Seven Demons

by Aidan Truhen

  retina not found. system armed.

  Doc says: “O for shit’s sake take the pig away for a second—”

  She sticks a needle in the pig’s ass.

  ROINK!

  proximity unauthorized. system engaged. ten. nine.

  “Doc this door is not a good door. It is a mean door.”

  “Put the pig back please Rex.”

  scanning…scanning…

  accepted.

  The X8 makes a disappointed noise and opens.

  Good door.

  Saul appears out of nowhere and the pig goggles at him like ooooooh magic. The rest of us jump a little because there just wasn’t anyone in that corner there was not. He steps through the door without making any noise and everyone waits for sounds like kung fu in the movies and those sounds do not come.

  Do not come.

  Do not.

  Saul waves us through the door.

  Silence. And you have not heard silence until you have heard it in a vault on a mountain. There is silence here even with the crump crump of fireworks and the yada yada of all the people there is silence here like you cannot get in a town. There is no traffic, no infrastructure, no whisper of humans. Just room tone and something underneath like thunder that is the waterfall in the heart of the mountain going down most of a kilometer into places you do not ever want to see.

  Down down in the deeps down and deeper into the wet black hell.

  There are no guards in the corridor and none in the atrium. Maybe they were all out among the crowd. Maybe they are holed up waiting to ambush us. Maybe something else.

  Maybe something bad.

  Saul does not whisper and he does not really talk it is a special inside voice for commandos he says:

  “Clear no contact.”

  But I can tell he is not real relaxed about that. Because according to Doc’s plan there should be contact. If not now, then soon.

  On to door number two.

  * * *

  —

  Eiger’s fortress is a maze of corridors which double back around U-bend corners and duck under and over one another so that you don’t know where you are or which way you came in but Doc and Charlie have sucked the map right out of the system so they know that there are secret lines drawn on the floor in secret magic ink, apparently it is ultraviolet but that is magic. We follow the lines in and on and in and all the time hearing the thrumming from under us, which is the mountain singing to the deep deep hole in the earth and all the time waiting for soldiers to appear and they don’t and they don’t and that just makes it worse. The pig unlocks doors for us like she’s getting into it now. Rex carries her and sometimes I carry her and then we get to a door and Charlie gives some kind of code response and then we have like a minute to do the scan before the X8 gets pissy and fires shotguns or electricity or whatever and the pig is like oooooooooh shiny red dot oooh and she makes little pig sexy noises and opens the doors.

  One.

  Two.

  Three layers in and now we are at the water room.

  Charlie plugs a thing into the thing and says go and we go into the air lock. I think it is the worst thing I have ever had to do like going into a submarine knowing there is no submarine.

  The pig and I are at one on this. She is not digging the water room.

  The worst part of Doc’s plan is the water room. It’s completely dark and you go into it in this steel bubble thing and you can hear the sound of the thing that is under you churning and thrashing and there is a kind of vertigo that I have never had before that happens when you know there is a current and a stud wall and if you fall through it you will die of crushing.

  It will be fine.

  We get into the air lock and there are suits and they are slightly awesome. Like they are plug-and-play suits. Like you stand on the shoes and fall backward into them and the suit closes over your tummy and then there is a helmet that you put on and blam you are like an action figure.

  The pig we have to kinda improvise. We feed her in and the suit folds up around her and her head is in the helmet. Moving in the suit in air is like lifting weights it is hard. The pig does not approve of this situation she feels constrained and unpig and she does not like that so she craps in the suit. The suit tells Charlie the pig has crapped in it. The suit evidently does not like the pig so now no one is happy.

  This is hilarious so I laugh.

  Inside my suit laughing sounds like a horror movie. It is loud and close and nervous.

  I do not laugh inside my suit anymore.

  I turn on the comms channel and say: “Online.”

  Everyone else says online too so Charlie tags the machine and the water starts to pour in.

  Over.

  My.

  Head.

  For some reason the protocol at this point means that all the lights go out in the air lock. Now I am in the dark in a prison suit with a million tons of mountain over my head and a bajillion tons of water going down down to the black hell and it is dark and—

  Charlie says: “Lights.”

  And the suits all have lights on them and they come on so now we are in a tiny room filling up with ice water robbing a bank and we have no guns because it is water. I mean Saul obviously has a water bag for guns to go in but they will not work until we are dry again.

  Doc says: “Excellent.”

  I love her so much right now. Of course it is excellent. Everything is going perfectly. We are in the belly of the beast and that is where we belong. We did everything to get here this is the thing we are IN THE MOUNTAIN hallelujah.

  The pig gets her snout on the chin switch and starts to scream and our comms are just all screaming pig.

  EEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEEeeee…

  The door opens into the water room and Charlie touches the door panel.

  “Magnetic system is off,” Charlie says.

  (EEEeeeeeEEEeeeeeEEEEEEAAAAA)

  I lift my foot and it takes a long, long time and then I am almost falling forward because it is so heavy.

  “SHIT—”

  TLUNK CLUTTER TBONKLE

  Strong hands on my arm—Saul and Charlie. She touches her faceplate against mine.

  “You okay there boss?”

  “I have never moonwalked before.”

  “Yeah it is not moonwalking it’s like giant walking you got to think like you’re a huge badly rheumatic elephant.”

  “And you know this because—”

  “Because video games boss, virtual life is real life now.”

  “…”

  “Yeah okay Saul told me. Come on boss let’s go.”

  So we walk out into the water room.

  We are halfway across when the water starts to move.

  The water room is like the size of a tennis court and it has rough-cut walls and a simple screed floor and lines that fluoresce in the suit lights to show you the way. You walk and you walk and you get to the other side.

  We get halfway across when the water starts to move like to flow like a current like an undertow like a ghost in a movie is clawing at you clawing pulling grasping and getting stronger the more you are afraid.

  In the water room there is no current because the stiff metal grilles at either end have basically only pinprick-size holes in but now that is changing. The grilles are opening.

  Eiger’s fucking mountain has a fucking sneaky fail-safe trap we did not find if you do not do something dance the fucking fandango tra la la la la then after the magnetic system is switched off the grilles come down and purge the room, which means us.

  Us going down into the hole.

  Everyone starts to move really fast. Like really really fast. But also really slowly because we are in huge moon suits weighing tons and the water is flowing across and if you fall you are going. Down. Dow
n down.

  Down.

  Into the hole.

  It is open behind me.

  The darkest mouth I have ever seen.

  I walk like heave stomp heave stomp like push push push and I am sweating inside the suit and I do not look to see who else is walking I do not look to make sure anyone else is walking at all perhaps they have all fallen and they are already gone.

  If you slip if you fall you are going—

  I am going—

  Any of us is going down.

  Into the hole.

  Heave stomp heave stomp head down push. Push as hard as you can. Push or die is what.

  I walk and I remember that I dreamed that the Demons would bury me in the ground and water would come up over my head and here I am I am a little bit psychic.

  There’s not enough air now in the suit. Or rather there is but it doesn’t feel like there is because I am running against the flow of water that wants to wash me over on the left side and take me down the hole.

  Silence and rushing water and the sound of the deep down there and the clank of my own feet on the screed and the sound of my own breathing.

  One foot in front of the other. One foot—

  Something hits me hard in the side. I am moving forwards so it bounces off and goes round me but I skid—I actually skid on the screed—and I realize it is a suit. A suit which has come unstuck and now is flying or I guess rolling towards the—

  A suit which rolls past me picking up speed and—

  Fuck I hope that is the pig.

  Of course it’s the pig the pig is an asshole there is no way it can do this no way anyone could hold on to it in this current and obviously that presents difficulties but one problem at a time so sure it’s the pig and that’s bad but—

  God let it be the—

  I almost turn and if I turn I’m going to slip and then you know it won’t really matter to me anymore whether it’s the pig or not because it will also be me so I—

  Don’t look—

  Just walk on. No point anyway you can’t help. No time. If you go back the grilles will open completely and you will die.

  I wonder if it’s Doc. Or Saul that would be ironic that guy is super good at all the physical things.

  I don’t think about it.

  I hear the tumbling suit scrape along the ground toward the grille and then I hear it reach the opening and stick and I do not look round.

  The sound of the water is really loud so the suit must have been really heavy or maybe someone was trying to grip onto the floor.

  Heave stomp heave stomp.

  Heave stomp heave.

  Stomp.

  Stomp.

  Stomp.

  I am at the far door and it is open onto the air lock and I step through and I look round.

  I see the suit hanging there on the edge of the drop and I see Charlie working at the console to close the grille and I see the grille start to move and I hear the sound of the suit scratching its way past the closing grille and I can actually watch it just—just—

  —vanish—

  and then I look back into the air lock and there are six suits and one of them one of them is on all fours on the floor and I know if I look though the faceplate and I see the pig that means someone someone one of my people—

  I look through the faceplate and see Doc’s face very pale but she is not a pig.

  The door shuts.

  Charlie cycles the air lock and we shed the suits.

  Doc.

  Charlie.

  Saul.

  Lucille.

  Me.

  And the pig.

  One two three four five.

  Once I caught a pig alive.

  Six seven eight nine ten no there were only fiiiive then.

  One two three four five.

  One two three four five.

  And a—

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  FUCK.

  Again and again but it doesn’t matter how many times I count.

  One of us is still the pig.

  * * *

  —

  Rex’s mother lives in a place called Gullit I do not know why it is called that. She is not that old because she had Rex and Billy real young and in fact likely someone oughta be in jail over that. She has a nice car and a big house in Gullit and her boys are the light of her life or they were right up until Fred killed Billy for no good reason at all and now Rex is gone too and the common factor in these events is me.

  People make choices you cannot stop them and you cannot take responsibility for those choices but likewise you got to recognize where your own momentum pushes someone along a new track and that is a thing that I do.

  Rex was here because of me and now Rex is not here anymore.

  Please do not get the idea that Rex will climb back out of the pit at a salient moment and save the day that happens in films sure but right now Rex has gone somewhere there is no coming back from. When you fuck up in the mountains there are not second chances and that goes double for water under the mountains just—

  But we still have the pig so we can open the door and get to the vault section.

  SCANNING—

  Click.

  The X8 swings back.

  We’re through.

  We’re alive.

  And we’re going to win this fucker.

  There is a noise like really slow popcorn.

  Hans Eiger is standing in the room beyond.

  He is clapping.

  * * *

  —

  It’s a big room on two levels like an aircraft hangar and Eiger is on a kind of gantry in front of what can only be the final door. He has his guys around the place: lots of men in suits with him and they have many guns. You do not need many guns in this situation but they have them anyway. Eiger and his guys and some extras who are obviously G-Wagen men and yes, a little Sound of Music–looking motherfucker standing on a chair behind Eiger so he can get a decent view.

  Clap clap clap.

  Eiger is really loving this it matters to him. It is his win that he has always wanted. He has been tested and he has been found worthy by the bank robbery gods. He has beaten the Seven Demons.

  Clap clap clap.

  I wait for him to make a speech but he just keeps clapping until it is way past ironic or mocking he’s just clapping like he does not know how to stop.

  Clap clap clap.

  Now everyone is looking at Eiger to see if he’s okay and he is. He’s fine. He’s just—he’s having too much fun now to stop. This is just the best moment of his adult life.

  He beat us.

  Legit.

  Fair and square.

  We beat his security system and we got into his head and onto his mountain but all the same, here, at the line, he won.

  Fair and square.

  Clap clap clap.

  One of the G-Wagen guys says something fast in French: “You want us to kill them now?”

  There is a version of this moment where we dialogue as dueling bad guys should and Eiger is totally up for that. I can see him shaping up to it like moohoohaha like so:

  “I have raised the canton against you Mr. Price. You have done well to get this far into Die Festung and I am quite honestly impressed, but here it ends. Even if you should overcome these men, which you will not, you cannot escape. Your exit would be a running gun battle from here to—”

  And Doc could maybe tell him she is wearing a phial of modified respiratory transmission hantavirus or I could say something about something but—

  But none of that happens because Hans Eiger has crossed a line. Volodya told me that Swissness was a thing but I did not get it until I c
ame here. You cannot get it from outside. Now I do and the thing is that sometimes it’s easier to see the landscape when you don’t have a house there. Hans Eiger does not realize it because as far as he is concerned people like him are the fountain, or wellspring, his national identity, but Swissness is a way of being, not something you just are. He has crossed a line in the Swiss. He brought anti-social Nazis into the federal capital and in the end—despite all this country’s bad moments and sometimes regrettable choices, which let us be honest it shares with every other country in the world—there is nothing anywhere that is more fundamentally un-Swiss than a fucking Nazi. If you’re going to Nazi about the place in a serious way, well, you may as well get your chicken out and fuck it right there on the Junkerngasse.

  Eiger stops clapping and looks at us like he’s fixing this moment in his head forever.

  He says: “Ja.”

  Or he tries to.

  But he can’t because a wide, fat metal blade has just gone into the space between two of the vertebrae in his neck and severed his spine.

  Eiger folds downward, taking the oyster knife with him. Behind him in the silence Evil Hansel looks pale and tiny.

  Doc says:

  “Price, you total fuck.”

  I say:

  “The Demons have a new client Doc.”

  The sound of the first gunshot is really loud.

  * * *

  —

  In a very real sense Hans Eiger was killed in 1976 by a guy called Joe Johnston. His boss came and asked him to design the thing that ultimately did the job and gave him four weeks and he sweated blood and got it done and finally it just dropped in my lap and I sent it where it was meant to go. That is one way of looking at it.

  The other is that once upon a time there was a little kid whose grandfather was secretly an evil wizard. The little kid was totally in love with his grandfather and he wanted to be an evil wizard too when he grew up. He spent his young life copying his grandfather in every way he possibly could and developing his evil wizard powers so that one day he would be able to just become that old guy. Completely become him.

  But a bunch of things happened along the way as things will do. The first thing that happened was that the kid became enamored of a sort of a romantic idea in a movie that he saw and when he compared that movie with the real world he came to certain conclusions about who was cool and who was not and Nazis very specifically were not. Furthermore the old man taught him to be Swiss, and while Switzerland is a long way from perfect and the banking community didn’t one hundred percent or indeed really even fifty percent cover itself in glory in the twentieth century, in terms of right now this moment today there is very little that is less Swiss than a Nazi. Among many other flaws and failings such as being Nazis generally, Nazis are exactly the kinds of people who will fuck a chicken in public. And that is what Hans Eiger did when he started a gun fight in the capital of his own country for financial reasons. And when I called Evil Hansel a Nazi, the little psycho experienced what I guess is an epiphany or whatever that is one of those things kids go through.