Johnny nodded.
Arturus pulled out the laces first. Normally he would have cut them, except he doubted there were any spares. Arturus went for the razor blade in his pocket. He inserted it into the instep and started sawing, careful not to cut his friend.
Galen came back into the main room while he worked. Galen was inspecting the wall. Pushing and pulling against bricks. Tapping on them. He had already spent some time on the floor and journeyed up into the tower.
Arturus kept sawing and the boot came loose. Johnny let out a sigh and then leaned his head back against the stone wall.
“Who built this place?” Aaron asked.
“I bet it was Nephysis’ laboratory,” Kelly said. “An old one. It doesn’t look like he’s been here for a long time.”
“That wood is fresh,” Avery said. “It must be new. Things must rot in here pretty damn fast.”
Kelly gave him a wry smile. “It’s been treated. Only the treated wood is fine. The rest has rotted, look at that table over there. No one’s been here in years, I’d bet.”
“She’s right, Avery,” Galen said from where he was checking the wall. “Be careful going up into the tower. The hill allows the corpses to get on the roof, and if you go up there, you’ll see there are places they can break in.”
“How are the dead looking?” Aaron asked.
“Numerous,” Galen answered, “more than I would have imagined possible. There’s no room to even try to make a break for it. They’re shoulder to shoulder.
“Maybe Calimay will come find us?” Johnny tried.
Kelly snorted. “No one comes to the Deadlands, not devils, and not humans. No one.”
Galen stopped and sat down with the rest of them, his face as calm as ever. At first Arturus was confused, but then he realized that Galen had completed his circuit. There was simply nothing left to check.
Johnny looked to Aaron, but the Lead Hunter wouldn’t meet his gaze. Then Johnny turned to Galen. “Alright, what do we do?”
Galen did not answer.
“Well? We can escape, right? Is there a way down into the tunnels?”
Galen shook his head.
Johnny frowned. “Then we’ll make a run for it. You can splint up my leg and we’ll run.”
“No,” Galen said. “Even alone and with a full complement of weapons and ammunition, I wouldn’t have a chance of making it. The Deadlands is over thirty miles wide. There are wights up there, too. I saw them. They’re intelligent. And they can run.”
Johnny seemed confused. “So what then? What do we do?”
Galen didn’t answer.
Johnny’s face grew red. He struggled up, standing on his good leg. “What do we do?” he shouted.
Galen looked at Johnny. Arturus watched his father’s face. Slowly, like a mountain eroding away, Galen’s stoic veneer crumbled. His face was stricken with sadness. An old sadness. Arturus felt it must be older than himself. Maybe as old as Hell.
“What do we do?” Johnny demanded.
“Calm down, Johnny!” Aaron ordered.
Johnny wouldn’t listen. “What?”
Galen looked for a moment towards Arturus. Arturus rarely saw naked emotion on the man’s face. There was love on it now.
“What do we do?” Johnny hopped forward and put a hand against the stone over where Galen sat. “Tell us what to do God damn it!”
Galen looked up at him. “We die.”
Did I play my part well? Then applaud as I exit.
—Augustus Caesar
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
—5th Century Christian Monk
From Gehennic Law: The Emperor and the Bridge
When Xerxes’ army came to the Dardanelles, they stopped and waited for their engineers to fashion a bridge out of boats and flaxen ropes. The engineers worked tirelessly through the day, and by evening, they had bridged the narrow sea.
Now on that night there was a storm, and the ropes were broken and the boats were washed away. When Xerxes saw this in the morning, he was furious.
“What happened?” Xerxes asked. “Was the bridge built too weak?”
“Nay,” answered the engineers. “The bridge was built correctly. It is the waters that are at fault.”
Xerxes was angered. “Could you not have lowered anchors on either side of each boat to better keep them in place?”
“We could,” they answered, “but the bridge was strong enough. It was the fault of the water.”
“And could you not have used winches to keep the tension between ships?”
“We could,” they answered, “but the bridge was strong enough. It was the fault of the water.”
“And could you not have built the bridge in the lee of that shoal so that the storm would not so trouble our construction?”
“We could,” they answered, “but the bridge was strong enough. It was the fault of the water.”
“And could you not have doubled the ropes and built the bridge two boats thick?”
“We could,” they answered. “But the bridge was strong enough. It was the fault of the water.”
“I see you are right!” Mighty Xerxes said, and he strode grandly before his troops. “What isat fault here are these waters. Take up your whips! Light fires and heat the brands so that we might mark the Dardanelles with shame! Today we shall spend thrashing the waters and marking them for their treachery.
And so it came to pass that all that day the engineers whipped and branded and jeered the waters. Xerxes came to them as the sun was setting.
“Look now at the waters!” Mighty Xerxes commanded. “Do they look pacified?”
The engineers looked at the waters, but they did not look pacified. They were a turbulent mass of anger.
“No,” said the engineers.
“Do they look like they have learned their lesson?”
The engineers examined the waters, but they did not look any different.
“No,” said the engineers.
Xerxes held up his hands in dismay. “But the branding! Tell me at least that you can see the brands you have made on the sea so that others might know of its treacherous nature?”
The engineers looked at the waters, but they could see no markings left from the hot iron.
Xerxes turned to his armies. “You see, punishment is wasted on those who cannot learn.”
And then Mighty Xerxes put his engineers to death.
The sky was a chaotic mess of dark thunderheads. Lightning swam through them in long forked chains, flickering like Tiamat’s tongue.
Carlisle looked along the ladder which shot upwards through the tumultuous lightning filled skies. Then he looked down at the rock where Benson lay, the man’s soul chained there by steel shackles. Those shackles had been forged by Mephistopheles’ will, so they were well nigh unbreakable. They shined like polished silver in the storm’s flickering light.
Benson struggled against them pitifully.
Soon.
“It was in a storm like this that Jephthah sacrificed his daughter,” Mephistopheles’ warm voice washed over Carlisle.
“Who was Jephthah?” Carlisle asked.
The shadow that was Mephistopheles turned to him. “He was a servant of your God, Carlisle.”
Carlisle nodded. “A good man, then.”
“As holy as you.”
Carlisle turned to the struggling Benson. “You will die slowly,” he said.
Mephistopheles’ shadowy form circled the knoll on which the ritual stone table sat. Then the devil returned to Carlisle. “It is time. Climb the ladder. As this man dies in Sheol, you will get closer and closer to his body in Gehenna. I will make sure that his march to death is a smooth one. Even as the last shred of Benson leaves this plane, you will enter into his Gehennic body. You will be barely able to move, and your form will be beset by malnutrition and atrophy. It will take great will on your part to defeat the stilling and move. Accept the help of your fellows, but leave as soon as you can. As your
body heals, it will grow to look more and more like you. After a week or so, you will be yourself again. Then you can complete your quest. Then you can find the Child of Heaven.”
Carlisle sneered. “Good. Thank you Benson. Any words you wish for me to give to Harpsborough?”
Benson had stopped thrashing. “Go on, Carlisle. But you will never make it. I will stop you.”
“He shall not,” Mephistopheles said. “I shall see to him.” Then the devil passed a stone dagger to Carlisle.
Carlisle held it up over his head. The air was roiling with energy. The thunderheads billowed, rushing in waves across the sky. The wind picked up and pressed his clothes into his body. He felt his hair whipping about his head.
This was the turning point. This was the moment in his death where he stopped growing farther and farther away from his Heavenly Father. This time he was going in the right direction. He was blessed, so blessed that even the demons were forced to help him. He would climb up into that maelstrom of clouds and wind and find himself one step closer to the angel’s get.
He would be one step closer to Heaven.
Down plunged the dagger into Benson’s stomach, cutting deep through the flesh of the man’s abdomen. Benson let out a long wail. The wail dissipated, torn away from the tortured man’s lips by the power of the wind.
CLIMB, CARLISLE! Mephistopheles’ words rang in his head.
Carlisle climbed. The rungs in the ladder were easy to grip. He felt light, as if the wind itself was lifting him upwards.
I have purpose. I mean something. I’m important. God makes this so. Without him I am nothing.
He could practically hear the song of the angels in the wind.
He started taking the rungs two at a time, then three at a time. He had never been filled with such energy. It was as if the Holy Spirit was streaming down from Heaven, cutting through the Earth, slicing through Gehenna before finally infusing him with its glory.
He looked down below him even as he climbed and saw that he’d left the stone table miles below—but he had more distance to travel.
How long had it been since he’d felt this way? How many sacrifices had he been forced to make in the attempt of holding his convictions? What lows had he been forced to sink to in the service of his God?
The music was growing louder now. It echoed in the spaces between the clouds, singing to him loudly between thunderclaps . . . only he had heard it before. It reminded him of something—of someone. A woman. A devil.
“Can you hear me Carlisle?” A low, sultry and feminine voice asked.
The voice was not loud, but it seemed so because it was so close to him.
Carlisle stopped climbing. “Who is this?”
“You don’t remember me, do you, my sweet? You don’t remember when I tried to save you? You don’t remember when I tried to heal you? When I tried to save you from your faith?”
“Lilith? Impossible.” Carlisle looked all about him in the turbulent wind tossed sea of clouds, but he could see no sign of Benson. “Mephistopheles defeated you.”
“Look down, my sweet. Benson found a friend.”
“Liar! He has no friends.” Carlisle said. “I killed the only person who ever loved him.”
Her laughter was a gust of wind, shaking him so he was forced to cling to the ladder lest he fall. “Are you sure about that? Are you sure there isn’t someone else out there who loves him simply because he’s human?”
Carlisle continued climbing, but his limbs felt heavy. Each new rung was an effort.
What’s happening? Someone who loves him just for being human? The fool. She thinks God is on Benson’s side.
“God’s not here, Lilith,” Carlisle shouted over the wind.
“It’s not God who helps him, Carlisle. What’s that pouring out of your side?”
Carlisle felt the blood running from his wound. It was drenching his pants and dripping off the bottom of his booted feet. The blood was soaking the ladder.
My wound. It bleeds like never before.
Lilith spoke again. “Didn’t that devil friend of yours show you how to see across long distances? How to have the eyes of an eagle?”
Carlisle changed his eyes and looked down, but he could not see far enough. He applied his will carefully to his vision until he could see the light even farther down. It gave him the sensation of plummeting even though he knew that he was still on the ladder. He saw Benson, sitting up, his chains clinging to his wrists. The black wings of Mephistopheles covered the man, but they seemed almost transparent.
Benson was shouting something.
Carlisle reformed his ears, focusing on those distant words.
“Infidel!” Benson was screaming. “I need you. You were right. The Christians here do the Devil’s work. I was wrong. Don’t let them use me! I won’t be their puppet. Save me. Save me!”
The Infidel approached, walking through Mephistopheles as if the devil were mere illusion. The wind picked up all around him. Benson’s sacrificial robe flapped back and forth in the gale. The grass wavered and the trees shook, but the Infidel was not touched.
He heard Lilith’s sensual breath in his ear. “And that’s not even my lover, Carlisle. That’s just the idea of my lover. He can win here because in Hell, your God is only an idea. There is no difference between the two of them. Don’t you understand? This Hell, it is based on perception. In Gehenna, there is no God to answer your prayers. But in Sheol—if the amassed weight of men’s perceptions can make the shade of a man, didn’t you ever stop to think that they could make a God?”
Carlisle was stunned.
My God, he could be here?
“But after Gehenna, Carlisle, the God men bring with them to Hell—well, let’s just say he’s more of the vengeful kind. More of a Luke 19:27 God than a 1 John 4:8.”
Then that’s why I feel the Holy Spirit! There is a God here, I must succeed.
She had said it was a vengeful God, but that would only help him, right? He needed God to strike down his enemies. He hadn’t done anything to anger God. He hadn’t done anything to bring about His wrath. He had been a good person. Anyone could see that. Anyone.
The chains fell away from Benson’s wrists. The Infidel handed Benson the sacrificial dagger.
“A lie!” Carlisle screeched. “The chains were unbreakable!”
Lilith sighed. “I told you he had a friend.”
The Infidel reached out one hand at put it on Benson’s shoulder. “Are you sure you wish to do this?”
“No!” Carlisle yelled. “Mephistopheles! Stop him.”
“He can’t hear you,” Lilith’s sultry voice caressed his soul. “Devils dare not come close to the Infidel shades.”
Mephistopheles, please, fight them!
“I do,” Benson was saying. “Do you think I am doing good?”
“I do not know,” the Infidel replied. “I’m not, in truth, here. You must ask yourself if this is the right thing to do.”
“Don’t listen to him!” Carlisle shouted down to Benson, his voice a whisper on the edge of the storm. “He’s evil! What I’m doing is right. I’m in the right, Benson. You just can’t see it because I’m trying to destroy you.”
But Benson did not seem to be able to hear him.
“It is,” Benson said. “Carlisle is not a good man. Whatever the devils have turned him into is vile. If I am to die, then let my death mean something.”
The Infidel nodded. “As you will it.”
Benson took the dagger and shoved it into his chest.
“Climb!” the distant voice of Mephistopheles ordered. “If he dies faster, you must climb faster.”
Carlisle grabbed the next rung, pulling himself upwards. He climbed with abandon, but he felt his legs burning. Sweat poured off his body and mixed with the blood pouring out of him. The wind buffeted him, slamming him into the ladder, and he felt the weight of his wound, all those thousands of tons of dirty blood, pulling him down like a chain.
With all the will he
could muster he tried to make himself stronger. Then Benson died, and the ladder was broken.
Carlisle was falling—falling at a speed he had not thought possible. He wasn’t falling through space, but through emotions. They crashed by him, slipping in through the perforations of his self and polluting his existence with their substance. Agony, as he had never felt before. Despair, as if God had abandoned him. Ire, as if some stranger had come to kill his mother. Indignation, as if some entity had stolen from him his dignity. Horror, as if he had awakened to find that he had raped his sister. Indifference, as if the world was peopled by automata. Mania, as if every girl in the world was in love with him. Vanity, as if he were the apple of God’s eye. Jealousy, as if he’d sacrificed his son to a people who’d left him for his enemies. Pride, as if he was the leader of all mankind. Lust, as if forty nubile virgins lay spread out before him. Hatred, as if he had been made to finally know himself. Each emotion was more intense than the last. Then the final one dissipated and he fell still farther. He saw the masses of Hells laid out beneath him.
I’m dying. I’m dying again.
He broke out of the land that he knew as Sheol. His soul wheeled about, trying to find purchase on any of the universes that he was now plummeting past. They were terrible, each more horrific than the last. He had to stop himself, he had to land now. There was no way he could exist in these vile places. He couldn’t let them get any worse.
But there was a weight beneath him, dragging him downwards, forcing him through each new land of horror.
Help me!
He tried to scream, but without a place for his soul to inhabit, he had nothing to scream with. No mouth to open. No voice to issue. No air to exhale.
He had to grab onto something but found himself lacking a physicality to grab with. Somehow he had become unstuck from the Hells during his fall. For him to stop falling, some part of him, some part of his soul, would have to be able to latch onto one of these damnations.
He spread himself as thin as he could, hoping against hope that he would touch down on the shore of some distant Hell.
And then he did.
March till Death (Hellsong Book 3) Page 12