33 • A LOT OF HOT ERR
“AN AIRPORT?” MILTON asked as they reached the end of the conveyor belt that deposited them at the other end of the passageway.
“Errport,” Moondog corrected, drawing out the subtle difference of inflection. “Where those that have erred congregate before they are, um … ported.”
Milton stood tentatively at the mouth of the sticky, stinky tunnel that had seemed so bleak and despairing only a moment ago but now, considering the infamy of his final destination, felt as inviting as his cozy Star Wars comforter on a cold winter’s morning.
He surveyed the gray congested terminal where thousands of put-upon, unpleasant-looking individuals boarded a steep escalator headed straight down. From Milton’s vantage point, it seemed as if he were looking down upon the Niagara Falls of humanity.
“Do we have a plan B?” he asked.
Jack laughed. “If plan Bs were any good, they’d be plan As, right?” He hit Milton on the shoulder.
“We gotta run like a pair of cheap nylons and leave you to your destiny,” Jack said. Milton stared as the lanky man walked the wrong way down the moving sidewalk, which made his exit far more gradual and far less dramatic.
“I’ll be fine,” Milton said sarcastically. “Don’t worry about me.”
Moondog patted Milton on the shoulder.
“Don’t mind him,” Moondog explained. “He isn’t much for goodbyes. After all, to him, this is just the end of one moment and the beginning of another. He’s either incredibly enlightened or is going senile. Until we meet again, Little Unborn.”
The old blind man in Viking clothes trotted down the conveyer belt to join Jack. Tears leaked from beneath Milton’s sunglasses.
“I hope you find the Margins … where those who don’t belong belong.”
Annubis nudged Milton’s leg with his snout.
“We must go,” the dog god said as he crawled toward the noisy human traffic jam outside the one-way escalators. “Maybe Heaven can wait, but the place we’re going can’t.”
Milton and Annubis reached the end of the escalator, which—after about a half hour of continuous descent—seemed like an esca-much-later. Demons—and not the pitchspork-wielding flunkies in Heck but nightmarish monsters brandishing deadly pitchforks—corralled the people into one big line, only to split them up again into three separate, backtracking lines that coiled around and around until coming back together one foot ahead of where they had been to begin with.
“NEXT!”
A skeleton in a navy blue uniform wearing a light pink crocheted shawl around “her” shoulders (how anyone, much less a skeleton, could get “chilly” in this sweltering heat was beyond Milton) greeted the arrivals as they entered the swelling lines.
“Transgression?” the creature, named Helen, judging from her badge, asked with a peculiar hollow quality unique to talking skeletons.
“What are my options?” Milton asked as the woman impatiently waved the twenty-seven bones that made up her hand, presumably to see Milton’s freshly fabricated passport. He handed it to her.
“Don’t be funny,” Helen replied as she scanned Milton’s fake ID. “Funny takes time.” She glanced at Milton through hollow sockets rimmed with blue eye shadow.
“Though that hat is a riot,” she deadpanned. “Transgression?”
Annubis tugged Milton’s pant leg with his teeth.
“Say ‘greed,’” he whispered through a mouth of beige khakis. “It’s a safe, not-immediately-evident sin.”
Milton nodded, straightened up, and addressed Helen.
“Greed.”
“Greed?”
“Yes, I was … blinded by it.”
“It says here you’re nineteen,” Helen said, glaring at Milton suspiciously “You look younger.”
“I … um,” he stammered. “Thank you. I’ll take your word for it since, you know, I can’t see myself or anything. Just a late bloomer, I guess.”
“It’s a pity,” Helen intoned through lipstick-stained teeth. “If you only died younger, you’d be going to Heck instead. That place is an ice-cream social in Candyland compared to where you’re headed.”
“I’ve, um, heard that … in line.”
Helen looked down at Annubis.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dog,” she chattered. “Loyalty, and all. Except for pit bulls. Those rap stars take them everywhere. Does he—”
“Dakota.”
“Dakota do any tricks?”
Milton smirked. “Sure, he can—”
Annubis bit Milton on the calf.
“No, actually,” Milton faltered. “No tricks … just … guiding me.”
The crush of people behind Milton grew from testy to supremely ticked off.
“Get a move on!” shouted a balding man with a face as flushed as an old red toilet.
“Keep your pants on!” Helen shrieked at the man. “At least until we ask you to remove them.”
Helen shook her head and snickered.
“I love how impatient these bozos get. If they had any clue that centuries from now they’ll be looking back at this moment like it was a big party with live music and a no-host bar …”
She handed Milton back his passport. He pretended to flail at it somewhat, which was pretty easy to do considering the thick black glasses.
“You’ll be passing through seven Insecurity Gates,” Helen said as she finally just tucked Milton’s passport into his pocket. “So if you’ll just walk through …”
Annubis led Milton through the first gate, basically an electronic doorway. It beeped.
“Hmmm,” Helen said, scanning the boy, who—thanks to his bland Make-Believe Play-fellow soul—was still, save for his outfit, physically nondescript. “Must be the hat. Take it off and pass through again.”
Milton obliged, handing the Viking helmet to Helen, then passing through the gate again, this time silently.
“Okay, the greed line is to your right,” Helen said as she cradled the helmet in her bony arms. “Just follow the green arrows. NEXT!”
Milton and Annubis followed the barely perceptible green arrows on a filthy, salmon-and-teal-colored shag carpet. Milton looked over his shoulder as Helen donned the helmet. Nervous, Milton scooped out the pendant Jack had given him from his front pocket and clutched it in his hand.
“I don’t want them taking this away from me,” he mumbled.
Milton impulsively plopped the necklace in his mouth and swallowed it. It went down like a charm, literally: painfully slow, leaving a metallic flavor trail in its wake.
“NEXT!”
Milton and Annubis passed through five more gates, each manned by a snippy skeleton—Helena, Helga, Helia, Helki, and Heloise—wearing a progressively redder shawl. At each gate, Milton was asked (“shrieked at” is probably more accurate) to remove a piece of clothing until finally he and his guide dog in disguise arrived at the final gate.
“NEXT!” screeched Helsa, who—despite not having any lungs—was the loudest gatekeeper of them all. Her shawl, cinched tightly to her neck with a brass pitchfork pin, was bloodred.
“Can’t you see we’re busy?”
“Actually,” Milton said, pointing to his glasses, “I can’t see anything.”
“Regardless,” Helsa replied, “your future’s so dark you won’t be needing shades.”
She yanked the glasses from Milton’s face. He winced at the sudden gush of harsh fluorescent light.
“Why did you do that?” Helsa asked suspiciously.
“Do what?”
“Scrunch your eyes up when I took off your glasses, even though you are blind … unless you’re faking.”
A throng of muscular demon guards looked over at Milton hopefully, hungry for a tense situation in which to overreact to.
“No, I … I’m not faking,” Milton managed through heart palpitations. “I—”
Annubis bit Milton’s leg.
“Ow!” Milton yelped, his face creased with pain. “Why the—? Oh, I see … I mean, I don’t. It’s just that my dog, Dakota, gets nervous and sometimes he … he calms himself by biting me on the leg.”
Milton stooped over and patted Annubis on the head. Hard. “Good boy,” he said between clenched teeth.
Helsa frowned as much as a smiling skull can.
“Fine, then,” Helsa sighed. “Do you have anything to declare?”
“Yes,” Milton said as he shivered despite the sweltering heat, naked save for his Clone Wars underwear. “I sure am glad there isn’t an eighth gate!”
Annubis nudged Milton through the swelling masses surrounding a dirty luggage carousel. A variety of seedy, anxious-looking people gazed longingly at the motionless beltway leading from a dark, cobwebbed opening in the wall.
“Sad,” Annubis said as he scratched the back of his neck with his leg. “They’ve been told all of their miserable, immoral lives that they can’t take it with them, but still they wait, regardless….”
An electronic billboard hung from between the rusty girders ribbing the peeling asbestos ceiling.
NOT-SO-DEARLY DEPARTING: 00:15
00:30
00:45
Milton eyed the maddening crowd pressed against one another. For some reason, the swarm of do-badders made Milton feel desperately lonely. These accursed individuals seemed entirely caught up in their own sad, sinful worlds, either wailing and tearing at their hair or staring blankly into thin air, never once looking to one another for comfort or sympathy.
“Where do we go now?” Milton asked forlornly.
Annubis stretched, then pulled Milton forward.
“To the Interminable Terminal,” he replied as he led Milton through the crowd. “The tarmac on the edge of the River Styx. Where we await the ferry leading us to our—and every bad person’s—final destination.”