“Don’t stare too much,” Asmodeus warned.“They eat and they vomit and shit all that out, then they eat it again.”Dante sighed.“I know you’ve heard all the screams everywhere.But if you’re scared, it might comfort you to know the humans who burn are less than the humans who wander like this.There are more souls trapped in endless chases than in the inferno.”Before Dante could ask, Asmodeus explained, “Humans are weighed down by their sins.Most of them land in Hell and those who don’t are on Earth, in the leaves and such.”
“What about,” Dante asked carefully, “Heaven?The humans in Heaven?”
“I’m a demon.I can’t answer that.”
As a person of ash walked past, and Dante accidentally brushed against them — he jolted back, tried to apologize on instinct, but he watched it stagger back, its arm unspooling between them, then the rest of its body with a soft, barely audible cry.‘Fuck.’However hardened he thought he was, Dante clutched at the cloak with his only hand trembling.‘I didn’t mean to,’ he wanted to say, but the figure was gone.“You’re saying you don’t know if humans...go to Heaven?”
“I suppose so.”
“God isn’t real,” Dante said; he was thinking of the disgusting pyramid of flesh, the screams he’d heard as he fell eternally, feeling himself roast, never dying.“God can’t be real if this place is.”He’d half-expected for the demon to argue, but he’d heard a laugh, then:
“You might be right.”
They strolled further through the field of bone and feces, until all the people of ash began to disappear into the fog, their miserable moans fading with them.A few times, Dante witnessed what Asmodeus warned him of — the vomiting, the defecating — but the horror was quickly replacing itself with pity.There was an existentialism sinking in, of course — a ‘What will happen to me?’— but Dante knew to wait for when it was a better, safer time to ponder.
The demon, however, in what was becoming eerie silence, said that no matter where humans land in Hell, they are not individuals anymore.The living dream of their sins resulting in specific torments; they dream of all those in the inferno to see them and know who they are, what they did, what they believed was worth risking this suffering.But no — they are all the same now.Death is the great equalizer.There are no rich and poor in Hell, nor are there beautiful and ugly.To ash they all return, and all ash looks quite the same.
Dante’s shoes tapped on more solid rock, suddenly, and he startled.Looking down, he saw now a trail of cobblestone, though reddened in rust.The path scaled up — a hill, which Asmodeus panted as he climbed.Dante, as he’d been doing, followed.For a few entire minutes, there was nothing, but just as he was beginning to tire, even opened his mouth to ask the demon if they could consider resting, he saw a stout, circular stone building come into view, something like a cottage with sparse windows and an overgrown garden.But there was crowding outside of it, a large demon with a laurel crown and horns — Baal — and other demons.On the ground, there were two figures kneeling, held in place by grips at their hair.
One of them — Dante saw as he inched behind Asmodeus, trying to hide and have a shield at once — had shoulder-length hair with two small braids framing his face and warm brown skin and a loose, but rather modest, tunic.Beside him, there was a pale person with curled golden hair in a single, thick braid; on his body, there was a scandalously sheer, red robe beneath golden chains and colorful jewels.
“Asmodeus,” Baal grunted in greeting, red eyes narrowed, mouth twitching; this was the last Dante understood of the conversation before the demonic language overrode any human understanding.“I tried to be kind to you because you returned to Hell willingly.And now what the fuck is this?Don’t try to tell me it was an accident.”
Dante couldn’t see Asmodeus’ face, but he spoke with a tightness that tensed the soldier’s muscles.To demon ears, the duke of lust was saying: “It’s me you want.Rosier did nothing wrong.Let him go.”Rosier jolted a little.“And Armoni has nothing to do with this.”Armoni was the pale one, who grimaced in what seemed shame.“I hadn’t even come home to them yet.”
“Well, you won’t be coming home for a long time, fucker,” Baal said.“You have no idea what you’ve done.”He waved for the other demons to release their hold on Rosier and Armoni, but then added, “I hope you enjoy prison before we put you on trial for treason to Hell.”Asmodeus laughed.“And who’s that behind you?”
When all the demons’ gazes suddenly swiveled toward the soldier, Dante’s blood ran cold.
“I found him,” Asmodeus said casually.“He’s a human.He must’ve come down with that angel.”He stepped aside, revealing Dante, who tensed but knew better than to raise his gun.If anything, he should prepare to aim it right into his mouth.But Baal did little more than stare, jaw set, eyes calculating, before he turned to say a few words to a demon standing beside him.
Hushed, Dante asked, “What’s happening?”
“We’re about to be imprisoned,” Asmodeus explained without fuss, then nodded his head.“Don’t struggle.”
“Wait,” Rosier was saying to Baal, about to rise to his feet only to be stopped by Armoni’s hand grappling his forearm.“We won’t leave Hell again.You don’t have to bind him or that human.I swear to you that I’ll keep them both here.”
Armoni said, “Rosier,” low, in warning.But then he addressed Baal with a determined, yet frantic gleam in his eyes, “I know this angel Dina you’re talking about, Baal.Imprison me too.”
Baal snorted.“Prison won’t save you from Moloch, Armoni, but come along then.”
As the demons went to cuff everyone but Rosier, Asmodeus told Dante again, “Don’t struggle.”
CHAPTER20
“You’re a real,” Joana began, cellphone pressed to an ear as she swallowed down a forkful of tortilla slices fried in salsa, “fucking idiot.”She was sitting cross-legged in a chair, the restaurant of a hotel, one of the only ones still open.Half the restaurants, or related food places, were temporarily closed due to the gas shortage, and most food carts had relocated to outside of major supermarkets, whereas the smaller and informal markets suffered severely.
Tadeo was sighing.“You told me that everything’s been fine.No one has noticed I’m gone.”
“Did you forget about the massacre at the river, dumbass?”
“But you said that there hasn’t been anything that’s gone wrong since.You told me that everyone thinks I’m still there.And there’s— Oh for God’s sake, Joana, I can’t leave him there!I left him inHell!That’s the part you’re missing.I didn’t leave him on the side of the road or something.I left him in a nightmare, and it’s my fault.I have to make it right.”
“If it’s such a nightmare,” Joana replied, “then he’s probably already dead.”She turned away from the televisions, heading toward the entrance.“Come back soon or other people you care about are next.”
“I don’tcareabout him.”
Joana hung up, shut her eyes in frustration, then heard a low chuckle from the other end of the table, followed by the deep voice of a man.He said, “In Hell, eh?”She refused to face him, the kingpin.“Well, we’re going to need him back soon,mija.”Scraps against the plate indicated that he was still picking at his food, a simple meal of beans and eggs with tomato, onion, and serrano pepper.“Have you seen the news?They’re saying the bad men,” meaning them, of course, “ordered those migrants to die.”He hummed.“I didn’t know that.”Joana bit her tongue, then finally fluttered open her eyes again, but hazily, tiredly.“It’s a good story, though.The people like a good story.The state is very mad at us, and the north isn’t happy either.There was a deal, did you know?There was a deal.”A grin formed between a scratching laugh.“They say that us bad men infiltrated the soldiers, corrupted them,mija, but no, no, they infiltrated us.For too long, me and my men, we had to listen to the governor, the businesses.There was no freedom.”
