by Michael Todd
Whatever. Pandora scoffed. Watch your left side.
Katie thrust her sword into a demon’s chest and it turned to dust.
That would be like stepping on a roach and claiming a medal for your “intense actions on the field of battle,” Pandora growled. They are posers; nothing but damn pos— Watch your right side.
Katie sighed and turned again, this time kicking high in the air. She hit the demon in the neck, and his bones cracked. His head went all the way to the side, and he flashed into ash as he dropped to the ground.
Ouch. Pandora giggled. That one would have hurt.
Seriously, you need to let that shit go, Katie told her, fighting a demon hand to hand. They are happy to have a chance in this war. There is no place for so many of them in this battle. They are born and bred cops, and nothing else. It’s like when we helped out on that bank robbery; it was in my blood to help those people, demons or not. I am just lucky to be strong enough to face both kinds.
Fine. I’ll take it easy on them, but you need to be careful who you bring in, Pandora warned. They will lose their lives so easily against my brother.
Aw, look at you! Katie laughed. Caring about the lives of humans like that.
Don’t start, Pandora snarled. I don’t give a shit about them. I just know that it kills you when there are civilian casualties, and I don’t feel like going through another sad sappy emotional rollercoaster with you.
Mmmhmm. Katie pulled out a knife and threw it as hard as she could into the back of a demon’s head. I won’t tell your secret.
I hate you, Pandora growled.
Katie laughed and ran forward to catch the knife in midair as the demon dissolved around it. Stephanie looked over and nodded at Katie before turning back and ripping a demon’s throat out with her bare hands.
Katie was pretty impressed by that and wondered if she could do the same. She shrugged continued battling through the plethora of demons, trying to make a dent in the chaos. She didn’t know where they had all come from, but then she didn’t care. She just needed to make sure they stayed there until they died. She cut the head off another demon and briefly watched Derek as he battled two smaller ones.
He laughed as he threw kicks and punches, almost toying with the damn things. Katie smirked, knowing it must have felt good for Derek to get out of the computer room and get back into the fight. He was out of practice, but he seemed to have no problem holding his own.
She liked having him there. He was family; family from way back.
Katie turned and leaped into the air, letting a charging demon go right under her. When she landed she tapped the demon on his shoulder. He turned around growling, the teardrop tattoo from the human he had taken over still visible on his scaly black cheek.
She took a step forward and pulled out her pistols, feeling like an Old West gunslinger. She pulled both triggers at the same time, blowing holes in the demon’s stomach.
She laughed as he turned to dust, then turned around to see what Derek was doing. As she turned he looked at her and smiled. Katie smiled back, but her eyes shifted past him to the two large demons stomping forward with their guns pointed at Derek and the demons he was fighting.
As if in slow motion, Katie screamed and pointed. Derek turned back around as the demons opened fire. Derek took bullet after bullet, his arms flying into the air and his weapons falling from his hands to hit the ground behind him.
Katie screamed again, unable to get through the pile of demons in her way fast enough.
The large beasts in front of Derek just kept shooting until there were no more bullets left in their weapons. They pressed the triggers over and over, and the clicks echoed in Katie’s brain.
Derek was on the ground, and the two he had been fighting were nothing but dust.
Derek clenched his fingers on the grass beneath him and groaned loudly as the large demons came forward, stopping at his feet. He lifted his hand to shoot, but his weapon was gone. He dropped his hand and looked up at the sky; the pain was almost unbearable.
Katie ran across the field toward Derek, slicing with her swords and screaming in anger. Her eyes flashed bright red and her fists were clenched around her weapons’ hilts.
When she had cleared the masses a bit she shoved her swords back into their sheaths. The two large demons had left Derek alone and moved into the crowd to fight with the others, but at that moment Katie was only concerned with getting to Derek’s side.
She slid to her knees next to him and looked his body over. There were multiple bullets embedded in his vest, but on his side, where the armor didn’t cover, were multiple bullet holes.
She pushed her palm over the wounds and closed her eyes for a moment, not wanting to go through what she knew she was about to. Tears streamed down her face and she pulled him into her lap, holding him in her arms.
He spoke, softly, with a slight whistle in his voice. “Tell Korbin the password for the servers is ‘KatieIsHott.’” He looked up to her eyes and smiled. “’Hott’ with two Ts.”
Katie sobbed a laugh and he chuckled, then curled into a tight fetal position. Blood spewed from his mouth and ran down his chin, but he didn’t panic. He just stared into Katie’s eyes, feeling like he was exactly where he needed to be. The battle raged around them but Katie tuned it out, not wanting to be bothered. She trusted Pandora to warn her.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she told him through tears. “Just hold on and let your demon heal you.”
“No.” He shook his head and whispered, “He’s already gone; done what he could. That was a big bullet, dude.”
Katie laughed through her tears and shook her head. She wouldn’t let him go. She couldn’t let him go. She rubbed her hand over his cheek and leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead.
“We have so much to do,” Katie told him. “There’s so much exploring that we still haven’t done. You have to pull through this. It’s not your time yet.”
“It is.” He reached up and moved a piece of hair from her cheek. “And it’s okay, because I am ready for it. I’ll finally get to read a fucking book.”
“I’ll read you a book,” she cried, feeling his breathing getting shallower by the second. “I’ll read you every goddamn book we have, and I’ll buy more. You just have to stay with me. We can help you.”
“It’s okay.” He smiled and touched her wet cheek. “I want you to do something for me. I want you to bury my ashes…in the dirt up….on the mountain where we saw…the sunset. Will you do that?”
She nodded, unable to speak or move from that spot. She held him in her arms as he turned his eyes up to the clouds. The light from the sun flooded down over them—just them—at that moment.
“Please,” she sobbed, putting her head next to his. “Please don’t do this, Derek. Please don’t go.”
When she raised her head he was gone; the last of the air had left his lungs. She screamed and threw her head back, wiping her face on her sleeve.
She closed his eyes and kissed him one last time on the forehead.
She carefully laid his body on the ground and got herself to her feet. Her hands squeezed tightly around the grips of her guns, and as she lifted her head her eyes shone painfully bright.
She screamed again, but her voice was deep and menacing; there was pain in the tone. She ran toward the large demon who had killed Derek and jumped onto its back, pressing the barrel of her gun against its head.
“Fuck you,” she whispered as she pulled the trigger.
She jumped off as the beast went down. He instantly turned to dust, but it wasn’t good enough for Katie; she wanted it to suffer. She found the other one and slowly walked toward it, firing into its arms and chest. The beast fell to the ground wailing but she continued to shoot, emptying her clip and slamming in the next one while screaming at the top of her lungs.
“GET UP! RESURRECT YOURSELF, MOTHERFUCKER, SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN!”
“Hey,” Korbin ran up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoul
ders. “Shhh… Let it go.”
“Oh God,” she sobbed, dropping her pistols to the ground and falling to her knees.
Korbin went with her, glancing at Derek’s body. He understood now what had happened. He buried his face in her hair and just held her, letting her cry in his arms.
He could feel her pain, and it took everything he had not to lose it himself.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The base was silent, even the wind had died down to a gentle breeze. The house was quiet; everyone had found a place to deal with their grief.
When they got back Katie couldn’t sleep, so she roamed the tunnels until the sun finally came up and found herself sitting on a rock outside of the perimeter fence. She pulled her legs up to her chin and stared out over the horizon, her thoughts jumbled with the sadness that sat like a boulder in her chest.
“Hey, kid,” Damian called as he walked up. He sat down next to her.
She didn’t say anything at first, just kept her gaze staring on the hills in the distance. Damian leaned back on the rock and looked at the sky, trying to find the right words.
He had seen her lose it—everyone had—but they understood. They knew that Derek had been important to her. He had been important to everyone.
“How are you doing?” Damian asked.
She wiped her tears on her sleeve and shook her head. “Noah died,” she told him. “Noah Rappley from Amy’s Assassins. They called me this morning and let me know he paid his tribute in an ambush with a bunch of innocents. He died almost at the same time Derek did. Three others from Amy’s team are in critical condition.”
A tear fell down her cheek and she sniffled hard, trying not to let the grief take her again. Damian sighed and wrapped his arms around her. She turned her face into his shoulder and cried for minutes, finally pushing back enough to catch her breath. She shook her head against him, not understanding why everything had gotten so hard so fast.
“It’s worse now,” she sobbed. “The demons; they are coming out of nowhere and killing everyone. How are we supposed to protect the innocents if we can’t keep ourselves safe? I was just out with Noah a few days ago, laughing and having a hell of a time. He talked about a real life—one with people he loved—and that was starting to include me.”
“Shhh,” Damian whispered holding her tightly for a moment before drawing back. “I know this is hard to take in. It’s all happened so suddenly.”
“Everything in our lives is fucking sudden!” she burst out. “There are no easy goodbyes, if such a thing even exists. There are no warning signs or illnesses. Derek looked at me and smiled, then turned around and took a dozen bullets to the body. He thought everything was going to be okay, and in the blink of an eye he was taking his last breath. I’m just tired of saying goodbye. I’m so fucking tired of it.”
“I know.” Damian sighed. “But that is the way it is for us. There are a million hellos, and just as many goodbyes. I have to go check on the others, but if you need anything—anything at all—you come find me, okay?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Thank you. I’ll get it together, I promise.”
Damian leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead before getting up and walking back toward the gate. Katie watched him go, knowing that one day her tears would be for him—if she didn’t get it first. She closed her eyes and tilted her head toward the sun, thinking about that night with Noah. Thinking about watching the sunrise with him, how secure she had felt in his strong arms. It had been an illusion, one that she had fallen straight into.
You know, I don’t usually tell people this, but I’ve been married more times than I can count, Pandora began. And definitely for longer than any human woman ever could be. None of them ever ended well for me, though. I was not the woman they thought, and I had to watch them die. I adopted the policy that I would love them and leave them.
“I just don’t know how I can deal with another death like this,” Katie admitted, speaking out loud. “It grinds me to the soul. The first ones…they were hard, but I think my body was in shock. These two—they have brought me to my knees.”
I know. I don’t know how you feel, but I know you can’t continue to take this over and over. The human body is fragile, but the most fragile part of it all is something I can’t see or fix. Your heart—not the physical beating organ, but the heart that loves, that cares, that feels. Demons can’t touch it. You took chances and opened your heart as a sister to Derek and as a lover to Noah, and I’m sorry you lost them both in one night. I wish I could have seen that coming; to have prepared you somehow.
“The crazy thing is, I don’t even know if I would have made a different choice with Noah. Being that close to him opened up a lot of things in me that had closed when I became Damned. For the first time, I felt secure in someone else’s arms. For that brief moment in time, I was safe from everything in the world.”
But you weren’t, Pandora replied. I know the feeling was there, but you weren’t safe. None of us will be until we can end all this. You loved and lost, and I’m sorry for that.
Katie stood up from the rock and rolled her shoulders, wrapping her arms around her chest. She could feel the pain thumping in her stomach, and her tears just wouldn’t stop.
“My love will be hot, and burn with them for a night,” Katie exclaimed. “Perhaps another time in the future we will have the chance to enjoy relationships that last longer. But if not, at least for one night of passion, everything will be right in the world.”
Amen, Pandora whispered.
This time the bar wasn’t loud and boisterous.
It was a little emptier and a lot more solemn, and the pictures of Noah and Derek stared directly into Katie’s soul.
The three critical-cares from Amy’s team were still in the hospital, and the loss of two veteran hunters had really hit the teams hard. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place by the time Katie took the stage.
She had done this many times now—paid tribute to the fallen, read the poem, and brought them all back together again—but she felt like the thread that stitched the wound had finally started to unravel. She wasn’t even sure how she was supposed to get out of her seat, but she had to.
“You ready?” Korbin whispered in her ear. “You think you can do this?”
Katie looked up at Korbin, then over at the two pictures. She had to do it. Those men deserved the same strong send-off as all the others, and it had become her place to do it.
She nodded and pushed her chair back, smiling at Korbin as he helped her up. Everyone went silent as she walked toward the stage, alone in the spotlight.
With each step she thought about the first time she had really talked to Derek, outside that sex shop when she was first Damned. He was so funny; such a loner, but he was a really great guy, and much loved.
Katie reached the top of the stairs and walked over to the mic, which was now situated at a podium.
They were moving up in the world.
She took the old crinkled piece of paper from her pocket and set it on the stand as she cleared her throat. She looked past the crowd as the door opened and General Brushwood and Colonel Jehovivich, dressed in civilian clothes, walked in. They took a seat at the table with Korbin and the others, and the general nodded at Katie.
She felt that if nothing else, in this war she had helped bring the military together with the mercs, and that was very important.
“Today we pay tribute to the fallen,” Katie said into the mic. “I had the honor of being with Derek Tosh when he took his last breath. I held him in my arms, wondering how we had gotten that far; how we had come to a moment when the demons were just too much. I don’t have an answer to that yet. Derek was a calm and comforting man, always there for others, always smiling, and always laughing at the silly memes he searched for on his phone. He liked to be alone, but when he was with his family he truly shined. May the angels carry him into the light, and may he ever rest in peace and honor. I only knew Noah Rappley for a few days before h
e passed away, but I can tell you that he was a force to be reckoned with. His teammates remember him as a dreamer, a man full of hope and love for the future. He was a Viking on the field and a big teddy bear with his friends and family. Noah will be missed in my heart and others.”
Katie sighed and looked down at the sheet in front of her, knowing it was time to once again read the poem.
“We are the chosen.
The infected,
battling our demons night and day.
Protecting the uninformed from reality.
We fight where the stupid meet the clueless to
perform the asinine for our
teammates every day.
We are cops, military, special forces, and SWAT,
medical techs, priests, and clergy.
We are the dimensional derelicts,
the legion, the host, the forgotten.
The feared.
The sheep can sleep at night because we don’t.
We fight for humanity—yours—and for our own.
We are the Damned, and death is our enemy,
our escape,
and our tribute.
“Thank you.”
The people in the crowd clapped between their tears, and Katie stepped down and made her way back to the table. As she approached, the general stood up and reached out his hand to shake hers.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, General.”
“I am more than appreciative of the rounds—the gifts that you gave us. They have already saved lives,” the general told her.
Katie sat down next to him and ordered some nachos from the waitress. The general ordered some food as well, and took a big swallow of his beer.
“I think that I might be able to help you and your team,” the general suggested. “I think we should sit down tomorrow and talk about it.”
“That would be great.” Katie smiled. “We can definitely do that. We need to move on…that is for sure.”
