Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

The cruiser was there, bellied up to the altar, and between them was a crushed priest. He had been a big man, but he was a broken doll now, his head lolling at an angle. The car had grown some sort of spear and stuck it through him.

"How are we gonna get him loose to bury him?" someone asked. It was a skinny old man in shorts and a string vest. He had metal plates in his chest, his skull and stomach. His entire left arm, his lower right arm and hand, both his knees, his left foot, his right shoulder and his right eye were gone and replaced. Lights flashed and wheels revolved inside him. He had been rebuilt with durium-laced plastic, now badly scuffed, and old-fashioned robo-bits. He would have been chinless but for a sharp jawguard. Half his skull was metal, the other half still sprouted clumps of red hair.

"Yup, that's right, Trooper," the composite said. "Surf city radical, ain't it? There's still some of me in here. Behr's the name. Tiger Behr."

"You own a motel?"

"Yup. That I do. I used to be an angel."

That sounded unlikely, especially in a church.

"Hell's Angel. Albuquerque chapter, 1965 to 1993. It was a life."

"I'm sure."

"We was macho men then, not faghaggs like these Maniax and 'chuggers and such."

A couple of overalled youths muttered darkly. Behr laughed, opening his mouth. He was toothless but for four metal prongs that replaced his eyeteeth.

"Now, there's more doodads than flesh 'n' blood. But I kin still lick anyone in the house. Anyone."

"Consider me registered, Tiger. Now, stand back. I'm going to check this out."

Everybody eagerly stood back. This was one of those rare occasions when civilians were only too glad to obey orders. Stack warily approached the cruiser. It seemed to be dead, but he didn't trust the thing to stay that way.

He had his gun out, safety off and one in the chamber.

There was a sudden creak, and his finger tightened on the trigger. He fought the trembling shudder that ran through him. The rear door of the cruiser, bent and buckled out of true, fell off. Inside, the upholstery was unmarked. Kling's silvery jacket was bundled up, a scatter of powdered glass spread over it.

Stack touched the car with his gunbarrel. It didn't move.

"Careful, Trooper," Behr said. "That there thing is mucho dangeroso."

He tried to feel any vibes that might be coming off it. He remembered how it had seemed back at Slim's. It had been animated, exuding evil and viciousness, spitting venom from the exhaust pipe. Now it was just another beat-up wreck.

"I think it's dead," he said.

"I don't care what frequency your brainwaves is on," spluttered Behr. "I saw Carl Cass spread over a wall this afternoon. And I'm seeing poor ole Padre Burracho pinned to his altar like a butterfly in a case."

He exposed the doorlock, and tapped in his personal entry code. Nothing. The electronics were down. The plastic keys were blackened and cracked.

"Give me a hand," he said.

"I ain't messin' with that bring-down city jazz, Trooper."

Stack levelled a grouchy stare at the half-machine old-timer. "Then shut up and stand back."

Stack kicked the lock with a steel-capped heel. It caved in. The door swung open with a horror movie sound effect.

The cruiser was empty. The dashboard lights were dead. Stack clambered over the rubble, getting too close for comfort to the stiffening priest, and slipped into the driver's seat.

Leona's keys still dangled from the ignition. There was an Aztec figurine on the ring. Stack had given it to her in Managua. He reached across to take the gift back. Maybe he would need a keepsake, to remind him who Leona Tyree was…

The steering column thrust forwards, pinning him to the seat. The synthesised voice crackled to life.

"Hi there, Trooper, here's a present."

An electrical discharge came up through the steering wheel and hit him in the sternum.

"Did that shock you? Here's another."

Stack twisted, and the seat broke. He slithered backwards. The shock hit him in the legs, and he had to pull himself free by his hands and arms.

Everybody else had got out of the church in treble time.

The remaining hood lase was up and swivelling. Scrambling away, Stack found he had plunged his arm into a bucket of water. Without thinking, he picked it up and hurled it, bucket and all, at the lase.

The effects were surprising, to say the least.

The cruiser screeched like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, and the lase exploded. That shouldn't have happened. Stack knew the system was fully insulated. The car was supposed to be completely submersible. It said so in the owner's manual.

The show was over. The audience came back.

Behr crossed himself, and said "Freakin' A!"

Someone else prayed in a loud mumble; The dead priest's hair stood up like the Bride of Frankenstein's, and Stack's nostrils caught a strong tang of electrical discharge. Stack got the impression there was a point being made and that he was sorely missing it.

"It's dead now," the old man said. "Deader'n John Brown, Buddy Holly and my marriage prospects."

Stack shook his head. "But…"

"Holy water, you see. The Devil cain't take no shower in holy water."

The Drying-Up of America in the Great Droughts of the Mid-70's left Salt Lake City adjacent to a literal lake of salt. Witer was being pumped in from the North, through a pipeline guarded by good Josephites. The old superstitions were wrong, Duroc knew now. Salt had no power against the Devil and all His works. Nor against Angra Mainyu, Loki, Pluto, Nyarlathotep, Ba'alberith, the Great God Boga-Tem, Pan, Damballah, the King in Yellow, Susanoo, the Deathbird, Aipalookvik, Baron Samedi, Nurgle, Pazuzu, Zalmoxis, Huitzilopochtli, Mosura, Anubis, Set, Quetzalcoatl, Vbdyanoi, Rawhead, Hiranyakasipu, Lukundoo, Yog-Somoth, the Yama Kings of the Chinese Hell, Ramboona, Klesh, Damballah, Khorne or the others. All the demons, all the Gods of Death and Evil, all the cast-out angels. All would walk soon upon this white expanse, trampling the old saws, the old religions, the pale and sickly Gods of milky feebleness, under their clawed, leathery, horned, scaly, slimy and hairy feet.

Roger Duroc stood now on the lakebed, mingling anonymously with the crowds. There was white salt under his boots, and he drank occasionally from a hipflask of water. He was shaded from the cruel sun by a wide-brimmed black hat identical to those worn by almost every other man in the congregation. There must be close to a million standing together here. They had all turned out to hear Nguyen Seth preach, and stood quietly, calmly, waiting for the Elder to appear on the huge stage that had been constructed in the vast natural arena where the lake had been.

Duroc had been in crowds before. In Paris, he had been part of the riots that followed President LePen's decision to send the troops in to put down the provisional government that had sprung up on the Left Bank. "We may have lost Algeria," he had said, "but, by God, we're not going to lose Montmartre." Duroc had thrown the first molotov cocktail when the CRS marched down the Champs Elysees. He had attended with pleasure the mass sterlings of Teheran, when the faithful ritually turn on their outcasts. And he had been at Ken Dodd's thrd farewell concert at Castle Donnington—he was there to assassinate a member of the audience, not to listen to the music—and been swept up in the surge that followed his climactic rendition of the song that inaugurated the "Mersey Beat," "Tears for Souvenirs." Duroc had left the dead diplomat standing up, kept on his feet by the press of the fans. Nobody had noticed the slaying for hours.

But this gathering made all the others seem like meetings of the Richard M. Nixon Appreciation Society. It was different. The silence of the multitude was eerie. The Jospehites had turned out in full. There were perfect couples, with matched toothy smiles and corn-blonde hair. Perfect families with two children and an unnaturally quiet dog. Chipper and upright old folks in black, with their spade beards and bonnets. Everyone was dressed alike. Most people looked alike. Their eyes were dead.