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Back Happy Hour In Hell
Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

I moved toward them as quickly as I could through the slippery ooze, trying to get their attention by waving my arms, but my cannonball sinker made me no faster than them, and even though I got closer I couldn’t attract the attention of any of them, least of all the blind leader. He marched past me, and the rest of the chained, doomed group followed him. I got close enough to grab at one of them, but the arm came away in my hand and the one who had lost it didn’t even seem to notice.

Too far gone, I realized. However long they had been down here, there was not enough left of them, either in body or in thought, to survive on the surface. The kindest thing I could do was leave them marching on as they were, to be pulled apart by fish or to rot gently into pieces and become one with the river.

One of the most profound lessons of Hell was how little an angel could actually accomplish. I had learned that lesson again and again since I’d been here, but never as clearly as this.

The chained slaves hobbled slowly away, vanishing within moments into the floating murk of the river bottom, invisible to my stinging eyes.

If I was a different kind of guy, I could probably spend an entire career studying the life (well, you know what I mean) to be found in the rivers of Hell. But I’m not. All I really wanted to do was just find my way out of the river, off this level of Hell, and down to the Neronian Bridge. Still, it was hard not to notice when I saw something thrashing in the mud and, instead of the fishy monster I expected, discovered two animated corpses, little more than bones, trying to murder each other.

Let me reiterate: I had to step over a pair of skeletons, which were struggling in the silt a couple of dozen feet beneath the surface of the Phlegethon. Both of them were missing most of their lower halves, and their bony hands were wrapped around each other’s throats. The throats in question were little more than vertebrae and a few rags of rotting flesh, and they were, I repeat, at the bottom of a river, so it wasn’t like one of them was going to suffocate the other. But there they were. I guess that’s why it’s called Hell.