by Jeff Pollard
Medved's back crashes into the third story of the glass building, cushioning the blow for Renee. The pursuing angels flap their wings to come to a hover just overhead. Renee scrambles to her feet, helping Medved up, he still carries Gwen's terrified head in his paw. They start running up the side of the building and the angels fly in pursuit. The angels cut them off, landing several stories further up the cantilever of a skyscraper.
Rene and Medved run back toward the vertical street. The angels run after them. Renee looks up and finds skyscrapers tumbling like dominoes, falling toward the mountain range and the hellish scene below.
Suddenly a chunk of a skyscraper crashes into the building they are running on, shearing off everything above the sixth floor. The angels disappear in an explosion of glass and steel. The collision rocks the building to its core. Renee and Medved lose their footing and fall.
Renee, face down, catches her breath, then something catches her eye. “Look!”
It's a televator. Resting on the inside of a window inside the building, perched over nothing. It can't be too long before that glass breaks and the televator falls. The glass wall they're on cracks like a spider-web. Renee carefully moves to the sheared off edge of the building. She climbs down inside, clinging to anything she can. Medved gets to the edge but stays put, afraid to climb down with the abyss beyond. Renee seems unfazed by the heights. She climbs down and gets down to the televator. She delicately puts her feet on the metal supports surrounding the window the televator is on. The glass creaks all around.
“Throw her down!” Renee shouts up to Medved. Renee prepares to catch Gwen's head. Medved's sweaty bear paws prepare for the delicate toss. Renee spots another chunk of building falling toward them. It's almost in slow motion, threatening to crush Medved in seconds.
“Now!” Renee screams.
The buildings collide in a crash of glass and steel. Renee hits the deck, covering her head. The building plummets beneath her. Medved is nowhere to be seen. Renee just hears the whistling of the wind as she's perched above an infinite canyon. That's it, they're all gone.
She tiptoes to the edge of the skyscraper, sits down with her feet dangling over the edge. She watches pieces of the city fall silently into the abyss.
“Renee,” a muffled, weak voice says. Renee at first thinks she's imagining it. Then it persists. Renee delicately feels across a steel support, avoiding the cracked glass, lifts up debris and finds her mother's severed head. Renee sits down and holds her mother's head in her lap.
“It's okay,” Gwen says softly. “It's gonna be okay.” Renee wishes she could believe her. She looks around for the televator, spotting it delicately perched, jutting over nothing, miraculously balanced on two protruding steel beams. Renee stands up, taking small careful steps across crackling glass. She reaches the beam and gets ready to tight-rope walk one of the beams.
“Just don't look down,” Renee says to herself. She closes in, walking ever so carefully. The steel beam is incredibly thin, not quite as wide as Renee's shoes. She tries to keep her focus on the beam, without letting herself see past it and to the hell beyond. Renee can't extend her arms to help balance, as she holds her mother's head tightly with both hands. Renee takes a bad step, slipping, she catches herself, but leans out to the side. She regains her balance, holds still, catching her breath.
“How was your date with Patrick?” Gwen asks. Eight meters.
“What?” Renee is totally surprised.
“How'd it go,” Gwen asks.
“Bad.” Five meters. “What's it matter now, the world's ending.”
“What happened?” Gwen asks.
“I know what you're doing,” Renee says, taking another careful step. “People perform better when they don't concentrate as much on what they're doing.” Two meters. Renee is almost there.
“Just trying to help,” Gwen says.
“Don't worry, I got this,” Renee says as she takes another determined step. “I don't panic.” The next building over gives way. Fifteen stories of steel and glass falls away at a tremendous rate. It leaves a vacuum in its wake. Renee's perch flexes and rebounds, vibrating like a tuning fork. Her shoes lose traction due to the vibration. Her feet start to slide, she flails in the breeze, trying to keep her balance. She's about to get it under control, but her foot slips, she's bent over the side, about to lose her balance, leaning further and further.
Renee accepts her fate. She is going to fall. Rather than spend this last moment in a futile attempt to regain her balance, she stops fighting her fall, turns toward the televator and tosses Gwen toward the open door. With her mother's head floating away in slow motion, Renee reaches for the bottom of the beam as she falls. Grabbing on just barely. Glass shards lining the beam cut into her palm. Blood trickles down her arms. The shards threaten to rip her hands wide open and send her into the abyss. The skin of her hand begins to give, ripping open.
Gwen reaches down and grabs Renee. She reaches out from the televator, fully bodied again. She tries to pull Renee up. Her bloody hand is slippery. Gwen has trouble keeping her balance and pulling. She reels Renee in, bringing her up. Renee reaches for the televator for leverage, but the televator slips, sending her off balance. Gwen loses her balance, and they fall, plummeting toward the mountains in the distance.
They pick up speed, hitting terminal velocity. The pounding wind is cold and dry, immediately causing their skin to crack and bleed. They fall for minutes, hands gripping each other for dear life. They fall past the remnants of the suburbs. The mountains grow beneath them. But the lake is still intact, seemingly sideways. They see skyscrapers floating in the lake. Once they are over the lake, they suddenly turn, falling toward the water. Gravity is still normal here. They head for the water at high speed. In the instant before impact, they see thousands of people clinging to debris, treading water, some floating, seemingly dead. At this speed, water might as well be concrete.
20
Storm clouds pump a torrent of rain onto a lake. There is an enormous steel cage, mostly submerged, rising just a few inches out of the water. Thousands of people are in this cage, just barely able to pin their faces to the bars, keeping just an inch or two above water. The waves threaten to drown them at any second. They've been there for days. Renee is alone in this sea of people. Her feet strain to keep her perched on the bars under water. She occasionally slips, plunging under the waves and frantically trying to get back above water. She sees some kind of structure sticking out of the water. She slowly pushes through crowd toward this structure. As she gets closer, she can see angels standing on this platform. Renee pushes closer. She sees many more angels, some circular device, hard to tell what it is, and a lone televator. She spies on them for some time. There seems to be a head angel, sitting on a throne. Two angels walk to the televator, open the door, and yank someone out.
Renee pushes through the bars, trying to make out the figure. It's her father, Percival. Renee pushes her face against the bars and sees Percival come to his feet, before the head angel, sitting on a throne. Percival is shoved into a seat on a big circular device.
Percival comes face to face with the perpetrator of this attack. He tries to make sense of the facial features mapped onto this perfect angelic body of muscle and armor.
“Lazarus!?”
21
“Why are you doing this?” Nellie asks, looking up at Lazarus. His golden armor brightly reflects the red suns.
“Hey I never really had a choice,” Lazarus replies, “I don't have free will, remember. You've been leading souls astray long enough Nellie.”
“My name is Percival.”
“You're a woman, don't try to pass off your delusion. You couldn't avoid God's judgment forever Nellie. It was inevitable.”
“Judge not, lest ye be judged,” Percival says defiantly.
Lazarus laughs, shaking his head. “Is that the best you can do? You don't even understand what it means. That phrase doesn't mean that you shouldn't judge,” Lazarus begins to lecture
, “It means you shouldn't judge unless you're ready to be judged yourself. I'm not only ready, I'm eager for God's judgment. I can't wait for the day that I stand before the lord and answer for my actions.”
“How do you know you're doing what god wants? All I see is you torturing innocent people.”
“Innocent? Really? Innocent? You've been engaging in polygamous sex-changed bestiality. Look me in the eyes and tell me that's what god wanted for you,” Lazarus says.
“Polyamorous,” Percival corrects.
“You thought you could live forever, you thought you found a loophole. So I had to come down here and make hell real for you.”
“Just kill us. If there's a hell and we really belong there, then that's where we'll go. Don't torture us.”
“I can't murder,” Lazarus says, “I'm not a sinner like you. I'm here to save souls. To show you the error of your ways, and to bring you to God. I'm not a killer. I'm setting these people free. Every last one of them, a lost soul, they're going to see the light.”
Percival looks back at the sea of souls in purgatory. He starts to tear up. “Just let us die,” Percival says quietly.
“Come on,” Lazarus says, “you're not seeing the beauty of it, the poetry. Sinners create a false heaven, a prophet comes to show them hell, thus saving their souls so they can go to the real heaven. It's better than Shakespeare; it's biblical.”
“What if you're wrong?” Percival asks.
“What if you're wrong Nellie!?” Lazarus shouts. “You've used all of man's baser instincts against him. You're offering up every last indulgence, lust, gluttony, you've taken a selfish, short-sighted society and given them anything they could ever want. You're a slut, guiding them away from the lord, away from virtue, down a path to an empty life; a godless, never-ending detour into hell. I'm just showing them the way.”
“And what if you're wrong?”
“I'm not wrong,” Lazarus replies simply. “Any last words?”
“Just let us die,” Percival pleads.
“I condemn thee,” Lazarus nods to an angel. He forces Percival back into a seat on the circular device. The angel pulls a lever, the seat is actually part of a large catapult. The steel arm swings around, flinging Percival at high speed toward the icy mountain tops. He disappears over the peaks, flying to hell on the other side.
“Next.” Angels pull another person from limbo, through the televator and set them on the catapult. One by one, Lazarus judges each person, cites charges against them, using information from their profiles, condemns them, and sends them catapulting over the mountains to the hell on the other side. Once they finish with those who were in limbo, they start on people in the sea, yanking them out, one at a time. They're all about to be trapped forever in a literal hell. Not even death can set them free. Renee pushes back from the bars, trying to get away from the platform, away from the angels.
A steel plate pushes from the opposite end, pushing the trapped people towards the platform like toothpaste from a tube. Renee fights towards the plate, getting as far from the platform as possible. It pushes slowly, as it takes time for each person to be judged and catapulted. This goes on for a day. As the plate approaches the platform and only a few dozen people remain to be judged, Renee takes a deep breath and dives into the water. The plate pushing along the prison has a small gap between the bottom of it and the bars. Renee tries to squeeze beneath the plate, it's a very small opening. If only she could ignore the need to breathe, knowing that it's just an illusion, she could hide and avoid being sent to hell. She comes up for air. She tries again, but feels the burning in her lungs, and comes up for air. There's only a handful of people left. Renee waits for the angels to be distracted. She gets an opportunity and dives under the water. She jams herself under the plate, kicking and pushing, she squishes herself between the plate and the cage. She's trapped, unable to come up. She tries to push through to the other side of the plate, but can't.
She tries to remain still, holding her breath. She watches as the last pair of feet disappear and the cage is empty. She remains hidden from view, beneath the waves. “Mind over matter,” she thinks repeatedly. It's not real. The pain, the air, the water, none of this is real. She tries to let knowledge overcome her senses. She sends her mind to anything else.
Meditating, dreaming.
22
Renee sneaks through the Comatorium, amongst the thousands of vats, hiding in the watery shadows. She sets a bomb down, turning it on, and watching a few seconds tick down to zero. Shouts come from not far away; bad guys chasing her. She holds the bomb tightly as it goes off. A purple-blue explosion rips through the entire complex instantly, helped by the Xenon-Oxygen atmosphere. Renee and several vats around her are instantly destroyed. The flames reach out to every nook and cranny and then just as instantly die out. For a split second everything seems fine. But the pressure in the room spikes so severely that every single vat shatters, releasing a flood of cerebro-spinal fluid that fills the room knee deep. Renee's shattered animatron lies in pieces. Her burned head smiles for an instant, then turns to agony as she starts to feel the effects of the Xenon Shock. She's freed everyone from hell by killing them.
She did it.
She simply can't do it.
Renee inhales water, thrashing and straining to get free and go up for air. She breaks the surface, gasping. Surprised angels immediately spot her. She thinks about taking a deep breath and trying again, but gives up. She keeps breathing, trying to make her lungs stop burning.
Renee is yanked from the water and thrown onto the judgment platform. She's barely conscious. She coughs up a gallon of water. A spear forces Renee into the catapult seat. Lazarus sits in judgment of her.
“That's funny,” Lazarus says, looking at a display in front of him. “You don't seem to be on file...what's your name?” Renee looks around for a way to escape. A guard angel shoves a flaming sword near her face, she can feel the heat coming off of it.
“Renee,” she says quietly.
“Your last name?” Lazarus asks, peering inquisitively at this teenage girl.
“Descartes,” Renee says simply. Lazarus's eyes squint menacingly at her. He ponders her existence the way a human considers the life of an ant before crushing it.
“Any last words?” Lazarus asks suspiciously.
“I think therefore I am,” Renee says defiantly.
Lazarus glares at her indignantly, then motions to the angel. He pulls the lever. The catapult accelerates her in an arc. She's crushed into her seat by the extreme forces, her face sags. Then the chair disappears and she's flying hundreds of kilometers per hour, toward the mountains. The jagged icy rocks beckon. In the split second before she gets to the peak, Renee spots several people lying on the peaks. They didn't quite clear the mountains and are now frozen into the ice. The rocks comes up to meet her. She's not going to make it. Her left arm scrapes the tip of the peak, tearing open a wound, but she continues past the mountain and tumbles down the far side, just meters off of the rocks, falling past.
At the base of the mountains, a valley opens up, with a wall of fire and spears separating the mountains from the fiery hell. Renee flies over the wall of fire. She's coming in on a hellish scene. Small volcanoes spew lava, making hell a constantly changing, fluid place. Black craggy rocks stick up from the ground like menacing stalagmites. Renee is coming in for a very hard landing on fresh rocks that hide bubbling lava below. This isn't going to be pretty. She is caught by a large net. It captures her and slows her down to a not so gentle smack against the rock.
The net recoils back into the air thirty meters high. Renee is stuck in the net, and realizes that dozens of other people are too. This net is gigantic, covering acres of hell, and is made out of an edited kind of rope that is unbreakable. They all slowly crawl across the net towards the four corners, kilometers apart. There's a tower at each corner, complete with a thirty meter tall ladder. The people flow across the net to the ladder.
A ring of a dozen suns line th
e horizon in all directions.
Renee crawls toward the ladder. Another person lands on the net, throwing Renee and everyone in turmoil. A person at the edge of the net is thrown off, falling thirty meters to the thin crust of rock. The rock breaks and he falls into the lava. Molten rock pours down his screaming throat and the hole fills over and begins to harden. Renee crawls for the ladder. A panicked man desperately tries to crowd onto the full ladder.
“I have to get out of here!” He shoves his way onto the ladder. He starts climbing down too fast, stepping on a woman's hands, she falls on the person below her. The man falls creating a snowball effect that clears the ladder, sending them into shallow lava. Renee laughs out loud. Everyone around her stops and stares, disturbed.
“What's so funny?”
“You people! You're all running around like chickens with your heads cut off. It's ridiculous,” Renee says. In the wake of the emptied ladder, a flood of people rush to fill the void and crowd the ladder again in seconds. Renee shakes her head and watches another avalanche of humanity take out the ladder. The pile of fallen people crowds the bottom of the ladder. Renee marvels at the panicked hopeless people. She crawls away from the ladder. She gets to the edge of the net, watching the mountains, waiting for a new arrival. A person comes flying over the mountains, screaming. He crashes into the net, far away from Renee. The shock stretches the net down toward the ground. Renee waits till the net gets as low as it will go, then leaps, landing on a hardened section of lava. Her right foot breaks through, but she lands face first. She yanks her foot from the ground and screams in pain as it has been covered in molten rock. The red rock quickly starts to cool and harden, burning her deeper and deeper. Renee crawls on, dragging her foot behind her. She struggles mightily, but has to stop, exhausted. She lies on her back, staring at the orange sky above.
“Welcome to hell,” Renee mutters quietly to herself. She stays put, with no more will to fight, and no idea where to go or what to do.
