Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 (44 page)

“You can do this, David!” she told him. “You can stop it!!”

Cole watched Stella and David for a second, but then he looked at the line of stained glass windows high up on the walls at the other side of the church. Tarantulas and scorpions were crawling all over the outside of the stained glass windows, somehow sticking to them in the sandstorm, and many of them were crawling in through the holes in the glass pecked away by the buzzards, dozens of the spiders and scorpions falling down to the floor.

A rattlesnake wriggled its way in from underneath the bulging doors.

“No … no … no …” Palmer muttered. He shot at the snake, blowing the top half of it away in a spray of blood.

The doors burst open, both doors slamming into the walls, one of them falling off of its hinges from the force.

Two people stood in the open doorway with the swirling sandstorm behind them … the man and woman who used to be Zeke and Joanie.

“David,” the woman who used to be Joanie said, lifting a thin arm up like she was reaching out towards him. “We’ve come to take you back home with us.”

Z
eke and Joanie stood in the doorway of the church. From behind them, materializing from the sandstorm, snakes crawled inside the building. Spiders and scorpions skittered among the slithering snakes, some of the spiders darted across Zeke and Joanie’s hiking boots, but the man and woman didn’t seem to notice or care.

Zeke and Joanie were both dressed in soiled jeans and torn flannel shirts, but their faces weren’t their own anymore—their heads were covered with the dead faces and scalped hair of David’s parents. The skin was gray and mottled, their eyes rolling around loosely in the sockets behind their flesh masks. Their mouths hung open, teeth sticking up at odd angles, their tongues lolling around inside their mouths like the writhing snakes on the floor.

Both of them took a step forward in unison.

Stella and the others had seen that walk before—these were the dead controlled by the Ancient Enemy.

“Oh God,” Begay said. “That can’t be possible. Those are David’s parents’ faces.”

“Those two are already dead!” Cole yelled as he glanced at Begay and Palmer who still held their weapons aimed at the slowly advancing couple. Cole looked at David who stood inside the circle of blood, trembling with fear. “Those aren’t your parents, David!”

“What the fuck is this?” Palmer whispered from beside Begay, shaking his head slowly like he was trying to clear it.

“Those are David’s parents’ faces and hair on those people,” Begay said.

Palmer nodded like he remembered the corpses of David’s parents. Their faces had been skinned away, their hair scalped, all of the pieces missing. But here those pieces were … stuck on these two people in the doorway.

“Stop right there!” Palmer yelled at the man and woman. “FBI!!”

The couple took a step forward, their tongues swirling around inside the mouth holes of their skin masks, their eyeballs so large they looked ready to pop out of their dead faces. They walked with the jerky movements of zombies in horror films.

“I said stop or I’ll shoot!” Palmer warned. “I swear to God, I’ll shoot!!”

The snakes slithered forward, passing Zeke and Joanie. The spiders, desert rats, and scorpions poured in through the doorway, marching onward like an army. More spiders, rats, and scorpions spilled in through the broken stained glass windows on both sides of the church.

“Shoot them with the shotgun!” Cole yelled at Begay.

Begay didn’t even respond or look at Cole; he slithered out of his backpack and let it drop down to the floor, and then he pumped his shotgun and fired. The buckshot tore the arm off the woman at her shoulder, the arm disappearing in a spray of blood.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Palmer yelled at Begay, horrified.

Begay didn’t answer. He pumped the shotgun again and blew part of the man’s leg off, the leg gone now below the knee.

But the man and woman kept stumbling forward.

“David,” the woman said in a guttural voice. “We want you to come with us. We want to show you things …”

“How … how can they still be walking?” Palmer asked.

“Because they’re already dead!” Begay yelled, pumping his shotgun again. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s true!”

Joe took the bottle of lighter fluid out of his coat pocket. He pointed the bottle down at the floor in front of him and squirted the fluid all over the floorboards in a wide arc. He plucked one of the large kitchen matches out of his jeans pocket and struck it. The flame sparked into life and he threw the burning match down onto the wriggling spiders and scorpions coming towards him in a crawling, living wave. Flames whooshed up on the floor, burning the closest critters. The other creatures backed away from the flames for a moment.

Cole glanced quickly at the flames and then he pulled the bottle of lighter fluid and the small box of kitchen matches out of his coat pocket that Joe had given to him a little earlier.

He squirted the fluid all over the closest line of spiders, scorpions, rats, and rattlesnakes. He plucked a long kitchen match out of the box, but his fingers were shaking so badly he almost dropped the match and the box. But he was finally able to strike the match against the side of the box.

It didn’t light.

The creatures were getting closer, glistening now with the lighter fluid all over them. Cole slid the match over and over against the side of the matchbox but it still wouldn’t light. He wished he still had his brother’s Zippo lighter with him.

After one more strike the match lit and he tossed it on top of the wet snakes, rats, scorpions, and spiders in front of him. The flames rose up immediately, the fire racing across the animals’ backs. The rats squealed and the snakes hissed; the animals writhed in pain on the floorboards.

Cole took a step back. The fire was holding them back, but it would only work for so long … more of the creatures were coming right towards the wall of flames.

“I said stop fucking walking!” Palmer yelled at Zeke and Joanie.

The couple took another step forward, Zeke hopping on one leg now.

Palmer squeezed off a shot, hitting the man dead center in the chest, knocking him back a step. But then he kept on hopping forward again.

“David, we want you to come home with us,” the woman said, her voice just a gurgling grumble.

The Ancient Enemy could put human masks on these people to look like David’s parents, but it couldn’t mimic their voices. The voice always sounded the same … that same guttural growl.

Palmer shot three more times, knocking both the man and the woman back again, but neither one went down. “What the hell?” he muttered.

Begay blew a hole in the side of the man’s face, erasing part of it. The rest of the man’s face slid off of his red glistening skull like a latex mask, the hair sliding off behind him. All that remained was the meat and tendons on his face with some pieces of white bone gleaming through. The one eye that was left rolled around wildly in the socket. His jaw had been broken in half from the impact of the bullet, but he still tried to gnash the teeth together that he had left.

A new wave of spiders, rats, scorpions, and snakes were crawling in through the open doorway. More of them poured down from the broken windows. The buzzards and other birds and bats shattered the rest of the stained glass windows, pouring in and swirling above them, flying through the smoke from the fires that burned inside the church.

“David!” Stella yelled as she turned to look at David. “Do something!”

David closed his eyes, tears slipping out. He looked lost … hopeless.

Joe kept on singing his prayers, but he had another container of lighter fluid in his hand; he squirted the liquid towards the fire, fueling the flames, keeping the snakes, spiders, and other creatures back away from him and the circle.

“We’re going to take your friends, David,” Joanie said. “We’re going to take them all away from you. You’re going to watch them die one by one.”

Joanie looked at Palmer and Begay. “You can stop this, Palmer,” she said.

Palmer had a confused look on his face:
How does she know my name?

“Kill the boy and all of this will be over,” Joanie growled.

Palmer stared at the snakes slithering towards him. Some of the snakes had curled up into a coil, their rattles shaking, ready to strike—their combined rattling was like the sound of a million cicadas inside the church.

“Kill the boy!” Joanie screamed at Palmer. “Just kill the boy!!”

“Don’t listen to them!” Stella told Palmer. “David’s the only one who can hurt it!”

Two tarantulas crawled over Palmer’s shoes and he pulled his feet away, backing up, but the spiders and scorpions were all around him and Begay now. He shot at a few of them, blowing them into bits until his gun clicked.

Then he reloaded.

The wind outside was even louder now, screeching in through the broken windows, bringing the stinging sand with it. The wood beams in the ceiling creaked and moaned from the strain, ready to give way soon.

“David, fight it!” Stella screamed over the howling wind, the rattling snakes, and the flickering fires.

“Last chance!” Joanie yelled at Palmer. “Last chance to kill the boy! We will win! We always do!” She opened her mouth wide and a fat hairy tarantula crawled out, dropping down to the floor at her feet in a pool of thick saliva.

Begay pumped his shotgun and blew the woman’s head off of her shoulders.

Zeke and Joanie, now without most of their heads, collapsed down onto the floor. Their bodies twitched and bulged. Something large moved around inside of their bodies, struggling to get out.

Cole squirted more lighter fluid at the line of fire in front of him, dragging the fire along with the stream of fluid. “Over here!” he yelled at Palmer and Begay. “Get behind the fire!”

But the fire wasn’t all the way around them yet, and now the crawling creatures were advancing from behind them, the snakes slithering quickly through the debris, their rattles shaking.

The wood floors began shaking, trembling underneath their feet like an earthquake.

Stella looked down at the floorboards beneath her feet and watched as they exploded. Skeletal hands reached up from underneath the floor, grabbing Stella’s ankles. She saw wide eyes in a skull staring up at her, a rictus grin in the darkness below.

“Come down here with us, Stellaaaa …”

“N
o!” David screamed when he saw the hands from underneath the floor grab Stella’s legs.

Stella tried to pull her foot out of the skeletal hands’ grasp, but they were too strong. More floorboards exploded away. Spiders and scorpions fell down into the darkness below. The hole was getting bigger and Stella could see so many more bodies down there crawling all over each other, their eyes glowing in the darkness, their teeth gnashing.

“David, help me!!” Stella screamed. She beat at the hands as she fell down onto her butt. The hands were dragging her towards the ragged hole in the floor.

“You can’t have her!!” David screamed and then his body went rigid, like he was going into a trance. The ancient writing that Joe Blackhorn had painted on David’s face and hands glowed bright red and seemed to move, coming alive on his skin. Threads grew from the symbols and crawled down David’s face, down his arms and hands, down his clothes, down to the floor. The threads grew thicker and wound together like vines, moving towards a black ball of darkness that was forming on the floor in front of David.

David’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body began to shake.

• • •

The ruined bodies of Zeke and Joanie were twisted together on the floor, their skin melting together for a moment, then pushing away as something inside forced its way out from underneath their flesh. Black tentacles and feelers poked out through their skin, whipping frantically in the air around them, and then changing form. A segmented leg that looked like a giant spider leg pushed out, but then folded back in on itself.

Begay pumped his shotgun again and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

He pulled the trigger again and again.

Still nothing. He turned the weapon around in his hands, holding it by the barrel like a baseball bat, and he beat at the snakes all over the floor around him and Palmer.

But there were too many of the creatures. One snake shot out and sank its fangs into Palmer’s left calf. The FBI agent screamed. Another snake got him in the other calf. A tarantula crawled up his pants leg. And then another one.

Begay grabbed the rattlesnakes and tore them off of Palmer’s legs, ripping their fangs out of his flesh and clothing. He flung the snakes across the room into the fire in front of Cole.

Cole came over to help Begay, squirting lighter fluid all around them in a circle, dragging the line of fire he’d created over with him, then continuing it on around them in a big circle. The flames rose up in front of them for a moment and they couldn’t see the Ancient Enemy crawling out of Zeke and Joanie.

• • •

David stood in the circle of owl’s blood, his eyes still closed, his body still trembling. The spinning black ball that had formed on the floor in front of him crackled with electricity as it began to rise up from the floor, gaining mass and solidifying, hovering in the air and spinning faster and faster.

David opened his eyes. His pupils had rolled all the way back into his head, only the whites showing now. His hands were out at his sides, his head leaned back, mouth opened a little, his body shaking violently now. The painted symbols were all off of his skin, all of them turned into threads of electricity that crackled around the spinning ball that was getting bigger and bigger.

• • •

Stella beat at the skeletal hands grabbing at her from underneath the floor. More of the dead were pulling her down into the hole. She grabbed the gun out of the waistband of her pants and aimed it at the dead skeletal creatures that held on to her. She pulled the trigger over and over again, shooting at the dead things until the clip was empty.