Double-Barreled Devilry

by D Michael Bartsch

It was my turn to smile. Thinking of telling him that I was running from the very things that he had spent his entire life believing either weren't real or locked up in another dimension, out of sight and out of mind. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

  I had a feeling he might actually believe me. God knows that would shatter his reality to learn that Demons and Angels were real, and they were all spiteful bastards.

  “I was married once too.”

  That took away the smile and replaced it with an empathetic sadness. I couldn't bring myself to hate him for the pity I saw forming behind his eyes.

  “I murdered her.” That part hurt the most. I felt the dam I'd built start to crack, my eyes watering at the memory of Elena. I took a hit from the bottle in my hand and drank until the burn in my chest outweighed the wetness in my eyes.

  “What happened?”

  Bastard. He wasn't supposed to ask, and I sure as hell wasn't supposed to feel like I could tell him.

  I didn't get the chance to, though. Hearing a blood-chilling scream outside your house tends to make you forget what you were talking about.

  12

  There's no mistaking the sound of a full-grown Ogre if you've heard it before. They're big, they're ugly, and they're single-minded killing machines that love to smash things. On top of that, they have a monstrous roar that scares the shit out of anyone who isn't completely insane.

  Carl looked at the roof of the apartment as it shook violently. I heard the sound of snapping wood as the thing pounded against the house.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing good.”

  The entire building shook as the Ogre slammed against the wall. A few years back, I'd had a Glyph ward my apartment and the one above it. I’d made a lot of enemies, and a lot of them were capable of big-bad-wolfing the place down on top of my head. He'd put up some defensive magic to keep Hellions out. It cost a fortune to upkeep since the wards were drained continually with me being in the house.

  A third rumbling brought the sound of more snapping wood. It had been a few months since I'd had them recharged so they wouldn't hold long.

  I turned to Carl.

  “Do you know how to use a gun?”

  I was already moving, running into my room and throwing the AA12 over my body, letting it fall and hang by the tac-sling.

  I ran back into the living room.

  “What is that?” Carl asked.

  “Ogre. Probably caught my scent somewhere along the line and followed me here. Do you know how to use a gun?”

  Carl didn't respond. He continued to stare at the roof as it shook and bucked in the frame. I unzipped the suitcase on my couch in a frenzy and slapped a drum mag into the shotgun.

  “Carl!” I said.

  Nothing. This was going to be bad.

  I moved the suitcase full of ammo off of the couch and slammed it on the table. I wouldn't be able to reload any mags, but I lined up a second drum and four box magazines. I didn't know how many I'd be able to get into the gun once it ran dry, but I always believed in being over-prepared.

  I swept around and put a hand underneath my couch, standing and flipping the thing on its back. Underneath was an Israeli-made FN FAL duct taped to the bottom of the couch. Eight magazines were neatly taped in a row beside the gun. A three-foot sword rounded out the weapon stash. It wasn't the time for that. Going up against an Ogre hand to hand was a horrible idea.

  I ripped the FAL free and pulled two mags for it. I walked over to Carl and grabbed him by the shoulders, placing my face directly in his line of sight. I gave him a good shake.

  “Carl!”

  “Yea?”

  His eyes lost the gloss, and he seemed to focus on me.

  “Do you know how to use a gun?” I asked again.

  He nodded, his eyes focusing in a little bit.

  “Sorta. I mean, it's been years since I've shot one.”

  “It'll do. Got any anointing oil on you?”

  He shook his head again.

  “No. We keep the oil at the church.” He said.

  Protestants. Say what you want about the Catholics, but at least they have the good sense to keep a healthy amount of holy water and anointing oil on hand at all times.

  “Alright. This is going to get ugly.” I said. “The spells keeping that thing out aren’t going to last long. We have another minute tops before a two-ton beast from the underworld comes through that wall looking to kill us.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “I don't need you to understand right now. I need you to listen to me. We can work on the understanding once we get the hell out of here.”

  I shoved the FAL into his hands. He took it, looking down at the weapon. Pulling the strips of duct tape free from the spare mags, I stuffed those into the loose pockets of his pants.

  “Take this. I don't have time to give you the usual safety speech so here's what you are going to do.” I started to walk him over to the door. “You're going to stay over here by the door. You're going to hug this to your shoulder nice and tight. Lean into it, and when you see the bastard, point and shoot.”

  I leaned over and flipped the selector to full auto and the safety off. He wasn't going to be accurate, but when you are shooting at a two ton, twelve foot tall monster from ten feet away, it was hard to miss.

  “This is in full auto. If you see a twelve-foot tall Shrek, point at its waist and hold the trigger till you stop hearing it fire. It's going to bounce up like a bitch. That's fine. Long as you start at the waist, just ride it up until the mag is empty. Once that happens, I'll help you reload it if I can.”

  An audible crack split the air as the house shook on the foundation. I could see the thick black cracks where the wood was starting to split. Not good. The spell wouldn't take much more.

  “We're going to ride it out down here. Ogres are stupid. With any luck, the bastard will break into your place, smash it up and then get frustrated when it can't find us. We wait for it to go back to the street and start rage smashing anything in sight. Then we run like hell. You got it? If you do see it, shoot and then run when you’re out.”

  I wasn't planning on Carl doing any real damage. The Ogre would feel any of the 7.62 rounds that hit their mark, but with the thing in full auto, I was counting on it being a distraction more than anything. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. Hopefully.

  “Carl, I want you to repeat back what I just told you.”

  Before he could respond, there was a final scream of fury followed by the sound of shattering glass and snapping wood. The roof of my apartment shook as the lumbering beast plowed through the wall. Carl's eyes widened, and his jaw went slack as the floor rumbled with every step.

  I didn't even need to bother telling Carl to be quiet. He was slipping into shock with every passing second. He hadn't even seen the damn thing yet.

  Cursing silently to myself, I left Carl by the front door and walked to my bedroom. I wanted to make sure that if Carl did fire his weapon, I wouldn't end up in the crossfire. I took a few seconds to get untangled from the AA12's tac-sling. I still had my vest on, for all the good it would do me. I wasn't going to have to worry about the Ogre shooting me. If it got ahold of me, it would just squeeze until stuff exploded out of every hole in my body.

  The Ogre was walking around upstairs, searching for me. I could hear it moving, dust dropping down with every step. Several crashes cut through the silence. The thing was trashing everything in sight out of frustration. The sound of its heavy breathing was muted by the flooring between us.

  I held the AA12 snug to my shoulder, muzzle following the thuds on the ceiling above me. A particularly thunderous crash must have come from the thing crashing through one of the walls up stairs. I knew Carl's bedroom was somewhere above my living room, and I could hear the thing thrashing around in there.

  I gave Carl another glance. His eyes were watching the clumps of dust drifting down from above. I could see his lips moving, speaking rapidly under his breath. No doubt h
e was praying. I wished he would stop. For one, if anyone was listening, they weren't coming.

  On top of that, on the off chance that someone was listening and a Guardian Angel showed up, the thing would be just as likely to attack me as it would the Ogre. I didn't much feel like dying.

  What happened next would later be described, by Carl, as fate. I call it the result of a four thousand pound animal removing several load bearing walls and a landlord who didn't care enough to replace rotted out flooring.

  There was a series of snapping noises and a line of cracks stitched its way across the ceiling. The wood bent briefly and then everything collapsed in a series of loud snaps. I covered my face as a thousand pounds of dry wall, flooring, and roofing came cascading down into my living room, sending a hurricane of dust and most likely asbestos at me.

  I saw a glimpse of flailing limbs as the Ogre collided into the concrete floor of my apartment. I felt the floor shake beneath my feet. It wasn't the greatest entrance I'd ever seen, but it wasn't the worst.

  Blinking out debris from my eyes, I trained the shotgun into the middle of the cloud of dust and waited for a target. I needed every round, and I didn't want to waste any shooting up my kitchen.

  Carl didn't have the same mindset. He snapped out of his panicked trance and jumped on the trigger, sending a spray of hot lead into the cloud. I could barely make him out through the cloud of dust and I saw the barrel of the weapon bouncing around like a kid at an EDM show.

  I don't know how many rounds hit between the lack of visibility and control of the gun, but the mag ran dry in seconds and the eardrum shattering sound of gunshots was replaced with the roaring rage of an angry Ogre.

  My ears were ringing. I wasn't even sure when I'd lost my electronic earplugs, but I would regret it later.

  I saw a leathery hand moving in the edge of the cloud, hurling a three-foot section of wood flooring at Carl. The chunk of wood barely missed him, and it exploded into a shower of splinters behind him, disintegrating my front door. Carl stood, dumb founded as a twelve-foot tall Ogre raised itself up to its full height. He pointed the FAL at it and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  The damn thing was so tall; it wouldn't have been able to stand up all the way if it hadn't ripped a hole through the top of my living room. It was a dark greenish brown color with black spots dotted across its hide. The skin was leathery and hard enough to dull a steel blade. Each hand was balled into a four-fingered fist, and thick globs of foaming spit flew from its mouth as it screamed at Carl.

  Its teeth were a mangled mess of sharpened canines and four-inch tusks sticking out of its mouth at odd angles. It had coarse shoulder length hair, like burnt straw flecked with drywall dust.

  The distraction had worked. The thing didn't even know or care that I was in the apartment. Carl forgot the rest of the plan, though, because instead of running, he just stood there, looking dumbfounded, and then opened his mouth in a silent scream.

  He was too afraid to make any noise. The thing about fight or flight that they don't tell you is that if you see something that scares you bad enough, your mind has to reboot before it gives you either option. Instinct is a real bitch when it gets overridden by fear.

  Hugging the gun tight to my shoulder, I took aim.

  “Carl, RUN!”

  I screamed the words so loud my throat felt like it ripped, and they were still drowned out when my finger pulled the trigger of the shotgun. The thing sounded like a series of rabid thunderbolts as it sent round after round across the room. My finger was locked down on the trigger, and I let my body ride the minimal recoil. The first round of shot ripped into the Ogre's left hip. Leathery skin vanishes in a spray of black.

  As the barrel rose, explosions of flesh and black blood filled the air. The alternating rounds of shot and slugs did their work. The slugs punched through the leathered skin like tissue paper, puckering the flesh as they pounded through it. The shot ravaged the skin, ripping and tearing at the Hellion.

  The Ogre cried out as the rounds found a home in its hide. It turned to face me, and the last five rounds hit it in the throat and face. The screaming cut off as its vocal cords were shredded by a round of shot. The last few rounds blinded it, popping its little black eyeballs. Ichor ran down it's ruined face, and sprays of blood burst out of its torn throat in a wet exhaling of air.

  Even as the bolt locked back on the AA12, the flesh on the Ogre's hip was already knitting itself back together. Beneath the oozing ichor, the leathered skin was stretching across the holes to seal them.

  Most Hellions can regenerate, but Ogres are up there with the best of them. That's what makes them such a bitch to kill. They can soak up a ton of punishment, and if you don't have a hell of a lot of firepower, you're more than likely going to end up dead.

  Empty, I tossed the AA12 aside. The rest of the mags were somewhere in the living room, beneath a thousand pounds of crap and hidden in a cloud of dust that had yet to completely settle.

  The sound of the weapon clattering against the floor caused the Ogre to swing its head in my direction and open its bleeding mouth. Its vocal cords started working as it charged my position. The snarling scream was wrought with blood filled rage.

  I moved quickly, diving to the ground and rolling into my bathroom. I was barely through the doorway when the thin wall separating my bedroom from the rest of my apartment collapsed in a cloud of dust. Scrambling, I reached behind the toilet and ripped the duct tape holding the Mossberg 185 hidden on the rear of the tank.

  I'd purchased the bolt-action shotgun six months earlier. I'd sawed it down to fifteen inches, reversed the bolt, so I could work it with my left hand, and carved the stock into a classic pistol grip. The thing looked like a pirate musket pistol.

  The two round magazine was loaded with twenty gauge slugs; a third round was already chambered. It wasn't the safest way to go leaving a gun, but as a rule of thumb, guns taped to the back of toilet tanks are meant for emergencies and are exempt from the normal rules of weapon safety. It only had three shots, but it was something, and I felt a whole lot safer with a gun in my hand.

  I ducked my head out of the bathroom and saw the Ogre thrashing about. I trained the Mossberg on it and stood my ground, doing my best to breathe as softly as possible.

  When the thing finally did turn its head in my direction, I felt a burst of joy spring up inside of me. Its body had fully regenerated from the shotgun wounds, but the thick blood that had covered its face was coated with a heavy layer of drywall dust. The big bastard was as good as blind. It scrubbed the back of its hand across its face, but the leathery skin just smeared the congealed ooze.

  Flight quickly won out over fight. I ducked out of the bathroom and headed straight for the front door. I could hear the thing sniffing the air behind me. Ogres had decent vision but relied heavily on their sense of smell to track down prey.

  Between being in my apartment, the scent of gunpowder, and the scent of its own sulfurous blood in the air, everything would be obscured long enough for me to get out.

  Carl was still standing exactly where I left him. He was white knuckling the FAL. It wasn't really pointed at anything, in particular, but he had a firm grip on the thing and was still muttering a string of gibberish under his breath. I quickly covered his mouth to stop him from making any noise. I had to get him out of there before we both got killed.

  The movement startled him, and he let the gun drop. My eyes widened as it fell, but with one hand on Carl's mouth, and the other holding the Mossberg, all I could do was watch as the FAL clattered to the floor. I didn't turn around. I heard the Ogre roar and knew it would only take it a few of strides to get from my room to the front door.

  Moving my hand to the side of Carl's head, I used it as leverage to hurl him to the floor. I took off toward my kitchenette in the opposite direction. I roared back at the Ogre as I moved. It was a stupid thing to do. I could have easily just moved past Carl and run for it.

  The Ogre would have been d
istracted with smashing his corpse to sludge long enough for me to get away. Hell, the thing would have thought Carl was me, and there wouldn't have been enough of the body left for anyone else to know who it had been. I couldn't bring myself to do it, though.

  As I ran, I twisted, gun extended with my left hand grasping the stock. I squeezed the trigger, and the Mossberg kicked back as the 260-grain shell flew out of it. I'd been aiming for the Ogre's right knee, and the slug hit home in the calf. Three shots weren't enough to kill the thing.

  Even if I managed to put all three rounds right in its face, the Ogre would still have some fight left in it. That meant putting rounds where it counted, and it didn't matter how big or tough something was, joints are always a weak spot.

  The giant Hellion stumbled. The knee buckled as the full weight of the Ogre came down on its leg, and I could just make out the cracking of bones beneath the screams. The bastard went down momentarily, throwing its hands out to catch itself.

  I kept moving toward the kitchen, sloppily vaulting over the counter and spilling on the floor. I kept ahold of the Mossberg and hammered the bolt back and forth, chambering a new round.

  Throwing open the cabinet beside me, I ripped the .38 special taped to the bottom of the sink and pocketed it. If I could get to my room, I knew I had a chance of getting ahold of my FN SCAR-H. The 7.62 NATO rounds could do some damage, and I knew I had a couple of grenades in the back of my closet as well. I'd just have to get outside before using them. There was way too much concrete in my apartment for that to be a good idea with me inside.

  Of course, the wall to my room had also just been pulverized, and I had no way of knowing if I'd even be able to find anything in there.

  I peaked my head over the counter and immediately jumped backward in a blind dive. My head smacked into the oven door, and I saw stars as the counter exploded, a giant fist cracking the concrete floor as it crushed through the counter like it was made of paper.

  Seeing a variety of things dancing across my vision, I lifted the Mossberg and shot the bastard in the crotch. The leather skirt it was wearing didn't have a chance of stopping the slug. That's what happens if you come into my house and trash the place. You get shot in the dick. Intruders be warned.