Hell Holes: Demons on the Dalton

By Donald George Firesmith

When hundreds of huge holes mysteriously appeared overnight in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle, geologist Jack Oswald picked Angele Menendez, his climatologist wife, to determine if the record temperatures due to climate change was the cause. But the holes were not natural. They were unnatural portals for an invading army of demons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Firesmith
• Release date: Oct 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781684189137

Donald George Firesmith

A geek by day, Donald Firesmith works as a system and software engineer helping the US Government acquire large, complex software-intensive systems. In this guise, he has authored seven technical books, written numerous software- and system-related articles and papers, and spoken at more conferences than he can possibly remember. He's also proud to have been named a Distinguished Engineer by the Association of Computing Machinery, although his pride is tempered somewhat by his fear that the term "distinguished" makes him sound like a graybeard academic rather than an active engineer whose beard is still slightly more red than gray. By night and on weekends, his alter ego writes modern paranormal fantasy, apocalyptic science fiction, action and adventure novels and relaxes by handcrafting magic wands from various magical woods and mystical gemstones. His first foray into fiction is the book Magical Wands: A Cornucopia of Wand Lore written under the pen name Wolfrick Ignatius Feuerschmied. He lives in Crafton, Pennsylvania with his wife Becky, and his son Dane, and varying numbers of dogs, cats, and birds. You can learn more about the author by visiting his website: http://donaldfiresmith.com His magical wands and autographed copies of his books are available from the Firesmith's Wand Shoppe at: http://magicalwandshoppe.com

Book preview

Hell Holes 2:

Demons on the Dalton

Donald Firesmith

Hell Holes 2: Demons on the Dalton

By Donald Firesmith

Copyright 2016 by Donald G. Firesmith

ISBN-13: 978-1-52324-176-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-68418-913-7

Second Edition: October 2016

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters and events in this work are figments of the author’s imagination.

1. Paranormal 2. Fantasy 3. Apocalyptic 4. Science Fiction

You may purchase autographed books by contacting the author via:

Magical Wand Press

20 Bradford Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15205

This book is typeset in Times New Roman and Mortis.

Cover design by Michael Fisher at EpicFishTales.com

Editing by Heidi Brayer and Paul Smith wisegrayowl.co.uk

Interior design by Donald G. Firesmith

Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) Data

Name: Firesmith, Donald.

Title: Hell Holes: Demons on the Dalton / by Donald Firesmith.

Description: Second edition. | Pittsburgh : Magical Wand Press, 2016. | Series: Hell Holes, Volume 2.

Summary: When an army of invading demons pours out of hundreds of mysterious holes that have suddenly formed around the arctic, three survivors (a geologist, a climatologist, and a member of an ancient secret order charged with defending humanity from demons) flee south along 350 miles of Alaska's Dalton Highway, one of the world’s most treacherous roads. | Audience: Adult. | Language: English

Identifiers: ISBN 978-1523241767 (Create-Space - softcover) | ISBN 978-1-68418-912-0 (IngramSpark – softcover) | ISBN 978-1-68418-913-7 (IngramSpark – ebook) | ISBN 978-1310637452 (Smashwords - ebook) | ASIN B01FQA1EFI (Kindle).

Subjects: BISAC: Fiction / Action & Adventure. | Fiction / Fantasy /Paranormal. | Fiction / Science Fiction / General. | LCSH: American–Fantasy–Fiction. | American–Paranormal–Fiction. | American–Science Fiction–Fiction. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Fantasy fiction. | Science fiction.

Classification: DDC 813.62 F57h 2016

Table of Contents

Maps

Preface

Chapter 1: Escape from the North Slope

Chapter 2: Crossing the Brooks Range

Chapter 3: The Battle of Coldfoot

Chapter 4: The Convoy

Chapter 5: I Bring You Fire

Chapter 6: Evacuation to Eielson

Chapter 7: Eielson AFB

The Survivors

The Demons

Other Books by Donald Firesmith

Author Notes

Acknowledgements

Dedication

A Thank You to My Readers

The Siberian Holes

About the Author

The Dalton Highway (Northern Half)

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The Dalton Highway (Southern Half)

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Preface

The I Remember Project was established to record and preserve eyewitness accounts of Hell Day and the subsequent Demon War. In this way, future generations will never forget the innumerable acts of courage and defiance that occurred during the demonic invasion. Since its founding in the months following the war, the I Remember Project has recorded over fourteen-hundred such accounts.

Dr. Angela Menendez, formerly a professor of climatology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, wrote this eyewitness account, which she gave the rather catchy title Demons on the Dalton. She was a member of a scientific team sent by ExxonMobil to study the huge holes that had so mysteriously appeared in the tundra of the North Slope.

For her contribution to the project’s repository, Dr. Menendez recorded her memories of how the team’s survivors narrowly escaped from the advancing demon horde as they fled south down the Dalton Highway to Fairbanks.

Mathew Hamilton

Chief Curator

The I Remember Project

Chapter 1

Escape from the North Slope

My name is Angela Menendez, and I was once a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where I taught classes in atmospheric sciences. As a climatologist, I also worked at the university’s Alaska Climate Research Center, where I conducted research on the impact of the powerful greenhouse gas methane on global temperatures. Of course, that was before Hell Day, before Fairbanks fell to the demons, and my university was destroyed.

My husband, Jack Oswald, was a geology professor at the same university. More importantly, he led our research team that studied one of the giant arctic craters that became known as hell holes. He also contributed to the I Remember Project and recorded his account of the demon invasion under the title Hell Holes: What Lurks Below. Jack’s account documents our team’s experiences over the four-day period from when we were hired on the day after the holes appeared until the day after Hell Day, when we began our escape down the Dalton Highway. In case you haven’t read his account, I will begin by briefly summarizing it.

…

It was a couple of weeks before the fall semester was scheduled to start when dozens of huge holes mysteriously appeared overnight in the tundra of Alaska’s North Slope. My husband Jack, Mark and Jill Starr, two of our graduate students, and I were in the geology building. They were helping me practice for my upcoming climatology TED talk when Kevin Kowalski called. A manager at ExxonMobil, Kowalski wanted to hire us to study the strange holes, discover their cause, and determine if more might open up underneath the oil wells and pipelines.

Jack and I naturally agreed, and we decided to take our grad students with us. Only after the call was over did we realize that Aileen O’Shannon, a reporter with the local newspaper, was standing in the doorway. She told us she’d come to interview Jack about the holes. Having overheard our conversation, she ended up finagling her way onto the team as our photographer.

After gathering the equipment we needed, the five of us flew north to Deadhorse, where they Dalton Highway ends just a little short of the Arctic Ocean. That’s where Kowalski joined us along with Bill Henderson, a field biologist he’d hired to protect us from grizzlies, wolves, and other wild animals. The seven of us drove down the Dalton to the first hole Jack had selected near the Trans-Alaska Pipeline’s Pump Station 2.

The next day, Jack and Mark rappelled into the hole, but poisonous gasses quickly forced them back to the surface. Although Jack returned safely, Mark was still being raised out of the hole when Kowalski carelessly flicked a still burning cigarette butt into the hole, where it ignited the mixture of methane and hydrogen sulfide gases rising out of that damned pit. The resulting explosion killed Mark instantly, and the terrible accident still haunts my nightmares.

That night, the demon invasion began when the hell hole erupted a second time. When an earthquake collapsed the vertical sides of the hole, a pack of giant hellhounds climbed out and attacked us. Bill shot one of them, but the demon’s dark magic almost immediately healed the wound. That’s when Aileen told Bill he had to shoot the demons in the head if he wanted to make them go down and stay down.

That’s also when she unexpectedly pulled out her magic wand and cast a spell that created barrier that prevented the demons from reaching us. Aileen O’Shannon had revealed her true nature. She is a curatrix, a sorceress soldier of the Tutores Contra Infernum, the ancient secret order charged with protecting humanity from demons.

This second eruption destroyed our vehicles and forced us to flee on foot for the nearby pump station. Along the way, we managed to flag down a car of refugees, who had escaped the demon’s attack on Deadhorse and the surrounding oil fields. With only one free seat available in their car, we selected Jill, Mark’s widow, to send south to safety, while the rest of us continued on to the pump station.

Once there, we fought our way past hellhounds to reach the relative safety of the station’s bunkhouse. The next morning, we found ourselves besieged not just by hellhounds, but also by imps and gargoyles. A hellhound killed Kowalski when we fought our way to the station’s main garage, were we found the SUV we needed to take us south to Fairbanks. Gargoyles killed Bill as he raised the gate that trapped us inside the station’s fence. Thus, only Jack, Aileen, and I remained as we began our long drive down the Dalton.

That is where my husband’s account ends, and mine begins.

…

It was in the middle of August about half an hour after sunrise when we escaped from Pump Station 2. Our car sent twin rooster tails of dust and gravel flying behind us as we accelerated through the front gate that Bill had sacrificed his life to open for us. My husband Jack was driving and Aileen O’Shannon was riding shotgun next to him. I was sitting in the back seat behind Aileen, while the seat to my left, where Bill had been sitting, was empty. The former US Army ranger had saved our lives several times over the preceding two days, and the three of us were acutely aware of the magnitude of his loss.

Still, we weren’t entirely defenseless without Bill to protect us. I had his rifle and shotgun next to me, leaning back against the empty seat. More importantly, we also had Aileen O’Shannon, who, in her own way, provided far more protection.

Aileen was much more than she seemed. When she joined our team, we only knew that she was a photojournalist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Unnaturally beautiful and attractive, she had wheedled her way onto our team as our expedition’s photographer. While I was confident of my husbands’ abilities to withstand her obvious charms, I nevertheless resented her initial attempts to wrap our husbands around her little finger. It was only when we came face-to-face with a pack of hellhounds that we learned that she is first and foremost a curatrix: a guardian and member of the military branch of the Tutores Contra Infernum, an ancient and once secret order charged with protecting humanity from demons. In other words, she was a real-life sorceress who regularly killed demons with a curse and a wave of her wand.

Although you’ve surely seen countless pictures and videos of them, believe me when I say that they don’t do justice to the true malevolent nature of these monstrous creatures. Demon incursions throughout history have clearly influenced both our religions and mythologies. In fact, this is undoubtedly why we call the world they come from Hell, although it bears very little resemblance to the Gehinnom of Judaism, the Hell of Christianity, or the Jahannam of Islam. In fact, it is almost certainly an alien world somewhere in our universe or a parallel universe.

All demons share certain characteristics indicating that they come from the same alien world. The most obvious of these is that their bodies are wrapped in a thin transparent membrane that does nothing to hide their brick-red muscles, yellowish bones, and deep-purple arteries and veins that carry a blood the color and consistency of crude oil. Slick and slimy to the touch, this transparent skin has a subtle sulfurous smell that pales in comparison to the nauseating stench of rotten eggs given off by their breath and blood.

The first demons to come out of the hell holes and attack us were hellhounds, creatures similar in shape to wolves though easily twice as big. Their strangely elongated muzzles are armed with long fangs that inject a fast-acting neurotoxin that is inevitably fatal upon reaching the heart.

On the second day, a huge force of gargoyles, imps, and more hellhounds reinforced the initial vanguard. Whereas hellhounds appear vaguely canine, gargoyles seem more feline. (Of course being aliens, demons are no more related to wolves and cats than they are to cabbages or even bacteria). Anyway, gargoyles are smaller than lions or tigers, being similar in size to cougars or leopards as long as you don’t count their huge, translucent, bat-like wings. Whereas hellhounds rely on venomous bites to kill their prey, gargoyles attack with razor-sharp, finger-long claws on their front and back paws before finishing off their victims by ripping out their throats with their serrated shark-like teeth.

As you probably know, lower demons such as hellhounds and gargoyles are voracious beasts that will attack and eat any living thing, whether human or animal. On the other hand, higher demons are humanoid, cunningly intelligent rather than bestial, and driven by what I can only describe as evil rather than hunger. Nevertheless, they take delight in a diet of young children, although they will also happily dine on adults, especially if they have been properly tenderized by torture. They prefer their meals alive and terrified, for fear is their favorite sauce.

Imps are the smallest and weakest of the high demons. Only half as tall as humans, they have grotesque faces and long gibbonous arms. When on foot, imps typically move in large troops and are armed with primitive swords and nasty spiked maces. However, they often ride hellhounds and gargoyles when they need to move long distances rapidly or to control these lower demons.

To return to our story, we had just turned left onto the dusty gravel road the State of Alaska laughingly calls the Dalton Highway. Designated one of the ten most dangerous roads in the world, driving its length was not something that one undertook lightly or without considerable preparation. Designed for the big trucks hauling heavy equipment and supplies up to Deadhorse and the oil fields, it was occasionally pocked with lunar-crater-sized potholes and long stretches of corrugations like some giant’s washboard. The Dalton only had two places along its 414-mile length where you could buy gas, eat in a restaurant, pick up supplies, and have your car repaired. I hoped that we had a good spare in the trunk. The demons that broke into the garage where we found our car barely gave us enough time to climb in before they were on us and we had to flee for our lives.

There we were, fleeing south towards Fairbanks in a badly banged-up SUV we’d been forced to borrow from the pump station garage because the expanding hell holes at our camp had swallowed our original vehicles, not to mention our equipment and most of our supplies. Though the Nissan Xterra we were riding in was several years old, it was in surprisingly good shape when we found it parked in the station’s garage. However, we’d barely made it into the car and locked its doors before dozens of imps began pouring through the garage’s windows like water through a large-hole colander. Temporarily unable to get at us, the diminutive demons proceeded to take out their frustration by hacking on our car’s hood and doors with their swords and maces. Having a particularly heavy gargoyle land on its roof while we were temporarily stuck behind the barrier at the pump station’s main gate didn’t help either.

Jack was practically flying down the station’s driveway and barely made the corner as the car drifted sideways onto the Dalton heading south. Because it took all of his concentration to keep the car on the road, he didn’t see what I saw. Much longer than it was wide, Pump Station 2 ran north and south. We’d exited via the main gate at the north end of the station, which meant we had to drive more than a hundred yards past the entire station before we would leave it behind us. While we raced south, I was transfixed by terror as I watched a pack of hellhounds pour out of a gate in the south side of the chain link fence surrounding the station. Nearly a dozen hellhounds were racing to intercept us. Jack and Aileen didn’t know it, but we were in a race for our lives, and I had no idea whether the demons would reach the road before we could