Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“You know that back in the world I’m lying in a pool of my own blood. I’d really like to get things rolling before I muss my hair.”

“Cool your jets, jet boy. We’re almost there.”

A mob is following us. I must be the most interesting thing that’s happened here since the girl. How sad for these dopes. How terrified do you have to be to put up with this dismal trailer-park universe? If I had time, I’d make every one of these assholes a deal. Let go. Come to Hell. You can camp out in Eleusis, the town God built for righteous pre-Jesus pagans. It’s still the nicest place down south. Crap parking but no torture and other reasonable souls to pal around with. I’d do it just to clear out this shit sink. But none of them would do it. They’re too chewed up by the demons in their own brains. I want to blame God for these losers. For not making Himself known and available to humans, but I wonder if it would make a difference to this crowd. There’s something willful about this kind of self-punishment. Without realizing it, they’ve made their own second-rate sitcom Hell.

Cherry says, “I hear you killed Mason.”

“Nope. He killed himself.”

“But you helped.”

“Russian roulette is a hell of a game. Second place sucks as much as, well, there isn’t anything worse than second.”

“You cheated, didn’t you?”

“I’m not stupid enough to play Russian roulette with Mason for real.”

Up ahead, it looks like a small nuke went off. A deep crater is spread over four square blocks. Buildings and the remains of cars and street signs lie in heaps on the edge of the blast zone.

“What’s Hell like?”

“It’s not as bad as this. Normal people would rather be inconvenienced by Hellions than be this bored for the next billion years.”

“They don’t have any imagination. We make our own fun. Did you ever lie on your back, look up at the sky, and make garbage angels? It’s very cathartic.”

“You tunnel in the dirt and play in garbage. You’ve come a long way since the Lollipop Dolls.”

“I miss the old gang. I wonder how they are.”

“I’m dating someone with an anime and manga fetish. I’ll ask her.”

The crowd behind us keeps growing. It’s officially a throng on its way to becoming a mob. Off to the side are groups of kids in dirty rags—eight, nine, and ten years old—standing off by themselves.

“Who are they?”

Cherry doesn’t even look at them.

“They’re lost kids. Ones that all died badly.”

I think she’s telling the truth. The kids look worse than I do. They’re crisscrossed with knife slashes. Long straight cuts along their throats. More slashed and crescent-moon marks on their arms and faces.

“Does anyone do anything for them?”

“They’re not exactly chatty. Little savages. They keep to themselves and we leave them alone.”

Cherry stops and points down into the crater.

“There she is.”

Our ghost escort backs away from the hole and keeps going to the end of the block.

The only things in the bottom of the crater are the Imp and the burned and rusted chassis of a school bus. She sits on the bumper in her blue party dress, idly stabbing the ground with the knife.

I start down the steep crater wall, walking sideways to keep from sliding. Pieces of broken pavement and loose dirt tumble down around me. The Imp looks up and screams. A full-on animal scream, nothing held back. She raises the knife and rushes me. I get down to level ground as fast as I can and pull the 8 Ball from my coat.

She freezes in her tracks. Takes a couple of steps back. I stay frozen. In a few minutes, she decides I’m not going to charge her, so she goes back to the bus bumper and stabs the ground harder than before, digging up fist-size clods of packed dirt.

When I get close enough to hear her, she says, “Are you here to kill me?”