Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

And I didn’t even know the guy.

I tried to turn and run. With every ounce of strength I had, I tried to force my feet to head in the opposite direction, but I could only stare. Watch as he got closer and closer. Drool rolled out of his shrieking mouth like the foam of a rabid dog. He wanted me dead. And he craved my death like addicts craved their next high. I could feel it. In one caustic blast, his murderous intentions hit me a microsecond before he did.

He slammed into me with the force of a freight train, knocking me senseless, but he had only enough time to send me crashing against the wall behind me before he went down. Probably because an equally angry Reyes was on his back. He tackled the guy to the floor, wrenching a loud scream from the guy’s throat as he tried to shake Reyes off. Still, the guy kept coming forward. Kept fighting and crawling and inching toward me as I pressed against the wall, stewing in my own bewilderment. And agony. My head had whipped back when I hit, and a startlingly sharp jolt of pain ripped through me like a tornado hell-bent on eating half of Barbara, my brain.

Faced with such bizarre and violent behavior, the crowd panicked. Several were hurt the moment the guy landed, but more were getting hurt in the crush of bodies, some trying to get out, some angling for a better look. Screams and shouts erupted and grew louder and louder as the guy did everything in his power to get to me.

“Go!”

I looked at Reyes. Keeping the man subdued was taking all his strength, and that’s when I knew the guy could not possibly be human. Or at least not all human.

He fought for a better hold and wrapped the guy in a headlock before offering me another glare. “Charley, for f**k’s sake, go!” he shouted through clenched teeth.

I scrambled to my feet as the guy elbowed Reyes’s jaw, loosening his hold just enough to gain another six inches. He refocused on me, his face contorted with a hateful sneer, saliva bubbling out of his mouth, blood gushing from his nose, but his only goal was to get to me. He clawed forward, his nails scraping on the cement floor, breaking as he fought for ground.

The chaos around me took on a life of its own. It rose to a cacophonic frenzy. Screams echoed from all corners of the warehouse as the spectators ran for the doors. I doubted any one of them even knew what they were running from at that point. People were screaming. People were running. And that was good enough for them. They followed suit only because not to do so would be detrimental to their health. They simply had no choice.

I’d started for the door when I noticed a kid in a Slipknot hoodie. He fell and would be trampled in a matter of seconds if no one went to his aid. I tried to rush forward, but the throngs of frenzied spectators pushed me back. I lost sight of the kid altogether.

Then I heard another growl. I had to turn back, to check on Reyes. The man had made some headway. He was once again only a few feet from me. As I placed one foot behind the other, unable to take my eyes off Reyes and the Hulk, a darkness emerged from him, the opponent, the crazy guy clawing toward me with a rabid fervor. For a split second, another head emerged out of his own. As black and dark as the outermost fringes of the universe. Teeth sharp as an obsidian razor and honed to a needlelike point. Then the beast was back inside him and I realized what I was looking at. A demon.

No. I stepped back again. No. A man possessed by a demon. I’d seen demons before when they’d tortured Reyes. Their spiderlike bodies. Their sinewy limbs that bent and twisted at unnatural angles. Their eyeless heads that consisted of teeth, teeth, and more teeth. And one was inside this man. He quaked with a fierce, animalistic need to rip me to shreds. He wanted me so badly, the hunger of it radiated toward me.

He gave one last, valiant effort to shake Reyes off, but Reyes was too strong. He wrestled him to the ground, and in one sharp move, he twisted the man’s head to the side and broke his neck. The surreal crack that followed, the unorthodox angle of his neck, the life draining out of him in seconds flat, caused another gallon of adrenaline to dump down my spine. And his smell, like rotten eggs, assaulted my senses.

A wave of nausea swept over me. I glanced around, tried to steady myself and to see who had witnessed Reyes break a man’s neck. The warehouse was almost empty now. A few stragglers stood in the shadows, mostly the bouncers and a couple other workers, their faces frozen in shock as they took in the dead guy.

Then Reyes was up. He grabbed my jacket and jerked me to attention. “What is it going to take to get you to listen to me?”

The colossal adrenaline dump that had overloaded my system now needed a place to go. With every ounce of strength I had, I pushed him off, rushed to the wall, and emptied the contents of my stomach onto the concrete foundation.

It was weird. I’d never had that kind of reaction to being attacked. I was usually much more composed. Or if not composed, vertical at least. But this time, I could barely stand. The world spun around me as my stomach heaved violently. That would explain the shaking and why I had an inexplicable compulsion to double over. But why? Why now? Why this guy?

Reyes didn’t give me time to finish, to catch my breath. He grabbed the back of my jacket again and dragged me toward the door. I thought about fighting him, but that would take an energy I just didn’t seem to possess. I felt like a rag doll in his grasp, my limbs hanging at my side, limp and useless. So I argued instead. I always had the energy to argue.

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, swallowing back another lurch of my stomach, and said in a muffled voice, “Let me go.”

He didn’t. He continued to drag me across the floor like a used mop. I felt his manhandling unnecessary and uncalled for, but fighting to keep bile down was taking all my mental energy.