Chapter 98: Book 2 Chapter 5 - Liquid Fires of Hell

Zoe’s face exploded like a jar of salsa hitting the sidewalk as a bullet passed through her skull. Blood and brains spattered Bella’s face as she turned to see what Anton was going to say.

Maybe she would find an opportunity to explain the emotions roiling inside her. She wasn’t angry, or sad, but somewhere in the valley between and none of that mattered as Zoe slumped from her chair and onto the ground. Brain trying to catch up.

Zoe's skull was still mostly intact. Tongue flopping. A harsh noise escaped her ruined lips.

“Ke ke ke ke,” Zoe’s tongue flopped as her body twitched. “Ke kss kssss.”

A hard flat crack echoed in the distance.

Mirror flickered over Zoe’s skin, draping itself over the ruined portions of her face, but still her blood pooled across the tiled floor of the gas station. The defensive technique was too little too late.

What just happened?

Bella stared in shock.

Anton grabbed her shirt and yanked her down to the ground.

“They’re sniping us,” he said.

The hole exploded in the center of the table. Anton started crawling toward the kitchen. Bella’s heart pounded in her ears. Sweaty hands gripped the runeblade as it hissed.

Your enemies have announced themselves, said the blade. Gift them death.

“The bugs?” she asked.

“I don’t know…” Anton frowned as he focused on his technique. “I can’t see anything, oh. Do you see any windows?”

Bella looked around from where she lay on the tiled floor. Paintings on the walls of smiling hamburgers, soft drinks, and hot dogs. Their eyes wobbled with glee, their rictus grins stretched to the point of pain.

“There are no windows in here,” she said. “But we saw through them on the way inside.”

“Some kind of illusion is hiding the windows. I have an eye outside, but I can’t see where they’re shooting from. We have to get them to shoot again…”

Zoe jerked once, her hand clasped Bella’s calf. Squeezed with enough strength to bruise and then stilled. Dead.

The blade burned in Bella’s hand as something dropped inside her — a trapdoor in her stomach leading to a bottomless pit — the dark behind her eyes — she fell like a cut anchor.

Find the enemy, whispered her sword. They have insulted our honor. We must destroy them.

“I can’t tell if there’s more than one shooter,” Anton said. “Why don’t you --”

The tiles bubbled around Zoe. The ground swelled and popped as teeth slid up in a razor-tipped circle around her corpse. Sharklike jaws emerged to consume the corpse of her friend.

“Demon…” croaked a familiar voice.

Oriz opened her yellow eyes and tried to sit up but her body failed her.

“You fools brought us inside a demon.”

Mouths split along the ceiling, the walls, they moved like bubbles of teeth toward the warm bodies. Toward Zoe, Anton, Oriz.

Toward Bella.

She swung her sword at the teeth, and they shattered. Blood oozed from the tiles Flesh twisted and wriggled against the tip of her blade. The ground shifted beneath her. A groan echoed through the building. She shuddered.

She had to move.

Do something.

Run.

[Fools Rush In]

[May a second chance give you the strength to grasp an opportunity]

[Deleting current timeline…]

Bella’s eyes widened as flames spilled from the ceiling, the floor, the pooling blood, and the very air itself. She retreated against the wall, but everything burned. Atoms spewed liquid fire as the world consumed itself.

Anton screamed as he charred. Bella tried to scream, but there was no air.

The flames devoured her, and the searing heat swept her mind clean of all thoughts.

[Timeline deleted]

[11/12 charges remaining]

She sat in her chair, a loose leg rocking under her weight as she wiped meat grease from her fingertips to a napkin. The napkin was dirty, she needed another but was enjoying the lazy peace of the moment. Thinking about eating and eating until she got fat. There were no more nightclubs anymore, so why bother looking fit? She didn’t even know if there were any men besides Anton and she’d go to the other team before she went to bed with…

Fire.

Her thoughts caught up to her memory.

She backed out of the chair. Looked around. The dining area was the same. Around twenty tables. The kitchen behind a swinging door. Old tiles, not dirty, but old. Paintings on the wall. The food watching her.

Her friends watched her. Zoe raised an eyebrow.

Zoe…

Head splattered open like a rotten cantaloupe.

Bella ran a few steps and puked.

Be strong, the blade whispered. You must avenge them.

It was in her hand. Why was it in her hand?

“My cooking isn’t that bad, is it?” said Zoe.

Bella wiped a shaking… no. She stood, grabbed a fistful of napkins, and cleaned her lips.

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“We’re not safe here.”

“The bugs didn’t even chase us down the hill,” Anton said.

Bella ignored him. She could smell the grease from the cooling grill. Hear the background whine and drone of the fridges. Hear the lick of flames on skin…

No.

She couldn’t smell that.

Enemies, the blade urged her. Kill the enemies. Avenge your friends.

She stared down at her white-knuckled grip on the handle. How did the blade know the enemies were out there? Was it’s mind linked to hers or were these her thoughts all along?

The tattoo along her wrist read ‘memento mori’ she thought it was cool when she was younger and had been looking at it so long she no longer thought about the words.

Remember that you die.

That you have to die.

She remembered death, and something steel settled inside her spine as she straightened. The blade crooned.

“They’re going to shoot us,” Bella said.

“Who?”

She shook her head.

“There’s a sniper outside. In a few minutes, they shoot Zoe. I used a time loop to warn you.”

Anton slammed a hand on the table.

“The windows!” he said. “There’s no windows.”

Bella urged Zoe up.

“We have to leave.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw you die.”

Zoe checked Bella’s eyes, before she nodded, and stood.

“If I find out this is some weird plot for your sword to steal my soul…” the joke died as it left Zoe’s scarred lips. “Where do we go?”

“Anton,” Bella said. “Where are the fewest windows?”

He pointed back to the entrance.

“Behind the register seems the safest, though if they have a proper rifle I think they can shoot through.”

“Let’s go.”

Zoe scooped up Oriz as Bella led the way. They hurried out of the dining area toward the entrance. The shelves of snacks stood waiting. A blue puddle spread beneath the slushie machine. Hum of fridges, the faint static drone of screens behind the register, the held breath of a store as customers wander the aisles.

They huddled behind the register. There was barely enough space for the three of them, even when Zoe set Oriz on her lap. Bella’s back pressed against a drawer full of cigarettes as she gripped her sword.

“And you’re sure there’s a sniper?” Anton asked.

“You don’t see anything?”

“The mantises are there, watching.”

“Still?” Zoe asked. “Bastards.”

“Maybe they cared about that bug we killed. It could be their little brother.”

“Or they want the tooth.”

“You should let me hold it, for safekeeping, since you died apparently.”

“Shut up, Anton,” Bella said. “You seriously see nothing else?”

“Just a group of crows flying from one tree to another.”

Zoe frowned.

“What happened exactly?” she asked Bella. “Why don’t we remember anything?”

“I think only my memory is preserved,” Bella said as she glanced at her sword. “The System told me it deleted the timeline, and I saw everything — I mean everything — burn. And then I was back in my body. When you died, the ground grew teeth and ate you.”

They all stared at the black rubber mat they sat upon. It was softish foam. Designed to help someone’s feet when they stand for eight hours at a time. There were no teeth, but they did not feel safe.

“I knew we shouldn’t have come in here,” Anton said. “A working gas station? Empty? So obviously some horrendous trap.”

“You said nothing of the sort!” Bella responded

“We should leave though.”

“Someone is trying to shoot us!”

Anton seemed unimpressed.

“I see nothing.”

“Maybe your technique isn’t as foolproof as you think if you didn’t even notice the windows.”

“You didn’t notice the windows either! Look, the only thing out there is… huh.”

“What?” Zoe asked.

“The crows are gone.”

###

Derek flew on the wings of a dozen crows. It always felt… wrong… to have his body broken up like this. Too much like someone hacked him apart and threw the pieces in the air. The fear, the constant numbing fear, was that he wouldn’t be able to put himself back together again.

The crows landed in a tree. Claws gripped snow-coated branches. Perching. Watching — the omnidirectional, overlapping view made him want to vomit.

[Under My Wing]

The crows vanished. He was himself again. Nestled in the crook of the branches, folded within the stealth technique he would never release. Not while monsters prowled the earth.

As his mother used to say: better to hide and not be hit than to be struck down and never rise.

It was dark as he peered through his scope. The long yellow swirls in the sky only changed the color of the shadows from black to indigo. But there was plenty of light inside the gas station.

He wasn’t sure what the strangers were doing, or why they had moved right when he was ready to fire, but in the apocalypse, he would not take any chances. Though he could only see a few hairs sticking above the counter, the reflections on the screens showed him they huddled behind the counter.

They had packed themselves like fish in a barrel. There was no way he could miss, and that counter was as bulletproof as plywood. With any luck, he would hit that demon woman first. Not that she had any real chance of retaliating, but still… in this new, insane world it didn’t pay to take anything for granted.

Like those monstrous bugs that kept coming closer and closer to the gas station…

He shook his head. Not the time for thoughts to wander. Out of the seven of them, he was the hunter. The rest were just country store clerks sworn to serve a demon. They relied on him, and so he would be reliable.

The gas station sat as pristine as ever in the snow. Yellow light bleeding from the wounds in the walls. Trucks covered in snow. The whole artifice quivered with organic anticipation. The One-Eyed Crow needed him, relied on him…

He lined up his shot, adjusted for angle and distance, and felt the rifle come alive in his hands. He was the only one from the hunting trip to hold onto his weapon and the One-Eyed Crow had rewarded him with its demonic blessing.

The rifle didn’t feel different.

The rifle was another world.

He closed his eyes as the paradox slipped through his bloodstream before he opened, sighted, and breathed.

“I offer this kill to the One-Eyed Crow.”

He fired.

###

“We can’t argue,” Zoe said after it appeared Bella and Anton wouldn’t tire themselves out. “I trust you, Bella. But what are we going to do? If there is someone outside shooting in, then there could be more than one. They have us covered. Pinned down. I don’t want to get shot… again. So, what do we do?”

Bella opened her mouth, closed it, and glowered at Anton’s smugness.

“Do you have a plan?”

“Well, I think we need to hide in a better spot. They can shoot through this,” he rapped the counter, “so we should go back to the kitchen. Hide in the fridge.”

“But for how long?” Zoe asked. “Nobody’s coming to save us.”

“What else can we do?” Bella asked.

“We kill them.”

Anton’s chest exploded before they heard the crack of thunder. His eyes went slack as he slumped to the ground. No final words.

Nothing.

Zoe gasped.

Black feathers fell about them. The shattered counter writhed like a nest of snakes. There must be some technique laced with the bullet, or else something to do with the demonic nature of their nightmare. Bella didn’t know, but soon Oriz would wake up again and she might be able to explain…

Teeth split from the chipboard and moved like a lamprey toward Anton’s bleeding corpse.

“We have to get somewhere safer,” Bella said. “We’ll crawl to the kitchen.”

“I’m going back in time,” Zoe said.

“No, Zoe… don’t.” Bella looked at the dead man in his ruined Hawaiian shirt. “It’s not worth it. The pain is unimaginable. It’s too hot, don’t —”

Bella screamed as flames devoured her and all of time.