by Harvey Click
Another head appeared around the corner of the foyer farther down the hall, and she was about to shoot when she saw it was Lucky.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“I could use a good stiff drink,” he said. “I’m guarding the front door and Shane’s guarding the back door at the south end. I don’t know where the hell everyone else is.”
“I’m down here guarding the kitchen door,” Bloody Joe said from the north end of the hallway. “Nyx is up on the roof. It looks like all the people in the bunkhouse are dead and Bill’s demons are in there eating them.”
“I thought his demons were supposed to be killing the Nephilim,” Amy said.
“Well, that’s not what they’re doing,” Joe said.
Amy had slipped back into the rear living room with only her head peering out while the conversation was going on, but now she ducked her head back too because a bullet bit the hallway wall just a foot away from it. While the shot was still reverberating she heard three more and then, from the south end of the hallway, she heard Shane yell, “I got him.”
“Shane, are you okay?” she yelled.
“I’m good. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
She stuck her head back out and saw the Nephilim Shane had shot lying on its side at the end of the hallway. It was a mammoth one dressed in gray coveralls. Beside its big head it had a second small one the size of a grapefruit, and the mouth of the small one was still moving. Another shot rang out, and then it had only one head.
“The back yard looks clear,” Shane said. “But this door’s smashed to splinters so I don’t want to leave it unguarded.”
“I can secure the front door with some furniture,” Lucky said. “But I could use some help. My furniture-moving days are over.”
“Kitchen door’s okay except the lock hole’s been kicked out of the jamb,” Joe said. “I just slid the refrigerator up to it. If they try to open it we’ll at least hear ‘em.”
He emerged from the kitchen and peered into the next doorway down the hall with his bow ready to shoot. He shot, notched another arrow and shot again.
Amy dashed up the hallway to help him, but by the time she got there he didn’t need any help. This one was tall, skinny, and possibly female. It was still thrashing on the floor with three arrows in its chest but was too badly wounded to cause any trouble. They didn’t want to waste ammo or another arrow or waste time cutting its throat, so they let it lie there and thrash.
They worked their way down the hallway together, checking every room. There were two in the front living room. Amy used six shots to stop one of them, and when she tried to shoot the other she saw the slide of her 1911 was locked open on an empty chamber. The thing kept coming even with three arrows sticking out of its chest, but at least it had dropped its rifle. Amy was reaching for the hilt of her sword when Joe charged past her with a mighty roar and cleaved the thing open from its shoulder halfway down its ribcage.
Since both her guns were empty, Amy snatched up the AR-15 that the Nephilim had dropped, and they continued down the hallway. They nodded at Lucky as they passed the foyer but didn’t stop. The door to Bill’s study was locked so Joe kicked it open, but there was nothing in there to kill.
When they got to the end they found Shane guarding the rear door and also watching the south staircase.
“The downstairs is clear,” Joe said. “I’m going to go help Lucky secure the front door.”
Shane nodded and embraced Amy, rather awkwardly because they were both holding rifles. “Thank God you’re okay,” he said.
She said the same thing to him and looked out the doorway. The back yard was empty except for dead Nephilim and living demons congregated inside and around the bunkhouse. Through its kicked-open door she saw them sitting in there feasting on Bill’s mercenaries and squabbling over the juiciest parts. Some of them had dragged their goodies outside and were picnicking beside the building.
“Where the hell’s Bill?” Amy asked. “Why isn’t he controlling his pets?”
“He’s dead,” Shane said. “I was shooting out the window when it happened. I saw him come out of the barn leading his demons, and at first a few of them started attacking the Nephilim. But then there was some sort of confusion. That skinny thing called the stickman started yelling at them, and then Bill started yelling at the stickman, and a fight ensued. Bill has a long dagger hidden inside that walking stick, and he pulled it out and stabbed the stickman, and then the stickman leaped on him and started biting.
“Somehow Bill got his dagger through the stickman again and killed him, but by then it was too late. Bill was still wearing his pajamas, and the top of them had gotten ripped off. I saw at least three big bites on his torso, one of them right above his heart where it looked like a hunk of flesh had been ripped out. He was already beginning to swell up with demon venom, but somehow he managed to stagger off somewhere to die.
“After that the demons lost all interest in killing Nephilim. It was like when Sandoval got killed and his demons went on a feeding frenzy. The Nephilim apparently had already killed everybody in the bunkhouse by then and were heading to the house, and the demons rushed in to eat their dinner.”
“Great,” Amy said. “So now the demons are out of control.”
“Looks that way.”
Pretty soon Joe and Lucky appeared carrying two doors, a hammer and some nails. They placed one of them horizontally against the open doorway and Lucky nailed it to the doorframe. Shane helped Joe set the next one above it, and while Lucky was nailing Amy reloaded her SKS and checked the nearly full magazine of the AR-15.
“I thought Bill was supposed to have some men out there watching the church,” Shane said.
“I guess they got themselves killed,” Joe said. “We better go look upstairs. You and Amy go up this stairs and me and Lucky will go up the other one.”
They found no Nephilim in the upstairs rooms. Most of the rooms had no furniture, but one of them had a few spare rifles and some boxes of ammo. Amy reloaded the 1911, stuck it in her scabbard belt, and then went to her room to exchange her blood-soaked pajamas for jeans and a shirt.
The others were already on the roof when she and Shane climbed up. They were all watching the yard except Azura, who was sitting in the center of the roof sobbing quietly.
Amy joined Nyx and quietly asked, “Did you see what happened to Bill?”
“Yeah, and you don’t need to whisper. She already knows he’s dead.”
There were meaty bones and bloody body parts strewn all over the ground around the bunkhouse. Most of the demons had apparently already eaten their fill. They were sitting on the ground clutching their swollen bellies, and some of them seemed to be sleeping.
“I hope they’re too glutted to attack,” Amy said.
“So do I,” Nyx said. “I’m too fucking tired for any more fun right now.”
“How did she find out about her father? Did you tell her?”
“She already knew. She probably watched it through her bedroom window while sucking her thumb. Lotta damn good she is in a fight.”
“She came in handy last night,” Amy said.
There was already someone watching each side of the roof, so Amy went to the center and sat beside Azura. At least she had put some clothes on, not pajamas and not her ugly baggy stuff but a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
“I’m very sorry about your father,” Amy said.
“He was an asshole,” Azura said. “He started molesting me when I was twelve.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“That’s not why I’m crying. I’m crying because everybody’s dead because of me. I said I’d stay awake and watch the church, but I fell asleep. And now everybody’s dead.”
It was true, so Amy couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Including my father,” Azura said. “I killed him too. He was an asshole, but still…”
“You didn’t kill him,” Amy said. “You fell asleep, th
at’s all.”
“I know everybody hates me, and I don’t blame them. I’m thinking of jumping off the roof.”
Amy was too tired for this kind of conversation, and she was relieved when Nyx said, “Look, they’re going back in the barn.”
Amy got up and looked. The demons were making their way to the barn, dragging uneaten arms and legs and torsos with them. The harpies were walking, maybe too fat right now to fly. Even the hell-kites seemed to be having some difficulty staying aloft and were floating just a few feet above the ground.
All of them except Azura had come over to watch. They were facing east, and the sky was beginning to show some color in that direction.
“Maybe we’ll be safe until their food’s all gone,” Lucky said.
“Or maybe not,” Joe said. “We can’t stay here with nobody to control them. We need to pack up our stuff and leave.”
“Where to?” Nyx asked.
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “Motels I guess.”
“We’re back to just being five people with no pet demons and no plan,” Lucky said. “Six if you count Azura.”
“She don’t count,” Nyx said. “Tomorrow more Nephilim will come and the demons will attack us too.”
Amy heard something behind her and turned. Azura was standing on top of the parapet at the front edge of the roof, getting ready to dive.
Amy screamed and the others went running to grab her, but they were too late. Azura had already started to topple before they were even halfway there. She was leaning forward at about a forty-five degree angle, and gravity should have done the rest, but it didn’t. She just kept leaning there at that impossible angle until Shane and Lucky had ahold of her and had pulled her back onto the roof.
Amy didn’t understand what had happened until it was over. She’d been holding onto Azura with her telekinetic power, and in the panic of the moment she hadn’t even realized what she was doing. For a few seconds she had been using a great deal of force, and now a wave of exhaustion swept through her and she sat on the rear parapet and felt sick.
Chapter 19
Bert Barker’s bladder usually woke him up about an hour before his alarm went off, and early Friday morning he was debating whether he should ruin the rest of his sleep by going to the bathroom or stay in his comfortable bed and try to ignore his raging bladder.
His bladder always won this debate, and he was slipping his feet out from under the covers when he thought he heard a muffled sneeze in the hallway outside his door.
In an instant he was wide awake with his .45-caliber Glock in hand, and in the next instant the bedroom door opened very quietly and a man with a rifle peered into the room. Two shots to the center of the chest sent the intruder backwards to the floor.
But he wasn’t alone. Something that looked like a slimy brown toad the size of a small man on all fours hopped over the body and into the bedroom. Crouching on the other side of his bed, Bert shot it four times, and the thing screeched each time it was hit, but the bullets didn’t slow it down. It leaped onto his bed and then onto him, knocking him backward so hard that his head rang as it hit the floor.
It squatted over him and licked his face with a long brown tongue. Toads don’t have teeth, but this thing did, sharp jagged teeth that removed Bert’s head with one bite.
***
The assailant Bert had managed to shoot and kill was a skinny young man dressed in black with long brown hippie hair and a short brown beard, maybe trying to look like Jesus or maybe Charles Manson. It was clear he wasn’t the one who had killed Bert; though an AR-15 was lying on the ground beside him it hadn’t been fired. Bert had died like Sonny, half eaten and swollen with some sort of venom, which in Sonny’s case the coroner hadn’t been able to identify nor had the lab he’d sent it away to.
But at least Sonny had kept his head. Bert’s was gone.
After Felix Gray had examined the hallway floor around the assailant’s body, Roamer slipped on a pair of plastic gloves and searched through the young man’s pockets. No identification, but in the right hip pocket he found a folded paper brochure that was worn and scuffed as if it had been carried in the pocket for quite a while. He carefully unfolded it and read the cover:
The Church of Love and Serenity
Imagine One World of Perfect Peace
Roamer slipped it into a plastic bag and drove straight to the courthouse to see Judge Hawkins. If this didn’t persuade him to sign a search warrant, nothing would.
***
Amy was in Azura’s room keeping an eye on her, so Shane brought up two plates of breakfast for them. He didn’t want to barge into a woman’s bedroom without knocking, but knocking was difficult with two plates in his hands, so he quietly asked Amy to open it. She did and took the two plates and shut the door in his face, but not before he caught a glimpse of Azura sitting on the edge of her bed. She was no longer crying, and Shane didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one. He had never quite figured out whether crying was good for women or just made them feel worse. It seemed they did a lot of it, so maybe it was good for them.
While he was upstairs he considered packing up his and Amy’s stuff, but that might be premature. All during breakfast the others had argued about what they should do next, and when he went downstairs he found them at the dining room table still arguing. Lucky was pointing out once again that the armored school bus would be useful and Nyx was saying the school bus wouldn’t make any difference, armor or no armor, because they were all going to get killed if they stayed here.
“I’d like to know why those demons haven’t run away,” Lucky said. “That’s what Sandoval’s did after he was killed.”
“Not until they ate everybody,” Nyx said. “They’re planning to eat us first, and then they’ll run away.”
“Maybe for some reason they haven’t figured out Bill’s dead,” Lucky said.
“I’m tired of sitting here on my ass arguing,” Joe said. “I’m leaving before those damn things decide they’re hungry again.”
Shane went back upstairs and tapped on Azura’s door. “Amy, I’m packing up our stuff. We’ll be leaving in a little while.”
“Where are we going?” she asked through the shut door.
“Another motel I guess. Azura can come with us or do whatever she wants.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Azura said.
“If you stay here those demons will kill you,” Shane said.
“No they won’t. I can make them kiss my feet if I want.”
Shane sighed. He was too tired to argue, but he didn’t want to leave her here to be killed.
“What makes you think you can do that?” he asked.
“I controlled them yesterday when I was in the barn,” she said. “Daddy showed me how. I don’t know those demon languages he learned from some book, but they understand English just fine, and they’re afraid of my powers.”
“Then why didn’t you control them last night when they were eating everybody?” Shane asked.
“Those people were already dead. Demons have to eat too.”
“What about the stickman? Why didn’t you stop him from killing your father?”
“The stickman’s different. He’s a mazzikin, and you have to know some strong spells to control a mazzikin.”
“Well then, you do whatever you want,” Shane said. “But the rest of us are leaving in about half an hour.”
He went to the room he and Amy shared, stuffed their few belongings in some bags, and carried them out to the shed where his Jeep was parked, keeping his eyes peeled for a stray Nephilim or demon. But today everything looked peaceful except for the body parts strewn everywhere.
Even more than tired, he was deeply depressed. Bill’s plan had sounded risky, but at least it was a plan. He knew there was nothing the five of them could do alone, and for the first time since the kidnapping he truly doubted he’d ever see his daughter again.
As he opened the Jeep’s hatch a terrible smell came out, like s
weat and sickness and raw flesh. He dropped the bags and drew his sword. He hadn’t locked his car, so maybe a demon had crawled into it.
He yanked open the back door with his sword ready, and for several seconds he just stared, not quite able to believe his eyes.
Bill was lying in the back seat, puffed up to about twice his usual size. He was wearing nothing but pajama bottoms, and the three massive demon bites visible on his torso were wet with blood and white pus. His head was the size of a small watermelon, his eyes were swollen shut, and his mouth was covered with pink foam.
But the foam was moving and bubbling very faintly. Bill was still breathing.
***
Bill’s legs were so badly swollen they had ripped open his pajama bottoms except at the waistband, which was dug so deep into his abdomen that Joe was barely able to get the tip of his knife in there to cut it loose. Lucky and Shane lifted him carefully out of the shredded cloth, which was soiled with urine and feces, and set him on a long piece of plywood so they could carry him to the house. After they’d laid him on his bed, Azura sat at the edge of it and touched his forehead.
“He’s burning up,” she said. “Bring up a bucket of ice water and lots of towels.”
She left and returned in a few minutes with gauze and some other supplies. She gently wiped the pus from his wounds with a towel soaked in peroxide, and when they were clean she smeared green ointment on them.
A fist-sized hunk of flesh had been bitten out of his left breast just above the heart, and the wound was so deep that part of a rib was visible. There was another hunk of flesh gone from his right shoulder, another nasty bite on his right bicep, and two more on his abdomen. But amazingly there was new pink flesh growing around the edges of the wounds.
After bandaging the wounds she dipped towels in the ice water and laid them over his forehead and his entire naked body, which was a sickly blue-green and puffed up to the size of an obese man. His face had ballooned so big it looked as if the skin might rip apart, and his eyelids were swollen so massively it looked as if they might crush his eyes.
But he was still breathing.
“It don’t make any sense,” Joe said. “Just one little bite’s enough to kill anyone.”