And Then There Was Darkness

by Greg Dragon

  There was a knocking on the door, and Alysia’s heart went into her throat. The man was asking them to open up, but the chill he was giving off was telling, and they knew that the demon was with him. Jaime stood still at the side of the door, his tanned, handsome face drawn taut by his determination as he held the gun to his side, ready for the demon to kick it in.

  The waiting went on for many moments until Jaime got impatient and motioned for Alysia to get behind him. He pulled open the door, and a slashed up, bloody Debdan sauntered in with the chill wrapped about him, and his mouth open in a cruel smile that revealed his intent. Where his eyes used to be stood black voids with deep red centers that glowed like lively embers. He had become something vile and corrupt, and the cold made Alysia think that it had something to do with the demon from the woods.

  “No, not you buddy. Not you,” Jaime mumbled as he held his gun up, trembling, but Debdan was no longer in that body and Alysia recognized this. She stepped through the crippling cold and kicked him square in the chest, causing him to fall back outside of Jaime’s house and onto the street.

  Screams were everywhere within the bunker as similar creatures to Debdan began to pop up and terrorize the unarmed citizenship. “We are about to be massacred!” Alysia shouted at Jaime, and her mind ran back to her father who laid helpless in the clinic, weak and vulnerable to the world.

  “What happened to Debdan, CeeCee?” Jaime desperately asked. “We’re supposed to be cut off from them down here. Did we get breached, or did one of you bring it in?” he asked, frantically trying to make sense of his friend’s condition.

  “The cold says it all, Jaime, and this is not the time to point fingers. We need to save these people and find the source. I think the demon that ran away from us managed to come down here.”

  She ran into her house and collected her gear, quickly slipping on the sword and scabbard and strapping her pistol to her leg. She had let her hair out for many days now, but she pulled it back into a ponytail, using the shoelaces from her damaged boots to tie it in place. When she was finished she sent a text to Tracy to let her know the situation. She then walked back outside to collect Jaime.

  He was struggling with Debdan at his door, unable to hurt him but reeling from the chill that emitted from his body. Alysia walked up and kicked Debdan in the side, forcing him to release Jaime. She struggled with the urge to draw her sword, remembering how frightened the demon huntress was of its edge, but she didn’t know if Debdan was still in that body or if he was gone from them forever.

  If he was still in there somewhere she would be a murderer, and the thought of killing another person made her hesitate in her action. Debdan stood up and rushed at her, but she pulled her blade free to hold him off. The edge glinted in the flashing light of the malfunctioning ceiling, giving presence to the hard work she had put into sharpening it during the week. She circled him until his back was to Jaime’s door, then she nodded to Jaime and he tackled him back inside the home where Alysia quickly pulled him off.

  Jaime closed the door and Alysia used the hilt of her sword to bash in the fuse box which allowed the door to be operated. Debdan became a prisoner inside of Jaime’s home, and Alysia took Jaime to the side to talk to him.

  “Jaime, look, we’re not even sure if that’s really Debdan. So don’t freak out on me when I really need you to be yourself.”

  “It’s cool, I got it, CeeCee,” he said. “Just wasn’t expecting that guy to look like that. Then the fact that he was coming at me was just a lot to process. I’m good now, let’s go get this b—”

  “You can’t take that,” Alysia said, pointing to the guns that he was cocking.

  “Why the hell not?” he asked, looking at her as if she was crazy.

  “Jaime, we’re in an underground bunker. There are innocent people inside of houses that the bullets from one of our guns would shred through easily. What about little Maria and her mom? The ones that stay near Tracy. What if you shoot at the demon and miss? Your bullet could hit someone like them. We need weapons that are not going to hurt innocent people. I have a feeling that the demon is down here possessing people like Debdan, and we will be running into more like him, trying to do her will. We’re going to have to find her and finish her.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” he asked as he holstered his pistols and picked up a pipe that had broken off one of the lines that ran behind the rooms.

  “When I cut the demon girl, my blade did a number on her. She had retreated when I did that, but she was healing when she did it,” Alysia said.

  “So this thing can heal wounds that we deal to it? Why the hell did it run then, if it’s invincible?”

  “I think that it isn’t invincible. I think that if we do enough damage to her, she will die. We just have to make sure that she can’t run while we do it.

  “How do you handle the cold?” Jaime asked.

  “The cold sucks. It’s meant to paralyze you, but if we focus on killing it, we can push through.”

  Jaime nodded his head and took the lead as he started down the dark road that separated the rows of bunker houses. People were locked inside of them tight, and Alysia noticed that Tracy’s room was dark, as well as Angelica’s. I wonder where they could be, she thought, and then quickened her pace to catch up with Jaime, whose long legs were marching along quickly as if time was of the essence.

  They walked past many locked doors, and soldiers darted this way and that as Jaime led them down the path towards the main hub of the bunker. The entire network of houses was built upon a web-like footprint that connected the different entrances that were aboveground within the city. This web of roads crisscrossed and stretched in a way that made it easy to find the center, and from this hub you could locate your main road to get back to your house. Normally it was busy with people—tons of people, walking this way and that—but with the demon loose, it was all quiet, except for the occasional sound of gunfire and people screaming.

  Alysia had never been to the center before, and as they got close to it she saw that it was set up very much like a mall. There were stores everywhere, and places for people to sit around and eat. She could see the bodies of the demon’s victims, and the temperature began to drop as they grew closer.

  “Screw the soldiers and their rules, CeeCee. Draw your blade,” Jaime said, and he pulled out his pistol, which annoyed Alysia since she thought that he had listened to her.

  “Just try not to shoot any of us with those,” she said under her breath and pulled the sword free.

  “You know, this whole time I thought that would be a samurai sword or something,” Jaime remarked, looking at Alysia’s sword curiously. “What the hell is it? Kinda looks like a blade from a lawnmower, or some sort of machete.”

  “It’s a demon killing sword that I inherited from Donald,” Alysia said.

  “Whoa, you mean the old, Asian soldier? Kick ass. Well, I hope it’s at least sharp,” Jaime replied as he rushed ahead to find the demon.

  “Oh, you better believe it is,” Alysia said.

  The air got colder as they walked past the corpse of a man who looked and smelled the same way that Debdan did. He had a bullet wound in his skull, and he was on his stomach, indicating he had been shot in the back.

  “What the hell are you two doing out? Are you crazy?” a young soldier shouted at them as he came from behind a store with his gun pointed at them. He was in the same black suit that they wore outside and had black paint around his ears. It made his blonde, spikey hair look like a geyser of straw sticking out of an all-black body. He probably thought it made him look cool, but Alysia thought he looked ridiculous.

  “I’ve fought that demon before,” Alysia replied, cutting off Jaime before he could get them in trouble.

  “What do you mean you’ve fought it before?” the soldier said as he walked up to Jaime and confiscated his pistol. “You need to get back inside and stow your weapons. You know the rules. You can’t be out he
re while we’re trying to eliminate this threat.”

  “Do you even know what ‘this threat’ is, soldier?” Alysia said as she stepped forward to stand eye to eye with him.

  “I’m not gonna tell you to move again,” he said as he moved his gun around in an aggressive way in order to intimidate them.

  “My father is a Navy Seal, and a hero to this bunker, you jerk. If you think I’m afraid of you shooting me, you must be crazier than you look. We were just out there fighting this demon when he killed one of our friends and injured my father. You may not recognize me but I was there. I’ve fought this demon before, and I know what to do to stop her.”

  The soldier looked as if he wanted to object, but after a loud scream broke the tension from a distant building, he flipped the pistol around to point the butt at Jaime, who took it back reluctantly. “You two just aim straight and be careful out here with these things. Anyone ask, you never met me, you hear?” And he took off running in the direction of the scream.

  “Let’s stay out of the road to avoid any more like him,” Alysia said with a sigh of relief, and they stepped between the nearest two houses, right in front of a large man in overall shorts with glowing red eyes.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  During the announcement for everyone to stay inside their rooms, the injured James Knight and Tracy McLeay were talking to one another within the clinic. She was sitting on his bed and holding his hand, and he was pretending to be calm after what he had heard over the loudspeaker.

  “I wonder what that means,” Tracy said when she heard it, but James showed no indication that he was worried about the announcement. In his mind, he wondered whether they were fated to lock themselves inside the clinic for however long it took the military to get things under control. It was hard being out of the fight, and he didn’t want to sit there doing nothing.

  “I really hope that it isn’t what I think it is,” he said to her and then turned his head see if she was on the same page as him.

  “You mean the demon?” she asked.

  “Yup, the demon,” he replied. “I knew we would run into her again eventually, but if she managed to come down here then we have us a problem. See, we were worried about the giant and those other demons coming in here causing a bunch of ruckus and whatnot. But that demon, she can freeze people, slash people up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she could fly and disappear, too.”

  Tracy didn’t know what to think. She looked around to see if there was anything that could become a weapon in the event of the demon finding them, but all she saw was medical equipment, chairs, tables and trash bins; all of the mundane things that comprised a living area. She got up and walked to the kitchen area to see if there were any knives and she found two long ones. I wonder what effect these will have on that demon and her freezing cloud of darkness.

  She remembered what Alysia was able to do with her sword and her confidence in the knives grow. She brought them over to the bed and slid one under James’s covers. The big man took it and held it next to him, thanking her silently as he lay there considering their options.

  Tracy walked over to the door to try it and was quite surprised to find that she could unlock it and peer outside.

  “So, they didn’t lock us in,” she said. “Do they really expect us to listen to what we’ve been told without question? Well that’s gonna be a problem. I mean, people have a hard enough time listening as it is. I imagine there are a couple fools out there right now, running about and getting themselves messed up by this demon while the soldiers try to shoot past them to hit the actual target. Jimmy, this is a disaster. They’re gonna need our help since we know what to do against that thing and they don’t.”

  “I agree,” James said. “But I think we need more than knives to do anything worthwhile.”

  “Yeah, and you’re in no condition to be running around looking for disappearing demons yourself.”

  “You underestimate me,” he said to her and got up off the bed and pulled the tubes out of his arms. He then made to stand up to show her just how ready he was, but when his bare feet touched the cold ground he stumbled into her arms. He didn’t realize just how weak he was after not being up and about for so long, and Tracy tried her best to help him up. After looking at her and shaking his head, he moved away and stood up by himself, trying not to wince despite the pain that spread throughout his entire body.

  “We need a plan,” he said. “We can’t just run out there all willy-nilly, looking to hunt this demon down or we will suffer the same fate that everyone else out there will. We have the advantage of having fought her before, so what do you think? What should we do?”

  “Well,” Tracy said. “We know she can be hurt, so that’s a bonus. She ran away from us when our bullets hit her but she healed and you saw what Alysia was able to do with Donald’s sword. But I’m assuming she healed from that, too. That’s gonna be the one thing we’re going to have to figure out to get to her.”

  “That thing seems to heal from anything that comes at it so we need to keep applying pressure,” James said. “We can’t allow it to heal. I think it runs away because it needs time to get the bullets out, and to regenerate limbs and whatnot from the cuts. In here, it’s all walls except for our exits, but we can seal off those exits and put constant damage on it. If we work together it’ll go down; we just have to get everybody on the same page as us.”

  “I think you’re onto something there,” Tracy said, “but you see how these houses are laid out. It’s not going to be easy to stop her from escaping, not when it’s just the two of us.”

  “That’s the thing though; it ain’t just the two of us. I’m sure these guys running around out there trying to get this thing under control are open to suggestions. No telling how many people already died for them to sound off an alarm like that. But if we can get them to block off the exits for this evil chick and all of us together pump bullets into her, I think we can stop her. If she doesn’t die, at least she’ll be too weak to do anything, and we can contain her and, I don’t know, maybe … maybe one of the scientists down here can take a look at her and figure out what the hell we’re dealing with.”

  “I still have a hard time believing that she is some kind of supernatural demon or that those giants are actual giants or those dinosaur things are whatever they are. I still think this is some sort of genetic experimentation gone wrong and there’s an actual person behind all this. Some sort of enemy to the United States, you know what I mean?” Tracy said to him as she walked over and checked to make sure that he wasn’t hurt anywhere.

  James nodded his head and looked at her intently. “Yeah, I hear you, Trace. There is definitely something else going on.”

  “You know I’m not religious, so I don’t believe in angels and demons, plus even if that was the case … I have yet to see an angel in all of this,” she said.

  “Well we do have some things flying around out there,” James joked and Tracy shook her head at him as if she was unimpressed.

  “Okay, it sounds like we have a plan,” she said and he walked over to the storage that sat inside the kitchen to collect his things. “I’m just gonna change and gear up so I’ll see you outside,” he said to her, and Tracy nodded at him and walked outside, shutting the door behind her as she held the knife to her chest.

  Carmichael, the medic, was outside of his room staring at the wall as if there was something there to stare at. Tracy watched him as he stood there and then the deep chill of cold that emitted from his body came over her, causing her to shiver uncontrollably. She stood staring at him, wondering why he was giving off this temperature. She thought it might have been the demon disguised in his likeness, trying to pull her close so that she could finish the job that she started back in the woods.

  “What are you?” Tracy announced, and set herself into a fighting stance with the knife held up in a guard position, waiting for the demon to strike at her. Carmichael turned around and looked at her and the deep
dark pits that were his eyes held tiny orbs of red that glowed bright. She looked for intelligence inside of those crimson orbs but found nothing but hate and confusion.

  He screamed at her, and it was a loud guttural scream that froze her where she stood. What the hell has happened to him? she wondered, and when he lunged towards her she slashed the knife at his face left and then right, leaving lines of blood wherever it struck.

  “Thank God, you bleed!” she shouted at him, too fired up to contain herself.

  Carmichael retreated, holding his face, and this made Tracy pause as she thought he might still be human. When he had attacked her and she countered, the knife was not sharp enough to do immense damage on his face. But it had made its point and he backed down, looking at her angrily as he touched his wounds. He screamed and came at her even more violently this time. On nothing but instinct, Tracy stepped out of the way and brought the knife down between his neck and shoulder blade, then pulled it out and shanked him again in his back.

  Screams continued as he kept trying to get at her but she kept slashing and stabbing at him. This went on for a good five minutes and when Tracy was tired and the doctor was desperate, he made one final lunge which resulted in him becoming impaled on her outstretched knife.

  Carmichael fell from the fatal wound, and from his mouth poured a black, ink-like substance that kept on pouring as he lay there. There was so much of it coming out that Tracy wondered how it was that he had that much inside of him. His skin, which used to be a golden brown, turned pale and dry as he lay there. He became the image of an old corpse lying inside a puddle of thick, black oil.

  When James came out of the clinic and saw the mess, he looked at Tracy breathing heavily and put the situation together as best he could. “What the hell happened to the doctor?” he asked, and Tracy showed him the bloody knife and shook her head.