Unearthed, p.41
Unearthed, page 41
part #4 of Southern Watch Series
15.
Arch sat at the kitchen table, devouring the meal that the reporter had put in front of him. Whatever Duncan’s issue was with the man, he made a mean can of beans, and Arch couldn’t decide if it was great because he hadn’t had anything in a day and a half or simply because it was cooked really danged well compared to what he was used to suffering through. Could be either way at this point, he supposed.
“So how long have you been hunting demons?” Belzer asked. He had a notepad next to him, pen in his fingers, acting about as anxious as a ten-year-old Arch had caught shoplifting once. He didn’t exactly have a guilty expression, but his posture was all stiff shoulders and fearful anticipation.
“A couple months or so,” Arch said, taking another mouthful. His momma had taught him not to chew with his mouth open, so he took his time answering.
“How’d you find out about them?” Belzer asked.
“Ran into the cowboy on the town square,” Arch said between bites, “along with a … you know, I don’t rightly recall what he was up against. But I ran into him facing off against a demon. I shot it a few times when it refused to follow commands. Thing shrugged off the hits like a mosquito biting him. Then he charged, Hendricks gave it a belly full of holy steel, and it disappeared as they do when confronted with an instrument of God.”
“Disappeared as in … burned up in that black fire?” Belzer asked, leaning in.
“Yessir,” Arch said, getting nearly to the end of his bowl. He wanted more and looked behind him to see Duncan lurking, resentfully, under the archway to the entry. He was eyeing the whole conversation with more than a little irritation. “This is going on the internet, isn’t it?”
“Soon as I can get it out there,” Belzer agreed, scratching furiously on his pad.
“Don’t print my name, then,” Arch said, making his way to the pot for a second helping. “I don’t need any more mud thrown up around me right now.”
“Uhmm … yeah,” Belzer said, still writing, “I can do this with anonymous sourcing, though it’s going to affect the credibility of the piece—”
“You’re writing about demons on the internet,” said Duncan, as cranky as Arch had ever heard him. “Face it, if credibility was a worry for you, you would have gotten a job covering politics. Then, if you wrote about the soulless beasts you covered destroying the world, people would have believed every word of it.”
“I didn’t think you were soulless,” Arch said, dipping the plastic ladle in and coming out with more beans.
“An essence is not a soul,” Duncan said, matter-of-factly. “It’s both more and less.”
“How so?” Arch asked.
“Yeah,” Belzer asked, turning his attention to the OOC. “Care to elaborate?”
Duncan’s face broke into a full-on scowl. “No. No, I wouldn’t. Not with you present, you tick.”
“Strange comment coming from a man without actual skin,” Arch said.
“Not a man,” Duncan said. “And ticks can still burrow into shells, though they usually don’t. I have heard of a few thin-shells being vaped by them, though—”
Arch’s phone broke into a ring, cutting off the OOC. Arch took his time setting the ladle back in the pot and making his way back to the table.
Then he saw it was Bill calling and scrambled to pick it up. “Hello?”
“Arch,” Bill said on the other end of the line, a powerful crackle of static—or something else—cutting him off, “—here now.”
“Bill, I can’t hear you very well,” Arch said, squeezing the phone tighter to his face. “What’s going on?”
“—in town,” Bill said, still cutting out every few words, “—it’s here.”
“What’s there?” Arch asked. “Is it the—the Rog’tausch?”
“Yes,” Bill said simply. “Need to—”
Arch heard the sound for the call ending and looked down at his phone to see that it had, in fact, cut off on him. “Dang,” he whispered and looked up to see Alison, Hendricks and Darlington all standing behind Duncan, watching him. The cowboy had his hat and coat back on, looked fit as a fiddle. “I think it’s game time,” he said to them all and let the hand with the phone slowly drop to his side as the realization of what was coming seeped right into his soul. “Saddle up. We’re out in five.”
*
Reeve brought his car to a squealing halt after crossing eight fucking giant potholes in the pavement that looked like they’d been smashed in by a jackhammer the size of Cleveland. He had to swerve the Explorer around them carefully, afraid he’d need a front-end alignment or fresh tires that the county could ill afford at the moment. He tried to imagine the price that Pike would exact from him in exchange for the extra dollars and shuddered at the thought. He hadn’t won the sheriff’s election by getting down and dirty on party issues; he’d simply talked about the damned job, about making people safe in their own town, their own homes.
That was a campaign promise that wasn’t looking so good.
There was a fire blazing on the right side of the road, one of the older homes on Cherry Tree Lane, a couple streets over from where he was supposed to be. There was noise coming from this direction, though, and Reeve had his window down, spotlight out and shining. He rolled to a stop and twisted the lamp to his right, shining it past the place where those holes in the road ended. It flashed over a lawn with dirt ruts in the same circular shapes as in the road and then fell over a white picket fence that would have been straight out of an idyllic film, save for the fact it was mangled and ripped asunder somewhere in the middle of two yards. He kept moving the spotlight up and let it fall on a brick house that had utterly lost its corner, like someone had smashed their way straight through in a hell of a hurry to get somewhere.
“What the fuck?” he muttered. The light caught motion further ahead, on the next street, and Reeve gunned his engine, racing the Explorer around the block, careful of pedestrians. People were out, he could see them, but they were standing around in nightclothes, disoriented, talking to their neighbors, wondering what was going on. He let the sirens warn them off as he shot past, cutting around the block.
This was Midian proper, the city itself, thought they were still a ways out from the town square and main street. Miles and miles away from the sheriff’s station on Old Jackson Highway and the freeway offramp where most of the new commerce was situated. This was still the beating heart of Midian really, though, and certainly where the majority of the people lived.
Reeve swerved onto the next street and rolled the spotlight so that it added to his headlights. The wind was hitting him in the face, rushing over his nearly bald head, sweet relief after another scorcher of a day. He could see motion just beyond the headlamps, and he took his foot off the accelerator, let the car coast to a stop.
“What the …?” He played with the spotlight, sending it a little further up. The headlights caught steel-grey feet that looked like … hooves? Tree-trunk like legs with grey skin that was a couple shades lighter than the hooves, knotted and thick. The more he scrolled up the light, the more he saw, and the more he felt like he was looking at some sort of fucked anatomy picture right out of an expressionist painting. He saw hip and buttock, muscled and brawny, and about two feet higher than the place where an NBA player’s groin would be.
By the time he made it to the comically enhanced steroidal pecs, Nicholas Reeve wasn’t even sure what he was seeing anymore.
The head was a hell of a mess, and seemed to be wearing some sort of nightmarish antler crown straight out of one of those fantasy movies he skipped right over on cable in favor of Division III games between teams he’d never heard of.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he said, watching the thing move. It stomped and the car shook as it made its way across the street. He’d sure as hell never seen anything like it, this beast, this thing that had come straight out of his waking nightmares. It was just huge, bigger than any person, even one that would make it into the Guinness Book. It had to be close to twelve feet in height, and not a piece of it looked like it could be animatronic, or a bear in a costume, none of the perfectly logical batshit-crazy explanations his mind tried to come up with to explain what he was looking at.
The sound of Erin slamming hard against his door made him just about shit his pants. He fumbled for his gun before realizing it was her, and left his hand there as he watched the thing stomp off toward the house across the street. It let out a roar that made him want to cover his ears and then tore into a stucco house, stepping inside and disappearing into the dark.
“What … the … fuck … was that?” Reeve asked, turning to look at his deputy.
She looked like she was shaking, paler than he’d ever seen her. “It’s a demon. A goddamned demon, that’s what it is. Just like the ones Arch has been hunting the last few weeks.”
Reeve just stared at her. “Oh, come the fuck on,” he said, voice ripe with disbelief. What a load of bullshit.
And then he turned his head to see a cast-iron bathtub flung full out of the hole that that … thing … had put in the house, and he started to reconsider.
*
Brian got an up-close look at the house on fire as they drove past. It was roaring, the structure … what was the phrase he’d heard before? Fully engulfed? No, that wasn’t it. But it damned sure was fully engulfed, the flames reaching up above the roof. Tiles were falling in, and there wasn’t a fire truck in sight. He could see the flash of police lights a couple streets over, though, and they were heading that way, which … wouldn’t have been his first call, if he’d been at the wheel.
For his part, Brian kept quiet, just taking it all in. There was a damned swath of destruction leading to and away from the burning house, like a tornado had just rolled through, leaving devastation in its wake. Houses had gaping holes through the middle of them, like an enormous cannonball had been fired straight through and come out the other side.
“Goddamn,” Brian breathed as they passed six uprooted power poles that had been tossed through the air. One had found its mark in a Toyota Celica, a javelin right through the middle of the car like it had grown there from a sapling. Another was sticking diagonally out of a detached garage, a toothpick thrown by the tornado. Except Brian knew it wasn’t a tornado. Tornadoes made low, dull, roaring noises, like wind gone fucking nuts.
This thing ahead also made roaring noises. He could hear them, tearing through the night, somewhere out there beyond the wind that was rushing through his open window. But these weren’t atmospheric; they weren’t the weather. They were primal and furious and reminded him of all the scariest parts of Jurassic Park, which he’d seen as a kid.
“This is straight-up disaster movie porn,” Brian muttered under his breath. He saw his father nod, but he was more talking to himself than anything. “This is like the last Superman movie if they’d thrown in Doomsday for good measure.”
“I have very little idea what you’re talking about,” Bill said, steering them around another corner, navigating his way around a block that looked like it had been neatly bisected by the trail of destruction. “But I think I agree.”
Brian heard an explosive sound out his window and swung his head around to look. A cloud of dust billowed into the dark night, barely visible in the moonlight. Whatever this … thing … was, it was in the middle of the block, ripping through, continuing its reign of destruction in someone’s house, or garage, or car.
An automobile soared twenty feet through the air, across the street, rolling over a fire hydrant as it landed. It ended up on its roof, water spraying into the night like the long-delayed rain, refracting under the streetlights. Bill kept the car moving down this perpendicular street as Brian stared out into the night.
The thing stepped out into the light, stared for a moment at its handiwork, then continued, unceasing, striding across the road toward its next soft target. Brian watched, awestruck, as it disappeared between two houses. Dogs barked all over the town, but there was one in particular that grew especially fierce, coming from near the beast’s point of disappearance. Brian listened, intently, and heard a yelp as that particular bark ceased, and then followed the sound of lumber splitting, of destruction, of screams—
“It’s a demon,” Brian whispered, staring at the carnage, mouth agape. “It’s an actual … fucking … demon.”
“Welcome to the party, son,” Bill said and slammed the truck back into drive, heading toward the next block.
*
“Ooh,” Kitty said as they drove, watching the Rog’tausch tear this stuffed-up town a new fucking asshole for it to … probably run its lacking anatomy up to for a quick rub, who knew? She could see the police lights, and the thought excited her. “How many cops left?” she asked Rousseau, who was minding his own business in the front seat.
“Three, madam,” Rousseau said.
“Take us down this way,” Kitty said, gesturing toward the block where she saw the lights, “I think it’s time law and order in this town got a little less ordered.” And the only law she wanted in this place was the law of the damned jungle. Because she was going to be the queen fucking lioness around here, dammit. This was where it would start.
*
Once again, Hendricks wished that he was driving, but Duncan was having none of it. The demon had gotten there first, and Hendricks had been lucky to get shotgun position. Tragically, it did not come with an actual shotgun, though it damned well should have, knowing what they were riding into.
The state of the town was obvious, even from a half mile out. With the windows down, Hendricks could hear the sirens faintly, and the glow on the horizon was unmistakably more than just the usual city lights, especially for itty-bitty Midian.
“Could you roll that window up?” Dr. Darlington asked from the back seat. They were in the reporter’s car, but the reporter hadn’t come with them, preferring to go with Arch and Alison for whatever reason. Hendricks suspected Duncan was a lot happier with that.
“Not really,” Hendricks said, but after another minute, he rolled the window up. She’d cared for him, after all. The least he could do was not blow her out of the back seat and be courteous about it. “Happy?”
“I’d be happier if I could get service,” she said, and he turned to see her fiddling with her cell phone. “No bars,” she said, holding it up by way of explanation.
“I always thought those ads for ‘More bars in more places’ sounded like an alcoholic’s catchphrase,” Hendricks said, letting his mind take him wherever it wanted.
“Focus,” Duncan said.
“On what?” Hendricks snapped. “Some big ugly that we haven’t even seen yet?” He looked ahead and saw Arch and Alison’s little car flying along in front of them. They passed the city limits sign, then left it behind in a flash. “No, thanks. I want to go into battle cool, not riled and shitting myself with anger.”
“You might want to calm down a little, then,” Darlington said from the backseat.
Hendricks glanced at Duncan. If he’d been human, his hands would have been white-knuckling the damned wheel. As it was, the wheel’s leather was cracking in his grasp, but the shade of his fingers looked the same under the flash of the lights they were passing every few seconds. “You gonna be all right? Feeling a little nervous?”
“If you knew what we were heading into, you’d be nervous, too,” Duncan said. His lips were a tight line, and his eyes were fixed on the road ahead as they ran at eighty miles an hour into town, the sky ahead of them aglow with unnatural fire.
*
Reeve had driven a couple more blocks, Erin as his passenger, catching another glimpse of the thing as it was making its way through a space between two yards. He’d gotten a good look at it under a street light, maybe even better than with his own headlights before, and he wasn’t that eager to confront the thing. There was dumb, there was stupid, and then there was this. Still, he needed to put this thing down, and he was planning to stage the confrontation in such a way that he could control the outcome as best he could. He figured choice shots to the heart would be the key, and to that end, he was suddenly real glad he hadn’t just stuffed the department’s AR-15 into the evidence locker after they’d retrieved it from Arch’s car, clearly plentifully used.
“Any luck getting hold of Fries?” he asked as he pulled the Explorer to a stop.
“No service,” Erin said, slipping her phone back onto her belt. “I think this thing might have taken out the tower.”
“You say it’s a demon?” Reeve asked, slipping out of his door as Erin did the same on the other side.
“Yep,” Erin said. “Straight outta hell. There’s a plague of them here. It’s what’s been ailing us.”
Reeve felt a surge of fury and pushed it down. “You and me are going to have a long conversation later that you’re not going to enjoy.”
“Looking forward to it,” Erin said, “if we live.”
“How are you with the AR?” Reeve asked, opening the back of the Explorer.
“Pretty good—” Erin started.
“Excuse me, officer?” A woman stood behind them, shadowed in the headlights of a car Reeve hadn’t even seen pull up.
“Ma’am, you’re going to want to clear this area,” Reeve said, turning around to face her. “This place is a disaster area.”
“I know,” she said, walking toward him slowly, “it’s just so scary.” There was something about the way she said it that caused Reeve’s scalp to tingle. His hand drifted toward his gun. “Explosions, and screaming, and pain …”
“Ma’am, I need you to step back,” Reeve said, suddenly very aware that the way the car was parked, the way she was approaching them, it was perfectly set up so that he was near blinded by the headlamps of the car.
She didn’t stop, though. “I mean … I’m just visiting this town, and I … I can’t ever remember seeing anything like this before. It’s horrible, just horrible.” She didn’t make it sound like it was horrible.
