“My guess is that the slime will take some sort of form. Whether that will be one big thing or a bunch of little things, I don’t know. What I do know is that it won’t last long, and it’ll probably get weaker as it falls apart or gets damaged. It normally wouldn’t be able to manifest here at all, and what he’s got going on now is a result of human beings. The Nachtmar is on its own now. The more we hurt it, the weaker it’ll get, and then we can get it and stick him with one of these things and send it back to hell where it belongs.”

“And you know this…how?”

“It was in the MHI employee handbook,” I said. Mosh snorted. “Okay, I just know. Call it instinct…How’re you doing?”

Mosh surprised me with a grin. “Remarkably well, actually. Believe it or not, this is kind of cool. Crazy, but cool.”

I bet the Nachtmar hadn’t realized that giving Mosh a chance to work his anger out against a bunch of death cultists would be so therapeutic. “Dad always did say you were the warped one. Stay back here, okay? I don’t want you doing anything stupid.”

“I came after you, didn’t I?”

He had me there. “Damn right you did.” I reached over and rubbed my brother’s shaved head. “For luck.”

I had stuck the ax handle through the straps on the back of my armor, so it was at least semi-secure. The ax wouldn’t do me any good until the Nachtmar got close, which meant that I would be using Abomination until then.

The rumbling in the earth had gotten steadily louder. Anything small that wasn’t tied down was jittering about from the vibration. “Get ready!” one of the MCB agents shouted. A crack appeared in the street a hundred yards away and began to grow. A chunk of the road split away, lifted, and then fell into the Earth.

Everyone had taken cover, but there had been no time to really prepare. The defenses that had been in place during the quarantine had been disabled or abandoned. We had a haphazard bunch of small arms and whatever else they’d been able to lay their hands on fast. I wasn’t feeling super confident.

The crack in the Strip spread further. Steam came shooting out from the hole. A police car disappeared into the crack. The hole was spreading rapidly, but we still hadn’t seen the Nachtmar’s form yet. Something long and black undulated briefly through the steam then disappeared. Someone jumped the gun and opened fire. Unfortunately that led to several others following his example and wasting their ammo against broken asphalt.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!