Mortality Bridge (13 page)

Niko is about to blow his groceries again and he sets Sam down. Sam clings to him a lingering moment with his only working arm, drowning man to driftwood, then lets go to flop onto the ground with a soft resilience that makes Niko tighten his throat and look away. His old friend’s body so distorted it inspires horror more than empathy or even dread. Sam’s been trapped long enough to heal but his organs and bones have grown back flat.

Unable to lift his head Sam stares up at the sky. “How do I look?”

“Like you crawled out from under a rock. What now, Sam?”

“Now we get out of here.”

“Sam, you can’t walk.”

Sam merely stares up at him. Of course he can’t walk, his legs are flabby tentacles. Blood burst from his skin and even toenails when the block landed on him, blood and shit spurted from his bowels along with loops of intestine and other unidentifiable stuff. His pelvis and ribcage are crushed and every organ that wasn’t shredded by bone had to have hemorrhaged. The pain alone would have killed Sam if he weren’t already dead. His brain had probably hemorrhaged like sat-on macaroni. It’s obvious as the block beside them that Sam isn’t going anywhere anytime soon unless somebody carries him, and the only person likely to do that for a long long time is Niko. The blunt truth of it hangs there between them like an odor.

Sam looks up at him. “I’d do the same for you.”

“I know you would.” Sam would, too. He was the guy who made the news by charging a machine gun nest with a grenade in hand and pulling the pin to lob it in through sheer inertia long after he’d been shot dead, the guy who dives in the frozen river to retrieve the fallen baby and hands it up to the mother before submerging one last time. Posthumous decoration was invented for men like Sam.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Fire away.”

“How’d you die?”

Absurdly and despite his horrific appearance Sam looks embarrassed. “Tried to break up a fight in a bar. Don’t know what it was about. Guy had a knife and the other one didn’t. I didn’t think it was fair, that’s all. I was—well, what difference does it make, here I am. Oh well, huh.” Sam snorts. “That’s probably what they put on my tombstone. Oh well.”

Niko’s thinking how much he doesn’t want to do this as he puts on his coat and bends to pick up Sam.

“SO HOW COME you’re down here in the Park?”

“That’s what they call it?”

“Yeah. Like an amusement park, only for torturing people. An abusement park.”

Niko’s wearing Sam like a knapsack. He snorts.

“Seen anyone else you knew?” Sam’s carrying Niko’s guitar case. “I really just got here a few hours ago. And I can’t see a damned thing.”

“I guess you get used to it. The dark I mean. I don’t think you ever get used to the rest of it. I think that’s the whole idea.”

Niko carries the trident.

“Why are you down here, Sam? You were a good person.”

“Well thanks. It’s a mystery to me. Nobody tells you. You just wake up here and they start in on you. I had plenty of time under that block to go over my whole life front to back and I couldn’t come up with anything. Except maybe that I was a good guy but I wasn’t great, you know? Not a hero or a saint or anything like that. Maybe that’s what you have to be to make the cut.”

“Then I imagine there are an awful lot of people here.”

“Well, yeah.”

Sam’s blood is soaking through Niko’s coat.

“I’ve never seen a living person down here. There can’t have been very many, huh?”

“Inanna came to visit her sister. Gilgamesh came to conquer death. Odysseus—well, he summoned the shades of Tiresias and Agamemnon from the mouth of Hades more than really descending. Theseus tried to kidnap Persephone and was tormented until Hercules rescued him when he came down to bring Cerberus to King Eurystheus. Virgil wrote about Aeneas coming down to find his father and then guided Dante when he got the nickel tour. Most of the medieval visits weren’t true descents but visions. Oh, and a lot of virtuous pagans like Adam and Eve and Moses were rescued by Jesus after his cruci—”

The ground trembles and a roaring rolls across the lidded sky. “Shit. Now you’ve done it.”

“What—oh.”

“Oh, he says. Man, go faster if you can. They’re gonna be on us like flies on shit.” Sam peers in all directions, one eye popping, both eyes blooded.

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“Oh well.”

Niko picks up his pace and Sam slaps against his back. Mangled Gumby or not Sam still weighs a grown man’s weight.

“He was already dead though so he probably doesn’t count.”

“Who?” Niko sounds a little breathless.

“You know. Son of He Whose Name Must Not be Said. He supposedly did it between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The Harrowing of Hell, Catholics call it. Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.”

“Some weekend.”

“Funny, when you talk about all the mortals who’ve come down here, you forgot one I’d have thought you’d mention first.”

“Who’s that, Sam?”

“Orpheus. He always reminded me of you. For one thing he was Greek—”

“Thracian. Son of Calliope and Œagrus.”

“And he played the lyre, which I guess is some kind of harp.”

“Invented by Hermes. Nero played it. Most people think he fiddled.”

“But Orpheus was like a force of nature. You know, he’d play, birds would harmonize, lions and lambs would crouch down to listen, rivers changed course to be nearer to the sound. Dogs and cats were pals. All that big mythic type stuff. Didn’t he also save Odysseus’ ship by drowning out the Sirens with his playing?”

“The Argo. Looking for the Golden Fleece with Jason.”

Niko’s stride has become determined, his heels pound metronomically.

“Somewhere along the line Orpheus fell in love with the maiden Eurydice—”

“After the Argosy.”

“The myth doesn’t say much about her, does it? I guess she’s what Hollywood calls the love interest.”

“She was a nymph.”

“Like I said. So Orpheus and Eurydice get married. The wedding’s barely over and what happens? Eurydice goes walking in a meadow with her bridesmaids, who knows why, and she gets bit on the ankle by a viper and dies instantly. Say, could you not grab my leg so hard?”

“Is there some point to all this?”

“So Orpheus’ wife of about five minutes dies of a snakebite and Orpheus goes out of his mind with grief. He grabs up his lyre and goes to some cave—”

“Tænarus, in Lacoön.”

“—and he walks down until he reaches Pluto and Persephone, the King and Queen of the Underworld. And he plays his lyre for them and sings his grief at the loss of Eurydice. Say, doesn’t this guitar case get kind of heavy after a while?”

“Fuck you, Sam.”

“He tells them Look, everyone comes back to you guys sooner or later anyhow. Our life is only loaned to us, at the end of it you get us no matter what, right? So what’s the difference if you let me have her now? It’s just a loan. Lend her to me and let her live out her natural lifespan with me and then you’ll have her again forever. He doesn’t even try to beat the rap the way they do in all those deal with the devil stories, because the Greeks didn’t have a heaven and hell. Just an underworld where everyone ends up. Nowadays who knows what old Orpheus would do?”

“Might as well finish it.”

“Okay, well, Pluto and Persephone can hardly turn him down, can they? This guy’s music defeated the Sirens. So Orpheus plays his lyre and all of Hades pretty much grinds to a halt. Pluto and Persephone are like, enough already, you’re killing us here. They get Eurydice from the newly arrived souls—maybe she was in a line for processing or something, I don’t know. But they give her back to Orpheus and they tell him he can take her back up to the world of men. But there’s a catch.”

“Don’t look back.”

“Don’t look back. Eurydice can follow Niko—sorry, follow Orpheus—back up to the world, and he can hold her hand and lead her through the cave and back to the daylight. But if he looks back the way they’ve come the whole deal’s off.”

Niko watches his own feet plod the treadmill ground.

“So they come back up through Hades, which couldn’t have been much fun. They’re holding hands and walking near the end of the tunnel and Orpheus sees a light ahead. He steps into it and—”

“He stepped into it and looked back to tell Eurydice how happy he was to be back in the world with her. But she was still in the shadows and the second he looked back her hand pulled away. She let go. He tried to hold onto her but he’d looked back and she’d become a shade again and she was slipping back into the dark.”

“And he tried to follow her, didn’t he?”

“The gods wouldn’t let him go back a second time.”

“Once in a lifetime opportunity I guess.”

Niko stops walking. They are near another of the granite blocks. “I have to stop, Sam. I need a couple minutes.”

“Sure. I’m not very light, am I?”

“Heavier by the word.”

Niko kneels and drops the trident and Sam lets go the guitar case and then Niko lowers Sam from his back. Sam peels away with a sound like getting up barebacked from a vinyl chair. Niko is sweating and breathless.

“I always thought that story was mean,” says Sam.

Niko laughs a single syllable. “Yeah.”

“I always wondered why he never told the gods fuck you and went back anyhow.”

“Maybe he was more broken than angry. Maybe he realized he’d just fuck it up again. Maybe he knew it would all come around again one day. Maybe he swore he’d change the ending if it did. It’s an old story really. It’s been told a lot of times a lot of ways.”

They’re quiet a few minutes.

“The first time I heard Notes on Her Sleeping,” Sam says. “I’ll never forget it. It broke my heart. I was a first-year grad student sharing an apartment with two other guys. But that day I was alone and enjoying no one else being around. Just sitting on my ratty couch in my shoebox apartment and listening to the radio. You don’t know what paradise is till it’s way too late. So this song comes on and a minute into it I just know it’s you. I had your first two albums, with Perish Blues and Stagger Lee. I liked them but you never got much airplay till that song. It was the first time I heard someone say your name on the radio. I was so proud of you. This was like nothing I ever heard out of you. Really sweet and just so sad. And I just sat there alone and cried. I guess people tell you things like that all the time.”

“Not quite like that.”

“Well. Bridge was one of my favorite albums. It would’ve been even if I didn’t know you. I mean that.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

“I just wanted you to know. I’m not just saying it.”

“Thanks.”

“I hope the ending changes this time round. I hope you get her back.”

Niko says nothing. What is there to say?

Pale orange throbs the sky.

Sam says Oh shit.

Niko turns and looks out where Sam is looking but sees nothing. “What?”

Sam’s good hand points toward what he sees with his dark-adapted eye. “Our friends are back.”

“Shit.” Niko puts his coat on and feels the pack of cigarillos in a pocket. He bends to Sam.

Who shakes his head. “Never mind, Niko. Grab your case and haulass over to that block. Stay up against the side and it’ll be harder for them to get you. Their aim’s good but I doubt it’s that good.”

“But—”

“Go on. You won’t make it if you have to carry me. If they miss you, haul back over here. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

Niko hesitates. He wants to say he knows old phrases and word-keys and charms. But Sam’s right and now is not a time to learn that ancient keys are useless. He picks up his guitar case. “Back in a few.”

“They’ll have to go back for another block after they drop this one. Come back right after they drop.”

“Okay.”

“Luck, Niko.”

Niko runs.

A hundred yards later and with fifty yards to go he hears demoniac laughter above and behind him and he puts on a burst of speed. The guitar case is a liability. He considers dropping it to recover later but suppose they take it? Suppose a seventy ton block lands on it? What good will all his journeying do him then?

Niko reaches the block and presses his back against a side and brings the case in close.

One demon yells Tim-berrrrr! and the other whistles a long descending note like the swan song of a diving bomb. They let go the block they hold impossibly aloft and Niko sees a patch of sky swell toward him like a gaping maw. His face tightens and it’s a great effort not to close his eyes and turn away.

The granite block hits. One edge strikes the top of the block Niko presses against. The bottom edge hits ground and the block tumbles away. The sound is deafening. And more than sound is the concussive push inside his chest. Niko’s knees buckle. Granite shrapnel stings his cheek. By the time his knees touch the plain all is as impossibly still and quiet as it was before the block was dropped. Niko is afraid to move.

“Get him?” Purring voice from on high.

“Think so.” Gruff voice. “Did you see? Monkey son had my poker.”

“We’ll get—” This last fades into incomprehensibility as they fly away.

Niko doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until he lets it out. His heart is playing thirtysecond notes. He relaxes against the protective block and relishes the relief he knows is fleeting.

He hears faint noise. A dim and distant screaming coming from behind him. He frowns and turns but there is only solid granite. He sets his ear against it. Yes, faintly through the stone: screaming.

HOW GOOD IT feels to see Sam’s body in the distance on the plain. Niko waves and Sam waves back. Niko picks up his pace. The guitar case feels good in his hand. For the first time since this whole affair began he feels not merely purposeful but confident. He’s gonna beat this thing, he really is. He’s high on epinephrine of course but that’s okay. Believing in yourself is half the battle. Hasn’t he told a couple dozen interviewers that?

Sam’s still waving. Niko grins. Glad to see me back, huh, Sam? Didn’t think I’d make it. Or maybe you thought I wouldn’t come back for you if I did.

Niko frowns. Isn’t that why Sam is waving?