“Dimitri, to the shell. Come on.”
“Grace is hurt.”
“She'll heal. Let's go!”
We took her under her arms and ran to the dead Tank shell. I had no idea if we would be able to lift it, move it, or get under it. If not, we were exposed and dead. A third, and not too bright, Pragon attacked with mouth wide open. Cappy and I each got a fireball in, and the thing exploded in the air.
Grace told Dimitri not to fuss, and we all grabbed the thick edge of the shell. To my great relief it came up easily and we slipped underneath. We gasped for breath at the trapped heat. At least we were out of sight.
The shell was built like a boat with three inch ribs every foot and several cross pieces, like thwarts in a canoe.
The shell had some small holes in it, enough to see what happened outside. Five or six Pragons swarmed up high. Sporadically, one dropped in a steep dive and skimmed the sand before climbing back to the others. Soldiers milled around the guardhouse cave, keeping an eye on the agitated Pragons. Soldiers also peered from the parapets of the fort.
Grace allowed Dimitri to tend to her arm. She endured the pain, there was nothing to do about that. That's why souls were in Hell, for the pain. It would go away eventually, and the almost severed arm would heal.
Cappy was not cheerful.
“If we can't move this thing, we're trapped, you know.”
“We can move it,” I assured him.
“What makes you think it will float?”
“The thickness around the edge is hollow. It's flotation.”
“How did you know that from the guardhouse?”
I shrugged and said, “It looked like it might be.”
“Jesus, we're trapped out here because of a hunch?”
“Call it intuition. You know about that, don't you? None of us would have survived this long without it.”
“Yeah, you got that right,” Cappy replied, shooting a glance at Dimitri. “If I'd listened to mine I wouldn't be here now.”
“I've heard that before,” I said. “How'd they take you guys, anyway?”
“You want the long version or the short?”
I looked out a hole and saw the guards getting organized.
“Better make it the short short version.”
“I came on these two in 163. They were with a couple minor KKC guards. The thought it might be a trap crossed my mind, but they were coming up on the Nexus and Dimitri's helped me out a couple times so I couldn't let him go in. I had the feeling something was watching me, too. Anyway, I ignored that and confronted the dim-bulb guards. They had a little hogdog with them for Christ's sake. I ignored that, too, until it ran behind me and turned into a trained Morph Ape. The two guards weren't so dim either, and neither was the squad that appeared from the bushes.”
“Mephisto's recruitment troops,” Dimitri said. “They trapped me, too.” He avoided the other man's eyes when he said, “I owe you, Cappy, for what you did and what happened after.”
“You're damn right you do,” Cappy said, smiling.
Cappy knew the code—you help a fellow Hell Cop and don't blame him for the consequences.
I stood up in the center of the shell.
“If we're going to do this, we'd better do it now. The natives are getting restless.”
We took our places: me at the forward crossbar, Cappy and Brittany at the middle one, and Dimitri and Grace shared the last one. On the first try the shell creaked but didn't move. My stomach clenched, and I had a quick vision of being surrounded by the advancing soldiers with no hope of escape.
The next try, the shell broke free, and we easily dragged it to the river's edge.
The front of the shell dipped into the dark river.
“Ewww, gross,” Brittany said.
Cappy said, “Just what I was dreaming about on the Rack, a steaming swim in the River of Blood.”
“Just ignore it,” I offered, willing my stomach to follow my own advice. The air inside the shell was so thick with the fetid stink of blood I had to breathe slowly through my mouth. At that point, I just wanted to keep my head above the surface.
The shell floated. Quietly, we hung onto our crosspieces and let the current carry us away from Fort Blood.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Heat, fatigue, and blood fumes induced a lethargy in us that was hard to fight. I helped Grace tie Dimitri to their crosspiece. Grace moved to the opposite side while I finished securing Dimitri beside a hole that let in relatively fresh air. Brittany hung with her, their heads together, murmuring girl talk.
Dimitri could barely hold his pale face out of the blood. Even so, he smiled at me.
“Thanks for rescuing us, Getter,” he said. “It's my fault. Fell for Grace ... like a ton of Dinocat droppings. Not paying attention.”
I wiped blood from his mouth.
“Save your strength,” I told him. “I don't want you to die before I finish.”
“S'okay. Be with Grace.”
“Man, what happened to you?” I said, mostly to myself. “I'm going to have to have a talk with Cupid. Stop him from sneaking down here.”
He smiled and shook his head. I turned to leave him. He called me back.
“Hey, found something for you. Something good ... for you.” He lifted a blood drenched hand to indicate Grace. “She's got it.”
Before I got over to Grace, Cappy, who'd tied himself to his support piece with the upper half of his coverall, called out.
“Hey, Grace, what'd you find in that tunnel? I bet it was a hip little bar by a waterfall and a cool pool with some Island music in the background. Yea, Mon. There was probably a sea breeze and beautiful waitresses serving big, colorful drinks with lots of crushed ice. Yeah, I bet that's what you found. And a big buffet table with sweating silver bowls packed with ice and fruit, and fresh baked bread and chilled crab salad and cold plates to put it all on. Was that in there, too?”
We all took a few minutes to savor Cappy's fantasy. I had a good idea where my next vacation would be.
Grace said, “I didn't get that far, Cappy. It was probably around the next corner.”
“Must have been. What did you find, then?”
“Basically, what you saw up front is what I saw in back. It's smooth as a baby's butt. There's no place, side to side, up or down to hide when that Tank comes in. The end is the same shape as this shell. It's squash-city if you get caught in there.”
“Not much of a life, is it? Go out, eat empty bodies, and then park it.”
“Existence is its own reward, I guess,” I said.
“I think this one we're in got the best deal,” Cappy decided.
“So, you told us the basics, what else did you find?” I asked. Blood covered her up to her lower lip and spatters freckled her face. Her skin was so translucent that up close the freckles might have floated a quarter inch above her flesh. Her pale eyes looked at me with a humorous sparkle. I was liking Grace more and more. She'd have made a good Hell Cop.
“At the very end about five feet off the floor where the ceiling sloped down we found a small hole in the rock just big enough for Brit to crawl through. And don't give me that how-could-you-let-my-little-baby-do-that look.”
“There was a space behind it,” Brittany added. “I don't know if there was room for everybody.”
“So we could have hid in the tunnel, instead of being chin deep in blood,” Cappy complained.
“You and one or two others,” Grace said back. “Somebody would have had to get squooshed.”
Cappy acknowledged the truth of what she said with a curled lip.
“One other thing,” Grace said. “Brit thought she saw a ledge that might have been part of a passage into the rock. That's a big maybe.”
What could you say to that? We settled in to wait for the most gruesome part of the trip. Bones began to thump against the shell and float to the surface inside. Through the holes I saw the River of Flesh about two hundred yards ahead. The idea of empty bodies floating next me was not appeali
ng. However, soon after the three rivers merged, the resulting River of Souls flowed into a narrow canyon with numerous side canyons. These branches dead ended and that's where the reconstituted souls emerged. They were confronted with three caves, one of which they had to go into to resume their torment and suffering. There was no way to know where the caves came out. That's where we were headed.
The Pragons were gone from the part of the sky I could see, and the soldiers were busy inspecting the caves. I allowed myself to hope that we might escape without any more theatrics. Hell was getting a lot more complicated than I liked. I'd made too many new enemies, admittedly balanced by some new friends, than I felt comfortable with. Every new demon walking around with me on its shit list made it that much harder to retrieve souls without a ruckus.
A shadow passing over the shell interrupted my ideas on how to make Cappy's fantasy come true.
“What was that?” Cappy asked.
Shadows are hard to come by when the light comes from all directions at once. The sinking feeling in my gut sank deeper when something big landed on top of the shell. Pragon! The sudden weight pushed the shell a foot lower into the blood, dunking us all. The beast stomped to one end and began tearing at the shell with its claws.
“Dimitri!” Grace cried.
Tied to the crosspiece, he was submerged under the blood level. His arm waved stiffly above the surface. The three of us lunged to him. Cappy managed to hold Dimitri's face above the blood while I cut him loose.
The Pragon peered through the hole it ripped open, its low growl like ten lions purring into a megaphone. Cappy replied by firing his flamegun. The pissed-off Pragon ducked and shrieked and tore at the shell. We retreated to the far end. The Pragon followed, shafts of light tracking us like lasers as its claws perforated the shell. Helpless, we watched as tooth and claw ripped a new hole. Periodically, Cappy or I shot a fireball. It only annoyed the Pragon more. It was smart enough not to open its mouth too wide.
“Anybody have any ideas?” I asked as the ugly square head poked through, close enough that I felt its foul breath on my blood-coated face. “I think these things can swim.”
“Oh shit, get that thing away from me,” Cappy said.
A flaccid sac of flesh floated next to him, its blind eyes staring and its open mouth silently screaming.
“Damn, Getter, why'd you have to bring us here? I hate this.”
Nobody else wanted to touch it, so he pushed it back under the blood with the end of the flammer.
I drew my knife.
“The flammers don't get it,” I told the others. “Maybe I can blind him, and he'll forget us.”
“You sure you don't have any more shells for your gun?” Cappy asked, pushing away another empty body.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Grace, show him,” Dimitri croaked.
She pushed up on my pack so the top rose above the blood and reached inside.
“I was going to tell you before,” Grace said. “We found it looking for food at the guardhouse. Got it.”
Over my shoulder she held out an intact shell filled with Hellshot. I hung my elbows over the crossmember while I drew my gun from its holster. As I took the blood-slick shell from Grace, the angry Pragon jumped through the hole it had made. The Tank shell, relieved of the extra weight, jerked up. I fumbled the gunshell and dropped it. In a wild grasp Brittany caught it six inches under the surface.
I hung by one elbow. Blood splashed over me. The Pragon screeched a few feet away. The blood blinded me. By feel, I loaded the gun and snapped the cylinder closed. Something grabbed my leg. I jumped. Only an empty body rising to the surface.
The Pragon foundered in the blood. Simultaneously, I wiped blood from one eye with my shoulder and the Pragon spread its wings and used them to lunge at me—mouth open. My right arm, holding the gun, disappeared between its jaws. I jerked the trigger. The Pragon's head flew backward. Its teeth raked my flesh, leaving ragged red furrows.
Once, as a real cop, I saw what happens when a man puts a shotgun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. When the Pragon reared back, spun, and sank beneath the river's surface, the back of its head looked the same as that man's—a hollowed out bowl with a few stringy threads of flesh around the edges and chunks of gray matter stuck to the bottom.
The shell drifted on into the main cliff-walled canyon and eventually floated into one of the small dead end branches. Bodies and bones were thick around us. Cappy, the tallest, felt the bottom first. He pushed the shell forward till it grounded on a narrow blood-sand beach. He and Grace lifted it while Dimitri helped Brittany help me onto the beach.
After a few minutes of lying with my head down I felt better. Grace trickled water from my pack onto my upper arm. No new blood leaked through. Ever handy, she wrapped a torn and bloody T-shirt around the three rough gouges left by the Pragon's teeth. We moved up to a corner by the three cave mouths and collapsed on bright rust colored sand. It was a losing battle trying to get the blood off our faces. Brittany and Grace tried.
When my head stopped swimming and I could sit up without vomiting, I wiped off my Find. It told me only that I was still in 333. As far as I knew, the caves led to random sections. The Find couldn't tell where that might be in advance.
A new-made soul, a rib thin middle-aged woman, walked out of the blood and trudged up to the caves. She stood in front of them, deciding. She looked at us and started to say something, but, for whatever reason, didn't. She left a dark red pool when she walked resignedly into the center opening.
“What now?” Grace asked. She cradled Dimitri's head in her lap and gently picked dried blood flakes off his face.
“Through there,” I said.
“Does that thing tell you where they go to?”
“No. Wherever we end up, we find a Nexus and go visit a friend of mine. He has a nice house overlooking a river.”
“Not this river, I hope,” she said.
“We should go,” I told anybody who was listening.
“You need to rest,” Grace insisted. “We all do.”
“Not here. We can rest at Rack's place.”
“But Dimitri can't—.”
“He has to. We all do. Ten minutes.”
“How about ten seconds?” Cappy said, pushing wearily and painfully to his feet. “Look.”
We looked, and by their expressions I knew the others had the same sinking feeling I did—Why won't they leave me alone?
Six Pragons flew in formation above the canyon. They all had riders. I didn't need binoculars to know that the riders were more than just soldiers. They were part of Mephisto's Elite Guard. Raccoon faced, armor-plated, scaly-bodied, and bear-footed, they were fierce, dedicated fighters; not flakes like Gitch and Jimig.
“Into the caves,” I ordered.
The Pragons screeched when they saw us, banked and dove.
“Which one?” Grace asked, running.
“You're the one with the luck. You pick.”
“Yeah, sure, I'm so lucky. Door number three, then.”
The Guards fired before we got to the entrance. We didn't have the energy to zig-zag, so we ran straight for the right-hand cave. Concentrated fireballs hissed against the sand all around us. One of them caught the back of Cappy's thigh. He went down with a cry, spikes of flame shooting out of his leg. I brushed the remaining ball off him and slapped the flames out.
“Go, Getter,” he said through clenched teeth. “I'm done, man.”
“Don't be so melodramatic,” I said.
I wrapped one of his arms around my neck and dragged him into the cave. My slashed arm screamed with pain. I ignored it. At the entrance, I looked back. The Pragons swooped down, allowing the guards to fire, and climbed up in a curve to take their turn again. High up, two dark spots circled. Twenty feet in, fireballs flying after us, Cappy found some strength and the four of us plunged into the blackness of the cave.
“Be ready for anything,” I grunted as
we passed through a lighter spot of shimmery darkness, like passing through a giant soap bubble.
“Be ready,” I reminded, right before we passed through another shimmer into—
Chapter Thirty
—NOISE!
Instinctively I clamped hands over my ears. I staggered, every muscle cringing from noise like giant fingernails against an enormous blackboard. We were in 202. There would be no quiet until we entered the Nexus or went deaf.
In a daze, I pawed through the blood soaked contents of my pack where I found three packets of ear plugs. I kept one for myself and offered the rest to the others. Grace declined a pair, signaling, words being useless, that the two souls were in better shape to stand the decibels than any of us. Gratefully, Cappy and Dimitri stuffed the green foam plugs in their ears. In 202 the plugs made more of a psychological difference than physical, though they did take the edge off.
I consulted the Find and waved the three others forward. “Come on,” I said, though they couldn't hear the words.
No straight path led through 202. Monolithic speakers were placed randomly throughout. The fingers-on-the-blackboard gave way to jackhammers, airhammers through metal, whining two-stroke motorcycle engines, babies crying, all well above human endurance levels. Souls were chained by their hands between speakers, forced to listen to a hellish opera featuring an off-key soprano trying for all the high notes, or rock music with the worst of heavy metal and acid rock guitar solos, or squeaky saxes, or polkas or traditional Chinese music. Whatever was a soul's least favorite. A large group of souls was chained between speakers that put out the pounding of a bass drum so powerful the souls slid back and forth across the ground like kelp in a surging sea. Blood ran from their ears.
Together, we wove through the jungle of speakers and noise. Sometimes a loose soul would run near us, hands on ears, mouth open with a silent scream. These free running souls were pursued by Arrangers, three-foot high, shiny black beetle demons with tiny heads, huge pincers to pick up souls, and segmented, muscular arms with almost human four-fingered hands. Their job was to catch stray souls and arrange them in the proper place.
202 was one of my least favorite sections. I hated continuous loud noise. As a regular cop one of my pet peeves was kids, including adult kids, who cranked up their rock and roll to obscene volumes when they knew it disturbed others. Above a certain decibel count, my blood pressure went sky high and my brain functions had only one purpose, STOP THE NOISE. I couldn't do that in 202. As we staggered through the speakers, it became harder and harder to follow the Find's directions. The noise deteriorated my concentration so that I might stare uncomprehendingly at the Find's instructions for fifteen or thirty seconds before I figured out what they meant.
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