The New Kid (29 page)

“They were given celestial inspiration! Therefore they were no mere mortals, but dwelled in between the earth and . . . our places. The prophecy
will
be fulfilled, there is no question to be raised. It is, as they say today, a done deal.”

Rage struggled against his bonds. But the veins only tightened on him. He shouted at the Dark Lord: “Immortals can defy the prophecy. YOU can defy the prophecy.”

“But why would I?”

“Because even you, in all your supposed ancient wisdom, have no concept of what will be unleashed.”

“Oh, I have every concept. I have
thirsted
for this since my earliest days. And you will be silent!” shouted the Dark Lord.

Clenching his fist/claw he conjured a sphere of shimmering white light and slammed it into the side of Rage’s head. Rage’s scalp bled and he cried out in pain. He moaned and then his breath went still. The Dark Lord conjured another sphere of pain but when he leaned close and listened to Rage’s feeble breathing he tossed the sphere against the wall where it exploded into a thousand fragments. The Dark Lord then left the chamber.

Rage opened his eyes. He’d always been good at playing possum. When you’re under the thumb of the most terrifying monster the world has ever known you learn ways to survive. He’d been forced to kill and steal and lie and cheat, to bend the minds of teens to his will and infect them with evil. At times he’d found himself enjoying the thrills that came along with corrupt and sinful behavior but other times the deeds he carried out saddled him with agonizing guilt that paralyzed him with migraines for days. He was a creature conflicted, driven by necessity into the dark corners of his mind but sometimes able to magically connect with his core, which he told himself was good. He’d been coerced into spreading evil each and
every place the Dark Lord had led them and now he knew he’d reached the end of the line. He would welcome death, but only after he’d done one last deed, accomplished one final goal worthy of praise. Not praise from the Lord of Darkness but from what few good forces still remained in the universe.

Rage looked at the ancient book on the pedestal. He was all too familiar with it. He knew the first part that young Will had read told only half the story. The other half was here, and within it lay humankind’s destiny. It had only to be played out—unless Rage could find a way to stop it.

C
onfident that the mini-bot’s diversion had bought him at least a little time, Will proceeded farther up the side of the mountain, passing the skeleton of a rusted-out truck and an old wooden shack leaning against the wind. He reached a meadow thick with hickory and wildflowers and surveyed the land ahead of him. After blowing up the mine entrance he now had two choices. He could either enter through the smoldering cone of the volcano or he could spelunk down through an adjacent fissure, the choice he’d opted for ahead of time, deducing that at hundreds of degrees the temperatures inside the cone itself were downright inhospitable. He’d done his research and downloaded and scoured the topographical and geological maps of the mountain and knew there were vertical cave entrances near the bluff where he was now climbing. Using a portable density reader he was able to locate an area where openings were likely to occur near a small verdant gorge about three-quarters of the way up the mountain.

He tapped a code on the back of his neck and in two seconds his trusty power rod came sailing down out of the sky and landed in the palm of his hand. He activated the temperature function and sent a
wide spray across the gorge as though he was shining a flashlight with a broad beam. The leaves on trees froze, as well as a few dozen hapless insects, and he immediately found what he was looking for. Steam. The hot air rising from a vertical cave opening combined with the freezing temperature from the power rod and created a plume of steam. Here was his opening. He tossed the power rod skyward to its nesting place once again, not wanting the Dark Lord to get his hands on it. He made a silent vow he would only call upon the power rod as a last resort.

Using the boltdriver he was able to blast a series of titanium pitons into the rock surrounding the fissure. To them he attached a top-quality climbing rope capable of handling high-impact force. He knew the Dark Lord’s minions would be sifting through the rubble at the main tunnel entrance and concluding that the explosion was merely a diversion. So time was ticking down. But as always, Will was super-prepared. In under a minute he had the pitons in place and the rope secured and had slipped into the climbing harness. Hoisting his weapons backpack onto his shoulders he dropped down into the dark cave like an expert spelunker. He was descending into the very heart of doom but he felt confident. Feeling anything else would have slowed his progress and he couldn’t let Natalie down again. He had to save her. If it was the last thing he ever did, he knew he had to save her. The Dark Lord wouldn’t care about her if it wasn’t for him and he would not allow his careless love to cause her any more pain.

Thirty feet into his descent he switched on his halogen light and scoped out his position. He was moving down a good-sized cave that was growing wider the deeper he dropped down so he increased his speed. He had to hurry. If he had any hope of reaching Natalie and rescuing his father once and for all he needed to have the element of surprise. So he zoomed faster down into the darkness. He closed his eyes and felt his way for fifty yards but then got a prickly feeling and forced himself to a sudden jerking
stop, his gloves growing so hot from the friction that he thought they might burst into flames.

Flashing his light below he saw that he’d just barely averted being impaled by a series of crystal-like stalagmites jutting up out of the darkness. He once again thanked his intuition for literally saving his ass and pushed the images of how he might have been skewered out of his mind. He impelled off the side of the funnel cave and found purchase on a ledge, where he fired a couple of pitons into the rock sides and tied himself off, bringing the rope from above down to his current position. His heart rate increased as he looked around for another avenue and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that he could now go horizontal; there was a cave opening only a few yards below him. He swung down and crawled into it. It was a tight fit, and crawling along on all fours he suddenly knew what it felt like to be a mole.

He could feel himself getting closer to the core of the mountain as the temperature increased rapidly. He began to sweat, not only because it was so incredibly hot but because he couldn’t help thinking about what would happen if he was too late. What if the Dark Spirit had already infected Natalie, or worse, had decided she was expendable and killed her? Will redoubled his efforts crawling through the narrow tunnel until it broadened out and he was able to stand upright. On two feet now he moved as swiftly as he could through the cave, taking care to make as little sound as humanly possible.

 

When the Dark Lord came for him, Rage appeared totally spent, his body slack, his skin even more pallid and mealy than usual. But inside he was coiled and ready to strike the millisecond he was freed from his bonds.

“It’s show time, as they love to say,” rumbled the Lord of Darkness.

With a wave of his clawed hand the blood vessel vines that had been enveloping Rage shrank away like so many tiny scolded snakes,
retreating into a disgusting placenta-like heap on the floor. And just like that Rage was free. He followed six paces behind the Dark Lord as was required by demon law as they exited one cavern and moved through a tunnel into a smaller one. Rage’s hand trembled as he reached into his snakeskin pants for the small bone shiv he’d been hiding there for days. The Dark Lord immediately sensed Rage’s nervousness, whirled, and with astonishing speed moved behind him and placed a tight hand on his shoulder. Rage began to babble to cover his fear.

“Your Lord, I was just about to say that I’m—”

“Nervous?” said the Dark Lord as he now walked beside Rage, his clawed nails digging into Rage’s shoulder.

“Y-yes,” stammered Rage. He tried to force the pictures out of his mind, the images of what he was planning on doing because he knew the Black Spirit could crawl into his thoughts at any time. So he made his move, pulling the shiv out and swinging it as hard and fast as he could. He had meant to blind the Master Demon by stabbing him through his eye sockets to lance his brain. But the Dark Lord was way ahead of him and not only twisted the shiv out of Rage’s hand but used the weapon against him, plunging it into his left arm. Rage cried out in pain. The Dark Lord laughed.

“I often know what you’re thinking even before the thoughts begin to form in your brain, Rage,” said the Dark Lord.

As they were adjacent to a deep soal of stagnant water the Dark Lord took advantage of the opportunity and with a flick of his fingers raised a dozen leeches out of the scum pond and into the air. They hovered and Rage’s skin crawled as he foresaw what was coming. The slimy black creatures metamorphosed into shark leeches with rows of tiny jagged saw-like teeth.

“Please, no. . . .”

“I’m afraid the time for clemency is long gone,” said the Dark Lord.

And then with the slightest of gestures he commanded the shark leeches to sail through the air and slap against the side of Rage’s head. He smiled as the muculent creatures crawled rapidly into Rage’s ears.

“This will be the mother of all migraines I should think,” chuckled the Dark Lord. “Now come, we have much to do.”

Rage had no choice but to follow and obey, so great was the pain that was building in his head as the shark leeches snaked in through his outer ear canal, chewed their way past his ear drums, and slithered down into his Eustachian tubes.

 

As the tunnel Will was trekking through widened into a broad expansive cave he stopped and realized his breathing was raspy and uneven. He checked his pulse. It was high. Cursing his stupidity he took out a small bag of Gatorade and sucked it down in three long gulps. It would be a huge waste of his young life if he were to pass out from dehydration and die at the hands of the Lord of Darkness in such an undignified manner. No, if he was going to go out, if this was his time, then he would go down swinging, that was for sure. Hopefully the Gatorade he just sucked down would last him for the duration of his subterranean journey. He tossed the bag down on the floor of the cave—littering was the least of his worries at the moment—then shook his head. He was hearing faint music and he was unsure if it was for real or just his imagination.

He moved forward and with each step the music grew louder. It was a familiar piece, one of the many thumping pagan-like choruses he’d heard a zillion times before. He saw a light at the end of the tunnel he was traversing and knew he had no recourse but to head straight for it. But first he stopped and knelt down and waited. He couldn’t afford to be anything but doubly careful; you never knew when they would spring a trap on you. When no attack was forthcoming Will moved onward. Reaching the opening, he stood and stared at a sight he would remember forever.

Down below in a monstrously huge cavern were hundreds of the infected. And not just demonteens, but other people he recognized from Harrisburg, as well as the five other towns where he’d lived while pursuing the Dark Lord. They all wore black leather and scarlet clothing and their eyes were a stomach-turning gooey black. Rex Farmer from Rex’s Game World was there, his shaved head sporting an Iron Cross tattoo. He was smiling and moving to the music alongside a wheelchair-bound woman dressed like a biker with a “Hell on Wheels” tattoo on her flabby arm. No wonder Rex’s business was booming. He’d sold out. Too bad he wasn’t going to live to enjoy the spoils. Mrs. Norrington was there, too, and though her manner of dress was comparatively modest, she wore a demented expression that told Will the old woman had plenty of sick thoughts rattling around in her contaminated brain. And she’d evidently found and infected poor little Scoopy because the tiny dog was drooling as it chewed the head off a dead rat and its eyes were as black as lumps of coal.

His mother and Gerald’s card-playing neighbors the Halvorsons were there, Fred wearing a studded dog collar and Belinda holding the leash. Correl Shames was there, looking mean and cocky. Faculty from Harrisburg High gyrated alongside pupils and Will recognized teachers and students who’d come from far away, schools he’d attended in California, Texas, North Carolina, and Vermont. This was some kind of gathering, a huge celebration. There was something big going on and Will had a feeling he was going to figure in the proceedings in a major way.

As his gaze swept across the vast cavern he saw dozens more demons dancing and sitting in tunnel entrances; the entire place was honeycombed with them and they led in almost every possible direction.
The entire mountain must be filled with tunnels
, thought Will,
and not just from the silver mine
. It looked as though some creatures had been hard at work for a very long time digging the complex series of interlocking burrows and catacombs.

The music was coming from a huge, state-of-the-art stereo system, the tunes supplied by a crazed-looking DJ who bobbed his head wildly, the plethora of piercings though his lips, ears, eyebrows, nose, and even his forehead jangling like wind chimes.

Will froze as, all at once, the demons in the cavern cast their collective gaze upon him. But instead of anger or malice their expressions spoke of adoration, even a kind of reverence. It was as if they felt great affection for him. He wondered how they would feel as he was killing them one by one.

Then Will saw Rudy. He was dancing to the diabolical beat, body-rubbing with Sharon Mitchell, their eyes trancelike, high on some kind of drug or perhaps just the adrenaline they were feeling, some twisted rush of pleasure from being ghastly. Duncan and Todd and Jason were there, too, and Mookie in his wheelchair. Will was about to call out to Rudy when he saw Coach Kellog emerge from a tunnel, smiling and giving him a thumbs-up gesture like he’d just scored a freakin’ touchdown or something.