V.J. Chambers - Jason&Azazel Apocalypse 01 (16 page)

team about a month after it started. We went as far south as we could, hauling empty tanker
trucks to store all the gasoline. In the beginning, it had been easy.

Back in early November, people still trusted us. We were the government, and when we said we
were coming to help, they believed we could help them. We said we needed fuel to get west and
get help. They said that was fine and to take it. Even though I’d been brought along to use my
magic, I hadn’t had to, not in the beginning.

But it was worse now. People were scared and worried. People were dying. And it was cold. We
were finishing our sweep and heading back to D.C. This suburb was our last stop before
checking in with headquarters. I had hoped everything would go smoothly. I could still see the
river in Tennessee, just a week ago, glutted with bodies. They floated face down in the muddy
water, dead. And that had been my fault. I hadn’t meant to. Oh God, I hadn’t meant to. But when
I opened up the container that held my magic, it seemed like I always released the voice too. The
whispery one. The one that told me to do awful things. The voice I couldn’t seem to resist
anymore.

I huddled inside my winter coat, my hands jammed into the pockets. I was watching as the other
members of the OF team siphoned gas out of the tanks below an Exxon station. Across six lanes
of empty street, a Target store squatted, a remnant of life before the power outage. Its windows
were cracked and broken. The parking lot was littered with twisted carts and abandoned cars.

The gray sky spit and swirled snow flakes at us. We were alone.

I hoped.

One of the guys on our team emerged from inside the Exxon. The original door was shattered,
leaving a gaping dark hole as an entrance. He was holding handfuls of candy bars. I thought his
name was Kieran. He loped across the Exxon parking lot to me, offering me a KitKat.

I shook my head.

“You more of a Hershey’s Almonds girl?” he asked, sorting through the candy bars to find one.

“Snickers,” I said, taking the one I saw peeking out of his jacket pocket.

“Hell, I was saving that for myself,” he said. “It was the last one.” I offered it back to him, but
he shook his head and grinned at me. “You can have it.”

The Snickers bar was cold. My hands were numb, and I struggled to open the wrapper. Kieran
took it from me and opened it. He handed it back.

“You look cold,” he said.

I shivered. “I’m fine.”

“I could go across to the Target and look for some gloves or a scarf or something for you,” he
said.

I took a bite of the Snickers bar. It was nearly frozen and brittle, but still sweet. I chewed and
swallowed. “I’m fine, really,” I said. “Thanks for the candy bar.”

“Your nose is red,” said Kieran. “You look like—”

He was interrupted from what I was sure wouldn’t have been a flattering comparison by a gun
shot.

We both started forward in the direction of the sound. There was a group of about twenty locals
marching up the empty street. They were carrying shotguns. Wonderful.

“Damn it,” I said.

“Damn it,” said Kieran.

We exchanged a look.

Since I was here to be the negotiator, I had to go and talk to the locals. Mournfully, I glanced
down at the Snickers bar. I’d only had one bite. However, I didn’t think the people with shotguns
would take me very seriously if I was chewing on a candy bar. I thrust the Snickers at Kieran and
jogged to intercept the mob.

“Stand down!” I called as I approached. “This is an official government squad. We’re just
following orders.”

The locals neither stood down nor stopped walking. I planted myself in front of them, in the
center of the road. I’d try logic. Sometimes logic worked. “Our weapons are more sophisticated
than yours and we’ve all been trained,” I said. “If you try to engage us, you will lose. Why don’t
you all just go home?”

There was a man in the front. He stopped and motioned for the others to stop walking. He stared
me down. “Who are you, girlie?”

Girlie. Seriously? I clenched my teeth. “I’m the only one in this team whose job it is to be nice to
you people. Those guys—” I jerked my head towards the men siphoning gas— “don’t talk. They
shoot.”

“Well, maybe we don’t feel like talking either.” The man fired another gun shot into the air for
emphasis.

Oh. This was perfect. This was really perfect. “For your own safety,” I said, “I really must insist
that you disband and return to your homes.”

“You’re stealing our gas,” said the man.

“We are taking possession of fuel in order to get west and get help,” I said. “The government
needs this fuel in order to help the country.” No one seemed to believe me anymore when I said
things like this. Maybe it was because all the teams we’d sent west thus far had disappeared
without a trace. No help had come. Maybe it was because it was winter, and everything seemed
gloomier and gloomier with each passing gray day.

“We need the gas,” said the man. “What are we going to do while the government steals our
fuel?”

“I thought those Order of the Fly assholes were magical, anyway,” yelled someone else within
the mob of people. “How come they can’t just magic up some gasoline?”

“Yeah,” chorused several other voices.

Uh oh. This was getting worse. The last thing I need was a bunch of people yelling and
complaining. Especially if those people were all holding guns. Things were going to get ugly
fast, unless I used my magic. But I didn’t want to. In Tennessee, all of those people floating in the
river had gotten there because of my magic. Even if these people were planning on shooting all
of us, I felt guilty about manipulating their minds.

Maybe I wouldn’t hear the voice. Maybe things wouldn’t get out of hand. Maybe if I was
careful—

But I didn’t have more time to think, because the man leading the mob raised his shotgun into
the air and yelled, “Charge!”

Before the stampede could start, I reached inside myself and uncapped the container holding my
magic. As always, it flowed into my entire body, making my limbs tingle and the back of my head
feel like bubbles were rising up my spine. I could feel the hazy focus of the minds of the mob.

They were angry and scared. They wanted to hurt us, because they were hurt and there was no
one else to blame.

I tried, as I always did, to simply quiet them. I tried to quench their anger and calm their fears.

But my power never seemed to work that way. It was as if it fed on anger and fear. As if it could
only cause pain and destruction.

Within seconds, I realized it would be easier to simply redirect the mob’s fear. I pulled the focus
away from our team and placed the focus on the Target. The store was already destroyed. How
much worse could they make it?

The mob howled and took off towards the store, guns at the ready. They began to pump bullets
into the store’s windows. Glass shattered. A hole appeared in the target emblem on the side.

Bullseye.

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was appropriate, I guessed. They needed a target for their anger,
why not Target?

Maybe it was the laughter that brought the voice. Maybe it was just the magic. I didn’t know. But
it spoke to me in scaly whispers, a voice that came from a deep, dark, musty place.
Human targets
, it said.

Before I could stop myself, I found myself picturing the people turning on each other, emptying
their shotguns into each other’s chests. I tried to turn off the image, to think about Target, to
refocus them on the store, but the images had taken hold of my brain.

The locals began to snarl at each other.

No. No, stop it. I struggled with the magic. I’d stuff it down, back inside me, if I couldn’t control
it. I reached out for it, trying to pull it back to my body. It wouldn’t budge.

The man who’d been the leader shot one of the local women in the head. Her skull exploded in
red gore, and she toppled to the pavement. Another man shrieked and shot at the leader. Two red
holes burst through his chest. He fell to his knees, clutching at his wounds before crumpling to
the ground.

I yanked as hard as I could on the magic, drawing it back closer to me. But I was too late. The
parking lot in front of Target had erupted into a shooting frenzy. Bodies danced as they were
riddled with gun fire and thudded on the empty lot.

I bottled the power back up, capping it tightly. I was shaking. This always happened. This
always

happened. I couldn’t use this magic anymore. Not if this was the result.

Grimacing, I took one last look at the carnage across the street. Then I looked away, ashamed.

I froze, horrified. Jason grinned at me, an awful grin. And then he walked past me, following his men back into the camp. Now that the people had cleared out, I could see the damage I’d caused.

There were bodies lying on the ground. Those men were dead, not because of a fight with the people they’d come to fight, but because I’d twisted their brains and forced them to turn on each other. Jason had stopped them from all killing each other, but he hadn’t been able to stop everything I’d done.

I stumbled forward, running to the first man I saw. I knelt next to him. His eyes were wide open.

Blood stained his slack lips, twisted in an expression of agony. I threw myself to my feet and ran to the next man. He was dead too, lying face down on the ground. His blood spilled out of him, turning the grass crimson. There was a man beside him, his neck twisted unnaturally. No, on closer look, he was hardly a man. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. The sparse blonde hairs on his upper lip gave his youth away. I rushed from one body to the next, hoping to find someone alive, someone I could save, but they were all dead. Dead bodies. Dead, because I was jealous of Jason’s new girlfriend.

What kind of sick monster was I, anyway?

I stood in the middle of the empty battlefield, my shaking hands pressed to my lips. What had I done? I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone else. I hated hurting people. Why hadn’t I had one moment of regret, one second to consider these men’s lives while I was toying with them? I let out a little gasp. I couldn’t handle this.

I stumbled past Hallam, Marlena, Kieran, and the rest of them. I walked all the way back to the church. Kieran had parked the Subaru in front again, where it had been before. I got inside. No keys. Darn it. I sat back against the driver’s seat, pulling the door shut after me.

What had I done?

I sat in the car, turning it over and over in my head, the way you do when you can’t shake a horrible thought. I tried to make excuses for myself. I was angry. I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I hadn’t done what I’d done, then Jason’s people would have hurt Hallam. But I knew that I hadn’t done it for them. Not really. I’d done it only because I was angry at Jason. I’d used those people as my weapon against him. That wasn’t the right thing to do. That was clearly the wrong thing to do. Why did I have this kind of power when I was so clearly unable to use it responsibly?

The things I could do…

I could rule the world. Everyone would fear me, because I could make them do things they didn’t want to do. And no one would be able to stop me.

I realized it then. It cut through me like ice, chilling me. The voice. I hadn’t heard the voice once today.

Did that mean that I was the source of its perverse orders and visions, not the magic itself? Did it mean that all the horror I caused came directly from my own brain? I shuddered.

The worst thing was that I could have gotten that grimoire, and I could have completely neutralized myself as a threat. But I’d been distracted by my own anger and now the damage was done.

It didn’t take long for the others to get back to the church.

Kieran noticed me in the car and came around to the passenger side. He tried the door. I’d locked it, so he just tugged at it.

“Go away,” I told him.

He pounded on the window. “Let me in.”

Kieran sighed heavily. Hallam and Marlena peered in at me.

“What do you suppose she’s upset about?” Hallam wanted to know. “She was fabulous. Without her, we would have been slaughtered.”

“Let me talk to her,” Kieran said.

Forget it. I wasn’t talking to anyone.

After a little more conversation, Hallam and Marlena went inside, leaving me with Kieran. He stood outside the car. “I’m not leaving,” he said. “Not until you talk to me.”

I scrunched down in the seat. I did not want to talk to Kieran. Why couldn’t everyone just leave me alone?

Kieran pulled the keys to the Subaru out of his pocket with flourish. Great. He opened the passenger door and got in the car next to me.

“I don’t want to talk,” I said.

“You’re mad at yourself because of using magic, right?”

“Did you see all those people who were dead, just lying on the ground there? I did that. I made them shoot each other.”

“They were going to shoot us.”

“Whenever I do magic, it always leads to destruction and death,” I said. “I’m sick of it. I’m sick of hurting people. I don’t want anyone else to die because of me.”

“Azazel, stop blaming yourself. You did what you had to do,” he said.

“I didn’t have to do that,” I said.