“Mr. Pitts. You have come back to us. I’d almost lost hope.”
“I was out of Moxie.”
He comes over and gets me in a big bear hug. For a guy who’s supposed to be hurt, he’s got a pretty good grip.
“Come. Sit down. Do you bring good news?”
I sit on one of the bunks while the remaining pack crowds in.
I say, “Where’s Traven?”
“The good father is going through what books he could save from his library. Vehuel and her companions have pinpointed the location of the Lux Occisor. We planned on sailing there tomorrow, with or without you.”
“Glad I made it back for supper.”
“You better eat up while you’re on board. We’re not taking any supplies with us when we go for the sword,” says Wanuri.
“Why?”
“We cannot carry them,” says the Magistrate. “Without the vehicles, we will have to move the weapon ourselves.”
I look around the room. He’s serious.
“We’ve gone from a crusade to pack mules? Why not just leave the gun, get the sword, and bring it back?”
“With whom should we leave it? Who can we trust at this point?”
“You saw Johnny and his bunch,” says Daja. “He isn’t the only one with a gang at this point.”
I say, “What about the angels? Can’t we leave the gun with them?”
“Then who would lead us to our goal?” says the Magistrate. “Who would protect us if there was another attack?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t believe you people. I’m gone a few days and I come back to the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”
Everybody stares at me.
“It’s a movie. There’s a standoff in a graveyard at the end. Everybody is going to shoot everybody else.”
Gisco says something and signs. I don’t need a translator to know he wants to hear how it comes out.
“Clint Eastwood is the star. You do the math.”
He gives me a thumbs-up.
“That is all terribly interesting, but what about the larger issue? Did you find Death?”
“Actually, he usually finds me. But yes, I did.”
His eyes light up. At least someone around here believes that I know interesting people.
“And what did he say?”
“He’s with us. He’s not going to run around killing everybody who looks at us cross-eyed, but when the time comes, he’ll be there.”
“Is that all? Did he give you anything to bring back that might help us?”
I wonder if he knows about Death’s hoodoo knife? He’s an archangel. Of course he does. He was probably on the budget committee that approved it.
“There’s this.”
I hand him the lighter.
He holds it up to the light and looks it over.
“What does it do?”
“It lights cigarettes.”
He hands it back to me.
“I was hoping for a more tangible symbol of his support.”
“What did you want? Team jackets? He’s Death. Death doesn’t lie. He just kills you. Or the other guy. In our case, it’s going to be the other guys.”
The Magistrate sighs.
“You are right. Death is a celestial being and celestials do not lie.”
Well, that’s a goddamn whopper of a lie right there. Well done, Raziel.
“There you go. It’s settled. Everything is going to be fine.”
The Magistrate rolls up his map and heads for the door.
“Have you told Vehuel about this?”
“Not much. I only saw her for a second.”
“Come. We must confer with her and prepare for tomorrow.”
“Can I get something to eat after that? All I’ve had in a week is six stale donuts.”
“What kind were they?” says Wanuri.
“Chocolate.”
“Ooo. I love those. You could have brought some back for the rest of us.”
“I was alone out there. I could have died, you know.”
“Which doesn’t alter the fact that you ate all the donuts.”
“I promise. Next vision quest, everybody gets snacks.”
She seems satisfied, but I don’t mean a word of it. The next box of desert donuts I find, they’re all mine. I think about going to Traven’s cabin and telling him what Death said about me not being able to go home, but I don’t do it. Either he was telling the truth or he was lying. I’m calm now. I have a handle on things. Talk about it is just going to throw me off balance again and I’ve been like that for too long. It’s time to let things go and deal with it.
I’m stuck here. Just another sucker in a kingdom of suckers.
We sail for a day and a half before heading back to shore. Knowing what’s coming, I eat the whole time. No way I’m hauling a doomsday gun to who the fuck knows where on an empty stomach. I also want to avoid Johnny, so I don’t come up on deck until we’re docking.
“You’re done,” says Alice.
“For the moment.”
“Are you proud of yourself? Are you proud of packing away as much food as a blue whale?”
“Which is bigger, a blue whale or a sperm whale?”
“Blue whales are the biggest animals ever.”
“Then yes. I’m very proud.”
People who know how to use rope and tie knots use every single inch of the ships’ ropes tying lines to the double flatbed with the Light Killer. Even with all the desertions, there’s still quite a mob of people left in the havoc. Still, I’m not sure it’s enough to move Big Bertha. And I’m right at first. But then the fucking angels jump in like the helpful little elves they are and the flatbed slowly starts to move. Imagine my glee.
Luckily, unlike when we entered the river tunnel, there aren’t any big hills going out. The side of the mountain opens for us and we grunt and curse like angry plow horses, but we get the gun moving out into whatever hellhole Vehuel and company are leading us to. The Magistrate takes Traven and Cherry up front with him and some of the angels.
The good news is that there are roads here. The bad news is that they’re old and rutted. Wherever we are, it isn’t like the Tenebrae. No desert monotony. No spiked mountains. It’s more like forest land after a nuke attack. Bare, mossy skeleton-like trees and tough tangles of gray and green weeds sprouting on low rolling hills. Pretty much everything but the weeds seems dead here. I can’t be sure about the trees. They’re thick and their branches twist at strange angles. Spirals, circles, and triangles. At points, some of the branches break into so many smaller branches that they look like clusters of nerves.
We trudge onward like morons, one foot in front of the other, ropes straining on our shoulders and backs. I wonder if Samael knew about the vehicles sinking and that we’d end up like this, army ants dragging the carcass of an elephant back to our mound. Bet he did. It seems like the kind of thing he’d find hilarious. Of course he wouldn’t let me in on the joke ahead of time. Where’s the fun in that?
Alice walks beside me, a length of rough, grassy rope pulled tight over her armored shoulder. My legs hurt and I’m sweating like a hippo in the middle of a triathlon. She, on the other hand, looks like she’s carrying a basket of daisies to Grandma’s house.
“This isn’t fair,” I say.
“What?”
“You angels have all this Incredible Hulk strength. Why do the rest of us have to pull at all?”
“Isn’t there an old saying about idle hands?”
“I wouldn’t know. The only sayings I can remember are old Iggy and the Stooges lyrics. See? All this pulling is bad for my health. I think I’m having an aneurysm.”
“Do you even know what an aneurysm is?”
“A little furry thing. Like a wombat.”
“Right on the money,” she says. “If you’re having such a hard time pulling, why don’t you use some of your hocus-pocus to float the gun where it’s supposed to go.”
“You’d lik
e that, wouldn’t you? I’d probably blow it up and let you angels off the hook.”
“Seriously, why don’t you at least make it easier for yourself?”
“I can’t take any chances on hurting the gun.”
We pass a pond of hot, bubbling shit. The smell is excruciating. Welcome back to Hell. You whined all this time about being in the Tenebrae and now you’re on home turf. Happy now, asshole?
“Did Death tell you something about the gun while you were out there?”
“Yes. But I can’t talk about it here. The only thing that’s important is getting the Light Killer.”
“Then shut up and keep pulling, Bessie.”
“Bessie?”
“Isn’t that what you call cows?”
“Bossie.”
“Trivia. I knew we kept you around for something.”
“Keep pulling, Supergirl.”
The Magistrate calls a cigarette break at midday. Everyone in the dog pack that’s still speaking wants a light from a 20K gold lighter.
Afterward, I sit with Alice by one of the nuke-blasted trees.
“I want to show you something. I got it when I was with Death.”
“You’re not going to trick me and show me a spider, are you? I hate spiders.”
“It’s not a spider.”
“It better not be.”
I take out the amber blade, but keep it hidden under my coat.
“It belongs to him. He uses it to cut souls from their bodies. He says it’ll kill anything.”
“That’s spooky. What are you supposed to do with it?”
“He wasn’t specific on that part, just that I should have it for now.”
“Why are you showing it to me?”
“If I should mysteriously snuff it, you need to get it before anybody else. I don’t even want Vehuel having it.”
She looks at me.
“Nothing is going to happen to you.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Do you see this armor? I’m kind of a warrior now. I’ll kill them.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“But just in case.”
“I know. Get the knife. Got it. Now let’s change the subject.”
“Okay.”
“If you could go to Heaven, would you?”
“No.”
“Don’t be so glib.”
“I’m not. I’m not built for Heaven. I’m built for killing things and Hell is where killers go.”
She picks up a dry twig and waves it in the air like a conductor’s baton.
“You’re the one trying to open Heaven to all the souls in Hell, killers included.”
“Still.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad. I knew exactly what you were going to say and you didn’t disappoint.”
“I’m sorry.”
The Magistrate calls for us plow horses to get back to work.
Alice tosses the twig away.
“I think I’m going to go in the back and walk with Vehuel and the others for a while.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
“See you later.”
She doesn’t say anything. I go back to my rope feeling like the biggest idiot in Heaven, Hell, or Earth. Alice isn’t dying and I’m not being dragged away anywhere, but it feels a lot like I lost her all over again. It’s confusing and I don’t like it.
We pull the flatbed for another slow, tedious, agonizing day and a half through mud, streams of shit, waterfalls of blood, and over a road paved with bones. People collapse and have to be tossed on the flatbed, making it even heavier. Others run batshit into the wilderness. A couple of people die in gang fights.
I don’t see Alice again the whole time.
At the end of the second day, and with everybody at the breaking point, it rains. I don’t know if it’s water. I’m just grateful it isn’t any bodily secretions. Except, of course, the road turns to a swamp and the flatbed bogs down. The angels come up front and pull while us puny types push from the back. It doesn’t help. Neither does getting them to push and the rest of us to pull. The Magistrate meets with Vehuel, some of the mechanics, and other people who seem to have a fucking clue and they come up with a plan. A really bad one.
We need to get something under the wheels for them to grip and the only things around are the skeleton trees. A contingent of the Magistrate’s goons and conscripts drags their asses up a hill and starts chopping down the forest. They have to clear a whole hillside to get enough wood for the twin flatbeds’ wheels. It takes hours to get the wood into place because a lot of the first batch sinks with the wheels and a second crew has to cut up the opposite hill. Eventually, we get enough wood, but we get something more, too.
At first it looks like a landslide down the bare, muddy hill, but it’s too slow and too regular. It doesn’t rush down toward us as much as it skitters. Vehuel and Johel manifest their Gladiuses to light the hillside.
I’m only here because I’m dead. I didn’t sign up for this shit.
It turns out what’s coming down the hill isn’t an it at all. It’s a they. About a million of them. Each about the size of my hand. The beetle colony must have nested under the trees and took exception to a bunch of strangers stealing their homes.
The insect mass is a solid carpet of writhing legs and ripping jaws. Turns out that not only are these particular beetles ill-mannered, they’re also carnivorous.
They hit the part of the havoc still coming down the hillside first, swarming over them until they’ve disappeared under the beetles’ bodies. By the time the insects move down to the road, anyone who was alive a couple of minutes earlier is stripped to the bones and blips away. The havoc panics. Most of them rush up the opposite hillside, but a handful of souls and Hellions freeze in place or get bogged down in the mud. The first wave of beetles covers them while others swarm around their bodies headed farther onto the road. Even the angels look lost. They’re used to fighting other angels, not chasing roaches when the lights come on.
People scatter, but there’s nowhere to scatter to. The bugs are everywhere. Muffled screams under piles of beetles as souls and Hellions try to claw their way out. Flashes of bones as bodies are stripped of their flesh. People scramble onto the flatbed, but the little bastards are going to swarm that soon, too.
No way I’m going out as bug food and neither is Alice.
I can’t think of anything else to do, so I bark some Hellion hoodoo at the front of the beetle wave. They explode into flames. The fire burns from the vanguard of the insects, spreading out across the hillside. Beetle bodies smoke and explode like monster popcorn, tossing their guts into the air.
The rain keeps falling. The angels look at me and I look right back at them.
“Great plan. Nice fucking road.”
When we finally get the flatbed moving again, the rain changes. People scream as tiny objects from the sky slash their skin. Some people hide under the skeleton trees, but most of the havoc dive under the flatbed as a razor storm cascades from the skies. The weird part is that it sounds nice. Like a million little bells tinkling overhead.
A few minutes into the deluge, Alice runs over and slides under the flatbed next to me.
“Are you all right?” she says.
“I’m fine. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Unfortunately yes. It’s the war. Things are getting worse. Do you know what celestial spheres are?”
“Yeah. They’re big glass globes that hold the light Mr. Muninn uses to make stars.”
If she’s impressed by my knowledge, she doesn’t show it. “Not anymore. That’s them breaking into a million little pieces.”
“You’re losing, aren’t you? The ones loyal to Mr. Muninn.”
“We weren’t supposed to say anything. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. But are you okay?”
“Y
eah. I guess.”
“Just stay here. It can’t last forever.”
Turns out I’m not as good a swami as Cherry. The glass falls through the night and the next day. The good news is that it does stop, and when it does, the rain stops, too. We shovel as much glass as we can from around the wheels and push the flatbed free. The Magistrate stands up front with the angels. His map was torn to shreds in the glass-fall. Good. Disgusted, he throws it onto the side of the road. I think everyone is expecting one of his Holy Roller pep talks, but the only thing he says is, “Let us get moving.”
Not exactly Dale Carnegie material.
We throw the ropes back over our shoulders and start pulling again. No one has eaten in over two days and the only water we’ve had is what fell from the sky. The angels better pull a miracle out of their saintly asses soon or there isn’t going to be anyone left to care who wins or loses their goddamn war.
After another day of pulling, and people collapsing or running off, we come to a crossroads. Strange, skeletal trees line both sides of the road and the hills. The branches look like they’re the bones of snakes woven around each other and posed to look like a forest by a very bad gardener or a very good taxidermist.
Vehuel and the Magistrate march to the front of the flatbeds. Vehuel’s red hair is stringier than when I first saw her. She and the other angels are as caked in mud and filth as the rest of us. It’s quite satisfying. On the other hand, except for his muddy boots, the Magistrate looks like he just got back from two weeks in Cabo. I hate him more by the minute.
Vehuel says, “Loyal friends, I have good news for you all. We have reached our destination. The weapon needs to be pulled no farther. In an hour or two, we will have the Lux Occisor in our possession and the weapon will be ready to return to Heaven so that God may use it to destroy his enemies.”