by Matt Turner
“The one who marked us both is waiting for you in Judecca,” Lao said. “He wants you to hurry. Time is running short.”
“I—what—” Simon gasped—and suddenly the pain vanished as the doors to the antechamber opened and Longinus and Fritz reappeared.
“Was he a good boy, Lao?” Fritz seemed to be in a remarkably good mood, twirling the end of his chainwhip through the air and humming a jaunty tune to himself.
“He was, Lord Prophet.” Lao gave Fritz a sensual smile that would have charmed any woman—and some men—in Hell. “I do like the strong and silent types.”
“Disgusting,” Longinus muttered. “We have no time for this prattle. It is time to move.”
“We’re agreed there.” Fritz nodded. “We’re going to the Fourth Circle, de Montfort. It seems that we have some hunting to do. You ready to test out that sword?”
“Always,” Simon growled. He caught Lao’s eye. I’ll use this blade on him first, he thought. Then I’ll find Judecca.
Lao gave the tiniest nod in response.
Longinus gingerly pulled a locust from the pocket of his robes. “We are ready to move,” he told the insect.
“Remain still.” Giles’s voice came through its pincers. Just as it had done before, the locust crawled up to Longinus’s shoulder, where it began to give birth to another of its number in an exponential process that took only seconds.
One of its offspring flew to Simon and landed on its shoulder. As the mass of locusts grew on him—it was still difficult to not scream and curse as the thousands of legs crawled across his bare skin—a strange voice whispered something in Simon’s mind.
Do not fail me, it said, in a voice thick with power and hate.
Lao smiled at the expression of surprise on Simon’s face—and just as the locusts crawled across Simon’s vision, darkening it with their bodies, he saw the whore’s eyes flicker golden. And then the locusts consumed him, and he was taken away.
24
Roy Norris was a born loser. He was born out of wedlock on February 5, 1948, in a place called Colorado. His parents were both drug addicts, so he spent most of his childhood shunted from foster family to foster family, where he frequently suffered from abuse and neglect. When he was at last reunited with his parents at age sixteen, they admitted that he had been an unwanted child, just before their subsequent divorce—he never saw either of them again. After a stint in the US Navy, he became a heroin addict and a small-time criminal. When he was twenty-one, he attempted his first rape. He failed, and was imprisoned at the California Men’s Colony. It was there that he met Lawrence Bittaker. The two quickly became fast friends, and it was in the prison that the two made their plans for release.
“Teenage dream. One girl of each year from thirteen to nineteen,” Lawrence had said.
“Yeah, yeah!” Roy had agreed in excitement. It had been nice to finally meet someone who really understood him. He couldn’t wait to hear them scream.
“Car won’t work,” Lawrence had mused later on, when they were working out final details. “We’ll need a van.” He was right—the way he always was!—and so Roy provided the money. A week later, they had a silver 1977 GMC van that they christened Murder Mac.
All of these images flashed into Vera’s head as Roy’s hand caressed her cheek. “Should we take this downstairs, sweetheart?” he breathed, washing her face in his hot, rancid breath.
“I think I’ll take it right here,” Vera growled, and then she pushed. Roy’s face went slack as his mind gave way before her. Vera reached deep inside it, forcing herself to focus away from the scenes of horror and cruelty, until she found what she wanted: the deep wellspring of terror Roy had felt in his final moments as the executioner’s needle pierced his skin. The keys, she whispered. Give them to me.
“K-keys,” Roy whimpered in the back of his throat like a dog. With a limp hand, he pulled the keys from his belt and dropped them in Vera’s lap.
“Good boy,” Vera said. Signy’s hands were already free from the nails she had used to pick her shackles; she took the keys from Vera’s lap and swiftly unlocked her shackles as well. “I think we’ll be taking that rifle of yours too.”
“You’re in my head,” Roy whispered in a voice tight with terror as he obediently placed his rifle on the floor next to her. “How are you in my head?”
Signy slipped the keys to the woman next to her in line. “Don’t fuck this up,” she hissed as the other worker nervously pawed at her shackles.
“Do you see that furnace at the end of the assembly line, Roy?” Vera pointed to the blazing inferno that bubbled a vast cauldron of molten iron—the raw material from which the nails were made. “Jump into it.”
Roy’s face twisted violently, and his mind suddenly recoiled—it was all Vera could do to keep from being driven out of his psyche entirely. “Why are you doing this?” he begged in a strained voice. “I didn’t do anything—it was all Lawrence’s idea—I never killed them—”
“Shut up,” Vera growled. She seized his mind in an iron vise and squeezed, trying to dredge up all his fears and anguish. Still he resisted, and so she pushed even deeper, clawing through his memories. “Jump in the furnace, Roy, or I’ll—” Something suddenly gave way in his hideous mind, and she jerked back from his brain, surprised by the sudden release.
“What,” Roy screeched aloud. He reeled back from her as he clutched his hands to his head. “What did you—what is—WHAT—”
“Shut him up, goddammit,” Signy muttered.
The key was still being passed down the line; Vera had no idea how many of the other workers had gotten their hands on it. We need more time, she thought desperately. She needed more weapons, more preparation—
“ROY!” one of the guards above bellowed down at the weeping man. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Damnit. There was no time like the present. With slightly shaking hands, Vera pointed the rifle upward—she still had a precious few seconds; most of the other workers and guards didn’t seem to have noticed her yet—and took aim at the catwalks above.
“Help—HELP—WHAT—my HEAD,” Roy gibbered. He fell to his knees on the ground as bloody foam gushed from his mouth onto the floor.
Jump in the goddamn furnace, Vera thought—and to her surprise, he slowly began crawling in that direction, still weeping and screeching.
“Hurry the fuck up, Vera,” Signy snarled. She drew her shiv, a sharp scrap of iron she had filched from the assembly line, and began to eye one of the nearby guards on their level.
One of the guards on the catwalk above leaned over, his eyes widening as he saw Roy’s deathly throes. His gaze shifted to Vera and the rifle she held, and a look of utter panic crossed his face as he opened his mouth to bellow the alarm—
Vera squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet directly into his head. The gunshot cracked across the entire factory as the guard’s head exploded outward and he tumbled over the railing and onto the conveyer belt. For an instant, there was utter silence in the factory—even the machines seemed to go still as every worker and guard turned their attention to the smoking gun in Vera’s hands.
All of her fears blazed away in that one instant. I was made for this, she realized, as the locks on the shackles finally gave way and crashed to the floor. “WORKERS OF THE WORLD,” she bellowed as she leapt onto her workstation, “UNITE!”
One of the guards standing by the assembly line stared at her in dumb shock. “The fuck—” he yelled, raising his rifle—and then his words drowned in a spew of blood as one of the freed workers leapt up from her station and slashed his throat open. He tumbled forward with a gurgle, hands clutched at his gaping wound, and slumped onto the assembly line, which began to drag his twitching body forward through the factory.
“KILL THEM!” Signy raged, and the entire factory went to hell.
Nearly as one, a score of workers rose from their benches and scattered throughout the floor, hacking and slashing at every guard they could possibly reach. V
era leapt down from the bench to join them, pausing only a second to blast a hole into one of the pipes descending from the ceiling. Hot steam blasted from the metal with the sound and fury of a cyclone, raising the shriek of machinery even above the cries of the wounded.
“STRIKE,” Vera screamed. She sprinted into the whirlwind of screaming and fighting workers. A man—whether he was a guard or a worker, she didn’t know—lunged at her, and she squeezed the trigger of her rifle, blasting his forearm off. He tumbled to the ground and howled as Signy’s bare foot smashed his skull against the concrete.
Above them was a bellowed command—half a dozen guards rushed to the catwalk, their rifles aimed down at the raging crowd below. Signy grabbed Vera and hurled her behind some machinery, just as the guns exploded, raining bloody ruin into the workers below. The gunshots were barely audible over the screams of steam and machine, but still Signy leaned close to Vera, yelling something in her ear. A bullet crashed into the machinery just above them, sending sparks flying, and in an instant, Signy was back on her feet, charging the terrified guard in a flash of teeth and fury, and sinking her shiv deep into the small of his back.
“STRIKE,” someone else called out.
Vera peeked around the machinery to see that the rifles had done their work—nearly half a dozen workers lay bleeding and moaning on the floor, and still more guards were rushing to the catwalks to fire on the women below. I’m not done, she vowed, for she recognized some of the mocking faces above her—they were men whose minds she had touched over the past week. With all her will, she reached out for that connection again—it was time to reap the harvest she had carefully planted for so long.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a guard armed with an axe take a violent swing at Signy. Somehow the woman managed to dodge the blow and leapt forward with her shiv, carving half his face off in a single violent swing. But above, a dozen men were taking aim at her, about to reduce her body to pieces of meat—
Vera found the connection again, to five of the men above her. FEAR, she screamed into their weak, anxious minds. The result was instantaneous; above her, guards suddenly screamed and howled as childhood visions of monsters and devils swarmed their vision. Their fellows jerked back from them in amazement—and then terror of their own as the ones Vera had touched blindly fired on each other, desperate to kill the ethereal demons of their minds. Blood and bodies rained down from the catwalks above.
“STRIKE!” This time the call came out from a dozen workers—not just women whose minds Vera had subtly influenced over the past several days, but newcomers too, who cheered as, one by one, their shackles were unlocked.
“STRIKE!” Now their voices were stronger than even the screaming of the steam whistle, the constant clashing of the machinery, or the artificial voice bellowing down at them from the ceiling to get back to work right fucking now.
At the far end of the factory, a machine gun began to chatter, spraying bullets across the assembly line, cutting through flesh of worker and guard alike. For a moment, the words of rebellion died—and then there was a great roar of triumph as the machine gun went silent and Signy hurled a screaming guard into the depths of the furnace.
“For the Revolution!” Vera bellowed.
In a dozen languages, they screamed out the words of revolution, even as they hacked and stabbed and bled, even as a score of guards rushed in from the entrance, rifles blazing, even as the concrete turned red with their guts. “STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!”
25
“Good God,” John said in amazement as he gazed down at the Fourth Circle. They stood at the edge of a great cliff above it; Plague said that they were technically on the border between the Third Circle and the Fourth.
“That’s blasphemy, John,” Plague prodded.
John had seen London once—he had thought it a monstrous expanse of brick and stone, but the sight that lay before him dwarfed that. The intertwined buildings of steel, glass, and brick seemed to stretch for miles—he suspected that London itself could fit in just one of those massive structures. And there was a whole nation of them, stretching in every direction as far as he could see—although his vision was clouded by the tens of thousands of smokestacks that endlessly spewed forth a dark, black smog. “Is this a city?” he asked dumbly. He had difficulty believing that enough humans had ever lived to fill such a massive labyrinth.
“It’s the industrial heartland of the Kingdom,” Plague said in a bored tone. “It helps the Holy Council burn off extra people and get some resources in the bargain.”
“And Death is in there?” John asked. “How are we supposed to find her?”
“Simple.” Plague stretched his back and winced as something popped. “We go to Factory 112 in C District. Most of what you’re seeing now is the A District—munitions, weapons, that sort of thing.”
“Then where’s the C District?” John demanded.
Plague started to say something, stopped, then groaned aloud. “God damnit, Lamech,” he cursed, and smacked the bag hanging at his right side—not too hard, John noticed. “You couldn’t take us to the right factory?”
“You said ‘Fine, goddammit, take us to the Fourth,’” the voice from the bag said in an uncanny imitation of Plague’s voice. “If you wish to exploit my power, you must be specific.” The subtle tone of triumph in its voice was nauseating.
“Biblical asshole,” Plague grumbled. “How long have we got, Manto?”
“It has already begun.” Her voice came from the bag on his left. “The Fourth Legion is on its way.”
John gazed out over the Fourth Circle. There was so much fire, smoke, and noise, distant though it was, that it was impossible for him to say whether Death’s rebellion had broken out yet or not. Maybe that’s just the nature of Hell, he pondered. Even the cities are constant battlegrounds.
Plague snapped his fingers in John’s face. “Hell to John, come in. I’ve got an idea.” He pointed to something in the distance—a black rectangle that rushed across the horizon with the speed of a hawk, spewing black smoke into the sky. “We’ll use some public transportation.”
“What is that?” John squinted at the distant thing. It seemed to be following a path of some sort, and was swiftly approaching the base of the cliff where they knelt. Still, its features remained difficult to make out through the dim light and veil of smog.
“Oh, that’s right, they hadn’t invented those yet when you died,” Plague said. “Well, John, that is a train. And you and I are going to steal it.”
Within ten minutes, they managed to scramble down the steep embankment of the cliff, largely by taking advantage of the vines and piercing branches that John was able to will from his plant-like arms.
“Hurry,” Plague urged as they dropped down the last several feet onto the muddy ground. Without waiting for John, he sprinted for a nearby path laid down into the ground—two metal rails running parallel to each other, for miles in each direction. “Railroad,” he explained to John’s questioning gaze. “The train is gonna be coming down this thing like a bat out of hell in a few minutes. You need to slow it down so we can hop on it.”
“Slow it down?” John asked. As if in response, the branches protruding from his shoulder twisted and curled against his neck. “Ah.”
He had never done anything so large or so deliberately before, but he supposed there was a first time for anything. Please work, he silently prayed as he placed his right hand down on the railroad track. He could feel the vibrations from the roaring train rumble up his arm. Time to trap a hell-beast. John closed his eyes and focused on the twisting branches at the end of his arm, willing them to grow outward and expand—and sure enough, he felt a strange spreading sensation as a plume of vines, thorns, and branches burst from his forearm and fingertips, clawing down into the dirt and wrapping around the tracks.
“Not enough,” Plague urged. “Give me more, Famine.”
John gritted his teeth and pushed even harder. The effort was exhausting—he could feel
beads of sweat building on his forehead—but when he opened his eyes, he saw that the railroad tracks, for fifty yards before and behind him, were tangled in a mass of vines and branches so thick he couldn’t see the metal beneath. Even the shrubbery he had grown in the church of the Flagellants had not been so dense.
“Good enough.” Plague stepped forward, a knife in hand to cut John away from the jungle of plant life, and raised an eyebrow in surprise when John simply pulled his hand away on his own, neatly detaching himself. “Huh, didn’t know you could do that. Anyway, back up, Famine—and get ready to run like hell.”
A sharp screech—like a teapot boiling, only magnitudes louder and more hellish—echoed from the direction of the approaching train. John gazed in awe at the approaching metal monstrosity as Plague pulled him away from the tracks. Its screaming iron face was the size of a building, and the long body that clattered and shook on the railroad behind it looked to be a mile long.
“That’s the locomotive,” Plague yelled over the clattering of steel and the bellow of the train’s infernal engine. “When I say go, run for it!”
“How are we supposed to catch that thing?” John bellowed. It was undoubtedly the fastest-moving thing he had seen in his entire life, covering the distance between them in mere seconds.
The front end of the train slammed into the thick layer of vines covering the tracks. For a moment, it slowed as the tangled vegetation became snarled in the clashing wheels that bore the steel beast.
“Go!” Plague howled, and he sprinted forward, more swiftly than John believed humanly possible. A man poked his head out of the locomotive as John bolted in Plague’s footsteps. He screamed something at the two approaching men, but his voice was lost in another blast of fire from the locomotive as more vines ensnared its undercarriage. The train sped up as it blasted through the miniature jungle, and John’s heart sank, for there was no way he could possibly make it.