by Michael Todd
Stephanie laughed. “Okay, I’ll check on you later.”
Timothy pursed his lips. “Kisses!”
He rolled over to the main computer to take notes on some system updates that he had been working on. Everything was going perfectly. The system was working just as promised, and the cops couldn’t be happier. On top of that, he had probably saved hundreds of lives by creating his software. It was a win-win all around…except for the demons.
He wrote down the last of his notes and closed his book. He looked around the empty room, then leaned back and put his arms behind his head. “It’s good to be the boss. Well, kind of the boss.” He thought about that for a second. “And kind-of bosses deserve iced coffee.”
Timothy grabbed his wallet and headed for the door. He was internally debating the pros and cons of mocha versus vanilla when one of the alarms went off. This happened quite often, and it was effortless to take care of. Nothing to be worried about. He leaned over his desk and read the information on the screen, and his eyes grew wide. His wallet dropped from his hand and hit the desk, all thoughts of a frozen mocha gone.
“Holy shit,” he whispered to no one, then grabbed the phone and fumbled with the buttons on the intercom until he finally got it. He knew he’d done it right because the speakers throughout the entire underground base started screeching loudly. He held the receiver to his mouth and tried to calm his nerves. “Calvin, we have a code red. Shit, we have a code red and a half. Get the fuck down here.”
Calvin was close. Timothy heard a door open and heavy footsteps pound as the other man ran down the hall toward his area. More steps followed as somebody else, who turned out to be Korbin, ran into the room. Calvin was breathing heavily, and he put his hand on the doorframe for support. Timothy looked at him with concern. “Did I interrupt something?”
Calvin waved the comment away. “I’m not quite in the best shape right now. What you got?”
Timothy jerked his hand toward the screen. “Oh, nothing. Just that we have a new portal—a really fucking big one. It’s opening a half a mile from here.”
Korbin narrowed his eyes and peered over Timothy’s shoulder, studying the screen. Calvin immediately called the general.
When the general answered, it sounded like he was chewing something. “General Brushwood.”
Calvin cleared his throat. “General, we have a code red. A new portal opening just a half a mile away from us. From what Timothy says it’s a motherfucking huge one.”
The general coughed and fumbled with something in front of him, making a loud noise over the phone. “Okay, got it. I’ll call Nellis for support, then get the plane scrambled and my people on this one. I would appreciate your backup.”
“Of course. We’ll see you there…or here. Whatever.”
Calvin shut the phone and sent Katie a text.
Huge incursion on the radar just a half a mile from us, but sit tight. We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t want to play into the demons’ hands if they’re trying to get you away from New York.
Katie was sitting comfortably on her couch watching Batman for the three hundredth time when her phone started to buzz. She pulled her phone out and leisurely read through the text, gradually sitting up straighter. When she finished reading her body was ramrod straight. Angie sat up with her, waiting for her cue.
Katie’s stare shifted around the room for a moment as she thought. Her eyes landed on Angie. “I want you to get my plane ready. And by ready, I mean loaded with any weapons I can’t fit on my body and all the extra ammunition I have.”
Angie agreed and ran from the living room. Katie had planned to go out after she was done watching Batman, and was already dressed in her battle gear, with her guns strapped to her hips and knives stashed all over. She figured Angie would get the rest of it for her. She took a big gulp of her drink and set it down on the coffee table, stopping for a moment to grab a coaster and put it underneath.
Pandora scoffed. Boy, have you changed. There’s a major incursion, and you take the time to put a fucking coaster underneath your drink.
Katie shrugged her shoulders as she walked toward the window. Hey, when the incursion’s done, we still have to come here. I don’t want to come back to rings on my coffee table.
Snobby bitch, Pandora grumbled.
Katie ignored her and walked to the window, and with no hesitation, she opened it and jumped out. Her wings spread wide, and she soared into the sky and headed to the airport. Flying there would be faster than catching a cab. The last thing she needed was to be stuck in traffic.
Angie stood at the window and watched as Katie flew toward the airport. She had the phone pressed to her ear and was waiting for the coordinator to get back on the line. When he did, she snapped, “FYI, you guys might want to hurry.”
She could hear him typing, and the guy let out a yawn. “Traffic sucks right now, so we have at least an hour. Unless she gets police support?”
Angie scoffed. “Traffic’s not a problem when you have wings.”
The guy choked and coughed before yelling, “We need this done in fifteen minutes if not faster! Katie will be here any second. I don’t have time to mess with you fools. Move your feet!”
He came back to the phone and softened his tone. “We’ll be ready.”
Angie chuckled and hung up. There was a knock at the door, and when she opened it, she saw the doorman standing there. Angie smiled at him. “I don’t need you to run anything over there today. All the weapons she needs will be on her plane. Besides, unless you have wings hidden under that uniform, there’s no way you’ll make it there before her.”
The doorman smirked and gave her a slight bow turning back down the hallway. Angie shut the door and leaned against it, thinking about how strange her life had gotten since the fateful day Katie saved her. She had to admit, a pair of wings just might’ve helped her in that situation. Being part angel might have given her enough protection from her douchebag ex-boyfriend that she could have gotten out of there on her own.
Angie shrugged. “Then I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have this awesome-sauce job.”
“Move it! Move it!” The staff at the airport was hustling like they never had before.
Stacks upon stacks of ammunition were loaded onto the plane one by one and strapped down to ensure that they didn’t go flying off. Piles of weapons were already tied down inside, as well as the new technology that Joshua had sent over earlier that month. Katie had managed to get the airport to agree to give her a secured area where she could store all of her equipment and not have to transport it back and forth every time she wanted to take the plane.
One of the staff members stopped for a moment and leaned against a box of ammunition. She dug out a rag and wiped her forehead. “Jesus, you would think she was already here and had been waiting for hours. It’s not like planes load themselves. It takes time.”
One of the other staff members grabbed a crate of ammo. “Sure, sure. Except I think you’re forgetting we’re dealing with Katie from Katie’s Killers. You know, the one with angel wings and a demon inside? I don’t really think she gives a damn if it takes time. All she’s thinking about is saving whoever’s in trouble. You can’t blame her for that.”
The girl nodded. “I guess you’re right. And I’m the last person who wants to be caught slacking in front of Katie. I like my head where it is.”
The guy chuckled. “The feeling is mutual, my friend.”
They loaded the last three boxes of ammunition onto the plane and began to start bringing up the weapons. The girl turned to grab a gun and saw something through the bay doors. She cursed. “It’s her!”
Everyone stopped and stared as Katie flew in. She hovered in the air for a moment and slowly and carefully landed on the pavement. It was still crazy to watch as her massive wings folded behind her and then disappeared. Katie shook her head and rolled her shoulders, which were sore from having flown so much that day.
She took a deep breath and s
tarted walking toward the bay, then noticed everyone staring at her. She stared right back at them, then clapped her hands. “Let’s go, people! This bird needs to get in the air!”
With that, everyone jumped to it. They all started moving even faster than they had been before. The stairs were down, so Katie walked right up and into the cabin. The pilot was strapped and ready. The flight attendant appeared from nowhere with a box of donuts and set them next to Katie.
Katie glanced at the donuts and then at the flight attendant. “She didn’t ask for them, so it doesn’t go against the pact we made.”
The flight attendant smiled as she walked away, even though she didn’t know what Katie was talking about.
Snack in a fucking minute if they don’t get this plane off the ground, Pandora barked.
The portal ripped across the horizon like a foul, warped bolt of lightning. It could be likened to what flesh tearing and bones cracking might sound like to the humans. Heat bellowed out of the open portal, and demons began to emerge one by one. They reached their clawed feet into the world like hideous newborns, then pulled themselves over the edge of the portal to drop snarling onto the ground.
They emerged from the portal by the hundreds, tripping over one other and kicking and biting and clawing at each other as they flooded onto the field. They had been instructed where to go, but they weren’t the brightest crayons in the box. It took them a minute to find the building they were supposed to be surrounding.
When they did, they took off in a hurry, pushing each other out of the way and scrambling for the fence that surrounded the building. They clawed over the fence, some of them getting caught up in the concertina on the top. The more intellectually challenged demons bit and slashed their own legs off to free themselves from the wire. Others took the smarter route, using their claws to rip great holes in the fence line and pour through.
In the distance, a group of humans stood watching them, screaming at the horror of it all.
Normally this would have grabbed the demons’ attention since they were always looking for a good excuse for a snack, but not this time. They were on a mission, and they knew that their leader was not going to accept any digressions, even if it were for a tasty arm or foot. There would be plenty of carnage to satisfy them later. They just had to reach their destination and ready themselves for the battle. None of them really had any idea what was coming.
Through the portal were two of the great horrors of hell. Just inside the gate stood Moloch and Baal. They sat around a large table, laughing as the demons fell through the gate and fumbled around below. The little guys were incredibly stupid, but they would do the job that needed to be done.
Moloch grabbed one of the leftover turtles from the night before and popped it into his mouth. “I have to admit, they may be stupid, but they’re fun to watch. I just don’t know if they’re going to be the best tool for this job. We have to use so many of them, and in the end, there’s not even an assurance that it will get done. We’ve seen it over and over. These little idiot demons get taken down in two seconds by the mercs.”
Baal wiped turtle fluids from his chin, then cracked a splinter of shell from one of the dead turtles and picked his teeth with it. “I know. Remember, we’re only using the lesser demons to test the defenses. We don’t actually expect them to do anything. Once we know what their defenses are, we’ll up the efforts.”
Moloch cracked his knuckles and grinned evilly. “That’s right. That’s when we bring out the big guns. I can’t wait to see the look on that meatsack’s face when our heavy artillery comes plowing through. I’m tired of these mercs thinking they can get one over on us using just a little bit of technology. All it took was two idiots willing to sell their souls for me to get the location of the weapons.”
They both laughed loudly as they watched one of the demons do a somersault into the next. “Did you see that motherfucking idiot? He just pulled a Mary Lou Retton! Out there on the field doing a double somersault backflip.” Baal shook his head, amazed.
Moloch bellowed and grabbed a piece of burning red rock from the floor and used his claw to scratch into it. He held the rock high in the air and waved it at the gate. He had scratched a burning score, nine-point-five, into the stone. “That’s right little demons! Go for gold.”
10
The demons clawed their way across the sandy ground, sniffing out humans. There weren’t a lot of tall buildings on the base, so it wasn’t hard to find the weaponry building. They just looked for the most populated area and scrambled that way.
Unbeknownst to them, the demons had set an alarm off when they breached the fence.
Joshua hit the button, acknowledging he’d heard the thing. He grabbed several weapons from the arms cabinet behind his desk and tossed one to a woman standing nearby. She nodded in understanding. It was time to fight, or at least get the others to safety. With the incursion appearing so close to the base, it was no surprise that they were headed straight for them.
Joshua and the others were hell-bent on protecting the base, remembering full well what kind of damage the demons had done when they’d attacked their last installation. Outside, the underground cannons began thundering at the guard station. The guards shouldered their weapons and began to fire at the oncoming demons. They were ripping the fences apart, but that wasn’t too surprising.
One of the guards took careful aim, exhaled, and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet straight into a crowd of demons. A horned head exploded into ash. The man looked back at the scared young guard behind him. The first guard blew a plume of smoke from his gun barrel. “Get it the fuck together and take out as many of these cocksuckers as you can. We’re the first line of defense.”
Through the gate to hell, Moloch and Baal sat watching. They were pretty impressed by the way the humans were protecting their base.
Moloch nodded and crunched down on another snack, something that wiggled and squealed as he gnashed his teeth through it. “Look at those contraptions they’ve made. I have to say, they may have learned from the last incursion.”
Baal laughed. “I do believe they have. I would have to say their defenses are excellent. Got pop-up guns ready and loaded. They have traps, which I haven’t seen used on a demon before, but look! That pit full of sharpened stakes keeps catching the little idiots. And they’re setting mines off right and left.”
The two demons watched as a group of lesser demons ran across the sandy ground. One moment they were running full-speed, the next they had been blown sky-high in ragged pieces. Baal gestured at the clearing smoke. “See? Mine.”
Another group of demons ran from the explosion, collapsing through a false floor and into a pit of sharpened stakes. Some burst into ash, but others were only wounded. They snarled in pain and growled when one of the security guards walked up to the trap. He leveled his gun at them with a smirk. “Not as easy as you thought, huh?”
The red eyes of the demons blazed, and their sharp teeth dripped with saliva. They began pulling themselves from the stakes and climbing out of the pit. The guard grimaced and sent a spray of bullets into the trap, turning all of them to ash. Then he reset the trap, and the false floor slid back into place. He chuckled, knowing full well that the next demons wouldn’t be smart enough to avoid it.
Joshua shifted his eyes to the girl he had handed the weapon to. “Get the women to the underground bunkers. You know the routine. The hatch’s right over there, inside the vault.”
She acknowledged that nervously and ran off, collecting anyone who wasn’t staying to fight. They headed into the vault, and she led them down through the hatch and locked it after them.
Joshua slammed his hand on an emergency button on his desk and then listened. Gears in the building began to turn, and there was the sound of metal sliding as steel blast guards began to cover the production building. They would make sure that the building was secure during any kind of fight.
Joshua checked his weapon and stared angrily at the front door. He
knew he had to stay and protect the building, no matter what. He wanted to fight, but Katie and the others wouldn’t have it. He was the only one who knew how to fabricate the weapons, and that made him the most valuable person on the entire base.
Calvin bolted through the underground tunnels toward the training room where the weapons were stashed. He grabbed his boots out of the locker and hopped on one foot at a time as he put them on. Stephanie and Korbin came around the corner and froze, watching him.
Calvin stopped hopping and gestured to the racks of guns along the wall. “All of these weapons are made for the special bullets that we manufacture. They work just like any other weapon, but they are especially lethal when you are fighting demons” Calvin strapped two guns into his holsters and slid two long swords into the sheaths he’d strapped to his back.
Korbin squeezed Stephanie’s hand and looked at her lovingly. “Don’t wait for us, but we will be there.”
Calvin stopped his weapons check and shook Korbin’s hand. “It’s good to have you back.”
Korbin smirked. “It might sound strange—hell, it sounds strange to me!—but it feels good to be back, even if I’m not really sure what that means.”
Calvin patted Korbin on the back and ran for the elevator. Korbin and Stephanie admired the weapons for a moment, then Stephanie looked at him and he pulled her in for a fierce kiss. Stephanie broke it off. “All right, let’s get to work.”
Stephanie pulled her sweatshirt off, leaving her in a tight black tank top and black spandex pants. Korbin hadn’t moved. He was staring at her. Stephanie wagged her finger. “Time for that later. Now, move.” Korbin grabbed his gear and began to suit up.
She pulled a pair of boots on. “Hey, these fit pretty well.”
