Rudolph! (13 page)

"Big enough to eat him in one bite?" Cupid wanted to know.

Donner shrugged. "Would it really matter if it took one or two bites?"

I ignored them, focusing instead on the problem at hand. What had Dante said about the third circle?.

Prancer called out to Rudolph: "That's a dead end," Prancer called out to Rudolph, nodding toward the narrow gap between two pillars of trash. Rudolph had been about to slip through the gap; he paused, eyes narrowing as he considered our options.

Rudolph's innate sense of direction was better than my map, and we had been following his lead as we wandered through the canyons of garbage, picking up the rest of the team. I could tell that Rudolph wasn't pleased by the idea of backtracking as it meant we weren't moving directly toward our goal, but I couldn't think of any other way. We had tried to stay up on the top of the ridges, but the smell had been worse up there, even with the tingling menthol afterscent of the candy canes in our nostrils. It was easier down in the canyons, but the route wasn't going to be direct, which was making Rudolph grumpy.

"Did you hear that?" Ring asked.

"What?" I asked, straining to hear anything other than the distant sound of the wind as it murmured through the canyons.

"It's big," Donner reminded us.

Rudolph glared at the muscular reindeer as he starting trotting back the way we had come. The reindeer fell in line, moving quickly to keep up with Rudolph, and I hooked an arm around Prancer's shoulder as he came by and swung up onto his back.

We followed Rudolph as he ducked through narrow openings and led us down wide trenches. I gave up trying to make sense of our wandering. It was like following a route in a forest that had been cut by a schizophrenic woodsman with an inner ear imbalance. Rudolph was getting more and more frustrated. He knew where he wanted to go, but there wasn't a direct path; turning away from his goal was like forcing the compass to point south.

When we ended up in a box canyon with sheer garbage walls, I called for a conference. We huddled up while Rudolph stared angrily at the wall in his path. "We need to think about where we're going," I said. "There's got to be a key of some kind."

"This is hell," Blitzen pointed out. "There may not be a key to this maze."

Rudolph took a running leap at the wall in front of him, zooming up to the top of the cliff like crazed hummingbird. As soon as he reached open air, the wind caught him. Rudolph bared his teeth, and his muscles stood out in stark relief on his bare skin as he strained madly against the wind. He made a valiant effort, but the wind was too strong, and when his hooves stopped dancing, he was thrown back like a leaf. We watched as he sailed overhead, and then he dropped below the upper edge of the cliff and neatly swung around to land on the ground nearby.

"It was a nice effort," Cupid offered.

"I hate mazes," Rudolph said. His skin was slick with sweat. He glared at me like the confusion of garbage was my fault.

I ignored him as I tried to think. Dante had written a long poem about visiting hell, and as I had said a couple times to the reindeer already, it was just a metaphor. While our journey had obvious parallels to his, it wasn't the same. I might as well have brought a foldout to the Super Mall of the Americas. It would have been filled with tiny graphics of stuffed animals and floating hamburgers and would have been just as useful.

We came from a different time than Dante. We were different. Our cultures were different. Our hells wouldn't match, and as long as I kept clinging to the notion that we were making the same journey, we'd keep getting lost. Sure, Dante's third circle had been a mass garbage heap—a prison for the slothful and gluttonous—just like the one we were in now, but there weren't any trapped souls.

In fact, other than the hunger crabs, our trip so far had been suspiciously free of any tormented spirits. The only torment was our own, and that was being heaped on us by the environment.

"It doesn't matter," I said, the thought forming in my head. Hell wasn't a place. It was an idea—a fluid environment that only became solid as we brought our own perceptions and apprehensions to bear on it.

"I thought Dante would give us directions," I said, "but all Dante really did was show us where the door was. Everything else has been different. Well, sort of the same, but different, you know?"

"Not really," Blitzen said. "You're rambling a bit there, Bernie."

"What is hell built on?" I asked him.

"Torment and frustrated desire," he said without hesitation. "Founding principle of Satan's misery."

"And each circle is a new iteration built upon the previous one, isn't it? The first was hunger—lust—a totally uncontrolled urge to consume. And then came despair, right? The sudden realization that you could never consume what you truly wanted, that you could never aspire to what you dreamt about. And after despair?" I waved my hand around me. "Confusion. Discord. The discarded refuse of your cast-off dreams and feeble attempts at creative accomplishment. This garbage heap is everything that we ever bought, ordered, or had manufactured that wasn't quite what we wanted."

"Are you heading somewhere inspirational with this speech?" Cupid asked. "Because you're not off to a very good start."

"I'm thinking out loud."

"Well, talk faster then."

I was watching Ring's ears and nose twitch, as the little reindeer alternated between smelling and listening. "What's the key to the fourth circle?" I asked. "What's the key to every circle? What keeps us moving forward? We keep thinking there's something better out there. We keep hoping that we're going to find the inner core of hell."

"No, seriously," Cupid said. "You should just stop talking now."

"Temptation," Blitzen said. "It's all about temptation."

"What?" Cupid looked at Blitzen. "How did you get there from his blather?"

"There has to be some moment that gifts you with momentary illumination," Blizten explained patiently. "We have to have reoccurring epiphanies that lure us into thinking that there is still some hope. Every failure is not absolute; there is always some tiny nugget of hope that makes us get up and try again. It's nothing more than temptation. The Temptation of the Infinitely Unobtainable."

I grinned. "Which makes your next failure even worse, doesn't it?"

Blitzen nodded. "The pit keeps getting deeper and deeper."

I waved an arm at the walls of garbage. "That's why the walls are higher, and why the wind is stronger."

"So, wait a second," Cupid said. "I'm not following this. It's going to get worse, every step we take?"

"Of course it is," I said absently. I was becoming mesmerized by Ring's nose.

"And there's no end to it?"

"None at all," I said as I wandered over to the small reindeer.

"Okay, so what's the point then?"

Ring caught me staring at his nose, and he stood stock still, his tail vibrating with the effort to keep his nose from wiggling. "What?" he squeaked.

"What do you smell?" I asked.

"Garbage," he said. "And Brussels sprouts."

I wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "No, you don't," I said. "There's something else, isn't there?"

He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Come on," I urged him. "Tell me."

"It's rotten," he said quickly, lowering his head. "Like a tub of Santa's sweaty socks."

Vixen made a choking noise, and Comet hung his tongue out of his mouth.

"It doesn't smell good, Bernie," Ring whined.

"I know," I said gently, patting him gently. I looked over at Cupid. "It's all about temptation. The key to every circle, or the key to the only circle. Do you get it? I thought we had to cross all these circles of hell to reach the center, and I convinced you all that was the right path, but it's an endless path, isn't it? We're going to wander each circle forever. But it doesn't have to be that way. We made this hell; we can unmake it too. We can get right to the heart of it. But to do that, we have to dream really big. We have to think really hard on the single thing that we want more than anything in the world."

I hugged Ring. "Come on, little one," I said. "What do you smell? What do you want more than anything in the whole world?"

Ring acquiesced finally, lifting his head and opening his nostrils to the horrible effluvia whirling through the air. The little reindeer's knees shook, and his eyes started to water, but he didn't stop trying. He didn't shirk from smelling as hard as he could.

"Come on," I whispered, hoping that I had guessed right. Hoping that the heart of an innocent reindeer was the purest of them all. "Let yourself be tempted."

His eyes widened suddenly. "Mrs. C's peanut brittle," he squeaked. "I smell it. I smell it!"

My stomach grumbled, and the back of my throat seized with sudden hunger. How long had it been since I had eaten anything other than a candy cane? "That's it," I whispered. "That's our ultimate temptation. Follow that smell, Ring. Follow it."

I let go of Ring, and the small reindeer bounced around me, his head up and nose tracking the most elusive of smells.

"You sure about it?" Rudolph asked, his eyes dark.

I shivered under that gaze, but I kept my apprehension under control. "Hell is supposed to draw us in. It's like the Hotel California. Sure, Satan's got an eternity to wait for us to show up, but there's a fast track. Because it's not the trip in that he wants. It's having us stuck here, knowing that we can never leave. And we've been wandering around, thinking that we just have to get to the center where we can get Santa's soul back, but come on, that's our job, right? That's not what we really want, is it? What is it that we really want? More than anything else in the world?"

"Lunch," Ring squealed suddenly, and he galloped off, lead by his nose.

"Off you go," I said to the others, signaling that we should follow Ring before he left us all behind. Cupid gave me a hairy eyeball as he passed, not quite sure that anything I had just said mean sense, but he followed Ring's lead. Lunch was lunch, after all.

Rudolph waited for me. "That was a pretty good trick," he said as I climbed onto his back. "Will it work?"

"I hope so," I said. "Remember Persephone? She craved a pomegranate. Imagine the lure of a pound of Mrs. C's peanut brittle."

"So the real trick is going to be stopping them from actually eating any," Rudolph said. "Who is going to tell them they can't have a bite?"

I patted his warm skin. "That's your job," I said. "They already expect you to be the killjoy. Might as well live up to it."

X

M
rs. C's peanut brittle was an old family recipe, gleaned from
the hand of her Norwegian grandmother, and it had the texture of soft gold. She usually made it after Halloween, and I stuffed myself stupid on it more than one night while writing FitReps for Santa during the run-up to Zero Hour. I had the dullest nose of the team, but after following Ring for about an hour, I could smell it too. It was almost like that vapor trail you see in the old cartoon, the one that lifted you up and carried you.

And finally, we found the source of the smell: a silver portal at the end of a long canyon, not unlike the one where we had conducted our confab. But this one was more imposing, longer and deeper. The walls curved inward as they rose overhead, blotting out the dark clouds thrashing in the sky. The sound of the wind rose in pitch as it faded, crying and wailing in anguish as we approached the portal.

Ring was waiting for us. "Come on," he whined, shaking with excitement. "It's just through there."

The portal shimmered suddenly, silver motes rising from the bottom. Prancer saw the tiny sparks before Ring did. "Look out," he cried, shoving the little reindeer out of the way.

A large shape catapulted through the portal, and Prancer was knocked aside, his body twisting painfully. The monster landed heavily, its weight shaking the ground, and we all stared at the three-headed beast that had just appeared.

I knew his name because, before I had given up on Dante, I had read about him. Cerberus. The three-headed guardian of hell.

Hercules faced Cerberus once. His twelfth and final labor was to retrieve the hound from hell, and the stories say that Hercules admitted that he couldn't have accomplished that deed without the help of Hermes and Athena. Dante used Cerberus as an allegory for the uncontrolled appetite which haunts the gluttonous, their punishment for a lifetime of excessiveness. The Disney animators turned him into a gigantic black beast with flaming eyes and jaws that dripped lava.

Maybe they hadn't done the lava dripping part. But they should have, because that was certainly how he was.

He was tall enough to stare down a truck driver behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler, and his teeth gleamed like polished chrome. His three heads perched atop thick necks that looked like the trunks of old-growth redwoods. His tail bristled with rattles and spikes—and maybe a tambourine or two for all I could tell. A mane of hissing serpents rose from the peak of his massive shoulders. Fire bled from his eyes, and what dripped from his black and pointed tongue burned a hole in the garbage beneath him.

Prancer was lying very still not far from the hound's massive paws. One of his legs was bent painfully under his body. His eyes were open, but he was doing his best not to look up at the beast towering over him. Cerberus's leftmost head was eyeing him, considering whether or not he would make a good snack.

"Nice doggy." Comet had been next in our file, and he was directly in front of the growling beast. "Anyone got a spiced ham or something?"

"I don't think a whole cow would slow him down," Rudolph muttered. His shoulders twitched. He wanted me off, but I didn't want to move. He shook me again, and I slid down reluctantly. I got it: I was small enough that Cerberus probably wouldn't consider me a threat, and Rudolph could move faster without me clinging to his back. But I wasn't going to outrun the big dog, not with my short legs. My stomach was hiding behind my lungs again, tapping out an SOS on my spine.

The central head dipped lower, drooling. The ichor hissed as it melted the garbage; somewhere in the packed trash, something ignited, and a lurid glow illuminated the beast's jaw. Its teeth gleamed, and it shook its head, scattering drool. The tiny fire crawled out of the hole and sent out runners of flame, chasing the scattered drops of magma spit.

Ring, who had been standing closest to the door when Cerberus had pounced through, made a noise like a startled fruit bat as he sailed up from behind the large hound. He buzzed the three heads in a
Top Gun
fly-by, and I made an involuntary animal noise myself at the risk he was taking. Cerberus's right head snapped at the flying reindeer, its teeth clashing together with a sound like two dump trucks colliding. Ring made a beeline for the nearest wall, flying close enough that he could skip along the packed garbage.

Whether he planned it or not, his run led the attention of the three heads right to Rudolph.

The hairless reindeer lowered his antlers and pawed the ground. "Come on, doggy," he said, mimicking Comet's tone. "How about a game of fetch?"

One of Cerberus's heads barked, and hell's guardian charged. The rest of the team scattered like frantic shoppers hitting the mall at opening on the morning after Christmas. I hunkered down, trying to pry up something to hide beneath. The left head snapped at me as Cerberus thundered past, its teeth closing noisily over my head. Along my sleeve, the material of the thermal suit started to bubble and hiss.

I batted at the melting fabric with a glob of cardboard, trying to scrape the spittle off before it ate through the insulating layer. I got most of it off, and after quickly checking on the rest of the team who were playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the hound of hell, I ran over to check on Prancer.

He was struggling to stand when I reached him. He got upright, and his ankle held, but judging by how he clenched his teeth, he wasn't about to join in the game.

"Can you hobble?" I asked. I gingerly checked out his ankle, noting that it was already swelling.

"How far?"

I nodded toward the portal.

"Yeah, I can do that," he said. He offered me a wry grin. "There's peanut brittle on the other side, right? I can do anything for some peanut brittle."

I didn't have the heart to tell him. "Just get out of sight," I said gruffly, pushing him gently in the right direction.

"He came out of it," Prancer said, bobbing his head toward the portal. "I bet he can go back through it too. I'm not going to be able to run."

"You won't have to," I said, reaching for one of the pistols hanging beneath my arms.

Prancer hobbled toward the portal, and when he stepped through it, silver streamers smeared his body into a dancing cascade of light. For a second, I saw through the portal: a plain of fire. But then the vision and the reindeer were gone, and all that remained was the fading echo of a church bell and the tinkling laughter of small children.

The reindeer swooped and darted like overweight hummingbirds around the snapping jaws of the hound. Donner came in low and speared Cerberus in the backside with his antlers and was nearly caught by a huge paw for his audacity. The muscular reindeer sped away, his hooves tearing at the trash as he went directly up a nearby wall. Blood dappled the tips of his antlers.

Cerberus leaped after him, its paws digging and tearing at the slope. Donner had slowed as he neared the top, unaware of how close Cerberus was behind him. Vixen shouted a warning, and Donner reacted without looking back. He lunged forward, cresting the top of the wall, and the wind caught him immediately. He was slammed against the edge of the shelf and tumbled heavily down the side of the canyon.

Cerberus dug in to the wall as its right head snapped at Cupid, who was trying to draw all three heads from Donner, who was sprawled on the canyon floor, dazed. Cerberus let go of the wall, and slid to the base, where it sprang toward the downed reindeer.

I ran, even though my too-short legs were no match for the large hound's ground-devouring pace. The rest of the team was coming too, but it looked like Cerberus was going to reach Donner first.

Unless . . . 

I saw Rudolph flying straight up, and when he crested the top of the canyon, the wind grabbed him. He didn't fight it. Instead, he let it carry him, and then he dove, hurtling down at Cerberus like a falling asteroid.

Rudolph landed directly on Cerberus's back. The middle head howled as Rudolph's hooves beat at the hound's spine, and the dog's mane of serpents struck at Rudolph's flashing hooves.

Cerberus went down, its back legs buckling under Rudolph's sharp blows. It thrashed on the ground, and then rolled, trying to crush the reindeer. Rudolph waited until the last moment to leap away, and one of the serpents tore at his flank, leaving a long scrape.

Rudolph's attack allowed the other reindeer to reach Donner. They formed a tight semi-circle around him, their horns lowered like a wall of spears.

Cerberus scrambled to its feet, two heads growling and snarling at the circle of reindeer. The left head was looking for Rudolph,, and it found the hairless reindeer just as Rudolph delivered a powerful back leg kick to the left head's jaw. The head snapped back, smacking into the middle head, making a sound like a couple of coconuts smacking together. "Get Donner out of here," Rudolph shouted at the team as the hound staggered, its heads yowling and snapping at one another.

Blitzen got his head behind Donner, and the groggy reindeer staggered upright. As one, the team started moving backward, toward the portal. They kept their antler wall pointed at Cerberus.

The right head snarled at the retreating reindeer. That head wanted to take a shot at breaking through the wall, but the other two heads wanted a piece of Rudolph, and they pulled the third head with them as they pounded after Rudolph.

The reindeer passed me as I slowed to a lung-heaving walk. I waved them on when Cupid made some noise about getting behind their pointy bits. "You heard Rudolph," I gasped. "Keep moving." I transferred the pistol to my left hand, and tried to wipe the sweat off my right.

I watched as Rudolph danced and taunted Cerberus. Without a bunch of other flying targets to distract the individual heads, Cerberus was getting closer to Rudolph with every snap of its jaw and swipe of its paw. It was going to tag Rudolph sooner rather than later.

I put several fingers in my mouth and whistled loudly. Rudolph heard my signal, and left off teasing the hound. He got a running start and took off, flying below the rim of the canyon. Executing a tight turn, he came back around toward the reindeer and me. He had to pass by Cerberus, and he tried to keep as much distance between himself and the hound as possible. But Cerberus took a run at a nearby wall, and then sprang off the vertical surface, sailing through the air. Rudolph tried to dodge, but a large paw caught his shoulder and shoved him into the wall of garbage. Rudolph kept Cerberus at bay with his antlers as they both slid down the garbage wall.

Rudolph landed sideways, and before he could scramble out of the way, Cerberus steam-rolled him. Rudolph rolled a few more meters, his limbs flopping limply, and then he was still. Cerberus turned around quickly, and ran over Rudolph again.

My shout was lost in the thunder of the hound's paws against the ground. I started running. My hand was both cold and sweaty, the grip of the pistol sticking to my skin.

Cerberus slid to a stop, and slowly stalked back toward the downed reindeer. The middle head was drooling, igniting fires in the trash again. The left head laughed at the sight of me running toward it.

Rudolph's legs kicked feebly. He raised his head and tried to focus on Cerberus, but his neck was too wobbly.

Cerberus stalked toward Rudolph, all three heads now focused on the downed prey.

I wasn't going to make it in time.

I slid to stop. My chest heaving, I raised the Flash Gordon pistol and aimed it at the large hound. "Hey," I shouted, trying to get its attention.

The middle head growled, fire dripping from its jaw.

I pulled back the hammer on the pistol with my thumb.

The left head barked at me.

"Bad dog," I said.

The pistol recoiled lazily as I pulled the trigger, and the bullet took its own sweet time leaving the barrel.
Jut a leisurely afternoon jaunt
, it seemed to be saying. And then everything sped up again, and Cerberus's left head snapped around as the bullet went into its open mouth. An explosion of ice crystals came out the other side of the dog's head.

Cerberus staggered, unsure what had just happened. The middle head gnashed its teeth, spittle flying, and the right head—having caught sight of the damaged left one—raised its muzzle toward the dark clouds and howled. Some other time and place, I might have felt sorry for him, but I could see Rudolph kicking and twitching as some of the acidic spittle fell on his bare skin.

I squeezed the trigger a second time.

Cerberus bellowed like an angry furnace as my second shot went under the chin of the righthand head and buried itself deep in his fiery core. It came apart in an explosion of icy crystals, and when I blinked the frost from my eyelashes, there was nothing left of the hound of hell but a scattered spray of melting icicles.

Rudolph raised his head as I came up to him. "Once upon a time," he said slowly, "all you got for being bad was a lump of coal in your stocking."