I watched with a grim expression as they hooked the demon queen up to a Chinook helicopter so she could be hauled away. She was near dead, had been dosed with enough tranquilizers to kill an elephant, had been chained up and then sealed in tight plastic wrappings, but I was still extremely nervous.

“I guess I’ll see you back at base,” Gene told me, giving me an awkward hug. It was difficult to do better than that though when he was still wearing that biohazard gear.

“Later,” I told him before he rushed off to join his squad in their helicopter.

Then I went to my sisters, all three of whom were injured. I’d escaped the fight with nothing more than a couple bruises and felt just a little guilty about getting off so easy. Of course, they would heal from their injuries while others had died…or been infected with the demon strain. That soldier would probably be better off if he had died, though I’d done my best to patch him up anyway.

Nicole shook her head and muttered, “How was she controlling those other demons…” She looked to Rebecca, “You saw her giving them orders…and they just acted like her pets or something.”

“Maybe they instinctively recognize her as the mother of their species,” Rebecca answered with a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe she actually is their mother and they hatched from her eggs.”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “I’m guessing pheromones.”

“What?” Nicole asked, giving me a curious look.

“Demons are like hyper-aggressive wild animals,” I explained. “Most of them seem to be driven on pure animal instinct. I’m guessing our demon queen has some kind of pheromone that works on their primitive instincts. Maybe it triggers their instincts to recognize her as their mother or pack leader.”

“Makes sense to me,” Rebecca said, giving me a thoughtful look. “Maybe if we can figure out how she does it, we can figure out how to control the demons.”

“Yeah,” Dani added with a chuckle. “It will be a lot easier of we can just make them stand still and let us kill them.”

“Or make cans of demon repellent,” Nicole added.

I nodded at that, then realized that we didn’t have much time. “I guess I’ll see you girls back at Heaven,” I told my sisters, giving Nicole a hug but being very gentle because of her ribs.

“Too bad there isn’t enough room for you to ride with us,” Rebecca said, glancing at the infected soldier who was riding with them as if wishing he’d leave to make room for me.

I just gave a weak chuckle at that. “Well, we lost our chopper and have to make do with where they can fit us in.” I looked to Julie, who was riding with my sisters. I gave my soon to be sister a reassuring grin and told her, “You take care of them.”

“Will do,” Julie responded.

“Go,” Dani said, pointing to the helicopter I’d been assigned to ride in. Then in a bad Austrian accent, she exclaimed, “Get to the choppa…”

I laughed at that, then gave Dani and Rebecca each a quick hug. “I’ll see you guys back home,” I said, turning and running to my helicopter.

I was eager to get out of Hell Town, as was everyone else. After all, not only could there still be a few demons hiding in the tunnels, but there were some planes coming to bomb the town flat...AGAIN. This time, they were going to covering a wider area and use some bunker busters to make sure nothing could survive by hiding in the tunnels and mines. I’d even overheard Captain Brooks muttering something about how he wished they’d just use a tactical nuke and get it over with.

One by one, the helicopters began to lift off and depart. When the Chinook that was carrying the demon queen began to rise, the queen somehow awoke enough to let out a loud shriek. I winced at that, cursing the fact that we hadn’t used even more tranquilizer on her. But on a second consideration, I cursed the fact that we hadn’t finished putting her down, orders from on high or not.

My helicopter was the last one to take off, but as we were doing so I heard someone calling out over the radio, “Holy shit… We’ve got demons coming out of the woodworks down there. That snake bitch must be calling them.”

I looked out the window and saw that demons were emerging from the outer edges of the devastation, probably having hidden in the tunnels and mines. There were probably about a dozen of the demons total, though I wasn’t concerned. We were already in the air and the bombs would take care of them soon enough. This time there would be no escape for the monsters.

“Oh shit,” the pilot of my helicopter blurted out. “I think we’ve got a flyer…”

“Oh shit,” I repeated, frantically looking out the window until I saw it, a flying demon that looked something like a humanoid pterodactyl. And it was flying right towards us, probably because we were the closest helicopter

“Hold on tight,” the pilot called back to me and the soldiers I was riding with. “This may get rough…”

The pilot tried maneuvering the helicopter, but the demon was able to change direction too. I was sure that a helicopter would be able to easily outmaneuver a demon, but a moment later there was an impact that shook the entire helicopter. My heart jumped in my chest and I struggled to get another look out the window so I could see what was going on. But then, we suddenly began to fall.

“It hit the rotor,” the pilot called out as the helicopter tumbled out of control, once again captured by the power of gravity.

There were voices coming over the radio, but the only one I could clearly make out was the voice of one of my sisters screaming, “MONICA!”

Seconds later, everything exploded into pain and chaos. The helicopter hit the ground and rolled several times while everything that hadn’t been strapped down was thrown around at random, smashing into me and everyone else inside. Somehow, I remained conscious through the entire ordeal, though I wasn’t sure how.

I had no idea how long I remained where I was, feeling dazed and in agony. Once my head cleared enough, I undid my seat belt and began pulling myself out. I winced with each motion, sure that I’d busted my ribs and leg. My shoulder hurt like hell too, and then there was the fact that I had a ringing headache and could only see out of one eye. My body armor had probably protected me from being hurt even worse than I was, though I now wished that I’d still been wearing my helmet as well.

“Guys,” I gasped, trying to look at the other people in there with me.

The helicopter was filled with blood and broken bodies. Only one of them was moving at all and he was moaning. From the look of him, he’d been injured nearly as badly as I was.

I groaned, caught between the desire to help him and the need to help myself. But after taking a closer look at him, I wasn’t sure that I could safely remove him from his seat without doing more damage. I couldn’t safely move myself either so that meant we’d have to wait for a rescue.

When I tried calling out on my radio, it was completely dead. I winced at that, wondering if one of the other radios was still working. It wasn’t likely that all of them had gotten busted in the crash.

“At least we weren’t too high up,” I muttered, knowing that this could have been worse if the demon hadn’t hit us so quickly after takeoff.

For a moment, I attempted to search for a working radio, but I hurt too much and gave up. Instead, I just remained where I was, waiting for the rescue.

A short time later, I heard a growling noise from outside the helicopter. It sent a cold chill down my spine and I immediately tried grabbing one of the weapons that had been flung about in the crash. Fortunately, there was one right next to me.

Suddenly, thick claws tore through the helicopter door and tore it open, revealing the demon on the other side. It looked much like a giant wolf, though it had thick boney spines on its back. It snarled and lunged at me, tearing its way further inside the helicopter.

I screamed like a little girl and then pulled the trigger, firing several shots right into its head. The demon died in a splatter of blood and gore. I closed my eyes, thanking fate that it wasn’t armored like some of those other demons.

“Oh God,” I groaned, wondering where my rescue was. Then I winced and turned to the other survivor, “Where are they…” I grimaced in pain, adding, “Maybe I can signal them…”

I grimaced and fought against the pain as I pulled myself out of the helicopter. From the trees around me, it was clear that I hadn’t landed in Hell Town but in the woods outside of it.

After a few more minutes, I noticed something in the sky, an aircraft. I squinted my good eye and tried to focus on it, though it wasn’t easy. It was a plane…not a helicopter. That meant it wouldn’t be able to land here. Then I saw something fall from it…several somethings.

“Oh shit,” I whispered, realizing that they’d just dropped the bombs.

Though I wasn’t directly in Hell Town, I was still far too close for my comfort. I scrambled to get return to the helicopter again but didn’t quite reach it when the first bomb went off.

The ground shook and rumbled, then I saw a massive wave of smoke and fire coming towards me. In desperation, I scrambled to find cover before it hit and barely managed to cower down beside the helicopter. I had barely found cover when it hit, smashing me with force and fire all at once. I screamed as I hunkered down, though several more bombs went off in short succession. I blacked out before the last one.

When I came to again, every inch of my body was in agony. The shockwave had thrown me a short distance from where I’d been crouched down and had broken more of my bones. My leg was at an odd angle and I could see a piece of bone sticking out from my forearm. My skin was blackened and blistered while blood seeped from various lacerations.

But as much as my body hurt, what hurt even more was the sense of betrayal and abandonment. They hadn’t come… No one had come to rescue me, not even my sisters.

I struggled to move, to at least try giving myself what medical attention I could. However, all my medical supplies had been left in the helicopter and there was no way I could get to them at the moment. Still I braced against the pain and tried pulling myself back there anyway, though I passed out before I could reach the opening.

After waking from long and twisted nightmares, I was back in a reality that was every bit as bad. My body was responding even less than it had before, so I was in utter agony and unable to do anything about it.

As I lay there, helpless for any demon who may have survived, unable to even defend myself against a squirrel, I tried to focus my thoughts by cataloguing my injuries. Since I couldn’t examine myself properly, some of them I had to guess from my pains and some were filled in by my imagination.

I had no idea how many times I cycled through horrific nightmares and an even worse reality. All I had was agony and terror as I grew even weaker and weaker. The only thing that had kept me alive this long was my augmented biology, but even that had reached its limits. I was at my end and knew it.

Then something shook me from one of my nightmares and I felt a presence. I slowly opened my good eye and saw a blurry figure bent over me. After several seconds, it became more clear and I saw it was a human, all dressed in some sort of gray suit. He had a hood and mask over his entire face, perhaps to help protect against infection.

At first, I thought I was dreaming, though he touched me and seemed to be checking my wounds. Something stirred in my memory and I whispered, “Don’t…touch…my…blood…”

The gray clad figure paused at that and then and then said, “That isn’t a concern.”

With that, the gray clad figure pulled off his hood and mask, revealing that it was not a man like I’d thought but a woman. But when she looked down at me, I saw the very same face that met me every morning in the mirror.

“It’s okay sister,” she gently told me in my own voice. “I’m Lisa and I’m here to help.”