by Matt Turner
The second figure made a move to follow the Prophet, but the first man stopped him. “We don’t have the time,” he warned. “Let him run.” He began to walk toward Simon, the dim light from the spreading fires casting a halo about his auburn hair that shrouded his features in shadow. “Now what do we have here?”
With a groan of pain, Simon tore the remnants of the chainwhip away from his body. He tried to stand, but the roaring beast of pain in his guts was too much to bear—he weakly slumped back down to the dirt. “Christ,” he muttered as he slouched forward, both hands wrapped around his bleeding stomach.
“Plague, he has the Mark!” the second man said excitedly. “Is he—”
“At last,” the first man said. A manic energy twisted every syllable he said, but through the haze of pain, Simon was starting to suspect that he knew that voice very well. “At fucking last. Let’s introduce ourselves, Famine.”
One of the men knelt in front of Simon. Gritting his teeth, Simon raised his head and gasped in horror at the stranger’s face—half of it was covered in bloodstained bark, from which sprouted a plethora of thorns and tiny branches.
The man extended a hand that had a massive gnarled root sprouting from his knuckles. “My name is John Hale. We’re Horsemen too. We’ve been looking for you, me and Plague—”
“No need to use that name right now,” the mocking voice said.
A powerful hand wrapped itself around Simon’s collar, and he was pulled upright. Even if he had the physical strength to resist, he could not, for he found that his will was utterly frozen by the hellish face that greeted him.
“The prodigal son returns.” Amaury de Montfort grinned a cruel smile that stretched halfway across the face that so strongly resembled Simon’s own, but no joy whatsoever reached his dark, empty eyes. “It’s been too long, Father.”
The last thing that Simon heard before he fainted dead away was the mad laughter of his child.
27
On the opposite end of the factory, Roy slowly crawled up on top of the assembly line, still headed for the furnace. For a moment, he paused at the base of the massive oven, a cry of despair on his lips as bullets shredded the air around him—and then he hurled himself into the flames and was gone.
Good riddance, Vera thought nastily. She looked around for her next target and nearly went mad with delight when she saw Pliers and half a dozen other guards engaged in a violent brawl with a group of workers. She took careful aim with her stolen rifle, hoping to catch him in the small of his back, and let out a curse when only a weak ding came from the trigger. No more bullets.
“Vera, we need to leave, right fucking now!” Signy bellowed in her ear. She jerked Vera by the shoulder to show her that dozens more guards were rushing down the catwalks from the roof above. Vera did not recognize any of them; they were clearly from neighboring factories, brought in to quell the rebellion. Her heart sank as she counted their numbers; they already outnumbered the workers nearly two to one, and even more of the capitalist bastards were coming.
“No,” Vera snarled. She shoved Signy away and made her way to the captured machine gun. “The Revolution cannot be stopped.” A bullet slammed into the worker desperately trying to unjam the weapon, and she fell away from it with a scream. Vera quickly took her place and found that she was able to immediately understand the machine; the memories she had gleaned from the guards were enough to grasp its operation.
“It’s over, Vera!” Signy shouted. The bandages wrapped about her torso from her previous wound were soaked red with blood, and half of one of her ears had been shot away—the Frenchwoman looked as though she could barely stand. She immediately crumpled to a heap behind the assembly line as Vera wrenched the jamming cartridge free and swung the machine gun around to face the newcomers above.
“I’m not done!” Vera howled. Death-death-death-death spat the machine gun as she squeezed the trigger and unleashed a volley into the catwalks that shredded man and metal alike. The guards returned fire, and she felt bullets smash into her face and arms, but she was too far gone to care. She let out a scream as the white-hot blasts of the weapon scorched her hands, spitting out shells that rattled like toys on the concrete.
Above her, half a dozen men were blown to bits, and scores more lurched back in a panic, trying to escape the sudden onslaught. The catwalk warped under the sheer storm of bullets—and suddenly it collapsed in the center, spilling wounded men and weapons onto the ground far below. Their bodies splashed against the machinery and the assembly line, bursting open pipes, guts, and gears.
“By Hela,” Signy swore in awe at the carnage, but her words were utterly lost on Vera; she continued to squeeze the trigger of the machine gun until the barrel began to partially melt, spewing bits of molten steel and meter-long columns of flame with every bullet. A small forest of fire began to sprout from the smoking, twisted bodies that lay sprawled across the entire factory.
Satisfied that the newcomers had been dealt with, Vera spun the machine gun around, searching for her quarry. Pliers. She didn’t even bother to stop firing; the belt-fed weapon was nearly empty, but it was worth it to watch the machinery and assembly line be torn to shreds before her. Guards and workers alike scrambled for cover from her cruel onslaught, but she found them—she found them all. She was dimly aware of Signy screaming into her ear and trying to pull her away from the weapon, but it was a tiny distraction, for out of the corner of her eye Vera finally saw him. Pliers and two other guards were rushing for the stairs that led down to Cenodoxa’s laboratory, no doubt hoping that the doctor could save them. She immediately blasted the two guards in front of him to bloody pieces, forcing Pliers to skid to a halt. Across the factory, their eyes met, and Vera felt a surge of triumph as she began to adjust her aim—
With a sudden screech, the first mortar shell punched through the cheap aluminum roof and landed directly in the center of the factory. There was no time to so much as blink before the explosive activated, and a shock wave of fire engulfed half the assembly line. The sheer force of the blast hurled Vera backward like a rag doll, nearly impaling her on a scrap of rebar protruding from the bullet-torn wall. Nevertheless, she slammed against the brick so hard it felt as though every bone in her body had broken. For a moment, she weakly lay there, completely dazed.
A pair of rough hands seized her under the armpits and hauled her back up. “You daft stupid bitch,” Signy snarled in her ear. “I fucking told you—”
“Pliers,” Vera gasped. She could feel the blood flowing down her face from her nose and ears—it was a wonder that she could even hear at all. “I need to find him.”
A second mortar round crashed into the far end of the building. Molten steel sprayed on everything within ten yards when the force of the blast shattered the furnace’s casing. Those who remained standing immediately forgot their battles and began to flee for the exits in a blind panic. A muffled volley of gunfire greeted them.
“Never thought I’d say this, but fuck revenge,” Signy grunted. She pointed upward to the shattered remnants of the catwalk. “Those look like they connect to other factories—we can use ’em to get the hell out of here.”
“Not revenge.” Vera took a step forward and winced at the sheer pain it caused her. For the Revolution, she thought grimly. “This is punishment.” In the smoke and flames before her, she caught a glimpse of movement and a familiar head of balding brown hair. I see you, Lawrence. Still heading for the basement, are you? She awkwardly limped forward, hoping to overtake him.
He whipped around, a pistol in his hand, and went deathly pale at the sight of her.
“Remember me, Lawrence?” Vera whispered over the crackle of the flames. “Darling.” Her ankle burned in a great surge of power as she reached out, trying to replicate that connection she had had with him once before. Shake, she thought.
“You bitch,” he cried out, and he unloaded his pistol on her. The little gun sounded like a toy compared to the blasts of the mortars outside.
He fired six times. The first shot nearly grazed her ear, but she didn’t flinch. SHAKE, she repeated. The next one missed her by half a meter, and the final four weren’t even close.
“You’re trembling, Lawrence,” Vera said as the gun tumbled from his trembling fingers. “Are you afraid?”
“Holy shit,” Signy muttered in awe.
Pliers’s eyes bulged out in terror. “What are you?” he demanded. “What the fuck are you?”
“I’m your devil.” She reached up for her hair and tied it back in a ragged bun—Lawrence had learned to fight dirty in the prison yard of the California Men’s Colony, after all—and gave him a wicked smile. “‘Now, how about a scream for old Lawrence?’”
Pliers turned and bolted for the stairs in a blind panic.
In an instant, Vera was right on his heels. The Mark on her ankle gave an approving pulse as she rushed down the stairs three at a time, reaching out for the rapist’s shoulder. “Almost got you,” she whispered breathlessly. One of her fingers brushed the nape of his neck. The lights on the stairs flickered as another mortar round slammed into the factory above them.
“Leave me ALONE!” Pliers screamed. He spun around, a knife in his hand, but she had already sensed his thoughts and knew exactly what his movements were going to be—a blind thrust up at her chest—and all that she needed to do was to move slightly to the right just about…NOW. His knife cut through empty air, and he let out a yelp of fear as he over-extended himself into the attack, tangling up his legs and losing his balance.
Vera gave him a gentle shove.
He toppled down the rest of the stairs in a ball of bruises and broken limbs, coming to a stop in front of the door that led to the crank with a groan of pain. Vera calmly strode down the stairs, smiling as she watched him struggle back up to his feet. Far above, there came a series of thudding explosions that sent vibrations down the stone steps, kicking up a layer of dust. Darkness cloaked the entire staircase for a moment as the lights flickered out again, then back on. Pliers whimpered at the sight of her grim shadow.
“I didn’t do anything to you,” he begged. “I never meant it—I was just joking. It was Cenodoxa, she’s the bad one—” Tears rolled down his cheeks as a fit of crying overtook him.
Something like pity nearly crossed Vera’s mind—and then she remembered his many, many victims over the years. “Don’t stop,” she said gently as she strode toward Pliers. “Keep going. I know how much you liked to hear them beg.”
Hate flashed in his eyes. “And you think you’re any better than me, whore?” he spat. “We’re in Hell together, you bitch. What gives you the right to judge me?”
“That Mark on her ankle,” Cenodoxa said. As silently as death, the doctor stepped from the shadows, a dozen armed guards beside her. Every single one of their weapons was aimed directly at Vera’s left leg. “Make one wrong move, Horseman, and I will order my men to amputate that Mark of yours.”
Damn, Vera swore inwardly. She had acted like a fool in her overconfidence. She ever-so-slightly started to turn her head back, hoping that somehow Signy had followed her mad flight down the stairs before the mortars had completely ripped the factory apart.
“Look at me, Horseman,” Cenodoxa’s voice cracked as sharp as a whip. “The Kingdom would prefer you to be captured intact, but if you attempt to use any of your powers, I will have you torn to shreds.”
Pliers let out a sigh of utter relief and gingerly got back up on his feet. “H-Horseman?” he stammered with a scowl of pain as he tried to put weight on his left leg. “Are you saying that whore is one of the Four Horsemen, Doc?”
Four? In the darkness behind her, Vera thought she heard the rustling sound of a body moving. Signy. But there were too many guns—they’d blast Signy to bits before she could move even a meter into the light. Vera concentrated on the image of the door that led to the crank. The one called Tituba is in there—she can be a distraction. She slightly cocked her head to the right so that it pointed to the shadowy door.
“There were. This specimen seems to be part of a new batch.” Cenodoxa smiled. “The loss of a factory is insignificant compared to her capture.”
“How did you know that I was right here?” Vera asked, placing slightly undue emphasis on the word right. Take the damn hint, Signy. The tiny shuffling sound came again, this time in the darkness just behind her.
“I walked up the stairs and found you here.” Cenodoxa pointed to the pulsing red mass on Vera’s leg that, even in the dim light, was painfully obvious. “A stroke of luck, I admit, but even miracles can happen in Hell.”
The faint light from above was abruptly snuffed out in a groaning avalanche of brick and roof. Only the electric lights mounted to the wall offered any sort of illumination. “It seems the Fourth Legion have wiped out the last traces of your rebellion.” Cenodoxa sniffed.
“As well as your factory, bourgeois pig.” The guards were getting antsy; it was only a matter of time until one of their fingers inevitably slipped and they blew her leg off. Signy, hurry the fuck up.
“You really think a single citizen in the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace gives a damn about a nail factory?” For the first time, Cenodoxa’s stern expression slipped, and she looked as though she were about to laugh. “There are a thousand nail factories in the Fourth Circle alone, making enough nails in one day to supply the Kingdom for an entire year. You don’t know very much, do you, Horseman?”
In the shadows, the door to the crank ever-so-slightly opened. The creak the steel hinges emitted was as loud as a shotgun blast to Vera, but Cenodoxa and her guards did not seem to notice.
“The world of the living has unlimited demand—the resources run dry, the consumers grow, technology advances! It is all the living can do to keep up.” Cenodoxa pointed a finger up at the darkness above. “But here in Hell, the supply is endless. Every day, the Kingdom has more soldiers, more workers, more people, more, more, more! Every day, tens of thousands more come flooding in—so what do we do with them?”
Her voice became unusually animated. “And that is why the Fourth Circle has a thousand factories endlessly producing mountains of nails for projects that will never exist. It’s the Kingdom’s method of population control—burn all those extra souls up before they can get tricky and troublesome.”
“Spoken like a true capitalist,” Vera sneered. Signy, hurry up….
“It still is only a temporary solution.” Cenodoxa shrugged. “For now, it remains vexingly impossible to truly end the existence of another in Hell—you already know that, of course. But that is why the Kingdom funds people like me and the Church of the Fallen Father—in the end, we are the ones who will restore death to humanity and bring back order to the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. Because of that, I have to thank you, Horseman; I believe that that Mark on your ankle will aid my research tremendously.”
Vera was tired of being talked down to by the condescending doctor. “Have your men stand down and give me Pliers,” she growled. “This is your only chance, Cenodoxa.”
Pliers nervously glanced over at the doctor, but she shook her head. “You are not in a position for negotiations, Horseman. The Holy Council will have me dissecting your body within an hour.”
“Hale,” a voice whispered from the shadows of the open door.
“What is—” Cenodoxa’s gaze shifted to the shadows.
“Oh Christ,” Pliers shrieked. He stumbled back into the guards in a blind panic, raising his hands before his face in terror. “It’s her—”
Like a she-devil from the deepest depths of Hell, Tituba exploded from the doorway, a spider’s web of chains and locks rushing behind her. “HALE,” she screamed, as her fist slammed into a guard’s face, shattering his skull in a dozen places. He flew backward into the others in a tangle of blood and limbs.
A body hurled itself at Vera, knocking her down to the floor just in time to avoid the mad volley of gunfire that began.
“Thanks,” Vera grunted.
“Good
thing you’re a skinny bitch.” Signy smirked.
“HALE!” Tituba howled. One of the guards pointed a shotgun at her and fired it point-blank. Three men screamed and collapsed as the pellets seared their flesh, but the madwoman did not even pause; she wrenched the weapon from his hands and used it as a makeshift club to cave his scalp in.
“Stop her!” Cenodoxa ordered. She reached into her pocket and pulled out something small and cylindrical. As the guards screamed and were hacked to bits by the bloodthirsty Tituba, the doctor began to flee up the stairs, the grenade clutched in her hands.
Out of the corner of her eye, Vera saw her wrench the pin out of the weapon and turn to face the chaos below.
“Signy, take her!” She pointed to Cenodoxa as she desperately scrambled to her feet. A guard nearly fell on top of her, his intestines gushing from his belly, and she just barely managed to dodge out of the way. Another fired his machine-pistol at her, but his volley was interrupted by the chain that Tituba spun and took off his entire forearm with. Behind her, Vera could hear Signy rushing up the stairs, a scream of defiance on her lips as she charged at Cenodoxa.
A rifle blasted directly in front of her, briefly illuminating the entire stairwell in a flash of brilliant light. Half a dozen men were drawing swords or firing their weapons around her, but she paid no mind to them, for a single figure was desperately limping down the staircase. Vera leapt down half a dozen steps, her arms extended for Pliers’s throat. Above her, the violence raged as Tituba continued her rampage, and Signy and Cenodoxa desperately struggled for the grenade in her hands.
Vera slammed into Pliers’s back, smashing him down to the stone steps in a bone-grating crack. Every single one of her teeth jarred violently in the sheer force of the collision, and through his shirt, she could feel his vertebrae warp and twist as he collided into the steps. They continued to tumble down the stairs, faster and faster, as the darkness swallowed both of them up. A great fury—whether it was her own or Pliers’s, she couldn’t say—enveloped Vera as the two of them fell, their twisted bodies as close as lovers.