Chapter 5 the devil's favorite form
A chilling silence followed.
Davie
"In..."
"Three."
"Two."
"One..."
lights go out.
Langster
"MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!"
All the soldiers pulled on their night vision goggles as they moved in they shot at the table where the children were this was supposed to be an easy mission Just got down a couple of kids right...
The heaviest kid that was gorging itself earlier flipped the steel table over with startling force.
Three of them ducked behind it while the others scattered, taking cover in opposite directions.
They moved with discipline-precision. Not the erratic scrambling of scared children... but the deliberate coordination of trained soldiers.
Then came the first strike.
It was the girl-the same one who had once been startled by a mere balloon.
She lunged forward, eyes sharp and unblinking.
She put her agility to perfect us flicking and rolling through the gunfire. Her small body and constant, erratic movements made it hard to hit her, even for these trained shooters.
She rolled toward a pillar, then backflipped off it. Reaching her hands up, she swung on the hanging lights to grab a nearby pair of metal plates still resting on the table before it tipped.
With the calmness of experience, she flung one with terrifying accuracy.
It shattered on impact against a soldier's armor. The fragments sprayed like shrapnel-each shard slicing into the exposed, vulnerable seams of our suits.
Cries rang out as blood spilled.
And that's when the blind kid reacted.
His nose flared. His head twitched.
Drawn to the scent like a predator.
He sprinted-no, pounced-toward one of the bleeding men. The soldier fumbled for his sidearm and fired directly into the child's chest.
The bullets barely pierced his skin.
It was like shooting level-six bulletproof glass.
The child reached him. Gripped his leg.
And twisted.
SNAP.
The sound was sickening. The soldier's leg bent the wrong way-half torn off. He screamed, a gut-wrenching sound that echoed across the building.
That scream... that one moment of pain and panic...
It distracted everyone.
And it would cost them their lives.
From behind the flipped table, the remaining three kids finally emerged.
The first was the boy who had earlier been calmly eating pizza.
He flung the half-eaten slice into a soldier's night vision goggles. The cheese stuck, the sauce smeared, and the soldier-blinded and panicking-opened fire in every direction.
His wild shots struck two of our own.
Then the kid evaded the gunshots and leaped on his shoulders legs crossed around his throat.
Carrying a pizza box, the child slowly advanced with that same unsettling joy from earlier-only now, twisted, unfiltered.
He yanked all the pizzas out of the box... and shoved them, forcefully, one by one, down the man's throat.
The soldier thrashed. Gagged. Choked.
But the kid kept smiling.
Meanwhile, the boy who had been playing with the radio earlier?
He picked up the same rifle that a fallen soldier had dropped-an AR, full mag-and opened fire.
His posture was tight. His aim controlled.
He fired like a trained marksman. He even handled the recoil like someone twice his size and four times his age.
What was more bizarre is that he shot at the same rhythm as the music he was listening to earlier, creating the same beat with the gunfire.
Another soldier, hidden and waiting for the right moment, was ready his scope sighted on the boy with the AR, his finger on the trigger, just waiting for that five pounds of pressure.
But he never got the chance.
The larger, gluttonous child-the one we barely even noticed before-snuck up from behind.
His mouth opened wide.
And he bit.
Then tackled the grown man to the floor.
We heard the screams.
I believe... he suffered the worst fate of all.
Because that child didn't stop biting.
He started eating him.
The soldier's thrashing and screaming only made him eat faster and more excitedly.
Alive.
I watched.
Frozen.
In pure shock. In horror.
Unable to move. Unable to speak.
My entire unit was dying-being slaughtered-by children.
No... not children.
What were they?
How? How could this happen?
My legs wouldn't move. My hands trembled. I couldn't breathe.
And for a single, fractured moment... I wondered-
Is this what Jesus saw when He descended into Hell?
All I could do at this point was grab-
grab and clutch my photo locket of me and my little girl.
I stared at it, as this might be the last time I see her before-
turning to Langster.
Desperate.
I needed orders. Guidance. Permission to do something. Even to shoot myself.
But all I saw... was a broken man.
Langster had dropped his gun.
He fell to his knees.
He removed his helmet, then his goggles, and just looked at me.
His face-empty.
His eyes-haunted.
This was a man who had seen over thirty years of war.
Who had cradled dying comrades in his arms.
Who had taken countless lives without flinching.
And yet... I had never seen him like this.
So completely defeated.
Langster
"I'm... I'm sorry. I don't know who the real monsters are anymore."
He looked hollow.
Human, for the first time.
And then-
CRACK!
A radio smashed into the side of his head.
The sound was sharp. Final.
This thing was so violent that I dropped my locket at the perpetrator's feet.
Langster collapsed beside me, dead before he hit the floor.
I stared at the perpetrator.
She stood above us, the red-haired girl.
Her expression was unreadable. Her eyes-green and lifeless-locked onto mine.
There was no joy. No hope.
Only... dominion.
Only...pain
And soon there will only be death...
I can just tell, just by looking at her
her heart never beats for anything but survival and her own self-preservation.
Even though, compared to all the other children, she did very little…
only when I saw her did I truly see the devil caged in her eyes.
This child was not created by the love of God,
but with me,
by the hatred of man.
The little devil knelt beside Langster's corpse.
Pulling pieces of metal and junk from the radio out of his head, and putting them into her little pocket.
For a brief second, all I could hear was the faint hum of the emergency lights flickering back to life a pale red glow washing over the room like diluted blood.
Dust hung in the air, drifting lazily through the crimson light.
The smell of gunpowder mixed with something else wet iron and burned fabric the aftermath of slaughter.
Her small, bare feet left faint prints in the spilled blood as she moved closer to me.
Silent.
Unhurried.
In her hand, she held the locket I had dropped.
She turned it over in her fingers as if it were something fragile, sacred even. Then she clicked it open.
The faint metallic snap echoed louder than it should have.
Inside was the photo me and my little girl taken on the only peaceful day I still remember.
The child stared at it for a long time. Her pupils barely moved.
Then, as if remembering she still had a face, she reached up and touched her own.
Her fingertips brushed against her lips, tracing the edges. Slowly, mechanically, she began to pull the corners of her mouth upward.
Her movements were careful, deliberate not playful mimicry, but study.
The skin on her cheeks stretched tight. Her fingers trembled slightly, but she didn't stop.
She adjusted her jaw. Tilted her head. Squinted her eyes until the imitation was flawless.
The resemblance was… perfect.
Her smile, the arch of her brows, even the small clench of her teeth all of it mirrored the girl in the photo.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
But there was one thing she could not copy.
No matter how far she stretched her face, her eyes remained the same bottomless, hollow, and starved.
They looked through me, not at me.
That emptiness stared back with a new kind of malice one dressed in innocence.
The girl tilted her head slightly, strands of red hair falling across her face. Then she stepped closer.
The faint creak of her heel against broken glass was deafening in the silence.
When she spoke, her voice was soft too soft the kind of voice a child uses when asking for a bedtime story.
She leaned close enough that I could feel her breath brush my ear.
"Thanks, mister," she whispered.
A pause. Then, with that dead smile frozen on her face
"…for giving birth to my smile."
End of chapter.