 
# Vorgoth

SMASHWORDS EDITION | COPYRIGHT 2018 Razor Blade

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# Chapter 1

# Melt down

The demon stood before the timeclock rubbing his hands together trying to warm them. He finished his hour long commute to the plant like he did every day in the dark, windy and freezing outside air. He wore gloves but the inside of his SUV never seemed to get warm enough to keep his fingers from becoming numb and it usually took a few minutes of holding his hands over the heater in the time-clock room before sensation returned. This morning snow fell from above intermittently blocking his view of the narrow road from his home to work. Ice often covered the roads making them slick and the hills he had to traverse made his knuckles turn white as he grasped onto the steering wheel for dear life. He had to take it a bit slower today but still managed to get to work on time.

The other demons in the time-clock room hung their coats and punched in leaving Vorgoth the last one to clock in. He hung his coat, picked out his time card and punched in. He returned the time card to the empty slot and left the room heading towards his station on the third floor in the main control room. The power plant was huge, with machines that surrounded him in all directions cranking, clanking and droning in a deafening cacophony of sound. Above him were huge pipes that ran the length of the building and surrounding them were hundreds of other pipes that ran throughout the plant entering and exiting the two foot thick basalt walls. The smell of sulfur emanated from the adjacent building where a small portion of Lucifer's work was carried out by a specialized group of demons. The kind of work Vorgoth used to do before his promotion and what he now preferred to go back to---torturing abortionists. But not today.

On his way to the elevator, Vorgoth ran into a coworker he casually recognized but didn't know personally. He nodded his head to greet the prong horned red skinned demon and moved on towards his destination. Vorgoth hated his new job and dreaded the start of his day. He entered the elevator and punched the button for the third floor and waited. The elevator rose up with a mechanical whine and stopped at the control room floor. The door opened where he was greeted by two armed security guards who he had to pass in order to get to the control room. It was all routine, he had done this many times before and followed the procedure without thinking.

"Name," the security guard asked. The guard had ram horns, rough with pock marks, was a good hundred pounds heavier than Vorgoth and had the body of a well-muscled Greek athlete.

"Vorgoth," he replied as he had done every day since he started working at the plant. His voice was low, graveled and thick. Vorgoth held up his security badge and the guard scanned the code with a wand. A beep indicated the scan was read and accepted.

"Hold out your hand," the guard said.

Vorgoth had his hand out before the guard said anything and his finger prints were read by another machine. Again a beep sounded and the guard motioned for Vorgoth to move on to the control room. One last press of a button, a glance up to a camera up to his right and the door clicked indicating it was unlocked.

There was a space between doors at which Vorgoth had to stand and wait at for a moment before the second door would unlock. This was a security measure in case there was an attempted break in and a trap door could open dropping whoever was trying to break in to a secure holding cell below. A moment later he was buzzed into the main control room.

The room was filled with computer consoles and facility alert indicator boards on the walls that surround him on all sides. These indicators responded to the sensors throughout the power plant that let the workers in the control room know the health of the facility. On most days the panels were dark with a few green lights indicating the plant was online and working within set parameters.

The door to the control room clicked shut and an armed security guard approached Vorgoth. Without thinking he raised his arms to allow the guard to scan him for weapons with a magnetic wand. And as usual there was nothing to find.

"You're clear," the security guard growled and Vorgoth walked over to his station. It was shift change and there were protocols to go through before the other shift could leave. Only this time the demon he was to replace was acting nervous and fidgety, like he wanted to get out as soon as possible.

"What's up?" Vorgoth asked the demon sitting in his chair.

"Nothing," the demon replied. His name was Moras and he didn't look familiar to Vorgoth.

"I don't think I know you, have we met before?"

Moras hesitated. "No, I got pulled here from another department, someone called in sick."

Hearing that someone called in sick, Vorgoth stepped over to the schedule and looked for his name. Written in pen beside his name it said that he would have to stay for two shifts to make up for a different sick call. Immediately he became angry and squeezed his fist in frustration. He hated his job and whenever he was forced to work a double it sent him into a rage. Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself and slowly walked back to his station.

"Is everything alright?" Moras asked.

Vorgoth bit his lip and looked away for a moment. He looked back and replied, "Yeah, everything's fine." He was a terrible liar. "How was your shift?" Vorgoth asked.

Again, Moras hesitated and was almost defensive. "I don't really know, I've only worked in the control room a few times. I don't really know the routine."

Looking around the room, Vorgoth saw the overnight staff and recognized most of them. They were all getting ready to go home from their shifts. "Did these guys help you at all?"

"No, not really, they kept to themselves."

"Doesn't surprise me," Vorgoth said looking at the workstation. There were no alarms going off and everything seemed to be in order. "These guys can be real assholes if they want."

"Is there anything else you need?" Moras asked. "I really need to get home."

"No, you can go," Vorgoth replied.

Moras stood up and scurried to the door. He was led out by the security guard leaving Vorgoth to start his sixteen hour workday. He sat down in his chair and logged into his console like usual. He wanted to hang his head and scream but did as always conducting a mandatory morning system check. Then he noticed something unusual, a small blinking yellow dot next to some red text that read, _'System check activated, response past due,'_ with a timer counting six hours, twenty two minutes and the seconds counting up. He had never seen this before and turned to look around the room for any blinking indicator lights on the walls. He saw nothing. He looked back at the red text and scratched his chin. "What's this?" he asked aloud.

The shift supervisor stepped over and bent down looking at the screen. "What are you talking about?

"This," Vorgoth replied pointing to the red text.

"That's the monthly pressure pump check, overnights do that."

"Looks like he forgot to do it. Should we be worried?"

The shift supervisor didn't reply as he stood back up and looked around the room.

"What does it mean when it says, 'System check activated?" Vorgoth asked.

"It means the pumps were cut to half power."

"Why?"

"To see if the backup pumps kick in."

"And what if they don't?" Vorgoth asked.

"Then we intervene and find a solution before the whole plant melts down," the supervisor replied.

"The backup pumps must have kicked in," Vorgoth replied. "I don't see any alerts."

Then a shutter rumbled through the floor.

"What was that?" Vorgoth asked.

The supervisor stepped over to a different console and typed on the keyboard. He looked up at the alert indicators on the walls and they were still dark. Then a muffled repeated banging sound with a high pitched whine emanated from outside the room. Like a washing machine with an uneven load. And then the first light lit up on the wall.

"What's that?" Vorgoth asked. He stood up and walked over to the indicator light which read _'low pump pressure.'_ "We've lost pressure in the pumps!" Vorgoth yelled to his supervisor. He had never seen any alerts light up since he took the job in the control room and it spooked him.

"Does it say which pump?" the supervisor asked. The other staff in the control room were now looking over at Vorgoth nervously paying attention to what was going on.

"Cooling pump four, five and six," Vorgoth replied.

"What the fuck? How can three pumps be failing?"

Then three more alert lights came on, this time on the wall to Vorgoth's right. He stepped over and read them. "We have three temperature alerts going off!"

The supervisor stepped over and read the alerts for himself. "Shit," he said in a panic and rubbed his forehead.

"What's going on?" Vorgoth asked. "You're making me very nervous."

"I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with the test he didn't run."

"Can we run it now?"

"Wouldn't do any good now. Whatever they forgot to do is affecting the system and I have to figure out how to fix it, fast."

"Tell me what to do!"

The rest of the staff were now standing, looking around as more alerts were popping up on the walls. Then the first siren went off. The supervisor ran over to the phone and picked it up. He dialed a number and waited for a response. He yelled into the phone over the noise, "What's going on?" He listened to the reply as sweat dripped down his chin. "I don't know, do something!" he yelled and hung up the phone.

"What's going on?" one of the control room staff yelled.

"We have three pump failures and the backup system was only designed for one. If the last back up system can't make the correction, the plant will blow."

"Is there anything we can do?" a voice yelled.

"We have to give the third backup time to kick in."

"But..."

Vorgoth asked, "Can't we repair the pumps ourselves?"

"It would take a crew three days to repair one pump," the supervisor replied. He sat down and hung his head with his palm on his forehead.

"How much time do we have?"

"When the temperature gets to three thousand, the reactor will blow. Fuck, you guys know that. Most of you have worked here for years."

One of the demons walked over to the temperature readout and called out, "Twenty two hundred and climbing."

The supervisor stood up and walked over to the main alert panel and shut off the siren. The repeating sounds of the pumps and the high pitched whine still cut through the two foot thick walls. He stepped back to his station and tapped on his keyboard trying to come up with a plan if the last fail safe failed. He jumped from page to page on his computer screen trying to think of some way to reduce the temperature in the reactor. He had drilled on a reactor meltdown scenario many times before and knew there was only one last ditch response he could activate but it meant certain death for everyone at the plant and anyone working within a half mile including the building next door where demons were busy torturing condemned souls.

"Twenty five seventy five," a demon called out reading the temperature off the alert.

"There must be something you can do!" Vorgoth yelled.

The supervisor looked up from his screen and replied, "Yeah, there is. But you won't be around afterwards."

"Why isn't the back up working?"

"It is, but the pumps have been down too long. If that asshole would have run the test we'd be fine. The backup pumps are running at full capacity and still can't catch up."

"So we're fucked?" Vorgoth asked. He was panting and pacing back and forth.

"There's a small chance the pump could catch up before the temperature hits three thousand. But I wouldn't count on it," the supervisor stated. "What's the temperature?" he called out.

"Twenty five seventy five and holding," a demon called back.

When Vorgoth heard the temperature hadn't risen, he pumped his fist and yelled, "Hell yeah!"

"Don't get your hopes up too soon," the supervisor replied. "I'm going to blow the reactor if the temperature gets to twenty nine hundred."

"What do you mean 'blow the reactor?" a staff yelled.

The supervisor stood and addressed the staff who were watching him intently. "There are explosive bolts that secure the reactor to its base. If I blow the bolts, the reactor drops two hundred feet into a reservoir of super cooled water and is covered by dirt blown from the side walls of the well. It will blow but the fallout will be greatly reduced. We all die, but we save hundreds, maybe thousands of lives."

# Chapter 2

# Temptation

The Reverend Andrew Lepper spent the afternoon in church and then at the gravesite service of his beloved wife and daughter who were both killed in a head on collision. His wife was found to be at fault in the accident, crossing the yellow line while texting on her phone and that made the horrific situation all the worse. His daughter was an innocent victim as the pastor had scolded his wife on multiple times about her use of her phone while driving. He figured one day she would get into an accident that would teach her a lesson, but not at the expense of his only child Cassandra.

The graveside service was a cold and rainy event compounding the sorrow and depressed atmosphere. There was a large group of parishioners that followed the hearse to the graveyard as the pastor's wife was very popular and his daughter was way too young to die at fifteen. The whole time the Reverend Andrew sat under the canopy, all he could think of was getting revenge. But against who? Or what? The other driver wasn't at fault and he was injured as well. It was too easy to place the blame on his wife and the cause of the accident was a huge embarrassment.

Today was Saturday, and every Saturday evening the pastor held a church service. But no one thought he would, or should hold one this Saturday. Or at best he should find a replacement until he was done grieving. But no, he decided to hold his service as scheduled and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to stand in front of his congregation and tell them what was on his mind.

He had a sermon scheduled for this evening but decided to scrap what he had planned. It was the usual fire and brimstone bullshit sermon he was used to giving, and the style he was known for. Only tonight he wanted to get revenge on the one and only being that could be responsible for taking his wife and daughter. There was no way that his wife could be held responsible in his mind, he knew she loved her daughter and would do anything to keep her from harm, so there was only one entity that could have cause the death of his wife and daughter and that was Lucifer himself.

And the Reverend Andrew Lepper was going to let him have it the only way he knew how. He sent out emails to all the parishioners instructing them to bring guns to the service. He didn't tell them why, just to be armed and bring enough ammunition to hold off an attack for a week. Normally this wouldn't sit well with the local Sheriff's department, but the Sheriff and all the deputies were members of the church and had the best guns in the county. He also told everyone to bring hunting gear, camouflage clothing and anything they had that could be used to track down game and kill it.

The graveside service ended and the cars cleared out. The pastor and a two employees from the funeral home were the last one's left and they stayed clear allowing the grieving father to spend time with his departed love ones.

"Is there anything I can get you?" one of the employees asked.

The pastor kept his eyes on the two caskets laying side by side under the green canopy. Drops of rain tapped all around him on the wet grass and landed on his lenses blurring his vision. He took off his glasses and tried to wipe them dry. He looked over at the man who asked him how he was doing and replied, "Would you happen to have something I can wipe my glasses with?"

"I think I do in the car," was the reply and the employee took off.

The Reverend Andrew Lepper stepped away from the gravesite and headed towards his car all along thinking out his sermon for this evening. It was a little past two in the afternoon and he would need to be ready by seven and on a bad day the church was packed. He expected standing room only tonight and many standing out front of the church trying to hear what was going on inside. He could set up some extra speakers and place them by the steps leading up to the church so everyone in the parking lot could hear so he planned on it.

The employee jogged up to the pastor and handed him a clean, dry towel. "Here you go, you can keep it."

"Thanks," the pastor replied. "You should get to church early tonight, going to be a packed house."

"I plan on it."

"Did you get my message?"

"About the hunting gear?"

"Yes."

"I don't have much, I'm not much of a hunter," the employee replied.

"Do you own a gun?"

"I have a Glock nine millimeter."

"Bring it, and boxes of ammunition."

The employee was hesitant to ask why, but he needed to know. "May I ask why the gun? Are we going hunting?"

"Oh yes, yes we are," the pastor replied.

"It will be dark out, what would we be hunting for?"

"Demons."

A quarter after seven the pulpit was empty. The congregation at the Church of the Newly Risen Christ was grumbling, whispering to each other pushing each other towards the front to get the best view. Nobody knew where the Reverend Lepper was and rumors began to circulate that he lost his mind and left the state in downward spiral of psychosis over the death of his wife and child. Most of the congregation were surprised the pastor would hold a service on the same day his family was buried, but they also knew of his devotion to the Lord. Then the lights at the back of the church dimmed and a hush fell over the crowd as the pastor stepped out from a side door near the lectern. He paused and looked out at the many anxious faces looking back at him in anticipation. He set his bible upon the podium like he did every time he began a sermon and opened the book to a marked page.

He seemed sullen, not like a normal Saturday night service. He kept his eyes low and seemed to be scanning the pages of the bible averting his eyes at those who were eager to hear what he had to say. Then he shut the bible, pulled the microphone from the holder and stepped out into the spotlight. The church was nothing special, the capacity was less than one hundred fifty, but tonight it was a packed house and he knew it.

The church was old, built back at the turn of the century and was mainly of wood construction but had been updated with new audio equipment and special lighting, including the spot light that lit him up like a candle.

The crowd was silent, waiting for the pastor to speak. But to their dismay he looked down at the floor as if he were silently praying. No one could anticipate what he would do next. Then he slowly looked up and held the microphone to his lips. "Pray with me," he said in a somber tone. For the next few minutes he and the congregation recited the Lord's Prayer. Then, like an actor on the stage he took a deep breath and paused before saying, "As you know, I lost two very special people and buried them today. Many of you were there, and I thank you for your kind words and support. I also know that many of you think I should have cancelled the service tonight. That's was the furthest thought I had in mind. The last thing I want is to sit alone in my empty home with my thoughts. You are my family."

You could hear a pin drop as everyone was glued to the pastor's every word.

"I've had a lot of time to think over the last few days and all I wanted to do was find someone to blame. The police tell me the accident was my wife's fault. But I don't believe that for a minute. There is only one force in the universe that would take a mother and her daughter from this Earth. And that force is Satan."

The crowd began murmur and a slight rumble bounced off the walls and stained glass windows.

"Lucifer took my wife and daughter. There can be no other explanation. It was Lucifer that put the phone in Julie's hand. It was Lucifer that compelled her to take her eyes off the road. It was Lucifer that tempted her, distracted her and caused her to veer into the other vehicle."

The crowd grew louder. And so did the pastor.

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Matthew 4:1" the pastor stated. "After the Devil had finished tempting Jesus in every possible way, he left him until another time. Luke 4:13." The pastor began to pace and continued, "The Devil tempts us every day of our lives. For some reason Julie was weak that night and gave into temptation. But do not blame her for we are all sinners!" the pastor shouted. "We are all weak human beings and can be susceptible when we least expect it. Lucifer found a crack in her armor and took advantage when she was most vulnerable. Now I realize I wasn't there to witness what occurred, but I know my wife and she would never do anything to put our daughter in danger," the pastor said. He had seen Julie text many times while driving and had called her on it only to get berated by her anger. He learned to keep quiet and kept his eye on the road. But he wasn't going to tell his congregation. He was too pissed at Lucifer to allow himself to become angry at Julie. He convinced himself the accident wasn't her fault for it had to be the fault of someone or thing with a greater influence. A greater power for evil. Who would take a fifteen year old's life? Lucifer---that's who.

"Who here among you agree with me?" the pastor asked. He let his arm go slack and held the microphone by his side.

Then a chorus of voices called back from the crowd. The rumble turned into shouts of agreement and the pastor smiled for the first time. He held the microphone back to his lips and called out, "The Devil has taken two of our own! And we can't allow him to get away with what he's done." The pastor heard more shouts from the crowd. "I need your help! I won't allow Lucifer to steal what isn't his to take. I am asking you to help me take back what is mine. What is ours!"

The crowd was now shouting back at the pastor in wild agreement. He knew he had the congregation where he wanted them and needed to whip them into a fury. "Bring them back!" the pastor shouted and repeated the message over and over getting the crowd to join him. "Bring them back, bring them back, bring them back!" bounced off the walls and rattled the windows. The crowd began to stomp in rhythm as they called back and forth, "Bring them back, bring them back!"

Then the Reverend Lepper held his microphone down by his thigh and nodded his head in rhythm to the chants from the crowd. He felt like a rock star and now had them eating out of his hand. But now for the hard sell. He raised his hand to silence the crowd and they immediately stopped chanting. "I asked you all to bring weapons to the service tonight, did I not?" the pastor asked. "We did!" the crowd shouted back. "I asked you to bring hunting gear and ammunition as well, is that right?" he shouted. "Yes!" the crowd yelled back. "I have a mission for you, a mission for God, to find Lucifer and bring him before God and make him pay for what he's done!"

For a moment the crowd seemed confused by what the pastor was asking. Then the pastor stepped behind the lectern and picked up a .223 rifle and held it up over his head with his free hand. "With this gun, I will hunt down Lucifer and bring him before God. Lucifer is a fallen angel, not a god. He is a fallen angel."

Then the crowd grew silent and a lone voice spoke from the crowd. "Lucifer is a spirit, he can't be killed with a gun."

"That's true on Earth, but not in Hell."

The crowd remained silent and hung on the pastor's every word.

"I need to create an army. An army that will penetrate the depths of Hell and fight Lucifer on his own ground. Once there, our weapons will work against the spirit, for the guns we carry will be mastered by spirits, our spirits."

The faces of the congregation looked confused.

"I am asking for volunteers to go with me, to go to Hell and fight Lucifer one on one. I will lead an army and together I will get my revenge, and get my wife and daughter back."

"But how?" a voice called out.

"We need to become spirits, then we can take anything we need with us and cross the plane into Hell. There we will seek out Lucifer, kill him and rescue my wife and daughter."

"But what makes you think they are in Hell?"

"Only Lucifer could take them in such a cruel way. I'm sure once they were dead he stole their spirits and took them down to the bowels of Hell with him. I know in my heart they are trapped somewhere below and I need your help to find them, and bring them back."

"But that would mean..."

"Yes, it would mean you would have to sacrifice yourself and become a spirit and follow me. Once I rescue Julie and Cassandra, we can all escape from Hell and rise and enter the Kingdom of God."

"But only sinners can enter Hell," the voice called out.

"Sinners and those who Lucifer has stolen."

"Do you plan for Lucifer to steal your army, and take them to Hell? Won't he know what you are doing?"

"I am planning no Trojan horse for I don't know if that would work. There is only one sure way to enter Hell and that is by sin."

"Are you asking us to sin?"

"I am begging you," the pastor replied. "We will need to commit sin so grievous that God would have no choice but to send us to Hell. From there we rescue my wife and daughter, we repent our sins and God will take us up to heaven."

"What kind of sin are you talking about?"

"Are you with me?" the pastor asked.

Silence.

"I asked you to bring your guns and hunting gear tonight for a reason. I plan to create an army from my congregation, commit an ultimate sin, become a spirit and enter Hell fully armed."

# Chapter 3

# Dig

The dig site was unusually quiet as the university van pulled up to the contractor's office. The construction crew that had been working the site had been temporarily reassigned to different projects until the Geology and Archelogy departments could examine the remains found at the new sewer installation. Two days prior, a backhoe digging a twenty foot deep sewer trench came upon human bones mixed in a packed sand layer below a denser layer of clay. The remains were a mix of lower leg bones, and smaller assorted tarsals and metatarsals. The project was immediately halted until the remains could be identified and a call to the university was made.

Often remains of ancient Native Americans were discovered by construction crews as they excavated, triggering projects to be flagged and stopped all together until they could be investigated. These bones looked like they could have been buried thousands of years ago and fit the profile of early inhabitants that once populated the area.

As the van pulled up, the site manager stepped out of the make shift office and walked down the steps to meet the van. He held out his hand to the woman who exited on the passenger side and said, "Hello, you must be Maggie."

"Yes, and your name is?"

"Dan Murphy, I'm the manager for Steele Construction." Dan wore a hard hat at all times and a button up cream colored shirt with long sleeves; he looked like a model for a construction outfitter. "I have the bones set out for you over here," he said pointing to a canvas covered table next under a temporary awning. The two stepped over to the table followed by the other two staff from the university. They all gathered around the remains and Maggie picked up what looked like a tibia. "How deep did you find these?" she asked.

"About twenty five feet," Murphy replied.

"That's unusual for remains to be found that far down. I wonder if we're in a floodplain?" she asked looking around at the landscape.

"I don't believe so, we aren't near a river nor a valley."

"Then how did these bones end up so deep?" Maggie asked as she examined the long bone. Looking around the table she noted several tarsal bones and pushed them around like dominos.

"Can you identify where they came from?" Murphy asked.

"If these were Native American remains, they came from a very tall specimen. At least tall for them. And the girth is larger than I would suspect for someone living ten thousand years ago on the plains. This looks European to me, and not early but late. Whoever this came from would have been tall, and carried a lot of extra pounds throughout his or her life."

"You can tell all that from looking at parts of a leg?"

Maggie held up the tibia for Murphy to examine. "See how consistent the bone is along the axis? See how wide it is towards the proximal end? This is not the bone of someone who lived on the grasslands. This is the bone of someone who had a hard life. A builder, or a farmer."

"But didn't Native Americans farm?"

"Not when these deposits were laid down."

"Who was farming then?"

"People who lived near the Mediterranean Sea," Maggie replied.

"But..."

"I know, this isn't the Mediterranean Sea. But whoever these bones belong to derived from there. Can you show me the dig site?"

"Sure," Murphy replied and led the three university staff over to the trench. "Be careful, I should have you all in hard hats."

Maggie looked down the long excavated trench and tried to find the spot where the bones were located. It was difficult to find in the messy piles of dirt and clay and the uneven surface.

"Over there," Murphy pointed. He was indicating a spot on the same side they were standing, about ten feet to the right and twenty five feet down. From her standpoint, she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"There's not much to see from here, if you want, we can hook you to a cable and lower you down," Murphy said.

"Can I take Michael with me?" Maggie asked indicating with a tilt of her head who she was talking about.

"Sure, we can secure the cable to the backhoe."

For the next ten minutes Murphy and another of his crew strapped Maggie and the Geology professor Michael Lighthouse to a steel cable and helped them down the side of the trench towards where the bones were found. Every move they made dislodged clay and sand down to the bottom where it covered the remains and the bottom of the trench.

"A few more feet," Murphy said, pointing to where he remembered the bones were found. He swore he put a red flag there but didn't see it anymore.

Maggie slowed down and scanned the bank looking for anything that looked like bone. What she saw was not bone, but a long metal tube about one and a half centimeters wide and ten centimeters long and hollow sticking out of the embankment. It at first looked like a metal pipe, but then didn't. "You see this?" she yelled back up to Murphy.

Murphy leaned over and looked down at what Maggie was pointing at. He saw something thin and straight jutting out of the soil but couldn't make out what it was. "I see something," he yelled and then shrugged his shoulders indicating he didn't know what it was.

Maggie pulled a brush from her jeans pocket and dusted off the pipe and noticed something jutting off the side at the end. She moved in closer and examined the pipe and put one and one together, only it didn't make any sense. What she thought she was looking at was the end of a rifle barrel. Only the rifle was buried under twenty five feet of clay, sand and soil and would have had to date back twenty thousand years or more. She reached out and touched the end of the barrel and put her pinky finger in the hole. It was perfectly round and the site at the end looked machined. Like it had been created in a factory.

"What did you find?" Murphy asked, yelling from above.

"It looks like a gun," Maggie replied. The words sounded odd as she said them.

"A gun?" Murphy asked.

Maggie pushed the soil away from the tube and scooped out handfuls until more of the barrel shown through the overlay. The deeper she dug, the more she believed what she was looking at was the end of a rifle. "This is quite odd," Maggie said as she continued to scoop out more and more soil. As she did clods of dirt fell from above and filled in the spaces. She cleared the clods away and dug deeper and deeper until she saw something that cemented in her mind that she had found a gun. What she found was writing engraved on the side of the barrel. She couldn't read what the engraving said, but it was obviously man made. As she pushed her glasses down her nose and looked close, she read, '.223 caliber" as plain as day.

"What does it say?" Lighthouse asked. He was leaning over trying to read the inscription.

"It says Remington .223 caliber."

"Ok, now what does it really say?"

"Look for yourself," Maggie said.

"This strata dates probably back fifty to seventy five thousand years. There's no way a rifle could be here. There must have been some recent construction they don't know about."

"That's possible," Maggie replied.

"No, it's the only answer," Lighthouse stated as fact. "No gun should be here."

Murphy yelled down to the two professors. "Well?"

"When was the last time anyone dug around here?" Maggie yelled back.

Murphy scratched his head and thought for a moment. "There used to be an old dump around here, but back then they didn't dig more than a few feet. "Are you sure you found a gun?"

Normally Maggie would stop her excavation until she could get her field survey equipment to the site but the dirt was so loose that she decided to dig a bit further. The more she dug the easier the soil fell apart in her hands allowing the rifle to be pulled from the embankment intact. It looked like it had been exposed to the elements and some moisture, but otherwise it looked like with a little cleaning that it could be functional.

Murphy saw Maggie pull the rifle from the side of the trench and yelled, "Holy shit, you did find a gun."

Maggie held it up for Murphy to see and called for him to pull her and Lighthouse back up. Using the backhoe as leverage, the machine lifted the two academics up the embankment and back up onto the edge of the trench. She handed the rifle to Murphy who inspected it.

"My dad had one like this. Bought it back in seventy four or five."

Another woman from the geology department stepped around and took a look at the gun. Her name was Abby Nowakowski and she didn't look academic, more like a makeup saleswoman for a department store. She was a graduate student who happened to be in the office when the call came to investigate the find and tagged along for the ride. She pulled down her glasses, took a look at the gun and said, "That's pretty cool."

"Cool?" Lighthouse asked.

"Yeah, what's the chances of you finding that in the ground?"

Lighthouse rolled his eyes. "I'm thinking a million billion to one."

"That's what I mean, pretty cool."

Lighthouse shook his head in disgust. The graduate student was about five three with a skin tight skirt wrapped around her bubble butt and a chest that matched. She wore black polished heels and blood red nails that extended half an inch past her finger tips. She didn't look like the field type or the lab type either. But then he couldn't figure out how she could type so office help didn't make much sense either. "What's your degree?" Lighthouse asked.

"Masters in Ancient Rome and Greek Civilizations," Abby replied.

"Do you plan to teach?"

"No, I want to work in the field after I get my PhD."

Lighthouse was confused, but then really didn't care. He had a rifle to figure out. "We should take that back to the lab," Lighthouse said.

"Sorry, can't allow it. Not without permission of the land owner," Murphy said.

"This isn't city land?" Maggie asked.

"No, we're putting in a new sewer for a land development company. They buy up huge tracks of land and put up housing. Lots of housing. They all look like cookie cutter houses but they sell like mad. Our job is to install the storm and sanitary sewer systems.

"Can you give me a number and a contact?"

Murphy dug through his wallet and pulled out a card and handed it to Maggie. "I have his number in my phone, you can keep that."

Maggie read the card and placed it in her pocket. "So I suppose I should give this back to you?" she asked holding the rifle out to Murphy.

"Sorry, but I should lock this up for now," Murphy replied taking the gun from Maggie.

"I wish you would have told us that before you called us," Abby said. She was arrogant and a bit demeaning in her delivery.

"They were doing what they have to," Maggie said. "I'm not sure we're the right people to call, but they covered themselves legally. I wouldn't put that on the market just yet, it needs to be investigated. If there is one gun down there, there is probably a lot more. And I'm sure you'll find more remains as well."

"Why? You found two legs and one gun, makes perfect sense to me," Murphy replied.

"There's something odd going on down there and if you keep digging you will eventually find it. What you will probably do is tear up a significant find before any of the remains can be cataloged. Let me call your employer before you start digging."

"How long will that take? We're losing thousands of dollars a day."

"I'll call when I get back to the office. If this is as significant as I think it is, you will most likely be rerouting your sewer anyway," Maggie said.

"I don't think so, this is the lowest area from the main sewer to the development. There's no other route. The only way we could alter the route would be to install pumps and that would be very expensive. Do you know how much it would cost to pump shit uphill a mile?" Murphy asked.

"No, tell me," Maggie asked.

"I don't know for sure, but it would be a lot."

"What are you going to do with the remains?"

"I thought we'd put them in a box and store them in the office," Murphy replied.

"Can I take them, they are of no use to you."

"Not without my boss's permission. I'm not losing my job because of you."

"Then please call him," Maggie said. "Now."

Murphy stood his ground and didn't go for his phone. He knew this woman couldn't legally tell him what to do.

"Fine, I'll call him," Maggie said and pulled the card back out of her pocket. She dialed the number and waited for an answer.

"Office of D and L Development LLC. How may I direct your call?" a joyous female asked.

"May I speak with Mr. D'Angelo?"

"May I ask whose calling?"

"Maggie Lorentz, I'm a professor at Alger University."

"Is Mr. D'Angelo expecting your call?"

"No," Maggie replied.

The phone was silent as the woman put Maggie on hold

# Chapter 4

# Torture Center #6934

"I have an idea," Vorgoth said in a panic. "Can't we use some of the super cooled water in the well to cool off the rector? Without dropping it in?"

"It's not set up that way, the water is pumped in from outside and circulated back out when it gets too warm. There are no pumps or hoses to bring the water up the well. And if we did spray the reactor with cold water, it would probably cause it to explode," the supervisor replied.

"You're guessing."

"I'm not guessing about the fact there are no pumps."

"What's the water temperature in the backup cooling system that's supposed to stop the overheating?"

"Nothing close to what's in the well. I don't know for sure."

"What's the temperature now?" Vorgoth asked.

"Still twenty five seventy five," the demon replied.

The supervisor said, "We might survive this after all."

Vorgoth stepped over to the temperature control read-out and read the monitor. "It's going down," he said with a slight sound of relief in his voice.

The supervisor felt a minor shutter from the floor and the lights blinked.

"What was that?" Vorgoth asked.

"I don't know," the supervisor replied. "As long as we don't have a meltdown we can survive just about anything so don't panic again."

Then another alarm sounded, this time a grinding low repeating shrill of a sound.

"What the fuck? That's a radiation leak!" Vorgoth yelled. "An entire bank of lights started to blink on the wall facing Vorgoth and he lost his shit. "Oh my fucking God, I'm gonna die!"

"You're already dead!" the supervisor yelled. "Find out where the leak is."

Although demons were not considered living beings, they were still vulnerable to the effects of radiation poisoning.

Vorgoth stepped over to the blinking alarm board and read aloud, "The reactor is leaking, and there is an alarm in the intake and exit valve units. How the fuck can the reactor leak? It's ten inches of solid steel."

"Was ten inches," a demon replied.

"Is the temperature readout giving a false report? I thought we were in the clear," Vorgoth said.

"The temperature may be going down because the reactor is venting. If that's the case the temperature will start to rise and rise fast after it's done," the supervisor replied.

"So now what?"

"I need to blow the bolts."

"You do that and we're all dead!"

"You won't die!" the supervisor yelled. "You will recover, eventually."

"That could take a thousand years."

"Better than dead," the supervisor stated. He tapped on his keyboard and brought up the controls for the reactor safety system. He found the input to release the bolts and hesitated, frozen in place not committed to blowing the plant. Sweat dripped down his red face onto the keyboard as he stared at the input command. He looked to Vorgoth who was looking back in sheer terror.

"Don't do it," Vorgoth said. "We can take the radiation, we can't survive the blast."

The supervisor looked back at his control prompt and pulled back his hand from the keyboard. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the blinking lights across the room and then closed his eyes listening to the constant alarms. "Can someone turn off the fucking noise?" he asked.

A demon flipped a switch and the alarms stopped. All that remained was the quiet of the room and the lights.

"The temperature is nineteen hundred fifty and dropping," a demon called out. Well within normal.

"The backup must be working," the supervisor said with a sigh of relief. "But we still have a radiation leak."

"Not in here we don't," Vorgoth said. "Get a crew in there to repair the reactor."

The supervisor leaned over and picked up the phone. He pressed the page button and called for a maintenance crew to the reactor for repairs. He hung up the phone, sat back up straight and wiped the sweat off the desk.

"That was close," Vorgoth said.

"Too fucking close," the supervisor replied.

"I'm quitting this job tomorrow."

"Now don't do something you're going to regret. I've never seen this happen before and I'm sure you don't want to go back to your old job."

"You know, my old job wasn't all that bad. I thought taking the promotion would be great until they started dumping more and more jobs on me. I have ten times more responsibility than I ever had before and more stress than I can deal with. Maybe I was a 'nobody' in my last job, but at least at the end of the day I didn't go home worrying that I forgot this, or didn't finish that. And I constantly have people checking up on me and sending me notes to fix all sorts of shit that isn't my job."

"Didn't you work next door?" the supervisor asked.

"Yes," Vorgoth replied. "A lot of people hated working there too, but it didn't bother me."

"What did you do there?"

"I tortured women eight hours a day. And I got two fifteen minute breaks and my lunch was never interrupted like here. When I was done I went home and slept like a log. If I had stress I took it out at work. Nothing relieves stress like beating sinners for a shift."

"Then why do I hear demons bitching all the time about the working conditions?" the supervisor asked.

"Because to some people the job is repetitive and boring. You have to make the job fun. I used to find ways to make whipping those bitches enjoyable. I used the pretend they were people I hated from my past and that always worked. I had a coworker that was always late to work, called in all the time and never did his job right. He'd take half hour breaks and his bitches never got what was coming to them."

"So why did they promote you to the plant?"

"Because I showed up to work and was dependable," Vorgoth replied. "I'm putting my notice in here when the shift is over."

The next day Vorgoth stopped in to the human resources department at the Torture Center #6934 and asked for an application. The center was located next door to the plant and his commute wouldn't be any worse that it had been for the last eight months. The female demon at the desk told Vorgoth that all applications were handled online and that he could use one of the facility kiosks to apply.

All this brought back some of the distain he held for the place, but he knew it was still better than the plant and he gave his notice. It was too late to turn back now. He finished up filling out his information and struggled a bit trying to come up with the reason why he quit his last job. He typed in that he left for personal reasons but felt that wouldn't fly so he deleted it and replaced it with, _"The position didn't offer the kind of advancement I was looking for."_ That sounded better but he was sure they would drill him on it if he were called for an interview.

He electronically signed the application and stood up to leave when the girl at the desk called his name. He was surprised that she had called so soon and stepped over to her desk.

"The H.R. director will see you in twenty minutes. You can get some coffee in the break room if you like and then wait here in the lounge area until we call your name."

Vorgoth wasn't dressed for an interview. He figured he'd fill out an application and they would possibly call him for an interview in a few days, not immediately. He looked down at his faded worn jeans and pulled on the t shirt that with a Nebraska Cornhusker logo in bright white letters. "Do you mind if I go home and change first? I wasn't expecting an interview today." he asked.

The woman at the counter looked up at Vorgoth with her tiny pink horns poking out the sides of her temples and faked a smile. "I don't think your dress will make a difference."

"Really? I was always told to look presentable for job interviews."

"You're applying for a floor position, not management. I think you'll be fine," the woman replied.

Floor position was code for low ranking shit worker. The ones who spent eight hours a day with a whip or hot poker in their hands torturing condemned souls. This particular torture center housed strictly females who had abortions. Nothing else. Each day he would be assigned a new woman to torture every half hour with a particular set of instructions based on the severity of their sins. They would be led to his station and tied up to a rail or bound to a slab and he had thirty minutes to perform his task according to the facility rules and regulations.

His bosses would walk around and monitor him and the other demons to make sure they were doing their jobs correctly and they were often berated in front of other workers when the masters felt they weren't handing out punishment to their liking. The place was very political with lots of back biting, rumors and favoritism. He quickly remembered all the bad shit he tried to forget when he left the job and quickly regretted leaving the reasonable security of the plant. At least most of the staff were civil to each other and the worst he had to do each day was monitor a work station. Now he'd leave work each day with a sore shoulder and lower back pain. He always strained his lower back when inserting red hot pokers up these women's assholes.

Twenty minutes passed and Vorgoth was led to the human resources department where a nicely dressed female demon with a clip board met him. She brought him into her office and asked him to sit down. The office wasn't very big, especially for a demon the size of Vorgoth but it wasn't uncomfortable. The room was lined with H.R. notebooks and filing cabinets filled with personal files. On her desk was a computer terminal and stacks of paperwork, and under her computer monitor were pictures of her kids wearing baseball uniforms.

Where ever she found to play baseball was beyond him, the outside world he knew was a frozen wasteland in a cold windy dark cave the size of Lake Michigan. She pulled out his old personnel file from a one of the filing cabinets and took a seat on the other side of the desk facing Vorgoth. She opened the file and pulled out a few sheets of paper and laid them down on the desk between them. She scanned the reports and nodded as she did running her finger along the lines she was reading. "Says here you're eligible for rehire."

"Good," Vorgoth replied.

"I think we can forgo the normal orientation since you only left eight months ago. There have been some changes though. We now run twelve hour shifts instead of eight and the hour lunch has been cut back to thirty minutes."

Vorgoth didn't want to say anything, but a thirty minute lunch break over a twelve hour shift sucks. "Do we still get our two fifteen minute breaks?"

"Yes, but we are now a non-smoking campus."

That didn't matter to Vorgoth, he didn't smoke anyway.

"We will start you off with what you made when you left. I can't offer you what you were making at the plant."

Vorgoth figured he'd be taking a pay cut, but not back to his original starting pay. He didn't have much bargaining power, the nearest torture unit to his house besides this one was another half hour drive away and he had no guarantee he'd get hired there. Plus he heard the work was miserable.

"That's fine," Vorgoth replied.

"Your probation period of sixty days will start over at which you will be eligible for a fifty cent and hour raise."

"That sounds fine," Vorgoth said. When do you want me to start?"

"Can you start today? We have fifteen positions to fill and we could use you on the floor as soon as possible."

"I don't have a uniform."

"Stop over at the supply room and they'll give you two pair. Just like last time. Then report to the supervisor's office and they will assign you a work station."

In his mind all he could think about was going home and relaxing. He didn't want to start today but she cornered him and he felt like he should do as she asked since it was his first day on the job. And he was reliable.

"I need you to fill out this tax statement, take a handbook and sign the back page that your received it. You can give that page to your supervisor," the human resources demon stated.

Vorgoth grabbed a pen from a cup of pens on her desk and filled out the tax statement and turned the handbook to the last page and signed it. He put the pen back and asked, "Is the supply room in the same place?"

"Yes," she replied and Vorgoth headed out of her office back to his old stomping grounds.

After meeting with his supervisor, Vorgoth was led to his work station. He had worked in most of the departments at the Torture Center #6934 over the years and had briefly worked at a whipping station. He found the work tedious and mind numbing and the lowest of the lowest of jobs. And it gave him bursitis of his right shoulder after a few shifts.

His station consisted of a rack of whips that he could choose from and a pipe that stuck three feet out of the ground with a metal ring attached that the cuffs of the dammed would be shackled to. He had a clip board attached to his whip rack with his daily assignments which he rarely read because the victims were delivered to him in thirty minute intervals by special demons charged with just that job. When the thirty minutes were up, they would bring a new woman to beat and take the other one to a new station to be whipped by a different demon. This would go on continually for the dammed, as Hell is a place of eternal torment.

When he arrived at his work station a woman was waiting for him. She was attached to the pole by a chain. She was exhausted, naked and covered in whip marks from head to toe. He looked at her and his old routine came rushing back to him, like it was yesterday.

"You ready for this?" he asked. He always tried to converse with the sinners before during and after his session.

The woman, hunched over with her hands upon her knees slowly turned her head and looked up to the six foot four demon who was browsing his rack of whips. "What do you expect me to say?" she replied.

Vorgoth looked over at her and saw the look of disgust on her face. He stepped towards the clip board and read her name. "Julie Lepper," he read aloud. "What did you do before you died?"

"I was a preacher's wife," she replied.

"Really?" Vorgoth asked. "That's a new one for me. "And you had an abortion?"

Lepper didn't reply.

"You don't have to tell me, you wouldn't be here if you didn't. It's usually those 'Holier than thou' types that do the most sinning anyway."

"I was eighteen. Before I met my husband," Lepper replied.

"Did he know?"

"If he did he never said anything."

"I bet he didn't," Vorgoth replied. He found a whip he liked and tested it out with a loud crack. "Have you ever seen one of these up close? The leather work is incredible."

"No, they don't show me before they beat me," Lepper replied.

Feeling a bit giddy with this fine whip in his hand, Vorgoth stepped over to Lepper and held the handle out so she could see it. "Look at the weaving. I don't know how they can do that. It has to be hand made," Vorgoth said as he pulled the whip closer to examine it. "I almost hate to use it because it will damage the leather."

"Put it back, you don't have to do this."

"I have rent to pay," Vorgoth replied and cracked the whip on her right leg. The sound pierced the air and sent Lepper to the ground writing in agony. He looked down on her without pity. "How did that feel?" he asked.

Lepper didn't look back and kept her arms wrapped around the wound. At the end of the thirty minute session the major wounds would heal and she would be taken to another station to be beaten again. And the process would be repeated for eternity.

Again the demon cracked the whip on the defenseless woman and this time left a bright red mark across her upper back. She stayed on the ground and that pissed Vorgoth off like no other. He liked to whip his victims standing, not laying on the ground. And the more he beat her, the more he got into it. He was doing as he had said and was making the most fun out of a boring job that he could.

Then he felt a shutter and heard what sounded like an explosion. The first thing that shot into his mind was the plant next door in a mushroom cloud after the reactor exploded. Only the lights were still on and the building wasn't flattened to the ground.

"What was that?" Lepper asked looking up at the demon with a whip in his hand.

"Fuck, I don't know."

# Chapter 5

# The alter

"I am begging you," the pastor replied. "We will need to commit sin so grievous that God would have no choice but to send us to Hell. From there we rescue my wife and daughter, we repent our sins and God will take us up to heaven."

"What kind of sin are you talking about?"

"Are you with me?" the pastor asked.

Silence.

"I asked you to bring your guns and hunting gear tonight for a reason. I plan to create an army from my congregation, commit an ultimate sin, become a spirit and enter Hell fully armed."

The pastor stepped back to the lectern and pulled out two photographs. He carried them back to the alter and held them up for the congregation to see. In his right hand he held a color eleven by fourteen photograph of his wife Julie and in the left a photograph of his daughter Cassandra. Today my wife's soul is being tortured on the bowels of Hell. I can only conclude that my daughter is with her as Lucifer would have taken the opportunity to steal her and take her away.

"But there may be a chance your daughter got away, and was saved!" a voice called out.

"Yes, there is a chance, although I feel it is a small one. I can only pray that Jesus got to her before Lucifer. But that doesn't change the nature of the mission. I need for you to accompany me to Hell to retrieve my wife and possibly my daughter. Are you with me?" the Reverend Andrew Lepper asked.

At first the congregation was silent, but then a rumble started from the back that reverberated to the front with cheers and calls of acceptance. The preacher smiled and waved the photo's about in cheerful glee. He then stepped back to the lectern and approached the microphone. His voice was gravelly from yelling and he wanted everyone to hear what he had to say next.

"For my plan to succeed, I need for everyone involved to be equally invested," he stated over the speaker system. The crowd died down to hear his plan. "Once we commit a sin worthy of Hell, we will all ingest cyanide poison and lay down our lives to be reborn into Hell. When we arrive, our guns and ammunition will be transported with us just as our clothes, hair, glasses and other things we need. From that point on, I will locate Lucifer and together we will rescue Julie and Cassandra and we will dig our way out of Hell and back onto the Earth where we will live as free spirits, able to be taken into heaven and live with the Father."

"What sin do you want us to commit?" a voice called out.

The Reverend Andrew was silent. He had the congregation where he wanted them but didn't know if he could get them past committing the ultimate sin. Once there he knew the mass suicide would be as simple as handing out cups of cyanide laced soft drinks. "The sin we commit tonight will guarantee two people entrance into God's kingdom as they will be the innocent victims of our evil deed. I need for you to understand that the sacrifice that will be made tonight is not in vain, but the opportunity for two lucky individuals to live in paradise. The sin we commit will be a blessing for them. Again the pastor was silent as he judged the congregation's reaction. "Jasper, I need for you to bring your wife up here to the pulpit," Lepper said as he looked into the crowd at Jasper Anson.

Jasper didn't understand what the pastor wanted, and shook his head as to avoid being called out. His wife pregnant Cindy stood next to him holding onto his arm scared at what the pastor was saying about her.

"Jasper, I need for you to bring your wife, please."

Jasper didn't move.

"I command you to bring your wife!" the pastor yelled.

Now in terror, Jasper began to sweat and looked to his wife. She looked back and shook her head horrified. She was eight months pregnant with their second child and knew what Lepper had in mind.

"No," Cindy whispered.

"Jasper!" the pastor yelled.

"We have to," Jasper said pulling on his wife's arm. She resisted and the crowd began to push her towards the alter.

Cindy looked around at the crowd that were pushing and shoving her towards the front and began to panic. She dropped to the floor, was picked up by four strong men and carried overhead towards the awaiting pastor. When she arrived, the men laid her atop the alter and held down her arms and legs. Her pregnant belly rose like a hill in the center.

"I need all the able bodied men to come towards the front, bring your guns and ammunition."

The crowd separated into men, woman and children and the men stepped forward with their weapons.

"Keep your guns at your ready, I don't want you to use them now, they are to be used in the afterlife---in Hell," the pastor said. He reached behind the alter and pulled out a twelve inch Bowie knife and held it up for everyone to see. "This will be the agent of her entrance into heaven, and our entrance into Hell. I want all of you to touch the knife before I use it. By allowing me to have the knife back, you agree you are an accomplice to whatever act I commit. Do you agree?" the pastor asked.

The crowd called back in agreement.

The pastor stepped forward and handed the knife to the first man he saw. "Pass the tool of sin and death around until every man here has held it. Then bring it back to me."

The knife was passed around from man to man and each one held it briefly. The knife was then circulated until all the men felt its weight and it was handed back to the pastor. He then stepped back behind the alter and held the knife above his head.

Cindy yelled and screamed the whole time the knife was circulated in the crowd and the pastor did nothing to silence her. He knew her screams would excite the men and help bring them around to his thinking. Normally a screaming woman would bring empathy from the men, but in his control, it did the exact opposite.

"I want all of you to repeat after me. _Kill the innocent, kill the child, kill the innocent kill the child, I ask of this of my own free will and to Hell my soul be dammed."_

The crowd repeated what the pastor said and he plunged the knife into the belly of the woman and into the child. He dug the knife around making sure the child felt the steel blade and then slid the sharp end down to the woman's pubis and pulled the knife out. Cindy continued to scream in pain as blood ran off the alter onto the floor and the pastor did nothing but smile and watch her die. The pastor and the congregation committed the sin of murder, and abortion.

The Reverend Lepper stepped back and waited for her last breath and commanded the men who were holding her down to release her. The room was now silent and the congregation awaited direction from the unholy man. "Before we take our last drink on Earth, I want to make sure you all understand what our mission entails. I don't know if we will be able to communicate once we are reborn in Hell. The mission is simple, you will all follow me, under my command until we find Julie, at that point we will do whatever it takes to rescue her and half of you will dig through the Earth until you reach the surface. The other half will continue with me in search of Cassandra. If we can't locate her, we will backtrack to the tunnel and climb back to the surface. Once there we will gather and ask for God's forgiveness and be transported to heaven. Do you all understand?"

"How do we know which half we are?" a voice asked.

Lepper replied, "All men born between January and June will be responsible for Julie, the rest will be responsible for Cassandra."

Then a man slid out of the crowd onto the first step of the alter. He was a tall thin man, clean shaven but worn from years of labor. His name was Samuel Peck and he looked concerned. "What makes you think God will forgive us?" he asked. "And if your plan is to work, why haven't we seen the damned roaming the Earth? There must have been others that have tried to dig their way out before."

Lepper didn't reply at first, he looked deep into Samuel's eyes and tried not to scream at him. In a restrained calm voice, Lepper replied, "John 3:16, don't you read your bible?"

"You are asking us to repent after death, if that worked, there would be no one in Hell. Everyone would repent and be saved. Is that in the bible?"

A long silence as Lepper glared into his eyes. He had nothing to back his claims and he knew his plan was a longshot. But he was willing to sacrifice his life as well as the lives of everyone in his congregation in order to find out.

"No," Lepper replied in a stern low voice.

"Then why should we follow what's not scripture?"

"Because I asked you to."

"Who are you to ask so much of me, of us?"

"I am your leader, your teacher and you connection to the Lord."

"Why don't we see the damned walking the Earth?"

"We do, they're called ghosts."

"You sound more like a false prophet," Peck said. He pulled a worn bible from his back pocket and held it up. He turned to the crowd and looked around at the faces staring back. "I know the bible, I study it each and every day. You will find nothing in this book that says God will forgive you once you have passed."

"2 Timothy 4:1, I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom," The Reverend Lepper replied.

"Then how do you know that your wife and daughter are in Hell? If Jesus hasn't come to judge the living and the dead, they would have to be somewhere in between. Revelation 21:27, nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. According to the bible, your plan will not work."

"I disagree, 'whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

"You are splitting hairs and are willing to sacrifice the lives of not only two innocent victims taken tonight but the lives of the men of our congregation as well," Peck replied.

"Once we repent, we will become pure and enter heaven."

"That is the very definition of shameful and deceitful. God will see through your lies."

"I won't lie. When I have my wife and daughter back, I will accept Jesus as my savior with every fiber of my being and the entire weight of my soul. I won't have to lie, I will accept Jesus and so will all of those who follow me in my mission."

Samuel turned again to the congregation. "Is this correct? Do you all plan to repent and accept Jesus as your savior after killing this woman and her unborn child?"

"Yes," the crowd replied as one.

"I think you're treading on thin ice," Samuel said as he turned back to face Lepper.

"Did you touch the knife before I used it?"

"No," Samuel replied.

"So you have no intention in following me and my army into Hell."

"That's correct. I believe you are a false prophet and I refuse to go along with your sin laced plan. Two people have suffered enough at your hands tonight and I will not be a party to the murder of anymore."

"Murder? These men give themselves to me freely. I can't force twenty or more men to drink poison any more than I could a hundred. They are sacrificing themselves of their own will."

"Because of your lies."

"Because of my faith. Maybe you should get some," Lepper said as he stepped forward and slashed Samuel across the neck with his bowie knife.

In shock, Peck stepped back and fell into the crowd trying to stem the flow of blood draining from his neck. Nobody attempted to help him and the congregation as a whole watched him die.

"I am no false prophet. I am your teacher and I asked for your help to save my family and in exchange I offer you the Kingdom of heaven in return. All you have to do is drink from the well and follow me when we arrive in Lucifer's den." Lepper held his hand out to the side door of the alter where he signaled two women to roll out a cart with a punch bowl on top and glasses all around. The bowl was filled with cyanide laced cola. "All of you come forward and receive your gift from God. Take a cup, drink it and wait for me on the other side. I will guide you in Hell and then back to heaven. Don't be afraid of death, for it is a new beginning. You will be with your loved ones who've passed and reunited in His glory."

A line formed before the alter and one by one the women filled the cups and handed them to the men. They took the filled cups back and waited for the pastor to lead them into the next life by drinking the poisoned contents. The Reverend Lepper stood back and watched the women fill and hand out the cups of toxin and his heart filled with joy. His mission had started and he couldn't wait to find his wife and daughter and rescue them both.

# Chapter 6

# Pit

"This is Carter D'Angelo, how can I help you," a man's voice stated over the phone.

"Hello, my name is Maggie Lorentz, I'm a professor of archelogy at Alger University. Do you have a minute to talk?"

"I have a few, yes, what can I do for you?"

"Mr. D'Angelo, I received a call from your site manager Dan Murphy about some remains found at a dig site and I think you may have to put your work on hold until we can do some further investigating."

"On hold?" D'Angelo asked. He sounded concerned. "What kind of remains are we talking about? Some deer bones?"

"No, human remains, and a rifle."

"So you found an old Indian grave, or a settler that died on the way to the gold rush. This isn't breaking news. That shit happens all the time."

"Normally I would agree with you. But these remains were found in a strata that date thousands of years ago. There is no possible way a rifle could be mixed in with the soil."

"Then your dating is wrong. I'm sorry but the dig must go on as planned."

"I could ask for a judge to halt the work," Maggie said. She wasn't sure if that was possible but decided to bluff anyway.

"You do that," D'Angelo said smugly. "In a month the project will be complete and by then you may have a cease and desist order."

"I need for you to stop now."

"Goodbye Ms. Lorentz," D'Angelo said and hung up the phone.

Maggie closed her eyes for a moment and pulled the phone from her ear. She looked to Lighthouse and hoped he had an answer. He looked back at her and shrugged his shoulders. She then looked over to Abby and got the same basic response.

The sound of Dokken's _'In my Dreams,"_ rang from Murphey's phone and he answered it. He stepped away so no one could hear the conversation and left Maggie to stew. She knew D'Angelo was on the other side of the conversation and that he was telling Murphey to kick them off the property.

Murphey hung up the phone and turned back to Maggie. "You got to go, all of you. Now. Or I call the police."

"I expected that," Maggie said defeated. "Let's go."

"You can't let him kick you off the property," Abby said. "These artifacts are one of a kind. You can't imagine the significance of what's buried down there."

"I don't have any choice Abby."

Abby stepped towards Murphey and pointed at him. "You call that fucker back and tell him I'll call the television stations and newspaper and get him so much bad publicity that he'll wished he dug this shit out for us."

Murphy replied, "Nobody gives a shit about some old bones dug up at a construction site. And that gun was probably planted there by some media hungry archeologist like you in the first place."

"You think we put that gun there?" You're fucking nuts. What would we gain out of stopping your stupid construction?"

"I don't know, maybe you should tell me," Murphey replied.

"You called us, not the other way around."

"Do what you want, if you're not off company property in five minutes I'm calling the sheriff," Murphey snapped.

"Let's go Abby," Maggie said. "We won't win this way."

Abby stepped away and as she did she yelled, "I'm serious about calling the news. You'll regret the day you fucked with me."

"I'm sure I will," Murphey replied with a grin.

At the car Abby stood in front of Maggie so she couldn't open the driver's side door. She wasn't going to let Maggie leave the property before venting some more. "Why'd you let him do that? Now we won't have a chance to get back and dig anymore."

"We have to obey the law," Maggie replied.

"Fuck we do."

Lighthouse opened the rear passenger's side door and waited for the two women to get inside. He could see it would be a while. "Let's get back to school and complain there. Before he really does call the cops."

Abby folded her arms and glared at Lighthouse. "Fine, but I'll be back."

"Good, now let's go." Lighthouse said. He sat down in the back seat and closed the door.

Maggie and Abby got in and shut their doors. Maggie started the car and they took off towards the University. On the way, Abby decided to vent some more. "I'll wait till it gets dark and go back."

"They hire security guards to keep thieves away. I'm sure you would qualify," Lighthouse replied.

"All I want is the bones and any other artifacts in the same area."

"Still theft."

"They will dig them up and bury them again without looking for anything. Who knows what else could be down their?"

"He's probably right about the gun. Not that it was planted, but that it wasn't originally from that strata. Who knows over the years who could have dug around here? That could have been an old well shaft that was filled in. Maybe a hunter fell down the well with his gun and over time was buried under dirt and they just happened to come across it by accident?" Lighthouse said.

"If that's the case, why not let us find out?" Abby asked.

"Because they aren't in the archelogy business, we are. Their sole purpose is to dig a trench and bury a pipe that shit can run through. Period. The most science those guys know about was from seventh grade."

Maggie listened to the two bicker and tried to think of a way to get back to the dig site without wearing a black mask and tights. She didn't spend ten years in college to end up a burglar. "Let's sleep on this and meet tomorrow in my office at ten."

"By then it will be too late," Abby replied.

"Maybe, but if we act tonight, we won't be prepared. We need to come up with a plan that works. Not jump a fence with flashlights and shovels. Do you know what would happen to the reputation of the school if they caught us illegally digging for artifacts?"

"Three to five years in the State Pen," Lighthouse replied.

"How do you know?" Abby asked.

"I don't," Lighthouse replied.

"Then shut the fuck up."

"We should have left you at school."

Maggie was tired of the childish banter. "Now shut up the both of you! I've had enough. I told you both to meet me at my office at ten tomorrow. You got it?"

Abby sat and stewed and a thought came across her mind. This was no hunter that fell down a well, it was the most significant archeological find in the last century and nobody was going to fuck it up and tell her what to do. All she needed was a backhoe and someone to operate it. Easy.

At ten till midnight Abby had her wish. A trip to the local bar wearing high heels, a low cut top and a short skirt found her three different guys that worked construction that had access to what she needed. And they were willing to do what she wanted if she gave them what they wanted. The only problem was getting past the construction site security and that wasn't hard either since one of the men she conned into helping her was related to the guard.

As soon as the site was secure, Abby called Maggie and told her to get down to the find and hurry. The men were unloading a backhoe off the back of a trailer and getting it ready to dig. The backhoe had lights and Abby and the other men brought some LED lights to help illuminate the dig site. After servicing two of the men, Abby changed into work clothes and waited for Abby to show up. There was a chance Maggie would instead call the police, but she took a chance she had some balls and would show up.

Then she did. Maggie pulled up to the construction site and crossed over the flimsy barrier and headed over to where the backhoe was getting ready to dig. It was difficult to uncover any new material from above so they pushed some gravel and clay down into the trench off to the side to make a ramp they could drive the backhoe down. At the bottom, the backhoe maneuvered close to the dig site and the driver pointed a halogen light at where the bones were found.

Abby slid down the side of the trench and tried to find the exact spot where the rifle had been found but it was difficult in the stark blinding light from the backhoe. She thought she was close and motioned for the operator to take a bite out of the side of the trench where she was pointing. The metal claw dug out a scoop of soil and dumped it on the other side of the trench allowing the material to slide down to the bottom. Abby shown her light on the pile and saw nothing so she indicated for the operator to take another bite. Again the backhoe took a bite which produced nothing, but then she saw a small camper shovel slide down the side of the trench and stop at the bottom. It was pale green and looked like something a kid would take to camp. In the moment she figured it was a tool that someone knocked into the trench by accident, but in the back of her mind it stood out. But not enough to stop digging.

For twenty minutes the backhoe dug deeper and deeper into the side of the trench and still they found nothing besides the shovel. Maggie was standing at the top of the dig site looking down expecting the police to show up at any time. Then she saw the backhoe buckle. It wrenched to the right and then settled as the front right tire slipped into the sand.

"What's going on?" Maggie yelled from above.

Abby stepped close to the backhoe and shined her light on the tire that was now halfway buried in the sand. The backhoe was tilted oddly forward and to the left. "I don't know," Abby replied holding up her arms.

"You want me to quit?" the backhoe operator asked.

"No, keep digging," Abby yelled.

The operator nodded his head and pushed on a lever moving the scoop closer to the left bank. The neck of the boom lowered, took another scoop of soil and jerked to the right to deposit the soil on the other bank when the backhoe shuttered and slid into the soil like the sand flowing through an hourglass. It was up to the control box before the shaking stopped and by then the operator had jumped ship and headed up the embankment towards safety.

"We better go," Maggie yelled down to Abby who was climbing on top of the backhoe. She either didn't hear or didn't care.

"That's not safe!" Maggie yelled.

Abby messed with the controls trying to move the boom arm up and in the process jerked the entire backhoe sending it dropping another foot into the soil. By now the sand was pouring into the area where she was sitting and she could feel the machine slowly slide down in comparison to the horizon.

"I think you're in quicksand!" Maggie yelled.

By now Abby was getting a little nervous but she didn't want to give up yet. She looked up to Maggie and motioned for her to come down and help. Maggie stood like a statue, scared to death thinking any minute she would see Abby drown in a pile of sand inside a backhoe. "Help me!" Abby yelled out like a scared schoolgirl waving her arms.

Maggie was scared as well but felt she had to do something so she got down on her butt and slid down the side of the trench slowly inching her way towards Abby. When she got to the bottom, she reached out her hand for Abby. Abby stood up and took a step towards Maggie when the backhoe dropped like a stone into a chasm below followed by dirt, rock, soil and two professors from the University of Alger.

The remaining crew members watched in awe as they witnessed the backhoe fall into a black hole and felt the freezing cold breeze that blew back at them. The temperature difference was fifty degrees easy and felt like an Arctic chill.

The lights around the construction site did little to illuminate what was deep inside the hole and the backhoe was long gone before they heard a thud and a crash. It seemed to take ten seconds or more before the sound of the backhoe hitting the bottom of the chasm returned and the sound wasn't good. It sounded like an airplane or train crash with metal on metal or metal on stone.

There was no way the two women should have been able to survive the fall and their flashlights did nothing to help them see. But now that they were gone there was no reason for them to be there any longer so the three men from the bar took off like scared school boys leaving the pit behind.

For the next six hours no one knew what happened until the day crew arrived and found the open hole leading to nowhere. The pit was pitch black and cold as ice with the occasional wind whipping out cutting through the sixty degree air.

There were faint sounds emanating from the hole, like the sounds of machines but no one could see them. Even with the most powerful searchlights, all they could see was the distant barren bottom of the pit and what looked like the tops of ancient ruins.

From the bottom of the pit Maggie could see the faint light from the hole above. The backhoe had landed close enough to her that she could smell the burning oil that drained from the engine onto the frozen ground. There wasn't much light to see, but in the dark she could make out the shape of Abby, lying on her back puffing out plumes of steam with each breath. It was cold, deathly cold and neither women were dressed to withstand the temperature. It was a matter of time before they both either died of their wounds or froze to death at the bottom of a pit.

# Chapter 7

# Cassandra

Six hours into his shift Vorgoth was in the break room eating lunch when he noticed emergency vehicles speeding down the road outside the window. Since the outdoors was always dark, the red and yellow lights atop the trucks were easy to spot at a distance. The sounds of sirens cut through the sounds of the plant next door and quickly faded as the vehicles sped away. And then they stopped still within Vorgoth's view.

The demon stood and walked to the window and tried to make out what was going on but all he could see was what looked like a pile of rubble flanked on each side by an emergency vehicle. And above them a spot of light beaming down from above visible in the dust that hung in the air.

"What's going on?" another demon asked; her name was Roshetta and she was putting a frozen dinner in the microwave.

"Too far away to tell. There's no road out that way so I don't think its car crash," Vorgoth replied.

Roshetta stepped over to the window and took a look for herself. "That is an odd place for an accident. Maybe there was a plane crash."

"That's possible, but we don't get many planes around here."

"What's the light up there? Looks like a hole in the sky."

"Yeah, kinda freaks me out a bit," Vorgoth said. "That concerns me more than whatever that pile is."

"Whatever it is, I'm sure they're taking care of it."

"Yeah, but a wreck that close to the power plant could be a concern. It could be an act of terrorism."

"I don't suppose an angel came down here to blow up the reactor do you?" Roshetta asked.

"I wouldn't put it past them."

For the next few minutes both demons stood and watched the lights flash until they were both bored. "Break is about up," Roshetta said. She stood up and tossed her trash in the waste basket and headed to the door. "You coming?"

"Yes, but I wish I had something for this pain. My shoulder is killing me."

"You have six more hours to go, are you going to be alright?"

"I'll take it easy for a while," Vorgoth replied.

"Don't let your supervisor catch you taking it easy, or he'll strap you to the rod and have someone beat you."

Vorgoth swung his arm in slow wide arks to relieve the tension in his right shoulder. He rubbed the joint with his left hand and tried to work out the kink that was causing the pain. "Maybe I need surgery."

"Your insurance won't kick in for sixty days so you might want to ice it when you get home," Roshetta replied.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Vorgoth said as he stood up from the table. He stepped around and followed Roshetta out the door and into the long hallway back to his workstation. Each step clip clopped on the hard basalt floor with his massive hooves and his horns often scraped against the narrow walls setting off sparks as he walked. "You'd think they'd make this tunnel a bit wider for guys like me," he said.

"Most males work with other males. You're one of the few that work with female inmates. That's why the halls are narrow."

"You make this sound like a prison."

"It is sort of," Roshetta replied.

"Yeah, I suppose."

It took over five minutes at a brisk pace to get to the doorway that led back to Vorgoth's workstation. Roshetta took another door and the two separated. Vorgoth walked down a shorter hall and out into the station where his whips were racked. He looked at the clock and saw he was late getting back and noticed a delivery demon standing waiting for him with a naked young woman by his side with a collar and leash.

"Sorry," Vorgoth said.

"I don't care if you're late, but if my boss finds out I'm late because of you..."

"I said I was sorry."

The demon unclipped the leash from the woman's collar and pushed her towards the metal pole at the center of the ring. She bent over and allowed the demon to strap her to the pole by her shackles and backed away.

Vorgoth stepped over to his clip board and read the name of the damned woman He read aloud, "Cassandra Lepper. I thought I had another Lepper a while ago."

"That was my mother," Cassandra replied. She looked way too young to be in this building, way too young to have had an abortion.

"How old are you?" Vorgoth asked.

"Fifteen," Cassandra replied.

Vorgoth was surprised that a girl was on the list to be whipped. "Why are you here?" Vorgoth asked.

"My mother and I died in a car accident."

"That doesn't explain anything. This center is for women who've had abortions. Have you had an abortion?"

"No, and neither has my mother."

"That you know of," Vorgoth replied. "They're pretty good about getting those things right. But I don't understand about you."

Then the other demon spoke up. "She was stolen when her mother was brought here."

Vorgoth knew this practice happened occasionally, but he never met anyone in person that had happened to. "So you really don't belong here," Vorgoth said. His voice was almost sad.

"No, I belong in heaven," Cassandra replied.

Vorgoth didn't feel it was right to condemn a soul just because they happened to be in in the wrong place at the right time and was being sent to Hell. But that was the rules and he was forced to comply.

"So are you going to beat me?" Cassandra asked.

Feeling guilty, Vorgoth looked to the ground and avoided eye contact. "It's my job."

"Do you know what it feels like to be beaten?"

"No."

"I've been here less than a week and have been whipped almost non-stop. I didn't do anything to deserve what I'm getting.

"That's not for me to decide."

"Are you going to tell me you just work here?"

Vorgoth looked up and replied, "What else can I say?"

"You can let me go, you know I'm innocent."

"I'm sure you are."

"Well?"

"If I don't do as I'm told---I will be punished."

"So you're going to whip me knowing full well I don't deserve it," Cassandra said as a statement and a question.

Vorgoth pulled a whip from his rack and wound it up in a neat circle. He felt the weight of the leather in his hand and looked down at the tight knit stitching admiring the craftsmanship. "I'm following orders."

"Like a fucking Nazi."

"Yes, like a fucking Nazi!" Vorgoth snapped back. "That's what we do down here! Who do you think taught those fuckers?"

Cassandra backed down hearing Vorgoth yell at her. But then she bounced right back. "You have a chance to make this right. You don't have to beat me."

"Of course I do. That's my job. I don't have the option to make decisions on my own. I have an employer who makes those."

"Then quit."

Vorgoth smiled at the quick witted girl. "I quit my last job, I can't afford to quit this one."

"Do you really want to hurt me?" Cassandra asked.

The demon was four feet taller and two hundred pounds heavier than the naked female standing before him. He could step on her and crush her under his massive weight if he wanted to, but deep inside she was getting to him. He didn't mind torturing the truly damned, but this girl did nothing wrong other than being in the car when the demons took her mother's soul to Hell. Vorgoth looked at the demon who had delivered the girl and asserted that he really did enjoy beating women pastor hours a day regardless of their circumstances. He put on a good show for his coworker, but deep inside he wanted to let the girl go.

Then a voice called from above. It wasn't Lucifer, it wasn't Satan, it was the shift boss on the loudspeaker yelling at Vorgoth to get started. "You're ten minutes late! Get going, this is your verbal warning!"

Vorgoth looked down at the young woman and shook his head. "Time to get to work."

Averting her eyes, Cassandra shied away waiting for the first crack of the whip. She heard the sound but didn't feel anything. She opened her eyes to see the demon that delivered her lying on the ground bleeding from his neck. Vorgoth cracked the whip on him instead of her.

"What are you doing?" Cassandra asked.

"Getting fired," Vorgoth replied. He stepped over to his whip rack and dug around in a box full of tools. He found a bolt cutter and walked over to the pole that held her chains and cut a link. He cut the other side of the link and the chain fell loose of the bracket that held it in place.

Cassandra held up her shackles for Vorgoth to see but he wasn't able to cut through them or cut them off.

"That's the best I can do," the now unemployed demon said and tossed the bolt cutters on the ground at her feet.

"What are you going to do now?"

"Get you the fuck out of here," Vorgoth replied. "How, I don't have a clue."

"I'll do whatever you say, just get me out!"

The first thing Vorgoth needed to do was to get to the front door, only the door was guarded at all times to keep the damned from escaping. In all his memory he never knew a demon that tried to help a damned soul escape and this may have played into his hand. Many times the damned had escaped the punishment floor only to be caught at the exit, but with his knowledge and expectance they had a chance. "We need to get you some clothes and somehow out the front door."

"Where do I get clothes?"

"I have a heavy coat with an inner jacket. You can wear the jacket but it won't cover your legs or feet and it is freaking cold outside."

"Then what?"

"Then I kick the guard's ass and haul you out the door," Vorgoth said knowing the guard would be armed and he really had no idea how to get past them.

Then an alarm sounded and the voice called again over the speaker, "Security to station eight eighteen, security to station eight eighteen."

"Well, so much for that plan," Vorgoth said.

"Hurry, before they get here!" Cassandra yelled.

The nearest exit was twenty feet away and the door was open. "Run," Vorgoth yelled and he took off towards the door followed by Cassandra. They both ran through the door and down the hallway towards the entrance to the building stopping at the door before the guard station. Vorgoth quietly opened the door and peeked through looking for the armed guard that always stood by the timeclock. He was there and he was half asleep standing with his gun leaning against the wall.

Seeing his opportunity, Vorgoth opened the door and ran up to the guard and shoved him through the glass and out into the freezing cold. Cassandra ran into the coatroom and grabbed what she could find that would keep her warm and waited for Vorgoth to find his coat. After Vorgoth finished stepping on the guard's windpipe and beating him unconscious, he ran back into the coatroom and grabbed his coat and jacket and together he and Cassandra ran out into the parking lot looking for his vehicle.

In a panic, Vorgoth forgot where he had parked and had to use his key fob to honk his horn. When he located his truck, he led Cassandra through the parked cars across the lot to his truck and let her in. The vehicle was ice cold and always started hard and today was no exception. The engine started on the first try but it would take fifteen minutes before the interior was warm enough to stop shivering. Normally Vorgoth would prestart his truck at home and let it warm up, but he had no choice today and put it in reverse and backed out of his stall.

"Are we going to your place?" Cassandra asked.

"No, that's the first place they will look."

"Then where are we going?"

"Fuck, I don't know. We'll just drive around for now," Vorgoth replied and sped down the parking lot to the exit. There was no guard at the entrance to the lot and he had no problem heading out on the street towards the highway. In the distance he could still see the yellow lights from the emergency vehicles he and the female demon saw during his lunch break

# Chapter 8

# Escape

When the last man had his cup filled and returned to his place in the crowd, the pastor filled his own cup and stood before them all. He held up his cup and scanned the faces looking back at him and said, "With this cup, I sacrifice myself for the better of others. I want you to repeat after me and then drink. With this cup, I sacrifice myself for the better of others, and will be joined with Jesus in heaven."

The group of men repeated what was asked of them and the pastor led the group by drinking the contents of his cup and holding it towards the sky. He watched a few of the men up front drink their poison and drop the cups on the floor. Satisfied, he said, "Thank you all. Take up your arms for you will be joining me in Hell soon." With that said, he turned and left the alter and walked into the ready room off to the side. He took a seat next to a table on top of which was his .223 caliber rifle, two nine millimeter Glock pistols and a hunting vest crammed full of extra ammunition, and a camping shovel. He pulled the guns close and rested the vest on his lap waiting for the poison to take effect. He knew he'd start to feel the effects within twenty minutes and should be dead by the end of an hour.

The Reverend Andrew Lepper awoke in a freezing wind lying on the ground in the dark. He dressed for the heat of Hell and found himself in the coldest wind he'd ever felt and was quickly becoming hypothermic. He looked around and saw three other men lying nearby all in the stages of awakening. They too were poorly dressed for the cold conditions and were having a difficult time coming around. The one thing that the pastor noticed immediately was the lack of followers.

"Where are the others?" the pastor yelled over the wind."

Two of the three men we now lucid enough to understand what the pastor was asking and one of them replied, "I don't know."

The pastor looked around in the dark and tried to find the others. He expected fifteen men, not three and suddenly realized that many of the men may have backed out at the last minute and didn't drink the poison. Either that or the dose wasn't strong enough.

"I'm freezing!" one of the men yelled. His name was Shawn and was wearing a t shirt and jeans. "We need to find shelter."

The landscape was flat in all directions and the ground was a dusty black soil that made it difficult to make out anything. In the distance he could see the dim lights of a large factory complex that was billowing out smoke, or steam. It was hard to tell the difference. And there seemed to be sparse traffic on what had to be a road. He could see faint headlights and tail lights of various sized vehicles heading to and from the factory. "We need to head in that direction!" the pastor yelled. From where he stood, the factory looked to be at least two miles away and in the subzero temperatures he didn't know if they would make it, but they had to try.

The three men picked up their guns and stood fighting the biting wind. They took off following the pastor towards the factory losing valuable body heat every second. The only consolation would be they would gain heat from the run and that might gain them enough leverage to make it.

What would normally take thirty minutes to traverse was going to take them an hour in the wind. They couldn't tell what the ground was like in front of them since it was as black as the sky and there were very few landmarks to show where the road started or ended. But the pastor did see a vehicle heading in his general direction and thought if they were close enough they could use their guns to signal the driver and get him to pull over. It was a longshot but may be their only hope of survival.

Ten minutes later they were numb and out of energy when the vehicle came close enough to signal. The pastor yelled for the men to shoot their guns into the air and make as much noise and light as they could. In his mind he felt he might scare off anyone who might be able to help them, but he was at his wits end.

In a hail of gunfire, the vehicle slowed and stopped a good hundred yards away. He knew he had someone's attention and now needed for them to come close enough that he could make contact. But the vehicle wasn't coming any closer and seemed to be turning. Then they noticed more lights behind the vehicle, only these were flashing, like the lights on an emergency truck accompanied by the sounds of sirens.

Maybe they saw them appear and were on their way to rescue them. That wasn't how the pastor's plan was supposed to go, but at this point they needed all the help they could get. They may have another five minutes before they all froze solid and became part of the landscape.

Then the vehicle moved towards them, at first slow and then picked up speed. It seemed the emergency was more about the mystery vehicle than it was about the pastor and his crew. Still they had to make for the road and flag someone down so they picked up the pace and ran as fast as they could to meet them. But it seemed by now it was too late and the emergency truck had caught up to the lead vehicle which slowed and stopped. Maybe this was the best chance they had since they were less than a quarter mile away.

Vorgoth pulled over and waited for the security to catch up. He knew now he didn't have a chance to escape and there was nowhere to go anyway. If he had taken Cassandra back to his place, they would have eventually found them anyway. He gave it a good shot but in the end there was no living on the run in Hell. It was a closed system and there was no other place to go. You had to live by the rules and that was it. And the rules were you go to work and obey what your boss says. And you don't help the damned escape.

Looking into his rearview mirror, Vorgoth shook his head. "Sorry, I let my emotions get the best of me."

"You tried to save me, you did the right thing," Cassandra replied.

"Yeah, I know. But doing the right thing down here doesn't get you anywhere. That's why it's called Hell."

A voice called from a loudspeaker from behind Vorgoth's vehicle. It was the voice of one of the security guards shouting to him. "Open the door, get on your knees and put your hands on top of your head," the voice bellowed.

"Don't," Cassandra said.

"If I don't they'll shoot nerve gas in here and take us out."

"Then take off, you don't have to give up."

"Where would we go?"

"I don't know, where were you going before they caught us?"

"I really hadn't thought that out. There is no place to hide down here."

"Then get us out of here."

"To where?"

"Back on Earth."

"Do you mean dig our way out of Hell?

"Yes. Has anybody ever done that before?"

"I'm sure it's been tried, but I've never heard of anyone making it before," Vorgoth replied.

"There's a first time for everything."

Vorgoth looked at Cassandra like she was nuts. "Do I look like I have a backhoe?"

"No, but there's one over there," she replied pointing over to the pile of rubble.

"That is a backhoe," Vorgoth replied. "How the fuck?"

"Up there, look," Cassandra said pointing towards the sky. "See that light spot? See the beam of light?"

"That's not Jesus is it?" Vorgoth asked.

"No you idiot, that's how the backhoe got there. It fell through a hole in the Earth."

He had to think for a minute to process what she was saying. It did look like the backhoe fell from the sky. And maybe that bright spot was the hole if fell through.

Then Vorgoth and Cassandra heard gunshots and panicked. "What the fuck was that?"

Just then a man banged on Vorgoth's driver's side window and pulled on the door latch. To Cassandra's shock and amazement, it was her father, the Reverend Andrew Lepper.

"Daddy!" Cassandra yelled.

"Daddy?" Vorgoth asked. His heart was racing a hundred miles an hour.

"That's my dad, let him in!"

"How can that be...?"

"I said let him in!"

Vorgoth pressed the unlock button on the car door and pointed for the man at his window to get in the back. It didn't take long before the pastor was sitting in the rear with his rifle in his hand. The rear driver's side door opened and another man got inside, it was Shawn.

"Where are the other two?" the pastor yelled.

"They were shooting the security guards, I think they got them."

The pastor yelled, "Get us the fuck out of here!"

Vorgoth slammed his foot on the gas and they took off down the road leaving the security detail and the two other men behind.

"Daddy, how did you get down here?" Cassandra asked.

"It's a long story honey, you just need to know we came here to rescue you, and your mother. Where is she?"

With his low booming voice, Vorgoth replied, "She's back at the torture unit."

"Torture unit? What? Is that some sort of factory?"

"You could say that," Vorgoth replied.

"Then may I ask what a demon is doing with my daughter?"

"I was trying to save her."

"What about Julie?"

"I can't do anything for her. I don't know where she is," Vorgoth replied.

"We have to go back."

"There are twenty thousand damned souls a day tortured in the plant and the chances of you finding her are less than zero. The place is huge and there are guards all over the place. I was only able to rescue your daughter by chance."

"I brought guns," the pastor replied.

"You can't kill a demon with a gun. I don't think you can kill a demon with anything. I've been alive since the beginning and that's been a gazillion years. I'm sure your two friends have found that out by now.'

"I didn't come here to be told what I can't do, I came here for one purpose and one purpose only. To rescue my wife and daughter."

"Tell you what, if I can find a place for us to hide for a while, you can go back and get her on your own time. I've never known another demon that did what I just did and I don't know what they will do with me and I don't want to find out."

Pissed, the pastor pointed his rifle at the back of Vorgoth's head and said, "If you don't turn this thing around now, I'll blow a hole in your head the size of a softball."

"No, actually it will go through my head and shatter the windshield and it will be freaking cold in here. Did you miss the part about how you can't kill a demon?"

The pastor was frustrated but he didn't have any other options. He was no longer freezing to death and realized he needed to take a break and formulate a plan to get his wife out of the factory. And then how to get back to Earth.

"Did you have a plan on how to get out of here once you found your wife and daughter?" Vorgoth asked.

"Not really," the pastor replied. "I figured we'd find a way to dig our way out. But we didn't expect Hell to be so cold. I was taught that Hell was a place of heat and fire."

"It is, inside the factory," Vorgoth replied.

"Daddy, we saw a backhoe a while back. Maybe we can use that to dig our way out," Cassandra replied.

Vorgoth said, "That thing was in a rubble pile. I don't think you can get it to work. And from what I saw, where you want to go is straight up, and that thing can only dig sideways."

"What are you talking about? What did you see?" the pastor asked.

"We think the backhoe fell from a hole in the Earth from above. From the looks of it, it's about a half mile straight up. You'd need wings to get there and in this wind, you'd never make it," Vorgoth stated.

"Who does that backhoe belong to?" Shawn asked. He had been quiet the entire time but now spoke up.

"I didn't see any marking on it," Vorgoth replied "It was too dark and the flashing yellow lights didn't help."

"How could a backhoe dig through the Earth to Hell in the first place?"

"Must have been a thin spot in the crust."

"I didn't think Hell was a physical place," Shawn replied. "I thought Hell was separation from God."

"You can't get more separated that this shit hole," Vorgoth replied. "I've never seen God hanging around, or Jesus for that matter."

"They are both God," the pastor replied.

"Yeah, whatever," Vorgoth said under his breath. "I'm not going to get in a religious debate with you. I'm actually in the bible, you're not."

# Chapter 9

# Bagdrath

Maggie and Abby were taken by a security patrol car back to the factory and brought inside. Both women were alive and somehow managed to survive the fall from the edge of Earth into the pit of Hell. They were bloody and broken but both were lucid and able to talk. Neither had life threating injuries and their lacerations were treated at the nurse's station. A nurse's station in Hell.

As their wounds were being treated, a call was made to the local authorities and a squad car was sent out with two detectives. There hadn't been a breakthrough into Hell in anyone's memory and they would want to know how the two women were able to cross the barrier. Maggie's right arm hung in a sling and she didn't have much sensation in her right hand. She assumed she had suffered nerve damage. Abby knew she broke ribs, but without an x-ray machine she had no way to find out for sure. But she did know that every breath she took was labored and she coughed up blood.

No one had spoken to either one of the women or responded to their frequent manic questions. All they knew was they had fallen into a hole and that it was freezing outside and hotter than Hell inside the building. "Are you holding us?" Abby asked.

No reply.

"What the fuck are you guys? You look like demons" She could tell by their red skin and horns that these men weren't human, but what they were she didn't know for sure. As an archeologist she tried to place them in time but all she could come up with was Christian Hell. She noticed that not all the men had the same sort of horns and that some were larger than others, some were curved and some were different colors and textures. But other than that, they all sort of looked alike. "Do you guys speak English?" Abby asked. She was condescending, like she was talking to a minority group she didn't like.

"Yeah, we speak English," one of the demons replied.

"Good, what the fuck are you?"

"My name is Beilotch," the demon replied. "What's yours?"

"You shouldn't be talking to them," another demon said.

"Don't worry, I'm just making conversation."

"My name is Abby, this is Maggie."

"Alright, I don't want to let too much out of the bag, but you are right, we are demons, and you're in Hell."

Abby looked at Maggie and nodded her head. "I knew it."

Maggie shook her head. "Hell isn't a place, it's a concept," she said.

The demon looked around the room. "No, it's a place."

Just then the door opened and two detectives stepped inside. They both wore brown suits and carried briefcases and had very different sets of horns. "Do not say another word to either one of them," the lead detective said. He wore a name badge that said 'Bagdrath".

"Bagdrath?" Abby asked. "Did I pronounce that right?"

"Yes, and this is my partner Talrach."

"Like Starsky and Hutch?" Abby asked with a giggle.

"I don't get the joke," Bagdrath replied. He sat his briefcase on a desk and opened it. He pulled out a notebook and a pen and checked the time on his watch. He looked to Beilotch and asked what time they found them and what time they brought them back to the factory. Satisfied with the timeline, Bagdrath took a chair and sat at a table to take notes. He offered the women a seat as well. "Name," Bagdrath asked Abby.

"Abby Nowakowski, I'm an archeology grad student at Alger University."

"And you?" he asked Maggie.

"Maggie Lorentz, I'm a professor of archelogy at Alger University."

"This Alger University, it's back on Earth?" Bagdrath asked as he scratched notes.

"Do you have one here?" Abby asked with a smirk.

"I'll be asking the questions. How did you get here?"

"You're EMT's brought us here."

"No, I mean from Earth, how did you break the barrier?"

"Oh, that was easy, we dug a hole and fell through."

"I see."

"That must happen a lot, we're always digging holes for something."

"Actually this is the first time I've heard of it," Bagdrath replied.

"No fucking way. Then how did we manage?"

"That's what I'm here to find out. Are either of you religious?"

"Not really," Abby replied.

Maggie hesitated. "At one time I considered becoming a nun."

Abby turned her head and looked at Maggie with surprise. "I had no idea," Abby replied. "When was that?"

"Thirty years ago, before I decided to become an archeologist," Maggie replied. "You were probably still in diapers then."

Bagdrath was becoming inpatient at the women's bantering. "So you never took any vows or anything?"

"No, I backed out before then. Why? Does that make a difference?"

"I'm not sure. Either that or you had a holy backhoe."

"What?" Abby asked.

"I have a preliminary report that the backhoe in question has had a blessing in it's past. Some of those Italian construction contractors have priest's bless their equipment and I suspect that may be the case here."

"And that was enough for it to dig into Hell?" Abby asked.

"I really shouldn't be sharing any information with you," Bagdrath replied. "But I do need to find out if you are spies."

Abby laughed. "Spies? Are you serious? Who would spy on Hell?"

"Who do you think?" Bagdrath asked. "God would love to get some intel on what's going on down here."

"That makes no sense. If God wanted to know what you were doing, he'd show up himself."

"Yeah, you'd think so, but that's not how he likes to do it. He prefers to have his minions do it for him."

"I can assure you I'm no minion, and neither is she," Abby said.

"Unfortunately I can't take your word for it. We're going to have to go through our normal interrogation procedures to ensure you're not lying to us," Bagdrath said.

Abby looked around the nurses office and over to Maggie. "What is this place?" she asked as she looked back at Bagdrath.

"This is a torture center."

"For the damned, right?"

"Right."

"You're not planning on doing that to us are you?"

"Not sure right now. Normally they torture souls, but since you're not technically dead they may have to find another way."

"What do you mean by not 'technically' dead?"

"You shouldn't have survived that fall. Something is keeping you alive. At this point we are considering you both dead and alive. Sort of the undead."

"Zombies?" Maggie asked.

"Not in the traditional sense," Bagdrath replied.

"So what are you going to do with us in the mean time?" Abby asked.

"I'll have to talk to my supervisor and find out, so for now you will be held here. I don't suspect it will take too long to make a decision."

"Are you charging us with a crime?" Maggie asked.

"No," Bagdrath replied.

"Then why not let us go?"

"Think of yourselves as illegal aliens. Without proper documentation we can't let you roam around free. You might be terrorists, or criminals. We have to do a background check."

"How?"

"Like I said before, this has never happened before. We'll have to work it out as we go."

"So there is a chance you may torture us?" Maggie asked.

"There is a good chance, yes."

"Then I want a lawyer," Maggie replied.

Both Maggie and Abby sat in the nurse's office for hours waiting to know their fate. A demon guard stood outside the door with a gun keeping them from leaving. They had no clue that the artifacts they found at the dig site would lead them to Hell and in their minds it made no sense. Why was there a rifle mixed in with the bones? Who did the shovel belong to? Who else could be down here in Hell with them that they didn't know about?

***

The pastor checked his rifle to make sure it was loaded. He thought his threat to shoot Vorgoth in the back of the head would work but didn't realize that solid objects to him were not necessarily solid in Hell. Then he had an epiphany. Maybe objects in Hell weren't solid to him either. Maybe he could dig his way out without using a machine to do it. If Vorgoth wasn't solid to his bullets, then maybe the walls of Hell weren't solid to his touch.

"I have an idea," the pastor said. "How close are we to the walls of Hell?"

"Walls of Hell?" Vorgoth asked. "What are you talking about?"

"If Hell has a floor and a ceiling, it must have walls. It can't go on forever."

"I think it does actually. At least I've never seen anything like a wall."

"If you kept driving, where would you eventually end up?"

"In Hell," Vorgoth replied. He found the question absurd.

"So there isn't any rivers, or hills, or mountains or borders?"

"Nope, just Hell," Vorgoth replied.

"Fuck, I have to find a way to get to the ceiling then," the pastor said in disgust. He was out of ideas but wanted to try his theory.

"Well, hold on," Vorgoth said. "There is this one place, but we're not allowed to go there."

"Where?" the pastor asked.

"Lucifer made an anti-shrine. It's the opposite of the place where Jesus was crucified."

"Golgotha?" the pastor asked.

"I don't know what the fuck it's called. All I know is it's on a raised hill with three twisted upside down crosses. Lucifer made it as a joke. But nobody's allowed to drive up there anymore. Plus why would you? It's no place for a picnic."

"Can you get to the ceiling from there?" the pastor asked.

"I don't remember, it's been years since I drove past it. It's possible. But even if you could get close, how would you get to it?"

"We'd need scaffolding," the pastor replied.

Vorgoth looked out the side window and laughed. "You're funny. Even if you had scaffolding, the wind would blow it down."

"Then I have another idea, I'll dig into the hill, there must be a passageway back to Earth."

"I told you we're not allowed to go there. And what would use to dig?"

The pastor pulled a camping shovel out of his hunting pack and held it so Vorgoth could see it in his rearview mirror. "Maybe you're not allowed to go there," the pastor snapped back. "But there's no rule about us going there. Is there?"

"No, we don't get a lot of the undead around these parts," Vorgoth replied.

"Then head that way, I want to get the fuck out of here."

"What about Mom?" Cassandra asked.

"I don't think we can do anything to help her now, but at least I can get you out. How far is it to the hill?"

"Three days, maybe," Vorgoth replied. "I don't know if I have enough gas to get there."

"Can't you stop and get some?" Cassandra asked.

"Do you see any 7-11's around here?"

Cassandra scanned the horizon and saw nothing but dark. The only way she could tell she was on a road was the yellow dashed lines in the center and the solid yellow lines bordering each side. She couldn't remember seeing any road signs either. "How do you know where you are going?" I haven't seen a sign the whole time we've been driving."

"There's only three roads in Hell, and they all lead to or from Lucifer's castle."

"How do you know which one we're on?" Cassandra asked.

"I know this is not the road home, and the other has a viaduct that spans the rail yard and back around the plant before heading away. This is the only one that could lead to the hill."

"Why didn't you head for the city?"

"That's the first place they'd look for us."

"Why not the other?"

"It's the only road that doesn't loop back towards the factory and the quickest road away from the factory," Vorgoth replied. "You ask too many stupid questions."

# Chapter 10

# Two days later

Vorgoth drove for two long cold days to the anti-shrine and pulled over on the side of the road with an eighth of a tank of gas remaining. The sky was pitch black and the constant wind whipped around the car rocking it from side to side like a toy. The hill was as Vorgoth remembered with the three crosses rising high atop the hill illuminated by three blindingly bright spot lights. Only the crosses were hung upside down and twisted together like a puzzle. At the bottom of the hill and to the side there was one dimmer spot light shining on what looked like a huge stone leaning up against the hill.

"Is that supposed to be Jesus's tomb?" Cassandra asked.

The pastor looked out the side door window at the stone and replied, "I think so. How did they manage to run power out here?"

"Underground I'm sure," Vorgoth replied.

The pastor took an interest in the stone and pondered what the display represented. Then he had an idea. "If that's supposed to be Jesus's tomb, then there should be a hollow space behind the stone where the body was buried."

"Maybe, depends on how much effort they put into the construction," Shawn replied. He had been quiet for most of the ride but seeing the religious display perked his interest. "Might just be a rock propped up next to the hill."

"I want to find out," the pastor said. "I need your help, and the demon's."

"You want us to move the rock?" Shawn asked.

"Yes, if there is a chamber behind the rock, I can use my shovel and dig my way back to Earth."

"What makes you think Earth is inside the hill? It makes more sense that you'd dig your way through the hill and back outside."

Vorgoth warmed his hands on the vent and pulled his jacket tighter around his collar. "There isn't a way in Hell I'm getting out there and pushing that rock. It's got to be twenty below without the wind."

Shawn said, "Maybe you can dig around the stone and get to it from the side. I'm not sure if all three of us pushed, it would move."

The pastor was frustrated that no one was willing to assist him moving the large obstruction. "It would take me ten times longer to dig around the stone. I need to push it aside so I can get into the tomb, get out of the wind and start digging."

"What's in it for me?" Vorgoth asked.

"If I make it to the other side, you can escape to Earth with me, and bring my daughter and Shawn with us," the pastor replied. "From what I can tell, if they get ahold of you now you're going to end up on the other end of the whip."

"Touché," Vorgoth replied. He wasn't dressed to go outside for long and Cassandra was wearing even less and he knew that being out in the cold, even for a short time, could be detrimental. "Ok, I'll push, but the girl stays here until we find out what's behind the rock."

"I'm fine with that," The pastor replied and Shawn agreed.

"Can you get us closer so we don't have to run so far in the cold?" Shawn asked.

"I don't want to leave the road. I can't tell what's out there. Could be a pot hole from Hell if you know what I mean."

The demon and the two men gathered their supplies and readied themselves to exit the vehicle and sprint to the huge rock. The pastor carried his shovel to dig with his .223 rifle for protection. Protection from who he didn't know. They knew the run would be freezing cold and they would become numb very quickly. "When we get there, I yell go and we all push together, got it?" Vorgoth asked.

The men agreed and on the count of three all three left the car and ran to the stone as fast as they could leaving Cassandra behind. The run was hard as the wind blasted them back and their fingers instantly became chilled to the bone. When they arrived at the stone, half their energy was spent and the two men contemplated running back to the warm vehicle, but they kept going and each found a spot on the stone to push.

"On three!" Vorgoth yelled over the wind. "One, two, three..."

The three shoved the rock and to their amazement were able to easily push it away from the cave entrance. And to the pastor's surprise, there was a hollow space inside the hill. It didn't take long for all three to run inside the cave to shelter themselves from the wind but the cave wasn't very deep. Maybe twenty feet allowing the cold chill to get to them.

"Start digging!" Vorgoth yelled.

The pastor used his camping shovel and dug into the hill resting his rifle against the wall of the cave. The soil was stiff and difficult to penetrate---frozen from millennia of subzero temperatures. Vorgoth saw how much difficulty the pastor was having and tried to dig into the cave wall with his claws. He didn't have much luck either.

"This isn't working," Shawn yelled. He didn't have a shovel or any tools to use to dig. All he could do was stand back and watch the man and the demon try to excavate the cave and dig a tunnel back to Earth.

The pastor stood up and threw his shovel against the cave wall. It bounced back and landed on the ground with a clank.

"So much for that theory," Vorgoth said. He was nasty snarky and a bit pissed off he was still standing out in the cold.

"We have to find a way to heat the cave and thaw out the soil," the pastor yelled.

"There's no way. There's nothing that will burn around here," Vorgoth replied.

"You're a demon, can't you breathe fire or something?"

"I think you have me confused with a dragon. Both start with a D, but I can't make fire," Vorgoth replied. He was trying to be funny but it fell flat.

Just then the pastor heard the sound of the stone scraping against the side of the hill and the faint light inside the cavern disappeared. The stone had rolled back and covered the cave trapping the two men and the demon inside. In a panic, Vorgoth ran over to the stone and tried to push it away from the cave entrance but was unable to budge it. "Help me!" Vorgoth yelled and the other two men ran over and pushed. But it was to no avail, the stone didn't move and they were trapped in the dark. The wind was no longer blowing, but it was twenty below and no one, not even Vorgoth could see.

Cassandra saw the stone roll back in place by itself and felt the shutter of the cave ceiling collapsing on her father, the demon and the parishioner. Now forever entombed with his .223 rifle and camping shovel. The same rifle Maggie pulled out of the trench before they fell through the hole into Hell. The bones they found were those of Shawn and no one found the remains of the pastor or Vorgoth.

No one ever heard from Maggie or Abby again and the hole the backhoe fell through disappeared. The construction crew finished digging the sewer trench and the housing development was eventually finished.

Vorgoth managed to escape his miserable job and in a way found peace buried in a cave under what was Lucifer's anti-memorial to the God he despised. Vorgoth, in a way became immortal and would have gone down in history if anyone knew where he ended up. Cassandra couldn't help her father and was eventually recaptured and sent back to the torture unit where her and her mother, Maggie and Abby would spend eternity being beaten by demons.

This was a free eBook so please go back to where you downloaded it and leave a rating and a comment. Thank you. Razor Blade...

The end.

