Chapter 7

They entered the tunnel in the order of Hank, Ed, Irene, and Angie. Irene kept a watch on the chamber at the foot of the tunnel and, at the same time, the tunnel behind them to keep a demon from slipping up behind them. This was frazzling her nerves, and she was showing the strain. Ed noticed this and told her to worry about the tunnel behind them: even six bats were no match for their shotguns.

That was quite a relief for Irene and she visibly relaxed when she followed Ed’s instructions. They continued down the twisting and turning tunnel with Irene carefully monitoring the tunnel behind them. Uh-oh, something large had just started to register on the aura detector, but it was still back up at the surface. In fact, the demon on the surface was acting strangely. It moved forward about 20-30 feet and stopped, as if it were resting. Could that be a Sho-Sho Mamu bringing food to the chamber?

That would be very unusual, since those demons seemed to eat on the spot what they killed. Irene told Ed what she saw and what she suspected, so there was a change in plans. Ed wanted them to hurry to the chamber to kill the bats before the Sho-Sho Mamu could get there. Then they would ambush the Sho-Sho Mamu when it came into the chamber. Everybody agreed to the plan, and they broke into a trot to get to the end of the tunnel as soon as possible.

The presumed Sho-Sho Mamu on the surface still had not reached the tunnel, so they had a little bit of grace in the time that they had to work on the bats. Nevertheless, care was taken when they got to the flat apron in front of the door to make sure that they were completely ready when they finally faced the bats inside the chamber. This time, they were in luck: the chamber was relatively long and narrow, so shooting for the length of the chamber would surely give the HE time to arm itself. That was bound to be a help.

They got set up and Ed looked inside the door. He nearly fainted at what he saw! Those were not bats in there, they were junior-size Sho-Sho Mamus! He jumped back and was lucky not to be seen. He gave a quick description on what he had seen, and they prepared to fight. This time, they were all going to start shooting as soon as they had a target. There was simply no time for anything fancy: they had to eliminate those six young demons before their mother returned.

Ed stepped through the door and opened fire with his HE. The first round hit a demon and exploded. The creature’s head disappeared in a cloud of mostly orange blood. That had not settled before he fired the next round. This one hit the demon in the neck and exploded, separating the demon’s head from its body. By now, the rest of the team was through the door and shooting buckshot at the remaining demons. They were all being hit by buckshot, but none were dying. At last, it seemed to dawn on the demons that their only chance for survival was to attack.

Four demons were rushing at the team with almost unbelievable speed, and the team was shooting back with equal determination, all but Ed. The demons were now too close to be stopped by HE because they were too close to give the HE time to arm itself. The demons were also moving too fast for Ed to have time to change to the buckshot that he had in another drum. For practical purposes, Ed was out of the fight. All he could do was stand there and watch his teammates try to kill the remaining demons. Ed realized at that moment that he was a piss-poor combat leader. Hank would be much better at the job, and Ed planned to make that official as soon as they got back to the surface.

Ed was actually the only one injured during the fight. When the young Sho-Sho Mamu got close enough, the buckshot did its job. Unfortunately for Ed, one of the demons reached out a paw in desperation and managed to scratch Ed on the wrist as it died. Well, there was no time to worry about that slight injury at this time because Mama was headed their way, and she would be spoiling for a fight the moment she realized what had happened to her offspring. They had to get ready for her arrival, and they had to do it now!

Irene checked her aura detector and almost shouted, “The adult is almost here. Everybody get ready to fight!”

Based on the previous experience with the young demons, Ed sent everybody else to one side of the room to start shooting as soon as the adult demon showed her head in the doorway. Meanwhile, he ran to the opposite end of the room to give his HE enough time in flight to arm itself. He grabbed two rounds of HE from his pocket and loaded them into the drum to replace the two spent shells that he had used only minutes ago. He worked fast enough so that he was ready when the adult Sho-Sho Mamu arrived.

She halted when she saw what had happened to her young. She had dropped a large black bear at the doorway and rared back on her hind legs to emit a tremendous roar that sounded very much like the horn on a large semi. If he needed it, which he didn’t, that roar would have stirred Ed into action. As soon as the adult demon stood on her hind legs, Ed started shooting. He poured all 10 rounds of HE into her belly on full automatic firing rate. That took only two seconds before the first load of buckshot went downrange with a completely different sound that told him to release the trigger.

The distance was enough so that every HE round was armed when it hit, and it exploded with a very satisfying bang and splash of flesh and blood. Anyway, the 10 rounds of HE were enough to cut the demon in half and the two pieces fell in opposite directions. The amazing thing was that the creature was not yet dead, but the buckshot pellets that were being fired from four shotguns fixed that problem.

The demon was hit by the buckshot from 61 shells, and that was over 600 pellets! Its flesh was riddled and peeled away from the bone. That was when they were able to see that the demon had overlapping ribs that provided so much protection for its body. No wonder the bullets slowed down so much when they hit the ribcage.

Irene quickly checked her aura detector and verified that there were no other demons around to provide an immediate threat. It was with considerable relief that the team returned to the surface. Ed and Angie reported in, and that was when Ed tried to resign as combat leader of the team. He was loudly voted down by the other three team members. Their argument was that he was doing a fine job. Hell, they were all still alive, weren’t they? They were killing demons, weren’t they? Dammit, what else did he want to prove that he was doing a good job? It was obvious that he was not going to win the argument, so Ed dropped the subject.

It was time for lunch and they needed a break. They all had a full size steak dinner to celebrate their killing of so many Sho-Sho Mamus in one morning. However, Irene did bring up the point that the six young ones they killed had to have been born after the mother arrived on this side of the dimensional wall. That had to mean that the pups matured very quickly, and was there a chance that there was another pregnant Sho-Sho Mamu running around loose?

If so, then the Earth was in a shit-pot full of trouble if the offspring of that demon reached maturity and began breeding before they could be killed. The Sho-Sho Mamu was the worst of the demons that they knew about, but the others would be bad enough, and they still did not know what to think about the skeletons produced by the ghosts. Dammit, that portal had to be sealed before another pregnant demon managed to get through. Furthermore, if two demons mated on this side of the dimensional wall, only God knew how they could be contained.

The situation was bad enough before, but now it was proving to be critical. Ed had to make his afternoon conference call and convince the power brokers that the whole world was facing a kind of Armageddon. Hell, maybe Mason Running Bear had been the anti-Christ and the plot had worked! It was time for crucial decisions, and they had better be the right ones! That was enough to shake everybody loose from the dinner table and back to work. They headed for the hotel where Ed could set up his conference call.

Back at the hotel, Ed worked on his conference call and what he planned to say. Angie worked on her next article calling for more public support of the anti-demon effort. Irene worked on her aura detector to try to improve its sensitivity.