Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (15 page)

Don’t even ask.

He decided the crawling could go to hell, and worked his way to his feet. The car was three steps away. He strode to it with all the pride and anger his glands could produce. Wet rocks cascaded from his clothes. He jerked the door open and leaned inside.

It was still slightly warm from the day’s heat. The scent of dusty carpet was thin and lifeless in the air. The shotgun was under the front seat, and Martel tugged it out with a grin creasing the mud of his face. “Gotcha, bitch,” he whispered. He straightened, and pumped a round into the chamber.

Suddenly he whirled, his teeth bared in a huge, evil smile. “Be smokin yer asses,” he breathed. “Make my day, mo-fo. Make my fucking day.”

He turned, stifling a chuckle. Artillery shells could blow people’s asses off many miles away, but with the Remington here the killing was up close and personal. In his military training he had learned that the shotgun was banned as a weapon of war by the Geneva Convention, whatever the hell that was. It seemed that in World War I the American soldiers, the Doughboys, used shotguns to clean out trenches when they found any Germans still alive after an attack. It was so horrible, so they said, that this big convention on rules of war got together some place and decided the nicest way to kill people was probably the best way. No shotguns, no poison gas, cool stuff like that. People back then were so damned queasy.

But not Deputy Martel. He popped the glove box open and felt inside for shells. No such luck. He stuck his arm under the seat again and could dredge up only a flat, empty bottle of Fleischmann’s vodka. He wagged his head. My oh my. Tupper was a lush.

He tossed it on the floor, then scanned things one last time, trying to decide. Stay here? He pumped the shotgun about halfway and saw a fresh yellow shell waiting to slam into the chamber. The only way to check how many were inside was to pump them all out, which he did not want to do, not if some Creature from the Black Lagoon was waddling his way. He laid the gun across the seat, ready for it in an instant, frowning as thoughts bubbled and burst throughout his brain. Could he get out of this nightmare and wind up with some kind of heroism medal? That would add to his paycheck. Could he maybe capture one of these creatures, and be famous for that, as if he were a scientist of note? Or would he die here, along with everybody else?

He sat inside. The creatures were gone. The fun was over. He needed food and he needed sleep. Anyway, he had to go back to Junction City to report Tupper’s death, fill out reports on the crash on Highway 47, make a diagram of the disaster, maybe other stuff.

He drew his legs in and pulled the door shut. “Duty calls,” he said to himself, and reached for the key to get this baby fired up.

The windshield shattered with a terrific
crunch!
Pebbles of glass belched across his face and chest. He instinctively raised his arms to shield himself, his brain not yet able to process this new bit of data. A webbed claw the size of a catcher’s mitt smashed through the window to his left, deluging him with more glass. It pawed at him. He screamed and backpedaled across the seat, hammering the steering wheel and that claw with his feet, a mud-man jerking and shaking like a prisoner being fried in the electric chair.

The claw raked down the inner seam of his trousers, tearing it open to expose one hairy white leg that was remarkably skinny, considering the size of the rest of his body. He shrieked and bellowed, his eyes as big as jumbo marbles, his hair standing on end.

The demon worked its huge, misshapen head through the ruined window. Martel found new reasons to scream; the thing was plug-ugly, almost as plug-ugly as Betty Newton, the fattest, ugliest girl at Junction City High, whom he used to hound and embarrass in the hallways by making elephant noises or shouting
ship ahoy!
As Martel’s mind began now to sort out the seriousness of this invasion, he was for one brief moment grateful that it was a demon, and not Betty Newton clawing her way in, so fat and ugly was she.

Betty’s stunt double clapped both claws around Martel’s right leg and began to haul him out. As he fought to stay inside, Martel found himself being shaped and twisted into forms he had never imagined his body could form. He hooked his elbows firmly around the steering wheel and saw with surprise that it could be bent almost in half before the metal-reinforced plastic snapped. He tried hanging onto the rearview mirror, a seat-belt buckle, the gearshift, the brake, the seat, the door itself, but all for naught. His last handhold, the outside mirror, broke off and he thunked face down on the gravel, this time losing a front tooth in earnest.

“Yaaahhhhhh!”
he tried screaming as he was dragged away. It came to him that he had not even tried to get the shotgun, though it had been poking him in the back the whole time.

“Yaaahhhhhh! Wahoooo! Pleeeeeeeeeease!”

None of this impressed the monster. Martel was dragged on his face across the lawn, his fingers combing furrows in the wet grass. Just before the dragging was over he felt a cold, hard thing bump from his crotch to his chin. He grabbed at it.

One of the pistols. One of the pistols!

The demon dropped him. Martel rolled over onto his back, the pistol hidden between his arm and ribcage, realizing that after all was said and done, the army had at least taught him how to aim a gun and pull the trigger.

Shapes moved out of the dark. Martel whipped his head from side to side.

More demons. Two more, then three. Then four. They formed a circle around him, hissing and drooling. Martel brought the pistol out and clutched it with both hands, aiming here, aiming there, his face drawn up in a snarl of fear and hate.

The one who reminded him so much of Betty Newton leaned down. It seemed to grin at him. Its jaw hinged open.

Martel fired. One eye became a puckered hole. The thing’s skull ruptured and began to leak black fluid in jagged lines, yet it had barely reacted.

Martel shot again. The demon jerked erect. Some crazy glow-in-the-dark liquid squirted out of both eyeholes. A line of it crossed Martel’s stomach, burning through his shirt, burning his skin like hot grease. The demon crumpled.

Another one bent for the kill. Martel fired, seeing a drift of hope in this situation. The shot missed everything but the sky. Cursing, he aimed again and pulled the trigger.

Click!

The pistol was empty. Martel knew better than to dry-fire a weapon that was utterly, unalterably empty, as the firing pin can be damaged in some models. He threw it at the newest customer. It thunked against its leftmost tusk and plopped on the grass, goodbye and so long. How he ached for it.

The demon bent low.

Martel screamed.

11

B
rayker heard it. In his very long life he had become used to a lot of things, things like hunger, thirst, loneliness, pain. But it was the screaming that ached the most, because whenever he heard it, he knew that it was his fault. Nobody ever invited a man like him into their lives. He snuck in the back door with lies and evasions, and invariably, every goddamned lousy time, people started dying. Screaming as they fought such unlikely foes, screaming as they died. He could never harden himself enough to bear it.

He turned and ran to the front door, hauled it open, and squinted into the dark. Someone was on the ground—Jeryline? Often male and female screams were indistinguishable; people rarely practiced beforehand just to achieve the right pitch. He had seen men as huge as bears squall like babies, had heard women and kids grunt and snuffle like lions as they fought and died. Whoever was thrashing on the ground surrounded by the Salesman’s henchmen was howling like a French hen.

Brayker got the key out of its pouch. The orb had only a few drops left in it, maybe eight or nine. The time for refilling it was upon him, but as yet there was little hope for a proper donor. He turned it to the point where its tiny hole barely peeked at the world, then changed his mind. When the blood was gone, it would take his life with it.

He maneuvered the key so that the long extended point jutted out between his knuckles, and jogged across the porch to the lawn. With the key in his fist like a strange knife he stabbed the nearest demon in the spine. Cold black liquid jetted out as it fell away. It would not die from this treatment, Brayker knew quite well, but the key was better than any gun ever used on one, except a shotgun, which blew them into harmless chunks that squirmed and writhed and never quite died all the way.

One demon was bent over clawing at whoever was on the ground. Brayker rammed the key into the spot where an asshole might reside, if the demons were so equipped. The creature shot up, hissing like a cracked boiler, and sprang across the lawn into the gravel.

A foot drove itself into Brayker’s right knee, causing a bright bolt of pain to rifle up his thigh. He gritted his teeth: that was no fleshy, rubbery foot; it was a boot. He slashed out at a demon and cut a huge trench through its hideous head. Gobbling, it staggered away.

Now Brayker could see well enough. The intrepid Deputy Martel was kicking and waving like a turtle on its back, a portrait of filth from the bottom of his boots to the tips of his hair. In their muddy sockets his eyes gleamed insanely. “Get up!” Brayker roared at him, stabbing the key into the side of a nearby demon’s bloated head. It squawked and fell over.

Martel was in a crazy trance of sorts as he kicked at nothing and flailed his arms, bellowing something about mommy, something about needing artillery for these sumbitches. Brayker bent and took hold of his hair, then twisted it as hard as if trying to open a jar with a stuck lid. Martel stiffened with a strangled groan. “You listen up,” Brayker growled in his ear. “Shut the fuck up, get the fuck up, and we’ll get the fuck out of here alive. Comprenday-vous?”

Martel blinked. Every cord in his neck was thick and tight. “Com-comprenday,” he groaned.

Brayker hauled him upright. One of the demons, till now unhurt, sprang at him. Brayker sidestepped and slit its belly open as it did. A mash of dark, unidentifiable guts flopped across the grass.

“Okay, go!” Brayker shouted.

Martel took a wobbly step, hesitated, then spun around. His feet skidded on the wet grass and he fell hard on his elbows. “There’s guns,” he panted. “One lost out here someplace. Another one in the cruiser.”

Brayker thought for a moment, his eyes jumping from place to place. More guns? If the basement could be sealed off, they wouldn’t need them. But that cat of Irene’s seemed to pop up everytime someone heaved it outside, which meant there was another way in, and another way out besides the trapdoor.

“You look around here,” he told Martel. “I’ll get the one in the car.”

“I want that key before I take one more step,” Martel said. “I saw what it can do.”

Brayker shook his head. “No way. Impossible.”

Martel aimed a shaking, muddy finger at his face. “I’m the law here,” he growled. “I run this show.”

Brayker eyed him coldly. “This key only works for me,” he said. “To you it’s just another piece of metal, won’t do a thing.”

“Hand it over, Brayker. I am an official of the county and the court.”

Brayker let out a short, apathetic chuckle, amazed all over again by the ruthless stupidity of the average Joe. “Go away,” he muttered, and turned.

A demon had crept up behind him and stood there, a gape-jawed, one-eyed monstrosity with its arms poised overhead for the pounce. “Wrong guy,” Brayker said to it, and stepped to the side. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “My pal here tastes better.”

The demon grunted its thanks. Brayker walked away. Martel let out another unhappy whoop and began to thump and twist on the lawn again. At the car Brayker leaned inside, fetched up the shotgun while admiring the redecorating Martel had done to the car’s interior, and worked the pump. One shell sat already poised and anxious to fire. He turned and ambled toward the house again, where Martel was now encircled by three of the original four and not happy about it at all, by the tone of his voice. Brayker raised the key and plunged it into the back of a demon head. The two others jumped back as the first fell, eyeing the damage it did. Hissing, drooling, they backed away.

Brayker leaned over Martel. “Still wanna run this show?”

Martel clambered sullenly to his feet, ignoring him, walked off, and lurched up the steps. Brayker allowed himself a smile, which was rare, and wished, for a silly little moment, that Jeryline were here to see it.

He had not quite made it to the door when someone else screamed, this time inside the building, this time upstairs somewhere, and this time, as always, he could not tell who it was.

Jeryline heard it. Even down in the basement, her secret place where it was dry and cool and free from Irene’s dictatorial grip, she heard it, as if it was carried along the walls to the bricks of the foundation. Not two minutes ago she had heard Brayker’s voice as Cleo the cat revealed her hideaway, had heard the little trapdoor pulled away, had known that there no longer existed a haven for her. When Brayker suddenly vanished she had thought about climbing out, going someplace else, pretending to have been in the pantry or the bathroom the whole time, and in this way keep her secret. But no, as always in her life she had been found out, exposed, stripped of her privacy, so now she decided she would damn well sit here until they dragged her out kicking and screaming.