Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  “Go to Hell,” Simon spat back.

  “We’re already there,” came the laconic reply. “This one’s annoying me, lads. Get him out of my sight.”

  With a final shove, they manhandled Simon through the small opening. For a second, he somehow managed to embed a few fingernails into the wood, slowing his descent—and then they were torn away, and the pit took him.

  12

  Within a very short time, Vera came to miss the sensation of being unconscious. She awoke to find that the fog had burned away, allowing her a depressing view of the long line of similarly naked women, all as miserable-looking and shit-stained as she was, who she was chained hand and foot to. The grim guards patrolled up and down the line, eagerly lashing out with their whips even though there was nowhere their captives could possibly escape to. Even if she could break out of her binds and outrun the slavers on foot, there was no getting past the stiltwalkers—five-meter-tall machines of steel and clanking gears that navigated through the churning mud like birds of prey.

  I’m not done, she vowed as one of the operators on the stiltwalkers leaned out to take a piss on the line of slaves. She was reasonably certain that she had slain the tsar in her final act. Killing the most powerful man in Russia had to count for something down here, didn’t it?

  It seemed that the slaver called Pliers had not forgotten about her. “Thought I forgot about you?” he sneered as he traipsed through the mud. One of his arms was wrapped about another naked woman, whose grim face was coated in bruises. “Oh no, I have special plans for you two.” He waved another man over and had him chain the silent woman behind Vera.

  Unbidden, one of her mother’s old lessons came to her. Men are stupid, the old babushka had told Vera as they struggled to warm themselves by the tiny cottage fire. They are more stupid when they are angry. Vera suspected that Mother had meant it as a warning, but listening had never been one of her strong suits.

  “Who are you again?” she asked innocently.

  Pliers’s smug face darkened. “Funny one, aren’t you, bitch? We’ll see who’s laughing when I’m done with you.” With that said, he stormed off.

  “That one has an ego,” the woman behind Vera rasped. Her voice was little more than a muffled growl, as if it had suffered from long disuse. “You should be wary of him.”

  “He mentioned you too,” Vera noted. “What’d you do to him?”

  “Kicked the bitch in the fucking balls.”

  I like her already.

  A great siren blasted from one of the looming stiltwalkers. “All right you lot, MOVE OUT!” Pliers bellowed. To prove his point, he flicked a whip and gave the grim woman behind Vera a violent slash across her naked back. “To the Fourth Circle we go!”

  After that, there was no time for talk or even thought. The long line of women lurched forward, urged by threats, curses, whips, kicks, and the occasional claw descending from one of the stiltwalkers to crush an unfortunate soul’s arm.

  “MOVE,” Pliers bellowed. He ceaselessly strode up and down the line, but his whip would somehow always seem to end up lashing against Vera. The pain was agonizing, the mud that clawed at them was freezing, and the horror of the environment was overwhelming.

  I’m not done, Vera vowed, even as she lost all feeling in her legs.

  I’m not done, Vera vowed, even when a sinkhole opened just in front of her, swallowing a dozen women and two of the slavers before they briefly undid her shackles long enough to drag her away from the swirling vortex of mud and screams.

  I’m not done, Vera vowed, when they had a brief rest and even more women were dragged away by the slavers, Pliers chief among them. The only thing that returned of the slaves were their screams.

  I’m not done, Vera vowed, when after what felt like days, the exhausted, bleeding line of slaves came to the edge of a great precipice in the earth. Just on the horizon, the goddamned plain of freezing shit seemed to finally come to an end—where there was once mud and filth, there was now nothing at all besides open air.

  “HALT,” Pliers ordered.

  With a sigh of relief, the line of women immediately slumped down to the ground. Most of the slavers joined them; it had been a miserable journey for all. Only the stiltwalkers continued to endlessly watch over the captives, casting intense beams of light through the dimming air.

  “You.” Pliers motioned toward Vera. “Please, join me.” His previous aura of hate was completely gone, replaced by the friendly exterior he had initially shown her, crinkled eyes and everything. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  Fuck that, Vera thought, but she had little choice—one of the other men had already unclicked her shackles and shoved her toward Pliers. He took her hand in his loathsome grip, and exhausted as she was, there was nothing she could do but weakly try to pull away.

  “Now, now, don’t try to fight, darlin’,” Pliers said gently. He easily dragged her to the front of the line to the very edge of the cliff. “Now, just tell me what you see.”

  Vera felt an utter wave of revulsion for the man as a blinding pain suddenly stole through her ankle. She gasped out and would have fallen had he not held her up.

  “Horrible, isn’t it, sweetheart?” he asked with relish.

  A terrible vision seized Vera’s heart. She found herself in a steel room—no, it wasn’t a room, it was a van, whatever that was—with Pliers and another man. A large bloodstained bag feebly twitched on the floor before them as the person within it moaned in despair.

  “Are you done yet?” the other man asked. “There’s not much left in this one.”

  Pliers nodded his head in agreement and pulled something sharp and metal out of his toolbox. “You’re right.” He reached for the bag and held his weapon high. “How about a scream for old Lawrence?” he gently asked, and the person inside shrieked as the icepick came down—

  “NO!” Vera cried out in horror. With a mighty effort of will, she wrenched herself out of that hellish dream—straight back into the shitty reality she had so briefly left.

  “That’s right.” Pliers waved his hand over the horizon. “This is the Fourth Circle, and you’re going to spend the rest of eternity here. Beautiful, ain’t it?”

  For a moment, Vera blinked in surprise, unable to process what was before her. Radiating from the bottom of the cliff, kilometers in every direction, stretched a catacomb of belching smokestacks, the discord of screaming men and machines, great buildings of stone and steel that loomed far above the mines where thousands worked in torment. Even from this distance, it was obvious that this place was as much a charnel house as a place of industry, a crushing yoke built on the backs of millions. It was enough to make even a capitalist weep.

  Vera yawned. “It looks just like home.” And, to be fair, it did bear a faint resemblance to the slums of St. Petersburg, even though it was a thousand times worse. This was Hell, after all.

  Pliers gaped at her in astonishment. “What? This is the Fourth Circle, home of industry for the Kingdom, and you think—”

  “St. Petersburg is probably colder though.” Vera motioned to a distant smokestack that was belching a great mountain of flames. “You ever been to Russia, Lawrence?”

  His eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

  So it was true. Vera glanced down at her hand, no longer touching his, and then for the first time noticed the faint mark on her ankle that pulsed and shook underneath the layer of filth covering it. Interesting.

  “Pliers, we have a schedule to keep!” an amplified voice blared from one of the stiltwalkers. “Let’s get a goddamn move on!”

  “Right,” Pliers muttered to himself. He opened his mouth as if to say something, gave Vera a suspicious look, and then closed it. “Get back to the line, whore,” he snarled, and he gave a violent push toward the others.

  This time she was ready, and for the most fleeting of seconds, she had a tiny peek into his mind, just enough for a name: Lawrence Bittaker. Once again, her ankle pulsed a sharp pain.
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br />   “Why the fuck do you look so happy?” the haggard woman behind her asked as Vera was chained back into position and the march continued on.

  “No reason,” Vera lied. “What’s your name, friend?”

  “Signy,” the other woman replied. “Not that it’s going to make any difference. We’re all fucked anyway.”

  Vera stole another glance at her ankle. The strange bit of raised flesh was now invisible underneath the muck and grime of the march, but she sensed that it was still there, still somehow giving her power. A tight smile crossed her lips. I’m not done.

  13

  “It sure is a lovely day, isn’t it, John?” The redheaded stranger seemed almost giddy, prancing about in the spare cloak that he had drawn from his pack. “The kind of day that just makes you glad to be alive—well, as close as we can get to it, y’know?”

  John tore off a branch from his shoulder with a grimace of pain. The damned things grew at an unnatural rate from his scalp and upper body—there were already a series of jagged holes in the robe the stranger had given him where the branches had torn through the dark fabric. “So what now?” he demanded. Don’t make us go back to the forest.

  It had taken them days to make it out through the Forest of Suicides, which was now little more than an ash heap. John had no wish to repeat that blundering, terrifying adventure, where he had repeatedly gotten lost and the crazed stranger had burnt fires willy-nilly and nearly set themselves on fire multiple times. Thankfully, by the end, they had found a small dirt road that they had followed out into an empty plain while the last fires burned behind them.

  “Now?” The stranger pretended to think.

  Stop doing that, John thought sullenly. There was a method to this man’s madness; the gleeful, yet methodical way he had burnt down an entire forest was proof enough of that. You have a plan; I know you do.

  “I think we should take a bath.” The stranger grinned. “Look at us, John. We’re covered in ash and smoke—that’s no way to meet our companions. Now, if I remember correctly, there should be a river just a few miles ahead.” He pointed into the distance, where a few rolling hills waited. “Right over those hills there.”

  “Companions?” John asked. “What companions?”

  “Patience, John.” The stranger held up his hands in a peace offering. “Good things come to those who wait, I promise. All will be explained—”

  “No!” John exploded in frustration. “This is—this is—” He forced the word out through gritted teeth and tore a branch off his shoulder in frustration. “This is shit. I was trapped in a tree, now I’m half-tree, now I’ve walked with you for miles, setting other people trapped in trees on fire, all while you go on about baths and companions and what a lovely day it is—well, it’s not! It’s not a lovely day! I’m in Hell, with a madman whose name I don’t even know! This! Is! Shit!” He could feel the branches on his shoulders growing back even more quickly as he cursed and raved. “Shit!”

  “I’m surprised,” the stranger said as John violently wrenched off a particularly large thorn that was protruding from his neck. “Where’s the John Hale who I was told to expect? The one who spent all his life running away from his problems?”

  “He got turned into a shitting tree, that’s what,” John growled. In a fit of childish anger, he tossed the thorn at the stranger. The projectile did not even come close to hitting its target. “Just tell me what the hell is going on here. Please.”

  The stranger sighed and ran a hand thoughtfully through his auburn hair. “Plague,” he said simply. He knelt and began to draw out a pattern in the dirt path with his finger.

  Thank you for that helpful explanation, part of John wanted to say, but he did not dare push the boundary with this madman any more for the time being. “I’m sorry?” he asked.

  “Plague,” the stranger repeated. A slight flush came to his features at John’s questioning gaze. “It’s my name. Well…more of a title, really.”

  John’s anger quickly gave way to confusion. “That’s your name? As in…when your mother gave birth to you—”

  “No, my parents didn’t name me ‘Plague.’ Even they weren’t that shitty.” Plague rolled his eyes. “Like I told you, it’s a title, given out by our master. You have one too.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Famine,” Plague whispered.

  A chill ran down John’s spine at the sinister word. He had not been alive during the dark years in the New World, when the Colonies were just barely founded, but he had heard the tales whispered by the old guard, the ones who had lived through those starving, awful days, when a single scrap of food was all that existed between you and the freezing embrace of the grave. Famine. The mere hint of that word had been enough to induce nightmares in the strongest of men. “And these ‘companions’ of yours…” John said slowly, trying to process the insanity of Plague’s words. “Who are they?”

  “War and Death, of course.” Plague grinned. “Just like you, they don’t know it yet. It’s our job to remind them of who they are. It’s time to get the gang back together, for our Master wishes to have the Horsemen ride again.”

  “Master? What are you talking about?” John asked. Each answer the madman who called himself “Plague” gave him seemed to only lead to a dozen more questions. “Who are the ‘Horsemen’—”

  “Shit,” Plague suddenly breathed as he stared down at the pattern he had idly been drawing in the dirt road. “Down!” He hurled himself at John, knocking him down to the ground, as something whizzed through the air just above his head. Plague leapt back up to his feet in a flash, a wicked knife gleaming in both hands.

  A dozen men and women glared down at them from a small slope just above the road—they must have used it to sneak up on them unawares. “This area is off-limits,” one of the women snapped. “Who are you?”

  They were all in armor—what looked like old-fashioned chain mail—but more importantly, they all possessed weapons. Crossbows, John realized with a sinking feeling. Crossbows that were all pointed directly at him. He could feel the branches on his shoulders start to curl around his arms as if in response to his fear.

  “We are two poor travelers from the Burning Desert, seeking the solace of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.” Plague beamed up at the soldiers. “Would you happen to be our honor guard?”

  “What’s up with that one?” one of the soldiers demanded. He adjusted his crossbow and drew a bead on John’s unprotected face. “Christ, he’s an ugly fucker, isn’t he?”

  “Holy shit, he’s a Suicide,” the woman in charge realized. Her gaze flickered down the road to where a hint of black smoke drifted up into the red sky. “The Forest—”

  Plague did not give her the luxury of finishing the thought. In a blur of motion, he tore up the slope on all fours and cut into the line of soldiers, hacking and slashing like a madman. With a wild scream, he buried his knife into the woman’s throat, ducked behind her as three crossbow bolts sprouted from her chest, and kicked her thrashing body into the others. Another one of the chain mail-clad men fell to his blades, then another, as he danced and weaved through the rain of crossbow bolts like a bride at a wedding.

  “Take the Suicide!” the woman with a slashed throat and three bolts stabbed through her lungs managed to gurgle out.

  In response, one of the men turned to release a bolt straight at John’s face. He instinctively screamed and held out his hands to protect himself from the attack. For a brief moment, he had an unpleasant sensation of something else within him, something that twisted and stretched—and then he blinked in astonishment at the arrowhead impaled through the bark of his arm, just an inch from his nose. Before he could react, another slammed into the bark just beside it.

  “That’s enough of that.” Plague laughed as he paused long enough to stomp a boot on the leader’s head, rupturing it like a fruit. “If you could stop shooting at my friend for just a moment—wait, not at me!” He just barely jerked his head out of the way of a b
olt that would’ve torn half his face off and scowled in irritation. “You’re pissing me off,” he warned as he hurled one of his knives, catching one of the men in the chest.

  It quickly became obvious to John that a pissed-off Plague was a dangerous thing indeed. The man with a knife buried through his chain mail let out a wheeze of pain as the madman body-slammed him, tearing out the blade in an explosion of blood while simultaneously using the dying man as cover from the remaining crossbows. The remaining enemy began to panic and retreat, heedlessly emptying their crossbows at him—and crossbows, John quickly saw, had a powerful punch but were an absolute bitch to reload. Plague picked off the survivors with a bounce in his step and a whistle on his lips as he lunged from one to another to another. Only one of the soldiers had any time to halfway draw his sword from its scabbard before Plague seized him by the head and violently twisted with a sharp CRACK.

  In less than a minute, all that remained of the enemy were twelve moaning and bleeding bodies that the madman casually kicked down the slope to roll into the road. “Goddamn Kingdom,” he grumbled to himself as he picked at his garments. “Getting blood all over my spare robe.”

  The danger had passed; John watched in astonishment as the thick plant growth over his arms ever-so-slightly receded, pausing only to shift around the two crossbow bolts and gently spit them out onto the ground. For once, the damned branches and thorns didn’t even hurt. “What is this?” he wondered aloud.

  “I told you, you’re Famine.” Plague knelt to pick up one of the dropped crossbows and reloaded the exotic weapon in a fraction of the time it had taken the dead men. “Being a Horseman can suck balls, but it has its perks.”

  “Horsemen?” one of the wounded soldiers gasped from the crude hill of bodies that Plague had made on the road.

  To John’s astonishment, it was still the same woman from before—albeit now with a crushed skull to go along with her earlier injuries. How can she even breathe?