
# Table of Contents

And Demons Followed Behind Her (The Godsverse Chronicles, #1)

And Demons Followed Behind Her

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Prologue

Chapter 1

Thousands of years ago...

Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

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Special thanks to the following people for breathing life into the Godsverse when I thought its light had been blown out:

KATRINA ROETS, PAT Shand, Starr, Ernie Sawyer, I'm a Ninja, Logan Waterman, Matthew Johnson, Gary Phillips, Ramsey Church, Phil, Melissa Hooper, Jean Lau, Eric P. Kurniawan, Peter Anders, Collin David, Nikres. Joshua Bowers, Jeff Lewis, Emerson Kasak, Linda Robinson, Susan Faw, Talinda Willard, Courtney Cannon, Dave Baxter, old_fogey@yahoo com, Nick Smith, Charlotte Organ, Chad Bowden, Jason Crase, John L Vogt, Philip R. Burns. Bloodfists, Death's Head Studio, LLC, Daniel Groves, Rodney Bonner. JF weber, Walter Weiss, Mitch Fittler, Stacey Henline. Stephanie, Kathy Ash, Charlotte Ulla Pleym, Ray, Jason Schroeder, Chris Call, Maximilian Lippl, Andrew Rees, Tawnly Pranger, Minarkhaios, Vincent Fung, Dave Kochbeck, and Bob Jacobs.

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# And Demons Followed Behind Her

The Novelization of Katrina Hates Dead Shit

Part one of The Godsverse Chronicles

By Russell Nohelty

Edited by: Leah Lederman

Proofread by: Katrina Roets

Cover by: Paramita Bhattacharjee

Also known as Katrina Hates the Apocalypse

*

Dedicated to every fan who read the Katrina Hates the Dead graphic novel and hounded me for years to make more stories in this world. You're to blame for all of this.

And Demons Followed Behind Her (C) 2017 Russell Nohelty

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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# Prologue

Two years ago, the world went through the end of times, the Apocalypse, or whatever the religious types call it. God beamed all the good boys and girls up to some giant orgy in the sky and left the rest of us asking one question: Why not me?

A rift opened in the desert. Hellspawn poured out onto Earth. They ravaged humanity, ripping us apart for their own pleasure, torturing us in the most grotesquely creative ways possible. They looted our towns, raped our bodies, and slaughtered us at will. It was bedlam; Hell on earth. And there was nothing we could do to stop it.

Then, one day, the monsters got bored and opted for a quiet life in the suburbs. They squatted in the homes of the people they once brutally murdered. They were neither pleasant nor polite neighbors. They threw raucous parties late into the night and played their guitars too loud. They shot off fireworks in the dead of night. They lived like frat boys. We lived in constant fear and in a state of perpetual loneliness, expecting to die and scared to live. We tried to get along any way we could, even after we'd lost everything.

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# Chapter 1

"Stay out of here, man!"

The metal door of my apartment shook and shuddered over and over as a zombie slammed against it. Wooden doors broke too easily. They splintered and sheared during even a light zombie attack. Metal doors lasted forever, if you could find a few suckers willing to lug it up a flight of stairs for you.

The door slammed again. The zombie on the other side wouldn't give up, I had to give him that. "I told you I'm not letting you in, so piss off!"

Zombies were a nuisance more than anything. Their spongy flesh barely held against your fist. They were only intimidating as a horde, and there haven't been zombie hordes for months. At most, you got a few zombies huddled in a group.

As far as monsters went, zombies ranked at the bottom of the Apocalyptic monster scale. There were all sorts of demons around since the Rapture, not to mention ghosts, and minotaurs, and these three-headed dogs, and seven-headed hydras, too. It's a complete mess. It's what you deal with during a full-blown Apocalypse. The kind the Bible warned us about for all those wasted millennia.

Also, most zombies talked, and not just "we eat brains" either. They were lucid just like anybody else on the planet. Well, some of them anyway. If they rose from the grave before their brains rotted, they could speak. Otherwise, they were the shuffling stupid zombies like in old horror movies. But that's just science.

I slammed my weight against the banging door. "Go away!"

"I'm not going anywhere, Katrina!" the zombie shouted back. "I have squatter's rights!"

"Go away!"

This particular zombie might or might not be, but definitely was, my old roommate.

He's a dick. Not because he's a zombie either. That just doesn't help the situation. No, he's a dick because he hasn't paid rent in six months.

I was making headway getting the door actually closed and locked when my phone rang.

Yes, there was still cell phone reception two years into the Apocalypse. No, I didn't know why it still worked, but you don't have to be a genius to figure out that the corporate shills who ran the cell companies weren't churchgoers. Otherwise, they would've been raptured. Weird how that caveat worked; where you could escape damnation just by going to church. Lotta rapists went to church. Lotta good people didn't.

We found all sorts of good men and women God left behind after the Apocalypse began. Men and women who did the Lord's work, even if they didn't go to church or praise his name. God was a vindictive bastard. The Devil was worse, though, for unleashing this Hell upon us.

I flipped open my phone. "What do you want, Ronald?"

Ronald was my boss at the only job I could find after the Apocalypse. Yes, there were still jobs. We're not savages. People gotta make a living. They gotta eat. We're not marauders. Well, some of us were marauders, but not most of us.

"Katie!" Ronald shouted into the phone.

"Don't call me that!" I screamed. I hated when people called me Katie.

His shrill voice pounded against my eardrum. "It's loud over there. Somebody tapping that ass or something?"

The door slammed again. I braced against it with all my weight. "You think I would pick up the phone if I was getting nailed, Ronald?"

"I'd like to think so. I mean, I imagine it often enough, Katie."

"Imagine me ramming my fist through your skull if you ever call me Katie again."

The zombie slammed against the door again. I pressed my ass against it to prevent him from coming in. "Look, Kate. You gotta come in."

"Screw you, man. I've worked for the past three weeks straight. This is my day off."

"Don't know what to tell you, Kat. Gary and Melissa both caught the Plague. They can't come in since they're dying."

"Can't you find somebody else?"

"Who else is there, man? I guess I could pull a couple zomboids off the street. They're always good for a shift."

"No! Do not do that. I'll come in, alright? Just do not hire any zomboids."

"I knew you would."

"I hate you."

The door slammed again. I'd had enough. I ripped it open and glared at the jaundiced zombie smiling back at me. "Screw off, Barry. I kicked you out two weeks ago."

He scratched his red hair. Flecks of skin fell to the ground. "I know, Katrina, but I just found a copy of Donald in Mathmagic Land. I wanna watch it, so I'm gonna need my TV."

"I haven't seen a dime from you in six months. Consider the TV my payment."

"Alright, alright. That's fair. But you know I'm just gonna keep coming back for it, right? I mean, it's not like there's a whole lotta functional TVs left in town, aside from the Black Zone and I ain't crazy enough to go there. I've been salvaging around and looking for one. So, like, you could keep it and then you'll have to keep seeing me, or you could let me take it and I'll be outta your hair forever."

I sighed. His zombie logic was sound. "Take the TV and you're outta my life forever, agreed?"

"Scout's honor. Now let me in. I'm freezing my nerps off."

I stepped aside and let Barry into the apartment. "Fine. Grab it and go. I'm late anyway and I gotta shower to get the stench of you off me."

"Fair enough. Hey, can I walk with you? It's not safe out there."

I grumbled to myself on the way to the bathroom. "Fine! Just wait for me out here."

"Thanks, Katie!"

"Don't call me that!"

*

I WINCED AS THE COLD water hit my shoulder. We haven't had hot water in a year, but my body never acclimated to that moment cold water first hit my naked body.

Hot water was a luxury and we didn't get luxuries anymore. Some businesses still had access to hot water, but only if it was critical to their operation, like water treatment plants.

There wasn't much we could hold on to these days, but clean water was one of them. It was one of the few things that kept us human; one of the few things that kept us going even on the worst days.

On special occasions, I gathered kindling and boiled water the old-fashioned way, but this wasn't a special occasion. This was just a run of the mill Thursday.

I rubbed the remnants of my last bar of soap over my aching shoulder. Trucks didn't deliver soap anymore. Luckily, there was always plenty of human fat to turn into soap, and there was always an industrious person willing to harvest enough to make more, but it took time. Another batch wasn't due for a couple more days.

Scars covered every inch of my body, save for my face. I wore long jackets and pants to cover them up, but as the soap rode against my skin it told the story of every battle I ever fought in Braille, from the first days of the Apocalypse through last night, where I beat back seven zombies with a hatchet. Every scar was a reminder that nowhere was safe.

"Are you almost done in there?" Barry shouted to me.

"No!" I screamed back. "Go away!"

The less civilized zombies still terrorized the countryside. The more docile ones lived in apartments and kept to themselves. The most enterprising demons hired less industrious monsters to flood the streets with terror, and zombies were their weapon of choice. You could go without a zombie attack for days, forget that life was a constant struggle, then face four attacks in an evening. Once the zombies tired us out, the demons would come and finish the job.

Anybody still alive could fend off a zombie attack on their best day, but it's harder to have your wits about you after you've been up for a hundred hours straight. That's where people got slaughtered nowadays. Everybody left was covered in scars, mentally and physically. We could all handle ourselves, but sometimes...you just lost your faculties. Other times, you lost the will to live.

Everybody lost the will sometimes. Hopefully, you got it back before you did anything stupid, cuz there's a mighty crappy price you pay for death.

Hell.

If I died, I went to Hell. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. God already beamed the good boys and girls up to some giant orgy in the sky, and I wasn't one of them. Which meant there was only one way out. Hell on Earth was bad enough, but Hell in Hell was an unbearable thought.

I ran the soap over a deep scar across my thigh, received in the first days of the Apocalypse, when Barry was still a human. Back then, and even before the Apocalypse, we were roommates. We met through his sister, Connie, and hit it off well enough. After high school, neither of us wanted to go to college. We just wanted to chill out and smoke weed all day. Barry sold enough dope on the side to make his half of the rent. I worked for mine.

Once the Apocalypse hit, the world erupted into endless flames. If you've ever seen the pictures of a forest fire engulfing Los Angeles, with the Holly Hobby homes in the foreground and the blaze burning inches from it, you know what it looked like.

The entire city of Overbrook caught flame at the same time. Our neighbors ran screaming through the streets. Great demons with swords and scythes indiscriminately hacked down everybody in their path.

That's where I got the scar. I turned a corner and came face to face with a big demon, like Andre the Giant on steroids. It swung its scythe at me and sliced across my thigh. I bled out on the street, losing consciousness. Barry found me. If he hadn't dragged me to a hospital...let's just say they took good care of me there.

Overbrook hospital did good work until they were overrun with demons. Like the big box stores and malls, they were easy targets for marauders and demons. There weren't hospitals anymore, but clinics existed sporadically around the city. Everything in Overbrook existed haphazardly. There's a doctor over here, a laundry over there, and a restaurant wherever there is room. People found little pockets of safety in the nightmare and hunkered down.

*

I DRESSED THE SAME every day. I didn't have the energy to agonize over my closet. I needed that brain power to stay alert. Long pants to cover my scars with a white t-shirt and leather jacket.

I rocked workout gloves, too, because they helped me grip poles and other weapons. They are a top five must-have item for any Apocalypse. I've been saved from so many blisters with those gloves. The last thing you want is an open wound when the monsters come out of the woodwork and attack.

I put together my look to be part utilitarian and part badass. I would be lying if I didn't say that part of my schtick was to look the part. People left you alone if you walked with a snarl, combat boots, and workout gloves. Even after two years, there were lots of people who ran away from a fight unless it was necessary, even though we could all handle ourselves. You don't get this far without having some serious survival skills.

I didn't much work out any more, but I didn't need to, either. Just living was enough of a workout. Back before the Apocalypse, Connie and I did Krav Maga with our friends Peter Li and Chad Bowden so we could protect ourselves from her horrible father. It came in handy after the Apocalypse, when I had to break way more than noses. For us at least. Peter and Chad barely lasted a month.

Ironically, you needed those skills less now than you did at the beginning. The monsters were softer now than when the Apocalypse first started. A function of living on Earth, I suppose. They got a little doughy around the midsection and decided playing video games was better than ripping people apart.

Those that enjoyed the heat and violence of Hell returned to the brimstone to torture billions of new victims. The runty ones remained. They didn't have the same killer instinct. Most of them just wanted to be left alone.

Finally dressed, I walked out of my bathroom, and saw Barry on the couch watching the TV, manspreading like he owned the place, with his hand down his pants. Men never change.

"Let's go!" I shouted to him. "Quit dicking around."

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# Chapter 2

Barry walked behind me as we made our way through the rusted gate and out of my apartment complex. He'd started banging on my door at twilight. It was dark by the time we left the apartment. Night was the worst time in Overbrook. The dead came out at night.

I don't usually take that long to get ready, but I did drag a little bit. I didn't want to go to work. The job sucked. The people sucked. Not that anybody wanted to work, but slinging moldy pizzas on a Thursday night in Overbrook was bad by any job standard.

Overbrook used to be the nicest little city in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by trees and cut off from the world's evils. We were content to be left alone. We didn't need much, and we didn't ask for much.

New movies didn't come to Overbrook, except for stuff like Star Wars and Transformers, and we liked them just fine. Nobody opened trendy new restaurants, but that was okay. Maximillian's had the best pie in Oregon and ice cream sundaes as big as your head. We had a hospital, but most of us just went to the doctor down the street we'd been going to for our whole lives. Mine was Dr. Call. He got raptured up. Deservedly so. One of the few who deserved it by my estimation.

It was the kind of sleepy, little town Norman Rockwell painted. I was perfectly happy living in my quaint little hamlet, working a sleepy, little job, and living a sleepy, little life. It was peaceful in Overbrook.

Main street was the only place in town where it ever hustled or bustled. Most of the shops and restaurants were there. On the Fourth of July, everybody gathered in the square to watch fireworks. Great joy existed there once.

Not anymore.

When Barry and I walked past it now, on cracked and slanted sidewalks, it was a shell of its former self. Mud and soot turned the white-washed buildings an ashy gray; vandals had smashed through the windows years ago. Huge trees grew straight up through the asphalt on the street. Only a ghost town remained.

Years ago, I walked blissfully ignorant through the town square high out of my mind. I remember wandering around after school completely blasted with my friends Dave and Swayze, laughing and joking without a care in the world. That was before they went off and got married, and then dead.

Now, I looked warily around every corner. Streetlights flickered as we ambled through the main drag. The hydroelectric dam still delivered us power, and people manned it at all hours to make sure we had electricity at night. We protected it with our lives. It was the only thing separating us from the creatures living in the darkness.

I probably should have just driven around instead of always walking. After all, there was an abundance of cars in Overbrook. You could have your pick, but cars made noise, and noise attracted monsters. Also, cars are only great until you roll one. Then, they become a liability. Even though I fought too many monsters walking around, it was still less of a gamble than driving. Besides, gas was precious in Overbrook. People fought and died for it. Cabals made their fortunes hoarding it.

I turned up a blind alley at the end of the main drag. Barry huffed and puffed behind me, fumbling his TV with every step. I didn't like using alleys. Alleys were prime spots for an ambush, but this one cut ten blocks off my walk and those ten extra blocks were a harrowing affair. The sooner you got inside at night, the better.

"Wait up!" Barry shouted. "This thing is heavy."

"You're the one who wanted to walk with me," I said. "Remember that?"

"You're a real asshole. You know that? Sound just like my sister."

Connie. She used to be my best friend, until I let Barry die. Since then, she'd been cold as ice. Really, it's a bit of a misnomer to say I let him die. That boy was a glutton for pain and a magnet for misfortune.

"How is she?" I said. "Haven't seen her around for a while."

"She's been avoiding you."

"That'll pass, eventually. She still sacrificing goats to the Dark Lord?"

"I don't think it's goats anymore. I think she moved up to cows."

"Is that an upgrade?"

"I think so. She's still pissed our douchebag dad got blue lighted and not her. Won't stop trying to summon the Dark Lord until he brings her justice."

Blue lighted. It's what we called it when people got raptured up to Heaven. Connie's dad was a real dickhead, but he was a churchgoing dickhead. That seemed to be the only criteria. You could be a child molester, but if you went to church, you'd still get blue lighted.

"Well, that does eat up a lot of time," I said.

"She still finds time for Dennis."

I frowned at her boyfriend's name. "Well, they both need to get over it. Life isn't fair."

"I'll pass on the message. You're all heart, you know."

"Hey, I let you move back in, even though you were a zomboid, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you're a saint, Katie."

"Don't call me that."

"You pitied me and felt guilty for letting me die. It's not like it was out of the goodness of your heart. You coulda just given me a handie and called it a day."

"If I ever touch your dick, it'll be to rip it off."

"See, like I said. Cuun--"

Shook! A five-foot-long stake smashed through the front of the television, shattering glass everywhere, and sliced through Barry's chest. I spun around to see the wooden stake protruding two feet in front of him.

"Aw, come on!" Barry said, looking down at the stake. "Uncool!"

"Relax! You can't feel pain. It's just an inconvenience." I latched onto the stake with both hands. Next time people laughed at me for wearing gloves, I would tell them this story.

"Get it out. Get it out!"

"Hold still, you big baby."

I dug my combat boot into Barry's chest and heaved. With one hearty yank, the stake slid through him and onto the ground. Blood, pus, and mucus spurted from Barry's chest.

"How does it look?" Barry asked.

I knelt to check out his chest. There was a massive hole where his heart should be. "You'll survive."

Zombies didn't need their insides. They didn't seem to need anything, except a functional brain. I was skeptical that one rattled around inside Barry's skull, but if it didn't, then he'd be gone. "You think?"

"I've seen better. I've seen worse. You'll live."

Barry stuck his hand inside the hole. "Gross."

I grabbed his wrist. "Don't touch it."

He slapped my hand away and poked at the hole again. "What do you think that was all about?"

"I don't know, but it can't be good."

Groaning rose from the end of the alleyway. I'd heard it before, dozens of times. A small band of zombies lurched toward us. These weren't zombies like Barry. There were braindead ones, the kind that a demon could easily control. These types of zombies rotted in the ground for years before they dug themselves out.

Unlike zombies in the movies, these ones weren't motivated by brains, and they didn't have some great sense of smell, or sound, or whatever allows for zombies to perfectly track down groups of humans. Mostly, these zombies just stood around, gathering dust, until something found them and took control. It was usually a demon ready to take on a middle management position.

I sighed. "I wish they would just get here already. The longest part is watching them amble over here, you know?"

Three zombies emerged from the darkness. One was tall and lanky, like Keith Richards, except less gaunt. Another looked like a fatter, uglier, Danny DeVito. A third crawled along the ground with its legs missing and looked just like my uncle Ramsey.

"Can we go now?" Barry asked meekly.

"It's just a couple of zomboids, Barry."

Cracking my knuckles, I readied myself, even though I really didn't want to fight. I had tweaked my shoulder last night, and just clenching my fists made the pain vibrate up my right arm. I had intended to ice it but never got the chance.

Like I said, that was how people died. They fought too hard for too long and then a zombie horde found them at the right moment.

"What are you doing?" Barry asked.

"Fighting. What does it look like?"

His head lolled back. "Oh god. We're gonna die!"

"Please. They're the dumbest, slowest monsters on the planet."

The zombies ambled forward.

"They're gonna rip us apart. We should run."

"I'm not running, Barry. Then they'll just terrorize somebody else. I can't let that happen."

"Fine. Fight them. What do I care? Just remember to stab them through the--"

"The brain. I know, Barry. Barry?"

Barry slumped over against a chain link fence, a wooden stake through his left eye. He was dead. For real dead this time. I'd staked enough zombies to know a perfect kill when I saw one.

"That's it!" I shouted. "If anybody was gonna kill that annoying prick, it was gonna be me!"

The legless zombie croaked when I dropkicked it fifty yards into a parked car. It crashed through the windshield, twitched for a moment, and then fell down dead, a piece of glass embedded in its stupid head.

I spun around to pick up Barry's TV and used it to cave in the Danny DeVito looking zombie's skull. He fell on the ground and the television landed on top of him. Blood oozed out from under the TV as the zombie fell silent.

I crouched down in front of Barry. His dead, lifeless eyes looked back at me. "Sorry, buddy."

Pressing my hand against his shoulder, I yanked the stake out of his eye. I clutched it in my hand and thrust it up into the Keith Richards zombie's jaw, sending it shooting out through the back of its skull.

They were all dead. For real dead. They fell within a matter of moments. That's all it took to kill a pack of them on a good day. Last night, it took ten minutes, and I'd almost died four times. Tonight, I was on fire. Every move I made was the right one. But it doesn't always end up like that.

I crawled over the spear that had pierced through Barry's chest. It was still damp with his blood. Poor Barry. He didn't deserve what came to him. He was a good guy to the end, even if he was a deadbeat, and now he died twice, making him the ultimate deadbeat.

Back before we got the lights back on, the night was even more dangerous. Massive minotaurs and three-headed demon dogs roamed through the streets, ripping humans apart. I stupidly refused to stay inside.

I had this grand plan to get out of the city and head to the mountains. Nobody lived in the mountains, and it was cold. Hell monsters didn't like the cold. I tried to convince them all for weeks; Stephanie, Kenny, Linda, John, Emerson, Eric K, and the others whose names faded from memory long ago.

It took two weeks of planning, but we finally loaded up four trucks of survivors and headed out. We were supposed to leave at daybreak, but logistical nightmares forced us to delay until nightfall. Connie told me to wait until the next day, but I didn't listen. I had to get out of Overbrook ASAP.

We didn't get five blocks from our place before a monstrous minotaur smashed into the lead truck and rolled it. Two of the three-headed demon dogs attacked another truck. It was bedlam. I tried to turn them all around. I tried to get back, but demons blocked our exit and forced us to scatter.

Barry and I barely got off the trucks with our lives. We were battered, bruised, and in pain. They wounded Barry the worst. He bled from his forehead and wobbled from a concussion.

I pulled him down an alley with a minotaur rushing after us. Of all the monsters Hell threw at us, the minotaur was the toughest I ever dealt with personally. There were worse ones, like hydras, but not in Overbrook. Demons could be reasoned with, zombies could be killed, ghosts could be evaded, and imps could be punted, but minotaurs never stopped.

We ran until we couldn't run anymore. We turned corners and jumped over fences, but the minotaur just kept coming.

Finally, we reached a dead end. The only way out was a broken picket in the fence. Barry couldn't get through, but I could.

"Go!" he shouted to me.

I wanted to say that I fought him, or at least screamed at him, but I didn't. I left him there. I just left him. In that moment, I knew why I wasn't raptured. No good person would have left Barry to die.

Now I'd let him die a second time.

Clapping echoed from the end of the alleyway. I gripped the spear tightly, feeling Barry's blood ooze over my hand. I gritted my teeth and waited for the son of a bitch who controlled the zombies to show itself.

"Bravo, my dear." I heard from the darkness. "Thank you for disposing of them. They really were the worst mouth breathers I ever had the displeasure of overseeing. Thank you for sending them back to Hell. I doubt they'll be back any time soon."

Out of the darkness came a dapper demon, red as blood, horned, and dressed in an elegant three-piece suit. He was immaculately put together, down to his perfectly polished black shoes that shone like mirrors.

"What are you doing here, Thomas?" I snarled. If there was a demon in the world I hated more than any others, it was Thomas.

"I want you back, my love. You are an exquisite specimen."

I held my spear up to his throat. "You never had me, Thomas. You can't trick somebody into sleeping with you and then get pissed when they wanna cut off your dick."

"Trick? I don't like that word."

"What else would you call it?"

"I don't know. It is my way." Thomas took slow steps toward me, his palms turned up. "I'd call it...Tuesday, I suppose."

"Of course that's how you feel. You have no soul."

"That would be accurate, Katrina, as you well know."

"I'm going to stab you through the throat if you take another step." I shifted into a ready stance.

Thomas grabbed the spear and punctured himself through the throat. He grinned maniacally as blue bile from the wound dripped down his neck. "My dear, I'm not a mortal, or even a zombie. Your weapons have no effect on me. There's nothing you can do to harm me."

I smiled back at him. "Maybe not--" I pressed my combat boot into his groin. A painful moan escaped his lips. "But I'll bet that, horndog as you are, you manipulated your nerve endings so they're concentrated in your cock, just in case I wanted to screw you again."

I pulled the spear out of Thomas's neck and jammed it into the gap between his pants. His confident bravado fell away, and he doubled over. "Now, I'm no expert, but that looks like harm to me. Now, leave me alone or I'll cut your head off. Got that?"

Thomas's blue blood spurted from the fresh tear in his pants onto my jacket as he collapsed onto his side. "Got it."

I looked down at my jacket. Thomas's bile stained the perfect leather. "Man, I love this coat. This stain is never gonna come out."

For good measure, I kicked Thomas in the face as I walked away, because screw him and his beautiful face.

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# Chapter 3

I shouldn't have slept with Thomas, and I knew that the moment I met him. It eats at me every day. I've made a lot of horrible decisions in my life. I cursed too much, drank too often, and slept with almost anything with a hard body and flashy smile. I wasn't surprised at all when the Good Lord didn't beam me up.

Still, a demon was low, even for me.

After the rapture, things were...the worst. Nothing prepared you for Hell on Earth. You could read about it, think about it, or get lectured about it, but you can't really know how bad it's going to be until you're smack dab in the middle of it. I watched people shoot themselves in the face right in front of me because they couldn't deal with the horror of it all.

That doesn't even account for the psychological baggage of knowing for a fact you aren't good enough for Heaven. Most people thought they were good on the inside and learning that God thought they deserved Hellfire sent them over the edge.

It broke a lot of people. Honest people beat each other for fun. My neighbor Jean looted churches for wine. Straightedge kids shot heroin because nothing mattered anymore. My ex-coworker Jason slaughtered a boy in broad daylight who picked on him at school, laughing hysterically the whole time like a rabid hyena. And people screwed each other. People screwed a lot.

I'm not proud of it, but for those first few months there wasn't a cock I didn't suck or a dick I didn't ride. So, when a strapping, barrel-chested hunk sauntered into my favorite bar, you are goddamn right I pounced on him. I didn't know back then that demons could shapeshift into anything they wanted. I didn't know that his MO was finding tender, human girls, screwing them raw, and ripping them in half from the inside as he came.

I knew it later, though. I knew it when he went from a charming playboy to a demon in front of my eyes. His smile vanished and his pale skin turned bright red. Horns grew out of his forehead and his cock tore me apart from the inside. I screamed and kicked, but that only made him laugh. I pushed him off of me, but he wouldn't move. He was in a trance, and just like a dog with a boner, his dick knotted inside of me. I couldn't get it out.

I wriggled to the edge of the bed. Thomas's eyes glowed yellow and illuminated the whole room with an eerie glow. He chanted under his breath as I screamed in agony. I could see the outline of his throbbing cock through my stomach.

I grabbed for anything that could help me. That's when I felt it sitting on the nightstand; my grandmother's rosary. My mother had given it to me right after the Apocalypse began. She made me swear to keep it close in case I ever needed it.

I reached my arm as far as I could and latched onto it. Then I swung.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Finally, the rosary smacked him across the face and he screamed out in agony. It seared into his flesh. His dick fell fallow inside of me. I pressed my knees against his chest and kicked him as hard as I could. He slid out of me and landed on the ground.

I stood up and ran out into the courtyard stark naked. "Help! Help!"

"You are being dramatic," he shouted after me. "I thought we were having fun."

"Fun? I don't mess around with demons."

"Well," he smiled. "I beg to differ on that front."

The denizens of the apartment complex came out to snicker at me, or to catch a glimpse of my naked body. Even then I was riddled with scars, but at this moment I didn't care.

"You guys get a good look?!" I shouted at them.

"Why don't you come back inside," Thomas said. "And we'll talk about this."

"Get out of here."

Thomas grew a suit around his naked body and wrapped himself in it. "I don't have to do that, Katie."

"Don't call me that! Just get the out of here!"

He dragged his finger across the railing. "Very well. Out of respect for you, I will go. I could rip everybody in this complex apart and not mess one fiber of my suit. But I won't. I'll leave you what dignity you have left, and you will think me magnanimous in that."

"You're a cocksucker."

Thomas laughed as he reached the bottom of my stairs. "Not to make too fine a point on it, but that is a description not out of line in describing you, my dear."

He never took his eyes off me, like I was a pet to be tamed. With one final nod, he turned and strolled out of the complex. I ran back to my room and shut the door. I don't know how long I cried, but the next time I looked up, the bright light of day shone in my eyes.

Thomas violated me. He lied to me. He tricked me. I hated him for that. I still hate him for that. The worst part of it all was that being raped by a demon wasn't even the worst thing that happened to me that week.

Horrible stuff happened all the time. You couldn't get caught up dwelling on it, or it might just get you killed. That's how I would get past Barry's death, too. By compartmentalizing it.

*

I TRIED TO AVOID PLACES that hired zombies over humans, but sometimes I couldn't avoid it. There was one minimart, for instance, that supplied the only stain stick in the entire city, and they loved hiring zombies for cheap labor.

A zombie read an old porn mag at the cash register as I stomped into the market. He was a fat one in a ripped blue shirt with a nametag that said "Andrew Rees" on it.

"Welcome to Mickey's Market!" it shouted at me.

From the tremor in his voice, he was only in the ground for a couple of days before he came up. He was still conscious of the world, but just barely. Unlike Barry, who was immediately reanimated, Ole Andy probably missed out on full sentience by a few hours. That's why he was perfect for work in a convenience store. It didn't take much brain power.

I picked up a stain stick and started rubbing it on the blue-ish green goop that lined my jacket sleeve. "It's not coming off. It's just rubbing it in more!"

"Hey!" the zombie screamed. "You pay! We not charity!"

"Christ."

I grabbed a bag of chips on my way to the front and slammed them on the counter. The zombie took the bag and rang it up. "Bad day?"

"You know I could pop your head like a zit, right?"

"No, please."

There was a spinner rack full of rosaries on the counter. My brain flashed back to Thomas. He would be coming for me, eventually. For some reason, demons hated biblical crap.

That seemed to be the only way to keep him at bay. Maybe other demons, too.

I grabbed a rosary off the spinner rack. "I'll take one of these, too."

"We no sell many."

I threw some money on the counter, wrapped the rosary around my wrist, and walked out. "Can't imagine why."

*

GARY AND MELISSA LIVED a couple of blocks from the pizza place. They were usually the people Ronald called in when he didn't have anybody else to cover, and I loved them for that. They were a little too jovial for me, but they both had a twinkle in their eye that never died, even after the Apocalypse took everything from them.

I needed to check on them, and make sure they were alright. They had survived so long that going out by catching the Plague would be an insult to them.

Their apartment was door wide open. Not a good sign. Inside, it smelled of death and decay. Flies buzzed around the kitchen. The swarms intensified as I inched toward the back bedroom. Even for me, who smelled death on the regular, it stank something fierce.

The Plague was the worst disease you could get in the Apocalypse. It came on without warning. People died screaming from the pain in a matter of days, sometimes hours. There were stories of perfectly healthy people puking black bile all over their partners in the middle of dinner and being dead by bedtime. One minute they were smiling and laughing. The next, they had a death sentence.

I knew what to expect before I walked through the bedroom door. Sure enough, there they were, Gary and Melissa, wrapped around each other, black bile spewed all over their bed, their mouths dropped open in a horrible final grimace, their eyes melted inside their skulls.

I was going to miss them.

Soon, the whole complex would pack up and move because the stench was so bad, leaving them to rot forever. One day that would be my fate, too, if I was lucky. Most of us didn't get to die in our beds, surrounded by loved ones. Most of us had no loved ones.

It took me longer than usual to walk the last few blocks to work. I took slow, deliberate steps, thinking about death, and the fickle hand of fate. Seeing a dead body used to get to me. I wouldn't even cut open a dead frog in school because it was too gruesome. Now, it didn't faze me at all.

Ronald didn't really own the pizza place. Nobody really owned anything anymore. He happened to find a restaurant and squatted there. He didn't look like much, but Ronald fought off enough gangs that people left him alone after a while. His place wasn't worth their time, especially so close to the Black Zone.

The Black Zone kept the monsters in the dark where they belonged. Most of them went back to Hell in the years after the Apocalypse, but those who stayed behind would roam around in the dark looking for food.

And that meant us.

Luckily, the nastier the monster, the more it despised the light. When we realized that, it was easy enough to trap them in the darkness. The city turned off all the lights on a five hundred yard stretch right between East and West Overbrook. That was where the worst monsters lived, those that could not acclimate to Earth and refused to return to Hell. Those that even the demons didn't dare disturb.

I came into the pizza shop through the back entrance and went right into the bathroom to wash the stench of Plague off me. Ronald had left my uniform on the toilet, but I wasn't about to wear it. When I was ready, I walked through the kitchen and into the dining area and saw that it was almost completely empty aside from Ronald and Stacey, the nasty bitch he was always trying to screw, and one gnarly faced customer. I could have stayed home, easily, if they weren't so lazy.

"Are you kidding me?" I shouted. "You called me in to deal with one tragic loser?"

The piece of human garbage eating his pizza looked up. "Hey!"

"That tragic loser is a customer. His name is Bloodfists, and he's worth more to me than you by about a million percent." Ronald replied. "Don't you forget it, or I'll pick some other nothing off the street to do your job. Got it? And would it kill you to wear a uniform for once?"

When he wasn't sweet talking me to come in, Ronald was a real dick. I grumbled back to him. "Yes, it would. It would literally kill me."

Ronald brushed passed me toward the door. "Now that you're here, I'll gonna shove off. Smoke a bowl and screw a hole, you know the routine. Stacey's in charge while I'm gone."

I turned to Stacey once the door closed. "He's got herpes, you know."

Stacey shrugged. "So do I."

"Awesome."

*

THE SHIFT WENT BY WITH the slow, rotting monotony of a root canal, but without the drugs or pain to keep it interesting. Seventeen people came in asking if we had cheese today (we did), thirteen asked if we had pepperoni (we didn't), and seven stormed out in a huff after I told them to get lost (I didn't care). A girl we called Organ and her friend Charlotte came in looking for human intestine, and they looked absolutely devastated when we sent them away. We haven't had fresh meat in months, and intestine was a delicacy, after all. We mostly dealt in Army surplus and whatever we could salvage from the garbage before scavengers ate it.

By midnight, I was over the night, and by two am, I was counting down the minutes until I went home. That's when I heard a loud pop from outside, and looked to see a bright yellow Yugo. I knew the car anywhere. It was Connie's.

I turned to Stacey. "Can I take a break?"

She dangled her feet off the counter in front of her. "Let me think about that. No."

"Why not?"

"Cuz I'm on break. We can't both be on break. It's bad for business."

"You're always on break."

"It's a mindset."

I watched through the broken glass window as Connie flung her boyfriend Dennis over her shoulder. She hadn't changed much in the months since she stopped talking to me. She still dressed in all black, with her bushy hair tied into pigtails on either side of her head. Dennis looked worse for wear, like he'd dropped a hundred pounds. His knees buckled under him as he leaned against Connie and tried to walk.

"Aw man," I said. "Why did they have to come here?"

Connie was the most violent fighter I had ever met, besides me. Of course, in order to be alive still, you had to have some measure of fighting skills. Even Stacey could dismember a zombie with her bare hands.

"They probably figured you'd be off tonight."

I sneered at her. "Shut up, Stacey."

Connie and Dennis walked inside. The bell over the door jingled. Stacey filed her nails. "I'm just sayin'. They asked me yesterday whether you're working today."

"And you're still gonna make me take them, I'll bet?"

Stacey nodded. "That's right, cuz it'll be funny to watch you squirm."

Connie and Dennis slid into a sticky booth in a dark corner of the restaurant and I angry-whispered at Stacey. "I hate you so much. Will you please help me out and cover their table? I can't deal with her tonight. Please. I'll pick up your shifts for a week."

Stacey thought for a second. "Nah. This will be more fun."

I grabbed a lukewarm pizza and hopped over the counter. "I hope your vagina falls off."

"It will."

I didn't want to confront Connie, especially not today. I didn't like the tension between us during the best of times, and now I was going to have to tell her that her brother died. Again. I thought about avoiding the subject and making her find out the old-fashioned way.

That's when you see your loved one's dead body on the side of a road and try to keep your sanity while burying them in a ditch. It was the way of the Apocalypse, but I couldn't do that to her. We had too much history.

I slammed the pizza in front of her and glided into the booth across from her. "I brought you this. It sucks."

Connie pushed the pizza away. "Who said you could sit down?"

"Well, nobody, but it's a free country."

Dennis slumped over in his seat. Connie leaned him against the wall. "I guess that's the truth."

I slid the pizza back over to her. "It's a peace offering, Connie. I figure it's time we buried the hatchet about Barry."

"This ain't about Barry and you know it. It hasn't been about Barry in a long time. It's about you being a selfish bitch who only thinks about herself. And it's a little bit about Barry."

"I let him move back in after he resurrected, didn't I?"

"Yeah, cuz you pitied him. Coulda just offered him a handie and called it a day."

"You really do think like him. Or thought like him. Or think like he thought."

"What are you babbling about?"

I sighed. "Your brother is dead."

Connie didn't even blink. "Because of some fool thing you did, I'm sure."

"It wasn't me. He asked to walk with me."

"Cuz he thought you would keep him safe. He was always an idiot."

I smiled. "That is the truth."

Connie slammed her hand on the table. "Don't you talk about him that way! I can talk about him like that cuz he's my brother, but don't you dare."

Connie flared her nostrils in a death stare. After a moment, I tilted down my eyes toward the pizza. "It's bacon. Rancid bacon, but it's bacon."

"I don't want your moldy bread and rancid meat."

"Then why are you here?"

Dennis spat black bile across the table. It was loud and wet, like phlegm caught in a vacuum.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"He's fine," Connie said. "Aren't you, baby?"

He nodded. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

He wasn't fine.  "I could rustle you up a can of soup, or an ice pack."

Dennis looked down at his napkin, covered in black gunk. We all knew what it meant, but none of us wanted to say it. "No thanks. I lost my appetite."

Connie rubbed his back. "Just leave us alone, alright?"

Stacey yelled over the counter. "Is he sick? Get him out of here if he's sick."

Without another word, Dennis collapsed with a thunk on the table. "Dennis!" Connie shook him. "Dennis! Get up baby. Get up!"

"Out of my way," I said, pushing Connie to one side and lifting Dennis onto my shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Connie shouted.

"We've gotta get him to a doctor now."

"Alright," Connie said, helping me lift. "Just be careful. He's all I got left."

"There's a clinic not too far from here but I really wish you'd showed up during daylight hours. Think your car can make it across the Black Zone?"

"It'll make it," Connie said. "It has to."

"Hey," Stacey shouted as we walked out of the door. "Who's gonna clean this up?"

"I don't care," I called over my shoulder as I walked out the door, supporting half of Dennis. "Please don't puke on me, Dennis. Okay?"

It took forever for him to put one foot in front of the other on the way to the car, but we finally got there. I pulled open the back door of the Yugo and Connie dragged him into the car. Then, she crawled over the back seat into the driver's seat.

I went to open the passenger's side door and Connie leapt over to lock it. "What are you doing, Connie?"

She reached over the back seat and locked that door as well. "Screw you! You're not coming!"

"You're a real asshole, you know that?"

She turned the car over, but it wouldn't start. She tried again, and again, and again. "Come on, you bastard! Work!"

"Troubles!?" I walked around the car to the driver's side door.

"It'll work. It'll work. It'll work."

"No, it won't," I said, pointing to the hose sticking out of the gas tank. "Somebody siphoned off all your gas."

I couldn't help but chuckle for a moment. I knew Dennis's condition was serious, but I loved uppity jerks getting what they deserve. Connie didn't get the joke. "This ain't funny!"

"I know, I know. Come on. Help me with him."

She unlocked the back door and when I pulled it open, Dennis oozed out onto the ground. "If you barf on my boots, I'll kick your ass."

He bent over and ralphed black bile over the asphalt. "Help me with him," I said, standing him up and trying to walk toward the darkness of the Black Zone.

"Are you kidding? We can't go in there without a car!"

"I don't see any other choice. There isn't a gas station around for miles. He'd be dead by the time we got back."

"Somebody's gotta have some gas to sell us."

"Maybe, but you got any cash? Cuz I just ducked out on my job to help you. I doubt I'm gonna get paid for a while."

Connie shook her head. "Ain't got no money."

"Well there you go. That leaves us two options. Let him die or take him across the Black Zone ourselves."

"You've gotta know what's waiting in there for us. We'll be dead in a matter of minutes."

"I had a good run. Now, you with me or we leaving him here to die?"

Connie grabbed Dennis's other arm. "We're gonna get mauled to death, aren't we?"

"That's the worst-case scenario. All we have to do is get through five football fields of darkness, surrounded by the worst monsters imaginable. I think we can do it."

Connie took a heavy step with me into the darkness, supporting Dennis's body with her own. "And what if we don't?"

"Then maybe we'll just get horribly disfigured. Besides, we're living in the Apocalypse. It's quite literally Hell on Earth. I mean, how much worse could death be?"

The glowing yellow eyes of the Hell hounds peered at us from the darkness. It would be the only light for five hundred yards. We would never make it, not with a dying Dennis. Not with a frightened Connie. I had just signed my death warrant, but I couldn't let him die. I didn't have much left in the world and I wasn't about to lose Dennis, too.

Not without trying.

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# Chapter 4

During the first days of the Apocalypse, Overbrook descended into one big Black Zone. The power shut off after the monsters invaded. It took them five days to slaughter their way from Reno to Overbrook. We watched the news every minute--every minute until the monsters arrived at our doorstep. That's when they invaded the hydroelectric dam, and everything went dark.

Without the lights, monsters ruled the night. Three-headed demon dogs rampaged through the streets with reckless abandon. Minotaurs destroyed everything they put their claws on. Clearly, it was an unsustainable lifestyle for us all. To have any chance of survival, we had to turn the lights back on.

My dad was an engineer at the power plant. His supervisor was blue lighted, and monsters mauled the rest of his team, but he survived. Us Clarks survived. We weren't the biggest, fastest, or smartest, but we were definitely the grittiest.

So, with his team and most of the city dead or blue lighted, dad was the only person who could turn the power back on to the town. I didn't try to talk him out of it, but I insisted on going with him. If he was heading into the damp, dark parts of Overbrook, he was gonna need protection. I didn't know about fixing dams, but I did know how to kick skulls, swing a hatchet, and fire a gun. Skills dad never mastered.

Dad recruited five people with a head for math and I recruited five who could fight; Bob, Ray, Courtney, Susan and Phil. I armed them all with guns and ammo, loaded them into two pickup trucks, and headed out to the power plant. Only one of us made it back to tell about it. I'll let you figure out which one.

Before we left on the mission, dad pulled me aside. "I need you to promise me something."

"Anything, dad," I replied.

"If it all goes tits up, and somehow...I die..."

"Don't say that..."

"I'm saying it, kiddo. If something happens...I don't want to live like a zombie. I don't...I need you to kill me."

"I'm not gonna kill you, dad."

"Please," he replied. "I don't want to die, but I don't want to live like one of them. Promise me. You said you would promise me anything."

"I...can't...You ask too much of me."

He nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry. It's probably not going to come up anyway."

I've always wondered whether he knew what would happen, or whether he just wanted to make sure he had his bases covered just in case.

*

THE PLANT SAT ON A river, five miles outside of town. The city council voted to create the dam back before I was born, and dad was sure that it would keep running forever as long as somebody was there to watch it.

Ray, Courtney and I loaded onto a truck with two of the brains and dad, while Phil, Susan, and Bob loaded the rest of the brains into the second truck in our convoy.

"Water's gonna keep flowing," dad said. "So, the power'll keep going long as somebody sits at the controls."

Back in those days, every city block was a warzone. Demons casually ripped people apart while zombies roamed the woods looking for a meal. Even the newly dead joined in on the fun. Barry later told me how much he regretted the killing.

"I know it's not an excuse," he said. "But I didn't know any better. I was a monster and that's what monsters did."

It was an excuse, and even the best ones stunk like assholes. Still, I never judged him for it. Those excuses calmed him in the worst days. It wasn't easy to live with killing people. I'd killed enough people to know.

It wasn't the zombies, or even the demons, that scared me when we were setting off to the plant. It was the demon dogs. They were extremely hard to kill. Each of their three heads was ungodly strong, and if any of their heads lived, so did the dog. The cujos just kept coming and coming. These were big too, three times as big as a Great Dane and ten times as heavy--like mixing a pit bull with a shark and giving it three heads.

It took all day to battle our way to the edge of town. We started out at daybreak, but by the time we reached the edge of town it was sunset. The demon dogs stayed dormant during the day. They hid in caves and vacant houses until the light faded. I wanted to turn back, or bunker down for the night, but dad wouldn't hear of it.

"That's one more night this whole town will be terrorized," he said. "I won't have it. Not when I can fix it."

I didn't beg or plead. He wouldn't have listened even if I did. "Okay, dad."

We got our first taste of the demon dogs when we reached the border of the town. Three of them jumped out of the darkness and ripped apart a very nice family. Their son Vincent graduated with me. His head lay bloodied on the side of the road as the dogs feasted on his father's organs. The mother, dripping in her family's blood, cowered behind a dumpster. She was next, and she knew it.

I caught her eyes for a horrifying moment. The will to live had drained out of them. I could have saved her but didn't want to waste the bullets. She had lost the will to live, and that meant she'd be dead by daybreak.

We sped toward the power plant. It wasn't long before yellow, glowing eyes glared back at us from the darkness of the woods. Their growls rose from a low roar to a guttural moan before they leapt toward us as a pack.

"Go, go, go!" Dad shouted.

The truck spun forward as the dogs bounded out of the woods. We slammed on the gas and peeled out as fast as we could. From the truck bed, a half-dozen guns riddled the dogs with bullets.

"Reload!" Courtney, our sharpshooter, shouted.

"Cover!" Bob yelled from the other truck.

They were built like Mack trucks and traveled in packs. With every bullet the trucks fired, a half dozen more dogs jumped out of the trees. For all the good our guns did, their sound attracted more dogs to join the fray. That's the problem with guns. They usually attracted more monsters than they destroyed. Swords never had that problem. Knives, spears, and stakes were harder to use, but brought less attention.

Besides, guns made bad melee weapons. If a monster attacked close enough, you couldn't fend it off with the butt of a gun. They worked well from long range, but demon dogs rushed like forces of nature, with no warning. If you didn't have something sharp in your hand, then you were as good as dead.

"I'm out!" Ray screamed from the truck bed.

A demon dog leapt out onto the road in front of my truck. I swerved to miss it and sent Ray off the truck into the ravenous jaws of the Hell beasts. He screamed in agony as I sped off into the distance.

"What are you doing up there?" Courtney spat.

"I'm trying to drive!" I replied. "Shut up and shoot!"

The truck bounced into the air and I latched onto the steering wheel.

"Tom!" Courtney shouted. "We've lost Tom!"

I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw one of the brains on the ground, being ripped to shreds by demon dogs.

As I watched, the other truck crashed into the pack of Hell beasts and flipped over. The dogs chasing lost interest in me and turned toward the fiery truck.

"We have to go back for them!" Courtney screamed.

"There's no time!" I shouted back.

The explosion from the other truck bought us just enough distance to separate us from the dogs. It wouldn't take them long to catch up, but not before we hopped off the truck and ran to the building.

Of course, once we'd locked ourselves inside the plant, a whole different set of problems presented themselves. We couldn't predict what waited there in the darkness.

"How are we gonna get out?" Dad asked as I slid a receptionist's desk in front of the door so the demon dogs couldn't smash through it. "They know where we are."

"Let's worry about that when we need to get back outside, okay?" I responded. "One thing at a time."

I counted the people left. There were four of us. My dad, me, Courtney, and some brain dad had recruited to help turn on the more complicated bits in the sequence. One truck died so we could live. They died, but we made it.

We all knew the risk. We knew why we fought. What we didn't know was how long we were going to last.

"I can never go back," dad said to me as we walked through the plant. "You know that. I'm stuck here forever."

"Don't say that. You'll train these guys and then we can work in shifts."

"You think there are enough people willing to run this place without me?"

I grabbed his shoulder. "We'll find a way, dad. We always find a way."

"She's right, Mister Clark," Courtney replied, clutching her shotgun close. "There's always a way."

Dozens of two-ton metal barrels speckled the massive room in tidy rows, all lit by a red emergency light which flashed down from the ceiling. When the plant functioned, those barrels generated power from the turbines churning underneath the water.

I heard a scream from behind me. The brainiac with us flew into the air and disappeared into the darkness.

"Run!"

Courtney turned and fired her shotgun into the room, then the three of us ran. Dad led the way toward a glass-enclosed room lofted above the rest of the plant.

"The control room is just up ahead! We just have to climb that ladder."

A great roar went up behind us. A minotaur reared its head and charged. I pulled Courtney and dad behind a generator as it galloped passed.

Dad pointed to a ladder. "Right up there."

"Go!" I shouted. "Both of you."

I grabbed the shotgun and fired it into the air. "Hey! Bet you can't catch me."

The minotaur puffed its hot breath on my neck as it chased me down the hall away from Courtney and Dad. I fired the last round of the shotgun at the minotaur, then slid behind a barrel and watched the minotaur skirt past me.

I climbed atop the barrel and looked out into the darkness. Footsteps clanged on the ladder to the control room. The beast must've heard it too, because it let out another roar and galloped toward it.

I couldn't let it hurt my father. I leapt onto it as it charged, landing on the beast's back. I pulled its horns and it reared against me. I used to do well on the bull-riding machines at the Saddle Bar in Ridgeway, but that was nothing in comparison to mounting a minotaur. It bucked me, and I rode it, barely holding on for even a moment. After a few seconds, it shook me off and smashed into the generators by the front door.

The lights flickered on in the control room--Dad and Courtney had made it. They weren't safe, though. The minotaur turned to the newly made light. It was a clear shot from where it stood to the steel beams that held up the loft. If the minotaur charged, it could take down the whole control room. I needed to end it, but I didn't have the strength myself. I needed help.

I bolted toward the front door. If I could get to the entrance, I could use the demon dogs as a distraction to buy Dad more time to get the plant operational. With any luck, the monsters would kill each other and leave us alone. I knew it was a horrible plan, but frankly they were all horrible plans. Even if it worked, we would still have to figure out an escape route. If we could get the plant back online, it would be worth it.

The dogs slammed against the door as I pushed away the reception desk. I wouldn't have time to act if the beast wasn't ready to fight. I had to time it perfectly.

"Hey, monster! I'm over here!"

The minotaur beelined for me. At the last moment, I pulled open the door. Five demon dogs charged through it. The minotaur crashed into them.

They nipped at the minotaur as a pack. In return, the minotaur crushed three of their bodies like zits. In the end, both beast and dog fell onto the ground. Blood from the monsters spewed across the concrete floor.

I loaded the shotgun with the bullets from the truck and ended the misery of what was left of the demon dogs. People said I didn't have a heart. Then, I shot four rounds into the minotaur. I pulled a knife out of my belt and hacked off its head for good measure.

For the first time since we'd left the house, it was quiet.

Too quiet. Something was wrong.

The control room was a blood bath. I climbed the ladder to find three imps taking turns slicing my dad with a knife. Courtney lay on the ground with a blade protruding from her throat.

"Hey!" I shouted to them.

They rushed at me. I grabbed one of their faces and smashed it into the ground repeatedly, then swung my shotgun around and shot the other two in the chest. They flew back against the wall, mangled and bloody.

Dad gagged blood as I knelt next to him. "Dad. Dad! No...please no..."

Blood sputtered on his shirt as he smiled at me. "It's okay. It's okay. I'm okay. You have to start it. You have to--"

I could barely talk through the tears. "How--how can I?"

"I--I--did everything. Just...the lever." He pointed to a lever on the control panel. "Push it up and it'll start."

"Dad. I can't do this."

He smiled at me. "You can. You can survive. Clarks are survivors."

The spark of life left his eyes. He was dead, and it was my fault. I could have prevented it. I shouldn't have let him go. I shouldn't have left him alone. It was the first big loss of the Apocalypse for me. I'd seen others die, but eventually you numb yourself to it. Not this time.

In that moment, I lost the will to live. I wanted to end it there. The shotgun had one more bullet in it. It would have been so easy.

But I couldn't do it. His death had to mean something. I pushed myself up off the ground and gripped the shotgun tightly in my hand.

That's when I heard the moan from dad's body. His leg twitched and his eyes turned jet black. His head jerked up and then to the side. He was alive again.

"Dad?" I asked. "Dad!"

"K-k-k-k-k--"

"Katrina," I said, smiling at him. "I'm Katrina. Do you remember me?"

"K-k-k-k-k-kill me," he replied.

"What?" I shouted. "I'm not going to kill you!"

"Pleeeeeeease," he whispered. "Can't live...like this."

"What about all that bull that we're survivors," I screamed, tears streaming down my face. "You just said we were survivors!"

Dad grabbed for the shotgun and pulled it up to his forehead. "Pleeeeaasse."

The shotgun trembled in my hand. I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill my father. He could have lived a long life as a zombie. I could have still been happy.

"I'm not going to do it," I shouted. "You want it, you do it yourself."

Dad's hand moved up the trembling shotgun to the trigger. His eyes found mine, and I didn't see that man who birthed me behind his eyes anymore. He was nothing but a hollow shell of my father. My dad might have been somewhere behind the darkness of his cloudy eyes, but I couldn't see him anymore.

I felt his cold hand against my trembling trigger finger. I clutched the gun tightly, but it still wiggled from one side to the other as my body convulsed with tears of pain. I felt my father's face press tightly against the barrels, and his hand push against the trigger.

"Please, don't..." I said through my tears. "Please."

"Save them," he whispered as he forced my hand down on the trigger. The gun blasted him against the wall. His brain shot against the wall behind him, and he was dead for the second time. I would have time to grieve him later, but I needed to fulfill his last wish first.

My motions were mechanical as I stepped through the pool of Dad's blood and made my way to the control panel. I grabbed the lever and pushed. In response, the plant cranked and wheezed to life--lights clicked on, boards lit up, generators hummed to life.

My dad had done it.

*

ONCE THE LIGHTS WERE on, we established a line of communication to Bend, Oregon, which was the closest functional city to ours. Portland, like almost all the big cities, went the way of the dodo some time before. Their destruction was the only thing shielding us from a worse fate. The smaller cities disintegrated, too, as their inhabitants were eaten, murdered, or run out of town. It was only cities like ours that remained, mid-sized cities, away from major population centers, that could surround and protect ourselves.

With the help of the power plant in Bend, we bussed several engineers into town to make sure the power plant stayed stable. They taught our best and brightest how to work the plant. If we could quarantine the beasties into a small area of the city and encircle them with light at all times, then they would stay in a localized area. Thus, the Black Zone was formed. At night, it worked to imprison them. During the day they retreated to the darkness of the apartment complexes.

The Black Zone was designed to keep all the monsters that go bump in the night, in the night forever. They hated the light so much they would do anything to avoid it. You could yell at a demon dog from just one foot inside the light and it wouldn't step a single foot forward to fight you. That was the one advantage we had over them. They were strong, but we were smart.

Okay, not that smart. I was about to willingly set foot inside the Black Zone, carrying a dying man who had no chance of survival, all because I felt guilty that I killed my ex-friend's brother.

"See, Connie," I said. "The Black Zone's a walk in the park."

"Easy for you to say. We've barely gone a hundred feet. Now shut up, unless you want to alert the demon dogs."

Dennis leaned on a car door while he heaved some more. The door whined on its rusted-out hinges and fell to the ground with a crash.

"Or that will do it."

Sure enough, ten demon dogs slammed down from the rooftops all around us.

"Get back into the light," I shrieked. "Quickly!"

I grabbed the car door with all my might and flung it at the biggest dog in the place. One of its necks snapped and lay fallow in front of him. That didn't stop it charging. They never stopped, except when they faced light.

When I was close enough, I threw Dennis into the light. The dogs wanted to attack, but screeched to a halt at the shadow's edge. Playing on their fear had saved me more times than I can count in the early days, and it saved us all when the power plant figured out how to contain them.

"Well, that didn't work," Connie said. "What are we going to do now?"

"I don't know."

Dennis slumped over Connie's shoulder, coughing black bile on her already black shirt. "We gotta figure it out or he's gonna die."

I looked toward the pizza parlor. Stacey was cleaning the black bile off the table wearing a full-scale hazmat suit. A few patrons cowered in the corner, worried that the Plague would infest them too. They were probably right.

Then it hit me. Demon dogs loved rancid meat. The older the better. Their taste for old flesh must have been honed in the pits of Hell, where the dead and enfeebled wasted away. The pizza place had rancid meat in spades.

I ran back toward the pizza place. "I'll be back!"

"Where are you going?" Connie called after me.

"Just keep Dennis alive!"

Stacey turned toward me when I ran inside the shop. "Welcome back. We're gonna have to burn this table, you know."

"That's the price of doing business."

Stacey snapped at me. "It's coming out of your paycheck."

I pulled five moldy pizzas out from under the counter. "Put these on my tab too, then."

"Hey! Those are the last ones we have tonight!"

I ran out the door again. "So?"

Dennis looked horrible when I reached the two of them. Sweat drenched his clothing and his eyes rolled back in his head. Connie fanned him uselessly with her hand. "Where have you been? He's burning up."

"Give me a break. I had to wrestle these away from Stacey."

"Just hurry up whatever you're doing, alright?"

I kneeled in front of Dennis. "Listen, I know that it's hard, but you have to move when I tell you, okay?"

Dennis flopped his head forward. "Is that a yes or a no? Groan if it's a yes."

"Yes," he said, meekly. "It's a yes."

"Good man."

I walked toward the Black Zone again. The dogs chomped their ferocious teeth and slobbered at me as I tilted forward, inches from the light. I felt their hot breath on my arms and legs, and the saliva from their slobbering jaws splattered against my face. "You like this? Do ya? Yeah? Then go fetch!"

I flung the pizzas like frisbees, the dogs chasing after them. "Come on!" I yelled to Connie. "That won't distract them for long!"

Connie pulled Dennis to his feet and we sprinted as fast as we could through the Black Zone.

*

DENNIS TRIED HIS BEST, but he couldn't get more than a hundred yards into the blackness before he fell to his knees.

"I can't--I can't do it."

"You gotta!" I said. "They're coming. That pizza's not gonna distract them for long."

"I can't," he said. "I can't."

Connie cradled his face. "It's okay, baby. We can take a break, alright?"

"We can't stop now!" I shouted.

Connie laid Dennis on a pile of rubble. "His heart's gonna explode and then this'll all be in vain."

"It's already in vain, Connie. Don't you get that?"

Connie held back the tears in her eyes. "You can go if you want, but I'm not leaving him."

"Fine." I knelt in front of Dennis. "You still with me, buddy?" Dennis mumbled under his breath. I slapped him across the face. "I said are you with me?"

A spark returned to his eyes, just for a moment. "I'm up."

"Good. Now we got another four hundred yards or so to go. You gotta be strong, alright? No more collapsing."

"Okay."

I looked over at Connie. "He's either gonna fall into a coma or a seizure any minute. We need to quit resting and find a doctor now."

She nodded. "You're right. Let's go."

Connie wrapped her arms around his shoulder. I looked past her and saw the demon dog I'd injured limping toward us. One of its heads flopped along, weighing it down. "Go! Get to the clinic. I'll hold them off!"

"But--"

"Go! If I die, it better be for something!"

Connie gave me an even stare. "Now we're even."

"We're way more than even."

Connie turned the corner and the dogs were on top of me. Demon dogs were ferocious alone, but, let them surround your position and it's over for you. If you could lead them down a narrow alley, though, then you had a chance.

I pumped my legs fast as I could and sprinted toward the closest alley. The dogs churned at my feet. I couldn't stop now. I couldn't succumb to them. In front of me I saw a wrought-iron ladder leading up to an apartment complex. Below it sat an old, rusted car.

Without breaking stride, I rushed up the side of the car and leapt. I latched onto the ladder with both hands, but it was no use. A demon dog bounded and caught my leg, dragging me down to the ground with it.

The dogs encircled. They snarled and snapped at me. "Easy buddies. Good doggies. Remember who just fed you, huh?"

The injured dog jumped at me. I closed my eyes and waited for my death, but it never came. Instead, the dog whimpered and yelped. I opened my eyes and a great minotaur spun the dog around by another one of its heads and smashed it into an abandoned building.

In his other hand, the minotaur clutched a giant club with a hundred metal spikes on it. He smashed it into the ground and the dogs flew into the air. They crashed into buildings and screeched away into the night.

That's when the minotaur turned its attention to me. I rolled away from his charge at the last moment. He pounded his great club into the ground as I dodged again. I found myself next to the car, with an eyeline to the ladder. I had to time it just right.

The minotaur charged forward again. I leapt onto the car hood, over the minotaur, onto the ladder, and pulled myself up. The minotaur roared, its breast heaving as it charged the wall and crashed its horns into the side of the building again and again. I steadied my hands and gripped the rungs tighter as I climbed.

I reached the roof as the foundation shook below me, the building teetering on the verge of collapse. I only had one chance. I took a running start and leapt toward the building next door. "Please don't die. Please don't die. Please don't die."

The building shook and fell just as I hurtled through the air and rolled onto the building next door. "I made it? How did I manage that?"

I stood up. My sore shoulder throbbed and ached, but I couldn't tend to it now. I looked over the side of the building and saw the lifeless horns of the minotaur under the building's rubble. Demon dogs gathered around to scavenge a meal. They had the last laugh.

*

MY FRIEND TALINDA LIVED in the Black Zone, or at least she did back before the Black Zone existed; back before the Apocalypse started.

I didn't know back then that West Overbrook was on the wrong side of the tracks. I just wanted to play in the brownstone tenements with my friend. I wanted to sprint up the stairs and throw spitballs from the roof. I just wanted to be a kid.

Tali had a nice laugh, but all I heard when I thought of her was the bloodcurdling scream she let out as she died.

There were no kids laughing and playing in the city anymore. Most were either blue lighted or dead. Those that remained stayed under lock and key. Nobody dared bring a child into the world now. Pregnant women were easy prey to marauders and monsters alike. The few children left were the most vulnerable. They didn't know the risks. They thought they would live forever. They were a liability.

Anybody you loved was a liability in the Apocalypse. The less you had, the longer you lived. That's why I'd made it this far. I had nothing.

It's also what made Connie and Dennis so amazing. They loved each other more than anything, and somehow survived through it all, together. They shouldn't exist. They shouldn't be alive. Yet, they were. More than that, they were stronger for being together. They looked out for each other. Once the Apocalypse came, I figured their love would fade, but they found solace in each other, even as the world burned around them.

It would have been nice to have somebody looking out for me as I stumbled down the stairwell onto the first floor. I couldn't wait for daylight because the demon dogs slept in the tenements during the day. If they came home, I would be a sitting duck. It was another two hundred yards of full-tilt boogie to the light on the other side.

I crept out of the apartment complex, eyeing a bright shining light from the other side of the Black Zone. The neon sign from the clinic glowed right beyond it. The monsters were busy with their minotaur meal. There would never be a better time.

My legs pumped forward faster than I thought possible. I drove them until they burned. I didn't look back. I didn't look sideways. I just looked ahead. And I didn't stop until I reached the clinic.

I pushed open the door and collapsed on the floor.

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# Chapter 5

I wanted to live. Like, I really wanted to live. I wanted to live more than anything.

That's the one thing that has always been consistent about me since I was born. It carried me through the darkest days of the Apocalypse.

The only reason I was alive was because I wanted it bad enough. Most people died these days because they lost the will to live. The fire left their souls and the life drained from their bellies. Sometimes it happened moments before they died; other times they walked around like living zombies for years.

I've lost my will to live for a moment here or a minute there, but I always bounced back. My stupid desire to live kept me alive no matter how bad the situation. Even running through the Black Zone, with demon dogs at my back, and the chance of survival nearly zero, I still had the will to keep going.

I didn't say that to brag, either. Frankly, I should want to die. I should want nothing more than to get out of here and see whether I earned my way out of Hell. That was the big question among those of us left behind, whether we could earn our way out of a trip to Hell.

We were probably doomed to Hell regardless, but there was a strong contingent that thought if they prayed enough, if they were good enough, that God's countenance would smile down on them and he would welcome them to Heaven.

It's a moot point, though. Nobody could lead a good life after the Apocalypse. Everybody made sacrifices and committed heinous acts that would have horrified their former selves. Even if they could buy their way into Heaven with good deeds, I didn't know if what we did mattered any more.

I did know one thing...when people gave up the will to live, I certainly didn't blame them. I couldn't do it, though. I couldn't willingly die. If for no other reason than this: if it was bad on Earth, with all the monsters spread out and doing their own thing, and the worst monsters contained inside the Black Zone, how bad would it be in Hell, where they were there for the long haul, and the worst monsters roamed free?

That's the kind of thing that left me clinging to life, if not loving it. No, definitely not loving it. The reality of Hell kept me breathing on the way to that clinic when my heart wanted to give out and my lungs wanted to collapse. But they didn't. I kept going, and I made it. I fell on the floor after I got there, but I made it.

Pressing my hands into the ground, I boosted myself onto my knees and looked into the faces around me. I witnessed the lost hope in their eyes. I scanned the waiting room, looking for Dennis and Connie, but my bleary eyes wouldn't focus. Luckily, a shrill shriek got my attention.

"Katrina!" Connie rushed over to me and reached out to help me. "Come on. Get up."

I pulled myself up. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine, I'm fine. How's our boy?"

She spun me toward a long bench where Dennis had propped himself against the wall, his head leaning against a withered plant. He painted its base black with his heaving. "He's been better."

Connie eased me onto the bench next to him. My shoulder ached terribly, but it wasn't broken or dislocated. I would survive. My health wasn't the concern. Only Dennis mattered. His face was gaunt and hollowed out, his skin sticky and pasty.

"You look terrible," I said.

"Always the charmer," Dennis said, eyes rolling back in his head. "You don't look so great yourself."

"That's why I have you around. I'm an Adonis by comparison."

"Funny. That's why I always had you around, too."

Dozens of moaning families were packed like sardines into the waiting room. There were others with the Plague, for sure, but also some with cuts, scraps, and bruises. Some had broken arms, and the children among them cried and wailed. That's why you don't have kids, I thought. Such a liability.

"How many people are ahead of you?"

Connie shook her head. "I don't know. They haven't brought anybody else back since we got here. An old woman dragged her motionless husband out of here a while ago. I guess we moved up the list when that happened, so that's something."

I ground my teeth together. "That's completely unacceptable."

"It's life, Katrina. It's not like we're livin' in a fairyland. They'll get to us in time. Either that or he'll die before we get inside. There ain't nothing else we can do."

"That's not good enough." I walked over to where a surly, old woman sat nestled behind the reception desk. She wore a pink medical hat and pinker scrubs. A gruff bitterness shone through the nurse's teeth as a woman pleaded with her. She clutched her daughter's hand tightly. The girl's other arm hung loosely at her side.

"Please," the woman said. "I've been here all day. My daughter's arm is getting infected. Please."

The nurse sighed. "Look, lady--"

"My name is not lady!" She shouted. "My name is Kathy. I'm a person. And this is my daughter, Mariel. She's a spitfire. She's ornery. And she's hurt. She's a person. We are people."

"That was very touching, I'm sure," the nurse said with a disinterested sigh. "But there's nothing I can do. The doctor will see you when he sees you. You're welcome to take the girl home and cut the arm off yourself."

"Cut it off?" she said, shocked. "I couldn't."

"Then sit down and shut up."

The woman bent down to the girl. "It's okay, Mariel. We'll be okay. Let's just go back and sit down."

"But it huuurts!" the girl shouted.

"Life isn't fair, kid." the nurse replied. "If it was, I certainly wouldn't be here."

I stomped up to the counter. The nurse sighed, unimpressed. "And what do you want?"

"What's taking so long?" I demanded. "We've been waiting here forever. My friend--"

"No, you haven't."

"Excuse me?"

She pointed at Dennis. "Your friend, the one that looks like death, he got here less than a half hour ago." She pointed to a fat, old man with his eyes rolling back in his head. "He's been waiting forever. I'm surprised he's not dead yet."

"My friend is gonna die and it's all your fault."

She sighed again. "Maybe, but lots of people die. I used to think everybody was going to, you know, until my bastard husband blue lighted. He didn't die. He tried to get me into church for years, too. Those guys didn't die. But everybody else," she pointed with her pen to emphasize her point. "You, me, definitely them out there, we're all gonna die. Sooner rather than later, probably."

"That's not good enough."

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back. "A thousand people live within walking distance of this clinic, and it's the only one around, 'less you wanna drive across the abyss for a day and take your chances in Bend. Now, I know what you did, dragging him across the Black Zone, and that's admirable, but it's also stupid, cuz we both know he's gonna die. We got one doctor in this place, and he can only see one person at a time. Savvy?"

I slammed my fists on the counter. "I guarantee my friend is the sickest person here."

The nurse looked down at my hands. "Get your hands off my desk. Now."

I grinned. "Make me."

The nurse dug under the table and rose back up with a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun. "Sit down or I'll blow off your tits."

"Pull the trigger. I dare you."

She cocked the gun and leveled it at my chest. The barrel of the gun shook. Her arms wobbled, and her finger wiggled on the trigger.

I swerved left and batted the gun toward the ceiling. It exploded in a massive thunder, making asbestos snow down through the clinic. The barrel of the gun sizzled against my fingers as I ripped it from the nurse's hand and smashed it against her face.

Blood from her gushing nose spewed through her fingers when she covered her face. "You broke my nose!"

I leveled the gun at her. My breath was calm, hands steady; I was a stone-cold murderer. I had no problem killing again. "Then it's a good thing you work in a clinic. Now, I'll break more than that if you don't bring us to see a doctor right now."

"You wouldn't. I'm a healer."

"You said it yourself. We all die sometime." I turned to Connie, who wrapped Dennis around her body to shield him from the noise. "Come on, Connie. We're going."

The nurse stood up and walked to the door behind her. "Follow me."

"Watch yourself," I said. "I won't think twice about cracking your skull open and leaving you for the Hell hounds."

The rest of the clinic sat in stunned silence as we walked through the door and locked it behind us.

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# Chapter 6

The clinic's floorboards were warped and buckled, causing them to creak and moan with our every passing step. The makeshift pressboard walls left gaps between them, so you could see the horrors inside. In one room, a man laid bloated and dead on an exam table while a woman sobbed in the chair next to him. In another, a young child dangled a single leg off the table, his other leg bandaged at the thigh. Cries erupted through every wall.

"How long is the wait once you're inside?" Connie asked.

"It's however long it is," the nurse said, still holding her nose. "The doctor has twenty rooms and two arms. You do the math."

The nurse stopped in front of a wooden door, unfinished and rusted at the hinges. "Here you go."

The vile stench of sick stuck to my tongue when the door swung open. My stomach convulsed, and I fought against the vomit lurching its way up my esophagus.

"Gross," Connie said, heaving under her breath.

"What did you expect," the nurse replied. "Club Med?"

"She's right," I replied, choking back my bile. "It's fine. Everybody inside. You too, nurse."

"I have patients."

I cocked the shotgun. The sound sent shivers up even my spine. Fear was a powerful motivator. If you could harness it right, it was more effective than firing a single bullet. A few cockroaches skittered out of our way as we filed into the room. The walls amplified every horrific shriek from the other rooms.

"Sit," I told the nurse. "Don't make any sudden movements."

She took a seat on an unstable chair near the sink. I noticed her nametag in the glint of the overhead light; Tawnly Pranger. She was a person, too, though not much of one.

The only other furniture in the room was an examination table that was frayed, torn, and covered in dried blood.

"You guys got a towel or anything to clean this up?" Connie asked.

"You'd be lucky if you could find running water in this part of the city," the nurse snapped. "We aren't so lucky as you folks in East Overbrook."

"Lucky," Connie said. "You think we're lucky?"

"Not lucky." The nurse shook her head with a small smile. "Just luckier than us."

Connie sighed and helped Dennis onto the bed. Her feet stuck in a dried pool of Plague bile as she moved. "This is gross."

"We see four hundred people a day, every day. Doctor doesn't sleep. He doesn't eat. All he does is work on patients. Last thing we can do is figure out how to clean this up. One goes out. Another comes in."

Two gunshots rang through the hall and shook our little room. BLAM! BLAM!

Dennis shot upwards in a feverish terror. "What was that?"

"Patient care." The nurse shrugged.

We heard a door creak open down the hallway, and the loud stomps coming toward us. I turned my gun to her. "Tell him to come in here. Now."

The nurse cleared her throat. "Doctor. I need to see you. Room Thirteen!"

The footsteps stopped for a moment, then moved toward us in earnest. The exam room door creaked open slowly, and an old man walked through. He wore a bloodied lab coat, spectacles, and a scowl.

"What is all the ruckus, nurse?" He jumped slightly when he realized I had a gun trained on him. "My word! What is going on here?"

"Sorry doc, but we got an emergency. My friend is all sorts of sick. He wasn't gonna last another five minutes out there."

"And if I help you," the doctor said. "what's to stop every desperate person from trying something similar? I'm sorry, but you're on your own. I simply cannot cater to intimidation."

I cocked my gun. "I understand, doc."

"You won't shoot me. I'm the only doctor within a hundred-mile radius. Kill me and only the patients will suffer."

"Got a point, doc."

I swung the shotgun around and blew off the nurse's leg at the kneecap.

"Shit!" she screamed as she fell to the ground.

The doctor grasped for a revolver stuck in his belt. I twisted around and knocked him on the chin with the butt of my shotgun. The gun flew out of his hand.

"You blew off my kneecap!" the nurse screamed.

"I know, bitch. I was there!" I picked the revolver up off the floor. "Now, look my friend over or I'll keep shooting pieces off your nurse joint by joint. So, what'll it be, doc?"

"You haven't given me much of a choice here."

"There's always a choice, doc. Just not always a good one."

The doctor ambled over to Dennis, stepping through his nurse's blood on his way. "Open your mouth."

The bile stuck to Dennis's mouth. The doctor pulled out a thermometer and moved it away. "Stick this under your tongue."

A few seconds later the thermometer beeped with a 105-degree temperature. I didn't have to study medicine to know that wasn't a good sign. Next, he examined Dennis's ears, tapped his knees, and checked his eyes, all in a very deliberate fashion.

"What's wrong with him, doc?"

He turned to me. "I will tell you, but first I want your word that no matter what I say, my nurse and I can leave with no further harm coming to our persons."

"You gotta lotta balls, doc, but no bargaining chips."

"Quit being a dick, Katrina," Connie snapped at me. She turned to the doctor and gave him a strained smile. "Of course you can leave without any more harm. I just wanna know what's wrong with my baby."

The doctor sighed. "Very well. Your friend has the Plague. Pretty advanced stages, too. Frankly, I'm surprised he's still walking. He'll be dead in a day, two at most, if not much sooner."

"No!" Connie shouted. "That's not true. You're screwing with me because of what Katrina did to you. I don't even like her! Tell me it's something else. Anything else."

"This has Plague written all over it. I've seen it enough to know. And unfortunately, there's no cure. My advice is to end his life quickly. Otherwise, he'll suffer an agonizing death."

Connie balled up her fists. "You're lying. You're lying!" She twirled herself around with all the force she could muster and decked the doctor across the face. He fell hard, but she didn't stop there. She leapt on top of his prone body, knocking her fists into any part of him she could find. The doctor held up his hands to protest, but the fury of Connie's punches broke his defenses again and again.

"Connie!" Dennis rasped with what remained of his strength. "Stop!"

"He's lying, baby! He's lying!"

"He's not the enemy!" Dennis croaked.

"He's lying! He has to be! I'm not gonna let you die." Big, ugly tears ran down her face. "We'll get a second opinion."

"You know he's right," Dennis reached out for her. "Katrina knows too. I know you want to help, but if all I have ahead of me is death, please just end it now." He coughed and tried to catch his breath. "I'm begging you. It hurts everywhere."

Connie rolled off the doctor and ran into Dennis's arms. "I can't let you go."

"You have to."

The doctor picked himself up off the floor. His face looked like it went five rounds with a meat tenderizer, but he'd live. "You promised us--"

"Leave. Just leave."

"Stay as long as you need." The doctor took off his lab coat and wrapped it around the nurse's leg. He was frailer than I thought. His bulky lab coat belied the brittle state of his constitution. He scooped the nurse into his arms. "I'll be going now."

"You do that."

Dennis held Connie in his arms. "I know it's hard, baby, but this pain is only going to get worse. I'm gonna die either way, so I want it to be on my terms. Please, Connie. I'm not strong enough."

"What if I'm not strong enough either?"

Dennis smiled. "You're the strongest person I know. You're the only reason I lasted this long. Every day I've had is thanks to you. But I can't die this way."

Connie slowly nodded her head. "Okay. I'll do it." She turned to me. "Give me the revolver."

"Connie, if you need me to--"

"No," she said. "I have to do it."

She placed the gun on Dennis's forehead, both of them sobbing like children. They truly loved each other, and that meant something. Not enough, but it meant something.

"Think I've repented enough?" Dennis said.

"Yes. I think we all have."

"I love you with all my heart."

"And I love you with all of mine. I'm so sorry."

Bang!

And then it was over. Dennis fell off the table onto the floor. His brains splattered on the wall behind him, a reminder that he was alive once.

I placed my hand on Connie's shoulder. "I'm sorry, too."

"I know."

*

I DON'T KNOW HOW LONG we stayed in that room after Dennis died. It could have been five minutes or five hours. Every time we went to leave, the door refused to budge. The weight of the knob was too great. It might have helped if Connie tried to turn it, but she couldn't.

It was too much for Connie to imagine a world without Dennis. He was the only good thing in her life. I'd lost the last good things in my life long ago, but I still remembered the weight of burying my mother, even if I refused to feel the pain.

"I can't go," Connie muttered again and again.

"I'm in no rush," I replied. It was the first time I'd felt like a real friend in long time.

Eventually, she found the strength to turn the knob. We found a gurney in a storage closet and wheeled Dennis out the back door into an alley. In Overbrook, most people simply laid where they died, but Connie refused to let that be Dennis's fate. She insisted on burying him.

By the time we left the clinic, it was light out. The same streets that had been so treacherous last night were mostly empty now, and we pushed the gurney through without any problems. Snarls emanated from the buildings now filled with creatures of the night, but they wouldn't dare show their faces in the sunlight. Once through the Black Zone, we pushed the gurney up to a hill overlooking the city.

The rays of the sun crept over the shops and revealed the truly revolting shanty town Overbrook had become in the two years since the Apocalypse began. No longer did businessmen bustle to and from work along Main Street; no longer were there people who took pride in their homes. Gone were the smiling faces, all replaced by the gaunt dead eyes of people living a waking nightmare.

"This is where we first fell in love," Connie said through her tears. "Right on this hillside overlooking the whole town."

She handed me a shovel, and we dug. My shoulder still throbbed, but the adrenaline quelled the pain. By midday, Dennis was in the ground and my muscles burned. "Do you want to say a few words?"

"Nah, I said it all before. This is nice, though. I'm gonna come back here whenever I need a reminder there's good in the world."

"You should just sleep here then."

Connie chuckled. It was the first laugh I'd heard from her in a long time. "Don't make me laugh, Katie. This is a solemn occasion."

With dad dead, Connie was the only person alive that could call me Katie without getting a fist to the jaw, but I won't lie, it still grated on me. "I know. With so much death it's tough to remember that dying still matters."

She pulled the revolver out of her waist and handed it to me. "Well, it does."

"Don't you think you'll need that?"

She shook her head. "Not anymore. I want to remember the good things about Dennis..." She didn't have to finish her sentence.

I looked out over the horizon. "Screw this whole town. Screw this whole stupid world."

"Katrina, I'm trying to have a moment here."

I threw my hands in the air. "I know, but...we are just so screwed, Connie. Eventually, we're gonna end up like Dennis, caught up with the Plague and a bullet in our heads. Or dinner for some demon. Or ripped apart by a horde of zombies. This is so messed up!"

"Yeah. It sucks." Connie just nodded. "You're right about that."

"Do you know what we should do?" I said. "We should go and tell Satan he can eat a dick. Punch him right in his nose until he bleeds."

Connie pursed her lips. "You know, that's not the worst idea I've heard today."

"I mean it's not fair, right? Nothing about this is fair."

"I just lost the love of my life to a disgusting, horrifying disease that shouldn't even exist." Connie leaned over and started picking up rocks and throwing them toward the city. "That's not fair. None of this is fair. It's not--fair--at--all." She'd run out of rocks to throw and paused to catch her breath. "Nothing's been fair about the past two years."

I gave her a hard look. I was starting to take myself seriously. "Really, though...we should do it. We should totally just get a car, drive to Hell, and kick the piss out of Satan until he agrees to end this Apocalypse once and for all. If we're gonna die, it should be on our terms."

"Yeah, you're right. We should do it."

"Seriously? Cuz I'm just blowing off steam. It's suicidal, what I'm saying."

"We're gonna die anyway. It might as well be by punching Satan in the dick."

"This is stupid."

"So stupid."

I smiled. "I can't wait."

"Me neither."

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# Chapter 7

It wasn't much work to steal a car. There were cars everywhere in Overbrook, and most of them didn't have drivers anymore. The hardest part was choosing which one you wanted. We chose to drive in style, picking up a red Mustang convertible over the more reliable Prius or some other gas-conscious car. We needed speed to outrun the demon dogs sure to be out along our route, even if we sacrificed fuel economy to get it.

Once we had the car, we needed gas. That was a little bit harder. Gas wasn't cheap or plentiful in Overbrook. It was a precious commodity, and one man hoarded it all. Connie chose to keep her cheap rust bucket specifically because it didn't need much gas. If we were going to make it to Reno, the nearest rift to Hell, we would need to stock up.

That meant a trip to Walter's, the only true gas station in the city. He set up small pop-up shops around town where you could buy a gallon or two of gas, but if you needed to fill up, you had to drive out to him.

I really hated Walter. He was a scummy, greasy, horrible piece of human excrement, and he knew it. He reveled in it. He had something everyone needed and lorded it over all of us. He was the most ruthless bastard in the city, commanding a cruel gang of thugs and extortionists. I was absolutely certain he was responsible for siphoning Connie's gas. Now we would have to buy it back from him at a premium--and thank him for the privilege.

His gas station wasn't even nice. It was a dilapidated building, more like a lean-to, on a burnt-out country road that didn't have another building for five minutes. "Better to see your enemies coming," he told me once. That's the kind of guy he was. Cared more about keeping his money safe than being comfortable.

Walter accepted cash, but he preferred bartering. I stopped home to pick up what I still owned that might be of value: ten boxes of bullets and three kilos of weed Barry paid me for rent six months ago.

I walked into Walter's on a mission. He spun around on his chair and smiled his toothless grin. Even by Apocalypse standards, he was not an attractive man. Still, he'd survived, and I had to give him credit for that. Those of us that survived were a bit like a family, dysfunctional as we were.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the bitch of Black Street."

"And the bastard of the backwater. Good to see you."

He nodded. "Don't get all sappy on me. What do you want?"

I threw down the boxes of bullets, the shotgun, and the three kilos of weed. Then, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the revolver. "I need to fill up a tank and get however much gas this buys me. Can you get us to Reno?"

He smiled. "I could, if I had that kinda inventory."

"You've been siphoning off gas for years, asshole. You have it."

"Not anymore. Militia needs most of it. I got a little reserve, but I can't spare it all." He shook his head. "I can get you to Bend. It's the safest town left in Oregon. They'll take care of you."

"Get bent."

He pushed back four boxes of bullets, the shotgun, and two kilos of weed. "That won't get you further than Bend."

I sighed. "I hate Bend."

He smiled again. "You hate everything. That's what I like about you."

"Fine. We'll take it. Can you tell your boys on the wall to let us through?"

He nodded. "You wanna get outta my town, I won't stop ya."

*

THE TELEVISIONS STOPPED broadcasting a long time ago, except for the dull hum from the emergency broadcast signal. The only way to get news was from a trusted source, who heard it from a trusted source, who heard it from a trusted source. The only source I trusted for information lived at the power plant.

During the day, the drive up was a pleasant one. The last time I'd driven that road everyone with me died, including my father. This time we got to the plant without incident. I banged on the door. Soline answered; a young, bespectacled woman with flaming red hair.

"Oh, thank Christ you're okay," I said, relieved.

She wrapped me in a hug. "Yes. We're okay, for now."

Soline shuffled Connie and I inside the plant and shut the door. "You don't call, you don't write--how am I supposed to know if you're alive or dead?"

"Always assume I'm dead."

"I do!" She fluttered her hands in the air in front of her face, trying to contain herself. "That's why this is so exciting!"

The turbines whirled and spun, the lights flickered and hummed; it was everything my father wanted, and Soline ran it all. She had learned the ins and outs of every machine, then taught it to others who called the plant home. They were all smart, but Soline was a genius.

"Do you want any lunch?" she asked. "It's mostly rat, but I think there's a little dog left."

"No thanks," Connie said. "I don't eat dog."

"Why? Because they're cute?"

Connie shook her head. "No. Just don't like the taste."

"When you are hungry enough, everything tastes good."

"That's fair."

Soline climbed the ladder into the control room. Connie and I followed behind her. "So, what can I do for you, Katie?"

"You know I hate that."

"Your dad called you--"

"You're not my dad."

Soline paused, chin to chest, then nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry, Katrina."

"I need to know what you know about the road to Bend and on to Reno. Is it safe?"

She skimmed through a pile of journals on her desk. "You should probably be okay getting to Bend. Not a lot of activity that way, but once you get down to Sacramento there are more marauders than you can shake a stick at."

"Is Portland still overrun with monsters?"

"Yep. Monsters pretty much run the show in Portland. They congregate in the center of town, though. Not many on the outskirts."

"What about heading east and taking Route 97 instead of Interstate 5?"

"If you want good news about Bend, we don't have it. Haven't heard from them in months. Guy who came through a few weeks ago said they've been without power since the beginning of the year." She raised her eyebrows and whistled. "That's rough."

"I couldn't imagine," Connie said.

"Me either. Luckily we've got power for days." Soline put a hand on my shoulder. "Thanks to your dad."

I shrugged her off. "Anything else you can tell me?"

"Monster activity has been real low for a while now. Most of the monsters seem to be pulling north for some reason, but nobody knows why."

"And yet I keep fighting them."

"Well, you are the special one then, cuz travelers keep saying there's not that many monsters along the way. Not even many marauders. Maybe they fought each other to death."

Connie turned to Soline. "Or maybe they're focused on taking the big cities and leaving the small ones to die off?"

"How many travelers do you see, Soline?" I asked.

"Not that many."

"Maybe that's cuz they got eaten, so they can't talk about it," Connie suggested.

"Maybe, or maybe they have less reason to run."

"Always the optimist." I forced a smile, then clasped her by the hand. "Keep your phone close. I might need you."

"It will always be on for you, Katrina."

*

SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY miles.

That's how long it was from Overbrook to Reno.

There had been a lot of stupid ideas since the Apocalypse, but none as stupid as the one we planned. It was a ten-hour drive from Overbrook to Reno in the best of times, but this wasn't the best of times. The weather-cracked asphalt was crumpled from heavy monster feet.

Of course, we would have to get out of town first, which wasn't a given. There were only three roads out of town, since Walter and his henchmen blew up the rest to make sure undesirables didn't have access. Lots of people wanted to come in because we were one of the most stable cities on the West Coast. With hydroelectric power and the ocean at our back, we were a desirable destination.

The refugees started coming soon after we got the power back on in Overbrook; marauders followed close behind. We kept both at bay using Walter's militia. Once they were gone, Walter and his men took over protection of the border, from both people coming in and those that wanted to get out.

As our population dwindled, people wanted to take their chances in other places along the road. They wanted to try Portland or Seattle, but Walter didn't want to let them go. We always needed more warm bodies, if nothing else. They didn't lock us inside, but it wasn't easy to get out, either.

We hit Walter's roadblock five miles outside of town. It was just wide enough to enclose the power plant and tight enough that it could be manned by a couple dozen men. Thick barbed-wire fencing rose ten feet into the air and wrought iron three inches thick made it impossible to break through.

A skinny boy in a dirty, baseball hat walked out of a guard shack. "State your business."

"Just let us through, Jeff!" Connie shouted from the driver's seat. She'd insisted on driving.

Jeff walked up to the car. He'd been a punk kid back before the Apocalypse, before Walter brainwashed him. Now, he was a nightmare. "You know I can't do that, Connie. We got rules and regulations."

Connie stared bullets at him. "This is the Apocalypse, Jeff. Screw your rules and your regulations. Let me through."

Jeff pulled out a notebook. "Where to?"

"Reno."

Jeff shook his head. "There ain't nothing in Reno, Connie, 'cept a big ole hole."

"You don't think I know that, Jeff? That hole's what I'm goin' for."

"Used to be the biggest little city in America. You know that?"

Connie nodded. "I did. Now it's a hole. Let me through."

Jeff tipped his cap up. "We ain't got the population to just let two fertile girls through here. You know that."

Connie gave Jeff an even stare. "Dennis is dead, Jeff. Even if he wasn't, you think I'd bring a baby into this world?"

"We gotta rebuild, Connie."

"No," I said. "We gotta die out. Don't make me kick your ass, Jeff. Just let us through. Or we're gonna force our way through."

"I gotta ask."

"No, you don't, Jeff," I replied. "Walter already said it's okay."

"I'll have to check that." Jeff lifted the walkie-talkie to his lips. "Hey, Walter. I got Connie and Katrina here at the gate. They wanna go out, but I told 'em fertile women--"

The radio crackled to life. "Let 'em go. Best case, they die on the road."

"What's the worst case?"

"They don't."

*

MY COUSIN CASSANDRA lived in Bend. I doubted that she was still alive. She wasn't a survivor. She liked fluffy things and creature comforts. Plus, she had three young kids, and kids didn't fare too well when the monsters came. Maybe she'd made her way north, to Canada and the protective cold that kept out most of the worst monsters, but I doubted she lasted a month.

Bend was four hours from Overbrook on good roads, and there weren't any good roads left. People were a little too preoccupied to bother with cleaning up rockslides, so we ended up backtracking through side streets and made our way slowly.

Every few miles, we passed another dead town in another lonely stretch of road. I remembered driving from Overbrook to Bend when I was a kid and stopping along the way to visit fruit stands and gas stations. There was none of that now. The Earth had reclaimed her land.

What surprised me most was the lack of action on the road to Bend. But then, why would monsters live in the middle of nowhere? They preferred the cities, and so the trip to Bend was a quiet, albeit boring one.

That all changed an hour outside of Bend, when our quiet trip was rudely interrupted. Four marauders encircled a truck on a lone highway, shouting profanities at the woman inside. People that liked the structure of a big group tended to join militias or live in cities. Marauders usually traveled in packs of less than ten, and only played nicely when destroying a big target, like Sacramento. Then, they'd split up the spoils and disband. Their disorganization was their biggest weakness.

"We should just keep going," Connie said to me as she put the car in park. "In a few minutes it will all be over. They'll be gone, and we'll be able to keep going."

"That's one way to do it. The other way is to kick their asses and save whatever's in the truck."

"I don't like that plan."

"Me either. Let's do it."

"Ugh. Fine." She slammed the car back into gear and gunned forward while I pulled the shotgun out of the backseat and loaded it with shells. "When I say, swerve."

"I remember."

"Now!"

Connie jerked the wheel and the car spun sideways and skidded toward the marauders. I cocked the shotgun and blew the head off the guy nearest the driver's door. The other three went for their guns. I dropped another one before he could bring up his pistol, and another one as he ran toward his truck.

Connie came to a complete stop and I kicked open the door. "There's only one of you left. Your odds are horrid. I'll let you get outta here if you leave in the next ten seconds. Otherwise, I'll blow your head off."

There was silence for the next several seconds. Then, I watched the last marauder scamper off to his car and speed off.

"You shouldn't have done that," Connie said. "He's going to come back with his friends."

"Yeah, but he'll tell his friends what happened here and by then we'll be gone."

I ambled over to the truck, its hood crumpled in and smoking. Peering in the driver's side door, I saw the airbag deflated against the dash. A middle-aged woman with a black eye leaned against it. She was bleeding badly and barely breathing.

"What happened here?" I asked.

"Marauders," she replied. "Smashed."

Then she passed out. I slung her over my shoulder and walked her to our car.

*

BEND WAS ENCIRCLED by a giant gate just like the one in Overbrook. Their defenses mirrored ours, which made sense. After all, we'd worked together to build them. A fat guard waddled out of his guard shack. Three snipers trained their guns on us from the top of their fence.

I remembered coming here on long road trips with my family to see my cousin Cassandra and her family. Back then, it was such a pleasant little town, quaint even. The people were friendly, and the streets were clean. Now, it was a fortress.

"State your business!" the fat guard shouted.

"This woman needs medical attention," I said, pointing to the back seat.

The fat guard looked in the back seat. "Jesus Christ. What did you do to her?"

"What? Nothing. We saved her. She's gotta be one of yours."

He looked at her more closely. "She is. Judith. Where'd you find her?"

"There's a lot of rough road out there," I said. "She's gonna bleed out if you don't let us in."

"We'll take her, but you two are another matter."

I cocked the shotgun and pointed it at Judith. "It's all of us or none of us, I'm afraid. Make your choice."

He motioned for the gate to be opened. Good thing too, because the shotgun wasn't loaded.

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# Chapter 8

The militia hated that I had threatened one of their citizens. They arrested us immediately and dragged us to the hospital with Judith. I couldn't believe they had an actual hospital, even if it did run on Home Depot generators and Christmas lights illuminated the hallways.

"How did you keep this hospital safe?" I asked as we walked the corridors, flanked by guards.

"It's easy if you have the right priorities," the commander of the unit grunted through a thick mustache. They called him Burns. "Every man, woman, and child in this town has a duty and a place."

We passed Judith's room, and I caught a glimpse of her hooked up to tubes. The sound of a running generator emanated from the corner. "You must use a lot of gas here."

"We do."

"How much time you spend searching for it?"

"Too much, that's for sure."

They shoved me in the room next to Judith's. "If she dies," Commander Burns said, "then we'll assume you shot her and throw you out that window there. These two nice gentlemen will be out front to make sure you don't try to escape."

"That's stupid," Connie said. "Why would we beat somebody up, then bring them to your doorstep?"

He shrugged. "Why does anybody do anything these days? I guess you should hope that she lives, huh?"

He walked out of the room and locked the door behind him. Connie threw her arms up in the air. "This is so stupid!"

They had actual beds in the room. I hadn't slept since Overbrook and the thought of laying on a bed was tempting. This one didn't even have dried blood on it. In fact, the whole place was exceedingly nice compared to the dump where Dennis died.

It had been so long since the one in Overbrook closed, I'd nearly forgotten what hospitals were like. Aside from the smell of gas that permeated every inch, it was spotless. Maybe Dennis would have had a chance in this place.

"Are you listening to me?" Connie shouted.

I sat up. "No."

"What are we gonna do? That poor girl is gonna die and then we're gonna die."

"Relax. I have a plan."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course you do."

I jimmied open the only window in the room. There were no metal bars holding us inside, just the fear of a seven-story fall, and the protection of a tiny ledge which barely fit my hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Just keep shouting like I'm here and not listening, okay?"

"But you aren't listening."

"That's perfect. More of that."

I climbed out onto the ledge and peered toward Judith's room. All that separated me from her room was a large gap--too wide to reach without leaping. Unfortunately, the ledge in front of her window wasn't any bigger than the one in front of mine. If I didn't land on Judith's ledge just right, I would fall and break my neck.

Nothing to it. I took a deep breath and leapt. With my outstretched arms, I managed to latch onto the ledge. My shoulder burned as the weight of my body pulled it down. I gritted my teeth and pulled myself up.

There weren't any guards in the room that I could see when I pressed my nose to the window. Back in our room, I heard Connie pitching a fit at an imaginary me. Or the real me. Whatever. I pushed up the window to Judith's room and shimmied inside.

Judith laid unconscious on the bed. A generator whirled in the corner and connected to her monitors, which beeped slowly and loudly. Those marauders really did a number on her. The thought of coyotes ripping apart their dead bodies brought a smile to my face.

I hated that this poor woman was a pawn in my game, but it didn't make it any less true. She had her role to play, and so did I. I walked over to Judith and yanked off the cords that connected to her heart monitor.

The monitors flatlined and screeched an ungodly beep. A doctor bolted in with a set of defibrillator paddles and a frantic nurse. Behind them, two guards rushed in to see the ruckus.

"What are you doing in here?" one of the guards shouted.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm proving a point."

The doctor moved toward Judith. I held up my hand. "She's fine. I just ripped off her monitor. But that's not all I could do. If I wanted to hurt her, she'd be dead already. Trust that. I know a hundred ways to kill a person."

The guards leveled their guns at me. "Back off!"

The door to our room slammed open. Connie tumbled inside the room through it and beat the living snot out of the guards, leaving us alone with the doctor, his nurse, and two guns.

"Run away," I told the doctor. "Run away and find the commander. Bring him here now. Meanwhile, nurse, plug this back in."

The doctor ran away. I looked up at Connie. "How did you get out?"

"I kicked really, really hard."

It took a couple minutes for the doctor to find the commander. During that time, the nurse reset Judith's heart monitors and Connie tied the guards together with medical tape she found in the cabinet drawers.

Commander Burns walked in with three guards, all training their guns on me. "This is not a good way to prove you aren't trying to harm us."

"Yes, it is. It proves I have no interest in harming you."

"You got a funny way of showing it."

"I could've slit all your throats and run outta here in the three minutes it took to get you here, but I didn't do that. We're all humans, trying to get along in this world. I think I can help, if you do something for me."

He faltered, thinking about what I said. His eyes fell on Connie, then Judith, then back on me. "What do you have that I want?"

"Why, power of course. Enough to set you up for the next hundred years. In return, I want enough gas and food to get us to Reno."

Commander Burns raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."

*

THE BEND POWER PLANT didn't run on hydroelectricity. It ran on good ole fashioned coal, and coal wasn't in much supply these days with nobody to mine it. Luckily, I knew a way around that. Commander Burns wasn't convinced. He drilled me with questions until we reached the plant, but I refused to answer them until we were in the control room.

"I really hope you're not messing with us," he said.

"Be pretty stupid if I said all that just to lie to you, wouldn't it?"

He nodded. "Pretty stupid. Also pretty stupid to leave Overbrook. That town's a fortress."

I tilted my head toward Connie. "We got business in Hell."

"Well, one way or another, you'll be there soon."

"Is that a threat?" Connie asked.

"Not a threat, just a fact. I am a man of my word. You do your part for us and we'll do our part for you."

Inside the control room of the power plant, three men sat in chairs. They spun around to us in unison. A man with thick-glasses and halitosis gawked at me. "You the girl?"

"I'm Katrina if that's what you mean."

"We don't care what you call yourself," a bald man said. "Just as long as you help us."

"What's your name?" I asked. "So, I know who I'm going to beat later for being an idiot."

The man gulped. "Collin. Collin David."

"That's a dumb name." I gestured to a road map pinned up on the wall. "By my estimation, half the power lines between here and Overbrook are down, but if you can put together the men to fix them, I can get you power."

The bald man stood up. "Oh, so we just go off your word?"

"Not my word. Soline's word. You remember her?"

The commander nodded. "She's a good woman. Never treated us raw."

"And she won't now. You get her on the phone and tell her I sent you. You'll have your power. Then you'll fulfill your part of the bargain."

He rapped his knuckles on a desk. "You'll have enough gas and weapons to get into Hell and take on a whole army if you get our power back."

Soline and Commander Burns talked for forty-five minutes, until the battery of my phone died, and they had to patch in a new one. Eventually, the commander nodded and turned to me.

"You happy?" I asked him.

He gave a noncommittal shrug. "We're happy. Well, happy as we'll ever be in this hellhole. It's not gonna be easy. Soline agreed to send ten men to fix the power lines between here and Overbrook. We're gonna send an army to protect them. Once we get it all fixed, we'll have power again."

"How long will that take?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Six months. Maybe more. Better late than never. You've done your part. Now it's our turn."

I couldn't leave the city without asking about my cousin first. My memories of visiting her when we were kids were happy ones, and I figured I would never get the chance to see her again. She was the only blood family I had left.

"I have a question for you. You ever heard of a woman named Cassandra Merritt? She used to be from here, before it all went down."

Commander Burns smiled. "Still is. She's got a very special job to do. Come on. I'll show you. It's on the way out of town."

*

COMMANDER BURNS DROVE us through the dark streets of Bend. Connie looked out the windows, waiting for a monster attack. "Aren't you guys scared of what's out there?"

The commander laughed. "We been dealing with the night for a long time and we're not scared of it any more than it's scared of us. We cleared every street out one by one. Not a monster left in this place."

I raised my eyebrows, staring out at the dark roads we were passing. "That's an incredible feat."

"Nothing to it. We were touched by God."

Connie made a face. "What does that mean?"

"You'll see."

In the center of the town, lit with work lights, stood a single massive church. Thousands of people surrounded it. Commander Burns gestured toward the crowd. "These people, their only job's to make God happy. They pray all day and night, every day and night."

Connie chuckled. "That's gotta be the dumbest thing..."

His look stopped her. "It's worked so far. How many monsters you see around here?"

"Fair enough."

He put the car in park outside of the church and we walked inside. The church organ's music filled the room. In the pews, hundreds of men and women sang hymns to the heavens.

"Sandy!" the commander shouted.

A young woman turned to us. She looked familiar, but her face was pale, with dark rings under them.

"Somebody to see you."

"I got work," she said.

"I know, but it'll still be there. Little rest won't hurt."

Sandy walked toward us. Her gaunt arms dangled at her side, thin enough to crack in half. Malnourishment plagued all the churchgoers, but hers was one of the worst. She couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds, and on her tall frame, it showed.

"You recognize this girl?" the commander asked.

"Of course!" She wrapped her bones around me. "Katrina! It's so good to see you. Oh my god. I was sure you were dead."

I unwrapped her arms from my neck. "It's good to see you too, Cassandra."

"Oh, they don't call me that no more. Not since the Incident."

"What incident? You mean the Apocaly--"

She stuffed her hand against my mouth. "We don't call it that. We call it the Incident."

"Whatever. How's Ben and the kids?"

"We don't talk about them," she whispered. "We don't talk about them at all."

I looked over at Commander Burns, and he gave a nod. "Alright, Sandy. It's time to go back."

"Thank you. Thank you." Sandy shuffled back to her pew and sang her lungs out. She blared over the rest of the women so loudly that her voice cracked.

I couldn't stop staring. "What happened to her?"

Commander Burns led me outside. "Some of 'em can't take it when their families are taken."

"They died?"

He shook his head. "Blue lighted."

"Everybody but her?"

"All of them. Now she can't eat and won't sleep. All she does all day is pray that she can get good enough to join them."

"That is a hell of a thing."

"That's sayin' everything."

Commander Burns brought us to the entrance of the town. His men stuffed our car full with enough food, gas, and guns to get us to Reno. I slid into the driver's seat just as the sun crested over the horizon.

"You should be good with monsters until you hit Reno. The sun will keep them away."

"I know what the sun will do."

"Course. Sure you don't want a better car? I can set you up with a Humvee."

I waved my hand, shaking my head. "We're alright. Thanks, commander."

"You've done a good thing, Katrina." He tipped his head toward us. "Connie."

"We just did a thing. Who knows if it's a good one?" Connie looked out over the dashboard as she spoke. "Maybe you turn out to be sons of bitches and then it would've been a bad thing."

"We weren't blue lighted, so that makes us all sons of bitches."

I had to laugh at that. "Fair enough." The light crested over the hills as I shook hands with him. "I hope things are better for you from now on."

"They won't be," he replied. "but thank you."

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# Chapter 9

We passed more dead towns the further we drove from Bend. Towns without humans or monsters. Towns abandoned to nature.

Honestly, I didn't expect to see many small towns full of humans on our way down to Reno, but I fully expected to see a couple filled with monsters. After all, there were some peaceful monsters in Overbrook. There was an imp that lived in my apartment complex who just wanted to knit and read. I could see in through the window in his first-floor apartment. Whenever we caused a ruckus he would sigh, put on headphones, and zone out to cross-stitch patterns. He said he wanted to start an art studio; Death Head Studio, he would call it. He was the least awful demon I ever met.

Once, he even made me a nice needlepoint pattern depicting the gates of Hell. He really was quite talented. He would have liked a little town, far away from humans, where he could work. A town like Doyle, near the Nevada line, where we ended up after a full day of driving.

Doyle was a ghost town even in the best of times, but now its crumbling buildings and sun-bleached sidewalks showed how little the Earth cared for humanity. We pulled up in front of the Grocery Hotel. It wasn't much more than an Old West saloon façade slapped onto a five and dime store, but it had beds and a high vantage point, which is what we needed.

Connie and I covered the car with thatch and brought the supplies inside. Not surprisingly, there wasn't anything to eat in the whole place. Whether it was cleaned out by monsters passing through, the last denizens of the sleepy town, or marauders who needed a quick bite didn't matter. It only mattered that the cupboards were empty.

We trotted up the stairs into a small bedroom looking out over the vast emptiness of the town. "You sleep first," I said. "I'll keep watch."

"And I'm supposed to trust you to be the lookout?"

"You don't have to sleep."

Connie was too tired to argue, apparently, and just fell onto the dusty bed. "Wake me up in a couple hours."

I won't lie. I fell asleep. Lookout duty was so boring. You stared out into the dark for hours on end and nothing happened, ever. You forewent sleep on the off chance that in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night, something was going to occur. Given the circumstances, this was likely, but also, given the circumstances, I was dog tired.

And so, I fell asleep.

And something happened.

I woke up to a jolt. Three men grabbed me by the arms and legs. Two more snatched Connie. We kicked and screamed to no avail. They dragged us out of the hotel and into the light from their trucks. Four more men sat in front of the cars, carrying shotguns.

"Well, well, well," one with a thick Mexican accent and long beard said, turning to the man who held me. "Look what we have here. God smiled on us today, Mitch."

I bit through Mitch's hand until blood spurted out. His skin was briny from weeks in the hot sun. He screamed out in pain.

"God ain't nothing," I said. "He didn't help you. I just messed up."

Mitch fell down screaming, but the man didn't care. Instead, he laughed. "You're right. You did mess up. We ain't seen anything so nice as you in a long time."

Connie glared over at me. A big, hairy palm covered her mouth. "HDSkfj mdsnck hhakljwdlk."

"What?"

Connie bit her attacker until he freed her mouth. "I hate you."

"I know," I replied. "but you should know never to leave me on lookout."

"I did know that!" She threw her head back. "I hate me too."

This wasn't our first time being held at gunpoint by a group of men. It happened, well let's not say a lot, but enough times that it was a thing.

The big man with the thick accent walked up to me holding a shotgun. "You are gonna suck my dick, and I am gonna like it, or I'm gonna bash out your teeth, and you are not gonna like it. Okay?"

I gave him a deadpan stare. "You're gonna lose anything you put in my mouth."

"And you're gonna call me Anansi while you do it," he added with a smile."

The man had a god complex, clearly. I couldn't do anything about that, but he also didn't believe me, and I was gonna make she he regretted it. When he stepped forward, I gave Connie the slightest of nods. Then, I dug my teeth into the man's inner thigh and ripped open his artery. Blood spurted over the men holding me down. In their shock, they loosened their grip.

Connie flipped one of her guards over her knee and snapped his neck. She hadn't lost a step at all. She spun around behind the other, using him as a shield. A shot rang out, and Connie's shield fell to the ground.

I broke free of my attackers and picked up the bleeding marauder's discarded shotgun. I cocked it and fired two shots behind me, blowing away Mitch and his friend who had held me down.

Next, I fired at the truck and shot out one of its headlights. The men fumbled for their guns, but I was on top of them before they could fire. I snapped the neck of a very ugly man with a buck tooth. His revolver fell into my hand and I fired it off into the necks of two more men.

One guard left.

I rose to my knees and fired into his chest, but I was out of bullets. The man looked at me, doe eyed, and pulled his gun.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Blood oozed out of his head and he dropped to the ground. Connie appeared behind him brandishing a smoking gun. "Good thing I didn't stop to take a nap, right?"

The dying men wailed. I stooped down to one of them. "You're going to Hell, you know that, right?"

"I figured as much," Anansi replied, blood spurting from his mouth.

"Was it worth it?"

"Yeah. It was. I got by the best way I could."

"I hear you. We all gotta do what we all gotta do." I stomped him once in the chest before moving on.

*

CONNIE PICKED UP A map of Nevada from the hotel before we left the marauders to rot in the hot desert sun, but it wasn't any help. As we entered Nevada, the roads ceased to be roads and turned into an endless desert.

"How much further?" I asked from behind the wheel.

"No idea. When I see a huge hole with demons pouring out of it, we'll stop."

"That map has outlived its uselessness. Time to chuck it."

"I'm not gonna chuck it. It's a perfectly good map!"

I reached over and tried to wrestle it away from her. "Then I'll chuck it!"

She ripped it away from me. "No!"

A whistling sound hummed through the air. Our heads snapped up in time to see a giant meteor sailing through the air toward us. Consumed by fire, the giant rock bore down on us as if aimed by Heaven itself.

"Incoming!" I shouted.

The meteor crashed next to us. The sky lit up with a hundred more flaming rocks whizzing toward us. I swerved, zigged, and zagged to avoid them as the molten embers crashed on either side of us. Among the orange flaming rocks was a blue light, streaming through the rocks faster than I could track.

"What is that?" I screamed.

"Who cares? Keep your eyes on the road!"

But it was too late. A flaming boulder sailed in front of us, too close for me to avoid. "Jump!"

We leapt out of the car just as the rock smashed into the windshield, demolishing it on impact. I rolled onto the hot desert sand and hopped to my feet. More molten rocks fell from the sky and exploded around us.

The sky turned black as a fiery rock bore down on us, and Connie gave me a look. "I hate that you're the last thing I'm going to see before I die."

I turned to face the massive boulder. "Me too."

I closed my eyes, ready for death, but once again, death didn't come. Instead, a sharp talon dug into my back and lifted me into the air. Flames licked my shoes, but I wasn't dead. I expected to see a savior when I glanced up, but found my sworn enemy.

"Thomas! Let me go!"

"If I do that, you'll fall a hundred feet to your death. Is that what you want?"

The desert below exploded in fiery embers as we rose higher and higher into the air. I shook my head. "Don't drop me."

Connie was caught in Thomas's other foot. "What is going on?"

"My dear, I'm afraid you've stumbled into a bit of a war zone."

I wanted to fight him. I wanted to hate him, but all I felt in that moment was thankful. "Jesus Christ, Thomas. I never thought I would be happy to see you."

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# Chapter 10

For all of Thomas's horribleness, he saved me more times than he raped me. That's not saying much, I understand that, and being saved a bunch of times doesn't make up for being violated once, but that was Apocalypse logic. Thomas saved my life three times after he tried to rip me apart from the inside the once.

The first time happened eighteen months ago. Seven demon dogs chased me through the streets of Overbrook, and he vanquished them to Hell with the snap of his fingers. The second time, a hulking minotaur rampaged through my apartment complex and he turned it away before it destroyed my place. The third time, a guy held a shotgun to my head and Thomas ripped him in half.

This whole chivalry thing was an act to make me need him, but, the fact was, he did save me, and when rocks fell from Heaven, there he was again. Still not forgetting the rape, but this was the fourth time he saved me.

Thomas landed us on a hillside overlooking a large encampment. Dozens of tents stretched into the horizon. Demons and imps worked alongside minotaurs and goblins to move swords, axes, hammers, and armor across the camp toward the smoking rift to Hell which crested over the horizon. Massive demons shouted commands to imps and zombies wearing full battle fatigues, who took turns slashing at dummies in front of them.

"Who are you, demon?" Connie said.

"So rude," Thomas said. "Not surprising, though. After all, you're friends with my Katrina."

"I wouldn't say we were friends," Connie replied. "We're putting up with each other at best."

"And I wouldn't say I was your anything," I added.

"Rude."

"This is Thomas," I said to Connie. "I swore if he ever showed his face again, I would kill him in a most unpleasant way."

"Thomas Thomas?" Connie said, curling her lip as she looked at him. "I heard a lot about you. All bad."

"Yes." Thomas nodded. "She has a way of embellishing my misdeeds."

"You. Raped. Me!"

"Just the once. And I saved you, what is it--four times now?"

I sneered at him. "We're not even close to being even."

"Maybe not. But we're closer."

I was done talking about it. The whole conversation had already gone over the amount of time I allowed myself to think about the whole thing, so I gestured to the encampment. "What's going on here, anyway? And what are you doing in the middle of the desert with all these monsters? Building an army?"

"In a way," Thomas replied. "But not the way you think."

"So...you're not about to wage war on humanity again?"

Thomas chuckled. "You are thinking too small, my dear."

"Who are you fighting then?"

"The Devil, of course. Or as I like to call him, dear ole Dad. Follow me." He led us down the hill toward the camp. The smell of sulfur overpowered my senses, though Thomas seemed to revel in it. "Welcome to the resistance, my love. These demons have broken my father's control over them."

Hammers smashed against hot lead. Forges burned bright with fire. Thomas strolled past them like a tour guide, without a care in the world. "We hope to gain favor with God by ending this wretched Apocalypse once and for all."

"So, what," Connie said, "by ending the Apocalypse you'll be able to enter Heaven?"

Thomas ducked into a large tent adorned with an inverted cross. "Well, I've never been to Heaven personally, but yes, that's exactly what we expect."

I followed Connie into the tent. Half a dozen demons of various sizes, colors, and shapes smoked hookah and looked over a map of the desert covering the floor. A reproduction of the rift lay right in the middle of it, with hundreds of miniature soldiers on either end.

Connie stepped over the map and trailed Thomas toward the edge of the room, where a tall, bearded demon with soulless, white eyes and long, curled horns sat reading a huge leather-bound book.

"What do you know of demons, Connie?" Thomas asked.

"I know they suck. I've watched demons rip people in half for fun."

Thomas chuckled and waved a hand. "We are not truly like that. There is so much you do not understand. Sit down and become enlightened." He pulled the massive book from the horned, soulless-eyed demon. "These pages are bound in flesh and inked in blood. They tell the true account of biblical events straight from the old man's mouth."

"Sounds like the Necronomicon," Connie smirked. "You guys just watched too much Evil Dead."

"Yes," Thomas said. "and that is its true name. Sam Raimi was a visionary. Now listen, some of what you know is true, of course. My father was exiled from Heaven even before the dawn of man for plotting a coup against Heaven. He tempted Eve with the first bite of forbidden fruit, though the metaphor was lost on humans." He gave both of us a pointed look. "I'll dispel any notions that she actually ate a fruit and just say they had sex."

I knew it! "Does that mean humans are descended from little demons?"

"No. She didn't get pregnant from him. My dad was very careful. You lot are the inbred disaster from Adam and Eve's children, and some other families that lived around the planet at that time. God sculpted quite a few people out of clay in his time, and he was a subpar craftsman, but that is not the crux of the story."

"What is?" I asked.

"I'll get to that," Thomas said.  "Daddy was also responsible for the decadence of Sodom and Gomorrah, though he always believed that their punishment was a bit excessive. A little debauchery was no excuse to turn everybody into stone."

Thomas cleared his throat and leaned forward. "But that is where your religious texts and the truth diverge. For you see, it was actually my father who talked to Moses as the burning bush. And while God convinced Noah to build the Ark, it was my father who drowned the world."

"If that's true," I said. "then why didn't God just set us straight?"

"He tried," Thomas replied. "By incarnating into human flesh, he tried to warn humanity that they had been deceived. But the Devil easily corrupted those in power. And your one true God was slain."

"Wait, wait, time out," Connie said. "That's crazy."

"Yeah!" I added. "Are you really trying to stuff this load of crap down our throats?"

"My love," Thomas replied. "I've spoken to the Dark Lord ad nauseum and heard first-hand accounts of God's glory. You know nothing of the inner workings of the afterlife and claiming otherwise is remarkably ignorant."

"That doesn't make it any less stupid," I mumbled.

Thomas closed the Necronomicon. "Very well. I will give you this option. Either have faith in my honesty or go back to the dirt hole you call your city and leave the world saving to the adults. Now, shall I finish?"

I glared. "Yes, but you're on warning. You lie to me and I'll cut off your head."

"Noted." Thomas opened the book again. "Like me, Satan is able to manipulate his form. After the crucifixion, he went to Jesus's apostles and told them a story about the end of the world you know as Revelations. In this tale, the end of times would come after God opened the seven seals and laid judgment on humanity, but that was all a lie set in motion by Satan for his eventual conquest of both Heaven and Earth."

"That did always seem out of alignment with the rest of Jesus's message," Connie said thoughtfully.

"Are we Bible scholars now?" I asked.

"What? I have varied interests. My dad was a zealot, after all."

"Fair enough," I said. "So, if this is all true, why didn't God just set us straight again?"

"After his son's death, God became...disenchanted with humanity. He tried to help repeatedly but you turned your backs on him. He withdrew, then, and prevented all but the worthiest from entering Heaven. That meant sending more to Hell, which gave Satan an even bigger army."

"As the centuries grew on, the Devil's army grew to tremendous proportions while God's dwindled to nothing. Those that passed through the needle's eye were pussies and pansies. Heaven would crumble if Satan ever set his sight on it."

Thomas cleared this throat. "And now, he has. Earth was just a middle ground; a staging area, if you will. Heaven is his prize. It's what he's always coveted, and he's about to take it. God knows that, which is why in a last fit of protection he took the worthy souls up to Heaven. He is still powerful, but his army isn't. And so, I began this rebellion as a last stand against the forces of evil. If we fail, then Heaven will crumble."

"Sounds like mumbo jumbo to me," I replied.

"Every word is the truth, whether you believe it or not. And today we take the battle to Hell itself, with this."

Thomas pulled out a dagger, adorned with a black gem on its hilt, and endcapped by a skull. The blade curved like a sinewy snake from hilt to tip. I chuckled as I looked at it. "Come on, man. A piddly dagger? That's weak sauce. Can you believe this, Connie?"

I looked around, but she was nowhere to be found. "Connie?"

Thomas grabbed my hand. "She is of no consequence."

"What did you do to her?" I shouted.

"What? Nothing! I would never concern myself with a mortal when there are more important matters to attend."

"Yeah, right. Like a little dagger that somehow is going to take down the big bad?"

"Once this dagger is plunged deep into his heart, the Apocalypse will be over, and God will allow us into his kingdom."

A great cheer erupted from the room. "Huzzah. Huzzah. Huzzah!"

I waited until the cheers died. "That's a nice story and all, but how do you know that once the Devil's gone these evil assholes won't just stick around forever, fighting God until there's nothing left in Heaven or Earth?"

"Think about it, Katrina. Evil only exists because of the Devil. He's the reason you have original sin in the first place. He's the reason we are all evil. These demons were once the beautiful voice of God, and then Satan corrupted them. Now they're monsters." He paused to stare out of the tent to the encampment below, gesturing to the demonic minions. "They all want to go home. Once the Devil is dead, he will no longer have control over the Hellspawn. God will see what we have done and open the gates of Heaven to us again. We will return to God's left hand, the evil will vanish from men's hearts, and Earth will become a paradise."

"That sounds like a pipedream, Thomas, but even if there's a chance that it's true, I want to help."

"Me too!" Connie shouted, walking back into the tent.

"Where did you go?" I asked.

Connie sat down next to me with a casual shrug. "I'll tell you later. Don't worry about it."

"I am gonna worry," I replied. "You were just gone for a really long time. What happened?"

"Nothing. Seriously. I mean, something, but it's not important...yet."

I stood up. "Who are you to tell me what's important. We're literally powwowing with a demon here. Everything is important."

"I just went out to get some fresh air. Jesus, Katrina. Not everything is about YOU. This is why we're not friends anymore."

"Cuz I want to know why you're acting weird?"

"No," Connie replied, shaking her head. "Because you can't leave anything ALONE."

I crossed my arms in a huff. "I don't like this."

"Of course you don't, because you have to know EVERYTHING. God forbid somebody keeps something from the great Katrina. How will the world ever go on?"

"I'm trying to help!"

"Then help by leaving me alone!" Connie shouted.

"Fine!" I grumbled. "You're on notice, though."

"Ooooh. I'm scared," Connie snitted.

"Hey!" Thomas screamed. "We're on a bit of a time crunch here."

"Sorry," I replied.

"Connie," Thomas said. "Do you want to know what you just volunteered to do?"

"Nope," Connie replied. "I'm good."

"And you're still in?" Thomas asked, confused as I was at her weirdness.

Connie nodded. "Totally."

Thomas turned to me. "And you're sure you want to help?"

I nodded. "If killing the Devil is gonna get the dickheads and monsters off my planet, I'll plunge the dagger into his heart myself."

Thomas smirked. "I hoped you would say that, because we are about to head into battle and we could use all the manpower we can get."

I folded my arms. "Womenpower. And when is this battle starting?"

"We march into formation in an hour."

"I guess that's convenient for us, then," I scoffed at him.

Thomas smiled. "Not really. Most of my men will fall in this battle and they have supernatural powers. You will have nothing of the sort."

"We'll manage," Connie said.

I nodded. "Yeah, what she said."

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# Chapter 11

Three hours later, Thomas, Connie, and I stood looking over the battlefield. Thousands of Thomas's demon horde faced off against a legion from Hell that outnumbered us a hundred to one.

The demons of Thomas's army towered over humans, but the legions of Hell made Thomas's horde look like babies. They were stronger, bigger, and meaner than the armies of Earth. I wasn't afraid of much, but they frightened me.

"Why--how are they so massive?" Connie asked Thomas.

"The ones who already came up to Earth were smaller, and sick of getting pushed around. These ones here are the ones who were doing the pushing."

"So, you're saying that the ones we're about to fight are bigger and stronger than anything we've fought before, and there's more of them."

"That's what I'm saying."

Thomas turned to his men. Behind the rows of his legions were three dozen catapults full of sulfuric rock. Imps stood with swords at the ready to cut away the rope that bound them and send the boulders flying. Five hundred archers stood with them, ready to light their arrows on fire.

"Soldiers," Thomas began. "This is the final battle. We have trained for this too little and we number too few. Most of you will fall, perhaps all of you. But should you fall, know that your gallantry will be rewarded in Heaven!"

The demons cheered for him. They loved him, and Thomas fed on it. "Your sacrifice today will not be in vain. It will not be squandered. We will succeed. It is our only option!"

The demons cheered again. Thomas pointed his sword toward the catapults and swung it sharply toward the rift. "Fire a volley of molten rock to announce our presence!"

The imps cut through their ropes. The molten rocks sailed into the air and exploded against Satan's multitudes. "Archers! At the ready!"

The archers lit their flaming arrows and let loose a barrage into the sea of Satan's men. A scream arose from our enemies and they charged. Thomas lifted his sword into the heavens. "Attack!"

Thomas's legions charged into battle. The charge kicked dirt and sand high into the air and clouded the sky. Then, armor, weapons, and bodies crashed against each other like deep ocean waves against rock. Shouts rang out from both sides. Once-proud demons screamed like babies as they fell in front of us. Swords, axes, spears, and all manner of weaponry created a haunting orchestra which rang toward the heavens.

The dust cleared long enough for me to see a demon charging at me. I ducked its advance then elbowed it in the stomach and smashed its face with my war hammer. "I think this might've been a mistake!"

Connie ripped the eye out of a demon's skull. "Where's your sense of fun?"

"The fun is in surviving, Connie. What has gotten into you?"

"It will all work out, Katrina." She smiled as she sliced a demon's throat open. "You just gotta have faith."

"Jesus Christ. Have you turned religious on me?"

"He's got nothing to do with it," Connie said. "I just know some things you don't know yet."

She was acting so strange I thought she must have been under an enchantment. However, she didn't have any of the tell-tale signs of being under a spell. She wasn't bleary eyes, nor were there sprinkling bits of dust floating around her, or anything that indicated she wasn't in her right mind. She looked like normal Connie but was talking like an insane person.

"You care to let me in on what you know that I don't?" I slipped under a charging demon and impaled it with its own sword.

"In good time," Connie said. "In good time."

"Great. I'm about to die and you've clearly gone insane."

"I'm not any crazier than you."

The dust cleared again. Thomas fought a massive mace-wielding demon. He managed to dodge the weapon for a few turns, but it finally connected with an uppercut and Thomas flew into the air.

"Oh no you don't!" I shouted, running toward him. "If anybody's killing that demon, it's gonna be me!"

I slid under a pair of demons and sidestepped a half dozen more until I was next to Thomas. The massive demon had his arms raised to deliver a final blow when I embedded my war hammer in his skull. He stumbled back, and I grabbed the crazy, curvy-bladed dagger from Thomas's belt. I jabbed it so deep into the beast's throat that it exploded into a cloud of dust.

"I like this dagger," I said, wiping it clean on my pants. "Can I keep it?"

Thomas rose to his feet. "That would be best, as we are nearing the rift. Once we are inside, only one with full mortal blood can kill the Devil."

"Why is that?"

"Satan is an angel, a fallen angel, one who has tempted humanity since the beginning. Only a human can overcome that pain and convince God they are worthy of redemption, thus, only they can kill the Devil."

"That doesn't make any sense," I said.

Thomas shrugged. "Of course not. You are only mortal after all."

"Wait, if all of that is true, then how can you wield it?"

"Only against other lesser Demons. My mother was Marilyn Monroe."

"That explains a lot."

*

THE REST OF THE BATTLE was, well, a battle. I mean, there was fighting. I killed some demons. Connie knocked a zombie's head clean off with a mallet--coolest game of croquet ever. We got pushed back, then we moved forward, then we got pushed back again, and it went on like that all afternoon.

I haven't been in many big battles, but if you've seen the Lord of the Rings movies, just imagine that big battle at the end of the trilogy, except in the desert, and it was that for hours and hours. We started only two hundred yards from the rift. We could stroll over to it in ten minutes on a good day, but in battle it took forever--and thousands of deaths--to move forward even an inch.

You know something else? It stank. Like really stank. When monsters died, they shat, and these monsters didn't just die, they were eviscerated. Their chests caved into their bodies and faces ended up three hundred feet from their skulls. The oppressively hot sun baked their insides and rotted them out in minutes.

Thomas's army didn't stand a chance against the forces of Hell. Decimated bodies dotted the battlefield, cut in half, ripped to shreds, stabbed in the gut...all fighting for a chance at redemption.

I felt bad for them.

They had probably been tormented in Hell and just wanted somewhere they could be free. When the Hell rift opened, they jumped at the chance to swing their big one and cause a little damage of their own. And they were slaughtered fighting beside me, a human, for the right to return to Heaven.

Eventually, Thomas, Connie, and I had killed enough of Satan's forces to find ourselves standing at the edge of the rift. We ducked through monsters and used our own men as shields to make it past them. Thomas really was an outstanding fighter. He was terrible, maybe the singular worst thing I've ever met, but he excelled at killing his kin.

The rift oozed dry heat like an open oven on a hot summer day. My legs turned to jelly just standing next to it for only a moment, and that was where we were headed--into the great maw of the heat's source.

"Okay," I shouted to Thomas. "We're here. Now what?"

"Now we jump!" Thomas shouted.

"Are you crazy? I'm not jumping into the abyss of Hell!" I looked up and down the rift. "Where's the elevator?"

Thomas stared at me, incredulous. "Hell doesn't have an elevator, Katrina."

Even Connie looked at me like I was stupid, but I just hadn't thought about it. I really hadn't thought about the logistics of getting down to Hell once we got to the rift, or how we would navigate Hell to get to the Devil. I just wanted to punch that evil dude in the cock.

"Come up with a better plan!" I screamed.

Thomas was completely exasperated with me. "There isn't one!"

It didn't take long for the forces of Hell to realize we'd snuck past them, and they quickly turned their attention toward us.

A demon swung its broadsword right at my stomach. Again, I braced for death, and again it didn't come. Instead, I felt Thomas's body against mine. A cry escaped his lips, and his face twisted into a gruesome scowl. The broadsword meant for me was embedded in Thomas's side. Warm goo dampened my leg when he heaved blue bile.

"Thomas!" I shouted. "Goddamn it! I was supposed to be the one who killed you!"

Blood spurted out of his mouth. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"I'm used to it by now," I replied. The monsters of Hell marched toward me in greater numbers, snarling and sneering at us.

"Katrina. Go." He pushed me into Connie with a hard shove. I caught her by the arms and the two of us tumbled backwards into the rift. Hundreds of monsters looked down at us, screaming at their dismay. They kicked Thomas's dead body into the pit and it fell next to us.

I spun myself around. The floor of Hell's white-hot chasm was coming up on us quickly--too quickly. The heat boiled my leather jacket until I had to abandon it. "We're going too fast. Hang on!"

I grabbed Connie and yanked her close to me. With my free hand, I pulled out my dagger and dug it into the stone wall. It slowed our descent as we skidded down the side of the rift. At the bottom of the rocky chasm, I swung Connie across the pits of fire and onto a boulder before wrenching the dagger from the wall and leaping over the gorge myself. I came to a stop next to Connie, on the rock. The lava blinded me and scalded my skin, but much to my surprise, I had survived. Again.

"You okay?" I asked, huffing and puffing.

She nodded. "I'm fine."

I looked over at Thomas, who lay twisted on some molten rocks nearby. His dead eyes stared back at me. "At least that's something."

Connie grunted in agreement, then looked around us. "Did we make it? Are we in Hell?"

"Sure smells like Hell."

"Great," Connie replied. "Now we just gotta find the Devil and plunge this dagger deep into his heart without Thomas's help." She stood up and brushed herself off. "Piece of cake."

"Yup, piece of cake." I bit my lip, thinking. "If only I had any clue how to do that."

"Maybe I can help," a friendly voice bellowed from behind a stalagmite. Connie and I whirled around to see a familiar figure crest over the rocks and into the light.

"Barry?" Connie asked, cocking her head. A smile crept onto her face.

Barry just laughed. He hadn't changed at all since I watched him die. He was still a mangled zombie, with green skin, which drooped too much to be considered human. Yet, he was still smiling like an idiot.

"Who else did you expect?"

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# Chapter 12

Hell sucked.

Not some earth-shattering revelation, but seriously, this place really blew chunks. People said that places were hot as Hell. I compared Nevada to Hell on innumerable occasions. Lots of people said the same thing about Arizona, Texas, and a whole bunch of places.

But we were all wrong.

Nothing was like Hell. Yes, it was hot. It was hotter than the surface of the sun. It would be hot if I were dead, but as a living person, the word blistering came to mind, though I wished it were only blistering.

The hottest day on Earth ever was something like 189 degrees in Iran and would be a pleasant winter day compared to Hell.

Then there was the torture. Each step we took, we heard the pained wails of the condemned echoing off every rock.

Barry diverted us through back alleys, away from the whipping torture and ferocious demons. He turned us away from the wails, but even in the distance they swelled to an overwhelming cacophony.

"So, you've been stuck in Hell this whole time?" I asked Barry.

"Monsters aren't allowed to enter Heaven, not that I thought I had a chance at that anyway. So, yeah. Kinda. It's not so bad."

"Hell...is not so bad."

"If you're a monster it's not."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," I replied after a deep sigh.

"How did you find us?" Connie asked him, hollering over me.

"Honestly? Dumb luck. I was supposed to be up on the surface, helping some demon terrorize Seattle, but I couldn't kill people. I just can't get into the terrorizing thing. They tried to assign me to some torture squad down here, where I would eat people's brains over and over forever, but it's just not my bag either. It's better than slaughter, but barely."

We climbed higher, away from the molten lava. "What have you been doing down here?"

"Paperwork. I file things. There is a lot of organization in Hell."

"Really? I figured it was kinda freeform."

Barry shook his head. "There's all sorts of bureaucracy. There are ten pits of Hell. Each one has different monsters and condemned souls assigned to it. It may be an eternity of suffering, but the punishment should fit the crime. Or something like that. I don't know. I just started. I'm still getting the lay of the land."

"Sounds horrible."

"It's alright. There's a big city called Dis in the middle, which is cool. I mean it's kind of run down, but they have bars and nightclubs. I rubbed up against a couple of pretty demons in there. Hell's really not so bad if you aren't a damned soul."

"But you're a zombie," Connie said. "How much more damned can a soul get?"

We reached a fork in the path with a tunnel to the right and another to the left. "Very. Technically speaking, I'm a monster. Down here, that gives me the right to do just about anything. I could slit Katrina's throat without a second thought. Wouldn't that be ironic?"

"You could try," I replied. "But I'd toss you into that lava pit so fast your head would spin, right before it melted off."

"Always a charmer," Barry said. "Always."

Barry tapped his feet and scratched his head with one of his undead arms. "I know it's one of these paths."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said. "It's just...I've never actually been to Lucifer's palace. I know it's one of these paths, but which one?"

I crossed my arms. "Are you serious?"

"I'll get you there. Don't you worry. We can always double back if I can't figure it out. There's a less confusing way, but it's filled with monsters. This way is unguarded. I come up here to get away sometimes, but I've never gone any further than this."

Connie pointed. "We should go to the right."

I wheeled on her. "How can you know that?"

"No reason. I just do is all." She shrugged, palms up.

"That's not good enough." I stepped in her direction and poked her in the chest. "You've been acting strange lately, trusting in God, telling me to have faith. You're a Satanist, for Christ's sake! Now what is going on with you?"

Connie tripped over a rock and fell on her ass. "Nothing's going on with me. Just chill out." She scooted away from me, toward the edge of a cliff overlooking a river of lava. "The heat's getting to you."

"No," I replied, grabbing her by the collar. "You're acting weird. Tell me what is going on!"

"I can't!" She tried to pull my hands away. "At least--not yet!"

I dragged her toward the edge of the cliff. "Then I'll toss you into the river. Don't be stupid. Tell me what the hell is going on!" She kicked and screamed, trying to break free, but I was stronger than her. "I'm not going to ask you again. What is going on? How do you know where Satan's palace is?"

A blue light flashed behind me. "She knows because of me, Katrina." The light cleared, and a familiar face appeared behind it.

"Dennis? This is too much."

Connie squirmed. "Can you let go of me now?"

*

DENNIS MATERIALIZING out of thin aired cooled me off in more ways than one. Not only did his unexpected appearance quell my immense rage, but he also brought with him a blue light which physically counteracted the effects of Hell. It was as if an industrial strength air conditioner turned on during the hottest day of summer and blew right into my face.

"So, you're an angel, huh?" I asked.

"That's correct."

"But you're in Hell."

"You're two for two."

"So, how is it that you are here, exactly?" I asked, confused.

"I came to Connie when you landed at Thomas's tent." He placed his hand on Connie's lovingly. "Every moment without her was agony."

"No. I mean, how did you get to Heaven in the first place? I get that you're an angel, but what did you do to deserve Heaven?"

Dennis shrugged. "I dunno, honestly. After I died, I just floated up to Heaven."

I blinked. "That is a lame story."

"Yeah, but it's true. I mean, I didn't say it was a great story, or super original, but that's how people have gotten to Heaven for thousands of years. The blue beams of light thing only happened once."

"But what you're saying is that you can get to Heaven if you die during the Apocalypse."

"I'm not saying anything. I don't know how or why it happened, all I can say is that it did. I died. I saw a white light. I ended up in Heaven."

"And why don't you have wings?" I asked.

"I've gotta perform a great deed to earn them."

"A great deed? What are you, George Bailey's angel? You gotta get us to see there is good in the world?"

Dennis laughed. "It's a little more complicated than that. See, Heaven is boring. Have you ever met like a real, die hard Christian? All they do is pray all the time. Now, imagine they were whisked to Heaven, the Christian wet dream. How much do you think they would pray then?"

"Probably a lot."

"Literally all the time. I thought my mother praying the rosary three times a day was bad. When I saw her in Heaven, she wouldn't even look up at me. She just kept praying."

Connie, Barry, and I all made faces, trying to imagine this. "That sounds horrible," I said.

"It is, but at least I got to punch Connie's deadbeat dad."

"You punched that old fogey?"

"Right in the mouth," Dennis nodded. "I laid him out good."

"And I thank you for that," Connie said, squeezing him tighter. She'd attached herself to him since the moment he appeared, nibbling on his neck and draping herself around his shoulders. "Did you ever figure out how people like that got into Heaven in the first place?"

Dennis shook his head. "They don't really tell you stuff like that. You just know you got in. I did get accosted by a rather large angel for fighting, though. He told me that if I did it again, it would seriously damage my continued relationship with Heaven."

"Does that mean you'd be kicked out?"

"I guess, but I don't know. Thing is, besides praying, there's nothing to do. They have shuffleboard, and knitting, and you can watch all the PG movies you want. I guess that's fine for some people, but I hated it."

"Poor you," Barry said. "I've been stuck down here in the bowels of Hell and you're complaining about Heaven? Asshole."

"I'm sorry, but it's true," Dennis said, emphatically. "Heaven is dull. The only people who have any fun are the archangels. Total badasses! They protect Heaven from invaders and get sent out on missions around the universe. They're also the only angels with wings. They kind of lord it over everybody else."

"And you want to be one of them?" I asked.

"Yeah, I do. Those dudes are friggin' sweet. But to get wings, you gotta perform a hella awesome deed. I mean, think about the archangels..."

"Are you sure you should be cursing?" Connie asked, looking at Dennis doe-eyed. "I mean you are an angel. Won't they get pissed? I don't want you to get in trouble."

"God has bigger problems than me cursing. Besides, I literally can't curse in Heaven. They just don't allow it. I have been aching to curse since I died. It feels so good."

"Can we get back to the problem at hand, love birds?" I asked.

"Sorry," Dennis replied, smiling like a fool at Connie. "Where was I?"

"Archangels," I said, shaking my head.

"Right. Well, they are the biggest badasses in Heaven." Dennis took a deep breath in and I knew I was in for some sort of sports fan drive-in totals. "Gabriel impregnated Mary with God's seed. Raphael evicted Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Uriel saved John the Baptist from the Egyptians. Michael kicked the piss out of Lucifer and sent him down to Hell. Samael is the angel of death."

Dennis paused to catch his breath and then grinned. "You don't have to know who they are to know those are feats of awesome."

"Sure, sure. Point conceded." I scratched my neck and tried to sound interested. "And now you wanna do something totally badass to earn your wings too?"

"Yup." Dennis looked smug. "Something...like ending the Apocalypse."

I clucked my tongue. "Glomming onto my glory, then."

"Hey," Connie shouted. "Our glory."

"Fine," I replied with an eye roll. "Our glory."

"Thanks a lot, guys." Barry was picking a zombie booger when we looked at him. "What?"

"Yeah, alright," Dennis said. "I want some of that sweet, sweet glory, okay? The only thing I enjoyed doing in Heaven was watching Connie. I saw you plan on ending the Apocalypse and figured that would be a huge enough deed to make me an archangel, so I snuck down here. They say God's omniscient, but trust me, he's got plenty of blind spots if you know where to look."

"I would never say that about him," I replied.

"Tell her how you already helped us, baby," Connie said. She squeezed his face and kissed him on the cheek.

"Well, I protected you from those fireballs in the desert, for one."

"You mean...the ones that nearly killed us?"

"I did the best I could. You would've been destroyed way sooner had I not come, but there were too many. I was so pissed when that demon jerk got to act like the big hero."

"Aw, baby," Connie said, smooching his cheeks again. "That's so sweet."

"Yeah, yeah. You have one of the great love stories of all time. Get on with it."

"Well, I followed you until Thomas revealed his plan. I knew you'd never succeed without me."

"Why? You don't think we're tough enough?"

"No, it's because you're mortals. Mortals can't survive in Hell for long. At least, not without a cooling agent."

"So, you're going to earn your wings by being a walking air conditioner?" I replied.

Dennis glared at me, pursing his lips. "I appeared to Connie and have been watching out for you ever since. I made sure you were okay on the battlefield, blowing away the dust in time to make sure you could foil any attack. Then, I followed you through Hell until you flipped out, and that brings us up to just now."

I yawned loudly and stretched. "I'm bored. If Heaven is half as dull as that story, I feel really sorry for you, brother."

"Trust me, it's worse. That's why I'm trying to help you."

"Does that mean you're going to lead us to the Devil now?"

"Yes. I studied the path before leaving Heaven, but--"

"Fantastic, cuz if I don't kill something soon, I'm gonna die of boredom."

Dennis turned to Connie and Barry. "You weren't wrong. She really is still like this."

They both nodded. Connie said, "Told you."

"Hey!" I shouted. "Shut your faces."

"I gotta warn you, it's not an easy road ahead." Dennis walked down the path to the right. "Follow me."

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# Chapter 13

Dennis led us to the top of a craggy rock path. It was an hour hike to the top of the sheer cliff. Every muscle in my body ached by the time we reached it, but my adrenaline kept me going. I could taste the sulfur in the air from the Devil's castle. It was so close.

Dennis stopped us behind a massive rock formation that jutted a hundred feet into the sky. "We'll see the Devil's castle just up ahead...after we get past the first obstacle."

I peered around the formation. A thin rock bridge traversed a hundred-foot gorge carved by the lava river flowing below. A wolf monster, adorned with golden bracers, chest plate, and helmet like he was right out of an Egyptian hieroglyph, spanned the bridge's entire width as it paced back and force.

This wolf looked unlike anything I'd ever seen on the surface. It carried itself as more human than animal. In its eyes, I saw more than the vicious idiocy of the demon dogs. It marched on its back legs along its well-worn path, a golden staff eternally clutched in its paw.

"This protector is left over from the old guard," Dennis said.

"The old guard?"

"Before the Devil. You really think Lucifer was the first Devil?"

"Don't you?"

"Well, not anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because I read the history books in Heaven and I know what I read on the map. These guys are left over from days of the first Devil. I don't know any more than that."

I sighed. "Fine. And it's the only one?"

"One is enough."

"We'll see about that." I gave a wry smile.

"Be careful. Demons in Hell are more powerful than they are on Earth."

"I heard."

The wolf paced in our direction. When it reached the end of the bridge, it turned on its heels and marched back down the small path. There wasn't enough room to fight, but it was enough to make one surprise attack. I snuck toward the wolf until I was close enough to smell the sweaty musk of his backside.

The wolf reached the end of the bridge. When it turned, its weight shifted off balance just for a moment. I leapt onto his neck and spun him around, then kicked him off the bridge. The monster fell into the abyss, howling.

I dusted off my hands and looked back at Dennis and the others. "Easy peasy."

We walked across the bridge toward a great black gate. I could see the Devil's castle in the distance now, surrounded by a moat of lava. The obsidian castle struck a fearsome image, its sheer size overpowering the rest of the landscape.

Dennis pointed over the rock bridge to a trail below us. Demons marched thousands of zombies past a boiling lava lake toward their next assignment.

"If we'd taken the left path back where I showed up, it would have led us down there, into the pits of Hell. We would have come face to face with all those zombies."

I shrugged. "Zombies are easy and dumb."

"Hey!" Barry whined. Connie smacked him in the arm.

"Maybe one, but thousands? Even you'd get tired from that."

*

THE WAILS NEVER ENDED in Hell. Strong men wept like little girls. Young women bleated out in incredible agony. Old men howled as their feet burned in lava. No matter where I turned, the piteous cries overwhelmed me.

I hoped against hope that my mother wasn't caught in the great expanse of Hell. If Dennis could earn his way into Heaven, so could my mother. She was the sweetest woman I'd ever known. She swaddled me as a baby, overfed me as a child, and protected me as an adult. Whenever I had a bad day, she was there. Everything she had, she gave freely.

The fact she wasn't blue lighted pissed me off something fierce. She just wanted to love, and she would do anything to make sure that those she loved were happy.

That became exceedingly tough after the Apocalypse began. Everybody she loved was rightfully miserable and died in horrible ways. It was in those days that my mother's strength came though the most. She never cried. She never wavered. She accepted strays into her house. She fed us all and kept us smiling. My parents' house became a base of sorts for hundreds of frightened people.

No offense to Dennis, but my mother was a better person than him. Dennis looked after Connie, sure, but my mother looked after everybody. The thought of her being torn apart for the rest of eternity was too much to bear.

"We're here," Dennis said, crouching behind a large rock.

I tilted my head around the corner. A massive demon dog snoozed in front of a thousand-foot-high black gate.

"More dogs? How original."

"It's effective. I couldn't find any way to scale this gate or get around it. The angels of Heaven have never breached its walls. The only way through is past Cerberus."

"Cerberus? Like the Greek dog?"

"Exactly like her. Those demon dogs on the surface--this is their mother. She's an ornery little bitch with a voracious appetite. Nothing gets through that gate and into Satan's palace without her approval."

I thought a for a moment. "Not a problem. I'm sure she's as dumb as her children. Come here, Barry."

"Huh?"

I grabbed Barry's right arm and ripped it from its socket. The flesh peeled apart like a warm, dinner biscuit. Barry howled. "What are you doing?"

"Shhh! You'll spook her."

Cerberus lifted her heads and took a giant whiff of the air. Slobber pooled on either side of her mouths. She could smell the meat, and grumbled under her breath, curious.

I walked toward the cliff with Barry's arm outstretched in my hand. "Come here, girl. Yeah, you like that? You like the smell of rotten flesh, don't you?"

Cerberus barked and howled for a moment. When she noticed Barry's arm, her mood changed from angry to excited, like a puppy with a ball. She leapt into the air and wagged her tail furiously, yanking at her heavy chain.

"Yeah. That's a good girl. Come on." I waved the arm some more. Barry muttered and rubbed his empty shoulder socket.

Cerberus had worked herself into a lather, her three gigantic heads chomping at the bit. She pulled and jumped, and when I threw the arm off the cliff, the old bitch lost her mind.

"Go get it!"

Cerberus lurched forward and ripped her chain from the wall. It streamed behind her as she leapt off the ledge and into the lava lake.

Connie, Barry, and Dennis walked to the ledge and peered over, speechless.

"What's next?" I asked.

Dennis looked over at me. "Twenty angelic legions couldn't get past her."

Connie nodded, eyes wide. "Girl, you're single-handedly destroying Hell."

"Because Hell is stupid," I spat back.

Barry just picked at his arm hole.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again, guys. I'm better than twenty legions of angels. Now, how many more of these challenges are left?"

I turned and walked through the huge hole in the rock wall Cerberus had left when she'd wrenched the chain free. The others followed behind me.

In front of us was the massive black castle with endless spires and towers, surrounded by another huge lake of lava. There were no bridges to cross. There was no way into the castle without swimming though miles of molten liquid.

"Just one," Dennis said. "But it's pretty much impossible."

I smiled. "Bring it on."

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# Chapter 14

I stomped down the dirt road from Cerberus's gate toward the lake of fire that separated us from the Devil's castle. Even the cool breeze from Dennis's blue glow couldn't prevent me from dripping sweat. The heat wouldn't stop me, though, even as it sapped all of my energy. The end-goal was in sight, and I wasn't about to stop now.

"The last challenge is getting over the lake of fire," Dennis told me.

"Cool," I replied. "Can you fly us over?"

"No. I can fly myself, but, without wings, I'm not strong enough to carry anybody else, at least not for that long."

"Fine. What other options do we have?"

"Unfortunately, there's only one, and it's a boat."

"That doesn't sound too hard. I can row."

Dennis shook his head. "No. There is only one boat, and one oar to row it. And only Charon's allowed to carry the gondolier's oar. It's enchanted--the boat, too--so they don't burn up in the lake."

"So...I guess that's a 'no' to swimming across...?"

Dennis exhaled sharply. "Can you swim in lava, Katrina? Have some sort of super power I don't know about?"

I shook my head. "No. Can you swim across?"

"The lake probably wouldn't hurt me or Barry, but we'd still disintegrate before we reached the other side. Maybe we could do it in bursts, if we had a way to break."

Barry put up a hand. "I vote for not swimming in lava. Who's with me?" Connie smacked his hand down and looked back at me.

"You're not giving me much of a choice, Dennis. I guess I'll just pay the sumbitch. How much does it cost, like five bucks?" I started patting my pockets for loose change.

"It's not that easy. He only brings across souls personally invited by Satan himself, and nobody has been invited in years."

"Pfft. That sounds stupid."

I needed that boat, and if Charon wasn't going to give me a ride, I would take one. I didn't exactly know how, but I was going to get across that lake. No stupid gondolier was going to stop that.

When we reached the bottom of the hill, the gondola waited for us, tied to the dock. On the boat was a cloaked figure, holding a large, black oar. Only two glowing eyes escaped the blackness under his purple robe.

"Who requests passage to the Dark Lord?" Charon asked.

I stepped forward. "I do. And I guess them, too."

"No bodies may pass."

"I'm not just anybody. I'm Katrina, and these are my friends."

"Only souls of the underworld may pass on to Lucifer's dwelling. Bodies may not pass."

"I don't like your attitude."

I pulled the dagger out of my belt and used it to stab Charon through the chest. He evaporated into a big ball of light, leaving nothing behind but his cloak, which I threw into the river.

"What did you just do?" Connie said.

"We'll never get to the castle now!" Dennis threw his hands in the air. "Only Charon could wield the gondolier's oar!"

"Relax," I said, smiling. "I have a plan."

Barry looked down, scared. "I don't want to know."

"Tough. Cuz you're a big part of it."

"Oh, man..." Barry said.

"Yup. Dennis, you said you and Barry could swim in bursts if you had a place to stop, right?"

"Yeah." Dennis chuckled nervously. "Why?"

I smiled. "You are our new oars."

*

DENNIS AND BARRY ROWED us across the river, bitching and moaning the whole way, but eventually we crossed the river to the castle. I didn't care about their whining. I was about to give Satan a piece of my mind. As we tied the boat to the dock at the castle's steps, my stomach fluttered. I was so close.

"Alright," I said. "Up the staircase, kill the Devil, end the Apocalypse, go home and have a sandwich. Couldn't be easier, right?"

Barry blew out the smoldering embers on his remaining arm. "If I ever get my arm back, I'm beating you to death with it."

"I'm right there with you, buddy," Dennis added.

"That's a nice dream. Never gonna happen, but a nice dream none the less," I said, climbing the stairs. "Now stop complaining. We're about to kill the Devil. Then, Dennis will get his fairy wings. Connie will get a nap. Barry can go back to doing whatever Barry does, and I won't ever have to talk to any of you ever again."

"That's a nice thought," Connie sighed.

"Isn't it?"

"I don't really get anything out of this," Barry said. "Why did I even help you?"

"I'll tell you what. I promise not to rip anything else off you today. How about that?"

Barry wiped at his eyes and sniffed. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Don't mention it."

I looked up at the imposing castle in front of me. For some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about He-Man when I stared at it, then it came to me. Lucifer's castle was a dead ringer for Skeletor's. I mean, it was black obsidian instead of green rock, and Lucifer used bones instead of wood, but it looked just like it, down to the creepy skull whose mouth acted as a doorway.

I leaned my weight against the heavy bone door and pushed with every ounce of energy I could muster. I felt the dusty, old bones give under my weight, and heard a ribcage snap under my pressure. The heavy door creaked on its hinges. When it finally groaned open, light streamed into a long corridor and we crept inside, single file.

Moans emanated from the end of the hall. These weren't the pained groans of the tortured, though. These were different. This was the first time I'd heard crying in Hell; the first time I'd heard sadness. Sadness was a dull emotion. You feel it in the absence of pain. It cut against you in the silent moments. It took shape over days, weeks, even years sometimes, but physical agony drowns it out. The tortured souls in Hell didn't have time to cultivate sadness over the screams of their anguish.

The cries led us down a hallway, where Gothic paintings of dead bodies lined the walls, framed in bits of bone. Bones crunched on the obsidian floor beneath our feet and culminated in a massive pile, atop which sat a throne, where the Devil was perched.

There was no power in him. No swagger. Just a fat, old, goat-legged demon, in shorts and a stained wife beater. He looked...pathetic.

"There he is!" Barry shouted triumphantly, his remaining arm raised into the air.

"No duh," I replied. "It's time to end this."

My feet crunched on the bones as I made my way up to the throne. The Devil looked up, his glowing, yellow eyes peering into my soul. "Well, well, well. If it isn't the distinct smell of humanity." He sneered at Dennis. "And an angel. How very interesting. God sent a peon to communicate with me."

The Devil rose to his feet. "You think I would have earned more respect after two hundred millennia of service."

I crossed my arms in defiance. "We're here to stop your rampage on the world."

The Devil chuckled. "Oh, that's rich. What are you babbling about? The Apocalypse?"

"That's right!" Connie yelled. "The Apocalypse you started!"

The Devil descended the bone pile. "Whoever told you that fairy tale was sorely mistaken, or simply lying to you."

"Your head games won't work on us, Satan!" Connie said. "We know the truth."

He stopped and eyed her with an amused look. "And what truth is that?"

"We know that if we kill you, the Apocalypse will end and there will be Heaven on Earth!"

He chuckled again. "My dear, if you kill me there won't even be Heaven in Heaven. God doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about any of this. He's no better than an absentee landlord. Do you know what that is?"

Barry raised his hand. "I don't, if that means anything."

"It means that he can't be bothered with the whole lot of you. Ever since you killed his son, he could care less if any of you humans entered the kingdom of Heaven."

"Then why did he let some people in with all the blue lights?" I asked.

"I don't know. I'm not him. He clearly thought some of you deserved it, like those that followed him without question. But from the beginning of time, I've toyed with your head, manipulated your minds, and destroyed your souls. Has he ever once tried to stop me?"

"Yes," Dennis said. "But you had Jesus killed."

Lucifer guffawed. "Is that what you really believe? Humanity destroyed Jesus on their own. I didn't need to be involved. And once you killed him, God deserted you for the last two thousand years, so he could sulk, leaving you with nothing but his greatest joke."

"Oh yeah," Connie said. "and what's that?"

"Free will, of course. He granted every person the ability to ignore his teachings, yet eternally punished those that chose not to follow him blindly. What kind of ego trip is that?"

"It's a big one," I said. "But I'm not here to talk about God's ego. I'm here to use my free will to jam this dagger through your heart!"

Lucifer spread his arms wide. "I won't stop you. God has forsaken me. All I wanted was to see the Elysian Fields one more time. Maybe in my next life, I'll be a simple apple farmer."

True to his word, he didn't fight me. I rammed the dagger deep into Lucifer's chest. He didn't scream. He didn't whimper. He just fell to the ground, blood oozing from his wound.

"Wow," Barry said, walking over to me. "He fell like a sack of potatoes, huh?"

"Didn't put up a fight or nothin'," Connie added.

"So...does that mean it's over then?" Dennis asked, peering at the Dark Lord's corpse.

A voice boomed from the rafters. "Not quite!"

I turned to see Thomas, flawlessly quaffed and dressed in a perfectly tailored suit. He sauntered down a flight of stairs toward us. "Appreciate you finishing off Daddy for me, though. I do so hate dirtying my hands."

"You...were dead," I said, stammering.

"Silly girl. That is what I wanted you to believe because it furthered my ends. Did you really think you would have made it this far if it weren't my bidding?"

"Obviously," I said.

"You realized the ease of your path couldn't have been an accident, of course." He studied my face. "No? Do you not understand how I manipulated the marauders to chase you down to boost your resolve, or how I protected you through the battle and in your descent to Hell? Did you not guess that I died at just the right moment to push you that last step of the way?"

"So, everything you told me was a lie?"

My jaw dropped as Thomas continued, a polite hand covering his mouth for a moment. "Oh my yes. Every word since the moment we met. You really didn't know. You truly do have simple minds. I've been planning this from the moment the Apocalypse began. I just needed the perfect mortal. One with the drive and skill to follow my plan through with single-minded focus. Somebody who would take care of my father while I shifted his focus to my resistance. I've tried so many women before, my dear, and you were superior to all of them." He stepped toward me, his arms out for an embrace. "Now, my love, join me in ruling Hell and I will give you everything."

Thomas pulled me close. I struggled against him, but he was too strong. My mind flashed back to the day he raped me. Then, too, I was absolutely helpless against him. But as it played through in my head, haunting me, I remembered something.

I remembered a rosary had burned him once before.

And I remembered I had one in my back pocket. I'd purchased it for precisely this moment. With my free hand, I wrapped my fingers around the chain and swung it at his face. It sizzled against his skin.

"I don't think so!" I shouted. "I hate all dead shit, but you're at the top of my list."

Thomas was hunched over, holding his face in his hands. "You fool. We could have ruled Hell together!"

"No thanks. This place is the pits."

Thomas rose again, a crucifix mark singed onto his check. "No matter. It doesn't affect my plans."

"I don't get it," Barry said, counting the fingers on his remaining hand. "Why get anybody to kill your father?"

"Because I desired control of Hell, of course. And dear old Daddy wanted me to be content with middle management. I don't sully my genius with trivial day to day tasks."

Barry gulped. "I guess we can kiss paradise on Earth goodbye, then."

"I'm afraid so. Now that I've taken control, a whole new era of carnage will commence." Thomas held his hands at his lapels, proudly.

"That doesn't sound good for you guys," Dennis said to Katrina and Connie.

"That doesn't sound good for anybody," Connie added.

Orange tendrils of light snaked out of Lucifer's dead body and settled in the air, hovering listlessly. Then, in one swift action, they beelined for Thomas's body and shot through him. He flew backwards into a stone pillar. Moments later he rose from the rubble, throbbing and animated. Orange light pulsated out of every orifice.

"The power!" he shouted. "The absolute power!"

He looked down at his glowing arms. "Yes! Yes! The old way of doing things is finished! Prepare for a new reign which will topple Heaven itself!"

I wanted to fight, to rail against him. I wanted to end Thomas right there, but I couldn't move. I became one with the void. All I could do was watch as I faded into the white light.

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# Chapter 15

I tasted maraschino cherry. Not fresh cherry like the kind you pick off a tree. No. This was the kind you get on the top of an ice cream sundae, like the one they loaded up for you at Oscar's Diner. The kind that melted into the whipped cream as you devoured the scoops of cold goodness underneath. Then, in the last moment, once all the ice cream was gone and you couldn't eat another bite, you bit down on the cherry stem and squished the sugary juice into your mouth. The final taste of perfection.

That's what I tasted in my mouth when the world went white. I thought I'd had a stroke. I should have had a stroke. It was a lot to take in, after all, this idea that the Devil, for all his evil, wasn't much of a big bad at all.

Far from being evil, he was, if anything, pathetic.

He didn't have some grand plan, except to sit in his castle and sulk. He was merely surrounded by evil. Of course, if you are surrounded by evil, and complicit in evil, that kinda makes you evil by default. Didn't seem like he enjoyed it, though.

I quickly discounted the idea that I was having a stroke, mainly because I was cogently thinking the whole time the world faded away. Once that thought knocked out of my head, then I was sure I had died.

After all, Thomas stated that his new reign would topple Heaven itself and killing me would be a good first step. Wiping out me, Connie, Barry, and everybody else for who knows how many miles, seemed like a good enough first step to enacting an evil plan.

I stayed in the white light for longer than was comfortable. There was nothing to do in the void except float. For the last few days I had been running through the world with a purpose, and I didn't like the sudden, still silence. I tried to keep my mind busy to avoid it. In the silence, pains made themselves known. I remembered all those I'd lost: Dad, Barry...Mom.

Mom's death was the worst of them all. It came eight months after the Apocalypse began. We'd watched how the other cities defended themselves. Los Angeles used tanks with lackluster results. San Francisco dropped a dirty bomb on Ghirardelli Square. Sacramento carpet-bombed their own citizens.

Nothing worked.

At best, cities fended off the monsters for a time. In San Antonio, the military held for ten months. In Washington, they managed to keep a functioning government almost eighteen months, but eventually it devolved, like these things do, into a power grab for territory.

All that remained were small towns fighting for themselves. Places like Overbrook, where the monsters ripped through homes with the speed and power of a bulldozer. Mom and I kept the resistance going longer than we thought possible, given our resources. It's one of the reasons Walter respects me even a little, because he and I fended off monsters at our gates together, more times that I could count. But it couldn't last forever. Eventually the monsters came for us, too.

We made night runs in those days. Night runs were more dangerous, which meant fewer neighbors were stupid enough to risk their lives doing them. Our house was ill defended in the night when we were out. Monsters hadn't trekked through our neighborhood yet, so we thought it was safe. Oh, how wrong we were. When they came for our house, it was a bloodbath.

Mom and I returned from a food run later than usual. I turned the corner in our overstuffed, cargo van and watched two minotaurs plow into the house, knocking it loose from its foundation. Dozens of people fell to the ground as it toppled. Zombies and demon dogs devoured those that didn't die in the fall.

"We have to go to them!" Mom shouted as I slammed the van into reverse and peeled away.

"If we go back, we die."

She pulled the wheel toward the house. "But those people!"

I spun the wheel away from her too hard. The unbalanced van teetered and collapsed. It careened into the side of a big, beautiful Tudor house and flipped over.

Blood pooled in my eye socket when I came back to consciousness. I hazily looked out the window and saw Mom stumbling toward the house. I pulled myself out of the van and crawled toward her.

"Mom!" I shouted. "Mom!"

She turned to me. "Those people!"

I staggered toward her. "They're already dead. Don't you get that?"

"They wouldn't be if we helped them!"

I latched onto her hand and pulled her away. "Yes, they would, and we'd be dead too!"

I pulled Mom down the cul de sac against her will. Around a bend, Connie slammed into me, her eyes petrified in horror, a pack of demon dogs at her heels. Dennis fought them off with a lead pipe as they lurched toward him.

"Run!" Connie shouted.

The dogs chased us through the woods and into the heart of town. Every time I looked back there were more of them. We looked for any open door. Anything to save us from the demon dogs. Then it happened. My mom tripped.

"Come on, Mom. Get up!"

She huffed and puffed. "I can't--I can't--"

I saw it in her eyes. I've seen many times before and since, but it never broke me like it did with her. She'd lost the will to live.

"Go on, Katrina--get out of here!"

Dennis shouted to me. "Come on! Let's go!"

The dogs closed in on us.

"KATRINA JEAN CLARK! GET OUT OF HERE!"

I let go of her hand and ran. The dogs, so close on my tail, lurched to a stop around my mother. I heard the crunch of bone, the squish of flesh, and the final, garbled screams of my mother as she died.

Dennis screamed at me from an open door. "We found one!"

I wanted to lay down and die with her, but my body wouldn't allow it. Mom had lost the will to live, but I hadn't.

I slipped into the door right behind Dennis, collapsed, and cried for the last time. My parents were gone. All I had left were Dennis, Barry, and Connie. They would be gone too, soon enough.

The scene in front of me faded. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. All the tears were gone, burned away. There wasn't time for that anyway. Now was time for action.

Resolve came back into my belly. The white faded from my eyes and I could see again. I stood on an enormous platform, surrounded by clouds. Connie kneeled on one side of me. Dennis and Barry to the other.

"Did we all just stroke out?" I asked.

"No, my child," a booming voice said. "This is Heaven."

In front of me sat a bearded man in a white robe, serenely floating in space. To his right was a pissed off man with long flowing robes and wings. I gathered he was an angel. On the other side of the floating man was the recently eviscerated Lucifer, healed and reclined comfortably on an old couch.

"If this is Heaven," I said. "then you must be God."

The old man smiled. "That I am."

Dennis muttered under his breath. "I'm so screwed."

The angel stepped forward. "You're right about that, Dennis. What right did you have leading these chippies into Hell?"

Barry scratched his head. "What's a chippy?"

The angel groaned. "How stupid can you idiots be?"

God cleared his throat. "Calm yourself, Michael. They know not what they unleashed upon us."

"Of course they don't," Michael said. "They're idiots."

I walked past Michael until I was face to face with God. "So, you're the big man, huh?"

"I am not a man. I am the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent God of scripture."

"I call bullsham on that. Bullsham. Why the flork can't I curse?"

"Because the almighty wishes you don't," Michael said. "And he is all-powerful."

"That's where he draws the line? Naughty words? I definitely call bullsham on that. I call bullsham on all of this."

"Excuse me?" God said. "I'm quite sure I am the almighty."

"No. I believe you're God, but I can't square up that other stuff about you being those three things you said. There's way too much bad crap that's gone down in my life to make me believe you are even one of them, truth be told. If you were...then I wouldn't have watched my mother be torn apart by a bunch of three-headed dogs, and you certainly wouldn't have made me relive it again just now."

"How dare you talk to the Almighty like that!" Michael hissed.

"Why not? If he's really all good he won't care what the hell I say to him, will he?" I turned to the Devil, still clad in a wife beater. "And you are the Devil. I see that you haven't changed at all."

"Well, you did only kill me a little while ago." Lucifer stretched his arms out on his couch. "And please, call me Lou. You murdered me in cold blood. If you haven't earned the right to call me by my first name, nobody has."

I nodded. "I appreciate that, Lou. You seem less nutty than the last time I saw you."

"Yes, several millennia in Hell will do that to you."

"I'll bet. I was only there for a little while and it was awful. Who's this other jerk barking orders at me?"

"I am Michael," the angel scoffed. "The archangel. The most powerful of all the archangels."

Lucifer chucked. "You. The most powerful archangel. Pfft. Maybe second to me."

"Ha!" Michael said. "You're a fat sack of garbage that got murdered by a mortal."

"In a moment of weakness, and I didn't even put up a fight." He looked at me with pleading eyes. "Go on, tell him I didn't put up a fight."

"He didn't put up a fight," I said.

Michael flicked his hair. "And that's why you could never be the most powerful."

"Boys! Enough!" I shouted. "Whip it out and compare or shut up. And while you're at it, why don't you tell me what I'm doing here?"

"I'll handle that," God said. The other two immediately shut up. "Look over the edge, Katrina."

I gave him the side eye. "Are you gonna push me over?"

God chuckled. "If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't have brought you here. I would have let Thomas have his way with you, or snapped my fingers and evaporated you into nothingness. Still could, too."

"Fair enough." I walked over to the edge of the platform. It was bedlam. The monsters of Hell tore apart the people of Heaven. Angels screamed and bawled across the Elysian Fields. They were unprepared for slaughter, thinking they would just live the rest of their lives in cushy perfectness.

God help me, but I smiled a little. The little snowflakes that got raptured up to Heaven before the Apocalypse were now getting a taste. I wondered how many times they looked down and thanked their stars they weren't down with us, slumming it up with the monsters.

"There is a war raging, Katrina," God said. "A war you began."

"It's such a cop out to blame me. I didn't have anything to do with this stuff. I just killed the Devil a little bit."

"Exactly. You're not the one waging this war," Lucifer agreed. "But you did put my son in charge. Moments after I died, Thomas took control of Hell and began an all-out attack on Heaven."

"Truth be told, Heaven is filled with cowards," Michael said. "Do you have any idea the litany of infractions a person can't commit to pass through the needle's eye? The meek couldn't swing a sword if their afterlife depended on it."

"And it clearly does," I replied.

"Once our army was the grandest in the universe, but now...it won't last another hour of this onslaught. We need your help. You've survived for two years on an Earth filled with the worst monsters imaginable." God studied me closely. "You are our best hope. And besides that, Thomas seems to have an affinity toward you--one I will never understand."

"I might help," I said. "But not until you answer a question for me."

Michael's angelic jaw dropped. "Who are you to demand anything from God Almighty?"

"I'm his creation. The one that's been suffering down there for years. Who's watched her loved ones get taken away from her, one by one. Who's bled, and wept, and cursed the heavens. I'm who he made me."

"We don't have time for this!" Michael shouted.

"Relax, Michael," God said. "We created Katrina to be inquisitive, and I will acquiesce to her demands."

I scoffed. "Suck it, jerk."

I turned to God, who smiled at me and said, "You wish to know why the Apocalypse began."

"Yes, of course I do. But more importantly, I wanna know who's responsible. You? Thomas? Lucifer? It's all really confusing."

"Very well," God said. "The Apocalypse was the inevitable eventuality of a fatal flaw in the human condition that I, as your creator, am responsible for."

"What?" Connie said. "Can you speak English?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Quit with the flowery language. Who opened the Hell rift and unleashed the monsters on Earth?"

"That is a long and complicated explanation. I ask that you trust it was the only possible solution to an impossible problem."

"Trust you? I've been fighting off monsters for two years. Everybody I've ever cared about is either dead or hates me. So no, I don't trust you, not one iota. Now, tell me everything or I'm not lifting a finger to help you."

God sighed. "Lucifer was not the first Devil of Hell. Did you know that?"

I shook my head. "No. I didn't."

"He was the fourth, and the least qualified."

"Hey!" Lucifer said. "Not cool."

"I took pity on him when I realized he was in over his head, and made him an offer. If he could keep Hell running for three hundred millennia, I would let him back in to Heaven, and lift his burden as the Devil."

"It wasn't so much a deal as an ultimatum," Lucifer said. "I had just waged a coup on Heaven, after all, and I wasn't in a good position to bargain. It's not like I had a lot of choice in the matter."

"You always had a choice," God replied. "It just might not have been a good one."

"Right," I scoffed. "Either agree to your terms or suffer in Hell for eternity."

God smiled. "That is a choice."

"Doesn't seem like much of a choice to me," I said.

"Me either," Lucifer said. "That's why I accepted, and for the first few millennia things were swell. Not great, but not terrible either. Life expectancy was low. Infant mortality was high. People feared God and generally couldn't commit that many horrible acts before they died."

"But after the invention of cars, planes, and the internet, humanity could do and see things their ancestors never even imagined. Have you ever seen a donkey show? That's six mortal sins in under an hour."

"I'll take your word on it," I said.

"Combine that with the fact penicillin and other drugs made it possible for people to live forever and all their sins added up to an eternity in Hell. It got incredibly crowded and I couldn't keep order anymore."

God chimed in. "And so, being the benevolent God I am, I began the Apocalypse to ease his burden. He was my oldest friend, after all, even if he did betray me."

"Just the once!" Lucifer scoffed.

"You treat your friends horribly," I mumbled.

"That is your opinion." God replied.  "Besides, it's not like you humans were making much use out of Earth anyway. Destroying the ozone, waging endless wars, fighting over the pettiest things like who marries who. At least the Apocalypse brought your priorities back in order."

"Back in--what? Survival? Scaring us out of our minds? Those are priorities to you?"

"Family. Loyalty. Courage. Comradery. Cherishing every day like it was your last. Those are good things, Katrina. Think about how selfish you were before the Apocalypse, and how much good you've done since it began."

I turned to look God square in the face. "Let me get this straight. You unleashed Hell on Earth, not the Devil, and you did it because there were too many people in Hell."

"Correct. The bonus being that humanity might see the error of their ways and atone for their sins."

"Uh huh. And how'd that work out for you?"

"For some people it worked out great. Look at Dennis. He's a perfect model of self-improvement."

"And what about my mother? Did she make better of herself?"

God looked down. "Your mother did not make the cut. Your father either, since he killed himself."

"Yeah," I replied. "After he turned into a zombie. Before that, he died saving my whole town!"

"Still," God replied without a hint of emotion. "Rules are rules."

"Are you kidding? They were better than the whole lot of us."

"You are entitled to your opinion," God said.

Lucifer leaned over on the couch so I would look at him. "Pretty messed up, right?"

"That's exactly what I was thinking! Man, now I'm a little sorry I killed you."

Lucifer smiled and bowed his head slightly. "Well, I appreciate that."

I sighed. "You answered my question, so I guess I'll help you. I hate you though, for what you've done."

"Loving me is not a prerequisite to helping me," God replied.

"Good. Is there any way to suck those creepy crawlies back to Hell?"

God shook his head. "No. Unfortunately, that is a decision that can only be made by the Devil."

"So...you can't just vanquish them all?"

"No. The Devil is an autonomous position. I have no power to control it.

"That is so stupid," I said. "There is no way you are all knowing. How could you be so stupid?"

"He assumed I would be there to carry out his orders until time stopped," Lucifer said. "or he could find another sucker to replace me."

"It's a little more complicated than all that." God smiled. "Still, Lucifer was a loyal subject until the very end. He understood the delicate balance between Heaven and Hell, and that one could not exist without the other."

"You're a better man than me, Lou," I said. "I would've gone postal and kamikazed Heaven eons ago."

"Probably why I was such a powerful ally," Lucifer replied.

"This Thomas, however," Michael chimed in. "is a plague. He was trouble from the start. I begged God to let me lop off his head years ago. Now it's too late. Since Thomas became the Devil, he's gathered every pitiful soul in Hell to march against our ranks."

"And that's why you need me."

"Like God said, he has a special affinity to you." Michael looked over at God while he brown-nosed. "Since we can't approach him, you've got to get close and kill this Devil."

"Sounds easy."

"It won't be. Are you sure you are willing?"

"Yes. I hate you, that's for sure. But no matter how big a dick God is, and he's a huge dick, Thomas is worse. He sent zombies to kill Barry, tricked me into killing Lucifer, manipulated me into sleeping with him, and now he's destroying Heaven. He's gotta die."

Michael nodded point by point with my laundry list of why I hated Thomas. "Fair enough. He sits at the back of the battle, in his throne made of bones, watching Heaven crumble."

I walked to the end of the platform, and a series of stairs appeared out of the side, hovering in thin air. "Great. One head of Thomas, coming right up."

"Wait!" Lucifer shouted. "You can't kill the Devil without an enchanted weapon."

"Duh. I've gotta find that dagger again."

"Thomas threw it into the molten lava of Hell." He paused, cocking his head. "In hindsight, I should have done that eons ago."

"Fantastic. How am I gonna kill him, then?"

God snapped his fingers. A great flaming sword, adorned with runes, appeared in the middle of the platform, sunk into a raised stone. Michael walked over toward it. "With this, the Sword of Damocles, the most powerful object in the galaxy. Only the worthy can wield it."

I cracked my fingers and spit into my hands. I'd seen the King Arthur cartoon. I knew what to do. "Alright. Here goes nothing."

I placed my hands upon the sword, took a deep breath, and pulled. I expected resistance, but it loosened from the hilt like butter and swung into the air without any effort at all. The blade was longer than me, yet lighter than air. It glowed with an orange flame, but it was cool to the touch.

"This is awesome," I said.

"It will make short work of the demons and monsters on your way to Thomas," God said. "Be sure to cut off his head. He can regenerate everywhere else, but if you cut off his head this blade will cauterize it immediately, and Thomas will die."

"Got it. Come on everybody. Let's go kill a Devil."

Michael put a hand on Dennis's chest to stop him. "Oh no. I'm not letting these dummies anywhere near that battle. They'll just bungle it up."

"Okay, how about just Connie then?"

Michael sighed. "Fine. You can have her."

"Cool, then let's go, Connie."

Connie turned to Dennis and squeezed him tight. "I promise this is the last time you'll ever have to hug me goodbye."

"We don't have all day!" Michael shouted.

"Okay, okay, sheesh," Connie said, loosening her grip on Dennis. "Hey, don't I get a sword or something?"

I pulled the rosary out of my pocket. "Here. You can have this."

"I'd rather have a demon gun."

"I wish I was home in bed. We all have our cross to bear."

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# Chapter 16

Michael wasn't lying. God's sword really did cut through Hellbeasts like butter. Whether it was demons, three-headed dogs, imps, zombies, or any manner of disgusting baddie, with one slice from my sword they were gone. The sword didn't just rip them in half, it evaporated them from existence. Connie managed to arm herself with a war hammer discarded by a fallen demon, and could swing it like a pro. She was handy like that.

The plains of Heaven were unlike Earth or Hell. The ground wasn't hard and rocky. Heaven was like fighting on a trampoline covered in pillows. Every time you got a good stance, it fell out from under you. More than once, I went to cut a monster in half and fell on my ass. Luckily, I was a trampoline ace in my youth, and that's a learned skill you never forget.

Thomas's throne towered in the air hundreds of feet over Heaven. In front of him, spanning into the horizon in every direction, a reserve army of monsters waited for their chance to enter the battle.

We were bouncing our way toward the reserve army, when a massive swinging head pitched forward and slammed into us. We didn't even see it until it was on top of us. I rose to greet the biggest monster I'd ever seen, the seven-headed Hydra.

They'd never come to Overbrook. Only big cities satiated their massive appetites. I watched whole army battalions go up against them on the news and not inflict any damage at all. Even when they managed to destroy one head, two more came to take its place. The crazy lizard things were unstoppable. Or so I thought. None of those armies had a flaming sword bestowed on them by God, though.

The monster's seven heads screamed at us. I should have been petrified, but gripping the sword in my hand, I felt empowered. The heads lunged at me one after another. I bounced and avoided them.

One of its heads dove past me. I saw my chance and sliced through its neck. The flaming sword left the neck sizzling. It cauterized the wound and prevented another head from growing.

The Hydra was aggressive and cocky. It had no fear of losing heads, and that was my advantage. I stuck my sword through another head and it fell limp. Connie smashed her hammer against another head, and I jumped to slice it the rest of the way off. We worked in tandem like a choreographed dance.

"Three heads down. Piece of cake."

Still, they lurched forward. I bounced high above the monster, spun my sword around and chucked it through the air. It cut through two more heads in the process and embedded itself into a third.

"Keep the last one busy!" I shouted.

I leapt across the stumps as the last one chomped at Connie. I pulled my sword out of the Hydra and ran up its spine just as it tried to bite Connie in half. It never had the chance. I sliced off its final head in one fell swoop of my blade, and it slumped over, dead.

I slid down from the Hydra's body like a slide. "Well that was a fun little warm up," I said to Connie.

She rolled her eyes but smiled. "You're a moron."

*

AFTER THE HYDRA, NOTHING of consequence stood between us and the reserve army of Hell. Some monsters tried to stop us, but we cut them down with ease. Eventually, we stood face to face with the army of demons.

A big hulking giant of a demon stepped out to meet me; twice as tall as the others and rippling with muscles, but not the cute, hot, attractive muscles. No. These were the kind a body builder gets after years of steroids. Gross muscles. He carried an enormous ax over his shoulder, its blade as long as my body.

"Turn back now, mortal," the hulking demon said.

"Save it. I'm here to see Thomas."

"There is no Thomas here, little girl."

I sighed impatiently. "The Devil, alright? Let me though to see the Devil."

The demon stood in place, unmoving. "Leave, before I rip you apart."

Connie pulled at my shoulder. Even though I wasn't scared about anything anymore, that didn't mean Connie wasn't terrified. "This is a bad idea."

"Don't be a baby." I stepped toward the demon. "You're pretty cocky. I'll tell you what, how about I rip you in half and find him myself?"

The big demon chuckled. "I'd like to see you try."

I swung the sword across my body and cut the demon in half. His legion clamored around me, then. They tightened around us and raised their weapons.

"Maybe this wasn't my best idea," I said.

"You think?" Connie replied.

"WAIT!" Thomas's voice boomed from the back of the garrison. "Let them through."

The monsters grudgingly separated. They created a path to a great palanquin at the rear of their ranks. It rose into the heavens like the great Empire State building. Atop the palanquin, Thomas's voice quaked the ground. "No one is to hurt them without my approval."

"Maybe it wasn't a bad idea," Connie said.

"At least it got their attention."

I whispered to Connie as she trailed me across the plains of Heaven toward the great stairs which led to Thomas's throne. "I need you to follow my lead, okay? We got all the way here and we don't have a plan. I need you to just go with it."

"Go with it?"

"Yeah. When I say 'now,' you just go with it. Okay?"

"That sounds like it's gonna get me killed."

"Well yeah, but so will just about any other plan I come up with in the next five seconds."

"Fair enough."

"My dear, I'm so glad you've come," Thomas said as we climbed the stairs. "When you disappeared, I feared the worst. I thought the 'Good Lord' might've punished you for killing one of his loyal disciples."

"Nope," I replied. "God just wanted to have a little chat, you know. Woman to omniscient being."

"Isn't that funny to call him omniscient--when he couldn't even see I was coming?"

"Yes, very, but let's talk. I came a long way to see you."

I stopped in my tracks when I hit the top of the stairs. Gone was the beautiful, suave Thomas I knew. In his place was a gnarled meat patty of a demon, a disgusting amalgamation of muscle, double the size of the biggest demon on the battlefield. His horns had lengthened to triple their original size. The only thing I recognized about him were his eyes. They were just as dead and evil as I remember.

"Come now, Katrina," he said. "Don't make that face. Are you not happy to see me?"

"Oh, I am. I am. You're just kind of...gross is all."

"Yes, I know. But as a war general I must exude a sense of power and prestige." He stood. Black goop wrapped around him. When he broke free of it, he was no longer a demon, but the gorgeous man with long, flowing hair and the kind eyes I remembered from the bar the first time we met.

"Rest assured, once Heaven is mine, I can become anything you want." He reached down and kissed my hand. "Tell me, what do you want?"

I snatched my hand away from him and rubbed it against my jacket. "The only thing I want is for you to drop dead."

"Then you'll have to kill me."

"That I can do... Now, Connie!"

Connie swung her hammer, but she was too slow. Thomas dodged the attacked and wrapped himself back into his black cocoon. He emerged again in his monstrous war general form.

"Fools!" He swung his meat hooks and knocked us into the air. Connie and I sailed a hundred yards across Heaven and collided into the ground at full force, bouncing across the clouds.

I rose to my knees, beaten and bruised, but I wasn't broken. Connie wasn't so lucky. She had cushioned my fall and took the brunt of the punishment. Both of her arms were snapped the wrong way, and her ribs poked through her skin. She gurgled through her breaths.

"Connie. Connie, come on. Connie. Get up."

She vomited blood onto my shirt and looked at me with half a smile. "I always knew you were going to get me killed." Her eyes lost their twinkle. She went limp. She was dead.

I hadn't cried since my mother died, but thick, wet tears filled my eyes now. I unwrapped the rosary she clutched around her hand and squeezed it tightly. "I won't let him win."

"Win?" Thomas said. "But I've already won. Heaven is mine. Your friend is dead. You don't even have your sword anymore."

He was right. I looked over at my sword dug into the ground a hundred feet away, equidistant between Thomas and me.

Rage filled me as I looked back at him. I spoke through clenched teeth. "I can still beat you."

"I should have known you would betray me. I've been so blind. Consumed with love and lust."

My hand twitched. My body quaked. "And you underestimated me."

"I did, at that, but I won't again. You look frightened, and you should be. You'll never reach your sword before I reach you."

"That sounds like a challenge."

I took a running leap and bounced into the air. Monsters lined up to block my path. I found a patch of monsterless Heaven and bounced again. Thomas's hulking brute force barreled through the plains of Heaven, too heavy to bounce along with me.

"Don't touch the mortal," he bellowed. "Leave her for me!"

I landed again, the sword inches within my grasp. My fingers wrapped around it, but I couldn't pull it free before the monstrous claw of Thomas seized me at the waist and moved me toward him.

"Aw, and you were so close." He threw back his head and laughed. I struggled and kicked against him, but his strength was too much. "Unfortunately, close just isn't good enough. Now, I will absorb you into myself and we will be together forever. You will never betray me again. Say your prayers, little one."

Thomas unhinged his jaw and brought me up to his mouth. I unfurled the rosary and tossed it into his mouth. "Great idea."

He choked back the rosary and keeled over like he'd eaten a bad burrito. "What have you done to me?"

I strolled over to my sword. The monsters backed away from me--for the first time, they were as scared as I was confident. "Isn't it obvious? I beat you."

"Please, Katrina," he coughed. "Spare me."

I gripped the hilt of the sword. "Spare you? After all this time, you want me to be merciful. Why would I do that?"

"Because I love you."

I lifted the sword over my head. "No, you don't. You lusted for me. You saw me as your plaything, maybe even a doll to protect, but you never loved me. I was just a thing to you. And now, you are a thing to me. A thing I'm going to kill."

I brought the sword down and sliced through Thomas's neck in one motion. The monsters scattered into the ether as thick orange plumes escaped out of Thomas's body and drifted into the air. They had nowhere to go, until they turned to me.

"Crap."

That's when I understood God's plan for me. I had been too dense and consumed with revenge to see it before. He needed a patsy. Somebody he could manipulate, and, as the fire filled my lungs, I knew he'd chosen me, and he'd chosen well.

God's voice boomed through Heaven. "The monsters of Hell are now yours to command."

"Yeah?" I yelled. "I want them back in Hell, where they belong."

"Thank you, my child. You have done wonderfully."

Humanity's long nightmare was over, and we were once again safe. The rifts around the world sucked the monsters back to Hell where they belonged. The rift in the desert closed forever.

Everybody was happy.

*

AFTER THE DUST SETTLED, things went back to normal on Earth. Humanity rebuilt itself slowly but surely. People found love and married. They had children. They thanked God for saving them, as if he had anything to do with it.

Overbrook became one of the most important cities in the new world order. It was one of the few left with a functioning community. They worked with Bend to drive marauders out of Portland, Seattle, and the entirety of the West Coast. Things weren't perfect, but they got on for a time.

Soon enough, people forgot about the Apocalypse. As the years went on, truth turned to memory, which turned to myth, which turned to legend, which turned to fiction. People laughed when their great-grandparents talked about the Apocalypse, as if it had never happened.

But we know the truth. We who were there.

For his service, God allowed Barry to live out the rest of his life in human form. He lasted a year before electrocuting himself in the bathtub.

Even though she died, things worked out alright for Connie. She was reunited with Dennis in Heaven. Michael thought so highly of Dennis that he promoted him to archangel. Now Dennis gets to have all the fun--when he's not with Connie, of course.

Yes, everybody made out in this deal except for me, the new Devil. I'm stuck here in Hell with everything I hate most for three hundred millennia. That's what you get for being a hero, kids. Never again.

Although, maybe I shouldn't say that. After all, three hundred millennia was a very long time.

*

YOU JUST FINISHED AND Demons Followed Behind Her, aka Katrina Hates the Apocalypse.

You can pick up all three Katrina stories in And Death Followed Behind Her right now.

<https://books2read.com/u/mYr87d>

*

NOW, HERE IS A PREVIEW of the next book in the Katrina saga, Katrina Hates the Gods.

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# Prologue

Ten thousand years ago, God raptured all the good boys and girls up to some giant orgy in the sky. The rest of us were left on Earth, wondering "why not me?"

A rift opened in the desert. Demons, zombies, minotaurs, and all manner of Hell beasts poured out onto Earth and roamed the land. They ripped apart everybody they could find and tortured us to the brink of extinction. Then one day, they got bored, and opted for a quiet life in the suburbs.

They squatted in the homes of the people they once brutally murdered, stole our jobs, ate our food, and made our lives a living Hell. We thought the rampant destruction was bad, but that was nothing compared to the torture of listening to a demon poorly play his guitar all night or having a zombie for your cashier.

They took everything and left us quivering in the shadows, shells of our former selves. Two years of that was more than I could take. I snapped and realized the only thing that could give me back my life was the Devil, so I set out to kill him.

I brought my best frenemy Connie and we traveled across the desert to the Hell rift that had engulfed Reno, Nevada. Along the way, we met up with my ex-lover and demon-jackass Thomas, who convinced me to join his rebellion against the Devil. Bad idea.

Before long, we came face to face with ole Lucifer himself, and I stabbed him through the heart. His death didn't change anything though. In fact, it made things worse, as Thomas used me to take the power of Hell for himself.

With Hell under his control, Thomas waged war on Heaven. He would have won too, if God didn't call me to his aid. He gave me a flaming sword and sent me off to kill Thomas, which I did.

He didn't tell me that by killing Thomas I became the new Devil. TL;DR - I'm the devil now and it sucks.

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# Chapter 1

"Did I ever tell you how much I hate Hell?" I asked my impish assistant Carl as we walked across the heat-cracked canyons of Hell to my next meeting. Fire and brimstone erupted on either side of me. Since becoming the Devil, I had become accustomed to the heat, but I would never become accustomed to imps like Carl.

His Hell-given name wasn't Carl, of course. I think his real name was K'hal'el, but, I got it wrong so many times, he just asked me to call him Carl.

He waddled behind me, tail dragging on the ground. "You've mentioned it once or twice over the millennia, madam."

I stared out into the grand, burning chasm of Hell. "Good. Cuz I really hate it."

When I inherited Hell, there was a bit of an overcrowding problem.

No.

There was a massive overcrowding problem.

We lived ass-to-ankles in Hell. Trillions of damned souls crowded every inch of the place. God, in all his infinite wisdom, made it nigh impossible to pass through the eye of the needle, which meant nearly every human ended up in Hell. On top of humans, millions of demons, bureaucrats, and imps, populated Hell. It was just a mess.

When I took over from Lucifer, I immediately started expansion plans. I kept the worst of the worst in the lowest pits of Hell. They deserved their Hellfire. These were your Hitlers, Stalins, Attilas, and Trumps, among others, but they only made up one percent of all damned souls.

Most of Hell was filled with slightly horrible people who, yes, had done more bad than good, but they'd never raped a baby or even robbed a bank. They'd lived mediocre lives, the same kind of life that I lived before the Apocalypse. They didn't deserve Hellfire. They just needed a place to chill out.

That's why I annexed Pluto and Neptune for the less terrible damned souls. After that, I annexed Mars and Venus for the quite awful, but not as awful as Hitler types. These were your murderers, rapists, thieves, and other jackasses that died without an ounce of repentance in their souls. While my best torturers stayed on Earth, I sent my gentlest monsters to Neptune and Pluto. Mars and Venus received my middle management enforcers. These baddies weren't tortured every day, but there were plenty of opportunities to beat the bad out of them.

Setting all this up didn't happen overnight, but over my first millennia in charge, we really got Hell in order. Now things ran smooth as butter.

There was only one issue.

A lot of the damned souls in Hell didn't deserve to be there at all. I mean suffering an eternity of torture simply because you cheated on your taxes wasn't fair. How long is a lifetime? A few decades? And how long is eternity, like a billion years?

That is not fair.

That's why my crowning achievement was about to be approved by God today, a system by which people--damned souls--could earn their way out of Hell.

The plan equipped every soul with a timer when they entered Hell. Based on the severity of their crimes, the clock counted down exactly how long remained until they could enter Heaven. If they became a shining example of morality, they earned bonus points. If they messed up, the device added more time. Once their timer ran out, my team sent them to Heaven.

God wasn't keen on the idea, but I've been very persistent. His rules were way too strict. Seriously, like .001 percent of people lived a good enough life to enter Heaven during their lifetime, so Heaven was a wasteland. I couldn't expand Hell any more without exiting the solar system or creating new planets, so the man upstairs just had to approve my proposal.

Sometimes, against all logic,  I missed the old days when it was as simple as "see a monster, kill a monster." I never thought I would long for the good old days when it was just the Biblical rapture.

"When do I leave, Carl?" I shouted to my imp.

Carl flipped open his notepad. "The portal opens in five minutes, my liege."

A heavenly portal wouldn't open for you without an invite. No matter how often I tried, God never opened the heavenly plains to me. Instead, we corresponded exclusively through the archangels, who acted as the voices of God but were truly nothing more than revered messenger pigeons. But today, he had invited me up, which meant good things for my plan.

"Do you know what today means, Carl?"

"Uhm...that you can finally get rid of a lot of these people and make them Heaven's problem?"

I nodded. "That's right, Carl. Look at this mess. Starting tomorrow, most of them will be Heaven's mess."

"I do not want to be a bother, mistress, but perhaps you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch. After all, they could delay..."

Fire flickered in my eyes. Not metaphorical fire, either. Like actual fire. One of the great benefits of being the Devil was access to supernatural powers galore. "Why would you say that, Carl? Why would you jinx me?"

"I'm sorry, mistress. It's just that I know how disappointed you get."

"Just shut up, Carl."

Frankly, he had reason to worry. Heaven put off ruling on my proposal eleven hundred times over the ten millennia I've governed Hell, but this time Gabriel swore that God would make a decision. He was so serious that he even called me up to Heaven. I hadn't been there in ten thousand years, not since the Apocalypse ended by my hand.

"This time is going to be different, Carl. I can feel it. I have a good feeling."

Carl didn't look so enthusiastic. "Yes, mistress."

"Don't you have a good feeling, Carl?"

"Yes, mistress."

It didn't matter what Carl thought. I was about to go to Heaven. God would see how well I managed the underworld, he'd approve my plan, and then, for Christ's sake maybe he'd let me out of managing Hell once and for all.

After all, I'd made Hell so efficient even a trained monkey could run it. I often took vacations to Dis and let Carl run the show for weeks at a time. He was a moron, but even he didn't bungle it. I'd created so many systems that even my systems had systems.

A beam of light appeared in front of us. I'd know it anywhere: It was the soothing, blue light of Heaven.

"It's time, mistress," Carl said.

I took a deep breath. I'd prayed for an invite from Heaven for eons. I had remembered it fondly since the last time I was invited, during the war Thomas waged against Heaven. Even then, in the midst of battle, the serenity of Heaven was the only time I'd felt at peace in the last ten thousand years. Even at its most awful, Heaven was more pleasant than Hell on a good day.

I stepped into the beam. It tasted like Maraschino cherries, just like I remembered. I turned to Carl. I hoped to never see his ugly face again.

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# Thousands of years ago...

Velaska sat on her throne, fire licking the feet of her subjects. They were all evil, she told herself, not worthy of redemption, and not worthy of a second thought. After Hades left, she had kept watch over the suffering of the damned; she had been the queen of Hell for thirteen thousand years.

It would be lying to say there wasn't a piece of her that didn't love the suffering. After all, it was what drew her to the job in the first place. Hades told her she would have dominion over the suffering of all the denizens in Hell; she had absolute power to deny the will of Zeus. But he didn't tell her she couldn't leave Hell until she found a replacement. That would've been a nice thing to mention.

If she had known that, she might not have taken the gig, even with all its benefits. When her appetite for suffering waned, she tried to get out of the gig, but nobody wanted to take her place. The other gods weren't as sadistic as she was, it turned out.

"Sorry," Zeus told her. "Until you can find a successor, there's nothing I can do."

She waited, and she waited...and she waited. And then one day a brash, young angel came along, angry at God's management of Earth. Lucifer was God's envoy to Hell and one of his most trusted angels, but he had a wild side, and he didn't like taking orders.

Velaska convinced him to revolt against God, build an army, and take back the Heavens for himself.

Admittedly, she was bored and thought it would be fun to watch Heaven tumble, even if the idea was riddled with flaws and had little chance of succeeding.

However, he didn't know that, so he accepted, and set out to topple Heaven. She kept him hidden as best she could while he built an army, but even with her help, Lucifer's attack lasted less than a day. He was only an angel after all.

God was kind, though, which was unlike him.

Instead of vanquishing Lucifer outright, God simply turned his angel into a hideous demon, and sent him back to Hell, broken and hideous.

"Velaska," he said, stumbling into my castle. His beautiful face gnarled into that of a hideous demon, with huge, ugly horns and feet shaped like those of goats. "Velaska, look what they have done to me."

She pouted her lips, though she really wanted to smile. "Poor baby."

"I did everything you said, and still my war against the Heavens failed in less than a day. What can I do now? The denizens of Hell demand my head. I cannot fight them off forever. No longer done the fear of my angelic nature to keep them at bay. I cannot rest. I am doomed."

Velaska stood, careful to conceal her glee. "Well, my dear. There is one thing you could do, but--"

Lucifer kneeled. "Anything, my queen. The other gods have all abandoned Earth to oversee Zeus's next planet. There is nobody left to help me but you."

"Do you know the power of Hell, Lucifer? Its true power?"

"No, my queen."

"It does not rely on the rules of Heaven to govern it. Down here, we have complete control. Absolute power. If you were, for instance, to take my crown, then you would be equal to Heaven itself. The Hell beasts could not touch you, for you would have the power of the Devil, which is rivaled only by that of the gods themselves."

Lucifer stepped back. "My queen. I could never...this kingdom has always been ruled by a god. I am but a lowly angel. How could I--"

"First, you're a demon now, not an angel. And second, what are you saying, are you saying you don't want it?"

"No, no, no. It's not that. It's just that...I'm not worthy to accept such a grand role."

Velaska snickered as she reeled in her prey. She couldn't pull too hard or the angel would turn away, but if she stroked his ego, he would be putty in her hands. Men were so easily corrupted. "It's governing the damned, Lucifer. You are overqualified. But if you don't want to escape God's wrath, or that of the demon horde, then I understand. Good day."

"No, no--I do! I would do anything to escape it."

"Then listen to me. Take my crown and become the Devil incarnate, and in return, you will be given absolute power in Hell. Even god cannot touch you."

Lucifer thought about it for a moment, before he bowed his head. "I accept."

She snapped her fingers. A spherical golden necklace appeared in front of Lucifer. An infinity symbol spun slowly at its center. Lucifer poked it with his finger, and the symbol spun faster, creating a powder blue glow.

"Put it on. You work for me now. Should you ever need to call me, this necklace will be your beacon."

Just like that, Velaska was free from the torment of the underworld. She'd found a successor, and, in doing so, freed herself. As she vanished from the Earth for the last time, all she thought was "Wasn't that easy?"

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# Chapter 2

I didn't know blue had a taste until Heaven beamed me up for the first time. I never forgot it. I tasted the same flavor again now, and my mouth lit up in ecstasy. A lot had happened in ten thousand years, but that flavor had managed to swirl around in my mouth every day for the last ten thousand years.

Maraschino cherries. The kind I used to top sundaes with back at Oscar's in Overbrook. Back before the Apocalypse, when I lived on Earth.

The blinding white light faded, and I regained my eyesight. There I was, standing at the gates of Heaven. Honestly, it was a bit underwhelming. When I took over as Devil, I erected giant apartments to house my workers and constructed massive highways in order to help things become more efficient. Luckily, Hell is full of slave labor.

Heaven, on the other hand, looked the same as it had my last visit. It was still cluttered with fluffy clouds and harp music. It looked like a 1960's love fest, but brighter. The angels still wore white robes. Okay, it was different in that they'd cleaned up after the battle--it had been stained with blood after Thomas unleashed his army on the Elysian Fields. They weren't prepared for battle, then. They weren't even prepared for a light breeze.

I guess when you have everything you'll ever desire, there's no need to innovate. God should have learned his lesson since the last attack and overhauled some things, but clearly, he thought me as much of a sucker as Lucifer.

Lucifer may have been a fallen angel, but he was still an angel. He still felt allegiance to God Almighty, and wanted to please him. So, after he led his failed coup and took control of Hell from the previous Devil, Velaska, Lucifer took a deal God offered him, which would allow Lucifer to reenter Heaven and wipe his debt clean. If the Morningstar could hold Hell together for three hundred millennia without cracking under the pressure or starting another war with Heaven, God's countenance would shine down on him once more.

Frankly, Lucifer was a horrible ruler of Hell in a time when ruling horribly was acceptable. For most of Lou's reign, life expectancy was low, so people couldn't commit enough sins by the time they died to warrant eternal torment. But when life expectancy went through the roof, so did sinners, and the population of Hell ballooned.

What did an archangel know about management? They don't know anything but fighting and...well, that's about the long and the short of it. Ask Michael or Samael a logic problem or discuss the intricacies of supply chain logistics, and they'll fall apart. Gabriel was the only one with half a brain in the whole lot of them.

Lucifer was no different. He was made for a single purpose. To fight. I was made as a human with high reasoning power. Surviving for two years in the Apocalypse made me scrappy and gave me certain powers of deduction. Plus, living alongside humans--living and dead--and monsters gave me a keen insight on how to improve relations among them.

"I'm sorry, are you Katrina?" a little voice said to me.

I turned to see a spry, young man, no older than ten, smiling at me. "Yes, I am."

I didn't spit the same vitriol to her as I did to Carl and his ilk. In fact, I didn't have any vitriol. I was, for the first time in centuries, calm.

"I'm Rodney Bowers. Please follow me."

Glistening, gilded gates guarded the entrance to Heaven. They rose three hundred feet high and connected to the only non-cloud structure around, a three-hundred-foot-high marble wall which stretched into the horizon in every direction. In front of it, thousands, millions of people, stood in line awaiting Saint Peter's judgment.

"We have a bit of a backlog," Rodney said, nodding his head towards the line of people.

Centuries ago, God agreed to use his people to help judge the dead. Previously, that burden fell completely on Petrus, guardian of the Gates of Abnegation, and our team of monster bureaucrats, but as the population ballooned exponentially, our backlog worsened until the line for judgement was several millennia long. Even with Saint Peter carrying half the burden, it was impossible to keep up with the massive number of souls that died every day. My plan helped solve this burden by bringing in AI automation into the soul judging process.

"I've noticed."

Most of the line would find their eternal end in Hell with me. How many hopeful idiots thought they would see beyond the pearly gates, only to be licked by Hellfire? It's not fair that they saw Heaven before sentencing, some for a thousand years, before it was ripped away from them for the rest of eternity. The bliss of Heaven was sacred, and the longing for it tortured the damned more than anything I could do to them.

Saint Peter, the protector of Heaven, stood in front of the gate, proclaiming the fate of each person as they stepped up to his pulpit. "Mister Nick Smith," he said. "I'm sorry, but you are damned to Hell for eternity."

The clouds opened below him, and Nick fell screaming into the pits of Hell. My minions would be there to greet him. It would not be pleasant.

"How many people get into Heaven these days?" I asked Rodney.

"Oh, that's over my pay grade, Devil."

"Katrina."

"Devil Katrina."

As I passed in front of Saint Peter, groans erupted from the dead. I turned to the line with fire in my eyes and flames on my arms, and the line shrunk back in fear.

"That's what I thought."

Rodney stopped in front of Saint Peter. "I bring Devil Katrina into Heaven for a meeting with God. I believe she has an appointment."

Saint Peter looked down at his sheet. "Ah, yes. I see her scheduled here. Open the gates!"

A calming light burst from behind the gate and the sound of a choir of angels flooded my ears. The men and women waiting in line openly wept at the sight of it.

"I don't understand," I said, pointing to the joyous crowd. "What's going on there?"

"They've never seen the gates open for anyone but an angel," Peter responded.

"Seriously? How many people do you let into Heaven?"

Saint Peter looked down at his sheet. I peered over it with him. He flipped the pages in his notebook. Every name for five hundred pages was condemned to Hell. There wasn't one Heaven in the bunch. "It's sad. I can't remember the last time."

"That explains a lot."

*

WALKING THROUGH HEAVEN wasn't like walking on Earth or through Hell. The clouds that made up the floor of Heaven were meant for sleeping and sitting, not for walking. The ground wasn't solid, and it moved like fluffy pillows, so walking around was more like bouncing.

"I'm sorry," Rodney said. "I usually fly. I didn't realize it was such a long walk."

"That's okay. It's nice to be away from the sulfuric stench of Hell for a moment."

"Yes, it must be horrible down there."

I didn't mind Hell as much as I let on. It wasn't that bad after the first thousand years or so. It's not like Earth smelled so great either. It reeked of sweaty flesh like Hell smelled of burning flesh. Heaven didn't smell like anything, except the gentle wisp of a cherry cordial.

"We ran millions of tests and found that everybody in Heaven enjoyed cherry pie, so we use that smell for everything." Rodney smiled at me. Tiny wings fluttered out from underneath his robe. Everything was so white in Heaven I hadn't noticed them before.

"I thought only archangels got wings," I said to her.

"Oh, that all changed some time ago. God started giving them to anybody who asked. I guess he figured what's Heaven if you can't do what you want, you know?"

I smiled despite myself. "Yeah, I guess that's true."

If God had granted wings to angels back ten thousand years ago, I never would have become the Devil. A big reason that I succeeded in killing Thomas was because of the help of Dennis, boyfriend to my old bestie-frenemy Connie. Plague killed him after the Apocalypse, but he returned to Earth to help me take down the Devil, so he become an archangel and received his wings.

If they gave out wings to everybody, Dennis wouldn't have met us in Hell after he died. He wouldn't have saved us from Thomas's flaming catapults. He never would have even left Heaven in the first place. My journey with Connie would have been over before it started, likely with our inevitable deaths. One thing was for sure, I never would have been forced to become the Devil.

"Ah, there we are," Rodney said sweetly, pointing into the distance.

I recognized the structure from my last time in Heaven: a hovering platform, replete with pillars at its base and a spiraling staircase up its side that attached to nothing. It was the place that God brought me the last time I visited Heaven, ten thousand years ago.

"Great. Let's go."

The angel held up his hand. "Oh, not yet. God is very busy, and he's running behind."

"How behind?"

The boy looked at his schedule. "Shouldn't be more than a hundred years or so. Thank you for your patience."

"A hundred years! What the fudgecake do you mean a hundred years? Flapjack--curry powder--why can't I curse?"

"Oh silly, you can't curse here. It's Heaven."

"Oh right. I forgot about that."

The angel flapped his wings and took off. "And I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I promise we will be with you as soon as possible. Buh-bye."

My rage flooded back upon me. I remembered that Heaven wasn't perfect. God certainly didn't know what was best. He couldn't even predict that Thomas would rise to power. On top of it all, he was kind of a dick.

I'd seen too many good people rotting in Hell for eternity, pleading for God's mercy that never came, to be impressed by him. I'd held babies who died too young, unbaptized, that would be punished unmercifully even though they would never understand why. I'd let the beauty of Heaven cloud my judgment for a moment, but I was back in control of my faculties in that moment and the rage filled me again.

"Holy shit, is that Katrina?" I heard behind me. It wasn't angry vitriol, per se, but it wasn't the welcoming dulcet tone of a friend, either. I knew immediately who it was, even after ten thousand years. Connie.

"What are you doing here, bitch?" she said, strolling up to me.

"How the frogcake can you curse and I can't?" I replied, uncomfortably accepting her warm hug.

"I'm dead and in Heaven. I can do whatever I want. They don't want people like you ruining Heaven for the rest of us."

"Yeah, I can see that. I am a bad influence."

"Man, that's the truth. How's the Devil business?"

I sighed. "Got more evil people than I know what to do with. Annexed Pluto, Neptune, Venus, and Mars, but they just keep coming."

"Yeah, Dennis told me a little bit about that. I'm actually here to wait for him now."

"So, that's still a thing."

Connie smiled brightly, and a twinkle filled her eyes. "Ten millennia and still kickin' like it was the first date."

"That's some soulmate level stuff right there."

"Tell me about it," Connie said with a big smile. "I'm headed over to God's podium to welcome him back from his latest trip. Come on."

Connie loved Dennis more than anything. In the middle of the Apocalypse, we'd dragged him across the monster-filled "Black Zone" of Overbrook to the only doctor in town, with the hope that we could find a cure. We knew it was hopeless, but she held out hope Dennis might get better. He wouldn't. Dennis put a gun in Connie's hand and asked her to pull the trigger. And then they met again, when Dennis came back from Heaven to help me. After Connie died fighting Thomas, they reunited in Heaven, and I guess they've been together ever since.

Connie floated toward God's podium and I bounced along behind her, trying to take myself seriously. "Do you like it here?"

"What's not to like?" Connie replied. "It's Heaven."

"Yeah, but it's oppressively dull, isn't it?"

She smiled. "You haven't been to the orgy pits yet, huh?"

"Say what?"

"Dude, you can do literally anything you want up here, aside from straight-up sucking the soul out of people and draining their essence."

"Yeah, right. You can just straight-up murder somebody?"

"I guess, but nobody up here would wanna do that. That's kinda the whole point of how we got in here. It's all good people who just wanna mess around, get baked, and watch cartoons. My brother would've loved it. How's he doing down there, anyway?"

Her brother Barry was the reason Connie and I hated each other. Or to be fair, why Connie hated me. I still liked her just fine. Barry was my roommate before the Apocalypse. He died saving me, and when he came back to life, I watched him die again by the hands of Thomas. After I saved the world, God gave Barry back his body, which he promptly lost again in a bathtub electrocution incident. He's been helping me in Hell ever since.

"He's actually pretty competent at making sure Pluto runs effectively. It took two thousand years to train him, but he's not doing too bad at the end of the day."

"Is he happy?"

"It's Hell, Connie. Nobody is happy."

A great gust blew from the podium. Three iron-clad angels hovered in front of us: Samael, the Angel of Death, dressed in his iconic black hood, Michael, commander of the archangels, and Dennis, who must've been working out over the eons because he looked deliciously beefy.

"Baby!" Dennis shouted. He flapped his enormous wings over to Connie, wrapping her up in a massive hug as they soared upward into the sky. I watched them fly for a moment before I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"So, you're here, huh?" Michael said to me.

"It looks that way."

Michael had never liked me. He thought it was foolhardy to kill the Devil, and Michael could not be impressed by foolhardiness. Luckily, I'd never tried to impress him.

"He's never going to say yes, you know."

"Why do you always have to be so negative? Seriously, what is your problem?"

Michael sneered at me.  "My problem is that you're a reckless nobody that nearly got Heaven destroyed."

"Yeah, and in case you haven't noticed, I've been paying for that the last ten thousand years, and doing a good job of it, if I do say so myself."

Michael scoffed. "You are doing adequate at best."

"Yeah, then why am I standing here, if I'm only doing an adequate job?"

Michael snarled his teeth, bit his lip, and clenched his fists. He wanted to swing, but Samael placed a hand on his chest and calmed him down.

"You will destroy us all before the end," Michael finally said.

"Well, I saved you once, so I guess if I destroy you I'll just be even with the universe, now won't I?"

Another gust of wind blew forward and Dennis stood next to us, flushed and smiling. "You're here. Why are you here?"

"I'm trying to get my merit system passed," I replied. "They said he'd have an answer today."

"Right...right," Dennis paused. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

Dennis pulled me aside, away from Michael's prying ears. "Listen, they're just jerking you around, man. There's no chance they're going to soil Heaven with your people."

I clenched my fists. "What do you mean, 'my people?'"

"Dude, chill out. Those are their words, not mine. Lou went to bat for you, God is stubborn, you know. He still hasn't forgotten the smell of the damned the last time they rode on Heaven, and he doesn't want anything like that to happen again. When you think about it, he kind of has a point."

"He has a point! He has a point?" I shouted, waving my hands in the air. "Are you kidding me? I sit with those tortured souls every single day and let me tell you, none of them deserve eternal damnation."

Dennis held up his arms. "Look, I don't know about you, and I don't know what's going on down there, but from what I've seen, they don't deserve Heaven either."

"From what I've seen, Heaven ain't so great, and if God's gonna screw me around, he can tell me straight to my face."

I pushed past Dennis and bounced toward God's podium. Samael flew up and landed in front of me, followed by Michael and Dennis.

"Where do you think you're going?" Michael said.

"Get out of my way, Michael. I'm going to see the big man."

Michael stopped me with his fat hand. "I can't let you do that."

"You can't let me do what? I am the Devil. Do you not understand my power?" Fire grew in my belly and sparked out of my eyes. "I have allowed you to lord over me out of respect for this place but block my path and I will show you my true power."

Michael drew his sword. "I have fought your power before, and I will fight it again."

I snorted. "You will lose."

Dennis drew his long sword as well. "It doesn't have to be like this, Katrina. It took Thomas an entire army to get through us. You don't stand a chance."

My size doubled in seconds. It doubled again in a few more. "I've had ten thousand years to master my power, angel. Thomas had less than a day. I don't need the forces of Hell to take you down."

Michael and Dennis confronted me from the front like idiots and I swatted off their attacks like flies. Samael flew around my back. I grabbed him in my hand and tossed him against God's podium. The façade shattered against the force of my strength.

Michael flew at me again, striking my foot with his flaming sword. I balled up my fist and drove him deep into the clouds until they collapsed over him. Only Dennis remained. He flew up to my face.

"We don't have to do this, Katrina!"

Blue flames shot out of my eyes and entangled Dennis, licking his face. "You're right! Just let me pass and I'll send you back to your Connie in one piece."

"I can't do that."

"I didn't start this fight, but I'm gonna finish it."

I flung Dennis, tired and singed, across the clouded plains until he skidded to a stop in front of Connie. Satisfied, I shrunk back down to my human form.

"You're a real dick, you know that?" Connie said, looking down at Dennis and then back at me. "I guess ten thousand years in Hell hasn't changed you at all!"

I looked down at my smoking hands, then at the three archangels I had just dispatched like they were nothing.

"Oh yes, it has. It's made me much, much worse."

*

PICK UP And Death Followed Behind Her today by clicking here.

<https://books2read.com/u/mYr87d>

*

OR, IF YOU WOULD LIKE to see the lead up to the Apocalypse, then pick up And Ruin Followed Behind Her, which follows Julia Freeman as she learns she is a pixie, becomes the protector of fairy kind, and travels into Hell in three different stories set in the years leading up to the Apocalypse, and shows the underworld as it is about to pop.

<https://books2read.com/u/4AzJ6p>

*

NOW, HERE IS A PREVIEW of the first story in And Ruin Followed Behind Her called Mystery Spot.

*

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# Chapter 1

"I don't gotta do nothing no colored woman tells me to do," Duncan Lewis sneered at me. I planted my feet and gritted my teeth, trying desperately not to march over to his desk and scratch out his eyeballs.

The classroom "oohed" and "ahhed" as their eyes ping-ponged back and forth from the hulking brood at the other side of the room from me, the perturbed, black teacher standing at the front of it. Duncan was a behemoth of a man in a boy's body. He stood six foot three with buzzed, blond hair and bloodshot, brown eyes. His thick forearms folded across his chest, which swelled with pride at his racist statement.

"I'm not going to tell you again, Mr. Lewis," I said, trying my best to project authority when I had clearly lost any that I might have had. "Go to the principal."

"Make me, Ms. Freeman," he replied.

Any shred of respect the students held for me had dissolved five minutes ago, when Duncan hurled a spit ball into my long, straight, bleached white hair. It stuck in like glue, leading the whole room to burst into laughter. Still, I didn't back down. "I'm waiting," I said, glaring.

"I can see that, Julia," he replied, stoic. "You'll be waiting 'til the cows come home."

I fought the urge to leap across the desk and toss him through the window that backlit his broad shoulders. The way he sneered my first name, like he knew me. I wanted to desperately to fight, but that wasn't how I was taught. My mama taught me to capitulate to white folks, because they will string up uppity negros as a lesson to others. I knew that truth all too well.

I combed my fingers through my hair one more time to pull out any spit left on it. My hair didn't used to be straight and bleached. I used to have a big, beautiful afro that would turn Pam Greer green with envy.

But that was back in Chicago. Back when I was in school, before I moved home to take care of my mama in Chandler, Colorado. In this town, black folk lived on the other side of the tracks, where they wouldn't offend the sensibilities of good, Christian, white folk.

I dared to step across that track and apply for a job at the school all the white kids attended. Sure, segregation had been over for some years by 1974, but it's not like black folk could just move across town on a moment's notice, especially not to a house that cost double what they could afford, so they just stayed put and kept going to the same school just like they always had.

There wasn't really a black school and a white school any more, not legally, but things hadn't changed so much since the 50s around here--no matter what the courts said.

The principal gave me a job teaching history, somehow, but nobody was happy about it. They called it affirmative action, and they called me a "token," but here at George Washington High the pay was a lot better than across the tracks at William Howard Taft High, and I deserved that money. I worked hard for six years to get a Master's in history, but in order to get that money I had to capitulate to make the white folks happy.

That meant I couldn't keep my afro. Now, my hair was "appropriate" for school and appropriate for Chandler; but that didn't matter. I still didn't get any respect.

"You are ruining your peers' education," I said.

"No more than you," Duncan replied to a room of chuckles. "I ain't the one tainting the classroom with my colored ideas."

I didn't know what to do. I couldn't back down, and I certainly couldn't take him on myself. I'd tried calling security into my classroom a dozen times before, and they were about as helpful as Duncan. Nobody wanted me here, except for me.

It got deadly quiet in the classroom as we stared each other down. The air left the room, replaced with swirling eddies of tension.

Thankfully, the bell rang, breaking the spell. The students groaned under their breath as they collected their things. They wanted a fight. They might still get one, but not today. There would be plenty of time for fighting in the future, though. Tensions don't just fade away in Chandler, they built under the surface until something snapped.

"Alright, class," I said with a smile. "Since this distraction didn't give us any time to study, we'll have our quiz on chapters seven and eight next time without any preparation. Please study these chapters."

The class groaned again as they walked out of the classroom. They all wanted to be Duncan in that moment and stand up to me, but the truth is that Duncan was pathetic. He was the star football player, and he was dumb as a rock. Teachers passed him because he could hit people well and catch a ball. He would get to college on a scholarship if he managed not to blow out his knee, but eventually he'd be back here working in a gas station, dreaming of his glory days for the rest of his life. Then again, I ended up back here too, so what does that say about me?

Duncan strolled up to the front of the room and cracked his knuckles on my desk. "I think I'm just gonna take the A and skip that test, Julia."

I laughed, looking him straight in the eye. "You don't have to come to class, but you will get an F."

"You don't know how this works, still, do you? You're the token hire, the joke. Nobody wants you here."

I leaned over the table. "Then we have something in common. Neither of us wants the other one here."

The loudspeaker creaked and crackled as it screeched through the room. "Ms. Freeman, please report to the principal's office."

Duncan pointed to the loudspeaker. "See?"

He strolled out as if he owned the place. He did, of course. In Chandler, he mattered more than me. That fact stung every day, but my mother beat it into my head enough. At least if you know the system, you can work around it.

*

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO tell you, Julia," Principal Anderson said, shaking his shiny, bald head. His jowls slapped the sides of his face as he stammered. "The parents have complained, again."

It wasn't Principal Anderson's fault that the parents complained, but I couldn't help resenting him for it. "What is it this time? Way I chew my gum? Way I say hello? What could they possibly have to complain about now?"

Principal Anderson cleared his jowly throat. "Well, it's that hair, Miss Freeman. They...don't think it's appropriate."

I scoffed involuntarily. "I only have this hair because they told me they didn't like the corn rows, and I only had them because they didn't like the afro. I wake up at four am to straighten this goddamn hair."

I could tell my terse tone and the fire in my eyes frightened him. That sort of thing, well...it scared white people, especially weak ones like Principal Anderson. They thought I was a wild animal, ready to strike at any time. Even the smallest hint of a temper sent them running for the door. Something about black people getting angry put white people on edge, even though they have all the power. Maybe it's because they have all the power, and they're worried we're gonna steal it back.

Principal Anderson scooted back in his chair, away from me. "I-I-I--"

"Speak up, Bob." I spat the words.

I had no patience for this back and forth. In the three months I'd been teaching, Principal Anderson and I had already held seven meetings about my appearance. Still, I wasn't supposed to be rude.

My mama taught me that--how to hold my tongue even when there was some nonsense taking place. She taught me to behave, to smile, to never raise my voice, and I didn't, for eighteen years. It's what got me out of this town alive when so many didn't, but after going to Chicago, and seeing a place where black people got along just fine, weren't looked at side eyed when they walked into a restaurant, and could puff out their chest with pride without fear of getting beaten, at least in the right neighborhoods, it was hard to act like a meek, obedient child again.

"I don't know what to tell you, Julia," Principal Anderson finally managed to say. "They don't like it. They think it should be shorter, more professional. They also have a problem with..."

His eyes tipped down to my clothes, a tasteful pantsuit that couldn't help but accentuate my curves. The parent-teacher association had a problem with me wearing slacks and a collared shirt now. Those bitties would say anything to get me fired.

"I am a curvy woman, Bob. I can't hide that."

Principal Anderson sighed. "The mothers would like it if you dressed more...matronly."

"I'm twenty-five years old. How matronly can you look at twenty-five? Do you want me to gain fifty pounds to keep this job? Cuz I'll do it, Bob. I'll do it."

He chuckled uncomfortably. "It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world."

I lowered my voice and dropped my eyes. "I need this job, Bob."

"I know, Julia. That's why I gave it to you. You're a damned good teacher and your credentials are stellar. I want to keep you around, but it's only been three months and you've gotten twenty complaints--"

"None of which are for my teaching."

Principal Anderson shook his head, disappointed. "And now I hear students are harassing you, too."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm losing their respect."

Principal Anderson placed his hand gently on the edge of the desk, expecting me to take it. "Don't take this the wrong way, Julia, but you never had it."

I was supposed to act like a meek teacher and tell him he was right, but I just couldn't. "It's always hard for all new teachers. I'm working on it, Bob. I'm getting through to some of them."

"Not enough, though, Julia. Not nearly enough."

I looked him in the eyes. "Are you firing me, Bob? Tell me straight."

He shook his head. "Of course not. Not yet, at least. I'm just saying you might be more comfortable at the...other school."

"You mean the black school across the tracks, right?" I said, pointing out the window behind him. "The one I came up through. The one no respectable white kid would attend even after everything that's happened in the last twenty years?"

Principal Anderson nodded, timidly. "There are a lot of good teachers over there."

"Then why ain't they over here, too?"

"Because they like it there," Principal Anderson said, smiling. "They're happy. They're respected. There is nothing wrong with that school, just because you say it's a black school."

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with it," I shouted. "That's not the point. Point is that I applied here, and I got hired here, not over there, and I should be able to work where I want as long as I'm doing my job right."

"I agree, but...that's just not how it is and you know it. How are you going to feel when these kids get a lesser education, not because of anything you did, but because the other students don't respect you?"

I looked down at the ground. I couldn't deny that giving the children the best education was my top priority. "I would feel terrible."

"And how are you gonna feel when those really smart ones start to talk about you behind your back because you're a distraction to their education?"

"I'm gonna feel really bad about it," I replied. I could see him baiting me. Damn it, this wasn't on me. Not this time. "But how are you gonna feel, Bob, when I leave this school because those women wouldn't let me do my job? How will it feel when you let a bunch of old, white women convince you to fire a good teacher just because she's black? Are you gonna be able to look at yourself in the mirror and be okay with that?"

"I can look in the mirror fine, Julia. Just fine. My duty is to the students, and to make sure they get the best education possible. That is why I hired you, because I thought you could provide that to them."

I stood up, seething. "I know why you hired me, Bob. We all know why you hired me. Thing is, I have more education than most of the teachers in this place. I got a Master's in history, Bob. How many of your teachers have Master's degrees?"

"Not many..."

"And how many have that Master's degree from Northwestern, huh? How many have them from one of the best schools in the country?"

"Not many."

"Not one of them do. Not one of them but me. I'll bet I'm the most qualified first-year teacher you've ever hired, and I'm gonna be the most qualified one that you've ever fired, too."

"I hope that's not true."

I headed toward the door. "You can tell those old bitties I'll start to wear my hair in a ponytail, and I'll wrap myself in a sweater whenever I'm in school. I promise you that, and if they ever want to talk to me--well, my door's open. Funny thing, though, Bob, I haven't ever heard from one of 'em."

"They won't talk to you except through me."

"I know they won't, Bob, and look. I know what you've done for me, giving me a chance to come back here and be with my mother. I know it's not easy for you."

Principal Anderson nodded. "Every day it's something else. I'm trying, Julia. I'm really trying."

"And I appreciate that, Bob. I do, but I'm a human being, with a goddamn Master's degree from Northwestern. I'm nobody's fool. I understand this game, and next year I might be right back over across the tracks where I came from, but until they kick me out of here, I am not going anywhere."

"I understand." He cleared his throat. "Uh, Julia, could you do me a favor?"

I stopped in the doorframe. "If I can, Bob."

"Don't tell anybody else you talked to me the way you did today, okay?"

"I was raised here, Bob. I know what's expected of me. Consider me the perfectly behaved teacher outside this office."

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# Chapter 2

They used to play this show, Leave It to Beaver, when I was growing up, and it reminded me of Chandler. From the outside, Chandler didn't seem so bad. Hell, from the outside it looks downright cheery, just like every other sleepy, little hamlet across this country, complete with smiling, happy people, clean streets, and perfectly painted houses. They could have shot Leave it to Beaver right down the street from school, that's how wholesome it was here.

But that's just a veneer.

Funny thing was, you didn't see a lot of black folks in that show. I'd love to see how Wally and the Beave reacted to a black teacher. Something tells me Ward and June wouldn't like it much. They might even complain to the school about their precious child being taught by a colored woman. It was hard being black in Chandler now, but it was harder when I was growing up.

Hell, if you were a white kid in Chandler, Colorado in the 1950s, things were hunky dory for you. Things came up aces again and again. Your parents had work. They had a house. You had friends. You had some money. Your future looked bright as can be.

But that was just one side of the train tracks. There was another side to Chandler, a darker side, and I mean that quite literally. It was the side the good, old white people of Chandler didn't talk about or visit, and they didn't want us visiting them, either. It was the side where black folks like me lived.

*

BY THE TIME I STEPPED out of George Washington High School, it was dark out. The dead of winter's crisp wind nipped at my nose. The cold never bothered me, but I didn't like the night. The streetlights lit up the streets, but I didn't trust it. Bad things happened in Chandler at night.

I stood at the top of the steps looking out at the quaint square that made up downtown Chandler. Restaurants and shops lined the square, and at its center was the park that made us famous, Mystery Spot Park.

Mystery Spot Park wasn't like any other park I'd ever seen. It wasn't even like any other park in Chandler. This park, well, it had something special. Right there, in the middle of the park, was a giant hole that led to nowhere. You could throw a penny down into the hole and it would never hit bottom.

Before I left Chandler, they fed a rope down into that hole ten miles and still never found where it ended. It was one of the great mysteries of eastern Colorado, and people came from miles around in the summer to play with it, to feel the weird electromagnetic energy that made your hair stand on end. On a hot summer day, there was a line twice around the block to get a peek. This was the dead of winter, though, and nobody came to Chandler in the winter. The spot was special, but not that special.

I walked down the steps of the school toward Mystery Spot Park, clacking my heels faster with every step. I loved it there. One of the only joys left in returning to Chandler was my nightly walk through the park, when the cold air drove everybody away, and it was quiet and peaceful.

I couldn't explain it, but the mystery spot seemed to draw me toward it, like it had a magnetic charge I couldn't control. Of course, most people thought that, which is why they came from far and wide to see it and waited all day to stare into the abyss. There was something magical about that hole. Of course, that was crazy, because magic doesn't exist.

Electrical charges crackled sparks through my hair as I danced along the edge of the spot, just like I had done so often in my youth. I closed my eyes and spun as fast as I could, until every hair on my head stood straight up into the air and twisted together in a ponytail.

"Hey!" A man's voice shouted at me. "Quit spinnin'. It's not safe to spin so close to the--"

I turned around to come face to face with a familiar face, Chuck Dixon, father of one of my most well-behaved students and nighttime security guard for the park. "I'm sorry, Mr. Dixon. I'm just strolling on the breeze and lost track of time."

"Oh. Sorry, Ms. Freeman. I didn't recognize you in the dark." He tipped his cap to me. "How is everything tonight?"

He was a handsome man, so I gave him my most flirtatious smile. I always knew how to smile right. "It's going just fine, and how is our lovely park tonight?"

He nodded. "Lovely as ever, my dear."

If I didn't know any better, I would think he was flirting back. The creases on the sides of his mouth turned up on the edges and I was pretty sure he winked when he caught my eyes. Mr. Dixon's wife passed away some years ago, and, like my poor mother, he had to raise his child all on his own.

The neon sign above Charlotte's Diner crept into my periphery and I remembered I was late to meet my mother for dinner. "I should be going, Mr. Dixon. Mama will be waiting for me."

"It's a pleasure, ma'am, and please, call me Chuck."

I strolled away from him, letting his eyes linger on me for a long moment as I walked. "I don't think I'll be doing that, Mr. Dixon, but thank you for the courtesy."

I always did know how to play the game.

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# Chapter 3

Mama never liked to eat at home. Home was a cold, dark place on the outskirts of town that she only visited when she needed to sleep. It used to be a warm, welcoming place with a down to Earth charm to it when I was growing up, even in the worst times. But since I'd left for school, it turned into a place I barely recognized. The furniture was the same, but the soul had gone from it.

Mama raised me by herself, which meant she hustled and bustled my whole life. When I was a kid, she ran a daycare out of our back yard. She kept her rates low since our neighbors couldn't afford much, and that made her very popular. Our house was always full of kids, laughing and playing. Mama loved kids, but the daycare was about more than that. It was about survival, and in my neighborhood, you did what you had to do to get from the beginning of the month to the end of the month without going belly up.

It ran her ragged, though. To eke out a living, she had to take on a lot of kids, and the more kids she took on, the more help she needed, but that meant paying people, and she couldn't afford to do that without eating up every dollar she made. So, she ended up with too many kids and too little help, which made her entire life...challenging.

When I got up in age I tried to help after school, but Mama wouldn't hear of it. She worked extra hard to make sure I could study and focus on school. She wanted to make sure I could leave if I wanted, even if she didn't think I'd ever want to go somewhere else.

She was wrong about that. I'd wanted to leave Chandler from the moment I exited the womb. What I never wanted to do was come back, but that's all that Mama wanted for me. Sometimes, I think she got old just to spite me.

When I got back to Chandler, things were different for Mama. She treated herself to the finer things since the house was paid off, and she got a social security check every month. It didn't hurt that I had a decent salary and could pay for a few of life's niceties which passed mama by in her younger days. I didn't mind spoiling her a bit, either. After all, she raised me. Back when I was a kid, we could never eat out. Money was always tight, like ketchup on bread tight--and stale bread at that, so we didn't leave the house much.

Eating out these days was more than just luxury, though. Nothing tickled Mama more than having dinner at a restaurant that had refused to serve her when she was young. She took great pride in sitting at a lunch counter in a place she once couldn't even step into without getting arrested and munching on food that white people said she couldn't have until the government forced them to treat her like a human being.

Her favorite place to eat was called Charlotte's Diner, right across from the mystery spot. For years, they'd had a sign on their window that said, "No Coloreds Allowed," but the government forced them to take it down. Mama liked to sit right by the window, where that sign had mocked her for so long, and stare out at the park, where every resident of Chandler could get a good look at her.

She would sit in that diner, sometimes all day, while I worked, just staring at that the mystery spot, which is exactly what she was doing when I entered the diner to the jingling of bells over the door. Mama never told me where she was going, but Chandler's a small town and there weren't that many options.

"Mama!" I called to her from the entrance. She sat at a booth looking out the front window of the place, through the big lettering that plastered CHARLOTTE'S on the front sign. Mama didn't look up as I sat down across from her.

"Didn't you hear me?" I asked.

Finally, she turned to me. Her wrinkled face cracked on its edges into a warm smile. "I heard you, but I was deep in thought. I'm glad you found me, even if you are late."

"Of course, I found you, Mama. You're always here."

She chuckled. "I'm not always here, my love. I'm just mostly here. And if I wasn't here, you would find me somewhere else. I do very much like that Chinese place around the corner, too."

A kindly, old woman named Martha came up to us. She was dressed in the powder blue waitress outfit common among all the wait staff, but she was different in her spirit. Martha was the only one who treated us like customers whose money was just as good as anybody else's, and not a nuisance It took me months to realize it, but she was the only person who would ever come to our table.

Everybody inside Charlotte's turned up their noses at us when we entered the place. Waitresses turned their backs and refused our calls for service. Patrons asked to move away from our table. Under their breath, of course, but there would suddenly be a chorus of shuffling tables and scampering feet whenever we sat down. Whenever I passed by the diner and Mama wasn't there, nobody ever sat in Mama's booth, as if we were contaminated with the plague.

Then, there was Martha, who smiled brightly at us just like we were any two other humans. "Good evening, Julia! What can I get for you?"

"Coke and a burger, please. Medium. You know how I like it." I returned her smile. Behind her, a couple scowled at me, but I didn't break my grin. You couldn't let them see you break, ever. "Mama, what do you want?"

"Oh, I already ordered."

Martha jotted my order down in her notebook. "Yes, she did. I'll have both your orders up right away."

She scooted away as the other patrons went about their business. Charlotte's wasn't a big place, and I could hear the animosity oozing from every table. Luckily, I got very good at drowning it out, though, and replacing it with idle chatter. Mama taught me that.

"How was your day?" she asked.

I just sighed. I opened my mouth to speak, but I just...couldn't get out the words. All I could do was grunt. Luckily, Mama knew exactly what that meant after hearing it every day since I came back.

"That bad, huh?" Mama asked in her most comforting voice.

"As bad as yesterday," I said, shaking my head. "Better than tomorrow I'll bet."

"I told you I could put in a good word at Taft. Good people over there at Taft."

"No money over there at Taft, Mama," I said, exasperated.

"We don't need money, dear. We got the house free and clear."

"You still gotta eat." I gestured at the room. "This place ain't free."

She stared out to the park. The school loomed beyond the mystery spot. "I don't gotta eat here, my love, just like you don't gotta work there."

"Then why do you?" I asked.

"Same reason you do it, my love," she replied, knowingly.

I knew why I did it, and I knew why she did it, too. It was because we could, and because we could, we were compelled to do it. The rush was exhilarating, making everybody else in town uncomfortable, just like we made them uncomfortable when Dad went missing. It had been sixteen years since sheriffs found him hung from an oak tree in Mystery Spot Park.

"You know it's his birthday next week," Mama said.

"I know," I replied. "How did you know I was thinking about him?"

"Thinking about him all the time these days, aren't you?"

She was right. I thought about him often. I thought about him every time I passed by the park where he was snatched, and every time I stood under the tree where they hung him for the whole town to see for the high crime of being a loud, black man in a town full of quiet, black men.

"It's not his birthday, though, Mama. Birthdays are for people who are alive."

Mama nodded. "That's true, but he was still born then, my love. Nobody can take that away from him."

"No. They could just take away his life."

The whole diner stopped in that moment, as if the needle on a record player skipped a beat. Waitresses stopped their deliveries as the patrons stared at us.

"Hush yourself," Mama said. "That's not polite. There's a line, baby."

She was right. My dad being lynched wasn't something you talked about in polite company, especially not during dinner.

It wasn't decent to talk about men stringing up your father. It wasn't proper to talk about how they watched his face turn purple as he struggled for breath, or to discuss them cutting his throat and watching him bleed out. That wasn't proper conversation in Chandler.

The act wasn't decent, either, but talking about it was taboo. If you were black, you didn't talk about justice unless you wanted to wind up on a tree yourself, and when you can't talk about something, you can't convict somebody of it, either. Not that a white jury was going to convict good ole boys of killing a black man. So, we just had to move on and swallow our pain.

They didn't even talk about it on our side of the tracks. My dad's death sent a message to the whole community. Shut your damned fool mouth. They didn't just string him up, they cut his throat across the voice box to remind us not to say a word.

When I was growing up, there was a lynching like that just about every six months, for over a decade. Like clockwork. White folks needed to send a message every once in a while, whenever we forgot our place. It could have been any other black man on any other day, but that day it was my father. It wasn't some other little girl who lost her daddy. It was me.

That kind of act, it built up a lot of resentment between black and white folks. Even though there hadn't been a lynching in ten years, the animosity never went away.

I looked out at the diner and saw a dozen hostile eyes staring back at me. There was no shame; they didn't even avert their gaze. Worse, they were disgusted that we weren't ashamed at interrupting their dinner with our insistence on existing. In that chorus of ugly, beady eyes, I lost my appetite.

"Can we go, Mama?" I asked.

"No. I'm hungry," she said, unaffected by their gaze. "And I'm gonna eat, damn it. You don't gotta eat, but don't go spoiling my appetite. You gonna keep spoiling my appetite?"

I shook my head. I knew the code. Shut your damn fool mouth. "No, Mama."

Martha smiled when she brought us our food and the eyes of the other diners eventually turned away from me. The chatter of the diner drowned out my thoughts. Mama and I ate in silence, her staring out at the mystery spot, and me staring at her, both watching with wonder.

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# Chapter 4

The only person who felt a bigger jolt at the mystery spot than me was my mother. She could have lived at that spot if they let her. She could have pitched a big top tent over the spot and been quite happy for the rest of her days, but Chandler frowned on that kind of thing.

We tried to camp out there once when I was in seventh grade, but the security guards didn't think it was a good idea for two colored women to lay out all night like they were homeless. It wouldn't be good for tourism, they said. Still, they couldn't stop us from walking through a public park as often as we liked and dawdling a little and dancing around the spot.

After we finished our dinner, instead of turning right to walk back across the tracks to our house, Mama insisted on turning left and strolling through the park.

"It's a lovely night, Julia, and the fireflies will be out in full. It will be glorious."

"I'm not really that interested in seeing bugs, Mama," I replied. "I've been on my feet all day. All I want is a hot bath and sleep."

"Then, you can go on home. Leave your poor, old mother to her own devices. I'm going to stay, walk around the park, and enjoy the night air. I spent too many nights not doing that when I was bending over backwards trying to raise you."

A mother's guilt trip transcended race, creed, and social status. It hit every child right in the cockles of their heart. When they wanted to, moms knew how to turn the screws and bend you to their will. My mother was no different, which is why, even though my feet were aching, and my constitution was fried, I followed her around Mystery Spot Park in the late hours of the evening.

"Your father liked to walk me past this park, in our better days," Mama said.

"I know, Mama. He didn't like being hung here though, so I'll bet all those good memories were drowned out by that bad one in his last moments."

"Memories don't work like that, honey."

"I guess we'll never know."

Mama looked up at the sky. Chandler was small and had very little light pollution, unlike Chicago. We could make out half the stars in the sky when we craned our necks skyward. "We might yet, child. We might yet."

I had nothing else to say to my mother. I just wanted to do my bid and walk her home, just like it was my bid to live in Chandler for as long as my mother saw fit to keep her house and hold onto her life. That could be five minutes or five hundred years for all I knew. Freeman women tended to live long, unnaturally healthy lives.

My hair stood on edge with the sparks of the mystery spot when I heard a man's voice. "Hey!" No Chuck Dixon this time. It was Duncan's deep growl. Now, every hair on my body stood at attention.

I whipped myself around to see Duncan and three of his thuggish friends stumbling through the park, drunk, as if they owned the place. Who am I kidding? They did own the place. Duncan's daddy had funded the mayoral and city council campaigns for every powerful person in town for the last twenty years. Duncan and his father, more than anybody, owned Chandler.

I put on my nicest face; the kind Mama taught me to plaster on myself at the first sign of trouble. "Good evening, boys. Nice to see you on this fine day."

"Don't talk to me, colored," Duncan sneered, taking a deep swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels. "We ain't in school no more. You ain't got no authority here."

The whiskey on his breath knocked me backwards, and when he lurched forward, I stumbled into Mama. His flunkies hovered behind him, like wolves waiting to strike. "I don't want no trouble, Duncan. I just want to make my way home in peace."

"It's Mr. Lewis to you."

"Excuse me?" I said, disgusted at the thought of showing him any deference.

Duncan strolled up to me, an ugly grin smeared across his face. He had the power and he knew it. Plus, he had backup that egged him on with every step he took forward.

"You don't get to call me Duncan, do you understand me?" The words oozed out of his mouth. "It's Mr. Lewis to you from now on. I don't even wanna hear that you called me Duncan to your colored friends in the privacy of your colored home Got it?"

I wanted to shout out, but I knew the consequences. I looked down at the ground, just like Mama taught me. "Yes, sir. I sure do see your point."

He laughed and took another swig from his whiskey bottle. "That's what I thought, colored. You don't have no bones and you don't have no spine. Like just like your mama."

I don't know where it came from inside of her, but Mama pulled back and slapped Duncan across the face. I'd never seen my mother so angry. She was the one who taught me to take it on the chin, and now, without warning, she exploded.

"Listen here, boy! I've been called a lotta things by a lotta white folks, but I ain't never gonna let you talk down to my daughter in front of me, you hear? Learn you some respect!"

But Duncan couldn't learn respect, because nobody was willing to teach it to him. Even if they were, he was too dumb to comprehend the concept.

His baser instincts took over. I watched the humanity drain out of him and a wild beast take its place, egged on by the chanting baboons behind him.

"I ain't never been hit by no colored," Duncan said, balling up his fist. "And I ain't ever gonna let no colored live who struck me."

Duncan charged at my mother. I leapt in front of her, holding my arms out wide to protect her. "Duncan! No! She doesn't know! She's old!"

Duncan threw me out of the way like I was a ragdoll and charged at my mother. "She won't have to worry about being old no more, cuz now she'll be dead!"

I rose to my feet and leapt on Duncan's back, holding back his arms as he tried to swing. He grabbed me under my shoulder and flung me. I crashed into Mama and sent us both onto the grass.

"Fine. I'll kill the both of you. It'll be a nice family plot up in Potter's Field with your daddy. And I'll come piss on it whenever I get drunk."

I clenched my fists. If I was gonna die, I wasn't going down without a fight. I might've looked like the meek girl who left Chandler, but I learned how to fight in Chicago, and I wasn't gonna let those karate classes my roommate dragged me to go to waste.

I pulled back my fist, but Mama stayed my hand. "No! I already done enough. If you hit that boy, they'll run you out of town for sure."

"So, you want me to let him kill us?" I shouted.

Mama looked Duncan in the eyes as he watched us on the ground. "Look at that boy. He's a coward. He won't kill us. It takes an ounce of courage to kill a person in cold blood, and he doesn't have it. His father might come for me, but he doesn't have the stones."

"I'll show you who has the stones!" Duncan shouted.

He charged us. I held onto Mama tight, trying to protect her from the savage beating sure to come. I had been beaten within an inch of my life before, back in high school, and I ended up in the hospital for a week. I wasn't looking forward to it happening again, but I would survive. A beating like that would destroy Mama's old, frail body.

I braced for the brunt of his assault as Duncan swung back his leg. His friends circled around, ready to join in on the violence...and then the whole world shook. Purple sparks fanned out in front of us, a bolt of light cracked where we lay, and we were gone, leaving Duncan to swing his leg at empty air and land on his behind in the wet, dewy grass.

*

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