“So you see,” Izbazel was saying, “We’re the good guys here.”
“How do you figure?” Christine asked.
“No Antichrist, no Apocalypse. Having an Apocalypse without the Antichrist is like… help me out here, Gamaliel.”
Gamaliel started, “It’s like…”
“The King and I without Yul Brynner,” Mercury said.
Izbazel’s brow furrowed. “Hasn’t Yul Brynner been dead since like…”
“1985,” Christine said. “I tried to tell him. So you want to
kill –”
“Eliminate a key component of the Apocalypse, yes,” said Izbazel.
Karl looked long and hard at Izbazel, then said, “Are you gonna eat those fries? Did you know that I can eat here for free? You guys have to pay, though.”
“He is a dickweed,” muttered Mercury.
Christine said, “You can’t just kill –”
“Eliminate,” said Izbazel. “And why not? Save millions of lives by eliminating one annoying little…”
“Dickweed,” said Mercury. “Can we settle on ‘dickweed’?”
Karl interjected, “Who did you say you guys were again?”
Izbazel spoke up. “We’re from the production company. We want to give you a cameo in the next Charlie Nyx movie.”
“How much?” Karl said, his mouth full of fries.
“I’m sorry?” Izbazel said.
“How much do I get? I don’t do this stuff for free, you know. Why didn’t you guys get more ketchup? Nobody ever gets enough ketchup.”
“Don’t worry, Karl,” said Izbazel. “You’ll be taken care of.”
Christine had a bad feeling about Izbazel. He was smaller than Mercury and Gamaliel, and he had a grating voice and a nervous, fidgety way about him. He reminded Christine of the sort of door-to-door salesman who had a way of hinting not very subtly that if nobody bought the remarkable cleaning products he was selling, he might have to return to his career of stealing electronics from the homes in the neighborhood.
She was less certain what to make of Gamaliel. He was brawny and handsome, and had the easy-going way of the high school football star who hadn’t yet learned that his ability to throw a perfect touchdown pass was in no way going to translate into anything remotely useful in the real world. He seemed likeable enough, but there was something about him she didn’t quite trust either. Part of what troubled her was that while Izbazel seemed to be the one calling the shots, she couldn’t see Gamaliel falling for his sales pitch.
“How many of you are there?” asked Mercury.
Gamaliel smiled, revealing rows of perfectly formed, brilliantly white teeth. “Enough to throw a wrench into the SPAM.”
“Is that movie lingo?” asked Karl. “You know what I’ve always wondered? What’s a ‘grip’? And what’s the difference between a ‘grip’ and a ‘key grip’?”
“On whose authority are you acting?” Mercury asked.
Gamaliel glanced at Izbazel, who remained stony faced. Gamaliel shrugged. “Best not to say at this point.”
Christine said, “So you guys are what are known as…”
“Fallen angels, yes,” said Gamaliel. “Although I’m not certain the paperwork has gone through.” He glanced at Izbazel, who shrugged.
Izbazel added, “We prefer the term ‘free spirits,’ of course. ‘Fallen’ makes it sound like we’re just clumsy. I mean, it’s not like we tripped or something. ‘Hello, what’s this? Someone needs to do something about that little rise in the floor there.’ It takes some chutzpah to declare your independence from the Heavenly bureaucracy.”
Gamaliel continued, “Anyway, we’ll definitely be designated as Fallen if we don’t check in soon. As will your pal here, by the way. You might as well join us, Merc. You’re going on the list either way.”
“I’m waiting to see how the first round draft picks go before I pick a team,” said Mercury.
“In any case,” Gamaliel explained to Christine, “Being a fallen angel isn’t as ominous as it sounds. It’s like when you got labeled ‘impertinent’ in fourth grade.
Christine’s jaw dropped. “How the hell…?”
“P.A.I.” said Mercury. “It’s all in the dossier.”
“Holy hell,” said Christine. “How did I get sucked into all this?”
“Not really sure,” said Gamaliel. “The P.A.I. designations are made at a pretty high level. Above our pay grade, as it were.”
Christine shook her head. “So let me get this straight: God tells you it’s time for the Apocalypse, and you decide to take it upon yourself to stop it?”
“Well,” said Gamaliel. “First of all, it’s not like God held a press conference for all the angels. There’s quite a layer of bureaucracy between us and God.”
“But… you’ve seen Him?”
“Oh, of course I’ve seen Him. Old guy, long flowing beard. Uncanny resemblance to Charlton Heston.”
“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” said Christine.
“Do you even believe in God, Christine?” asked Gamaliel.
“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure.”
“Well then, I’m not entirely certain I’ve seen Him,” said Gamaliel. “Fair enough?”
“But how can you not be certain whether you’ve seen God? Either you have or you haven’t.”
“I would agree,” said Gamaliel. “Either I have or I haven’t.”
“So… which is it?”
“Not sure. How would I know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, God isn’t a koala bear.”
“I’m sorry?”
Gamaliel said, “It’s not like I can go down to the God exhibit at the Heaven Zoo and snap pictures of God munching on eucalyptus leaves, and say to myself, ‘Yep, that’s God alright, because it says so right there on the plaque.’ You mortals think that once you step outside the Mundane, everything is crystal clear. It’s true that some things become clearer, but whole new levels of ambiguity open up as well.”
“So… angels are just as confused as human beings are?”
“Confused? Well, I suppose so. But we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things.”
“Okay, but the SPAM, it presumably comes down from God Himself?”
“Presumably,” said Gamaliel.
“So is it God who’s behind this Apocalypse? Or Lucifer?”
“Both,” answered Izbazel. “The events of the Apocalypse are governed by a legal document called the Apocalypse Accord. God isn’t a direct signatory, of course. He doesn’t get involved at that level. The Accord was hammered out over several thousand years by various representatives of Heaven and Hell. And things are complicated by the fact that Lucifer isn’t the only demon with pretensions to world domination. There’s Beelzebub, for example. And Tiamat. A lot of us were actually betting on Tiamat to be the predominant demonic power. Lucifer was something of a dark horse. Hey, Mercury, didn’t you used to hang out with Tiamat back in the day?”
Mercury shrugged. If Christine didn’t know better, she’d have said he was embarrassed. “I was on her staff for a bit in the third millennium B.C. I was on the ziggurat.”
“You were on what?” said Gamaliel.
“The ziggurat. Step-pyramid. Everybody was building pyramids back then.”
“Oh yeah,” said Gamaliel. “The global pyramid race. What was that all about anyway?”
“Beats me,” said Mercury. “It was just the thing to do at the time. Nobody really put much thought into why. Pyramids were like the parachute pants of the third millennium B.C. The Egyptians schooled us all, of course.”
“Well, they did have Osiris on their team at the time.”
“Yeah,” said Mercury. “Hard to compete with that. I tried to tell Tiamat to go in a different direction. I thought domes were the way to go. But she wouldn’t listen. She just wanted to keep building taller and taller ziggurats. Well, you know how that turned out.”
“The
point is,” interjected Izbazel irritably, “Nobody fully understands the entire plan. The angels are all just acting on orders, doing their part to bring about the Apocalypse because that’s what we’ve been told to do. My feeling is that if God wants the Apocalypse to happen, He’s not going to let me stop it.”
“So you’re testing Him?” Christine asked incredulously. “You’re going to try to stop the Apocalypse and see if God lets you?”
Izbazel said, “Let’s just say that I’m tired of having my life dictated by some stupid arbitrary Schedule that I don’t even understand. Angels have better things to do than… anyway, it’s stupid and I’m sick of it.”
Christine said, “So the guy with the rifle, that was your doing?”
Gamaliel shrugged. “Danny Pilvers is an unstable individual. We may have whispered in his ear a bit. Angels can be very persuasive.”
“We try not to get involved directly in Mundane events,” said Izbazel. “We work through human agents when we can. But your little stunt back there prevented the… adjustment we were trying to make. So now we need to finish the job and get out of here, before somebody traces us and we get hit with a Class Three.”
“Just so we’re clear then,” Christine said, “None of you cares a whit about millions of people dying from plagues, famine and war. Mercury just wants to hang out like an apocalyptic tourist, and you guys want to kill an innocent person to thumb your nose at the angelic bureaucracy. Is that about right?”
“Our motives are irrelevant,” Izbazel said. “The point is that we’re trying to stop the Apocalypse. You have to admit that’s a worthwhile cause. And it certainly justifies eliminating an individual who has contributed absolutely nothing to the greater good.”
“What it comes down to,” Christine said, “Is that you want to kill an innocent person to prove a point. You don’t even know that killing him will stop the Apocalypse. You’re just guessing.”
“I gotta pee,” said Karl. “Move it.”
Karl was seated in the middle of the semi-circular booth, flanked by Gamaliel and Izbazel. Christine and Mercury were on the outside. Christine and Gamaliel stood up to let Karl out.
“It’s not that simple, Christine,” Gamaliel said. “We’ve been working on the Mundane Plane for most of the past seven thousand years, and after a while you realize the futility of trying to –”
“Hey, Karl’s on TV!” exclaimed Mercury.
A TV hanging from the ceiling in the corner was tuned to a news channel. On the screen were shaky images from someone’s camcorder, taken at the event in Lodi earlier that day. The ticker on the bottom of the screen read:
‘Antichrist’ Karl Grissom shot in the head… Location of body unknown…
The video showed Karl walking to his car, and then cut to a shot of the helmet being struck by a bullet and dropping out of sight. Then a white Camry pulled in between the camera and Karl. The rear door on the opposite side of the car opened, there was some blurry movement, and then the car screeched away. There were shots of Karl’s deserted Saturn, surrounded by police tape.
“Holy crap,” said Mercury. “They think he’s dead.”
“That’ll make this even easier,” said Izbazel. “So what do you say, Mercury? You’re not going to cause trouble for us, are you?”
“Never should have done that card trick,” Mercury muttered to himself. He looked at Izbazel. “I’d prefer to stay out of it altogether.”
“Then stay out of it,” said Izbazel. “Stay here and finish your coffee. Do whatever it is you do. We’ll take Karl off your hands.”
“He is a dickweed,” said Mercury, thoughtfully. “This isn’t going to come back to me, is it?” He was absentmindedly smearing ketchup around his plate with the long edge of a French fry.
“We never even saw you,” said Gamaliel.
Izbazel nodded. “This doesn’t concern you, Merc. You just got caught in the middle of it. You’re not supposed to have anything to do with the Antichrist in the first place. You didn’t want to be involved in the Apocalypse, and I can respect that. So stay uninvolved.”
Gamaliel said, “We’re not asking you to do anything. Just stay out of our way, and don’t make trouble for us later on. We didn’t see you, and you didn’t see us. The Antichrist got shot in that parking lot, and then somebody dumped his body in a ravine in the foothills.”
“Hmmm,” said Mercury, “Here’s the thing. There are different levels of non-involvement.” He now had a fry in each hand, pushing ketchup around his plate.
Gamaliel looked puzzled. “I don’t follow you.”
“You see,” Mercury went on, “I’m involved now, whether I like it or not. So anything that I do at this point is going to have repercussions.”
“Sure,” said Gamaliel. “But what do you mean by ‘different levels of involvement’?”
Mercury said, “Well, for example, there’s the level where I let you take Karl and give him the hole in his head he so desperately needs. That’s one possibility.”
“,” said Gamaliel.
“And then…” Mercury started. “Hey, look! I made a ketchup angel!” He seemed genuinely surprised.
The two fallen angels looked down at Mercury’s plate. He had indeed made a ketchup angel.
“Have either of you ever made a snow angel?” Mercury asked.
They shook their heads.
“Funny, isn’t it? We spend hundreds of years down here and never bother to make anything, even for fun. It’s such a human trait, wanting to make a mark on your surroundings.”
“Vanity,” said Izbazel. “Nothing lasts forever.”
“True,” said Mercury. “But I think I’d like to leave a mark before it’s over. I want to make a snow angel. Or… no, a snowman! I’ll make a snowman!”
“Folly,” said Izbazel. “Talk about something impermanent. Besides, where are you going to find snow this time of year?”
Gamaliel was still examining the ketchup angel. “It looks a little like Bamrud,” he said, cocking his head.
“Bamrud?” Mercury said.
“You remember. Cherub, worked for the M.O.C. until the Middle Ages.”
“Oh yeah! Wasn’t there some kind of scandal…?”
“They caught him skewing plague statistics. Trying to beat the spread, you know.”
“That’s right! What’s old Bammy up to these –”
“Please!” Izbazel interjected, “Can we get back to the matter at hand? Mercury, all we need from you is an assurance that you won’t interfere with our plan to eliminate the Antichrist.”
“Oh, right,” Mercury said. “As I was saying, there are different levels of non-involvement. On one level, I let you take Karl and have your way with him. Another….” Mercury sat back and smiled broadly. “Another is that I sit here talking to you about that first level, not to mention ketchup angels, just long enough for Christine to get Karl back on the interstate. That’s another possibility.”
Izbazel stood up. A white Camry peeled out of the parking lot.
“Damn you, Mercury! I told you to stay out of this!”
“I am,” said Mercury. “Completely uninvolved. You guys want cheesecake?”
“Let’s go,” barked Izbazel. He started for the door, Gamaliel following. “We’ll catch them on the bikes.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Mercury said.
“Izbazel stopped and turned, fuming. “More non-involvement, Mercury?”
“If you guys leave, I won’t have anybody to talk to. I was thinking of calling Uzziel.”
Izbazel growled, “What’s Uzziel going to do? He doesn’t have the authority to –”
“Forget it,” Gamaliel said. “He’s got us.”
“How’s that?” Izbazel asked.
“Angel Band. They’ll trace it right here. They’ll be on us in seconds. Of course,” Gamaliel said, looking sideways at Mercury, “they’ll get him too.”
“Yeah, they’ll get me,” Mercury said. “But where am I going to
hide when this place is gone anyway?” Mercury said. “They were always going to get me. Now or a few weeks from now, what’s the difference?”
Izbazel was furious. “So you’re going to let the Antichrist live? You’re just going to let it happen. The Apocalypse, Mercury. The end of your precious world.”
Mercury shrugged. “None of my business,” he said. “Have a seat, boys. It’s just the three of us, stuck in Lodi again.”
Gamaliel sighed. “I always hated the Allman Brothers.”
SIXTEEN
There were thirty-eight Charlie’s Grills on I-5 in between Yreka, California and Los Angeles, spaced so that on a road trip from one end of the state to another one could eat breakfast, lunch and dinner – not to mention brunch, linner, and several other meals to be named later – from a completely standardized menu of entrees that ranged in quality from passable to mediocre.
This proliferation of family restaurants was not, despite the protestations of anti-sprawl advocates and concerned cardiologists, part of any kind of diabolical plan. This isn’t to say that there was no plan, or that there weren’t demonic entities involved in its inception, but the actual marketing strategy and franchise agreements were no more intrinsically Satanic than was the norm for the hospitality industry. Charlie’s Grill was evil only to the extent that it concealed the unremarkable character of its food with a façade constructed of faux brick walls and artificially weathered signs promoting no-longer-existent brands of soda and/or motor oil with slogans like “The smoothest yet!” That is to say, it was about as evil as Applebee’s.
Charlie’s Grill was, pure and simple, a money-making operation for Lucifer, who had long ago come to terms with the fact that while spreading depravity and ruination was his true calling, it didn’t always pay the bills. Lucifer was a true believer in the adage that no one ever went broke overestimating the number of times a day that Americans can pull over for cheeseburgers. It wasn’t an exciting or particularly sinister way of making money, but it did make possible all sorts of other costly but worthwhile diabolical schemes, so Lucifer expanded the operation at every opportunity.
Mercury Falls Page 12
