by Ryder Stacy
Now it was time to change position and deliver the vertical blows. The job would not be over, and the Goddess not properly prepared for her sacred trust, until there was a red crosshatch pattern on her lovely posterior.
The blows began anew, this time up and down. They fell so many times in the next few minutes that Rona thought she was going to be beaten to death.
On the hundreth blow, a dizzy, half-conscious Rona heard Manion say, “The scourging is over.” Manion turned to the statue and bowed. “Oh, Renquist, your bride is properly chastised. As it was written, pain and the anger aroused in a chastised bride will increase the chance that a male child will be born of this sacred union. So be it. Now let the insemination proceed.”
Rona twisted her head, shook the blurriness from her eyes. What were they doing over there? They were chanting and moving about the statue of the snake. Oh God, they don’t mean to—
“Praise be to Renquist,” the acolytes, the handmaidens, and the soldiers shouted. The two maroon-robed acolytes went forward from the group of chanters, over to the ice-covered votary that was the carved cobra snake. They took up flickering torches and played the flames under the snake statue’s head to gradually melt the ice seal around the long, slender cylindrical object that was hidden in the snake’s stone mouth. Slowly, once the long cylinder was freed of its ice, the torches were played along its bottom, until the frost was burned away. The sixteen-inch-long green glass tube was a straight glass snake, a sealed catheter with a milky fluid in its narrow interior.
“The honeymoon vessel has been prepared,” Manion intoned, ringing the gong again. “Let the insemination of the honeymoon begin.”
Insemination? “No,” Rona gasped, twisting her tear-stained yet defiant countenance around to see the green glass vial as it was passed to Manion’s meaty hands.
No.
Rockson had heard the frantic screams for several minutes, and had run at all the speed he could muster, setting himself far ahead of his companions. Rona was being tortured—somewhere in this maze of tunnels. He went up two dead ends, and then retracing his steps, tried a third tunnel. And found the snake temple. He blasted the door open with a burst of fire—explosive .9mm bullets from his Liberator auto-fire rifle tearing the huge brass doors off their hinges.
Rockson burst into the Temple of the Snake, and immediately took in the situation.
The priests. Rona—bound and naked, the long green-glass cylinder poised between her spread legs. The awful streaks of red across her backside.
He leveled his weapon on the man with the vial, the one closest to Rona.
“Drop whatever the hell you’re holding, mister, or die.”
McCaughlin and Chen flew into the doorway behind him, to back up his words. The soldier-monks around the temple who had started to lift their weapons were cut down by a sweep of hot lead from three Liberator rifles; their bodies jerked back and slammed against the altar of their false god, spurting hot streams of blood.
The blue-robed man at Rona’s side dropped the glass vial and it shattered at his feet.
Detroit came in next, shotpistol up. Ready. Danik, panting from the run, came in behind him. It was a tense moment. They were in time to hear Rockson yell, “Away from her, priest.”
Manion made to reach the trank-stick on his belt—and never made it. Rockson fired on full automatic. The priest’s head, severed by a sweep of hot lead, spun across the darkness. The body that had belonged to Manion’s head sank to the floor like a sack of potatoes, the neck-opening pumping out a fountain of blood.
Through the cordite smoke of the weapons, the Doomsday Warrior stepped over to his beloved. Rockson approached the beaten nude figure stretched out on the mound with trepidation. Was she alive? Yes. But her eyes were bleary.
“Rona, are you—”
“Untie me. Rock,” she groaned in a soft voice.
Rockson used his balisong knife to cut the bindings off. He threw his coat over her, she zipped it up. It was large and went down halfway to her knees. It would do. Detroit was stripping the headless corpse of its shoes—they were about right for Rona’s feet. Rockson slipped them on her and lifted her to him and hugged her. “Rona, are you—”
“I’m basically all right, though I don’t want to spend any time sitting real soon.”
She had spunk. That was for sure.
“Can you walk?”
“Walk? Hell, I can run. Let’s get out of here.”
There wasn’t much left of the enemy down the long ice corridor, Rona quickly saw that. Slumped bodies were everywhere. The Freefighters had gotten only so far in their Cultist disguises, and had finished off a good number of their enemy on the way to rescue Rona.
Rockson had grabbed one of the surviving soldier-monks from the temple and was pushing him along the corridor, a gun in his back. “You find us the passageway to Eden—the old construction tunnel—or else.”
“The construction tunnel? Why, that was blown up, sealed off last week. There is no way to Eden anymore.”
Rockson spun the cowed man around on his heels, and cocked the shotpistol and placed its cold barrel against the captive’s forehead. “Then, you find us another passageway to Eden.”
Eighteen
The captive, the pupils of his colorless eyes pinned in fright, stuttered out, “There—there is a passage—to the Caverns of H-Hell. They say th-that those caverns come out in—in Eden. But—”
Rockson said, “You take us to this passage—now.”
The captive complied, leading them down a series of corridors, then down some steps with an inch of dust on them. “God, Rock,” said Detroit, “no one must have been down here for a long, long time.”
“That’s because,” Danik gasped, keeping up the pace down the curving wide stairs with great effort, “because the Caverns of Hell have legends of horror.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs; their flashlights played along a wide crack in a stone wall. There was darkness beyond, and a cool wind coming from the hole. “This is it,” said the captive. Now let me go—you said . . .”
Rockson let go of the man’s arm. “Get the hell out of here, jerk, and don’t tell anyone—”
“I won’t,” the man yelled, taking off back up the stairs two steps at a time.
“Now, what’s the story on these caverns, Danik?”
“In Eden we know them as the place of horrors. A natural series of caves with strange voices in them—and death. The man that led us here was correct, though. They do come out in Eden. Through a fissure. It isn’t sealed because a fresh wind comes from it. The whole ecosystem of Eden would overload if they closed the fissure. The Caverns of Hell—sometimes called the air caves—were briefly explored by early Edenites. Most never returned. The few that did told of horror beyond the imagination.”
“What sorts of horrors? You mentioned voices—could just be echoes, coming back long after someone spoke. What else?”
“I read that there were animals—of some sort—they had big teeth. Adults in Eden never read of such oddities, it was just nursery-school stuff. I don’t really know.”
“Maybe,” ventured McCaughlin, “they just made up the tales. The leaders of Eden weren’t too keen about having people go out of the city. Could be all hogwash.”
“Hogwash or not,” Rockson said, “I hear some thundering feet up the stairwell. I think the reinforcements are coming. Shall we make the plunge?”
Rockson was sure the Death City folks wouldn’t follow. He was right. They were unmolested in their quick march through the cavern. Danik told him that if they just kept going south, they would descend steeply, and then go up after seven miles and come out at Eden. A piece of cake. Of course he was going by dim recollections of a map he’d seen in a book in Eden—when he was a child. They found direction with one of Schecter’s pocket compasses; unaffected by local sources of magnetism, the nifty little luminous dial-thing unerringly pointed magnetic north.
When they had gotten about a quarter
mile into their remarkable passage, there was a tremendous rumble, and rocks and soot sifted down from the trembling mountain above them.
“Quick, against the wall of stalagmites over there,” Rock ordered.
Because they obeyed their leader, they avoided anything more than a few shoulder scrapes from falling chunks of rock. The rumble died down. Then its echo also. All was silent.
“What was that?” Rona asked.
“There’s your answer,” Rockson declared, pointing back toward where they had come from. There was smoke and dust exuding from the crevice they had entered the cavern from.
“The entranceway to Death City has been blown up,” Detroit surmised grimly.
“There’s no turning back now,” McCaughlin stated flatly “It’s forward or die.”
They proceeded on their way, on a sloping but secure floor of limestone. It was a beautiful underground vista opening before them, a limestone cavern, with stalagmites of every shape and color—they were amazed at the beauty of the delicate formations when they shone their lights on the dim shapes.
All seemed well, and then the pleasantly cool temperature rose. It became quite warm. “Some sort of hot lava bed perhaps, ahead.” said Scheransky, an expert on such matters.
“I sure hope this is the right cavern,” Rona said.
No one commented on that hope. It had to be the right cavern. Or they were dead.
The air became fetid with sulfurous fumes, but was still breathable. They unclicked their flashlights as the light of a bubbling magma stream off to their left illuminated the way for another half mile. Then the air and temperature returned to normal. “Good thing that stream of hot lava wasn’t in our way,” Detroit said. “I’m not much for fire walking.”
Now instead of heat, it was cold—bitter cold. And the pebble-littered path among the rock formations descended steeply. It was cautious going, each Freefighter helping the next twist and turn down the escarpment. Worse, here and there were human bones—skulls with huge dead eyesockets, fragments of clothing of the twentieth-century variety.
“No one has to be told to keep alert, do they?”
At Rockson’s suggestion, they went single file. “I sure wish we had some rope—I don’t like groping in the—” Rock stopped in his tracks. The lightbeam from his flashlight had reached some object ahead. A big hump of rock. It stood out on the flatness that lay, thankfully, just ahead. Their steep, dangerous descent was over.
They came down one by one to the flatness. Then onward they marched, braving whatever would come before them. After all, it was incredible that they had gotten as far as they had—perhaps Rockson’s mutant luck would take them all the way to Eden after all, and thence to a safe return to Colorado.
Rona had swallowed some of the pain pills and antibiotics from Chen’s belt-pouch supply of medicinals. She was keeping up, despite her injuries.
“That landmark, guys, let’s head for it.” Rock said, referring to the hump of rock about a hundred yards ahead. “We’ll climb atop it and take a look around, combining all our lights.”
The walk to the rock hummock took no time at all. They found it to be about a hundred feet high. Steep, but walkable. When they reached its rounded summit, their combined lights could find the cavern ceiling above, about another hundred feet up. It was studded with long color-radiant crystal stalactites. Rockson took another look at his special compass. “We’re still on track. Must have come a third of the way, and there hasn’t been any monsters,” he reassured.
“Still, it’s a big cave, and we have a way to go,” Detroit said.
Rockson had the party play their lights over the inky distance. Finally he saw something other than a smooth floor. Something white—another long hill of some sort. “Might as well head that way,” Rock said, “it’s almost due south. It looks like it’s man-made.”
Again into the lower darkness they plunged. They came to the white object. It wasn’t a hill, it was a handmade wall of immense stones. Atop the ten-foot wall, which went on into the darkness in both directions, completely cutting off their trek, there were writings. And a cryptic set of drawings. The words were in Spanish.
Detroit played the torch up to the dusty script. “Yes, it’s Spanish. I’ll translate. It says, ‘Beyond here dwell the ones whose mere whispered words destroy the mind. Better to kill yourself now than to proceed through these halls and have your mind tortured.’ It’s signed ‘Father Serra.’ ”
“I’m for turning back,” Danik said, with a distinct tremble in his voice.
“And go where?” Scheransky retorted.
“What the hell does that warning mean?” McCaughlin asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Rock, “but the inscription is really old and the dust on the floor has no footprints in it. This way has not been entered for decades, maybe even for centuries. Perhaps it was written by some early explorer who somehow got into these deep caverns. There might have been some exits to the surface long ago. But the wall was built by many hands. And machinery. Whatever is on the other side, well, it might be dead by now. In any case we’re climbing over.”
“Hold on, guys,” Detroit said. He had wandered down the wall a bit. “There’s more wording here—something about—” he rubbed the stones with his hands, “something about ‘the Whisperers use the power of your own mind against you . . . what is a nightmare becomes real. Guard well your mind but no matter how you resist, the madness comes . . .’ That’s all I can make out. And by the way there’s another skeleton down here—he has a chisel in his hand. I’d say this fellow made the inscription.”
“Doesn’t anyone want to go back?” pleaded Danik.
His plea was ignored.
“All of us should remember our meditative training,” Chen admonished. “There is the power of the chi, the inner force within, to protect us. Let us be brave and confident.”
“Chen is right, we will proceed.” Rockson said, starting to drive the mini mountain-climbing pitons he’d brought along in his beltpack into the wall with his baton handle. When he had climbed halfway up, he had Detroit pass the reluctant Class Act up and put her atop the wall. Detroit climbed up and stood on the two-foot-wide top with the dog, scanning the darkness with the electron binoculars, his rifle ready to protect them all. Rockson climbed down the other side, putting more of the pitons in the wall to accomplish that. The other Freefighters were over in a minute, using the strong metal mini-spikes as hand- and foot-holds. Detroit handed the heavy wolf-dog down, and then climbed down himself.
Class Act ran forward in the darkness, sniffing and growling softly.
The Freefighters moved off behind the canine mutant, guns ready. All except for Archer, who had his crossbow out and the biggest steel arrow notched.
“Wait,” the frightened Edenite implored, “I’m coming.”
Smokestone muttered, “I sense something. The dog is right to growl. There is a presence . . .”
The party had no choice but to move on, though with heightened trepidation. They passed bizarre stalactites, twisted funnels tapering to a sharp point fifty or sixty feet above them, a veritable sea of giant pinpoints. The air was freezing now, the ground beneath them slippery with frost. And there was a new element—sounds.
“Is anybody breathing funny?” Detroit was the first to ask. They all said they were breathing the same as always.
“Perhaps.” suggested Chen, “it is merely an echo from the stalagmites.”
“No, I definitely hear some funny breathing,” Detroit insisted, stopping again after another hundred paces. “And I hear—voices—over there.” He shot his beam to the left, and their beams followed. Nothing. Just oddly shaped gray-blue rocks.
A case of nerves?
They moved onward. They left the flat plain; the way was now inclined upward. “We’re halfway,” Rock muttered.
Detroit Green, a man of easy mind, relaxed and always optimistic, was surprisingly the first to fall under the spell of the deadly illusions created by “the Wh
isperers.” He fell into the dream easily. First there was just a dull hum, an electricity in the dark cold air of the underground passage. It was just the whisper of a gentle soft voice, a breeze, the hint of fingers tracing over the forehead. And with that slight mental breeze, cold soft fingers reached into his mind. Not with horror. Not at first. Just gentle pleasant memories.
Thus the unseen beings, the Whisperers, that created the illusions were able to painlessly enter Detroit’s mind undetected, unopposed. He had steeled himself for horror. And there wasn’t any.
He was suddenly basking in the warm sunlight of a gentle spring day near Century City. Detroit Green saw not the darkness of the cavern, felt not its icy wind. Instead he was in the verdant forest of poplars and cottonwoods. The leaves on the trees overhead made the sunlight flicker in his eyes as he walked unafraid and happy toward his loved ones. He had a nice musk deer he had killed draped over his shoulder—he was happy.
And now that the Whisperers had entered his mind by this devious trick, the images changed. The deer became a desiccated rotted corpse, foul and crawling with worms. He shouted and dropped it. He saw the trees around him wither, and the leaves rot off and fall in a cascade of dank death. The sky opened up with blacks snow swirling down, burning his skin . . .
The Whisperers were picking up his most fearful thoughts—like black acid snow—and projecting them back on him.
Detroit tried to throw it off, started chanting his words of protection, as Chen had taught. He caught a glimpse for an instant of his real surroundings. Detroit stood still. He tried to gain control. He stated, “No-no, I am here, I am in the cavern—” But the brave Freefighter, despite his best effort, couldn’t hold the thought, and reality slipped away again.
He was suddenly in boot camp, a raw recruit to the Freefighter cause. A bull-necked DI jabbed him in the belly with a finger and said, “All right, Green, you have to prove yourself. Jump down this little hole. It’s not deep. You can do it. The others did. They’ll laugh at you if—”
