Hell Cop

by David C. Burton

  I learned something that day about taking the time to look at both sides of a situation, about testing first assumptions. I've met many people since then who could benefit from a good long look from that gas station.

  The station was still open as I passed by, but I noticed fresh plywood over the windows on a couple buildings. I left the town behind and raced across the valley. After the first rise I turned onto a dirt road that wound up through aspens over the next ridge. Nobody followed me.

  I pulled off the road into a small clearing. Two deer stared at me with big doe eyes, then bolted into the trees. I activated my Find, a small, half electronic, half magic device that allows one to navigate through the netherworld.

  The road to Hell lay ahead, somewhere. The good intentions it was paved with changed constantly so the location kept moving. It's hard to keep track. One year your intentions might admit you straight to Heaven, the next year they get you a pitchfork up the ass. The entrance shimmered into view a hundred yards ahead. Then the fear hit me like it always does. A rush of pure terror. I sat on the running board with my head between my knees and vomited up Christine's roast chicken and mashed potato dinner, the last good meal I figured to have for awhile. That ritual over with, I rinsed out my mouth, got in the truck, and drove through the entrance onto a road that's not on any map.

  My shoulders tensed as the land rose up around me. Instead of gold, the aspens were blood red. The pine needles rippled, searching for prey to skewer on their barbed tips. The light darkened to a sinister gloom almost palpable in its promise of Evil. I concentrated on the black rock above me. It doesn't happen often, but things do escape occasionally. A warm, live body is a real treat for them.

  The road ended abruptly in a dim, high rock cul-de-sac barely big enough to turn around in. I parked heading out. After checking that I was alone, I donned my pack, locked the truck, and, Find firmly in hand, walked through a blank stone wall into the back way to Hell.

  I'm not sure even The Big D knows about the tunnel. The walls are rough hewn, as if chewed out of the rock by some monster with a mouthful of blunt teeth. The sides quickly fade from a clean gray to a damp, slimy moss covered black. The tunnel has a putrid air about it, like rotting flesh combined with sulfur. This is the pervasive aroma of Hell. It quickly disappears with familiarity; there are many more specific odors to take its place.

  I made my way carefully. Small alcoves or cracks can hide any sort of creature. I carried my gun at the ready. You don't always have time to draw and aim when something quick and hungry comes after you.

  * * * *

  In Hell, Hell Cops rarely use their real names. You never know what might be listening and have a connection to the Lifer world. My name in Hell is Getter, and I'm proud of it. I've gotten every soul I went after, except one. And everyone acknowledges that that one wasn't my fault.

  After fifteen minutes rest I was pumped and ready. I donned my gear, flipped my middle finger at the dead spider, and stepped out into the boundless variety of Hell itself.

  Chapter Two

  Hell's a hell of a big place, to use an earthly phrase. I could spend eternity searching for the girl and come away with nothing but hot feet. So, as usual, I went to see Rack the Hack.

  The millennia-old trail descended easily from the tunnel exit to the sizzling flat below. I wondered what the pioneer Hell Cop thought as he descended into Hell for the first time.

  Legends are based on facts it's said. Hell Cop legend is based on a few more facts than are generally available in ancient history or mythology texts. The first known Hell Cop was Ninshubur, the vizier of the Sumerian Inanna. The stories say he petitioned the gods to rescue Inanna when she went to the underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal. He didn't petition; he just went and got her. Odysseus really did go deep into Hell, not take a quick look and then split. The Roman poet Virgil used his own adventures as a model for Aeneas, the hero of his Aeneid. It was an easy leap from seeking advice from the souls of the dead to rescuing misplaced souls and guiding them to Heaven. Dante's description of Hell may have been accurate when he wrote it, but the ever shifting geography has rendered his maps obsolete. Some day a Hell Cop scholar will write our history. Though it's fact, it would probably be shelved next to books on UFOs and alien abduction.

  As the Lifer population increases, so do deaths. Purgatorial bookkeeping mistakes also increase (rumors of demon manipulation abound) and so does the need for Hell Cops. There are about a hundred of us alive and scattered throughout the Lifer world. Recruitment is an oft discussed topic when two or three gather together.

  The Spire Grove begins somewhere on the baking flat ground below the tunnel exit. I've never seen where it begins. Suddenly they're all around. The Find is essential; without it a person is lost, and lost in the Spire Grove means, whether by critter or by thirst, an unpleasant death.

  The Spires, like crooked stacks of red donuts, can reach hundreds of feet above the hard packed orange dirt. They feel like solid rock, but they're hollow. They have to be to contain the millions of Spire Mites that live inside. The Mites build the structures with material they gather from the miles of tunnels dug underneath the spires. The tunnels sometimes come close to the surface. Fall through the crust into one when Mites are present, and the chances of surviving are none to none.

  I used the Find to guide me through the Spires, some of them twenty feet in diameter, and toward the Info River where Rack the Hack lived, so to speak. I tapped the ground ahead with the staff. I had no desire to fall into a tunnel filled with hungry Mites. Their jagged rock crushing jaws would make quick work of my bones. But they weren't what I was the most worried about. Marauding Sticky Lips were the real danger.

  I didn't see any till I began to notice the babble coming from the Info River. The ground sounded hollow under the staff, so I rounded a small spire with my eyes on the ground instead of above me where they should have been. Out of the corner of my eye I spied a dark shape.

  A young and thirsty Sticky Lips crouched above me. These flat, hairy, cartoon creatures have huge lips they can shoot out like a frog's tongue. They scratch holes in the thinner upper reaches of the spires and use their lips to sweep up the mites. The lips stick to anything. They can rip the skin right off the ass end of a Rockarino. This one was young and aggressive; all three eye stalks were trained on me. It wasn't so much interested in me as much as the liquid I represented. If it got a hold on me it'd suck me dry in fifteen painful minutes.

  My face was well within its lip range. I took a step back, and it took a step forward. My staff saved me. I swung it between us just as the Sticky Lips attacked. The lips hit the stick, instead of my face, giving me a chance to jump back. We tug-of-warred with the stick. They're strong little sons-of-bitches; this one dug in its claws and dragged me around the spire—where two more were waiting. I was about to let go of the stick and grab my gun when the other two attacked the first one.

  The original little demon let go, and I stumbled backwards. The ground gave way, and my heart leaped into my throat when my legs fell into a Spire Mite tunnel. The staff spanned the hole as I went through. A fetid odor engulfed me. My eyes teared and my stomach convulsed even as I recognized the chittering click-clack sound of the Mites’ jaws over the screech of the fighting Sticky Lips.

  I clutched the staff, sucked in a deep breath through my mouth, and heaved myself up and rolled to the right, hoping for solid ground. The dirt gave way under the staff, but momentum carried me to safety. Mites covered my legs. I brushed them off, suffering only a few pinches. I regained my feet just in time, because the Sticky Lips had settled their differences and joined forces. They must have decided I contained enough moisture for all of them.

  They rarely leave the spires, but liquid is where you find it. Their broad flat bodies flowed off the spire, thick claws ticking on the hard dirt. I had my gun ready, but I didn't need it. The hole in the ground distracted them long enough for me to haul my ass out of there.

  In sight o
f the bridge over the Info River, I stopped in the shelter of some rocks and regrouped my mind which hadn't really been on the job at hand. For a few minutes I engaged in a common Hell Cop pastime, wondering how the hell I came to be in Hell.

  I'd met the Thanos family twelve years ago. I was a rookie policeman, twenty-four years old, scared and unsure, and too cocky to admit it. I hung out with other young cops. Our youthful machismo far outstripped our experience. Me and another rookie were off duty when we ran smack into a robbery in progress. Our belief in our own immortality and a few beers got us in way too deep. He died. I spent a week in the hospital. The last thing he said to me was, “I didn't really think I'd die. Did you?”

  No, I didn't. The incident messed my head up pretty good. Julie Thanos was the night nurse. We talked, a lot, and when I got out I met her family. Six months later we got married. A year later I was a Hell Cop, going down to Hell with her dad and brother, Dimitri. We wanted kids from the beginning. It didn't happen. Our daughter would have been ten in a month and three days.

  That idea of the impending imaginary birthday was getting to me, though, and if I didn't get a professional, impartial attitude real quick I was going to end up dead for real.

  While I thought, I scanned the air for Skyhooks, gray and brown birds with fifteen foot wingspans and bony hooks hanging down they used to snag their prey. They have long necks and sharp beaks so they can feed on the souls they impale while flying. They are ubiquitous throughout Hell.

  On a bluff across the river I could see Rack the Hack's house and the thick wires running into the river that supplied him with the information he craved.

  What passed for sky in that boundary sector, number 281, looked clear. I jogged over and crouched by the foot of the stone bridge. Skyhooks aren't the only danger going over the bridge. Squidlings live on the underside, and they don't like to be disturbed by beings clumping over their bridge. I didn't see any, but that meant nothing.

  Bones of the ancient damned imbedded in the rock provided a grip for my boots. I walked steadily across, treading lightly on the skull faces staring eternally toward Heaven, my staff and gun ready. Three trips before I had had to shoot one of the Squidlings. They were intelligent creatures and would remember my smell, although how they could pick it out of the pervasive stench I had no idea.

  Two thirds of the way across I heard a Skyhook cry. I stopped and scanned the haze. Nothing. Then, gently, almost like a caress, I felt something slip around my ankle. From behind me a two inch thick, smooth, mottled gray tentacle with an oval tip covered by teeth rimmed suckers wrapped around my leg. Resistance was useless. The tentacle urged me toward a single softball-sized eye peering from the edge. I placed the gun barrel on the gray flesh where it flared into the tip. The urging stopped. It knew what a gun can do.

  “The other one attacked me,” I told the eye. “I tried not to disturb him. I just wanted to get across.”

  Nothing happened. I put a little pressure on the gun. The tentacle unwrapped from my leg and slithered out of sight. The eye stared for a few seconds, then disappeared also. I made myself scarce as quickly as possible. A trip to Hell is a constant cycle of trying to stay out of trouble, getting into trouble, and then, assuming you're still alive, running like crazy away from trouble.

  Rack's house was one story, built of stone (What else?) and would have been worth a million plus in a better location. Beyond, the terrain turned to pine covered hills that rose to snow-capped peaks. That's where those chanceless snowballs came from. The sunrises and sunsets would be spectacular if there were any. I once asked Rack why he rated a fancy house full of computer equipment. He said he knew demons in low places.

  Rack didn't care about mountains and sunsets. The only views that interested him were on the monitor screens in his computer room. I walked in the front door and made my way through the house. Rack glided across the floor in his wheelchair and began a furious tapping on an oversize keyboard. He squinted through thick glasses at the screen and attacked the keys again.

  “Hey, Getter. That Squidling almost got you, didn't it? You must not stink bad enough.”

  “He didn't want to get his tip blown off.”

  “Who does? Oh, shit. Look at this will you. Some Senator just opened a bank account in the Cayman Islands. What do you think that's for?”

  “Which Senator?”

  “Getter, don't start. I'm in Hell here, you know. Why bother to tell when you won't remember? Son of a bitch, all this input and no fucking output. Man, I could rule the damn world with just one phone line back to Life.”

  Rack had been regarded by the hacker community as the best ever. The government certainly thought so. To feed his habit Rack worked his way through the banking system to the IRS, the military, the FBI and CIA. He even cracked MIT's unbreakable Omega system. The government was hot on his trail, albeit far behind, when he sold some information that got some agents killed. The spies were caught and gave him up. Rack was shot, trying to escape. In Hell he can get into any system, but he can never tell anyone what he knows. Rack ran his long fingers through his Dagwood hair and said, “Well, whatever. Who you looking for this time?”

  “An ten year old girl, Brittany Highwater.”

  “Brittany? They ought to reserve an extra hot room for parents who name their kids Brittany or Tiffany. How long?”

  “My time, five days.”

  He wheeled over to another screen and entered the name.

  “Hey, Getter,” he said as he worked. “The next time you talk with God ask Him if He wants me to help shape up His network. Those guys are screwing up up there.”

  “I'll mention it to his secretary. Anything?”

  “They've added some more security levels to their system here. It might take awhile. This'll be fun.”

  “Rack,” I said, wanting to get his attention before he zoned out in underground cyberspace. “You know Dimitri, don't you?”

  “Yeah, sure, Greek guy. You guys used to come down together. Haven't seen him in awhile. Those Greeks, wait till the Olympics. That'll be a surprise. Man, one phone line ...”

  “He's missing.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  “My time, three months.”

  “Damn. That long down here?” He shook his head as if watching a casket sink into the ground. “Not good, man. He's gone.”

  “He said he was going to see you that trip.”

  “Yeah? Could have. Three months—three years, don't mean shit down here. Who was he looking for?”

  “A woman named Grace Goody.”

  Rack laughed—Huh Huh Huh, like a repressed cough.

  “With a name like that I'm surprised they let her in, mistake or not. Those guys upstairs are really fucking up. What'd she do?”

  “Hooker. Supposedly killed one of her customers when he tried to strangle her. She got caught in a ménage a trois in prison, somebody slit her throat. Conviction was reversed a week later.”

  “Tough luck. She a looker?”

  “Yeah, but I know what you're thinking. She wasn't that special. Anyway, Dimitri wouldn't give it up for any woman. He's too experienced.”

  Rack gave me a pitying look over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, right. Those broads ain't the same once they get here. You know that. Now get out of here. I'll call you.”

  I knew he was right. Old Satan and his boys loved to recruit the innocents. Dimitri was a fool for women. Someone like Grace Goody, with the powers and temptations available to her, could make it hard on a man, in more ways than one.

  Just before I left the room Rack looked at the constantly scrolling screen next to him. He leaned over and tapped some keys. “Son of a bitch,” he said triumphantly. “I knew that cop was on the take.”

  I took a shower, ate some rice and beans from a stock purposely left from other trips, and slept till Rack woke me. That part of Hell had perpetual light, but by my body clock it was midnight.

  From
Rack's place Hell proper began. The terrain became closer, gloomier, and the dangers more subtle, or blatant. I needed to be sharp and not think of the girl as the daughter I might have had. Despite what I said to Christine I did think Dimitri was dead. It had been too long. When a Lifer is killed in Hell his soul is stuck. He can never leave. My priority had to be the girl.

  “I found her, Getter,” Rack said when I reentered his computer room. “She's at 101, the Schoolyard. But, somebody has really fucked up or somebody knows something about that girl I don't.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked around a yawn. Many kids went to the Schoolyard.

  “She's with Mrs. Scritch.”

  That woke me up. “Ah shit. She gets the worst ones. This Brittany doesn't even come close to qualifying.”

  “You sure?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is a rush job, right?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “So all you know about this girl is what the doting parents told you, right?”

  I thought back to my meeting with the parents. They had seemed sincere, the tears real. And Father Henry had vouched for them. I tried to remember what they said about the girl besides the usual platitudes. Something about another child who died. It was a girl one year old who accidentally suffocated in a plastic bag. Brittany had felt responsible, they said, and hadn't been the bright, sunny sweetheart she had been before.

  “We did everything for her but she just never was as ... loving as before,” the mother told me.

  I asked how Brittany got along with her little sister.

  “Oh, she just adored her. Isn't that right, dear?” the mother said.

  “Yes, absolutely,” the father said. I wasn't convinced, and I don't think they were either.

  Something to keep in mind when I found her.

  To Rack I said, “You're right. I don't know as much about the kid as I'd like. It's too late to worry about it now, though.”

  Rack shrugged his shoulders and gave me an it's-your-funeral look.

  I thought for a few seconds, then said, “Oh, man. Is Bujo still the Principal demon of the Schoolyard?”