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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: City Infernal
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Cassie quickly turned away, but then her eyes fell on some bulky object beneath the seat. “What-what’s that?”
Xeke pulled it out. It looked like a travel bag.
“Somebody forgot their luggage?” Cassie asked.
“They sure did,” Xeke said when he opened it. Cassie almost passed out when she saw what was inside.
The case was full of severed human hands and feet.
Xeke and Via couldn’t help but chuckle at Cassie’s abhorrence. “Like we told you,” Via informed. “You’ll get used to the way things work around here.” Xeke opened the window for a moment, threw the travel bag out. “Give the Dirt-Chucks something to snack on.”
A tapping sounded at their cabin window, then the door slid open. “Tickets, please,” came a voice. A thin elderly man stood before then, dressed appropriately in uniform and cap, a ticket-puncher hanging off his belt.
“We don’t have any tickets,” Xeke told him.
The ticket-taker’s face remained deadpan. “Then it’s a Judas Note each.”
Xeke crossed his arms. “We don’t have any cash, either.”
“Then I’m afraid I’ll have to call a Golem and have you all thrown off the train,” the man informed them.
“Hold up, pops. Let me show you what we do have.” He opened the paper bag with the fish bones in it, and he broke off one single bone from a spine. The bone glowed furiously here, bright as an electric arc. Xeke passed it to the ticket-taker. “That should cover it, huh, pappy?”
“I ... should say so.” The man examined the tiny bone, duly impressed. “Why, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Real World bone of such quality. You must know a very competent Ossifist.”
“I got it from Santa Claus,” Xeke said. “And you and I both know that that bone’s worth more than you make in a hundred years working on this shit-wagon. So how about punching us up some indefinite rail-passes and beating feet?”
“Yes. Of course.” The man quickly pocketed the bone, then handed Xeke four tickets with holes punched next to a line that read NO EXPIRATION.
“Thank you for traveling with us,” the old man said. “Have a good day in Hell.”
“You too, you old stick,” Xeke returned when the man had left.
But Cassie just sat there, tremoring. The ticket-taker had appeared perfectly normal—save for one detail. When he’d handed Xeke the tickets, Cassie saw that his hands were long, three-fingered claws.
“Surgical victim,” Via explained to Cassie’s obvious dismay. “He must’ve gotten pinched by the Office of Transfiguration. Lucifer’s Teratologists are always experimenting on people. Skin grafts, transplants and implants—some really gross stuff. Lately they’ve been taking in humans and giving them transfusions with demon blood.”
Cassie seemed to be choking down the information. “But would that—wouldn’t that kill them?”
“Nope,” Xeke asserted. “But it sure as hell screws them up. Remember, a human can’t really die here. Only when the Spirit Body is completely destroyed does the Soul pass to a lower being.”
“If somebody cuts your head off,” Via gave an example, “the head continues to live and think and talk until it’s eaten by vermin or picked up by a Pulper Detail.”
But even before Cassie could reckon what a “Pulper Detail” might be, a sudden scream shot out from somewhere on the car. Her eyes bugged again. “What-what was that?”
“Uhhhhhh ... a scream?” Xeke mocked.
The screamed resounded, higher this time. Cassie ground her teeth at the sound.
It was clearly a shriek of agony.
She stood up, looked through into the next cabin, then sat back down, shuddering. “My God! There’s a pregnant woman in that cabin! She looks like she’s about to give birth!”
Via took a peek. “Yeah? So?”
Cassie couldn’t believe the response. “So? Is that all you can say? So?”
Now Xeke took a look. “Wow. That ain’t no bun in the oven—that’s a whole friggin’ bakery. Looks like she’s gonna pop any second now.” Then he merely sat back down.
“I do not
believe
you!” Cassie exclaimed. “That poor girl’s in labor! Aren’t you going to help her?”
“Uhhhhhhh, how about ... no?” Xeke replied.
Another scream ripped through the air. “Well damn it!” Cassie rebelled. “If you won’t help her, I will!” She jumped up, burst into the next cabin. The lank-haired woman lay spread-eagled on the floor, her face stamped with pain. Cassie had little idea what to do to help; she knelt down, took the woman’s hand and tried to comfort her. “Don’t worry, everything’ll be all right,” she blathered. “Take deep breaths. Try to push....”
In the background she heard Via say, “Xeke, she doesn’t know. Go get her.”
“She’s gotta learn sometime,” Xeke replied. “This is the best way.”
Hush came into the cabin, tapped Cassie on the shoulder. She looked sad, motioning with her hand for Cassie to come back.
“I can’t just leave her!” Cassie insisted.
Hush scribbled something quickly on a notepad, showed it to Cassie. The note read:
there’s nothing you can do
“She needs help!”
Hush moped away, then—
Yet another scream exploded from the woman’s throat. Her milk-heavy breasts shuddered as she heaved out the scream. Cassie pulled up the threadbare dress, saw that the vagina had already dilated.
The baby’s head was emerging.
“Push! Push!” Cassie implored.
Then Cassie ripped out a scream of her own.
The little head that emerged was no baby’s—at least not a
human
baby’s. It was gray and squashed, with nubs at the forehead like precursory horns. When the new-born mouth opened, Cassie saw that it was full of fangs. Blood-red eyes looked right at her.
Then the infant began to bark.
Cassie’s own screams followed her back into their cabin. Seeing the head had been more than enough—when the rest came out, she definitely didn’t want to be there.
“It wasn’t a baby, Cassie,” Via told her.
Then, Xeke:
“Humans
can’t reproduce here; nothing human can ever be born in Hell. What you saw in there was just a hybrid.”
“She probably got raped by a Gargoyle or a City-Imp.”
“The thing in that cabin doesn’t have a soul,” Xeke finished, as if that made it all okay.
Next came the squalling, a hot burst of infantile need, but soon the squalls seemed to taper off into a fastidious wet clicking sound—like an animal eating sloppily at a trough.
“First it’ll suck all the blood out of the umbilical cord,” Via informed, “then it’ll eat the afterbirth.”
“And then,” Xeke furthered, “it’ll start to nurse—”
Cassie bolted, threw open the cabin window, and began vomiting.
Xeke raised a brow toward Via. “Looks like this is gonna be a long ride....”
PART TWO
THE MEPHISTOPOLIS
Chapter Seven
(I)
Cassie’s revulsion overpowered her, but even in spite of it, she could not suppress periodic glances out the window. Past the wastelands, she soon saw strange acres of farmland where slaves cultivated noxious crops; and ranches pocked with what could only be slaughterhouses processing Hell-born livestock that were better left undescribed. The train clattered over only one bridge—a high suspension bridge—which spanned a mile-wide river the color of bilge.
“Styx,” Via told her. “It surrounds the city,” and then Xeke charmingly added, “All the city’s run-off, waste, garbage, and sewage empty into it. Waste is our biggest resource, even bigger than sulphur.”
The visions thinned Cassie’s breath. Watercraft of manifold sizes—from canoes to barges—roamed along the river’s surface of steaming muck. Fishermen hauled in nets teeming with hideous creatures that would later find their way to market; crab traps were hoisted aboard, yet the crustaceous things they contained could hardly be called crabs. Body parts, innards, and various human and not-so-human organs floated atop the unspeakable river, and these too were harvested with zeal.
The next sight jolted Cassie: a fanged serpent at least a hundred feet long serenely rose to the surface and swallowed a dinghy whole. Moments later, Cassie’s guts clenched as she glimpsed another serpent prowling just below the watertop—only this one was at least a
thousand
feet long.
“She’s not holding up very well,” Via observed.
Xeke concurred. “You can get off at Pogrom Park; it’s the first stop on the line. You won’t have to wait very long before the next train. It’ll take you back to the station, and you can go home.”
“Go back to my house alone?” Cassie objected.
“Hush’ll take you. But Via and
I have
to get into the city. We have to get food. We haven’t eaten in a while.”
“I’ve got food at my house,” Cassie blurted. “I’ll give you all you want.”
“We can only eat the food in
this
world, Cassie,” Via explained.
I have to go back,
Cassie realized. Her nauseousness was only multiplying; she couldn’t take much more. Then she nearly vomited again when she inadvertently took another glance out the window, and saw swollen corpses hanging from the bridge’s suspension cables. Liquefied rot ran off of them in thick dribbles, yet the corpses still moved with life.
Oh, Jesus, yes! I’ve got to go back!
But then—
Then I’ll never stand a chance of finding Lissa....
The consideration turned over in her mind. “I don’t want to go back,” she eventually roused her courage and told them. “I want to go to the city.”
“That’s a good girl,” Xeke said. “And you know what? I’ve got a
great
idea.”
Cassie didn’t have time to ask what it was before she heard the conductor’s voice: “Approaching city limits. First stop Pogrom Park, walking distance to the J. P. Kennedy Ghettoblock, the Bathym Memorial, and our own beautiful Riverwalk. Connections to the City Center Nexus, Panzuzu Avenue, Athanor Hill, and the brand-new Baalzephon Mall for all your shopping needs.”
“This is us,” Xeke said.
Cassie squeezed Hush’s hand as she forced herself to look on. They were fast approaching the Mephistopolis now, the city’s northernmost outskirt: smoke-misted skyscrapers along an endless straight line. In between the buildings, Cassie could see an urban labyrinth that might as well have existed ad infinitum.
When the train chugged to a halt, Cassie kept her head bowed as they left the car; she didn’t dare look into the cabin across from them where the woman had just given birth.
Hearing the suckling sounds was enough.
“Ah, I love that great fresh air,” Xeke said when they stepped off the train.
“To be honest,” Via commented, “I really think New-ark was worse.”
The air, indeed, stank. Cassie could swear she felt soot clinging to her sweat and adhering to the inside of her nostrils. However, the dense scarlet sky aside, her first look around once they’d exited the train proved unremarkable—or, at the very least, not as horrid as she’d expected. When they got off the platform, she was looking at something like a public piazza. It had park benches, trees, open stretches of grass, and sidewalks branching out. A large statue, surrounded by a fountain, stood at the piazza’s center. Pedestrians milled about.
The scene, in other words, seemed normal of any large city. But then Cassie took a harder look.
The trees were twisted, deformed; faces seemed imprinted in the pestiferous bark. All of the grass as well as the foliage in the trees was not the expected green but instead sickly off-yellow. Many of the “pedestrians” milling about displayed an array of disfigurements, emaciation, evidence of incalculable destitution; and some weren’t even human. Some were Trolls, some were demons or bizarre hybrids. The “normal” fountain gushed blood, and the statue standing above it was the likeness of Josef Stalin, who’d starved millions of his own people to death because they were Jews.
When Cassie looked down, she saw the “normal” sidewalk, the concrete of which was flecked with bone fragments and teeth.
“Welcome to the Mephistopolis,” Xeke said.
Cassie was at least grateful for her nausea’s distraction. It kept her from concentrating on the details of this new environ. Hush led her along—a petite tour guide in black—behind Via and Xeke. When they passed a row of derelicts begging for money, Xeke joked, “Did we get off in Seattle by mistake?” but the derelicts, sitting in their own rot, were clawed, homed
things
with amputated legs, dressed in infested rags. From one another they plucked off bugs nesting in the rags, and ate them.
Smoky stenches wafted off the water as they toured the elaborately leveled Riverwalk. It was high, unrailed, and dangerously narrow.

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