Jesus in Hell: Day 1, Part 9: Dismas and Gestas battle the Girgashites
Previous Chapter: Day 1 Part 8
Dismas and Gestas emerge out onto the plain. Dismas climbs up out of the valley that surrounds the stream first. He is solemn of countenance, alert yet unwavering. Gestas pops up behind him. His eyes are darting this way and that. A loud noise suddenly startles him.
"What was that!?!"
"It was nothing. Come on, let's go."
"No, I definitely heard something, over there, by those bushes. Say, Dismas, would you mind if I could have that knife back?"
Dismas walks on, silently.
"What are we doing, anyway? Finding that woman's kids? How is that any of our business? That is so you, Dismas - always going off on adventures, without the least bit of- There it is again!"
Now it's unmistakable: something is rustling in the bushes. Something... big.
Dismas circles around and confronts the beast.
It's a dugong. It's huge: at least 10 feet long, and ferocious. Having been discovered, it roars menacingly at the two heroes.
"Easy, boy..." says Dismas, trying to soothe it. But no luck. The dugong flops forward on its huge flippers and lunges at them. It swipes a muscular and fatty flipper at Dismas, knocking him back several feet. Then it painfully pins Gestas between its massive, serrated tusks and its big wet lips start lapping at his feet.
"It's going to eat me!" cries Gestas.
Dismas runs toward the brute, fists raised. But before he can land a punch, the dugong again swipes at him with a flipper, this time whomping it straight down upon him, flattening him like a pancake. It raises the flipper only to bring it down again, even harder, pressing him painfully against the rock floor. Dismas tries to pry the flipper up but it's too strong. He can't escape.
"Here!" shouts Dismas, tossing the knife back to Gestas. But the knife skids to a stop on the rock floor, just out of the reach of Gestas, whose fingers flail for it helplessly before the dugong picks him up with his teeth and slams him against a boulder.
While the dugong is grappling with Gestas, Dismas sees his chance. He rolls out from under its flippery grasp and then runs straight toward its head, punching it squarely in the jaw. The dugong rears up, howling, dropping Gestas from its lips, and turns with a pudgy plop directly to face Dismas. He punches and punches the beast, relentlessly, pausing only when the huge mammal whaps him with its mighty tail. Finally he lands a blow powerful enough to render the animal temporarily stunned. He takes that moment to shove it right in its ribs, flipping it onto its back. When it comes to, it flaps its limbs helplessly, unable to right itself, like a beached whale. Then Gestas runs in with the knife, plunging it deep into its chest. With a "GRROOOAAAGHHH!!!" the thing finally heavily collapses and dies.
With a look of disgust on his face, Gestas pulls his arm and knife out of the belly of the beast, now covered in yellowy flubber. "Here," he says. "You can have the knife back. You're better with this thing anyway."
"No need," replies Dismas. "I have a better idea." He steps on the jaw of the enormous dugong and yanking with all his strength, manages to pry one of its tusks loose. Then he wields it as a makeshift sword, swinging it around and testing its weight.
Gestas looks up at the long, thick piece of ivory, with its row of sharp jags, and makes an expression as if to say, Not bad.
Dismas chops the tusk down through the air and cuts off a chunk of the dugong. "You know, this might make fine meat, if we get hungry."
Behind his back, Gestas smiles quietly at the sound of the word "we".
"What is this thing, anyway?" murmurs Dismas, mostly to himself.
"It's a dugong," says the donkey, who has just appeared at his elbow, trailing the rope.
"You!" says Dismas. "What are you doing here?"
"Um...." says the donkey. "I forget. Looking for something, that's right, looking for something."
"So there are animals down here, too?"
"Every animal that ever lived!" says the donkey.
"Do they all... talk?"
"No, no, no," replies the donkey. "At least... I don't think so! Birdy! Did I see little birdy? I think I saw little birdy." With that, the donkey runs off, as if chasing something. But as soon as he has passed the next ridge, he comes running back the other direction, screaming in terror. He runs right between Dismas and Gestas, and continues to run, presumably back to the town, bell clanging the whole way.
Dismas and Gestas look at each other after he passes and then simultaneously shrug.
Then they see it: coming over the ridge, where the donkey was running from, is a huge wall of Girgashite zombies. The zombies see them and immediately swarm in around them.
Dismas and Gestas hack away at the crowd of zombies, Gestas with his knife, and Dismas with his dugong tusk.
Eventually they defeat them but then another wave of Girgashites arrives. These, rather than wearing normal clothes, are wearing armor, as they form a kind of army. Dismas and Gestas manage to defeat many of these, too. Partway through, Gestas, pawing through one of the corpses, finds a pair of brass knuckles. "Hmm," he says, "I could get used to this." And with that he puts one set of brass knuckles on each of his hands. Now he begins defeating zombies much more efficiently.
They make their way up over the ridge, into another valley, and descend deeper in, fighting Girgashite fiends the whole way.
Eventually they get to what seems to be the hangout, the temporary fortification of the Girgashites. Inside, they find children, locked away in cages - including the children that had been playing in the village. But inside are also much more well-armed and armored Girgashites.
Suddenly, 5 figures in red cloaks rush in, chanting. They wave their arms in the air, and circles of strange glowing symbols seem to emerge from their hands. Then they all point at a specific spot in the air, and beams shine forth from their fingers. At the point where all the lines intersect, power seems to grow, and it expands and cools into a material form, which flops down heavily to the ground, slowly uncurling into a beastly biological form. The figures in red cloaks run away, as quickly as they appeared.
The huge creature gradually pulls apart what reveal themselves to be huge, bat-like wings. It opens them, threateningly, and begins flapping up off the ground, flying into the air above the adventurers. It unrolls a huge tail, and there are no other arms or legs. It's a serpent of some kind. Suddenly the entire animal bursts into strange, green flame - yet it is undamaged by this fire. A fire serpent! It roars and breathes fire down at the ground, just near where Dismas is standing.
But Dismas holds up his dugong tusk, defiant. Behind him, Gestas gets up and flexes his fingers in his new brass knuckles, menacingly. He assumes a fighting stance, the slightest glimmer of a smile spreading across his lips.
What follows is a brutal battle. The monster and the adventurers trade blows. Dismas's badge proves effective in deflecting the beast's fire breath, but not against the whips of his massive tail. In the course of the battle, the fire serpent bites down hard on Dismas's hand, ripping flesh from the bone and rendering the appendage into little more than a useless, mangled open wound - and sending the dugong tooth down to the ground. But Gestas seizes that very moment to grab the dugong tusk and plunge it deep into the monster's skull. With that, the monster collapses, swells, and bursts in a fiery explosion, projecting Dismas and Gestas's shadows against the interior walls. The children cheer from their cages.
Dismas and Gestas open the cages and out come the kids. A little girl looks to Dismas with sad empathy and whispers, "Your hand..." She reaches up to touch it.
Dismas winces slightly and pulls the injured hand away. "Never mind that. Let's go."
Dismas leads the children back to the village. Gestas pulls the dugong tooth from the remains of the fire serpent and wobbles after them: "Wait for me!"
Next chapter: Day 1 Part 10: Flashback: the Big Job
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