Gateway to Forever

By: Immodicus Furor

Chapter 1: The Gate Opens

“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.”

A. Sachs

James trudged on through the thick mud, his combat boots covered in the disgusting slop. He moved as silently as humanly possible, the other nine members of his assault team endeavoring to do the same. Unfortunately, however, it is quite hard to move through flooded swampland with fifty pound packs of equipment on without making some noise. James just hoped that they weren’t making enough noise to draw the attention of any enemies on patrol in this area. Not that this particular cell of home grown American terrorists was any stronger than any other that his special Marine Corps squadron had faced before, but they did seem at least somewhat intelligent.

            For one, the cell had chosen to meet in the middle of a swamp, having used a full array of vehicles to cross through the various treacherous terrains of this area. It was the perfect area to hide weapons, discuss tactics, or anything else this cell had in mind; it was a very hard area for anyone to sneak up on when they didn’t know as much about the land as the terrorists themselves. Second, this cell had managed to arm itself somewhat well for a supposed freedom fighting militia. Recent intelligent reports stated that this group had managed to acquire shoulder-mounted missile launchers, AK-47s, Uzi’s, and a variety of pistol products from Beretta and several other well known manufacturers. Not bad for such a small cell. This is exactly why the Marines had been called in instead of the local Coast Guard units; they were way too tough for the normal guys to handle.

            James stopped for a moment, taking out a satellite recon photo and looking at it with his flashlight carefully covered so that no light would be visible to any possible enemies in the area. It was hard to discern any information from it in the dark with such a small light, but he managed, and quickly stuffed the photo and light away.

            “Okay,” James whispered. “The main forces of this cell should be about a half-mile due north, as we planned during our briefing. Everything seems to be going pretty good, so let’s not slip up now.”

            “Major, who are we dealing with here?” Lieutenant Dryson asked.

            “Well,” James responded, “Intelligence makes it out to be a local ‘freedom fighting’ group. They call themselves the Aryan Uprisers or something like that. They seem to think that white people are being oppressed, and need to be freed from the grip of the minorities that have taken over the country.” James rolled his eyes. “In other words, we’re dealing with fucking fascist Nazi sons of bitches. Well armed fascist Nazi sons of bitches. Good enough?”

“Yep.” Dryson responded. “So who is this leader we’re supposed to capture anyway? That picture of him in the briefing folder was horrible, no resolution whatsoever.”

            “Well, intelligence said he would be easy to spot; he has a swastika on the back of his neck, evidently.”

            “Good. Makes our job all the easier.” Dryson smirked.

            James signaled for his soldiers to spread out, and to remain silent, motioning towards the north. He began walking again, his perimeter guards looking around for signs of trouble while the bulk of his troops kept their concentration forward, where the largest threat was believed to be.

            They continued on without a problem for several minutes, not having run into any terrorists. But of course, all good things must come to an end. There was a loud scream off to James’ right side, a sound of an M16 firing, and then nothing. By the time James and the rest of his troops got over to where one of their perimeter lookouts had been walking, his attacker was already gone. The lookout, second Lieutenant Gourley, had several red slashes across his face, and was looking as if he was about to go into shock.

            “Lieutenant Gourley, what the hell happened?” James inquired rather forcefully, hoping to snap the man out of his shaken state.

            “It… it…” Gourley could hardly get out a word. James shook him, and stared into his eyes.

            “Lieutenant, what attacked you?” James asked.

            “It… was…” Gourley shook as if having a small seizure, and continued, “Horrible. It was horrible. Some kind of demon… blood red skin…”

            James shook his head, and stood up, motioning for the medic in their unit to go help the Lieutenant. The medic never made it to him, as four members of the terrorist cell had chosen that moment to leap out from their prone positions in the deep mud, tearing into the Marines with Uzi fire. The medic, Lieutenant Gourley, and two other soldiers were all caught by rounds before they could react. The other five soldiers and James immediately dived to the wet, mushy ground, returning fire.

            James carefully aimed at the back of one of the now three men, who were attempting to run. Letting off a burst from his M-16, the man went down, three rounds embedded in his spine. A staccato assault of rounds emptied out from the other five Marines’ rifles, giving further incentive to their enemies to continue running.

            Wiping the amassing sweat from his brow, James waded through the thick mud towards the downed Marines.  He stopped cold as he heard three shrill screams pierce the night, from the bearing the enemy soldiers had barreled away towards. He motioned to the five other soldiers to create a perimeter around their casualties, covering them from all directions. It was the only response he could think of to the situation; he had no idea what the hell was going on. Terrorists had most definitely not created the slashes across Gourley’s face.

            James’ finger tensed on the trigger of his rifle as he saw a flash of movement between a couple of trees on one of the thousands of small marshy islands that permeated the area. The movement had come from a little under a hundred yards from him.

            “Did you see that?” Dryson asked from beside him.

“Yeah. Keep your eyes open.”

            No sooner than he had made the comment did James spot another flash of movement in-between more trees, this time less than fifty yards from the group of Marines.

            “At this point,” James said in little over a whisper, “we have to assume hostility. If you manage to draw a bead on anything heading towards us, shoot first and ask questions later.”

           Dryson and the other Marines barely managed to keep from rolling their eyes. Regulations be damned; there was no way they were going to attempt a diplomatic solution in this type of situation.

            Unfortunately, with most of their attention focused on the trees surrounding them, none of the Marines managed to spot the red swirl above them in time. The first warning they had was Dryson’s loud scream.

            “God damn it! Get this thing off of me!” He shouted wildly as he attempted to reach over his shoulder to pry a creature off his back.

            James turned towards Dryson, raising the butt of his M16 to prepare for a melee attack. As he saw the creature however, he froze. Its skin was a dark red, and although it was only a little over two feet tall, it had six inch long claws extending from its fingers. Its curly tail even appeared to have some type of stinger on it. Dryson was unable to throw the beast off, as it sunk its claws deep into his back as soon as he tried to grab it.

“Dryson, drop!” James commanded.

The words had their intended consequence of Dryson throwing himself face first into the thick mud. James hurriedly took his chance and let off a burst of rounds into the hellish creature, tearing it away from the soldier and sending it running… although it was apparently still alive after something a human most definitely would not have survived.

James barely had time to take a full breath before several more screams broke out from behind him. He turned to see that ten more of the creatures had landed on his soldiers, clawing deep into them and tearing their weapons from their grip. He brought his rifle to bear, aiming at one of the monsters that were now approaching him. He emptied the rest of his magazine at it, serving no purpose other than to make it really pissed off as it seemed to be able to ignore the pain of several bullets buried in its chest and skull.

James was not a fool, and he could easily deduce that he and his soldiers were all about to end up these demons’ snacks. He wasn’t about to stick around and die fighting, as some self-sacrificing idiots may have.

“Fighting retreat!” He shouted. “If you still have legs, get the hell out of here!”

Dryson and two others Marines that had managed to shake off the creatures were right beside him as he began a headlong charge through the swamp. They were quickly up to the fastest sprint they could manage in the mud… and thus didn’t have time to stop or change course as reality bent in front of them, another swirling red portal forming.

None of them even had time to finish their assorted curses before they were slamming into dark, sulfur charred ground.