Holy Hell, page 8
part #5 of Sins of the Father Series
I spotted Priscilla near her kitchens, over past a copse of trees. Florian had brought Samyaza over to introduce them. I smiled at the oddness of it all, how Samyaza extended a hand, like it wasn’t at all strange to meet a gorilla, and how Priscilla took it and shook it expertly, like this was some office and he was just the new guy in the IT department. Maybe things were going to be okay. Everyone seemed to be getting along. We just had to nip this zombie thing in the bud, figure out how to take Durandal the hell away from Beelzebub, and it’d all be fine. What did he even want with it, anyway?
Florian and Samyaza gathered around Priscilla, fascinated by her hooted instructions on how to properly split open a coconut. I tilted my head as I watched on and rubbed my chin. Wait. Was Samyaza moving in? Would I have to build him a hut?
“Perfect timing,” Artemis said, slapping me on the back.
“Oh, right. Might as well ask you – ”
She waved her hand. “Not right now, we’ve got someone knocking on the door. You should go show him in. I’d do the whole fancy thing with the booming voice and the fanfare and whatever, but it feels like you should be the one to fetch your necromancer friend.”
I blinked. “Oh, shit. Almost forgot. Is he outside right now?”
“Yep. Hop to it.”
I shrugged on a T-shirt and rushed for the entrance portal. A doorway in the shape of a leaf served as the only entrance to Paradise. It led out to the Nicola Arboretum, anchored to the real world by a tiny, moss-covered statue of a fox embedded among the shrubbery. It made sense for Artemis to nestle her home in Valero’s biggest botanical garden. There was something poetic about it, almost. And the shift in environment was simply breathtaking, going from a huge garden in an urban setting straight into a sprawling rainforest that stretched on into forever.
As the ruler of the realm, Artemis controlled the gates. Florian and I were free to come and go as we pleased, but other supplicants needed to actually go through the motions of requesting access. It was how it worked for most entities. You didn’t just barge in on someone’s home, you needed to knock first. And in many cases, you needed to bring some offerings, too. A drop of blood was traditional, and considered the bare minimum. Artemis, though, had particular tastes.
I sprang through the portal, the warmth of Paradise’s sun turning to a damp chill as I stepped into morning in the Nicola Arboretum. Asher stood there, two huge bags of snacks clutched in his arms, a backpack strapped to his shoulders.
He pushed the snacks up. “I brought the goods.”
Snacky Yum-Yums, Artemis’s favorite junk food. I never could figure out her obsession for those crunchy, cheesy, twist-y things, and for that brand, specifically, but nobody enters Paradise without the right offering. At least it was convenient to acquire by modern standards. Some entities preferred live sacrifices. Much easier to pick up a bag of snacks from a bodega than a whole live lamb, I’ll tell you that.
“Thanks,” I said, collecting the bags, and just about to head into the portal when I heard an odd, familiar noise. “Hold up. Did you hear that?”
Asher tilted his head. “You know, I actually did.” He pressed two fingers against his temple, trying to focus. “There it is again. Does it kind of sound like it’s coming from underground?”
It was.
Muffled, as if spoken through a mouth filled with dirt, came a single word.
“Durandal.”
Ah, nuts.
16
A hand burst through the earth, reaching clawed fingers at the sky. Then another, and another, until the grounds of the Nicola Arboretum looked like a garden of corpses, of gray, withering talons with ragged nails flailing and clawing at nothing and everything. The sight of so much rot against the sweet smell of flowers in morning bloom had my senses firing all over the place. Well, that, and the sudden screaming from all over the botanical gardens.
“Oh, fuck,” I muttered. “What time is it? Out in the real world, I mean?”
Asher glared at me. “You mean here? Right here, right now? It’s past nine.”
The Nicola Arboretum was open to the public, and that meant only one thing. Zombies were pulling themselves out of the ground all over the place. This was way worse than I thought. Now civilians were getting involved. Innocents. Several feet away, a pair of zombies clawed their way fully out of the earth, their bodies brown with wet soil.
“How the fuck are there so many dead people buried under the arboretum?” I said, arms still loaded with Snacky Yum-Yums when I knew I should have been working on conjuring a weapon.
“That’s not what this is, dude.” Asher backed up against me, instinct taking over as he lowered one hand, maybe to prepare a spell, or to summon one of those bone swords he loved so much. “Don’t you get it? The zombies, they’re traveling underground. They burrowed their way here. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got corpses in the area. These things are showing up from everywhere, and they aren’t going to stop coming.”
“Well fuck me then.” The bags of Snacky Yum-Yums hit the ground as I drew a line in the air, separating my hands and surprising myself all over again as a blade of gleaming gold materialized between my fingers. “We’ll need to put them all down. But we need backup, too.”
Hey, I’m gung-ho, sure, but I’m not totally stupid. I brandished my sword, making sure we were a good distance from the closest zombie before I huddled up close to the little fox statue, then up towards the leaf-shaped opening in reality that led back to Paradise. I went through, shoulder first – and was promptly stopped in place by a wall of force.
“The fuck?” I muttered. I banged a fist against the gate. It sounded like I was hitting a huge, heavy glass door. “Artemis, open up.”
The air wavered and her face appeared in the portal. “No can do, sweet cheeks. We’re on lockdown. No way I’m letting any of those deadheads into Paradise.”
I bared my teeth at her. From beside me, Asher gave her a sheepish grin and a wave. “This is not a joke, Artemis. There are normals out here. Civilians. People are going to get hurt.”
Her face vanished, and when I heard her voice again it came from behind me. I whirled in place, shocked to find her standing there, along with Florian, Samyaza, and Priscilla.
“Relax,” Artemis said. “It was a joke. But I know, shit is on high alert out here and we need all the muscle we can muster. I wasn’t kidding about lockdown, though.” She banged on the portal, which gave the same dull, thudding noise. “The place is shut down tight. Gotta keep the homestead safe.”
“Right,” I said, advancing slowly. “So now we save the day?”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” she said, holding out her hand. In a shimmer of green and gold, her bow appeared in her grasp. “Let’s make it a competition. Whoever kills the most zombies is the best.” In a flash, she nocked and released one, two, three arrows, instantly slaying as many zombies. They hit the ground within seconds of each other, gurgling and bleeding black ichor into the grass. “Wow, look at that, I’m already leading.”
“No fair,” I grunted, charging into the fray, slashing at the air and lopping the head off of an oncoming zombie.
Artemis was making a game of it, sure, but we all knew that this shit was serious. This was just her way of motivating us. And in a way, it sort of worked. Asher had drawn one of his ivory swords, as expected, and with his other hand he launched a flurry of jagged spears, each wickedly sharp and stark white, each crafted from his own bone. Those took out half a dozen zombies on their own. Samyaza went in with fists and feet flying, each of his kicks and punches backed with the volatile smiting power of celestial energy. Every strike dealt a devastating blow. It didn’t matter whether he struck a zombie in the face, or in the torso. Whatever. That thing’s unlife was officially over, ended in a glorious, blazing explosion of fetid blood and guts.
Priscilla was a sight to behold all on her own. She’d left Paradise with one of her beloved magical staves, because while she had every last one of her needs met by Artemis, she was also paid a living wage. And in Priscilla’s mind, there was no better way to spend her coin than on building a terrifying arsenal of enchanted weaponry. I recognized the staff of fireballs she wielded instantly, one of her favorites, but she hardly needed it to be a threat in battle. She screeched as she pummeled her way through the undead, staking the staff into the ground long enough to free up both of her hands for the truly awe-inspiring feat of tearing a zombie completely in half. Still deep in the throes of bloodlust, she hoisted her staff, fired off a couple of glowing spheres of molten flame, then went rampaging into the underbrush in search of more things to kill.
I slashed again and again, the competitive side of me driven to keep up with the others, even as I searched for Florian, curious and yet already aware that he’d be beyond comfortable on what was essentially home turf.
Florian was kneeling on the ground, his skin in direct contact with the grass. With a little bit of plant life nearby, Florian was a force to be reckoned with. But in the Nicola Arboretum? He may as well have been a god. This was his playground. Vines and roots burst out of the bushes, out of the very ground itself, tearing zombies apart, separating them limb from limb, dragging them croaking and rattling back into the depths of the earth for a true, final burial.
Beating back the tide of the undead was a realistic prospect, at least. We had the firepower and the numbers to fight them. The problem, though, was how these attacks seemed to be coming closer to home. The warning from the Scions was right, and Azrael only supported the fact that the zombie sightings would only grow more numerous, more frequent. But we could worry about that later. The most important thing we had to focus on was actually fanning out into the arboretum.
“Find the normals,” Artemis said, her voice booming across the gardens. She was already way ahead of me. “Seek out the innocents. Protect them.”
I spared her a glance, her hair rippling in the breeze, her eyes fierce and furious as she rained true death upon the zombie horde. In ancient times, I imagined how Artemis might have led great armies in huge wars, all the old stories of battles against the titans, against other gods.
And now all she had was us. The thought filled me with a quiet sadness, yet somehow, a sense of pride that threatened to swell through my chest. Checking to see that Artemis and Florian had full control of the area around the portal, I took off running, heading north through the arboretum even as Samyaza and Asher broke in separate directions.
The good thing about the zombies was how slow they were. Disgusting as it is to think, there are many flavors of the undead, and very likely different types of zombies, depending on which traditions of necromancy were used to reanimate them, or which cruel god decided to wrench them out of their graves to use as infantry, or cannon fodder. The problem was how these slow, lumbering beasts could still be a threat to mankind in large enough numbers.
The soles of my shoes rang against pavement as I followed the stone path throughout the gardens. Here it wound past the flowers, and there was the butterfly enclosure. I kept going, vigilant as I searched the grounds for signs of human life, or worse, human harm. But we’d come to learn that the undead only bled black, or at least these specific zombies did, spilling dark ichor from their wounds. That was the one bright spot, the fact that I hadn’t caught any splashes of fresh red blood, any torn scraps of clothing, or worse, flesh, to indicate that any people had been hurt.
As far as I could tell, any of the living in Nicola Arboretum had already made it out of the compound. Good news for me, bad news and a gigantic migraine for the Lorica, who were going to have to deal with the fallout one way or another. They couldn’t just let the normals run their mouths about an attack of the walking dead in the city. Emergency services were probably on the way, a police presence. Shit, what if someone alerted the media?
“Not the point,” I reminded myself quietly, huffing as I maintained my sprint. My calves were burning, but I had to keep going.
I reached what used to be a quaint outdoor cafeteria, most of its green-tinted tables and chairs overturned, the tiled floor strewn with broken cups, spilled coffee, pastries stomped flat by frantic, panicked feet. A small cadre of zombies wandered the area aimlessly, another reassuring sign that there was no one for them to harass within the vicinity. But that was when I noticed something moving among the ruined patio furniture.
Not something, but someone. Huddled under a table. A little boy.
17
I froze in place. One false move and the zombies could be whipped into a frenzy. My sweat was already cooling on my skin, the damp of the gardens and the chill of morning seeping into my clothes. The boy hadn’t seen me yet. He was clutching his knees, his eyes huge and wet. Couldn’t have been older than seven.
His eyes were searching his surroundings – a parent, somewhere? – until they settled on me. My hand flew to my mouth as I placed a single finger against my lips. He gasped in surprise, and his hands flew to cover his mouth – but too late.
As one the zombies shambling about the courtyard turned towards the small sound, shuffling double speed towards the café table. Shit. I had to act fast.
I dropped my sword, then made a dive for the kid, moving faster than I’d ever moved in my entire life. He stuck a hand out instinctively, too frightened to budge from the spot until I wrapped my fingers around one of his wrists. Something about the sensation of human touch must have given him the burst of confidence he needed, but wordlessly, he nodded, scrambled to his feet, and pushed his way out from under the table.
We ran.
I scooped up my sword again as we passed it, because like hell was I going to have the mental clarity to create another one, now that we were being chased down by a miniature horde of hungry undead. I glanced over my shoulder, relieved to find that there were no more than a half dozen of the things following us, until I noticed more and more streaming out from among the hedges and labyrinthine pathways of the arboretum.
Shit. Shit. All I really needed to do was lead them to one of the others, to find a friend that could help fight off what now looked like a couple dozen zombies. Fuck. Six or seven, I could handle with my back against a wall, but this was too much. That smiting thing that Samyaza and Raziel could do, could I do it as well? I looked down at my wrist, wondering how the fuck I was meant to launch angelic light out of my hands, the sigils on my skin blazing with the heat of my body, when the kid stumbled.
“Crap,” I mumbled, skidding to a halt. “Crap, crap,” I said, as I bent down to check on the boy. “You okay?”
He wiped at his face and nodded, showing me the tear in his jeans. No blood, though. “It’s nothing. I’m okay.”
“Just to be sure,” I said, “I’m gonna pick you up. Okay?”
He nodded again. I scooped the kid up, then ran like hell.
The boy was light, the jersey of his hoodie bunched up in my left hand, my sword gripped tightly in my right. I could feel his little heart thumping against my chest. I was scared, maybe, sure, but nowhere near as frightened as he was. I pulled him a little tighter in.
“My name’s Mason,” I said, keeping my voice light and friendly as I searched the pathways for an exit, or even better, for a fireball-toting gorilla, or a trigger-happy hunting goddess. “What’s yours?”
“Jimmy,” the boy said, sniffling, but never really crying. “I like your sword.”
“Thanks. I use it to fight bad guys. We’re gonna make it out of this, okay? I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
He nodded. “Are you a superhero?”
And despite the sweat pouring out of me in buckets, despite the adrenaline and fear racing through my blood, I laughed. “Not at all. Just someone who’s trying to help out.”
“My daddy’s around here somewhere,” he said softly.
“We’ll find him,” I said, hoping against hope that I was right, that we would find him alive, unharmed. “He’ll be so happy to know that you’ve been so brave.”
Jimmy’s fingers dug into my shoulders. “Not brave. Kinda scared.”
I buried a hand in his hair, ruffling it reassuringly. “You’re braver than you think, kid. You’re bigger than you think. Don’t you ever forget that.”
The moans of the zombies were far enough behind us that I was confident about losing them eventually, but as light as Jimmy was, a child was really just a small person, and it wasn’t exactly as easy as carrying around a bundle of feathers. My arms were growing heavy. I ducked into an alcove, almost positive that there was a way through the hedges to get through to the other side of the arboretum.
I was wrong. Someone, somewhere had decided that the Nicola Arboretum should be designed like some big, stinking hedge maze. Someone, somewhere was going to get their throat punched in if I ever met them.
Dead end. The hedges walling us in were too thick to push through, and impossible to actually climb. I placed Jimmy gingerly down on the ground. He stood there with his hands balled into fists, looking up at me like I was supposed to know what was coming next.
“Stay put, okay? I’ll protect you.”
I couldn’t say I was the biggest fan of the incredulous look on Jimmy’s face, but I couldn’t blame him. He said nothing, but nodded.
“Into the corner,” I said. “Back where you’re safe.”
He nodded and complied. I turned to face the oncoming horde, planting my feet in the ground, gripping my sword with two hands. Now or never.
My blade sang through the air, my muscles powered by fury, and fear. With every slice another zombie’s head went flying into the bushes. I had to keep us safe, me and Jim. I couldn’t let him down. With every stroke I called out another of my friend’s names, but no one answered. We’d run too deep and too far into the gardens, or maybe they were busy fighting off their own small battalion of three dozen or so slavering zombies.
