Storming the Gates of Hell - 2

Hell's Hammer!

Dain barely survived his first encounter with Hell's demonic hosts.  But the price of that encounter must still be paid.  Six months later evil returns and Dain is given a terrible choice.  Save the woman he loves or rescue an unsaved girl whose soul is at stake.  His fateful decision will change the lives of everyone he loves and knows... forever!

Being a heavenly warrior is never easy, but now Dain must give up his family and friends to seek out the source of the evil that plagues him.  His search will reveal a hidden secret as a long buried past reemerges.  Could his own father's mysterious past be connected to the malevolent forces that he is desperately trying to stop?

Betrayal, revenge and hatred will force Dain to save a former enemy, sever all family ties, and leave everyone he knows behind as he seeks to unravel something much larger than he ever imagined.  The destruction of the United States economy and the total collapse of Western civilization!

Can one man – even one blessed by Heaven – stop Satan's rampage to destroy the free world?  Hell plays for keeps and new adversaries will rise up to prevent Dain's interference.  Like the mythical Hydra, cutting off one head of evil only produces two more in its place.

And the price he must pay to thwart Hell is far from over.

A short excerpt from Book 2, Storming the Gates of Hell.

               The heat is near unbearable and the smoke is thick and suffocating.  Dain reaches for the car handle, using his jacket to reduce the heat transfer from the superheated latch release.  He quickly jerks the vehicle door open and grabs the still form inside, dragging the woman out of the burning vehicle.  Keeping low, he pulls the unconscious female to an open area against the firehouse wall, which he uses as a block against the extremely high temperature, just a few scant inches away.  Dain perceives the shapes of people through the thick smoke – among them are his friends, Sergeant Krammer and Pastor Steve.  He reaches out with his amplified senses and tries to calculate the time remaining before the wall collapses, releasing the hungry beast waiting on the other side.  He realizes he will have to move with careful precision, using the remaining precious seconds as if they were the rarest things in all of creation.  He must not only save the woman, but he must also persuade the world that he has died in the attempt.  A difficult task to pull off, without turning into the very victim he wants the world to believe he has become.  He realizes that the time has come for him to move.

               Gathering the limp form in both arms, he steps out into the firelight.  He begins swinging his burden in a dizzying arc, rotating faster and faster.  Calling on every ounce of strength he launches the senseless woman into the air, aiming for a pile of blankets stacked near the grassy area where the rescuers are feverishly working.  He can see the awestruck amazement and disbelief on the faces in the crowd as the human rag-doll sails towards the small group, landing with a plop in the stack of thick bedding.  Only Pastor Steve's eyes remain fixed on Dain, as if he knows that something more is about to happen.

Dain salutes his friend and smiles, as if to say, “Everything will be okay.” The collapsing wall is almost upon him now, its hellish heat blasting towards his silhouetted form in the dense smoke as the flaming beast on the other side explodes through – a living creature determined to devour the reckless youth. Still Dain waits. Time becomes meaningless, as micro-seconds somehow transform into long minutes for the godly warrior. The factional seconds slowly crawl by, stuck in the thickening movement of time. Just as the sun had been drawn out in the days of Joshua for the children of Israel, so too, is Dain granted a slowing of the clock. His small environment becomes an island of timelessness, yet another gift of God for the modern day Joshua. Dain reaches down deep inside himself, preparing for the most important dash of his life. Only when the intense flames rise around him, effectively blocking the heavenly soldier from view, does he move. If human eyes had been present to witness Dain’s sprint to safety, they would not have believed what they were witnessing.

Dain forces his body to travel at unbelievable speeds as he hurls himself just ahead of the gluttonous flames that seek his flesh – a blur of motion that is almost too fast to follow. He dives under a large two ton truck, skidding on his stomach like a braking car on an icy road, just as the first elements of the firehouse wall hit the parking lot, causing several of the cars to burst into balls of consuming fire. He launches himself up from under the rear of the behemoth, just a mere second later and quickly resumes his mad dash to safety. Dain knows he’s not in the safe zone yet.

The remaining parts of the vertical structure reach out greedily towards the large propane tank used by the fire station for its two sizable furnaces. The cascading bricks puncture the protective steel shell, immediately igniting the nearly full storage cylinder. The resulting explosion slams into Dain’s back like a fast moving train, knocking the breath from his battered body and causing him to lose consciousness for a few brief seconds. The impact hurtles him over fifty feet, dropping him into a snow covered hedge. Moments later his eyes snap open, as excruciating pain screams from his burning legs. Gazing down, Dain realizes to his horror that he’s on fire. Rolling out of the brush, he tries to extinguish the relentless flames, but they burn even hotter and hotter, reaching up to consume his entire body.