Callsign: King II- Underworld (2 page)

No. There had to be another way.

He glanced down at the girl, so serene in death, eyes closed as if merely asleep, mouth open ever so slightly as if to draw a breath.

Then the man glimpsed the faint reflection of torchlight on something in the child’s mouth and he understood what he needed to do.

He took the leather
kibisis
from his belt and dug out two tarnished silver
tetradrachm
coins, which he held up for the creature to see. The thing bared its hideous teeth at him—the man realized it was a grin of satisfaction—and it nimbly forded the river once more.

He paid careful attention to where it stepped, memorizing the safe path—
yes
, he thought.
I can do this
. Then the thing was standing expectantly before him, hand outstretched.

The man dropped the two coins onto the creature’s open palm.

He heaved the club onto his shoulder once more, and followed the creature across the river, with only the soles of his sandals dipping into the alkaline water, as he leapt between the crossing stones.

As he set off along the far shore, resuming his exploration, he got a last glimpse of the creature hugging the offering of coins to its chest. The price for passage into the Underworld had been paid. Whether the man could find his way back out was none of the ferryman’s concern.

East of Phoenix, Arizona — Yesterday — 2053 UTC (1:53 pm Local)

The smartphone on the passenger seat of the Nissan Altima chirped and Leilani Rhodes glanced over to see who had sent the text message. “Becca. What now?”

She picked up the phone and held it against the steering wheel as she tapped the touchscreen to display the message. She glanced down quickly to read it, then made a little growling noise in the back of her throat. “Seriously?”

The screen read:

I think im going to cut my hair

Leilani turned her eyes back to the road ahead. It would have been easy enough to reply; the section of US Highway 60 through which she now drove was almost completely straight for at least another ten miles, and the only vehicle she could see was an eighteen-wheeler a good mile ahead of her—she’d probably catch up and pass him in the next few minutes. But the truth of the matter was that she didn’t want to reply to Becca’s inane message. Becca was a good friend, but oh so needy, and Leilani just didn’t want to deal with that right now.

Especially not right this instant, driving on the remote highway between her home in Globe and her job in Mesa. She hated the drive, hated living in Globe and hated the job, all of which meant she was in a foul mood to begin with, and not at all sympathetic to Becca’s grooming crisis.

The phone chirped again in her hand.

Shuoldi????

Leilani had lived her life—all 22 years of it—in the Arizona town some sixty miles from the edge of the Phoenix metro area. As a teenager, she had chafed at the limitations of the remote location; Phoenix, with its malls and marginally hipper scene, was just too far away. Getting her first car hadn’t helped much, because while the distance separating Globe from the city was relatively short, it required a sojourn through some of the most desolate terrain in the United States. Blisteringly hot asphalt, undulating mountains where lightning and even hail storms could descend at a moments notice, the possibility of overheating from using the air conditioner—and you couldn’t
not
use it—or a flat from one of the ubiquitous chunks of disintegrating truck tires scattered like land mines on the roadway, were just a few of the factors that gave the trip nightmare potential.

After finishing high school, she had enrolled at ASU, but living closer to the city, on campus, was about the only thing about college she had found appealing. So after just two semesters, she had dropped out and moved back home. The derailment of her plans for higher education had brought her face to face with the harsh realities of adult life; she had been unable to find work—at least the kind of work she was willing to do—in her hometown. After a few months, she had started looking in the city, even though it meant a daily commute through the wasteland. Her plan had been to get a job, and then with a few paychecks under her belt, find a place to live in Phoenix.

Six months later, she was still making the drive, four days a week, to her job at a sports bar in Mesa. Even though she lived frugally, at least by her own estimation, something always seemed to come up to drain away her savings before she could make the move.

Now, she wasn’t just sick of living in Globe. She was sick of the desert altogether.

Chirp
.

Well??????

Leilani glanced down at the touch screen keyboard on the phone just long enough to tap out:

>>>Driving!!!

When her eyes met the road again, it was like looking at the end of the world.

So many things were happening at once, her brain couldn’t process all the incoming visual stimuli.

Directly ahead of her, the eighteen-wheeler was sideways, its white trailer stretching across both lanes, and relative to Leilani in her Altima, it was coming up fast. All around the trailer there was black smoke and dust, and pieces of debris were flying through the air from beyond it. There were flashes to the north, a veritable strobe of lightning, stabbing down out of a clear sky. And all along the roadside, there was movement: dark shapes that looked almost like people, swarming down from the hills.

She stomped her foot on the brake pedal, but as adrenaline slammed through her body, leaving her extremities strangely numb, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stop in time. The semi’s trailer slowly rolled over directly in front of her as the Altima’s anti-lock brakes peeled away the car’s momentum…seventy-five to fifty in the space of a heartbeat…the underside of the trailer looming ahead of her like a monolith…fifty to thirty…

Damn you, Becca. I’m going to die because you couldn’t make up your own mind about a haircut.

The Altima was still moving forward at about twenty miles per hour when its front end crunched into the obstacle. To Leilani, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, but her responses were entirely reflexive—disconnected from any conscious decisions. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel…felt the phone slip from her grasp as she did…and then she was thrown forward. The airbag exploded from the steering column, protecting her from impact even as it showered her in a fine spray of pyrotechnic residue. She rebounded from the safety cushion, and was surprised by the fact that, except for a throbbing pain across her collarbone, where her seatbelt had locked in place to restrain her during impact, she was unhurt.

A wave of sublime joy washed over her, cleaning away the terror of the preceding moment. She was alive and that was unexpected. But her transcendent happiness was fleeting. A glance across the rapidly deflating airbag revealed the aftermath of the crash; the front end of the Altima looked like an accordion, crumpled beyond recognition, and steam was hissing from the destroyed radiator.

Oh, my god. It’s totaled
, Leilani thought.
How am I going to pay for this
?

Such mundane thoughts ricocheted through her head, transforming the miracle of her survival into something onerous, but this too was a temporary reaction. She pushed down the rising despair as a more rational part of her brain realized that the crisis was not over.

The phone had been knocked from her hand by the airbag, and as she tried to pick it up, she found that her hands were trembling. Just closing her fingers on the slim plastic case was like trying to thread a needle. She finally got a grip on it and brought it up from the floor, but as soon as she tapped in 9-1-1, she saw the words “No Service” flash across the display.

“What is this, the 90’s?” she muttered. Leilani couldn’t remember ever not being able to get coverage. She directed a few choice curse words at her wireless service, but the message did not change.

“Well, what good are you, anyway?” she finally said to the phone. Then it occurred to her that it was more than just a phone.

She activated the video camera function and then held it out in front of her, framing the crash scene in the phone’s display. “Okay,” she said, haltingly at first. “I was just in a huge accident. A semi flipped over right in front of me, and I couldn’t stop in time. There’s also some weird shit going on out in the desert. A lot of lightning… I wonder if that’s why I can’t get a signal?”

She aimed the phone toward the mountains on her right, catching several flashes at an oblique angle. “Anyway, it’s pretty weird. I think I’ll get out and take a look around.”

As she said it, it occurred to her for the first time that the driver of the eighteen-wheeler might be injured…or worse. Somehow, that made the idea of shooting video of the crash seem more than just silly; it was almost ghoulish.

She depressed the button on her seatbelt, but it refused to release. “Damn it. Doesn’t anything work?”

Suddenly, something slammed against the window beside her. A sound like a gunshot reverberated through the vehicle, startling her and opening the adrenaline gates once more. She tried to pull away instinctively even as she snapped her head around to get a look, but the seat belt held her fast.

A nightmare gazed through the window at her. It was a man…except it wasn’t a man; it wasn’t even human. It was the face of a demon.

The thing’s baleful red eyes fixed on Leilani, and it bared its teeth in a feral snarl as it hammered its hairy fists against the glass again.

Primal panic tore through Leilani, as she struggled in vain to loosen the seat belt. She didn’t even bother with the latch, but instead slipped her upper torso under the shoulder strap, giving the belt enough slack to allow her to squirm snake-like out of its restraining embrace.

The creature pounded again, and the Altima shook under the assault.

Leilani half-rolled over the center divider, but the seat belt caught on her shoes. She struggled and kicked, and when that didn’t work she tried slipping the shoes off.

The car shuddered again, the impact so ferocious that Leilani pitched forward, into the foot well on the passenger side. She tried to push herself up but her arms were pinned beneath her and every inch of movement was a titanic struggle, made all the more impossible by the relentless shaking.

There was a harsh snapping sound as the driver’s side window broke under the furious hammering, transforming instantly into an opaque mosaic of tiny tempered glass particles, held together only by a thin laminate coating, and then the curtain separating her from the demon fell apart as the creature thrust both arms through.

Leilani felt its fingers graze her leg and somehow found the will to wrestle her arms free and push herself off the floor. She stretched a hand out for the passenger’s side armrest, felt her fingers close on the latch lever, and frantically pulled at it. There was a click inside the door panel as the mechanism released. She threw the door open, and with a near-superhuman effort, heaved herself through the opening.

She felt the creature’s nails rake the bare skin of her leg, but that minor injury was nothing to what she experienced when she crashed face first onto the hot asphalt alongside the wrecked Altima. Both hurts however were muted by the anaesthetizing flood of endorphins. The scrapes and bruises might as well have been happening to someone else for all that she felt them. A single imperative drove her now.

Run
!

She scrabbled for a purchase on the blisteringly hot tar macadam and pulled herself the rest of the way out of the car. She was on her feet an instant later and immediately started moving.

She didn’t get far.

Another demon appeared from behind the rear of the Altima, blocking her escape. The thing rose to full height, towering over her, all matted black hair, carious yellow teeth and bloody red eyes. She pivoted, trying to get around it, ducking under the sweep of its massive arms, but before she could move, she felt the ground slip away. Another pair of arms seized her from behind and closed tight in a crushing embrace.

There was just enough air in her lungs for a scream.

2122 UTC (2:22 pm Local)

Arizona Department of Public Safety officer Matt Becker felt a moment of dread as he stopped his police cruiser and stepped out of its air-conditioned environs into the desert heat. He’d seen plenty of carnage on the road in his six years with DPS, and it never got any easier. According to the 911 call, this one was probably going to be pretty bad, but it was what he was paid to do.

Traffic coming from Phoenix was already piling up on 60. From what he could tell, the wreck was at least twenty minutes old, but no one from the long queue of idling vehicles had ventured out to play Good Samaritan. That was probably for the best, but Becker thought it a little strange; usually there was always someone eager to offer their services or at the very least, gawk at the twisted bodies. Today however, the onlookers seemed to want to keep a healthy distance; there was a gap of almost half-a-mile between the first stopped car—presumably the person who had placed the emergency call—and the edge of the wreck.

Becker left the cruiser with its MARS lights flashing a constant warning, and jogged toward the chaotic sculpture of fiberglass and metal. It was difficult to tell how many vehicles were actually involved. There were three eighteen-wheelers, all of them either jack-knifed or on their side, but pieces of passenger cars and SUVs poked out from beneath them. Becker counted at least six different smaller vehicles. Yet, it was only as he was completing his hasty assessment of the wreck that he realized something was profoundly wrong.

There wasn’t a soul in sight.

It was extremely rare to find a rollover accident where passengers weren’t ejected on impact. Seat belts weren’t always a sure way to prevent being thrown when a car traveling close to eighty miles an hour suddenly started tumbling, and statistically, there were always a few dumb schmucks who couldn’t be bothered to “click it.” This time however, there were no scattered bodies. Nor were there any walking wounded, milling about the site in a state of shock.