Tim Marquitz - Armageddon Bound

Though I’d seen many of the fiends before, it’d always been off in the distance. Their place was the far reaches of Hell, the soul pits, the torment fields. They didn’t mingle with infernal citizens, they were kept apart. I’d never had the odious pleasure of being so close to one of them. It wasn’t on my to-do list, that’s for sure.

Their elongated faces were chiseled in hard bone beneath shaggy mops of knotted, coal-black hair. Sharp yellow growths burst from beneath their waxy skin in bunches, making their faces look like the bastard sons of skeletal porcupines. Their oval eyes shone with an unnatural orange glimmer, focused to a murderous fine point on us. Thick muscles rippled across their wide torsos as they crouched and crept toward us, the sharpened talons on their hands twitching in eager anticipation of the blood to be spilled. Our blood. Less than thrilled about the prospect, I backed away slowly, pushing Veronica behind me as I angled toward the cover of a nearby abandoned tenement. They had no intention of letting us go. With ravenous snarls, which sent dancing shivers rattling down the length of my spine, they charged.

I shoved Veronica toward the boarded-up building and yanked my. 45 out of my waistband. In fluid motion, I swung the pistol up and squeezed the trigger as I went, foregoing accuracy for speed. Turned out, it really didn’t matter how fast I was. I was rewarded with a hollow click of an empty chamber. The gun had run dry.

I fumbled for another cartridge just as the first of the fiends reached me. I had barely ejected the empty clip, the fresh one nowhere near inserted, when the beast slammed into me. I likened the impact to being tackled by a Bullet Train; a stinky, greasy, hairy Bullet Train with claws. I felt my chest cave in as my legs, arms, and head were snapped forward only to whiplash back when we hit the wall behind us. Shards of brick exploded on impact, the wall cracking and giving way, tumbling down on top of us. A gray cloud of mortar dust choked the air as it billowed up around us. I felt the pressure on my chest give way some as the fiend, which lay on top of me, shrugged off the wreckage and stood up. Without mercy, it reared back, its claws shimmering in the hazy light, and slashed at me. I closed my eyes and tried my hardest to sink into the ground.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to rely on that highly overrated defensive maneuver. I heard a guttural gasp above me and felt the fiend pulled off, sliding past my feet, and then it was gone. I opened my eyes in time to see Veronica Judo-tossing the stinky critter back toward his companions. It was a beautiful sight to behold.

“Get up!” she screeched.

Not waiting to see if I listened, she disappeared, the remnants of the wall blocking her from my sight. The fiends dodged their hurled buddy, which rolled past them to land in the street, and shot off after her en masse. They must have thought I was done. I muttered a curse and crawled to my feet. My head pounded out a tribal rhythm as my eyes swirled inside their sockets as I stood. I pushed down the nausea that bubbled in my gut and stumbled out of the hole. Despite it all, I knew what I had to do. I had to help Veronica. Outside, amidst the wreckage of the wall, I found my pistol. Without bothering to search for the loose clip, I pulled another from my belt and slipped it into the gun. I was priming the chamber just as the tossed fiend came lunging toward me to finish the job it started, its gnashing mouth spewing out graveledthroated growls. I showed it all the mercy it had shown me.

As quick as I could, I emptied the gun into the fiend. While my hands were shaking like a crack whore who needed a fix, my aim was true. One after another, each of the seven bullets ripped into the beast. The first struck it in the center of his face, which exploded in a spray of vile rot. Its head whipped back as the second bullet caught it in the neck, silencing its growled complaints. The rest struck in rapid succession, each a little lower than the last as the force of the one before redirected the momentum of its upper body. The last bullet hit it in the abdomen with a gurgling thump. Wide eyed, the fiend slid to stop in front of me, its ruined head at my feet. I heard the click of the empty chamber, my hand still squeezing away, as I stared down at the fallen fiend. It wouldn’t be getting up. Still shaking, I was reloading the gun when I heard Veronica scream, her voice harsh, panicked. Without hesitation, I bolted off after her. At least I tried to. More injured than I thought, I stumbled, finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. My legs felt like Jell-o, my whole body wracked with pain. Unfortunately, Dread Fiends weren’t like the rest of demon-kind. Their souls, their power, didn’t transfer over on their deaths. I didn’t get a healing boost from the ugly bastard I’d just killed and that was gonna make things hard, considering there were three of them left. Between the beating Veronica had given me and the fiend, I was already half-done. That was when I heard Veronica cry out again and I realized my weakness would mean both of our deaths. I couldn’t let that happen. I resorted to something drastic. As I ran, I dug in my pocket and pulled out the wrapped vial of Lucifer’s blood. I gave silent thanks to my uncle when I found it intact. Frenzied, I tore the washcloth off and popped the stopper. In one big gulp, I swallowed the contents, tossing the vial aside. It shattered against the wall as I raced around the corner to where I’d heard Veronica’s screams. What I saw turned my stomach.

In a whirling pile of demonic limbs, the fiends tore at Veronica like a pack of rabid hyenas on a fallen antelope. In the midst of it all, I could see her lashing out, fighting back against them. That gave me hope, albeit only a little. I sure wouldn’t be betting the house on her survival.

“Take your hands off-” my shout went unfinished as the full fury of Lucifer’s blood hit me, screaming through my veins.

My vision blurred and I felt my legs go out from underneath me. I hit the ground, my gun bouncing away across the asphalt. Numb and weak, I stared up at the out-of-focus fiends as they stopped their assault on Veronica and turned to glower at me. I got to my knees as the three barked amongst themselves, presumably about what to do. It didn’t take them but a second to decide. They did what they always do. They attacked.

One of the fiends grabbed Veronica and held her tight while the other two stalked toward me. I tried to stand to meet their approach, but felt my legs wobble hard. Once more, I collapsed. I started to worry. I’d never taken so much of my uncle’s blood before. Though I knew what it would do in theory, I’d never had the courage to test it. Seemed I picked the wrong time for field trials.

Unlike when I had just sipped the blood, what I felt now was far from orgasmic. My veins burned as if molten lava rumbled through them. My skin felt two sizes too tight as my muscles throbbed beneath it, threatening to rip free. I could barely see through the haze that clouded my vision, my brain rattling about inside my head. I tried to stand again, but my body conspired against me. I felt heavy, as though someone had weighted me down with pocketfuls of lead. Unable to stand, I looked up at the fiends who smiled sharply back, realizing I was easy prey. I heard their teeth chatter and saw them pounce. I vaguely heard Veronica scream, her voice off in the distance, before the fiends were on me. I went down in a heap, incapable of holding them off.

I could see their claws tearing into me, but couldn’t feel them. Spurts of blood shot from the wounds, splattering us all in a scarlet rain. It pooled beneath us. I saw hunks of meat torn from my legs and torso, flung about like so much refuse. I watched in horror as one of the fiends went for the soft bits, its claws sinking into the flesh on the inside of my thighs, its snapping mouth closing in. My nerves came alive like a roadside flare.