Free Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight by Randall Boyll Page B

from Brayker to Roach. “The Bible talks about demons all the time. Remember when Jesus commanded them to leave that man? He made the demons go into a herd of pigs.”
    Irene nodded. “Jesus believed in demons. Why can’t we?”
    Jeryline shot to her feet. “Listen to you people,” she hissed, staring incredulously at the others. “There are no demons, and even if there was, they would be spirits. Jesus didn’t have a bunch of guys in monster suits running all over the place, and that’s what these are, nothing more. Here.”
    She strode to the desk, extracted a pencil from a jar of pens and pencils, went back, and squatted by the fallen creature. “The game’s over,” she blared in its face. “Hop up or get a pencil in the eye!”
    Brayker hurried to the front door. He let a drop of liquid fall on the wooden threshold. Lines of yeliow flame burst into existence, shot from angle to angle, and met at the top. Poof! and they were gone.
    Jeryline lowered the tip of the pencil to the deflated hole where once a huge yellow eye had been. “One, two, three,” she said almost gleefully. “One, two, three!”
    Brayker went to another window, shook out a drop, stepped back.
    “You faker!” Jeryline screamed. She stood and began to kick the corpse. “Get up! Get your fucking ass up!”
    She slapped her hands to her face and began to weep. Uncle Willie went to her. She whirled and embraced him in a sudden, crushing bear hug. “It can’t be,” she moaned against his dirty jacket. The pencil dropped from her hand and clicked on the floor beside the creature—beside the demon. Uncle Willie looked down at it. He had seen ten thousand unbelievable things in his life and in his delirium tremens, but nothing to match this slimy, puckered, green dead thing, this demon.
    “They’re always howling about how the world is gonna end soon,” he said as Jeryline sobbed, and stroked her hair. “Maybe there’s a God up there who’ll watch over us while it does.”
    As far as comforting words go, he thought dismally, there had to better ones than those.
    Brayker marched up. “This area is sealed for now. Jeryline, take me through the rest of the building, show me every possible entrance and exit.”
    She pulled away from Willie and swiped both palms across her eyes. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Just who in the hell are you?”
    He pointed a finger in her face. “To hell with who I am. You either live, or you die, tonight. All of us. It’s that simple.”
    Roach, perhaps tired of Cordelia hanging on him again, shook her aside and piped up. “Mister,” he said, “you throw orders around like a goddamned general, but not any general I’ve ever heard tell of. Me, I’m heading out to my car and getting the holy fuck out of here. Anybody care to join?”
    They looked back to Brayker, their eyes full of questions. Wally Enfield, a corpse by the TV, raised his head and moaned. He spied Tupper’s body and scrunched his eyes shut.
    “Well,” Cordelia muttered, “we’ve already killed two of them, and there’s only four. If we all go charging out we might make it. But not in Roach’s little bug-mobile.”
    “It’s a damned good car,” Roach snarled at her.
    Irene, holding her heart, stepped forward. She fanned her face with her other hand. “My car is out back. ’Eighty-two Caprice. It seats eight. All we’ve got’s seven, but we’ll have to carry Wally if he doesn’t come back from the dead any faster. That could slow us down.”
    “Forget it,” Brayker said.
    Bob Martel, the front of his uniform smeared and slick with whatever goop the demon that attacked him had been shiny with, decided to find his voice. “Sheriff Tupper’s cruiser is out front, people. Half of us head for it, the other half heads out back for Irene’s wheels. We’re bound to make it, cause they’re outnumbered, and besides, I’ve still got my gun.”
    “Forget it,” Brayker said again. “The Salesman can make them faster than