The Wicked

by James Newman

  “It doesn’t matter what you do, old man,” Mavis said, her voice strangely masculine and somehow hauntingly seductive. “Moloch will have the children. Very soon.”

  “Who you callin’ old, bitch?” said George.

  “He’s coming,” said Frank Deon, beaming as if he’d just won the lottery. He rose to stand behind Mavis Ledbetter, and his stiff little penis bounced against the old woman’s cottage cheese buttocks. “He’s coming...and you will die if you try to stop him.”

  “You’ll die if you try to stop him,” said everyone else in the room. Their voices were strangely alike, and that sent a chill down George Heatherly’s spine.

  David pointed his AK-47 heavenward. He pulled the trigger, and a quick burst of deafening gunfire blew a shower of plaster from the ceiling. It rained down on them like chalky gray snow.

  “Godammit, I’m sick of fucking around! Where the hell are my kids?”

  George stared at the younger man, impressed.

  “They have been promised to him,” the tattooed fat man atop the church’s organ shouted across the space between them, and a few feet away Billy Dawson’s mother slid off of Hank Keenan’s fat cock to announce: “He’ll take them, no matter what you do. You cannot stop what has begun.”

  “Moloch,” said Mavis Ledbetter. “You cannot stop what has begun.”

  “Moloch,” said the crowd, as one.

  “Fuck Moloch,” David said.

  And then something was suddenly on David’s back, a horrible weight, and he couldn’t breathe. He felt arms around his throat, squeezing. Tighter and tighter. He wheezed, slammed into the wall behind him. Dropped the Beretta.

  “Moloch, motherfucker,” said a familiar voice in his ear. “Moloch! Moloch! Moloch!”

  “Blessed be,” said the crowd. “Moloch!”

  “David!” He couldn’t get a clear shot at the man in the Santa Claus suit for fear of hitting David.

  David thrashed about, slamming into the wall in futile efforts to get the man off of his back. “Get...off!”

  “Shoot him, David!” the old man shouted.

  David went to his knees, his vision blurring. The vice grip around his neck did not let up for even a second. He could smell the Santa imposter’s breath. Onions. And beer.

  The crowd around Moloch’s altar drew together, inched closer.

  David grasped blindly for the AK-47. He couldn’t find it, though he felt its weight digging into his ass, felt it trapped between his body and that of his assailant. He elbowed Dawson once, in the gut, enough to stun him. Finally the AK was in his grip. He angled it around, pointed it toward his own head. He stared down the barrel as he brought it up, back, toward the man trying to kill him. He thought briefly how close it would be to his own head, the shot he was about to make. He hooked his thumb through the trigger guard.

  He pulled the trigger, jerking his head away from the blast, his teeth clenched tightly together.

  Sticky wetness splashed across the back of his head. Instantly, the arms around his throat grew slack and the weight fell off of his back.

  David stood, coughing. He stared down at the man, quickly looked away when he saw the awful hole in Santa Claus’ head.

  “You okay?” George asked.

  “I think so.”

  David rubbed at his Adam’s apple, stared toward the front of the church, as a low humming came from behind the pulpit area.

  A voice called out above the gathered throng surrounding Moloch’s altar: “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi!”

  The crowd turned from the intruders in their midst to face the church’s front stage. They repeated that dark chant as one: “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi!”

  David tensed, his grip on the AK-47 tighter even than Fred Dawson’s grip had been around his throat, as he saw the speaker for the first time. It was Reverend Rhodes, but not the Reverend Rhodes who had presided over Fire Chief Randall Simms’ funeral just two months ago. The pastor was nude, and his great beard hung halfway down his belly, impossibly long considering the man had been clean-shaven when David saw him last. His eyes were wild, but his mood was somber as he walked slowly out upon the church’s stage. His stiff member seemed to the lead the way, jutting out before him like some fleshy divining rod.

  Kate followed behind the pastor, staring out at the makeshift idol as if it were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She, too, was nude. Her breasts hung full and pointy, her nipples hard, as she gazed out over Rhodes’ gathered congregation.

  But David barely even noticed his wife. She did not matter anymore. The only things he could focus on—the only things that mattered now—were his children. Their mother was leading them out, Becca softly crying as she held her baby brother in her arms like one of her dolls back home. Despite the situation, David felt a moment of pride as he saw her lean down, kiss Christopher on the forehead as if to assure the infant that everything would be okay.

  Kate stood behind her daughter in the center of the stage, to Reverend Rhodes’ left, her hands tight upon the seven-year-old’s shoulders.

  “Becca!” David shouted, running forward into the crowd of naked bodies.

  “Stop him!” Reverend Rhodes commanded from the stage, pointing at the intruder among their midst.

  “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi,” the crowd moaned, and then they were upon him. Arms and legs kicked and punched at David as he tried to make his way to his daughter. Someone kneed him in the groin. A long fingernail barely missed his eye, scratched all the way down his cheek, burning open a deep gash along his jawline. Hands tore at his clothes, ripped at his flesh, but all he could see was his daughter, up there behind the pulpit, silvery tears staining her cheeks like clear greasepaint in the firelight. He heard gunshots, realized George was trying to cover him, but the closer he got to the stage it only seemed to incite the crowd to pull him farther away.

  “David!” George cried from somewhere far away. “Godammit, use what you’ve got, man!”

  As David pulled out his weapons, he could hear Reverend Rhodes upon the stage, invoking Moloch. The man’s voice was unnaturally loud, nearly drowning out the violent grunts of his parishioners, and David grew dizzy beneath that strange incantation.

  “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi! IN NOMINE DEI NOSTRI MOLOCH EXCELSI!”

  “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi,” the crowd chanted in reply as they thrashed and struck at David.

  David pulled the trigger of the AK-47, roared as the weapon cut through the crowd. The man George had identified earlier as Frank “Beanpole” Deon went down with a hole in his forehead, his shiny red fireman’s hat flying off into oblivion like some odd-shaped bird the color of freshly spilt blood. The tattooed man who had been sodomized earlier by the skinny young Denny’s employee stumbled back as six bloody holes appeared in his flabby chest. Mavis Ledbetter went down with a hoarse shriek, a series of crimson holes polka-dotting her thigh.

  Meanwhile, the fire in Moloch’s hollow belly continued to blaze, crackling, popping, like the short, sharp bursts of gunfire. The room stank of burning wood, metallic gunsmoke, sweat and musty sex.

  “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi!” Reverend Rhodes shouted, and even above the chaos around him David heard Kate echo the pastor’s words: “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi...”

  He also heard Becca sobbing frantically, and that gave him the strength to press on.

  Beside him, just inches from his face, a man’s brains flew out of his forehead in a thick spurt, splattering across Mavis’ breasts as she rose again. She looked down at that gray mess, sopped a portion of it up with one fat finger. She stuck her finger in her mouth, grinned back at George Heatherly as if thanking him for the unexpected meal.

  David glanced back, saw George covering him with the M-16, and stuck the AK-47 to Mavis Ledbetter’s burly throat. He pulled the trigger. She went down with a thud.

  David felt arms around his neck again. He gasped for air, spun around. In his peripheral vis
ion he could see George fighting off several of those naked lunatics. He angled the gun over his shoulder, aiming it at the person straddling his back but could not get a clear shot. Hands batted at the weapon, at his chest, and he could not angle the weapon away from his own head for several seconds. With every ounce of strength he possessed, he forced the gun down, swinging it around through that sea of arms and legs. He pulled the trigger. A burst of gunfire sent red splatters across the torsos of those who had been trying to take him down from behind. Hank Keenan was one of them, as well as the two young men from the fire department who had been so infatuated earlier with one another’s cocks.

  “Godammit!” David shouted, still trying to throw whomever it was off his back. He tried to elbow his assailant in the face, but his shoulder screamed with agony every time he used his right arm. The AK’s recoil had done a job on his shoulder, bruising it with every shot, and he briefly wished George had warned him about that.

  No time to think about it now, though.

  He stumbled back against the bull-god’s altar, felt its heat through his shirt. Its metal body was growing hotter with every passing minute.

  The person at his back screamed in his ear, and he suddenly felt her teeth in his neck.

  He would know that scream anywhere.

  Kate.

  He howled in agony, ducked to the ground, and she fell off of him at last. But before he could grab her, she ran back onto the stage. Reverend Rhodes stood stone-still up there, watching everything with a very calm expression.

  Kate ripped Christopher from Becca’s arms and held the baby high.

  “Accept our sacrifice, O Lord,” Reverend Rhodes said above the din.

  “Noooo!” David screamed.

  Kate walked toward the altar, Christopher in her arms. David tried to lunge for her, but there were still too many people thrashing at him, holding him back. He tripped over a fat corpse in his path, and then they were upon him.

  He could only watch as Kate laid the baby in Moloch’s glimmering gold hands.

  She looked back at him when it was done and grinned evilly.

  “You should join us, David,” her voice came to him through the din of Moloch’s thrall. “You never liked my old God anyway. And perhaps you were right. He was quite boring.”

  Still, David thought, even as she said it, was there something in her eyes that insisted she did not believe all this? The dazed look of someone who has gone too far, but can never turn back now, a trapped help me look deep inside those beautiful green eyes with which he had fallen in love so long ago?

  No. Maybe. David wasn’t sure. All he could focus on was his infant son, lying in Moloch’s arms. And she had placed him there. His own mother.

  “You...bitch!” he shouted, flailing about beneath that smothering throng.

  “Fucker!” Kate screamed at him, before running to join Reverend Rhodes upon the stage again.

  The child wasn’t crying. Not yet. The altar’s hands were not quite heated up enough. Only its base and sides. But the fire raged on. And the heat was spreading through the thing. Quickly. It would not be long, David knew, until little Christopher was burned alive. Just like those children in the books George borrowed from the library. Passing through the fire. Even as David fought with the sweaty crowd he saw those worshippers who were not engaged in the fight solemnly stoking the hungry flames. Keeping the blaze going. Every few minutes they added new pieces of wood from the shattered pews all about the church. Building the fire higher and higher. Higher and higher.

  Christopher started squealing.

  “Jesus, no...”

  Someone had his arms now. David couldn’t move. Somewhere in the melée he had lost the AK-47, he realized, and he couldn’t see it anywhere around him. Now he had nothing, only his aching limbs with which to defend himself.

  George kicked a middle-aged man with a patch over one eye in the balls as hard as he could, then punched a red-haired teenaged girl in the stomach. She was pregnant, but George only hesitated for a second. Both members of Moloch’s cult collapsed, and the ex-Marine moved forward, closer to David and the crowd atop him. A young man with a Rolling Stones “tongue” tattoo on his left bicep leapt onto George Heatherly with a cat-like squeal, tried to rake at the old man’s eyes with his long fingernails, but George cut him down with a burst from his M-16. Heatherly ran toward David, pointing his gun at anything that moved, but it seemed as if for every evil person he took down, three more raving Moloch worshippers immediately took their place.

  David could only watch, trapped beneath the weight of the naked bodies pummeling him with their fists, their feet, with anything at their disposal, as George Heatherly took two fists in his wrinkled face. The old man stumbled, fell back, but kept firing as a bony middle-aged woman with dirty hair and rotten teeth bit savagely into his arm, ripping a bloody chunk of flesh from his forearm. George screamed. A stout man several years younger than George ripped back on that same arm, bending it the wrong way. David heard the crack—that awful, awful crack!—even above everything else transpiring within the flickering room.

  George grimaced, his head arched toward the ceiling and his eyes rolled into his head beneath the pain, but only for a second or two. He quickly regained his composure, aimed the M-16 with his good arm, and blew out both his assailants’ throats.

  George and David made eye contact.

  Don’t move, the old man’s lips moved.

  George aimed at David’s attackers. Fired.

  The person holding David’s right arm suddenly released him. David’s arm was numb, but he brought it around, punched the old woman on his left as hard as he could.

  He gnashed his teeth as he felt something pop in his bruised shoulder. His vision blurred as tears welled up in his eyes.

  But he was free.

  “David, here!” George shouted, tossing him the shotgun.

  David caught it, but just barely. He spun around, fired the thing without aiming, and the two men behind him fell beneath a nasty spray of buckshot. David’s ears rang, like a shrill alarm inside his head. He realized he had lost his earplugs at some point during the battle.

  To his right he saw a very old man sitting cross-legged upon the carpet, chewing on the earplugs as if enjoying fine chocolates. A flame from one of the candles in the floor lapped at his right leg, but the madman did not even seem to notice.

  David ignored him, as Earplug Man seemed to pose no current threat.

  “Get the baby!” George cried, heading for the stage.

  David could not hear him, as his ears were still ringing beneath the Mossberg’s report, but he didn’t have to be told. He turned toward Moloch’s altar and ran.

  But then he stopped, pushed back as if by some invisible force. His shoulder throbbed as he stared in awe...

  ...as something began to happen up there on the church’s stage.

  Kate walked slowly forward with Reverend Rhodes. Becca glanced back, to the area behind the stage, squealed with terror as she too realized something big was about to happen. They could all feel it in the foundations of the building. A faint tremor, like a distant earthquake. Becca tripped and fell, but caught herself and ran for her father. Her body hitched with sobs as she fell into his arms.

  At the front of the church, where Reverend Rhodes had once preached to the faithful every Sunday, the wall began to buckle inward. It expanded, pushing toward the gathered combatants as if made of liquid. Rippling, undulating, forming into a shape. The wall, like a giant bubble, swelled inward until it was even with the foot of the stage.

  “He’s here!” Reverend Rhodes cried, a single tear running down his face. “He’s here! Come, my Lord!”

  “At last!” Kate squealed with delight. “He’s here! In the flesh!”

  “He’s here!” cried those in the crowd who had not yet fallen beneath George and David’s attack.

  The wall was slowly forming, David realized, into the shape of a ghastly face. Moloch’s face. Features burst forth from the
wood—first a beakish nose, its color paling from swirling wood grain to the shade of sick gray flesh, and then two wet ebony eyes the size of tractor tires blinked out at David and George. They were deeper than the blackest chasm, infinite. Two fat, bullish horns sprouted from the thing’s forehead, stretched out over the length of the church just a few inches below the high white ceiling. The dozen or so fat wooden chairs reserved for the Sunday morning choir at the rear of the stage tumbled over one by one, and then Reverend Rhodes’ pulpit did the same, landing several inches from Moloch’s metal altar with a resounding crash as the creature’s chin formed and stretched out of the wall. And then, at last, hair began to sprout from the foot of the stage, long trailing ropes of it stretching out along the floor of the church. A massive, filthy beard unrolled like some matted gray carpet until it touched the front door of the church. A dirty sea of it, everywhere George and David looked.

  The church, in essence, had become Moloch himself.

  The demon’s immense mouth opened, and the sigh that erupted from within shook the building like thunder. From that black void, too, came a swarm of things that looked like brown alien babies with wings.

  “What the fuck!” George Heatherly cried, running to David’s side.

  “Jesus, oh, Jesus...”

  “Good God Almighty.”

  The thing stared at them, at everyone in attendance, and it smiled. As if pleased with the havoc that had transpired here tonight.

  Kate and Reverend Rhodes screamed that awful chant now, louder and louder with every passing second: “In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi! In nomine Dei nostri Moloch excelsi!”

  “I’ve got Becca,” George yelled into David’s ear. “Get the baby!”

  David could still barely hear his friend, but he did not have to be told twice. He kissed Becca on the cheek and shouted into her ear, instructing her to stay with Mr. Heatherly. He ran for the altar, leapt onto its base, and pulled Christopher down from those massive scrap-metal arms even as several of the terrible insect things plunged their stingers deep into him.