My radio had only been turned back on for a few seconds when I received, “Was that Sam?” from Julie. “I mean, visibility is garbage and the wind keeps moving the fog around, and it took me a while to find you in all the debris, but…Sam?”
“Yeah.” I was limping along as fast as possible, Abomination in hand, just waiting for something to pop out of the fog. “It was Sam.”
“But Sam’s gone.”
“We got reinforcements.”
There was a pause as Julie took a deep breath. “I thought I’d lost you for a minute there. I…”
“Me too.”
The rest went without saying. Julie didn’t have time to get emotional. This was business. “Hang on. This stuff is pissing me off. I’m switching rifles…Milo and Nelson got most of the innocents away from the breech. Earl’s got nearly everyone boarded up on the main floor. They’re holding the demons in the lobby. There were a few other teams out, but there’s nobody close to you.”
“Tell Skippy to warm up the chopper. I’m on my way to meet you. I’ve got a plan.”
I’d sliced my forehead open, but my armor had kept me from getting cut in too many places. However, I’d whacked myself really hard in several spots during the ride down. I’d pulled muscles and wouldn’t have been surprised if there were a few bones cracked. There wasn’t any part of me that wasn’t hurting, but there weren’t any bones sticking out and nothing was squirting blood, so I could do this. It was weird, though, I felt stronger than I probably should have. Either I was in shock and working through the pain or there had been something else to Sam’s help than just the memories from my brother.
Hang in there, Mosh. I’m coming.
“Hold still,” Julie ordered. I froze in place. All I could see around me was the wretched churning fog. There was a solid THWACK ten feet in front of me. Something hit the ground. “Got it. You can keep going now.”
I found the body of one of the warrior demons just ahead. Julie had shot it through the vulnerable juncture of neck to body. Steaming goo had sprayed everywhere. It was still twitching as I went around it. “You on thermal?”
“Sure am. Told you I was switching rifles. When the fog rolls around it’s the only way I can see.” Anything that emitted body heat would positively glow in this cold mess, and these demons always seemed feverishly hot. “The wind keeps changing, so this might get tricky. There’s an external stairwell to your left.” I couldn’t see a damn thing. “Keep turning. Turning…Okay. Head that way. I’ll cover you. The garden’s crawling with monsters.”
I set out with a sort of hopping, hobbling jog. The demons were shrieking and clicking at each other. There was a trumpetlike bellow from one of the big acid throwers. “They know you’re there. There’s more coming.” It took a moment for her bullet to arrive. THWACK. There was a gurgling noise as another creature choked to death on its own blood. THWACK. “Two down, but they’re surrounding you. Hurry.”
Hurry was a relative term when all you could feel from one foot was lightning bolts whenever it touched ground, but I ran like everyone’s lives depended on it.
“Monsters on your right. Two. Don’t have a shot.”
I turned and lifted Abomination. The rapidly moving fog was so wet that rather than raining, water just accumulated out of the air and soaked you. Gusts were like being smacked with a damp towel. The water picked up the blood and ran off me in pink rivulets. The mist swirled. I was ready. The instant a bit of orange broke the fog I shot it to death. Its companion pushed by, only to have a pile of silver rip through its thorax, spilling it in a wet heap.
“Clear. There was a tree in the way. Didn’t have an angle.” THWACK. “That time I did.” Julie was an absolutely lethal shot. “Hit the deck!” I did exactly as she said, diving forward and landing on the soft grass. Several spines passed through the air where I’d been standing. There was a series of loud impacts as Julie opened up on them. “They’re down. Move.”
I got up and ran. Blood kept running into my eyes. It turned the fog red, then pink as I blinked it away, then clear. Repeat every few seconds. I vaulted a low iron fence. Hitting the ground hurt so bad it nearly made my legs buckle. The wall of the hotel came into view. I was right under Julie. She must not have realized she was still transmitting. “Edward, hold onto my belt. I’ve got to lean over to see. Don’t let me fall.” I had a sudden vision of Julie toppling over the edge of a twenty-story building while trying to keep the demons off my back. There was a sudden impact off to the side and my heart jumped into my throat, but it was only another monster catching a .308 round right through the top of its bulbous skull. “Door should be straight ahead of you. Two dozen monsters coming your way.”
There was the door. I tried the handle but it was locked. It was a fire exit. Of course it was locked. It opened outward so I couldn’t kick it. I didn’t have any breaching rounds, so being really hopeful that I wouldn’t kill myself with a ricochet, I stuck Abomination’s muzzle next to the frame and blasted the lock into shrapnel. There was enough metal still engaged that it still wouldn’t open. So I overreacted and jerked the trigger twice more. That did the trick, but a chunk of metal ripped a tear in my armored sleeve and drew more blood. The movies always made it look so easy.
“Going in,” I said as Julie killed a few more of the demons chasing me. The interior of the fire-escape stairwell was nothing but plain concrete walls and metal stairs. I looked up. They seemed to go up forever.
“Climb fast. Ed, get ready to toss that black backpack over the side…Yes. That one. Careful. It’ll go off on impact…Yes, boom…Yes, it is heavy…Owen, climb really fast.”
“Crap.” Each step felt like taking a hammer to my foot as I put my weight down, but it sounded like Julie was throwing down something nasty, so I gritted my teeth and hauled ass up the stairs. Behind me, bullets fell like rain as Julie kept the monsters off the door. “Second floor.” Pain. Pain. Son of a bitch. Pain. Two steps at a time. Not fast enough. Three steps at a time. “Third floor!”
“Reloading,” Julie said. “Keep going, Owen.”
My leg hurt so bad I could taste it. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. One of the bomb nuts made it out of chemicals from the nail salon.”
There was a crash below me as one of the demons thrashed its way through the broken door. “Fourth floor,” I gasped.
“Let it go, Ed. Ahhhh!” Julie screamed. “Not me! The bag! The bag! Drop the bag. Hold onto me!”
“You okay?”
“Fine. Orcs can be so literal sometimes.”
I was still climbing when the improvised explosive device hit amid the demons crowding their way against the entrance. The boom wasn’t as big as I’d expected, either that or I was so frazzled that my system just wasn’t registering concussions anymore, but a look over the railing showed me that the bottom floor had been sprayed with colorful blood and entrails. A foul smoke was drifting up the stairwell. The chemical stink of acetone burned my eyes as it hit, but nothing else was trying to get through the door. “Clear?”
“For a minute. They’re milling around.”
“Who made that one?” I asked as I resumed climbing. Talking kept my mind focused on something other than my foot, which felt like it was so swollen that I was expecting my boot to pop open.
“Cooper, Lee, or Milo. I’m not sure. I think those three are having a competition to see who can build the most dangerous thing out of household chemicals.”
There was a fierce rumble. The hotel shook. Dust fell down the stairwell. “What was that?”
“Damn! Half the conference center just blew up. It was the overlook area where the demons broke in. That was huge. I think Milo just took the lead.”
“Right on.” Getting those particular pyromaniacs together was like a Discovery Channel show gone horribly wrong. The Mythbusters had nothing on our guys.
“I’m sending a couple of the men down to meet you. Skippy’s prepping the chopper. I hope you know what you’re doing, Owen.”
Not really. “Sure do. Don’t worry.” I thought about telling her about the baby, but quickly dismissed that thought. We needed to concentrate on not getting killed first, then talk about the future. Now I could understand why Earl hadn’t said anything. Normally it was the woman that knew about this sort of thing first. This was supposed to be happy news, not hey, we’re trapped in a nightmare dimension surrounded by demons and a nightmare creature that’s going to swallow our souls, but you’re pregnant! Yay! This sucked. Keep climbing. Keep your head in the game, Owen. I had to focus on the task at hand. Not my stupid foot, not fatherhood, but focus on beating the Nachtmar.
Beating him required getting his attention first. “I’ve got to talk to Earl.” I toggled through the channels and found the main band. It was chaos.
“Holding on two, but Kantrowitz is down.”
“Demons are stalled at the escalators. I don’t know who, but somebody’s flanked them.”
“There’s fifty of them at the conference side entrance. We can’t hold them. Falling back.”
“No, damn it. Belay that. This is Nate Shackleford. I’ll hold that side. We fail here and Russians will be stuck in the open. Don’t you dare move!” I’d never heard Nate so fired up before. He was a Shackleford after all. “Haights on me. Hold this fucking line until everyone is in!”
Every second counted. I had to get the Nachtmar’s attention away from the others, but if he knew what I was planning, he’d take me out before I was in position. I had to wait. My chest hurt. I could barely breathe, but I kept taking the steps three at a time. Abomination banged back on its sling against my back as I used my hands to pull myself up the railing. I listened to the radio chatter for several awful minutes. The world’s Hunters were taking a beating.
“We’ve got some of those acid-tank bastards coming through the hole.” Nate was shouting into his microphone. “Gregorius, I need more ammo for that fifty-cal.”
“Hang on, Shackleford. Omaha Stakes on the way to back you up. Shit! They’re coming through th—” Static.
The Hunters were losing.