The New Kid (26 page)

“So you
knew
all along—what I was doing, who I was hunting,” said Will. Silence. Then the fat Gerald thing stomped into the living room and with one mighty puke of rancid beer toxin set the couch Will was hiding behind on fire.

“You thought you were soooo sneaky!” bellowed Gerald as the power rod crashed through the picture window and obediently snapped into the palm of Will’s outstretched hand.

“Why didn’t you try to kill me?” demanded Will.

“Maybe I did,” bleated Gerald. “You’ve always been a slippery little scumbag.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Will. “You’ve had a thousand opportunities to put me in my grave. I don’t understand. You’re one of
them
. Why didn’t you kill me? Why have you been bird-dogging me all these years?”

“Like I told you, I’ve been chaperoning you. Making sure things went according to plan.” Gerald was growing carbuncles and boils and they festered rapidly and emitted a stench so strong Will had to partially cover his mouth.

“Whose plan?”

“Oh, I think you know whose freakin’ plan I’m talking about, Willie.”

There it was again, that name Will detested. The power rod glowed and pulsed with force as Will stood up and squared off against the creature who had been his stepfather, which now sprouted a dozen more slithering tentacles from his armpits, neck, and belly. Will heard his mother calling from upstairs.

“Will? Gerald? What’s going on down there?”

“We’re fine, Mom,” said Will. “Just stay there and I’ll be up in a minute.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” burped Gerald.

Will activated the double saber on the power rod and twirled it as he advanced on the creature.

“Go ahead and cut me. I won’t mind,” blurted the corpulent beast as he moved to the doorway leading to upstairs and wedged his massive buttocks into it, purposefully blocking Will from getting to April.

“I think you’ll mind when I cut you in half, Gerald.”

Will’s eyebrows furrowed as he took measure of this strange fat ugly brute in front of him. He’d always disliked Gerald, but now, knowing that he was going to have to kill him, he almost felt sorry for him. Emphasis on the
almost
. He thought about this creature touching April, and his blood boiled.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so harsh with you all these years, Willie,” said Gerald, who, in an impossibly odd turn of events now appeared almost tearful. His tentacles shot out and whipped around but he wasn’t trying to kill Will, merely keep him at bay. Will sidestepped a tentacle and then hacked it off. It spurted a goopy kiwi-colored blood that clotted instantly and turned solid, pulsing and then cracking and exploding.

“I’ve only wanted what’s best for you, boy,” wailed Gerald. “Because what’s best for you is best for all of us.”

Tears were running down his cheeks now and Gerald’s nose was running like a toddler’s as he sniffed and burbled and cried. He looked genuinely remorseful.

“For years I’ve had to hide my true feelings and act aloof and distant,” Gerald warbled.

This is an act
, thought Will.
He’s mocking me, taunting me
. But another tiny voice in Will’s head told him that Gerald’s performance wasn’t a performance at all but an expression of genuine emotion. But where was it coming from?

“I shouldn’t be saying this,” said Gerald, “but I’ve always cared so very deeply for your welfare. Every time you came home from . . . doing what you do . . . I always thought to myself, I don’t know how I’ll cope if anything happens to young Willie.”

Things were getting way beyond weird, and it occurred to Will that the creature might be purposefully trying to mind warp him, so he shouted loudly, “Enough of this crap!”

Will charged forward and used the arctic gust on his power rod to freeze and incapacitate two more of Gerald’s tentacles before kicking them to bits. Gerald bled more lime gunk and dropped to his knees, which made a squishing sound as they hit the floor due to the abundance of protruding boils.

“Tell me what’s really going on!” demanded Will.

“I have done what’s been asked of me,” stammered Gerald as he half-heartedly swiped at Will with more tentacles. In a flash of swift, anger-fueled energy Will spun and used the double-edged lightning sword to cut off six more of Gerald’s maddening tentacles, which fell to the floor and writhed like cleaved snakes. Gerald moaned in pain but he was smiling wistfully as his decaying life’s blood spilled from him, as though he felt he was bound for a better place. He moaned as his massive body began to expand even more and Will glanced out the window at the purple clouds now angrily crowding the house.

Will heard his mother whimpering and wrenched his gaze from the window and looked up at her. She was at the top of the stairs looking numb, shell-shocked, paralyzed with terror as a thousand questions pinballed through her brain. She was staring at what was left of Gerald’s monstrously mangled body. It was difficult, to say the least, for April to comprehend, let alone process, the image she now confronted: the burbling backside of the man she’d lived with for years, swelling with such force that the Dockers she’d bought him were all but ripped off. And the tentacles . . . so many tentacles. April felt faint.

“Stay where you are, Mom! I’ll come to you!” shouted Will.

Gerald made one more weak lunge at Will who, with a mighty swing, slashed what was left of his stepfather into quadrants, silencing him forever. Gerald’s remains, like those of all demons, hissed
and sparked but didn’t just disintegrate. But because of Gerald’s perpetual gaseous state his remains went up in a horrific explosion. Gagging, Will rushed up the stairs and held his mother tightly. The house shook with the force of an earthquake and lightning blasted down out of the sky and Will heard the sound of the Dark Lord’s laughter ringing in his ears.

He felt a ribbon of panic wrapping around his ribs as he realized something he knew was of no small importance. By dispatching Gerald,
he’d just made kill number 666!
Will looked down at his hands, wondering if the kill had changed him, if he was now going to go through some metamorphosis. But he was the same. Wasn’t he? He felt angry and apprehensive, felt his blood heating up, but that was normal in these circumstances, wasn’t it? The ground rumbled and the sky opened up and rain poured down. But it wasn’t an ordinary rain. Will dashed to the window. Hundreds of thousands of tadpoles were falling from the sky. It was as if the Dark Lord had scooped up the dregs of a lake and was dumping them down on Harrisburg. Will looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was still himself, 666 kills or not. He was going to get through this thing if it killed him.

Then he looked at his mother. She was still in shock, still staring at the last remains of the creature she knew as Gerald rapidly decomposing in fiery sparks.

“Will I . . . I . . . what . . . how . . . ?” Her thoughts were jumbled and confused. She began to speak not in English but in some incomprehensible tongue and Will knew she’d gone even deeper into shock.

“Don’t try and think about it right now, Mom, don’t think about anything except how much I love you. I’m going to take care of you; I’m not going to let them get you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you!”

April’s knees buckled as the sights and sounds of the previous sixty seconds overwhelmed her and she lost consciousness. Will scooped her up into his arms. His wrist watch began emitting emergency signals again and he hurried down the stairs and set his
mother down on a chaise lounge in the living room. Then he went to the coat closet and yanked open the door. Turning on the light he quickly tapped a code on the wall and a hidden panel whisked open, revealing a bank of switches that Will began activating. He was putting the house into lockdown mode. The infrastructure of the house came to life and one-inch thick steel shutters rolled down over the doors and windows. All those weeks ago when they’d moved in the workmen had done their job.

Will picked his mom back up and moved them downstairs and into his secret chamber, where he lay her down carefully on the futon. With wide eyes he watched his monitors. The red dots were still coming, more and more of them, the Dark Lord’s army. It was a blizzard of malice and Will switched a couple of the monitors over to exterior real-image surveillance. He began to sweat. His heart was stampeding in his chest as he watched the approaching purple clouds, clouds that brought with them the most painful memory of Will’s life. The clouds roiled and grew darker and more menacing and Will braced himself mentally for the onslaught, running through various defense strategies in his mind.

But then something unexpected happened. The clouds kept on moving, right past his house. Will checked the infrared monitors. The red demon dots were shifting now, too, still coming, but converging and turning left on the screen, away from Will’s house. And then it hit him. They weren’t coming to his house, they were converging on another house in the neighborhood. He felt an awful pang of dread in his chest as he realized where they were going. They were going for Natalie.

Soon I shall own all who are dear to your heart and then you shall bow down to me as it is written!
The Lord of Darkness had been talking about
Natalie
.

Will cursed himself. He should have known! He had to save her. He’d made probably the biggest mistake of his life and now he had to make it right. He raced to a huge aluminum crate and, dialing the
combination, unlocked it and extracted a futuristic-looking weapon resembling a small bazooka. It was a weapon of his own design of course, a high-powered electroflayer, a gun that fired bolts of electricity capable of chopping a good-sized oak tree in half. He returned to the futon, where April was just struggling to sit up.

“Mom, I want you to hold this.”

April was still mind numb but enough of the shock had worn off that she could comprehend what Will was saying. She took the weapon into her arms.

“Here’s the trigger,” said Will as he placed her finger on it. “Can you feel it?”

April nodded.

“Good,” said Will. “I have to go. . . .” He searched for words that would not alarm his mother further and decided to keep things as vague as possible. “I have to run an errand.”

His mother’s eyes grew large with fear and Will took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. If anyone, or
anything
, comes through that door besides me, don’t even think about it, don’t try and figure out what it is, just shoot it. And keep on shooting until. . . .” Will’s voice trailed off as he imagined the unthinkable. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I won’t ever leave you, I promise.”

Then Will ran to another aluminum locker and took out one of his newest weapons, the VB2, a high-powered medium-range voltage bombardier. It was always good to be prepared.

W
ill ran out the front door and felt the earth shaking beneath his feet. A short but powerful jolt, maybe a 5.0 earthquake. He glanced up at Mount St. Emory and saw a thin tendril of smoke snaking up from its peak. The mountain was coming alive. Time was running out. He used his remote to open the door of the Mitsubishi and set the voltage bombardier down in the passenger seat. He’d only run a couple of field tests on the weapon but felt confident it was battle-worthy. The VB2 shot balls of packed electro-charges that swarmed around the target and then exploded, creating a net of doom. Will hoped he wouldn’t need it but had a feeling he would.

Will pulled backward out of the driveway, the wide-rimmed racing tires on the EVO smoking on the pavement. He flew down Maple Street and passed what looked like a nasty domestic disturbance. A short bald man with a goatee had his wife on the front lawn and was pulling her hair as she screamed and slapped at him. Will didn’t have time to stop and play cop with these two freaks so he simply swerved across the street and clipped a fire hydrant, popping off the stop cap so a sideways geyser of water blasted the scrapping couple and knocked the bald guy clear back to his porch.

At the first stop sign Will saw another sad disturbance. Hefty Mrs. Norrington had little Scoopy tied off to a stop sign with his leash and was cruelly swacking at him with a stick, an evil gleam in her eye; the old broad actually seemed to be enjoying it! Will put down his window and used a short throwing blade to slice through Scoopy’s leash, setting the little dog free. He dashed off down the street as Mrs. Norrington cut loose with a string of expletives aimed at Will that would have made a dock worker blush.

Will pressed the EVO hard and was circling around to Natalie’s street when he saw that it was blocked off by city workers from the gas company and some police who’d erected a barrier. He rolled his window back down and caught the tail end of a cop’s explanation to an irate driver, telling him that due to the recent earth movement they suspected a break in the main gas line and workers were on their way to try to locate and repair it.

Will yanked hard on the wheel, cut through an alley, and gunned the EVO through side streets so he could approach Natalie’s house through the back way. It was a circuitous route but if he was lucky he could take the Dark Lord’s assault team—if they hadn’t struck already—by surprise. His route took him past Harrisburg High where he paused at an ugly sight. There were demonteens in abundance but they weren’t wielding weapons, they were holding paint brushes and rollers and were just finishing up slathering the school with paint. They’d painted the whole school a terrifying shade of blood red. The outline of the Mustang had been obliterated and in its place they’d painted a huge black pentagram with a goat’s head in the middle.
Terrific
, thought Will.
What a fitting mascot.
He made a note to himself to wipe the school off the face of the earth when he had more time.

He screamed around the high school and down Holmes Point Road and that led him to N.E. 32nd Street, the back road to Natalie’s place. He tore down it, skidded to a halt, and stared at Natalie’s house through the backyard. The entire structure was cloaked in the
ominous, roiling purple clouds, which gave off tiny lightning bolts that had already wilted the landscaping. A posse of demonteens circled the house in the clouds. Will checked his power rod in its holster and then whipped out the voltage bombardier. He crossed the backyard lawn and knelt down where Natalie’s parents lay prone. He quickly checked for pulses. They were gone.