And Hell Followed With Them

By Giovanni Diaz

Enemy Falls prides itself on producing more United States Marines than any other town in the Mojave Desert. But on the day a group of hometown heroes are set to return from the war in Afghanistan, their bus is found abandoned and covered in blood.

 

What follows is a nightmare of the town's own making. For a merciless power is rising from the depths of war. And the children of Enemy Falls are coming home. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gio Writes Stuff, LLC
• Release date: Apr 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781734085648

Giovanni Diaz

Giovanni Diaz is a writer from New York City. His short story, "4H", can be found in the November 2018 issue of Drunk Monkeys Magaizine.  He is currently working on his next novel, The Sons of a Rebel God

Book preview

THE BEAST WILL DEVOUR

Deputy Efrain Ormaza rolled to a stop before the bus, his squad car a smear of green and white over its black windows.

The Mojave stretched to the left and right of the road. Vegetation trembled. Rocks jutted like serrated teeth bleeding at their gums, forking currents of dust hissing with the wind and coating the yellow chassis of the bus in gradations of red earth.

Efrain pushed the gear selector into park, rubbed his neck, and frowned. He checked his watch. He glanced at his notepad, measuring the day’s planned events scrawled in his neat hand against the time. Then he scanned the surrounding desert. He expected movement. He imagined at any moment that young men would rush from around the bus and leer and howl with laughter.

All lay still. The dipping sun creased the horizon into burning folds. Cars streaked red and silver in the distance, a patchwork of embers glinting through Enemy Falls like shards of a fragmenting mirage.

Efrain lifted his radio.

Dispatch, this is car-twenty, he said. He waited, tensing at the deepening silence. Melody, you there?

No one answered.

He grunted, threw on his hat, adjusted his shades, and got out of the car.

He stared over the siren lights at the bus. He checked his watch again, looked right towards the stretch of road rising between ancient hills and vanishing into the north, looked left towards Enemy Falls shimmering in blue grids. He could just make out Little Sparta, the bustle of the town’s main street a froth of color and heat.

He licked his lips, took off his sunglasses, thumbed the green shamrock button on his collar, and walked around to the bus’s entrance.

The door stood open. Dust coated the steps and driver’s seat.

Hello? he said.

Wind keened through hinges. Efrain’s reflection in the sideview mirror stretched with subtle distortions as he leaned right and squinted inside.

Darkness lay thick. Silhouettes of the first row of seats carved deep green lines in the murk.

Efrain placed his hand over his holstered gun and stepped inside.

Shadows hovered in varied curvatures, as if they were waiting to spring at the deputy. He swayed left to right at the head of the aisle, smelling must and sweltering metal and deep copper that coated the back of his throat. He glanced out the entrance door, tightening his grip over his pistol, and half-expected some marauder dislodged in time to come screeching from the desert.

The endless sands. The screaming silence.

He stepped into the aisle, his footfalls crunching against scattered fragments of something he could not make out. The rear door unveiled itself in a triptych of reds, the glass catching the outer edges of the falling sun, and Efrain felt as if he were watching some archaic form of blood magic rise from the earth to lay its curse upon the land. Every footfall and every breath and every tremble of his hand impregnated him with the certainty of doom. And the bus seemed to pull him deeper and deeper into an opening maw.

He walked through time and into a realm of fear that transformed his heartbeat into snarls of thunder. Yet he reached the back door. He laid his hand upon it. His fingers printed the glass, the oily shapes like deformed priests in a distant fire.

Quiet held sway, enriched by the skitter of wind playing against the bus. Efrain knew the sound. Knew the hush and heat of the desert and its spaces. He exhaled, not realizing that he had been holding his breath. Relief bloomed through confusion, and he knew the empty bus had to be part of some practical joke.

He reached for his shoulder radio.

Dispatch, this is Deputy Ormaza, over, he said. He waited. Nothing. Christ. He pressed the radio again. Melody, if you can hear me, I’m on Pathfinder Road, and I found the bus where our boys are supposed to be, but no one’s here. I think they’re pulling some—

Footsteps raged behind him.

He wheeled, ripping out his gun.

Silence resounded. The footsteps dissolved into the wind and the sand. A dull reverberation nearly imperceptible beat through the bus, and with it came a swarm of sensations that brought Efrain back to the darkness of another desert, where a hidden enemy transformed night into the snarl of an insatiable beast. He breathed hard, his heart pounding, scanning the slant of dull light flaring red at the edges of windows. Absence seemed to mock him. As if a cult of leering ghosts dared him to believe that he had not heard nor felt the threat of footfalls running towards him. But he knew the presence of violence—knew the sound and heat of men rushing full forward with bloodlust in their teeth. He looked over the seats and through the windows, anticipating a horror he could not name.

But there was no one.

Nothing.

He let his hands drop to his waist. His gun shivered within them, catching and breaking apart beads of the red setting sun against its barrel. He stared, mesmerized into a kind of profound dread.

Spires of harsh light gleamed in his peripheral, and he looked and beheld what was not possible.

Two sets of folded uniforms lay on a seat, neat and crisp and symmetrical, one covered in medals, the other a field of deep blue. Bright red lines ran through their fabric, and two white dress hats and white folded gloves lay atop them.

Efrian knew them. Had seen men and women from Enemy Falls wearing them his entire life. Had worn them himself—the United States Marines Corps’ dress blues.

Que carajo? he said, staring.

More sparks crackled in his vision, and he looked and saw another pair of uniforms, folded, squared away, and then another— every seat bearing dress blues like altars offering sacrifices to feral gods.

Efrain’s hands shivered, shook, trembled. He struggled to hold position. To fulfill his duty as an officer of the law and investigate. He still felt the running footsteps and their menace, how they had marauded with purpose, how they had felt like a team of killers about to strike.

Through all that, a single thought screamed.

A certainty:

There had been no uniforms on the seats when he had entered.

He ran.

Out of the bus, over the macadam, into his car.

He drove, forgetting to hit his sirens, speeding towards Enemy Falls, towards its main street known throughout the sands as Little Sparta, toward the police station where he would have to tell the sheriff what he could not explain.

He did not see the blood curving over the roof of the bus.

He did not see the driver lying decapitated and sprawled on its peak, encircled by grounded bone and red earth.

He did not know that they were coming home.

THE SHEPHERDS CANNOT SAVE THEM

Alyssa Munoz watched the group of junior high schoolers open their bags and slip on their war masks.

I spit fire! Jesus Llanos said, a tall boy donning a screaming samurai helmet over his lean features. He waved fingers bearing black rings before a woman pushing her baby in a stroller, and then saluted an old man in uniform who admonished them all as he passed. The others laughed, a gaggle of puffed up children with scruff on their chins losing themselves in one type of monster or another, their masks a collection of historical or imaginative war-faces raring together like horses champing at the bit.

Jesus climbed the lamppost before Tara’s Books, jostling to get into position and cheering and saluting again as Red Hannigan hoisted a dummy draped in desert fatigues up another lamppost across the street.

The General! Jesus said, and the others followed, saluting and making obscene gestures. Red climbed down his ladder and crossed the street between marching band members eating tacos, and said something Alyssa did not need to hear.

She saw it all from within the bookstore—standing before the Travel and Geography section, remembering the countless times she had witnessed this exact ritual play out. No matter the year, or the name of the boy in the mask, or the location of the General, it was always the same. She sighed and slipped a book about the Pacific Ocean into place, and then walked to the counter as Red chased the boys off and then went back to his bag beside the ladder. He pulled out a poster and a roller, crossed back, looked at Alyssa, made an apologetic gesture, and plastered the poster over the bookstore’s window.

Alyssa opened her mouth to protest. She turned away, knowing it was pointless. She sat behind the counter and opened a book on the sailing culture of Polynesian tribes. The words blurred, swirled, fragmented. She closed the book in frustration and pressed at her eyes. Though she had been engrossed in the work for the past week, she could now only be aware of Little Sparta. Of the ritual being played out again. Of the refrain in her mind that would not let her be:

We’re doing this again.

After a year or more of letters, staticky phone calls, stuttering video chats…after tracking their maneuvers on the front, listening to the old timers praise or curse this marine or another…after the worry, the vigils, the sermons at Clayton Wood’s pulpit and supermarket register alike, the marines of Enemy Falls were returning home.

It did not matter from which war. They all screamed together in Alyssa’s memory, a haze of heat and soot that carried people away and returned them as strangers. To civilization. To themselves. The afterwards always a conflagration of drunken fights at Fire Watch, domestic brawls shattering quiet evenings, an uptick of once proud and haughty wives, nee cheerleaders, growing heavy and sunken eyed with pregnancy. And then the inevitable reenlistments. The waves of veterans looking to prove themselves on distant battlefields once more.

All this was for those who came home. Those who did not were spoken of only as ubiquitous ghosts. A shared absence posing as heroes that no one named, but everyone deified.

But everyone forgot all that now. Or perhaps they remembered, but convinced themselves that this time would be different. That this homecoming would be so joyous and patriotic that the PTSD and combat fatigue and suicidal ideation and loss of life would dissolve into the wind and float into the desert.

Alyssa exhaled. She looked out the window at old timers dressed in their blues or greens, veterans of varied wars dating back to Korea. Among them were the relative newcomers—the middle-aged from Desert Storm, the hard faced men and women from Afghanistan and Iraq. Throngs stopped to shake their hands, and then carried on up and down Little Sparta, lugging lawn chairs, confetti, and billboards promising imminent pleasures to the returning heroes. Men grilled burgers and hot dogs across the street, beneath red, white, and blue crepe strewn over palm trees, and fire trucks carried oversized American flags.

All the same. All seen before.

But now it was too much.

Alyssa swiped open her phone and checked her text messages. She clicked Jeremy’s name and was both relieved and disheartened to find that that he had said nothing more since a few days prior.

Since that last sudden declaration:

We’re coming home.

She stared at his words and felt their finality. The change they promised locking into place after more than another year apart. After her world had shifted so that she could finally see herself, know herself and all she wanted. After she understood that she had no interest in standing with the other wives, did not care about the judgmental glances. That she did not expect much beyond the continuation of tensions between her and her fiancé upon his return, and the thought of once more sharing her life with his, diminished her newfound sense of self into a captive ghost.

But he was the father of her child. And a dimming part of her could not imagine life without him. He had not answered her two follow up texts. She worried. She did not care. She hoped he was safe. She was indifferent to all else besides.

Alyssa Munoz shook her head and knew that she did not know what to do.

The door sighed open. Alyssa looked up and set her face to hide the million things she wanted to say to the man who walked in.

Sheriff Landon O’Shea trailed behind him the blare of the brass band rehearsing up the street. He pulled the door shut, cringing with frustration as he looked over his shoulder at the parade prep. Then he looked at Alyssa. Tall and thin in his desert-toned uniform, cradling his olive hat in his black hands, a goatee well-shaped over his lips, baby-faced, save for an air of certainty and sadness radiating from his gaze. A man who had lost a lot. A man who carried on anyway.

Hi, he said.

Hey, Alyssa replied.

He approached, rotating his hat between his fingers, head bowed. He stopped before the counter and looked up at her and there was no fear in his eyes.

But there was longing. There were all the things one does not have the words to say.

Are we really not gonna talk about it? he said.

Alyssa adjusted in her seat, looked left towards the office door, looked back at Landon.

It is what it is, she replied. She dug her nails through her jeans. She knew it was a million things more. She faced him, stoic but wholly aware that he could see in her what she saw in him—that despite the completeness of themselves as individuals, the world was better when they were in each other’s lives.

He looked away for a moment. He looked back at her and inched closer.

Alright, he said. I know things are…I know I can’t change anything. That I shouldn’t. Hell, I’m not trying to get between you and…But I need you to know that what happened meant something to me. That it always will.

Alyssa tensed her jaw, flared her nostrils, did everything to stay the quiver in her eyes. She looked away.

I don’t know how to answer that, she replied.

All we gotta do is tell the truth.

She wheeled on him.

Yeah? she said. That easy?

They shared a long look.