The Fall of Hades (9 page)

“I guess after all these years stuck here, anything would be exciting.”

“Life is always a challenging balance between change and stability, Rebecca.”

“So it would seem. Well, having been a televangelist, I hope my father will at least appreciate your efforts with the Mesh to some extent.”

“Yes, one can only hope.” Johnston spread his arms again. “So, you will want to lead our team to where Karl is being held, then, naturally.”

“Yes. I guess that’s what a good daughter would do.”

“Mm. Well, Charles wants to lead the expedition, and from what you told him about the way Karl’s body has been refashioned, we’ll send a pair of Demon surgeons along to help extricate him. Fred, here, will also go along to protect you, and protect your father on the return journey.”

Vee glanced at
Johnston’s son with something like surprise; he had remained so silent that she had almost forgotten his presence.

“Thanks, Fred,” she told him.

Fred only nodded again in return.

Johnston
asked, “Do you feel up to taking our team to your father now, or…”

“I guess now’s as good a time as any,” she told him.

“Well, you and Fred had best be going, then; Charles is waiting to take you.” Vee rose from her chair and started for the door, which Fred had opened for her, but Johnston called her back. “Rebecca, you told Charles your father wasn’t in a very good mental state.”

Lingering in the doorway, Vee said, “That’s right. I’d say he’s gone insane. Good luck to your Demon surgeons in extricating him from
that
.”

“Well, perhaps he’ll recover and recall himself. And I think you may recall yourself in time, too, Rebecca. What do you think?”

“I sure hope not,” she said, and then turned and was on her way.

17: THE DEMON WRANGLERS

Vee was surprised when Roper brought her back to the holding tanks where she had been briefly held, like a specimen pickled in formaldehyde, to find Tim Wade among the team gathered to accompany them. He had an assault rifle cradled in his arms and a big grin on his face, though he hadn’t as yet noticed her approach. She was not surprised to see that two purple, winged Demons—one of them probably the same creature she had seen in the neighboring tank when she’d been interred—accompanied the group, knowing these were the surgeons (torturers, actually, Roper had explained) that would help free her father from the form he’d been rendered into. She was, however, shocked to see that one of the Demons had been forced onto hands and knees while Earl, whom she had briefly killed before, in one hand held a chain attached to the tight iron collar the entity wore, while in the other he gripped a pistol that he kept trained on the Demon. A third man, whom she didn’t recognize, knelt down behind the Demon, holding onto its folded wings, his pants lowered to reveal white, stubbly buttocks that pulsed as he roughly copulated with the creature, though Vee couldn’t be sure if he had entered a vagina, anus, or some other orifice. Without a mouth, the creature made no protest. Even if it had, the sound might have been drowned out by the encouraging shouts from Tim and Earl. The second Demon stood off to one side motionless, the end of its chain secured to the catwalk railing. Both Demons wore cuffs around their wrists, these attached to their collars by another length of chain.

Tim’s grin turned to dismay when he saw that the others had arrived—

Vee, Roper, Fred Johnston and two impassive Celestials. Vee didn’t know if it was her presence, or that of Roper or Fred, that caused the grin to go out of him. He nudged Earl, who looked over and smiled like a boy caught teasing the family cat. “Johnny,” he said to the man violating the Demon,

“hey, that’s enough, man!”

The young man he addressed looked up, gave a boyish grin of his own, and slipped out of their captive. As he rose and tugged up his white pants, Vee saw the pink indentations on his knees from kneeling on the grated catwalk, and his bobbing erection smeared with a thick white fluid.

Fred Johnston snapped, “You disgraceful, Demon-fornicating morons!”

“Hey, only Johnny was fornicating with the Demon, sir,” Earl explained. “You got to forgive him; he was raised on a farm.”

Fred hardly looked amused, but Roper couldn’t resist a laugh.

“Johnny, in life every sheep in Tennessee must have trembled at your name.” To Vee, the security commander explained, “Johnny here died back in the Civil War, the Battle of Bull’s Gap, 1864. A good ole Confederate boy. And you sure do love those bulls’ gaps, don’t you, Johnny you sick pup?”

“Sir?” the former rebel soldier said, confused at the pun..

Earl gave the Demon’s chain a tug and it moved a little unsteadily as it rose and went to stand by its partner. Vee admired the being’s compo-sure, but then the two Demons were not immortal as the Angels were and no doubt wary of being killed.

“I’m going to mention this incident to my father, Charles,” Fred said.

“I think you should train your men to conduct themselves with a little more dignity, and is this the best team you could assemble to come with us on a mission like this?”

“Well, Fred, Johnny here is one of our best Demon wranglers, and he’s also one of my best snipers. Tim is Rebecca’s former fiancé, as you no doubt know. And Earl was a tunnel rat in
Nam; used to go down there with just a flashlight and a .45. These men might be bad boys, but they’re definitely bad asses.”

“Yeah, I know, Earl’s so good that he got himself killed in one of those tunnels,” Fred remarked.

“Hey, sir,” Earl spoke up in his own defense, “do you know what the survival rate was for us tunnel rats?”

“No need to get your daddy worked up over this, Fred,” Roper said.

“Like Earl says, for Johnny we’ve got to make an exception—this poor inbred rebel doesn’t know any better.”

“And these other men who were encouraging him?”

“We just couldn’t believe he was doing it, sir,” Tim said meekly.

Vee had noticed the blatant bulge in the front of Earl’s pants. Tim carried his assault rifle low, maybe to hide one of his own.
Fiancé?
she thought.
What was I thinking?

Johnny retrieved his helmet from where he had set it down and lowered it onto his head. Up close now, Vee noted that the helmets were fashioned from sutured plates of bone, like a second skull. Across the front of his, above the eye holes, Johnny had painted a crude Confederate flag.

Earl donned his own, across the front of which he had simply painted REBORN TO KILL.

“We got to let Johnny get out his gay tendencies, anyway,” Earl joked, his voice distorted, as he adjusted his helmet’s fit.

“Hey,” Johnny protested in his own muffled voice, “that thing ain’t a man! I don’t see no pecker on it.”

“Don’t see no pussy on it, either.”

Vee looked back to the Demon, saw rivulets of white fluid slowly winding down its legs and realized Johnny had created his own orifice with the combat knife he wore on his belt. Both tall Demons were covered in old scars that looked like nicks and gouges, these having healed bright white against their glossy dark skin. The torturers given a taste of their own medicine, she supposed.

“Raping a female Demon would be okay,” Vee mumbled, “but let’s not rape a male Demon—what a sin.”

“It’s bestiality, and much worse,” Fred fumed. “And we need these things healthy, anyway, so they can help us, not cut up by you lunatics.”

“Won’t happen again, Fred.” Roper slapped him on the arm as he moved past to collect his own gear.

Fred said, “Can we suit up a little faster and be on our way?”

“Where’s my gun?” Vee spoke up.

“I got it for you here, ma’am,” said Johnny the Demon wrangler. He moved off to one side, returned proffering Jay in both hands.

“Did you try out that critter, too, Johnny?” Earl teased. “You stick your willy in that sweet little mouth?”

“Hell no! This thing ain’t sexy like those purple things is.” He snorted. “But yeah, I test-fired the thing. I thought maybe it wouldn’t let me use it, but looks like it can’t stop anybody who wants to trigger it…or trigger itself when it wants to, neither.” He passed the short, snub-nosed bone rifle into Vee’s hands. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Vee looked down at the gun and saw its red eye roll to gaze up at her, too. She murmured to it, “Don’t worry, Jay, I think you’re sexy.”

“Thank you, madam,” the weapon whispered hoarsely.

“Sure you wouldn’t want one of these instead?” Earl asked, showing her his own weapon, inspired by an earthly original. “M16A1, with a thirty round mag,” he slapped it, “and a 40mm M203 grenade launcher under the barrel. Very sweet.”

“Madam,” Jay whispered again, “as a firearm myself, I have amassed some weapons information that has been introduced into the Mesh, and it has been cautioned that the M203 grenade launcher can have a bad firing pin that can cause misfires.”

Vee had to smile. “Don’t be jealous, Jay,” she told him quietly, “I’m not going to trade you in.”

“Oh, and here’s this, too,” Johnny said, handing over her pouch of spare magazines.

“Are we ready to march or
what?
” Fred asked.

“All set, Fred,” Roper assured him, picking up a helmet for himself,

“all set.” Coming close to Earl and Johnny, Vee heard the security commander hiss in a less jovial tone, “Don’t you dipshits embarrass me anymore in front of this guy, all right? Let’s just do this.”

Tim could barely meet Vee’s eyes, and covered his head with his own helmet, its front decorated with a cross rendered in gold paint.

Johnny fetched two pouches apparently made of stitched human or Demonic skin, resembling her own, and hung them around the neck of both Demons so that the pouches rested between their folded wings. No doubt, Vee thought, the implements of their diabolic surgeries. Then, Johnny took the chains of both Demons and gave them a bit of a yank to get the creatures moving. Watching them, Vee again respected the wounded one for bearing its pain so well. Though the Demons didn’t regenerate like the Angels and Damned did, they still healed quickly, and she didn’t doubt this was a recurring indignity. Should she pity them, though, when their fellows had spent innumerable years torturing
her?

As the Demons were brought past Fred’s Celestial warriors, the two pairs of manufactured organisms seemed to eyeball each other with wariness or restrained hostility, but it was hard for Vee to tell, the eyes of the mute Celestials being so flat and lifeless, and the Demons having no faces but for those golden eyes. She had to agree with Johnny on one thing: the naked Demons, as unearthly as they were, had an hypnotic beauty, particularly in their graceful, androgynous forms. More human-looking though they might be, she found the Celestials more unsettling.

They began their march, and their path took them onto an adjoining catwalk that passed through a threshold and out into the open city itself, which spread dizzily above and below them. A flurry of Essential Matter was falling from on high, like radioactive fallout, and Vee observed that citizens and shopkeepers were almost urgently sweeping it into piles and burning it, as if it were autumn leaves. As if destroying evidence.

18: THE ELEVATOR

The high catwalk finally led them through another threshold, and the sounds of the bustling city faded behind them. The party had become subdued as they threaded their way through a series of paths like narrow chasms in a mountain range of machinery hulking in the gloom. Occasionally, Roper would wave to white-garbed soldiers perched above. Eventually, they came to one of the colony’s entrance points, demarcated by another series of those living severed heads hanging from long chains. She figured it must be the two Demons accompanying them that had capped the necks of the heads for their Angelic captors, to prevent the Damned from regenerating.

“I guess these people didn’t merit forgiveness and conversion,” she said.
Roper looked back at her. “I wouldn’t convert a single one of them if I had my way, lady, but there are those that don’t want to be converted anyway. These here might be hardcore Muslims or Buddhists or what have you. Or Satan worshipers.”

“Satan,” Vee heard Jay scoff.

She lifted him closer to her ear. “What?”

“They still believe in Satan even after all this time in Hades.”

“There is no Satan?” Vee couldn’t recall anything about this subject.

“No. Take it from a Demon; there never was. No Satan, no Lucifer, no ruler of Hell. Only the Creator. All is His creation—everything is from and of Him.”

They slipped between the dangling, forlorn heads, and Vee glanced around herself as they continued on. “This isn’t the way I came into your city.” Fred immediately came to a stop. “It isn’t? Charles, which way are you taking us? I thought she went over this with you.”

“She did, Fred, relax. I’m taking us to the freight elevator; we can take it down to level 2 and retrace her path to the basement from there. A shortcut. It will save us time and make it easier, dragging these purple people eaters along with us.”

“Mm,” Fred grunted, sounding dubious.

“Don’t worry, I been down in the basement a few times. You have too, as I recall. Weird that we never chanced upon the cells Rebecca and her dad were hidden in before. I remember not long after they disappeared, you took some of your Celestials down there searching for them and never found anything.”

“That’s right,” said the red-haired man grimly, “I didn’t.” He gestured ahead of them. “Very well, Charles, lead on, if you’re sure you know where we’re going.”

Roper did lead on, a little further, until they came to a blank iron wall guarded by some of his security force, including gun crews manning a pair of mounted .50 caliber machine guns that were trained on the barrier. Roper gave an order, and one of his men peered through a slitted window in the wall until he seemed satisfied that all was well on the other side and gave a thumb’s up to another man, who threw a large lever set into the floor. The wall split in the center, proving to be two sliding doors that parted with a loud squealing. Beyond was revealed a capacious elevator shaft, and as Vee watched a wide platform descended into view and then disappeared below.

A minute later, an identical platform descended from above and vanished.

This was repeated continuously, the platforms apparently spaced along a looping track; certainly, they had to come back up somewhere.

As yet another platform lowered, another lever in the floor was eased forward, slowing the platform’s motion until it was brought level with the floor. “Okay,” Roper instructed, starting forward, “all aboard! Stop us at level 2, Jim.”

“Gotcha, sir,” said the soldier manning the levers.

Roper, Tim, Earl, Johnny and the two Demons, Fred and the two Celestials, and Vee all stepped onto the platform, with its strong mesh floor, with plenty of room to spare. Jim at the controls got the nod from Roper, and the lever was thrown to allow the track to continue sending its chain of platforms down toward the lower levels.

“We have to be careful with the elevator,” Roper told Vee, “because we aren’t the only ones that use it, but not every floor has the mechanism we have to slow it down and stop it.”

“It doesn’t go straight down to the basement level?”

“It does, but there are unfriendlies in the vicinity at level 1 and the basement. Better to go on foot from level 2, like I say.”

The men held their guns warily, so Vee did as well. The entrances to levels 6 and 5 were sealed behind more iron doors, labeled with those levels’ numbers, but 4 when it came level was open, stretching away into darkness upon darkness. They heard an uncanny howling, and Vee wasn’t sure whether it was human or Demonic, a cry of pain or a call to fellow beings. She thought she saw movement back there in the unlit depths but couldn’t be sure, and was relieved when the level and its echoing howls were lost above her.

Vee stood apart from the others, and with his helmet off Roper shifted closer to her. In a low voice masked by the elevator’s loud humming, he said, “I just want you to know again, lady, how much I admired your father. We really need him back now more than ever, the way things are going. Fred’s dad is getting senile, I think. He’s letting that sinful Damned wife of his warp his mind, and dirty what
Los Angeles stands for—the principles that sent us to fight in Hades in the first place.”

“So you didn’t take a Damned wife or lover, then?”

“No way. Never. I took a devout female soldier like yourself as my bride; an Angel. After all these years beside her, I’ve never given in to temptation, even with all these supposedly saved Damned women around me every day. We have no business claiming to save those who the Creator Himself condemned.”

“But there weren’t enough female soldiers to go around, were there?

And homosexuality was out of the question.”

“Prison sex? Yeah, of course.”

“So what were the others supposed to do?”

“Be strong.”

“Strong like you?”

The elevator jolted to a stop, startling Vee into gripping the double handles of her Demonic weapon more tightly.

“We’re here,” Roper announced, rescued from their debate.