The wood thudded against its limp-hanging left arm. With a roar, the demon grabbed Wilkes one-handed, and slammed him against the wall as he had Sid Pitts, who was still pinned in place a few feet away. But Wilkes was not like Sid. He was a great bull of a man, tall, thick and strong. The demon was taller, thicker, stronger. It had only one working hand, however, and this gave Wilkes a fighting chance. He broke the thing’s grip and in a flurry of kicks and punches drove it back.
Still, for all the damage he was doing, he might as well have been kicking and punching the side of an elephant. Ten seconds of this was all the demon would stand and after receiving a thudding roundhouse kick to its side, it darted in, faster than any of them thought possible. Strangely, it looked as though the demon was trying to hug Wilkes, but when it stepped back, its mouth was filled with red flesh, and there was blood shooting out from an outrageous gaping wound in Wilkes’ neck.
Wilkes was paper-white as his knees buckled. This brought a bloody grin to the demon’s face. He turned the smile towards Bryce before casually turning to look down at Griff, who was still gasping.
“No!” Bryce yelled.
He had been stunned by the explosion and then by the violence in front of him. Now he was racing along the uneven hallway, rocks in hand. They were stupid weapons, but all he had. Between him and the demon was an exhausted, out-of-her-depth Maddy and the gnarly she-demon. He had no time to deal with her. He headed for her all the same; she reared up like a viper and grinned in anticipation, thinking he would have to get within reach of her to use the rocks.
In this she was wrong. Cocking his arm, he hurled one of the rocks at her from a distance of five feet. There was no missing from that range. Still, she spoiled his killing throw by jerking away. The rock—four pounds of concrete—struck her on the side of the face and exploded. The demon’s face was crushed inward by the force of the impact. Her jaw broke in three places, teeth shot from their sockets, and her orbital bone was turned to dust.
But the she-demon was not dead.
“Finish her!” Bryce cried to Maddy as he ran past. He couldn’t waste another second. The demon had picked up the length of wood dropped by Wilkes and was advancing on Griff who was balled into the fetal position and unable to uncurl. Before Bryce reached it, the demon slammed the wood down, breaking it in two; both with ragged points.
It used one on Griff. Raising the wood, it stabbed down just as Bryce let fly with the second rock. The concrete hit a split second before the wood drove into the agent. Bryce was further away and his accuracy suffered. The rock hit the demon on the shoulder and did little damage, however, it did keep the spear of wood from going through Griff’s liver and out the other side of his body. Instead it tore through flesh and muscle, and shredded his intestines.
Griff would’ve screamed if he had any breath.
In disbelief, he touched the wood sticking from him and as he did the world went grey around him. Through this growing haze he saw Bryce attack the demon empty handed and for the first few seconds the human held the upper hand. His fists were pale blurs as they pounded home. He fought with desperation. Everything was against him, including time. There was no telling when the nukes would arrive and wipe the city from the earth. And what of Griff? How long could he survive with a hunk of wood sticking from his belly?
And Maddy, how long could she hold out against the she-demon? They were going back and forth; the demon fighting tooth and nail; Maddy swinging the shining ice axe. It rose and fell as she hacked and hacked and hacked.
Bryce didn’t even have time to watch that. His demon had caught hold of his stained white shirt, pivoted and slung Bryce twenty feet down the hall. It hurt. His elbows lost flesh and his shoulders took the brunt. He even struck his head and the blood flowed even more.
Slowly Bryce got to his feet as Maddy’s axe finally scored a real hit. The she-demon’s face was a bloody wreck, punctured ten times and it was still coming. The eleventh drove into its right eye and nearly got to its brain. Maddy tried to dig it in deeper, but the angle was odd and it meant staying in close where the creature could get her hands on her. Flinging out a huge flabby arm, it slapped away Maddy’s hand and now the woman was defenseless and still too close!
Dread filled her and she tried to run, but the demon was so fast. It caught Maddy’s hair and pulled her down by it.
Maddy fought back as best she could. She kicked and clawed which only seemed to encourage the demon. Its misshapen face, more hideous than ever, grinned down at her, drooling, uncaring about the pick of the ice axe in its eye.
Its great weight was too much for Maddy and she was pressed to the ground, barely able to breathe, and with her hands pinned, she was helpless. The demon opened its horror of a mouth and went to eat Maddy face. Panic filled the woman as she could do nothing except scream high and shrill.
The agonized sound struck Bryce, further weakening him. He had failed in every way. His friends were all dead or dying, and the city would be reduced to ashes any time.
By any measure of intelligence, the smart thing to do was to run away. Alone, he might make it to the FBI. Alone, he had a chance to survive. And wasn’t that the name of the game? All his life the concept of survival of the fittest had been drilled into his head, and here it was in black and white. Stay and die. Run and live.
He took a step back and the demon grunted. Its face was a slaggy, broken mess from the train, still it was able to communicate utter contempt. It made Bryce feel weak and pathetic. It made Bryce feel like himself again…and he didn’t like it. He turned back to the demon.
Chapter 52
Bryce turned from being Bryce Carter, PhD the egotistical, smarmy little shit who had the bad habit of pointing out the flaws in other people while ignoring his own. That person had been an infrequent but poor lover, a fair-weather friend and a backstabbing colleague. He also never bought pickles because he could rarely get the lids off and felt that this alone exposed his inherent weakness.
The Bryce who turned to confront the demon was certainly taller and more manly. Pickle jars no longer frightened him, but was he any better of a person?
“A little.” He had tried and he had fought, and he wasn’t running away. That was something.
He advanced on the demon, who nodded. Respect from an evil, soulless creature should’ve meant nothing and yet Bryce nodded back. In a way, they were both victims of Daniel Magnus. And they were both warriors. Like it or not, the demon had helped make him one.
The nodding was it for the preliminaries and the demon rushed at Bryce moving faster than the human eye could easily follow. Bryce’s eyes were no longer simply human. With the light from the fires slipping through the smoke, Bryce saw the demon well enough; close on seven feet tall, two-hundred and eighty pounds of muscle, its left arm swung uselessly, and it favored its right leg.
During the train crash, something had happened to its left knee and it was only just healed, and perhaps it wasn’t entirely so. Bryce decided in that split second, he would go for that knee. It would slow the creature down, giving Bryce a chance.
The demon went for a straight killing punch with its massive right hand. If it landed, Bryce’s head would be turned around, his chin, or what was left of it, pointed back the way he had come. Right before impact, he dropped low, lashing out for the knee in something of low-altitude flying side kick. The fist skimmed off the top of his head, while his foot struck the demon’s knee squarely.
The shock of the impact ran from Bryce’s foot all the way up his leg and nearly popped the head of his femur out of its hip socket. The demon crashed over Bryce who felt like he was being run over by a small truck. He went tumbling and rolling backwards.
Had it even felt its knee crack in two? Bryce doubted it and he struggled to get to his feet before the demon could. The creature hadn’t even tried. It had one good hand and one good leg. It half crawled, half dragged itself along, its nails ripping into the cracked tile floor.
Bryce was too slow and
it was too quick.
It latched a huge hand onto his ankle and yanked him from his feet. Then, as if Bryce weighed nothing, it reeled him in. Bryce had both hands and one foot free, and he began kicking the demon square in the face. Although it lost teeth and had its nose bent sideways, the demon took the punishment long enough to drag Bryce under it, where his kicks were useless. Bryce then fought with his fists, landing heavy blows with each hand. He had never punched so hard in his life. The blows knocked even more teeth from the demon’s gaping mouth which only meant that Bryce’s death would be that much slower.
Then the demon planted his bad knee on Bryce’s left arm and that was it for the fight. It could rain down punches with its good hand and Bryce was in no position to do much. Instinctively, and disgustingly, he grabbed the demon and pulled him close like a baby chimp clinging to its mother’s breast. Keeping close was the only way to keep from being pulverized by that fist.
Baby chimps didn’t win many fights for a reason. The demon reached down and pried Bryce away from it. Thinking, he’d just reattach, Bryce tried to nuzzle in again only to see the demon’s elbow flying down at him. The elbow almost turned off his lights permanently. By the barest of margins, Bryce ducked into it and still saw stars when it hit.
Desperately, he grabbed inward again and again the demon went to pry him away, but that was when he heard something rushing at them.
It wasn’t a someone. Who would it have been? Wilkes and Sid Pitts were dead, and Griff was beyond the ability to rush anywhere. Nichola was young still, and a fighter, but her energies were for her benefit alone, while Victoria’s were for her family.
No, only another zombie would dare to run at a demon. But the steps were nimble and light.
The demon heard them as well, and looked up giving Bryce a second to see what was coming: a furious, bloody-faced Maddy Whitmore. Despite being pinned, she had slain her demon and hadn’t needed hands to do it, either. With the spike of the ice axe in its eye, Maddy had slammed her forehead into the hammer end as hard as she could.
She had gouged her forehead deeply but had managed to pierce the thing’s brain, sending the pick into the soft black sludge. The she-demon went spastic, shaking screeching and jitterbugging on the ground, nearly crushing Maddy in the process. She had squirmed beneath the hideous corpse, yanked out her axe and was now flying at the demon, thinking she had a free shot, thinking she could kill it and save Bryce.
She thought wrong.
It yanked its hand from Bryce’s grip and shot out a long arm, grabbing Maddy around the throat just as she swung the axe. Her arms were short and the spike breezed an inch from its face. She went to swing again; however, the demon squeezed its massive hand and Maddy went stiff, her face going purple in an instant. She dropped the ice axe and grabbed the hand with both of hers. In vain she pulled at the black fingers. It was like trying to pull the root of a tree from the earth.
Beneath them, Bryce thrust out an arm and groped for the ice axe with a desperate hand. Just as Maddy sucked in her last breath, his hand found the handle. But even with the ice axe in his hand, the demon was safe from an instant kill.
The demon’s heart was protected by a belt of muscle three inches thick and rib bones that were strong as stone. Its neck was stout as a bull’s and the thin bones of its temple were impossible to get to with its arm in the way. With a quick death out of the question, Bryce aimed for the carotid artery that ran along the side of the creature’s Adam’s apple.
He missed, hitting the thing’s larynx instead. Rather than pulling the spike right out, he pushed up savagely on the end of the handle in a prying motion, causing the spike to tear outward, ripping through the cartilage and gaping the wound. He swung again and the spike sunk three inches deep. Again, he applied pressure to the end and again the spike began to tear through the thing’s throat. This time there was a spray of blood and he could feel the pulse of the great heart run down the metal.
Bryce was determined to carve out the thing’s throat…but only if Maddy could last a few more seconds.
She went limp a moment later, just as Bryce brought the ice axe back for a third time. Maddy fell as the demon let her go and slammed its hand down on the axe pinning it to the tile. Bryce tried to lift it but it was like trying to lift a car. A second later, the demon ripped it from his hand.
The axe was no longer his or Maddy’s weapon. It was the demon’s. And chimping it in close was no longer an option, if it ever was. No one would save him now if he clung to the demon’s breast. Maddy was unmoving and even if she were to suddenly spring up, she was weaponless.
Bryce was stuck fighting a superior being with only the pathetic implements God had supplied: hands, feet, teeth. Biting wouldn’t work. Sure, there was a gaping hole in the thing’s neck, but already the demon was rearing back, protecting its neck from a bite. Bryce was in no position to kick and now, with its larynx destroyed, even a throat punch was basically useless.
He tried anyway. He grabbed the creature’s ear with his left hand and slammed his fist into its throat as hard as he could. This elicited nothing, not even a grunt. The only sound was the scrape of axe coming off the tile.
Bryce’s fist came away wet and red. It had slid into the wound where, for an instant, he had felt the thing’s pulse once more. The artery was so close he could touch it…and if he could touch it, he could rip it out. Forming his fingers into a flat plane he jabbed once more into the thing’s neck, this time aiming for penetration.
The gaping wound was odd and ugly, with muscle and tendon overlapping or hanging like spare lines off a blimp. His fingers slid between all of this until he felt the artery. It was there, bleeding, making everything slippery, which only meant Bryce would have to get as firm a grip as possible. His hand crunched down into a fist and there was something definitely alive within the tissue, something alive and pulsing.
Only then did the demon realized his danger. It swung the axe at the same moment Bryce pulled his hand back with all his strength. The spike of the axe parted his ribs, just below his liver, missing it by half an inch.
Bryce didn’t feel it. He was still pulling a handful of meat from the demon’s throat. None of it ripped out in a big chunk. Instead it stretched like taffy. The carotid, a slimy red hose stretched and stretched as the demon paused as it was pulling the axe out for another strike. Then all at once, the great vessel split and a gout of blood sprayed over Bryce. The thing’s heart blasted out another pulse a second later.
Realization came over the demon. It was going to die and for just a moment it hesitated as if it were an actual thinking person. Then its desire to kill overcame even its own onrushing death and it pulled the spike from Bryce’s body. It slid out like it had been greased. The demon was surprised when he lifted the axe and found that Bryce was clinging to its wrist. Bryce had realized that he could do no more damage to the thing’s throat and had grabbed hold of the creature’s wrist.
The demon had essentially pulled him free and now Bryce staggered back, suddenly feeling the deep ache in his side. It hurt to move and every breath sent fire into his body. The demon stood as well as it could, blood jetting from its neck. Maddy lay unconscious between them. Her chest rose rhythmically. Bryce knew that if he backed away, the demon would kill her with its last remaining seconds.
Bryce stepped forward and stood over her, barehanded against the demon.
Chapter 53
Maddy had been drunk exactly four times in her life and she woke in that crumbling building feeling exactly like she’d been pounding gin fizzes all night. Her entire body ached, though it was mostly her throat that had her attention. For a moment she didn’t know why, then she remembered the demon’s iron grip. Her hand went to her throat as she sat up.
The demon was there, lying in an immense pool of blood. She was suddenly terrified to move, afraid that it was only sleeping and that if she made a sound, it would jump up and eat her.
Seconds ticked away before she gained control of he
r fear. The demons were dead. She remembered killing the she-demon by slamming her forehead into the hammer end of ice axe. Its blood had poured over her…
Maddy’s stomach turned over. She had killed the one demon, but what had killed the big one? “Bryce?” she whispered. There was no answer and she pushed herself to her feet. She saw his feet first. The sneakers he had put on hours before were already splitting at the seams. The rest of him was no better.
His clothes were torn in places and shredded in others. There was blood all over him, some red and wet, some black and stinking of the demon. His arms had deep holes in them that bled sluggishly, and the ice axe stuck from his chest.
“Shit! Oh God, Bryce.” She wobbled to him and found the axe was buried in the upper part of his chest near his left shoulder. She touched it gently and he groaned. Leaning over him, she hissed, “Bryce! Hey. Are you okay?”
His blue eyes fluttered open. “Wha…what happened,” he asked, thickly.
“I don’t know.” She almost said, I think we won, but she could see Griff lying on his side, a hunk of wood sticking up out of him and Sid pinned to the wall. This wasn’t a win. “How’d you kill the demon?”
He remembered flashes of the final fight. The demon was slow and grew slower, and yet even at the end it was still strong. They had battled back and forth over Maddy’s body, neither giving an inch. Bryce couldn’t, knowing that the demon would kill her if he gave it a second of respite. He had gotten the worst of the fight. The demon had hacked with the axe, aiming for Bryce’s face in its fury. Bryce could do nothing but throw an arm up time and again as he ducked to the side. He had been slashed and stabbed over and over and in the end he had taken the spike to his chest and had gone reeling back.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 39