Chapter 7

Charlie had been making his way toward the tower, occasionally running into a few beasts, but for the most part he managed to evade their notice. He quickly dispatched any that came his way.

"I thought you said Tash would be sending 'hordes' of beasts my way," he said to Azaroth through the crystal.

Hm…It seems that I was wrong, she responded. Perhaps he wants a performance, a duet starring you and Susan. Tash was always one for theatrics.

Here he had come out into the open, and in quick succession, six shots fired from the tower. Charlie's head snapped up, the blood-red sky surrounding the decrepit lookout making the bright yellow spark of a rifle fire all the brighter from the window, however small. Then a seventh shot fired, and a bullet ricocheted off the ground right next to his feet. "Whoa!" he exclaimed in shock. For the slightest second he panicked, thinking Susan was under attack in the tower, but then a memory came to him. He realized only one person had marksmanship that brilliant to be able to hit him so close. He raised his arms and shouted, "dammit, Su, watch where you're pointing that thing!"

Her small image retreated from the window. Charlie bolted off in the direction of the tower, wondering how she had obtained a rifle when she was trapped in that tower.

Finally, he reached the tower base. It was an old stone thing, as if a lighthouse had been built on the seashore, only for the water to recede and leave the structure in the dust. It was cracked and broken all the way up, and in places where the stairs broke off, ropes and ladders had been installed. The color was a horrible drab gray, with barred prison-like windows sparsely dotting the structure all the way up. The base and the broken stairs and ropes and ladders were all painted with blood, leaving almost no drab gray to be seen. The gore painted a dark red winding path upward, contrasting brilliantly with the tower's natural structure.

Susan was climbing down, nearly at the bottom. He called up to her, but she looked down and looked away again, focusing on the task at hand. Eventually, she dropped down and they embraced. "I was so worried about you," he said. "What happened? Why? How'd you escape the tower?"

She pulled away. "Slow down, Love," she said. "I don't know why I'm here. One minute I'm in my flat, the next—well, it was a flurry. I thought there was a burglar or a robber, but they came straight for me. Bound me up and dragged me away. When I woke up, I was in these filthy streets, with a Jaguar in front of me."

"Azaroth," said Charlie.

"You've met her too?"

"She's the one who brought me here. To rescue you."

Susan laughed lightly. "Love, I hardly need rescuing," she said. "I grabbed a rifle when I came to and fought my way around just fine."

Charlie looked up toward the top of the tower. "You managed to get yourself trapped in this here tower, though," he pointed out.

"What else could I have possibly done?" Susan retorted. "I had no idea how to get out, and besides, this tower is easily defensible, with only one way in or out."

"Fine, fine, you're right," Charlie sulked.

But Susan had moved on, and Charlie noticed she was looking him over, as if inspecting him. "What?"

"Well, it's just that…Rescue may not be the appropriate term, but…I wouldn't mind the extra firepower."

Small footsteps were heard jumping from the rocky base of the tower. It was Azaroth. "And now that we have everyone," she said, "let's get moving." She led them behind the tower, where a wine dark red river flowed from the base.

Charlie and Susan both stared. There was nothing, just shallow ripples of sand, golden in the light from the crimson sky and the moonlight reflecting off the river. Beyond that, there was just sand, stretching as far as the eye could see and into the horizon, with the red river flowing out in a perfectly straight line and into oblivion.

A boat pulled up, a long river barge, headed by a hooded figure, tall and shadowy, and dressed in a tattered cloak as black as night. The boat was like a Viking longship without a sail or oars, and the stern was decorated with a skull. The bow of the ship curled up into the spiny tail of a monster, and the vehicle was clearly grinded away in places to make it more suitable for transportation. But it was clear after some observation that this had once been a horribly deformed beast, a man so wretched and sinful as to become a large and grotesque behemoth, but had since been destroyed and repurposed, his bones forming the structure and mast, and his horrid, scaly skin being stretched over it.

The figure held one skeletal hand on a long pole, and the other beckoned them to come aboard. Azaroth jumped aboard. "This is the only way out," she explained. "We'll have to sail to the edge of this realm, where Aslan is set to meet us."

They clambered on board, and with a strong push of the pole against the bloody riverbed, the undead river-captain whisked the three away into the unknown recesses of the abode of the damned.

It was in late December of 1953, about six months after they started seeing each other. Charlie had taken Susan to the shooting range when she visited him at Lakenheath. He remembered the lewd taunts and jeers of his fellow soldiers, joking about how "shooting straight" is a man's job, and a woman's job was to get him "primed".

And then their stunned expressions when she hit all targets in a matter of seconds, dead center, and with a small handgun to boot. Somehow, even the targets meant for rifles had been hit.

She didn't even taunt back that much; she just smiled and asked sweetly, "straight enough, boys?"

And Charlie just laughed, delighted and surprised at his girlfriend's hidden talent. "What else can you do that I don't know about?" he asked her quietly as they walked away.

"I'll let you know," she said with her perfect smile. She put her hands on her hips and barked, in an exaggerated American military voice: "you're on a strictly need-to-know basis, Airman. Understood?"

"Understood, Captain," Charlie played along with a little salute.