by Greg Dragon
She brought her wrist up to her nose and smelled the oil; it was strong and sweet. She wondered what the demons wanted to summon. Was it a beautiful, demon queen, born from the vessel of a young, chaste woman? Or was it something monstrous and terrible, bursting from the flames and gobbling up any demon that stood too close when it emerged?
Alysia was still deep in thought when suddenly the clouds covered the moon, and the sky turned pitch black. When lightning struck she fell to her knees as her fear finally broke through. The lightning had revealed the form of a giant that stood up from the forest and was looking down at her as she sat frozen on the grass. The clouds pulled back a bit and the silhouette of the giant stood menacingly before her as he watched her every move.
“Snap out of it, CeeCee!” she yelled at herself, and she stood up, shaking, looking about for a place to run. Anywhere she ran, the giant could catch her. The only thing she could do was retrace her steps and run back the way she had come. The giant was forcing her to confront the demons, or go back to the ritual and play her role. She could face the giant, who could smash her with one step, or she could turn around, hide until daytime, and let the demons have her.
Fight or flight, baby girl, she could hear her father say as she dusted off the dress and ran towards the giant. He stepped out into the clearing to face her, but she didn’t slow her sprint as she darted towards his feet. The creature let out a loud roar that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but she was too committed to let it stop her. She was going to get out of the clearing and into the woods behind the giant.
The giant lifted his foot and slammed it down at Alysia but she jumped and rolled out of the way as she ran to his other foot. She grabbed one of the jagged toenails on his planted foot and jerked up on it hard, causing it to tear away from the toe. The giant bellowed out in pain and fell backwards to grab his injured foot and Alysia sprinted towards the woods.
She laughed at herself loudly as she ran. She was fearless, and she didn’t know why. She had faced kreples, demons, and fought a giant, but much of it came from instinct, nothing calculated, planned, or even reasoned through. Her adrenaline was up and she had gotten used to her heart racing. It felt good, and for the first time she could appreciate the cool night air against her skin.
Chapter Four
“So, how do we find her?” Tracy asked as she lay on the dirty sleeping bag, bordered by tall grass.
It was the question of the century and James didn’t have an answer for it. He had tracked the demons that took his daughter all the way to a campsite, but something had caused them to scatter. He would follow some steps one way and then come back to follow some others, but he couldn’t make any sense of it. Tracy was doing better, but they had to take numerous breaks and on this particular day, he had allowed her to stay still while he did his tracking.
“She ran this way,” he said and pointed back towards the area that he had come from. “Into the city, away from those things. I found a bathroom where she was for a time, and then a few corpses up further. My girl was fighting all night, and it looks like she got a few of ‘em. We should keep moving; I’m on to her trail now.”
Tracy nodded but groaned as the pain was becoming unbearable. She tried to soldier through it but James took notice.
“Tell you what, Tracy. Let’s get you somewhere safe; you don’t need to be running around with me, looking for CeeCee. I’ll find her and then we’ll come back for you. I don’t know what kind of hell the world is turning into, but you’re a survivor. We need your help just like you need ours.”
Tracy wanted to object, but sleep and recuperation sounded like heaven. She knew James was a military man, and he more than looked like he could take care of a few thugs.
“Not cool of me to let a partner go out on his own against the enemy,” she joked, and he looked at her as if he was trying to decipher the meaning behind her words.
“Wouldn’t be my first time soloing it, Tracy. You just heal and stay alert. No telling what those damn things really are.”
They rode back into the city and found an old Raze Hotel. It had 23 floors and the refrigerator, which should have been raided, still had water in it. James grabbed anything that hadn’t spoiled from the heat, lifted Tracy into his arms, and walked her up to the eleventh floor. She tried to object but he ignored her; speed was more important than ego for him. Tracy got down and gingerly walked over to a door, motioning for him to come over when she got there.
“I think I like this, room number 1121. It’s easy to remember, plus it’s lucky number twenty one, right?”
James smiled at her as he tried to slow down his beating heart. “I see that the police lady plays a little blackjack on the side eh?”
“Actually I meant basketball, big man. When I heal, I’ll take you out on the court and school you.”
“Yeah, and that won’t be happening,” he said under his breath as he tried the door. He knocked three times before putting his ear down and listening. “You just might be in luck, lady,” he said to her as she forced a smile and played with her hair. He spun, causing her to fall against the wall in a panic, and side kicked the door in. Once inside, they found the room spotless, and Tracy walked over to the bed and tested it with her hands.
She pushed open the curtains to let the sunlight in and then kicked off her boots before sitting on the bed. James walked into the bathroom and tried the tap; there was still running water and he walked back into the room to give Tracy the thumbs up.
“You have my number, right?” he asked her, and she shook her head and pointed to her phone, which was out of battery power. “We should have broken into one of these electronic stores and grabbed us a few of those,” he said, frustrated.
“Aww, it’s okay, Jimmy. When I feel better, I may do that. Just keep trying to call – one day I’ll pick up.”
James nodded and then looked around the room as if he were taking inventory mentally of what was in there. She had a bag full of junk food, wine and water; courtesy of the downstairs bar, and then there was a little refrigerator stocked full of more adult beverages, in case she ran out. “Looks like you have enough liquor to keep you under until we get back,” he joked and she brushed her wild hair back to wink at him, then turned to look out at the abandoned city.
“Why don’t you stay?” Tracy said without looking at him. “Just the night. It’ll be evening soon and you won’t get very far. Plus, you just carried 130 pounds up eleven flights of stairs. You’re a big guy but you have to be exhausted. Just like, sit down for a sec, will you? Alysia needs you, I know, but you won’t be any good to her worn down and hungry.”
James thought about it for a few and then nodded. There was running water and he could use a shower and some food before setting out to find his daughter. Tracy lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, and James stared at her as the sun revealed the many wounds on her body. He noticed how small and vulnerable she looked and tried to imagine her as the fighting police officer that she really was. It took a bit of imagination but he could see it. She reminded him of the Navy women back when he was in the war and it made him confident that she could take care of herself.
By the time he showered, cleaned his gun and ate, she was fast asleep beneath the beaming sun. He smiled at her and looked at the lock that he had broken out with his kick. He wanted to try and fix it but really, what was the point? Tracy would need the freedom to come and go from her room without the risk of locking herself out. He thought about setting up traps, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t stop thinking about his daughter.
He felt guilty for staying and for the thoughts that crept into his mind periodically about Tracy. It was time to put his game face on, go out, and find the demons that took his daughter. He gathered his gear, took a bag of potato chips, and saluted the now sleeping Tracy as he exited the room with his mind made up for war.
~ * ~ * ~
Darkness, loneliness, and anxiety, were just a few o
f the emotions Alysia experienced as she walked through the woods away from the giant. She had heard him stand up when she ran away and had come into the woods to look for her. She kept walking the entire night, worried that a gang of kreples would assault her, or the demons would catch up to her again. When she grew tired, she wanted to stop, but her mind wouldn’t let her do it, not until she was out of the woods—literally.
She pushed on through until the sound of helicopters pulled her up short, and she walked up to a fence that kept the trees back from what appeared to be a compound. There were many parked vehicles and military personnel walking about, and in the background, she could see a large assortment of tents. So, this is where they evacuated everyone to, she thought and looked around for an exit to the fence. There was none and she assumed that it had electricity flowing through it to stop the creatures. It was tall enough to stop a giant, and in the distance, she saw large guns pointed in her direction.
She flagged down a guard walking by and he came up to her with his gun drawn, ready to shoot. When he saw that Alysia was an actual human being, he motioned for her to come close so he could talk to her. The way he kept looking around made Alysia suspicious.
“You cut all the way through the barrens?” he asked, looking her over suspiciously and flinching a bit when he saw that she had bare feet.
“Yes, I was chased by one of those giant … things.”
“What about the red zombies; you see any of them out there?”
“Yeah, they were who I was running from when I saw the giant,” Alysia said, annoyed at the questions that didn’t seem to hint at him letting her in.
“Well, sorry, see I can’t let you in here,” he said, looking down at his feet as if they would help him.
“How come? Look, I’ve been walking all night, those things want to kill me and—“
“This is a military base. We have strict rules not to take in any civilians. We got our hands full with those damn things attacking us, and the last thing we can do is take care of you.”
Alysia looked over his shoulder at the tents, and she could see a number of people who were obviously civilian, talking to one another and walking about.
“You mean that you don’t want me in there,” she said to him, and he made to object when she started screaming loudly. “HELP! I NEED HELP! WHY WON’T YOU LET ME IN?”
A few more soldiers ran up to see what the noise was about and after a few exchanges and a Major being summoned, Alysia was led to an area of the fence where they could power it down and allow her access. She wanted to punch the man that denied her entry but held her composure as they escorted her into the camp. The soldiers gave her a tent to sleep in and it was more than she expected. It had a bathtub full of hot water and food, along with books and electronic equipment. She took a long bath and massaged her sore feet, and then she dried herself, tried on a few of the clothes and scarfed down the foodstuffs.
When she was finished getting situated, she lay on the inflatable mattress and tried to sleep. It was something that her body needed but her mind refused to let her have. She lay there for what felt like hours, thinking about the demons and the giant that almost took her life. When she finally closed her eyes and drifted off, she dreamed the same scene repeatedly as if she was under a curse to keep on reliving the nightmare. Gunshots and explosions forced her awake and when she finally got her bearings, she noticed there was a lot of movement going on outside.
She rose and turned on the lamp next to the mattress and looked around for anything that could serve as a weapon. The only thing she saw that could work was a box of pots and pans. That wouldn’t do, so she pulled on a pair of jeans and slid on some canvas shoes that fit her. She snatched a ragged t-shirt from the pile of clothes to complete her ensemble and then pulled open the zipper that sealed her tent.
It looked as if she was in the middle of a war. There were soldiers everywhere, firing this way and that, and the demons were among the tents, tearing them apart, as well as their inhabitants. Alysia couldn’t believe what she was seeing; the fence had collapsed under the body of a dead giant and the demons were pouring through, violent and enraged. The soldiers were fighting bravely and efficiently, and although the demons number seemed endless, the humans were winning.
Alysia didn’t know what to do in that instant. She didn’t have a gun to help in the fight, and she was still exhausted and groggy. She couldn’t take her eyes off the fallen giant, wondering how it was they had managed to kill it from behind the fence.
A pair of young men that seemed to be around her age ran up to her tent, and the first one used his handgun to shoot a demon that had slipped past the soldiers. He wasn’t dressed like a soldier but he was armed, and Alysia wondered if he was up to no good.
“Hey, you can’t just stand out in the open like that,” he said to her as he ran up to her and turned to protect her from anything incoming. He had brown hair and broad shoulders and seemed too skinny for his frame. The other boy was heavyset with glasses, brown skin and a mass of black hair. He didn’t say anything as he looked around frantically. She saw that he was holding a gun, too.
“Do you have a gun I can borrow?” Alysia asked as she came out to join them, looking around to make sure that a demon hadn’t gotten behind them. The second kid handed her a small revolver, and she took it and nodded at him as they all stood watching the soldiers fight against the waves of demons. “What the hell are those things?” Alysia asked, and the brown-skinned boy looked at her as if she was crazy.
“What? You haven’t heard?” he said, and his songlike accent threw her off guard as she mentally tried to figure out where he was from.
“No, heard what?”
“They’re like zombies or something. When people started dying in the cities from the baby dinosaurs or whatever, the red zombies came in to finish them off. I mean, they aren’t ‘zombies’ like they want your brains or something, but they aren’t human. Some of them even have horns, like little devils or something.”
A demon ran at them after smashing in a soldier’s face and the trio shot at it several times until it went down screaming. Alysia wasn’t sure if either of the two shots she fired had connected.
“That’s an MA15, small caliber weapon,” the brown-skinned boy said as he looked at her. “I got it off the body of a guard during the last attack. As long as you don’t shoot it a bunch of times in succession, it will regenerate the bullets. All of these guns have that feature, not like our civilian guns. Pretty cool, right?” When he said this, the quiet, taller boy gave him an annoyed glance, then focused again on the fighting.
“What about the giants?” Alysia asked. “The giants, the kreples—I mean, dinosaurs or whatever, and the flying bat creatures? What are they?”
“What do you think they are? Creatures from hell, come to collect our souls and turn us into demons,” the taller boy said. It was obvious that he was joking sarcastically but Alysia wondered how far off he was from the truth. “My name’s Jaime, by the way. This here’s my frat brother, Debdan.”
“My name is Alysia, but you can call me CeeCee. I just got here a few hours ago.”
The boys nodded and got quiet as they concentrated on the demons, shooting at the stragglers that got near them, doing their best not to hit any of the frantic refugees running about. Some of the men and women in the camp were trained fighters, so the soldiers had help to hold off the demon rush. When the attackers quieted down and they began to tend to the wounded and dead, a loud screech pierced the air and a large kreple charged the camp. No matter how many bullets they pumped into the charging behemoth, it wouldn’t slow as it gained access to the camp and bit into a large, portly man before moving on to another.
One by one it went around biting at them until a brave soldier shot it point blank with a shotgun.
“Debdan, Jaime, we can’t stay here,” she said to them. “I’ve survived on my own against those things but I think I only managed because I kept on mo
ving, sleeping on rooftops during the night and running through the woods during the day.”
“We have guns, ammo, and shelter here,” Debdan said to her. “Why do you think you are safer out there with no resources than in here where people have your back?”
Alysia thought he had a point, but she looked around at the chaos from their skirmish. What would happen to them if three kreples of that size were to charge their camp? What if five, six, or even twenty showed up?
“What is the plan here, guys? Why did the military bring everyone here? Are they planning to bomb the city, or is there rescue coming for us?”
The boys looked at one another and shook their heads at her. Nobody knew what the plan was, if there even was one.
There was some commotion amongst the huddled refugees as a rather large, bearded man led his family through to face the soldiers, and Jaime nudged the other two to look at him. He was angry and he began cussing and yelling at the soldiers so that everyone could hear. He was upset about the raid and the soldiers, in their own dramatic way, silenced him with threats to remove him from the settlement.
Things went on like that for a time; soldiers and civilians were angry and frustrated with what had happened. So to get out of the line of fire, the boys took Alysia to their tent where they continued their discussion on the military’s plan.
“They’re saying that those creatures aren’t supernatural, after all,” Jaime said as he sat on the mattress and took out a cigarette. Alysia glanced at it with disdain but bit her tongue on objecting since it wasn’t really her tent.
“Oh yeah, then what are ‘they’ saying that they are?” Alysia asked, her eyes locked on the cigarette as Jaime took a long drag and exhaled the smoke through his nose.
