Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim)

by Richard Kadrey

  “What a lovely trick. If I’d known you could do that, I wouldn’t have bothered giving you the key,” says Azazel.

  “How’s retirement treating you, boss?”

  Azazel is the Hellion general who put the key to the Room of Thirteen Doors in my chest. I used it to move around Hell and kill for him. I slit his throat before he had a chance to ask for it back.

  “I wondered if I’d ever see you down here someday, and here we are. Reunited at last.”

  “Don’t get too choked up. I walked in on my own.”

  “I showed you your power. I made you what you are,” he says. “You could show a little gratitude.”

  “I could have tortured you to death, but I killed you quick.”

  Semyazah’s eyes narrow.

  “You came into Tartarus voluntarily. Why?”

  “To get you.” I glance at the crowd. It’s still packed with dead generals. I speak louder so they can all hear. “I’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you won’t have to suffer down here much longer. The bad news is that Mason Faim is going to burn the universe to the ground. He doesn’t care about Heaven. He just wants the high ground for his attack. And he’s probably going to do it in the next few hours.”

  That gets their attention. I hear whispers and then actual voices from the crowd.

  Semyazah says, “You intend to take me out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s absurd. Tartarus has been here for hundreds of thousands of years. If it was possible to escape, someone would have done it by now.”

  “That’s the great part. Who do you think Hell’s armies would rather follow, a mortal who made a lot of promises but hasn’t delivered on anything or the biggest baddest general ever? The only Hellion who ever walked out of Tartarus.”

  That starts the chatter again. Generals lean together like they’re forming battle plans.

  “So how can we do it?” I ask.

  “You can’t,” says Azazel. He looks at Semyazah. “You can’t trust this creature.”

  “Why should they trust you?” I ask. “They all know you sent me to kill them. Now you want to keep them in Tartarus just because you can’t get out?”

  There’s a slow murmur as faces turn in his direction. In Tartarus’s gloom and despair, a lot of the dead forgot that it was Azazel who’s responsible for sending them here. Some old wounds are fresh again. Azazel looks around and fades back into the crowd.

  “How does this place work? Is this meat locker Tartarus or is the machine?”

  Semyazah says, “The place and the furnace are parts of a single punishment device. Tartarus is the machine that runs the universe. It provides heat and energy to light the stars, Heaven and Hell, and every place where mortal and celestial life dwell. And we’re the fuel.”

  Mammon gives a mad, gleeful little nod. He says, “We’re the souls judged so worthless or relentlessly vile that the universe has no more use for us. All we’re good for is fuel for the fire.”

  Did Muninn, Neshamah, and his brothers think up Tartarus on a particularly good day or a bad one? Did they mean to create this place or is it another one of their mistakes? I’m going to have to reconsider whether the demiurge is evil or not because this place is on a whole new scale of evil.

  I watch the Metropolis proles working away at the furnace and boiler. Gears and pipes and valves stretch from the floor, spread to the three enormous pipes that disappear into the ceiling.

  This is it. God’s ultimate revenge for his kids letting him down. Eventually we’ll all end up down here. Right now it’s only the most monstrous souls, but Muninn and his brothers will get tired of watching humanity fuck up and we’ll end up cordwood, too. So will the rest of the angels. Even Humanity 2.0, 3.0, and 100.0 will eventually disappoint them. When there’s no one left to punish, why would they keep Hellions around? We’ll all end up in the furnace, warming the brothers’ palace, a tiny dot in an empty universe, while they sit around arguing like old biddies for the next trillion years. Or until one of them gets fed up enough to crack open the Big Bang crystal and put them out of their misery, too.

  The furnace workers cut down more souls from the conveyor and toss them in the fire.

  “We can’t get out the way we came in, but what about up there?” I point to the machine. “Are there any maintenance areas or access tunnels? Someone built this place. Someone has to maintain it.”

  “No. God in his infinite wisdom built the furnace well,” says Semyazah. “It might be his greatest achievement. His perfect creation.”

  Even Mammon doesn’t argue with him.

  When I think about leaving Alice with Neshamah, I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. He knew what I’d find down here. Wouldn’t it be the biggest joke in history to have survived Hell, Lucifer’s games, and Mason’s bullshit just to have God murder Alice while my back is turned? I can’t even go back and check on her. All I know is that they’re in a parking lot in Eleusis. In L.A., gosh, there can’t be more than fifty of those in the area.

  “Has anyone tried attacking the workers?”

  Some of the generals nod.

  “The furnace has divine protections against that. We have some of the most powerful witches, warlocks, necromancers, and djinn in existence here. They’ve tried every imaginable type of magic to destroy the furnace or break down the walls. They’ve even combined their powers. Nothing has worked.”

  “Where exactly does the furnace go?”

  A female Hellion general with a hole in her chest says, “One conduit goes up to Heaven. One to Hell, and one to the rest of the universe.”

  “Then that’s the way out. How do we attack?”

  The souls nearby whisper to each other like they’re going to be held after school if they get caught talking. Azazel smiles smugly. With his meat-loaf face, it’s hard to tell if Mammon is smiling, too. Even Semyazah has turned away.

  “Hey, assholes, I only chanced coming down here because there were supposed to be a lot of sharp G.I. Joe types. You’ve been standing around with your thumbs up your double-dead asses for years, so you’ve had time to suss out the weak spots in the machine’s defenses. What are they?”

  Semyazah points to the furnace.

  “An attack is simple in theory. We’re deemed powerless, so there are virtually no defenses around the furnace.”

  “Who are the salarymen bleeding the steam? Are they fighters? Can I take them?”

  “You don’t have to. They’re the Gobah. Angels who rebelled after we were thrown from Heaven. Their punishment was that Father took their minds and sent them here.”

  “If they’re not in charge, who do I go after?”

  “Chernovog,” says Mammon.

  “He was the leader of the second rebellion.”

  “Where is he? I can’t see him.”

  “No. You can’t. The Father took away his visible form, leaving him nothing but an empty space in the air.”

  “How do you know he’s there?”

  “Beelzebub. Come over here,” yells Semyazah. I remember Beelzebub. He put up a pretty good fight when I crept into his palace. I had to cut him up pretty bad to kill him. He seems to remember, too, because he’s not in any rush to get near me.

  “Stand at an angle,” Semyazah tells him. “Come here,” he says to me. When I get there: “Look.”

  It takes a minute to see it. Beelzebub was always a flash boy and his armor is like a gold mirror. As I stare at the reflection of the furnace, a seventh worker slowly comes into view on a platform high above the others. He’s bigger than the other Gobah. He moves well and seems to still have a mind. He climbs all over the furnace on his arms and legs like a spider monkey, making tiny adjustments. He leaves the heavy work to the drones down below.

  After a minute, Beelzebub lurches away and sinks back into the crowd.

  “You see? No soul, angel, or Hellion can attack Chernovog,” says Semyazah.

  I think I just found out why Heaven calls
me an Abomination.

  “Then it’s lucky for you that I’m none of those things. I’m a nephilim.”

  A few of the Hellions laugh. Mostly the military types. The rich ones roll their eyes. Most just stare.

  “The nephilim are dead,” says the female general. I think I might have put the hole in her chest with the na’at. “Before we fell, I commanded one of the companies dispatched to hunt them down. The few we didn’t kill killed themselves. Temperamental children, all of them.”

  “I’m the last one because I was born after you pricks played Kristallnacht with the others.”

  It’s the same as before. Laughs. Eye rolls. Stares.

  “I’m Uriel’s son.”

  That shuts them up.

  “I notice he’s not here with us. Someone is going to have to talk about that. But right now I have to kill another angel. See if it brings back any fond memories.”

  I look around for Beelzebub, but he’s long gone. Just as well. His armor is as ghostly as he is, so I can’t steal it off him and use it to see Chernovog.

  “General Semyazah, come with me but don’t get too close. The rest of you can follow or you can stand here and generally fuck off. I don’t care. But if you get in my way, I’ll put you in the oven myself, feetfirst.”

  It’s a long way to the front of the chamber. Tartarus would be a lot more fun with Segways.

  Christ. Look at the shit I do. How can I drag anyone into a life like this?

  I’ve never tried to kill a God before, but if Neshamah has put a scratch on Alice, I’m going to try.

  The front of the crowd is exactly what I thought it would be. Hellion garbage collectors, street sweepers, and small-time merchants. The officers and Hellion elites are all bunched at the far end of the place, leaving mortal souls, Lurkers, and working-class Hellion slobs to be fed into the furnace first. I bet some of those Hellion heavyweights have been hiding at the ass end of Tartarus for centuries. You’d think one of the drones would break up the tedium and take souls from the back of the room once in a while. I’d volunteer to sharpen the hooks for them.

  The crowd gives me a wide berth when I make it to the furnace. I walk up to the machine slowly, waiting for the Gobah to react. I don’t think they even see me. They’re drones that service the dead. I bet they can’t even see the living. They don’t even twitch when I stroll past them. I jump up, grab a valve, and pull myself onto the machine, heading to where I saw Chernovog working. I whisper some simple hoodoo as I go.

  Steam bleeding from pipes rolls down and wraps the upper boiler in a hurricane of opaque heat. I reach Chernovog’s platform and hoist myself over. A few feet over my head I see him. Chernovog is a negative space in the steam. An angel-shaped ghost enveloped in burning mist. It’s goddamn hot up here. If I’d thought about it, I’d have gone for him Greco-Roman style. Oil up and take him down naked instead of wrapped in a wool coat and heavy boots. I’ll put that in my memory book for the next time I destroy one of God’s perfect creations.

  Chernovog is banging on the furnace controls with a monkey wrench, trying to stop whatever is causing the boiler to bleed so much steam. I manifest the Gladius and take a swing at his leg. He screams as I burn off part of his left foot, then does his spider-monkey thing up into the mist. I go to the middle of the platform, looking for any odd movement in the steam. Listening for movement overhead and feeling for weight shifting on the platform. Chernovog drops down behind me. I pretend I don’t notice. When he’s close I drop to one knee, spin, and swing at his legs. I catch the edge of one. He screams again. But even with a leg wound, he jumps straight over my head and onto the boiler before disappearing.

  Chernovog is somewhere overhead. I catch glimpses of empty spots in the steam. Sweat is rolling into my eyes. I have to keep rubbing it away with my coat sleeve just to see. The hissing of the steam makes it hard to hear his movements.

  Something smashes into my left arm. Chernovog swings his heavy wrench. I dodge it and he disappears. I look at my robo arm. Not a scratch on it. I admire it just a little too long. Chernovog slips up from behind and gets a better shot at my right shoulder. The pain blinds me for a second. I fall forward and almost burn a hole in my own leg with the Gladius.

  I look up in time to see Chernovog scrambling up and away on all fours. I get to my feet, trying to see where he went, when he jumps onto my back from behind. I spin and push back, driving him into the hot metal on the front of the boiler. Chernovog squirms a little, bites down, and tries to take a piece of my ear. When I shake him off, he disappears.

  I don’t even get a chance to look for him this time. He rolls past me and hits my leg with the wrench. I slash down with the Gladius but miss him by an inch. Then he’s on my back again. Then gone. He hits my arm with the wrench. Slams into my chest and drives me down on my back. Gone again. The prick’s actually getting faster. I get to my knees and use the railing to pull myself to my feet. Between the steam and the sweat in my eyes, I can’t see a thing. I turn in circles, swinging the Gladius randomly at the steam just trying to keep him off. The angel in my head says something terrible and I want to shove him back into the dark, but I’m afraid he might be right.

  I’m playing Chernovog’s game. And I can’t beat him.

  I slash the bars off the side of the platform with the Gladius. I’m exhausted. The steam makes it almost impossible to breathe. I catch glimpses of Chernovog shooting back and forth on the face of the boiler. I let the Gladius go out. Is it technically playing possum when you’re about to do something that might amount to suicide?

  I know what he’s going to do and I wait until I see him do it. An empty spot in the steam streaks toward me as Chernovog leaps from high up, hoping to land on me and crush my chest. I bark some arena fighting hoodoo, holding off on the last syllable until Chernovog is a foot above me. Then I say it and roll off the platform as the air turns to fire.

  Who needs Mason? It feels like I just blew up the universe myself. I’ve never done the air-burst hex inside before. I figured it might work since the only things not ghosts already are Chernovog, Semyazah, and me. After you set off a hex like that, the trick is to stay out of its way. Falling from the furnace, I stay just ahead of the blast. I chant one more arena hex and make an air pocket to cushion my fall. It isn’t exactly like landing on a feather bed, but it keeps my bones from turning to butterscotch pudding.

  I still can’t see a thing. Steam is everywhere and the heat from the furnace feels as hot as ever. Souls howl and scramble away from the explosion. In a few minutes, the steam drifts away and the temperature cools. Like a magic trick, the boiler emerges from the mist. It’s caved in on itself, the bottom twisting as the face and overhead pipes came down. The bottom is twisted slag and the transit pipes droop from the ceiling like metal stalactites. Chernovog and his drones are gone daddy gone.

  Cold air and a white celestial light streams down one of the pipes and lights up Tartarus for miles. I don’t even bother checking what’s on the other end of that one. I hope they have electric blankets in Heaven because it’s going to get cold tonight.

  The light from the second pipe is bright, but flickers and is colder than Heaven’s glow. That’s the way to the stars and earth. I hope Neshamah, Muninn, and Ruach up in Heaven and the other two brothers heard what just happened here. Cleanup on aisle two, boys.

  Nothing comes out of the third pipe. No light. No air. No nothing. I crawl up into the bottom. There’s a breeze, but it flows almost imperceptibly upward. The angel feels it long before I do. But I know what’s important. Overhead, the ground is blown open. Beyond it are rolling black clouds lit underneath by fires in the hills. Hell’s half acre never looked so good.

  I yell, “Semyazah!”

  He stands under the pipe and peers into the sky.

  “I never thought I’d see the sky again.”

  “You can write a sonnet about it later. Get up here and get climbing.”

  I manifest the Gladius, shove it into the pipe, and pull it
out quickly. I do it again at an angle to the other hole and again a few feet higher. I put my foot into the first hole and my hand in the second, pulling myself up. I punch climbing holes all the way to the top.

  When I get out I can see the Fourth Street Bridge. Sweet. It’s close enough that Medea Bava had to feel the explosion. I hope the falling sparks kill her pretty lawn.

  Semyazah yells down the pipe for the others to start up. Lurkers are scrambling up the sides of the pipe, holding on like geckos. They reach the top and run into the gloom, whooping as they go.

  Scrub trees and dry weeds growing along the sides of the railroad tracks are burning. A pile of abandoned railroad ties makes a pretty bonfire. Too bad there aren’t any marshmallows in Hell.

  “Come on, General. Let’s get you to Pandemonium.”

  He looks around at the industrial waste.

  “How? We’re halfway across Hell.”

  “See those nice fat shadows by the railroad ties? I’ll show you a shortcut.”

  We go to the fire, but before taking him into the Room of Thirteen Doors, I stop.

  “What happened to Uriel? I know Aelita killed him, so he must have ended up in Tartarus. If he’s still down there, he would have found me.”

  Semyazah nods but doesn’t look right at me.

  “I wasn’t there when Uriel came to Tartarus. I heard that the Gobah were waiting for him. He was taken to the furnace immediately.”