by Mat Ridley
Of course, it was one thing to agree to play along with the physical side of my punishment—and that’s how I was seeing it, as punishment; make no mistake about that—but I was still immensely sceptical that I would be able to fulfil the other part of the contract: to grow to love God. Sure, I could probably fix a smile onto my face if forced to shake His hand, but somehow I didn’t think I was going to be able to bluff my way past the creator of the universe. I had no idea how I was going to get around that particular obstacle, not in the face of so many persuasive arguments to the contrary, but like Saint Peter said, I was going to have plenty of time to figure it all out.
“Alright then,” I said, eventually. “Count me in. I’m not happy about it, but if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that God doesn’t care whether or not you’re happy with His way of doing things. I just want to get this over and done with, so let’s get started.”
Saint Peter sighed. “Daniel, of course God cares. You’ll see, one day. But I’m glad you’re agreeing to actively participate in the situation here, even if you don’t like it. You see, with a flexible attitude like that, you could be out of here very quickly. Come, let us go to meet your comrades.”
“You mean the other members of whatever battalion or division I’m joining? How exactly do you organise the army here, anyway?”
“We don’t. There are only two types of warrior here: those who are fighting for their salvation, and the angels. Whenever you and your comrades are sent into combat, you are left to form your own alliances, friendships and command structure. It’s all about free will again, Daniel; the angels are not there to command you or restrict you as you progress, but rather to act as counsellors and arbitrators. Although they are extremely capable of defending themselves and New Jerusalem should they need to, they do not proactively engage in combat. The only time they will intervene is if you become overwhelmed—and are deemed worth rescuing. On the other hand, if you are found wanting, then I’m afraid that they will leave you to your fate: consumed, digested, and shat out into Hell.”
When I’d woken up that morning (or whatever morning it was), I’d never really expected that my day would turn out the way it had, but I certainly hadn’t expected to be hearing Saint Peter, the guardian of that most holy of places, using such colourful language. If I were capable of raising just one eyebrow, I would have done so.
“You might well look shocked, Daniel, but such words are appropriate. The depictions of Hell that you know from art and literature back on Earth are nothing compared to the reality. There is no way you can even start to imagine what it is like down there. For your own sake, as well as that of Joanna and the others you love, you must not give up, either on God or on yourself. You have already demonstrated that you are not a quitter, but out there, it will be tough, make no mistake. At times, you will wish you were dead—dead in the sense of complete and absolute extinction, rather than the state of existence you currently find yourself in—but you must not give in to such temptations. The demons of Satan’s army are not your only enemy here in Purgatory, Daniel. Look to yourself, too.”
“Yeah, very profound. Thanks. But I think my brain’s had just about as much as it can take for the moment. Look, I appreciate you trying to scare the hell out of me, or into me, or whatever, but none of this abstract stuff seems to be getting me any closer to getting the fuck out of here. Jo couldn’t ever convince me to change my mind about God either, no matter how much we talked about it, so don’t take it too hard. How about we concentrate on the practical side of things instead? If I’ve got to fight, then let’s go and fight. Come on.”
Saint Peter turned and began to walk slowly towards the main cathedral doors. The back of his head was just as featureless as the front, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still looking at me, perhaps disapprovingly, as he made his way along the nave. I did my best to avoid what might have been his gaze, choosing instead to focus on the wondrous architecture of the cathedral. As we walked past row after row of seats, all of them empty, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen anyone apart from Saint Peter since I had arrived.
“Those comrades you mentioned earlier seem to be pretty thin on the ground. Where is everybody?”
“Most of them are out on the battlefield at the moment, Daniel. You’ll find it much busier here later on, at the end of the day’s toil, when the soldiers return to the city to meditate and pray.”
I looked at the austere seating, as hard and inadequate as any I could remember seeing in churches back on Earth. “It doesn’t look very comfortable.”
Saint Peter paused mid-stride and turned towards me slightly. “Purgatory isn’t supposed to be comfortable, Daniel. That’s the whole point. But you’ll cope. You’ve been in enough wars to know that the body can quickly adapt to great measures of hardship, and that’s especially true for a new body like yours.”
We reached the massive doors much more quickly than I had expected. Like the rest of the cathedral, they towered above us, and were decorated with carvings so elaborate that I doubted they were made by human hands. If I hadn’t just been told otherwise, I would have thought these were the fabled pearly gates themselves. Or maybe they actually were. Just as I was about to ask Saint Peter, the doors began to swing open—with no visible sign as to how or why—and the sight that was revealed to me knocked the question clean out of my mind.
Chapter 10
The first thing that struck me was the sky: cloudless, as red as cancer, and stained with a faint haze of smoke. The intensity of the colour was breathtaking, and when I inhaled in astonishment, a smell hit my nostrils, metallic, burnt and rotten. After the purity of the air in the cathedral, it was like a slap. I looked around for the source of the smell, at the same time taking in what sat beneath the sky: in all directions, as far as the eye could see, mile after mile of buildings, surrounded along the horizon by a continuous, towering wall. An enormous fortified city. But in every way that the cathedral was magnificent, the other buildings were pitiful, ruined, many of them little more than bare frames struggling to stand against the harsh wind that swept across the landscape. An occasional attempt had been made here and there to form primitive walls, but most of the stones had been strewn across the streets as if kicked there by an angry giant.
Even as this thought occurred to me, the true cause of the city’s wretchedness suddenly revealed itself. With a deafening roar, a glowing missile of some kind, the size of a bus, hurtled out of the sky and slammed into a small huddle of buildings not far from the cathedral. Soil and debris were thrown high into the air, and a deep tremor rumbled through the flagstones beneath us. An unearthly wail coiled out of the site of impact.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked, taking an involuntary step backwards.
“That’s one of the Fallen, Daniel. A type of demon that you’ll soon become all too familiar with. The Enemy catapults them over the walls in the hope that they will somehow be able to fight their way through to the city gates and open them from the inside—but it’s a foolish tactic. Most of the Fallen don’t even survive their landing, and those that do are usually too badly injured to put up much of a fight. Not that this seems to stop them from coming over the walls. As you can imagine, Satan doesn’t care how many of his soldiers are needlessly sacrificed.”
I fixed my eyes on the dust billowing up from the point of impact, part of me hoping to catch a glimpse of the demon, part of me dreading that I might. Through the clouds that seethed around the newly devastated buildings I could see figures streaming towards the source of the howling, but the dust and the distance made it impossible for me to discern any more than that. Shortly, the sounds of battle emanated from the fog, in many ways as familiar as an old friend, but with one terrifying, clanking exception.
“Uh, what exactly are the good guys in this war of yours armed with?”
“Swords, of course. What could be more biblical?”
“You’re kidding, right? I won’t last five minutes out there! Apa
rt from in the movies, I’ve never even seen a sword, let alone used one.”
“Your new body will surprise you, Daniel. One of the improvements you’ll find is a complete competence with the blade you’ll shortly be given.”
“What about guns? Couldn’t God provide us with guns instead?”
“Of course He could, but He hasn’t, and with good reason. Think about it. Where is the struggle, the testing of the mettle and the man, that comes from pulling a trigger and watching a distant foe tumble anticlimactically to the ground? Where is the glory or the honour in striking an opponent who is unable to strike you back? What better spur to victory than to look into the eyes of evil, to smell its breath, and to see that evil extinguished as you ram your blade home? You are here to work for your salvation, Daniel, and work you shall. There are no guns in Purgatory.”
Saint Peter was clearly keen on the subject; unsurprisingly, I didn’t share his enthusiasm. Despite his reassurances that I was suddenly an expert in swordfighting, the idea of going toe-to-toe with demons was more than a little intimidating. Terrifying, more like.
“So the demons are unarmed, too? I mean—they don’t have guns either?” I said, correcting myself. I was still trying to get used to the idea of participating in a war with weapons other than firearms.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly. Although there are no guns here in Purgatory, certain types of demons are capable of spitting or throwing projectiles of various kinds.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“No, it’s not. You’re right. But whoever said life—or the afterlife—was fair?”
This was getting better and better, but before I could protest, Saint Peter crossed the threshold of the cathedral and went out into the city. Not that I expected protesting to do any good; I already understood that arguing wasn’t going to get me anywhere, least of all back together with Jo. With a deep sigh, I followed Saint Peter out of the cathedral, still keeping a careful eye on the now-silent cloud of dust.
We emerged at the top of a huge, broad flight of steps leading down into the city. The stairs were flanked on either side by other beings—machines? angels?—similar to Saint Peter, all as still and silent as he had been when I had first awakened. The only movement was the flapping of their robes in the wind. Each held an enormous two-handed sword against its chest, blade pointed directly upwards and gleaming dully in the light, and by the time we were halfway down the staircase, I was surprised to find myself almost looking forward to using one of these impressive-looking weapons in combat. The memory of the demon’s shrieking—and the fear it had awoken in me—was already being blunted by curiosity about my surroundings and eagerness to seize control of my destiny once again.
The angels’ swords were not the only thing vying for my attention, however. The stairs provided a superb vantage point from which to survey the rest of New Jerusalem, and all that I could see only served to reinforce my initial impressions of its expanse and the state it was in. I wondered how many millions of souls must be living there, huddled together behind the city walls, forced to fight for their lives every day without clear reason or guidance, and with no chance to petition for reprieve. How were any of them supposed to grow to love a God who put them through such an ordeal?
On the back of such thoughts, I began to look forward to meeting the other inmates of this spiritual concentration camp. I wondered how those dearest to me in my old life had coped with being here—Jo in particular, of course. Saint Peter had said that she had already passed on to Heaven, which was some comfort. I didn’t want to picture her fighting for her eternal soul against a horde of demons. George, on the other hand, I could easily imagine up to his neck in combat. I smiled inwardly as I pictured his astonishment upon discovering that his carefully cultivated beer belly had been replaced with the body of an athlete—and his fearful thrill on hearing how he would have to use it—but I was sure the prospect of such combat would reawaken his old fighting spirit. The fact that he’d died only a short time before I had, coupled with the fact that he was as staunch an atheist as you could meet, stirred a hope in me that George at least was still somewhere here in Purgatory.
The other person I would have wished by my side in the upcoming struggles was Lewis, but I was far less optimistic that I would be reunited with him again. Even if he still remained somewhere in Purgatory, it would be a miracle if I was able to find him amongst all the other lost souls, and I hadn’t believed in miracles for a long time. I hoped George, at least, might have been delivered to the same drop-off point that Saint Peter was leading me now. Quite apart from anything else, I wanted to shake his hand—hell, give him a hug—for all that he had done to try to save my life. I supposed that being able to buy him a beer would be out of the question.
In addition to my friends, there was one other person I was hoping to run into—Sam—although if there was any kind of justice in the afterlife, that fucker would have gone straight to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds. I hoped that after their string of impeccably timed misses, the police had at least managed to arrive in time to stop the bastard from getting away after he had murdered Jo. With a bit of luck, there might even have been an armed response team that would have levelled the score there and then. I liked that idea even better.
I’ll always wonder if what happened next was God giving me a slap on the wrist for these uncharitable daydreams of vengeance. One moment, my mind was simmering with retribution; the next, all thoughts of punishing Sam suddenly fled as the roaring whoosh of another of the Fallen filled the air. I looked up, trying to locate the missile. It didn’t take me long. It’s difficult to miss something the size of a small house, and doubly so when it’s headed straight towards you.
“Look out!” I yelled, scrambling back up the stairs. “Don’t just stand there!”
But that’s exactly what the rows of Temple guards continued to do. Saint Peter, too, stood serenely on the steps, looking up at the demon, as seemingly uninterested as if he were observing a raincloud rather than impending death. Incredulous, I looked up at the juggernaut again, just in time to see it lurch sharply off to one side, the smoky trail of its wake the only clue that it had originally been heading directly towards us. An unholy scream issued from the missile, the rage and frustration of its passenger too much to bear, as it careened off into a large open space near the cathedral. The demon thumped into the ground and the scream abruptly ceased.
I turned to Saint Peter, thunderstruck, partly by the noise, partly by the miracle I had just witnessed, but mostly because I had just had my first brush with death in the afterlife: real death, permanent death, death with no second chances. Despite Saint Peter’s earlier reassurances that the angels would not permit me to die if there remained a chance of redemption, and despite the evidence of my own eyes, I still felt a chill as if someone had walked across my grave—wherever that might be. For the first time, the reality of my situation hit me, harder than the impact of any infernal artillery.
“How did you do that? You knocked that thing out of the air like it was made of paper!”
“I didn’t do anything, Daniel. I didn’t need to. The shield of faith is all that is needed to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. God protects the Temple from any direct harm in the same way He protects all His agents here in Purgatory. Why do you think we have no fear in the face of such opponents?”
“So why doesn’t He just protect the whole city? If this shield of faith covered everything instead of just the Temple, the demons would never be able to get in and Heaven would be perfectly safe.”
“For the same reason He allows suffering back in the mortal world. Of course He could seal the city off from the demons if He wanted to, but in order for Purgatory to mean anything, there comes a point at which God must relinquish His protection. Think about this. It is not God that causes suffering, either here or on Earth. Suffering is caused by the selfish actions perpetrated by the free will of others, the same free will that
God grants us all. Even natural disasters and terminal diseases are simply a consequence of Satan exercising his free will. God cannot prevent suffering without imposing His will on others and forcing their actions, and that is something He rarely does. Instead, He works within the framework of the suffering we experience, to bridge the separation that has existed between Himself and mankind ever since the Fall. It’s what you choose to do in the face of suffering that gives you the chance to meet with God, that defines your relationship with Him. Some people, like yourself, choose to rail against Him and turn their backs; others choose instead to seek His comfort in the face of adversity—a comfort that is free for the asking. The reason why God does not shield the entirety of New Jerusalem from Satan’s might, as you suggest, is because then there would be no suffering here… and without the challenges and dynamics that suffering inspires, the faith of the Purgatorians would stagnate, causing them to languish here for all eternity. That is why it is only the Temple that is shielded. As with all temples, its existence is a testament to the glory of God, a sign that His offer of salvation is the only constant, the only solid reality in this desolate place.”
“Are there any questions I can ask you without getting a sermon in response?”
We finally reached the bottom of the stairs, and from there began to make our way through the city. An eerie, infectious silence filled the air, and I found myself sticking close to Saint Peter. Around us, the city seemed to sleep—or cower—and the redness of the sky bathed the buildings in a soft, pink haze; but there was no warmth in the glow. A quick scan of the sky revealed that there was, in fact, no sun up there to provide such heat, so that made some sort of sense, but then where did the light come from? As far as I could tell, there was nothing up there at all; no clouds, no stars, nothing, just endless red. There were no obvious signs of Heaven, either, but then that was nothing new as far as I was concerned.
