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Markham remembered his estimate of the population. Fifty, maybe a hundred
billion. "This isn't a solely Christian Hell, then, huh?"
"Not at all. The Babylonians think they're in some sort of staging area. Any
moment a winged chariot trailing a glowing sun will descend and make this into
a lush forest, they say, a heaven rich in date palms and fresh springs and
easy women."
"Heaven? This?"
"Compared with scratching out an existence in a bleak dry plain, using a
wooden plow? Yes."
"Not my idea of even a pleasant weekend."
"Nor mine. I say, what are you planning?"
"Nothing."
"When you dashed away, I thought-"
"Well, I didn't think. I just wasn't going to get my brains fried."
"Nor I."
"Why didn't you do something?"
"I am not the, ah, active type."
"Who are you?"
"A philosopher, Bert-"
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"Fine, look, we've got to maneuver away from-"
Something napped lazily overhead. As Markham looked up he saw it bank and
turn, a thing ponderous and scaly and unmistakably interested in them. 3. Its
head was huge. Yellow eyes, with fractured red irises like shattered glass.
They peered down at the men from behind a pig snout with inflamed fleshy
nostrils. Below these, flaring red-rimmed holes that dripped a bile-green pus.
Where a mouth should have been there was a crusted band of hairy warts, sickly
white cysts and brimming brown sores. Its head was shaped like a bulldog's,
blunt and squat and massive. As Markham watched, it hovered on languidly
flapping wings and surveyed the area, its head swiveling completely around, as
if on ball bearings. Then it fixed upon them again, selecting them from all it
could see. Its eyes locked with Markham's. A moment passed between them, the
yellow eyes flashing with malevolent lust and appetite, the fevered ancient
communication of carnivore and prey.
It began its descent. The vast body was scaly, triangular, and its
six-fingered claws grasped the air in anticipation. It brought bony arms up
for the attack, sharp nails of crimson clashing and scraping together.
It came down on unseen currents, heavy and lumbering, its skin like aged
brass. Then its swollen neck opened and Markham saw that he had been wrong:
the apparent skull was only the upper half of some grotesquely misshapen head.
The neck yawned greedily, showing orange teeth that came to glinting points.
Muscles knotted, splitting the mouth into a thin, rapacious grin.
"My ... word," the Englishman whispered.
"Yeah."
The thing was heavy and inexorable. It looked aerodynamically impossible, a
huge mass suspended aloft on gossamer wings of coppery reptilian sheen. And it
thrust these wings forward and back as though it were batting at the air, not
trying to skim through it. The things could move easily and swiftly while high
up, but descent seemed difficult.
It doesn't seem to be maintaining an airflow over the wing surfaces, Markham
thought. More like using the wings as oars. Maybe Bernoulli's laws don't work
in Hell. But then something else must...
Slow but sure, it came.
"Run!" the Englishman cried.
"No, somebody'll just shoot us." Markham tried to think clearly.
"They'll be aiming at that."
"They already are."
They heard the thunk of bullets hitting the side of it. The leathery hide
buckled in waves, spreading away from the impact, and then oozed back into
place.
"No penetration," Markham said thoughtfully.
"If even machine guns can't puncture it, I fail to see what we-"
"Say, right-puncture. That's it."
"That's what?"
"It isn't flying at all. The thing's a damned balloon."
The Englishman named Bert looked doubtful. "It is a supernatural beast. You
cannot assume the same laws-"
"Hell I can't. Or do you want to wait for it to come down here and eat you?"
"We should run."
"It moves sideways too fast." Markham assessed the monstrous bulk coolly.
"Even if we got across the clearing, through the machine guns, it would keep
up."
"Then what-"
"We let it come to us."
"We're hopelessly-"
"Get some dried pine branches, quick."
The thing filled the air, ponderous and making a slobbering noise of greedy
anticipation. The mouth split wider, purpling lips bulging, teeth gleaming a
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vibrant orange. Its eyes glowed with stupid energy. From the leering lips came
a snakelike hiss. Abruptly the thing bellowed a high piercing attack note, a
sound like a dozen blaring trumpets filled with spit.
The two men gathered some branches and squatted in the lowest part of the
gully. The demons flexed rippling muscles and its distorted head lowered to
bite.
"Got a light?" Markham asked.
"A what?"
The Englishman fished a worn book of pasteboard matches from a pocket. It tore
when Markham opened it. He tried three of the thin matches and each time the
head crumbled away. He felt wind fluttering his hair.
"Where'd you get these?"
"I ... off a ... dead person."
"Oh great. Been out in the rain-" The fourth match lit, flared, and then the
beating of monstrous wings blew it out.
"Stand over me!"
"But-it's so-"
"Do it!"
The spindly man stooped over Markham and the fifth match split in two. Markham [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]