The God Machine

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  "Damn it," Hellboy swore. Holmes had known the dangers of his assignment, but Hellboy always felt responsible, no matter what.

  He removed his coat and draped it over Holmes's body, recalling the time he'd been on a flight with the good-spirited agent, on the way to an operation in Peru. Hellboy wondered if the poor bastard had ever gotten around to asking his childhood sweetheart to marry him.

  Something scrambled from out of the shadows, darting from concealment behind a stack of crates, making their way toward a back exit at the far end of the room.

  "It's the Electricizers!" Steve exclaimed.

  "Hold it right there!" Hellboy screamed, reaching down to pick up a large hunk of Huwawa's head, and throwing it toward the door.

  The piece of rock shattered as it hit the doorframe, and the two children froze. Slowly, they turned around.

  "They're just a couple'a kids," Hellboy said, startled by the sight of the little girl and slightly older boy.

  "On the outside, they're adorable," Steve explained. "But on the inside, we got a whole new can of beans."

  The boy immediately threw his arms around the little girl. "Please don't hurt me and my sister," he said, his voice trembling with fear. "Our boat washed up onshore and our parents got hurt." The boy was crying now, hugging his sister close to him. "We were just looking for some help when we found this place. We thought there might be someone inside to help our mommy and daddy..."

  The little girl suddenly pulled herself away from the boy, a cruel snarl twisted young features that shouldn't have understood the concept.

  "Listen to you," she sneered. "What would our god think if he could hear you now?"

  The older kid's eyes went wide with dismay. "You stupid bitch!" the boy screamed. "You've ruined everything."

  The little girl just smiled smugly, as if that had been her plan all along.

  Hellboy looked at Steve.

  "Told you," the ghost shrugged, pulling a sidearm from the holster hanging from Delaney's side, and aiming it at the pair. "A whole new can of mean."

  Chapter 13

  T he subbasement was filled with the buzzing and whirring of the mechanized corpses as they stalked toward Liz and Abe.

  "Well, this isn't quite working out the way I expected," Liz said, firing her pistol ineffectually into the advancing force. She and Abe backed up, making their way toward the stairs.

  Abe fired his gun as well. "Maybe if we can hit the spirit batteries we can..."

  "Won't work!" Massie yelled from his workstation. He held up a curved piece of metal to show them. "New feature in the latest models," he explained. He rapped the metal with his knuckle. "Placed over the batteries to protect them. All these guys have them. Bullets won't really do a thing. Sorry." The old man went back to work again; it was like he'd already forgotten they were there.

  Abe continued to fire his gun, aiming primarily at the zombies that were closest.

  Liz glanced his way.

  "What?" he asked, ejecting the empty clip from the weapon and slipping in a full one. "Can't blame a guy for trying."

  The zombies were closer now, falling over themselves in an effort to reach them. Thank God for confined spaces, Liz thought. She knocked a stack of boxes filled with machine parts into the advancing legion's path, hoping to buy a little more time. She and Abe were almost to the stairs.

  "We can't let them follow us," she said, watching as the automatons fought with each other to be the first over the obstruction.

  "I was thinking the same thing," Abe said.

  "This whole place and everything in it needs to be destroyed," Liz said, feeling that awful combination of fear and excitement she always did when about to unleash her power.

  The zombie robots were practically on top of them, and there wasn't any more time for thinking.

  "The place is old," she said, taking a deep breath of the fetid air. "Should go up like an oily rag."

  "What about the old guy?" Abe asked.

  Liz looked over the crowd to see the pale old-timer still diligently working. He was stuffing the large torso of the woman's corpse with wires. She could also see the boxlike object grafted to his chest, pulsing with an eerie inner light.

  "It's too late for him," she replied. "I doubt that there's much difference between him and these guys. Maybe a few days. Look at what the crazy bastards have done to him. No turning back for him now."

  The fire was always there, like an eager dog anxious to be called.

  "You ready?" she asked Abe, ascending the first step.

  "Whenever you are."

  For a moment, she closed her eyes on the sight of the reanimated corpses lurching toward them, fingers like knives reaching out to rend their flesh. She summoned the fire that was her curse, but also her salvation.

  Liz extended her arms, feeling the air around her become superheated as she allowed the flame to flow from her body, engulfing the army of reanimated dead that was mere feet away. But she didn't stop there. She extended the hungry flame, allowing it to continue on through the subbasement, consuming everything that it could find in its voracious hunger.

  On that bottom step she watched, mesmerized by the sight of a multitude of human shapes silently burning as they attempted to squelch the flames that covered their bodies. There was a series of small, muffled explosions from somewhere far back in the underground chamber, and Liz knew it was time to get out. She shook herself from her reverie and turned, ready to sprint up the stairs, when she noticed that Abe was nowhere to be found.

  Odd, she thought, certain that he would have been waiting for her to finish with her task, but then, out of the corner of her eye she saw him. He was down in the basement again, amid the flames.

  "Abe, what the hell are you doing?" she yelled from the steps over the increasing roar of fire.

  The amphibious man didn't answer. He stumbled through what little areas remained untouched by flames, a large boxlike machine in his arms. She rushed back down the stairs and into the conflagration to help him, wondering what could be so important that he would risk his very life to retrieve it.

  There wasn't much time before it would all be gone, destroyed by what she had loosed.

  "What were you thinking?" she asked, grabbing him by the arm.

  Abe remained strangely silent. His scaly flesh seemed parched and rough, dried in the heat.

  Liz pushed him up the stairs and was prepared to follow when she felt the sudden surge of warmth behind her. She spun around to see one of the zombie robots, its body burning, reaching for her. One of its clawed hands closed around her arm, and she immediately felt the material from her shirt begin to burn, scorching the skin beneath.

  Liz hissed through her teeth, the pain intense. Instinctively, she went for her gun, pulling it from the holster, and pressing it up tight against the zombie's blackened flesh. She pulled the trigger repeatedly, emptying the clip into the monstrosity. Its body lurched and bucked as the bullets careened around inside its carcass. There was a miniexplosion and a burst of green energy in the shape of a man erupted from the corpse to escape through the ceiling.

  The zombie, its power source depleted, collapsed to the ground at the foot of the stairs, but its clawed hand still gripped her arm. Liz peeled back its fingers, then made her way up the stairs into the smoke-filled cellar, where she found Abe waiting. The look in his eyes was strangely vacant as he clutched the black box possessively to his chest.

  "We have to get outside," she rasped, smoke filling her lungs.

  They went up into the farmhouse kitchen. Smoke had found its way up into the main body of the house as well, and they navigated through an artificial fog that stank of wood and burning flesh.

  Out in front of the farmhouse, Liz bent over, hands upon her knees, and greedily gulped the winter air. Catching her breath again, she turned her attention back to Abe, who stood silently watching as the smoke billowed out from the farmhouse windows. He was still clutching the black box.

  "I wondered where you
went," Liz said, as he turned to look at her. "It's you, isn't it, Sally?" she asked. "You've taken control of Abe, haven't you?"

  Abe nodded. "There was no choice," she answered, using the voice of her teammate.

  Liz picked up a handful of snow and began to rub it on the exposed flesh of her friend. "He's going to be dehydrated from the fire," she explained, washing away some of the collected dirt and soot, as well as moistening his green-hued skin.

  "Thank you," she answered. "I did not wish to harm him, but I didn't want the machine to be destroyed either. I believe it could prove to be very important."

  "What is it?" Liz asked, watching as Sally dropped Abe to his knees, setting the machine gingerly down in front of him.

  "It was a device that my husband made," she said as she flicked a switch at the front of the black box. It had only three sides, and Liz could see a series of tubes inside the box begin to glow with an eerie light. "One of his first."

  "Looks like it still works," Liz said, kneeling beside her possessed friend. "What does it do?"

  "He made it to communicate with the beyond," she explained, eyes riveted to the inner workings of the strange device.

  "He built it to speak to his god."

  It was nice and warm inside the house, the smell of greasy breakfast sausages making his stomach grumble hungrily.

  "Look, Aubrey," Hellboy said, sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, along with agents Delaney, Feig and Dexter. Ghostly Uncle Steve floated in front of the sink. "We really have to get going."

  He glanced at his watch, wondering how long they had before an ancient god of destruction was summoned to Earth.

  The old woman, wearing a brightly colored apron with a flower print, continued to poke at the fat sausages sizzling in the large black frying pan.

  "I know, dear," she said, and turned the flame down beneath the pan, wiping her hands on a towel beside the stove. "I don't know what's keeping him. I told him where I put it."

  Aubrey toddled to the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room and yelled to her husband, who was somewhere else in the house. "Baxter, did you find it?"

  There was a sound of something heavy being moved in the room above them, and Hellboy's eyes darted to the ceiling.

  "He should be right down," the old woman said with a gentle smile, leaving the doorway to return to the stove.

  Hellboy could now see through the kitchen doorway, through the dining room and into the parlor beyond. The two children they had found in the Depot were seated on the sofa, their hands bound behind their backs.

  "You may have stopped us, demon, but you haven't stopped our master," the little boy screamed from the olive green sofa. The furniture was covered in clear plastic, like it was the 1950s all over again.

  "You've prevented nothing--our god will still come and..."

  "Why don't you just shut up," the little girl said with disgust. "It's over and done. We failed. That's it."

  The boy turned on his companion. "If you hadn't opened your big mouth, we might have escaped. You're a traitor, Annabel Standish--a traitor to the Electricizers and to the holy mission we've worked so hard to achieve."

  The girl child's face distorted with rage, words of anger spilling from her mouth. "A holy mission so sacred that you would cast me aside?" she exclaimed. Her voice cracked, and she began to cry. "You told me that you loved me--and I loved you in return. I thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives together."

  "There were circumstances," he began, attempting to explain. "I didn't mean to hurt you, it was just that...things changed and..."

  The girl turned her head away, refusing to look at him any longer. "Yes, they have. I suddenly have no interest in gods and the changing of the world. I'm very tired," the little girl said. "And I'd like this all to end now."

  The boy struggled to his feet. "You stupid cow!" he screeched. "Do you realize what you've done?"

  Hellboy left the kitchen and strode into the parlor. "That's about enough out of the both of you," he said, pushing the boy back down.

  There was a squeak from the stairway nearby, and Baxter Whipple descended into the parlor, an old wooden chest in his arms. "What's all the ruckus?"

  "Lovers' spat," Hellboy said, moving to help the man with his load. "Is this it?"

  Baxter pulled a wooden folding table from out of the corner and set it up. "Yes, that's it." He patted the flat surface of the table with his hand. "Set it down here if you would be so kind."

  Hellboy did as he was told, watching as the old man pulled a key ring from one of the deep pockets of his blue cardigan.

  "Let's see if I remember which one it is," he muttered, reviewing each of the keys before deciding on one that didn't look any different from the others. "Here it is," he said, and slipped the key into the front of the wooden chest, turning it slowly until it unlocked.

  Baxter flipped open the lid and a dusty aroma, like old clothes stored in an attic, wafted out from within. He reached inside, withdrawing something wrapped in yellowed cheesecloth. Carefully, he pulled the old cloth away to reveal an ancient-looking dagger, its blade nearly black from age.

  "Isn't it lovely?" Baxter exclaimed. "Aubrey gave it to me on our twentieth wedding anniversary. It belonged to the Assyrian exorcist, Nykore Anyroda, and is the foremost instrument for the eviction of uninvited spiritual habitation ever forged."

  Hellboy studied the ancient tool, simple in its design, an eight-inch blade with a crude carving of a screaming skull on its hilt. And to think most married couples are satisfied with flowers, he thought.

  "I've loaned it out from time to time to the Bureau and some of its affiliates, and in all those times it's only failed once."

  Hellboy looked from the ancient blade to Baxter. "Only once?"

  The old man nodded. "Tried to use it on my mother-in-law, but it didn't do a thing," he said, raising a hand to his mouth and lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Come to find out she wasn't possessed at all, she was just a witch."

  They both laughed.

  "I heard that," Aubrey Whipple said, coming into the parlor.

  Steve's ghost drifted behind her, as if carried in her wake, and he was smiling. Agents Delaney, Feig and Dexter soon followed, and each of them was holding a plate piled high with scrambled eggs and sausage.

  "You know I'm only joking, darling," Baxter said, blowing a kiss to his wife, which she pretended to bat away.

  The former BPRD agent turned back to Hellboy. "Perhaps a little breakfast before we proceed?"

  Hellboy glanced at the bound pair still sitting on the couch. Their eyes had become wide, darting around the room fearfully. The ghosts possessing the kids must have suspected that their days were numbered.

  "No," Hellboy said with a slight shake of his head. "I think we better do this now."

  "Fine, fine," Baxter said, slightly agitated.

  "Is there a problem?" Hellboy asked.

  "No," the old man said, and he looked to his wife. "I'll take care of it."

  Aubrey tottered over to them. "You'll do no such thing, you stupid old man," she said, taking the still-wrapped knife out of his hand. "Nykore's blade demands payment from its user," she explained, turning to Hellboy. "It drains a bit of life force from whoever wields it--so that it has the necessary power to complete the job."

  "One of the reasons why Anyroda wasn't an exorcist for all that long," Baxter explained. "Eventually sucked him dry."

  "This old coot," Aubrey said, gesturing toward her husband, "doesn't have life force to spare, I'm afraid."

  "Any kind of special training needed to evict these creeps?" Hellboy asked, hooking a thumb at the two sitting on the couch.

  Baxter stroked his chin in thought. "Not really," he said. "It's pretty self-explanatory."

  Hellboy took the wrapped blade from Aubrey. "Then let's get cracking," he said, turning toward the couch.

  "What are you going to do?" the little boy asked, a twinkle of fear showing in his eyes.

  "
Never mind," Hellboy barked. "What do I do?" he asked the old man.

  "Take the blade from the cloth."

  He could feel all their eyes upon him--the BPRD agents, the ghost, Aubrey and Baxter, the possessed children waiting on the plastic-covered sofa--as he gripped the blade by its hilt and lifted it out of its yellowed wrapping.

  "Okay, now wh..." Hellboy began, but his voice was momentarily sucked away. He felt the blade familiarizing itself with his body, making itself at home.

  "Whoa!" He swayed slightly on his feet.

  "That's all right," Baxter said reassuringly. "This too shall pass."

  Hellboy felt himself grow tired, not devastatingly so, but enough that he'd give his eyeteeth for a little snooze time.

  "Now point yourself toward the subjects," the old man directed. Aubrey had gone out to the kitchen and returned with a plate of breakfast for her husband. Baxter had started to eat, as Hellboy pointed the blade at the boy and girl sitting upon the sofa.

  Almost at once his mind was filled with the most fantastic images: exorcisms done throughout the blade's existence, thousands of demons and spectral entities ripped from where they didn't belong, forced to return from whence they had come, or to at least move on to the next plane of existence.

  "Get away from me!" the boy screamed, standing up from the couch again, only to be pushed back down. "I'll tell you anything you want to know. Just please, let me stay in this body, I'm begging you. Please!"

  "Listen to you," the little girl said to her companion. "To think that I once believed you to be wise and brave. Accept your fate. You don't know anything that could possibly be useful to them. Absolom purposely didn't tell us our destination from this point, for just this reason. He told the drones, but he didn't tell us."

  The boy was crying, praying for help to a god that did not appear to be listening.

  "It makes me sick to realize how wrong I was about you--about everything," the girl said.

  "Now take the blade and..." Baxter began again, handing his empty breakfast plate to his wife.

  "I know how to do it," Hellboy said, his head jammed full of examples.