It wasn’t pleasant.
Once we had settled into some kind of routine, I gave the promised answers to the questions people had about Hector, Domino, the LSA, and the Land of the Dead in general. That wore me down as much as anything else. And there were some questions I didn’t know the answers to, like what they would find in the Ninth Underworld once we finally got there.
So it was a hard, slow trip; but, eventually, we limped into Puerto Zapato. We made something of a stir when we sailed into the harbor. La Mancha was obviously not in good shape, and it was equally obvious there wasn’t even a real crew on board. I gave the port authorities a story about being shipwreck survivors. We were bedraggled enough the story went mostly unchallenged. There were questions arising from the fact there were so many of us and that most weren’t sailors. It would take a cruise ship to explain us, and none had been reported missing recently, but our story was that we had been stranded for many years before finding a derelict ship. That was close enough to the truth that it was eventually accepted. Since we could claim the ship as salvage, I had Albert try to find a buyer for it. Even as scrap, La Mancha was worth enough to allow us to equip for the next stage of the journey.
While Albert was making the necessary deals, I worked on finding Paddy Yeats, Puerto Zapato’s lone LSA agent. He was making himself scarce, I discovered, but I eventually tracked him down to a filthy tenement near the warehouse district. He was pretty cautious when he opened his flimsy door a crack to see who was knocking, but he swung it wide open once he recognized me. Next to his pal Slisko, I was probably the one from the old Rubacava days he trusted most.
“Calavera!” he exclaimed, then looked up and down the narrow stairwell behind me. “Come in, quickly,” he said, giving me space. He shut and bolted the door behind me, which probably would have kept out all but the most determined mouse. “Where the hell did you spring from, man?” he asked. “When the Lola headed back out to sea and we heard the explosion…”
“Well,” I said, sitting down at his rickety kitchenette table, “things got interesting after that… but first, what have you heard from Salvador lately?”
“Nada,” he said. “I sent along my report about the Lola but I haven’t gotten word back yet.”
“What about Alexi and the gang?” I asked, figuring he’d at least heard from them.
Paddy shook his head. “Rubacava’s gone dark, man. You should know that.”
“I’ve been out of the loop since I made captain,” I explained. “Too risky. I was hoping to reconnect once the Lola docked here.”
“I’m mostly out of the loop myself,” Paddy said. “Things are getting very hot for the LSA in El Marrow, and I’m pretty sure the DOD here in Zapato know about me, too, so I’ve been laying low.”
“Yeah, I almost couldn’t find you.” The newsies and derelicts I’d traced him through had seemed right enough, but still I’d had Glottis and others follow them up before I showed my face in Paddy’s part of town. “So how long’ve you been in this rat hole, carnal?”
“Only the last few weeks,” he said. “But what about you? What happened to the Lola after you steamed out of port?”
“Well, she went down. I don’t want to go into details, but I found out what happened to all those souls Hector stole Double-N tickets from. I have them with me and I’m going to try to get them to the end of the line.”
Paddy stared open-jawed at me for a couple of seconds. “Wow,” he said finally. “How’d you manage all that?”
I shook my head. “There’s no time to explain, and I wouldn’t even if there was. I want you to keep the little I’ve told you to yourself for as long as you can—I don’t want it getting back to Hector, somehow. It’s not that I don’t trust you, man…”
Paddy held up his hand when I trailed off. “You don’t have to spell it out. Hector’s intelligence is good, I know. So how long should I hold back? I’ll have to make a report eventually, if I can.”
I nodded. “If all goes right, it should take about a year to get to the end of the line on foot. I’ve got too many people to do any better than that.” I gave the answer some more thought. “Give us two, maybe three months before you pass the news on to El Marrow. Once we’re out in the wilderness, it doesn’t matter what Hector knows. He won’t be able to find us, much less stop us,” I assured him, “even if he’s got Captain Scott on his payroll. When you make your report, tell Salvador that the Pearl is the key. People don’t jump overboard there—they’re thrown overboard, and every one of them is a saint. The Pearl is the pickup point. From there, they’re taken to a forgotten island on the southern edge of the world. I’ve done a lot of damage to the operation, but there’s nothing to stop Hector from getting the system going again once he finds out what’s happened.”
“Now that we know about the Pearl,” Paddy said, ever optimistic, “maybe we can intercept Hector’s victims before they get that far.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but there’s not much you can do on your own.” I hesitated, not wanting to imply I didn’t trust the man. “Are you sure there’s nothing new from El Marrow?” I finally asked.
“The most recent news I sent to you by carrier pigeon when the Lola docked,” Paddy answered, either not picking up on my worries or not caring. “Everything else is so stale it isn’t worth telling any more. Basically, the LSA is working hard in El Marrow but can’t get any traction. Hector’s just too powerful.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, getting up from his tiny, Gay Nineties-era table, “Hector can be hurt. When you tell Salvador about the Pearl and the island, you can also tell him that Domino Hurley is out of the picture… for good.”
Albert found a buyer for La Mancha. The amount looked pretty impressive until we worked out what it came to per person. What we could afford to equip ourselves for the next stage of the journey was barely adequate, even when we added in my savings plus Glottis’, but we couldn’t take the time needed to raise more. I figured we needed to be out of town before any of the local DOD on Hector’s payroll got wise to what we really were, so we got the minimum of what we needed and set out.
And I thought the trip on La Mancha was rough.
Once we got away from the coast, the land became a flat plain, rising imperceptibly toward the mountains at the far distant western edge of the world. The landscape became unbearably uniform. Frozen gray dust lay everywhere under the dull gray sky. Terrain like this would have been tundra in the Land of the Living; but in this world there were, of course, no plants. We trudged forward, mostly silent, watching our own feet march forward… the only entertainment. We went numb after the first few weeks, and not only from the cold. There were occasional encounters with the demons native to the plain, savage parodies of moose and bear. But after a while, evading and escaping these beasts became routine. We never lost anyone. Everyone watched out for everyone else, and Glottis kept watch on us all.
Then we came to the ice and snow and the demons became equally polar, although demon penguins were nothing compared to demon beavers. In my opinion, anyway. The ground rose up, forming low, broad hills at first. In time, mountains began to show purple on the horizon, seeming not to grow any larger for weeks. But we did eventually come to the foothills, and struggled up into the mountains themselves. We were about a year out of Puerto Zapato by this time, and nearing the end of the journey, but it seemed as if we had always been traveling and always would be. Some people gave up and had to be carried.