The Voice Of My Dark Angel Book 1 Angels of the Apocalypse

1: How It Starts

Everybody’s always going on about how your sixteenth birthday is supposed to be this ‘special’ or ‘magical’ affair. But that’s not how it was for me.

The day of my sixteenth was the day of the Demon Invasion. I spent the day running and hiding. And I’ve been running ever since.

-Fifteen Years Later-

“What do you mean we’re not going back with that colony where those hot guys were?” My sister whined. Ok, maybe it was more of a complaint, really, but I was at my limit.

“That’s exactly it.” I hissed, spinning on her. “I’m not getting stuck in somebody’s misguided ‘repopulate the Earth’ scheme. Or worse, end up raped or have a bunch of numb-skull, d**k brained idiots who can only think with their crotch chasing me. If you want to go back, then go.” I snapped, turning back around so I wouldn’t have to face my blond, hazel eyed, too pretty for her own good sister. Even as ratty and dirty as we were, she still drew attention.

“Your sense of priorities are.. skewed.” My sister commented wryly from behind me. I made a disgusted noise and kept walking, but my sister’s footsteps stopped. I rolled my own nearly identical hazel eyes, the only thing our father ever gave us really, and decided to ignore the fact that she wasn’t following. “How long are we going to keep running, Char? We can’t keep this up forever! Eventually the D’s or a gang of rogues is gonna catch us. We need to pick a place and stay. Ever since mom died you-”

“Don't you even!” I turned on her so fast her mouth froze, hanging open. I forced my own disheveled brown hair out of my eyes as her expression changed, and I flinched as I saw the anger in her bubbling up. This was going to turn into one of our terrible fights, I just knew it. Mouth firm, she glared at me, c*****g a hip.

“And just what exactly don’t you want me to do, Charlotte?” She drew out my full name in that way she knew annoyed me. “Point out that if you had just married that guy instead of running away, that mom would still be alive? That it’s your fault she’s dead and I’ve been deprived of my own husband and children because I was outcast with you, so I’m out here.. Just.. wandering around, homeless, and..and..” She flung her arms out, and then with tears in her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest, but I was too hurt, too frustrated and angry to comfort her this time.

“Well you know what? If you hate staying with me so much, maybe you really should go back to that colony!” I grit out and spun on my heel, stomping off away from her. I didn’t bother to look back to see if she was following, just shrugged my bag a little to make it settle around the tight knot of my shoulders. Internally, I cursed the whole problem.

Demons. They came here from Hell and took over. Oh the planet is still mostly intact. The cities were all mostly destroyed in the Demon’s hunt for people. Souls to consume, people to breed their spawn with or use for slave labor. Sometimes all three if you were unlucky.

They’d waited until humanity was at its most corrupt, and then poured from some dimensional rift to conquer us all. It was easy. The majority of us were poor, desperate, discriminated against, kept separate by scheming politicians and greedy news outlets always looking for a quick buck. We wanted a way out, we wanted the wealth, we wanted more, we wanted.. Everything… all the sins.. All the sins.

Now people were even afraid to say the ‘D’ word out loud. Especially in public. In case it brought the Demons down upon them. I sighed. Not that they needed the excuse.

Despite our cities being crushed, people survived. After all, the Demons didn’t want to eradicate us. We’re too useful.

So they let us flee to the rural areas. The places less affected by their invasion. The places where little ma and pa farmers still had little ma and pa farms and knew the ways of the land or knew how to survive without all the conveniences. ‘The old ways’, without all the technology that we’d come to rely on. Humanity built isolated colonies around these little rural communities, and as long as the number never got too large, the colony was left alone by the Demons. It’s mostly travelers and roaming bands who get picked off.

Until, that is, a colony gets too large. Or starts causing the Demons trouble. Like when they decide it's time to try to take back our world…

And then.. Well, then it’s like the Conquering all over again, and that’s left behind is broken bodies, ash and destruction. Any unaccounted for people are assumed taken by the Demons. You’ll likely never see them again.

Eventually, even lost in my own thoughts, I heard my sister’s scuffing footsteps behind me. The scuffing likely deliberate just to annoy me into acknowledging her. I rolled my eyes and ignored her. She may only have been five years younger than me, but we still squabbled like kids.

In my opinion, it was probably just a product of our environment. We didn’t get to ‘grow up’ normally, and sort of stagnated in this weird teenage/childish loop we couldn’t seem to crawl out of. We were suddenly thrust into a dangerous world of survival and had to be so mature in so many ways, that it was like we somehow became emotionally..stunted. I shrugged my pack again, and looked ahead of us for the overgrown dollar store. We’d spend the night there. Any shelter was better than none, and we could scavenge for any supplies that might have been overlooked or hadn’t decayed away too badly to be rendered useless. Fifteen years was a long time, but medications could still be found on occasion, and even if they were old, there were still some that were effective. Especially painkillers, things people overlooked like allergy medications, sleeping pills, vitamins and other supplements to help keep you healthy when you couldn’t find enough food to sustain you… Plus, they could be traded for food, if nothing canned had survived. And there was always cheap plastics. Containers, shoes, brushes, hygiene items. All these things could sometimes be found, and since manufacturing plants no longer existed, plastic had become a valuable resource. It didn’t break down, was sturdy, it was basically worth its weight in gold. I heard some places even melted it down when it broke and reformed it, even though I always thought that was bad for your health. I guess in a Demon conquered world, nobody cared anymore. And another item to look for on my list: toys. Some colonies would trade well for decent toys, and most dollar stores had plastic jewelry, plastic dolls, plastic dinosaurs and things…

I guess it would all be easier to have a Demon on your side. They seemed to be able to pull necessities from thin air. Otherwise, you did like we did, scavenge them, make them, or find somebody who would do one or the other for you so you could trade for them. I snorted to myself.

We made it just before nightfall, crawling in through the large front display window behind the cash register counter because the door had fallen off its hinges and gotten wedged in place by plantlife. Vines and other plants spilled into the building, and I reminded my sister to watch for snakes. The last thing either of us needed was to get bit. She nodded mutely, still obviously upset. I ignored her attitude and stepped carefully through the scattered vegetation growing up through the cracks in the concrete flooring. The place smelled musty, and like cat-spray. A cat marking its territory meant it kept coming back here for some reason, which was a good indicator that they were getting fed, i.e. vermin. And vermin meant they were still nibbling on something, even if it was just the wiring and insulation. I was hoping for more though, so I cautiously made my way further back into the store.

“Char.. I think it’s too dark to go too far.” My sister’s voice echoed slightly, a tinge of nervousness creeping into her voice. Nervousness that became infectious when something skittered in the dark of the toppled shelving. Shelving that a part of me noted had already been looted before.

“Yeah, I think you’re right..” I muttered. “Though I wish you’d keep quiet. We don’t know what’s in here.” I backed towards her and she gripped my arm, peering over my shoulder skittishly. It would have been funny, the fact that she was taller, and thinner than me, built more like an elf to my shorter, broader frame.. If it wasn’t for the current situation.

“Fine, next time I'll let you walk into the dark alone.” She hissed, and the thing skittered again. “What is it?!” Her voice changed pitch, getting higher with her fear.

“Probably a rat.” I answered, making her muffle a squeal.

“A rat?! Kill it!” She yelped, and I twisted, slapping a hand over her mouth.

“I said ‘probably’. It could be worse. Even one of..them.” I spat and she stilled.

“Oh God.” She moaned. “Oh God, oh God, oh God..” Practically pulling me back towards the window, she retreated, using me as a shield. My foot snagged on something and I tripped, felt myself falling and couldn’t suppress the adrenaline fueled shriek as I toppled. The last thing you wanted to do in this kind of situation is fall flat on your ass, become a helpless target.

“Analise!” I yipped as I tumbled over, and with a crash, a ball of black fuzz bolted from the shadows out of the broken window.

“A cat!” My sister sobbed. “It was a cat!” Analise dropped to the ground beside me, half laughing and half sobbing as I rubbed my sore tailbone.

“I’m glad you found it so amusing.” I grumped. “Now, do you want to set up out here or further in?”

In the end, we chose a spot away from the windows so that our small campfire wouldn’t be noticed. Or well, as easily noticed. With as many c****s and cracks as were in the walls, there was no telling. Analise and I had the fortune to find a few tents in a chain store early in the Demon invasion. We’d carefully maintained them so that they’d last. There were leaks that we’d patched, of course, but it was better than nothing. It was a warm, mostly dry place to sleep and protected you from most of the elements. My biggest fear was the metal rusting and corroding, so I was always on the lookout for oils when we stopped places. It turned out, this was not a thing people scavenged as much as I thought they would. For instance, I found a whole box of sewing machine oil in a superstore storage room once. Worked great for keeping the collapsible tent poles, well collapsing easily, and the joints rust-free. I guess people just didn’t think about maintenance during the apocalypse. Who knew?

The next morning, Analise and I made our way into the stock room and started going through boxes and inventory that hadn’t made it onto the shelf. Others had beaten us to it, but we found several plastic tubs that just need a wash, a couple of suspicious cans of diced tomatoes, a pair of plastic flip flops that she wins the fight over because they’re closer to her size, and a handful of intact plastic baby bottles with silicone n*****s and plastic pacifies with the same. The cardboard had decayed, but everything else seemed ok, just needed a good wash. I shoved them in my pack. You never knew when some desperate mom might want something like this, even if formula was pretty much a thing of the past. Nursing mothers still sometimes shared milk. This might make things easier for someone. Analise trotted past me celebrating her win of the shoes.

“Not really good for much except bathing* and colony walking anyway.” I muttered, trying to console myself. She stuck her tongue out at me. Honestly, I got it. It was nice to have anything new.

We moved on, heading for our next target, another chainstore that we knew had quite a large storage area along with several trucks in the lot out back that still had quite a bit of merchandise. Even looters hadn’t managed to go through all of it in fifteen years. It probably helped that the local humans were all so scattered and had to carry what they wanted away on foot. And large groups were preyed upon by humans and Demons alike, but.. count your blessings, right?

I had even found some seed packets still sealed in their plastic vacupack shipping sleeves there once, and we’d gotten a decent amount of food for them. So I was wondering what else we could find if we kept rooting around in the place.

It takes three days to get there on foot. However, the closer we get to the building, the quieter we get. The store used to be located in part of a bigger population. Not a city, but a small town. It held out a lot longer than some of the other places. Guess the Demons didn’t think it was as important, but when people started fleeing to the town, thinking it was going to be the best place to hide, and the population went from five thousand to over ten, then twenty.. I guess the Demons changed their minds.

When they finally arrived, it took them mere hours to destroy nearly the entire population. Hours. We saw it happening on the internet, before we lost even that, and we ran. We used to shop at this store. They say you always come home. I guess we just stayed where we knew the land. How else do you outrun a Demon? In the end, it turned out to be a good thing that I used to take long walks when I was upset (which I admit was often). I knew a dozen different ways to get to a place, and it didn’t always have to be on a road.

We snuck in through the broken sliding doors of the store. Nature was slowly taking over the asphalt in front of this place, but for the moment, it hadn’t made that much of an impact inside. Humanity had done the majority of that. Analise and I walk slowly and quietly, our heads on a swivel, ears listening for any sound, alert for the slightest sign of movement. There’s always a risk coming to these bigger places. The Demons know we scavenge. Always, in the back of your mind, you wonder: is this it? Is this the time they catch me? Is the reason I’m finding such good stuff here because it’s a trap?

There’s no noise inside, aside from the usual strange dripping of water and settling sounds old abandoned places make. The quiet beyond that is almost disturbing. It’s enough to slow us down even further, making us stop constantly between shelves, listening for any change in the ambiance that is not caused by us. It smelled moldy and musty, which shouldn’t have surprised me, I suppose. After all, the skylights above only allowed in so much limited light over the years, combined with the fact that they became clouded with algae and detritus once no one was around to maintain them. And once the products started to decay, mold and fungus took over. I just hoped nothing was particularly dangerous to breathe. Any plants that tried to survive this place had a hard time of it. Except for maybe the gardening section, which provided enough fertile ground for hearty weeds.

Everything was so quiet, I thought I might need to pop my ears, and we reached the stock room with no trouble, so I had begun to relax. Of course, that’s when things started to go wrong.

“Score!” Analise squealed happily, raising a crinkling plastic wrapper above her head. I squinted, it was dark in the storeroom, our only light was the propped open double doors behind us and a couple of solar-powered camping lanterns we scavenged several years back.

“What is it? I can’t see with the light behind you.” I asked and she danced happily in place for a moment more, digging through the box.

“Clothes!” She gushed. “Decent clothes! Most in good shape, especially after you get past the first layer or so! A box of shirts! With this we could definitely buy our way into a colony or get some land from one to start a small garden.. A house, a family..” I went rigid and silent. Of course she couldn’t know how awful it was to be pressured into one of the human ‘breeding’ programs. She’d been younger and sheltered, and was more outgoing than I. She’d never had to worry about them coming for her in the dead of night…

“No!” I snapped quickly. “I won’t barter my way into a colony. I’ve told you before.” My sister rolled her eyes.

“Oh come on, it was one time! Some old dude scared you trying to get you to marry him and now-”

“It wasn’t just one!” I shouted, breathing hard. Forcing myself to calm down as she stared at me, mouth agape, I continued more quietly. “When they came for me, it wasn’t just one.” And Analise looked shocked, and then her mouth set in a firm line.

“What are you talking about?” She demanded, crossing her arms, plastic crinkling as it got tucked under with her hand. “You’ve never said any of this before! Why all of the sudden are you coming up with this.. this.. story?!”

“You think I’m making it up?” I yelled, outraged. I threw my hands in the air helplessly, and then knotted my fingers in my hair, turning away from her. How do you convince someone who doesn’t want to see? She was so deluded into this image of humanity she held in her head. Maybe because she was only twelve when all this started and she didn’t know any better, she’d grown up like this, in this twisted world.

A clatter at the doorway interrupted my thoughts, and I turned, expecting it to be Analise doing something stupid. Instead, what I saw made my blood freeze in my veins.

“Analise.. Run!” I whispered coarsely, barely able to speak as I took in the Hell Hound in front of us.

“What? Why? Oh my God!” Her words went from angry to a desperate squeak in a fraction of a second. The Hell Hound turned its gaze to her, and I panicked.

“Over here, you big brute!” I picked up the solar lantern and tossed it, something I’m sure I’d regret if I survived. The Hell Hound snarled and I heard Analise’s scrambling footsteps as she made her way out of the storeroom and back into the main part of the store.

“Come on Char!” She squealed, holding open the door between the two areas. I half-turned to start running towards her, but nearly lost it when I saw her just standing there.

“Go! Go, go, gogogogogogo!” It all ran together as I took those first fateful steps towards her and she spun, heading into the store. I saw her disappear into the shelving as I slammed through the door, and I went in a different direction, the Hell Hound’s hot breath on the back of my head, ruffling my hair. I darted around corners and down aisles, but it was always right there. It was playing with me. It could have had me by now. That was my last thought as I came to the collapsed shelving. I was going too fast to slow down. My foot caught on the edge of it as I tried to jump into the middle, hoping to land between broken and twisted shelving, shelving that was currently sticking straight up at me like some sort of medieval torture device. I went down, hoping Analise made it out. Hoping the Hell Hound didn’t have a Master waiting for it. Or a pack. Hoping I just became meat, and not somebody’s toy, or a soulless slave. My body struck before my head, but the sharp metal edges tore at my skin all over. When my head struck, I felt the whiplash resonate down my spine, and then.. Nothing.

*Author's Note: In some places where communal showering/bathing is used, it’s common to wear footgear like sandals or flip flops to prevent the spread of disease. Additionally, when entering unknown waters where the possibility of sharp rocks or dangerous elements such as glass might be found in stream beds or banks of waterways, it’s often safer to wear something on the feet to prevent accidental cuts and infections.