Hell's Gate

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by Bill Schutt


  “The old ones have run out of wise words,” Leila’s mother had told her then, “and now they are becoming children again.”

  Could this be happening to her mother?

  Leila knew that people from a strange and heavily armed tribe had been arriving and departing for more than a year now. They came on rafts, laden with what appeared to be long vines of metal, heavy sacks of gray earth, and the makings for stiff metal huts. She had no idea why they had come or what the material was for, but she was sure that these men did not emerge from a fish.

  “These warazu are different,” the old woman continued. “Some of them have golden hair. And they worship a crooked cross.”

  Even as she spoke the words, Leila’s mother could see the disbelief in her daughter’s eyes, so she took Leila by the wrist, half-dragging her to a vantage point along the river’s edge.

  With a mixture of relief and dread, Leila saw that her mother had not slipped back into childhood. There were warazu, many of them. And their giant fish was actually a great black canoe of some kind, the likes of which she had never seen. A portion of the canoe even extended upward like the fin of a great fish. It was this particular fin that bore a pole, and from this pole there hung a cloth painted with the strange crooked cross her mother had described.

  For the first few days, Leila watched the strangers from the fringes, and the more she watched, the more puzzling their behavior became. She also noted that the warazu were divided into several castes—like ants. Some were of normal height with straight black hair. Like her people, these men were quiet as they went about their work. Some of the warazu, though, were giants and indeed her mother had been right: Several of them did have golden hair. They spoke loudly, and in a harsh-sounding language that reminded her of spitting. Leila also noticed that both groups wore clothes that seemed well made but far too heavy to be practical.

  From the start, and even when viewing them only from the edges of their encampment, Leila could see that most of the warazu acted more like conquering gods than visitors. And surprisingly, her people treated them like gods, accepting them and even working with them side by side. And work they did, from dawn until dusk and beyond, putting groups of newly arrived captives to the task of cutting and clearing the forest. Others used a giant arm to transfer strange objects from their enormous canoe to the shore. Their constant movement was another way that the warazu reminded Leila more of ants than men. They even used flying machines to carry their goods and, though the contraptions resembled gigantic dragonflies, the horrible noise and wind they produced were nothing like the delicate air dance of real dragonflies.

  Although she had been banned from setting foot in her own village, the cacique had not actually forbidden her from visiting the warazu camp, and so each night Leila crept in among them, easily slipping past the guards (who she thought must be half-blind). Their strange metallic huts were hidden in the forest, amid tall stacks of mysterious objects. She followed the scent of rotting meat and vegetables and came across a mound of strange containers, hollow metal gourds that had once held food. Soon Leila began stealing the unopened gourds from their stacks, and after returning to her hut she cut them open with one of their own metal knives (also stolen). As distasteful as the contents often were, it was sustenance, and Leila quickly came to realize that the Warazu Who Worshipped a Crooked Cross had become her salvation—and her family’s. “Thank you for the Crooked Cross,” she told the river and the stars.

  “This food will make you stronger,” Leila whispered each evening, ladling unrecognizable meat and fruit into her son’s gaping mouth. He often reminded her more of a hungry baby bird than her own child. The boy almost never responded, but from his general appearance, Leila knew that his health was improving with each passing week.

  And then the screaming began.

  At first the cries had come from slaves, most of them locals captured by the warazu. Some of the tattoos these slaves bore were familiar to her; others were not. Leila estimated that there had been more than two hundred of these wretched men clearing trees and hauling away stumps and rubble. For reasons unknown to her, the warazu had set out to uncover one of the ancient causeways that crisscrossed the tribal land. Then, instead of using the road for travel, they built a long, low wall out of wood and stone down its middle. The screams of the imprisoned, and especially those who tried to escape, often lasted for hours. Recently, though, a new cry had risen from the forest beyond the valley. It came one night as she was returning from gathering fruit and lasted only a few moments. A shout had come in the language of the warazu followed by a sound that was unmistakable to anyone who heard it—the gurgle of life torn from the throat of a dying man.

  On this starry night, Leila tried to put the screams from her mind, as she looked out across the fog lake and contemplated another foraging raid. She hesitated just inside the doorway of the hut. A downward glance confirmed that her son and mother were still asleep.

  The warazu are posting more guards now, she thought, knowing that her nocturnal descents below the surface of the fog lake and into the warazu camp had become increasingly dangerous. But she also knew that her family needed food and that she would risk anything to obtain it.

  Leila stepped outside and shivered, not knowing if it was the night breeze or Sereburã’s breath, absent these five years, that chilled her body. If only something so wonderful were possible.

  A strange and beautiful music came from one of the metal huts, lasting forty-five minutes and accompanying Leila’s descent into and return from the encampment. She was clutching an armful of canned food as she reentered her thatched home. Damp, musky air filled the tiny room.

  The scent of black earth and mushrooms . . . and flowers.

  A whisper, unidentifiable but familiar, broke the silence.

  There was an out-of-place silhouette on the floor and Leila released a deep breath that became a gasp. She also released her grip on several of the metal gourds, but as her eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, she relaxed ever so slightly. The shadowy figure on the floor was her son.

  Were you listening to the music, too?

  “You should be asleep,” she whispered, some part of her brain wondering why her mother hadn’t stirred at the sound of the gourds clattering to the floor.

  As usual, the boy said nothing.

  “Go on,” she said, gesturing toward his sleeping pallet. “It’s very late.”

  The boy replied with a wet gurgle and for an instant—only for an instant—six eyes, not two, reflected the moonlight that angled in through a solitary window. She neither felt nor heard the rest of the cans dropping to the ground around her feet.

  A moan escaped Leila, and as she fumbled to light a candle her mind tried to comprehend what she was seeing—or thought she was seeing: two dark shapes backing away from behind where the boy sat, retreating from the sudden spark of light.

  The candle’s flame held steady, then shifted, first to the left then to the right as breezes passed her on either side, foul-smelling and throwing impossible shadows onto the walls.

  The cave. The shadows moving toward Sereburã.

  No!

  Then the room was still.

  “NOOOOO!!!” Leila cried, rushing to embrace her son, who folded into her arms like a doll.

  She pulled back.

  The boy’s eyes were vacant, unfocused. Then his head flopped over to one side, with a sudden crack.

  Leila extended an unsteady arm and the candle threw sputtering light onto the woven pallet where her mother lay motionless in a widening puddle of—

  An instant later, Leila heard the sound of someone screaming. At first, she was startled that a person could create such a bone-chilling cry. She was not quite aware, yet, that the screams were her own.

  CHAPTER 16

  Stolen Food, Stolen Dreams

  A conflagration will come upon the earth . . . and plagues . . . And their error: that they acted against themselves, this human race.

  —EG
YPTIAN REVELATION OF SETH (APPROXIMATELY FIRST CENTURY B.C.)

  January 28, 1944

  Six beams of light probed the edges of a steep trail leading away from Nostromo Base. Colonel Wolff had decided to investigate the screams coming from the hill for himself, and, while the horrible sounds had instantly put everyone in the camp on alert (and on edge), the colonel found that his overriding emotion was inquisitiveness. What could cause someone to scream like that—and for so long?

  He also perceived that Sergeant Schrödinger and the four soldiers accompanying him were anything but inquisitive as they followed the shrieks to their source—a small hut.

  How had my sentries not noticed this place before? he thought, as they approached the structure. His flashlight beam paused at a pile of empty cans. And what else have they missed?

  The colonel gnashed his teeth. Too many mistakes.

  Wolff noted that one of the men with him was the corporal who had been on the deck of the Nostromo that morning. Now this same man had been ordered out of the camp and into the dark forest where an unknown killer lurked, a killer he might actually have seen. Wolff allowed himself a small measure of satisfaction. Corporal Kessler is having a difficult day.

  They stopped just outside the simple dwelling, the cries from within having now settled into a prolonged moan.

  At Wolff’s signal, three of the unnerved soldiers rushed in, flashlights secured to their MP-43s, which they each held at waist level. Wolff entered next, with Schrödinger backing in behind him, his flashlight scanning the borders of the tiny clearing that surrounded the hut.

  For several moments the Germans played their lights around the interior of the circular room, each attempting to understand the scene before him. They had all seen their share of horrors, and to varying degrees they had become numb to all manner of human mistreatment. But none of them had ever seen anything quite like this: a young woman, hysterical and clutching a pale, catatonic child . . . an older woman seemingly asleep in a pool of her own blood, too much blood for her to possibly be alive. Then there was the smell, the horribly incongruent smell.

  Wolff gestured toward the withered figure of the old woman. “This one will be autopsied.”

  Then he turned to the mother and her child, a boy of perhaps four. “And these two—” He moved in closer, squatting beside them. The woman shifted her position, shielding the loose-limbed figure from the glare of Wolff’s flashlight, but not before he had glimpsed the boy’s eyes—alive but blank and unfocused.

  Without warning, the child began shaking uncontrollably, his small body stiffening in his mother’s arms. At the sound of a wet cough, Wolff took a reflexive step backward just as the boy vomited a mouthful of blood across his mother’s back and onto the floor. Another low moan escaped from the woman as the child completed its transformation into a bloody rag doll in her arms.

  The colonel was fascinated. This is exactly how my men died.

  “Don’t disturb these specimens,” he said, never taking his eyes off the dying child. “Corporal Kessler, bring some body bags from the lab. I want this boy bagged and on Dr. Kimura’s examination table in fifteen minutes.”

  Corporal Kessler gave Wolff a puzzled look, “Sir, but he’s still—”

  “Now, Corporal!” the colonel shouted. It was the first time any of them had heard Wolff raise his voice.

  Kessler bolted from the hut, careful to avoid tripping over the cans that lay scattered in the blood.

  From their perch on the hillside, the twins tracked the chaotic comings and goings of the bipeds. Four of them were now half-stumbling down the steep incline, burdened by their weapons and by the weight of a prize the bats had earned.

  FOOD, the female signaled with the ultrasonic equivalent of a human sigh. She could still taste it, though most of the liquid was currently soaking into the ground. And if they waited much longer—

  The four bipeds struggled past the trees where the twins hung in silence. The siblings could smell it—even through the thick material that covered their prey. The smallest meal was still alive, and they could feel the lingering liquid heat and the turbulence as the food drained out of him and sloshed inside the membrane in which the intruders had wrapped him.

  The female sensed a vibration that ran through her brother’s body into the tree trunk from which they hung. She could feel his claws tearing deeply into the bark.

  The male roared in ultrasonic silence.

  MacCready awoke from a dream about cool mountain streams to the sound of the outer door being opened. He was expecting to see Wolff or the SS giant, back to finish what they’d started. But instead, he watched a pair of German soldiers carrying a hysterical and blood-covered woman toward one of the cells. Scott’s old cell, he thought, suddenly remembering the lieutenant’s mad song.

  MacCready sat up. “She win a date with Sergeant Frankenstein?”

  Both of the uniformed men seemed startled by the sound of another voice.

  Relieved to see that it was only a prisoner, one of the soldiers shot his companion a puzzled expression. “Was sagte er?”

  “Er scherzt darüber,” the other replied.

  Although MacCready’s ear for German speech had grown a little rusty in recent years, he did notice that, unlike his earlier handlers, one of these guys was actually being quite gentle as he ushered the woman into a cell. He also noticed that the blood staining the woman’s clothes was apparently not her own. Still, she slumped to the floor even before the soldier backed out of the tiny cell.

  The man secured the cage door and turned wearily toward MacCready. “You think this is a joke?” he inquired, in heavily accented but very serviceable English.

  MacCready said nothing, noting that the man’s eyes were set deeply within dark circles. Though only in his twenties, his features seemed stretched tightly over the bones of his skull, giving him a haunted appearance.

  The soldier gestured toward the woman. “Her family was killed by the . . .” He struggled in vain to find the right word. “Blut kinder.”

  MacCready sat up straighter. Blut kinder? Blood children.

  The man’s partner looked on, his puzzlement turning to annoyance. “Kessler, warum sprechen sie mit einem Gefangenen?”

  The corporal ignored him. “The blut kinder came down from the trees. They killed her mother und her son. Drained them . . . like pigs.”

  MacCready’s body responded to a sudden release of adrenaline. His mind responded, too, becoming clear and instantly relieved to be focusing on something else besides horrible news, aches, pains, and his impending death. Thankfully, they had untied him.

  The draculae. He’s talking about the draculae!

  The considerable portion of MacCready’s brain that dedicated itself to self-preservation saw an opening—a tiny crevice of light—and he headed straight for it. “Blood children—now there’s a load of native bullshit,” MacCready said, finishing up with a dismissive wave.

  One of the men turned to leave, but the haunted-looking man rushed to the bars, his eyes wide. “I saw them! Es geschah an diesem Morgen!” he cried. “They were like deformed . . . children. Crouching. Scrabbling.”

  “And her family was bled to death?”

  The guard nodded. “Yessss.” His voice could have been coming from a ghost.

  For MacCready, it all seemed to make perfect sense. Vampire bat saliva contained chemicals that kept victims bleeding as the bats fed, and for hours afterward. Even normal-size vampire bats left behind particularly gory scenes, long after abandoning their unsuspecting prey. Big fucking vampire bats equals big fucking bleed-out, he reasoned. Thorne had been right. The Germans had either awakened the draculae or provoked them. And now, whatever Wolff’s mission was (and evidently, it was a doozy), it had become bogged down in some deep and serious bat guano. Apparently though, and this was the important thing: These guys have no idea what they’re dealing with, at least not yet.

  Who killed my men? Wolff had asked again and again.

  “
Well, I’ll tell you a secret, Kaiser,” MacCready said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster. “I’ve seen them, too.”

  “You’re lying!” Kessler shouted, kicking at the base of the bars. “You said yourself it was only native bullsh—”

  “Yeah, I know what I said. But I have seen them.” MacCready’s voice was soothing now. “I’ve heard them, too.”

  Before the corporal could respond, MacCready decided to reel him in. “I was wondering . . . by any chance did you hear them singing to each other? Singing to you?”

  “Singing,” Kessler said, his voice a desperate whisper. He almost pressed his face against the bars, then thought better of bringing himself within bait-and-strike range of the prisoner, and stepped back.

  “Well . . . I know what they are,” MacCready whispered back.

  The corporal straightened up. “That’s imposs— How could you—?”

  “I’m a zoologist,” MacCready said. “And what do you think zoologists do?”

  Kessler said nothing, but he seemed to have added “offended” to the haunted expression he’d worn previously.

  “I just thought that maybe your Colonel Wolff would be interested in knowing what these blut kinder really are,” MacCready said, gingerly lowering himself to the floor and turning his back to the wide-eyed corporal. “Maybe not, though. He does seem kinda busy.”

  MacCready closed his eyes and waited. Moments later he heard the outer door slam shut.

  He says he knows what these creatures are, sir. He says he’s seen them.”

  Colonel Wolff shook his head. “Yes, Corporal Kessler. And did he also tell you how you might end the war and return home a hero?”

  “Sir?”

  “This American considers himself rather clever. But he is no different from anyone else. He knows he is going to die soon, and to buy himself some time, he will tell you anything you want to hear.”

 

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