“I can disinfect it,” she said, placing her bag on the hood and fishing out a steel flask. “Vodka should do the trick.”
“You got a whole bar in there?”
“I wish,” she said, pulling out a couple of small rectangular strips. “A Bloody Mary would be exactly the right drink for the apocalypse, but didn’t pack any tomato juice. Fortunately, I do have a first aid kit.” She produced a roll of gauze. “I keep this stuff handy. I fall down a lot.”
I offered her my hand. She dabbed my wounds with gauze doused in vodka. It stung like hell.
As she bandaged me, Jude tried to stand, but fell onto his hands and knees, his legs still rubbery.
“Stay down,” I growled.
“It’s the whore who will fall!” Jude cried, lisping through loose teeth. “Repent! The hour of judgment is at hand!”
“If he were stalking me, I’d drink too,” I said.
“Don’t give him credit for my being a lush,” she said. “I started drinking before I even made that first video. I was just good at hiding it.”
“What’s his problem with you?”
She shook her head. “He blames me for his daughter’s death.”
“Murderer!” shouted Jude.
“Apparently, she got knocked up when she was thirteen, and there’s not a lot of places to get a legal abortion in Texas. She’d heard the old wives tale that, if you throw yourself down stairs, you lose the baby. She broke her neck.”
“Why’s that your fault?”
“Apparently, the girl was kind of a fan. When they found her body, Mystery was playing on her headphones.”
Mystery was Baby’s debut album.
As she finished my hand, she asked, “Want to know why I named the album Mystery?”
“Not that I don’t want to talk about anything you’d like, but right now our priority should be to find someplace safe.”
“Safe?” She shook her head. “It’s Judgment Day. There’s no safe.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I said. “There has to be some rational explanation.”
“Even for that?” She pointed over my shoulder.
I turned to find an army of knights on horseback galloping across the sky. Maybe horseback isn’t the right word, since the steeds had the heads of lions and tails like scorpions. They raced among the clouds in eerie silence, their flaming hooves finding purchase on thin air. Black armor encased the knights, who carried long lances that crackled with internal lightning.
“Take me!” Jude shouted, rising to his feet, lifting his arms. “Take me!”
One of the riders heard Jude and peeled away from his fellow riders. He landed with a thunderous boom at the far end of the street, throwing up a pillar of smoke as he gouged a crater in the asphalt. The shock wave knocked me from my feet. I tried to get up, but the ground kept shaking as the monstrous steed thundered toward the preacher.
From nowhere, the reporter, Carrick, leapt into the path of the monster, camera in hand, snapping shots like crazy. He looked prepared to jump aside at the last second but the beast was faster than it looked. I blinked, and suddenly Carrick was impaled on the knight’s lance. The lion beast paused for a second to shake the corpse free. The, the knight turned its gaze toward Jude.
The preacher’s shouts trailed off as the knight lowered his lance, aiming it straight toward Jude’s heart. His face went pale as the monster steed galloped forward once more. Jude might have been crazy, but even he could see the thing wasn’t coming to save him, but to kill him.
“Run, you moron!” Baby shouted.
That sounded like excellent advice, so I pulled myself back into the car. I turned around to make sure Baby was in the back seat. She wasn’t. She was running toward Jude.
“Snap out of it!” she screamed, grabbing the preacher by his arm. From where I sat, it looked like they’d both be trampled. The lion-thing was the size of a rhino.
Cursing my own stupidity, I threw the Cutlass into drive and stomped the accelerator, aiming for a collision course with the onrushing beast. Instead, the thing leapt onto the hood of my station wagon, killing my car. I slammed into the steering wheel.
The beast flew over the roof. Behind me, I heard Baby scream.
Then, I heard her cheer.
I twisted to see what was going on, wincing. The steering wheel hadn’t done my ribs any favors. The rhino-sized steed was on its side, its severed head a good ten feet distant from its body. The black rider, at least ten feet tall, had drawn a sword and was hacking at what could only be described as a demon with a pitchfork.
I pushed open the car door and managed to drag myself out. The demon looked female, with long black hair and porn-star breasts, though her feminine traits were matched by an equally impressive length of male genitalia. She was no taller than Baby, but leathery bat wings at least thirty feet long jutted from between her shoulder blades. A black, scaly tail, thick as an anaconda, snaked from her lower back. With a laugh, she used her tail to jerk the knight from his feet, then buried her pitchfork in his torso. The thing disintegrated into a swarm of black flies.
Baby ran up to the demon, lifting her hand to give a high-five. “Way to kick ass!”
“199,999,999 to go,” the demon said.
“Why?” Jude said with a sob, dropping to his knees. “Why wasn’t I taken?”
“Idiot,” the demon said. “You weren’t good enough.”
I limped forward, not fully convinced of my sanity. “What’s going on?”
“Really?” the demon asked. “You don’t know?”
“Vile succubus,” Jude said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You’re a demon, come to drag our filthy souls to Hell.”
“Demon? I’m not one of those saps.”
“You’re not a demon?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m an independent angel. My real name is seventeen syllables long and would rupture your eardrums, but my friends call me Halo. You must be Dan.”
I wasn’t sure what was more disturbing, that I was face to face with a supernatural being, or that she knew my name. I couldn’t do anything but stare at her.
“An angel?” asked Jude, who evidently had more of his wits at the moment than I did. “Then… I am going to heaven?”
“Yeah, no. I’m not that kind of angel.”
“You’re a fallen angel?” asked Jude.
“There was no falling involved. I walked out.”
“Don’t be so insulting, asshole,” Baby said to Jude. “She just saved your hide. That thing,” she pointed at the swarming flies, “was an angel. One of two-hundred million spreading across the globe, charged with killing a third of mankind.”
“What?” I asked.
“The seven seals have been broken,” said Halo. “The Lamb has returned to Judah and now walks across the ocean for his final battle with Babylon.”
“What?” I asked again.
Halo looked puzzled. “How can you not know what’s been going on? God’s like the Riddler. He spells out his crimes in advance. The world’s had 2000 years to get ready. What the hell do they teach in school these days?”
“They pollute innocent minds with lies of evolution!” said Jude, clenching his fists.
“That’s still at thing?” asked Halo.
I looked back at the bloody sky.
“So…that Bible stuff…it’s real? Shouldn’t we…I dunno, find someplace safe to—”
“The great day of his wrath is come; who shall be able to stand?” Jude said.
“What he said,” said Halo. “We need to get someplace a whole lot more dangerous if we want to have a chance. Let’s hope your sister’s ready.”
“I’m getting there,” said Baby, tilting back the vodka. She belched and wiped her lips. “Can we loot a liquor store or something?”
“Ready for what?” I asked. “Why are you being so cryptic?”
“Reality is cryptic,” said Halo.
“This isn’t the first time Halo and I have met,” said
Baby. “She’s been giving me career advice for a while now.”
~
I’m no Bible scholar, and Halo and Baby took all of two minutes to explain the entire Book of Revelations to me, so if some of this gets muddled, I’m sorry. The takeaway is that Judgment Day begins when a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes is sacrificed and found worthy of judging the world. The sacrificed Lamb then opens a book that’s held shut by seven seals. With each seal that opens, he unleashes various horrors upon the earth. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse aren’t just something heavy metal bands put on album covers. Instead, they’re set loose to punish a wicked world, along with an army of two hundred million angels charged with killing a third of mankind.
“That’s what’s happening now,” said Baby.
“You’re telling me two billion people are being slaughtered while we’re standing here?” I asked, incredulous.
“That’s more or less accurate,” said Halo.
“Why is there wiggle room?”
“You noticed the sky’s changed to blood?”
“Kinda caught my attention, yeah.”
“We’re not in the material world any more. The Lamb has shifted the globe into the spiritual realm. Here, the physical laws are subservient to symbolism and faith. It’s a world of waking dreams. People believe they’re being killed, so they’re dead, at least until they wake.”
“This is just a dream?” I asked. “Then what’s the problem?”
“As long as we’re here, there’s no waking. The Lamb will keep us here for all eternity if we let him.”
“Let him? We have a say in the matter?”
“With this, yes,” said Halo, holding out a small wooden chest, just big enough to hold an egg. “Open it.”
I took the box. It wasn’t very heavy. The wood was fine grained, etched with stars and swirls, which were coated with dust. The clasp was simple, made of brass. I flipped it open and looked inside.
“A golf ball?” I asked, rolling the contents into my hand. It was a smooth white stone, maybe marble. It was warm to the touch. There was a single thin braid of black hair wound around it.
“That’s the stone that killed Goliath,” said Halo.
“Whoa,” said Baby, leaning in for a closer look. “You’ve got the best toys.”
“You know how the Old Testament God was a bully?” asked Halo. “A sadist who slaughtered the firstborn children of Egypt? Who blasted Sodom and Gomorrah to the gravel because he disapproved of how the residents used of their genitals? The maniac who drowned the whole fucking world in a fit of spite?”
“A God of righteous vengeance,” Jude murmured.
“Then, you notice that around the time David became king, God mellowed out? No more smite-fests?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“The mellowing out wasn’t voluntary,” said Halo. “When David fought Goliath, God placed the spirit of his wrath into this tiny stone. The pebble punched a nice, clean hole through Goliath, but some buddies and I were waiting on the other side. We grabbed the stone before it hit the ground and encircled the rock with a braid woven from the hair of a fetus, trapping this aspect of God inside.”
“And that works why?”
“Because God can’t hurt you if you’re sinless, and original sin doesn’t pass into a person until they’re born. The hair holds him as securely as a chain. But, even if the wrath can’t escape, this is still one bad-ass pebble. It might be the only thing in the world that can kill the Lamb.”
“If God’s wrath is trapped inside, why is the Lamb dangerous?”
“The Lamb is the manifestation of God’s judgment, not his anger. It’s a fine distinction, but the end result is still destruction.”
“So…we’re going to put the stone into a slingshot and throw it at the Lamb?”
“I’m thinking crossbow,” said Halo. “I’ve got a modified bolt with a little cage to hold the stone.”
“Wouldn’t a rifle be better?”
“We debated using a musket, but worry that might destroy the hair. Fortunately, Baby assures me you’re good with a crossbow.”
“I am?”
“You’re not?” asked Baby. “Didn’t Pop-Pop used to take you hunting with one?”
I shook my head. “He used to hunt during bow season, but the only thing I ever shot was a straw target out behind the barn.”
“How was your aim?” asked Halo.
“I mean, not terrible, but… look, why can’t you take the shot?”
“Even with the hair around it, we free angels are sensitive to the power radiating from the stone. It’s only safe for me to touch the gopherwood case. If I tried to use it as a weapon, I’d be dead before I had time to pull the trigger.”
“So…you want me to kill…”
“The Lamb of God,” said Baby.
“Is that…is that even…remotely ethical?”
“It’s always ethical to protect yourself from a bully,” said Halo.
“But…isn’t this bully…God?”
“An aspect of God, yes.”
“Don’t let that intimidate you,” said Baby.
“I’m intimidated as hell.”
“If you don’t help, he’s going to kill me,” said Baby. “And I don’t mean as one of the faceless billions the angels are going to slaughter. I mean he’s going to rip me limb from limb and personally toss me into the fiery pits of hell.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the current manifestation of Babylon.”
Seeing the confusion in my face, Halo jumped in. “The Lamb’s judgment ends in a final battle with a woman known as Babylon the Great. She’s the last embodiment of the goddess Ashera, once worshiped throughout the Middle East. She was a goddess of female sexuality, of life and fertility, the embodiment of sexual freedom. Then a band of zealots with a commitment to patriarchy and strong opinions about who should sleep with whom came out of the desert carrying an ark filled with an angry God and wiped out all the tribes that worshipped Ashera.”
“But,” said Baby, “as long as men worship female sexuality, the worship of Ashera continues, even if almost no one knows her name.”
“A lot of men lust after your sister,” said Halo. “Basically, anytime a man downloads nude pictures of Baby, he’s worshipping her, imbuing her with spiritual energy, making a rival god of her.”
“And God is jealous,” said Baby.
“That’s why the Lamb’s heading for New York,” said Halo.
“To find Baby?”
“Because New York harbor is where the most famous idol of Ashera is located.”
“It can’t be that famous. I’ve never heard of it,” I said.
“To the Roman’s, Ashera was worshipped as Libertas,” said Halo.
I was still confused, so Baby spelled things out. “The Statue of Liberty. He’s coming to tear down the Statue of Liberty. And when he gets there, I’m going to be inside.” She tilted back the flask, frowning to find it empty. “And, I’d like to be a lot drunker.”
~
Which brings me back to my perch atop the Statue of Liberty. Did I mention it’s raining blood? And that I’m having to listen to my sister engaging in loud sex in the room below, losing her virginity to a creep like Jude Barnes? News that Baby was a still a virgin took me by surprise. Apparently, by maintaining her virginity, she’s been able to store all the accumulated sexual energy of the mobs who pay tribute to her. It seems that Halo explained all this stuff to her when Baby was still fourteen, when Halo discovered my sister the same way the rest of the world did, via YouTube. Record producers saw a future superstar. Halo saw a goddess waiting to blossom. As to why Jude is her partner, I’m a little fuzzy. Maybe the preacher was the nearest warm male body she wasn’t related to. As to why Jude agreed, I suspect he’s been lusting after Baby all along. Once he learned he hadn’t been raptured, he didn’t have any reason not to give in to his baser instincts.
The Lamb strides closer and keeps getting big
ger. I thought I’d be shooting more or less on the level of his eyes, but I’ll be shooting almost straight up. I’m holding out to the last second. I’ve only got one shot.
He’s close enough I can smell those prehensile entrails he’s waving. I pull the trigger.
The bolt is instantly caught by the wind. It’s not only going to miss the eyes, it’s not going to hit at all. Suddenly, Halo’s dark wings unfold from below and she launches herself at the falling bolt. The second her fingers wrap around the shaft she screams. Flames wreath her as she falls from the sky, the bolt clasped against her breasts. The Lamb kicks out with one his cloven hooves, catching Lady Liberty dead center of her chest. There’s a rending sound as the statue twists on its pedestal. I’m flying through the air, buffeted by the storm, dropping toward the raging waves.
Then Liberty drops the tablet she carries and stretches her arm toward me. Giant green fingers gingerly pluck me from the air as the statue lands feet first in water that, for her, is only knee deep. The statue’s features shift from a stoic stare to a sly grin.
The torch in her other hand flickers, then flares into a blinding light. She rises from her crouch, thrusting the white blaze into the Lamb’s dangling entrails. There’s a horrible sizzling sound and the smell of burnt meat as she stands on tiptoe to twist the torch in the Lamb’s guts. The big guy roars. He grabs her by the crown and lifts her as easily as I could lift a toddler. As she rises, the hand that holds me passes near the now vacant base of the statue and she drops me. I land without breaking my legs, but the whole base is slick with the oily blood. I lose my footing and slide toward the edge before my fingernails find purchase.
Above me, the Lamb holds Liberty above his head with both hands. He roars again and throws her toward the city. She spins head over heels for half a mile before crashing into a skyscraper. Every window in the building shatters as she slides down the face, landing with her limbs limp, the torch guttering in her lap. Her face twists. At first, I think it’s a look of pain, but then she raises her fist and shouts, with a voice like a thousand megaphones, “That all you got?”
The Lamb stomps across the waves in pursuit. She aims her torch and blasts him with a beam of light. By the time he reaches her, his wooly coat has caught fire, but it doesn’t slow him. He grabs her by the throat and slams her into a nearby building. When she keeps fighting, he slams her again, and the whole skyscraper twists and topples.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 35
