Hell Patrol

by R. D. Tarver

  A halo of white light surrounded the ridge directly above the concrete incline that led down to the Hell Hole.

  “They made it!” Rick yelled.

  As they drove towards the light, Jesse began to make out the individual headlights that lit up the surrounding woods. Twenty-some-odd cars had created a makeshift parking lot just off the old service road in front of the mine.

  Jesse parked Bessie on the side of the service road, allowing the others to climb out of the truck bed.

  Rick shoved both middle fingers into his mouth and uttered a loud, shrill whistle. A handful of roadies emerged from behind the circle of lights and began pulling out the gear and schlepping it down the incline to the mine entrance.

  “Reporting for duty, your Prickness,” shouted Robb-O, Rick’s old roadie buddy who had sold Hell Patrol the discounted backline.

  “Here to do our part, dudes,” said one of the black-clad crew who raised horns at the road-weary Hell Patrol.

  “Rick the Prick delivers once again,” Rick answered back.

  Jesse felt a twinge of nervousness at the shit-eating grin his brother was broadcasting.

  “Now that’s a crowd,” said Rust. “How did the hell did you get so many people to show up?”

  “I may have told them there was a diy protest show coming on the heels of the church record burning.”

  “They all showed up to see us?” asked Rust.

  Rick continued beaming at Jesse.

  Jesse calmly turned off the ignition, shook the glass shards from his hair and jacket, and looked his brother dead in the eyes. “What did you do?”

  “I did my goddamned job. You and Professor Venom worry about the demons. Let me worry about putting on a show.”

  “Seriously,” Jesse folded his arms. “Why are there so many people here?”

  Rick lowered his voice as he peered over his glasses. “They might have been told you were opening for Prisoners of Flesh.”

  “What the fuck?” asked Jesse.

  “If you must know, I also alluded to the possibility that there would be free beer. Don’t worry—it won’t come out of our end. The Forgotten Order is picking up the tab.” Rick looked out of the side of his face. “I billed it as the best underground show of the year. At least that much will be true.”

  “What happens when a legion of demons pours over this place?”

  “They know what they signed up for—metal or death.” Rick screamed out the words “metal or death,” a sentiment echoed by each of the roadies as they carted out gear from the caravan of vehicles. “See?”

  Agostino appeared outside Jesse’s window. “I am afraid we do not have much time…”

  “This is fucked up, dude,” Jesse said, glaring at his brother.

  “Put it in a letter,” Rick replied. “If we survive the night, you have my permission to be pissed.”

  2

  A command center was quickly established in the central control room. The road crew—a mix of musicians, roadies, stage hands, and other fixtures of the regional underground music scene—made quick work of setting up the backline. They even managed to provide lights and power by tapping into the mine’s dormant power grid with an industrial-grade generator. A mile of electric conduit snaked through the central tunnel between the control room and the impromptu stage being set up near the entrance.

  Under Rick’s direction, a beer station was quickly set up in the Hell Hole, just outside the mine entrance. By the time the gear was set up, there were nearly forty people on site.

  Away from the prying eyes of the bustling entrance, in the dark recesses at the end of the central tunnel, the expedition to the nexus between worlds had established a base camp inside the derelict winch house near the opening of the vertical mineshaft.

  Agostino helped Jesse into The Ripper.

  “The suit is fully charged. And I should warn you, it is going to get very hot once it is powered on. The interior is lined with a thermal protectant and cooling fans, but the amount of power running through the battery array is still dangerous.”

  “I’ll be okay. As cool as this thing is, I don’t plan on wearing it home.”

  “That is agreeable, because at full power, the battery packs will only be able to sustain the dislocating barrier for about twenty minutes.” He pointed to the four green bars that represented the power supply on the boombox breastplate’s led readout. “Each bar represents approximately five minutes. Keep an eye on the gauge.”

  Jesse nodded. “Got it. Back in twenty or I’m demon food.”

  “When you are ready, we will lower you down in the bosun’s chair. The partitioning membrane surrounding the nexus should not be far off once you reach the bottom.”

  “How will I know when I’m near the nexus?”

  “You will know.” Agostino demonstrated the toggle switch on the power console. “When you are ready, all you have to do is press this switch to activate the suit by placing it into full from the default standby position.”

  “Kinda like turning on a tube amp.”

  “Precisely.” Agostino moved his fingers over the boombox affixed to the suit’s midsection. “Once the suit is powered on, press play on the cassette deck, and the rest will take care of itself.”

  Agostino decoupled the suit’s power supply and toggled the suit’s power switch into standby. Immediately, the suit lit up. The led lights from the boombox and surrounding network of auxiliary speakers allowed Jesse to see a few feet into the abyss as he leaned over the lip of the vertical shaft. The cold darkness plummeted down beneath, causing a twinge of dizziness as he tried to fathom the depths of the descent.

  “Just make sure that the tape keeps playing when the sonopods are near. The weaponized sound field created by the suit should repel the sonopod resonant frequency within a radius of ten to fifteen feet.”

  “I’m ready,” said Jesse.

  “I have produced a mixtape just for this occasion.” Agostino opened the cassette deck to demonstrate. The door to the player opened, but no tape could be seen. He tried the second recording deck. Empty. He felt his pockets and appeared dismayed. “No...this cannot be.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Jesse.

  “Henry was supposed to load the tape back at the lab.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Jesse suddenly felt strangled by The Ripper’s claustrophobic confines. “Will anything work? There’s an army of metalheads out there.”

  “Anything on cassette will suffice. The suit itself converts regular sound waves into the dislocating frequency, but it is preferable that the source is one of extreme volume and aggressive tonalities.”

  Rust jogged up to the winch house with Mazes in tow. “Hey Jess, I think I found us a guitar player.”

  “That’s great, but we’re kind of dead in the water until we get a tape for The Ripper. Can one of you guys check with Rick and see if he can score something?”

  “I’ve got you covered.” The squeaky voice cut through the hum of activity coming from the mine entrance. Jesse turned to see a skinny teen with a backwards ball cap, biting into his lip with a pair of oversized front teeth. A guitar was strapped over his shoulder.

  “Alex!” Jesse shouted, unable to believe his eyes.

  Alex reached into his battle vest pocket and held up a Maxell cassette tape. Jesse instantly recognized the title flanked by a pair of inverted pentagrams: painkiller. “Heard you guys needed a guitar player.”

  Jesse hugged Alex despite The Ripper’s awkward girth. “I thought they made you burn all your tapes?”

  “Just the cases,” Alex smiled. “That collection was my life’s work, man. I wasn’t going to toss it into the fire for some fucking Jesus freaks.”

  Kara appeared next to Alex.

  “Alex filled me in on the way over,” she said. “If there’s a chance in hell we can bring her back, I want in. Got room for one more?”

  Alex looked Jesse over in the suit and smiled a wide-toothed grin as he placed the
tape into the boombox’s cassette deck. “Go find Mal.”

  3

  The sound of a guitar being tuned up resounded off the tunnel walls and down into the vertical shaft where Jesse’s descent was being staged.

  “Sounds like the band is almost ready,” said Rick. He was on standby near the winch house, overlooking the descent, fiddling with the two-way radio in his lap.

  Jesse pulled on the cable from his perch on the bosun’s chair—a dusty old harness with a plank seat they had found in the winch house.

  “The young mage has signaled his readiness,” called Mazes from the winch controls.

  The winch arm creaked and groaned as Mazes and Agostino manually lowered Jesse down in the bosun’s chair. Even with Mazes’s brute strength, the rusted steel cable had to be forcibly separated from the drum with each turn of the crank, causing the descent down into the vertical shaft to be slow going and methodical.

  Jesse tried to steady his breathing inside the claustrophobic suit. The light from The Ripper’s led power meter illuminated the rough stone shaft as he inched deeper and deeper into the abyss. Once he was out of earshot, he heard Rick chime in on the two-way radio built into the noise-cancelling headphones that were mounted inside the helmet.

  “How’s it going, man? You holding up?”

  “So far, so good,” Jesse said. “Agostino was right about the suit. Haven’t even fully powered it on yet and I’m burning up.”

  “Just hang in there. A little bit farther and the professor says you should be nearing the bottom. When you touch down you should be seeing some kind of spacetime disturbance. Follow it to the source, and you’ll be at the nexus.”

  Just your average day in the life.

  After a few minutes, the cable went slack as the bosun’s chair touched down at the bottom of vertical shaft.

  “Okay, I think I’m here,” Jesse spoke into the headset, relieved to be once again on solid ground.

  “Good work, little bro. I’m going to pass the mic—Professor Venom over here is getting all twisted.”

  “Jesse, it is Vincent—I mean, Agostino.”

  “I read you.”

  “You should be coming up on the partitioning membrane’s outward extent at any moment. Follow its signature and you will likely end up somewhere within the natural cave system beneath the mine—at least the portion of it that remains undisturbed by the collapse. Look for an open cavern or chamber—somewhere large enough for the hive to amass.”

  Jesse surveyed the bottom of the shaft in the scant illumination cast by The Ripper’s led lights. He immediately noticed the large tunnel that shot off from the base of the shaft. As his eyes adjusted, he began to notice movement within the inky blackness. The very air seemed to writhe on top of itself like a nest of snakes.

  “Standby. I think I see something.”

  Agostino’s voice resounded from inside the helmet. “When you turn on the suit, remember to monitor the power gauge. And whatever you do, give yourself enough time to make it back up the ascent.” The radio turned to static as Agostino’s voice faded.

  Jesse had never felt more alone in his life. He took a breath and powered on the suit. The Ripper’s power supply began to hum, sending out jarring vibrations that pulsed through his entire body.

  Mal’s voice filled his ears as he conjured her image in his mind’s eye. “Do you ever just feel like you’re stuck between worlds?” she had once asked.

  He closed the visor on the modified motorcycle helmet; a faint greenish hue flashed across his vision, indicating the low-light filter had been engaged. Night vision. Looks like the Brothers Grimm thought of everything.

  As he stepped into the abyss of shifting darkness, a brief tingling sensation swept over his body. Once the sensation subsided, he found himself inside a partially collapsed antechamber that announced the formation of a vast, open space beneath the earth.

  Just as he rounded a pile of fallen stone that lay in his path, an unseen weight landed on his shoulders, causing him to reel forward. His balance was off-kilter in the cumbersome suit; the force of collision toppled him over onto the ground.

  As he tried to regain his footing, he came face to face with the snarling hell hound that clawed at the helmet visor. The bulbous resonator organ in its chest swelled to bursting as the creature let out a bellowing howl. The sound was muffled by the noise-canceling headphones, but Jesse knew that the summoning call had already dealt its damage.

  He reached for the cassette player just as a second hell hound wrapped its jaws around his arm. He tried in vain to wrestle the demonic minion loose as the hound’s vice-like grip tore through the outer layer of the reinforced suit. Jesse rolled to the side to avoid being pinned down, and with his free hand he smashed down on the cassette player.

  The soundburst pulsated outward through his chest, spinning him around like a top as he fought to regain his footing. The descending hell hounds recoiled from the noise, allowing Jesse to get his bearings in the heavy suit.

  The antechamber was awash in the rhythmic drum intro of the first track—“Painkiller” by Judas Priest, from the album Painkiller released on Columbia Records in September 1990 after a six-month delay resulting from the much-heralded subliminal message trial.

  The explosion of sound had attracted the rest of the pack, who stood their ground at the opposite end of the antechamber. One of the larger alphas emerged from the pack and charged towards the intruder, clashing head-on into The Ripper’s invisible sound barrier.

  As the alpha approached the field of weaponized sound put forth by the suit's array of blasting speakers, the creature’s flesh bubbled and fizzed. It recoiled from the onslaught, appearing to howl in pain, though Jesse couldn’t hear its cry over Rob Halford’s piercing vocals.

  Jesse took the initiative and grabbed the staggering alpha, pulling the hell hound into him. The creature writhed in pain, but Jesse held firm, wrapping both arms around its neck and holding it against the boombox chest plate that protruded from his torso.

  The alpha struggled frantically to be released from Jesse’s grip before exploding like a balloon filled with two hundred pounds of organic sludge.

  The rest of the pack turned to flee at the sight of their leader’s abrupt demise.

  Jesse wiped away the sludge from his helmet visor and checked the suit’s power gauge. One of the four green bars representing the suit’s power supply had already turned red. Still enough time. Almost there. Almost to you. He pressed stop on the cassette player to conserve energy.

  With no sign of the pack, Jesse proceeded through the antechamber, following on the heels of the retreating hell hounds. He thought of Agostino’s description of the hive hierarchy and reasoned that they might be heading to the core of the nexus to protect their master. Jesse lingered at the mouth of the large natural opening, awestruck by the enormity of the vast cavern that lay ahead.

  The transition into the natural cave system awakened some reptilian memory within Jesse’s evolutionary subconscious. Henry had mentioned that these alien demons—these sonopods—preferred human prey because of their tendency to live in caves back in prehistoric times. It was hard to deny the ancestral connection he felt to this landscape as he gazed upon the void within the earth.

  In the center of the vast open space, a great column of weeping stone connected the floor to the ceiling of the spacious chamber. Jesse had been to a handful of state parks throughout the South—Alabaster Caverns, Carlsbad Caverns, and Meramec Caverns (where they filmed Tom Sawyer, according to one overenthusiastic tour guide)—but none of those underground marvels had prepared him for what he was about to see.

  An enormous chrysalis had been formed around the circumference of the stone pillar, the exterior of which was comprised of a tessellation of translucent, hollow capsules, each roughly the size and shape of a standing, adult human.

  The bottom-most layers of capsules within the conical structure were filled with a viscous liquid that appeared greyish-white in the low-light f
ilter of the visor. Jesse conjured the memory of the royal jelly from the beehive that Mazes had found in the woods near the Hell Hole before their first practice. And again he felt the familiar sense that there was something unsettling about witnessing nature order itself in such complexity, especially when it involved kidnapping your girlfriend and extracting her life force in order to feed a legion of demonic aliens.

  Undissolved scraps of clothing and dense skeletal matter hung suspended in the liquid matrix of the lower capsules, each one an individual cell in the great psychic battery that would be used to power the sonopods’ passage to Earth. Jesse reasoned that the less fortunate among the population—vagrants and transients passing through the quiet streets of Macomb Springs—were likely some of the first occupants...now empty husks devoid of life that stared up through their hollow orbits at the domed ceiling.