by A. P. Fuchs
In a loud whoosh, Nathaniel’s sword lit up in flame, its fire bright and hot. He removed his shield from his back, guarded himself, then spun around and faced Billie. In one swift motion he plunged his sword into the ground and drew a semicircle in front of her. Everyplace the tip of the blade touched, a wall of flame sprang upward to the ceiling.
Billie’s world went orange and she was shielded from the demons.
The wall of fire was so bright she could barely see. She raised her hand over her eyes to help but its fiery power was so intense her efforts didn’t matter. Just then, the wall of flame dimmed and went partly transparent; she could see into the room beyond as if through orange and yellow glass.
Nathaniel stood amidst the demons, a pillar of strength yet also serenity. He immediately drew up his sword and cut off the wings of the first demon to buzz by him. The creature fell to the ground and skidded to a halt several feet away. In a blur of motion, Nathaniel leapt over to it and plunged his sword into the creature’s back. The demon squealed then burst into black smoke.
More came at him. Nathaniel lashed out with his blade, spun, and sliced through many at once. A moment later his shield was in front of him as he blocked the sharp talons of a demon that had moved for his throat. He brought his sword up then down and cleaved the creature in two.
A haunting face appeared just on the other side of the orange fire wall and Billie jumped back. The creature’s pale gray eyes and snapping sharp teeth made her cringe, especially when the demon kept driving itself against the fire wall like a determined killer bee only to be rejected each time. Four more flew down and landed beside it, each one fixated on trying to break through the barrier Nathaniel had set up for her.
Billie screamed.
Nathaniel glanced her way. His feet left the ground and he flew beside the demons and removed the legs of all five of them before slamming his blade home through each of them in turn. Bursts of black smoke temporarily removed him from view as he destroyed them.
Del, she thought. He had to be around here somewhere, but each of the demons looked the same from where she was standing. To set him apart . . .
She kept her back to the wall, wanting to keep as much distance from herself and the forces of evil as she could.
Suddenly a black, scaly and taloned hand reached through the wall behind her and wrapped itself around her mouth.
22
El Camino Roadtrip
Even through the El Camino’s glass, Joe heard the gunshots on the air. He searched the street and the sidewalk for Tracy. Dust still hovered on the air, however it was beginning to settle, making it much easier to see than before. He honked the horn a few times, hoping to get her attention.
Another gunshot. It sounded like it came to the left. Joe kept his eyes that way, searching for any sign of her. He didn’t want to drive too fast and accidentally miss her, but going too slow would also be dangerous because it’d give any of the undead close to the car a chance to jump on.
Joe drove around abandoned cars and vans, took a right at the next street and headed down it. Another gunshot banged on the air, this one fainter than the last. He hit the brakes, popped the El Camino into reverse, did a U-turn and headed back the other way.
A couple of zombies shambled down the street. It was difficult to tell if they noticed him or not. It didn’t matter. He pressed on the gas and slammed into the nearest one. The corpse’s body thudded against the front bumper, flopped onto the hood, then rolled off to the side. Joe steered to the left and took out the next one, this time with a little more speed. The zombie hit the front bumper then the hood in one seeming fluid motion before rolling off to the side like its kin. Joe couldn’t help but grin.
A gunshot rang out, close and to the left. He took the next available street and went down it. The undead were thick up ahead, a good twenty of them or more. They were focused on something and he knew that something was Tracy.
“The trick now is to get in there somehow and get her out,” he said to himself.
Joe floored the pedal and headed for the zombies. A head-on collision would spell disaster for the El Camino so instead of slamming into them straight on, he waited until he was close to them then swung the wheel hard to the right, causing the car to turn sharply. The left side of the car plowed into the undead like a baseball bat, taking out many of them not just at the beginning, but in the follow-through as well. He pressed on the brakes and backed up, searching through the glass for Tracy.
He went past the dead then came back at them again, riding over the fallen dead like over rocky terrain, hitting more with the front of the car. Bodies hit the hood, denting it. A couple slammed into the windshield, their snarling mouths and white eyes reminding Joe why he hated them so much. He went in reverse again and shook off as many of the undead as he could. A couple hung onto the hood by the windshield wipers with everything they had. Joe drove close again to the rest of the zombies, hit park, then jumped out and blasted the heads off the undead still on the car while being careful to not aim square at the hood, but rather just over it so the bullets wouldn’t hit the engine.
Zombies shambled toward him. Joe kissed the end of the X-09 and shot the faces off two more undead. He avoided the grabbing hands of another, popped a bullet into the back of the thing’s skull, then kicked another as he ran past more, calling out for Tracy.
Joe dropped another three zombies and rounded the back of an abandoned hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant.
Careful not to get himself surrounded with no way out, Joe ran in a wide zigzag pattern to help scatter the undead.
“Hey!” The female voice was hoarse and tired.
Tracy was in the parking lot beside the restaurant, running from the zombies.
“Over here!” Joe called back.
“I know.”
He rolled his eyes and took out a couple zombies trailing her with the X-09.
When she caught up to him, she could barely speak she was so out of breath. “Lo—lots.”
“I know.”
She must have took it as a smart Alec response to her using the same words just a moment ago because she smacked his arm open-palm and not in a playful way.
“No, not—” he started. “Forget it.” He capped off a few zombies that had gotten too close for comfort. “This way.”
Joe took her by the arm and the two ran back in the direction of the El Camino. He hoped the engine was still running and the zombies hadn’t done anything to the car. He couldn’t remember if he had left the door open or not.
“You have a gun, right?” he asked her.
She took a deep swallow before answering. “Yeah. Down to one. Dropped the other.”
“Use it!”
Tracy raised the weapon and took a good look at it. What was wrong with her? A zombie killer not using a gun?
“Come on!” Joe said and fired off a few shots behind them.
They rounded to the side of the building. A crowd of the undead stood between them and the El Camino.
Joe slowed down to give himself enough distance between him and the zombies so he could unload shots into their skulls without running right into them.
An Asian zombie ambled toward them. Tracy took that one out. Another one, a guy with really white skin and no nose came in from the side. Joe sunk a bullet into his skull via his ear.
They ran over the undead bodies littering the ground, only stumbling a few times. Joe took the barrel of the X-09 across the face of one zombie, getting himself enough time to turn, drop down on one knee, and shoot the head off another. He caught Tracy doing something similar in his peripheral, but working against three zombies. Two went down rather easily but the third she missed and only pegged its shoulder.
“I’m out!” she said.
Joe ran and jumped on the zombie’s back just as it tried to grab hold of her. He wrestled it to the ground, punched it in the back of the head and neck, then shoved the X-09’s barrel against the base of the zombie’s skull and pulled the trigger. Bone and
blood sprayed upward. Its rotten stench made him gag and he couldn’t help but spit out a small bit of puke.
He got to his feet.
More undead came.
They couldn’t get to the car.
Anger boiling his blood, he called to Tracy, “Run. This way. Just run.”
The two ran away from the vehicle as fast as they could. Side by side, they stood, waiting for the undead, which were about thirty or so feet away. Joe shot as many as he could, but more zombies came out of the alleyways and from the adjoining streets.
“We can’t stand here,” Tracy said.
“I know. Just need to get some distance between them and the car.” He turned to her. “You didn’t happen to notice if the engine was still running, did you?”
She shook her head. “It better be. Be stupid to try and get into—”
Joe fired off another shot, cutting her off.
“How close to do you want to cut this?” she asked.
“As close as we can.”
Joe felt his legs getting jittery, so he slightly bent at the knees and readied himself to start sprinting with all he had. “Head to the passenger door when I say go, ’kay?”
“Got it.”
The X-09 sounded a couple more times. An undead toddler fell before a heavier zombie and instead of tripping over it like Joe expected, the big dead man just hoofed it like a football and continued on.
Joe sent the big man to the ground with a bullet between the eyes.
“Now, go!” he said, and he and Tracy ran as fast they could around the zombies, one to the left, the other to the right. At first the zombies hesitated, seemingly not knowing what to do.
Go, go, go, Joe told himself. Push it. He dug in his heels despite the burning in his thighs.
He and Tracy reached the El Camino. The door had been left open. Joe jumped into the driver’s seat, closed the door and aimed the X-09 through the driver’s side glass at the approaching zombie horde beyond. The engine was still running. Tracy pulled the undead body off the passenger seat, grimaced at the blood, then got in and closed the door.
“Gun it!” she said.
Joe put the pedal to the metal and drove headlong into a half dozen undead that took up the road in front of them. Their decaying bodies left the pavement on impact and half of them got onto the hood while the other three fell by the wayside.
“Give me the gun,” Tracy said, hand held out for the X-09.
“You shoot through that glass,” Joe said, nodding at the windshield, “and we got nothing between us and them.”
“Not exactly what I had in mind.” He gave her the weapon and Tracy shifted in her seat. “Just don’t go too fast.”
She leaned out the window and fired off several shots into the zombies.
“Don’t hit the engine,” Joe said. He didn’t know if she heard him because she didn’t respond.
Zombie skulls burst open across the windshield. Blood coated the glass.
“Great,” he said, now only able to see in between the black spatters of undead blood.
Joe slammed on the breaks, the sudden change in inertia enough to force the dead zombies to slide off the hood and fall to the ground. Tracy slipped back into the car.
“Take it easy!” she said.
“Sorry.” Joe drove over the bodies and the two hit Main Street and headed away from the congestion of downtown.
“Where to?” he asked.
“We need some distance. I say keep going, if you can.”
Joe weaved around the stalled vehicles cluttering the road and did his best to be mindful not to run over anything that might pop his tires or cause damage to the car.
A few lone zombies walked down the road not far from them. Joe aimed for the middle one with the vehicle.
“Don’t,” Tracy said.
“Why?”
“You hit him this hard at this speed and you’ll bust the windshield. Besides” —she bobbed her head side-to-side, peering through the bloody splotches on the glass— “you can barely see as it is.”
Joe tried the windshield wipers, but they made it worse. “Where’s the—” He pressed on the brakes, not wanting to hit the zombies up ahead while doing this, and found the windshield washer fluid knob. “There.” There was still fluid and a few squirts was all it took to clear the glass of the syrupy black blood smeared across his line of sight.
“That stuff’s greasy,” he said, more to himself than her.
“Tell me about. Ruined so many clothes thanks to that crap.”
The car hit the zombie in the middle of the pack, his speed slow enough to take the thing off its feet and preserve the car.
“Nice,” Tracy said.
“They’ve taken so much from me—” he started, but stopped himself.
“I hear ya.”
He clamped his mouth shut. If she only knew.
Joe rolled down his window and held his hand out open-palm to Tracy. She passed him the X-09. “Thanks.” He popped off a zombie standing on the corner of Cropo Funeral Chapel.
They kept going, at one point the congestion of cars so terrible he had to drive up on the median and cross over to the street going the other way to avoid them. Once able, he crossed back over.
“Can I have that?” Tracy said, nodding toward the gun.
Joe passed it to her. She, too, reached out the window and capped off a couple of zombies wandering the sidewalks. She leaned back into the car and put the gun on the seat between them.
Joe turned the radio on. Static. “Mind flipping through the stations? AM and FM.”
“There’s nothing on, Joe.”
“Thought maybe here . . .”
“We’ve tried. Once the major stations went down, the army took over the radio. Then they went out, too. For a short period there were, kind of, what, pirate radio guys that took over the stations? They broadcasted on the regular waves and the Internet, too. Now those who still do it—and there’s very few—do it on the Net only. The power isn’t out everywhere.”
“It was the same back home.”
“Yeah. I guess a few survivors used to work at Hydro and kept things going enough so others would benefit. From what I know, Manitoba Hydro is another safe house from the zombies. They must have their own little world going on in there to stay alive and keep things running enough for those of us on the outside.”
“Ever been?”
“No.”
Joe smacked into another zombie. This one’s head cracked against the windshield before tumbling off the hood to the pavement.
“But I’ve thought of it,” Tracy continued. “At the same time, don’t want to upset whatever balance they got going on over there. I’m assuming nothing’s allowed in or out, the greater good being the goal and all that. Just don’t accidentally want to cause a breach of some sort.”
Joe nodded.
They passed Chief Peguis Trail. Traffic congestion was thinning as was the presence of the undead. Joe checked the gauges. All checked out but they were at around a quarter tank of gas. It wouldn’t take them far, never mind if for whatever reason they had to double back and head to the city proper.
“Once the roads clear, we’ll pull over and come up with a plan,” Joe said.
“Sounds good.”
“Also need to figure out something for food. I’m starving.”
23
Emergence
Billie couldn’t breathe as the leathery palm covered her mouth. The thick stench of sulfur rose into her nostrils, sharp, piercing her nasal cavities.
“We don’t lose,” Del hissed from behind her.
Her back was still against the wall. Somehow, Del was reaching through it from a room on the other side. Instead of coming up beside her like she expected, he merely pulled against her face, his awesome strength pressing the back of her skull into the stone wall behind her head.
Her muffled cries were barely heard by her own ears. There was no way Nathaniel would be able to hear her beyond the wall of flame.
Eyes glazing over as her head was slowly compressed between demonic palm and stone wall, she could barely make out the golden movements of Nathaniel on the other side of the firewall, slashing his sword into the demonic hosts, bursting them into smoke.
Hands shaking, Billie reached up and grabbed Del’s hand, doing her best to dig her fingers in between his palm and her face. She managed to get them in a half inch or so, barely enough to have purchase to fully utilize her remaining strength, but she pulled anyway, doing her best to widen the gap between his hand and her mouth. Heart pounding, lungs starting to ache for air, she felt her legs go weak as she realized her efforts weren’t making a difference at all.
Del whispered into her ear, “Today you will join us in Hell. Our master has prepared a place for you. You will burn.”
Her eyes went wide at the thought of flames licking her body forever.
Nathaniel! she cried out inside. She tried speaking, but the best she could do was a muffled, “Nrrtthhhnnll.”
Head growing fuzzy, lungs pounding for oxygen, she stomped her feet on the ground as loudly as she could. She kicked at the floor, kicked back against the wall, made as much noise as possible.
God, help me! Immediately upon thinking those words, Nathaniel spun around beyond the wall of flame, his glowing white eyes fixated on her. He leapt into the air and covered the distance between them almost instantly. His bronze robe shone like the dawn, the surrounding fire reflecting like a thousand stars against him. He drew up his sword and the yellow and orange flame went bright blue and green. In one swift movement he lunged forward, the hot blade whooshing past Billie’s ear and plunging into the wall beside her head. Del’s foul screech sounded like a thousand agonizing screams. Instinctively, Billie went into panic mode. She still needed air and Del still had his reptilian hand around her mouth.
