Red Twilight: A Dawning Of Power

Act 2 Echoes

Chapter 8 Struggle and Aftermath

Jacob stares at his old, wrinkled face in the rest stop bathroom. The glass is filthy, and smoke stains cover it and everything in sight. Once a faithful servant of God, he is now just a miserable old man looking for a new life for himself and his girls—Ashley, age ten, and Lizzet, age fourteen. Jacob took what little money his church was willing to give him upon retirement and used it to purchase a station wagon. It was about twenty years old and looked like it might shake to pieces at any moment, but the price was right.

Jacob washes his face and tries to shake off his disgust at the putrid scent of the liquid waste splattered upon the stone floor. They have been driving for several days. They left from Oregon on a Friday and haven't seen a proper bed or clean bath since. The last road sign read, "Old Silent Hill 20 miles, Bram County 30 miles, Navu 35 miles."

"How does a man who hasn't questioned himself in fifty years wake up one morning and decide he no longer has the strength to keep serving his god?" Jacob asks himself. "Well, no sense in waiting around here any longer. The sooner we reach Maine, the better." With heavy feet and a tired heart, Jacob makes his way back to the car, shaking his hands dry on the way. He sighs heavily, knowing he has no real direction or any real destination. As a boy, he'd always walked into the sunset like a great Western hero. Now, as a man with no family left aside from his children, he is retracing his steps one last time in hopes of a new beginning.

His children wait patiently for him. Ashley smiles as she awakens in the back seat. "Where are we, Dad?" she asks.

"We are still a long way from home," he answers as he hits the roof of the car with one hand, mustering up a small amount of enthusiasm.

Only an hour after getting back on the road, the car starts to make a strange sound. It is an odd round of clicks and clanks. Shortly thereafter, the car coasts to a stop. The engine revs as if it wants to run, but the wheels just won't rotate. Lizzet looks at her father from the passenger seat. "Why are we stopped?" she asks, a hard look of confusion on her face.

Jacob takes his hat off and scratches at his c.h.e.s.t and then his chin, staring straight ahead with a baffled look on his face. Finally he responds, "I don't know." He waits a moment, then he tries to turn over the engine again, but there's only a wet, flopping sound followed by the feeble click of the starter.

"Let me take a look." Jacob gets out and opens the hood of the car. He stares into the steaming, hissing mess and can think of nothing to say but, "Well … shit."

Jacob has worked on a handful engines in his life. He can change his own oil, clean his sparks, and he knows what a leaking gas line looks like, but this is like nothing that he has seen before. He retrieves a rag from the back seat and then reaches into the engine, removing half of the broken transmission casing. "I think we're going for a walk," he states as he examines the oily pieces of steel. "There was some sort of buffet or something back that way a handful of miles, I think. If we start walking now, we'll be there around sunset. We can call for a tow from there."

Lizzet, the older of the girls, speaks up. "Dad, you can't walk that far. Can't we wait for someone to drive by and pick us up?"

"I don't think I've seen another motorist in over an hour," he says, cracking his neck and stretching out his aged but sturdy form. Lances Jacob is an old, heavy man with weathered features; he has put on a good amount of weight in recent years, giving him a husky look, but he's still healthy enough. Today he has chosen to sport a tan polo shirt and matching canvas pants with his dust bowler cowboy hat and snakeskin boots. He takes his spectacles off and wipes his face, thinking about the long task at hand.

It takes some convincing, but he and his children soon begin walking back up the highway in the treacherous summer heat. When you're young, five miles isn't too far a distance. But when you reach sixty or so, every mile is trying on the bones.

The establishment they eventually reach is a strange-looking place. Neon lights illuminate the Old West–style façade, and a bizarre group of vehicles wait out front—some bikes, an eighteen-wheeler, a sports car, and an old bus like the kind Western bands like to use. The name of the unwholesome place is Lamia's Back. There's a picture of a serpentine woman with her a.s.s up in the air looming above the door, which is fifteen feet tall and made of cold steel. Inside, a roguish-looking man greets them. The walls are gray as stone, and the stink of s.e.x and liquor runs strong on the breeze around the joint.

It is a rowdy place. There is a live band playing behind a chicken-wire gate, and a powerful-looking colored man with a tattoo of the V.i.r.g.i.n Mary on his exposed c.h.e.s.t looms near the entrance. He gives the three of them a dirty look as they make their way to a table to await hot food and any leads to assistance with their little problem they may find. It appears that the Lamia's Back is a nightclub of some sort, as shortly after they take their seats, a woman takes the stage and begins an e.r.o.t.i.c dance.

I can't believe I'm here, and seeing this, Jacob thinks, sitting in a bar with my children watching a woman undress in front of a bunch of inebrieties. The scene is quickly broken, however, when a pair of slick-looking men in silk suits stand up and a fight breaks out between them and the man that was at the door. Screams of gunshots shatter the air. No more than a few seconds later, the dancing woman morphs into a snake-tailed beast and sinks her fangs into one of the suited men. Soon all hell breaks loose as the floor breaks open and the room fills with animated corpses.

Fighting breaks out all around Jacob where he stands in shock. There's an explosion to his left. Blood starts to spill from the sprinklers, and there is a scream from one of Jacob's girls as a hissing bark comes from his right, followed by the sound of twisting metal.

Jacob spins to catch a glimpse of two of the monsters careening away with his children. The first abomination is a fly-like man, hunched over with elongated traits and oily skin. The other, a rickety, aged corpse, fades into the murky depths of the bar to the point where the former holy man can only make out an indiscrete shape. He is forced to quickly shake himself awake and accept what he is now seeing. He rips a leg from his chair and begins his struggle with the armies of the damned.

Jacob's eyes burn with a divine rage that only a parent could understand. He squares himself off with one of the devils surrounding him, tightening his grip on his pseudo mace. He pulls back and takes his first swing furiously, anger giving him strength well beyond that which a man of his age should have. The force of the blow flings the befouled creature away, toppling two more in the process.

Heart filled with spite, Jacob drives the club into another's gut then across its face, driving it to the ground. Struggling to hold on to his humanity, he whispers a prayer to himself. Consumed by a sort of blood frenzy, he swings his club again and again into swine after swine, shattering their bodies with most every attack, clearing waves of his prey as he tries to catch a glimpse of his children in the mass carnage. Monster after monster falls beneath his fury until the waves thin out and he finds that his girls are nowhere in sight.

Grief taking over for a moment, Jacob looks to one of his fallen nemeses and strikes it several more times until his club breaks, cracked beyond the point of usefulness, at which time Jacob discards it and spits on the corpse.

***

"Larry," Snake yells, "I need you!"

As Snake kicks the serpent woman's body off of Larry, one of the undead monsters' leaps at him. Snake crosses his arms to catch it against his c.h.e.s.t then places his gun under its chin and blows a hole through its head. He pushes the limp body off of himself, then he shoots the next nearest one a number of times.

Snake reloads his gun and then pistol-wh.i.p.s yet another attacker away. He swoops down, grabs Larry's revolver, and begins pissing lead over the battlefield round after round fired in haphazard rage. Snake is filled with fire, he demonstrates skill and focus well beyond that which would be expected from a drunk ruffian. Three shots and the first drops, two more the next, an entire clip and another falls. With no need for conservation, Snake hovers over Larry, passionately protecting his brother. He mercilessly shoots every rotting corpse to come within six feet of them until he runs out of ammunition and is forced to pick up a chair and break it over the last one's skull he can see, two bits of broken chair I his fist link hon-bo's.

***

One shot, one kill, El thinks to himself as he's blowing both heads off the bartender with a single bullet from his Jackal. Never be wasteful. Every movement must count. Nothing seems to escape El's eagle eyes. Zombies start leaping over the bar at him. El grabs the nearest one, bends it over the bar, El grabs a steak knife from the table alongside him and drives into unearthly things c.h.e.s.t. He backhands the second to spin it around, grabs its head with both hands, and cracks its neck. The third comer he round kicks into the wine rack, impaling it with a second kick. El is in artist in hand to hand combat, tampered in the fire of war, his steal tested in the trenches of Vietnam. El knows what he can do and what his opponents cannot, this wisdom leaves him with no fear weather fighting one fowl or fifteen.

El hears a girl scream, turns toward the sound and, spotting a monster carrying a young girl, raises his Jackal to attempt to snipe the fly-man. Just in time he spots his partner. "Lacerti," El says over the ruckus, nodding at him. Lacerti nods in return and continues his pursuit of the monster and girl. El leaps back over the bar and tries to find a clean shot, but instead he is forced to shoot the eyes out of three other, closer zombies. "Bugger." He whispers knowing that he has missed his opportunity to safely lay chase himself.

This clears a path to the pool table on the other hand, where El grabs a cue. A staff isn't El's proffered weapon, but it offers speed and reach, it is light weight and easy to control, as room to jump and dodge becomes limited a more maneuverable tool can offer an edge.

Meanwhile, Lacerti runs at the door to save the girl, but he is met instead with an unmovable object as the iron door slams on him. Lacerti looks to El, disappointed. El catches the glance and nods in understanding. Nothing Lacerti can do now but resume his primary objective of protecting El—as if either of them needed protection. Lacerti picks up two nearby zombies and smashes them against one another in a maneuver sometime called 'the coconut' before commencing to pound them into the group into submission with his b.a.r.e hands. El cracks his erstwhile staff over one foe's head and stabs another with the pointy end of one half. He swings the bo between two with a clean strike to one and a rebound to topple thee other before him and finally smoothly smashes another, crushing its neck.

***

Having little experience fighting, Trash grabs a bar stool and, like a lion tamer, thrusts it at a group of the undead. One of the corpses grabs the stool away, but Spooky shatters a beer bottle over its head. "Eat shit, motherf.u.c.ker!" Spooky shouts at the fallen monster. Undead gather before them, growling and barking like ribbed beasts. Spooky lights a new cigarette on a candle and raises his defenses.

Trash looks up at him. "Think that will work four more times?" She turns her attention back on the in-closing swarms. She nimbly leaps away as the creatures start diving at them. One grabs Spooky's leg and he brings his foot up and stomps on its head, collapsing its skull.

"What do you say we find out?" Spooky says through his teeth as he dances around the monsters.

The two of them practically run circles around the zombies until they knock themselves out. "Good thing they're not smart," Trash heckles.

Spooky has never fired a gun, he has trained in knife fighting and 'Khally-style stick-fighting' but in the end Spooky only has one worthwhile weapon, his mitts. A hand grabs spooky from behind, Spooky spins into a crashing elbow strike then reverses into a rising strike, hammer hand and cannon punch and he has crushed an attacker.

Trash and Spooky stand but to but to protect each other. The next wave move in for an attack, Trash produces a folding knife from her jean pocket, she spines the knife holding it to the back of her arm. "you know. I wish I had a gun right now." A monster steps up to grab Trash, Trash pulls it's hear back and drives her knife up into its chin.

Another jumps at Spooky, spooky lets himself get grabbed. If he knows where his enemies' hands are he knows where their body is, he gooseneck grapples in a counter grab, he pulls the monster forward into a knee strike then a dropping elbow, he grips t by the head spinning it around and pushes it into one of the others to slow there advance. The old boxer and the young punk-rocker making a half way decent par once they have their footing.

***

In those few minutes, which felt like hours, the various groups fell the beasts. Snake grabs Larry's arms and pulls him to his feet. "That bitch broke my damn shoulder," Larry curses.

"It's not a bitch," Snake says, pointing at her, "it's a …" He pauses as he looks at it. "nope, you're right. It's a snake bitch."

"I don't care what it is. Ten minutes ago I was jacking off to it; now I'm covered in blood, and piss, I can't move my arm," Larry speaks in a fl.u.s.ter.

"Your shoulder's not broken." Snake points out

"How do you know?" Larry argues. "Are you the doc now?"

"Can you move it?" Snake asks, raising his voice slightly.

"Yes."

"Then it's not broken." Snake swoops down and grabs Larry's glasses. "What is this?" Snake holds them out to their owner.

"I … I … don't know," Larry stutters.

"Do you know why you don't know?" Snake asks, leaning into him.

"Because I dropped my glasses and I can't see."

"I know. I'm holding them."

"Give them back, please," Larry says.

"I can't," Snake protests, "they're broken."

"OK, I'll go get the other pair from the car."

"No."

"Why not? I can't f.u.c.k.i.n.g see!"

"You broke that pair while we were in Chicago," Snake explains.

Larry leans in, aggravated. "Then why didn't we fix them in Chicago?"

"We were kind of on a time limit." Snake grabs his shoulders.

"F.u.c.k!" Larry yells.

"Stop shouting." Snake pokes his brother's nose, a friendly gesture that he does to settle Larry down.

"OK," Larry says, relenting.

"I'll go get someone to bandage that shoulder up." Snake lets go of him. "Take off your coat."

Larry nods, takes his coat off, and unbuttons his shirt. He rubs his arm and notices that it's swollen and bleeding a yellowish green color, like a burn sometimes would.

Trash and Spooky join up with El and Lacerti. "What the f.u.c.k just happened?" Trash asks, jumping up and down, both scared and excited. Spooky shakes his head. "Those things sure weren't human." "Where are Pistol and the others?" Trash orders.

"Quiet." El looks around, noticing that something's not quite right—other than the obvious. El and Lacerti have both seen war, they have both seen fighting, and they both know death. But the stillness, the silence, and the lack of blood on the ground hint at something. Freshly dead bodies don't look like that. El kneels down to examine one closer. He states calmly, "I think they're playing possum on us."

***

Jacob walks toward Snake and Larry. He asks, "Is that man hurt?" Snake

points aggressively and says, "Are you a f.u.c.k.i.n.g doctor?"

Jacob shakes his head. "No, I'm a f.u.c.k.i.n.g priest."

Snake shakes his head in disappointment and covers his eyes with one hand, then asks, "The faggot kind I assume."

"Nope." Jacob boldly stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Snake. "I'm the real thing, a mean mother-f.u.c.k.i.n.g servant of god."

"Listen, Father," Snake starts, "my brother got bit. It looks pretty bad to me." Snake sounds scared, but he is putting on a strong face.

"What is his name?" Jacob asks.

"Larry."

"And yours?"

"Snake."

"Then let's take a look." Jacob kneels in front of Larry, who's clutching at his arm in agony. Jacob pulls Larry's shirt out of the way and examines the wound. He looks at the serpent woman on the ground. Like a doctor, he pulls up Larry's lip and then looks at one of his eyes. The holy man sighs a familiar sigh that his children know can mean a variety of things, none of them pleasant. "Is that what bit you?" Jacob asks Larry.

Larry nods, looking drunk with pain.

Snake looks at Jacob with concern. "What do you think?"

"It's a puncture wound, so it's going bleed like hell." Jacob looks at the snake woman again. "I once fell in a whole damn nest of snakes like that one; they ripped up my arms and legs really good. And do you know what my old lady did to make the swelling stop and bleeding stop?" Jacob asks. He explains, "She poured vinegar all over the bites. Made the most rank smell I have ever known, but it ate the venom right out of me. Go find me some, and I'll fix up your brother in a jiffy."

Snake nods, and for the first time in a long time he feels gratitude toward anyone. "Snake," Jacob yells as he is walking away.

"Yes, Father?"

"There is one more thing I need. I came in here with my children, and I think they're still here somewhere. After I help you, I want you to help me," Jacob pleads.

Snake nods. "I will, Father."

"Lances, my name is Lances," Jacob calls out.

Snake nods and offers a smug look. "All right, Lances."

***

Down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Pistol calls out to the child he rescued, thinking, What the hell is a ten-year-old girl doing in a sleazy night club like this? The girl crawls out from under a pile of potato bags. Pistol kneels. "Hey, honey, how are you?" He helps her to her feet.

She smiles. "Good, thank you."

"What is your name?" Pistol asks, in his kiddy voice again.

"Ashley," she responds, "how about you?"

He starts to answer, "Pistol," but stops himself, instead saying, "Name's Charlie. It's a little scary down here." Pistol looks around, making note of the heavy-looking medieval construction.

"What happened to your face?" Ashley asks innocently, feeling his scars.

Pistol shrugs. "Some of it is my bike, some I got fighting. Almost all of it is because I did things I should've known not to do."

"If you knew not to do it, why did you?" she asks, not understanding his answer. The man takes a deep breath and looks to the roof trying to form a reply. "I guess I wanted to know what would happen, or maybe I thought it would be fun." Pistol stands and begins pacing about. The room is two times the size of the upstairs, with a dozen doors and many candle-stands all around. There must be a hundred unopened boxes lying about as well.

"Charlie," Ashley pats his back, "I heard the man in the hall call you Belmond. Do you know him?"

Pistol thinks back to something his grandfather told him. "No," he begins, "but he knows me."

"How?"

"It's a bit of a story, but here goes," Pistol says. "My family's a bunch of Turks, formerly knights in the Ottoman Empire of the fourth century. Belmond led the Dracul Army, mostly Knights under the control of the church, alongside a man named Sir Nithies Clever. At that time in history, Turkey was a buffer zone basically being passed between all the kings of Europe. The Turks got pissed and asked us Dracul to protect Turkey under the offices of Her Holy Mother the Church. But as history tells, Mother Church is paranoid and greedy. So instead of watching the borders, we hunted the enemies of Christ, like the paladins in times before us.

"My ancestors were damn good at it. On one unforgiving hunt, Belmond returned home to find his sister missing. He went to Nithies for guidance. Nithies sent him on a witch hunt. One hag had named Nithies as a member of her covenant. With great haste, Belmond searched out the Dracul for confirmation of this. The devil himself seemed to have infiltrated their ranks. Nithies admitted he was a practitioner of black magic, then he returned Belmond's hexed sister to him. Nithies had signed a declaration of war on God for killing his wife. Belmond, it was told to me, had hexed himself after this betrayal, and with an angel and a demon as his witnesses announced that he and all his seed would be cursed to hunt the night against endless beasts that shall know his name until the last befouled Dracul burns in the abyss. The angel handed him this whip—" Pistol points to his whip—"saying, 'This will be your blessing,' while the demon took his hand and said, 'This will be your curse.'" Finally Pistol stops, finishing his tale.

"Is Nithies still around?" Ashley asks.

"If he is, he must be the most powerful undead around by now." Pistol shudders.

"That's not a very nice story to tell a little boy," Ashley adds.

Pistol thinks for a moment. "I was twenty-five before my granddad told me that. Even then, I figured it was malarkey," he explains.

***

Up top, Trash is walking from side to side, frustrated, rambling on and on about the missing bikers. Snake lobs a bottle of rubbing alcohol to Jacob. "Lances," he calls, "will that work?" Jacob nods baffled, and seemingly unaware of his surroundings.

Snake points around authoritatively and addresses the group, taking charge.

"Attention, if you will." He points around at everyone as he sits atop the serving station. "That over there is my boy Lances. He is a badass motherf.u.c.ker." He points two fingers at Jacob as Jacob's cleaning out Larry's wounds. "The lot of us dirtbags are going to help

him find his kids, then we'll get the hell out of here. You all got that?"

El looks up. "It's not happening."

Snake stands, pissed off. "Why not, baldly?"

El gets up defensively and explains calmly, a hint of defiance in his voice. "Number one," he nods to the door, "that is a fourteen-inch cold iron door with a six-inch crossbar for a total of twenty inches of metal to try to break through. That will require a minimum of three thousand pounds of pressure to break open. Ten of him couldn't match that," he concludes, nodding to Lacerti.

"Then we can punch out the wall," Snake commands.

"Not likely," El continues, "the cubical volume of this room is 15 percent less than its circ.u.mference, meaning that the walls are thirty-six inches deep, and the building has all-granite exterior walls."

"So what?" Snake asks ignorantly.

"Means we couldn't crack it with anything less than dynamite," El educates him.

Larry laughs. "Burn!"

"Second," El goes on, "I don't think I heard you say please."

"Burned! You are the insult master!" Larry calls out playfully.

Snake looks like he's been slapped. "Are you calling me stupid?"

El confronts Snake. "Open your ears; that is not the statement I made is it?" He walks back over to the monster he'd knelt by before. "Third," he says as the beast howls and the rest of the undead creatures in the place all come back to life, "they likely wouldn't let us if we could." El looks down as the beast on the floor reaches for him. "Welcome back," he says, driving his fist into its mouth, shattering its jaw, nose, and skull against the concrete.

Trash screams and the group circles the wagons, moving to stand around one another defensively. "Snake," Larry utters, sounding upset, "where is my gun?" The monsters start to loom over the group. "I don't think it matters."

"Why?"

"We're out of ammo."

Spooky yells, "F.u.c.k this shit! Backstage, ya'll!" The black man leads the way behind the stage and into the storage closet. El and Lacerti cover the way, slugging monsters left and right consecutively before barricading themselves in.