Our Devils, page 41
But for all the desperate pain and love and white hot fury within her, it just couldn’t compare to his. The triceratops raked his massive claws through the air, dispatching vultures three at a time. His big jaw ravaged and feasted on the beasts, snapping and snapping and snapping, neck after neck, torso after torso, whole mouthfuls of them disappearing into his gaping maw. Bradbury unleashed a bellow that cracked the earth beneath their feet, overflowing with bloodlust and heartbreak, and fought with his own human’s blood smeared across his chest. He knew his scar would soon fade, but that only fueled him more. Chuy had gone down fighting and Bradbury was ready to follow.
Nat sliced through the swarm and pried the vultures off her devil. She yanked Orion’s head up and shoved several of the little beasts into her devil’s throat, trying to help her regain strength. The owl chewed through them as some sense returned to her five eyes. Moments later, Orion jumped to her feet and caught more vultures in her beak to feast. Her human fought off others with her blades as she mounted her devil’s back. Nat whispered something to her and they took to the air.
Bradbury was too deep in his rage to slow down, so Orion circled the swarm as Nat fired into the heart of it. Pulsar took the cue and rolled out of the fray, scooping up handfuls of rocks and throwing them like shrapnel. Soon fliers were hitting the ground by the dozen. Aaron and Bradbury covered the hare as he dodged and scooped and hurled hard chunks of earth. Orion waited for an opening and shot through the diminished swarm, feasting in mid flight. Her human fired to either side as they passed, unleashing unfathomable carnage.
At last they landed to catch their breath. The battle was over. Bradbury stood with his shoulders heaving as his turquoise blood mingled with his human’s, all across his broad chest. He turned his head again towards his human’s corpse, but before he could move, Nat laid a hand across his battered flank. In that moment, she knew his pain, and he knew hers. It broke them. She embraced him fully. He embraced her back.
Orion flew to an RV and rapped on the door with her beak. “It’s safe,” she said. “You should run while you can.” A shriek came from inside. Nat stomped to the door and ripped it clear off the frame. The family inside scrambled away and pressed themselves against the wall, shrieking in fear. Then Nat grabbed the father by his collar, hauled him out the door, and threw him on the ground.
Nat kneeled on the man’s chest and held a blade to his throat. He cried out, but his struggle was no match for her strength. “Who decided to come here?” she fumed. “Who ignored the order to evacuate?” The man nodded rapidly and tried to gulp out an answer. He feebly gestured to himself and cried.
Bradbury approached Chuy’s remains and collapsed to his knees. Nat gestured to the devil with her other blade. “A good man lost his life because of you. A family lost their father because of you.” She pressed the blade into the man’s neck as he begged for his life. “Grovel, you piece of shit.”
Orion called out to her. It was the only thing that gave her pause. Nat fumed for another long moment before barking at the man. “Find every survivor here and tell them to go. Now.” The man wriggled out from under her and scurried away.
Orion turned to the family and stood up her full height. “That man is stupid and selfish. He put you all in danger. You should be ashamed of him.” The family huddled together and nodded in fear. The mother looked like she shared some of those thoughts. Nat was blown away by Orion’s outright callousness, and Nat loved her devil for it.
Aaron and Pulsar returned from evacuating more trailers just in time to see Bradbury depart. The big devil loped back towards the trailer park with Chuy’s remains held to his chest, and they stopped to watch him go. An update came through the comms and Aaron relayed it—their job wasn’t done. Marcus and his party needed help at the water treatment plant. They took to the road and headed northwest as drone strikes erupted in the distance.
On the way, a herd of zebra-like devils caught up to them, their stripes toxic green and hazard orange. Aaron realized with horror that they had blades behind each of their hooves. Soon they started running into him, rearing up in attempts to slash. Nat fired from overhead as they tried, downing the three closest ones before she had to stop and reload. Two more vehicles with mounted guns approached from the distance, with another helicopter not far behind them.
A voice came through Aaron’s earpiece—they were to extract Marcus’s group so backup could drone strike the water plant. He grunted in acknowledgement, juking the next two zebras with his erratic driving. Pulsar wiped out two more with a swipe of his enormous claw, and three more soon took their place. They split apart, dividing the attackers as Nat opened fire on several, downing four. The mounted guns caught up with them, but the group was too tight for them to take a shot.
Ahead, Marcus charged directly towards Aaron on his dirt bike. The centaur was in hot pursuit, lagging only seconds behind him. It bled profusely as it galloped, but its lion jaw was tight and focused. Pulsar lined up to take him head-on as Nat sped ahead on Orion in search of Jess.
Marcus’s bike turned at a harsh angle, narrowly missing Pulsar. The hare leapt over him, colliding with the bloody centaur in a deafening blow. Pulsar grabbed the centaur’s hands and held them out, using his reach to his advantage. The centaur’s build rendered his legs helpless in the grapple, so instead it leaned down and snapped out with its lion jaw.
Aaron yelled out. “Karate kid!”
He intended for Pulsar to use a crane kick, but instead the devil dropped low and swept the centaur’s leg. It stumbled long enough to give the hare an edge. Pulsar jumped and planted both feet on its chest. He intercepted a blow from one of its hands and held on tight. Then he kicked its chest with all his might, popping the centaur’s arm straight out of the socket. The centaur lurched back and Pulsar lodged his teeth deep into its neck. A moment later, he wrestled the centaur to the ground. Aaron dashed in to hack at its legs, and soon they were reduced to a bloody heap.
On the far side of the complex, Nat and Orion found Jess and Verne making their stand. Aster fought alongside them, backpedaling and dispatching the squid spiders with blow after blow from his tongue. He spun around to repel several in a single swipe and downed the next wave with his caltrops. Then he sprung backwards and flung a grenade into another cluster, blowing them apart. Orion flew up near him and hovered so Nat could tear through several more with her submachine guns, quickly thinning the herd. Orion noticed that Aster had taken some serious damage to his leg and backside, but the frog just didn’t know when to quit. They watched as he ended three more spider squids with a single blow of his wrecking ball tongue. He feasted on one of them, regaining his strength by degrees.
Jess and Verne pushed forward as the helicopter crested the hill, and Jess soon switched back to her melee weapon to tear through the spiders. Nat touched her finger to her headpiece, telling command that they could hold off on the strike. Most of the spiders were already dead, and the others would soon follow.
But there was another problem: the car that brought them there, along with its driver, were utterly destroyed. Nat spotted a pickup truck and she quickly hotwired it. Jess seemed a little shocked by just how quickly Nat handled it. Aster jumped up into the tailgate as Jess and Verne mounted Orion and took flight. Nat took the wheel and off they went.
They rode back west towards the trailer park to replenish their ammo as a fresh round of drone strikes descended, annihilating big stray devils and herds by the dozen.
Chapter 92
For the next several hours, Scar Gang rode out and returned, bloodied and bruised. The attacks were faster and more chaotic than they ever anticipated. Soon they breached the 12, 13, and 14 mile radius, and there were no signs of stopping. Zapata and Machado watched from the command trailer as drone footage captured their agents being ripped apart by enormous orange ferrets with leathery bat wings. Headquarters claimed that backup was en route, but it would be an hour before they arrived.
Marcus stepped out of an SUV with a gash on his forearm, but he was still very much in the fight. He grabbed a towel and wiped three different colors of blood off his face and arms, throwing the tie-dyed towel in the dirt. Medics rushed to suture Aster’s wounds as he replenished with a K8, willing the strength back into his limbs. When Jess returned from the front, it was their time to leave again with Aaron and Pulsar, once more into the breach.
Nat took a moment to pour a bottle of water over her head. She had witnessed and caused more death in the last few hours than most would see in a lifetime, and it was a challenge to stay in the fight. Her physical damage was healing quickly, but the mental fatigue was taking its toll.
Orion feasted on a devil carcass she had claimed in the fight, quickly restoring her energy. Soon It was her turn to leave again with Jess, Danny, and Titan, who left to stop an attack to the south that breached Los Peros.
Zapata spoke over their earpieces. “That’s twenty,” she said. “We’re at twenty miles and counting.”
Danny, Jess, and their devils returned a while later with fresh blood on their faces. They toweled off and sat while they could, hoping for even a moment of peace.
“This is awful,” whined Verne, “I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up.
Pulsar grinned weakly. “You’re doing great. You fight dirty.”
The monkey squeaked, “Thank you. So do you.”
They found their moment of silence, broken only by the occasional violence of a drone strike. Soon Aaron and Marcus returned with their devils, both stepping under the outdoor shower in their full equipment. Marcus had a new gash across his leg and Aaron’s shoulder was missing a little skin, but they would be fine. They had to be.
Jess put a hand to her ear. “Talk to me.”
The message from Zapata came through on all frequencies. “No sign of the Return Gate yet, but the last wild ones were twenty two miles out. Any further than that and this could get dicey.”
“How are the reinforcements looking?” she asked.
“Busy with another attack in Cedar Heights,” said Zapata. “There’s another one in Trinity City, but we’ll try to handle it ourselves. I’ll keep you posted.”
Jess grabbed a K8 and downed it all at once. “Copy that,” she said.
They sat in uneasy silence as the bombs rained down, knowing the Return Gate could open up at any moment to swallow their friends whole. A medic tended to Nat’s leg as two more closed fresh wounds on Pulsar’s back. He held a wild devil’s torso in his big fists, chomping on it to recharge.
Soon, the air strikes began to thin out and the radio chatter calmed down. It seemed like the battle was winding to a close with no Return Gate in sight. Marcus and Nat looked to Aaron, trying to figure out what that meant for them.
But the moment did not last long. A voice came through the comms: “San Judah is hit. I repeat, San Judah is hit. All forces move on San Judah.”
They tightened their holsters and got to their feet, the worst case scenario unfolding before them. Then, a second voice came through the comms. “Return Gate spotted near San Judah. We’re sending you the coordinates now.”
Chapter 93
He galloped on his knuckles where the bone white windmills loomed large, somewhere on the outskirts of town. Time was fading fast. He cleared the tan grassy hills in heartbeats each, their shadows ripping past like waves at high tide. Still he picked up his pace, his form lithe and lean and brutal, his breaths hot and fast and deep. A flash of fangs and fur and teeth. The devil leapt with grace and landed with violence, tearing the landscape on impact. He opened his maw and a wildcat roar ripped the distance. The windmills trembled in his wake.
An ATV tore beside him at full throttle, cresting hills and churning through valleys. A dirtbike flashed past with fierce precision and savage speed. A many-eyed devil soared low overhead with her wings outstretched. A four-armed devil gripped the roof rack of an SUV as it barreled along. And a big blue devil galloped alongside them all, rocketing off his tongue to an unfathomable distance.
But through all the pain and heartbreak and raw ragged fear, a fire cut through it. Aaron looked to his allies, each one of them incredible and impossible, and his chest swelled to the brim. For the first time in his life, he didn’t question the way he was heading. He didn’t question the people by his side. And he was ready to fight and bleed and kill for every last one of them. He let the moment overtake him and thrust his axe to the sky, screaming with joy and bloodlust and total abandon.
A low black devil clocked him off his ATV with a single swipe of its claw. The hare swerved to catch his human on his back in one fluid motion. The man hung on tight, white knuckles sunk into grey and green fur. They outran the wild devil, dodging around more as they climbed into the hills, plowing through and juking around a thick snarl of smaller beasts. They cleared the hills as San Judah came into view. Its great many buildings swallowed the whole of the bay, its skyscrapers and low apartments and its shiny golden hill. And even from that distance they saw their destination.
There, in the city’s dead center, sat a bone white orb of impossible size. No, not sat. Lurched. Dragged along by hundreds of bright pink legs, guided by hundreds of bright pink eyestalks. A spiral of ridges and crags ran across the shell, scarred by age and violence.
They rode full speed through the sloping hills as the hermit crab slammed its whole mass into a parking garage, flattening it like a house of cards. Aaron looked down at his hare as they rode. The devil was resolute and bloodthirsty, and the man loved him for it. Aaron feasted on his fire and tightened his grip.
Buildings fell as they took to the highway, and people in the departing cars gawked at the sight of them. Jess caught the eye of a small child as they passed, her eyes wide with wonder. A man hung out of his sunroof to cheer them on, and fist after fist rose to the sky in support.
The right lane was choked with cars that had driven on the wrong side to escape, so the gang had to weave through the snarl. Jess had the hardest time of it, crashing through several bumpers as they barreled through it. Aster landed on their hood to spin cars away with his tongue as others ahead scrambled to clear the path. As long as they got there in one piece, it didn’t matter what they had to go through.
The highway dropped in elevation and the street dipped into a commercial district. Praying mantises with lion manes tore through several nuns while a bipedal snail digested an old hippie. His legs thrashed as his head disappeared into the meat.
They tore around the corner, through a crowd in yoga clothing. They were running away from a four headed bear—two mouths were already occupied. A coyote with bony spines along its back tore into a small electric car as the man inside shrieked and slapped the glass. It bit deeper and the puncture caused an explosion that rocked the street. A black pelican the size of a school bus plucked screaming children from a doorstep, throwing its head back to swallow. Something dark and many limbed and otherwise indescribable dragged a woman from a coffee shop, screaming into her face. And overhead another building tumbled, crashing mere blocks away.
Nat shouted into her headset. “How are we looking with the Gate?”
“So far so good,” said Machado. “Our other devils are en route right now, and reinforcements are on the way. Take out the crab and get back to the Gate, ASAP.”
“Copy that,” she said, going silent.
They rounded the final corner and came face to face with the hermit crab, some two hundred feet away. It was the size of a ferris wheel, its shell ancient and twisted and pearlescent. Instead of two hot pink eyestalks it had hundreds, each pulsing and thrashing and fighting for a better view. Its claws, too, were too many and too fast to count, plucking up victims in barbaric numbers.
But its six larger claws were the worst of it. The gang watched in horror as they pinched and lifted a full size city bus with ease, tearing off the end and emptying the whole of it into its hellscape of jaws.
“We can’t go straight at this one,” said Aaron, already trying to plan around it.
“One way to find out,” said Marcus, leaning out the window for a better look.
The crab threw its bus directly at Jess’s car, too quick and brutal for her to avoid it. Marcus pulled inside as it clipped the trunk, spinning the vehicle around three times before it slid to a halt. Marcus, Jess and Verne scrambled out before the crab could follow up with another projectile. The next one blew the car away.
“What’s the plan?” asked Nat.
“Find a weak point,” said Aaron.
“What weak point?” spat Pulsar. “It’s armored as fuck!”
Verne landed beside them. “Draw him out of his shell.”
Aster chirped, “I don’t think he’s going to leave it.”
Jess dispatched a rogue devil that wandered their way. “What other options do we have?”
Verne leapt to her human as she shot two more wild devils. “Maybe we don’t have to draw it out the whole way?”
Marcus threw a kunai at another beast, hitting its eye with flawless precision. He followed up with a slash from his sword. “It’s worth a shot. Avoid its claws.”
Aaron dropped another with a throwing hatchet. “You talked me into it.” He stepped on its back and ripped the hatchet back out again.
Nat jumped off her bike. “One of you take this. I’m going up.” They traded a quick look and Marcus jumped on the dirtbike. Nat climbed onto her devil’s back. “Get its attention and stay safe. We’ll find an opening.”
“On it,” said Jess. A fresh horde of devils approached, dark red lemurs with weirdly stoic faces and shiny golden eyes. On their tails were long, wicked sickles that swiped through the air with faint whistles. Jess and Verne fired on them rapidly, creating an opening for the others to break through.
