This broke off as yet another attacker struck him behind the knees.
Scott rolled with the impact and brought his fist down on the exposed spine of the young man who had tackled him. Barely a man. Couldn’t be more than seventeen years old. The boy screamed at him in a voice full of fear and anger.
Tantrum voice.
Again and again he hit the boy. Until the grip was watery, and then not a grip at all.
Scott did not know where Aaron had gotten to, but his absence was not a good sign.
The two of them always had one another’s backs. Only a dire emergency would have distracted his friend in an instance like this one.
The huge man thought it likely his rowdy counterpart would be locked in combat of his own with one of the Possessed souls.
That was the nametag assigned to the changed in E.T.’s stories.
Possessed.
They acted devilish enough that it made sense.
Something completely unrelated to logic told Scott that the far-fetched explanation was pure truth. He should be more skeptical, like Aaron. But he was not.
Another person -or the possessed shell of a person if his new information was correct- came at him cursing loudly. This time it was a slight Asian man. The stranger met the same fate as many others had already, crumpling weakly at Scott’s feet.
Two more potential attackers were coming from his left, being more cautious than those before them. These actually tried to keep bodies and equipment between themselves and him until the last moment. Thinking defensively. Scott felt another bear down from directly behind.
So many.
Cold rage like winter wind built in him with each attack on his own person. It ratcheted up exponentially with every sob and scream from a bystander caught in the crossfire.
He would locate Aaron and they would end this together.
Something struck his hip, distracting him for a moment. An errant gurney whizzed past, laden with a vomiting patient and soiled linens. The situation was deteriorating faster than he could control with brute force.
Scott looked up again, and found Aaron Dayne.
There, in the chaos of the cafeteria, relatively still in a swarm of motion, Aaron sat on the messy floor. One boot was gone, his sock soaking up the spillage of broken IV bags.
The face Scott saw was not that of his best friend. More like a waxen mask, so deep were the creases around his mouth and eyes.
To Scott, it appeared as though Aaron had jumped forward a decade. He looked drawn out. Aged.. His lips twitched. The corners of his mouth sought the floor, as if the deepest of frowns was not enough to express the profundity of his grief. Shiny little rivulets traced their way down his face.
Scott’s super-human heart plummeted the moment he saw where those tears fell.
Aaron’s rough hands pawed gently but desperately at her face.
His muscled arms cradled her, hugging her earnestly to his swelling chest.
A dark syrupy pool of blood spread over his stomach and lap and onto the floor.
Too much blood.
Aaron kept picking her delicate hand up and trying to cross it over his shoulder. Trying to make her hug him back, vainly hoping to keep her skin out of the gore. Each time, the limp arm would succumb to the pull of gravity and slap back down into the mess, sending up little splashes to be wiped away by his calloused palm as it shook uncontrollably.
It was too cruel, Scott thought, to be the work of destiny or God.
He stood, transfixed in shared shock and grief, watching the strongest man he knew utterly fall apart.
Aaron Dayne did not cry like a man was supposed to cry, his tears came in weighty drops and he shuddered like a frightened animal. Even as their new enemies kept coming for him, Scott Fitzpatrick could not dam his own tears. Nor could he erase from his mind the image that would be burned into his memory forever forward.
Allie Dayne laid still, bled-out and holding the utterly motionless pose of the dead. Cradled gently in the arms of her husband, her still-beautiful eyes open and staring calmly into the void.
Hurricane, Utah
Red rocks at the Virgin River RV retreat glowed wickedly in the rising sun. Long, cold shadows stretched across the sand and scrub, reaching their concealing fingers over the abandoned campgrounds. The detritus of family fun gusted over concrete pads and blackened fire pits. Skittering candy wrappers and burnt-out aluminum cans were the only voices to be heard in the still desert dawn. The rose light carried an inconsistent promise of warmth. For now, dry air hung frigid.
Crouched in the cone of one reaching shadow was a figure swaddled in feathery rags and a haze of blowflies. Long, colorless hair hung like a dirty curtain to conceal what may once have been a pretty face. The features clouded by little puffs of breath in the chill were striking, devolved to almost frightening. Softness and femininity had long since eroded into edges and lines. Sandblasted beauty.
Nobody knew her real name.
Even she didn’t know it.
Her neighbors all identified her in pronouns and clipped phrases, whispered warnings to naughty children and campfire stories.
The Witch, Demoness, Soul-Stealer, Bruja.
Very often no title was needed. It was simply She that would come in the night, or Her totems and black altars stumbled across in the hills and rock piles. To many in the surrounding communities, and even some in the farther off cities, the Bruja was a bedtime monster, a fairy-tale villain and dark tale to be shared on expeditions into the desert.
Those that had never actually laid eyes on her would giggle fearfully at her stories. A friend of a friend of a friend who had seen what happened at Burning River, or had been to The Crying Rock. The details sometimes muddled, but the tale of her wrath at the Eastern Sand Court was mostly true. The Angels Landing Massacre -where she reportedly led a busload of schoolchildren up the precarious climb and then pitched them off one by one into a bloody rain- was utterly fabricated, though she fancied it a good idea. That story had even made the county newspaper.
She was a legend, a wives’ tale to most.
Of course there were those who had met her. Some had wandered alone or been foolish enough to investigate an unnatural stone formation or mutant copse of juniper.
Those unlucky few did not laugh at the stories. They did not sensationalize or share. They bore the scars, both physical and otherwise, with shame and fear.
Clutching teenage lovers and adventurous lonely hikers would return home filled with suspicion and regret.
She made them feel betrayed by their own senses, made them doubt their rock-solid faith.
The hoodoo she conjured showed them things that were impossible to see, harder still to forget. Local bishops and pastors who dared admit to her existence would armor their congregants with prayer and faith and blessings.
Much more often, they pretended there was nothing to worry about.
The Bruja relished such foolishness.
This cold morning she squatted and scratched at the scat left by some desert rabbits. The worn fingertips of one hand traced spirals and lines in the waste. Her symbols were vaguely reminiscent of language, like the scrawls of a long-dead skeleton.
A childish voice that should not be hers murmured something nonsensical, reading the almost-words in the dirt. Sunlight fingered the ground beneath her, and she smiled a sinister smile.
At the solar touch the Bruja dropped her robes and stood naked in the chill morning. Her body was lean and hard, almost masculine. Raw wounds at the shoulder blades, knees and elbows told tales of the ordeal she had only this morning broken free of. Red sand caked into the rawness. Swollen lines stood out on the brown skin of her stomach where she had raked herself in agony. A map of scars, welts, and old burns detailed her journey through the underworld of Santeria and black magic. One elbow was crooked at an odd angle, evidence of some past accident. Or perhaps not an accident.
There were stories about the scars too. The bulk of those were untrue. Details
of her past had been clouded over long ago, traded away for arcane skills and powers unintended for a person’s wielding.
The Bruja came from nowhere and had no home.
She was a ghost of the hills who drifted in and out of the reality occupied by the truckers, miners, and park rangers who shared desert townships.
The ordeal that had pulled her back into orbit this time around was something new altogether.
Never before had she been laid low for so long. The heavy chapping of her lips and hollowed out appearance of her cheeks evidenced the depth of her dehydration.
It had been days since she’d last eaten. Yet she somehow felt refreshed. The garbage of the campgrounds would provide her sustenance soon enough, but she had work to do. Her crumpled and tattered robes produced a small vial, the butane refill pack for a cheap cigarette lighter.
A sharp plastine crack broke the stillness, sending hidden rabbits dashing for cover. Dipping her soiled finger into the lighter fuel, she traced mirror symbols onto her own skin. The spirals and angles of her fingerpainting ignited where her skin touched, sparked by something unseen. Burning dung and sebum combined to create a putrid incense. The Bruja’s gap-toothed smile spread wider and a lilting childish giggle purled out into the freshly bright morning. Desert birds and hares jetted away, chirping in panicked high notes and skipping tiny stones across the cacti and brush. The unnatural breeze that pursued them carried elemental menace, hints of danger. Blisters rose and popped under the flaming glyphs on the lone woman’s naked flesh. Plasmic run steamed stinking into the air, but her grin remained. She reached for her robes with fingers alight, setting them on fire and adding more smoke and stink to the atmosphere of the campground.
Her eyelids fluttered in masochistic ecstasy as more flames licked at the track marks on her shins.
She fell in love with the torture.
Only the silent stones witnessed her perverted moment of privacy. A woman who should be beautiful, made ugly, alone in the open wilderness. Murmurs and laughter became a chant, then a song. The melody throbbed with ugly intent. It echoed unnaturally crisp from the far off mesas. Wisps of grotesque smoke curled into almost-shapes and prowled out over the scrub brush like predatory clouds. Hardy plants crisped and died. Fragrant dusty green leaves dropped in a depressed rain. The few reptiles left hiding under rocks and roots voiced fearfully in rattles and hisses before scattering or dying.
No crunching rocks or scuffing dirt marked her passage as she tread on dirty feet toward the campground dumpster. Filthy hands reached in and pulled out a plastic sack of damp bread and moldering hotdogs. Moisture in the garbage wafted into the air as if she cooked the items in her bare hand. The food –if it could be called such- disappeared down her throat, barely chewed. Using both hands now, she sifted through the refuse of the previous weekend’s campers, ravenously devouring anything that even resembled food. More putrid stink rose into the morning as the heated garbage added its signature to the poisoned air. Little flecks of ketchup and Twinkie cream joined the occult skin art as the Bruja feasted.
Many long, disgusting moments later, she stopped and wiped her greasy hands on the brown metal side of the trash bin. With a belly swollen and finally sated, she turned her dark eyes southward, where far off the sun winked in reflection from the windows and storefronts of town. She headed that way, the winged shadow she cast leaving a wake of dead vegetation and curled up carcasses.
The sleeping town she aimed for just started to stir. Dogs and cats there all turned eyes and ears northward. Pausing for a moment to listen or sniff at what the breeze had to say. Tails curled under and lips curled back in nervous fearful aggression.
Dawn, typically so calm and mundane in the desert, erupted with animal noise.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Lonely old iron hulks anchored at Pearl Harbor hummed mournfully. Their younger, better progeny had been dispatched to prowl international waters and defend America’s coast against further attack. Or still waited for the first attack, nobody was really sure.
Peni marveled at how different the Harbor looked, emptied now by necessity.
He had visited the Memorial before. There had even been a time when his crew had sold drugs to the young Japanese tourists trailing behind their parents and rolling bored eyes in embarrassed exasperation.
It was different now, as of course it should be. Small temporary barriers closed off the walkways onto the docks and museum doors. Hundreds of frightened-looking visitors in oversized sunglasses and fanny packs crowded against the fences. Asking each other the same questions over and over. Recycling inquiries up and down the lines but never finding answers.
Peni stalked past them, his edgy senses pinging the crammed-together bodies for anything unusual. For now, there was nothing. No telltale smell or heaving movement of the crowd that would hint at another attack like the one in his house.
Antiquated frigates and battleships in the bay sounded like metal whales.
Peni continued past the crowd and out of sight.
The nearby naval base was his destination. Answers might be found there.
In an effort to avoid undue attention, he stole an abandoned rental scooter, perching awkwardly on its tiny wheels for a few blocks before abandoning it again. Feeling ridiculous, he returned to his airborne ambulation until the guardhouse gates came into view. Humvees were parked between the cement barriers, baby-faced troops bristling with high tech weapons and radio antennae skittered around the barricades and the fences beyond. Even the palm trees seemed poised for something big.
The base was on high alert.
Trucks, jeeps, and a few helicopters roared about the grid as Peni approached. A megaphone-tainted voice called out to him and the other few wanderers approaching the gatehouse.
“Attention civilians, this installation and all personnel are on high alert and have been instructed to avoid contact with non-military persons. You will not be admitted to the base. If you do not turn back and clear the area, you will be arrested. Return to your homes and await further instruction from the Emergency Broadcast System. I repeat, clear the area and return to your homes or you will be arrested.”
The chirpy metallic voice rang in Peni’s sensitive ears and repeated itself in Japanese, Hawaii’s unofficial second language. He noticed that some of the muzzles on the jeeps and trucks were wagging suspiciously in the direction of an approaching man who appeared to be homeless. His gait looked sickly and his clothes were torn and dirty.
Young soldiers focused in on the vagrant because they thought whatever was going on had something to do with a disease. If any of the approaching bodies carried something, this was the most likely suspect.
The guardsmen wondered whether there was something wrong with him, but Peni knew there was. His nose told him so, and something about the way the man moved. Maybe it was something even deeper. A heavy thrumming sound washed away more announcements from the soldier with the megaphone as a Comanche helicopter set out from base.
Peni looked up to note the bristling batteries of sidewinder missiles and air-to-ground armor piercing cannons. Whatever was going on, the military was taking it seriously.
Very Seriously.
So far he had only been able to gather snippets of information. Blurbs that spewed from storefronts and hearsay picked up through apartment windows. The consensus around the island thus far seemed to be some kind of biological attack or nerve agent.
The usual suspects denied culpability.
Korea, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia; all came forth issuing generic statements of peace and beseeching the UN and world superpowers to exercise restraint because they too were suffering the same sort of tragedy. So it was worldwide.
Peni wondered how many people were hurting, and how many were acting crazy, breaking into houses and attacking their neighbors. He wondered how many smelled like death and heat and made him feel like he needed to put a fist through their heads, the way his old self would have done.
; Most importantly, he wondered how many people grew wings and knew how to fly.
The helicopter’s racket receded, chased away by a salty breeze. Paper and dried palm leaves blew past Peni’s feet.
More crackly metallic instructions came from the bullhorn, this time more urgent. It brought the large man back to the moment, back to now.
The hobo in his dirty rags screamed something nonsensical at the fence and collapsed into the gutter. He appeared to sleep peacefully for a moment before his legs started running without him, followed by his left hand, then his right, until his whole body shook and his breath puffed at the sand and dust and garbage of the roadside. The flow of people headed for base parted like water around a river stone, nobody stopping to help.
Peni changed course and headed for the man, drawn not by sympathy, but by that same internal drive. A deep-sea coldness of anger that he had felt while fighting in his own kitchen. He crouched beside the twitching body and stared, gritting his teeth and deciding what to do. Of course the man would wake up, stinking and hot and ravenously mad, seeking to hurt someone, maybe Peni himself.
Should he end it now? Hit the man while he was down? Waylay the misery he would find himself in, or at least inflict on others?
It was tougher now to decide than it would once have been. For a moment he reached to grab the man’s head in his newly-smooth palms. Already an otherworldly fever was baking upward from under the skin.
Disgusting.
Gun barrels bristled and the megaphone chirped yet again, warning everyone away from the government barricades, and away from the man shuddering against the dirty curb. Sirens sounded, heralding the arrival of a military ambulance. Only a yard away, Peni stood back as four young men -or maybe they were women- in HAZMAT suits jumped out. One carried a backpack tank of some cleansing liquid. He sprayed it over the surrounding curb and street, then onto the man and Peni too. The foamy substance was cold and slightly yellowish.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 22