by Matt Turner
Signy sucked in her breath at the sight of what lay before them. “What fresh hell is this?”
“That,” Vera sighed, “is an assembly line.”
The assembly line in question stretched before them, from their end of the warehouse to the other side, nearly a hundred meters away. It was difficult to make out what the hundreds of workers chained in place in front of the conveyer belt were making over the clanging of hammers, the hiss of molten iron being poured into place, and the shriek of steam, but Vera assumed it was nothing good. It really is just like home.
“Pliers! My man!” A mustached man with a rifle slung over his back strode toward Pliers and offered his fist to him. “How was the recruitment this time around?”
Vera blinked in surprise at the weapon the man bore; she hadn’t known that there were firearms in Hell.
Pliers bumped his fist against the man’s. “Not too bad, Roy. I’ve got some recruits I think Cenodoxa is just going to love.” His eyes bored into Vera’s soul.
She gave him a daring smirk.
“Always good to hear, man.” Roy stroked his mustache and looked over the miserable captives skeptically. “Mainly women this time?”
“Not too many good enough for Dis in this batch,” Pliers explained. He gave Roy a conspiratorial wink. “Besides, it’s been too much of a sausage fest here lately, know what I’m sayin’?” His voice sank into a whisper, but his eyes never left Vera’s face.
“Damn them,” Signy raged under her breath as the two grown men gossiped and giggled like schoolgirls. “If I had my bow…”
“Stand up straight!” A guard, similarly dressed as Roy, howled out over the noisy chaos of the warehouse. “The doc is here!” The workers on the assembly line paid no attention to his announcement, but the various guards on the floor and railings above immediately snapped to attention. Even Pliers and his friend Roy slightly stiffened their backs.
“All of you, shut your mouths,” Roy hissed at the silent captives. “You don’t want to be on the doc’s bad side.” He took no notice of a pudgy, bespectacled woman emerging from a dark staircase with several guards in tow.
“They’re all bad, Mr. Norris,” the woman said as she approached him.
He immediately paled and ever-so-slightly took a step back so that Pliers stood between them.
“Good morning, Doc,” Pliers said cheerfully as the woman stood back to inspect the line of slaves he had brought in. “Like the haul for today?”
The doctor utterly ignored him and pushed up her glasses to carefully survey each captive. “I have a suggestion for a few you can start off with right away,” Pliers said. “There are some real interesting specimens in this group, if you catch my drift—”
“Have them clothed,” the doctor ordered.
“Excuse me?” Pliers looked as though he had been slapped in the face. “These lot aren’t worth a few rags, Doc. They’re just—”
“I’ve told you before, your lusts are your own business, Mr. Bittaker,” the woman said, not even bothering to lower the volume of her voice. “But when these specimens work in my factory, they follow my rules.”
Several guards approached with armfuls of clothing and began distributing them to the gathered captives. They really were little more than tattered rags—Vera got a shirt still stained with dried blood and a pair of trousers missing half of one leg—but worlds better than nothing. I like this woman, Vera thought—and then immediately changed her assessment with the doc’s next words.
“I am Cenodoxa, the manager of this factory,” the woman announced when the captives were finally done clothing themselves. “There are only two things in this world that I care about—your quota, and my research. If you do not reach your quota, you will contribute to my research. To be clear, that is a threat.”
“It’s a goddamn promise, is what it is,” Pliers growled threateningly, perhaps in an attempt to massage his bruised ego.
“This factory produces nails for the Kingdom,” Cenodoxa went on. “Not the most glamorous assignment, I know, but your efforts will directly contribute to the Kingdom’s war machine, protecting us from our enemies, and making the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace a bastion of stability for all mankind.” All traces of emotion left her voice with those last few words; she may as well have been reciting a recipe for butter.
“Nails?” Signy whispered in astonishment. “This entire hell is built on making NAILS?”
“The capitalists rule in Hell,” Vera muttered to herself.
“What the hell is a capitalist?”
“I was a worker like you once,” Cenodoxa said. “I worked within the system, and I rose to the position you see me in today. Work hard, and you will rise. Work poorly”—she pointed at the stairs that led into the depths of the earth from which she had emerged—“and you will fall. Mr. Norris, chain these in with the rest.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Roy bowed his head low. Without so much as a second glance, Cenodoxa turned and went back into the depths from which she had come, her guards still trailing behind her. “All right, you lot.” Roy motioned with his rifle to the assembly line. “Get over there.” The line of captives meekly followed him into the depths of the warehouse and were chained into place alongside the trundling conveyer belt.
As Vera was chained into place at a workstation that consisted of a tiny desk, a single stool, and a handful of tools—all designed, presumably, to construct the pieces of half-melted steel passing on the conveyer belt into nails—she noticed a guard unshackle the woman directly opposite her on the line and lead her away. She did not even try to resist his pull; instead, she stared at the floor with dead eyes as he pulled her down the dark staircase that Cenodoxa had disappeared into. She glanced up and down the assembly line, noticing that several dozen other workers were being treated the same—marched away like cows to the slaughter as their replacements arrived. What will happen to them?
“What the fuck is—this?” Signy demanded from alongside Vera as she angrily motioned at the tools in front of her. “What do I do?”
“You make nails.” Vera sighed. She picked up the tongs on the tiny desk before her, used them to seize a piece of iron from the creaking conveyer belt, slipped the piece of iron into the nail-shaped mold, and hammered it down, breaking away the excess half-melted metal and leaving a nail that she carefully extracted from the mold with the tongs. “Like that.”
Signy’s jaw nearly hit the floor. “How did you do that?”
“Not my first time in a factory,” Vera grunted. “They don’t have those where you come from, do they?”
Signy picked up her metal tongs and eyed the conveyer belt with undisguised suspicion. “We have forests and towns instead. Sometimes castles and cities, too.”
Castles? “What year do you think it is, Signy?”
Signy looked at her as though she were stupid. “It’s the twenty-first year of the reign of Philip II, duh.”
Vera couldn’t help but feel curiosity about the Frenchwoman’s past. “And what exactly did you do to earn your place here? What were you up to in King What’s-his-face’s reign?”
“Do you know of the Crecy family?” Signy tried to pull the piece of hot iron onto her table and came perilously close to dropping it in her lap.
Vera shook her head. “Never heard of them.”
Signy succeeded in seizing the piece of hot iron and brought it back up to the desk. The light of the scorching metal cast a sinister orange glow on her face as she gave Vera a slow smile—one that pulled her lips back, revealing the sharpened blade-shaped remnants of her teeth. “You’re welcome.”
“Holy shit,” Vera exploded. “What the hell happened to your mouth?”
Signy looked pleased at her reaction. “Filed ’em down.” She laughed. “Now that was a bitch of a night, I can tell you that. I’m just glad I don’t have to do it again.”
“But—why?” Vera demanded. “Jesus, I used to run with a rough crowd, but you—”
“Because, Vera, in cas
e you haven’t noticed”—Signy suddenly lurched in her chains, making Vera jump in surprise—“I’m completely fucking insane.”
She cackled wildly at the look on Vera’s face and slapped her on the back as much as her chains allowed. “Relax, I only jest.” The wild glimmer in her eyes remained. “Besides, if we are where I think we are, I may just be meeting my brother-in-law again… Edmund Crecy is somewhere around here, I’m sure of it. I could smell him the moment I woke up in this hell.”
“Well, well, well,” an irritatingly familiar voice drawled. “Two old hens gossiping together—doesn’t look like much work is going on here.”
“I burnt half a kingdom for my revenge, Pliers,” Signy snarled. “I’m thinking you may be next on my list.”
“I’m shaking in my boots,” Pliers said sarcastically. “Why don’t we take a walk, ladies?” He motioned for a guard to come over and unlock the chains about the two women’s legs. “There’s something I want to show you—”
“I was just about to tell you the same thing,” Signy said. As the chains about her legs fell away, she suddenly exploded forward, her jaws open like a wild animal as she leapt like a banshee at Pliers’s throat.
There was a loud CRACK and Signy gave a cry of pain as a hole opened up in her chest. Her leap became a weak stumble that Pliers easily dodged, and she weakly collapsed to the floor.
“Stupid whore.” Pliers grinned. He laid a boot on the gaping wound that emerged from Signy’s back and pressed down. “Ever hear of a gun, you stupid medieval bitch?”
“I got you, bro!” Roy gave Pliers a thumbs-up from the railings where he stood with his rifle. “Damn easy shot.”
“Fuck,” Signy raged on the ground. She struggled to stand back up, but Pliers gave her a cruel kick to the face with his boot, ending all attempts at movement on her part.
“No smartass comments?” he bellowed down at her. “No jokes? No threats? You’re just like all the others, whore—in the end, there’s only one thing!” He slammed his boot down on the bullet wound in her back, cracking bones with the violence of the movement.
Signy’s scream echoed up to the rafters, cutting through the commotion and crash of the machinery. For a moment, all production ceased as even the guards turned to look at the origin of the cry.
“That’s what I thought.” Pliers smiled. He motioned for the guard to lock her back to the assembly line. “I think that’s enough with this one for now.” He gave one final slap to the back of her head as she sat down with a groan at the stool, hands wrapped about her torso to stop the bleeding. It did no good; the blood poured out of her like water from a shattered dam, utterly soaking through her clothes.
“You son of a bitch,” Vera cursed. “You motherfucker, I’ll kill you—”
“You can’t kill me any more than I can kill her.” Pliers shrugged. He pointed to the puddle of blood swiftly forming at Signy’s feet and chuckled. “Might make it harder for her to reach her quota, though.”
“Should I still unlock this one?” The guard motioned with his rifle at Vera.
“You going to do anything stupid?” Pliers asked Vera. He pointed at the guards on the railings above—all with weapons aimed directly at her. “I have a lot of friends here.” When she was silent, he nodded. “Yeah, I’m still taking this one for a walk.”
It took every ounce of willpower she had to not blindly charge him like Signy had, but it was clear that that was nothing more than what he wanted her to do. Instead of rushing him, she went to Signy’s side. “Are you all rig—” she started, and then stopped, because the answer to that question was painfully obvious.
“She’ll live.” Pliers shrugged. “Now, let’s go for a walk. I insist.” Without waiting for a reply, he seized her by the hand and dragged her forward.
Once again, a flash of images exploded in her mind at his touch—something called a car, a jury, an idyllic afternoon where four-year-old Lawrence played ball with his father—but she was unprepared and off guard. She cried out, struggling to blot the rampage of flashes in her brain.
Pliers paid no attention to her discomfort. “Let’s go, darlin’,” he said as though they were partners at a dance. “There’s something I want to show you.”
Under the guns of the guards above, there was nothing Vera could do as he pulled her into the hell of clashing machinery and the stench of rancid human sweat.
16
“At last,” Plague announced grandly as they ascended the crest of the final hill. “Here we are.”
John surveyed the massive expanse of water that stretched to the horizon before them. “Is, it, a, ocean?” he asked between wheezing breaths. “Looks, like, the, Atlantic.”
“That ain’t an ocean, John,” Plague said. “That’s the River Phlegethon. It may as well be an ocean now, though; it spilled over its banks millennia ago.”
John sighed. “So what’s the catch?” Plague raised a questioning eyebrow. “You know what I mean. There’s always a catch here—the trees are people, the damned can’t die, there’s always something to make things even worse than they already are. So what is it here?”
“You’re learning,” Plague said in a surprised tone. “I’m impressed. Very well, I’ll tell you—notice how red the water looks in this light?”
“It’s blood, isn’t it?”
“Very good, John!” Plague beamed.
Of course it is, John thought wearily.
“Once upon a time, it used to be boiling, too, but now there’s so much water even the hottest fires have trouble heating up the river. Nowadays, most people who end up in it just spend all eternity as bloated drowned corpses instead of being boiled alive,” he said with relish. “There’s not even any centaurs left anymore.”
“Wait—centaurs?”
“They’re ugly fuckers.” Plague began to stride down the hillside toward the greasy black shore. “Half-man, half-horse? I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They used to run around the riverbanks with bows and arrows, sniping anyone who tried to come up for air.”
John gazed out at the deceptively calm sea of blood, trying to imagine it as a boiling cauldron filled with screaming, howling people struggling to drag themselves onto the banks, all while being shot and mocked by monstrous amalgamations of man and beast. After all he had experienced, the image came horribly quickly. “Where are these centaurs now?”
“There.” Plague kicked a scrap of bone out of a tuft of grass onto the beach below. “Over there.” He pointed to a skull half-submerged in the dirt. “And over here.” He stomped on a femur that jutted from the grass, shattering the ancient bone. “The centaurs went the way of all the other devils—into the grave. The Second Rebellion saw to that.”
“Second Rebellion?”
“Am I really going to have to give you a history lesson?” Plague groaned. As they stepped onto the beach, he glanced in either direction as if searching for a landmark. “Hold on,” he grunted. “I need to…” He reached for one of the two loose canvas bags he had tied to either side of his waist. He swiftly untied one of the bags, held it up to his face, and murmured something under his breath.
“I—I think there’s a leak,” John said timidly as something dark and wet dripped from the stained bottom of the bag onto Plague’s fingers.
The Horseman gave him a dirty look and took a few steps away, still murmuring softly to the strange bag. He abruptly stopped, then nodded, then nodded again.
“We go this way,” Plague announced as he turned to John and swiftly retied the pouch to his belt. “North.” And with that, he began to follow the coastline in the direction that he had pointed.
“Wait—what was that?” John demanded. “Where are we going?”
“That’s three more annoying questions you’ve asked me today, John,” Plague said sourly. His normally manic mood seemed to have curdled. “We’re close to our destination, so I will answer one. Please make it a short one—”
“What’s the Second Rebellion?”
“
You just had to pick that one, didn’t you?” Plague growled. “Fine, fine, it’s something you should know as a Horseman anyway.” His pace quickened on the pebbly beach, and John found himself struggling to keep up.
“Everyone knows the First Rebellion,” Plague began. John started to say something, but the other man quickly cut him off. “You do. Lucifer and his angels rose up against God and His angels. The dumbass rebels lost because declaring war on God is obviously a stupid fucking idea, and Satan got his ass thrown all the way down to Judecca. The rest of the rebels became the demons of yesterday—the halflings, the harpies, the kings, the Nephilim, and so on and so on. You following me so far?”
“I am a reverend, you know,” John said.
“You were a reverend, Reverend,” Plague mocked. “Now, the Second Rebellion is where things get interesting. The Garden of Eden, the Apple, the introduction of sin into the world… Adam and Eve, those fucking idiots, chose sin, but the Devil helped give them a little push…making that the second stupidest idea he ever had.”
“What are you talking about?”
Plague abruptly turned around, seized John by a large branch protruding from his shoulder, and spun him to look at the sea of blood that stretched before them. “Look at that, John,” he whispered in his ear. “When that was first built, it was a river that went up to your eyebrows at the deepest point. Now, it’s a fucking ocean. You want to know what happened? They gave us sin, and then we gorged them with it—more and more and more and MORE, until their stomachs were full to bursting and every torture chamber in Hell was packed to the brim, and still we kept coming, until we outnumbered the devils a million to one!” He raised his arms above his head in excitement at the thought. “I’m told that the Second Rebellion was glorious—by the end of it, the devils were drowning in an ocean that they helped create.”
“That’s impossible,” John stammered. A rebellion in Hell—it made no sense; it went against all the rules he had assumed existed. Is that what he meant by unlimited freedom?
The still-leaking bag on Plague’s hip made the slightest twitch. John would not have even noticed it had he not seen a tiny ripple of fabric shift from its movement. What the—