Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

“Did you just hear that?”

“Who was that?”

“It’s one of those creatures, I’m telling you! You heard that they can speak, right?”

“I have a proposition to everyone inside!” the voice continued, and everyone went quiet again. “We want only the General! Give him up and we’ll let the rest of you go!”

“Don’t listen to her!” the General exclaimed from the platform. He was keeping his cool, and Homewrecker had no way of knowing if he was intimidated by the promise of the unknown speaker. “She’s saying that to deceive you and make you lose your guard! The moment we open any of those doors they’ll be all over us!”

“The General will keep hiding behind your backs! He will not hesitate to put all of you in the line of fire if it means that he will survive another minute!”

“That crazy bitch lies!” Anxiety started to creep into the General’s voice. “She wants to behead our Brigade! Those creatures did nothing but kill you and your brothers out there! You’re going to trust such an enemy?”

“We will not be held back by these doors for much longer. Sooner or later we’ll break in. Once we do, everyone we’ll find inside will be killed! You have one minute to decide.”

The soldiers started whispering and murmuring to each other, discussing their situation, and Homewrecker himself started thinking: Perhaps it really was possible to just give them the General?

After all, he thought, we can’t be sure that we will be able to kill all of them. Who knows how many there are of those demons outside .

“Do you think we should take her up on her offer?” Homewrecker asked Corpse Eater.

The boy shook his head. “No way. You’ve seen what her demons did to those men. We don’t know who she is or what she really wants, so trusting her is not smart.”

“We can’t trust them,” Puppy Slayer whispered. “They are not here to make peace with us.”

Not everyone agreed with Puppy Slayer. At that moment, unbeknownst to them, everyone had become a player, and the brigade had split into two teams. Everyone wanted to win—nobody wanted the house to take it all. The lingering questions that ran through everyone’s minds like news through a telegraph wire were: What would be the best course of action? And how would the others react?

How to make the right choice and choose the winning team?

Which team would win?

The commotion was silenced when the General fired a shot into the ceiling: “Do I hear doubt in you? Did my ears betray me?” His voice was not worried anymore. Instead, it carried confidence and power, as well as deep sorrow. It was the voice of a father who had found out that his son was misbehaving.

“Listen to me!” the General shouted, and everybody instantly obeyed. His confidence was like the north to everyone’s internal compass. “You think she’ll do you violence? She’s still wet behind her ears when it comes to such things. I’ve been doing it for over a decade and you know it. Nothing—nothing! That she can do to you will ever match my wrath if you betray me and listen to her.”

It was a ballsy move; on the verge of being betrayed the General decided that the best course of action would be to double down on his stance. And it was working.

“You are not a cowardly lot. I can see you are all ready to battle but some of you—some of you!” he repeated for a greater effect, casting his gaze upon the crowd, and Homewrecker saw, from the corner of his eye, Puppy Slayer lowering his head. “Have doubts about it. Well, I’ll pretend that I didn’t see you doubt me. For this time only, I will let you join your brothers in a fight and I will not mention that I saw you trembling. I will not make you into everyone’s whore and feast. So pick up your weapons and fight for me, as you always have!”

Homewrecker figured out what the man was doing. He was not appealing to the men’s bravery—he knew it to be an unreliable and treacherous quality. No, he was doing the opposite. He was appealing to their fear. Their fear of casting the wrong choice and landing on the wrong side of the barricade.

And one by one, accepting the rules of the game and making the choice to leave the choice to the man, the soldiers started to cheer for him. And Homewrecker could see how, one by one, the adults around him were getting more and more restless. Hyping themselves up and going all in.

“All hail General Malaria!”

“We never doubted your words, General!”

“We will prevail!”

“Death to the witch!”

“Idiots,” Homewrecker heard Corpse Eater whisper under his breath. “But maybe it’s for the best. At least now they’re all on the same page.”

“I guess that means ‘no,’” they heard from the outside. “Even better. These people lusted for your blood anyway.”

The heavy gates suddenly screeched and heaved, breaking under the pressure exerted on them from the outside. The soldiers raised their weapons, aiming at the gates. They expected them to smash open, revealing the monstrosities on the other side—yet nothing followed. There was only silence. There was only tension.

Homewrecker could smell it—it smelled like sweat on unwashed bodies. He could taste it—it tasted like iron. He could hear it—it sounded like raindrops hitting against the slate sheets on the roof.

And he could hear something else—the clanking of claws scratching against the slate on the roof.

For a moment so short it couldn’t be measured, he and everyone else in the warehouse froze, bound together by the realization that struck all of them at the same time. For the first time in his life, the boy could feel the connection between him and the grunts around him. All of them sensed where the enemy was. All of them knew what was coming next.

Then the moment passed. Everyone and everything started moving at the same time.

The sheets of slate scratched against each other as they were moved out of the way by monstrous hands, and one them fell down, landing on some poor soul’s face who was looking up at his death. The rain instantly poured in, and the columns of water falling from above let everyone know where the breaches were. Standing near them meant certain death, and Homewrecker mentally said his goodbyes to those who were drenched in it.

The creatures followed the rain, pouring from above into the warehouse. They wanted to flood it with blood, and Homewrecker had no doubt that they would easily manage that.

Some of them landed poorly, breaking their limbs, but that didn’t hinder their advance. Their bodies were no more than vessels for hatred that transcended death, mediums for the priestess’ hatred. Even lying on the ground, they crawled toward their prey, intending to use their jagged, exposed bones to gouge the scared eyes out, extinguish their light.

The warehouse wasn’t their salvation, Homewrecker realized. It was their prison, their cage, their tomb. The concrete pot in which they were served.

The noise was deafening. The sounds were bouncing against the walls and each other, trying to break free. The shouting, the screams of terror and pain, the shots, and the mad incoherent ramblings all mixed together to create a cacophony of hell.

They can speak , was all that Homewrecker could think about in a panic. They can speak!

It seemed such an odd detail to point out, but it was driving him insane. His youthful mind was confused by that juxtaposition, by the fact that he couldn’t place these creatures in some one precise folder in his mind. They looked like humans—and yet they weren’t.

He was trying to lock onto some target, but wherever he looked there were soldiers running around. He didn’t want to shoot any of them, so he wasn’t pulling the trigger. And he received a confirmation that his worries weren’t groundless when he saw one of the soldiers get accidentally shot in the back of the head.