The Devil Next Door

Louis inched around the pit like a caterpillar until he saw the knife and brought his hands around until he grasped it. He immediately started sawing at the ropes on his wrist. It was expertly sharpened and right away the fibers began loosening one by one.

In the flames and the smoke, the blood sport near the stairs went on unheeded. It was like some twisted, blood-drenched nightmare. The children fighting in a pack, glistening red, Maddie and Kylie both slashed and bleeding but refusing to go down. Knives bisected skins and hatchets laid flesh open, spears sinking into bellies and axes shearing heads from necks.

It ended on the floor with the three remaining children chopping on Maddie while Kylie, split wide open and clutching her intestines in one hand, lurched in Louis’ direction. She had a knife in the other hand. Her hair was plastered to her face with blood. She limped forward, dragging a bad leg behind her that was nearly severed at the knee.

She made a low growling noise that was wet and gurgling as she choked on her own blood.

Louis’ hands were free, but not his ankles.

He had a knife but he didn’t know if he was any match for Kylie who was by that point beyond anything as simple as a savage. She was a gruesome, hobbling zombie, a monster who understood nothing but killing.

“ Don’t do it,” Louis told her.

She spit out a glob of blood and came closer. She would have had him, too, and her last act in this world would have been to make him suffer unbelievably. But a spear plunged through her belly and then another through her chest. More children were rushing around. They sliced limbs and meats from the rafters overhead, kicked over the tripod which spilled to the floor, the gut bag bursting with a sickening hot smell as organs and entrails steamed over the dirt.

They were destroying everything.

Throwing bottles of gasoline at the walls and roaring with delight as the flames spread, consumed, and the air became as hazy as fog.

Louis slit his ankles free.

His legs were numb but he made them obey. He knocked a couple kids out of the way, dodging and darting towards the doorway. A spear just missed him. A girl swung something at him that he realized was a severed arm. And then he was jogging up the steps, coughing on the smoke.

More savage children.

They were pissing on the walls and pulling the stuffing out of sofa cushions, tipping over furniture and tossing their scat at one another. Several of them saw Louis, hesitated, maybe unsure if he was one of their own or not. They decided and bared their teeth.

Then a huge, bristling man stepped forward.

His face was tiger-striped with black slashes of paint, old and seamed, the eyes glittering with dementia. He wore a vest made of fur, his bare chest and arms filthy with blood and dirt. There was a necklace of what must have been human ears around his throat.

Louis hesitated.

Good God…was this Chalmers? Frank Chalmers from a few streets over?

He knew it was and then Chalmers dove on him. They rolled to the floor, knives forgotten, fighting tooth and nail. Chalmers was old, but in incredible shape from so many years in the Army humping it through jungles and leaping out of airplanes. Louis hit him three times and Chalmers barely flinched. His hand like a claw, he took hold of Louis’ windpipe and squeezed it close. Louis fought and tried to throw him off, but it was useless. The world went dark and he went limp.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in the grass.

The house was burning.

Two girls squatted by him and both had knives. They were no more than eight or ten years old and seeing them there-painted for war, splattered with flesh and blood, their eyes just gone wild-it was ludicrous. For a few days before they might have been selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door. Now they were hunting people, slaughtering anyone or anything they could catch.

Louis licked the blood off his lips.

The girls moved in closer, crawling on hands and knees towards him like Preying Mantises stalking their prey. They had been waiting for him to come to. It would have been no fun for them to gut a sleeping man. One of the girls raised her knife for the kill…there was a human scalp on a thong around her wrist, the hair red and lustrous.

Then Louis heard a whooshing sound and a hatchet came flying end-over-end with a perfect throw, imbedding itself in the skull of the girl with the scalp.

Other savages charged in and it was war to the knife…

84

Macy was outside the lair, the church, and sucking in the not-so clean air of Greenlawn. She had status now. She was one of the Huntress’ clan. By blood-rite she had secured the right to stand with them, to hunt with them and butcher, and to die with them.

She heard a noise behind her.

She turned quick with sharp animal reflexes.

A man was standing there.