by Alton Gansky
“Isn’t this lovely.” The voice came from an area of shadows near the back of the large chamber. “We’re all here together. I’ve been waiting for you.”
The figure of Azazel emerged into the light of the room. He shook his massive head. “I saw what you did to poor Ambrosi. He was our chosen one, you know. We had big plans for him. But he had a bit of an ego. Then again, who doesn’t?” The giant angel moved slowly across the room.
I’ve faced some pretty big guys on the football field, but all of them were tiny compared to this dude. Give the Hulk pale skin instead of green, wrap him in a brown robe, give him a hairy chin, and add a finger to each hand, then you’d have this guy. Except the Hulk was still basically human. Like most angels in the Bible, Azazel had a human form, but there was nothing human about him.
“I’ve been around since, well, creation, and I don’t think I’ve met a more annoying band of people. Oh, the apostles were irritating, of course, but they were someone else’s problem.” He paused for dramatic effect. “You, however, are my problem.”
Then things got really weird. Here we were, a thousand feet below the ice of Antarctica, facing an evil angel giant, having survived cold, ice-eels, frozen Nazis, and storerooms of things that have haunted us since we first got together. We had fought and killed the antichrist, and seen a dear friend murdered—how could things get weirder than that?
But they did.
I turned my attention to Zeke, who slipped out of his backpack and set it near one of the walls, as casually as he would take off his pajamas and toss ‘em in the dirty clothes hamper. He pressed the button on the wire that dangled from his pack.
“Tank, it’s go time.”
That’s when he stopped being Zeke the navy guy and became Zeke the I-don’t-know-what. I could guess, though. As I watched him expand to a slightly smaller version of Azazel, I assumed he was an angel. A righteous, obedient angel. There’s a verse in the Bible about people entertaining angels without knowing it.
That sort of sums it all up.
“You!” Azazel said, smiling in disbelief. “Well, aren’t you clever, you—”
Zeke didn’t wait for Azazel to finish his sentence. Clearly, he had not come to chat. He was on Azazel before I could blink. The two careened through the room, knocking over equipment and monitors. It was almost too much to believe.
Zeke had one more thing to say, and he said it to me: “Tank! Run. Now.”
The power in his voice shook me out of my trance. I spun and headed for the door. The others followed, but it was clear that Brenda was in a bad way. I hoisted her onto my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Chad looked like he was declining fast. I don’t know if he was bleeding out from the eel bites or if those things had poison in their heads. At the moment, it didn’t matter.
“I got him,” Andi said. She did her best to serve as a human crutch for Chad. He smiled. Maybe he was trying to flirt. He finally had his arm around Andi.
Or maybe he was just in pain.
“Daniel,” Brenda said. It sounded more like a sigh that a word.
“I’m here, Mom. I’m good. I can run.”
We covered a dozen yards before we stopped.
“Duch,” Daniel said.
I was lowering Brenda to the ice when I spotted the four black-masked humanoids we had met when we first saw Azazel. They watched us for a second, then sprinted at us.
Then past us.
They had no interest in me or the others. “They’re going to help their master,” I said. Why bother with us? As far as they knew, we were trapped. They could grab us later—unless Zeke’s plan worked.
“Did I see what I think I saw back there?” Chad’s voice was growing weaker.
“Shut up, Chad.” Andi started forward again, dragging Chad with her. “Save your energy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Weak and delirious, he tried to salute. We were running uphill, but our situation was going downhill.
A lot of screaming behind us as Zeke bought us some time. I repositioned Brenda on my shoulder and continued down the corridor.
We were attempting the impossible and had no time to do it in, but still we had to try. One thing I had learned about our team: if we went down, we would go down fighting.
Twenty yards ahead I saw our goal: a massive set of black doors shaped like a giant eye.
I stopped at ten yards out. I was going to have to blow the doors like Zeke said and we couldn’t be too close when that happened.
When I set Brenda down, she didn’t move an inch. I could see her chest rise and fall, but her eyes were at half-mast.
Tears trickled down my face. I told myself I didn’t have time to imagine the worst right now. That didn’t keep my brain from doing it as I ran toward the doors.
I worked as fast as I could. Zeke’s backpack of death was on a timer. He only had to keep Azazel and his goons away from it until it blew. I had no idea what an explosion would do to other worldly beings, but I did know what it would do the likes of me and the others if I messed this up.
I placed the directional charges where I thought they’d do most good and ran back to the others.
“Huddle up.” I turned my back to the door, pulled Brenda in front of me. Daniel sat in front of her. Andi did her best to shelter Chad.
The explosion shook my everything. Ears rang. Heat rushed over us. The corridor was concrete, but a thin layer of ice covered everything. It fell around us like broken glass.
“Talk to me.” My voice sounded strange in my ears.
“I’m okay.” Andi didn’t sound so sure.
“My ears hurt again,” Daniel said.
No one else spoke. Not good.
I stood. “Outside, Daniel. Go now.”
“Mom. Mom.”
“Go, little buddy. I’ll get her. Go.”
He did.
“You too, Andi.”
“I can’t lift Chad. I need help.
“Get out. I’ll come back for him. Go.”
“I can’t—”
“Don’t argue!”
She stepped to me and kissed me. And for one moment I wasn’t freezing, busted up Tank. I was just the luckiest man in the world.
Andi pulled away and ran for the opening.
I picked up Brenda, but I had to make three attempts. I was spent. I was broken. I staggered out the portal and lay Brenda on the ice. She looked bad. I made the trip back inside to get Chad. I couldn’t lift him, so I used the last of my strength to drag him outside and set him beside Brenda.
He wasn’t breathing.
Neither was she.
Daniel was on his knees, his head resting on Brenda’s chest. Crying came first. Then deep weeping. Then wailing, as only a broken-hearted boy can.
Andi knelt beside him and sobbed.
Daniel struggled to speak through his grief.
Soft words.
Powerful words.
“Best . . . mom . . . ever.”
Another explosion rocked the earth. A big one. Zeke’s backpack—the one with the “big boys”—had gone off. Ice and concrete dust blew through the open door, showering us with debris. Andi, who was closest to Daniel, threw her body over the boy.
When everything settled, the door we had passed through was gone, replaced by a deep depression in the ice. Giant chunks of ice lay where once a smooth surface had been.
“Zeke did it,” I said. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did it.”
The cracked ice moved as if something was pushing up from below.
Andi stared at the moving earth. “This is never going to end, is it?”
Again, I struggled to my feet, swaying where I stood. The ice sheet continued to rumble, making standing ever more difficult.
Azazel appeared in the heaps of ice. Don’t ask how—I had no idea. I had no idea how he did any of the things I’d seen him do.
“You, Man of Faith. You did this to my sanctuary.” He was not offering congratulations, and it took a second for me to realize he was t
alking to me.
I met his gaze. Despite the pain, I managed to grin. “Actually, I only helped.”
“You have annoyed me far too long.” He started coming my way, and I realized he wasn’t walking. He was floating just above the ice. “You and that boy.” He pointed at Daniel.
I steeled myself for a confrontation, but who was I kidding? I was too busted up to offer much of a fight. Even Daniel could take me out in the first round. Still, I would stand my ground. I couldn’t let him win.
Azazel was on me before I could blink. He caught me by the throat and lifted me in the air. I cut my eyes to the side and realized I was a good thirty feet above the surface.
I said at the beginning that this would be the story of my death. Brenda’s picture showed all of us dead except Daniel. Sometimes her drawings were more like warnings than prophecies, but I had known in my heart and that this would be my last stand.
So be it.
I seized Azazel’s throat as he had seized mine, but I had too little strength, and I doubted it would do any good. But if I couldn’t be victorious, at least I could be defiant. I tried to squeeze and managed to make the fiend smile.
“First you,” he said. “Then your pretty friend. Then I’m going to torture the boy to death. I promise to take my time with him.”
He threw me toward the sharp-edged ice. Tossed me like I was a rag doll. He was more than a match for me. He was a match for a hundred of me.
I landed on my back. I heard a loud, gut-wrenching snap as my upper body bent one way and my lower body another. I’m not sure how I remained conscious. Fear, probably. I could move my head and my arms, but not my legs. He broke my back.
Breathing grew difficult. I could hear myself wheezing.
Then I felt a thud next to me. Andi landed on the ice, face down. Andi. My sweet, sweet Andi moved her head just enough to see me. Our eyes met. I saw no fear in her eyes, only her love. I hope she could see the love I felt for her.
I was losing my ability to move my head, so I had to rely on my hearing for the rest of the story.
“Enough!” Zeke’s voice rang out, bigger and badder.
“The boy will be mine.” That was Azazel.
“No, he is not and you know it. I am his protector, and I will fight you from now until the end of eternity if I have to. He is special. He is chosen.”
Azazel roared. The sound thundered across the ice.
Then I heard another sound—the steady chop, chop, chop of a helicopter. Daniel would be safe.
“Come here, little buddy.” I croaked out the words and Daniel obeyed. Tears had iced up on his face.
“Remember something . . .” My breath caught. I had only moments. “Every ending is a beginning. Got it?”
“Yes, Tank. I got it.”
“Say it for me, buddy.”
“Every ending is a beginning.”
“My man. You da best, ever.”
“No.” The tears began to pour. “No, you da best, ever.”
“Keep the faith, buddy. Keep the faith.”
“I will, Tank.”
I managed a weak nod. “I need a favor. My glove. Take it off.”
He loosened, then removed my right glove. Cold air stung my flesh. I shifted my gaze to Andi. She didn’t speak. I don’t think she could, but she did blink a few times. I took that to mean yes.
“Now Andi’s.”
Daniel figured it out. He removed her glove and gently placed our hands together.
We held hands—no gloves—and together we crossed the threshold.
Epilogue
Dan
The needle bit into my skin. I could feel its bite up and down my right arm. That was to be expected and I made no complaints. I had other issues to deal with: my emotions.
“You doing okay, kid?”
The tattoo artist had a bald head, no eyebrows, and tattoos up his neck and the side of his head. An epic beard hung from his chin, and his breath was slightly sour, like stale beer.
“I’m fine.”
I tried not to look at the tattoo, my first. I had waited eight years to get this. I was eighteen now; almost nineteen. I’ve spent a good part of the last decade living in Florida with Andi’s grandparents.
They’ve taken good care of me. They even arranged for home schooling. Go figure. I don’t fit in well at a regular school. The professor left his money to me, so I’m pretty well off. At least I was never a burden to my new grandparents. They cried over Andi a lot. We shared our tears. It seemed to help some.
Eight years have passed since that day in the Antarctic. Eight years since I was loaded on a helicopter and flown to McMurdo. Eight years is a long time, but not long enough for me to forget the sight of my friends—no, more than friends. They were family.
I left their bodies on the ice. That sounds horrible, but I knew they were no longer there. I saw them go.
As long as I can remember, I’ve seen the unseen world. Not perfectly. None of our gifts worked perfectly, probably because perfect gifts have trouble functioning in imperfect people.
My gift worked pretty good as I was being led to the chopper. Behind me rested the bodies of the only people on the planet I was capable of loving, but a short distance away, in a place no one else could see, was a scene bathed in gold light. The ice and the cold had been wiped away by the warmth there. The kind of warm that is inside and outside a person.
In the gold mist, I saw a line of people. Smiling people. Whole, undamaged people. Tank waved. Andi blew me a kiss. Chad raised a fist to his chest and thumped his sternum—his way of saying, “Love ya, kid.”
I saw the professor, too. Looking younger and stronger. I couldn’t tell he had been crucified a thousand feet below the ice.
And then there was my mom. Adoptive or not, she was and will forever be Mom. She looked up and crossed her arms over her chest as if hugging me. She seemed happy. She seldom showed happiness. She had fought too many battles in her tough life, but she looked joyful in that golden glow.
It’s that view of heaven that keeps me sane, that keeps me from waking up screaming every night. I replay that scene a hundred times a day. It gets me out of bed in the morning and encourages me to think of the future.
I saw something else on that trip: a vision of a star falling from space, a star I understood to be the Gate’s orbital mothership, the thing Chad had seen on one of his soul projection trips. It’s somewhere at the bottom of the ocean now. What’s left of it, that is.
“Uh, oh.” The tat man swore. “I did it again.”
My heart sank. “Did you ruin it?” I didn’t want to look.
“Look kid . . . sometimes I ink something and I don’t know why. I’ve followed the picture of the tattoo you gave me but…”
I had given him a photo of the tattoo my mom inked on Tank’s arm so long ago. She had done the work in this very shop, and there was a good chance Tank had sat in this very chair.
“But what?”
“Here.” He handed me a mirror. “This will make it easier to see.”
I looked at the image on my arm. My skin was red and a little swollen, but everything was clear enough to see. There was my mom’s face, dreadlocks and all; Andi looked real enough to crawl off my arm. The professor and Tank were as lifelike as could be. Chad was inked to one side. The artist had to add him from a photo I had. It all looked right to me…
Then I saw it. He had added another person: Zeke. Zeke my protector, my guardian angel.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Believe it or not, I know him.”
“I believe it. This happens more than I like to admit. Too many drugs when I was young.” He took the mirror from me. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the tat.”
“No need,” I said. “It’s perfect.”
“But—”
“My mom used to work here when I was little. She used to do the same thing. So it’s cool. No worries.”
He nodded in appreciation and finished up a few rough spots. He then put some plasti
c wrap over his latest work of art. I slipped from the chair and paid the man. I gave him a pretty good tip. Again, thanks to the professor.
I started for the door.
“Thanks for understanding,” the tat man said. “Hey, you never told me your name.”
I opened the door and stood at the threshold. “It’s Dan—Daniel Barnick.” Then, for some unclear reason, I added, “I’m the last Harbinger.”
The warm Southern California night enveloped me and some of Tank’s last words played in my head:
“Every ending is a beginning.”
fini
About the Author
Alton L. Gansky (Al) is the author of fifty works of book length fiction and nonfiction. He has been a Christy Award finalist (A Ship Possessed) and an Angel Award winner (Terminal Justice) and recently received the ACFW award for best suspense/thriller for his work on Fallen Angel. He holds a BA and MA in biblical studies and was granted a Litt.D. He lives in central California with his wife.
www.altongansky.com