by Dick Denny
“Do you have a plan, Nick?” Gretchen turned her large, liquid, and eternally dark eyes to me.
I met them and tried to memorize every detail. If I was going to cast into Hell for trying to stop the end of the fucking world, I might as well do it with as many details of Gretchen in my head as I could.
Because, I figured anyway, that was the point, wasn’t it? There was the big story and the small story. Any asshole who said he was trying to save the world for the world’s sake, in my opinion, was at worst a lying piece of shit; at best they were a damned moron.
Hemingway said, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for” in the classic For Whom The Bell Tolls. I think the only way he was right was dependent on your definition of “the world.”
Most people don’t matter. They exist just as cells in the organism of greater humanity. At best they live, reproduce, and die. At worst they turn cancerous and fuck up bits of the metaphor. If the time I spent in Iraq and Afghanistan taught me anything it’s that some men’s only purpose is to deserve to get killed. Some people’s only real purpose seemed to be existing just to be put down.
Most people didn’t do a damned thing for the world. Some made the world worse. Some made the world better by what they brought to it. Some, me maybe, made the world better by what we took out of it.
The faux lightning strikes kept flashing behind us as we drove out of the city. I took my phone and punched in a text message that was either going to be the most brilliant thing I ever cooked up, or the world was going to end in a handful of hours. I figured there wasn’t going to be a lot of middle ground today.
Gretchen glanced at me curiously but she left the obvious question unasked.
I knew Uriel was after us and I knew I couldn’t lead her to anyone she could use against me as collateral. That was what sucked. If she were just coming after me that would be one thing. An enemy you could trust to come after you was something you could respect. I didn’t trust Uriel to play the game fair. She already proved she’d come after me through the people I cared about. I couldn’t let that happen again, even if I needed help.
It should have been an hour's drive out of town. I made it in less than half that in the Ferrari. We pulled off the interstate and whipped around the curves of back roads for another few minutes before I pulled over on the bridge over the gorge. A river I couldn’t remember the name of flowed quietly several hundred feet down. It was a pretty view. You could see in the mountains where the deciduous oak forest transitioned into coniferous spruce-fir forest. It was a wild verdant Heaven/Hell-scape depending on your sensibilities.
“We never went camping,” I said quietly as I looked over the view.
“I’ve never been camping,” Gretchen confessed with the appropriate amount of shame for an admission like that.
“There’s not a lot better than the combination of a campfire, cool night, and a flask of Scotch.” I smiled over to her.
She arched her eyebrows. “Oh? What is?”
I shrugged. “The view of your wing tattoos as you got your arms out wide while you’re bouncing on…”
She punched my arm. “Jerk.” But she smiled.
In the quiet, I heard the sound of the Ducati engine before we saw her come around the bend and onto the bridge. Gretchen and I walked back to the Ferrari and took up our HK UMPs. She extended the folding stock and held it professionally to her shoulder. But the Spear of Destiny was already extended and laid strategically atop her left foot with a nearly perfect balance.
I kept the stock closed and held it like a giant pistol in my left hand. I felt the rage welling and I let it flow into my right hand. The Fiery Sword slowly emerged in my grip. This time it appeared as a smoothly curved katana, but too short to be a traditional katana. It took me a minute to recognize it as the blade of Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, the sword from Highlander.
Gretchen smiled approvingly. “Nice.”
“Just works out sometimes.” If Uriel was about to kill me, going down with Gretchen’s eyes in my mind wasn’t that bad.
“You know, if that sword was supposed to be fifteen-hundred years old, how come the ivory in the handle wasn’t yellowed all to crap?” she asked as Uriel began to slow before us.
“Not now, Gretchen,” I chided her softly as Uriel pulled to a stop about twenty-five feet short of the two of us.
It was a very non-dramatic stop. She lowered the kickstand and slung her leg over the side. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, but her hair was pulled back in such tight a bun that it might as well have been a helmet. Her boots, with a very impractical six-inch heel, clicked with each slow, molasses-like step toward us.
“I am here,” she slowly informed us, “for the Father’s Wrath.” Her eyes flickered over the Spear laying nearly balanced on Gretchen’s combat boot. “I’ll take that as well.”
“Lady,” I said—God I sounded annoyed and tired.“We’re here for shit that has fuck and all to do with you. So just make life easy, hop on your little toy bike, and scram.”
She lethargically drew her long, thin rapier from thin air. It reminded me of the sword Inigo Montoya used to fight the six-fingered man, but nowhere near as pretty. But maybe that was because it was about to be aimed at Gretchen and me.
She started stepping forward; when she was about ten feet away Gretchen asked, “Now?”
“Yeah.” So, the commonly given definition of insanity is doing the same shit over and over and expecting different outcomes. I’d emptied an entire mag of 10mm at full auto into Zadkiel and it’d done the sum total of fuck and all. Dunno why we thought it would be different this time, but Gretchen and I gave it the old college try.
Our HK UMPs loosed gouts of flame as we sprayed cones of hot copper jacketed lead into the torso of the ginger archangel. Uriel staggered a bit, then continued forward. There were holes all over her red leather jacket, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage. Even in the horrific realization that we were probably about to die and the simple sheer exhaustion that was weighing on me, it couldn’t be denied that shooting firearms full auto was fun.
I dropped my sub-machine gun and lunged forward slashing with the Fiery Katana. Uriel sidestepped me and slashed. My momentum carried me past her and I barely got around to block her rapier slash with my Katana. The good news was this put the annoying and powerful ginger between Gretchen and me.
I saw Uriel grimace as I heard the sound of rapid-fire .357 rounds. Gretchen was behind her, six-shooter in hand fanning the hammer. I didn’t slash but thrust. As the last round punched into the back of the archangel’s shoulders she barely turned my Blade. But she didn’t turn it enough. The Blade ripped through her jacket and cut a gash into her upper arm. Instead of blood, light sprayed from the wound.
Uriel reached out with her wounded arm and grabbed me by the collar and slung me. My feet came off the ground and I went a couple of feet through the air before hitting the ground. I heard the slower, more aimed fire of Gretchen’s second six-shooter, but that didn’t stop Uriel from dropping her knees over my shoulders and dropping onto my chest. One of her idiotic heels pinning my right wrist down made the most powerful weapon in the universe impotent. Her rapier transformed into the type of dagger you’d expect a wack job Aztec priest to use to hack someone’s heart out, except, you know, made of freaking light.
I knew that life, what little left there was going to be of it, was going to suck.
She screamed and raised the dagger high in both hands, ignoring Gretchen off to the side. I saw the horror in Gretchen’s eyes. I probably should have said something before then, probably should have said something then, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty, right?
Then I heard the tires screech and a blue Nissan Rogue slide to a halt next to Uriel and me, the open passenger side window facing us. She looked over just in time for the barrel of the Remington 870 pump shotgun to poke out the open window. She was close enough that the gout of flame from the end of the barrel smacked her in the gob as the light
field game load slammed into her face. Even as the roar of the shotgun echoed in my ear Uriel fell from where she was squatting on me and bumped into the railing of the bridge.
I watched as Gretchen kicked the Spear up into her hands and spin it, slamming the shaft into Uriel’s shoulders. As Gretchen drew it back the blade cut into the jacket, leaving a long slice that bled light. Uriel tried to get her dagger around but couldn’t before Gretchen stabbed. The Spear of Destiny punched into Uriel’s side under her left arm. Light sprayed as bright and rapid as a strobe light a psychopath would use to try and kill a group of epileptic kids.
Gretchen leaned into the shaft and pushed the large Spear tip deeper into the wound. Uriel screamed; light burned from her eyes, her mouth, her ears. Gretchen screamed as she drove the Spear deeper.
Then, Uriel exploded in a flash.
Gretchen, having leaned hard on the shaft of the Spear, fell, barely bracing and catching herself on her forearms.
Where Uriel had been now just sat a spinning ring of gold. The halo spun like a coin before finally wobbling and doing its best impression of a hula hoop coming to rest.
I pulled myself to my feet then reached down for Gretchen. Her hand felt good in mine as I pulled her to her feet.
I smiled and slid my arm around Gretchen, giving her a squeeze. I heard the car door behind me, the engine still running, and I turned my head seeing the towhead of a man standing as he cradled his shotgun in his hands and a very concerned look on his face.
Even with the anxious look, he sounded as unflappably calm as he always did. “Tell me I didn’t just shoot some lady in the face for no good reason.”
As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t help but laugh. Gretchen did, too, then looked up with a beaming smile and laughed. “Phil the Destroyer for the win!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Streets of Fire…
“Bat Outta Hell” Meatloaf
Our business with Phil didn’t last too terribly long. That was because the legal request wasn’t too terribly complicated and because Phil was an amazingly thorough and professional dude. The longest bit was the ever-present speech I’m not your lawyer, you’re not paying me, this advice isn’t sanctioned by any authority, this isn’t my field, blah blah blah. And even though he said all that, he still gave me the advice I needed and the help I had to have. That’s the guy that Phil the Destroyer was. A guy who would tell you to turn yourself into the cops, but then tell you how to steal his car and give you a twenty-four-hour head start with the cops.
He gave me the envelope I needed, and then Gretchen and I followed him to a nondescript shotgun house occupied by Jeanette Fitzgerald, her husband Lloyd, and their son Curtis. Jeanette and Lloyd were both in their eighties; Curtis was in his fifties and had never lived anywhere but his parents’ basement. Jeanette was sweet, grandmotherly, and wore a floral print dress and 1950s librarian glasses. Lloyd was the old-man skinny that came with once having been built like a Greek statue but weathered by age. His slacks were well pressed and his collared polo shirt was obviously thirty years old, but obviously well mended. There was a dignity to Jeanette and Lloyd. Curtis was just a piece of shit.
Phil laid the papers out on Jeanette’s dining room table. I signed them, Lloyd and Curtis witnessed them, and Phil signed off as the person who prepared it. Then Jeanette came in with her stamp and pen and notarized it all. There were three copies in all. I folded one up and put it in a letter envelope and slid it in the flask pocket of my jacket with the flask. I gave the second to Gretchen. The third I gave to Phil.
I hugged Jeanette, shook hands with Lloyd, and ignored Curtis before Gretchen, Phil and I stepped outside.
“I’m not real sure what’s going on here, Nick. And that,” Phil said gesturing to my pocket, “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Will it stand up in court?” I asked with all seriousness.
Phil nodded. “Where the law can apply, yes.”
“Then it will do.” I held out my hand and we shook. “Give my best to the girls, okay? And do me a favor, go slap happy with treats today.”
“Okay?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” I said.
“It sounds certifiably crazy,” smiled Gretchen.
“But the world might end in the next hour and a half,” I finished, proving Gretchen right.
Phil studied the two of us for a second. “Well,” he said slowly, “if it doesn’t end we should get dinner tomorrow.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Gretchen’s matched mine. That was Phil the Destroyer in a nutshell. Unflappable, calm, and positive. He was a guy who would have looked at the Great Flood as a simple yet interesting engineering problem. This was a guy who went to church on Sunday but saw the world for what it was: no worse and no better. Most people were shit, but then there were Phil and Tessa and their kids.
I hugged him. A guy who heard the world was ending didn’t question, still planned for tomorrow, and kept on keeping on. I’ve never deserved friends with that amount of quality.
Gretchen and I parted ways with Phil and climbed back in the Ferrari. I started driving back into town. We kept seeing the flashes from the sky. They were coming with more intensity and regularity now. Yet no one else seemed to be noticing. It seemed like one of those things people would pull over to the side of the road to watch, but no one was. Maybe Gretchen and I noticed because we’d been around enough weird shit we’d become immune to the filter that got tossed over reality?
“Are you planning what I think you’re planning?” Gretchen asked quietly as 102.9 FM Panther Radio, the REAL ROCK, played in the background. It was the beginning of Iron Maiden's Run To The Hills, which at the moment didn’t seem like very bad advice.
But I told her it didn’t take long because it wasn’t a complicated or great plan. Gambit might have been a better definition. I told her my thought process and her idiotically important part in it. We were pulling back into the city as I looked over into her dark eyes. “So, whatcha think?”
Gretchen smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly happy one. “I’ve heard worse plans, I guess.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked as I yawned into the back of my sleeve. “Such as?”
“You could be going to have a sledgehammer fight with Raven Shaddock,” she offered.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh, then, “but you're too hot to be McCoy and you’re too badass to be Ellen Aim so that simile kinda falls apart, doesn’t it?”
A laugh escaped her lips. “Yeah, you’re cooler than Michael Paré in a duster and a Marlin 30-30.”
I chuckled. “Tonight is what it means to be young, I reckon.”
She reached up and pushed her raven waves back behind her ears. “I don’t feel particularly young right now.”
“Add sixteen years and two war zones to that and you know what I’m sucking up right now.”
Her cheeks lifted as she smiled. “Well, you wear it well.”
“Fucking liar.”
She laughed. More flashes scarred the sky. “This is really happening, isn’t it?” Her voice was soft. I heard the fear there, but it didn’t rule her. It was the fear I felt every time I’d stepped out the door to do my job as a Paratrooper, counting to four as I fell from a high-performance aircraft, waiting for the opening shock of the parachute. Knowing if I got through One Thousand, Two Thousand, Three Thousand, Four Thousand, and didn’t feel the opening shock of the opening chute, I had to pull my reserve. Knowing that if the reserve didn’t work I had the rest of my life to fix it. She felt the fear, but it didn’t rule her. It was something to be more proud of than not being afraid at all. It was the first time I’d ever really heard it in her voice. I loved her for it.
Gretchen reached behind the driver's seat and pulled out a bag she’d put there earlier. She set the bag on the floor between her ankles, then reached over and started pulling off my belt. I didn’t stop her, but I did shoot her a confused look. As she started putting it back on me
as I drove—I would shift to help her—she threaded on two, black leather double mag holders. Putting four Wilson Combat eight-round .45ACP mags on my hips, two to the left, and two to the right. She unbuckled me and tugged at my jacket and helped me get it off. Then she took off my underarm holster. She tugged the OD green Springfield 1911 from the holster and set it in her lap as she threw the rig behind the passenger seat. Some holstered the pistol in a rig she pulled out of the bag and helped me put back on. I now had my 1911 under my left arm and Jammer’s nickel-plated Kimber 1911 under my right arm. I got my jacket back on and my seat belt buckled back in.
It definitely seemed like if I was going out Gretchen wanted me going out swinging. And if that’s the way it was, I figured we might as well go all out. I started driving toward the storage place we’d inherited from Jammer.
As I drove Gretchen got changed right there in the passenger seat. It was distracting but who would mind? She changed into a gray tank top, black yoga pants, her pouch belt with pistol holsters, her jungle boots, and the half-jacket she wore the day we met. She shoved the empty bag back behind my seat as I pulled into the storage place. The gate code was 80085: BOOBS. The padlock on the rolling doors had the combination 6969; I shouldn’t have to explain that one.
Inside there were weapons placed up on pegs on the walls. I took down the M-60 and loaded it with a four hundred-round belt and fed the dangling excess into a satchel. Gretchen took down the AA-12 and loaded a twenty-round drum of double-ought buckshot. She then pulled down the sawed-off, pistol-gripped double-barrel shotgun she’d carried when we’d visited Peaches, what felt like a lifetime ago. She loaded it with shells from a box of Dragons Breath that set on a workbench. Instead of loading the weapons into the Ferrari, I took the keys off another peg.
Sitting there in the storage space was the coolest thing Jammer had ever owned, legal or illegal. A black van with a red stripe and spoiler. He’d juiced the engine with nitrous oxide and he’d lined the interior with Kevlar sheets that would at least stop most pistol rounds. He’d never used it because no situation had ever felt “cool enough” in his opinion. But it was the end of the world. So we started loading our weapons into Jammer’s replica of the A-Team van.
