Hell Gate

by Josh Matthews

  That’s for damn sure, thought Jason.

  Chapter Four

  Jason struggled to make it back to Le Mere Poulard. Not because of the pain, which he no longer felt, but because the morphine took effect as he left the Abbey. He hated that the way to the hotel led down a dark, steep flight of stone stairs and through poorly-lit streets. He took his time, concentrating on staying awake, and trying to block out everything else around him.

  It didn’t work. Everything about Mont St. Michel reminded him of what his life had become.

  Thanks to the accident at CERN, overnight Europe had been tossed back to the Dark Ages. Without electricity, the citizens of the city were forced to rely on fireplaces to heat their homes and candles to provide light. Things he had taken for granted like smartphones, laptops, and television were relics of the past. He always overheard the adults complaining about how every task had to be done by hand since there no longer were machines to help them. Jacques gave pep talks about how hard work was good for the soul, and other crap like that, although no one believed him. Whenever Jacques was not around, Jason heard the adults mutter about it being easy for Jacques to say these things because he never did any of the work himself. Jason couldn’t relate. As a member of the protective force, he was not required to participate in the daily chores, so he felt he didn’t have the right to complain about the lack of electricity. Still, he missed surfing the Internet and playing video games.

  He would gladly give up all those long-gone luxuries permanently, if only he wouldn’t be treated like an outcast.

  Jason made his way down Grand Rue. A group of four men had gathered by the steps of the Parish Church, chatting and laughing. When he approached, one of the men pointed in Jason’s direction. They stopped talking and stared. Jason lowered his head and quickened his pace, rushing past the men and hoping no one would say anything. Only after he had moved on did they resume the conversation, speaking in loud whispers that carried far into the night.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yup. That’s Jason McCreary.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “Screw him. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for his mother.”

  Jason continued on and pretended not to hear. Not that it mattered. Everyone in town felt that way. That was now his lot in life, to be Jason McCreary, the son of the woman who opened the Hell Gate.

  A few minutes later, Jason entered the lobby of Le Mere Poulard. The guard at the front desk stopped reading his weathered book, scowled upon seeing him, and went back to reading. Jason climbed the three flights of stairs, followed the candle-lit hall to the far end, and entered his room. Sasha had lit the candelabra on his desk so he would have light. Maybe she wasn’t mad at him after all.

  Lucifer and Lilith were curled up by the open window. Lilith raised her head and, upon seeing her master, lowered it on her paws and went back to sleep. Being more protective, Lucifer lifted himself off the rug and came over to check on his master. Jason bent down and scratched the werehound behind his ears, and received a face bath in return. The werehound plodded back to the window and lied down beside his mate.

  Jason pulled off his boots and stripped out of his green, military-style flight suit. Taking the candelabra from the desk, he brought it into the bathroom, peeled back the bandage, and checked himself in the mirror. He grimaced at the sight. The bite looked pretty bad, covering most of his shoulder. The stitches reminded him of something from a monster movie, and the skin around the sutures had already begun to turn black and blue. He had been banged up enough to know that it would hurt in the morning despite the drugs.

  There were a lot of scars on his body from previous battles. Three scratches stretched across his chest from where a Nachzehrer had clawed it three months ago. A two-inch wide burn marred his left forearm below the elbow where he received splash back from a soul vampire’s acid vomit. Of course, there was the embarrassing one – a gouge had been taken out of his right shoulder where he had accidentally raked an arrow head across his skin when first learning how to use a crossbow. Jason hoped they made him appear tougher. God knows he needed all the help he could get. Despite eight months of literal Hell on earth, the image that stared back at him still was that of a teenager, with a soft and child-like face and gentle green eyes. Worst of all, that scraggly blonde hair with several strands hanging loose. Even covered with the grime of battle, he still appeared younger than his age.

  Pouring water from the porcelain pitcher into the accompanying bowl, Jason splashed handfuls across his face and chest, using his palms to wash away the dirt and sweat, and being careful not to get the stitches wet. He finished by scraping his hands clean in the brown-tinged water. Pulling a towel off the rack, he dabbed it across his body and stepped back into the bedroom. Moving to the open window, or least as close as he could get to it because of Lucifer and Lilith hogging the floor, he gazed out. The Abbey’s southern facade dominated the view. From his room, he could see the soft glow of lamps lighting the abbot’s lodging where Jacques maintained his quarters. Jason didn’t have a watch, so he assumed that the midnight meeting must be underway.

  He closed his eyes and mentally reached out to Sasha, figuring as the leader of one of the gun teams she would probably be in attendance. He could pick up only the barest hint of her aura. Sasha seemed concerned about something, although he could not determine what caused the emotion. He assumed Jacques was briefing them on some half-assed suicide mission that would put them all in harm’s way, with Jason on point. If that happened, he would find out soon enough.

  Jason crawled into bed and threw the covers over him. Nestling into his pillow, he closed his eyes and drifted off due to a combination of exhaustion and drugs. With luck, he’d get a good night sleep and not relive the nightmare that had changed his life forever.

  Chapter Five

  Jason blinked against the flashing of cameras and the glare of klieg lights. He lowered his head and stared at the floor of the makeshift stage set up in the dining hall. The metal chair was uncomfortable. He tolerated it, knowing his mother would be upset if he fidgeted and ruined her big day. She stood before him at the podium, wearing a black skirt and cream-colored blouse, with a white lab coat covering her clothes. Long red hair cascaded down her back and draped over her shoulders. Doc sat in the folding chair beside him. Several other scientists occupied the remaining seats, although he had never bothered to learn their names. In front of the stage, more than thirty reporters and camera operators crowded around, hanging on his mother’s every word, anxious to talk with Dr. Lisa McCreary, the lead physicist for Project Discovery.

  His mother smiled for the cameras. “Project Discovery is the most ambitious undertaking yet in the field of antimatter research. The intention is to generate more antimatter at one time than has been attempted previously. At the same time as we here at CERN will be creating our own continuous stream of antimatter particles, our sister facilities in Russia, China, Japan, and the United States will do the same. We hope to increase our knowledge of antimatter exponentially and, once the separate facilities combine our research, develop a better understanding of the physics involved in the creation of our universe. There are so many vistas of particle physics as of yet unexplored that we—”

  Jason tuned out his mother and let his mind wander to things he would rather be doing at the moment, which included almost anything. He had no idea what she was talking about. She always used scientific terms that were way over his head. Even at home, during what little quality time they spent together, she discussed her work. Rarely did they ever talk about him, and then it was mostly about his grades or how he was doing in school. She never asked him about his friends or his social life, neither of which he had. This was the first thing the two of them had done as mother and son in years, and even now he served as window dressing for his mother’s moment in the spotlight.

  Doc leaned over and nudged Jason with his left elbow. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

&
nbsp; “I know this is boring. It’s even boring for me. Try not to yawn or you’ll get me going.” Doc gave him a conspiratorial wink.

  Jason liked Doc. He paid attention to him at his level. Doc would often drop by the house on nights his mother worked late, which was usually every night, to chat with him about girls and movies. Once he even played World of Warcraft with him. Doc was really good at solving the puzzles in the game, although he sucked at boss fights.

  Lisa stepped away from the podium and motioned to Doc. “Let me give the floor to Dr. Eric Fisher. He’s the true mastermind behind the technical aspects of this project, and can do a better job of answering your questions than I can.”

  Doc stood up and patted Jason on his shoulder. “I’m on.”

  Jason considered Doc to be the closest person he had to a father since his parents divorced when he was ten. Although neither his mother nor his father discussed the details with him, from the pieces of arguments he overheard from his bedroom he thought they split up because his mother had spent as little time with his dad as she did with him. Even after the separation, Jason and his dad had been close and did things every other weekend until two years ago when his father moved to Tokyo to head up the Japanese portion of Project Discovery. Since then, they only talked via text messages and the occasional Skype call. Although Jason never admitted it to anyone, that hurt him as much as his parents’ divorce. He could never shake the feeling that everyone who mattered in his life found their jobs more important than being with him.

  A bustle of activity around the stage snapped Jason back to the present. The news conference had ended, and the reporters headed off to the viewing area to watch the experiment via closed circuit camera. Lisa turned to those behind her on the stage, her face beaming with pride.

  “All right, everyone. Are we ready?”

  The scientists followed her to the control room attached to CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator Facility, an off-shoot of the primary accelerator loop where the antimatter would be created. The decelerator would slow down the particles enough so they could be captured and stored in an electromagnetic containment chamber situated in the adjacent room. A thick glass partition built into a heavy steel wall separated the two areas. Jason maneuvered around the horde of scientists and officials to get a glimpse inside. The glass-enclosed containment chamber sat on a platform in the center of the decelerator room. It measured three feet in circumference, with a series of giant electro-magnets encircling it. This is where the antimatter would be captured. Jason shrugged. It seemed like an awful lot of time and effort to produce something so small.

  As she always did, Jason’s mother took charge and began ordering everyone to their tasks. When the others were in place, she switched on the intercom so they could all hear the conversation between the control room and the other facilities.

  “United States, are you ready?” asked Lisa.

  “Ready when you are.” The voice spoke with a New England accent; the “are” sounding like “ah.”

  “Russia?”

  A thick Russian accent came over the speaker. “We’re ready.”

  “Japan.”

  “All set to go, Lisa,” answered his father.

  “And China?”

  “We’re ready.”

  “Then let’s make history.”

  Jason pushed closer to the corner of the glass, ignoring the commotion around him and focusing instead on the containment chamber. A white mist like cigarette smoke swirled into it and then vanished as the massive vacuum pump beneath sucked out all gasses, leaving the interior void. A few seconds later, a spark lit up the interior as the first particle of antimatter collided with one of the remaining matter particles. Jason blinked. When he opened his eyes, a series of sparks flashed throughout the containment chamber as antimatter destroyed the last of the matter. Then the interior went black, a dark so intense it reminded Jason of the photos he had seen of deep space. Whoops and applause filled the control room.

  Doc yelled out. “We achieved antimatter containment!”

  Lisa asked the other facilities, and the same chorus of voices applied in the affirmative. Several of the officials rushed over to shake her hand. For the next several minutes, the celebratory atmosphere continued as an increasing amount of antimatter filled the chamber. Jason was pleased. He could not remember the last time he had seen his mother this happy.

  “Merde.” A young man sat in front of a computer screen, his eyes wide with fear. Jason knew something had gone terribly wrong. “Dr. McCreary, we have a problem.”

  The congratulatory spirit evaporated. Lisa joined the young man. “What’s wrong?”

  “The magnetic containment field is destabilizing.”

  “Are we about to lose it?” Lisa leaned forward and began punching code into the keyboard.

  “No. I think the field will hold if I can increase the cooling to the primary mag—”

  Before anyone could react, the containment chamber erupted. The blast slammed into the glass partition and knocked Jason off his feet. He landed on his back and slid several feet across the floor. Though winded, he didn’t feel like he had been hurt, which surprised him considering the pane had fractured into a spider web of cracks that scoured its surface. Jason rolled onto his knees, his ears still ringing from the concussion. Most of the others had also been knocked down. Lisa and the other scientists climbed back to their stations and worked at the control panels, each occasionally casting a frantic glance toward the decelerator. The officials got to their feet more slowly. Some moved to the rear wall of the control room while others ran for the exit. Jason crawled over to the control console and, using the edge for support, pulled himself to his feet. Finding a place where the partition had not been fractured, he peered through the glass.

  The decelerator room was a shambles. The breach had completely destroyed the containment chamber and blasted the monitoring equipment into the far corners, leaving it in smoldering piles of twisted metal. Fortunately for everyone in the control room, the heavy partition wall had deflected the explosion and vented it against the weaker structures inside the room. The left wall had been breached, a huge gash nearly thirty feet long having been gouged out of the metal surface. A large hole twenty feet across had been cratered in the cement floor beneath the containment chamber, and above it, a large portion of the ceiling had been blown away. Jason barely noticed that damage, his attention focused on the cause of the destruction. A swirling vortex with a two-foot wide hole in the center filled the space where the containment chamber had once stood. Black smoke poured from the opening and formed an ominous cloud around the circumference. The hole glimmered like a mirage. Jason gazed through it, expecting to see the opposite side of the decelerator room. Instead, he stared at a dark, barren landscape. The only light came from rivers of lava that cast an eerie glow onto a blood-red sky. In the background, strange figures lumbered through the shadows, approaching the opening. The vortex pulsed every few seconds, and with each pulse, it increased a few inches in diameter.

  “Mom, you might want to see this.”

  “Not now, Jason.”

  “But the hole is getting larger.”

  “I’m busy at the—” Lisa stopped in mid-sentence when she saw the vortex. “What are the radiation levels in there?”

  “There’s no way of knowing, Dr. McCreary. All the instruments were destroyed in the blast.”

  “I’m going to check it out. Nancy, Andre. You’re with me.”

  “You can’t risk it,” said Doc.

  Lisa ignored Doc. As she passed by, Jason grabbed his mother’s arm and held her back. “Don’t go in there,” he pleaded.

  “I’ll be fine. I have to get a closer look.” Placing her hands around his wrists, she tightened the grip until he released her arm. Her hands slid into his palms and squeezed gently. His mother’s touch felt reassuring, but it did little to quell his fear that he might lose her.

  “Please,” he cried.

  “I’ll be right back.”
The tenderness in her voice was offset by the stern look in her eyes. Lisa let go of Jason’s hands and walked over to the decelerator room.

  The partition door had been warped by the blast, and it took the three scientists several attempts to open it. When they did, their lab coats and hair blew in the wind as a steady undercurrent of air flowed into the decelerator room. Jason heard a low rumble that sounded like an approaching thunderstorm. The scientists stepped inside and cautiously approached the vortex.

  “What do you see?” Doc asked from the doorway.

  Her eyes darted around the decelerator room, wide with fear and uncertainty. His mother’s voice trembled. Jason had never seen his mother like this before. “It’s a portal of some type.”

  “A portal? To where?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen any place like this bef—” His mother’s hand covered her mouth.

  Doc centered himself in the doorway. “Lisa, what is it?”

  “I th-think we opened a gateway to Hell.”

  The vortex emitted a heavy pulse and expanded, doubling to almost six feet in diameter and accompanied by an increase in the tempo of the rumbling. The wind grew in intensity, sucking the three scientists toward the portal. Nancy and Andre were yanked off their feet and flung through; their screams cut off when they passed through. The two scientists were tossed nearly fifty feet into the other world. Neither got back up. The wind dragged Lisa toward the same fate. She reached out at the last second and grabbed a twisted piece of the console still welded to the floor.

  The vacuum sucked the air out of the control room, generating a whirlwind of papers that flowed into the decelerator room and through the portal. Doc threw himself against the wall inside the control room. He pulled himself against the force of the wind toward a fire hose anchored on the opposite wall, unwound the hose, and wrapped one end several times around his right arm. As Doc inched his way toward the partition door, he yelled above the roar of the vortex. “I’m going to save Lisa. Drs. Kim and Bernard, stay here and pull me back. The rest of you, get out now.”