[Demonworld #1] Demonworld

by Kyle B. Stiff

  The skinny accountant among the slaves rose up straight. “I count less than three-fifty,” said Fachimundi. “That leaves fifty gone, including the girls that were in the Feast.”

  Barkus shook his head, his permanent smile now obscenely out of place.

  “Devil’s balls,” said Wallach. “Gotta be more of us!” He laid his teeth against the radio, said, “If you’re not with the slaves, report! Now! I don’t care how drunk you are!”

  Almost immediately the radio crackled, said, “I’m not with the slaves.”

  “Who is this?” said Wallach.

  “Not a slave,” said the voice.

  He heard neighing through the radio.

  “Is that the horses?” said Wallach. “Is this -”

  Barkus snatched the radio from Wallach, ignoring the one on his own belt. “Who is this?” he said, grating the words through his fierce smile. “What have you done?”

  “Just stepping out for a walk,” said the voice. “That’s the right of every free man, isn’t it?”

  Barkus hesitated for a long time, wondering if another gang had snuck weapons to the slaves. Had the Coil planned this to humiliate him?

  “What’s the matter, Barkus? Did you cut off your tongue to show the Ugly your team spirit?” Barkus heard laughter on the other end of the radio, then the voice said, “How’s your smile look now?”

  “It’s that little bitch-pup!” said Wallach. “The boy we had in the tent!”

  Barkus’s eyes widened. “What are you trying to do?” he said quietly.

  “Live my life on my own terms,” said Wodan. “Same as every human being does, or should do.”

  Again Barkus hesitated. He gripped his saddle as if the world was disappearing beneath him.

  Wodan continued. “Did you really think we would follow the path of least resistance? Why, Barkus? Is it because your own path through life is a steady downhill slide?”

  Wallach jumped violently and leaned sideways in his saddle such that his horse buckled and wobbled under him. Wallach fell against Barkus, grasped the wrist that held his radio, and said, “The horses! Don’t you dare-”

  “Ye-e-e-es,” said Wodan. “That’s right! We’re only taking a few for ourselves, but I did notice that you have quite a surplus. Nice job defending them, by the way.”

  “Don’t you do it, you little bitch!” Wallach spat into the radio.

  “You only gave us a handful of rice every day,” said Wodan, “but when you wake up, you’re going to find an entire banquet of fresh meat laid out for you.”

  “You!”

  “Wait,” said Barkus. He leaned his head against Wallach so that they were both crowded around the radio. “If you shoot the horses, we’ll kill some of the slaves.”

  The radio crackled quietly.

  “I’ll do it,” said Barkus. He felt his control coming back. “The old don’t fetch a great price anyway.” He waited.

  “I can’t very well have you chasing after us,” said Wodan.

  “Be that as it may,” said Barkus, “all I have to do is give the word, and we start shooting. Parents and grandparents, boy! Ha. Probably brothers and sisters, too!”

  “Okay,” said Wodan. “But they won’t be easy to find.”

  Wallach blinked as a little idea formed, and said, “Hey, come back now, or we’ll shoot some of the slaves anyway.” Barkus hissed in annoyance.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Wodan. “They had their chance to leave, and they didn’t.”

  Barkus shot Wallach an annoyed glare, then pushed him away.

  Into the radio he said, “You’re just going to get eaten by demons. You know that, right?”

  Wodan laughed, then said, “We’re ready for them. If you need help tracking us, just follow the trail of dead we leave behind.”

  Before Barkus could reply, they heard gunshots and the clamor of horses running and spreading in all directions. Barkus was almost convinced that he could hear singing. The radio on the other end turned off.

  Barkus and Wallach sat in silence for a long time, then Wallach said, “Do you think the Coil snuck some weapons among the slaves, and that’s how they got out?”

  Barkus paused for a long time, then said, “That’s not the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day, but it certainly comes close.”

  * * *

  “Stay away from those,” said Sevrik, and Professor Korliss jerked his hand away from the node of keys.

  “Now you talk,” said Korliss.

  Several bright white lights hung over Didi’s inner sanctum, casting stark shadows on the half-naked Guardians that lazed about drinking nutrimilk or polishing armor that was already shining brightly.

  Sevrik rubbed his face with shaking hands racked by chemicals. His eyes did not bounce lightly from point to point but glided along with inhuman smoothness, and while Korliss did fall inside their path from time to time, his old friend began to doubt that Sevrik saw him at all. Most of Didi’s monitors were shut down, and Sevrik had his own monitors and automated feeds apprising him of the hunt for Haven’s missing citizens.

  “You’ve beaten any record ever set for staying awake, even with drugs,” said Korliss. “You know, friend, if the body does not sleep, it does not heal. If the mind cannot shut off its conscious apparatus, then the garbage of experience piles up, and systematic thought breaks apart, and eventually you will go mad.”

  There was silence. Korliss watched Sevrik’s head loll back and forth like an animal worn ragged with deprivation and abuse.

  “I admit I don’t know what you’re doing,” said Korliss.

  “If you move rational,” said Sevrik, “then they figure you out.”

  “But why did you have him arrested, man?!” said Korliss.

  “You don’t understand because you’re a rational man. Sometimes crazy beats rational. It upsets plans.”

  “A fancy way of saying that you’ve done something incredibly irresponsible and unbelievably stupid. Is Didi the enemy now?”

  “We allied for the Project,” said Sevrik. “I keep Project alive.” But when he said this, his face screwed up, and he seemed to wince utterly, at the bottom of his soul.

  “Listen,” said Korliss. “Didi’s under house arrest, but now that it’s out that he tampered with the unborn, he’s... Sev, he’s looking at the death penalty or a hundred years at least. No one’s died under the law in Haven since either of us has been alive, and when it did happen long ago, it certainly wasn’t because two friends had a misunderstanding.”

  Sevrik raised his face, eyes closed in corpse-like repose.

  Korliss leaned in close, whispered, “Do you think he could even begin to make the common man understand the importance of Project, even if he had to do it to save his life?”

  “Looks like the strong will have to come into the light,” said Sevrik coolly.

  “Looks like all three of us could go down for this!” shrieked Korliss. “I’m the only one that could possibly articulate his motives, you’re the only one with connections to the Guardians of the law - and we’re all well-known friends, we’re all implicated, this stupid thing you’ve done could... it could end us all, you giant fool!”

  Sevrik turned away from Korliss. Korliss felt eyes on him, then sensed a Guardian approaching to politely force him out. Korliss turned and left on his own. He wondered which of them would come out best: The one who was executed, the one who ended up in an insane asylum, or the one who committed suicide?

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Monster

  They rode through the night, freezing cold and terrified of dropping into a ravine at any moment. When so many hours passed that it felt like they had lived in darkness forever, they stopped and lit the torches they’d taken from the camp. They looked like skeletons to one another. Now that they could ride faster with torch-bearers in the front, those that knew how to ride showed others the finer points of equestrianism. Wodan had never ridden a horse, but his shaggy blond mare seemed to like him from the start. T
he sides of the mare were covered in bruises; Wodan scratched her ears.

  Red and blue seeped through a blanket of thick clouds and they could see distant rises and jutting contours on the black earth. The miles of rock rattled their bones. Now that the stream of panic and bloodlust ran dry, exhaustion and hunger and thirst caught up with them. They slowly came to a stop. The horses blew thick reams of steam into the chill air.

  “We gotta eat one of these horses,” said one among them.

  “They’ll see our smoke,” said another.

  “Didn’t say cook it,” said the first.

  No one moved. Some curled against their horses, as if to sleep atop those long legs.

  “If we eat we sleep, and if we sleep we die,” said Wodan, his face buried in his horse’s mane. After the words were absorbed he lifted his face. “We have to assume they’re right behind us.”

  “But we scattered their horses,” said a tired voice.

  “All they need is a few,” said Wodan, “and we’re too tired to fight. We have to figure out where we are, then figure out where we’re going.”

  “I know the area,” said Agmar. Wodan perk up. “Know it well,” he finished, nodding.

  “Been all around, have you?” said Wodan.

  Agmar nodded, said, “We ran off course a little, no fault of ours, but... I could get us to Sunport.”

  “How long?” said Wodan.

  “Half a day, a day,” said Agmar. He smiled cynically, said, “But we’re tired, we’re hungry, and these horses are gonna start dropping if they don’t get watered. Only a day to the city, but I reckon it’ll be the longest day of your life.”

  “Damn, we were lucky,” said Wodan. “To be that close to the city!”

  “You’re right.” Agmar scanned the dark roof overhead, then said, “If we’d stayed just one more night with the Ugly…”

  “We might have gotten to Sunport by nightfall tonight,” said Brad, “and then we never would have been able to escape.”

  The thought was sobering and terrifying, a reminder that they should be grateful for what little they had.

  Wodan turned to Agmar, then said, “Thanks. For coming with us, I mean. We wouldn’t be able to find Sunport without you.” Wodan looked the old man up and down, remembering his words of caution and wondering exactly why the old man had risked his life to come with them.

  “You’re quite welcome!” said Agmar, bowing with a forced flourish. “Welcome to the land of freedom! I’ve no doubt that all our needs will be met out here in the wilderness. Well, except the need for food, water, sleep, shelter, or even a bare minimum of safety. But other than that, it feels great to be here, doesn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Wodan. “You wanted to escape from the Ugly just as much as we did.”

  “We’re alike in some ways, but we’re a little different in others.”

  “Is that so?”

  “For instance,” Agmar continued, “do you feel any guilt about the lives you took?”

  In truth, Wodan did not. He had read books and seen films in his youth that showed normal, average people pick up a weapon to defend their life from some criminal; inevitably the person’s hands would be shaking so hard that it never proved difficult for the criminal to disarm them. He’d also seen stories that showed crime-fighting vigilantes taking lives, but later moping about with a conscience weighed down by guilt. There was always a scary aura of darkness that hung over such so-called “superheroes” who took the law into their own hands. Strangely enough, Wodan felt no guilt at all. While aiming a gun and pulling the trigger and watching his enemies fall, his only concern had been about accuracy. He wondered if perhaps he was some sort of monster. If all the slaves had risen up and overpowered the Ugly without killing them, would he have been capable of arguing against the idea of torturing their captors to death?

  “No answer?” said Agmar. “Maybe that’s why I came along. Maybe I was afraid that these people were being led by an immoral little boy with no sense of remorse or compassion or… humanity.”

  “Humanity?” said Wodan. “That’s where you’re wrong, Agmar. Those men we killed – they crossed a line and left their humanity behind. I know it was your sense of compassion that kept you from using a weapon earlier, but you have to understand that you were raised and programmed to obey a morality that they made. Do you think the demon and the Ugly would be the masters of this world if they couldn’t depend on the passivity and meekness and selflessness of popular morality? I saw you take the book that Barkus dropped. I don’t have to see it to guess what’s inside; I saw it written on the faces of the old ones who refused to fight back. Is it full of stories about idealized hardships suffered by victims? Are the bad guys magically defeated in the end? Is there a concluding chapter where all the evil in the world is conquered by some outside force that finally rewards all the poor suckers who endured their suffering with a smile?

  “Agmar, we had to kill the Ugly because they were confident. They were confident in their strength and our weakness. They were confident that we would live in fear. And if you and the other old ones hadn’t held back, we would have outnumbered our enemies four-to-one. Less of us would have died, the people we left behind wouldn’t be living in hell right now, and the Ugly, well… it would be their turn to endure the suffering that they seem to love so much.”

  Agmar was about to reply, then he noticed that all the others were sitting straight in their mounts. They held their guns with confidence and their eyes were alive. They were not in the mood for self-deprecating introspection.

  “He’s right,” said Brad. “Let’s ride the hell outta here.”

  “All the way to Haven!” said Rachek, smiling. “Right, Wodan?”

  “Right!” said Wodan, laughing.

  Wodan was about to ask Agmar of the route they must take, but at that moment a cry broke out. A man with sharp eyes pointed into the distance. In the rising light of the dawn they saw a large figure in the distance.

  They watched the black, featureless thing. There was nothing natural about its movements. The dark shape churned against the earth, leaping oddly with the help of membranes that flapped at its side. It was far away, but moving toward them very quickly. Soon they could make out horns and quivering limbs.

  “Demon!” shouted one. “A demon!”

  Screams broke out and everyone kicked their horses in a blind panic.

  “Stop!” yelled Wodan. “Wait! Stay where you are!”

  The riders broke into small groups and stumbled in odd directions, and some crashed into one another and clung to the sides of their bucking horses. Wodan turned about, stabbing the people with his eyes but unable to stop the panic. It was a cold slap in the face to realize that even though the Ugly had posted guards to watch for demons, not a single demon had come near them; now that they were alone and on their own for just a few hours, a demon had already found them out and was ready to kill them.

  A shotgun blasted. The people stopped and saw Brad holding the smoking barrel of a gun, a deafening reminder of the power they wielded. “Quit actin’ like a bunch of whipped bitches,” said Brad.

  “But it’s a demon!” said one man. “It’s a destroyer! We can’t…”

  “Can’t what?” said Wodan. “Can’t outrun it? Can’t wrestle it to the ground? Look at you. You’re bigger and stronger than I am.” Wodan produced a handgun and leveled it at the man’s face. “Just remember, no matter how big or how strong anyone is, one between the eyes is the greatest equalizer in the whole world.” Wodan lowered his gun, then said, “It’s time for people to stop killing people. It’s time to form up in a line and start killing these dumb animals that think they rule the world.”

  “He’s right!” Rachek shouted. “Form a line, now! No more sacrifices, no more running!”

  Brad and Rachek drove their mounts in a wide circle and gathered everyone up. Wodan stood and faced the monster, and the line formed on either side of him. Wodan glared at the approachin
g monster and exchanged his handgun for a heavy rifle. The others were terrified, but more than a little ashamed at their cowardice. Even though their bowels threatened to burst, they spat on the ground in disgust and aimed their weapons.

  “Do not be afraid,” shouted Wodan, and he raised his rifle high. “DO NOT BE AFRAID!”

  * * *

  “What do you mean to do?” asked Fachimundi, biting his lip and wringing his hands. He watched the elite leaving the tent and they seemed dead-set on some plan of action.

  “We’re going to find them,” said Barkus, striding past. Fachimundi ran to keep up. “We’re going to find them before the demon does. We’re going to kill them before the wasteland does.”