Rudolph! (9 page)

Mrs. C had said as much. The nights were going to get colder. And when I looked at Rudolph, I could see what the young reindeer saw. I could see that whatever fire had been started that night in 1964 was never going to go out.

"I'm going," I said. The reindeer all stared at me. "It's not about being worthy," I told them. I rubbed the young reindeer on the head and walked over to the sled pad.

"It's not about being scared," I said. "I'm scared shitless of going to hell. But I can't let that stop me because there is something I'm even more afraid of. I'm terrified of the expression on every child's face on Christmas morning when they find out Santa hasn't come. I'd rather face anything hell has got to throw at me than answer to every mother and father with a tearful child in tow come Christmas Day."

I laughed at the irony of what I had just said. "I'm even afraid of trying and failing. But does that mean I don't try? Does that mean that I let fear rule me?"

My question hung for a moment, and I thought again of the tiny snowstorm in Mrs. C's office. A little bit of Christmas struggling to make itself heard.

Cupid shouldered his way to the front of the group. He walked across the bay and stepped onto the pad with me. "Count me in, field mouse." He stood next to me, a tall reindeer with an entire platoon's armament strapped to his back . . . and Elvis glasses wrapped around his head. I felt like I was in some weird David Lynch version of
The Night Before Christmas
.

Blitzen nickered gently. "Better to fall in hell," he said, "Than cower before heaven." He joined us on the pad. I wasn't quite sure who he had been quoting, and I don't think anyone else knew either, but the words sparked something in the rest of the team, and they crossed as a group and crowded onto the pad.

Rudolph looked up at the cloud-covered sky. "God bless us all," he said. "Every one of us." He pushed the green button on the console, and the pad jerked into motion, rising up toward the surface.

"We're going to need it," Cupid cracked.

"Amen," answered Donner.

V

"Y
ou sure about hell?" Rudolph asked. We were standing on the
southern ridge, just past the Park. The rest of the team was hidden in the snow behind us. Rudolph had brought a more elf-sized thermal suit this time, complete with a Batman-style utility belt. And a hat too. A floppy baseball cap with a Boynton reindeer cartoon on the front. Someone had stitched SECO across the back. Rudolph denied any familiarity with a needle and thread. He only glowed a little when he said it.

The hat was a little too big, but I wore it anyway, turned backward so the bill wouldn't get in the way.

Rudolph wasn't wearing an assault rig. We all knew what he would do to the electronics in the gear before we made it even a kilometer from the Residence. Instead, he wore a harness so that I could ride him, along with a sleek pack. When I had stashed the copy of
Inferno
in the pack, an ordinary-looking thermos caught my eye, but I hadn't had a chance to ask Rudolph if it contained soup or whisky. Instead, I snagged the pair of high-powered binoculars.

I dialed in the magnification on the glasses, trying to pick out the angel on the roof. "It's a little late to wonder about that, isn't it?" I asked.

Rudolph snorted. "Better now than when we're trapped on a plain of lava."

I reflected on the visitation that I may or may not have imagined in Mrs. C's office. "Well," I said, "I'll have to be that much more convincing then, won't I?"

Something sparkled off in the distance—a thin glint of reflected moonlight. I tried to focus on the glittering object, but it was too small (and too shiny) to identify. If I didn't know better, I would easily think that the flying object was a small aircraft.

But I knew better.

"Who's the youngster?" I asked as I watched him turn and dive toward the roof.

"Name's Ring," Rudolph supplied. "Got a stripe of enthusiasm longer than the coast of Iceland. Thinks he knows something about flying."

"There weren't any open slots at Top Gun?"

"Hasn't been since that movie came out in '86."

"Just as well," I said. "The North Pole has got nine flight jockeys that think they're the best. What would we do with another one?"

I turned my attention back to the roof, and I caught sight of the angel as he stood up. Something flickered on the roof, obscuring my field of view, and I dialed back the magnification. Somehow I couldn't keep the angel in focus.

"He's getting bigger," Rudolph said. And he was right: Ramiel was elongating like a living Stretch Armstrong doll.

Ring had the stellar hoof-eye coordination of the young, and the first canister he dropped was right on target. Ramiel, large enough now that we could see him without the binoculars, reached up and casually closed his massive fist around the tiny object. Rudolph made a warning noise in his throat, and I quickly looked away. Even still, the flash of light made my eyelids glow.

Whatever was in the canister made a lot of light, and I was guessing a commensurate amount of heat. I blinked a few times, trying to clear the afterimage of the supernova flash, trying to see what was happening on the roof of the Residence.

Ring had already come back around for a second pass, and as I watched, a galaxy of stars bloomed on the roof. The youngster had dropped most of his load, and I didn't blame him. It wasn't like he was going to get many more chances. The sound of the detonations finally rolled over us, a rumbling reverberation that felt like being strapped to the undercarriage of a '86 El Camino. Ramiel stood in the center of the exploding cloud of stars, the remnants of his right arm still upraised. His thunderous, unearthly howl finally reached us.

"That's got to hurt," Rudolph chuckled.

A tiny shape buzzed the belly of the clouds on our left, and I tried to focus in on it through the glasses. Ring was circling like he was going to make another run. "What's he doing?" I muttered.

"Come on," Rudolph growled. "Come on."

I swung the glasses toward the roof and realized he wasn't talking to Ring. Ramiel was tracking the tiny reindeer, but he wasn't moving.

"What are you waiting for?" Rudolph whispered.

Ramiel hadn't moved. He was still on the roof.

Ring made a third pass, and his aim wasn't as perfect this time. The stars exploded in a line toward the angel, and Ramiel finally moved, striding toward the edge of the roof. He only had to take three steps, and as the last bomb blew apart the tiny lean-to where he had been sitting, the angel launched himself into the sky after Ring.

I watched the angel come close to Ring, the fingers of his remaining hand nearly reaching the flying reindeer, but then the gap widened. The angel was falling back toward the ground because, well, that was how gravity worked.

"He jumped," I said. "He didn't fly. He just jumped."

Rudolph didn't seem terribly surprised. He looked over his shoulder and whistled to the rest of the team. "Ring'll stay out of his reach," he said. Behind us, I heard the soft sound of reindeer leaping into the night sky.

Through the glasses, I watched the one-handed angel leap again, sailing through the air after Ring. They were both getting smaller as Ring led the angel away from the North Pole.

"Time to go," Rudolph said, pulling me away from the show. "That book have a map?"

I lowered the glasses and folded them up. "Dante?" I said as I put the glasses away. "Sort of."

Rudolph gave me a look that—six months ago—would have made me quiver in abject fear. Now, I just shrugged. "Look, Dante wrote
Inferno
more than seven hundred years ago. Like three hundred years before Mercator was even born. Plus it's all in verse, which is great for metaphors but crap for specific directions. It's a map
of
hell; it's not a map
to
hell."

Rudolph snorted and pounded the snow pack with a hoof. "Our choice of direction from here is
south
," he said, nodding toward the distant specks of the reindeer team. "But after awhile, they're going to want something more specific. Time to come up with something, Bernie."

I nodded, my tongue racing around the edge of my teeth as I thought quickly. "How about Germany?" I offered. "There's got to be an old entrance that is still open."

Rudolph shook his head. "Most of the camps were plowed over and are farmland now. Though, I can't imagine what grows there. And there probably aren't signposts, either."

"Blitzen doesn't have a Brimstone-o-meter or something?"

"Not his department," Rudolph said. "That's little people R&D. And no, there wasn't anything like that in the Wish Lab archives. He checked."

There was a distant trio of explosions behind us, a reminder that Ring was buying us time—time that we were, in turn, wasting. I wracked my brain. We needed an entrance to hell, though maybe it wasn't a physical gate that we needed.

"What if . . . ?" I started, thinking out loud. "Look, Dante wrote about hell in ornate and flowery prose. We should just follow his lead, right? What's the metaphorical equivalent of his dark wood? Someplace like—"

"Vegas," Rudolph said.

"Okay, yeah. Vegas," I said, nodding.

What can I say about Las Vegas that hasn't already been said by clowns more gifted and more infatuated with the pulsating neon experience of that glittering oasis in the desert? We weren't there for the tinkling ring of spilled coin, or the tremulous shout of an early winner, or even the cacophony of air horns, fireworks, and applause that made up the soundtrack of the sin-swept city. We were there for the hollow spots: the ugly alleys yawning behind every casino, behind every shining facade; the foul-smelling dumpsters where the mountains of buffet scraps went to die; and the cheap hotel rooms far away from the lights where the wallpaper peeled down on drunks too destitute to care they were being absorbed by the city.

The reindeer rode the Jet Stream down along the curve of Alaska and the Rocky Mountains. Somewhere near the gray smear that was the Great Salt Lake, they turned across the Sevier Desert for the Nevada border. "
Fiat lux
," I whispered as we sped through the half-light near dawn, and there it was, snaking across the empty sands: the argent and rainbow glow of the Strip.

"Vegas," called Comet from the point position. He affected a dry British accent as he banked and fell towards the only dark spot on the Strip. "There never was a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be careful."

The reindeer watched a lot of TV and old movies during the off-season. It was better than the alternatives. Like gambling. Or rolling drunks in the parking lot of Canadian bars.

The reindeer came down in the construction of a new casino on the northern end of strip, and once Rudolph was on the ground, I told them to stay out of sight as I reconnoitered the situation. I used hand signals straight out of any prime time action drama, just to be sure they got it. Dante and I went for a stroll. There had to be something we could use as a stand-in for an entrance to hell. There was too much expiring hope in this city—there had to be some way to make the crossing. Too many dreams spattered from sixteen stories up; too many grand designs lost in the ill tumble of a silver ball or a pair of dice. Despair was never far from the surface of anything here.

I stood on the pavement outside the construction zone and flipped open the book. The pages were lit by the flickering red and blue light of the Strip, and I felt like I was standing on the edge of a crime scene. "
Relinque spes
," I read, tracing my finger along the Latin inscription that Dante said was written over the doorway to hell.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

"This going to take long?" Rudolph was at my elbow. Cupid wandered up to the edge of the sidewalk, ogling the gaudy lights across the street.

I glanced behind me, expecting to see the rest of the team. "What part of ‘let's keep a low profile' was confusing?"

"The part where we stood around, sniffing each other's butts while you figured something out." Rudolph nodded up the street where a pair of giant galleons floated in a man-made lagoon.

"Reindeer don't sniff—"

"So what are we supposed to do?" Rudolph asked. "Light a fire? Sacrifice a goat?"

"We're fresh out of goats," I said.

"Where's Ring when you need him?" Cupid wondered.

A late-model convertible slowed to a stop in front of us. A large gentleman with slicked back hair and mirrored aviator glasses sat behind the wheel. There were three women in the car with him, and the one in the passenger's seat was wearing what looked like a private school uniform, and I couldn't help but wonder what school allowed blouses to be cut that low as she leaned out of the car.

"Hello, sailor," she said breathlessly.

I was momentarily flustered. "What? How? I'm not—" I couldn't fathom how she thought I had just gotten off a boat. The thermal suit didn't look anything like nautical gear.

"Maybe she thinks you work on a submarine or something," Rudolph suggested.

"Do you see any body of water deep enough—" I started.

"Like on the missile tube cleaning crew," Cupid interrupted, trying to be helpful. "You know, they put you in and . . ." He rotated his head around in a circle.

The woman's attention was drawn to the reindeer doing the stupid
look at me, I'm an elf in a missile tube
gag. "Look at you," she said with a smile. "A pair of fancy sunglasses and you're the King of Rock and Roll." She winked at Cupid. "How's it hanging, King?"

"I'm ah . . . I'm feeling a little lonesome tonight," he said in his best Elvis Presley voice.

"What a shame," she said. Her two friends in the back seat giggled and nudged one another. They were staring at Rudolph. The driver was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music. He had given us a onceover and seemed unimpressed.

The schoolgirl in the front seat wiggled around on her seat until she was on her knees. "I can't believe the King of Rock and Roll is standing here all alone," she said to her friends, who both giggled again. She put her hands on the car door and leaned forward. "Can I get your autograph?" she said, her voice husky enough to pull a dog sled.

"Absolutely, ma'am," Cupid said, bumping me aside as he approached the vehicle. "But, I have to admit that the King is traveling without a pen."

She pouted, a lip motion that made me forget something important. One of her friends rummaged around in a purse the size of a postage stamp and produced a tube of lipstick. The schoolgirl took it, and her frown turned upside down. "But I don't have anything to write on," she sighed, leaning forward again and doing a magical little wiggle with her shoulders. The motion made one of the buttons on her blouse slip out of its eyelet, and even more of her became visible.

"That's not exactly a flat surface," Cupid said. "But I think I can manage."

She smiled and carefully rotated the bottom of the lipstick until it was fully extended. The entendre wasn't lost on me, and I was starting to get a little uncomfortable.

Cupid leaned in for the tube of lipstick. "You know," he admitted, "I'm not really Elvis."