House Infernal by Edward Lee (22 page)

"Ruth, please remember. Try to have some Grace." He
tried to sound hopeful. "And don't forget-with any
luck, I'll have some new limbs in a little while, and you
won't have to carry me anymore."

"Yeah, that I really have to see ..

Her flip-flops pounded on.

To passersby, the priest appeared as a second head on
Ruth's shoulder. "Wait, wait," he said, as if alarmed.
"Cross the street and cut through the next block."

"Why?"

"See those Broodren up there at the corner?"

Her eyes peered ahead. Several guffawing Demonic kids
had congregated around a fire hydrant, and one of them
had a big wrench. "Yeah, I see 'em. What about 'em?"

"Well, you know how kids in the inner city open fire
hydrants during the summer to stay cool? Same thing
here."

"Not quite the same thing," she snapped over her
shoulder. "Kids in the inner city don't have horns and
fangs."

"But it's all relative, Ruth. Just cross the street. We don't
want to be anywhere near that hydrant."

Ruth slowed, thinking. "What's wrong with you? I'm
burning up it's so hot here. Let's go cool off under that
hydrant."

"Ruth. Think," the priest sternly suggested. "This town
is called Sewageton. No water will be coming out of that
hydrant, just diarrhea."

Ruth sprinted across the street.

"So where are we going now?" she half-sobbed.

"We're looking for Excreta Avenue. There's an urban
event that's going to take place there soon, and we can't
miss it."

"I don't even want to know."

"Good, because it's easier to see than to explain." He
paused, looking off in the distance. "Oh, and here's something pretty disgusting."

"Then I don't want to know!"

"It's just more things that you need to know." The
priest was losing his patience. "Knowledge is your best
weapon, Ruth. You need to know the terrain of your enemy. Then you can operate more effectively. Like that,
for instance...."

Ruth stopped at the corner of a street called Ordure
Lane, then spotted the sign on another multilevel brown
brick warehouse that took up more space than just
about any structure she'd ever seen. DISTRICT TANNING DEPOT #1.

"Ruth. You're looking at the largest tanning facility in the Mephistopolis. It makes sense that they'd have it in
Sewageton."

"Tanning like in tanning hide?"

"That's right."

But the smell coming out of the building's vents was
abominable.

"I used to live with a guy in Florida who poached gator,
and he'd tan the hide and sell it to dealers. But fuck! The
chemicals smelled bad but not that bad. Jesus, that place
smells like-"

"Take a look in the window."

Ruth hesitated, but then thought that maybe he was
right. The more I know about this fucked-up place, the better
I'll be able to get along here. She took one look through a
stained window and saw vats so big they reminded her of
water reservoirs.

"Every urinal in the district empties here, by the way.
And as you can see, they also have an immediate source.
Along the upper rims..."

Each huge reservoir was open-topped, and when she
scanned the upper rim of each one, she saw-

Are those people?

"They're convicts," the priest continued. "In the Waste
District, Human Damned who commit crimes don't go to
the penitentiary, they come here."

"For what?"

"Take the Abyss-Eye and see for yourself."

Ruth reached around and grabbed the pendant, then
held it to her eye.

"Oh, man! That's fucked-up!"

"That's how Humans serve their sentences here-by
contributing to the supply."

She'd zoomed the Abyss-Eye on to one of several hundred Humans trapped in Iron Maidens that hung just
past the reservoir's rim. Conscripts and Golems patrolled
the rim in supervision. The Maiden that Ruth focused on
contained a naked man whose hair and beard hung to his
knees. A fat black tube led from the ceiling into his mouth.
When Ruth took a longer view, she noted that thousands of such tubes fed thousands more of the Iron Maiden
prisoners.

"Since the convicts are all Human, they can't die,"
Alexander explaned. "No matter what you feed them. Polluted water is pumped through the tubes into their bodies
so that they're constantly urinating, feeding the supply.
Understand?"

"That's outrageous!"

"Um-hmm. So definitely don't commit any crimes in
Sewageton, because that's where you'd spend your entire
sentence. Ten years, fifty years, a hundred. Whatever. In
Hell, convicted criminals are forced to contribute to the
economy."

They're using people for piss generators! "Wait a minute!
Wait a fuckin' minute! What's this got to do with tanning
hide?"

"Watch. See those claws?"

Ruth looked again and noticed that every so often, a giant metal claw would dip from the ceiling and release
scraps of freshly flensed skin. The scraps would fall into
the vat.

"Human skin, Demon, Hybrid, fish skin, Gargoyle
hide, Octo-Vulture-you name it. Flensing is big business
in this District."

After the claw released its load, it shimmied to the
other end of the vat, lowered, and a few moments later
clattered back upward, its tines bearing scraps of still
more skin.

"They alternate ends," Alexander said. "A fresh load
sits in the vats for about a week, and then its removed for
processing and tailoring. You see, Ruth, there's no tannic
acid in Hell, but there's plenty of uric acid, an effective
substitute. What you're looking at is essentially the most
productive skin processor in Hell. The District's entire
economy runs on it. Skin makes up ninety percent of all
apparel in Hell. Only the very very rich own clothes made
of fabric."

"That's the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen!" Ruth
yelled, and jerked away from the obscene window. "You bring me into a town made of shit just to show me a piss
factory!"

"Calm down, Ruth. You better get used to it. What
you're seeing here is nothing compared to some of the
things that go on in the Mephistopolis."

"Well I don't want to see any more!" Ruth was striding
so fast that Alexander almost jounced out of the harness.
"I want out of here. This is worse than that other fuckedup place-ten times worse!"

"Not much farther," he tried to console her. "Take a left
at that Manburger stand."

Ruth glimpsed what looked like a hot dog cart on the
corner like you'd see in any city. The only difference was
that the vendor himself had a face that looked collapsed
by a baseball bat and some kind of weird vegetation
growing out of his ear. "You said hamburger, right?"

"No. Just ... forget it."

They turned at the brown brick corner, under the EXCRETA AVE. sign. "All right. What now?"

"Go to that alley. But watch for rats and Caco-Ticks."

Fuckin' great, she thought.

The stench that wafted out of the alley was positively
worse than anything she'd ever smelled in her life.

"Just try to hack it, Ruth," the priest sensed her revulsion. "Set me down and pay attention.

Yeah, yeah. She did so, breathing through her mouth.
"Man, do we have to be in the alley? It smells like a
corpse's ass crack."

"We need a protected vantage point. For instance, if
some Broodren or drug addicts saw a living torso sitting
right on the street unattended, then they'd snatch me and
sell my guts and blood to a fortune-teller, and the rest to a
Pulping Station."

Ruth's brow popped up. "But you're not unattended.
You're with me, and I've got this." She patted the clunky
pistol on her belt.

The dismembered priest seemed reluctant to say something. "Look, Ruth. For this to work, you're going to be
on your own for a few minutes. Into the fray, so to speak."

She glared down at him. "What the fuck are you talking
about?"

"Sit down for a minute. Let me explain-"

"The sidewalk is made of shit bricks. I'm not going to sit
on it. Now what kind of jive are you trying to pull?"

Alexander aimed his stump. "See that yellow line in the
road?"

Ruth saw it beneath the feet of droves of Infernal citizens walking to and fro. The crowd parted every so often
to let a steam-car chug by, or a Ghor-Hound driven carriage. "Yeah, a crosswalk. So fuckin' what?"

"It's not a crosswalk." Now his stump elevated. "Look
at that sign."

The yellow sign with black block letters spelled crr
MUTILATION ZONE.

Ruth thought back. "Didn't you tell me about that before?"

"Yes. I lost my arms and legs in an MZ at Pogrom Park.
There's another yellow line at the end of the streeteverything in between is fair game. The Constabularysort of like a federal police department-always waits till
rush hour to do this. More grist for the mill, you know?"

"No, I don't know." Ruth cocked her hip, continuing to
glare. "Why are we here?"

"If my intelligence source is correct, in a little while a
Nectoport will open at each end of the street, and-"

"A Necto-what?"

"Nectoport, Ruth. It's a sorcery-driven transportation
device that folds space. The system was invented at the
De Rais Labs. They run on pain."

"Pain?" This was getting harder and harder to comprehend.

"Pain, Ruth, derived from torture. Every district's got a
Torture Factory. Let me put it this way-in the Living
World they've got nuclear reactors and oil-burning power
stations that generate electricity. In Hell, they've got Torture Factories. I can show you one later."

"I'll pass," Ruth said. "And how the fuck does pain-"

"Sorcerers invented a way of converting the energy that fires between nerve cells into an equivalent of electricity.
But here it's called Agonicity and Electrocity. Humans are
the best fuel rods because they can't die. Anyway, that's
how the Nectoports work. Like the transporter on Star
Trek, only-"

"Only fucked-up?"

Alexander nodded. "It's a way for the Satanic police,
the military, and Lucifer's security forces to move around
quickly and without giving notice. You never see it coming until it's too late. National Mutilation Laws call for
these occasional slaughterfests. When it happens, you'll
see what I mean."

"What, you mean the cops can kill anyone between the
yellow lines?"

"Exactly. It's a way to keep the Pulping Stations full,
and more important than that, it helps maintain an overall air of terror, something that Lucifer insists on."

Ruth frowned back at the droves of Demons, Imps,
Trolls, and Human Damned filling the street. "Well if
they know they can be killed by walking between the
fuckin' lines, then why don't they just not walk between
the fuckin' lines?" she yelled.

"Because there hasn't been a Mutilation Action here in
decades. Same as the Living World, Ruth. People aren't
cautious. They're lazy."

Nectoports, she thought. Agonicity. She wondered where
it could possibly all end but then reminded herself that,
for her, it had only just started. Then another thought
jumped forward. "What's this got to do with you getting
new limbs?"

"That's how we're going to get the limbs, during the
Mutilation Action," the priest told her, then raised his
brow. "Or I should say, that's how you're going to get
them. When the Squads arrive, the first thing they'll do is
start hacking the crowd apart. That's when you slip into
the Zone, grab me two arms and two legs, and bring them
back."

Ruth looked down and laughed. "Bull-fucking-shit,
man!"

"Come on, Ruth. I can't do it myself for obvious reasons. And once I'm ambulatory again, you won't have to
carry me. It'll only take you a minute." His gaze darkened. "Of course, you don't have to. You can walk away
right now if that's what you want."

Ruth knew if she did that there'd be no Purgatory for
her a thousand years from now ...

"I'11 do it ... you fucker.

"Good girl. Try to get me arms and legs from an
Usher-you know what they look like. But if you can't, go
for Troll limbs or limbs from a strong Conscript."

Ruth chuckled. "Beggars can't be choosers, huh?"

Alexander raised his stumps. "You're quite right. Human Conscripts lead each Squad, and each Squad usually
contains two Ushers and a half dozen demons of pretty
much any species. I've heard that they've added Anneloks
as well."

"What's that? Or ... don't I want to know?"

"An Annelok is another experiment that came out of
the Academy of Teratology, where they Hexegenically
crossed Human genes with a species of Demon known as
Mephistus Annelia-your basic Worm Demon. Since their
brains are so small, they're very easily manipulated by
Subordination Spells. The Annelok's got arms, legs, and
an abdomen that look like giant earthworms. They can
squeeze a Demon or Conscript to death in seconds. This
new one's third generation, so watch out. It's almost as
savage as an Usher."

Even Ruth's not terribly sharp mind caught the flaw.
"Wait a minute. Ushers are those big-ass things with
slimy grayish brown skin, claws, and faces like meat,
right?"

es."

"If they're the ones doing the mutilating, how am I
gonna get any of their limbs?"

Alexander nodded. "See those four Imps over there?"

Ruth looked down the street and saw the four things
sitting against a building. They wore rags, rotten shoes,
and held out cups hoping for change.

"They look like homeless bums ... except with horns."

"That's what they're supposed to look like. They are really Contumacy operatives-the Satan Park Sect. They're
anti-Luciferic terrorist agents masquerading as homeless
bums. They'll do a quick hit and run, take out several
Ushers and Conscripts with their weapons, then slip
away."

"What weapons? Those guys aren't carrying anything
except cups for change."

Alexander smiled. "Just watch."

Ruth stood by, eyeing the bustle of pedestrians. Some
big thing that looked like a giant jaw on two legs strode
by. That's fucked-up! she thought. Then came a Human
woman totally naked, but her skin was completely covered by grafted faces. Get out of here! Several creatures that
looked part-reptile and part-Troll were playing some
crapslike game on the sidewalk but with fingers instead
of dice. Hybrids, she guessed. Then another Human
walked by, but with four heads.