Hope and Undead Elvis

chapter Thirty-Three

Hope and the Pit





Margaret brought Hope back to her room where they could discuss their plans in privacy. Fidel leaped onto one of the two double beds, scratched at the bedspread with his claws, and laid down. He was snoring within seconds.

"I'm sorry. I'll clean your bed," said Hope.

"Nonsense," said Margaret. "He's not a dirty dog. Besides, I sleep on the other one."

The suite looked like a typical hotel room with two beds, a TV on the dresser, and a sliding glass door that led to a deck. Snow blew against the glass, drifting on the deck beyond. Overall, it had been designed with just the right amount of discomfort to make its resident not want to stay in it, because the Casino didn't make money off people who weren't gambling. It was still dark outside and Hope wondered if the sun would ever rise again.

"The Deuce had some food sent up here earlier for you." Margaret pointed to a tray. "It looks like a good five or six chips' kind of meal. You better not let it go to waste."

"Please share it with me." Hope perched on the edge of the bed, glad to have her weight off her feet at last.

"Oh, no, I couldn't," said Margaret.

"I insist. I won't eat while others around me go hungry. I've managed to get this far without a history of regular meals."

The two women picked at the plate of food, consisting of microwaved appetizers, a fried chicken TV dinner, and a can of Coke. "This is a five chip meal?" asked Hope, astonished. "What do most people eat?"

Margaret made a face. "It's this nasty oatmeal stuff. It has almost no taste and probably almost no nutritional value. The Deuce's people say we can live on it, but that's no way to live. A lot of folks will skip a meal or two just to get better food. People are slowly starving to death. Is it any wonder none of the women have gotten pregnant?"

"God," said Hope. "And when people can't afford even the gruel anymore, they go into the basement to generate power?"

Margaret looked around as if to check for listeners, even though they were alone in her suite. "We're not supposed to talk about it. Everyone knows about the Pit, but it's taboo to discuss. People who go down there are usually never seen again."

Hope pushed the tray over to Margaret. She'd lost her appetite. "There's someone down there I need to see. I need to find out if he's who I've been looking for."

"The father of your baby?" asked Margaret.

"No. Not exactly." Hope sighed.

Margaret's laugh was gentle. "Dear, either he is or he isn't."

"Then he isn't. We never hooked up."

"So what is he to you?"

Hope didn't answer right away. What was Undead Elvis to her? He had been her guide, her confidant, and her sounding board during the first portion of her journey. He'd given her a destination, listened to her rambling on, and carried her when she no longer had the strength to walk for herself. He'd helped her to discover a vast well of fortitude, both physical and emotional, that she hadn't known she'd possessed. Without him, she felt sure she would have died many months ago. She realized, with some astonishment, how much she'd transformed over the course of her pregnancy. Now she'd become to others what Undead Elvis had been to her. Was this part of how her child was supposed to fix the world? Would her son have those same qualities that Undead Elvis had inspired within her and now she inspired in others?

She hoped so.

"He's a friend," she said at last. "And if he needs me, I have to help him."

"I can show you where the entrance to the Pit is," said Margaret, "but I can't take you down there." She offered a wry smile. "It's not wheelchair-accessible. I wish I could do more than that, but I'm afraid of what's down there."

"What is down there?"

"The stuff of nightmares. People who've lost their humanity over the Deuce and his goddamned chips. People who'll do anything, sell anything if the price is right. People who are killing themselves on the treadmills and cycles, starving to death just to get that one chip so they can run upstairs and pull a slot machine lever."

Fidel rolled over on the bed, splaying his paws up in the air, and groaned in his sleep. Hope patted his soft tummy. He opened his eyes and looked at her, still more asleep than awake. She could see herself reflected in the dark pools of his pupils, and the woman she saw wouldn't be afraid to face down the monsters below if it meant she could save her friend. "Okay, you show me and I'll take it from there."

"Tonight?"

"Now, if you will."

"I don't know…" The bravado Margaret had displayed earlier vanished as the woman seemed to sink into her wheelchair.

Hope reached out and squeezed her hand. "Margaret, listen. I said I'm leaving as soon as this storm clears up, and you can come with me."

"You mean… leave the Casino?"

"Yes. This place is poison to everyone in it. If it doesn't kill you all, the Righteous Flame will when they get here."

"The what?"

"The worst thing you can imagine. They're coming. They've been coming for months. Every time I get a little further ahead of them, then they catch up. I believe that if we make it to Graceland, we'll be safe from them there."

"And then what?"

Hope cradled her belly. "And then we fix the world."

Margaret shook her head. "Nothing can do that now."

"Not yet. Please, will you show me the Pit?"

"No, I can't. I'm too frightened."

"Then tell me where it is."

Margaret sighed. "All right. Turn right out of my room and go to the very end of the hall. There's a stairwell which leads down to the basement where the kitchens, maintenance, and laundry rooms are. Go through there and you'll find a door labeled Backup Generator. The Pit is beyond there. After that, I can't help you."

"Are there people down there? Guards and stuff?"

"Probably. I don't know much more than I've told you."

Hope stood. She handed the receipt Margaret had typed up for her earlier back to the older woman. "Hold this for me. If anything… Just hold it for me, okay? And make sure Fidel gets fed if I'm not back in time to do it myself?"

"I will." Margaret sniffled. "Did you really mean it? I can go with you when you leave?"

"Of course."

"I'd like that. I always wanted to go to Graceland. Never got to."

Hope smiled. "I hear it's beautiful."

Margaret caught her hand and kissed it, then held it against her cheek for a moment. "Good luck, Hope. I'll see you very soon."

Hope left the room and waddled down the hall, following Margaret's directions. Her belly felt larger than ever, and she wondered how close she was to her due date. Due date was such an odd term, she realized. It implied that childbirth would follow the calendar, but with the world's end, calendars and even time itself had ceased to have any meaning for her.

Her baby would come when he was ready.

She found the stairs and sighed as she regarded the steps descending into darkness. "Least I'm getting my exercise," she said aloud to herself. Nevertheless, she took frequent rests and was careful to hold the rail at all times. So many stairs when she couldn't see her feet made her edgy. Nobody else was on the staircase. She figured most everyone was either sleeping or gambling.

Just when she didn't think she could take it anymore, she found the bottom. She'd have sat and rested on the stairs if she thought she'd be able to stand back up afterward. Instead, she pressed on through a basement lit only by sporadic candle stubs.

She came to the door Margaret had described. A man sat dozing in a chair, the front legs off the floor and back tipped against the wall. As Hope approached, she stepped on a steel plate on the floor that moved under her weight and made some suspended pans jangle together. The man's eyes opened and he raised a pistol Hope hadn't seen.

"You ain't supposed to be down here," he said. "Only folks who got no chips, and then they got to be brung."

Hope would have raised her hands, but she was too tired. "It's all right," she said. "Mr. Deuce sent me down here." She lowered her voice with an conspiratorial air. "To talk to the guy. The blue one."

The man's eyes widened. "Him?"

Hope felt an invigorating thrill of success course through her. She'd bluffed as well as any high-stakes poker player and the man had folded his hand. "Yeah. Is he still in the same place?"

"All the way in the back? Yeah he is," said the man. He glanced down at her belly. "You, um, are you gonna have a kid?"

Hope's smile turned genuine. "Yes." She rubbed her belly.

The man smiled back at her. "Good. The world needs kids in it. Now more'n ever. Hang on, lemme let you in." He took a key that was hanging inside his shirt and opened the door. It swung out to reveal a darkened corridor lit by a couple flickering candles. A stench of unwashed bodies mixed with vomit, urine, and acidic diarrhea to create a miasma that struck her almost like a physical blow. Hope gasped and covered her nose. "Yeah, it's kinda strong," said the man. "Hey, Chris? She's going to talk to that one guy. She's not here to work."

"Okay," said a disembodied voice. Other rhythmic noises punctuated the silence: the sound of footsteps on treadmills, the hiss of stationary bike sprockets, the sour exhalations of exhausted workers.

Hope shuffled through the oppressive hall. She could feel the eyes of those consigned to hard labor upon her as she walked, even though she could only see them as lumpy, misshapen shadows stinking of sweat and futility. A man who'd once been fat and now had his skin hanging off his shrinking frame vomited down his front. The yellowish bile soaked his shorts and ran down his legs as he staggered along a treadmill. His eyes were rolled back in his head, like a dead man who hadn't realized his life was already over.

The man called Chris sat at a desk, resting his feet upon it and paging through a coverless paperback by candlelight. His eyes glittered in the darkness like a crow's.

"Please," whispered a voice from one of the workers. "A chip. Anything. Save me."

Hope shuddered and hurried on to the end of the hall. She felt a terrible, pressing need to help these people, slaves to the Casino, but didn't know how. Someone behind her stumbled and fell off a treadmill, causing Chris to rise from his lazy vigilance. "Goddammit, Himmel, you ain't been workin' even two hours yet. Get your lazy ass back up." The sound of a booted foot hitting flesh drawn tight from starvation and fatigue shook Hope like a gunshot.

She reached the end of the hall and with a quaking hand she could barely see, pushed open the door.

There he was, in a pool of light from a cold fluorescent bulb. His jumpsuit, once pristine, was torn and stained, and his bluish flesh looked like it had begun to decay at last. His perfectly-coiffed hair hung around his lowered head like filthy rags as he trudged onward, never stopping as the treadmill turned a generator. A chain ran from one wrist to the treadmill handle, binding him without rest or reprieve. Hope gasped in surprise and horror. "Elvis!"

She heard a horrifying hiss behind her and spun to see a great black bird perched on a shelf with its wings spread wide.