Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [1]
PROLOGUE
Six minutes after he officially died, Slydes found himself standing agog on a street corner like none he’d ever seen. He stood as he had in life: broad-shouldered, tall, dark dirty hair and a bushy black beard. Blue jeans and work boots, and his favorite T-shirt stretched tight over his beer belly; it read ST. PETE BEACH – A QUIET LITTLE DRINKING TOWN WITH A FISHING PROBLEM. Slydes was a redneck, tried and true, a shitkicker. A bad ass. He’d seen a lot of outrageous things in his day, but now . . . Now . . .
This?
The wind screamed. Winged mites swarmed in the humid air and splotched red when he swatted them against his brawny forearms. What kind of city is this? he thought as his gaze was dragged upward. Dim, drear-windowed skyscrapers seemed a mile high and leaned this way and that at such extreme angles, he thought they might topple at any moment. Twisted faces that couldn’t possibly be human peered out of many of the narrow panes, while other panes were either broken out or spattered with blood. The sky visible between the buildings appeared to be red, and there was a black sickle moon hanging between two of them. Slydes blinked.
A dream, it had to be. It was this notion that he first entertained. His Condemnation only minutes old, he couldn’t remember much. He couldn’t remember where he was born, for instance, he couldn’t remember his age, nor could he remember his last name. Indeed, Slydes couldn’t even remember dying.
But die he had, and for a lifetime of wincingly outrageous sins and wickedness, he’d been Damned to Hell.
So here he was.
A nightmare, that’s all, he convinced himself. A red sky? Office buildings leaning over at sixty-degree angles? And—
SWOOSH
A black bat with a six-foot wingspan and a vaguely human face glided by just over his head. Slydes felt a stinking gust, then recoiled when the impossible animal shat on his head.
“Fucker!” Slydes yelled.
The bat—actually a Hexegenically created Crossbreed of one of several genera known as Revoltus Chiropterus—looked over its leathery shoulder and smiled.
“Welcome to Hell,” it croaked.
Slydes stared after the words more than the creature itself. Hell, he thought quite obliquely. I’m not really in—
WELCOME TO ST. PUTRADA CIRCLE, HELL’S NEWEST FISTULATION & TRANSVERSION PREFECT, the sign said.
Slydes could only stare at the sign as the splat of monstrous guano ran down the sides of his face.
Hell’s newest . . . WHAT?
At the corner another sign blinked DON’T WALK, and then a rush of pedestrians crossed the street. Slydes just kept staring . . .
He didn’t know what they were at first: People? Monsters? Combinations of both? A slim couple held hands as they strode by, flesh rotting from their limbs and faces. Several impish children wove through the crowd, with fangs like a dog’s and eyes as big and as red as apples. A werewolf in a business suit and briefcase passed next, and after that a fat clown with a hatchet in its face. To Slydes, the clown bid, “Hi, how are ya?”
Slydes could not respond.
If anything, the street was worse. Cars that looked more like small steam engines chugged by on spoked wheels, a smokestack