All Hell (9 page)

Three of Martaan’s men, all uniformed, take cover behind a car, aiming purposely and expertly in different directions. Their bullets plug into the corpses approaching them. But their aim isn’t true enough. They’re too panicked to hit the hearts, so all they’re doing is
chipping away flesh, bone, and muscle tissue while the decomposed bodies still come for them. They try to flee before they get overrun, but a hoard blocks them in from behind cutting off their retreat.

Preacher Larry runs into the middle of the street, a stern presence, a force to be reckoned with. His first shotgun blast blows a zombie to smithereens, its guts spraying the concrete crimson red. A second blast splatters another. He’s yelling to Martaan’s men as he reloads. I can’t hear what he’s saying but he’s pointing at his heart, rallying them, telling them where to concentrate their aim. They group together tightly and turn a row of the u
ndead into a row of the Swiss cheese.

Then Balzuzu, the architect of this terrifying insanity, swoops down out of nowhere. Preacher Larry shoots him
, but the devil doesn’t even flinch as the buckshot ricochets of his thick hide. He grabs Larry with both hands, elevates high enough for everyone to see, and literally rips Larry in half as a display of what will happen to anyone who defies him. Larry’s intestines drop from his torso and splash onto the street. Two officers run away, right into a hoard of zombies that start tearing into their flesh. Another officer stands his ground and starts shooting at Balzuzu who simply swoops down again and guts the officer like a fish.

I’ve fought monsters for years. I’ve seen gruesome deaths firsthand. Not once have I ever seen carnage like this.

Balzuzu sees us race forth from the forest. It’s too bad he hasn’t noticed me riding atop Rebel. Too bad for him. He hears our howls and battle cries. His expression tells me he thinks total victory, total annihilation of the people of Los Agros, is at hand. He thinks he’s about to witness more slaughter, more needless death that he can relish in. He’s right, but he’s wrong. It’s not the townsfolk that are going to be slaughtered by werewolves. It’s his army of zombies.

We come in hard and fast, without an ounce
of hesitation in our stride, arriving like the light brigade filled with teeth and claws. Fangs bite down, easily tearing through flesh. Razor sharp nails slice through organs. But Hell Pack is only ripping into the dead, not the living.

In mid-stride, Rebel bites the head off a zombie about to attack a lost child then
glides to a stop to let me off. “Stay safe, my friend,” he says.

“You too, friend,” I respond. I jump off his back, roll in a somersault, and come up with guns blazing. I double tap the stumbling corpse closest to me. It drops easily and I do the same to the one right behind him. Two z’s grab my left shoulder. I back step, reach to the sharpened
weapon on my waist, and thrust a machete through one of their hearts. Then I kick the dead zombie into the other one, turn my gun on them and blow them away. I quickly pivot to my right and kill another.

All around me werewolves are doing the same. I see a dead head roll by. I backtrack its path and see Silver Joe’s got a firm grip on its still moving body. He wipes blood from his mouth and snout, discards the headless body into an advancing zombie and savagely goes to work on a few more with his claws. I take out two more with my machete before I
spot Rebel. He thrusts his arm through the living corpse in front of him. A second later, he pulls out its decrepit heart which is still beating in his hands. He sees me, smiles, crushes the squishy red muscle in his large hairy fist, and kills some more. Behind him, a brown werewolf gets bitten by a zombie that jumped on his back. The wolf howls, turns, and gets savage. It’s a vicious display of wetwork I didn’t need to see.

Everywhere I look it’s pure chaos. Nature, or I should say ‘unnature’, at its most simple, brutal core. There is no mercy, no civilized behavior. It’
s strictly an unrelenting violent battle where only the strongest and most aggressive will survive. But it’s all the sideshow. Balzuzu is the main attraction, the one we need to kill most. Though, with our weapons so far unable to penetrate his armored skin, how we’re going to accomplish that is beyond me.

I finally spot the devil and it ain’t pretty. He’s been betrayed. The look on his face is priceless but someone, probably every one of us, is going to pay. A small pack has him surrounded. A white werewolf lunges forward, its teeth bared going for Balzuzu’s throat. Balzuzu catches his head in his big hands, mid-leap, and snaps his neck like it was a twig. The werewolf looks like its head was put on backwards as the devil drops him, re
adying himself to dish out more punishment. While I’m pondering if a werewolf can heal from an injury like that, two more werewolves jump on Balzuzu’s back, sinking their teeth into his wings. Balzuzu rolls forward, tucking his wings in, then he arcs them forward bringing both wolves within reach of his massive hands. He grabs one and throws him at another werewolf about to attack, taking out both with one move. Then he grabs the other werewolf in both hands and rips him in two the same way he did Preacher Larry.

I slash forward with the machete, using it and my guns to plow my
self a path through the zombies. I start to race toward Balzuzu, my machete raised. All I’m thinking is that one of those hands has to go. Someone human grabs my shoulder and holds me back.

“You’re confusing bravery wit
h stupidity,” Pa says. “That’s the quickest path to death I’ve ever seen. We need to hit him with something bigger and harder than he is.”

I look around. My eyes catch a black SUV. “I could hot wire that,” I say. I think quickly. “Do we have any
C-4 at the house? We could rig it to explode. I could drive it right up his a—”

“Plenty, but…
” my pa hands me a Heckler & Koch MP5. It’s hefty in my grip but I can handle it. “Take this. Take these too,” he says handing me extra clips. “Fully automatic and the ammo is explosive incendiary filled with four grams of bullseye powder at the tips. They still may not get through his thick hide, but they should get his attention. Lure him to the church. Backroom. Miguel’s sanctuary.”              

Five zombies attack from the side. I kick one back and test the weapon. The torso I aim at
disintegrates in a puff of smoke. Two more splatter that were standing directly behind it. The gun packs a punch. I’ll need it too. Bony fingers grab me from my blindside, twisting me, knocking me down. I fire upward feeling the heat as the bullets scorch through its chest. Two are on my pa. I can’t risk using the MP5 when they’re so close, so I take out my machete and shish kabob one of their hearts. My pa outwrestles the other. In a moment, he’s on top of it, his knee on its back. He clasps his hands under its chin and yanks its skull clean off. Its body is squirrelling on the ground like a beheaded chicken. I stick my machete through its back and it stops.

My
pa hands me a thin metal strip about the length of my hand. “Even more important, if at all possible, attach this to his back. The ends are coated with a powerful adhesive.” My pa shows me a strip of his own. “I have one too. Only one of us has to be successful.”

“Looks like an aluminum
Band-Aid. What is it?” I ask.

“Miguel refers to
it as a higher calling,” Pa smirks. “It’s—” something catches his attention and he glances up.

It’s Balzuzu and he’s heading straight for us.

Chapter 17

The devil’s charging like a bull, swatting aside zombie and werewolf and anything else that’s in his way as he makes a straight line for us. He steps on a zombie, squishing it beneath his hooves. A wolf comes at him from the side and he smacks it away as easily as if it’s a gnat.

My pa
pivots, his weapon raised at Balzuzu. An instant later his fully automated submachine gun is firing round after round that hits Big Red square in his barrel chest, the bullets exploding on impact with a violent burst of heat and smoke. A volley like that would have killed any other monster. In Balzuzu’s case, it merely slows him down.

He lets loose a frightening roar before beginning with the threats. “You will regret that you have annoyed me. I will skin you alive then rip the meat from your bones.
I—”

My
pa adjusts his aim so his next volley goes right into Balzuzu’s ugly goat mouth. It shuts him up. He stops running then spits out a spent cartridge in an exhale of black smoke
More importantly it gives him pause
.

“Your soul is mine. That
is a promise,” Balzuzu scowls.

My pa
continues firing. Balzuzu tilts his head down while bringing his massive arms up to shield his face, blocking the barrage of oncoming bullets, slowly continuing his approach. I raise my H & K and fire a burst of ammo into his thick gut. The bullets make a pinging sound as they bounce off him, but by the way he’s howling I can tell they’re stinging him even if they aren’t penetrating his thick skin. Pa quickly refits another clip. This ammo’s different… a relentless spray of gunfire that shoots faster but doesn’t explode upon impact. The bullets hit Balzuzu but ricochet off in every direction, destroying whoever or whatever is around him. My pa keeps up the pressure, unleashing the full clip in an up and down motion, while I’m aiming everywhere he’s not so we’re hitting Balzuzu everywhere at once. Three werewolves seize our advantage and attack him from the sides. Balzuzu knocks one away, which allows me to fire a burst into his face that irks him enough where he shrieks and takes off into the skies.

“Now he
’s really pissed,” I crack, watching him arc around back in our direction.

“We got his attention
,” Pa responds. “The church is two blocks away. Let’s go.”

The street we run down is
a chock full of zombies. We fire enough bullets to make dead beef stew. My pa yells, “Run.” I start to, but he doesn’t come with me. Balzuzu’s already back, bearing down on him and my pa wants to give me a bigger head start. I see him firing everything he’s got as Balzuzu swoops in for the kill. But this time the red devil isn’t stopped. He knocks the gun out of Pa’s hands then grabs him by the waist. My pa fights to get free but Balzuzu head butts him in the face with his horns.

An unsettling smile crosses Balzuzu’s twisted
face. I turn, raise my gun to fire, but Balzuzu holds my pa between us, using him as a shield, practically daring me to take the shot. I don’t, knowing wherever I aim, Balzuzu will simply move my pa into the path of the bullet. He would love to taint my soul by having me be the one that kills my father.

“You’re not as dumb as you look, Silas,” h
e yells. Then he looks at my pa, “I will kill you, Jebediah. But first I’m going to eviscerate your other son while you watch.” He slams Pa into the ground hard enough where I know he ain’t getting up then he’s glares at me the way a cat glares at a mouse.

I’m
as likely to survive this as a hen in a fox house and both of us know it. I don’t even bother to fire. I turn on a dime and sprint toward the church like the north wind. I can feel the vibrations behind me as Balzuzu stomps forward, his hooves cracking the concrete street as he chases me. In the open street I’m too easy to pick off. So, in desperation, I do the most insane thing possible. I dart to my left, and at the last possible moment before Balzuzu can grab me, I dive into a horde of zombies.

There are dozens of them. The stench of their decay is sickening, the touch of their rotted flesh grotesque. They threaten to smother me in death
, but before they can pile on me, I’m on my back with my gun obliterating everything inhuman around me. I’m making a big mess of body parts, splattering blood and guts everywhere thinking maybe Balzuzu will lose me in all the confusion. There’s a pickup truck a few feet away. I push off my legs, scooting on my back, as I continue firing, bringing me closer to it. Then I roll beneath it to temporary safety, hoping I’ve either given Balzuzu the slip or he’ll think the zombies got to me first and cheated him of the kill he wanted.

The other side of the truck is clear. I roll out and bolt down the street, sprinting about fifty yards before the big fuck reacquires m
e in the chaos. Our eyes meet. He sees the fear in mine. He’s laughing now, strangely satisfied by my resilience, knowing he has me once again.

I’m just one block away
from the church. It may as well as be a mile. The street is littered with overturned cars, unmoving corpses, and the newly dead. As I quicken my run, Balzuzu starts coming. He’s not running this time. He’s flying fast, no longer fucking around. He wants me and he wants me bad. He’s close enough to snatch me when my two new best friends make their play. Silver Joe and Rebel pounce on him from behind. They’ve seen what he can do, so their attack is more cautious, more measured, but no less vicious. Silver Joe goes high for one of the wings. Rebel goes low biting an ankle.

Balzuzu gets his long fingers on Joe’s fur, so Rebel bounces up and slashes him across the face, causing him to release Joe. When Joe drops he goes for the same ankle Rebel tried working on. Their movements are coordinated and strategic
, their plan to hobble him in some way, limit his mobility. First wound then go for the kill. It’s a good strategy, but even with their superhuman strength they can’t break the demon’s skin. Balzuzu’s too strong.