Juntto

by Michael Todd

  Calvin signed the piece of paper she handed over. “Mia, stay safe out there, okay?”

  She nodded and ran off to whisper and giggle with her friends.

  Maria shot him a look. “Mia? Does that happen a lot?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t love it.”

  Calvin shook his head and sat back in the chair. “All of this is cool, it really is. Lets me know that people appreciate what we’re doing for them. But that’s not what this night is about. This night is about you. This night is about being back in each other’s arms and being safe, even if it’s just for a little while.”

  The waitress walked up and refilled their glasses before setting their salads down in front of them. Calvin put his napkin in his lap and took a sip of his wine. “How is school going?”

  “Better. I’m glad I didn’t transfer this semester. Just want to get enough of it done that I can, you know?”

  Calvin nodded. “I’m glad you didn’t too. There is a lot of danger everywhere, but the new base isn’t even finished yet. I would have been worried about you the entire time.”

  She smiled her perfect smile. “You’re always worried about me. I could be in a metal box with fortified demon-killing metal, and you would be worried about me. I need you to focus on you while you’re out there. I don’t want to be a distracting thought. That’s what can get you killed.”

  Calvin smirked. “But you are so hard not to think about with that low-cut sparkly gown and that ruby-red lipstick. I don’t even want my salad anymore. Let’s just get it to go.”

  She giggled and swiped her hand at him. “You are crazy.”

  “That’s what my team counts on.”

  Near Las Vegas, down an old dirt road, were the remnants of Katie’s Killers’ old base. The traps in the field were sprung and open, the guard shack empty. The armory door swung back and forth in the breeze, squeaking and banging against the brick walls. Dust blew across the empty ground with no lights shining overhead. It was abandoned. Every last bit of the merc team was gone.

  Lightning shot across the desert sky and a rumble of thunder sounded overhead. There was often lightning and thunder from the heat, but there would be no rain. Between the strikes of lightning, it was dark, just a light breeze blowing sand across the abandoned lot. In the distance, beady red eyes began to glow. At first, there were two pairs, then four, and then they began to multiply as small animals of all types gathered in the shadows.

  Beneath the trembling thunderous sky, the orbs grew closer and closer until a horde of small furry animals ran sniffing across the ground. Demons had infected the wildlife and were now looking for any sign of Katie and her team. They had taken over foxes, birds, bunnies, and rodents and now ignored their usual predator/prey relationship, snuffling the ground for a hopeful lead.

  They moved in and out of the ammunition building, their small claws scratching on the cement floor. Others searched the guard shack and the landing pad, but the team had been very careful not to leave even a shred of paper on the sands. One coyote scurried to the emergency hatch and began scraping around it faster and faster until his paws began to bleed.

  He leaned his head back and howled loudly to catch the others’ attention. Suddenly, his body began to shake and twist, and his skin became tighter and tighter until the demon inside him ripped through his thin, furry flesh. Two sharp claws protruded from its front paws. The coyote howled, then snarled, then screamed as the demonic head burst through the coyote’s jaws. Its crooked back legs broke through the coyote’s bones until all that was left of the animal was a shred of bloody pelt hanging from the demon’s body.

  He reached down and grabbed the hatch, opening the thing wide, then beckoned to the rest of the creatures, who ran, hopped, and flew to him. He pointed them down the shaft into the empty halls below. The demon slowly climbed in and hung on to the ladder, pushing the hatch door all the way open. He looked at the large moon emerging from behind the clouds and growled, his eyes flashing bright red as he descended.

  The demons were going to find Katie and the team for Moloch. It was their quest.

  Korbin sat back in the new base and wiped his face. The kitchen was still being renovated, so they had ordered pizza again. Nobody really minded. Stephanie and Joshua were across the table from Korbin, tired from the day’s work. Timothy had already gone back to his room, exhausted from having spent the day pushing diggers around the base and supervising the cable-laying.

  “You know, things are a lot different now than they used to be back in the day,” Korbin mused.

  Stephanie picked a piece of pepperoni off her pizza and ate it. “Oh, yeah? How so?”

  Korbin sat forward and grabbed another piece of pizza. “For starters, we have to go to the incursions to wage war. Back in the day, your job was to defend. Your castle was built, every place had an army, and you were equipped to defend your city to the death.”

  Stephanie grinned. “Castles? So you’re talking way back in the day.”

  “Yeah. Way back in the day. You didn’t want them to get anywhere close to the top of your wall, so you built great big things. Now, we put up defenses where we are, and we have police, but demons can walk right into any city they want.”

  Joshua nodded. “That’s true. If you were attacking someone else, it wasn’t to save the people inside the walls of that kingdom, it was to take over. Otherwise, the enemy came to you, and you had to defend the rights of your people and your city or kingdom. There isn’t any of that anymore. We live in a world where we hope that demons don’t come to our town, and then we chase the enemy, trying to hunt them down.”

  Korbin took a sip of his soda. “Yep, it’s not the same.”

  Stephanie winked at Korbin. “We can build you a moat if that will make you feel better.”

  He looked up thoughtfully. “I’ve wondered if we could turn the tides, you know? If we could use our place to both defend and attack. They come to us, but we are ready for them. Then we turn it on them and attack them all until they are dead.”

  Joshua thought about it. “That would mean us never leaving our castle. We would have to let them pretty much burn down the rest of the world and wait until they came to our doorstep. It would really only work if we somehow convinced every other country in the world to take it back to the Middle Ages.”

  Korbin looked disappointed. “They did have some badass defenses back then. The big giant gates, the moats, the fire cannons.”

  Joshua laughed. “My favorite is the hot oil. They had buckets at the ready all across the walls. In this day and age, we could come up with some hot-tar sprinkler system. It would just douse everyone. We could put them on the grass and the bridge too. Then, poof, light them up.”

  Korbin giggled like an excited schoolboy. “And then load the cannons and just blow them up. Boom!”

  “It would be interesting to watch Joshua constructing cannonballs out of the special metal,” Stephanie replied.

  Joshua’s eyes went wide. “We would need several facilities for that.”

  Korbin pointed at Joshua. “I feel like you already need more facilities. Have we gotten anywhere with the thought of expanding our manufacturing to more locations? Now that we’re connected to the military, I would think it would be easier to figure it out.”

  Joshua shrugged. “To be honest, I kind of gave up on the thought. Besides General Brushwood, I haven’t met any leaders who are trustworthy. It’s been kind of a crapshoot. The general can’t always be there, and there are a lot of corrupt people in the government these days.”

  Korbin thought about it for a second. “What if we didn’t do it on military installations? What if we did it through us and just placed them in different locations we felt comfortable with all over the country? We would run, manage, and secure them, and then we could exponentially up our production.”

  Joshua leaned forward and wiped his hands. “Right, but think about it this way: if we hadn’t been the ones defending the
last attack on our base, what was the likelihood we would have been able to save the armory? I think that the more locations there are, the better the chances of the process and weapons dropping into the wrong hands.”

  Korbin pursed his lips. “I agree. We could never take that chance, and given the way they’ve been targeting multiple locations at once… Well, they could hit us in every location. We couldn’t possibly successfully defend multiple locations at once. We just aren’t big enough for that.”

  Stephanie cleared her throat. “If you think about it, in the past we didn’t even have enough security on our own base. We didn’t always have the military support we have now. If you could imagine us fighting off all those demons on our own…that would be a shitshow for sure.”

  “Not only that.” Joshua rubbed his hands over his face. “But can you imagine if the demons started using our weapons? Or if they got the ability to manufacture the bullets and use them against our side?”

  All of them shook their heads, and Korbin tossed his crust in the box. “It would be the end of the war, in my opinion. We have Katie, yes, but other than her, we rely on having more advanced weapons than the demons. I can’t even imagine what the fight would be like with special bullets turned against us.”

  Stephanie shivered. “I don’t want to think about it. We would be exterminated in three seconds by the hellbeasts. They would have no reason to even send as many as they do. They would just line up, fire, and be done.”

  Korbin reached across the table and took Stephanie’s hand. “Let’s hope we never have to face that.”

  6

  The news had really started to sink in with people around the world as more and more attacks happened in random places. The general populace had started to reach a breaking point. They were beginning to realize that the war had grown so large and so unpredictable that they could no longer sit out the action and think the mercenaries would save them. They had to take action and prepare their people for attacks.

  If an incursion happened where they lived, they wanted to have a fighting chance.

  All across the world, groups set up town meetings, all centered around the idea of bringing defense to the demons’ offense. The meetings were planned in the early morning since most incursions seemed to happen in the evening. Droves of men, women, and children came to learn more and give their opinions on how to fight back against the demons.

  Videos of the war had been broadcast to all corners of the Earth ever since Incursion Day. The attacks had started in the US, but over time the rest of the world had seen more and more attacks. Demons waded onto the shores of every continent.

  In a small town on the outskirts of London, they held the meeting at the high school gym. It was the only place large enough to hold the number of people who wanted to come.

  The speaker took to the podium, cleared his throat, and read from a piece of paper. “Dear citizens, I am so glad you have chosen to come out and participate in this meeting. Every day we see a new place destroyed and ripped apart by the war—towns not much different than our own. We feel secluded from these terrors because we are so small, but that is no longer the case. In fact, we seem to be the ones that are under the most threat.”

  Several of the people in the audience shouted, agreeing with the speaker. He put his hands up to quiet the crowd. “I will not lie: for the first few months, I did not allow my children to watch the news. The hit-and-run tactics of the demons were gruesome and unforgiving. However, as small villages all over the globe fell victim to these attacks, I found that the only way for me to truly drive home their serious nature was to allow the kids to view these terrible events. The world we live in is no longer peaceful or serene. We are under attack by creatures that do not belong here. I will not allow my family to perish during one of these attacks without at least equipping them and everyone else with the means to fight back. We will not die in vain.”

  Everyone clapped.

  The speaker gestured to a woman standing behind him. “To explore this more, I would like to turn the floor over to demonologist Eliza Dewberry.”

  The woman was nervous, constantly fidgeting with her long mouse-brown hair and touching her glasses. She put a stack of notes on the podium and cleared her throat. “Hel… Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Eliza Dewberry, and for ten years now I have been studying demonology. Obviously, a lot of new information has come out since Incursion Day, and my team and I have been sifting through it as quickly as possible.”

  “How do we fight back?” someone yelled from the crowd.

  Dr. Dewberry put her finger up. “This is an excellent question. After studying their moves, their strength, and the randomness of their actions, we have come up with a couple of options. Now, just so you understand, this is not simply my opinion. I sit on a panel of experts from all over the country. I know many of you want to fight, but as we’ve seen from the videos, it’s a futile gesture, followed by a brutally quick and painful death. So, to negate that, we are suggesting a system of shelters. These shelters will be prepared, readied, and manned twenty-four hours a day. There will also be Demon Sirens to warn you.”

  “Like the old air-raid sirens?” someone yelled.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, precisely. When those sirens go off, you make your way to the shelters as quickly as possible.”

  A woman in the middle of the crowd stood up. “But won’t that just put us all out in the open?”

  Eliza pointed her finger. “Excellent question. We believe not. We were able to partner with local and international government, and they have a system created by Katie’s Killers that detects openings between worlds, often five minutes or so before the demons arrive. This will allow us to sound the alarms and, as long as you are prepared, enable you to make your way to the closest shelter. Obviously, this is quite risky, but we won’t survive in our homes, and we are not strong enough to fight back, so we have to look for better ways.”

  A man in the front raised his hand, and Eliza pointed to him. “Yes?”

  “And then what? We wait?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath. “Yes. We wait. We wait for assistance, or we wait for the demons to go back through their portal.”

  He nodded approvingly. “So, these buggers would be like post-apocalyptic demon shelters.”

  “Absolutely. They would be fortified and stocked, and we would issue weapons to those responsible for protecting the shelters. This is a foreign enemy: creatures from a completely different world. We cannot stand in the streets with guns and expect to survive. We will create enough shelters from existing structures to hold the entirety of the town. Once inside, we will have a check-in system to help… Well, help us figure out who didn’t make it.” Her voice managed to grow even smaller somehow. “The carnage these creatures has produced is not easily forgotten. Oftentimes, identifying bodies has been difficult.”

  The whole room nodded, talking back and forth. They loved the idea.

  Time was the only thing against them. The shelters had to be completed and stocked before the next demon attack. And who knew when that would be?

  The alarm went off bright and early, even before the sun had risen. Katie yawned and stretched her arms overhead, then smacked the button on the top of the radio. She had almost forgotten what it was like to wake up to an alarm rather than Pandora’s constant nagging. Incessant beeping or incessant bitching? Katie wasn’t sure which one was worse.

  Pandora yawned, just waking up herself. I’m not usually one to complain about this, but remind me again why we are up before the sun?

  Katie sat up in bed, breathing in the smell of coffee from the kitchen. We’re heading to the base today, remember? We have to get the boys up and going so we can catch the jet.

  And Juntto?

  Katie walked across the room to pull on her clothes for the day. She had already packed the rest of her things. As far as I know, Angie helped him pack last night. He will probably need a wake-up call.

  Just then the sound of
Juntto’s deep laugh echoed through the house. Katie wrinkled her nose and stuck her head out of the door. From her room, she could see into the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Juntto munching bacon and drinking coffee as Angie prepared the rest of breakfast. Katie ducked back into her room. I feel like Angie is taming the dragon.

  Pandora scoffed. Impossible, unless she castrated him or something.

  Katie started dressing. Maybe it was mental castration. All I know is, the more laughter, the better off we are.

  I guess.

  He’s not murdering anyone.

  He can laugh and murder at the same time. I’ve seen it.

  Katie finished getting ready, pulling her hair back into a ponytail and putting her two smaller pistols in their holsters. She had packed Tom and Harry, figuring they wouldn’t be necessary on the plane ride. She collected her things and took her bags to the door, where the concierge would pick them up.

  As she set the bags down, there was a knock on the door. She opened it up to find a smiling Brock .

  Why, hello. Morning wood, anyone?

  Katie gestured for him to enter, and Brock winked at her. He was followed by the rest of his team, half-awake and half-hungover.

  Oh, and the boys too? Don’t mind if I do.

  Katie laughed internally and ushered them into the kitchen, where Angie was dividing the last pieces of stuffed French toast between a heap of plates.

  “Good morning,” Angie chirped. She waited for a moment and then gave Juntto a side glance.

  Juntto sighed. “Good morning, humans.”

  Angie smiled proudly, like a kindergarten teacher who has just heard her students recite the ABCs.

  The soldiers halted in the middle of sitting down at the table. Angie giggled and put the carafe of OJ on the table. “Juntto is working on manners. He figured it would cut down on paperwork.”

  Brock gave her a questioning look. “Paperwork?”

  “Paperwork.” Katie nudged him in the side meaningfully. “You know. It’s a terrible thing.”