The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (41 page)

“Look down there,” Freezay said, pulling her from her thoughts in order to point to the crazy assemblage of bodies below them.

There were Harvesters and Transporters scurrying around like worker ants outside of a giant orange octagonal building with a sign on it, reading:

“What the hell is that?” Caoimhe asked, fascinated by the carnival vibe of the building and its surroundings.

“Don’t know,” Freezay replied, uncertainly. “But it’s not good, whatever it is.”

Caoimhe felt the owlet on her shoulder give a strand of her hair a gentle tug, telling her it was time to go.

“Shall we go down there?” she said.

Freezay nodded,

“Looks like down’s the only way
to
go.”

She let him take her hand.

“Follow me,” he said, leading her toward the path that would take them from the top of the cliff to its bottom.

It was slow going. The path was slippery, with chunks of orange rock breaking off underneath their feet as they walked. Caoimhe was glad to have Freezay to lean on, to keep her upright whenever her ankle would twist, or she’d start to lose her footing. She found herself clinging to him as though he were a solid, immovable mountain.

When they finally reached the bottom of the cliff, Caoimhe had to rest her head against Freezay’s arm. She thought she was going to pass out because the heat was even worse down here than it’d been on the cliff.

“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded.

“Fine, just…it’s very hot down here.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he replied.

She closed her eyes for a second, savoring the nearness of this big, strong man, then her mind flashed to Calliope and she knew they had to hurry.

“She needs us,” Caoimhe said, her eyes fluttering open.

She started to run, fear for her daughter making her fly. And Freezay stayed right beside her, keeping up with her panicked pace.

They hit the crowd of Harvesters and Transporters first. She and Freezay had both expected interference, but, instead, they received no resistance from the strange, Victorian-garbed creatures. The Harvesters and Transporters were too busy running around the orange rock floor, holding their eyes and screaming.

“What happened to them?” Caoimhe asked, as Freezay grabbed her hand again and began to maneuver them through the hysterical crowd.

“Don’t know,” Freezay said, shoving a tall man in a stovepipe hat out of his way.

He didn’t like the Harvesters and Transporters, never had and never would. They’d elected Uriah Drood as their union president, which to Freezay said more than anything about their motives. Any union that had someone like the sniveling pig Drood as their representative deserved what they got.

“Help me!” screamed a tiny woman in a beetle black dress, gray gauzy bits of fabric floating at her throat and wrists. She was thrashing around, holding her arms out in front of her as though she was blind.

“What happened to you?” Caoimhe said, grabbing the woman by the arm.

The woman began to shake, her small body trembling.

“He opened the jar—”

“What jar?” Caoimhe asked.

The woman shook her head, trying to erase the memory from her brain.

“Pandora’s Box. He opened it and it burned out the fake eyes Mr. Drood had given us, so now we can’t see at all.”

The woman gave up these lasts words with a sob, and Caoimhe let her go.

“I guess that’s how he bribed them,” Freezay said. “None of them have real eyes, just empty black holes where eyes should be, and they’re horribly self-conscious about it.”

The crowd was getting rowdier now, more hysterical.

“It’ll be easier to get through here if I carry you,” Freezay said. “Is that all right?”

Embarrassed for God knew what reason, she nodded and let him pick her up. It felt nice to have him carry her through the crowd, protecting her with his own body. Still, even with her in his arms, it took them more than a few minutes to weave through the crowd of bleating Victorians. Finally, they made it to the edge only to discover there was a low fence made of giant concrete blocks surrounding the octagonal orange building. This was what was keeping the crowd away from
The Pit
. Inside the fence Caoimhe saw two bodies huddled together by the entrance to the octagon. One of them resembled her daughter. Her heart skipped a beat as she tried to see if it was Callie or not.

“We need to go in,”
she heard the owlet whisper in her ear.

“Take us inside,” she said to Freezay.

“Your wish is my command,” he replied, as he set her down carefully on top of the fence then climbed up after her.

*   *   *

howard had not
liked being in that jar. Had not liked being carried around like a genie in a bottle. Had not liked being kicked out of the jar and forced to go through Hell. Had not liked anything that’d happened to him since he’d died.

He wanted to see his wife. He wanted to rest. He wanted to just be left the goddamned hell alone.

Instead, he was in this animal-like pen with a bunch of other angry dead people. Every so often a few of those Victorian bastards would come in and drag a bunch of souls out, but none of them ever returned, so no one knew where they were being taken.

He was about ready to start yelling—
Attica! Attica! Attica!
—when another host of Victorians came in, corralling him and a bunch of others and herding them out of the pen. He didn’t know if he should be irate or overjoyed at this turn of events—but he knew if he’d had his druthers, he’d still be sitting in that rest home playing cards and eating glorified baby food.

The Victorians didn’t speak to them, not anymore—
but they’d sure done a lot of talking to get me into that jar, by God,
he thought. Well, if they didn’t want to talk to him, then he didn’t want to talk to them, either.

After they were a few feet away from the pen, the souls were forced to line up, in single file, one dead person in front of another. Howard slid in between a little girl with short red hair and a young African American woman in surgical scrubs. He wondered what had happened to the doc so that she’d died with her scrubs on. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask, so he tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around, a serious expression on her face.

“How’d you die?” Howard asked.

She shook her head and indicated she didn’t speak English.

He made the universal signal for slitting your throat and she laughed, said something in her native tongue. She could see it wasn’t translating, so she began to shake and jump up and down.

It took a few seconds, but he got it: earthquake.

“Earthquake,” he said, offering her his hand. She took it and they shook.

The Victorians came around again and the long line of souls began to walk across the plane of orange rock. Howard was just happy to be moving, even if he didn’t know where he was going. He figured it couldn’t get any worse than it already was—but he’d figured wrong.

When he saw the old Gravitron buried in the dirt, he got a funny feeling in his gut. You could call it intuition, or just a funny feeling in your gut, but Howard always trusted it—and it was telling him to turn around and run far, far away as fast as his legs could carry him.

*   *   *

gerald was the
last one in the big orange machine. He hadn’t wanted to go inside, but they’d made him. He didn’t like carnivals or roller-coaster rides and this smacked of both.

The inside of the machine was filled with soft black velvet seats, one for each customer, Gerald realized.
Maybe this isn’t going to be so awful, after all,
he thought. Maybe when this was done, they’d let him be alive again and he could find Molly and go home—because he missed his Vespa something fierce and hoped whoever found her took good care of her and only gave her Supreme gasoline.

Since Gerald was the last person inside the ride, he was the last person to sit down. But as soon as he’d found his seat, the music began to play. It was funny music, like what they played at a carnival, and it made the room start to spin. Gerald didn’t like it. It was going too fast and the music was going too fast, too.

“Stop it!” Gerald screamed—and he wasn’t the only one. Other people were screaming, too. Some of them were even crying.

No one outside was listening, or if they were, they didn’t care. The room just spun faster and faster and
faster
until Gerald couldn’t think anymore.

And then there was no need for Gerald to think.

Because Gerald didn’t exist.

*   *   *

harold was in
the group that didn’t make it into the Gravitron for the first ride. He was annoyed about this. Frustrated he had to stand around and watch as someone else got to do something,
anything
, before he did.

While the Victorians herded the luckier souls into the ride, Howard occupied himself by trying to communicate with the doctor. She seemed very nice, even if he had no idea what she was saying. He wanted to impart his name to her, but this simple thing was proving very confusing.

He would say: “Me, Howard.” She would say: “Meoward.”

It went on like this until they’d closed the door of the Gravitron and started the machine up. That’s when everyone around him stopped doing whatever they were doing and started watching the big orange thing as it began to whirl. Like
him, they wanted to know what the ride was going to do to them.

They didn’t have to wait long for their answer.

Howard thought the Gravitron spun around so fast it looked like a whirling dervish, but as it burrowed in the ground and shot out its load of bright orange energy, Howard changed his mind.

There was nothing magical about the Gravitron, if that’s even what it was, and Howard was pretty damn sure it wasn’t.

What he did know, though, was the machine was the scariest thing he’d ever seen.

All he had to do was get down there, take out the wish-fulfillment jewel, and then Watatsumi would show up with Pandora’s Box—and the box would solve all of Daniel’s problems.

“Are you okay?” Judas Iscariot asked as they neared the end of the path.

“Fine,” Daniel said, but he was sweating profusely, his body aching from heat and stress. “Just want to get down there and stop this madness.”

He didn’t want to talk to Judas Iscariot anymore, so he picked up his pace, keeping his thoughts to himself as he left the other man behind him. He just needed to get down there and everything would be all right. He’d explain everything to Callie, tell her why he’d done what he’d done, and she’d forgive him because it’d all been for her.

He tried to imagine her reaction in his mind, but couldn’t. Maybe he was drawing a blank because he was afraid of what his mind might conjure. That it might not be the reaction he wanted.

“Nearly there,” Judas Iscariot called, from behind him.

Yes, I’m not blind,
Daniel thought.
I can see we’re almost there.

But where was “there” really? He saw the odd Harvester and Transporter scurrying around, but they hardly seemed to notice Daniel and Judas Iscariot. Beyond them stood a silent herd of souls, their eyes dripping with fear after watching their compatriots go into
The Pit
and get annihilated.

He didn’t blame them for being scared.

The Pit
was scary.

He searched the area, looking for Uriah Drood, or this elusive Man in Gray, but he saw no one who fit either description. He stopped by a low concrete block fence and waited for Judas Iscariot to catch up. It took the slight man a few seconds, but he finally saw Daniel and jogged over to him.

“Thought I’d lost you,” Judas Iscariot said, looking sheepish.

Daniel didn’t feel like making small talk, but he supposed he had to.

“So, you see your friend in gray anywhere?” Daniel asked, but Judas Iscariot shook his head.

“He’s not really my friend.”

Daniel didn’t give two shits if he was Judas Iscariot’s friend or not.

“I don’t see Drood here, either,” Daniel said, changing the subject.

“You think they’re in it together?” Judas Iscariot asked.

“Yes,” Daniel said.

“Me, too,” Judas Iscariot agreed.

Daniel was getting impatient. He wanted Watatsumi to come now. He pulled the orange wish-fulfillment jewel from his pocket, letting it sit in his palm.

“What’s that?” Judas Iscariot asked.

“Nothing.”

But Daniel sounded like a liar, and he knew it.

“It’s a wish-fulfillment jewel,” he added, finally, feeling bad about being such a jerk to the other man.

Judas Iscariot stared at it, then he held out his hand, palm up.

“Can I touch it?”

Daniel raised an eyebrow.

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

They were pressed up against the fence now, another crush of dead souls having been brought in just as the last group was forced inside
The Pit
.

“Please,” Judas Iscariot asked.

“I don’t know—”

“I promise I won’t bother you again.”

The man looked so pathetic Daniel felt sorry for him. Against his better judgment, he lifted his arm and let the jewel drop into Judas Iscariot’s upturned palm. They just stood like that, both of them staring at the jewel in Judas Iscariot’s hand almost as if it held the answers to the universe inside of it—and maybe it did.

“So, this jewel will give me whatever I wish for?” Judas Iscariot asked.

Daniel nodded.

“Within reason.”

Judas Iscariot looked up, eyes begging Daniel to understand.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered then he gazed down at the jewel:

“I wish to not exist anymore.”

What happened next was over so quickly Daniel didn’t have time to process it.

First, the jewel in Judas Iscariot’s hand began to glow like a hot coal, cooking the soft flesh of his palm. Instinctively, he yanked his hand back, trying to dislodge the jewel from his skin, but no matter how hard he shook his hand, the jewel wouldn’t budge, preferring to stay affixed to Judas Iscariot’s palm.