The Perdition Score

  I’ve been fighting Heaven’s battles for so long.

  Seriously: listen. You bastards forgot about me when I was in Hell. Please remember me now. Give me just this one thing.

  I take out a couple of Maledictions. Hand one to Bill. He lights them both with a candle. I puff mine until it’s red as a poker. Hold it to my wrist until it blisters.

  “What the hell are you doing?” says Bill.

  “It’s where she cut herself for Vidocq. I owe her this much.”

  “Hurting yourself won’t bring her back. You’ve got to gather your strength for what’s coming next. In a funny way, we’re lucky.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It isn’t often that vengeance and a righteous fight coincide so completely. But it’s not over. We both have work ahead.”

  “You’re right there.”

  I rub the knot on the back of my head.

  “You take care of those Wormwood pig fuckers back home,” says Bill. “Send ’em down to me. I’ll handle them from there.”

  “I might have to come back and help you with that.”

  “I wouldn’t object. Just don’t let thoughts of revenge blind you to your responsibilities to those you love.”

  “Don’t worry about Candy. She’ll be right with me when she finds out what happened.”

  Bill looks under the counter for another bottle. Looks frustrated when he comes up with nothing.

  “Send me some souls soon. Bereft is not my natural state. I fear I’ll go a little mad without a useful task to occupy me.”

  “It won’t be long, Bill. I promise.”

  He gets a rag and wipes off the top of the bar. It doesn’t matter that there will probably never be another customer in here; nervous energy has to go somewhere. Even the smallest things can help.

  “Any chance there’s more Wormwoods down here that we missed? If there’s tracking to be done, I’m ready,” he says.

  I blow on the blister. Watch it bloom on my skin.

  “I think we got them all for now.”

  “Pity,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it’s time for me to get out of this hovel,” he says. “I was a lawman once. Maybe I could make myself useful down here.”

  I set the Glock on the bar, along with all the ammo left for it and the Colt.

  “Keep both guns. I have more.”

  “The Colt was a gift.”

  I stack the bullets in rows.

  “Candy will understand. She likes you—she’d want you to have it.” I think for a moment. “We should go back up the hill to Quay’s place. Pick up some of those rifles and whatever ammo is left.”

  He puffs the Malediction. In the candlelight he looks older than his Earthly years.

  “That’s a good thought. But later. It will give me something to do after you leave.”

  “Let me show you how the Glock works.”

  He picks it up. Weighs it in his hand and gives it to me.

  “I never thought this would be the time or place I’d modernify myself.”

  “Life is funny.”

  “And death is riotous. So, show me how your toy pistol works.”

  I pop the clip and take out the bullets. Show him how to load the gun and rack in a shot. Playing teacher feels good. Gets me out of my head for a few minutes.

  When we’ve run through it enough times that Bill can do it smoothly, he pulls a crooked smile.

  “I guess this ain’t such bad iron after all.”

  “I hate to tell you, but there’s not much iron in there.”

  He sights down the barrel.

  “Iron enough for my purposes.”

  I look around the bar for a clear spot. Over by the wall there’s a long table where we served food when I was Lucifer.

  “You mind if I lie down for a while? My head hurts, and like you said, it’s been a long day.”

  He hooks a thumb over his shoulder.

  “I have a cot in the back. You’re welcome to it. Don’t use it much myself. I lost the habit of sleep when I came to this elegant burg.”

  I shake my head.

  “Thanks. The table is fine.”

  I take off my coat and shoulder holster. Set the black blade and the na’at on a corner of the table. Wad my coat into a lumpy pillow.

  “Good night, son.”

  “Night, Bill.”

  MAYBE LYING DOWN wasn’t the best idea after all. In my dreams, I’m drowning. My lungs fill with black, stinking muck so thick it pulls me down like there are cinder blocks around my ankles. I dream of the Tar Pits back home, only I’m not throwing Liliane into the black lake. I wade in myself. First, to my ankles and then my knees. By the time I’m up to my waist, it’s hard to move, but by then it doesn’t matter. The sticky stuff pulls me down like some dumb bear who didn’t watch where he was going. I pass through the preserved branches of trees. The skeletons of small animals. Birds and runty gazers. Tangle myself in a forest of wolves and saber-toothed cats, their ribs folding around me like I’m a bug in a venus flytrap. Then there are the big bones. Pool-table-size mammoth skulls. Legs the size of filing cabinets. I come to rest on the tip of a long tusk. The tar weighs me down so that the sharpened ivory goes all the way through me. I float there for years, a Flintstones shish kebab.

  Hands reach down and grab my wrists. Pull me up through the muck.

  I want to look around when I hit the surface, but my eyes are gummed tight by the tar. Someone holds my face. Uses their thumbs to wipe it away. When the hands let go, I cough up gallons of the thick black stuff, until my lungs work again.

  Eventually I can get up on my knees, I grab hold of the tusk and pull it out of my stomach. Another bad idea. It’s like I’m back in the arena, where some fucking hellbeast has sliced me open. I have to grab my abdomen. Only the tar and my hands keep me from falling apart.

  I’m not at the Tar Pits anymore. I’m by the other black filth at the treatment plant. I look around for Hesediel. She’s the only one who could have pulled me out, but I’m alone.

  I stumble out of the plant and head north, crossing the freeways, then up Highland. Turn east and begin the long walk into Griffith Park.

  Everything is on fire. The tar on my skin bubbles and burns as I follow the road up the hill.

  By the time I make it to the mansion, the boiling tar has sealed my stomach closed. When I can use my hands again, my first instinct is to pull my gun. I reach back for the Colt, but the tar has fastened it to my body.

  Shadows circle overhead.

  In the sky, two flying things claw at each other. There’s so much smoke, I can’t tell if it’s angels or eagles.

  I try to pull the Colt free. Turn round and round in a frantic moron dance. The gun won’t budge.

  A golden, angelic knife falls blade first into the ground.

  I get it now. I can help. I can make things right.

  The knife sticks to my tarry hand, but the blade is clean enough to use.

  I draw it through the tar and flesh holding my insides in place. It hurts so much I have to laugh. When the hole is big enough, I force my hand through the opening and cut a hole in my back. As the skin parts along my spine, I throw the blade away. Reach through my body and pull the Colt out through my stomach.

  Free now, I point the pistol into the sky and shoot. Fire all six shots, but the gun keeps going. I pump round after round through the burning treetops.

  One of the angels falters. Spins and nose-dives to the ground. I run to the body. I was so set on using my gun that I didn’t bother to see who I was aiming at. My heart is going a million miles an hour.

  The body is Hadraniel. Her armor is twisted. Her wings broken.

  Hesediel lands a few yards away in the circle of burning trees. Her armor is new and perfect.

  I point with the Colt to Hadraniel. Try to say something, but my lips are sealed by the tar. I find the knife and cut through the stuff until I can open my mouth.

  “It’s okay now. See? I kil
led her. Not you. None of this is your fault. It’s mine. You can come back now.”

  She smiles at me. It’s all so perfect and beautiful.

  “My little monster. Do you really think it’s that simple?”

  “Yes. It’s over. I fixed it.”

  She takes out her knife.

  “You can’t fix things that haven’t broken. Some things just are, even if we don’t like them.”

  “Please.”

  She draws the blade across her throat and falls back into the tank.

  The forest is one solid sheet of flame reaching to the sky. The tar boils and bubbles on my skin.

  I put the Colt to my head.

  And pull the trigger.

  I WAKE UP on Wild Bill’s table. He’s standing over me.

  “Bad dreams?”

  “You could say that.”

  He walks away and sits on a barstool.

  “That’s why I gave up on sleep. The visions are acute. Never had a lie-down that didn’t end with me shouting like a fool at ghosts.”

  “I talked to Hesediel.”

  “Did you now. What did the lady have to say?”

  I rub the back of my head.

  “Stay away from rodeo clowns. They’re drinkers.”

  He straightens his mustache with the knuckle of his index finger.

  “Sound advice from anyone.”

  I roll off the table still feeling the gun barrel against my head. It takes me a minute to get my balance. When it comes back, I put on my coat. Slip my knife and na’at back into place.

  I sit next to Bill at the bar.

  “Now that the thing’s been done, how long do you reckon until those rebel angels and Wormwood feel the pinch?” he says.

  I pick at a splinter on the barstool.

  “We don’t know how much refined black milk there is. It could dry up tomorrow or it could take a year. All that matters is there’s an end.”

  “Amen to that.”

  I look at him.

  He nods.

  “A funny thing to say down here, I know. But I think apt.”

  “I wasn’t going to argue with you.”

  Bill looks into the dark.

  “I suppose you’ll be heading home.”

  I rub my human arm. My hand comes away wet.

  “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “I think I got shot.”

  Bill gets up and comes around me.

  “Let me see.”

  I shrug off half the coat and he tears open my shirtsleeve. Holds up a candle and shakes his head.

  “It’s not a shot. More like a bugbite or prick from one of those damned bushes in the park.”

  “Good. I’d be embarrassed taking a bullet from one of those Hellion mercs.”

  Bill helps me put the coat back on. Now that I’ve noticed it, the bite or whatever itches.

  “As I observed earlier, I suppose you’ll be wanting to get back home.”

  “I do. But there are a couple of things I need to take care of.”

  “You feel up to going back out there?”

  “’Cause of the arm? I’m fine.”

  “You’re a little white is all. With them scars, your face is a bit like an ice-skating rink.”

  “Are you saying you went ice-skating, Bill?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Me? No. But I saw it once on a lake. All these kids and ladies twirling around. I thought it must be what Heaven looks like.”

  “If we do our work right, maybe we’ll both find out.”

  He gets up. Dusts off his pants.

  “I didn’t think you were too keen on getting to Elysium.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to stay. But if I can stand Disney World, I can handle an afternoon with halo polishers.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “To Tartarus.”

  He frowns.

  “Why there?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. And because it’s what Hesediel would have done.”

  “Then let’s get moving. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we’ll get you home.”

  Bill heads for the door. I blow out the candles and we go outside.

  “First we’re going to need another car.”

  He drops his head a little.

  “Try to pick a better one than last time. I don’t want to spend eternity walking home from one of your damn errands.”

  There are vehicles abandoned by the outskirts of the old street market. I get out the black knife and start testing ignitions.

  It doesn’t go well.

  I CLEARLY DON’T have Candy’s luck when it comes to cars.

  It takes a couple of hours to find one that starts. A rusted-out Corvair with seats that are mostly springs. That’s bad enough, but the fuel gauge is almost at empty. After some looking, I find a length of hose and bucket in one of the old market stalls.

  Did you ever siphon gas from a car by sucking on a hose? It’s pretty much the worst thing you can do with your mouth. To make it more fun, Hellion fuel tastes even worse than regular gasoline. It’s like gas that’s been filtered through a bloated whale carcass and served with a side of overcooked broccoli. I have to hit a dozen cars to fill the damned Corvair, but after another hour it’s done. Bill was a big help throughout the ordeal, smoking and shaking his head at me from the back of an old pickup truck.

  “You anywhere near a conclusion? You’re making damnation boring.”

  I give him a thumbs-up. Then go behind a VW Bug and throw up.

  Bill hands me a handkerchief when I get back to the Corvair. I spit and wipe my mouth.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t bother giving it back,” he says.

  I toss it away and we climb into the car. It’s a tight fit, but we manage it after Bill figures out how to push his seat back.

  “Where to, Magellan?”

  “Tartarus.”

  “I should have stayed at the bar.”

  “You’ll love it. There’s a river view.”

  “It sounds rapturous.”

  “That’s exactly the word I was thinking of.”

  TARTARUS, THE HELL below Hell, a Holiday Inn for the double damned, is a place of eternal darkness. A stinking cattle car crowded with all the suckers unlucky enough or stupid enough to die a second time. Then there are the Hellions. Unlike Heavenly angels, the fallen don’t blip out of existence when they die. No, they get to fall a second time.

  Bet Lucifer didn’t mention that on the job application.

  The entrance to Tartarus is through the river under Hell’s creaky version of the old Fourth Street Bridge. The landscape is a wasteland crisscrossed with old railroad tracks running beside a blood-filled tributary of the Styx. I bet all those dead L.A. real estate developers are tortured by dreams of condos and shopping centers as they’re sucked down into the dark.

  A year or so ago, I broke out of Tartarus, releasing the schmucks below. Then I sealed it again as the final resting place of Mason Faim. A shitty move, I know, but cry me a fucking river. I thought that would be the end of the place, but now it’s full again and that’s rotten for so many reasons, one of which is visible from half a mile away.

  “What in the Lord’s name is that?” says Bill.

  “It looks like Jurassic Park.”

  “Boy, this is not the time for riddles.”

  “You know I used to fight hellbeasts in the arena, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you noticed the Griffith Park Zoo was empty.”

  “I ain’t blind.”

  I stop the Corvair on a frontage road by the railroad tracks.

  “I’ve been wondering what happened to all those animals.”

  Bill stares into the distance.

  “You silly son of a bitch. What have you brought us to?”

  “A hellbeast buffet.”

  The entrance to Tartarus might be through the river, but the exit is on dry land. And at the moment it’s surrounded by
a wandering, snarling, crawling, slithering herd of the ugliest hellbeasts I’ve ever seen.

  “They must smell the souls.”

  “May I point out to you that I’m a soul?” says Bill.

  “Don’t worry. They won’t even notice you with the hot lunch down below.”

  “Am I to assume you have some blockheaded idea to take them things on?”

  I tap the steering wheel.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Is it too late to disown you?”

  “Calm down. Let me think for a minute.”

  I look at the bloody river. It’s low along the banks.

  I look at the hellbeasts. They’re moving slow. I bet they’re starving.

  There’s not much around us except for a train yard to the north.

  “Fancy a train ride, Bill?”

  “That’s not a real question, is it?”

  I start the Corvair and we head across the wasteland to the depot. We take it slow. Nothing to see here, monsters. We’re barely a morsel. Not worth your time.

  Eventually, we make it to the yard without being eaten, a good omen if there ever was one. I wish I believed in omens.

  “What now?” says Bill.

  “How do you like the look of that train over there?”

  He squints through the windshield.

  “It looks like Lucifer’s iron cock.”

  I see his point. A lot of machines down in Hell might work like Earthly machines, but they’re not exactly based on the same aesthetic. The locomotive is a hundred-ton tube with steam pipes that look more like bloated arteries stretched across diseased and pockmarked flesh. The front of the train is a leering skull with smokestacks recessed into the eyes. About fifty freight cars stretch out behind it.

  I look at Bill.

  “Ever drive a train?”

  “Every Sunday after church.”

  “You’re being sarcastic and that’s okay. I’m nervous too.”

  “Thank you for your permission. Now, what are we doing here?”

  I get out of the car. Bill follows.

  “I just said it. We’re stealing a train.”

  “You plan on driving it by those brutes?”

  “Nope. You are.”

  “Like hell I am.”

  “Not right away. After I distract them.”

  “Going to dance a monster can-can, are you?”

  I head for the train.

  “Let’s see if we can get it started.”