“How do you figure?”
“You’re supposed to roll them by hand. It’s no fun if you use magic.”
“Miracles.”
“Whatever.”
“So it turns out that my linoleum installer is in league with Satan.”
“Most are,” said Mercury. “And don’t get me started on the masons.”
“Seriously,” said Christine. “He’s a demon named Malphas. You know him?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Mercury.
“Anyway, he’s evidently installed a portal from my condo to a place called the Floor. They’re planning to send six hundred sixty six demons with bombs through it. They’re trying to destroy the world.”
“Impossible,” said Mercury. “First, the transplanar energy channels aren’t right in Glendale. You’d need some kind of massive…”
“Earthquake. Or quakes. To reconfigure the energy channels.”
“Yeah, and to cause an earthquake you’d need…”
“The Attaché Case of Death, which they apparently have.”
“Really? Wow. That’s… still, there would be no point. Lucifer can’t just go off the reservation and send a horde of demons through a portal with… did you say bombs?”
“I think they called them ‘anti-bombs,’ whatever that means.”
Mercury whistled long and low.
“What? What are ‘anti-bombs’?”
“Very short-lived portals. When triggered, they open a rift to an empty plane. The rift creates a massive vacuum, sucking everything around it into the other plane. An implosion rather than an explosion. Hence anti-bomb. I didn’t realize Lucifer had access to them. But as I was saying, Lucifer can’t just send his minions through a portal to wreak havoc whenever he wants. There are very clear rules for the Apocalypse. The final battle takes place at Megiddo. That’s why it’s called Armageddon.”
While they talked, a group of young boys, having overcome their initial fear of the giant self-rolling snowball, were now playing in the snow nearby. They quickly tired of trying to build a snow fort, the destructive whims of the giant snowball making such an endeavor precarious, and they agreed instead to have a snowball fight. The boys split into two groups, which headed for opposite ends of the snowfield.
Christine, irritated with Mercury’s skepticism, said, “Do you think I’m making this all up? Don – that is, Malphas – gave me the whole rundown. They’re not going through the Megiddo portal. They’re going through Glendale. Through my condo. A surprise attack.”
“But that’s suicide,” Mercury replied. “The interplanar authorities would never allow it. There’s a complex system of checks and balances that prevents things like this from happening. If there weren’t, Lucifer would have blown this place up long ago.”
The two groups of boys had sent out their advance teams with a supply of snowballs and were now gingerly testing each other’s defenses. Christine noticed, in the middle of the escalating fray, one little boy who seemed to have been left out of the negotiations. He sat midway between the two groups, pathetically building something unrecognizable out of snow.
“Oh, and Izbazel is on Lucifer’s team after all,” Christine said. “They said something about needing to eliminate Karl. But that doesn’t make any sense; the Antichrist is supposed to be on their side.”
“A Buckminster Fuller fan, I see,” said Mercury to the small boy laboring alone in the snow.
“Huh?” the boy grunted.
“He’s the wizard of the dome.”
The boy looked confused. He had the kind of open-mouthed, squinty eyed face that always looked a little confused, but which really only took its proper shape when it was seized by full-on bewilderment. It was in full bloom now. “It’s a casshole,” he said, as if Mercury must be blind not to recognize a casshole when he saw one. The boy’s nose, having evidently noticed the snow, began to drip big globs of snot, as little boys’ noses are required to do under such circumstances.
“And a fine casshole it is,” said Mercury. “None of those pesky vertical walls or turrets to defend. Anyone attacking that casshole would ride their horses right up one side and down the other looking for a way in. Genius.”
The boy, having given up trying to understand anything Mercury was saying, slapped another shapeless glob of snow onto the sloped side of his castle.
As the snowball fight escalated, Mercury and Christine stepped back to avoid the crossfire. Christine noticed, though, that the two sides had evidently agreed to leave the snotty little castle-builder alone. The war raged, but the boys were careful to make a wide berth around him.
“Izbazel working for Lucifer,” said Mercury. “I figured as much.”
Christine said, “If Izbazel is working for Lucifer, why would he want to kill Karl? Karl is on their side. I mean, he’s the Antichrist, right?”
“Well,” said Mercury. “Ostensibly Karl is on their side. But between you and me, I have a hard time seeing what he brings to the table exactly. He’s a liability, if anything.”
“An astute observation. What’s your point?”
“Well, let’s suppose for a moment that if the Antichrist were eliminated by a third party, a supposedly renegade faction of angels….”
“Yes? Then what?”
“Well, conceivably Lucifer could cry foul. He could argue that the renegades were actually taking orders from Heaven. I suppose the plan would be for Izbazel to kill Karl and then turn himself in, claiming that he was acting on orders from Michael.”
“Slow down. Lucifer has Izbazel kill Karl, but blames it on Heaven?”
“Right. I mean, that’s the obvious assumption, right? One of Hell’s agents gets killed, you’d assume that Heaven is to blame. But Heaven can’t just kill Karl. Not yet. It’s a violation of the Apocalypse Accord.”
A sudden shout from one of the snowball fighters rang out. “Hey! You hit Timmy!”
The snotty castle builder, who was evidently named Timmy, had the remnants of a snowball sliding down his face and neck. His mouth was open wider than before, in the kind of rictus grimace that portended a crying jag for the ages.
“Did not! It was Tyler!”
“It was not, you liar. I saw you!”
As Timmy let loose a horrific scream, soldiers on both sides of the snowball conflict indignantly accused the other side of having whacked poor bewildered Timmy with a snowball. Yelling gave way to a vigorous volley of snowballs.
“So,” Christine said, trying to remain focused on the larger issue. “Lucifer blames Heaven for breaking the terms of the Apocalypse Accord by killing Karl. How does that help him?”
“It gives him…” Mercury started again, struggling to be heard over fracas and Timmy’s injured howls. “It gives him an excuse to withdraw from the Accord. As you know, Lucifer got the bad end of that deal. Following the Accord to the letter, Lucifer is bound to be defeated. It’s all there in black and white. But if he accuses Heaven of cheating, and then pulls out of the Accord… All the terms of the Accord, which were hammered out over centuries by Heaven and Hell, are voided. Everything is thrown into disarray. Then, while Heaven is off balance, Lucifer launches a surprise attack, supposedly in retaliation against Heaven’s violation of the Accord. If you’re right, and there’s now a portal between Glendale and one of the planes under Lucifer’s control…”
“Trust me, I just traveled through it myself a few hours ago.”
“Then Lucifer now has the means to launch a surprise attack on the Mundane Plane, and a legal excuse to do it. Michael’s forces would be mobilized at Megiddo, waiting for the hordes of demons to show up. But they never show up, because they’re busy smuggling anti-bombs into Glendale. Wow. This could be… wow.”
As the snowball fight grew more rancorous, Christine’s eyes followed a young blond-haired boy who found himself only an arm’s length from an enemy combatant – a boy who appeared to have at least two years and five inches on him. The smaller boy, having just thrown his last snowball
, was empty handed, while the larger boy held a snowball in each hand. The larger boy grinned and pulled back his right arm to pelt his little blond adversary.
Christine watched as the face of the younger boy telegraphed a complex and fateful series of thoughts – all in the instant it took the older boy to aim his snowball.
The first thought that occurred to the younger boy was, “Gosh, I wish I had a snowball. But I don’t, and if I reach down to make one, I’ll get smacked in the head and probably have snow stuffed down the back of my shirt.”
The boy’s second thought was along the lines of, “Of course, it wouldn’t have to be a snowball. Anything that would smack my opponent in the head hard enough for me to get away would do.”
This thought was quickly followed up with, “Do I have anything like that? Something like a snowball, but maybe a little harder. Something that would work well at close range. Like a rock. But not a rock, because I don’t want to crack his skull open and be grounded for a week. Something in between the hardness of a snowball and the hardness of a rock. Maybe something hard on the inside, but wrapped in something soft.”
Finally, it occurred to the boy that he did indeed have something like that with him. Two of them, in fact. One on the end of each wrist. Bone wrapped in skin. Perfect!
The younger boy’s fist popped out at lightning speed, smacking the older boy in the nose. A look of shock came over the older boy’s face. He dropped his snowballs and clutched his face as it began to bleed.
The younger boy, realizing that he had transformed the character of the battle from snowball fight to something else entirely, turned and ran. The older boy, forgetting about the blood pouring from his nostrils, pursued him with newfound rage. All around Mercury and Christine, boys were now pummeling each other mercilessly with their fists.
“So,” Christine said, finding it ever more difficult to concentrate. “This could be really bad. If Lucifer gets away with killing Karl.”
“Yes, well,” said Mercury thoughtfully. “On the upside, Armageddon is averted.”
“And the downside…”
“Something far worse happens.”
“So you believe me?”
“The pieces do fit together,” admitted Mercury.
Two boys, their faces bloody and their limbs intertwined, rolled in between them.
“And you’ll help me stop it?”
“Stop it? How on earth do you expect to stop it? And what’s the point? If Lucifer fails, the Apocalypse will go on as planned. Either way, this plane is screwed.”
“I know,” said Christine. “But – oh for crying out loud.” She scooped up a handful of snow and shoved it down the back of the top boy’s pants. The boy, a pudgy and unpleasant looking specimen, howled and jumped up.
“Hey!” he yelped. “What’s your problem?” He and the other boy, sensing the presence of a common enemy, bent over to scrape up snow to make snowballs.
“A little help, Mercury?” said Christine.
Mercury shrugged. He knelt to make a snowball and hurled it at the pudgy boy. It missed by a good two feet.
Both boys began to laugh. “Nice throw,” said Pudgy.
“I was kind of hoping,” said Christine, “that you would…”
The snowball boomeranged in mid-air, coming back to smack Pudgy in the back of the head.
“Hey!” yelled Pudgy, turning around. Snow slid down his neck and back. Then, to the boy’s horror, the chunks of snow lifted off his body and began to float in the air in front of him. The remnants of the snowball reassemble themselves before his eyes. Pudgy ran, with the snowball in pursuit. The other boy, having witnessed these events, ran off as well. Three more miraculous snowballs and the area was deserted except for Christine, Mercury and Timmy. A group of spectators remained on the perimeter of the snow field, but even they had shrunk back. Timmy, who seemed to barely notice the miraculous happenings about him, was happy to be able to get back to his amorphous glob of snow. “This is gunna be the bestest casshole ever,” he murmured.
Mercury nodded. “You have a gift for cassholes,” he said.
“We’ve got to stop him,” Christine said.
A puzzled look crept across Mercury’s face. “It’s just a casshole, Christine. Try not to take everything so seriously.”
“Lucifer,” said Christine through gritted teeth. We can’t let him kill Karl.”
“Oh,” said Mercury. “Right.” His brow furrowed. “But as I said, even if we could stop him, all that would mean is that the Apocalypse would go on as originally planned. Is that what you want?”
“No,” admitted Christine. “But it seems to me that if Lucifer is betting all his chips on this double-cross with the Antichrist, then he’s probably unprepared for the real thing. So if we can stop this plot, or expose it, then he’ll be forced to go through with the Apocalypse as originally planned, and he’ll get his ass kicked.”
“He was always going to get his ass kicked. That was the agreement.”
Something about this troubled Christine. “Okay, this is the part I don’t get,” she said. “This Apocalypse Accord. It’s a sort of contract between Heaven and Hell, right?”
“Right.”
“And it was negotiated between the best minds among the angels and the best minds of the demons.”
“Oh, no,” said Mercury. “Where did you get that idea? It was negotiated by lawyers.”
“Alright, but presumably these lawyers, the lawyers on each side had the best interests of their respective sides in mind.”
“Yeah, right. I mean, what?” said Mercury, his attention on Timmy’s featureless castle. “Sorry, I’m getting bored.”
“My question is, why would Lucifer negotiate a contract that ensures he will lose?”
“Ah,” said Mercury. “You’re assuming the Apocalypse Accord is a treaty negotiated by equals. The fact is, though, it’s more like a plea bargain. You don’t get away with rebelling against Heaven. I mean, not long term. It’s like those cop shows where they film the bad guy running away from the cops in a stolen car. He’s one guy in an old Corolla hatchback, being chased by eighteen cops with automatic weapons in turbo-charged Crown Vics, but he just keeps running.”
“Okay, I get it. Lucifer’s delusional.”
“I mean, the cops have radios. All they have to do is call the cops in the next town.”
“Yeah, alright. So he negotiates a deal, trying to make the best of –”
“And then they put those nail strips down and blow all his tires, sparks are flying from his wheels, but he still keeps running. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting away, but he just keeps running. It’s madness.”
“Yeah, I understand. You’re saying that –”
“And then you realize that you’re watching the whole thing from a helicopter. A helicopter, Christine. You can’t outrun a helicopter in a beat-up Corolla with four flat tires.”
“Mercury, I got it. Lucifer has no choice but to – ”
“Still, you have to hand it to him,” said Mercury thoughtfully.
“What?”
“It makes for good television. Now, what were we talking about?”
“The Apocalypse Accord. You were saying that –”
“Right, so Lucifer’s got to make the best of a bad situation. He negotiates the best deal he can, which is a bloody battle for this plane. He’s going to lose, he knows that, but he’s going to create some carnage on the way down.”
“And how does that work exactly?” asked Christine.
“How does what work?”
“I mean, this battle, it’s supposed to happen at Megiddo, right? That’s where the portal is. So what’s supposed to happen, exactly? Angels and demons pour through the portal and start beating the crap out of each other?”
“Not exactly. The fighting is done mainly by your people. Humans, I mean. The angels and demons are just auxiliary support. And of course the actual battle at Megiddo is just part of it. There are signs and
wonders, disasters and plagues, et cetera. That’s about as much as I can tell you. Like I said, I’ve missed a few meetings.”
“But things turn out okay in the end, though, right? The good guys win.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But if Lucifer is planning on pulling out of the Accord, there’s no telling what might happen.”
“That’s why we have to stop him. If we can stop his attack through the Glendale portal, then he’ll have no choice but to go back to plan A. He’ll have to send his demons through at Megiddo instead. They’ll be disorganized, and Michael will be ready for him. Maybe with that kind of advantage, the good guys can wipe out Lucifer while minimizing the carnage.”
“You’re pinning a lot to the hope that Michael isn’t itching to lay down some serious destruction, regardless of what Lucifer does.”
“Yeah,” admitted Christine. “I guess I’m still hoping that the good guys will end up being good guys. In any case, I can’t help but feel like all this is happening for a reason. That I was meant to overhear this plan so that I can stop it.”
“So you think that Michael has already figured out Lucifer’s double-cross?”
“I don’t know,” said Christine. “Maybe somebody above Michael. Or somebody above somebody above Michael. I can’t comprehend all the politics, but I can’t shake the idea that somebody somewhere has to ultimately be in charge. And if somebody is in charge, then I can’t believe that he or she or it has entrusted the fate of the world to some arbitrary bureaucracy. Life can’t be all about deciphering puzzles and playing one side against another. Ultimately you just have to do what you feel is right.”
An unexpected voice intruded upon their conversation.
“Yes,” said the voice, from the edge of the snowstorm. “Let’s all decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. What do we need the Divine Plan for? Perhaps we were meant to disregard our orders and spend our last remaining moments building snowmen.”
The figure drew closer. It was Uzziel.
“So you found us,” said Mercury.
“You don’t make it very difficult,” said Uzziel. “A snowstorm in Bakersfield is something of a red flag.”
“I’m surprised it took you so long,” said Mercury.
Mercury Falls Page 20
