Authors: Allan Burd
The second missile appr
oaches him from above. The devil dives downward then makes a ninety degree turn a few feet above ground. The missile turns with him, but can’t match the abrupt change in direction and explodes against the ground. Balzuzu’s coming back this way fast and hard, low and angry. Two more missiles bear down on him from up high. Balzuzu zig-zags, but he’s still heading right for us. If these missiles don’t hit him, if he somehow avoids them, then every one of us is dead. I head out into the street, ready my gun, just in case. Not that it’s going to stop him, but I’d rather go out shooting a gun than standing around waiting to be slaughtered.
Balzuzu avoids the next missile by darting quickly to his left. It
too explodes upon impact with the earth, throwing balls of flame into the background. Balzuzu veers back on course, narrowly avoiding the last missile as well. The plume of fire that shoots up feels symbolic, a final candle burning before our lives get snuffed out.
I kneel and ready my weapon, hoping that somehow I manage a lucky shot. I try to get one of his eyes lined up in my scope. I figure I have about ten seconds to lock in on it and take the shot. I catch his face in the scope. A portion of his long mouth is missing. Black blood drips from his chest. At least there’s comfort in knowing we put a dent
in him before we died. I put an ounce of pressure on the trigger, trying to lineup his eye in the crosshairs.
Then the church explodes from the inside out.
Three missiles burst forth, shot at ground level, all in a straight line on a direct collision course with our devil. Balzuzu sees me. He sees them. His eyes narrow. He wants me more than he wants to dodge them, so he doesn’t change course until it’s too late. He darts upward but there’s no way in hell he can avoid the missiles. They arc up with him, matching and surpassing his speed. The first one blasts into his midsection, exploding into an all-consuming ball of flame. A micro second later, the next two hit him just as hard. The explosion blows me back off my feet. The weapon I was holding slides down the street. My ears ring. Still, I get a good glimpse and the results are epic.
Balzuzu took
the full brunt of the triple blast and got thrown a good distance before plunging to the ground like a flaming meteor. When he hit, he created a smoldering impact crater ten yards wide. If he were truly born in the pits of hell, I’m guessing right about now he feels at home. With a little luck we sent him out the same way he came in.
A hand clasps my shoulder before I’m on my feet. It’s Miguel.
“I’m okay.” I nod.
“Let us
pray the devil is not,” he responds.
Miguel helps me to my feet. I pick
up my fully automatic; make sure the locking mechanism is in place. “Let’s go over there and find out.”
We walk toward the crater, cautious but with a deliberate pace. We reach the edge. Flames are still burning in the middle of it like
an Olympic torch. A broken wing breaches the flame. We collectively hold our breath. A thick, dark red colored hand reaches out of the fire. Then, slowly, Balzuzu stumbles forward.
He’s a shell of himself, the left side of his body fully exposed, a collection of thick, fleshy muscle tissue hanging from charcoal bones. He’s hemorrhaging fluid everywhere, as if he was drowning in a sea of his own black blood. His right arm is hanging useless, broken like a toy
doll whose arm was twisted backwards from the elbow down. His once terrifying goat face no longer has a bottom jaw. His remaining horn is a jagged stump. Syrupy ooze drips from his eye sockets. But still he sees us. He makes it two steps forward before dropping to one knee.
“I will kill you both. Slowly. Painfully. I will imprison your souls for eternity. I will fill your infinite death with a thousand forms of torture. I will—”
I reload a brand new clip and hold down the trigger until every bullet lodges into whatever’s left of his face. The barrage of incendiary lead chips away his teeth. His agonizing shrill scream becomes a choking gurgle as spongy pieces of his foul tongue dislodge and slip down his throat.
“Now that’s what I call opening up a can of shut the fuck up,” I say proudly.
Still, the fucker lives. I discharge the empty magazine and start searching for another.
He glares at us with what little he’s got left.
His words come out weak, slurred. “I will be back… for you, for everyone. Evil never dies.” Then he pushes off the ground, flying weakly off into the distance.
By the time I lock the magazine in
, he’s out of range. Miguel grabs my wrist. “He’s going back home, back through the portal. He will heal himself with new souls. We must go back to the graveyard now. Close the portal. Lock him on the other side. I can do it.”
I stare at Miguel then look up once more as Balzuzu fades in the distance. That fucker killed my brother, destroyed my town, and threatened to wipe mankind from existence.
‘I will be back,’
he said
.
Those words mull around in my noggin. Fuck that! We hurt him good, but not good enough. I have to make sure he
never
comes back, that he never
can
come back. I have to put him down for good. For my brother, for Los Agros, and for the world.
“Fine,” I say to Miguel. “We’ll go back to the portal. We’ll close it. But first I have some things to get and some things to do.”
Miguel looks at me with a worried expression, as if he can read my mind. “What are you thinking, Silas? Where are you going?”
I look at him with pure determination in my eye. Then I answer. “
I’m thinking this isn’t over. I’m going to Hell to kill him once and for all.”
Miguel and I are in the basement of the
house I grew up in, or as Pa calls it ‘the Hill family arsenal’. Over the years we’ve compiled enough weapons to fully stock a small army. Easily more than enough firepower to overthrow a third world country. We obtained much of it through less than legal means, but Sheriff Martaan never cared because on days like this, when the world we lived in went to shit, Martaan knew he was going to need all the help he could get. I can tell by the empty spaces on the racks that my pa and Martaan came here first and took as much as they could carry to properly arm the townsfolk. They took a lot of stuff, but not all. There are still plenty of goodies left to choose from.
Before we came here
, Martaan assured us he could handle things until the military arrived. Pa was unconscious but alive. A medical technician was checking his vitals, told us he’d live. My pa’s as tough a man as you’ll find. Even the beating he took from Balzuzu wasn’t enough to make this a good day for him to die. I caught a glimpse of Silver Joe and Rebel too. Joe wasn’t moving too well. The ass kicking Balzuzu gave was one he’d remember. Rebel, meanwhile, was coordinating and commanding others in his pack and making shredded wheat out of the zombies. They didn’t need my help. The best thing I could do for any of them was to finish the job we started. Balzuzu needed to die. I need to choose the best weapons from my arsenal to make that a reality.
I haven’t been down here in
a while. It takes me a few minutes to re-familiarize myself with the layout. I scan the room; handheld pistols, machine guns, flamethrowers—Martaan should have grabbed those—, knives… finally I spot the truly explosive stuff. It took four missiles just to knock the wind out of Balzuzu’s sails. But since I can’t carry a RIM-116 rolling airframe missile launcher on my back, I need something portable, yet even more effective.
I turn to Father Miguel, “Talk to me. Tell me everything you know.”
“That would take years. I’ve spent a lifetime studying them,” Miguel says sardonically.
“Cliff notes. Start with fuckface. What’s a Nephilim?”
Miguel paces a moment. I could tell it was a big story and he was figuring out how to condense it down to size. He gets there and begins. “Many millennia ago a group of watcher angels were dispatched to Earth to watch over humanity.”
Normally I
tune out at hearing religious stuff like this, but I’ve seen enough in the last few hours to keep my trap shut.
Miguel continues. “However, instead of simply watching us, they decided to do
more
. They chose to guide us in their ways, teaching us things we would have been better off not knowing. They taught us the art of war, the use of weaponry and sorcery for untoward purposes. They also desired us, procreating among us. They bore children. Their offspring, the end result of this unholy union between god-like beings and women, were the Nephilim, a race of giants brimming with savagery and power who followed no laws but their own. The children of the watchers became our conquerors. Araqiel was one of the first Nephilim. Balzuzu is one of his sons.”
“Still alive after all this time?” I question.
“They are not like us. They do not abide by the laws of God. They are immortal. Eventually, God had enough of their destructive ways so he directly intervened on behalf of mankind, something he rarely does. He banished the Nephilim from Earth with a great flood. Sent them to another realm.”
“God banished them to Hell?” I ask.
“Not exactly,” answers Miguel. “Hell is merely the space between. Do you believe in souls, Silas?”
“I don’t think too much about it,” I say.
“And yet you are one of the purest souls I have ever encountered. I have known that since I baptized you. Balzuzu noticed it the moment he lifted you off the ground in the graveyard. I could see it in his eyes. He let you live so he could taint you.”
A wry grin crossed my lips. “Forgive me, Father, but I’m pretty fucking far from being a saint.”
“Yet you confront evil every time you encounter it, with a bravery few men have ever shown.”
“Well someone needs to kick them in the balls,” I shrug.
“That’s an accurate, but most ineloquent way to put it,” he nods. “All living things have a soul, Silas. It’s what defines us… what makes us who we are.”
“Even werewolves? Even zombies?”
“Even Balzuzu,” he responds. “But theirs are
captured
souls. When a human is born he or she is gifted from God a perfectly pure soul. It is a thing of utter beauty, utter perfection. As that person grows, their actions color that soul. When they sin-and I’m talking about true sins that come from bad intentions; deceiving, stealing, murdering—their souls become tainted. When that person dies, their soul leaves this realm and travels to God’s kingdom. And I mean truly travels from our plane of existence into the next. If that soul is still pure enough, it will return to God an untouchable invisible light along a dark path. If that soul is tainted, it becomes vulnerable to those who inhabit the space along the path… the space
between
.”
“You mean between Heaven and Earth. So Hell is whatever lies along that path and that’s where God banished the Nephilim to,” I say just to clarify.
“Yes. And the more tainted the soul, the easier it is for the Nephilim to capture it. Only God has power over a pure soul. Only God can contain that power. But once a soul is tainted its power is reduced and then any devil living along the path can claim it, hijack it if you will, and twist it for their own sinister purposes.”
“I’m not sure I’m following that part,” I say, trying to get a better understanding.
“Think of a pure soul as a burning sphere. Only God’s hands are powerful enough to hold it. Think of tainted souls as sphere’s that have cooled off. Now less powerful hands can grab onto them. And as there are many sins, souls are cooled off in many different ways. There are a diversity of devils inhabiting the paths between here and God’s Kingdom. Each one has a different specialty. They look for souls with certain temperatures. Balzuzu goes for the coldest. His lust for the worst of the worst among us knows no bounds.”
“So if your soul is pure you go to Heaven. If you have committed sins, depending on the level of those sins, your soul may be claimed by a devil, essentially sentencing that soul to their own personal hell.”
“We try our best to keep people on the right path. This is why,” replies Miguel.
“What do they do with the souls they capture?” I inquire.
“Anything they want,” he answers. “It depends on the devil that has it. Some are tortured, others are studied and used for trade. The fortunate few are given a chance at redemption.”
“And in Balzuzu’s case?” I say, getting straight to the point.
“Balzuzu has the ability to reshape those souls and move them across vast distances, across realms. He has the ability to send those souls back into our world in various forms. He is incredibly powerful and he has collected a great many souls. He has been using them to build monster armies that have not only helped him escape from the underworld but also to be used to rule once he got here. Balzuzu himself created the werewolf species by placing tainted human souls inside of the bodies of real wolves and reshaping their DNA with a touch of sorcery. That’s why some of these wolves remember who they were when they were human. That’s also how he was able to animate an army of the dead. He simply shifted hundreds of the souls under his control into the corpses in the graveyard.”
“And voila… instant zombie army. Nice!”