Chapter 7: Escape from Pump Station 2

Another earthquake jarred us awake just after midnight. Bleary eyed from lack of sleep, I stared around the room as the bed Angie and I were sharing shook violently, banging over and over against the bunkroom's wall.

In spite of all the supernatural craziness of the last two days, the geologist in me couldn't help but estimate the quake as a six on the MMI scale. Once again, I felt handicapped by my inability to log into the computers back at the university and see the seismic data. Given its source, I had no idea whether it was an aftershock or a totally new quake associated with the demon invasion. Although the shaking soon stopped, the distant rumbling continued.

"Everybody, you're going to want to see this," Kowalski said, staring out the window.

The six of us gathered around the bunkroom's windows on the west side of the bunkhouse. It was a hellish scene. To our northwest, dozens of distant fires were sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the overcast sky. It was worse looking northward towards the coast where the majority of the initial holes had opened. Except for the green tundra instead of desert sands, it looked remarkably like the hundreds of burning oil wells set ablaze during Iraq's withdrawal from its invasion of Kuwait. Repeatedly, we saw explosions sending balls of flames and smoke soaring hundreds of feet into the air.

"Shit. Now what?" I asked, more to myself than to anyone in particular.

"We leave," O'Shannon said. "We grab our packs, fight our way over to the garage, and hope we find something we can drive. Otherwise, we'll be stuck here until the army rescues us or we're overrun."

We removed the barricade blocking the door, made our way downstairs, and wolfed down some granola bars we'd found in the pantry. Then, we all made one last final check of our backpacks and weapons, and we were ready. All of us, that is, except for our guardian sorceress; O'Shannon had pulled a shallow silver bowl some six inches across from her backpack, filled it with water, and was staring at it intensely. The amulet in her hands began to glow as she repeated the words "Ostende mihi futurum" over and over again.

We gathered around her, impatiently wondering what she was doing. Looking through the water at the polished metal, all we saw was her reflection, inverted and made smaller by the bowl's concave shape.

"What's that?" Kowalski asked, but O'Shannon just shook her head and continued chanting.

I was about to turn away when the water in the bowl turned cloudy. Then, it cleared to reveal the image of a golden eagle flying high over the tundra. The image expanded until all we saw was the eagle's eye. The image blurred, changing to show the North Slope as the bird saw it. Everywhere it looked, there were hell holes, their floors dotted with bluish flames. Flying lower, the eagle focused on one pit, which expanded until we could see hundreds of hellhounds racing up its steep sides, and they weren't alone. Among them, half as tall but just as numerous, were little men, the brownish red color of dried blood, running alongside the hellhounds or riding them as though they were horses. As the image continued to enlarge, we could see they weren't human. They looked like grotesquely disfigured chimps with stubby legs and monstrously long arms. Like the hellhounds, they had no skin, and we could see their muscles stretching and contracting as they ran. They wore black loincloths and were armed with swords or maces tipped with wickedly long spikes.

"Imps," O'Shannon hissed. "Why did they have to send so damned many imps?"

"Are they worse than the hellhounds?" Bill asked.

"Unfortunately, yes," O'Shannon answered, her expression one of anger and disgust. "Imps are more intelligent and can plan and work together; hellhounds are as dumb as dirt. And though hellhounds can't turn doorknobs, imps definitely can."

"Yes, that's obviously bad," Angie replied. "But the way you said imps made it sound like there's more to it; it sounded personal."

"It is. A few years back when I was living in a dry cabin outside Anchorage, six of the little bastards ambushed me while I was fetching firewood."

"Wait a minute," Kowalski interrupted. "I thought you said demons only came through one or two at a time. What were so many imps doing in Anchorage?"

"Not sure," O'Shannon answered. "Probably hunting for me. It was unusual to see so many at once. I was so busy fighting the five in front of me that I didn't notice the sixth one creeping up behind me. Luckily for me, he broke his silence before striking by cursing me for killing his companions; if he had remained quiet, he would definitely have killed me. I spun around to face him just as he swung his sword. I was fast, but he was faster. He managed to slash open the side of my thigh at the same time I bashed in his skull with a length of tree branch I was using as a club. That damned demon dwarf left me with a five-inch scar that reminds me to never ever let imps get behind me again."

"Look at that!" Kowalski exclaimed, drawing our eyes back to the metal bowl.

In addition to the hellhounds and imps, the hole was now disgorging what I can only describe as enormous blood-colored bats, their bodies rivaling those of the hellhounds in size though their huge wings made them appear many times larger. Like the hellhounds, many carried imps as riders as they scattered in all directions. One, unencumbered by a rider and flying higher, headed for the eagle whose vision we were sharing. The eagle fled, twisting and turning to avoid its far larger pursuer. Less than a minute later, the scene in the bowl jerked sharply and disappeared. Once more, the bowl contained only water.

"What in the hell was that?" Bill asked, giving voice to the question we all were thinking.

"That was a gargoyle. Devils use them as spies, scouts, and as a way to rapidly move imps over short distances," O'Shannon answered. "The nasty creatures like to drop down onto your back before you are even aware they are nearby."

"So what do we do now?" I asked.

"We prepare to fight hellhounds, imps, and gargoyles. The second phase of this war has begun. We need to get the hell off the North Slope and over the Brooks Range before the hell holes start vomiting even worse demons." She picked up her little bowl, dumped out the water, and shoved it inside her backpack.

A minute later, we were standing at the door to the passageway between the bunkhouse and office building.

"Okay Dr. Oswald, you take the lead with me," O'Shannon said, gesturing for me to join her at the door. "I want your shotgun in front with me. Dr. Menendez, you come next, followed by Mr. Kowalski. Bill can bring up the rear with his rifle. Remember, imps can open doors, so if anyone sees one opening, you damned better let the rest of us know. Once we're outside, remember to also look up for gargoyles."

As we lined up, O'Shannon looked at each of us in turn to ensure that we'd heard her and were ready to go. After taking a final look through the small window in the door, she opened it and we stepped into the short passageway.

We stopped at the door to the office building, and O'Shannon looked in through the window. "I don't see anything," she said. "But that doesn't mean much. Ready? Let's do this." She opened the door, and we quietly entered.

The garage, our immediate goal, was visible through the three windows to our right, and the doorway we planned to use stood just beyond them. But then, the silence was broken by the sounds of blades striking wood and a high-pitched argument spoken in a language of grunts, growls, squeals, and snorts. It was coming from behind us, from one of the private offices or the loading deck where I'd shot the hellhound.

"What's that?" Kowalski asked, speaking a little louder than he should have. Bill shushed him, and Kowalski briefly put his hand over his mouth before whispering the word "sorry".

O'Shannon turned to Kowalski and answered softly, her voice just loud enough for all of us to hear. "Imps arguing over how to keep the hellhounds from eating all of us and not leaving enough for them." She pointed to the barricaded door to the loading dock, where the end of a sword poked through a small hole. "They're using their swords to cut their way in."

"How about we make sure they all go hungry?" Angie muttered softly from just behind me. "Let's get the hell out of here before that hole gets any larger."

"Agreed," O'Shannon said. "Follow me."

We passed the windows and gathered at the door leading outside and to the garage that hopefully held our transportation. O'Shannon reached out, but just before her fingers touched the doorknob, it began to turn, slowly and cautiously at first, then rapidly and loudly as an imp on the far side became angry and frustrated at finding the door locked. The turning stopped. A loud clang of metal on metal rang out, and the doorknob shook. The exasperated imp had stuck the doorknob with his sword.

"So much for stealth," O'Shannon whispered. "It looks like we are going to have to do this the hard way. Dr. Oswald, I am going to unlock the door and jerk it all the way open. You blast the imp and any other demons you see. I will cast killing curses at anything you miss. Then, we run down the stairs and over to the door in the garage across from us. I will unlock the door, we all rush in, and Mr. Kowalski will slam the door behind us and lock it. Dr. Oswald and I will take care of any demons inside while the rest of you find one or two vehicles and get them started. Then, we open the garage doors and drive over anything that gets in our way. We'll turn right out of the garage and drive up the middle of the pump station to the North entrance. Once we are on the Dalton, we drive south as far and as fast as we can. Any questions?"

Kowalski tentatively raised his hand. "What if some of us don't make it across? What if the garage is empty? Or full of demons?"

"We do what we must. We protect each other, fight, and improvise. If we have to, we prepare to fight our way to the other building with garage doors just north of us. We do anything and everything we can to ensure that as many of us as possible make it out of here alive. What we don't do is stop; if we stop, we die."

"Oh," Kowalski said, his face white with fear.

"Okay," O'Shannon said, pulling out her amulet and pointing it at the door. "We go on the count of three."

I raised my shotgun and aimed it at the door, this time holding it firmly against my shoulder.

"One. Two. Three!" O'Shannon jerked open the door to reveal two very surprised imps.

I fired the shotgun, blowing the head off one and badly mangling the other's face and chest.

O'Shannon, stepped forward, aimed her amulet down the stairs, and shouted, "Demorior demonia!" A hellhound and another two imps dropped and rolled down the stairs.

Without waiting for their bodies to hit the ground, we ran down the stairs, jumping over the demons' bodies or stepping on them, heedless of whether they were dead or merely stunned. A hellhound and its rider charged at us from the left as I raced across the fifty feet separating the office building from the garage. I fired twice more: once to drop a hellhound and its rider, another time to kill one of the imps running to cut us off. After casting an initial curse, O'Shannon ignored the demons, concentrating solely on making it to the door so that she could unlock it. I heard several shots from Angie's handgun and Bill's rifle mixed with hellhound howls, imp curses, and the screams of injured and dying demons. We reached the door, and I turned to see Angie and a pair of imps playing tug-of-war with Kowalski as the rope. Aiming around the screaming man, she shot one of the imps in the face while I blew a messy hole in the other's torso. Several of the pellets peppered Kowalski's hand; I'd apologize later if we managed to make it inside.

Suddenly, a hellhound came running out from under the office building. It leaped on Kowalski, biting his left arm just below the elbow. It shook him back and forth as if the man weighed nothing. Kowalski's forearm ripped off, the butcher knife still held tightly in his hand. As he screamed and fell, Kowalski swung his remaining arm and severed the hellhound's throat with his meat cleaver. Angie knelt down, and grabbed Kowalski around the waist with his remaining arm held tightly over her shoulders. Then, she grunted, pulled him up to his feet and began dragging him towards the now open door.

I stood just outside the garage, providing cover, while Bill swung his rifle swiftly from side to side dropping hellhounds and imps, who seemed satisfied to let the hellhounds lead the attack and take the brunt of our fire.

"Damn it, Dr. Oswald, get in here!" I heard O'Shannon shout from inside the garage.

That's when I remembered that I was supposed to be inside, ensuring the building was demon free. I helped Angie pull Kowalski through the door and lay him on the floor. He was in bad shape with bright red arterial blood spurting out the end of his severed arm. His face was chalky white in the dim light, and he was barely conscious. I quickly pulled off my belt, wrapped it several times around his arm just above his elbow, and tightened it until the blood flow eased to a trickle.

"You have to take over from here," I told Angie. I stood up and started scanning the single room that ran the length and width of the building. I noticed a firetruck, a pickup, and an SUV parked behind three of the six garage doors. The back wall of the building was taken up by workbenches and a storage area partitioned off by chain link walls and doors. Once broken, a row of windows above the workbenches would provide access points easily big enough for imps to crawl through.

The rifle fire ceased as Bill backed in through the open door and slammed it shut behind him. A long thin red forearm was stuck between the door and door jam, and its owner howled in agony as Bill put his shoulder against the door and pushed with all his might. The arm broke with a loud snap as the door closed. Held by a slender strip of mangled muscle, the end of the imp's arm twitched, then hung limply, dripping black blood on the garage's concrete floor. The imp screamed as he yanked backward, attempting to free itself. The crushed strip of flesh parted, and the severed arm fell and landed on the floor, lying in a small spreading puddle of blackish blood.

Bill had no sooner locked the door than it shuddered with a loud crash that reverberated through the largely empty building. The handle rattled as the imps tried to get inside. They howled and shouted curses of rage as they realized their prey were temporarily out of reach.

Bill's shirt and pants were ripped, and he was bleeding from several scratches and a long gash down his left forearm. While reloading his rifle, Bill looked down at Angie. She'd ripped off a sleeve of her shirt and held the blood-soaked wad of cloth against the stub of Kowalski's severed arm.

"Everyone get in and quick," O'Shannon called through the open window of a Jeep Grand Cherokee near the north end of the building.

"Kowalski's been injured," Angie yelled back. "A hellhound bit him and ripped off part of his arm."

"Leave him," O'Shannon shouted. "If he is not dead yet, he soon will be. Hellhound venom is inevitably fatal unless the one bitten immediately receives the antidote, which none of us have. Even if I had all the ingredients, which I do not, it would take far too long to brew."

We all looked down at Kowalski, who wasn't breathing and stared up at us with unseeing eyes. I reached down and gently pulled up my wife. The sound of shattering glass at the back of the building made our decision for us. Imps shouted curses as they poured through the broken windows, heedless of the razor-sharp shards of broken glass lining the window frames. I opened the SUV's back door on the passenger side and shoved Angie inside. I turned to open the garage door, but Bill had beaten me to it.

"Get in," he ordered. "I'll be right behind you."

I ran around to the driver's door, yanked it open, and threw myself in. As I passed my shotgun over to O'Shannon, it dawned on me that she was sitting in the front passenger seat when she should have been sitting where I was with the car already started. "Why aren't you driving?" I asked.

"Because I can't drive and cast spells at the same time," she explained, turning around and handing my shotgun back to Angie. Her tone was that of an exasperated parent explaining the obvious to a particularly slow and annoying child.

I slammed my car door shut and had just realized I didn't have the keys when O'Shannon pointed her amulet at the front of the car and shouted "Vigilaveris!" The engine started. Bill yanked up on the garage door handle with his left hand and used the rifle in his right to fire at the imps racing across the garage. He made it into the seat behind me, and the imps were upon us, their swords and maces striking the car doors.

I floored it. With tires squealing on the concrete floor of the garage, the car leapt forward. We heard several satisfying crunches as we bounced over hellhounds and imps, sending others flying like pins from a bowling ball. I turned right and raced a hundred yards north between buildings, the purpose of which I hadn't a clue. Just before the end of the pump station, I yanked the wheel to the left and sped towards the exit, sending dust and gravel flying in our wake.

A horizontal bar stretched across the driveway, blocking our path to the highway. I skidded to a stop, missing it by inches.

Bill put down his rifle and grabbed his handgun from Angie. "I'll get it," he said, jumping out of the car before anyone had a chance to offer joining him to stand guard. He had to shoot the padlock three times before it opened. He raised the bar. Turning back, he looked up, shock and fear emblazoned upon his face. Less than a heartbeat later, a gargoyle the size of a mountain lion dropped from the sky. It plowed into Bill, knocking him onto his back, and sat heavily on his body. The demon dug the long talons of its front feet into Bill's chest as the former ranger stiff-armed the demon's neck with one hand and brought the handgun up with the other. He fired twice in quick succession. The gargoyle screamed in pain and anger as the bullets broke its left wing and burrowed into its side. Still very much alive, the demon strove to sink its jaws into Bill's neck. I thought he might manage to shoot it again, but two more gargoyles landed on either side.

"Go, God damn it," he cried. "Drive!" One of the gargoyles bit into his abdomen, ripping him open from groin to sternum. Then the other bit into his neck, abruptly ending his tortured scream.

I was furious at the flying fiends. Wanting nothing more than to blow them all back to hell, I was about to demand that Angie give me my shotgun when she screamed. Yet another gargoyle had landed right outside her door. It looked hungrily at her and smiled, revealing a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth the length and diameter of my little fingers. It raised a massive paw up to her window. Its sharp talons left long scratches in the glass as it lowered its paw towards the door handle. I'd left the doors unlocked so Bill could get back in after opening the gate!

"Lock the door!" I yelled, as I searched for the unfamiliar car's door lock button.

With a loud crash, the SUV's roof buckled downward to where it nearly touched the top of my head. Then with the sound of ripping metal, four black claws, razor sharp and the size of my thumbs, punched through. I looked up to my right and saw the curved claws pulling backwards as the metal began to tear. A fifth gargoyle had landed on the roof!

O'Shannon yelled, "Go!"

I stomped on the gas pedal, and the car sent twin rooster tails of gravel flying behind us. We skidded sideways as the SUV fishtailed from the driveway onto the Dalton Highway heading south. The gargoyle on the roof screamed with rage and frustration as it fell off the roof. Its scream cut off abruptly as it hit the hard pavement and rolled to a stop, its ripped and broken wings wrapped tightly around its hideous body.

"Can you see any more of those damned hell bats?" I demanded as I accelerated the SUV to 70. Although it took all of my concentration to keep the car from plunging off the road's slender shoulders onto the tundra, I couldn't help repeatedly glancing up at the leaden sky. A southwest wind had blown the smoke away and with it the stench of sulfur. The air beneath the clouds was clear, providing excellent visibility for spotting any formations of flying gargoyles.

I was still doing twenty over the Dalton's 50 mph speed limit when the pavement abruptly gave way to gravel some ten miles down the road.

"Christ!" Angie cursed as I applied the brakes as hard as I dared. "Jack, slow down! It won't do us any good to outrun the demons if you end up killing us by running off the road and crashing."

"Okay, okay," I replied as we roughly bounced over potholes and rows of washboard ruts. The violent vibrations snapped my teeth together and threatened to shake out my fillings. "How fast can gargoyles fly?" I asked as we slowed to just a little above the speed limit. I was worried that the slower speed made us vulnerable to attack from the air.

"I'm not sure," O'Shannon replied. She glanced over at the speedometer. "We may be okay. I suppose it depends on how serious they are at catching up with us."

"Watch out," Angie warned, pointing past my shoulder and out the windshield.

There was a car on its side next to the road. I slowed to a crawl as we drove by, but the blood smears down the roof ending in bits of bone and gore on the ground made it clear that there were no survivors.

"There's another one," Angie said before we were even a mile past the first wreck. This time, it was a big rig that had run off the road. Its driver's door had been ripped off and more blood was all that remained of its occupant.

Over the next few miles, we passed several more wrecks and abandoned vehicles. It was so depressing that after a while, we drove past as fast as I dared, our eyes anywhere but on the bloody carnage.

As we continued farther south, I began to spend more and more time looking at the sky and across the endless expanse of tundra. Where in hell were the demons? Had we really made it far enough south to be ahead of their army of hellhounds, imps, and gargoyles?

"Look out!" Angie shouted, yanking my attention back to the road. She was pointing out the front windshield.

It's hard to estimate distances on the flat featureless tundra, and a distant smudge on the horizon had somehow transformed into two wrecked cars blocking the entire road only a hundred yards in front of us. "Damn it," I cursed as I stomped on the brakes, bracing for a crash. At the last second, I yanked the steering wheel to the right. The SUV left the road and bounced across the tundra for another fifty feet before stopping.

"Is everyone okay?" I asked, my head hurting like hell from banging repeatedly against the car's dented-in roof.

"I'm fine, but you scared the hell out of me," my wife said angrily. "You need to keep your mind on your damned driving and let us worry about the demons."

"I'm sorry," I replied, trying to ignore the pain spreading down my neck and wondering whether I'd given myself a concussion. "I guess I forgot just how fast we were going." Hoping to steer the conversation away from my driving, I looked over my shoulder at O'Shannon and asked, "How 'bout you?"

"Okay, I think," she answered. "A little shaken, but fine."

Suddenly, an unexpected knocking on my window startled me. I looked out to see a man in his mid-forties. His shirt ripped and splattered with blood, he was cradling his right arm with his left.

"Please," he begged. "You got to help me! We have to get out of here before..." He paused and looked up, searching the sky. "...before any more of them damned things show up."

"Get in," I said, nodding my head at the back door and the empty seat behind me.

He wasted no time. "Thanks, mister. I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't come along. Those things will rip you apart if they get their claws in you."

"What happened?" I asked, pointing at the wreckage blocking the road. "Anyone else survive?"

"Nope, they're all dead." He answered. "The other car was trying to pass me when one of them creatures landed on my hood. Scared the hell out of me. I swerved and hit the other car. The next thing I know, we've crashed and are rolling sideways down the road. The only good news is I managed to roll my car over that cougar/bat thing. I crushed the sucker good."

I put the car in drive and slowly drove off the soft tundra, climbing up the steep shoulder and back onto the raised bed of the Dalton. "We're heading south for Fairbanks," I said as I floored the gas pedal. "You're welcome to ride with us. The way I look at it, there's safety in numbers, and we need to work together if we're going to make it out of this alive."

The speedometer was just passing 50 when I detected the faint stench of sulfur coming from the seat behind me...