Demonica

by Preston Norton

  Rabies, huh? I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever Bill had spread, it was worse than rabies. Much worse.

  “We’ve been looking for Bill forever,” said Eli. “Nobody’s been able to find him since.”

  One word out of Eli’s mouth hit me like a moving car. “Forever?” I repeated questioningly.

  Eli seemed confused by my response at first. Realization washed over his expression shortly. “Oh…yeah.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Um…” Eli bit his lip, glancing to the side as he thought. “Four days?”

  “FOUR DAYS?”

  “Roughly.”

  “Jesus titty-fucking Christ!”

  Eli just gave me this sad look. “Jesus Christ doesn’t titty-fuck anyone.”

  My face flushed. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like…Yeah, that just sorta came out. But god! I’ve been unconscious for four days?”

  “I think. The days all kind of blend together.”

  I was still speechless, staring past Eli and into space. Four days? When I killed Amon, I had only been out for…what? An hour? Why would killing Belphegor leave me unconscious for four whole fucking days?

  Unconscious? Shit. I was in a coma.

  Then I remembered the unsettling sensation I’d experienced. I wanted to keep sleeping. Though I seemed to bounce in and out of it, I was bothered by the possibility that I didn’t wake up simply because I didn’t want to.

  “What all has happened?” I finally asked.

  “Nobody has tried to help us,” said Eli. “That’s for sure.”

  “They haven’t done anything?”

  Eli shook his head.

  “How can they just leave us here?”

  He shrugged. “A lot of people tried to escape. They panicked at the idea of being quarantined inside a diseased area. They’re all dead now. Shot.”

  I felt my breath escape me. Part of me wanted to ask who was dead. The rest of me was terrified to know. A wave of lightheadedness smothered me, causing me to waver slightly in my sitting position.

  “You must be starving,” said Eli. He was already rising to his feet. “Here, let me get you something.”

  I started to nod contentedly. Just at the thought of him leaving, I wanted to lie down and fall back asleep. Then I blinked. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! Hell no. I blinked several more times and then shook my head, hoping to knock some sense into that bullshit thing that was supposed to be my brain.

  “I’m coming with you,” I said. I staggered to my feet, stabilizing myself on a nearby costume rack.

  “No no no no no,” said Eli, shaking his head. “Zoey said you have to stay here. She thinks someone’s after you.”

  “We’re all locked down in a quarantine zone. People are much lower on my list of concerns.”

  “Well considering we found you in a coma, I kind of agree with her. What happened to you anyway?”

  “I fell and hit my head,” I lied.

  There was no conviction in my tone, and likewise, Eli didn’t seem to believe a word.

  “Well, are you going to take me to where the food is, or do I have to wander around by myself?”

  “But Zoey said—”

  “If Zoey wants to tell me something, she can tell me herself!” I snapped.

  Between my newfound anger problems and my current lethargy (which only seemed to make me more cranky), Eli did not argue further. Lifting my arm around his shoulder, he assisted me across the obstacle course of drama props and to the door.

  I had to give Eli credit where it was due. This little storage room was the perfect hiding place. He opened the door directly into a curtain that had been draped across the wall. Wading past the shrouding material, we finally broke free onto the drama theater stage. I glanced back, and the sliding curtain once again settled gently against the wall. The door was completely invisible to anyone who didn’t already know it was there.

  The drama theater was empty as we crossed it. Already, I could feel energy in my legs. I pulled my arm off of Eli’s shoulder, mostly to prove to myself that I didn’t need his help anymore.

  Eli reached the door but paused with his hand on the knob. “You’re not going to like what you see out here.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. Even as the words escaped my mouth, I could feel my own doubt. I inhaled and exhaled deeply, preparing myself for whatever atrocity lay outside. Eli turned the handle and pushed.

  Eli was right.

  The door opened to a pool of blood. As Eli opened the door further, that pool of blood expanded to a human body. A teenage girl. A redhead, like me. Her eyes and mouth were both open. Even more distinguished was the bullet hole in her head, a trail of red matching her hair.

  I looked to my left and right, discovering an open empty hallway in both directions. I noticed a chair that had been pushed to the lockers beside her. And above those lockers was a small, lofty window that had been cracked open. That very same window pane had a distinguished bullet hole and was splattered in blood.

  She had tried to escape.

  “It’s better if you don’t look,” said Eli. He didn’t even wait for me to respond, instead directing me promptly down the hall with a guiding hand. I didn’t even try to resist.

  Our shoes clapped noisily, echoing through the empty halls. Halls that somehow seemed all the more empty with a fresh teenage corpse behind us.

  I needed something—anything—to get my mind off the presence of death.

  “How do you and Zoey know each other anyway?” I said. I had to practically vomit out such friendly conversational banter. “I’ve known Zoey forever, and I never knew you two were friends.”

  “It’s…complicated,” said Eli.

  I eyed Eli suspiciously. From my experience, I knew that there were two kinds of complicated. There were the stories that take forever to share, where you don’t even know all of the details, and it’s just a pain in the ass to tell. And then there’s the complicated that has some sort of romantic angle involved. The way Eli was now flushing and awkwardly avoiding eye contact with me, I was inclined to believe the latter.

  “What do you mean ‘complicated?’ You two didn’t date, did you?”

  “We aren’t…dating. It’s…complicated.”

  Aren’t. As in present tense. Oh shit.

  “Okay, you’re going to tell me everything,” I said. “Ready, set, go.”

  “Why are you interrogating me?”

  “Because Zoey’s my best friend, and I have a right to know her dating life. Now fess up. What are you hiding?”

  Eli sighed in exasperation. “Saturday. That’s when it started. Meaning that we had one good weekend, and then spent twice as many days in a quarantine zone. Not the most romantic setting. And it was just a fling to begin with.”

  “What do you mean ‘just a fling’?” I countered defensively.

  “I mean I know that she’s had a thing for your brother for as long as she’s had eyeballs.”

  This comment shut me up quick.

  “It really doesn’t bother me,” said Eli as we reached the door to the hallway. “It started off as a fling, and that’s all it’s ever going to be. You’re just going to have to trust me when I say that it was a very mutual agreement.”

  Though I couldn’t say that I knew Eli well, I knew that he wasn’t the type to take advantage of girls. Casey had set me up on a blind date with him after all. I knew he ruled out all the douche bags. And even if he missed one, I doubt anyone douche bag had the balls to cross Casey when he was in defensive, big brother fuck-with-my-sister-and-I’ll-fuck-you-inside-out mode.

  But Zoey and Eli? Who saw that one coming?

  “There are going to be more bodies up ahead,” said Eli. “Just so you know.”

  His eyes met mine, and I forced a hefty dose of fake confidence and
nodded. “Okay.”

  I already had an idea of what was to come. This hallway was about to merge with the entrance. Eli was probably referring to more than just the dead security guards. All too clearly, I remembered the other gunshots during my flashes of consciousness. We neared the entryway hall. I could already see the traces of blood. Several lifeless limbs outstretched from beyond the corner. I immediately lowered my head, shielding my peripheral vision with one hand. Eli placed a comforting hand around my shoulder as he positioned himself between me and the massacre. However, as we rounded the corner in the opposite direction, turning from the bloodbath, I inadvertently stole a glance.

  Bad idea.

  Bodies were heaped on top of each other in a mountain of flesh, practically barricading the glass doors. Open eyes. Open mouths. Dead faces staring into oblivion. Blood was splattered everywhere like some Rorschach nightmare. I hastily looked away, but the scars were already cut into my retinas.

  Eli and I continued down the opposite hallway silently. What do you say after a horrific scene like that? Part of me wanted to ask if anyone I knew was dead. The other part couldn’t stomach an answer.

  I could hear teenage voices further down the hall. The gymnasium and the cafeteria were the two biggest rooms in the building, and from the sound of it, the majority of our quarantined school body seemed to have congregated there. It made sense. I’m sure everyone wanted to stay as far away from the massacre as possible.

  Up ahead, I spotted the nurse’s office. Both the main window and the smaller door window were streaked in blood. I didn’t even want to ask what happened in there, and Eli didn’t seem eager to tell. He avoided looking at it altogether.

  Something humanlike smacked against the nurse’s window, snarling.

  I screamed and jumped away. A distorted middle-aged male face pressed against the glass, smearing blood that appeared all too fresh. His teeth gnashed, animal-like, as if trying to bite through the glass. Most disturbing of all were his eyes—bloodshot with faded milky irises.

  It was Mr. Garrison.

  “It’s okay,” said Eli. He grabbed my hand. “He’s locked in there. He can’t get out.”

  “What the fuck?” I asked, which I suppose isn’t really a question, or if it is, it’s a really ambiguous one.

  Despite asking, I had already come to my own scary conclusions. Zoey had made me watch one too many Romero films not to.

  “The nurse said he was dead,” said Eli. “No pulse. Nothing. And then he killed her.”

  Another face—this one female—smacked against the glass, snarling and screaming. There was nothing feminine about her violent bloodthirsty thrashing.

  “She stayed dead for about as long as he did.”

  20

  Leader of the Coven

  As if Demon-slaying wasn’t enough. Now the school stoner had to go and start a zombie apocalypse.

  So what kind of Demon did that make Bill? Or Belphegor or whoever the hell he was? And then there was that thing he said that made my insides squirm. Mr. Garrison wasn’t the first and that he wouldn’t be the last. He bit someone else? Did that mean there was another zombie roaming around school? It seemed unlikely that another one of these things could have gone unnoticed for four days straight, but I wasn’t about to let my guard down.

  I pulled my gaze away as the two undead creatures slid their snarling faces across the bloody glass.

  “They’re the only two like that,” said Eli.

  Ha. As far as he knew.

  Gently grabbing my shoulders, he directed me away from the nurse’s office, and we proceeded down the hall.

  “A lot of us think the only reason we’re still quarantined is because no one knows where Bill is. They set up all these security cameras for a reason. But once they see that this virus isn’t spreading—that we’ve contained it—they have to let us go. I mean, they have to!”

  Bullshit. Surely those security cameras saw Bill turn into fucking Skeletor right before he me hari-kari his ass.

  “How can police get away with shooting kids like this?” I said.

  “It’s not just police. There’re a bunch of government-types in black suits too. Like…I dunno…CIA or something.”

  Who the hell were these government whack-jobs? These bastards knew a quarantine was happening. How? Did they know about the Demons?

  There were teenage voices up ahead. It was hardly the sound one would expect from an occupied high school gymnasium. The voices were hushed. The conversations solemn. The sound was funeralesque in the most literal sense possible.

  We entered the gym which was practically barren. Some students were by themselves, staring blankly into space because that was clearly better than staring into reality. Others were clustered together in groups, although even these were relatively sparse in the conversation department. And then there were plenty of others who were sprawled out across blue fitness mats that had been scattered across the gym, attempting to sleep away the nightmare that had become real life. Not exactly the best sleeping accommodations, but it was apparently the best the school had to offer.

  Just the sight of it made me sleepy.

  God, why was I so tired? I shook my head desperately to wake myself up.

  I returned my focus to the gymnasium occupants. Though I recognized a few faces, I hardly knew any of them well. Zoey was my top priority, and I quickly concluded that she was not here. Eli understood my unspoken agenda and proceeded to escort me to the cafeteria.

  The cafeteria was much livelier.

  “I’m warning you, fatass! Stay away from the food!”

  This came from a student that Eli seemed to recognize regretfully—a fellow footballer, still wearing his black and red jersey. Eli dropped his head slightly, rubbing his eyes. “Devon,” he muttered under his breath.

  “I’m hungry,” said another voice which was actually more of a I-just-woke-up-from-hibernation-and-I-want-a-fucking-moose-burger bear roar.

  That voice—husky, furious, intimidating, and yet with a childlike innocence—came from the largest thing in the room: Bubba the janitor. The three-hundred-pound anomaly was barely contained in his blue food-stained jumpsuit. His curly dark hair was even greasier than usual, flat against the beaded sweat of his forehead. His mutton chop sideburns sank against unusually sallow cheeks. His usual plump face was sickly. He seemed to be suffering more than others from the circumstances.

  “Listen to me, you fat fuck,” said Devon. “You’ve been eating more than anyone else. If we’re all stuck in here together, then we’re going to eat the same amount of food. We’re not going to starve to death in here because of you. We’re starting your diet today, fatso.”

  Though Devon’s tact left something to be desired, he had a point. Who knew how long we’d be locked in here? And if worst came to worst, and we were quarantined here for weeks or even months, then we needed the food to last.

  “I’m hungry!” said Bubba, more hostile than ever. Lurching forward, his thick legs carried him directly to where Devon stood, blocking the entry to the kitchen. “Let. Me. THROUGH.”

  Several other solid teenage boys stepped to Devon’s aid. The rest of the football team, I assumed. Joining Devon’s ranks, they formed a formidable barrier.

  “Over my dead body,” said Devon.

  For several long seconds, Bubba and Devon stared each other down. Finally, Bubba relented. With a snort, the humongous janitor shuffled off. At this point, the confrontation had garnered a sizeable audience. Whispers ushered throughout the crowd.

  “Monica?”

  I knew that voice anywhere. Eli and I both whipped around to find Zoey standing directly behind us. Her blue-streaked hair hung halfway over her stunned face. After four days without a change of clothes, the runaway thrift store style was looking more tattered than ever. Her hands hung limp at her side. But only for a moment.

&n
bsp; “I told you to keep her out of her!” she hissed—both discreet and furious—pointing an accusing finger at Eli.

  Eli’s mouth floundered open.

  “Come with me,” said Zoey. She snatched me by the arm before I could even will myself to comply. As frantic as she looked, she kept her voice down, making it clear that she wanted to go unnoticed. Eli started to follow, but Zoey pointed her finger at him with so much hostility, it might as well have been the barrel of a gun. “You! Stay!”

  Eli owned that hurt puppy dog look, and he stayed just as well. Zoey hurried through the crowds and out of the cafeteria while I whipped from behind. I felt like a water skier attached to a speed boat pimped out with nitro boosters. If I escaped this without my arm getting yanked out of its socket, I would consider this a success.

  “Ow!” I said “Where are we going?!”

  “Somewhere private.”

  For a second, I was worried that she might be dragging me past the dead bodies at the entrance. Much to my relief, our speedy jaunt through the hallway ended at the girls’ bathroom. However, my relief quickly transformed to embarrassment as Zoey dragged me into a bathroom stall with her, hastily sliding the lock shut. I nearly fell onto the toilet seat in the process.

  “You know, the bathroom is empty,” I said. I struggled to move so the toilet wasn’t poking at my calves, and together we repositioned ourselves. “Would you mind telling me why we’re sharing a stall?”

  “I don’t like those cameras watching me,” said Zoey. She glanced at the upper edge of the stall.

  “They have cameras in the bathroom? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “What exactly about this whole situation strikes you as legal?”

  Hmm. Good point.

  “Now my turn,” said Zoey. “Would you mind telling me why the hell Amon was after you?”

  Oh great. That didn’t take long. I hastily racked my brain for a decent lie, but the words weren’t processing. In that split second of deliberation, I decided to take the offensive.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a witch?”