“Where are you now?” Joanne asked quietly.
“Pfft, where do you think?” The woman replied. “In hell!”
26.
“This is all too crazy,” Joanne said. “In hell?”
It’s beyond me, too, Jeff thought.
They had been unable to get any more information out of the woman and had finally let her go. She had immediately rejoined the group and cheered on the torturers beneath the crosses. What choice did they have but to continue on their way?
They had encountered more people. One group had been occupied in chopping off the limbs of “sinners” with long machetes, so that they bled to death. Another group had been lowering people into giant cauldrons of boiling water. With bared teeth, and pure hatred in their eyes. Jeff hadn’t dared to intervene or to speak to any of them. The blond woman had been right: this was hell!
But one thing bothered Jeff above alclass="underline" if the woman had really been on Deneb-6 when the planet was blown up by the rebels, was it possible that his father was down here in this madhouse? Jeff had told the woman his father’s name, but she had shaken her head.
Now they were passing another group. Four men were lying on the ground screaming in pain, while a dozen others impaled them on iron bars. An older gray-haired man was still alive when the bar emerged out of his body through his mouth. Jeff turned away.
“I can’t take any more of this!” Joanne whimpered and covered her ears.
“This is a fucking madhouse…” Mac looked down at the ground as he continued to pull the equipment sled behind him.
They encountered more people as they progressed to the middle of the cavity. Jeff didn’t see any real houses. Where did these people live? The whole thing was surreal. Were they just holograms? A huge show to frighten Jeff and his crew? No. He had touched the blond woman. She had been warm and obviously consisted of flesh and blood. Jeff had even smelled her sweat.
They were coming up to another group that was pushing heavy rocks up a steep hill. Once at the top, the big chunks of stone immediately began to roll down the other side of the hill, followed by the people who ran after them screaming. At the bottom, the whole exercise was repeated, as if Sisyphus himself had organized a competition for his most devoted followers.
Jeff and his shipmates stopped and watched the bizarre show. There were about a hundred people taking part in this crazy spectacle.
“I don’t get it,” Castle said. “What makes them do this bullshit?”
Shorty was wide-eyed. “They must have lost their minds!”
Green ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. Since they’d entered the cavity, he’d hardly spoken a word. There was a strange sheen to his eyes, and Jeff hoped he wouldn’t be the next one of them to fall victim to madness.
“Some of them are completely exhausted,” Shorty frowned. “Why don’t they just stop?”
“They can’t,” Joanne countered. “Look!”
Jeff followed her gaze. One of the unfortunate men was so exhausted he was stumbling around aimlessly. Again and again he paused for a moment, only to keep on running, his face distorted with pain.
But what—?
Then Jeff’s eyes fell on the man’s feet. As soon as he stopped for just a moment, the rock beneath him began to glow. With horror, Jeff saw that the man’s soles were already burned black.
Jeff couldn’t stop himself. He stepped forward and shouted: “Frank? Frank Austin?”
He didn’t get a reply. Not that he had expected one.
27.
Finally they started to near the other side of the cavity. They had taken two breaks. The first time behind a small outcrop, the second time in a hollow in the ground. During the first break, Jeff had been unable to sleep. As soon as he’d closed his eyes, his mind had been filled with the horrific images he had seen—and with so many questions. The more he thought about it, the harder it was to come up with a single explanation that made any sense. Joanne knew about his father, but he’d had to explain to the others why he had shouted out his father’s name. During the second break, however, he managed to nod off. His body was so overwhelmed with tiredness, that not even his restless mind could stop him falling asleep. But when he woke up, he felt anything but rested. Like zombies, they dragged themselves past more groups of people carrying out the most unimaginable atrocities on one another. And each time, Jeff forced himself to check that it wasn’t his father who was being hacked to pieces, whipped, stretched, or disemboweled. And every time he called his father’s name, he hoped he wasn’t among the tormentors. But he neither saw his father nor received a reply from anyone.
Finally, they reached a flat summit and Jeff saw a broad staircase, similar to the one they had walked down to enter the cavity. It extended upward around eighty feet. At the top, there was a black gate, which hopefully offered a way out of this chamber of horrors.
They passed the last group. Several men were standing around some stone structures that looked like ancient altars. Naked women lay on them, motionless, and Jeff didn’t want to know what the men were doing with their chained bodies. Almost out of habit, he called out the name of his father.
“Austin. Frank Austin.”
He didn’t even make the effort to lift his head.
“You’ll find the sinner back there.”
Jeff stopped in his tracks, as if struck by lighting, and looked up. A man with long brown hair was pointing vaguely toward an area to the left of the exit, then turned back to what he was doing.
“Excuse me?” Jeff asked. He had spoken so softly, he had to repeat himself immediately, but he didn’t receive an answer.
He turned to his shipmates. They, too, had stopped in their tracks and were staring at him.
Jeff’s horror was reflected in Joanne’s shocked face. This simply couldn’t be!
Joanne stepped closer to him. “Jeff,” she said quietly and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do it! Don’t let yourself be manipulated!”
Was that what this was about? Was someone trying to manipulate him? To force him to do something? Had he heard correctly or was he starting to lose his mind? No, he was thinking clearly. And he knew what he was going to do.
“I have to know,” he answered quietly.
Joanne looked at him beseechingly for a moment, then relented. “Of course. We’ll go with you.”
Mac cursed, but Castle and Green nodded understandingly. Jeff marched ahead. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat. They walked around the group at the altars, and a several hundred feet ahead of them, Jeff saw another cluster of people. About a dozen men and women were piling up logs and erecting poles. It was a pyre, there was no doubt about it.
A little to the side, four people lay on the ground, again wearing only loincloths. Their hands and feet were bound. There were three women and…
“Dad!” Jeff cried with a sharp intake of breath. He began to run.
“Jeff, wait!” Joanne screamed after him.
Jeff ran to his father as fast as he could. He had almost reached him when a tall man with curly black hair blocked his way.
“Where do you think you’re going, kid?” the man asked.
“I want to go to my…” Jeff swallowed. “I have to talk to that man over there.”
The curly-haired man shrugged and made way for him. “Be my guest. You don’t have much time, in any case. He’s gonna burn in a minute.”
Jeff ran the last few feet. He stumbled and fell to the ground in front of his father. He scraped his knee on the sharp rock, but barely noticed the pain.
“Dad!”
“Jeff? Is that you?”
It was unbelievable! Jeff had never expected to hear his voice again. He took his father’s face in his hands and looked him in the eyes. His cheeks were sunken. He looked thinner than Jeff remembered. His pupils weren’t dilated. He looked at him without a trace of madness. But his lips quivered. “Is that really you, Jeff?”