Demon Gate: Beyond the 9th Circle: The Rapture Was Just The Beginning. (9 page)

The sun had barely started to peek over
the low hills to the east when a weak and
unidentifiable sound shattered the eternal quiet
that had settled over the city in the wake of Hell’s
attack.

Spencer and Vince had been holed up in
the Stratosphere Tower for three days and their
supplies were starting to dwindle. Spencer was
slipping deeper and deeper into hopelessness.
How were they expected to survive? Was there
anybody else or were they on their own? Spencer
stood overlooking the vacant city 1,100 feet
below. He stared down toward the ground, he
was contemplating jumping from the tower when
Vince approached, a large machine gun in his
hands.

Vince asked.
“I don’t see any other option, everybody
else is dead, why not us?”
“You don’t know that. There could still
be someone else,” Vince declared.
“WHERE?” Spencer shouted, he didn’t
give a damn if the armies of hell heard him. “I’ve
crossed the entire damn continent and only found
three other people and every last one of them is
DEAD! Eric, Lester.” He paused, “Even
Gretchen. God, Gretchen, I left her for dead
when I ran like a coward.”
Spencer turned to walk away when Vince
corrected him.
“You’re forgetting about one more.”
“What?” Spencer demanded.
“You found me,” Vince explained. “I
would have died if you hadn’t come along.”
Spencer stood there, and let the thought
set in; as he did peace bubbled to the surface
before Spencer walked back to Vince and looked
him in the eye. “Thank you.” Spencer said.
“Does that mean you’ll stick around?”
Vince asked.
Spencer nodded. “I don’t know how
much longer we have left on this rock, nor if
there’s a future worth waiting for. So I’ll stick
around for now, but when the time comes I will
do it, and take as many of them with me as I
can.” Spencer promised.
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Vince asked.
“I was ready to jump to my death; I was
kind of hoping you had the plan.” Spencer
admitted.
“How about duck?”
Vince nodded at something behind
Spencer, who then turned to see a winged demon
diving at the pair. Spencer hit the deck as bullets
began flying and the demon retreated to the
south.
“You probably didn’t kill him,” Spencer
observed a he got back to his feet.
“Yeah, probably.” Vince said. “But it was
either shoot at it or be ripped to shreds.”
Spencer and Vince rushed the edge of the
tower to see where the demon was going. The
fleeing demon was heading for a group of a
dozen or so demons.
“Go get me the sniper rifle. The big one,”
Spencer demanded, Vince left and soon returned
with a large sniper rifle, which Spencer quickly
loaded and aimed, set up and pointed at the
retreating demon. Spencer stopped himself from
pulling the trigger when he saw something on the
roof of a building a couple thousand feet down
the Las Vegas strip, south of Spencer’s position.
Six hive queens leading the charge!
“We are in some serious crap,” Spencer
said peering though the scope that was pointed
down towards the ground. Vince looked over the
edge of the tower.
“You’re not kidding,” Vince declared as
he saw demons arriving in droves, there must
have been tens of thousands.
“Do you think they’ll try to climb up the
tower?” Spencer asked as he continued to eyeball
the hive queens.
The tower shook from an impact near the
base.
“I wish.” Vince commented, “I think
they’re just going to knock it down.”
Vince let his comment hang in the air allowing
the tension to build.
“What are you thinking?”
Spencer paused for a second with the
head of a hive queen in his cross hairs, his finger
patiently wrapped across the trigger.
“How many can we take out before it all
hits the fan?” Spencer asked then squeezed the
trigger.
A loud explosion ripped through the air
like a bolt of lighting, striking the head of a
queen and opened a gaping hole in the black
leather of the horned head. The body dropped to
the ground and the remaining five turned their
wrath towards the origin of the shot. The tower
faintly shook again as the demons struck the
tower’s base again.
Spencer reloaded the rifle and took aim at
a second hive queen. Pulling the trigger, a second
headless body dropped to the ground. Then a
third queen fell to Spencer’s sniper rifle. Spencer
reloaded in hopes of a fourth kill shot, but the
three remaining queens had pinpointed Spencer
and were on the move jumping from building top
to building top evading him and directing their
hordes straight at him.
Spencer caught one in his crosshairs and
pulled the trigger, the shot ripped though the air,
but his target moved out of the path of the bullet
at the last instant.
“Damn it, I missed,” Spencer mourned
before trying to reload. “These damn things are
getting a little too fast.”
The three remaining demon queens were
rapidly closing the fifteen hundred feet to the
base of the tower and only had three hundred feet
to go when Spencer finished reloading the sniper
rifle
Taking careful aim he caught a queen in
his scope, and this time there was no escape.
Pulling the trigger the queen’s head vanished in a
puff of blood and gore and the body dropped to
the ground. The two remaining queens leapt from
the building at a distance of three hundred feet.
Their path would carry them several hundred feet
up the tower, it wouldn’t be enough to land on
top, but it didn’t have to be, their claws dug into
the side of the tower as they raced to the summit.
The two remaining queens would reach the top of
the Stratosphere Tower in seconds and Spencer
knew it.
He tossed the grizzly aside and went for a
machine gun sitting nearby, racking the weapon
he made ready to fight a battle he did not expect
to win.
“I don’t mean to be a downer, but we
have to take off their heads. How are we going to
do it with these?” Vince asked.
Spencer looked for the sword he had kept
from the battle site outside Shreveport Louisiana
just a few days earlier but it was too late, the
queens reached the top and leaped over the
restraining railing as they landed atop the tower.
As they unsheathed their swords, they
charged at Vince and Spencer who responded
with a high rate of gunfire from their M249
machine guns. These at least slowed the approach
of the queens.
“Where’s the sword?” Spencer shouted.
“What sword?” Vince asked.
One of the queens had finally succumbed
to the gunfire and dropped her sword. Spencer
had depleted his clip, so he resorted to using the
gun as a blunt weapon and clubbed the other
queen before reaching down and grabbing the
dropped sword.
The queen that had dropped the sword
was stunned, but still made the effort to shriek,
enraged that a mortal had stolen her sword. The
blade seemed to turn against Spencer and swung
at him despite being in his hand. Vince had
finally exhausted his clip and quickly grabbed
new ammo in shaking hands. The sword in
Spencer’s hand began slicing the air wildly of its
own volition.
“Watch it, Spencer.” Vince chided as he
finished reloading. The queen tried to call the
sword back, but Spencer wouldn’t let it go. She
shrieked again, her shriek seemed to call the
sword to her. Spencer noticed the other queen
was coming for him.
“Vince, cover me, I’ve got a plan.”
Vince opened fire on the attacking queen
and Spencer released the sword, as he did he
drew his Glock, took aim and fired a single round
at the other queen aiming right for her eye. The
gunshot served only as a momentary distraction,
but it worked. The queen was not able to catch
the sword and it plunged into her chest. Spencer
ignored the stunned queen and approached the
wounded queen.
“Let me get that for you,” Spencer offered
indignantly then pulled the sword from her chest
and lowered the blade to the queen’s neck and
sliced a swift, brutal cut that severed the black
neck, her head rolled away.
The remaining queen had regained
enough of her strength that she retreated. Seeing
that five other queens had been killed and their
assailants were unscathed, it was either run or
die. Spencer searched for the grizzly, he was
going to finish off the sixth queen, but it was
nowhere to be seen.
Vince went to the edge to check on the
demons that were trying to knock the tower
down, their efforts were still ongoing, but the
impacts were far less substantial. They seem to
have been distracted by the death of so many of
their leaders.
Spencer heard what sounded like a gun
shot ripping through the air and went to the edge
of the tower to try to identify where the shot
came from. In the distance he saw what looked
like a large military truck, a Hummer sitting
parked as though it were ready to head north up
the Las Vegas strip.
“Vince, it’s time to leave,” Spencer
suggested as he gathered up the machine gun and
strapped the new sword across his back then he
and Vince quickly reloaded their M249’s before
heading out. “There might be other survivors.”
Vince and Spencer headed back into the
tower.
“How are we going to get down? There’s
no power,” Vince objected.
“Maybe there’s an emergency evacuation
stairwell,” Spencer said optimistically.
Spencer and Vince headed into the tower and
quickly did find an emergency evacuation
stairwell and thundered down the hundreds of
steps.
Half way down Vince asked an obvious
question. “Aren’t we getting out of the frying pan
and into the fire?”
“If we stay we’re dead any way.” Spencer
replied. “Best to get out while we can.”
The bottom steps were coming into view
and the door to the outside loomed ahead.
Spencer and Vince made ready for an onslaught
that would likely lead to their deaths, but after
smashing through the door they saw that most of
the demon army had fled. A small handful still
remained, they quickly converged on the door
way that Spencer and Vince just emerged from
and were cut down by machine gun fire.
Vince looked around. “There are no
queens around,” Vince observed.
“We did just kill five of their queens,
maybe the sixth split while she had a chance.”
Spencer reminded.
“Leaving her soldiers to die?” Vince
questioned.
“No honor among thieves…or demons for
that matter.”
“Maybe they have to have a queen in
close proximity to withstand our weapons.”
Vince surmised.
“Maybe,” Spencer said half-heartedly, he
was focusing on getting out alive. Spencer
headed for the loading dock where he had left his
GTO and sadly found it had sustained significant
damage.
Spencer dropped the M249 in the back
seat and dropped into the driver’s seat, Vince
waited outside the driver side door as Spencer put
the key into the ignition and turned. The car
started but it started to whine.
“Get in; we have to leave, NOW!”
Spencer urged as Vince got into the passenger
seat. “My car isn’t going to last much longer,
those damn demons must have done something to
her.”
As they pulled out of the loading dock,
Vince poked the barrel of the large machine gun
out the window to deal with any demons that
would risk an attack. Spencer turned onto the Las
Vegas strip and headed north to where Spencer
expected to see the Hummer. Passing the
pawnshop they raided the previous day, they
realized the Hummer was no where in sight.
“Where the hell did they go?” Spencer
asked.
“There!” Vince shouted when he caught
the sound of a large truck. Spencer turned his
head to the right to see a desert camouflage
Hummer with a large weapon on top. The
Hummer disappeared too quickly to see the
driver so Spencer sped to the next street and
turned right hoping to catch the driver’s attention
but the Hummer passed before Spencer came
anywhere near it. It was too late, the Hummer
was a good thirty yards away and the GTO was
starting to smoke.
“We’ll never catch them now.” Spencer
said.
“Like hell.” Vince said as he racked the
M249 and fired several shots at the buildings
ahead of the Hummer. The military vehicle
rocked to a dead stop and a single person climbed
out, an M-16 assault rifle in hand. It was a
woman; her red hair flowed in the breeze as she
high ported the barrel of her weapon. It was
Gretchen!
“You!” the woman shouted when she
realized who she was looking at. “I should leave
you here to die!”
“Gretchen?” Spencer asked in relieved
awe.
“You leave me in New Mexico, and I’m
alone for three days surrounded by Hell. That’s
all you can say?” Gretchen shouted.
Vince looked at Gretchen, then back to
Spencer. “You were right.” Vince commented,
and then looked back.
“Look you guys, we have to get the hell
out of here. We took out five queens: one
escaped and took her army with her. More are
sure to come.” Vince explained.
“You got other weapons?” Gretchen
asked.
“Lots of them.” Vince assured. “But our
car died.”
Spencer was still in shock that Gretchen was still
alive, but made the effort to come back to reality.
“There’s no time to fix it. We’ll load your
gear and get moving.”
Gretchen turned around and drove back to
the GTO to unload. Her jaw about his the ground
when she saw the guns loaded onto a trailer that
Spencer towed behind the GTO.
“You weren’t kidding,” Gretchen
commented.
Spencer and Vince unhitched the trailer
and hitched it onto the Hummer, then started
moving the contents of the GTO onto the trailer.
As they finished loading the last of the weapons
and supplies, a demon dropped down from the
roof of an apartment complex. Spencer reached
for his M249 and fired at the demon who
dropped, stunned.
“He’s not dead, Spencer,” Vince
observed.
“Damn it, his queen must still be nearby,”
Spencer guessed.
“Too late, we’re getting the hell out of
here,” Gretchen said and reluctantly directed
Spencer to the driver’s seat as she headed for the
gun turret on top of the military vehicle, Vince
got into the front passenger seat, and the
Hummer sped away. Spencer glanced into the
mirror and saw that the one demon was joined by
several hundred demons.
“Gretchen, if you’re going to use that gun
it had better be now!” Spencer shouted.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep your shirt on,”
Gretchen griped as she primed the 50 caliber
Gatling gun. A single pull of the trigger and the
multiple barrels started to turn and spew massive
shells toward the oncoming demons.
“They’re still coming, can’t you go any
faster?” Gretchen shouted while she held the
trigger down.
“Vince, how well do you know Las
Vegas?” Spencer asked.
“What do you want to know?” Vince
replied.
“Where’s the nearest road out of here?”
“I-15, turn left on Washington Avenue,”
Vince directed and Spencer took a hard left as