Hell on Earth (28 page)

The little voice in the back of my head chose that instant to open its fat yap and suggest that Arlene and I should say something to the imps, on the order of, “We're hijacking this plane to Hawaii. We never did have a proper honeymoon!”

But there was no way to give an imp orders, other than
Fall down, you're dead!
We'd simply take over the plane. After we killed the imps.

I'm certain that Arlene and I fired at the same moment. The idle thoughts passing through my mind couldn't have affected the results.

But something went wrong.

The imp Arlene tapped went down and stayed down. She put two more bullets in him, almost by reflex, to make certain that the job was good and done. I should have been able to take care of one lousy imp, after the way we'd exterminated ridiculous numbers of zombies, demons, ghosts, and pumpkins..

One lousy imp! At the closest possible range! The
head turned ever so slightly as I squeezed the trigger. Somehow the bullet went in at an angle that didn't put the imp down.

Turning around, screaming, it flung one flaming snotball. One lousy snotball. I dived to the left. Arlene was already out of the line of fire, on the right, taking care of the other one. Jill crouched, fingers stuck in her ears, trying to keep out the loud reverberations of the shots in the enclosed space. Albert could have done the same.

But Albert froze. As much of a pro as he was, he stood there with the dumb expression of a deer caught in the headlights, right before road kill. Maybe Albert had a little voice in the back of his head, and it had chosen that moment to bug him. Or maybe it was such a foregone conclusion that these imps were toast, he'd let down his guard, taking a brief mental rest at precisely the wrong moment.

The fireball struck him dead-center in the face.

I remembered losing Bill Ritch that way.

It didn't seem right to survive all the firepower this side of the goddamned sun, and then cash in on something so trivial. It made me so mad, the cockpit vanished in a haze of red. It was like I'd mainlined another dose of that epinephrine stuff from Deimos.

I dropped my gun and jumped on the imp, beating at it with my fists, tearing at it with my teeth. I was screaming louder than poor Albert, writhing on the floor holding his face.

Hands were on me from behind, trying to pull me off, little hands. Jill was behind me, yelling something in my ear I couldn't understand; but the part of me that didn't want to hurt Jill won out over the part that wanted to rip the imp apart with my fingernails.

Letting go seemed a bad idea, though: there'd be nothing stopping it from tossing the fireballs to fry us
all. Then I heard Arlene shouting something about a “clear shot,” and I suddenly remembered the invention of firearms.

The caveman jumped out of the way to give Cockpit Annie the target she wanted. She pumped round after round into the imp's open mouth. He never closed it. He never raised his claw hands again.

Of course, while we were encountering these difficulties, there was a commotion outside. I guess we had made a bit of noise.

One of the zombies tried the door. The lock held for now. Sanity returned, and I helped the blinded Albert get up, casually noticing that he hadn't taken any of the flaming stuff down his throat or nose. He might live.

In the distance we heard gunshots and curses. The Clydes must have been forcing their way forward, shooting any zombies in their way. Suddenly, I was grateful that the plane was a sardine can of solid, reworked flesh.

“Okay, moment of truth,” said Arlene, the mantle of command falling on her there and then. It's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy. “Who's going to fly this damned thing?” she asked in the tones of a demand, not a question.

The gunshots crept close. We had perhaps a minute.

“I will,” said Jill in a small voice; but with confidence. I remembered her stint in the truck with some trepidation. Then I remembered how she stayed behind the wheel after a missile tried to take her head off.

“You didn't tell us you could fly one of these,” I said, getting my voice back.

“You didn't ask,” she said. It sounded like one of those old comedy routines, but without a laugh track. It wasn't funny.

“Jill,” I said, “have you ever flown a plane before?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of? What the hell does that mean?”

A zombie threw itself against the door, where Albert still moaned. He braced himself, still fighting, still a part of the team.

She sighed. “Okay, I haven't really flown; but I'm a wizard at all the different flight simulators!”

Arlene and I stared at each other with mounting horror. I hated to admit it, even to myself, but my experience bringing down the mail rocket—with a high-tech program helping every mile of the way—probably qualified me less to fly the C-5 than Jill with her simulators.

“All right?” I said to Arlene.

“Right,” she answered, shrugging, then went to hook up Ken.

I helped Jill look for jacks on the glistening biotech. She was more willing to touch it than I was. She found what she needed and plugged Ken into the system. The operation went smoothly; he'd been designed for the purpose.

Jill called up SimFlight on her CompMac and tapped furiously, connecting it to Ken, then to the actual plane. A moment later she spoke with that triumphant tone of voice that rarely let us down: “Got it! We have control!”

The gunshots suggested the Clydes were getting closer, and more heavy bodies were beginning to throw themselves against the cockpit door. I was about to make a suggestion when Albert beat me to it. He was down but not out.

“Godspeed,” whispered Albert, still covering his eyes. “Now, why don't you purge all the air from the cabin, daughter?”

Raising my eyebrows, I silently mouthed
“daughter” to Arlene, but she shook her head. Albert obviously meant it generically. He was much too young to be her real father.

Faster and faster, Jill typed away . . . then the raging, surging sounds behind the door grew dimmer and dimmer, finally fading away to nothing. Modern death by keyboard. We were already at forty thousand feet and climbing; up there, there was too little air to sustain even zombies. And Clydes, human-real or human-fake, had a human need for plenty of O
₂
.

“Well done, daughter,” said Albert. He could hear just fine.

Having come this close to buying it, I could hardly believe we were safe again. A coughing fit came out of nowhere and grabbed my heart. Arlene put her arm around me and said, “Your turn to sleep again.” I didn't argue. I noticed that Albert was already snoozing.

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care . . .

I felt too lousy, and too guilty somehow, to stay under for long. Less than a half hour later I was awake again. Jill had turned around, crossed the coastline, and was over the ocean. All was well with the world . . . for a few seconds longer.

“Holy hell, we're losing airspeed!” she suddenly screamed, jerking us all awake. “We're losing altitude!”

It's always something.

The engines strained and whined, making the noises they would if headed into a ferocious head wind. But there was no wind. With a big
fooooomp,
one engine flamed out. Jill wasn't kidding about the quality of her simulator exercises; she instantly dived the plane to restart it. Then she headed back, circling around to try again.

“Stupid monster mechanics,” I yelled. “Dumb-ass
demon dildo ground crew! How the hell do these idiots intend to conquer the world when they can't even—”

“Shut up!” Jill shouted. I shut up. She was right. I could be pissed off all I wanted after she saved our collective ass.

Two more tries and she was white-faced. “It's some kind of field,” she said. “We can't go west.”

“So that's how they're conquering the world,” said Arlene calmly. I took my medicine like a good boy.

J
ill set the auto-pilot to continue circling, hoping no one had noticed the deviation yet. She typed away, accessing the biotech nav-com aboard. Then she smiled grimly. “Listen up,” she said.

We sure as hell did; the mantle of command was hers while we were in the air. “Guys, we're going to have to dump you off at Burbank.” She said it like Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell where the devil himself is imprisoned in ice, spending eternity chewing on Judas like a piece of tough caramel. I'd made good grades in my lit. courses.

“What? Why?” demanded Arlene.

“The force-field switch is located in the old Disney tower, near the studio.”

“Is nothing sacred to these devils?” I asked.

“Night on Bald Mountain,” said Arlene, “part deux.”

“Sorry. No choice.”

Jill altered course and headed northeast. We didn't speak for the rest of the short flight. None of us could think of anything worth saying.

Finally, Jill was bringing the plane low over Burbank International Airport. “Can you do a rolling stop?” I asked. “Slow down to about fifty kilometers per hour, then turn it into a touch-and-go?”

“Uh,” she said. After thinking about it, she continued: “Yeah. Why?” I let the silence speak for me. She gasped and said, “You're crazy if you're thinking of a roll-out!”

“I'm thinking of a roll-out.”

“What the hell,” said Arlene. “I'm crazy too.”

Jill shook her head, obviously wondering about both of us.

She cruised in over the airport, ignoring the standard landing pattern and dodging other planes, which answered my question about lousy zombie pilots.

We were low enough that the passenger cabin was pressurized again. Arlene and I went aft, picking our way over a planeful of zombies and two Clydes that were examples of the only good monsters. Jill kept calling out, “Are you ready?” She sounded more nervous each time. We reassured her. It was easier than reassuring ourselves.

“Open the rear cargo door!” Arlene shouted so that Jill could hear. We hit the runway deck hard, bouncing twice; the C-5 wasn't supposed to fly this slow. The rushing wind made everything a lot noisier. But we were able to hear Jill, loud and clear, when she said the magic word:

“Jump!”

We did just that, hitting the tarmac hard. I rolled over and over and over, bruising portions of my anatomy I'd never noticed before. I heard the sound effects from Arlene doing her impression of a tennis ball. But I didn't doubt this was the right way to disembark the plane; couldn't risk a real landing.

I got to my feet first. Jill was having trouble with her altitude. “Jesus,
no!”
shouted Arlene at the sight of Jill headed for a row of high rises.

“Lift, dammit, lift!” I spoke angrily into the air. There wasn't time for a proper prayer.

At the last second, bright, blinding flares erupted from under both wings, and the C-5 pulled sharply upward. A few seconds later we heard a roar so loud that it almost deafened us.

“What the hell?” Arlene asked, mouth hanging open.

“Outstanding!” I shouted, fisting the air. “She must have found the switch for the JATO rockets.”

“JATO?”

“Jet-assisted takeoff!” I shouted. “They're rockets on aircraft to allow them to do ultra-short-field take-offs.”

“I didn't know that plane would have those.”

“She probably didn't either,” I said, so proud of her I wished she could hear me call her daughter the same way Albert had.

We watched until Jill became a dark speck in the sky, circling until we could get the field down.

We tucked and ran, jogging all the way to the huge Disney building; the Disney logo at the top was shot up—somebody'd been using it for target practice.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Always.”

I took a deep breath; pistols drawn, we popped the door and slid inside.

My God, what a wave of nostalgia! It was like old times again . . . back on Phobos, sliding around corners, hunting those zombies!

Up the stairwells—couldn't trust the lifts . . . I mean the elevators. Any minute, I knew I'd run into a hell-prince—and me without my trusty rocket launcher. Thank God, I didn't.

We played all our old games: cross fire, ooze-barrel-blow, even rile-the-critters. The last was the most fun: you get zombies and spinys so pissed, they munch each other alive.

Every floor we visited, we looked for that damned equipment. Nada. We climbed higher and higher, I began to get the strong feeling that we'd find the field generator way, way up, fortieth floor, all the way at the top.

It'd be just our luck.

We took Sig-Cows off'n the first two zombies we killed; better than the pistols, even though they were still just 10mm. The next one had a beautiful, wonderful shotgun. I'd take it, even if it was a fascist pump-action.

“Like old times,” I said.

“Back on Deimos,” she agreed.

“They die just as easily. I like my new toy.”

“Hold your horses, Fly Taggart,” she said. “Haven't you forgotten something?”

“Like what?”

“A certain wager.”

No sooner did she mention the bet than I did indeed remember. There was only one thing to do. Change the subject: “Those zombies were probably the least of our troubles, Arlene. We can settle this later—”

“No way, Fly! I jumped out of a plane for you, and you're gonna pay your damn bet.” When she got like
this there was nothing to do but surrender. All the demonic forces of hell were like child's play compared to welshing on a bet with Arlene Sanders.

“Well, now that you mention it, I do have a vague recollection,” I lied. “And that Sig-Cow looks like a mighty fine weapon at that.”

“Good,” she said. “You take the Sig-Cow. The shotgun is mine.”

We resolved this dispute at just about the right moment, because a fireball exploded over our heads. We were under bombardment by imps. Now the new weapons would receive a literal baptism of fire.