Chapter Twenty Three
“Our world is not so different from the one before. Friends can turn to enemies, and only through exercising violence do we find ourselves again at peace. If we rezzers can be faulted for anything, it’s that we do so in the blink of an eye.”
–Hades, “Some Philosophical Shit”. 4 Years After.
* * *
From dictator to revolutionary. What a week this has been.
Leah studied her allies. Like her friends up North, the Hunters in El Dorado wore many different outfits. Jackets and coats, ponchos and suits, tunics and dresses. They all had their own choice of weapons too, ranging from throwing knives to automatic shotguns. But what made them such a unique fighting force were the skull-shaped masks, all decorated with flowers and vines, each with vibrant colors. Red, teal, orange, violet. The more flamboyant, the better.
Meanwhile, Leah was alone as she sharpened a combat knife in the corner of the hotel lobby they’d taken as their temporary base of operations.
Shit had really hit the fan down here. Apparently, Mateo – or “Brother Mateo” as he’d really been known – had shown up with a small group maybe three or four months back. Unlike Pandemonium, there were fewer regulations against literature down here, and plenty of folks had developed their own religious inklings as a result. Those became the first marks. Next thing anyone knew, a bunch of “Hermanos” and “Hermanas” were running around. Their numbers exploded from there, and once they got a hold of Santiago and his team, it was game over.
Even the Hunters fought alongside the Beholders now. Of the seventy that served as El Dorado’s primary defense, only twenty were still with Flamingo. Some were full Hermanos, while the rest followed Santiago’s commands without question, lest they get thrown into the pool and be brainwashed themselves. Not that it saved them for long. From what she’d learned, more Beholders were getting made by the day, often under the flimsiest pretense of “stopping heresy.”
Leah sighed. A group of twenty was all they had to undo this mess, along with herself. Twenty-one Hunters against an outpost of thousands. How the hell were they going to pull this off?
At least she was no longer naked. As chance would have it, one of the surviving Hunters happened to be about her size and had plenty of clothes to spare. The vintage look wasn’t exactly her speed, but Leah adapted well enough. In the end, she’d found a black and red Gothic dress with a skirt that neither tangled up her knees nor dragged a mile behind. There were even skulls decorated along its length. With the wide-brimmed sombrero that sat above – a necessity to keep others from seeing her bone-white skin and distinctive Mark – she looked like a real El Dorado Hunter.
Wearing the giant hat made her wonder… Did I have one of these when I first came down here? That’d explain the shared memory from the locals, but she couldn’t say for sure. Hollowing was a bitch.
Flamingo closed in, a wire hanging from the earbud where his guitar music blared. As he’d reminded her, playing flamenco before a fight helped prime his muscles to move at their maximum speed, though Leah was convinced that he just liked to be dramatic.
“I do not think that knife could be more sharp if you try,” Flamingo said with a tilt of his top hat.
She twirled it in her hand, watching as the light danced on its edge before scraping another chink away. “I can do better.”
“How are you feel, señora?”
“Still not great. I think I got spared the worst of rehollowing, but I’ve just been… Off.”
He stared deep. “You think it is the Lord?”
Blessed be His name. Leah buried her face in her palm. She didn’t think those words. Not by choice. They just appeared in her mind the second she heard His name. Her hand instinctively stroked her scarf, but her fingers graced nothing but her exposed flesh and teeth. She buried the tears before they grew.
“He not real,” Flamingo said. “You say so yourself.”
“Except that He is!” she snapped. “Don’t you fucking get it!?”
The others were watching her now. Even behind the skull-shaped masks, she could feel the fucking pity leaking out. But the moment she made eye contact, they each turned away.
Leah dipped her sombrero low. “I get that they were only reading from a book, but it’s more than that. There’s another power out there. Something I don’t understand.” She closed her eyes, feeling the Lord’s presence, even here. “I can’t explain it, Flamingo. Just… Trust me. We have to stop them.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “We will, señora. We have you for hope. You are only one to survive baptism and not lose yourself.”
You sure about that? It sure as fuck didn’t feel that way. “Let’s talk about something else.” Leah needed to get her mind off this subject. Now. “What’s with the masks, anyway?”
He laughed. “I can try explain, but my English not much good.”
“You’ve been doing fine so far.”
“Do you know of Día de los Muertos?”
“Memory’s been fucked lately, Flamingo, so maybe just give me the full rundown anyway.”
“It is ‘Day of the Dead’ in your tongue… A day in old world celebration when the spirits of the dead get to walk the world again.”
“Sounds a lot like the Hollowing.”
“Sí, señora. They believe in this tradition for many years before, but Día de los Muertos did not become true until the Hollowing. Humans had their lives, and then they die, and we were born, to walk these lands in their place. Like the celebration before, there is much beauty in that.”
Leah chuckled. “We are rotting corpses that feast on the flesh of the living, Flamingo. I wouldn’t exactly describe that as beautiful.”
“But it is true! This is a world driven by cycle of life and death. Creatures are born, they live, and they die, and new creatures are born from their death.” He plucked a flower growing from a crack in the wall behind and stroked its white petals. “You would say this plant is beautiful, no? Consider that it would not have lived if this hotel did not die. Only through its death could there be life for flower and vine.”
“Fair point.”
His red eyes twinkled behind the mask. “That is why we wear these masks. As Hunters, we have most responsibility to Día de los Muertos. We go through dead world to bring back life to other rezzer. The cycle must always continue.”
Leah mulled the thought. “We are the harbingers of death, sent to usher in new life?”
“Sí, señora Leah. That is what we do.”
She held the white-petaled flower herself. No one had ever articulated Hunting this way. Up North, they were just mercenaries who fought for the highest bidder. Here, Flamingo’s description practically elevated them to gods.
As she examined the flower, Leah wondered where in this cycle she resided. Was she like them in helping to maintain their race, or had her arrogance doomed them all? It wasn’t lost on her that she’d been asleep at the wheel while the Beholders rose in power.
“You made this possible,” Flamingo said. “Hades was strong, but you have always been first Hunter. We would not be able to bring true honor to Día de los Muertos if you no bring this gift to our land. Do not forget this.”
Leah’s eyes watered again. She’d had every fucking chance to take Abraham out early, but she let the moment slip, convinced that someone like him could never beat her. Now, there was no telling how long it’d be before Pandemonium fell under his spell, like the people in this country.
And yet, it did not seem to matter to these guys. Leah studied the Hunters of El Dorado with fresh eyes. They weren’t pitying her. Far from it. She was being revered. Leah was the Godmother of their craft, sent to them in their city’s most dire hour of need. They gave her distance purely out of respect.
“Thank you, Flamingo,” she whispered. “I needed to hear that.”
“It is you to thank. I had only ten amigos before you arrive.” He looked around the room himself. “Still does not feel enough. We have you, but they have armored trucks and machine guns.”
Leah nodded. “Anything in that convoy will eviscerate us as soon as it gets a lock. We decked them out with enough firepower to destroy groups twice our size. You don’t travel this far with anything less.” She scoffed. “And now the Beholders have them. What a fucking joke.”
“Sí. I do not think we can win without those trucks.”
“Maybe… Or maybe not.” She surveyed the room of desperate Hunters and thought through the options. Could that work? It has to.
“You have plan?” Flamingo asked.
“Yes.” She stood up and looked out the window. Even this far outside El Dorado, she could make out the spires of the parish, where Santiago and his friends were based.
“What will we do?”
“Exactly what I told my people in the first place.” She clenched her fists. “We’re going to burn that place down.”
* * *
They couldn’t make their move until the following morning. The others had wanted to wait until nightfall, but there would be no better time than now. It was Sunday, after all, which meant that most of the Beholders would be attending Mass. That kept the bulk of them distracted while they infiltrated the outpost.
A humvee rolled by with an Inquisitor manning the turret, and a nearby pedestrian nodded once before donning a skull-shaped mask. Leah lowered her sombrero and hopped the yellow plaster wall, with the rest of Hunters not far behind.
Not many people were left in the streets, but Flamingo took no chances, pulling the group into the nearest house where one of his sympathizers kept the doors unlocked. They cleared the living room and made for the alley behind, pressing forth at full speed.
Leah gripped the FN P90 she’d been given. She would’ve much preferred her own arsenal, but the Hunters only had so much gear to go around after the Beholders made their power grab.
Block by block, their group rushed through the back alleys of El Dorado, its multi-colored walls sprayed over with graffiti. They had to move quickly. If this was going to work, they had to reach the parish before anyone figured out they were under attack. They did not step into the open unless necessary, only after the patrols passed.
Leah could see the spires of the parish, just across the street. They were almost there. Once they got through that courtyard, they’d be in the clear. She jumped over the cobblestone wall that lined the perimeter.
Shouts erupted nearby. A pair of soldiers dressed in plain clothes raised their rifles. Leah took aim with her P90.
But Flamingo stepped in between, gloved hands raised high. He began speaking to them, his voice soft and even. The guards jolted their weapons back and forth, their own tones loud and fast. Leah couldn’t follow a word of it until her name came up.
“Señora Leah?” one of them squeaked, his rifle shaking.
“Say the word and I’ll drop these guys, Flamingo.”
“No,” he said, arms still raised. “They are not Hermanos. I can convince them.”
She raised her sombrero an inch, her head on a swivel. “Hurry this shit up. We’re too exposed.”
The rest of the Hunters had entered the courtyard now, their own weapons drawn as they inched across the grass. The guards retreated a few steps, trying in vain to scare them all in place. Their words grew more erratic as the standoff dragged out.
Then a truck rolled through the main street before screeching to a halt. Leah recognized the .30 cal minigun at once, with one of the black-cloaked bastards behind.
The Inquisitor shouted and yanked the handle of his turret. The barrels of the minigun accelerated into a spin. No one needed to speak the language to know what he was about to do if they didn’t drop their weapons at once.
Fuck this. “Run!” Leah launched into a sprint.
There were a couple seconds of peace as Leah took cover behind the nearest tree, but then gunshots flared out. Some of the Hunters had made the wrong decision, taking potshots against the truck before the return fire came. The M134 she’d mounted onto that rig could shit out six thousand rounds per minute at full speed, so Leah watched helplessly as the Hunters dissolved under a tsunami of lead, their Día de los Muertos masks shattering with their clothes, their armor, their gear, their flesh, their bones, and the soft organs beneath… All in the blink of an eye.
She cursed and made for the next bit of cover, pushing her legs as fast as they could.
There was still a chance. Someone had the brilliant idea of tossing smoke bombs to obfuscate their route, and a veil of black fog soon covered the yard. The stream of bullets continued, though now without precision. A chunk of fiber puffed out the edge of her sombrero, grass and dirt burst into the air beside, and trees shattered as though struck by a hundred axes at once. But none hit her body.
Leah broke through the smoke and lunged behind a pillar, now inside the boundary of the central parish. The maelstrom continued behind, and the Inquisitor concentrated all his firepower onto the Hunters in the yard.
This was the moment of truth. Leah fired at the truck. Her P90 might as well have been shooting pebbles from this far away, but it did the job. The Inquisitor knelt down for cover and redirected her way. Six barrels of mounted death pointed right at her.
But he did not shoot. He just sat there like an asshole while Leah laid more covering fire from within the parish. Flamingo and his people cleared the final hurdle, now safe themselves the moment they got behind the pillars.
Exactly as planned. The Beholders were merciless killers who cared about nothing other than enforcing their beliefs, but it was also within that devotion that they became vulnerable. This parish was a house dedicated to the Lord… Blessed be His name. They couldn’t desecrate somewhere so holy with a heavy machine gun. Could they?
Nope. Even Leah felt uneasy bringing a firearm into this place, and her exposure to their Holy Word had been minimal. The other Hunters couldn’t have given two shits about them or their God. Praise be His blessings.
One of the Hunters rammed a metal bar into the church doors, locking the congregation inside. The remaining Beholders were quick to rally, but close-quarter-combat was where Hunters thrived. The atrium thundered with violence as the two sides engaged. Gunshots rang out, shotgun shells tore through the plaster walls, and it wasn’t long before the floor was caked in blood. Curses and commands echoed throughout, incomprehensible in their native Spanish.
Flamingo split off to get the prisoners while Leah went upstairs with a group of her own. Bolts whizzed by the moment she hit the second floor. A line of Beholders had formed to launch a volley from their crossbows, and Leah flinched when one struck her breast, with another piercing her offhand, sending her P90 to the ground. She watched as the first group knelt down, making room for a second line to send a volley of their own.
Leah drew her combat knife and dove. The bolts flew harmlessly above as she scrambled forth. The first wave mechanically pulled against their hand cranks, too focused on getting the bolt in place to realize how quickly Leah came for them. By the time they stood back up, she was mere feet away.
Even down an arm, it didn’t matter. Leah was back to full strength and pissed the fuck off. She and her team made short work of everyone in front. The red skulls of her dress became stained in black, and within moments of engaging, the Beholders were all dead.
Save for one. Hermano Mateo entered the battle, ambushing her team from behind in his brown Friar cloak. One of the Hunters screamed as he was thrown from the balcony, and another’s arm shattered when she tried to raise her pistol. Mateo twirled his staff, driving the point straight through the eye-hole of her mask.
There were still two Hunters left with Leah, but she stepped in between. She could see her burgundy scarf dangling from his waist like a fucking trophy.
“I got this,” she ordered, meeting Mateo in the eye. “I’ve still got a score to settle.” With a quick set of slashes, she clipped the crossbow bolts from her breast and arm.
The other Hunters bowed out of the way, and Mateo pivoted his staff into a defensive stance. He grinned wide, his eyes burning with a confidence that only the Lord could’ve given him. Praise be.
The poor fucker never stood a chance. While Mateo readied for a charge, Leah pounced for the Hunter he downed and claimed the pistol for herself. Her shots went quick, first penetrating his chest before landing where she intended. The soft skin of the neck exploded from the final bullet, shattering the spinal column behind. Mateo’s body seized. He fell.
Leah casually strolled over, wrenched her burgundy scarf free, and wrapped it back around her face. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, feeling whole once again.
Mateo writhed in shock, his eyes locked with hers. But they were no longer defiant and composed. He watched back with nothing but terror, now paralyzed from the neck down.
Leah spun her knife in hand. “Told you those eyes were mine.” She knelt down and went to work.
The battle was almost won. Some Hunters were tossing Molotovs into anything flammable, while others were carving brains free from their downed enemies. What few Beholders remained were uncoordinated, with many in retreat. Flamingo rushed through the atrium with a group of prisoners at his flank.
Leah glanced down the hall. There was only one task left. With a wave of her hand, her team rushed for Santiago’s office.
He waited for them behind the desk, a cross clutched in one hand and a shaking revolver in the other. He bellowed at the Hunters to no avail.
“It’s over, Santiago,” Leah said, raising her sombrero. “Put down the gun and surrender.”
He twitched her way. “No! Heretics cannot have this place. It belongs to the Lord!”
She frowned. “This isn’t you talking, Santiago. It’s them. It’s what they put you through, and what they made you put everyone else through, myself included.” She holstered her knife and raised her hands. “There’s still a chance though. I don’t know how yet, but I swear, I’ll figure out how to save you.”
“I am saved!” he screamed, tears forming. “I was lost before, clinging to the power you people gave me like some soulless animal, but the Hermanos showed me the truth. I have beheld His glory! There is no greater virtue than teaching His wisdom. How can you not see that!?”
Her own fingers quaked. “I did… Fuck, I do. But… The Lord, praise b–” she grimaced. “His power isn’t like they say. The Beholders aren’t teaching us enlightenment. They’re taking it away! Please, Santiago. Put down the gun and tell your people to stand down. This doesn’t have to be how it ends.”
He sobbed. “I can’t go back… I can’t become that godless creature again.” He turned the revolver on himself.
“No!”
But it was too late. Santiago placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered against the cross still wrapped in his hand.
Leah grimaced, but she was alone. All around her, another energy had taken hold of the atrium. Screaming. Cheering.
No, it wasn’t just here. Leah looked out the window and realized that the citizens of El Dorado had taken to the streets. Her trucks were still there, but a mob had managed to get a hold of their owners, with the Inquisitors all rounded up. Other workers danced and laughed on the rooftops, with many pointing to the flames billowing from the parish. The guards buzzed about, as much part of the uprising as everyone else.
It didn’t matter whether Santiago officially surrendered or not. There were still enough able-minded rezzers ready to reclaim their city the moment they were given a chance.
Leah swallowed the lump in her throat and marched back downstairs, the fires rising around. She watched as Hunters beheaded the last of their dead enemies, collecting as much Rez as possible before this place burned down. Frescoes of priests and nuns became enveloped in flame, their pious faces slowly melting away. Wood cracked, and the roof began to collapse.
But it wasn’t until she made it outside that her worst fears were realized.
A Beholder lay dead in front of the church. Her brown hair flowed like silk, and her skin was as smooth as ever, but her white cloak was stained black where the blood had leaked out, and her reddish eyes held nothing but an empty frenzy. A knife stayed trapped inside her delicate fingers, but she seemed to have been purged before ever getting the chance to use it. Which made sense, considering that this one had never been a fighter.
Leah bent over and forced Luciá’s eyelids shut. Her loyal translator deserved to have some peace in death, even after being failed in life.
Flamingo marched her way, the golden trim of his velour jacket glittering in the light of the fire. He patted Leah on the shoulder. “It is over. Listen!”
All around, the people of El Dorado were chanting the same thing. “Leah! Leah! Leah!”
And yet, this victory still felt hollow. Here Leah was, on the ass end of the world, dressed like a Victorian noble as a crowd of supporters cheered her on, but the blood that covered her hadn’t come from their enemies. Only a few Beholders had worked their way into El Dorado, after all. The rest were just indoctrinated into fighting against them.
And Father Abraham still had thousands of followers at Pandemonium, if not many more by now.
She grimaced. This fight was far from over.
