City Infernal Read online

  Cassie felt a stab of nauseousness when she looked more closely. The mound of waste was churning with plump, grub-white worms.

  “Condemned to eat shit forever,” Xeke finished off.

  The image, and the remark, nearly finished Cassie off. Her face blanched under the red darkness.

  “You’ll be grossed out big-time at first,” Via offered. “Then you start to get used to the way things work around here.”

  Cassie had serious doubts about that.

  Then Xeke was kind enough to add: “Shit and rot and pus and stink, atrocity, horror, mindless violence and non-stop sheer fuckin’ terror ... it’s all no big deal.”

  Cassie choked back more nauseousness.

  “You see stuff like that here the same way you see people walking their dogs in the real world, or someone just getting in their car and driving to work. You’ll literally see blood running in the gutters the same way rain water runs in them where you live. Horror is the status-quo. It’s Lucifer’s public order.”

  It wasn’t only the content of Xeke and Via’s remarks, it was the nonchalance with which they’d made them that bothered Cassie just as much.

  No big deal?

  She could scarcely ponder any of it. She took a final glance at the stick-figure laborers in the hot fields, grateful she could not discern their features to any great detail.

  Hush could sense Cassie’s unease; she gripped her hand tightly, as if to reassure her. Every so often, along the path, bones could be seen, some human, some clearly not. Xeke stopped and playfully picked up a great homed skull. “Check it out. You won’t see this very often—the skull of a Grand Duke.”

  Cassie shuddered at the huge demonic cranium.

  “Looks like a Ghor-Hound got him, right in the noggin.” He tilted the skull to give Cassie a view of the wide bitemarks. Something had bitten open the skull in one strike. “Sucked his brain right out of his head—that’s some doggie food.”

  “In the Outer Sectors, the Ghor-Hounds can grow to the size of horses,” Via said.

  Cassie could only imagine what a Ghor-Hound was—some hellish version of a dog—and she didn’t ask for elaboration. But the obvious danger occurred to her at once. There were creatures that big running around out here?

  “How do we know one of them won’t attack us?” she asked.

  “We’re Plebes,” Xeke answered. He heaved the homed skull away. “They usually only go after Hierarchals.”

  Great, Cassie thought. I feel so safe now.

  More bones lay scattered to either side of the path. “Well it doesn’t look to me like there’s any shortage of bones in Hell.”

  “There isn’t. Spirit Bodies die all the time. I’m sure the Department of Raw Materials will send a crew out here soon to pick all these up. They crush the bones up in the Industrial Sector, mix it with limestone to make brick and cement. Nothing’s wasted in Hell.”

  “Sounds very efficient,” Cassie said with sarcasm. “But what I mean is, with all the bones you’ve got lying around out here, what’s so special about my bagful of fish bones?”

  “It’s not the kind of bone,” Via said. “It’s just the fact that yours come from the Living World.”

  “Bones from the real world are like gold here,” Xeke added. “The Ossifists use chemical sorcery to produce them. Like the alchemists of the Dark Ages on Earth who sought to turn lead into gold, the Ossifists can turn Spirit bones into real bones. But it’s a really complicated and expensive process; that’s why they’re worth so much, and that’s why only the upper-class Hierarchals have them.”

  “But now—” Via seemed hesitant.

  Xeke rubbed his hands together. “Now Cassie can provide an endless supply. We’ll be rich!”

  Via elbowed him. “Don’t listen to him. We’re not allowed to profit from an Etheress. We can’t ask you for anything.”

  Getting bones out of the garbage seemed simple. “You don’t have to ask. I’ll get you all the fish bones you want.”

  “We’re rich!” Xeke repeated.

  Via’s disapproval was plain. “One of these days,” she said to Xeke, “you’re gonna say one word too much and violate the Covenant of Citizenry. The Ushers’ll grind you up into blood pudding, and then it’ll be your soul that gets transferred to an Excre-Worm.”

  “I’m so scared,” Xeke bragged. “I’ve killed Ushers before and I’ll kill them again. They’re just a bunch of big ugly chumps.”

  “What’s an Usher?” Cassie asked.

  “They’re working-class Hierarchats—demons that exist to torture and kill for Lucifer,” Via said. “Think of a psychotic, homicidal gorilla with no hair, whose only instinct is to kill. They’ve got fangs like lions and claws that can cut through stone.”

  “Wonderful,” Cassie replied. “I can’t wait to meet one.” Then she changed the morbid subject. “All right, I get it now. Bones from the real world are money. But what about this jewelry I brought?”

  “That’s mainly for your protection,” Via told her. “We pretty much have our own.” Xeke pointed to his pierced earlobes, on which stone-fitted skulls dangled. Via brazenly pulled up her t-shirt, showing similar tiny stones on metal stems which pierced her nipples. Hush, too, had earrings set with odd gemstones, and in a silent giggle she stuck out her tongue. A black-streaked stone on a pin pierced her tongue.

  “Plus I’ve got some goodies in here,” Via said, wagging a small pouch on her belt. “Some special stones, a couple different kinds of Enchantment Dust, some talismans. It comes in handy.”

  Xeke grinned. “Via’s a punk-rock witch.”

  “Damn right. Silver can always be used in an emergency, for a Warding or Repulsion Spell. And birthstones can protect you from various demons. You’ll see in due time.”

  Cassie didn’t care for the final remark. But as her uneasiness grew, Via added, “That onyx you brought is real important.”

  Cassie checked her pocketful of stones, then found the tiny black one. “This black one right here? It probably cost less than twenty bucks.”

  “Doesn’t matter what it cost where you come from; in Hell, its priceless, and it’ll give you a unique protection. You’re an Etheress; you have a living aura, and any drastic emotions you feel can set your aura off. For instance, right now your aura just jumped, kind of yellowy. That means you’re scared. Are you scared?”

  “Well,” Cassie admitted. “A little.”

  “Any sharp emotion will set your aura off: fear, anger, excitement. The onyx will keep your aura subdued, hidden, but you’ll have to try hard to control your emotions.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cassie said.

  Xeke laughed. “Our auras are dead. But you’re an Etheress; you’re a living being walking around in Hell. Your aura will light you up like a pinball machine. People will see it, and it’ll give you away.”

  Via enumerated: “If word gets around that there’s an Etheress on the streets, the Constabulary will go nuts. They’ll put a bounty on your head.”

  The words sunk in. Cassie’s footsteps forward began to retard.

  “You don’t have to come,” Via repeated. “You can turn around and go back right now. We wouldn’t blame you one bit.”

  Xeke stood silent. Hush looked up at her questioningly. When Cassie looked back up the smoking hill, she could still see Blackwell Hall.

  “She’ll come,” XeKe said.

  “Shut up!” Via yelled. “You can’t influence her!”

  Xeke ignored her. “Sure, Cassie, it’s cool that you’ve offered to help us out by getting us the bones and all. But you want something from us too, and we know what it is.”

  Cassie looked back at him. She hadn’t really even consciously acknowledged it to herself yet ... but she also knew that he was right.

  “You want us to help you find your sister,” Xeke said.

  “You want to find her and tell her you’re sorry, right?” Via guessed.

  Cassie looked down at her feet. “Yes.”

 
“Then it’s your call, Cassie,” Xeke said.

  It didn’t take her long to make up her mind. She touched her locket. “Let’s go,” she said, and then they all began to continue back down the hill.

  (II)

  “Coach leaving, Track 4!” a voice shot through some kind of tinny-sounding megaphone. “Boarding now for direct connections to Pogrom Park, Pilate Station, Edward Kelly Square!”

  Jarring bells clanged amid rising rust-scented steam. Cassie jogged along behind the others through the outdoor train station that had been built at the foot of the long hill. It had just seemed to appear from nowhere: all gridded iron platforms and pillared canopies. A faded swing-sign hung aloft that read:TIBERIUS DEPOT

  (OUTER SECTOR SOUTH)

  Cassie didn’t have much time to take in details, but she could see no one else standing on the platform. The train itself looked like something from the early 1900s—old wooden passenger cars hauled by a steam locomotive. The engine car was backed by a high coal tender; however, the chunks of off-yellow fuel were clearly not coal. A man stood on top of the tender, shoveling the chunks into a chute. At first he appeared ordinary, dressed in work overalls and a canvas cap as one might expect. He paused a moment to wipe some sweat off his brow, and that’s when he cast a glance down at Cassie.

  The man had no lower jaw—as if it had been wrenched out. Just an upper row of teeth over a tongue that hung from the open throat.

  “All aboard!”

  “Hurry!” Xeke urged.

  Their jog broke into a sprint. Hush yanked Cassie forward desperately as the train began to chug forward with explosive gusts of smoke from the engine’s front stacks. The smoke smelled atrocious.

  They pulled themselves up through the open doorway just in time; the door clanged shut as Cassie pulled her foot in. Another second and it would’ve been severed..

  “Let’s try to find a decent cabin,” Xeke said and led them down the aisle. Wooden sliding doors lined either side, with wide glass panes. Xeke looked into the first cabin, frowned, and said, “Nope.” In the cabin sat a man whose face was warped with large potato-like tumors. Cassie wasn’t sure but the tumors seemed tohave eyes, and one eye winked at her. “Not a chance, Granny,” Xeke said of the next cabin, in which an ancient woman sat totally naked, leathery skin hanging in folds, vagina prolapsed. Cataracts glazed her eyes over, and she drooled as her toothless mouth hung agape. Red spots on the old skin seemed to move—until Cassie realized they were mites.

  “Smoking is so glamorous,” Via commented.

  Something morbid forced Cassie to stare further through the pane. The old woman’s hands trembled as she awkwardly stuffed two pinches of raw tobacco into her nostrils. She lit them with a match and began to inhale.

  Oh, man, that’s SO disgusting, Cassie thought.

  Into another cabin she only dared to take a peek. A short demon in tattered clothes—and with scaled yellow skin—was lackadaisically urinating in the comer. But the root-like penis had two coronas the size of plums, and the urine was a steaming mix of blood and minuscule worms.

  “Just wait till you see him take a Number Two,” Xeke remarked with levity.

  “I’m about to vomit!” Cassie said, outraged. “Find a place for us to sit down!”

  Xeke, chuckling, finally found an empty cabin. Cassie slammed her butt down on the wooden bench seat, then slammed the door shut, heaving in air.

  “Calm down,” Via said.

  “Oh my God, my God!” Cassie gusted, close to hyperventilating. “This place is horrible!”

  Xeke sat down next to Via, propped his legs across her lap. “What did you expect, Cassie? We’re in Hell, not the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.”

  Cassie sat forward, her eyes bugged. “Did you see that man—with all those awful growths on his face?”

  Xeke shrugged. “Facio-carcinoma. It’s one of Hell’s strains of cancer. Eventually those tumors grow full faces. They’ll rap with ya.”

  Cassie gagged. “And-and did you see that old woman with the-the-the—”

  “Blood-Mites crawling all over her?” Xeke finished. “Yeah, we saw her. It’s nothing to get bent out of shape about. In Hell ... people are fucked up.”

  The train clattered on, jostling Cassie in her seat. It took a while for her nauseousness to fade. In the window, more scorched land passed them by. At one point she thought she saw a broad-shouldered demon on horseback, riding a fanged horse over people buried in the soil up to their necks. A glance further on showed her several bats biting pieces out of a man crawling across the dirt—only the bats were the size of buzzards.

  Cassie quickly turned away, but then her eyes fell on some bulky object beneath the seat. “What-what’s that?”

  Xeke pulled it out. It looked like a travel bag.

  “Somebody forgot their luggage?” Cassie asked.

  “They sure did,” Xeke said when he opened it. Cassie almost passed out when she saw what was inside.

  The case was full of severed human hands and feet.

  Xeke and Via couldn’t help but chuckle at Cassie’s abhorrence. “Like we told you,” Via informed. “You’ll get used to the way things work around here.” Xeke opened the window for a moment, threw the travel bag out. “Give the Dirt-Chucks something to snack on.”

  A tapping sounded at their cabin window, then the door slid open. “Tickets, please,” came a voice. A thin elderly man stood before then, dressed appropriately in uniform and cap, a ticket-puncher hanging off his belt.

  “We don’t have any tickets,” Xeke told him.

  The ticket-taker’s face remained deadpan. “Then it’s a Judas Note each.”

  Xeke crossed his arms. “We don’t have any cash, either.”

  “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to call a Golem and have you all thrown off the train,” the man informed them.

  “Hold up, pops. Let me show you what we do have.” He opened the paper bag with the fish bones in it, and he broke off one single bone from a spine. The bone glowed furiously here, bright as an electric arc. Xeke passed it to the ticket-taker. “That should cover it, huh, pappy?”

  “I ... should say so.” The man examined the tiny bone, duly impressed. “Why, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Real World bone of such quality. You must know a very competent Ossifist.”

  “I got it from Santa Claus,” Xeke said. “And you and I both know that that bone’s worth more than you make in a hundred years working on this shit-wagon. So how about punching us up some indefinite rail-passes and beating feet?”

  “Yes. Of course.” The man quickly pocketed the bone, then handed Xeke four tickets with holes punched next to a line that read NO EXPIRATION.

  “Thank you for traveling with us,” the old man said. “Have a good day in Hell.”

  “You too, you old stick,” Xeke returned when the man had left.

  But Cassie just sat there, tremoring. The ticket-taker had appeared perfectly normal—save for one detail. When he’d handed Xeke the tickets, Cassie saw that his hands were long, three-fingered claws.

  “Surgical victim,” Via explained to Cassie’s obvious dismay. “He must’ve gotten pinched by the Office of Transfiguration. Lucifer’s Teratologists are always experimenting on people. Skin grafts, transplants and implants—some really gross stuff. Lately they’ve been taking in humans and giving them transfusions with demon blood.”

  Cassie seemed to be choking down the information. “But would that—wouldn’t that kill them?”

  “Nope,” Xeke asserted. “But it sure as hell screws them up. Remember, a human can’t really die here. Only when the Spirit Body is completely destroyed does the Soul pass to a lower being.”

  “If somebody cuts your head off,” Via gave an example, “the head continues to live and think and talk until it’s eaten by vermin or picked up by a Pulper Detail.”

  But even before Cassie could reckon what a “Pulper Detail” might be, a sudden scream shot out from somewhere on the car. Her eyes bugged again. “What-what wa
s that?”

  “Uhhhhhh ... a scream?” Xeke mocked.

  The screamed resounded, higher this time. Cassie ground her teeth at the sound.

  It was clearly a shriek of agony.

  She stood up, looked through into the next cabin, then sat back down, shuddering. “My God! There’s a pregnant woman in that cabin! She looks like she’s about to give birth!”

  Via took a peek. “Yeah? So?”

  Cassie couldn’t believe the response. “So? Is that all you can say? So?”

  Now Xeke took a look. “Wow. That ain’t no bun in the oven—that’s a whole friggin’ bakery. Looks like she’s gonna pop any second now.” Then he merely sat back down.

  “I do not believe you!” Cassie exclaimed. “That poor girl’s in labor! Aren’t you going to help her?”

  “Uhhhhhhh, how about ... no?” Xeke replied.

  Another scream ripped through the air. “Well damn it!” Cassie rebelled. “If you won’t help her, I will!” She jumped up, burst into the next cabin. The lank-haired woman lay spread-eagled on the floor, her face stamped with pain. Cassie had little idea what to do to help; she knelt down, took the woman’s hand and tried to comfort her. “Don’t worry, everything’ll be all right,” she blathered. “Take deep breaths. Try to push....”

  In the background she heard Via say, “Xeke, she doesn’t know. Go get her.”

  “She’s gotta learn sometime,” Xeke replied. “This is the best way.”

  Hush came into the cabin, tapped Cassie on the shoulder. She looked sad, motioning with her hand for Cassie to come back.

  “I can’t just leave her!” Cassie insisted.

  Hush scribbled something quickly on a notepad, showed it to Cassie. The note read:

  there’s nothing you can do

  “She needs help!”

  Hush moped away, then—

  Yet another scream exploded from the woman’s throat. Her milk-heavy breasts shuddered as she heaved out the scream. Cassie pulled up the threadbare dress, saw that the vagina had already dilated.

  The baby’s head was emerging.

  “Push! Push!” Cassie implored.