Weary Traveler
Chapter 9

Mitch peeked out of the front window, eyelids peeled open to take in the epic proportions of the approaching fortress wall. Two slabs of a sharp, wrought iron gate, loomed up ahead at the end of a steep decline, dropping deeper into the underground lair, where janitors disappeared, transformed into death itself.

The enormous gate was built right into the rock. Its iron bars raged with fiery light like the Crawlers had captured flames from the deepest abyss, stolen the gates of hell. An interdimensional portal teleporting bums into alternate realms.

The bus rolled down the ramp and stopped between the two sides of the gate. The elongated vehicle instantly transformed into a miniature toy car, engulfed by the earth and iron and colossal magnitude of the vast chamber.

Built into the rock, at the center above the top of the gate, was a short passage written with letters of fire across a cast iron sign.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Thomas faced forward, staring directly out of the front window panel with his hands gripping onto the large wheel like a petrified creature lost in an abandoned, nuclear city.

A cavern-shaking hiss burst from the iron portal. Its hidden hydraulics released their hold on gigantic hinges, forced the fiery gate open. The center spread like the chomping mouth of an angry demon, feasting upon the flesh and souls of forgotten men, banished as sacrifice for creepy Crawlers in their wicked fortress.

The hissing ceased. The cavern descended into near silence, except for the humming pulse spreading from the electric motor and the faint, incoherent chatter from the rows of restless janitors behind Mitch. He glanced at them from over his right shoulder. Dozens of pairs of eyes spread wide, pale faces scattered with scars, dotted by bloodshot eyes like none had slept in days. His eyes found Sebastian and Felix at the back of the bus, panicked faces like their souls had left their bodies and a ghost had taken its place.

“Best stay in your seat, Mitch Henderson,” Thomas said. “Crawlers are about to slither onto this here bus and inspect each one’a you.” He shifted gears and inched the bus forward into the blazing light streaming out from the other side of the open gate.

Mitch plopped onto the cracked, vinyl seat and settled back into his calm posture. He stared into the approaching artificial light with focused eyes and a stoic face, like his features had been pounded out of a block of granite.

The nose of the bus squeezed through the opening, swallowed Thomas in an aura of luminescence. Mitch squinted, lowered his gaze, and shielded his eyes with his hands.

A dizzying whistle permeated the air. It bounced around Mitch’s skull like a persistent ring burst from the center of his mind, stretching from the axis of his soul grounded in eternity. He flexed his jaw and popped his ears, swatted at the air in a feeble effort at shooing away the light and sound piercing his brain.

The sting in his forehead slowly dissipated as his eyes adjusted. He blinked several times, squeezed tears from his sockets, and stared through the front window.

Standing in a straight line about thirty feet ahead, were a group of armed, Crawler guards. Six of them. Each carrying a fiberglass, CorpoMax light rifle sizzling with red plasma down the length of the barrel, pulsing every few seconds. They wore short, cream-colored tunics that stopped above their knees, held up by a gold clasp over their left shoulders with matching, gold, utility belts wrapped around their waists, revealing bare, muscular pecs on the right.

Their albino eyes had a blue tinge to them, like a pair of frozen jawbreakers pounded into their chiseled skulls, leering through the bus like it was invisible. Their faces were void of any kind of emotion, as if they were duplicates of each other. Their blue-white skin was so pale that it bordered on translucent, without a single strand of body hair like some kind of synthetic, deep sea creature evolved with legs and lungs. They had thin, white lips and two, tiny holes that punctured the center of their faces where their noses should have been.

Mitch shook his head, blinked rapidly, and then focused on the Crawlers a second time like he had imagined their strange appearance. But their pale blue skin and albino eyes remained, like phantoms trapped in a freezer box.

“What the fuck…” Mitch whispered, slouching back down into the seat. “What’s wrong with ’em?”

“Quiet, now, or they’ll kill us both,” Thomas said. He threw his hands against the big steering wheel and turned the bus so that the side was parallel with the line of guards, twisted the key, powered down the electric engine.

The fresh silence awakened the guards as if they had been trapped on idle, waiting for the arrival of their janitor slaves. The Crawlers on the far left and far right each pulled a slender stick from their belts, aimed it at the ground, and then marched in opposite directions around the perimeter of the bus. After they had made a full rotation, they found their position back in the line of guards.

And then, one by one, starting from the guard on the front left, they turned and marched single file towards the bus’s front door like they were members of a schizophrenic, CorpoMax brigade. They mounted the steps and stomped down the center aisle, rifles raised, aimed straight at the side of each of the janitors’ forward-facing heads.

Mitch leaned forward and placed his head against the driver’s backrest, peeked at the Crawlers standing behind him. They were spaced out evenly down the central aisle, sweeping their rifles back and forth, seeking to destroy any sudden movement.

“Janitors,” the guard closest to Mitch said in a voice that sounded like it was injected with static, “stand up.”

Dozens of orange jumpsuits rose from their seats, stood on their feet.

“Janitors,” the second guard in line said, in the same monotone voice, “walk forward.”

Like a trail of dominoes had been flicked, the janitors shuffled, sandwiched in-between the Crawlers.

“Good luck,” Thomas whispered as Mitch passed and stomped down the steps onto the colossal cavern’s ground.

The air was crisp, fresh, so cold that it stung Mitch’s lungs and pushed tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Janitors,” the third guard in line said, “stop.”

Their crunchy steps across gravel ceased and the cavern filled with the echo of heavy breaths.

“Janitors,” the fourth guard said, “spread out and face the bus.”

Mitch walked towards the left a few steps, turned towards the bus. The janitors dispersed in a straight line, faced the bus, and glared at the line of Crawlers.

“Janitors,” the fifth guard said, “raise your hands above your heads.”

Mitch gritted his teeth- fighting back the urge of his will to restrain himself from the Crawlers’ commands- and slowly lifted his cuffed hands above his head.

“Janitors,” the sixth guard said, “spread your legs.”

The line of janitors shifted their feet, gravel sliding beneath them. They kicked up small clouds of dust until each was lower to the ground, bodies dropped into a posture of disadvantage.

The remaining four Crawlers yanked their slender metallic devices from their hips, joined the other two, and charged forward. They held the wands out in front of them, scanned the janitors’ bodies.

Mitch’s body stiffened. His eyes studied the strange, pale creature standing before him. There wasn’t a single scar or blemish or cut on his smooth face. Perfect features of Crawler genetic engineering. A lab-grown specimen that had long surpassed the weak human form of a measly nomad or bum in the city above, scrounging for synth-scraps and slicing their bodies open to be injected with filthy, malfunctioning implants.

The guard’s wand scanned Mitch’s body with a sliver of trembling orange light. He traced his jumpsuit from head to toe. And then, the Crawler stopped, froze over Mitch’s pelvic area. He held the wand there long enough for a single bead of sweat to roll from the wisps on Mitch’s head, down his temple, over the mound of his bony cheek, and onto the ground.

The splat shot up from the floor, squirmed through Mitch’s eardrum, rattled his brain like he was trapped in a tunnel during a rainstorm with a single hole carved out of the ceiling. His heart pounded against his chest. Boom boom. Boom boom. Boom boom. Beating against his ribcage, seeking freedom. Climbed through his throat and fought for air against his brain. Then exploded within his skull, squeezed through his ears, plugged his eardrums, trapping him in a prison of silence.

Without lowering his head, he peeked at the Crawler and his suspicious wand, glaring at the creature until his head ached from the pain of his straining eyes, preparing his body for the inevitable.

The orange light flared once more, then vanished. The Crawler stepped aside and marched over to the next janitor.

Mitch released a thin stream of air out of the right corner of his mouth and allowed his frantic mind and wild heart a moment to calm themselves and step away from the edge of the cliff that they had nearly leapt off of. He peeked down the line of janitors still being scanned. His eyes homed in on a scrawny man three bodies over, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The man’s neck fidgeted like he was going through bonzo withdrawals. His irises flicked back and forth within his sockets as if he played paddleball with his eyeballs.

A Crawler stepped in front of him, held the wand up to the janitor’s navel. Mitch gazed with gaping eyes as the wand flashed from orange to solid scarlet and blared a screeching siren that echoed through the cavern.

“Danger! Danger! Danger!” a robotic voice screamed from the wand.

The janitor’s feral eyes glanced up and down the line of prisoners while the other Crawlers closed in, light rifles raised and aimed at his chest. They encircled the crazed man, closed in around him like he was wounded prey.

“Crawler scum!” the janitor shouted, reaching between the center flap of his jumpsuit, groping for something buried inside.

Within the span of a single breath, six beams of sizzling, red energy burst from the Crawlers’ light rifles, collided with the janitor’s face and chest, burned holes through his body. He sucked in one, final, gasping breath, and crumbled onto the dirt, dropping a rusty revolver from his hand.

Upon witnessing the execution of a fellow janitor, the rest of the prisoners brought their legs together so that the sides of the feet were touching. They straightened their backs and tilted their chins upwards, eyes focused ahead, while the Crawlers formed their own line directly across from them.

“Janitors,” the guard in front of Mitch said, “turn and walk into the entrance.”

The prisoners shifted their feet and shuffled towards a collection of glass doors tucked into the rock like the entrance to an underground hotel. The artificial, white light coming from inside stung Mitch’s retinas, crept across his mind like he stared into a floodlight for too long during a jelly trip.

One of the glass doors opened automatically, split down the middle as Mitch and the first Crawler approached, swallowed them both in a cloud of white light like they had stepped through the Pearly Gates.

The air inside was ice cold, sterile, like Mitch had awoken in a hospital after a night of booze and bonzo binging. A dizzying, mechanical taste pinched his nostrils, tightened his throat, suffocated his lungs. He clamped his mouth shut to prevent a cough from spewing into the Crawlers’ holy sanctuary and angering their sick spirits.

His eyes watered as they adjusted to the glaring luminescence. They darted around their sockets, taking in the strange sights of a vast lobby with white, tile floors and metallic pillars that stretched high into a tall ceiling. Each pillar wedged against the stone and earth above their heads, propping up the rot and filth of Rosenfell. The disease and decay of an entire poor, deteriorating civilization, built upon a shaky foundation of creeps.

Mitch blinked away the final stinging aches that crawled over his eyeballs and peered towards a group of Crawlers standing in front of a crystalline desk about twenty feet ahead. They each wore tunics like the guards, but theirs were fashioned from some kind of shiny, white material like the threads of a synthetic spider web had been stitched together and wrapped around their pale, blue-white bodies, coddling them within a cocoon to protect against the bums entering their den. Fresh prey to feast upon.

“Greetings, fine, noble, heroic janitors…” said a tall, lean woman with strong limbs standing at the center of the pack, stepping forward to distinguish herself, “and welcome to Paradise.” She spread her arms out from her body to introduce the structure of light, glass, and cold metal behind her. She had close-cropped, chrome hair that glimmered in the artificial light as her head shifted from left to right, examining the janitors.

“Janitors,” the six guards said simultaneously, voices echoing through the lobby, “spread out.”

Mitch shuffled to the left, made room for the other janitors to disperse on his right, until they all faced the group of Crawlers in white tunics. They all wore stiff grins across their faces like they had been painted on. Smiles forced too wide so that their tiny heads seemed like they were on the verge of shaking with a fit of uncontrollable hysteria. Potential patients in an insane asylum, searching for a reason to unbutton their brains and lash out at whoever snatched their pudding from their weak grip. Lunatics who slithered underneath the earth so that they could run their own sick show and conduct their own wicked experiments.

“We, Angels in Paradise, thank you for offering your life to help keep this filthy place clean,” the chrome-haired woman said.

Mitch looked around without moving his head. There wasn’t a speck of dust or grime or dirt to be cleaned. It was like a postcard of a hospital had been welded over their luminous lobby.

“My name is Angela,” she continued. “These wonderful Angels behind me,” she said, looking over each of her shoulders, “are known as Surveyors. They will monitor your work and decide whether or not it meets the cleanliness standards of our magnificent, Paradise.”

The Surveyors nodded slowly, smiles stretched wider so that the veins in their necks appeared beneath their skin like taut ropes.

“Now… the procedure,” Angela said. “Each of you will be assigned a level. You will be in charge of cleaning that entire level until every last speck of dirt and dust is wiped away. You will remain in Paradise until one of the Surveyors approves of your work. At which point you will be scanned for release and sent back to be with your people in the wonderful, elegant, and magnificent, Rosenfell. Is that understood? Terrific. I must say that Surveyors keep high standards of cleanliness. So you fine janitors had better stay focused on your tasks or suffer grave consequences.”

Angela snapped her fingers so loud that Mitch winced from the pang that rattled through his eardrums, shook his auditory nerve. A Surveyor stepped forward and handed her a thin sheet of fiberglass. It shined with a blue light and white letters that ascended as her eyes scanned it.

“The lowest levels are always off-limits. Never enter or you will be subject to immediate, violent, and painful execution. It appears that levels seven, nine, and eleven, are also off limits,” Angela said. She flicked her fingers across the tablet, closed the text, and handed it back to the Surveyor.

Angela marched to Mitch at the front of the line, heels clicking off of the white tile and echoing through the lobby as if she galloped along with a parade of synthetic horses. She looked Mitch up and down. The left corner of her mouth twitched, masking the sneer she flung at his filthy flesh, deep wrinkles, and scars that covered his face.

“Level one,” she said to Mitch, walking to the next janitor, hands clasped behind her back. “Two… three…” she marched down the line, providing each janitor with their own floor, skipping over the off-limits levels. “Thirty-eight… and thirty-nine,” she said to Sebastian and Felix at the end of the line.

“What about the handcuffs?” a janitor in the middle asked, wriggling his hands above his head.

The guard nearest him stomped over, raised the light rifle, and fired off a single round between his eyebrows.

A stream of smoke burned through both sides of the janitor’s head. He swayed back and forth, toppled over into a crumbled heap across the tile. A puddle of blood slowly expanded and swallowed his body in a crimson circle.

“No questions,” Angela said, turning back towards Sebastian and Felix. “Thanks to your colleague’s pathetic attempt at violence,” she said, glancing towards the body and puddle of blood on her right, “you two get to share cleaning duties for his level. What an honor!”

Mitch’s lips quivered, body swayed from the silent chuckle that squeezed from the depths of his belly.

“Very well, then, to the elevators!” Angela said, marching down the line of janitors towards a second group of sliding glass doors. “Hurry up. Much to clean. No time to waste.”

A guard shoved the side of his light rifle into Mitch’s back. He stumbled forward into a fast walk, followed Angela’s trail through the glass doors. They emerged into another vast corridor with a collection of about fifty elevators like metallic tombs. Half on the left, the other half on the right.

“Level one, first elevator on the right. Level two, first on the left. And so on…” Angela said, shuffling towards the center of the corridor. She stopped and turned, faced the way they came in.

Mitch shuffled up to his elevator at the front, rotated, and stared into its metallic glimmer, focusing on each inhale, exhale of the chemical air.

“Better wait for us, bum,” Sebastian whispered.

Mitch peeked over his left shoulder as Sebastian and Felix marched past, glaring with a fierce scowls at the smirking bum. He shrugged, turned back towards his elevator.

“Quickly! Get to your spots,” Angela said. “Good, good, that’s it.”

“Janitors,” one of the guards said, “walk towards your elevator.”

Thirty-five pairs of feet shuffled towards their metal box. Each of the doors dinged, slid open in time for the approaching prisoners.

“Janitors, step onto your elevator.”

Mitch stared into the faint light coming from inside of the coffin. His mind raced with thoughts of the possibility that the box would drop through the ground, send him straight to his death in the depths of hell beneath this false Paradise, that wicked realm between worlds.

“Level one, step forward or face annihilation,” the guard nearest Mitch said.

The Crawler stomped over to him and pressed the muzzle of his light rifle into the side of his head, digging into his flesh.

Mitch stepped forward, turned around so that he faced the guard in the corridor, and stared down the muzzle of the light rifle. A vague nod rocked his head and a maniacal smirk filled his face. And then, the elevator doors slid shut.