Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell

by Corwyn Matthew

  The sound of his voice was so powerful the soil around the open grave scattered and poured itself over Marty’s broken body, burying him beneath the earth in Le’Duprie’s formerly vacant hole.

  Jean-Claude was almost surprised by the power his breath held, but deep down knew this display was only the beginning.

  He looked around the cemetery – his eyes glowing red with Marty’s fresh blood swirling through his veins – and his attention was instinctively pulled in one direction. He was summoned into this living-death for a purpose. There was an even larger scheme at work here than he could truly understand, but somehow, he knew it started there, in that tiny little chapel near the front entrance of the graveyard he could now see in a new light.

  It was as if it had existed in two worlds, but converged here on one. Through his new eyes he could see an astonishing silhouette of an enormous citadel engulfing the humble church at its middle. The world around him was monotone – in simple shades of black and gray – but the translucent image of this fortress surrounding the church was glowing in sharp, dark tones of red, orange, and yellow, like structured flames. It reached five times the height of the single-story chapel and encircled it by fifty yards in every direction. The ground outlining this Spirit Fortress sunk into the earth as if the soil supported its weight, and a wave of death among the grass and weeds close by began spreading like fire.

  J.C watched in delight as the trees withered to wiry skeletons and the lawn dried and cringed into lifeless bristles around him. The death among the turf covering the grounds carved sigils in the Earth so large you wouldn’t see them unless you were looking down on the cemetery from above. The sigils were a warning to the heavens – a seal stating that from this moment on, Earth belonged to Hell, and that the demon Imala had grown to be held the lease of every living thing on its soil. It would only be a matter of time now before she’d implement her rule.

  J.C. walked mightily toward the base of the fortress and stopped just outside its walls. He cocked his head when he heard the beginnings of a ruckus beneath the surface of the cemetery – it appeared he wouldn’t be the only monster to rise from the grave this night.

  He looked back toward the church, not sure what it was he was waiting for, but knew that here was where he would find his purpose. A hunger in him began to grow and an image in his mind took shape. A beautiful reddened-demon’s black eyes cut into his thoughts and spoke to him in unheard words. Flashes of gore and chaos accompanied her call as he saw pure violence and terror run through his mind, him being the catalyst, bulldozing through the streets of L.A., ripping to ribbons anyone standing in his way.

  One word echoed through his mind from the lips of the beautiful she-devil Imala. One word that brought meaning to his being, and he knew now what he was meant to do. One unspoken word that would inherently bring about furious chaos and unrestrained horror unto the world. And that one word clawed its way into his mind in her voice and crept from his throat as a grumble and a smile…and he growled it in a whisper with an insidious need growing inside…

  “FEEEEEEEED…”

  The Beginning of the Dead

  Culver City Forum; Los Angeles, CA:

  “Shoot. The fucking. Puck! The puck! THE PUCK!! …Shoot! The FUCKing!!” Coach Gary was using his outside voice inside the Priests’ locker room between periods 2 and 3 of the second game in their playoff series. “I don’t see what it is about that process that doesn’t compute with you Facebook fucks! Do I hafta post it on twitter for you kids to get the gist of it?!”

  You could always tell the Coach meant business when the veins in his neck would swell up like squirming, baby pythons and he was using pop-references to intercommunicate. After screaming his strategic advice at the top of his lungs, he switched gears in his tone, addressing his team in a sarcastic, and more plain and simple manner.

  “That little, black, round fucker made of rubber that slides around on the cold, hard stuff in between the boards? That’s the puck. Hit that with the blades of yer fucking sticks and aim it at the back of their FUCKING NET!!”

  The Priests were down by 3 goals and just didn’t have their hearts in the game without their star player, Marty, out on the ice. Jimmy wasn’t suited up (nursing a concussion and a fractured rib), but was there for his team, more-or-less, being slightly distracted by the vintage game of Tetris he was playing on his cell while seated next to Terry. In between the Coach’s roaring and ranting, little computer blips and electronic chirps escaped his corner of the bench. Eventually, the entire team zeroed in on the distracting sounds, eyeballing their teammate who didn’t have a clue.

  Terry, on the other hand, was so preoccupied by his own passing thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the Coach had finally stopped his bickering until all eyes were on him and Jimmy. He stopped in the middle of lacing his skates and gave his friend a heads-up with a nudge from his elbow.

  “Chill out, dude. I’m on level nine,” Jimmy whispered back, figuring whatever he wanted could wait until after he got his shot at beating his top score.

  Terry just shook his head in surrender, already knowing the consequence of his buddy’s lack of focus.

  “Hey……FUCK-NUTS!!”

  Somehow, Jimmy knew his Coach was referring to him. He lifted his head just as the game’s sound took a downward tumble in its pitch, symbolizing his failure at immortalizing a score

  “Turn that FUCKING thing off, or we’re gonna find out if I can fit that phone…into an empty space…in yer pasty ASS!!”

  A few Priests reservedly chuckled at the Coach’s referential scold.

  “Sorry, Coach.”

  Jimmy promptly turned off his phone and, nearly simultaneously, Terry’s cell rang inside the bag between his feet. He glanced up at his coach, who now had his eyes beaming directly into the meat of his skull, and gave him an apologetic frown.

  “…Sorry, Coach…”

  Coach Gary just shook off his frustration and sighed. He figured he’d give Terry the benefit of the doubt since he and Jimmy were more closely involved in the tragic events of the previous game. Considering the circumstances, Terry’s distracted slip-up wasn’t too far from understandable.

  Terry reached into his bag and grabbed his cell to switch it off but hesitated when he saw who was calling. Alex’s name was starring him in the face and somehow, he knew he had to answer, but by then it was too late…the phone had stopped ringing.

  He kept the cell in his hands while his coach continued clucking paternally at his squad, resembling in his bitching what a mother hen might sound like if she had a vulgar vocabulary and a croaking frog lodged in her throat. Soon after, a notice popped up on his cell’s screen signifying a new message. He immediately felt on edge, certain that Alex wouldn’t be calling unless it was important, his thoughts drifting throughout the remaining minutes of the intermission. When everyone was suited back up and started filing out onto the ice, he made his move to try to settle his unease by quickly checking his voice mail.

  Jimmy watched his friend put the cell to his ear and instantly became jumpy.

  “Dude…what’re you doing? You want Coach to make you eat that thing?”

  Terry just brushed him off, not worrying about the consequences, feeling that this message might be more important than the game and there was only one way to find out.

  Jimmy anxiously watched as his friend’s eyes widened at the content of the recording and knew something was up. Terry put the phone down afterward and started stripping away his gear, jerking at snaps and elastic straps.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Jimmy’s glazed eyes and tone made it clear he was starting to worry. Terry was tearing off his pads and moving a little too hastily for his comfort.

  “It was Alex…”

  “Alex?” He looked confused. “My…I mean, Marty’s Alex?”

  “Terry!” The Coach popped his head back into the locker room
to interrupt their conversation, wondering what the hell was taking him so long. “What the hell’s taking you so long?!” His eyes shifted up and down when he noticed him disrobing. “What the fuck’re you doin’, soldier?! We have a god damn battle to win out there!”

  “I gotta go, Coach. Marty’s in trouble.”

  The Coach put on an overly sarcastic look of bewilderment. “Well, send Jimmy. He’s not playing anyway!”

  Terry stopped to flash his coach a raised brow. “Marty’s in trouble…and you want me to send Jimmy?”

  He let that scenario marinate in the contemplative juices of higher logic for a moment, then:

  “I see yer point. Jimmy’s a fucking putz. You go ahead and do what you have to.”

  He nodded. “Thanks, Coach.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Coach,” Jimmy repeated sarcastically after him, then turned to his friend. “Dude, what’d she say? What’s goin’ on?”

  He shook his head. “Not sure.” He took off his skates while trying to explain. “But she sounded serious. Real serious… Somethin’s not right.”

  “You want me to call her back for you?” He was hoping he’d say yes…

  “Yeah.”

  Yes!

  “Ask her where she wants us to meet.”

  2

  Smoke stood tall outside the cemetery – hood over his head, sleeves pushed up around his forearms – and took in the embodiment of Hell that spawned around him. Slowly, dead creatures dug their way into the world of the living (the more recently deceased being sooner to rise than those soldiers who’d been resting for decades), and the sight of the hellish fortress that surrounded the tiny church behind him reflected sharply through the peripheral of his dead eyes. But his mind only saw in one direction: forward, to his reunion with his blood-father who’d unknowingly be waiting to meet him in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.

  He’d been standing outside the citadel for nearly an hour until the stirring below the earth became loud enough to be unmistakable. Dozens of dead soldiers were clawing their way into the city of L.A., ready to make a hardy, first meal out of the wandering b-movie stars and wannabe celebrity-nobodies infesting the city. Any minute now, this town was in for a shit-storm unlike any it’d ever seen, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t be the first of the undead to run savage through the blocks of his very own home.

  He marched eagerly toward the busy street bordering the cemetery with an army of undead rising behind him and leapt into oncoming traffic. The tires of several cars screamed against their own weight, fighting the blacktop for a grip on their momentum, and the one less fortunate of the few stopped directly under his fist as he charged insanely for the screeching yellow cab. He drove his knuckles in and exploded its windshield under the wave of pressure crushing its hood. Traffic all around him came to a stop as confused and terrified citizens looked into the city street at this towering freak-of-nature buried elbow-deep in the painted steel of the taxi’s metal frame.

  The cab driver was out cold, limply draped over the airbag, and Smoke took a second in his triumph to look around at the cars surrounding him. He scanned the cluster of automobiles like a customer in a used car lot, and his expression lit up when spotting the humble carriage that would be his ride into the nearby city. A 2017 all-black Camaro with hood vents like dragon nostrils stood out among the trash that accompanied it. He flipped the broken cab out of his path with one lift from his hand, throwing it into the car beside it – not yet familiar with his own strength – and zeroed in on his soon-to-be, newly acquired trophy ride.

  Brazenly, he walked toward the vehicle with a swagger imbued in newfound power and stopped at the driver side door. He cocked back then reached through the tinted window as if it wasn’t even there, grabbing the driver by the top of his head and dragging his helpless body out through the broken glass. After throwing the man’s carcass into the side of a Prius, he carefully reached into his new ride and gently unlocked the door. He slid into the driver’s seat with an expression of satisfaction and leered through an evil visage at the sight of the well-cared-for upholstery. He hadn’t noticed at first, but there was an attractive brunette seated beside him, frozen in fear, pressed up against the inside of the passenger door, cleavage trembling, peeking at him through the corners of horrified eyes. Smoke pulled his glance away from the polished dash to look over at her and smile.

  “Hi.”

  His scratchy, deep voice was so terrifying it coaxed an instinctive response. She suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs, opened the passenger door, and took off running for a few yards before falling over her heels and skidding across the road.

  Smoke let out a belly laugh that could put a drunken Norse God to shame. She had no way of knowing, but she was headed right for a horde of hungrier and much less hospitable creatures than him. He put the car into gear, slammed the pedal to the floor and took off like a bat out of Idaho, his laughing a bass-line to the music of the Camaro’s squealing tires burning rubber against the surface of the street.

  The first wave of muddied, demonic soldiers poured out of the cemetery into the cluster of awe-struck onlookers piled bumper-to-bumper in the growing traffic, filling his rearview with tantalizing scenery. Two hundred or more bloodthirsty, zombie veterans appropriately dressed in the uniforms they fought in (their garments being re-manifested through the same magik that reformed their flesh), swarmed the streets, ripping off the roofs and doors of cars like peeling shells to get to the meat of the human nuts squirming inside. Streams of blood and flying human limbs splashed out of the mass of chaos, and Smoke groaned in a deep, wanting tone, wishing he had the leisure to join the former American heroes in their voracious feasting frenzy… But there would be plenty of tender cop-pork-chops marinating on his menu soon enough, he thought. And waiting for that moment of triumph would make the rewards to come that much more grossly satisfying.

  He hit the gas and sped into the city where he’d soon come to find his father. He wondered what sort of man he’d be and if he’d be half the man he expected, which was only about a quarter of the man that Smoke was when he was just a street dwelling bag of meth, an empty gun, and a real shitty attitude. If his father measured up, he’d be about one eighth of a junkie who was only worth a third of a homeless man with herpes, and even less if the hobo could still get it up. With stakes that high, he’d hate to get too excited about meeting him for fear of disappointment. He figured for now he’d assume his father was as impressive as a genital wart on a lesser man’s penis and save the judgment call on his character until he’d get to look him in his eyes. It wouldn’t be hard to tell what sort of man he was when he’d come face-to-face with the wrath of an undead son ripe with abandonment issues. Not that he actually gave a shit anymore about why his father wasn’t a part of his life, but he might bring it up anyway just to put the fear of God into the old man. It might make for better sport to coax some waterworks out of him along with his groveling. And if that wasn’t satisfying enough, he’d have a hell of a time scraping his eyeballs out of his skull with the splintered end of a broken Number Two pencil.

  Life was good, as they say…but death was a perfect pair of tits attached to a pretty brunette in her birthday suit. Needless to say, the life of an undead bad-boy undoubtedly had its perks.

  3

  Le’Duprie left a path of chaos behind him like a trail of blood-soaked breadcrumbs that started at the Remembrance Cemetery and ended where he stood. The course in front of him was a one-way trek to pain and villainy leading to the Forum where his former teammates and greatest opponents were all gathered in one place, ripe for mauling like a school of fish swimming in a blender. He was the first of his kind to rise from the grave, but from the sound of things, a wave of death and chaos crawled through the streets not far behind. His hearing was acute, and from blocks away he could take in the sounds of the crowd in the arena ahead, and those of the destruction of th
e city growing louder to his rear.

  He marched through ten blocks of urban streets, plowing through cars and buildings like cloth, making a straight line for his destination. The deeper he got into the city, the harder it was for him not to stray from his path and start picking off vagrants or liquor store clerks for snacks to fuel his stride. His black, muddied suit and loosely hanging orange tie were nearly torn to shreds, shrouded over his frame, barely clinging to his shoulders and hips while howling sirens blared in the distance. No doubt they’d follow his path to its beginning where a hellish glow burned against the night sky directly above the cemetery. He pitied the fools who’d be the first to face the battalion of undead soldiers clawing their way into this world from the undersides of muddy graves.

  The Culver City Forum was another ten blocks in front of him, but he swore from where he stood he could smell the blood and meat of his former friends and league-mates teasing in the air. It was as if he could hear the racing of their hearts and those of the fans in the crowd, and just the thought of that wet meat pumping inside their chests heightened his cravings, making waiting even another moment for the taste of flesh almost intolerable.

  The public was thinning out as the path of havoc in his wake became more apparent with every demolished block… But in every town there was an unconcerned laggard, too caught in his own world to be bothered by the end of the one happening right outside his door…

  -Bleepbleep-

  The sound of the two-way, Nextel walkie-talkie phone-bleep snapped the distant stoner out of his daze in the middle of a smoked filled grow-room.

  “Al! Al! You watchin’ the news right now, man?”

  The man in his mid-thirties, who looked like he might’ve fashioned himself fresh from a Hunter S. Thompson novel, wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, khaki cargo shorts and a plastic visor, popped his head up from behind a marijuana plant with one eyebrow raised. He was admiring his fruitful hobby’s latest crop with a half-smoked joint dangling from his lips, peeking over the buds of his plant at the phone sitting on a work bench in the corner of the florescent-lamp-lit garage.