Chapter Eight
Clean Up On Aisle One
My brochure told me that the Old Confederate Union was one of the easiest places to live for all beings, mortal and mortally-challenged alike in the Playground. Its history had unfolded much like my own world’s had in many ways until the time of Martin Luther King Jr. . . . only on this plane of existence it wasn’t Martin Luther King who led the civil rights marches across this version of the South.
No. Here it was Samuel L. Jackson.
Everything turned around for the South the day of the assassination. Samuel L never took the bullet, but that wasn’t for a lack of trying on James Earl Ray’s part. Every time the creep attempted to shoot the man, Samuel L just looked at the bullets and dared them to come closer. Forensic experts never were able to find the projectiles. A rumor is still floating around that they had themselves melted down and converted into lead fishing line sinkers out of fear. Even the Playground periodic table knows better than mess with Sam. Before Ray had a chance to run out of ammunition, Samuel L. leapt off of his Memphis hotel balcony, walked up to the assassin, snatched the rifle out of his hands, and beat him over the head with it.
Meanwhile, this principality had always been run by the Ghosts of Heritage Past, but they weren’t ready for racial amity. The Union and Confederate dead were too interested in fighting their battles over and over again in massive, ethereal armies. The soldiers weren’t content to keep themselves confined to the battlefields at Appomattox, Gettysburg, and Fort Sumter. They roved all across the countryside until they finally decided to take their quarrels back to the place where it all started right here in the dirty south. At the conclusion of each battle, the unquiet dead demanded that the residents of the South pick the rightful winner. You can imagine what that did to set back race relations. No matter which side got picked, the losing ghosts poltergeisted the voters until they fled their homes and towns in desperation.
Samuel L. knew that the ghosts relied on the living energy of mortal humans watching their reenactments, so he had a talk with them. No one knows exactly what Sam told the spirits, but tourists visiting the tombs of the unknown Civil War dead can still hear them weeping uncontrollably. Reenactments of the old battles here are still huge tourist attractions, and for an extra fee, ticket purchasers can watch spectral performances of Gone With the Wind by the original actors. When the ghosts discovered that human adoration did wonders for their ectoplasmic bodies, they redoubled their efforts to bring more mortals into their barony. They lowered taxes, kicked out the KKK and banned Al Sharpton from the area. They also warned everyone that if they didn’t get along, Samuel L would come back, and he wasn’t going to be happy.
I realized when I looked at Walmart that all of this didn’t mean that the South was an oasis of love, harmony, and good manners. It was still the South, after all. Considering the fact that it’s populated not just by multiple human races but by a sizable minority of extraterrestrials (mainly the Greys), mythological creatures, a host of other beings both supernatural and paranormal, and escaped laboratory experiments, AND that none of these has broken out into another Civil War, I’d say the area had something going for it.
The hour here was late, but in a principality where night lasts forever, I guess the hour was always getting late. The parking lot was mostly empty. Angelica parked us near a Volkswagen beetle, but it must have known what she was like, because it skittered away on six legs to a safer location. Closer by stood a placid Clydesdale hitched to a carriage, drunkenly singing a lewd version of The Camp Town Races. When our eyes met, the thing stopped and said in a slurred voice, “Hey buddy, I’ll give you a free ride for a case of Bud.”
“No thanks, pall,” I told the bleary eyed horse. “I don’t drink and trot.”
The horse flicked its head in annoyance and started belting out the theme song to Mr. Ed. I guessed some animals never seemed to learn. A few shoppers moved about, either going into the store or coming out. I saw a shirtless man with a tattoo of a woman tied to a tree, screaming. Thankfully the automatic doors closed, cutting the distressed lady off. I’ve never liked tattoos, and sometimes you’ve got to wonder about people’s judgment in body art.
A wrinkled elderly man in a neatly cut suit walked out of the entrance holding an armload of makeup products and baby powder. He was arguing with a disembodied female voice about who let the cat into the kitchen. Apparently it knocked some of their invisibility powder into the macaroni salad. I might have been wrong, but the guy seemed unhappier that he couldn’t find the macaroni than the fact that he wasn’t able to see his wife. I couldn’t imagine why either one of them had left something like invisibility powder open in the kitchen. That’s why children and old people frequently needed sitters.
When I passed through the doors, the first thing to greet me was the greeter, and he didn’t. In fact, the man didn’t do anything except recline in a lawn chair beside a stack of holovision units, which seemed to be the Playground’s version of television. At the moment, the display unit looked like it was experiencing some kind of malfunction because the only hologram consisted of an amoeba of static hovering in midair. The static bore an uncanny resemblance to the sound my brain was beginning to make as it was coming apart at its sleep-deprived seams.
Maybe it was because I had been killed and brought back to life in a place called the Demon’s Playground, maybe it was because I was being chased by psychotic movie monster horrors, or maybe it was because I was stuck in an uparmored, James Bonded SUV with a succubus, a wereschnauser, and a fangless vampire . . .but this aggravated me.
The door greeter was sound asleep and sawing some heavy logs by the racket his snoring was making. I flagged down a floor worker, a lady with a large set of gills. She was just walking away from the fish tanks in the pet supply section and leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her. When I told her about the greeter and that somebody needed to wake the guy up, her eyes widened and she looked at me like I was crazy.
“He’s protected by the Disabilities Act,” she proudly sniffed while somehow managing to insinuate that I was an intolerant buffoon.
“Is he too disabled to do his job?” I fired back. I knew I was grumpy, but a line of common sense in this mad world had to be drawn somewhere, and I was damn well going to draw it. “Come on,” I complained. “Sleeping on the job? I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night, lady!”
The floor worker gave me a scandalized look. She held her head back and squared her shoulders indignantly. Then she waggled her finger admonishingly. “I’ll have you know he has SOBN!”
I didn’t know what that was, so I stood my ground and looked at her with an expression that said, “!!!”
“It means he has Spontaneous Out-Of-Body Narcolepsy,” the lady said in a lecturing tone. Like the acronym was supposed to make a difference.
“Oh yeah? Well I know a couple of SOBs, and they don’t impress me too much.” I folded my arms and wanted to see how she responded to that.
How she responded to that was to tersely inform me that SOBNs suffered from uncontrolled periodic episodes of sleep where their conscious minds popped out of their bodies. “He’s also our security,” the gilled lady smartly informed me. “People like you make it harder for the disabled to find acceptance in society.”
Son-of-a-bitch.
I wanted to remain undaunted, so I folded my arms again and looked at her with an expression on my face that said I was constipated or perhaps suffering from dysentery. I prepared to move on when the out-of-body narcoleptic abruptly woke up. At first I thought he had heard my comments, because the man bolted up so fast from his lawn chair that he slung the thing into the center of the entrance aisle. By the time I spun around, the fellow’s head was surrounded by a bubble of holovision static, and the his voice was almost childlike as he screamed out, “THEY?
??RE HEEERE!!”
Suddenly, half a dozen of the principality’s law enforcement poltergeists materialized through the store’s front doors, bellowing at shoppers to take cover, screaming out orders that everyone was in danger and that they had to move to the rear of the store as quickly as possible.
Before I had the chance to say, “What the fu—,” the entrance’s glass face exploded inward, sending glittering shards fanning out in a lethal spray. Shoppers screamed and fell as shrapnel peppered them. My hand swiftly moved to the breast pocket of my burial coat for the pistol, but a powerful force rapidly pushed me against the wall and I heard the whispery voice of a ghostly officer telling me to remain calm and stay out of the way. Screams of alarm filled the storefront as three hideous creatures swooped through the gaping hole and landed on the floor not far from where the narcoleptic stood in terror.
The monsters stood at least five-and-a-half feet tall on talons long enough to eviscerate a horse. Their deadly appendages clacked and tapped against the floor with a carnal impatience. The things radiated an eagerness to rend into living flesh and feel warm and sticky blood pouring across their claws. Their legs possessed multiple joints, perfect for wrapping around helpless prey with bone crushing violence. A filthy coat of thick feathers covered them, though it lay bare above the waistline, exposing flat, deflated, and pendulous breasts. Short, stubby arms protruded beneath a pair of massive wings, and if they had not been folded behind their backs, the things would have spanned twenty feet from tip to tip. They were clearly powerful enough to propel the beasts into the sky, carrying helpless victims to whatever perch served as their buffet table.
“What are those?” I gasped.
The poltergeist protecting me said in an angry and gravely voice, “Harpies. Bad business for mortals.” Underscoring the poltergeist’s words, the harpies let out a wail of black malice that no rollback discount was going to satisfy.
Urged by a rising sense of panic, I struggled against the poltergeist’s icy presence to fish the screamer out of my pocket but found myself thrust aside onto the floor as the ghostly figure joined several other shapes floating in formation toward the intruders. Across the aisle by the checkout lanes I caught a momentary glimpse of Angelica hunkering behind a register and staring in shocked disbelief. I scrambled up as the brave poltergeists drew closer to the harpies, and I attempted to make eye contact with the half-succubus, but the look on her face ran deep with fear. When the demon lady shrunk back behind the register, I knew she was going to be no help to me if the harpies got past security, so I kept to the periphery of the action where I thought I had my best chances of getting off a good number of shots without hurting anyone else.
The poltergeists met the harpies with a sudden banshee’s wail, which immediately sent out an expanding ring of frost that caused the harpies’ feathers to white over and harden until they clacked against one another like shards of steel. The monsters stiffened and become immobile as the ghosts whirled around them, growing layer upon layer of ice around things’ bodies with each pass they took. The harpies’ faces were grotesquely human and mockingly feminine. They were clenched in grimaces of rage. Before I had a chance to feel reassured that the poltergeists had everything under control, one of the harpies managed to produce a concealed device from beneath its feathers, and it depressed a red button at the thing’s tip.
The poltergeists let out earsplitting shrieks of pain, and they rocketed away, leaving behind frosty contrails hovering in the air along with echoing wails of pain that took several seconds to ebb away and recede into the distance. For a moment everything was quiet except for the voice of the drunken Clydesdale outside, who was now singing the theme song to Grizzly Adams.
The harpies let out agonized screeches as they forced their bodies to move. The enraged monsters cast about for any moving victim, and when their sights settled on the quivering narcoleptic, one of the harpies seized ahold of him with unbelievable speed. I gagged as she sank her talons into the poor fellow’s body. The man wriggled helplessly in the monster’s grasp like a pathetic child’s plaything. The harpy let out a cry of triumph as she threw him aside.
The other two harpies fell on the man’s lifeless form with savage gusto, and I heard cries of disgust from hiding onlookers. They couldn’t help themselves despite the danger nearby, and I understood. What the beasts did to the man’s body still gives me nightmares.
At the door front, I saw Mike running into the building, but I lifted my hand up to hold him off. I raised my weapon to let him see that I was armed, but he vigorously shook his head NO.
The harpy that gored the door greeter began moving around the front of the store in bobbing strides that made me think of a chicken or an ostrich hatched in hell. Its head rapidly shifted from right to left as it sniffed at the air. The thing seemed intent on finding someone. As I listened to the wet noises the other two harpies made as they gorged themselves on the dead man, I couldn’t let that thing find its next prey. I needed to find a clear line of sight.
Taking two running steps into the aisle, I took up a squared stance, aimed my pistol and squeezed the trigger. The recoil was terrific, rocking my body as if I had been hit by a small car. A wispy energy projectile screeched toward the harpy, striking her in the back and lifting her into the air, sending her flailing into the wall in front of the checkout area with a loud crunch. Her sister killers let out furious screams of rage; their torsos were covered in the thick ichor of congealing blood and torn entrails. Their eyes locked onto mine through pupils slanted with hatred. I pushed away the urge to run and fired off two shots in quick succession. Both shots struck true, but the energy bolts bounced off of both monsters. The things merely winced.
My mouth went dry and my stomach clenched so tightly something might have ruptured down below. Mike skidded to a stop beside me long enough to haul me into a long aisle of kitchen appliances. I struggled to keep up with his long strides as the harpies let loose with a chorus of angry wails. We hung a left where the aisle intersected with another, and Mike pushed me into a narrow cove between two display stands featuring large Ooteenee Cast Iron Jawa Cauldrons (“for the best wampa rat stew EVER!”)
“I told you not to use that thing,” he hissed between gritted teeth.
“I got one of them!” I retorted, keeping my head low and my voice lower.
Someone up front let out an agonized scream. A man pleading for his life broke into a series of wet gurgles before his voice cut off entirely. I felt my face grow hot as my jaws clenched together so tightly they groaned.
“You killed the first one, but it passed on an immunity to the other two,” Mike told me angrily. “Which is why harpies never attack alone. Now you’ve only made the others really, really mad.”
“They’re looking for someone,” I whispered quickly. “I’ve got an idea how to handle them until more help arrives,” I told Mike, slowly sticking my head above the lip of the display. I couldn’t see the things, but I heard their taloned feet tapping the floor as they bobbed through the aisles sniffing out their quarry. I rose and squeezed through a gap before Mike had a chance to stop me, and kept a stooped posture as I moved toward the sound of the prowling birdstrosities. By the racket they were making knocking boxes off of shelves, the beasts were now at the end of the sporting aisle. I passed several people hiding in the middle of clothing carousels and motioned for them to close the gaps between the garments so the harpies wouldn’t see them peeking out. They already knew what was happening—death most fowl was happening, and if they weren’t careful, it was going to be coming for them like I was a plate of fried chicken at a short order diner.
When I got close, I flattened myself against the edge of the aisle and peered around the corner. Both harpies waved their faces through the air, whiffling loudly for their target’s scent. I looked at my screamer and
knew I needed to find another weapon. Peering down the aisle, I saw a set of Rip Van Winkle Nine Pins Bowling Kits (Loser sleeps for nine days, GURANTEED!), but there was no way I could get to the things in time to use them. The banner on a cricket box next to me promised to keep players hopping for days, but I didn’t know if the change in gait would help or hinder the creatures, so I decided against it.
The only option I really had was distraction, so I opted on the Scooby Doo plan. I boldly stepped into the center of the aisle and loudly called the things a number of names. A moment of startled silence followed as I quickly raised my left hand, waved to them, said, “Ree you rater Raggy.” I aimed my pistol and shot the shelves above them, and ran like mad.
My feet pounded the floor as the harpies bellowed. Sporting equipment rained down on the creature’s heads. The moment of surprise only lasted seconds. I used it to jig and jag through the rows of shopping lanes in an attempt to lose the things somewhere in the heart of the store. The rapid tack-tack-tacking of birds’ feet closed in on me in fast pursuit. Running headlong down the aisles, I fired off my weapon at the shelves around me, blasting everything from pickled yacks’ udders to candied Dodo’s eggs across the floor. Nothing worked. My heart lurched as both beasts rounded the last corner, emitting jubilant cries as their gazes locked onto me.
I fired two shots at them, but the energy bolts only ruffled the harpies’ feathers. I launched into the pharmaceutical section of the store, hoping that I might be able to hide inside the caged room where the heavy grade meds were stored, but the room was already packed.
“Crap!” I shouted. “I hate birds!”
Both of the harpies moved like Jurassic velocichickens onto the pharmacy floor. I looked around in desperation for anything that might work in my favor, but aside from a jar of leeches for cosmetic bloodletting needs, I didn’t see anything that might help. The closest fiend leapt across several shelves, toppling one onto my hip, knocking me to the floor. I let out a loud scream as the harpy stood on top of the shelf, placing the main of her weight over my body and driving the edges of the shelf’s supports into my hips and ribs.
Scrabbling madly, I kicked to free myself. The harpy’s talons were caked with gore, and flecks of tissue and offal clung to them in sticky clots. Images of the things cleaving into my guts and ripping my organs out flooded my mind. The harpy looked down at me and bared her fangs in eagerness to tear me apart. As the monster bent and started clawing at the shelf covering my body, I caught a brief flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye as a blurred object collided with the monster, catching her midriff and sending her spiraling across the top of a display case.
“Get away from him!” Mike snarled. His lips were pulled back from his fangs in a frozen rictus of fury. I prayed the dentures didn’t fall out. When the beast rushed at Mike, the vampire was ready. He dropped low as sharp talons whooshed through the space above his head. Quickly, Mike wrapped his arms around the birdstosity’s thighs, hefting it high into the air and sending it toppling end over end to land in a heap twenty feet away.
“Get back!” Mike snarled at me before the second harpy could close with either of us.
My body hurt too much to make it very far, and I scrabbled a short distance to the left of the pharmacy counter, as Mike, eyes ablaze with the cold, undead sparks of the grave, collided with the second monster. The shrieks and howls of their brawl raised a bloodcurdling cacophony throughout the store. I heard the alarmed cries of shoppers flooding toward the storefront as they moved in a mass exodus away from the violence.
To my right, I saw the wide, frightened eyes of Angelica peeking around at us. I motioned for her to come out and help Mike. When I saw her gaze flicker beyond me toward the harpy Mike had thrown across the floor, I knew that the beast was onto the scent of its hidden prey . . . and Angelica crouched behind a shattered kiosk directly in its path. Without thinking, I aimed my pistol and squeezed off several shrieking rounds and pulled my body back behind the counter wall. With any luck, the diversion would buy the demon-lady a chance to dodge away.
When I head a muffled whimper come from the damaged kiosk, I knew the harpy remained undeterred. I leaned out to scream in frustration at the half-succubus to motivate the hell out of there. Where was all of her sharp-tongued bluster now? When I saw Angelica sink down into a fetal position and wrap her arms around her knees protectively, the words froze in my mouth. She was too frightened to move. That meant I had to get the harpy’s attention off of her. The only thing I had was an ineffective pistol. I aimed my gun, carefully zeroing in on the thing’s head. Maybe the shot wouldn’t hurt the harpy, but I hoped it might do something unpleasant to draw its attention.
The recoil jarred me, but my aim was spot on. The monster’s head whipped to the side violently, and the harpy spun, bristling with venom. The thing ruffled its feathers in agitation. I only had time to let out a quick, “Oh hell!”
The harpy unfurled its enormous wings and let out an aggressive shriek. One bound in the air brought the monster down directly in front of me. I lifted my hands instinctively, but my head erupted in a sizzling burst of pain as the harpy’s claws raked across my forehead with so much force that I saw fireworks explode within my field of vision. When I hit the floor, I slid across the tiles in a heavy heap of unwieldy limbs. Nearby, Mike’s fight was not going well. His adversary managed to grab ahold of him, and then it gave a great, bounding leap with the vampire held fast in its grip. When the harpy let go of his body, Mike fell twenty feet in a hard plunge to the floor below.
Through my swollen eyes I caught a glimpse of Angelica cowering behind a broken makeup kiosk specializing in Triassic and Cretaceous skin types, which explained the hamster-filled Plexiglas snack box attached to it marked hors d’oeuvres. Mike lay on the floor, attempting to collect himself in fits and starts. His impact with the tiles had knocked him dumb for the time being. I couldn’t be sure because of the blood dribbling into my eyes, but Mike’s left side looked like it had been realigned, and he seemed to be having some difficulty pulling all the twisted angles out of his limbs.
I knew if I didn’t act quickly, I was going to have the same problem. “Damnit Succubus, help me,” I pleaded as the pitiless harpy bore down on me. I kicked at the thing’s taloned hands as it reached for me, but the beast just trilled a short burst of cold laughter and stepped on my legs with one of its massive claws. My gun went flying. I screamed as sharp, disease-carrying daggers ripped into my calves, sending warm runnels of blood welling up around the embedded claws. My leg flared with pain.
I screamed again as I felt a tingling numbness creeping up the length of my wounded leg toward my body, deadening it to voluntary motion. Angelica stared at me through wide and terrified eyes. The moment our gazes locked, I gasped in surprise. A wave of her emotions suddenly rushed through me. I realized I could feel the punishments of hell that she always felt, insinuating their way into her soul like parasitic worms. In my own moment of mortal torment, I knew what it meant to be a reformed minion of darkness. Angelica felt other people’s pains as if they were her own, only magnified. When I bellowed in agony as the harpy gave her claws a savage jerk, Angelica screamed, too. There was no way she could help me. What a pitiful sight, watching the pretty little demon lady. She was immobilized by her own nature. I had no idea.
I was tired. Terrified. And accepted my fate. Yet even in all of my agony, I reached out my hand toward her. I wanted to touch her and tell her everything was going to be okay. Once the harpy was done with me . . . no more pain, and that meant she wouldn’t hurt anymore either.
“Please run,” I mouthed the words as I felt tears of blood dripping down my face. The harpy crowed in triumph. I saw Mike on his feet once again. He made another charge at the harpy holding me down, but its partner gave a fluttering hop and seized him in its gri
p. Angelica looked lost and lonely, like an abandoned girl left alone on a cold and desolate night. “Run!” I shouted at her. “There’s still time for you!”
A look of resolution spread across Angelica’s face. She stood up and hefted the kiosk over her head, throwing it with so much force that the beast above me was knocked aside. “Stop it!” she screamed, then called out in a language of dark words that made my ears hurt.
Both harpies froze for a moment, and their eyes narrowed on Angelica with looks pitiless and sere. Then the beast with my blood soaking its talons hopped over me. Its rustling feathers sounded like an army of snakes passing through dried leaves. Angelica continued speaking to the creatures in that foul, cruel tongue of hers—the language of demons. It sounded so vile that I nearly begged for the harpy to turn back around and finish its job on me, but it paid me no attention and continued its relentless approach toward her. The thing’s partner joined in step behind it. Angelica screamed for the things to stop one more time, and when they didn’t, I saw she held my screamer in her right hand.
“Cover yourself, Jack,” she warned me.
Angelica fired the weapon . . . not at the harpies, but into the ceiling above me. Shots in rapid succession blasted through large sections of the roof causing a cataract of debris to roar down on top of the beasts. Dust and sharp bits of ceiling fell around me and billowed into my face.
I was still scrabbling back when the air began to clear. My back collided with something stiff and unyielding. When I looked up, I saw Angelica looking bleakly across the ruined swath of damaged masonry, steel support beams, wiring, and chalky tiles. I frantically grabbed ahold of her pant leg to get her to look down at me. Those abominations might still be alive underneath all of that ruin. I couldn’t get out in time if the things rose up and came at us again. I knew she could.
“Run,” I begged her in a panicked voice. “Get out of here while there’s still time! Take Mike with you and go!”
Angelica’s eyes focused on mine, and her face rippled with so many conflicting emotions that it moved like the surface of a turbulent pond. “Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before,” she said in disbelief.
“Go,” I implored her, but she shook her head.
“They’re dead,” she said hollowly. Then she looked down at me, and in a quiet voice, asked me, “Why, Jack? You don’t owe me anything.”
From somewhere amid the carnage and wreckage, a section of collapsed roof heaved and split in two as Mike freed himself. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he growled.
I moaned in pain as Angelica lifted me up over her boney shoulders. It was all I could do not to scream out again when she finally had me secured above her back. Where’s Max?” I mumbled between swollen lips. I hadn’t seen the wereschnauser stalking the pet food aisle, and that worried me.
“One of the harpies kicked him before they came inside,” Mike said through strained jaws. “His ribs are broken, but he’s a lycanthrope. He’ll heal.”
As we made our way through the chaos inside the store, an arriving medical worker offered to take me from Angelica’s back to an ambulance, but she told the man that if he touched me she was going to rip his face off and then start doing rude things to his body. “Hang on Jack . . . we’ll get you taken care of,” she told me. Before I lost consciousness for the second time in one day, I realized through my addled and foggy mind that she had called me Jack.
Not flyboy or some other disparaging name.
Jack.
And my name never sounded more beautiful.