Chapter 9

The gas was gone, so there was nothing to keep us from picking up metallic items that had fallen to the ground. Wow, where had those skeletons been to collect so many gold coins? By the time we had all of the coins picked up, it looked like we had around $12,000 just from these skeletons. If this kept up, we were going to have a very profitable day.

A little farther along, we came to a flock of the small demons and a single one of normal size. The demons were busy carrying out stuff from a store. Most of what they had were wooden casks with something written on the side which seemed to indicate what the cask contained. Well, I was going to check more closely after we got rid of these demons.

These demons were not bunched up, so the grenades or poison were not indicated here. I did not see any weapons with the demons except for a small knife carried like a fighting knife in a sheath at the demon’s belt. We tried to sneak up on the demons because we were afraid that they would run away if they spotted us too soon. The boss demon must have been acting as their lookout from the way his head kept swiveling, but his back was toward us, so he never saw us as we moved from hiding place to hiding place.

Ed was in front this time, so he crept up behind the large demon and chopped off the demon’s head with the sword he was holding in his right hand. Just as Ed did this, one of the other demons happened to see him, and he let out what sounded to me like a startled scream, but it might also have been a warning that an enemy was among them.

In any case, that demon dropped the cask that he was carrying and ran back into the building. The dropped cask had broken open and had scattered a white crystalline substance on the ground. Bill and I followed the demon into the building, and we found him chattering in a language that none of us could understand to four more of the small demons that were carrying more of the casks. Now I could see the casks more clearly, and I saw that the side was labeled “saltpeter 12 pounds Erlik Chemical Co., Eastmont, Isbardia.” Were the demons stealing potassium nitrate to make gunpowder? If so, where were the sulfur and powdered charcoal coming from? Maybe I would find that out later.

These demons were easily killed. It was as if they were recent recruits who had not had sufficient training. They certainly were clumsy when they tried to use their spears. We looked around the building and did not find any sign of anything else that the demons were stealing. Furthermore, we say no sign of either sulfur or powdered charcoal.

I wondered if this was an important bit of intelligence. I would report my observation to Pete and let him follow up on what needed to be done. Was this why there was a rush to drive the demons out of Eastmont? I probably would never know the answer to that question.

The next batch of demons we ran into were more of the little ones. It was enough to make me wonder if they were sending in the reserves and the not-quite-make-its of hell. This bunch were enthusiastic, but not very effective. These little guys were armed with clubs that were nearly as big as they were. That spoke well for the physical strength of these Munchkins of the demon world, but they knew even less about how to fight with them that did that previous bunch with their spears. This bunch amounted to 27 demons, and we were able to kill every one of them without resorting to grenades or to poison.

These guys were also loaded with gold coins. I think that we must have picked up about $3,000 worth, along with some silver and copper coins. On top of that, there were six rings, but none of them had sockets. That was disappointing, but we could sell these rings for a decent price if we dealt with John. I don’t think that he would try to cheat us. The clubs were made of wood and had no magic spells that we could detect. They were not even worth picking up our of the street.

Hey, that’s interesting. I see a demon riding on the back of a giant monster that was damned ugly, but had no specific features that could be used to identify it. As we got closer to it, the giant monster sped up as if it were charging us. That seemed peculiar because it did not have anything that I could see that would harm us except for its two feet. They were big, but the monster seemed very clumsy as it walked. Was this another reject pulled out of the refuse dump for lack of anything better to throw at us.

However, I did see a couple of respectable looking hands on the end of long arms. Maybe it was going to try to grab us and follow that with something we would not like. I would have dismissed it completely and used a grenade on the duo if I had any idea of what was supposed to happen when they got close. Well, the monster picked me to be its first victim, and that was going to give me a chance to test my now supercharged Demon Bane against it.

When it got close enough for me to reach it, I tried stabbing the monstrous creature with the point on the end of my Demon Bane. What the hell!? For all of the good I did, I might as well have been trying to poke the wall of a stone building. I was touching the creature on the side of a leg, and it looked like there was some sort of armor plate covering that part of the leg. A small arc of lightning did jump to it, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the creature.

Okay, dammit, let’s see what will happen if I smash against it with a blow from the club part of my enhanced Demon Bane. At this point, the creature was trying to turn to face me, so it was not trying to move that specific leg as it would for walking. I drew my weapon back and smashed it against the creature’s leg where I had previously tried to stab it. Nothing! The club was not damaged, but it just bounced off.

Now I was feeling frustrated. I was especially frustrated because I had just paid out a hell of a lot of money to upgrade my Demon Bane, and it was not able to do a damned thing against this behemoth. It had finally completed its turn to face me and was reaching for me with one of its gigantic hands. I didn’t wait for it to finish the motion. I don’t know why I did it, panic maybe, but I reacted by trying to stab it in its torso down where its bladder would be if it were a giant human.

Oh, my God! That produced a roar of pain that nearly deafened me. The point went into the giant’s flesh with practically no resistance, and the wooden head to which the blade was attached made quite a dent as it followed the blade. I was so surprised by that roar that I twisted the shaft of Demon Bane and kind of pulled up on it. There was another roar of pain at that, and the blade rotated about 90° and made a long cut in the belly of the beast.

Liquid poured out of the beast’s cut abdomen. There was so much liquid that was ejected from the wound that I almost wondered if the beast wsere filled with the liquid, whatever it was. At least, it didn’t smell like piss, so I can’t imagine what it was or from what organ it had come from.

Well, the smaller creature riding the back of the beast I had just wounded jumped to the ground and tried to dig through the cobblestones, apparently to escape. Bill, who was standing beside me, reacted by plunging his Demon Bane into the body of that smaller beast. From the smell of burning flesh, that creature must have been immediately killed by electrocution. Bill said to me later that he could see the arc jump from his weapon to the body of the creature that he had just killed.

Meanwhile, my Demon Bane was shooting arc after arc of electricity into the body of the larger beast. I was still kind of stunned by the beast’s roar, so I am not sure exactly what I did see, but it looked to me like at least four arcs jumped from Demon Bane into the wound that I had just made. Here, too, I could smell the odor of burned flesh. Okay, whatever actually did happen was enough to kill the huge creature, so I was finally able to relax. I promised myself that the next time I encountered one of those things, I was not going to fool around. I was going to hit it with a flask of poison. That creature was frightening just to look at.

I sure hoped that we did not see any more of those things any time soon. However, the next creatures we saw was no pushover. We were attacked by at least 12 of the demon dogs, and that was one hell of a battle. The dogs caught us out in the open without anything to shelter against. We did the only thing that we could do and formed the triangle with each of us facing outward. Again, my diamond ring protected not only me, but my two companions.

I was immune to the bites of the dogs, but the others weren’t. Whenever possible, I reached out to strike a dog that was going after Bill or Ed. Thank God that the electric arc from my Demon Bane was strong enough to kill any dog that it struck. Therefore, all I had to do was to hit the dog with the blade or the club portion of Demon Bane to kill it. The story might well have been different if I had been forced to stab my blade into the body of the attacking dog and then pull it out before I could attack another dog. The few seconds might have been enough for a dog to reach a vital part of Bill or Ed’s anatomy.

I had to rest a bit after that battle. It was not that I was suffering from too much physical activity, but that I was totally stressed out over having to fight so frantically for about 10 minutes or so. A further frustrating part of the battle was that none of the dogs had a fanny pack that we might get something useful from. Now that was truly frustrating!

Another terrifying creature that we had to face that day was the pack of huge rats that were summoned by a nondescript demon that I might not have taken seriously. That creature was able to summon and control hundreds of Norway rats that it called in to attack us. Okay, I will admit it, I am terrified by rats of all types and sizes, and a Norway rat is often as large as a cat and had fierce looking teeth. These rats that the creature called were not demons or monsters in the normal sense, but were common rats as are to be found in any city in any place where there is food to be found.

Anyway, thank God for the ample supply of grenades and flasks of poison that I had. The rats tended to accumulate in one spot or another, and I was able to kill them in large helpings with a grenade or with poison. I used a grenade lobbed into a pack of rats whenever the wind was not favorable, but the poison was much more effective in killing rats than were explosions.