Chapter Twenty Four
Judah; rhetoric 
Word Count: 1,599 

The hotel was battered; it barely stood on the beams and supports that had been built into it.  The walls crumbled, the doors swung open, closed, open, closed, in the breeze.  It was just passed noon and the sun hung back behind the tops of the trees, peering through the breaks in leaves and branches, littering the road with intricate patterns of light and dark.

He could smell daemons on the air, but they weren’t close.  Not yet, anyway.

Judah looked around him, memorizing the lay of the land easily; the temperature had gone up and he wore nothing more than his t-shirt and jeans – the jacket rested safely in the cab of a pick-up truck he’d managed to start back in the city.  He’d gathered too many followers in too short a time – he’d left the grocery store after Alice left, seeking his next task, and had found a plethora to choose from.  The downtrodden seemed to be growing in numbers; the sheep were missing their shepherd and for lack of anyone better, they were following him wherever he went.

Two women, a man, and a child; complete with two cats they carried around in carriers and an absolute lack of any skill resembling survival.  The man had found one of the women with the child, the other he’d rescued from a band of looters with nothing except for a shotgun and a voice that was larger than his body.  The women were dirty and broken; they cried more often than they did anything else, and Judah almost preferred the whining.  He certainly preferred Alice’s ability to simply continue on.  These women were weak and tired, and while a part of his angelic heart held pity for them, most of him contained nothing except bitterness.

This was the humanity that his father sought to save.  These were the people that had doomed themselves and now screamed for a savior.  It was that scream that he’d been attempting to answer when he returned to Earth, but now he was not so certain he wanted to answer it.  Humanity had disintegrated into something sick and malicious; a tumor on the land that refused to die, that refused to back down, that simply grew and bred and burgeoned until it covered every inch of terra and gobbled up the resources and sinned as if it would never have to repent.

Well the time for wild abandon had passed, and now they stared at him with wide-doe eyes and nothing to offer except a few calloused encouragements about their certainty of his virtuousness.

It was not his virtue that was in question, he wanted to say, but he shut his mouth.  Better not to speak, he reminded himself, when those listening could not understand.

From an open doorway, the man yelled for him.  Judah looked over, tearing his eyes from the far-off horizon over the highway, and realized he’d forgotten the man’s name, again.  He must have found something.

In the hotel room, Jenson, as Judah had re-learned was his name, led him to a small, disconcerting pile of bloody skulls in the corner of the bathroom.  A black candle sat beside them, the flame still flickering.  “We need to get out of here,” Judah said, sliding his machine gun from his shoulder to feel the weight of it in his palm; there was something terrible nearby, and it was almost frightening to know he couldn’t place its location.

“I ‘new that’d be bad,” Jenson said, a lump of chew tucked between his teeth and bottom lip.  He spit on the way out.  From somewhere to the east, Judah could hear the first rumbles of an engine.  “Get the girls and the kid,” Judah snapped, and made his way into the next hotel room.

At the end of the strip was a small garage, clearly where the owner kept his vehicle.  Judah broke into the main office and kicked open the side entrance to the garage.  Parked inside, safely away from looters and daemons, sat a pristine thundercloud grey Jeep Wrangler.

The garage was quiet; a dense kind of silence that he found reassuring.  Even silence beyond these walls wasn’t really silence – Judah could always hear nearby creatures, could always make out the roll of water or the rattle of the breeze.  There was nothing alive in the garage; save him, and he felt strangely compelled to never leave.

Instead, he got into the truck and found the keys in the visor.  He set his gun on the seat next to him and scanned the vehicle’s contents.  He wondered who had owned the hotel; whoever it was had been pretty well prepared for the oncoming apocalypse.  The back was loaded with boxes of guns and ammo on the left and canned goods on the right.  Down the middle, separating the two, were stacks of water bottles.  Judah smiled to himself. 

He ran from the office, able to smell the daemon’s scent as soon as he left the garage, and found the group huddled in the pick up truck.  Judah pulled the keys from his pocket and threw them to Jenson.  He said, “Go; head south, find the nearest city and stay as out of sight as possible.  I’ll find you.”

For once, Jenson didn’t argue.  Perhaps it was Judah’s tone, or the unflinching way he stared at Jenson as he spoke.  “Ye’sir,” he said, and nodded.  He spared a glance back to the young boy in the too-big flannel shirt tucked in the middle of the cab between Jenson and the boy’s mother.  Judah’s leather jacket was passed through the window.

He started the engine and threw the truck into reverse.  The young girl, the one that had been a victim of the looters, smiled at Judah as the truck drove into the vanishing horizon.  He returned to the office and crouched low beneath the window.  He had a clear view of the highway in both directions and the woodland that stretched outward from the opposite side of the pavement.  The second engine was closer and he could tell it was making its way to him from the north.  Then he heard it – echo motors trailing close behind the first.  It was a full gang of vehicles coming for him; six cars, at least.

The wind changed and he caught a stronger whiff of the daemon scent that he’d been monitoring – stronger now, he could narrow down to at least eight individual daemons, each tainted with the smell of human flesh.  They were possessors, then; not even full-fledged daemons.

This would be easier than he thought.

Most possessors used the human body they inhabited to their full advantage against the angels they hunted.  It was reasonable, even, since most angels had a soft spot for humans – even ones that currently held a daemon inside of them.  Judah was not that kind of angel, which put the advantage in his favor.

He traded his jacket for his automatic riffle in the Jeep.  His hunting knife was still in its sheath along his spine, his handheld pistols in their respective holsters on each side of his ribs, but he preferred the brute force of the automatic knowing there were at least eight bodies he had to plow through before he could leave.  He waited, standing at his full height in the window, his arms crossed over his chest, one hand grasping the automatic gun.

Within moments, the cars came screeching to a halt in the parking lot.  Most were old model-Fords; glossy and pastel with chrome accents anywhere that would fit.  Bodies crawled from the opening doors, limbs and features contorted to fit a daemon inside.  Arms and legs bent in awkward angles, making simple actions difficult and cumbersome.  The eyes were a luminous red that seemed to be lit from the depths of hell itself.  The stink of sulfur was everywhere.  Manic laughter broke the silence as one daemon stretched its long legs out of the door.  She wore heels and a plain dress suit, splattered in blood and dirt.  Her hair was burgundy and blew in the breeze – she was the only pure daemon, given her own body to inhabit, untainted by the ritual of possession.  Her eyes were a dark, shimmering gray that held him in place as they stared openly at each other in the window.

He could feel her consciousness like nails being dragged up his spinal column.  Something within him stirred; some shadow of his duty that lurked beneath the guilt and the self-hatred, some small beast that responded to her presence.  He shook it off and ducked just in time for her legion of possessors to open fire on the office and garage.  He kept low to the ground, peeking out of the corner of the shattered window, holding his riffle up and pulling the trigger.  He had been firing guns for so long the recoil didn’t even shake his arm anymore, and he blew the possessors into chunks in a matter of seconds.  All that remained was the woman daemon.

She said, “Judah, Judah, Judah,” and her voice was oddly musical.  “Why won’t you come out to play with me?”

He crawled to the open door into the garage, digging through the weaponry in the back of the Jeep in search of the sniper rifle that had caught his eye.  He loaded one slug into it and returned to the office, sniper rifle leveled, his eye peering through the sight.  As soon as he could see her eyes, he pulled the trigger and she went down.

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Author guidance for This exercise

This is a collab work. If you wish to join, get in touch with me (rhetoric) and write up a bio for me to look over. :)

The setting: Post-rapture apocalypse. Angels, Dark Angels, and Daemons have taken to the Earth. Humans struggle to stay alive.

The end of days is upon them all.

Ratings: Ratings are always up to the reader, but if you're going to rate something below a 4.0, it would be very kind of you to leave a few helpful suggestions for the writer. Otherwise, please don't bother rating; it's rude to rate something down and not give the author a reason why.

the characters:

name: judah
author: rhetoric
age: 26 earth years.
species: dark angel.
appearance: Six-foot-three, with dark brown hair that is only a little shaggy, usually kept to just cover his eyebrows. Black irises. Scarred. Hard, sharp, stoic features. Perpetual five-o'clock shadow. Muscular but lean.
*
name: azazel
author: cat_monty
age: 25 earth years
species: daemon
appearance: Untidy black hair, pale skin, 6'0, slender build, sharp facial features and a scar across his collarbone.
*
name: lottie rose
author: thegirlinthecupboard
age: 21 earth years
species: dark angel
appearance: Tiny frame, thin, and short. Short choppy black hair. Has bright blue eyes but wears black contact lenses. Wears all black.
*
name: alice mayfield
author: xkatieshepherd
age: 17
species: human
appearance: Incredibly pretty in a slightly exotic way. She has an olive complexion, large brown eyes and a tall, slender figure. Thick dark hair that falls in waves past her shoulders and full lips.
*
name: belial, the dark emissary
author: lilley
age: unknown
species: daemon
appearance: Despite his heartlessness the Dark Emissary is an unnaturally handsome man with chiselled features, at six foot two he is not the biggest of his kind. When in human form he is handsome, tanned skinned and muscular with tussled blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. In daemon form he is cowled, horned and sprouts wings like that of a bat. It is said in this form that if any mortal soul should meet his gaze, a fate worse than death would befall them.
*
name: tai "the titan" kaliso
author: lilley
age: 29
species: human
appearance: Tai is massive at six foot eight inches tall and almost as wide as he is tall. He is of Polynesian decent and his appearance reflects this with slightly slanted eyes, long get black hair platted into a long pony tail and black tribal tattoos running down the whole right side of his body from the belt line to the scalp.
*
name: Alexis
author: tillett
age: 19
species: human
appearance: Athletic build, 5-foot-seven, with dirty unmanageable blonde hair, waist length. Peircing chrysolite green eyes. Fair skinned. Her delicate features have hardened with suffering and the need for survival.
*
name: Agaton
author: rhetoric
age: 26 earth years
species: daemon
appearance: Agaton is six-foot-three, with golden blonde hair that he keeps just short enough to run his fingers through, and wide, black irises. He smiles the way women imagine handsome cowboys to smile, with the faintest crinkle lines around his eyes. He has a dark shadow of facial hair and a strong jaw. Sharp features, scars littering his entire body. He has a habit of wearing button up shirts and well-fitted jeans.
*
name: Suzuki Akane (first name: Akane)
author: ghostburgers
age: 23
species: human
appearance: Tall (or willow-ly), walks graceful, Long (mid-back) black hair, electric blue eyes, Japanese.
*
name: Tazereal (Taz)
author: thebear73
age: looks roughly 30 earth years
species: fallen angel/blood angel
appearance: 6'6, muscular, shoulder length black hair, He has scars on his back where his wings once were attached to his back.
*
name: dawn
author: sei-chan25
age: roughly 23 earth years
species: angel
appearance: Long, silver-blonde hair and dark sapphire blue eyes. Small and petite, barely 5'3", she's fairly cute and always wheres a silver locket.
*
name: menefer
author: whispervaughan
age: 16 earth years
species: dark angel
appearance: 5-foot-5, curly black hair that comes half way down her back. Red eyes with flecks of black. Quite thin. Always wears a black ring with a blue jewel on it. Always has her pet snake, Nyoka, with her.
*
name: zoe foster
author: cat_monty
age: 24
species: human
appearance: Tall (5'9) with long legs, short, spiky brown hair, cyan eyes and dark skin.
*
name: Rhian
author: nyxie
age: 15 earth years
species: angel
appearance: Long, light, brown hair (changes in the sun - so it loks like she has blondish highlights), eyes that change colour (generally crystal blue or emerald green), thin, small.
*

name: here
author: author
age: here
species: here
appearance: here
*

updated Feb 22 by rhetoric