Because in the end that’s what love is. To go on, despite everything, driven by hope and faith alone.
The door at the end of the car opened abruptly before him, then the door into the next, and he stepped through into the crimson hell glare of demon territory and the company of Hell. Dozens of the creatures filled the car from end to end, packed in tight, facing him with anticipatory smiles, with teeth and claws and long, barbed arms with too many joints. Foul, horrid things with inhuman needs and appetites made clear in their misshapen flesh, all the better to inflict suffering upon the living. They laughed in JC’s face and stamped their cloven hooves upon the steel floor.
JC laughed right back in their awful faces, and the demons actually paused a moment, taken aback. They weren’t used to being so openly defied and mocked, in the face of certain torment and slow death. The sight of them was usually enough to drive mortals out of their minds. JC struck a studiedly casual pose and addressed the waiting host of Hell with contemptuous disdain.
“I don’t know if you really are demons called up out of Hell or only living extensions of my unseen enemy; and I don’t give a damn. It doesn’t matter what you are. You stand between me and my Kim; and I am here to rescue her. Get in my way, and I swear I will strike you down like the hammer of God.”
The cold, certain implacability in his voice held the demons motionless. And in that long, extended moment, JC took out a heavy brass knuckle-duster and slipped it onto his left hand. He reached down with his other hand and drew from a concealed ankle sheath a long, rune-etched silver dagger. He showed both weapons to the demons and laughed as they seethed uncertainly. JC took a glass phial from his inside coat pocket, pulled out the rubber stopper with his teeth, and spat it away. And then he poured some of the holy water over his silver blade and some over the knuckle-duster. He drank the rest, tossed the empty phial aside, and smiled a really nasty death’s-head smile at the demons assembled before him.
“All right, you ugly pieces of shit. Let’s do it.”
He strode forward, weapons at the ready. Not to punish the demons, or to take vengeance for all the missing commuters, or even to strike them down for what they were. He was doing what was needed to reach and rescue Kim because that mattered more to him than life itself.
To fight with demons, your intent must be pure. And even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll win.
The demon host rose up before him, and he hit them hard, lashing out with his silver blade and punching in misshapen faces with his brass knuckles. The silver blade sliced cleanly through demon flesh, opening them up like garbage bags. They fell screaming and howling to the floor, their steaming insides spilling out even as they tried to stuff them back in. The brass knuckles shattered bones and stove in fanged mouths, and the touch of the blessed metal was enough to burn demon flesh. JC worked his way forward, one step at a time, striking down the demons with a cold, implacable fury and trampling them underfoot. They fell before him, shocked and dismayed, unable to believe any mere mortal could do this to them.
JC fought his way into the midst of them, never dodging or ducking, always pressing forward, right into the teeth of anything they could do to him. He struck the demons down and stamped on their heads and sides, forcing his way through the whole pack of them. All the way down the car, to the next door, then through the door and into the next car, where a whole new host waited for him. JC fought on, opening up a path through the demon horde using sheer brute courage and tenacity, and a simple dogged refusal to be stopped or turned aside while Kim still needed him.
They hurt him horribly, but he kept going. Jagged claws sliced and tore through his flesh and grated on the bones beneath. Heavy blows knocked him this way and that, but he wouldn’t fall. Sharp-toothed jaws buried themselves in his flesh, and even found his face more than once. Blood-stained and terribly injured, he kept going, ignoring the pains that threatened to drain his strength and resolve, ignoring the blood that poured from him and dripped down to steam on the hot floor. JC threw himself at the leering demon faces before him, giving blow for blow and hurt for hurt, and never once allowed himself to be stopped, or slowed. Claws came at him from every side, teeth buried themselves in arms and legs and had to be jerked or shaken free. Overlong arms tried to wrap themselves around him and drag him down. But still, he went on. Sometimes he cried out, and sometimes he sobbed, and sometimes he roared and cursed and spat at the snarling faces before him; but none of it meant anything. He had a thing to do, and he was going to do it.
Despite everything he did, and everything that was done to him, he thought only of Kim. And what the demons might be doing to her. Being dead was no defence against the torments of Hell. He went on, and not all the demons on the hell train could deny him.
Until finally JC fought his way through to the last car but one; and there, at last, they stopped him. Because in the end, he was only a man, with a man’s limits. The demons blocked the way to the next car through sheer strength of numbers, their horrid shapes packing the car from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. They surrounded JC, coming at him from every direction at once. And so, finally, he was forced to a halt and stood swaying in the middle of the car: a ragged, tattered, and bloody mess of a man. His wonderful cream suit was ruined, soaked and stained with his blood and that of the demons. He had been cut and gouged and torn open, and a long trail of blood lay behind him. He had to keep spitting out blood because it kept filling his mouth. He could feel broken and splintered ribs grinding against each other with every breath, tearing into his lungs; and he was tired, so terribly tired. Every movement hurt him, and lifting his savaged arms was an effort that would have made him cry out if he’d had any voice left. But he’d worn it out screaming, several cars back.
The demons blocked his way, but still he lurched forward and struck out at them with stubborn fury. Because they stood between him and Kim. He was close by then; he could feel her presence. He was damned if he’d be stopped. Not after he’d come so far. He called out Kim’s name, a single breathy rasp of sound; but the demons howled and shouted him down, mocking him by yelling out her name in their sick and rotten voices.
JC swung his silver blade, and missed, and a demon surged forward. Its vicious jaws snapped together and bit off three of JC’s fingers. He hardly noticed the pain; it was one more, among so many others. He looked down stupidly as the silver blade fell from his mutilated hand, and blood jetted from the stumps of his missing fingers. And while he hesitated, thrown off-balance for a moment, a clawed hand came sweeping round and sliced clean through both his eyes.
Blood filled his view, then darkness, and a sudden agony roared inside his head. He howled in rage and loss, and lashed out blindly with his knuckle-duster and his maimed hand. It didn’t feel like he hit anything. He could feel viscous tears running down his face, blood and vitreous fluids from his ruined eyes. He could hear mocking demon laughter all around him. Claws cut at him from every side at once, darting in and out again, taunting and mocking him. A set of heavy jaws fastened on to his right hip, worrying right through to the bone, and he couldn’t shake them off. He staggered and almost fell, blind and alone, flailing helplessly around himself, shouting incoherent defiance; his only regret was that in dying he had failed Kim.
I’m sorry, Kim, he said, or thought he said. I’m so sorry.