Hell's Maw (36 page)

“And if Ereshkigal was an Annunaki,” Shizuka pointed out, “then what might such a hypnotic suggestion entail?”

“Good point,” Brigid mused. “They fooled the whole world into believing that they were gods once—a kind of mass hypnosis by consensus. So I guess anything is within the realms of possibility.”

“Anything,” Grant repeated dourly.

Shizuka rubbed him gently across the shoulders. “And we'll be ready for it,” she assured him. “Ready for anything.”

* * *

Z
ARAGOZA HAD SURVIVED
. There were pockets of resistance, people who were not susceptible to the mathematical spell that commanded men's bodies to destroy themselves. Some had been rounded up and killed by the followers of Ereshkigal, but many had hidden, barricading themselves inside the great monuments of the city—the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar cathedral and the Aljafería Palace—old structures that had survived world wars.

The revived dead lost purpose when the church bells stopped ringing, and after a few hours without sustenance they simply ceased to function, unable to draw any more energy from their rotting bodies to power tired limbs. In total, the city lost an estimated fifteen hundred people in a single hour, but given the circumstances it remained a triumph.

The Pretors had been decimated, however, and the strictures of law and order took a backseat to common sense and man's infinite capacity to share and to help his fellow man, to survive. The dark days of the Deathlands were long behind them, but people still remembered the lessons that dark period of history had taught them—that survival at any cost was not really survival at all.

Ereshkigal's temple was left untouched, for there was little that the Cerberus warriors could do without ground explosives or an air strike other than to warn people away. Cáscara's body burned itself out within the pool of collected blood, fizzling there like potassium in water for a very long time until it had simply disintegrated to nothing.

Ereshkigal's two retainers—or Terror Priests as they were known—Namtar and Tsanti—were rounded up by
a Cerberus pickup squad led by Domi three hours after Kane's team had exited the temple. She found them still inside the temple, walking in aimless circles as they waited for instructions from their dead mistress. Domi's squad—CAT Beta—carefully captured them and brought them back to the Cerberus redoubt for incarceration, where they could be questioned and studied.

* * *

B
ACK AT
C
ERBERUS
, once everyone had had a chance to recover, the field team sat down to consider what had happened in Spain. Kane's head was bandaged where he had been struck with the staff, and Brigid's wounded ankle had been properly dressed, but everyone was getting back to normal. Shizuka joined the group known as CAT Alpha on the plain outside the redoubt's massive, rollback doors, accompanying Grant at this impromptu meeting spot as the sun rose over the valleys of the Bitterroots.

“Some vacation, huh?” Grant said as Kane, Brigid and Domi filed out from the dark recesses of the redoubt and onto the sandy plateau.

“One to remember,” Shizuka replied pragmatically.

“Think it's one I'd prefer to forget,” Grant said. He looked up as Brigid approached, catching the woman's emerald eyes. She was limping from her twisted ankle, but she looked less drawn. Painkillers working miracles, Grant guessed. “You figure out anything yet?” he asked.

Brigid shook her head. “Nothing much, just assumptions and guesswork really,” she admitted. “That chant she was reciting—I translated it. It translates as something like this.

Circle around the body,

Be still to move no more.

Turn life away,

Turn breath away.

Embrace Hell's gaping maw.”

“Embrace Hell's gaping maw,” Kane repeated with disgust. “Cheery kind of poetry, huh?”

“I think it's a kind of instruction,” Brigid said. “I spoke with Reba, while she was bandaging my foot—” Reba DeFore was the staff physician for the Cerberus redoubt “—and she agrees it's possible to use some kind of hypnotic suggestion to make people take their own lives.”

“But why didn't it affect us when we heard it?” Shizuka wondered.

Brigid shook her head. “I…don't know,” she admitted.

“Spanish,” Kane said as he found a jutting rock on which to sit. “I don't speak it, nor does Grant. Shizuka?”

“No,” Shizuka confirmed.

“See, we rely on our Commtacts to translate in these situations,” Kane reminded everyone, “but—I never really thought about it until now—they wouldn't properly translate those words that Ereshkigal chanted. Like they were, I dunno, unable to affect to the translation software.”

Brigid shook her head with uncertainty. “That's all well and good, but I can speak Spanish, Kane,” she said. “So I could understand the words. I've just proven that.”

Kane looked up at her thoughtfully. “Is translation the same as native tongue?” he asked.

A smile slowly crept across Brigid's face. “No, I guess there are differences,” she admitted. “The act of translation involves an additional step in the brain, albeit a very swift one for someone fluent in a second language.”

“But there is a step,” Kane said, holding his hands out before him and widening the gap between them as if to demonstrate, “a jump that needs to be crossed mentally.”

“I guess,” Brigid agreed reluctantly. She hated it when Kane out-thought her.

Domi looked up from where she sat cross-legged, sharpening her knife, a broad smile appearing on her face. “Brigid, I think Kane just out-logicked you,” she said.

“Maybe,” Brigid said with a tight smile. “Hypnotic suggestion, if that's what it was, can also affect different people in different ways. Early reports from the mop-up crew suggest that not everyone in Zaragoza was affected.”

“This went deeper, though,” Grant said. “From what I saw, the bodies of those affected were just kind of turning on them. Some of them, anyhow.”

“Maybe we'll never know,” Shizuka admitted.

“One thing we do know,” Kane reminded everyone, “is that the Annunaki
were
dead. Let's not forget that. So where did Ereshkigal come from?”

“I guess Hell's maw opened wide and eschewed her,” Brigid proposed, “but maybe it didn't do so by itself.”

The allies were solemn then as they considered Brigid's words. For a moment the atmosphere seemed very, very grim.

Shizuka stood after a moment, turning to face Grant. “You promised me dancing on our vacation, Grant-san,” Shizuka reminded him.

“Yeah,” Grant agreed. “I guess I did at that.”

Shizuka stood with hands on hips, challenging him. “Well?”

From across the plateau, Domi clapped her hands and shouted encouragement, “Dance!”

Kane and Brigid took up the rhythm, clapping in time with Domi in a kind of fast polka.

“None of you are going to sing, right?” Grant checked. Then, reluctantly, he stood before Shizuka and executed a low, formal bow, taking her hand. Then, while Domi, Kane and Brigid clapped out a rhythm, he and Shizuka danced on the plateau outside the redoubt, beneath the rising sun of the new day. Whatever was out there could wait, at least until the dance was over.

Somewhere in the overgrown wilderness of Louisiana, in the
djévo
located underground within an abandoned military redoubt, Papa Hurbon was reading through the Zaragoza report. He read it twice before looking up at his comely companion. It had not been satisfactory. Over a thousand had died, yes, but the dragon's tooth seed had failed to take root, or to branch.

Hurbon frowned regretfully as he handed the report back to Nathalie so that she could file it for him. She had created the report from ground observation, two days after the occurrence itself.

“Much to consider here, Nathalie,” Papa Hurbon said as he handed the report over.

“It did not go as planned, my beacon, my guide,” Nathalie lamented.

“No,” Hurbon agreed. “But these are early days, the first salvos of an advance. Considered purely as a proof-of-concept test, this worked admirably.”

Nathalie's brow furrowed in confusion. “Ereshkigal died before she could complete her plan,” she said.

“The seed planted, new life emerged,” Hurbon corrected her.

Nathalie looked uncertainly at Papa Hurbon where he sat amid his totems in the imperfectly mirrored room beneath the earth. Hurbon glanced up, saw her expression
and smiled his broad, toothy smile, reminded of an ancient refrain.

“A man who slits throats has time on his hands,” Hurbon assured her.

* * * * *

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ISBN-13: 9781460381250

Hell's Maw

Copyright © 2015 by Worldwide Library

Special thanks to Rik Hoskin for his contribution to this work.

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereinafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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First edition May 2015

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