by Stuart Slade
He backwinged suddenly and landed in front of an entrance flanked by two buildings. As he walked towards them, two angels, Hashmallim by the look of them, hurried out to stop them.
“You can’t come in here.”
“Can’t?” There was a menacing level of surprise in Michael’s voice. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, and it doesn’t matter. Nobody is allowed in here without permission from Belial or The One Above All.” The hashmallim smirked at the thought that he was giving the Mighty General Michael-Lan the run-around.
Michael just stared at him and his hand moved to grasp the angel. The hashmallim was suddenly pinned against the stone wall and was choking. “I find your lack of respect… disturbing.” Michael’s voice was still calm and dead level. I’ve been wanting to say that for years.
He held the grip until the Hashmallim collapsed to the ground. Then, he turned to the other angel. “Any questions?”
The Seraphim gulped and shook his head. “Good, then open that damned gate! We are looking for the Lady Maion. Where is she?”
The Seraphim shuddered at the venom behind the question. “She is a new arrival. She will be in Section Six. The guards will be breaking her in there.”
Michael simply glared at the hapless Seraphim. “I will remember you.” Then he stalked through the opening gate, Lemuel following close behind.
The sight inside was far worse than anything they could have gathered from the air. The stinking mud that coated the inside of the compound rose high around their feet and stung even this peerless skin. In front of them, the prisoners were moaning with anguish as they tried to move in the all-encompassing filth. Lemuel only needed one glance to understand why none had attempted to fly out of the camp, at some point, they had had their wings methodically and comprehensively broken. From the look of some, the broken bones had started to heal and had then been broken again. After repeated breaks, the wings were healing deformed and he doubted if they would allow the angels to fly again. That was assuming they got out of this place.
“Has Yahweh gone completely mad?” Lemuel’s voice was numb with shock. “How could he allow this?”
“You heard him. ‘All the pains of Hell’, he said. We all thought he was being his usual bombastic self. We never guessed he meant it. And did you hear who is in charge here? Belial, a refugee from Hell itself I guess. Yahweh wanted to recreate Hell, and he brought in a surviving daemon lord to do it for him. We’d better find Maion fast.”
Michael set off at a determined pace, looking for Section Six. Around them, the crippled angels were trying to beg for help and food. To his mounting anguish, Lemuel realized that they weren’t just crippled, they were far more than half-starved as well. Fortunately, on a number of levels. Section Six was quickly located. It was barely distinguishable from the others only, to Lemuel’s eyes, the prisoners hadn’t been starved yet and they were in marginally better condition. Beside him, Michael was quickly scanning through the figures that surrounded them. Finally, he saw the one he was looking for.
“Maion. She’s over there. Hurry up old friend, we haven’t got much time.” He strode off, ignoring the mud and filth that was splashing over him.
“Don’t hurt me any more. Please…” Maion’s voice was a pathetic whimper. To Lemuel’s horrified gaze, she was bloodstained and battered, her wings savagely broken and trailing in the filth that surrounded her.
“Maion, it’s us. We’ve come to get you out of here.” Michael’s voice was comforting and consoling as he knelt beside her.
“Michael? You came? I was praying for… “
“Maion, did I not tell you that you are one of my people now. That if you got into trouble I would come and get you? You are one of us, Maion-Lan-Lemuel-Lan-Michael, one of my people and that means if they you help, it is for me to succor you. Leaders serve their followers Maion, just as much as followers serve their leaders. And Lemuel wouldn’t leave me alone until we found you and came to your aid.”
The words spoken by Michael cut through Lemuel’s stunned consciousness. He had heard them before, from Charmeine-Lan. “Michael, you. You are the leader of the Montmartre Club.”
“I am, Lemuel, and I have been trying to protect people who were at risk from Yah-Yah’s growing insanity. I have been trying to save as many humans as I could from the Hellpit and give them some sort of life in Heaven. Now, I see I have failed.” Michael theatrically sagged and started to weep.
Beside him, Lemuel put his arms around Maion and tried to comfort her. Instead, she screamed in renewed agony as his movements caused the jagged ends of bone in her broken wings to grate against each other. The sound clouded his mind with sheer fury. “Michael, what do we do?”
Michael gave every appearance of recovering from his breakdown and he drew himself up. “We must first get Maion out of here. That was and is our first priority. She’s been very seriously hurt, her wings look so badly broken that I doubt if she will fly again unless she gets some very special care.”
Maion was struggling to speak but the pain form her injuries kept breaking through. “Michael-Lan, you came just in time. One of the guards here said that Onniel had ordered my legs be broken as well. Please, help me.”
“What do we do?” Lemuel was weeping uncontrollably.
“We can do nothing here. There are only one group of people who can treat injuries this severe and still allow the victim to make a full recovery.”
“Humans?”
“That is right, humans. Lemuel, you must get Maion to the humans. They can cure her wounds and restore her body. We can create a portal to earth from here and you can take Maion through it.” Michael turned his attention to Maion and his voice softened. “Maion, you are going to Earth for treatment. It will hurt as you go through the portal but you’ll be out of here at least. Just be brave for a few minutes longer.”
“What are you going to do Michael?” Lemuel had thought the situation through and saw that Michael-Lan was right. Maion’s only chance lay on Earth.
“I will go to the Eternal City and confront Yah-yah. I cannot believe that he knows what goes on here. He has been mislead by bad advisors and tricked by Belial. Once he knows what is happening here, he will make things right. You, on your part, tell the humans of this. Beg for their aid in treating these wounded. Humans are very strange, they will kill without mercy yet present them with a scene like this and they will go to unimaginable lengths to aid the sick and wounded. Bring the humans here and try to save these people.”
“Michael-Lan, it won’t work. The All-Seeing must know what goes on here.” Suddenly all the pieces that Michael-Lan had so painstakingly crafted fitted together in Lemuel’s head. “Michael-Lan, he doesn’t just know, he planned this. He knew there were those who opposed him so he used us to catch them. He used Azreal to cerate the terrorist movement so he would have an excuse for this. Michael, remember I asked if Azrael’s treason went so high? Well, it didn’t, it started so high there is nowhere higher. Yahweh was behind the bombings, I am sure of it and he did it all to justify creating this place to punish those who were questioned him.”
“I greatly fear you might be right.” Michael-Lan put exactly the right amount of doubt and anguish into his voice. Well done Lemuel, you put it all together. Now, lets see if you can make the obvious final jump. His face settled into an expression that combined grandeur, nobility and offended honor. Michael was quite proud of the expression, it was one he practiced in front of a mirror often. “What should I do?”
Lemuel summoned up his strength and, as he looked down at Maion moaning in the mud, his mind was made up. “Michael-Lan, Yahweh knew all of this and knew it well. He is no longer fit to reign in Heaven. You, you Michael, must depose him and take over the throne. Then, you must make peace with the humans somehow. I do not know how you can do this or when you will achieve it but it is your duty to the whole of the Angelic Host to make sure that what we see around us now will never happen again.”
“Lemuel,
my old friend, I ought to strike you down for the words you have just said. But while my head tells me to do that, my heart says that you are right. Bring the humans, bring their armies for without them we cannot depose Yahweh. I will do what I can Lemuel, I will oppose Yahweh, I will try and prevent this atrocity from happening again. Yes, my old friend, I will attempt to remove him from power. Your words convince me of the need for this and for that I thank you.” The poets were right, the power of love will achieve wonders. When used and steered properly of course. Michael gazed at Maion on the ground. “But first, we must see to your beloved. Be brave Maion, soon you will be on Earth and your wounds will be cured.”
Michael and Lemuel reached down and lifted Maion, trying to disturb her shattered wings as little as possible. Once she was lifted, the two combined their power and pushed through a portal to Earth. Then, Lemuel took a firm grip on Maion and took her through the black ellipse.
Behind them, Michael-Lan watched the ellipse close behind them. Well, we are truly into the end-game now. He thought. The humans won’t just send aid although they surely will send that. They will send their armies as well and the first thing they see will be this nightmare. They’ll see the angelic host as the victims here just as the dead suffering in Hell were the victims there. And that will preserve the host for they will forgive us.
Michael-Lan started to move away, to return to the Eternal City where the next stage of the complex scheme would take place. As he did, he saw the hellish conditions in the camp around him and one last thought popped into his mind. I wonder if I’ll ever forgive me.
Chapter Sixty One
Washington DC Air Defense Interception Zone Command Center, Andrews Air Force Base, Washington DC, United States
In another city in the United States, the sudden wailing of an alert siren caused the staff to make a panic-stricken transition from the sleepy ambiance of an over-heated room at 3 am to the urgent activity of an operations center that faced an imminent, city-destroying threat. Nobody had forgotten the sights as the western side of Manhattan had been pounded by rocks falling from a portal in the sky. Nobody wanted to see the same thing happening in Washington.
“The DIMO(N) net is picking up data from the cell phone system now. We’re getting increasing numbers of towers dropping off the network.” Sergeant Manuel Oporto made the report in crystal clear English. At a very basic level, it was a sign of just how uncoordinated the US government was that he had been drafted by the United States Air Force and promoted several times without anybody seemingly being aware that he was actually an illegal immigrant. “The spectrum analyzer is showing a broadband hump peaking in the low gigahertz. The data is partial at this time but it’s filling in fast. I’m going to call it Sir. We have a portal forming over Bethesda, Maryland. Confidence is high, say again, confidence is high for portal opening over Bethesda, Maryland.”
Even through the thick walls of the command center, the sirens wailing outside could be heard. Yet even they were drowned out by the howl of F-22s firing up their engines and moving to take off. Oporto could envisage the scene in Washington itself, with the air raid sirens screaming, the street lights flashing and, something that had been absent from the attack on New York, Marine-One landing at the White House to evacuate the President and his family. The war-room under the White House had been designed to stay functional during a nuclear exchange but nobody was confident of its ability to do so when hit by a rock of effectively unlimited size.
Across the readiness board that dominated the control center, lights were flickering, changing in color as the units they represented came on line. The entire room vibrated as the first of the ready-alert F-22s took off directly over the building, their engines on full afterburner as they clawed for altitude and swung north. Washington was lucky, the stealthy composite structure of the early F-22s made them unsuitable for use in Hell so they had never been fitted with the filters that allowed them to fly in the dust-laden atmosphere of Hell at major cost to their performance. These F-22s went supersonic within seconds of leaving the runway. Around the Beltway, missile batteries and anti-angel guns were coming to full alert as well. Soon, the command center would be swamped with target discrimination work as they tried to distinguish hostile targets from the defensive assets that were pouring into the area.
“Philadelphia and Richmond are on line Sir.” Oporto’s headset was constantly buzzing with updates. A part of his job was to filter out the routine data so that his officer knew what was happening without getting swamped by detail. In Oporto’s private opinion, it didn’t take much to swamp an officer with details. “They confirm a portal forming over Maryland. They’re ready to transfer assets to us if we need them.”
“Very good.” Major Coyote was watching the map display carefully, seeing the red carat defining the area of the newly-developing portal. “Data consistency?”
“The cell-phone system error rates and signal strengths still climbing Sir. We expect ingress any second. Hold that Sir, we have the portal, it’s a little south of Bethesda.” He hesitated slightly as the final data came in. “It’s just a touch west of the I-270/Old Georgetown Road interchange. It’s frozen in place, not moving the way the New York one did.”
“F-22s on scene. They report the portal, no ingress. No rocks.”
“Hold that one Sir, we have radar contact. Single object is transitting the portal. We have an inbound.”
“Well done Sergeant. Send the data to all missiles and gun batteries, prepare to open fire.”
F-22 Lightning “Oscar-One”, Over Bethesda, Maryland.
“We have portal in view.” Captain Joshua Slocombe racked his F-22 around in a tight curve. He guessed that the glaziers would be doing good business tomorrow, replacing all the windows that were being shattered by the passage of the four fighters in Oscar Flight. Out of consideration for the householders below and to try and keep an open firing solution on the portal that hovered a few hundred feet in the air over I-270, he dropped speed to well below transonic. “This is a weird one people, it’s very low down. Rocks won’t pick up that much speed when they come through.”
“Topaz Control here. We have word of an ingress.” The message from ground control was disrupted by the strange electronic effects caused by the close proximity of a portal but they were still clear and decisive.
“Roger that. Selecting AIM-120 now.” If angels came through, Slocombe wanted to be sure he could start getting hits early. That meant missiles, he could shift to the AIR-120 later. “Confirm that Topaz, we have visual on ingress. Ready for missile shot. Fox-… Hold that Topaz, there is something wrong here.”
Slocombe looked carefully at the figure that had just come through the portal. Despite being clearly an angel, and thus a perfectly legitimate target, it was falling through the sky under the portal, frantically beating its wings in an effort to brake its descent. And, it was malformed somehow. It was the wrong shape, it wasn’t the perfect humanoid that had marked the other angels that had afflicted Earth. As he analyzed the shape in front of him, it suddenly snapped into focus. “Topaz, figure is two angels, one appears to be carrying the other and attempting to fly for them both. Am holding fire.”
“Acknowledged Oscar-One.” There was a pause on the radio. “Sensors indicate portal is closing.”
Slocombe took his attention off the falling angels for a second. “Confirm that Topaz. Portal is closed. Say again, portal is closed. Whatever we just got is all that there is.”
The F-22 climbed a little as Slocombe completed another circuit. “Topaz, hostiles just landed on I-270, almost on top of Old Georgetown Road interchange. Confirm, two angels, one laying on road, other standing. Request instructions. Over.”
There was a long, long pause on the radio channels while Slocombe imagined messages running up and down the command chain. Eventually, the radio broke silence. “Oscar flight is to remain circling area. Ground forces closing in to assess situation. For your information, alert is being cancelled.”
One of the small advantages of gasoline rationing was that the roads were clear and people who wanted to drive at high speeds could do so. The previous night, Officer Peter Malloy had been in a high-speed pursuit of a Corvette whose owner had obviously decided to blow his month’s fuel ration on a really fast run. The race had topped 170mph before the ‘Vette had gotten clean away. In the secrecy of his soul, Malloy was looking forward to a rematch. In the meantime, this race along I-270 would have to do. “What’s going on?”
Beside him. Jim Reed was listening to the scanner. “Two angels down just ahead of us. They’re not doing anything, just standing on the Interstate. Well, one of them is standing, the other is laying down. Army and Marine ground forces are moving in but we’re way ahead of them. Nobody seems to realize we’re here yet.”
“Good, let’s keep it that way. If we can bring them in alive…” Malloy’s eyes were sparkling with delight at the prospect.
“Or get killed in the attempt?” Of the two, Reed was the more realistic. Or pessimistic depending on how one looked at such things.
“So? We go to Hell. You think they don’t need cops in Hell?” Malloy hit the brakes on the Crown Vic cruiser. “OK, we’re there. Get ready.”
He reached under his seat and pulled out one of his most loved possessions, a Pfeifer-Zeliska. 600 Nitro Express Magnum revolver. Malloy was a cop partly because he liked it and partly because it had annoyed his parents who believed that their money should insulate their only child from such mundane lifestyles. When they had finally died in an auto wreck, he had become a very wealthy cop and had invested USD17,000 in an example of what was truly the most powerful handgun ever made. ‘Malloy’s Cannon’ was a legend in his local police station and had caused him to be at the top of the “must call” list if there had been a Baldrick berserker raid. Sadly, in Malloy’s eyes at least, the opportunity to fire the piece had never emerged.