Saviors 101

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Virgil had driven the blue-striped white Trans Am into the Hills of Hell through the night until Jeremy was beyond carsick, beyond caring, and well into numb by the time the time the sun showed the Hell around them.

People crawled across vast burning sands without ever moving. Others lay in boiling pools to cool off from the scorching air.

And then they’d hit the mountain roads. Twists and hairpins enough to frustrate the most patient driver, which Virgil was not. He’d turned off the 8-track and in the vast silence, Jeremy could hear the screaming.

At first he’d thought it was the souls around them. But many had no mouths. And those that did, had given up wasting energy on screams long before.

For a mad moment he wondered if it was his own voice echoing strangely so that he didn’t even recognize himself.

Finally he pinpointed the source. The Hills themselves were screaming in agony.

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

“What was that?” Virgil snapped at him.

“Nothing.”

“Then shut up. It’s hard enough to find the road, never mind follow it.”

Indeed there were times when it was a four-lane highway with dotted lines, guard rails, and cheerful green signs with arrows that pleasantly informed you of the routes to “Diviner’s Hell,” and just where check forgers and plagiarists should get off. There were also neat little signs for Palm Springs and Miami Beach but those exits were cluttered with tumbleweeds and dust from lack of use. Even the damned showed occasional bouts of good sense and left those places alone.

The next moment, the highway disappeared and they followed what was suddenly little more than a dirt goat track clambering along the edge of a chasm. Virgil’s knuckles were white, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the leather squeaked.

Jeremy was reduced to a whimper.

The road opened up again to a two-lane dirt road. Rather than accelerating, Virgil slammed on the brakes. The road was blocked. Two men, one light and one dark, but both looking impossibly strong, were locked in combat. With swords that were nearly as big as Jeremy. Their shields, barely the size of hubcaps, were used to deflect the mighty blows of their opponent.

Virgil cranked down the window letting in a wave of impossible heat and sticky air. Jeremy could taste the red soil on his tongue. Cayenne pepper mixed with concrete dust burned all the way down into the bottom of his lungs.

“Will you two idiots get out of the road?”

Their swords crashed together with a ring that drowned out the mountain’s cries.

With their swords still engaged, they both turned to Virgil. Then they turned from their battle and both raised their weapons high.

The poet was out of the car in a flash and standing in front of the hood of his car.

“You touch her and I’ll have you wallowing in a circle of Hell that will make the Mountains of Pain look like the kiddie train at Disneyland! Don’t f**k with me! You know I can do it.”

The two glanced at each other and then back at Virgil, swords still poised.

In that long pause, Jeremy recognized the emblazons on their armor. He’d used them in Chraze. They were Greek. Ancient Greek. All the way back to the Minoan culture. This had to be Achilles and Hector. But Troy had fallen thirty-five hundred years ago.

“Are these dweebs still fighting the same battle?”

“My brother is stubborn. Great with a sword, not that great with the brain cells.”

Right. He’d forgotten Cassandra was Hector’s little sister.

“Then where’s Paris?”

“My twin was never a very good fighter, just a very, very handsome playboy. He was responsible for the demise of two of six wives of King Henry the Eighth and would have been all over Guinevere if Lancelot hadn’t gotten there first.”

Achilles raised his blade to hack down on Virgil. If he completed the blow, he’d cut the car in half as well, with them in it. But Hector blocked the blade with a great ringing of steel that bore down upon Jeremy’s brain like a vise through both ears.

The Greek spun on the Trojan and snarled. It was a primal, nasty, scarier-than-s**t sound that started deep, like ten feet below him, and rose until it shook the ground.

Hector shouted at him. “Remember Chuck E. Cheese?”

Achilles froze in place as if he’d been dropped into a block of plastic. A shiver slid across the warrior’s vast shoulders for a moment.

“We don’t want to go there again,” Hector insisted.

Achilles grunted in assent and lowered his sword.

Hector wandered around to the side of the car and knocked on the window. He squatted to look in as Cassandra rolled it down.

“Hi there, sis. What lies you telling today?”

He had an easy grin, that along with his physique, probably made the ladies melt. Jeremy had tried it any number of times in the mirror, but it had just looked like a jack-o-lantern grin on his thin face that he’d given it up as a lost cause.

Hector’s charm washed into the car like a cool breeze of fresh air, even here in the scorching Hills of Hell.

“And who’s your boyfriend?”

Jeremy was over three millennia younger than Hector’s sister. And he suspected that Hector wouldn’t think twice about defending her honor with his massive blade, or the huge hand he had casually draped through the window.

Cassandra didn’t answer. It took him a moment to catch on. Of course she couldn’t, anything she said that was true, Hector would never believe.

“I’m a programmer.”

Hector scowled at him.

“By the Goddess Athena, you people scare the s**t out of me.” He was addressing his sister, but keeping his eyes on Jeremy. “You know how f*****g dangerous programmers are, Cassie. And you bring one here? Are you crazy, sis, or just stupid? Don’t answer. I wouldn’t believe you anyway.”

He jumped to his feet and moved to the front of the car.

“Get the f**k out of the way, Achilles. We don’t want to mess with this carload of crap. Just trust me on this.”

“Trust you? Trust you! Why should I want to do that?” With a swipe of his sword, that Virgil barely ducked in time to keep his head, they clashed together again. They roared back and forth across the paved roadway as the poet climbed back into the car.

“Your brother has serious testosterone poisoning,” Virgil climbed aboard and restarted the engine.

Cassandra didn’t say a word as he put the car in gear and edged around the mêlée. Once clear, he roared back up to third gear before he had to lock them up in a four-wheel skid.

More mountain goat path.

“Where are we going anyway?” Jeremy wished his voice was steadier, but he really didn’t deserve to be in Hell. Though there was his game to consider. Chraze had already received a great deal of Christian press, not that there was much of anything else left in the USA. A great deal of it blamed him for the church dropout rates of the Gen-X and Gen-Ys. Not a single word of it had been good, all of it had helped sales. He was starting to make inroads on the boomers.

“I’ve got a buddy who has Universe access and a quiet place to work. I was just seeing if we could use Michelle’s terminal first without my buddy finding out what I was up to.”

“What was that?” Cassandra beat him to the question by half a breath.

“Nothing. I didn’t say nothing.” He growled deep in his throat as he downshifted at the end of the next straightaway. The growl was low and feral and Jeremy had no desire to mess with it.

Virgil wove past a half dozen boulders. To Jeremy’s left was a screaming cliff, shouting its pain right in his face. To his right was a chasm. Not one bit of extra road, just a narrow ribbon of a shoulder with a friendly white line of worn paint, and then a chasm.

Just chasm.

A deep, aching slice that threatened to split the planet in half…if they were on a planet.

Even the author of Chraze didn’t deserve to be here.