Inferno (15 page)

I called across the low hood to Benito. “Who are they?”

Benito was busy tearing burning gunk out of his hair. “They sinned against Nature,” he yelled back.

“What does that mean?”

“Unnatural love. Man for man, woman for woman—”

Man for sheep, woman for vibrator . . . poor bastards. I wondered about the gay men who’d owned the house next door to mine. Quiet neighbors, friendly middle-aged people like any married couple without children. Were they here?

I turned my head and hunched up so that the fireflakes hit the side of my face instead of the front. I couldn’t slap fast enough. The windshield gave Billy some protection now that we were moving.

The fire burned holes in my skin.
You’ll heal, Carpentier. You’ll heal, if we ever get out of here
.

But what about them?
They danced, they slapped at themselves; they ran in circles; they screamed at us to stop and cursed us when we didn’t, with an insane jealousy that I understood perfectly. They’d be here forever.

This, just for being queer? But it was no surprise to me that God’s justice and mine didn’t agree. I thought about my neighbors and shuddered.
Credo in un Dio crudel . . .

The industrial section of Hell was only a yellow tinge to the sky behind us. Ahead was nothing but more desert. We must be about halfway across, I thought. Mirages floated across the view, slight variations in the yellow background. They had to be mirages, didn’t they? One looked like an aquarium I’d visited in childhood. One looked like a Dairy Queen.

Suddenly the car surged forward with the bit in its teeth.

Corbett froze in panic. The motor screamed in inhuman fury as the car accelerated. In a second we’d be moving too fast to stop. I tucked my head in my arms and rolled off the fender.

Look, I wasn’t running out on my buddies. The car was going to crash, and they’d have a better chance if one of us could move, right? It was what I was thinking, anyway.

The motor choked off while I was still in the air.

I hit rolling. I came up screaming and dancing. The other souls hadn’t been dancing for joy either. The pain was as bad as the boiling blood.

The car rolled to a stop, and I ran for it, yelling and swearing at the fireflakes.

Suddenly a girl was running alongside me. She’d have been pretty once. Now her hair was raggedly scorched, and her body was covered with burns. “Can you take me out of here?” She screamed.

“We’ll be lucky to get out ourselves. There’s no room!” I kept running until I reached the car.

The girl stayed right with me. “Please, I’ll do anything if you’ll take me out of here.
Anything
.”

“That’s nice,” Corbett told her. To me he said, “We’re in big trouble. The gas pedal just damned well floored itself. I had to turn off the ignition.”

“Couldn’t you—”

“Couldn’t I what? Pull the pedal up with my toes? Allen, this car is haunted. It hates us.”

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked. She got no answer.

It was hard to think with the fire settling on me. I danced around the car, shouting. “We’d better think of something. In a minute or two we’ll be under a pyramid of people.” The damned were running toward us from all directions.

“Raise the bonnet,” Benito commanded. “Corbett, see to Billy.”

I got the hood up. We looked inside, and Benito said, “Now, Corbett, move the accelerator.”

Something wiggled behind the engine.

“Allen, you saw? That moves the petrol feed. You must control it with your fingers.”

It was a hell of an awkward position, sprawled across the fender with my head and hands under the hood. The motor was as hot as the sand. I couldn’t avoid touching it. But I pulled at the widget and cried, “Okay! I got it! Corbett, go! Go like a bat!” The crowd was very near, and they couldn’t
all
hang on. Benito motioned to the girl, and she took the fender in front of me.

The car roared and surged into a converging circle. Most of them dodged for their lives. One went under the wheels. Another, a big athletic type with long black hair halfway down his back and a scraggly beard, got the edge of the right door and swung up on the trunk lid. A small-boned blond man had come with him. “Frank!” the companion called. “Frank! Don’t leave me!”

“Sorry, Gene. Nothing I can do. No room for both of us.”

“Frank!” The car gunned ahead as Corbett got it under control again. A thin voice followed us. “Frank! I went to Hell for you . . .”

Frank had managed to crawl up to get an arm around Corbett’s neck. He squeezed. “All right, buddy, turn this thing around! We’re going to Havana!”

“Fine. Whatever you say,” said Corbett. Frank grinned and slacked off his grip on Corbett, but he didn’t let go.

Now we had Frank on the trunk; Billy in the passenger seat, groaning a little, still unable to move; Benito on the left front fender; me on the motor compartment trying to stay clear of the hot engine, my legs dangling out to the right; and the girl forward on the right front fender, her feet on the bumper. Corbett had his problems driving. He had to lean way out to the left to see around the open hood.

Billy was able to scream now.

“For God’s sake, brush the fire off him, Frank!” Corbett yelled.

“Screw that. Screw God too. Get moving.”

We moved. Corbett yelled and I slacked off on the gas to let him shift to second. That was fast enough. The car fought, the hot metal tugged against my fingers like something alive, but I could control the speed. At least we weren’t hitting any bumps.

“Heeehaaah!” Frank screamed in joy. “Better’n the last chicken run! I’ll make you guys honorary Hells Angels! We’re tough, you know? Toughest bunch in the world, you know? Hick sheriff was so scared of us he called the state fuzz. We run for it. I had the lead. Come around a curve and the whole road was full of fuzzmobiles. I got two fuzz smearing myself.”

“Your friend back there—” I shouted.

“Gene? We did some swinging times, man. Had a whole stable of ’em. Boys, girls, but the only one they let me keep was Gene. Maybe I’ll miss him.” He didn’t look back.

“Could you get that fire off my leg?” I asked the girl.

“Naw! Enough trouble holding on here.”

“You said you’d do anything!” I clenched my teeth in agony. There was fire on both legs now, and I couldn’t slap. I couldn’t let go of the spring, and I had to hold on with the other hand. The car was still fighting me. “Get that fire off or we’ll throw you off!”

“Awright, awright, you don’t have to get nasty.” She slapped a couple of times and got the worst away.

“Who are you?” Benito asked.

“Doreen Lancer,” she yelled above the roaring motor. “Go go dancer. One night some bastard raped me and strangled me. At least, he tried to rape me!” She laughed bitterly. “He didn’t seem to know how to go about it!”

“So what the hell are you doing here?” Frank demanded.

“Don’t know! I liked it every which way. Most of the types I meet here are fags—”

“I’m no goddamn fag!” Frank yelled.

“Don’t blaspheme,” Benito told him, predictably, I guess.

“Fuck off! Talk to me that way and I’ll twist this bastard’s neck off!” The car lurched as he choked Corbett.

“No!” Doreen screamed. “We’ll crash! This is our only way out! Leave him alone—Look, don’t hurt him, and when we get out we can really swing, right?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“It’s not a romantic situation!” I bellowed. I wasn’t even sure there could be sex in Hell, and I hadn’t found any opportunity to try. Or inclination, either.

I bellowed again and she slapped my testicles. It hurt as much as it had when I was alive. I pulled the accelerator widget out, tugging with all my strength, letting the car slow.

“I’m sorry!” she yelled. “I was getting the fire off, I swear, that’s all I was doing! I’m sorry . . . hey, you wanna be a three-some with Frank and me?”

I let the car speed up again. We had to get out of here. But I’d never had an offer I liked less.

“I can see something ahead!” Corbett shouted. “We’re getting to the edge!”

“About time,” Frank said. We rolled on. “Just remember, pretty boy, I’m in charge here,” he added, and Corbett grunted in pain. Frank must have emphasized his words.

The horizon was sharp ahead. I could barely see over the motor. Corbett saw it too. “Kill the power!” he yelled. Brakes screeched, and he twisted the wheel hard.

I climbed out of the motor. The fireflakes were thicker here than in the middle of the desert. We ran, hopping—

Frank still had Corbett by the neck. “This the way out of here? What are you trying to pull?”

There was a sheer drop ahead of us. It was gloomy down there. I couldn’t see the bottom. Several hundred feet anyway. “Now what?” I asked Benito.

“The quick way would be to jump.” He was dead serious. “Jump and wait to heal, then go on.”

The girl backed away, staring at him. “You’re crazy! Crazy! I should have known better than to trust guys like you! All the promises you make—” She didn’t finish, but ran back into the desert, crying.

“That’s done it!” Frank yelled. “You’re sure as hell going over that cliff, all right, because I’m going to throw you!” He had Corbett by the neck, and he dragged him toward the cliff edge. “First you, then your loudmouth friend, then the fat one, and then—”

He’d forgotten Billy. We all had. It was a mistake for Frank. Billy launched himself from the car without warning. He landed on Frank’s back and seized the long hair with one hand, pulled the head back, and wrapped his arm around Frank’s neck. His knee gouged into the Hells Angel’s back, bowing him into an arc. “Friend, I don’t think I like you.”

I yelled, “Billy! Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You weren’t moving—”

“Been able to move awhile now. Didn’t seem like a good idea to let this creep know it. Jerry coulda crashed this thing if we were fightin’ while it was movin’.”

I thought about the self-control it would take to sit still under a rain of sticky fire.

“What’ll I do with the Gila monster, Benito?”

“Leggo! I was only kidding!” Franked yelled. “You guys got no business giving me false hopes! It was all your fault—” He stopped talking because Billy’s arm had closed his throat.

“Do not harm him,” Benito said quietly.

“Yeah?” Billy let him go. “Friend, you’re not tough. You don’t know what tough is. Now get away from us.” The pale-blue eyes seemed infinitely deep, and cold, even in this place of fire.

“You may come with us if you like,” Benito told Frank, “although I do not think you are ready. With your attitude you might well find a worse place than you have now. Still you are welcome to join us.”

“Go to Hell!” Frank screamed. He thought that was funny. “Go to Hell! Go to Hell!” He ran away into the desert, laughing, screaming, trying to keep both feet off the hot sand at once.

Benito looked at us, waiting.

“I’ll jump if you say so,” Billy said. “Looks bad, though. I can tell you, being crushed flat ain’t no fun.”

I gulped. “I will too.” I wondered if I meant it.

“There may be a better way,” Benito said. “We must find the stream. Corbett, you can drive?”

“Sure.”

We turned left. I had a whole fender to sprawl on now. The car seemed more docile, too, but I wasn’t going to trust it. I didn’t really have to—I was getting good at manipulating the gas widget.

We came to a horde of people dressed in the finery of all ages: velvet robes, flare pants, alligator shoes. Corbett shouted at me. “Stopping!” He turned off the key before I could do anything, and the car rolled to a halt.

Fireflakes fell on us. “Now what?”

Corbett was out of the car and looking at a beefy man in a gaudy tunic, crimson sash, and black glove-leather boots. There was a big leather wallet hung on a golden chain around his neck, and he stared into it, not looking up. The fireflakes had burned holes in his tunic and scorched his hair.

Corbett stood in front of him. When the burly man didn’t look up, Corbett stooped over so that his face was in line with the wallet. “Give me my money!” Corbett shouted.

“You son of a bitch, you owe
me
!”

“But I’ve had this problem, see, my girl is . . .” Corbett began.

“I don’t want to hear any stories, I just want my money! Arrgh!” A big fireflake settled on the crown of his head. He tried to brush it off.

“Hang tough,” Corbett said. He came back to the car chuckling. “Long Harry there loaned me some cash, once. Six for five—every week.”

I nodded. There were lots of others there, crying into their purses. The rain of fire seemed heavier here. “Let’s get going.” I didn’t like Corbett gloating over them—but if anybody deserved to be here, it was them. Loan shark is as low a form of life as there is.

We didn’t drive so fast that we couldn’t talk. “Funny thing about Harry,” Corbett said. “He had to give up the loan shark business. Had a customer with a hit man for a friend. Took his buddy Lem to see Harry, but Harry wouldn’t listen. Just kept saying, ‘Give me my money.’ So Lem had a talk with Harry.”

“Lem?” Billy asked. He sounded puzzled.

“Yeah. I don’t know what he told Harry, but just after that all of Harry’s customers were off the hook. Just had to pay what they’d got in the first place.”

“Lem,” Billy said. “Little guy? About my size? Big scar over his left eye?”

“Yeah,” Corbett said. “You know him?”

“Kind of. They used to let him onto the island for a day. One day a year. The rest of the time he was out in the blood. I always did wonder why.”

“We are coming to the stream,” Benito said. “The fire does not fall there.”

19

T

he
river was narrow but fast. Its roar was different somehow from that of water, and it was still bright scarlet. The air was thick with the smell of blood.

Nonetheless we walked down and bathed our half-broiled feet in it. Afterward we walked the cool mud of the bank with our sandals off until we reached the waterfall. There we watched endless tons of blood falling into the darkness.