The Kill Society (Sandman Slim)(75)

“Then shut up and keep pulling, Bessie.”

“Bessie?”

“Isn’t that what you call cows?”

“Bossie.”

“Trivia. I knew we kept you around for something.”

“Keep pulling, Supergirl.”

The Magistrate calls a cigarette break at midday. Everyone in the dog pack that’s still speaking wants a light from a 20K gold lighter.

Afterward, I sit with Alice by one of the nuke-blasted trees.

“I want to show you something. I got it when I was with Death.”

“You’re not going to trick me and show me a spider, are you? I hate spiders.”

“It’s not a spider.”

“It better not be.”

I take out the amber blade, but keep it hidden under my coat.

“It belongs to him. He uses it to cut souls from their bodies. He says it’ll kill anything.”

“That’s spooky. What are you supposed to do with it?”

“He wasn’t specific on that part, just that I should have it for now.”

“Why are you showing it to me?”

“If I should mysteriously snuff it, you need to get it before anybody else. I don’t even want Vehuel having it.”

She looks at me.

“Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Do you see this armor? I’m kind of a warrior now. I’ll kill them.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“But just in case.”

“I know. Get the knife. Got it. Now let’s change the subject.”

“Okay.”

“If you could go to Heaven, would you?”

“No.”

“Don’t be so glib.”

“I’m not. I’m not built for Heaven. I’m built for killing things and Hell is where killers go.”

She picks up a dry twig and waves it in the air like a conductor’s baton.

“You’re the one trying to open Heaven to all the souls in Hell, killers included.”

“Still.”

“Fine.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad. I knew exactly what you were going to say and you didn’t disappoint.”

“I’m sorry.”

The Magistrate calls for us plow horses to get back to work.

Alice tosses the twig away.

“I think I’m going to go in the back and walk with Vehuel and the others for a while.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

“See you later.”

She doesn’t say anything. I go back to my rope feeling like the biggest idiot in Heaven, Hell, or Earth. Alice isn’t dying and I’m not being dragged away anywhere, but it feels a lot like I lost her all over again. It’s confusing and I don’t like it.

We pull the flatbed for another slow, tedious, agonizing day and a half through mud, streams of shit, waterfalls of blood, and over a road paved with bones. People collapse and have to be tossed on the flatbed, making it even heavier. Others run batshit into the wilderness. A couple of people die in gang fights.

I don’t see Alice again the whole time.



At the end of the second day, and with everybody at the breaking point, it rains. I don’t know if it’s water. I’m just grateful it isn’t any bodily secretions. Except, of course, the road turns to a swamp and the flatbed bogs down. The angels come up front and pull while us puny types push from the back. It doesn’t help. Neither does getting them to push and the rest of us to pull. The Magistrate meets with Vehuel, some of the mechanics, and other people who seem to have a fucking clue and they come up with a plan. A really bad one.

We need to get something under the wheels for them to grip and the only things around are the skeleton trees. A contingent of the Magistrate’s goons and conscripts drags their asses up a hill and starts chopping down the forest. They have to clear a whole hillside to get enough wood for the twin flatbeds’ wheels. It takes hours to get the wood into place because a lot of the first batch sinks with the wheels and a second crew has to cut up the opposite hill. Eventually, we get enough wood, but we get something more, too.

At first it looks like a landslide down the bare, muddy hill, but it’s too slow and too regular. It doesn’t rush down toward us as much as it skitters. Vehuel and Johel manifest their Gladiuses to light the hillside.

I’m only here because I’m dead. I didn’t sign up for this shit.

It turns out what’s coming down the hill isn’t an it at all. It’s a they. About a million of them. Each about the size of my hand. The beetle colony must have nested under the trees and took exception to a bunch of strangers stealing their homes.

The insect mass is a solid carpet of writhing legs and ripping jaws. Turns out that not only are these particular beetles ill-mannered, they’re also carnivorous.

They hit the part of the havoc still coming down the hillside first, swarming over them until they’ve disappeared under the beetles’ bodies. By the time the insects move down to the road, anyone who was alive a couple of minutes earlier is stripped to the bones and blips away. The havoc panics. Most of them rush up the opposite hillside, but a handful of souls and Hellions freeze in place or get bogged down in the mud. The first wave of beetles covers them while others swarm around their bodies headed farther onto the road. Even the angels look lost. They’re used to fighting other angels, not chasing roaches when the lights come on.