Armageddon

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “Which is just my point,” Jeremy stated. “You’re only two months old, and a bloody sea serpent sighting is commonplace.”

  Enoch scooped more stew from the can, dribbling some of it down the front of his tiny blue jacket before shoving the rest into his yawning mouth.

  “I’ll try to fix that,” the boy said. “Once I’ve had the chance to—”

  “To what?” Jeremy asked. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to fix—this.” Enoch waved the plastic spoon around. “I’m going to fix the world.”

  “That’s what you keep telling me, but all we’re doing is running around from one place to the next, with no rhyme or reason.”

  The toddler was frustrated. “You know how hard it is for me.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Jeremy was tired of the whole thing. He returned to the stool and took the can from the child.

  “My memory is incomplete,” Enoch said. “I know what I was, but not what I’m supposed to be now.”

  Jeremy didn’t answer. He’d heard it all before.

  “I’m hoping that it will eventually come to me,” Enoch explained. “I sense it out there . . . like a beacon trying to reach me. It’s what brought me here, and to your mother’s attention.”

  Jeremy flinched at the memory of his mum. He couldn’t get the image of her dead body out of his mind.

  “I’m here for a very special purpose, Jeremy,” the child said, his tiny voice cracking from the strain.

  And then he was crying, tears streaming down his cold, chubby face, his cheeks turning an even brighter red.

  Finishing the rest of the stew, Jeremy remembered his mother’s face as she died, her last word before her final breath:

  Protect.

  She wanted him to protect the little bugger, so here he was.

  “Shush,” Jeremy said, setting the empty can and plastic spoon down on the floor. Enoch continued to wail, so worked up that calming him seemed impossible.

  Jeremy sat next to him. Enoch tried to crawl away, but he was too overcome with emotion.

  Jeremy could relate. He was frustrated too. He could only imagine what it was like for the toddler. Yes, Enoch spoke like an adult, but the truth was the little bugger was only eight weeks old. It was amazing that he was capable of holding it together as well as he did.

  “C’mere,” Jeremy said, grabbing for the squirming Enoch. The child fought him, but Jeremy was larger, and quite a bit stronger. He pulled the fussy babe into his arms and hugged him close. “Calm down now,” he said, and started to rock.

  Enoch continued to fight and screech.

  “Wouldn’t want that sea serpent to hear you now, would you?” Jeremy asked. “I’d have to toss you to him to make my escape.”

  “Damn . . . you . . . ,” the baby wailed, between gulps of air.

  Jeremy squeezed the child tighter. “That’s it,” he said, his voice soft and calming. “Let it all out, and then we’ll be done.”

  “Don’t . . . you . . . understand? I . . . have a job . . . to do . . .”

  “I get it,” Jeremy said. “I really do.”

  He knew that the child was here for a purpose, but it was nothing short of maddening, for Enoch as well as himself, not knowing exactly what that reason was. They simply had to keep fumbling along in the dark, until some light was shed on what Enoch’s mission might be.

  An earsplitting roar rattled the window.

  Bloody hell, if his bit of fun with the baby hadn’t come true.

  “Wait here,” Jeremy said, prying the child from his grasp.

  “Where are you going?” Enoch demanded petulantly. “I haven’t finished venting yet.”

  Jeremy walked toward the door, a sword of fire igniting in his grasp. “You have if you don’t want to be eaten by a sea serpent,” the Nephilim said.

  That shut up the wailing child.

  Jeremy placed his hand on the freezing door latch and looked back to Enoch. The child sat, arms crossed, sulking.

  “Thought you were going to feed me to the beast,” Enoch said in his sternest voice.

  “Now would I do something mean and nasty like that?” Jeremy asked. “This shouldn’t take but a minute.” Then he stepped outside into the cold, slamming the door of the cabin closed behind him.

  The serpent loomed above the cabin, its skin glistening like a rainbow in the dim light of day. Jeremy hated to admit it, but it was a beautiful sight to see.

  But then the beast opened its mouth in a roar as it saw him standing there, showing off rows of milky-white, hooked teeth. He could just imagine the damage they could do when biting into tender flesh.

  So much for beauty, Jeremy thought, sprouting his wings and flying at the beast, preparing his weapon of crackling flame to strike.

  He could be pretty damaging when he wanted to be as well.

  * * *

  “It’s all about choices,” Tom Stanley said, his face having burned away to reveal a yellowed and charring skull.

  Aaron wanted to scream and run, but he knew it would be pointless. Where was he going to go in all this darkness?

  He couldn’t stand to look at his foster dad, choosing instead to focus on Lori, his foster mom. She didn’t look quite so horrible, even though her skin was burning too.

  “What kind of choices?” Aaron asked. “I don’t understand.”

  He wanted to believe that this was all some sort of nightmare, but no matter how hard he tried to wake himself, how hard he pinched the flesh of his arms and legs, he wasn’t waking up.

  Which meant that this was somehow real.

  “You’re in a bad way, Aaron,” Lori said, puffs of smoke leaking from her mouth.

  “What do you mean by a ‘bad way’? I’m fine—or at least I was until I got in the elevator tonight and . . .”

  “And it all disappeared,” Tom finished with a knowing nod. “That’s what we’re trying to tell you, son. None of it was real.”

  Aaron just stared, dumbfounded, having no clue how to respond.

  Lori stepped closer, and Aaron pulled away. He could see that his actions were hurting her feelings, but he couldn’t really help that right now. He needed to know what the hell was happening to him.

  “None of this is real,” Lori said, and then sighed. “Your job, your office, your life outside this place . . .”

  It was as if somebody had taken a sledgehammer to his stomach.

  “My life outside . . .” He couldn’t even bring himself to finish. “This is crazy. Insane. You’re not real. You’re the figments of my imagination. . . .”

  “We are,” Tom agreed. “But we’re your subconscious, here to try and help you.”

  Aaron’s legs had become like rubber, and he was having a difficult time standing. “Help me? How are you helping me by telling me that everything I know and love . . .” Aaron stopped as more horror crept up on him.

  “Wait,” he said. “Vilma and Jeremy . . .”

  His foster parents remained silent.

  “Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!” Aaron cried out, bending over in agony. “So this pain . . . isn’t real either,” he gasped.

  “No,” Tom said. “The pain is very real.”

  Lori reached out a flaming hand and laid it on his shoulder. “We just want to help you, Aaron.”

  The pain was getting stronger. It was like he was being stabbed with a large knife—or sword.

  “What—what’s happening to me . . .”

  The pain was incredible, and getting stronger.

  “Your body is forcing you to make up your mind,” Tom said. Most of his lower face had been reduced to bone.

  Aaron fell to his knees, shivering in a cold sweat.

  His foster mom knelt beside him. “We’re here to help you make the right choice.”

  “What choice?” Aaron demanded through gritted teeth. “Why is this pain real but nothing else is?”

  “You brought the pain with you,” Tom explained. “From your true reality.”

  “In fac
t, you built all of this to try and escape it,” Lori said, her sparking hand caressing his arm supportively.

  “What—what does it mean?” Aaron feared the answer, but he needed to know.

  Lori glanced up at her husband.

  “Do you want me to tell him, or . . . ,” Tom began.

  “No, I’ll tell him,” Lori said. “It means that you’re either going to live, or . . . ,” she said to Aaron.

  “Die?” Aaron asked. “I’m going to die?”

  “It’s up to you,” Tom explained.

  “Of course I want to live,” Aaron insisted.

  Once again Lori and Tom shared a look.

  “Do you really know what that means, Aaron?” Lori asked.

  Aaron didn’t.

  “All this,” Tom said, waving a blackened, skeletal hand around his head. “All this goes away.”

  Aaron’s eyes darted around. “Looks to me like it already has.”

  “It all goes away,” Lori repeated. “In here”—she pointed at his forehead—“as well as in here.” She pointed to his chest.

  “What do you mean it goes away?”

  “Your wife, your child, the life you share with them,” Lori said. “It all ceases to be if you choose to live.”

  Aaron could not wrap his brain around the meaning of Lori’s words.

  “Because they never really existed,” Tom said with a shrug. “You’ve created it all to escape the reality of your current situation.”

  “You were mortally wounded in battle with the Darkstar, who took the form of your father,” Lori added.

  “My father,” Aaron repeated.

  The pain intensified, and with it came a barrage of images.

  Aaron didn’t know which hurt worse.

  He remembered. He remembered his wedding day. The birth of his son. But those memories had been a dream. Creations of a perfect existence; what he wished to be true.

  “Oh God,” he said, voice cracking and eyes welling up with tears. “None of it . . . they’re not real.”

  Aaron’s reality rushed in to fill the void left by his shredded dreams.

  “You could have stayed with them,” Lori said sadly. “But that would have meant that you chose to die.”

  In a way he felt that he had.

  Aaron pictured his son asleep, eyes suddenly opening and smiling a smile warmer than a thousand sunrises.

  Then it faded.

  “Oh God, I can’t forget him—please . . .” He looked to his foster parents. They had always been there for him while growing up, but now he remembered how they had died.

  And he knew why they were burning.

  “I killed you,” he said.

  “No.” Tom shook his head. “The Powers killed us. Verchiel killed us.”

  “But it was because of me.”

  “Shit happens.”

  Aaron gasped, desperate to hold on to the memory of something very important—something to do with a thousand sunrises—but it was gone. He couldn’t remember.

  He started to cry again, feeling a monumental loss, but not knowing what it was.

  He thought of Vilma, and for a crazy moment, he remembered her as his wife.

  Maybe someday, but not now.

  “Are you all right, Aaron?” Lori asked. The flames flicked over her gentle features.

  “Yeah,” he answered. The pain in his stomach was still pretty intense, but he pushed himself to his feet. As he did, he was startled to see that a bloodstain had formed on his shirt. “This doesn’t look good.”

  “It’s not,” Tom said. “We should probably move on, if you’ve made your decision.”

  Aaron looked around at the darkness and tried to imagine what had once occupied the void. If he had known, that knowledge was gone.

  “We should probably do something about this,” Aaron said, holding his arms up to draw attention to the expanding stain of blood.

  “That’s exactly what we intend to do,” Lori said.

  His foster parents turned, retreating farther into the darkness.

  And Aaron followed close behind, pulled along by the light thrown from their burning bodies.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Those progeny of the divine and human, who had been called Nephilim before they’d died, had been transformed into some other entity entirely.

  Their master—their father—called them his dark messengers . . . his Angels of the Void.

  The five dark angels stood in their birth chamber, acclimating to their new environment. Slowly they flapped their leathery wings, allowing their slick ebony flesh to dry and their muscles to strengthen.

  They vaguely recalled that they had once lived, flashes of memory from a time and place when they had served another God.

  The memories filled the Angels of the Void with intense hatred, but also with purpose: to destroy those that had once been family to them.

  The black messengers could sense their former brothers and sisters, somewhere else, and it caused them great pain.

  A pain that they knew would not stop until—

  “Do you feel them?”

  The Angels of the Void turned toward the sound of their father’s voice. He stared at them proudly. Others gathered around him, but they were not the ones of whom their father spoke.

  “Out in the world,” Satan said, pointing beyond their birthing chamber. “Hiding from me . . .”

  Jagged memories of their former selves assaulted their senses, making the desire to destroy—to kill—all the more urgent.

  “Hiding from you.”

  The angels knew that the Nephilim must suffer as they had suffered before surrendering to the darkness of death.

  Before they had been reborn.

  “You need to find them and you need to steal their lives . . . so that they, too, may receive the gift you were given.”

  The angels watched their father, understanding what was being asked of them.

  What was expected.

  “Find them,” Satan instructed.

  The Angels of the Void did as they were told, attempting to reestablish the connection they’d once had with their Nephilim siblings.

  “Find them. And take away their lives.”

  Anticipating the coming hunt, the angels spread their black wings.

  “Go,” Satan, the Darkstar, commanded, and the dark messengers surged into the air, exploding through the domed ceiling of the citadel.

  Out into the endless night.

  * * *

  The last thing Lorelei remembered was thinking about her friends.

  She wasn’t precisely sure what had happened then, only that the grounds of the school where she’d been had blurred all around her as if she were suddenly moving at an incredible speed, and she found herself in another place entirely.

  Lorelei felt the urge to panic, but then remembered that she was dead, and that there really wasn’t much to worry about anymore.

  It wasn’t like she could get hurt.

  If she could have taken a few deep breaths to calm herself, she would have. Looking around at her new surroundings, she saw that she was in some sort of basement, her feet floating a few inches above a concrete floor.

  It would have been cool, if she wasn’t dead. That kind of threw cold water over anything that might have been exciting.

  People were sleeping in the darkened room: a young woman and a little girl, a teenager, a middle-aged cop—or was he a security guard?—an old man, and an elderly woman. Lorelei was drawn to the old lady. She could feel the tethers that held the woman to life gradually loosening.

  Lorelei had no idea why she was here, until she saw a familiar form asleep in the corner, away from the others.

  “Melissa!” Lorelei squealed, but only she could hear. She floated across the room toward her sleeping friend, and that was when images—terrible images of creatures with black, armored skin, rising up from the earth—flashed through her mind.

  Lorelei had no idea what these demons were, but she somehow knew that they
were extremely dangerous.

  Dangerous to the Nephilim.

  Some sort of strange, inexplicable link seemed to exist between Lorelei and these awful beasts. She saw them as they crawled up from the dirt, spreading leathery, batlike wings.

  “What are you?” Lorelei asked, oh so curious, but also afraid.

  It was if the creatures were compelled to answer—to show her—the masks of black upon their faces melting away to reveal human faces beneath.

  Lorelei reacted with a scream that only she could hear.

  They were the dead, her friends, the Nephilim fallen in combat. But how? How could they be alive again?

  And then it hit her, and for an instant she refused to believe, but then thought better. Maybe they weren’t alive at all.

  Lorelei tentatively reached out with her mind once again, connecting with the other armored creatures as they pulled themselves up from what had been their graves, and was shaken to the core.

  The dead Nephilim had somehow been returned to life, brought back from death to serve as agents of a terrible force.

  The Darkstar.

  And those who had once been her beloved friends had a terrible purpose that they willingly shared with her. These things, these twisted mockeries of sacred life, were now hunters of the surviving Nephilim.

  Stalkers of their still-living friends.

  Lorelei could not allow this. She had to do something—but what?

  Managing to sever the strange connection she’d made with her resurrected friends, Lorelei experienced a whole new level of frustration.

  How could she help if she could not be heard? How could she reach out to her still-living friends and warn them about what was coming?

  And then she remembered what she had done to the insect creature that had crawled from the body of the dragon, and stared at her translucent hand, not wanting to hurt in this instant, but to help.

  Was there a way?

  Lorelei drifted closer to the sleeping Melissa, still entwined within the grip of nightmare, and reached out to her with her ghostly hand. She didn’t know exactly what she was doing, but instinct guided her.

  The tips of Lorelei’s fingers disappeared inside Melissa’s head, establishing a tentative connection with the girl. It required a great deal of energy, and Lorelei knew that she could not hold the connection for long. She injected the fear of what she had seen into Melissa’s subconscious, hoping that her friend would take it as some sort of sign.