DEMON HUNTERS: THE DESCENT

Valerie was just reaching the main doors when she watched in horror as Marcos fell. He had held on long enough against that powerful Reaper to let them escape from that hell, but she didn’t understand why. The droning noise grew louder. More discordant, demonic voices shrieked and cursed in triumph, the awful sounds echoing down the long corridor after her.

When she reached the last exit doors, she could see the night sky and all the shining stars twinkling in the blackness. She pushed against the doors with her back. They wouldn’t budge.

“Fuck!” she screamed.

She let go of Will and shoved with her cut, bleeding shoulder, using all the force she could muster. They had lost the fight in this maddening place. All she knew now-all she felt-was that she had to save this kid after losing Ethan. She pushed a third time, yelling, “Fucking open!”

Finally, the doors flew open from the rage behind her forceful push. She grabbed Will and pulled him outside into the cold night air. The Chevrolet Lumina wasn’t far now, and she dragged Will toward it. She was exhausted, but she kept pulling him until she finally reached the car. She grabbed the door handle and yanked the backseat door open. Then, with a rage-filled effort, she lifted Will and pushed him inside.

At that moment, the windows of the building exploded, sending shards of glass everywhere. With Will safely inside, she slammed his door shut and ran to the driver’s side. She flung that door open, got in, turned the key, and started the engine. She stomped on the gas pedal and roared out of there.

More windows exploded behind them, and the echoes of those dark, cursing voices still rang out. She heard them say, “Run! You will both be slaughtered at the altar of hell! We will open wide the doors!”

Valerie sped up, headlights on, hitting eighty on the road, her own screams overriding the demonic voices reaching her ears. Now and then, she turned to glance at Will. “It’s all fucked!” she said to him in a frantic, rapid voice. “I’m taking you to a safe place.” Her tone was desperate. “It’s only a couple of hours away… they won’t find us there!”

Will, with the long gash on his face still bleeding, opened his eyes for a brief moment. He stared up at Valerie from where his wrecked body lay, but to him, it could have all been just another bad dream, like the ones he was used to having. Maybe he really was in a car with the girl who had joined the fight in Sanctuary. Maybe it was the Reapers messing with his head. Maybe he was still in Sanctuary, slowly dying from his wounds. He didn’t know. His eyes closed again.

Valerie drove on and soon turned onto East 304. She had to get to Cross Street, where the abandoned house was. She and other addicts had used it to get their fix and zone out of this world. That was where she would help Will stay alive. If they both survived, that was a win-and the Reapers hated to lose. She smiled to herself and let out a maddened laugh. Eat that, you fuckers!

Will mumbled something, then called out for his mother. She turned and glanced at him for a few seconds. He was losing too much blood. She had to get to that house fast, where she could stop his bleeding. She was hitting ninety-five now, maintaining control of the car with all her effort, trying not to crash, trying not to die in their escape from hell.

At least forty-five minutes later, she finally pulled onto Cross Street. The car screeched down the empty road toward one of four abandoned houses in the area. She stopped right in front of it, turned off the car, and looked around into the pitch dark. There didn’t seem to be any druggies around, and no one was inside. The door was bolted shut, with police tape around the house and some papers stuck to the door.

She got out of the car and limped over to the passenger side, opened the door, and grabbed Will. She pulled him out and dragged him up the porch steps. She left him there and went back to the car. On the passenger side, she grabbed a tire iron that was lying on the floor.

She limped back to the porch, ripped off the tape, and wedged the tire iron between the heavy lock, pulling down with all her might to break it. She strained, pain shooting through her body, but the lock finally broke under the pressure. She dropped the tire iron and pushed the door open. Then she grabbed Will, pulled him inside, and closed the door behind them.

It was dim and cool in there, just like she remembered-and she began to crave it again, the heroin, the sunshine dust that took her to the Ferris wheel. There would be time for that later. Right now, she had to stop the kid’s bleeding before he died on her too.

She laid him on a beat-up couch and then went into a closet. She opened it-there were still some blankets there. She took one and limped back to him, then took out her knife and started to rip the blanket.

She began to bandage Will’s cuts-first the gash on his face, then his head, followed by his arms and hand. At least the bleeding was stopped, and he just might make it. Cynthia, her nurse girlfriend, could get what he needed to get better, and he would need lots of morphine for the pain. But that would have to wait until tomorrow.

She then limped to the bathroom and turned on the water in the old bathtub. She stuck her head under the faucet, wetting her face and hair and drinking up the cold water, her thirst unquenchable. She turned the water off and rested there for a long moment, thinking hard, fast, and chaotically.

She took the blanket and ripped it into more strips. She started to wrap some strips around her shoulder, then wrapped others around her wrist and neck. The bad neck wound was courtesy of that demonic bitch-the one the kid had finished off for her. There was some satisfaction in dead Reapers.

An hour had passed since they arrived, and as she leaned against the wall, her mind was racing. She wanted to go back there. She watched the high school kid on the sofa for a moment. All she knew was that Ethan had called him Will. She didn’t know who he was, but he had fought hard in that place. There was no doubt now-they were on the same side.

She turned away and limped to the kitchen cabinet. She rummaged through the drawers and found a single cigarette lying in the corner. She grabbed it and lit it with the lighter she slipped from her pants pocket. She let out a satisfied sigh-she needed that badly. But what she could really use was heroin or morphine right now. That would do wonders for her.

She watched the smoke as she exhaled, and in that moment, she knew what she had to do when she got to Sanctuary. She had to get back there before the break of dawn, before the townsfolk woke up to their daily routines, completely oblivious to what was happening around them.

The pain in her leg was killing her, but she didn’t give a shit. She had to settle a score with them. And the kid, Will-he would be okay here for now. She knew, too, that if she didn’t make it back, he would die in this abandoned house. It was a chance she had to take.

She limped over to the door, opened it, and stood for a moment at the threshold. She glanced at Will, then closed the door behind her. At the car, she quickly got in and turned the engine on. She saw that the tank was nearly empty. The engine roared, and she took off the same way she had arrived.

Half an hour later, she stopped at an all-night motel. A few lights were on, and three cars were parked there. She got out of the Chevrolet Lumina and limped over to a cherry-red car. She popped the trunk with a screwdriver and looked inside-it was empty except for a spare tire.

She moved on to a gray car and popped its trunk. Her eyes lit up. There was a drum, and it was full of gasoline. She took it and limped back to her car, filling up the tank. There was still some gasoline left. She went to a trash can and looked through it, finding plenty of bottles inside. She took four of them and limped back to her car, placing the drum of gasoline and the bottles on the passenger seat.

She touched the bandage on her neck-it was wet with her blood. She knew she had to get to Cynthia soon-she was losing blood, too. She hit the gas and roared out of the motel parking lot, back onto East 304 and toward Sanctuary Hospital. The Chevrolet Lumina tore up the long road at ninety, racing to make time before the break of dawn.

It was exactly one hour and thirteen minutes later when she arrived at Sanctuary. It was still barely dark out and mostly quiet, except for a low droning noise. The doors of the place were wide open. She began to pour gasoline into four bottles, then placed a piece of the blanket into the neck of each one. She got out of the car and limped toward the entrance with four Molotov cocktails, two in each hand. She limped inside the corridor and made her way to the center.

She gasped in horror when she saw Ethan and the man, Marcos, lying side by side, their bodies torn and bloodied. Next to them, a grinning, twisted demonic face had formed in the blood on the floor, and the words WE MISSED YOU, VALERIE were written right beside it in the same blood. They were fucking mocking her again! She could bet they were laughing their demonic asses off at her right now.

What was worse was that scary bastard Zethraker knew she was coming back and had placed the bodies there for her to see what he’d done to them. Yeah, that Reaper was really fucking with her now.

“Bastard!”

She moved in closer, got to her knees, and placed the bottles on the floor next to her. She wiped away the twisted, grinning face with her hands, smearing away the message too. Then she held Ethan’s small body in her arms, staring at his agonized face one last time. “I swear,” she said to him, tears in her eyes, “I swear I’m going to kill them all and send him back to that hell... just like you wanted to do.”

There was an eerie silence, except for the low droning sound coming from the red glow at the end of the corridor where their door to hell was. It sounded like it was just waking up. She hated that sound as much as she hated those Reapers and their fucked-up grins.

She gently placed Ethan back on the floor and let him go. She picked up one of the bottles and got to her feet. She called out to Reaper Zethraker, “Come out, you motherfucker!”

She expected Reaper Zethraker to come out and attack her with his minions. She was willing to die and burn there with him if she had to, with all that came at her, right where she stood. But that bastard never came out to meet her. The door was still there, pulsing and droning and waking. She waited, daring any of the Reapers to show themselves. “I said come out, you fuckers!” she called to them again. But there was only that damn droning noise.

At that moment, it wasn’t any kind of fear that got to her, but the utter feeling of loneliness. She hated that feeling more than anything else. It was what she felt when Jacklyne was gone-it was when she had felt most alone in the world. And there was nothing worse than feeling alone.

She staggered a little closer to the end of the corridor. She lit the Molotov cocktail with her lighter and threw it toward the red glow, engulfing the entire corridor in front of her in flames. She slowly backed away but stopped to look at the bodies of Ethan and Marcos as the fire rolled down the sides of the walls and across the floor. The flames were moving closer to them. “It all went so wrong…” she said to Ethan.

She picked up the other bottles and backed away farther as the flames now engulfed the two bodies. She turned and staggered back to the entrance, hurrying outside. Once outside, she lit another Molotov and threw it at the front wall, then tossed another through the shattered window on the second floor, engulfing the entire building in flames.

As the building burned, she hurried over to the car and got back in. She watched Sanctuary burn for a long moment. Then she started the engine and drove out of there, just as the early morning sky grew dark with black smoke. The stars were gone now.

She watched the flames through the rearview mirror, a smile forming on her face. Then, when she glanced back at the road, a Reaper dog was suddenly standing in the distance, waiting for her. It stared intently at her, baring its black teeth. She sped up, hitting ninety, heading straight for the Reaper dog.

Moments later, the car slammed into the Reaper dog, its body hitting hard against the windshield. She laughed heartily at the physical pain that Reaper must have felt.

She slammed on the brakes, and the car stopped with a screech of tires. She got out, went over to the Reaper dog, and knelt down beside it. It stared at her with those dark eyes, so full of hate for her. It wanted nothing more than to tear the flesh off her face and rip her apart as it snapped at her.

She held its head down, drew close to its hairy ear, and whispered, “Tell that fucker I’m coming for him!”

She slipped her knife out and stabbed it in the neck over and over until the head was almost severed and whatever dark soul was inside was gone. Its black blood splattered all over her, and she felt utterly sick at the awful feel and smell of it, but that smile never left her face.

She rose and looked up at the dawning sky-she had to get back to Will, had to make sure he didn’t die. She got back into the car and drove off, heading back to the abandoned house.