by Brian Hodge
The midwife soon follows the procedure, removing her own clothing. The task now accomplished, the two slowly disappear into the woods.
I have waited for nearly an hour, staring into the black woods. My fear grows as every minute passes.
Suddenly, I hear a cry. Could this be my cue? I walk to the perimeter of the woodland and gaze into the sea. Nothing graces my sights. I step further in. I hear a constant moan. My gait is strangely hesitant, for fear of what I’ll find. The sounds of nature abound, yet I still discern the familiar echoes of labored breathing. Shadows engulf me, I press farther ahead. The painful sounds grow as I near its source, concealed somewhere amidst the tangled knots of branches, leaves, and twigs. Shards of broken moonbeams illuminate pockets of spicy foliage. At an impasse, I reach my hand out, pull aside a thicket of nature, and step forward into a hidden clearing.
Here, I find the answer to the question.
Do you love me?
A shaft of moonlight escaping through the forest canopy shines across the two wolves. I see dampened fur upon them both, the copper tang of blood thick in the air, the matted grass beneath them soaked thick with crimson life. One wolf lies on its side, panting, a trail of blood seeping from its womb. The other gently licks the leg that dangles from it.
The leg is human.
The mother-wolf’s eyes spot me, its green eyes telling a primordial tale, that this is the way it’s supposed to be. It turns its head and howls a lupine cry into the night, its efforts echoing wickedly throughout the forest. The baby slips free from the womb, the midwife-wolf immediately licking away the afterbirth to cleanse it from infection.
I walk over and pick up my baby boy, elated, overjoyed. My human baby boy. I smile and pace to my wife, the mother of my child.
Yes, I love him. And I will not reject the child born in human form.
I kneel down and place the baby next to her, by her nipples. He instinctually latches on, lips sucking voraciously for his mother’s milk. This child will be loved, will live. My dreams shall no longer be haunted by the soul of the dead child.
I hold my wife close, my child.
And I love him.
End of the Line
The subway train surges forward.
Then, brakes.
A harsh screech rises like a siren, metal on metal burning, filling the air with its acrid stench.
Smith becomes aware of his nodding slumber, jolts awake. Finds himself alone.
He looks around. The train is motionless. Dark walls encapsulate the windows, grease-coated cables snaking along them like unruly vines. He rubs his face, senses muddied, refusing to accept the disconcerting truth: he’s fallen asleep, and missed his stop.
He twists around to survey the barren territory of the NYC 2-Train car. Empty, save for strewn newspapers, coffee cups, and dried gum circles on the floor. Above, cool air blows in from the vents, drying the trickling sweat on his brow. He smells the hours gone past on himself: the beer, the wine, the liquor, the fried hors d’oerves from the party.
He stands up. Presses a nervous hand against the dark window. Shit. He has to find his own way back to the hotel, despite a lack of NYC wisdom.
The Park Central. 60th and Seventh Avenue.
He pinches the sleeve of his suit jacket. Peers at his watch. 3:15 AM. Where have the hours gone? Tonight he’d gathered with hundreds of other boatyard stewards at the con party, most of them strangers. Socializing, eating, drinking. Fanfaring their boatly triumphs and making business contacts for the future. Somewhere along the line he’d stepped away from the festivities, feeling ill or tired or bored, looking to call it a night.
The train jerks forward. The cables on the wall crawl upwards, giving way to pallid light. A station.
No identification upon its tiled walls.
No announcement from the PA.
Where am I?
The train stops. A bell rings. The doors open.
Smith makes an unpremeditated decision to exit, and quickly slips out onto the dusty platform. He looks right, then left. On both sides, the platform stretches unveeringly toward distant stairwells. Behind him, the train remains still, like a mother minding a child at the bus stop on the first day of school.
Sweat flows from his brow. The stench of sitting water and urine adds to his discomfort. He switches his gaze back and forth, finding no solace in any choice of direction.
From the street above, he hears a pounding beat. A vibration. It sounds far away, like the muffled boom of stereo speakers from behind closed windows. He turns, looks at the standing train, thinks about getting back in.
I’ll take a cab, he decides. Must be a thousand of them available at this ungodly hour.
Slowly, he paces to the left. He eyes the steel-gray stairwell parallel to the rear of the train. The pounding beat outside grows louder. It prods the walls of his stomach, thump, thumpa, thump. He tries to ignore the uncomfortable feeling, but it won’t go away.
He reaches the foot of the steps, grips the handrail and climbs them tiredly, one at a time, unconvinced of his decision to leave. He thinks: I should cross over to the other track. Wait for another train to take me back.
He reaches the top of the steps. Here, another barren NYC landscape awaits: lone turnstiles, an empty token booth, black-rusted entry cages. Smith glances back down the stairs. The slumbering train doors are shut. They didn’t ring. I didn’t hear them sliding on their tracks.
He looks forward. Ahead, another set of steps leads to the street.
Thump, thumpa, thump.
I’ll take a cab, he decides.
He paces swiftly forward, up the steps. Into the outside world.
The streets are dark and desolate. Empty cars sit at the curbs like sleeping dogs. The storefronts are boarded-up and useless, sheathed in graffiti. He gazes quickly at the four street corners. A cool wind blows. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end.
No signposts.
No people anywhere.
But the sourceless beat plays on. Louder now. Impregnating the hot summer air. He paces to the left. At the corner, he turns left again. Here there are no cars at all, parked or otherwise. The buildings lay in near-darkness. If not for the corner streetlamp, Smith’s world would be black.
He starts off down the street, shoed footsteps augment the loudening beat. Nothing else seems to exist beneath the dark city sky: no distant car horns, no faraway shouts. No taxis.
Shaken, he begins to jog. Then, he runs.
Through the slapping of his footsteps, he hears the distant beat rising. Thump-thumpa-thump. Louder now.
To his right, a door in a brick-walled building slams open. A loud slice of incessant thumping spills out.
Winded, Smith stops running. Hands on knees. Panting.
He looks toward the open door.
A black man emerges.
They lock eyes, Smith contemplating the man under a sweat-soaked brow.
A haze of fear washes over him. He shudders.
The man is naked.
With no warning, the man reels toward Smith. Arms outstretched. Squealing.
Smith takes a step back, whirls and flees, screaming. His heart pounds with fear, exhaustion. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, he repeats in silence, seeking support from a previously unreliable source. He peers over his shoulder. The naked man is gaining on him. Bare feet slapping the pavement. Eyes wide and rolling. Tongue lolling doglike from his blood-red mouth.
Smith’s screams echo those of his pursuer’s. Other than imminent death, nothing else seems likely at the moment. His lungs burn for air; his mind struggles for a sliver of lucidity amid the terror. He darts ahead, stumbles down a concrete recess at the gated entrance of a building. Whimpering, he closes his eyes, presses himself against the sewage grate at the bottom of the steps. He feels the release of his wet bowels.
The heavy slap of naked feet on asphalt ceases.
Smith waits. Anticipates an attack. Minutes pass in silence.
Silence—except for th
e muffled beat…which continues on and on.
He opens his eyes, allows the blur of fear to fade. He waits. Then, slowly, rises up. He peers around, body pressed against the concrete wall. The stink of his excrement sickens him, as does the stench of his dread. Cautiously, he crawls up the steps, hands scraping gritty concrete. He reaches the top step. Looks. Sees nothing.
He stands, bones creaking.
From behind the gate, the naked black man leaps out, growling. Smith scrambles back against the building and wedges himself against an empty steel trashcan. He peers up at his attacker. The black man’s eyes are huge, rolling in their sockets. His mouth is coated in white foam.
It has a monstrous erection, which it begins stroking with malformed clubs for hands.
Smith screams.
The man-beast stops stroking itself. It then reaches down and grabs the trashcan next to Smith.
Despite the deformity of its hands, it tears the trashcan in half and tosses the jagged strips away with swift jerks of its muscular arms.
It squeals, and reaches its groping clubs toward Smith.
From behind: a siren-bleep. A cop.
Jesus, thank you!
The man-beast darts around.
Through fluttering eyelids, Smith sees a cruiser. Sitting in the middle of the street. The driver’s door opens. A cop emerges.
Like a bullet, the man-beast lunges at the cop, who pulls his gun and manages to get a shot off. The bullet hits the attacker once in the chest. A circle of gore appears in its slick, naked back. Blood pours out in a gush.
But the man-beast doesn’t slow. It lashes out and plunges its clubbed fist deep into the cop’s sternum, blowing it apart. From within, the man-beast rips free the cop’s still-beating heart.
The man-beast turns around and displays it to Smith.
Smith chokes and gags as blood arcs from the hole in the cop’s chest. The cop falls to the asphalt in a trembling heap, gasping crazily for air.
Smith, writhing in his own bowels, screams. Struggles to crawl away, resigning himself to certain death.
In no way could one escape such a monstrosity.
First time in the big city. Everyone told you to be careful. Said there were crazies running around.
Smith stands. Plunders down the street, legs like sodden tea-bags. From behind comes a quick feet-slapping-on-asphalt noise.
A mind-numbing blast slams against his shoulder. Smith succumbs to the ensuing pain. Falls to the ground. The man-beast is on him now. Tearing his suit jacket, reaching for his leg. Smith twists his head around. Sees the thing’s blood red mouth tearing into his calf, shredding away the cloth of his pants. Blood oozes. Seconds pass before the pain catches up. He roars in agony. Makes a final attempt to flee.
A loud whump sounds out. Then comes a blast of hot air. The thing loosens its grip on Smith and howls like a tortured dog. The furnace blast comes again. Suddenly, the man-beast is on fire, staggering away aimlessly. Arms flailing, endeavoring to douse the blaze. Flames fall from its jerking body like offspring, polluting the air with the unmistakable reek of burning flesh.
Smith collapses flat against the street. Face touching blacktop. He feels the continuous vibration of the beat in the earth. The beat. The cops’s heart? He wants to pass out, but doesn’t.
A pair of black military boots appear alongside him.
From above, a deep voice: “Get up if you want to live.”
He reaches out, touches the worn leather boots. A callused hand grabs his wrist, yanks him to his feet. Smith follows the lead, legs tremoring. He tries to gaze at his savior, but can’t get past the image of the man-beast melting in a fiery heap, thick plumes of black smoke rising, filling the air with its smoldering stench.
“Come,” his savior says, pulling his wrist hard, “before another one shows up.”
Finally, Smith turns, looks at the stranger. Human on the outside. Black. Tall. Six-six, bursting with muscles. He’s wearing a tank top and leather pants, both black. Holstered around his shoulder is a flame thrower, the blue pilot aglow in the barrel.
Smith staggers behind the man toward the area of the sourceless beat. How long has it been since he first stumbled into this freakish world? His head spins with horrid confusion, unsure of the moment’s reality. He falters behind the man, unable to keep up, the bite in his leg firing jolts into his groin. He loses his step, falls down once, twice. He can’t get back up. The big man lifts him over massive shoulders and carries him away.
Smith passes out…until he comes to once again in another ghastly world of unfamiliarity.
Smith opens his eyes.
He lays on a tattered sofa, stinking of mildew. The incessant beat looms close by: from just behind the stained and peeling walls.
There is a murmur of voices.
His vision clears. A black woman with long braided hair comes into view.
“He’s awake,” she announces, voice unusually deep. She moves close to him. Full lips nearly touching his cheek. “It bit you, didn’t it?”
Smith nods, looks at his body. He’s naked. A towel covers his groin. The pain in his leg is nearly gone.
“Tell me what happened. How did you get here?”
Smith tries to speak, but his tongue is coated.
“Bring him some water, and another painkiller.” A young boy appears beside her, holding a paper cup and a white pill. He gives it to Smith, who chases the pill in three gulps. The cup is taken away. Refilled. He downs the second cup just as quickly.
Smith props himself up on his elbows. Gazes around. The room is filled to capacity, twenty to twenty-five people staring at him. All eyes are upon him as he quickly explains his plight, from the moment he awoke on the subway, until he fainted in the arms of the flamethrower man. At the conclusion, he gazes down at his leg. It’s bandaged, only a spotting of blood seeping through the thick white gauze.
“You brought the demon outside,” the woman says. “Now, we are forced to do send it back in.”
A chorus of groans fill the room. Smith looks about defensively, as though he were on trial. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You did.” Flamethrower Man appears, weapon poised across his chest. “You stepped into the demon’s world, delivering life onto a deadened street. They’ve devoured it, and now, they’re awake. We must do something about it.” He paces back and forth.
Smith straightens up. His leg reminds him of his injury. “What the hell is going on? What was that thing out there?”
The woman looks at him sourly. “You set them free…never thought it would happen. But it did.”
Someone from within the crowd calls out, “The beat is very loud. We have to take action now.”
Bodies shift in the room. Guns are checked and loaded. From an unseen point, Smith hears Flamethrower say, “There was a cop. The demon got him.”
More groans. Curses. Headshakes.
“What the hell is going on?” Smith pleads, tears filling his eyes.
“Their tribe is in ceremony. They want to take our territory. But we won’t let them. No. This is our turf…the turf of the Angels. The Demons are trying to take it away from us.”
“Jesus,” Smith cries, “Is this a gangland issue? Because if it is, I just want out—”
“Shut up!” Flamethrower yells. “We saved your ass. Now, you gotta help us burn the Demons.” He leans in close to Smith, cigarettes and whiskey on his breath. “Consider yourself an honorary member of the Angels of Life.”
“I don’t think I can—”
“You’ve no choice. We purified the street at midnight: no cars, no signs, no people. When you stumbled in, you breathed life into their ceremony. Just what they were praying for. And now, they’ll take to the streets.
Smith gazes at the room’s occupants: all of them, wearing black. Tank tops. Black bandanas knotted around their necks. Sweat coating their faces.
“Can I have my clothes back?” Smith asks.
The boy who’d brought the water returns with S
mith’s pants and shirt, damp and cleaned of his release. Smith gets dressed while the group murmurs amongst themselves and loads their weapons.
A gun is thrust in Smith’s trembling hands.
“Jesus, I can’t—”
“You can, and you will,” a bald man demands, shouldering a hunter’s rifle. “Just aim for the head,” he adds.
Flamethrower silences the room with a howl. “Angels!”
Smith gazes at the towering man with awe and suspicion. God help me, he thinks, I’m going to die. I’m really going to die.
“Angels—the time has come. We’ve organized ourselves for this day. The demons are loose…but we’ve got God fighting with us, may he protect our souls against the evil that defies us.” A rousing battle-cry follows, drowning out the wall-filling beat, some people screaming, “This is our territory!” and “Protect our turf!”
They start filing toward the door.
The woman prods Smith with the flat blade of a machete. “Move your ass, boy. There’s strength in numbers.”
Smith rises. Dizzied. Fatigued. He imagines what it must feel like having your heart ripped out of your chest.
Smith feels something in the air. An acrid smell, and a dulling of the dark environment. Surrounded by the band of Angels, the braided woman holds him close. She explains that the Demons seek to gain the streets, not only here in New York, but in other inner cities as well. That they are indeed humans, but in sinful prayer had transformed themselves into powerful beings capable of taking down entire neighborhoods. “They hadn’t expected such a formidable enemy,” she explains, speaking of the Angels. “The Angels are gorgeous creatures. We are close, bonded by soul. We will protect ourselves and our turf with our lives.”
Flamethrower, leading the procession, stops before the doorway from where the first demon emerged. He sniffs the air. “They are frightened of us.” He closes his eyes and offers up a prayer to God, then screams and kicks in the door.
Smith, carried by the throng, grips his pistol with sweaty hands. Ahead, the burst of the flamethrower drowns out the pounding beat and the subsequent howls of those caught beneath its torch. Inside the building’s first floor (which had been shrewdly gutted, forming one large room), Smith catches sight of another demonic man, also black and naked and glistening, crawling up a support column like a spider. A barrage of bullets take him down. Flamethrower adds the final blow.
