by Stuart Slade
It had all the fascination of a train wreck. Stevenson wanted to look away from the great cloud but couldn’t. For a brief second she thought there had been another initiation and started to duck away to save her sight but then she realized it was just lightning. The massive electrical charges in the atmosphere from the initiation plus all that condensing water vapor was a perfect breeding ground for thunderstorms. There would be tornados as well, all around the blast area. Idly, she wondered if Heaven had ever seen tornados before.
“Attention. For your information, there has just been a 1.2 megaton nuclear initiation over the main body of an Angelic Host twenty four miles due west of our position. The initiation was a high air burst using a nuclear device optimized for clean performance. We do not expect excessive radioactive contamination. Specialized reconnaissance elements are in action now, checking for fallout and other effects. All personnel may now leave cover but be prepared to find shelter at short notice. Message ends.”
Stevenson sighed, she guessed that her battalion would be getting orders soon, ones that would direct her to advance on Ground Zero.
Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.
“We’re getting the data in now. The initiation was complete and on target. The preliminary estimate is between 150,000 and 250,000 dead. I’m sorry, General, but military targets are obdurately linear and nuclear blast effects are obdurately circular. We planned this one so the Host was caught between two hills and that squeezed the circle into an ellipse. Still, the nose and tail of the column were out of the immediately-lethal area.”
“You’re sorry.” Petraeus couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “We kill a quarter of a million people in a split second and you’re sorry because you didn’t get more of them. Just who are you anyway?”
The Targeteer smiled sadly. “Brennan, Don Brennan. By the time this thing has run its course, there’ll be a lot more than a quarter of a million dead. Even allowing for the way angels and Second Life humans recuperate, we’ll be way over four hundred thousand. Look on it this way Sir, if we’d done this to a city, we’d be looking at half a million dead right now and more than a million by the time the week is out. If the powers that be in the Eternal City get the message, we’ll all be spared that.”
Brennan was interrupted by a messenger from the National Reconnaissance Office. “Global Hawk pictures Sirs. Obliques of course.
“Which RQ-4 took them?” Brennan sounded interested. “Did she survive?”
“Donde Esta, Sir. She’s fine, circling out of harm’s way.”
Brennan nodded. “That’s good, I like that one. She always comes through with the goodies.” He flipped through the photographs and nodded with satisfaction. “Most of the Angels were within the total kill zone. Including the big one who was leading the Host. No sign of who he was I suppose?”
“No Sir. Without radios to intercept, we’re a bit stuck there.”
“No problem, we’ll find out eventually. Thank you.” The messenger left, privately glad to be away from that flat, uninflected, monotone voice.
“We used to get lectures on this but even the films didn’t convey the reality of it.” Petraeus was speaking very quietly.
“They never do sir. You have to be there when one goes off to really understand it.”
“You have of course.”
“Of course. Not an American test, but I was invited there as a guest. It’s something everybody who wants to run a country should see.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you.” Petraeus pushed a button on his desk intercom. “Sir Michael? I’ll be resting for a couple of hours. If anything comes up, handle it. There shouldn’t be, everybody has their mission objectives and we’ve got good people in command slots.”
He paused and got up from his desk. “Brennan, if there are any developments at Ground Zero or if we get warning of fallout, call me immediately.” There was a long pause. “You know, I could almost wish that the things didn’t work up here. Almost, but not quite.”
10 miles from Ground Zero. Heaven
The great ball of glowing light in the sky had been more than 700 times brighter than the normal light of Heaven. Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael had been blinded by the flash even though, by pure chance, he had been looking the other way. His partner in the scouting team, Amanael-Lan-Asohar had not been so lucky. He had been looking west at the time and he had been blinded as well. Only, for him there would be no recovery. His eyes had melted.
Uxhalar wasn’t well, but at least he was alive. The great thunder and the howling wind that had followed the flash of light had thrown him from the sky and damaged his ears. There had been an eerie silence between the flash and the crash of thunder. That’s what had amazed him so much. In a way, it had shocked him even more than the thunder, though the display was far greater than anything he had seen before. When he had risen, bruised and shaken, he had looked out from the crest of his hill across a sight he had never expected to see. The whole area was blackened, the grass seared away to bare soil, the trees burning. Everything that could burn was burning and the pyre of black smoke stretched high into the sky. Not high enough though for he could still see the great mushroom-shaped cloud that glowed red as it slowly changed color. Red was the color of Hell, and, impossible as it might seem, the humans had brought Hell to Heaven.
He stretched his wings and started to fly towards the cloud. The small forests that had once been scattered so artfully over the landscape were gone. Some were still burning but others were just scattered around, all over the track that the Host had been following on its way to do battle with the humans. On an instinct, he flew down to look at one closely, landing on the track in the midst of a cluster of burned tree logs. As he walked towards one, he heard a long, rasping groan of agony. It seemed to have come from one of the logs. He looked more closely and saw just a burned, charred log. Then, it opened its mouth and groaned again. To his horror Uxhalar realized that the ‘logs’ were all that was left of the human levies that had formed part of the column. He hurried away, taking off as quickly as he could, anything to be away from the sight he had just seen.
To his relief, the ‘logs’ vanished after a while. He realized they had to be the ones who had been on the outer edge of the strange weapon that had wiped out The Eternal Father Of All’s personal guard. Rigt on the edge, to close in to escape, to far out to die quickly. Further in, all that was left was the blackened stains on the ground where the people had exploded into flames and burned to ashes. And yet still further in there wasn’t even that trace of the survivors. Just the shadows of the dead, burned into the bleached ground. Human, Angel, it didn’t matter. They had died as if they had never existed, leaving only a shadow behind them
That was when Uxhalar stopped in his tracks, backwinging so he could absorb the immensity of what he saw. For, in front of him, the landscape had changed and become something he couldn’t have imagined. For at least three miles in front of him, the ground had been completely flattened and turned into glass. Soil, trees, grass, animals, people, Angels, all had gone leaving nothing behind but the sheet of glass. He tried to imagine what could have done this, what great power could fuse soil unto glass. He flew over it, looking down, realizing that this glass plain was the only memorial to the Army that had been once marching through the valley. Through the valley, that was not true any more for even the valley itself had been changed. The hills had been distorted, their pleasing symmetry destroyed, looking as if a giant hand had pushed them away.
Another strange sight caught his eye. Right in the middle of the great glass plain was a lake where no lake had been before. An odd, perfectly circular lake that was slowly expanding as it filled with cobalt-blue water. Uxhalar could sense evil from that lake and he stayed well away from it. The sight distracted him though and he was shaken by a flash and another thunderous roar. For a hideous moment he thought it was another one of the great explosions but he quickly realized it was just a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning.
Not that thunderstorms were common in Heaven unless He Who Is Above All Others willed it. And yet, it was a storm unlike any other he had experienced. The rain that began falling from the sky over was jet black, a mixture of water that was condensing on the plentiful dust and smoke particles. The black rain soaked into his wing feathers and along his back, causing an intense burning sensation on the patches of skin they touched. He tried to brush them off, but they stuck to him and all the efforts he made just spread the burning sensation further. He gave up, he would just have to tolerate them.
Eventually, the plain of glass with its strange, evil lake was behind him. He pointedly did not look at the track below until he was clear of any hint of the ‘logs’. It was then that the one thing he had not seen struck him. On all his flight over the site where the terrible thing had happened, he had not seen a living creature. Had the entire army been destroyed in that one great blast?
He flew a little higher and started a methodical hunt for any survivors of the Host. It took time and he was rained on again in the process, but he found them. A ragged column of survivors headed west, away from the death of their army. Had he not known better, he would have assumed they were Fallen Ones, for they were black overall. Even from above, it was obvious that few could see, most staggered along, their hand on the shoulder of the one in front of them. As he winged down, Uxhalar tried not to look at their faces, he knew what he would see there and he had already seen too much this day.
On the ground, he tried to find an angel he could speak to. Surrounded by the moaning of the survivors, he searched for anyone who could tell him what had happened. He saw hands with the fingers so burned that the knuckles stuck through the flesh and the skin peeled off in cylinders that retained the shape of the fingers within. He saw muscles that had once been red turned black with deep splits that ran to the white bone beneath. He pushed through the crowds, trying to hide his eyes and feeling only shame that these were suffering so much while he was unharmed. Then, at last, he found an angel, one badly injured where debris from the blast had carved deep into his body but an angel nonetheless.
“I am Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael. What happened? Where is our leader?”
The angel looked at him. One eye was clouded and blind, the other reddened and inflamed. “The mighty Elhmas, son of He Who Is Above All and leader of our host? He is back there, I think. He was over the column when the thing happened. He is part of the glass and the black rain. Our Eternal Father has no son any more.” Then he pushed past Uxhalar and was lost in the shuffling column that wound past him.
Uxhalar tried to take off but the effort suddenly seemed too great for him. He inflated his flight sacs to the maximum but it was no use, he was just too heavy to fly. So, he turned around and started to walk west with the rest of the survivors. As he did so, he noted that his wing feathers, once a pristine white but now stained with the black rain, were beginning, one by one, to fall out.
Chapter Seventy One
Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD
“How are you feeling Maion?” Lieutenant Grace Zachariah looked at her patient with professional concern. A concern that felt slightly ridiculous given that the size differential between them was so marked. According to the medical records, Maion-Lan-Lemuel was about 20 feet tall standing up. Fortunately, she wasn’t doing that right now. She was laying while Lemuel was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside her. The other thing that made concern seem unnecessary was Maion’s beauty. Now the bruising had faded from her face and body, she was radiant.
“I am much better thank you. But I feel sick and my skin crawls. As if there were insects underneath it.”
“That’s you getting free of your drug addiction. Didn’t anybody in Heaven tell you to just say no to drugs? I’ll get you some methadone, you’re about due for a new shot anyway.” Lemuel’s expression was one of resentment at the prolonged treatment and Grace didn’t like that. “Not a word from you Lemuel. We’re detoxing you as well, remember?”
“How long is this going to last?” There was a hint of petulance in Maion’s voice, one that reminded Grace of car trips and her little sister asking ‘are we there yet?’
She hesitated before answering, partly because of a nurse’s instinctive caution in telling patients anything and partly because any answer she gave would be a guess. When the Salvation War had started, the last thing anybody had expected was the problems inherent in treating drug-addicted angels. “If you were human, it would take between three and six months to get you cleaned up. Angels, we just don’t know. We’re only just beginning to get a handle on how daemonic and angelic body chemistry differs from ours and without knowing that, our best predictions are guesswork.”
“How is our patient Nurse?” Doctor Zinder had arrived and was reading the patient’s clipboard.
“Suffering from mild drug withdrawal problems. I’m getting her daily methadone dose to deal with that. Otherwise, much recovered.”
“Very good. Memnon is waiting outside, would you ask him to step in please?” Zinder turned to Maion. “You are looking much better. But, you must have realized by now that something is seriously wrong with your wings.”
“They won’t move.” Zinder also noted the petulant intonation.
“Let me show you why. These are called X-rays, they’re a sort of photograph that shows the inside of your body. These white things are the bones of your wings, these very bright white bits are the screws we put in to hold the long bones together while they healed. Now, these are pictures of a healthy wing, they’re of Lemuel’s actually. Compare them with yours, you can see the difference in the wing joint here. Lemuel’s is a marvel, five bones coming together in a joint that has three axes of movement. Your joint, on the other hand, is just a fused mass of bone. Left to itself, it will never heal to anything more than that.”
Maion started to cry, causing Lemuel to grip her hand and wrap his wing over her head. Zinder paused for a second, then carried on. “There is another option. There’s somebody I would like you to meet.”
Lemuel looked around, then his eyes opened with shock. “A Fallen One. What is he doing here?” The question was directed at Zinder and had a degree of anger in it.
“This is Memnon, a senior member in the government of President Abigor. Memnon lost his wings in a battle with our forces. As you can see, he got them back. I’ll let him tell you the story.”
Zinder sat back while Memnon told the story of his adventures in Iraq and Hell to the two Angels. While he did so, Zinder watched him carefully, trying to learn as much as he could from what, he had no doubt, was the most unusual meeting ever held in Earth Hospital. When Memnon finished, Zinder took over the conversation. “We can’t be sure that angels regenerate the same way daemons do. So you have a choice Maion. You can stay with wings that are present, but paralysed and useless or we can amputate them and hope that they regrow. If they do, you should have fully functional wings again, if they do not, you’ll be wingless. Up to you. Something I have to add, you’re the most advanced patient we have here. What happens with you will determine how the other Angels are treated. Some of them are in much worse condition than you are. Their wings were broken and re-broken while some have had their legs injured the same way as well. If this amputation and regrowth doesn’t work, they won’t be able to walk, let alone fly.”
Maion started crying again. “That’s horrible.”
“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” Lemuel spoke belligerently. “The Fallen Ones are our enemies, they always have been. They have plotted against us for millennia.”
“As you have against us never-born. Your arrogance wearies me as it has done for centuries.” Memnon was equally belligerent and Zinder got the same sort of feeling he did when dealing with his children squabbling over who had the largest apple.
“Shut up both of you.” Zinder looked at them both with exasperation. “Lemuel, I got the medical records from the hospital that treated Memnon. It took a little ti
me because it is an Army facility and this is a Navy installation but I’ve got them. I’ve even got the X-rays of his wings before and after the amputation and regrowth treatment. They confirm everything he has just told you. I wouldn’t have let him even mention this without checking out his story. Listen, both of you, it’s time to let old hatreds die. Isn’t it obvious by now that both Yahweh and Satan played you all for suckers? Us too, only now we’re doing something about it. Memnon, coming here to help was a generous and kindly gesture and you should appreciate it Lemuel. But this is a hospital and I’ll have no squabbling here. Either of you causes trouble and out you both go. The only person who really matters here is Maion and all that matters is what’s best for her. Get it?”
Memnon and Lemuel looked at each other, their mouths hanging open with shock.
“Err, yes.” Lemuel was speaking for them both. “My apologies, you too Memnon. We’d better forget what happened in the past or the humans might get angry with us.”
“Doctor, the wings I have will never work again. I do not need your pictures to know that.” She paused took her breath. “Lemuel, with your permission, please let them cut off these wings. They just get in the way now. I do not want to spend the rest of my life walking through doors sideways. Even if they don’t grow back properly, I’ll be better off.”