"Somebody please," the woman was calling, "put him down!"
The big demon was ahead still, seemingly unaware that he was killing its children. Cerulean moved to the next, kicked it in the swollen gut and locked its bowing head under his arm, squeezed until the throat popped, and wrenched.
A fountain of guts, bile and blood came out. The next was easier, and the one after that, and then he was standing alongside the red demon itself. It didn't look so tall now. It moved away from its last victim, and Cerulean swung one fist the size of a trash can lid to punch it, crushing the whole head like a swatted mosquito against the wall.
"Nooooo!" the woman shouted.
The red demon moved to the next. Cerulean darted round to block its path and shoved it in the chest. It staggered backwards over one of its burst victims, then straightened in the middle of the bloody hall.
Its burning eyes set on Cerulean, finally, and he looked into the hollow eyes of this ancient enemy. For so long he'd fought this demon. It had stolen his body, his mind, and killed everyone he ever knew.
Now it was here, made real in ways he'd never believed possible, and the anger tore through him, giving him the strength to stave off the cold a little longer. It still towered chest, shoulders and head over him, and he knew he couldn't hope to tear its head away; but then it wasn't hope he was fuelled by now, nor defiance, nor acceptance or any of those.
It was raw, rage-filled faith.
He dropped his shoulder and charged.
24. FLIGHT
It was like hitting a Humvee.
Their bodies crunched together with a ringing smack, and the red demon buckled slightly at the middle and took three steps back, but three was all. Cerulean bent far over and drove hard like a linebacker plowing through the defensive wall, but already he was slipping backward as the red demon pushed back.
One step, two, and it was just stronger than him. He screamed into the air, even as he heard the woman's voice from above.
"Yes, squash that little bastard."
Three steps, four, but that wasn't all he had to offer. After all, his strength had never been in his legs.
He skipped to the side and grasped the demon's left wrist. It ignored him, heading toward the next prisoner hanging from his chains, and Cerulean let it take one more step, pulling his arms extended fully, then with a single rowing stroke yanked it backward.
It lifted bodily into the air. For a second it flew, then hit the ground so hard the corridor shuddered.
The woman screamed. Focus filled Cerulean. This was what he should have done so long ago, to Green-O, to Julio, to any of the threats that faced him. Forgiveness was not for the weak, it was for the strong, and he'd never been strong enough to let them go.
He stamped on its head, then knelt to elbow it once in its hissing, evil face, then he seized the other arm and heaved it again, scraping down the corridor on its back. It kicked like a dog to get its feet under it, batted with its free arm, but it couldn't stop him.
There was a sound of raging applause. Cerulean couldn't be sure if it was the prisoners cheering or the crowd round the pool or the swelling of fresh cold concrete from the bile in his middle, but it spurred him on.
He kneed the demon in the face as it tried to rise, dropped a punch square between its eyes, then jerked it backward again. This was Green-O, Julio, and the demon that put him in his bed all together, plus the fear and panic that kept him there. This was all his enemies and mistakes at once.
It tugged to free its arm, pulling back, but Cerulean was stronger and merciless. He forced its arm to lock out straight, then punched one massive trash can lid fist through the elbow, breaking the joint backwards with a grisly CRUNCH.
Its black mouth opened and screamed. The woman screamed from above. Chains rattled and Cerulean yanked it again by its flopping broken arm, screaming and kicking along the blood-smeared cement. It spun and tried to swipe at him with its one good arm but Cerulean caught it, forced it to extend and lock, then punched it through the elbow too.
That scream stopped up Cerulean's hearing and almost dropped him to his knees. The cold thing inside him clawed harder and almost smothered him, but he beat it back one last time, yanked the red demon a few more yards, then stuffed it into its big glass cupboard.
It screamed, broken arms flailing and clicking as the bones realigned themselves under the skin, but it could do little other than headbutt the glass ineffectually as Cerulean bent his weight and drove the door closed. It slammed shut with a satisfying clank and for a second Cerulean leaned against it, staring at the demon inside, back in its box and butting so hard cracks shot through the glass.
No time.
"Scramble the drones!" The woman's voice was shouting from very far away. The cold bile was in his neck and rising. "Bomb the shit out of him."
He turned and ran down the corridor, and it felt like he was running into the past, back toward Zane and Green-O, to his mother and Matthew and all those billions of souls he never could have saved. This was his repayment.
The chains of the first of them, a skinny Asian with hollow cheekbones and a terrified grin, broke in his fists like a cornhusk. The man dropped and Cerulean moved to the next, breaking chains one after another. As he moved down the line the bodies grew fuller and plumper, less desiccated, more muscular. A man dropped and caught himself on his feet, wobbling unsteadily.
"Get them out!" Cerulean barked at him. It barely sounded like words to him, but the man nodded and started back toward the others. The next one, a redhead woman, caught her balance too and went to join him.
Seven more chains snapped and then he was done. He stood and swayed, looking back along the corridor as this slender rivulet of tiny people hobbled and helped each other to the ladder. The winch was running and a cluster of three rose up beside him like a yoyo.
So few. Scarcely enough to make one good wave.
The glass door at the end was grinding open, revealing something red inside, but it didn't mean much to him now. Instead he was back by the Mississippi with his best friend Zane on a wintry day, the ground covered in snow, tossing a football back and forth.
"Great spiral," Zane encouraged him, "good job."
"Go west!" Cerulean thundered at the survivors, a roar they probably couldn't understand. They quaked and wobbled and perhaps one of them said thank you. Many of them were moaning, many had to be carried as their shrunken legs no longer worked. "Warn Amo!" he shouted.
"Great catch!" Zane called again, and he grinned in the corridor, replaced by the demon running toward him now. Its arms looked healed and its great legs drove it on. Any second now.
He looked up at the little people climbing through the high hole in the ceiling. He felt them as hot, angry welts on his skin, like pinpricks of boiling oil. He waved at the last of them, a little black girl dressed in blue and white, and she waved down at him.
"Good bye, Anna," he said.
The red demon shouldered by him roughly and started to climb the ladder. He had barely the strength to hold onto its leg, but he clung there for long seconds while it kicked him in the face, slowing it down. He didn't even know why anymore, only that he had to, clinging until the cold inside broke his grip.
The demon pulled free and was gone. There were not many sounds left after that, only the fast pulse of his breath coming in and going out. He was hanging by his fingertips in a very high place, a man on the edge of the platform, a man lying on his back looking up.
The circle of sky through the round opening above was a searing, halogen white. Something fell through the gap, like dust, and landed on his face. He touched his thick red fingers to his face and felt the round mouth hole there, the slit of a nose. He brought his hand away with a speck of melting white on his bloody fingertip.
Snow.
The corridor was empty now and he was alone. A chill wind gusted over him to match the creeping ice inside, steadily taking him over. He felt the cold dot of the red demon moving away over his skin, following behind the hot burning cluster of prisoners as they sped across his chest. Perhaps they had the panel van. Perhaps they would reach Amo and warn him in time. Perhaps they would all survive, and Anna too, and all would be well.
He had faith.
There was just one thing left.
His hands found the rungs of the ladder and climbed. His legs trailed uselessly below him, already claimed by the demon inside.
He emerged above ground to a beautiful scene of white; snow was thick in the air, fogging the distant mountains and coating the churned earth with a cozy white mantle. He laughed, as the distant sound of the van's engine echoed back, followed by the crumping thud of bombs exploding.
Drones. Through the white curtains he caught glimpses of fire, but the hot cluster on his skin kept moving. They had a chance. The snow might save them. He held his hands out and let it gather starkly against the red of his palms, lying on his side in the snow, wanting to say only one thing.
"Anna, shall we build a snowman?"
She laughed and ran up to him. It was a time he'd loved, one of a thousand memories he'd cherished all through the dark times, as she grew up hurting inside and turning that hurt onto him.
"Silly," she'd said, "you can't make a snowman out of sand."
"This is not sand," he'd said, miming forming the slipping golden stuff on Muscle Beach into a ball. "It's snow, honey. Didn't you know the beaches in California are made of dried-up snow?"
She'd tilted her head to one side, so her tight braids flapped wildly, studying him through screwed-up eyes. "Dried-up snow?"
"Of course," he'd said, meeting her screwed-up eyes with his raised eyebrow, "don't you know that? When it snows in LA it melts very high up, then comes down as just the dried out grains in the middle, like seeds." He picked up a shell. "This too, it's just the hollow bone of an old snow bat that fell while he was flying to the Arctic. And look at this, here's a bit of a dried-up, frozen pterodactyl, left over from an ice age I expect."
She'd looked at him for a long moment full of doubt, and looked, and then her face split in a wide beam. She'd dropped to her knees and scooped up a big ball of dried snow and dunked it on his head.
He'd laughed. She'd laughed. It was such a happy time.
He looked down the hole into the corridor below; the gap was narrow but he could do it. It wasn't what he'd always dreamed of, it was no Empire State Building, but it would do.
He pressed a sharp edge of manacle to his neck and pressed until it broke the skin. He wasn't a demon yet, still human enough for this. He worked the metal deeper, through muscle and fiber down to bone, then wrenched it to the side, cutting his own throat. The cold leaped up sharper to refill the gaps, but he pressed on, cutting a furrow round the side of his neck, to the back and down the other side.
Blood covered his hands, but there was no pain. The twisted chain in his hands looked like an alien thing. He noosed it tight round his neck, digging into the channel he'd worn, and knotted it there, preventing the meat from growing back.
Lifting himself to arm-stand took all the focus he had left. His arms shook and heat and cold battled inside and out. He'd done this once before, when all he'd dreamed of was that Amo might survive, but now the stakes were higher. He had so much more to lose, and so much more to gain.
Ravi as a son-in-law and Anna happy with children of her own, all the people from below brought out into the light, New LA left with a fighting chance and a warning that could save the world. It was more than he could have ever asked for, filling the hole up in ways he'd never imagined possible.
He jumped.
There was no blazing somersault this time, no pike or twist, only an arrow-straight form through the hole with his arms at his sides, a suicide dive down to the ground. This was his reward, to be a hero twice over, and the concrete rushed up to meet him like it had so long ago, only now he had chosen it, and that made it all the better.
CRUNCH
He hit and his spine broke a second time, the bones shearing inside without the surrounding meat to support them, and his head pulled away from his body.
The cold couldn't reach him now. The demon couldn't hurt him any more, here at the end. All was black but for the ghostly burning blip of the survivors racing over his shoulder, with the single cold dot of the red demon following behind.
He'd won.
Anna lay down beside him. She nestled herself warm against his headless body and whispered, "Goodnight, Daddy."
Then he was gone.
* * *
In the corridor the woman's voice continued over the speakers, perhaps forgotten, perhaps no longer caring who heard what she had to say.
"I don't care how much of the reserve you have to scramble! I don't care how many missiles or drones we exhaust in the effort, that van does not get to Los Angeles to warn them, am I clear? Am I clear?"
Moments later the line crackled and went dead.
Snow fell down through the hole into the bunker, down across the giant red body of a man called Robert, heaping over him in a white pyramid that almost looked like tiny bodies interweaving, climbing one atop the other.
Snow flurried further on in thick drifts, coating the grimy floor with a pristine carpet of white and cleaning out the fog of rot, waste and suffering with fresh winter air, draining the stink like pus from an open wound. Now the splinter under the skin was gone, the pain was over and the land could heal.
Seven miles west along a winding road through a dense forest of Douglas fir, a white panel van veered over the icy, snow-capped road. Two thin men and a woman sat cramped and shivering in the front seats, peering intently into the white fog ahead as if they could somehow divine their future from it, working the steering wheel as best they could on the slippery asphalt, while broken chains clanked at their wrists and all around rang the distant, terrifying sound of explosions, echoing like avalanches through the thick rain of white. These were the woman's bombs falling from twenty thousand feet overhead; unstoppable, unpredictable, against which they were utterly defenseless.