Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  In one smooth motion, Plague leapt onto the edge of the locomotive, seized a piece of pipe jutting out from the train’s iron skin, and yanked the gaping man out of the train to crash into the ground below. “JOHN!” Plague yelled as he turned to offer his hand. “TAKE MY HAND!”

  Hundreds of scraps of shredded vegetation spat out from the train’s wheels as it finally crushed the last remnants of John’s plants, and it swiftly began to accelerate to its former breakneck pace. In one last act of desperation, John stretched out his hand in the direction of Plague—and let out a whoop of relief as a vine shot from his fingers and wrapped around Plague’s hand.

  A grin of triumph crossed Plague’s face for an instant—and then became a look of horror as the sheer force of the locomotive tore John off his feet and dragged him through the dirt like a child’s plaything. John coughed and spat out entire lungfuls of dirt and filth. Bark, he thought desperately, and willed the tough substance already present on his torso and arms to spread and prevent the sheer friction of the train ride from skinning him alive.

  “Shit!” Plague cursed over the roar of the engine.

  Choking back dust and the occasional rock, John raised his head to see that a handful of soldiers—dressed in similar garb to the ones they had encountered earlier—had appeared on top of the carriage above them. For a moment, they stared down at the two men hanging off the train in disbelief, and then one of them raised a strange metallic weapon to his shoulder.

  “No!” Plague yelled. He yanked on the vine connecting him to John in a burst of ungodly strength, and suddenly John found himself ripped into the air, curving upward—and directly into the group of soldiers. For a brief instant, his eyes locked with the bewildered expression of the man holding the strange weapon—and then they collided so hard he could feel half the soldier’s bones shatter. A burst of white-hot light exploded from the weapon between them, and John felt his cloak jerk as the beam just barely avoided bisecting his torso.

  And still his momentum carried him forward as the soldiers toppled before him like bowling pins. Somehow he smashed into the steel roof of the train, nearly fell off the opposite side, and was then jerked back upright by the vine that still extended from his arm to the side of the locomotive below. “What the—” He stared in utter confusion at the groaning, sprawling soldiers around him. One of them weakly raised a pistol and fired a shot at his torso, but the bullet only kicked up a few splinters of wood; the bark he had grown over his body seemed to have made him impervious to bullets.

  “What in the blazing fuck are you?” one of the soldiers screamed. He snatched up his fallen weapon, pointed it at John’s head, and squeezed the trigger.

  It was sheer luck that kept John’s head on its torso, for at that very instant, the train below them suddenly lurched as its speed picked up, and the barrel of the weapon wavered. The beam of light that would have otherwise atomized John’s face barely missed his head, whizzing by his ear so fast that the only evidence it had ever existed at all was the distant boom of an explosion in the horizon.

  Enough. He was getting to be damn tired of people trying to kill him. Without even thinking, he thrust both hands forward and smiled as a massive vine sprouted from both of his palms. In a single violent gesture, he swept the roof clear of the soldiers, knocking them screaming off the train. Their bodies slammed into the rushing ground with the force of cannonballs.

  For a moment, John stood there, panting, as he tried to process what had just happened. Much to his dismay, two dozen more soldiers were climbing up onto the roofs of the carriages behind the locomotive. A shot rang out, then another, as bullets slammed against his tough skin. His smile quickly faded as soon as a crossbow bolt became embedded in his arm.

  “Famine!” Plague called out. John peered over the side of the roof to see that Plague was leaning out of the locomotive’s compartment and looking up at him. “Get down here,” Plague called. He said something more, but most of his words were lost in the screeching of the train as it careened down the rails.

  John nodded in reply and crouched down. Bullets and arrows pinged off the steel roof around him, but he forced himself to concentrate—first on detaching the massive vines that still hung from his palms (both of them limply slid off the train when they fell away from his palms) and then on awkwardly climbing down the side of the screaming metal beast to where Plague waited.

  Plague pulled him back inside the interior of the locomotive as soon as John was within reach. “Jesus, that hurt.” He winced as he massaged his right arm, which hung uselessly at his side. “Doing that to you was a bitch.”

  What’s wrong, John tried to say, and then he found that he was unable to speak, for a thick layer of bark had built itself over his lips. For a moment, utter panic overtook him—he was back in the Forest of Suicides, forever trapped—and then he forced himself to focus on making the bark recede. He nearly wept in relief when it did, and he was able to breathe in a mouthful of air.

  “Armor-like bark all over your body,” Plague noted. “Huh.”

  “More of them coming,” John croaked. He pointed to the roof above them. “Maybe thirty, maybe more.”

  “I know.” Plague cocked his head to the end of the compartment, where a heavy iron door stood. It was locked in place by a dozen steel bolts, but it was still visibly shuddering in its hinges from where someone was slamming a heavy weight into it from the opposite side. “It’s our lucky day, Famine,” he said as he awkwardly closed the window that John had come in from with his one good hand. “See that symbol on the controls there?”

  There were a maze of levers and dials on the board that Plague was talking about, but one image stood out among the rest: a steel-gray IV, surrounded by nine golden stars on a red background.

  “This is a troop transport.” Plague laughed in maniacal glee. “I swear, I thought this was just another cargo run, but Johnny—we just hijacked the Fourth Legion’s War Train!”

  “How many of them are there, Plague?” John demanded. “How many?”

  “On this train? Probably two thousand—that’s elite troops, mind you. The rest have to walk.”

  Behind them, the door shuddered as a particularly heavy blow landed against it. There was a pause, and then a burst of gunfire as someone blasted a dozen rounds into the door. John could see the indentations form in the metal where the bullets had bounced off. Plague paid no attention; he merrily gazed out the front window at the blur of buildings and factories shooting by.

  “Shouldn’t we be doing something?” John shouted. He pointed his hand at the door and grew a twisting maze of vines before it, but he sensed it would do no good—the soldiers trying to break down the door had some sort of mechanical saw that was even now tearing a great gaping hole in the metal.

  “One more minute, John,” Plague promised. His eyes gleamed with utter excitement. “When I say ‘Now,’ be a dear and pull that lever in front of you. I’d do it myself, but I’m already operating the accelerator and—” He mournfully shrugged. “I kinda shredded the muscles in my right arm hurling you up like that. It’ll take awhile to regrow them.”

  “Enemies of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, there is no escape,” a stern voice echoed down from the ceiling above them. “For your transgressions against the Holy Council, you will suffer the Seven Sinful Tortures, and then be cast into the depths of Judecca—”

  “Bitch, I’m from Judecca.” Plague laughed as the threatening voice rambled on. “I didn’t know they had an intercom, though! Hand me that thing, would you?”

  John handed him the hand-sized thing in question, and Plague lifted it to his lips. “This is the Horseman Plague,” he grandly announced in a voice that echoed throughout every compartment on the train. “It pains me to say this, but it looks like—” He placed his foot on the accelerating lever, and the blur of factories passing by became little more than a streak of light. He nodded to John in anticipation as a curve appeared in the railroad tracks above them. “This is the end of the
line. NOW!”

  Just as the screaming train slammed into the curve of the tracks, John wrenched back the emergency brake with all his might. For a brief instant, he had a sensation of floating through the air as the train flew from the tracks like a bat out of hell.

  And then the entire world came crashing down.

  26

  For an instant, Simon felt an uncomfortable stinging sensation as the locust bodies swarmed over him, covering every inch of his body—and then there was sudden relief as they abruptly fell away. He opened his eyes to see that, once again, there was a pile of dead insects lying at his feet. Disgusting. Whatever unholy power the vermin had, it seemed to kill them in the process. He turned his head to examine his surroundings. Wherever the Prophets had taken him, it was undoubtedly far from the antechamber he had been in previously. The three of them stood beneath a red, smoke-filled sky, in what seemed to be a vast city of strange architecture and churning machinery. Before he had time to fully appreciate any of his surroundings, a soldier in the garb of an officer rushed up to them.

  “Lord Prophet Longinus! Lord Prophet Fritz!” the officer breathlessly called out. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating a group of other nervous-looking soldiers. They clearly had been expecting the Prophets’ arrival. “My lords, we’ve just received word of an uprising in the C District.”

  “C District?” Fritz rolled his eyes. “That’s not even munitions. What are the workers rebelling with, chairs?”

  “We’ve contacted Dis,” the officer continued. He gave Fritz a polite nod, but his eyes were fixed on Longinus. “Lord Giles said that you two were on the way, and that you were to take full command of the operation. It’s small so far, but the guards are reportedly having some difficulties…”

  “It’s the Horsemen,” Longinus growled under his breath. “It has to be. Lieutenant, where is the rest of the Fourth?”

  “Eighty percent are stationed in the A District,” the lieutenant said nervously. “Most of the rest are in B. All we have here in C is a small platoon—the individual factories are supposed to be responsible for their own security. We have an elite division coming in on the War Train—”

  “We don’t need any of ’em,” Fritz bragged. “Come on, Longinus, let’s crush this little workers’ rebellion ourselves.” He ran his hand over the end of his chainwhip. “It’s been too long since I got to use this.”

  “Be quiet,” Longinus snapped. “What’s the ETA of the War Train?” he demanded of the lieutenant.

  For the first time, Simon noticed the strange road that ran through the cobblestone beside them—two parallel iron bands set into the ground, about the length of a man apart. Oddly enough, they seemed to be vibrating. He gently placed his foot on one of them to confirm this, and sure enough found that there was a slight rumbling to the strange bars. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a strange rumbling in the air too? Some new noise seemed to be rapidly growing in volume.

  “Ten minutes,” the soldier replied. “If the Prophets approve, I was planning to join the elite division and lead them to the factory in…wait…” He paused for a moment to cock an ear up.

  “You are making me impatient, Lieutenant,” Fritz warned.

  “It’s the train,” the soldier muttered. He turned his head to gaze down the strange road, which curved out of sight just a few blocks away. “F-forgive me, Lord Prophet, but it couldn’t possibly have gotten here this fast unless—”

  “MOVE,” Longinus suddenly bellowed. He seized the soldier by the collar and bodily threw him from the tracks, just as an image from Simon’s worst nightmares suddenly exploded into being at the curve on the railroad.

  It was a blur of motion, of fire and steel and death, bellowing flames and spewing thick black smoke, slamming down the iron road with the speed of ten thousand horses. All sound was drowned out in the piercing scream it bellowed as sparks flew from its iron feet and terrified men tried to leap out of its belly. For a split instant, Simon had a glimpse of two dark figures standing in the monster’s eyes, and then the steel beast jumped off the road in a corkscrew of death, flipping a dozen times, spraying metal and fire and bodies in every direction. Its tail ripped through the entire bottom floor of a building, bringing it down in an avalanche of stone, and still the beast kept coming, churning up a mountain of ash and dust—and quite suddenly, Simon realized in horror that it was coming directly at his fucking face.

  He leapt into a ditch a split second before the monstrous burning beast demolished the area where he had been standing. On it continued—the sheer volume of the crash threatened to burst his eardrums—for fifty, a hundred, two hundred more yards, until it finally came to a rest with an exhausted sigh.

  Simon coughed up a mouthful of dust. “Holy shit,” he moaned, though he could barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears. He sat up in the ditch and gaped at the utter destruction around him.

  The strange, albeit peaceful, city block he had stood in a moment before was completely gone. Only a handful of buildings remained standing; the rest were nothing but rubble and fire from the sheer impact of the iron beast. The beast itself was in little better condition—most of it was torn and twisted scrap metal. Even as Simon stood up to dust himself off, one of the house-sized links in its body suddenly exploded into a fiery inferno. Simon flinched from the sudden blast, but none of the shrapnel it shot out came anywhere close to striking him. Even the Prophets and the soldiers were gone; of the block, he was the only thing that had been left completely untouched.

  “Fuck.” Fritz groaned. He kicked aside a scrap of concrete and emerged from a small pile of rubble. The Prophet looked absolutely terrible—one of his eyes was bruised shut, blood gushed from his nose and scalp, and a chunk of rebar protruded from his flank. “Fuck,” Fritz cursed again. He slumped down on the ground and gazed at the destruction around them. “Like goddamn fuckin’ Stalingrad,” he said with a grim chuckle. With both his hands, he gripped the iron spike embedded in his torso and let out a scream of pain as he started to pull.

  It was the best chance Simon would ever get. He knelt to pick up a fist-sized piece of rubble and strode toward the wounded Prophet. “It always had to end this way, Fritz,” he said. “I think you and I both knew that.”

  Fritz didn’t even bother to look up at him. “Aren’t you going to ask what I wanted with you?” he gasped through a mouthful of blood. “You were never supposed to be a bodyguard, obviously.” With a tremendous heave, he wrenched the iron spike out of his body and tossed it aside.

  “I did wonder that,” Simon admitted. “But I’ve decided something, Prophet.”

  “And what would that be?” Fritz smiled. He struggled to stand, but barely accomplished any sort of movement, instead weakly falling back to the ground.

  “I don’t give a damn.” Simon raised the rock and smashed it down at Fritz’s face.

  As fast as a snake, Fritz’s chainwhip lashed out, embedding a spike deep into Simon’s forearm, and throwing him off-balance. Simon reeled back from the sudden attack, inadvertently lifting the laughing Prophet back up to his feet. “You think a rock will stop me, BITCH?” Fritz screamed in laughter. He hurled his chainwhip up in the air and lightning-fast, drew a pistol from a holster beneath his shoulder. Simon lunged for the gun, but it was too late—a shot rang out, then another and another and another. He could feel the bullets tearing through his organs, and let out a roar of pain.

  “Jacketed hollow points, expand on impact!” Fritz shouted in glee. The coils of the chainwhip fell back down to earth, wrapping around Simon’s arms and torso. Fritz yanked on his end of the whip, drawing the weapon taut and allowing its jagged edges to tear into Simon’s flesh. Simon toppled to the ground with a thud. “Made ’em myself for Horsemen like you,” Fritz continued to gloat. “They hurt like a bitch, don’t they?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he raised his pistol again and aimed it down at Simon’s bicep. “I need to take your arms and legs off so we can go meet a friend who�
�s going to help me out,” Fritz explained. “I have a knife, but we don’t have much time, so…I guess bullets will have to work.” He gave Simon a wink. “Fear not, de Montfort, I have plenty.”

  Is this how it ends? the part of Simon’s mind not going mad with pain wondered. But he knew that it wasn’t the case; death was impossible here in Hell, after all. No, this was merely the start of a new chapter in his life, one darker than the others perhaps, but no less than what he deserved. With his last scrap of strength, he hacked up a mouthful of blood and spat it up at Fritz.

  “Do you feel better now?” the Prophet asked sarcastically. “Now then…” He knelt and placed the end of the pistol’s muzzle against Simon’s arm. “This should shatter the humerus.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

  A blade flashed out of the haze of dust and smoke and sank into Fritz’s right arm. He let out a yelp of pain and surprise as the pistol slipped from his suddenly useless fingers. “Du fickfehler!” he cried out as he leapt back and drew another pistol with his left hand. “THE FUCK?”

  “I hear you’re looking for Horsemen, Prophet,” a strangely familiar voice said.

  Despite the barbs that cut into his flesh, Simon angled his head back to see that two figures were approaching them. The wall of flames left by the metal beast’s destruction veiled their faces in shadow, but there was something about them…

  One of the figures drew a knife and hurled it down at Simon. He tensed, expecting it to pierce his body, and then let out a sigh of relief when it snapped one of the links of the chainwhip in two. Despite the pain clawing at his guts and skin, he twisted and wriggled his way free of the damned weapon.

  “Here we are,” the figure finished. “Shall we dance?”

  Fritz’s handsome features contorted in rage. He started to raise his pistol, seemingly thought better of it, and turned to disappear among the smoke and rubble. “This is not over, Horsemen,” he threatened as his form vanished.