Chapter 9

The briefings and the charts, all the various documents and maps they had shown me could not have relayed the fact that going through the damnable gateway was like filling your stomach with bricks and sand, before violently vomiting everything through your nose. My head felt like it had already been donated to science and then returned as if it hadn't been found useful at all.

I looked around and saw I was in the same chamber, only the pond, the gateway, was curiously enough placed on the ceiling. Everything else seemed exactly the same. I picked up my shotgun and checked my ammo. I also checked the 'device'. It was still strapped on my back, tight and snug as a baby on a back pouch. On the outside the 'device' looked just like a stick pony toy. The difference being the stick was made of an intricate, super-light alloy, and the head, the pony bit, was like an enlarged, stylized knight's chess piece made of some kind of crystal, among other more exotic materials.

There was no one around the chamber. I half-expected it to be crawling with demons, with Bureau men fighting at close quarters. Like, face-to-face close. At least I expected someone to be guarding the gateway. But there was just me in there. I could hear faint sounds from the outside, but it didn't sound like the firefight I'd just left behind, but rather more like a murmur, or perhaps kids whining. As I was about to make my way out and find Eileen, I saw a blueish, translucent form very similar to what John had looked like.

Age-old human instincts and fake memories of a lifetime of running from the cops would have made me take a few steps back and start running away from a ghost, which was universally considered scary, abnormal, and potentially hazardous for one's sanity. Instead, I just lay there looking almost apathetic as I saw the unmistakable form of Eileen pass through the walls. She looked pissed, and quite incorporeal, as in, made of thin blue air.

"What the hell took you so long?" she shouted and grabbed me by the wrist. Interestingly enough, she actually pulled me through the wall, and while I saw very tiny amounts of matter flash through my eyes in just a split second, I hadn't realised she could do that. I was still looking like I had wet myself when I came over to the other side. Immortal or not, literally going through a brick wall was something I hadn't gotten used to, and did not intend to anyway.

A pungent, sick smell with the distinct aroma of sulphur attacked my senses. While I grimaced at the almost insufferable odor, I turned my head around and I saw. And then hopelessness grew inside me like beer foam. Just a glimpse, and it made me want to just have a smoke and some idle talk before lying down and letting everything around me go up in flames. It made me think that perhaps that plaque outside the gateway room actually meant 'abandon hope all ye who enter here'. Because it was a certainly fitting thing to say about that place.

Legions, not hordes or multitudes, but innumerable armies were amassing in front of us, marching slowly but surely in perfectly ordered rows, their flaming scimitars swaying with each step. Great swarms of flying demons circled overhead, monstrously giant things that seemed like locusts made of bone, their cries echoing the agony they would inflict. It was like watching Dante's Inferno remade into an epic action movie, something that spelled disaster in so many ways.

The sky wasn't the black night sky I'd left behind, but a sickly orange red that belonged to some alien atmosphere or the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. It seemed both scenarios were a reasonable outcome if we failed here. Which was a very real possibility, even if I applied some very creative math on top of certain unavailable power multipliers.

I could see the men and women of the Normal Bureau standing their ground. There weren't more than a few hundred at most, nothing but a drop compared to the ocean tide that was about to consume us. Most of them were already engaged in close quarters fighting with what looked like the shock troops of hell, the same kind of demon that I'd killed with my shotgun just a few minutes earlier.

Once every few moments an intense bright white beam would shoot from something that looked like the ghost version of a unicorn on steroids, and incinerate a few of the brutish demons in one go. Large balls flaring with white and blue starlight would shoot up in the sky from what looked like a huge translucent caterpillar bathed in pixie dust, before exploding in raining swaths of cleansing fire among lesser demons and imps riding hellish hounds, burning them into oblivion.

But still more of them came, the nightmarish vanguard of the terror that was to be unleashed. It was hideous. And it was unfortunately, quite real; doom, on a monumental scale. I felt I had been cheated. Perhaps if I'd really understood how bad the odds were, I'd just have had a last good night's sleep and spend the rest of eternity looking morose. Just as I must've probably looked like when Eileen slapped me hard across the face, without the slightest warning:

"Hey! Hey! Snap out of it!"

"That was totally uncalled for! You could have just nudged me!"

"You simply sat there, frozen stiff. Why are you wearing that football gear? And what's with that pony-on-a-stick?" she said, pointing with a finger in disbelief.

"That's just some last minute equipment. Looks pretty bad, right?"

"Blue doesn't suit you, yeah. The pony, well..."

"I meant things over here," I said and saw a fireball explode a few dozen yards away, a gunner team narrowly avoiding it. Eileen said with a sudden weariness:

"Awful would be a better word. Cataclysmic, perhaps, would be more suitable."

"That's just a fancy word for really bad, right?"

"We're wasting time Bobby, and there's precious little of it. But now you're here, we can turn things around," she said with a desperate smile.

"About that, I'm not so sure. I don't exactly see the reasoning behind such an optimistic look of events."

"But surely, with you in the front we can send them all back to hell!"

"Am I supposed to ask them to stop their invasion really nice? Because I don't think that would work," I said and tried to sound less than serious about it.

"Bobby, you're immortal! Even these demons can't touch you!" Eileen retorted with a feeling of indignation.

"I'm trying to cope with that myself, but I don't see how I can pick them off one by one. Unless this thing actually works."

"What thing?" she inquired, squinting her blue incorporeal eyes.

"The pony," I replied, almost shamefully.

"What does it do?"

"I kept asking myself but no-one explained it. For some weird reason, I built it like that myself and it's supposed to have a nuke-like effect, if it does work in the end, that is."

"Nuke-like?"

"As I said, no-one explained it to me. It's our best chance anyway. I wouldn't exactly consider there are many options left, would you?"

"What about the gateway?"

"Blow it up?"

Despite everything, she managed to actually laugh.

"But, that's impossible!"

"How can it be impossible? There's nothing impossible about blowing something up, is it? You've got explosives right?"

She shook her head wearily, while another volley of beams cut down a group of demons only a few hundred yards away. The sounds of fighting was getting dangerously closer and louder by the minute.

"They didn't tell you everything, did they?"

"What kind of a question is that? If they did, then I'd know everything!"

"It was a rhetorical question! You think the gateway is just a machine?"

"Aren't we talking about that pond back in there?"

"That's just the doorway to the after-world, Bobby. A gate is much bigger than a door, isn't it?" she said flapping her arms wildly.

"How much bigger is it then? Like, say, a bigger pool?"

"A lot bigger than a pool," she answered morosely, suddenly looking just as gloomy as I felt once I had first seen what we were really up against.

"A small lake? Look, it doesn't really matter. There's no way in hell to win this. Let's fall back while they're not all over us."

"You have no idea how this whole thing works, do you? And you actually built it? That's a laugh."

"All I know is that it doesn't involve silly hats. They said I'd know it when I saw it, and that you'd know what to do," I said, pointing an accusational finger at her.

"They said that? Well, someone must've thought you might not go this far if you knew."

"Know what? I've been jerked around so often I get dizzy just by thinking about it. Now I'm immortal, and suddenly I have to fight off the hordes of hell. I keep surprising myself all the time! The only reason I'm doing this is that I'm stuck with it."

"In a very real way, you are stuck with it Bobby. Because it seems you are the gateway," she said, her see-through eyes level with mine. She kept confusing me.

"I don't understand. You mean, in an abstract kind of way? Like, I'm the guy behind it?"

"No, you are the gateway. Its purpose and function is linked with your soul. It's what has made you immortal. But that doesn't mean you can't die, Bobby," she said with her arms at her waist while a mangled, half-dead sky-demon crashed a few yards away, flailing wildly in its death throes.

"I can? I'm new to this, really, and no-one explains a damn thing in plain English, so it's -"

"That's why the demons wanted you here in the after-world, Bobby. To perform a ritual sacrifice, unlock the gateway and allow them free passage. We kind of forced their hand actually. They'd prefer it if you just waltzed in here all alone, still thinking you were doing this to save your ass from Falconi."

"And why did the Bureau convince me to come here?"

"Because, you're the only one who can destroy this connection, this living gateway for good!"

"How am I supposed to do that if I can't remember anything about it?"

"And that's why Falconi erased your memory! Don't you see? There was no way to escape his plan, but only to beat them in their own game! You have to stop them, and find out how to destroy your link with the gateway, Bobby!"

"Which is, how big exactly?"

"You're standing on it!" she shouted, and smiled despite herself.

"What, this building?"

"Sulphur, Nevada. Just on the other side of the fence, in the after-world. Not a lot less picturesque."

"The whole town?" I asked, trying to make sure I wasn't simply hearing things.

"Yeah, on this side, in the after-world, there's already a network of moats shaped like a pentagram. It's got blood, bile and tears running throughout it. We're sitting right at the center. You can actually see the pillars of fire around you, about three miles out. That's like candles. Hear that constant murmuring sound that seems to reverberate through everything? Those are the first incantations, Bobby."

"You mean, like in a satanic ritual? Pentagrams, candles, virgins, non-consensual orgies? That's stuff real?"

"Should you be asking that question when you can clearly see a unicorn that shoots white beams off its horn and a giant caterpillar throwing balls of cleansing fire?"

"Not really, no. So, their plan is to kill all of you, and get to me; either from this side, or from the normal side of things?"

"Yes, that's their plan," she said nodding profusely, relieved that I had finally understood something essentially simple.

"And then hunt me down, tie me up, and perform a ritual sacrifice that will open up a gateway six miles wide, to pour their hordes onto the face of the earth?"

"I'm afraid so, Bobby."

"And that would kill me?" I asked, vainly trying to understand just how immortal I was in practical terms.

"The sacrifice itself would not, but then you would be rendered mortal again. At least, I think. I'm not sure what Satan's policy for keeping pets is, but I don't think he'd make a very agreeable master."

"So much for being immortal. I'm afraid their plan's working all too well."

As I uttered these words, I suddenly had a flash of genius or perhaps insanity:

"Which is a very good thing. It's actually wonderful," I repeated to myself.

"If you're going to be like that you just might walk up there and end it. I can't really stop you anyway," said Eileen, looking genuinely hurt.

"No, no. It's great. There will be some tricky timing issues, but we can pull it off, I think."

"Pull what off?"

"I'll tell you. I just have to remember how that pony works..."

I just sat there, with my back against a wall, carrying an improvised flag strapped around my back with a very big, plainly drawn, stuck up middle finger. I was trying to look conspicuously nonchalant; what a romantic poet might have in earnest called a 'mad fool'. On my end, it was simply an idea put into practice. Immortality hadn't really proven its usefulness, and was about to put to the test, not as a solid battlefield advantage which I'm sure every fighting man would be interested in, but as a way to ensure the plan worked and I lived through it.

As things were, the approaching hordes of Hell weren't as relentless as I would have hoped in their pursuit of overrunning our position; instead of simply barraging us with hellfire, storming the impromptu trenches and cover positions of what few defenders remained with their halberds, axes, scything claws and gaping maws, they were content to keep our heads down by taking occasional shots, keeping everyone busy by assaulting a position with enough force as to give ground.

It was like squeezing that very last bit of toothpaste from the tube with one's nails. It also meant that they were effectively stalling, waiting for something to happen or maybe someone to arrive.

A runner had gone back with a message, sharing my plan with Jules. An answer had come back a few minutes later, telling us that the hardest part of their trials was probably over since the lawyers in Falconi's disposal - after having obtained a cease & desist order - were forced to retreat for a recess because of the 'non-government organization' status of the Normal Bureau. That and a few of Jules well-placed Magnum shots seemed to have put them effectively out of the fight, and only the lycans and werewolves remained alongside Falconi's head-honcho demon lackeys.

It seemed we would be safe from a backdoor attack. I was ready to start running around the various trenches, emplacements, and positions to make it painfully obvious and clear as rain, that I was showing them the finger and calling them jackasses. Generally, making it well-known that I thought they were nothing more than useless demonic hordes only good for filling the tar pits, and stirring the open-air shit baths.

As the saying goes, if Muhammad can't go to the mountain, let the mountain come to him. I looked at Eileen; she nodded and smiled. She didn't wish me good luck, but I knew she meant it anyway. I pulled myself out of cover, and started off at a walking pace, waving a hand for everyone to see and smiling casually as if this was a friendly get-together.