Tom Piccirilli - Emerald Hell

An ugly thought struck Hellboy and he stopped short. "Hey, these swamp people, they're not luring these teenage girls here with their babies to try to bring new blood to the people, are they?"

"Why'd they want to go and do that?"

"To clean up the gene pool."

Lament frowned, scratched at the scabbing wound on his neck, and looked at Hellboy for a long time. Enoch stepped up, leaned toward Lament's ear, and let loose with a stream of quiet gibberish. Lament listened and nodded, and finally went, "Oh, now I see. Thank ya."

"What was that about?" Hellboy asked.

"Oh, he was just explainin' to me what it was you meant." Lament blinked at Hellboy. "You got yourself a complex mind, son, you truly have. The answer is no, the babies ain't here for no genetic purposes."

"Well, good."

The kids climbed over a sycamore log in the brush upsetting bitterns, limpkins, and squawk herons. There was a quick flutter of many wings and a rush through the leaves. The land gave way to more solid soil littered with clumps of palmettos, oak, and palm trees.

"You sure this is the right way?" Hellboy asked.

"I've never lost myself quite this badly before. So no, I ain't sure of much at the moment. But the children, they know. So long as we follow, we'll get to the village soon enough."

"I still don't get why Sarah came all this way. What's so safe about this place?"

"Prayers and will have power. This was once a shanty town where the swamp folk held their all-night sings. A lot of healin' and good will and faith and miracles took place on this ground. Suppose it's about as holy a spot as you're likely to find anywhere near Enigma."

"And yet it's where all these poor people live now. The ground hasn't done much to make them well."

"Depends on whether you think they're sick, I reckon. Do you?"

"I didn't say that-"

"It's all right, son, I know what your intent was. You just need to understand that what some folks might call freaks, others consider blessed."

"I think I understand that pretty damn well."

"See that then? Already you better off than a whole slew of ignorant dullards."

"That makes me feel a lot better."

"Good. Always glad to help a friend."

It began to rain lightly and the kids all let out whoops of joy. Hellboy didn't quite get it, but he liked that they were so full of energy and elation. He hoped they stayed here in their little corner of the planet, where they might count on one another and their people to get them through. The rest of the world would try to steal that laughter from them.

Passing beneath a sharp palmetto frond he felt something cold brush against his cheek. He looked up and a huge snake was hanging uncoiled from the leaves, its mouth open.

Hellboy shoved Lament aside."Watch it… a snake!" He brought his stone hand up and caught the snake just as it was prepared to leap.

Lament said, "It's only a timber rattler."

"Only a rattler?"

"At least it ain't a cottonwood mocassin. Just don't let it bite you. Go on and let it get about on its way."

"Oh." Hellboy opened his fist. The rattler wasn't about to ever get about on its way again.

"I don't think you needed to squeeze it quite so hard, son," Lament told him.

"Guess I overreacted a bit."

The kid with the insectoid eyes came running over and asked Hellboy in perfectly nuanced English, "Are you plannin' to keep it?"

"I hadn't thought about it."

"May I have it, please?"

"You want a crushed dead snake, kid?"

The boy nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, please."

Shrugging, Hellboy figured, All right, whatever. He handed the timber rattler to the kid, who grinned, and the snake was reflected and refracted about a billion times in his eyes. The boy ran off to rejoin the others ahead.

A few years back Hellboy had run into a cult of Nyarlothepian sorcerers down in Paraguay who used boiling baths of serpent venom to call up long-slumbering demigods. Now he couldn't even go to the reptile cages at the Bronx zoo without thinking about bad juju.

"What's he want with the snake?" Hellboy asked, wiping his hand clean on a thatch of fronds.

Lament said, "Well, it ain't for no damn genetic purposes, if you still got that on your mind. Why else would he want it? It's 'cause he's hungry."

"He's going to eat it?"

"Probably bringin' it back to his ma so she can fricassee it and feed it to the whole family. They make for good eatin', especially with fried rice."

"Jesus Christ."

"Can't exactly order in prime rib and chicken cacciatore out this far in the bogland. Can't order it in town neither, but that's another matter altogether. Folks here live on snake and lizard, gator meat, wild goat, hog, duck, squirrel, and fish, mostly."

For years Hellboy had been so busy fighting the infernal orders, the angry dead, the towering trolls, ogres, and dragons that he sometimes forgot there were simpler issues abounding. Like sick kids without bread. He had to stay hooked in to the world. It was easy to get too caught up in paranormal events and forget about the orphans.

Hellboy heard music in the distance. The children grew excited and rushed along faster toward the sound, Hellboy reached down and lifted Fishboy Lenny, hoping to put the kid up on his shoulder the way Lament had carried the girl, but the little fishy guy just slipped out of Hellboy's grasp and squirmed away.

So much for that.

Lament said, "Well, I think we're nearly there. Lord help us if Sarah and the girls ain't. I'm not sure where to search next."

"We'll find them, don't worry. You've been to this village before. What's it like?"

"They were glorious times. I was a young'n and still sang the gospel. Used to have all-night sings out this way. People'd come in from as far as three hundred miles to listen and bear witness."

"Listen to you and Jester."

His eyes clouding, Lament nodded. "Wasn't much of a town at the time, nor populated by so many people with special consideration under the Lord. But it was here." He watched the girl with no bones in her legs slither along in the cabbage leaves. "I seen my share of one-of-a-kind peoples in my travels, same as you have. Some good, some not so good. The more different we are from one another, the more the same I discover us to be. Sharing problems and fears and endeavors. Not any one of us is so strange as to not have the same hopes and heartaches, not even you, I reckon."

"How about Jester?"

"He's not all that different from the rest of us neither," Lament said, brushing his wet hair from his face. "Except he's dead and won't lay down."

"That could be considered a pretty big difference."

"I'm not so sure."

The pumpkin-headed kid let out a holler. Fishboy Lenny returned to Hellboy and went,"Fweep," and then scurried off again. Breaking clear of the brush now Hellboy saw clusters of paintless cabins and crescent rows of dark shanties lining the slopes of slough, vine-draped and overgrown with hanging orchids. The music grew louder. Fiddles, banjos, washboards, and squeezeboxes wheezed and rattled and twanged out.

It was a hell of a racket, and yet just as with Lament's tunes, Hellboy felt himself willing to go with it. A couple of screen doors clattered in the hot breeze. He thought they must've been having one of their swamp weddings or revivals out in the bog, despite the rain. Or maybe not. Maybe they were just enjoying life.

People walked up and greeted them, making a fuss, calling for a doctor, and offering skins of clean water, wine, and whiskey.

Hellboy gulped down two bags of water, hardly taking a breath between them. Weird to think this place with so much marsh and quagmire and rain would make him as dry as if he'd crossed the Kara Kum desert. It wasn't an exaggeration. He'd crossed the Kara Kum desert once, and this was worse.