Trevor crouched to the ground and covered JB’s head. Hauser provided his body as another layer of shielding over the boy. A dull explosion slapped the air and a man-sized hole in the fan-like doors appeared-leading to darkness.
Hauser tapped Trevor’s arm and asked, “Are you sure you couldn’t use some back up in there?”
“I’m sure. Here, you could use this more than me,” and he handed the MP5 machine pistol to the man who had been his personal pilot for so many years.
“Good luck to you, boss,” Hauser took the gun and then ruffled Jorgie’s hair. “You take care of your dad.”
JB returned the gesture with a sweet but unsure smile.
The entry point secure, Trevor hurried up the stairs while Hauser joined the ranks of warriors at the perimeter. The Marine covered Trevor and his boy but he did not have enough bullets for all the monsters that would soon flood in.
A girl manning the defensive line fell over with a spear-like projectile through her stomach. The arm of a man wearing a blue racing suit caught fire and he rolled on the black ground screaming. A bike exploded sending wheels, handle bars, and an exhaust assembly smashing into the temple walls.
Trevor hurried toward the hole in the blasted door with his son in tow. He met Armand at the top of the stairs and said, “Thank you.”
“I come with you.”
“No. You can’t help. Out here-this is where I need the warriors.”
A shout from the perimeter warned of a pending charge by the nightmares. The rat-tat-tat of heavy gunfire accentuated the point. The Royal Marine standing by Trevor’s side fired a burst of bullets at something in the distance.
Trevor added, “Get your people out of here. Keep fighting, no matter what happens.”
Armand shook his head in frustration, but only for a moment. He placed a hand on Trevor’s shoulders.
“Good luck to you, Trevor Stone. Whatever happens, it has been fun, yes?”
Trevor nodded.
Armand yelled to his force, “Saddle up! We will withdraw back to our lines!”
An explosion from across the battlefield suggested Alexander managed to get the heavy artillery into the fight, yet Trevor knew Voggoth’s reinforcements would keep coming-and coming-and coming unless he could do something. Or Jorgie could.
Armand descended the stairs. The perimeter of biker cavalry collapsed in an orderly fashion to their rides. Hauser found the back of a bike, as did the Royal Marine.
Trevor and his son slipped through the hole in the door and entered the temple of Voggoth.
The sounds from outside-motorcycles racing away, guns blazing, artillery shells exploding, and all manner of monsters howling and groaning-disappeared as Trevor and JB entered the temple. The hole in the door remained and the light of fire and lightning flashed but none of it shined into the large chamber, as if some sheath still hung over the blasted door that kept sounds and light at bay.
Father and son entered a great empty space that stretched away forever both across the featureless floor and overhead. A putrid smell carried on the humid air; a smell Trevor knew too well from the cadaver-filled cities in the days after Armageddon.
Two massive orbs broke the blackness of the chamber’s heights. They hung from the hidden ceiling by an unknown mechanism; floating in the void. Each measured hundreds of feet in diameter and appeared made of some clear material such as glass or polystyrene.
“Father…”
At first they were hard to notice due to the colorless background of the temple’s ceiling. But Trevor did see a familiar sight; something he had seen on a parallel Earth.
Inside each orb lived a swirling mass of living black cloud. The creatures pushed against their confinement in an attempt to break loose. Trevor thought he saw the silhouette of faces inside the mist. Screaming, angry faces, but that might be a fantasy conjured by his nightmare memories of the things.
No sound came from their futile efforts to escape but a shimmering halo of energy crackled from the surface of each of the gigantic spheres. That energy-like electricity-arced between the balls like some arcane power source in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.
For a split second-a blink of the eye-Trevor saw some huge, formless mass lurking between those spheres; something siphoning the energy from the imprisoned Nyx.
In that instant the reality of the situation-or at least as close to it as his simple human mind could comprehend-filled his soul with dread. A shiver ran along his spine; fear as cold and as real as he had sensed since that first day when monsters arrived on Earth.
He had buried thoughts of this moment beneath the battle to get here; beneath a single-mindedness focus on arriving at the objective but he had refused to fully consider what waited at the end of the road.
Voggoth.
For years he contemplated the nature of this entity. The thing that had orchestrated his torture, the invasion, the mutation of millions of human beings, the collapse of civilization. The puppet master pulling the strings of the Gods.
“Father-it is very cold in here. Very empty.”
Trevor felt insignificant standing there in the massive hall filled with nothing. He did not feel like a conquering Emperor or a hero for a species. He felt like a lonely, weak, meaningless man. Nothing more. An overwhelming urge to turn and run nearly overcame his senses; nearly sent him into a blind panic. But just when that feeling neared critical mass, he felt the hand of his son grab his hand.
His heart continued to beat at a fast clip; each exhale nearly turned into a gasp, but Trevor held his ground.
Barely audible above the crackle of energy, Trevor heard a rhythmic click, click, click.. The sound of footsteps moving across the darkness. Louder. Louder.
A human form materialized from the dark and approached at a slow pace. Trevor saw the outline of a man dressed in casual clothes and strolling forward as easily as a favorite son coming home to a welcoming family. With each step the stranger took, Trevor saw he was no stranger at all.
“Hello, Trev.”
The face-the hair-a voice that lingered on the edge of a joke with each word. Trevor recognized it all despite not having seen Danny Washburn since the first winter of the invasion, nearly eleven years, when his friend had disappeared into a hellish vortex on the grounds of SUNY Binghamton.
“What’s wrong? Not happy to see a familiar face?”
Trevor remembered sending Danny and Bird and several others on a mission to destroy one of the gateways, one that belonged to Voggoth’s realm. Danny had constructed a fertilizer bomb onboard an 18-wheeler. While Nina’s group distracted the gateway’s guardians, Danny and Bird delivered the bomb. It exploded, despite the sudden materialization of a Goat Walker.
To his surprise, the Gateway did not simply vaporize in the blast. Instead, the detonation created a screaming whirlpool of reality, sucking away everything in the event horizon to someplace different.
Danny had pleaded for help. Trevor did nothing.
“I can understand why you’re not so thrilled to see me,” the body of Danny Washburn said. “I guess you probably managed to forget about ol’ Danny after all this time.”
“Father, who is this man?”
“Dan-Danny?”
“Yep, old Danny. Your pal. You stood back and watched me get dragged to Hell. But hey, I guess it was all part of the equation, right? Sacrifice some for the good of the whole, isn’t that how you do things?”
“Trevor! Help us for Christ’s sake! You can’t leave us! Trevor! Help me! Help me!”
It seemed as if that horrible day happened all over again. He could hear the cries for help. He could see the spinning vortex first distorting then pulling in Danny Washburn and the rest of the team-and then disappearing, leaving behind a hole in the Earth that slowly turned white as a raging snow storm rushed to fill the scar.
“There was nothing I could have done,” Trevor mumbled in a daze.
“Well, of course not. I mean, you have to believe that or how would you be able to sleep? But, say, who
