I put down the kickstand and go around the front of the bike to cut down the captain. It only takes a second to see why he stopped yelling. His lips are frozen shut. I give him a little pop in the mouth. Not to hurt him. Just to break up the ice. And to hurt him a little. Remind him whose game this is. I take off his blindfold and he looks around in wonder.
“We’re here,” he says.
“Looks like it. Here’s what’s going to happen next. You’re a captain. We’re going inside and you’re going to do the meanest, most hard-ass officer impression of your life. Order people around. Make them salute and kiss your ass. Then tell them you want to see the new arrivals.”
He shivers in his thin city coat. So do I. I put up my hoodie.
The captain shakes his head.
“What if it doesn’t work? Are you going to kill me?”
“Why wouldn’t it work?”
“They might be in a different regiment. They might not take my orders. Sometimes soldiers stationed this far out for too long can go a little wild.”
“Do your best,” I say, and whisper the hoodoo that resets the glamour on my face. The captain shakes his head.
“This will never work.”
“Maybe not, but isn’t it more fun than getting drunk all on your lonesome?”
“No.”
“You’re welcome. Now go up there and be an asshole, Captain Bligh.”
He moves so fast for the door to the Quonset hut I have to trot to keep up. He bursts inside with all the subtlety of a mammoth on roller skates.
Six guards stare at us. One is standing by an old wood-burning oven and the others are scattered around several tables. There used to be more guards here. The ones that remain don’t like one another much. All good information to have.
The moment we get inside and the captain gets warm air into his lungs, he starts looking like an officer. He stands up straight, giving the scruffy guards the hairy eyeball. The bad news is that they give it right back. No one gets up when they see him. No one salutes. The Hellion by the oven nods and pours something thick and sludgy from a pot into a coffee cup.
He says, “Well, what did you do to get this shit duty?”
The captain doesn’t answer for a few seconds.
“I don’t believe I heard you say ‘sir’ at the end of that sentence, did I, soldier?” he says.
The soldier at the oven seems genuinely shocked.
“I guess not. Sorry. Sir.”
“Quiet,” says the captain. “I’m not here to correct your grammar or manners. This is an inspection. I want one of you to escort me to the new arrivals.”
A scrawny recruit with a crooked nose sitting at a table by himself says, “Who’s your friend?”
“Again, I didn’t hear ‘sir’ at the end of the sentence when addressing me.”
Crooked Nose sits up straighter but not because he’s obeying the rules. It’s sheer tension. This is how barroom brawls start.
“Who the fuck is that with you, sir? He doesn’t look like any officer I’ve seen. Sir.”
“Don’t worry about him. I’m the one who can assign you to even worse duty than this.”
“Worse than this?” says the guy by the oven.
“Do you enjoy the smell of rotten and congealed blood, soldier? Would you like to spend a few years patrolling the Styx?”
Crooked Nose raises his hand like he’s in first grade. He’s having a good time with us.
“Excuse me, sir. What general do you serve under?”
“Are you interrogating me, soldier?”
“It’s a simple question, sir. Under whose authority are you here? Who the fuck would send an officer out here to the middle of nowhere in dress shoes and no heavy coat? Sir.”
I can see where this is going. I lean in and whisper to the captain.
“Keep them talking,” I say, and go outside.
I find a good shadow behind the closer of the snowcats and slip back inside.
I come out by the stove, so I slit that Hellion’s throat before he can throw the hot cup of sludge on the captain. Let his body fall. Then step back into the same shadow. Outside, I can hear shouting over the sound of the wind. I go back in through another shadow and arrive with the SIG in my hand. I put bullets into the heads of the two guards closest to the captain. Crooked Nose stands and watches me disappear.
This time when I come in, I do it under the table where he was sitting. I spring up from underneath, using the table as a battering ram and cracking his head against the wall. One of the other two guards gets off a lucky shot and knocks the SIG from my hand. I grab Candy’s knife and throw it, hitting him square in the left eye. He falls into the last guard still on his feet. The stunned guard steps back, letting the dead one slide to the floor. I pick up the SIG and aim it at him. Retrieve the knife from his dead friend’s eye and wipe the black muck off on the soldier’s leg. When I look around for the captain, I notice the door is open and he’s gone, daddy, gone. Have fun trotting home for days through a blizzard.
I put my gun to the soldier’s head.
“Guess it’s just you and me, sweetheart. That okay with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not an officer, so don’t sir me. But you are going to obey that other officer’s order, aren’t you?”
His eyes scan the room, lingering on his dead and dying pals.
“Sure. Whatever you want. The new arrivals are easy to find.”
He takes a set of keys from the wall and picks up a heavy coat. He points to the soldier I got in the eye.
“It’s cold outside. You might want a coat.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just go.”
Twenty yards down a road rutted with snowcat tread marks there are heavy iron double gates. Like something you might see outside of an asylum in an old B movie. Icicles hang from the fence, as thick as a man’s leg and twice as long. The old lock on the gate is as big as a pumpkin. The guard has to bang it against the metal a few times to break the ice off before he can insert the key.
“The new ones always stay by the gate. High up here on the hill. The wind isn’t as bad in the valley, but they always stay up here at first. Some ice over and never make it down.”
I see what he means. Down in the valley, millions of dots mill around. Damned souls. Some huddle together in the waste like penguins in a snowstorm, guarding their brood. Down the nearby hillside are the frozen souls of the ones who never made it as far as the valley floor. Among those pathetic forms are men and women, some in suits, some in jeans and T-shirts, others in rags or stark naked, standing or sitting on the hill. The wind picks up. The temperature drops and it’s hard to see anything. I’m sorry now that I didn’t take the dead soldier’s coat.
“Traven. Father Traven,” I shout. But the wind is loud enough that I’m not sure how far my voice carries.
I grab the guard.
“You shout too. Go that way and shout. The soul’s name is ‘Traven.’ ”
The soldier wanders off looking as lost as the damned and yelling, “Raven. Raven.”
I get out the SIG and fire a couple of shots.
“Traven. Father Traven. Up here.”
The wind keeps blowing. Visibility is shit. If Traven was standing right in front of me in a prom dress, I don’t know if I’d notice him.
A figure comes trudging up the hill. It’s tall and haggard, with its coat wrapped tight around it. I start down toward it. His face is still pale and blotched with the same broken blood vessels from when he died.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he yells.
I push down the hoodie and kill the glamour. His eyes narrow.
“Stark? Is that you?”
He touches my shoulders, my face, still trying to figure out if I’m real.
“Ready to get out of here, Father?”
“To where?”
Oh. Right.
“I hadn’t really thought that part through. Why don’t we get out of the wind and we’ll figure it out.”
“I’d like that.”
We start up the hill. Stupid me. I’m so happy to see Traven that I forgot about the guard. He comes charging out of the blizzard with a knife in his hand. Slashes my left arm, my Kissi arm, which means he only manages to ruin yet another one of my coats. I take out the SIG and shoot him in the legs. That gets the attention of all the mobile souls on the hillside. They look around at us. Some start up the hill. When I take Traven out the gates, I leave them open. The guard crawls after us. He’s yelling something but I can’t hear him over the sound of the wind. Besides, he’s surrounded by freezing, damned souls. I don’t think he’ll be shouting much longer. I throw the keys into a snowdrift.
I take Traven into the Quonset hut. He stops for a minute by the door when he sees the dead guards.
“All this death just to save me? Why?”
“Because I’m Sandman Slim. A monster and damned and those are the kind of choices I make.”
Traven goes to the oven and warms himself.
“I pulled you out of that hole because I like you, but I don’t want your gratitude. I did it because sending you here was as much a sin as anything you ever swallowed on earth. And saving you is a message to the people who make the rules.”
“And what is that message?”
“Don’t be such assholes.”
That makes him laugh a little. It’s good to see his face in anything but a frown or lined in deep thought. This isn’t a guy who’s had a lot of fun in his life. I think this last month with Brigitte might have been his best days. I suppose there are worse times to die. But it was still too soon for him.
I take a coat from the soldier I stabbed and wrap it around Traven.
“There’s only one place I can take you right now. The Room of Thirteen Doors. No one can touch you there. That includes Lucifer and God. I’ll figure out what to do after you’re safe.”
“Can I see Brigitte?”
“No.” It’s a hard thing to say. “You’re dead and you’re not coming back. Let her grieve and deal with it.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t sweat it, Father. It takes a while to figure out the rules of being dead.”
“You died and came back to life.”
“I’m not human.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Thanks.”
I look out the window. The wind has died down.
“Listen. When I get you in the Room, I’ll bring you some of your books. Maybe pens and paper, if you want. Not regular stuff. Like necromantic school supplies. Stuff to occupy yourself until I figure out the next move. I already put the 8 Ball there. Think of it this way. You’re not some poor schmuck stuck in a room. You’re what’s-his-name. The knight who guarded the Holy Grail.”
“Arthur was supposed to have guarded it in some legends. The descendants of Joseph of Arimathea in others. There’s the story of Parsifal. Also stories about the Templars.”
“Damn. You do know some trivia. No. I mean the three knights who guarded it.”
Traven looks at me.
“I think you might be thinking of a movie.”
“Probably.”
Warmer now, he puts the guard’s coat on over his jacket.
“Thank you. I don’t know what else to say.”
“I’m sorry I dragged you into Kill City.”
“I’m not. I’ve looked into God’s face and I’ve tasted the worst of his wrath. After that, I suppose I’m prepared for a room, a grail, or whatever else might come.”
“Stay here and keep warm. I’m going to check on that hellhound outside. And maybe something else.”
I take a gun from one of the dead soldiers and give it to Traven.
“If anyone but me comes through the door, don’t ask questions. Shoot. You’re in Hell, Father. Don’t worry that you might shoot any schoolmarms.”
“I’ll think about it,” he says, and puts the gun in his pocket.
Silly me. He’ll never use it. He’s still a priest. Sentimental.
I go out and worry about him for the hour I’m gone.
WHEN I GET back, Traven, the crazy bastard, has practically opened a soup kitchen in the Quonset hut. A hundred damned souls who’ve wandered up from the valley huddle inside trying to work the feeling back into their dead limbs.
“Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?”
“Old habits die hard,” says Traven. “Wait. I think I just made a joke. My first joke as a dead man.”
“Congratulations. I’ll send you roses and a rubber chicken. It’s time to go.”
I pull him outside. As we go, he gives his heavy coat to a woman in rags afraid to go into the warm building. She stares at him and kisses his hand.
“Move it, Gandhi.”
He gives her a smile and comes over to me.
“Can’t we take some of them back with us? How big is the Room?”
“Sure, Father. Which of them gets rescued and who has to stay in Hell forever? You choose.”
“I see the dilemma.”
“Lucifer, the first Lucifer, always told me my problem was that I didn’t think big. Well, I’m trying to now. And stashing a few souls in the pantry isn’t the way to do it.”
“I trust you.”
“That makes one of us.”
I strap the dead hellhound to the front of the bike and put Father Traven on the back.
“This won’t be a long trip, but it might be a little weird. You can close your eyes if you want to.”