Copyright © 2019 James Russell Stoakes. All rights reserved.
https://JamesStoakes.com
It was dark out, and the city was about to come unglued. A woman’s screams could be heard in the distance, Jarred laughed inside. The police had given up on trying to maintain the peace hours ago.
Jarred could feel the atmosphere around them changing. Even so, he and his three demon escorts walked the sidewalk confidently and without fear because they were on the hunt. It wasn’t long before they were confronted.
“Our prey has arrived,” Jarred said after a quick glance at the auras in front of them. The low light levels did not impede his ability to see them.
As soon as the group saw Jarred and the girls, they began hooting and hollering and surrounded the four of them. They pressed in to intimidate.
A pre-determined password had been passed to all the members of Croc. “Chaos rules the night,” Jarred said, and two the men backed away quickly. They had heard the password and the rumors of Jarred Chaos and his power.
The rest of the group looked at each other, confused because their quarry did not seem afraid of them. One tried to sneak up on Jarred and hit him in the head with a hand made club. Tina intercepted his attack, and he went down hard.
“Those two live,” Jarred said, indicating the two members of Croc that were withdrawing into the darkness. “Kill the rest in my name,” Jarred commanded.
Jarred watched in delight as the carnage moved forward. Demons might not remember what the body they possess knew, but they remember everything they have learned in the eons of their existence, and fighting was one of those things they remembered well. It only took moments for the three of them to cut down every one of the men in the group. Tina was making a count when the man she first took out groaned and began to move. She casually walked over and stomped his head into the curbstone.
“And this one makes sixteen,” she reported.
“Nice work,” Jarred said. “At least the count on my quota has broken even tonight. Are we ready to celebrate?”
Tina licked a spot of blood off of her knuckle and giggled. It wasn’t hers, and neither was the new knife she held. “I’m ready to kick some more ass,” she said with a sexy smirk. “You can shower us with praise when we celebrate.” Jenny and Wendy both nodded in agreement as if the matter was settled. The three of them began to cruise the sidewalk again, leaving Jarred behind.
“I see,” he said, leering at their behinds in the moonlight as he followed. “You’ll need a shower when I’m done praising you,” he said as he thrust his hips in the air and laughed uncontrollably.
Camila couldn’t sleep. She wanted some chamomile tea and was improvising with the candle to make hot water. She had a metal measuring cup suspended over a candle, and the water was just starting to get hot.
A scratching noise caught her ear. At first she wasn’t sure what it was or where it was coming from. Then someone tried to turn the handle on the door, and it clicked back and forth a few times. Camila put down her container of water with the thought of getting her husband, but before she could, the door burst open with a crash.
Two very large men entered the room, they stunk of cigarettes and beer and body odor. The whites of their eyes seemed unusually bright in the candlelight as did their wide grins.
“Bill!” she screamed. “Billll!” she screamed again as one man lunged to grab her, and the other moved deeper into the living area and disappeared from her sight. “No!” she screamed as she backed away. Her hand touched the side of her container of hot water as she moved. She tried to grab it to throw at the man as he moved towards her again, but it slipped from her grasp and spilled on the counter.
Camila could hear Bill yelling commands at the other intruder as she ran out of space, and her back was up against the sink. She could feel the handle of the knife she had used to make salad, so she grasped it and got ready. Three bright flashes and the accompanying loud bangs distracted the man in front of her. When he turned to see his friend fall to the floor, Camila lifted the knife and plunged it into the shoulder of the man in front of her.
He screamed in pain and moved away from her as Bill came around the corner. Bill was surprised by the man charging him and was knocked to his ass. The intruder escaped out the door he and his buddy had broken and was navigating the stairs by the time Bill recovered his footing. He began to chase after his assailant, who was moving a bit slow. At the bottom of the stairs, Bill caught up with him as the perpetrator tried to exit the building, and Bill put two bullets in his back. The man burst out of the building and onto the sidewalk face down.
Bill slowly moved to the door and looked around, no one could be seen. The injured man was trying to crawl away, “Not today, asshole,” Bill said as he pointed his gun and shot one more time. The dead man’s brains painted the sidewalk, and his blood spread from there. Bill looked around again and satisfied that no one had seen him, he closed the door and walked back up the stairs.
When he entered the apartment, Camila was nowhere to be seen. “Camilla?” he called out worried.
“We’re in David’s room,” she called back.
Bill was starting to shake. “Stay in there while I clean this up,” he commanded. There was no response.
He hefted the body in their hallway up and carried it down to the street. He tossed it on top of the other body and again checked that no one had seen him before going back in. He retrieved a camping lantern and assessed the mess, including the door.
“Door first,” he decided and retrieved his hammer.
Jarred heard three gunshots in an apartment above where they were on the street. The three flashes of light could be seen through the third-floor window curtains.
“Let’s watch for a few minutes,” he said to the girls and motioned them into the shadow of the building. They did as he asked and waited. Only a few moments later, someone tried to exit the building but was cut down by gunfire. Officer Walsh stepped out behind the man and looked around before putting a final bullet in the man’s head. Jarred smiled as the man’s aura changed before his eyes from blue to grey to yellow. “Welcome to the fold, Officer Walsh,” Jarred whispered to himself.
Once the excitement was over, the three demons moved north to begin circling back home. It was only a little after midnight, and most everyone had hunkered down for the night. Even the opportunistic criminals had disappeared. Maybe all the looting early on had temporarily satisfied their lust for material items, or the number of bodies in the street had made them think better of being out.
Seargent Basko had been at the station all night and had not slept a wink. He wasn’t sure if he had stayed out of loyalty to the job or if he was letting his fear of walking the street alone get the best of him. There was no one to go home to except his cats, Buddy and Tom, and because of his odd schedule, there were several days worth of food out for them already, so he wasn’t worried about them. The front room was crowded with people who just wanted a safe place to be since the looting had started. He had been keeping an eye on them while going over the paperwork that had been returned from the power company. Electrico claimed they had not needed officers for the times claimed, but he knew that officers had been assigned to lift trucks throughout the city over the last few weeks.
Basko and two other cops had stayed at the station overnight. Officer Tyson was the only scheduled officer that had shown up for their shift. Officer Bryce, like Basko, had decided it was better to work than walk home.
It wasn’t unusual for some officers to not make it to work when there was a natural disaster, most of them had family to take care of too, but today’s lack of attendance was disturbing. Seargent Basko figured it was probably a combination of the Mayor’s policies dragging down officer morale and the fact that this was obviously a terrorist attack of some sort. They were too short on help to investigate the multitude of homicides, robberies, rapes, and other atrocities that had happened during the night.
Reports had piled in via radio while patrols had attempted to keep the peace. Some of the officers had called in and reported going off duty, others had called for backup and hadn’t been heard from since. Basko had no idea if backup ever arrived with the streets the way they were. His radio went silent hours ago, and his battery backup was nearly dead. He feared the worst for them. The last he had heard was from the fire department on Boyleston st; there was a fire at the Prudential building, and they didn’t have enough staff to do anything about it.
Conditions in the city were bad this night, the ugly underside of the city had shown itself, but it was restrained. The next time the sun went down, he predicted, there would be no restraint; ugly would not be a strong enough word to describe what was coming.