Aside from the overhead conveyor and the distant hiss and bang of machines, the place is almost silent, like the tens of thousands of dead around me and the thousands in the adjoining lockers have sunk so low in their misery that they can’t even acknowledge each other.
I didn’t think seeing Tartarus would get under my skin the way it is. I always imagined it would be Hell cranked up to eleven. Torture, chaos, and cruelty on a planetary scale. Mountains of flensed flesh. Mad bone seas. But this is worse. Tartarus is a dim, crushing despair. Heaven might not have been where you were headed, but now even Hell is a long-gone distant memory. Dante got it wrong when he put the “Abandon All Hope” sign at the entrance to Hell. This is where all hope dies, even for monsters.
I’ve only been here for a few minutes and the place is starting to bring me down like the permanent residents. I think about Candy, but it’s already hard to remember her face. I can make out the ghost of her body, but not her voice or how she felt. When I try to remember our room at the hotel, it feels as dismal and dead as this place. What am I doing getting close to her? Even assuming I get out of here, do I want to drag her into this life? Look what happened to Alice. Look where I am now. I’ve been here ten minutes and I already miss Hell.
Candy is a big girl and can make her own choices, but what if she chooses wrong? Will I be doing this again in a year when someone murders her and steals her soul?
The angel in my head isn’t handling any of this well. Tough shit. I didn’t exactly enjoy the ride when it took over while I was sick with zombie hoodoo. I suffered through its choirboy routine so now it can limp along while I figure a way out of here.
What looks like mist in the distance shifts and parts. It’s steam coming off an enormous old-fashioned open-face furnace beneath a gigantic boiler with transit pipes on top. Like a scene out of Metropolis, blank-faced but efficient workers take souls off the conveyor chains and toss them into the fire. The ones who aren’t frying the double dead are adjusting iron valves and enormous levers. They inspect gauges and bleed off hurricanes of steam to keep the pressure steady.
I push my way through the mob. It’s like walking through a wheat field. They’re so insubstantial that I can barely feel the spirits around me. The meat locker goes on for miles in every direction. I could wander down here for years without ever seeing a familiar face.
I yell, “General Semyazah!”
Heads slowly turn in my direction. The motion ripples out in small waves, like I dropped a rock into a pond of the dead. No one here has paid attention to anything in a long time.
“General Semyazah!”
Nothing. I feel arouic I feelnd in my pocket and pull out Mason’s lighter. I spark it and hold it high like I’m hoping for an encore of “Free Bird.” The room fills with light. Thousands of souls that haven’t made a sound in years suddenly try to speak. It sounds like a wind from the far side of a hill. Some souls rush to me and fall to their knees, holding their hands up in prayer. They think I’m Jesus at the final judgment come down to save them. Sorry, but I don’t think any of you are high on the Rapture list.
“Semyazah!”
Someone yells back at me. The voice is faint at first, but it gets louder as the crowd shifts, parting for someone muscling his way through. I can’t tell much about him except that he’s wearing the filthy remains of a Hellion officer’s uniform. I head toward him with the lighter over my head.
It takes about twenty minutes for us to meet in the middle.
“General Semyazah?”
He hesitates, not sure if he should admit it.
“Yes,” he says.
“I’m here to get you out of here.”
“Are you? And why would the Father send an angel for me, one of his most devoted betrayers?”
“God wouldn’t send you a pizza even if it was your birthday. And I’m no angel. I’m Sandman Slim.”
Semyazah is thin but moves gracefully, like he was built to always be in motion. His face is almost as scarred as mine. When he smiles half of it doesn’t move.
“Another one? I’ve met a hundred Sandman Slims down here. You’re not any more impressive than any of them. Less, in fact, in those filthy rags. Besides, Sandman Slim is mortal. You’re Hellion.”
“No. He’s not. It’s him,” another voice says.
I close the lighter and turn. The crowd sighs and groans when the light disappears.
It’s Mammon.
“Enjoying my face, are you?”
Where his face should be is all raw red pork roast.
“Hi, General. How’s the neck feeling?”
Semyazah looks at me but talks to Mammon.
“This is who butchered you?”