Continued from Chapter 7.3, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 8: Adapt to setbacks.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find on the other side of that door.  Maybe nothing at all.  Maybe an army of howling demons.  Maybe, and I desperately hoped for this outcome, a bunch of nubile young maidens who’d just laid out a lovely lunch of grilled paninis and didn’t have anyone to enjoy them with.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see a single maiden on the other side, much less a panini sandwich.  There wasn’t an army of devils or demons – but the devils I saw were more than big and scary enough to make me hesitate.

“There are many demons in Hell,” Eremiel had said before going through the door.  Now, we saw one of them, and I understood why Eremiel looked so anxious the entire time that we were passing through Hell.

We’d entered a large cavern, and this demon occupied most of it.  While Vinrael reminded me of a snarky salesman, a devil in one of Noel Coward’s upper English crust style plays, this one appeared to have stepped right out of the pages of a paperback fantasy novel.  Horns protruded not only from his head, but in a jagged line down his spine.  His eyes were two portals into pure flame, and more fire licked out of his mouth each time his jagged tongue came slipping out.  The demon was definitely male, I observed, trying to avert my eyes from where they kept on being drawn.  

More importantly, he stood between us and the door on the far side of the cavern, and he was most definitely angry.

“Easy there,” Vinrael urged, looking tiny as he stood in front of the massive demon, his arms up in a placating gesture.  “This isn’t as bad as it looks.  There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this, promise.”

“ANGEL!” the demon roared, pointing one long-clawed finger at Eremiel.  He looked ready to spring right over Vinrael and attack Eremiel, and the angel hefted his flaming sword higher, like a batter getting ready to swing at a pitch.

“Yes, but he’s here on demonic business!” Vinrael pleaded, but the huge demon was apparently no longer listening.  With a single, almost lazy swipe of his huge arm, he backhanded Vinrael all the way across the cavern.

I winced at the sound of Vinrael’s body smacking against the rocky wall.  It sounded like someone slapping a wet lump of ground beef.  Before anyone could move towards the stricken devil, however, the demon lunged forward to attack.

The next couple minutes devolved into chaos.

Eremiel proved to be quite a deft hand with that flaming sword, and Alice added to the firepower as she started blasting away with the shotgun in her hands.  However, the demon was huge, angry, and apparently invulnerable to bullets, and he threw back his head and let out a roar that shook the very foundations of the cavern.

“Jack!” Alice shouted at me, diving to the side as a demon claw swept through the air where she’d stood only moments before.  “Move!”

Still gripping the pistol that she’d handed me, I turned and looked at her, my brain feeling like it was filled with molasses.  “What?” I asked dumbly.

“The door!”  She pointed at the far side of the cavern where, through the haze of smoke coming off of the massive flaming demon, I could still see the door that Vinrael claimed would lead to Megiddo.  “You need to go!”

For a moment, I thought of arguing, but then the demon came charging in at us.  With a growl, Alice shoved me out of the way, and the demon slammed into the wall where we’d been standing moments earlier.  Chunks of stone came raining down from the ceiling with the force of his impact with the wall, several of them landing within inches of my sprawled limbs.

“Go!” Alice shouted at me again, rolling to her feet and firing the shotgun directly into the demon’s open mouth until the weapon ran dry.  Rather than bothering to try and reload it, she just threw it at the monster and reached for other weapons at her belt.

I didn’t stick around to see what she tried next.  I scrambled up to my feet and staggered across the cavern, doing my best to dodge the flailing limbs and gouts of fire that erupted from the demon as it fought against the angel and the mortal.

After what felt like an eternity of getting thrown off of my feet, slammed into walls, and diving to the floor to avoid various attacks, I reached out – and felt cool metal under my fingertips.  I glanced up with wide eyes, and saw my fingers curling around the handle of the door on the cavern’s far side!

“I’m at the door!” I shouted, turning to look at how Eremiel and Alice were faring against the massive demon.

Not good, I quickly saw.  Alice kept on attacking, but one of her arms hung uselessly at her side, and her expression was twisted in pain.  Eremiel stood right in front of the demon, blazing sword swinging back and forth, but even as I watched, the demon slammed his claws down on top of the angel, all but crushing him against the wall.

Alice glanced over at me.  “Go!” she shouted again.

“Yes, but-”

“I said go!”  She looked down at the ground between us, but even I could see that it was too far.  She couldn’t make it to me, not before the demon caught up with her and attacked from behind.  “Get to Megiddo!”

“And then what?”  I couldn’t even remember the rest of our plan.

“Stop the Apocalypse!”  Alice looked as if she wanted to say more, but then the demon roared again, and she spun around to try and fight it off for another few moments.

I hesitated an instant longer, but I realized that I couldn’t do anything else here.  If I waited, her sacrifice would be in vain.

I grabbed the handle of the door in front of me, twisted it open, and stepped through the doorway.  For one last instant, I heard the sounds of battle coming from behind me – and just before the door closed after me, cutting off all sound, I thought that I heard a female scream, even above the demon’s roar.  Something shot past me, a whoosh of air just past my ear.

On the other side of the doorway, standing in shifting, blowing sand, I squeezed my eyes shut and failed to fight a rush of tears.

Continued from Chapter 7.1, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 7: Remain positive.

When I stepped through the magical doorway hanging in the middle of the air, I expected to find myself in Hell proper on the other side.  I imagined stifling heat, rivers of lava, maybe some tortured souls, or at least a few pitchforks stabbed into skeletons.

I saw none of that on the other side.

Instead, Vinrael’s office turned out to be, well, an office.  I felt like I was stepping into the personal quarters of a mid-level music executive, back in the eighties.  There was a thick but slightly worn red carpet under my feet, and dusty framed pictures hung on the walls.  There was a green leather couch pushed against one wall, and a large desk made of dark-stained wood, looking heavy enough to crush a car if it fell out a window.

I glanced around, and noted that there were no windows.  No danger of anyone being crushed, hopefully. Continue reading →

Continued from Chapter 7.0, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 7: Remain positive.

A few hours later, I’d noticed the first strange thing about Hell – it seemed to grow warmer the further that we descended into the depths of the cavern.

With Eremiel leading the way, we headed into the depths, picking our way through shattered and scattered boulders.  No breeze stirred the dust, so we left a pretty clear trail of footsteps in the dirt behind us.  Alice asked if we needed to worry about concealing our trail, but Eremiel just replied that anyone who wanted to follow us wouldn’t be using our footsteps, so not to worry about it.

Somehow, that reply wasn’t totally reassuring to me, but I decided to hold my tongue. Continue reading →

Continued from Chapter 6.2, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 7: Remain Positive.

Somehow, I expected that opening up a portal to Hell would be a very dramatic event.  I imagined hours of chanting, blood sacrifices, and all sorts of nasty, forbidden activities that would make most priests blush.

Instead, once we’d drawn out the complex summoning circle, the actual procedure was quite straightforward.  Eremiel had us put on the robes, but then just stepped up to the circle, said a few words, and then waved his hand a few times over the diagram, being careful not to smear any of the painted lines.

As soon as he finished speaking (chanting?  Did this really count as an incantation?  Is ‘incanting’ a real word?), the lines glowed for a moment, flaring up with reddish light, and then faded back again until the glow could barely be seen.  I had to really stare at them to tell that anything was happening at all.

“And there we go,” Eremiel said, sounding a little relieved.  “No one coming through; I’m betting that all the devils are probably busy with their own preparations for the Apocalypse, after all.” Continue reading →

Continued from Chapter 6.1, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 6: Formulate a long-term plan.

“This doesn’t seem like a good idea,” I said again, although I probably ought to have learned by this point to just keep my mouth shut.

Indeed, no one responded to me.  Alice sketched out a few more lines in the intricate diagram that she’d painted on the middle of our floor, and then sat back to appraise her work.  She stuck the paintbrush in between her teeth to free up her hands, making her appear slightly like a deranged pirate artist.

“What do you think?” she asked me, glancing up as she sat back on her knees.

“You’re not listening to anything I say, are you?” I replied morosely.

“Nope.  Not even a little bit.” Continue reading →

Continued from Chapter 6.0, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 6: Formulate a long-term plan.

Our tenuous little alliance lasted for about five minutes, until we started actually considering the logistical implications of getting from the United States to Israel in a post-Apocalyptic world.

“Plane?” I suggested, flopped across one of the armchairs.

“None of us knows how to fly,” Alice answered from the other.

“Boat?”

“We’re not near a coast.  And none of us knows how to drive a boat, much less across an ocean.”

“Drive?”

Alice lifted her head up to look incredulously at me.  “You realize that Israel’s across an ocean, right?” Continue reading →

Continued from Chapter 5.3, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 6: Formulate a long-term plan.

It turns out that a furious and bloodthirsty woman is a fairly decent opponent for a distracted and disarmed angel.

After a couple of minutes of holding back, worried about catching a blow if I tried to interfere, I finally managed to scoot between Alice and Eremiel, praying that the bloodlust hadn’t clouded Alice’s vision to the point where she wouldn’t recognize me as a friend, rather than just another enemy.

She held her next punch, although her eyes blazed at me.  “Get out of my way, Jack,” she snarled. Continue reading →

Continued from Chapter 5.2, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 5: Learn as much as possible.

In the beginning, Eremiel began, existed the Word.

And yea, the Word did come straight from the Lord himself, and it was law.  Obviously.  

Yea, for the angels leapt to happily obey the Word, and all was good.  For the angels knew that the Lord had a plan for the universe, and they did trust in His judgment.  Given as how he had brought them into the world, had been as their Creator, well, why wouldn’t they trust said judgment?

However, yea for as more Words came forth, a new problem did emerge.  For all created by the Lord was infinite, and nothing that the Lord created was ever truly destroyed, and this included the Word that he spoke.  Yea, instead of dissipating after a little while, like normal words, the Words did remain eternal, bouncing around the highest chambers of Heaven and causing all sorts of problems when they snuck up on some of the lower angels who’d just popped in to do a little bit of cleaning and dusting around the place.

So issuances of the Word grew less frequent, and the Lord instead began delegating the running of the Universe to the highest of his angels.  This approach also did seem to work, but some of the lower ranks of angels began to worry that there might be some misinterpretation of the Lord’s true desires for the future.

And so, to remedy this, the Books were created.

*

I sat up, groaning as I rubbed my head.  Eremiel looked up as I interrupted his story, but I had to interject.

“Do you really need to say so many capital words?” I asked him, pushing one finger into my ear to try and scratch the itch on my brain.  “Those things really give me a headache after a while.”

“But if I don’t emphasize that this is the Word, or the Book-” I winced again at Eremiel’s emphasis, “-how will you know that they aren’t just everyday words or books?”

“We’ll get it from context clues,” Alice insisted.  She didn’t look any more thrilled than I felt at hearing the capital letters drop in with heavy emphasis at the start of those particular nouns.  “We can figure it out.”

Eremiel frowned at us both, but after letting out a long sigh, he nodded.  “Very well.  I forget about the weakness of mortal ears.  I will attempt to speak more freely.”

“Thank you,” I said, settling back in my chair once again.

Eremiel nodded, and after a moment, continued speaking.

*

The Books – sorry, the books, you know what I meant – were created using the power of the speech of the Lord himself.  No, stop glaring at me, I’m still saying that one with the capital letter.  He deserves respect.

Anyway, the books were created using the power of the words that floated about the chamber, imprisoning them in their volumes and simultaneously allowing for them to express much more as they spread across the blank pages.  They told us what would happen to the universe and when, and they were given to the archangels to guard, and so that our commanders would know their orders.

Some of the books were relatively mundane in the topics that they covered; they talked about how to make sure the universe continued to run smoothly, checking on some of the trickier subatomic functions, everyday stuff like that.  Other books contained instructions for minor miracles, like the 1980 Winter Olympics.  

But one of the books, the book entrusted to the archangel Metatron, contained the instructions for the Apocalypse.

The contents of that book were dark and powerful, given as how the Apocalypse was meant to represent the judgment call of the universe, measuring whether this creation of the Lord’s proved to be up to snuff.  Metatron guarded his charge fiercely, and we all hoped that the book would not be opened for as long as possible.  After building a big tower of blocks, no child wants to have to put away his toys.

But then, Metatron announced to us, the day had come.  The book had opened and spoken to him, and the time of the Apocalypse was at hand.

We all went to work.

The end of the universe, you see, is all about judgment – or, more accurately, measurement.  Everything has to be weighed, measured, examined, and its value determined.  Basically, the angels are tasked with summing up the worth of the universe, all to determine if it meets the criteria listed in the book entrusted to Metatron.

*

At this point, Eremiel once again had to pause his story, as both Alice and I shot forward with questions.

“We’re just some number to you?” Alice burst out, and I wondered how Eremiel managed to avoid bursting into flames under the heat of her glare.  “Really?  That’s how you angels see us?  We have lives, you know!”

Eremiel shrank back a little from her blazing anger, but he didn’t quite have the good sense to keep his mouth shut.

“Well, had,” he responded, and the fury in Alice’s eyes told me that the angel’s life expectancy had dropped to the point where it was being measured in seconds.

“So what’s the number, then?” I asked instead, jumping in quickly in hopes of avoiding violence.  “How good does the universe have to be to pass?”

He shrugged.  It’s rather strange, seeing an angel shrug; the wings make the gesture a lot more expressive than it would have been otherwise.  “I don’t know.  I don’t even know how they do the counting.  I’m just assigned to guard the Earth after the counting has begun.”

“Yeah, on that,” I continued, keeping one wary eye on a fuming Alice.  “So you took all the good people and bad people up to be judged, right?  That’s the point of the Rapture?”

Eremiel nodded.

“So,” I finished, “what does that make the rest of us, stuck down here still?”

The angel frowned, shrugged again.  “Zeroes?”

This time, I wasn’t fast enough to stop Alice from shrieking bloody murder as she lunged at Eremiel.

Continued from Chapter 5.1, here.

Read it from the beginning, starting here.

Axiom 5: Learn as much as possible.

Inside the Starbucks building, Eremiel didn’t grow any less snotty.  

“I always forget how dirty you mortals tend to be,” he commented, looking around with distaste.  “Compared to the Shining City, you always seem to have dirt bits everywhere, stuck in all the corners.”

“Well, with the whole end of the world and all, we don’t have as much time to clean up and kep things tidy,” I grumped back at him.  “You know, since we’re focused mostly on just trying to stay alive and such.”

Eremiel just sniffed and kept on wandering around the interior, looking disdainful.

This time, when I saw Alice glaring at him, I knew exactly how she felt – and agreed with her. Continue reading →