Happy Hour in Hell

twenty-one: terminus

“. . . FISTULA, POOR Meat, Heartbreak Soup, and Phlegethon Docks . . .”

I awoke to the sound of the lifter voice announcing the terrible places we were approaching and passing in quick succession. The pressure in my head was easing, although that was no longer the worst of my problems. As I struggled to make sense of things, the voice announced several more stops along the fiery River Phlegethon, during which time I managed to pull myself into a sitting position with my back against the lifter’s shuddering wall. My blood sloshing on the floor looked as though it might reach an inch deep if it ever puddled in one place. I felt like a smashed hourglass.

To my dull surprise, several more passengers had joined me while I was unconscious, an array of mixed sweets that altogether made for quite a diabolical little chocolate-box: beast-things, blob-things, and even a few almost humanoid shapes, mostly better dressed than what I had grown used to seeing. I couldn’t look at them long, since my eyes wouldn’t focus properly, but these more upper-crusty travelers seemed to have ranged themselves as far away from me along the lifter wall as possible. Under other circumstances I would have found it amusing, citizens of Hell fastidiously trying to avoid a little blood. Of course, not a single passenger offered to help me or even looked at me with anything deeper than casual distaste. As you might guess, Hell is not big on empathy.

When my head stopped spinning so damn fast, I tore a strip from my robe and clumsily tied it around the ragged stump of my wrist to slow the bleeding. If I had been in a human body, perhaps even in one of my enhanced angelic bodies, I would have been long dead, but this demon form was sturdy, at least in terms of blood loss. With the pressure easing, I would actually have felt healthier than I had in hours if I hadn’t been so weak and dizzy.

Then again, I had to admit, maybe I’m just feeling better because I’ve almost bled out. Maybe this is what it feels like to die in Hell—the nicest thing that happens to you all day.

I didn’t really think I’d be allowed to die, of course. I would either be recycled into some permanent garbage heap of misery or, if I was deemed important enough, get swept up and shuttled off to the infernal body shops for replacement, which would be worse, since they’d probably notice when their meters all read, “ALERT! UNDERCOVER ANGEL! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”

The lifter kept banging to a violent halt and then just as violently starting up again as people got on and off, more all the time as we rose higher—Phlegethon Heights, Lower Mandible, Brokebone, Shrill Hollows, and a raft of others I was too fuzzy to understand properly. When we started to get to the Lethe levels, starting with the Lower Lethe Basin, I pulled the makeshift bandage tight just a few inches below the wound, preparing to run, or at least crawl, toward safety when I got to my destination.

Upward we shot, through more Lethian stops, then on through a number of the lower suburbs of Pandaemonium. Memories implanted by Lameh told me the Red City itself was stacked many levels deep. The announced stops were all enticing—Ass Crack, Disgust, Filth Lake—but I finally heard the words I’d been waiting for, Styx Loch. See, the waterways of Hell all twine around each other like the strands of a DNA molecule, or at least that’s how I picture it in my head. And though the River Styx surrounded and also flowed through the bottom-most levels of Erebus and Tartarus (and for all I know might have lapped gently at the hooves of the Adversary himself down in the ultimate darkness) it also cradled the uppermost levels, and that meant we had almost reached Pandaemonium.

Even through the delirium and weakness, something struck me. An oddity. You’d have expected that if the Adversary and the most important work of the infernal regions were in the deepest pits, that’s where those courting power would have built their homes. Instead they were all up here, as far from those terrible depths as possible, as if Hell’s most important lords still somehow, at least dimly, hoped one day to climb back toward the light. Maybe Riprash had grasped something important.

The announcer voice went silent for long moments, then said in a flat, doom-laden tone, “Terminus.”

With a final seizure and a creak like a nail being dragged out of a hardwood coffin, the lifter ground to a halt. Doors hissed open in a puff of steam. The rest of the passengers, now somewhere close to two dozen, all tightly pressed together except in my bloody part of the car, shuffled out. I was terrified the door might close on me and the lifter drag me back down again, so I didn’t even try to rise but simply scrambled out on elbows and knees, doing my best to keep my bloody stump from touching anything. The shock was beginning to wear off and the pain was incredible, as if the raw end had been plunged into a bag of salt. Believe me, they may not let you die in Hell, but they’re quite happy to let you suffer to the extent of your capacities and beyond.

The Terminus was immense. You could have plugged a couple of Grand Central Stations into just the lifter station, but it was also the hub of a network of pedestrian tunnels, roads, and (as I discovered to my surprise) railways. The trains fanned out from the central terminus, and as I staggered up the stairs I could see some of them waiting on their tracks—long, low things like millipedes, dull black metal with windows so narrow they might have been gun slits and probably were. I had no time to marvel, though, because every second I was staggering lost in Pandaemonium was a second I was vulnerable to being grabbed by one of the roaming bands of thieves and kidnappers or picked up by the Purified, the elite Mastema guardians of Hell and the only creatures who owed allegiance to the Adversary above all his lesser supporters. Still, although the Purified might not dance to the music of Eligor and Prince Sitri and the other bigwigs, they would definitely agree that Bobby Dollar was persona non grata in Hell, and my express ride back to the Punishment Levels would have me under torture as quickly as if Grand Duke Eligor personally caught me in his bedroom.

The Purified were uniformed in semi-modern military gear the color of thunderheads, each one wearing a sort of black spiral on the tunic, like the view from on top of a tornado, perhaps an image of the metaphorical Pit we were all in. This somber gray and black motif was made cheerier by splatters of deep crimson, apparently individual to each soldier. In their bulky metal gear and the strange casque helmets that hid their faces, the Purified could have resembled a Victorian writer’s idea of astronauts but for their distorted bodies, which had only “big and strong” in common, along with the astounding variety of weapons they carried, including the first guns I’d seen in Hell.

One last dizzy thought as I stumbled across the main concourse through a crush of Red Citizens as thick as anything I’d found in Abaddon: So was this the level of technology in Pandaemonium? Why? Why did this place look like a fairly modern railway station while down in Abaddon even the comparatively well-off were living like medieval peasants?

Stuff like that tends to snag my interest, but I couldn’t get distracted. I was woozy, exhausted, and sick, and if I didn’t find the way out I’d attract notice from the armored Purified, who seemed to have little else to do but to stare out their eyeslits at everything and everyone that passed. I found a huge stairway that, in my condition, might as well have been Mt. Everest, but it seemed to lead up toward an area of greater light, or perhaps an even bigger concourse, so I tightened the rag around my wrist again and started up.

It took me what felt like half an hour or more to climb those hundreds of steps. I was pushed and bumped the whole way by flocks of grotesque commuters who shoved me whenever I got in their way, but at last I reached another lobby. It was smaller than the great concourse downstairs, but its monstrously tall and narrow windows glowed with bright red light, and I could see a door that looked open to the outside.

As the uncaring, often actively hostile crowd jostled me out of the terminus and into what I realized must be Dis Pater Square, I saw the heart of the great infernal city for the first time. Pandaemonium was built from what looked like only two kinds of stone, great blocks of volcanic black and something more translucent, almost like quartz, that glowed with a fiery scarlet light. The radiance from the great buildings in its center made the whole metropolis seem to burn like a coal. Add the surrounding black city walls and, from a distance, Pandaemonium looked like a pile of embers burning forever in the darkness. The Red City. It wasn’t that different from other Hell cities I’d seen, just bigger and more so. The sky above my head was a tangle: dozens upon dozens of skyscraper towers loomed crookedly against the darkness, linked to each other by an array of fragile bridges, as if someone had stuck a bunch of giant pickup sticks in the ground, point down, and then dumped another pile right on top to let them settle where they would. Just looking up at this helter-skelter made me lightheaded without taking away a single throb from my wounded arm.

Suddenly I realized I was no longer standing but lying on the ground in front of the Terminus. I had fallen but didn’t know when or how long I’d been sprawled there. I climbed back onto my feet and staggered forward again, but the exhausting climb from the lifter had almost ruined me. I had to find safety, but where? I dimly recalled Lameh mentioning a Red City safe house where Snakestaff could hide in an emergency, but my blood-starved brain couldn’t summon it up. If only Lameh were still in my demon-head like she’d been in my Bobby-head . . . but I’d left her behind along with my world, hope, and sanity.

Where should I go? I was a sick animal, and I needed to get to ground and lick my wounds, but there were more than a few problems to solve first.

Problem number one: I was in Hell. I had no money, and there was literally no such thing as a free ride here. Even if I could remember where the safe house was, I had no idea how far away it was, though it was likely to be outside the center of the city, and I was so weak I’d barely made it out of the station. I stared blearily at vehicles speeding past me along the narrow streets, the cars of the wealthy, exhaust-belching, low, and slick as snakes. I saw fancy coaches, some drawn by huge rhinolike creatures and others towed by strings of shrieking, beakless birds. I saw jitneys pedaled by near-skeletons and big cargo wagons pulled by headless slaves, but I didn’t see a single thing that was going to carry me without charge, and I was pretty certain that if I didn’t rest I wouldn’t last much longer without fainting again.

I spotted a food-peddler’s rickety wagon on the far side of the street, loaded with steaming vats. The owner had a jackal’s face and the legs of an anorexic spider, but he seemed the least likely candidate to turn me over to the Purified. All I could think of was climbing into his cart to hide and sleep while he was looking the other way. Everything was darkening in front of my eyes, and a very enticing heaviness was sweeping over me. Bleeding out, it’s called, and the idea of “out” was definitely there: I could feel myself diminishing, like something swirled away down a drain. I took a step into the road—no curbs in Hell—and found it was difficult but not impossible to walk. My vision had lost focus, but I could dimly see the shape of the wagon, so I took another step and another. Then something hit me.

I can’t really tell you much about what it was, or at least I couldn’t at the time, just something big and loud that was suddenly on top of me. Then I was rolling, or flying, spinning across one of the main streets of Pandaemonium, and it was black and white and red all over, just like in the old joke. Rolling, bumping, then another, smaller impact. A feeling like the entire stony sky of Hell had fallen on me, then blackness rushed in.

The last thing I heard, as though spoken into a tin can down the longest, shakiest string any child had ever strung from a tree house, was a surprisingly sweet, feminine voice exclaim, “Oh! The poor, pretty creature!”

Then it all went away.