At inspection Jonathan met the other members of his squad that he knew by name. There was Sergeant Nathan Der Wales, a relatively young sergeant about five years older than Jonathan, about a centimeter or two taller, and with black hair and white, slightly tan skin. There was also Private Kade, who was the support gunner of the squad. Hailing from America with at least some Latino blood, he was a tall man with black hair and green eyes. He had a first name, but didn't tell it to anyone and everyone just knew him as Kade. He was also a man of few words, and Chuck wasn't friends with him, but found him generally pleasant. Then there was Private Isaac Knowles. He was almost white as a sheet, had blond hair, and when Chuck initially met him he thought he would be good friends with him. But he later found Isaac to be immature and annoying, and they were brothers in arms, but not currently friends, though they did talk occasionally.
After inspection, Chuck Horner walked along the road with his comrades in the United States Army. He passed by the tall Tesla coils still protecting northern Cordoba, which had been so instrumental in protecting the city in 1979. Far to the east was an old burnt out shell of a Mexican artillery position, which was intended to protect the South American coast, but proved to be sadly ineffective. And thus began the first, safest leg of the journey to Borborema. As expected, long stretches of the journey had to be marches, but for about 600 kilometers he was able to take a train, and road in cars and carts for other parts of the trip. He passed by a landscape in recovery. The land north of Cordoba had seen its share of demon attacks, but ever since Tesla towers had been built north of Curitiba, and later in 1984 to the north of Asuncion and Salta, the land south of that line had enjoyed a decade of relative peace, interrupted by panics that demons would break through the defenses. Chuck saw a mix of Latino and White people populating this land, many of them farmers. Also, there were signs of the demon attacks over a decade before, but with people safe to fix damage, any signs he saw were just when it was something damaged that wasn't practical to repair or demolish.
During this leg of the journey, he had plenty of time when he was in a tent or hotel, or when he didn't have to walk, to read a new book he had purchased for the journey. It was titled Creation of the Humanoids and covered history from 1970 to 1980. Chuck was alive for the events of the book, and had read about many of the events it described before, but it was interesting to read them all together and learn things he either never knew or had learned once but forgotten.
In 1970 pictures taken by a spy in Libya were leaked to the American public, which lead to a panic that the US Army had tried to prevent by making sure the pictures were not leaked. In a clear, high-quality picture, taken from a telephoto lens, two British soldiers stood at ease next to a monster. The monster was undeniably humanoid, but the picture led to a slew of questions. It was about three times the size of a man, with naked reddish-gray skin and patches armored like an armadillo. It was surrounded with a glow, and had four long, white, sinister-looking tentacles coming from its back, and had large hands with short claws. Editorials came into newspapers faster than they could be printed about what could have led to the creation of these humanoids. Theories ranged the full spectrum, from mutated humans, to a monstrous, detailed costume, to stranger possibilities such as the creature being an extraterrestrial, or from another dimension, or a demon from Hell itself. Strangest of all was the detail of the British soldiers close to the humanoid, unhurried, relaxed, and not looking threatened by the creature. So, the most heartening possibility was that it was some sort of hoax - something on a movie set, or a bad joke. Or perhaps the picture itself was a fake; something painted to be completely photorealistic, and was simply the product of a tortured brain. Either way, inquiries to the British government all fell silent, and the American public at large was left to wonder what that strange creature could be.
In 1975 they found out. The British Empire and the United States had un-allied in the chaotic decade after World War II, and never re-allied. After World War II it had totally conquered France, destroying the French language and doing all it could to destroy pre-war French culture. It then captured large swaths of territory in the wake of the collapse of Russia, and by 1968 had an empire larger than the Mexican empire, and far dwarfing the United States. All of Africa was under its control, as was the Middle East and most of the former Kingdom of Russia. So, when large numbers of transport ships were spotted off the coast of Natal, it was obvious that the British Empire had invasion on its mind. Coastal guns blew up a small number of the ships, but the number of ships far exceeded the number of guns, and the great majority made landfall in Brazil unharmed or with minor damage. That was the start of horror, and April 17th, 1975 became a day that would live in infamy far more than the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. Chuck remembered reading about that fateful day, and seeing the horrible pictures when he was older, though he was only two months old at the time.
Out of the transports did not come British soldiers, or even any large invasion force. Most of the barges were empty decoys. Instead, the transport barges opened to reveal five of the monstrosities. Even at close range, with the great Mexican costal guns scoring direct hits on the strange beings, the shells seemed to explode a short distance from them rather than directly hitting the beings, and the beings were unharmed. The being then lifted their arms, which carried no tools or items, and seemingly from nothing but thin air conjured black swirling balls, which they launched at the fortifications. The strange spheres exploded like great cannonballs, blasting the fortifications apart. Soldiers ran for their lives, fleeing the unstoppable humanoids.
On April 18th, panic gripped Brazil. There were no regular army units in the area, and though small militia units tested their guns against the beasts, their guns were completely ineffective, causing only small sparks against their evil glow. A few days later a small force of light tanks engaged the creatures, but found the tank guns as ineffective as costal guns and small arms. So, the Mexican armed forces tried larger bombs, delivered from the air. Bombers from the Mexican Air Force arrived and began bombing runs against the creatures, but were entirely ineffective. Even a direct hit from one of their bombs did not kill the beasts, and the pilots learned with horror that the balls of energy that the creatures shot behaved like magic missiles, tracking their targets even at 10,000 meters above the ground. The balls of energy hit the bombers, obliterating them. They were not given permission to break off though, and the entire small bomber fleet was destroyed. A hundred kilometer evacuation radius was ordered, and people all around fled as fast as they could. Fear gripped the country under the assumption that these creatures themselves were the tools of their destruction, a valid fear at the time, but incorrect in retrospect. Instead, the creatures headed to Borborema, and entered a mine in the area. Things were quiet for the next week. Seismometers detected disturbances in the area, but no one that entered the mine came out alive, so about a week passed in nervous terror.
Then, new creatures began emerging from the mine. A few were like the unstoppable demons that had landed on the shore, which people referred to as Greater Demons to differentiate them from the other humanoids. However, there was another type of creature, smaller and more numerous, about twice the size of a human, similar to the first creature, but not glowing. Also, on its hands were long, sharp claws. Those creatures were called Demons proper by people, though somewhat confusingly, people also began referring to any of the new creatures as demons in general. Finally, huge numbers of what could best be described as Imps also poured from the mine. These were about 3/5ths the size of an average man, and looked like the children's Halloween costume of a devil. They were dingy red, also armored like an armadillo, with pointy noses, pointy ears, horns like a goat, four-toed feet, and sharp claws on their five-fingered hands. Local militia also tested their guns on these new creatures, and hearteningly, found that the Imps were not bulletproof from rifle rounds, though they could survive a pistol round or glancing blow from a rifle round easily. The larger creatures were also not bulletproof, but very bullet resistant, requiring careful, direct placement of high-speed bullets to injure, and sustained fire of such shots to completely kill. However, the numbers of such creatures made local resistance futile, even more so as they were supported by more of the unstoppable glowing monstrosities.
With the short wait time before demons came from the ground, a mass evacuation had occurred, and hundreds of kilometers around the area were nothing but ghost towns when the demons poured out. Further, drafts had been initiated for the Mexican Army, but the short time meant that the army units in the area amounted to little more than people equipped with semi-automatic rifles and pistols, a small force of heavy tanks in Brazil, and only a few aircraft. Not that it would matter against the unstoppable Greater Demons, but a larger army would have delayed the onslaught at least. As it was, the small tank force was ineffective and the tanks killed some Imps and Demons, but was swarmed and annihilated, and a nearby tank factory was destroyed. Afterwards, demons spread to the surrounding areas as fast as their legs could carry them, and it was at the city of Salvador that the new demons met the first large collection of humans - people who had evacuated to that city for safety, which now found even that city too close to Borborema to keep them safe. Everyone feared the worst when the demons arrived, and mass prayers began. And indeed, the demons entered the city and killed everyone holding a weapon or praying. They also ate some people, but the demons seemed to be easily satiated, and each could only eat one small child a day or a piece of an adult, and after satiated, they would simply kill a person and either leave the body to rot or store it somewhere to eat later. However, fear turned to confusion when it was found there were people the demons would leave alone. When demons encountered an unarmed person, who was not praying and made no move of resistance, they would leave that person alone. Deception was futile. The demons either couldn't communicate with humans or made no effort to do so, but by all accounts they were at least empathetic, in the sense that they could tell if a person was submitting in true despair, or was submitting just to get into a better position to kill demons later. The latter they would kill instantly, with no heed taken to armament or posture. The Greater Demons made this feeling of helplessness come easy, as they were huge and invincible. The Imps, however, had the opposite effect on people who saw them. Their huge numbers filled people with despair, but in a one on one fight, a strong man could kill an Imp, so long as he had some sort of weapon and knew how to fight. Chuck never heard of any story of a Brazilian Davy Crocket who could kill an Imp with his bare hands, but did read stories of individual people getting into one-on-one combat with Imps, sometimes carrying nothing but a rolling pin, a baseball bat, or even in one case a frying pan and emerging hurt but victorious. Such people that had the guts to fight the demons were exactly the sort of people that ended up dead, as the demons would never show them mercy if they closed in on them.
So, as demons began spreading through Brazil, leaving widespread disruption but not total destruction, entreaties first went to the Mexican government in Mexico City, which had the authority to send more regular army units to the area to slow the spread and give civilians more time to flee. Mexico did for its part at least make some effort to contain the beasts. It tried setting up more artillery positions farther from the Gate to Hell, but those were easily overrun. So, without a large army in South America to meet the supernatural threat, and with the most powerful conventional bombs in the Mexican arsenal ineffective at actually stopping the waves of demons flooding from the Gate to Hell, instead the dictator of Mexico, Samual Acuna, sent out a mass message to the mayors of South American towns and cities, which included a line that became infamous for years later - "Su sentimiento de impotencia es su mejor amigo." It meant "Your feeling of helplessness is your best friend." He said in the message that he regretted to inform them that, while he was keeping the coastal guns manned and ready, that regular army troops could not be sent to stem the tide of the unstoppable beasts, and that fortifications were being set up near Panama. He further implored those that could to flee as quickly as possible, and those that could not to fully and sincerely submit to the demons and throw themselves on their mercy, giving no outside show of piety, which seemed to only anger the beasts.
The British were even more callous, and entreaties to them resulted in only silence. Individual citizens of the British Empire expressed displeasure and disgust at the carnage taking place in South America, and fear that it would spread beyond that continent, but there was no official messages whatsoever to the people of Brazil, to the Mexican government, or to the United States government about the situation in South America. Letters were sent back unopened, radio transmissions unanswered, and conversations started on other topics in the rare cases when there was high-level interaction between the two groups of peoples were shut down if talks turned to that subject. The people of Brazil wanted to surrender to the British. They wanted to know that if they were to be dominated, it would at least be by a people that wouldn't eat them. But there was no chance of surrender to the British. The demons were like hives of bees catapulted into an enemy camp, and no surrender to the enemy would stop the bees from stinging, nor in this case was the enemy even willing to hear talk of surrender.
The United States, for its part, at least tried to send some help down to South America, but the effect was disastrous to the effect of being almost sadly comical. In 1976 a group of transport helicopters with builders and some army troops flew down to Brasilia to try to set up a base and fortifications there. The demons arrived too fast for any to be set up, so they moved further south, to Campo Grande, where the speed of the advance again surprised them, and they had to move down again. The Army assumed that against the vincible demons, the coastal guns would at least slow down the demons, as they could swivel 360 degrees, and neither Imps nor Demons were invulnerable like the Greater Demons were. However, their numbers were too great and they overwhelmed the fortifications one after the other, not falling quite like dominos, but more like a loaf of bread with slices being cut off. So, the transport helicopters skipped the next fallback city, Asuncion, and instead fell back all the way to Buenos Aires to give the soldiers and builders time to actually fortify the area some before the demons arrived. That did work, but barely. Two large groups of demons had moved down the coast destroying the costal guns, and by the time they reached Cordoba, one cluster had been entirely killed, and the other down to just a few hundred demons, which were killed by soldiers, and bought enough time to make a base south of Cordoba. Soon after, two things happened. First, the United States instituted a draft. At the time it was hoped it could be a temporary measure, but that was in late 1976, and 18 years later it was still in effect. Second, the Mexican government had constructed some missiles in Alaska, a few armed with fission nuclear missiles, and it sent three against the Gate to Hell. When they hit, they scorched the area around the mine entrance, and killed any demons in the area, they were otherwise completely ineffective. The entrance could be easily sealed with missiles, but it only delayed the creatures for a few days or weeks until it could be dug out again.
In 1979 forces near Cordoba had built up enough that Army planners decided to mount an offensive against the Gate to Hell. Twenty five thousand foot soldiers gathered, armed largely with M16s and wearing light flak jackets, and were joined by four of the first generation IBIS walkers. They marched along the coast, and met with initial success, and even retook Sao Paulo from the demons. However, it was at Penápolis that they met their doom. The force of soldiers was met by wave after wave of Imps and Demons, and a handful of Greater Demons. Hearteningly, when the IBIS walkers concentrated their fire on one of the greater demons, after pounding it heavily with long-range artillery, the Greater Demon was finally killed. That marked the first time one of the Greater Demons was killed, and meaning that such humanoids were tough, but not invincible. However, their void blasts were very effective against the large groups of infantry, and damaged even the large IBIS walkers without much trouble, such that after a few days of fighting all 25,000 soldiers were dead, and soon every IBIS walker was destroyed as well. Companies of troops were rushed to the front line as fast as they could to stop a total rollback of all that had been liberated from the demons, but they came a few thousand at a time. While they were effective at slowing down the onslaught and eventually killed every demon marching towards Cordoba, there was one Greater Demon that marched on the city like an unstoppable juggernaut, and seemed to shrug off the small arms fire directed at it.
So, just north of Cordoba, a new experimental defense was set up. Large Tesla coils, about a hundred meters tall and powered with underground cables from large generators were set up, which had beams affixed to their tops which could direct the otherwise uncontrollable electrical discharges onto an area by creating a conduit through the air for the circuit to ground and complete. They later were found to be much more effective than guns and shells, and could instantly kill Imps, and electrocute Demons with prolonged, powerful bursts. However, at the time they had never been tried and when the first Greater Demon arrived at the Tesla coil cluster, fear spread all around South America that even the new towers would be ineffective. Every soldier that could be armed was brought up to defend the towers and every effort was made to brace them against concussions, and as soon as the Greater Demon came within range, the air crackled with electricity. It was a long battle, taking over an hour, with many towers hitting the glowing demon over and over again. The demon threw ball after ball of dark energy, and its void blasts damaged several towers, but brave engineers raced from tower to tower, some of them being killed by those blasts, to repair damage caused by them. Forty minutes in, observers with binoculars could see the demon was no longer glowing with the bright luster it had when it had first come into view. Fifty minutes in, the demon collapsed to the ground. Shocks continued for several minutes to make sure the beast was dead, and then the towers stopped. Several were smoking or on fire from the prolonged current, and many were damaged in places by void blasts or melted from the prolonged current flowing through them. But the Greater Demon was dead. As soon as possible, a single soldier went to the body and decapitated the creature with a knife to ensure that it was well and truly dead, and reddish black blood flowed from its body. Then several others came to collect the smoking, charred body and take it back to base for dissection. Chuck was only four years old at the time, but he remembered reading with interest about that dissection when he was older, which removed all notions that the creature was some kind of mutant human. It had organs analogous to humans, but they were in different places and different shapes than human organs. More to the point, that battle between beast and the Tesla coils had proven that some kind of protection from the Greater Demons was possible, and gave hope to people that they might live their lives in relative safety. Here the second book ended.