The tension and fear slowly dissipated as we drove on in silence and the miles passed without anything to suggest that the demons had reached that far south. I became aware of the rugged beauty of the Brooks Range. It was the middle of August and autumn in the Alaskan mountains. The yellow leaves of the short quaking aspen and occasional balsam poplar brightened the dark green of the tall and narrow black spruce trees that covered the valleys between the majestic bare mountains. I leaned back in my seat and forgot for a while the painful cuts on my thighs and the dangers, natural and supernatural, that hid in the surrounding forest.

Our next potential stop came at Sukapak Mountain. There was nothing there but a restroom that we no longer needed. Though we saw no signs of demons, we drove by without slowing.

A few miles farther down the road, we came to something far more useful than the restroom; the gravel gave way to honest-to-goodness pavement. We celebrated the smoother safer ride by increasing our speed to 70 mph and slowing only when curves forced us to.

Thankfully, the next 45 minutes also passed peacefully. We drove by the turnoff to the tiny town of Wiseman. Being several miles off the road and without a gas station or any place to buy supplies, there was no point in stopping. I suppose it was possible that there could have been a small plane parked at its landing strip, but the odds were slim to none. Ten minutes later, we came to the Marion Creek Campground. Again, we didn't slow down as we went by; there was no point, as we were only a few miles from Coldfoot, our next stop on our way to Fairbanks.

As we were nearing the end of the Brooks Range and the beginning of the Alaskan interior, Aileen pointed up through the front windshield at something I couldn't see. "Look at that!" she exclaimed.

"About fricking time," Jack said, looking upwards and taking his eyes off the road just long enough to make me nervous.

"What is it?" I asked, afraid despite what he'd said that it might be another formation of gargoyles that had somehow managed to get ahead of us.

"Three helicopters," Aileen replied. "Military by the looks of them. Here they come."

Less than a minute later, the deep thumping roar of an approaching helicopter bombarded our ears as the dusty wash from its main rotor blades buffeted our heavy SUV. Looking out of my closed car window, I could see one of the helicopters flying parallel to us, seventy-five feet to our right and fifty feet up. Its side doors were slid back, and two men in camouflage uniforms and armed with assault rifles were seated on the floor with their feet hanging over the edge. They gazed down at me, and my initial thoughts were that I hoped that they were properly strapped down and that no amount of money could persuade me to sit up there with nothing under my feet but fifty feet of air. There was a smaller opening just forward of the much larger door where an airman was behind a modern multi-barrel version of an old west Gatling gun.

I waved up at them and then pointing down at the ground, hoping to get them to land and pick us up. They waved back, but then one of them shook his head and pointed north, the direction they were originally flying. Then just as quickly as the helicopter had appeared, it rose back up, and all three of the aircraft continued north along the road.

Five minutes later, we crossed the low bridge over Slate Creek and approached the small gravel crossroad that marked the north end of Coldfoot, the second largest settlement on the Dalton between Deadhorse and Fairbanks.

"Now, there's something you don't see every day," Jack observed.

I leaned to my left so I would have a better view between Jack and Aileen.

Two massive, military-green, armored personnel carriers were parked side by side, completely blocking the Dalton Highway and our way forward. Each eight-wheeled behemoth was roughly one and a half times as wide and tall as our big SUV, twice as tall if you counted the large machine gun mounted on top. Raised six feet above the roof of our SUV, their barrels were aimed over our heads and back up the highway we'd just driven down. The two armored titans gave me the distinct impression of being a little person riding in a tiny circus clown car.

The two armored personnel carriers seemed to be identical, right down to the four soldiers manning each one. The helmeted head of a man was sticking out of a partially opened hatch near each vehicle's sloping front end. Wearing light green camouflage uniforms and helmets, the upper bodies of three more soldiers were visible above the top of each APC, one behind the large mounted machine gun, one next to him, and one near the back of the vehicle. All six of these soldiers were diligently scanning the forest and road around us, seemingly ready to react in an instant by laying down a hail of bullets should any demon dare show its ugly head.

The two huge APCs were flanked by two more soldiers, one standing guard on each side of the road. In addition to wearing the same camouflage uniforms and helmets, they were armed with assault rifles and large handguns holstered at their hips. Finally, each wore a big brown vest seemingly consisting of nothing but dozens of pockets stuffed with God knows what that gave them a comical roly-poly appearance completely at odds with their deadly weaponry.

One stepped forward, raised his arm, and motioned for us to stop.

Jack pulled the car up to the soldier and rolled down his window. "You have no idea how good it is to see the Army's finally arrived," Jack said, smiling up in relief at the young soldier who couldn't have been much more than 18.

"No, sir," the young man said proudly. "What you see here is the Alaska National Guard. The Army won't arrive for another five hours. But Governor Walker knows he can rely on us to take point while the Army's getting ready to come up and join us."

He briefly glanced into the back seat, spotted me, nodded, and said, "Ma'am". Then, he turned, looked through my husband's window, and saw Aileen in the seat in front of me. His face lit up as he stared raptly at the redheaded Irish beauty.

I sighed. I realized that I'm on the wrong side of 50 and have always been the nerd with the nondescript clothes who only wore makeup when she absolutely needed to. Still, it bothered me to see how the soldier stared at her. Then, I remembered and smiled to myself. Though she seemed to be in her early twenties, she was over 1700 years old and would look like the boy's great grandmother were she to drop the magic spell she used to glamour our sight.

"Where you folks coming from?" the soldier asked when he finally tore his gaze away from Aileen and looked back to Jack.

"Pump Station 2 on the pipeline, just north of the Brooks Range," Jack answered.

"Pump Station 2? I thought that station's been closed for years? What in Earth were you doing there?"

"You're right," Jack replied. "The station's been mothballed and inactive since the late 90s. But after one of my team was killed and we lost our cars at the hell hole we were investigating, we needed somewhere to hide and the pump station was the closest place we could find. As it is, I lost three more members of my team there, and we're damned lucky to have made it out alive."

"You were at one of those damned craters?" the soldier exclaimed in surprise.

"We're scientists from University of Alaska Fairbanks," Jack replied. "ExxonMobil hired us to investigate the holes. We were at one two days ago when it erupted and a pack of hellhounds came out."

"No way," the soldier said in amazement. "You got to be shitting me. No one survives near a hole, not with those damned creatures pouring out of them."

"And yet here we are," Aileen replied dryly. "How about letting us pass? We have had demons either on our tail or right in front of us for the last two days, and I for one would like to get some gas, food, and be on our way south before they catch up with us again."

"You can pass," the soldier said. "But our intelligence officer will want to speak with you. Turn right at the road, drive a quarter mile, and you'll be at the landing strip. You can't miss it. We'll radio ahead and let them know you're coming." He turned and motioned for the armored vehicle to our left to move forward.

The APC started up, its engine growling loudly as it slowly advanced, leaving just enough room for us pass between them.

Following the young man's instructions, we turned right at the crossroad, and drove down the narrow gravel road that led to the Coldfoot airport. After passing a couple of dirt driveways and the Alaska Department of Transportation's Coldfoot facility, we came to two more dirt roads leading north to unknown destinations and another heading south, this time to the State Trooper's office according to the sign.

As I looked down each of these side roads leading off into the wilderness, I wondered how many people were vacationing or even living out there in dry cabins miles from town and the Dalton Highway. How many of them weren't aware of the demon invasion? Had it really only been two short days since the holes had erupted? Would the demons search out and murder these scattered people or pass them by on their way to new feeding grounds in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau?

A Humvee barreled past us, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake as it sped from the landing strip towards the small town on the far side of the highway. The dust cleared, and we pulled up to a checkpoint at the entrance of the airport. Several more soldiers stood guard in front of yet another armored personnel carrier. Once again, we were motioned to stop.

"Are you the scientists who just arrived from the North Slope?" one of them asked.

"Yes. The guard at the roadblock told us that your intelligence officer would want to speak to us."

"Yes sir, that he will," the guard said. "Once inside, turn left and follow the fence until you get to the Coyote Air office. It's the little wood building covered with snowshoes and moose antlers. Park in front. The command tent's just past it. Please wait inside your vehicle, and someone will be right out to get you." With that, his companions lifted up the bar blocking our way, and he waved us through the checkpoint.

We turned left onto a large rectangular area of hard-packed dirt and gravel. The tiny airfield was a beehive of activity. A couple of dozen soldiers were busy erecting a chain-link perimeter fence topped by razor wire while others were raising up floodlights to light up the fence once the sun set. Dozens of other soldiers were going about their duties, transforming the little landing strip into a mini-military-base. Four large helicopters of the same type as the ones we'd seen flying north on our way into town were parked at its far end. But the huge gray cargo plane with four jet engines parked in the center of the field dwarfed them. It was facing away from us with a large door on its tail lowered to form a ramp. As we drove slowly by, an armored personnel carrier drove slowly out of the back of the plane to join another sitting nearby. Inside the plane's cavernous hold, several airmen were preparing large pallets for unloading.

We pulled up in front of the Coyote Air's picturesque "airport terminal," which stood just outside of the newly erected fence. The tiny brown wooden building looked just like the soldier had described, except that the antlers and snowshoes covering its walls were joined by flower boxes and hanging pots overflowing with a riot of colorful fall flowers. It looked totally out of place, as if someone had magically dropped a fairytale cottage right on the edge of a modern military base.

We parked in front of the picturesque little building, and Jack reached behind the steering wheel to turn off the engine. "Damn," he said when he realized that there was no key in the ignition. "I forgot there weren't any keys when we found this car." He turned to Aileen. "We sure would have been up Shit Creek without a paddle if you hadn't been there to start the engine."

"Indeed. There are certainly times when having a magic amulet definitely comes in handy," she replied with a grim smile. "Once the imps made it into the garage, they hardly seemed in the mood to afford you any time to look."

My muscles clenched as vivid memories of our narrow escape from Pump Station 2 flooded my mind. So much had happened since then, it seemed impossible to believe it was early that morning that we'd lost Kevin Kowalski and Bill Henderson.

"Aha!" Aileen exclaimed, her voice mercifully banishing my nightmarish memories. I looked up. She was holding up a keyring triumphantly in her hand. "They were in the glove box the whole time." It was a tiny victory as triumphs go, but we were all happy to take any good luck we could get. I hoped it would be an omen of more good fortune to come.

As the minutes slowly crawled by with no one coming to get us, Jack nervously began tapping his fingertips on the steering wheel. Soon, he switched to slapping his entire fingers. The striking of his wedding rink on the wheel sounding like a broken metronome that unexpectedly beat faster rather than slower as its spring unwound. I could tell from the way his shoulders bunched up against his neck that the unexpected delay was rapidly pushing him to his breaking point. "Damn it!" he exclaimed, glaring at the nearby tent. "That's it. We need to gas up and get the hell out of Coldfoot before the demons attack and block our way south. If no one comes in the next sixty seconds, I'm going to start this car and leave."

"Jack, it hasn't even been five minutes yet," I said. "I'm sure they're busy setting up their base. If we can tell them what we've learned about how to kill the demons, it could save lives. Surely, that would be worth a few more minutes."

"I guess, but we're not staying one minute more than we have to."

"Your shoulders must be sore from all the driving you've been doing." I reached forward and started rubbing the right side of his neck. It was impossible to get the correct leverage while sitting in the back, but hopefully it was better than nothing.

"That's good," he said.

"Take a few deep breaths and try to relax your neck and shoulders."

He tried to let go of the tension, and I could feel the knotted muscles slowly began to loosen under my thumb. I'd only been rubbing for a minute or two when a soldier exited a nearby large white tent and walked quickly up to our car. We stepped out into the early afternoon sunshine.

"I'm Sergeant Sims," she said, introducing herself as she stepped forward to shake our hands. "Our intelligence officer would like to talk to you about your research and what you've seen along the Dalton. If you will follow me please?" She turned and walked rapidly back towards the tent.

Once again, stepping out of the car and standing put a strain on the cuts and I could feel warm blood beginning to seep into Jack's makeshift bandages. I was limping more than a little by the time we reached the command tent.

The sergeant ushered us in and led us up to a table in a corner where a young man was looking over various maps and other documents.

"Lieutenant McElroy, sir. These are the folks from the North Slope that you wanted to speak to."

"Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all." The young man laid down the papers he was reading, removed his reading glasses, and stood up. "I'm the base intelligence officer. I hear that you're scientists who were up on the North Slope researching these damned holes. What can you tell me?"

"My name's Dr. Jack Oswald. I was the leader of a small research team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. We were hired by ExxonMobil to study the hell holes that were threatening the wells and pipelines. A couple of days ago, one of my graduate students and I rappelled down into a large one near Pump Station 2. But too much methane and sulfur dioxide had collected at the bottom, and we had to come back up after only a few minutes. I'd just been pulled out when the gasses exploded, killing my student. Later that night, the earthquake woke us up, and then the hole erupted. We saw a pack of hellhounds coming out of an opening at the side of the hole. Then, when the edge of the hole collapsed, the hellhounds climbed out and attacked us. We fought them off and made our way to the pump station, where we were trapped by more hellhounds, a troop of imps, and several gargoyles. We lost two more of our team early this morning fighting our way to a garage where we found our car. And then we lost another while leaving the station. We've been fleeing south ever since.

"Excellent," Lieutenant McElroy said, nodding approvingly. But his smile disappeared when he saw the shock on our faces. "Oh, sorry. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Not excellent that you lost so many of your team; that's obviously terrible. But you don't understand the importance of what you've just said. As far as I've been able to tell, you're the only people who've come into direct contact with the enemy and lived to report about it. Your intel could save dozens if not hundreds of lives. I need you to repeat what you've just told me to Colonel Davis, our commanding officer. He needs to know what you did that enabled you to survive. Follow me."

Lieutenant McElroy led us to a table at the opposite end of the tent where two officers were standing. They were looking over the shoulder of a young soldier who was sitting in front of a large computer monitor displaying a detailed topographical map of the northern three-fourths of Alaska from the Arctic Ocean all the way down to the two military bases just east and south of Fairbanks: Eielson Air Force Base and the US Army's Fort Wainwright. The map was covered with obscure symbols. Red diamonds were mostly in the north along the coast, while the blue rectangles clearly represented our military forces in the south. The blue rectangles enclosed symbols that I didn't recognize and had writing next to them, while the red diamonds representing the demons were oddly unadorned. Apparently, there'd been no time to program in new symbols for demonic infantry and airpower. But the most obvious markings on the map were the pair of big arrows overlaying the Dalton Highway - a blue one pointing north and a red one pointing south to a spot just north of Coldfoot.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Lieutenant McElroy said, interrupting the other two officer's conversation. "These people just arrived down the Dalton, and our scouts report that they appear to be the last of the North Slope survivors. They're scientists who were studying one of the holes when it erupted. I think you're going to want to hear their story."

"Very well, Lieutenant," the middle-aged man with silver eagles on his shoulders said.

"This is our commander, Colonel Davis, and this is his executive officer, Major Ramsey," the lieutenant said, indicating a man in his early-thirties standing next to him.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Dr. Jack Oswald," my husband said, introducing himself. "This is Dr. Angela Menendez, my wife and our team's climatologist, and Ms. Aileen O'Shannon, our photographer."

"Pleased to meet you. What can you tell us about these hell holes?" the colonel asked.

"Not much, I'm afraid," my husband answered. "One of my graduate students and I rappelled down into one, but we were only able to spend a few minutes at the bottom before high concentrations of sulfur dioxide and methane forced us to head back up. I'd just been pulled out of the hole, and my student was on his way up when the gas ignited. Sadly, the resulting explosion killed him. It would have seriously burned the rest of us too if the huge blast hadn't blown us back from the edge of the hole."

"What about the creatures?" Colonel Davis asked. "Did you see any sign of them while you were in the hole?"

"No," Jack answered. "There was just the hole. The hellhounds didn't appear until after the earthquake and following eruption. That must have been about an hour after midnight."

"What happened then?" Major Ramsey asked.

"That's when we heard this strange howling coming from the direction of the pit. At first, we thought it might be wolves in the distance, but when we approached the edge of the hole, we could see a large crevice had opened up in the base of the hole and a pack of hellhounds came running out of the crack."

By now, even the young man who had been operating the computer had turned around, and all four soldiers were keenly listening to my husband.

"A few minutes later, there was a large aftershock, and the vertical walls of the pit started collapsing. It wasn't more than a couple of minutes before a pack of hellhounds climbed out of the hole, saw us, and attacked."

Major Ramsey stared at my husband in disbelief. "Are you seriously trying to tell us the three of you came face-to-face with a pack of these... these hellhounds, and they just let you walk away? As far as we can tell, the entire North Slope has been overrun and with no survivors. How in hell did you three civilians manage to escape?"

"First, I have a question for you," Aileen interjected before Jack could answer, "Have you been briefed yet on new information from the Tutores Contra Infernum?"

I looked from Aileen to the soldiers, curious to know if the existence of her ancient society and the help they were providing to the world's militaries was no longer secret.

"The what?" Colonel Davis asked skeptically, clearly puzzled by both the Italian-sounding Latin words and their having been spoken by a civilian photojournalist. "I've never heard of them. How about you, Sam?" he said, turning to Major Ramsey. "You served a year as a liaison in NATO headquarters in Brussels. Are they possibly a part of the Italian Defense Staff's Department of Information and Security?"

"No idea, sir," Major Ramsey replied.

Turning back to Aileen, the colonel replied, "So far, the only intel we've had has been from our reconnaissance flights and a small number of phone calls, emails, and instant messages that the people up on the North Slope that were sent before communication with them was lost. That's why it's so important for you to tell us everything you know."

"Bill Henderson saved us," Aileen continued, answering the major's original question before Jack could speak. "He was the field biologist ExxonMobil hired to protect us from wild animals. He shot several of the hellhounds, and the others ran off, heading north towards where most of the hell holes opened up. That bought us the time we needed to make it to Pump Station Two."

"From some of the videos and eye witness accounts posted to the Internet over the last 36 hours, shooting the damn things doesn't seem to do much more than slow them down... that and piss them off," Major Ramsey said. "Why would they let you escape?"

"You have to shoot them in the head," I explained. "Otherwise, individual gunshot wounds will heal within a couple of minutes."

"Damn," the enlisted man sitting at the table said. I looked down to the see him apparently staring at the crotch of my pants. "Ma'am, you're bleeding."

I glanced down and realized that he was right. The cuts where the devil had bit me had reopened. I had a large fist-sized ring of fresh blood at the very top of my thighs. As I watched, it spread to become a solid circle of blood.

"Dr. Menendez, why didn't you tell us you were wounded?" the colonel exclaimed, clearly surprised by my unexpected bleeding. "Lieutenant McElroy, take Dr. Menendez to the medical tent and have the doctor tend to her injury."

"It's nothing," I protested. The last thing I wanted was to be separated from Jack and Aileen in case the demons were closer than everyone thought. "The devil was already dead when he fell face first into my lap with his mouth open. The cuts from his teeth are actually quite shallow and look much worse than they are."

"Nonsense," Colonel Davis said. "God knows what kind of germs one of those filthy beasts has in its mouth. Go with the lieutenant and get yourself properly treated."

I looked at Jack and Aileen, unsure of what to do.

"It's okay, dear," Jack said. "I didn't exactly have a lot of time to bandage you up properly. Besides, he's right. We can't take the risk of those cuts becoming infected."

"If you'll follow me, Dr. Menendez," Lieutenant McElroy said. I limped as I slowly followed him out of the command tent to another much larger tent. It had six empty cots along its walls at one end and an examining room and operating room at the other end.

A woman in uniform with a stethoscope around her neck looked up from some papers that she was reading when we walked in. Approximately thirty with dark brown hair pulled back in a rather severe bun, she looked a little like my sister had when she was her age.

"What do we have here?" she asked, her eyes drawn to the growing circle of blood on my upper pants legs.

"This is Dr. Menendez, a member of a research team that just arrived from the North Slope," Lieutenant McElroy answered. "It seems she was bitten by a dead demon," Then the lieutenant turned to me and said, "This is Doctor Anderson. She'll take good care of you. Now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to the command tent."

"Bitten by a dead demon," Dr. Anderson said, leading me over to an examination table as Lieutenant McElroy left. "Now that's not something I deal with every day. I'll bet there's quite a story behind your injury." She smiled, patted the top of the table, and said, "Climb up here. First, I'll help you get out of those bloody pants, and we can get a good look at that bite."

I kicked off my shoes, and the doctor gave me a hand as I climbed onto the table. I laid back and a couple of minutes later, she had carefully helped me slide my pants over the ripped-up pieces of shirt Jack had used to bandage the cuts.

"My goodness, how many teeth do these demons have?" she asked once she had removed the blood-soaked cloth. "You're not allergic to latex, are you?" she asked as she reached for a box of disposable gloves.

"No," I answered as I lifted myself up on my elbows to see what she was doing. Carefully, the doctor pressed lightly on the skin on either side of one of the cuts, which easily opened and began to bleed again. A thin rivulet of blood ran down my thigh to drip onto the paper-covered table. The skin immediately around the cuts was reddened and inflamed.

"When were you bitten?" the doctor asked with a look of concern.

"Fairly early this morning," I answered. "Around seven, I think."

"Hmm," Dr. Anderson said, looking at her watch. "It's twenty after two now, so that's over seven hours. The cuts appear to be less than a centimeter deep; I would have expected them to have stopped bleeding by now. Tell me, have you recently taken any aspirin or are you perhaps on a prescription blood thinner"

"No, doctor."

"Interesting. I wonder if the demon's saliva contains an anticoagulant. And I don't like the look of the inflammation around the cuts."

"So, what do we do? My husband and I really want to get back on the road south. We don't want to stay here any longer than we absolutely have to."

"I understand," Dr. Anderson replied, "but we need to take care of this before it becomes a real problem for you. First, we'll clean out the cuts with some hydrogen peroxide. Then I'll apply a mild coagulant to stop the bleeding. Ordinarily, I'd close each cut with a couple of stiches, but since it appears they may be infected, I think we'd better leave them so that they can drain if they need to. I'll just put a small Steri-Strip skin closure on each one to help hold the edges together. Are you allergic to any medications?"

"Only penicillin."

"Then I think I'll give you a shot of Clindamycin. It's good for most bacterial skin infections. I'll also give you a week's worth of the same antibiotic. Hopefully, between the shot and the pills, this will clear right up. Just promise me you won't stop taking the antibiotics before you've taken all of them, even if the redness and pain go away. We don't want whatever that is coming back."

"Thank you, doctor. I will," I promised.

"Good. Oh, and another thing, antibiotics will only work on bacterial infections and even then, only on certain types. They won't do a thing for viral infections, and I have no idea whether they'll work against whatever grows in these creatures' mouths. If the redness doesn't start to go away in three days or if you start running a high fever, go to the nearest emergency room and tell them what happened. God knows, we're in new territory here, and you might be the first person ever treated for one of these bites. Otherwise, you can just get an appointment to check in with your primary care physician in a couple of weeks once you get back to civilization."

I thought of Aileen and the Tutores Contra Infernum's centuries' long war against the demons. I was pretty sure that she would know how to treat the bite better than my regular GP would. As far as I was concerned, all I needed was to have the cuts cleaned out and properly bandaged.

Thirty minutes later, I was fixed up and on my way back to the command tent. Doctor Anderson had even given me a pair of camouflage pants to wear. I was just about to enter when my husband and Aileen walked out.

Jack looked at my new pants and grinned. "What did you do while you were gone, enlist?"

"Not on your life," I answered. "The sooner we fill up the gas tank, grab some food, and get out of town, the better."

We climbed back in the car, this time with me sitting in front with my husband. I had had enough riding in the back and figured with any luck, we wouldn't need Aileen casting any more spells through the windshield.

We pulled out of the airfield, headed back along the gravel road that led back to the Dalton Highway and on to Coldfoot Camp.

"So, what did the colonel and major say after I left? Did they say how close the demons are or how they intend to defend against flying gargoyles carrying imps with brimstone bombs?"

"No, the whole thing was probably a big waste of time," he said. "The colonel didn't say anything specific, but he and the major gave a strong impression that the demons weren't anywhere nearby. He was also confident his company of Strykers would have no trouble shooting a bunch of dumb animals and Iron Age dwarfs from the sky long before they get anywhere close."

"Strykers?" I asked.

"The eight-wheeled armored personnel carriers," Jack answered. "The colonel and major seem to think they can stop anything that moves."

"They may think that they have everything under control," Aileen said, "but I doubt he has any real idea of the hell that's going to rain down on Coldfoot when the demons arrive in force. My guess is that the gargoyles and imps will be dropping brimstone onto everything in this town and the whole place will be enveloped in hellfire within the first five minutes of their attack."

"I'm afraid you're right," Jack said, shaking his head in frustration. "We tried to tell them, but we're just civilians. What do we know? Hell, I may not be a soldier, but it seems clear to me that the colonel's set up his defenses as if he were expecting the Russian army to come driving down the road in tanks or armored vehicles. But the gargoyles can fly in from any direction, and it looks to me like he has arrayed all of his forces at the north end of town."

"I agree," Aileen said. "I wouldn't be so worried if the imps were organizing the attack; they are not the sharpest swords in the castle. I strongly suspect that there are one or more devils directing them, and they are devious bastards at the best of times. My guess is they will hit us from all sides simultaneously and also block the road south to cut off our escape."

"So, what do we do?" I asked.

"We get out of here just as fast as we possibly can," Jack said with grim determination.

By then, we had driven nearly three hundred yards past the highway, and we'd only passed a couple of driveways to small cabins and campers nestled among the dense forest of slender spruce trees. Then the road made a bend to the right, and we'd arrived in Coldfoot Camp.

"Will you look at that?" Jack asked, gazing out his window at the large gravel parking lot where truckers parked their big rigs while overnighting at Coldfoot Inn. On several occasions, Jack and I had slept in its tiny rooms just barely big enough for two twin beds. It may have been incredibly basic, but it was far preferable to sleeping in a car or tent.

"At what?" I replied as I glanced past a dozen parked big rigs to the inn itself. The inn's long low profile with its many single windows always gave me the impression that its builders had simply bolted several dozen, single-wide mobile homes together side by side.

"Notice anything unusual about the semis?" he hinted.

I looked again and then I saw it. What I had initially taken to be the back ends of tractor-trailers were actually the front ends. The tractors were gone. "Now I get it," I said. "The truckers have all unhitched and abandoned their loads before escaping south."

"That reminds me," Jack said. "While you were getting patched up, the colonel told us that the convoy of about a dozen cars and trucks we saw leaving Pump Station 4 arrived about 45 minutes before we did. Seems they only lost a couple of cars on the way."

"That's great," I replied. "Not that they lost anyone, but that the rest got through safely." Given the last couple of days, I was happy to settle for any successes, even ones tempered by loss.

"Yes," Aileen said. "So many vehicles must have made a very tempting target. My guess is the demons' main force was too busy burning down Chandalar Camp to notice them driving by. However, that piece of good news was qualified by what he said next."

"Oh," I said, my smile rapidly fading.

"He said he sent them on south under escort of two of his Strykers about ten minutes before we reached the roadblock," Aileen continued. "And he doesn't have any more resources he can spare, not to escort a single vehicle. We're going to be back on our own once we leave town."

"Then," I replied, scraping together as much courage and determination as I could find, "we'll just have to keep ahead of the demons and deal with any that get between us and Fairbanks."

By then, we had followed the gravel road around to the town's main street. Calling Coldfoot the second largest town on the Dalton Highway south of Deadhorse is actually a gross exaggeration. In reality, Coldfoot is little more than a truck-stop consisting a bare-bones motel catering to truckers and a few hearty souls seeking an arctic adventure, a small café/bar with a couple of gas pumps, a tiny post-office, a basic garage where you can get a tire replaced or patched, and a handful of trailers belonging to its ten full-time residents.

After driving past several storage sheds and a large steel garage with a crudely painted Tire Shop sign, we arrived at the very center and soul of Coldfoot: The Truckers' Cafe. The gravel parking lot was empty except for two more of the huge eight-wheeled armored vehicles that stood guard at the north and south ends of the café. Armed with assault rifles, several soldiers stuck up through hatches on top and scanned the forest and sky for any signs of demons. Jack pulled up to one of the two gas pumps and turned off the car's engine.

"I'll fill up the tank," he said, "while you two grab us something to eat and drink."

"What do you want us to get?" I asked.

"Doesn't matter as long as it's fast. We need to get back on the road as soon as we can. We've already spent far more time here than I'd planned."

"Okay," I replied. Aileen and I started walking towards the café, but then I remembered. "Jack, I lost my purse back at the camp when the hell hole swallowed our tent. Do you have any cash on you?"

"Never mind, Doctor Oswald," Aileen said. "Whenever I'm on assignment, I always carry a couple of credit cards and a few hundred-dollar bills folded inside a zippered pocket hidden inside my belt."

"Thanks," Jack said. "Okay, let's see if we can get everything done and get out of here in no more than 15-20 minutes tops." He pulled out his wallet, fed the gas pump a credit card, and prepared to fill the tank for the 250-mile drive to Fairbanks.

Aileen and I turned and walked the rest of the way to the café, climbed the stairs, and entered through its plain twin doors. At first glance, the place seemed deserted. There was no one behind the little counter with its display case of souvenirs, and no one sitting at any of the basic two- and four-person tables. There was also no one to be seen through the wide food pickup window along the back wall that opened into the kitchen.

My eyes were drawn to a small black chalkboard placed on the cluttered counter in front of us.

Have a seat anywhere for food service. To talk to the hostess for rooms at the Slate Creek Inn across the street. Go into the Frozen Foot Saloon in the next room for beer or wine.

For a second, I wondered if everyone had already evacuated south and the staff had forgotten to lock the doors. But then, I heard the sounds of a TV coming through the open doorway to our right. We walked into a second, much larger dining room outfitted with the same old-fashioned tables, each just as empty as the ones in the previous room. A long bar lined the back of the room, and a TV was mounted in the nearby back corner of the room.

A middle-aged man and a young woman in her early twenties were sitting at the bar, the only people in the entire café. With straight black hair and a short reddish beard, the man wore matching black shirt and pants under a long white cook's apron flecked with spots of grease. He also carried the extra thirty pounds of a cook who ensured quality by regularly sampling his own food. Although the woman was also dressed in black slacks, she wore a long-sleeve powder blue shirt bearing the camp's logo, and a comfortable pair of sport sneakers. I assumed she was the waitress because of the order pad sticking out of the pocket of her short white apron.

They clearly hadn't heard us come in and completely ignored us as we walked up to them. Their eyes were glued to the TV, which was showing an aerial view of one of the small towns along the coast. It might have been Barrow, but it was hard to tell because most of the buildings were on fire and smoke blocked most of the camera's view. Still, you could see hordes of hellhounds and imps roaming the streets while gargoyles circled overhead. There were numerous blood-red blotches on the ground that might once have been bodies, but thankfully the camera was too far away to see clearly.

"Excuse me," I said, walking up to the woman. "Are you open?"

"Sorry," she said as she turned her back to the TV. "Didn't hear you come in. Yes, we're still open. Welcome to the Truckers' Café, the world's northern most truck stop."

"Great," I replied. "How fast can you whip up something to go? We're heading south as soon as my husband fills the gas tank and we get some food and drinks for the drive."

"Can't blame you, what with all the craziness up north," the waitress said, shaking her head while the cook got up and shuffled back to the kitchen. "Thank God, we have the Guard here to protect us if those creatures eventually get this far south. With every channel showing the same videos over and over again, it's a wonder anyone can eat at all. Hell, we haven't had even one person willing to sit down to eat since early this morning when we served our breakfast buffet to the last of the locals before they left. We had a caravan come through maybe an hour ago, but they just topped off their tanks and grabbed some sandwiches before they took off for Fairbanks." She sighed and handed us a pair of menus. "George is the fastest cook this side of Deadhorse. He can fix just about everything on the lunch menu in ten minutes or less. Can I take your drink order while you decide what you want?"

"We'll just take three large coffees to go. That and we'll grab some bottles to take with us from the coolers by the door. We already know what we want. We'll have three cheese burgers and fries and another six sandwiches for later."

"Okay," the waitress said, taking back the two menus she'd just handed us. "What kind of sandwiches?"

I looked at Aileen, who shrugged and said, "I don't really care. Maybe ham and cheese, or how about roast beef? Whatever you can fix fast."

"Okay," the waitress replied. "We have three cheese burgers and fries, three ham and cheese sandwiches, and three roast beef, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches to go. Anything else?"

"Nope. That'll do it," I said. "Do you mind if we pay now? We'd really like to head on south as soon as the food's ready."

"No problem," she said. "I'll just place your order while you pick out your drinks. You can pay me up front at the register."

"Oh, one more thing," I said as she turned to go.

"Yes?"

"One of my graduate students should have passed through Coldfoot yesterday. Her name's Jill Starr. She's in her early twenties, slender, a little taller than me, and has shoulder-length straight black hair. She would have been travelling with a man and his wife, their two young children, and an older couple I assume were the grandparents."

"Sorry, but it doesn't ring a bell," she answered. "Then again, it was crazy in here yesterday, what with so many people passing through. A lot of the time, only one person would come in to get takeout, while the rest either waited outside after gassing up or just popped in to use the restroom. But don't worry. She's probably safe down in Fairbanks by now."

"Do you have a phone I could use? I'd really like to call her and make sure she's okay."

"You don't have a phone?" she asked incredulously.

I couldn't blame her. Normally, no one traveled the Dalton without a satellite phone. It could be deadly otherwise if you broke down along the road. Of course, these weren't normal times. "We lost our phone when we lost our vehicles during the initial attack."

"In that case, you'd better follow me. You can use our phone. Just don't tie it up. My best friend left first thing this morning, and I want to make sure she can reach me if she has any trouble on the road."

"Thank you! I promise I won't take long. I would feel a lot better if I knew she was back home."

Aileen and I followed the waitress around to the café's front counter. Aileen paid while I tried calling Jill. It took a couple of tries for me to get the number right; I had it programmed into my lost cell phone and only very rarely had to remember it. The phone rang several times, but she didn't pick up. It made me nervous. I left her a brief voice mail saying we made it to Coldfoot and that I'd try calling again once we reached Yukon River Camp.

Aileen and I returned to the bar so we could watch the TV while waiting for the food. We hadn't heard anything about the invasion since watching the news at Pump Station 2 the previous night. The news was grim. They were showing videos of some of the native villages taken from the air. Miniature versions of Barrow, their buildings were burning with blue hellfire and nobody was left alive by the hordes of demons roaming the streets. Unlike the night before, far fewer retired military, politicians, preachers, and other talking heads were pontificating in their ignorance. The terrible pictures left even the normally talkative commentators speechless with some on the verge of tears and others openly crying.

A few minutes later, my husband came in and joined us at the bar. "The car's full of gas and ready to go," he announced. "How long before the food's ready?" Then he looked up and scowled at the TV. "Christ," he cursed, "It looks like the whole damned North Slope's fallen."

"Dr. Oswald, there was never any doubt about that," Aileen said grimly. "With so many demons, the poor people never had a chance."

Just then, the words Breaking News flashed on the screen and the announcer interrupted the hellish videos. "We go now to the Pentagon Press Room, where the Press Secretary will make a brief statement on the status of our military campaign against the demon invasion currently taking place in northern Alaska."

The image changed to show an empty podium standing in front of a wall that held a large oval plaque with the words THE PENTAGON under an image of the iconic five-sided building. Almost immediately, the press secretary entered the room, stepped up to the microphones, and began to speak.

"Today at approximately 1:30 p.m. local time, units of the US Air Force and Army mounted a coordinated attack to take back the Deadhorse Airport. Their mission was to create a beachhead from which to mount our offensive to retake Northern Alaska and drive the demons back into the hell holes from which they've come. Operation Northern Fury began when fourteen Apache attack helicopters assaulted demons at and near the Deadhorse airport with Hellfire missiles and 30 mm rounds from their chain guns. After killing hundreds of hellhounds and imps, two Alaska National Guard C-130 and two C-17 transport aircraft dropped approximately 180 paratroopers from the Alaskan 4th Brigade Combat Team and the 25th Infantry Division's 6th Brigade Engineer Battalion. Once the paratroopers and attack helicopters had secured the airport's runway and swept the surrounding area clean of demons, we began landing C-5 cargo planes and unloading Bradly Fighting Vehicles and pallets of material needed to support the operation. In a little over an hour, our brave soldiers and airmen had retaken the entire airport and had set up a defensible perimeter. Stage one of Operation Northern Fury was a complete success with hundreds of demons killed and only very minimal casualties."

I was surprised to see the press secretary's grim expression after having delivered such wonderful news. A cold chill ran down my back.

"Tragically however, the tide of battle then turned against us. While wave after wave of hellhounds and imps from the town and surrounding countryside kept our perimeter defenses occupied, the demons opened several new hell holes inside the airport itself. In addition to large numbers of fresh enemy ground forces, these new holes also provided entry to dozens of flying gargoyles including many that carried saddlebags of brimstone bombs as well as imps to drop them on our ground forces. Unlike the primitive demon weapons we have previously encountered, these incendiary bombs produce hellfire that rapidly eats through armor and incinerates everything it touches, be it armored vehicles, aircraft being unloaded or refueled, or our brave warfighters."

"Did you hear that?" Aileen asked? "He called them demons and used the correct names for their different types. That must mean they are in contact with members of my Order. Hopefully, they will pass on our knowledge of the best way to kill demons to local commanders like Colonel Davis."

"Even our airborne Apache helicopters were not immune to this new weapon," the press secretary continued. "Highflying gargoyles from nearby hell holes attacked from above by dropping brimstone bombs onto the low-flying attack helicopters that were busy dealing with ground-based attackers.

"I am sorry to report that, after less than thirty minutes of intense combat, these hellish monsters overran our forces. This tragic defeat appears to be due to the demons' heavy use of brimstone and hellfire, their seemingly supernatural ability to instantly heal themselves from most wounds, and their seemingly endless supply of blood-thirsty and frankly suicidal demons that showed absolutely no regard for their personal safety. I am profoundly sad to report that the only known survivors are the crews of two helicopters that were returning to base after having exhausted their ammunition and missiles. Although all other military personnel are currently being treated as DUSTWUN (that is, Duty Status - Whereabouts Unknown), the demons do not appear to take prisoners and we fear that the number of killed in action may well approach 100%."

"Damn," Aileen said, turning away from the TV. "This is just the kind of disaster that Jack and I tried to warn the colonel about."

"That's it," Jack said. "It's time to leave. The colonel's crazy if he thinks he can hold the demons with only the forces he has."

"Okay Jack," I said, "you find the waitress and have her meet us at the cash register. Aileen and I will grab some bottled drinks. We already paid for the food, and take whatever they have ready. No food's worth risking being here when they arrive."

My husband left in search of the waitress, while Aileen and I quickly removed nine bottles from the coolers and put them on the counter.

"Here you go," the waitress said as she rushed up to the register carrying two large sacks in one hand and three large coffees in a cardboard carrier in her other. Jack gave her his credit card without even glancing at the bill in spite of the well-known high cost of food in Coldfoot.

"You know, you and the cook should really leave," Aileen said as she started putting our bottled drinks in a couple of sacks the waitress gave her. "The TV just announced that over the last hour or so the Army and Air Force fought a major battle to retake the Deadhorse airport and lost. From what they said, it was a complete disaster with only a few survivors making it back."

"We're a long way from Deadhorse," the waitress replied. "Besides, the Guard's assigned the two big Strykers parked out front to protect the Inn and Café. They'll take care of everything coming from the front and sides, and George and I have our rifles behand the counter in the main room. We'll shoot anything that tries to break in through the back. This time next year, you're going to see some of those monster's ugly heads mounted on the walls."

"Come on, Angie," Jack called from the open front door. "We got to go. We got to go now!"

"Forget mounting their heads," Aileen ordered. "That's where you need to shoot them if you want them to go down and stay down"

"Come on," Jack interrupted. "It's their decision, and we gotta go!"

All I could do was wish her good luck as we followed my husband out of the café. He'd backed the car up to the front of the building. Aileen got into the back, and I handed her the two bags with our drinks and sandwiches.

Jack and I were just getting in when we heard the distant sound of gunfire from the direction of the airport. We slammed our doors shut, and I scrambled to put on my seat belt. The noise of the near continuous firing of dozens of assault rifles soon mixed with the roar of the machine guns on top of the APCs.

Jack started the car. He put it in drive and peeled out of the parking lot, our tires flinging a rain of loose gravel against the café's rough wooden walls. As we accelerated across the parking lot towards the nearby road, dozens of hellhounds with imps on their backs came racing around the Coldfoot Camp Inn. Only seventy meters away, they were sprinting straight for us, racing to cut us off. On either side of us, the soldiers on top of the Strykers opened up with their assault rifles and two heavy machine guns. Almost instantly, hellhounds and imps began to drop as if mowed down by invisible scythes.

We turned right onto the gravel road and headed south towards where it looped back to the Dalton. The sound of the firing was deafening, and I hoped that the bullets from the south-most Stryker would fly over us as we drove between it and the demons approaching from our left. Looking towards the oncoming horde, I saw several large bursts of blue hellfire erupt from the long low roof of the Coldfoot Camp Inn. Aileen rolled down her window and aimed her amulet at five gargoyles and their imp riders that were flying low over the open field towards us and the café. Her spell hit two flying next to each other, dropping them out of the air. Three continued on, flying erratically back and forth to avoid her spells as well as the spray of bullets from the two Strykers. Beneath them, I could see some of the wounded hellhounds stagger to their feet and once again advance towards the café and the two Strykers protecting it.

Jack had the gas pedal floored, and the SUV fishtailed as we sped south past the small blue post office. Through the rear window, I saw one of the Stryker's explode as a brimstone bomb detonated directly between the three Guardsmen standing up through the open hatches on its top. The resulting bluish fireball instantly incinerated them and any other soldiers the Stryker might have been carrying. Another gargoyle flew over our car, no more than twenty feet up, and I fully expected the car to erupt into a fountain of hellfire. Instead, a few seconds later, a brimstone bomb fell behind a chain link fence to our right, landing on a small oil tank sitting between two large propane tanks. Aileen and I were pelted with marble-sized chunks of safety glass as the resulting blast blew in both passenger-side windows. Jack nearly lost control of the car as it tipped sideways before falling back down onto its tires. I glanced at Jack. It looked like he was shouting at me, but I couldn't hear anything over the painfully loud ringing in my ears. I tried to shout back that I couldn't hear him, but he couldn't hear me either and turned his attention back to driving us out of town before anything else could happen. I turned around to see if Aileen was okay just in time to watch the café burst into brilliant, sapphire flames.

Less than a minute later, we had circled back to the Dalton. Jack turned left onto the highway as several hellhounds and a dozen or so imps rushed out of the forest on either side of the road to block our path. Jack, thank goodness, didn't take his foot off the gas and accelerated straight through the demons, swerving only a little to plow through a spot blocked by imps rather than the much larger hellhounds. There must have been a loud crunch but I couldn't hear it though I did feel the car briefly shake as it crashed into the demons, sending one imp flying up and over the hood to crack the windshield before disappearing over the roof. A gargoyle must have been flying up from the south because a brimstone bomb hit the pavement not ten feet behind us. I felt the heat of the resulting fireball burning the back of my head, but it only lasted an instant as we accelerated past seventy. I looked behind us. Beyond a smoking hole in the road, several angry demons stood over the broken bodies of their fallen fighters. Dozens of columns of black smoke rose in the distance behind us on both sides of the road, marking the hell that had once been Coldfoot. When I turned back to look ahead at the deserted highway, my eyes were drawn to the windshield's long crack and the small spots of black demon blood splattered on the glass like a month's worth of dead flies.

Aileen handed the shotgun up to me. I closed my eyes and held it tight, drawing courage and strength from the solid weight of its wood and steel. It was several minutes before I stopped shaking and a good hour before my hearing returned to normal.