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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

SO THERE I was, hobbling along, oozing brains and blood, at my lowest ebb, my pursuers closing on me, when a miracle happened.

Well, I thought it was a miracle. You unbelievers would probably call it a drainpipe—a big hole gushing water into Suicide Swamp and leading upward.

I probably mentioned before that the rivers of Hell run in and out of the different layers. I couldn’t make a model for you if I tried because the physics are impossible, but Hell has holes. Conduits between the levels allow the rivers and their streams to flow through and down to the next level, and I had stumbled onto one of these conduits—a big stone tunnel. Although the water coursing out of it was as foul and disgusting as you’d guess, I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen or even smelled, because at the other end, one level up, was the Abaddon level that contained my current number one favorite span, the Neronian Bridge. It felt like the Highest was saying, “See? You doubt Me, and yet I reach down and give you an escape route. Still feel like busting My balls?”

No time to celebrate, of course. Niloch and his hunters were sloshing through the undergrowth at the bottom of the ravine not far behind me.

I was lucky it wasn’t an actual pipe, but a tunnel scraped by erosion through the raw stone of Hell itself, because there was no way I would have been able to climb through a real, slippery drain pipe with that much water rushing at me. But the rough stone and debris gave me handholds and footholds. All I needed was a little bit of luck and soon my buddies at the Compasses would be wearing souvenirs that read, “My Co-Worker Went To Hell, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt!”

Of course, nothing really happens “soon” in Hell except the pain reflex, and climbing up that wet tunnel wasn’t the piece of cake I thought it would be. There were a few times when only my toe-tips and the fingernails of my one good hand kept me from tumbling back down into the bog of the Grey Woods. But at last I reached the top of the sluice and tumbled out into Abaddon. I stood there for a few seconds, drenched in the stinking, sticky waters of Cocytus, and coughed out some of the sludge I’d swallowed. Coughing really made the hole in my head hurt, of course. I was knee deep in one of several filthy rivulets that came together there, but more importantly, I was back on the same level where I’d found young Gob and begun my journey, so long ago that it seemed like it had happened to a different Bobby Dollar entirely. And, in a way, it had.