Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell

The Rapture has come and been, and those left behind find themselves out of the frying pan into the hellfire as they battle against hordes of demonic creatures. Rumours abound of a way to join those who have ascended but Heaven can wait as far as Marvin is concerned. He needs to cross the ruined city to his girlfriend Monique and prove he’ll do anything for love.

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Smoke fumed from the cone of the volcano that had levelled most of downtown. When the burning mountain ripped through the skin of the city it had killed thousands and demolished billions of dollars of real estate in only minutes. Clouds of black ash now poisoned the air. The reflected glow from molten rivers oozing down the volcano’s sides made it look like the sky was on fire. Cruel shapes capered through the clouds on batlike wings.

Marvin screamed down the highway on a Black Phantom motorcycle trimmed with silver chrome. Weaving around ranks of empty vehicles and bodies left in the road. Along the edge of the highway, he could see across the ravaged city to where the last remaining units of National Guard and other military battled demonic forces. The core of the volcano burned so hot it almost hurt to look at. Fiery rocks exploded and sailed through the air like meteorites, causing more devastation wherever they landed. It was by the light of one of these flaming rocks that he saw a batwinged shape knifing toward him like a missile.

“Shit!”

That glimpse was all the warning Marvin got. He swerved, slowing, but the demon slammed into him at incredible speed. Wheels slewed and screamed, twisting as he was flung out of the saddle. The bike went down on its side and spun along the surface of the highway, throwing fans of sparks, metal shrieking, until it smashed into an abandoned car.

Marvin found himself flying, tangled in the demonic creature’s claws. It let him go, dropping him near the side of the highway while still travelling at speed. Pain jarred his hips and ribs. Like the bike, he spun across the asphalt. His leather jacket was all that saved his skin from being ripped across the road’s surface like cheese down a grater. Gloves saved his hands. A couple of times his helmet bounced, rattling his teeth and sending bursts of pain through his skull. He reached the edge of the road and rolled to a stop.

Marvin struggled upright as the creature swooped overhead. Its wings kicked up clouds of dirt and trash. Talons dripped from the ends of its arms. Pain radiating through his bruised frame, he badly wanted to lay down for a few moments more but he knew if he didn’t act fast then he’d be dead.

The helmet was cracked and squeezed the sides of Marvin’s head. If he hadn’t been wearing it then his skull would be cracked instead. He wrestled it over his ears and tossed it aside. The demon swooped again and landed nearby, shrieking, and Marvin got his first good look at the thing. Humanoid, chimplike with short legs and long arms covered in ropes of muscle. Its skin was dark and reptilian yet tufts of hair grew from between its scales. Wings arched behind its shoulders. Its face was almost human but horribly deformed, with teeth so long and sharp and malarranged that it couldn’t even close its jaws fully without seriously injuring itself. It looked both dangerous and like it was in incredible pain of its own.

“For crying out loud,” Marvin grunted.

Marvin’s hands ached but thanks to his gloves he still had all his fingers. He snatched the gun on his belt. He wouldn’t normally wear the .357 in a gunbelt around his hips like a cowboy of course, dangling at his left side, but this wasn’t exactly normal circumstances. He was lucky he hadn’t lost it.

Insectile, the gargoyle scrambled toward Marvin using all six of its limbs. Its wings acted as a second pair of arms. Marvin thumbed the hammer of his revolver and fired. He was dazed from the crash but the gargoyle was too close to miss. .357 rounds punched through its centre mass, drilling holes in its ropey, scaly chest. Hot, dark blood splattered the road but it didn’t slow down. One of its wings snapped out and caught the side of his gun. The weapon sprung from his grip and spun into the middle of the empty highway. Snarling, the gargoyle pounced. Its sinewy weight bore Marvin to the ground. Talons ripped at his jacket, thankfully blocked by armour plates sewn into the leather. Fangs bristled inches from Marvin’s eyes. He wrestled it back using all the strength he had.

“Fuck, get off of me!”

The gargoyle lunged, jaws snapping. Marvin shoved back just in time to stop it from biting his face clean off his skull. It breath reeked of brimstone and rotting meat. Wedging his left forearm against the creature’s chest, he levered it backward by a few more inches. It took considerable strength, bones creaking in his arm, as the gargoyle bore down. With his right hand, Marvin groped for the knife sheathed on his ankle. Its hilt jutted from the rim of his boot.

Ropes of drool ran from the gargoyle’s jaws. Marvin pulled his boot closer and got his hand around his hunting knife while holding its snapping fangs away from his face. Nine inches of gleaming steel backed with sawblade teeth slid free of its sheath. He rammed the knife into the side of the gargoyle’s throat then wrenched upward. Blood, almost scalding hot, black as oil, sprayed his gloved hand and his sleeve, burning his wrist and smattering the side of his face. He kept sawing until he reached whatever the demon had that passed for a spinal cord, bellowing with the effort until he felt it buckle and crack. Life left the gargoyle’s yellow eyes and its sinewy weight fell limp on top of him.

It all started two days ago with the disappearance of the world’s children. Across the planet, empty beds, empty classrooms, empty wombs, all the kids vanished and left behind legions of terrified parents and horrified teachers looking for their lost boys and golden girls. There were reports of some adults disappearing as well, or ascending into the sky on pillars of holy light, but those claims were few and far between. The Rapture was happening. Believing there had to have been some kind of cosmic administration error, faithful packed every church and synagogue and mosque and temple, every holy place, beseeching for leniency from their God or gods. In what may have been an act of mercy, many of these holy houses collapsed in on themselves with little warning, trapping and crushing millions of petitioners within. The rest of humanity were left to bear witness as the skies darkened and the ground split open, and plagues of demons and all manner of damned creatures spilled forth.

Shoving the gargoyle’s body off of him, Marvin climbed to his feet. He cleaned the hot blood off his knife and resheathed it, and then recovered and reloaded his gun. His helmet was too deformed to put back on. He’d have to be careful going forward, assuming the motorcycle was functional.

More batwinged gargoyles menaced overhead. Marvin had already faced a swarm of horrible, handsized insects, like scorpions with wings, an enormous spider with bladed limbs, and a halfdead reptilian monster that crawled along the ground on dozens of claws. Staying low, he dashed toward the car where his bike had come to rest. He cursed his signature platinum blonde hair, peroxided half to death and pasted flat across his head. In the fiery half-light, he felt like he was flashing a beacon to any hungry demons overhead. Silvery hoops lined both of his ears and one side of his nose. Tattoos circled his exposed throat.

Something had melted the windshield of the abandoned sedan. Molten glass draped, cooled and solidified again, across a couple of badly burned corpses in the front of the vehicle. The top layers of their skin had been eaten away and what was left of their faces was now frozen and preserved in a pair of silent screams. Marvin had lost count of the number of similarly awful things he’d seen in the last twenty-four hours.

Wrestling with the weight of it, Marvin righted his motorcycle. Its black paint and silver chrome looked scuffed and its handlebars were a little out of whack but the wheels were intact and the rest of the bike seemed to be in one piece. He reached for the ignition and turned the engine over. It growled back to life.

Across the city, the volcano boiled and erupted with a fresh blast. On the tail end of the sound, Marvin heard a shriek. Something splattered a nearby patch of asphalt. Another monstrosity galloped up the road behind him. It looked like a grotesquely overmuscled gorilla with bright red skin and spikes growing from its shoulders. It had no head, instead a huge mouth cut vertically down the front of its torso. Squealing, it sprayed more greenish liquid. The liquid hit the hood of the car and began to eat through it, steaming. Some kind of acid. Marvin thought of the two bodies behind the melted windshield. Not wanting to end up like them, he slung himself into the saddle of his bike and pulled it around in a tight circle. Its back wheel screamed. Headed away from the acid spitter, he rocketed off down the highway again.

With no helmet and more gargoyles circling overhead, among other threats, Marvin had to be careful. He knew only the insane would be outside in this. The vast majority of survivors would be locked in their homes or barricaded in some place they believed would be safe, watching on, praying for it all to end as quickly as it had begun. But that wasn’t an option for Marvin after the phone call from Monique twelve hours earlier, before the phones all died. She was sheltering in her apartment on the other side of the city with no way out and no one to help her. He’d told her in the past that he would do anything for her, he would do anything for love, he’d walk right into Hell and back, and now it was time to prove it. He didn’t even know if she was still alive or if her building was still standing. He’d been trapped himself until he could get to his bike and his gun, but he had to know for sure.

More abandoned cars forced Marvin to slow down as he crossed the bridge into the city, weaving through their ranks. He felt exposed but took the time to look over the bridge’s railing. The river below appeared to have turned into blood. Boiling blood, a foul steam rising off its surface. Luridly red in the volcanic light. Clots of gore ran with the current. Mutant plants fed off the blood along the riverbanks, growing in staggered rows.

A thundering military chopper spun through the air swarmed by flying demons. It lurched and two gargoyles were sucked into its rotors. The spinning blades, fat and heavy and whirring at impossible speeds, minced the gargoyles in an instant. Blood hissed into the air, bits of meat falling like confetti, but there were a dozen more demons behind them to carpet the chopper’s sides and the bubble of its cockpit. Plowing into a building by the riverfront, the helicopter wiped out the structure’s upper floors. Bits of the building along with the aircraft and parts of the flying demons scattered in an umbrella overhead. Marvin sped onward before the explosion drew more attention.

It was too dangerous to cross the city on the surface. Gunfire jackhammered, deafeningly loud even over his engine. The volcano loomed over the ruins of the central business district. He had to take the tunnel if that was at all possible. He didn’t know what condition it was in but it would take him almost all the way to Monique’s front door.

Crossing an overpass, Marvin saw a grid of streets surrounding one of the city parks. The trees and plants had all burned to ash. A struggling military force, a hodgepodge of armoured vehicles, faced off against several demonic war wagons. Rolling fortresses the size of houses, bristling with spikes and chains and bones, crewed by monstrous humanoids that Marvin could only think of as orcs. Hundreds of naked people were leashed to each war wagon, hooked chains impaled into their flesh. Whips snapped at their backs, flaying open the skin, forcing them to draw the rolling structures forward in spite of the agony the hooks caused them. Military gunners were left with no choice but to empty their weapons into the ranks of slaves, slaughtering them by the dozens to get at the orcs.

Winged monsters circled through the sky. Marvin turned hard and rejoined the surface streets. Heat from a burning building splashed across his exposed face. He turned hard again and rocketed into the mouth of the cross-city tunnel.

With no electricity, darkness filled the tunnel. Marvin had left his bike’s headlamp unlit while travelling into the city, to avoid attention, but he had no choice but to switch it on as he moved underground. Immediately the glare of his light reflected back at him from the broken windows of several crashed cars. Traveling at speed, he braked hard. Almost scraping against the tunnel wall, he squeezed through a gap behind one of the vehicles. Debris crackled under his wheels. After the crash though, the tunnel opened up and he could pick up speed again beneath the ruined city.

Marvin worried that molten rock or volcanic tubes might have penetrated and destroyed the tunnel. By his estimation, the tunnel skirted the volcano that had levelled downtown. He spotted structural damage, huge rents in the walls and ceiling and asphalt, but no lava. Instead, in one section boiling blood ran from the ceiling and pooled down the wall. Like back at the river, strange plants sprouted at the edges of the blood right out of the broken asphalt. Hybrids between jungle shrubs and spiralling towers of fungus. As Marvin drew closer, one of the plants uprooted itself and swayed in his direction with tendrils waving. Rather than stick around and find out what the hellish plant could do, he swerved and continued on. His back wheel sent up a fan of blood behind him.

Approaching the deepest part of the tunnel, Marvin spotted more light ahead. At first he thought the fiery glow was lava but as he got closer he saw a mixture of burning torches and battery-powered lanterns. A bus and several vehicles had been parked to barricade the tunnel, covering all lanes from wall to wall. He was forced to slow to a stop.

Shadows moved behind the windows of the bus and other vehicles. Marvin’s hand strayed toward the revolver on his belt. Before he could pull it out, he heard the ratchet of a pump action shotgun. Someone pointed a barrel at him over one of the cars.

“Who are you?” a voice yelled. “Did you come from outside?”

“I’m human!” Marvin said. “Of course I did, I’m just passing through!”

“Okay, come forward! You can bring your bike this way.”

Marvin eased his motorcycle up to the barricade as someone climbed into one of the cars and reversed it to create an opening. A couple of those demonic plants were splattered across the ground near the barrier. He eased himself through the gap and they closed it behind him. He was greeted by an older man, burly, holding a shotgun, surrounded by several other people.

“What’s your name, kid?” the man asked.

“Marvin.”

“Where are you coming from?”

“Originally? Haverfield.”

“You made it all the way from Haverfield in this? What’s it like out there?”

“What do you think? It’s Hell out there.”

Looking around, Marvin saw close to three dozen people sheltering behind the barricade. Men and women, no children obviously, almost all of them armed with makeshift weapons instead of guns. Smoke hazed the air from torches and small fires. A second barrier, a truck and a few more cars, cut off the tunnel in the other direction as well. A kind of camp had grown between them, with shelters made from vehicles and tarps.

“I’m Richard,” the man with the shotgun said, and he pointed out a couple of the others. “This is Hamilton and Lara.”

“You’re taking shelter down here,” Marvin said.

“Since it started,” Richard said. “It’s not getting any better?”

“The army is still fighting from what I can see but no, it’s not.”

Richard huffed. “Well, you’re free to stay with us if you’d like.”

“I’m just passing through. I need to get to my girlfriend, she lives not far from the other end of this tunnel.”

“You can’t, you won’t get through,” the woman named Lara said.

“Why not?”

The man that Richard had called Hamilton answered. “There’s something out there.”

Richard and the others led Marvin through their camp. Marvin steered his motorcycle past the vehicles and tents being used as shelter. The survivors regarded him with suspicion and desperation. They stopped again short of the other barricade and Marvin booted the bike’s kickstand to set it upright.

“It’s some kind of bear-lizard thing,” Richard said. “We sent out scouts before, patrols, to warn us if anything was coming down the tunnel. That thing out there killed them all, and it’s still out there.”

The light of the lanterns and torches only reached so far. Beyond them, the tunnel retreated into inky blackness. Marvin could see bodies, or bits of bodies, scattered at the edge of the light. And he could also sense something out there, lurking. He could almost hear the padding of its pacing footsteps.

“Why don’t you just shoot it?” Marvin asked.

Richard looked embarrassed. “We’re out of bullets, and shells.”

“You’re out?” Marvin realised the shotgun pointed at him originally was a bluff.

“The scouts had the last of our ammo,” Lara said. “Not that it helped them.”

“I can speed past it on my bike,” Marvin said.

“There’s more cars down there, more accidents,” Richard said. “It’s a maze, you won’t be able to get through fast enough to outrun it.”

Marvin looked back across the makeshift camp. Down the tunnel in the direction he’d already travelled.

“I can’t go back,” Marvin said. “I have to get to Monique. And there’s no way I can get across the open city, it has to be through the tunnel.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Richard looked down at the gun on Marvin’s hip.” You still have bullets?”

“You want me to kill it for you?”

“It’s been testing us,” Hamilton said. “It’s smart, it was waiting out there for the scouts. Sooner or later, it’s going to realise we can’t hurt it and it’ll come for us.”

“If you go out there, we’ll help you,” Richard said.

Marvin looked up the tunnel again. At the body parts around the edge of the light. Among them, he saw the shadow of a shotgun or rifle.

“I’ll lead and you try to recover the guns that your scouts left behind, and we’ll blow this thing away. I haven’t seen one that can’t actually be killed yet. Enough bullets should do the job.”

“Let us get some things,” Lara said.

Marvin waited as the survivors rounded up some more people and exchanged their empty guns for some other weapons. Half a dozen returned to the barricade carrying machetes or baseball bats. Others massed along the barricade to stop the demon from getting into their camp, they hoped, if it slaughtered Marvin and the others.

“You really don’t have anything better than those things? No more bullets at all?” Marvin asked.

Richard shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly easy getting here, you know? We’re not a bunch of survivalists, just regular people.”

One of the survivors rolled another car backward and Marvin led the way past their barricade. He borrowed a flashlight and raised it alongside his .357 Magnum revolver. Richard, Hamilton, Lara, and several others bunched up behind him.

Sweeping the light from side to side, Marvin revealed more of the shotgun that he’d spotted at the edge of the barricade’s light. He saw another gun, a pistol, resting against the wheel of a crashed car. Unfortunately, he also revealed more body parts splashed across the tunnel. Limbless torsos with their midsections hollowed and strewn. Broken arms and legs terminating in meaty stumps. Blood thick on the ground. It looked like the scouts had been ripped apart by a wild animal. A wild animal with a grudge. The only things he couldn’t find were their heads.

“Go on, get the guns,” Marvin said.

Marvin kept playing the light back and forth, covering the others. Richard hadn’t been lying, he could see a maze of vehicles spreading through the tunnel ahead of them. He wouldn’t have been able to simply speed past them. He didn’t spot any demons though. Richard went for the shotgun, looking nervous. A woman whose name Marvin hadn’t caught moved toward the pistol.

“Quickly!” Hamilton said.

The woman ducked to snatch the pistol. It lay in a streak of dried blood next to the crashed car. Suddenly, with a roar, a huge, furry shape leapt from behind the vehicle and landed on its roof. Windows cracked and shattered as the frame folded under the demon’s weight. The creature had the general shape of a dog but the size and burliness of a bear. It was covered in a shag of black hair but in the light of his flashlight Marvin could see patches of dark green scales as well as a heavy tail that looked like the tail of an alligator. Its most distinctive feature, however, was the three wolfish heads sprouting from its humped shoulders. Muzzles filled with hooked fangs and vulpine faces helmeted and armoured with bone.

“Fuck!” Marvin yelled.

Marvin fired twice, although the woman partially blocked his shot. Echoes bounced off the concrete walls and crackled down the length of the tunnel. Bullets punched into the cerberus’ hairy bulk to no apparent effect. The cerberus lunged and caught the woman with the mouth of its central head, the largest of the three. Jaws fixed around her face, teeth piercing her skull, as she screamed. Bone creaked and blood spilled down her neck and chest. Marvin fired again, drilling into the demonic dog’s shoulder. With a crunch, the cerberus bit down harder and the woman’s head imploded. Brains and gore sprayed from the corners of the central head’s mouth. With another bite, it sheared the remains of her head off at the neck. The other two heads caught her body at the shoulders before it could fall, savaging and tearing off her arms.

“Goddamnit!” Richard yelled.

Richard clearly had some idea how to handle a gun. Turning the shotgun’s stock against his shoulder, he found the weapon’s safety and fired. Buckshot rattled the beast but ricocheted off the bone brow protecting one of its heads. He pumped and fired again, tearing a hunk out of the beast’s fur, but the blast didn’t appear to penetrate.

Marvin dropped the flashlight and took his revolver in both hands. The light bounced and didn’t break. He steadied his hands, exhaled, and fired. Recoil hammered his wrists. The bullet drilled through one of the leftmost head’s eye sockets, avoiding its armoured skull. The head jerked back then went limp.

Releasing the decapitated body, the other two heads howled in anguish. Before Marvin could adjust his aim, the cerberus spun. Leaping, it landed heavily on the floor of the tunnel.

“Get back! Go back to the camp!” Lara said.

The six of them, Marvin plus the five survivors, retreated toward the barricade. The cerberus, however, moved to cut them off. Talons scarred the concrete. Its dead head flopped against its neck, blood drooling from its cratered eye socket, but the other two heads snapped and snarled.

“This way!” Richard said.

Richard covered them with the shotgun, useless as it seemed to be against the beast. The cerberus stood between them and the barricade. Marvin skipped backward, flipping open his gun’s cylinder and desperately replacing the empty casings with fresh bullets. The others fell back toward the crashed cars with their flashlights and makeshift weapons.

“You said bullets would kill it!” Richard shouted.

“They will! You’ve got to shoot it in the head, in the eyes!” Marvin said, a bullet falling from his fumbling fingers.

The cerberus charged and pounced. It bounded from car to car as they scrambled to get away, heading deeper into the tunnel. Cars imploded under the weight of the demon, spraying safety glass. One of the survivors, Hamilton, got separated from the others. The cerberus circled toward him.

“No!” Richard yelled. “Hey! Hey, over here!”

Richard fired and caught the cerberus in its central neck. The blast wounded the demon but didn’t drive it off. Richard ratcheted the pump action and tried to squeeze off another shell but the shotgun fell empty. The creature’s two remaining heads descended on Hamilton, ripping and tearing with their teeth. One of Hamilton’s arms was yanked free, hosing blood.

Marvin thumbed a final bullet home in the revolver’s cylinder then slapped the gun shut. The cerberus’ middle head bit down on the back of Hamilton’s neck, crushing his spine and tearing his head from his body. The .357 boomed in Marvin’s hands. He squeezed off several rounds in quick succession. An eyeball belonging to the rightmost head burst and the head jerked and died, tongue lolling from its mouth. Two heavy rounds bounced off the bony brow of the middle head. Releasing Hamilton’s body, it disappeared behind the vehicle.

“You missed!” Richard yelled. “One of the heads is still alive!”

“Two out of three ain’t bad!” Marvin protested.

Enraged, the cerberus roared around the vehicle. Lara and the others scattered while Marvin and Richard retreated along its path. Marvin aimed but he had no hope of hitting the central head while it was moving so fast. The two dead heads flopped at its shoulders but the remaining head’s evil gaze was fixed on Marvin.

“Fuck!” Marvin yelled.

Richard tripped and fell, and rolled out of the cerberus’ path. The demon ignored him and stayed on Marvin as he ran deeper into the tunnel. Talons scraped sparks off the ground. The creature’s heavy tail swung behind it, slamming against empty cars. One impact set off a vehicle alarm and it started squealing, headlamps and other lights flashing.

A midsized SUV loomed out of the darkness, slanted across two lanes. Marvin didn’t have time to veer around it. He grabbed the closest door, one of the rear doors, and fortunately found it unlocked. Throwing it open, he jumped inside and scrambled across the backseat. The cerberus slammed into the SUV behind him hard enough to make it rock. Its central head and humped shoulders squeezed inside. Marvin kicked open the door on the opposite side then spilled out of the vehicle, slamming it closed behind him.

The cerberus threw itself around wildly, wedged inside the SUV. Marvin aimed at it through the window but couldn’t get a clear shot at the middle head through the tinted glass. He dropped his gaze then moved the barrel of the revolver toward the gas tank on the side of the vehicle. Unthinking, he fired twice. Bullets punched through the metal and, after a moment’s hesitation, amber gasoline began to run from the holes. The cerberus struggled to free itself, cracking the nearest window from the inside. Marvin groped inside his jacket as he skipped backward then produced a silver lighter. The legend ‘Bad Attitude’ was inscribed on the lighter’s side. Flipping it open, he sparked a tiny flame. The cerberus made the SUV leap in place. Retreating even further, Marvin tossed the burning lighter into the growing pool of gasoline.

The gas caught. Twin strings of flame climbed toward the holes that Marvin had put in the side of the SUV then crawled inside the gas tank. After a pregnant second, the tank ruptured. It didn’t consume the whole SUV in a fireball like in the movies but exploded through the interior of the vehicle with a thunderous clap. Noise rippled through the enclosed space. The windows erupted as shrapnel cut the air. Flames licked the roof of the tunnel.

Echoes faded and smoke billowed in the sudden, looming silence. Marvin’s ears ached. He crept forward, gun extended, but the cerberus had been reduced to a lump of torn and twisted charcoal.

Richard and the other survivors recovered a couple more guns that had been left behind then retreated to the barricades. Marvin reloaded and holstered his revolver. He was beginning to run low on bullets himself. He hoped he had enough to get himself to Monique. Recovering the flashlight he’d been given, he stuffed it inside his jacket.

“Thanks for your help,” Richard said.

“Don’t mention it,” Marvin said. “I don’t know how much longer this will go on, or what happens next, but look out for yourselves.”

Climbing back onto the Phantom motorcycle, Marvin kicked over the engine. He steered it out of the makeshift camp and weaved through the ranks of abandoned and trashed vehicles. Past the burning SUV with the body of the cerberus demon inside. It was a maze at first but eventually the cars thinned out. He picked up speed and hurtled through the tunnel, his headlamp warning of obstacles ahead.

Marvin didn’t come across any more demons, or survivors, or any blood or molten rock dripping from the walls. Nearing the end of the tunnel, however, Marvin heard more gunfire and other sounds of battle. As he exited, exposed to the angry sky again, something shrieked through the clouds. A fighter jet or missile, he couldn’t be sure. Either way, something exploded several blocks away, near enough that he could feel the shockwave it created in his chest. By taking the tunnel, he’d avoided most of the fighting but emerged in the middle of a war. Smoke from the volcano was heavy in the air and hung overhead like a ceiling.

Marvin turned and forged a route toward Monique’s place by memory and instinct. Many of the roads were blocked or simply looked too dangerous. In one intersection, an antiaircraft gun thundered on the back of an armoured truck. Gargoyles and other flying demons exploded and plunged from the sky. He had to swerve between their splattering bodies. It wasn’t only military and demons either. Groups of civilians fled from place to place as fighting intensified.

Approaching Monique’s street, Marvin swerved around a military vehicle that had been left flipped onto its back like a stranded tortoise. A staggered crew of soldiers fired up at something he couldn’t immediately see, blocked by an apartment building, while a rank of terrified civilians cowered behind them.

A giant with the head of an enormous bird stalked down the middle of Monique’s street. Its body looked scrawny and was covered in leperous sores, wearing nothing but a filthy loincloth, but it stood a good four stories tall. Its head looked like that of a horribly mutated blue jay. Bullets stitched up and down its chest but it waved them off like irritating insects. A couple of soldiers fired underbarrel grenade launchers. One of the giant’s hands swung around and batted a smoking RPG out of the air. It flew through the window of a nearby apartment and exploded, showering glass into the street. The second grenade hit and tore a chunk out of the giant’s side, staggering it for a moment.

The soldiers renewed fire, aimed at the giant’s head. Angered, it lunged and managed to catch a straggler as the unit retreated. Civilians screamed and the other soldiers barked as it heaved the man into the air then fed him into its waiting beak, weapon and body armour and all. Meanwhile, the soldiers at the back of their unit were readying an antitank weapon. To Marvin, it looked like an oversized bazooka.

“Clear!” one of the soldiers yelled.

The bazooka boomed, scouring the street behind it with a flaming backblast. The giant was distracted, head tossed back, the shape of the swallowed soldier visible in its throat. The meteoric projectile from the antitank weapon drilled it right in the centre of its chest and exploded. Ribs sprung open. Blood and bone and flesh erupted from a crater in the giant’s back.

Civilians cheered. Spine shattered, the giant folded over and collapsed. Marvin pulled toward the group as slowly as possible so he wasn’t mistaken for a threat. The soldiers were busy reloading and trying their radios for orders. He needed to get through them, past the body, to reach Monique.

Suddenly, a tunnel of pure light pierced the clouds of ash overhead. As wide as a bus, it fell over the lip of a building and illuminated a patch of ground near the dead giant’s feet. A cry of amazement went up among the civilians following the soldiers.

“It’s happening! It’s one of the stairways to Heaven!” someone shouted.

“They’re real!”

“Killing demons must open them up, if you kill the big ones!”

Marvin overheard one of the soldiers, looking nervous, talking into his radio. “Uh, Command, we appear to have a-, uh, we have a pillar of light here. Appears to be, uh, Rapture-related, over.”

“Stay back!” Another soldier tried to wave off the civilians. “We don’t have any reports of this, we don’t know exactly what it is! Stay back!”

Ignoring him, most of the crowd surged toward the light. Some hung back out of caution but most plunged straight into the glow, brilliant in the smoking darkness. Marvin hesitated. Earth had been given away to the forces of Hell. God had abandoned them. He wasn’t sure if the demons or military were winning but the future looked bleak either way with all the children gone, millions, maybe billions, dead, and the planet more ruined than ever. This might be his only chance to escape all of that but it would mean leaving any chance of finding out what had happened to Monique behind.

Marvin leaned over and spat on the ground, his saliva laced with ash. “Heaven can wait.”

“It’s beautiful!” someone yelled.

“God, I’m coming home!”

Only one of the soldiers broke ranks and ran for the shaft of light along with the civilians. Basking in the glow, those seeking salvation raised their arms and faces to the sky. Gossamer tendrils, faintly blue, unfurled from the source of the light and wrapped around them. Laughing and shouting prayers, people were whisked into the air and vanished into the light’s brilliance.

With a crunch, the light suddenly disappeared. The street plunged back into darkness, half-lit by the reflected glow of the volcano, and it took several moments for Marvin’s eyes to adjust. He heard another juicy crunch. What might have been muffled screams were abruptly cut off. On the rooftop where the pillar of light had originated was something huge and vaguely crablike. A cross between a giant spider and a crustacean. It chewed and bright beams of light flickered behind its mandibles before it scuttled off across the rooftops.

“Jesus Christ!” someone said, as others screamed in horror.

Marvin moved on past the corpse of the bird-headed giant. Monique’s building was in one piece but battered by fighting. Most of the windows were broken and something had clearly rammed down the front doors. The sight of the collapsed entryway worried him but he took advantage of it by steering his bike right through the doorway and parking in the lobby.

He took the stairs up to Monique’s apartment two at a time but when he kicked open her door he found the place empty. The windows were broken and a fire had destroyed her bedroom. He ran from room to room before remembering the whiteboard on the fridge that Monique and her roommates used to leave messages for one another. Hastily scrawled on it was just the word ‘BASEMENT’.

Marvin returned to the stairwell. The basement of Monique’s building served as its laundry, lined with washing machines and dryers. Another explosion rattled the building as he made his way down. There was no power but he still had the flashlight he’d taken from the group in the tunnel. He used it to find his way to the laundry door.

“Monique? Monique!”

About a dozen people clustered behind the washing machines, looking for a safe place in the chaos. After a moment, Monique stood up. He recognised her immediately in the dimly lit room by her athletic frame and dark, frizzy hair.

“Marvin? How did you get here?”

The two of them closed in and squeezed each other tightly. Wide, white eyes watched them throughout the room.

“We have to go, we have to get out of here,” Marvin said.

“Why?”

As if in response, another explosion shook the ceiling overhead. One of the other survivors cowering in the basement interrupted.

“Are you crazy? You can’t go out there!”

“The city is a warzone,” Marvin said. “We need to get out of here! I don’t know where things are better but I know we can’t stay here without getting blown up or covered in lava or something!”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me.”

With a regretful look around the room, Monique took Marvin by the hand. They raced back up the stairs to his bike. Monique climbed behind him on the saddle.

“But where will we go?” Monique asked. “Somebody said there were still pillars of light appearing in places, picking people up and taking them to Heaven!”

“I, uh, don’t think so,” Marvin said.

“Then where?”

“I don’t know, maybe the countryside? Less people, less demons. Maybe Mexico, or Alaska, or Canada. Or we could ride out to California and try to jump on a boat to the Hawaiian islands?”

Monique laughed in spite of the situation. “That’s a lot of options.”

“Good girls go to Heaven, baby,” Marvin said, revving the bike’s engine. “But bad girls go everywhere.”

======

Sean: Back when I used to work a lot of hospitality, I was pretty infamous for constantly singing on the job. Like I guess it was a way of keeping myself entertained? Singing is just a tic of mine, when we first started dating my now-wife hated how I would sing while wandering around the shops but I wouldn’t even realise I was doing it.

I can’t remember all the songs I used to sing but Meat Loaf was absolutely up there. I used to do a sort of Meat Loaf medley where I would just belt out a bunch of his songs in a row, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, I’d Do Anything for Love, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, and, of course, Bat Out of Hell. How many Meat Loaf references did you catch, by the way? Some are more obvious than others.

The absolutely vivid imagery that just drips out of Bat Out of Hell was of course what really drew me to the song. To me, always evoked this vision of this urban hellscape, like this monstrous, eldritch place underneath the city itself with bodies in the gutter and supernatural killers. I did toy originally with ending the story on a motorcycle crash, no survivors, since it’s obviously the whole impetus of the song but, fuck it, the whole setting felt grim enough for me.

Welcome back for the year! First official story for 2026, got plenty more Mixtape on the way, you can get a bit of an idea of what’s on the way by checking out the new Mixtape playlist, and you can find more from me on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram. 

Next Track: The Black Sorrows – Chained to the Wheel