by Harvey Click
But now babbleboons were swinging out of tree branches and listeners and other horrors were emerging from big holes in the wet ground. There were too many of them for two people to fight, and all Neoma and Amy could do was swing their swords wildly as they ran.
Amy managed to impale a harpy as it darted down, and for a while the hideous thing remained stuck on her sword, its enormous bat wings slapping her legs as they flapped. She shook her sword until it slid off, but by now a toad-like thing the size of a Saint Bernard was hopping toward her. She plunged her sword into its wide warty forehead and spun around to slash something like a gigantic eel with a human face that was flopping toward her.
Just ahead she saw Neoma trying to kill a harpy that somehow had gotten the tip of its wing tangled in her long hair. It was hanging down behind her with its face turned the wrong way to bite her, and Neoma was trying to jab behind her back with her knife but wasn’t able to hit it. Amy got there just as it loosened itself from Neoma’s hair. It fell to the ground, and she ran it through before it was able to regain its balance.
“Did it bite you?” Amy asked.
“No.”
There was shouting ahead, and they ran toward it. Several Unseens were near the cars fighting furiously. Because of the camouflage and confusion Amy recognized only Bloody Joe, who was shooting harpies out of the air with his bow.
Suddenly something swung out of a tree and landed on her back, and while Amy was spinning around in terror trying to shake it loose, she heard the thwick of a knife in its flesh. The babbleboon fell off of her with a shriek, and she jabbed it twice while it lay twitching on the ground.
“Bad aim,” Nyx yelled. “I was trying to hit you and my fingers slipped. Get my fucking knife for me.”
Amy pulled the knife out of the babbleboon’s back and ran to Nyx, who immediately threw it again, this time at something that looked like a grotesque three-foot-tall human infant with green puke pouring out of its mouth.
“Shit,” she said. “Now I’m out of knives. Somebody cover my ass while I get them.”
Amy followed her with her sword ready while Nyx raced around retrieving her knives from demons already beginning to decompose in the heat. As she was bent over a dead listener another one of the puking infants waddled out from behind a log and grabbed her shirt. Amy impaled it like a fat sausage, then lifted her sword and dashed the creature’s brains out on a rock.
“Thanks,” Nyx muttered, “but I’m still planning to kill you in your sleep.”
They ran back to their comrades, who were fighting in a rough and constantly shifting circle, all of them facing outwards. Amy lunged at another toad-thing that was hopping toward her, and as she pulled her sword from its slimy brown flesh she noticed that a nearby tree trunk seemed to be moving. As she stared at it she realized that the bark was covered with centipedes four or five feet long with human faces.
She hacked madly at them as they slithered down the tree trunk to the ground, and whenever she cut one of them in two, both pieces ran off in different directions. There were too many of them; she gave up and rejoined the circle.
“Roll call!” Neoma shouted.
“Red!”
“John!”
“Jake!”
“Lucky!”
“Nyx!”
“Bloody Joe!”
“Amy—I mean Mary!”
“Where are the others?” Neoma asked.
“Brook’s still over there at the ridge,” Nyx said. “He’s guarding it so Sandoval’s shit-balls can’t come up the hill.”
“And who’s guarding Brook?” Neoma asked.
“Manda, Leo, Ivan, and Shane,” Lucky said.
“That’s not enough,” Neoma said. “I didn’t give you permission to leave your position.”
“Fuck that shit,” Nyx said. “We heard fighting over here so we came to help.”
“You don’t need four snipers over there,” Lucky said. “Sandoval’s not there anyway, and his lackeys are hiding behind their vehicle so nobody can hit them. They’re just waiting there to shoot us if anybody tries to run down the hill.”
“We’re good and fucked,” Nyx said. “This was some seriously brilliant planning on your part.”
The conversation was shouted in sporadic bursts while swords jabbed and knives and arrows flew. The ground around them was covered with dead demons putrefying into puddles. The stench was overpowering, but now Amy smelled something even worse, something like an open sewer.
“I smell a shitskin,” Bloody Joe said. “Unless somebody just farted.”
A misshapen, naked dwarf sprinted toward them from behind a tree. His entire torso was covered with puckered little anuses with runny brown feces oozing out of them. An arrow suddenly appeared in the center of his chest, and he toppled backwards.
“Ain’t that one of your brothers, Bloody Joe?” Nyx said. “Don’t you—” but before she could finish her sentence a screaming harpy swooped down at her and Lucky slashed off its head.
Neoma let out a sharp cry and then sank to her knees with a strange moan. Lucky knelt beside her and said, “Are you hurt, Milady?”
“No,” she said. “It’s Ivan. He just died.”
“How do you know?” Lucky asked.
“I was talking to him when it happened.”
Neoma stood up and said, “They need help on the ridge. Let’s go!”
John was the closest to the ridge, but as he set off running a harpy was suddenly on his back, its wings flapping like a black cape. Amy and some others raced toward him as he fell forward, but by the time they got there and killed the thing it had already clawed off the right side of his face and had chewed open the veins at the side of his neck. He stared up at them with terror, and thick white foam began to bubble out of his mouth.
“Oh Momma, Momma, help me, Momma,” he was crying when Lucky shot him.
“Johnny, Johnny, my boy!” Jake cried. He knelt for a moment beside his son, and when he stood up his head exploded.
A fraction of a second later, Amy heard the shot. It had come from the direction of the lane, and when she looked she saw a man in gray with a rifle aimed at them. She was trying to get the shotgun off her back, even though the gunman was probably too far away for it to be effective, when she saw something sprinting toward him so fast that she thought it must be a demon. But it wasn’t a demon because it was dressed in camouflage and holding a sword.
What happened next was a blur of motion. The swordsman leaped high, spun once in the air with a fierce cry, and beheaded the gunman.
It was Siliang. He sprinted toward them as two more gunmen appeared behind him. There was a sharp crack and then another, and both gunmen fell. Amy looked behind her and saw Lucky with his .220 Swift Remington at his shoulder, its barrel smoking.
Siliang wasn’t even breathing hard when he reached them. “It would be prudent to take cover,” he said. “There are many more of them coming up from the lane and circling the woods.”
Lucky fired his rifle again, and another gunman fell beside a tree trunk forty yards away in the direction of the lane.
A terrible wailing came from the opposite direction. It sounded like Manda, and they all started running toward the ridge. When they got there they found her kneeling beside what was left of her husband while three harpies fought over his flesh.
“For God’s sake, get away from there!” Neoma yelled, but Manda kept kneeling and wailing. A harpy suddenly plummeted to the ground beside her with an arrow through its breast.
“That’s my last damn arrow,” Bloody Joe said.
Neoma and Amy grabbed Manda’s arms and pulled her away. Leo and Shane were some distance away by the knoll, slashing a horde of listeners and babbleboons that were running up the slope from Ebbing’s field. Everybody else ran over to help them, but Neoma and Amy were still struggling with Manda, who was putting up a strong fight.
They managed to drag her some distance away from her husband’s body, but had to let go when a herky-jerky s
uddenly came jerking out of the brush and sprinted toward them. It was taller than the other demons, taller than Amy, and was rushing toward her so fast that she tripped over a log and fell as she tried to dart out of its path.
The thing was above her in an instant, jerking like a worn-out reel of film as it crouched down toward her, its monstrous human-lizard face just a foot or two from hers, venom dripping off its piranha teeth, and then its head came off its shoulders and fell on the ground beside her own, its teeth snapping like castanets, while its scaly green-gray body fell on top of her twitching and jerking madly, hot blood pumping from its neck and drenching her face.
Amy was screaming and trying to roll out from under the thing while Neoma was trying to push it off her with her foot, but the dying herky-jerky had its scaly arms wrapped around her in a tight, jerking embrace. Finally she slid free, jumped up, and fell to her knees again, shaking almost as badly as the demon. She vomited, pushed herself up again, and saw Neoma slashing at four or five harpies clustered over Brook’s body.
Her legs still shaking, Amy ran over to help and saw that the harpies were no longer working on Brook. Having already devoured most of his flesh, they were now ripping away Manda’s by the handful and shoving it into their bloody mouths. They were so excited by their feast that they were slow to die, and it took a lot of stabbing to make them lie still.
Amy and Neoma ran to help the others, who were still fighting by the knoll. It was getting dark now, and their camouflaged figures blended like shadows into the fading dusk, but the gleam of their swords was easy to see as they stabbed and slashed.
Neoma tripped over a log as she backed away from a babbleboon, and when Amy stepped in to kill the demon she saw that the thing Neoma had tripped over wasn’t a log after all—it was Red, his face so swollen with venom that it was barely recognizable.
“Is there any fucking way outta here?” Nyx yelled.
The marijuana field lay below the woods between Ebbing’s property and Billy’s lane, and Amy thought if they could get to it they would at least be hidden from Sandoval’s men. And maybe it wouldn’t be filled with demons; the plan seemed to be for the gunmen to keep them trapped in the woods where the demons would kill them, so probably Sandoval had sent most of his demons to the woods.
“Follow me,” Amy said. “Let’s move fast and be quiet.”
She ran south, ducking behind brush when she could, and whenever she looked back she saw camouflage shadows sprinting after her, quiet and nearly invisible. The woods thinned as it sloped down toward the field, and soon there was nothing but scrubby brush to hide behind, but it was dark enough now that she didn’t think they’d be seen.
She saw the marijuana field just ahead and was sprinting toward it when a spotlight came on and moved back and forth for a few seconds before it found them. It was coming from the woods; probably one of the SUVs had pulled in there from the lane.
A rifle cracked and cracked again as they dashed into the field. The marijuana plants were tall enough to hide their heads if they ducked down, and though the rifle kept firing the gunman could only guess where they were now.
“Holy shit,” Nyx said. “Anybody got some rolling papers?”
“Shut up,” Neoma said in a harsh whisper. “Roll call, but whisper.”
“Lucky.”
“Siliang.”
“Shane.”
“Leo, Milady.”
“Nyx.”
“Mary.”
“Bloody Joe.”
“If we head south,” Amy whispered, “we’ll come to the front of the property, and if we can get past the barn and the yard—”
“Which way’s south?” Nyx asked.
“It’s the way we’re going,” Bloody Joe whispered. “Can’t you read the sky?”
Nyx glanced up and said, “Yeah, I read it loud and clear. It says Bloody Joe is a fucking jerk.”
“Keep it down,” Neoma said in a harsh whisper. “No unnecessary chatter. If you have to say something, whisper it.”
They were moving while they talked, but the going was slow because the marijuana rows were planted east-west and they had to work their way against them, which caused the plants to rustle and possibly give away their position.
“I guess all those damn things we killed will be coming back to life pretty soon,” Lucky said, “since we didn’t dump quicklime on them.”
“Why don’t you go back there and do that now, Lucky?” Nyx said. “We’ll sit here and wait for you.”
A rifle bullet zinged past Amy’s ear, ripping leaves off the plants, and they all hit the dirt.
“Gonna have to do this on our hands and knees,” Bloody Joe muttered.
“So if we make it to the front of the property, then what?” Nyx asked.
“If we can make it across the road, there’s thick woods on the other side,” Amy said. “Caves and hollers and all sorts of places to hide.”
“Then what?” Nyx asked. “Sit there and starve? They’re gonna know where we are.”
“No good,” Bloody Joe said. “Siliang, how many SUVs are parked back there?”
“I saw four.”
“They parked in the lane or the woods?”
“More in the lane.”
“I’m thinking all those bungholes are in the woods or else moving down into this field right now,” Bloody Joe said. “I’m gonna sneak back to the lane and see if they left their keys in one of them SUVs. Rest of you get as far south as you can and hide somewhere close to the lane, so when you see me coming you can jump out and get in the car.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Nyx said. “I’m coming with you so I can ride shotgun.”
“No, you’re too goddamn noisy,” Bloody Joe said.
They had all been crawling on their hands and knees with bullets still whistling above their heads not very far away, and now Bloody Joe crawled away from them to the west toward the lane.
“Fuck this shit,” Nyx whispered, and she crawled after him.
Before long Amy and the others came to the southern edge of the marijuana field, and she stared out at the thick weeds Billy had allowed to grow in the next field to hide his crop. She knew they were fairly close to the lane because she saw the sycamore tree that her astral owl body had rested in more than once. It looked strange now, thick and heavy in the darkness.
Though some of the weeds were high, they were sparser than the marijuana and wouldn’t provide such good cover. But they had no choice but to move forward because by now there were probably several riflemen in the marijuana field coming toward them.
“Let’s make a run for that tree,” she whispered. “When we get to it I’ll have a look at the lane, and if I don’t see anyone let’s run across it. There are more weeds over there, and maybe the gunmen won’t be looking for us on that side.”
“Okay,” Neoma whispered.
Amy was halfway to the tree when she realized why it looked strange: it was full of harpies. They came flying out in a thick dark flock, flapping their monstrous wings and shrieking as they darted down to harass her and the others. They stayed just out of range of the swords, and with no arrows or throwing knives it was impossible to touch them, but now the gunmen knew where the Unseens were by the harpies circling above their heads, and a barrage of bullets came singing past them.
They were all running in different directions now. Amy ran to the sycamore, thinking it might offer some protection from the bullets, but when she got to the far side of it and leaned against the trunk she felt something squirming and recoiled.
Four-foot-long centipedes with horrible little human faces were crawling down the trunk. She felt something rubbing against her ankle, and she saw that the ground was crawling with them too—she was standing in a writhing sea of them.
She raced across the lane to the thick weeds on the other side and then kept running south toward the house. She had no idea what she would do when she got there, but she was too terrified to stand still. Maybe the harpies had lost track of her�
�she didn’t see any flying above her head—but when she looked down she saw a babbleboon scurrying toward her.
It ran straight into her sword, which plunged through its belly all the way to the hilt, and the monster clawed her wrist as she tried to pull it back out. She snatched her hand away, and the dying babbleboon stumbled away into the weeds with her sword still embedded in its belly.
“Goddamn,” she said.
She was wading through the weeds trying to find the thing so she could retrieve her sword when the most hideous demon she had ever seen stepped out directly in front of her.
It stood upright on two long legs like a man but was taller and skinnier. It had pale green snake skin and a long neck hooded like a cobra’s. The face was more snake than human, but there was enough human to make the snake features even more grotesque. It stared at her with little round eyes and opened its slit-like mouth to show long cobra fangs dripping with venom. It stuck out a long snake tongue and hissed.
With no sword, the only thing she could do was run. She heard the creature running behind her with soft slithery steps as she raced through the tall thistles and stinging nettle. Suddenly she was out of the weed field and in the long yard behind Billy’s house, and as she raced toward it she looked behind her shoulder and saw the snake-thing maybe fifteen feet behind her, maybe less, running with strange, awkward strides as if its long legs didn’t have quite the right bones for running.
She turned her head to the front just in time to avoid stepping into the deep dimple in the ground behind the house, the dimple where a deep old well had been filled with garbage and wasn’t safe to walk across because the garbage in there had been rotting and collapsing for years into a sinkhole.
She darted around the well and stopped and turned on the other side of it. “Come on, shit-face, come and get me,” she said.
The snake-thing loped toward her with its strange strides, stepped into the dimple, and began to sink. Hissing like a snake, it thrashed its skinny arms trying to swim up out of the wet rotten garbage that was swallowing its legs and then its belly and then its shoulders.
Amy was watching its ugly, hissing face disappearing into the muck when something hard hit the back of her head and she lost consciousness.