White and Other Tales of Ruin

I looked back at the coach. It was motionless and the sharp-edged rents I’d blown into reality danced with dark shapes. Struggling people joined them at first, but then they were totally blotted out as the shapes took control. New faces stared out … faces with antennae and visors reflecting nothing of our fear and confusion. And then the demons came out. Not only through the holes I had created with the pad-rifle, but also through new gaps in the background scene of houses and mud and mist. Trapdoors opened in the coach’s roof, shedding demons like confetti to the sky. They spiralled upwards, ten of them, fifteen, twenty, and others flowed into the mud, burrowing just below the surface, aiming for the bandstand and casting strong wakes behind them.

People started screaming. They’d brought down a few demons, yes, but the initial flush of success was smothered by the sight of dozens more vectoring in on us. Back came the fear. Back came the supernatural awe that these things inspired.

I aimed the pad rifle at the swimming shapes and fired into the mud. It exploded upward and outward as if a depth charge had blown, scattered wet filth to the breeze, raining down around us brown and black, and red where I’d hit one of the damned things. More came in, lines of bubbles the only evidence of their route now that they’d gone deeper.

“Open fire!” I shouted, looking around at the terrified people. Their guns aimed tentatively at the skies, the mud, and some of them fired a few rounds.

In their eyes, their stance, I saw only hopelessness.

The sky darkened as a dozen demons swept in. I shouted at Laura to drag Chele to the centre of the bandstand floor? I wondered whether any tunes had ever been played here, any brass victory marches or string pleas for peace? and I fired again. The gun thumped in my hands as it expelled a shot; until now it had been recoilless. The round hit a flying shape and turned black into a rain of red, but when I fired again there was a loud hiss of gas, a broken thunk from inside the rifle, and it died in my hands.

I spun the weapon around to use as a club. But I didn’t need it.

The demons didn’t come for me or Laura. Not even for mortally wounded Chele. It was as if we were invisible observers, and the slaughter was a show put on especially for us.

The clicking of their communications was a low, seismic tickle through my spine, standing my hair on end, sending pains through my teeth. Everything went hazy and dim, as if my sight was picking up atmospheric interference.

Mud-covered demons emerged and squelched up onto the bandstand. Others landed from the sky. They walked with the same gait, struck with the same deadly precision.

Not one of the people fired again before they died.

The demons lashed out with lengthened limbs, claws slashing through clothing and flesh, the air turning red, bodies spinning away as insides leaked out, other demons catching them and crushing their heads, paralysing with stun-guns, gutting with elongated claws protruding from where their elbows or knees should be, pushing them from one to another like cats playing with a mouse, slashing or stabbing, moving on, plucking out an eye, emptying a gun into a chest, moving on again. The bandstand floor was awash with human stuff. It ran over the edges and flowed away with the flood, spreading like a bruise on its surface, heavy bits sinking, lighter pieces — scalps and eyeballs and flayed skin — floating towards their final resting place.

There were screams and gasps and the air stank of blood and shit. I felt the greasiness of the slaughter coat my skin, tasted death.

It lasted for thirty seconds.

Everyone was dead but us. Most of the demons turned to leave, but two came our way. They were clicking and clacking quietly, a casual chat during a walk in the park. Their dark body-armour — grown or worn, I still couldn’t tell — was slick with blood. I despaired at the hopelessness of it all, the unfairness, and I selfishly turned away from Laura. No man should see his daughter die.

I looked out over the sea of mud and waited for the end.

“Dad!” Laura hissed. Her voice was so imploring I had to look.

The demons had nudged her to one side and were standing over Chele, kicking her with their clawed feet. When she did not respond or move one of them slung her easily over its shoulder. Blood dribbled from her wounds and added its own signature to her carrier’s armour.

I stepped towards them. There was nothing I could do, but it was an automatic reaction.

They stopped dead-still and the crackling of their communication increased in tempo and volume. It went for a gentle hush to a chaos of static, a white noise in which anything could have been said. The unencumbered demon brought up its stun-gun and aimed it at my face. Laura gasped. I looked at Chele’s back, trying to make out whether or not she was breathing, but I couldn’t tell.