by Michael Todd
Juntto looked at him and shook his head. “All in good time, big guy. I’ll be with you in just a few.”
He kicked a demon hard in the chest, sending it flying back until it impaled itself on a broken street sign. The beast scrambled to get off but just sank backward until it finally burst into ash.
Screaming children and the light, muffled music of an ice cream truck grabbed Juntto’s attention. He squinted at an overturned truck on one of the side streets. A tall, thin man was walking toward a group of kids.
Something about the man wasn’t right.
The guy stopped in front of the truck and hunched over. His eyes flashed red and his arms began to grow longer, tearing his human skin and revealing the scaly black demon skin underneath. His chin dropped six inches lower than any human’s should, and a loud wail burst forth. His long arms reached toward the kids as his legs morphed and twisted, bending backward at the knee.
Juntto’s eyes grew wide. “The freakiest shit happens to me. Seriously. They don’t have this shit on my planet.”
He took off toward the ice cream man. The beast turned around, eyes bright red and teeth sharpened to points. Juntto’s fist came down hard on the demon’s face and knocked him backward. He scrambled onto all fours and scurried up, clawing his way up the side of the apartment building like some huge, horrific bug.
Juntto waved his arms at the kids. “Run. Go. Get the fuck out of here.”
The kids took off toward the cops and were ushered as far from the fight as they could get them. Juntto cracked his neck and brought his hands back to normal size, then looked down and saw his two errant daggers. He grabbed them and motioned for the demon to come fight, and its huge mouth curled into a grin.
The beast leaped straight toward Juntto and tackled him to the ground. The demon latched all four limbs around Juntto and opened his mouth.
“What the fuck?”
The demon began to slash at him with a tongue covered in spikes. He pierced Juntto’s cheeks, and Juntto growled deeply. With all his strength, the Leviathan pulled his arm away and jammed one blade into the demon’s stomach and the other into its neck. He pushed up to his feet, using the blades to hold the demon in the air.
“You are not an ice cream man,” Juntto yelled as he ran straight for the crumbling apartment building.
He slammed the demon into the brick and jammed the knives even farther into him. The demon struggled and moaned, trying to get free. Its red eyes flickered, and a human moan came from his throat before he burst into ash.
Juntto let out a deep breath, and his shoulders slumped. He muttered to himself as he wiped the blades on his pants.
He caught Angie’s eye. She was standing there, shocked. Juntto cupped his hands and yelled over the crowd. “They should put that in the game. That shit was wild!”
Angie rolled her eyes and pointed to his left. Juntto looked up just as a demon jumped at him. He stepped to the side and grabbed the demon by the throat, wrestling him into submission. He grunted and twisted the spitting beast’s neck, yanking its head off its shoulders. Gooey black blood squirted over his suit, but he didn’t care. He could always create a new outfit.
Angie turned to find three demons surrounding a little old lady. The woman kept her head low, waving her walker at them and whimpering. Angie ran at them, shooting each one, careful not to hit the old woman. One by one, the demons collapsed into a pile of ash at the old woman’s feet. Angie dropped the magazines from her guns and reloaded before walking to the woman.
She had her head down, and her shoulders shook with fear. Angie reached out and touched her shoulder. “Ma’am, you’re all right now. Let me get you out of harm’s way.”
Suddenly the old woman looked up, her eyes burning red. When she smiled her demonic teeth showed, jagged and yellow. She opened her mouth to talk, and a deep, raspy voice emerged. “Stupid little girl. You are all going to die. All of you.”
Angie pulled her hand back from the demon’s shoulder and jumped off the curb. She pulled her gun up, but the demon was gone, replaced by a helpless old woman.
“Please help me. Don’t kill me.”
Without warning, her face hardened and became haggard and demon-like. “You bitch, I’ll bite your throat out.”
Back and forth the woman changed, her body shaking and twisting as it went.
“Please.”
“Die!”
Angie watched in horror for several moments, finally screaming, “Enough!”
The old woman slowly lifted her head, and the demon had taken over. Its eyes glistened, and its sharp smile was something nightmares were made of. Angie shook her head in disgust, finally pulling the trigger and striking the woman right between the eyes. Her body fell to the ground, convulsing until the demon evaporated, leaving only the woman’s frail and tiny corpse on the ground.
Angie put her hand over her mouth and cried out, closing her eyes as tears began to form. She took a deep breath in through her nose and shook it off, whispering to herself, “Strength of Juntto, balls of Katie. Strength. Balls.”
She turned as a smaller demon scurried across the asphalt toward her, his claws at the ready. She pointed her gun at him and pulled the trigger, letting the bullet blow half his head off. He wobbled back and forth like a chicken without a head until she reared back and punted the beast through the air. He slammed into the side of the apartment building and burst to ash.
Juntto had been watching from across the street and gave her the thumbs-up. She smiled unconvincingly and made the gesture back, turning in a daze. She had never been through something like this before. She had only imagined it when Katie had talked about it at the house. Actually being in the situation was totally different. She had to get her wits about her, she knew that, but how?
Just then a loud cackle pierced the air, and the sound of a crying baby filled Angie’s ears. She turned toward the sound to find a woman on the ground, her neck torn open. Her dead eyes stared at Angie, a tear still rolling down her cheek.
A demon stood above the woman, lifting a small baby from a stroller. Angie gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes, shoving her guns into her holsters. As she marched toward the demon, she reached down and grabbed a sharp, jagged piece of metal off the ground. A freckle-faced cop saw what she was doing and moved into position to cover her.
Angie reached the demon and tapped it on the shoulder. The demon spun around with the baby in its arms. Angie quickly jammed the metal into its stomach and hissed, “That baby doesn’t belong to you.”
The freckled cop shouted, “Now.”
Angie yanked the baby from the squealing demon’s arms, then rushed away and dropped to the ground, covering the child with her body. Shots rang out as the cop fired at the demon again and again. By the time Angie looked up, there was nothing left of the fiend but a cloud of dust. She turned to the cop and handed her the baby. “Thank you.”
Juntto cleared out several large groups of smaller demons and stopped to catch his breath. A large demon was climbing the side of the building, reaching in and yanking people out of their homes. Juntto walked to Travers and Schultz and stood with them as they stared up at the fiend.
Travers held his gun loosely. “We can’t fire. There are too many civilians.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Juntto snarled.
The two detectives slowly turned their heads toward Juntto.
Juntto put out his hand. “You mind if I borrow your weapon? It’s got the special bullets, right?”
Travers nodded without saying anything, eyeing Juntto’s purple suit. The guy was weird, but Katie and Pandora were a little strange too. He handed over his gun, and the two watched as Juntto sprinted across the pavement, leaped onto the hood of a police cruiser, bounced off it and scrabbled for purchase on the adjacent building.
Juntto gulped in air, then leaped to the apartment building. He hit, then clung tightly to the brick next to the snarling demon. Juntto snarled right back. “I’ll give you one chance to
give up and go back through your portal before I kill you.”
The demon let loose a wild roar, and Juntto squinted as spit flew all over him. He wiped the spittle from his face. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled Travers’ gun and shot the demon’s knees out from under him. The demon screamed as huge chunks of flesh and bone split from his body and fell to the ground below. The demon still held on, even with his legs dangling uselessly.
Juntto aimed the gun at the demon’s arm. “Stupid.”
The demon slashed a large catlike claw at Juntto, forcing him back a bit. Juntto hung onto the building, but the demon scrambled up, dragging his lame legs behind him.
Juntto fired at him twice, but the thing was swinging around wildly. He called, “Where you going? We were just getting to know each other.”
Juntto sighed and tucked the gun in the back of his pants. With a thought, he morphed his feet into wicked claws and easily sprinted up the building behind the demon. When they reached the top ledge, Juntto leaped over the demon and landed on the roof, changing his feet back to his shiny leather shoes. He dusted his hands off and waited for the beast to poke his head over the edge of the roof.
When the fiend peeked over the edge, Juntto strutted forward and pressed the gun against his head. “Do me a favor. When you get back to hell, tell Moloch I’m coming for him.”
Juntto pulled the trigger, putting a hole in the demon’s head. The demon held on, dazed from the bullet in his skull but not quite dead. Juntto frowned down at the creature. Setting the gun aside, he grabbed the demon’s head with his great hands, placed a leg on the demon’s shoulder, and smiled darkly.
With a grunt, Juntto pushed the demon’s body away with his foot and pulled the thing’s head from its shoulders. The demon did fall, then, tumbling over and bursting into dust halfway down, showering the people below. He looked at the head, not yet ash, and tossed it over his shoulder. He leaped off the building and landed below, running into the group of smaller demons.
Angie was impressed with Juntto’s skill; so impressed, in fact, that she didn’t see the demon coming up behind her. Suddenly, she felt a burning pain across her back. She winced and arched forward, stumbling over some stones and falling. She turned over and saw the demon coming for her.
“God… Fuck… Shit. Where are my guns?” She looked all around but couldn’t find them. They were both gone.
The demon cackled loudly and held up the guns in its long fingers. Angie’s eyes grew wide as it dropped one to the ground and turned the other toward her. Carefully, the thing poked its talons over the trigger. She straightened her shoulders, feeling the burn across her back and the weakness in her legs. The warm blood from her wound soaked the stone beneath her, but she didn’t care.
As the demon situated the gun, she closed her eyes, waiting for the end. There was a loud boom, and she cringed, waiting for the pain. After a moment, though, she didn’t feel anything, and she opened one eye slightly. Standing in front of her was Juntto, holding the demon in one massive hand. There was a bullet hole straight through its brain. The demon turned to dust, and Juntto pulled Angie carefully from the ashes.
“Sorry I didn’t get over here sooner. I had to get a busload of elderly idiots out of the way.”
Angie looked at the bus carefully parked on the other side of the cop cars. “How did you move it? You don’t know how to drive.”
Juntto flexed and kissed one of his biceps. “These guns are getting their own show.”
Angie blinked at him. “Oh, you mean you have tickets to the gun show. Okay, I get it.”
Juntto scratched his head. “What gun show? Should we take Katie with us?”
“Never mind, Juntto. I’ll explain it later.”
They turned to watch the last of the demons scramble back into the portal. A line of police officers had formed around the portal, making sure none escaped. Juntto grunted. “Now they get their shit together.”
“You did a kick-ass job here.”
Juntto motioned to an ambulance. “You’re hurt. Go get cleaned up. I’ll help out here.”
Angie hobbled to the ambulance, and they started taking care of her immediately. One of the medics told her it was just a flesh wound and she would be fine. She sat on the curb as they cleaned her wound, watching the dust from the falling buildings beginning to clear.
Travers and Schultz walked up to her and Travers winced. “Ouch.”
Angie smiled. “Yeah, kind of. I think I numbed it myself when fear took over.”
Schultz watched Juntto from afar. “Yeah, I saw him help you. Good to see a bad guy can do good things. I do have to say, he might want to choose a more subtle look, or it’s going to be obvious who he is.”
Angie laughed. “I’ll tell him again, but that’s kind of his thing. And as far as being a bad guy, just remember that on his planet that’s survival. They don’t have the numbers we do, so they don’t have the option of debating and examining problems. They just kill. The rest of it? Yeah, he’s a douchebag and has no idea how to treat women. He’s making up for it, though, one life at a time.”
Travers leaned in. “By the way, we saw that freaky-ass old lady. Don’t feel bad about that. That shit was straight out of my nightmares.”
Angie scoffed. “You’re telling me.”
Travers whispered, “She looked just like my Nana.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Big yellow teeth and everything.”
Schultz and Angie chuckled.
Travers grinned. “I’m not kidding. She was a mean old broad.”
17
Katie rolled over in her new bed at the base and smiled. She was in heaven. Stephanie and Timothy had gotten her the good sheets, and they felt like satin on her skin. Even Pandora was knocked out, and Katie could almost swear she’d heard her snoring at some point during the night. Talk about annoying. She couldn’t get away from that shit.
Katie pulled the covers over her body, snuggling back in. The vibration of her phone began to echo through the room, and Katie moaned. She rolled over and slapped it as if it were her alarm.
Pandora snorted. Huh? What? Fuck, you idiot, it’s your phone. Stop slapping it!
Katie sat straight up in the bed and plucked the phone off the nightstand. “Oh shit, it’s Angie. She knows the rules about time. Hello? Are you alive? What’s going on?”
Angie chuckled. “If I were calling you and I was dead, you’d have other things to worry about. Zombies and demons—what a mix.”
Katie groaned. “Don’t give them any ideas. Please, Lord. I don’t do zombies. That’s a new rule of mine. No zombies. We get zombies, I’m going to retire to a bunker somewhere and live out my days in peace.”
Angie let out a long deep breath. “So…”
Katie situated herself. “Uh-oh. What’s going on over there? I hope it’s not Juntto.”
Angie cleared her throat. “No, not really. He was actually pretty good. There was an incursion. I, Juntto, and the cops were able to repel it, but it was pretty big. Started in Brooklyn. There were a ton of small demons and one huge one. Then there was the ice cream man and the old lady.”
Katie furrowed her brow. “The what and the who?”
“Think of the most terrifying thing you can imagine, and then put a granny’s face on it. Or an ice cream man’s face. Both were pretty horrific. Dude stretched his jaw down farther than Pandora when faced with her favorite thing in the world.”
Pandora laughed loudly. Bitch over there talking about some dick! And believe me, I can unhinge that shit.
Katie held back a laugh. “Uh, when did my nightmares start popping out of the portals? And the old lady?”
Angie shook her head with a shiver. “She was being attacked by demons, so I helped her, and then she turned into this creepy red-eyed freak and tried to stab me. I put a bullet in her, but I can’t stop thinking about that poor little granny, whoever she was. Damn demons are ruthless. When the children of the corn start coming out, I’m handing in m
y notice. I just want you to know that. It’s not just because I don’t think I can kill a kid, but creepy kids will fuck you up for life.”
She is telling the truth. Have you ever heard the Lizzy Borden song sung by a bunch of kids? Holy shit, that freaks me out and I’m a fucking demon. We get kids in hell sometimes. We just lock those evil little bastards away in the deepest, darkest pits. Nope. Nope. No way.
Katie was perplexed. “I can’t believe they attacked New York. I wonder if it was because I took Korbin into hell earlier. Maybe they noticed and implemented a hit on New York in retaliation.”
“I don’t know, but it was crazy. We’re home now, though, and the cops are cleaning up. I’m gonna get some rest, and we can talk later.”
Katie nodded. “Yeah, for sure. Get some rest. I’ll call you later today.”
She hung up the phone and shook her head. Pandora groaned. I just realized that I’m starving and there is no fucking food here.
I’m sure the mess hall has something.
There are no donuts, no bacon, nothing. What kind of shitty establishment did you bring me to? All the while Angie’s over there killing grannies and eating good food.
Katie looked around her room. You might be right. This is awesome, but we can’t be here for good. I’m going to need to figure out how to get the team on some sort of rotation. That way a few of them can be in the city, too. Otherwise, we’ll always be stuck here at the base.
Pandora scoffed. Over my dead body. And that was not an offer to kill me. I have been given the taste of luxury and food. I will not go back to bunker living, especially now that we’re even farther away from the city. This is why the folks at Area 51 have, like, five-star chefs down there. They would go crazy otherwise.
Katie looked down at her phone as it rang again. “General Brushwood.”
“I didn’t wake you? That shocks me.”
Katie pushed the covers off and sat on the edge of the bed. “Yeah, Angie woke me. We just got off the phone.”
The general was glad to not be the one to give her the news. “Okay, so you know about New York?”