Between Heaven and Hell

by Jeff Kirvin

  And by morning, the United States of America as the world had known it would cease to exist.

  Phillips was beside himself. Everything had gone better than he ever could have possibly dreamed. Yes, it was shame about the people that died in the rioting, but omelets, broken eggs and all that. You couldn’t stand in the way of progress.

  He stood across the river at the Iwo Jima Memorial, safely away from most of the rioting, but with a nearly perfect view of the Mall. The gravestones of Arlington National Cemetery stood to his right, in mute protest of what he’d done.

  He didn’t care. The door was open, facing him with undreamed of opportunities. Not only would he be the obvious choice to lead now, but he’d be leading a country of his own making, living by his rules. He was completely, totally, in charge.

  “Enjoying yourself, sir?”

  He turned momentarily from the view and noticed John approaching from the car. He was glad. He needed someone to watch him gloat. He spread his arms wide, including the panoramic view. “Look at what we’ve done, John. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  The younger man craned his skinny neck to take it all in. “Beautiful. Yes, it most certainly is.”

  “Yes,” Phillips continued. “And by morning, it will all be mine.”

  “Oh, I seriously doubt that, Senator.”

  Phillips cast a questioning look at his aide. “What did you mean by that?”

  Before Phillips could react, the much smaller man reached out, lifted him off the ground, and tossed him easily into the metal base of the memorial.

  John Williams approached Phillips, no longer looking the part of the dutiful aide. “What I meant,” he said, his voice deeper, harsher, “is that now that your purpose is fulfilled, I see no reason to tolerate your presence any longer.” Williams lifted Phillips by the neck and held him off the ground. His fingers were as hard, and as immovable, as steel.

  “What?” Phillips choked, still unbelieving.

  “Even now,” Williams continued, “I can’t believe that a backwoods idiot like yourself rose to such a position of power. Democracy at work, I suppose. But for you to have one of the very demons you railed against as your closest, most trusted advisor, and never have the slightest inkling of it, well now that’s just pathetic. We played you, Senator. Up to this moment, your plans and ours coincided, and we gave you all the rope you needed with which to hang yourself. You see, chaos is our business. While we certainly appreciate all your help in bringing down the government the whole world revolved around, we can’t allow anyone to actually fill that vacuum of power. We’d be right back where we started.”

  Phillips’ eyes widened until it seemed they’d pop from their sockets as the full realization of what he’d done sank in upon him.

  Still holding Phillips with that terrible, immobile grip, “Williams” glanced back at the fires rising off the Mall. When he turned back to look at his puppet/tool/victim, Phillips could see the total lack of humanity in his eyes. “So while we thank you for your efforts in our behalf, I don’t think we’ll be needing you any longer.

  “You’re fired.”

  With a crack of bone and nervous tissue, the dreams and aspirations of Timothy Phillips came to an end.

  Loss

  Ye can drop the phony Irish accent,” Lucy said to Asbeel, “I know who and what you really are.”

  “Fine,” the demon said reasonably, and without a trace of accent. “What do you plan to do about it?”

  Lucy smiled a very unfriendly smile, then tossed a grenade at the demon.

  Heinrich and Jack found Hakael much harder to take down than they would have anticipated. For one thing, he not only knew all their moves and tactics, but he was armored as well as they were and he knew the layout of Hell far better than they did. Several times already they thought they had him, only to lose him down a side corridor at the last second.

  “Getting tired yet, boys?” the demon asked.

  Wiping the sweat from his brow, Heinrich responded by launching another grenade. Again the demon deftly avoided the brunt of the explosion.

  Jack wondered where the other demons were. They’d chased Hakael nearly all the way around Hell’s first level, and he was the only demon they’d yet seen. Where were the others?

  “Come now, gentlemen,” Hakael taunted. “After all of my people you’ve destroyed so quickly, so cleanly, you’re having such trouble with little old me?” The demon backed into yet another side corridor.

  Heinrich made a move to follow. “Stop!” Jack shouted. When Heinrich turned to question, Jack said more quietly, “It’s a trap.”

  Heinrich looked disgusted. “Of course it’s a trap,” he said. “We’re in Hell. This whole place is a trap.” After checking that no demons were actually in sight, the young German knelt. “But with God’s guidance and protection, we will rid the world of Satan and his minions once and for all.” He made the sign of the cross over his heart.

  Heinrich then stood, looked into Jack’s eyes, and ran off after Hakael, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  Ah, Hell, Jack thought. That kid’s gonna be the death of me. He ran after Heinrich into the unknown corridors of Hell.

  “Satan?” Daniel asked, getting to his feet.

  “One and the same,” the demon replied, bowing slightly. “I’m very pleased to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Likewise,” Daniel said as he whipped out his grenade launcher and prepared to fire.

  The demon kicked out faster than Daniel thought possible and knocked the launcher over the railing and into the abyss. “Please,” he said, “let’s try to keep this civil.”

  Daniel had a few hand grenades left, but he was sure they’d prove just as useless one-on-one against Satan as his launcher had. He didn’t know what to do, other than play along until reinforcements arrived.

  “Come with me,” Satan said. “There’s something very interesting on television you might want to see.” The leader of all demons turned and walked away. At a loss for anything else to do, Daniel followed.

  Satan led Daniel into a room lined with television screens. The demon’s hand was poised over a button on the arm of the only chair in the room. “Watch this,” he said.

  Satan pushed the button and all the screens flared to life at once, though silently. On screen after screen, Daniel saw pictures of warfare, rioting and destruction.

  “Disaster movie marathon?” he asked.

  “Listen,” Satan said. He pressed another button.

  Audio now joined the video feed. Daniel concentrated, but he was only able to pick out bits and pieces from the cacophony.

  “…Capitol Building utterly destroyed…”

  “…President Walter Thomas found dead in the Oval Office…”

  “…Tokyo stock market crashing through the basement…”

  “…Russians on the move into Eastern Europe…”

  “…riots in Los Angeles making previous riots look like picnics…”

  “…thousands dead in Washington tonight…”

  “…Iraqi troops have re-entered Kuwait…”

  “…vice president dead…”

  “…chaos reigns in what’s left of the United States tonight…”

  Satan pushed a button, and all the screens went black and silent once more. The demon walked over in front of Daniel and flashed a dazzling smile. “We’ve won.”

  Lucy had used all but one of her grenades, but nothing had worked. The demon that killed her brother was still breathing, and there was seemingly nothing Lucy could do about it.

  “So you’re one of the mighty DTF,” Asbeel taunted. “Really, from all the press you people get, I expected better.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Lucy quipped as she looked for an opening to use her last grenade. She kept it hidden from view, so the demon wouldn’t know how many she had left.

  “You’re so much like your brother,” Asbeel went on. “Such a young, idealistic fool. He never stood a chance, yo
u know. He was too reckless. A family trait?”

  Lucy came to a decision. She offered a quick and silent prayer to her brother’s spirit. Peter, forgive me.

  Popping the pin behind her back, she ran at the demon and wrapped her arms around it. Asbeel didn’t get it.

  “A hug? Now, after all we’ve been through?”

  Then they exploded.

  As night fell outside on the flat expanse of Nevada desert, the quiet of the evening was broken by the roar of rocket engines. In the western sky over a converted missile silo, dozens of white, winged man-sized forms dropped from the sky on plumes of fire.

  And the angels descended upon Hell.

  They wasted no time gaining entry. Instead of taking the elevator down as Daniel and his team had done, the angels destroyed it and flew down the open shaft. They stopped at the first level and fanned out through the corridors, their massive suits clanging loudly on the metal walkways.

  It had, indeed, been a trap. Jack and Heinrich found themselves pinned down in a small vestibule while they held off more than a dozen demons, led by Hakael, with the last of their grenades.

  “It’s over, Jack,” Hakael called out to him. “We won, you lost. Come on out and take your medicine like a man.”

  The demons were moving in again. Jack glanced back to Heinrich. “How many you got?”

  Heinrich held up two hand grenades. His launcher lay empty on the floor.

  Jack peeked around the corner at the demons in riot gear moving slowly towards them. He’d blown two of them to … well not Hell, but wherever they went when they died. The rest were more cautious, but he and the kid only had five grenades left between them and they stood no chance against a dozen demons hand to hand.

  Suddenly, Jack heard thundering footsteps headed their way. His spirits dropped. Reinforcements, he thought. Then he saw a rocket streak past him and blow apart two demons at once. “What the—”

  He and Heinrich watched, slack-jawed, as three angels in the same gleaming white armor they’d worn on the Mall ran past him and tore through the remaining demons like a hot knife through butter. Between their rockets and their flame-throwers and their sheer, unbelievable strength, it was over almost before it had begun. None of the demons remained, Hakael included, and the angels moved on to other unseen targets.

  Jack and Heinrich exchanged a look, then followed them.

  Survival of the Fittest

  Daniel stared at the blank monitors in shock. Satan was right. They were too late; the demons had won.

  “Don’t look so crestfallen, Daniel,” the demon said. “It’s for your own good, in the long run.”

  The words sank in on Daniel. Our own good. Zagam had said the exact same thing moments before his death. This was too much. “What?”

  “Please,” Satan gestured to the chair. “Sit.”

  Suddenly exhausted, Daniel sat.

  “I’m telling you this, Daniel, because I want you to understand. You’ve been through a lot at our hands, and I feel we owe you an explanation. Now that we’ve won, it no longer matters whether you know or not why we do what we do. From what you already know, from what the angels have told you, you are aware of our struggle against them. But you only know half the story.

  “Five thousand years ago, after leading the angels at Michael’s side for tens of thousands of years, I had a revelation of my own.”

  The demon paused, thinking. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. For you to understand what my frame of mind had become, you have to know what it was.

  “We are not evil,” Satan said. Seeing Daniel’s reaction, he held up a hand. “I know what you’ve been taught, but most of that is what the angels would like you to believe. Since the dawn of human history, we immortals had watched over you, guiding your development. Not in the name of some nebulous and arbitrary concept of ‘good’, but in the name of order. We helped you learn to cooperate, build communities, to accept a structure in your lives that allowed you to be more as a group than you could have been as individuals.

  “But we went too far. After instilling this pattern of order that pulled you out of chaos, Michael and the others set about enforcing that order, keeping you in tight little rows, held in check by fear of what we, your gods, might do if you disobeyed. Having reached a point of civilization where you could function as a society, that society began to stagnate.

  “About five thousand years ago I decided to change that. I’ve read Miss Richardson’s story about us, and one of the quotes she attributed to Uriel is true; we have a need, deep down, to do what’s best for the human race. We demons still feel and act on that need. And at that point, so long ago, I felt very strongly that the path Michael had chosen for your people was not the right one. Once humanity had been civilized, you no longer needed order enforced from without. You were perfectly capable of organizing yourselves. What you needed, more than anything else, was the impetus to advance. We provided that.”

  “By attacking us?”

  “Exactly. Think about it, Daniel. Without conflict, without stress, a society stagnates. You needed something to struggle against, something to prevent you from becoming complacent. It’s evident throughout the last five thousand years, but just for the moment, think about the last fifty. Look at all the technological advances that were the direct result of the Cold War, most of which have led to a steadily increasing standard of living for your people. Do you think mankind would ever have set foot on the moon if your government didn’t need the rocketry and electronic guidance technology to build ICBMs? Look at all the great works of art and literature directly inspired by conflict. Your own national anthem describes one glorious night in a war!”

  Satan stood directly in front of Daniel and looked him straight in the eye. “All because of us. Our prompting. Our pushing your race to excel. Without us, your mighty six billion strong human race would still be a hundred thousand farmers stagnating between the Tigris and Euphrates. You owe all you are to our encouragement. The strength of your race was forged in the fires of the tension we create. It’s nothing more than Survival of the Fittest. We are the lions, and you are the herd we strengthen by weeding out the weak.”

  “So what now?” Daniel asked. “Aren’t we back to the same chaos you lifted us out of to begin with?”

  Satan chuckled. “No, I don’t think so. Your race has too many generations of order behind them to revert completely. You’ll rise from the ashes now, just as you’ve always done. But by making it harder, by knocking out the governments and other support mechanisms that made it possible for you to watch eight hours of television a day, we’ve done your race a great service. A service we’ll continue to provide for as long as necessary.”

  “I think not,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Daniel and Satan looked over and saw several white-armored angels walk into the room. The first one spoke again.

  “I told your second it was over, Satan. You didn’t take me seriously.”

  Satan looked remarkably nonchalant. “Gabriel. Haven’t you been watching the news? We’ve won. The last bastions of order are falling even as we speak. What can you possibly do about it now?”

  “Rebuild,” the angel said as he fired a rocket.

  Satan barely dodged in time. Daniel slipped out of the chair and moved to the edge of the room.

  “What are you doing?” Satan demanded, finally looking upset. “Have you forgotten the rules?”

  Gabriel stepped forward and the other angels spread out behind him, blocking the exit. “No,” he said. “But as I told Beelzebub, the rules have changed.” Gabriel made a fist in the air next to his head, then pointed at Satan.

  Daniel eased his way over and watched from the door as the angels tore the demon apart. Satan didn’t go down easily, and he even managed to take an angel or two with him, but after a long, violent and desperate struggle, Satan was destroyed. Even at the end, Daniel thought the great demon really couldn’t believe what had happened to him, to his plans.

 
; Belief or no, Satan fell.

  By morning, Hell was free of demons. Daniel, Jack and Heinrich stood outside on the desert floor and watched as one by one the angels emerged, spread their metal wings and took off to the west, the rising sun glinting off their wingtips. There was an explosion that they all felt through their feet as the last angel emerged, and soon after that, the fires of Hell burst through the destroyed elevator shaft. No one could re-enter for quite a while, and when they did, there’d be nothing to see.

  There was no answer when Daniel tried to call back the helicopter, and eventually he and the last two members of his team made their way back to what was left of Las Vegas on foot.

  The Demonic Crusade officially ended a few weeks later when the angels tracked down and destroyed the last of the demons, Belial, who had escaped the purge of Hell by being in Washington D.C. at the time. With his destruction, the demons no longer existed.

  When the United States government crumbled, it took its economy with it. Soon after, other governments began to crumble as the world economy ground to a halt. The chaos Satan worked so hard to bring about was complete.

  The angels were very helpful in rebuilding human society. Michael had proclaimed it the dawn of a new Golden Age. There was talk of using the opportunity to create a single, unified world government, with the former sovereign nations of the world acting much the same way as the individual states of the United States. The angels would help set up such a structure, and arbitrate disputes. Hungry for leadership, most of the world eagerly went along with Michael’s plan.