Hell's Gate

by Dean R. Koontz

  The white-haired half-man took the gun from the other's paw and turned it over and over, fascinated with the knobs, lines of design. He was intelligent enough to see just how it was meant to be held, though his own fingers were too large to grasp it as delicately as was intended. His fingers brushed the trigger, fired a pellet into the chest of the half-man who had brought the gun into the caves in the first place.

  The creature's chest seemed to expand as if it were a balloon being blown up by a giant with fantastic lung capacity. Then it burst outward, showering gore on those seated nearby. The half-man looked down curiously at its ruined body, grunted something the others of its kind didn't even seem to understand, turned and stared at Salsbury with swiftly glazing eyes, then slumped forward- dead.

  The chief dropped the gun, hooting insanely, and danced to his feet, much more agile than he appeared. He was in a fury, waving his arms about, chanting over the fallen body. When he was finished, the corpse had not moved even a fraction of an inch as all of them seemed to expect it might. Keeper reached out and rolled his friend over. Together the half-men inspected the gaping hole that revealed their ex-comrade's innards. Then, almost as one organism, they turned to stare at Salsbury where he sat on the ledge.

  Salsbury felt like stone.

  He knew they were thinking of breaking him down into gravel any moment now.

  He stood, nervously watching them.

  They were a tableau, frozen on different ends of the room. In their eyes, Salsbury was the bad guy, they were the good guys. After all, he was the odd fellow. He was the one who had brought evil magic into their snug little haven when they had been asleep dreaming half-men dreams of half-women. His gun, his evil magic, had killed their buddy. It made no difference to them that their own stupidity was involved.

  Before any of them could move, Salsbury jumped from the ledge, hit the cave floor running, and burst through the archway into the room from which the half-women had brought the soup earlier.

  The women were still there, squatted about the room chittering to one another, their fingers messy with gruel, the hair around their mouths matted with revolting streaks of wet food. When Salsbury broke in on them, the four of them screamed and darted into a corner, huddling together, their eyes wide under the deep shelves of their heavy foreheads. He spotted another tunnel leading away from this chamber and started across the room toward it. He would have to pass within a few feet of the women, and he didn't like to think what would happen if one of them built up enough courage to swat at him. Baring his teeth and building his voice into a stentorian roar, he shouted: “Aarrrggghhh!” at the top of his lungs.

  The half-women screamed and tried to crawl on top of one another. While they were thus engaged, trying to press farther into the corner, he went through the archway into the new tunnel and ran as fast as his weary legs would carry him. It would not be fast enough, he knew, for he could remember with what ease Keeper had loped past him in the forest.

  In time with his fears, the white-haired chief and the rest of the pack entered the tunnel a hundred feet behind. Salsbury put on speed, then saw that he was running into more trouble instead of away from it. Ahead, in the cavern into which this passage fed, a lamp was lit and glowed cheery red. In that glow, he could see other half-men coming awake, roused by his pursuers who were screeching and hooting furiously.

  He stopped-though every nerve in his body screamed to him to move-and searched the walls which were shot through with small, dead-end caves. One of these looked deeper than the rest; at least he could not see the back of it. Besides, it was only wide enough to admit a man. The gorilla-like morons would have a devil of a time trying to come in after him.

  He didn't know what good it would do to gain a temporary respite. Did he really think dying of thirst or starving was any better than being torn apart by the local savages? You're damned right he did! Because he could imagine how slow a process the half-men would make of his death. Savages enjoyed torturing their enemies. He did not want to be their plaything. He crawled into the opening and wriggled into the cave to a place where it widened out enough for him to turn around. Just then, the chiefs face appeared at the opening, glaring in at him.

  Salsbury backed up another foot, then settled down to see what would happen. The chief reached in with a long, filthy arm and groped for him, but the creature's fingers were a good five feet short of their target. Salsbury breathed a sigh of relief that he felt fully in every cell of his being. The chief withdrew his arm, mumbled with the others for a time. Several more of them took their chance, but none of them was long-armed enough.

  Fifteen minutes passed without any action.

  That was just enough time to give Salsbury a chance to calm down and consider the direness of his predicament. Seventy-six worldlines away from Lynda Stranded miles from the vacii ship which held his only chance of return Trapped in a cave just out of reach of a horde of gabbling, lame-brained monkeymen If he had been a betting man, he would not have placed more than twenty cents on his chances of living out the night. Or even the next hour, for that matter.

  Soon the half-men were back. They had put their meager IQ's together and devised a plan. There was a rattling and scraping sound, a dimming of the light as the chief blocked the entrance again. Then something jabbed Salsbury hard on the shoulder, retreated, came back again, skinning the side of his face. They had cut a long stick, had sharpened the end, and were poking him with it in hopes of killing him, or wounding him sufficiently to make him crawl out where they could reach him.

  He took two more jabs, the last of which broke the skin on his shoulder, then reached out and grasped the stick, thrust it backwards with all his might. He caught the chief off guard. The other end of the pole slipped through his paws and rammed him solidly in the chest. He heard the beast make a whuffing sound and suck in new breath. The stick was withdrawn and not used again.

  But they were working their fevered little minds overtime to come up with something, and for a few terrible moments, it seemed as if they had hit upon a good idea. One of them brought a torch to the mouth of the cave and held it inside. A thin column of smoke was carried back to him. Another half-man collected a pile of grass and leaves, stacked that in the entrance and lit it. The ensuing smoke almost smothered Salsbury. It roiled by in blue-white clouds, thick as London fog. It clogged his nostrils, burned the back of his throat, and made his eyes water helplessly.

  He was almost prepared to crawl forward and admit defeat when various little facts connected in the depths of his brain to mean something important. One: the smoke was being drawn toward the back of the cave, swirling past him. This meant his cave had to have an outlet of some sort to cause the draft. Two: even if the outlet was not large enough to crawl out of, it would provide, perhaps, a pocket of air to breath that was less smoky than that here. Instead of going forward to Keeper and Chief and the others, he turned around once more and worked with the smoke, seeking the outlet it had already found.

  For long moments, he crawled with closed eyes to avoid getting them more inflamed than they already were.

  His mouth tasted like the bottom of an ashtray.

  It was a bad journey. At places, the walls of the narrow tunnel grew even tighter, pressed in more insistently. And, invariably, at these places, the walls were more jagged so that flesh was gouged out of his shoulders, hips and arms. The walls and floor became damp, and he crept through cold water that made him shiver uncontrollably. And there was always the smoke, just thick enough to keep him gasping and choking, but not so thick as to smother him altogether. His eyes were swollen, and tears were streaming down his face.

  He came to what he thought was a dead end.

  He felt around to all sides.

  It was a dead end.

  He beat his hands against the stone in front of him, cursing like a madman half crazed with heat prostration. Then he ceased acting like an imbecile long enough to let his skin pick up a hint of a draft. He felt around overhead, discovered t
hat the tunnel went straight up for four feet, then broke to the left with a horizontal floor again. He squirmed up and through the bend, flopped onto the floor above and tried to catch his breath.

  All he caught was a hefty lungful of smoke. He gagged, forced himself to crawl on. Slowly, the air began to improve. At last, he could take deeper breaths without coughing, and his chest had stopped its painful throbbing. Ahead, there was a dim circle of light. He made for it at a rapid crawl, pushed himself through, and fell full length onto a half-man who was waiting for him, a wide grin on its twisted face.

  CHAPTER 17

  There was no sense in struggling. They were even more sharp-witted than he had anticipated in his wildest moments. They had been aware that his tunnel might have an outlet somewhere, and they had dispatched sentries into the corridors of their maze to check for smoke. If one of them sported any, he was to wait there under the assumption Salsbury would follow the vapors. And Salsbury had. He was carried back into the main room where the half-men had eaten their porridge, where Keeper's friend had been killed by the gas pellet gun in the chief's hand.

  They returned him to the shelf where he had been, depositing him rudely, slamming him down harshly on the cold stone. They left two guards to watch over him and gathered in the center of the floor to debate on what should be done with him. There seemed to be various factions strongly in favor of their method of punishment. Salsbury knew none of them were arguing for leniency, just for a crude and colorful form of death they preferred to administer.

  In the end, they tied his hands behind his back with a length of thin but tough fibrous vine, looping and looping the stuff as insurance against a weak spot in its length. Next, they ran a heavier vine around his waist, knotted it, looped it under both his arms. A second heavy rope had been tied high above the floor, one end to a smooth projection of rock on the left, the other to an equally placed projection on the right. The rope that had been tied around his waist and looped under his armpits like a harness was thrown over the ceiling rope, and he was hoisted to his feet, then higher until his shoes dangled three feet off the floor. The pain as the vine drew tight around his waist and cinched his arms together was grueling. He gritted his teeth and spat at his tormentors. That only seemed to encourage them.

  He hung there for another five minutes, wondering if they merely planned to let him hang until his arms were ripped off by the constant drag of his body. But they had more specific plans, ones that would give them some entertainment as well as revenge. A half-man came up to Salsbury, grasped him by the legs, drew him back as far as it could manage and shoved him forward. He began to swing like a pendulum, the vine cruelly chaffing his waist and arms. To make certain he did not lose momentum, the half-men formed groups at both ends of his swing and batted him back and forth. At the peak of each arc, he was slammed by a hard paw, sent back the other way. They took turns so as not to tire. He soon lost track of how many times he had been struck.

  In time, after countless blows and countless arcs, he felt a sharp sting on his side, sensed the wet flow of blood. On the other peak of his arc, he understood what had happened. They had decided to use their rather blunt but, nonetheless, wicked claws. The second slice was deeper than the first and sent hot waves of pain coursing through him, even though he thought that by this time he should have been beyond feeling anything.

  Back And forth Slash And slice

  He thought about coming from the future (slice) into the past (slash), from there into another probability line (back and forth) where alien lizardmen ruled, from there (slash) across seventy-six probability lines to a totally different counter-Earth (rip), there to be murdered by a gang of ruthless, stupid apes. He thought it was a sorry end to what had promised to be a glorious epic adventure.

  There was a red haze creeping over his vision, and bells ringing out a symphony in his head. He was about to slip into darkness, utter and complete when a new, shriller tone of gorilla talk split the air from the entrance to the chamber. The half-men playing with Salsbury missed a few swipes, and his momentum dropped. The shrill voice called again, louder and more insistent. Then, in good English, a husky gravel-toned voice said, “Hold on. We'll get you down as fast as possible.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Victor Salsbury fought against darkness and dizziness that grappled with him, and he won. He was conscious when they cut him down. He dropped into a puddle on the floor, more anxious about the condition of his mortal shell than about who had stepped in to save his life like a saint in a storybook miracle. He was aching all over from the pounding he had received. Both his hips were bleeding thick crimson fluid that seeped through his tattered jeans. When he was finished accounting for every wound, he decided that, despite how he might feel, he would survive. His accelerating healing processes would stop the bleeding at any moment and would begin to knit the torn skin. He hated to think what he would have looked like, how far beyond the scope of his healing powers he would have been if he had not been cut down when he was. A few more pendulum swings, and he would have slipped into an unconsciousness where the last dregs of his life forces would have been drained quietly away.

  The worst of his worries about his body assuaged, he thought of his rescuer.

  He looked up, somehow expecting to see either the vacii or a detachment of marines. Instead, there was another gorilla-like man standing over him. He was different from the other things, though. The amount of facial hair obscuring his features was considerably less, exposing tough, brown skin creased heavily like ancient, weathered leather. His scalp itself was still liberally furred and pointed up his relationship to the savages. The features of his face were not as harsh as those of the other half-men, the forehead jutted out only half an inch instead of two inches. His nose was more completely formed with heavier cartilage deposits that gave it a roughly human quality. The mouth was smaller, more evenly lipped, and the teeth were well-cared for, as if they had been regularly brushed.

  “You are from another probability?” the newcomer asked, trying to look as pleasant as he could. Despite his gorilla resemblance, he was a welcome sight compared to the heavy, vicious masks of Salsbury's tormentors.

  Victor wetted his lips, said, “Yes.”

  “Good! You speak English! English is a prime Tongue in this sector of worldlines, though not on this particular one. My other languages are decent, but not so polished as is my English. Do you think? Polished? English is spoken on your alternate world, then. Is it the only language?”

  “No,” Salsbury said with effort. “French. Chinese. Russian. Too many of them to list.”

  “Most likely. A diversity of tongues is more common. But English is dominant?”

  “One of the few dominant tongues, yes. Look-”

  “Oh, excuse me,” the modified gorilla said apologetically, reaching out a hairy, long-fingered hand to help Salsbury up. “I'd forgotten, in my excitement, that you've gone through a great deal.”

  Vic managed to struggle to his feet. He felt horrible. Like he had been drenched with kerosene, then lit with a torch; every square inch of him burned. That wasn't half so bad as the elephant that had been chained inside his body and was trying to kick its way out.

  “You see, this is the first time,” his rescuer continued excitedly, “that I have ever encountered anyone from an alternate probability. To speak with, at least.”

  “Who-” Salsbury began, his tongue a moth-eaten blanket rolled up inside his mouth.

  “No talk for the moment. The vacii will come in search of you. We must go to the lower levels which they do not know of.”

  “Okay,” Vic said, taking a few tentative steps.

  “Do you wish to be carried?” the newcomer asked.

  “No.” He could see that he was still smaller than the half-men perhaps only seven feet tall, but the half-men obeyed him. “I'll make it on my own. You aren't as large as these brutes.” Then he walked five feet and collapsed.

  “Much of their extra size is wasted in fat and bones,” the newcomer said. He bent o
ver Salsbury, picked him up as if he weighed in at slightly under three pounds, and started out of the room. “We are simply more compact, but just as strong as they.”

  There were others of the more refined strain of gorilla men. Salsbury noticed, his head hanging down over his rescuer's shoulder, brilliant showers of fireflies exploding on the surface of his eyes, obscuring his view of the new men. He could see, however, that they were dressed, unlike the half-men who had been torturing him. They wore high skin boots that came to their square, chiseled knees, and tight short pants of coarse material. They carried bows, quivers of arrows, and a sheathed knife each. The one who was carrying Victor had entrusted his weapons to one of his comrades. The others, however, were prepared for combat and maintained a constant, tense vigil to all sides, their weapons armed, whether for vacii or for the more daring and surly half-men, he did not know.

  Then they were moving. He couldn't see anything for the hobbling and swaying of his head. All he could make out was that they were leaving the naked half-men behind and were going down, down, farther down each minute.

  There was another firefly eruption in his head. Hundreds and thousands of flickering green lights. This time, he settled back and allowed them to swarm in on him as if they were hungry, blood-seeking mosquitoes. They blotted everything out and dazzled him with their brilliance. Then, strangely, the lights disappeared, and there was only a soft, murmuring bandage of nothingness about him.

  Later, he came awake to find his rescuer holding his head up and rubbing the crushed petals of a rich purple flower beneath his nose. The odor made him gag, but it did bring him awake as was planned. He shook his head to make the stranger take the smelling salts away, then leaned back and realized he was in a chair! It was a well made piece of furniture, comfortable with cushions of dark fabric, and seemed to be stuffed with feathers or fur of some sort. This was the first sign of the artifacts of moderately civilized people, aside from the weapons and clothes he had already noticed in his groggy state. These people were more than slightly advanced above the naked half-men who had been trying to kill him.