by Adam Ingle
“I didn’t give away your plan, if that’s what you’re really concerned about,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Look, I’m sorry to bruise your fragile little ego, but if you said—”
“That's enough!” said Marcus in that tone that fathers used when they’re fed up with their kids' bickering.
Everyone looked over at him. He had stood up to speak, though whether it was for emphasis or because he was about to rescue Stephanie from Mestoph’s barrage of questions was up in the air. Stephanie got up and walked into the adjoining room. Marcus followed her. Sir Regi looked to Mestoph and Leviticus and they shook their heads. Sir Regi made a soft, chirpy bark and then curled back up on the bed, casting constant glances at the door to the other room. After several minutes, he closed his eyes and settled in for a nap.
Mestoph and Leviticus looked at each other briefly. They didn't quite smile. Things were progressing nicely on that front, at least. Unfortunately, things were less than perfect with the other half of their plan. Almost a week of being cramped into two small rooms with nothing but TV and each other to keep themselves sane, and nothing to show for it. They had started taking turns visiting the hot spring baths, which were the whole reason most others stayed at these rather sad excuses for resorts, but the tension and strain that had melted away in 106 degree mineral water would quickly mount again minutes after returning to their rooms. If St. Peter didn't find them first, Mestoph and Leviticus weren't sure how much longer they would last before they did themselves in.
Mestoph stared at the televisions. Then, suddenly, something caught his eye. Sir Regi jerked awake as Mestoph jumped up, shouting.
“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” said Mestoph.
Leviticus turned to look at the screen, and a big smile spread across his face. Sir Regi looked up at them, and then at the weather report. A storm swirled over Iceland. It had brought near record rains and low temperatures, but until now they hadn’t paid it any attention. Now it was definitely a sign. The storm had mutated into a slowly revolving pentagram, hovering over one of the mountains in the mainland. The oddest thing was how absolutely no one was mentioning its rather peculiar and ominous shape.
“Alright, kids,” said Leviticus, “get your shit together. We're heading to Iceland first thing in the morning.”
Knowing where you have to go and getting there are completely different things. Aside from the fact that there was no such thing as a direct flight to Iceland from New Mexico, they also had to figure out how to get tickets for four people and a dog without leaving a trail for St. Peter to follow. Using Stephanie's credit card in Truth or Consequences wasn't really a big deal because St. Peter already knew where they were. But now they needed to get to Iceland and find what they were looking for without giving up their hand.
They needed St. Peter to assume they were remaining there for as long as possible. The trip would require driving to Albuquerque, getting a flight first to Chicago, then to London, and then finally to Reykjavik. Each stop represented a potential security risk as both Heaven and Hell could have spies and lookouts anywhere.
“What if St. Peter watches The Weather Channel?” asked Sir Regi while everyone was sitting around the kitchen table brainstorming.
“Huh?” asked Leviticus.
“You're all assuming St. Peter hasn't figured everything out already. Why else would we have hunkered down for a week except that we were waiting for something? And if we're waiting for something, then he has to be wondering what it is. Just because the guy with the perfect weatherman haircut doesn't recognize a pentagram when he sees one sure as Hell doesn't mean St. Peter won't,” said Sir Regi.
Everyone looked at the little dog, dumbfounded.
“So basically what you're saying is that we don't have to move in secrecy, we just have to get there before he does?” asked Marcus. Sir Regi just nodded.
The next morning they were all sitting on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Stephanie had maxed out one credit card and pushed the limit on her emergency card for five last minute tickets to Iceland. All told, it cost nearly $20,000. Of course the airline had insisted Sir Regi had to have his own ticket, even after they had spent the entire drive from Truth or Consequences to Albuquerque trying to convince Sir Regi to travel in a small dog carrier they had picked up at the Salvation Army store near the motel. After he had finally acquiesced, and after many assurances from the ticket seller that he could ride as carry on under one of their seats, the stewardess refused to let him on without purchasing another ticket for a little dog. Sir Regi was quite happy to sit in the seat next to Marcus and Stephanie, but Stephanie was thinking about how long it was going to take her to pay off their little trip.
The flight to Chicago and even the long and arduous flight to London had been uneventful to the point of being torturous. Mestoph had thought he had seen a fellow demon at Heathrow, but it didn't really matter how many people knew where they were going because they had to get to Iceland as fast as possible regardless. Their plan, the true plan that Mestoph and Leviticus were following, relied on them being in control of whatever disaster was to befall the people of there. All they had to do was get there first in one piece with the Omen, Marcus, and Stephanie, and then they would have all the bargaining power.
The fact that the Omen wasn't actually about Marcus and Stephanie didn't matter as long as everyone believed it did. And since even Marcus and Stephanie believed it, it was as good as true.
Because they had booked their flight last minute, they were spread all across the coach class of the 747 they were flying on to Reykjavik. Marcus, Stephanie, and Sir Regi had managed to get seats together, but Mestoph and Leviticus were separated from each other and the rest of the group by several rows. They had hoped to get some time alone to talk about what to do about Persephone, as she was a loose end in their plan. Why was she in Iceland? The Greek gods didn’t have much sway in Iceland—it was Norse territory, after all—so the presence of a Greek goddess, even a relatively minor one, was puzzling.
Neither God nor Satan had really had a lot to do with the Greek gods; they remained mostly a curiosity for tourists visiting Rome and Greece and the small sects of people who still believed in their power. Furthermore, the way the Omen was worded would insinuate that Persephone was in Iceland not with her husband Hades, but with some illicit lover. They would at least have to put up the illusion of hunting Persephone down for the sake of Marcus and Stephanie, but they would have to consider searching for her in earnest to ensure they held all the cards. If it became known that Persephone was the actual target of the Omen, they had no idea how or if they could keep the upper hand.
After the flight from Chicago to London, this little hop was like a drive to the store. However, it became a rather bumpy drive as they approached the southern coast of Iceland and hit the outer reaches of the giant storm. The captain came on the intercom and warned passengers that they would be in for some heavy turbulence, but that it was nothing to be alarmed about. After being jostled around for a few minutes, both Leviticus and Mestoph gave up the dreams of a nap. Mestoph looked back to where Marcus and Stephanie sat. Stephanie laid her head on Marcus’ shoulder, and the two of them were holding hands, paying little attention to the turbulence. It was nice to see someone at least was getting what he wanted. It was too bad that Mestoph and Leviticus were probably going to ruin both their lives before this was all done.
“You guys traveling together?” asked a man behind Mestoph. The voice spoke in English heavily tinted with an African accent. The Demon had thought the seat had been occupied by an old German woman.
Mestoph turned around to find a very dark-skinned black man in the seat behind him; not Demon dark, but pretty close. He was wearing a solid black shirt with a priest’s collar tucked around his neck, which made Mestoph cringe a little.
“Uh, yeah,” said Mestoph uncomfortably. “Why?”
“You keep checking on them,
so I was just curious. Guess you couldn’t get seats together. Last minute trip?”
“Something like that,” said Mestoph.
The priest turned to look out his window briefly and then turn back to Mestoph, giving him a broad smile full of brilliantly white teeth, “Sorry I bothered you,” said the priest as he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Yeah, me too,” said Mestoph under his breath as he turned back around.
Mestoph looked out the window as the plane flew over the coast and into the mainland. He hadn't realized it, but he had been tensed up. Now he sighed with relief. They had made it to Iceland and had victory in their sights. He was about to close the visor when something bright on the horizon caught his attention. For the briefest of moments, he thought it was the sun rising, but he was on the northern side of the plane and it was the wrong time of the day. Now that he looked at it, it was also far too small to be the sun. He titled his head in doglike confusion as he realized it was getting bigger. He knew what it was, but his mind refused to click.
He just looked at the missile—no, maybe it was just a Rocket Propelled Grenade. It's slightly erratic path seemed to jostle with the same turbulence as the plane, which is when he finally acknowledged that there was definitely an RPG flying straight at the airplane.
“Well, shit,” he muttered to himself as he realized the RPG was about to shoot his dreams out of the sky along with the airplane.
There was no time to do anything meaningful about the RPG speeding toward them, so he simply crossed his arms and slumped back in his seat with his bottom lip jutted out, completing a picture that any parent would recognize as pouting. At first it just felt like more turbulence, albeit slightly more intense, but then the explosion ripped off the wing, which in turn ripped a hole in the side of the airplane the size of a small car.
It didn't quite happen like in the movies. There was no sudden vacuum that sucked everyone out of the cabin, but the hole the wing had ripped away was ragged and the drag continued to rip it wider. The passengers stared straight at the front of the cabin, screaming in terror. The only time they quieted was when one of them braved a look at the hole, the view instantly silencing them for a moment—but only for a moment.
Mestoph picked himself up off the floor and looked around. He was facing the back of the plane. There was a giant windy hole in the wall to his right. He could see the ground a few thousand feet below and wondered if the pilot was trying to land in the tundra, or if they were going down against their will. He figured it was probably a little bit of both. Leviticus was getting to his feet after a brief struggle with the seat belt and slid out of the aisle to run over to Mestoph. He could see that Leviticus was saying something, but he couldn't hear anything but a muffled rushing sound. Leviticus was next to him now and trying to get Mestoph to lean on him, finally pointing down to Mestoph's leg. Mestoph followed the direction of Leviticus’ finger, and saw several small pocket-knife sized shards of metal sticking out of his left thigh.
“Mother fucker,” he thought.
Part of the floor underneath the seats of row 45 suddenly crumbled away. The bolts in the seat legs rattled around without any anchor and began vibrating out of their channels. The passenger nearest the stretching hole tried to shy away, but the seatbelt kept him strapped in tight. He fumbled the seatbelt loose and then began climbing over the other passengers in his row like they were household furniture and he was playing the old childhood game where the floor is made of lava.
He looked like he was going to make it, and then he was gone. The two passengers still strapped to their seats looked surprised, as if they had been witness to true magic. They tore at their seatbelts, but then, with metaphorical lightning striking twice, they too were gone. They took the whole row of seats with them, leaving behind an ever larger hole. Then the plane flew into the storm that surrounded most of Iceland, and the ride quickly got rougher. Amidst flashes of lightning—this time the real stuff—rain whipped around the hole and turbulence got drastically worse.
Leviticus helped Mestoph move closer toward the back of the plane, near Marcus and Stephanie, who looked remarkably calm. Not like they were in shock—it was obvious they were aware of what was happening—but it was the kind of calm of those who knew freaking out wasn't going to do any good. Sir Regi had hopped into Marcus’ lap, shaking in that mildly convulsive way that only dogs could. Marcus and Stephanie held tightly on to each other’s hands.
Leviticus sat Mestoph down in Sir Regi’s vacated chair so he could take a look at the Demon’s leg. The shards weren't much bigger than fingers, but if they were fingers they were stuck about two knuckles deep into his leg. With his Demonic metabolism, Mestoph wouldn't stay on the injured list for too long, but Leviticus pulled the shards out and tried to bandage them using the pillowcase of the crappy airline pillow the cranky stewardess, air hostess, sky bitch...whatever she was, had given everyone on the flight. Leviticus was really just trying to preoccupy himself and Mestoph as the plane continued to shake and drop.
After the disappearance of the row of seats near the hole in the plane, everyone had moved out of fear of falling or being sucked out into the void. Most had crowded back into the tail section of the plane, where Mestoph, Leviticus, and the rest of the gang were. They all faced forward to the front of the plane, most in an awkward, shocked silence. No one really knew what they were waiting for: to die, to crash, to land, or even to wake up from a dream and find that everything was really just fine. A few people had slowly begun to get used to the sound of roaring wind and herky-jerky shaking of the plane and were actually beginning to have somewhat calm and casual conversations. Others began to cry, some began to pray, and several did both.
The perception of calm was broken as the plane dipped suddenly and things seemed to bend unnaturally. It was as if the horizon shifted upwards. Everyone had a straight view of row after row of seats that scaled off into the distance in an easily perceptible pattern, and then that pattern just...changed. The straight line suddenly bent upwards, and then to the left and to the right. Everyone sensed it long before they understood it, and then when they understood it they panicked. The plane was falling apart and there was a jagged, imaginary line being drawn from the gaping hole on the left clear across the cabin to the other side. On their side of the imaginary line everything was normal, but on the other it was chaos.
Then that imaginary line quickly became very real as the ugly blue carpet ripped and revealed split sheets of metal and fraying wires. The gaping hole was now spreading quickly, like an opening mouth, and another row of seats jerked loose and tumbled out into the air. The screams and crying that managed to overwhelm the sound of rushing air and rending metal.
Mestoph looked at Leviticus and smiled awkwardly. “You might want to try that praying stuff about now,” he said. Leviticus tried to return the smile, but he couldn't manage to stop gritting his teeth.
As far as he could recall, Leviticus had never been truly afraid before. He had been born in Heaven and had never known the kind of danger and fear that most humans would experience during their time on Earth. Mestoph had been in dangerous situations in his work, and had on occasion been in serious jeopardy, so the fear wasn't quite as overwhelming to him. Leviticus found it crippling and was reasonably sure that if he could teleport, he would have been long gone by now. It made him curious, though, and he turned to Mestoph again.
“You know you can leave at any point. I won't hold it against you.”
This time Mestoph's smile was genuine as he patted Leviticus on the back. He didn't have to say anything. They could both very well die—maybe not permanently, but it would be painful and it would ruin all their plans. Mestoph's face told Leviticus that there wasn't a chance that he was going to leave him behind.
Marcus turned to Stephanie, still holding her hand, and said. “I just want you to know that I’ve been in love with you ever since I first saw you at the coffee shop.”
“I kno
w,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him.
It was bad timing that they chose to have their first kiss at the exact moment that the plane finally tore in half with an ear-splitting shriek of metal on metal. The roaring wind became absolutely deafening. The forward two-thirds of the plane twisted away and began to climb in altitude for a brief moment as it lost a large portion of its weight and drag. The engines on the left wing continued to propel the plane onward, or more accurately upward considering the angle of the body. The twisting created more shear than the wing could handle; it ripped away and the nose plummeted down toward the ground.
Being in the tail of the plane, it was difficult to know exactly what kind of aerial acrobatics it did, but it felt like a ball tossed in the air that had hit the apex of its parabola and was beginning its natural descent back toward the earth. There was the slight feeling of free fall that made a tingling sensation in the stomach, but for the most part it seemed rather calm. Mestoph double checked that his seatbelt was secured and then motioned Leviticus to do the same. He tried not to think about where its former occupant might be and instead checked Marcus and Stephanie, who were leaning in awkwardly close to each other like one had a secret for the other. Then Mestoph grabbed Sir Regi and held on to him tightly, nearly squeezing the air out of him. He was surprisingly calm, considering that they were clearly falling to their death.
That calm remained for a long time, right until they hit the ground. Then it all went to Hell.
Gravity is a real bitch, and inertia is its obnoxiously loud and misbehaving child. Simply put, those passengers who weren't strapped in died viciously. When the tail section hit the ground, those who were standing or sitting unrestrained flew outward in all manner of ways. Some twisted and contorted as they flew through the air and landed hard in the dirt. Others catapulted out and then hit the gnarled rocks of ancient lava flows that littered the landscape, caught along jagged edges of the plane, or hit the seats in front of them and just crumpled.