Damn Him to Hell

bodies lying in the street, we didn’t rate headlines. They’d do breaking news for the morning TV shows, when they could get good video.

But Andre obviously hadn’t wasted time stirring up the populace. More smart-phone videos started making it through. They showed a cloud that had grown spectacularly ominous—thick and greasy and . . . colorful. Sluggish in the pre-dawn humidity, the chemical fog rolled widespread and low along the harbor. Beneath it, small figures dashed about, either escaping or trying to mug each other. It was hard to tell.

Around four a.m., Frank, the detective who owned Discreet Detection, called in. “We’ve got two geezers behind Chesty’s trying to kill each other here.”

What was it with geezers beating up on each other tonight?

“Where’s Andre?” he asked.

“Chasing vandals out of Bill’s bar,” I told him. “They’re breaking windows already. Want me to send Schwartz your way?” I didn’t know how many hazmat suits they had on the ground, but Frank was apparently in one of them.

“Nah, I’ll just dump one in a Dumpster,” he said. “They’ll wear themselves out trying to get at each other. Nice to know a catastrophe brings out the crazies but not the cops.”

He appeared to be right. Rather than falling dead in the streets, people in the Zone were becoming increasingly violent—and there was nary an official policeman in sight, despite our calls. Maybe they were unpacking their hazmats.

Andre had to establish a bunker in front of Bill’s Biker Bar and Grill to keep people out of the liquor. I hoped he wasn’t guarding it with his AK-47; alcohol wasn’t worth human life.

Schwartz called to say he was barricading the kitchen at Chesty’s. A cook had caught thieves running out with everything they could lay hands on. They were hauling their loot back to the homeless camp, fighting over it and then dropping like flies.

“Where are your buddies at the precinct?” I asked.

“Acme’s told them the air has neutralized the gas,” he said flatly. “And I’m not inviting mundanes to learn the hard way that Acme lies.” He hung up before I could ask more. I’d never heard Schwartz sound so cynical. He’d be beating up bums next.

On his next call, Andre was shouting. “Clancy, send Tim next door for Paddy and Pearl! You’ve got incoming.”

Incoming? Andre didn’t talk about his military career much, but I’d seen him crash through locked doors with automatic weapons in hand. Even though I didn’t know what to expect, I jumped when he hit commando mode. And if Andre thought it was safe for Tim to run next door, fine. I couldn’t imagine what crazy Paddy or doddering Pearl could do to help.

By the time I finally heard sirens, it had been more than three hours since we’d first seen the cloud. It was now practically covering the entire Zone, officialdom was just checking in, and Milo was fast asleep at my feet.

Propping the cell phone against my ear as Bill reported relieving Andre at the bar, I checked the corridor at the sound of pounding on a door. Emerging from the hospital room, Julius waved me away to indicate he had matters in hand.

I liked Julius, but he was a neurotic hermit and not necessarily dependable. I told Bill that the authorities were heading his way, then took a quick survey of the premises, as it had occurred to me that by incoming Andre likely meant new patients, not bombs or cops.

Three more cots had been set up in the room with Beauty—who hadn’t flicked an eyelid. She lay there in eerie stillness even as voices shouted from the tunnel and wheels and running feet racketed outside in the hall.

“They were pounding the stuffing out of each other, then whap!—just like that, they keeled over,” a sharp, curt voice said from the hallway. Frank. Frank was a detective because he had a talent for finding what was lost. Strange, but again, it was best not to question. Not with Frank. Not with Cora, my best friend down here, who conjured snakes. And definitely not with Sarah, who was even weirder, not to mention scarier, than me—and I’d sent my boyfriend to hell.

Life in the Zone was never boring.

I left the infirmary to watch Frank rolling a gurney carrying a frail old man. Julius tested his pulse and checked under his eyelids. I got out of their way.

The patient on the gurney wore the rough clothes of the homeless encampment. He didn’t move a muscle or make a sound as he was unceremoniously rolled from one mattress to another. Just like Sleeping Beauty, and Nancy Rose earlier, he was stone-cold out of it, and my skin crept with uneasiness.

At this rate, we could have an encampment of zombies by noon.

3

I shoved an overgrown hank of hair out of my face and started making calls, attempting to discover what had happened to Nancy Rose. My shampoo-ad hair had been a reward from Saturn for sending Max to hell. Thus it was a source of both guilt and pleasure. Still dealing with my overdeveloped conscience, I hadn’t learned to accept my hair yet.

I hadn’t meant to send Max to hell. I still didn’t have a rulebook about this Saturn’s daughter business. All I had was impossible-to-contact Themis, my dotty grandmother. And she wasn’t exactly what I’d call clear about facts, which made me assume there weren’t any. For all I knew, she could be one of the homeless living in the encampment, not that I’d recognize her if they rolled her in on a gurney.

Sarah, the only other Saturn’s daughter I was aware of, looked more and more like a chimpanzee every time she took someone out. Without my knowing exact criteria one way or the other, her example had cured me of experimenting with my special abilities. Fearing that I was selling my soul to the devil for pretty hair had been a game changer that had me vowing to behave and never to use my erratic Saturn power again.

Except . . . I’m not what you’d call a passive person. I’d spent a lifetime being bullied for looking like a wimpy geek—and I’d learned to fight back. So yeah, I was lying to myself if I thought I could stop using my planet-god-given ability to wreak havoc.

“Where is Nancy Rose?” I asked when I finally reached Ernesto.

“Still here. We’ve got a probl—” The phone went dead.

I pounded the damned receiver against the desk.

Can you see my dilemma as I watched my neighborhood crash and burn? I conceivably had the super-ability to fry all of Acme Chemical’s management in eternal flames for gassing my friends. But no matter how crazy- making furious I might be, I couldn’t convince myself anyone would deliberately explode chemical tanks. Who would I damn? And if I damned the wrong person, would I, in turn, be damning myself?

Milo climbed on my lap, and I stroked him in an effort to calm down.

“More incoming!” Andre shouted a little later, this time in person while I was helping Julius peel grubby clothes off comatose old people and scrub their withered limbs.

I made a lousy nurse, but my landlady was worse. Pearl held her nose and picked up the rags with tongs to carry them to a covered trash can. Paddy hadn’t arrived with Pearl. Tim had said our mad scientist had come out of Pearl’s basement, sniffed the air, and wandered off without a hazmat. I half expected the incoming to be him.

But instead this new arrival was someone else I recognized—Nancy Rose. I still hadn’t told Tim about her, hoping she’d have recovered by now. Stupid of me.

Praying the chemical company hadn’t been experimenting with infectious diseases, I helped roll her onto a cot. She was younger and in better shape than the homeless guys, if totally zonked. But Tim started crying when he saw her.

“She’s just asleep,” I said, trying to be comforting. I’d had enough crying for a lifetime, and under these