[Demonworld #1] Demonworld

by Kyle B. Stiff

  “So you think it’s best to go along?” said the other.

  “I don’t see what else we can do,” said Agmar.

  The young man with dark hair was near them, and said, “We outnumber them, old man.”

  “Let’s just say that their guns outnumber our guns,” said Agmar, opening his empty hands.

  Several slaves nodded slowly, their heads drooping.

  “Then again,” said Wodan, “what he said is true... but only to a certain point.”

  The slaves turned to him, some hopeful, others irritated.

  “What do you mean?” said Agmar.

  “Barkus said that, within the system, you have to live like a slave or not live at all,” said Wodan. “But he made the assumption that human systems are the same everywhere.”

  “You’re saying he was wrong?” said Agmar. “I don’t like it any more than you, son. But where exactly did he speak untruthfully?”

  “Even if a person gives you a premise, or two premises, or even ten, they can all be true without any logical flaws in them, but his conclusion can still be wrong.”

  The dark-haired young man said, “Huh?”

  “It’s because all of his premises come from a certain mindset,” said Wodan. “His mindset, you could say, is his first premise. He’s been to the cities around here, seen how things worked, learned how to con people and get his way by watching some other goons do it and get ahead, and then he made the conclusion that the he understood how the entire world works because he’s seen a few parts of it. But he hasn’t seen my home.”

  “Your home?” said Agmar. “And where is that?”

  “Compared to this place, it’s a paradise,” said Wodan. He became aware that many eyes were on him. “It’s far north of here.”

  “Sunport?” said one man.

  “Farther north, across the sea. We live on a rocky island.”

  “Life there can’t be that good,” said Agmar. “Anyone who lives near demons has to-”

  “There are no demons where I come from,” said Wodan. “No demons and no slavers.” Now every slave in the area was watching him and listening, and he said, “We have all the good of civilization and little of the bad. We have food, medicine, education. In fact, every child is educated and taken care of, and every adult has a chance to make something of him or herself!”

  “Aah!” said someone. “You’re making this up.”

  “Do I look like I come from this area?” Wodan said loudly. At some strange impulse, he lifted his pale arm high into the air. It was evident that he did not come from the mountains or from Pontius.

  The slaves began speaking excitedly among themselves. “Quiet, quiet!” said Agmar. “We don’t need any attention! We can’t risk being noticed… for now, at least.”

  “Fine,” said Wodan. “But my point is that Barkus is trying to con us with reasonable words. He’s trying to scare us into buying into his version of the world. Where I come from, people like him have no power. I tell you, there is another, better world, and-”

  “Do you come from heaven?” a girl near him said.

  “No!” said Wodan, and Agmar quieted him again. “No,” he whispered harshly, “I’m flesh and blood, just like you, and the people of my land are flesh and blood, too. There is a better world here on earth. And we could get there, if we wanted.”

  “I want to go there!” said the girl. Wodan looked at her. She was younger than he, plump, with tanned skin and auburn hair around a wide face and slightly crooked teeth. She was pretty, and Wodan knew that in time the wasteland would drain out and suck dry everything that was good in her.

  “I mean to get back there,” said Wodan. “I didn’t fight demons and lose all my friends just so I could become a slave. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Rachek,” said the girl, smiling. Then a shadow passed over her face, and she said, “But you’re so young. Can you really… I mean, is it possible to…”

  “Aye, young!” said someone further away. “Brash, stupid, like a kid. We’ve got to… look, we can’t just…”

  The dark-haired young man finally spoke up, shaking with rage. “Shut up back there! I ain’t no bitch, and never gonna be! This little guy might not look like much, but anyone who says anything against him...” He flexed the huge biceps on his arms, and said, “They get these cannons fired in their face!”

  Several people laughed, including Wodan. Agmar looked down, then said, “Okay. They’ll have us moving early tomorrow. Let’s keep our eyes open, and see if we can-”

  “We should jump ’em now,” said the young man.

  “Brad, we’d just get slaughtered,” said Agmar. “We have to wait and watch. Watch for opportunities.”

  “Why wait?” said Brad.

  “Because I’ve been all over and, believe me, you can’t understand this world when you’re fifteen years old. I’ve seen violence done well, and I’ve seen it fouled up from the start by losing your head and not having a plan.”

  “But!” said Brad.

  “I have to agree,” said Wodan, clapping a hand on Agmar’s back. “We wait. Let’s get an idea of what we’re up against.”

  “Shi-i-i-it,” said Brad. “All right, then.”

  The slaves talked long into night. Rachek and Brad stayed near Wodan, huddling against the cold. Agmar debated with others but kept an eye on Wodan. He was impressed that the boy had turned what could have been the longest night that any of them had ever faced into something with a glimmer of hope in it. But he also knew what drove men, and he knew that their nightmare would not end when morning came. It would begin.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Scar of the Ugly

  In the icy hills of the holy land, his guide led him to the House of Ages. The door opened before him. “Come and see,” said the guide.

  He entered and saw a man holding a jar of water over a wide basin. The man looked up and said, “The jar is empty. Go into the next room.” Before he had a chance to ask the man about a time when the jar was full of water, he found himself in another room. He did not remember passing any threshold.

  The dingy, dark room was flooded with salty water up to his ankles. A hideous monster shaped almost like a round cage, with twisted bars of pale flesh, dominated the room. Its long limbs were filled with eyes and he could almost make out a head near the ceiling. The guide prompted him and he tore his eyes away from the beast. He saw men sitting in the corners and along the walls, hunched up with little room to sit because of the size of the beast. In one corner he saw a man of Haven sitting in the water with his face in a book. In a nearby corner sat four men of Pontius. Each held a gun to one another’s head.

  “The four gangs,” said the guide. “The Ugly, their hated foe the Law, their hated foe the Coil, and their hated foe the Smiths. Such a delicate balance! They’ve held their guns so long that some of them do not even remember if they loaded them with ammunition.”

  He looked about the room again. He saw a man of Hargis organizing his affairs. He saw a man of Sunport looking about at the others, sure that an attack would come from another human at any moment. He saw a man of Greeley in the distance but it was difficult to make him out. On the very furthest edge of the room he could just barely see, through the bars of the demon’s flesh, many men of San Ktari wrestling with several other men. The men of San Ktari were strange and foreign looking, but numerous.

  “There’s so many of them!” he said to the guide. “Why don’t they turn on the monster and clean this room up?”

  He turned and saw the guide pointing upwards. He looked at the beast once again and saw that its head bore a great crown of horns.

  “This is the Age of Capricorn,” said the guide, “and the one who bears the crown numbers the days.”

  “Could anyone take that crown?” he asked.

  “Anyone,” said the guide.

  He decided he would climb the monstrous, living cage and take the crown and make the room a decent place for everyone. He made as if to climb, then
noticed that the monster’s limbs were slimy and covered with sharp thorns.

  “Anyone,” said the guide. “But only with great difficulty.”

  “Get up, pups! Get up, fools! Wake up, get up, on your feet!”

  The dream slipped away and Wodan saw the Ugly walking among them, sticks and whips swinging and smacking flesh. The slaves rose awkwardly, eyes bleary, heads hunched into shoulders. The sun was only a faint glimmering in distant blue. Agmar shook people awake. Wodan exchanged glances with Rachek and Brad, then they stood together.

  Voices called out the names of girls. There was confusion. Raiders shot their guns into the air, said, “Walk! Walk! Follow the riders!” and they walked. They heard wailing in the distance. Through fragments of conversation that spread through the crowd, they heard talk of young girls that had disappeared, daughters that had slept beside their mothers and fathers but had not woken with them. Some of the raiders, too, were gone. The unlucky mothers and fathers wailed or walked with dead faces like masks, and with each step across the dead earth they realized more and more what it was to be a slave.

  There were sixty or seventy Ugly raiders altogether, and none of them walked. Each had a horse of his own. A large truck trudged through the sand some distance away, a diesel burning engine that spewed black into the air. Since none of the horses were burdened by supplies of any kind, the slaves looked at the truck and hoped that it had some food and water that would be given to them. The raiders hemmed them in on all sides and herded them like cattle. The raiders smoked and passed bottles back and forth to one another, then threw the empty bottles into the mass of slaves. They often showed jewelry or bits of food to any women who wandered near, laughing and boasting to one another. Fathers and brothers hated the Ugly for what they were doing, but they also came to resent the women for drawing attention.

  It was the advance guard, the elite among the Ugly, that Wodan feared most. These black-caped riders often rode ahead, perched on hills and scanned the distance with binoculars, and called out to one another on hand-held radios in a strange, short-hand tongue. Wodan knew they were looking for demons or for others too close to their kind to be trusted. These men did not drink all day long as the men who guarded the slaves. Wodan feared them the most because when he caught glimpses of their faces, he saw nothing but ice behind their eyes.

  Always the slaves were prodded from behind and watched from the sides. Even though the press of one’s neighbors was unbearable, Wodan, Brad, Rachek, and Agmar stayed close to one another. As the hours dragged on and the heat of the blinding sun melted their awareness, speech became impossible. Sometimes they held hands in order to stay near one another, and this was communication enough.

  Because of the press of flesh and heat, the only relief anyone could find was to press ahead to the front. There, Wodan saw the wasteland. He had thought that it would be an endless stretch of sand. It was not. The land was hard and cracked in places, a checkerboard of red dust. Ornate hills carved by the eternal wind divided the horizon. Scrub brush choked the earth; the Ugly took no care to avoid anything, so many times the mass simply plowed over dry bushes and thorns and steep, empty creek beds, protesting all the while. It took great endurance to remain at the front, and the herd eventually swallowed any who led.

  The muscles in Wodan’s legs were worn raw, the nerves ground into pulp. He did not want to disappoint his new friends, so he did not complain, and neither did they. He often wondered if he would feel a tap at his shoulder, then see Marlon ready with a plan of escape. As the hours dragged on, the oppressive heat and hard-baked earth beat this hope out of him.

  The skies darkened and turned cold. The moon was full and frozen high overhead. They came to a wide, sandy plain. Riders cried ahead of them, then the truck honked its horn. The riders around the slaves cried, “Stop! Stop! Lie down!” and for a minute there was gossip that a demon lay ahead of them. But the Ugly shot their guns in the air, cried, “Lie down! Sleep! Sleep!” and so the slaves stopped, bumped into one another, then sat in the hard sand.

  Some of the Ugly formed a ring that stretched loosely, far away, around the entire camp. The slaves watched some of the Ugly as they pulled a tarp from the back of the truck and raised a large, green tent. Several of the elite riders dismounted and went to the tent. Their capes billowed in the wind, and Wodan thought that he saw Barkus among them. Even the heavily armed elite deferred to him, and Wodan wondered where his power came from.

  “Did you notice the sun?” said Agmar.

  “I did,” said Wodan. “It went from right to left.”

  “We’re going north, then.”

  “I thought you said the Ugly were from Pontius, in the west.”

  “They are,” said Agmar. “They may be taking us to Sunport, to ship us elsewhere.”

  Wodan said nothing, so Rachek said, “You said your home was to the north, across the sea. That’s how you were able to do all that walking on those skinny legs of yours!”

  Wodan nodded, but before he could speak, Agmar said, “Were you lying about that home of yours?”

  “Of course not!” said Wodan. “I mean to make it back there.”

  “I understand, son, I know what you mean. Still… it would be a shame if you tried and failed, and the Ugly ended up finding out where this hidden paradise is located.”

  “It wouldn’t matter,” said Wodan. “Haven could repel the likes of them. Easily.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  Agmar thought for a minute, then said, “It wouldn’t do to underestimate the Ugly. They’re an old society, boy, very old. Their roots stretch back to the dawn of time, some say. To the time when the demons first rose and shaped the earth.”

  “They’re a gang of bullies,” said Wodan.

  “In the beginning,” said Agmar, “when the demon was reshaping the world in its own image, there was a group called the Vatica. From one city, it’s said, they ruled the entire world. They had a vast storehouse of holy books and records. They worshipped a god of suffering, a god of mutilation who created heaven on the other side of agony. When the demons began glutting themselves on the Ancients, the Vatica struck a deal. They fed the demon, and the demon allowed them to continue their work. When the seas rose and swallowed most of the earth, the prophet Sade led the people of Vatica to the place that would eventually be called Pontius. Sade was a prophet who had a vision of the world; he saw a circle of animals, each eating the other, for all eternity. He saw men doing the same.”

  “That’s awful!” said Rachek. “If he was a holy man, he should have prayed to God to stop such a thing.”

  “I think he did, at first,” said Agmar. “But they say that not only did God not stop any of it, He gave Sade visions that explained that He made it that way because He wanted it that way. Cain’s murder of Abel was a supreme act of creation that happened over and over again, continuing the world and feeding blood to the gods that upheld the world. Because of Sade, the new Vatica dusted off some of their tools that they’d put away in times of peace. Tools of torture, you see. And they didn’t just use them on their enemies. Oh, no. They used them on one another. They wanted visions from God, you know, but all they saw were demons. Those were the new gods, so they started emulating their new gods.

  “That’s how they came to be Ugly,” Agmar finished. “That’s how they came to be one of the gangs that control Pontius, the hellhole where I grew up… and left, as soon as I was able.”

  “They may seem scary out here in the wilderness,” said Wodan, “but I’m telling you, even if there were ten thousand of them armed to the teeth, they wouldn’t amount to anything up against the Guardians of my homeland.”

  Everyone was tired and Agmar’s account had only driven them deeper into exhaustion, but as soon as Wodan spoke about Haven, many of the slaves turned to listen.

  “Tell us about your home,” said Rachek.

  “I live on an island far from here, away from raiders,” said Wodan. “Many of my pe
ople live underground, or in buildings the same color as the mountains, so no demon can find us even if they flew over us. People work and live their lives in peace.”

  “But if they’re peaceful,” said Brad, “then they probably wouldn’t last too long against demons or Ugly!”

  “Don’t think that they’re weak,” said Wodan. “Far from it. Someone told me, not long ago, that the design for guns has been copied generation after generation, but that it’s hardly ever been improved upon. Isn’t that right?”

  “It is,” says Agmar. “If it wasn’t for the Smiths protecting the blueprints, we might be fighting with sticks and stones now. And we’d have a much better chance against these Ugly!”

  “It’s the opposite in my homeland,” said Wodan. “We don’t have gangs or secret societies protecting the designs for guns, radios, vehicles – or any piece of technology. It’s all out in the open. Anyone can access that information. And anyone can improve on the design, too, if they’re able. From what I’ve seen, I think one of our armed and armored Guardians could take out a dozen Ugly. And that’s not even taking into account our air power and heavy artillery!”