“Anyway it’s all, as the big brains say, academic, Jack. I saved you from Mammon and you got me to Eleusis. We’re even-steven.”
Up ahead, a gutted city bus has jumped the curb and plowed into the stone wall. The damage is mostly blocked by the bus’s body, but through the windshield I can see where part of the wall has collapsed. I glance back at Jack. He looks nervous and a little confused. Is that a good look or a bad look for a serial killer? Whichever, I want to cut this freak show loose. I climb into the driver’s-side window and call back to Jack.
“Take it easy, man, and thanks for the memories.”
He yells something after me, but I don’t stop. I kick open the front door and head into the city.
Finally Eleusis.
Fuck me.
I wonder if Kasabian is watching me through the Codex? Is he eating pizza with Candy and giving her a blow-by-blow? He must be laughing his ass off by now.
Eleusis, God’s city in the Inferno, halfway across Hell from Pandemonium, is part of goddamn North Hollywood. Light Bringer, Lucifer’s biopic, was supposed to be shot in a Burbank soundstage just a couple of miles up the freeway. I’m still in L.A. This whole fucking world is L.A.
I’m almost there, Alice. I think. I hope. Who fucking knows anymore? I could walk a block and e2" block nd up back in Venice or the cemetery. We seem to have come in a big circle from Hollywood back to Hollywood. But it’s not the same Hollywood. And where I am can’t be entirely random. Mammon was taking me somewhere and Jack has been taking me somewhere and I don’t believe Mammon but I do believe Jack. He didn’t have any reason to lie. He thought we were partners, Hope and Crosby on The Road to Zanzibar.
This is what I get for putting my life in the hands of a crazy road spirit. Mustang Sally would love wandering around like I have. More streets, more roads, more crazy-ass tracks in the dirt for her to claim. You’re going to get a lot more salty peanuts than candy the next time we meet, Sally. No more sugar rushes for you.
I hear stones crunch and fall behind me. I’m not scared. I recognize Jack’s footsteps. Don’t get too close, Loony Tune. I really want to punch something right now.
On the other side of the rubble is a big intersection. Malls and parking on one side. A forties-style apartment house on another. The Scientology Celebrity Center nearby. There are bodies curled up under the dead trees and bushes where they’ve turned the celebrity center into a pagan flophouse. Most are dressed in hospital greens and bathrobes. A few are in straitjackets that look like they’ve been gnawed apart. There are even a few demented hellions with them. Refugees from the asylum. Finally something like good news. I’m getting closer.
There’s faint noise in the distance. Yelling. Gunshots. Maybe even engines revving. Someone is having fun somewhere in Eleusis.
I should probably wait and get the lay of the land but one of these Sleeping Beauties knows where to find the asylum. I step down from the rubble and head across the street to the parking lot.
I don’t get ten steps when Jack grabs me. I spin and come up with the knife under his chin.
“Do not even begin to try your Ripper act on me. I’m not one of your scared Whitechapel girlfriends. I’ll teach you what every slash and cut you gave them feels like. I felt them in the arena and they don’t feel good.”
Jack looks past me, shaking his head. He raises his hand and points.
“Look at the street,” he says.
I look over my shoulder, keeping the knife at his throat.
“I don’t see anything.”
“The sidewalks. The buildings. The windows. There are no proper joins. No right angles anywhere.”
“Why would there be? Downtown is getting shaken to death like Lassie with a rat.”
“It’s not the tremors, sir. Look across the street at where the pavement is falling away.”
ight="0" width="12" align="left">“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”
I look to where he’s pointing. The corner by the apartment building is shattered and sinking in the middle. The soil under the street is a mix of black mud and red muck.
“We’re standing on a suicide road,” he says. “The blood tide rises from beneath and eventually everything above drops down into it. This entire street could become a sinkhole at any moment.”
I try to read him to see if he’s bullshitting me. He looks as calm as can be expected with a knife at his throat.
“Then what are all these sleepyheads doing here?”
He looks at me like he’s trying to teach a few first words to a particularly dumb parrot.
“These are the only safe parts of the city. Thieves and raiders won’t come down here.”