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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

Not that I could do anything about it right at that moment, because the toothy little snot-harpies were swarming me, experimenting with different ways to get through my skin. The suicide I had tried to help had staved off his own attacker long enough to get his shortened rope over a lower branch. He tied it, then let himself go limp until the noose began to strangle him once more, this time with his feet on the ground. As he choked and struggled, the harpies rose from him like flies off a buffalo’s back and headed toward me instead. Unpleasant as they were, there was no way I was going to throttle myself just to get rid of them, and there were far too many to stab or shoot, with more dropping out of the murk every moment. So I ran like a motherfucker.

I’d finally made a good decision. As I got farther from the spot where I’d tried to save the hanging man, the harpies began to drop away. Apparently they were territorial. Either that or lazy.

The farther I ran, the more bodies I saw. And “ran” is a relative term here, because trying to go fast over soppy, muddy ground through tangles of thorns and low-hanging branches was a bit like trying to sprint through barbed-wire bouillabaisse. As with the first suicide, none of these were exactly going quietly. Some were drowning in streams and ponds, often in less than a foot of water; others had blown their own brains out, or slit their own throats, or jumped from the tops of trees onto rocks and lay whimpering quietly as their brains, and other things that should have been inside them, dribbled onto the forest floor. All of them were clearly suffering, but I’d learned my lesson the hard way, and I ignored them. Hundreds of souls in pain, and angelic me just running right past them without a second glance.

Behind me, the howls of the hounds rose in volume, but then faded away again, till I began to hope they had lost my trail. The forest was getting darker and the mists thicker and thicker, until I could scarcely see more than an arm’s length in front of me and reduced my pace to a cautious walk. I had gone several minutes without seeing any of the restless dead, so I hoped that meant I was getting close to the edge of the level.

A rock outcropping the size of a small tower loomed out of the tangle before me. No bodies lay beside it, which made me more than ever sure I was getting near the edge of the forest. I climbed it, so tired that my trembling arms and legs barely supported me, but when I got to the top I could finally see a bit of my surroundings past the mist.