Lovely Death

by Brandon Meyers

  The tool weighted itself to the ground, the three-and-a-half-pound steel bit stooping downward.

  Although fire still bubbled in his chest wound, Nick had glimpsed enough hope to pull himself to his feet, using the axe as a sort of cane. When he stood, he was met with the oily black stares of five more looming monsters. They hung in the sky, wings pounding steadily to keep their heavy bodies aloft. But aside from the bobbing caused by their wings, they made no move to approach. One of them hissed at him, its tongue tasting the air like a bullwhip.

  “What’s the matter?” Nick said in a throaty rasp. “Never seen one of your buddies get his fucking noodle lopped off before?”

  Now the others began to hiss as well. They knew he was mocking them. But they also knew he was dangerous.

  Back in the real world, the key had left him untouchable to the Black Tar Man and any of his familiar extensions, but Nick had no doubt these things were still capable of hurting him here in this place. The monster he’d killed had released him only momentarily once he’d held the key, and even then, it had only been out of disgust, not pain.

  As the seconds passed, Nick felt stronger, surer of himself. He straightened his spine, hefted the axe in front of him with both hands.

  “Well,” he said to the hovering monstrosities, “What are you waiting for? I don’t have all goddamned day.”

  There was a sharp tingle in his left shoulder, a sympathetic connection to the Cougar’s pain, wherever it was. Nick ignored it and stepped forward.

  Two of the devils lighted upward and off to the sides, likely looking to flank him. He paid no attention to them, instead focusing his attention on the three monsters remaining in front of him. With a yard or so between each other, they all floated about five feet off the ground.

  Nick howled wrathfully. It was a primal scream, an unstoppable outpouring of the rage he held for the Black Tar Man. Before he knew what he was doing, Nick’s body went into auto pilot. It was something he’d never experienced before, watching himself like a spectator from within as instincts he’d never known he possessed took over.

  Nick charged the hovering trio, knowing only that these beasts, whatever the hell they were, were not nimble little things, at least while airborne. He jabbed the wooden handle of the axe into the wings of the monster on the left. This disrupted its flight and it rolled back in the air, stunned. Without missing a beat, he brought the head of the axe to connect with the jaws of the middle one. It tried to seize the bit, but its reaction was too slow. There was a crack as half of its obsidian teeth broke. It cried out and caught Nick by the wrist, but he broke its hold as he drew the axe in an upswing. A second later, it split the skull of the toothless creature. Its wings ceased beating and it fell like a stone.

  The kill cost Nick a severe wound. The third, unharmed flier latched its jaws onto his right shoulder. Searing pain swept through his body and Nick struggled to wrench himself free of the demonic parasite. He twisted in circles, yelling unintelligible obscenities as the monster jerked at his shoulder like a German Shepherd shaking its favorite squeeze toy to death. When it finally broke free it took a fair chunk of Nick’s flesh with it. His right arm twitched repeatedly at the elbow as a result of unknown tendon damage. The wound caused Nick to gasp in surprise, eyes wide. He stared at the bloodless mess of torn muscle that lay exposed beneath his shredded tee shirt.

  He screamed again. It began as a release of redirected pain but quickly melted into blind rage. His elbow twitched, but fury won out.

  The demon was still chewing on the flesh of Nick’s soul, chomping happily as it circled around to prepare for another swoop.

  Nick bared his teeth at the thing, snarling. And when he heard the sound of beating wings behind him he ducked to the side. The first of them, the one he’d stunned, barely clipped him on his good shoulder and struggled to right itself midair. As it slowed course, Nick sped forward. Axe and body moved as one as he caught the thing from behind. It was as easy as playing tee ball, and Nick took animalistic satisfaction in carving the shadowy being in half with one swing.

  And as soon as that one was fallen, he spun automatically. This time he was ready for their half-assed strategy of diversion. He met the third attacker head on. If the previous kill had been a tee ball effort, this swing was one for the major leagues. Using the blunt end of the axe, Nick pounded the jaw clean off of the monster. The jawbone—which had previously taken a huge bite out of him—went flying into the grandstands. The ravenous killer drooped to the earth, choking and giving off a disturbing, pained wail.

  Nick cleaved its skull open with a single blow, returning it to nothing more than a liquid pool of ichor which sunk into the dirt.

  Nick raised his eyes to the sky, darting them round alertly as he spun front and back. He was prepared now, ready for the return of the two flankers. If indeed his spectral body was still capable of producing adrenaline, it was running high now.

  Nick watched the skies, trying not to make any noise. The bubble of his vision now stretched thirty or forty feet into the air and he scanned the dark horizon as carefully as he could.

  “Come on,” he said softly, growing impatient. “Come on, you fuckers. Where are you?”

  The field in which he stood was a palette of grays, full of long forgotten, folded corn stalks and soft dirt. The bodies of the fallen goblins had fully sunk back into the earth. No traces of them remained.

  “Come on,” Nick said, breathing heavily. He looked left, then right, spinning to repeat the process. But still there was only silence.

  He closed his eyes, tried to picture the Cougar. He could not see her. Nor could he sense their tethering bond. Since the last jolt of pain, there had been no further evidence of their connection and Nick began to fear the worst. Had those filthy little bastards wrecked her? Had they torn into her and cleaved away her body like they had his own? There had been well over a dozen of them, after all.

  “Shit,” he said, imagining only the worst scenario playing out in his head. He could see her wrecked and maimed body broken down in the middle of nowhere, while chunks were shredded from her beautiful frame by the savage claws of the shadow man’s proxies.

  And then they arrived. He heard the thunderous ripple of their collective wing beats long before he saw them. And because of it Nick did not need to see them to know that their number was many. Far too many for him to fend off with just an axe and his anger.

  There was nowhere to run. And even if there had been, Nick was tired of running. It seemed that he had been running his entire life. From the memory of his father, from his alcoholic mother and her asshole boyfriends, from the fear that he would amount to nothing in his life. No, even if life was beyond him and this was the last and final opportunity he was granted to do so, he would stand his ground. He would not welcome the endless oblivion with his back turned, nor on his knees.

  Nick twisted the felling tool in his hands. He set his lower lip, staring in the direction of the approaching sound.

  They appeared like a murder of crows on the horizon, flying in a solid, fast formation. As best he could guess there were almost twenty of the things on rapid descent.

  Nick planted his feet firmly into the ground and readied the axe.

  The pulse of their wings grew stronger, faster as they closed the gap. In a group, their sound had a peculiar rumble. It was throaty, full of bass. That deep roar continued to grow, until it overpowered the noise of thwapping leather altogether. Nick had been mistaken. That rhythmic, mechanical explosion did not belong to the creatures at all.

  Perhaps sixty feet away, the Cougar blazed through the black bubble of Nick’s sightline. Its motor roared at redline as it dumped all the power it had into crossing the field to reach him before the gargoyle-like creatures could. It tore along the ground beneath their diving forms, running at full bore speed.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, come on, baby.”

  The Cougar was five seconds away from him. The fiendish freaks might even have been c
loser. Nick acted without thinking. He started to run in the opposite direction of both of them. He pushed his will out to the vehicle, hoping for his life that their connection allowed her to read his intentions.

  Nick could feel the thunderclap of wings at his back. He could also feel the earth-shaking power of the Cougar’s motor hot on his heels. He reached out to her with his mind, closed his eyes, and dove sharply to the right.

  The ground reverberated like a tin roof in a hailstorm when the bodies of two dozen falling aberrations collided with it. They tumbled and fell, crashing into the ashy loam with terrible force.

  Nick saw it all from the front seat of the Cougar. His plan, as insane and impromptu as it was, had worked. He had dived right into the open door, tripping on nothing this time, and the Cougar had spun off into an immediate skid. It avoided the collision course handily, sliding sideways to a bumpy stop.

  “Now! Do it!” he shouted.

  But the car was already ahead of him. It j-turned violently, wheels spinning into traction, and launched itself forward into the group of crashed monsters. And it caught them while most of them were struggling to dig themselves out of the dirt.

  The Cougar didn’t get all of them, but it was damn close. Like the world’s most unprepared prairie dogs matching wits with a redneck’s truck the Cougar mowed through the tightly knit group of them without hesitation. The car rocked and jolted and was met with the hissing screams of the dying, but it never slowed down.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Nick said. “Get us back to the road.”

  And get to the road they did. The Cougar jetted through a surprisingly short stretch of field before Nick spied smooth blacktop break through the horizon. He held tight to the grab bar on the door as the Cougar bounced across the ditch and once again found solid asphalt.

  It was only when they had returned to the relative security of the road again that Nick was able to turn his attention to his wounds. He watched as his shoulder and chest, both previously shredded messes of flesh, mended themselves whole again. It was the doing of the Cougar. He was sure of it. Because the regeneration came at a cost. His skin was paler than before, almost translucent, as if the repairs had drawn from everywhere else in his being, spreading around his body while he was being remolded in the same shape, but without adding more substance. The same went for the Cougar. As the dozens of little gashes and gouges on her steel frame stitched back together, the motor gave a series of soft hiccups. The car rattled briefly, as if recovering from a sneeze before resuming its onward charge. It was almost imperceptible, but her top cruising speed had slowed a little.

  His soul was a finite thing, and the dark man had captured a small share in that surprise attack. The axe rested beside him, tipped sideways in the passenger seat. The key insignia looked back at him expectantly, despite the lack of light in the cabin.

  He scanned the peripheral road around them, and when he saw nothing in any of the mirrors or windows Nick leaned back in the seat and allowed himself a first true moment of relief. The motor growled as the road flowed ever onward beneath them.

  Just as surety found its way back into him, the earth began to quake. Nick sat up in his seat to inspect the road. Even at their current breakneck speed it was easy to see that the asphalt was deteriorating to the left and right of the vehicle. The car rumbled across the increasingly uneven surface, slowing to absorb some of the intensifying shock.

  When the Cougar did cut its pace Nick could clearly see the spider-webbing splits that coursed their way through the highway. They lengthened, forked off into multiple others, and continued to spread into an infinitely collapsing network. And though coming from behind the car, they were quickly gaining speed. Within a few seconds they reached the front tires and the car rocked dangerously. It had to cut speed even further, and in doing so, allowed the fissures to completely surpass them on the road.

  The car was overtaken by the collapsing blacktop.

  Twenty-Six

  Frustration and fear threatened to overtake Nick completely. He could not take his eyes from the road outside, crumbling to pieces a foot beneath him. The Cougar’s motor revved at peak RPM, winding with such ferocity that Nick thought the engine block might crack wide open at any moment. The Cougar was giving its all. But it was still not good enough. Outside the vehicle, the sound of the collapsing thoroughfare reverberated through the earth, vibrating it with the fury of a hateful earthquake.

  The disintegrating road had surpassed the muscle car’s horsepower and was only moments away from wrecking it, possibly swallowing it whole like the hungry sinkhole it appeared to be. Through the rear window, in his limited view, Nick saw the previously traveled road crumble and slope downward behind them. Within the expanding cracks and gaps he could see the same viscous black goo that had comprised the flying monsters. It was the black tar essence of the dark man, the man who would stop at nothing to claim his soul.

  The Cougar rocked violently to the left as its rear tire hobbled over a chunk of broken road the size of a basketball. The leaf spring protested with a groan and for a moment Nick wondered if it wouldn’t just break under the force of the landing. The car remained on the road. However, a second later, a similar breakneck collision afflicted the front right tire.

  Nick was thrown harshly against the driver’s window, his skull battering it with the helplessness of a thrown rag doll. Stars dotted his vision.

  The Cougar maintained, pushing as hard as it was capable. They were still doing ninety, maybe even a hundred miles an hour. But it was not fast enough.

  Any moment now, the increasingly devastating road would cripple the vehicle enough to stop it and it would be sucked straight down the vortex behind it. A second later, as he braced himself on the console, he saw that the front end had lifted enough in elevation to point toward the blackness of the sky. They were about to tip backward, nose first, into the waiting abyss.

  “Faster, goddammit! Go, go, go!”

  The motor sparked for an instant, sputtered, and resumed its previous output. With the increasing incline, its tail was dragged further downward, and they were now even going slower than before.

  “Fuck!”

  There was no way to escape. Doom was on rapid approach and there was nothing Nick could do to stop it. The car listed dangerously close to the edge of the beaten road when it bounced over a huge square shard of pavement. There was a deep, serious grinding of metal from beneath the Cougar. The damage was severe enough to make Nick grab his chest and double over. As he did, his head connected sharply with the steering wheel. Pain boiled in his insides and he knew that whatever damage had been done to the vehicle, it had been serious.

  Rubber squealed as the tires fought for purchase on the ever expanding gaps in the road. The car listed helplessly to one side, skidding free of traction. The tires bit once again, barely righting the direction of the vehicle in time to keep it from spinning out and rolling end over end into the open maw of hell that awaited its rear. The relief however, was to be short lived. Any moment now either gravity or the shitty ground was going to claim the Cougar and its lone occupant for good.

  Nick pulled himself upright in the front seat, planting his hands on the dashboard for support. He screamed. It was the sound of frustrated anguish. He had come this far, had gotten so close.

  “Go, goddammit! Please, just fucking go!”

  Nick smashed his palms down on the dash, beating the molded vinyl with enough force to numb his hands.

  And he was sapped. That was the only way to put it. He felt instantly drained, tired enough to fall asleep where he sat. His head bobbed and he watched as his hands—his hands!—faded from existence. Like a parting chunk of dry ice, Nick’s hands sublimated into nothingness before him. It began at the fingertips, skin and bone disappearing completely all the way up to his elbows, then toward his torso. The arms of his jacket faded away too.

  The energy sap hit him so hard that he scarcely understood what was actually happening. The
car was draining him. Like a reciprocal battery, Nick’s soul could be channeled back to the Cougar just as the car had helped to restore him after escaping his attackers. And the strength it produced was astounding.

  The Cougar’s motor blazed with the unstoppable power of a jet engine. It roared. There was no better way to put it. The Cougar roared to life like a top fuel dragster, rocketing forward with so much G-force that it pinned Nick’s armless torso to the seat.

  Unconsciousness tugged at the corners of his perception, willing him to submit to its dark and welcoming embrace. But he remained awake, at least enough to watch what happened next.

  The Cougar rocked violently only once more, bounding over a final chunk of debris and recovering swiftly. It darted to the left, dodging a massive fissure. Then it pressed forward even harder. At that point, Nick could feel the momentum in his teeth. Yet at the same time it felt like it could be a dream. He was slipping away.

  The car climbed the steep incline in less than three seconds, and seemingly without troubled labor. The motor’s power was ungodly, not faltering once. It blasted them clear of the danger, past the crumbling pavement and back onto solid footing. At once, the ride became smooth again as the tires found grip. Soon enough, the rumbling, crackling earthquake drone dissipated too, growing softer and fainter in the distance. Nick did not have the energy to turn and inspect, but there was little chance he could have fought the G-force even if he had.

  There was no telling the speed at which they traveled. The Cougar moved like a bullet, honing in on the target that Nick had provided it with. Its motor played a symphony of mechanical combustion, swelling with intensity.