Special Ed.

His name was Edward, but they called him Special Ed. One of the better alumni from Blairgowire High School, once Special Ed had battled geography teachers and the vicious machinations of the school bullies.

Now he battled the very forces of Hell itself.

Special Ed had always found comfort in knowing he was prepared for pretty much any circumstance. He had seen the possibility from afar, knowing that eventually God would turn his back upon the bastard denizens of Blairgowrie, now fallen far from grace. He knew that the only sure defence against the Satanic hordes were guns and bullets.

The weapons he possessed were myriad, and definitely illegal in the current Scottish political climate. Guns he had, guns upon guns, great big piles of guns with a liberal sprinkling of guns on top.

Lots of guns.

More importantly, lots of ammunition.

How he had come into the possession of such weapons is a long tale which, by necessity of draconian word limits and reader attention spans, must be retold in short here. It involved an Al Queda cell, a part time job position as chef and five litres of poison porridge.

Buried in Special Ed’s back garden were the decomposing remains of Bin Laden’s poisoned finest, a small atomic weapon and enough hardware to outfit a small revolution.

And Special Ed was a small revolution into himself. Revolting he was, certainly. Small in more than one department. A dervish of righteous and pissed off revenge, all packaged neatly into the lithe four-foot frame of Special Ed.

Schwarzenegger had nothing on Eddy.

Special Ed had seen the sky turn crimson and nodded sagely to himself. The time was here. Perhaps Barry, Satanist, rampant bully and sixth form Head Boy, perhaps he had finally achieved his goal and raised the legions of Lucifer from the seventh level of Hell. Or perhaps God had been slighted once too often by the fell citizens of Blair, and had come to claim and cleanse what was once his and again would be.

Special Ed had watched it all come to pass and had known the conclusion before it was written. Special Ed was ready.

More likely the ancient, lost and bloody red fields of Armageddon were none other than Davie Park, and the apocalypse was here. The end of times, the very end of the world. And Special Ed would be more than a footnote in the Apocrypha, of that he intended to make damn sure.

Rushing home through the rains of blood he went, aghast at the possibility but always and ever ready, Special Ed rose to his calling; A Warrior For God, the Bane of the Demonic, the Ultimate and True Saviour of Mankind.

He sped through the rooms of his home, barely noting that some foul force had rent his parents from their souls. His mother, skull bludgeoned into the consistency of strawberry jelly, lay broken upon the kitchen lino. His ineffectual and mostly useless stepfather had been garrotted with his strap belt and lay purple and stiffening upon the lounge couch, his corpse still watching the televised distraction that had allowed his assailants to assail him unassailed. No mention of the impending apocalypse was to be heard on Sky Sports. The demonic invasion was a personal assault on Blair. Special Ed nodded to himself, scarcely aware of the cooling corpses by his side. It made sense.

Blairgowire first, the world later.

To gain a foothold into the world of mortals, Satan had obviously assaulted the world’s weak point. Blairgowire, the realm of the stupid and morally corrupt, the citizens of which would either welcome the Dark Lord with open arms or provide nothing but token resistance before torn screaming down into the void. It was a perfect beachhead for the assault on Earth.

But Satan had obviously not counted upon dealing with Special Ed.

He retrieved the spade from the Stepdaddies workshed. Battling against gales and the foaming seas of blood that poured from the sky, Special Ed proceeded to dig up his pet dog’s grave. A wooden crucifix marked the spot where Smudge had been buried, along side seven persons of a Bin Ladenish disposition. Latin wards were engraved upon the balsa wood monument to protect the haloed spot where Special Ed’s canine companion and a brace of Allah’s warriors had come to their final rest.

From the shallow grave he retrieved his guns and ammo boxes, wrapped in polythene bags and gauze to keep the worms and the wet from ruining the mechanisms. Down the furrows in the Steppdaddies marrow patch ran the blood from the sky, into the freshly dug hole they passed, gurgled into the grave and running down through the earth to poison the very core of the World itself.

Special Ed hefted the packages, said a short prayer for the soul of the beloved dog whose final rest he had just disturbed and defiled, and then clambered dipping from the hole before the red rain could accumulate and drown him. Into the house he bore the swaddled weapons, depositing them upon the kitchen table, unwrapping the devices with care and making his final choices.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The demon, a hole punched through sternum and spine, crumpled to the floor with a confused look upon its malformed face. Eyes blinked, mouth gurgled and the incomprehensible question in a hideous tongue bleed from it, accompanied with a popping bubble of mucus and blood.

Special Ed regarded it coldly for a second as the last of its life bled out into the tiled floor and ran down the wall behind it. The demon did not understand that it could die. It did not understand what was happening to it. It stared at Ed in disbelief that here and now, life had come to a close.

Demons were not the only ones that could tear out the soul. The tables were turned, and they screamed. They screamed, and the screams of the damned filled Ed louder than the wails of the innocent. They painted the air red with hate and pain.

Gunsmoke and fires surrounded the Special Ed as he strode on past the mortally wounded, watching the demons flee before him in his path. Again and again the gun in his hand fired, again and again the creatures before him shattered and fell.

Blood drenched the corridors of hell’s first base. Death walked here, reaping and leaving nothing but cooling meat and shell casings in His wake.

Fire. Reload. Fire. Reload. Shoot. Kill. Reload. Step over the bodies of the slain.

And the demons here, they were not the worst. As hideous as they were, abominations before God, they were as nothing compared to the zombies. The possessed. They bore the faces of his friends, wearing their bodies. Ed could barely bring himself to gun them down, to destroy these people that he had known since childhood. Their faces twisting, begging him not to fire, to spare them. But inside these walking corpses, nothing remained of the people he had once known. Their souls had been jettisoned and some dark force had taken up residence inside the flesh.

Special Ed killed them not in hate, though he did hate them. He fired his gun in love, that his friends and peers might be released from the iron grip of the Devil himself.

God had chosen his champion well.

- - - - - - - - - -

Barry screamed, despite himself. Barry wept.

He hunkered down behind the overturned table, bleeding. Gunshots and wailing buried the low whimpers and gurgles of the shot and dying. Amongst them were scattered random screaming from the Special Ed, declaring himself to be the Champion of God and screaming something about finding a blue key card whist rampaging through a Hell of his own creating.

Panting and tying the hole in his arm with his bootlaces, Barry looked around him and despaired. He and his friends had obviously flushed Special Education’s head down the privy once to often.

Barry’s friend the Mullan lay face down across the room. Last week the Mullan had force fed Special Ed a urinal cake. Now he was dead.

Funny how things work out.

This is our fault, thought the Barry, staring forlornly at the Mullan’s stiffening corpse, the result of this madness that wore the face of the town retard, this insanity and this abomination. This is because of me. This is the wage of cruelty and suffering repaid. Dear God, what have I done?

This is Barry’s guilt and horror.

This will not have a happy ending.

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