“Well, shit. I guess it’s my turn, isn’t it?” August groaned and motioned for another beer from Abdul.
“Not until story time, Gus.”
“Ah, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy! You bastards got Abdi to cut me off! Fine, you want to hear about it? Let’s take a stroll down memory lane

“I was a little kid coming home from the movie theater with my folks when a mugger with a gun burst out of the shadows and gunned them down.”
“No, that’s Batman, smart-ass.” Jack threw a handful of pretzels at August.
“OK. Well, I was on a field trip at the local university’s lab, observing an experiment with radiation when-”
“Shut the fuck up, Spider-Man!” This time a full salvo of pretzels flew from all the bikers.
“I was a reporter in Hub City.” August paused, as if he expected another round of flying bar food. “What? No one likes The Question?”
“Who the fuck is The Question?”
“Exactly!” August lean back in his chair smugly.
“Would you just get on with the fucking story? The REAL story?”
“Fuck off. They killed my family. I ain’t goin’ into it.”
“They?”
“The fucking Church. Those frog worshiping fucks have been paying for it for the past five years and I’m going to make sure that they get every bit of vengeance I have in me.” August’s golden eyes burned with hatred as his muscles tensed up, ready for action. “Speaking of it, we had been talking of paying them a visit. What’s wrong with right now? This waiting and plotting bullshit is for movie villains with goofy mustaches. Let’s fucking doing something!”

August stood and grabbed his jacket. Clark scrunched up his face and then drug his heels over to the bar.

“Hey, Abdi. Remember when you took my shotgun so that I wouldn’t get drunk and do something stupid?”
“Yeah?” Abdul’s voice strung out the word, knowing that he wasn’t going to like the next sentence.
“Gimme my shotgun. I’m drunk and I’m going to do something stupid.”
“God dammit.” Abdul was right. He didn’t like it, but knew better than to argue inside his bar where more things he didn’t like could happen and end up costing him money to replace. He hefted the pump action from under the bar and handed it over. “You sure you dudes are ready for a throw down? I mean, fuck; you’re all shit faced.”
“I shoot better shit faced.”
“You guys are fucking retarded and you’re going to get killed by those cultists. Or worse yet, you’re going to attract the cops and get me blamed.”

An hour of scrabbling among the weeds had left the quartet of drunken bikers sober enough to stop stumbling and tripping in the dark. With the biggest gun, Clark led the group through the tangled forest, in a direction that was generally towards the massive marble church. As the haze of alcohol faded, Clark’s mind focused more tightly on the task at hand. His steps became more sure. He recalled the times he had left the road and lived in the woods. As much as he hated his father for being a crazed mountain-man survivalist, the lessons that had forced onto him made sense now. The clarity of moving single file through the woods, weapons in hand put him more at ease than the countless mugs of beer he had drank.

Jack followed closely. His massive revolver thumped against his shoulder rhythmically. His fingers continuously toyed with the holster to adjust it before finally deciding that it was just a badly made holster. He hadn’t realized it before since his heavy leather jacket kept it firmly in place. Leaving it behind in Abdul’s bar made traveling lighter, but more annoying because of the holster’s failings.

August’s long legs burned with the short steps he was forced to take to stay behind the two bruisers of gang. His weapon of choice was a black Italian semiautomatic. His mind counted the total ammo they had repeatedly. Then it counted the years in prison they would no doubt serve when they were convicted for the murder they would visit upon the cultists combined. Then he replayed in his mind his wife’s face when he found her, dying on the floor. He counted the times she breathed out. He counted the times she blinked before her eyes closed forever. His eyes were brought to the brink of tears a hundred times on the walk and he gripped the steel links of the chain that he had looped over his neck. Their strength brought him the faith that they were doing the right thing. There was clarity in the chain. It had no motives. It could not move but in reaction to his steps.

Right then August’s chain was his best friend. There was no judgment in it. Only steely strength that could be relied on forever. It wouldn’t care if he left a piece of his humanity in these woods and left to commit murder in a church dedicated to monstrous gods and demons. God might damn him to Hell, but the chain would still be a chain.

Vinnie wanted to shoot his fellow bikers in the back. At least part of him did. The dark thing inside Vinnie’s stomach twisted. It begged Vinnie to protect The Order, whispering evil thoughts into his soul. As tight a grip as the amphibious demon that grew in his belly had on Vinnie’s mind, it could not evade the alcohol that he had poured into his body. With Vinnie’s human resistances to violence removed by the beer, the demon was helpless to prevent the attack on Church through sheer willpower. But still it struggled to end the attack by filling Vinnie with rage.

Vinnie’s mind flooded with impossible memories of Jack beating him to a pulp as a child. Vinnie hadn’t even known who Jack was until hours ago. The thought that he had been bullied by him was so alien that Vinnie snorted in laughter. August turned and brought a finger to his lips to shush Vinnie. Vinnie struggled against laughing as the monster inside him used that moment to paint his vision of August in garish colors. He was forced to imagine August’s tall, lanky form as a massive, spidery clown.

Vinnie choked back a laugh as the intruder continued its attempts at sabotage every step of the way. He was pleased that he had ran into these men. While he might not be able to speak of the thing growing inside him, he could get his revenge and possibly even get killed in the process, leaving the monster without a host. He grinned more widely as ways he could die heroically flashed through his mind. He could dive in front of a bullet meant for one of the others. He could be the guy that says, “Run! I’ll cover you!” who dies in a hail of bullets, but leaves the rest of the group safe to fight again another day. He could even be the guy that dies just to prove that it’s still dangerous to the rest of the group. It didn’t matter. His death would doom his parasite, giving it meaning no matter what lay in store for him.

Salvation for him and a slow death lay in wait for him just over the next hill. He peeled his lips back over his teeth and smiled predatorily. Whether he managed to kill any of the cultists or whether he died horribly, he’d win. The tiny alien infant in his stomach could do nothing but squirm angrily.