Between Heaven and Hell

by Jeff Kirvin

  She thought of him often, out there fighting the ever-growing injustice while she remained the mouthpiece of … of what?

  Inhuman monsters? The angels certainly weren’t human, but even after all she’d seen, Susan still believed they meant well. Then again, according to what Daniel had told her, Satan believed the same thing. Who was right?

  Maybe it was the power, she reasoned. The power of guidance the angels and demons had possessed for millennia. Maybe they were so full of their roles as shepherds, they lost sight of what was really best for the flock.

  In any case, her life was hollow, people died by the thousands every day for genetic flaws they had no control over, and while Daniel fought for those people, Susan did nothing but cover it up. One way or another, Susan swore that would change.

  Obeying an urgent summons, Gabriel walked into Michael’s throne room. The angel that ruled the world stared intently at one of his data screens, but looked up when Gabriel entered.

  “He’s in,” Michael said.

  “He’d better be,” Gabriel replied. “We lost a lot in Cho’s little raid.”

  Michael sat back on his throne, looking very regal but not impressing Gabriel in the slightest. “Yes,” he said, “but who would have thought Cho and his merry little band of outlaws would be so efficient?”

  “Certainly not Adonaeth,” Gabriel said dryly.

  Michael sobered a little. “That part mustn’t get out. If the humans ever come to believe that one of them can fight and kill an armored angel—”

  “—we wouldn’t have a minor resistance, but a full-scale revolt,” Gabriel finished.

  Michael smiled. “I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, old friend, but you get the point. In any case, Rhaumel is in place, and he has activated the homing beacon. We now know exactly where Cho and the rest of the Underground are hiding.”

  “Excellent,” Gabriel said. “I’ll arrange for an aerial strike immediately.”

  “No!” Michael said. “Aerial bombing is too high profile, too deliberate. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort over the past year painting the Underground as pathetic, incompetent malcontents, and if we publicly bomb them now, we bestow upon them the very credibility we’ve worked so long to deny.

  “No, you and a strike team will go in on foot, in armor. Afterwards, we can pick any cover story we like, that a routine security patrol happened upon a den of looters, whatever. The important thing is to keep it quiet. Rhaumel will signal when they are least prepared for an attack. You will then strike hard, fast and quiet. Once word gets out in the Underground about this attack and the death of Cho, they’ll lose heart. We can crush this resistance quite easily after that.”

  “And Richardson?”

  “Yes, noticed that, did you?” Michael asked. “I don’t quite know what to make of her these days. She’s developing quite an attitude, and I think she knows more of what’s really happening than she lets on. Still, for the moment, she’s loyal, and her value as a trusted and beloved spokesperson outweighs her danger as a journalist, so caught up in some ethereal concept of truth rather than concrete and definable order.

  “You know, Gabriel, things were so much easier a thousand years ago. The church listened to us, and everyone else listened to the church. We set the rules, they obeyed. No questions. Order. Now these humans are so caught up in ridiculous concepts like freedom and self-determination, as if they were actually wise enough to rule themselves effectively. Didn’t the rampant chaos during their centuries of self-rule teach them anything? Don’t they realize what’s best for them?”

  “Old friend,” Gabriel said, “sometimes I wonder if these humans should be allowed to continue the practice of their old religions and philosophies. Too many different schools of thought make it much harder to control them effectively.”

  Michael waved a dismissive hand. “Leave Richardson to me. I’ll keep a close eye on her. I want you to concern yourself only with a successful strike. I literally want the head of Daniel Cho on my desk by morning. Go.”

  Gabriel assembled a strike team of his best warriors, suited up in armor, and left Heaven, “on patrol”.

  Gabriel had mixed emotions about what he was doing. On the whole, he agreed with the plan, but he often wondered if it came too late. Not all of the humans’ mythology and religion was bunk. Even though a great deal of it was fiction created by his people to keep the humans in line, there were often real lessons to be learned from it, even for angels.

  Lately he’d been preoccupied with the story of Adam and Eve. He had become acutely aware that he was watching that ancient tale play itself out again, this time on a far grander scale. Just as Eve became poisoned to Paradise by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the humans were increasingly becoming poisoned to the angels by ideas of freedom. He agreed with Michael that the angels, in their immortal perspective, had the wisdom to know what was truly best for the humans and that only the angels could guide the human race efficiently as time went on. He just doubted it would happen with this group of humans.

  Gabriel had tried to voice this concern to Michael on several occasions, once even detailing a plan to isolate a large group of very young children, kill off the adult population and start over from scratch. Michael generally scoffed at his concerns, confident that the angels, by virtue of nothing more than simple longevity, would win out. Gabriel wasn’t so sure. Gabriel had watched humans more closely than most of his brethren, and had paid particular attention to human wars. He knew why humans fought, what they fought for and what they were willing to die for, by the millions if need be. He knew that so long as the humans had a word in their language for freedom, the angels would never be truly secure in their power base. Humans were too damn independent for their own good.

  Finally, the signal he’d been waiting for flashed onto the display inside his helmet. The Underground’s guard was as far down as it was going to get. It was time to strike.

  Against the Wall

  The attack came with no warning. The angels were inside before the sentries even knew they were there. In the first ten seconds, a dozen humans nearest the door perished in fire.

  Daniel was awake, weapon in hand, before the first explosion ceased its echo. He sprang off his bunk and had a half dozen fighters at his side by the time the last angel entered the building.

  “How’d they find us?” someone asked.

  “Worry about that later,” Daniel said as he began firing on the lead angel. As expected, their grenades did more damage to the surrounding architecture than to the angels.

  “Damn!” Daniel cursed. Already, the smoke from the multiple grenade explosions and the angels’ flame-throwers made it very difficult to see. It wouldn’t be long before the smoke made it difficult to breathe.

  A hand fell on Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel whirled around and nearly struck Ricardo in the head with the barrel of his grenade launcher. “We have to retreat, Daniel!” Ricardo shouted over the increasing noise.

  “Good idea! You get the civilians out, and I’ll cover you!”

  Ricardo shook his head. “I don’t think so!”

  Before Daniel could react, three bulky Underground fighters grabbed him from behind. “You’re too valuable to risk here!” Ricardo shouted. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous point!” Ricardo motioned for the emergency exit, and the three men carried Daniel away. The last thing he saw before they entered the darkened, narrow tunnels to safety was the image of Ricardo trying to organize a counterstrike against ten armored angels. He offered a prayer to whatever god Ricardo worshipped.

  Ricardo hoped he hadn’t just made a fatal mistake. While it was true that Daniel was too valuable to the overall resistance to risk capture, he was also a brilliant tactician, and Ricardo knew that he’d need every advantage he could get to get out of this alive.

  While his men kept the angels relatively contained with explosive blasts, the angels were giving far better than they were getting, and it wouldn’t be long before they tore
the place apart. Most of Ricardo’s men had formed a protective wall of constant firepower to mask the escape of the civilians and those too weak or injured to fight. Due to the angels’ efficiency, Ricardo noticed they didn’t have to evacuate nearly as many as he originally would have thought.

  Unfortunately, the wall of protectors wasn’t holding very well either, for the same reason. “Fall back!” Ricardo screamed. “Orderly retreat!”

  A grenade, from the angels or an errant shot from one of his own people, he didn’t know, exploded directly over his head, raining down plaster, wood and metal. “We are leaving!” he shouted.

  Ricardo and a handful of others concentrated cover fire until they were the only humans left alive in the building, with seven angels bearing down on them. The angelic armor was in varying stages of disrepair, from only scratched to nearly totaled, but the angels themselves still moved with all the speed and power that was their trademark. Ricardo and his men crowded in front of the emergency exit, waiting for the angels to get close enough for Ricardo to give the order. When the angels were within ten paces, Ricardo jerked his head backwards. “Let’s close the door!”

  As one, the men backed into the tunnel, leaving the angels as the only living creatures in the building. When the angels rushed to follow, the men fired their grenade launchers not at the angels, but at the walls and ceiling of the tunnel entrance. Tons of rubble that had been carefully placed around the entrance months before came raining down.

  “Go!” Ricardo shouted over the din. As his men retreated, Ricardo slowly followed them, walking backwards and firing more grenades to bring down more rubble. Once he was sure he’d created a barricade large enough to buy them time to escape, he turned and ran down the dark tunnel to the rendezvous.

  Ricardo caught up with Daniel a short time later at the rendezvous point, where Daniel supervised the loading of the weak and injured into the trucks for the evacuation out of Los Angeles. The city wasn’t safe for them anymore.

  Daniel managed a quick smile as Ricardo approached. “So it’s done?” he asked.

  Ricardo nodded, still out of breath from his escape. “If they try to dig through and follow us, we’ll be long gone before they get out of that tunnel. If they just radio in and close down the city—”

  “We’ve already got ways around that,” Daniel said. “Good work, Ricardo.”

  “Daniel, how’d they find us?”

  Daniel looked around, then put an arm around Ricardo’s shoulder and took him aside. “I have an idea, but I wanted to wait until you got here to test it. You’re still the boss in L.A.”

  Not anymore, Ricardo thought, looking first at Daniel, then at the remains of the Los Angeles Underground packing into the evacuation trucks. “What’s the plan?”

  Rhaumel, or “Lewis Malone”, waited in line, impatient to get in the truck. The injured and elderly were being helped in first, and those rebels cursed with being ambulatory had to wait. As he looked around, he noticed Jones and Cho walking towards him. He was initially suspicious, but they were both smiling and chatting happily. They probably knew nothing, he decided.

  “Lewis!” Cho called out. “We need your help with something.”

  Rhaumel pointed to himself with a questioning look.

  “Yes, you,” Cho said, smiling even wider and chuckling to himself.

  Reluctantly, Rhaumel stepped out of line. He didn’t need to draw undo attention to himself by refusing whatever they wanted outright. “What do you need?”

  This time, Jones did the talking. “We’re short-handed loading some of the cargo, and Daniel here says you’ve got a pretty strong grip. We sure could use the help.”

  Rhaumel scowled. Bad enough the rebels escaped Gabriel’s assault, but now they wanted him to do manual labor?

  “Come on,” Daniel said, “it’s the least you can to pay us back for all that insulin.” He playfully jabbed Rhaumel in the shoulder.

  “All right,” Rhaumel said.

  “It’s this way,” Jones said, pointing the way, “We’ll meet you in a second.” Rhaumel began to walk in the prescribed direction. As soon as he was ten meters or so away from the line, he heard Cho shout “Now!”

  From hiding places behind trucks and crates, a dozen rebels raced out and grabbed him. He’d been tricked!

  He quickly glanced around and assessed the situation. None of the rebels holding him were armed, but there were several just beyond arm’s reach that were. Cho and Jones stood directly in front of him, and even with his strength and speed he didn’t think he could break the grips of a dozen humans and reach either of the ringleaders before the armed rebels could fire. He decided to maintain his cover and try to play it off as a big misunderstanding. Humans were fond of that. It was the basis for most of their comedy.

  “What’s … what’s going on?” he asked in the most terror-stricken voice he could muster.

  “A test,” Cho said, unsheathing a knife. “I’ve had doubts about you ever since we first met. Now I’m going to see if I was right.”

  Rhaumel struggled, but the humans just barely held him in check. Cho stepped forward and slashed quickly along Rhaumel’s arm with the knife. The wound had already begun to heal by the time Cho sheathed the knife again. The other rebels tightened their grips, now that what they were dealing with had been confirmed.

  “What’s your real name?” Cho demanded.

  Dropping all pretense of humanity, the angel answered promptly. “Rhaumel. How did you know, rebel?”

  “You should have picked a better cover ailment. Very few diabetics could have really gone three whole days without insulin, and none of them would have been as strong as you were after a sugar reaction. I just wish I’d thought of that before tonight, when I saw you were the only one other than the sentries already up when the attack began. All this death could have been averted.”

  “So what now, rebel?”

  Cho shrugged, a maddeningly casual gesture. “We’re leaving. You’re dying. Goodbye.”

  Cho turned and walked briskly away, already resuming the job of coordinating the rebel departure. As Rhaumel looked around, he saw Jones glaring at him, the hatred exceedingly obvious, a rebel preparing a small plastic explosive device, and another rebel stepping in front of him and leveling a pistol at his head. Rhaumel struggled again, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to break his bonds.

  “Everyone get away from his head,” the pistol-wielding rebel said, and just for a moment Rhaumel thought he had enough freedom of movement to get away. But he wasn’t quite fast enough.

  Town Meeting

  What?” Michael said, incredulous.

  Gabriel stood before him in the throne room, still clad in his charred armor and holding his helmet in his hands. He spoke quietly. “Cho escaped, and we lost contact with Rhaumel. We believe his cover was blown, and he’s presumed dead.”

  Michael nodded, stood, and walked to the window, its vast expanse overlooking the pre-dawn Los Angeles below. “What you’re telling me,” he said, “is that you knew where Cho and his band of traitors were, you took them by surprise, killed nearly half of them, yet not only did Cho and the other rebel leaders escape, but you lost three of your own men and the mole we sacrificed a Care Center to plant?

  “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Gabriel stared at the floor. “Yes, sir.”

  Michael whirled on his subordinate. “This is intolerable! Gabriel, you’ve served me well over the millennia, and that’s the only reason you’re still alive. I will not accept this sort of failure any longer. They’re only humans! You’re an immortal! Act like it! From this point on, I’m assigning someone else to run security around here. Your job, for every second of every day, is to find Daniel Cho and deliver his dead body to me.

  “Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Michael pointed to the door. “Get out of my sight.”

  Scowling, Gabriel left.

  The trucks filtered into San Diego by morning
, and Daniel found the members of the San Diego Underground very receptive. Their leader was a burly Mexican named Manuel Nogales, and he seemed particularly pleased to have Daniel in town.

  “So you’re the Great and Powerful Daniel Cho,” Nogales said, enveloping Daniel’s hand in a beefy palm and shaking vigorously.

  “Just Daniel,” Daniel smiled, finding the large man’s enthusiasm infectious. Daniel looked around the compound as the other Los Angeles Underground members started unloading the trucks. It was a vast underground maze of forgotten irrigation tunnels, hard to find and protected from aerial strikes. Daniel approved. “Quite a place you have here, Mister Nogales.”

  “Please, Daniel, it’s Manuel. Come this way. There’s someone who wants to see you.” Manuel put a tree-trunk arm around Daniel’s shoulders and half led, half dragged him away from the trucks and further into the tunnels.

  Further in from the entrance and “loading docks”, the tunnels had been substantially modified to provide living quarters and other makeshift rooms. Most of the “walls” were nothing more than sheets of pressboard or drywall propped against one another, but it was a more elaborate headquarters than they’d had in Los Angeles. As they passed, all activity stopped and as one the denizens of the San Diego underground turned and watched Daniel walk by. Daniel was a little disturbed by their silence.

  “Your reputation precedes you,” Manuel said, noticing Daniel’s discomfort. “You’re a hero to these people, and others around the world. I hope their reverence doesn’t cause you undo discomfort.”

  “It’s a little unnerving,” Daniel said, looking around at one awed face after another.

  “It shouldn’t be. You discovered the immortals and exposed them. You were present at the destruction of Hell. You’re the only human to publicly defy Michael and survive. Can you blame them for thinking you walk on water?”

  Daniel didn’t have an answer. He didn’t think of himself as a hero. He just did what he had to do.