Mortality Bridge (16 page)

“Me!” Onyx rises trembling to her spiky knees. As the black spotlight of the giant’s attention turns to her the demons cowering around her scatter like fish darting from a stone dropped in their midst. “Great Moloch it was me!” Her obsidian claws clutch her naked scalp and dig in deep. “This mortal man was moving among us, I am not worthy to speak to you, he was moving among us and I only sought a new torment, I worship you, this mortal and I struck a deal—”

Faster than Niko would have believed possible the giant’s hand plummets like a crashing jet to pulp the demon Onyx under his massive thumb and swab her across the ground like a bilefilled bug.

Niko feels his bladder let go.

The giant straightens and licks gore off his thumb with a thousand pounds of mottled gray tongue. He cocks his head at Niko with an expression absurdly reminiscent of Victor the RCA dog.

MORTAL MAN WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE BEFORE YOUR FINAL DAY?

This is more familiar ground at least. “Up there in the mortal life,” recites Niko, “my wife of common law was taken from me before she reached the fullness of her days.”

AND YOU HAVE STRUCK A DEAL WITH THIS.
The giant indicates the jellied smear of Onyx on the ground.

“I have.” Niko’s teeth are chattering from pure fear. “In exchange for two songs I have just played she was to tell me how to get to—” Niko hesitates over the euphemism “—to the, the head office.” His knees are shaking.

IN THIS PLACE A DEAL WITH SUCH A ONE IS BINDING AND IS LAW. THOUGH SHE IS NO MORE THE BURDEN OF HER TELLING FALLS ON ME AND I MUST HONOR IT. BUT KNOW BEFORE I TELL YOU THAT I HAVE HEARD YOUR MUSIC AND RECOGNIZE YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE. YOU HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE.

“Me?” Niko shakes his head. “Oh no no. No. Much here is strangely familiar to me but—”

BENEATH YOUR MORTAL GUISE YOU WEAR A SPIRIT OLDER STILL. THE MASK OF CRAWLING MEAT DENIES THE TRUE ETERNAL FACE BENEATH. I SPEAK NOW PAST YOUR MASK TO TELL YOU THAT YOUR QUEST IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE FOR NOUGHT.

“I don’t understand.”

I DO NOT SPEAK TO YOU. FROM MY MASTER I AM COME TO TELL THE WEARER OF YOUR FLESH THAT HE IS WEARY OF THIS REENACTMENT. I REMIND THE HOST OF YOUR FACADE THAT IN THIS PLACE WHERE WORD IS LAW AND BLOODSIGNED DEALS ARE GRAVEN ON CREATION’S BONE, YOU HAVE GIVEN US YOUR WORD AND SIGNED YOUR NAME. IN THIS YOU AND MY MASTER ARE WED, FOR YOU MUST HONOR AND OBEY.

“These are your words?”

THEY ARE MY MASTER’S.

Niko bites his lip and thinks. “You haven’t come to stop me?”

I AM COME TO STOP YOUR DESECRATION OF THIS HOLY PLACE.

“But not my—my quest.”

I AM BOUND BY YOUR BARGAIN WITH SHE WHOM I DESTROYED.
He wipes his thumb on his obscene and dimpling hip.
I MUST TELL YOU THE WAY TO...THE HEAD OFFICE.
At this last the titan smiles for the first time and a shrieking horror of vertiginous death assails all Niko’s being with the writhing soil of the rotting grave that is not oblivion or peace or even surcease from our earthly pain and sorrow for in every cell there is evolved revolt against the undeniable corrupt majesty of inimical death, a horror of annihilation shaped not by the senses but from deep within the gene, a viper nestled in twined strands of DNA. What corruption awaits us all.

Niko forces his gaze from that graveyard smile and the allconsuming feeling slowly fades. The titan raises a huge flabby arm to point across the endless plain.
THE BATTLEMENTS OF APATHY ARE THE SOURCE OF THE LIGHTS THAT BURN ACROSS THE PLAIN. THERE FIND THE MONSTER GERYON AND CALL HIM BY HIS NAME. ORDER HIM TO TAKE YOU DOWN, SAYING TO HIM THIS HAS BEEN WILLED WHERE WHAT IS WILLED MUST BE. THEN MAKE YOUR LIGHTWARD WAY ACROSS THE REACH ON WHICH HE LEAVES YOU.

“That’s all?”

NOTHING MORE.
That vast entropic grin again. and nothing less. Niko suspects for all his pending wrath the titan is amused by him and enjoying all this drama greatly.

He stands with his guitar and feels the rising bravado that strikes him at the oddest times. “Well. I’ll just be on my way then. Thanks.” He waves. “See you.”

EACH AND EVERY TIME.
And in Greek the titan says
GOOD TRAVELING, ORFEO.

“And you Moloch.”

The titan pauses.
IT’S A HORDE.

“Excuse me?”

A GROUP OF DEMONS. COLLECTIVELY A HORDE.

Then the titan simply is no longer there and Niko is knocked off his feet by air that rushes in to fill the space the vast abomination occupied. He picks himself up and absurdly dusts himself off. His hand brushes the damp patch on the crotch of his jeans and shame heats his face.

He stops in the midst of putting the Dobro back in the case as he remembers the titan’s parting wish in Greek and his own unthinking reply. As he had understood Onyx’s German. He frowns. Old locked doors are opening in his mind and in his heart this long and godforsaken day.
BENEATH YOUR MORTAL GUISE YOU WEAR A SPIRIT OLDER STILL.

Around him the demons slowly regain their feet or hooves or paws or talons. Some glance fearfully at the gleaming purple wipe that’s all that’s left of Onyx. None look at Niko the Troublemaker as they resume the work they have performed for all the generations of mankind at least.

Screams and German curses once more fill the oven air.

A slickheaded demon beside an excoriated nazi holds a bright plastic sandpail and a cheery red plastic shovel. The demon uses two sharp claws to carefully separate two of the man’s facial muscles, which are as clearly defined as those on a colored medical diagram, and then shovels fine blond sand into the breach. He shoves the shovel back into the pail and begins to pat the man’s face in an oddly motherly fashion and he smiles as the man begins to scream.

Niko turns from the bonfire and gazes out into the black and starless air. Soon a streak of burning orange flares and shadows stretch from standing objects on the plain. A distant cry from high up in the direction of the flare is carried across the flat ground.

Toward that source of light then. Once more Niko sets out on his ragged way. As he nears one of the staked men he hears a soft and pleading voice. Mein herr. Mein herr.

Niko looks down at a naked German staked spreadeagled and facedown. Iron spikes pin the twitching spiders of his fractured hands to ground. His skin meticulously flensed in perfect alternating one inch strips from head to toe. The inchwide strips of remaining skin embroidered with yellow stars of david, strings of numbers, pink triangles, barcodes. The space between the naked muscles packed with sand.

“Entschuldigen sie mich. Mein herr?” the man says in a whisper more awful than any scream. “Danke shon. Fiir die musik, ihre musik.” His head is turned to the side and his bisected lips move carefully. “Danke shön, gnedige herr. Fielen danke.”

XI.

BEEN DOWN SO LONG

IN THE DISTANCE there appears to be a stadium or coliseum Niko’s path will near but not quite intersect. The enormous structure brick red in the murky light. A roar perhaps a hundred thousand voices strong carries from it even miles away.

To Niko’s right lie toppled statues, informed giants with undifferentiated features, stone eyes open and forever staring sidewise at the broad expanse. All have fallen from their pedestals, some to fracture, some to break, some to shatter into scattered rubble. Hard about them on the flat stone plain are radiating cracks, jagged epitaphs engraved by their demise. Blood seeps from the statues’ cracks.

Distant ratcheting like rattling engine valves. A mile or more away a group of demons standing high atop a recumbent head of granite performs a kind of sculptural lobotomy with jackhammers against the stone temple. It looks like what a migraine feels like.

Another flare of orange lights the sky. This time the accompanying scream is more pronounced and grows still louder as the sparking comet streaks from what looks like a huge wall several miles away. It’s hard to judge the distance. There is no true horizon for the earth here does not curve. Only vanishing points on an infinite unvarying plane.

Yet there where the flares streak from, where the massive wall holds sway, it seems there is an oddly close horizon. As if the earth beyond were sheared away. Five miles? Ten? There are a lot of objects in between, moving creatures, stationary structures. It also looks more crowded out there toward the wall. What’s the draw? Well he’ll know soon enough.

Niko trips on scattered statue chunks and catches himself. His jeans have dried but he is conscious of the smell of urine clinging to him, of Sam’s gore tacky on his hands and arms, of stubble bristling at his neck and the underside of his chin, the saltrings of dried sweat and stiff patches of Sam’s dried blood staining his shirt and coat, the swampy slickness of his cotton socks encased by hiking shoes. His tongue is dry and thick and reptilian. His parched throat makes a tiny click whenever he swallows. His eyes burn from arid kiln air, from vapors and from lack of sleep.

A group of demons with krylon spraypaint cans industriously tags a fallen statue that somehow conveys an air of quiet desperation. Little balls rattle when the demons shake the cans.

Niko steps on something soft that screams and jerks from underfoot. He leaps away from the disemboweled man he’s stepped in and a demon looks up from the gutted body it is violating. It rises tall and slim and muscular and frightening and beautiful before Niko and looks down at him in wonder with catlike eyes of startling cerulean. Pendant cock slurried with shit and gobbeted blood. Chest slick and breathing hard from foul exertions. It surveys Niko head to toe and grins and licks the length of its chin with a pointed black tongue caked with gore. It raises an oddly elegant talon and waggles the tapering slim fingers.

Niko tries not to look down at the spasming husk at the demon’s feet.

The demon’s hand lowers. “Your name.” Its voice a beautiful contralto.

“That word is mine to keep or give.”

The demon’s laugh does something to Niko’s spine. “Credo in un deus crudelis.” It mockingly blesses him like a priest, tracing the sign of the cross hand sinister, bottom to top, right to left.

Thunder shudders from above and Niko glances up. The charcoal sky convulses with a swarm of bats, black scraps that flex like epileptic birds across the hot abyss.

“You have no quarrel with me. I’m mortal.”

“And you think that opens every door? Spreads the legs of every whore? Unlocks each and every lock? Makes my cock hard as a rock?”

Niko tries to break in but the demon speaks nonstop and does not pause for breath. “Pulls the cork from every bottle? Melts the king’s wax like a griddle? Breaks the vows of silent monks? Pries the lid from every box?”

Babbling doggerel it advances. Niko steps backward in kind and raises a placating hand, the guitar case moving forward as a shield. “Come on now. I’m still alive, I haven’t been Judged, you have no power over me here.”

“Biggest ass gets softest seat? Living flesh gets choicest meat? Smoothest tongue gets softest thigh? Sharpest glance catch brightest eye?” A graceful and accusing finger points at him and he retreats as if pushed.

“My business is with one who would destroy you should you hamper me,” Niko recites. He looks around for a place to run to or a weapon or even another demon to enlist against this one, for they seem to fear the wrath of their superiors.

“Quoted word should make me quake? Stolen fire make me bake? Demon nose whiffs mortal dung. Shit must spew from borrowed tongue.”

The backs of Niko’s knees touch something hard and warm. Another demon crouched on hands and knees and grinning up at him. The doggerel-spewing demon grins and pushes Niko backward. Niko lets go the guitar case and tucks and rolls to come up in a doubtless futile fighting stance.

The demon he has fallen over straightens up and dusts itself off, still grinning at Niko as it guffaws in a big loud stupid voice, literally saying Haw haw haw haw. He’s wide and burly and covered with piercings, studs and bars and metal rings.

The demons highfive each other and their palms strike sparks. Absurd embarrassment heats Niko’s cheeks. He has quite literally fallen for the oldest schoolyard bully trick in the book.

“Oh you wacky funmasters,” Niko says.

“Haw haw haw.” Pierce slaps his thigh hard enough to kill a small animal. “That’s the spirit.”

“Not the spirit but the flesh. Mortal meat pie, him no guest.”

“Naww.” A stubfingered hand goes to the flat broad face in caricatured astonishment.

Doggerel nods. “This widdle meat pie, him go hunting. This widdle meat pie, him not home. This widdle meat pie, him got mojo. This widdle meat pie, leave alone.”

Pierce looks Niko up and down. “No molesta?” He sounds disappointed.

“This widdle meat pie, him go wee wee wee all the way home.”

Pierce slumps and Doggerel drapes an arm partway around the massive demon’s shoulders. Doggerel’s arms are long but Pierce’s shoulders are much broader. “Not to worry, never fear. Us will leave this meat pie here. Let him go his meat pie way. We see him again someday.”

And paying Niko no more heed they walk away. Niko watches them go, unaware of his incredulous expression. He shakes his head and picks up his guitar case and continues on his dire way.

THE STATUE GARDEN now consists of lifesized sculptures of mounted generals and declaiming politicians, the kind of statues found in parks or civic centers the world over. Except here they are not lone monuments to fallen leaders but thousands on thousands of stone figures crowded on the plain like forgotten figures in some giant child’s toy army. A general of Pharaoh’s army clutches his staff of command and inspects troops only his stone eyes can see. A Grecian senator in draped double chiton clutches a scroll and raises a fist. A Civil War general on horseback stares out across the plain with gloved fist on West Point saber. An Arab chieftain looks up to Allah with upturned palms. Their alabaster ranks are all in different stages of erosion, some merely blemished as if suffering a century’s urban acid rain, others deeply corroded and runnelled. One statue of a furclad Hun on horseback is so dissolved his helmet is cleaved in two and his features smoothed to disturbing anonymity. His mount’s ears have worn away and one hoof eaten to the base. Many statues have toppled like defeated chessmen as their foundation dissolved by whatever slowly eats their quarried flesh.