Malachi saw the three imp-things, looked at Ms. Jones, then looked back at the imps. She wasn’t going to outrun them. Hell, he wasn’t going to outrun them. He’d been skipping cardio days way too often.
“Fuck! Go down that alley, then pick a street and keep going. Do not go to 6th or East Smith. Go as fast as you can.”
Ms. Jones’s eyes had gone wide and she was gaping in horror at the demons.
“GO!” Malachi roared.
She tottered towards the narrow alley, pulling Fido as Malachi whirled on the demons. “Hey shitheads! Look at this! It’s your buddy’s blood!” He shook his shirt at them. He held the improvised spear tight, then his eyes widened as he glanced at it. Strange ethereal sparks were coming off the iron quill he’d fixed as a tip. As the sparks danced, the quill was—disappearing. Literally, vanishing into thin air.
Shit, he thought intelligently. The sirens were growing louder at least. Maybe if I can last long enough…
Malachi had done the javelin event once in middle school track and field because he thought it was cool. He’d come in dead last, but he at least knew sort of how to throw a spear. He wound up and chucked his broomstick as the quill tip vanished, then turned and started running down the center of the street, bare feet pattering against the asphalt. The hard grit stung his feet.
He heard the clatter of his broom handle hitting the pavement and the guttural chatter of the imps. He glanced back. Well, it had worked. All three of them were following him, and gaining. They were shorter than him, so Malachi had the advantage on stride, but these things could also leap three stories up and crack concrete, so he didn’t have any illusions about their relative strength.
He heard the clack-clack of their clawed feet behind him and put on the gas, breaking into as fast a sprint as he could manage. His feet felt like they were on fire, followed shortly by his lungs. He crossed the street, lights suddenly appearing to his right as he heard a car horn and the squealing of brakes.
Malachi tripped on a pothole in the middle of the street and went sprawling, scraping his arms and legs to shit as he skidded. The white hot pain shot through him.
The driver laid on the horn.
“Drive! Get the fuck out of here!” Malachi said as he scrambled to his feet and stumbled towards the sidewalk. “Actually, wait, can you—”
Suddenly, one of the imps was by the side of the car. Its club smashed into the driver’s side window, sending glass tinkling everywhere, then reached for the man driving. The driver screamed and hit the gas, just missing Malachi as he peeled out, swerving erratically. The imp had a firm grip on the man’s collar, so as the car accelerated, the imp was dragged along with it. That left two imps, one holding a spear, and the other a machete that was probably going to give him tetanus just from looking at it.
Then he looked back and saw the blue and red flashing lights approaching.
A strange feeling went through Malachi. He was relieved. He was relieved to see a cop.
Malachi felt a burst of pain as something wrapped around his torso. A chain, he realized, as it started dragging him backwards. He shouted as he was dragged over the concrete, scraping up his back side to match the front. He could feel loose gravel embedding itself. He fumbled at the chain, trying to dislodge it. It was strange; it was sending out little sparks just like the quill had as it disappeared. The chain was glowing, though it wasn’t hot.
He twisted, trying to get into a position where he could fight back against the imp. And where the hell had the imp gotten a chain anyways? As he looked back, he saw the imp holding a hand-claw in the air. Dancing in front of the palm were glowing red symbols. As the chain dragged him closer, it was disappearing in a hail of crimson motes. What the hell? Is that magic?
As the chain vanished, the imp with the rusted machete grabbed his leg, claws digging into his shin, and started dragging him back up the street. It said something to him in that guttural language. The second imp hissed.
Malachi hissed out a breath as he went from being dragged on his ass to being dragged on his back, his poor t-shirt and back now getting torn up by the asphalt. There were bright headlights and cop car lights. The siren was almost on them. In the other direction, there were more figures, and a red glow. More imps?
“Help!” he shouted as the SUV squealed to a stop and the doors opened.
“Freeze!” came a voice over a speaker. “You! Short-stuff in the cosplay! I said freeze!”
The imp that was dragging Malachi paused, then turned to face the cops. There was a pressure, and dancing red sparks and glyphs sizzled into the air, gathering—then a bolt of fire whistled through the air.
“Suspect is armed! Requesting backup!” Malachi heard one of the officers shouting.
Then the shooting started.
“Wait!” Malachi shouted. The gunfire was deafening. He heard something whistle. A bullet. A fucking bullet. Didn’t they realize he was in the line of fire?
Another fire bolt zipped by, followed by more of the CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! of the guns. Malachi screamed as a hot line of pain blossomed on the back of his calf.
Fortunately, the imp who’d been dragging him had been hit too, and he was dropped to the ground. Malachi scrambled away on his hands and knees, trying to stay low, but also trying to get out of the line of fire. He heard a loud ping! as a bullet hit a parked car. He moved in between the bumpers of that car and another. The second imp leapt forward, accelerating suddenly towards the cops with a raised spear. Malachi blinked. There’d been those strange sparks again as the imp had leapt. Is that also magic?
There was shouting and more gunfire.
“Officer down!” he heard a cop shout, then another shot, then screaming.
Malachi rushed from his spot towards the sidewalk by the intersection, keeping his body low as he half-ran towards the corner of the building. Again, sharp pain stabbed him, and he collapsed to the ground, swearing and clutching his foot. Wincing, he pulled a piece of broken glass from his heel. “Motherfucker!” he said between clenched teeth. He had to take a moment to just lie there as the pain pulsed through him. As he hissed and swore, he looked back down the street. There were glowing figures continuing toward him. More imps, more porcupine-demons, and something new, too. It looked like a cross between a spider and a centaur. That was, the creature was trotting forward like a horse, but its torso had eight needle-like arms and its head looked arachnoid. It was the most nightmarish thing he’d ever seen. The big mandibles briefly exposed huge fangs as they flexed.
By all rights, Malachi should have been out of adrenaline. The terror of those creatures, though, sent another jolt through him. He scrambled back to his feet and ran. Behind him, he heard the screech of metal as molten iron quills hit the cop car. There wasn’t any gunfire anymore, just screaming. There were more sirens in the distance.
Malachi went for the alley in the next street, praying he didn’t step on more broken glass. He stumbled, and realized there was more pain from where the bullet had grazed him on the calf. That he could still move was a miracle.
The world became a jumble. Shouting. People leaning out from their windows to see what was going on. The glow of phone screens. Screams. Quills impacting. Firebolts sizzling. More sirens, but it was impossible to say where. More shouting. He kept stumbling on, just keeping his focus on moving forward. He crossed a street, somehow having the presence of mind to look both ways before he did.
Above, he heard the crack of helicopter blades, then saw the helicopter pass overhead. It was flying low, using a bright spotlight that momentarily blinded Malachi.
He gaped at it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, some part of him was processing, good, they brought out the big guns, maybe—
And then the helicopter exploded. There was this roaring sound, and then the thing plummeted into a three-story apartment building, making this terrible noise of crumpling and shrieking metal.
It took him a moment to process what had just happened. There had been this glowing red skull made of fire, trailing more fire, and then it had hit the helicopter.
Was that the wizard? Holy fuck. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
He could see flashing emergency lights reflecting off of buildings. Above him in the alley, someone looked down at him. “Dude! Yo, dude, up here! Are you okay?”
Malachi was not okay.
“You gotta get out of here,” he said. “There’s demon-things and the buildings are catching fire. More are coming this way, and a wizard just blew up a fucking helicopter! They just killed the cops down the street!” Realizing what he’d just said, he added, “I swear I’m not crazy. I gotta… I gotta keep…”
His lungs were still burning from all the running he’d been doing. He started jogging again.
He was so damn tired. He was losing blood too, though he had no idea how much. His jog became a walk. His walk became a stumble.
He kept going forward.
***
Malachi woke up, blinked, then sat up like a lightning bolt. The imp! The wizard! That red portal! He needed to—
He looked around, breathing. No, he realized. He was in a hospital. There was an IV in his arm and he was on one of those shitty wheelie beds that were designed to be as uncomfortable as possible to lie down on.
Actually, scratch that, he was in a school gymnasium. The basketball hoops had been raised up to the ceiling, and the floor was scuffed to shit. There was a thin barrier of plastic sheeting on three sides of him, but in the glare of the lights, he could see there were more beds around him. Someone groaned.
What happened?
He tried to remember. He’d been going south, heading away from the portal and the demon army. The helicopter had exploded, and he’d kept going. He’d made it… six blocks? Seven? Pretty far. Then his adrenaline had faded enough and he’d just collapsed in pain, his left leg hurting too much to move. That was the one with the glass laceration and the bullet wound.
Someone had found him. He’d been dragging himself toward the street, and some car had stopped. He’d said a bunch of shit to them, and then they’d driven towards the hospital. Then why was he here?
A person wearing scrubs passed his bed. “Hey,” he managed.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” the man said, raising a tablet to mark something down.
“What… why am I here?”
The man looked at his tablet. “Uh, severe laceration to the left heel, a nasty gash on your calf, various other cuts, embedded gravel, several first degree burns, one second degree burn, and blood loss.”
Malachi leaned back on the bed and closed his eyes. Words weren’t exactly coming easily to him right now. “I mean, why am I in gym class again?” he asked.
“Oh! All the hospitals are overwhelmed.”
“From the portal,” Malachi said, leaning back in. “Are we safe here?”
The nurse laughed nervously. “You’re perfectly safe. I know there’s a lot of rumors going around… I mean… but portals leading to another world? It seems a bit…” He trailed off, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying himself.
Malachi just wanted to sleep. Maybe in a few hundred years he’d be ready to do things like ‘stand up’ again. Maybe. Then something the nurse said hit him. “Wait, what do you mean portals? Plural. As in, more than one?”
“Ha ha,” the man said, actually saying ha ha. “That’s the rumor! My wife saw one on social media, said there was this green portal that opened up and started spilling out creatures straight out of the Monster Manual. She’s a bit of a nerd. Anyways, you know, plants started taking over the street. The video looks neat, but I think it’s gotta be AI-generated or something. There was the gas main that exploded on 6th and East Smith, and I think what probably happened on Harbor View Drive was something similar. I mean, if there were portals, where did they go? But there’s a lot of missing people, and a lot of hurt people.”
Malachi didn’t have the energy to argue with the man. He sighed, then opened his eyes again. “There was an old lady near 5th and East Smith. Ms. Jones, I think. Had a pomeranian. Is she okay?”
“No one with a pomeranian here,” he said. “She might have gotten placed in a different shelter.”
The nurse looked over Malachi, replaced the IV bag, then wandered off. Malachi felt under the thin blanket. Yeah, someone had cut his pants off so they could bandage him. He looked around. His phone was sitting on a little metal wheelie table next to the bed. He checked it.
483 notifications.
He set his phone back down and sighed again, feeling like death warmed over. He was just too damn tired to deal with that. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was sunlight streaming through the windows high up near the gym’s ceiling. He checked his phone again, ignoring the notifications from his guild mates.
He scrolled down his text messages to Malia Ward. She was listed as ‘Big Sis’ in the contacts.
She’d sent him twenty-two messages already. He read the first one: ‘Mal, I just saw your apartment on the news. This drone circled around and there was this red glowing thing and everything was on fire. Are you okay?’
The next one read, ‘The news anchor is saying there was a portal there but now it’s gone?? WTF do they mean a portal? What the fuck are they talking about? They’re saying there’s a bunch of people missing so please check in with me.’
He scrolled passed increasingly desperate messages down to, ‘Mal, you dead?’
And then the last one read, ‘You can’t be dead. You were there for me when no one else was. You stood by me when they wouldn’t. I need you to be alive, do you understand? Please tell me you’re okay. Please. Please.’
Malachi swallowed hard, blinking back tears.
‘Hey sis,’ he texted her. ‘Want to come pick me up from school?’
‘MAL!!!’ came the immediate reply. ‘What happened?? Where are you??? What’s going on???’
***
It took an hour for Malachi to wave down a nurse and get the address of the school they’d brought him to, then a few more hours for Malia to make her way through traffic with all the street closures. Eventually, she texted him that she’d arrived. By then, Malachi had talked with the nurses enough to convince them he was stable and they’d started getting him ready to leave.
A different nurse told Malachi to stay off his left leg, told him how to treat the nastier burn he had, stuffed a bottle of antibiotics in his hand, then gave him a crutch. Then she harangued him until he signed something he was pretty sure just was a promise not to sue them or something stupid like that. He could tell they kinda wanted him to stay, but they also wanted him to go to free up a bed. He was still a bit foggy, but none of his injuries had been that bad. Even the bullet wound was a graze, though it had bled a lot and still throbbed. He hobbled towards the gym doors. He’d never used a crutch before.
Out in the school hallway, there were more beds pushed up against some of the lockers, and dozens of people sleeping on the floor with a mishmash of pillows and blankets. Someone had changed the channel on the screen in the hallway so it was showing the news. A bunch of people were gathered around it. “—you think this is some sort of high-tech attack by Russia or China?” some pundit said, while aerial footage of a colossal rhino-like thing bashing into cars played in the picture-in-picture. It wasn’t a rhino, though, because it had a double-jaw that ate anyone who tried to run from their car once it’d hit it. As the newscasters talked, Malachi rolled his eyes so hard he nearly died. By the front office, he saw Malia, pacing back and forth.
“Mal!” she said when she spotted him, and rushed over to give him a bear hug.
“Ouch, hey, careful,” Malachi said. “Good to see you too.”
Malachi was tall, but Malia still had about two inches on him. They didn’t at all look related. Malia dyed her hair pink, and Malachi didn’t. Their facial structures were both different enough that plenty of people had asked if one of them was adopted. They both did have the same dark eyes, but that was it. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just… I can’t believe it. Mal, the news showed your apartment. They showed the blocks around your apartment. There’s nothing left, just a pile of smoking rubble.” She wiped her eyes. “Come on, let’s get you to the car.”
She was still driving the old red Mazda. The ancient sports car had seen better days, and that was a decade ago. He was surprised it still ran. Malia gave the car a little pat on the hood as she always did before she swung into the driver’s seat.
Malachi limped over to the passenger side, then tried to figure out how to fit the crutch inside in a way that it wasn’t sticking out somewhere. Malia helped him wedge it behind the seats, then the engine purred to life.
He leaned back in the seat as they pulled out of the lot. “Been a hot minute. Feels like high school again.”
“Yeah,” Malia said. High school hadn’t been great for her. “It’s… it’s fucking crazy out there. The news has only shown a few clips, but social media is full of it. Portals. Like, from another world. There were two, maybe three here in the city, and they stayed open for hours before they closed. But there’s more, all over. One of them was, like, a portal to an ocean or something, it just started pouring out water and fish all over the place, except it also poured out this huge sea serpent that looked like it came out of one of the bad Jurassic Park sequels. There was a green one near Covington, and people were getting sick from whatever came out of it before it vanished. No one’s sure if its poison or some sort of disease, but they can’t quarantine it because everyone’s trying to run. Suburban nitwits just scattering everywhere. The beasts were running around killing people, but someone got drone footage of the one that was by you. Fire demons. Creepy spider things. People getting dragged into the portal kicking and screaming.”
Malachi closed his eyes. “Yeah. They almost got me. They’re doing… I don’t know how else to say it. It’s magic. What do we do? Do we run?”
“I don’t know,” Malia said. “There’s vids over from the east coast, from Europe, from South America, and from Asia too. I don’t know Mandarin, but it’s pretty clearly more of those portals, and bad shit’s coming out of those too. I think it’s everywhere.” They drove in silence for a bit, then Malia said, “I guess… we just go back to my apartment?”
If this was happening everywhere, Malachi didn’t have any better ideas. “I guess,” he said.
Malachi looked out the window. All of a sudden, the world had changed. Just yesterday, he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life in some shitty office job so he could pay the bills. Now, just like that, everything he had was gone. Everything except his sister. Suddenly, the future was strange and unknowable.
They drove in silence. Above them, hundreds of birds had filled the skies, and were flying north.
===
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