Limbus, Inc., Book III

by Jonathan Maberry

  Boris was already over on the dark side, as far as Hiro saw it. After Poliske and a short but weird trip to a four thousand year old Arawak bat cult shrine in Aruba, the gruff Russian soldier had started treating Priest like some kind of holy man. Or a god. Or something. Hiro didn’t have it all worked out yet, but it was starting to scare the crap out of him. Keppler had been stable at first, but now she was slipping into the weird, too.

  “Hey,” Hiro said, trying to reach the scientist, “we don’t know what we’re walking into.”

  That somehow struck a spark in Keppler and her eyes suddenly came to sharper focus. “There are a lot of people out there who can climb ropes and pick locks, Hiro. We both know that and I’m pretty sure that Priest knows it. I’m sure he’d find a replacement if you don’t have the stomach for it.” She paused and the glare in her eyes crystallized into something else, an expression he could not identify. “Courage requires vision, Hiro. Courage requires faith.”

  Hiro said, “What’s that supposed to—”

  But Keppler turned away and walked over to stand near Priest. For a moment Hiro was afraid that she was going to tell their team-leader about the conversation, but she didn’t. Instead she just stood there, behind and to one side of him. It was then that Hiro became consciously aware of something he’d half noticed before. Like Boris, Keppler often stood in Priest’s shadow. Not metaphorically and completely, but partly, even if it was only their foot or hand. It was something Boris had started doing after the trip to Poliske, and Hiro had assumed it was simply a bodyguard standing close to the person he was protecting. But it was more than that and Hiro now knew it. Boris would shift slowly around so as to be actually touched by Priest’s shadow. Not always, but often enough so that it was clearly not an accident. And now Keppler was doing it, too. It was starting to freak Hiro out. He tried to remember whether Rink ever did that.

  No, he determined. Just the opposite. The more of these kinds of things they did, the more Rink kept herself at a distance. Not even within arm’s reach most of the time.

  Keppler stood close to Priest now, and she stared at him with an unusual and somewhat adoring intensity.

  Priest turned to look at Hiro. “Everything is good, yes?”

  “Yeah,” he said diffidently, “it’s all good. I guess I’m just a little bit on edge. Maybe it’s the heat.”

  Priest gave him a smile that would have looked at home on the Joker from the Batman comics. Very happy in bad ways.

  Fucking freak, thought Hiro.

  “Okay,” called Priest, climbing down from the small boulder on which he’d been sitting, “let’s go.”

  They went.

  Hiro did not like it one little bit, though.

  Within twenty minutes of their last rest stop they reached the mouth of a narrow cleft. Hiro peered at the rock and decided that this was an old split, not the result of recent seismic activity. He wondered if that was good or bad.

  The mouth of the cleft was nearly hidden by a tangle of water-starved shrubs and the twisted stumps of trees that had suffered from lack of nutrients and had grown into improbably goblin shapes. Lizards scuttled through the brush as they approached. Priest reached out with a heavily gloved hand and pushed some of the shrubs aside, revealing a slope that swept down and around out of sight. It was steep but walkable, but the entire way was protected by a strange type of thorn tree whose needles were a dark and threatening red that glistened with some kind of sap.

  “Everyone keep your suit on,” ordered Priest, pointing to a sticky wetness on the ends of the thorns. “See that? Do not under any circumstances touch it. It’s a natural neurotoxin that will drop you in your tracks within two steps, yes? It won’t actually kill you, but it takes six days to leave the bloodstream. Get stuck and you will lie out here and die of exposure.”

  “Unless something comes along to eat you,” said Boris.

  “Yes,” said Priest with a smile, “unless that happens.”

  He used his booted toe to push a smaller bush out of the way. Beyond it lay a tangle of bones. A goat or something similar. And there were more bones along the path. Not all of them were animal bones. When Rink saw a pair of human skulls she cried out and shrank back. She almost fled to Priest’s side, but caught herself and merely stepped backward. Priest didn’t appear to notice, but Hiro did.

  She’s afraid of him, he thought. Even wearing a protective suit, she’s afraid to touch him. Fuck me.

  “Let’s go,” ordered Priest. “Everyone be careful. I can’t afford to lose anyone at this point. Though…to be clear, if you fall, none of us will carry you back to the vehicles.”

  It was long past the time when Hiro thought comments like that were a joke. He caught Rink’s eyes and from the terror in them it was clear she believed Priest, too. It was all about the mission. Nothing else was a priority or even a concern.

  It took another twenty minutes to navigate the hundred yards of the cleft, and by the time they reached the bottom their suits were covered in scratches and dripping with the deadly sap. Along the way they saw bones of every description. From the delicate bones of hummingbirds to the heavy bones of wild cattle.

  “God!” cried Rink as she recoiled from a skull. Hiro hurried over and saw that it was a human skull. Small. A young woman or a child.

  Priest joined them. “Yes. Expect more of that.”

  It was all he would say. A single, cold statement of fact. Ugly in its honesty. Prophetic in its accuracy, because the closer they got to the end of the cleft the more human bones they were forced to step over. Dozens of dead people, and some of the bones looked like they’d been there for ages. Many years at least, if not centuries.

  “Who are these people?” asked Rink.

  Priest shrugged. “Pilgrims, some of them. Explorers. Opportunists.” He paused. “Sacrifices. What does it matter?”

  “It matters in how they died,” said Rink. “And why.”

  “No, my dear, it does not. It only matters that they died trying to get to where we’re going. It matters that they were unsuccessful.”

  “Hasn’t anyone gotten to where we’re going?” asked Keppler.

  “And gotten out? No,” said Priest, “we will be the first.”

  “Then how do you know it’s going to still be there?” asked Rink.

  Priest did not answer until they reached the very bottom. He stopped in front of a thick tangle of the thorn bushes and stood considering it for nearly two full minutes. Deep in the cleft it was stiflingly hot and Hiro considered attaching his oxygen supply. But then Priest turned toward them and the look in his eyes stopped Hiro from doing anything. His breath caught in his throat and once more he backed up a step, afraid of the mad, weird lights that glittered in this man’s eyes.

  “I know it’s here because I can feel it.”

  “Feel it?” echoed Rink. Even through the thickness of her suit Hiro could see her shiver. It was one of those deep shudders that begins in the marrow and ripples outward. It almost provoked a sympathetic shiver in Hiro, but he managed—just barely managed—to keep control.

  “Feel what, exactly?” Hiro asked.

  Instead of answering directly, Priest turned and touched the tips of the thorns. “Can’t you hear it singing?”

  No one answered.

  Priest stepped back and signaled to Boris.

  “Burn it,” he snapped.

  Immediately the soldier unlimbered his pack and removed from it a small tank with a flexible leather hose and metal nozzle with a pistol grip. He flipped a switch to ignite a spark, then turned a dial to start the flow of flammable liquid. Then he raised the sprayer and pulled the trigger. Bright yellow flame whooshed out and a fireball engulfed the thorn bushes that stood in a cluster against the wall. Boris kept feeding fuel, kept spraying the fire until the bushes were blazing wildly. He only stopped when Priest nodded. Then Boris simply tossed the flamethrower into the weeds.

  They stood watching the thorn-bushes burn. They were rugged but dry and
they burned with great heat and immediacy. The weeds turned black and began to curl, and then pieces began falling away trailing sparks. A few smaller fires ignited from the embers.

  Keppler made to stamp them out but Priest stopped her.

  “No,” he said.

  “This whole gulley will catch fire.”

  Priest considered, then shrugged. “Let it. It’ll be easier for us to get out of here.”

  As the big clump of bushes burned away, Hiro could see that there was a second cleft behind it, this one tall and vertical. It had been completely hidden by the deadly plants.

  “Clear it,” said Priest, and Boris began kicking savagely at the thorn-bushes, and they crumpled into burning debris. He kept kicking until the opening was completely free. Then he peered inside, stepped back and nodded to Priest.

  The opening was too narrow for anyone to walk in normally, so Priest turned sideways and shimmied into it. He vanished into the heart of the mountain. Boris followed close behind, and then Keppler. Rink lingered a moment though and cast a worried look back at Hiro.

  “What’s in there?” Hiro asked.

  Rink merely shook her head and followed the others.

  Hiro peered inside and saw only a window narrow passage. A few distant scuffling sounds echoed back to him, muffled by the helmet he wore. Then he looked at the gully behind him. All of the bushes were smoking now and a few fires had taken hold. Soon all of this brush would be fully involved. If he waited here, protected by the mouth of the cleft, it would burn up and burn out soon. And then he could leave. Without the thorns in the way, and with his own skills at moving over rough terrain, he knew he could make it all the way back to the truck before anyone knew he’d fled.

  He almost did that.

  Almost.

  Almost.

  Was that what Priest had asked. Can’t you hear it singing?

  “Goddamn it,” Hiro said to himself.

  Then he went inside.

  The passage was very curved and twisted like a snake, and in spots Hiro had to suck it in to squeeze through. He was amazed that the larger and bulkier Boris had managed it at all. He clicked on the helmet light and saw fresh scrapes on the stone, proof that the Russian soldier had not had an easy time of it.

  Within a dozen yards, though, the passage widened and soon he was able to walk normally. At this point the walls changed from the simple roughness of rock that had been split open in the distant geologic past to something different. He paused, training his light on irregularities in the wall and saw that they were carvings. At first he had the irrational thought that they were Egyptian pictograms, but as he bent closer to inspect them he realized that they were not. These were strange markings, unlike anything he’d seen. Animals of many different kinds, strange buildings, exotic trees, and creatures clearly born in myth or madness. Tiny human figures knelt in humility or lay upon sacrificial altars. Some dressed in odd garments stood like priests, arms raised, daggers in their hands, heads thrown back in exultation. But what disturbed Hiro most was the representation of the gods these people seemed to be worshipping. He’d seen pictures of the local gods but these did not look like any of those. No, the gods of the people who had painstakingly chiseled these carvings untold years ago seemed better fitted to people who lived by remote seas or on isolated islands. The gods were massive and bulbous, with many trailing, twisting tentacles. Huge black eyes seemed to burn with intensity, even from the cold representation in old rock.

  They gathered around the pedestal and stared at the book.

  Even closed and covered with a glass dome it looked wrong.

  That’s the word that came into Hiro’s head. Wrong.

  The book was as thick as one of the old illuminated Bibles. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages; the edges painted with gold. The cover was some kind of leather that was pale and wrinkled, and it looked uncomfortably like old skin. Human skin. Hiro’s grandmother had skin like that in the months before she died of cancer. A jaundiced tinge and dark lines that almost looked like collapsed veins.

  It was ugly and Hiro wanted no part of it. He stood a deliberate step back from it, glancing around at the others, seeing how the book impacted each of them. Keppler was confused, her precise scientific mind no doubt wrestling with the odd and intense emotions she must be feeling. Rink looked small and frightened, and maybe a little sick. Disgusted or nauseous with fear. Boris, on the other hand, tried to keep his soldier’s stoicism in place, but his lips were wet and he was sweating badly. Priest was like a god to him and this was something the twisted scientist craved.

  The words that sprang to Hiro’s mind when he looked at Priest were all variations of the same thing. Hunger. Deep desire. An almost carnal lust to possess this book. There were weird lights in Priest’s eyes and even his skin glowed with a vitality that seemed to restore some of the youth the man had lost since this series of adventures had begun. In that moment, as Priest stood there with his hands resting on the glass dome, he was young again. Youthful in a way that Hiro found deeply disturbing. It was how he imagined the jikininki, the insatiable Hungry Ghost of Japanese folklore, to look at the moment it feasted. And just as the jikininki invariably became ravenous within seconds of finishing its grisly feast, Hiro knew that even now, even at the moment of possessing something that fed one of Priest’s deepest needs, the scientist would become hungry again for the next item on his list. And the next, and the next.

  “Priest,” said Rink in a hushed and frightened voice, “let’s get it and get out of here. This place is—”

  Priest wheeled on her and hissed her to silence. Actually hissed like a snake, and Hiro thought for a moment the man was going to strike her. Hiro pulled Rink backward out of reach.

  “She’s right,” said Keppler. “We need to go.”

  The pedestal was in the middle of a vast chamber nearly half a mile beneath the ground. All around them were massive chunks of rock that had fallen from the ceiling. Once, many years ago, there had been more than fifty titanic granite pillars holding up the shadowy ceiling. Now more than thirty of them lay in heaps beneath piles of limestone that had dropped from the ceiling when the columns fell. Hiro had studied the geological reports of this region and was alarmed at the number of earthquakes despite the paucity of fault lines. This whole area was supposed to be stable and yet it had trembled over and over again.

  It’s the book, whispered a voice from the shadows of his mind. The earth itself can’t abide its presence.

  The thought was absurd. Dramatic and foolish. And yet Hiro knew that it was the truth. Impossible, but true.

  He looked around at the destruction and saw that nothing had fallen inside the glow from the pedestal. Not a stone, not a flake of dust. The glass dome was as clean as if it had been newly polished.

  Get out of here, whispered the voice. Run now. Get away while you can. Go…go now.

  Hiro felt himself edge backward. One step, two. A third.

  But then he stopped, caught between his fears and the promises he’d made to Priest. And his need for the money. Until his contract was completed the bulk of the money would not be released.

  It is a horrible thing to know about oneself that in the end it is greed that matters more than conscience, faith, self-respect, self-preservation, or even hope.

  Fewer realizations stab as deep.

  “Help me,” said Priest as he approached the book.

  Every single one of them followed.

  -9-

  Sam Hunter

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  How do you even respond to what Acantha just told me?

  I mean, seriously?

  An hour ago I was wondering which credit card company I was going to have stiff in order to write a check to keep my office lights on. I was worrying about whether I needed to start buying pants a size larger because I like meatball subs more that I like doing crunches and sit-ups. I was worrying about calling back the woman I met at the diner the other night because I couldn’t af
ford to take her on a real date.

  Now I had to worry about stopping the end of the world. Seriously. End of the fucking world. The end times. The apocalypse. Whatever else they call it. Dropping the curtain. A strange woman from a sketchy organization needed me to go up against an order of religious maniacs and shadow government special operators to fetch a book written in the blood of Jesus.

  Hey, it’s not like I’m any kind of holy-roller. I grew up in the Twin Cities as part of a family that sometimes went to church on Christmas, almost never on Easter, and rarely thought about it much the rest of the year. Not atheists, not even sure we’re agnostics. Just indifferent.

  And now this.

  I lowered the phone and started to cry.

  Couldn’t help it. Call me a girly man, call me a sissy. Whatever. But tell me how you’d react to that.

  Go on. Tell me.

  -10-

  Hiro Tsukino

  Tristan da Cunha

  1750 Miles from South Africa

  South Atlantic Ocean

  Three Years Ago

  It looked like a scene from hell.

  Or, to Hiro’s eyes, something from one of the big budget summer blockbusters. In either case it didn’t look entirely real.

  The island was burning.

  A massive column of smoke corkscrewed up into the sky and everything on the windward side of the island was coated with hot gray ash. The team was upwind, safe for the moment unless the winds veered. The lack of any ash at all on this section of beach was only a small comfort. Red veins of lava cut crooked channels down the hill. The last aftershocks were hours past now, but none of the members of Mr. Priest’s party believed that they were truly safe. Not even their leader, who Hiro had come to believe was as mad as the moon.