Mortality Bridge by Steven R. Boyett

Author:Steven R. Boyett [Boyett, Steven R.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: E-Reads
Published: 2011-10-21T04:00:00+00:00

XVI.

FLOATING BRIDGE

NIKO WAKES UP wanting a drink. Before he opens his eyes, before he has time to think I’m alive, he has a sense of lifting a tumbler of brown liquor to his lips and drinking it down to feel the good sharp burning tunnel to his stomach and settle there as before a hearth to spread warmth throughout his limbs and ward off the—

Chill.

Niko sits up and gasps. He turns his hands in front of him as if he has never seen them before. He thinks clench and they clench. His skin burns. At first the pain is good. A reminder he’s alive. But then doubt creeps in. I have seen a world of pain down here and no one feeling it has been alive.

Well how do you know you’re alive, cowboy?

Niko tables the question. Right now there are less philosophical matters to attend to.

He is in a tiny room of ice. His shadow wavers on the curving orangelighted wall, cast by the small and cheery fire crackling before him. His black guitar case stands against the white wall like a cutout silhouette. His socks and hiking shoes are on his feet. Laces doublebowed.

As if waiting for his attention his feet begin to throb with frostbite. The soles burn as his scabbing cuts begin to thaw.

Niko touches the tender swelling on the back of his head where he got slugged. Did getting cracked upside the skull do something to his memory? How would he know if it did?

Something about the fire bothers him. The fact of it is puzzling enough. And it’s burning branches. When did he last see anything that might be used as kindling? The ice room is a little igloo six feet wide and maybe four feet high. There’s no hole to vent the smoke and provide fresh oxygen to feed the fire, or for Niko either. And without an airhole he should be choking on woodsmoke that doesn’t seem to be there. There should be water everywhere. It should have put the fire out. But the smokeless fire burns and no ice melts.

The fire’s heat is far from soothing. Niko has barely escaped freezing to death and the close warmth makes his skin feel sanded with an emery board. His cheek throbs where it’s cut and bruised. The eye the Aussie gouged continually waters.

But unquestionably the fire has saved his life. Who down here would build it and return his shoes and disappear? Not one of the damned. They are long past caring even for themselves.

One of the demons then? Why in or underneath the world would they do that? At best the demons seem amused by Niko. Most are perplexed by him and even a bit fearful. But hold on. Dexter/Sinister said there was a pool on whether Niko’d go the distance. One of them had bet in Niko’s favor. Who else might have? What might it cost you here to help out the underdog? Who would take that awful chance to win a bet?

For a moment he conceives a secret cabal, an organized resistance to the tyranny in Hell.

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