Part 52: Fortune Favors the Bold

Kurt Dinkley shut his eyes as the demon pinned him against a tree and moved its teeth toward his face. Hot, almost suffocating air emanated from within the creature, accented by the smell of sulfur. He could feel it searing his skin as he waited for the end. Then three cracks went off like fireworks. Kurt felt dust raining down on his body and he dared to open his eyes.

Skip Jones was standing in front of him, a smoking revolver clutched between both hands and piles of dusted demon at his feet. He had a look in his eyes like a predator that had just made a kill, but that softened as soon as he looked up at Kurt. He holstered the revolver.

"Doctor Dinkley" he clapped Kurt on the shoulder. "Good to see you're not dead. Say, do you know the way to Cape Casem?"

Kurt nodded.

A few minutes later they were pulling in to the abandoned former NASA base. It would have been a longer drive, but it's amazing the time you make when you have no concern for speed limits or personal safety. Indeed, if this man had taught his son how to drive then Kurt was retroactively uncomfortable with all of the times that Fred Jones had driven Velma around.

Skip stopped at the entrance to the main hangar. He pressed a button by the side of the large hangar door and it began to rise, creaking and showering dust onto the ground.

"When they closed the base," Skip explained as he stepped in, Kurt following cautiously, "they took most of the new stuff with them, like that fancy gunship Freddy flew a couple of months back. But they left all of the old planes and from what I hear Rogers' pals in the hoods had'em fueled up and made battle ready when they found out we'd be fighting a war here."

Skip stopped right beneath a large gunship that looked to be a WWII era fighter plane. Skip inhaled sharply. "Smell of engine grease in the morning and all that," he said as he began climbing into the pilot's seat. He looked down at Kurt who was just staring slack jawed. It seemed the boy was truly his father's son. "Coming Doc?"

Kurt nodded.