“Who’s there?” she called. Her voice echoed away, like a stone dropped down a deep well.
“I suggest we simply keep walking,” Jay told her. “You know you are not alone in the Construct.”
“Yeah. I’m surprised we haven’t seen anyone before this. Do you have any estimate at all how many people made it into this place for protection?”
“I couldn’t say, but I can tell you that before the deluge, the number of those dwelling in Taratarus—that is, Demon overseers, Damned laborers, and those Demons who had been birthed and were awaiting training and deployment—must have been about four million.”
“Jeez! That’s like…like Los Angeles.” She remembered that place now. Had she even visited it once?
“Now, I would venture to say perhaps eight million.”
“God—and that’s comparable to New York City!”
“It could even be a million or two more than that.”
“So where is everyone?”
“It’s a big place. Bigger, I’d say, than your Los Angeles and New York combined.”
Vee had turned to resume walking, but glanced over her shoulder every now and then. “Ten million inhabitants. But after all this time since Tartarus became the Construct, shouldn’t all you Demons have gradually died off? You’re mortal in your way, right? Whereas the Damned and Angels have the advantage of immortality over you.”
“We don’t die of old age, but yes, of course, many have been killed in continuing skirmishes or even simply accidents. But don’t forget, many Demons aligned themselves with the Damned. And don’t forget, this was an enormous factory complex to manufacture Demons. In some regions, that practice has continued, though on a much smaller scale.”
Just a short distance ahead, that same small brown-skinned being—or was it another?—stepped halfway out from another of the arched doorways, gazed at Vee for several moments, then darted back into the shadows. This time she had a better look. A small, wiry man with a dome of black hair, his face painted red—with blood?—and various piercing through his face, including a long iron bolt through his nostrils. In his hands he had been carrying a metal rod; as a club, or a blowgun? Vee knew he must have been from some Amazonian tribe. Of course, not having subscribed to the one favored faith, he and all his ilk would have been condemned to the netherworld.
“I hope he’s just curious,” Vee muttered, slowing her pace warily,
“and not baiting us.” Maybe his whole tribe lurked in these doorways, waiting for the right time to ambush her.
But no more of the Indian’s kind manifested, and Vee finally reached the end of the hallway without confrontation. After the length and grandeur of the great hall, she was surprised to see the doorway was of modest size, with a thick metal hatch that stood open, looking scorched as if some weapon or explosion had forced it. From a distance, it appeared that sparse white flakes of snow blew out from the doorway, and had whitened the black marble floor, but Vee recognized this as Essential Matter. Nevertheless, for some time now the air had grown steadily colder, and now it came through that portal as an icy wind, adding to the illusion of snow.
“Look,” Vee said, stopping and angling Jay so that his one eye could see what she was indicating: clusters of tiny white mushroom-like growths had sprouted up from the layer of Essential Matter that carpeted the floor in front of the open doorway.
“Fascinating!” he hissed.
“I’m not sure I want to go in there,” Vee said, shivering as she peeked into the room beyond. It looked like a great chamber, taller than it was wide, filled with bulky industrial machinery, all of it lost in a combination of sparkling frost and more Essential Matter—flakes of which alighted on her lashes and upon her lips, like crumbs of a sacramental wafer. “Well,”
she said, “we’re not going to freeze to death, are we?”
“I suppose not,” Jay said unenthusiastically.
Vee stepped through the portal, the frozen crust of Essential Matter crackling beneath her boots. She saw the flakes were blowing in through a huge whirring fan up near the chamber’s high ceiling, the source of that arctic blast. She picked her way between the hulking, sugar-frosted machines leerily, trying to minimize the sound of her footfalls and watching for any tracks on the floor, bare feet or otherwise. She reached the far wall, composed of metal streaming rust from its bolts and seams.
A ladder was fixed to the wall. Vee took hold of a rung, winced at the cold, pulled her hand away with some resistance as the frost tried to adhere to her flesh. But steeling herself, she placed a foot on the lowermost rung and began to climb, after first snapping the flap of the ammunition pouch over Jay to hold him in place, lengthwise.
As she climbed, she again threw looks over her shoulder, expecting a pack of Indians to burst into the room firing metal darts and arrows up into her back, but no one appeared in the doorway. At the top of the ladder she hoisted herself up to a smaller hatch, and pushed it open. A corridor beyond, through which warmer air circulated. Ahh! Vee stepped through it gratefully. And so they continued on…to no known destination.
9: THE MASS PRODUCED
They had been mounting an iron staircase bolted to the concrete interior of a titanic smoke stack or silo. The mesh steps were rusted, and the concrete cracked and stained with dampness and grease. The staircase—distressingly narrow and with no handrail—had already taken Vee so high that below her the floor was engulfed in darkness, so that she could not see the mouth of the corridor that had delivered her into this gigantic silo. The staircase spiraled around and around it like the coiled skeleton of a monstrous serpent.
Once, weary, she stopped to rest, perching her bottom on one of the steps and wrapping her arms around her knees. She slept that way for an indeterminate time, her dreams a dissolving and reforming collage of images and associated, dislocated sound, the tatters of a former life. She woke with a start, and a vertiginous look into the spiraling vortex that gaped hungrily for her to fall. She rose unsteadily, resumed climbing.
With no sense of destination, up seemed the only viable direction—up, and up. Her only impulse, her only instinct, for ascension.
She even passed huge stenciled numbers painted in white on the curving wall. 3…4…5…6. It had to be an indication of the level she had reached. Or was it the current circle of Hell?
There were other things painted beside or overlapping these numbers, in red paint. At level 6, there was the quote: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out ofheaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.” Not only that, but the giant number 6 had a slash through it, and over it in red was painted: 666. There were misspellings, besides, as there were in the quote that appeared at level 7 when she reached it: “Upon the wicked he shallrain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.”
The winding staircase terminated at this, the 7th level. Another metal hatchway, and Vee opened it on squealing hinges, stepped over its threshold.
It was another stupendous room, a factory floor, murkily lit; only occasional lights spaced here and there inadequately. Not far from the door were several padded cradle-like chairs, like something astronauts might recline in, with an intricate control panel between them, a few bejeweled lights still twinkling upon it. Bullet holes punctured both chairs and Vee thought she saw ancient blood stains. Beyond the chairs loomed a number of massive steel vats that took up most of the room, but lining one entire wall was a row of vertical glass cylinders. Some of these were broken, shattered by bullets. A few still contained a vile-looking greenish solution, with scum that almost looked like bits of macerated flesh collected at the bottom. She moved down this aisle, and came upon a couple of tubes in which a body floated in the greenish fluid, reminding her of the deformed fetuses carnival sideshows called “pickled punks.” But these had obviously been Demons in the making, looking close to
completed. Dead now, however. They were a little like the insect Demons she had seen in the recorded memory Jay had played for her, but these appeared more like ticks than locusts, bipedal, with pale greenish exoskeletons. Their forelimbs resembled those of a praying mantis, but bladed, and lesser pairs of limbs ended in a variety of surgical-looking implements of torture.
One of the cylinders was punctured by bullets; the fluid had long since all run out, and the insect Demon was slumped at the container’s bottom with half its head shot away. Painted in red words across this cylinder was the quote: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils.”
Having reached the end of the aisle, Vee turned and saw an odd obstacle between this and the next factory chamber beyond.
It was a row of human heads, maybe thirty or so, hanging from the ceiling via long chains affixed to metal rings screwed into the top of their skulls. The dangling chains were like the strands of a beaded curtain demarcating the border between this room and the next—and the heads suspended from the chains were alive. Vee saw eyes blink, mouths move soundlessly for want of vocal cords. But shouldn’t even severed heads regenerate into full bodies again? As Vee warily neared the heads, though, she saw why this hadn’t occurred. The neck stumps had all been capped over with a metal covering, bolted through the flesh into the bone perhaps, that prevented the bodies from regrowing. From Jay’s ongoing tutelage, Vee could tell by the brands on some of the foreheads that these were Damned humans, though by the time of the recording he had shown her the practice of branding the Damned had been forsaken, so the heads that weren’t branded were also members of the Damned as opposed to being Angels like herself.
The heads swayed ever so slightly on their chains, like pendulums, stirred by a faint vented breeze. Vee stepped closer still, and saw the eyes follow her. Some seemed to blink their lids as if to convey a message to her in morse code. Other heads appeared to widen their eyes meaningfully, and a number of them stretched their mouths in silent screams or else mouthed words mutely.
Too late, Vee realized the disembodied heads were trying to warn her.
10: THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE
The crack of a gunshot (from a high angle, to the right),and a projectile whined off the floor a foot ahead of Vee’s feet. A voice amplified as if by a megaphone, also from on high but from another angle, began to call down, “Demon! What are you doing at our bord—”
But Vee didn’t remain inactive to hear the rest of it. As if another, more experienced soul took over at her body’s controls, she swept the Demonic gun up in an arc, letting loose a chattering burst of molded bone bullets in the general direction from which the sniper shot had come. At the same time, she threw herself into a roll, tucking in her head and minimizing the shock to her body by keeping it fast, coming up on her feet and bolting into the chamber beyond the heads. Automatic fire stitched the ground where she had been and tried to follow her, but she found cover behind the imposing column of a steam pipe that skewered up through the floor and sprouted numerous twisting boughs high above before it faded into gloom. Bullets punched into its far side but didn’t penetrate, though Vee heard the hiss of liberated steam. Its billowing vapor helped mask her—but obscured her view of what lay ahead, too.
She glanced behind her to see if any other assailants were sneaking up on her from that direction, and saw one of the suspended heads twirling, everything shot off below the nose but the eyes still unhappily active.
“Demon!” came that electronic-sounding voice again. “You are messing with the wrong fucking Angels!”
“I’m not a Demon, asshole!” she shouted. “And I’m not messing with anyone!”
“The fuck you aren’t, and the fuck you aren’t!”
“We should turn around!” Jay whispered. “They must have a settlement beyond this point!”
“You heard him—they’re Angels. I am, too. They—”
“To your left!” Jay blurted.
It was a good thing his single eye was on his left side; otherwise, the Demonic instrument wouldn’t have seen the stealthy figure darting from behind one mechanical hulk to another. Vee whirled and triggered the gun, sending an automatic stream of bullets that way. She heard them clang and scream off a metallic bulk, not hitting the figure but at least letting them know she was aware of them, and pinning them down so they couldn’t for the moment advance further.
“What are you trying to prove, Demon? You have a chance to get your ass out of here!” that voice drawled again.
“I told you,” she called out, “I’m not a Demon! I’m an Angel, like you!”
“You think we’re stupid, lady? You got a Demon gun and a Demon uniform—though I have to admit you look mighty fine in it, Mrs. Peel!”
“I just took these clothes and this weapon off some dead Demons, damn it! Look at me! Do I look like a Demon to you other than that?”
“They come in all shapes and sizes, sweetheart!”
A boom off to her right, and several large holes popped open in the pipe beside her. A jet of steam scalded her neck, but worse, one of the balls of buckshot had taken off most of her left ear. With a cry more of surprise than pain, Vee dropped into a crouch and fired Jay before the shotgun-wielder could launch another blast. She saw a figure in a white uniform, wearing a goggle-eyed helmet with a perforated snout like a gas mask, start to duck back down behind a droning ventilation box of some kind.
He wasn’t fast enough; the chunks of bone hit him in the face before he could complete the move. One of the goggle eyes was punched in and the top of the helmet split open, as did the skull within it. The exhaust from the ventilation machine sent a poof of misted blood curling gracefully into the air before it dispersed.
The man’s amplified screaming from behind the machine incensed the person who had been calling to her. “So you’re an Angel, huh, bitch?”
Trying to ignore her own blood as it wound down her neck and below her high collar, Vee bellowed hoarsely, “You shot me first, fucker! Okay, if you don’t believe I’m an Angel, I’ll go!”
“Too late for that now, lady—you shot one of our boys!”
“Fuck your good ole boys, you redneck fuck!”
A few moments of silence, apart from the wailing curses of the wounded man, before the voice finally came back again. “If you’re not a Demon, then stay where you are and put your weapon down. We’ll move in and talk to you.”
“Oh yeah, right…and why should I believe you don’t mean me harm now?”
“Because now I think I believe you, lady.”
“Why now?”
“Because a Demon wouldn’t say ‘good ole boys’ and ‘redneck,’ I figure.”
Vee digested that, and thought it was probably a good thing these expressions had come back to her so readily from her forgotten life. Still doubtful, though, she yelled, “You can come, and we can talk, but I don’t feel comfortable putting down my gun, sorry!”
“Too late for that,” said a voice close behind her.
Vee spun and on instinct fired Jay as she did so. Her semicircle of bullets, like the swing of a scythe, knocked down two of the four white-uniformed, helmeted figures that were rushing her. Their torsos were thick with body armor, however, and a half-second later all four were firing their own weapons in unison. Assault rifles sprayed her in zigzags, and a shotgun blast sent her crashing back into the tree-like pipe. She slid down it, ragged and pumping blood from over a dozen holes, her nose caved in and blood flooding down the back of her throat. Jay clattered beside her as her arms went limp.
Before Vee lost consciousness, she tilted her head up groggily to blink at the lead figure as he stood over her.
“You sure were pretty,” he drawled. “Well, you will be again. But for now—” and he extended a handgun, put a bullet into her forehead “—that’s for shooting poor Earl in the head, bitch.”
11: THE HOLDING TANKS
She opened her eyes to see lazy tendrils of blood swirling b
efore her eyes. In the next instant, Vee’s body was in an instinctive panic, her eyes bulging and legs thrashing, even though there was no way she could actually drown.
She floated in some nearly gelatinous solution, contained within a large glass cylinder, the inner surface of which she began to thump with her palms. Through the glass she could see that hers was one in a row of such containers. Most of them appeared empty, but in the cylinder to her immediate left floated what was undoubtedly some species of Demon.
The naked flesh of its body was eggplant purple, its head devoid not only of hair but of any facial features apart from its metallic golden eyes, which stared back at Vee inscrutably. More acclimated to its prison than she, it hung in its fluid calmly, or at least fatalistically, very slowing fanning wings with a translucent patagium stretched across long, finger-like bone struts. The utterly alien entity was both terrifying and beautiful.
Vee broke eye contact to look up at the hinged cover to the tank, and she started beating at this next. As if in response to her efforts, the level of amniotic fluid began to drop, and Vee pressed her face up into the gap that resulted, gulping desperately for air. The level continued dropping, until she could tread water and keep her head and shoulders above the surface. She looked down and saw that a drain in the floor of the cylinder had opened, letting out the thick solution. She also saw that she still wore her rubbery black uniform, her white skin showing through the chains of holes torn in the material by automatic fire, though her flesh itself had since healed, the only evidence remaining of her injuries being her blood threaded through the clear liquid.
Finally, the contents of the tank diminished to the point where she could stand on its floor. As the last of the fluid gurgled down the drain, Vee heard the hatch in the top of the cylinder open and looked up to see two figures poised above her on a catwalk, staring down at her. One carried an assault rifle, and both of them wore white uniforms and white ballistic vests, though they didn’t sport those goggle-eyed helmets. Both men had shaved heads, one of them with a goatee.
The Fall of Hades Page 6