CHAPTER 16
PEDESTRIANS
On the way to the station, Peddle defied Chase’s every effort to ignore him. The gas station owner grumbled about everyone, Chase in particular, for accusing his business of creating the demons in the first place. Chase kept his gaze forward, despite Peddle.
As far as he could tell, the demons themselves hadn’t trashed the town any more than the night before. With his truck still at the motor inn, Chase had no choice but to head that way. Every now and then he checked to make sure Peddle was still following him.
If I can just get my truck, I’ll get Dylan and we’ll ditch this place first chance we get, Chase thought.
Now why would you want to leave us, Chase Weaverson? We’re your friends, the ones who understand you like none other. The demon voices came alive inside his mind again, whispering sweet nothings to him. The chill creeping underneath his skin made him shudder and struggle to breathe, his heart racing as the demons’ words excited it once again.
Chase gritted his teeth. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? Hell, he could barely stand to even think of them. Just a fleeting image in his mind of the old guy demon was enough to constrict certain muscles, make his mouth overflow with saliva. His body filled with a dark lust despite his efforts to shake the thoughts spurring this on. He was a human, not a demon. He didn’t belong to them. He was his own person. Wasn’t he?
Hopefully, the pill’s effects would last a while longer, long enough for him to leave Helensview. It’d be even better if he didn’t have to rely on Peddle at all for those pills.
The men reached the motor inn, only to find no sign of Chase’s truck. Profanity from Chase filled the air, much to the excitement of the voices humming their chaotic chorus between his ears. The constant stream of noise in his brain made him yowl and throw his fist in the air, narrowly missing the side of Peddle’s head by inches. He paused when he saw the terror-stricken gaze in Peddle’s eyes and realized that he’d almost decked the jerk with no provocation this time. Without uttering a word, he spun away from the gas station owner.
Blast this whole damn town and everyone in it! Chase thought.
As soon as his mind produced the words, the voices stopped altogether. Why, though, in the middle of his mental tirade? Had something else caught the demons’ attention? Or were they winding down again? Those things sure needed to rest an awful lot, it seemed. Could it have been that they were only capable of incredible feats in short spurts?
Or maybe the initial stages of the transformation took too much of a toll on them. Chase recalled the tiredness he’d felt right after Peddle’s pill had pulled him back from the brink. Did all the human-demons have this initial period of low activity while their bodies adjusted to their new condition?
The smell of sulfur penetrated Chase’s nostrils as he marched toward the gas station, his attempt to recover his truck foiled. He still had his keys on him, so the only way for it to have gone missing was for the demons to have jimmy-rigged it. There was a chance that another town survivor might’ve broken in and fiddled with the ignition to fire up the engine. But the distinct lack of glass on the asphalt in the spot he’d left the truck made this unlikely.
“Damn it,” said Chase. “I must’ve left my truck unlocked. That’s the only way it could’ve gone missing.”
Peddle added, “Either that, or it got towed. The guy driving the tow truck is one of those things, remember?”
All this thinking didn’t alleviate Chase’s headache. Worse, the buzzing resumed. Back from their momentary distraction, the demons again cooed hungrily for his soul.
Maybe you should do away with that annoying Peddle. He’s only going to ditch you first chance he gets. Why not blow off his head? It’d most certainly be an improvement for the guy.
Straining not to listen to their words, Chase shook his head and kept one foot in front of the other. Reaching the gas station remained the goal. He had to be sure that Peddle’s gas had caused the transformations, because then he and the others could do something about it.
Needing a diversion, he immediately thought of Grains Plain and the family farm. What he wouldn’t give for a whiff of Ma Weaverson’s buttery corn on the cob right then, or fluffy mashed potatoes served with gravy, a couple of turkey drumsticks, and a biscuit from a basket sitting in the center of the table. He imagined a stick of butter sitting off to the side, awaiting a knife to carve out a pat and spread it across the top of the biscuit. Hell, he’d gladly put up with another one of Pa’s anecdotes from when the boys were still raising Cain out in the middle of the fields. It’d sure beat breathing in the burning stench of concrete and tar now filling the air.
“Slow down,” Peddle spoke up, panting as he stood hunched over to the right of Chase. “I can’t keep up.”
“‘Slow down’? Heh. With people being in such a hurry these days, that’s a complaint I never thought I’d hear again,” said Chase, his stride strong as ever.
Peddle wheezed and clutched his chest. “I said hold up!”
Chase rolled his shoulders to release the tension that had been festering the past few days. He fought to keep from lashing out at Peddle, for the demons expected him to kill the gas station owner. If Chase couldn’t control his temper, Peddle and the rest of Helensview’s survivors were all goners.
“What is it?” he asked, staring at the frustration flickering in Peddle’s eyes.
“Can’t a guy catch his breath?” Peddle snapped, his face a pale blue under the glow of moonlight.
Chase heaved a sigh of disgust. That sniveling weasel was becoming such a waste of human flesh. Had the man traded away his self-respect at some point in life?
Demon howls rang out once more from somewhere off in the distance. Another shiver tickled Chase’s spine, likely sprouting from these far-off cries. Another explosion boomed a few miles away, coming from somewhere near the western edge of town. A crimson glow rose in the air as Chase watched on, hearing Peddle’s gasp come to an abrupt standstill as the other man undoubtedly noticed this too.
More glass shattered nearby. The hours leading up to midnight proved to be a high volume time of demon activity, unless this was what typically happened during a weekend in Helensview. The fact that there were no dogs barking or sirens blaring indicated that the town was mainly an empty shell besides Chase’s band of survivors and the demons. Hell had taken over this already suffering community.
Throughout the latest series of explosions, crashes, and howls, Chase pressed on. With none of the demons actually crossing paths with the two men, he didn’t exactly worry about them. They wanted him, after all. They wouldn’t harm such a potential future demon if they could make him one of them.
He kept these thoughts to himself and didn’t look back at Peddle. In a twisted way the entrepreneur was getting exactly what he’d asked for: the chance to survey the damage at his gas station. With any luck, the Mini-Mart and the pumps out front would be completely leveled.
#
They cut through a vacant lot, shaving some time off their journey. Soon they came upon an ambulance tipped over on its side, its back doors wide open. This was probably the same one that Dylan and Brittany had seen and tried to flag down earlier. In the moonlight, Chase couldn’t help but note the faded cherry paint of the vehicle, as if it’d served the town for years. The busted headlight and front fender looked more like damage from a past wreck rather than this one. On the side facing the moon, he found the words that identified the ambulance as a unit in the Helensview Fire and Rescue.
Based on what he saw, he reckoned Helensview had combined emergency services to compensate for the city government’s probable overspending. Considering that this town lacked in so many ways, it wouldn’t have surprised Chase at all to find a deficit on the books. Maybe the demon crisis was a way for the city council to deflect the town’s problems elsewhere.
As his gaze remained glued to the ambulance, a demon attired in torn paramedic threads emerged, its breathing heavy and erratic
. Unlike the other demons, this beast staggered about as if injured, gripping its rib cage and gasping a much softer howl.
“What’s wrong with that thing?” Peddle whispered.
Chase silently shushed Peddle with a flick of his hand, a move the demon half-heartedly mimicked afterward. At first, it appeared that the creature was mocking him, until Chase realized that this wasn’t the case at all. It seemed aware of being wounded, perhaps even of its own imminent mortality. The glimmer in its eyes suggested resignation or sadness, like it had lost the energy and conviction that drove other demons to ravage Helensview. Clamping both hands to its forehead, the creature whimpered before tumbling out of the vehicle and onto the sidewalk.
Searing white pain flashed through Chase’s mind, his proximity probably triggering this. A groan came from the paramedic, a long and slow sound. Chase’s heart wallowed in despair not of his own, but which had probably reached him via the mental link he seemed to have with all demons.
“Why’s he doing that?” Peddle asked, seemingly slow on the cue.
Ignoring Peddle, Chase took a step toward the former human. Despite the pill keeping him from becoming a demon for now, a bond developed between Chase and the paramedic, making it impossible for Chase to resist engaging the wounded demon. He could hear the creature’s thoughts in his mind. More pain throbbed in nearly every part of his body, a hitchhiker from the psychic highway sharing the two being’s minds.
“No one wants to hurt you, my brother,” he said to the paramedic without thinking.
Peddle gasped. “Did you just call him your brother?”
Barely hearing the fear in Peddle’s voice, Chase suddenly caught himself. He’d regarded the paramedic with more reverence than he’d ever shown Dylan. It had slipped from his lips so casually, too, a reflex of gut instinct, something so natural it almost didn’t spook him. The demon chatter grew into mental white noise he could hear without trying. His own internal voice, meanwhile, had to shout to be heard, to warn him that the demons were still a threat to Helensview and its survivors.
He stepped over to the paramedic, grabbed the demon by the arm, and tried to help it get back on its feet. The paramedic went limp in Chase’s arms, face down. A weak rasp wheezed from its lungs. Chase rolled it over onto its back, revealing a pair of medical scissors wedged right in its belly, the lower half of which Chase could see soaking in blood. Its eyes staying shut longer with each successive blink, the demon reached down and grabbed the scissors. With a hard yank, the scissors came out, the blades dripping in the beast’s blood.
Chase leaned in to retrieve the shears. Before he could snatch them from the creature’s grip, the paramedic plunged the scissors right back into the wound. It shrieked in agony while stabbing itself a second and third time in this manner, each stab looking weaker than the last.
Suddenly, Chase realized that the ambulance had likely ended up on its side from the demon crashing it in a suicide attempt. Judging by this behavior, it seemed some people actually sought to reject the transformation. If the paramedic was still aware of what had happened, maybe Chase stood a shot of surviving this.
“Something’s not right with this guy,” Chase said, now addressing Peddle. “I think he’s trying to kill himself!”
“It’s a monster. Nothing’s ever right with these things.”
Chase shook his head, banishing his contempt of Peddle from his mind, and focused on the altered paramedic.
“He must know on some level of what he’s become. All of the other demons we’ve encountered before didn’t seem to care, but this one...”
Peddle huffed in wordless annoyance.
“What?” Chase asked.
“Don’t tell me you feel sorry for this monstrosity.”
“Don’t you?” Chase couldn’t tell whether the scarlet on Peddle’s face was from overexposure to the blistering sun, or because Chase’s employ of a quick retort shattered Peddle’s whole argument. “I can’t tell you the number of whippings Dylan and I got from torturing hapless critters. Ma refused to let us have pets because of how we shot BB gun pellets at woodpeckers or poured salt on snails. She wanted to make sure we understood the sanctity of life all too well before we were entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of it.”
“We’re not talking about shooting woodpeckers. This is a demon that’ll eat our brains or our guts or something,” Peddle pointed out.
Waiting until the paramedic stopped grabbing the scissors altogether, Chase let the creature slump to the ground. Nearby, the entrepreneur groaned another protest.
“We should just leave it for dead,” said Peddle.
Chase gnashed his teeth at him. “We’re not leaving him for dead.”
“Are you insane? These creatures will tear us apart if given the chance!” Peddle said, still defiant as ever.
Chase didn’t care. The last lingering threads of humanity still clung to the paramedic’s soul, which might’ve explained the repeated self-stabbings. Instinctively, Chase reached out with his mind to find scant traces of compassion in the being’s memory.
He saw an image of the paramedic trying to rescue an asthmatic woman with a defibrillator. While being treated, the woman transformed, and then swiped at his throat. The paramedic managed to get away right before she hurled the defibrillator at him, the plastic casing shattering upon contact with the ground. The air whipped by as he sprinted to his ambulance, arriving at the vehicle in almost the time it took to bat an eye.
Throughout all this, Chase saw the paramedic fight the changes. Flashes of pain echoed in the man’s memory as the demon chatter attacked the paramedic the same way it did Chase. The paramedic began sprouting talons on his fingertips even as he fumbled with putting his vehicle into gear. The bony horns and spongy tail protruded out of the man as he crashed the ambulance, clinging to what remained of his humanity.
Now, lying on the ground with death imminent, the paramedic’s movements slowed, including respiration. Chase leaned down toward his monstrous kin, careful not to startle the beast. In this condition the creature probably wouldn’t lash out at him, but taking that extra precaution certainly didn’t hurt.
“It’s okay,” Chase whispered. “Your suffering will end soon.”
“It’d end sooner if you plugged that abomination with a bullet or two,” Peddle uttered nastily.
Chase shook his head. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I truly wish it hadn’t. You’re supposed to be out there saving lives, and now yours is coming to an end. But no one has to die alone. I’m staying right here until you go.”
“You’re flipping insane!” Peddle roared, throwing his hands up in the air. “I can’t believe I’m wandering around with a demon sympathizer!”
He doesn’t understand, a singular voice rose inside Chase’s skull this time. He sees us as a threat. But you understand. You can hear us. We are not so far different from you. We used to be like you. Now, we are better.
Chase blinked three times, straining his eyes to focus on the world around him. He glanced down at the paramedic bleeding from self-inflicted stomach wounds. It was only then that he understood who the voice referred to. It wasn’t Peddle at all, but rather the paramedic.
Why, though? Was it because the paramedic’s transformation had been incomplete?
An idea flickered in Chase’s mind. “Give me a pill, Peddle.”
“Why should I?”
Chase stepped toward Peddle, waving his fist in the air.
“Do it because I told you to.”
Chase watched the man’s eyes flicker between cowardice and bold determination. Good thing Peddle hadn’t armed himself, unless he’d done so while Chase had been napping.
“Fine,” Peddle said. He heaved a sigh as he yanked out the medicine bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured a pill into Chase’s expectant palm.
“Thank you.” Chase loathed thanking Peddle for anything, but Pa and Ma Weaverson had raised him to mind his manners, a skill now all but lost upon mos
t everyone these days. Thank goodness his folks had instilled some good values in him, or else Peddle wouldn’t still be standing.
He went to give the paramedic Peddle’s pill. The creature held its gut with one hand while wriggling its other set of fingers as if to warn. Chase held out the capsule for it to see.
“You’re an idiot,” Peddle grumbled from a distance.
Chase waited for the paramedic to take the pill. Noticing the creature fading fast, Chase put his free hand around the demon’s mouth. Next, he tried to pry its lips apart. Physical contact with the man’s skin gave Chase the sense of cold fury, a protest almost human. The open wound at the creature’s mid-section continued to gush out blood.
Sooner or later, even a demon had to stop bleeding.
Finally Chase crammed the pill down the guy’s throat. The demon twitched about uncontrollably, another yowl bursting forth from deep within the former man. The paramedic swatted at Chase, its talons digging well into Chase’s bicep. Retracting his arm, Chase sprayed blood from his wound on the demon and sidewalk.
Still, he didn’t scream, despite his injury. Willpower alone gave him the strength he needed to hold on, even as blood trickled out of his wound. It wasn’t like the paramedic had lopped off a limb.
“This isn’t your fault,” Chase said, clasping the beast by the shoulder.
A spasm shot through every portion of the medic’s body. The convulsion bucked Chase’s grip off. He watched as the paramedic’s flesh reverted back to its natural dark tone, the enamel horns shrank back into the man’s skull and the tail fell off, leaving gaps where those extra appendages had formed.
“Thank you,” the man whispered to Chase, and then breathed no more.
“You’re welcome,” Chase whispered. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, his lips trembling as each word he uttered passed between them. As he spoke, the voices tempting him toward slaughter receded into the back of his mind.
“Please let this gentle soul now departed from his body rest forever in peace, never to again know the horrors inflicted upon him in his final days. I implore you in the heavens above to find this lost spirit and bring him home. Amen.”
He opened his eyes once more, glanced at the paramedic one last time, and frowned.
“Farewell,” he said before turning away.