Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

He climbed upwards, the picture playing over his body. He plunged through the fabric, which parted with a steady rip, turned, and fired again. The shot went wild, mainly perforating the ruined screen. One of the Oscars detached its hand, and threw it. The thing sprouted waspwings and dived at Stack, red lights winking where the electrodes were. Stack knew it was a shock-sticker, and if it touched him he was fried for sure. He reversed his gun, getting a grip on the hot barrel—searing his palms in the process—and swatted at the hand. He connected, and hit a home run. The shock-sticker smashed, sparking and spitting, to the floor.

There was a ladder set into the wall. He climbed fast, gun tucked between his arm and body. The plaster was crumbling and the rungs were loose. If he could make it alive to the hatch he saw in the ceiling, be would have lost these Oscars. With their weight, they would never be able to use the ladder.

A shell exploded in the air near him. The pumpgun slithered free of his armgrip, and clattered on the floor below. Shit, that left him with only his side-arm.

Stack wondered if Chantal was still alive.

He headbutted the skylight hatch, and it flew up. He scrambled through onto the roof of the Rialto. The sun was going down.

"You know, don't you?" a woman's voice said in the dark. "What's going on?"

"Yes," Chantal said.

The lights went up. She found herself in a small room with a rack of guns on the wall. Her arms were being held by the beefy, red-faced sergeant—Quincannon—she had seen excercising the intake yesterday. Her questioner was the Captain—Finney—who had been at the monitor when they traced Stack's cruiser to Welcome. Neither of them looked happy, and they were both violating Standard Operational Procedure.

"I have diplomatic immunity," Chantal said.

Captain Finney wasn't impressed. If she couldn't get through to these people, Chantal would have to hurt them. She didn't want to do that.

"Tell me," ordered Finney.

"Quincannon? That's an Irish name, isn't it?"

"What?" The Captain was bewildered. The Sergeant was surprised.

"Irish. You're Catholic?"

Quincannon's grip relaxed on her as he nodded.

"You, Finney. You're a sufi. You said so yesterday."

"What does all this have to do with it?"

Chantal had graduated from prisoner to advisor. Quincannon stood back respectfully.

"I'm a nun. I'm on a special mission from the Pope."

Finney was still off-balance.

"Do you believe in the Devil? In a personalised force of Evil?"

Quincannon grunted an assent. Finney took a deep breath, "Well, that's a hard question for a sufi. You see, we believe the world is composed of balances and…"

"Enough. What has happened here since I left?"

Finney took another deep breath, but was terse this time. "Younger is dead. Rintoon's gone mad. Lauderdale's a homicidal maniac. And the computer is doing things computers can't do…"

"As I thought, Fort Apache is possessed."

Quincannon crossed himself.

"You must take me to a terminal."

"Possessed?"

"By a demon. I have to perform the rite of exorcism."

"Holy Mary, Mother of God," said Quincannon.

“I'll take all the help I can get. Are you in?"

The Sergeant saluted, and Finney opened the door. "There's a conduit through here. We can get into the access space under the Ops Centre. There's a terminal there."

"Lead the way…"

The demon was taking a time-out for gas and oil. It wanted to have total dominance of Fort Apache before it spawned again and made a push for the next node. It was hungry for the multiple inputs of El Paso, but it knew the triumph would be all the sweeter if it waited, nourished its own desires, its lusts, its needs…

Defer the gratification, and the blood tastes better.

Lauderdale was an annoying acolyte, a messed-up pissant in blue, pretending to be naughty, gingerly dipping a toe into the Dark but holding back. Deep down, he was just another chickenbelly scared sumpless of the monsters. He lacked the force of will of The Summoner. He was a zeroid waster even set beside the Frogman between whose ribs the demon had nestled. But Lauderdale was serving his masters adequately, and he was sure to be rewarded for his efforts.

Too bad; the demon would have got its rocks off teaching Lawdy-Lawdy-Lauderdale the true meaning of the word torture.

Before the Summoning, it had never been more than a servitor of the Dark Ones, fed with the cast-offs of the Great. The tongue-tentacles of his original ectoplasmic body were scraped raw from assaulting the Big Boys of the Outer Darkness. Here, on this Earthly Plane, it was a Giant, it had found a destiny.

"Destineeeee," it sang, to the tune of Jealousy, "I got me a destineee…"

The power was building up. It coursed through the channels of the Fort. It sealed off the underground garages, and sucked out all the oxygen in the air. Thirty-eight personnel tried to fill their lungs and collapsed, blue-faced. "Suck on that, airheads," it boomed over the tannoy as they asphyxiated. Score another bunch of notches for the killer. The demon was riding high, itchy souls wriggling in torment under its clawhomed feet.

And yet it sensed danger. There were still humans struggling against its will. They were trivial. They could be ignored until he was ready to stick it to them. He owed that Swiss Miss a thorough freaking-over for living through their rumble in Welcome, but that could wait. There was something else, something which carried within it the Light that was anathema to the Dark Ones, the burning, cleansing Light that had always banished the Night.

Outside, the Sun was setting. But there was Light blazing.

For an instant, the demon knew Fear. Then, it felt better within itself. The Light was a puny, paltry thing. The Light could be dispelled.

The sun was down. And night-time was the right-time for the rituals of blood and iron. Night was for the masters, not the slaves.

It launched all the fort's missiles, trusting them to find targets in the desert somewhere.

"Just gimme that rock and roll carnage!" it screeched, sending feedback throughout the fort.

"Two-four-six-eight, time to de-cap-it-ate!" An orderly halfway through a dumbwaiter hatch found the door slicing down.

'Three-five-seven-nine, killin' folks makes me feel fine…"

A chaingun above the courtyard opened up. Troopers scattered or fell.

"This is the life," the demon thought to itself.

The moon was up. In the desert, the temperature had plunged. Stack, in his shirtsleeves, was shivering as he darted from cover to cover. Lauderdale's androids were still tracking him. One of his knees had popped, and every step was like taking a bullet in the leg.

A while back there had been a mess of explosions. Fort Apache had fired its missiles. Even if there hadn't been any nukes in the parcel, a lot of damage must have been done in Havasu. Stack wondered if the bridge had got it. That would be a shame. It had come a long way to wind up in pieces in a dried-up river.

Sooner or later, he would drop from exhaustion, and the patient robots would bear down, lases slicing, electrodes primed. That would be it. Stack hoped Chantal was making some difference, because he was certainly out of the picture.

Thirty-eight wasn't so young to die these days. It was more years than Mozart had managed, than Keats, than Alexander the Great, than Billy the Kid, than Bruce Lee, than Jean Harlow, than James Dean, than Chuck Berry…And LeonaTyree, who had been thirty-three last month. And Miss Unleaded, who probably hadn't made fifteen.

He thought he couldn't hear out of his left ear, which was gummed up with blood. His knee was on the point of giving out completely.