Chapter 33: Band of Killers

The Marriott was as fancy and grand as James had imagined. Its main tower soared up into the cloudy sky, pale gray stone with hundreds of blue windows embedded seamlessly in its face. The front was snarled with official cars of all stripes, including a hummer and limousine. James guessed they weren’t the only ones to have noted its helpful proximity to the NYCEM.

Jessica was in her element and guided them through the bustling crowd and into the lobby. It was exactly the kind of place that had been off-limits to him for most of the past decade, everything gleaming, sophisticated, clean, expensive. Despite everything, despite the events of the past week, James found himself hunching his shoulders and waiting for a faux-friendly tap on his elbow as a security guard accosted him.

Jessica retrieved a duffel bag from the front desk and strode back to them both. “Clean clothing. Take a moment to freshen up, and then I’ll take you to the ballroom.” She checked her watch. “We have ten minutes.”

James washed his face in the echoing restroom, the wall mirror revealing him in all his shabby, worn glory. Shucking the torn and ichor splattered clothing, he used a wad of paper towels to wash behind the neck and under his arms, then pulled on more Bass Pro gear.

Jessica had a good eye for this kind of stuff. Despite himself he looked pretty sharp in the mirror. He raked his fingers through his beard and imagined standing before a thousand new DRC members.

A fucking thousand.

His shoulders slumped. He wasn’t an inspiring leader-type. He’d be… what? Just a guy helping organize this shit. He’d not put on airs, think himself important. He’d been around the block too many times to think otherwise.

Emerging from the bathroom he saw Serenity had donned a black Adidas tracksuit with white racing stripes down the arms and legs. She was scowling, but couldn’t quite hide how pleased she was, and how well the tracksuit fit her newly athletic frame; she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and was chewing a stick of gum, her eyes narrowed as she studied James in turn.

“Look at you, boy. If this whole DRC thing falls through, you could try booking some hobo-chic fashion shoots.”

“You should talk, track star.” He chuckled and realized Jessica was all but tapping her foot. “Ready.”

“This way.” Jessica strode down a large hallway, past a bank of elevators, then down another hall to a massive set of double doors. A young man in a suit stood before it with a tablet, and his generic smile came to life at the sight of Jessica.

“Ms. Miles. Everybody’s inside.”

“Mark, this is James and Serenity. Mark’s one of the DRC’s latest assistants, used to work out of Budgeting but he was wasted there.”

“Mark,” said James.

“Sir.” Mark blushed. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

James had no idea how to respond to that, so he just stayed quiet.

Jessica cracked open one of the doors and he followed her inside. The ballroom was indeed massive, the coffered ceiling high above with huge chandeliers made of a thousand crystal rods each, while everything else followed the color scheme of a Tiramisu cake. Endless rows of chairs had been set out in a semicircle around a stage, and for the first time James saw the DRC recruits.

They were as varied as any crowd of New Yorkers. He saw a Hasidic Jew with a massive black felt hat, scrawny homeless types, guys in suits, teenagers, hard-faced older guys, women in athletic gear, a crew of beefy firemen in their navy shirts, a few elderly men and women, and on and on. Every ethnicity, every age, every economic class.

The one thing they all had in common, however, was their weaponry. Whether it was a baseball bat, a cane, a shovel, a rifle, pistols, shotguns, or even swords, they’d all brought their weapons of destruction with them.

Standing on the stage was a balding guy in his late twenties, his eyebrows bright red, his face freckled, his manner energized, engaging.

Richard, no doubt. He was finishing his speech, a slide projected on the wall behind him with a single question mark resplendent in the center.

“…which is why I want to end on a note of caution. Everything we know is limited to what’s been revealed to the world over the course of the last five days. We’re going to do our best to optimize that data, but as far as data sets go, it’s incredibly limited. We can extrapolate from what we’ve learned about the Nemeses 1, 2, and the Monitors, but even those data sets can be misleading. Who’s to say Nemesis 3 won’t be psychic? Or able to fly? Turn invisible? Merge into a demonic super entity, Voltron style? We don’t know, which means our plans and guides must remain dynamic and flexible.

“For now, everything I’ve shared with you holds true, but come Nemesis 3, it all might change. So don’t disregard Night Vision or Remove Fear out of hand. What if Nemesis 3 can disappear into shadows and unleash waves of unnatural panic? We just don’t know. Which! I know sounds like a downer. But this is the demon apocalypse, people, we’re not here to hold hands and say affirmations. Don’t hate on the messenger.

“That said, I’ll be maintaining the DRC’s latest guides on our website, so make sure to check those out, and I’ll blast you all with notifications of important updates as I make them. Until then, don’t hesitate to reach out by email or the contact form on the DRC site. My email is [email protected] I’m happy to answer all and any optimization questions, or whatever else you need help with. Yeah? Awesome. Now go forth and prosper.”

There was a smattering of applause. Richard waved, walked off the stage, then as the applause began to die out jogged back up, opened his arms and shook his head with feigned modesty. “No, really, thank you, that’s too much, you’re too kind. Thank you.”

He pressed his hands together and bowed really low, then stepped back, pointed toward the ceiling as if toward non-existent balconies, then jogged off again.

“I like his style,” said Serenity. “I thought he was supposed to be a nerd?”

A lady took the mike and stepped onto the stage. She was curvy, wore 1950’s librarian glasses, and smile nervously at the crowd.

“That’s Cindy,” said Jessica.

“All right, thank you, Richard, and no, I’m not going to call you Mr. Star Boy. Sorry.”

Some laughter from the crowd, but not much.

“Well, I think the moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived.” Cindy made eye contact with Jessica, who gave her a thumb’s up. “He needs no introduction, as he’s the man who made all of this possible. Please welcome the Deputy Commissioner of the DRC on stage, Mr. James Kelly.”

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People turned, craned their necks, and James stared straight ahead as he led Serenity down the center of the ballroom to the stage.

People began to applaud, and quite a few gave curt shouts of encouragement. A few folks even stood as they clapped.

Again, James didn’t know what to make of it, so he just didn’t think about it.

Cindy met him at the edge of the stage and handed him the mike. “I’m such a big fan,” she said, her glasses gleaming. “I’m so happy to be helping out.”

James nodded back, then mounted the stage and with microphone in hand turned to face the crowd.

“Sexy lumberhobojack!” called Richard from between cupped hands.

Chuckles from the crowd.

But most of them were studying him. James saw hard expressions, piercing stares. Everybody in this room was at least Level 5. That meant they’d killed thousands of Nemesis 1’s or more. They’d seen terrible violence, had faced loss, tragedy, pain.

And now they were here. Willing to hear him out for a few minutes. The vast majority of the room was willing to give him that much, and nothing else. Everything he’d done had been enough to bring them here.

The rest he’d have to earn.

“Hello. Thank you for coming. My name is James Kelly, and I’m a Supplicant Level 2. A week ago I was living on the streets, just trying to get by. Then a gremlin tried to tear out my throat -”

“Demon,” Serenity called from the stage’s side.

“A demon tried to tear out my throat, and, well, now here I am. You all know what I’ve been through. You’ve been through it yourself. I guess what we all have in common is a refusal to stand back and do nothing. It doesn’t matter who you were, what you did, if you were an upstanding member of society or sleeping on park benches like me. When the moment of truth came, you found it within yourself to kill the enemy, and then keep on killing.”

Nods. Some people crossed their arms, leaned back, others sat forward, interest avid.

“Now you’re here. Wondering what I’ve got to say to you. If I’m actually a government tool. If you’re wasting your time when you could be out there leveling, gaining power, getting ready for Nemesis 3. And I’ll tell you this: to me? The Department of Ranking Citizens is a means to an end. A bigger bat. A way to take out more demons, faster, more safely, and nothing more. We’re lucky to have good people putting this together, helping this moment happen, but at its core, the reason we’re all here is because we’ve found out we’re good at killing demons and we want to find out ways to do it better.”

More nods.

“I’m no leader. Any one of you could be up here saying this shit. But whatever, I’m here now, so let’s run with it. The army’s going to attack one of those demon symbol blocks in a couple of hours. We’re talking Black Hawk helicopters, special ops, miniguns, Rangers, the works. They don’t think we’re worth listening too, so we’re going to do the same thing, but we’re going to do it better. The Nemesis 2’s are doing some heinous shit in those blocks beneath the symbols, and we’re going to work together to put a stop to it.”

A heavyset guy with a shaved head raised his hand. “What the fuck they doin’ in there, anyways?”

“We don’t know for sure. What we’ve seen with our own eyes is that they’re taking live people and consuming them, then shitting their bodies out as pink goo with which they’re covering the buildings. We don’t know why, but we want to find out if those people are still mentally there and capable of being saved.”

A good chunk of the crowd hadn’t heard this, and reacted with faces curdled in disgust, some shouting their horror and anger, others rising to their feet before settling again.

“I know how you feel.” James’s voice was heavy with resignation. “It’s how I’ve been feeling since we saw it. And it’s the reason I’m willing to stand up here like an idiot and talk like some politician. But what it all comes down to is that the thousand or so people in this room are going to do something about it. The demons think they’re killers?” James slowly scanned the crowd. “They’re in for a rude awakening. If our species has proven one thing over the past hundred thousand years it’s that the one thing we do best is kill things that don’t look like us, and sometimes we’re not even that discriminating. Killing shit is in our blood. It’s in our genetic code. And now we’re going to rise up and show them why they made the wrong move the day they decided to walk into our town and start slaughtering innocents. We’re going to head over to that symbol and destroy every Nemesis 2 that we see. We’re going to scour that place clean, and then move on to the next symbol, then the next, and we’re not going to stop till every last demon is dead and this city, this country, this world is ours once more.”

James inhaled deeply, pursed his lips, and stared intently at the thousand killers before him. “You all with me?”

Hoarse shouts of agreement tore themselves from hundreds of throats, and while not everybody seemed as enthused, James knew he’d gotten through to a critical mass.

The DRC was up and running.

“Bear with me,” he said, then dug out his phone and raised it up. Thumbed his way to TikTok, angled the phone just right so that his face and the huge crowd behind him was in focus, and hit record.

“Short message here from me, James Kelly. I’m standing with a thousand other men and women who have committed to wiping out a nest of Nemesis 2’s. Everybody here is at least Level 5, and by the time we’re done, by the time the sun sets, we’re all going to be that much stronger. And then we’re going to find another nest, and another, and keep killing those fuckers till the next wave hits, and then? We’ll burn Aeviternum and kill those fuckers, too. If this resonates with you, wherever you are, then do this: find other people to stand with. Join forces. Start your own group, your own war band, and start killing. Individually we may be fierce, but together we’re unstoppable.”

He paused.

The hundreds of faces visible on the screen shone with grim determination.

“Now if you all will excuse me, it’s time to get to work.”

And he quit recording.

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