Felon quietly got to his knees.
Morgan moaned as the snuffling and lapping noises continued, and now the vague shape of a massive man was appearing on the bed. He was bent over between her outstretched legs. The sleeping woman moaned and her breath drew in more sharply. She twisted her hips against the shadow head that grew steadily more visible. Felon could make out a small pair of curved horns atop the large naked skull. But he could not distinguish a silhouette or profile. Its face was obscured pressing against the sleeping woman’s groin. As Morgan made small laughing noises, she began to buck her hips more powerfully against the Incubi’s slowly resolving face. With each counter thrust, the guttural sounds she made increased-spasmodic gulps of air exploded-and the Demon took shape.
It was more than eight feet in height, and powerfully muscled. The Demon’s dark flesh was like carved granite. The muscles flexed impossibly-black blood churned through distended veins. The Incubus slipped one large hand under the woman’s buttocks and easily lifted her lower trunk and hips upward toward his foot long tongue. Morgan moaned with pleasure as the Incubus lavished her with monstrous kisses, his tongue flicking, darting in and out, his yellow fangs nibbling.
Felon lifted his gun as the creature lowered the woman on the bed. Stahn straightened now, arching his powerful back. The Demon’s penis stretched over the woman. It was two feet in length and looked as thick as Felon’s arm. Stahn gathered Morgan’s ankles with one clawed hand and pushed them back to her ears. He grinned, muttered “ficus” to himself, and then looming over her exposed genitalia he thrust. The woman screamed.
Felon stepped out of the closet, gun level with his eyes. The Incubus swung its head as he fired. The hiss of the silencer drew Morgan from her trance. She screamed again. Impaled, she was dragged over the mattress as the Demon turned. Felon moved slowly toward Stahn, looking at nothing but his head. He fired into the skull, again and again, while his free hand positioned the next clip. Stahn’s head flexed and changed with the first few bullets as he attempted to disappear, but too late, for the impact of the bullets pulled him back into physical form. Each strike punched more solidity into his dissolving head. Roaring the Demon was drawn back to the physical world.
Felon had the other clip poised beneath his gun, now ready: discharge clip, reload. Fire! The automatic thumped with each shot. The Demon howled, then shrieked as one of its horns shattered. The bullets fully reversed the earlier process and began to chew a great hole of ragged nothingness in its face. “NO!” it roared-the mirrors in the apartment burst into fragments. Felon slammed in the next clip, opened up
“NO!” The top of Stahn’s head exploded in a great eruption of black and gray. Hot red streaks flew from the gaping skull and steamed smokily on the dresser and wall. The Demon’s body could no longer resist the impact of the bullets, and was flung to the floor on the far side of the bed. The assassin leapt after it firing.
He shifted his aim onto its muscular chest until a ragged fist-sized hole was punched. Discharge clip, reload. Fire. Stahn stopped moving. Felon continued to fire. Discharge clip, reload. He stopped; then grimaced. The gun steamed in his hand. Morgan was out of her mind, screaming-her white thighs streaked with Demon blood. She threw herself on the floor and crawled into the closet sobbing. Then Stahn’s body began to smoke. Wisps of silky white thread like solid steam curled upwards. His head was missing from the top lip up-a wide pool of blood filled the crater in its chest. The rising mist was sour.
Felon turned away.
“Assassin…” The voice was deep and terrible; the words wet with blood. “Assassin…”
Felon froze, gritted his teeth, and turned. He swung his gun, stepped near. Miraculously, even as its body was dissolving, the mouth moved. Jawbones slid beneath torn flesh. “I see you,” the corpse moaned. Felon looked at its mangled head. The eyes went in the first volley.
Felon checked his peripheral vision, caught on the dresser: a white orb. The eye trailed its long gray optic nerve through a pile of gore. The slit pupil dilated. Felon raised his gun and fired. The eye burst into a glob of moisture that painted the wall behind it. The Demon’s body moaned a final time, limbs flailing weakly as it turned to smoke.
Felon wanted to kill the woman in the closet but Balg wanted her alive. He walked out of the bedroom scowling.
17 – Bedtime Story
“What do you think happened to my mother?” Dawn asked from the darkness where she laid on her little mattress by the cubbyhole. Mr. Jay was over at their small table. He used a wooden packing crate as a chair. After returning to their hideout, they had eaten dinner and shared a little chat about the day. Mr. Jay did not tell her anything about what happened at Carmen’s apartment except to say she had pictures of cats. Dawn didn’t think that was any biggy. Since the animals went crazy after the Change, pet lovers had to make do with pictures and stuffed animals.
She asked him about the men who chased them. And he finally explained that he’d been around a long time, and it could have had something to do with old debts. Though he promised her that he had done nothing wrong or illegal.
“I was just avoiding trouble, Dawn,” he said. “Sometimes that’s the best you can do.”
While that explanation didn’t reassure her much, she was still upset about the situation with Carmen, so she let it stand. Before her curiosity got the best of them, Mr. Jay sidestepped more questions by telling her he wanted to make an early start the next day. She should get to bed early and he’d go too after he’d given a couple of his books a quick glance.
Dawn dozed off but woke back up to find her friend still reading in dim candlelight.
“Go to sleep.” Mr. Jay turned his green eyes to her. From their faraway look, Dawn could tell that he had been deep in thought.
“What do you think happened to her?” She pushed herself up on one little elbow. Her nose still twitched at the chemical they had used to remove her beard.
Mr. Jay sighed, turned all the way around on his makeshift chair. He set his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve talked about that before.”
Dawn nodded. “But I was just thinking about it.”
“Well, you’ll have a lot of nights like that.” He smiled warmly. “At least until you know more or get used to not knowing.”
“You think that will happen, Mr. Jay?” she asked.
He chuckled, “I doubt it.”
“And you don’t know…” She struggled with conflicting urges. Dawn had moments of obsession on the topic but she was sure that Mr. Jay was tired of it. Momentarily, she pondered returning to sleep.
“No I don’t.” Mr. Jay leaned back with one elbow on his table. “But I remember the stories about the riot. It was a bad one by all accounts.” His head drooped forward; his brown beard dusted his chest. “What I heard was that there was a big group of living people in a town called Severance. Now that’s a long way north and west of here as you know, and when I heard the story I happened to be traveling north of it.
“But I heard a group of living people were trying to get rid of all the dead people in the town. They asked them nicely at first, but the dead people had no place to go, and they had a right to stay in Severance, since most had lived there when they were alive. But the story goes that the living people believed the walking dead caused Change. That really wasn’t fair since they rose after it. It was just a matter of time before something bad happened.”
Dawn’s mother had brought her to Severance. The town was just a main street that you could see to both ends of with no buildings taller than three stories. It used to be a bigger place her mother said, but pointed to burned ruins as the cause of its shrinking. The forever child could still feel the thrill as her mother led her by the hand over the street’s cracked asphalt. It was so different from Nurserywood-she corrected herself-it wasn’t called Nurserywood in those days. People were just starting to come there to hide and had built a little village around old campgrounds. And they didn’t even have a giant yet.
She had heard about towns and cities in stories, but seeing one and hearing about them were two different things. She couldn’t remember anything before Nurserywood. Her mom told her sometimes the first years of a child’s life were like that. Nurserywood was like Severance since it had people and buildings-though in the forest, there were old cabins and rough shelters of woven branches, cloth and plastic. And there were no paved roads only
