by Alan Spencer
Mandy shouted it, "You keep saying evil? What do you mean by that? It's like you're making up a bunch of bullshit."
The four vehicles pursuing them arrived in the parking lot. The axe hovered above them, ready to strike at the right moment.
Whitman removed a long piece of white chalk from his leisure suit. He drew a long circle. "Quick. Step inside of it. We'll be safe, temporarily."
Whitman rattled off a bunch of words in a foreign, growly tongue. Turf wasn't sure what the hell the man was saying, but he sounded like someone in need of a serious exorcism.
When the battle axe became a streak of speed, as if battering down on them, Turf grabbed Mandy by the arm and forced them into the circle. The tip of the axe sliced Turf across the back. The gash was 1/16 of a centimeter deep.
"Fuck, that was close!"
"Listen to everything I tell you from now on," Whitman advised. "I'm here to save your life. You won't believe your eyes. What's coming will be insane."
"It's already been insane! Just get on with it."
Seven more vehicles arrived. Turf didn't have to ask. Judging by the drawn on pentagrams on the sides of their cars, they were more of Dalton's buddies.
Dalton stepped out of one of the vehicles. He stood seven yards out from where the three of them stood in the chalk circle. Dalton's eyes were delighted. He spun his fingers in a circle. The axe mimicked his motions. That put a dagger's smile on the bastard's face. He was so full of himself, Turf thought, especially now with the battle axe at his steed.
A small legion of Satanists stood behind Dalton. Many of them wore robes, cloaked with heavy hoods. Others chose to wear horse, goat, boar, and pig heads. The weapons they carried ranged from sickles, scythes, staffs, and AK-47 and M-16 machine guns. The scariest thing Turf had seen in his life, maybe second to a flying battle axe, was a animal-headed Satanist clutch onto a machine gun.
Dalton didn't wear his club jacket anymore. He wore a red ceremony robe. Dalton had a pentagram drawn on his forehead.
"Paul Whitman," Dalton announced, "you're a fool. Look at my loyal minions. They far outnumber yours. Speaking of which, I see not a single one of yours in sight."
"They're coming. I don't need a thousand idiots to win this battle. I only need a few of the best."
"I'll chisel that on your epitaph after I piss on it," Dalton laughed. His followers soon broke into heavy delight. "Now shove that piece of meat out of the circle so the axe can have her. If you don't, I'll unleash its fury on everybody in the area. You've seen what it can do. The battle axe knows no end to its bloodlust."
"You'll just cover it another person's blood, and another, and another. There's no end to your plan. You only want to kill, and make sacrifices, and please the dark gods."
"I've pleased them beyond expectation. With every death the axe has perpetrated, my dark magic becomes increasingly potent."
Whitman yawped, "Show me what you got, asshole, or shut that mouth of yours and fight me! By the end of this, YOU WILL BE DEAD, DALTON!"
Dalton unleashed a curse of indignation. He threw up his hands in the air, and his hands lit up with fiery orange energy. Turf thought flames were shooting out of his hands. Dalton channeled that energy into the parking lot. Chunks of the ground exploded, landing on nearby cars, and smashing into the large hardware store.
Turf couldn't doubt his eyes, though he seriously wanted to. Rising up from the earth, a black serpent with a cobra's head towered high above them. It was easily as tall as a six-story building. It spewed venom, what launched across the parking lot and melted the fleeing customers into pink muddles of nastiness.
The axe couldn't stand to wait for Mandy's blood. Even Dalton couldn't control it, Turf noticed. It snuck through the automatic sliding doors and attacked those inside the store. Heads soon shot out the automatic doors and struck the pavement so hard, they shattered like half-rotten pumpkins.
Mandy was crying. "All these people are dying because of me."
"No," Turf said. "They're dying because of Dalton. He has to die."
"He will," Whitman said. "I just wish my crew would show up already. The circle will only hold for so long."
The Satanists were unloading machine gunfire at them. The bullets would implode on themselves before reaching the perimeter of the circle. The serpent kept spraying venom at every passing person, including the circle of surrounding police vehicles. Each patrol car dissolved, then crunched up into itself, with the officers still inside.
Dalton wasn't done with his magic. He chanted in an ancient tongue. The Satanists dropped to all fours. They stripped out of their robes, now naked, tossed aside their guns and weapons, and threw their heads back and unleashed notes of agony. Course black hair sprouted from their bodies. The cultist's hands and feet slithered off the end of their extremities to be replaced by bone hooves. Faces extended into wolfish, beastly maws armed with dagger-sharp teeth and long probing black slabs-for-tongues.
"This is what they wanted," Whitman said over the roar of death and transformation. "Dalton has so much power. That axe killed so many so fast...there's power in the air, and he's harnessing it."
"What do they really want?" Turf exploded. "What's the point of this sick show?"
"Dalton wants to achieve hell on earth, and if and when that happens, he wants to reign supreme. If he keeps using that axe to slaughter people in the name of his evil, the more blood that spills, his dark power will only grow and grow."
"Where's your back-up?" Mandy demanded. "You said help was on the way."
Whitman froze. His face became heavy with sadness. "You see that truck?"
There was a hatchback approaching the parking lot.
The giant serpent swallowed it whole.
"That was my back-up."
"That was one truck!" Turf shouted. "You telling me that was your back-up?"
"There's only a few of us that practice white magic, and defend the world from the dark side," Whitman explained. "We had a small office at the community college. We're under-funded, under-staffed, and well out-numbered by the opposition."
"Then what's your plan? My sister's not dying."
"I'm afraid I only have one plan," Whitman said. He dug into his leisure suit and removed a Glock. "You have to kill Dalton yourself, buddy. Chances are, he's so caught up in what he's doing, he won't see you coming. Shoot him in the head. End this. My final spell will distract his evil forces long enough for you to make a try. Everything else is up to you, Turf. Sorry I couldn't do more for you. But remember, if you succeed, you must find the battle axe, and hide it somewhere nobody will ever find it. You got me?"
"I got you! Now what are you going on about, please explain!"
"No time," Whitman said, forcing the Glock into Turf's hand. "The circle won't protect us much longer."
Turf observed how the white chalk was quickly fading.
Whitman stepped out of the circle. "Remember what I told you, Turf. This next spell is the best I've got. Everything else is up to you."
The moment Whitman stepped out of the circle, the wolf-faced Satanists pounced on him. Mouths turned him inside out, flensing meat and scoring blood from his body. Dalton voiced his delight on the air.
Before Whitman died, half-skull face, half bloody pulp face, chanted a series of words, and then the battle kicked into higher gear.
The white chalk circled vanished.
Turf knew then they were exposed.
The battle axe shifted in their direction. It gleamed bright, catching the sun at the right angle, giving the steel the illusion of smiling at them.
Dalton's fiery red hands, the power surrounding him, suddenly vanished. He bumbled around, so confused, with a look of horror spreading on his face.
"Whitman! Damn you! It's the death curse. He's disabled my power. It'll only last minutes. The son-of-a-bitch didn't care if his curse required him to be dead. No worries. The axe will still swing in my favor. You're both dead!"
Right when Dalton said that, out
from each entrance of the hardware store, a horde of implements were on the attack. Compelled by white magic forces, the strangest war began.
Axes, rakes, hoes, pick-axes, shovels, trowels, riding lawnmowers, push-mowers, weed-whackers, and power drills with interchangeable bits floating in the drills' wake all arrived to combat the throng of monster Satanists. The battle axe swooped down, combating the throng of tools. Fighting hard, the implement turned steel implements into dust. That didn't prevent numbers being lost on the evil cult's side. Cross-section of snouts, the uncurling of chopped up guts, and flying hoof extremities spread about the air. The battle kept scoring floods of blood upon the pavement. Then the tools and weapons from the hardware store suddenly lost the life they had, and tumbled to the ground useless.
Whitman's death curse was finished.
Turf had his idea.
He had precious little time to execute it.
Turf said to Mandy, "Remember when we were kids, and I'd let you rid me piggyback? I'd scare the hell out of you, because I'd run real fast and pretend like I was going to throw you off of my back like a bucking horse?"
Mandy was confused. "Uh, yeah. Why?"
"Jump on my back. Take the Glock. I'm going to charge the bastard. You open fire on Dalton as soon as you get an open shot."
"What? You're crazy!"
A pile of skeletal bones covered in melting flesh called out from the ground. It was Whitman. "Do it, Mandy! My magic's used up!"
The sight of the talking skeleton horrified Mandy enough that she complied to Turf's demands. She jumped onto Turf's back, and clutched the Glock.
Turf ran right into the remaining cult monsters. "Come on, axe! Cut me up, you bitch! Just try it!"
Turf charged in Dalton's direction. The sick man was admiring the blood and death on the pavement so much, the man didn't see them coming. The battle axe pursued them, hacking up cult members into sloppy pieces in their wake. He picked up his speed, knowing the axe was a hair's breath away from slicing Mandy and himself wide open.
Mandy was taking aim with two hands.
She unloaded the entire clip into Dalton's head.
Calm
Turf and Mandy were frozen in place. Mandy remained on Turf's back with the gun clutched in her hands. The serpent, the cult members, Dalton, and the ruined parking lot, all vanished. What was left was exposed earth, as if the ground had swallowed up the horrible events and erased it from existence. It wouldn't be long before the cops and ambulances would arrive and try and make sense of everything.
Turf and Mandy had a short moment of calm before the police and media would turn their story inside out.
"Where's the axe?"
Mandy wasn't sure how to answer her brother's question, except to get off of his back and search. They scoured the area and couldn't find it. They both reached the same conclusion. The earth had swallowed up the axe. Whitman's white magic had seen to the battle axe's demise.
"It's over," Mandy said. "It's really over."
Turf agreed. "Yes, it's all done. I love you, Mandy."
"I love you too."
Brother and sister faced the cops together, and would try and tell their amazing story to a third party. They didn't care if anybody believed them, or not. They were alive.
They had survived the battle axe.
Epilogue
Street bum Chucky Grover was searching for aluminum cans along the road when he witnessed the war unfold at Steele's Hardware Store. He wasn't just shocked; Chuck was impressed. The show of death and dismemberment was something he'd never seen before. You couldn't pay to sit ringside to such an event, because such a event didn't exist.
When the earth caved in on itself, burying the parking lot, the corpses, and the cult, and so many vehicles, Chucky stood in place and waited. He expected something else to happen. Maybe another cult would pull into the now dirt parking lot, and another flying battle axe would start chopping up people. He was gravely disappointed when cops, paramedics, and reporters covered the scene. He stayed back from the action. Chucky wasn't on the police's good side. He begged for change, scavenged in trash cans, and often broke into homes for shelter. Chucky considered himself the homeless king in the Lee's Summit, Missouri, area. The cops would drum up some bullshit to finally nail his ass to the wall if he was spotted here at this super massacre crime scene.
He hurried from the scene. Chucky was so swift, and so afraid of the cops, he tripped over himself. When he shook the stars out of his eyes, and really felt the pain in his left foot, especially the big toe, his eyes went huge at what he located.
Hey, would you look at that?
Ho-ly mo-ly, buddy.
There was the battle axe. Could it be the same one that hacked up all of those people? It wasn't flying around anymore.
Chucky nudged the long handle with his foot.
Nothing happened.
He picked it up, and then threw it on the ground, as if he'd give the weapon a jump start.
"Come on, do something! Fly around like you did earlier. That was great."
Chucky was getting hungry right about now. He hadn't eaten a square meal in days. He survived on huffing paint. The paint he stole from the back of Steele's Hardware, actually. He had a line of camelback yellow paint across his nose. It didn't smell pretty, but it kept him high. Even drooling at moments.
And maybe he was too high. The axe didn't kill anybody. That sick cult did the work. Everything else he'd seen was...his imagination, warped by a brain choked full of holes. Yeah, he reasoned, that had to be it.
Chucky wondered if he could get some money for the battle axe down at the pawn shop. It could be a piece of antiquity. The axe could be melted down for its precious metals.
Chucky didn't think about how it would look to somebody driving down the main road seeing a grungy homeless guy carrying the giant battle axe. He pictured pawn shop dollar signs. Dirty Don would try to screw him over, but Chucky wasn't born yesterday, he thought. He would bleed every penny out of this axe.
Chucky forgot how long of a walk it was to Dirty Don's Pawn Shop. His arms and back ached lugging the battle axe. It was easily more than a hundred pounds.
Sweet Jesus, my arms are going to fall off.
Dirty Don's gonna stick me. He's gonna fuck me over. Dirty Don's gonna laugh in my face. Dirty Don, that son of a bitch.
Chucky was half-way to Dirty Don's. He was crossing a sidewalk connected to the overpass on I-291. It was early rush hour.
Glad I'm not a member of the rat race. All I have to do is find shit and sell it.
Suckers.
I'm going to give it to Dirty Don real good. I'll break him off a good piece.
He was half-way across the bridge when his arms gave out on him. Chucky lost the grip on the axe. The bottom of the handle landed directly on his big toe. He felt the crunch. The toe nail split in half. The toe broke.
"Goddamn son-of-a-bitch, mother fucking dry hand jobs!"
Chucky lost himself in a fury. He didn't realize until it was too late that the axe fell off the edge of the overpass and was headed directly into oncoming traffic. Chucky's colorful curses were drowned out by the sudden screech of many tires braking hard. The battle axe shattered through the windshield of a vehicle. It slashed the throat of the driver, and nearly decapitated him. The blade went through the back section of the transport vehicle belonging to the county blood bank. The axe, guided by its downward fall, slashed open half a dozen sealed Styrofoam containers. Donated blood splattered the head of the axe. The blade soaked up the many different sources of crimson. When the transport vehicle crashed into the shoulder of the interstate, the axe pounded free of the backmost doors. The blade wouldn't stop killing until the owners of the twenty-five different samples of blood were each slaughtered.
Inside the Perimeter: Uncut
Mystery Trip
Boyd Broman was scheduled to be transferred out of Hutchinson Penitentiary for reasons unknown to him. What new prison he’d be shipped off to, he
wasn’t notified. What state, his best guest would be wrong. Today, Boyd was simply escorted onto a black bus outside the barbed gates of the prison's property by two non-county officials.
Nobody told him why.
Nobody told him anything.
Boyd sat alone in the bus for over an hour, itching at his wrist shackles nervously. The vehicle coasted down a lone barren road aimlessly. Boyd didn't catch a single highway sign during the trip. He kept watching for any indication as to where he was being delivered. That's why Boyd was relieved when the driver finally broke the silence.
“You’re lucky in a way, Mr. Broman. Those criminals would’ve murdered you in that lock-up. All ex-cops face that kind of danger behind bars, right? At least in this other place, you’ll have a real fighting chance to live.”
Boyd failed to grasp the driver’s vague explanation.
“What do you mean I’ll have a fighting chance? Everybody’s closed-lipped. First my lawyer, then the warden, and now my driver won’t say anything. Somebody better start speaking up, or I’m going to lose my shit."
“That’s too bad, because I’m done talking. I shouldn't have said anything in the first place. You're just like the rest of them. Antsy and stupid. Just sit tight, shut your mouth, and you'll be finding out everything you need to know soon enough. Jesus. You people don't have a clue. If you did, God help you."
The law enforcement vehicle didn’t have a badge decal or county number, Boyd recalled. Were there even government tags on either side of the bumpers? Why would they go through the trouble of transferring just one person to another prison? It would take months of paperwork to approve such a measure.
Chief Edward Hill of the Crawford County Precinct said that Boyd had developed a sixth sense during his thirteen years on the police force as a lead detective. Anytime something bad was about to occur, Boyd suffered a migraine.
