All Hell Breaks Loose
Chapter 8: A Step Behind

June 13th

11:03 PM

Derrick Jones

Evan could never manage to stay in one place for long. The bodies of both Humans and Demons alike weren’t even cold when he took off. When I finally noticed he was gone, I told everyone where I was going. Most weren’t in any shape to chase after Evan. His pace was beyond ludicrous. I hoped at the very least he would stick to the route we had already planned out. Running while carrying a loaded weapon and a bag full of food was tiring, but I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. Everyone always talked about how good of a shot he was. I’d never believed them until today.

We had been fighting hundreds of flying, demonic monstrosities for hours. Some of them were the size of diesel trucks too! I never would have believed that this college grad would be able to land every shot he took until I saw it with my own eyes. I was a little impressed and jealous as hell. To be fair, a few weeks ago I was just a photographer and graphic designer, so it’s not like I had a lot of experience shooting at moving targets. Unless you count photography. Even still, when Evan first set foot on that bridge yesterday he had less than twenty bullets and somehow managed to kill at least twenty Demons while using the damn thing as a club. It was kinda bullshit.

When I finally caught up with him, he’d almost arrived at the safe zone the military set up. I could see the lights in the distance beaming against the fire and smoke of the rest of the area. I tried to shout his name to get his attention. Too much huffing and puffing later he finally slowed down a little and let me get within a normal speaking distance. He put a hand on my shoulder while I tried to catch my breath and the air around me started to feel pleasant rather than sweltering.

“Evan,” I huffed. “You can’t just run off like that. We’ve gotta stick together if we want to survive.”

“I know,” Evan replied. “but it looked like the rest of you needed a break. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong, so I started ahead of the rest of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘You got the feeling something was about to go horribly wrong.’ What?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it too much,” Evan said. “but we need to keep moving. Can you keep up?”

“Yeah,” I huffed. “I made it this far, didn’t I?”

“Excellent,” Evan mumbled. “Stay alert. We’re probably walking into a trap.”

“In the safe-zone? Seriously?”

“Yeah. Just take my word for it, I have a really bad feeling about this place, okay?”

I nodded my head. A second wind was finally kicking in now that I had a moment to rest. I wasn’t out of breath or anything. I felt like I could fight another hundred Demons on the bridge. Weird.

When we walked up to the fence surrounding the old community center, we were greeted by a trio of guards with weapons ready and some ridiculously blinding lights. The kind I’d use in my studio. As soon as I got a good look at the guards, I could see why Evan was on edge. All of them were wearing hella dark aviators and pointing guns at us. Something was definitely wrong.

The guards immediately started demanding Evan and I surrender our weapons and kit. I tried to resist at first, but Evan shut me up real quick. All the guards were talking to Evan as though they knew him. Evan barely said anything. There was a fire in his eyes that threatened to burn this whole place down. It was as if he could see past all the bright lights into whatever darkness was waiting for us inside. Everyone was starting to get a little tense now.

The guards kept demanding that Evan follow them inside alone and that I stayed outside for now. Every time I tried to butt my way into the conversation they threatened to kill me. I decided to stay quiet, but couldn’t help but flash death-glares at the weapons and the guards holding them. Eventually, Evan agreed to disarm and follow the guards inside while I had to stand with my hands in the air, weaponless, and being aimed at by a dude that was probably a Hell-spawn. As I watched Evan trudge inside, I really couldn’t help but think to myself.

I really hope that wiz-kid has a plan…

***

11:09 PM

Mariah Adams

The ensuing fight lasted a few seconds at most. People barely had time to scream before the Staff Sergeant had slit most of their throats. He clearly wasn’t human. No one could possibly move so fast. Before I could even blink, Malcolm, Moore, Anderson, and Allen were on the ground and their guns were destroyed. I had tried to duck out of the way expecting there to be more gunfire, but not a single shot was fired. I found myself being picked up by the throat by a man a head taller than me while I got to stare in horror at four people bleeding out in front of me. The two guards weren’t Hell-spawn, but they were in on it the whole time.

I tried with all my strength to escape or snap his wrist. Nothing would budge. His grip seemed impossibly strong and unbreakable. He started to blithely monologue about the futility of struggling, but I wasn’t listening. I was paying more attention to staying conscious as I started to see stars. After what seemed like an eternity of his voice droning on and on in the background of my awareness, I felt my feet slam into solid ground. He spun me to face toward the door and put a gun to my head. Evan was there in the doorway. He was visibly distraught, but kept a steely expression as he saw what I saw. Four people dead or dying on the ground, nearly a dozen Hell-spawn, and a madman intent on trying to kill him.

“It’s about time you got here,” The Staff Sergeant gloated. “I was beginning to worry that one of my rivals had gotten to you first.”

Evan said nothing. His eyes were dead set on the man holding me like a tiger about to pounce. I was starting to notice a fatal flaw in the Staff Sergeant’s behavior: If he really was about to get easily distracted by an idealistic monologue, he was incredibly cocky. Super strength or not, he still had to obey the laws of physics. He was a head or so taller than I was which meant that his center of gravity was either at or above my waist. That would actually make it pretty easy to throw him to the ground barring the fact that he might have some ridiculous demonic powers or weighed more than I could lift. The last thing that worried me were his reflexes. Even if they were only human speed, his finger was on the trigger of the gun aimed at my head.

I had to be quick. Before he could say another asinine or arrogant boast, I grabbed the gun and pushed it as far away from me as possible all while simultaneously trying to get my hips underneath the Staff Sergeant’s center of gravity and throw him over my shoulders. To my surprise, it actually worked. He started turning head over heels as I slammed him into the ground. I could feel immense pain as a bullet scraped across my forehead followed by the blazing heat of the gun’s propellant.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. For a brief moment my view was obstructed by the Staff Sergeant’s ugly, astounded face. By the time he cleared my line of sight, Evan had dealt with the four guards surrounding him and sprinted impossibly fast from the doorway to where I was standing. He then proceeded to throw the Staff Sergeant into a group of Hell-spawn on my left. There was a brilliant flash of golden light and suddenly the pain on my forehead was gone. I glanced to my right and saw that the wounds of the four men lying on the ground had been miraculously healed. The fight was on.

Despite being surrounded by people that definitely wanted to kill me, I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. Maybe it was my inner nurse; that part of me that studied religiously about how to keep people alive even at the brink of death. Breaking, dislocating, and maiming people joints was the best I could do. Malcolm, on the other hand, had no such reservations. Whatever war he fought through and whatever hellish baggage he brought back burned furiously in his eyes. Despite his age, he was agile and could hit like a truck. Even still, blows that should have easily shattered someone’s jaw or eviscerated someone’s knee barely had any effect on the Hell-spawn. Not even Moore’s and Anderson’s guns seemed to do much. We were easily outmatched.

Meanwhile, Evan was only concerned with one opponent: the Staff Sergeant/Demon Overlord. Whenever a Hell-spawn would even think about approaching their fight, Evan would casually send them flying against a wall. The fight between the two impossible creatures was little more than an imperceptible blur. Evan was doing all he could to make sure that not a single stray bullet hit one of us. The Staff Sergeant didn’t bother to count his shots and ran out of ammunition fairly quick. As soon as his gun clicked empty, he made a break for one of the many boarded up windows in the room and Evan began to turn his attention toward the numerous Hell-spawn that were slowly beginning to overwhelm us. He quickly and easily dispatched the relatively few Hell-spawn we hadn’t completely crippled.

The six of us turned to watch the Staff Sergeant grinning maniacally outside. His clothes and body were on fire and the smoke billowing away from him gave off a horrifying and sickening stench of sulfur. As the last pieces of his uniform turned to ash, his true form was revealed. He was the largest Overlord I had seen so far with teeth that were easily the size of my arm and a wingspan of at least fifteen feet. He leaped into the air with a massive downdraft that nearly shattered the other windows. His booming voice rattled every bone in my body as he shouted.

“You’ve played your hand, puny one!” The Overlord cackled and roared as he flew south with an overwhelming thunder.

“Dammit!” Malcolm cursed. “Now this whole place is awake. We’ve got to get the hell outta here!”

“No.” Evan replied.

“What?” I gasped. “Why not?”

“I’m afraid I might have doomed us all,” Evan began. “Even without the Overlord escaping, I had to use a lot of power to bring several of you back from the brink of death. Every Demon in the city knows where we are now and they’re probably on their way here. Running isn’t going to be enough this time.”

“Then we need to get ready.” I solemnly mumbled.

“She’s right.” Anderson agreed. “We need to clear out every Hell-spawn we can replace and dig ourselves in as best we can. But, I don’t think we can really hold out if the Staff Sergeant comes back.”

“He won’t be in the first wave.” Evan stated nonchalantly. “He’s too much of a coward. He’s afraid of me because he knows who I am, so he’ll send his underlings first and promise them limitless glory.”

“Evan!” Someone shouted. Within a few moments a wiry, young man holding a large, angel-touched handgun was standing in the doorway. “What the hell is going on?”

“Derrick?” A small hint of optimism and a plan began to creep over Evan’s face. “Actually, I could really use your help right now. I need you to run back to the Golden Gate bridge and tell everyone there that we need their help as fast as possible.”

The young man hung his head in disbelief. “I just ran all the way here to catch up with you and now you want me to run back?”

“Yes,” Evan nodded. “If you don’t, we’ll probably all die.”

The young man threw his head back and groaned as he began walking back the way he came.

“Wait,” Malcolm shouted. “What about the Hell-spawn?”

Evan casually gestured to the many dead or dying Hell-spawn in the room we were standing in. “Most of them were probably in here. If not, I think Derrick might have handled them. Still, it would be prudent to sweep the building and make sure.”

“Fine.” I grumbled. “I’m going to go replace Smalls. When we get back here, there are a lot of questions you need to answer, Evan. And before you start, if we really are about to fight every Demon in the surrounding cities, I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Evan could only nod in agreement. As I stepped closer to get past him, I noticed an incredible anguish in his eyes. Something inside was tearing him apart, he just wouldn’t say what. Or maybe he already had. Whatever it was, I followed the five men out the door and began looking for Smalls.

He had only just woken up at the sound of fighting and gunshots. I found him crawling along the floor toward his wheelchair trying to lift himself up. Maybe it was just old habit, maybe part of me just wanted to cling to some last sense of normalcy. Either way, I could barely stop myself from trying to help every crying or injured person I saw. As soon as Smalls was situated in his wheelchair, he began asking questions.

“What the hell was that noise? Who was shouting?” Smalls asked.

“Evan is back.” I replied. “And the man shouting at him was a massive Overlord that will probably come back soon.”

“What? I thought he was supposed to show up tomorrow.” Smalls replied.

“I thought so too. Looks like the plan has changed.” I sighed. “Listen, it looks like a whole lot of Demons are going to be heading our way. I’m going to get Evan to answer as many of our questions as he can while we still have time.”

“No running anymore?” Smalls asked.

“Not this time. And judging by what Evan said, we probably wouldn’t make it out alive either way.” I replied.

Smalls somberly cursed under his breath. We were fighting a losing battle from the start and we both knew that all this was probably going to end violently whether we liked it or not. Smalls’s tired eyes only lit up once he saw the massive number of weapons in the armory.