The New Kid (28 page)

Standing now in front of the mirror he checked himself out. The image he saw was not that of a sixteen-year-old boy. No, what he saw in his reflection was a one-man wrecking crew ready to wage war. It was time to settle the score.

 

High in the bowels of Mount St. Emory Natalie lay in darkness, her mind deadened, her throat numb from screaming. When the Lord of Darkness had first touched her after invading her house and tossing her parents aside like rag dolls, she was so shocked she could barely move. His hands, his arms, were so strong that as long he held her she knew from the depths of her being that she was powerless
against him. Then he had blown a hole in the roof—with his breath!—and flown up and placed her in the coffin and she had fought and screamed. She’d lashed out with her fingernails and pounded with her fists but he shut the lid anyway and then her world went into the dark and she continued to claw at the unspeakably horrid thing that surrounded her. It was like a hideous grown-up version of a womb. She raked her fingernails across it but the living thing, whatever it was, recoiled like it was in pain and though Natalie couldn’t hear the being scream she knew it had felt the effects of her attacks upon it. She stopped fighting. The coffin did not appear to be attempting to injure her, so she lay still. And the membrane relaxed. Natalie wasn’t sure how, but she understood the creature, the
thing
lining the coffin, sensed it more than anything else and what she sensed told her it wouldn’t hurt her. So they rode together and Natalie gradually got her wits about her. The membrane had to be a creature of some sort who was being punished by the Dark Lord, she concluded, and this in turn steered her toward thoughts of her own probable fate. She shuddered and her heart beat so fast she thought it was going to jump out of her chest. She took long deep breaths and tried to think of anything except about what was really happening.

She felt the being around her tighten as the temperature inside the coffin soared and they swayed back and forth. Then it felt as though the box was lifted out of the hearse and carried somewhere, and dropped. Natalie’s head hit the coffin’s roof and the being inside it with her flinched. Then all was quiet. The top of the coffin flew off and smashed against a wall.

Natalie wasted no time climbing out. She looked around for an escape but the darkness surrounding her was so utterly complete she could only see the images she manifested in her mind’s eye. Sparkles of light. Faces of her family and friends. They all floated around like orbiting celestial bodies. Overcome by the trauma of her journey, Natalie sat on the ground, then slumped over and sank into a sleep
that bordered on unconsciousness. It was a dreamless sleep that could have lasted an hour or a day but when she woke up she did so because she realized, in a rush, that she was no longer alone. And the presence she felt, it felt
familiar
.

“Emily?”

Something stirred in the darkness. It might have been a rat or a cockroach. Or a demon ready to pounce. But she didn’t think it was any of those things. She moved toward the sound.

“Em? Is that you?”

She heard a whimper. It was but a tiny noise, really, hardly a sound at all. Then a handful of rocks tumbled down from somewhere high on the wall. A dim shaft of light found its way into the cave and illuminated a human figure several yards away. After a few seconds Natalie’s eyes adjusted to the faint glow and she saw what she had been praying to see for all these months: her twin sister Emily.

“Emily! Oh God, Em, it’s you!”

Natalie rushed across the cave to where her twin sister was standing. Because of the angle of the light she could only see Emily’s face but she praised the good forces of the universe because Emily was okay, she was alive! She moved to hug her but Emily shook her head and bared her teeth like an animal. She was breathing rapidly, sucking the air in greedily and then blowing it out in anger. Then Natalie saw her sister’s eyes. They were bloodshot and had deep dark circles under them. They were full of pain and terror, the eyes of someone who’s seen so much they can never be brought back. In Emily’s eyes Natalie saw the sum of the Dark Lord’s terror.

“Oh my God, Emily. . . .” said Natalie as she reached for her sister again.

Emily’s eyes widened and she hissed, “Stay away from me! I’ll kill you!”

Natalie obeyed though it took all her willpower.

“Emily, it’s me! It’s Natalie, your sister!”

Emily’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head from side to side.

“I don’t believe you . . . no more tricks . . . stay out of my head!”

Emily emitted a low, nearly inhuman growl from deep in her throat and turned her face to the side, refusing to look at Natalie. Natalie wanted so badly to hug her twin, to feel for herself that Emily was alive and whole, but she had to establish trust first.

“It’s me, Em. Natalie.”

Emily again growled and shook her head.

“Remember our ninth birthday party? The one where dad hired that ridiculous cowboy clown? Remember? He was so drunk he could hardly make the balloon animals? Remember how you cried, and I told you it didn’t matter, that it was still our birthday, we were nine years old and nobody could ever take that away from us. And . . . and the cake . . . the angel food cake with strawberry frosting? Remember, Em? Please. . . .”

Emily stopped shaking her head back and forth and grew quiet. Her breathing slowed down. She softened. And then her eyes found Natalie’s and she whispered, “Natalie? Is it really you?”

“Yes!” said Natalie, barely able to contain her joy. She’d broken through. “I knew you were alive! I could feel it! You were talking to me all along, weren’t you, in your dreams!”

“Yes,” said Emily, her voice full of anguish and despair.

“I never gave up hope, Em, I always knew I’d find you!”

Again Natalie reached for her sister and again Emily barked out the warning in a mean and nasty tone, shocking Natalie.

“I told you to stay back!”

“Are you . . . infected?” asked Natalie.

And now Emily’s jaw tightened as she thought of all the hours, the days, the weeks she’d been subjected to the demonteens’ onslaught of evils. And yet she’d held on to hope, held on to goodness. More tears poured forth from her bloodshot eyes.

“No. I . . . I wouldn’t let them.”

Natalie flushed with pride. She knew her kooky, free-spirited sister was good inside, that she had a pure heart.

“I’m so proud of you, Emily. You beat them, you wouldn’t let them get you.”

“No . . . I . . . I didn’t. . . .”

Emily actually allowed the smallest of proud smiles to form on her face. But then her brief moment of bravado passed and Natalie watched with despair as the gleam went out of her sister’s eyes as she sank back down into a deep depression.

“They only kept me alive to . . . to hurt me,” whispered Emily. “They would let me escape . . . and then hunt me down, over and over. . . .”

“That was the dream . . . I was with you in the dream.”

“I know, I felt you.”

“We’re going to get you out of here. We’re going to stop all this and get you out of here,” said Natalie.

Emily closed her eyes as sadness engulfed her.

“No . . . there’s nothing we can do to stop them. He’s too strong. He’s taking over. It is written.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll find out. We’ll all find out,” said Emily.

More light spilled into the cave and Natalie began to slowly piece together the image in front of her, her mind resisting, not wanting to acknowledge the horror. Emily wasn’t standing of her own accord, she was being held up, her limbs outstretched, lashed in place by thousands of tiny thin red things that looked like filaments. Natalie choked back her screams as she realized that Emily was caught in a huge web made of blood vessels. Then she felt dozens of those same vessels swiftly wrapping around her arms and legs.

“Natalie, run!” screamed Emily.

But the veins already had too strong a hold on her.

“What ARE these things?” she yelled.

“They used to be . . . humans,” answered Emily. “The beast transformed them.”

Then Emily saw her twin pulling a key from the coin pocket in her jeans.

“NO! Don’t try and cut them!” she warned.

But it was too late. Flooded with panic, Natalie tried to saw away at the creeping veins with the teeth of the key. The veins cut and bled but for every one she severed two more sprouted in its place and they took hold of her so quickly she knew that she wasn’t going anywhere for a very long time. At the sight of her twin sister now entrapped alongside her Emily began to weep uncontrollably, her keening cries echoing through the dark caves.

 

Driving through Harrisburg in his EVO Will couldn’t help but notice how docile the town suddenly appeared. There were no fights breaking out on the front lawns, no elderly women beating their dogs, no one behaving poorly as far as the eye could see. In fact there were few people anywhere; it was as if the whole town were on vacation, which was weird because the volcano in Mount St. Emory was rumbling and storm clouds kept rolling in, thickening the sky. It wasn’t as if people were leaving in droves as he thought they might be, either; an active volcano is nothing to sneeze at and Will wouldn’t blame anyone for ditching their digs in Harrisburg, packing up the family and getting the heck out of town. They were just . . . quiet.

He shook off his thoughts and concentrated instead on Phase One of his plan, which meant returning to the place where he’d almost met his maker—the opening to the mine shaft. He double-clutched and geared down to roar past a grocery van and then took the turn that led him up the side of Mount St. Emory. When he came to the wooden barriers that the U.S. Forest Service had erected to keep traffic off the mountain he didn’t hesitate but just blasted right through them. He’d learned that lesson already. He sent out silent prayers to Natalie as he sped up the winding road.
Please be okay. Don’t be afraid. I’m coming to get you and nothing is going to stop me.

He pulled the EVO onto the road leading to the mine tunnel entrance but stopped short. Opening the trunk he lifted out the mini-bot, activated it, and placed it on the ground then put the car in reverse and backtracked. The mini-bot, which looked like a pimped-up miniature Mars Rover, blinked and whirred and its wheels churned in the damp soil as it trekked forward.

Will parked his car and, using the Death Hacker, the weapon whose blade changed shapes depending on what needed to be hacked to death, he covered his car with branches. Because even demons knew how to use ActiveEarth. He hiked up to a ridge and then flipped open his mini-laptop and powered it up, quickly loading images broadcast from the mini-bot, which was awaiting instructions from its position at the mine tunnel entrance.

“Okay little fella, let’s take a look around, shall we? And by the way, sorry about having to throw you under a bus like this.”

The mini-bot blinked and chirped and rotated its little camera as if to say,
Sorry about what?
Then it rolled forward and lit up the mine tunnel with its tiny halogen headlights. As he looked at the images broadcast by the mini-bot Will wondered if he’d guessed wrong, wondered if maybe he should have taken the direct approach and ripped right into the mountain through the mine tunnel. He was about to change his whole battle plan when the mini-bot’s lights found a nest of demonteens lying in wait, armed to the teeth. They hissed and snarled at the tiny robot and rushed to attack it, realizing only too late that it had a cube of concentrated C-4 strapped to its back. Will pressed the detonator and the C-4 ignited and rocked the tunnel with a massive explosion that toasted the whole clutch of demonteens.

Watching the explosion from his vantage point on the ridge Will felt sorry—for the mini-bot. Even though they weren’t sentient creatures he still felt they had little personalities and he always disliked
sacrificing them. As for the demonteens, most of them were way beyond redemption. So as far as Will was concerned the whole lot of them could go straight to hell. In fact that was his whole plan: Send them all to Hell.

At any rate Phase One was completed. It was time to move on to Phase Two, entry. He re-checked his equipment and began climbing the side of the not-so-dormant volcano.

 

The Dark Lord turned and faced Rage. His almond-shaped eye sockets glowed from orange to red and then quieted down to shimmering saffron. Rage was sweating, bound to a huge wooden triangle by the same creeping blood vessels that held Natalie and Emily. His face was twisted in agony, partly because he was overcome with guilt, but also because the Dark Lord, wielding a power rod, was slowly drawing the lightning saber back and forth across his thigh. Even demons bled, and the power rod’s molten blade felt like a branding iron. Smiling with enjoyment the Dark Lord paused in his torture of Rage and slipped the power rod into his tunic.

Then he walked slowly across the cavern and touched an ancient book. The pages were made of cabretta leather, the back cover of marble. It was the second half of the book from Will’s basement. The Dark Lord had been looking for the first half when he’d traumatized young Will those many years ago.

Rage spoke up: “You mustn’t continue with this madness.”

The fiend gazed over at Rage and shook his head.

“Your negative attitude is discomforting. This is a day for great celebration.”

“I have nothing to celebrate,” said Rage. The Dark Lord sneered and the veins tightened around Rage’s neck, beginning to choke him.

“You know I cannot tolerate your disrespect!”

Minute particles ignited in mid-air as the Dark Lord spoke harshly, his anger causing them to ignite and pop like tiny fire-crackers.

“It is written in the book, and so it shall be!” bellowed the Dark Lord.

Rage spit back at him, “Mortals wrote the book!”