The Angel of the Abyss

by Hank Schwaeble

  The men who had moved the cross got behind it and pushed it closer, closer, until it reached the edge of the flames. Fire crawled up the front of the wheeled platform and then washed over it. Jonah's final scream died out as his head became engulfed.

  A huge cheer erupted from the circle, applause breaking out. The flames climbed higher until the entire cross was fully involved, burning violently. The woman who'd poured the accelerant tossed the jug into the bonfire and laughed, throwing her head back. She paused to watch the cross roar, admiring her handiwork, then made a pirouette and danced away. A man grabbed her as she passed and she laughed some more. He dropped to his knees and buried his face in her crotch as she lifted a leg over his shoulder. She threw her head back again, this time arching her back, and her headdress fell off.

  Felicia.

  Others started removing their head coverings, tossing them into the fire. The men with heads on pikes held them over the flames until the hair caught completely, then stabbed the pikes into the ground. Men started grabbing women, women grabbed men. A few women grabbed other women. The celebration quickly became an orgy.

  Hatcher spun to see if the door was still there, had to catch himself from falling. Not only was the door gone, everything else was, too. He was back on the ledge, looking out over the chasm. He looked over his shoulder. No tunnel, now. Just a rocky, earthen wall. That faint light, just enough to see by, like the wash of an invisible moon.

  Had he been there, on that ledge, the whole time? He wasn't sure. Not of that, not of anything. He peered down, as deep as the darkness would allow.

  The reason we stare into the abyss is because we know it holds our fate in its depths.

  There was nowhere to go, no route of escape. He could hear the darkness beckoning him, and nothing else. He stood there for what seemed like hours, until he realized it was pointless. Closing his eyes and taking a breath, he jumped.

  Chapter 40

  —atcher?”

  Hatcher blinked at the sound of his name. Amy was in front of him, searching his eyes. “Hey, talk to me... are you okay?”

  He nodded absently, casting glances. He was on the platform, in the launch duct.

  “Feel what?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You were asking if I felt something.” She looked past him, brow furrowing. “Hatcher, I don't know if you hit your head, or are feeling the effects of exhaustion, but whatever it is, we need to get out of here. Like, yesterday.”

  Hatcher said nothing, trying to collect his thoughts. He wasn't certain how, but no time seemed to have passed, or no more time than a blip, the flap of a fly's wing. But it felt like hours.

  Especially the time he spent falling. One prolonged moment, the drop peeling away mental blinders, his mind opening like a parachute. The darkness cleansing his thoughts as he plummeted, stripping them of confusion. Revealing one, solitary imperative.

  “We have to save the boy,” he said, looking Amy in the eye.

  “I know! But we have to get out of here first. Our best chance is to call the police. You're hurt. We don't know how many more of those things there may be.”

  “You don't understand. I have to save him, leaving without him just isn't an option. There's no time to explain.”

  He brushed past her and retrieved the shotgun, its barrel still clutched in the dead creature's hands. He checked the breech, closed it.

  “Hatcher—”

  “Amy, get to the surface. Call the police. An ambulance, too. He may need it.”

  “But Hatcher, listen—”

  “There's no time. Please, I need you to do this.”

  He turned to look over the rail, then started for the side where there was a ladder. “Jake, there's something I have to tell you!”

  Hatcher stopped. He took a few steps back to her.

  “It's about Vivian,” she said. “She's—”

  Gripping her by the shoulders, he pulled her close and pressed his lips against hers. “This isn't about her, not anymore,” he said. “I'm not sure it ever was.”

  “But—!”

  “There's no time,” he said, cutting her off. “I need you to hurry. Get to the surface and make the call.” Then he darted to the ladder and started to descend, cradling the shotgun in one arm.

  She started to shout something else, but he was already refocused on the scene playing out below, not quite hearing her.

  One shell, he told himself. Make it count.

  “You have to stop it, Bartlett!” he yelled over his shoulder, dropping as many rungs at a time as he could manage. “Before it's too late!”

  Bartlett said nothing. Hatcher found a rhythm, grabbing the lowest rung he could reach and dropping his feet down several at a time. Halfway down, he paused to get a better look at the scene below. The blood was in a full boil now, pockets bursting at the surface rapidly, the whole of it churning and splashing like lava. Opposing currents started to swirl and a whirlpool began to form, the center of the downdraft opening beneath the body suspended by its ankles, still wrapped in strips of cloth.

  “I saw it all,” he said, yelling again as he resumed his rapid descent. “You're being used!” And he had. An infusion of insight, of understanding. The plunge had brought him back into himself with a clarity of purpose. Not so much new knowledge, as the rearrangement of knowledge. The fall had pulled off a blurring layer, brought things into focus. Not all the details, but enough. Enough to know one thing especially – he had to save the boy.

  He glanced over his shoulder again. The vortex was larger now, a gaping hole opening in the swirl of blood.

  The smell grew more intense the lower he went. A putrid smell, like a rotting corpse covered in wet pennies. He jumped the last few feet onto the lowest perimeter platform, a few feet above the surface of the raging blood. The soles of his hiking boots clanked off the metal grating when he landed and he launched into a sprint around the edge, racing to the extension plank that led out to the center platform.

  “Give me the boy,” Hatcher said, leveling the shotgun. His breaths were heavy, his arms almost numb. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his system, spiking his pulse, supercharging his senses. He tried to slow down, let his body respire, his muscles oxygenate. He couldn't afford to crash.

  “You don't understand,” Bartlett said.

  “No, you don't understand. She set you up, General. It's not what you think.”

  Bartlett sighed, glancing beyond Hatcher, then lowering his eyes. “I'm afraid you're wrong.”

  Sudden pressure around his midsection, then Hatcher felt himself yanked into the air.

  Oh, shit.

  Something slick and gelatinous coiled around him like a tentacle, hoisting him almost ten feet. The tentacle extended out from the blood, squid-like. Next to it a stream arced up and poured itself onto the platform, taking shape as if filling a mold. Feet, legs, torso, arms, red and swollen. The final splash coned into a ball, then into a head. A huge one, befitting the enormous body. It hardened into a bald skull, forehead curving down over a prominent brow, stretching past jagged cheekbones into a triangular jaw. A long nose, flattened along the ridge. An outline of perfect, almost feminine lips. Bat-like ears.

  And eyes Hatcher had seen before. Part feline, part something else. Crocodilian, maybe. The thing smiled, revealing the only other visible part of it that wasn't a deep shade of red.

  Unnaturally white teeth, two prominent pairs of fangs. “Raum,” Hatcher said.

  The blood creature thrust its arm out, punching it into the tentacle, and the portion of it below that arm instantly lost its shape and splashed back into the frothing liquid below. The rest of the long, tubular appendage poured itself into the creature's extended limb, merging with it, altering form, until Hatcher was no longer being held by a tentacle, but a hand.

  Hatcher swung the shotgun around and
pointed it directly at the blood-thing's face, squeezing the trigger as soon as he did. The blast kicked the stock back hard against his shoulder. A fiery plume exploded out the business end, obliterating the giant head, atomizing it into a crimson spray that painted the far wall of the silo.

  Blood oozed up from the neck, first forming a turgid bubble, then shaping itself and hardening just as before into a bald head and triangular face. The reptilian eyes narrowed and it wagged its chin, mock disapproval in the way it pursed its lips.

  “Bartlett!” Hatcher said, letting the shotgun clatter to the grate below. The general frowned, wincing at the sound of it banging off the metal, watching the gun lay there. “Listen! Whatever she's told you, she's lying! It's a trick!”

  A glimmer of doubt washed over the general's face like a passing shadow. He looked to Sahara, who shrugged in response – What's he talking about? Who knows? – then produced a large book from her robe. Hatcher noticed Bartlett eyeing the dagger he'd set down, watching to see if she made a move for it. She didn't.

  The woman opened the book and said something Hatcher couldn't understand, words from a language he'd never heard. No sooner had she spoke then the other person on the platform grabbed Bartlett from behind, hooking his arms through the general's to pin them back. Before Bartlett could react, Sahara pulled a knife from the interior of the book and spun around, burying it in the center of the general’s chest, right down to the hilt. Bartlett's stood there, arms still restrained, looking at her, lowering his chin once to see the knife, then raising his eyes to Hatcher. He glanced over at the boy, still strapped down. When he looked up to Hatcher one final time, the surprise, so profound a moment earlier, had flushed from his expression. He mouthed words that Hatcher couldn't hear but easily understood, especially considering his eyes said the same thing.

  I'm sorry.

  The blood hand tightened around Hatcher's torso, unyielding.

  Yeah, Hatcher thought, taking a breath, his squirming and tugging and pushing getting him nowhere, thinking it was going to take a miracle now, his only real hope that Amy had made it to the surface, to safety.

  Yeah, I bet you are.

  Chapter 41

  “Was that part of your plan?”

  Amy slapped her palm against the table, staring at the screen, shouting. She'd raced back to the hidden room, tapped the laptop screen with impatient fingers, then stormed in, rushing straight to the screens. “We have to do something!”

  Calvin's lips moved a few times, but no words came out. He swallowed, a gulping sound rasping out as some imaginary object traveled down his throat. His face stretched as he pulled on his jaw.

  “Well?”

  “I'm thinking!”

  “We don't have time to think! We have to do something!”

  Vivian stepped closer, almost in between them, and put a hand on Calvin's shoulder. Her voice was calm, but she seemed on the verge of tears. “She's right. She's been right all along. We have to do something.”

  “It's...” Calvin looked to another screen. “It's almost sunrise.”

  “What happens at sunrise?”

  “Walker and Dietz, they pull open the doors to the silo. Sunlight... sunlight and exposure to the surface... it's supposed to weaken if not kill them, it. I don't know. That's the fail-safe.”

  “Your guys up top? They're dead, Calvin! Dead! Your fucked-up plan is done, over, kaput! Don't you get it?”

  “I... dead? Both of them?”

  “Yes! Dead! So what's the back-up plan to the back-up plan?”

  “I...”

  “You don't know?”

  “I mean, sunlight, yes, but even without it, still... she – she was supposed to do something to bind it, then the sunlight – Bartlett was going to get the boy out of there, and I was supposed to...”

  “Supposed to what?” Amy said. The moment she said it, the answer seemed obvious. “Blow the place. You were supposed to blow the entire facility, weren't you?”

  “Yes. A thermobaric fuel-air mixture. Heavy quantities of silver, just to be safe.”

  Amy pointed at the screen where Sahara Doyle stood, reading from a book she held in front of her. “But you didn't tell her, did you?”

  Calvin looked away, scraping his face and letting out a long breath.

  “No, you sold her on some stupid story about Bartlett taking over Hell or some other BS, her being the new queen or him giving her immortality or whatever phony deals you concocted, only all he really planned to do was kill her, the way she just killed him. How long have you been planning this? Months? Years? She outsmarted you every step of the way!”

  “You don't understand, this was supposed to be a victory over the Great Evil, a way to beat the Devil. Literally. Once and for all.”

  “Yeah? And then what? Then what, Calvin? Peace on Earth?”

  “I don't – maybe, something like that. The thought was, there would be a struggle for power, a fight over succession, years or decades, maybe many decades, of distraction, a chance to allow the world to recover, to return to—”

  “Stop it. I don't want to hear anymore.” She poked a finger at the screen. “Someone has to go in there and stop this. And since you obviously don't have a set of balls, I will. Give me my gun.”

  “No. Insult me all you want, but I won't let you commit suicide. Do you really think bullets will do something to that?”

  “We can't just sit here and let this thing keep spinning out of control!”

  “Wait!” Vivian said. Her voice was loud, forceful enough that both Amy and Calvin stopped to look at her. “Didn't you say the sun was almost up?”

  Chapter 42

  Amy was out of breath by the time she reached the surface exit doors, fumbling with the locks and latches until she was able to throw them open and sprint outside. The sky was showing the first signs of dawn, a pale glow creeping from the horizon, causing the stars to fade from view.

  She paused, bouncing on the balls of her feet, orienting herself until she spotted the Humvee, its silhouette in the setting moonlight just dark enough. She ran toward it.

  Four bodies, two still smoldering, the smell both strange and familiar, an overpowering mix carried in the smoke, meat and metal – sweet and sour, just like the body by the camper. They were blocking the path of the vehicle, so she dragged one out of the way, rolled the other. Pieces of it sloughed off, sooty smears of it caking her arms, making her cringe.

  Okay, she told herself, think this through. Tow line.

  She raced to the back of the Hummer. A cable was hooked around a towball. She checked it, gave it a few pulls. It seemed secure. She looked at the launch doors, giant reinforced concrete slabs, angled downward at the outer edges. They were in an open position, a thirty-foot gap or so between them. In the center was a huge sheet of metal. Calvin said it was on a on a track. A floating system, because the launch doors had been rendered inoperable. He said the single panel of metal, maybe twenty by twenty-five, weighed around two tons. It would slide open if pulled hard enough. That was what the Humvee was for.

  She hurried around the front and opened the door, climbed in. The interior felt completely alien. Unlike the one Bartlett had driven in, this one was evidently a military surplus model. No leather, no electronic controls or stereo. It had a storage compartment with a pad for a driver's seat, similar pad mounted for a backrest. She fumbled for a light, found a switch and turned it. The headlights came on, a utilitarian interior bulb brightening the dash. It took several seconds for her to realize there was no key, no place for one to even go. There was only another switch, a lever moving from left to right, with three positions. Stop. Run. Start. She turned the lever to start.

  Nothing.

  Damn it!

  She pounded her fist against the steering wheel, scanned the dash layout. To the right was a plate with the word WARNING writ large across the uppermos
t portion: WARNING

  PRIOR TO STARTING ENGAGE PARKING BRAKE AND SHIFT TRANSMISSION TO NEUTRAL

  Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

  She found the parking brake, moved it, felt the vehicle float a bit before something locked, so she pulled the lever back. Then she found the transmission stick and moved it to ‘N’.

  Another try with the switch, turning it from Run to Start. Nothing.

  Son of a—!

  A thought occurred to her as she slapped her palm down on the steering wheel, causing her to jerk up. She looked over at the cindering bodies.

  No.

  She climbed out of the vehicle, eyes roaming the ground until they found their way to the bodies she had moved.

  There. In the hand of one. A clutch of girthy black wires, partly melted, but still recognizable, octopusing out of a glob of black plastic or rubber. A distributor cap.

  Amy raked her fingers down her face, tilting her head back as she dragged them down her throat, the scream inside her building. She clenched her fists, pounded them against her thighs, staring up at the sky, watching it start to slip from purple to gray.

  There were no other Humvees, they were all gone. Long gone, driven out hours before she and Hatcher had started the trek in.

  Think, Amy. Think, think, think. Her mind flashed on the rental car, only to realize it was a long shot. It was average, mid-size, six cylinder, almost certainly didn't have a tow ball. And it was far. But she would have to give it a try. She took a few steps, ready to break into a run, wondering why in the Hell they hadn't rented a truck.

  She'd only traveled a few feet before her head turned, her eyes looking a split-second before she was aware of the thought.

  Her gaze settled on the camper, barely visible in the wan light filtering in from the east. Then she was running again.