“Of course,” he said. “You loved Bora steak as much as anybody. I don’t know if I’d have shown you, otherwise.”
14: THE WIVES
“Danielle? Miranda?” Tim called out as he let himself into his own metal box, Vee on his heels, “I’ve got a very special guest with me!”
Danielle was the first to appear, from what had to be a kitchen, her sleeves rolled up and a damp apron around her waist. She was young and pretty, though her hair was in frizzy disarray, her eyes in dark pouches and the line of her mouth hard. She blinked at Vee without emotion.
“Danielle, this is Rebecca Phelps—daughter of the missing general, Pastor Karl Phelps!” He gave her a much-abbreviated rundown on Vee’s having by great fortune blundered into their midst. “She and I were engaged, honey, remember I told you that?” At last he turned to Vee.
“Rebecca, this is my wife Danielle. She was a Damned who was gathered up in one of our pussy posses—excuse the expression.” He gave an apologetic shrug and a boyishly mischievous smile. “We didn’t have enough women in our own ranks; so many wives and girlfriends stayed behind in Heaven, you know. So anyway, Danielle was reformed—she used to be a prostitute—and accepted Christ as her Savior. And me as her husband.”
He winked at Danielle and chuckled, but then made his face serious again.
“Of course, all of this was long, long after your disappearance, Rebecca, believe me.”
“Congratulations,” Vee said to the woman.
“Yeah,” Danielle said, her empty demeanor unchanging.
“So, where is my little pet Miranda?” Tim asked.
“Napping,” Danielle said.
“Well, I’m afraid nap time is over.” Tim gestured for Vee to follow him into a dark bedroom just off the central living room. “Hey, cutie, you hiding in here?”
He switched on a light consisting of a bulb inside what appeared to be a shade stitched from human skin. A small nude girl curled in a nest of blankets lifted her head groggily, long black hair hanging in tangles about her face. She was brown-skinned, with pointed bumps for breasts, her full-lipped face sullenly beautiful.
“We baptized her with the name Miranda,” Tim explained, ruffling her hair. “Huh, sleepy head.”
“You two adopted her as your child?”
“Child? No—Miranda’s my other wife. Isn’t she gorgeous? Right out of a Gauguin painting, huh? I mean, wrong part of the world, but she could be, huh?”
“She looks all of fourteen, Tim.”
He turned to Vee and said, “Well, Rebecca, she died thousands of years ago, right? So she’s a pretty old soul if you look at it that way, isn’t she?” Studying the black pools of the Bora girl’s large, heavy-lidded eyes again, Vee could at least agree that she did look like an ancient soul.
“So…we can eat some of the infernal plant life we grow in our hydroponics facilities, if you want to go vegan tonight, Rebecca. Like I say, please don’t be squeamish about the other. We only eat cannibals, right?”
He laughed, nudged her. “Well, the Bora aren’t really cannibals, but the Aztecs were, I guess. Myself, I can only bring myself to eat meat from the females. Funny, huh? Somehow it just seems, I don’t know, gay to me to eat the males.”
Lord forbid, gay, Vee thought—though she had a suspicion that her former fiancé might even find eating female flesh to be an erotic experience. She said, “If you can convert Miranda, why not all of them?”
“A lot of these pagan folk refuse to accept Christ. Then again, I’m sure it’s hard for them to grasp it all due to the language barrier. I’ve worked hard to teach Miranda English, but she’s shy, aren’t you, baby?”
He blew her a kiss. “Anyway, salad for you tonight, right? And I’ll have Danielle fix up the sofa for you until I can convert my little office back there into another bedroom. I made sure Danielle and Miranda had separate bedrooms, so they could have their own space—not that we don’t all cuddle together some nights.”
Vee stepped out of the bedroom, feeling suffocated by its humid aroma of sex. “Ah, thanks for your hospitality, Tim, but I was under the impression that my own apartment was going to be provided for me.”
His face fell. “Well, yeah, that could be done if you wanted. But until then…”
“We’ll see what Roper says. When was he going to have me meet this leader of yours?”
“I’m not sure if that’s going to happen today. It’ll be night, soon. Of course, there is no night or day in Hell, really, but we divide it up that way for our benefit anyway, to make things feel more like home. We dim the sidewalk lights at night, and everybody rests, spends time with their families—you know. Come on, anyway, you have to eat something.” Tim turned to call out, “Danielle! Get some supper going, okay? No meat!”
Miranda appeared from her bedroom, apparently to help with the meal, and Tim gave her a swat on her bare bottom. “That’s right, you run along and help before I give you another spanking, lazybones!”
15: THE CHURCH MACHINE
Roper himself escorted Vee the next morning (that is, morning as portioned out in this city), after she had ended up giving in and spending the night at Tim’s apartment after all, lying on his couch and listening to his muffled grunts and sighs from Miranda’s room. The girl herself had remained stoically silent.
“If I’m going to stay in L.A.,” Vee told Roper as they made their way to the colossal, imposing-looking machine in which Pastor Jacob Johnston had made his offices and living space, “I’m going to need a place of my own—soon.”
The security commander had a handgun strapped to his side, another on his belt, and signs of rank on his white uniform that made him stand out somewhat in the white-garbed crowds. As when she had walked with Tim, Vee in her unconventional attire received many strange looks, though a lot of men appeared to be sizing her up. Fresh meat, she thought.
“If you stay in L.A.?” he said, turning his head. “And why wouldn’t you stay here? You got a better place to go?”
“I didn’t say that,” Vee said, keeping her eyes ahead.
After a few minutes more of walking, Roper said, “You know, I didn’t recognize you at first, but I remember you now…shit, it’s been so long. I never talked with you before, but I saw you a lot from a distance beside your dad. I was just a captain in one of Pastor Johnston’s regiments back then. I was in the Marines in life,” he explained with some pride. “Fucking car bomb, Haqlaniyah, Iraq.”
“So you rose up in rank, huh?” Vee asked without interest.
“Well, see, after we set up our base here on level 7 we gradually restructured ourselves into less of a military force and more of a colony—we, being the two divisions led by your father and Pastor Johnston.
Anyway, later on smaller Angel units found their way to level 7 to expand our numbers and fortify our position. Over time, we claimed and opened up level 8, too. That’s a lot of border to keep secure, and then there’s the militia to keep on its toes. So, yeah, our colony needed a commander of security, and we went through a number of them until those guys got burnt out on it and retired. Then Johnston gave it to me, even over some of the higher ranking officers in the colony. There were some hard feelings, but then again like I say a lot of these guys just wanted to mellow out and settle down after a time, too. This was back when the Pastor had more confidence in me. Or anyway, when I had more confidence in him.”
Vee looked at the man’s profile and from the set of his goateed jaw had the sense that he had said a little more than he had intended. She didn’t pursue it, but he did say as sort of an afterthought, “Your father was— is—a great man, lady, a true man of God who would never compromise his beliefs, and I’m personally going to lead the expedition to free him.”
“So there’s going to be an expedition to free him.”
He looked at her. “Hell yeah, there is. You think we’re going to just leave him there? You’re going to show us where he is, of course.”
“Of course…yeah. Of course
.”
At last they reached the mammoth machine, and outside its entrance were posted four guards, two to a side, standing as still and unblinking as statues. Besides carrying terrestrial-patterned assault rifles, the white-robed guards each had a sword with a long straight blade sheathed on their belts. But what was remarkable about them was their identical appearance: androgynous, with white-blond hair and eyes even more vividly blue than Vee’s. Their flesh was so eerily white it faintly glowed. It was obvious they weren’t human beings.
When Vee and Roper had passed inside uncontested, she stopped to look back at the things through the threshold. “What?” Roper said. “You don’t remember Celestials, either?”
“I remember Jay…um, my Demon gun said something about them.”
“They’re beings that were created to serve us Angels in Heaven, but they’re the equivalent of Demons in that they don’t have souls. Therefore, they’re not immortal. Gazillions of them were sent into Hades to fight in the Great Conflict, and they can fight like a bastard, but the ones that made it into Taratarus haven’t fared well over time because like I say, they can be killed, and they were at a disadvantage here in the devils’ play-ground even though the Demons can be killed, too. So their numbers have decreased a lot over time. Still, we got a barracks of them here, and Johnston uses them as his personal bodyguard. They’re pretty much just robots, so I guess he likes that they never question his policies.”
Once again Vee had the impression that Roper was betraying some personal bitterness, but he left it at that and led her further into the machine.
Vee soon realized its ground floor served as a place of worship.
Before following her guide to the stairs that would take them up to the colony’s administrative offices—Johnston’s in particular—she glanced into a great chamber in which long metal benches had been bolted to the floor as pews, the walls and high ceiling still bulky with servos, pistons, hydraulic and pneumatic mechanisms. A huge cross, sans body, formed of two riveted girders hung suspended from chains above the altar. Vee didn’t want to guess at the source of the many burning candles, but couldn’t help but suspect human tallow.
Two more Celestials flanked the Pastor’s office door. They stared straight ahead as if they didn’t even see Roper, but he gave them a polite nod before knocking on the gleaming metal door.
A voice on the other side invited them to enter.
16: THE PASTOR
Pastor Jacob Johnston rose from behind a desk of black iron, on which perched a baroque computer resting on little wheels, that he had pushed out of his way for the time being. As opposed to so many of his male citizens, Johnston had a full head of hair, neatly cut and brushed back from a broad forehead, as white as his grin of strong teeth.
He spread his arms, and in his white smock with its cowl hanging down his back he looked like he was encompassing his flock for a sermon, but Vee realized he meant to embrace her. She decided it was best not to resist the gesture. Fortunately, it was a brief one. Holding her away from him by the elbows, in a resonant voice the Pastor said, “Oh Rebecca, tell me it’s not true you don’t remember who I am.”
“They tell me you were friends with my father,” she said blandly.
Johnston shook his head sadly, let go of her arms and said to Roper,
“Thank you, Charles; if you would wait outside.”
Vee looked back at her escort, and had the impression that he was unhappy about being so dismissed. Roper left Johnston’s office with a brief glance at the only other person present in the room—a tall man with bright red hair styled like Johnston’s, with the same broad forehead but a decidedly more solemn expression. This man wore a gun on the belt that cinched his cloak. With the door now closed behind Roper, Johnston gestured to the red-haired man and said, “You must not remember my son Fred, then.”
“Sorry, no. Nice to meet you, Fred.”
Fred only nodded, and remained standing by one wall as Johnston reseated himself.
“Fred commands my personal unit of Celestial bodyguards,” Johnston explained. “Please.” He indicated for her to take a seat opposite his desk, which she did. “Something to drink? Are you hungry?”
“Not hungry, thanks. I’m fine.”
The Pastor knotted his hands atop his desk as if to offer an opening prayer. “Rebecca, Rebecca,” he sighed. He took her in—the limp hair framing her pallid face, those intense blue eyes—and said, “I hate to say it, but you look like you’ve been through Hell.”
“Hardy-har,” she said.
“Sorry, I know that your reception here was less than pleasant, and I know indignity is harder to forget than pain, but I hope you’ll forgive Charles and his men. There are many, many hostile people out there we must keep at bay.”
“I understand.”
Johnston’s creased smile deepened. “You may have forgotten much, Rebecca, but it looks to me like you’re the same scrappy girl I remember.
I’m told you gave Charles quite a fight. You were pretty formidable in your father’s army, I’ll tell you that. A lot of us called you the ‘Demon Hunter.’ When we were still settling in here on level 7, you and your father either separately or together would lead excursions into the levels above and below, to hunt and exterminate as many Demons as you could, to make our position more secure. You don’t recall any of that?”
“No.”
Finally the man’s smile receded as his face’s creases shifted to his brow in concern. “And how do you account for your memory loss?”
“I don’t know,” she said in her subdued tone. “Too much time alone with myself? Too much self-disgust?”
“Self-disgust? Why would you be disgusted with yourself.?”
“Well, logic dictates that I should keep my opinions to myself, but I have to admit I’m not thrilled with a lot of what I’m seeing around here in your town.”
“Such as?”
“Pussy posses?”
Johnston’s smile returned faintly. “And who called them that?”
“My ex, Tim Wade.”
“Ah. Well, an unfortunate expression to describe a very serious and important endeavor to find the men of our colony mates, and to redeem Damned souls. Forgive Tim—he remembers you as you were, a young woman with a spark in her eyes, a sense of fun, who might not have objected to some of the things that bother you in your state of forgetfulness. So what else here troubles you?”
“Your livestock. Living in their pens like that. How many times have those same individuals been eaten, again and again? I wonder if Tim ate his wife Miranda a couple hundred times before he married her.”
“You’re not jealous, are you?” Johnston teased.
Vee made an ugly sound, something like a laugh. “Hardly.”
“Well, yes, our meat source…”
“Does it make it easier to eat them if they’re primitive? Or did I miss the cage of atheists?”
Johnston sighed and leaned forward over his hands. “Rebecca, let me tell you a few things about myself. When I volunteered to lead my own division of Angelic troops into Hades, to help battle the rebellious Demons and Damned, I had a furnace for righteous bloodshed burning in my guts. But our situation, being trapped here, required a redirection of our energies; made us have to slow down, take deep breaths, and look to creating as comfortable a future for ourselves as we could manage here—in the hopes that someday, somehow, our Creator will liberate us from this trial. The long years—and God only knows how many they’ve truly been, but we estimate over two thousand—have not, can not age me, of course, and yet I feel I have evolved with time, grown wiser. There are always going to be critics in any society, large or small, and my critics have interpreted this as becoming too mellow, too weak…”
Johnston was interrupted by an odd event. There were massive clock-work gears set into the walls of his office, and suddenly these began to turn. A green fluid that looked to Vee like antifreeze gushed through a thick, transparent plastic pipe that ran across the
ceiling. Then, the building reverberated with a deep gong that sent vibrations through Vee’s body. Another gong followed, and another…
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Is it noon already?” Johnston said. “We made the church into one big cuckoo clock—our attempt to keep track of the time, or at least to organize our days. And as I say, there are those who would call me the cuckoo who lives in it. You see, as time went on here in Los Angeles and our men pined for their women, we saw the advent of homosexuality, and I realized we were living like prisoners, becoming perverted and dispirited. That was when I decided to allow the Damned to be pardoned and converted through baptism into our church, and many men took Damned for their wives. It was a great boost to morale, and our city flourished as a result. But there were still many who rejected this idea and saw it as a dangerous compromise. They refuse to take the Damned for their wives, or accept them as converted, their position being that the Creator Damned them and thus they are irredeemable. But am I not a man of God; does He not act through me?”
The gong sound had stopped, as had the movement of the gears, though Vee still felt the echoes of the vibrations in her chest. She had indeed counted twelve of them. She continued to listen patiently to the Pastor as if he were counseling a troubled soul.
“Despite my reforms, for countless years I resisted the temptation to take a Damned wife myself, because my dear wife Abigail was left behind waiting for me in Heaven. But…finally I did so, not all that long ago. And I tell you, Rebecca, it was like I entered a whole new phase of my evolution; I felt my soul soar to a place it hadn’t been for a long, long time. My Elizabeth is a wonderful, compassionate soul, despite the misdirection that caused her damnation, and she has taught me to be a more compassionate soul, as well. I have been trying to open up my parish to more new ideas, to take us out of stagnation into a more enlightened future of greater opportunities. Which takes us back to your question about our eating habits.”
The Fall of Hades Page 8