HE REACHED INTO THE VENDING MACHINE with the broken glass and plucked out a bag of hot fries. He ripped open the bag as his boots crunched the glass that littered the floor. His mind was flooded with possibilities, and possibilities weren't normally the things that flooded his mind. As he crunched on the fried whatever-it-was sprinkled with Cajun spices, he moved into the hallway to take the long way back to the library.
He thought about all that he had seen. He and Anastasia had come to some sort of weird realization in a jungle in South Asia, and they'd ended up not killing one another and instead had sexy times. He knew he couldn't trust her then, and she tried to pull the double cross on him before he had gotten his pants good and zipped. He wondered if he could have been happy just running off with her and not calling up the Time Zombie to search for his mother.
He wondered now, that sexy times had happened again, if that wasn't still the best plan. She liked that word, plan; he had never really given too much thought to planning anything. Anastasia was a big fan of planning though, and she seemed to be actually pretty good at it. The only plan that Billy had ever come up with was going back in time to try to find his mother, hoping that he could change the way he grew up.
Technically, that had been a bad plan from the get-go. He hadn't really factored in that it wouldn't be him growing up again, but the back-in-the-past him. So what would have happened to the him-him that was him all grown up who went back into the past? Luckily for him-him, he had not really gone into his past, but an alternate universe that was sort of his past that his younger self had gotten pulled into also, when he had first met the Time Zombie on the baseball field. If he hadn't have gone into that alternate reality thingy, then he might have erased him-him from the back-there-him timeline.
Or, the back-there-him that was really kind of the over-there-back-there him.
Billy crunched hot fries and savored the salty-cayenne clarity. “Time travel is way too confusing.”
He decided he dodged a bazooka round where time travel was concerned. Aside from him setting all kinds of screwy things into motion, like his mother being evil and a member of the Satanic Five over there, and now the Satanic Five here being after him.
That goddess chick, Artemis, seemed pretty pissed off about what he had done too.
“At least I got to kill that mouthy Russian again.” Billy crunched once more and thought about what a dick Broom had been.
Now, he had a cassette tape of some guy named Hoof Scratch Hatchett who had secret codes in the lyrics, and he was supposed to be hiding out and waiting for the Devil Bird to find him.
Anastasia was mad at him for wanting to find Lissandra on the way to try and sneak into Mexico, but he couldn't help that. Lissandra was the only person who ever made any sense out of the instructions the goddess handed out. Billy knew that he didn't understand a word that antler-wearing broad said. Anastasia, as smart as she was, hadn't seemed to really tune in on the transmission either.
“Pop's dying alone in some clinic, and Mom is still on the run, and I don't know if she's good or evil.” Billy dunked the rest of the bag of hot fries into a trash can in the hallway. “Yeah, you really fixed things up good.”
Billy rounded the corner and froze when he saw all the kids standing at the other end of the hallway. There was a whole tribe of them, breathing heavy and staring up at him. Farm hicks, cool kids, three skateboard punks, popular looking kinda girls with their arms crossed: it hadn't mattered what clique they were from, as they all smiled at him.
Those smiles and the black eyes were the school colors that tied the unlikely mob together. Girls pointed and the three boys hit their skateboards and pushed down the hall towards Billy with their mouths opening wide.
Billy held up his arms. “Hey you kids, what're you doing in school? It's summer, you nerds.”
The skateboard kids were fast and swarmed around him. He couldn't believe his eyes as they all kicked their boards up into their hands and commenced to beating on him with them. The strikes were hard, harder than a bunch of punk kids should have been able to hand out, and they were targeted for maximum effect.
Billy took one to the knee, then one to the jewel-factory, and finally one right across the chin. He fell back, and it was everything he could do to not completely go down. He rolled back up to face them off again.
“Okay! What you just did, them's my moves and I don't like amateu—”
Smacked right across the face with a wooden deck. He heard the girls scream out an advance marching order, and the whole mob was headed his way. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blood fly from his busted lip.
Billy dodged the next strike to the side of his head, but still took a jab in the ribs. That one had hurt; these kids were playing for keeps. Billy pushed himself up in a leap and barely dodged three strikes to the legs. When he landed, he grabbed the trash can and swept the line with it, sending the kids bouncing into one another and falling like bowling pins as the rest of the group barreled down on him.
He tossed the trash can at them, making it bounce off the ground and go rolling. The mob ran right into it, and it sent the lead girls down to the floor hard as the skateboarders pulled themselves up.
Billy stared the closest skateboard kid down. He couldn't have been more than fifteen. The words that came from the kid's mouth were not those of a typical skateboard punk. “We are going to tear your soul from your body and defile it as your dead eyes watch.”
He pushed away from them. Kids didn't talk like that, and he wasn't into having anything on him defiled — especially his soul.
“Black eyes…” Billy was in a full run and locomotive'ing himself towards the library. “Demons.”
“Run away, Purgatory! It only makes it that much sweeter when we catch you. Blood sautéed in fear is most delicious.”
II.
Anastasia was standing outside the doors to the library and deciding whether she had calmed down enough to go back in. Billy Purgatory had made her angry yet again. Every time he made her angry it was more intense than it had been the previous time.
Or maybe she was angry at herself?
“I can't believe I let him touch me.” She pulled at her hair as she tied it back and decided to take a stroll up and down the hallway to think before she gave him a piece of her mind. “That's what I should have given him a piece of in the first place.”
She had told herself that remaining with him was a bad idea — the worst idea. There had been plenty of chances to sneak away. He was in far over his inflated head, and this was not her war. She could have easily snuck away and forgotten that he existed, living in happy obscurity for the rest of her days while the world of the humans went to dust.
“The only reason I am involved in any of this is because I won't just walk away and leave him to his approaching judgment. I am the reason that my life continues to spiral, because I keep coming back.”
She realized she was walking with her arms crossed and broke that pose, sending them swinging at her sides as she traversed the darkened hallway. She would have left after the insanity of the hospital: Biker gangs. Federal agents. A Devil Bird.
If only Billy's father had not pulled at her heartstrings. “You're a vampire, Anastasia. You are not allowed to have a heart suspended on strings.” If she was going to survive this, she was going to have to start thinking like a vampire again.
Billy had made his decision; it was Lissandra who he considered to be his savior. Curly-haired gypsy harlot that she was. She knew what was really in his head, and what he had wanted all along. “Let the two of them run away together and solve these riddles. What a perfect union, the Satanic Five will never know what—”
Anastasia was unprepared for the fist that hit her squarely in the face. She had seen nothing in the hallway ahead, but she had been so focused on her rage that she hadn't been looking very well either. The force of the blow was severe; it sent her up and off her feet to fly back the way she had come, ten feet or more, and then come cr
ashing down onto the maroon carpet.
She knew her nose hadn't broken, thankfully, but it hurt like it had. She shook her head and saw them, all the women who were emerging from shadows. The one in the forward position who had struck her was a fat little thing in her late thirties. Mom jeans and a garish discount store top with rhinestones.
Anastasia's demeanor changed as she sprung to her feet like she was made of springs. “Come looking for your lost jacket, bitch?” She clicked her fangs into place.
There was an army of farm-bred soccer mothers behind the first one. They cracked their knuckles and carried rolling pins and held crackling-arcing tasers.
One carried a golf club she brandished like a spear.
Anastasia leapt forward, claws at the ready and fangs primed to sink and tear flesh. The throng didn't move backwards as she flew at them like a rabid animal.
All offered their necks. “Yes, vampire! Please bite me.” Anastasia touched down amongst them as their hands went for her to pull her closer to their collective groping.
“No, me first. My neck is ready.”
She saw their black eyes and bit none of them. She sliced with her claws and sent blood flying as she herself flew backwards.
The women advanced, pulling their hair from their necks and taunting Anastasia. “Put your fangs here. Taste my blood.” “You know you are hungry. We see it in your eyes.”
“Demons…” Anastasia turned and ran.
III.
Anastasia and Billy slammed into one another at the entrance of the library. Their eyes were wide and they said it with the same exasperation at the very same time.
“Demons!”
Billy grabbed her and pulled her into the library.
“How many?”
“I couldn't tell.” She watched him pulling the cassette tape from the player. “Very many.”
“We have got to get out of here.”
Billy was stuffing his notes into his pack. “Did they have skateboards?”
“What?”
Billy threw the bag over his shoulder. He had his skateboard in his right hand. “Were they in the hallway that led to the gym? Towards the truck.”
“No… I don't know.” She pointed as they headed toward the doors. “I was the other way.”
“I was outside the cafeteria.” They were both plotting out how they could escape in their heads. “We're not going to make the truck.”
“It looks like they've possessed the whole town.”
Billy pushed out into the hallway. “How the hell did they find us?”
“I think you just answered yourself.”
He smiled. “I think I have a plan.”
Anastasia's fangs were at the ready. “I do too. Kill them all.”
Billy held her arm as they began to run towards the gym. “We can't kill any of them.”
“Are you insane? We kill them all!”
“No, Ana. They have these people possessed.”
“How does that change the plan?” They shot around a corner and found hundreds in the hallway and more filing in from an open door. Anastasia threw her arm up to block the bright sunlight from her face.
“Because it's not their fault. They don't know what they're doing.”
“That doesn't change that if we don't kill them, they're going to rip us apart.”
“This is worse than zombies.” Billy threw himself between Anastasia and the bright light, and the legion, and pushed her down the hall away from it all and towards the gym. “I have a plan.”
“Don't be offended that I'm not at all relieved by that.”
Billy grabbed her arm to stop her at the scaffolding in the hallway. He began to grab the rings of pins at the joints. The legion was running towards them now.
“What are you doing?”
“Anastasia, shut up and pull pins.”
Anastasia did just that. They ran down the row of metal scaffolding and pulled every pin they could. Billy grabbed Anastasia again with one hand and took hold of the scaffolding with another and pushed.
The expanse of it began to collapse, like when he had attacked his metal construction set with his monster toys as a kid. Thirty feet long and eight feet high, the metal support posts and walkway toppled due to weight and inertia, crashing with an unholy racket that blocked the hallway.
“If the rest of your plan is anything like this…”
“Come on, Anastasia!”
They ran the rest of the hallway as demons cursed after them. The demons began to crawl and navigate over and around the mess of twisted metal Billy had created.
Into the gym, each took hold of one of the metal doors and slammed it shut. Anastasia looked over to Billy; both of them had their backs to the door.
“Now what?”
Billy raised his hand. He had kept as many of the metal pins as he could carry and had them dangling from his fingers. He began to fish them off one hand with the fingers from the other and jam the pins into the locking mechanism on the gym doors.
“If we pry enough of these into here, it'll keep the doors wedged closed to buy us some time.”
Anastasia looked across the gym to the next set of doors. “Those lead outside. They have to.”
“We're surrounded. You really think that the truck is gonna be sitting back there unguarded for us to just jump into and drive off?”
She watched him banging the pins into the space in the doors. “If we don't, then how are we going to get out of here?”
“We're not walking through those doors, but we are getting out of here.”
Anastasia grabbed his arm. “We have to run.”
“The whole town is overrun for all we know. How far do you think we're gonna get? The whole FBI could be out there for all we know.”
“This is crazy…”
“It's only half-crazy.” He jammed the last pin into place and began walking to the center of the gym. Frustrated at him, but intrigued, Anastasia followed.
“Say the town is overrun, Anastasia. These aren't mindless zombies we're dealing with here. These are demons. Demons have rules.”
Billy pulled the bag of blood out of his pack and then dropped the pack at his feet. Anastasia eyed the bag of blood as Billy finished his thought. “We're gonna use those rules against them.”
“You're suddenly an expert on demonology?” Anastasia reached for the bag of blood in Billy's hand. It looked a lot more appetizing than it had the night before.
“I don't know nothing about demon-rules, hot stuff. I just know about the blues.”
~40~
“THIS IS PRINCIPAL ASMODEUS. THERE WILL BE A SCHOOL ASSEMBLY…”
BILLY AND ANASTASIA STOOD in the center of the gym and watched as the doors leading to them began to take a serious beating. Armed only with a skateboard, a couple of knives, fangs, and sharpened fingernails. Big dents began to appear in the doors in successive powerful strikes from the other side.
They both looked at one another, knowing that the doors were only going to hold up for a few more fleeting moments.
“This is the worst plan ever.” Anastasia nearly hissed the words from her mouth.
“It's a good plan. You'll see.”
Bam! The door began to buckle and several of the hinges snapped.
“We should have made a run for it.”
Metal pins sheared and fell helplessly to the floor.
“I thought you were tired of running?”
The door took another heavy blow and began to fold in on itself, barely hanging on.
“So, you're doing this for me?” Anastasia was staring down the breaking entryway. “Thank you.”
The door collapsed on itself and crashed to the gym floor in a rending of metal and sputtering of dust.
“You're welcome.”
Billy and Anastasia moved in close to one another as the possessed legion of townspeople began moving in — they were walking backwards.
“What the…?”
One of the first ones in was an older
farmer type who pressed his palm into a button on the wall. There was a great noise of machinery that came to life and the two captives of the gym watched as the bleachers began to move out from the wall by means of chain-driven pulleys. As the four sets, two on either side of the gym, fully extended, the demons in their host bodies began filing calmly up them to take a seat, as if a hometown basketball game was about to start.
“Why are they walking backwards?”
Anastasia didn't answer, but her eyes spoke for her that she had no idea.
Once the crowd was assembled in the grand stands, all with their backs to Billy and Anastasia, one of the skateboarder kids that Billy had faced off with and the town sheriff entered the room. They too walked backwards, and stopped some fifteen feet or more before reaching Billy and Anastasia.
The last one into the room wore a smart black suit and had white hair. His backward step motion stopped at ten feet from the two of them, who watched the scene unfold in disturbing wonder.
When the man went for the inner pocket of his jacket, Billy raised his board and Anastasia hissed. They calmed themselves as the man held up a piece of parchment and began to unroll it.
All at once, the man, the skateboard kid and the sheriff, and the entire legion turned to face Billy and Anastasia. The legion took their seats in the bleachers and Billy looked over the three on the gym floor with him. He'd been wrong about Demons having black eyes. None of them had any color to their irises, as if their eyes had been pasted onto them from an old black and white movie.
The sheriff and the skateboard kid looked on stoically and said nothing. The man with the white hair in the suit held his parchment scroll in one hand and indicated the floor of the gym at Billy and Anastasia's feet with the other.
“I am assuming that you invoke the laws of the old country?”
Billy shot his eyes down to the floor around his and Anastasia's feet. Anastasia held onto Billy's arm as Billy looked at the lines he had drawn beneath them with the blood from the bag he had punctured. Billy had used the blood to sketch out the symbol of the three roads crossing. He and Anastasia stood in a circle enclosing it all.
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 36