Emerald Hell

Chapter 16

At least it appeared as if the mammoth Mother Tree opened an eye on its great feminine-like face, to now gaze at the intruders. Maybe it was just the shifting of leaves, but it sure looked like a seam in the bark had parted like an eyelid rising. The marionettes crowded around the massive trunk, dangling and waiting with the patience of the dead.

Lament said, "All right now, give me your lighter."

"How do you know I have a lighter? You're the one who fries turtle eggs."

"I only use wooden matches, and they're the very definition of soggified at the moment, son." He pointed at Hellboy's belt. "Looks like you got compartments a'plenty there. Ain't you got no fire?"

"I've always got fire," Hellboy said.

The girlies started to laugh and Lament turned, anxiety more deeply etched in his features.

"What is it?" Hellboy asked.

"The web is snapping loose. I don't know what's gonna happen next but it looks like Mama is waking up. We ain't got much time."

Hellboy grunted. They always started waking up right about at this point. The Goliath of Gol. The Baleside Behemoth. They'd be sleeping for millennia and twenty minutes after Hellboy showed up they'd be ail quarrelsome and looking for trouble. It got a little depressing sometimes.

He reached into his belt and produced his Zippo. Its casing was dented from a couple of high-caliber bullets he'd taken in the chest a long time ago. He kept it mostly for sentimental reasons nowadays but it still worked. At least it had when he'd taken the skiff out and lit the lantern last night, before he'd spent the day fumbling around in all this muck.

"They say these things never fail. Let's see."

He snapped the Zippo open, sparked it by whipping it across the thigh that hadn't been mauled. It flamed immediately.

The girlies lifted on their vines and reeled away, mimicking human voices and making their chatter, waving their hands about their faces.

"They know to fear it," Lament said. "I reckon some of them moonshiners held on long enough to throw a burning sprig or two before they gave up the fight."

Hellboy grabbed hold for the nearest cluster of branches but the recent rains had wet them down too much. He pulled at the grass, grabbed hold of some of the thatching of briar. He pressed the lighter to it all but couldn't get anything other than a few puffs of smoke.

"The flame won't take, it's too wet here."

Hanging by their tendrils, the marionettes ceased their human-like activities at the same moment and froze in place. Limbs completely limp, eyes shut. Chins to their chests. At once they were all drawn to the top of the great Mother Tree's head, and lay flat against the bark, unmoving and forming a canopy of cover.

The earth began to stir and rumble, and the hummocks and thorny bushes swayed and then surged for the sky, the ground quaking and heaving.

"Aw crap, it can walk."

"Now that is a damn sight to behold."

Replacing the Zippo in his belt, Hellboy snarled, rushed forward, picked up speed, drew back his stone fist, and threw every- thing he had into punching big ole Mama in the knee. He connected powerfully and shouted,"How 'bout that!"

Not nearly enough. His fist barely scarred the bark. Mania had grown strong on the life-blood of so many men over the years.

It looked down at him. The ancient living eyes blinked at him, and the bellowed air seeped from a hundred knots in the tree, a desperate and vicious hiss of contempt escaping as Mama scowled.

"You done gone and riled her up somethin' fierce now!" Lament called.

"She pissed me off!"

"I done told you not to hit!"

"Yeah, well, maybe you were right after all."

Lament clucked as if about to castigate a child. Hellboy reached into his belt and found a flashbang grenade shell for his demolished pistol.

When you threw a punch it was natural, everything else was a pain. They'd told him the gun would fire even underwater. That it was self-cleaning and wouldn't ever gum up. Well, so much for that.

He tried to recall if the shell had to be primed. He couldn't remember. It had been seven or eight years since he'd used the flashbang. Maybe it had been in Istanbul, or Norway. He really should start writing these things down and keeping a little notebook with him.

"Move off, I'll draw it away."

"You sure about that, son?"

"Hell no."

Mama looked back and forth between Lament and Hellboy and settled on Hellboy. Well, of course. It bent and started coming for him, its anger apparent even without any expression on that vague face. Its hair of women tangled and knotted now as it moved in, reaching with its colossal arms. With the sound of a thousand sighs, it brought a gargantuan fist down.

Hellboy dodged. He lashed out and struck one of its giant fingers, and with a heartening crash he felt the wood give way and pulp beneath his fist. The huge tree limb acting as Mama's pinky sheared loose, fell, and stabbed into the soft earth. It teetered for a moment, and then toppled like an oak tree. Maybe it was an oak tree.

Mania's eyes bled a strange crimson sap and the eerie wheezing grew even louder. It bent lower, seeking Hellboy out, and prepared to smash at him again.

He shouted, "Lament, cover your ears and shut your eyes! Turn away!"

Hellboy drew out the shell, held it in his stone fist, and started to squeeze. He swung his hand into the face of Mama, who stared at him like it knew his name, had always known his name, and that no matter what happened next it would continue coming after him for the rest of his life. Maybe it was true. You could never tell.

Mama had a mouth after all. A huge cavity opened and out spilled more blood-colored sap and a blizzard of lethal flowers. Then those bones too old and fractured to be used in its luring, female-like bait cascaded around him. The calcium and phosphates of the dead went into feeding the grand vegetation. Nothing was wasted. It sneered at him, and it was the scorn of power, of nature itself. Lament had been right. It really was beautiful in its own way.

The Mother Tree made to swallow Hellboy. He shoved his fist forward and kept squeezing until finally the grenade detonated.

Boom.

The world went white-hot.

A searing lick of golden-white light spiked and exploded in an insane roaring blast. Hellboy screamed and the concussive force threw him high against Mama's face. The bark of its forehead bled where he struck it. A ball of wildfire broke inside the Mother Tree's mouth and soon hurled heaping flame across the girlies lying atop its head.

Coiling billows of smoke heaved around them. Hellboy managed to peel himself off the great tree, and he fell into the mud.

Mama tore herself from her own roots and the earth erupted all around. Hellboy's hand was still on fire and he had to drive it down deep into the wet, black soil to put the flames out. He looked up and watched as the Mother Tree's head flared, all the vines and girlies catching fire and bursting into flame.

The mammoth creature turned and opened its mouth as if to scream, but all that came free was the sound of boiling sap and the crackle of burning timber.

Mama reared, the fiery husks of the flailing marionettes dropping through the dangling cypress like ignited streamers. They ruptured against the earth and all across the jungle. The Mother Tree wept gallons of red bubbling syrup and eventually lurched toward the water, halted in its tracks, began to split apart, and plummeted into pieces.

Burning, log-sized chunks of timber rained down. Lament shouted, "This way!" and Hellboy sprinted for cover, the boiling sap splashing across the area. An arcing spatter caught Hellboy across the legs and he groaned and went down. Lament rushed forward, got a hand on Hellboy's wrist, and tried to pull him along. A huge burning branch smacked Lament across the shoulders and threw him into the mire. Hellboy staggered up and dove after him.

They both hit the water hard, the fiery husks striking around them. Super-heated skulls and other bones rolled and hissed past, skimming the surface before sinking.

Unconscious, Lament began to sink into the slime. Hellboy struggled to him, swimming and crawling. The toppling wood caused huge waves to rise in the swamp water, pressing Hellboy back.

By the time he got to Lament, the hillbilly wasn't breathing. Hellboy dragged him up onto the shore, avoiding the clumps of burning timber, and began CPR in the mud.

Thirty seconds later Lament coughed a wad of black muck from his lungs.

He lay on his back breathing deeply, looked over Hellboy's shoulder, and said, "Day ain't even near over yet."

Hellboy turned, and that's when he saw the pumpkin-headed kid and the fishboy staring at him through a partition of smoking reeds.