The devil's Pact - S01 E412

Story 3 days ago

The devil's Pact - S01 E412

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 412

Jessica St. Pierre – City Hall, Seattle, WA

I was exhausted.

I don't think I've slept since the outbreak started, other than a few minutes dozing at my desk. The situation was horrible. The hospitals were crammed with sick and dying men with only a few overworked nurses and doctors – the few who were still coming to work – to tend to them. It seemed most of the male doctors and nurses were infected before proper quarantine procedures could be established, creating more patients for the beleaguered female nurses and doctors.

This is what Lilith wants—a world without men.

I stared down at the report in front of me. It was an order to start burning the dead. There wasn't time to bury them and they were beginning to pile up in the makeshift morgues. The battalion of soldiers Master gave me were stretched thin. They were the only men in the city immune to the disease, and had to be everywhere, trying to help out. I only had a section, half of a platoon, guarding me at city hall. It was all that could be spared.

I nodded my head and jumped. I had fallen asleep. I was so tired. I rubbed my eyes. What was I doing? I looked down at the order. Right. I reached for a pen, and scrawled my signature neatly at the bottom. I set that aside, and reached for the next piece of paper. A casualty list. It was heartbreaking. Most who died were young boys and elderly men.

I grabbed the next paper. Proposed food distribution sites. Every store in the city was shut down, no-one wanted to be out in public anymore. But people needed to eat and rations were being brought in by the military. Places needed to be chosen for those spots. I blinked, the page growing blurry as I struggled to focus.

I jumped; fireworks exploded outside.

I frowned, standing up. Why would anyone be setting off fireworks at a time like this? I walked to the window, glancing down at James Street and saw three soldiers firing their weapons down the boulevard. My exhausted mind struggled to think. Why would they do that?

A black rock crashed into one of the soldiers, caving in his chest. That woke me up; adrenaline spiked through me, setting my heart thudding. Up the street a brown-skinned, hairless woman ripped up another chunk of asphalt and hurled it at the soldiers. No, one of Lilith's monsters, I realized with a chill. More monstrous women rushed the soldiers, covered by the asphalt missiles. They were all varied: a gray-skinned woman with white hair, a gaunt woman with shriveled sacks for breasts, and a green-scaled woman loping on all fours.

The remaining soldiers kept firing; their bullets ripped into the green-scaled woman and she collapsed in a bloody heap, smoke rising from her wounds. The gray-skinned monster stopped and thrust her hands forward; a great wind swept down the street, buffeting the soldiers and knocking them to the ground. The skeletal woman reached one of the prone soldiers, her fingers sharp as claws, and she drove them through his body armor into his chest and plucked out his heart.

I couldn't hear what the last soldier shouted as he struggled to aim his weapon. He fired a grenade from a launcher slung on the bottom of his rifle. The window shattered before me as a boom rocked the building. I threw up my arms as a few shards of glass cut my forearm. The skeletal woman was gone, bits of her staining the street.

The door to my office burst open and I whirled about in fear. It was Privates Brasher and Santillian. “We have to go, ma'am,” squat Brasher shouted. His radio squawked noisily. “Those damned monsters are popping up all over the city!”

Santillian grabbed my shoulder and pushed me forward while Brasher led the way to the elevator. Another boom rocked the building, then a loud, repeating roar—some sort of heavy weapon firing. The elevator ride seemed to take an eternity to go down the two floors to the lobby. I trembled in fear; my heart seemed to beat a million times a second. I was afraid it was going to explode.

The doors opened on the lobby. Outside was parked a Stryker. The repeated roaring noise came from the machine gun mounted on a turret atop the armored vehicle, firing down Fourth Avenue. No-one manned the turret, it was controlled remotely from inside. Two more soldiers huddled on the side of the vehicle, firing their weapons in the same direction.

The air rippled behind one of the kneeling soldiers, like a mirage dancing on hot pavement, and then a woman stepped out of the ripples. She was pale; her hair seemed to glow with white light. She pointed her finger at the back of the soldier and a bright, red beam struck him and he fell forward, a smoking hole through his body armor.

“¡Madre de dios!” Santillian cursed as he and Brasher opened fire on the woman. The glass front doors shattered into tiny beads of broken glass. The woman turned, pointed her finger at us as a bullet struck her in the chest. Her red beam went wide, slicing through the front of the city hall, leaving behind a smoking line of destruction.

“Go! Get in the Stryker!” Brasher roared and raced for the front door.

A bullish, winged woman dropped on the Stryker from the sky, the vehicle rocking on its four axles, groaning in protest. How could something so heavy fly? She grabbed the turret and ripped the machine gun off, hurling it down. Then she grabbed at the hatch on top and started prying up the metal. Brasher fired his weapon at the winged monster. She didn't even flinch as his shots stung her body, leaving small, bloody holes.