The Black Rider

by J B Trepagnier

  Luci shook his hand and snapped to attention.

  “Pay attention, grunts. We’ve got an attack headed our way of the shithead human variety. They are heavily armed, and they’ve got trucks capable of breaking through our barrier. Let’s go find out if Nazis can fly.”

  I felt pretty useless. I learned I was pretty good at bashing brains with Smurfette, but I didn’t know the first thing about explosives, and I was sure I didn’t before my memories got wiped.

  Aeron and Leif both slung an arm around my shoulder.

  “Come on, Ariel. We will teach you the beauty of playing with C4.”

  Chapter 21

  I

  was pretty amazed watching everyone work together during the apocalypse. Sure, they were all setting up explosives to blow up Nazis, but it was still a beautiful thing to watch. I knew I was slowing everyone down. I managed to set a few explosives, but I had a healthy fear of not blowing myself up in the process.

  They didn’t want to blow the entire bridge, but they still needed to set the explosives far enough from the barricade that it didn’t go down. They seemed to know exactly where to do this and had everything arranged just as we could see a bunch of trucks in the distance.

  Aeron and Leif yanked me back behind the barricade. Aeron handed me a massive gun.

  “It’s not Smurfette, but you need a long-range weapon for this. They aren’t Rage Heads. You can hit them anywhere and do damage. I need everyone to cover me so I can get close enough to kill everyone who survived before they start shooting,” Aeron said.

  “Are you nuts? They have rocket launchers.”

  “Listen to me, Ariel. You’re the only one who doesn’t already know this. When I raise my right hand with two fingers up, close your eyes. You have to close your eyes, or you’ll die too.”

  I didn’t like this. I didn’t care if Aeron was the Horseman of Death. I didn’t want him walking out there with a bunch of pissed off Nazis with guns, but it wasn’t like I had another solution to whip out and save the day. I had this massive gun in my hand, and it just felt so unfamiliar. It wasn’t triggering any memories like I’d ever picked up one before, much less fired it.

  Leif grabbed me and yanked me down.

  “Showtime.”

  I was so focused on Aeron, I wasn’t even looking at the trucks headed our way. I was in the back of a garbage truck that had view slots cut and welded in place. Leif shut all the view holes, and they both covered me with their bodies.

  There was no light in the back of this garbage truck. All I could hear was the pounding of my heart in my ears. I’d woken up similar to this in a train car surrounded by Rage Heads, and I wasn’t this scared. Aeron said he had a plan, and I trusted that. Aeron had been in that situation before, and he had gotten himself out. I trusted him to do the same again.

  This was different. Rage Heads were scary, but they were animated corpses that only wanted one thing. Humans were different. They had emotions and real thoughts. That made them unpredictable. A lot of them were listening to the preachings of the Antichrist, and that made them dangerous. And now they were coming here to commit mass genocide.

  I was about to hyperventilate when the entire garbage truck shook as things started exploding outside. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t care if I was supposed to be some badass Harbinger Nephilim. I clapped my hands over my ears and started shrieking like a fourteen-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Was Justin Bieber a Rage Head now going around eating people, or was he holed up somewhere trying to survive? Why the fuck was I even wondering about him right now when shit was exploding all around me? That wasn’t even my kind of music.

  Leif clamped his hand around my mouth to silence me and had me in a death grip. Where was Aeron? He was just crouching here, holding me, and now he was gone. He better not be out there getting blown up. I’d only gotten to have sex with him once, and I enjoyed having him around.

  “Ariel!” Leif hissed. “Stop screaming. The explosions are over.”

  I eventually calmed my shit. The garbage truck wasn’t shaking anymore, and the loud noise was gone, but what I could hear now wasn’t much better. I could hear the screams of dying men and the wail of approaching Rage Heads, who were drawn by the noise and smell of fresh blood.

  I didn’t want to look, but I had to. Aeron was out there, and he gave me a gun for a reason. I had my freak out, now I had to get over it, or people would die.

  “I’m good. Thanks for being there for me. We promised Aeron cover, so let’s do that.”

  “You don’t have to look, Ariel. The scene out there won’t be pretty. We can cover Aeron. You aren’t a soldier, Speedy, you’re an artist. This isn’t normal for you.”

  I just let out a bitter laugh and jumped to my feet.

  “Since when has anything about my life been remotely normal?”

  I flung the viewing window open. I said I was prepared for anything, but I wasn’t ready for that. It blew two of the big rigs that were first in line to smithereens and burning. There must have been a ton of men in the back. The Right Hand Path must have recruited members from what was left of the country for this mission.

  The ones that still had their heads attached to their bodies were wearing their signature red mask with the swastika on it. They might have still had those stupid fucking masks on, but they were missing other body parts. Some of them were dragging themselves on the ground, trying to get away from the approaching Rage Heads.

  But the C4 only took out the first few trucks, and now there was a bunch of pissed off Nazis spilled out the back of the other vehicles. I wasn’t sure if they had some well thought out plan, or they thought the guns and the trucks would be enough. They weren’t counting on me being able to warn Mexico they were coming, and now their plan was going horribly wrong. I may be a horrible person, but I took extreme joy in pissing in some Nazi cornflakes.

  Rage Heads were unusually fast because of my blood, and they were right on top of the men spilling from the trucks. They couldn’t shoot at us because they had to fight for their lives against zombies.

  That was when I saw Aeron. My big, stupid online boyfriend was just walking out into the middle of a battle between zombies and Nazis. Had Aeron moved from being my online boyfriend to my actual boyfriend? I wanted him to be. We’d have to talk about it if he didn’t get his angel ass killed.

  Aeron gave the sign. He raised his right hand with two fingers up. Leif wasn’t looking away. What the fuck was Aeron up to?

  “Ariel, get down and close your eyes,” Leif hissed.

  “What is he doing?”

  I saw Aeron’s beautiful white wings rip out from his shirt. He was magnificent standing there in the middle of all that carnage with his wings out. It transfixed me. I couldn’t look away.

  Leif tackled me and clamped his hands over my eyes. I could hardly see anything, but I could tell something lit up outside. Leif was lying on me, and it was hard to breathe. I couldn’t see anything except that I could sense a bright light. I had a feeling something major was going down, and I wanted to see it.

  Suddenly, it got dark and eerily quiet. I couldn’t even hear the Rage Heads howling anymore. Leif finally let me up and offered me his hand.

  “It’s over. Do you have a death wish, Speedy? You’re just human enough that it would have killed you.”

  “What just happened out there, Leif?”

  “Humans can’t look upon angels when we aren’t assuming human form. It’s too much. They die almost immediately. The Rage Heads have just enough demon in them they don’t die, but their human side gets very weak. The Rage Heads out there are all sitting ducks. Want to go bash some heads in?”

  Yeah, I did. I was pretty useless with the C4, and I never once fired the gun they gave me. But I was fucking good at killing zombies and I was pissed a few truckloads of Nazis came here to kill everyone.

  I needed to smash some brains in.

  Chapter 22

  D

  eath, by viewing an angel
without their person suit, must be horrific. All the human corpses were bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nose, and their bodies were bloated and black. I didn’t see this on the way out of California, but if you touched them the wrong way, they kind of exploded on you.

  We couldn’t leave until we killed all the Rage Heads and moved all the human corpses to a pyre that was built so we could burn both. No one buried the dead anymore. The soil was bad enough after the war, and it wasn’t like there were coffins or lumber to spare to make them. Everywhere I’d gone so far had some sort of pit to burn things in. Unless you were on a scavenging mission, Rage Heads were burned too, so their mutation didn’t cause further contamination if it got into the soil or water.

  Leif didn’t seem to enjoy killing as much as Aeron, but he managed to pull a sword out his ass too.

  From what I could remember about the Book of Revelations, Leif was supposed to have a pair of scales, not a sword. We were both standing over our own Rage Head when I asked that.

  “Where are your scales, Pestilence?”

  “Never had them—writer embellishment. Aeron, Dice, and I have swords. Asher has a bow. Someone decided there were too many swords and wrote me as having scales.”

  “Tell me about your built-in angel pockets,” I said, bashing a zombie's head. “It’s a little unfair women don’t get pockets at all, and you have them when you are totally naked.”

  Leif just laughed and rammed his sword into a corpse head.

  “We don’t have pockets in our asses, Ariel. We can reach through time and space and pull things.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Aeron pulled a condom through time and space?”

  “No, Aeron stole one of my condoms last night, reaching through time and space. I don’t have some massive supply like a huge pervert who stocked up on condoms because I thought the apocalypse was an excellent time to get laid.”

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “There’s other birth control here. There was a factory here that makes the implant. That’s what most women here who don’t want to have babies use.”

  “Can I get one of those?”

  “Preparing for our orgy in the Oval Office?”

  I pointed my blood-covered bat at him.

  “Watch it, buddy.”

  “Gross, don’t fling that shit at me.”

  “Care to join us in the showers since I’ve been apparently invading the men’s shower room?”

  Leif looked surprised.

  “You want me to see you naked?”

  “Maybe I want to check out that hot ass of yours naked, Leif.”

  “Thanks, Ariel. I thought you preferred Aeron since you met him first and didn’t remember me.”

  I smashed in the face of a Rage Head that looked like he used to be a car salesman. His shirt still had the name of the dealership, and he had a bloodstained name tag on that said Ted. Rest in peace, Ted.

  “I remember enough, Leif, and I like what I know so far. I’m not saying I’m ready for a sex free for all, but we all need to shower, and I never said I didn’t find you sexy in your lab coat and goggles.”

  Leif yanked his sword out a skull, and black blood went spurting everywhere.

  “Tell me I’m sexy again when we aren’t covered in gore.”

  “I’m sure I’ll blurt something out in the shower. It’ll probably be totally offensive. I hope you’re not sensitive, cupcake.”

  “Get as nasty as you want when you are checking me out, Speedy. I’m not one of those prudish angels.”

  Smurfette was covered in Ted’s brains and a lot of other gore. I could hardly tell she was baby blue. Maybe I was fucked up. I probably was, but there was something titillating about trading barbs with Leif while bashing in brains, even if the smell was just God awful.

  I always did like a challenge. I would make the Horseman of Pestilence blush just as soon as we disposed of all these bodies.

  Chapter 23

  W

  e didn’t get back to San Quintin until almost dinner time the next day. We were all caked in blood and brains. I don’t think I’d ever smelled that bad in my entire life, and I certainly had some stinky moments on the way to Mexico. None of us had eaten except for some jerky that seemed to be in never-ending supply. I ate a lot of it because I was starving and it was good, but I didn’t want to ask what animal they made it from. It could be anything during the apocalypse and being locked in San Quintin with Maria cooking for me, there were things I wasn’t desperate enough to eat yet. Maybe while we were back on the road, but not with Maria’s salsa waiting for me. So, I just didn’t think about it and chowed down.

  I marched straight for the showers as soon as they zapped me back to that white building. I don’t know how I missed the prominent ass symbol on the door the first time that I went into the men’s shower before, but I gave zero fucks what people thought as I marched through the door covered in guts tonight. It was the apocalypse. Why were people still worried about labeled bathrooms and who saw you naked in a safe city like San Quintin?

  Aeron might have wanted to salvage his clothes when he showed up covered in guts, but when I peeled mine off, and they were so soaked they stuck to my skin, I dumped them in the trash. I sacrificed one of the few pairs of panties I had to the trash gods because I didn’t think there was any way to wash them enough that I wouldn’t always think about having gut stains near my girly bits when I wore them again.

  Leif felt the same as I did. It was pretty fucking sexy watching him cut his clothes off with that massive sword. Aeron took his off carefully and set them on a bench so that someone could wash them. At the rate he was grossing up his clothes, he’d better do something really fucking lovely for whoever was cleaning them. I didn’t care if he was an angel; no one should be expected to wash that much yuck out his clothes that often. It was needed this time, but I think he enjoyed killing Rage Heads just a little too much, and he got more on him in Mexico than we did on the road.

  I didn’t take a peek at a single bit of sexy angel until I got under the scalding water and started washing zombie brains out my hair. I think I had exploded Nazi in there too, but there was so much, who could tell? They didn’t really have shampoo and conditioner anymore, but someone here was making some damned good soap. This was the kind of soap soccer moms in California spent a shit ton of money on in specialty shops.

  It felt like silk, and they scented it with lavender that probably grew here. Not only did it feel and smell fantastic, but it was also pretty fucking useful for getting brains and Nazis out of your hair. I stopped playing in the water for a minute, and a light bulb went off over my head. Even the Nazis had friends and family.

  “This isn’t over,” I said. “Eventually, their people will realize they haven’t come home, and they will raise another army.”

  Leif flung his wet hair back like he was pretending to be some hot girl in a bathing suit in some beach movie. Okay, that wasn’t fair. I was trying to talk about war, and he was showing off. He was straight up smirking at me.

  “It’s not just the three of us against the world, Speedy. Dice is the Horseman of War. He’s got his own toys and trained soldiers. He’s dealing with things. He’s making sure no more hate groups get riled up enough into coming here,” Leif said.

  “How does he plan on doing that? It’s not like you can reason with them.”

  Aeron started flexing and making his pectoral muscles dance. Great, they were both showing off. Were they taking any of this seriously? Sure, they were sexy as fuck, but today could have been much worse.

  “Dice is a little crazy, and he’s a whiz at whipping up gadgets with what he has on hand. We already talked to Dice and heard his plan. Dice’s big thing is music. He’s amassed a collection when they scavenge. He thinks too many people are listening to Isaiah’s hateful words because they have nothing better to listen to. He’s already placed a homemade device on top of the White House so he can listen to all his radio conversations. He’s b
uilding another. Isaiah can broadcast all day, but no one will receive it. Everyone will be listening to one of Dice’s fucked up playlists.”

  “And when those Nazis don’t come home? Everyone close to them will know where they went. More will come to avenge them.”

  Leif just laughed.

  “You haven’t met Dice yet. He’ll be doing his own radio show. The Horseman of War doesn’t exist to start wars. Dice was created to deescalate and end them. He’s the reason World War III didn’t last as long as it could have. Isaiah would have preferred it last until everyone was dead. It was a victory for us the war ended. Dice will manage to weave it into his radio show that no one attacks Mexico ever again, and people stop herding Rage Heads here, and everyone will think it’s just entertainment.”

  “The Horseman of War sounds interesting.”

  “Enough about Dice. I thought you wanted to check out my ass?” Leif said. “I’m not feeling objectified, Speedy.”

  “You hardly checked me out either, Ariel,” Aeron said.

  I threw up my hands.

  “Something worse than Nazis could come, and that’s what you’re worried about?”

  “We are sensitive angels with real man feelings. It hurts our feelings you aren’t looking. You promised.”

  “Dice has it handled, Ariel,” Aeron said. “Now, can you check out his ass so we can go eat? I’m starving.”

  I turned all my attention to Leif. I knew he was some kind of special angel, but he looked like pure sin naked and soaking wet. He just winked at me.

  “Okay, it’s not fair the two of you are so hot. Every inch of you is so perfect it almost makes up for the fact that Aeron is an asshole sometimes and Leif jokes about everything.”

  Aeron and Leif moved in, so they were both naked, wet, and pressed up against me.

  Aeron nipped at my nose.

  “That’s the entire reason you started dating us in that chatroom. Can we eat now?”