Between Heaven and Hell

by Jeff Kirvin

  Standing there in the stillness of the morning, Daniel took a moment to center himself, reflecting on all the events that had conspired to bring him to this place. It seemed a lifetime ago that he was just a workaholic EMT with no social life, but really it had been less than four years. Who would have guessed then that now he’d be the leader of millions, standing atop the world’s center of government clad in powered armor not made by human hands, and preparing to do battle with none other than the archangel Michael?

  Daniel shook his head. A stranger life I have never known, he thought to himself. He stepped to the edge of the roof. Michael’s throne room was directly beneath him.

  Time to embrace my destiny, he thought, then ignited his engines and took to the air.

  Michael sat alone in his throne room, encased in armor and watching the course of the battle on his monitors. He’d argued with Azrael that the armor wasn’t necessary, with a legion of his best troops stationed at his door, but the other angel insisted. Michael was hot and uncomfortable, but he endured.

  He was also beginning to worry. He had spotted Cho some time ago in that blasphemous black armor in the corridor outside his throne room, but while Cho’s fighters and Azrael’s continued to exchange fire, Michael hadn’t actually seen Cho in quite a while. The instant the fighting died down a bit he’d have to radio Azrael.

  Over the noise of combat from his monitors, he became aware of another sound, a deep rumbling. It grew louder and louder until it drowned out everything else.

  “Azrael!” Michael called, but it was too late.

  With a terrible crash, Cho shattered the bullet-proof glass of the bay window and swooped into the room. He banked sharply to avoid hitting the far wall, then landed light and neat at the foot of Michael’s throne.

  “Now we settle this,” the human said, and trained his weapons on the leader of the world.

  Apocalypse

  Responding to Michael’s call, Azrael and his troops burst into the throne room. They found Michael and Daniel circling each other, weapons raised and no more than six feet apart. Azrael cursed. He couldn’t fire on Daniel for fear that the collateral damage would harm Michael. So the angels watched.

  Shortly after the angels filed in, so did Jack and his men. The angels either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Jack held his fire for the same reason Azrael did, and the standoff continued. Jack activated a small video camera mounted on his left shoulder. He had a feeling Daniel would want these events broadcast.

  “You may as well give up, Cho,” Michael said. “Even if you destroy me, there’s no way you’re making it out of this room alive. Without you, the resistance will fall, and my legacy will continue.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Daniel said. “If I fall, another will take my place, then another, then another. And none of them will follow you.

  “You rose to power on charisma and the fear of chaos. The people of Earth now know there are far worse things than chaos, and your charisma isn’t what it used to be.”

  Michael scoffed. “Is that what you think?” he asked, continuing to circle Daniel warily.

  “I’ve been the guardian of mankind for over one thousand centuries,” Michael went on. “No one knows the human race better than I do, or what’s best for it. Mankind will follow me because it knows no other way.

  “I can still remember when you made your first tool, or when you discovered fire. I can still speak the first human language, and I can still remember all the ancient religions. I’ve been present at nearly every significant event in the history of your race. I was present at the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. I was in New Mexico to see the detonation of the first atomic bomb. I sat in Mission Control during the first moon landing. I decide who wins your wars, I decide which treaties get signed, I keep the world running smoothly.

  “So don’t tell me mankind will simply do without me. You never have before, and you won’t now.”

  “You’ve been at all the significant places in history?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Nazi Germany?” Daniel asked.

  Michael nodded. “For all his flaws, Hitler really understood the value of order. If only he hadn’t developed that irrational hatred of the Jews. It was a very difficult decision, letting him lose the war.”

  “Yet you don’t share his weaknesses,” Daniel said, noting the tiny red light on Jack’s camera.

  “No, I love the entire human race.”

  “And your death camps?” Daniel prompted. “Do you love the people you’ve ruthlessly exterminated?”

  “They don’t count,” Michael said. “They’re defective. They drag down the gene pool. Humans can never achieve their full potential if these misfits are allowed to reproduce and pollute their genes.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Daniel said, his voice hardening. “Ludwig von Beethoven was deaf, yet his music has moved and inspired millions. According to you, his existence was a mistake, and he should have been exterminated.”

  Michael stayed silent.

  “For someone who claims to know humanity so well,” Daniel continued, “you don’t understand us at all. We achieve our full potential by overcoming adversity, including biological adversity. Many of mankind’s greatest specimens have had some kind of physical problem. It was overcoming that obstacle that gave them the strength of character to go on and do great things. You would deny us this. By removing those that aren’t already perfect, by controlling and breeding us like farm animals, you inhibit our growth. You’re trying to purify our genes at the cost of our souls.”

  “You sound like Satan.”

  “He went too far in the other direction, but he made a lot more sense than you. You’re a terrible guardian, Michael, and we don’t need you anymore.”

  With a bellow of rage, Michael lunged at Daniel. Black and white armor struck with a clang, and chaos ensued.

  The instant Daniel and Michael collided, Jack opened fire on Azrael. If Daniel won his personal battle, Jack didn’t want him to have to fight his way out. The first volley of fire hit the angels by surprise, and several of them went down from the impact. Jack and his men immediately dove for cover as the angels returned fire. One of Jack’s men disappeared in a red mist, but the others kept firing. Two angels went down, gaping blackened holes in their armor.

  And the battle continued.

  Michael was stronger than Daniel had expected.

  The armor made them more or less equally matched in terms of leverage and firepower, but Michael remained standing through some exchanges that would at the very least have knocked Daniel down.

  Michael took a swing at Daniel, who ducked as the powerful armored arm arced over his head. Daniel took advantage of his position to leap up and forward, ramming his shoulder into Michael’s midsection. The angel staggered back, then regained his composure.

  “You can’t win, Cho,” he shouted over the explosions of their fighting troops. “Believe me, I’ve seen your kind come and go a million times!”

  “Maybe,” Daniel answered. He noticed that Michael was standing directly between him and the broken bay window.

  “Maybe not!” he shouted as he ignited his rockets and charged. He slammed into Michael’s chest, picked him up, and carried both of them out the window and into the morning sunlight.

  Jack was actually starting to believe this could work.

  He was down to three of his men other than himself, and everything in the room had been reduced to rubble (including the floor in some places), but the angelic opposition was down to only Azrael and two others, all heavily damaged.

  “Throw down your weapons, humans,” Azrael shouted, “and we might let you live.”

  Jack poked his head out from behind the remains of Michael’s throne, which he’d been using for cover. “You don’t exactly look like someone in the position to make such an ultimatum,” he shouted.

  Azrael answered with a rocket, which, if Jack’s count based on Daniel’s armor was cor
rect, should have been his last one. The weapon detonated harmlessly on the wall behind Jack, and Jack gave the signal to his men for a blast of simultaneous fire.

  On cue, four humans popped up from their hiding places and opened fire. One of the angels returned fire, killing the man to Jack’s right. The four grenades launched by the humans hit their targets, and all three angels went down. Only Azrael managed to struggle back to his feet.

  Jack stepped out from behind the ruined throne and walked slowly towards his adversary. Azrael raised his rocket launcher towards Jack.

  “Don’t bother,” Jack said. “You and I both know you’re out.”

  Azrael shrugged, then launched his final rocket.

  Jack dropped to the floor just in time to feel the heat of the rocket’s exhaust on his back. He then heard two explosions in quick succession, one behind him and one in front. When he looked up, the Angel of Death was gone and smoke slowly curled from the barrel of the man to his left.

  It was all up to Daniel now.

  Two metal titans clashed in the skies over Los Angeles.

  Held aloft by back mounted wings and rockets, the two figures, one black, one white, dived and banked and collided in midair, only to separate and do it again.

  “Curse you, Cho, fall!” Michael screamed.

  Daniel answered by falling back and launching a rocket, which Michael only barely avoided.

  Daniel reversed direction and charged Michael once more. The angel made no move to dodge, and instead met Daniel head-on. The collision could be heard from the ground, even over their rockets, and both combatants, man and angel, were visibly shaken.

  Daniel recovered first and quickly ducked under Michael’s field of vision.

  Michael shook it off and looked for his enemy. “You can’t hide from me up here, Cho!” he shouted.

  “Don’t intend to,” said a voice very close by and behind him.

  Before Michael could turn around, Daniel seized one of the angel’s metal wings and ripped it away from the suit of armor. Michael began to spin out of control. Before he really knew what was going on, the angel was spiraling rapidly towards the ground. Daniel followed with much more grace and control.

  Michael survived the impact with the ground, landing in a vacant lot, but he didn’t land well. His right leg and arm were both shattered, and though they began to heal almost immediately, they’d be quite useless for a few minutes.

  Daniel had no intention of giving him that long.

  Daniel landed a few meters away from Michael’s struggling form and trained his remaining rockets on him.

  “It’s over, Michael,” he said.

  “NEVER!” the angel screamed, and loosed all his remaining rockets against Daniel. Daniel backpedaled furiously, but he couldn’t evade all of the massive barrage. Three of the rockets impacted squarely on his armor, and he fell to the ground.

  The diagnostic readouts in his helmet told him more than he really wanted to know. The armor’s power was down to nearly ten percent, barely enough to move its own massive bulk. Most of the armor plating was weakened to the point of uselessness, and on top of all that, Daniel’s right leg was broken.

  As Daniel tried to sit up, he noticed Michael was already getting to his feet. With the condition of Daniel’s armor, the angel could easily tear him apart with his bare hands. Daniel couldn’t give Michael the opportunity, but he only had two rockets left. He had to make them count.

  Still sitting and dragging his broken leg, Daniel began to pull himself backwards, away from Michael.

  Michael shook his armored head. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said. On his good leg, he began to lurch after Daniel.

  “What were you saying about it being over?” Michael taunted.

  Daniel said nothing, but continued to pull himself away from the approaching angel. Closer, you arrogant son of a bitch, he thought. Come closer.

  “You thought you knew so much,” Michael continued. “You had the incredible audacity to believe you knew better than I what was best for the human race. Pathetic.

  “You have no idea what’s really going on. Everything that has happened on this planet over the last four years has happened because I willed it. I was the one that kept the demons just far enough away from you that you could get your story to the press. I manipulated Satan into tipping his hand before he was ready, letting him fall into my trap. I engineered the collapse of your national governments, knowing you’d have no choice but to embrace my rule. Everything has happened exactly as I intended, and I’m not going to let one insignificant human stand in the way of my master plan.”

  Michael was very close now, almost close enough to reach Daniel with his good arm. Almost, Daniel thought.

  “But now it ends,” Michael said. “First you die, then your inconsequential rebellion. I only hope that now, at the end, you realize which of us was truly right.” Michael began to reach down towards Daniel.

  “I do,” Daniel said, raised his arm, and launched his final two rockets.

  Both hit Michael square in the chest, knocking him away from Daniel. The concussion of the explosion knocked Daniel flat on the ground, but not before he saw Michael’s armor blow apart.

  As the ringing in his ears began to fade, Daniel became aware of the sound of cheering human voices, coming from the direction of the giant golden building that had until very recently been the seat of all earthly government. The angels had been defeated.

  It was over.

  The Dawn of a New…

  Mister President, they’re waiting for you.”

  Daniel Cho thanked his aide and checked his tie in the mirror one last time. Not too bad, he thought. Very presidential.

  Daniel had had a very busy six months following the fall of Heaven and the end of the Angelic Jihad. Despite his other flaws, Michael had succeeded where Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Napoleon had failed. He united the entire world under one banner, one government. When the angel died, he left a vacuum of power in his absence that threatened to plunge the world again into chaos.

  Once again, Daniel had stepped into the fray. Opposing vocal and powerful proponents of a return to nationalism, he claimed that the idea of a central world government was valid, so long as no single person ran it. Daniel conceived, championed, and eventually sold to the masses the idea of a worldwide representative democracy, patterned after the governments of the United States and Canada. The Terran Republic slowly took form, with the former sovereign nations of the world now functioning much as the states of the former United States. Each sent their representatives to a central world Congress in Geneva. A bicameral legislature took form, but they still needed an executive branch.

  Daniel won by a landslide, opposed only by power hungry niche players who failed to win the trust and confidence of the masses that Daniel enjoyed. With Jack Harris as his vice president, Daniel was elected to lead the people of Earth just five and a half months after Michael’s destruction. His term of office would be five years, with the possibility of a second five year term. After that, he would have to step down.

  Daniel wasn’t sure he was ready, but he doubted anyone sane enough to do the job correctly ever was. If he wanted the job for his own sake, he shouldn’t have been allowed to do it.

  Still, he thought a lot about those that preceded him, or tried to. Not a day went by that he didn’t think about Satan and Michael, and what they tried to accomplish.

  Satan wanted a world of utter chaos, total Darwinian survival of the fittest. Only through struggle and blood, the demon had said, could mankind strive to be something better. Mankind under his rule would have been reduced to paranoid barbarism, with only the strongest and most ruthless living to fight another day. Barbarians had little use for art or culture, and under Satan most of the finer aspects of humanity, the things that separate humans from animals, would have disappeared.

  Michael, on the other hand, put a great deal of emphasis on civilization, cooperating with others instead of fighting them. Howev
er, the angel also took it too far. Michael decided to strengthen the human race by breeding out the qualities he arbitrarily decided were unfit. While his ideals seemed nobler on the surface, Heaven quickly deteriorated into a sterile, merciless institution, no better than a thousand dictators throughout the history of mankind. Pure, unquestioned order was no better than pure chaos.

  Still, Daniel thought, in their own ways, each had humanity’s best interests at heart. Both sought to improve and better the human race. Angel and Demon both wanted the same thing: the continued existence and improvement of humanity.

  The very same goal which Daniel now faced.

  Daniel turned away from the mirror and walked out the door. It was a sizable walk to the outdoor display stand where he was to give his inauguration speech. Several aides had offered to write a speech for him, but he preferred to “wing it”, speaking from the heart. He still had no idea what he was going to say. Flanked by security men, Daniel huffed up the stairs to the walkway that led to the display stand. He was still getting used to the Swiss mountain air in Geneva.

  Over the last month or so, Daniel had begun to understand his two immortal foes a little better, and he developed a growing understanding of where they went wrong. Both Satan and Michael had valid philosophies, on the surface. Satan was right; humanity had made its greatest advancements in times of great stress. Michael was also right; it was order and community that made humans people instead of animals.

  The problem was that each went too far. Too much of anything is never a good idea, Daniel mused. The angels and demons lacked balance.

  Balance had become a very important concept to Daniel recently, so much so that he decided to make the symbol of the Terran Republic the Tai Chi Tu, the Chinese Yin and Yang symbol. Two opposing forces, each containing the seed of the other, in perfect balance. Light and darkness. Activity and rest. Order and Chaos.