by Adam Cesare
My target is too far away, so there’s a significant spread.
The fire that booms out of the end of my stubby gun is enough to singe Vinny’s shirt and set flame to the hair underneath.
The smell is terrible, worse when added to the desperation-potpourri that covers a room full of strung out junkies during the post-apocalypse.
The big guy groans, lays back in the aisle, and is smart enough to point the end of the AR away from me so I don’t blast him again.
He’s not dead but his suit is all kinds of fucked up.
I toss Vinny into the pew to my left, confident that he’s hurt badly enough between his neck and his burned side that he’ll be a non-issue.
I stow my sawed-off and retrieve Vinny’s cap-gun from my inside pocket. I wave it around a little in case any of these junkies are confused as to who the hero of this particular raid is.
None of them are going to be a threat. One looks me in the eye and then throws his head to the side and begins to fake snore. As messed up as he is, pretending to be asleep probably seemed super subtle to him.
Up in the tent, the lab-techs have their hands raised as high as they can go. The fervor with which they’re trying to show me they’re unarmed makes me think I’m dealing with hired help.
I cross the church floor to them, stopping briefly to pat down Rambo. Even in the low-light I can tell that the blood has begun to drain from his face tubers. They’re wilted against his neck and collar.
“If I finish this up quickly enough, maybe you don’t bleed out. But you try to get back up before I’m done and I’ll blow yer head off.”
He just looks up at me, contempt in his eyes, and gives a slight nod.
As I guessed—because I’ve always been such a good guesser—the lab techs were working on an archdemon. And as I told Rambo: its friends would be beyond pissed if they saw what kind of state he’d been put in.
But this seems like such a thorough operation it seems like the kidnappers must have taken precautions. This demon must have had enemies in his own world. Maybe he was some kind of demon snitch, offered up in trade.
Whatever he used to be, he was now... pathetic.
I used to get mailers from PETA, somehow they’d pegged me as an animal rights girl. Not that I don’t like animals, I’m just not going to be rushing any Japanese whaling vessels. In one of the mailers was headed “Declawing is Mutilation” and contained graphic images of post-op cats with bloodied paws and missing toes.
The archdemon in front of me as I duck into the clear plastic tent, this poor guy’s been declawed.
And defanged and gagged.
And dehorned.
And de...
Castrated.
All the wounds are clinical, by which I mean that they don’t look like torture, per se, just an attempt to defray the threat posed by trying to keep a demon alive and—
And.
“What exactly am I looking at here?”
“You... you...” the male tech tries to get out, his voice weak but stalling.
“Shut up,” I say, pointing the gun in his face. “You any better under pressure?” I ask his colleague.
“It’s a distilling process,” she says. “For them.” She motions to the junkies in the pews. “Please don’t shoot him.”
I see it now. The tubes connecting the archdemon to various drips and machines aren’t life support, but life extraction.
They’re getting people high on archdemon plasma. Not something I even knew was possible, and maybe it’s only the horned ones that it works with. Hard to imagine anyone looking at a bio-pile (what I call the shit-smeared ones) and wanting to tap a vein. Whatever the case, I know putting this shit in you can’t be healthy.
How does one even go about figuring that out? Hollister would’ve known.
“Let him go,” I say. The words come out before I can even register what they mean or implicate.
“W-what?” The girl asks, pulling down her surgical mask, then returning that hand to the sky.
“You’re going to let him go.”
There’s movement in the aisle and I sight Rambo’s head and pull the trigger.
He yelps as the bullet takes him in the neck, sheering away some of his growths. He was inching towards the AR and I’d told him. They’d all heard me tell him.
“Ma’am. It’s still dangerous. Are you feeling...” her voice trails off as she searches for the words. But I know what she’s intimating.
“No, they can’t do that to me. I’m in my right mind. I’m just tired and pissed off. Now let it go and get the hell out of here.”
I jam the end of the 9 mil into the crook of the male tech’s arm. He recoils from the heat, but the burn won’t leave a mark.
“I’m going undo the lines. That’s all I’ll do. You can get the straps when we’re gone. Please let us go.”
“I said that already, didn’t I? That I would?” I say.
She begins unhooking IVs and switching off pumps. The needles they’ve used are nearly as thick around as my pinky finger. I wonder how they were able to set the lines, they probably needed a hammer to get through demon skin.
As she works I try to think about why Rolf sent me here. He’d said that there were old world problems coming back. But this was a very new issue. A church converted into a drug lab, the sanctity of the place hopefully providing enough psychic dampening so the archdemon couldn’t struggle, couldn’t call for help. It was decidedly... inhuman.
And what was I asking her to do?
Victoria had slaked her thirst on hundreds, thousands, of demons just like this one. During the old days and the new.
But trussed up like this it was... I don’t know. Unsporting. Chopped up like it was, the demon was not even a compelling argument for a mercy killing. Was that it? Or maybe did it deserve a chance at revenge? Even if I was giving the lab techs a running start.
“Okay,” she said, finishing whatever it was she had to do.
“You can go.”
“I...” she starts to let her elbows drop, then catches herself. I point the gun away to show that I’m not going to shoot her. “I didn’t ever follow the news closely. Was never... into you. But this is the wrong way to be a hero. These things, they.”
“Hey. Lemme stop you there,” I say, then draw a blank at what the moral of all this is. What it means. If anything. “We’re all just working for somebody.” No. That’s trite and also incorrect. I’m not working for somebody. Or am I? What did Rolf think I’d do out here?
I raise the gun again to signal the end of the conversation.
They leave. Followed by all of the junkies with-it enough to realize it’s about to be closing time. My insomniac friend from before trips over Rambo’s gun and makes a terrible clatter in the quiet church.
“Can I go too?” a voice yells from the audience. It’s Vinny, he’s gripping his side from where the muzzle blast had seared him.
“Yeah,” I shout to him. “You’ve been a big help,” I add, lower.
Now it’s just the demon and me.
I reach for his gag and he flinches.
I don’t reassure him. He’s not a baby bird. But I do tell him not to speak to me.
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want you owing me anything. I just want to loosen these, go home, and be able to sleep for the first time all week. Just really sleep.”
The archdemon blinks its understanding and I use Victoria to cut him down from his trestle.
I leave before his legs are steady enough to stand.
I head back to my apartment and: no surprise, Rolf’s not on his stoop. I’ve no idea if that’s the outcome he’d expected, the one he’d planned. But I know that we’re going to have a long talk the next time we see each other.
But like I said: no more friends, no more handlers, no more den mothers or do-gooders. There’s only me. And the apocalypse.
About The Authors
Adam Cesare’s books include Zero Lives Remaining, The First One
You Expect, Video Night, The Summer Job, Mercy House and Tribesmen. He writes a monthly column exploring horror fiction and film for Cemetery Dance Online. He lives in Philadelphia and can be found at AdamCesare.com, where he’s giving away a free eBook if you sign up for his mailing list.
Matt Serafini’s books are Island Red, Devil’s Row, Under the Blade and Feral. He’s a columnist for Dread Central, and has formerly contributed to Bloody-Disgusting, Fangoria and Shock Till You Drop. He lives in Central Massachusetts with his wife and son where he spends way too much time tracking down obscure slasher movies.
Find him at mattserafini.com
Coming Soon
Vicious Circle: Season Two – Episodes 1-4
Hunter of the Dead by Stephen Kozeniewski
Chasing Ghosts by Glenn Rolfe
Find these and other horrific books at www.sinistergrinpress.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword by Jeff Strand
Saturday Nightmares
Bringing Down the Giants
Intermission #1
War of the Cryptid
Intermission #2
Incident at Night
Intermission #3
Killing Time in the Off-Season
Intermission #4
Gore Galore
Intermission #5
The Last Remake
Dead Air: Final Transmission
Extra Transmissions: 4 New Stories
A New Kind of Image
The Executioner’s Wish
Appraisal
Savior Girl in Philly Hell
About The Authors
Coming Soon