James Axler - Red Equinox

Fire danced all around him, lapping at the control consoles. The door through which the American had vanished was closed, a thick glass door, with a light glowing inside it. And above the noise of the flames and the screams of the doomed and dying, was an insistent humming sound.

The Russian holstered his Makarov and powered himself through the fire, holding his breath. He reached the glass door. Out of the corner of his eye he saw what looked like a body, wreathed in flames. In a bizarre fraction of blazing time, Zimyanin thought that he could also see an American flag, with its stripes and its stars, burning across the corpse.

He touched the door handle, wincing at its heat against his bare flesh.

Doc and Jak had already slipped into unconsciousness. J.B. was relaxed, his glasses neatly folded in a pocket, eyes closed.

"See you back... in... Deathlands," Krysty muttered.

As the blackness forced its way behind her eyes and into her mind, she had the momentary illusion that the door of the gateway chamber had opened and someone had come in. But the jump was too far advanced, and she took that fantasy with her into the infinite night.

Ryan was the strongest of the group, and the effects of the mat-trans process overtook him last of all. His eye was still open, though the inner vision was clouding. But he saw the door swing open. A bulky figure entered, kicking the entrance closed behind him.

A smell of burned cloth and hair.

Circle of silver and bald head.

Pocked skin.

A voice breathed in Ryan's ear. "You who are about to die..." The rest disappeared. Hands, like clamps of high-tension steel, jammed around his throat.

Breathing became difficult. Ryan wanted to struggle, but the jump had sucked away all his power to resist.

Someone laughed, the hands on his throat remorselessly strong.

Laughter.

Blackness.

Blackness.

Black.