Serpent's Sacrifice

by Trish Heinrich

Alice forced a smile on her face as she handed plastic rings to a little girl who was barely tall enough to see over the booth. All she could think of as the child’s laughter sang through the air was what would happen to her when the gas went off.

  It was then that she noticed the white and purple bag on the arm of the child’s mother.

  “What did you get?” Alice asked, nodding at the bag.

  The woman shrugged. “Just some candy and stuff. Nothing from the liquor store, cheap bastards.”

  “Nothing good, then?”

  The woman dug a small purple box out of the bag. It had a white question mark on it. “These are for the raffle apparently. Supposed to open them when it’s time and see what we win.”

  Alice swallowed and tried to smile at them as they walked away.

  She was just about to ask the man in charge of the booth if she could step away for a moment, when she saw a very familiar bald head making its way through the crowd.

  “Detective Garrick!” She waved her hand.

  He spotted her and the frown on his face deepened to a scowl.

  “Where is he?” he barked.

  “Who?”

  “You know damn well who. I gave him plenty of chances, but he crossed a line last night.”

  Alice pitched her voice low, keeping a smile on her face. “There’s bigger problems. Those bags everyone’s carrying around have gas canisters in them.”

  Garrick’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her.

  “So, Phantasm’s here?”

  She would’ve explained it all, but there just wasn’t time.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes, and if you don’t get those bags away from everyone there is going to be hundreds of panicked people running all over Jet City.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “It’s a long story and I’ll explain everything after today. But you have to do this.”

  “No, I don’t have to do anything. You and your buddies think you can be the law in this city, tell me what to do. I’m not your lap dog, and I don’t answer to you.”

  “Damn it, Garrick! All these people could die if you don’t do something.”

  “Why don’t you do it? You’re so sure.”

  Alice sighed. “I can’t.”

  “Things getting too hard for you? Should’ve stayed out of all this at the beginning. You see Steel, you make sure to tell him we’ve got a reinforced cell waiting for him.”

  “Garrick, wait!”

  But he turned his back on her and was soon lost in the crowd.

  “That was quite the display,” said a voice behind her.

  She stared in horror at Gerald’s dark, grinning face.

  “I called and told you to stay away, what are you doing here?”

  “If I didn’t show up, she’d know something was going on. And I’m guessing you need her not to suspect,” he said.

  “When the canisters go off—”

  He took a gas mask box identical to the ones Rose made for them out of his pocket.

  “I’ll be ready. Besides, it’s my neighborhood. I’m their doctor, I should be here.”

  “That’s brave and incredibly stupid,” she said.

  “Being a hero usually is.”

  She laughed at that. “Please, be careful. It’s going to be chaos.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve been in combat before.”

  As the minutes ticked into hours, Alice grew increasingly impatient. Every sound that rose above the crowd noise, every squeal from the dunk tank or the face-painting booth made her muscles tense with readiness. She was sweating through her pink, sleeveless shirt, and even though the Serpent suit wouldn’t be any cooler, Alice couldn’t wait to be doing more than smiling at people who could be dead any minute.

  A loud bell rang three times, followed by Victoria’s sweet voice over the speakers.

  “Welcome, citizens of Jet City, residents of Park Side. It’s my great pleasure to celebrate the opening of your new, expanded neighborhood clinic.”

  Feeble applause followed this greeting as anyone with a bag surged toward the stage.

  Seeing her chance, Alice grabbed her large purse and wove through the people moving toward the stage. When she finally made her way out of the booths, Alice was facing the apartments that had been built up against the wall of the old paper mill. This part of the grounds was virtually deserted so she darted down one of the narrow alleys, hoping no one saw her.

  She’d just snapped her gauntlets securely in place when Marco stepped down from the fire escape overhead.

  “It’s in the purple and white bags,” she said. “She’s having them carry it around like a prize.”

  “I know. There’s also some in the buildings, probably for those who had gone home or didn’t come at all.”

  “She’s thorough, I’ll give her that. Where’s Steel?”

  “He’s watching on the roof top of that apartment on the end. Serpent...” Marco’s eyebrows knit together, thin lips pursing a little. “I’m worried about him. He’s...tense.”

  “We all are.”

  “Yeah, but...this is different.”

  She met his dark stare and felt her mouth go dry. They needed Lionel, but if he couldn’t control himself…

  “I’ve got extra clips, I can knock him out if I need to. I’ll save the rest for any of Phantasm’s men.”

  Marco opened his mouth to say something when terrified screams rang out through the neighborhood.

  Alice felt her stomach drop and her body start to shake with adrenaline. Snapping their masks in place they ran the short distance straight ahead toward the food carts.

  Thick plumes of gas billowed out from the crowds. Alice glanced back and saw the windows in the building they’d just ran from start to spew gas as well. People began to rush from the booths, some of them cowering as they screamed at invisible horrors. Others began laughing hysterically. That is, until some of the more terrified people began attacking them.

  Alice froze, her mind struggling to take it all in. Who did she try and save? Where were the children she’d seen? Could the police help them or would they start attacking as well?

  More people staggered from the cloudy gas, their dazed eyes falling on Marco and Alice. Snarls and screams of rage escaped from their lips and they rushed them.

  Alice dodged back to escape the slice of a knife. The man holding the knife swiped at her face and she brought her gauntlet up to block it, then kicked him in the gut twice. He fell to his knees and she punched him across the face. As he fell, a woman tackled Alice to the ground, and she realized with horror that it was the mother she’d spoken to only a few hours earlier. The woman raked her nails across Alice’s cheek, drawing blood.

  Bringing her legs up and around the woman’s torso, Alice flipped her onto her side and kicked her across the face. She saw the woman’s nose shatter and her eyes close in blessed unconsciousness.

  “How the hell do we get the non-violent ones to a safe place?” Marco said, his breathing a little heavy.

  “Are you—?”

  “I’m handling it.”

  “Maybe the police barricades would be safe for them? They’ve started carrying gas masks, so maybe they aren’t affected.”

  Marco nodded.

  They looked at the impenetrable cloud of gas in front of them. They could hear screams and cries, rage filled howls, the crash of tables and equipment punctuating it all. Fear gripped Alice tight and she couldn’t move.

  “Thanks for waiting,” Lionel said, running up beside them. “Let’s get this over with.”

  His eyes stared into hers, lending Alice all the strength he could. She looked at Marco on the other side of her and took a deep breath.

  We can do this, the three of us together.

  She drew her batons and the three of them ran into the fray.

  Chaos was too mild a word for the world they found themselves in.

  People were beating each other with fists, plates, anything they could grab. One pers
on was laughing as he hit himself with what looked like a chair leg. Alice heard moaning cries and looked down to see a few cowering under tables and chairs.

  Marco’s shadows were hard to see in the thick gray of the gas. But as people began to fall silent in his wake, she knew he was at work.

  One man to her left was sitting on another as he began to slowly cut off the man’s fingers. Alice ran to him, hitting him across the face with her baton. The man fell to the side in a heap. But when she went to help the wounded man, he backhanded her.

  “Hell bitch!”

  She stumbled to a knee from the shock of the impact and didn’t see the kick coming to her stomach. Alice fell to her side and caught the man’s foot as he tried to stomp on her chest. She twisted, sending him to the ground and punching him twice until he lay quiet.

  Looking behind her, Alice gasped as a towering cloud of shadows stood above a group of people. They screamed in rage as the shadows descended on them, inky black and thick.

  She could see Marco a few feet away, duster swirling around his legs, eyes behind the mask completely black, shadows flying from his outstretched hands.

  The people became silent, and the mass shifted up, hovering there for a second like a menacing cloud. Alice watched with growing horror as the shadows spread out all around her, and began spinning. It was like being in the center of a great whirlpool as the shadows engulfed every person except for Alice and Lionel.

  She ran up to Marco just as Lionel got there. Marco was shaking, his teeth bared.

  “It’s enough!” Lionel yelled.

  “No, it’s not.” Marco’s voice was strained and low. “You don’t see it! I do! I can stop them all! I can make it go away!”

  “Stop, please!” Alice said, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Stop!”

  His gaze shifted, black eyes falling on hers. Every instinct told Alice to look away from those empty, dark holes, but she couldn’t. He needed her.

  After a moment, the shadows spun backwards into Marco, and he fell to his knees on the dry grass. He gulped air, his whole body shaking.

  “Alice,” he whispered. “I...I could’ve stopped them, but...”

  She pressed a hand to his face. “We’ll find another way.”

  “We have to move,” Lionel said.

  Alice looked up and saw shapes coming toward them, screams and laughter drifting out of the thinning gas.

  Lionel pulled Marco to his feet and ran to the left. Alice wasn’t sure where the street was, but she knew that they had to get into some kind of clearing.

  As they moved, the gas dissipated, and things became a bit clearer. But, as Alice took it all in, she wished everything was still veiled in gray.

  The dunk tank was to her right, two bodies crammed inside. She had to jump over another body, a woman whose face looked smashed in. The bubbling vats of cooking oil that had been used to make corn dogs was tipped over, a man laying next it with red and blistered skin. All around her were displays of brutality that Alice had never thought possible.

  “I don’t think there’s any way to salvage this,” Marco said.

  Alice winced as she moved her shoulder.

  “Maybe we can take out Phantasm at least.”

  “Do you think she’s still here?” Lionel asked, his eyes sweeping the area around them.

  Alice was about to answer when Lionel suddenly bolted toward the apartment buildings.

  In the small space between the booths and the buildings, Alice could see two people surrounded by a group. As one of the two began to fight, Alice recognized Gerald.

  One assailant got a kick to the gut followed closely by two punches to the face. A second man rushed him, but Gerald used the momentum to throw him over his hip and punch him. The third man jumped on his back, biting Gerald on the ear.

  Alice then realized the second person being attacked was Rose, who was wearing two gauntlets, very much like Alice’s, except they had a sheen to them like metal. She punched one man, his nose spurting blood. As another tried to grab her, she elbowed him in the throat and kicked him to the ground.

  By the time Alice, Lionel, and Marco reached them, all the assailants were down.

  “Are you alright?” Alice asked.

  Gerald nodded, blood running down his ear.

  Rose’s brown eyes sparkled at Alice, her gas mask hiding the smile Alice knew was underneath.

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “You have a strange sense of humor,” Alice said.

  Rose shrugged.

  That’s when Alice saw a half a dozen children huddled in between Rose and Gerald.

  “I need to get these kids to safety,” he said. “My clinic should be outside the radius of the gas.”

  “The end of the street is that way.” Lionel pointed to the right.

  “But there’s guards blocking the way,” Gerald said, his brown eyes hard. “They’re shooting anyone trying to escape.”

  Alice’s hands tightened on her batons, that bright hard anger flaring to life.

  “C’mon,” Lionel said, taking point.

  The rabid victims of the gas were fewer, the closer they got to the end of the street, as if they knew it would be folly to engage the dark-clad men, who Alice recognized as the security guards from earlier. They stood silent and firm, watching the chaos with a cold detachment Alice found more disturbing than what she’d just encountered.

  Behind the men, squad cars stood abandoned, one of them on fire. The bodies of officers lay sprawled out on the ground by their cars and near the men.

  As she looked more closely, Alice could see that many civilians were among the officers, and some of them were children.

  Her anger began to burn hotter, brighter. She could feel it’s power course through her limbs. She wanted to obliterate these men, drive them into the ground. But then, she took a deep breath, remembering who she was, and tried to focus that rage.

  “Stay with the kids,” she told Gerald and Rose.

  Lionel was the first to come close to the men. Two of them raised their handguns and shot him. Alice saw him twitch as the bullets impacted in his skin, but Lionel didn’t stop.

  He punched one man so hard he was lifted off the ground before falling onto his back.

  A third man raised his gun to Marco, but the shadows raced up the man’s body and his face was soon contorted with terror. He fell to the ground crying.

  Alice threw her baton at a fourth man, hitting him square in the face. She then shot him with a serpent bite and he stayed down on the ground. She heard a gun go off seconds before feeling the burning bite of the bullet go into her upper arm.

  She screamed, dropping her remaining baton.

  The man raised his gun again, but Alice tackled him to the ground before he got the shot off. The impact caused the man to drop the gun, but he was quick to punch her in the side.

  She gasped, the pain circling around her lower back.

  As he reached toward where his gun landed, Alice pulled her arm back and punched him once, twice, three times.

  Still, he tried to reach his weapon, eyes vacant and cold.

  Alice jumped off him and ground her boot heel into the wrist of the hand that was reaching for the gun. He cried out as the bones of his wrist snapped. With her other foot, she kicked him across the face. The temptation to finish him off was stronger than Alice would’ve liked.

  Looking around, the other five guards were sprawled on the ground or sobbing in fear.

  “C’mon, get out of here!” she yelled to Gerald.

  “You’re wounded,” Lionel said. “You should go with him.”

  She shook her head, and tried not to wince as the wound began to throb and burn, blood seeped from it onto the sleeve of her suit.

  “Let me see,” Gerald said.

  “There’s no time!”

  He grabbed her arm anyway. “It’s a through and through, here.”

  The familiar cool wave went up her arm and soon the pain had lessened, the bleeding s
topped.

  “Thank you, now go, get them to safety.”

  “Serpent—” Gerald began.

  “If I can end this today, I’m going to.”

  Gerald frowned at her for a moment and nodded.

  In the distance, sirens began to blare, loud and erratic. Alice wondered how many were coming and if they’d be able to contain anything.

  Alice glanced at Marco, whose long hands were curled into fists. His shadows weaved in and out of the folds of his duster, and under his arms.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I think...I think Phantasm is there.”

  He nodded at the building in the middle of the row they were facing.

  “You can feel her in the middle of all this?” Lionel asked.

  Marco shook his head. “I...there’s a lot of people with her...like she’s gathered them up and locked them in the building. It’s their reaction to her that I feel.”

  Alice took a deep, shaky breath. “Then, let’s go.”

  They sprinted to the building, encountering little or no resistance.

  “We should go up the fire escape,” Lionel said. “We don’t want to get trapped inside.”

  Marco nodded, shooting his grappler to the top of the fire escape. Lionel grabbed Alice, and before she could say anything, he’d jumped to the top of the building and landed with a skidding step onto the roof.

  It was deserted.

  Alice looked around. “There’s no way Phantasm wouldn’t show for this.”

  “Quite right!”

  On an adjacent roof was Phantasm, metallic gas mask gleaming in the summer sun. She was flanked by half a dozen men.

  Alice opened her mouth to ask Phantasm why she’d done this when a low, rumbling sound came up from below.

  “A little present,” Phantasm said. “My assistants are bringing you some of the residents of this building. Did you know that some of the most ruthless henchmen for my former organization lived in this neighborhood? No? Well, now you do. And now you get the chance to bring them to justice.”

  The roof they were on was suddenly flooded with people scrambling up the fire escape. Some of them were barely able to walk they were so terrified. Others looked like wild animals just let out of their cages.

  Lionel, Marco, and Alice stood with their backs to each other as the angry men and women rushed them.