Aloha from Hell

“It won’t work, Jack. Look at our histories. We’re lone wolves. We don’t work with partners. When we get to town we go our separate ways. I’ll be grateful I’m there and you’ll be grateful you’re not still a Hellion’s paperweight.”

A steam vent explodes nearby. The blast of heat and vapor knocks me back. I think I hear a rumbling behind us. There might be a truck coming or it might just be the sound of the vent. I push Jack and we break into a trot.

Jack says, “May I see your knife? I have a great fondness for knives.”

“No.”gn=201D;

I look back at our tracks in the dust. You could see them from space. Maybe Jack wants us to get caught. We need to get off this street. I take his arm and push him onto a side street that’s clean of dust. The vent spews again and the street moves below us. A palm tree falls and crushes a dusty pickup truck. Jack pulls me back in the other direction.

We run to the street we’d been on before. The air is full of dust and we can’t see where we’re going, but we run anyway. If there are any sinkholes or faults in front of us, we’re fucked. We can barely see each other. But the tremors and the noise die down after a minute and the street goes back to being solid.

Jack looks at me.

“I assume you won’t stray from the path again.”

“You’re the boss, Jack.”

“Well put.”

WE’RE HEADING FOR what looks like low hills, but as we get closer, it’s really an area where the streets have buckled wildly, like black icebergs jutting up from the street. Eleusis is on the other side.

We turned off the dusty street twenty minutes earlier. Most of the signs in this neighborhood are in Spanish, but the residents are the same mix of dazed Hellions and lost souls we saw in Hollywood. They sit in cars and wander between strip malls like sleepwalkers.

Where the hell are you, Alice? What are you doing right now, Candy? I’d rather be having the worst time possible with either of you than having the best with my knife-happy tour guide. I know I told Candy to take the blood cure from Allegra, but I wouldn’t mind letting her show Jack here what a Jade looks like. Try to hurt this woman, you little shit.

Every couple of minutes a lone man runs across the street. He’s easy to spot when everyone else is going half speed. When he’s settled somewhere he whistles an all clear. Soon a group of eight or ten Hellions comes up the same way. A mix of men and women, they whoop it up, running into stores, busting the places up, and coming out again with stolen wine and food. The ones with working guns take potshots at cars and store windows.

Jack says, “Raiders.”

He starts running for the back of a half-burned building off to our right. I follow. When he can’t get the rear door open, I push him out of the way, jam the black blade into the door frame, and push. Metal pops and wood splinters. I shove Jack inside and we head to the front of the place. The door is open a crack, giving us a good view of the street.

The Hellions stroll by like the street is bought and paid for. Some are still in their uniforms. Others only kept half of their uniforms and replaced the jackets or pants with formal wear or stolen motocross gear.

“Where are the Raiders from?”

“As the war with Heaven grows closer, there are more and more deserters from the armies. They raid the provinces and live on anything they can find. I once drove the master on a mission to arrest a group hiding in Eleusis. That’s why I know where it is.”

The raiders stop in front of the building we’re hiding in. Suddenly I wish I’d brought a shotgun or two. But they’re not looking at us. They’re looking back down the street. When they get a look at what’s coming, they sprint, run, and disappear over the fence behind a convenience store.

Moving lights sweep the street. The posse has grown to several vehicles. How did they get ahead of us? They must know where we’re going.

There are about twenty Hellions on tricked-out ATVs and Unimogs. They have hot-rod flames on the sides and animal skulls mounted on the roofs and hoods. Their spotlights are LAPD issue. When they hit you with one from a helicopter, it’s instant daylight and you better stop and look happy about it. Jack and I duck behind the door as the light moves over the front of the building.

A ticking, whirring sound follows the posse. I don’t need Jack to tell me what that is. A pack of hellhounds. There wasn’t much in Hell that gave me the creeps as much as the metal hounds. Maybe my subconscious really is shaping the place. The hounds are the only things I’ve seen that look just as hard and awful as they do in regular Hell.

The hounds move in packs. They’re clockwork war dogs bigger than a dire wolf and are run by a brain suspended in a glass globe where their heads should be. A hellhound is smart and dangerous on its own. In packs, they’re like a herd of velociraptors driving tanks. The best way to fight them is to run away and hope they die of old age.

The mechanical hounds lope behind the noisy trucks, their gears ticking quietly in the dark.