Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [69]
“Sixty-six, to be precise,” Howard redresses. “And there are exactly sixty-six Impoundment Wings in this Maternity Barrack.”
The number staggers you, but then you ask, “What do you mean, dual purposes?”
“Pardon me while I get us in-processed,” Howard says aside.
The two gate guards—a pair of pugnacious, phlegm-eyed creatures in scaled armor—stand at a spiked iron gate.
“I’m with the Office of the Senary,” Howard relays and holds up his palm. It’s the first time that you’ve noticed it: a luminous six branded into his palm.
The sentries bow and step back; then the spiked gate rises. But before Howard escorts you in, the chain gang of sixty-six outrageously beautiful woman are led in first. Hopeless eyes stare back at you as they’re hauled onward.
“Ah, and here comes the most recent Impoundment Block to expire,” Howard points out.
Another chain gang of women are being led in the opposite direction, preparing to exit. This consignment, however, differs from the first group in two ways.
One, they’re emaciated, haggard, and bone-thin, and—
Two, they’re headless.
“Out with the old in with the new as they say,” Howard explains. “The production cycle of these unfortunates has expired, while it’s only about to begin for the group we just saw entering . . .”
“Production cycle,” you say more than ask. The headless women are worn out (as if having one’s head removed wouldn’t wear one out enough), and then you suddenly have an idea why. Their bellies hang like limp sacks streaked with stretch marks, their breasts but emptied flaps of skin.
“This particular barrack, by the way, is the major supplier of fetuses to the aperitif bar we visited upon earlier.” Howard leads on down the reeking corridor of sheet iron. “The women, once beheaded, are taken to a Decapitant Camp. You’ll recall the Luciferic Initiative I referred to earlier? It’s officially titled the Beheadment Initiative—the law of the land now. Human women deemed attractive enough for Preeminent classification must all be beheaded, and the process functions twofold. It’s a constituent of their punishment, and while the wares of their wombs supply the lucrative gourmand market, their heads provide an exclusive construction component.”
Again, you scarcely hear Howard, your attentions fixed instead on the troop of headless women shuffling out of the complex. Moments later, several hunched Imps in laborers’ garb exit the complex as well, each pushing wheelbarrows full of Human female heads. As the barrows pass, the eyes on the heads all hold wide on you.
“Why, why, why?” you plead.
“It’s elementary, Mr. Hudson. Lucifer loathes the Human Damned, but this unadulterated hatred burns exponentially hotter for the Human Female Damned.” Howard pauses at a trapdoorlike window in the iron wall. “This may afford you an acceptable view . . .”
He raises the square metal viewing port and holds your gourd-head up to look.
Beyond the Barracks stretches a region of barren land that must encompass several square miles. The parcel is circumscribed completely by a high fence laced with barbs and within they trod aimlessly in a vast circle: tens of thousands of headless women.
“The idea enthralls Lucifer, that they walk headless for eternity, while their heads live on elsewhere and with equal permanence.”
You’re too appalled to even react now, but you have the creeping impression that there are worse things waiting to be seen . . .
“The Beheadment Initiative?” you question, dazed from the sight. “A law that all beautiful women come here to be decapitated and . . .”
“All beautiful Human women, Mr. Hudson. Lucifer is quite nonchalant about Hellborn females. His utter hatred for Human women in particular is plainly explicated. You see, it was a Human female who destroyed his original abode, the 666-story Mephisto Building. This cunning female—whose name it is forbidden to speak or even think—undermined Lucifer’s most powerful defenses and turned his monumental edifice of evil into a pile of rubble, and she did so with white