“You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?” This time one of the workers, a broad dark haired man in a blue shirt, is singing with me, and others are snapping along with my rhythm. “Another day older and deeper and debt. Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.”
When I stop singing, they all become quiet, so I start talking. “Maybe you’re dumb enough to think that the Devil is going to spare your souls because of all the hard work you’ve been doing. It’s possible that you believe he really is building a safe haven, and he’s got a special place in it reserved just for you. Maybe you’re just that stupid—but I’m betting that you know better. I’m betting that you realize that no matter what you do, the Devil is going to slay you in the end. The way I see it, you only have one chance, and that’s to do exactly what I tell you to do with that lightrock you’re mining.”
Dead silence.
“And if you will not listen, no problem, just keep your sad ass on the stone and wait for the rest of us to finish risking our souls for yours.”
The man who’d sung with me bends down and picks up his basket of the glowing lightrock. “Alright, boss, where do you want it?”
I smile. “This way.”
I hear the workers singing as I creep deeper into the Core. “You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?”
The song must be pretty easy to pick up, or at least its refrain, because they’re singing it all over the complex. It must be giving the Devil fits. I pick up a lit torch from one wall and head away from the areas where the workers are stationed. I’ve got to find Myla, or hell, anyone who knows where my boy might be.
The flickering light around me will give my position away, but traveling through these tunnels in the dark would be impossible. Besides, they’d all carry torches too, I assume, so they’re still going to have to make sure it’s me before they shoot.
I remember the friendly fire incident the scout had reported. It would be sort of horribly ironic to get slaughtered by a man who hallucinates that I’m actually me.
I hear the noise of laughter, which surprises me. I follow it. Then I begin to smell something. The odor is sort of musky, reminding me of old clothes.
There is a lit room ahead. Smoke pours out of it. I set my torch back on a sconce and walk forward.
This room is decked out as if it belongs in the palace. The ceiling is high and arched, causing the laughter of its denizens to echo. The Devil men lie sprawled across the myriad couches, divans and pillows. Some are unconscious. Others are staring at the wall blankly. One man, leaning forward over what looks like a polished granite cutting board, snorts up a line of what I guess to be wightdust. He looks at me and chuckles.
Either they don’t recognize me, they think I’m a hallucination, or they’re just too far gone to care. It’s all the same to me.
I walk up to one of the unconscious ones and check his side arm. It’s a .22. I draw it.
“Shit,” one says, “that’s the Infidel Friend.”
I pop out the mag and check it. It’s fully loaded. The man has another mag with a few bullets in it. I point the gun at the observant one.
He fumbles for his sidearm, but it drops out of his clumsy grasp. It clatters along the stone floor. I shoot him twice in the body. The gunshot’s noise is horrifically loud in this chamber. The laughter is drowned out by sudden cries of terror.
The room erupts into chaos. Some cover their ears, cringing from monsters which I cannot see or hear. Others run back and forth, as if unsure how to run away. Only a couple of them seem to notice that I’m the real monster. I kill them first.
To save ammunition I use my knife to kill the rest. A few of them laugh as I take hold of them. One continues laughing, albeit in a gurgled way, even after I slit his throat. I shake the last one, trying to bring him into consciousness.
“Report time?” he asks.
I nod, unsure as to whether report time means he is about to give me a report, or if it means he has to go somewhere.
“Shit, man. I’m too fucked. I just need a minute.”
“The boy, where’s the boy?”
“The little wight?”
My heart falls in my chest. If Aiden has become a wight already . . . a couple of the dead men are rising as corpses. Most don’t, so I’m guessing that it’s been a while since they’d had any corpsedust. I consider sprinkling the corpsedust I took from Allen on the rest of them to cause more confusion, but I decide against it. I leave the man I’m questioning and use the knife to fell the risen corpses again.
I return to the man I’m questioning. “His name is Aiden.”
“Right. He’ll make a fine wight. Myla’s got him the Devil’s favor.”
“Is he here?”
“The Devil? He’s here?” His eyes are half rolled back into his head.
“No, Aiden. Is Aiden here, in Maylay Beighlay?”
His eyes focus on me. “Who the hell are you? Alexander!” he shouts, “it’s the Infidel Friend. He’s here. He’s right fucking here, man!”
I shove the .22 in his mouth and pull the trigger. He drops back down to the ground. My right ear is ringing from the pistol’s reports, but even so, I hear the footsteps of my enemies approaching.
I look to the right and see a group of them moving cautiously towards my room in short, darting movements, staying behind cover. The tall black wight is in the lead. I dive behind a futon and crawl out of an exit. Behind me, the man I’d just put down rises. The boom of a shotgun echoes through the chamber I just left.
“I think I got him!” a man shouts.
“That was one of ours,” the wight answers emotionlessly. “Press on.”
The corridor I’m in now is pitch black. I try to run down it, but hit a wall before I can go more than a few steps. I fire back behind me twice to slow them up and try to use the muzzle flashes to make out where I should go next. I don’t see much of the corridor, and I trip over a knee high stone which cuts into my shin.
There’s light up ahead, so I move toward it. I recognize this room. This is where I had to crawl up to the aqueduct after escaping my prison. I run straight to the access ladder and scale it like a madman. This time the aqueduct is dry. No one had thought to move Kessler’s body. He’s still here, and he’s still cuffed to the ladder. I drop into the empty trough and look behind me. A soldier enters the room, attempting to hide behind a rocky outcropping which would have defended him nicely if only I’d headed back toward my old prison cell. As it is, I see him clearly.
I take a moment to let my breathing steady. I aim, and fire. I miss pretty badly, but fire again quickly, hitting him in the side. His body spins around as he falls to the floor. A couple of his friends enter the room at that moment, and one of them spots me. I duck down into the aqueduct. The structure hums to the tune of their bullet strikes. I crawl down a few feet and wait for their shooting to stop.
I pop up and fire again.
There’s eight of them in the room now. My bullet skips off of the stone by one of their heads, but I don’t hit anyone. I crawl back to Kessler’s body. With a heave, I push him back over the side. I dart back down the aqueduct as they shoot at his body. I hear the clicks of a couple of guns as they run out of ammo.
I pop up yet again and fire, this time hitting a guy in the chest.
“Keep his head down,” the wight orders. “I’m heading to the ladder.”
This time I come up aiming for the wight. He and a couple of men are heading to the ladder. A bullet hits the ceiling over my head. I duck back down. Maybe I can shoot them as they come over the ladder.
Aw hell. Fuck it.
I keep my head low and sprint down the aqueduct. I run through the tunnel and the turn. A bullet hits the aqueduct right where I just was. It’s pitch black again, but this time it’s easier to run since there aren’t any obstacles or stone outcroppings. My footsteps echo loudly in the trough. I hear other footsteps too, the ones of my pursuers. And I hear singing.
“…sixteen tons, and what do you get?”
Up ahead is the room in which the aqueduct runs through the floor. I see the workers in there, half of them sitting on the ground, the others singing. The singing ones are carrying their baskets of lightrock. The Archdevil is going to be awfully confused.
Amidst them is one of the Devil men. I gun him down. Behind me I see one of my pursuers. He’s not shooting at me, presumably because he’s out of ammunition. I try to shoot him, but apparently that’s a problem we’re both having.
I keep running as I abandon the magazine and load the half empty one. I turn back to fire, but the man dives out of the aqueduct. For a second I catch a glimpse of the wight as I turn the corner. Those long legs give him great speed.
My breathing is getting pretty labored and I feel some pain in my chest from my previous wounds. Apparently they’re not all healed. I ignore the pain.
Suddenly I’m free of the Core, running along the aqueduct over the city. The smoke is still thick in the air, causing me to cough. That doesn’t help my ribs.
I climb up the side of the trough and start to descend a service ladder. The wight and one of his men come into view. I aim for the wight and fire even as he raises his own assault rifle. His gun explodes into shrapnel. Either his weapon backfired or I’d just hit his magazine. The man beside him drops to the ground, screaming, but the wight walks on unaffected.
I remember how the bullets didn’t affect the marble man. He must have a similar immunity. I climb back up and balance on the aqueduct’s ledge at the edge of the trough. It’s only about a foot and a half wide. The city seems to spin beneath me.
I draw the Old Lady to try and test my theory.
The wight has no gun. His long limbs help him climb easily out of the trough and onto the walkway. Fearlessly, he heads toward me.
“Where’s my boy?” I shout.
The distance between us shortens. Thirty feet. Twenty. I fire. The slug that’s loaded into the Old Lady gives me enough kick to make my balance seem unsure for a moment. I’m uncomfortably aware of how many hundreds of feet down it is until I would land. If I fall, I had better fall into the aqueduct.
The slug puts a hole in his clothing but stops, as if robbed of its momentum, without piercing the wight’s skin. It drops, bouncing off of the ledge and then toppling over the edge where it plummets down into the city.
Ten feet.
“I asked you where my boy is,” I inform him as I cock my gun.
The spent shell casing follows its slug over the edge.
“You have no way to hurt me, Cris,” the towering wight informs me, “but it’s not your boy anymore. He’s the Devil’s.”
The next blast contains the lightrock. It takes out his knee. He falls, face first, onto the ledge. Black blood spouts out of the wound. He struggles to get up, his wounded leg dangling over the edge. The lightrock buried in his skin glows there, little grey points of light.
As he pushes with one hand, he’s able to lift his black-eyed face and look at me. I give that face a hard front kick. He’s not immune to that either, so he’s propelled off of the edge.
My fight has not gone unnoticed. I see a group of the Devil men, perhaps fifteen of them, heading through the city.
I move onto the service ladder.
Far below me, the broken body of the wight twitches.
The smoke is unusually thick near the exit of the Heart. It descends like a waterfall along the back wall from the clouds above. It hides me from the eyes of my pursuers. I had intended to come here, surely, but the nature of the chase would have herded me here nonetheless. The marble man leads a posse of around fifteen. They’re probably low on bullets, which would normally help me, but I’m out of ammo too, except for the Old Lady—but because her modified shells are precious, I can’t waste them . . . not to mention the fact that she might jam.
I approach the exit with caution. Before, the Devil had kept men guarding the exits, but there are none now—probably thanks to the damage that I’ve done.
For the first time I feel the pain of the symbol I’d carved into my hand. I glance at the scabs forming there. The pain is reassuring. Hopefully I’m doing Q proud by claiming his house as my own.
I exit the Heart.
This middle chamber is similar to when I’d left it last. I stand beneath the woodstone frames which support now only rotten brineberries and sinfruit. Ahead of me are the aqueduct and the tower. Beyond that the reflecting pool.
I trot forward cautiously.
A wave of light, noticeably dimmer than when I’d been here before, pushes its way slowly across the chamber. I know now to close my eyes to save my vision. My memory is good enough to let me keep moving while I do so.
I pause near the tower in the center of the chamber and enter one of the three story houses. As quietly as possible, I creep up the stone stairs. I step out onto the roof and look out across the city. It’s too dark for me to perceive anything over long distances, so I keep my eyes open during the next light wave. I see them moving, darting from behind one building to another. They’ve occupied three of the central streets. The marble man has taken the street to the right.
For some reason he had guessed that I would run right for a few streets after I entered. He overestimated me. I had just run straight. That’s okay, though, I can adjust. I creep back down the stairs and cross over so I can intercept his street. I climb a two story building there and pause.
I see them during the next light pulse. They’d moved farther than I’d expected, but there should still be time enough for me to regain my night vision. The roof’s flat, and the walls of the building extend about two feet higher than the ceiling. It’s a perfect perch for an ambush. Apparently I’m not the only one to have thought so because bags of stones sit open along the corners. I lie down, keep my eyes closed, and listen.
The cold stone roof feels good against my back.
I hear my own breathing as it slows. I can feel my heart calming in my chest. And then I hear them coming down the streets. They are not as quiet as I. Who knows how long it has been since their last drugging. Still, just from watching them move I know that they are much more together than the ones in the plush room that I’d slaughtered earlier.
I hear them as they pass beneath me.
“I think I seen him up ahead,” someone whispers.
“Stay quiet.” The marble man’s voice is as emotionless as always. “Stay focused.”
They pass by.
I get up on my knees and suck in a deep breath, then I look up toward the sky and shout, “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”
In the distance I hear calls returning. “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!” And then another one closer. “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!” And then a high female voice. “All ye all ye out and free.”
Rocks begin to rain down upon them.
“Save your ammo!” the marble man shouts. “Stay together.”
I see a rock impact with his head. He’s not immune to it in the same way that he’s immune to bullets, but it hurts him a lot less than it does his compatriots.
“Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”
From this vantage I can see the mottled and half rotten children. I’m amazed at their agility and ingenuity. No wonder it was so hard for me to catch them. They crawl like spiders along the rooftops, descending down the corner of one building and climbing up another as surely and as quickly as a monkey would climb a tree. A gunshot rings out.
“I said hold your fire,” the marble man orders loudly.
But it wasn’t one of his men shooting, it was that damn kid who’d taken a pot shot at me when I’d first come through.
Originally my plan was to leave these people mired here and return, but that all changes when I see the men split to take cover. One of them runs into a building close to me. It’s not anything about him in particular that makes me want to kill him—it’s that he’s wearing my backpack.
“Jesus, let us fire!” a man shouts.
; “We’re getting torn up in here.”
“Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!”
The marble man is intractable. “Find them and kill them hand to hand. They’ll flee after you take a few out.”
Good fucking luck.
Children are on the roof over the man who’s got my pack. I peek at him through the crack of a window shutter from the building’s back alley. He’s looking up, so I know he hears them. Cautiously, he moves toward the staircase. I keep the Old Lady pointed at him in case he turns around, but I hope to get him with my knife.
“Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!” “All ye all ye out and free!”
Another gunshot rings out.
“I said hold your fire,” the marble man’s voice calls out over the cries of the children. “Adam!”
The man I’m sneaking up to shouts back, “It wasn’t me, sir.”
It wasn’t, it was that damn kid again—but innocent or not—those are the last words he’ll say. I stab him in the side of his throat with my knife. He drops to the ground. I take my 9mm out of his dying hands. The pack is damn near empty, and my tac vest is nowhere to be found. He’s down to half of his last mag, but maybe he’d missed the one sewn into the pack’s bottom. I feel for it.
It’s still there.
With my knife, I rip the bottom of my pack open and grab the magazine.
I meet his eyes. He’s looking at me while he’s dying. I nod to him. He nods back.
I point to the staircase. The children are coming down, rocks held high over their heads. I wink at one and then hop out of the window. Kids. I fucking love kids. Charming little bastards. For a second, I look behind me. The children descend upon him. I jog down the open streets back toward the Heart.
Behind me they chant, “We’re gonna get you. We’re gonna get you.”
I slow to a walk as I pass the ruins of the palace. The smelters are still going, but there is no one tending them. A worker sits, his back to a pile of glowing lightrock, holding in his guts with his arms. He sings to me as I pass.
Affliction (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 1) Page 11