All Hell Breaks Loose

June 13th

1:04 PM

Mariah Adams

The man carrying the gun was young, maybe his early twenties. He had surprisingly well kept blonde hair and thick-rimmed glasses, but most importantly I could see that his eyes were blue and untainted by whatever the madman had gotten as a ‘gift’.

He reacted calmly but quickly to our appearance. His rifle was pointed skyward and one hand was raised in submission. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m probably here for the same reason you are. We good?” His voice was soft but stern. It sounded like he’d likely been through this several times in the past few days.

Smalls chimed in quickly. “Yeah, all good, bro. There’s someone following us with a knife, though, and we could really use that gun.”

The kid with the glasses chuckled softly before his expression became stoic and steely as he watched the madman approach from behind us. The kid pushed past us and didn’t hesitate to strike the madman in the throat with the butt of his rifle. The fight was over before it even began as the madman tried earnestly to stab at anything he could reach but soon found himself impaled by his own knife.

The kid motioned for us to follow after the madman collapsed. “We should get back inside.” He gazed warily at the skies and streets behind us.

We followed him back into the store and we followed suit when he set the backpack he was carrying down onto the customer service counter. He turned to look at us with open arms and a half hearted grin.

“Nice to see a friendly face. It feels like it’s been forever since I have.” He started rummaging through his backpack while talking to us. “My name’s Evan, by the way. Either of you hurt? I’ve got some bandages.”

We introduced ourselves while I checked the only place I thought the madman slashed at me. The clothing was torn and there was a bit of blood. The cut itself was barely even skin deep. It was a cinch to patch myself up before I turned my attention to Smalls. I had to make sure his gunshot wound from earlier hadn’t opened up in the chaos. Thankfully it hadn’t, yet, and I was able to start a conversation with the kid named Evan.

“So, Evan, you’ve been traveling alone these past few days?” I asked.

Evan nodded shortly before Smalls interjected, “Man, you’re kind of a badass! Where’d you learn how to do all that stuff?” He pointed excitedly over his shoulder toward the store’s exit.

Evan chuckled softly before responding, “I studied a little bit of martial arts when I was younger. I thought I’d forgotten it all, but it came back pretty quick in the last couple days.” He motioned toward me as he spoke. “And yes, I have been traveling alone for the most part. I had some friends but the Demons made pretty quick work of them. I did what I could but in the end, I just had to run.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “We’ve been cooped up in a hospital since this all started. Since you’ve been outside, maybe you have a better idea about what’s going on. Any relief efforts or any word from the military about what’s happening?”

Evan simply shrugged, “Not much. Any military base within about fifty miles of here is probably completely overrun by now. There’s a few hundred soldiers scattered throughout the city, but most of them seem to have trouble telling the difference between friend and foe ever since the Hell-spawn showed up.”

“Hell-spawn?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, the guy with the knife and the black eyes. That’s just what I’ve started calling them. Haven’t met many people that came up with a better name or that weren’t already Hell-spawn.”

“So, why didn’t you just shoot the guy?” Smalls asked.

Evan shrugged again, “I’ve only got four bullets now and loud noises tend to attract a lot of attention from Demons. It’s better to save the bullets when I can.”

Smalls nodded in understanding while I kept talking, “So, if the military is overrun, what are we gonna do? Is anywhere even safe?”

Evan shook his head as he spoke, “I’m not sure. I’ve even seen what looked like Angels fighting the Demons, but they didn’t last long either. Especially not when I saw a few military guys shoot the Angels in the back, panicking or otherwise.” He began repacking his bag since it appeared we were done with its contents. “The best idea I’ve come up with so far is to get out of the city as quickly as possible. Maybe I’ll be able to find a group that’s holed up somewhere or something. God forbid anyone tries to use the nuclear option. I don’t want to be anywhere near here when something like that goes off.”

“They wouldn’t really do that though, would they?” I guffawed.

“Never know these days.” Evan tossed us each a bottle of water before he finished repacking. “It also seems that the Demons aren’t straying too far from the city centers yet. So, unless you two have any better ideas, wanna come with me?”

I glanced around at Smalls as he was trying to hide the pain of his gunshot wound that occurred not even two weeks ago and ran through a very short mental checklist of everything we were able to grab from this place. Even with the extra mouth to feed, having someone who was handy in a fight and, assuming he was being honest, was able to survive largely on his own outside was too good of a chance to pass up.

“Sure. Safety in numbers and all that...” I nodded. “Got a more specific plan than get out of the city?”

“Yeah. Walk with me.” He shouldered his backpack and picked up his rifle then started toward the sporting goods section. “Like I said, I’ve only got four shots left. I’d like to see if there’s any more in here before we head out.” He continued talking and glancing back at me and Smalls while we walked. “The best idea I’ve been able to come up with so far is to head north past the Golden Gate Bridge. If we head south it’s just city after city after city, but just past that bridge is a bunch of state parks and national refuges and whatnot. Point is, it’s a lot of wilderness that the Demons don’t seem to be too interested in.”

“But isn’t that thing in the sky up north?” Smalls asked.

“Well, yeah...” Evan replied. “The Portal to Hell opened up over Oakland specifically so if we stick to the western coast we should be able to avoid the brunt of the Demons. But, to be fair, there’s no use denying there’s a lot of Demons between us and the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“That sounds like a bit of an understatement,” I said skeptically.

Evan just smiled and shrugged sheepishly while he finished counting the few bullets he was able to scrounge up during our conversation. “This brings me up to fifteen shots leaving a little bit more room for error on the part of my terrible skills with a gun.” He paused while he looked at us and for anyone potentially following us. “Let’s head out the back doors through one of the emergency exits...” He stopped the both of us as we leaned in to question his decision. “The power’s been out for about four days now. The alarms don’t work at all.”

With that, we hesitantly followed Evan through an emergency exit into the late afternoon sun and San Francisco’s humid, oceanside air. Clouds were rolling in overhead as they typically do during the summer. The light as we stepped outside was startling and the air was uncomfortably hot, but if bad weather was going to be the thing that stopped us, we wouldn’t last long.