Probably Monsters

by Ray Cluley

  Jones wasted nothing, not even words. “Oh. Shit.”

  Back the way we’d come from, criss-crossing the road in angry sweeps, was a twister. It span its dust with quiet violence for now but it was going to be on us quick and then we’d hear it scream.

  I ran to the girl and took the ankles from her hands. I dragged the corpse up the last steps and dropped it to the side of the doors.

  “No, over here. We don’t want them feeding that close to the door.”

  “What?”

  Frances pointed again.

  “Oh shit. Shit.”

  Sailing in the winds of the storm were two demons. They dived and arced as if the cyclone was a large pet they played with.

  I dragged the body over at a run. “Have they seen us?”

  “Not yet.”

  Frances grabbed me by the shoulder and ran me back to the doors.

  “How can you tell?” I yelled against the wind.

  “They’re still over there instead of here.”

  George was feeding the door-block down into the cellar. “Quickly, quickly.”

  Cassie was standing and clutching herself like she needed to pee. She stepped from one foot to the other in the rising dust, looking to where hell flew at us.

  “Inside, little heart,” Frances said.

  We followed her down and George pulled the doors shut behind us.

  Sitting in the dark, we listened to the wind howl. It wasn’t long before the howls were those of the things flying with it.

  “I thought they only came at night?” Frank whispered. We all shushed him quiet.

  Above us, something landed on the roof with a heavy thump. We heard it even in the cellar. It screamed, and the winds pulled the sound round and round in echo. To me it sounded like a woman in labour, giving birth to something stillborn. Jones said later it sounded like the slaughterhouse. I guess we hear what we can relate to.

  “Maybe the other one will—”

  Jones, whispering so quiet it was like I was thinking the words, was cut off by the sound of something landing on the dry ground outside. It, too, screamed. It screamed in short sharp shreds. This was no bestial cry of the hunt. It was communicating with the one on the roof. It was scratching its way around the pile we’d made out there.

  The doors shook. I cried out but my throat was parched and the noise I made was only a cracked nothing. Frank stifled a yelp. The doors thumped. It was only the wind, lifting and dropping them in its frantic wrath.

  There came next a wailing shriek I never in whatever life I’ve got left ever want to hear again. If that rooftop scream was a woman birthing death, this one sounded like the demon clawed her own abortion. The shards of it went through you like jagged porcelain and as it trailed off it thinned to a fiery hot needle in your ears. The way the wind whipped it into a ricochet pulled it through you like infected thread, yanking the line tight till you clutched your head against the pain. When the other one joined in I wished for death just so the chorus would end.

  It stopped eventually, though the reverberations of those screams will be with me forever as a tortured background noise as permanent as thought. I can still hear it now when I close my eyes, finding myself in the same darkness.

  “They’ve found their sister,” said Frances.

  When the doors thundered again in their frames it was not the wind.

  “Oh Jesus,” Jones moaned.

  “Ssh,” said Frances, “they don’t know we’re here.”

  “Sounds like they know,” said George.

  “Ssh.”

  Sure enough, after a while of pounding the doors we heard them demolishing the store above.

  “They’ll tear the place apart just in case, but those doors are strong and we have water, even some tinned food. If we keep quiet, we can wait them out if we have to.”

  “You know what else we got?” I said. I pointed to the bodies we hadn’t shifted yet. “Think they smell good now, wait a few days.”

  “Good,” said Frances. “They’ll smell it too and figure the only humans down here are dead ones.”

  The destruction above ceased. The only sounds we heard then were those of the wind as it tore its way over us.

  “Think they’ve gone?”

  “Maybe,” said Frances, but we could tell he didn’t think so.

  “No,” whispered Cassie. “They’re still here.”

  S

  They stayed long after the cyclone had passed. The new quiet allowed us to hear the occasional heavy dragging outside. When the sounds became wet, thick, and guttural we knew they were feeding.

  “There’s bodies plenty out there,” Frank whispered, “they could eat here for weeks.”

  Nobody liked that idea.

  Frances nodded his agreement and pointed across the room. We trod our way silently to the far end and huddled so we could talk quietly.

  “There are only two of them,” Frances said.

  “Only?”

  He spared me a glance but otherwise ignored my comment.

  “There are six of us,” he said. “If we’re quick, we can take them.”

  Six. He’d counted the girl.

  “Frances, you’re a big man,” said Jones. “You’ve probably survived by being a big man. Quick, too. But me, us, we’ve survived by keeping low, hiding out. Playing it safe, you could say, as safe as this new world allows. We’re not about to go at it with two demon bitches.”

  It was a speech for Jones.

  “Shit, Jones, you’re chicken.”

  “Yeah, George, I am. Only a stupid person wouldn’t be.”

  “I’m not,” George replied, apparently missing the implication.

  Frances counted off our advantages on his fingers. “They’re feeding, so they’re distracted. They’re close, so we won’t miss. There’s only two of them, so they’re outnumbered. There’s a few hours of sun left, so they’re weak.”

  I think he may have been making up the sunlight bit.

  “Good enough for me,” said George, already moving to the doors.

  Frances saw an opportunity for visual emphasis and moved over with him, the girl going too, leaving just three of us cowering in the shadows. Frank said, “I go where the big man goes,” and went.

  “What about you, Charlie?”

  I shrugged. “You make more sense,” I said.

  “But you want to take them down.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jones sighed. “Yeah,” he repeated. “Me too.”

  We joined the others. It took only a minute to plan our tactics.

  Frank checked his gun in the light that slanted down from between the doors. “We’re all going to die,” he said.

  He was wrong about that. They only got two of us.

  S

  Four days after that fight at the gas station, Frances told me about the demon he and Cassie had seen in Colorado. We were camping at the side of the road eating beans from a can.

  “Her parents were still with us then,” he said.

  Cassie nodded to herself, scraping at the sides of her tin.

  “What happened to them?”

  “People on the road,” said Cassie. “They tried to take my mom for their penitentary.”

  “Penitentiary,” I said, pronouncing the “sh.”

  Frances said, “No, she’s right. They call it a penitentary.”

  I remembered he’d said the word in the cellar. Back when the others were still with us.

  “Places where women are kept prisoner,” Frances explained. “Sometimes by religious nuts, sometimes by men who are scared. Sometimes by those who just like an excuse to hurt women.”

  I nodded and put my can aside. Frances pointed at it with his spoon.


  “Not hungry,” I said.

  He gave the rest of my beans to the girl.

  “Anyway, we’d crossed the Rockies hoping things would be different on this side of the mountains. They weren’t. We found a scrap yard, figured we might find a car. What we found was one of those things. It was flapping only in bursts, wings beating against the ground and hiding most of what it was hunched over.”

  “It was Brenda,” said Cassie, as if I should know who she meant. I could guess why she wasn’t with them now. “She looked like she was having a bad dream with her eyes open.”

  “We thought it was eating her at first but it wasn’t.”

  “Was it turning her into a demon?” I asked.

  The girl shook her head. “It was doing what adults do.”

  I looked to Frances but he only nodded.

  “It was fucking her?”

  The girl sucked in a breath.

  “What?” I reached for my gun.

  “You said a bad word.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

  Frances smiled and nodded again. “It was doing what adults do.”

  “But . . .”

  “They’re not all women,” Frances said. “Whatever you’ve heard, or maybe even seen, there’s at least one out there that isn’t female.”

  “If we tell people they’ll stop hurting each other,” Cassie said, “they’ll be nice again and just hate demons if someone tells them.”

  “You sure?”

  Cassie misunderstood. “I saw its thing,” she said.

  Frances held his hands out about a foot apart. He shook his head, either appalled or impressed.

  “What did you do?”

  “We hid and it flew away.”

  “With the woman?”

  “No, she came with us.”

  Before I could ask, Cassie said, “She died having a baby.” She burped and covered her mouth.

  Frances told Cassie to bury the cans a little way off and added quietly, “We did what we had to when we saw what was coming out of her.”

  I thought of my poor Beth. All that futile pushing, a labour of pain that brought only death.

  “Do you think we should give him something to eat?” Cassie asked, coming back before I could ask any questions.

  We all looked at where Frank lay, his broken body strapped as tight as he could bear it. He was asleep, the only retreat he had from the pain.

  “Wait until he wakes,” I said, knowing that he wouldn’t.

  Cassie simply nodded. Maybe she knew it too.

  “Why didn’t he shoot?” Frances asked, but I still didn’t have an answer for him.

  S

  We’d burst out of the cellar as one, but that was as much of the plan we stuck to. After that, all tactics were abandoned in our response to the horror before us. We knew what we’d see, but confronted by it we could only react. Our reaction was to fire, fire, and fire again. We fired until our guns were empty, which didn’t take long. We all fired at the same one.

  She was standing over a body, one clawed foot buried in the cavity of its chest while the other clawed at what flesh remained of the stomach. A line of entrails stretched up from the corpse to the creature’s mouth, its talon hands hooking more and more into a gathered mouthful as if balling twine. Its leathery wings beat just enough to add strength to its pulling.

  We surprised it; that bit went to plan. Its mouth was a bloody slop of guts and when it screamed at us, chewed stinking mouthfuls dropped down its chest. It released the corpse anchoring it and took to the sky, managing only one sweep of its wings before we hit it. I ran to it firing and was satisfied to see a good chunk of purple thigh vanish in a spray of blood, the rest of the leg severed by the creature’s own attempts to flee, hooked in the body that had been its meal. Shots from George and Jones and Frank peppered the demon’s torso, each round a splash of blood and bile that hammered it back, back. Frances was more deliberate with his guns, hitting it three times in the head. Another blast from my shotgun blew its wing into tatters but it was already falling then.

  The other one had been scooping handfuls of flesh from higher up the body pile and retreated behind the corpses the moment we started firing. Part of me registered that. Part of me knew it was there even as part of me knew the one on the ground was dead, yet that was the one I approached. I broke the shotgun open and reloaded as the demon body jumped and shivered with wasted rounds from the others. They were clicking empty when I put the barrel against the head and burst it like a melon.

  “Charlie!”

  I dropped turned and fired all in one action but missed as the other one sailed over my head. It caught a tangle of my hair by chance, even short as it was, and tore it from my scalp as it passed.

  Frances dropped his gun behind him and Cassie crouched to reload it while he fired with the other. It was a smooth operation that suggested practice and I wondered how many fire fights this little girl had been in. Her hands weren’t even shaking.

  The demon wheeled in the air. A hole appeared in its wing but that seemed to be the only hit and it didn’t slow it down none. It dove towards us screaming.

  That was enough to send me and George back to the cellar. We crouched on the steps and saw Jones fumble for his knife. He raised it quick enough to lunge once and then the demon had him, lifting him up with her talons as she shredded his legs and bowels with clawed feet. He screamed his agony till something broke in his throat. She cast him away, flying back and up as Jones flew forwards. He smacked into the corner of the building with a crack that broke his spine.

  “Come here, you bitch!” George yelled, then ran out to her before she could take him up on the offer. He fired all the way, quick for a man with a rifle, but she only soared higher, a twisting shape in silhouette against the darkening sky.

  “Reload!” Frances shouted. “While it’s up there! Quick, reload!” He swapped his gun for the one Cassie offered.

  Frank stood, shielding his eyes from the dying sun, watching as the creature hovered.

  “Reload, Frank!” I told him, pushing two cartridges into mine. When that was done I ran to him and snatched his weapon from a limp grip. I ejected the magazine and slapped his arm for a fresh one.

  “We made them,” he said, “when we did what we did to ourselves. They were born from the ashes that came after.” He pointed. “We made them.”

  It was something I’d heard before, but not from Frank. Religious bullshit, like we didn’t have enough to feel guilty about. I shook him, keeping an eye on the demon. It arced left and right but remained distant.

  “Get some more fucking bullets in this and unmake it then,” I said.

  When he looked at me his eyes were empty, but he did as he was told.

  “Spread out,” Frances called. He’d shrugged out of his coat and harness. If the demon grabbed any of us, I hoped it grabbed him. With his bulk he wasn’t being thrown anywhere, and with those arms he could tear this thing apart. Maybe that was why he only used crappy revolvers.

  I put distance between me and Frank. George, for reasons known only to him, scrambled up the pile of corpses. He stood atop them with his arms out, daring the bitch to attack.

  It did. It dived for Frank.

  Frank levelled his gun at it calmly and had plenty of time to fire. But he didn’t. He faced his doom as it flew down at him. George popped a few shots, making more tiny holes in the membrane of its wing. Frances took one careful shot but only clipped it as far as I could tell. I didn’t dare from where I stood. It hurtled straight and hard, hitting Frank across the upper body and tugging him into the sky as it pulled up and away. I saw it rake a claw across his gun hand. The other sank into Frank’s fleshy shoulder and he swung one arc of a pendulum before the creature’s momentum took them both high.

  I ran to w
here Frank had dropped his gun. A few of his fingers lay scattered around it like bloody commas.

  Above us the demon screamed in play and tossed Frank away. He cartwheeled and fell a short distance but the bitch snatched him up again before he really began any descent, clutching him sharply around the ankle. A line of blood splashed down across my upturned face.

  “Fucking shoot it,” I yelled. My own weapon was useless at this range.

  “Might hit Frank,” said George. He was taking aim.

  “I don’t think it matters now,” said Frances, also lining up for a steady shot. “Might be better.”

  The demon swooped low, dragging Frank so he hit the ground and broke somewhere. Then it was diving away in an abrupt turn and Frank was thrown into our midst. He struck George across the legs and the two of them fell in a tumble of female corpses.

  I fired both barrels as it passed me. A chunk of its hip blew out and it spun, only for Frances to hit it once, twice, three times in the side and breast. It crashed down into the dirt and flopped in a writhing mass of purple flesh.

  I was reloading as I ran. Frances was still shooting as he came at it.

  The creature was rolling and flapping and spraying its blood, clouds of dust billowing in the gusts of its attempted flight. Part of its sleek violet skull erupted, then another as Frances aligned his second shot by the success of his first.

  I raised the shotgun to my shoulder but Frances, beside me, lowered it with his hand. “Save your ammunition,” he said.

  We watched it twitch and spasm until it was still. Then Frances tore it to pieces with only his hands.

  S

  George, taken down by the thrown body of Frank, had fired another shot as he fell. It went in under his chin and opened the top of his head. Not the movie star end he would have wanted. Not the end many would have wanted, though I’ve known a few that have taken a similar route. I’ve thought about it myself from time to time. Only my fear that the demons will still come has kept me from that darkness.

  George was dead. Jones was dead. Frank had lost a lot of one hand, which we bandaged, and most of one foot, which we amputated. Didn’t take much but a snip here and there. He was a crooked tangle of limbs, each one broken more than once. His chest rose and fell in an awkward shape as he made rasping shallow breaths. He only screamed once with the pain of moving him and that pain was enough to make him pass out. He was easier to handle after that.