Harry waited anxiously while the others turned and saw for themselves. Coming through the snow, with a steady and methodical purpose, was the hooded figure again; only this time, on either side of him, were others. Dozens, in fact. Their ghostly visages seemed to melt into the background of the thick, whirling blizzard that could have hidden an endless legion of them for all Harry knew.
Kath frantically tried keys on the lock. Lucas fell to his knees, muttering. Harry thought he heard the Irishman say something about ‘an army of Christ’, but there was no time to ask about it; the hooded figures were approaching. Urgently, Harry turned to Kath at the door. “How’s it going?” he asked her.
The chinking of keys. Kath fumbled with the lock. “I’m trying,” she said, sounding close to tears. “I’m sodding trying.”
As if things could get any worse, Harry heard a sound that chilled his blood several degrees beyond the ice that already flowed through it.
Growling.
The sound was so guttural that it could have emanated from a pack of rabid wolves. Or a dozen beasts from hell, thought Harry. Alongside the hooded figures appeared several other beast-like shapes, moving faster and more erratically than their two legged companions. They seemed like over-sized dogs, just as Jerry had described them. Harry wished he’d paid more attention
“It’s the hounds of hell,” said Jerry. “The ones I saw earlier with Jess. Believe me now?”
Harry clutched the chef’s knife tightly in his hand, but had a horrible feeling that it would prove to be as useful as a handful of wet spaghetti. “Jerry,” he said. “If we live through this then I will be the first in line to apologise for not believing you, but now’s not the time for humble pie.”
Jerry seemed buoyed by the vindication and actually began to smile. He moved over to Kath and picked up the baseball bat that she had propped against the supermarket’s door.
Lucas was still on his knees, but had stopped his incoherent rambling. He fixed his gaze on Jerry. “What the b’jaysus are you doing, lad?”
Jerry narrowed his eyes at the man. ”I’m getting even.”
With that, Jerry trudged through the snow at a speed that was as close to running as was probably possible given the terrain. He held the baseball bat high above his head as if it were a holy sword of Justice. The strange army of unearthly figures continued approaching, led by the more quickly moving ‘hounds of hell’. Jerry didn’t seem concerned by any of them and picked up speed.
“Jerry, get back here!” Harry shouted, but his words were wasted and almost faded into the blizzard.
Moments before Jerry was set to collide with one of the hounds, he stopped in his tracks. Harry watched the boy stick out an arm and make a beckoning motion with his hand. “Let’s go, Cujo!”
Jerry swung the baseball bat from over his head in a downwards arc. It connected with the skull of his closest attacker. With a snarling whine, the beast shot sideways into the snow, which quickly begun to melt around it. Jerry swung the bat again and it connected with the beast’s hindquarters, causing it to yowl in agony. Before he had time to swing again, it got to its feet and fled. Jerry held the bat above his head triumphantly. “Flawless victory, bitch!”
Harry watched the surreal image of the spotty, teenaged boy taking on a pack of hell beasts with a decrepit baseball bat and wondered whether he was stoned. Had his drinking progressed to drug-abuse and he was now just lying somewhere, hallucinating the whole thing? It was a thought he would’ve liked to have held on to very much, but he knew it wasn’t true. They were all in very serious danger and none of this was imaginary. It wasn’t a movie.
“Jerry! Get your arse back here, now!”
Harry’s warning was too late. He and the others watched in horror as a wave of dog-beasts swarmed over Jerry’s scrawny frame. Harry was unable to take his eyes away as flesh and fat were shorn from teenager’s bones like meat from a turkey, razor sharp fangs piercing every inch of Jerry’s skin. Harry thought his ears would explode under the force of the boy’s agonised screams and was grateful that they only lasted a few seconds as the exertion eventually ripped free Jerry’s vocal cords.
Harry sobbed.
“Thank God!” Kath said finally, unlocking the door and pushing it open so hard that she fell to her knees on the other side. Harry himself did not move, too transfixed by the pack of wretched beasts that feasted on Jerry’s still-twitching body as though it were a packet of raw meat. Despite everything that had happened that night, Harry was only now realising the situation they were in. “They’re going to kill us all, aren’t they?”
“Maybe,” said Lucas, pulling him backwards and through the door. “But there’s no reason for us to make it easy for them, is there?”
Finding a defiance inside of himself that he did not know existed, Harry closed the supermarket’s door behind them. “No,” he said, “That’s the last thing we’re going to do.”
Kath locked the supermarket’s door while, outside, a dozen hooded demons surrounded them.
Chapter Thirty
“Damien…
“Damien, wake up.”
Damien opened his eyes, expecting light to stream in and burn his retinas; but there was only darkness. Gradually, he remembered the evening’s events. The unending snow, the power cut, and everybody freezing. He could remember no more than that at first, but when he found himself tied to a chair he began to panic. It all came flooding back to him.
“Steph!”
“I’m here, Damien. I’m going to untie you, but you’ve got to stay calm. We need your help.”
“That son of a bitch knocked me out. Harry, I’m going to kill you.”
“Damien, I can only untie you if you calm down. The only reason Harry hit you was because he thought-”
“I was going rape you.”
“Yes,” said Steph. “We got it all wrong. It wasn’t you, it was-”
“Nigel!” Damien could remember; remembered finding the sick pervert about to stick it in an unconscious woman. Not just any women either; it was Steph. Damien was a lot of things, but a rapist he was not. Sex offenders and nonces were a whole other level of scumbag; subhuman slugs. He pulled at his wrist restraints, furious when they would not come off. “Where the hell is that piece of shit?”
“I’m here princess, and guess what? This time you get to watch.”
Damien strained in the darkness to see what was happening. He heard Nigel speak and the girls cry out in fear, but his eyes were still too unadjusted to the lack of light. He could only make out vague, shifting shapes in front of the fireplace. He struggled at the ropes around his wrists. Come on, come on. Need to put a stop to this before it gets nasty. Arsehole needs to pay.
The ropes were tight, too tight in fact, and the skin around Damien’s wrists was abraded and sore. Nevertheless, he began sawing his arms back and forth, trying to create some slack that could set him free. In front of the fire the struggle continued, punctuated by a wet slapping sound.
Damien flinched as a body fell down in front of him. Steph lay crumpled on the floor, dazed and semi-conscious, blood seeping from a wound on the bridge of her nose. She murmured something to Damien but it went by him. It sounded like the word ‘poker’. Damien continued rubbing his wrists back and forth and felt the ropes loosen a couple of millimetres.
Yes, come on.
At his feet, Damien could feel Steph squirming on the floor, slowly moving past his legs. At first he thought she was making a run for it, but a tugging sensation at his wrists made him realise what she was doing: untying him.
He felt the ropes loosen.
Damien’s eyes adjusted to the scene in front of him. Nigel had Jess up against the wall beside the fire, struggling back and forth as the girl held onto his wrists, keeping his hands away from her. Jess obviously put up more of a fight than Nigel expected. Damien almost smiled as he watched her spit and bite at his face, doing anything she could to defend herself.