Demon Frenzy (Demon Frenzy Series Book 1)

by Harvey Click

  “There’s nothing here,” she said. “Just hills and trees.”

  “Okay, come back now and open your eyes,” Neoma said.

  Amy opened her eyes and saw Neoma sitting on the bed beside her, watching her face.

  “Have you made up your mind yet?” Neoma asked.

  “About what?”

  “Are you going with me or Shane?”

  “Shane.”

  Neoma got up and left the bedroom. Amy had slept very little and wanted to continue lying on the bed for a few minutes, but somebody tapped on the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Red.”

  She got up and said, “Come in.”

  He and Ivan came in, stripped the sheets off the mattress she had been lying on, grasped it by the rope handles at the side, and carried it out of the room. Amy latched her suitcase and grabbed the plastic bag containing her binoculars and the camouflage clothes Neoma had given her.

  She followed the men as they slid the mattress down the stairs and out the back door and lugged it to the huge bonfire near the sweat lodge. There were other mattresses burning on it along with chairs and tables, and its flames transformed the faces of the people standing around it, making them look strange and savage.

  She walked to Bloody Joe’s cabin and tossed the bag with her camouflage clothes in the back of his Santa Fe. Shane’s Jeep was parked farther down the row, and she was lifting her suitcase into the back of it when Shane stepped out of his cabin carrying two duffle bags.

  “I’m very glad you’re coming with me,” he said. “I promise I’ll do my best to keep you safe and comfortable.”

  She smiled and kissed him lightly on the lips but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Yesterday evening’s hush was gone. People were talking and laughing as they bustled around, loading cars and carrying junk to the bonfire. Amy heard snatches of conversation as she returned to the house, but nobody seemed to be talking about what they were going to be doing in a few hours. They were making jokes, asking if anybody wanted this tea kettle or that set of dishes, complaining about the heat, and saying that they sure wouldn’t miss this goddamn place and these goddamn mosquitoes.

  She held open the back door for Red and Ivan, who were now bringing out Neoma’s box springs. Neoma was downstairs running a vacuum cleaner, but she shut it off when she saw Amy.

  “Your Mossberg’s on the table,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  It had been strapped on Scotty’s back when the herky-jerky killed him, but Amy didn’t care about that. A gun was a gun. She checked to make sure it was loaded. It was, and the box of shells sat beside it.

  “Are you going to burn this nice table?” she asked.

  “No, it came with the house. We’ll scrub it down to get rid of fingerprints.”

  “I’ll go ahead and do that.”

  “There’s no sense doing it before we’re ready to leave. Somebody might touch it again. I think everything’s out of the upstairs bathroom, so you can start scrubbing up there. Then do my bedroom after it’s cleared out. There’s a bucket under the kitchen sink. And don’t forget to do all the doorknobs upstairs, every surface that somebody might have touched.”

  Amy was glad to have something mundane to do, just to keep her nerves busy. By the time she was done with the bathroom Neoma’s bedroom was empty except for Amy’s revolver and sword, which lay in the corner where her mattress had been. When she was done cleaning the bedroom and the study, which looked even smaller with the bookcases gone, she carried the weapons downstairs and put them on the table beside her shotgun. The furniture was gone from the living room, and Neoma and Red were cleaning the woodwork.

  “Is the upstairs clean?” Neoma asked.

  “I did your room, the bathroom and the study,” Amy said. “I didn’t go in the other room.”

  “It’s already been scrubbed,” Red said.

  “Okay then, nobody goes upstairs again and nobody goes in the living room,” Neoma said. “Let’s have lunch.”

  Ivan had already fixed the sandwiches, and Amy was surprised that her appetite had returned. For some reason she felt calmer than she had last night, almost eager. She wanted to get this over and done with so she could be on the road to New Mexico with Shane.

  “Ivan, pack some sandwiches and iced tea for the woods,” Neoma said. “We’re probably going to get hungry again before dusk. Better pack some toilet paper too, for when we need to duck behind the trees.”

  When they were done eating, Amy scrubbed the dining room table and the other surfaces in the room that anyone may have touched while the others worked on the kitchen.

  “Last call for the downstairs bathroom,” Neoma said.

  Amy used it and then asked Neoma to come in and help her spread on her ointment. And then there was nothing left to do. Amy tied two protection bags around her neck, grabbed her weapons and the box of shells, and followed Neoma out the back door, holding the screen door open with the barrel of her shotgun so she wouldn’t need to touch it.

  Leo and Siliang were sitting at the picnic tables and Bloody Joe was poking the bonfire with a rake. Nobody was adding any more fuel to it now, but it still had plenty to keep it alive.

  “Okay, let’s hit the road,” Neoma said.

  Amy climbed in the front of the Santa Fe beside Bloody Joe so she could direct him when they got close to Ebbing Road. But it was a long while before that happened. When Shane had led her to the camp, she had assumed he was deliberately trying to confuse her with unnecessary turns, but the way out was just as circuitous—narrow gravel back roads led to more narrow back roads. The camp was located deep in the hinterlands, and she was surprised that even demons had been able to find it.

  Finally Bloody Joe turned right onto Wellman Road, just north of Clarkton. Amy’s relative calm had been wearing off with each mile, and now it was completely gone. She could feel her heart pounding, and her hands shook as she raised them every minute or two to make sure the protection bags hanging around her neck were secure. Only a few miles of pitted road to go now, and she desperately wished that Neoma would come to her senses and tell Bloody Joe to turn around. What good would it do to kill Sandoval and a few of his men? There would still be plenty of evil bastards in the world.

  She saw Ebbing Road up ahead and told Bloody Joe to slow down and look for the turnoff on the left just after this field. He found it and turned, and then they were slowly bumping along the dirt path between the two corn fields, and she knew there was no turning back. In a few more hours either she’d be dead or she’d be a wanted criminal.

  Bloody Joe turned right at the lane, crept along it to the driveway of the deserted farmhouse, and turned left onto Ebbing Road. Billy’s house soon appeared on their right, and Amy stared at it as they turned into the long driveway, thinking how strange it was that her childhood home was about to become the site of a battle that would forever change her life. As they bumped down the lane toward the woods, she wondered how often she and Billy had fought pretend battles there against all sorts of desperados.

  As soon as they reached the woods, Neoma told Bloody Joe to get out and examine the tire tracks. “See if there’s anything more recent than a week ago,” she said. “Shane was here Tuesday morning.”

  He got out, inspected the ground for a couple minutes, and came back. “Old tracks,” he said. “Must be Shane.”

  “Then it looks like we got lucky,” Neoma said. “Apparently Sandoval doesn’t know the mazzikin was killed here. Otherwise he would’ve sent someone out to investigate. Okay, pull in far enough that the car’s well hidden.”

  Bloody Joe drove a little ways and parked the same place where Amy had parked the day of the sacrifice.

  “Don’t slam the doors,” Neoma said. “If you need to talk do it quietly. Sound carries out here.”

  “You don’t need to tell a Cherokee how to be quiet,” Bloody Joe said.

  They got out and changed into their camouflage clothes, Amy and Neom
a on one side of the Santa Fe and the men on the other. They strapped on their swords and other weapons. Everyone had a long gun and a sidearm except Bloody Joe, who just had a knife and sword at his waist and a bow and a quiver full of arrows on his back.

  “Where are your guns?” Neoma asked.

  “Didn’t bring ‘em,” he said. “Too goddamn noisy.”

  The others explored the woods while he sat in the car and used the rearview mirror to paint his face. The place was deserted, just as it had been this morning when Amy spirit-traveled. When she returned to the car, Bloody Joe looked like a part of the woods himself, his face painted to blend invisibly with any bush or branch.

  “Do mine,” she said.

  When he was done, she didn’t recognize herself in the mirror. Her hair and face were green and brown with twigs and leaves painted on her forehead and cheeks.

  Neoma sent Siliang to watch the opening to the lane and sent Bloody Joe to examine the ridge above Ebbing’s field to determine the best spots for the snipers to hide. He returned and said, “The deer stand’s no good—any damn fool can see you up there. Two of them can hide behind the dead tree on the knoll. For the other two we can drag some branches and pile them around a big rock off to the left.”

  Neoma answered her cellphone, which was set to vibrate, and said, “Siliang says the second car is coming up the lane.”

  A minute later Lucky’s Explorer parked behind the Santa Fe, and he, Shane, Nyx, John, and Brook got out. Neoma told them to get their camo on, and Nyx said, “Where’s the dressing room? I don’t want these pervs looking at my ass.”

  “Put a lid on that shit,” Neoma said. “No unnecessary talking.”

  While the second group changed, the first group dragged fallen branches to the crest of the ridge and piled them around a rock just to the left of the deer stand. It was only 3:45 and Sandoval’s men probably wouldn’t show up till an hour or so before dusk, but Neoma told John and Lucky to take their positions on the ridge and watch the field. “Remember to keep the covers on your scopes until you need them,” she said.

  Lucky kissed his rifle and said, “You hear that, sweetheart? You need to keep your blindfold on for a little while, but when it comes off you’re gonna stuff some big fat turkeys with .220 Swift dressing.”

  “Yeah, and I bet you’re gonna be the first turkey to get stuffed,” Nyx said.

  Ivan’s 4Runner arrived, and after the people in it had put on their camouflage Neoma called everyone together except John and Lucky, who were watching the field, and Siliang, who was still watching the opening to the lane.

  “Shane, Ivan, Leo, and Bloody Joe, I want you to guard the snipers,” she said. “They’re our golden boys tonight, and I want them safe even if everyone else gets killed. Keep far enough back from the ridge so no one down in the field can see you.”

  “Let me guard them too,” Manda said. “One of those snipers happens to be my husband, and I’d kind of like to get him back in one piece.”

  “Okay, you can take Bloody Joe’s place. The rest of us will spread out and patrol the rest of perimeter. Since we can’t be yelling or using whistles, we’ll have to depend on our cellphones if there’s trouble. If there’s anybody’s number that you don’t already have in your phone, get it in there before we go.”

  “How the hell are they supposed to kill demons if they’re all yacking on the phone?” Nyx said.

  “Shut up, Nyx,” Neoma said. “You and Brook go take your sniper positions now, and I don’t want any talking over there. The rest of you stay inside the trees and brush while you’re patrolling in case someone’s watching from a field or hilltop. You’ll probably be out there till the fireworks are over, so if you’re going to want something to eat or drink you better take it with you.”

  Amy filled a canteen with iced tea and stuffed a sandwich and a big wad of toilet paper in her pants pocket. Neoma sent her to the north sector, which was the high ridge above the deep hollow. Though she was pretty sure nobody was hiding in the wilderness across the chasm, she did her best to keep that nobody from spotting her, often having to crouch behind brush since trees were spindly and sparse out here at the rocky edge of the woods.

  She was more worried about demons than people. Manda had said that demons were good at hiding but couldn’t hide their smell, so Amy was using her nose as much as her eyes to hunt for them. The trouble was that the whole woods stank. The ground was still soft from the torrential rain Sunday night, and everywhere she looked something was rotting and stinking. Deep swampy puddles reeked of pond scum and decomposing vegetation, thick fallen branches were covered with smelly orange fungus that looked like huge ogre ears, and it seemed every twenty feet or so she smelled another dead animal, many of them probably birds knocked out of their nests by the storm. All of the stenches made her think of spoiled cabbage, Limburger cheese, rotten eggs, dead rats, and demons.

  But her eyes spotted none. Since there were five people patrolling, Amy’s path wasn’t very long, and she soon reached the west end of it. Red was patrolling the next sector, and she saw him walking toward her in the distance. She headed back east, and when she reached that end she saw Leo standing with his arms crossed, guarding the snipers.

  Time passed slowly, and the silence of the woods began to eat away at her nerves. She didn’t want to wait any longer; she wanted the fireworks to begin so they could finally be over. It shouldn’t be too hard for four snipers to shoot thirteen men all gathered in a tight circle. She pictured what it would be like when the last shot was fired, Sandoval and his coven all dead. Her cellphone would vibrate with a message from Neoma: “Done.” They’d all hurry back to the cars and get out of there as fast as their wheels could carry them. Probably they’d change out of their camo on the way back to the camp, laughing with relief as they wiped paint off their faces with toilet paper. At the camp they’d all get in their own cars and speed away in their own different directions, and she’d be speeding away with Shane to a new life.

  Finally the sun became noticeably lower in the west, and she was thinking that if Sandoval’s men wanted to get their protection circle made before dusk they’d probably need to get started pretty soon. A moment later her phone vibrated with a text message from Neoma: “Colby says 5 SUVs just left house.”

  She realized that if she wanted to eat anything before the shooting started, she’d better do it now. She sat on a log behind a bush and gnawed at her sandwich, but the ham and Swiss seemed to have no flavor and the bread was so dry that she had to wash each bite down with a sip from her canteen.

  Something kept bothering her about Neoma’s text message, and it took her a while to figure out what. The message said that five SUVs had just left Sandoval’s house, but the day when they sacrificed Jerry Jefferson there had been just four of them, and she wondered why they needed five tonight.

  She was thinking about this when the corner of her eye noticed a bright glint in the woods across the chasm. She threw down what was left of the sandwich, hunkered down lower behind the bush, and watched.

  The sun was to her left and a bit behind her, where it shouldn’t shine off her binoculars, so she put them to her eyes and carefully searched the woods on the other side of the hollow but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. After a few minutes she called Neoma.

  “I’m coming over,” Neoma said. “Keep hidden and keep looking.”

  Several minutes later she heard Neoma creeping up behind her. “I’m over here,” Amy whispered.

  Neoma crouched beside her behind the bush and peered through her own binoculars. “Are you sure you saw something?” she asked after a while.

  “Yeah. Something flashed like light off a lens.”

  “Have you been smelling anything funny?” Neoma whispered. “Manda’s called me twice now saying she smells Limburger cheese.”

  “That’s what she said in the barn yesterday,” Amy said. “What if there really was a listener in the barn that overheard our plans?”

  “Wel
l, we didn’t find one, did we?” Neoma said. “It’s just nerves, like Lucky said. That’s probably why you think you saw something.”

  “I did see something, and I’ve been smelling stuff too, but this whole damn place stinks so it’s hard to tell what I’m smelling.”

  Neoma’s phone vibrated. She answered it and after a while said, “Okay then, keep me posted as soon as anything changes.”

  She put her phone away and said, “Brook says one gray SUV just arrived, but it hasn’t come into the field yet. It’s parked at the end of Ebbing’s lane with its engine shut off.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Amy said. “The last time there were four SUVs, and they were all parked in the field not far from the tree. They need them close to where they make their circle because they have equipment to move and of course Sandoval’s wheelchair.”

  “They’re probably just waiting for the others,” Neoma said. “They probably got held up.”

  Amy looked through her binoculars again and distinctly saw a man dressed in gray standing beside a big tree across the chasm. He was holding a rifle.

  “Shit!” she said. “Somebody’s over there.”

  Neoma raised her binoculars but before she could have a look her phone vibrated. She was the next one to say, “Shit,” and when she hung up she said, “It’s an ambush. Siliang sees vehicles approaching the woods from the lane.”

  She and Amy started running across the woods towards the lane, and that’s when the demons appeared.

  Chapter 17

  Harpies swooped down from the treetops screeching, and while Amy was swinging her sword at them she heard a sound behind her and saw two listeners racing toward her on all fours like huge slimy gray dogs with no fur, long fangs glistening in their wide grinning mouths. She cleaved one of them in two with her sword, and Neoma beheaded the other.