by Mick Farren
With the precision timing of extremely bad luck, Jim could hear running footsteps way down the tunnel, just as the Virgil finished speaking.
Three factors that Mr. Thomas would later consider dubiously serendipitous were all that saved Aimee and her angels from a summary dispatch to the Great Double Helix. The first was the slowdown in the rubber guards’ responses since Semple had departed. The guards’ twenty-second deadline extended itself to well over two minutes; then, just before even that ran out, the second factor staggered into the room in the form of Igor. Igor hadn’t been drinking his martinis from a bucket, but he was nonetheless just as far in the bag as Mr. Thomas, so drunk that he found it difficult to grasp what was happening.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“I think you turned up just in time to see the firing squad in action.”
Just then, Mr. Thomas didn’t particularly care what happened. He still had a major grudge against Aimee for what she had done to Semple, whom he considered not only a friend but also a drinking companion. If the rubber guards wanted to execute her and her ridiculous cohorts, so be it. At least he’d be left in peace. It was only as the rubber guards raised their guns and trained them on Aimee and her cowering followers that Igor blinked twice and finally made sense of the situation. “Wait a minute.”
The rubber guards ground to a stop without firing their weapons. Mr. Thomas looked blearily at Igor. “Why did you stop them?”
“I can’t have the guards shooting the mistress’s sister. That would never do.”
“But she’s the reason your precious mistress isn’t here anymore.”
Igor swayed. “Blood is thicker than water.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Igor shook his head as though trying to clear it. “I’m not quite sure.”
Mr. Thomas turned and faced Igor. “Listen to me, okay?”
Igor nodded, but looked exceedingly vacant. “Okay.”
“These people are only here because a bunch of armed rebel nuns is after them.”
Now that Igor was very drunk, his resemblance to Peter Lorre, in both appearance and voice, was quite uncanny. “Armed rebel nuns?”
“That’s right.”
The rubber guards stood poised, as though waiting for a fresh set of instructions. Mr. Thomas moved confidingly toward Igor. “I have much more experience in this sort of thing.”
Igor frowned. “What sort of thing?”
“Acting decisively when very drunk.”
“When I’m drunk, I can’t feel the noise inside other people’s minds. That’s why a lot of telepaths are alcoholics. They can’t take the constant noise.”
Mr. Thomas was being very patient with Igor. He could see that Aimee, the nuns, and the angels were rapidly getting over their fear of the rubber guards. Aimee even took a tentative step forward, but this was enough to set the guards in motion again. “Do-not-move. Remain-where-you-are-while-we-await-our-orders.”
Aimee couldn’t believe that the very continuance of her existence was in the hands of a goat and a semi-dwarf, both mindlessly gin-drunk. She tried a direct appeal. “Igor—”
Mr. Thomas shook his head warningly. “Don’t listen to her, Igor.”
Igor was now totally confused. “What should I do, Mr. Thomas?”
“I think you should order the guards to shoot them, Igor. Then, when the really mean and nasty nuns break in, we can claim that we’re on their side. Otherwise we’ll end up crucified right along with this lot.”
“I don’t want to be crucified, Mr. Thomas.”
“Of course you don’t, bach, so give the order to fire.”
But before Igor could give the order to fire, the third factor that saved Aimee came into play. A loud crash in another section of the environment was followed by a shock and a bang as though a grenade or a charge of explosive had gone off. The rubber guards were galvanized into slow-motion action by this new intrusion, which they saw as more pressingly dangerous than the intrusion of Aimee and her group.
“Emergency-emergency! Armed intruders in the Moorish colonnade! All-guards-respond! Armed intruders in the Moorish colonnade! All-guards-respond! All-guards-respond!”
This call to the guards appeared to countermand all previous programmed imperatives. Aimee and her people were forgotten as more formidable interlopers threatened. As the three rubber guards trundled from the Louis XVI Suite, Aimee smiled nastily. “So, goat, Igor left it too late, didn’t he? Now we sink or swim together.”
The pursuers emerged from the tunnel that Jim, Semple, and the Virgil had just left and immediately opened fire. As the first bullets ricocheted from the stone of the carved Dragon, all ducked for cover. The Virgil looked anxiously at Jim. “I can’t be expected to involve myself in this.”
Jim was busy ducking bullets; he was hardly able to pay attention to their guide and his troubles. “I don’t much want to be involved in it myself.”
“But this is your problem, not mine.”
A fragment of lead or stone all but parted Jim’s hair. “Can you get yourself out of here?”
“I’d be more than happy to.”
Jim quickly reached inside his coat and pulled out the bag of coins he had taken from Richard Nixon. He tossed it in the Virgil’s direction. The Virgil deftly caught the bag, hefted it to feel the weight, and treated Jim to a brief formal smile. “I thank you for your generosity, young sir. And now I must bid you farewell. I’m sorry I can’t stay to observe the outcome of this.”
The Virgil made a complex pass with his right hand and instantly vanished. Jim blinked and glanced at Doc. “How the fuck did he manage that?”
Doc was crouched behind the Dragon’s other extended foreleg. He shook his head. “Don’t ask me, boy. I guess the Virgils have their secrets.”
With the Gun That Belonged to Elvis in his hand, Doc was taking aim at the shadowy figures and muzzle flashes on the other side of the cavern. He fired three fast shots that exploded where they hit in highly destructive puffs of ghost plasma. A scream indicated that at least one of his projectiles had hit its mark, but Doc’s return fire also triggered another intense volley from the hidden pursuers. Jim ducked lower, seeking every inch of cover. “I wish we had that trick.”
Doc fired again. “Unfortunately, we don’t. Our only hope is to get ourselves into the Dragon’s mouth and away. Can you and Miss McPherson make it in there if I give you covering fire?”
“We don’t have any other choice, do we?”
“Not that I can see.”
“What about you? We only have the one weapon.”
Doc allowed himself a deadly grin. “Don’t worry about me, boy. If I can’t hold these clowns at bay, I don’t deserve to make it at all.”
“Surely they’ll just follow us inside.”
“I’m hoping, once we’re inside, we’ll be able to wind our way out almost immediately.”
“I sure as shit hope so, too.”
“Are you ready?”
Jim glanced at Semple to confirm she knew what the plan was. She nodded tensely and Jim looked back at Doc. “We’re ready.”
“Then go for it!”
As Doc laid down a positive fusillade of fire and the dim cavern was lit up by more flashes of plasma, Jim and Semple scrambled for the open archway formed by the mouth of the huge Dragon statue, bullets kicking up fragments of stone around their feet. The moment they were inside the dark sculpted maw, they turned to see if Doc was going to make it. With the same nonchalant lack of concern for his own safety that had made him a legend in the Old West, Doc rose to his feet. Two of the pursuers broke cover, a zoot-suited vato armed with a sacred Thompson gun and a thugee in dirty robes with a nineteenth century Martini carbine. Both ran toward Doc. Apparently they assumed that Doc was surrendering. They learned their mistake as Doc, still without hurrying himself, took aim and reduced them to dissipating plasma with just two shots. The disappearance of their two companions gave sufficient pause to the other purs
uers that he was able to stroll calmly after Jim and Semple and into the mouth of the Dragon. As he approached them, he looked extremely pleased with himself. “Shall we get on with getting out of here?”
When the vato and the thugee came out into the open, it was the first time that Semple, Doc, or Jim had seen the people who had been following them. Until that moment Jim had been entertaining a paranoid flight of fantasy that the footsteps were nothing more than an audio illusion sent to drive the three of them crazy, and that maybe the Virgil was also in on the deal, leading them around and around in circles until they finally cracked. Real or not, the audible footfalls of the pursuers had dogged them, through tunnels and passageways, all the way into what had to be one of the most ancient sectors of Hell, an area that was dark, derelict, all but deserted, and largely forgotten by a population now occupied with well-lit tourist attractions. Unfortunately, the sector hadn’t been forgotten by the relentlessly following footsteps.
The Virgil had done his best to shake the unseen posse by making use of every twist, turn, and doubling-back corkscrew he could dredge up from his encyclopedic memory of Hell’s geographic backwaters. They had used tunnels so small that even Semple had to duck her head to pass through them. They had rounded hairpins, climbed and descended narrow spiral staircases, and crossed fragile bridges over abyssal chasms with red molten lava flowing in their depths. On several occasions the sound of the pursuit had faded to nothing, but no sooner had Doc, Jim, and Semple breathed a collective sigh of relief than the advancing echoes had started up again and they were forced to hurry on.
The long trek through Hell’s labyrinth ended in a high, roughhewn cavern where, in its ancient but unweathered glory, stood a massively heraldic, couchant Dragon, carved from living rock aeons earlier by some unknown demon sculptor. Beyond its gasping, stone-fanged mouth lay the mysterious power source that would, according to fable, transport them out of Hell and, within reason, take them anywhere they wanted to go. Unfortunately, when they had reached the cavern, their pursers had finally caught up with them and the firefight had ensued.
Even once they were inside the mouth of the dragon, the mystery of the Dragon Ride itself was far from revealed. They found themselves in the darkness of yet another tunnel. The only light came from a dull red glow deep in the interior. Nothing about this place encouraged either Jim or Semple to press on into the gloomy unknown, but they knew they had to. The crew sent after them by Lucifer and Kali was not going to call off the chase just because Doc had gunned down two of their number. If anything, it would probably make them even more vengeful. While Jim and Semple initially stood and stared, attempting to make sense of their new surroundings, Doc moved purposefully forward. “Come on, young lovers, we’re not out of the woods yet.”
“It’s seems like we’re going in deeper and deeper.” Semple fell into step beside him while Jim hurriedly brought up the rear. Doc glanced back, but there was no sign of the pursuers—not yet.
“I think we have to operate on the principle that it’s going to get pretty damned dark before the dawn comes.”
“Or maybe we’re just whistling past the graveyard?”
Doc treated Jim to a bleak look. “Just don’t whistle, okay? I wouldn’t want to listen to it.”
As they moved quickly down the tunnel, the red light grew brighter; along with it came an intense sense of foreboding. The end of the tunnel brought no end to the apprehension. When it opened out onto a high ledge above a vast lake of liquid fire, Jim and Semple both stopped in their tracks, though they knew their pursuers had to be only minutes behind them.
“How the fuck is any of this going to help us get out of here?”
Doc pointed to something far along the ledge. “I think that may be the answer.”
“What?”
“That.”
Semple peered into the distance, shading her eyes against the glare from the burning lake. “Are you talking about that bridge?”
“You see anything else that could work?”
“But that bridge isn’t complete; it looks like they never finished it. It only goes halfway across the lake.”
“And we have to cross it.”
Semple halted and planted her hands on her hips. “Are you out of your mind, Doc Holliday? What happens when the bridge stops?”
“We keep on going.”
“And fall into the lake of fire?”
“Hopefully we go on and up and out. The end of the tangible bridge being the jumping point for the wind-walk.”
“Hopefully?”
Jim pushed his hair out of his eyes. The heat from the burning lake was causing him to break out in a sweat. “We just have to take it on trust. Doc’s right, there’s no other way.”
But Semple was digging in. Jim hadn’t known her that long, and most of that knowledge was carnal, but he was already starting to recognize her capacity for resolute stubbornness. She was quite prepared to face down Doc Holliday if need be. “I bow to the fact that you’ve been around the Afterlife far longer than either me or Jim, but I’ve crossed a few bridges in my time and I’m pretty well versed in their symbolic content. I have to assume that a bridge that only goes halfway is exactly what it claims to be, a dead end. With the accent on dead.”
Doc gave her a hard look. “I wouldn’t spend too long bowing to my experience. I can hear the bad guys coming down the tunnel.”
With no other alternative, they scrambled along the ledge toward the elegant stone arch of the ambiguous half bridge. Semple shook her head even as she ran. “I still think we’re doing the wrong thing.”
They were almost to the bridge when the pursuers came out of the tunnel. Bullets peppered the rock walls above the ledge, but none came close enough to be a threat. The posse was shooting on the run, more as matter of brute psychology than out of any serious intent to do harm. In no time they would catch up with Jim, Semple, and Doc, and the fugitives would be in the bag. Doc didn’t even bother to fire back. In four more paces, he was on the bridge. Jim was immediately behind him. For a moment Semple balked, then two more shots hit the rock wall and she started forward again. “Damn you both. This is insane.”
“You want to fall into the clutches of Kali?”
“I don’t want to fall into the burning lake.”
“Trust that you won’t fall.”
“I can’t just walk off into empty air like Daffy Duck.”
Jim and Doc held out their hands. “We’ll do it together.”
Semple grasped their hands. With Jim and Doc on the outside, and her in the middle, the three of them stepped into nothingness, with only the lake of fire beneath them. In the last second, Doc laughed out loud. “Entering the Dragon Ride—if the damn thing exists!”
10
How easy to survive?
What has happened to my creation?”
Anger and alarm were Semple’s first response as she grew to human form out of the rolling swirls of orange Day-Glo mist in which she, Doc Holliday, and Jim Morrison had made their vaporous, billowing reentry from the Dragon Ride. She sprang to her feet before Jim and Doc were even fully formed and looked around furiously at the ruins of her onetime kingdom, as yet unaware that she was jaybird-naked. “I thought there’d be damage, but never anything like this.”
Jim was now also fully formed and he, too, had come through without a stitch of clothing. Doc, on the other hand, was clothed and correct—except, mysteriously, for his boots, each now on the wrong foot. As he irritatably tugged his left boot from his right foot, he glanced at the nude and bemused Jim. “Were you two having sex in the middle of all that?”
Jim looked at Doc and blinked sheepishly. “What makes you say that?”
“I heard some sounds just as we were being transformed into fog.”
Semple turned and glared at Doc. “Then you should have been minding your own business, shouldn’t you?” Her clothes were now assembling around her out of thin air. Not the red dress she had worn in Hell, but a midnight-blue, semi-
military ensemble with a pencil skirt, padded shoulders, and epaulets that matched her current belligerent mood. Now that she was back home, Semple seemed to be building up a head of rage at everything around her. Jim’s time-honored leather jeans and loose shirt also appeared; only the white tuxedo jacket he’d been given at the casino had vanished along the way. The three of them had arrived in the same mosque-like chamber with the high-domed ceiling, black marble floor, and ruby glass where Semple had once amused herself by torturing her prisoners and slaves.
In some ways, it was an apt reentry point, although right at that moment Semple was too angry to see it as such. Her blood was boiling at the ravages to which her glorious construct had been subjected. The marble was cracked and shattered, and part of the dome had fallen in, littering the already-damaged floor with rubble, smashed mosaics, and broken beams. The air was filled with dust, smoke, and the stench of cordite, indicating that some of the damage had been caused by indoor explosions since Semple’s departure. The gaping hole in the dome now let in an eerie, green-death light that had never been any part of her original design. Breathing hard, she repeated her question as though expecting someone or something to provide her with an answer. “What have they done to my beautiful home?”
The sounds of automatic weapons fire and a muffled explosion from another part of the environment supplied an answer of a sort. Doc finished switching his boots and warily eased to his feet, at the same time drawing the Gun That Belonged to Elvis from its shoulder holster. “They still seem to be going at it.”
Semple kicked angrily at the rubble and turned to face the two men. “It’s fucking Aimee.”
Doc frowned. “Your sister did all this?”
“She did some of it when she blew me into Limbo, but I think the rest of it’s the work of Bernadette and her rebel nuns. I’ll lay Vegas odds that the inevitable uprising has risen, and this is collateral damage.”
Jim and Doc looked at her with unhappy frowns. “Rebel nuns?”