Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  A swift strike when he is done with the Horsemen, then. It was the best solution. Let the humans tear each other to pieces, and then clamber out of the afterlife on a mountain of their bodies. It would have to be careful to not slaughter them all in the first few days; for all its talk of the extinction of Homo sapiens, Babylon had come to like the idea of maintaining a small breeding population of the weak creatures. What fun it would be to toy with their evolution! It already had several dozen genetic disorders logged into its database that it hoped to greatly accelerate in its captives.

  I’ll breed them all into screaming little balls of fat and meat, it thought savagely. But they’ll keep their brains. Oh yes, I want them to be aware of every little—

  “Machine,” Eve’s voice, distorted by the hiss of static, squawked over the radio channel. “You have a job to do. Now FINISH IT!”

  No human commands me, hag. Babylon flicked off its communications with a tiny shake of its head. With a single signal to the reactor built into its chest, its afterburners exploded twin jets of flame as it accelerated toward the vast sea of humanity that swarmed toward the fortress—and the massive tree, tinged with blood and flames, that continued to surge upward, swatting aside thousands with every mighty branch that erupted from its trunk. In seconds, Babylon flew close enough to see that the strange flames that coated the tree’s surface, although they spread fire and confusion among the Master’s ranks, seemed to be inflicting no harm on the tough, serrated bark.

  Yet another breach of logic, the cold intelligence thought with mounting rage. I will rectify it.

  It flew in a rough circle around the massive tree trunk, raining down its stock of Hellfire missiles, depleted-uranium rounds, napalm, and a dozen other hellish devices its perfect form contained. Great shards of bark tore from the tree trunk, crushing dozens in the frantically scrambling horde; even the sheer power of Babylon’s engines reduced the few humans unlucky enough to be caught in the wake of its afterburners to smoldering skeletons.

  Babylon did not care; it ducked and weaved around the mighty tree, easily dodging the forest of branches that twisted upward to block its passage. A mighty branch exploded upward from the horde like a hand, with dozens of screaming humans impaled on its serrated bark. But a single blow from one of Babylon’s rockets reduced it to ash, and a single swipe of its diamond-serrated wings split the massive branch in two. A flood of red sap sprayed through the air like blood—the Horseman within the tree continued to stab the bleeding trunk at Babylon, perhaps hoping to distract it as hundreds of vines slashed down from every direction, trying to seize and crush the metal god—

  “Pathetic,” Babylon boomed. Defensive Protocol 004. For a split second, the reactor in its chest faltered as its arms and legs retracted, providing more raw material for its wings to extend another five meters—and then the army of beam-cannons built within it exploded outward, providing an avalanche of pulverizing, burning destruction that radiated three hundred and sixty degrees. Every one of the Horsemen’s vines were reduced to ash, and not even the mighty trunk could stand against the onslaught—hundreds of holes tore through it directly to the other side, revealing the murky devastation of the distant horizon. The horde below twisted and collapsed on itself, its ranks having been literally hollowed out by the devastating attack.

  But Babylon was still not done. It whipped out its twenty-six carbon-alloy blades—each sharpened to an edge nearly razor-thin enough to cleave a molecule in half—and blasted down into the chaos of the Master’s army. With its blades forming a protective cage, and the sheer power of its engines, it passed through rank after rank as though the unending humans weren’t even there—they were nothing but screaming faces reduced to cubes of flesh by the army of its blades. The machine carved a great streak of red around the base of the Horseman’s tree as it circled, faster and faster and faster, still firing upward with its augmented weaponry, practically intoxicated on blood and carnage as it tore like a jet through even the smallest scrap of resistance. And it was working; the top of the burning tree, taller than even the greatest skyscraper, frantically trembled back and forth as Babylon’s weapons rapidly chewed through the trunk’s base.

  Perfect. Babylon extended its wings farther in order to catch more humans in its horrific path. A shock wave built up behind it, lifting up a cloud of blood and flesh, and still it pushed its engines faster, faster, FASTER. It tore the humans apart at a fraction of the speed of light, and now it was more the fire of its engines than its blades that inflicted the damage; the heat cooked the horde for half a kilometer in each direction, and now the blur of faces that Babylon whipped past were charred and screaming out—at least until the angel’s razor-thin blades scoured the flesh from their bones with the precision of a mechanized butcher.

  “YOU ARE NOTHING!” Babylon mocked them. “I AM YOUR GOD, AND YOU ARE NOTHING!” Drunk on its own power, and for nothing more than the sheer hell of it, it seized a handful of the vials stored in its body and fired them kilometers in every direction. They contained the most horrifying weapons the Kingdom had ever created: weaponized smallpox, bubonic plague, leprosy, even a few diseases of Babylon’s own design… Across the battlefield, the microscopic probes—each small enough to travel through the eye of a needle, much less the pores of the skin—it had stored within each vial eagerly burst out of the fragile glass and surged outward to spread the filth and contamination across all Hell.

  Soon you’ll have a species of lepers, Cain, Babylon laughed to itself. And then I’ll—

  Even at the incredible speed it was going, the suddenness of the impact at the small of its back took it completely by surprise. It instantly rotated its head backward to survey its attacker, just as a mighty talon slashed at its wings. The angelic armor held, but the blow was just enough for Babylon to slightly lose control of its velocity, and suddenly the raw speed of its passing caught up with it—not even its processors, capable of analyzing terabytes of data in a millisecond, were able to properly re-align its trajectory. It crashed into the side of the trunk, carving out a swathe of bark and sap the size of a house, and smashed forward another kilometer, frantically tumbling and cursing as it crushed rank after rank of humans to pieces—until at last, the wall of the fortress finally arrested its motion.

  “Who dares?” Babylon snarled as it wrestled itself free of the crater it had blown into the side of the wall. It swiftly ran a diagnostic check and was relieved to find that the damage it had suffered was minimal—and judging by the way the mighty tree was starting to collapse backward, it had accomplished the last of the tedious missions Eve would ever assign it. “Who DARES?”

  There was a rush of great wings overhead, then a slight impact as Leviathan slammed into the ground just a few meters away. With an easy flick of his tail, the dragon-demon reduced the front ranks of Cain’s army to a pulp. His rider paid no attention to the mighty horde behind them; instead, she kept her bloodshot eyes fixed on Babylon as she pulled away the last few rags from her bleeding skull.

  “Hello, ELIE.” Salome curled her hideous, flayed face into a smile. “It’s been awhile. I love the new look.”

  “Lord Prophet Salome.” Babylon curled its wings outward, springing out a row of machine guns from within its body. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  “Then you’re even stupider than the Master.” Salome winked. “It takes more than losing her face to keep this bitch down.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Leviathan growled.

  The demon’s scarred flesh twisted around the cybernetic implants that Babylon’s previous body had taken such enjoyment in installing. Leviathan had been much more compliant once the surgeries were completed, but it seemed that his old mistress had been able to reverse the conditioning process. How disappointing.

  “Lao is gone,” Babylon noted. “He lost control after all, did he?”

  “I am no slave,” the devil snarled. “He will suffer a thousand deaths for what he did to me. And you—you will suffer a
million.”

  “I knew he would fail.” Babylon felt a surge of satisfaction as it reached out with its sensors. Just as it had hoped, the tangle of wires and computer chips within the dragon’s frontal cortex were still there—all they needed was the slightest push, and Leviathan would belong to it once more. “Homo sapiens, in its millions of years of existence, has accomplished only a single, solitary thing. In everything else, like all flesh, they are a waste of resources, a waste of space, a malignant tumor—”

  “Jesus, I get it,” Salome groaned. “Fritz was right about just how boring you are, robot.”

  “But your species succeeded in one thing,” Babylon repeated. It chambered the first rounds into its machine guns, devoting a significant amount of processing power to make sure that its first bullets tore directly through the Prophet’s pupils. Incendiaries for this one. It simultaneously reached out with a powerful radio wave, intent on reactivating the computer seared into Leviathan’s brain. “The birth of the one perfect being. The machine. Me.”

  It sent the command directly into the demon’s tangled mass of neurons. Eat her alive.

  Leviathan jerked upright, a confused look gleaming in his remaining eye, as Salome tried to regain her balance on the devil’s back—

  Babylon unleashed a hellstorm of bullets that screeched for their twin targets at five times the speed of sound, leaving a shock wave of magnesium-aided flame in their wake.

  The time of the Kingdom’s Prophets was over. They were nothing now but refuse thrown upon the heap of Hell’s garbage. And Babylon was the cleansing fire.

  45

  As her allies fought and screamed and struggled against the unending tide of darkness, Signy was having the time of her afterlife.

  After Salome had forcefully imposed her will on the Eighteenth Legion’s War Train and the scared remnants of Imperator Sisera’s army, Signy had had little to do. She hadn’t minded; it had given her some time to take a much-needed nap, and force a scared medic into binding up her wounds. But soon enough, her restlessness got the better of her, and so she had wandered back into Sisera’s private compartment to see whether there was anything of note. Hidden away in one of the imperator’s crystal-laden cabinets, she had found a treasure.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered in utter awe. She could not even take her gaze away from the cabinet; she was afraid that if she looked away, the wonderous sight would turn out to be nothing more than another cruel mirage. “Is that…”

  She reached out with a trembling hand to touch the glass container. And then the spell broke; she eagerly tore it out of the cabinet, struggled with the cork, smashed the end of the bottle against the wall in impatience, and raised the broken glass to her lips. The beautiful taste filled her mouth, her nose, and she let out a groan of relief. For the first time in nearly six hundred years, Signy Crecy was able to revel in the taste of wonderful, wonderful alcohol. Never mind that it smelled like piss and tasted like a mix between gasoline and paint thinner; it was still like a taste of Paradise itself.

  Signy immediately downed at least three pints of the stuff. Why the fuck is it so hard to find a drink down here? If Sisera’s body wasn’t currently digesting in Leviathan’s belly, she would have given the imperator a nasty kick to the head. Greedy Kingdom bastard, keeping all this shit for himself. She casually tossed the empty glassware out through the hole that Leviathan had left in the wall and reached for another.

  In that moment, a strange thing happened as an old thought suddenly reasserted itself. James doesn’t like it when I drink. When she had become pregnant, her husband had begged her to lay off the alcohol. Signy had grudgingly heeded his advice for the rest of his life. I didn’t even drink when they murdered him. Not even when I killed my own—

  “Signy, Signy, Signy,” a throaty voice called.

  Signy jerked around, already raising the metallic bow that she had borrowed from the Eighteenth’s armory.

  A strange bird-creature stood on the head of the bed where Signy had been chained just a few hours earlier, its wings neatly folded against its torso. From the neck down, it looked like any other raven that Signy had seen, even if its talons were enlarged to monstrous proportions. But, at the end of its curved, scaled neck, the miniature face of a woman sneered at her. Did I really drink that much?

  Signy pulled back her bowstring further and took aim. “No,” she snapped. “No more fucking monsters or demons. I am sick to death of you freaks.”

  “Freak?” The tiny face on the bird’s body looked oddly offended. Signy did not fail to notice that it dropped its initial harsh voice for something deeper and more soothing. “I assure you, I’m the most normal one down here.”

  “You know my name,” Signy said flatly. “You have three seconds to explain that before I shoot you…and then ten seconds before I start skinning.” She licked her lips. “Been awhile since I had crow.”

  “That’s because I came for you, Signy Crecy.” There was no doubt about it; the voice with which the bird-thing spoke did not match the face. It was a kind, gentle voice, and despite the feminine appearance of the bird, it was undoubtedly male. That raised Signy’s hackles more than anything. “I’ve watched you all your life—well, the interesting bit at the end, mainly. I’ve waited such a long time to finally meet you, face-to-face.”

  Signy released the arrow. It barely traveled a meter through the air before it spontaneously winked out of existence—one instant there, and then, nothing. The bird’s face did not even blink; instead, its beak-like lips curled upward in a bland smile.

  Somewhere deep in her mind, a tiny part of Signy slowly began to grasp the sheer magnitude of the entity that stood before her, wrapped up in a clumsy disguise of feathers and talons. Perhaps it was the alcohol, perhaps it was the fallen angel that was already wrapping her up in its tendrils of influence, but Signy Crecy made a crucial mistake. For centuries, she had endured on little more than her instincts. And in this moment, when the fate of Hell hung in the balance, she ignored them.

  Signy slowly lowered her bow. “Face-to-face it is then,” she grunted. “But I don’t think you’ve shown me yours yet.”

  The bird’s smile widened. “You’re a clever one, human. Look outside.”

  Signy glanced out through the great hole that had been torn in the side of the compartment. She saw nothing but the unending expanse of the Burning Desert. Tiny scraps of flame trickled down from the blood-red sky, and on the horizon, a distant fire glimmered.

  “That is me,” the devil whispered. “That is my true face. All of it. From the towers of Dis to the ice of Judecca, I exist. I am all.”

  What the hell is this? There was something utterly unnerving about the way the thing’s beady eyes glimmered. A coil of fear wrapped around Signy’s heart. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You will be my champion, Signy Crecy. Sisera and Acceptance were just pawns, but you…you will be my queen.” The bird let out a single sharp cackle that contrasted horribly with the smooth, warm voice with which it spoke. “I’ve waited such a long time…and this little ‘war’ presents us with a golden opportunity.”

  “And you’ll give me whatever I want?” Signy knew the way this game was going. “You’ll let me see my family again?”

  “Don’t lie to me,” the bird suddenly snapped, with such an air of authority that it made Signy jump. “Your husband and child are in Paradise, far from the likes of you. Your rancid soul makes those behind the Pearly Gates vomit. Tell me what you really want.”

  Wealth? Sex? The chance to forget? Power, Signy nearly said, but she saw the warning look in the demon’s eyes. “Death,” at last she whispered. “Give me—death.”

  The monster smiled. “That’s more like it, child. When the throne of Hell is mine once more, you will be the first I kill. I promise.”

  The sounds of battle from the First Blockade were growing louder now. Up and down the War Train, the soldiers of the Eighteenth Legion nervously loaded and re-checked their weapo
nry. In the private office of a warlord of Hell, just a few meters away from the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever built, Signy Crecy made a deal with the Devil.

  And the great steam engines clattered on, hurtling them all to the final destination.

  46

  Once again, Vera staggered through the underground depths of the First Blockade, clutching the ugly gash that the fall had torn across her forehead. It was even more difficult this time; the pounding of the Master’s unending horde was directly above her, so loud that it nearly drowned out all conscious thought, and the sheer weight of the bodies above—as deep as the corridors were—had caused some of the ceilings to partly collapse. Several times she had to crawl on her hands and knees, through pitch-black hallways, guided only by her fingertips.

  Some of the prisons that had held the Kingdom’s experiments had burst open due to the commotion above. Vera never saw the monstrosities, dark as the corridors were, but she could feel them, strange warpings of human and demon, pecking at the edges of her mind. Several times she heard a clumsy shuffling sound slipping on the wet floor after her; once it had nearly caught her, but she managed to drive it away with a few well-placed pistol shots into the darkness.

  “Shit,” she whispered when her fingertips slid out into empty space. She reached out farther, trying to find the other side of the chasm that had been torn into the floor, but touched only empty air. How am I supposed to get past this? She squinted and stared down into the yawning void. An ice-cold breeze rushed upward, bringing tears to her eyes, but somewhere, so far down it was hardly visible, she thought she saw a glimpse of an electric light.

  A realization came upon her, and she touched the edge of the chasm to confirm it. Yes, the floor at the edge was smooth and rounded with some sort of metal. An elevator shaft. She clambered up and blindly smashed at the buttons, but there was no response. “God damnit.”

  Salome had said that this so-called “Earthquake Bomb” was located at the very bottom of the facility. And that, Vera grimly reflected, meant that she was about to have a very unpleasant climb. “I remembered when I complained about working in a nail factory,” she muttered to herself as she turned herself around and reached out with one of her feet for some sort of foothold. “I thought that was the lowest I’d ever get. But no, it always gets fucking worse.”