She hit with a deafening crash, scattering bricks in all directions and sending fire and ash into the sky. Walls crumbled as her body smashed into them. Weakened floorboards cracked beneath her weight. She smashed down through one floor, then another. As she came to a stop in what must have been the cellar, the roof collapsed above her. A moment later what was left of the Red House came down on top of her.
“Crap,” she said.
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The glass coffin was thick. A sledgehammer would take too long, might not work, and the good citizens of Kongoville would come and tear him apart for desecrating their heroine’s grave.
Noel stood in the door of the mausoleum and looked up and down the street. Things were oddly quiet, though he could see some broken windows in shops where looting had broken out as the country coped with the idea that the Nshombos were dead.
At one of the construction sites the cranes stood idle, but a lone backhoe was moving the remains of the building that had been demolished to make room for another grandiose monument to the People’s Paradise of Africa.
He didn’t like teleporting into moving objects, but he didn’t want to take the time to run down the street. And that might draw the attention of the nervous policeman who stood ready to direct traffic if there had been any to direct.
Just like shooting. Lead the target. And he made the jump.
The driver yelled in terror as Lilith appeared, standing on his lap. He tried to eel out the door so Noel lost his precarious balance and fell sideways banging his head hard on the side of the cab. He managed to snag the back of the man’s shirt with one hand while with the other he drew his gun.
He drove the barrel into the base of the driver’s skull. “Drive or I’ll kill you,” he said in French.
The man’s head nodded with the speed of a needle on a sewing machine, and he resumed his place behind the controls.
“Drive to the mausoleum.” The man rolled a terrified eye at him. “Do it!”
As they rumbled down the street the traffic cop gaped at them and began pawing for his radio.
They reached the mausoleum. “Knock down the wall.”
“Sir, please…”
Noel fired a shot right by the man’s ear. He screeched, put the backhoe in motion. The wall came down.
Some of the debris fell onto the coffin. Noel saw a few cracks. “Move that crap and break the glass,” he ordered.
It seemed to be taking forever, manipulating the hydraulics, lifting the front bucket, using it to push aside the fallen stones. Finally the glass was exposed.
The driver’s hands were trembling. “Sir, she is our hero. To desecrate-”
“She’s going to live again and save-” His inventiveness failed him. Noel could hear sirens drawing ever closer. “You remember how she saved Tom Weathers, brought him back from the dead?” The man nodded. “Well, her power still lives and she’s going to bring Dr. Nshombo back.”
The man enthusiastically obeyed. On the second blow the glass broke. Noel leaped from the cab. Cops were clawing their way over the rubble. Bullets began to snap and whine around him. Noel snatched the medal off the corpse’s neck, then staggered as a bullet took him in the shoulder. For an instant he felt only extreme heat at the point of impact. He knew the pain was coming.
He made the jump back to the Red House.
The Red House
Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Ellen’s breath was shallow, her eyes fluttering. Lilith pressed the golden medallion into her good hand. Bugsy held his breath. Behind them, Monster roared, a sheet of lightning turning the night to day.
Ellen closed her eyes. Someone he’d never met opened them. He was suddenly very aware of being naked. “Hi,” he said. “I know this is going to seem a little weird, but the thing is, you’re dead? And I kind of need your help.”
“I know what I am,” the new woman said. Her voice had an African accent.
“Great,” Bugsy said. “Really that’s great. I was thinking if you could just patch Ellen back up, that would be really, really cool. Then we could-”
The woman sat up slowly. Ellen’s skin cracked and split, blood rolling down her side in a crimson stream. “No,” the woman said. “The time has passed for that. Help me stand.”
Bugsy took her good arm and lifted. She seemed lighter than Ellen. Less substantial. The Lady of Pain turned her head as if no terrible injuries had disfigured her. Her expression was frank and evaluating. Bugsy turned with her, and saw what she saw.
Bodies. Dozens of them. Men in the tattered uniforms of soldiers or the white smocks of nurse attendants. Children lying flat on the ground to avoid the violence all around them, or already dead. And beyond them, in the ruins of the Red House, Bubbles and Monster trading terrible blows.
With every strike that Monster landed, Bubbles grew, and with every exploding bubble that detonated against Monster, the creature became larger, its claws and penis waving in the African air. Each incapable of harming the other, and both wreaking terrible damage all around them. Monster howled at the moon above them.
It struck Bugsy that both the combatants were white, and the dead around them black.
“You do not know the pain I have carried,” the Lady of Pain said. He thought at first she was looking at the dead, but when he followed her gaze, it was on the charred remnant of Nick’s fedora. She turned to look at him. Cameo’s good eye narrowed. The burned one was too damaged to close. “With every healing gesture, I have carried the pain. Do you understand what I am saying? They call me an ace, and all that I have been given is pain.”
Ellen, Bugsy thought. This isn’t the Lady of Pain, whatever the voice sounds like. I’m talking to Ellen.
“Please,” Bugsy said. “Could you just heal-”
“This is no day for healing. This is a day for the ending of things,” the Lady of Pain said. “Tom Weathers has killed me. Let him take the pain that I carried.”
Something came out of her, a bolt of light that was not light, a heat that froze. The air between the Lady of Pain and the monster writhed and shuddered. Bugsy felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rise.
And a world of hurt enveloped Tom Weathers.
It was as if he were being wrenched apart and crushed and suffocated and burned alive. All at once. As if it were happening to each and every nerve ending in his body. Every atom.
He struck out. The pain only grew, impossibly grew. It began to eat at his mind like flame at paper.
“Here’s what’s happening,” Mark said, his words clear through the horrific all-consuming agony. “One of those eggs you broke so cavalierly has been put back together again. Sort of. Just long enough to pay you back for all the pain you caused others. With that pain.”
Tom tried to say something. He could only scream. Even in his unimaginable torment he knew that Meadows felt every bit of it, as strongly as he did. Yet the old hippie spoke as serenely as ever a martyr did through flames.
“Remember Dolores Michel, Tom?” he asked. “Our Lady of Pain? She couldn’t just take on herself the pain of others. She could also give that pain back.”
The Radical tried to raise a final fist of defiance. But that emotion crisped and burned to ash as well.
And in that agony, he died.
The quiet seemed unnatural. Noel became aware of the whimpers and cries from the wounded. The medal gleamed against Cameo’s chest, her hands still clutched around it.
But the demon was gone. There was a form lying on the ground. Noel got to his feet and tottered toward the body. He had to draw the gun with his left hand. The wound in his shoulder had left his right arm useless.
Shock brought him to a stop. Instead of a powerfully built man in his forties there was an emaciated figure with long grey hair and a beard like the remnants of a torn spiderweb. Blood streaked the body, drawing the insects. Noel holstered his gun and laid two fingers at the base of the man’s throat. There was a threadlike pulse. “He’s not dead,” he said. “Even after all that, the bastard Weathers is still not dead.”