Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (25 page)

“You think this chicken won’t cock-a-doodle-do it?” Damian sneered. He raised the gleaming scepter over his head. “Well, think again, brainiac. For the last time …”

Then, just as he brought the weapon down full force toward Milton’s chest, Damian
vanished
, his scepter landing on the floor with a terrible clang.

Milton blinked his eyes in disbelief. Damian, in all his cruel, monstrous glory, had been there, just about to dispatch Milton to a third death (not that Milton was counting) and then—
poof-
—he was gone.

But Milton had no time to bask in his confounding fortune, as a squad of security demons surged forth, roughly apprehending writhing PODs and confiscating their wares. The guards appeared to be shackled together at the waist, each a link in a sinister, sinewy chain. Milton staggered to his feet, his leg aching brightly, like a blinding lighthouse of pain. He rejoined the tumble of bodies and wheels streaming through the curtains.

A claw grabbed Milton roughly by the shoulder. “Now I’ve got you!” a security demon roared.

The leathery demon—resembling a macramé project woven haphazardly of rancid meat—tucked its ropy neck to its chest and hissed into its walkie-talkie. “I’ve secured the Fauster child,” it said triumphantly digging its claws into Principal Bubb’s own personal Public Enemy Number One. “No, the little milksop boy.”

From his unfortunate vantage point, Milton noticed that the guard and his cohorts were not merely shackled together but that their bodies were
physically
connected, sharing a gnarled cat’s cradle of black and red sinews. Dust from one of the captured PODs flew up into the rear guard’s face, causing all six of the demons to sneeze in unison.

Milton tried prying himself free of the front demon’s grasp, but its claw was as firm and unyielding as petrified wood.

Beyond the cadaverous conga line of guards
(or was it more like one long caterpillar-of-a-guard?
Milton couldn’t be sure), a group of children and adults milled about noisily. From their various historical costumes and the masks of sullen defeat each wore, Milton deduced that the adults were teachers futilely attempting to herd their students.

“Quiet!” ordered one of the teachers, a man with a gleaming crown and robe. “Remember: Silence is golden!”

The group parted and Milton could see Marlo in the distance. She gazed past the line of demons, her eyes stopping at Milton. She hopped up and down and waved her arms.

“No!” he could see her mouthing, but her words were lost in the currents and eddies of babbling commotion.

One of the students, a dark-haired boy in penny loafers, noticed Marlo’s outburst and—following her gaze—quickly, yet not completely, took in Milton’s situation. The boy inexplicably heaved himself against a potted Madagascar dragon tree, which toppled over onto one of the teachers: the man with the golden crown. The teacher staggered and stumbled into the guard at the end of the row as the tree—now a gleaming gold statue—fell to the ground with a clangorous crash.

One by one, the demon guards turned into gold, each of them becoming glinting links in a golden chain leading straight to Milton. Freaking out, he struggled to free himself from the demon guard’s firm clutch, but to no avail. Just as the golden row of “demonos” tumbled toward Milton, a shopping cart slammed into the security demon gripping him.

“Take that, ya nasty piece of maggot food!” a POD with a droopy brown mustache yelped triumphantly as the 24-karat guard toppled to the ground.

A new swell of demons oozed from the concourse.
They indifferently eyed the fallen trophies that had been their cohorts as they rushed toward the security vestibule. A demon tugged the struggling POD away from his cart as a woman behind them squealed.

“Let him go!” yelled Hope, the angelic supermodel, as she kicked the guard with her expensive and surprisingly dangerous stiletto heels.

“All he needs is a little compassion!” Faith screamed as she pummeled the guard with her fists.

Milton stared dumbfounded as the throng of demons absorbed the POD that had saved his afterlife.

“Get a move on, boy!” the POD bellowed as he was dragged away.

Milton grabbed the man’s shopping cart, slunk down, and pushed it through the security vestibule and into the parking garage, joining the throng of migrating PODs.

The phantoms surged toward the shadows in the back of the garage. Milton wheeled next to a gangly female phantom with a face creased with sadness, pushing a cart loaded with two-liter jugs filled with a glittering, silver liquid.

She eyed Milton with vague curiosity. “Nice ride,” she said faintly.

“Where are we going, ma’am?” Milton asked the woman as he limped beside her.

After a moment’s hesitation, the woman gave him a warm, toothless grin. “Nowhere,” she answered in a
craggy voice. “Anywhere. Everywhere. It’s all the same. So many places to go, and not one of them home.”

Milton nodded mournfully feeling an instant kinship with this fellow phantom, a restless spirit on a circuitous quest, the destination changing abruptly with every uncertain step.

The line of squeaky carts snaked into the darkness of the sprawling concrete structure, disappearing, swallowed up by shadows.

42 · CHiCKEN FREED

“FOR THE LAST
time,” Damian said, thrusting his arms down; only, his scepter—and Milton—were gone. In fact, the whole mall had disappeared around him.
Vanished
.

Instead, he was in a dark basement full of crates, lying on the ground, surrounded by a half dozen staring lunatics in blue robes.

“What the—?” he exclaimed. As he tried to rise off the ground, his body painfully refused. Every muscle was stiff and sore, as if he were half boy half statue. He reached around to the back of his head and plucked out what looked like a meat thermometer. A long cable trailed from the bottom of it, leading beyond his field of vision.

Damian looked around the room, or as much as his rigid neck would allow. The basement reeked of burnt
popcorn chicken. The floor was, inexplicably, covered with feathers, blood, and the bodies of hens whose lifeless talons pointed up at the ceiling. The bygone birds were connected by a series of electrical wires clipped to their combs.

“Where am I?” he asked, though his voice hardly sounded like his own. His throat was drier than it had ever been, and the sound he made was a strained croak.

A twitchy mouse of a girl with shiny black eyes stepped away from a cheap plywood casket.

How tacky
, Damian thought,
I wouldn’t be caught dead in
that
hunk of junk
.

“Hi, Damian,” Necia said with a ghoulish smile. “Welcome back.”

“Welcome back?” he rasped.

The Guiding Knight approached Damian with a knowing smile. “Yes,” the man said imperiously. “Back to the land of the living to lead us.”

He turned to Sentinel Shane, whose butcher’s apron was caked with fresh blood.

“Nice job, Sentinel,” the Guiding Knight congratulated. “We’ll compensate you for all these Rhode Island Reds that died valiantly to deliver us our new Bridge.”

“Lead us? Bridge?” Damian squawked. “What are you talking about?”

The Guiding Knight smirked.

“The Bridge between this world and the next,” he continued matter-of-factly “We harnessed the subtle
energies available to us, in this case contained within poultry, and were able to revive you, our new Chosen One, the once-dead-now-living Bridge destined to guide us to our rightful place …
beyond.”

Damian fought an almost overwhelming urge to peck at the strange man. “Me?” he replied. “The Chosen One?”

The robed nut jobs around him smiled and nodded with reverence. Damian examined their faces and the blind respect that shone from their eyes.

“So you’re telling me that I’m your new leader and you have to do what I say because I’m going to show you the way to your own personal paradise?”

The Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship again nodded as one. Damian grinned, his orange, overly made-up face creasing into a grotesque mask. He rubbed his hands together and mentally savored the countless, wicked possibilities that his new situation offered.

“Cool,” he tried to reply, but instead his comment came out more as a cluck. He cleared his throat. “What I meant to say is, that
brocks
!”

43 · PLAYiNG THE FOOLS

MARLO SAT ON
the edge of the stage with her legs dangling restlessly. Her limbs itched with the urge to flee, but security demons, teachers, and various Netherworld bureaucrats now surrounded her.

Poker Alice wheeled through the disbanding crowd along with Ms. Mandelbaum, Ms. O’Malley and Principal Bubb. Soon they were swarming about Marlo and the smoldering bunny wreckage strewn about the stage.

“I
knew you was at the root of this, ya miserable little sidewinder!” Poker Alice fumed through a thick cloud of cigar smoke.

Marlo looked up through the mall’s thirteen tiers to its gorgeous stained-glass ceiling. The intricate geometric patterns dazzled with fierce color. A dopey grin shellacked itself across Marlo’s face. Now that she was free
from the Grabbit’s greedy grip, she felt bigger on the inside than she was on the outside. Then there was the cool, mysterious boy who had helped her to help Milton escape. For some reason, he, too, made her feel big inside. But, regardless of her newfound inner “bigness,” Marlo now found herself in some seriously big trouble. In the kaleidoscope of shapes above, she searched for some way out of her predicament.

“Look at me!” Poker Alice bellowed.

Even on the best of days, the last thing Marlo wanted to do was fill her eyes with Poker Alice’s wrinkled gunnysack of a face.

“I’m not saying anything without a lawyer present,” Marlo said, still hypnotized by the roof. “Except, of course, for what I just said.”

Lilith pried her way through the stubborn, grumbling remnants of the mob and reached the stage. “I demand to know what’s going on!” she insisted hotly.

“And who might you be,” Ms. Mandelbaum asked, sizing Lilith up with an accusatory crinkle, “like you’re ze belle of ze ball?”

Lilith shoved her gilded red and gold business card into Ms. Mandelbaum’s shiny, plastic-wrapped face, never taking her eyes off the gnarled, twisted heap on the stage.

Ms. Mandelbaum gulped, nervous as an antelope on a nature show. “Forgive me, ma’am,” she said contritely, smoothing out the wrinkles of her poly ethylene coating.
“I’m
. a little
meshuggina
with all this. I’m Ms. Mandelbaum, but please, dear, call me
Marm.”

“I’ll do no such thing, Ziploc,” Lilith snapped. “I need to know where the Hopeless Diamonds are!”

Principal Bubb joined the vicious circle. “The POD situation is under control,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb informed Lilith.

“The blazes with the PODs!” Lilith yelled. “I’ve got to get those diamonds before the NSE opens, or the whole underworld economy will collapse!”

“The Hopeless Diamonds?!” Mammon howled from behind. “Do
not
tell me that the Hopeless Diamonds aren’t safe and sound in Sadia!”

The blood drained from Lilith’s face as even her corpuscles tried to flee the body they called home.

With detached amusement, Marlo surveyed the freakish assortment of creatures surrounding her. Her situation seemed like a tiny circus car disgorging a thousand clowns, a visual that made her chuckle, clearing her head in the process.

“What’s so blasted funny?!” Poker Alice raged.

In that instant, Marlo knew what she had to do. She fished one of the Hopeless Diamonds out of her fanny pack. Mammon’s wolf-pupils widened into dark pools of liquid desire. He thrust out his hairy paw. Marlo suppressed
the urge to comment,
My, what big teeth you have, Grandmother
. With both arms straining, she handed him the diamond.

Poker Alice wheeled forward, screeching to a stop in front of Marlo’s knees. “I’m on to you, Miss Fauster,” she snorted bitterly. “There are two Hopeless Diamonds. Nice try … thinking you could fool us by giving—”

“It’s over there,” Marlo said calmly, casually pointing over her right shoulder toward the Grabbit’s charred, fractured torso.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb nodded toward the Grabbit’s body, sending her security demons shuffling onto the stage, sifting through the wreckage. The principal grabbed Marlo by the arm, sinking her talons painfully into her flesh.

“I trust you about as far as I could order someone to throw you,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb muttered suspiciously.

“Here it is,” a muscular demon said as he held up the dazzling teardrop-shaped jewel.

Norm, Takara, Lyon, Bordeaux, and Jordie joined the fray just as the demon handed Mammon the precious gem. The chairman of the Netherworld Soul Exchange lifted up his squealing briefcase, unzipped its bristly back, and deposited the two gems into the creature’s fabricated pouch. Mammon set the black boar down on its stubby legs.

The principal arched her eyebrow, which looked
like an angry centipede rearing up to attack. “Now, all I want to know is how this happened,” she said, releasing Marlo’s arm with great reluctance.

“I’ll ask the questions around here,” Lilith butted in. “Now, all I want to know is how this happened.”

Principal Bubb rolled her curdled yellow eyes.

Lyon stepped forward spryly
“She
stole them!” Lyon said, stretching her arm at Marlo until it reached its full, accusatory length.

Norm looked at Marlo nervously. “That’s not entirely—” Norm sputtered.

“Yes,” Marlo interrupted, rubbing her sore arm, “that’s true. I
did
steal the Hopeless Diamonds.”

She looked deeply into Norm’s eyes.

“All by myself.”

Lilith folded her smooth, tan arms and scowled at the dusty girl on the stage.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?!” she pronounced with outrage, hoping to divert Mammon’s ire. “What would have happened if—”

“—if the Grabbit had gotten the diamonds?” Marlo interjected. “Yes, I do. Which is why I had to stop it.”

“What do you mean?” Lilith scowled.

Marlo stood up onstage. It was showtime. The half dozen security demons reached for the bully clubs dangling at their sides. Principal Bubb waved them off with a waggle of her claw.

“What I mean,” Marlo continued, “is that the Grabbit enlisted me—
and only me
—to steal the Hopeless Diamonds for it. Why did I agree? Because I knew that if I didn’t, it would just get someone else to do it … some
lesser
criminal,” she added with a contemptuous sniff so subtle that only Lyon would—
and did
—notice. “So I took the job in order to, ultimately and brilliantly, thwart its plan.”

“And what
exactly
was this plan?” Mammon posed with a blend of suspicion and intrigue.

Marlo replied as melodramatically as possible.

“To destroy …
everything.”

Poker Alice laughed.

“Ya can’t be expectin’ us to swallow this steamin’ pile o’ hooey,” she chortled.

“Silence, you ashtray on wheels!” scolded Mammon, clearly fascinated with Marlo. “Go on … what was your name?”

“Marlo Fauster.
F-A-U
—”

“We’re all familiar with your unfortunate surname,” Principal Bubb grumbled.

Marlo paced the edge of the stage in thoughtful strides.

“See, the Grabbit wanted the Hopeless Diamonds to create a black hole that would suck in everything, everywhere, making every molecule, every atom completely its own. Destroying our humble corner of the universe in the process.”

“Black hole?” Ms. Mandelbaum exclaimed. “What bupkes are you talking about?”

“A
black hole,” Bordeaux interjected, “is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that even electromagnetic radiation, such as light, cannot escape its pull. Within the black hole is a singularity, a place where matter is compressed to such a degree that the known laws of physics no longer apply to it.”

Lilith eyed Bordeaux as one might scrutinize an unusual bug that had just splattered on the windshield during a cross-country car trip. “And how was the Grabbit going to accomplish this improbable feat?” she asked, returning her attention to Marlo.

Marlo skipped toward the Grabbit’s collapsed hull and dragged out one of its severed, corkscrew arms.

“The Hopeless Diamonds are the densest objects known to man,” Marlo said. “And I don’t have to tell you that if you slam particles together in a particle accelerator fast enough, you can create your very own black hole.”

The small crowd turned to Bordeaux.

“Gawd, I don’t know.” She gaped back. “Stop staring at me already!”

The teachers, bureaucrats, guards, and students returned their gaze to Marlo.

“Well, you can,” Marlo continued. “And, with particles like those in the Hopeless Diamonds, you sure could make one black, unholy hole.”

“Astounding,” murmured Mammon.

Lyon’s jaw fell open in disgust as she watched the gullible grown-ups figuratively perched in the palm of Marlo’s hand. “She’s lying!” she shrieked. “She didn’t steal the diamonds!
I stole the diamonds, too!”

“But I thought you just said that Miss Fauster did?” Lilith inquired.

Mammon shook his head pityingly.

“Oh, young lady,” he offered, “that’s just sad.”

“This is
so
not over!” Lyon huffed as she yanked Bordeaux by the arm and stormed off.

Mammon stalked to the stage and stood before Marlo, bringing with him a cloud of pungent musk. She noticed that the coarse pelt coating his body was gelled into lacquered waves of gleaming fur, cresting in stiff, crisp peaks at the top of his head.

“The name’s Mammon,” he said with a pointy-toothed grin. “Chairman of the Netherworld Soul Exchange. And we could use a girl like you …
down there
. In fact, you rather remind me of …
me
. When I was a cub, that is. Someone who isn’t satisfied with just making money but who also wants to make a
statement
. Someone who knows that greed is a game and plays that game to win.”

Marlo looked down at Mammon’s oxblood leather lace-ups with hand-stitched detailing on the toe. They were buffed so meticulously that she could see a budding pimple on her chin in their reflection. She looked
up nervously at Ms. O’Malley who returned her gaze with a sly wink and a grin, filling Marlo with a quiet confidence.

At that moment, John Keats ran to the stage, the bright blue plumage fringing his head and arms rippling in the wind. “Am I too late?” the feathered poet queried as he fluttered to a stop before the teachers.

“Actually you just missed—” Ms. O’Malley started to reply before Ms. Mandelbaum elbowed her in the ribs.

“Yer right on time, bluebird of happiness,” Ms. Mandelbaum said.

Keats’s yellow beak of a mouth widened into a smile as he flittered to the stage.

Ms. O’Malley glared at Ms. Mandelbaum while rubbing her aching side. “Why’d ya do that, ya nasty old sandwich bag?”

Ms. Mandelbaum leaned into the Irish pirate’s flaming-red mane. “The only thing worse than that bird-brained blowhard’s poetry is listening to him kvetch about not getting to recite it,” she whispered through her unzippered mouth. “Plus, it will calm down the old biddies.”

Keats pecked the microphone.

“Check, check …”

He cleared his throat.

An assortment of screams rippled through the crowd as droves of old women made room for an angry red blur hemorrhaging toward the stage.

Lord Byron glared at the plumed poet perched atop the stage. “KEATS!” he bellowed, popping a network of blood vessels on his angry red cheek.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb pressed her claw against Mammon’s hunched back. He turned and, upon seeing the principal’s face, grimaced, as if he had just passed a bowling ball-sized kidney stone.

“What?” he grumbled.

“It’s Ms. Couture,” Principal Bubb said earnestly “She allowed a known fugitive, Milton Fauster, to return to Heck completely undetected. She let the Hopeless Diamonds fall into unauthorized hands. She’s completely—”

“Incompetent,” he blurted.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb faltered. “Excuse me?” she asked, bewildered.

“I said, she’s completely incompetent,” Mammon repeated. “And she’s about to learn that just because she has powerful friends in low places, she’s not coated in procedural Teflon so that nothing bad will stick to her.”

He tromped back to the stage with heavy steps.
“Ms. Fauster,” he said in thick, oily syllables, as if his tongue were buttering a slice of toast, “we just might have an infernship opening with the Big Guy Downstairs himself. Are you interested?”

Marlo’s attention again went up to the dazzling stained-glass ceiling. As she stared, mesmerized by its radiant geometry, she thought about what the angel, Ms. Roosevelt, had said at assembly, about Rapacia holding with it “opportunity”:
Nothing is set in stone… True joy comes from giving to others, because, when you give to others, you’re really giving to yourself
.

Maybe this was her opportunity to make things right somehow, by working the system from the inside. Perhaps she could insinuate herself into the machine and help Milton, Norm, Takara, and even Ms. O’Malley … all the people she knew who deserved better than to waste their afterlives kowtowing before bitter, grasping bureaucrats who abused their tiny scraps of power. And who knows, she’d probably enjoy some way-cool fringe benefits in the process.