Devil Dog's War

by Robert McKinney

  If I’m going to get inside Graham’s place, my best chance is to not need the weapon or drops at all. Quietly, I move back to the other side of the rooftop before levering myself over the edge and lowering myself down to the space behind Graham’s shop.

  The inside of Graham’s place had been dark when I’d been in it before, so I hadn’t gotten a good enough look to see if there is a back door. After I land, I’m glad to see that there is in fact one to use. It doesn’t budge when I try and twist the handle, so I decide that my having the pistol is useful after all before raising the weapon, taking a half dozen steps back, and open fire on the lock.

  I’m a runner, not a fighter, which usually works in my kind of business. I have had some friendly encounters with other fighters, though, and always keep my ears open when they have advice to offer. Some of the best that I’ve received had come from an Army Ranger who had no problem with sharing the “grand blueprint of violence” after I’d bought a few rounds of Bangkok beer.

  His theory was simple. In any given fight, there are three clear principles that help decide how you should approach the task. They are, in order of preference, surprise, speed, and violence of action. Doing something slow and unseen is almost always better than doing the same thing fast and loud. Sure, fast makes it harder for people to react to your actions, but unseen prevents them from ever reacting at all.

  I don’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket, so I compromise with a combination of all three options. When I open fire on the lock, I don’t just pull the trigger once, I squeeze it back a half dozen times. While the suppressor turns my gunshots into whispers, the sound of the metal lock being smashed is harsh on my ears. The second I empty half a magazine into the door frame, I lunge for the door, yank it open as hard as I can, and throw myself into the room beyond.

  As before, darkness greets me on the other side of the door.

  I hear voices deeper inside the shop, and throw myself into the shadows before anyone can come my way. I try to close the door behind me as I do this, but the door frame and lock are a mess at this point, and so I leave the entrance open a crack. Streetlights and light pollution from the buildings around pool into the rest of the shop, turning the darkness into something dominated by vague shapes and agitated voices.

  There are people with guns around, so I swallow my pride real quick and drop down to my knees. I do it because I don’t want to wind up stumbling over a mop bucket or run face first into a wall. It’s apparently a great idea for all kinds of reasons, because someone I hadn’t seen starts firing a shotgun in my direction an eyeblink after I duck.

  The flame erupting from the end of his barrel lights up the room with flash, making him and the people nearby, clear to see for a few instants.

  I see Graham on the floor, her eyes closed and head bloody. Standing near her, at what seemed like an altar, is Tom being ridden by Ole Beeze. Only one mercenary, the one who opened fire, seems to be standing. I see other shapes on the floor mostly by the doorway. None of them are large enough to have been a full person, but from all the red that I’d seen splashed over that side of the wall, whole isn’t a word that can be applied easily to the others anymore.

  The clak-clak of another shell being pumped into the shotguns breech sends me into a scurrying crawl. I doubt that the shooter had been able to see me from my spot on the shadow covered floor, but I see little reason in giving him a chance if he’d caught a glimpse. I move slow, but steady, keeping one hand out with fingertips soft to press into anything before I can bump it solidly and make anymore noise. I still have the half loaded gun in my hand, and a full magazine.

  I keep moving until I come in contact with something that feels large and metal. From there, I lift up my pistol in the direction where I’d seen the mercenary before and aim, more or less blindly, into the dark.

  For one long, long minute, I hear movement in the dark. I consider pulling off a few shots in that direction, but decide not to. Though suppressed, a pistol will still make a flash in the dark, and I don’t trust the metal I’m hiding behind enough to take a few custom slugs from a fancy shotgun.

  After two minutes, I realize that not firing had been a mistake. The hair on the back of my neck raises up, and when I try to turn around in a futile attempt to see what’s worrying me, I’m met with the barrel of the shotgun, uncomfortably warm, pressed to the front of my forehead.

  “Stay still.” says the man holding the gun on me, before backing up and away into the darkness. I hear more rustling in the direction that gunfire had initially come from, and then am blinded, by light this time, pouring from the now open back door.

  Standing in the doorway is the surviving mercenary. He has a soaked, bloody bandage on one of his arms, but seems to have little trouble in using it to hold his shotgun on me. Given the mangled state of the bodies I’d seen on the floor near where Graham had fallen, I’d say that he’d gotten off easy.

  “What do you want me to do with this one?” He asks Ole Beeze, who still stands at the other side of the room.

  The man’s question, surprisingly, gives me a moment of relief. Ole Beeze, like all devils, is bound by the rules of their agreement - which includes first and foremost - that he can’t kill me. And while that may not include things like providing information on me to my enemies, it definitely covers asking, telling, ordering, or coercing anyone else into doing it for him.

  “Surprise me.” Says Ole Beeze in return.

  Shit, I think. That loophole may work on me.

  The mercenary standing above me must be thinking much the same thing, because he just shrugs and raises the shotgun to his shoulder.

  Before he can aim it at me, though, I see his eyes spring open wide a moment before he screams. He pivots sharply to the side, and starts panic firing his shotgun as fast as he can pump new shells into the chamber. My ears are ringing too much by the time he finishes to tell if he’s still screaming, but I do see how easily he grabs the steaming barrel of his now empty shotgun in both of his hands, raising it over his shoulder to swing it like a baseball player striving for a home run.

  He hits nothing, of course, because if my guess is right the thing he’s been aiming this whole time doesn’t actually exist at least not here on this plane of creation. I look across the room and instead only find an empty spot on the ground where I’d seen Graham lying earlier. Though injured, she’d apparently used my arrival as a distraction so that she could launch an attack of her own. Good for her. It’s more or less what I would have done.

  The front door slams open a moment later, and I turn just in time to see a flash of Graham escaping into the open air. I hear gunfire follow outside, followed by something else that makes my skin crawl in the same unmistakable, unnamable revulsion that I’d felt when making my last drop here.

  “No!” shouts Ole Beeze, who stands up to sprint for the door after Graham.

  “No!” I shout in reply, taking after him.

  I stumble through the half dark of the grocery and crash through the door after Ole Beeze. What I see on the other side is similar to the glimpses of the body pieces strewn across the front door of Graham’s place.

  Holy hell. The drivers. Graham had ripped apart all of the drivers waiting outside of her shop in the time it had taken me to follow her and Ole Beeze out of the door.

  I can see the bodies she’d left behind clearly in the light,and I’m not ashamed to say that my stomach flips in a heartfelt concoction of disgust and horror.

  I’ve seen bodies before. I’ve seen what happens to a militia man when a .50 cal severs his spine, what happens to a woman when a badly tuned AK is sprayed into her house. I’ve even seen what happens to a person, a beautiful, kind and innocent person, when a shaped breaching charge detonated on the other side of the wall that they’re leaning against.

  Nothing I’ve seen, not even what happened to M
ary, compares to the carnage that Graham had wrecked within a few moments of leaving her store. The blood and limbs cast across the street are the worst part, but the steaming coils of intestines definitely come close.

  I skid in the gore and feel bile pushing up through my throat, my body on the verge of a panic and shutdown response. When I look away from the carnage, though, I see that Ole Beeze is still running down the street, about half a block away from where Graham is now fleeing. I only notice her presence as a vague, unimportant thing, because the sight of Beeze’s exposed back sends a pulse of anger through me. The feeling is more than strong enough strong enough to shove aside the disgust at my surroundings and send me dashing.

  Ole Beeze has some distance, and unlike me, owns a stolen body that’s immune to pesky things like exhaustion or pain. If I keep chasing on foot there’s no way that I’ll catch him, so I throw a glance at the SUVs parked outside of the grocery and dismiss the thought almost as fast.

  Whatever the hell that Graham had done here seems to have focused on turning the soft people, and the cars they drove, into a blend of metal and meat. Gore drips from steel in uneven clumps, and at least two of the vehicles seem to be missing steering wheels. In this state, the cars are worthless to me.

  With the SUVs out of the question, I’ll have to take a risk my other option. When Ole Beeze gave me the ability to make drops, he’d lost the privilege of using the same powers for himself. For as long as I live, I’ll have drops at his expense. I may be tired and battered, but at least I have that. I’ll use whatever edge I have against him, no matter the risks.

  My hand shakes when I pull the lighter back out of my pocket, because I don’t want to do what I’m thinking of doing. The sight of Beeze is growing smaller, though, and that makes the decision for me. I flick the lighter, make a drop, and let the horrors I find there come to chase me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I immediately regret this decision, because the moment I enter the in between place of New Orleans, I feel something not just grab, but envelope me. Panic thrums through every one of my bones, and I think the familiarity of that feeling is why I don’t immediately die. I’ve been grabbed before while making drops downstairs through Hell, and it’s never been what I’d call a peaceful experience. I panic every time, but more importantly, I fight. This time is no different.

  I reach into my waistband for the pistol that I’d tucked there. It slips free and securely into my hand without much effort, and I don’t hesitate before firing it first in the direction of whatever’s grabbing me without turning to look.

  Nothing happens.

  I try kicking out and clawing at what’s grabbed me next. My feet thud, then splash, then skip off of surfaces in every direction I throw them in. I claw, and find my nails digging into a confusing mix of textures that range from stone to gelatinous ooze.

  Again, nothing happens.

  Finally, a realization that I should have had earlier pops into my head. In Hell, where I usually make my drops, it’s impossible to make a landing if a devil has grabbed onto you. This isn’t Hell though, and what holds me now isn’t a devil. If I’m lucky, the same rules may not apply here.

  I think of the spot three houses ahead of where I’d last seen Ole Beeze and simply picture landing there. It’ll be a stretch of distance farther than anything I’ve tried since I’d arrived in the town. Hopefully I’ll land somewhere in the path of Ole Beeze, and corner him before he gets a chance to dodge me and keep running after Graham. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll wind up somewhere nearby randomly, which is still better than staying here with whatever the thing grabbing onto me is.

  It works, kind of, because I do in fact make a landing back in creation.

  My timing, however, could have been better, because I have just enough time to see Ole Beeze running full sprint at me from less than three feet away before his body, all 200 stolen pounds of a man once called Tom, slams into me.

  We both go tumbling, and as Ole Beeze scrambles to get back to his feet, I reach out and grab onto him. I manage to tug him off balance and towards me. I know it won’t last long. I’ve seen him move in this body, seen the damage he can do when he’s in arm’s reach. I don’t care, because I’ve known for a while that I’m not getting out of this. All of Graham’s talk about her patrons and the gifts I’d receive were just fantasies, really. Things for children right now. With Graham, there’d been a chance that I could use her help to trap Ole Beeze in that in between place. Without her, I know the only option that I have left, so I make another drop. But this time, I take him with me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The impossible things, the things that can’t be anything other than the patrons behind the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, are waiting for us when we arrive. I don’t want to see them, so I close my eyes tight and try not to perceive the sheer sensation of wrongness surrounding me.

  Ole Beeze, however, doesn’t react to the patrons. He’s too focused on me. I feel one of his hands wrap tight around my throat, and while he doesn’t squeeze, he uses that grip as leverage to dislodge my hands from his body.

  Shocked, I let him, because he’s getting away from my grip makes no sense to me. I’m the one with his ability to drop between worlds. Without me, he’ll never leave.

  I hear the sound of Ole Beeze sucking in air to start shouting at me, before his voice jerks and trails away in a strangled gasp of surprise.

  Oh, God yes, I think as I look at the shock on his face. He hadn’t noticed where I’d brought him until now. Hell, he may never have even entertained the idea of me being crazy enough to bring him down here with me.

  That’s no surprise. Ole Beeze is a creature that’s used to being in control. Even when he’d first showed me how to make drops through hell, I’d never seen him as anything but comfortable in those flames, surrounded by his kin.

  He isn’t in the flames, now, and is just starting to realize that what surrounds us are nothing like devils.

  The exact moment he realizes this isn’t hard to pinpoint, because he starts to scream. Something about the tone, the tenor to his horror sounds familiar to me. Maybe I’d made them myself the first time I’d seen these things. I may even be making them alongside him as well.

  I think back to the words Graham had told me when we’d been planning our trap. I can feel the impossible things watching me. I know what’s now required of me.

  “I am Robinette Kohl, and I bring you this gift!” I shout into the unquiet void around me. I don’t wait for a response, or give a request like Graham had told me to do. I don’t need their favors anyway. I have all I want with the knowledge of what I’ve just done to Ole Beeze.

  I think of New Orleans again, and the soft wet grass near where I’d run into Ole Beeze. A moment later, I land there, and feel rain fall on my face.

  My hand hurts, a little, I realize standing there. Looking down I see that the cut I’d first made to enter Graham’s place has scabbed over into a brown, ugly looking thing. It doesn’t look right, but then again, why should anything be right after where I’ve just been.

  A growing feeling of worry is also bothering me. Looking around, I see no threats on the street. Nothing that can hurt me. But still, there it is. A wall of intuition, growing both closer and larger in scale, too far to quite grasp, until it hits me.

  Mary.

  God, how? How do I go on now? Ole Beeze had killed Mary. That made him something to me. Something to chase after. A reason to keep fighting.

  What am I supposed to hunt now? How will I even keep breathing?

  I don’t come up with any answers. I just stand in the street, crying in the rain.

  “That was, once again, surprisingly decisive.” says a voice, interrupting me. “Though I guess that maybe, I should stop being surprised by this time.”

  Tentatively,
I open my eyes to see Graham standing over me. Her clothes are so soaked through with gore that they look more like props from a Halloween movie. She holds a hand out to me as if to help me up. I notice that it too is covered in blood. I take it. After all, I have some of that and worse on my own.

  Graham takes me off the sidewalk and into an abandoned house about a mile away from her store in time to avoid the sirens and police cars that drive up the street. There’re gunshots, and while her neighborhood had been mostly abandoned by residents, that didn’t mean the roads were still closed to through traffic. Anyone driving by would have seen the mess that we’d both left behind. We wait the storm out and talk, sharing intentions and planning.

  Eventually, Graham takes out her phone and summons what I assume is an employee who won’t ask any questions to the house that we hide in. The man brings us several fresh sets clothes, including some that fit. The rain has all stopped by the time we exit and return outside. The sun’s even out, and shining bright overhead.

  Once outside, I get a better look at the man that Graham has summoned. It’s not hard to see that there’s nothing going on upstairs with him. He’s not stupid, or stoned out of his mind. His face is just slack, no expression. I look at Graham for explanation, and she smiles at me.

  “Zombie.” She says, placing emphasis on the last half of the word. I look back at the man, confused, because he doesn’t seem to be rotting.