"We got hit," Stagger said. "Set up, I think. Is it oka) down there?"
"Getting no worse," Cloud said calmly. "Patriae will want you both right away." Doc reached for his bat;: he saw. then, the rip in the car top, eighteen inches long and Straight as a steel rule. He put a hand to his temple, just exploring. Nothing there. He looked up, saw a dark streak against Cloud's white cheek.
"You're hurt."
"Not at all. You are needed." Cloud said "Sergeant Aquila," and the Ellyll officer nodded. Cloud led Doc and Stagger beneath the street. Stagger flipped on a flashlight.
"There's a whole level down here," Doc said, as they walked past riveted iron columns, broken traffic signals, signs corroded past reading, clouds of dust rising and falling in the light beam. He reached into his bag for a tube of goldenrod salve and an adhesive bandage for Cloud's cheek.
"Two levels, at one point," Stagger said.
"Why?"
"It was supposed to solve a traffic problem." He swung the light to this side and that. "Before my time, Doc. City planning's a lost sorcery."
A car's headlights cut a slant across the street. Four, maybe five bodies were on the pavement, a Ruthin Ellyll in a short red leather cape and some humans dressed in Ruthin colors. The headlight beams ended at a door, and next to the door stood McCain, holding a Thompson with the big round magazine. He touched a finger to the brim of his hat, pushed the door open. From within, red light spilled out into the cold dusty underground, as from an entrance to Hell.
They went in.
It was Hell.
There was a large room with an iron-beamed ceiling, and a freight door into another one. The light was deep red, threaded with paler shafts from flashlights. The rooms were furnished with tables and cages and racks. There were people in the cages, people on the racks and tables: strapped to them, roped to them, bolted and nailed to them. There was a heavy smell of blood and urine and shit. The people looked like drawings in anatomy books, though the light was so red it was hard for Doc to tell what he was seeing, what only imagining. Some of them moved, with the scrape of metal, the crunch of bone.
There was a soft, wavering moaning through the room, a sound that pierced straight from the ears to the base of the spine; more horrible than screaming, because it should have been screaming. This was Hell as Doc had always understood it: a mass-production pain factory with everybody suffering at maximum efficiency and nobody dying on the job.
Doc pushed the salve and bandage into Cloud's hand, no longer seeing them.
Mr. Patrise came out of the next room. He was walking stiffly, his face shadowed by his wide flat hat. "Hallow," he said, quite clearly, "I'm glad you're here. I hope you have morphine. Shall we send for more?"
Most of Doc's brain wanted to yell out loud that giving pain shots here was plowing up Iowa with a nail file, but he didn't. He put his bag on a narrow, empty table and got out all the stuff he had, loaded up with meperidine. He looked at Stagger Lee, said with a calm he couldn't quite understand, "Did you know about this?"
"This? No. No. I thought maybe, a couple of animals-but this, holy clockwork angels, no."
"Give me a hand, will you?"
Stagger nodded unsteadily. They went to one of the occupied tables, Mr. Patrise following a few steps behind. The body on the rack might have been female, but that was just a guess. It was tough enough to be sure it was human.
Doc shook his head. He wasn't thinking hard enough. "Mr. Patrise, is Cloudhunter busy?"
"Not if you require him."
"Well-" He looked around. "We can save some effort if any Ellyllon here go straight home to Elfland. Probably save some of their lives, too. But I'm not sure I'd know which is which. I thought maybe another elf would."
"An excellent thought, Hallow. But there are no Ellyllon here. That is quite certain."
"All right. Stagger, can you give me a hand with this one?"
Stagger Lee nodded. He fingered the clamps holding down the victim's ankles, unfolded a pocket tool and spun off the bolts.
The body gave an airless howl and the lc.^s bent up. trvinu to curl into a fetal position, hard as cramp could pull them. Doe pushed the drug in, grabbed an ampule of haloperidol and gave that as well. The body sagged. The lidless eyes rolled over. Doc forced himself to touch the body. There wasn't any pulse or breathing. Raw meat, Doc thought, and it didn't put an inch of distance between him and the body.
"Tell you what, Doc," Stagger said, "let's go toss now, get the suspense over with."
They went outside and vomited into a dark corner. Doc wiped his tongue on a gauze pad; Stagger pushed a flask into his hand, and he swallowed the whiskey straight.
At the red-lit door, they both slowed down, not ready at all to go back in. A black shape, humped and broad, crossed the light, and Doc's chest seized up; but it was only the combined silhouettes of McCain and Mr. Patrise.
Patrise said to Stagger Lee, "We got some of the equipment. They were in the process of removing it. I would like to believe that our information was simply late, and not someone else's early." He stopped suddenly, said, "That startled you. Why?"
Stagger told Patrise about the ambush.
"I see," Patrise said. "For a while we will act as if this all was just unfortunate timing. Find Wolfpond; he'll take you around to the loading area. Give me your assessment tomorrow.
"Hallow, we still need you inside. If you would, please."
"Stagger?" Doc said.
"Yeah," Stagger said, but didn't move.
"Got a deck of cards?"
Stagger blinked once, then pulled a battered pack of steamboats from his pocket.
"Thanks," Doc said. "I'll replace 'em."
Doc and Mr. Patrise went in. It was worse the second time. The shock was over, and the details showed more clearly. Hands, faces, what was left of them.
Mr. Patrise said, "The cards are for what?"
"Triage markers. Dead get a spade. Too bad to spend time saving, a club. Anybody who just needs first aid, not that I expect many, gets a diamond. The hearts are the ones we focus on."
"Very good, Hallow. I will pass the word."
Doc started walking the tables, stopping to look for responsive pupils, check for breathing and blood pressure, poke at exposed viscera and bone. He didn't lay down any diamonds; no surprise there. What surprised him was how few drew spades. Despite the damage, most of the victims were holding on by their splintered fingertips.
Once, at home, his crew had been called a hundred miles out to help with a town a twister had chainsawed through. There had been this much mess, then, but the sorting was mostly done by the time they'd arrived. "Hey, friend," one of the local paramedics had said to him, "let me show you a card trick."
Doc was aware that as he walked, and made decisions, Mr. Patrise's other people had become very quiet around him. As they did, he could hear the soft hum of moaning from those who couldn't move but weren't yet gone.
Mr. Patrise was standing quite still at one side of the chamber, McCain still his armed shadow. Doc said, "Do we have any backup coming?"
"Everyone here knows some first aid. All will follow your directions. I would not expect anything beyond that."
Doc flipped a heart, more from hope than honesty, and got a couple of people working, just to break the silence and stillness. "Then most of these people are gonna die. Maybe all of them." Doc paused, swallowed hard, fought down the urge to vomit again. "Don't mean to be rude, sir, but that's it."
"Understood, Hallow. What do you propose to do?"