by B. L. Morgan
They were more like stampeding cattle, destroying anything in their path.
You would think that whoever was controlling the armies of Rome that were based in the city would send them out to restore order, but we saw no soldiers on the streets at all.
The riot spread swiftly ahead of us. The entire route we took back to the Temple of the Brothers of Isis was a battlefield.
* * *
When we got to the Temple it was being defended from looting and burning by Clovis and eight of the other Brothers who had bows and arrows. Theirs was the only building we'd seen that wasn't on fire.
We shouted who we were and waved. Clovis motioned us forward. We sprinted past their line of archers and Clovis took us into the temple. Once inside, we told Clovis all that happened since the night before and what had caused the outbreak of violence.
"It has happened before," he told us. "And for just about the same reasons. The mobs at the Coliseum cannot be controlled. Anything sets them off. The Legions are off conquering lands that Rome doesn't have the man power to control. They don't even have the man power to prevent anarchy in the streets."
"Thanks for the history lesson," I told Clovis. "Now we need to get this lady and ourselves back home."
He led us down the stairs into the chamber of the four portals. On the way down he reminded us that he had no idea where each of the portals went.
We stood in the room with the four humming portals and looked at each of them. They all looked the same to me. They were yawning doorways into other worlds.
Marius entered the room and shook our hands. "It has been a short friendship," he told us. "But I will miss you."
We told him we would miss him as well.
Since none of us knew where any of the portals lead I turned to Johnny and asked, "Does any of that Voodoo blood in your veins tell you which one of these gets us home?"
"My Voodoo blood don't tell me shit," he answered.
I asked Sherry, "Does your women's intuition tell you which one we should go through?"
She smiled. "My woman's intuition seems to be on vacation."
"All right," I told them and took Sherry's hand in mine. "Grab Johnny's hand." I told Sherry.
She did.
I pointed to the portal directly in front of us. "Let's go," I shouted and trailing them behind me took a running leap into the screaming vortex.
PART IV
In the dark backward and abysm of time…
-Shakespeare, The Tempest, I,2
Revenge is not sweet. It is bitter!
But then again, so is the strongest liquor.
-The Walker in Darkness
CHAPTER 51
Under a Blood Red Sky
We dove straight into the endless nothingness of the cold vastness of interstellar space and instantly burst into flames. The sensation was the same as before but I doubt if I took a leap through those vortexes a thousand times that I would ever get used to it. It was like being dipped in boiling oil.
I don't think that I'll ever eat freshly boiled lobster again because I know what kind of pain they went through just before they died. My skin felt like it was melting away and it seemed like it would go on forever.
The thought ran through my mind, what if the doorway wasn't open on the other end? Would we just careen around the universe forever in pain? Then there was a doorway in front of us in the distance.
Something darker, a solid blackness stood out among the twinkling lights of the distant stars of the cosmos. It was coming closer, or we were flying toward it, three flaming comets in an eternal night.
The solid blackness was growing larger, more distinct against the celestial background. If this pitch blackness meant the doorway was shut then I knew we would blast ourselves to nothingness against it.
We flew through the doorway and skidded and rolled on hard dirt. I landed partially on my face like before. That was all right. Anything was better than feeling the skin frying from by bones.
But we were still in pitch blackness. That must have been why the doorway had been so black. It was darker than the bottom of a grave in there.
"Is everybody OK?" I asked,
Sherry answered first. "I seem to be all right. Where are we?"
"We in the dark, Goddamn it," Johnny said.
"We are there," I agreed.
The first thing I noticed before my eyes adjusted to the almost total absence of light was that where we were smelled strongly of ash. I can't explain it any other way. It was like you stuck your face in an ashtray and sucked in through your nose real hard. Not an appetizing smell, I can tell you.
Then my eyes did adjust and I was seeing what light there was to see. Ahead of us or in front of me anyway, were two lines of red light. They were a little in front and above us. I didn't know what it was but I wasn't going to sit there forever.
I told the others, "I'm going to find out what the hell that is."
"We're all coming," Johnny said. "In horror movies the black man always gets killed because he stays behind to do some stupid bull shit. I say fuck that."
"I wish this was a movie," Sherry said. "Then I could just leave the theatre."
Edging my way along, I felt on my side for the sword I had grown accustomed to hanging there. It was still at my side. I drew it now.
It wasn't but about five paces in the dark before my foot met a stone step.
I ran my left hand over the clothes I wore.
"Johnny," I said. "Do you realize we're still dressed as Romans?"
"Yeah, I noticed how I was dressed," he answered. "Wait a second, I'll run my hands over Sherry and tell you what she's wearing."
"Touch me, and I'll cut your hand off," Sherry said.
"Goddamn," Johnny answered. "Second time I get rejected in two mother fucking days. A goddamn fuckin' record."
"I'm betting we're not at home," I told them as I ascended the stairs with my left hand held out in front and above me.
After about eight or nine stairs my knuckles rang on a steel plate.
"I think I'm at a door," I told the others and pushed upward on the left hand side of it. Nothing gave. So I slid my hand to the other side and just before I got to the red line I pushed up.
With a loud groaning that only long rusted metal against metal makes, the door swung upward just about a foot before it stopped cold.
"Come on up here. I need some help," I told Johnny and Sherry stepped to the side.
Johnny got up beside me. "White man always gets the niggers to do the muscle work," he told me.
I kind of chuckled. "You're gonna be back to normal pretty soon," I told him. "I can tell. You'll bounce back."
"Yeah," he said and we put our shoulders to the door. "Like fuckin' never."
We pushed up with all the strength that our legs had. With a loud scream, the steel trap door above us came loose and we flung it wide open.
We were out in the open air, on the crest of a rounded hill. The sky was one we had never seen before. It was blood red, the color of deep scarlet thick blood.
Clouds flew past at dizzying speeds, black wispy clouds. They looked like enormous flying black veils. From the thicker clouds lightning bolts shot down and exploded sending sprays of dry dirt flying up into the air. And there was a lot of lightning hitting the ground. It seemed like hundreds of bolts were hitting the ground at once.
The land vibrated beneath our feet like a massive base drum was being pounded from under us.
Everything was ash and devastation. I could see no plants at all and no evidence that mankind had ever lived here.
"What the fuck is this?" I whispered and took a few steps away from the steel trap door.
The ground moved to my left. I glanced that way and a flap of Earth erupted up and "It" flew out at me too quick for the eye to track.
A shaggy thing the size of a horse only with eight legs, it was silvery, thickset, low to the ground, and knocked me from my feet before I even knew it was there.
Only
one thing registered in my mind as it charged me as I lay on my side. "This is one big mother fucking spider!"
It grabbed me by the leg with some pincher things that came out of its mouth that felt like steel and started dragging me toward the hole it had hurtled out of.
Sherry screamed a blood curdling cry and that was probably what saved me. The thing froze in its tracks.
Thank god my sword was still in my hand. I managed to get a good swing at its head. It lifted one of its legs to block the swing and I cut that leg in half.
It screeched at me, a screech that sounded like a cross between a sea gull cry and a train braking.
Then Johnny was on it hacking and screaming, "You big ugly mother-fucking bug you! We need some fucking Raid!"
I got another good slice into the thing's side and got spurted all over my face with sticky green spider blood. Johnny jumped forward and hacked a straight slash right down on top of the spider's head that also splashed me with green blood by the bucket full.
The thing let go of me and skittered backward screeching at us. No doubt it was cussing us out.
We'd spoiled its dinner.
I stood up and wiped some of the spider slime from my eyes. Sherry moved up close to Johnny and me. We took a good slow look around us.
In hundreds of places we could see flaps of Earth lift up slightly and could see eight eyes peek out at us. They were all waiting for us to just take one step too close to their home, so they could spring on us and drag us down.
"What do you say we head back out the door we came in?" I told Sherry and Johnny.
"Smartest thing you said all fuckin' week," Johnny answered.
"On three," Sherry whispered.
"Yeah," The two of us agreed.
"Three!" Sherry yelled and we all ran back down the trapdoor and slammed it behind us.
We could hear the beating of spider feet on the steel door from above our heads.
"I don't even want to guess where we might be," I told them.
"It ain't Disneyland," Johnny said.
We took another running leap back into the vortex.
CHAPTER 52
November
The frying of the skin as we flew through hyperspace or outer space or cyber space or whatever the fucking kind of space it was wasn't any more pleasant than it had been before. This time I landed on my ass when the vortex farted us out onto the stone floor.
Johnny and Sherry came tumbling out of the vortex right after I did and landed on top of me nearly breaking my back. I guess sliding in on my face did have its advantages after all. At least I'd already be flattened out when someone else landed on me.
After we managed to untangle ourselves, and I've got to admit I didn't rush untangling from Sherry, we started to take a look around.
The portal we'd just been shit out of gave a loud pop like a cork being pulled from a big bottle. The stars in the center of the stone oval winked out. The loud humming that seemed to always accompany the vortex being active was gone. The light show from the glowing hieroglyphics carved in the stone was over. All that we saw in the center of this stone oval was clear air.
Behind the stone oval was a statue, an ugly statue. It was at least nine feet tall. It had the head of an elephant except that it had bull horns sticking out of its forehead. Its body was like a Mr. Universe contestant except that it had six arms and two of those ended in a sea creatures claws.
This was the statue of Asmodeus.
The same statue I'd seen in the chamber beneath the Masonic Lodge in Cahokia.
He was an ugly son of a bitch, but I was glad to see him.
* * *
Besides realizing where we were, the first thing we all noticed was we were back in the kind of clothes we had left the twentieth century in. My holster was back around me and the chrome plated 9 mm Johnny gave me was in it.
I checked the gun. It was loaded.
The gun felt better in my hand than that sword did. I like to do my killing from across the room where I can enjoy watching how they fall and flop around.
I took an inventory of what I had on me at that moment. In my back pocket was my wallet with all my current ID's from my life in East St. Louis. I don't know what I expected to find different in there, maybe a Martian ID or something like that.
In my front pocket I had the same roll of cash I'd left with. Thank god for that. I'd busted Roy Wilson's head to get a chunk of that money. I wanted to have as much fun spending that cash as I'd had getting it. There was also something extra in that pocket, four large Roman coins.
I don't know how they could have made the journey without changing into our money. I couldn't spend them now.
The chamber was torch lit, just like it was when Johnny and me left. It was a hell of a lot cleaner though. When we'd jumped through before there was a dead guy lying on the sacrificial alter with his chest carved open and his heart missing.
Now the whole place was positively sparkling, like the maid just finished cleaning up.
"Are we really back?" Sherry asked Johnny and me.
"Only one way to find out," I answered and we all went toward the iron door.
The corridors were all the same as I remembered them, damp with flickering torches the entire way.
Johnny's sawed-off shotgun had reappeared for him the same way the chrome nine millimeter had for me. He carried it out in front of him ready to blast anyone who was waiting for us.
We retraced our steps carefully, taking our time, making sure anybody waiting around a corner didn't get free shots before we could get shots off at them. No one was waiting for us.
Living in the Roman Empire in the time of Caligula had made us all paranoid. But you know what they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you.
We climbed up out of the trap door into the main office in the Masonic Lodge of Cahokia without being ambushed and phoned for a taxi back to Johnny's.
On the teak desk, along with other official Masonic lodge papers that needed to be signed or filed, was a businessman's day calendar. It was one of those that had a cute thought for the day along with the date and a place to write notes. The thought for the day was, "A boss is just like a diaper, on your ass and usually full of crap." I couldn't argue with that.
The date on the calendar was November 1st.
Almost five months had passed.
Christ! Time flies when you're having fun, don't it.
* * *
On the way to Johnny's with the three of us sharing the taxi's back seat, Sherry, sitting between us, turned to Johnny.
She touched him on the arm and looked into his eyes. "I'm sorry you lost Sushi," Sherry said in a whisper. "I know you really loved her."
Johnny turned his face and looked out the window. His face was like stone. "Fuck it," he said.
CHAPTER 53
Back Home
A freezing rain was coming down when we climbed out of the taxi and went into Johnny's Bar and Grill. The front door was unlocked. This didn't seem to surprise Johnny. The same way it didn't surprise him to find Jeanette was up and waiting for us.
If I haven't mentioned it till now, it was late in the night when we got back, sometime after midnight. Jeanette just seems to know things that the rest of us don't. I'm going to just have to get used to it.
Jeanette gave hugs to the three of us. When she was done hugging me, she slapped me a good one upside the head.
"What was that for?" I asked her.
She laughed. "I told you I would slap your jaws for you when you got back and I always keep my word."
"You don't forget a damn thing, do you?" I told her.
Jeanette turned to Sherry. "So this is the young lady you took your journey for." She looked her up and down like a drill sergeant doing an inspection. "You seemed to have come home in one piece," she told her.
Sherry answered, "If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be alive."
Jeanette looked at Johnny. Quietly she asked, "Where is your
young lady?"
Johnny walked to his bar and turned his back to us. The silence in Johnny's Bar and Grill suddenly seemed like a physical thing. He stood and stared at the rows of bottles stacked in front of the mirror behind the bar.
He whispered something that none of us could hear.
Jeanette went to him and touched him lightly on the back. "Are you OK, my grandson?" She asked.
Johnny hammered his right fist down onto the bar making the rows of bottles jump and clink together. They sounded like tiny Chinese bells.
"I said she wouldn't come with me!" He shouted. Quieter he added, "She wanted someone else."
His head dropped and he began sobbing.
Jeanette gathered him up in her arms and held him as only a loving grandmother could.
Softly she told him, "Someday the pain will stop. I know it will."
Johnny whispered back, "I don't think I want it to."
* * *
Sherry called for a car to come and pick her up. I told her that I'd taken her this far home I'd ride along and see her all the way.
Johnny didn't cry for very long. Maybe it was about ten minutes, I don't know. He did exceed the limit for what a bad mother fucker from East St. Louis is allowed though. So, for the next few months I'll be calling him my bitch. He'd do the same for me. That's what friends are for.
As soon as Jeanette was through mopping Johnny's eyes, he went upstairs to his apartment.
I told Jeanette what happened to Julio "Padre" Paez and asked if she could give the four Roman coins I'd found in my pocket to Julio's wife.
"They might be worth something," I said.
She told me she would and as it turned out a few months later it was in the newspaper that Julio's wife had sold the coins to the St. Louis Museum of History for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Shit! I don't mind giving to charity but if I would have known they was worth that much, I'd have kept them for myself.