The Dig

[FONT=&quot]CHAPTER FIVE[/FONT]

There was smoke slowly rising from the air, the smell of burning filling Arthur’s nostrils as he stirred awake yet again, but as always, feeling different. Cool grass was gracing his bare backside, as he lifted his head up, his vision impaired by the thin wisps of clear white smoke. To his left and to his right, his panning head noticed patches of burning material sprinkled across this particular grassy lawn, each of them smoldering with smoke.

A chill went through his body as he realized a moment later that smoke was rising from him as well. He lost his voice as his eyes immediately darted over his naked body, the smell of burning overwhelming his senses now as his hands sprung to life and he started patting his body in desperation, slapping away in desperation, trying to smother the flames burning his flesh, fueling the smoke that was rising from his body.

He stopped a moment later, his skin feeling warm… but touching no flames.

Regaining his composure, he slowly rose into a sitting position, and then opened his palms up in front of his hands, noticing they were almost dripping with sweat. He then realized it was all over his body, glistening. He started to breath heavy, feeling a stifling humidity all of a sudden as he looked around, getting his new bearings, and soon realizing he was sitting in a small half block converted into a small park, surrounding by a parking lot.

Several meters away, he saw the ambulance, or what was left of it. Most of it was blasted apart, with blackened shards of metal spread across the park, the charred hulk that was the front end of the vehicle having smashed head on into a large tree, its radiator and bumper half wrapped around the trunk of the arboreal. Arthur blinked, suddenly feeling lightheaded, not from anything physical, but from realizing that the most logical turn of events was that the oxygen tanks on board the ambulance had exploded, tearing apart the entire vehicle and throwing him several dozen feet away, onto the ground.

He looked over his body.

Not only was he alive, but not a single burn on his body. Doing a second lookover, he realized he had stopped steaming, or smoking, whatever it was. His Asian coppery tan skin was looking a shade redder of course, and he certainly felt warm, but, that was getting off excessively light for what should have been him getting blown apart. Rising steadily to his feet, he then looked straight ahead and saw before him was his destination.

The interior was mostly dark, windows shattered, the cream colored walls pockmarked with burns, blasts and bulletholes but even to Arthur, towns hospital was readily recognizable as it jutted a clear eight stories above the ground, the entire building wide enough to take up a city block itself it seemed. And it was just a parking lot away. First though, he looked around, noticing craters in the park, as well as the immediate area filled with partially ruined buildings.

Regina, the Fire Chief wasn’t anywhere in sight. Arthur thought about calling out, but decided against it as he looked around, noticing that unlike before, an unnatural calm had seemingly come over the entire area, though in the distance he could hear the distant crackling of gunfire and far off booms which almost seemed muffled and distant.

Worry started to come over him as he contemplated with a far more clear head now then he had before the crash, what was transpiring. What was that entity that had attacked them and where was she now? Approaching the burning husk that remained of the ambulance, hoping to find something useful, he felt the warmth of the wreckage on his bare skin as he crouched in low beside the destroyed vehicle.

But all that was left was useless, ruined and burnt to a crisp.

Small geysers of dirt kicked up a staggered line just to his right, culminating in a sharp dinging sound as a bullet deflected off the crashed ambulances engine block. Arthur immediately dived to the ground and scrambled away on his hands and knees as another bullet struck the vehicles skeleton, ringing hollow as metal struck metal. He turned his head, and noticed that while there may have been a lull in the fighting, it was far from safe.

A single man was charging straight towards him, one wearing a simple gray suit and pants. Dirt caked his business like uniform at the joints, as dark, almost black, blood stained the white shirt underneath his suit. His neck had a wide, gaping red gash on the front, where the larynx should’ve been and a pale looking face, leathery and dead, with blackened, gangrenous looking flesh surrounding the eyes and covering the cheeks, finished the visage of this new attacker as it sprinted towards Arthur at full speed. In one of his arms he held a pistol, in the other, an already deformed tire iron.

Arthur recovered his feet, as he could almost feel a bullet zip past his head as he raced around the back end of the ambulance crash and started to sprint towards the hospital itself. Another gunshot rang out, as the Asian man glanced over his shoulder and noticed his ghoulish pursuer was still gaining on him, his gun still in hand, each round getting closer and closer to its mark. Its mouth fell open, but instead of letting out a cry of alarm or rage, more blackish ichor almost freely drizzled over its slack lips, spilling onto its chest. The gun barked again as it was fired one hand.

He felt the bullet zip past his opposite cheek, almost taking a chunk out of his face.

Complimenting the hiss of the bullet as it zinged past was a curious whinnying sound followed by a tremendous explosion as between the two of them, a bubble of earth and grass suddenly brewed upward into an eruption of dirt and shrapnel. Arthur found himself thrown to the ground, as his pursuer simply disappearing in the explosion.

No the military hadn’t left yet.

More explosions followed, as he realized the airspace had merely been cleared for what seemed like an artillery bombardment, which explained the distant booms he had heard earlier. Within seconds, the deafening inferno blotted out all other sound as Arthur pushed himself back to his feet and started to sprint towards the hospital again when he felt something smash into his back.

Before he even hit the ground, he felt the tire iron smash across the top of his back painfully, before a strong hand seized the back of his head and pushed it forward, smashing his face into the grass. He felt his right eye burn up, when those same fingers pulled hard on his hair, lifting his head again as he felt a cold goo like liquid splatter onto his back. He chilled with revulsion, realizing it was the gunman who had blindsided him. Drooling on him. Arthur screamed.

He dug his fingers into the ground and pushed off with his hands, bucking his hips as hard as he could, jinxing his attacker off balance as he saw the tire iron thud harmlessly into the ground a mere inch from the front of his face. Growling, Arthur shot back an arm into an upward arch, a backhand smashing into his adversaries deformed face, causing another dollop of black ichor to burst from his lips and knocking him to the side.

Spinning about, Arthur pinned his foe below him just as he saw the tire iron come up for his head again. He raised his own arm to block his head, driving it down and forward to intercept and then lock the arm carrying the weapon. He felt a pistol barrel suddenly whip across his forehead, drawing a thin line of blood across his scalp. His eyes blacked out a moment, but his arms kept moving as he dropped his left elbow onto the open wound that was his enemies throat with all of his weight behind the strike.

The creature gurgled, and Arthur ripped the tire iron free of its grasp with his right hand. Without hesitating, he raised the tire iron above his head, and at the last possible moment removed his elbow from the ghoulish figures throat. Its deformed head shot upward defiantly, when the simple metal handle of the tire iron drove down into the open wound in the front of its neck, and then punching through the back of its neck, the force of the blow driving the tire iron into the ground.

It let out a dry, empty wail as Arthur immediately jumped off of the now pinned down gunman, watching him thrash about as he was pinned to the ground via the neck. Its arms were flailing, unable to reconcile the pain… or perhaps rage, at being immobilized, with the fact it could probably just pull the tire iron from the ground if it could focus long enough to do so.

Arthur ducked instinctively, realizing that there was still an artillery bombardment going on, and glanced over at the ambulance. It was still burning. He picked up a nearby wooden branch and dipped it into the flames before walking back towards the trapped creature and setting his clothes alight.

As soon as he did however, he noticed through the thick clouds of dust and dirt, more dark shapes, few of them close to human, yet all approaching, perhaps attracted by the gunfire of one of their fellows. One that wasn’t human seemed to grow darker and darker, which meant they were the ones closing in the fastest.

Arthur held onto the flaming stick, and started to run towards the hospitals main doors. He didn’t reflect on the fact that glass windows and unlocked doors would somehow stop his pursuers and save him. Just the thought of being indoors, and even moreso, with the chance that his friends were in the same building, was all the comfort he needed right now. If he could just make it through those doors.

The booming of the artillery continued, but none of the shells were landing in the vicinity of the hospital. In fact, it was almost as if it was avoiding it. To Arthur, it made sense. His legs started to burn. The tremendous explosions were going away though, giving way to something else yet not dissimilar. He heard the roaring, as it raged over the impact of countless artillery shells, and above that, the sound of thundering… hooves.

He glanced over his shoulder, and saw vertical towers of dirt and asphalt plume dozens of feet into the air, noticing what looked like a pack of canines pursuing him. They were baying, and barking, but they sounded queerly silent over the constant clashing of voluminous explosions. Some had blood red hides, others had swaths of skin stripped away, exposed musculature or bones sticking out crude angles, all were mutilated well beyond nature, patently unnatural.

They weren’t the origins of the thunderous repetition though, or the roars. For that, his vision shifted upwards as he saw coming out of the blackness of the sky were a trio of creatures that swarmed towards the ground like locusts, their wings beating through the air like insects, yet unleashing a terrific and resounding thumping that reverberated through the night air, overtaking the sound of a dozen exploding shells of artillery.

Long, scorpion like tails ending in scything barbs trailed in their wake, as blackened and reddish faces, vaguely human with long manes of matted unkempt hair trailing over their carapaced bodies, scowled and gaped at their sole prey. Sharp gray teeth, lined in rows after jagged row, grew wider, opening up as if to roar but instead, unleashed a terrible jet of sulphorous smoke mixed with blinding streaks of infernal flame. Their breath projected outward like streams from a flamethrower, but instead of surging upwards, they seemed to sinnow through the air, curving through the empty space like serpents, tracking their prey as he lowered his head and plowed through the open doors, hoping they were wide open.

They were.

The glass door was heavy, his shoulder smashing hard against the thick glass, as he lost his balance, his feet stumbled, and he soon fell face forward into the carpeted hospital lobby floor. His body skidded forward a bit it seemed, until he felt the top of his head plow into something soft as behind him, the entire glass façade of the hospitals first floor suddenly shattered as the flaming smoke billowed into the room, saturating it from head to toe.

He scrambled back to his feet when he realized he had literally plowed headfirst into the corpse of a headless, white shirted hospital security guard. Several dozen bulletholes had torn up his body, and yet he still had a gun in his hand. The locals usually took guns from their victims though, which meant that this person may have been killed later and thus no one had come by yet to liberate it of its weapon.

He snatched up the pistol as he felt the searing heat start to burn across his backside, as the thick cloud of smoke shrouded fire closed in upon him. His other hand moved to unbuckling the mans equipment belt and without waiting to put it on himself, he started to sprint down the hallway, dragging the security guards belt behind him, a dozen different items dangling and skittering on the floor as he did.

Up ahead, he saw a pair of what looked like swivel double doors, and noticed the warnings printed clearly on them, stating that they were supposed to open inward, not outward. Arthur lowered his shoulder, intent on smashing through these doors as well, figuring they could be no harder then the heavier glass doors up front.

He fell backwards a moment later, his right shoulder exploding into a mind numbing pain as for a moment, he wondered if he had just dislocated his own shoulder through his own stupidity. His toes curled up, it started to feel like flames were tickling the bottoms of his feet. Turning around, he immediately closed his eyes as soon as he felt the wave of superheated air start to waft over him, preceding the dark cloud that had just enveloped the entire lobby.

Against the higher reasoning in his brain which screamed for him not to, he forced himself to open his eyes, noticing only a blurry haze had replaced clear vision. He looked up, noticing a gray blurry dot in the ceiling, and opened fire with his new pistol. He didn’t stop after the first shot, and started pumping round after round into the ceiling, until he heard… and felt, the sudden spray of ice cold water saturate the hallway. A sizzling hiss filled the air, as black smoke shrouding bright orange flames suddenly recoiled as a near constant jet of water rained down upon the oncoming cloud of destruction.

Arthur blinked several times, moistening his eyes up before reaching up to the wall and pulling a fire alarm lever along the side. Each sensor in the lobby detected the smoke, and at once, everyone activated as a dozen sprinklers, some already deformed and melting from the heat, fizzled to life, the water meeting the flame, causing a hot white steam to brew up from the receding cloud.

Meanwhile he slammed a gray button right below the fire alarm, to open the double doors, and just as the warning said, they opened up towards him. Not wanting to chance staying in the lobby any longer, he crawled through the open doors, closing them up behind him and then, looking ahead, noticed the hallway before him was nearly pitch black, except for a few glowing points of artificial light emanating from what looked like a nurses station located in this corridors mini lobby, with three other hallways leading deeper into the hospital.

Some of the computer monitors were in sleep mode, and each of the hallways entrances had a softly white lit sign hanging from the ceiling, with the name of each corridor. He glanced behind him, through the window, and saw only white steam shrouding the dark cloud. He made a beeline for the nurses station and grabbed a pair of bedsheets off one of the counters. Looping the cloth between the double doors handles, he tied them off. It seemed so pathetic that whatever was pursuing him would be stopped by clean linens, but it made him feel better as he then went to work looking for a pair of scrubs. Walking around naked might be a treat to the psychotic ghoulish ladies that infested this town, but being Asian, he figured he was at least a bashful type.

He returned to the nurses station again, finding a pair of sky blue scrubs that fit him loosely and then fastened the security guards belt around his waist, before he started opening up shelves, looking for more goodies while glancing up at the double doors every other second it seemed, waiting for something fearsome to burst through in a dramatic fashion. He took some medical tape and tied a small smooth flashlight to his pistol, then lifted it.

Grunting in displeasure, he ripped the tape off, realizing that offsetting the weight of the pistol with a flashlight was probably a dumb move. If he had to move around, he’d just do it without his hands free. He then snatched up a trauma bag and slung it over his head and shoulder before, just out of hope despite his previous chilling experiences of trying to use communications equipment, picked up the phone.

It was almost a relief when he found that the line was dead. He then moved towards the nearest computer in sleep mode and swished the mouse when his head suddenly darted up, his ears picking up on a noise coming from the lobby, or at least he thought so. But the doors remained unmoving, and the windows were covered in an impenetrable fog. He glanced back down at the computer and noticed the screen was switching to different security camera views of the various hallways and other stations in the hospital.

Some looked worse than others. In the brief span of seconds it showed each feed, tried to see the location, and what was happening in the area itself. Some showed bodies, others showed nothing, most showed some form of disarray or destruction.

Then one showed movement. It was dark, with a snowy gray quality to the video, but he could see it clearly as three clearly humanoid shapes ran across the screen, down what looked like a hallway, coming closer to his electronic eye. The camera was mounted high in the ceiling, so he couldn’t see their faces, but what he could see was clear enough. Two men in military uniforms, and one woman with wavy blonde hair and an easily recognizable leather cowboy hat. They were sprinting down the hallway.

He glanced down at the bottom of the screen.

5-1. Radiology and Nuclear Medicine

Now he had a location, and could only guess the number five meant the physical floor itself. He glanced back up at the screen, only to notice the three of them were gone from the black and white feed. Instead he saw a softly glowing light surge through the top of the feed, entering the range of the cameras feed and soon cresting into the hallway itself. They were running for a reason, they were being pursued.

Arthur felt the grip of his pistol, his fingers already twitching as he kept looking at the screen, wanting to know exactly what else was in this building with them. In the midst of the cloud of glowing light then, he saw the murky outline of a slender, sleekly curved creature with no discernible arms or head, but seemed to walk… or perhaps float, with a pair of legs, down the hallway. Visible even in this poor quality CCTV feed, he noticed ripples of brilliant white light criss crossing the sublime form of the apparition as it literally floated down the hallway before disappearing out of sight below the edge of the camera.

It was then he noticed his teeth were chattering against each other.

He willed himself to stop his jaw from trembling and backed away, wishing he had something more powerful than a pistol, a flashlight and a baton to dispense of his adversaries with. He turned away, making one final look around for anything useful here, and then glanced back at the computer monitor and immediately jumped back.

The screen was glowing so brightly, a shaft of white light seemed to illuminate the nurses station itself, and shined directly on his face as he staggered back in absolute shock. Hs fingers fumbled for the trigger on the pistol he held tightly in his grasp as, wide eyed, he saw two coal black ovals suddenly appear in the field of white, and stare directly at him as. His eyes focused on the apparition, forming a distinct face and communicating to his mind the fact that they weren’t just black circles on the screen, but actually eyes.

They told his mind to walk forward, to the light.

Enraptured by the vision, he started walking towards the monitor.

The light started to seep through, the brilliance slowly surging through the screen itself, the apparition itself shining more brightly, as its luminescent form slowly took a sickly green color, and the snowy white color immediately transitioned to the green hue. The darkness remained.

An explosion tore open the double doors, incinerating the bedsheets flimsily holding the doors together as they got ripped off their hinges. Arthur leaped back instinctively, closing his eyes as he saw a twisted mockery of a human face staring at him, the massive insectoid body taking up the entire doorway, its large wings folded back over a blood red carapace. Arthur raised his pistol, and fired the first round at the green glowing apparition slowly emerging from the monitor.

It dissipated as the monitor itself exploded into a shower of sparks.

The lion maned monster uttered another bestial roar before it opened its many fanged mouth and spat forward another column of fiery black smoke. Arthur dropped into a roll as the black pillar shot clean over his head, the thick billowing flames incinerating the air above him as he somersaulted into a hallway and still keeping low, sprinted blindly down the hallway. His foot slipped, stepping into something liquidy on the floor, but he paid it no heed, as he struggled to maintain his footing this time at least and looked ahead. He smiled a moment later.

He saw a stairwell leading upwards.

But that wasn’t the reason for the smile.

As he ran past it, he pushed down a large oxygen tank to the floor and with a bit of effort, kicked it into a roll down the hallway back towards the nurses station, now covered in the deadly smoke. He backed up against the stairwell and let out a whistle. He had been chased, tortured, and chased again. He wanted payback now.

He saw the dark silhouette of the demonic monster pursuing him even through the smoke. It practically leaped into his line of sight, like any desperate beast would, into his path, tasting the opportunity for an easy kill.

The oxygen tank rolled into the cloud.

Arthur fired twice, having patiently lined his sights up with the tank the past few seconds. His shots were spot on, and it delivered quite the boom.

The inhumane howls of pain and anguish he had inflicted upon his tormentor were delicious to savor as well.

What are you talking about, he was just laying around the entire third chapter having people carry him around and such.

That is true, that did happen in the Ring. But the image of the creature rising up from the screen, is something that was more inspired by Ju-on, the original Japanese "The Grudge" film. If you watch the third part, Hitomi's story, you'll know what I mean exactly. Personally for me, it was the most unsettling part of the entire film.

Though I don't expect much Japanese horror influence in my writing, I'm more action oriented then suspense.

CHAPTER SIX

He backed into the stairwell, swiveling about, ensuring that the trauma bag hanging around his neck wouldn’t get caught by the closing door. He had the pistol gripped in his right hand, with the flashlight in his left, hooked underneath his right arm, wrists locked together. He wasn’t sure what it was called, but he did recall the stance being used before. It seemed practical… moreso then actually taping the torch to the pistol itself.

The light panned upwards, the guns sighting following the same path. The stairwell was simple, with concrete steps leading upwards a half floor, with a center wall made of large whitewashed bricks acting as a median and support for the stairwell. No windows. At the top of each flight, a small red and white klaxon was silently flaring. The air felt cooler in the stairwell then it did in the nurses station not that it was saying much.

He glanced through the small metal wire mesh reinforced window in the metal stairwell door, glancing back at the nurses station. The black smoke was dissipating, but there were flames kicking up billowing heaps of gray smoke from the explosion of the oxygen tank. Nothing emerged from the flaming ruin of the blast to pursue him. Satisfied, he started to quickly move up the stairwell, taking care to pivot around the median, rotating and leaning into the hundred eighty degree turn at the top of the flight of stairs, before heading up the next flight that led to the second floor.

Instinctively he kept low as soon as he approached the door, noticing it was dark through the window, interrupted by a large amount of flashing white lights, like electrical sparks. Not wanting to be seen, or wanting to see, what could be going on in the other side of the door, he ducked underneath the window. He just wanted to head to the seventh floor, where his friends were.

But as he moved to the next flight of stairs, he paused as he noticed the source of the cool breeze and looked up at the top of the flight of stairs, realizing it had collapsed downward into rubble, and on top of that rubble, was the sky full of stars and perhaps other things. Arthur glanced up, wondering if he could climb to the top of the rubble and then pull himself onto the flight of stairs directly above and across the stairwell divider. It looked possible.

He started to move up, pocketing the flashlight but kept the pistol in hand as he scrambled up from the stairs as they gradually turned into loose rubble. He felt the wind, and kept an eye out for anymore of the strange threats, knowing he had left them behind in the opposite side of the building when he entered. Peeking his head above the rubble, he looked down and noticed a rear parking lot, and more homes and trees in disarray for several blocks before eventually it gave way to the thick, tall trees and nearly endless rolling hills. The wilderness. The bombardment, outside of a steady tempo of booms trailing off into the distance, seemed to have largely dissipated now, though the gunfire continued.

Outside of the flames and tree branches waving in the air though, he saw no movement.

He looked over to his left side, and saw the rubble was giving way to the edge of the stairwell divider. On the other side of the divider, half of the stairwell was also blasted apart and fallen away. He’d have to be surefooted and practically hugging the divider in order to make it. Though he wasn’t a fan of heights as far as his gut could tell him, he wasn’t afraid of them.

Moving up the pile of rubble, he fully exposed his head when he felt a blast of particles suddenly seem to jump right up into his eyes as a rifle round crackled in the air. He jumped back, his eyes closed tightly as he felt them burn a bit, bits of concrete dust having struck his eyeball. Cursing himself under breath, he opened his eyes again, sticking his finger into them, rubbing it a bit, causing himself to tear up before wiping them clean and dry on his sleeve as he realized someone with a rifle had nearly taken his head off.

“I see you my little cocksucker,” cut a deceptively cruel voice. Arthur immediately recognized it. One of his tormentors, the young man with the big brown eyes and Wal-Mart vest. He frowned.

Apparently he hadn’t endeared himself to Corey as much as he had to the pretty medic with the green eyes. Just as well, at least he was outside.

“I got something for you houseboy,” he then said, as Arthur heard him clearly work the bolt action on his rifle, also probably from Wal-Mart. If he was planning on shooting him through the building, the Korean man realized that he could probably afford to wait, catch his breath, and ponder whether to try and kill Corey, or just move on to the second floor and find another way up. He heard something land on the rubble above him, it sounded like glass breaking.

Arthur immediately leaped forward, practically falling down the rest of the steps as the rubble pile that comprised the top part of the staircase burst into flames from the Molotov cocktail. “I know you and your boys are in there Arthur!” Corey screamed over the flames, still unseen. “And that little blonde slut with the leather. Oh Arthur, I’m going to have so much fun bending them over some furniture,” he started to taunt to his somewhat captive audience. “Going to pop my load into them, take them rough and bare. Especially your cowgirl Arthur. I know you like her.”

His fingers gripped the pistol tighter. From the sound of his voice, he could tell he was close. Real close. It was only two and a half stories up. If he got back up there, avoided the flames, he could still hit Corey from this range. “I’m going to tie her down Arthur, fuck her like a bitch.” The young man then cleared his throat, before continuing his threat. “I’m going to pump her so full, she’ll be moaning.” Corey stopped again, interrupting his tirade with a deep groan, apparently aroused by the thought of it. “Ugh… fuck Arthur. I’m going to knock her up. What do you think about that? Have my little groinspawn growing in her belly huh? Bet you’d like to see that huh?”

No more. This little punk kid was going to die. He ejected the magazine from his rifle, and checked his ammunition before slamming it back in. Showdown time. He’d already taken apart enough of these monsters and ghoulish types, was he really going to back down now? Run away? He started climbing back up the steps.

“And that Latina motherfucker, what I would do to ruin her juicy ass,” Corey continued.

Arthur stopped. Corey had said too much.

Why did they keep talking about her? Until they captured him, he was questioning whether she existed even, or if he just imagined the face. If the door opened automatically, or randomly… or by someone else completely.

He thought about it. Then he thought about the now. If he crawled up to the top of the rubble, he’d burn himself and he’d get shot down. He realized Corey had his rifle trained right on the spot, if he as much as popped his head up… boom… headshot.

There was nothing else to consider. Corey kept on taunting. Arthur opened the door to the second floor, closing it behind him. He was immediately assaulted by the surprisingly cold air that almost made him shiver as she stepped in and moreso twitched his nose as he recognized the strong, distinct and to him, distinctly distasteful smell of disinfectant and formaldehyde.

He took several steps into the pitch black hallway, resuming his previous cross brace stance with the flashlight and pistol in hand, wrists locked together as he noticed the source of the flashing white light in the darkness. It was a thick, partially insulated electrical cord which occassionally coursed with brilliant arcs of blue and white electricty. The first time it flashed, it gave Arthur pause. Not from the brief lightshow itself, but from what that flash of light revealed.

The entire corridor was choked with bodies.

Naked bodies. Pale bodies. Dead bodies.

They should’ve been in the morgue.

They were in the hallway.

Arthur stepped over the corpse of a middle aged woman laying face down across the hallway, the one his foot had brushed against, and waved his flashlight over her body and immediately bit his lower lip. “Shit,” he muttered under breath as he noticed purplish red discolorations on her backside. It confirmed in his mind, it had moved.

Well, not that it moved. That it had been moved. Arthur frowned, not wanting to jump to conclusions.

He moved down the hallway, at a far more hurried pace then before, hoping to find another junction and perhaps another corridor that would lead to a stairwell, or an elevator, or anything. Several times his bare feet brushed against one of the ice cold bodies, sending a queasy chill up through his body, but he kept moving, making sure to avoid the exposed and still sparking electrical cord several meters in. Moving past it, he looked up ahead and aimed his flashlight beam straight ahead, noticing he was perpendicular to a T-corridor up ahead. The soft beam of light revealed what looked like a long glassy window that his light could not penetrate.

He moved the beam down, checking to see if there were any signs indicating whether he should go right or left but saw only small drill holes in the white walls where the signs should’ve been. He then heard a snapping sound in front of him as what looked like a black curtain snapped upwards, revealing a feintly lit room behind what he once thought was tinted glass. Something was staining the back wall though, but in the dim light he couldn’t quite make it out.

Conveniently, the electrical cord surged and flashed behind him, providing a split second of illumination as his eyes went wide as he saw the words were smeared with red blood on the wall and stated only one thing.

RE ANIMATION

He raced forward, practically leaping over the last body before he reached the junction, when suddenly another creature shot upwards from within the glass office, rising without warning, from behind a line of desks and computer consoles. He jumped back a step, the back of his feet striking the cold, soft skin of another morgue corpse and causing him to topple back as he recoiled from the sight.

In the office, a slender woman with rather decent sized breasts was wearing a blood soaked security uniform, replete with a simple black tie and white office shirt, stood up straight. More blood splattered down about her, geysering randomly it seemed from her cleanly severed neck. Arthur didn’t see its head anywhere as it almost casually turned around and reached her arm outward to turn on the lights.

Arthur felt this would be a bad thing and practically leaped off the floor as the light switch was flicked on, then off again. The electrical cord surged and suddenly spasmed, exploding into action as a bolt of electricity suddenly burst from the ruined end of the wire, driving into the ground as the resulting cackles of energy shot outward across the floor and walls in a split second.

Then Arthurs bare feet touched the ground again.

The headless woman turned around, ‘facing’ Arthur through the glass. She raised a finger, beckoning for him to come closer. He raised his pistol and fired a shot at her.

It pancaked against the glass, causing webs of fractures and cracks, but no penetration.

Out of the corner of his eyes, both of them, he saw every single body in the hallway suddenly twitch. Then they started to rise. The female security guard was still beckoning him to come in with her forefinger. Arthur glanced left, then right. The headless guard jerked her thumb to the left.

He went right just as the corpse at his feet started to move its arms into position to push itself up. His bare feet felt the cold tile underfoot in a whole new fashion now, as he continued down the dark passageway, leaving behind a chamber filled with low, ominous groans and guttural growls. It reminded him directly of countless horror films, of the dead rising to life. But for some reason, it struck a cord with him, something that scared him so much in the cinemas, now unfolding before his very eyes.

Well not before his eyes, he was leaving them far behind.

He turned around another corner only to notice a wall before him, and no indications of stairs or elevators, merely a large tinted glass window at the end of a hallway. Along the side, he saw a metal cart with some sort of electronic monitor on it. He also noticed at the far end of the hallway was a door along the left hand side marked security.

Security meant weapons.

He heard the ghastly moans behind him. Having more bullets couldn’t hurt.

He took two steps when the door literally swung open, and in the same second another blood splattered security guard stepped out into the hallway, already facing him down with gun drawn. Before the second was up, three rounds barked out of the pistol. Arthur felt his left shoulder explode into searing pain. The flashlight fell, skittering across the floor, the beam of light bobbing about in the darkness. He fired back, overcoming the pain with sheer will.

Only meters apart, both of them had their guns blazing. Bullets punched through the door itself as it closed shut. Another round zipped through the empty space above the guards cleanly cut neck, where the head should’ve been. Two more struck his chest. The guard staggered back, still pressing the trigger of his own weapon as rapidly as possible.

Arthur reciprocated and started to charge forward. He let out a scream. Bullets cracked through the air, zipping by his head, and then gracing mere inches above his head. But he kept moving forward. His shots were on target. Small craters of red pooled behind the security officers already crimson caked shirt. Then his attackers pistol clicked on empty. Arthur vaulted himself into the air midstep. He shot his knee forward.

It connected with the chest of the headless gunman, smashing into his breastbone, knocking him clean to the floor. A geyser of dark blue ichor spouted from its severed neck upon impact, painting the hallway as he tumbled to the ground only to immediately do a backwards somersault back to his feet. The headless man arose just in time to receive a followup jump kick to the chest.

This time the security guard was launched backwards, clean through the window, shattering it.

The darkness of the hallway filled with the feint hue of moonlight and countless fires.

Arthur turned around and saw the night illuminate the pale faces of at least a dozen of these risen corpses advancing towards him. There was no going around them. He reached out a hand, trying the door to the security office, only to find it locked automatically upon closing. He had just kicked the one who may have had the keys out the window. Glancing over to his left side, blood was soaking up his scrubs. He tried moving his shoulder, and soon realized the bullet had ‘merely’ opened up a cruel looking gash on his upper arm rather then smashing the joint, or nicking an artery.

It hurt like hell, but it wasn’t crippling, or fatal, as far as he knew.

Arthur aimed his pistol at the closest of the shambling corpses and fired two rounds into the mans chest. It shuddered, still moving forward however, as Arthur almost automatically changed his guns level and fired a third round in rapid succession into the zombies head. Like a zombie, it suddenly crumpled to the ground as soon as its brain was excavated out of the skull byt the bullet. Arthur didn’t need anymore examples to pound the obvious into his head. Shoot them in the head.

He turned, gripping his pistol with both hands, and fired another round into the face of an oncoming female zombie. Her nose caved in, cold, dark red blood oozing from the grievous impact as she toppled back, and then was pushed forward by the press of undead behind her and landed facedown on the floor, only feet away from Arthur.

Calmly, the survivor turned his pistol on a third of the oncoming shamblers, only to have his pistol click on empty.

Just like that, everything grew considerably harder.

He glanced down at his options. He still had the baton.

What did that Private say back in the bunker?

I saw Oldboy man. Those Koreans kick ass when it comes to hammers. Hardcore shit.

Well it wasn’t a hammer. He positioned the baton so the longer length of the shaft was pressed against his right forearm while flipping the pistol in his opposite hand, so that he was gripping the barrel. He tried to think of something really badass to say, even though only he could hear himself. Something like “Let’s dance” or “I hope your headstrong” but it all sounded so cliched and he knew the only reason he was thinking like this was because if he didn’t, he’d probably be excavating his bowels right now.

That settled it.

He charged in swinging.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He gripped the side handle of his baton tightly as he charged forward, wading in with his right forearm which was protected by the longer end of the weapons wooden shaft. The first impact smashed across the bridge of the nose of the closest zombie, thick dark red blood exploding across its face as its nose shattered. Arthur spun about, bringing his left arm in, and striking at the same corpses temple with the pistol butt, knocking the zombie to the ground as Arthur finished the roundhouse motion.

A second zombie moved in as Arthurs back was turned, only to get the back of Arthur’s heel connecting with his jaw, shattering it, knocking it loose of its connections and causing its head to snap har to the side as it fell away. It toppled forward as the survivor finished his roundhouse motion and immediately spurred himself forward again.

The first zombie, blood freely pouring from its crushed nose onto the floor, was still on its hands and knees as Arthur planted a foot on its backside and using the corpse as a springboard, launched himself into the air and into even more oncoming foes. He shot out his other foot, planting it in the top of the head of an undead woman advancing behind the others and sent her falling backward with pure momentum of his leaping action forward.

He crashed head and shoulders into the rear ranks of the undead mob, knocking two of them down as the others quickly moved in on their prey, mouths opening, and hands reaching out, intent on grabbing him, ripping him apart, consuming his flesh. He shot out his legs, driving the heel of his foot into the front of the knee of one of the zombies, causing its joint to buckle and him to fall to the side as Arthur struggled to get back up.

Hands were already reaching for him, he could feel ice cold, strong fingers, tugging at his scrubs. He had to get out of here, as he realized what foolish acrobatics he had just engaged in. He lashed out his arms to both sides, driving the baton into the soft area where the neck meets the head of the zombie to his right. It uttered an unseemly gag before jerking its head backward, buying Arthur a precious second or two of time as he pistol whipped the face of another zombie to his left, barely gaining a noticable reaction from the undead creature.

He felt hands seize the back of his scrubs. He heard a hungering moan behind him, only inches away. Arthur shot his head backwards, the top of the back of his head smashing into the upper lip of the zombie trying to grab him from behind. Teeth rattled loose, a sharp pain drove its barbs into Arthur’s head as he felt a pair of jaws press through his left arm, right below his laceration.

It was the zombie he pistol whipped a second ago.

Arthur winced, feeling the sharp teeth about to pierce his skin, and drove the point of the baton into the biters eye. It popped, the wooden club crushing the fluid in the eye socket, as Arthur followed through with the move, pushing off the zombies face from his arm. He started to move forward as he felt a pair of hands rake across his back.

He lowered his shoulder and drove it into the last pair of zombiea standing between him and hopeful escape. He charged forward and low, as one of the zombies lost its balance, falling to the side, the other driven into the far wall. Arthur immediately pulled away, keeping his head low as the same zombie surged forward, trying to grab him as he ducked low and stepped back, avoiding the lumbering attack.

The baton struck across this zombies face, cutting open the side of her head as Arthur, putting as much force as he could muster, knocked her to the side a bit, causing her to stagger. He recovered, and delivered a quick followup strike to the side of her neck, the force of the blow knocking the undead female to the ground.

Behind him, the pack was moving in pursuit of their lone quarry. Arthur started to move, when a cold hand seized his ankle, and with a simple tug, pulled him to the ground. He threw his arms out under him, cushioning the impact to his head as he landed and then glanced back, noticing a heavyset zombie he had pushed aside and knocked to the ground seconds earlier was now pulling him in towards his wide, gaping mouth.

He tried to pull his ankle free, but to no avail. So he shot out with his other foot, and started kicking and stomping away at the zombies fat head in desperation, not wanting to be on the ground, his leg trapped, while the other undead fell upon him. He kept kicking, as theothers moved in closer and closer. Arthur, desperate, pulled his free leg back one more time as he saw another zombie close in and in its desperation, suddenly fall forward into a crawling position, still moving towards Arthur.

He shot out his foot, smashing it into the fat zombies face. Its cold grip slackened. Arthur jerked his other foot free. His bare feet slipped a bit as he struggled to get back to a running start. He felt another hand rake across his backside as another of the shambling creatures fell forward, desperate to seize him. But it failed, and Arthur started to sprint down the hallway, decided to go the other way this time.

Coming up on the T-corridor, he noticed the security office with the female guard who was also headless was now curiously empty. The cacophony of undead moans and groans behind him, motivated Arthur to not concern himself with this development as he continued down to the opposite end of the building. He turned around another identical corner, almost crashing into the wall due to the darkness.

But what he noticed at the end of the passageway wasn’t another window, but rather a softly glowing white sign that said ELEVATOR. He continued sprinting towards it and practically ran into the closed automatic doors, jamming his finger into the call elevator button. Miraculously, it dinged as he glanced up and saw the elevator reader slowly move up from level one to level two.

The moans of the zombies seemed so distant now that he realized the elevators were still working. Letting out a sigh of relief, he spun about, leaning against the wall beside the elevators, suddenly realizing he had to catch his breath.

His right arm shot up instinctively as literally out of the darkness, a long sharp blade cut through the pitch black of the hallway, aiming for his neck. He barely saw the figure, and then, only at the last possible moment. It was like trying to spot a shadow moving in total darkness as he noticed the obsidian blade, as long as a mans forearm, slice into and through his side handle baton.

Arthur leaned to the side, away from the swing as he felt his baton get torn from his grasp, and a sharp sting across the top of his right ear right before his body crashed into the side of the hallway. His baton fell to the ground in two pieces.

The elevator dinged, the doors about to open.

A narrow shaft of light partially illuminated his attacker. The only glimpse Arthur got before he reacted was an almost skeletal face, the skull and hollow sockets readily seen, but with a thin layer of charred flesh covering the bones. It was worse then the Fire Chief, she had been set on fire, but this new abomination, it was merely a skeleton covered in a thin layer of what looked like charred to a crisp meat. The blades came down at him.

No, not blades.

Its forearms were the blades.

Arthur bent in his leg and shot out an upkick, the bottom of his foot smashing into the hard, unyielding, and warm charred ribcage of his attacker. He felt light as he was launched backwards. Reflexively, without thinking, Arthur shot out his left hand, aiming his empty pistol at the creature as it fled into the darkness. He was about to fire, when, as if afraid of getting shot, the skeletal monster leaped straight up into the ceiling through some unseen hole.

Alone again, the young Korean man rose to his feet before realizing, the elevator doors were open. He turned around just as a pair of hands suddenly gripped the sides of his head and roughly pulled him into the elevator itself, hurling him headfirst into the backwall of the elevator car. Arthur groaned, only to have a heavy booted foot suddenly slam into his chest as he looked up and saw a heavily muscled man also wearing purple hospital orderly scrubs was his new attacker.

The elevator doors started to slide close.

The man proceeded to deliver kick after kick to his victim as he curled up into a fetal position, seemingly unable or unwilling to fight back. But Arthur simply took the blows, curling up, covering his head as he was being battered.

Then the doors closed.

Arthur was safe from the new monster. Peeking through his own arms, he noticed that this new psychopath was balanced on one leg. Immediately Arthur shot out his own legs, moving them to either side of his opponents supporting limb and then scissored his legs inward, one leg smashing into the back of his foes knee, the other buckling his ankle, sweeping his foot out from under him. The big man crumpled to the ground.

Pistol in hand, Arthur practically pounced on his fallen adversary, diving in and driving the pistol handle into the big mans face almost immediately, intent on smashing this suddenly extremely mundane foes face into hamburger. The first blow struck across the mans face, the second bloodying his ear. His own heavily muscled arms shot outward, one of them crudely slapping back as Arthur simply pushed the arm aside and delivered a third hard blow with the pistol handle, smashing in his attackers mouth, as blood oozed from between his lips.

Arthur started to growl, punctuating each blow with an almost bestial snarl as the athletic man suddenly tried to explode into a flurry of action, forcing himself up to a sitting pushing, using brute strength to push his smaller opponent off of him. The young Korean fell backwards, grabbing one of the heavily muscled arms as he was pushed away and then wrapped his own legs around the trapped limb and then pushed his own hips forward.

Trapping the big man in an armbar, he pulled back on the wrist with his own hands and pushed out his hips even more. He could feel the elbow joint start to break, the limb hyperextending. The big man, unable to respond effectively, rolled onto his face. Arthur, sitting on his attackers backside, pulled back even farther until he heard a sickening snap.

His psychopathic attacker roared, not in pain, but in helpless rage as this lesser man was besting him. Arthur let go of the useless arm and immediately moved onto the back of his adversary just as he was rising to his feet. The big man rose upward, apparently not slowed by the broken arm, and suddenly felt the Korean wrap his arms around his neck. The orderly snarled, and drove himself backwards into the elevator wall. Arthur felt the wind knock out of him as the musclebound maniac then reached back with his remaining good arm and grabbed hold of him by his scrubs.

He started to pull on Arthurs top, trying to pull him off of his backside before slamming Arthur into the wall again. Pain flared up from the survivors bloody left arm. He couldn’t take this battering and he could’t resist the almost superhuman strength of this orerly. He felt the powerful pull again, his own weakened arms still wrapped around the big mans neck, ineffectually choking him. Then he felt a powerful fist slam into his face, jarring his vision. Arthur swivelled his head to the opposite side of his opponents, when the orderly, getting wise, simply shot his own head back into a headbutt, smashing the back of his head into Arthur’s cheek.

His chokehold slackened. He felt a daze wash over him.

Another fist smashed into the side of his head. He tightened up the choke, futilely hoping he could something asphixate one of these psychopaths when clearly, it took a tremondous amount of punishment to fell one of them. Choking them seemed to be the most useless thing to do.

So he drove two of his fingers up into the big mans nose, while still holding on with his legs and right arm, and jerked his hand upward as hard as he could. He heard something tear, and he felt the warm rush of blood over his fingers, but he got what he wished as they both toppled to the ground again. Arthur raised one of his legs, wrapped around his attackers waist, and started heel kicking his foes groin.

That stopped the punches.

It took Arthur a while to figure out how to break his neck, but after the fourth try, he heard the sickeningly satisfying crunch.

He hoped the broken neck would stop the orderly.

But it didn’t.

The back of his head smashed into Arthurs face again, swelling up his cheek.

He felt the bulge of his trauma bag underneath him.

It was a miracle he still had it after the zombies.

His large opponent had managed to grab his foot with his remaining good arm, and was desperately trying to twist and turn his foot about, attempting to torque and break the ankle. Arthur responded by jamming his thumb into his attackers face, aiming for the eyes as with his other hand, he unzipped the trauma bag underneath him and started blindly fumbling for something sharp, like a syringe.

The big man grabbed one of Arthurs toes and started to twist. He screamed in pain as he felt the manipulation, and half out of anger and rage, hooked his own hand into the corner of the psychopaths mouth and started wrenching back on it, pulling his head to the side, watching it in macabre horror as it was still rolling about upon a clearly broken neck. His other hand, still probing the trauma bag for a weapon, finally found something.

Not quite an ideal weapon, but it would work.

He pulled the syringe free and turning his head to avoid the constant headbutting, he bit on the sheath of the needle, pulling it off and spitting it out. He pulled up the plunger with his teeth a half second later, and then jammed the needle into the side of the orderlies head and thumbed down the plunger, injecting a tube full of air directly into his brain.

A moment later the elevators electronic bell dinged again, as Arthur, wiping his nose clean of blood, glanced around, and stepped out of the elevator as it arrived on the seventh floor.

CHAPTER NINE

Arthur staggered out of the elevator, a soreness gradually shifting to numbness inching up his leg from his toes. The orderly had twisted and torn at his feet. He had battered his face. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, feeling a cold ooze between his fingertips, from gouging at his assailants eyes.

He staggered another step into the dark hallway, a sudden wave of sadness overcoming him, his exhausted body falling victim to a surge of despair. His shoulder injected a jolt of pure pain into him, he was grazed by the bullet. More than a graze perhaps, but it had stopped bleeding. He didn’t feel much since then, but the adrenaline, it was wearing off now. He felt human again.

His body leaned against the wall, all but a fraction of his strength in him now. So quick the release. He lifted his pistol, it felt heavier, but was lighter now. Slowly, methodically, he reached into the security guard belt he still had wrapped around his waist, and released the old magazine, carefully replacing it on the belt and replacing it with a fully loaded one. The simple action made him exhale with exhaustion.

Gripping the pistol loosely in his right hand, his left drifted to his chest and he felt the gentle, dry lacerations that criss crossed his chest, and then the soreness of his butt. All at one, they combined, colluding, crushing down on him, a thousand injuries minor and major, all accumulated in the span of hours. His brow throbbed. His stomach rumbled.

Like that, he noticed something in the distance, at the end of the hallway. It was a simple rectangular sign on the side of the hallway that said “Cafeteria.” He could hear the hum of vending machines at least. He didn’t have a wallet, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He dealt with worse. Dragging himself, half leaning against the wall, Arthur purposefully placed foot in front of foot. The pistol in his right hand, dried blood trickling down to his fingers from the bullet wound, staining its grip, his left pushing off the drywall like a crutch.

So hungry.

He moved into the cafeteria doorway and fell on his knees as he saw the vending machines were still working.

Three of them, lined up on the far side of the larger room, the tiled floor itself slick with crimson stained trash, rotting food and human gore puree. The vending machines were streaked with bloodied footprints and pockmarked with holes, causing the normally lit facings to flicker unnaturally in the darkness of the cafeteria. Grunting, Arthur struggled to get up to his feet, letting out an audible groan as he struggled back to his feet.

The three vending machines had their doors suddenly swing open, mysteriously, inexplicably. The innards were exposed as human offal, still slick with thickened blood, crushed bone and minced organs, fell out of the inner chambers of the machines and splattered onto the slick floor with sickening flops.

He heard the streaking of metal on tile and realized, in incomprehensible horror, that the machines were moving towards him. The flickering grew more intense, more rapid. They inched forward, swiveling corner by corner, the doors slamming shut, then opening again, revealing again and again, the butchered remains within them that were crushed and processed by the machinery within.

The orderly wanted to surprise him but made the classic blunder of attempting speed over silence. It was natural reaction for Arthur to brace his body and suddenly turn, seizing the not so silent psychopath, a syringe still driven deep into his skull and apparently stuck fast within. A hip throw sent the orderly up into the air, smashing his backside into the frame of the cafeteria doorway. He caught a glimpse of the orderlies mangled face, his head hanging off his broken neck at an odd angle, and the furious fire of life still within it as it rose back to its feet.

Adrenaline kicked in, and maybe something more. Arthur lifted his right leg, flexing at the knee and as the orderly rose in the frame of the door, the exhausted survivor launched his foot outward in a perfectly executed kick to the man’s chest. Physics was still working as it sent the man toppling backwards.

His assailant hit the floor into a slide, the human remains and trash that collected on the floor taking on a slippery, slimy quality. The maniac landed in a slide just as the vending machines flipped open their massive maws. The Coca-Cola machine in the middle ended the slide as the orderly, sensing what was about to happen, jerked his body out of the path of the facing before it slammed shut.

Everything but his right arm made it.

It let out a scream, jerking its body free and with a disturbing ease, the crazed human ripped his shoulder free of his crushed arm, only to have his face smashed to the side, ripping open a terrible gash on his broken neck and the side of his face, as the neighboring vending machine swung open its front end before quickly snapping it back.

A swift decapitation.

It stopped moving.

Arthur started to run in the opposite direction, not noticing the vending machines moving around their latest meal.

He ran down the hallway, and was suddenly blinded by a flash of light coming from a long stretch of man sized windows facing over the town and illuminated the entire stretch of the corridor with the star filled night sky. Over the edge of the hills beyond the town, he saw a massive fireball erupt high in the sky and tracing his head upwards, following a steady line of canisters that lazily fell towards the ground from a small obsidian triangle thousands of feet in the air.

Normally it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye, but the sky itself seemed to be infested with the same fiery energy that was erupting through the very environs of this town. People. Animals. Machines.

A line of military made devastation ripped across the outskirts of the town, burning acres of forests, blasting apart roadways, bridges, trails, paths and vehicles. The might of the United States military had withdrawn its forces, having confronted something out of context, beyond the walls of understanding or planning, and were going to treat it like a cancer. A tumor that had to be exorcised.

Arthur was smart enough to know what was going to happen next.

He turned away from the windows, from the firestorm, and to the end of the hallway. A new presence, a new horror, a new obstacle in his path, had arrived.

It approached him, a young man, fit and in good shape but completely naked. No blood drizzled down his backside, from heel to neck despite the fact his head was buried in a tangled mess, hidden behind a mangled collection of glass shards seemingly glued over a thick mesh of cables and electrical wires. The head itself was encased in what could only have been a large television set or monitor. Not encased, the head was hurled, driven or smashed into the appliance and now the broken device had enveloped the intruder, neck and up.

Arthur raised the pistol.

The shattered screen suddenly came to life, faintly flickering, as wispy green lights suddenly travelled down the length of the man with the encased head and like that, he was glowing unnaturally and the screen itself came to life. He had seen it before. It had come through the monitor in the lobby.

His friends fled from it.

It didn’t have a television set affixed on its head then.

Arthur felt his stomach churn. His friends.

He raised the gun to the creatures monitor screen, which he took for a face and started to pull the trigger when the windows to his side simultaneously exploded, bringing about a storm of broken glass, and throwing off the young man’s aim as the bullet tore across his own head and he realized his pistol wasn’t being aimed at the green man, but his own head.
---

South Korea
Some Time Before

A slightly plump Asian man looked across the table at Eunsoo and in response, Eunsoo stared right back at his friend, a confident smile crossing his face. He even nodded a bit, adding a bit of emotion to the rather dour meeting of minds.

“The truth is that if we don’t invest in Nibabwe, the Chinese will. Or the Americans. Or the Europeans. They all have been making inroads in the region, so we must if we wish to compete in the commodities market in the future,” the Director stated as he flicked to the next video in his media presentation.

The screen was filled with the image of a fleet of massive cargo ships still being constructed in shipyards. “Maritime shipping and insurance. Security contracting. Marine research. Undersea mining. Financial services. We’ve expanded greatly over the past three decades with innovative solutions to the worlds resource problems through new technologies, new ideas, and new distributive ideas. But eventually the time comes when we must go back to our base. Commodities are finite. Regardless of the distribution and technology, we must secure our future with an undeniable base in commodities and the South African Resource Project is our future.”

The CEO, a graying elder of a businessman, glanced over the prospectus. “And what of security?” he asked. “Last year, transportation strikes crippled our shipping domestically. How can we ensure stability in such a wild area?”

The Director gestured to Eunsoo, who rose to his feet. “I would like to introduce you to Eunsoo. He, as you well know, is our Maritime Security Chief of Operations. He has a decorated record in our Special Forces and…”
---

Southern Africa

“We have reached sixteen thousand individual accounts, each one is a worker paid a decent wage,” Jeon stated, a perpetual sweat on his brow as flipped through the latest local hires. Eunsoo glanced over at him, looking up from his computer and window after window of dry spreadsheets.

“You’ve lost weight,” Eunsoo dryly replied, completely off topic.

Jeon frowned. “Don’t you have any idea of what we are doing here? There was nothing here before we came. Just poverty and repression. Now we’ve come, we pay our workers more, treat them better than our rivals and we’re going to make far more than them as well. It is as Adam Smith said.”

Eunsoo frowned slightly and glanced out the window of their trailer like office, at the streams of black skinned workers clad in hard hats, coveralls or simple pants and sleeveless shirts. About them were carts, tractors, tents and vehicles going to and fro. Organized chaos. “Why didn’t they develop this area before?” Eunsoo asked skeptically.

“They didn’t have the technology for deep mining,” Jeon replied.

“The British did. The Portuguese perhaps. But they never broke dirt, they must’ve at least been curious what was down below,” the military veteran responded.

It was Jeon’s turn to frown now. “What are you getting at?”

“There’s a wealth of nations underneath our feet and it hasn’t been touched until now,” Eunsoo stated, his eyes glancing upwards.

“We have more advanced technology then the British did fifty years ago Eunsoo,” Jeon stated evenly. “We can use sound to map the caverns, landsat satellite imagery, geochemistry, electromagnetic geophysics-,” he started to explain, not liking the turn of this conversation.

Eunsoo glanced back at his old friend, a reassuring smile on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, cutting his friend off from getting too into this purely theoretical discussion. “It’s just, with all this success, I think I’m suffering from Survivor’s guilt,” he said, glancing down briefly, before his eyes fluttered back up to meet his friends eye to eye.

Jeon fell silent. It was not a topic either wished to talk about.


Eunsooo was used to getting roused in the middle of the night, but not by Jeon, and not by doing something as sad as being poked with a ruler. He jerked awake, slapping the ruler out of his startled friends hand with a purely reactive backslap. “What the hell?” he asked, glancing out of the window of his trailer and noticing how high the moon was in the Southern sky and instantly gauging it was way too early for a wake up call.

“We’ve run dry,” Jeon stated.

“What?” groaned the still groggy security chief, trying to rub away the invisible veil blurring his eyes. Such a struggle was usually ended by the drinking of tea, even though the local varieties were simply horrid. But, with his background, he didn’t mind too much. He was growing a taste for the distasteful.

Jeon turned on the lights, expecting Eunsoo to flinch a bit, but he only batted his eyes in response. Somewhat excitedly, his friend then pulled a table up beside Eunsoo’s bed and laid two transparency sheets side by side on the tables white surface.

“This is our mapping of caverns that probably carry the diamonds,” Jeon stated, laying it on the table. “And this is the map of the tunnels we have already created. We knew that we would have to dig extremely deep to reach the first deposits, but they’re already dried up after three weeks!” he then said as he superimposed the second transparency over the first.

Even Eunsoo understood the image. The tunnels were being dug through where the mineral maps had showed sizable deposits to be yet… there was none there. The tunnels had driven deeper and deeper, through the supposed deposits and deeper still, yet nothing discovered beyond the initial find.

“So it was an error?” Eunsoo asked.

“An error? An error!” Jeon stammered, unable to understand how Eunsoo could be so calm at this revelation. “Millions of dollars lost!”

“Okay so it’s a big mistake, but it’s not ours… well mine at least,” Eunsoo stated with ill timing as Jeon gave him a hostile stare. It was all he could do, since he well knew he wasn’t a physical threat to the former Special Forces man. “Look Jeon, we are here to dig, not map. If there is a problem with the geophysic whatchamacallits, that is a problem of the survey team, we still managed to bring together-.”

“Are you even looking?” Jeon asked, pointing to the timestamp on the mineral map.

Eunsoo blinked, and then blinked again.

The minerals had been mapped yesterday, only hours ago.

I just hate leaving stories unfinished, not something I enjoy doing.

[FONT=&quot] CHAPTER TEN[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “I know it’s hot, you should too. It’s what happens when you dig very deep, it gets very hot!” Jeon growled angrily, suppressing his natural instinct to revert to Korean as he spoke English clearly and concisely to the native mining foreman over the wired radio which led deep into the caverns below his feet.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]“What’s wrong?” asked Eunsoo, noticing his friend standing in the desert heat and glanced down at the ground and saw he had been walking circles constantly while on the radio. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Apparently unsatisfied with the foreman’s answer, Jeon simply hung up. “I thought it was tough to deal with workers back home!” he snapped to Eunsoo, this time readily falling into his native tongue as he addressed his friend. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “I heard…,” the slender Security Chief replied, reaching into a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and handing his partner a bottle of water. “Still cold.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Almost imperceptibly, Jeon nodded.”I don’t suppose you can do anything?” he asked, already knowing the answer. Eunsoo wasn’t here for labor problems, he was here for safety and to keep away prying eyes from their operations here. It was a dangerous part of the world after all.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Any reasons giv-,” Eunsoo started to ask, before being cut off as Jeon immediately leaped to a response as if waiting for that question to be asked.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Yes… apparently it’s hot down there,” Jeon said sarcastically as Eunsoo, agreeing with him completely, glanced up at the blazing sun in the sky. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “This is Africa…”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]---[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Fine! Fine!” Jeon said. “If you don’t want to work the mines, that’s fine. This land is bought and paid for Mr. Morgan.” Off to the side, Eunsoo occasionally glanced out the window at the literally thousands of workers they had employed for only a few weeks now moving out of the camp. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He glanced back at his friend at the desk, noticing he was shaking his head as he listened to the miners spokesperson on the other line before replying again, trying to keep his cool, and not fall back into his native tongue. “No we don’t actually need your workers. You see, this isn’t the only country suffering from chronic unemployment. Our firm does business worldwide. In one week, we’ll have ten thousand Filipinos or Indians replacing your clients. I am sure they can handle the heat.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Uh huh.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Yes…”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “If you do, that would be illegal…”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “He’s right here in fact,” Jeon then said, glancing up at Eunsoo. Having only heard the one side of the conversation, he already had his arm out, expecting the pass of the telephone.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Hello Mrs. Morgan,” Eunsoo quipped dryly. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “MISTER Morgan sir,” replied a strong baritone voice on the other end in precise English.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Oh my mistake,” Eunsoo said with a large juvenile smile on his face, as Jeon simply shook his head at the immaturity. “We have an agreement with your government to develop the mineral rights on these public lands. There is nothing you can do to stop us if your workers refuse to fulfill their contracts.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “The mine is not profitable, how can I be sure your clients will-.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “They will be paid. We are from South Korea, not Russia. Our economy is stable and we pay our debts,” Eunsoo responded to the monetary question, even though he was the security specialist.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Listen! You must suspend operations. The working conditions are unsafe for anyone to go down there!” Mr. Morgan responded.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Uh huh…”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “What do we have to profit from blackmailing you?” Morgan asked from the other line.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Money. We obviously paid your workers too much and now your threatening to shut down our mine down because we called your bluff and won’t pay your clients.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Listen-.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Heat! Sixteen thousand miners stop working because it’s too hot down there? No one has died from heatstroke have they? We installed air conditioners and reduced the working time due to the unexpectedly high temperatures. They are all within legal and recommended safety guidelines.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “You don’t understand!” Mr. Morgan stated. “The deeper they dig, the hotter it gets. My clients are worried about their safety. This area maybe geologically unstable. Many of my workers have complained about hearing things through the rock.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Either your men work or leave. If they stop working, they will be removed!” Eunsoo stated. “We will bulldoze the living quarters of anyone who refuses to leave our property in three days unless they are going to work the mines. Is that understood?”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Mr. Morgan started to say something when Eunsoo simply hung up and stared at Jeon. “They’re afraid of an Earthquake… there’s never been a recorded earthquake here that’s not related to volcanic activity.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “…or mining,” Jeon added in a rare display of wit.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]---[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Four Days later…[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] The manager started sweating. Not just his underarms or his face, his hands. Even his tongue was swelling. This was exciting. The soul of battle that he had read about in books, fantasized about in the dojo. He was loving this. He saw a gun barrel rise from the melee before him, one of the black faced Africans rising slowly above a fallen guard. He saw the guards baton slipping from his grasp, blood oozing from his brow.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

They weren’t armed with pipes, they were armed with guns, and he saw the business end of a weapon aiming for him now. He was so caught up in melee, he didn’t hear the gunshots. The manager obliged, and reacted identically to the armed miner with one exception, the manager was quicker to react and when he leveled his shotgun with the would be assassins face, he squeezed the trigger. It really was as simple as that.

Boom. Smoke. The face disappeared into gore.

Several of the workers behind the gunman fell down as well, the spread of pellets striking them as well, causing them to scream and howl in pain as they fell upon one another backwards. In the towers, Kalashnikov actions cut through the air as the most recognized sound in a warzone suddenly entered this scene. More fell. The miners fled. The guns did their job. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]---[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “I think we’re finished,” Jeon said as he wiped a mix of blood, sweat and dirt from his forehead as around them, the setting sun did little to cool the air. The workers camp was on fire, the rioters had set torches to their own tents and used firebombs on the bulldozers. Thankfully no one was in them but it still had taken the rest of the day to clear out the camp.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] There might have been more casualties as well.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Eunsoo walked past Jeon, who was sitting on a cooler box as off to the side, local doctors and nurses were tending to the wounded as well as a line of eleven dead. Nine of them were rioting miners, the two other locals that Eunsoo had under his employ as guards. He felt sick.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “It’s not our fault,” Eunsoo responded.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “How can it not be?” Jeon asked. “Our people opened fire! We were in charge!”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “When two groups of people disagree and both have weapons, blood is often shed. That’s the nature of it, trust me,” Eunsoo said, kneeling low to the ground as he swirled his forefinger in a splotch of blood that dried in the dirt. “Especially here.” [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Why?” Jeon asked. “Why don’t they want us to dig here?”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “I don’t quite kn-.”[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] The ground started to tremble. For a moment, Eunsoo and Jeon exchanged disbelieving glances. Was it an Earthquake? Or at least a tremor. But as soon as it had started, as soon as they realized the ground was shaking, it had ended… with a boom.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Jeon read Eunsoo’s face and confirmed his own suspicions. Not an earthquake, an explosion from underground. Some of the disaffected miners had sabotaged the mines. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “It’s too dangerous, I’ll check it out,” Eunsoo said, raising a hand, silencing any debate about this prematurely. “It’s my job Jeon. I’ve survived worst.” Without another word, Eunsoo ran off towards the mines main entrance.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]---[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] The Mine[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] It was past five thousand meters, he knew that for certain. Wearing what looked like a creepy hybrid of a firefighter outfit and a modern day land warrior, Eunsoo ducked his head low in the wide but still low hanging manmade cavern. Dark black soot clung to his dull yellow rescue uniform. He had a pair of strobes on his shoulders which were already covered by the black dust from within. He peered through the darkness through a pair of light amplifying goggles, the smoke and soot[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “It’s still stable,” Eunsoo softly murmured over the radio in his mask, his words divided by audible breaths. “The blast collapsed a section of the cavern,” he then added a moment later as he noticed loose rocks and pebbles around his feet, then saw shreds of fabric and flesh. “We got casualties,” he then added. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] This time there was response from the other line, barely audible, and completely unintelligible. Interference from the depth, or the debris. Eunsoo wasn’t sure. He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting something, but saw only the thick clouds of dust, turned into a greenish mist by his amplification goggles and bright columns indicating his suit mounted flashlights. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “Can’t read you. Repeat?” Eunsoo asked, creeping forward again, this time more tentatively as he realized the bombers brought the cavern down on themselves. He gulped, crawling up a low pile of rubble, picking away at the rocks. He saw a hand sticking out of the mess. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He must’ve been dead of course, but still, an intact corpse. It had to be recovered, just because it was the right thing to do. All the while, in the back of his mind, he wondered, what could motivate these people to do this? It couldn’t of been the working conditions. People weren’t inclined to die for other peoples pay wages, not if they were already well off.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Propaganda? Fear? What?[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He picked away more rocks.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Static came through the line. The surface was trying to talk to him, but nothing was coming through. Eunsoo grunted. Still stable. It was safe, no reason to pull back. He could wait for the rescue team down here.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] So he did. And he picked away at the rocks.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He checked the temperature levels. It was hot down here, especially with the bomb blast. But his suit was insulated, it had its own cooling system. But he was still sweating, the saltiness on his skin, it was bleeding into his eyes. He started squinting. Why was he sweating?[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Then he realized what it was. Something he worked so hard to suppress it almost seemed unrecognizable.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He was afraid.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] But he wasn’t sure why? It wasn’t the claustrophobia. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He felt compelled to glance over his shoulder again, his shoulder lamp shooting a beam of light through the murky darkness. It cut a couple feet into the dusty cloud filling the cavern, then dissipated into darkness itself. Visibility was still low, even with the goggles.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] His breathing grew more rapid. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Then he heard the sound of rocks jingling, loosening up.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] A thick gloved hand went to his gun. He shouted aloud, in a muffled, filtered voice, through his mask. “Who… whose there?” [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Off to his side, barely beyond the edge of his vision he reckoned, he could hear that sound again, like someone else was digging. One of the miners perhaps survived the blast. Or a rescuer?[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He withdrew his sidearm. If it was a miner, he was involved in this bombing. It wasn’t a rescuer, he knew that as an almost certainty. He crept forward, pistol ready for trouble, instincts honed from years of military training and experience. Soon he saw it. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] A soft glow emanating from a gap in the rocks. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] It seemed like it was an emergency light, but he couldn’t be quite sure. He peeled the amplification goggles off of his mask and realized through the murk, it was a ruby red glow. The same as emergency lights. “If you read, I may have survivors in some equipment,” he said, again only receiving static.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] He crawled towards the glow and pistol in hand, moved his head into the red light and looked straight down. It was all red down there. Using the point of the pistol, the safety still on, he brushed aside a few of the pebbles, when he saw something else.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] A face.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] She was beautiful.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Small nose. Full lips. Her ears half covered by thick dark reddish brown hair tied behind her back. Light brown colored skin, so creamy and smooth even in the reddish glow which made her seem all the more serene. And those lips. At first, he thought she was Southeast Asian, perhaps a Malay from South Africa, or some other nearby ethnic group. But the eyes seemed so full and dark and round, like an American Indian or Latina. But that seemed impossible.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] His pistol drifted into the hole.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] “I… I…,” he started to mutter in the radio.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Her hand suddenly seized his forearm. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] It was a strong grip that he could feel, that hurt, straight to the bone. He started squeezing the trigger, only for nothing to happen as suddenly those big dark eyes closed before turning to a brilliant blood red crimson. Not like rubies at all. He felt her pulling him in. His thumb flicked off the safety on his pistol.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] It escaped his grasp. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Another jerk and suddenly he felt his shoulder and side slam into the pile of rubble. He tried to resist, and started to scream, crying aloud for help on the radio.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] Immediately a voice cut through the static. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] FIRST YOU WILL ADMIT THERE IS NO GOD, OR GODS. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]THEN YOU WILL ADMIT THERE IS NO FREE WILL, NO MORALITY AND THAT YOUR EXISTENCE HAS NO MEANING WITHIN YOURSELF. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Eunsoo started to scream, barely hearing the rest of the sadistic message dominating his radio as he suddenly realized his arm wasn’t going to be pulled off. His body was actually sinking into the rubble. The sound wasn’t someone digging out, but digging through. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot] WE SEE YOU NOW![/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]His boots wiggled as it looked like they were simply enveloped by the pile of rubble. A dead monotone static came over the radio.[/FONT]

Chapter Eleven

He awoke screaming. Terrified. Sparks cascaded around him as he saw an explosion mere feet above his head. He was calling out to God, or something divine as he jerked his arms back. His dark brown eyes closed tightly in pain before shooting open again, wide with fear as the echoes of gunfire reverberated through the hallway and a dark shape loomed larger, its rectangular, misshapen head spitting sparks. It took only a second for Arthur to recover from the nightmare he awoke to.

The creature, with the television monitor in lieu of a head, was falling to the ground, a sparking, spitting hole cut clean through the device as the whole mutilated body fell away to the side. But Arthur remained frozen in place on the ground, even as the strange television headed humanoid laid beside him. What he had just witnessed, had just dreamed, had just seen.


He was remembering it all now. It was all coming back to him.

It overwhelmed him so much that when he saw his savior, that remarkable woman, Marshal Anna Dugan, run down the hallway and grab his forearm, he didn’t even offer any sort of greetings. There was only one thing he could say. “The mine. They came from the mine, they dug too deep. We have to go to the mine.”

“Okay. Okay come on,” the Marshal said, her eyes glistening in the darkness as with one hand still clutching the Glock 32 in her free hand as with a grunt, she pulled Arthur to his feet.

“The mine. We have to go to the mine,” he muttered.

“Oh God…” the Marshal said, glancing down both sides of the hallway just to make sure she had a second free and wrapped her arms around his body, burying her suddenly sobbing face into his blood splattered chest. “I thought we lost you,” she said, her arms wrapping around him tightly.

Almost unthinkingly, and tenderly, he wrapped his arms around her and blinked again and looked down, a puzzled look on his face. Then his fingers curled a bit, holding her tighter. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might’ve given her a kiss on the top of her pretty blonde head. “I love you,” he said softly.

“What?” she asked, slowly pulling her arms back to her side, her crisp blue eyes sparkling with tears as they looked up at him.

He gulped, and stared at her, a near vacant expression on his face. “We have to go to the mine. That’s where they came from. They dug too deep. They released something. A presence. Hell on Earth. We have to bury it.”

Slowly, she nodded. On any other day, that would sound crazy. Today, it sounded like a perfectly rational explanation.

The entire building suddenly trembled, an audible, unearthly groan emanating deep from within the hospital itself it seemed. “There’s a Blackhawk on the roof, they aren’t going to wait forever,” she said, regaining her composure as she unslung a shotgun from her shoulder. “We have to leave now, there’s something in here. Something we don’t want to encounter.”

“Okay,” he said, taking the Mossberg shotgun from her, his fingers finding the grip of the weapon to be… familiar.

Boom. Smoke. The face disappeared into gore.

“Hey are you okay?” she asked, her tears having disappeared as a look of worry crossed her face. Her fingertip itched along the guard of her handgun.

“I want this to be over,” he said, glancing down at her. At her face, past it. Down her breasts. Her stomach. Her hips. Her legs. His tongue barely stuck out, wetting his own lips.

“Almost there big guy,” she said with a smirk. “Let’s run and gun cowboy,” she added, her levity somehow making a dent in the overwhelming dread and danger they had been facing all day.

They raced down the hallway, like a team and rounded a corner, heading down another dark passageway towards the stairwell leading straight to the rooftop. It was only forty meters away. But that was on a normal day, before they made it five feet, the walls started to tear open in front of them. They ran faster as drywall was torn apart and cruel, wicked looking blades of bone tore through the plaster and wallpaper.

Ahead of them, boiling through the walls, tearing them apart with long, curved, pincer like blades that seemed to be grinded out of actual forearms. Charred red and black flesh caked their skeletal bodies, like a tough, crusty membrane. And they moved in blurs of motion, ripping through wood and paper in seconds.

The duo brought their weapons to level and opened fire just as the first of the skeletal creatures tore open its hole wide enough to leap into the hallway. A .357 magnum round tore away one of its legs, shattering the femur at the socket joint and causing the creature itself to skitter backwards several feet. Its forearm blades tore open the cheap hallway carpeting.

Arthurs Mossberg boomed. A puff of smoke. The head of the creature disappeared.

The skeleton toppled to the ground, the skull and half of the spine reduced to bony shards. It didn’t move after that. The Marshals gun kept barking as another skeleton appeared, and Arthur leveled the shotgun again and fired, his blast ripping off an arm, tearing out a chunk of the things shoulder and exposed ribs.

It recoiled, before surging forward in a leap once again, vaulting through the air, its remaining blade arm pulled back to strike down like a stringer. The two of them ducked, but the Marshal kept firing her pistol as a fortunate bullet severed the monsters spine, causing it to sail past them and crash into a heinous pile of flesh and bone behind them.

But more were coming. They kept running.

She leaped over a scythelike bone blade as it swept inches off the floor, almost severing her feet at the ankles. The Marshal lost her footing as she recovered her feet, crashing headfirst through the stairwell door, spilling into the floor of next chamber and rolling onto her back. “Arthur!” she screamed aloud.

He glanced back, the periphery of his vision picking up on another deadly pincer of sharpened bone slicing towards his head from behind as yet another of the creatures leaped at him from behind. He fell into a forward roll, as the skeleton itself flew over him, landing in the doorway as the Marshal, not missing a beat, raised her Glock and fired two shots into its chest and a third into the monsters skull, shattering it.

Arthur gasped, scrambling to get back to his feet as a fourth adversary surged upward, the same one that swiped at Anna’s feet. It was standing now and lunged at him, thrusting a bone pincered arm at him. He raised his shotgun, intercepted the thrust, the barrel of his weapon caught between the bones.

Much to his surprise, and that of any materials science he was aware of, the bone pincers snapped the shotgun in two right before his eyes. Acting quickly, the South Korean wrenched the shotgun pieces free and shot out a snapping side kick, aiming high, his leg hooking under the monsters deadly limbs, the side of his foot connecting with, and crushing the skeletons jaw. The creature stumbled backwards several steps as Arthur sidestepped out of the line of fire and Anna emptied the rest of her magazine into the staggered foe, finishing it off.

But more were coming.

And the building trembled and quaked again.

The groaning could be heard. Not of strained metal and wood, but something alive.

Something deep within the hospital, simmering to life.

Arthur dropped the shotgun remnants and the two raced up the stairs, ignoring the pain in their legs, in their bodies. Arthur almost didn’t feel anything now, despite the exhaustion, the poisoning, the beatings, the rapes, the electrocutions, everything that he had endured. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was at the mines. Everything would be answered, he just had to go into the mines. Deep into them.

He’d find what he was looking for.

He’d have to do it alone too.

They burst through the door, onto the rooftop of the hospital, the cool night air greetings them, as well as the sight of a city on fire surrounding them. Off to the side was the Blackhawk helicopter and a half dozen voices calling for them to run to them. He could hear Corporal Vann amongst them. The door gunner was clutching what looked like a beautiful minigun.

Naturally, the Marshal started to race straight towards them but Arthur pulled on her arm, forcing to run parallel with the helicopter. She didn’t understand until a moment later, the first of a half dozen of the skeleton creatures leaped from the open rooftop door.

The minigun cycled to life, exploding into a torrential salvo of death. The skeletons were shredded to bits of gore within seconds, as the rooftop stairwell outcropping was also practically torn apart by the bullets as well. As soon as that was done, the two of them sprinted towards the helicopter as it was already lifting off the ground.

Corporal Vann and the helicopters crew chief reached out, pulling them both into the helicopter as it started to lift off, just as the ceiling of the hospital suddenly collapsed inward in a most unnatural fashion. The chunks of masonry and brick fell inward, collapsing but not falling straight down as much as swirling clockwise deeper and deeper inward, a deep green glow emanating from within the bowels of the building itself.

“So glad to see you-,” Corporal Vann started to say to Arthur when even he was suddenly transfixed on what was transpiring on the rooftop.

But a moment later, the rooftop of the hospital was ripped from their view as the Blackhawk pilot, apparently not wanting to tempt fate, started to roll away and fly full speed away from the scene. Out the open doors, they could see heavily armed and armored gunships moving in. Their cannons were already lighting up, and rockets and missiles started to be unleashed on the exact location they were departing.

None of the survivors wanted to look back at what was occurring.

“Pilot,” Arthur then spoke up. “We have to head to the Telos Mining Entrance!” he said when Corporal Vann grabbed his shoulder, gesturing for him to sit down.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “We have to get out of here,” the Marine Corporal responded.

“No can do civilian,” the pilot replied. “Orders are to take you to our forward base. B-52’s have been called up, they’re going to blow this place to hell.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s the mine. That’s where this all started,” Arthur said.

“Then they’ll drop a bunker buster or ten down the mine shaft and seal it up,” the Corporal rationalized.

“I have to put an end to it, not just bury it,” Arthur said with a surprising strength in his voice. “We have to go to the mine now. You can bury it after I get there.”

Anna looked up, a look of concern in her eyes at his apparent willingness to get himself killed all of a sudden. Corporal Vann simply frowned. Both of the pilots simply shook their heads.

“Sit the fuck back down civilian,” the pilot finally ordered. Nearby, the crew chief glanced up from behind the minigun as Arthur glanced back at him, and noticed the sidearm in his hip. The crew chief didn’t read the intention off of his eyes, and looked back out to the burning town passing below them, his hands gripping the minigun. But Corporal Vann, a moment to late, reached out to intercede as Arthur shot outward, ripping the handgun free of the Crew Chiefs hip holster and then whipping it across the back of the mans head, knocking him unconscious as he slumped forward, still safe in his harness.

The co-pilot glanced back as Arthur elbowed the marine back and saw as the civilian pressed the gun against the back of the pilots head. “We’re going to the mine now!” he growled, breathing deeply.

“Arthur!” the Marshal called out in shock, but still remaining seated.

Even Corporal Vann realized something was amiss, but while he had the power to do something, simply stood there as if wondering how this would unfold and ultimately it seemed, putting his trust in Arthurs judgment.

The two pilots weren’t buying it though.

“Okay dumbass,” the pilot said, a savvy veteran himself. “Who the fuck is going to fly this bird if you blow my brains out?”

“Well you don’t need a co-pilot do you,” Arthur replied calmly, waving the gun over to the co-pilots face. Unlike the pilot, he wasn’t nearly as good at hiding his well founded fear, as he leaned back in the seat, away from the gun hovering in his face.

“Jesus Christ,” the pilot said, glancing back and noticing the Marine Corporal was just standing there. “Well, I guess if you’re comfortable with a court martial Corporal, we’re going to the mine.” The pilot checked his instrumentation for a moment it seemed, then peering through his nightvision, glanced towards the mountains. “Fuck all three of you,” he grunted in spite.

A second later, the helicopter made a lazy turn towards the mountains.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Corporal Vann was the first person to sit down, averting his eyes again as the pilot glanced over his shoulder at him again. The pilots eyes then briefly wandered over to Arthur, who was sitting down between Anna and the marine. Meeting his eyes, Arthur raised the pistol again, aiming it at his co-pilot. The pilots eyes turned forward again.

“I don’t know about this Arthur,” the Corporal said softly, hoping he was out of earshot of the pilot. “I could end up in prison for this.”

Arthur took a deep breath and wiped his forehead dry of sweat. “I… they captured me. I’ve seen things. It’s from the mine. The mining company, they dug too deep. Uncovered something that should’ve been left buried.”

“We’ll drop a fuel air bomb, bury it again,” the Corporal said.

“I hope so, but I have to go down there,” Arthur simply stated.

“Why?” Anna then spoke up, perhaps a little louder. Neither she, nor the marine, could understand his insistence.

“What if it’s already out… what if you have to cut out its heart… at the source. Put an end to it there. Then it’ll be dead and buried,” Arthur stated grimly, wanting to look at Anna’s face, but keeping his eyes and the Beretta aimed forward at the pilots.

“And so will you,” she said, shaking her head.

“No one else can go-.”

“I can go,” the Marshal said, immediately earning a harsh glare from Arthur. Her brow furrowed for a moment, reading the hostility off of his eyes, before her face lit up briefly and instead of a sharp rebuke, she stared at the top of his head, cocking her head slightly to the side as if transfixed by something.

Naturally, Arthur glanced upwards. “What is it?”

“You’re bleeding…” she said in a curious tone of voice, as if she herself was unsure.

He instinctively wiped his nose with the back of his free hand, only to find it was still dry. “I had a nosebleed earlier,” he said, turning forward again only to have Corporal Vann stare at him now, and his eyes grow larger as he apparently noticed the same thing.

“Your forehead. It’s bleeding,” the Corporal said.

Not comprehending his words for a moment, Arthur hesitated, as if in disbelief before slowly raising his free hand up to his forehead and almost cautiously tapped randomly above his brow. Blinking as he sensed something liquid on his fingertips, he pulled his hand back down and saw blood on the fingertips. “I… ummm I must’ve banged my head. I got headbutted I know. And I was in a car crash.”

“Yeah, we saw you enter the hospital. That’s how we knew you were inside,” Corporal Vann said calmly, still staring at him. Arthur saw his eyes, they were beginning to have that same stare as that of the pilot.

“Where’s Private Nakaj?” he finally asked, noticing the sniper that had accompanied them earlier was strangely missing and uncomfortable with the current line of questioning, hoped to change the subject.

“Medevac took him out. His leg was fractured when the car crashed into him. He’s out,” the Corporal said, still staring at him, or rather his forehead. “Are you okay, you look like your burning up.”

“Yeah… yeah I’m fine,” Arthur replied as the helicopter kept chugging forward. “You know…” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve been through a whole fucking lot today. So forgive me if I’m not in peak health.”

The Corporal slowly nodded and turned away, as Arthur, now scowling, thought about turning back to Anna but could already feel her eyes staring at him, as if looking for something. Instead he stared forward.

Almost immediately, he picked up on something, as he noticed the pilots lips murmuring, his hand returning to the steering controls. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Arthur asked, raising the Beretta to the pilots head. “Are you whispering over the radio?” The pilot remained quiet, so Arthur’s aim shifted to the co-pilot. “Turn the radio up now! Let all of us hear what you’re chatting about.”

The pilot turned to the co-pilot and nodded.

Obediently the co-pilot switched the communication settings so everyone could hear what was being transmitted over the pilots helmets. “Eunsoo Choi is a known organized crime figure, kicked out from the South Korean military for criminal conduct and wanted for multiple counts of corruption, fraud, resisting and evading arrest as well as murder in South Korea and Nibabwe,” the voice said over the radio, crisply and clearly. “We are on an intercept course, remain on course, we will intercept.”

Arthur felt the eyes on himself again. He felt his body heating up, the stress, the pressure, building. He could practically feel the Corporal sitting next to him, his body tensing for action. Arthur knew he had to re-assert control. “It’s a lie! Who is that?” he growled, waving the pistol at the two. The two pilots sat there impassively. “Ask them!” he finally screamed, waving the Beretta at them again.

Marshal Anna Dugan suddenly realized something to as she turned to the man. “I was supposed to pick up an inmate from a private prison facility. High priority from the State Department. I was supposed to get the details at the location of the pickup,” she almost calmly rattled off. Arthur gulped, visibly and audibly. “You’re a felon… a murderer,” she said softly. “The things that…” the Marshal started to mumble, before her voice trailed off. She wasn’t reaching for her gun though, she just turned out to the empty sky feeling drained.

“Identify yourselves!” the co-pilot quickly asked, intimidated enough to finally respond.

“We got you,” the voice on the other end then said.

The co-pilot looked out to the side and saw another helicopter through his nightvision goggles, barely a silhouette against the purplish early morning night sky. It was heading them off but slowly turning its nose towards them. “Identify yourselves,” the co-pilot asked again as an almost eerie silence overtook the entire chopper with only the spin of the rotors audible.
Arthurs arm lowered slightly.

Corporal Vann suddenly exploded into action, his arm shooting out, chopping downward on Arthurs extended limb, knocking his aim downward as the Beretta itself suddenly discharged a round into the floor. The pilot cursed as suddenly Corporal Vann and Arthur embroiled in a grappling match for the pistol, the marines hands trying to twist and pry and wrench the pistol from Arthurs tight grip and Arthur meanwhile trying to drive his shoulder and elbow into the marine, struggling in vain to make him let go as they were both strapped into their seats.

“Fucking murderer!” Corporal Vann growled. “You’re one of them you fucking shit!” he started to scream as on the other side of Arthur, Anna simply sinked her head low, staring at her own feet, caught in an eerie funk of her own as she slid her hands over her face. “I’m going to fucking kill you!” he then cried out yanking Arthur’s gun arm high above their heads, trying to slam the weapon free only to have it empty another round into the roof of the Blackhawk.

That gunshot caused another round of curses to erupt from the pilots as, trying to take advantage of the situation, the pilot turned around and produced his own sidearm. “Hold him!” he screamed at the Marine as he turned and aimed at Arthur. It was an odd angle, especially in a moving helicopter, firing at close range at two people in a fight, but the pilot was willing to take the risk. Corporal Vann was wearing body armor after all, and the pilot made sure to aim for the body.

Anna looked up from her hands, and saw the gun aimed at the two. “No!” she suddenly screamed, unfastening her seatbelt as the pilot pulled down on the trigger. A gunshot rang out, and the Marshal suddenly crumpled to the ground, one of her hands weakly clutching at her chest. A weak moan escaped her lips. The pilot cursed again as he saw the Marshal collapse.
Arthur didn’t curse. He exploded.

Surging with anger, he launched an elbow into the Marines face, knocking his head backwards and jerking his gun arm free. The pilot fired again, his eyes wide with terror. A bullet thudded into the back wall, inches away from the Arthurs head. A miss was a miss though and Arthur fired back three quick shots.

The pilot let out a whinnying grunt, his pistol falling from his grasp, rattling onto the floor as he slumped back into his seat, moaning weakly. “Oh Jesus!” the co-pilot started to scream, randomly invoking divinity when in the distance, lights started flickering, followed a fraction of a second later by a line of tracer fire.

“We got you!” the mysterious voice on the other end of the radio repeated again as several heavy machine gun rounds tore through the cockpit and cabin of the Blackhawk. The co-pilot ducked as half inch bullets nearly decapitated him and punched clean through the helicopters interior. The Corporal even ducked as he saw tracers snap by the helicopter. Before he could raise his head though, Arthur wrapped his arm around his neck and started to squeeze.

“Nyaagghhh!” the headstrong Corporal growled, his vice muffled as he felt his airways and bloodflow being constricted by the strong chokehold. His free arm reached into his belt, withdrawing a combat knife and blindly lunging it in an arc, aiming it at Arthur’s chest. Desperately, Arthur intercepted the arm, the point of the blade stopped only an inch from his own stomach as he looked down, watching as the knife slowly struggled to come closer and closer. They both screamed, Arthur firmly gripping the marines wrist, trying desperately to push his knife wielding hand back to no avail. His other arm surged in strength, lean muscles pumping as they tried to squeeze the life out of the Marine, choking him. He just had to hold off a minute longer.

Bullets whistled by, the co-pilot screaming as he swerved and rolled the Blackhawk in desperation, trying to evade but unable to strike back. And Arthur, his eyes focused on the knife, suddenly looked past it for a moment and saw Anna on the floor, clutching at a reddish stain on her chest, her blue eyes looking increasingly vacant as she looked straight back at him, her lips trying to form words that he couldn’t read or hear.

The distraction costed him, as the knife point shot another half inch closer, the tip touching his stomach when suddenly, the marines strength sapped and his arm and body grew limp. He was unconscious.

Arthur took a deep breath and then pushed the unconscious Marine off of himself and leaned down over the Marshal. Bullets whistled by, tearing the Blackhawk apart. He was almost killed. She had just learned who he really was. He had just learned who he was. He was so close to the origin of all of this and yet all he could focus on was the small framed blonde woman laying on the floor of the helicopter.

As he unfastened himself and kneeled down on the floor, he slid an arm under her head, trying to find the words to say. But he couldn’t. What was there to say.

“Finish it… finish this,” she finally murmured, one of her hands still covering her gunshot wound. But her other hand reached up slowly, almost lazily, and graced the side of his face with the back of her hand. Her eyes fluttered. “End this…” Her mouth then stilled, a vacant look overtaking her lustrous eyes.

He lowered her head to the ground and noticing the Crew Chief was still unconscious manning one of the door miniguns. But the other was still unmanned. “Get me a clear shot pilot!” Arthur ordered, as he crawled over and took control of the minigun.

The co-pilot had a few choice words for Arthur, but now wasn’t the time. He invoked some sort of divinity and banked hard to the side, offering his new door gunner full view of their unexpected attacker while also risking giving the same foe a far larger profile.

It took a few crucial, terrifying moments for the minigun to cycle to life, but when it did, those fears proved unnecessary. A flaring beam of light erupted from the minigun, like a stream of fireworks, all of them directed at the black silhouette spitting its own tracered machine gun fire at them. Arthur simply followed the tracers back to their origin and unleashed a torrent of death.

Whoever they were, they were overconfident, came straight at the Blackhawk thinking it couldn’t fight back. Instead it flew head on into several hundred fifty caliber rounds. They shredded the cockpit, the pilots, the interior, the rotors, the entire frame of the helicopter. A few seconds after he started firing, his efforts were rewarded with a brilliant fireball exploding in midair, as the flaming wreckage fell to the forested hills below.
Grimly, Arthur turned the pistol on the co-pilot. “To the mine entrance now!” he simply ordered as the damaged Blackhawk kept moving forward.

“We’re already here asshole,” the co-pilot said, as Arthur saw a few seconds later, the Blackhawk hovering about ten feet over a road choked with abandoned vehicles and debris and up ahead, the main mine entrance, fenced up and populated by numerous abandoned earth moving vehicles and several construction prefab buildings. It was all dark and quiet. So much unlike the previous twenty hours.

Arthur got up and glanced back at the Marshal, not even sure if she was still alive or not. She was in the same position as before, but he could swear her saw the fingers of her free hand slowly clutching and opening at her side. Maybe a soft moan escaped her lips, or it was that of the pilot who was still slumped in his seat. Or maybe it was Corporal Vann, who he saw slowly shake his head, lifting it up groggily. “Take care of her!” Arthur shouted to the Marine as he looked up and after shaking the haze from his head, locked onto him. His eyes immediately filled with alarm and hate.

But before he could do anything, Arthur leaped off the chopper, spilling into a roll and running off the road, into the forest. Corporal Vann started to rise from his seat as the Co-Pilot screamed something profane out the window. And the Marine paused, his desire for vengeance stilled as he saw, as he realized, the Marshal had been injured.

He kneeled down beside her and gently cradled her head. “You’ll be fine,” he said softly.

Anna looked up at him with glassy eyes, grunting something.

“The bullet was caught by the shoulder strap of your vest, slowed it down enough. I think it clipped your collarbone though, but you’ll be fine. I promise,” the Corporal said as the Blackhawk gained altitude.

She started to nod, but felt the almost crippling stabs of pain surge through her body. Her eyes were watering now, the tears streaming down her face, they felt hot as they drizzled down her cheek. Looking up at the Corporal, her lips started to tremble. “Bury it. Bury it,” she whispered softly.

The Co-Pilot glanced back. “We’re heading back to base. We have to get out of here, gunships have been vectored in. They’re going to collapse the mine entrances until the heavy bombers can seal the deal permanently.”

---
Arthur raced into the forest, off of the main road. He didn’t want to risk the Corporal manning one of the miniguns and gunning him down, or attracted the attention of any of the psychos or monsters or whatever it was that had been hunting him, and everyone else, since this horrific day began.
But as soon as the helicopter peeled away and the rotors soon fluttered into the distance, the forest and the road all seemed so quiet. So still.

A gentle cool breeze wafted through the trees, rustling the branches.

It was peaceful.

He was glad.

He had only shreds of clothing left clinging to his warm body, and a Beretta with ten bullets left in the magazine. Following the road to the mine entrance, he moved in, darting about like a commando in the darkness, as he moved into the unguarded mine entrance and immediately smelled gunpowder in the air. And gun oil.

Moving forward, he realized he had just missed a gun battle. A large one it seemed as well. Moving in, Beretta at the ready, he finally found his first corpse, nestled beside a bulldozer. It was one of those masked gunman he had encountered before. He had a Kalashnikov in hand but the hand was severed, and so was his head.

Arthur ripped the shards of his shirt off of his own body and pulled off the Cultists woodland camouflaged jacket, pulling it over his own body and then pulled his combat boots off as well, fortunately finding them to be a similar size to his own feet. Then he took the AK and checked that as well. Now he had firepower.

He moved deeper into the perimeter, noticing the masked gunman had set up the earthmoving machines, sandbags and concrete barricades and other obstacles into several rough concentric circles fanning outward from the large mine entrance. He also noticed that all of the gunman were dead, limbs removed, bodies slashed open. All of them had shell casings and weapons only partially loaded. They had been firing but it didn't seem to stop whatever carved them up. In fact, he couldn't find any evidence to point to the fact that anyone but these cultists were the ones getting killed, or even wounded.

It was a puzzle that Arthur thought of deciphering but figured the answers would come soon enough. He secured as much ammunition as he could when his ears picked up on the distant yet growing sounds of helicopter rotors coming in. He wasn’t sure, but figured they were gunships. There was no turning back now.

He raced into the mine entrance as a minute later, from several hundred meters away, a formation of Army attack helicopters unleashed salvo after salvo of rockets and missiles at the mine entrance, causing it to collapse, burying any chance of escape under several feet of rubble and rock. Arthur, moving deeper into the shaft, realized it was just enough to keep him from digging out if he ever had second thoughts. Chances were, they’d be dropping something heavier to permanently bury the mine for as long as they wished.

That would be a good thing.

But only if he could find the source of what was going on.

Burying what happened after all, wasn’t as good as leaving something dead and buried.

I hate leaving stories unfinished. For like weeks I kept contemplating on writing this, but recently I got the motivation to actually start putting words to paper... so to speak.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

His eyes almost never peeled off staring down the sights of the Kalashnikov, as Arthur heard the mine entrance collapse behind him from under a bombardment of missiles and rockets. The entire shaft trembled and shaked, but he moved forward, step by step, moving forward slowly and purposefully as the world thundered around him. Dust and pebbles sprinkled from the ceiling hewn from solid rock and dirt. It collected on the greaves and creases of his fatigues, or rather those of the cultist he had found butchered outside.

A line of lightbulbs provided the dim illumination as he felt a wafting wave of dust slowly billow outward from behind him, as the mine finished collapsing, the thunderous booms of impacts and collisions almost subsided in an instant, replaced by a near dead silence.

With all of his senses fully alert, and only a line of flickering lights that seemed to lead endlessly down deeper into the mines, he could practically sense presences that weren’t there. He was on edge. Ears perked. Hairs standing on end. Finger on the trigger guard. Muscles tensed. Eyes staring down the rifle sights.

But it was unlike any other time he had experienced since he awoke in that prison cell. An eerie quiet befell the place. It was the serenity that was driving him crazy now. He flinched again, this time spinning about, sensing something behind him. Searing.

It wasn’t until he had scoured the empty tunnel behind him that he realized the burning sensation was coming from his backside. And his chest. Turning forward again, he shook his head and blinked, closing his eyes only to have them also sting as he opened them again. Raising his arm, he wiped his face on the sleeve, only to notice it darken with sweat. It was getting hotter the farther in he progressed. Yet, he had barely moved in. It took a few minutes, or maybe forever, to reach a large elevator meant for large numbers of people, or cargo. The platform itself slid down a long, barely lit elevator shaft that descended downward into the deep. Perhaps it went for dozens of feet, perhaps hundreds.

He moved forward onto the platform, past several dozen abandoned carts and other sundry mining equipment, as if expecting another bloodthirsty psychopath to burst from behind cover and strike. But it didn’t happen. He walked over, toting the Kalashnikov in one hand as he pulled a lever. The silence was broken by the streaking and straining sound of metal grinding against metal as the large steel platform slowly descended down the diagonal shaft.

He noticed the lighting ended several dozen feet down the shaft. He truly was heading into the darkness.

The light was hurting his eyes anyways.

And for some reason, the darkness didn’t seem all that dark. As the elevator proceeded farther and farther down, his eyes seemed to open up even wider, and concurrently, the large swathes of darkness seemed to dissipate, revealing a vibrant plethora of shades of gray. His realization was immediate, and yet unbelievable. He should see nothing but the black, but he could see clearly, yet differently, in the perfect dark. The outline of the platform, the contours of the packed rock and dirt sheared and blasted apart by mining equipment. As the elevator platform slowly travelled deeper down, Arthur even reached out his hand and wiggled his fingers, noticing every detail and movement in a world of gray and black and white.

Nightvision, but not technologically. It was natural.

He smiled to himself.

Then the elevator suddenly shuddered to a stop, as even he was caught offguard, stumbling forward as he was taken off balance by the abrupt pause.

His hands returned to the gun, his finger on the trigger, his eyes aiming down the sights. He looked up, and then raced to the front edge of the platform and peered down, seeing everything. But as the darkness receded, he still saw nothing hiding within. The fears of the unknown returned, flooding his mortal mind with incomprehensible terror as he realized even if the darkness was gone, there was still plenty to fear within the realm of the unseen.

But not unheard.

A loud, whinnying sound suddenly chimed over what sounded like an announcement system built within the mine itself, as a piercing feedback echoed through the chamber. Then came an all too voice.

“Arthur. Is that you?” a voice called out, a deep, husky male voice. And it wasn’t there to be helpful, but taunting. “Or should I call you Eunsoo Choi? Or is it Choi Eun Soo? Korean names confuse me.”

“Who are you?” Arthur growled, falling to a knee as he crouched beside the lever box, as if it would provide some sort of protection on the open and now stalled platform. A second later, he heard his voice faintly drifting downward in echoes.

“You think you can stop us now Arthur? The Ambassador has already arrived and I will be serving your broken body on a silver platter, or rather a steel one,” the man over the public announcement system said just as the steel platform elevator shuddered again, sliding down another several feet before jerking to a stop. “Did you honestly think you could stop us by taking the elevator?”

Arthur almost felt weightless, if just for a moment, as the platform seemed to fall from underneath him. But the sensation lasted for only a fraction of a second, as both Arthur and the elevator he was on careened down the shaft in a full free fall, that same mocking, taunting voice trailing after him, his voice filling the empty air. He was laughing now, or rather cackling, like a supervillain gaining the last laugh, which perhaps he was.

Arthur gritted his teeth, and then closed his eyes.

He wasn’t fearing death, he never did. But something he was genuinely afraid of, especially after this epic day, was what would follow. Deep down inside, as Arthur tried to desperately weigh his extremely limited options, he didn’t want to see what was in store for him. The laughter chased him down the dozens and dozens of feet, as his eyes slowly opened up, only to see the walls reduced to a blur on all sides of him. Death was waiting for him at the bottom. Not really irony if you expected it.

But he truly was hoping for more.

The laughter then was interspersed with gunfire.

And screams.

The elevator platform started to screech, sparks flying as the entire floor started to violent shudder as the brakes or whatever was slowing this deathtrap started to bleat and struggle. It was slowing down, but as he tried to peer through the steel grating, he couldn’t see the bottom. It could be hundreds of feet for all he knew. Or just beyond that outer veil of darkness.

Flesh tearing, the sickening crunch of bones, and the gurgles of torn throats overflowing with blood filtered through the shaft, as whoever had previously taunted him seemed to be having a most miserable moment right now. Was it the same presence that chopped up the bodies at the entrance?

Arthur smirked.

What a silly question to consider at this moment. He was about to crash to his death, that could wait.

The platform shuddered more violently. Sparks were flying now, burning up the elevator ascending and descending systems, as he could almost feel the supports bending and breaking. It was slowing down, but either it was too slow to stop the crash, or too fast it would rip the platform apart. He thought of something crazy and immediately picked up his rifle and started to scramble towards the opposite end of the platform, towards the slope. Gripping the rifle firmly, he started to concentrate all of his strength into his arms and shoulders.

Then the platform crashed on the ground. A horrible pain shot through Arthur’s legs as he felt the shock of the impact surge through his fracturing bones, sending painful currents of energy surging through torn muscles and skin. He collapsed to the ground, too much in pain from the mangling of his legs to even scream out loud.

So he just writhed there, eyes closed tightly, his hands turning white as they curled up into fists, and his face grew flush red with raw, overbearing pain. And he laid there, gritting his teeth as he dug deep inside of himself, trying to find the will to just open his eyes for a moment and look downward. When he did, and took view of his legs, he immediately collapsed backwards and burying his face in his hands, wished he never had.

They were twisted in different directions, the skin torn open by jagged splinters of bone. Both of his legs were broken. Mangled. He was immobile.

He was useless.

It was over.

At least the gun was nearby. He could finish himself off.

It would be so easy to end this.

Regaining a semblance of control over the rest of his pain wracked body, he reached his arm out towards the Kalashnikov and grabbing it by its stock, dragged the gun towards himself. It’d be tricky to blow his brains out, but not impossible even if his legs were broken. He just didn’t want to fuck it up and not make that first shot lethal. The last thing he wanted was to be even more miserable before he died. Or worse, if his adversaries managed to find him in this state. He wasn’t sure how he would be able to handle that.

Typical.

Just as soon as he was remembering who he was, he was going to blow his brains out.

As he pressed the barrel of the gun against the bottom of his chin, nestling the tip of the muzzle against the point furthest back on the underside of his chin, almost resting the barrel of the weapon against his neck, his mind started to drift on his last thoughts. For some reason, he wanted to think of something peaceful, serene, even beautiful as he blew his brains out.
He closed his eyes, wanting to think of something that would put a smile on his face. His memories helped. He remembered the time he was a member of the South Korean military, even a member of the exclusive Special Warfare Command. The places he visited in Africa and Asia. Even training in America. The honor and excitement of his duty and service.

For a moment, his memories of service strayed, as he wondered how he fell so much. His mind suddenly dwelled on the fact he was an apparent felon, and then the memories of the mine in South Africa. Of something reaching out, seizing him-.

No. He blinked a few times. He wasn’t going to die with regret or fear.
Marshal Anna Dugan. The five feet blonde haired, blue eyes dynamo. She was a killer with a pistol. She looked like a damsel but was never in distress. He wished he had more time to know her. The way she carried herself, a confident slouch, laid back and calm, a total cowgirl. She was absolutely lovely. He hoped she was okay, but he was certain she’d be fine, she was a survivor after all. She wore her vest today and it saved her life more than once after all. Then he remembered when she was knocked out by the roadside, he carried her to the woods, undressed her.

Why did he undress her again?

To check her injuries. That Black kid, he had shot her in the stomach. What happened to that kid. He snapped when he saw his father killed, that was it. But how did that kid die? Arthur gulped, suddenly realizing that he was the one that killed the kid. But he used the taser, to stun him. It was only to stun him, temporarily. Not kill him.

She looked so pretty without the clothes on.

He brushed the tip of his finger against the trigger. What was wrong with him?

Beauty. Serenity.

The Latina woman in the prison. The most beautiful woman he could recall ever seeing. She had saved his life. She had freed him from prison, and all he heard was her succulent, savory, slightly accented voice. “Good luck.” She handed him a bag of Vicodin though.

If he took it then, it would of saved him a lot of trouble. Why didn’t he just overdose right there?

His eyes flashed open as he realized he didn’t want to die. His legs were broken and useless, but he didn’t want to kill himself. Almost disgusted with the thought, he almost found himself retching, physically idea with the slightest consideration of suicide. No. That wasn’t him. It was revolting.

Even now.

He pushed the gun away in disgust. He was going to live damn it. He didn’t kill himself then, and he certainly wasn’t going to now.

A realization fell upon him.

It was so simple that it stared him directly in the face. He had connected the dots earlier, he knew he did, but truth be told, his mind was distracted.
But just as he pushed the gun away, he realized he would need it.

A shadow crossed his body in the well lit mine shaft and he looked up and saw that same beautiful Latina woman suddenly standing over him. She was still wearing the same dark green trucker cap she had worn when she freed him. She had a matching jacket and pants, the words Convict Leasing Corporation, LLC on the left breast of her jacket. But the uniform was dirty and torn now, flecked with blood. She had a drum fed Kalashnikov slung across her back, and her belt was jingling with a combat knife, a baton, two pistols holstered, even a few miscellaneous grenades of various types and a haversack marked with a red cross.

“Almost thought we had you,” she said, in that same sultry, accented voice as she walked past the crippled man and picked up his gun.

He recognized her face. When his memories came back to him, in the hospital, he saw what had occurred. His memories of Southern Africa, of the mine he worked as the head of security at. He investigated what was keeping the miners spooked. He descended so deep into the mine. So far down. When he dug too deep, he came face to face with her. A demon. She pulled him down and then…

He couldn’t remember from that point to yesterday when he woke up in the prison cell.

She had all the answers, she had what he was looking for, but all he wanted to do right now was kill her.

But he was too weak, too helpless, that all he could do was lay there and stare at her with his murderous intent. She read it off his face. It made her smile.

Not giving a care to his legs, or the pain that moving him would cause, she gingerly reached down and seized one of his limp arms, and started to drag him off the ruined platform. She ignored his screams and cries of pain as his torn and shredded legs were dragged across the rough rock, past the corpses of several masked cultists located around the lift control panel, torn apart by bullets and something else.

“You’re coming back with me,” she said succinctly, dragging him off into the darkness.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The butt of her rifle came down on his face, hard, putting a stop to Arthur’s screaming rather forcefully, as the wooden stock of the weapon cracked into his jaw. Naturally, Arthur tried to open his mouth again, only to have a blinding pain surge pang outwards from his jawbone, surging through his entire head, stabbing into his brain, numbing his cries for help. Considering where he was, he figured it was futile, but for some reason, still wanted to keep on doing it.

At the very least, it made him feel better as he was dragged deeper and deeper into the dark, and increasingly hotter tunnels.

“Stop bitching or I’ll rip your tongue out. I need you alive, not intact,” the Latina woman said, still not slowing down as she continued dragging him along, his smashed legs leaving a scattered trail of blood behind them. His next attempt at a scream resulting in a low moan, followed by a painful whimper. She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled, even chuckled. “That’s better,” she said before letting go of his arm and letting him flop to the floor.

He rolled onto his stomach, groaning from the exertion, trying to suppress the incredible pain that was still flooding his body, all coming from his shattered legs. Even after being dragged for dozens of meters, the pain hadn’t deadened in the slightest. It felt just as horrible as when the bones within snapped, and the fragments burst outward, rupturing his muscles and flesh. Try as he might, it even made him cry that the pain was so bad.

“You know, sad as you look, you still impress me… Arthur, if that’s your real name,” she said with a snicker and a wink of her eye as she walked farther down the tunnel. They both knew it wasn’t. The woman walked down the side of the tunnel about a dozen meters and then glanced back at him again, flashing him that sultry smile and another seductive wink, one he could clearly see even in the pitch black thanks to his inexplicable nightvision.

Almost nonchalantly, she reached into the solid rock wall, and then pulled out what looked like an oversized leather messenger bag, but he immediately recognized what looked like a pull igniter sticking out of the side. “Satchel charge,” she said with a smile. “We’re not coming back anytime soon. Even though you just butchered those cultists at the mining entrance, there could still be more around. And we don’t need them or their loony buddies to follow us where we’re going.”

Arthur immediately realized something. She thought he had taken out the guards at the mining entrance.

He sure as hell didn’t, and if she didn’t…

He tucked that tidbit in his mind.

These possessed townfolk didn’t attack the masked cultists either, which meant either the US military had ninjas kill everyone at the mining entrance or…

“Could you please explain everything to me?” he asked, matter of factly and in a weak voice, his jaw still sore and reeling in pain even as he barely opened his mouth to whisper his question.

She stifled a chuckle, a single dark, well manicured hand covering her full, dark lips and then shook her head. “Ummmm no? Once we get to where we’re going, you’ll know anyways,” she said with a smile as she fastened the satchel charge to a chest strap on her front, keeping it well out of his reach if she was going to continue dragging him. “And don’t worry, it won’t be long. After all, I’d have having to hobble you again before we get there,” she said, nodding past him.

Arthur glanced back, over his shoulder and saw his mangled legs and immediately took on the expression of sheer disbelief. Shards of bone were sticking out of his torn flesh just moments ago, and now, the bone was gone, as if it had sunken back under the flesh, and cruel, purplish looking scars and partially open tears had taken the place of the vicious wounds. It still hurt like hell, but now he realized why the pain wasn’t fading. He was rebuilding himself.

Grabbing his arm in her unnaturally firm grip, she started dragging him again while shaking her head. “If you could only see the look on your face. Like a virgin all over again. It’s going to be sweet doing it all over again,” she said with an air of remembrance carrying in her voice.

Arthur, knowing what he knew now, decided to keep her talking, despite how much it hurt even just moving his busted jaw. “Are you my girlfriend?” he asked, hoping that the sarcasm wouldn’t be lost on her despite his hoarse voice.

She let out another chuckle. “Yeah. You reached out, and I grabbed you,” she said with a fiendish snicker. “Do you remember that?”

He gulped.

The tunnel in Africa. He dug too deep and saw her face. Her taloned fingers wrapping around him, pulling him deeper, into the small hole. He was screaming then too.

“Yes,” he whispered softly.

She smiled. “I loved that day. You have no idea how rare it is to get a fucking stud like you practically arriving on our doorstep.” She sighed, apparently having positive memories of the event. “We’re going to have so much fun together,” she added, knowing full well Arthur probably wasn’t going to agree with her idea of fun. “Speaking of which, why didn’t you take the Vicodin? It would’ve saved you a lot of trouble.”

“How…” he started to say, before wincing in pain. Gulping, and taking another controlled breath, he opened his mouth much more slowly this time.

“How do you mean?” he whispered back.

“The Vicodin I gave you. I swear I thought you were going to take it but… you didn’t. You’re such a fucking soldier, I love it,” she practically cooed. “And I just waited and waited for you to blow your brains out on the platform, but again. You didn’t.”

“Because suicide is an unforgivable sin?” he asked.

For a moment she paused and looked back at him and winked again. “Got it on the first try,” she said before resuming her previous pace. Shrugging, she started to elaborate. “I mean, suicide on its own isn’t a one way ticket to Hell, but in your case, it’s a guarantee, with the life you lived. Would’ve saved us… or rather me, a lot of trouble of having to drag you back kicking and… well… screaming.”

“Wait,” Arthur said. “If dying would’ve brought me to ummm Hell, then why didn’t you just kill me in that prison cell?”

“Because getting slaughtered by an agent of Hell is pretty much a score for the other guys. I mean, don’t get me wrong. You’re a murdering, thieving, raping, lying bastard so maybe it would’ve worked, but there’s no way I could be sure. Suicide would’ve been a far more reliable method, short of well, dragging you through the Gates like I’m about..,” she started to chatter before rounding a corner, and finding herself losing her voice. “… shit.”

This time, she wasn’t smiling. In fact, she dropped him again and crouched down, wielding both her assault rifle, as well as his, one in each hand and peered forward. “Shit they moved the pocket,” she muttered under breath.
“What?” Arthur muttered, painfully rolling onto his belly as he tried to get a look at what she was talking about but only seeing a wide, black cavern in front of them with a small hazy red dot on the other end which could’ve been kilometers away as far as she was concerned.

Her lips pressed together. “Shhhh,” she muttered and then pointed one of the rifles at a slight change in the floors shape. “See that edge against the flat surface,” she said softly as she glanced at him, her eyes briefly sheening with a yellow glimmer as she looked at him. He noticed two trickles of blood drizzling down her forehead, the origin of the blood coming from two midpoints just an inch above her seductive eyes.

His sharp eyes focused on what she was pointing at and realized the irregularity ahead of them. It was a boat. A little rowboat from the looks of it, simply laying there in the middle of the cavern floor.

Arthur found it eerie, but not quite terrifying.

“I don’t get it,” he murmured, turning back to her only to see his own reflection in her eyes and saw he had the same yellowish glimmer. He had already figured it out, but for some reason, he froze in his position, his eyes growing wide.

She smiled. “You and me, we’re practically the same,” the Latina looking woman said with a whisper. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t realized that yet, it’s so fucking obvious that…” she started to explain before realizing that wasn’t the reason why he froze.

He had already accepted the fact that he had been dragged to Hell, or whatever it was and it had changed him. But that wasn’t why he suddenly grew still. She realized the reason as she saw a reflection of herself in his yellow eyes and a shadow growing behind her. One wielding a fireaxe and clad in what looked to be a fire scarred firefighters outfit.

The Latina woman turned around, just as the Fire Chief sliced her head clean off with one swing of the axe. The head rolled down the gentle slope, out of sight, into the large cavern.

Demon or otherwise, the womans body simply crumpled to the side and Arthur glanced upward, the rest of his body still unmoving. Even his breathing slowed as he took in the view of what he hoped was his savior again.

The orange reflecting strips on the Fire Chief’s dirty and dull yellow firefighter outfit shimmered slightly from the dim red glow at the end of the tunnel. Beyond those reflectors, he couldn’t tell anything of her shape, apart from her silhouette, which was like a solid black shadow, surrounded by a veil of white. It was like an aura. He had seen it from a distance, unsure of what it was except that it was drawing closer, only to disappear whenever his captor had turned her head. But now, the identity was revealed. It was she who killed the guards at the mining entrance. And now, it looked like she was glowing.

She put the fireaxe in a relaxed position, leaning it on her shoulder like it was a rifle and then, with her free right hand, outstretched it to him. From her oversized sleeve, emerged the crispy blackened flesh that apparently still covered her entire body. This close, it finally came into view.

He glanced up at her, and slowly struggled to uncertain feet. His legs were still straining, the time, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed since his legs snapped on the crashing lift, had rebuilt themselves enough that he was able to stand on his own again. But it was still painful, as he felt the steady trembling in his recently fractured bones. “Come on, let’s finish this,” Arthur said in a clear voice, clearing his throat and revealing even his jaw was healing too.

She shook her head, the rear visor of her firefighter helmet swaying from side to side and then reached out her burned hand, clutching his wrist.

Almost immediately, he jerked his hand free from her grasp and took a step back, giving her a mixed look of alarm and disgust. The Fire Chief stood up a little straighter as Arthur, the look of fear in his yellow eyes, brushed his wrist free and then crouched down, picking up one of the decapitated woman’s assault rifles.

“That point there, that’s the finish line. We have to stop this Regina,” he said with a snarl, pointing at the dim red glow at the end of the tunnel. “That is where it ends.”

This time, the Fire Chief kneeled down, picking the satchel charge up with her free hand and then gestured at the narrow tunnel they were standing in, indicating she wanted to seal it from here.

“Fine. Set it off. I’m going ahead,” Arthur said with finality, slinging the first rifle over his shoulder, and then scooping up the second from the ground.

Just as he was about to pick it up, the axe blade suddenly came down right next to his hand, cleaving the rifle barrel in twain. He jumped upward and skittered backwards a few steps, unslinging the rifle. She took several matching steps forward, the axe held loosely in the grip of one arm, the satchel in the other. “You’re not stopping me,” he said.

The Fire Chief shook her head, and then stepped forward again, as if challenging him. Immediately he recalled the scene at the mines entrance. There was a small army of cultists there, he saw dozens of shell casings. She killed them all with an axe.

Glancing down at his gun, he started to wonder the usefulness of even a drum full of rifle ammo. Realizing his options were rapidly slimming down, he resigned himself to the situation and nodded slowly. “Okay, you win,” Arthur said, taking a step forward and lowering his rifle.

She stepped forward at the same moment he pulled the trigger on the Kalashnikov and empted a long, steady burst of automatic gunfire as a score of bullets tore apart the surprised woman’s right leg, shredding her kneecap.

The cave itself seemed to tremble slightly, as Regina staggered forward, having at least temporarily, lost her balance as her injured knee buckled inward and she almost fell to her side. Arthur meanwhile, simply turned right around and sprinted towards the red light.

He already knew what was there. The Latina woman had told him. A gate to Hell.

It was the last place he wanted to go, but he felt compelled to keep moving forward. All of the answers were there he thought. Not just to his life, no, he wasn’t that selfish. Down here, at that light at the end of the tunnel, were the answers to the madness that had filled this past day, and he hoped, he believed, the answer to how to put an end to all of this.
It was buried before, in Africa. The military, even the Fire Chief, wanted to bury it again. But not him. He wanted to finish it.

He ran towards the dim red light in the distance and even sprinted past the abandoned rowboat that remained perfectly still in the middle of the dry cavernous floor. There were no sounds besides his heavy breathing, and the pattering of his feet, and the inhumanly formidable Fire Chief as she pursued him, somehow already managing to get both of her legs working within seconds to break into a full sprint after him.

As they ran down, through the middle of the cavern, he paid the boat no heed despite the odd fact that it was even there in the first place.

He didn’t even look up, until he felt a sharp stab of pain shoot up his ankle as soon as it hit the ground at the end of another stride. Arthur grunted, and feared he had reinjured his once mangled legs, but glanced down and saw it was actually the Latina’s removed head. Her eyes were wide open, and lifeblood pulsed out of her neck as her yellow eyes shot up at him.
Her head had rolled down to the lowest point of the cavern.

“Look up,” a raspy voice called up to him, as the detached head somehow found the ability to still speak, despite having its neck cruelly chopped apart.

Arthur knew the Fire Chief was right behind him, but he paused that very moment and looked up, deciding he would indulge the severed head, if only for a second. But when he glanced upward at the equally vast ceiling of the cavern, he froze yet again and not just for a second. But two, then three.
Then the Fire Chief tackled him to the ground, smashing him to the ground. Arthur ignored the pain as the impact of the solid rock smashed his arm, as a random jagged rock cut into his shoulder, as his legs howled in pain from the tackle. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, or rather what was covering it.

It almost looked like a lake, or would have if it remained perfectly still.
But it wasn’t a vast, plain of faintly shimmering water, occasionally rippling from gentle currents and disruptions like a true body of water. Not only was this vast lake on the ceiling of the cavern, but it was slightly luminescent. Constantly shifting. Postulating. Writhing. Full of life. The shapeless aggregation of protoplasm forms reeled and uncoiling, furled and billowed into movement. Then a myriad of eyes opened outward, countless obsidian orbs engulfing the panorama of Arthurs vision, filling him with absolute terror.

“Oh God,” he murmured softly as he lay on the ground, the Fire Chief atop of him. It was only at that moment, she glanced back, and looking up, bore witness to the same macabre horror he was witnessing. She too froze in fear.

“NO GOD,” the shapeless entity rebounded in a chilling response, it’s voice so terrible and powerful that it shook the cavern itself, it’s voice vaguely imitating Arthur’s whisper as it started to descend its crushing mass downward from the ceiling, towards the two unique morsels that had drawn themselves so foolishly beneath it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"No," Arthur groaned, feeling the Fire Chiefs hard, charred black fingers wrapping around his throat. Her grip was strong, inhumanly so. His own arms reached upward, trying to pull at her elbows, at her wrists, but finding it utterly futile as the pain seared up from his shoulder, from where the jagged stalagmite had driven a hole into his flesh when he fell. But he kept struggling. Kept resisting.

His eyes narrowed in focus, as he felt a trickle of fluid suddenly drizzle into his face, searing pain emanating from his face, blurring his vision. Something was pouring into his eyes, blinding him and he wasn't sure what. Her grip tightened, choking off his neck, pressing down on his caroteid artery, making him feel weak, feel sleepy. But the pain was keeping him awake. It was keeping him alive.

In a moment of clarity, he focused on the pain, feeling the burning injury in his shoulder, and his face, and all over his battered and bruised and tortured body magnify. Blood seemed to surge through his body, his skin turning a shade closer to crimson as he looked past the Fire Chief and saw the darkness slowly inexorably lower itself upon them. The living mass of pure evil, writhing and shifting, bubbling with postules innumerable. It was going to engulf them all unless he did something.

Unless he made a greater sacrifice.

He couldn't match the woman in strength, or maybe even determination, but deep down, in the recesses of his mind, he knew he could count on something she never could. Hidden far below, in the dark recesses of his cavernous mind, Arthur instinctively knew something that amnesia simply couldn't erase. The true knowledge that deep down, he wasn't a good person. He was a savage. And in this moment of need, he embraced it.

His arms shot from fending off her strangling chokehold and reached down to her hips, where she was holding the satchel charge. Without a moments hesitation, he pulled the detonatonation trigger and lit the fuse. A low sizzle filtered into both of their ears as in a moment of shock, the Fire Chief's eyes went wide in absolute disbelief. She hesitated.

He said, "I'm sorry," and then smashed his fist into her chin.

His knuckles drove deep into her hardened black flesh, knocking her head upwards and opening just enough room for Arthur to pull in his legs and then launched them outward in a double upkick that sent the still stunned woman flying backwards, the sizzling satchel charge still attached to her hips.

"YES! OH YES!" exclaimed a sickly voice, as Arthur scrambled to his feet and then glanced down, noticing the severed and pale head of the Latina woman was still laying on the cavern floor, her face having taken on a cruel visage of absolute glee at the turn of events. "You need me Arthur! You-ack!" she started to opine when, unsure if he really did need her, Arthur simply reached down and scooped her up by gripping a handful of her long hair and started sprinting towards the light at the end of the cavern.

He gave one glance back, and saw the Fire Chief Regina Carano hefting the satchel charge in one hand, high above her head. A flash of light, and a wave of darkness was all that followed, and like that, she was gone.

But he was still alive. And he ran.

The cavern trembled again, the very Earth seemingly quaking from the mass of anti-life that was descending from the cavern ceiling behind him. He could hear their dark whispers in his mind, boasting of the end of life and light and existence itself. It beckoned him to join them, embrace the darkness, and the entropic nothingness it represented. But he kept running towards the fiery hellish light at the end of the cavern.

Cold wisps of negative energy licked at his heels, grazing across his skin and clothes, leaving a cold searing pain in its wake. Pure darkness encroached around his edges, as if it was moving around his fleeting form, reayd to surround, and engulf and swallow him whole. For some reason, it seemed all the more terrifying. But the futher he ran, the warmer he felt, the less his body burned and almost ironically, he felt closer to safety. The hotter it got, the brighter the end of the tunnel became, the more reinvigorated he suddenly felt. It was so close now. He felt he could almost reach out and touch the bright lights glowing at the end of the cavern.

The tunnel trembled again, but not from the massive entity of eldritch darkness that was filling the cavern behind him, but somehow completely different. It emanated from the light at the end of the passageway. Where the hellish lights were. He could almost see the ripples of raw invisible energy contort his vision, bend light and thunder with deafening silence down the tunnel.

Instinctively, Arthur wanted to dive to the ground, or leap aside, but he knew if he did that, he would be in his pursuers cold embrace. So he kept running forward as the hair on his skin started to tremble, and stir, the air itself seemingly starting to vibrate. His clothes rippled across his body. Both his voice, and that of the severed head he was carrying crudely in his hand were silenced. Then finally, another split second later, he felt a permeable force of energy push against and through his body. It did so forcefully, causing his skin and flesh and bone to contort, to pit inwards all over his face and chest, before bulging outward on his backside.

Completely invisible, the projections of energy passed through his body, forcefully yet harmlessly as Arthur's ears trembled and shook, upon hearing the overwhelming sound of hounds or beasts howling and barking and baying filling the cavern.

His body trembled from within, causing his organs to vibrate and his blood to flow awry. Raw, blinding pain seared across his entire body, as his cries of absolute pain were struck mute simply by his nerves being overwhelmed by the raw sensations his body was tormented by.

Arthur fell to his knees, the head of the demoness unceremoniously being dumped onto the floor of the cavern beside him.

The pain burned through every facet of his body. So intense, he couldn't scream aloud for relief, or even open his eyes to cry. All he could do was just suffer, and suffer more. No way to relieve the pressure with an outlet, or meditation, or simple willpower. He just had to experience it. More invisible projections of energy passed through his body harmlessly, only a microsecond later, to transform into all too audible and terrible howls of utter bestial horrors.

Arthur then collapsed to the ground, his body spent as the last of the cacophonous sounds washed over his defeated body.

His eyes flared open in one last fleeting and utterly futile attempt to remain conscious, to see through this journey to it's end, but his efforts gained him only one final glimpse before darkness overcame his vision.

It was a beast, that carried itself on four legs, like a lupine predator. It's eyes were both feral and demonic, yet cast in a brilliant, icy blue light. The fur looked like human hair, fine and straight, with supple waves of thick, pure brown and matted in spots with patches of dark red and crimson. The maw was long, the lips thin and dark, the teeth shining ivory yet oozed with thick, bubbling saliva the color of ichor drizzling over the edge of its mouth, dripping to the cavern floor. It was all that he glimpsed.

A moment later, he felt a coarse, mottled and wet tongue slather against his flesh, tasting what had foolishly wandered into its nest.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He felt the cold cavern floor against his cheek even before he opened his eyes. Cold and wet, but the air itself was warm and humid. It felt so thick that the dampness almost seemed to hang in the air, and made his skin glisten with moisture and perspiration. Arthur opened his eyes and immediately they stung. It was a dull burning that made him blink rapidly, trying to clear whatever grime had fallen into his eyes.

"-there was darkness and it has awakened. It has returned. And it will consume both the Heavens, and Earth and Hell below unless we join with them," a commanding, almost tremorous voice stated, the words echoing through the large, brightly lit cavern. A hue of flames, orange, yellow and red filled the chamber as Arthur slowly, cautiously, turned his head to the voice.

"You are a betrayer. You have unleashed the Adversaries forces and manipulated his cult to dig too deep. You awakened the darkness that was hidden and when you face the Accuser, you will be damned to eternal torment," a far more raspy, uneven voice retorted as Arthur realized it was the voice of the Latina woman that he had beheaded... or Latina demon. Whatever it was.

From the sound of it, they were having a disagreement. Arthur slowly opened his eyes again, suppressing the pain that burned in his eyes as a mixture of sweat and blood caused them to tear. If that wasn't bad enough, the smell of ozone and sulphur, thick and mingled with the humid, almost stifling heat of this chamber, simply added to the discomfort as he took in his surroundings and almost confirmed he had reached the light at the end of the tunnel.

That somewhere nearby was the Gate to Hell.

"In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. So God betrayed the darkness with the act of creation. And then war arose in Heaven and the Dragon, the Adversary and his angels rose up against God and were cast from Heaven into the Abyss. Another betrayal. Now the darkness has awakened on Earth, and I was the one who awakened it. What has happened before will come to pass again, in full circle. This is the way of the world. But few know this and of those that do, many resist against the tide. Yet I will not, I will manipulate the currents. I will not resist the current of fate and destiny. I will ride with it, and my reward shall be greater then anything ever attained by either the Creator or the Adversary," the powerful voice returned.

Arthur tried to focus through the haze, on the humanoid figure in the distance. Humanoid was the loosest term Arthur could think of using as his vision came into focus and saw the body was hidden by a canopy of dark flesh. Soon though he realized the reason, as the flesh soon outlined itself and he saw that the creature that was talking had six seperate wings, all colored in a sickly hue of dark brown, and covered in fine, tiny, microscopic feathers that seemed to be in a constant state of molting.

A thick, fleshy tail, moved and writhed in the air, never quite touching the ground and ending in a hardened fleshy spade at its tip that was smooth and flawless enough to perfectly reflect the light. It's legs were bare, and remarkably gaunt and thin, with loose folds of flesh rolled onto the joints and ankles, and each foot ending in five unnaturally long toes, tipped with disgustingly long nail like claws. It's back was turned to Arthur, so he could not see its face, but saw one arm, powerfully muscled, and clad in a fine shimmering armor that had the color of the blackest black. It looked like plates or shards of obsidian folded over each other like the scales of a reptile and forming an armor. The hand however was bare, and the fingers were replaced by thick, curved talon like claws.

And in those talons was the decapitated head of the woman he was having the conversation with.

"Satan freed us, yet you seek to enslave us to that which you know nothing of," the detached demoness head stated boldly.

"My dear, it is eminently practical to side with those who are of infinitely more power. The Adversary you serve so blindly was cast down to the Abyss for an eternity by the Creator and is preordained to defeat. Yet this very Creator who we rebelled against is but a fragment of the darkness that once enveloped all of existence. This Creator simply sheared off a shard of darkness and breathed life and light into it, giving birth to creation. One cannot resist such formidable power arrayed against us. If it was not to awaken now, sometime in the future it would have arose and we would have no option but to be destroyed. For existence was once darkness and to darkness it shall return once again. It is fate, our only chance is to join with it, and rule over the remnants of creation that remain."

"This darkness you speak of will consume you. If what you say is true then it has no reason to deal with a pathetic, despicable, creature as lowly as you. It will destroy you with but a thought for your efforts. Throwing yourself on the mercy of those so vast in power is akin to an bee begging the bear clemency by refusing to sting. If what you say is true, the predator will consume all of us, regardless of our demeanor and you are a fool if you think otherwise," the woman responded.

The six winged creature suddenly turned around, doing so with such speed that Arthur, intent on feigning unconsciousness, was caught unaware and before he could prostrate himself again, found a pair of nonhuman eyes fall directly upon his face. The creature had eyes that glowed the most miraculously golden hue, even if the rest of his body was a dark and twisted visage of what likely was once a Heavenly angel.

"I am in no need for excessive companionship my dear. And when the Ambassador arrives, I can only hope he will be pleased by this sacrifice I will offer him," the demon stated as he looked over and past Arthur, to the cold tunnels beyond. Arthur, without looking, realized that behind him was the vast cavern where the eldritch creature had nearly consumed him. For some reason, some how, it was being held at bay.

Or perhaps it was merely waiting.

The six winged demon pulled back its arm, as with horror, the bodyless demoness realized she was going to be hurled down the tunnel and delivered into the dark cavern where the dark creature was awakening. "You will be-," she started to cry out, when rather unceremoniously, he simply turned his hand upside down and dropped the detached head onto the floor, causing it to land face first.

At first, Arthur watched with perverse interest what was about to unfold, wondering if the demon was going to crush her head underfoot but soon realized he wasn't as that same clawed hand first went for what looked like a long, flat chopping blade of sickly greenish metal sheathed in a belt around the creatures waist. But for some reason, the hand lingered over the hilt of the sword, before then pausing. Instead a throaty chuckle escaped its lips, as he reached towards the side of the cavern and picked up a simple miners pick and gripped the comparatively tiny instrument in its massive hand.

"Goodbye Jetaita," the demon said almost casually, referring to the Latina woman by name. Arthur, in a revelation that made his stomach churn, realized that name sounded familiar. The miners pick came down, powered by a superhumanly strong arm, the steel blade almost effortlessly driving a hole into the womans skull and through her brain before just as casually, the demon lifted the pick up, her head still firmly stuck on the metal point.

Yet to Arthurs amazement, he could still see her lips moving, her eyes only half shut. She couldn't quite speak it seemed, but she was trying to unleash one final, futile taunt. Then, for just a moment, her beautiful dark eyes, so full and expressive, locked with his. For some reason, it made his entire body tingle, and shiver as subconsciously his body at the very least remembered that look, and what corresponded with those eyes. Arthur could barely recall the years he had spent in Hell, but his body was reacting, even now, with an unnaturally aroused response as their eyes met for one final time.

It last a fraction of a second, before the Demon simply hurled the miners pick, and the head planted on it, down the cold tunnel, into the darkness.

She was gone.

She had pulled him down into the depths of Hell. Stolen years of her life and used him and his body in perverse and twistedly cruel ways that he could barely fathom. She had manipulated him and drove him to such extremes that he had apparently tried to take his own life to forget the horrible memories that had haunted him. But all it gave him was a dose of inconvenient amnesia and this. Yet for some reason he felt sad to see her go.

A horrible truth was coming over him as he wondered opnely if the reason he was down here, in this situation, was because he truly deserved it for a life of wickedness that he could only remember in images and scattered memories.

He wanted to think on it, dwell on it. Figure out the truth, but he saw a great shadow cast over him as the demon with the glowing eyes turned and advanced upon the poor Arthur and smiled.

Slowly, Arthur looked up and saw that the Demon was standing between him and the only source of light in this cavern, that of the opening to the Hell itself. His six draconic leathery wings, covered in their thick dark and molting feathers were slowly spreading out, in a dramatic, sweeping fashion as he revealed himself completely to the prostrate mortal.

Arthur wished he could look away but he realized forces beyond his control were compelling him to look up from the ground, as his line of sight initially focused on his yellowed nailed feet slowly panned upwards, past the gaunt, disgusting and overfleshed legs, to his uncovered groin with its thick furred covering the base of its lewdly hanging phallus. Past paunched belly that pressed against the obsidian scaled armor that covered his widening torso that ended in broad shoulders and a powerfully muscled chest.

Up to his head, fixed upon a nearly squat neck that descended into his upturned shoulders. It's face was vaguely human, with cracked reddish skin burned to a bright crimson, with the brilliant golden eyes that almost seemed to glow with a pure fiery light, a thick head of curly black hair that fell down to his shoulders and most curiously, a golden crown seemingly fixed on the top of his head.

Arthur, against his will, was forced to look him straight in his eye as he spread his wings out fully, letting the mere mortal take in his full presence. "Ah... Arthur is it now?" the demon stated. "I am Astaroth. Prince of Hell. Lord of War. God of Sex," he boasted. "Undoubtedly, you have heard my conversation with your previous Master Jetaita," he said simply, referring to the Latina woman. "She induced mad lust into me, but I cannot be harried by her constant badgering which affords you the rare opportunity."

With that said, Astaroth, a cruel smile widening across his florid face, turned to his side and beckoned for someone Arthur hadn't noticed, to come closer to them. Arthur turned and immediately saw the same beast from moments before. The jackal like creature whose terrible baying had repelled the creature of darkness that pursued him only moments before. It wasn't a hallucination.

The jackal was tall, six feet at the shoulder, yet carried itself low like a lupine predator stalking its prey. Or perhaps reminescent of a jungle cat. The way it moved was almost feminine, exotic, almost unlike any single animal but a perfect blending of all of natures finest hunters. His body shivered as he remembered when the beast came upon him, its long narrow muzzle nuzzling his face, licking at his wounds, its hot breath on his face, almost soothing. He could remember sliding his hands up, feeling the jackal beasts thick, straight brown hair, realizing it almost felt like human hair. Soft and luxurious. And those icy blue eyes staring into his as the tip of its long mouth...

But he paused.

No... the jackal had merely saved his life. He had blacked out before he experienced anything like that.

Or...

Astaroths gleaming golden eyes saw the confusion in Arthur's face. "Arthur... if that is how you wish to be called," the Demon Prince said as the Jackal beast trotted up beside the Demon. Even at a six foot height at the shoulder, Astaroth towered to at least twice that height, dwarfing the four legged creature. "I see you remember more then you think appropriate. There is a simple explanation for that my mortal proxy." Astaroth stepped back a single long stride and nodded to the Jackal. "During your time enjoying our hospitality, Jetaita wasn't the only one among us you enjoyed relieving your lusts with."

A sense of revulsion suddenly seized Arthur's stomach, as he felt like he wanted to double over in disgust. There was a reason he was struck by the seemingly innocent and regal beauty of the Jackal... but it wasn't just innocent admiration. "Oh... don't be bashful now Arthur. You and her made terrific confidants, and companions... and... I believe you even gave her a name, didn't you Arthur. Or was it a title?"

"Ally," Arthur groaned weakly, sickenly, his hands gripping his stomach, somehow pulling up the name from the emptiness that was his memories. Somehow... he knew her name.

Upon the mentioning of the word, the Jackal beast murred softly, lowering her head, as if flustered or embarrassed. But Astaroth simply smiled. "I love reunions. And Arthur, do stop despairing. You have been blessed. If not for your dalliances with my hound here, you would have never been spared and never been drawn to us again."

Arthur grunted weakly. "Blessed in what way?" he asked.

"You heard what I stated, and believe me, it is all truth. The darkness will consume all that is created and our only chance is to collaborate, not resist. The fued that these eldritch beings have is not with us lowly demons, but with the Creator and what he created. If we join with the darkness, they will leave us the husks of creation that will survive in the wake of their passing. When all of creation is consumed by the dark, all that will be left, all that will keep the fire of light alive... is us."

And it was with that statement that Astaroths cruel smile grew impossibly wide across his face. "Here I am merely a Prince of a domain that remains in both the shadow of the Heavens and Earth. At the bottom of all creation. Yet when the end comes and darkness consumes all, only a husk of creation will be left and all that will remain will be I, who collaborated with them, who brought to them the opportunity to right what they feel has been wronged. And when the darkness returns to the void beyond, only I... and those I choose, will remain."

Astaroth panned his vision from Arthur to the Jackal beast, Ally and stroked her healthy mane of brown hair with is taloned hands. "Think of it, we will be all that remains. We can remake what remains as we wish. We will become Gods ourselves, Lords of what remains of all creation. And I will be the greatest among us. And you can join me Arthur. Ally convinced me that you are a worthy companion." A flash of perverse lust crossed his face. "The pleasures we would have..." Astaroth removed his hand from Ally's neck and turned to face Arthur squarely. "What say you mortal?"

Arthur took a deep breath, and chose his next words carefully.

"With all do respect to the station of Lord of War and God of Sex, as well as Demon Prince of Hell, I feel compelled to tell you Prince Astaroth that you and you alone are the greatest moron in all of history, and that your idiocy alone has almost crippled me because I am trying my hardest not to laugh out loud, because I'm honestly afraid, if I do start laughing, I'm going to suffocate to death because I'll be laughing so hard at how stupid you are."

The mortal then cleared his throat. "And your fat, so that means your a fat retard. Which is even more funny."

Astaroth was not laughing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Ally," Arthur groaned softly, his body still burning with pain even as he spoke. He raised his eyes up to the Jackal beasts, the blood trickling down his face from his pounding forehead, two distinct crimson streams of fluid framing his tired and increasingly... inhuman visage. Arthurs eyes were even starting to glow it seemed, flickering as they adjusted to the near darkness of the cavern as he stared right into the eyes of the four legged beast. His friend apparently. Or at the very least, a most perverse lover. "I might have lost my memory, but I know things about myself."

"Do shut up and die with dignity," Astaroth simply intoned, his cruel blade now drawn out, ready to strike down the impudent mortal and not desiring to hear some all too mortal sympathy.

But Arthur continued to speak. "When it comes to friends," he said, his memories, what little of them he had left, drifted back across the remnants of his previous life, and the all too visible memories as of late. He could only remember slivers of his life in the South Korean military, or in the mining companies he worked with afterwards, but even as he looked back onto the people he had met since he awakened into this second life, the Marshal, the Marines, even that female demoness that took the guise of a sultry Latina, he could find a common theme in all of them. "When it comes to lovers," he added, again his mind drifting to Anna and... what could have been. "I know one thing I admire. Strength."

His eyes turned upon Astaroth and he smiled grimly. "Ally, would you rather serve as his bitch for the next thousand years like you have the past thousand, or would you like to seize your own destiny for the first time in your life. You can either be some minor demon lords pet, or the Savior of Satan and his domain. Your choice."

Astaroth advanced, sensing the danger in Arthur's words and intended to silence him permanetly. His green steeled weapon rose as he advanced upon the puny human proxy, his shadow casting over the weary man well ahead of the tip of his blade. But then he noticed, to his side, his loyal Jackal-beast had disappeared.

Astaroth already knew the betrayal had occurred, her loyalty to him sundered with this mortals mere words, as he glanced over his shoulder and saw the great maw of sharp white teeth, inches long, open wide and reveal the hungry gullet dripping with saliva and blasting with the heat of her breath. Despite his own power, his age, and his many cursed blessings, even he recoiled as he heard the unexpected baying of his once loyal bitch, causing him to freeze in place for the fraction of a second needed for the Jackal-beast to strike.

It struck decisively as teeth pierced leathery flesh, and rending claws tore open great gashes into the Demon Princes side, ripping open skin and rupturing muscle underneath. The long lupine maw jerked away, his sword arm firmly in Ally's grasp as both tendon and sinew was snapped like steel cord, the tears audibly echoing through the soundless cavern as with one mighty jerk of the Jackal-beasts neck, Astaroth's sword arm was torn clean off the rest of the body.

And the mighty Astaroth roared in a manner that almost commanded awe and respect as his six great wings flared in a mix of pain and anguish and the towering demon toppled mightily to its knees. The sword clattered to the ground before Arthur, the handle of the fine weapon having skittered free from the now dead grasp of the demons severed arm.

Arthur reached out and seized the handle of the fine demonic blade and in an instant, he felt renewed. Invigorated. A sudden rush of power and virility seemed to flow from the weapon, inot his worn and near defeated body. And so, as Astaroth toppled down to his knees, Arthur rose to his feet. "It appears the sword is in the other hand," the once mere mortal said, twisting a popular turn of phrase into perhaps the most inopportune of moments. In any other setting it would had elicited groans, but here, in this moment, he had the power.

"My Ally..." Arthur then cooed softly, as the Jackal-beast raised its eerily intelligent brown eyes to her former lover and then with a snap of her head back, flicked the arm through the portal to Hell, as if sending a message of their impending arrival. "...Please come to me my love," Arthur further cooed as it seemed, with the rush of power he gained from seizing the demonic blade of Astaroth, he just as easily had washed away any of his civilized pretensions of taste and decency, and wanted to embrace the Jackal-beast once again.

She held her head proudly now, not slinking low as before as she gently strided over to Arthurs side. He had to reached up to stroke the lush hairlike fur on the top of her head. She murred deferently, lowering her long muzzle, the tip of it grazing against his face, and her long, rough and wet tongue flickering out across his face, tasting him again before a shivering rumbled through her body. In response, he only smiled lewdly at her, pressing his face against hers for a moment of perverse intimacy before turning his attention to Astaroth.

"Oh you're fucking amazing!" the still proud Demon Price growled, slowly rising back to his feet, the cruel wound of where his arm was literally ripped off still seeping blood and viscous fluids that streamed almost freely down his side. "God damn, I see what Jetaita and Ally saw in you now," he groaned weakly as he eyed the approach of Arthur, the green bladed sword in hand, warily. Astaroth breathed in deeply, his muscular chest gasping as he managed to stand slowly. "Fuck you need to be with me now. The things we could do. The three of us."

Arthur just nodded slowly, slowly lifting the sword, Astaroth's sword, above his own head. "Wait God damn it," Astaroth suddenly growled, as in a flash of anger and rage, his already inhumanly demonic features started to transform into a more cruel visage. Muscles bulged. Veins flared. Lines of definition and imperfection rose. Astaroth himself even seemed to grow in size, as both shadows of darkness and unnatural energies seemed to radiant outward from the wounded Prince. Even his voice, now of raw emotion, seemed to cause the cavern itself to tremble and as Arthur noticed, even his love Ally had taken a few steps backward cautiously. Astaroth was invoking an aura of fear and shock in all that would look upon him now. All, demon or angel, mortal or supernatural, would tremble before him when he took this form.

But Arthur simply grasped the sword, and dismissed it all as fanfare and empty bravado. He had the demons sword and had caused his most loyal pup to betray him at the moment of his plans fruition.

The sword flashed in a downward green arc and the other arm of Astaroth fell to the ground. And the Demon Prince roared again, only to have that cut short as Arthur simply spun about and with a horizontal strike, sliced clean through the powerful creatures inhuman legs, and leaving only a stumped torso in its place. And so, Astaroth fell before the mighty mortal proxy. And Astaroth roared no longer.

Instead he laughed.

A laugh complimented by hot tears and a raw arousal. One that Arthur could easily recognize rising from the disgusting creatures groin, and one Arthur though momentarily to sever before it grew. Most creatures weren't kinky enough to get aroused by having their limbs removed and their power and plans emasculated, but clearly Astaroth was an exception.

"God damn you Arthur. You fucking mastiff you. You fucking stud," Astaroth groaned, gritting his rows of razor sharp teeth through the pain as Arthur stood over him. "Are you going to kill me now you big fucking man! God, I wish I met you earlier. We'd of had so much fun you and I. Still can. Just... just drop the sword and we can rule what remains, all of existence, together."

Arthur cocked his head to the side. "This adversary. This darkness your bringing into our worlds. It will devour everything and leave only remnants of what once was in its wake yes?" Arthur asked, earnestly, while trying to avoid eye contact with... pretty much any part of Astaroth besides his eyes.

"Yes... and we can rebuild it. You and I and your bitch. We'll be Masters of all that is known and exists beyond the infinite darkness," Astaroth moaned, his voice still not filled with desperation, but still bargaining hard even at this late a stage.

"You still don't understand Astaroth. The reason you've been betrayed is because your a big fish in a small pond. Ally and I, we're going to be big fishes in the big pond. You're content with living in the shit that remains of the world, while we will be hailed as Saviors, and not just in Hell, but everywhere beyond. I can't think of anything more empowering or currying of favor then having all of those in power knowing you saved existence itself." Arthur then raised his blade and made one final slice, the deft stroke emasculating the fallen Prince. A sputtering geyser of blood put a fitting exclaimation point on the action, as Arthur stepped to the side casually and reached down, liberating the belt from the bloodied hips of Astaroth, only to be mildly surprised as the demon's bellowing laugh simply grew higher and louder.

Even the underlying wheezing of the monsters breath did nothing to mitigate his apparent exuberance at just how incredibly the tables had been so quickly turned on him by this mere mortal. And Arthur soon realized words wouldn't curb the demons apparent mood. "Ally. Fling this carcass back to Hell. When we go before your Master, I want his butchered body to preamble our arrival along with our success."

Dutifully loyal to her apparently new Commander, the massive Jackal like demon padded over to her former Master, still laughing gregariously at his predicament. He continued laughing, even as the demonic Beasts maw clamped on his chest, and her sharp white canines, inches long and wickedly sharp, punched through his leathery flesh and drew the dark ichor that was his blood.

"God Damn you Arthur!" Astaroth growled as he was pulled towards the portal. "God Damn you to the deepest Abyss. You've betrayed me and crippled me and emasculated me. My God your fucking amazing." He groaned again, the pain, if only briefly, giving him pause. "You fucking pissant mortal. God may have made you in his image, but you were made in mine. We're going to meet again, and when we do I'm going to break you to your knees and you'll serve me. I'll crush that spirit within you, and I'll take your mind and your body and your soul and it'll serve me." More blooded seemed to spurt from his groin as the sheer thought of it seemed to arouse his passions. "God damn, we will sow so much heavenly destruction with you as my slave. When I-."

Ally jerked her head to the portal and let go of the still yammering carcass with her jaws, letting it fly through the fiery event horizon of the fissure to Hell. And he was gone.

Arthur turned to the portal finally, not wanting to see him go as he sheathed his new sword to his hips. The cavern was hot, and already the sweat made his almost nude body glisten in the shadowy darkness of the Hellish gateway. His eyes drifted to Ally, the demonic Jackal like creature, which carried herself like a predatory cat. Of course, to him, she was no beast. There was intelligence behind those eyes. Not just human, but something more. He knew, instinctively how long she had toiled under the service of those so undeserving and so unloving and unappreciate of her loyal efforts.

All it took was a few acts of kindness to turn her head. To bring her into his line of thinking. Arthur hadn't thought of the finer details, but Astaroth had alluded to enough, as had Ally herself simply with how she carried herself in his presence. He saw the emotional crack in Astaroth's relationship with her and ruthlessly exploited it and this was the pay off. But his work wasn't done.

Ally let out a plaintive murr.

"I know you want to go back, but we have one more battle to deal with," Arthur stated, as he realized his pounding headache was rapidly fading, and the pain that had plagued his body from the ordeals of these past few days was already a memory. Whether it was the possessoin of the sword, or the proximity to the portal itself, or a combination of them both that was reinvigorating him, he didn't know. "If Astaroth is correct, this Ambassador will call on his allies or whatever and consume this world and your home too."

Reading her bestial face, he kneeled low, Astaroth's sword firmly in his grasp and feeling completely rejuvenated just from gripping the unholy weapon. He reached out his free hand, sliding his fingers over the furred brow of the demonic jackal, stroking her face like he would brush the hair over a cute girls ear. "This time tomorrow, we will either be dead, or Saviors of the Underworld," he said with a big grin, as his bestial partner lapped her rough and coarse wet tongue across his face rapidly.

He didn't recoil from her almost overwhelmingly heavy exhalations, as his face practically dripped with her thickly viscous spittle as she flickered her tongue across his face affectionately until they dropped off the edges of his face in long strands.

The cavern trembled as thin streams of fine powder seemed to lightly drift from a thousand near invisible cracks in the cavern ceiling. He glanced up briefly, and then lowered his eyes back to her, gripping a thick tuft of her furry neck in his hands before his gaze drifted towards the encroaching darkness. He didn't say any final words as he flexed his arm and pulled himself up and over her neckline, mounting the beast and leaning low and forward along her powerful mane. His other hand gripped his blade, Astaroth's cleaving sword, in his fingers and dug a heel into the side of Ally's rear haunches, signaling for her to spur forward into the advancing darkness.