New Title 1 by Dru Pagliassotti

for the drawer next to it.
    It was hanging open. He reached inside and stabbed himself with broken glass. He probed around more cautiously until he felt the comforting solidity of a metal flashlight beneath his fingers. He pulled it out and pushed the power button.
    A bright white beam filled the room. He swung it around until he found Andy.
    His friend was crouched next to the desk, his laptop pressed against his chest, a bookshelf angled over him.
    “Jesus!” Jack was halfway across the kitchen before another shudder made him freeze. He started to walk more carefully. “You all right?”
    “Native Californian.” Andy mustered a nervous smile and crept out from under the shelves. “Always duck next to a sturdy piece of furniture.”
    “A native Californian should bolt his shelves to the wall.” The flashlight beam showed nothing but disaster around them.
    “I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.” Andy swallowed. “We’d better go check on everyone else.” 
    The earth jolted again, an unnatural up-and-down heaving that threw them both off their feet. Jack raised his arms over his head, expecting the roof to come down. Shouts arose from the neighboring apartments. A loud cracking sound ripped through the air.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Andy yelled, grabbing his shoulder.
    Jack nodded, getting a better grip on the flashlight. The beam juddered and tilted as the earth shook. A table slid across the floor, rucking up the cheap carpet. The front door hung open, crashing back and forth against the wall. Jack scuttled forward, then froze in the broken threshold. Andy bumped into him and then uttered a most un-Catholic oath.
    Dimly lit by stars and a three-quarters moon, a long, pale shape rose and fell where the apartment complex’s courtyard had once stood, moving through the earth like the back of a sea serpent. Waves of dirt broke around it and threw them against the doorframe. Another crack ran up one of the stucco-covered walls, and a roof across the yard collapsed.
    “What the hell is that?” Jack shouted, dropping the flashlight and grabbing his St. Jude medal. It was quiescent in his hand, as were the sigils sewn into his jacket and pressed into the metal toes of his cowboy boots and buckle of his belt. “Andy, what the fuck is that?”
    “...Christ below me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger...” The words of St. Patrick’s prayer spilled from his friend’s lips in one breathless litany.
    A long white pillar broke through the apartments across from them, sending wood, stucco, drywall, and dirt exploding. Jack staggered and fell to his knees.  Splintered wood ripped through his jeans and into his legs. He stared up, aghast, as another dim shape rose up against the starlight, plates of interlocking exoskeleton scraping and clicking against each other as it rose. For a split second its blunt, lizardlike bone muzzle opened, and a horrific scream tore from its bowels and spiraled up into the night sky.
    Then the wards and talismans in Jack’s jacket stabbed him with their occult warnings as a swirl of foul ashen air swept around him in a burst of warm wind. A large hand landed on his shoulder as the giant serpent’s head wavered and turned.
    Jack raised his hands in a futile warding gesture as the head slammed down, but before it struck him, he was hauled away.

X

     
    “Kill them, kill them, kill them,” pleaded a wavering, creaky voice. Jack staggered backward into a body like a brick wall as he was yanked to his feet. Next to him, Andy was receiving the same treatment, his laptop lost somewhere outside.
    “Not now, Amon,” Edward Todd’s voice rumbled. Jack regained his balance and turned, looking up at the large man’s stern face.
    Supernatural warnings burned into his awareness, but it wasn’t Todd that was setting them off. Jack took a step backward, his boot heels crunching on something that gave way beneath them.
    A devil pressed against Todd’s leg and snapped at him,