All Hell (7 page)

“God, I love punching you in the face,” he says, as if God has any place here. “It’s all over, Silas. You, humanity, everything. The Devil’s on his way and he has two armies to conquer with. Zombies and werewolves killing and destroying all of mankind. I wanted you to know that before you died.”

He hoists me in the air, one hand gripping my throat, the other wrapped around my crotch,
an unpleasant amount of pressure on my delicates. I look into the abyss he’s about to throw me in… a true hellhole engulfed in hellfire.

“Any final words, Silas?”

“Go to hell,” I squeeze out.

“I don’t have to. Hell’s coming here,” he says.

Sidekick arches his arms back and I brace myself for the fall that’s coming. But then a single shot rings out and he buckles. Another shot drops him to his knees as I drop off to his side.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size,” my Pa says. His muscles are bulging out
of his short sleeve, blood-soaked, khaki t-shirt. His M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle is clutched against his shoulder, his finger leaning on the trigger. He’s pissed. I can see the vein bulging from his forehead. No one ever walks away unscathed when the vein comes out.

“I think I will,” snarls Sidek
ick. He lunges at my pa with lightning speed.

My pa
doesn’t even flinch. He squeezes the trigger and unleashes every bullet left in his 30 round STANAG magazine. I have the pleasure of watching Sidekick’s body convulse under a barrage of silver bullets. When he hits the ground like a hairy clump of red and black dog goo, blood spurts out of the exit wounds. My only regret is that the honor of killing him wasn’t mine.

I stand up. My pa
gets a good look at me and as tough as he is, I can see the wince on his face. “Shitty night?” he asks.

“You have no idea,” I answer. I look at Sidekick
again. There’s barely enough of his face left to see what species he is. I’m fairly certain my pa didn’t miss a single shot. “He so had that coming,” I say to Pa.

“Happy to oblige,” he answers. “Any need for more silver?” he asks, seeing only a smattering of walking zombies left in the area. The rest of them are lying around like litter in the graveyard.

“Save the silver. We’re going to need it later,” I say. “If there is a later,” I add.

My
pa nods. He reloads with a standard clip and takes out a few more zombies on the other side of the pit. He lowers the rifle, puzzled. “They’re backing off. Any idea why?”

Miguel’s back on his feet now, with us. “T
heir master has ordered them to,” he says.

We all know what it means. Flames shoot skyward from the pit to confirm it. We back away, shielding our eyes from the heat and the bright flash of light. Then the world rumbles once more, the vibration building to an ear-splitting crescendo. A moment later
he
emerges.

I’ve heard he comes in many forms. For this entrance he’s chosen the most terrifying. His body is a hulking mass of ripped red muscle, nothing at all like the gentlemanly appearance you read about. I estimate his height at around nine feet tall. His wings arc out angular and long like a prehistoric pterodactyl. His clawed hooves dig into the dirt in front of us
, as if he owns the earth. His hands are massive, his fingers threateningly bent, properly displaying his razor sharp talons. His face is that of a goat, but with predatory fangs and thick, slightly curled, elongated horns. His odor is foul and repulsive. He is, by far, the scariest motherfucker I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the scariest.

The three of us instinctively step back. Father Miguel crosses himself and the devil laughs.

“Hello, Father Miguel Santos, Jebediah Hill. How nice to greet you…
again
.” His eyes slant and a puff of smoke comes out of his nose. Then his gaze turns to me and I swear his black eyes can see my soul. “Have you brought me your other son to kill?”

I swallow, the overwhelming fear mixing with the knowledge that the Devil himself is my brother’s killer.

Father Miguel steps forward. “Your foul presence has no place in this realm of the living. Your summoning was involuntary and thus not in accordance with celestial rules. Be gone, now, lest the forces of Heaven itself rise up against you,” he screams.

T
he Devil leans in. The smoke coming from his goat nostrils cover Miguel’s face. “Blow smoke up someone else’s ass, Father. From this day forth, your world is mine.” He flaps his wings, hovering a few feet in the air. “Rise,” he commands, spreading his powerful arms wide.

He’s looking at us, laughing, reveling in our fear and despair. With his gesture
, more corpses awaken from their dirtnap and push up from below. I try to take a quick count of all the distorted, hideous, rotted ghouls, but there are far too many of them. An army of hundreds of zombies are rising from the graves.

Chapter 13

Werewolves, zombies, and the Devil
. This is the triple fuck of all fucks and if me, my pa, and Father Miguel can’t stop ‘em, the human race is doomed. Yet, what we’re supposed to do against this I have no idea. I remember I’m still holding an M27 semi-automatic and decide to use it. I fire as many shot as my trigger happy finger can get off right into the Devil’s chest. The bullets bounce off as if his skin was made of armor.

He swoops down and grabs me in his
big fist like I’m a doll. My pa makes an effort to hold onto me, but the Devil effortlessly nudges him away and takes me with him into the air. I don’t catch my breath until he stops around a few hundred feet high. His grip is so powerful, his fist so large, I don’t even have room to struggle. He smiles at me and licks his lips like I’m a snack.

“You must be
Silas. Still
little
after all these years,” he mocks.

“You killed my brother, asshole,” I say.

“He was the price your father paid me for your mother,” the Devil responds to me. I don’t understand. He sees the look on my face and knows he’s found a weak spot. “Oh, I see. Your father never told you how we met,” he adds.

I’m not sure I even want to know what he’s talking about. “Go fuck yourself,” I answer.

He’s unfazed. “You should thank me. I could have chosen you,” he says back. “Though I guessed you were
half
the man he was,” he adds, again with the midget jokes. He holds me out, away from his body, his dark eyes scanning me. I can tell he doesn’t like what he sees. “Hmmm… perhaps my initial assessment was wrong.” He dives down, descending like a bird of prey, and there’s not much I can do about it but helplessly go along for the ride. He stops short, a foot off the ground, and deposits me at my father’s feet like a stork delivering a baby.

“Are you done?” I scowl at him.

He smiles then looks at my pa and snorts. “Your son has a pure soul. Looks like the two of you need to have a father son talk. Perhaps that will color it a bit.” Then the Devil looks back, admiring his advancing army of zombies. “You better hurry, though. You don’t have much time.” Then he takes off, literally like a bat out of hell.

“He’s heading to Los Agros,” says Miguel. “We need to go
, now,” he adds, raising his gun, firing a few bursts of scattershot that drop the two zombies closest to us. One of ‘em rises back up. Miguel aims more carefully and finishes him off for good.

My father grabs my arm and lifts me up. Our eyes meet. I see the shame in his. He knows the Devil just revealed to me his darkest secret. Now I know the Devil spoke true.

“I—” Pa starts to explain, but Miguel cuts him off.

“Not now… Balzuzu’s right. We don’t have much time,” yells Miguel. He tilts his head at the advancing hoard of corpses. Their
sickening moans fill the air with despair. Their stench washes over us like a gray cloud. “Nor do we have enough ammo to deal with them. Our only hope lies in Los Agros.”

Pa
looks at me, almost apologetically. “I agree,” I say loudly. Then I turn to my pa, soften my tone and add, “and anything you have to tell me can wait until later... if there is a later.”

Pa
nods and it’s time to move. We backpedal toward a motorcycle lying on its side. Miguel fires indiscriminately at anything non-living that approaches. “And who’s Balzuzu?” I ask him. “I thought that was the Devil.”

“Balzuzu is a devil. He’s not
the
Devil,” Father Miguel answers. “He’s Nephilim… a descendant of Araqiel, a savage that resides in the space between Heaven and Earth.”

Miguel’s words are just as confusing as Balzuzu’s
, but I got the gist. “Since you know who he is, how do we stop him?” I ask, while blasting an approaching zombie into tomato paste.

“We need to get him back on his side of the gate. I know how to perform the ritual that closes it,” says Miguel.

“Simple enough… how do we get him there? How do we drive him back?”

“Through the only thing he understands… brute force,” answers Miguel.

“Okay… brilliant,” I say, a pained smile on my face. In my head I say we’re fucked more than a new kid in a prison block.

My pa
grabs the motorcycle by the handle and hoists it upright. He steps on the clutch, twists the handle, and the engine roars. The rear wheel kicks up dirt and in a second my pa’s next to us. “Get on,” he says.

It’s built for t
wo. Miguel hops on behind my pa. The zombie herd is closing in. I squeeze in behind Miguel making the bike big enough to fit two and a half.

My pa
throttles it. Then he screams out. “Sheriff Martaan got your Wyatt Earp message. The whole town is prepared. But they’re prepared for a werewolf invasion, not zombies, and definitely not Balzuzu. We have to get back and warn them.”

“It’ll be too late. Balzuzu’s probably there already,” Miguel shouts.

I look back. The few seconds we’ve logged on the bike have already put a sizable distance between us and the undead. I have an idea. It’s a bad one but… “Pa,” I scream. “Drop me off at the tree line. I have a stopover to make.”

My father alters course, swerving through the tombstones. A dead hand rises up from underneath and attempts to grab the front wheel. We r
ide over it grinding it to mush. A few moments later, we’re where I need to be.

I hop off. “How much silver you got left?” I ask them.

“Six clips. Thirty each,” Pa answers. He’s already figured out I’m going back for the werewolves. “It’s suicide,” he adds.

“It’s slim to none, but it’s our only slim to none,” I respond.

“Then I’m going with you,” my pa replies.

“No!,” I insist. “Balzuzu
the devil creature… he’s the biggest threat. You need to get to our weapons cache, take out everything we’ve got, and make him eat it.”

“
This is an unwise course of action. Are you sure, son?” asks Miguel.

“Dead sure,” I blurt out
with a shrug. It has to be the worst timed joke ever.

My father tosses his satchel at me. I pull out the custom-made wolf killer magazines, lock one of them into place. My
pa’s staring at me, still deciding if letting me go on my own is the right move. I nod. “You do what you have to do. I’ve got this,” I insist again. He gets the message. We’re the Hill family. Come hell or high water—and in this case Hell is here—we do what we have to and take care of business.

“Semper Fi,” he says back to me with a salute. He looks ahead, twists the throttle and never looks back.

I race into the forest, quickly finding the trail Sidekick and I used to make our way out here. Only this time Silver Joe and I will meet on my terms, not his.

Chapter 14

I zip between the trees, my eyes on constant alert for were-zombie rabbits, supernatural snakes and whatever other paranormal fucked up forest creature might inhabit these woods. My thoughts move to Sidekick. Seeing his face turned into pudding by a barrage of silver caps warmed my heart, but the things he talked about chilled my bones;
‘Our entire clan is Hell Pack,’ ‘Because in order for the spell to work, the blood sacrifice must enter the circle of their own free will,’ ‘Zombies and werewolves killing and destroying all mankind.’

So if the werewolves were in on it the whole time and Old Man Jones was their blood sacrifice then why did the werewolves kill Old Man Jones before he got to the graveyard? Then I remember… the werewolves didn’t kill him.
A
werewolf killed him. A rogue werewolf that Silver Joe said was an outsider to their pack. A werewolf that I put down for good because I assumed he was the problem.

It’s still not making sense to me. A snake slithers across my path. I can’t tell if it’s of the sup
ernatural variety so I run around it instead of wasting the bullets. I glance back and see it doesn’t follow. But the trees behind it are familiar. I make the mental note that soon I’ll be crossing back into werewolf territory.

I
take the inconsistency of Old Man Jones’ murder puzzle and flip it around in my head so I can see it from a different angle. The actions of the lone werewolf couldn’t have been a coincidence. It had to have known exactly what it was doing. It had to have known Old Man Jones was the willing sacrifice. That meant he wanted to stop him. He killed Jones to make sure that he never made it to the graveyard.
So he was working against his own kind.
The question was why? He was an outsider. Maybe he just wanted to piss them off.