Reaction

by Seth M. Baker

  “Grassal, get his gun,” Amadeus said. Grassal removed the gun from the man’s belt. “Did you kill him? Did you kill Tommy Brunmeier?” Amadeus said.

  “Amadeus,” Grassal said, “we need to get go.” The black-eyed man laughed and spit some blood onto the concrete.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I neutralized him,” the man said. In the distance, Amadeus heard gunshots then a familiar screeching sound. Amadeus looked around.

  “Neutralized him. What the fuck does that mean?” He could pull the trigger right now and see this man die as he had seen Ramona die, as he had seen Laroux die.

  “Amadeus…” Grassal said.

  “You want to run away,” the man said. “I know you recognize that glorious sound.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Um, Amadeus…?” Grassal said. The demon’s bellow sounded like the rumble of a thousand trains. The sound shook the city. Glass windows of the office towers facing the wharf shattered and fell. Amadeus and Grassal both turned to look. When they looked back, the black-eyed man was scurrying away. “Chase or run?” Another roar, followed by more glass crashing.

  “Run. Definitely run,” Amadeus said. Grassal tossed him the keys.

  “You can drive.” Grassal tossed the keys to Amadeus. “I’ll admit I’m a shitty driver.” Amadeus shrugged and got in the driver’s seat, taking off before Grassal closed his door.

  “What about Zella and Lucretia?”

  “They’re fine, they’re playing in San Diego tonight.” Grassal adjusted the mirror in an attempt to see the demon. “We’re going back to Colorado, aren’t we?” Amadeus looked over at him.

  “Got any better ideas?”

  49

  The radio announcer’s frantic, smoke-burned voice reported on the scene in San Francisco, yelling to be heard above the fwopping of helicopter rotors. “It’s smashing buildings, rampaging, tearing people and cars apart like they’re nothing more than scraps of trash. Makes the L.A. riots look like an Easter egg hunt, the aftermath of the ’92 quake a Black Friday sale. Okay, wait, the demon, it’s turning, away from the city center. It’s…running away? No, going up an on-ramp. It’s on the freeway. I’ve got a top view of it now. It’s bigger than the Manhattan Monster or any of the ones that raped Huntington. Jesus, Mohammad, Mary and Krishna help us. It’s as big as a yacht. And it looks like, from where I’m at, I don’t know, a dinosaur, that doesn’t even do it justice. Cthulhu has risen, people. Stay in your houses. This is fucking, I mean, I’ve never even dreamed anything like this. Yes, I just said ‘fucking’ on the air. Sue me. Okay, commuters, if you’re headed north on the One, you best be finding an exit ramp, traffic is backed up due to road destruction.”

  “Um,” Grassal said, yelling to be heard over the announcer, “we’re headed north? Yeah?” Amadeus nodded. “This thing is following us.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Amadeus said, calm as a doctor. “I’ve dealt with demons before. How do you think I got this?” Amadeus lifted his loose pant leg to show Grassal the dirty bandage that covered his calf. Amadeus didn’t mention the demon that did this to him was no bigger than a small dog… and dismembered. “It’s all good, Grassal. Nothing to worry about.” Amadeus drifted through traffic, quick and competent.

  “You heard him. The size of a yacht.”

  “Yachts come in different sizes.”

  “A big fucking yacht.If Ross had a yacht. That big.”

  “Grassal,” Amadeus said, looking over at him. “Relax. I’ve got this.”

  They had just started across the Golden Gate Bridge when a rumbling, warbling drone like a whale in an echo chamber amplified by a million-watt PA system vibrated the Jeep windows. The roadway ahead of them lurched and heaved. A piano-sized claw reached up from below the bridge and grappled at the orange vermillion suspension cables, trying to gain purchase, scraping over the cables like a plectrum pulled over guitar strings. The demon straddled the bridge from the bottom, hanging upside down, its hind claws wrenching the metal railings loose as it tried to get purchase.

  Amadeus slammed the accelerator to the floor. The Jeep kicked them back in their seats as the turbocharger engaged. The road ahead of them, just before the second tower, bulged upwards then exploded, spraying concrete shrapnel in every direction. A chunk shattered the Jeep’s windshield and landed in the back. Grassal screamed. Amadeus flinched but kept the Jeep steady. Cars ahead of them swerved and smashed into each other. Grassal unstrapped and kicked out the windshield, giving them a clear view of the road ahead.

  The demon started pulling itself through the hole it had made in the bridge, claws scraping long gashes into the left—hand lane. More concrete flew into the air and the demon’s head appeared like a waking nightmare. An array of mammalian yellow eyes leered from beneath an exoskeletal shroud. Below its eyes, the demon’s face was sloped and shaped like a plow, two plates cleft vertically down the middle. The demon roared and the plates split to reveal a white mouth ringed with tentacles, like the top of an anemone. Placoid scales, like sharkskin viewed under a microscope, covered its body.

  Behind the demon, an oncoming freight truck jackknifed and turned over, slamming into the back of the demon’s head. The demon swatted the truck away like a fly, sending it spiraling into the bay below. At the same moment, he had to swerve right to avoid an oncoming motorcycle, slamming into the driver’s side of a red sedan. The sedan reacted by pushing back, forcing them left, towards the slashing, grasping claws of the demon trying to pull itself through the hole.

  “Crazy son of a bitch!” Grassal said.

  Amadeus slowed down, but their vehicles were locked together. He held the wheel tight and, fast approaching the struggling demon, slipped past with two meters to spare. Suddenly, the demon swiped at the road just beside their car, knocking the red sedan against the suspension cables. The sedan ricocheted like a tennis ball and skidded on its roof before being smashed by an SUV. Amadeus veered right to avoid the wreckage. Behind them, the demon managed to pull itself through the opening, pushing the bridge apart as it did so.

  They quit the bridge just as the north tower buckled. Cables began to snap and lash through the air. Rending metal whined, piercing their eardrums. In the rearview, Amadeus saw a cable whip the demon, knocking it sideways. The announcer’s voice screamed from the speakers as they entered a tunnel.

  “Folks, the Golden Gate Bridge is crumbling. That fucker tore it apart. Where’s the military? Where? Years of overseas wars and they can’t even protect us at home? Forgive my digression. Okay, the demon is off the bridge, headed north. It’s climbing over Waldo Tunnel, headed for Marin County.”

  Grassal glanced at Amadeus. “That means it’s going to…” At the tunnel’s end, they saw the demon straddling the highway, batting at the exiting traffic like a kitten swiping at a string, shredding some vehicles, missing others. Amadeus downshifted, redlining the engine, and slid into the left-hand lane. No one wanted to go downtown today.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Grassal said.

  “Getting through.”

  When they flew out of the tunnel, the demon’s claw rushed towards them from the side. Amadeus pulled the parking brake and the Jeep spun around, but the claw caught them straight on and scraped across the roof, lifting the Jeep a meter off the ground. The fiberglass top ripped off. The Jeep landed with a kruchunk, jarring them against their seatbelts.

  The tires squeaked as they landed. Amadeus straightened the wheel as the demon pulled the hardtop apart and flung away the pieces. Meters behind them, the demon smashed a white van like a beer can, flinging it off the road and starting after them.

  Amadeus drove the Jeep hard, RPMs in the red, driving in the right-hand median, leaving a plume of dust and rocks behind them. The demon gave chase, galloping along behind them, but it sometimes stumbled over cars, and soon the distance between the Jeep and the demon began to grow. By the time they reached Marin City, the demon was well behind them.

  Grassal�
�s face was pale, his large hands balled into quivering fists on his lap. Both he and Amadeus squinted against the wind and bugs coming through the non-existent windshield.

  “You worry too much,” Amadeus said.

  “Funny how that goes,” Grassal said. “Tell me something. Why doesn’t that scare the living shit out of you?”

  “Brother,” Amadeus said, “what’s another demon? Since I left Connecticut, I’ve been orphaned, shot at, chased by the Cambodian military. I’ve seen innocent people die before my eyes. I’ve seen more demons than I care to count, even got into a fight with one. Along the way I saw the world, hand untold rounds of ammunition shot at me, survived a Pachyderm crash, nearly stepped on a landmine, and slept next to a beautiful woman…” Amadeus checked the rearview but saw only open highway. he whipping wind carried the distant roars of the demon. “What’s a little high-speed escape?”

  “Wait a second,” Grassal said. “That last bit, did you just say…you mean to tell me you and Lilly?” Grassal gave Amadeus a sly, Indianapolis used-car salesmen grin.

  “I’m working on it. Definite progress.” Amadeus wasn’t about to tell Grassal what really happened.

  “That explains a lot.”

  “Like what?” Amadeus said.

  “Like why, when I tried to kiss Lilly, she gave me the ‘you’re a brother to me’ speech,” Grassal said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I knew that was bullshit. It was never about me and her. She did let me kiss her cheek, though.” Amadeus scrunched his brow at this, and Grassal slapped his shoulder. “I’ll admit it was first-class, but we’re as innocent as schoolchildren! No worries.”

  “Buddy, you showed me how to look up porn in fourth grade. Your definition of innocent troubles me.”

  Laughing, relieved, with the setting sun at their backs and the demon far behind them, they drove west.

  50

  A long, windy drive. As the land changed from high desert to mountains, Grassal told Amadeus about his time at the compound, about Jones, how he grew a little stranger every day, like a man about to lose everything in the stock market, making long bets on short sales. How he would stay locked in his bedroom-office for days at a time.

  “One evening, Lilly had me follow her into her room. When we got inside, she turned the music up and whispered something in my ear. She said, ‘I think my father is insane.’ This was a few days after she got back from Prague. I know it broke her heart to say it. She said it might be the tumor, pressing on his brain, making him crazy.”

  “Tumor or not, that fucker tried to kill me,” Amadeus said. “There were too many coincidences, I should’ve seen it. I mean, every time I went somewhere, something showed up: a demon or the black-eyed man. Laroux was right. Jones was using me to get the data. The computer on the Pachyderm, he must’ve put a key logger or monitoring software on it.”

  “He accessed my forum,” Grassal said. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Right. And that’s why the demon showed up in San Francisco.”

  “But the demon wasn’t just running around destroying shit. It was after us specifically. That would mean…”

  “That these demons can be controlled.”

  “How would you control a demon?”

  “I have no idea. What I do know is there are too many coincidences. Here’s my theory: Ross wanted me dead from the start. When we showed up at the compound, Jones saw an opportunity and started working with Ross, feeding him information. But the thing is, sometimes that information was wrong. Why? Jones wanted the plans for himself, not for the demons but for the transportation, so he was playing both sides, giving Ross just enough on me to keep him satisfied, but not enough to get me killed, at least not until he was done with me.

  “When he realized what I was actually up to, that I’d made the Gate Crasher, he freaked out and disabled the Pachyderm. I assume he decided, at that point, for him it was better to cast his entire lot with Ross. The only reason he didn’t crash it sooner was because he hoped I would get the plans for him.”

  “That’s heavy stuff, brother,” Grassal said, “but it makes sense. That reminds me of something else Lilly told me. Jones was deep in debt. His patent royalties and grants didn’t come close to covering the cost of running the compound and doing private aeronautical research. He was in it for the money. A cold, objective, pragmatic scientific calculation. But what about Gravity?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is he even on our side?”

  “He’s never worked against us.”

  Outside, night had fallen, the air had turned cool, and the sky was lit by a million little points of light. They drove for nearly twenty hours, stopping for energy drinks, fuel, and to share the driving task.

  Their headlights illuminated a sign that read “Leadville, 15km.” Amadeus had thought he recognized the silhouettes of the mountains, like familiar people standing behind a movie screen. He felt relieved the drive was almost over. After all this was finished, he hoped to spend some time in one place without driving, flying, or walking anywhere. A cabin, maybe. Or a compound.

  The demon, according to the radio, had been engaged by the military somewhere in the Nevada desert, though no reports had come for at least an hour. Amadeus hoped it wouldn’t make it this far. But if it did, at least they were in a compound. Even a demon that size couldn’t get in through a ten-foot layer of granite or a three-foot thick steel door. Right?

  “What if Jones is inside?” Grassal asked. Amadeus wanted to say that they would shoot the Judas like he was a rabid dog, but Jones would have information. Besides that, he couldn’t do that to Lilly, wherever she was.

  “If Jones is in there, we tie him up. I want to kill him, but I really don’t want to kill him. The guy is in a wheelchair, so tying him up would be easy. Then we get some answers. And wait this thing out.”

  Amadeus turned off the paved road and drove up the mountain until they reached the gate. Grassal jumped out and keyed in some numbers on the control pad. Nothing happened. He tried again, then pulled a small device from his pocket.

  “Got to hack in,” he said. “Could take a couple minutes. After our chat, I slipped a script in for backdoor access. Hopefully Jones didn’t catch it before he left.”

  As Grassal worked on the computer, Amadeus caught a whiff of a something familiar; decay and sulfur, body odor worse than the guys from the library in San Francisco. Grassal pecked quick, arrhythmic bursts onto the screen of his computer. Clouds obscured the full moon.

  “Grassal, I hope you can hurry up with that.”

  “I’m working as fast as I can. The script was buggy. I have to run the compiler again.”

  “Well you best get compiling; you smell that? One of those things is nearby.” As if his words were an invocation, the air trembled with a warbling roar. A dark silhouette loomed in the distance; the demon from San Francisco. It had followed them. Only, instead of being the nimble beast that had pursued them hours ago, it now swayed and shook like a flag in a storm. Yet still it drew closer, closer.

  “Grassal, hurry.”

  “Almost.”

  Grassal made a few more rapid-fire clicks, then something beeped. The ground shook. He cried out, his eyes darting from his computer to the keypad and back. Amadeus called out to him; Grassal didn’t look up. Another beep. A green light flashed. The earth below trembled as the thick steel door began to rise, too slowly for Amadeus’ taste. Amadeus looked back to see the demon lurching towards them.

  He drove the Jeep to the door, waiting for the door to rise. A thunderous crash shook the Jeep as the demon’s claw impaled the passenger seat, the place Grassal had sat only moments before. Amadeus jumped out of the Jeep and darted inside as Grassal entered the code on the control pad.

  The door started to close as they dashed down the corridor. The demon swiped the Jeep aside and tried to crawl in after them, but it was unable to fit its body through. As the door lowered above the creature’s head, Amadeus had an idea. Instead o
f running deeper into the compound, he turned around began walking towards the creature, yelling and waving his arms. This infuriated the creature, who kept trying to push itself through the steel doorframe. Grassal shot Amadeus a perplexed look, but Amadeus nodded to the lowering door, and Grassal understood. Within moments, the door had pinned the demon to the concrete floor. When it realized its predicament, the demon roared and tried to back out, but its head was too big. It flailed and thrashed and moaned but couldn’t free itself.

  The demon snapped at him, but Amadeus had plenty of room, and inched forward to get a closer look. Its yellow eyes were tire-sized and the rectangular pupils throbbed. Its skin was smooth and mottled like a salamander.

  “Want to toast it?” Amadeus asked. “We’ll never have a better chance than now.” Grassal smirked. They ran down the hallway and into the hangar. There, Amadeus filled a pump sprayer with gasoline while Grassal searched for something in the back. Amadeus grabbed a propane torch and a striker from a workbench. Grassal returned bearing two shotguns and a box of ammunition.

  “Found these in—” Grassal cocked his head and furrowed his brow. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “I heard someone calling my name.”

  “Unless it was Lilly, you’re hearing things.”

  “It definitely wasn’t Lilly,” Grassal said, then shook his head as if he were disappointed in himself. “Let’s do this.”

  When they returned, the demon had given up trying to free itself. Now it whimpered, as if it knew what they were planning. The stink had grown worse. Amadeus’ stomach still hadn’t adjusted to the smell, and he fought to keep from retching. Standing at what he judged to be a safe distance, Amadeus pumped the sprayer, aimed, depressed the trigger, and emptied the contents onto the demon.

  Amadeus, a voice said. The voice sounded like the wind blowing through the forest behind his home in Stamford. Amadeus looked over at Grassal.