ã€ŠHellcrashersã€‹


 Chapter 1. Waterfront

    I broke open the factory door with a crowbar and entered a decrepit manufacturing plant. The soot-covered facility went bankrupt years ago and still leaked chemical waste into the ¡°Mighty Missisip¡¯¡± decades later.

    For a brief moment, the only noises were the icy wind racing over the waterfront and the soft ticking sound of the van¡¯s engine behind me. The side panel of the van slid open.

    ¡°Sweet baby Jesus, it¡¯s colder than a witches¡¯ tit in a brass bra out here!¡± Felix exclaimed.

    I nodded my agreement as a mechanized lift lowered my co-worker¡¯s wheelchair to the ground.

    Jackie hopped from the passenger seat, her military boots crunching on the wooden timbers of the boardwalk.

    Sections of the greasy boardwalk had rotted away, revealing the polluted harbor below. The rancid waters stank of dead fish and petroleum. A huge rickety crane loomed overhead, its base squatting in the water, rusting its way towards oblivion.

    Jackie opened the back of the van, rooted around, then pulled a bulletproof vest on over her tank top. She held another vest out in her grimy hand. I took it with a grateful nod.

    Vasquez put The Club on the steering wheel, a sunshield on the dash, and began inspecting his gear. He may have been an OCD prick, but he knew how to plan a job.

    New Kid hovered nearby, hands in his pockets.

    ¡°Hey Bitchnugget, try doing something useful for a change!¡± Felix jibed.

    We grabbed our camping gear and entered the factory. Light filtered in through broken windows from sodium streetlamps outside. The center of the room was illuminated but darkness concealed every corner. Conveyor belts and walkways filled the cavernous space like a real-life version of Chutes and Ladders. The air reeked of grease and metal. Rusted machinery spoke of long years of disuse.

    Felix accidentally rolled right through a pile of animal droppings and cried out in disgust at getting shit in the tire treads. His shouts echoed in the gloom.

    I dropped a duffel to the floor and opened it up, revealing a cache of weapons. We divvied up the contents so each of us had gas masks and guns.

    ¡°Alright everyone, huddle up.¡± I said. Everyone gathered in a semi-circle. ¡°Vasquez, give us the rundown.¡±

    ¡°Today is a standard snatch-and-grab. Our target is named Aurora Laura.¡± He held up a centerfold spread ripped from an adult magazine. The lewd pose didn¡¯t leave much to the imagination. ¡°Real name Laura Brown. Originally from Omaha.¡± He squinted at the glossy pages. ¡°Measures 34B, Waist 25, Hips 26. Likes puppies and men who aren¡¯t afraid to show their vulnerable side.¡± The New Kid blushed, Jackie snorted, and Felix grinned.

    ¡°We have reliable intel that she¡¯s being held in a Domain known as Hotel California. Basically, it¡¯s worse than the worst ¡®No-Tell Motel¡¯ you¡¯ve ever imagined. Each Dweller gets their own room, so we¡¯re searching door to door.¡± He sighed. The rest of us groaned out loud. ¡°The floorplan tends to change on its own, so watch out for that. This isn¡¯t Scooby-Doo, we do not split up under any circumstances.¡±Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

    ¡°If you see something valuable on the way out, grab it. And I¡¯m talking something portable. Smaller than a breadbox. We don¡¯t want another incident like last time.¡± Vasquez looked pointedly at Felix before continuing. ¡°Garrett, you¡¯ll pop the Cherry for us.¡± I nodded in response. ¡°We go in, acquire the target, and get the fuck out of Dodge. Any questions?¡± Vasquez looked at each of us with an upraised eyebrow.

    New Kid raised his hand like a schoolboy.

    ¡°Why am I not surprised?¡± Felix asked the ceiling.

    ¡°What¡¯s a Cherry?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a door, Kid. A gateway Down Below Where The Bad Men Go.¡±

    ¡°Oh, right.¡± he said, blushing.

    ¡°Okay then, let¡¯s get to it.¡± I said.

    Past wasp¡¯s nests and sticky linoleum floors I found a door with an ¡°Employees Only¡± sign on it. The door frame sagged, dislocated from rotted walls heavy with mildew. The door had warped over time so even though it was unlocked I almost couldn¡¯t get it to budge. The factory door bore battle scars and boot prints from a hard fight with someone who lacked a crowbar. Someone like me. Busting open the door revealed a tiny office containing a desk, chairs, and an empty safe. Nothing worthwhile. I closed the door again.

    From my backpack I took a jar of a milky yellow fluid and a barbecue basting brush. When I unscrewed the lid, a nasty rotting smell wafted out. My nose wrinkled in distaste as I began painting the door hinges in slime.

    ¡°What the Hell is that?¡± inquired the New Kid over my shoulder.

    ¡°Kid, Crashers never say the H-Word. Never. Not even Topside if we can avoid it. I told you this before we started.¡± I said.

    ¡°Aw, come on! That¡¯s some superstitious bullshit!¡±

    ¡°I mean it.¡± I glared at him. ¡°Watch your fucking mouth or you¡¯ll jinx the whole Crash. Do not say the H-Word.¡±

    ¡°Sorry. What the heck is that?¡±

    ¡°Ever hear of ¡®bukkake¡¯?¡± I replied.

    ¡°No?¡±

    ¡°Then don¡¯t worry about it.¡±

    ¡°Okay, but why are you doing that?¡±

    ¡°This particular Cherry won¡¯t pop until the hinges have been lubed with actual body secretions. And before you ask: no, spit won¡¯t cut it. Just be grateful the gateway doesn¡¯t need it fresh.¡±

    ¡°Are they all like that?¡±

    ¡°No, some of them only open at midnight or you have to make a cat cry in pain. It depends on the Cherry.¡±

    ¡°Can I ask you a question?¡± the Kid asked, shuffling his feet uncertainly.

    ¡°Another one? Sure, Kid. Ask away.¡± I replied patiently.

    ¡°What makes a Cherry open where it does? I mean, if they can open anywhere how come a gateway doesn¡¯t open up in the middle of Times Square? Or in a daycare?¡±

    I paused for a long moment, considering.

    ¡°Rust and despair. Plants need water and sunshine. Mushrooms need shade and shit. Cherries need rust and despair. Simple as that.¡±

    When I finished painting the hinges the door creaked open on its own, this time revealing a rickety wooden staircase down into darkness. Felix cracked a couple chemical glow sticks and shook them. They began glowing with a golden-green light and he tossed them through the doorway.

    I grabbed the handles behind Felix¡¯s wheelchair and edged it closer to the Cherry.

    ¡°Hey careful with the merchandise, peasant!¡±

    ¡°I ain¡¯t afraid to kick a cripple downstairs.¡±

    Felix stood up on the other side of the portal.

    ¡°What the fuck? You¡¯re just faking?¡± Kid asked in an angry, disbelieving tone with eyes wide as dinner plates.

    ¡°No, Cuntpuddle.¡± Felix said, rolling his eyes. ¡°My legs don¡¯t work Topside, but they work just fine in the Nether.¡±

    ¡°Topside?¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s just a slang term for the world we live in. Topside is the place that the Damned covet beyond all else and the rest of us take pretty much entirely for granted. Don¡¯t know what you got ¡®till it¡¯s gone, as they say. It¡¯s the world you see out your window, where we get born, fuck around, and die. It is what it is and for the most part it¡¯s a pretty okay place to be. For the most part.¡±

    ¡°But how can he walk on the other side of the gate?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know Kid, but as soon as you figure it out let me know.¡± I said.

    We turned on our lights and the five of us moved slowly downwards, footsteps echoing in the gloom.

 Chapter 2. Hotel California

    The staircase was built out of salvaged boards, no two of which were the same; different lengths, different colors. There were fourteen steps exactly, but the topmost step was smaller than all the others and bright red. A last minute addition to avoid Unlucky 13 perhaps.

    My nerves were on edge as we descended. Every little creaking step telegraphed our movements to anything lurking nearby.

    At the bottom of the stairs we found a diseased and barren wasteland. The ground was black and filthy like the Athabasca oil sands of Canada. My throat and lungs ached. Noxious smoke filled the air and made breathing a chore.

    I saw a hundred burning fires lighting up the distant mountains. That made me real tense. I¡¯d watched ¡°The Hills Have Eyes¡± once and the things down here would have put cannibal mutant rapists to shame.

    Glancing backwards, I saw the staircase slowly disappearing like it¡¯d never existed.

    In front of us, our destination was uncomfortably close. Squatting less than two hundred yards away was a dilapidated motel modeled after every circa-1940s cheaper-than-shit roadside inn on ¡°the wrong side of the tracks¡± but worse. The walls had been marred by fire. A flickering red neon sign stuttered ¡°VACANCY¡± into the night. On the porch was a screen door creaking back and forth on its hinges as if begging for relief. Acid rain tinkled weakly against the corrugated tin roof.

    ¡°Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Hotel California.¡± I said.

    Inside, we found rusted pipes leaking raw sewage and rotting the stucco. Fungal blooms spread over paper-thin plywood with the texture of rotten leaves splintering at the softest touch. Nearly every window was boarded up over the remnants of razor-sharp glass.

    We searched room to room, seeing some of the sickest things you¡¯ve never imagined. Things that can¡¯t be unseen. It took us almost three days to find our target. I think the New Kid must have puked twenty times during that stretch.

    Sleep was damn-near impossible for a variety of reasons. The moth-eaten sheets were stained yellow, constantly and consistently damp with every body fluid imaginable.

    Thanks to the AC units mounted in the walls, most of the rooms were freezing cold and when I say freezing cold I mean actual people covered in actual ice. Never thought I¡¯d see someone with their own urine frozen in an icicle hanging from their crotch.

    Some of the rooms were blazing hot, literally cooking the inhabitants alive.

    ¡°Mmm! Smells like down-home cooking!¡± Felix quipped as he caught a whiff of scorched human flesh.

    The ice machine down the hall never actually worked until you were attempting to sleep at which point it spontaneously turned on. It wouldn¡¯t do a damn thing when you wanted it to but it would happily and loudly make the sound of a thousand blenders grinding away at a fistful of pebbles as soon as you laid down.

    The first night we were camping in one of the motel rooms when the old TV in the corner suddenly turned itself on, self-tuned those old rabbit ear antennas covered in foil, and scared the ever-loving crap out of us by blasting some repugnant program at maximum volume.

    The New Kid unplugged the television from the wall, but it stayed on anyway, causing him to start pounding on it angrily.

    ¡°Kid, quit making such a damn racket.¡± Vasquez said.

    ¡°Okay, fine.¡± the New Kid huffed, throwing himself down on the bed. ¡°So here¡¯s a question.¡±

    ¡°Jerkstain, your entire life is one big fucking question.¡± Felix quipped.

    ¡°Where do those shows come from? Is it something the Hotel made to screw with us?¡±

    ¡°Actually, that is a good question.¡± I said, busily stripping, cleaning, and reassembling my rifle. ¡°I¡¯m fairly certain those shows are piped in from CRT.¡±

    ¡°CRT?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s another Domain in the Big Bad. Except instead of a motel imagine a sewer filled with television sets and bad wiring. All the TV channels are fucked-up versions of the worst shows ever made.¡±

    ¡°Yeah Dickcheese, if you survive this job maybe someday you¡¯ll get to go there!¡± Felix said, holding out a flask.

    The Kid ignored the jibe but accepted the flask and took a swig of whiskey.

    ¡°For example?¡±

    ¡°Okay, you¡¯ve seen the show ¡®Survivor?¡¯ Now imagine it¡¯s more like the Hunger Games except the contestants hunt and eat each other to survive.¡±

    ¡°Jesus¡­¡±

    ¡°Trust me Kid; you really don¡¯t want to watch anything on that boob tube. Here¡¯s a question for you, Kid. How¡¯d you get into this line of work?¡±

    ¡°Well¡­ I dropped out of high school and started getting into trouble, hanging out with a bad crowd. One night my gang broke into a moving van and the cops spotted us. So I ran and made it into the basement of an abandoned meat packing plant. Found a door leading to a hallway made of baby teeth. The cops following me got eaten by a monster made out of tumors and barbed wire. Bought me time to get back Topside. After that, it was only a matter of time before I found more Crashers. What about you guys?¡±

    ¡°Back in the day I was a long-haul trucker until I went into the wrong goddamn gas station. My partner never really came out again. I found that I¡¯d lost the use of my legs when I dragged myself out of the Pit. I figure if I keep Crashing I¡¯ll find a way to make them work permanently.¡±

    ¡°How about you?¡±

    ¡°Me? I¡¯m in it for the money. Cold, hard cash. This ain¡¯t no charity; I got bills to pay. When I do a job, I expect to get paid.¡± I said.

    ¡°Amen to that, brother.¡± Jackie said, tilting a bottle in my direction with a nod. ¡°The bigger the paycheck the better.¡±

    ¡°How about you Vasquez? How¡¯d you get into this line of work?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve been doing this my whole life, man.¡± Vasquez replied.

    ¡°Say what now?¡±

    ¡°When I was a kid, I was a refugee. My dad brought me to the U.S. from Cuba on a raft made out of old plastic barrels he lashed together. I think I was about nine, maybe ten years old at the time.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re a Cuban?¡±

    ¡°Cuban-American to you, gringo. I¡¯m a Hialeah boy, born and raised. Before ¡®95, if a Cubano set foot on American soil they got the chance to apply for residency status a year later. Lucky for us, we made it ashore before we got picked up on Miami Beach. Dry-Feet, they called us.¡±

    ¡°Dad got a job working graveyard shift at a gas station and I started going to school. I always walked down there by myself to bring Dad a soda and we¡¯d sit and chat for a while. One night I¡¯m going down there right before bedtime and there¡¯s all these police out front with that yellow crime scene tape strung up across the door. The cops say that the robbers put lit matches all over him before they killed him.¡± He takes a long swig from the bottle.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°So Mom couldn¡¯t afford the rent without Dad, and after that we were sleeping rough. Couch-surfing, church pews, shelters, and sidewalks.¡±

    ¡°My God¡­¡± Kid said.

    ¡°God? God can¡¯t help us, man. See, Satan led his army to storm the Gates of Heaven and drove God and the angels out. The demons smashed his palace of blue-moon marble into dust and Satan sits on the Throne of Heaven. That¡¯s why our world is so fucked up.¡±

    ¡°So Dad¡¯s spirit came to me. He was bloody and there were these tiny flames burning all over his body. He told me that demons found doors to our world. That¡¯s why the gates keep opening, man.¡±

    ¡°Dad told me that he was joining God¡¯s secret army of angels to take back Heaven. He told me that I needed to learn to fight. To stay strong and smart, so I could count on myself, no one else. To fight back against evil. So I went looking for the gates. You look hard enough and long enough, eventually you find something. And I did.¡±

    ¡°Man¡­ is it worth it?¡± the Kid asked.

    ¡°That¡¯s not the right question.¡± I said.

    ¡°Huh?¡±

    ¡°The real question is do you censor yourself or not?¡±

    ¡°What do you mean?¡±

    ¡°Option A: you say the things you ought to, and shut your mouth on what you actually think. You wear the clothes you¡¯re told to wear, go where they say to go when you¡¯re told to go there, do the things they tell you to do. In return, you get the job, the girl, the two-point-five kids, a white picket fence, and a dog. You get to eat three square meals a day, get laid occasionally, and probably enough money to get you everything you need, some of what you want, and a bed to sleep in with a roof over your head. You¡¯re a slave but you¡¯re comfortable.¡±

    ¡°Option B: you get nothing. You get fuck-all and you¡¯ll like it because you¡¯re free. Go where you want when you want and do what you want to do when you want to do it. Comfort means fuck-all because you¡¯ll probably get arrested, get your head kicked in, or both.¡±

    ¡°So my point is do whatever you want to do because I really don¡¯t give a shit, Kid.¡±

    We sat there silently for the rest of the night. There was really nothing more to say.

    It was the second night when the New Kid decided that he actually did want to watch something on TV. Scrambled Porn Sally was pole dancing and the fuzzy static bar was right where you didn¡¯t want it to be.

    We found the Kid staring and slack-jawed, his nose touching the flickering television screen. His eyes were watering and blood trickled from one nostril.

    I shook him out of it and he mumbled a quiet ¡°thank you.¡± Every so often I¡¯d catch him stealing glances at the television when he thought I wasn¡¯t looking.

    If you were still so exhausted that none of that kept you awake, the phone rang and room service cheerfully provided a complimentary wake-up call just as you were nodding off.

    Then there were the cock-roaches. Behind one door we found one of the Lost covered in chittering insects. Carnivorous, angry little bastards about three inches long and sporting chitinous dicks.

    The moment it was dark the cock-roaches came scuttling out to bite a hole in your skin, pump their nasty bug-dongs in the bleeding orifice, and lay eggs in your flesh. After a few minutes, the cock-roaches deposited a load of eggs and goop into the poor bastard which then burst open and made a new swarm.

    Hiding in every nook and cranny, they skittered into hiding beneath the bed and in the closet when illuminated by a flashlight mounted on the barrel of an AR-15.

    The New Kid squashed a couple roaches beneath his boot and the rubber sole began to sizzle. ¡°Damn it! That burns like battery acid!¡± he shouted.

    ¡°Then don¡¯t do that.¡± I calmly said.

    On Day Three we found a Damned that swore up and down he¡¯d seen our target. We¡¯d bribed him with a little baggie of black tar heroin that offered a brief respite from his torment, so we felt confident the intel was solid.

    We were moving through the darkened hotel hallways, guns at the ready. The Kid was on point with Vasquez watching his back. Felix and Jackie were in the middle while I was behind the squad.

    ¡°This scary-ass motel reminds me of that movie ¡®Identity¡¯ with John Cusack. You ever see that shit?¡±

    ¡°Is that the one where Cusack delivers a bag to a creepy motel out in the middle of nowhere?¡±

    ¡°Nah, man. That¡¯s ¡®The Bagman¡¯ but it did have a creepy motel.¡± he said.

    ¡°Okay, so is Identity the one where Cusack has to stay in a haunted hotel room?¡± Jackie asked.

    ¡°No goddammit, that¡¯s ¡®1408.¡¯ Identity is the one where there¡¯s like a dozen people stranded at this motel in the middle of nowhere and they start getting killed one by one.¡±

    ¡°Okay, first of all: why does John Cusack stay in so many scary motels?¡±

    ¡°Typecasting?¡±

    ¡°And secondly, why are we talking about this while we¡¯re standing in the scariest motel ever?¡±

    ¡°Third question.¡± I interrupted. ¡°Do you two ever shut up?¡±

    We entered Room 303 and finding it completely thrashed, lingered in the doorway. Mattress slashed, threadbare blankets ripped, and every stick of furniture broken. The stench in the room was overpowering. The source was easy to spot; a cadaver lay rotting amid scattered toys on the floor.

    ¡°Rock and roll.¡± Felix said glibly.

    We slowly searched the room.

    ¡°Dude check this out!¡± Felix excitedly waved his latest find: a teddy bear stitched together with human skin, complete with male genitals and real eyeballs too. Just looking at it gave me the creeps.

    Giggling, Felix waved the bear inches from the Kid¡¯s face. ¡°Come here and let me give you a big old kiss!¡±

    ¡°Ugh, it¡¯s blinking at me.¡± Jackie said.

    ¡°You¡¯re coming home with me little buddy!¡± He stuffed the doll into his backpack.

    We heard a scraping sound inside a large armoire in the corner with the doors shut. Everyone went silent immediately. Vasquez pointed his gun at it.

    ¡°Come on out of there slowly, and you won¡¯t get shot.¡±

    There was no noise or movement of any kind in response. Felix sighed before moving very slowly towards the armoire. He pulled the door open quickly, surprising the woman crouched inside. She was covered head-to-toe with bleeding holes from the cock-roaches.

    ¡°Climb out of there slowly, with your hands up.¡± Vasquez said. The woman seemed to comply with Vasquez¡¯s order, her palms open and weaponless.

    The Kid hesitated for just an instant when she sprang at him. The woman grabbed his hand, pointing the gun away from herself and he fired out of reflex, the blast ringing in our ears. He tripped over the corpse on the floor, falling backwards. His head hit the floorboards, dazing him momentarily.

    She straddled him, clawing his face and howling like a banshee until Jackie stepped forward and bashed the other woman upside the head with the butt of her rifle. The woman collapsed to the floor, clutching her bleeding skull.

    ¡°Oh God, don¡¯t kill me, don¡¯t kill me!¡± she sobbed as she cowered and covered her head with both arms.

    ¡°Quiet!¡±

    The woman shut her mouth instantly, but her body visibly trembled and her eyes welled up. Occasionally, tears ran down her face, leaving twin trails on her filthy cheeks.

    ¡°Damn guys, isn¡¯t that a little harsh? I mean, look at her. She¡¯s scared and she¡¯s hurt!¡± said the New Kid.

    ¡°Look Kid, I explained this before but let me make it perfectly clear. She isn¡¯t a person deserving of respect and dignity. She¡¯s a very bad person who did very bad things and ended up in a very bad place.¡± I said.

    ¡°Yeah, but-¡°

    ¡°Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the Down Below deserves to be here. No one wakes up down here for being an atheist, or being gay, or for smoking weed when you were sixteen.¡± I continued.

    ¡°Every single person in the Bad Place committed at least one genuine act of pure, unmitigated evil.¡± I counted off a list on each finger. ¡°Rape, murder, torture. Shoot, I¡¯ve even been on a job to collect a Wall Street banker who stole people¡¯s retirement accounts then blew it on hookers and cocaine.¡±

    ¡°The point is that they did something that caused pain and suffering to others and whatever they did was enough to earn a ticket Way Down to Hadestown.¡± I pointed to the woman crouched and shaking on the floor. ¡°That includes Little Miss Sunshine here.¡±

    ¡°You try anything like that again, and I¡¯ll shoot your hands off. You run, I shoot your feet. Am I making myself clear?¡± Jackie said to our target.

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Is your name Laura?¡±

    ¡°Yes¡­ how¡­?¡±

    Felix gripped the woman roughly by her chin and held her face up. Vasquez pulled out the centerfold and looked back and forth from one to the other.

    ¡°That¡¯s a positive ID on the primary target.¡± Vasquez said.

    ¡°Great, can we get the Hell out of here now?¡± said the New Kid.

    ¡°Goddammit Fucktard, we told you not to say the H-Word!¡± Felix yelled angrily. He grabbed the Kid by the straps of his flak jacket and shoved him back against the wall.

    The New Kid stammered out an apology, but we all knew the damage had already been done. By all rights, we could have abandoned him right then and there. We could have left him to die, but for the time being, we still needed another pair of hands to finish the job.

    ¡°We need to get out. Now. We have definitely overstayed our welcome. Bag her up.¡± I said.

    Felix and Jackie grabbed the target by the arms, holding them together and Vasquez locked handcuffs to her wrists. The Kid shoved a black bag over the target¡¯s head despite her protests.

    Prize in hand, we made our way out of the motel room just as fast as we could. The floorplan had shifted around, closing hallways behind us and most of the time it felt like we were going in circles.

    It took another three days to finally find our way out of the motel and make it across the mountain pass. No matter how long we walked it was always late afternoon and a red sun was constantly shimmering faintly across the plain, casting mile-long shadows from the scrubby brush.

    Forward motion was slow and steady; every step felt like weights were attached to our feet. Even breathing felt like work. Plumes of smoke and dust rose with every step as we trudged our way down the blighted hillside.

    Scattered about were blackened stumps with drifts of wind-blown ash accumulated against them. Jackie accidentally kicked over one of the ash piles, scattering charred twigs and stones. Upon further examination, we realized that the debris we¡¯d thought to be twigs were actually scorched bones.

 Chapter 3. Route 666

    At long last we made it to a stretch of blacktop. Abandoned vehicles filled the road and we cautiously threaded our way around them. Each vehicle was rusted or gutted, and most of them had corpses for passengers. The Damned turned their rotting heads to watch us pass, reaching weakly out to grab us.

    Dead weeds stuck up wherever they could find purchase in the cracks. We found that the road had been melted, cooled, and reformed. Several Damned had been submerged in the asphalt, arms outstretched as if surfacing from beneath a pool of black oil. Their cries were muffled but still audible. There were impressions left behind in the asphalt after it had released its prizes to the scavengers who came later.

    ¡°Hey, do you hear that?¡± Jackie asked.

    ¡°Hear what?¡± said the New Kid.

    ¡°Sounds like something scraping on metal. Listen. It¡¯s coming from over there.¡±

    Obscured by the tinted windows of a camper shell, something moved in the back of a rusted pickup sitting up on cinder blocks. The New Kid crept slowly up to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate.

    A sleek, obsidian hound with a human head launched itself out of the back of the truck. Its fur was black and glistening, with a body built for speed like a greyhound but with the face of a man. It opened its disjointed jaw and roared like a mountain lion, revealing rows of serrated shark teeth.

    Like a heat-seeking missile, it hurtled itself at the Kid with every intention of clamping its jaws around his throat. He brought his arm up to block the hound¡¯s attack and the beast locked its fang-filled maw around his limb.

    The creature snarled, shaking the Kid like a rag doll, intent on tearing his arm off in a gout of blood. Claws tore his clothing, and the Kid screamed in pain as triangular teeth began to puncture holes in the flesh of his arm.

    Out of the corner of his eye he saw a short length of wood. He scrambled for it in the dust with his left hand while the dog savaged his right arm. The New Kid finally managed to wrap his hand around the sturdy board and brought it down on the canine¡¯s square-shaped head in a sweeping arc. There was a loud crack as the board connected, but he could¡¯ve been smacking it with a flyswatter for all the good it did. He struck the sharkdog in its human-shaped face with the board over and over again. The New Kid tried shoving the end into the monster¡¯s mouth to pry it open, but the beast refused to release his bleeding arm.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

    The moment I saw an opening I shoved my old Ka-Bar knife right into the side of its head. The beast shuddered and died, collapsing in a heap on top of the Kid. He wiped blood and gore off his face and looked up with bleary eyes.

    ¡°Told you not to use the H-Word.¡± I said.

    We stopped beside a rusting Quonset hut for a quick break. Jackie dug around in her backpack for a pack of smokes and her lighter. Felix went to take a leak on the other side of the building.

    I took a swig from my canteen. The water in the canteen had a sharp taste of iodine from the purification pills I¡¯d dropped in: not unexpected from reclaimed water, but always tough to stomach.

    Vasquez sat the package down beside the Quonset and removed her hood long enough for me to give Laura a drink of water. She gulped it down gratefully before we replaced the hood on her head.

    I mentally inventoried the remaining water. We all had plastic bottles in our packs plus had the canteen on my hip. I¡¯d read somewhere that the best place to store water was inside ourselves. While I understood that intellectually, I couldn¡¯t help but be daunted at the prospect of making our way across the desert without any water tucked away for later.

    Rations were running low too.

    We were still many miles away from an exit Topside, and the Bad Place was always full of surprises.

    ¡°Hey Garrett. Got a minute?¡± Vasquez beckoned me over to the side of the building. ¡°You know what I just realized?¡± he asked.

    ¡°That simultaneous revelations aren¡¯t a thing?¡±

    Vasquez leaned in to whisper in my ear. ¡°We are now standing in the Tollway.¡±

    ¡°Route 666?¡± I asked.

    He nodded. ¡°I didn¡¯t recognize it before because there¡¯s no tollbooth and no signs. But one of us is going to pay the toll. You know who I mean.¡±

    I looked over at the New Kid. He was nursing a knot on the back of his head and his face was still all scratched up from Laura¡¯s fingernails. The New Kid removed the sopping bandage wrapped around his arm. The wound where the sharkdog had bit him was black with infected tissue.

    Together, we coldly calculated his chances of survival and came up short.

 Chapter 4. Troopers

    The New Kid was taking a leak on the side of a rusted Quonset hut while Vasquez and I decided his fate.

    Rumbling engine noises heralded the arrival of a flat-black sedan on the horizon. A vehicle of generic make and model, the police cruiser had clearly driven through ¡°You-Know-Where¡± and come out on the other side.

    Jackie and Felix grabbed our target and the five of us hustled behind the Quonset, hiding as quick as we could and praying we weren¡¯t seen. The New Kid wasn¡¯t so lucky. The dumb fuck stood there with his dick in his hands and didn¡¯t notice the police cruiser until it was too late.

    The battle-scarred vehicle came to a stop, engine idling. The dented drivers¡¯ side door opened and a bipedal male wearing a khaki uniform emerged from the dark interior of the cab. At first glance he may even have passed for human except that every inch of skin was horribly burnt and mutilated. Steel-toed boots crunched on the gravel as he approached.

    The Trooper peered at the Kid through his mirrored aviator sunglasses. One hand rested on the nightstick tucked into his belt.

    Unsure what to expect, I kept my hand near my pistol just in case.

    ¡°You live around here, boy?¡±

    ¡°No sir. Just passing through and found the place like this.¡±

    ¡°I find out you¡¯re lying to me, we¡¯re going to have a problem, boy.¡±

    ¡°Understood.¡± Every now and then, I caught a glimpse of scarred flesh beneath his shirt.

    ¡°Alright then. Just so long as we have an understanding between us.¡± The Trooper looked around at the horizon almost as if he¡¯d forgotten he was in the middle of a conversation. His gaze settled back on the Kid. ¡°What¡¯s your name, son?¡±

    ¡°My name?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t play dumb now.¡±

    Without warning the Trooper pulled a baton from his belt and smashed the Kid with a merciless blow. He doubled over in pain, clutching his belly.

    The Trooper loomed over the Kid, lightly smacking the baton in the palm of his palm.

    ¡°Looks like you in a heap of trouble here, boy.¡± the Trooper said with a pronounced Southern accent. He pronounced ¡°here¡± like ¡°he-ah.¡±

    ¡°You look healthy, don¡¯t have the shakes. No sir, I can tell just from lookin¡¯ at you. You a young man, your back is strong, and you got all your parts in working order, yes sir. You got your whole life in front of you. Seems to me you¡¯ll make a fine slave.¡±Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    ¡°You¡¯re gonna dig for us with your bare hands, until your skin is gone, and you dig until your finger bones are worn down to lil¡¯ nubbins. Yessuh, and I¡¯m gonna beat you so bad you¡¯re gonna thank me for the privilege of diggin¡¯.¡±

    The Trooper raised the baton to smash the Kid over the head.

    Shots rang out as I unloaded my Glock 9mm into the Trooper¡¯s head, blasting him over and over again. Bullets shattered his aviator shades and tore holes in his khaki uniform before the Trooper fell to the ground. We ran up and Jackie fired her shotgun point-blank into the Trooper¡¯s face before checking on the Kid.

    ¡°That seems like overkill, Jackie.¡± I said with a smirk.

    ¡°Overkill is nothing but a word.¡±

    ¡°That stick looks like lacquered hickory but felt like rebar covered in nettles.¡± The Kid hissed.

    ¡°Let¡¯s get the fuck out of here. If one Trooper found us, more are on the way.¡± I said.

    The crew hurried into the Cruiser while the target went into the trunk like a piece of luggage.

    ¡°Buckle up.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to.¡± the New Kid pouted.

    That nasally whine was the last straw. Ice water flowed through my veins. It must have showed on my face because when he saw my expression he recoiled.

    ¡°I don¡¯t give a fuck what you want. I ain¡¯t your brother, I ain¡¯t your dad. Lately I ain¡¯t even a nice person. If you don¡¯t do what I say when I say I will knock you the fuck out and make it happen. Now buckle the fuck up.¡±

    He buckled up.

    I shifted the police cruiser into drive and stomped on the gas. Nothing happened. ¡°No.¡± I stomped on it again, shouting louder each time. ¡°No, no, no! I do not believe this horseshit!¡±

    ¡°Is it a Ford?¡± Felix joked.

    Aggravated, my forehead hit the steering wheel. The Troopers were bearing down on us fast. I stomped down on the gas out of frustration and the Cruiser lurched forward. Surprised, I looked up and the vehicle died again, whiplashing our necks. ¡°What the-?¡±

    I closed my eyes, gripped the wheel, and stepped on the gas. The Cruiser moved forward slowly.

    ¡°Guys, you¡¯re not going to like this.¡±

    An hour later and my heart was still hammering in my chest and I was white-knuckling the wheel. Vasquez sat right beside me, giving me directions as I drove pedal-to-the-metal with my eyes shut tight.

    Bullets pinged off our vehicle and I ducked out of reflex. I could barely hear the gunshots over the roaring engines and police sirens.

    ¡°Can¡¯t this piece of shit go any faster?!¡± Jackie screamed inches from my ear. Jackie turned in her seat, firing a few potshots at the other cruiser.

    Felix rooted around in the Army surplus duffel bag and pulled a homemade pipe bomb from the bottom. He lit the fuse with a cheap gas station lighter, let it cook for a moment, then lobbed it out the window at our pursuers.

    His throw fell short, and the pipe bomb landed in the middle of the road.

    Whether it was Luck or Fate or God deciding to finally give us a break, the second cop car drove over top of the pipe bomb, straddling it with all four tires before it went off.

    The police cruiser lifted off the ground, bursting into flame and sending two Troopers screaming into oblivion.

    ¡°Keep driving, let¡¯s get as many miles away from here as we can before this thing runs out of gas.¡± Vasquez instructed.

    The sun was setting, and already a cold wind was sweeping down from the hills. Within an hour the temperature would drop by fifty degrees. Sleeping in the exposed cab of the police cruiser would prove to be a very uncomfortable option that night.

    And the next night.

    And the next.

    Four of us left the New Kid hogtied and blubbering in the middle of the road. None of us said a word about it, but we all knew our offering was accepted because we found an exit Topside within an hour.

    To this day, I don¡¯t know what dragged him screaming into the desert. But the toll had to be paid.

 Chapter 5. Special Delivery

    We delivered the package to a seedy film studio on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada. On the soundstage was a set built out of plywood and made to look like a teen girl¡¯s bedroom: painted pink and full of stuffed dolls. Stage lights hung from metal bars where the room¡¯s ceiling should be, and several cameras were aimed at the bed from different angles.

    We were escorted by a couple of hired goons. Low-rent thugs with chrome-played Glocks tucked in the waistband of their jeans.

    Vasquez led the way past the stage lights and cameras. Jackie and I flanked the package, while Felix rolled behind with a sawed-off shotgun cradled in his lap.

    ¡°You know what the worst job here would be?¡± Felix asked.

    ¡°What?¡± I sighed.

    ¡°Janitor. Can you imagine cleaning this place every night? ¡®Excuse me sir, can you lift your feet? I¡¯m trying to mop here¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Jesus, Felix.¡± I laughed. I couldn¡¯t help it.

    ¡°Every night you have to clean it! You can¡¯t imagine the smell!¡±This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°Sure I can.¡± Jackie retorted. ¡°Like a warm turtle tank probably.¡±

    Felix chortled loudly.

    Our customer was a loathsome weasel named Bob Gunkel. He was fat, slowly sliding his way to four hundred pounds. He came out of his office wearing a Hawaiian shirt with huge sweat stains under his pits. He wiped cheese puff dust off his hands, leaving long orange fingerprints on his khakis. The very sight of him made my skin crawl.

    ¡°Well? Did you bring her back to me?¡±

    Vasquez pulled the black bag off the package¡¯s head.

    ¡°You did it! I have to admit, I had my doubts when I heard you could bring her back but you actually did it!¡± Gunkel caressed her with his meaty fingers and the expression on his face looked like he was already creaming his pants. She flinched away, but we¡¯d kept the ankle chains and handcuffs on for a reason.

    ¡°Laura, sweet Laura, I know I got carried away the last time we were together, but I promise you this time is going to be different!¡±

    Vasquez gripped my arm before I even realized my fist was clenched.

    ¡°Sir, not to interrupt, but if you¡¯ll just pay us our fee we¡¯ll be on our way and leave you two alone together.¡±

    ¡°Of course!¡± He snapped his fingers and one of the goons retrieved a couple of greasy fast food sacks, handing them to Vasquez.

    Vasquez checked the paper bags and the wads of cash inside. Jackie and I watched the goon squad to see if their hands moved towards their pistols.

    ¡°Are we good?¡± Gunkel asked.

    Everyone held their breath for a moment.

    ¡°Yeah, we¡¯re good.¡± Vasquez said. ¡°Let¡¯s move out, team.¡±

    ¡°You lovebirds have a real nice time now, y¡¯hear!¡± Felix called on the way out.

 Chapter 6. Sin Bragas

    Later that night we were sitting in a strip club called Sin Bragas working our way through our second bottle of Don Julio Blanco.

    On the asphalt, neon-drenched streets of Topside, we''re nothings and nobodies. Between the fast food and taxes, the bad gas station coffee and the past-due child support payments, we¡¯re just pieces of soiled human garbage. In a world of drugs, traffic, radio, politics, smoke and mirrors, we¡¯re little more than dirty, disposable pawns.

    Yet amongst the freak show outlaws and leather-clad outcasts, the occult cabals and deranged sickos, the demon summoners, the adrenaline junkies, and conspiracy nuts who make up the heart of the Hades-diving fringe, we¡¯re death-defying, bigger-than-life rock stars.

    Every form of fame has its own form of groupies. There are women who sent marriage proposals to Ted Bundy when he was on Death Row, for God¡¯s sake.

    Most of us had a scantily-clad woman hanging on an arm or crawling in our lap. Jackie was busy showing off her new tattoo, flexing biceps as big as my head. Her upper arm shined with fresh ink depicting a sexy Devil Girl straddling a black spade with the number ¡°13¡± in racecar red.

    ¡°Well, I gotta go drop the kids off at the pool. Felix said.

    Vasquez rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb towards the hallway behind him. Felix rolled his wheelchair to the men¡¯s room. I followed.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

    When I stepped into the men¡¯s room Felix was pounding on the handicap stall door. ¡°As if my life wasn¡¯t hard enough!¡± Felix shouted.

    I was standing at the urinal when one of the local yokels came in. I recognized him as the hillbilly at the bar telling racist jokes to the stone-faced bartender.

    Now, every man knows that there are unspoken rules of men¡¯s room etiquette. When you¡¯re first and there are multiple urinals on the wall, you¡¯re supposed to take the spot furthest from the door. When you come in second, you take the spot furthest from the first guy. What you don¡¯t do, what you never, ever, ever do is stand at the urinal directly adjacent to the first man. That¡¯s a surefire path to an ass-kicking in my book. Of course, this mullet-wearing motherfucker decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me.

    ¡°You guys are HellCrashers, aren¡¯t you?¡± he asked.

    I didn¡¯t respond.

    ¡°Dude, you guys just go down to Hell, kick Satan in the balls, and rescue the souls of big-tittied single moms. Man, that¡¯s fucking awesome. ¡°What¡¯s it like being a Hellcrasher, bro?¡±

    ¡°Ever hear the one about the guy who wouldn¡¯t shut the fuck up with his dick in his hand?¡± I curtly replied without looking at him.

    ¡°Um, no?¡±

    I reached up and grabbed the hair on the back of his head then slammed him face-first into the tile. His nose broke and he crumpled like a wet paper sack, hitting his chin on the urinal on the way down to the floor. I hosed him down with the contents of my bladder for good measure.

    ¡°That¡¯s what it¡¯s like.¡±

    I was washing my hands when I heard Felix shouting.

    ¡°Hey! Can somebody toss me some toilet paper? I¡¯m all out of shit tickets over here!¡±

    I left the club without a word.

 Character Spotlight - Mr. Pinkler

    There are plenty of things that Jeffrey Marcus Pinkler is pretty darn sure of: America is the greatest country in the world, women are all whores who must be punished, and music today is trash put out by homosexual atheists and Jew-elite bankers and negro gang-bangers. Then there are the few things things that he''s almost totally convinced of: kids today have no respect for education, no one understands anymore why WW2 had to be fought, and that Hitler was a great man manipulated by an evil cabal of Freemasons. And then there are the few things in this universe that he''s is truly and absolutely certain of: the existence of Hell, the nature of the Damned, and the sanctity of his mission to commit back to the flames all those who traffic with demons. He has proof. Mathematical proof. Historical proof. Social-studies related proof.

    See, the thing is that Mr. Pinkler (as his students at the Middle School call him, and as he prefers to be addressed while "in the field") has actually met Jesus Christ. Or, I guess, a reasonable facsimile there-of: the Son of God, Hosanna in the Highest, was hanging out in a drainage-ditch out behind the school near the closed-down water-treatment plant, where Mr. Pinkler was investigating to be certain that none of "his kids" were smoking marijuana cigarettes or reading pornography during lunch hour.

    The storm-fencing had recently come down, you see.

    The Prince of Peace stood there in the darkness inside the the runoff tunnel, with a crown of thorns warping His face into an obscene sunburst of flesh and with clotted blood pooling from His hands and feet, and He told Mr. Pinkler that the Lamb of God was trapped in Hell while the Damned roamed free.

    He offered proof: the name and address of a powerful out-of state financial investor who had died two years ago. Track him down for me, said Christ, and you''ll see that he''s alive and well again. Consign him back to Hell for me, begged Christ, and I''ll assure you a spot at my right hand at the coming of my glory in Heaven. Use a circular saw and a hot curling iron to kill him, suggested Christ, because he deserves to suffer for his sins.

    For three years, now, Mr. Pinkler has been taking longer and more frequent sick-days and leaves-of-absence from the Middle School to fly out of state (not that anyone is particularly bothered: everyone really respects Jeff as an educator, but it''s not like anyone considers him a close friend). He''s invested more and more money in stun-guns, gas masks, knives, rope, bullet-proof vests, binoculars and duct tape. He even had his basement re-done with sound-proofing. He''s gotten very good at circumventing both police scrutiny and highly-paid counter-intrusion security experts. And he''s successfully ''re-Damned'' somewhere in the range of a dozen people, including one guy TWICE.Stolen story; please report.

    Mr. Pinkler used to be a buttoned-down little psycho, living a life of quiet desperation and softly going more and more mad with each passing day. Now his sanity is positively plummeting, and he couldn''t be happier. When he gets the urge to go down to the tunnels and meet with Christ, the King of Kings provides a holy sacrament of divine flesh and divine blood, and these give Mr. Pinkler special powers to catch the Damned. Once he''s choked down the spongy, rotten skin and stained his teeth with nearly-fermented ichor, Mr. Pinkler can read minds for a week. The sounds of surrounding thoughts wash over him, and he can "tune his heart" to catch snippets of sins and suspicions and avarice and dark desires and murderous intent.

    With this power, Mr. Pinkler has even made some money in Vegas. All of it, of course, he''s re-invested in the mission.

    The scary thing for the community is that Mr. Pinkler is a Hatchetman who thinks like a crasher: he''s not a homicidal, fearless loon. He''s not a megalomaniacal amateur psychopath. And most importantly, he''s not an aimless drifter like either of them: he has a base of operations, he has a tool-kit, he has a list of resources and notes on acceptable losses and he is doing this job because he loves it and because it feeds his soul in a way that nothing else does and because it''s exciting as hell and because the pay is SO worth it.

    In fact, the connection to "topside crashing" is further exemplified by the fact that Mr. Pinkler occasionally works with a "crew": he''ll hire out local muscle if he thinks he''s going after a target too big for one man alone. And since Mr. Pinkler is the man called in for the biggest of Hell-Pulls, that means he''s sometimes the head of a six-man team in a black van. And, much like a crasher, the goal is to snag the target alive ¡­ and then to pull them apart slowly, in Mr. Pinkler''s case. The other major thing to note is that Mr. Pinkler does not kill anyone except the un-Damned. Or, at least, he sure tries not to: his mission is a holy one, and his job is to send the escaped back to Hell, not harm the living. Sure, sometimes his job entails using a sniper rifle from a roof to pop someone, and then a window entry to a hotel room to stun a bodyguard and then an extraction from there, but most people who deal with Mr. Pinkler live.

    Which is all part of his cover.

 What We Know

    What We Know We Know

    There is a Bad Place. Or more accurately there are bad places that do not play by the rules of our universe. Doors and portals and gates and tunnels open up to these places that are dangerous and alien. Most of these doors pop up like mushrooms in the neglected corpses of buildings where once people lived and worked and writhed together in the squalid theater of life.

    These domains are connected for the most part. The knowledgeable, determined and lucky can find and navigate the doors between them. The key that seems to tie these domains together is that they seem designed to capitalize or at least endorse the suffering of their human residents. There is no real comfort or serenity within these places, even to the creatures native to its cruel physics.

    There are new rules in each one. The Laws of Nature are often absent or mutilated to a degree they become unrecognizable to their ablest observers. There are laws to be sure; repeatability and ardent study occur often, but mechanisms for many are never found. We know the lost can "survive" decapitation in the Factory</a> and sprinting is markedly slower than walking in Dust for everyone, but we do not know how. Some Underlaws effect only the dead people that are in residence. Some effect everyone that enters.

    Dead people show up there. People that die in our world go to these places. At least, the bad people do. If the point of the domains isn''t punishment, then they do an exceptional job on the side. Torture isn''t just the language of natives, it is woven into the blood and marrow of the location itself. It is a unifying physic. Some domains seem to contain only lost souls that have a similar history or catalog of actions; others have vastly diverse backgrounds among it''s residents.

    These lost souls can be brought back. By bringing them back through a door to Topside, those who were once dead can live again. Their old body is unaffected by this process and it remains as it was. Their new body undergoes no change, save for the reassertion of our Laws of Nature. A severed head may even be able to talk when you fish it out of the Offal Pit, but once it crosses the threshold to Topide, it will die as quickly as any other severed head.

    You can die there. Those traveling through these places can and do die often. They have not yet reappeared in the same place or, in fact, anywhere. There are several hypotheses that there are special bad places just for interlopers or "crashers".

    Shackles. The lost are restrained to these locations in ways living trespassers are not. Often the restraint or shackle is provided by a sentient or semi-sentient group of entities, such as the crows of the Lonely Woods</a>. Other places, the shackles are an intangible aspect of the environment. Regardless, these shackles cannot travel from domain to domain. The crows explode if the cross a threshold between domains; Thoughts of the compulsive need to search evaporate after one leaves the Silent City</a>. Shackles are rarely a threat to crashers, but their only purpose seems to be keeping the lost in residence and at the mercy to the domain''s tortures.

    Screws. Beings known as screws are less predictable than shackles. Some are fanatically devoted to the suffering of the lost while others are unconcerned with anything beyond their own pleasure. Screws are very often dangerous but can often be overcome with skill and firepower. They are sentient and tied to their home domain. Despite this, they can travel to other domains, but crumple to ash instantly upon coming into our world.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    Demons. Demons are much like screws, but with an inexplicable interest in particular events topside and they are much, much more powerful. Demons maintain a respect and implicit authority among the screws of their domain and are considered aristocracy of a sort to most crashers. Demons can be bargained with, but they are very skilled in negotiation and have powers that can often manifest Topside. They cannot travel topside themselves and so have been known to invest lost or even crashers with a modicum of their power to act in their interests. These people are known as hachetmen.

    Hachetmen. Hatchetmen are the bogeymen of crasher culture. They are sent to reclaim escaped souls, usually by rekilling them. Sometimes killings assumed to be the result of a hatchetman include esoteric and bizarre ritual elements. Sometimes hatchetmen are sent after crashers themselves if they draw the attention of a hatchetman''s patron. Hatchetmen often have powers or strange abilities, but are more dangerous for their desperate dedication. Their contracts with demons rarely leave room for failure.

    What We Think We Know

    Everyone there deserves to be there. No one wakes up Down Below for being an atheist, or for being gay, for shooting the guy who raped their wife, for getting an abortion, or for getting drunk on the communion wine when they were 16. Everyone there committed at least one act of genuine, true evil in their lives, be it taking advantage of a drunk girl at a college party, being a serial poisoner of neighborhood cats, or ¡°Just following orders¡± at a Serb rape camp.

    No one has met an angel. If there is an opposite to these bad places, no one has come back with anything resembling evidence. Every crasher can give detailed accounts or even show you pictures of demons and damned, but not once has a reliable account of an angel popped up. Priests, rituals and magics from every culture have repeatedly failed to discomfort the natives of these domains. While most religious traditions can shoehorn the findings of crashers into their own dogma, no one''s dogma has really come out on top of the list for metaphysical accuracy.

    What We Don''t Know

    Who¡¯s in Charge? Somehow, between death and appearance in a domain, the lost are sorted into groups. People who willingly infected others go over here and war profiteers go over there. By what mechanism or judgment this occurs has never been determined. The lost have no memory of an intermediary stage between death and damnation.

    If justice is a goal of these places, they seem to operate by an inefficient and largely apathetic binary rubric. Once the lost appear in a domain, they are almost always anonymous. Whatever crimes landed the dead in that location don''t seem to concern the screws in any way.

    The doors between the domains that crashers use are not the only way to move between the domains. There are train systems and bus lines and highways that travel non-euclidean routes from one domain to another. These Transits do not exist for the convenience of crashers. Who established or maintains these Transits is a complete mystery. Demons will give any answer to these questions they think will benefit them the most and cannot, as a hard rule, be trusted. Many believe the evidence suggests that demons simply do not know.

    What are the doors for? No shackles, nor screws, nor even demons can use the doors. Crashers are not welcome and the lost are successfully prevented from using the doors. So why built or place a fixed portal? There seem to be metaphysical locks of a sort to prevent the casual use of some, but these aren''t universal or even difficult to overcome. As with everything in crasher society, there is much debate and hypotheses, but none yet that cover the full facts.

 Not Cavers

    <div>

    Spelunkers are dicks. God it felt good to type that although it''s probably just a little bit pathetic. Growing up I wanted nothing else but to be a caver, I''d play at it for hours under our trailer, studied and learned everything I could about caves and the people that explored them. I worshipped the bastards. I joined a cavers club at the community college where I studied journalism - had some fun there and right after graduation landed my dream job. Writing this, the ''In Caving" column for newly funded Extreme Explorer magazine which is of course how I met my first honest to Jesus group of serious cavers. Never in my life had a met a more self absorbed group of narcissistic asshats: Every one of their orthedontry cost more than my college education. Two weeks with them in Wakulla-Leon pretty much ended my love affair with the darkness below as it were.

    I spent the next few years running around the globe as publicist and paid hanger on for these pricks until I¡¯d pretty much had it. Six months ago I¡¯d typed my letter of resignation for the 8th time certain I was going to go through with it¡­then it happened. It didn¡¯t get much publicity but most of my regular readers probably know what I¡¯m talking about ¨C The Galt disaster.

    If you hadn¡¯t heard the story¡­a group of cavers managed to overhear another group planning to hit Galt caverns, no one¡¯d been in them for decades not since Lazarus Galt bought the land and sealed it off. So they decided they¡¯d ride in on the coattails ¨C let these other guys take some of the heat and knowing that there was another team in the hole acts as a bit of a security blanket if things got dicey.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

    Anyway no one knows for certain what really happened down there but of the ten cavers that went in only 3 came out. Galt hushed it up as best he could ¨C paid off those three to keep their traps shut, has the authorities still working on the ¡°official¡± report ¨C you know the drill. We¡¯re never going to know, except that my editor gets a bug up his butt about it¡­¡±I don¡¯t care what it costs, get one of the guys to crack.¡± I¡¯d have to be a moron to turn down a blank check so I tear up resignation number 8 and begin looking.

    Which brings us nicely to last night and Duane Barton. I finally tracked him to a bar in Xtopa. Only took half a bottle of Tequila to get him talking ¨C He walked me through getting in and tracking ¡°the other guys¡±, I got some good stories about his dead buddies but whenever we got close to what happened he clammed up hard. Sometime around bottle 3 he breaks down and begins weeping and he tells me about fire and smoke that smelt of rotten eggs and how he cradled a dying man in his arms asking if there were other cavers further in that needed help¡­He gets real quiet after saying that, He tells me the guy said three words before he died. I¡¯ve been thinking if I only had three word left what I would want to say. I guess everyone has three last words we just don¡¯t know which three they¡¯re going to be. This guy had to know these were his last, so Duane asked this guy about other cavers and with his last breath he answers, ¡°Not Cavers¡­Hellcrashers"

 Crasher Jargon

    Baby-raper: A derogatory term for a damned soul.

    Boutique: A domain that houses lost that have all committed a similar sin.

    Cheney: An old, wealthy client.

    Cherry: An entrance to Hell.

    Citizen: The native lost of a domain.

    Demon: A creature of great power and seeming self-determination. Demons do not appear to have responsibilities to a domain, but exert authority over one.

    Domain: A distinct underworld characterized by its own screws, shackles and even physics.

    Drift: An extremely small domain that travels within other domains. Drifts are rare and usually unpredictable, but they can be used with caution to travel between domains.

    Ghost Pussy: A rumored but undiscovered cherry.If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    Hachetman: Men and women with personal demonic pacts. Unlike summoners, Hachetmen usually have met their demon in the flesh and have negotiated to serve the demon in return for specific gifts.

    Kit: A superstitious crasher''s collection of lucky charms is his "kit"

    Lost: A polite euphemism for a damned soul.

    Mint: An unclaimed cherry.

    ?stermann Account:A job so risky that it can''t be done or a payoff off so big that it can''t be believed.

    Pink: A living person

    Smithers: A loyal right hand assistant to a Cheney. Some smithers skills are bureaucratic in nature, while others are investigators or men of violence. Crashers generally interact with smithers more often than Cheneys.

    Summoner: A person capable of entering a hypnotic state that can supposedly contact and negotiate with demons. Their contacts are usually made within strict ritual confines. There is no evidence that a summoner has actually communicated with a specific demon or anything at all. One only has the word of the summoner, which is why a summoner''s reputation is their most vital resource.

    Topside: Our world, the world of the living

    Transit: A domain with an infrastructure deliberately connecting it to other domains as opposed to cherries which most domains have.

    Underlaws: The physics or metaphysics of a domain.

    Warehouse: A domain with no apparent requirements for its citizens.

 Domain - The Silent City

    The Silent City

    Type: Warehouse

    Entrance: Quietside is an iron well cover outside Tremont, Maine. A former Hellcrasher bought the land after retiring. He keeps it locked and well-guarded and will allow access for $1500 or a ¡°particular type¡± of sex with a female. His tastes have drifted well past the normal predilections in his years of crashing and prevent him from finding willing partners.

    Alternately, Backayonder is a cave entrance in the woods outside Bentonville, Arkansas. It is easily found, but requires advanced spelunking and scuba gear to traverse.

    Transit Access: The Silent City is the home of Absear Train Station.

    Citizens: The citizens of the Silent City are called searchers. They travel in small, silent tribes, sifting through the burning debris and crumbled architecture and fighting other tribes over territory to eke out a sad, squalid existence. A strange physic of the Silent City is the inability of anyone to read within its boundaries. Anyone within the city is functionally illiterate. The searchers never speak aloud and while they are skittish and violent, they are also eager to trade and negotiate with anyone that may have food or other resources. The searchers have developed a complex sign language based off the sign language used by the tonguers. Any communication with searchers will reasonably take this form. If anyone speaks aloud to or near them, however, they will panic and run away. GM note: GM¡¯s should let players know that they must act out any communication they wish to convey. Don¡¯t allow, ¡°I look at him like I¡¯m asking for the gun.¡± or ¡°I shrug my shoulders.¡±

    Most searchers carry both guns and hacking weapons of some sort fashioned or found while scavenging. Enemies of the tribes are usually chopped up and then reverently placed in the Tenant Bins to moan and weep among the severed residents.

    Shackles: Every lost soul in the Silent City is looking for something they cannot leave behind. This conviction is so strong that nearly any soul rescued from the Silent City must be removed forcibly. There are even rumors of some rescued souls committing suicide after reaching Topside in an attempt to return. Each searcher believes the thing most important to them, be it a prized possession, experience or loved one is lost in the burning, broken waste of the city. There is also a sad resignation to the search, a sense that whatever it is they are searching for is lost forever, but the search must continue on the thin hope that it could be recovered. Searchers almost never are willing to tell another person, even someone within their tribe what they are ultimately searching for. There seems to be a paranoid compulsion to keep that a secret.

    Screws: The screws of the Silent City are called tonguers. Tonguers travel as a well-organized military unit, tirelessly hunting down those that dare to utter any words. While tonguers are tougher than humans, they are not particularly resistant to Topside weapons. Tonguers appear as human-shaped, vaguely-skeletal, near-humans in military fatigues with empty eye sockets and a seal across their lips that does not allow them to open their mouths. Tonguers wear withered tongues they have cut from speakers they have caught on thin chains around their necks and waists as a status symbol. They are equipped with slightly antiquated rifles and artillery, travelling the debris with gun-mounted all-terrain vehicles and sometimes, even a tank.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Travelling along with any platoon of tonguers, one is sure to find a few whisper hounds. Whisper hounds are actually hideous bats the size of large dogs. They can¡¯t fly, but they can bound on their sawn wings and stubby back legs at surprising speed. Whisper hounds can zero in on the smallest utterance from miles away and then track by scent thereafter. Tonguers can be evaded, but because of the whisper hounds, it¡¯s never easy.

    Should anyone make the mistake of speaking aloud, the tonguers hunt the speaker down mercilessly. Once they have caught a speaker, the platoon usually tortures them for a time, pulls out their tongue (remember, it doesn¡¯t grow back), cuts off both legs and one arm and hangs the speaker by their neck from a sign post to direct those traversing the city.

    The Place: The Silent City is a vast city that some claim is never-ending. It sits on Black Blood Bay, a clotted body of black, semi-viscous liquid that causes stunning hallucinations and diarrhea if ingested. Its architecture ranges from unlikely multi-story affairs without a single right angle to elegant cathedrals of classic beauty. The city is under constant attack. Bombs occasionally rain down from above the constant reddish cloud cover, fires run wild throughout and both tonguers and searcher-tribes roam the streets with gun and machete at the ready. Nothing in the city is whole or untouched by violence.

    The city has no signs or written words of any sort. Instead of signposts, the tonguers have mutilated speakers and charged them with answering questions concerning direction by pointing. They hang from sign posts, with bluish, swollen faces and all their limbs but one arm removed as well as their tongue. Most of the signposts are willing to fulfill this duty for no more than a drink of water or some other small kindness.

    The searchers have built rickety, open-topped boxes to collect the (still conscious) dismantled parts of their neighbors and tribesmen. These are the Tenant Bins. Once someone has been reduced to such a state, they are no longer a threat, so the searchers take tenants with a sober respect to the place they all will probably end up. On regular occasions, most tribes bring a tithe of food and water to the tenant bins. It makes no difference if the person was a best friend or a terrible enemy while whole. While being consigned to the Tenant Bins is a horrid prospect, it is considered preferable to being a signpost. Signposts are never touched, and so never know the community of the Tenant Bins.

    In the ¡°center¡± of the Silent City stands the Absear Train Station. It can be seen from many, many miles away. It appears a massive tower that is half completed and stands at a slight awkward angle. Several lines of elevated train tracks lead into its bowels. And trains can be seen entering and exiting Absear many times a day. No bombs fall near Absear, but it is obviously a headquarters for tonguers, so searchers avoid staying near it.

    Landmarks: Absear Train Station, the Last Library, Black Blood Bay, the Tenant Bins

 Domain - Absear Train Station

    Absear Train Station

    Type: Transit

    Entrance: None known. Any entrance to Absear is still considered Ghost Pussy.

    Connections: Absear is in the ¡°center¡± of the Silent City</a> and has several lines that reliably travel to known demesnes, including: Bulgone</a>, Churmish</a>, the Factory</a> and Tick-Tock</a>.

    The Place: Absear stands in the ¡°center¡± of the Silent City. A crooked tower with octopoid arms of elevated rail lines radiating from its center. Safe from the constant shelling of Silent City, the Absear station serves as a hub of activity and traffic for many hells. It should be noted that various Hellcrashers have attempted to molest the rail lines in various ways, including damaging them to derail a train, following them to attempt to walk to their designations, leaping onto trains and riding them from the outside and such. All such attempts have led to terrible and deadly failures.

    Inside, Absear is a cluttered, dirty train station full of the sounds of train engines, scuffling feet, a great clock, rattling ticket machines and little else. The visitors of Absear have learned their lesson. A whispered word will land one mutilated and tortured with ruthless efficiency. No words or lettering are anywhere to be seen and would be useless if they did appear. Ubiquitous pictographic signs feature stick figures putting fingers to their lips, a fist with a bar across it, a stick figure slyly removing an item from another, oblivious stick figure¡¯s bag with a bar through it and two stick figures holding a set of scales between themselves with a bar through it. In short: No Talking, No Violence, No Stealing, No Soliciting. While talking and violence are never risked, stealing and solicitation are. Hence pick pocketing and finger whoring occur with semi-regularity.

    The great clock is a large clock face with minute and hour marks, but no numerals. Its loud ticking is easily heard throughout the station. Many have noted that another side effect that is particular to Absear as opposed to the Silent City is a slower time flow. A single hour spent in Absear is a solid week or more of time that has passed topside. One notable Hellcrasher group entered Absear in late 1979 and spent eight days in there before they realized their wounds weren¡¯t healing as they had in other demesnes. They reached Topside in the fall of 1983.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

    Citizens: Though Absear is a bustling transit, full of thousands of travelers and refugee¡¯s from various domains, all are under the laws of Absear, which is under the authority of the Silent City although, they don¡¯t pick up new shackles by travelling here. As a result, anyone in Absear is functionally illiterate and cannot heal grievous wounds.

    Authority: The authorities of the Silent City are the tonguers that rule over the entirety of the Silent City. Tonguers are military units, that strictly enforce the Silent City¡¯s edict against speaking and the station¡¯s laws banning violence, theft and solicitation. Since they use the train station as a headquarters, the station has many tonguer platoons at one time patrolling it and escape is very unlikely.

    Costs: Boxy machines the size of a refrigerator are in every high traffic area of the station. They are made of dirty steel and stained plastic. Manual sliders allow a user to select their destination, arrival time and number of tickets. A tiny window in the machine displays a card with the cost of the tickets at the current settings. The smallest and most common price is ¡°One finger (unspecified)¡± Distant locations, large groups (more than three) and sooner times may elevate the cost: One finger (unspecified), Pinkie, Ring, Middle, Two fingers (unspecified), Index, Three fingers (unspecified), Thumb and Hand (Sinister). Each location, time and price are identified by pictographic icons. Clock faces, counting scratches, hands and arrows identify the various settings.

    A series of labeled holes of various sizes is arranged in an artful arching pattern. When a finger is placed fully into a hole, the machine rumbles and tremors in response and a blade slices the finger off at. Once the appropriate finger or fingers are collected, the machine dispenses the appropriate tickets. Fingers that have already been severed will not be acceptable payment. If you place your finger in the wrong hole or pay the wrong price¡­bummer. Like all wounds suffered in the Silent City, fingers claimed by the machine do not grow back, even in domains where they normally would.

    A special class of souls that scout Absear are finger whores. Finger whores are weary persons that have designs on improving their lot and have found a single resource by which to move toward their goals. Finger whores prowl the station scouting for visitors rich enough in possessions to be worth trading one¡¯s digits. Finger whore will pay one¡¯s ticket costs in exchange for sizable payment. For a single finger, the price might be, ¡°everything that one is carrying¡±. They are not stupid and they can play this game only a few times, so they know what they are after. The fewer fingers a finger whore has left, the higher the price one might expect. They will not make an offer to a person carrying little, nor will they be fine with, ¡°ok, just let me keep my guns.¡± It¡¯s usually an all or nothing proposition. They might forgo one weapon, but the weapons are likely one of the things most desirous to a finger whore. Adding to the tension these deals might normally elicit, there are strict laws forbidding such solicitation and all deal must be secure without the use of written or verbal language.

    Notable Demons: the Engine Driver

 Introductions

    ¡°How''d you get into this line of work, Kit?"

    "Same as any of the rest of us - cold, hard cash. You?"

    "Fuck that. I lost my legs in a car accident about six years back, heard a rumor. Good as new, huh?"

    "Huh. Sure."

    "Blow yourself."

    "And what about Xun over there?"

    "Her? Yeah, she''s never told me - but I think her grandfather''s grandfather used to crash, way back before Pol Pot was even a glimmer in his daddy''s eye. ''Course, they called it ''Ghostwalking'', or something. One rumor I heard was that her family was trying to build a machine out of parts taken from all five Walls of Hell ¨C something like a Hungry Ghost Engine that could send armies into Hell and back. Like that one Prussian thing, but it didn''t work."

    "So it''s in her blood. Great. Me, I got hired on with a crew to boost the final chapter of some series of fuck-stories by this big fat online beastio-pedophile who dropped dead in his rotten, wobbly trailer out in Cali."

    "You lay hands on it?"

    "The Cheney had a real asshole of an informant. We got the damn thing, still dripping chunks of gore from the wounds he used to smear it out, but we took heavy losses coming through the Wood of Suicides - not the best route to take, by the way - and then the Cheney didn''t want to pay up."

    "Buyer''s remorse?"

    "Said it got ''too sick'' or something. How a guy who regularly beats off to lovingly detailed scenes of preschoolers on leashes getting ass-fucked by dobermans can suddenly think that his pet author has gotten ''too sick'', I''ll never understand."

    "Yeah. White people are crazy. Xun says that there is no ''Wood of Suicides'', by the way."

    "Really? Whatever, man - there were woods, there were bodies, there were crows and a bunch of hypodermic needles everywhere. Knox called it the ''Wood of Suicides'', but what the fuck does he know?"

    "What the fuck, indeed. Look alive, mate - we got company."

    Jonestown turned his head towards the door of the quiet diner, "And there is just the mother-fucker I''ve been hoping to see."

    Peeling his eyes away from his half-congealed coffee, Kit glanced across the poorly-lit room. A well-dressed, dark-haired man was weaving between tables toward them, dodging between the still forms of half-asleep long-haul truckers, heavy creases in his doubtlessly several-thousand dollar suit. Without a word, the man in black dropped heavily into the booth and put his head down on the Formica.

    "Ethan Essex - my nigga."

    Head still on the table, "Good morning, Jonestown. You know how uncomfortable I am with that turn of phrase."

    "Yes, I am, Ethan. Yes, I am. Ethan Essex, meet Kit. Kit comes highly recommended by a man called Knox."

    "Fuck Knox."

    "Knox was stealing money from his Crew. Kit walked ¨C and he ended up here."

    Ethan raised his forehead from the table-top and took in the young man across from him.

    "Good morning, Kit. My name is Ethan. ''Kit'' - short for ''Christopher'' or ''Christian'', I presume?"

    "Yeah, it''s-"

    "Very well. You may call me either Ethan or Mr. Essex. Tell me, Kit, do you take any medications for allergies, asthma, or pre-existing medical conditions of any kind?"Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    "No, I-"

    "Fine. Can you handle a firearm, Kit?"

    "Yeah."

    "Do you own a firearm of any kind, Kit?"

    "No."

    "One will be provided. Can you drive a stick shift?

    "Yeah."

    "Thank god. And you can be counted to take orders?"

    "Sure."

    "Good enough. One final question, Kit: have you ever, due to inebriation or your own incompetence, dropped a lit cigarette directly onto your own penis?"

    In the moment of confused silence, Jonestown began to crack up.

    "Uh? No, sir."

    "You''re hired."

    "Fuck, Ethan, you got that shit off of Francisco."

    "And if I had asked Francisco that exact question, I could have prevented us having to deal with his dumb, drunken ass for the last few months. Kit here seems like a good, responsible young man with a decent head on his shoulders and bright future."

    "Ah, hell no. He a CRAZY mother-fucker. Look at him. He''s just playing nice because he thinks you''re a Smithers or something."

    "Is that it, Kit? Do you think I''m a Smithers?"

    "No."

    "Good."

    "Mr. Essex here is our Face-Man - he deals with the Cheney, secures the job, gets us our thirty pieces, and gets the planning underway."

    Kit frowned, "Thirty pieces?"

    "Jonestown is referring to the crasher superstition that retrieving the Dearly Departed from the Nether is some sort of violation of spiritual law - a betrayal of Christ, so to speak. Thus, our employer''s payment is sometimes termed ''thirty pieces of silver''."

    "Shit, some guys won''t even take a payment if the price tag is divisible by 30 - I''ve seen a crew talk their way down a full tax-bracket, trying to avoid that bad mojo. Me, I could give two fucks - bring on the payoff, man."

    "Which is one of the reasons that Jonestown and I get along so very well."

    "Fuck it, we''re professionals. I see no reason to argue with a man who wants to pay me $300,000 - a little ominous background music be damned."

    "I agree. Now where are Dufrene and Xun?"

    "Sleeping, man - we''ve been at this god-forsaken 24-hour truck-plaza for the better part of four days, you asshole."

    "Would you believe that the gentleman who picked me up at the hotel flew me to a private airstrip in British Columbia, confiscated my cellphone at gunpoint, blindfolded me and then drove me six hours into the Canadian wilderness?"

    "White people."

    "Rich people. And fucking tell me about it - the Negotiator he brought in was into some ridiculous theatrics, drinking goat-blood, doing Tibetan chanting and generally hamming it up for the home crowd, who loved every minute of it."

    "Sorry ¨C what''s a Negotiator?"

    "Polite word for ''demon-summoner'', Kit."

    "Okay."

    "Yes. And the room service was terrible."

    "Fuck your room service. You''ve been jerking around while we''ve been sitting here with our thumbs up our collective asses, you mother-fucker, waiting for your damn call, which is why Xun and Dufrene are sleeping now. So we have a job?"

    "I''m just saying that I''ve been through a lot, recently."

    "And I''m saying that I don''t care if you had to lick Mr. Cheney''s wrinkled old asshole, that is your goddamn job-description. Did you get us a damn job, you mother-fucker?"

    Ethan slapped a white envelope on the table, "A smash-and-grab, fifty-thou up front, twice that more on delivery, for one baby-raper, female, currently residing in a Boutique called ''Laughing Solitude'' - find your own entrance."

    "Not a pornstar?"

    "Not a pornstar."

    Kit squinted, "Pornstar?"

    "It''s always best to check - the majority of pulls from the Nether are for females because the majority of Cheneys are male; the majority of people that they want to rescue are, thereby, female. If the pull is female, I need to determine if the Departed is a pornstar before I can accept the deal."

    "Why? So they don''t make a comeback tour or something?"

    "There is that. But more importantly for my own crew, we don''t take pornstar jobs.

    "We don''t?"

    "No, mother-fucker. We don''t."

    "One of Jonestown''s first crashes was being hired to yank a Departed who had starred in a few skin-flicks - her Benefactor was presumably a fan, but he could have been her murderer, her father, or both, for all they knew."

    "Mother-fucker set us up. That was the nastiest shit I''ve ever fucking seen."

    "By definition, the Nether is only as bad as your very worst nightmares - a number of women in the adult performance industry have a long and tragic history of abuse, and some of their torments are notoriously ¡­ vivid. Another example of ''blame the victim'', I suppose. Still, there''s no one having a good time in Hell, no matter if your job was hospice worker or ''Naughty Enema Nurse number 5''."

    "Never again. Never. Fucking. Again."

    "Well, no worries. She''s apparently a former lover of some sort, as per usual, but she never did any professional film work."

    "Fine. First step?"

    "Baltimore. We need a good map; moreover, I''d like some insight. Perhaps I''m being paranoid, but something seemed amiss - either the Negotiator or the Informant was withholding information, and that will get someone killed."

    Kit stared, "What''s in Baltimore?"

    "The Three-Eyed Man."

    "He''s a contact of ours, something of a regular go-to guy for a number of crews - has a set of three spheres made of Nether-Stone that he can trade out to his left eye-socket, they let him view various ¡­ places of interest."

    "In Hell or Above. People in the know say he sold his soul for them."

    "People say that he''s a part-time Hatchetman, too. Doesn''t make it true. And he''s been as good as his word thus far. Grab your things - we''ve a long road ahead."

 Going To Hell

    <div>

    "All I''m saying is that it can''t be biological. Doesn''t make any sense."

    Jonestown hunched away from the wind and lit a cigarette, "It''s genetic, Kit. They ain''t found the fucking gene for it yet, but it''s genetic. Inborn. Gotta be."

    "Okay, but if it was genetic or whatever, it would have been bred out of the system by now, right? I mean, over the centuries and stuff."

    "Don''t be so sure, man. I know some gay dudes with kids."

    "Oh, sure, adopted."

    "No, Kit. Kids. Biological-as-fuck kids. Not from a lab, nothing -

    dude knocks up his wife, and then comes out of the closet a few years

    later. Happens all the time."

    "What, like back in the fifties?"

    " ¡­ Just how old do you fucking think I am?"

    " ¡­ I don''t know?"

    "Shit. Look, I know a dude who came out last year, he has an eight-year old goddamn son. Mother-fucker was watching ''Will & Grace'' when he was putting it to his old lady, alright? This is the goddamn nineties, end of the twentieth fucking century, and he can''t be a man in his own head unless he''s banging this broad. All kinds of social pressure from this guy''s family and upbringing had him eight shades of messed up, and its all the homophobic shit like your damn theories that make it worse."

    "I''m not homophobic, man."

    "Are you gay, Kit?"

    "Hell, no."

    "Well, shut the fuck up about it, then."

    "I''m just saying-"

    "Seriously, shut the fuck up about it or go wait in the van."

    The two stood in silence. After a few moments, another pair of figures approached out of the darkness. They pulled close for a second, and then the smaller of the two strode off toward the tail-lights in the distance. Pulling his coat tight against the wind, Ethan walked away from the road and lit a cigarette.

    "And what''s the word, cracker?"

    "We should be on the road before too long. Xun is delivering Dufrene''s fucking spark plug and his damn McDonald''s. I hope its all ice-cold."

    "Then on to Cambridge?"

    "No. I just got off the phone with William Tombs'' mother."

    "Why in the hell are you calling Billy''s mother?"

    "Let him know we were coming. Last I''d heard, William was living at home - now, it seems that he''s in the custody of the state."

    " ¡­ Holy shit."

    "Apparently, young William is serving nine months for performing castrations without a medical license."

    "Castrations?"

    "Castrations. As in testicle-removal."This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    "On who?"

    "Don''t know."

    "On his own crew?"

    "Christ, I don''t know! Jesus fucking wept, Jonestown - how am I gonna ask that poor woman a question like that over the phone at three in the goddamn morning?"

    "What''s she gonna do, slap you over the phone? Shit, it''s simple, man: ''So, Mrs. Tombs, you know how your son has his ''Special Friends'' that he sometimes runs off with for a few months at a time? And then he comes back with herpes sores, bruises on his knees and a wad of cash the size of a bicep? Yeah, well, we''re friends of a friend, and is he in prison for assaulting one of THOSE young men?"

    "Jail."

    "What?"

    "He''s in jail, asshole, not prison - nine months."

    "Shit."

    "Tell me about it."

    " ¡­ can we get someone else to run the numbers?"

    "Jonestown, there is exactly one human being I''ve ever met who could quote-unquote ''run the fucking numbers'', which was probably at least fifty percent blind luck, and he is currently fulfilling every one of his mother''s worst nightmares about her son licking men''s assholes. So, no."

    "Calm down, man."

    Ethan slumped to the ground on the side of the highway, "I''m just sick of this bullshit. The legendary, vaunted Three-Eyed Man was a great goddamn deal less helpful than I was hoping, we''re already starting to feel the burn on cash, and now we''re stuck with no leads and no map on the side of the road in fucking Connecticut because Dufrene can''t keep the damn van running."

    "Makes you wonder if Coffin ever has days like this."

    "I''m sure he does."

    "Big, scary dude like that? Hell no."

    "Everybody eats a little shit now and again. You''d have to be a little crazy-masochistic to take a job like this, doesn''t matter who you are or how competent your crew."

    "Well, there''s that."

    "There''s that, indeed."

    Kit piped up, "So ¡­ can we still use the Shuddering Storm?"

    "Good question. Ethan?"

    "Not if I can help it. As a Drift, it has a nasty tendency to strand you - take a half-hour break to cat-nap, crack open an MRE or even recon the horizon, and the thing could blow right overhead, leaving you out in the open. You walk long enough, days at a time, somebody is going to drop, and then your ass is hanging out in the wind."

    "My feeling exactly: great for a getaway, terrible for a long-haul. Plus there''s the fucking refugee Damned, those greedy bitches - I know that I''ll be labeled a traitor to my entire fucking profession for saying this, but without the Shackles & Screws holding them in place, most of the people in Hell are real assholes."

    "Yeah - and the alternative sucks in ways I hate to even mention."

    Kit began to chew on his lips, "Which is what?"

    Ethan slowly stood, brushing dirt off of his pants, "Here''s the lay of the land, Kit: the Three-Eyed Man says that our Departed''s locale, this ''Laughing Solitude'', is Ghost-Pussy territory - while it''s on the maps, there''s no charted Top-Side entrance; if there''s a way to crash there directly from the surface, no one has found it. In addition, it''s considered ''Deep Nether'', so there are no particularly good roads leading there. On all of this, I tend to believe him."

    Jonestown nodded, "Which means that we can burn a few weeks and spend a couple thousand bucks double-checking what the Three-Eyed Man says, against the hunch and against the clock, or we can just kick in the doors and march our way semi-blindly into the shit."

    Ethan started pacing, "We''ll need a Transit, and something semi-direct. We could hit Chicago, make a few calls and crash through to Lonely-Wood, but the Pits are unreliable. We could bargain with the Silent Wolf</a> for a route, but the cryptic fuck only deals in red meat, still on the run - and I''m not dragging a street-walker down there for that thing''s hunting pleasure, no matter how good the info is."

    "Xun wouldn''t let you, anyway."

    "I know."

    "Which leaves us with Alcatraz, which is shit-city and one-way, or with one of the Drifts."

    "As I said, the Shuddering Storm is off-limits because we can''t guarantee it - the odds of losing pace and winding up stranded somewhere uncharted are just too high. And the only other Drift that I know how to navigate is ¡­ "

    Kit went white as a sheet, "No."

    Jonestown chuckled, "Knew we could talk you into it."

    "As for the exit - well, the Three-Eyed Man claims that Laughing Solitude treats their baby-rapers pretty well, at least physically, so our Departed should be able to walk. Whether she''ll want to walk is a different story, but that''s why we have Dufrene. We''ll make a run back to the Dollhouse once we''ve broken her out, but we''ll pretty much be playing it by ear from there until we hit surface again."

    Jonestown considered, "Can we make it back before the Dollhouse wanders away?"

    " ¡­ There''s no way to know for certain."

    "So we might find ourselves stuck in a less-than-charted Boutique in the Deep Shit, baby-raper in tow, against hostile Screws with no way back Up?"

    "We run that risk. And that''s a best-case."

    "I hate this shit."

    "Which means you''re still human, Jonestown. Which means you''re still human."

 A Night in the Creeping Dollhouse

    "Is he coming?"

    "Shut the fuck up, Kit."

    "How long do we -"

    "I said ''shut the fuck up'', Kit."

    "But where ¡­ holy shit."

    And there it was - swaying drunkenly and huge in the suddenly small doorway, the reek of chewing tobacco and old sweat running off of it, grey and lumpy and gnarled and deformed and wheezing quietly, something that could only be a winking, erect penis stabbed violently forward before it.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

    Ten yards away, the unlucky Ethan lay, breathing with the slow, shallow rhythm of morphine dreams, his pale body shining and coated thick with KY.

    Jonestown turned bright-white eyes towards the frozen-still shape of the gape-mouthed Kit and hissed "You say one word or make one sound, and I''ll kill you myself."

    The massive, thick thing staggered forward, a terrible parody of stealth, the room creaking as his weight settled around them. Jonestown shot a look to Xun, her head shaved after her experiences of the horrible night before, who clutched her long straw like a dagger in both hands.

    The beast stopped above the tight circle, huddled in sleeping bags on the floor. The thing bent down and licked the side of Xun''s head, and she went stiff as a board, holding back a scream and possibly a torrent of tears.

    Uncle straightened up, surveying the landscape. Within a minute, someone was going to be on their way Upstairs. As quietly as he could, Jonestown whispered to Kit, "Not. One. Peep."

 Novices

    Grayson looked through the night vision goggles and scanned the trailer again. The structure sagged and slumped against the fetid swamp like some thirst-dead creature, crumpled and rictus moments before it reached the water hole. And everywhere surrounding the rank husk were cats. Mangy, filthy and loud, teeming through the trailer and its surrounding like maggots. Their target shuffled onto the rickety porch and began the tedious process of feeding the cats again. She was gaunt and pale and broken. Stringy gray hair fell down to her slumped shoulder. She moved with practiced deliberation, like someone that had been doing this for years, though she had only been here a couple days.

    "Got a lock on the baby-raper," Grayson said.

    Jess sighed, "Do you have to keep calling her that? We don''t know why she''s here¡­"

    "But we do know she''s here, don''t we? Cunt gave up her chance to a fucking respectful moniker the moment her bony ass landed in Cat Shit County."You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    Taking the goggles herself, Jess looked over the moss-caked log the trio had chosen as cover. Coffin seemed unconcerned and didn''t deign to even look. He simple continued to lay on his back looking at the stars with his cigarette and shogun aimed straight up. Something like a cricket chirped in a droning cadence. Jess came back down.

    "Are the cats screws?"

    "No," Coffin''s voice scratched out. "Too many. Thems the shackles. They''ll go git a screw and delay us if they can, but they ain''t much on their own."

    "But there''s a hell of a alot of them."

    "Then it¡¯s a good thing we brought scatter shot, eh? And watch yer fuckin'' mouth or you''ll jinx the whole crash, got it?"

    Stretching her neck, Jess turned to look at Coffin, "You can''t really be that superstitious with this job, can you?"

    Coffin sat up and rattled a few hacking coughs into the sleeve of his jacket, "You kiddin''?¡­"

    A soft scratch announced a new arrival and they all turned to look on top of the log, on which sat a large orange tom cat.

    "Meow?"

    As Coffin leveled the shotgun less that a yard from the cat, a humourless grin etched into his face, "Fuckin'' novices."