Waking Up
The Evil Dead
by Random
***
DISCLAIMER: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and all its
characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, 20th
Century Fox and the WB Network. "Evil
Dead," "Evil Dead 2," "Army of Darkness" and all their characters and names are
property of Sam Raimi and Renaissance Pictures. "Splattermania" written by Ginger, published by Warner Chappel
Music Ltd. "Far Beyond Metal" written
by Devin Townsend, Gene Hoglan, Jed Simon, Byron Stroud and John Paul Morgan,
published by Bucket of Nothing Music.
DESCRIPTION: Buffy/Evil Dead crossover. A mysterious book surfaces in Sunnydale and
soon people start getting possessed by an evil force. Now it's up to the gang to get things under control, all with a
little help from a certain S-Mart clerk with a chainsaw for a hand.
RATING: R
FEEDBACK: Yes, please!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was my very first Buffy fanfiction that
I wrote way back in 1999. It takes
place towards the end of season three. Thanks
to Kent for pointing out my glaring omission of the term "boomstick." And thanks to Devin, Ginger and Jason for
all the music.
NOTE: This fic's original title was "There's
Something Evil In The Parking Lot".
* * *
PART II
* * *
"You did
what?" Giles asked wide-eyed.
"We
cut the sucker up and buried it," Ash answered setting down a heavy bag of supplies
on the library table, next to the bags that Buffy and Xander had hauled in and
the shopping bag that Cordelia had retrieved from the parking lot.
"And
it was dead then?" the watcher inquired.
"Not
quite," Xander said wiping some sweat from his brow. "One of the disembodied hands tried to strangle me while the
other one was feeling Cordelia up."
Giles
turned and looked at the cheerleader who promptly turned a bright shade of
red. This time she didn't care that the
color clashed with her clothing.
"It
was very much like a demented Addams Family episode," Buffy added.
Ash
unzipped the duffel bag before him and started unloading several handguns and
shotguns onto the table. The second bag
revealed an arsenal off ammunition of all kinds, while the third held a
Bazooka, an AK-47 and Ash's beat up chainsaw.
Giles
looked on in disbelief as his library was turned into an armory. "Buffy?" he muttered. "Why all the guns?"
Ash
answered for her. "Blondie says that
she is some sort of vampire killer."
"Slayer,"
Buffy and Giles said in unison.
"Yeah,
sure," Ash said derisively. "Look, if
you wanna believe in vampires suit yourselves.
But the deadites are tough suckers, those little wooden sticks ain't
gonna do nothing to them." Ash held up
his sawed off shotgun and added, "But my boomstick here has gotten me out of
many a fix. So we 'borrowed' the
merchandise from S-Mart. Unfortunately
the tank we have on order hasn't come in yet."
"And
what's in the bag at the end," Giles asked pointing at Cordelia's shopping
bag."
"Nothing,"
Xander answered, "just Cordy indulging her shoe fetish."
The
cheerleader shot him a dirty look for that comment which he chose to ignore.
Ash
took a look around the library then turned back to Giles. "Fluffy also said you've got the book."
"For
the millionth time: my name is Buffy," Buffy fumed.
"Yeah,"
Ash laughed, "like that's any more of
a name!"
"The
book?" Giles muttered, still confused by the present state of things. "Oh, the Necronomicon! Yes, it's in my office." He ran off to retrieve it.
Xander
picked up the AK-47 and an ammunitions clip and loaded the rifle with a few
quick moves, making it look like he had practiced it a million times
before. He drew some raised eyebrows
from his cohorts. "What?" he asked
sheepishly, when he noticed everybody looking at him. "Remember Halloween?"
"Soldier
Boy, thinks he's all cool cause he's got a big gun now," Ash muttered to
himself.
A
moment or two later Giles reemerged from his office, Necronomicon in hand. "Now, Mr…-" he gave Ash an inquisitive look.
"Name's
Ash," he answered. "Housewares."
"Quite,"
Giles muttered. "So, Mr. Ash, you say
you have come across these demons before?"
"Yes,
several years ago," Ash said sitting down in one of the chairs around the table. "I had traveled out to a cabin in the middle
of nowhere with my girlfriend Linda. There
I found the book and a tape recorder with the translated spell. I played the tape and it unleashed that
thing on us. I took Linda. Then it got my hand." He looked
down at the metal glove on his right arm.
"I had to cut it off at the wrist."
Cordelia
shuddered slightly as she thought about that.
"With
a little help I was finally able to push the dark spirit through a rift in
space and time. But it swallowed my car
and me too. I ended up medieval
England. There I had to fight a whole
army of those deadites. Finally one of
the wisemen was able to send me back to this time. I was back at S-Mart living my life in peace. And now you morons come along and set that
spirit free again." Ash was gradually
getting angrier and finally he just yelled, "Don't you people ever think about
what you are translating and what the spell can cause if you recite it out
loud?"
"I
wouldn't dream of doing that," Giles answered.
"Unfortunately somebody, presumably one of the vampires, did it before
we were able to get to the book."
"Pffft,"
Ash scoffed, "there you go with your freaking vampires again."
"You
said that you were able to push the evil spirit through a rift in time and
space?" Giles asked and Ash nodded in
response. "How were you able to do
that?"
"It's
all in the book," Ash replied. "There's
two passages. One to make the spirit
appear in the flesh and another one to create the rift. But this time figure out how to close the
rift beforehand. Can you translate the
text?"
"Yes,"
Giles mused. "But I'll need help. Buffy, page Willow and Oz and get them over
here. It's gonna be a long night."
"You
have no idea," Ash muttered to himself.
* * *
The van stopped by the back door of the
library.
"Go
in and get started," Oz said. "I'll
make a snack run."
"Be
careful," Willow answered. "Sounds like
the situation is pretty precarious."
"Precarious?"
Oz smiled. "I love it when you talk
smart!"
He
gave his girlfriend a quick kiss on the lips and watched her get out, then
pulled away to get snacks.
Willow
entered the library through the door at the back of the stacks and was quite
surprised by what she saw. Giles was
engrossed in that creepy book bound in human skin that Buffy had found,
Cordelia was bringing a big stack of books to him, Xander was fiddling with
what seemed to be a high-powered assault rifle, Buffy was worrying at a shotgun
in her hand and some stranger was sitting at the table cleaning a
chainsaw. She hoped that it wasn't
blood that the stranger's shirt was covered in, but she had a bad feeling that
it was. Nobody seemed to have noticed
her coming in.
Willow
cleared her throat. "Hey, guys."
The
stranger instantly dropped his chainsaw, grabbed a shotgun and pointed it right
between Willows eyes. "Who are you," he
demanded.
"Whoa,
Ash," Xander exclaimed. "Calm
down. That's Willow, she's with us."
The
new guy looked at Willow for a moment longer.
"Aren't there any grown ups in this town?" he groaned. "This is turning into a B-Movie!" Finally he put the gun down and resumed
tinkering with his chainsaw. Willow
looked at the arsenal of weapons spread out on the table and didn't like what
she saw at all.
"I'm
happy to see we're not on edge," Willow said sarcastically. "What's the occasion?"
"The
vampires were able to release an evil spirit into our dimension and we have to
translate the passages that stop it," Giles answered, taking the opportunity to
clean his glasses. "I need you to get
on the net and see if you can find anything on some of these characters."
Willow
walked around to Giles side and picked up a piece of paper on which he had
jotted down some notes about what he wanted her to find.
"Where's
Oz," Buffy asked.
"Oh,
he's out making a snack run. He'll be
right back."
Willow
sat down at the computer and within short time was completely engrossed in her
task.
* * *
It was moving in on a parking lot again. But this time it was moving in on the high school
building. The lot was mostly empty and
no lights were on in the building. It
slowly moved along one wall and finally saw a row of windows with light shining
through them. It flew up to a window
and looked in on the scene inside.
A
few people were moving around inside going after their own business. It recognized the girl that it tried to get
to earlier in the mall.
JOIN
US.
* * *
Cordelia screamed and looked around the room
frantically. She could see nothing out
of the ordinary, but she was sure she had heard it.
"Cordy,
what's wrong?" Xander asked.
"Did
you hear anything?" She was slowly
inching her way to the center of the room.
The
others looked around and at each other then shook their heads. "We didn't hear anything," Buffy said reassuringly
putting her hand on Cordelia's shoulder.
"We're all very nervous. Maybe
you just imagined it."
"No
I didn't," Cordelia responded. "I heard
it. It said 'join us' again."
Ash
grabbed his shotgun and looked around the room. "It's out there," he announced.
"It's watching us, waiting for the right time to strike."
Cordelia
felt tears running down her face. The
others didn't know, except for Ash maybe.
They hadn't felt it, they didn't know the incredible evil that was
lurking outside.
* * *
It was watching the scene that was unfolding
inside the library, when it heard something pass by behind it. A van was pulling into the parking lot. It slowly followed the vehicle as it headed
into the main lot. The van pulled
around and stopped in a space facing the direction that it was coming from.
It
could see the orange haired kid inside rooting around, trying to collect all
the bags he had with him. He was so
busy that he didn't even notice it approaching.
It
speeded up and raced towards the van.
The kid screamed as it broke through the windshield.
* * *
Willow came out of the bathroom shaking her
hands dry. They had run out of paper
towels again and of course the dispensers hadn't been filled up.
Cordelia
was really starting to freak her out.
Willow had been told what had happened earlier, but she wasn't really
sure what to make of it. What Cordelia
had experienced in the mall parking lot seemed to have been really bad, yet she
had been completely unable to describe it.
She
set off down the hallway leading back to the library when she heard her name
being called from behind her.
"Willow…"
She
stopped and turned around. All she saw
was a deserted hallway, which made her wonder whether she had heard anything at
all. But the voice had seemed so very
familiar.
"Oz?"
she called out tentatively.
Her
voice echoed around the walls for a few seconds before giving way to total
silence again.
"Yeah,"
Oz's voice called back all of a sudden, startling Willow. "Can you help me with these bags?"
"Oh,
sure" she answered, breaking into a run down the hallway. But as she got further down the hall she
still saw no sign of her boyfriend. She
stopped and took in her surroundings.
"Oz?" she whispered.
The
door to the classroom behind Willow burst open and suddenly there was an arm
around her neck while something bit into her shoulder.
Willow
screamed.
* * *
"Willow?" Xander said as he heard the scream
coming from the hallway.
Xander
scooped up his rifle and ran out of the library doors. Ash quickly removed his metal hand and
attached the chainsaw to his right stump.
Then he grabbed the bazooka off the table and headed after Xander.
Xander
tried his best to follow his friend's screams and finally he found her
struggling with somebody holding her from behind. He assumed that it was Oz because of the mop of orange hair in
top, but otherwise it bore no resemblance to Willow's boyfriend. His first instinct was to shoot, but it was
too close to Willow and he was afraid to hit the wrong person. So Xander quickly flipped his gun around and
hit the assailant in the head with the stock.
This
seemed to have surprised the demonified Oz as it let go of Willow. Xander quickly scooped her behind himself
and admonished her to stay back. Xander
again leveled a blow at the deadite Oz with his gun, which sent it reeling for
a moment. But it quickly regained its
bearings, grabbed Xander by the shoulder and started savagely punching him in
the face.
The
deadite got in a good many punches before Xander was able to turn his AK-47
around and point the barrel at its chest and pull the trigger. The possessed Oz's chest exploded in a
torrent of blood and it let go of Xander and stumbled backwards a few steps. It examined the hole in its chest for a
moment before looking up at Xander in disbelief.
"Keep
shooting," Ash screamed in the dazed Xander's ear. "Drive him further back, see if you can get some distance between
him and us."
Instinctively
Xander squeezed the trigger again and kept firing at the demon before him as
the hail of bullets slowly pushed it down the hallway. When Xander's clip was empty Xander suddenly
heard a loud roar next to him and he saw a rocket careen towards the deadite. The projectile exploded on impact with the
deadite splattering it all over the walls and ceiling.
"That's
gotta hurt," Xander heard Ash mutter next to him.
Xander
took in the freshly redecorated hallway for a few moments. "I wonder why nobody ever thought of
painting the hallway red before," he mused.
"It's a good color."
"The
janitors are going to curse us for this tomorrow morning," Willow added.
"Don't
worry," Xander replied. "The lunch lady
will probably scrape him off the walls and serve him."
* * *
"Willow are you okay?" Buffy asked as the group
reentered the library.
Willow
nodded clutching her shoulder, which was bleeding slightly.
"Where's
Oz?" Buffy added when she noticed the boy missing.
"Whatever
is out there got to him," Willow said sadly.
"It possessed him, he attacked me.
Oz is dead."
"Dead?"
Buffy exclaimed. "Does that mean
there's not gonna be any snacks?"
Xander
dropped his head sadly. "No snacks," he
muttered unnecessarily.
"No
snacks?" Buffy repeated. "That means if
that spirit out there doesn't get to us, then we'll starve to death."
Ash
walked over to where Giles was sitting, his eyes glued to the pages of the
Necronomicon. "How are we doing?" Ash
asked.
Giles
looked up for a moment, blinking his eyes to get them into focus after staring
at the book for too long. "We're making
progress," he sighed. "Slowly but
steadily."
"That's
it," Buffy fumed. "I'm going to get
food. Anybody want to come with me?"
"You
won't be able to," Cordelia said taking everybody by surprise. She was sitting by one of the library's
windows, solemnly staring out into the night.
Her expression was a mixture of resigned bravery and budding despair. "You can't get out of here."
The
rest of the group except for Giles ran up behind her and looked out the
window. They were completely stumped by
what they saw.
"The
parking lot…" Xander stammered. "The
exits are gone."
On
first inspection everything seemed normal outside the window. But as they kept looking around they started
noticing that all ways to exit the campus had disappeared. They couldn't quite put their finger on how,
but all they knew was that there was no way to get beyond the parking lot.
"We're
trapped," Cordelia whispered. "It took
Oz. It's gonna come back and take each
and every one of us."
Xander
stepped back from the window and considered their predicament for a few
moments. "So basically," he speculated,
"we're a group of teenagers trapped in a building with no apparent help from
outside, with an evil spirit roaming on the outside waiting to possess and kill
us one by one." His face clouded
over. "We're trapped in a horror movie
cliché," he concluded heavily.
"Well,
let's get back to work to get ourselves out of B-Movie hell," Buffy said.
* * *
About an hour later Giles, Buffy and Xander
were immersed in books in deep research mode, Willow was working on the
computer, Ash was taking stock of their firepower while Cordelia was still
staring out the window.
Suddenly
Willow looked up and a smile unfolded across her face. "Hey, guys," she announced happily, "I think
you should take a look at this."
Giles,
Xander and Buffy quickly ran behind the counter to see what Willow wanted to
show them. She was scrolling through an
obscure web page filled with symbols similar to the ones in the Necronomicon
and lengthy explanations.
"That
is remarkable," Giles muttered to himself as he skimmed over the contents.
"Oh,
you think this is remarkable," Willow said smugly. "Well, check this out."
Willow
opened a blank screen and started typing at a frantic pace that impressed
everyone present. But then they grew
more concerned as her speed increased.
They looked in horror at what was appearing on the screen.
JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN
US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US…
Xander
noticed that Willow's skin was changing color, starting from the spot where Oz
had bitten her, which they had bandaged earlier.
Willow's
head suddenly spun around and she hissed at her cohorts, her eyes completely
whited out. Then Willow quickly grabbed
Giles' head and rammed it through the glass of the computer monitor. Giles passed out with his head inside the
monitor, while all Xander and Buffy could do was scream. The possessed Willow quickly stood on its
chair and vaulted over the library counter, where Ash stood waiting for
it. The deadite kicked Ash in the face
and then flipped over him.
Ash
quickly pulled out his shotgun from the holster on his back and lowered it at
the deadite's head. "Say good night,
Willow," he said.
"Good
night, Willow," the demon spat back at him.
Ash
was about to pull the trigger when he heard Buffy scream behind him.
"Ash,
no!"
He
quickly lowered his gun and gave the demon a powerful kick to the chest putting
his whole weight into it, which sent it stumbling backwards into the cage used
to lock up Oz when he became a werewolf.
Ash quickly flipped the door shut before the deadite could regroup and
mount another attack.
The
possessed Willow jumped up against the cage rattling it and snarling at everybody
the way her boyfriend used to do every time the moon was full.
"Is
this gonna hold her?" Ash yelled at no one in particular. "It doesn't look too safe."
"It's
strong enough to hold Oz," Buffy answered still slightly dazed, "whenever he
becomes a werewolf."
"Werewolf?"
Ash cried in desperation. "You
screwheads believe in those too?"
Xander
and Buffy slowly approached the cage looking in disbelief at what used to be
their best friend. It was still
somewhat recognizable as Willow's body, but her skin had turned the same flaky
blue gray color of the other deadites.
It had ripped the bandage of its shoulder exposing a nasty wound, which
was slowly oozing blood. The deadite
stood with its hands on the cage, its raspy, deliberate breathing audible throughout
the library. Its eyes were darting back
and forth although the lack of pupils made it hard to tell who it was looking
at.
"You
think this is enough to stop us?" it screamed in its demonic voice. "We will take you all and then we will feast
upon your souls!"
"Shut
up!" Buffy yelled at the demon, tears running down her cheeks.
"Join
us!" it shrieked and then it started chanting.
"Join us, join us, join us…."
The deadite also did a little dance to complement its chant. It reminded everybody of one of the more
incompetent after-touchdown jigs. It
was however far too demonic to be described in this story.
"Shut
up!" Buffy repeated trying to scream over the demon's chant. Xander could see Buffy eyeing the array of
weapons on the table, wondering whether to pick one up and shoot her one time
best friend.
"What
are you gonna do, girly?" the deadite hissed.
"Are you gonna shoot me, huh?
You can't kill me!"
Buffy
scooped up a shotgun and fired a round to the demon's chest, which sent it
flying against the back wall. Finally
it collapsed to the floor in an untidy heap.
"No,"
Buffy said, "but I can shut you up."