ESCAPE FROM HELL!
By Hal Duncan

PROLOGUE

    

    
Night in the City

It’s night in the city, clouds overhead painted crimson by the streetlights, roof underfoot mirroring the same light in the sleek of water shattered by splash-patterns of ripples and raindrops, constant but arrhythmic, out of synch with the slow onward trudge of bootsteps—left, right—through the puddles of liquid night—left, right—stepping up to a low wall’s edge—left, right—and onto it. Left. Right.

     Look down. Pull back. The alley below is a thin chasm of darkness patched by windows to the left, a neon sign at the corner, sliced for a second as a sword of light sweeps the rain. The beam of a police copter’s searchlight picks out a shamble of ragged coats which was once a man named Eli, standing now on the edge of nameless death, a vagrant suicide in the city morgue. His arms are spread as he testifies to the copter, St John Doe the Divine.

     – And I looked, he shouts, and behold, the heavens opened. And I saw a great white throne, and He who sat upon it, from whose face even the earth and the heaven fled away.

     Loudspeaker noise urges him back from the edge, but he doesn’t listen to the words, just looks over his shoulder back the way he came. The wind that’s been batting the open fire exit door against concrete finally lets it go. The door swings slowly shut as Eli turns back to his little back-alley abyss.

#

In the emptiness of the warehouse, the sound of the bullet being chambered in the Desert Eagle echoes loud and clear. Israeli gun designed to scare the shit out of a man before it’s even fired, to tell you: Listen up, fucker; that’s the sound of your death coming down upon you. Seven raises his head, angles it back until he feels it touch the gun-barrel.

    – Go ahead, motherfucker, he says. If T-Bone wanted me dead, you wouldn’t be wasting your time with this bullshit.

    Too-Loose and Hound Dogg are Desert Eagles in the shape of men, heavy pressure rather than precision hitters. So their contract won’t be for a quick disposal; they’ll have something slower and more painful lined up for Seven. Too-Loose circles round to stand in front of him, gun aimed at Seven’s face, then lowering to his chest, his gut, his balls.

     – You blew a contract, Seven, says Hound Dogg at his ear. T-Bone got to make an example of you. We’re gonna do a lot more than just kill you, nigger.

     His arms behind his back, Seven’s fingers test the handcuffs as the man talks: two pairs, police-issue, one cuff on each wrist, the other looping a back leg and corner of the chair he’s sat on. He curls his hand up, reaching with index and forefinger, almost manages to tease the pin from the cuff of his right sleeve—almost but not quite. It slips from his fingers, falls to the ground. He looks up to meet Too-Loose’s gaze without blinking, even smiling a little, just enough to make the thug twitch a tiny sign of contempt, somewhere between a narrowing of an eye and a curl of an upper lip. The man switches the gun to his other hand and reaches into the pocket of his leather jacket, brings his fist out brass-knuckled.

    – You’re not gonna be smiling long, Seven, he says.

    He puts his whole body behind the punch.

#

The backhand knocks Belle to one side, against the wall; she slaps a hand against it to keep from falling, but he’s grabbing her hair and pulling her back for another slap.

    – Where you going, bitch?

    – Nowhere, she says. Nowhere, Johnny.

    The half-packed suitcase on the bed says otherwise. The open drawers and closets say otherwise. So did the fear on her face when he walked in through the door of the apartment.

    – You fucking running out on me, Belle?

    He hits her backhand again, contemptuous, casual, like he’s kicking a cowed dog. And why not? That’s what she is, after all, a fucking cowed dog, a pimp’s bitch. She wants to stand up for herself, but she backs away, hands up to shield her face. There’s no smell of drink on him, but his eyes are bullet holes, his shoulders stuck in a shrug, his hands matching his verbal anger with their own wild rhythms.

    – Fucking no one fucking runs out on me, he says, fucking bitch.

    She ducks back from his swing, dodging, hears his curse as the punch connects with wall. She dodges past him for the open door, but he hauls her back, swings her hard into the dresser. Bottles of cheap perfume and cologne scatter and roll as it judders.

    – You’re going fucking nowhere, he says.

    Another backhand, angled down and hard enough to knock her to the floor. She looks up and, through the hair over her eyes, sees him walk over to the apartment door, close it with a quiet menace.

#

The double-doors bounce open into the ER, orderlies wheeling in the gurney, paramedics to this side, doctors to that, talking across the bloodied mess, rattling a litany of injuries and assessments. Matthew doesn’t hear, doesn’t know that he has:

    – primary hypothermia, stage three—temperature eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit—blunt cranial trauma in the left occipital region—lacerations—abrasions—contusions—noticeable ecchymoses on the right and left rib cage—hematoma on the abdomen, feels like internal hemorrhage on the spleen—a fracture to the left femur—numerous small third degree burns in right scapular region, probably from a cigarette…

    Matthew doesn’t know that he’s in critical condition, naked and blue with the cold from being stripped and left in winter snow, that he’s been cut and kicked and pistol-whipped, that he’s bleeding and burned and broken-boned, not now.

    – Rapid infusion of 250 mils lactated Ringer’s solution, stat.

    He doesn’t know that his blond hair is matted, that his face is smeared with blood, his square jaw broken, features swollen and cracked from a pounding he doesn’t remember, not now.

    Being beaten to death can have that effect.

    The gurney bangs through another set of double doors.

#

The Sound of Many Rivers

Eli digs into his pocket for a bottle—bourbon, nearly done. He slugs back what’s left and raises the empty to the searchlit rain, the copter, the sound of rotor blades and loudspeaker.

    – And I heard a great thunder from heaven, he shouts, like the sound of many rivers, like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. And I heard a loud voice out of heaven saying, behold, God’s house has come unto his people, and he will dwell with them, and God himself will be their king.

    He hurls the bottle out into the chasm of the alley.

#

– I own you, get it?

    – I get it. I do. I’m sorry.

But even as she tries to calm him, he’s feeling the bulge in her jacket pocket, pulling out the roll of bills she’s been gathering for the last few months. He pulls her head back by the hair.

     – You holding out on me, Belle?

    – No, Johnny, I’ve just been saving.

Then the punch crumples her legs and she’s on the floor, trying to push herself away, finding a wall behind her.

#

– Look at this nigger trying to crawl away, Hound Dogg laughs. You don’t know you’re a dead man already, Seven?

    Seven, on the floor and on his side, still cuffed to the chair, pushes with his feet. Just another inch and he feels the pick with his fingertips, another inch and—Too-Loose and Hound Dogg grab him by the shoulders, haul him up, kick the chair back into place beneath him. Hound Dogg’s pistol cracks across his face, but Seven has the pick in his fingers, working at the cuff holding his right wrist to the chair. Too-Loose clamps his hands on his shoulders, holds him down as Hound Dogg, puts his gun into its shoulder holster, brings a flick-knife out of his inside pocket. Clicks it open.

    – Dead man, he says. We just gotta cut you open to find the cause.

#

They wheel Matthew into the O.R.—three, two, one—and heave him onto the table. There’s a tube being pushed into his throat, a needle into his arm, lights overhead, wires everywhere hooking him up to monitors, a doctor scanning his paperwork, handing it to a nurse.

    – Blood pressure falling to eighty over forty.

    Matthew knows none of this.

     We’ve got cardiac arrhythmia, ventricular fibrillation.

    He’s not really here right now.

    – AED.

    Not that he’s anywhere else.

    – Charge to two hundred joules.

    Not yet.

    – All clear.

#

A Small White Light

– And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Eli preaches to the rain and light. Death and Hell gave up the dead that were in them. I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, each with a book held in their hand. And they were judged, each one, out of the things which were written in the books.

    He reaches, brings a battered Bible out of his jacket, fumbles through its pages to find a photograph of the man he once was, standing there with his arm around Sarah, Sarah’s hand on the shoulder of their little girl, Lucy, smiling there between them. The Bible slips from his hand and he staggers a little as he tries to catch it, fails. He’s drunk, he knows, too drunk to hold onto a book or to care about picking it up. And just about drunk enough for this.

#

Left hand still cuffed, as he rises Seven swings the chair out from beneath him, cracks Hound Dogg with it, full in the face. With his right hand, at the same time, he grabs Too-Loose by the throat. He hauls, curling his back and using the other man’s own mass to lever him over his shoulder, bring him down, back-first, upon the edge of the chair’s steel seat. He drops to wrap his arm around the man’s neck, snap it with a quick twist, rips Too-Loose’s Desert Eagle from his waistband, and rolls the body away. Hound Dogg has his own gun out now, but Seven is already spinning, bringing the chair around to smack it aside, bringing the Desert Eagle up and firing point-blank into Hound Dogg’s face.

#

Johnny kicks the words into her.

    – This. Is what. You get. For fucking. Trying to. Fucking. Leave me.

    At first she feels each blow, curled in a ball, his boot beating his message into her body, legs, and forearms; she tries to make herself as small as possible, to plead when she’s not crying out from the pain. Then his boot hits her head and it’s just light and dark and pain, broken and blurred glimpses of carpet, ceiling, bed, or boot, Johnny standing over her, a jumble of disconnected violence, senseless. She’s crawling, falling, grabbing at his legs. If she could just—

#

– No change. He’s still arrhythmic.

    Somewhere inside Matthew, in the dark, there is a small white light.

    – Charge to three hundred.

    The light is getting dimmer.

    – All clear.

#

Death Will Be No More

– The light of the lamp will shine no more, sobs Eli, for the fruits which your soul lusted after have all perished, and all things that were delicate and beautiful have been lost to you.

    Seven walks through the warehouse, down the central aisle, alleys of crates to left and right, the exit a bright blur of daylight straight ahead—the loading bay. Brown leather jacket, gun in each hand, handcuffs dangling from his wrists, he knows there’s no point trying to make a quiet exit, knows the only way out now is to be a motherfucking dreadnaught. A worker steps into his path, sees him and turns to run; Seven drops him with a bullet in the back. A man with an Uzi skids into sight at the far end of the aisle, lets off an aimless burst of staccato gunfire as Seven puts two bullets in his chest.

#

– The voices of harpists and singers, flute players and trumpeters will be heard no more. The sound of the craftsmen working will be heard no more.

    Down an aisle to his right, Seven spots another foot soldier, hears the crack of his gun, the whine of a bullet flying past his head. Even as he fires and the man drops, Seven keeps on walking.

    Belle crawls across the floor, away from the pain, but there’s no escaping it. The palm of her hand comes down upon the rosary she wears around her neck, torn off in the beating. She clutches it tight even as Johnny kicks her again, in the ribs, hard enough to send her rolling.

#

– The noise of the mill will be heard no more. The laughter of the bridegroom and of the bride will be heard no more.

    Two more, three, four foot soldiers appear ahead, take cover. Seven strides on towards them, both guns firing as he pulls the triggers over and over again.

    Belle feels her hair ripped out at the roots as Johnny pulls her to her feet. She tries to stand but she can’t. She just can’t. A hand clamps round her throat, not to strangle her but to hold her up, to spit in her face.

    – Charge to three sixty.

    In a darkness empty even of pain, Matthew is dying.

    – All clear.

#

– But he will wipe away from them every tear from their eyes. Neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain. For Death will be no more.

    And Eli spreads his arms out to the rain and the light, to the copter circling him, to God, to the world, to his own pitiful end; and, turning to the darkness of the alley below, he lets himself fall forward—

    And Seven strides into a thud in his chest he doesn’t quite feel until his legs suddenly weaken, and the next step brings him down onto one knee; the guns are just too heavy to keep raised now, shit, it’s all he can do to look up at the heavy walking towards him, pistol pointed at his forehead, grinning as he pulls the trigger—

    And Belle’s legs are rubber as Johnny pushes her away from him; she tries to hold herself up, she does, but she just stumbles over her own feet, falls, head cracking hard against the radiator, all her weight behind it, twisting, snapping bone, and as she slumps to the floor, a length of rosary slides from her open hand—

    And the noise of a flatline on a monitor just carries on as the doctor pumps, palm-over-palm on Matthew’s chest, trying to restart his silent heart, trying again, and again, and again, until finally he steps back and calls the time of death—

    And Eli lies on the ground, the old family photo crumpled in his fist, in a puddle of rainwater darkening with his blood.

#

The Ferry Across the Styx

The sound of a distant foghorn, clang of footsteps on the swaying steel underfoot. Eli opens his eyes. He’s on the car deck of a ferry, he realises, rust-stained paint on metal walls cutting off his view to either side, the great dark slab of the door at his back, chains running down each side from pulleys to spindles, to unwind and lower the door into a ramp. Overhead, the sky is heavy, the formless smudge of a charcoal and chalk sketch left out in the rain.

    There are no vehicles on the car deck, just a scattering of strange passengers, an assemblage of men, women, and children of all ages and races, in all manner of clothes—suits or pyjamas, evening wear or combat gear. Most stand awkwardly, gazing around with the unease of the lost, too overawed to ask what the fuck is going on, how they got here. Only here or there, as a few begin to sob or pray, others start to murmur questions to those nearest: Is this a dream?

    Eli touches his ragged brown overcoat, just the outer layer of strata of clothing; it’s still soaked from the rain, still dripping. He doesn’t remember the moment of impact, sudden as it was, too fast to feel, but he knows what’s happened to him, what he imagines has happened to them all. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him, No, this isn’t a dream. This is death.

#

Seven pushes his way through the crowd. This is fucked-up, he thinks. This is some fucked-up amnesia shit. He doesn’t know how many days or weeks or months he’s lost since somehow he got out of the warehouse, but he can feel that he’s not packing, and whatever this… freak show is, it’s not anywhere he wants to stay. He pushes past an old man dressed in nothing but his boxers, steps round a little girl in an ice-skating costume, boots dangled round her neck, and makes his way to a set of grilled steps leading to the upper decks. He glances back at the other passengers as he climbs, scouring his mind for an answer. What the fuck are they all doing here dressed like… refugees from some fucking disaster, whatever the fuck here is?

    There are more passengers on the walkway that overlooks the lower deck, all dressed as crazily as those below, more visible through the windows of an enclosed seating area. It’s the sight to starboard that holds his eye now, though. Over the rail, across the chop of a river in winter, through low clouds and mist, is a skyline that looks not unlike Manhattan, but ragged and hollow like every window in the city of skyscrapers was smashed, every building shelled and shot up, every surface painted with dust and ash.

    – Holy fuck, says Seven.

#

Belle lets the door into the passenger area swing shut behind her and steps out onto the starboard walkway. Given the muttered oath, it doesn’t seem like the brick shithouse with the Black Panther look is any more clued-up than her, but he’s the first passenger she’s seen not just gaping dumbly at their strange surroundings.

    – Where are we? says Belle. You know what’s going on?

    He barely acknowledges her existence with a glance, something that might just be a shake of his head, before he’s walking away from her, towards the front of the ferry.

    – Fuck you too, she says under her breath.

    She heads the other way, sidestepping an old woman in a ball gown, glancing down at the other weirdoes on the car deck, at the shambling hulk of a hobo climbing the port stairs to the upper deck, at the sight over the port rail. She stops. On a small island off the port side stands a grey-green statue, grand in her flowing Grecian robes and spiked crown, sword in her right hand, scales in her left. A blindfold covers her eyes.

    – Lady Justice, says a voice at her back, the old woman.

    – Where the fuck are we? says Belle.

    The old woman cackles, a crazy leer on her face.

    – Oh, you know where we are, sweetie. Don’t pretend you don’t.

    Belle backs away from the hag, along the port walkway.

    – You know where we’re going. You know.

    She points past Belle, ahead, and Belle can’t help but turn, eyes caught by the Statue of Justice again for just a second, before catching the sight now coming clear through the mists ahead.

    – No, she says. No.

#

Matthew shivers on his wooden bench, naked under the thin green cloth of the surgical sheet stained with what he knows is his own blood. He pays no mind to the other passengers, sitting on benches round the open-air seating area or standing at the rails, looking out at the statue to one side, the city to the other. He stares straight ahead, his fingers flat on the wood as if to support himself, like without his hands on something solid he might just… fall off the world. He’s not sure he hasn’t already; even the grey river under them seems ethereal, a surface of mist as much as water.

    It can’t be real. This can’t be happening.

    In front of him the island is close now, close enough that he can see the guards in grey outside the red brick building grand as a palace, close enough that he can see the Gothic intricacy of the lettering on the iron gates across the dock, swinging open now to admit the ferry, close enough that there’s no mistaking the words spelled out. He’d had a moment of panic when he first tried to read them in the distance, certain for a second that the motto was “Arbeit Macht Frei.” But now, as the ferry slips in through the gateway, as gears crank and rattle into reverse, as the iron gates swing slowly back together, slowly closing, slowly creaking into place with a low doom, now he knows those letters spell a message just as chilling.

     Abandon Hope.

————————————————————————————————–
_{Escape From Hell! is scheduled to be released in December of 2008 by MonkeyBrain Books. It is the second in their series of tradepaperback original novellas, following last year’s Cenotaxis by Sean Williams. Next up is 2009’s Death of a Starship by Jay Lake. Hal Duncan is the author of two novels, Vellum and Ink. Vellum was nominated for the World Fantasy award and by the The British Fantasy Society for Best Novel and the Locus and Crawford Awards for Best First Novel.}

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