Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  “Yes, but here in Hell, we’re all effectively immortal. Congratulations. It gets old quick.” Amaury enthusiastically clapped his hands together. “Get back over here, Famine,” he called out into the darkness in a voice filled with false cheer. “The gang is finally all here!”

  The tree-man quickly emerged from the shadows of the cavern. Vera recoiled at the sight of the scraps of bark that pockmarked his face and the branches that protruded through holes torn in his cloak. “What the hell is that?”

  John sighed. “It’s good to meet you too. My name is John Hale—er, Famine. We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Death.”

  “And I am Earl Simon de Montfort, lord of Montfort-l’Amaury,” Simon said. Amaury gave him a beady-eyed look, and he reluctantly added: “And I am told that I am War. Whatever that means.”

  “And that just leaves me—Plague!” Amaury laughed like a child. “All four Horsemen, together at last… You don’t know how long I’ve been looking forward to this.”

  “Listen, I don’t know who the fuck you people are.” Vera grunted as she rose to her feet. “But I have a workers’ uprising to save. Signy and Tituba are still up there. If there’s a chance that I can save them—”

  John’s face turned as pale as the moon. “T-Tituba?” he gasped. “S-she’s here?”

  Vera gave him a cunning look. “You said your name was John Hale, right?” He weakly nodded. “I don’t know what you did to her, Hale, but she still remembers.”

  “Oh God,” John whispered. He sank to his knees and covered his face with his barked, branching fingers. “Oh Jesus, oh Christ, please protect me…”

  “That’s enough of your whining,” Amaury snapped. He seized John by the collar and wrenched him back up to his feet. “Even if your old flame is here in the C District, the Fourth Legion either already has her or is about to have her. She’s as good as dead—even worse, actually.”

  “What do you mean?” Vera demanded. “The last I saw them, they were up at the top of the stairs.” She gritted her teeth. “Signy’s too tough and too stubborn to be captured by some bourgeois thugs.”

  Oh God, Simon realized. She sounded just like the Russian he had met on the boat. What was his name? All he could think of was Mucus, but he sensed that wasn’t right.

  “Then allow me to explain our situation.” Amaury drew a knife, skillfully spun it about in his fingers (Simon did not remember his son having such talent with any sort of blade), and carved an X into the stone floor. “That X is factory C-112, a facility under the command of Cenodoxa that provides nails to the Kingdom and bodies to the Church of the Fallen Father. My original plan was just to sneak in, bust Death out, and get the hell out of the Fourth Circle. But now—”

  He drew a large circle around the X. “Death here just had to go and cause an uprising. And if there’s one thing that the Holy Council of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace absolutely hates, it’s when their workers start to get uppity. And so, in addition to the Prophets who are undoubtedly hunting us down at this very moment, an entire army will be exterminating and destroying everything within this circle—just because they can.”

  “What if we—” John started to say.

  Amaury shook his head. “You have no idea how efficient the Kingdom has gotten at these sorts of things. You don’t rule half of Hell for two thousand years without putting down every uprising in the book. They’ll root out every hiding spot, annihilate every hint of resistance, wipe out any hint of an opposing ideology. The lucky ones within the circle will only be crucified for a century or two. The others—well, I’ll just leave it to your imaginations.”

  “Then we escape,” Simon said. “We can use these tunnels to slip underneath their perimeter.”

  “It won’t work.” Amaury sighed. “The perimeter is made of Hellfire, and tunnels like these are the first place they’ll look when they’re done roasting the surface.”

  “How big is this circle?” Vera asked.

  “At least fifty kilometers across. Probably more, considering they likely know they have us Horsemen trapped.” In spite of the damning words, Amaury’s eyes seemed to gleam with an unnatural excitement. “This is all because you couldn’t just shut up and work on an assembly line, Vera. How’s it feel to know you’ve single-handedly destroyed a fifth of C District?”

  “I…” she started to say, and then she caught herself. “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” she mumbled.

  Simon stepped in before Amaury could slash her again with his words. “We don’t have the time for this.” He pointed down at the circle. “I won’t pretend I know exactly what’s going on, or who you people are…but right now, it looks like there’s a lot of very powerful people who want all of us dead, or worse.”

  “He’s not wrong,” John said.

  “It looks like our only chance of survival is together…for now,” Simon added. “I don’t know and I don’t care who or what the hell you people are, but if we all want to get out of this circle-fire thing, we should all stop squabbling and start to fucking think.”

  There was a moment’s pause as the others silently thought over his words.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Amaury said as John began to nod in agreement.

  Vera was silent for a longer time than the other two men. “All right,” she finally agreed. “But only if we make the fucking Kingdom pay for what they’ve done.”

  “Oh, you and I are going to get along just fine.” Amaury grinned.

  33

  Even by Longinus’s standards, he was in an exceptionally foul mood. Fritz could almost see the cracks forming in his ice-cold exterior. He couldn’t blame the other Prophet; it wasn’t every day that you got hit by a runaway War Train. Still, where Fritz was covered in slashes and bruises, Longinus seemed to have been barely affected.

  “The Holy Council ordered the use of Hellfire? On our own industrial district?” the Roman muttered angrily. “Idiocy.” He stormed through the streets of C District, Fritz in tow. A passing soldier wielding a flamethrower did not salute him swiftly enough, and so the Prophet seized his throat without a second glance and hurled him into the side of a building.

  “This job is sloppy,” Fritz agreed. He had to raise his voice over the distant explosion of the flamethrower’s fuel supply detonating. “Where’s the artillery? The formations?” Even with a Hellfire perimeter—good God, Fritz couldn’t even remember the last time the Kingdom had even thought of using one—the exterminating legion was supposed to surround the area with artillery first, then methodically sweep each district, block by block. The job of destroying rebellions was supposed to be systematic and thorough, not the mad charge of troops and stiltwalkers that surrounded them.

  “The loss of their War Train has made the Fourth Legion emotional,” Longinus groused. “Unprofessional. They’re rushing things.”

  In front of them, a stiltwalker raised an armored foot and slammed it down on the back of a fleeing worker. Damn waste, Fritz thought as her innards splattered across the street. She had looked relatively healthy; the Church of the Fallen Father and a dozen other cults paid good money for chubby ones like that.

  “And all of this without my orders,” Longinus continued to bitch. “I am the commanding officer here. I give the commands.”

  We were both put in command of putting down this rebellion, Fritz sourly thought. The Prophets were all nominally equals, but that always went completely out the window whenever Longinus got his hard-on for war – and the crucixions, always sure to follow. Maybe I should try stealing his power after de Montfort’s? But that would be difficult, damned difficult, especially with those fucking new Horsemen who had stolen de Montfort from his fingers…

  “The Fourth has always been a little over-enthusiastic,” he had to admit. Down the street, a soldier fired his beam-cannon point-blank at the side of a factory, triggering an avalanche of steel and rubble that immediately buried him and a score of his comrades. “There isn’t usually much action
in the Fourth Circle.”

  “Idiocy,” Longinus repeated.

  They passed through several more burning streets to finally find the command tents of the Fourth Legion stretching before them. Half of them had not been set up properly, and a tiny fire was smoldering on the corner of one. Fritz could almost feel Longinus’s heart start to race. “Not even a perimeter,” he offered. Only a single bored-looking guard sat alongside the entrance to the main command tent.

  Longinus’s silence spoke volumes. The soldier stiffened to attention as they approached, but he mercifully paid no attention to her, and shoved past into the command tent.

  They were greeted by the sound of laughter and music as they entered. A dozen high-ranking officers were sprawled around the interior of the tent, their maps and battle plans abandoned on the central table as they gossiped and chatted with one another. A handful of scantily clad men and women that Fritz immediately identified as prostitutes giggled and pretended to hang on to every word of their gossip. One of them was busy playing a jaunty tune on a flute that half of the officers were mumbling the words to.

  “Lord Prophet Longinus!” one of the officers hiccupped. He shakily stood and leaned on a beautiful brunette for support. “Good of you to join us, sir.”

  “Who is in command here?” Longinus softly asked.

  The woman playing the flute was somehow too damned stupid to stop. Fritz had to suppress his grin. This is gonna be good, he thought in relish.

  “That would be me,” one of the men said. He shoved one of the whores away from his couch and stood. His fleshy face was bland and vaguely reddish, but his baby-blue eyes were dancing chunks of malice. “Imperator Fendrel de Holland, at your service.”

  Longinus seized a handful of maps from the desk. “Tell me, Imperator, what is the progress of your troops? Which districts have been purified? Where is your artillery support?”

  Fendrel blinked stupidly. “The lads are proceeding to plan.” He grinned. “Lots of maiming and torturing out there—I was just thinking of going out myself, as a matter of fact.”

  “I did not see a legion out there,” Longinus hissed. “Only a disorganized mob. You are relieved of your duty, Imperator. Consider yourself lucky that I do not have you crucified on the spot.”

  “Now wait just a minute—” one of the officers started to say, but Fendrel waved him down.

  “My orders come from Lord Prophet Giles himself,” he sneered. “Treat the rebellion however you want, he said, and that’s what I’m doing. The Titan has delivered the Hellfire perimeter. No one comes in or out. This is my little Hell now.”

  “Choose your next words very carefully,” Longinus said in a very low voice.

  “Your time is past. The Kingdom doesn’t need Prophets anymore.” Fendrel smiled nastily. “Why have one Prophet when you can have a million soldiers?” He pointed to the tent flap. “Now piss off, old man. Your commander is going to have some fun.”

  Fritz wisely started to back away through the tent flap. You’re fucked, he mouthed over Longinus’s shoulder at the others in the room.

  “You are no soldier,” Longinus growled.

  A small metal rod flicked down from his sleeve into his right hand. Longinus pressed one of its mechanisms, and suddenly the rod shot outward in either direction, becoming two meters long in the space of a second. Fritz had a glimpse of a flash of gold and steel as Longinus stabbed the rod forward, impaling it into Fendrel’s chest.

  Fendrel stared down at the javelin extending from his chest in shock—Longinus had yanked out the weapon, fully extended it, and stabbed it into him in the space of a single second. “What—” he coughed out dumbly, a confused expression on his face. The other officers stared in terrified silence.

  “Behold the Lance of Longinus,” the Roman said. A tight smile crossed his stony face. “You’ll wish that I had just crucified you, Imperator.”

  Fendrel fumbled for the sword at his side, but it was already far too late. The lancehead buried in his chest somehow pulsed, and the imperator let out a scream of pain. The flesh on his face withered and shrunk, as though it were being wrenched back into his body, and his howl died into a muffled moan. He seized the Lance with both hands, but his fingers were decaying just as swiftly as the rest of his body. One by one, his fingerbones fell to the floor, until, with a sudden heave, the dusty, smoldering remnants of his corpse collapsed to the ground. There was no sign of life in the empty ruins of his face.

  Everyone else in the tent remained deathly quiet as Longinus retracted the Lance back to a small metal rod that he slipped into his sleeve. “I am assuming command of this operation,” he said. “We will move this command post to the center of the Hellfire circle, effective immediately. Do I hear any complaints?”

  No one dared to even look at the Prophet.

  “Good.” Longinus sniffed. He turned his attention to the pile of maps on the table. “Fritz, fetch me a messenger. It’s time we finish this rebellion properly.”

  34

  With her newfound companions, Vera emerged from the depths of the sewer into a Hell she had helped create. All around her was the smell of burning flesh, the crash of buildings collapsing, and the screams of the fleeing. A wall of fire stretched across the horizon, casting thick plumes of smoke and steam that shrouded most of the sky in darkness, punctuated only by the shriek of artillery and mortar fire. In the distance, she could make out the familiar sounds of machine gun fire and the unstoppable march of thousands of feet.

  “Manto, how far are they?” Plague asked.

  “The forward elements of the Fourth Legion are approximately five kilometers to the west,” a disembodied female voice said crisply. It seemed to originate from a leather bag hanging at Plague’s side.

  “What the fuck was that?” Simon demanded.

  “That’s Manto, in the bag,” John said, completely deadpan.

  “What?” Simon stared at the small bloody bag hanging from Plague’s belt. “How is that possible?”

  “She’s just a head. Don’t worry, you’ll start to get used to these things after a while.”

  Simon looked flabbergasted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “They have stiltwalkers,” the female voice interrupted. “I recommend that you run.”

  “Shit,” Plague swore. “You heard the lady. No more talking. It’s time to run like hell.” With that, he turned and ran down the burning street, toward the distant flames on the horizon.

  For just a moment, the three others hesitated. Vera could see the looks of worry on the faces of John and Simon. Seth’s words came back to her: You have no idea what the consequences will be. But Simon slowly nodded, and then John. Without a word, the two men began to follow in Plague’s footsteps. But still Vera stayed in place.

  These are the consequences, Vera thought. An artillery shell shrieked down from the sky, pulverizing a block of buildings just behind the sewer entrance, sending chunks of burning brick and rebar flying. Somewhere in the wreckage, someone began crying out for his mother. The Revolution cannot be stopped, she remembered, but the words seemed to ring hollow now. What hope was there for the workers of the world even in the real world, much less in this hellish nightmare of unending torment? What hope was there at all?

  She felt herself tottering on the edge of the void. This was the real Hell, she realized as she peered into the black emptiness of her soul. Not the factories, not the tortures, not the monsters in human skin…it was simply the utter hopelessness that tore apart your mind and then drowned it. She began to sink to her knees in despair.

  And then she remembered something—a flash of her childhood: her father coming home stinking drunk again, his belt already in his callused hands. There had been no hope in the stinking slums of Kazan, yet she had survived, fueled by the words of Marx and a dozen other great revolutionaries. I’m not done, she had vowed to herself when Pliers had captured her and dragged her down into the Fourth Circle.

  “And I’m sure as fuck not
done now,” she said out loud. She recovered her balance and began to jog down the street after the others. When this is all done, I’ll be back to save you, Signy, she vowed. That’s a promise. And if she had to burn down the entire Kingdom of Heavenly Peace to do it, then so be it. Hell had not heard the last of Vera Figner.

  And so the four of them ran. For hours, they ran through burning rubble, through mobs of fleeing workers, through empty streets, through deserted buildings, through factories still churning out spoons and forks and a thousand other products utterly useless to the Kingdom, their workers and managers in utter denial of the doom that was coming to them. The distant explosions of gunfire and violence never grew quieter; it seemed that the soldiers of the Fourth Legion were moving just as swiftly as they were.

  “How have we not lost them yet?” Vera gasped out as the four of them collapsed in a deserted alleyway during one of their infrequent breaks.

  “They’re moving fast, even for a legion,” Plague panted. “Must be some commander breathing down their necks.”

  “How far to the perimeter?” John groaned. A thick sap was leaking from the parts of his face covered in bark, and his skin was flushed a deep red. “And how are we going to get across when we get there?”

  “Another few hours,” Plague said. John vomited up a mouthful of bile at the sound of that, and even Simon looked queasy. “And I’m working on it. None of you are fireproof, are you?”

  “Why the fuck would we be fireproof?” Simon demanded.

  Plague shrugged. “The Mark works in mysterious ways. Us four are already significantly different than the Master’s original Horsemen in the Second Rebellion—can’t hurt to see if one of you might be fireproof.”

  “Can’t help you there,” Vera breathed. She winced at the painful memory of crashing down the dark staircase, locked in Pliers’s nauseating embrace. “I can’t even handle stairs.”

  “Either way, we’ll have to deal with those following us sooner or later,” Simon warned. “They’re herding us against that fire-wall like rats in a trap.”