by Chuck Wendig
Frank’s hand falls on his shoulder and jostles him.
“Stinks,” Frank says.
“Yeah.”
“You ready?”
“I dunno. Nergal, he...” His jaw tightens.
“Hey, you can say it. You’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.” But he is. He really is. It’s like from the old days—about to get into the ring with a fighter twice his size and with a helluva lot more skill. Like when he fought Manny Corrado. Or Paul Kevitts. Or Udo, that rabid German who went by one name like he was Madonna or some shit. Stepping into the ring with those guys was like diving into an ocean teeming with sharks. Sharks you could see. Sharks you knew were there, knew were hungry, who saw you like one big bag of frothy chum.
Of course, he beat those guys. Each one of them.
Cason Cole. The Beast.
This time, versus Nergal. The God of Death. The Lion. The Dragon.
Ding. The fight bell ringing. Cason’s body tenses.
“How do we get in?” he asks. Fists balled at his side. By the looks of the place, it’s pretty well bound up in chain-link fence. Barbed wire atop it. And, peering through the darkness, he sees another fence, deeper in, by thirty feet or so.
Frank answers by pointing down.
Cason gives him a look.
“Sewer. We go down, then we pop up like gophers at the hole.”
Above their heads, thunder tumbles across the sky—a steady clamor of rumbling boulders behind phlegmy clouds.
That’s not a great sign.
Frank just laughs, and heads to a manhole in the middle of the street. He twirls a small blue crowbar pulled from his backpack. “Once more into the breach!” he hoots.
THE POP-HISS OF a signal flare, and the sewer tunnel is lit by crimson fire, the blood-red torch carried tight in Frank’s scar-knuckled grip.
It stinks down here, but not like Cason thought—sewer to him means human waste, but this is mostly just street run-off. Oily water. Condoms and condom wrappers. Big cups from 7-11. Mysteriously, a one-eyed teddy bear snarled up in a tangle of wire.
They move through the tunnel. Elbows rubbing against old stone.
Cason hears scratching ahead. Like rat claws on porous brick. Scritch-scritch. Skitter-skitter. Water dripping, too.
And, sometimes, a breath of damp hot air moves down the tunnel. Through them, over them. It smells of rainwater. It carries a sound like someone moaning, then someone laughing. Then it’s gone again.
Frank doesn’t acknowledge it.
So Cason decides to ignore it, too.
“There,” Frank whispers—the whisper a loud susurration crawling along the tunnel on the back of an echo. He points ahead—a small rusty ladder climbs to another manhole cover.
Cason heads over. Tests it with a boot. It squeaks, shifts with a complaining groan—it’s only a ten foot climb, but he doesn’t feel like falling down into filthy city water. The tunnel keeps going. “Go deeper?” he asks.
“Nah,” Frank says. “Take this one.”
“Not too stable.”
“It’s a ladder. If you can’t handle a ladder, I’m not real sold on our chances with the Sumerian god of death. Grow a pair and climb, big guy.”
Frank’s a real asshole sometimes.
Cason climbs. The ladder sways like a homeless drunk, the satchel bomb on his shoulder swaying with him—a tiny spark of fear alight that the whole thing will go off suddenly, that the bomb is unstable and the swaying will blow it to hell and then he’ll never see his wife or son ever again. But then a rain of rust flakes falls and interrupts his thought—Cason coughs, spits, blinks them out of his eye. He hears Frank grumbling beneath him, so he climbs faster. He presses his head and shoulder snug against the manhole cover and grunts as he presses his boots hard against the ladder rung.
The cover shifts, starts to rise. Clanging. Scraping.
Cason plants one hand, opens it up, climbs out.
He tilts the lid back like the head of a Pez dispenser, holds it there as Frank drops the flare and starts to ascend. The ladder again shaking beneath his feet.
“Case-of-herpes,” Frank calls, “gimme your hand, this damn ladder—”
The bolts holding the ladder in place shear, and it drops. With Frank on it.
At the same time—
Thunder booms above. Vibration in the ground.
The edge of the manhole cover beneath Cason’s palm suddenly bites—a sharp electric sting—and before Cason can do differently, he yanks his hand away.
The manhole falls back into place with a reverberating bang.
“Fuck!” Cason says, shaking his hand like he just palmed an angry hornet.
From beneath the manhole cover, a muffled “ow.”
Cason kneels down, gets his hands in the thumbholes on the metal disc, tries to lift.
Nothing. Doesn’t budge.
And Frank has the crowbar.
“Frank,” Cason yells. “Can you hear me?”
Another muffled: “Ow.” Then: “Yeah. Yes. Fuck.”
“I need the crowbar.”
“And how’m I supposed to get it to you?” Frank coughs. “I’m not magic.”
“I’ll see if I can find something.”
“I’ll head down the tunnel. You got the satchel charge?”
Cason yells down an affirmative.
“And the trigger?”
In his pocket, the trigger mechanism—a radio transmitter built off a small remote control once used to steer a toy speedboat. It’s just a green box with a black dial on it. Frank showed him—turn the dial hard from 0 to 10 and bomb go boom.
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”
“Good. Then go meet me at the next manhole.”
Another growl of thunder.
A greasy, cold rain starts to fall.
Shit.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Seven
THE RAIN PICKS up—a hard knife-slash of water that falls at an angle, needles of rain lit bright by pulses of lightning. Cason hurries along, the factory grounds rising up around him in black shapes darker than the backdrop of night; he tries to keep to a straight line, hoping he knows where the next manhole cover might pop up.
The sudden storm isn’t helping.
And something gnaws at him, too. Nergal was once a storm god, wasn’t he?
Is this just a storm?
Or is this him?
Cason tries to remember whether or not he checked the weather today. Was it supposed to rain? He doesn’t know.
Doesn’t matter. Onward. Find Frank.
Ten yards. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Boots splashing in swiftly-formed puddles. Cason thinks he sees something along the roof-line of one of the buildings—a rusted hulk with a hundred shattered windows, each a broken eye—but when he follows his gaze upward he sees nothing. Just shadow against shadow, just the lightning and the rain.
And what doesn’t he see down here? Another manhole cover.
Damnit.
The rain picks up. Cason can’t see. Can’t hear. The downpour sounds like the pounding surf; white noise drowning everything out.
He pulls the satchel charge tight against his shoulder, ducks left and darts under a concrete overhang whose pillars are crumbling—each with big hunks taken out of them, like something bit through the cement, exposing rusted rebar bones.
Then—
A scuff of a boot behind him.
Cason wheels, body tensing to a defensive stance—
“Dude, whoa.”
It’s just a kid. Some teenage wasteoid—his ratty blond curls sticking out from under a red-and-white trucker hat that says FUCK YOU. Thin frame beneath a tattered Operation Ivy t-shirt and stuffed into a pair of slashed jeans hanging too low on the kid’s knobby hipbones. He’s got his hands up, mouth in a surprised O, backpedaling.
Cason asks: “The hell are you doing here? You scared the piss outta me.”
Thunder booms. The ground shudders.
“Dude, yo, a
re you here to see him, too?”
“Who? See who?”
The kid smiles a snaggle-toothed grin. “The Tacony Hermit, yo.”
Cason wants to look around. See if someone’s playing a prank on him. Half-expects Frank to be hiding behind that snarled tangle of wire over there—it’s all a joke, all of it, the gods and goddesses, the freaks and the monsters, there is no Sasquatch Man, no beautiful Aphrodite, no Nergal and no bombs that blow these divinities back to whatever cosmic seed-bed they came from—but then Cason hears the sound of his wife screaming inside a burning car, hears hands slapping against window glass and against a melting dashboard, and knows that this isn’t a joke. It’s all too real. And all too horrible.
“What hermit?” he asks.
The kid laughs. Waves him on. “Come on. We got a bead on him. I’ll show you.”
THE KID TALKS as he walks.
“So, there’s this fuckin’ homeless guy, right? He lives here. He lives here. He lives here! Fucked. Up. He’s got this, like, huge beard and these wild eyes and he’s got all these blankets and rags wrapped around him. Sometimes you can find him by the smell ’cause, like, he smells so bad—I mean, I guess the only showers this nutball gets is when it rains like this, right? Hey, dude—if you’re not here for the Hermit, what are you doing here?”
They dart into the nearest building and cross an old factory floor: defunct extruders and wire-cutting machines rear up to the left and right, massive metal skeletons, all spider-like, as if they might come alive at any moment—hungry for a meal of flesh. Far above them hang catwalks that sway and squeak. In here the rain is a dull, distant roar.
“I’m a...” Cason thinks. “An urban explorer.”
“Dude. That’s awesome. Like those spelunker guys from Detroit. Fuck yeah.”
“Hey, what’s your name?” Cason asks.
But the kid doesn’t seem to hear him. He hangs a sharp left through the machines, keeps blathering. “So this Hermit, right? Some people say he’s like, not even alive. That he’s just a ghost, but that’s bullshit because we’ve seen him. We’ve talked to him. Other people say like, he’s the last of the wire factory workers. Like, they closed up shop and he didn’t have anything or anyone and he fuckin’, you know, he just fuckin’ stayed. But the weirdest story says that he’s a mass murderer and shit. Like, he killed a bunch of people and this is where he hides out—his mind couldn’t handle it and even he doesn’t remember who he is or where he came from. Fucked up, right? Fucked. Up.”
Fucked up, indeed.
At first, Cason thought—maybe this so-called ‘Tacony Hermit’ can lead him to Nergal. If this derelict factory is his home, well, maybe he could point the way. But now, a new theory: the Tacony Hermit is the god of death. Lost. Insane. Like the way the Sasquatch Man became polluted by the area around him. Turned into a shut-in.
That sends a chill scrabbling up Cason’s spine.
“This way,” the kid says, taking another hard right toward a door. “My buddies are over here. We’ll take you to see the Hermit. I think we know where he is.”
The kid throws open the door with two hands. The sound echoes: kachoom.
Inside, a room lit by a barrel fire. All around, the ghosts of big aluminum bins and rack upon rack of rusted, coiled chain-link fence. Storage area. Once upon a time, the wire came off the line, got bundled by one of the machines, then hauled in here—Cason sees a break in the wall above their heads, where a hanging track carried wire spools between rooms. Now the track—and the catwalk above it—has buckled, kinked like a garden hose.
Gathered around the barrel fire are two other kids. Late teens, by the look of them, their faces lit from underneath by the flickering orange glow. One kid’s got straight brown hair framing a long lean face, and is wearing a Cannibal Corpse shirt. The other kid’s shorter, fatter, showing off a shorn scalp and a blank white t-shirt.
Embers swirl around them—fiery snow turning swiftly to ash as it disappears. Holes in the barrel show off the molten light of burning wood.
“Dudes!” Operation Ivy yells. “This is—” He turns. “Who are you again?”
“Cason.”
“Cool name, cool name.” He turns back to his buddies as they approach. “This is Cason! He’s like, a fuckin’ urban spelunker and shit.”
Cannibal Corpse offers a fist to pound. “Cool. ’Sup.”
Shorn Scalp smirks, offers not a fist to bump but a hand to shake. His voice is high-pitched yet gravelly, too, like he’s a smoker—a fact fast confirmed as he precariously lights a cigarette off the barrel fire. “That’s pretty rad. You here to see the Hermit?”
Cason shrugs. “I am now.”
“Cool, man, cool.” Shorn Scalp puffs on the cigarette like he’s mad at it.
Cannibal Corpse pokes at the fire with a hunk of rebar. Cinders belch forth.
“Where you kids from?” Cason asks.
“Around,” Cannibal Corpse says.
Shorn Scalp chuckles. Raspy. Like a saw cutting rough wood.
Then nobody says anything. Or makes any other move.
“I’m ready to roll,” Cason says, interrupting the silence. “We good to go?”
He feels Operation Ivy come up on his side, close enough for their elbows to touch. Cason pulls away. Shorn Scalp gives him an irritated look.
“I dunno,” he says. “You ready to see the Hermit?”
“What is he, the Wizard of Oz? I’m ready.”
Cannibal Corpse shakes his head. “I’m not sure you are.” Poke, poke. The barrel coughs fireflies of ash. “You a religious guy?”
“What’s that have to do with anything?” Unease crawls under Cason’s skin.
“The Hermit,” Shorn Scalp says, “is special.”
“Real special,” Op Ivy says.
Suddenly, something Frank said rears its head: how some gods are content to toy with just a few of us at a time and build up little cults of personality...
Little cults of personality.
Cason fakes a laugh. “You guys are creeping me out a little.”
“Hermit ain’t like you or me,” Shorn Scalp says.
“Yeah,” Op Ivy says. “Fuckin’ yeah.”
Cannibal Corpse chimes in. “He’s got flies in his beard. Lightning in his eyes. Disease on his breath.” With each word, the kid taps the barrel with the piece of rebar. Whong. Whong. Whong. Whorls of hot ash rise with each hit. Shorn Scalp bends over, fakes playing the guitar. Op Ivy gnaws on a thumbnail and giggles like a girl.
Cason feels his teeth hum, mouth slick with spit. Pulse beats in his neck. “You guys know the Hermit’s name?”
“Ner-uru-gal,” Op Ivy says between giggles.
“Nirgali,” Shorn Scalp says, letting smoke drift from his mouth and nose-holes.
Cannibal Corpse nods. “Lion. Dragon. Storm lord. Dead king.”
From behind Cason, another voice, a girl’s voice: “Lord of the Great City.”
Another voice from the shadows, this one a boy’s: “Lord of Cutha.”
Cason turns. Sees more of them coming. The girl in a too-long Hello Kitty shirt, punky pink hair in a single side ponytail. Next to her, a boy—shirtless, scrawny, ribs showing, khaki shorts bulging at the pockets. Two more behind them—Cason sees a girl with a Superman shirt and a mini-skirt, and behind her, a boy with a blaze-orange vest.
They begin to chant. All of them.
Ner-uru-gal.
Dan-nu-um
i-na ili ga-ba-al
la ma-ha-ar.
Again and again. From hissing whispers to speaking voices to an angry, belligerent mantra. Drowning out the sound of distant rain, hiding Cason’s own drumming heartbeat.
They encircle the burn barrel.
Cason, his back against it. The heat licking his neck, fire between his shoulder blades. Sweat dribbles down his back.
Then the chants end suddenly. Cut short, as if with a blade.
Cannibal Corpse clucks his tongue. “You shouldn’t have come, human.”
>
Cason turns. Is about to say something.
But then Cannibal Corpse cracks the barrel with the rebar—a cloud of hot bright ash rises, and from the boy’s mouth keens a loud howl, a hard wind of breath—
Cason’s vision is all embers, all fire, his hand up, his eyes blinking away ash—
Hands shove him.
Someone pulls at his hair. Blind, he stabs out with a fist, finds nothing there.
A foot kicks against the back of his leg. His hip drops; he almost falls.
His vision clears—
This is no cult.
Cannibal Corpse has the face of a lion.
Shorn Scalp puffs on a cigarette pinched between bird-like talons—his mouth still human, his hands most certainly not.
Op Ivy has pig tusks and all-white eyes.
Hello Kitty has a tiger’s head, its muzzle flecked with red.
Shirtless has a pair of insectile mandibles. Click, click, click.
Supergirl has glossy black crow’s eyes and feathers tufting over her ears.
Blaze-Orange has cracked hooves and lobster-claw hands. Snap, snap, snap.
They begin to circle. Like sharks swimming clockwise around a sinking boat. Cason feels his face stinging from where little motes of burning residue marked him. Orbs of light bob before his eyes. Shorn Scalp swipes at him with a claw—not to connect, just to threaten. Cason backs away, almost hits Op Ivy, who snorts and giggles.
Cannibal Corpse speaks—the lion mouth moving, but human words coming out.
“We are the Sebittu. We are the Seven.”
“Dude,” Op Ivy says, slick tusks pushing at his upper lip.
Shorn Scalp flicks away the cigarette.
“You want to see Ner-uru-gal,” Cannibal Corpse says. “You have to go through us.”
The lion-face roars, and they advance.
