by Jake Bible
Morty wasn’t sure if he’d emptied the suites below, but couldn’t waste the time looking. He left the penthouse, gave Jim a courteous nod, and found the stairwell again. ’Round and ’round he went, down level after level of landings that led to a new floor until he was on the fourth-floor landing.
He had his hand on the door’s handle, ready to push it open and step out into lobby of the top tier of the casino’s auditorium, but he stopped. There was a noise. It was faint, far off, and strangely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He thought he should know the sound, but it didn’t quite ring the right bell.
Morty pressed against the door and cracked it open slightly, carefully, but the noise didn’t get any louder. It wasn’t coming from inside the casino. Morty growled, knowing he couldn’t go hunting for cigars when some mystery noise could present a threat. He also growled because, if the noise wasn’t coming from inside the casino, then it was coming from outside. Which meant going all the way back up to the roof for a look-see.
The roof was the only place he could get a view of the entire area surrounding the casino. The rooms were useless because they only afforded a view from their windows’ perspectives. Good view if you were on a vacation with the missus and ready to play some slots, but horrible if you were trying to perform a simple threat assessment.
Morty said goodbye to his cigars and stomped his way back up, level by level, landing by landing, until he came to the roof access door once more and shoved it wide.
The noise was louder, but still not quite recognizable. Morty thought it was mechanical, an engine possibly. He looked up in the sky, hunting for an airplane. He remembered seeing airplanes fill the skies the first few weeks after the Gates of Hell had opened. People trying to flee a nightmare that could never be escaped. Morty had no idea where any of those planes went, but wherever they landed, he knew what was waiting for them. The same nightmare they’d tried to flee.
When the Gates of Hell opened, the event wasn’t like literal gates that spilled demons onto some causeway in New Jersey. No, the opening was metaphorical, a spiritual opening that flooded the Earth with evil. Fly away all they wanted, those people had nowhere to run. The evil was everywhere, and running had already been too late the moment the idea for escape entered a human brain.
Technology didn’t like the demon energy. Circuits and boards and wires shorted out and went up in poofs of smoke any time a possessed person barely looked at a car or computer or even a handheld radio. Simple weapons like firearms were good, and demons were great with fire, but anything with a mechanism that included an electrical wire was fried instantly. So, the sound couldn’t have been from a plane filled with possessed out for a sky-diving trip.
But Morty looked up anyway.
The sky was clear of all flying objects except for a couple of stray birds here and there. Crows and ravens, mostly, but a gull was up there too, all circling for signs of possible scraps.
The noise became louder, and Morty was certain it was an engine. So he walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. He was on the stage door side, the alley behind the casino directly below him. A hundred possessed were down there, but nothing that could be the source of the noisy engine.
He continued around the roof, looking down to see more of the same—a lot of possessed keeping that weird distance from the walls and doors of the casino, but nothing mechanical.
The engine noise continued to grow until Morty finally had it pinpointed as coming from the area of the main entrance to the casino. Looking down, there—racing right at the building—was a truck. A truck. Racing at the building. It was an understatement to say Morty was shocked and surprised.
What he wasn’t shocked and surprised about was the possessed’s reactions to the truck. A new noise joined the engine. Those possessed with firearms were busy firing bullets into the truck’s windshield, sending spiderweb cracks then a full-on explosion of safety glass showering in on the driver. A driver Morty couldn’t see.
“What in the stupidity of everything holy are you doing?” Morty asked down at the truck. Not that the driver could hear him, but Morty felt the words needed saying. “Where do you think you’re going?”
It was a full-sized pickup truck, one of those used by farmers and ranchers to pull their trailers. Big, heavy-duty tires up front and double axles in back meant the thing could take a beating and still keep going. Although, Morty could see a line of steam starting to come up from under the hood as the possessed switched their aim from the windshield that didn’t exist anymore to the engine block.
The truck kept coming. It bounced up over curbs, drove over the skeletons of long-dead shrubs, clipped a Volkswagen Beetle Cabriolet, sending the abandoned vehicle spinning into a group of firing possessed, tossing most of them into the air, their bodies broken and destroyed.
On came the truck, straight toward the main entrance.
Morty seriously debated his unwelcome conclusions and options. If the truck was being driven, then it had to have a driver. A driver that wasn’t possessed, a driver that was human, a driver that would need some help. Morty could offer that help.
But why?
He wasn’t back at his sanctuary. He was on the roof of the Cherokee casino, not on the roof of the Margaret’s Patch cathedral. Whoever was driving that truck was not his ward. He owed that person zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.
Morty would be totally justified in wiping his hands of the huge hassle of saving the idiot human and go back to Bryson City to start moving the supplies. If the supplies were still there. He was giving about fifty-fifty odds on that. The possessed who had dogged him in Bryson City might have found the supplies and stolen them, trashed them, or pissed all over them and smeared them with crap. Despite Valac’s orders. The possessed couldn’t pass up an opportunity to defile things.
He had enough problems. He no obligation to the fool who was plowing through the horde of possessed straight at the front doors. No obligation at all. Except for maybe, just maybe, a moral one.
Elisa’s face, Hannah’s face, and especially Olivia and Artus’s faces popped up in his mind. They’d argue the moral obligation point.
Sure, he could decide not to tell them when he got back, leave out the entire casino part of the day, but then he’d feel guilty lying to them, even to the humans, especially to Elisa, and eventually he’d crack. Because, dammit, he always cracked, and they’d think he was an amoral ass no better than Valac or any of the demons that possessed the human bodies that walked the land.
Guilt hurt his brain.
Morty looked down right before the truck was lost from sight under the covered valet parking overhang, and his stone heart stopped.
His decision was made for him in that last glimpse before the truck was gone, the noise of it crashing into and through the casino’s front doors filling the evening air.
No human drove that truck. He knew that for a fact. Yes, he was twenty stories up, but he knew what he saw.
No face made of flesh and blood peered out the windshield-free opening. The hands holding the steering wheel weren’t covered in skin.
No, what Morty glimpsed was a creature of stone. A creature like him. And it had driven a truck into the first floor of the casino.
He looked over at the roof access obelisk. Too slow. He needed to get down there fast.
Morty stepped off the roof and laughed as he went into freefall.
8
A TWENTY-STORY drop made quite a mess. The possessed he didn’t hit were sent flying as a wave of fluids and flesh slammed into them. Several more layers were knocked off their feet as the pavement buckled under them upon Morty’s impact. A dozen possessed might have been broken by his fall, but Morty was way too big for the bodies to actually break his fall.
He chuckled then got to his feet to face the angry horde that surrounded him. Morty got a bri
ef glimpse of the tail end of the truck sticking out from the casino’s entrance before he was swallowed up by the horde.
Despite their overwhelming numbers, it was only a six-on-one fight. That’s how many possessed could get at him at any one time. Morty didn’t have to think of it as fighting a horde of possessed, but as fighting groups of six over and over and over. Kill three, move closer to the entrance, defend against three behind him, kill them, turn and kill three more, move closer, defend, kill, turn, kill, move, kill.
Morty’s fists were non-stop pistons of violence. They demolished faces and skulls, ripped into bellies and rib cages, tore off arms, snapped legs. He never let those fists rest for even a moment. Even as the horde tried to use its mass to keep him from moving forward, Morty’s fists never tired. They crushed, killed, smashed, killed, pulped, killed. Everything in front of them died. Or behind when he turned to cover his back for a moment or two.
Someone shot him with a pistol and he had the firearm ripped from the possessed’s grip and shoved down its throat before he could even tell if it was a man or woman he was killing. A pistol. Seriously? It was almost embarrassing. There was always one asshole who tried it. Which meant there was a demon suddenly back in Hell having to explain to management why he was standing there with his (or her) thumb up his (or her) butt.
That made Morty laugh.
“What’s so funny, stoner?” a possessed man snarled as he slammed a hunk of rebar into Morty’s right shoulder. “You think dying is something to laugh at? I hope so, because that’s what’s about to happen—”
The man’s head popped off his neck like a dandelion before going fully to seed. Pop and gone.
Morty rolled the shoulder where the rebar hit. That had hurt. Had to have been obsidian shards on the rebar and Morty didn’t like it, but he also didn’t have time to think too deeply about it. Not that thinking deeply was his forte. He was the punch-into-guts kind of deep, that was it. The continuing ache in his shoulder was annoying, but got no worse.
Morty pressed on, ripping and shredding, punching and crushing, step by stone step until he was under the valet overhang. Most of the horde began to back off, keeping their distance from the casino entrance. Another thing for Morty to think about when he didn’t want to be thinking at all.
A possessed leapt onto his back, wrapping his arms around Morty’s neck as Morty reached the tailgate of the crashed truck.
“What are you trying to do?” Morty asked, filled with annoyance and a little surprise. “You can’t choke me.”
“A message,” the possessed man hissed into Morty’s ear. “A message from management.”
That was new.
“Well, what the hell is it?” Morty snapped as he tried to pry the possessed man’s arms loose. The guy was big, as big as Morty, and clung tight. “Just tell me already or get off!”
“She is not yours,” the possessed man said. “She is ours. You have no jurisdiction here, so walk away. Fly off, silly gargoyle. Leave here while you can.”
“Grotesque,” Morty snapped. He knew that management was messing with him by calling him a gargoyle, but the misnomer was so infuriating sometimes. “Grotesque, dumbass. And tell management something for me, will ya?”
“What is that, stoner?” the possessed man asked.
Morty reached up and back with both hands then clapped them together. The possessed man’s head burst like a water balloon. A water balloon filled with brain and blood. Morty shook the headless corpse free and squeezed past the truck.
It was a tight squeeze and he had to bend part of the door frame to get his bulk around the front of the truck, but he did it and was finally back inside the casino. The possessed horde waited outside, shouting obscenities that mainly consisted of what they would do to his stone orifices when he came back out. While some of the threats sounded intriguing due to their anatomical impossibility, Morty understood he’d best make his exit from the casino’s rooftop.
The novelty of mass destruction had worn off, and he was done playing with the possessed for the day.
“Hey!” Morty called out as he walked away from the destroyed front of the truck.
Liquids poured from the engine block and pooled in the casino’s old carpet. Smoke and steam drifted up from the crumpled hood. Morty was going to ignore the truck, but a brief glimpse of flame flickering from the engine caught his attention. He found a fire extinguisher on the wall a couple of feet away and aimed it at the truck.
Nothing happened. It hadn’t been charged in years. No matter. Morty ripped it open with his hands and tossed the chemical contents onto the engine, suffocating the flames before they could spread and set the casino on fire. If the casino burned, then so did the stores of cigars, and Morty was not going to let that happen. Not when his Bryson City supply was being attacked by the possessed.
“Hey!” Morty called again, his voice booming and echoing back at him from the empty casino floor.
Lines upon lines of slot machines stood between him and several avenues of escape. Whoever was driving the truck could be anywhere in the casino. Anywhere. Morty was tired of sighing; it had been a day of sighing, but he let another one pass his stone lips as he picked a direction and started walking.
“Okay, don’t answer me,” Morty said. “I don’t know why. It’s not like you snuck in here under the cover of darkness. You kind of gave yourself away with the whole drive-through-a-horde-of-possessed-and-crash-into-the-casino thing, pal.”
No response.
But Morty didn’t need one. As he passed between the banks of slot machines, the unmistakable tang of blood hit him like a freight train. The unexpected scent knocked him back a couple of steps, and he had to shake his head a few times to get himself on track again. The mystery kept getting weirder and weirder. There was absolutely no reason blood should have that effect on him. But it did.
He pushed through the overpowering smell and made it to the end of the rows of slots. At his stone feet, only an inch from the granite claws that stuck out from his toes, were several large drops of blood. Morty had a visual to go with the olfactory assault. The drops trailed away toward one of the many bars that were scattered throughout the casino. Morty followed, his senses dialed up to maximum and fists ready to go flying if anyone or anything jumped out at him.
The bar was one of the nicer venues in the casino. At one time, at least. All expensive wood and highly polished chrome, both of which had seen better days. The seats, from the bar stools to the booths, were imported leather. From the look of the velvet rope that lay useless on the floor of the bar entrance, the venue had been VIP-only. Or wanted to look that way.
Morty stepped over the velvet rope and stopped, his eyes scanning the interior of the bar, looking for more drops of blood. He could smell it, but couldn’t see it. The physical trail ended where the bar began. The smell was so strong that Morty couldn’t tell where it came from. It was everywhere. So he stood there, waiting, watching, while outside the casino, the demon-possessed hordes howled curses and vile threats at the destroyed entrance.
“Eventually they’re going to come in here,” Morty said to no one. “They haven’t tried before, but you may have given them a reason. A closed door is one thing, a wide-open wall is another.”
He waited, but there was no answer.
“Hello!” Morty yelled. “I freaking saw you drive in here. I saw what you are, even though I can’t believe it, so show yourself.”
Again, he waited, but still no answer.
“You must have a human with you,” Morty said, walking forward with cautious steps. The fact that the truck’s driver was stone had him spooked already and the intense smell of blood wasn’t helping. He paused halfway down the bar. “What is your problem, pal? If I made an entrance like that, I’d be all top hat and tails while singing Puttin’ on the Ritz. You can’t start the show wi
th flash and dazzle then not deliver an actual performance. Hello?”
The thing he was chasing, and the wounded human, were in the bar somewhere, Morty was positive of it. But, since they didn’t want to reveal themselves, Morty figured why waste a good hunting trip? He hurried around the bar, eyes still wary and watchful, and straight for the stash of cigars he knew was directly under the cash register. There was a humidor on the wall by the liquor, but he’d emptied that long ago. The cigars he wanted were out of sight.
Except he didn’t make it to the cigars. He made it around the bar and that was it. A double-barreled shotgun opened up on him, sending him flying backward into a booth. He crushed the table and tore apart the formerly expensive leather bench seats. He lay there for a second, stunned that he’d been shot and that the impacts actually had an effect, before pushing up onto his elbows to look across at the woman who was crouched behind the bar, busily reloading her shotgun.
“Hey!” Morty shouted and the woman fumbled one of the shells. She ignored it as it rolled under the bar and fished another from a pocket in the denim jacket she wore. “Hey!”
She gave Morty a terrified glance then stopped, frozen. Her eyes narrowed and she seemed to come out of a daze.
“You’re a grotesque,” she said as she settled the second shell into the barrel and snapped the breach shut with a well-practiced flick of her wrist. “You’re not a demon at all.”
“No shit,” Morty said as he stood up. He stayed where he was, not wanting to spook the woman, but he also made sure he showed his full height and width, flexing his wings slightly to add to the effect. “And neither are you if you’re in here. None of the possessed come inside the casino.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, although he wasn’t sure it actually pointed toward the entrance, but he figured the woman would get the idea. “They’re all out there hollering at me and wanting to put large objects up my butthole.”
