by Mark Cain
“Uh, no. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
“Are you sure?” I pulled the schematic out of my pocket and showed it to her, careful only to reveal the portion that corresponded to the Glutton’s Gap area of Level Three. I didn’t want to show too many people the drawing. Satan or Beezy might not like it.
Laverne, who despite her nasty nature, seemed to have a pretty good sense of spatial relationships, looked curiously at the drawing. “Well,” she said slowly, “I don’t recall a green pipe there, but there’s an old grain silo on that spot.”
More camouflage? “Where?” I asked.
“Just take the road maybe half a mile past town, and you’ll see it.”
“Fine, and thanks for your cooperation. I’ll make sure both Satan and Beelzebub know how much you helped us.” Since Beezy is the patron devil for gluttony, this operation was his.
“No, no,” she said hurriedly. “It was an … ” she almost choked on the expression, “an honor just to be of service.”
“I bet,” Orson grumbled, and we left.
We stepped through the demolished entrance of the cafeteria and out on the gravel road. Not far away, BOOH had settled back down on top of the bank. His eyes were closed and he was snoring loudly.
“Let’s let BOOH get his beauty rest,” I said to Orson. “It’s just a short walk.”
“Fine by me. Got your stethoscope?”
I pulled it from my trouser’s pocket and slipped it around my neck. “Ready when you are, Dr. Welles.”
Just outside of town was a chuck wagon. Donner Party Planners, which must have been operated by a cartel of devils and demons, was throwing a barbeque for some residents of Glutton’s Gap. Many of them were soon-to-be diners; others were soon-to-be-dinners, the latter skewered on large rotisserie spits and turning over bonfires. Slow-cooked, my mama always told me, was the best way to do barbeque. Makes the meat nice and tender. I took a whiff and almost gagged. Ugh. They’re using a sweet sauce.
In life, I was quite fond of barbeque and often sought out the different varieties that could be found in many regions of the States. The North seemed to favor sweet sauces, my least favorite. Some places in the South, like South Carolina, had mustard-based sauces. My favorite, Texas barbeque, was smokier and more vinegary. If I had been running the show, I’d have opted for that from the Lone Star state. It would cover up the quinine tang of human flesh.
Not that I’ve ever tasted any, of course. I’m just sayin’.
The devils had really put on the dog. Well, actually, they’d put on the people, but they had all the fixin’s: potato salad, beans (pinto not fava), loaves of sliced white bread, pickles and onion slices, banana pudding for desert - a lot of it - and of course iced tea.
There was one devil, probably the boss, who was standing near the wagon, overseeing the preparations. He had on an apron that said, “Kiss the cook.” Except for the fact that humans would be eating humans, and that everyone would no doubt have to eat until they were near to bursting, it looked like a nice affair.
Anyway, the food-to-be was in agony, and the expectant diners looked green at the gills. I imagined that once they’d finished eating and then passing their neighbors, the groups would switch roles.
“Creepy,” Orson whispered.
“Yeah. I’ll never eat barbeque again.”
“Just as well,” my friend said. “It’s really terrible for you. That charred meat - all those carcinogens - could give you cancer.”
“Well, since I’m already dead, that’s not much of a disincentive.”
“How about cannibalism?”
“Yeah. That works.”
Beyond the festivities I spied cornfields. There looked to be miles and miles of stalks in long and, for Hell, surprising straight rows growing out of rich, black soil like what you might find in Illinois. The corn was “as high as an elephant’s eye,” ripe for the picking, and I pulled an ear off a stalk. I tore the rich green husk away from the ear, but the yellow kernels turned to black dust when they were exposed to the air and blew away. With a sigh, I tossed the naked cob over my shoulder.
A couple of more minutes walking, and we spotted the silo, about a hundred feet off the road. The storage structure did indeed look abandoned; there were no signs of activity. As we got close, I noticed flecks of green beneath the peeling yellow paint. “I think we found our pipe.”
“Yeah. You know, Satan is good at this camouflage stuff.”
I shrugged. “Would you expect anything less from the Prince of Lies?”
“Not really. Hey! Look at that.” Orson pointed to a nearby hitching post. Hanging from its underside was a small icicle.
Chapter 24
“We’re running out of time, Orson. At this rate, all Hell will soon freeze over, the devils will miss their poker night, and chaos will ensue.”
Worst of all, said that selfish portion of my brain, I’d lose Flo forever. A familiar anxiety grasped my chest, but with an effort of will, I shook it off. This was not the time to panic. Well, it was exactly the time to panic, but that wouldn’t have done any good. If Flo and I were to have any chance together, if the entire universe were to be saved from bedlam, Orson and I had to stay focused on the job.
“Then we’d better get at it,” he said, putting his stethoscope to his ears. I followed suit.
The pipe was as silent as the dead, or at least the dead before they made it to the afterlife, where we all tended to be on the mouthy side. We pulled off our stethoscopes. “That clinches it, Orson. The problem is somewhere on Level Two.”
“Or in the ground beneath either One or Two.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” I said with a frown. “If it’s buried in the ground, I’m not sure we’ll be able to handle this on our own.”
Orson scratched his beard. “Well, let’s isolate this as best we can. Pull out the HVAC schematic.”
I placed the drawing on the curved walls of the faux silo. Together, we studied the drawing for a few minutes.
“Looks to me like the pipe is right next to the Elevator on Two,” Orson concluded.
“Yeah. That should make this pretty easy.” I whistled for BOOH, and he came roaring out of Glutton’s Gap. “BOOH, it looks like our next stop is the Elevator doors on Two.” My winged compadre grabbed the two of us by his claws and shot upward.
The easiest way to hide something is in plain sight. Satan had made the column appear to be part of the Elevator shaft on the Second Circle. The shaft looked especially large on this level, but I knew from experience that the car inside was the same car that served all levels of Hell, so at least a portion of the shaft, the back portion I was pretty certain, since the front was taken up by the Elevator doors, was fake, like a secret compartment in a desk or suitcase. Sure enough, there was a very slight roundness to the back of the shaft. I was positive I’d never seen that on any other level. “I bet money that’s the pipe.”
Orson nodded and pulled out his ears’ augmenter.
Again there was dead silence. I unplugged my ears and hung the stethoscope around my neck. “Somewhere between here and the tee box on One.”
“I concur,” replied my supercilious friend. “What do you propose now?”
“At this point, I think the best thing to do is for you to wait here while BOOH and I trace the pipe all the way to the top of this level. I’ll take a listen periodically to make certain the failure isn’t somewhere in midair, though I doubt that’s the case.”
“Wha … what’s going on?” Bik asked, pulling himself out of my pocket. I placed him on my palm.
He looked terrible, as if the life was being sucked out of him. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” I asked him worriedly.
“Don’t know. I feel kind of woozy.”
I dug into a pocket of my coveralls and pulled out a couple of matchboxes. “Orson, feed our diminutive friend while I’m gone, would you?”
“Sure, Steve.” He looked as concerned for the little guy as me, as he
took Bik and the matches from my hands. He set the fire giant carefully on the ground, then struck a match. After a few attempts, Orson got it to light. “Here, little one,” he said gently. “Have a bite.”
While Bik sucked down fire, BOOH and I flew up to the shaft and began paralleling its ascent. A few hundred feet in the air, the tube separated from the elevator shaft. Because of the constant haze found on every level of Hell except Limbo, no one on the ground would have been able to see the pipe from this distance. Since there was no need for additional camouflage, the pipe reverted to a bright green. I took a listen about twenty feet from where it had made its right angle divergence from the shaft, but there was no sound to be heard.
The course of the pipe was now a beeline. I saw where we were heading and shivered. It was hard not to. We were shooting straight for Erebus.
As we approached the summit, or nadir, depending on your point of view, BOOH slowed down. He seemed to be having difficulty getting close to the mountain; as he struggled against some invisible force, his golden glow began to fade. Finally, about twenty feet from the tip of the giant stalactite, BOOH was reduced to a hover. He let out a Skree! in frustration.
“Hold on, big guy!” I said. “Just let me take a listen to the pipe then we’ll back off.”
The pipe was deader than a doornail, this close to the summit. I tapped BOOH on the shoulder, and he retreated about fifty feet from his position, still close enough to see the pipe - which traveled along the side of the mount, a giant, slithering green snake frozen to a great big icicle - but not close enough to take a listen.
We weren’t able to get near the pipe again until we reached the underbelly of Level One. Less than thirty feet from the base of Erebus, the supply line emerged from the bottom of the First Circle of Hell. Attached to the pipe, running along the underside of the circle, was a horizontal service ladder. I put the stethoscope to the green metal of the fuel line.
I heard the loud swish, swish, swish of souls flowing through the pipe. BOOH tried to fly closer to the base of Erebus but hit the same invisible force that had stalled him at the summit. From our vantage point, I examined the green tubing as it started its climb up the mountain. The pipeline was undamaged as far as the eye could see.
Back on the ground of Level Two, I told Orson. “The location of the sabotage must be somewhere on Erebus, but for some reason, BOOH can’t fly me to the mountain. We’re going to have to find the failure point ourselves.”
“Are you kidding?” Orson spluttered. He had just picked up Bik and put him in his own pocket protector. Bik’s color was better, but he was still very lethargic. “Are you telling me that, in order to find the leak or blockage or whatever the hell it is we’re contending with, we have to climb Mount Erebus … upside down?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, but before we do, I need to talk with Satan again to find out what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Not Beezy?”
“No, I don’t think so. Beezy doesn’t even know the source of the fuel that fires his own HVAC system, and I think Satan wants to keep it that way. I need to talk to the big guy himself, and since he said no more ‘mind phone calls,’ this will have to be in person. On the way, we’ll have BOOH drop you at Parts. Get Dora to give you every bit of mountain climbing gear she has, and tell her no holding back, unless she wants her butt chewed on by a dragon.”
We took off and flew down to Five. The temperature on all levels was dropping rapidly now, and we were shivering by the time we got to Parts. I took Bik from Orson, thinking the fire giant might benefit from visiting his grandfather while I talked to Satan. BOOH whisked us down to Nine. After placing me on the carpet before Satan’s office, the bat hopped on his perch near the Elevator. Even though he had lost his golden glow, BOOH’s dip in the Well of [Damned] Souls was still standing him in good stead. He was as fast as ever, but like Bik, he now seemed to tire after each of our jaunts, requiring frequent naps. The giant bat closed his eyes and was soon snoring.
Bruce was at his desk, clad in a powder blue parka and thick ski gloves. In all my years of dealing with him, he had never looked more miserable. “Bruce. Give me the key to the Corridor of Traitors. Bik needs to see his grandfather.”
Normally, Bruce would have argued with me, but I guess he didn’t have the energy. Instead, he just fished in his pocket and pulled out the key, handing it to me. Then he laid his head on the appointment book and fell asleep.
Shaking my head, I walked over to the door. After unlocking it, I pulled Bik from my pocket protector. “Do you think you’re strong enough to fly in and see your grandpa?”
“I … I think so.”
“Can you get through the boiler room door?”
“Special opening … on door. Just my size … be fine.”
Bik’s voice was so soft that he was almost inaudible, but I could make out enough to know he was talking about the peephole. “Good. Stay with Surtr for a while. Maybe he can help you get your strength back.”
“Okay.” Bik flew off at a slow, looping pace, like a yellow butterfly that could barely stay aloft.
I left the door cracked open and placed the key on Bruce’s desk. He was snoring slightly. I tried to wake him, but he wouldn’t budge, so even though I knew it was a bad idea, I walked over to Satan’s office, pushed open the doors, and stepped inside.
Satan was standing in front of his desk, arms crossed over his black Armani suit, eyes hidden by dark sunglasses. There was no expression on his face as I approached the Earl of Hell. Then, without warning, he slapped me. Hard.
“You are getting insolent, Minion. This is the second time you've barged into my office without invitation. It is the height of hubris.”
Satan frequently knocked me around when I met with him, but those punishments were the reflexive act of a consummately cruel being. This slap, though, came from a deep sense of personal outrage, that I had violated the rules of engagement, made a huge breech of protocol. And perhaps I had. After all, a man’s office is a man’s office, even if he happens to be the Devil. Not only did I not have an appointment; I didn’t even knock before entering. The slap was deserved.
I bowed my head. “Sorry, my Lord, really I am, and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we we’re running out of time. Things are getting colder on every level. I saw an icicle on Three, Bruce is out there wearing a parka, and I fear that very soon all Hell will freeze over. That’s much worse than just a cold day in Hell, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” Satan said under his breath as he walked around his desk to his chair. He sat down, pointing at one of the visitor chairs that regularly appeared and disappeared in his office. Grateful for an opportunity to get off my feet, I sank into the cushion. I was no longer merely bone-tired; I was exhausted to the point of collapse. This was turning out to be a very long day.
“I visited the Well of [Damned] Souls, sir. Peter told me about it in some detail. Burning human souls to heat the Underworld … that's pretty diabolical, even for you.”
A comment like that would normally have gotten me flame-broiled, but Satan only frowned. “Yes. That’s not a secret I want too many people to know about - it would cause me a major PR problem -- so you and Orson keep your mouths shut, get it?”
“Yes sir. And I think I know where the problem lies. It’s … ”
“Erebus. Yes, your mind has been ringing with that one word since you stepped into my office. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve discovered?” The Lord of Hell emitted a long sigh. Until today, I’d never seen him exhibit any weariness; it was very unsettling. More, in the past, whenever he wanted to know something, he’d just pluck the information from my brain. I had a feeling he was just too tired to do that now. The seriousness of our situation was becoming more and more apparent.
Quickly, I outlined our efforts to identify the break point in the supply line and the conclusion we had drawn. “It has to be somewhere on Erebus, sir. The pipe is working fine at the base of the
mountain, but shortly after leaving the summit, the pipe is silent.”
The rest is silence. I wondered who said that.
“Shakespeare,” Satan replied, answering my unspoken question. “It’s the last thing Hamlet says before he dies.” The Earl of Hell took off his sunglasses and laid them on the desktop. One eyebrow formed an impossibly high arch. “I’m tired, Minion, not dead like you. If Hell were to be destroyed, I’d be the last to go.”
“I always figured that, sir. But to get back to Erebus, I have to somehow climb the mountain and trace the line to the failure point, unless,” I added hopefully, “someone else more appropriate for this task could handle it.”
Satan frowned at me. “Trying to get out of your eternal damnation, Minion?”
“No, no sir, but things are getting pretty serious in Hell, and I wasn’t sure you wanted to waste any more time with my stumbling around.”
He shrugged. “You’re doing okay, all things considered. Besides, most devils and all demons are incapable of dealing with the cold on Erebus. Only one of the princes of Hell or a human could make the climb, and I’m not ready to call on one of the princes yet.”
I nodded. “Especially since you’re trying to keep the existence of the fuel line a secret.”
“Yes. Once again, Minion, you show your gift for clear thinking. Being Hell’s Super may be your eternal damnation, and you stink at fixing things, but you’ve shown your mettle on more than one occasion. Without letting the cat out of the bag about the Well of [Damned] Souls, the only other being who could effectively deal with the Erebus situation is me, and I’m not ready to climb a mountain to fix it. Well,” he said, considering the possibility, “I’ll do it if I have to, but straits are not yet so dire as to make that necessary. You have a go at it first.”
The Lord of Hell had just paid me a compliment. He didn’t deal those out very often, and he surprised me.
“Sir, there’s something funny about Erebus. Well, there are a lot of things funny about Erebus, starting with it hanging upside down. BOOH, for example, can’t fly me there. He can only get so close.”