Inferno Read online

  I don’t want to think about that. There has to be a way out. Benito says there is. Dante described it—

  A way out for him, yes! A living man whose guide called on angels!

  There is a way out of Hell and we’re going to find it, because we can’t die trying, because there’s nothing else to do but sit for eternity. Eternity.

  I’m scared, Carpentier.

  Me too. Let’s talk to the others. They’re scared like you. Talking helps.

  “The guards,” I said. “They bother me two ways.”

  Corbett said, “It’s boiling that bothers me.”

  “I don’t think I’ll like being shot full of arrows and bullets,” I said. “But worse than that, what the blazes are they doing here?”

  Corbett just laughed. They were guarding, his look said.

  “They did violence they believed justified,” said Benito. “They fought for what they thought was a higher cause.”

  “And there aren’t any soldiers in Heaven?”

  “I’m sure there are. But these enjoyed their work.” His voice took on a note of sadness. “They enjoy it still. They do not seek to escape.”

  “It’s weird. They’re serving the Builders, or Big Juju, or God, whatever we call the master of this place. If they’re serving God they ought to be in Heaven!”

  Benito shrugged. “Or Purgatory. Perhaps. Theology is not my specialty. The next doorway is just ahead, be careful.”

  He wouldn’t say more, but I remembered the uniformed servitors in Disneyland and wondered if the guards worked in shifts. Did they have homes to go to when they got off work? Did they go home and tell their wives about their day?

  We waited, peeking around the doorjamb to watch the shore. The island was obscured by clouds of steam and no easier to see than it had been from a mile away.

  A band marched past, robed and unarmed. “Inquisition priests,” Benito murmured. “They would call the temporal authorities. The soldiers.”

  They receded. A handful of barbarian women passed, arms and shoulders the color of bronze armor. They carried bows and shortswords. Behind them was another group, also women, wearing olive-drab fatigues and carrying submachine guns. They passed out of sight, and the shore was clear.

  “Run,” Benito ordered.

  We ran. There was a ten-foot drop to the steep slope. I landed on my feet and kept running in a half-controlled fall. Jagged flint edges tore at my feet. When I hit the beach I kept running, because I knew I’d never be able to walk into the boiling lake. The wandering clouds of steam wrapped me round, hid me from the guardians, and I ran toward the chorus of screams. The smell was overpowering, fresh blood and clotted blood, copper bright and polluted foul.

  Corbett was ahead of me. He splashed into bubbling red fluid and screamed. He stood, covered to his knees, screaming in pain. Benito plunged in, waded through the stuff like a damned robot, and gripped Corbett’s arm to keep him from turning back. Then I was in it myself. I fell into a trench and was instantly waist deep.

  The pain hit me weirdly, as if I’d stuck my finger into a light socket. Stunning. Unreal. All my senses were scrambled. I knew the smell of pain, its sight and sound, and there was nothing to see or hear but pain. I couldn’t control my limbs. They thrashed and twitched, almost spilling me full length into the stuff.

  Half a squad of Green Berets stood there studying us. They had friends: small men in black pajamas.

  I turned back. We were committed now. Through a gap in the steamy mist I had seen their eyes: dull, expressionless, intent on their task, and their task was to let no one leave the blood.

  “The island,” I screamed. “To the island!” But I didn’t move and neither did the others. We stood where we were and screamed.

  “The island!” Corbett laughed hysterically, laughter and pain and horror. “We can’t use the island—”

  I screamed. “What?”

  “Stupid! Look!”

  He was right. I cursed the roiling clouds that had hidden it from view. They were shoulder to shoulder over every square inch of the island. I never saw a more vicious mob. They were armed haphazardly, with clubs and crude daggers of what seemed to be splintered bone. Even as I watched, someone trying to climb out of the blood was repelled by half-a-dozen stab wounds. He staggered away, howling, leaving a foaming red wake.

  Benito came up to me, still pulling Corbett by the arm. “We must wade around the island.”

  I couldn’t move. Suddenly he took my shoulder in his powerful grip and began to plunge through the boiling red, towing both of us like children. I remembered his strength. There was no point in struggling with him. I didn’t want to. I wanted out, but my limbs would not obey. The pain was paralyzing.

  You could read the agony on Benito’s face. He hurt as we did. But he plunged on. He shouted, “Deeper down, there is a place where souls are not even allowed to cry! Here there is no law against screaming!”

  “Yeah! Cheer me up!” I screamed.

  We halted. There were guards on the shore. A man in a high peaked hat stared through binoculars. We didn’t dare move.

  There are two ways to treat constant excruciating agony. Both involve screaming. You may try to suppress the screams, and they will force their way through your teeth; or you can just let it out. Similarly, you can concentrate on the source of the pain and try to minimize it: a current of not-quite-boiling blood here on the left, get into it! Stand on tiptoe, you gain an inch . . .

  Or you can tell yourself it will heal and concentrate on something else.

  There was turmoil on the island. People were shouting at one of their number. He stood with his feet planted wide and his hands raised high over his head. The hands held the haft of a spear: a length of wood that might have been a broken oar or a tree sapling, and a leaf-shaped blade poised a few inches above his feet. Poised to strike, but at what? Hands reached to shake his shoulders, and he snarled in an agony different somehow from all the moans around him.

  I tried to hear. By now the wordless moaning of the thousands of waders, even my own, had become a background noise, had faded like the sickening smell of boiling blood. I caught disjointed phrases.

  “Kill ’em! Kill ’em before—”

  “Billy, if you won’t do it, let us through!”

  “Idiot, you hafta, they’ll be all around us in a minute—”

  The man with the spear bellowed, “No!”

  And the ground seemed to erupt beneath his feet.

  He kicked at whatever was gripping his ankles. He kicked himself free and ran for the island’s shore. Others got out of his way, then surged to close the gap. Behind him, that portion of the island was heaving as in an earthquake, and clubs and knives were rising and falling with horrible rhythm.

  “Billy” splashed knee deep into boiling blood and stopped at once. As he sucked air for his first shocked scream, three separate hands thrust forward against his back. He splashed face down. Two surging waves washed against the bathers around him.

  He was up in a flash, his spear ready for war. I was sure he’d try to fight his way back onto the island. But he didn’t. He turned and waded away, in our direction. A foot short of my nose he said, “Friend, it’s not polite to stare.”

  “Sorry. What happened back there? Will they let you back?”

  He glared back at his erstwhile neighbors. “Those bastards couldn’t stop me.” He sounded like he was holding his breath . . . as we all did, because each of us was trying to talk around a scream. It was almost funny, that sound. “I . . . never thought it would hurt so much,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you stay?”

  “Couldn’t take the killing.”

  “What?”

  Benito and Corbett had crowded close to listen. “Billy” studied me, his face contorted in agony. “Don’t know about the island, do you?”

  I shook my head. The Afrika Korps had gone, but cuirassiers with muskets had replaced them. We still dared not move.

  “We on the island
, we killed people, just like you in the swimming hole. But we all had some excuse, some reason we had to kill. Like me. There was a range war going on. We wasn’t even the ones that started it.”

  I said, “Yeah?”

  He took it wrong. “You think maybe we could have stopped it? Gone along with the amnesty?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about and didn’t much care. His blue eyes had turned killer in that moment. I said, “Don’t mind me. I’m in Hell too.”

  That calmed him, and changed him. He was younger than me and shorter than me, and the short amateurish haircut gave him a pleasant boyish look. Though the hair was plastered down with blood . . . “Then there’s Harry Vogel,” he continued, “he was robbing a liquor store and the owner pulled his mask off. He’d seen his face, so he had to die, see? And Rich and Bonny Anderson, they kidnapped a kid, and it would have been okay, but he got away. Got as far as a great big street called a freeway, then some kind of machine hit him.” He looked down, then continued talking, hurriedly, as if that would block the pain. “Hey, we got Aaron Burr on the island! And that guy who ran the Andersonville prison camp—”

  “I get the idea. If they thought they had to do it, they don’t get hurt as bad.”

  “Yeah.” Billy looked down at his waist. “It hurts. I think this hurts as much as anything I ever did except die. But I wouldn’t go back. No.” But he looked back and wasn’t sure. He said it again. “No! I won’t ever kill anyone again!”

  “That’s twice you’ve—”

  “Well, that island ain’t any common dirt, you know. It’s mostly judges and congressmen and lawyers and a few jury members and crooked sheriffs—”

  “Wait! Wait!” I remembered the island surging up around him. “The island’s people? Live people?”

  I swear he was enjoying my reaction. “Yeah. We have to keep ’em crippled. It’s what Minos does to them for letting known killers loose on the public that was paying them to protect them. Some was jury members that took bribes, and lawyers that fiddled with evidence, and congressmen that passed laws against putting a man in jail if the evidence wasn’t got in a special kind of way . . . I don’t know. That kind of law is all new to me. The island was a lot smaller when I came here.”

  “And they keep coming back to life!” I was this shocked: I had forgotten to hurt.

  “Friends, they sure do. And we have to keep persuading them not to move, one way or another. Otherwise they’d just swim away, and where’d we be?”

  “Waist deep in boiling blood?”

  He tried to laugh. “Well, I guess I’d rather boil. If they could die it’d be okay, but they can’t. Let ’em alone long enough and they try to get up. I can’t take it anymore.”

  I felt Benito’s hand on my shoulder. “Allen, the shore is clear of guards. I think we can move.”

  Corbett was already raising a wake. I started after him, tottering on stiffened legs. On impulse I turned back. “Why not come with us? It can’t be any worse lower down.”

  His eyes sparkled with hope. “Maybe you’re right.”

  16

  W

  e waded through boiling blood, going up to our chins before the bottom sloped up again. After an eternity we reached the other shore and let ourselves fall, each wrapped silently and solipsistically in his own pain. We lay in full view on what seemed to be rough white concrete. Four targets. If the guardians wanted us they could have us.

  A long time later, Corbett found the strength to roll over. “They’re all along the far shore,” he reported, “watching us. Nazis, Indians—”

  Benito said, “Never mind. They will not harm us. They do not bother those who wish to go deeper into Hell.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Corbett.

  I wasn’t so sure, but I held my peace. I inspected my feet, legs, buttocks. The meat was loose on my bones. I should have been dead down there; it should have stopped hurting. Fat chance, Carpentier.

  And Billy, who must have hurt just as much as I did, was smiling to himself. I snarled, “What are you so damned happy about?”

  “First off, this is the first chance I’ve had to lie down in a hundred years. Second, I don’t have to kill anyone, even if they yell at me. Third, I didn’t much like the company on that island. Maybe I’ll like you better.”

  “Maybe. Who are you?”

  “William Bonney. Just a cowhand that got done unto and did some back.”

  “Bonney?” Corbett sat up suddenly. He’d healed much faster than I had. “Billy the Kid?”

  “Friend, there are a dozen men on the island that all claim they was Billy the Kid.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m the real one.”

  I could see the wheels going round in Corbett’s head. Were we supposed to spend eternity wondering if he was telling the truth? Corbett said, “Have it your own way. I was a spaceship pilot.”

  “What? You mean like you been to the Moon?”

  “Right.”

  Benito grunted and surged to his feet, then sat down hard with another grunt of pain. From the waist down he showed bright red skin, very tender looking. Like Corbett he’d healed fast, but he wasn’t in condition to scout.

  I asked, “Benito, what are we headed into? It’s for sure we can’t go back.”

  “The Wood of Suicides lies ahead. A pleasant place, comparatively, if we can avoid the dogs.”

  “Dogs?”

  “The Wood is punishment for the sin of suicide,” Benito explained. “Each tree holds the soul of one who took his own life. They are not dangerous to us. But the violent Wasters also suffer there, and the dogs are their punishment. There will not be many of the dog packs. It is almost an obsolete sin.”

  Corbett looked up. “Since when is a sin obsolete?”

  “Customs change. In Dante’s time there were men who would hold a party at which they would burn part of their wealth, to show how wealthy they were.”

  “Potlatch!” I cried.

  “Gesundheit,” said Corbett.

  “No, dammit, listen. There are West Coast Indian tribes that used to do just what Benito’s talking about. Hold a party, burn a lot of valuables. They used to compete at it. I never knew the Italians did the same thing.”

  “They did,” said Benito. “Their punishment is to run through these woods pursued by wild dogs. If the dogs catch them they tear them apart.”

  Billy was sitting up. “They heal after that?”

  I was healing! My legs and buttocks still hurt, but the flesh was firm, and I could move the muscles. I watched, fascinated, as new skin grew before my eyes.

  “The dogs and the prey they pursue should be rare,” Benito said, “and the trees can do us no harm. We should find this stretch easy.” He stood up. “Are we ready?”

  My feet were still tender, and Billy was complaining about his. But it didn’t sound like we’d have to run anywhere. Corbett and Benito were healed.

  We set off, deeper into Hell. It had become an obsession with me. Anything was better than waiting—and if I spent too much time remembering the agony in the lake, we’d never get started.

  We left concrete for dirt. When we topped a gentle rise, the ground was suddenly all erosion gullies, hard red and yellow clay studded with gravel and gashed by flash floods. We had to scramble in and out of them. Some had water at the bottom, water filthy with broken bottles and bottle caps, used condoms, floating grease, occasional bursts of brightly colored dyes, chemicals that burned our sandaled feet. Nothing grew here; there were dead stumps of trees and dried brown vines reaching upward like dead old women’s fingers. Strange smells moved on the air: incongruous whiffs of automobile exhaust, acids, burning oil and rubber.

  Billy grunted. “I don’t see no trees, Benito. Where’d you put the damn trees?”

  “We should have reached the Wood long since. I do not understand. But we must go on.”

  We scrambled out of the gully and looked downward. We had a vista of Hell.

  It looked l
ike Hell on Earth. Nothing grew. We had to shout above a continual racket. In the distance rectangular shadows showed through the gloomy half-light and thick smog. Buildings? Factories?

  I said, “Progress has caught up with your woods, Benito.”

  A clattering sounded nearby, within a cloud of roiling smoke. A woman ran out of the smoke, terror on her face, hair streaming behind her. She wore a torn evening gown with diamond brooch and earrings, high-heeled shoes with jeweled ornaments. She ran holding the skirt high.

  Billy shouted and tried to stop her. She dodged him and ran on. The clattering grew louder, and a bulldozer roared out of the smoke. A man ran just ahead of the blade. The ’dozer trailed smoke, and it was gaining on the fugitive. There was no driver.

  Billy was in the bottom of the gully, curled up, his head wrapped in his arms. When the monster was past I went down to Billy. He was muttering to himself, and when I touched him he twitched galvanically. He leapt to his feet in fighting stance.

  “I was never afraid of no man that ever lived,” he said. “But I was scared of that. What was it?”

  “Bulldozer. For moving dirt.”

  Billy stared into the smog, his face wondering. “You could tear down whole mountains with things like that.”

  “We did,” Corbett said. “There’s more than one way to be a violent waster.”

  Billy frowned. “How’s that?”

  “Pollution. This must be the place for people who ruin the environment.” Corbett’s face showed his disgust. “They did this to the Earth.”

  “But who gets chased by them things?”

  “Real-estate developers, I guess. Housing-tract speculators. We shouldn’t have too much trouble here.” Corbett looked at us. “Or do we?”

  I’d always been a conservationist myself. If Big Juju’s poetic justice ran true to form, I’d be safe enough.

  Or would I? Had I fallen by accident? I’d certainly put myself on that window ledge. If a bulldozer buried me here, would I become a tree?

  “Let’s go,” said Billy. “This place gives me the willies.”

  We moved off by tacit consent.

  “Where are we going, anyway?” Billy asked.