by Nick Keller
“Okay, Ally. Kill it,” Dr. Kinder said. “But before you do, just listen to me.”
Ally stopped and looked at him, waiting.
Dr. Kinder took a breath eyeing the creature from head to toe, arranging his thoughts, then looked at Ally. “It starts at the root, at our foundation. It’s biology, Ally. It’s in our DNA.”
“DNA,” she hissed.
“Yes. Our building blocks…”
“I know DNA,” Ally cut him off. “Deo-xyro-nuclear… something.”
Dr. Kinder looked impressed. “That’s right. Deoxyribonucleic acid. You’re very smart, Ally. Our DNA as humans, as people, transfers proteins in a very specific way. It’s all very involved, Ally, but that’s how we make human skin, human eyes, our bones and hair, everything. It’s how we make our human bodies. Everything that is… us.”
Ally’s gaze shifted down to the creature. “And they can’t do that anymore?”
Dr. Kinder took a breath and said, “Well, yes they can, but it’s more than that, Ally. Their DNA hasn’t lost its ability to convert proteins. They just convert it in a very different way now. A wrong way.”
“Mutations,” Ally said. “They’re mutants aren’t they?”
“Well, yes. But there’s more to it. Things we don’t understand. Mutations only change the human form. There’s something deeper. It’s not just their human form that’s changed, Ally. It’s their very humanity.”
Ally switched her eyes back and forth.
Roy Stanton nudged his chin toward Ally and said, “Tell her. She needs to know.”
Dr. Kinder nodded and shared a deep look with Ally. “Something very bad came up from the Earth, Ally. Whatever it was, it registered on environmental air-quality instruments all over the world. You know those things that read pollen count and pollution, things like that?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like atmosphere samplers and spore traps, right? I learned about them in A.P. chemistry. What about them?”
Dr. Kinder made a grunt, impressed again. “Well, they registered something. We’d never seen anything like it. We captured readings all over the world, the entire planet. Whatever it was, it caused the… changes.”
“So, what was it?” Ally said through eyes that were bleeding for the truth.
“We only know to call it,” Dr. Kinder swallowed nervously, “Demon Seed.”
Ally pulled away from him with a horrified gaze and hissed, “You mean like, the devil?”
Dr. Kinder looked fatigued all of a sudden and admitted, “We don’t know what else it could’ve been.”
Ally looked over to Roy Stanton and blurted, “Well, where’s God?”
Roy Stanton stepped forward and put his hand on Dr. Kinder’s shoulder relieving him of any further exposition, and asked, “Do you believe in God, Ally?”
She shrugged, “I guess so.”
“Good. That’s good. You see, in my discipline, Ally, we believe something very evil happened on that day. The wicked one—Satan—attempted to destroy all the righteousness of the world. He tried to take all mankind. All in one single day.” He exhaled a pent up breath, and continued, “But God is different. He’s patient and careful. He loves us each, Ally, individually. And he touches us all, one at a time, like a mother to her children,” and he nodded compassionately to her belly. “The Bible says in Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…’ Do you understand that passage, Ally?”
She shook her head looking doubtful.
“When two people, a man and a woman, create life, something very special happens. In science it’s when the sperm penetrates the egg. But I think a far greater process occurs in that moment. A tiny breath of God touches that union, Ally. Right then and there. That’s how the Lord joins with us. That’s how we join with Him. It happens at the very beginning.”
Ally’s hands rested on her belly, probing for the life inside her. She looked up with tearful eyes and asked, “Is that why you want my baby?”
“That’s why we want your baby to live, Ally. There’s something very special about your baby—and you—that no one else can claim.”
“What?”
Roy Stanton sighed big and continued, “You were on land when the Demon Seed arrived. None of us other survivors were. I was on my boat, on the water. The doctor, he was flying back from Phoenix. He was on a plane. The sergeant, out at sea. Even your friends, Kerry and Munica, they were returning from a scholastics tournament on the same flight. Everyone, all of us, we were all away from the soil and earth.” Then he looked at her with a deep, quizzical look. “But you were land-bound. You were at the gym, perfectly exposed. Why didn’t you become,” he nodded toward the beast restrained on the table, “like them?”
Ally gave him a look of disbelief, her mouth hanging half open, eyes big and questioning.
Roy Stanton continued, “Because when the Demon Seed touched you, you and Benny were being touched by God. You were conceiving a baby, making life, Ally. From love.”
Dr. Kinder moved back to the table, his eyes dancing painfully across the creature strapped down, writhing and moaning. “This girl’s name was Sarah, Ally. She was your age. Sixteen. When the Demon Seed happened, she was on the lake, jet skiing with her family. She was saved. But she came to us bitten by one of them. That’s how the Demon Seed touched her.” He looked up trying to force back the tears in his eyes. “We’re losing her, Ally, and there’s nothing we can do. But that’s what makes your baby so special. We think your baby holds the key to preventing this from ever happening again. Now, do you understand why you’re so very important?”
Ally turned and walked away from them staring into nothing, looking into the past, gleaming toward the future, seeing her own intangible existence. Something inside her refuted this sudden surge of knowledge. She was immune to the Demon Seed, immune to them. And that made her child…
“An experiment?” she muttered.
“Oh no, Ally,” Roy Stanton said. “You’re child is not the experiment. We are. We’re the variable element. Your baby is the control. All the souls of all those people—they weren’t ripped out of their bodies. Their bodies were ripped away from them. They’re not in Hell. We are. And your baby is the final vestige of God on Earth in His most divine form.”
Ally turned around with a new expression dawning in her, one of a sudden, hard-boiled terror. “Then they’ll come for me, won’t they? I mean, what if they know? They’ll try to come get my baby, won’t they?”
Sergeant Oleman stepped forward and grumbled powerfully, “Not as long as I’m alive, Ally. I promise you that. I’ll kill ‘em all.”
Breath of God
Being in the school’s gymnasium at the lower level of the north complex was like being home again. At least it was the closest thing. Inside the smell of a gymnasium, challenging her muscles to perform slow, fully-extended positions, either sitting on the matt or standing against the various equipment with her heal brought up from behind in a long swan position, or doing an inverted split with her back in a severely arched formation, she allowed her mind to wander toward old dreams she used to have… before. They were dreams of a future time in which she would be loved by so many, in which her body would become a responsive utensil, as capable of flight as a bird, and in which Benny would always be there to love her.
But then she would always come back, and the darkness in her would live again. As she tumbled about in nearly perfect form on the mats, or executed a dancing, gymnast’s pirouette, she would begin to envision the object of her hatred surrounding her: the soulless minions now walking in hordes across the Earth, choking away those dreams of… before. In her new dreams, the dark ones, she sashayed through those stinking creatures with a violent, bladed grace, her body like a razor slipping them all off toward death—or whatever state they would occupy after this one—until the whole Earth was one big junkyard world of demon dead. And her motions would become more driven, sweat glistenin
g off her shoulders and chest, matting her hair down onto her forehead. It was always then that Sergeant Oleman, her constant bodyguard, would break her concentration.
“Ally!” Sergeant Oleman would blurt. “Take it easy…” And she would look at him heaving, angry, but cooling. Tonight, however, after he calmed her motion, the walkie-talkie at his belt chirped at him. He brought it to his mouth and said, “What is it?”
A voice on the other end, shaken but holding firm, said, “Uh, this is Jones, rooftop sentry, south complex. Um, there’s something going on out here, Sarge.”
He crinkled his forehead. “Explain.”
“Uh… there’s a whole bunch of them out here.”
“Where’d they come from, Jones?” Oleman growled.
“I don’t know, Sarge, they were just there, like they came out of the ground or the shadows or something.”
Sergeant Oleman looked concerned and said, “How many are there, more than usual?”
“Uh, yeah. Like a shit-ton, man.”
Oleman looked at Ally, and in his eyes was the command to ‘stay put’, then he headed for the exit. “Guesstimate, Jones,” he barked into the walkie.
“I dunno, like… thousands, maybe. They’re all over the place, Sarge. It’s like freakin’ Woodstock out here, man.”
Oleman froze. He looked back at Ally. This was an invasion. Jesus, Ally had been right. They were coming for her.
“Shoot their asses, sentry!” Oleman barked.
“Yes, sir. I’ll give the order to… Oh my Gaw—” and the walkie went silent.
Oleman’s pistol was in his hand in a flash. He cranked the slide and looked at Ally. She looked back.
Thud!
Both their eyes went up toward the gymnasium’s roof. “What the …”
Thud.
Thud.
ThudThud.
Thud.
ThudThud. Thu’thu’thud. Thud. Thu’thu’thu’th’th ’thu’thud!
The walkie-talkie screamed in his hand, “Christ! They’re jumping! They can jump! They’re up here! On the roof! Get out! Get out!” In the background, coming through the walkie-talkie, was that horrible screeching of the Damned mixed with the pop pop pop of close quarters gunshots. Then everything went silent… except the Thud thu’thu’thud of those beasties landing above them, up on the roof. It sounded like a hailstorm. Or, maybe, demons raining from the sky.
“Ally, stay close! Let’s go!” Oleman commanded.
No sooner did they sprint from the gymnasium and up the student rampway toward the main lobby than they heard the infamous tri-tone blast of the homemade klaxon signaling to the human community of an approaching danger. Once Oleman reached the lobby floor with Ally close at his heals, the whole place was in a frenzy. It was a stampede of people reporting in chaotic groups toward their group leaders. Then from above, the sound of sheering plaster boomed out dropping chunks of the ceiling down. Each head looked up aghast to see the creatures of the Damned ripping and punching holes in the roof. Immediately, dozens of weapons—pistols, hunting rifles, shotguns—were aimed up high and booming away. The crowd was propelled into panic, each human scurrying this way and that. And then the creatures began raining down, either blown to smithereens by a scattergun, or storming down for a kill.
Oleman wrenched Ally by the forearm and yanked her along. “C’mon! The back way, Ally! Let’s go! Move, move, move!” She looked up to see people cramming out of the large exit and into the night. The woods. They were fleeing toward the woods. A window shattered out to the left grabbing her attention, and as she turned around her balance lifted away and down she went, broken from Oleman’s grasp. He reached back for her, eyes full of controlled haste, then looked up in a split-second toward something just behind her, his pistol pointing forward, hammering away. She looked over. Here they came, those sinister creatures, one’s head exploding, then a second, a third. But there were too many of them. Oleman’s gun went click, click!
“Ally, get to the skywalk! Go, go!” Oleman howled out and charged toward the attacking demons like a human battering ram. She watched him crash into them, arms out capturing as many of them as he could, before their numbers swallowed him down.
Ally screamed, got to her feet, shot a glance toward the exit, saw that her way was cut off. They were all around, so she took to the clearest path, toward the history wing.
The hallway was empty here, and for a second Ally felt she’d left the conflict behind, but way down at the end of the hall people were scurrying past, firing whatever weapons they had behind them, followed quickly by those demon creatures with the furtive intention of ripping their lives away. She pressed herself against the wall and looked back behind, to the right. Way back there, she could hear the raid depleting in the north complex as the humans fled toward the night. Then, to the left, the battle was carrying further away, leaving her. She suddenly felt very much alone. A horrible quiet dawned on her. No one was with her.
Only the baby growing in her womb.
She crept down the hall, eyes peeled for signs of motion. When she got to the end of the hallway and peeked out, there were only signs of a battle that had moved on—holes blown into the walls by small arms fire, the occasional carcass of a demon lying twisted and twitching, the screams of panic and death fading away.
She took a breath pondering her next move. She would have to leave the school, go out into the night, find her people out there, rejoin with her fellow man, somehow, somewhere. But for now she would wait here, hoping to be silent and invisible. Then, she made the mistake of turning around and looking back down at the far end of the hallway.
The beasts of the Damned frothed and squirmed, all of them compressed together in a mindless mass, each so singularly determined to get at Ally and her baby that they climbed and slithered over each other in an orgiastic display, their eyes like stinging white lamps, each face a blackened scar against anything decent. It was the purge valve of Hell. And it was about to release.
Like silent guardians awaiting this moment through years of solitude were the knight, the highlander, the Samurai and the soldier, all of them looking forward through an ambivalent quality, silent and lifeless, yet each whispering a message to Ally. She could hear them in her mind saying sweet warrior-things.
She closed her eyes forcing away her fears, her hope, even her courage, and replaced everything inside her with that old familiar sensation of hatred, the one force of nature inside her that she knew those creatures could never overtake. She took a breath, opened her eyes, brow down, lips pulled into a tight sneer, and waited for the purge valves to open. In that final moment, she moved to the Highlander. Yes, she needed the big guns first, and took the pommeled cruciform of the Claymore sword in both hands, feeling the immense weight of her bloodletter. This, right here, right now, was where she would make her finest stand.
“Okay—come the ‘F’ on, you A-holes from Hell!” she snarled.
And the purge valve exploded. They came scurrying forward, rolling over each other, bowling their death mates out of the way, all of them releasing a communal howl that shivered Ally’s nerves. She swung the blade in a full circle, like a discus thrower, spinning the thing around once, then twice, and releasing it at the zenith of all her power. It pin-wheeled at them, smashing blade-long into their forward ranks. They crumbled to the floor, limbs bouncing forward with the momentum of their detached owners. But their brothers and sisters over took them in a crazed frenzy.
Ally sneered out loud, flew toward the knight, snatched the broad sword from its gauntlets, and sprang forward on the attack with a perfect, gymnast’s flying form, one knee out in front, the other leg trailing behind. She came down with a swing that filleted the first thing from clavicle to ribcage, disassembling it like a toy, then, using her momentum, swung fully around, low to the ground, severing legs at the knees, spilling open groins and gullets alike. Arms protruded toward her, rasping at her hair, but they each met with a singing blade of cold steel as it warmed against
the friction of dismemberment. Hands and limbs flipped into the air, heads parted from ear to ear, body parts fell to the floor like pieces of so much detritus, until the blade in Ally’s hand, in a moment of dizzying disbelief, was wrenched away from her grasp. She met eyes with her assailant, hers wide and full of frenzy, the creature’s glowing with a lifeless allure.
Ally barked out going air born again, launching backward, clearing her immediate vicinity of Hell’s beasts, and headed back toward the Samurai warrior. Without a moment’s hesitation, not even breaking stride, she found the dual handles of the katana swords, unsheathed them with a double, icy schiiiing! And came to a defensive posture facing her enemy, one blade held forward at a glancing angle, the other tucked back, poised for a thrust.
The hordes of Hell took pause studying her. They seemed to consider that this living creature was not so edible as the others. Not without a fight. She could sense them reading her in their brainless impulses, studying newer and more surprising ways to take her down. She would not let them. Her hatred flared inside her. It rose to a zenith and became the greatest part of her. As she attacked, she went air born again zoning her might and all her antipathy toward their hundred beatless hearts. The world drew out, her instincts slowed time. As she came down on them, her new philosophy in life became an audible creature in her head. It shrieked out to all the demonic Damned as she skewered them like piggies on a spit:
“You have no comprehension of things. You do not understand my motion. I am saved. You are the Damned! You do not fathom the world with its timelines, with its beginnings and its endings. You do not know these things. You only want my flesh and the life inside me so that you can rip it out, like you did my Benny!”
She swung and sliced, severed and smashed.
“But you are now nothing more than my blade! My cold steel. Thoughtless. Destructive. Let me introduce you to my blade! For it is I that know of greater things than myself, that beholds life within me. I refuse you. I hate you. I spit my revenge on you. I kill you! All!”