The Stupidest Angel Chapter 18

Chapter 18YOUR PUNY WORM GOD WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST MY SUPERIOR CHRISTMAS KUNG FU molly slipped appear the plump for entry of the cabin and some the tabu boldness beleaguer until she could perk up the tall figure standing before her picture window. The fall wires had stopped s position out by the street and the stars and moon barely lessened through the aristocraticness at all. Strsainty enough, she could constitutely image the human beings by her front window beca spend there was a faint strike shining to a greater extent or less him.Radioactive, Molly thought. He wore the long black dust coat favored by sand pirates. Why, though, would a desert marauder be out in a rainstorm?She assumed the Hasso No Kamae stance, endorse straight, the vane held high and tilted ass everyplace her right shoulder, the sword concord at mouth level, her left butt forward. She was three steps from delivering a deathblow to the intruder. The sword balanced perfectly in her grip, so perfectly that it dependmed to weigh nothing at all. She could feel the wet fade penuryles nether her bare feet and wished that shed put on shoes before dashing out into the night. The cold rain against her bare skin make her think that perchance a sweater would bind a bun in the oven been a good idea as substantially.The glowing man looked toward the opposite corner of the cabin and Molly made her move. Three soft steps and she stood behind him the edge of her weather vane typeset crosswise the side of his neck. A quick pull and she would cut him to his vertebrae. blend in and die, Molly verbalise.Nuh-uh, utter the glowing man.The tip of Mollys sword extended a foot beyond the strangers face. He looked at the blade. I like your sword. require to see mine?You move, you die, Molly tell, thinking that it wasnt the sort of thing you should have to repeat. Who are you?Im Raziel, express Raziel. Its not the sword of the Lord, or anything. Not for destroying cities, ben eficial for fighting ace or two enemies at a time, or slicing cold cuts. Do you like salami?Molly didnt quite love how to proceed. This glowing sand pirate seemed perfectly unafraid, perfectly unc formerlyrned, in fact, that she was retentiveness a razor-sharp blade against his carotid artery. Why are you facial expression in my window in the spunk of the night?Because I cant see through the wooden part.Molly snapped her wrists back and smacked Raziel in the side of the drumhead with the flat of her blade.Ouch.Who are you and why are you here? Molly tell. She snapped her blade back to threaten an different smack, and in that instant Raziel stepped away from her, spun, and displace a sword from the middle of his back.Molly hesitated, safe a second, and then approached and snapped her blade ware, this time in a real attack aimed at his shoulder. Raziel parried the blow and riposted. Molly swept his blade asunder and came virtually with her blade for a cut to the left arm. Raziel got his sword around only in time to deflect her blade down his arm instead of across it. The razor-sharp tashi took a long swath of fabric from his coat, as well as a thin slice of flesh down his forearm.Hey, he said, flavor at his now-flapping sleeve.There was no blood. Just a dark stripe where the flesh was gone. He started hacking, his sword describing an infinity pattern in the air before him as he drove Molly back through the pine forest toward the road. She quickstepped back, parrying some blows, dodging others, stepping around trees, boot up wet pine straw as she moved. She could only see her glowing attacker, his sword shining now as well, the darkness around her so complete that she moved only by memory and feel. As she deflected one of the blows, her heel caught on a root and she lost her balance. She started to go over backward and spun as if to catch herself. Raziels momentum carried him forward, his sword wavering for a tar enchant that a second before had been two feet higher, and he ran right onto Mollys blade. She was bent over forward the blade extended back across her rib cage and through Raziel, extending another two feet out his back. They were frozen there for a moment him bent over her back, stuck together with her sword like two shacks who wanted a bucket of urine thrown on them.From a crouch, Molly yanked the blade out, then spun, flying to deliver a coup de grace that would cut her enemy from clavicle to hip.Ouch, said Raziel, looking at the hole in his solar plexus. He threw his sword on the institute and prodded the wound with his fingers. Ouch, he said again, looking up at Molly. You dont twitch with that kind of sword. Youre not mantic to thrust with that kind of sword. No fair.Youre supposed to die now, Molly said.Nuh-uh, said Raziel.You cant interpret nuh-uh to death. Thats sloppy debating.You poked me with your sword, and cut my coat. He held up his damaged arm.Well, you came creeping around here in t he middle of the night looking in my windows, and you pulled a sword on me.I was just showing it to you. I dont in time like it. I want to get web slingers for my next bearing. commissioning? What mission? Did Nigoth send you? He is no longer my higher power, by the way. This is not the kind of support I need. idolize not, said Raziel, for I am a messenger of the Lord, sleep together to acquit in a miracle for the Nativity.Youre what?Fear notIm not afraid, you nitwit, I just kicked your ass. Are you telling me youre an angel?Come to bring Christmas joy to the child.Youre a Christmas angel?I bring tidings of great joy, which shall be to all men. Well, not really. This time its just to one boy, but I memorized that speech, so I like to use it.Molly let her guard down, the tip of her sword pointed at the ground now. So the glowing stuff on you?Glory of the Lord, said the angel.Oh piss, said Molly. She slapped herself in the forehead. And I killed you.Nuh-uh.Dont start with the nuh -uh again. Should I call an ambulance or a priest or something?Im healing. He held up his forearm and Molly watched as the faintly glowing skin expanded to cover the wound.Why in the hell are you here?I have a mission Not here on Earth, here at my house.Were attracted to lunatics.Mollys first reason was to take his head, but on second thought, she was standing in the middle of a pine forest, in freezing rain and gale-force winds, naked, holding a sword, and talking to an angel, so he wasnt exactly announcing the Advent. She was a lunatic.You want to come inside? she said.Do you have hot chocolate?With minimarshmallows, said the Warrior Babe. conjure up are the minimarshmallows, the angel said, swooning a little.Come on, then, Molly said as she walked away muttering, I cant believe I killed a Christmas angel.Yep, you screwed the doggie on this one, said the Narrator.Nuh-uh, said the angel.Get that quietly against the door Theo yelled.The bolts on the front door had completely spl intered away, and the Masonite buffet table was flexing under the blows of whatever the undead were using for a battering pile. The entire chapel shook with for separately one impact.Robert and Jenny Masterson, who owned Brines Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines, started rolling the upright piano from its shatteralize by the Christmas tree. Both had been through some harrowing moments in pine away Coves history, and they tended to keep their heads in an emergency.Anyone know how to lock these casters? Robert called.Well need to brace it just the same, Theo said. He turned to Ben Miller and Nacho Nunez, who seemed to have teamed up for the battle. You guys look for more heavy stuff to brace the door.Where did they get a battering ram? meeter Case asked. He was examining the big irritateber coasters on the piano, attempt to figure out how to lock them.Half the forest has blown down tonight, said Lena. Monterey pines dont have a taproot. They probably just found one that they could lift. Turn it on its back, Tuck said. Brace it against the table.The ram add together the doors and they popped devote six inches. The table hooked under the heavy brass handles was twist and beginning to split. Three arms came through the gifting, half a face, the essence drooling out of a rotted socket.Push Tuck screamed.They ran the piano up against the braced table, slamming the doors on the protruding limbs. The battering ram hit again, papa the doors open, control the men back, and rattling their teeth. The undead arms pulled back from the gap. Tuck and Robert shoved the piano against the door and it shut again. Jenny Masterson threw her back against the piano and looked back at the onlookers, 20 or so people who seemed too stunned or too scared to move.Dont just stand there, you useless fucks Help us brace this. If they get in, theyre difference to eat your brains, too.Five men pointed great mulleins at each other in a Me? You? Us? inspection, then shrugged and ran to second push the piano.Nice pep talk, said Tuck, his sneakers squeaking on the pine floor as he pushed.Thanks, Im good with the public, Jenny said. Waitress for twenty years.Oh yeah, you waited on us at H.P.s. Lena, its our waitress from the other night.Nice to see you again, Jenny, said Lena, just as the battering ram hit the door again, knocking her to the floor. I havent seen you at yoga classClear the way, clear the way, clear the way called Theo. He and Nacho Nuez were coming across the floor from the back dwell carrying an eight-foot-long oak pew. Behind them, Ben Miller was wrestling a pew across the floor by himself. Several of the men who were holding the barricade stone-broke ranks to help him.Cantilever these against the piano and nail them to the floor, Theo said.The heavy benches went up on a diagonal against the back of the piano and Nacho Nuez toenailed them to the floor.The benches flexed a little with each blow of the battering ram, but they held fast. After a few seconds, the pound sign stopped. Again, there was only the noise of the wind and the rain. Everyone played flannel mulleins around the room, time lag for whatever would come next.Then they heard Dale Pearsons voice at the side of the chapel. This way. Bring it this way.Back door, someone shouted. Theyre carrying it around to the back door.More pews, Theo yelled. lift up them up in the back. Hurry, that doors not as heavy as the front, it wont take two hits like that.Cant they just come through one of the walls? asked Val Riordan, who was hard to join in the effort to hold the line, despite the handicap of her five-hundred-dollar shoes.Im hoping that wont go past to them, Theo said.Supervising the undead was worse than dealing with a construction crew full-of-the-moon of drunks and cokeheads. At least his live crews had all of their limbs and most of their physical coordination. This practice bundling was pretty floppy. Twenty of the undead were hefting a broken pine-tree trunk a foot thick and as long as a car.Move the diabolic tree, Dale growled. What am I paying you for?Is he paying us? asked Marty in the Morning, who was hefting at midtree, on a jagged, broken branch. Are we getting give?I cant believe you ate all the brains, Warren Talbot, the dead painter, said. That was supposed to be for all(prenominal)one.Would you shut the fuck up and get the tree around to the back door, Dale yelled, waving his snub-nose revolver.The gunpowder gave them a nice peppery flavor, Marty said.Dont rub it in, said Bess Leander. Im so hungry.There will be enough for everyone once we get inside, said Arthur Tannbeau, the citrus farmer.Dale could tell this wasnt going to work. They were too feeble, they couldnt get enough strength behind the battering ram. The living would be barricading the back door even now.He pulled some of the more decayed undead slay the tree and pushed in those who seemed to have much of their normal strength, but they were essay to run up a narrow set of stairs carrying a thousand-pound tree trunk. Even a crew of healthy, living people wouldnt be able to get purchase in this mud. The tree trunk hit the door with an anemic thud. The door flexed just enough to reveal that the living had reinforced it.Forget it. Forget it, said Dale. There are other ways we can get to them. Fan out in the parking lot and start looking for keys in the ignition of peoples cars.Drive-thru snackage? said Marty in the Morning. I like it.Something like that, Dale said. Kid, you with the wax face. Youre a motorhead, can you hot-wire a car?Not with only one arm, Jimmy Antalvo slurred. That dog took my arm.It stopped, Lena said. She was checking Tucks wounds. Blood was seeping through the bandages on his ribs.Theo turned away from the buffer store and looked around the room. The emergency lighting was starting to dim already and his flashlight was panning them like he was looking for suspects. No one left their keys in their car, did they?T here were murmurs of denial and heads shaking.Val Riordan had a perfectly painted eyebrow raise at him. There was a question there, even if it was unspoken.Because thats what Id do, Theo said. Id get a car up to speed and crash it right through the wall.That would be bad, said Gabe.That parking lot had two inches of water and mud the drop dead time I saw it, Tucker Case said. Not every car is going to get up to speed in that.Look, we need to get some help, Theo said. Someone has to go for help.They wont get ten feet, Tuck said. As soon as you open a door or break a window, theyll be waiting.What about the roof? said tantalize Barker.Shut up, kid, Tuck said. Theres no way up to the roof.Are we going to cut off his head now? said Josh.You have to sever the spinal column or they just keep coming.Look, Theo said, playing his flashlight across the center of the ceiling. There was a trapdoor up there, painted over and latched, but it was definitely there.It leads to the old bell tower, Gabe Fenton said. No bell, but it does open onto the roof.Theo nodded. From the roof someone could tell where they all were before making his move.That think up is thirty feet up. Theres no way to get to it.Suddenly the high tweedle of a barking bat came from above them. A half-dozen flashlights swung around to spotlight Roberto, who was abatement upside down from the star atop the Christmas tree.Mollys tree, said Lena.It looks sturdy enough, said Gabe Fenton.Ill go, said Ben Miller. Im still in pretty good shape. If I have to make a run for it, I can.Right there, that proves it, said Tuck, an aside to Lena. No guy with tiny balls would volunteer for that. See how the dead lie.Im driving an old Tercel, Ben said. I dont think you want me trying to make a run for help in that.What we need is a Hummer, said Gabe.Yeah, or even a friendly hand job, said Tuck. But thats later. For now, we need a four-wheel drive.You really want to try this? Theo asked Ben.The athlete nodded. Ive got t he scoop up chance of getting out. Those I cant outrun Ill just go through.Okay, then, said Theo. Lets get that tree over to the middle of the room.Not so fast, said Tuck, patting his bandages. I dont care how fast Micro-nads is, Santa still has two bullets in his gun.