Ted shoved his shovel underneath a demon with a hole in its forehead—Hannah’s aim was impressive—and rolled it towards the pile. Some of the demons were in worse shape, victims of his hammer rather than Hannah’s precise rifle shots. He looked back now to check his hammer was still in the wheelbarrow where he’d left it. He felt dismembered without it. His unease was multiplied when he saw Hannah heading towards him. She waved a hand. “Hey, Ted. You sleep okay down there in the boat shed?”
“I’ve had worse nights.” He remembered how tired he was and let out a yawn. “Not many though.”
Hannah grabbed a shovel and got to work beside him, rolling over that same corpse with a bullet wound in its forehead. “I remember this one,” she said. “It was attacking the doctor.”
“You remember it from a bullet wound?”
She smirked. “Believe me, you don’t forget a perfect headshot. I hit the other three in the chest.”
“You took out four all together?”
She nodded. “What about you? How many did you take out?”
“He took out three,” chirped a voice. It was Nathan’s. He pointed at the line of bodies. “You can tell because they’re all mashed up. That hammer is so brutal.”
Hannah huffed. “Shit, kid! You sound like his biggest fan.”
Ted nudged her. “Don’t encourage him.”
“Nathan’s a weirdo,” said the other teenaged boy. He pulled a face and sneered at Nathan. “He’s always been into sick shit. No one ever went near him at school. A mate of mine found him in the toilets, masturbating over animal porn.”
Nathan growled. “That was a bunch of bullshit, and you know it!”
The adult looking after the boys barked at them to get back to work, then approached Ted and Hannah. He looked embarrassed. “Sorry. There’s not a lot to entertain kids nowadays. This has all been a bit too much excitement for them.”
“We understand,” said Hannah. “I’m Hannah, and this is Ted.”
“I’m Eric.” They all shook hands. “It’s nice to have some new faces around here, if only to show us we’re not alone. Thank you for helping last night.”
“You’re welcome. You, um, don’t have the same accent as the others.”
Eric gave a titter. “No, I’m not blessed with their Black Country twang. I’m from a village about ten miles from here. I used to volunteer at the activity centre. My colleagues left to find their families when everything started, but I… well, I never had anyone to get home to. I wanted to stay here with the kids.”
Ted wondered what choices a middle-aged man had to make not to have anyone calling him back home. “You never had kids of your own?”
He shook his head with enough sadness to show it was a regret. “I probably spent too much of my time stuck in the past to ever interest a woman. I volunteered here for fourteen years, when I should have been getting a social life.” He stopped to have a little smile to himself. “Even with all of the horror that’s gone on, I still love it here—the nature, the memories, the sense of history. That empty castle up there reminds me that things never stay the same. I hope that one day what we’re going through will be just another chapter in mankind’s history.” Ted frowned, which caused Eric to laugh. “What, you never met a black historian before?”
“Not an optimistic one.”
Eric looked at the demon corpses scattered at their feet. “I suppose I was always a nerd. Ask me anything about Kothal castle, and I can tell you.”
“Um, yeah, okay, how old is it?”
Eric grinned. “The castle was built by Stanley Godlaw in 1045, and it saw extensive use during the Norman conquest of England. Godlaw died in the castle during a siege in 1068, leaving the castle to his nephew, William Fulford. William went on to—”
“We should probably get on with this important work,” said Ted, motioning with his shovel.
Eric gave another small titter. “Now do you see why I never found a woman willing to marry me? Thanks for the chat—it actually distracted me from all this misery for a moment.”
Ted couldn’t help but smile at the man’s self-desecration, but he hoped it wasn’t cruel to do so. To move things along, he planted his shovel under the demon corpse and got back to work. But moving the corpse that way was cumbersome, so he quickly decided to just sod it and use his hands. He heard the others gasp, but Nathan watched him the entire time with interest.
“Wow, you’re not a squeamish one, are you?” Eric winced, and crow’s feet crept from the corners of his eyes.
“They’re just flesh and bone.” He dragged the corpse over to the pile and tossed it on top. “Doesn’t six of their corpses prove that to you?”
“I suppose so,” said Eric with an awkward shrug.
Hannah marched over to the corpse pile and kicked at it. “Wait! What?”
Eric looked worried. “Something the matter?”
“Yeah! Ted just said six corpses, but that can’t be right. I shot four and Ted hammered three—that’s seven. Where is the seventh corpse?”
Ted inspected the corpse pile. Three demons with their head bashed in and three more with red, ragged gunshot wounds. He then turned to Hannah. “You’re sure you shot four of them?”
“Positive. One headshot, three body. I watched every one of them drop.”
Eric had his arms folded. “So, what does that mean?”
Ted scanned the tree line, wishing he had his hammer already in his hands.
“It means one of ‘em got away.”
Part II
21
DEMON
The demon was named David. After centuries burning in Hell, that was the only thing he remembered. Every flap of skin had seared from his bones long ago, his soul torn to pieces until all
