J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (10 page)

Katherine looked his way as she said, “This is scaring the shit out of me. We’d better run for that church.”

Katherine had ditched her spike-heeled shoes in the hospital and was in her stocking feet, so the best they could manage was a jog. Paul led the way and the creatures—demons—cried out now in a chorus of excited screeches and howls. The sound they made had an oddly human timbre to it, disturbing and frightening at the same time. Paul could hear them advancing up the streets on either side, flanking them, moving much faster than he and Katherine could manage.

Up ahead something crawled out of an alley and he and Katherine slowed their pace. It appeared to be no more than a black smear oozing across the ground, a dark blot of nothing that broadcast hatred and loathing to assault his senses. He staggered under the attack, stumbled to his knees and vomited, thought of the stupid heroine in some cheap movie who fell for no reason just as the evil villain was chasing her, and you wanted to kick her for being so clumsy. Katherine too was on her hands and knees vomiting. He struggled to his feet and helped her to hers, felt as if he carried an enormous weight on his back. Supporting each other, they staggered around the black smear, knew they mustn’t let it touch them. They staggered on, and the farther they got from it the less its malevolence affected them.

They’d lost precious moments eluding the black smear, could hear the cries and screams of whatever was chasing them all around them now, and knew the creatures had surrounded them. They could run, but there was no place to run, and it was clear they couldn’t hide.

Something loped out into the street in front of them, a misshapen, distorted form of human being. It scrambled forward on its hands and knees as fast as any dog might move and stopped in the street not twenty feet from them. It stood on its hind legs, lifted its arms high and cried out in triumph from a human mouth warped by rows of needle-like teeth. It had the genitalia of both man and woman, though they were disgustingly swollen, and like the rest of the creature badly distorted.

Paul looked over his shoulder and saw a half-dozen similar creatures had come to a stop in the middle of the street behind them. To both sides more of them yipped and shouted and jumped up and down on the rubble that remained of old houses. Paul moved slowly, reached down and lifted an old board that he could use as a club. It probably wouldn’t do much good, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

Katherine fumbled in the pocket of her coat and said, “I’m going to clear us a path.”

She lifted something out of her pocket, raised her closed fist to her mouth and spit into her palm. Whatever she had cupped in her hand began to glow with a harsh, blue light and spears of radiance escaped between her fingers. She turned toward the pack of creatures behind them, lifted her glowing hand high above her head and waved it like a sword. The intensity of it grew steadily and the creatures cringed and backed away.

She turned toward the lone creature standing in the street in front of them, probably their leader. She charged at it and screamed like a banshee. Paul charged after her, caught up with her and shouted, “Hope you know what you’re doing.”

The creature in front of them suddenly dropped to all fours and charged. But in that instant Katherine threw the glowing thing she held directly at it. When it hit the monster loping toward them it exploded with a thunderclap and enveloped the thing in a ball of incandescent fire, with swirls of electricity discharging at its edges. The concussion kicked Paul in the gut and slammed him to the ground.

Get up
, he told himself.
Get up. Get up. Get up
.

Katherine helped him stagger to his feet and said something about, “ . . . sorry  . . . didn’t have time to protect you  . . .” but his ears were ringing too much to hear it all.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

“A little spell I prepared in advance. I don’t have many left so we’d better move.”

Katherine’s fireworks display had scared off the pack of distorted humans so they staggered on, leaning on each other heavily. When they got to the bottom of the hill he turned left, trying to recall the exact location of the church. His vague memories told him it should be in the middle of this block, but there was no church visible.

“Why are you stopping?” she demanded. “We can’t stop now.”

He pointed at a pile of rubble. “I thought the church was here, but clearly it’s not.”

Katherine slowly turned a complete circle, scanning the horizon. Paul wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but then she stopped and pointed past his shoulder. “Look.”

He turned and saw the crumbling remains of a steeple rising out of the rubble one block further on. “The steeple is symbolic,” she said, “and symbols contain power. That’ll be the last thing to fall.”

The silence that descended earlier continued as they both started running, the only sounds that reached their ears the patter of her bare feet, the clop of his shoes, and their own struggling breaths. Using the steeple as a guide they made it to the end of the block and turned right, but as Paul rounded the corner two strides ahead of Katherine he heard a painfully familiar screech behind them.

He looked over his shoulder as he ran, saw Katherine behind him doing the same, the vampire-demon thing about a hundred feet behind her and loping toward them with an ungainly gait. Katherine stopped looking over her shoulder and shouted at him, “Ruuuuun!”

Paul did exactly the opposite. He slowed a bit to let her pass because, in her stocking feet, she was slower than him even though she was sprinting like a madwoman, obviously ignoring any pain she felt.

The church was still half a block away. Paul kept glancing over his shoulder as they ran, and they were gaining distance on the demon because it just wasn’t made for running. And then it flapped its leathery wings, and within two strides took to the air, rose to a height of about ten feet and swooped down toward them. Paul looked ahead to the church, realized they weren’t going to make it, recalled that he’d been able to have some sort of effect on the monster, so he swerved to the edge of the street and dug his heels in near a pile of rubble, came to a stop, bent down and picked up another club. He turned and stepped into the middle of the street to face the monster.

“What are you doing?” Katherine shouted.

He glanced over his shoulder to find she too had stopped. “We’re not going to make it,” he screamed, and turned back to the demon. He shouted over his shoulder, “Get to the church. I’ll try to stop it.”

It glided down toward him, it’s wingspan a good fifteen feet. If it hit him on the fly, at the speed it was traveling his only hope was to try to hit it with the club just before impact. He watched it glide toward him, watched it coming and tried to gauge the timing of his swing. But when it was about twenty feet away it suddenly flared its wings upward, rose slightly, then settled almost gracefully about ten feet in front of him.

It looked at him carefully, its head moving side-to-side.

Katherine stepped up to stand beside him holding her own club. “Don’t look into its eyes. Remember that.”

He looked at her. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

She didn’t look at him as she answered, “Ya.” But then she did look his way and said, “But it’s wary of us, for some reason.”

The demon took a step toward them. Paul raised his club like a batter in a baseball game waiting for the pitch. Katherine raised hers as the demon took another step. It seemed to grow more confident and took another.

Katherine hissed, “Back slowly toward the church.”

They both took a step backward, and the demon took two forward, and another, and another. Then it raised its head high as if preparing to lunge for them. But it hesitated, froze without moving for several seconds, looking at something behind them. Then slowly, carefully, it dropped its head, scrunched it down low on its shoulders, leaned forward and lowered its snout to the ground. And it started whimpering, piteous sounds like those of a badly beaten dog. Then, cringing fearfully, it turned and literally began crawling away from them on its belly.

Paul glanced over his shoulder to see what had frightened it so, and standing behind them was Walter McGowan. He smiled.

Katherine turned to look and shouted happily, “Father! Thank god!” She started trotting toward him.

Paul hesitated. Earlier he’d thought McGowan had tried to kill him, and while Katherine had nothing to fear, Paul had to be more cautious. He wasn’t going to just run up and wrap his arms around the old fellow, even if he was their salvation from hell. But as Katherine trotted toward him Paul saw the old man’s image
blink
, and for the tiniest fraction of a second it appeared something else stood there. It had been too short of an instant for him to recall the image, but he was certain it wasn’t one of the bat-like vampire things. Then there it was again,
blink
.

Paul acted on impulse. Katherine was halfway to her father when Paul charged like a baseball player trying to steal home plate. He started from a standstill and it took agonizing seconds to build his speed, seconds during which he watched her closing the gap with her father, reaching out to him hopefully. Old man McGowan raised his hands to envelope her in a fatherly embrace, but Paul’s instincts screamed that it would be a deadly embrace.

Paul hit her an instant before she stepped into the circle of the old man’s arms. He hit her like a linebacker and she grunted painfully as he wrapped his arms around her, spun to one side, dropped to the ground and used his momentum to whip her at an angle past her father. She tumbled head over heels off the sidewalk and onto the church steps. Paul skidded and rolled to a stop at McGowan’s feet, hoping desperately the church steps were hallowed ground.

McGowan look down at him kindly and asked, “Now why did you do that, young man?”

Blink
.

Katherine groaned and rolled over. Blood trickled from a cut on her cheek as she growled angrily, “What did you do that for, you fucking idiot?”

Paul looked up at McGowan.
Blink
. “It’s not your father,” he said.

The being wearing McGowan’s image stepped toward him, and Paul, lying on his back on the ground, scrambled away from him in a crab-crawl. McGowan’s image stopped and looked down at Paul. He smiled a very unfriendly smile, his eyes blood-red and goat-slitted. “Since you deny me her,” he said, and his voice was no longer McGowan’s. It rumbled like the earthquake that shook them earlier. He smiled and said, “Then I’ll have you.”

Blink.
The demon wore two images.
Blink.
It looked like the old man, but blurred over that image was something else.
Blink.
Paul tried to focus on that other image as he crawled backward and scrambled to his feet. The demon’s mouth had lengthened into a bird’s beak, and as Paul looked on its hair disappeared and a comb of feathers appeared on its head. Its legs twisted and warped and began to writhe, and in McGowan’s place there now stood a chimera-like monster with the head of a rooster, the body of a man, and legs made of writhing serpents. A large squirming phallus hung between its legs with four testicles hanging beneath it, each the size of a grapefruit. The legs slithered and squirmed, bringing the monster closer. “Interesting!” it said, looking Paul over carefully. “I wonder who’s brought me such a delightful present.”

Its goat-slitted eyes fascinated Paul and he studied them carefully, mesmerized by the power he sensed in them. He could see dominance and supremacy there, and he felt an overwhelming need to embrace this monster, even as he realized such need was wholly unnatural, even as he wanted to run away screaming hysterically. But still he couldn’t lift his feet to run, couldn’t turn, couldn’t move.

“Don’t listen to it, Paul,” Katherine shouted. “That demon’s at least Secundus caste. Don’t listen to it. Don’t make any deals. Don’t agree to anything no matter how trivial it seems. And above all, don’t look into its eyes.”

But her warning had come too late. Paul could see deep into its eyes to the core of its power, a swirling maelstrom of hatred and loathing. It moved closer, and if the beak of its rooster head were capable of a smile, somehow it smiled and said, “Your plaything can’t remain on hallowed ground forever. And I do have forever.” The demon leaned toward him, sniffed at him like a hound. Its eyes narrowed uncertainly, it frowned and said, “And why do you stink of Dragon, mortal?”

This close Paul could see millennia in its chicken-headed, goat-slitted eyes, thousands of years of torment, untold numbers of souls heaped upon the fires of its hunger. It had always existed to torment and devour unwary souls. It had no beginning and it would have no end. Paul could see all that in those eyes, and he could see something else buried deep, deep inside them, a center of existence, a core of being, a name.

Paul said, “I know nothing of dragons, Abraxas.”

The demon screamed and backed away, its serpent legs writhing frantically, the phallus between its legs swelling to unbelievable proportions, then shrinking and disappearing altogether. It turned its eyes away from him shattering the enthrallment, but Paul couldn’t put the images and torment he’d seen out of his mind. He was too disoriented to move as he tried to comprehend the agony he’d witnessed.

Something hit him hard, wrapped arms around his shoulders and lunged, pushing him backward. He landed painfully on his back on the steps of the church with Katherine on top of him. Still disoriented and hurting everywhere he rolled over, rolled on top of her.