The Devil’s Peak II, page 1
Devil’s Peak
II
Greig Beck
There’s only one way out of Hell.
Fight your way out.
www.severedpress.com
Copyright 2025 by Greig Beck
When I was young they told me there was no such thing as monsters.
They lied.
EPISODE 07
When the Earth’s heartbeat stops, then the devil shall rise.
CHAPTER 01
The United States Geological Survey Headquarters (USGS), Reston, Virginia
Andrew Martinson and Phillip Zeng sat at each end of the claustrophobic monitoring facility, and were lost in their own duties. Around them were all manner of equipment monitoring earthquake data nationally, as well as the hundreds of shimmies, shakes, and full blown earthquakes from all around the world.
The data was correlated, analyzed, and then the AI programs would make a best guess on what and where the next geological shift would take place.
Martinson and Zeng were so used to the myriad beeps, pings and buzzes that to them they became part of the usual background noise. And it wasn’t the music from the electronic symphony that caught their attention, but the lack of it.
Martinson lifted his head and frowned.
Something was different.
He turned to Zeng who was already staring back.
“It’s stopped,” Zeng said.
Martinson turned back and checked the seismological audio, and traced it back.
He scoffed softly and sat back. “Earth’s heartbeat just stopped.” He folded his arms. “I wonder what it means.”
***
At the Vatican another private monitor registered the same thing. However this one generated a very different reaction.
The young priest trained in seismology raced up to his superior, Cardinal Belloni.
He bowed and was bade to speak and he looked up with wide eyes. “Earth’s heartbeat has stopped.”
Belloni shut his eyes for several seconds and after a moment more nodded once. “I’ll tell the Holy Father.” He sighed. “It seems the ancient enemy is finally coming for us.”
CHAPTER 02
Australia, NSW, outskirts of Thrumster – the Simmons’ farm
Jack Simmons was up late doing some paperwork, and hating every second of it. He surveyed the pile – bills, more bills, past due and final notices – he growled deep in his chest. Why would anyone be a damn farmer? he wondered.
The Simmons’ farm just outside of the town of Thrumster wasn’t a big one – two hundred acres holding a few hundred head of milking cows, a bull in another paddock, and in the barn several horses. It was hard work, and it never stopped. He couldn’t remember the last time he took a day off.
His boys were both at university, Jesse studying economics, and Will doing computer science. Neither doing anything that was close to farming. And neither ever expressed any interest in it.
Good on them, he thought, as he wouldn’t wish a life of backbreaking, thankless work on his worst enemy these days.
Margarete was already in bed, Neddy the kelpie was asleep under his desk, and the house was quiet.
But outside…
He paused to concentrate; he thought he heard a buzzing sound, thick and heavy, like an insect but deeper, more like that of a toy airplane.
It grew louder as if it passed overhead, and then went quiet – not fading away, just stopping.
Simmons sat listening for a moment more, but now silence reigned again. He looked down at Neddy who farted softly in his sleep. He smiled, knowing that if it had have been anything then the dog usually was the first to hear. But tonight, nothing.
After another moment he went back to his paperwork.
He’d give it another half hour, he thought with gritty eyes and drooping eyelids.
***
Out in the barn the horses snorted and stamped. The strange scent scared them. They didn’t have great night vision, and the barn was near pitch dark, but they had a great sense of smell and excellent hearing, and they heard the sound of something big coming across their roof.
A large dark shape appeared momentarily in the high barn window and forced itself inside.
They heard it clawing its way across the ceiling and knew it was hanging above them in the darkness. The horses started to snort and move about. They wanted out. Something alien was in their home that smelt like danger and death. Some sort of predator.
The oldest horse, Nellie, the mare, stamped and snorted and turned to kick at her gate.
The thing above them dropped down and landed on top of her. She screamed at the revolting thing that clung to her. It was big, heavy and was covered in thick hair-like bristles.
Then she was either bitten or stung, and immediately fell silent. The other two younger horses soon suffered the same fate.
In the darkness the massive fly took its time laying eggs on the still living horse bodies. The eggs would hatch on them and feed, and each of the brood would carry in its gut a parasitic disease that no one on the surface of the world had ever encountered. It would be something that would infect the flesh, twist it, debase and deform it. It had no cure and it would be spread by the merest contact.
The fly suddenly stopped moving and seemed to freeze in place. The massive bristling thing shuddered and shook, and slowly a huge split appeared along its back.
In seconds more a bulbous lump of muscle appeared at the split, and gradually over the next fifteen minutes an even larger form of the Octavius Conti fly emerged.
It clung onto the empty shell casing for a while as its wings spread, filled with blood, and hardened. And then in seconds more the huge fly with the grotesquely human facial features was gone. On to grow more minions to spread its hellish plague across the country and then across the entire globe.
***
The bottle-shaped eggs swelled and hatched quickly, and the foot-long maggots soon ate the horses down to their bones. Then they crusted over, split down their backs, and from their husk bodies the fist-sized flies emerged.
They took to the air, spreading out in all directions. Except for one, who headed to the Simmons’ house. Several also went for the local dam water that fed the town.
Like a small squadron of Kamikaze airplanes they dived at the water and on contact, they exploded, and the filthy contents of their bodies quickly mixed into the town’s drinking water.
***
Jack Simmons woke to a feeling like someone was gripping the side of his face with a spiked glove – it stung.
He sat up in the darkness swiping a hand up and just caught something that let go and then darted away.
“Ouch.” He grimaced at the pain. “Fucking spider.”
He gritted his teeth. His face already felt swollen and hot. It must have been a big huntsman given the size he felt. Those bastards were painful, but nothing like this.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered, holding his face.
The pain was agonizing and getting worse, and was spreading down his neck; already his arms were feeling funny.
Simmons coughed, and tasted blood.
“Margie,” he groaned from a rapidly numbing mouth.
There was no response.
Simmons coughed again, and this time felt something solid come up from his throat. And worse, it was moving.
He vomited onto the bedcover, and reached across to turn on the bedside lamp. With the light he saw his hand looked weird – the fingers were longer and darker.
“Margie.” He turned back and saw her still lying there.
He reached across and grabbed her hand, his fingers barely working now. “Margie, I’m sick.”
Where his hand touched hers it felt hot. And wet.
“Marhkeee…” His mouth wasn’t working properly and he leaned over her.
He saw then there was a massive boil thing on her neck, and he guessed she had been bitten as well.
He tried to release her hand, and found he couldn’t. It seemed his hand was glued to hers, and when he looked down, he saw that now he couldn’t even work out where his hand ended and hers began.
Margie seemed to lean closer to him then, and as their arms touched, the skin immediately zippered together.
“Mrgghheetth.”
He felt his skin burning all over and even his bones ached – he heard as well as felt them shifting beneath the skin, sliding, rearranging into different positions and shapes.
“Mrggghhtthhh, wotthshappenggg oo eee?” Simmons fell back onto the bed as his vision swam.
Margie seemed to move closer again, and now from his foot to his shoulder he felt the warm wetness as he bonded with her.
He heard a voice then – deep, commanding, and suddenly he heard Margie’s thoughts as well as if they were in his own head. She was confused and frightened.
But most of all he was hungry. So hungry. But what he hungered for, revolted him at first.
But then the craving became intolerable.
And he knew what he had to do.
CHAPTER 03
USA, Texas, the Stoker Ranch
Addison lay in the darkness with her eyes open. She could feel the body heat emanating off Ethan in waves like he was on fire.
She hurt all over and especially down below. They had sex again. Just sex. Because she couldn’t call it making love as it had been vigorous and brutal, and he had wanted to take her in ways they had never even talked about before.
She sighed. He was like a different person.
She
Addison had tried to raise the subject about Drake, his older brother, and the guy who had literally marched through Hell to rescue him, but all Ethan could manage was a grunt, and telling her that he needed a bit more time to recover his strength.
She sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She needed to talk to someone, and right now, there were only two people on the planet that could possibly understand what she was worried about.
She pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt, and paused to turn and look at him. She had come back from the seven circles of Hell. But had Ethan?
No, that was a stupid idea, she thought.
She went downstairs to the library to make a call.
CHAPTER 04
Rome, The Vatican, Operations Room-2
The Templar Knights sat in the darkened room and watched the screen before them. On it was the movement of the tracking device Leonidas had placed on the flying abomination.
It had first made its way from the Devil’s Peak to the coastline of Australia, settled for a short time in a small town called Thrumster, and then made its way up the coast and crossed the Timor Sea toward Indonesia.
Isabella Romano had already given the Vatican superiors an update and then again to the room of assembled Knights – the apocalypse was upon them and for now, all they could hope to do was slow it until something arose that could stop it for good.
“The plague is here. And spreading,” Isabella finished with.
“Two vectors,” Leonidas said. “The flies, and those already infected, spreading by a bite or other fluids. It is aggressively contagious.”
Isabella nodded. “For now, the only cure is a quick death to those infected. Because there is no coming back.”
Cardinal Ferdinand Montebello folded his arms and paced at the front of the room. He stopped and turned. “And the sea beasts? The Hell spawn, what of them?”
Isabella shook her head. “No sightings yet. But I suspect they will harass the coastlines and shipping. They will try and distract the human race from what is going on with the infection, until it is too late to fight back.”
He nodded. “I thought this too.” He looked at the room. “Priority is to get a sample of the plague. We cannot begin to fight something we know so little about.”
“Leonidas and I can go to Australia to this town of Thrumster.” Isabella smiled sadly. “It seems communication has been cut to the two thousand residents. They know something is happening. But they will have no idea just how bad it is or is going to get.”
Montebello nodded. “The others will be dispatched in two person teams throughout the world – to Indonesia, to other Asian countries. Our job is to educate the populations, find the vectors…” He looked at each of them. “And eradicate them all.”
“And Drake Stoker?” Isabella asked hopefully.
Montebello shook his head slowly. “Right now, he is not a priority. And you know there is no way to get to him. If that changes, then we recognize the help he gave you and will do what we can.” He dropped his arms. “Go, time is already against us. And take Marco. God bless you all in this that could be our final mission.”
The group dispersed and outside Isabella turned on her phone. There was a message waiting from Addison.
She called back immediately.
***
“I don’t believe it,” Addison said. “You’re leaving him down there?”
“I’m sorry, Addison. We have no choice,” Isabella said softly. “There is no way to get to him. But the cardinal did acknowledge we owe Drake a debt. And if…”
“When?” Addison interjected.
“…when, we see an opportunity to retrieve Drake and Benson, I promise I will personally lead them in,” Isabella finished.
Addison knew Isabella was right, but the guilt was still eating at her. Drake had thrown down everything for his brother, and saved her and Isabella’s life many times. And Drake had lost a lot of friends along the way. But now he had paid the price.
She grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. The thought of Ethan’s brother being trapped in that horrifying nightmarish place made her feel like she was about to throw up.
“How’s Ethan?” Isabella asked softly.
Addison’s eyes flicked open. “He’s…” she tried to think of a way to describe him.
She certainly didn’t want to say he was changed, as for all she knew Isabella and the Templar Knights might drop in and cut his head off on suspicion alone.
“He’s okay. Still recovering,” she finished.
There was silence for a moment.
“Okay,” Isabella said with the single word layered in skepticism.
“What are your plans now; next steps?” Addison asked.
“We need to go to Australia. A small town called Thrumster,” Isabella replied. “The plague is out, and we need to obtain a sample. And also do what we can to stop its spread.”
Addison looked up at the ceiling, as if looking through the wooden beams to see the sleeping Ethan.
“Can I help?” she asked. “I’m a biologist. And you know I know what’s going on.”
Isabella thought about it. They could use all the help they could get, but Addison wasn’t trained as they were.
“Thank you but no. We can take it from here. You just stay put and look after Ethan,” she replied softly.
“I’ll try,” Addison said. “But… can you keep me informed? Of anything?”
“I promise,” Isabella said.
And then, “Addison?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“I like that you called me. Please know that if you need anything, or are concerned about anything, anything at all, you call me anytime, okay?”
“I will. I will.” Addison’s brows came together. “Isabella…”
“Yes,” Isabella waited.
There was silence for a few seconds.
“Um, nothing.” Addison sighed. “Just be safe.”
Isabella disconnected and held the phone up for a moment more. She didn’t believe that everything was fine with Addison, and she was vague on Ethan’s condition.
She certainly would stay in contact, to keep Addison informed, but also to keep an eye on her. And Ethan Stoker.
“We need to go,” Leonidas said.
“On my way.” She stuck her phone in her pocket, and they headed out.
Her team was small, at just three Knights – her, Leonidas, and Marco. Marco was one of the oldest Knights at thirty-five, but also one of the best trained. It was an honor to have him. Being given a larger team when all others were just in duos, and also the assignation of Marco was a testament to the importance the southern region was given.
The portal was there, and though it had been physically closed, the emanation point was there and when the Earth was brought low by the abominations and by the plague, then that could well be where the Devil chose to rise from.
“Thrumster, it’s called,” Isabella said. “Let’s see what’s happening down there.”
CHAPTER 05
Australia, NSW, town of Thrumster
Thrumster was a smallish town in New South Wales with a population of just over two thousand people.
It was close to the larger town of Port Macquarie and had an older community and was nestled in amongst thick Australian bush land. The area was known for having a huge koala population, and also the fishing in nearby Lake Innes.
They didn’t get all that many tourists in the summer months because it got frypan hot, and the snakes and funnel web spiders tried to find shade – be that in your tent, sleeping bag, or even shoes.
Chief Inspector Frank Hardcourt and a deputy, Nathan Fitzsimmons, were dispatched to see why the local constable outpost had gone dark, and no one seemed to be answering phones.
The pair of men were impatient to go in but they were told that there was an international team that would be coming to meet them, and they were to hold off entering the town proper until they arrived.
“Bugger that,” Hardcourt spat.
They drove their Land Rover into the main street and Constable Fitzsimmons slowed; it was quiet, strangely quiet.
“Where is everyone?” Hardcourt asked the windshield.
