Hard Case Read online

  Izzy was thoughtful. He didn’t say anything for a few moments. “Cruel way to put it, but essentially true. Any attempt to stop the demons would be met with horrible pain and suffering for the mass. It’s no win. We are here, in this place. It is and will always be horrible. Some of us are just a bit better at making the most of it.”

  I got up.

  “Thanks for the tea and chat. I’ve learned a lot. Have a lot more to learn.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back down. Going to figure out how to kill more demons.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “Not really. Just a goal. Kind of like how I write.”

  Izzy was quiet a moment. I could see wheels turning. He was shy and unassuming, but he was a deep thinker. He considered everything about what he was focused on. He was not easily distracted. I liked Izzy. He took things in stride. He didn’t immediately jump up and yell at me about being nuts, which I probably was.

  “I’d like to find a way to help you if you are going to do this. At least let me take you to meet some of the others.”

  I hesitated. I wanted revenge, plain and simple. I wanted revenge for Rox. Probably because I still blamed myself. I was mad now, I didn’t want to give it time to wear off.

  “What can it hurt? You might learn something new.”

  “I might learn enough to realize how foolish what I want to do is.”

  “There is always that.”

  “Sure, why not? I’m always capable of not letting facts get in the way.”

  6.

  I was antsy and finding it hard to sit still. This was a lot to take in and I wanted to do something. Izzy was a lot more methodical than I was and puttered about the house taking the water pot off the embers and wiping down counters and such before we took off. I stepped outside to catch some fresh air. Apparently some of Hell’s rep was urban legend. Not a whiff of sulfur. It made this place dangerously hard to evaluate. It felt so normal and unthreatening some of the time.

  The house was low and squat with mud walls that wouldn’t have looked out of place in New Mexico, except there was no tile roof, only a thick thatching of intertwined evergreen branches. It also appeared to be half sunk in the ground which, with the thatching, made it very hard to see from anywhere lower down the slope. The small, flattened shelf of packed dirt that formed the small yard around it was very narrow. You would have to stumble on it in order to find it. I noticed Izzy’s “sensor” system just over the lip of the shelf. There were stakes in the ground with string running down the slope, one from each stake. Strung along each were pairs of clay blocks. They were heavy enough to hang to the ground, which kept the wind from moving them much, but clearly, if someone brushed the strings, the clay pieces would knock against each other, making a sound. I was curious what it sounded like but decided against unnerving Izzy with a false alarm.

  From behind, the house was protected by the hillside itself, rising up sharply, which is why the small shelf had to have been carved out. I had to admire Izzy, assuming this was mostly his work. Given the lack of any evidence of sophisticated tools, this was quite an engineering project.

  I went into the house again to see what was taking Izzy so long. At first he didn’t seem to be there anymore. Then I heard some clunking sounds coming from the back of the house. There was the living area and kitchen and then a short hallway going back. I followed the sounds down the hallway. On the left was a small bedroom with a cot and a bedside table. The hallway ended just past the bedroom door with a doorway that opened out into a larger room. The door, which was of a heavy, hard wood, would be hard to break in. The room was dark because there were no windows. It had been carved out of the hillside rising up behind the house. There were a couple of clay pots with something fiery and molten in them, like smaller versions of the street lamps I had seen in Rockvale. I could see Izzy rummaging about.

  "Safe room?"

  It took Izzy a moment to figure out my reference. "Might hold demons off for a while. Unfortunately, it would need an escape tunnel through the hillside to be of any real use."

  Inside was a workshop. Tools carved out of hard woods and stone, benches, makeshift urns and an armory. Against one wall were a couple of handmade bows and pots with arrows in them. In addition, there were stone blades with wood handles, some staves and billy clubs of various sizes. There were even a couple of slingshots and bolos. Anything one could make with hard woods, stone and animal gut using limited stone tools.

  "I don't remember my high school science lab looking quite like this. I might have paid more attention if it had."

  “I'm afraid that I'm more of an engineer than a scientist here.” Izzy took down a bow and threw some arrows in a quiver. "Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be able to do some basic science in a place as alien as this."

  "Any thoughts on what—or where—this place really is?"

  Izzy shrugged. "Hard to know. You'll learn more from the others. The place is allegedly vast but communications are nonexistent. It’s hard to know anything except about your locale."

  "You don't explore? We have eternity, don't we?”

  "I guess. But once you carve out a way of surviving, your comfort zone contracts and we tend to become both solitary and limited in how far we are willing to range."

  "Makes sense."

  Izzy rigged up a rucksack and filled it with a mini version of his armory. It looked like it had been woven out of grasses and stems, hardened with a shellac. He strapped it on his back. I settled for two short staves and a stone dagger. I wore one staff on my back and carried the other. I tucked the dagger into my belt.

  We went out and Izzy found a barely visible trail into the trees. We headed up, climbing to a natural ridge and then began following it.

  "So we don't need food or water?"

  "Not really. Don't need sleep either. But memories are strong. There are places in the towns where you can get food and drink. The demons use them as incentives for obedience. "

  We walked along in silence for a bit.

  "I'm most surprised by what I don't see."

  Izzy looked at me quizzically.

  "I don't see many people, considering how many I'd have to guess would be sent here if this is about the Jesus rule."

  "Remember, Rockvale is just a drop point. Most people leave. This place is rumored to be vast. There are zones that are very densely populated."

  "Okay. I don't see much eternal pain and torture. I see bursts of violence, but if it weren't for the demons, this place would be pretty livable. Nothing like a Bosch painting."

  Izzy shrugged. "I don't know, but again, there doesn't seem to be much interest in the border towns. I've seen one area where former humans are tortured, then slaughtered, reborn as protos and it starts all over. You really can't imagine. Maybe it's like the different levels. I don't know.” Izzy pulled inside himself a moment, visibly shaken. “I never want to see that again."

  "What about Satan or whatever the head honcho is called here?"

  "I have no idea.” Izzy paused while he negotiated some difficult footing. “It's like living in Alaska before modern communications and wondering who the Pope is. You wouldn't even know for sure if there is such a thing as a Pope."

  "Inertia is really popular here."

  "Until you came along."

  "Sorry. I was never motivated one way or the other about religion, but this is just too much of a raw deal for me to take sitting down."

  “Maybe it’s not really much about religion.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Maybe it is about nature, a part of nature we never suspected and invented false stories about. Maybe there is nothing supernatural about this place; it is just alien. Another solar system, another dimension. Just nature, red in tooth and claw.”

  “And we get here by dying?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not only here. There’s just a whole lot of variables involved in this that we don’t understand.”

  “So, essentially, i
t sucks, but it isn’t something that was necessarily done to us. Not punishment meted out for judgment.”

  “I’m just saying we don’t know much.”

  We walked along quietly again for a while. The path we were on wound in a spiral up the hillside and then followed the ridgeline overlooking a valley below. Abrupt climate changes based on altitude seemed to be the rule here. The ridgeline was forested, but down in the lower depths of the valley it was all desert and rock outcroppings.

  We were crossing through between two peaks when Izzy stopped short, listening intently. I looked around but didn't say anything. A human emerged from the brush. He was like the majority of humans in Rockvale—withdrawn, drab, disconnected. He was looking about, but there wasn't much alertness. Then there was another sound. It was like a shriek, but not anything human. Izzy stiffened and already had his bow off his shoulder and was reaching for an arrow.

  From the woods came a frightful apparition. It was a large bird-like creature, but it walked upright. It had wings, but also clawed hands at the tip of bony, feathered arms. It was covered in black, oily-looking feathers. Its head was proportioned larger than you would expect a bird's head to be, making the figure grotesquely humanoid. The man moved slowly. The bird-creature moved quickly.

  A bad combination.

  The creature opened its sharp beak and cried shrilly, aggressively. One of its eyes was missing, no doubt a battle scar, but that didn't keep it from snapping up the man in its clawed hands, ripping the man's flesh.

  "What is that?” I didn't bother whispering because the creature was still bellowing. Izzy didn't answer; He was fitting an arrow. He edged over to a tree.

  "Hide." He said it like an order. I dropped behind a rock. Izzy fired and ducked behind the tree. His skill was immediately noticeable—without missing a beat he got the arrow off in a straight line before going into motion. The arrow flew true and hit the creature in the neck. It threw the man to the ground and tore the arrow out. Then, in a rage it stabbed the man with a violent thrust of its beak.

  It was like the alley all over again. The man was obviously in pain, but he did not cry out. I couldn't take it. I charged the creature. As usual, I didn't quite know what I was going to do.

  I don't think the creature saw me coming at first. I ran up a nearby rock and launched myself onto its back, bringing my staff down hard on its head. It screeched in pain, and then did something I hadn't anticipated. It rapidly fanned its wings. They were strong and, if you were sitting on its back, they were crushing. It was like being whipped with heavy carpets by someone very strong. I started to lose my grip, so I pulled out my dagger and plunged it in right where it looked like the wings were hinged. It gave me a handle and slowed down the wing fanning. There was a painful screech from the bird-creature.

  The creature spun several times while trying to get me with its beak, but my position made that impossible. I could feel strength I had never felt before surging through my body. My explanations were all body-based, such as adrenaline pumping, but of course I didn't really have a body. Another arrow hit it in the chest, causing it to stagger a bit. I hoisted myself up, withdrawing the dagger, pulling myself all the way up to its head, and then plunged the dagger into its good eye. My hope was that even here, brains would be right behind the eye. Again, a deafening screech, then the creature stiffened and plunged to the ground, falling hard as I rolled off.

  Izzy ran over. "Case!” He pulled me over because I was still a bit winded and not responding yet.

  "What the hell was that?"

  "We call them Ichibods. Nasty little devils."

  "So there is wildlife here, or is that form another type of punishment?"

  "There are areas of this place called wildlands. They are teeming with wildlife, most of it dangerous. Even the demons won't go there, but sometimes these creatures stray off into the mountains. Since they are few, we risk them to avoid the demons."

  I looked at the Ichibod, lying in a pool of black blood and shuddered. It really did look like something from a medieval painting. I then crossed over and knelt down next to the man who still lay bloodied on the ground, torn and broken.

  "I'd be careful," Izzy warned with nervousness in his voice.

  "Or what, he might bleed all over me?” It was a sharper rebuke than it needed to be, but the indifference I was perceiving in this place was getting on my nerves.

  I turned back to the man on the ground. "What were you doing here?"

  The man struggled to form words as blood bubbled in his throat. "Scout... demons..." was all he managed.

  "Scouting for demons here?"

  "For you... demons want you found.”

  I turned to Izzy, who was standing back some, still a bit twitchy.

  "They have human scouts looking for me?"

  "Makes sense, they don't want to come up here and run into an Ichibod. We know the demons are focused on you."

  "I plan on giving them justification."

  "I think you had better get back—I think he is dying."

  "Your compassion for your fellow man overwh..."

  I was interrupted by a shriek that was as alarming as the Ichibod’s cries. I looked at the man. It was horrible. The body split open with pink-red flesh forming first, strong, heavily muscled, taut. The face had disappeared, with only smooth, fleshed-over indents where eyes, mouth and nose should be. There were no longer clothes. Flesh grew, gashes closed, tissue was molded into a new human physique, but featureless. No hair, no wrinkles, no fingerprints. A mouth appeared, then blank, hostile black eyes that fixed on me. Then all the muscles bunched tight and an echo of the previous shriek cut through the air.

  "Case!"

  It was too late, the man, now a proto I realized too late, leapt up. It was not so much that he attacked me as I was in his way. The proto wildly and blindly lashed out at anything in its way. Freud would have had a field day with this; this creature was all Id, all want and need, like a newborn, except very strong and very angry. It was like being hit by a freight train. I flew into an embankment. Had he really been attacking me, he could have finished it right there. Luckily, he just kept running. A fallen tree was in his path to the woods. He could have easily side-stepped it, but instead hefted it and threw it hard. It crashed into another tree, shattering. Naked, still lacking distinguishing features, it just kept running and disappeared crashing through the trees.

  Izzy came over, helping me up. "You okay?"

  That, I take it, was a proto."

  "Yes, get torn up enough and, essentially, you reboot to factory settings."

  "Why did they want to do that to me?”

  "Not sure, but you lose your thoughts and memory. You can see why they restrained you first. Normally, demons don't like to be around protos when they are born."

  "What happens to protos?"

  "In a few hours or so, he will reintegrate and become a more docile human again, with no memories or sense of who he once was."

  I thought about this for a moment. Then I remembered what I had just learned before the man died.

  “The demons are looking for me. Why? So far, they've scored all the points."

  "I don't know, but I think we'd better get out of here. We're going to need the others to help sort this out."

  I hesitated another moment. “Izzy, I owe you an apology.”

  Izzy looked perplexed.

  “I keep judging situations that I really don’t understand yet. I keep judging your reactions as if we were on the streets of New York and you were telling me to not get involved.”

  “Oh, that.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m thick skinned. It’s just refreshing to meet someone who hasn’t been worn down by this place.”

  “Yet.”

  Izzy smiled.

  As we continued along the ridge, I could hear a distant shrill cry from the depths of the forest. A lost soul. A hopeless world.

  7.

  The ridge came around and reemerged between two peaks onto another spectac
ular view that took in the foothills. In the far distance I could see Rockvale. Gazing across the vista I could see the high desert in the distance and then, off to one side, I could see a gorge with glowing orange and black smoke.

  "You can see a little of everything here. That, over there..." Izzy pointed to the smoke-bellowing gorge. "...is your fire and brimstone. It’s a molten substance that runs in deep crevices all through the continent. I use it in my little arrow pots."

  We turned and climbed up to a passage that went between two cliff faces. Sheltered in the back was a small tower honed out of stone. Izzy crossed around and stuck his head in a small doorway to the tower and called out, announcing he was here and that he had a guest. Very small windows had been crudely hewn out of it. There must have been three stories with an equally crude balcony on the second floor. Like Izzy’s house, the tower was sheltered from view, in this case by being tucked within a rocky crook, flanked by sheer cliff faces. You really couldn’t tell anything was there until you were on top of it.

  "Welcome to the tower.” The voice had a sing-song quality, but there was a seriousness to it. I turned. The voice belonged to a woman, standing up on the balcony, wearing a simple blue cotton blouse and jeans. Her hair was silver, not gray, but silver that shone in the light of the afternoon sun. It was hard to place her age, though that really didn't matter here. She seemed friendly, but there was also something very veiled about her.

  "Hey, Saripha,” Izzy said casually. “Who’s here?”

  “Got a full house today. Who is your friend?”

  “This is Quentin Case. He’s new. Quentin, that’s Saripha Taine.”

  I nodded. She smiled.

  “Would you like to come in, Quentin?”

  We stepped into the tower. It was small, the interior lit partially by daylight coming in the windows and from clay bowl torches. The bottom level was mostly taken up by the steps that spiraled to the second floor. We climbed up and the second floor opened into a much larger chamber. The tower obviously fronted a deeper carved vault. There were rooms that exited off from the chamber and, near each doorway, a wooden writing desk. In the middle of the vault, sitting on a woven rug, was a great wooden table with scrolled parchments. Four people sat at the table. Saripha and Izzy joined them.