“I know I told you I was all out of food,” Judy explained. “Sorry about that. I had a few of these stashed away. I was saving them for my grandson if he ever woke up. He likes them. They’re not as bad as they look.”
“That’s very kind,” Vee said, taking a seat. Her stomach rumbled at the very concept of food, no matter how unappealing it might look.
“It’s best eaten raw, not cooked,” Judy said, taking her own seat. “I don’t know why, but it sort of breaks down into a terrible stringy mush.”
“Raw is fine.”
Judy plunked a root onto Vee’s plate. Cutting into her own, eyes downcast, she said, “My grandson liked to help me prepare food. I remember my daughter used to love to help me cook when she was small.”
Daughter…small. Vee knew the woman was talking about her mortal life now. Did she always drift into these memories, or had Vee’s words stirred them up from the silt of her mind?
Judy looked up to meet Vee’s gaze and said, “Do you know why I was sent to Hades instead of Paradise? I’m Jewish. I never killed anyone, never robbed anyone. But I’m not a Christian.”
“It wasn’t fair, the whole system…I know.”
“And so where is my daughter now? My grandchildren? Where did my husband go when he died before me? Are their souls out there, outside the Construct, fossilized in that rock but aware for eternity? Or somewhere here in the Construct and we just haven’t found each other?”
“I understand,” Vee said inadequately. Again she felt guilty for being an Angel.
“Maybe it’s better if they are in the rock,” Judy reflected. “Just so long as they’ve gone to sleep, like my family here has done.”
Vee chewed a piece of the crunchy root. “Mm,” she grunted, smiling around her mouthful. “You’re right, it isn’t bad. Could use a little salt, but...”
She succeeded in pulling Judy back to the here and now. The elderly woman smiled in return.
A sound came from beyond the kitchen, small and unidentifiable. The look Vee and Judy exchanged altered in character, and they had already begun turning toward the doorway to the living room when a diminutive figure appeared there. The figure was as tall as Judy’s foster grandson would have been, had he awakened and come to join them at the table to partake of the roots he enjoyed. But it was not the little Asian boy.
The Demon was unclothed, with a withered little body like a mummified monkey come to life. The black claws curling from its fingers resembled an eagle’s talons. The head, disproportionately large for its gnome-like body, was a hairless skull barely covered in skin, but with a tapir-like snout hanging down in front of its bared grin of jet black teeth. Deep in hollow sockets, its tiny eyes glowed entirely white, like those of the much larger Demons patrolling the factory floor below the apartment.
The snout snuffled noisily. It had used its sense of smell to track her, no doubt. The lipless grin seemed to stretch wider, if that were possible. And then – with movements that looked like speeded-up film -- the creature was launching itself at Vee.
But Vee had risen, too, and swung her arm at the oncoming Demon. In her fist, the knife she had been using to cut into her root. She cried out as the Demon’s wildly flailing claws sliced deeply into her left forearm through the material of her jumpsuit, and dug channels along her jaw as they sought her neck. Vee sought the neck as well, and found it. She plunged her knife all the way to the handle in the center of the Demon’s throat. It backed away with the same uncanny speed, the knife still protruding from it, crashed its back against the mock fridge. A burst of black blood snorted out from its snout.
“Judy,” Vee cried, “go get me my gun!”
Judy scurried from the room, babbling and sobbing to herself, while the Demon gurgled and collected itself to spring at Vee again. “You stupid fuck,” she snarled, picking up the chair she’d been sitting in and cocking it back over her shoulder, “you know you can’t kill me. You know I can kill you. So why do you do it?”
It was true. While an Angel or a Damned person, both formerly human, could not be killed, a Demon had no immortal soul. Though natives of the afterlife, Demons were essential mortal.
The pigmy Demon lowered its bony head as if it might charge her and drive it into her guts like a battering ram. It slashed at the air furiously, its arms a blur, but foul inky blood was running over its lower teeth and down its jaw.
“Nature of the beast, huh?” Vee barked at it. “Well come on! Come on and see the nature of this beast!”
Maybe the Demon felt it was dying and had nothing left to lose. It sprang. Vee swung the chair. And a stream of automatic fire rattled from the doorway to the living room. Vee cried out and let go of the chair as several bullets crashed into it mid-swing. But the bullets struck the Demon, too, in the side of its oversized skull. Its head shattered like an earthen pot and something looking like a fist-sized cauliflower soaked in oil thudded off the refrigerator.
Vee turned to see Judy standing in the doorway, holding Jay in both hands. “You almost blew my hands off, but thanks.”
“You’re cut!” Judy whined, badly shaken.
Vee took Jay from her. “Angels heal faster than Damned, don’t worry. You better go get your pistol.”
“Why?”
“That little bastard followed me up here from Level 117. He was small enough to take the same path as me.” Vee glanced past Judy warily toward the living room. “And he wasn’t alone. There were a half dozen of those things on my trail.”
“Oh…my,” Judy said.
“Fuck me,” Vee hissed, wagging her head. “I’m so sorry I led them here.”
Vee was standing on the toilet lid, peeking out through the hole where the Demon had removed the window pane just as she had, when Judy joined her with retrieved pistol in hand. Vee said, “Even hearing gunfire, none of your family has woken up?”
“You think they’ve never heard gunfire before? But,” Judy admitted, “not from inside our apartment. I’ve never had to really defend it before – you’re the first one who’s found us.”
“That’s me, always stirring things up. Look, I’ve got this window covered. You go watch the one in the kitchen. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it was just the one –”
Something breaking in another room…a sudden commotion. “The kitchen!” Judy blurted.
“Okay, you stay here!” Vee said, hopping down from her perch and tearing from the room.
She plunged down the hallway, turned into the living room, saw a new figure added to the still life there: a Demon standing beside the sofa, head cocked to one side curiously as it took in the unruffled scene, as if absorbing an unexpected display of taxidermy. It started to whirl around when it heard Vee and she stitched it with bullets made from bone – but even as she did so, another of the Demons flashed into the threshold of the kitchen, spotted her, and came hurtling at her maniacally. Flung itself into the air, talons spread. As the first Demon crumpled, Vee swung Jay toward the second. She strafed the Demon in midair and sidestepped it as the body struck the floor and rolled past her. It thrashed a few moments, then abruptly went still as if an “off” switch had been thrown.
Vee saw that the mother had slumped onto her side on the sofa. The drawing pad was still on her lap, but it now bore a composition in her own blood. Vee cursed inside; a stray bullet had spiked the woman in the right temple. Blood was soaking into the sofa’s cushions.
Gunshots from the bathroom. Judy was screaming in panic -- or pain. “Shit,” Vee said, and as she started that way she saw Judy blunder into the hallway, still on her feet somehow and bouncing from wall to wall, one of the miniature Demons riding on her piggyback.
Vee ran to meet them, raised Jay over her shoulder and when she came within range lashed out – the butt of the bone gun striking the Demon’s skull. It dropped onto its back and Judy dropped onto her front, tattered and bleeding as if a whole flock of eagles had been at her. As the dazed Demon lifted its head, Vee blew its whole skull into shards.
> Judy could barely raise her head from the floor, her hair matted with blood. Vee crouched by her and took hold of her under the arms, but Judy made an anguished sound of protest and Vee let go of her again. Still squatting beside her, she cooed to the old woman, “Hang in there…it will pass. It will pass…”
More sounds of entry from the bathroom, and Vee rose from her crouch already firing. The bathroom’s doorframe splintered but the Demon that appeared there was so inhumanly fast that it shot straight at her unharmed, as if it had lunged through a gap in the stream of bullets. It got one of its talons into her left eye socket, puncturing the orb and hooking into the bone. Vee couldn’t help but scream and fall to her back with the Demon atop her. Couldn’t help but let go of Jay when another pair of hands jerked him out of her grasp. It was a second Demon that had snatched Jay from her and flung the bone gun aside, and now this creature joined the first in bending over her, both slashing madly with their clawed hands. It felt to Vee as if twice their number at least were working at her body in a frenzy, and she was too overwhelmed to fend them off. Her blood splattered both of the walls that composed the hallway.
Then, the chatter of automatic fire. With a kind of oomph sound expelled from its drooping proboscis, one of the Demons was blasted off her body. The second Demon lifted toward the source of the gunfire, obliging the shooter nicely. The next discharge uncapped the cursed thing’s skull as if cracking the top off a soft boiled egg. The creature fell away from Vee and she lay there on her back with her rubbery jumpsuit shredded, one sleeve torn off and a hip laid bare. The hip itself was sliced to the bone. Her own blood ran down the back of her throat, her one good eye staring at the ceiling through a wet mask. Slowly, as if drugged, Vee turned her head on the floor toward the source of the gunfire, curious as the Demon had been.
The family’s father – Andrew, she remembered Judy had called him – stood there holding his own assault rifle. Unlike Jay, it was fully made of metal, without sentience or any other ability than the power to kill Demons.
Andrew stepped around Vee to kneel beside Judy and help her into a sitting position. Though she was clearly still in great pain, the eternally elderly woman was mending rapidly. Judy sobbed and clutched at Andrew. He held her to him, and close to her ear said, “Shh. Shh.”
Vee didn’t dare try to sit up just yet, for fear of blacking out. All she could do at the moment was lie there and wait for the worst of the pain to pass. Wait for her ruined eye to reform, her full vision to return.
Andrew looked over at her and asked, “Who are you?”
Judy lifted her head from his shoulder and explained, “She’s my friend.”
When she was strong enough to do so, Vee staggered into the kitchen and sat down in one of the chairs at the little table. Already seated there was the family’s mother, her surrogate son standing beside her. The mother’s hair was wet from having the blood washed out of it. The small entry hole in her temple was gone and the larger exit wound almost healed. Fortunately the stray projectile had passed entirely through her head so she wouldn’t have a bullet trapped in her skull.
“I didn’t want to sit in there and get any more blood on the upholstery,” Vee croaked, hooking her thumb back toward the livingroom.
“Me, too,” said the attractive black woman.
Andrew came into the kitchen leading Judy by the elbow, helped lower her into a third chair. He looked at Vee dubiously. “You sure no more of those things will follow you here?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be on my way in a couple minutes.”
“Oh Vee, maybe you should stay here with us,” Judy said, wincing with concern.
“Thank you, Judy. That’s kind of you. But I’ve got my mind set on finding that place called Freetown. Anyway, you’ve got enough of a nice little family here as it is.”
Judy turned to look up at Andrew, holding one of his hands. She reached over to take the mother’s hand, too. “Please,” Judy pleaded, looking from one to the other. “Please…don’t leave me alone again. I was alone for so long.”
The mother rose from her chair to wrap her arms around the old woman. “I’m sorry, Judy, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know. We didn’t know you were still awake.”
Andrew moved closer to join them in their embrace, and said, “Don’t worry, Mom. I guess we’ve slept long enough.”
Vee rose from her chair, still not entirely regenerated but ready to return to the bathroom and hoist herself back into the crawlspace. She didn’t want to be the guest that stayed too long after the party. She said, “Well…sorry about the mess.”
Andrew straightened up. “Ah, don’t worry – it’ll give me something to do. Maybe we’ll remodel.” He looked at Judy again and in a thoughtful tone said, “If you hadn’t come, we might never have known our mom was alone like that.”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Judy said, suppressing a sob. Now her grandson hugged her along with the mother. “I didn’t want to be selfish.”
Vee stepped toward the doorway, but leaned in its threshold and said, “Maybe you guys will consider coming to Freetown yourself sometime. It might be worth the effort, if it’s as civilized as it seems, anyway.”
“I don’t know…maybe,” Andrew said, but he didn’t sound convinced. Vee couldn’t blame him. Maybe if the apartment had been a little bigger – and maybe if she hadn’t been of such a restless spirit – she might have wanted to stay here insulated from the horrors outside, herself.
“You can always come back and visit anytime,” Judy said hopefully. She smiled, and added, “Visit your new Aunt Judy.”
“Thanks. Thanks, Aunt Judy.”
Knowing that she would likely never see them again, Vee took a mental snapshot of the family grouped around the table. If she had no memories of a family of her own, at least she would have this. Then she turned away, to fetch her bone gun and return to Hell.
THE RECRUIT
by
DANIE WARE
The first thing I said to her was, “Call the Doctor, for God’s sake.”
Tari’s like my sister – she’s not blood, but it’s never mattered. When she learned to braid hair, it was mine that she tangled. When she kissed her first boy, it was me that counselled caution; when he broke her heart, I caught her. She calls me her ‘rock’, and then laughs at the cliché.
This time, though, the only rock was the stone-cold lump that had settled in my belly.
Dear God! I had no idea what I was looking at.
Tari’s hands were clutching her robe closed. She was muttering, her voice soft with horror, “What the hell would I say? Kate? What the hell would I say?”
I had no answer for her; I was groping through fear, denial and disbelief for a rationality that wasn’t there. From the moment she’d called me, panicked, in the early hours and I’d jumped into the car still in my PJs… Jesus! This was beyond bloody crazy.
Sanity had packed its bags and fled.
In front of me, in the princess-pink bed, Tari’s little daughter was sweetly oblivious, curled round her new favourite toy. Beside her, slumped boneless on the carpet, was Tari’s husband Rob, staring at the gently cycling nightlight.
One of his hands was resting protectively on his sleeping daughter; he looked like he’d just slid off the edge of the bed.
But his face…
In the soft yellow of the child’s moth-decorated light, his skin was dry and stretched and wax-pale; his cheeks corpse-hollow. His lips were thin and parched, cracked in places, and a trail of black fluid had dried on his chin. Staring at the lamp, his eyes were lost and blank, as dark as old blood; within them, the circling moths moved like ghosts. He looked empty, terrifying – as though the creatures had alighted on his skin and sucked him dry, body and soul.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I was frozen to the spot, an arachnophobe watching a spider, absolutely fucking convinced that he was going to move, that he was some sort of zombie, some nightmare creature that would come up and lunge for me, any m
inute, any minute now…
Choking on a throat full of terror, I gripped the doorframe and forced myself to think.
Don’t be ridiculous. Focus, Kate!
I couldn’t quite make myself enter the room, but I blinked, shuddering, clearing my sight and mind.
Rob’s chest was moving, he was breathing – just. What the hell had happened to him? He was a node of horror, pulling my gaze and transfixing me. A nameless threat lurked in his empty eyes, his hollow skin.
Crouching, Tari shook his shoulder. “Rob? Love? Rob?”
She drew her hand back, as if stung, cupped it under her arm. Turned to look up at me. “Lyn was talking in her sleep. She’s started having nightmares. Rob came to see what…” Her voice tailed off, she stared back at her husband’s face, almost as though she were deliberately trying to sear her memory with his expression, make herself believe. “I just heard the thump.”
“Did you call anyone else?” I wanted to lean forward, to close those blank eyes, those eyes with the moths in them, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. My skin was crawling with cold; I felt like he was watching me, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Any second now, he was going to snatch at Tari’s wrist; his eyes would fill with darkness and he’d come for us. My words were reflex. “An ambulance? The hospital?”
“God, no. Jesus, his eyes. Kate – what the hell do I do? What..?”
I had absolutely no damned idea; the pale moths circled the room, mocking me. They glided over my skin, crawling, teasing. My hairs were standing up and I was shivering as though I could feel their wings, soft as a taunting breath.
I turned on the main light.
Lyn muttered and turned over, eyelids fluttering. Her toy was still clutched in her hand. It was some sort of grey doll, oddly shiny; I’d not seen it before.
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