‘Don’t come any closer!’
I held out my hands to show that my weapon was still in its holster. Conroy did likewise and we both took a step forward.
‘Don’t!’ Blackwater raised the launcher and aimed it straight at us. ‘I’m warning you!’
‘We need to talk because this is crazy.’ I said.
‘Letting those demons into our lives, that’s what’s crazy. They’re ruining everything. They come here, act as if they own the place and twist everything we’ve ever believed in. Goddamn filthy monsters! They shouldn’t be here and they need to be stopped. What I’m doing is what any sane man would do.’
‘Really?’ I took a small step towards him.
‘Yeah, really! We need to send these things back to Hell where they belong.’
‘That’s not for us to judge.’
‘Yes it is! God made us in his image! We are God’s children. They are not! They don’t deserve to share the Earth.’
‘Who are you to decide that?’ Conroy cried angrily.
I glanced across at my partner and signaled for him to calm down. His reaction took me by surprise. I’d never seen him so animated about the rights and wrongs of Demon-kind.
‘Who Am I?’ Blackwater cried in a shrill voice. ‘I’m the one who will cleanse the Earth of abominations! I bring the message of God!’
‘If you bring it in the form of violence, then you’ll have to go through us,’ Conroy retorted.
‘So be it,’ Blackwater replied in a voice so devoid of emotion that it indicated it could be no bluff.
‘Wait!’ As I cried out, I felt my partner roughly throw me to one side. His strength was incredible and I landed about twenty feet away just as Blackwater fired. The grenade hit Conroy at almost point blank range. I covered my eyes to protect them from the fireball and pulled my gun from its holster. As soon as I was able, I fired two shots and saw Blackwater drop. He died attempting to reload his weapon. Slowly, I got to my feet and went with a heavy heart to see what was left of Jeff. I looked at what should have been his corpse and stepped back in amazement.
‘Abaddon,’ I whispered.
The huge demon was in bad shape but he was still alive. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket but the demon gestured for me to put it away. It seemed he already knew that he was beyond my help.
‘You saved my life.’
‘Hey, chief,’ Abaddon croaked. A stream of black fluid poured from the corner of his mouth. His open chest cavity was filled with the same viscous liquid.
‘I didn’t know…’
‘That we’re shape shifters?’ He grimaced and coughed. ‘You weren’t supposed to.’
‘But why?’
‘Why do you think? We had to know when your people might be ready for us. We’ve been walking among you for hundreds of years.’
‘Ready for what? Can you tell me why you’re here on Earth?’ It was the question that every human wanted an answer to.
Abaddon shook his head. ‘It’s up to the boss to decide when to reveal his plan and the time is not yet here. We all have our agendas. Even you, Frank.’
‘Is he going to conquer us?’
Abaddon merely gave an enigmatic smile.
‘Should we be scared?’
The horned creature gave a painful laugh as more ichor poured from his lips. ‘Not all demons have horns and not all angels have wings. You need to look beyond the superficial, Frank. There are those in your own kind you should fear more than us.’
He had a point. I glanced across at the corpse of Reverend Blackwater. Was he simply a man driven by hatred of those that were different? How much of Blackwater resided in all of us?
‘Why did you save my life?’
With some effort, Abaddon pointed at the drone with its camera still hovering at the edge of the building. ‘The world will see what I did. People like you are more important than you realize. I know you disapprove of our presence here but that doesn’t stop you doing your job, doing what’s right. I saved you because we need you to show others that not all strangers are dangerous and the world isn’t governed by something as sharply defined as good and evil. We might never know if this act was a conspiracy or some crazed loner at work. In a way it doesn’t really matter because a conspiracy is simply an alliance of similar minds with a plan. It’s all about points of view. Change the views, change the world’ He coughed a little more of the black spittle. ‘We both want a better world. We’re not all that different, you and I.’
‘The Infernal Manifesto. Can you tell me what’s in it? Why our government gave in so easily?’ I knew it would be the last chance I had to ask the question that had bothered me for so long.
Abaddon gave a sigh and closed his eyes.
‘Can you tell me anything? I need to know that this is all worth it!’ There was a long pause and I thought he’d gone but, just as I had given up hope, he gave a painful chuckle.
‘Tell me,’ I urged.
Abaddon looked directly at me. ‘We’re not demons. That’s just a name you gave us.’
‘We came to your people thousands of years ago, from another dimension, another universe. At first we observed you merely because it amused us but, eventually, many of my kind grew to respect humans. We watched you continue despite every catastrophe nature could throw in your direction. You grew stronger and built greater civilizations and we tried to help. But you rejected us and called us devils. You even started churches on the assumption that if a devil exists then so must a god.’
‘And this isn’t so?’
‘No. We’re not devils but, for a long time, it was easier to let you think that we were. That’s the great irony: all your churches, mosques and temples were built to worship a god you created for yourselves. It was a deity you assumed existed because of us; a mirror image of the fear we unintentionally instilled in you. But He was never real. Your religions have played a great part in your development as a species but now you’ve outgrown them and it’s time you put them aside. All your belief gives you now is just another reason to hate.’
I sucked in the cold night air through my teeth wondering how much of this was true. Could we have blinded ourselves for so long? ‘Go on,’ I insisted, ‘I need to hear it all.’
‘You talk of hordes when you speak of us but that is just another myth we have left unchallenged. In reality, we are few in number. We are a race that instinctively seeks out the company of others because we lack something of our own. We have no drive or purpose. Perhaps that’s the price for our continual regeneration?’
I wiped a fleck of black spittle from the demon’s mouth. ‘Why now?’
‘Because our universe is dying. Because there’s nobody else. We must find a new home or perish. Our technology is far more advanced than yours and we’ve used it to search the different dimensions for millennia. We’ve reached the conclusion that we are alone, you humans and we denizens of Hell.’ He paused as his breathing became more labored. Then, ‘Have you ever considered, Frank, that being alone might be damnation in its purest form?’ He laughed but I could see that it hurt him to do so. ‘No. I don’t suppose you have,’ he said in reply to his own question. ‘But, in a way, our reaching out to you and your kind is no different to you searching for a non-existent creator. As your people would say: we all need a reason to get up in the morning.’
‘But if you stay here, leave Hell for good, Will you lose your immortality? No more regeneration?’
‘Yes. The laws of your universe are very different to ours. Everybody has a price to pay in life. But what if that price is not enough for some?’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What if the discorporeality of Murmer wasn’t some random act of prejudice? What if he was targeted because he was the administrator of The Portal?’
‘And is he?’
‘Yes.’
I could feel my eyes widen as I considered the implications. The Portal – the gate through which the demons travelled. It would be a prime targ
et for anti-demon activists.
Its location was a closely guarded secret but there would be some in the Government that knew its coordinates. If they were secret sympathizers with God’s Children…
Destroying the Portal would disrupt traffic until another could be built. A sense of dread spread down my spine as my thoughts moved further into the realms of possibility. What if the terrorists were able to send a nuclear warhead straight into Hell itself?
I took in a deep gulp of air. ‘This is big.’
‘Right now, it’s all hypothetical,’ Abaddon replied. ‘We have no solid evidence that the terrorist intelligence is that far advanced. You need to keep watch, find out who you can trust.’
I shook my head. ‘This is too much. I can’t do this on my own.’
‘I have left instructions in the event of my demise,’ Abaddon said. ‘Another will arrive to take my place. Work with him to save us all.’
I felt his black eyes stare into the pit of my soul and panic knot my stomach. Responsibility for the fate of two universes threatened to crush me out of existence.
‘All we have is each other,’ he continued. ‘Heaven doesn’t exist but Hell does and it’s a lonely place that has no future. I think both our peoples seek the comfort of others. No matter how different we may appear to be, there’s more that binds than separates us. But we also have our lunatic fringe. There are some in Hell that think we can take by force what you may choose to deny. Don’t give them an excuse to act, my friend.’ He gave me a demonic grin as his chest heaved one final time.
He was gone and I had changed. I didn’t quite understand why but I believed him and it shook me more than anything else had in my life. I knew that somewhere in the depths of that other universe we called Hell, he was already reforming and I wondered if I’d live long enough to see him again. How would news of his discorporeality by a human terrorist be taken in The Pit? I imagined his reconstruction already beginning as an ember starting to glow in the black unknown and feared that this tiny spark might produce a fire that would burn us all.
I made my way to Blackwater’s corpse and searched the pockets of his coat. It was all there: letters, names, connections with UCAD and other incriminating evidence. It was too easy. They wanted me to find this stuff. The names Blackwater carried would end up in court charged with conspiracy and they’d become martyrs to the cause. Somebody wanted an uprising that led to war and the evidence I would deliver to my superiors would be the catalyst for such a thing. My position crouching next to the corpse had hidden my discovery from the drone’s camera and it gave me the opportunity to slip the documentation under my coat. I needed time to think the implications through.
The rain began to fall once more and I found that I was afraid of what the future might hold. My fear wasn’t because of an influx of demons. It was my own kind that scared me and I wondered how we could hope to survive as a civilization if we reacted with such hatred and suspicion against those among us that were different? The secretive way our government dealt with the situation regarding the manifesto didn’t help and I questioned if they had a genuine reason or if it was just an unattractive aspect of leadership. Knowledge, as they say, is Power.
The drone continued to hover above as I wiped the rain from my eyes and bowed my head, shielding my face from the camera with the brim of my hat. I understood Abaddon’s motives. The drone’s transmissions would show how a demon saved my life and hopefully would make people think twice before starting any kind of conflict. Of course, it might also raise levels of mistrust when the population realized that demons could change shape. That, allied to the information in my possession, could become a topic of hot political debate in the coming days. Only time would tell how it would play out.
Thorpe let me head home pretty soon after forensics and the clean-up crews arrived.
‘You’ll need to file a complete report,’ he said.
‘Later,’ I replied. ‘Right now, I need to get some distance, try and figure out what just happened.’ I never mentioned the evidence I had found and walked off into the night, resisting the urge to look behind me. Perhaps it was just a fit of paranoia but I was certain that I could feel the lieutenant’s eyes follow my exit. Was he sympathetic to the cause of God’s Children? I questioned whether I would be able to trust anybody in this matter but I also understood that this was exactly what the haters wanted. We would be manipulated by fear and distrust – becoming exactly what they wanted us to be while we vehemently denied those very changes were anything other than our own choices. But they weren’t, and deep down, we would know. Our reality was built on a bedrock of denial. Some would demand an end to the influx of refugees from Hell. Public opinion would harden with each new atrocity until nobody was innocent any more. If any of the Bleeding Hearts pointed out that the demons would die without our aid, the answer would be: Let them die. It’s not our problem. The situation would fester and positions would become more polarized with an increasing loss of life on both sides until, finally, the extremists would have their war.
Once inside my apartment, I set about destroying the documentation I had acquired from Blackwater. Fire, I decided, was the most appropriate method. I sat back, cradled a glass of whisky and watched the paper burn in a dish atop a small, glass-topped coffee table. As the flames receded, I stared at the black ash in contemplation and began to understand that we humans were still too busy battling our own demons to worry about any more. Could we possibly come through this crisis unscathed?
As I glanced at my reflection in the table I realised that I was looking at just another corrupt cop tampering with evidence. Did the end justify the means? Would I go to Hell for my sins? For the first time that night, I was able to laugh. I could think of worse places to be.
THE END.
THIRST by Joseph Rubas
“You think he’s a baron or somethin’?”
Sheriff Justus T. Cooper drained his whiskey and sighed contentedly. “Mayhap.”
It was early afternoon in Alura, California, a tiny hamlet nestled on the edge of the Mojave, and the sun shone so brightly a man could believe it was Judgment Day if he squinted hard enough. It had to be over one hundred degrees, and the occasional blast of wind washed over you like the gritty rubble of a massive explosion.
Cooper had been sheriff of Alura for two years, having been appointed by the governor of California, under whom Coop served at Gettysburg. The previous sheriff, George Packard, was corrupt, and during his years, the peaceful became a haven for outlaws, highwaymen, and Mojave pirates. In late 1873, Packard shot a U.S. Marshall investigating crime in Alura on behalf of the Governor. Another Marshall was taken out into the desert and executed by Packard and his cronies. In what Coop himself thought a suicidal fit of madness, they shipped his severed head back to the statehouse with a note inviting more lawmen to come to town.
Governor Davis, a short, bully man with bushy mutton chops, replied with the state militia, sending in nearly two hundred men. Packard loyalists fired on them from windows and rooftops, leading to a massive three hour gunfight that left some fifty men dead in the streets. Packard, for his part, had fled the day before, and was arrested in Texas a week later. The arresting officer: Justus Cooper.
In a happy twist of fate, George Packard rode right into Coop’s arms. At that time, Coop was a lawman in the town of Renee, a dusty little village lost in the west Texas badlands. Governor Davis was so grateful that he offered Coop the chance to replace George Packard as sheriff of Alura.
Coop happily accepted, and went west. Compared to Renee, Alura was a virtual city, arranged, grid-like, between the railroad in the west and the Mojave Trail in the east.
Unlike most towns in the west, Alura wasn’t the kind of place where men came and went, and the locals didn’t take too kindly to outsiders. In the beginning, most of the townspeople wouldn’t even spit in his direction. Over time, however, he managed to win them over.
Take, for instance, Barney Parker, the plump little prosp
ector sitting next to him at the bar of Joshua Greene’s saloon. There was a time when Barney wouldn’t even look at him. Now he was talking to him like he talked to anyone else, asking him what he thought of the German who bought the old Carter place south of town.
“There’re a lot of people in Germany,” Coop said, “and not all of them are barons.”
The Carter place, a crumbling two story frame house built long ago, sat in shambles on the apex of what some people called Cemetery Ridge; if you stood in the right spot on Main Street, you could just see it looking down at you, all dark and shuttered. It had been empty for as long as Barney knew, and he’d been in town since 1858, almost twenty years. The old timers would tell you some kind of witch lived there way back, put spells on people and communed with the devil under the full moon. Coop didn’t put any stock in those sorts of tales, but the house was certainly unpleasant to look at, and now some fool from Germany was buying the place. John Murphy, the town real estate agent, said the German had money, and lots of it, and wanted to move in as soon as he could. Why someone would want to move into a decaying husk on a hill was beyond Coop, though he supposed it did have a fairly nice view of the town, the desert beyond, and the jagged mountaintops beyond that. Standing up there, you could see everything. The streets, the buildings, the church steeple and the schoolhouse, the train station, even the vague suggestion of Manson, the next town over, some ten miles away.
“Mayhap so,” Coop repeated.
“I don’t think a baron would wanna live here,” Joshua Greene said from behind the bar. Greene, short and hefty (not unlike Barney Parker) wore spectacles and two chins.
“Maybe he likes the heat,” Barney said.
“A baron would wanna live in the city,” Greene countered. “San Francisco, or maybe even Los Angeles.”
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