CHAPTER 14: "HELL ON EARTH"

The first thing that hit him was the smell. Copper. Burning flesh. Something acrid and chemical that his brain couldn't quite categorize because his brain was shutting down, refusing to process what his eyes were showing him.

The second thing was the sound.

Not screaming anymore. Screaming required living people. What Speed heard was something worse—the wet, tearing sounds of meat being ripped apart. The splintering of wood. The collapse of structures. The guttural, inhuman roars of things that shouldn't exist making sounds that throats weren't designed to make.

Speed stopped at the village entrance.

His entire body locked up.

A demon was standing thirty feet away. Grotesque. Humanoid but wrong—skin stretched too tight over a skeletal frame, teeth like daggers, claws that looked like they were made of obsidian. It had a civilian—a man, screaming, struggling—pinned against the ground.

The demon's jaw unhinged. Wider. Wider.

It bit down on the man's neck.

Blood sprayed. Not a little bit. A lot. An arterial spray that painted the ground red and kept going, kept pumping, the man's body convulsing once, twice, then going completely limp. Dead. Just like that. One bite and the man's life ended, his body dropping like a puppet with cut strings.

The demon released him, blood dripping from its teeth, and turned to look at Speed.

Their eyes met for one eternal second.

Then the demon shrieked—a sound so loud it made Speed's eardrums ring—and charged at something else. A woman trying to run. The creature reached out, grabbed her by the leg, and threw her like she weighed nothing. Her body arced through the air, screaming, and crashed through the wooden wall of a building, leaving a Speed-shaped hole in the structure. The screaming stopped.

Speed covered his mouth.

He was going to be sick.

All around the village, it was the same. Different demons. Different variations of horror. One humanoid thing with too many arms was tearing apart three people at once, each arm gripping a different limb. Another creature—reptilian, scales glinting in the firelight—was swallowing a body whole, the corpse disappearing into its maw.

And the souls.

Speed didn't understand what he was seeing at first. But then his brain caught up. Bodies of people killed by demons were releasing glowing orbs—soft, ethereal, like balls of light no bigger than a fist. The souls. They were leaving the bodies, drifting upward, fading into the smoke and ash like they were being erased from existence.

One man—older, with a gray beard, still holding a pitchfork like he'd tried to fight back—was facing down a massive demon with a hunched back and too many teeth. The man screamed a battle cry that sounded like desperation and thrust the pitchfork forward.

The demon caught it with one hand.

Then twisted.

The man's spine made a sound like cracking wood. His body folded backward in ways spines weren't designed to fold. He crumpled to the ground, his legs no longer responding to commands, the pitchfork clattering uselessly.

The demon finished him.

Speed fell to his knees.

"Oh my God," he whispered. His hands were shaking. "Oh my God... oh my God..."

He wanted to look away. Couldn't. His eyes were locked on the nightmare unfolding in front of him, cataloging every horror, documenting every death, storing away trauma that would probably destroy him if he ever had time to process it properly.

The village was hell.

Bodies everywhere. Not quite corpses yet—some were still twitching, still dying. Buildings burning. Demons moving between the flames like they were at home here, like the fire was a comfortable bed and the death was a familiar meal.

Speed backed away.

The movement caught the attention of one of the demons—a thing that looked like it was made of chitinous armor and spikes. It turned toward him, its head tilting at an angle that suggested it didn't have a normal spine.

Speed ran.

He sprinted back the way he'd come, pushing through the chaos, trying to avoid the demons, trying to find anything that made sense in this senseless nightmare. The demon didn't chase him. It didn't need to. There were plenty of other people to kill.

Speed made it past the first building. Then the second. His brain was screaming at him, his body was running on pure adrenaline and terror, and he was looking—searching—for the ghost boy.

The little blonde kid.

The one who'd run through him in the cornfield.

The one whose family had walked toward this burning hell.

"Kid!" Speed screamed. "KID! WHERE ARE YOU?"

His voice was swallowed by the roar of flames and the wet sounds of death.

Speed kept moving. He dodged around burning buildings. Jumped over bodies. Once, he almost stepped on a severed arm and his stomach lurched but he didn't have time to get sick, didn't have time for his body to rebel.

Then he heard it.

Faint. Nearly lost in the chaos.

Crying.

A child's voice. Small. Terrified. Alive.

Speed's heart seized. He changed direction, moving toward the sound, pushing through smoke so thick it was like breathing liquid.

He found the house.

What was left of it.

The roof had collapsed in on itself, wooden beams creating a cage of splinters and debris. Only a small section of the interior was still visible—a pit of rubble where a home had been.

And there, trapped under a massive wooden beam, was the ghost boy.

His upper body was visible. His head. One arm reaching out. Everything from the waist down was crushed under the weight of the beam. Not dead yet. But dying. Slowly. Helplessly.

Speed ran to him.

"Hey! HEY! It's okay! I found you!" Speed was on his knees, hands reaching out, voice cracking with the kind of desperation that came from finding one person to save in a world where saving anyone was impossible.

The boy's eyes focused on Speed.

Their eyes met. The boy could see him now. Speed was no longer a ghost in this reality. He was real. He was there.

"Sir... help me..." the boy whispered.

His voice was so small. So scared.

Speed's hands were shaking so badly he could barely steady them.

"It's gonna be okay, alright?" Speed said, and he was lying and he knew he was lying and the boy probably knew he was lying too, but he said it anyway because the alternative was accepting that the world was nothing but horror and there was no point in trying. "I'm gonna get you out!"

Speed looked around, trying to figure out what he was working with. Trying to find a way to save this kid.

That's when he saw them.

A hand sticking out from under the rubble. Small. Delicate. With a wedding ring on the ring finger.

The mother.

Speed's throat closed.

The mother was crushed under the same beam, under the same rubble. Dead. Probably had been dead for hours, or maybe just minutes, but dead nonetheless. The wedding ring caught the light from the burning village, glinting like a reminder of a life that had ended.

And past that—

The father.

Impaled on a wooden stake. Crucified-style, his body hanging limply, his eyes open and staring at nothing. As Speed watched, a glowing orb—the soul—rose slowly from the man's mouth, drifting upward, fading into the smoke.

Speed watched the father die.

Again. Even though he was already dead. Even though the soul leaving the body meant he was gone, truly gone, erased from existence except for the memory of his death.

"No," Speed whispered.

He turned back to the boy.

The boy was looking past Speed, looking at where his parents' bodies were crushed and impaled. The boy's eyes were wide. Not quite understanding. Not yet.

Speed moved fast, covering the boy's eyes with his hand.

"No, no, don't look," Speed said, his voice firm even though his hands were trembling. "Don't look, buddy."

The boy's hands came up, gripping Speed's wrist, but he didn't pull away. He just held on. Held tight.

Speed took a deep breath.

He looked at the beam pinning the boy to the ground.

It was massive. Heavy. The kind of thing that would have taken three, maybe four grown men to move under normal circumstances. These were not normal circumstances. These were the circumstances of a kid's entire world being crushed under wood and stone and the weight of a dying world.

Speed grabbed the beam.

He pulled.

Nothing happened. The beam didn't even shift.

Speed pulled harder. His muscles screamed. His hands dug into the wood, splinters driving under his fingernails, drawing blood. He planted his feet and pulled.

"COME ON! MOVE!" he screamed.

The beam didn't move.

Speed tried again. And again. And again. Pull until his hands bled. Pull until his arms felt like they were going to tear out of their sockets. Pull like he could make this work through sheer force of will and desperation.

It didn't work.

The beam didn't budge.

Speed collapsed beside the boy, his chest heaving, his hands shaking, blood dripping from his palms where the splinters had torn the skin open.

"I'm sorry," Speed said, tears streaming down his face. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

He reached down and took the boy's hand.

The boy's grip was weak. Getting weaker. Faster than should have been possible.

"Please... save me... sir..." the boy whispered, his voice fading.

Speed's heart broke.

He was supposed to save this kid. He was supposed to be the hero. Instead, he was kneeling beside a dying child, both of them trapped under the weight of a world that had stopped making sense and decided to end instead.

Speed tried to smile. Tried to make his voice sound like everything was going to be okay.

"It's gonna be okay," he lied, and the lie tasted like copper and ash. "We'll... we'll go to the park after this, okay? Get some ice cream... play on the swings..."

The boy's eyes focused on Speed's face. His grip tightened slightly.

A small, fragile hope flickered in the child's expression. Like he wanted to believe. Like he needed to believe.

"...Okay..." the boy whispered.

Speed held his hand.