The Kill Society

The Magistrate points.

“We will camp at the base of the mountains. He said no one is there. That will be his first test.”

I raise my hand like I’m in the third grade.

“Excuse me. What if I’m not in the mood to get tested?”

I prop the rifle on my hip, but Traven calls out, “Pitts. Calm down. It’s going to be all right.”

“Is it?” I say to the Magistrate.

He opens his hands.

“I cannot guarantee that. But consider this: Father Traven has vouched for you. That means he, too, will be judged. If you are not a reasonable man, if you are a stupid man, he will die with you.”

Slowly, I let the barrel of the rifle drop so it’s pointing at the ground.

The fucker called my bluff. He points to the half-burned pickup truck.

“Can you drive that vehicle?” says the Magistrate.

“I usually steal better, but yeah.”

“Then ride with us when we make camp tonight. If you try to leave the havoc or attack anyone else, I will personally kill the good father. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Daja looks around at where her dead friends used to be. “And what about the two, now three, dead?”

“We will have a memorial service tonight,” the Magistrate says.

He calls to a patched-together ambulance.

“Mimir, come and ride with me. I will need an oracle tonight.”

A woman in a ratty fur coat, with some kind of plastic mask over the lower part of her face to filter out the dust, steps from the ambulance and goes to the Magistrate’s Charger. Without another word, he points to the mountains and the vehicles rumble to life.

I walk to the charred pickup truck as Traven rides his hellhound up beside me. Dressed in boots and a ragged leather duster, he gives me that sad smile of his and I shake my head at him.

“It’s good to see you, ZaSu,” he says.

“You’ve got some explaining to do,” I tell him.

“So do you.”

I start the truck.

“Do those bastards have anything to drink?”

“Of course.”

“And food?”

He nods.

“Good. At least I’ll get a last meal.”

He takes off the rag that was covering his face and wipes the blood from some of my worst wounds.

“Don’t talk like that,” he says. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah? If Ahab up there has a real oracle, he’s going to find out I’m lying about who I am.”

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes. Have a little faith.”

I look at him.

“When you died, faith got you sent to a frozen gulag at the ass end of Hell, remember?”

He nods.

“And it got me rescued. By you. You’re who I have faith in.”

Some riders nearby signal us forward.

“These days, Father, I’m not worried about dying. I’m just worried about doing it hungry.”

Traven and I pull out, joining the havoc convoy heading for the mountains. The only thing I’m wondering about besides what time they’re going to kill me is the thing at the back of the havoc. It’s under a giant tarp and being hauled by the construction equipment on a double-length sixteen-wheeler bed. People like this, they don’t take anything with them that they don’t need. So, what do a bunch of Hellions and damned souls need with something the size of a Saturn V rocket? Maybe I’ll live long enough to find out. The way the day is going, though, I’ll be lucky to make it through the appetizer course.

WE DRIVE TO the base of the mountains, a herd of lumbering, smog-belching dinosaurs. Maybe ten yards away, Daja is riding parallel with me on the Harley. I’d rather be on the bike than this trashed pickup, but I don’t think she’d trade me.

When we reach the mountains, the vehicles fan out in a semicircle, forming a defensive perimeter. That means they know what they’re doing and they’re worried that someone out there might be gunning for them. Whoever thinks they’re hard enough to take on this crusty bunch, I don’t want to meet. I stay put in the jeep while the others set up camp. It’s a cruel joke. This thing was on fire a few minutes ago, but now I can’t find a damned thing I can use to light a Malediction.

Father Traven leaves me and disappears into a small teardrop-shaped camper being hauled by a rusty tow truck. I wonder if I hopped on his hellhound and headed straight up the mountains, how many of these assholes could follow me? Hellhounds can climb like goddamn apes and go places no ordinary vehicle would dare. On the other hand, I spotted plenty of Hellion Legionnaires on the drive over. All it would take is one good sniper and off I’d go to a time-share in Tartarus. No thanks. Mason is still down there and I couldn’t stand his gloating if we ended up roommates. I’ll stay put, play dumb, and see what happens next. Besides, being murdered made me hungry. If these clowns are going to stone me in the public square, I’m going out with a full stomach.

While they set up camp, most of the mob goes out of their way to ignore me. I wave my unlit cigarette to a couple of the ones that dare look at me, but I get the finger, not a light. I settle back looking bored, but watch them while they work. They’re fast and efficient setting things up. Everybody knows their job. That means they’ve been doing this for a while. Daja doesn’t do any heavy lifting, but moves from group to group answering questions and moving people around when there’s a group that needs help. We lock eyes for a second and I give her a little wave. She turns away and gets back to work. Okay, she’s smarter than I was hoping. Not so easy to provoke. That means I’ll have to go for someone else.

Everyone in the camp is armed. While that sounds bad, it works in my favor. It means all I have to do is find someone weak enough, hurt enough, or stupid enough that I can kill them and grab their gear. While I’m scoping out the rabble for easy pickings, Traven comes over. He smiles like he can read my mind.

“Relax,” he says. “You have business with the Magistrate. No one is going to bother you.”

“Meaning, I won’t be stuffed like a turkey and cooked until afterward. That’s a comfort.”

“No one’s resorted to cannibalism, yet.”

“Unless that’s why they’re in Hell.”

Traven smiles.

“True. But as long as they’re part of the group, there are rules of conduct that everybody follows.”

“Even the Magistrate?”

“Even him.”

I nod and look back at his trailer.

“I never took you for a ramblin’ man. When did you decide you didn’t like Blue Heaven?”

Traven glances at the ground. The last time I had seen him, I was hiding him in a funny little burg called Blue Heaven. It isn’t Heaven or Hell, but exists in a funny limbo zone between each. It’s a kind of sanctuary for people with nowhere else to go.

“It’s gone,” he says.

“Blue Heaven? What do you mean it’s gone?”

Traven looks around the mob like he’s nervous about someone listening.

“The Magistrate and the havoc appeared there a few weeks ago. They told the ruling council they were looking for something he called the Lux Occisor.”

“I learned a little Latin when I was in Lucifer’s library. I know lux is ‘light.’ What’s the other word?”

“‘Slayer.’ ‘Killer.’ Take your pick.”

“Fun. Do you know what it is?”

Traven runs a hand through his hair. I swear he has a few gray ones he didn’t have before.

“If we did, maybe we could have given him … something. The Magistrate doesn’t talk about it in specifics.”

“And when Blue Heaven couldn’t come up with the light killer?”

“The havoc killed anyone who ran. Then they burned Blue Heaven to the ground.”

So much for my former life as a savior. A lot of the people I try to save have a bad habit of not staying that way.

I look over my shoulder and across the camp.

“This all has to do with whatever is under the tarp, doesn’t it?”

“That would be my guess,” Traven says.

“Do you know what it is?”

“‘Salvation.’”

I give him a look.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s all the Magistrate will say about it.”

“You’re hauling around a ten-ton leap of faith.”

“Isn’t a leap of faith what salvation is?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I feel stupid holding an unlit cigarette, so I put it back in the pack.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” I say. “The Magistrate and his party boys show up in Blue Heaven and have a barbecue. So, how is it you ended up joining them?”

He looks back at the tarp, too.

“When the Magistrate found out I was the librarian and Blue Heaven’s historian, he strongly encouraged me.”

“And who’s going to say no to King Kong?”

He draws a breath.

“I wish I could say that I was brave enough to refuse. I took some of the most important books, my pens and ink, and I’ve been with the havoc ever since. The Magistrate wants a record of the crusade. He thinks it will be important. So do I, but not for the reasons he thinks.”

I’m still bleeding and my left leg hurts. Horned Toad got my quadriceps and the meat isn’t healing fast enough for my taste. I shake blood off my boot onto the sand.

“They don’t have Nuremberg trials in Hell, Father.”

“No. But perhaps they do in Heaven.”

“Always the optimist,” I say, and he shrugs. “As for the other thing, I would have joined him, too.”

He turns his head toward me.

“That’s nice of you to say, but I know you wouldn’t.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. When a tidal wave washes out the luau, you surf it and look for land.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry. I know this is a strange moment for you, but I have to ask …”

I put a hand on his shoulder.

“Brigitte is fine. She’s working. Doing auditions. She got a part on some cable-TV series.”

He puts his hand over mine for a minute.

“Thank you.”

“She misses you.”

He takes his hand away.

“It’s mutual.”

Brigitte Bardo and Father Traven were an item back in the world. A defrocked priest and an ex-porn-star zombie hunter. A Hollywood love story if there ever was one.

“And how are the others? How’s Candy?” he says.

Now it’s my turn to get awkward.

“Everyone is fine. Candy’s doing good. But she goes by a different name now. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Of course,” he says.

We stand there in awkward silence, and I think about all the life leaking out of me. There’s only one thing that’s going to take my mind off all this blood.

“I don’t suppose you have a light, do you?”

Traven goes to his camper and comes back with a match. I take out a Malediction and he lights it for me. Breathe in a big lungful of the beautiful poison.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Then you’ll fit in just fine around here,” he says.

He nods to the camper.

“I have some work to do. I’ll come back when the Magistrate calls for you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I bet I’m the only one here with cigarettes. The rest of these assholes are smoking locoweed and pocket lint.”

Traven gives me a small smile and then heads back to his camper.

“Enjoy the smoke,” he says.

I sure as hell will. It might be my last.

I COOL MY heels in the burned-out pickup for an hour. Smoke one Malediction and light a second off it. But I stop there. Got to ration myself, which isn’t in my nature, but these are weird times.

The good news is that while I was bleeding when I started the first cigarette, I’ve pretty much stopped by the time I flip the butt of the second away. That’s means I still heal quickly. Good news there.

The cigarette arcs through the air in the direction of the mountains and almost hits Daja, who’s headed my way. She doesn’t even flinch. Just tracks the flying smoke’s flight with her eyes and watches it miss her by a couple of inches. Nice.

She crooks a finger at me.

“Let’s go,” she says.

“Where to?”

“The Magistrate wants to see you.”

“That’s okay. I like the view right here.”

She rests her hand on the grip of her pistol, cop-style. She’s packing a Colt 1911. Not a new gun, but it still blows nice holes in things.

“The Magistrate wants you with a clear head, so I’m not going to shoot you anywhere that’ll kill you. Just where it hurts.”

“Fine. I’ll go to prom with you, but you’re paying for the limo.”

I swing my legs down out of the truck and yell, “Father! We’re up.”

Traven comes out of his camper, putting on the ragged duster.

We follow Daja to a Hellion motor home. It looks less like something your grandparents would drive to the Grand Canyon and more like a Gothic mansion on wheels—one designed by insects and decorated by something with more tentacles than taste. Hellion chic. Daja opens the door and we go in.

The light inside comes from glowing glass globes that seem to float above the furniture. A cramped sofa along one wall and a small table with chairs in the center of the claustrophobic room finish off the nightmare.

The Magistrate sets down a book he was reading when we come in. He points to chairs at the table for me and Traven, then sits down across from us. Daja doesn’t sit. She stays behind me doing her best to loom. At another time and place I’d say it didn’t work and I’d mean it. But right here and right now, I’m a little off my game and I don’t like her and her gun behind me.

The Magistrate says, “Thank you for coming without causing any more trouble. I somehow think it’s not in your nature to so graciously respond to a summons.”

I shrug. “It beats bleeding in a truck. Do you have anything to drink around here?”

The Magistrate turns around, takes a glass off a small table, and sets it in front of me.

“I had a feeling you might be thirsty.”

I sniff it. No smell.

“Water?” I say.

He nods.

I squint at him.

“You wouldn’t try to roofie a guest, would you?”

“Do I strike you as that sort of man?” says the Magistrate.

“No. But I’ve been wrong before. And we are in Hell.”

Back in the world, I can usually tell when someone is lying. I can hear their heart, watch the pupils of their eyes and micro-expressions on their face. But most of that doesn’t work on the dead. No heartbeat. Micro-expressions dulled by death. And it’s too dark in here to see the Magistrate’s eyes.

I down whatever’s in the glass, though, because at this point I’d drink paint thinner out of a hobo’s galoshes.

What I swallow seems like water. There’s no weird aftertaste and my eyes don’t start spinning. So far so good.

“Feeling better?” he says.

“Okay. But I’d feel great if you had something stronger.”

The Magistrate moves his head from side to side. “We shall see,” he says. “Now that you’re feeling better, are you still Mr. Pitts in here or can we start off on a friendlier footing?”

“Are you still the Magistrate in here?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m still Mr. Pitts.”

Traven gives me a look, but I give him one right back.

“As you wish,” says the Magistrate. “What were you doing on the mountain?”

His speech is clipped, like English isn’t his first language. But I can’t identify his accent.

I say, “I have no idea.”

He cocks his head.

“You weren’t spying on us?”

“Until you stopped I thought you were a dust devil come to pick my bones clean.”

“Who else is on the mountain?”

“No one that I know of. I told you that when I fried your friend.”

I hear Daja move behind me, but she stops when the Magistrate holds up his hand.

“How did you get onto the mountain? Where did you come from?” he says.

“I was busy getting murdered on Earth.”

“You’re dead?” blurts Traven.

I hold up my left arm to show him that it’s my old human arm again and not a biomechanical Kissi prosthetic.

The Magistrate looks to him, then me, then back to Traven and his big goddamn mouth.

“Why would Mr. Pitts being dead surprise you, Father?” he says. “Hell is a place of the dead.”

Traven mumbles, “It’s just that …”

“This isn’t my first time in Hell,” I say.

The Magistrate leans back.

“I see. Another mortal foolish enough to make a deal with the Devil. Did he send you back with promises of immortality? How did it feel when you realized you’d been tricked?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “In fact, Lucifer and me are pretty simpatico these days. The old Lucifer. The retired one. He’s the one who thought it would be funny to leave me on the fucking mountain.”

The Magistrate continues to lean back, but he doesn’t look so smug anymore.

“You mean the Lucifer who has become Death?” he says.

I upend the glass and get a few more drops of water.

“Do you know a bunch of other Lucifers?”

He leans forward and rests his arms on the table.

“You are friends with Death. My, how special you must be.”

“We don’t go to karaoke or anything, but we’ve had a cocktail or two.”

“I find it hard to believe you, Mr. Pitts.”

I push the glass back to his side of the table.

“I don’t give a single fuck what you believe. Unless it means I don’t get a drink later. Then I care a lot.”

The Magistrate takes the glass and puts it back on the small table.

“Why would your ‘friend’ Death leave you here in the middle of nowhere?” he says.

“Isn’t it obvious?” says Traven.

“No. It is not. Why do you think he was there?”

Traven opens a hand to the Magistrate and then to me. “For this. This moment. This meeting. This is why Mr. Pitts was on the mountain. Death wanted us all to meet.”

“To what end?” says the Magistrate.

“To help with the work, of course.”

“You’re so sure?”

Traven leans forward, speaking quietly, but intensely.

“Death could have left him in Pandemonium or at the gates of Heaven with the other refugees. He could have left him in the wilderness where no one would ever find him. But no. He left him right here in the Tenebrae, directly in our path.”

“Perhaps Death left him so that we could dispatch him to Tartarus,” says the Magistrate.

“Perhaps he has something we need.”

“Or perhaps Death was having a joke on all of us.”

“I vote for that,” I say. “Death loves a joke. Pull my finger he says and poof, you’re gone.”

Traven lays his hand on the table.

“I’m telling you. Death has sent us a gift. This man is useful to the cause. I don’t know exactly how, but it will reveal itself.”

“How do you know that he isn’t lying about everything?” the Magistrate says. “From where he came from to his alleged friendship with Death?”

“Because I knew him.”

“When you were alive.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know he is the same man you knew then? Perhaps he’s gone mad. Perhaps he’s a spy.”

“Excuse me,” I say. “What time does the buffet start? The service here it terrible.”

“Stop it, Pitts,” snaps Traven.

The Magistrate shakes his head.

“Yes. Stop it, Mr. Pitts. We will know everything when Mimir gets here,” he says.

Fuck. The oracle. I’d forgotten about her.

“But for my own curiosity,” the Magistrate says, “what is the new Death like?”

“Is this part of the interrogation or are we just dishing?”

“It is simply a question.”

I look at him for a minute. He didn’t poison me and he could have. He also hasn’t let Daja shoot me and I know she’d love to.

I say, “Death is pretty much like he was when he was Lucifer. He didn’t much like that job either, but he was good at it. Truth is, I haven’t seen him much since he’s become Death. It’s like being a cabby. Long hours.”

“You were friends, then?” says the Magistrate. “Confidants?”

“Why not? I’m a people person.”

The Magistrate aims a finger at me.

“The Devil had many secrets. What was his greatest?”

“Now it’s twenty questions? Fuck you,” I say. “That’s his secret and mine.”

Daja moves again. I’m getting really tired of this.

“Please answer the question,” says the Magistrate.

“Please answer,” says Traven. There’s something in the bastard’s eyes. It takes me a while, but then I recognize it: now that he’s seen a familiar face, he doesn’t want to be alone again. I can’t blame him.

“There are a couple of things it could be,” I say. “But what I think you mean is the wound. The one Dad gave him during the war in Heaven. The one that never healed. Until recently, at least.”

“You are saying the wound is healing?” says the Magistrate.

“Healed. It started getting better when he went home.”

The Magistrate stays silent for a minute. Then he whispers, “Interesting,” and looks at Daja.

When no one else says anything, I say, “Now I have some questions for you.”

“I am sure you do. Father, would you bring in Mimir?” the Magistrate says.

“Of course.”

He gets up and goes outside. I lean my head back and look up at Daja. She doesn’t look any better upside down. Her dark, dusty hair is long and she wears it tied back. Her leathers are light and worn. She’s strong. She could wear heavier leathers, but she likes the light ones because they let her move faster, so she’s down for a gunfight, a knife fight, or fists. I smile up at her wondering which one she’d like to start with on me. She scowls back.

Traven comes back in with Mimir in tow. She’s still in her ratty fur coat, but she’s taken the bandanna off her face. Turns out it was hiding a respirator attached to a small oxygen tank under her coat. She sits across the table, next to the Magistrate. I can hear her labored breathing all the way over on my side.

The Magistrate gently takes her hand.

“Thank you for coming, Mimir.”

“Of course,” she says, her voice muffled by the oxygen mask. “How can I help?”

The Magistrate looks at me.

“Mimir, I am concerned that Mr. Pitts here might be a spy or intend to harm us in some other way. He says that he found himself on the mountain and that he was placed there by Death himself. Is he telling the truth?”

“Do you mean, did Death leave him or that he believes Death left him?”

“How did he get onto the mountain, Mimir?”

She opens a canvas Safeway shopping bag (Have I mentioned recently that they bootleg a lot of our stuff in Hell? They steal cable, too. Don’t tell anyone.) and lays a whole spook show on the table. At the center is a bowl made from the skull of a Hellion with three horns that make three perfect little legs for it. She pours in powders, a few drops of a potion, a seed pod, and a lot of other crap I can’t identify. As she grinds it all together, I wish Vidocq was here. I bet Vidocq wishes he was here. The alchemist in him would be going nuts right now. He’d know what kind of moonshine Popcorn Sutton here is brewing. All I know is that I don’t want to drink it when she’s done. Things might get tense soon.

When she’s finished, I put my hands on the table, ready to push back and try to knock Daja off balance before she can shoot me.

But Mimir doesn’t come up with the glass. She pulls a match from her bag and lights the mess in the bowl. Just as it starts to stink, she unhooks her respirator from the oxygen tank and puts the tube over the Dumpster fire she’s started.

I start to say something stupid, but Traven’s hand closes on my arm in a goddamn death grip.

Mimir sucks in the smoke and suddenly I want another Malediction. Her eyes roll back in her head. She begins to shake. She mumbles something unintelligible, like she’s chanting or speaking in tongues. It’s your basic oracle carny act. I’ve seen a million of them. They always look like they’re about to have an aneurysm. If they didn’t, the rubes wouldn’t think they were getting their money’s worth.

After a long moment, Mimir pulls out the tube and puts a lid on the skull bowl. She blows a long trail of smoke from out of the tube, clearing her wheezing lungs, and hooks her respirator back to the oxygen tank. She takes several long, deep breaths.