Chris Holm - The Big Reap

Drustanus roared. Charged. Blood dripping from his stump, and from his one remaining hand, which still gripped the makeshift blade of glass. And then, in that slow/fast/out-of-sequence/all-at-once way times of blood and valor seem to unfold, the scene shifted. Yseult coiling to pounce in support of her one true love, a low growl escaping her lips. Kate, beside me, assuming a defensive stance — knees bent; weight on the balls of her feet a shoulder-width apart; hands open, not balled into fists; arms up and ready. Me, looking back and forth between the two threats, handicapping the odds of each reaching us before the other. A rush of footfalls. Drustanus, distracted, looking past me and away. Me following his gaze. Yseult turning, twisting, and then with a metallic thunk and a crack like shattered bone, she’s going down, jaw shattered, head half caved in. Gio, behind her a little ways, doubled over, panting, one hand against a nearby locker for support. And Theresa following through with her swing of the steel pipe that was her dismantled shotgun’s barrel as if she were Hammerin’ Hank himself, knocking a ball into the stands.

Drustanus still coming. Eyes wide and wet and not on Kate or me, instead locked on Yseult’s dazed, flopping form; her eyes rolled back, her limbs rigid, mangled mouth foaming pink at the corners.

“Ter,” I yelled, “the pipe!”

Ter’s a good soldier. A fighter through and through. She didn’t question, didn’t hesitate, and — despite her blindness — didn’t miss. She chucked the barrel to me, and I lunged toward the speeding freight train that was Drustanus, jabbing it forward with all I had.

It struck his ruined flesh, his fragile bone, underfed and undernourished in the face of all the energy he’d been expending — and, thrumming with sudden electricity — punched straight through.

He slumped to his knees. Blinked in confusion. Dropped his shard of glass onto the floor. It shattered. He tipped forward. And as I plucked the yellow, chalky remains of his soul from the end of the gun barrel, grinding them to dust between my fingers, his last pained, reverent word was, “Yseult.”

His body caved in before our eyes. Shook the building from foundation to rafters. While behind us, unnoticed at first, Yseult struggled to her knees, and plucked her own glass shard up off the floor.

It was her strangled pleading I noticed first. A wet, guttural sound, like an animal not known for the ability trying to mimic human speech. When I turned away from her fallen lover, I saw her, head dented like a rotten Jack O’Lantern, moving her shattered jaw, her face all twisted up, not with anger, nor malice, but simply grim determination.

When my gaze trailed downward to what her hands were doing, I realized what she was trying to say, what she was trying to ask of me.

She’d used the shard of glass to slice open the flesh of her chest; gouged deep furrows into the yellowed breastbone beneath, and cut muscle and connective tissue away from between her two exposed ribs. Pushed her tiny fingers through the gap — probing, searching, to no avail. What she wanted could not be found without assistance, without the touch of one of my kind to make it present itself.

She was trying to gouge out her own soul.

To follow her beloved to the grave.

As Drustanus had said, she always was better at expressing her devotion than was he.

I approached her, hand extended — equal parts a calming gesture, and a promise of death’s reprieve. “Sammy, the fuck you think you’re doing?” asked Gio with alarm. “You just killed that freaky bitch’s boyfriend. Now you’re gonna make all nice?”

He took a step toward me, intending to intervene, but I waved him off with my free hand.

“It’s okay, Gio. Yseult’s not going to hurt me. If she did, if she evicted me from this meat-suit, it would only delay her in following Drustanus. Isn’t that right, Yseult?”

Tears shone in her eyes. She nodded almost imperceptibly.

I couldn’t help but feel some kinship with her. My eternal damnation, after all, was nothing more or less than an extended demonstration of my love for my dear, sweet Elizabeth. As my hand found her shoulder, and her body shuddered from the sudden current of my touch, I told her, “I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal.”

Her hand dug deep into her own chest once more, and then her eyes went wide. With her last ounce of strength, she pulled it free, and then slackened.

Her withered soul fell from her grasp, cracking as it hit the floor.

I let go of her. She slumped to the vinyl tiles. Then I ground her soul to dust beneath my boot. Her body followed suit, desiccating before our eyes.

“Now,” I said, “let’s go find Grigori.”

“That was some messed-up shit back there, dude,” said Gio, huffing and puffing while we sprinted for the auditorium, but somehow still finding breath to speak.

“In case you hadn’t caught on, Dead Guy I Stuck Into a Different Dead Guy’s Body, messed-up shit is sorta my specialty.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but even for you, man, this is fucking bugnuts.”

“Ugh,” said Theresa. “Don’t mention bugs.”

Kate looked at Theresa, and then back to me. “Bugs? What’d I miss?”

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Theresa said, “if you ever wanna sleep again at night.”

We sprinted past the busted down front doors, continued onward down the hall. No sign of Grigori. No signs of life at all, I thought.

Then a door opened to our right, yellow light spilling into the dim hall. Two girls deep in joking conversation shuffled, smiling, out. Their expressions faded to worry when they caught sight of us, and shot on past toward fear; an enormous afroed black woman arm-in-arm with a short, squat Pesci-in-Goodfellas-looking mofo; a bruised and battered waitress, her uniform spattered with blood; and a beefy, bearded, gore-streaked trucker with a crooked ear and a bevy of seeping wounds who was carrying a pipe caked with bits of rotting lung and heart and brain.

“Get back inside,” I said, jabbing my finger toward the classroom they’d just vacated. “Are there more of you in there?”

One of them nodded. The other elbowed her.

“It’s all right,” I said, “we’re not gonna hurt you. Just get back in there. Lock the door if the door locks. Barricade it either way. And don’t come out until the cops come get you. You understand?”

This time, they both nodded. Then retreated. The bar of light that shone underneath the door went out, and I heard the slide of something heavy being moved.

And we continued down the hall once more.

“You know, Sam,” said Kate some twenty silent paces later, “that shit back there with Drustanus and Yseult? Kinda sorta personal for me . I mean, those evil bastards upturned my life. Wrecked my place of business. Turned a table of my best tippers into the blood-drinking undead. Cheesy catchphrase aside, if that ain’t personal, then what the hell do you call it?”

“An average Tuesday?” Theresa ventured.

Kate laughed.

Despite myself — and these godawful circumstances — I couldn’t help but think I’d missed these three.

Up ahead, a child of twelve or so was slumped against the wall, two holes puncturing his neck, blood oozing down it and soaking into the collar of his shirt. “Grigori, you monster,” I muttered, and forced my new XL meat-suit to put on a burst of speed. Kate — not carrying fifty extra pounds of beer-and-chicken-fried-steak weight — still reached the kid first.

“He’s got a pulse,” she said, two fingers to his neck on the side opposite the wound, “but weak. He’s going to need a doctor, and soon.”

The sirens outside brayed loud enough to make my meat-suit’s ears pop. Lights, red and blue, splashed through the hashmarked windows facing the ruined Pancake Palace and projected strobing diamond patterns across the far wall of the hall. “He’ll get one,” I said. “Won’t be long before they wind up over here. Let’s try and keep their workload light, shall we?”