A/N: Thank you all again for all the favorites, follows and reviews. Here's another chapter in the spirit of the holiday. Happy Halloween!
Guest: Here you go.
PART 8
The radio of my new used car re-hashed the strange eruption of Mt. St. Helens, this time to explain the warped weather we'd been experiencing. "…and headed straight for the New York/Manhattan area. All residents are encouraged to take shelter immediately," which was what I and everyone else was trying to do, resulting in a traffic jam of the century.
I was laying on my horn and drinking coffee and wondering what the fuck was with all the freakiness this year? The weather. The shooting at Goode High—attempted shooting anyway—Percy Jackson—
A constant blare of noise cut through the darkness. I blinked awake and raised my head up. The horn stopped. My car smelled like a café. Coffee dripped off my steering wheel and soaked into my pants, the seat and the flooring below. What the hell? I picked up the coffee, hitting my head against the steering wheel as I sat up. Still fuzzy from sleep, pain didn't quite register. The radio was still playing but they weren't going on about the eruption.
"—blackout all around the Manhattan area with the Empire State Building in the epicenter of the problem. Traffic is already being re-routed. If you are near the Empire State area turn around now. Dangerous weather systems have been reported in the area."
Outside the dashboard darkness had fallen. My phone said 4:47 but the darkness was black as midnight. Lightning flashed, an intense bolt so close every cell in my body convulsed with energy. Ozone burned the air. Briefly, there was light. Briefly, it illuminated a scene straight out of 300. Then I was blinking spots out of my eyes as they slowly adjusted to the darkness. Flashes of bronze fluttered between cars. Some kind of cosplay battle? A renaissance faire? What the hell were those idiots doing holding it in the middle of a blackout traffic storm?
Someone crashed against my car. I ducked. One Spartan warrior-type leapt over a van and landed as the first rose. Swords clashed. It all happened too fast. The first warrior's blade flew from small hands and hit my car, razor edges gleaming wickedly inches from my hair. I said nothing, frozen as ice. The second warrior thrust her blade in a crevice between the other's armor. Her enemy fell limply. Pressing a metallic boot on the other's chest, the second warrior tugged her sword free.
The weapon was covered in dark liquid.
I thought I had known fear when I stood up against my class alone. I knew nothing. Blood poured from the corpse. With the helmet rolled to the side beneath car headlights, I could see her clearly. Just a girl, not old enough to wear a bra, dressed in armor from five-thousand years ago.
The other fighter approached, and I cowered further into the seat, but she only yanked the sword from my car and left, heading toward the screams and curses behind me. As my eyes adjusted further, I could see bodies. Many limp bodies. And more fighting. Hundreds.
The earth trembled.
I've been through earthquakes. Feels like a herd of rhinos charging down the streets. Or elephants. This? Earth roiled like the ocean. Gaping gashes rent asphalt like cracks through an egg. I clung to the seat of my car. The nearest jagged canyon swallowed the dead body of the little girl and toward the center of it all the earth itself bulged.
Like it was hatching.
I should've kept my eyes down. Looked away. Gone back to sleep (if this wasn't a dream). Then fear to me would have only been an armored woman approaching me with a bloody sword. But like a train-wreck I couldn't look away.
Asphalt crackled and shattered, falling into a depthless pit. Shapes moved. No, those weren't real. Darkness flowed like liquid into the world and the lingering summer heat died beneath bone-biting cold. A horn keened like blizzard winds ripping through icy cliffs. Something blacker than the night's blackness rose into the world, blacker than a nightmare, carved with artwork Stephen King would have clawed his eyes out to look at, drawn by creatures which shouldn't exist. It was a tank of ancient times, lit by ghastly green fires. Except tanks were familiar things, human things, and this monstrosity was not.
It was pulled by demons. Creatures that did not exist now or ever, not in the bitterest ice age or blackest depths of the ocean. Four of them, worse than the four horses of the apocalypse. Beasts like no horror writer could have ever dreamed up, shifting to more and more terrifying forms. Impressions of fangs and armor and horns and hell-burning eyes passed through my eyes but nothing concrete. Darkness hid the worst. If it hadn't, I'd have gone insane.
What commanded them was worse.
Descriptions of the Devil speak of a man-shaped creature with bat wings and goat horns and a monstrous, fanged face and cloven hooves and eyes with hellish pupils. The Grim Reaper of story is all skeleton armed with a scythe sharp enough to cut reality.
I wish that was true. Every organ in my body turned liquid with terror. My fear circled to new heights, coming back around as something more, something worse. Physical terror drew me in like a black hole sucking in light. I couldn't look away.
The next moment was white-blank. I don't remember tearing out of my car like a wild animal. I'd been too afraid to scream, too afraid to freeze, my fear so powerful that it suppressed all those reactions with intense, heart-stopping numbness. My mind was gone. Instinct remained. Ancient nature from the time my ancestors were but mice among giants.
Those instincts saved my life.
I dove beneath a truck and shot out the other side. Something crashed behind me. No looking back. A motorcycle blocked my way, the rider throwing his leg over one side to flee. I leapt right over both, clearing the lane and sprinting down the sidewalk. Wet concrete was cluttered with fallen bodies—some starting to rise—crevices and rubbish. I should have twisted an ankle in three steps but fear and adrenaline gave me Olympian agility and speed.
I leapt aside. A pillar of ice smashed into the concrete where I'd been. Even then, I didn't scream but my terror-stricken heart skipped a few beats. A dark-haired, bronze-clad warrior, inhumanly quick, thrust his sword into the pillar, shattering it. More concrete-crushing footsteps rang from behind, I ran faster. Everywhere people got with the program. I stumbled over another person trying to jump from where she lay. My foot collided with her side, I jerked, I flipped in midair and hit the ground running. Out of here. Leave. Leave. Leave.
The packed townhouses and businesses turned to shore-line before I slowed. The worst of the fear bled out of me in a shaking rush that left me hands and knees in the wet sand. My heart trembled, I was hyper-aware of my quivering pulse and my jaw and eyes burned.
Thunder roared. I flinched with each terrible clap. Lightning flashed so close I could feel the strike through my teeth. It all looked like a storm from here. Just a wild, crazy storm.
Just a storm. Just a dream.
"—Clash between two rival gangs in the downtown Manhattan area. Scattered reports on fatalities estimate at least fifty, mostly teenagers. Astonishingly, the worst damage ringed the city's most famous skyscraper, the empire state building is unharmed and open to visitors as soon as the police investigation is over. Meanwhile the mysterious weather systems seemed to have disappeared virtually overnight—"
I hit the snooze button with shaking fingers and closed my eyes. Didn't help. The night had passed in a half-awake haze, struggling against recent memories to snatch a few precious hours of sleep. Two fighting rival gangs sounded sensible.
But I hadn't heard bullets.
No one could drive through the worst of the destruction but even from the photos it looked like a natural disaster had raped a war zone. Great, gaping cracks wounded the ground like an earthquake had hit, cars smashed and overturned and flooding. God I hoped mine wasn't among them. I remembered the earthquake like the ground still convulsed. Worst one ever. Turning the earth liquid and my car into a boat in the middle of the sea's fury. Everything beyond that was a muddle of darkness and horror and…
A car horn blared. I jerked my nails away from my face and looked up. Becca waited in her car for me because mine was still MIA. "Ellen?" She asked with concern.
"I'm fine." Just don't think about it.
"Look in the mirror."
I flipped down the visor and stared at the mirror. Even with makeup covering the worst I looked like a Walking Dead extra. Dark pink indentions decorated the darker bags beneath my eyes.
"Were you down there?" Becca asked carefully.
I snapped my attention away from the mirror. This part of the city was mostly untouched, it only looked like a bad storm had passed through. Someone grumbled about their lost cell phone. If I kept looking at the asphalt, I could see where the darkness bled through. "…yes," I said.
"…what was it like?" she asked at last.
In the warmth and light of day with my best friend the whole 'devil' idea seemed silly. A mushroom and LSD-induced hallucination of epic proportions—or a sleep and fear addled one—but I couldn't stop sweat from slicking my palms. Instead of morning traffic surrounding me, I saw the dead body swallowed by the earth; a pillar of ice dropping from the sky. Just a nightmare. Just a storm. Just a dream. Becca's car still felt too cold. That night was a nightmare I could never forget.
"Nevermind," she said. "Do you want to stop somewhere and—"
"You're lucky," I rasped. Though I was jealous her eyes hadn't been burned by what I couldn't unsee, I was still glad she hadn't been there. "Just...don't talk about it."
"Sorry. There's a coffee shop and they've got a new butterbeer flavor."
Seeing That Thing had done something to me. Much as I tried to forget, tried to think 'it's only a storm, only a dream' that rising Devil wouldn't leave me be. But Becca hadn't seen anything. She hadn't seen that.
Lucky she wasn't there.
A/N: Normally my updating schedule is a little more flexible, but I had to post this chapter on Halloween.
