Coffee with a Devil Part Nine
Coffee with a Devil
A Story in Serial - Part Nine
This is part nine of the serial story I’m currently writing. If you have not read the story from the beginning, you might want to go check out part one first. Click here to read it now. This is a story you get to help me write by providing your feedback in the comments or by sending me a message through my Contact page . If I like your ideas, they might just end up in the story, or I might name one of the characters after you!Part Nine:The Accident
Outside the diner, Abaddon had made himself comfortable in the leather passenger seat of the small rental car Viggo had picked up at the airport. He smiled as the pathetic human exited the diner with his head down and shoulders slumped. The demon waved a hand to his soldiers, sending them away; he could handle this on his own.As Viggo fished in his pocket for the keys, Abaddon began to speak to himself, soothed by the sound of his own words.
“The fool thinks it can all end so easily.” He made a “tsk” sound and shook his head. “When will they ever learn?”
The driver’s side door opened, and Viggo stood in the doorway, hesitating. Yes, he can feel it, can feel my presence. Come fool, come to your death. Viggo got in, obviously with hesitation, and pulled the door shut. He dropped the key FOB into the cup holder and then started the engine. He gulped with such a loud noise that Abaddon nearly burst out laughing. The human’s fear was deliciously palpable.
“Drive.”
Viggo put the car in gear and pulled away from the diner, onto the hot, black asphalt under the scorching sun of a lonely, West Texas sky. The demon was in control, and now he did laugh.
* * *
Viggo tried to focus on the road, looking just above the white, bloodless knuckles of his hand on top of the steering wheel. He was not alone. The feeling had overwhelmed him as soon as he had opened the door to the little black Kia rental. He was overwhelmed now, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his arm was beginning to hurt all the way up to the shoulder.
He took a deep breath and repositioned himself so that his hands were at ten and two. It was uncomfortable and awkward, but he needed the extra stability. Before him was the straightest and blackest road he had ever driven on. To his left and right was endless, flat landscape, broken up only by the distant plateaus and oil rigs splotched onto the grassless fields of cracked earth. He had never been to this part of the country before, but everything about it felt familiar. That thought amplified the feeling of being overwhelmed, and his breaths began to come out in shallow puffs.
Though he fully knew the road before him was dark, as if freshly paved, it seemed to transform into an older road, one with large holes scattered all over it. The oil rigs to his left and right were still spread out far and in between, but they were no longer oil pumps; they had become huts and houses of earth and discarded materials. There were no longer barrels or trucks beside them but scarcely clad children at play. They were filthy and barefoot, and when they saw his car—their armored truck—the children stopped their game and turned to shout at him. They shook their fists at him and shouted for them to go home. Viggo wanted to stop and go to them, to tell them that they were trying to help, to make their lives better. He knew it was hopeless; all of those years of violence had made the kids who once smiled and begged for “chocolata” into bitter enemies.
Viggo forced his eyes straight ahead and squinted to block out the peripheral sights. Forced himself to focus on the gunner in the vehicle in front of them and keep the proper distance. To scan the horizon in a figure eight pattern ahead and to the left. That was his sector of fire, his area to watch. He didn’t see the ones holding the weapons, only the hot blast as the projectile streaked into the lead vehicle. Streaked in orange and fire, hot yet bringing the cold hand of death. The vehicle’s left side rose before the sound met up with the blast. Viggo watched the gunner being thrown from the hatch. Watched Matthews being thrown from the vehicle.
Someone screamed from the other side of the vehicle, shouting his last name and telling him to swerve. Viggo turned and saw his vehicle commander—Sergeant Abaddon—shouting and pointing, then calm and smiling. Viggo shook his head and felt his breath stop. He turned back to his left and saw the front end of the lead vehicle. They were about to slam into it. He jerked the wheel hard to the left and the vehicle swerved hard, too hard. The tires skipped, and then they were rolling, sideways. Something hit him hard in the face, chest, and legs; and he was instantly coughing through an acrid smell.
The vehicle barrel rolled twice and then slid for twenty more yards before coming to a stop on its side. Viggo heard laughing to his right and screaming all around him. He heard gunfire in every direction. He frantically slapped his hands all around him, but his rifle was nowhere. He smelled diesel and smoke, carbine oil and blood. A horn was going off, distant but then closer, closer.
Strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders and around his waist. He struggled against them but was helpless against the raw power of the hands and arms as they dragged him from the smoking vehicle. He felt the hot asphalt on his legs as he was dragged across the road, and then he was in the cracked and crumbling earth in a ditch. Something touched his head, and then the hands were gone.
Viggo opened his eyes and shouted uncontrollably as a King Ranch F-350 slammed into his rental car just a few feet away from him. He lifted his arms to shield his face and ducked away. He heard tires squealing, doors slamming. Someone was shouting. More than one. He heard running steps on the asphalt and someone yelling at him. Had to be him. It was his fault. They were gone, and it was his fault.
Hands grabbed at his arms, but he fought them and yelled, “Haji! Haji!” He turned onto his stomach and tried to crawl away, shouting for someone to bring his weapon, and then he heard an elderly voice, calm, saying something that he knew would never be true.
“Son, you’re home now.”
Viggo stopped crawling and turned onto his backside. He looked up and saw two figures silhouetted by the sun behind them. There were two men, both wearing boots and jeans with big hats that shaded their necks. One was very old, and the other—had to be his son—was probably in his twenties.
Viggo’s voice trembled and his eyes filled with water. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He backed away as the younger man knelt and reached out to him. “They’re gone. I’m sorry.” He looked past them and saw the rental car pressed up against the front of the truck. “I’m so sorry.”
Viggo could not hold back the tears any longer.
* * *
Lisa looked at the building and suite number on the piece of paper in her hand for the hundredth time. Building 3460, Suite 12. She groaned and let her hands fall back to her sides. It was the place. No point trying to convince herself otherwise. She steeled her nerves and then shoved the paper into the pocket of her jeans. One more deep breath, and then she opened the door, pushing it in and feeling out of place when the bells above the door made a pleasant ringing sound.
She ignored the people in the chairs of the quiet waiting area and bypassed the woman at the chest-high reception desk. She marched right for the door of the office with the name she’d memorized, the same name Viggo had written on the paper now crumpled in her jeans pocket. Janice McElroy. She heard the receptionist calling her but ignored the “ma’am stops” and “you can’t go in theres.” She grabbed the door handle and yanked it open.
She heard a gasp at the same time she saw the elderly woman behind the desk who had made the sound. Lisa paused, instantly scanning the slowly rising woman who must have been in her sixties. The image of the business suit, heavy makeup, white hair, and department store perfume didn’t match the one that had been haunting her dreams for the past year.
“Excuse me, but you cannot simply barge into this office,” Janice McElroy said as she ripped a pair of bifocals from her face. “Just who do you think you are?”
Lisa, baffled yet determined to give this home-wrecking woman a piece of her mind, lifted her chin slightly and lifted a hand to pause the receptionist, who had come up beside her. “Lisa Baptiste,” she said with as much grit as she could muster despite the shaking in her voice. “Viggo Baptiste’s wife.”
Janice McElroy set her glasses on her desk. “Oh.” She looked down and nodded. “I thought you might come, eventually.” She looked back up. “I see he finally told you.”
“Yeah, he did. Are you Janice McElroy?” Lisa was more confident now but still a little bit confused.
Janice McElroy nodded then held a hand up to her receptionist to tell her it was alright. The receptionist reluctantly nodded and then went back to her desk. Janice McElroy smiled. “Please come in, Lisa. We have a lot to talk about.”
To be continued…
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