The Fall of Hades (7 page)

11: THE HOLDING TANKS

She opened her eyes to see lazy tendrils of blood swirling before her eyes. In the next instant, Vee’s body was in an instinctive panic, her eyes bulging and legs thrashing, even though there was no way she could actually drown.

She floated in some nearly gelatinous solution, contained within a large glass cylinder, the inner surface of which she began to thump with her palms. Through the glass she could see that hers was one in a row of such containers. Most of them appeared empty, but in the cylinder to her immediate left floated what was undoubtedly some species of Demon.

The naked flesh of its body was eggplant purple, its head devoid not only of hair but of any facial features apart from its metallic golden eyes, which stared back at Vee inscrutably. More acclimated to its prison than she, it hung in its fluid calmly, or at least fatalistically, very slowing fanning wings with a translucent patagium stretched across long, finger-like bone struts. The utterly alien entity was both terrifying and beautiful.

Vee broke eye contact to look up at the hinged cover to the tank, and she started beating at this next. As if in response to her efforts, the level of amniotic fluid began to drop, and Vee pressed her face up into the gap that resulted, gulping desperately for air. The level continued dropping, until she could tread water and keep her head and shoulders above the surface. She looked down and saw that a drain in the floor of the cylinder had opened, letting out the thick solution. She also saw that she still wore her rubbery black uniform, her white skin showing through the chains of holes torn in the material by automatic fire, though her flesh itself had since healed, the only evidence remaining of her injuries being her blood threaded through the clear liquid.

Finally, the contents of the tank diminished to the point where she could stand on its floor. As the last of the fluid gurgled down the drain, Vee heard the hatch in the top of the cylinder open and looked up to see two figures poised above her on a catwalk, staring down at her. One carried an assault rifle, and both of them wore white uniforms and white ballistic vests, though they didn’t sport those goggle-eyed helmets. Both men had shaved heads, one of them with a goatee.

“You’re looking a little better after your bath,” said the goateed man.

Even without his voice being distorted through amplification she recognized it; the man with whom she had shared a shouted conversation.

“You’re the guy who shot me in the head,” she panted, lungs burning.

Before the liquor amnii had finished draining away, Vee had vomited up all that had filled her.

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you,” he drawled. “I’m Charles Roper, commander of security for this settlement. But let’s talk about you, lady, and your claim that you weren’t grown in one of these vats, here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your claim that you aren’t a Demon.”

“That’s right, I’m not. I’m an Angel. I was held prisoner, for I don’t know how long. I have no memory of who I am, but the Demonic gun I took with me told me that my father was an important figure in Heaven. I couldn’t free him; he’s still held prisoner back there, down in the basement level.”

“Wait a minute, here, hold on…let me take all this in a second. You claim you don’t know who you are, but you were a prisoner. Whose prisoner?”

Vee hacked a little more, then continued, “I don’t know—some Demons who were killed a long time ago. I guess my father and I were overlooked by whoever shot them.”

“You don’t know your father’s name, either, I suppose?”

“No, but the gun told me in life he was a televangelist. He volunteered to come to Hell to help fight in the Great Conflict; he was like an important general or something. And I was a captain in his army, as I understand it, though I don’t—”

”Jesus Savior!” the security commander exclaimed. “Are you talking about Pastor Karl Phelps?”

“I don’t know…Karl Phelps?”

“Wait a minute, you just hang on—I know a guy who can help us with this, I think. I’m going to go bring him back here.”

“I don’t suppose you could let me out of here in the meantime?”

“Just be patient a little bit.” Roper turned to the man with the gun. “Earl, I’m going to go find Tim Wade. Give the lady those new clothes, for now.”

She heard Roper’s boots clang away along the catwalk, leaving Earl to grin down at Vee. He set his assault rifle to one side and produced a neatly folded bundle of white clothing. “You can get out of those wet rags of yours, honey—I got a new outfit for you. Just toss those old things up here and I’ll toss these down.”

“Not on your afterlife, hick. I’m not stripping for you.”

“Hey, bitch, the changing rooms are all full. Come on, or are you trying to hide some Demonic mark or something?”

“Sorry, Earl, but you’ll have to go back to watching your sister striptease for you. By the way, I see your brain has almost grown back.”

There was still a hollow depression in the man’s shaved head. “Or did you always look like that?”

Earl’s grin seemed to gurgle down a drain as well. “You better hope you’re an Angel, bitch, or I’m gonna shoot your eyes out and skull fuck you twice.”

“I think I saw that sentiment on a Hallmark card once.”

Earl snorted, and pulled back out of view.

12: THE BOYFRIEND

Roper had returned, and accompanying him was another man in a white uniform and shaved head, also with a dark goatee, though he was thinner and younger than the security chief. This man knelt at the rim of the tank and cracked a huge grin. “Oh dear God…my Lord Almighty, I can’t believe it! You were right, sir, it’s her!”

“Earl,” Roper said immediately, “get a couple gaffs and help me pull this lady out of there.”

“Is she an Angel, sir?”

“She sure is,” said the new man.

Earl mumbled something, sounding disappointed, as he moved off.

The new man leaned over the rim again and said, “Rebecca! Rebecca, honey, do you know who I am? Commander Roper said you didn’t know your own name, but I hope you can still recognize your old boyfriend!”

Boyfriend?
Vee thought. Had she really changed so much through her amnesia and the long, cleansing years? Because she couldn’t see herself ever finding a white man with a shaved head attractive, even though he had wisely gone for an Edward Norton look by compensating for a weak chin with the goatee. Well, maybe he had had hair when they had been involved—assuming this wasn’t all some kind of trick.

“I don’t recognize you, no,” she said.

“You don’t? Come on, Rebecca, try now. It’s Tim, Tim Wade…that name doesn’t ring a bell?”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t, Tim. My own name doesn’t ring a bell, either.

You say I’m Rebecca?”

“Rebecca Phelps, yes! God, when I was just a kid I saw you on TV a couple times at your daddy’s side—you were just little yourself. And then we met up here in Hades; I was a volunteer with your father’s army, and you were my captain. I served under you!”

“Yeah, Tim, and I bet she served under you, too,” Roper joked, nudging him.

Tim chuckled. “Be good, sir.” To Vee he continued, “None of this is coming back to you? God, what those Demon fuckers must have done to you.” He wagged his head. “We were going to be married, Rebecca, in Heaven once the Conflict was over. But we got trapped down here, of course. Made it into Tartarus before the floods could catch us. Created our colony, here, taking control of levels 7 and 8. And when the settlement was still new, and we were still fighting to secure its borders and wipe out any local pockets of Demons, you and your father and a group of other soldiers went out one day and none of you ever came back again. We searched and searched and never found you. We figured you’d been taken prisoner by some Demons or other, but we couldn’t tell where they’d stashed you, no matter how many of them we caught and tortured. We knew you couldn’t be dead. I searched for you myself, Rebecca, I can’t tell you how many times. But God, after a while I figured I’d never, ever see you again, honey! This is a dream come true—a miracle, I swear it!”

Earl had returned, and passed Roper one of two hooked poles. They lowered them into the cylinder, and Roper said, “Hook these in your clothes, pretty lady; watch your skin, now.”

Watch your skin,
Vee thought; this from the guy who had put a bullet in her brain (which might still be in there now). She hooked the loops of several straps in her uniform, while Tim continued to gush. “I’m a mechanic, now, as you can see,” he gestured at the grease stains on his uniform, “but I’m still in the militia, too, under Commander Roper here.”

“Ready to make Swiss cheese out of anybody who comes knocking, huh?”

Roper and Earl began hoisting her up, while the security commander grunted, “Okay, I’m sorry about all that back there, but we worked hard to win this territory, Miss Phelps. Speaking of Swiss cheese, don’t you worry—we got some highly skilled surgical Demons we keep around, who can dig out whatever bullets are still in you.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said, at last alighting on the grated catwalk beside the three male Angels. She found she was a little taller than the man who claimed to be her former boyfriend. He went to put his arms around her but she stepped back, held out a palm. “Take it easy, okay? I still can’t connect to anything you’re telling me.”

“You believe what that Demonic gun told you,” said Earl, “but not us?”

“Shut it, Earl,” Roper said.

“Where is my gun, anyway? I hope you didn’t destroy it.”

“We’ve got it put away,” Roper said.

“Good, because I want it back again. It was very useful to me.”

“So I noticed,” Earl said, rubbing his head meaningfully.

“You shouldn’t trust that thing, ma’am,” Roper advised. “If it’s a gun you want, well we got plenty of good weapons we brought here in the Conflict, and new ones we’ve made ourselves since.”

“If you can trust your Demon surgeons, I can trust my Demon gun.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll discuss this later. Right now, let’s get you situated in an available living space, and I’ll go give our leader a report on all this.

I’m sure he’s going to be as happy as Tim here is. You don’t recall him either, I guess—Pastor Jacob Johnston?”

“Um…no.”

“Well, he and your father were great friends. They helped found this place together.”

“So what do you call this colony of yours?”

“
L.A., of course,” Tim said. “Los Angeles! Welcome home, Rebecca.” He spread his arm toward a metal hatch at the end of the catwalk. “Come on…let me be your guide.”

13: THE CITY OF
ANGELS

Over a great span of time the citizens of
Los Angeles had removed much of the floor that separated levels 7 and 8, and the walls that divided vast factory chambers, opening up one enormous space to contain its countless dwellings. The majority of these were simple box-like affairs made from sheets of tarnished metal or glossy bone, wedged into any available gap in Cyclopean machinery, or stacked in great giddy tiers toward a ceiling of girders and pipes—a solid sky made insubstantial through distance and smoky haze, so high up that it gave Vee vertigo just tilting her head back to gaze at it. Narrow elevated walkways crisscrossed between the towering stacks of boxes, along with laundry lines, electrical cables, and water pipes. Numerous structures were not made from removed sections of floor and walls, though, but assembled from cannibalized machine parts. Not only that, but an abundance of dwellings or places of business (for there were many of these, mostly at ground level, advertised by electrical signs) existed
within
gargantuan machinery that had been hollowed out or otherwise adapted for that purpose. The city, makeshift as it was, was of such size that it extended beyond the limits of her vision.

Tim pointed out, “And see, there’s been a lot of use of bone; we have a great bone-producing plant here in
L.A. We use the materials that were once used to manufacture Demons. If it wasn’t for that kind of technology, we wouldn’t have been able to adapt Tartarus into the Construct fast enough to deal with the deluge. See, we here in L.A. really did more than our part in creating the Construct, while so many of the Damned and the Demons, too, were just finding some little corner to cover their own head with. We had a bigger picture in mind. People like me broke our backs reworking ventilation systems and whatnot to provide proper life support to the Construct that not only benefits our colony, but so much of the rest of it. Though damn, sometimes I think we should try to cut off the life support to any other region outside of L.A. We’ve done them too many favors. And they still try raids on our borders once in a while!”

“Who do?” Vee asked.

“The Damned. Demons. Who else?”

They walked on through narrow streets packed with milling bodies, and she was relieved to see that not all the men shaved their heads, though it was a prevalent look. All of the citizens around them wore white garments of one kind or another so that the streets looked to be teeming with termites. Women tended toward an ethereal or at least a more feminine look, in dresses or flowing robes with hoods. Some men wore cloaks or robes, too, and anyone who covered their head did so with either a peaked cowl or even a conical headdress.

She was surprised at the number of women; had so many volunteered to fight in the Great Conflict like herself? There were, of course, almost no children. But Vee did see some, and asked Tim about it.

“Oh, those were Damned children, condemned to Hades for not being baptized Christians, but some people take pity and convert them so they can be adopted. We assemble parties sometimes that go out into other levels looking for them, catching candidates that look like they might appeal to the citizens who put in the proper request for a child. A worthy cause, huh? It’s a dangerous one, though, because so many times there are adult Damned around that will try to stop these kiddie posses, as we call them.”

Vee changed the subject. “How did you die, Tim?”

“In the Big Bang that ended it all. Do you know about that?”

“Yes, the gun showed me. And me and my father?”

“The same. Your mom is still in Heaven.”

“Are you sure there is still a Heaven, after what happened with God?”

Tim stopped dead in his tracks and looked into Vee’s eyes with some intensity. “Of course there’s still a Heaven. Don’t even question that. And what do you mean, what happened to the Creator?”

“Well, you know, when he went supernova—self-destructed. The Essential Matter…”

Tim stepped closer to her, and dropped his voice to a harsh whisper.

“Where’d you hear that crap from?”

“The gun.”

“And you believed that lying Demon? Do
not
blaspheme like that, Rebecca. I know you don’t know any better, but don’t let anybody else in L.A. hear you spouting that kind of sacrilege. The Creator did not self-destruct. And this stuff you call Essential Matter, it’s just Demonic matter, which this factory city used to be full of and still is. Okay? We clear on that?”

“I hear you, Tim,” Vee said warily, giving him a thin smile.

He didn’t look entirely convinced, but turned to continue the tour.

They passed what appeared to Vee to be a restaurant, from the interior of which came the scent of grilled meat. It made her stomach roll over and she audibly groaned. Up until now, she had been able to largely tune out the emptiness that ever seemed to yawn inside her. “Oh my God,” she said, lingering to savor the aroma. “Is that for real?”

“Nothing’s for real, for real,” Tim said, drawing too close to her shoulder, “but yeah, that’s chow. If you like that, wait until I get you to my apartment, soon enough. I’ll have a feast fit for a beast put together for you.”

“But where does the meat come from?”

“Come on,” he said, his good cheer returning.

They came to a sizable building of riveted metal plates, rust streaking down from the seam of its flat roof (upon which a smaller structure rode piggyback). Tim spoke to someone seated at a desk in a little office off the anteroom that Vee waited in. Smiling, Tim soon returned and took Vee’s hand. “Great, I got us permission to have a look at the livestock.”

They passed along a few short corridors, but in one of them Vee stopped and cocked her head. She could hear an odd muffled sound, high-pitched and wavering but consistent, that at first she had taken for machinery, but someone opened and closed a door somewhere and in that instant she realized it was a continuous screaming of panic and pain. “What’s that?”

“The livestock being butchered. But come on, don’t be squeamish, honey—this is the afterlife, right? Only Demons can die, and these aren’t Demons.”

They turned down another corridor, passing a worker along the way.

He looked Vee up and down, obviously confused by her bullet-tattered, form-fitting black uniform. She looked him up and down in his butcher’s apron caked thick with blood. Tim and Vee continued on to a door, and Tim hauled it open, pulling Vee by the hand into a large chamber.

Armed guards patrolled around the outside of a single huge cage, filled with dozens of naked human beings. They were all small, brown-skinned, and reminded Vee instantly of the furtive primitives she had encountered below this level. Some of them huddled in little family-like groups, while others hooked their fingers in the mesh and stared out at her forlornly. Some were sobbing, but most were silent, vacant-eyed husks.

“Who are they?” she managed to get out.

“Don’t ask me why, but apparently a lot of these Damned who originated from the Amazon made it into the Construct before the floods.

They’re called Bora Indians. We’ve caught most of them, though there are still some out there that have slipped past our hunting parties.”

As Vee watched, a hatch in the ceiling above the cage slid open and a half-dozen decapitated heads tumbled down to thump and bounce on the floor below. A woman dragged one of them, eyes and tongue rolling, into her lap and rocked as she cradled it mutely. Now, stepping closer despite her horror, Vee saw a man with a normal-sized head but a weirdly small, skeletal-looking body dragging himself along the floor, not yet regenerated enough to stand and support himself, and other such figures either more or less reconstituted.

“You eat these people,” she breathed.

“Yeah, I know it’s kind of
Soylent Green
, but hey, we aren’t killing them, right? We harvest them for meat and then seed them again.”

Vee was trembling. “How many times a day do you ‘harvest’ them?

This little group feeds the whole city?”

“Oh no, not just them; this is a big plant, here. They’ve got a cage for a bunch of Zulus who got killed by the Brits back in 1879—if you like dark meat, heh—and we got some honest to God Aztecs, even, if you like South of the border style. And other sorts of primitive people, too. They’re happier if they’re with their own kind, so we do that for them. But yeah, we do have to harvest the people a lot everyday to meet the city’s needs.”

He shrugged. “We got a lot of hungry citizens here.”

Vee turned to him, her teeth fairly grinding, but did her best to control her outrage. She was, after all, a lone visitor in the City of
Angels. “You can’t convert these people like you do the Damned children you round up?

Well, but then what would you eat? Not that we Angels
need
to eat to survive, right?”

“Hey, Rebecca, we still have the craving to eat—you must have felt that. And anyway, we have converted some of the
Boras and the others.

Come on, I’ll show you that, now, too. If you think I don’t see them as people, you’re in for a big surprise.”

Vee didn’t think she could handle any more surprises, but she went along, though she made sure Tim no longer took her hand. She walked in silence for a time, followed him up a series of narrow metal staircases like fire escapes that zigzagged up one of the alarmingly tall and uneven stacks of domiciles. Halfway to what turned out to be his own living space she asked, “Tim, did I use to eat those Indians, too?”

“Of course,” he said. “You loved Bora steak as much as anybody. I don’t know if I’d have shown you, otherwise.”