Knights and Demons: Season One | Omnibus

by Greg Dragon

  He looked down at the bread, saw the black dirt from outside, and couldn’t believe he had neglected to wash his hands. “God made dirt, dirt don’t hurt,” he said aloud and then walked into his own room to get a shower.

  Chapter Two

  "Dad, did Donald ever tell you the history of this sword? I know it wasn’t originally a sword, but how did he do it?"

  "Growing attached to that thing, huh?" James asked his daughter while rubbing the area behind his neck. He sat on the old bed with his shoes off, and he seemed comfortable, despite the fact that they were squatting inside the home of an unfortunate victim.

  "I'm just going over it in my head. Why did it hurt the demon girl, and what makes it so special that she was so powerless against me?"

  James motioned for her to hand it to him, and she stood up, loosened the laces from the scabbard, and handed it to him.

  "It's funny how different a killer can look from a copycat pretending to be one," he mumbled to himself as he moved his hand along its length, paying close attention to its imperfections.

  "What do you mean, Dad?"

  "I mean everything, sweetheart. Me, you, Tracy, Jaime, this piece of metal. We're the real thing. I know you don't like to hear that, but we are, baby girl. When they portray killers—the people who are forced to commit the ultimate sin—they hardly look like us. Their swords are always flawless, beautiful renditions of historical relics; not crude, wicked-looking blades like this one."

  He stopped talking and kept his hand running on the flat side of the sword. It was fashioned into the style of a Japanese katana—one edge curved and long—but forced into that form from something else. Not from a blacksmith—who could probably make it into a convincing sword—but from force. It was bent, chipped up, and ugly. James brought it up and smelled it, brought it close to his face and flicked the blade with his finger, and then put it up to his ear as if to listen to it.

  "Good God almighty, she's singing," he whispered, then stood up suddenly and sheathed the sword gracefully as if he was at the end of a Japanese Iaido kata.

  "I didn't think you still cared for that sort of thing, Dad," Alysia said when she saw him, and she smiled with pride as it brought her back to the days when they would spend hours together inside of his dojo.

  "A warrior never forgets his discipline, CeeCee. I know you know this, but don't write your old man off yet. I may prefer the weapons of my age, but under all of this bone and flesh you see here lies a focused spirit."

  "A focused spirit with a thing for police women?" she said to him, slitting her eyes to show her disapproval.

  James turned in such a slow, graceful way that it caught her off guard and he looked at her intently. He shifted his hips so that the sword clicked as it rested perfectly into its sheath. "We've been through this, CeeCee. I'm not going to defend her every time you decide Tracy isn't good enough for me. The world is ending, let's stay focused on that."

  Alysia rolled her eyes and took back her sword, tying the ribbons around her waist and positioning it where she could feel it against her hip. James moved in to take her down in a sudden attack, and she fell with his motion, rolling away smoothly and coming back to her feet with her hand on the hilt of the sword, ready to defend herself. Her father smiled when he saw this and she nodded at him. Always be ready, he used to say, and it was a lesson that had made itself into her very being.

  "There's silver in that weapon," he said to her. "Old Donald must have taken it from something other than what he told me, but that blade definitely has silver in it. When you cut into one of them, it will sing for you, CeeCee, but beyond that – I think it tells us that silver hurts them."

  "Just like werewolves," Alysia said as she walked over to sit on the bed next to him.

  "So, we will need to make some modified silver ammunition for our guns," he said.

  "That sounds like a pain in the butt, Dad. You should just get a sword; actually, three swords. One for Tracy and one for Jaime, too."

  "That won't work; they don't know how to use them," he said. "No, we need to make some silver bullets. We’ll restrict them to being used on the big ones, major ones like that thing in the bunker. The rest of them die easily enough from our regular shots. So I think we have a good plan with that."

  “Okay, Dad, I will keep that in mind the next time we’re near a silver mine and a place that will allow us to make bullets,” she said as he shoved her gently away from him. She looked at him, laughed, and then hugged him closely.

  “You know, your mother always thought we had the strangest relationship,” he said to her as she leaned in on him.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, we Knights aren’t the most affectionate people, you know, and while people can see the love we have for one another, we don’t always show it.”

  “Well, Dad, we shouldn’t have to. That’s why we’re family.”

  “Yeah, you said it, baby girl, you said it.”

  Alysia got up and walked into the living room where Jaime was sitting back, watching his movie. She picked up a pillow from the couch, threw it at him, and then looked into the kitchen where Tracy was doing her laundry in the sink.

  “Tracy, why don’t you sit down?” she asked. “You haven’t taken a break since we set up here and it’s been like two days.”

  Tracy waved her off and kept on washing. Alysia sat down on a loveseat to watch the zombies swarm a frightened police officer who was shooting and missing every one of them.

  “Hey Tracy, I think you might want to see this,” Jaime shouted. “One of your fellow officers is about to be turned into the living dead.” Tracy came out of the kitchen in a long blue robe, and walked up behind Jaime and smacked him in the head.

  “Hey, that’s like police brutality. You saw that right, CeeCee?”

  “No, I was so engrossed in this stupid movie that I missed it, Jaime,” Alysia lied.

  She tried to pay attention to the movie and let it take her mind off their situation but she just couldn’t concentrate. Her mind drifted to happier times, when she would return home from college to smell her mother’s cooking. Kendra was an ace in the kitchen, and it was always the smell that she associated with home. She remembered the smell of her faux fried chicken, baked with breadcrumbs to give the illusion, but it was all healthy with mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes and some sort of smoothie for the drink.

  The Knights are a healthy family, was what her mother used to say, and she prided herself on keeping their eating clean. James kept them punching, kicking, and running, and Kendra baked her chicken, made black bean brownies, and a number of other healthy variants to popular foods. Being inside this house made Alysia miss her, and she wondered if her father missed her cooking as much as she did.

  She hadn’t realized that she’d fallen asleep as she sat there. The long trek along the road to scavenge abandoned buildings had taken a lot out of her. They were under the beaming sun the whole time, and when she had wanted to call it quits and return home with their booty, Jaime had pushed them to go inside another building.

  She dreamt of happy times, children laughing in parks, rain showing up unexpectedly to ruin a picnic, and dates with boys inside of the University’s social center. It was so bizarre to remember these things in their new world of survival; it almost felt as if she were imagining fantasy.

  The only thing she worried about in those days was whether or not she could maintain her grade point average, meet a boy her dad would approve of, and marry before the age of twenty-five. Now she couldn’t even think of a future. What sort of future had demons and giants in it? No, these days she had to take things one day at a time.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  The sound of something tinkling woke her up, and she opened her eyes to find that she was alone. The front door and the back door were open, and a light breeze blew the evening air into the house, causing the curtains to dance like apparitions.

  Alysia hopped up and crept to the front door. She check
ed to see if she still had her sword at her waist, and touched the hilt reassuringly. The tinkling of the bell sounded again, and she looked outside to find her father working on the fence. She breathed a sigh of relief and then walked back through the house towards the back door. When she got there, she saw Jaime cleaning his gun.

  “Finally awake huh, sleeping beauty?” he said, and she sat on the ground across from him, choosing not to reply.

  “You and your dad do that a lot, you know that?” he said.

  “Do what a lot?”

  “You sort of choose not to answer people when you think they say something stupid,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s true; we talk with our facial expressions. It’s not that we think people are stupid, it’s just that some things are rhetorical … they don’t require an answer.”

  “Oh, bull, whatever. You ignore people. I guess it’s a Knight thing, or part of that warrior’s code your family lives by. Alysia Ninja has taken the vow of secrecy by Grandmaster Daddy Knight. She must not answer the lowly plebes, for they are below her and not worth a warrior’s breath.”

  She rolled her eyes at him and looked up at the darkening sky. “Do you ever shut up?” she asked.

  “Whoa, did you see that?” Jaime asked, and he pointed to the sky where a long, shooting star was moving across the sky.

  “Now that is cool!” Alysia exclaimed as two more stars shot up at the same time. “Cool … and a bit odd. Why are there so many stars doing that?” she asked.

  "I’ll tell you why,” Jaime said. “Do you remember the Mars project?"

  "I remember the Moon project," Alysia said, smiling to herself since she knew he wouldn’t like the fact that she’d corrected him.

  "I guess you're a little behind on your news then, smart ass, but the Moon project preceded Mars."

  "So, what about it?" Alysia asked, not quite convinced that there really was a Mars project.

  "You know how they took volunteers up and we thought those people were crazy, right? What if they weren't? Crazy, I mean. What if they have cities up there, and vacation spots where, like, the rich and powerful can go." Alysia made to stop him before he got too deep into his conspiracy theory, but Jaime put up a hand and continued. "No, you need to hear this because I feel it in my gut; I feel it in my gut, CeeCee. This crap with the demons? They saw it coming. All of our governments saw it coming, and they set up Arks to fly off of here and leave us to die."

  "Because we are poor?" Alysia asked, eyeing him intently, hoping he would burst into fits of laughter or admit to joking. But he held her gaze without budging.

  "You act like you don't believe me but let me ask you this. Why send us into bunkers that just happened to be built, ready to take in millions of people? Don't you find that odd?"

  "With the amount of wars the United States has been in for the last century, Jaime, those were probably built to keep us safe in case we got bombed ... or something."

  "You sound like every other fool who bought into their lies. Come on, CeeCee. I bet your dad doesn't even believe all of it like you do, and he's a soldier; he's supposed to be drunk on the punch. Open your eyes—”

  "And what? Look for a big spaceship full of rich people taking off into the air, en route to Mars? Do you hear yourself? This isn't science fiction, Jaime, even with all the craziness going on. This is real life."

  Jaime got up and put his hands in his pocket. He walked around the backyard for a time and then circled back to where Alysia sat and playfully kicked dirt on her.

  "Seriously? You can be such a kid sometimes, you know that?" she whined.

  "What did you think of those shooting stars?" he asked.

  "They were pretty cool," she said.

  "I don't think those were stars, CeeCee. There were four of them, close in proximity, and they were shooting upwards. When was the last time you saw something like that?"

  "When was the last time you saw giants?" she countered.

  "Where's the President? Where's the governor, for that matter? The mayor? Top brass, anybody, letting the people know we're gonna be okay? I'll tell you where, miss thick in the skull; they are on a ship flying away."

  Alysia had heard enough, and she got up and made a loud grunt of frustration. With everything that had been going on in her life, the last thing she needed to hear was another story rooted in us versus them, rich and poor hysteria.

  "I'm going for a walk," she announced as she walked past him in long strides.

  "All by yourself?"

  "Yup, all by myself. If my dad asks, tell him I'll be back within the hour. I just need to think, and I'm realizing that I can’t do it here." She started to walk away when he called after her.

  “Hey! If you recall we aren’t supposed to be wandering off like that,” he said to her, and she stopped and spun on her heels to face him.

  “I know. I heard him loud and clear. I won’t be leaving the property, just around the yard to clear my head.”

  She walked around to the side of the house that was closest to the street and looked out at the trees in the distance. The air was still and the temperature was cool. In the past, it would have led her to taking a stroll or a light jog on the sidewalks around the university. There was no need for jogging now, she thought. The monsters keep us in good shape with all the running and fighting for our lives.

  The tops of the distant trees were starting to darken and become mere silhouettes against the brilliant blue of the sky, which darkened as the sun said its goodbye and dipped below the horizon. She watched the tree line as she walked, trying to see if she could spot any red eyes, or the head and shoulders of a giant, roaming towards their new home.

  She thought about what Jaime had said and it took her gaze skyward, as if she thought she might see another ship on its way out for the long journey to Mars. There were no more ships or shooting stars, but she could see the tiny outlines of the flying creatures. It was then that it dawned on her that she had not seen any birds since the arrival of the monsters. Those things probably eat them, she thought, and then trained her eyes forward as she rounded the corner to the front of the house where her father’s project stood broken and rusted in the grass.

  The memory of the undergarment that had been in the grass made her want to vomit, but she’d promised herself she would let it be. There were many problems going on in the world, and her dislike of her father’s affair was a miniscule annoyance at best. The bells tinkled once again, and she spun to see if her father was securing the fence. There was no one at the fence, but inside the house she could see lights on in most of the rooms.

  She crept forward and pulled her sword. She rounded the corner to the far side of the house and saw what appeared to be a cloaked figure slip to the back where Jaime was. How did he manage to hop the fence so quickly? she wondered, and then ran towards the back to investigate.

  “DAD? JAIME!” she screamed as she got to the back. But when she looked around, she saw nothing. Jaime was nowhere and her father had not come out when she screamed his name. She felt her heart drop to her ankles, and a wave of fear took over her as she entered the house, both hands resting on the hilt of her sword. She slowly walked into the kitchen. It was silent and she stopped to listen for any movement, heavy breathing, or evidence of her friends. There was no sound inside the house and all she could hear was the sound of her own heart beating in her ears as she stood there, waiting.

  She was about to move forward when a jolt of what felt like electricity ripped through her body. She dropped the sword and fell to her knees. It was so harsh and sudden that she didn’t even realize she had fallen until she was on the ground and looking up at the ceiling, confused. She tried to look around and managed to look past her feet where a man in a red cloak was standing with a strange-looking gun in his hand. He pulled the hood back and revealed a hard face with long blonde hair that was thinning in the middle. Where his scalp was sparse in hair follicles, his face and chin were full of them and it all descended into a g
reyish-blonde beard that ended in a knot.

  He looked at Alysia and walked over to her, kicking an ottoman out of the way as he retrieved her sword in a smooth, effortless motion. He scanned its length and then flicked it like her dad had done before. He stared at her intently, his grey eyes kind despite his gruff demeanor.

  “So, you’re the one,” he said to her, his face stoic and hard to read. She saw that he was muscular, and she wondered if her father had managed to get any hits in before this predator subdued him. “You killed one of them. You got them to utter your name. Alysia, right?”

  Alysia nodded her head and then looked around to see if she could see where he had stored the bodies of her friends and family.

  “They are safe; we removed them from the house and took them to a place where they can’t be hunted,” he said.

  “Who are you? How did you—how did you manage to attack me and get rid of everyone so quickly? And, where is my dad?” Alysia asked. She could sense feeling in her arms and legs again, but she lay still, hoping to catch him off guard when he least expected it.

  “Get up,” he ordered her, pulling back his cloak to reveal a belt full of guns and weapons. Some were so exotic that she didn’t know what they were or what they were capable of. She complied and scrambled to her feet, glad she was still alive but curious and concerned about what it was he had used to shoot her.

  “What did you hit me with?” she asked.

  “Nothing you could fathom or even understand, Alysia Knight. At least not yet.”

  “How do you know my name, and how did you know to find me here?”

  “You are all loud, sloppy, and pathetically lucky,” he said to her as he leaned against the bar, playing with her sword. He was not concerned about her retaliation and she could tell that even if she tried something he would be ready for her. “Your father hasn’t been a Navy Seal for ages and the policewoman is such a brute that her stomping gave you all away even at a mile’s distance. Then there’s the loud-mouthed boy-man you call ‘friend.’ Instead of asking me how we found you, you should ask me how it is that you aren’t dead by now.”