Angel of Death

by J. Robert King

  She had imagined only an emergency C-section for the Son of the Son of Samael. Instead, the baby was three weeks overdue.

  Already, he has broken all ties with his tempestuous father.

  “The doctor will be down,” said the old woman. The suspicion was gone from her features, replaced by a smile. “So, you’re going to have a baby today?”

  “Yes,” Donna replied, rubbing her belly, “my first.”

  “Do you need me to call the father?” the volunteer asked indiscreetly.

  Donna shook her head and looked toward the elevator, where her doctor appeared. “No, thank you. The father’s dead.”

  Samael was climbing rapidly behind her. How could a one-handed man climb a ladder so quickly? There was no time to wonder. Samael had already reached the spot where the rung had come loose. He sprung across the gap with lizardlike ease.

  Donna scrabbled higher. The ladder was slick with her blood. Rust prickled her palms. She flung herself upward, toward the hopeful light. Three rungs, five rungs, eight rungs…

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Donna. Come back. You’re tearing open your wounds!”

  Donna reached the top of the ladder. She crawled out onto a small flat landing strewn with cement rubble. A stout wooden door stood in the wall at the back of the niche. Beneath the door came a ribbon of light, the loveliest sight she had ever seen.

  Donna panted for a moment on the rubble-strewn landing, and then rose and grabbed the doorknob. It turned loosely, but the door only rattled in its frame, locked.

  Samael’s face topped the ladder.

  Donna kicked cement rubble at him.

  He cried out as grit sprayed into his eyes. Fist-sized stones struck his face. He lost his grip and tumbled back. His legs caught around a rung, and he hung upside down.

  Donna clutched a jagged stone and smashed it against the corroded doorknob. It broke off. The knob clattered to the cracked cement floor. Three quick kicks only rattled the door again. With a roar, she smashed the rock against the top hinge. The old metal shattered. The other two hinges cracked as easily. The door creaked toward her. She pried it back and it fell with a baroom. Samael’s bloody fingers clasped the edge of the landing. He clawed upward. Beyond the ruined door, Donna staggered into another shaft. On the far side of it, a set of steep, wooden stairs zigzagged up a gaunt tower of metal L-beams. It looked like an old fire tower – rotten wood, rusted steel, shorn bolts, and a crumbling wall of cement.

  “You can’t escape. The door above is locked, too.”

  Donna rushed the stairs and clambered upward. The planks creaked beneath her feet but held. As she rounded the first switchback, the larger bullet wound in her stomach began to throb. By the second turn, it felt like a hot poker impaling her.

  I should’ve brought the morphine.

  Below, Samael stomped across the fallen door. It boomed like a timpani drum. He bounded up the stairs.

  Donna rounded the third landing. A warm trickle of blood ran from her side. One foot was slick with it.

  “I won’t kill you,” Samael hissed between breaths. “I love you. I’ll never kill you. As long as I’m your angel of death, you’ll live forever.”

  The stairway swayed and creaked. Bolts were pulling free from the cement wall.

  Donna glanced up the narrow crotch of the stair to see how far she had to go. At least seven landings remained, the dim light becoming gradually greenish. How deep can these tunnels be? What earthly reason would there be for such deep tunnels?

  Her foot caught on something. She stumbled. Her toes were wedged – not wedged, but held. The killer had grabbed on between the treads. He reached higher, gripping her ankle. She kicked out. His fingers slipped, raking down her already bloody foot. She kicked again. Fingernails peeled back, and he lost hold. By the sound of it, Samael landed in a painful heap midstair and tumbled downward. Donna reached the fifth landing, and the sixth. Each breath felt like a saw sliding down her throat. The metal framework listed outward. Grinding sounds came from above. Rusted bolts ripped away from the crumbling cement. The stairway teetered out into the shaft. He’s coming. He’s closing on me. His footsteps are only getting louder, faster. He’ll catch me. As long as he lives, he’ll catch me.

  Donna’s legs were leaden. Three more landings. To die in a hole, away from the sun…

  She dragged herself up another flight, but there –

  there he caught up to her.

  Samael vaulted up the steps behind her and seized her ankle. She fell to her knees. She flipped over but couldn’t break his grasp.

  “You can’t escape me. You can’t escape love.” He yanked her down underneath him, slid his arm around her neck, and throttled her. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Relax. You’ll fall asleep and wake up, safe and warm on your bed.”

  His hold was implacable. She couldn’t break it. Every struggle was agony. Submit. Her body screamed that she submit.

  But there was that slumbering baby in the bright, clean room…

  They had tried prostaglandin gel. They had broken the bag of waters. They had started Pitocin. Her false labor had become truer than she could have previously imagined, but still, the progress was slow.

  “About four centimeters,” said Doctor Lein. He was an East Indian man, tall, with intense brown eyes. Just now, those eyes peered at his gloved hand, prodding the cervix. “This little one seems not to want to come out.”

  Donna gasped from the pressure of his fingertips.

  “Must’ve heard what it was like out here.” She nodded toward him. “There’s another contraction starting.”

  “Yes,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “I can tell. Keep up the good work.”

  “It’s been ten hours already,” she replied. “How much longer?”

  “Be patient. It’s a hard thing to be born, but everybody does it.”

  Gritting her teeth, Donna raised her good leg and kicked, planting her heel in the killer’s groin and flinging him backward, head over heels. She turned onto her belly and scrambled to the next landing. Dull thuds came as Samael struck moldy wood and cracked through.

  Please, God, let him be dead – and if not dead, maimed. And please, God, let me reach the top…

  The crashing sounds below rumbled into silence. A new noise took their place – the ominous squeal of stressed metal.

  The metal tower veered away from the cement wall and out over the darkness. Then it reeled back to clang against its facings. Perhaps if she could break it entirely free after she jumped to the landing – perhaps Samael would be killed as the stairway collapsed. Donna topped the final rise, which drifted ten feet away from its terminus – a wooden door in the smooth wall at the top of the shaft. There was no landing. The door was bolted in place with a fat padlock, and goldgreen light poured out all around it. So close. She couldn’t hope to break through the door, with the tower swaying as it was, or cling to it and pick the lock. For that matter, she had nothing with which to…

  Beside the door was an ancient glass compartment, so shrouded in dust that it seemed at first only another panel in the gray cement. As the tower swung inward, though, she spotted within the compartment a bulky fire extinguisher and an ax.

  Donna lifted a hunk of rotting stair and struck the glass. It shattered with a dry, dusty sound. The tower drew inexorably away before she could thrust her hand through the jags of glass and bring away the ax. The tower reached its farthest point and pendulumed back toward the door. Donna thrust her hand through the shattered glass and seized the ax haft. The blade broke out through ragged shards of glass. Her hand streamed blood. She gripped the ax with both hands. It seemed to have never been used, sharp despite its corrosion.

  “Good enough for me,” Donna said, bracing herself to swing at the door.

  The scaffold sighed, slowly approaching the wall. She swung and struck. A few chips of old wood flew back, but the resultant cleft gripped the ax, dragging it out of her hands. It took another sway of the tower before she could rea
ch the ax and pull it free. Light poured warmly out through the chink. As she waited for the next blow, she listened for Samael. Aside from the moan of metal, there was silence.

  Donna hunkered down. The door loomed toward her. She struck. A wedge of wood flew free, and she yanked the ax head out. Another five or six strokes, and perhaps she’d have a hole big enough to dive through. Two, and then three more solid hits. The door was cracked down the center. If she got lucky, the door would split in half and fall away. Donna reared back with the ax, holding her breath as the tower and door swooned together.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Whirling, she lashed out. The blade bit into the side of Samael’s jaw. He fell back, silent and leering. She caught her balance and swung again. This time, the blade cleaved into the killer’s shoulder. The ax head cut muscle and tendon before embedding in the upper knob of the humerus.

  Donna didn’t stop, even as Samael staggered back. The ax fell again, nearly severing a leg, and then sank into his belly, like a spoon into oatmeal. He slumped precariously against the framework. With one mighty strike, she chopped the man’s bad arm clear off. Blood jetted from the amputation. He would be dead in moments, and she would be free. She turned. The tower crashed into the wall. The gory ax flew into the fissure in the wood and split the door in two. One ragged half hung by stressed hinges, while the other slid down between door and tower, cracked against stone, and plunged in a long, rattling descent.

  Even as the tower leaned away again, Donna leaped. Her upper body and hands caught just within the doorway, the baby and her lower body hanging in the emptiness beyond. It felt as if climbing up onto that ledge would cut the baby in half, but if she were still hanging this way when the tower swung inward, she’d be crushed.

  Donna wriggled her way up through the hanging threshold. No sooner had her feet dragged across it than the scaffold clanged into position. Gazing back past the riven door, she saw the immobile, bloody mess of the Son of Samael, slumped on the stairs.

  “You’re not my brother,” she blurted. “You’re not anything. It’s time to die.”

  She turned to see a wide basement with I-beams and metal posts. This was the lowest level of an abandoned brick warehouse. Through a bank of high, shattered windows, golden sunlight streamed across unmown green grass. It was a beautiful sight. Only the arm amputation bled a lot. He stuck his fingers into the brachial artery. That helped. The bleeding would stop that way. Then a tourniquet for his leg. He could make the tourniquet out of his own shirtsleeve and his own ulna, stripped of skin and muscle, of course. Once the tourniquet was tight, he could use one of these pieces of glass to cut the leg the rest of the way off.

  Spirit arms and legs were much better than real ones. If those amputations went well enough, he’d get rid of more parts, and more, until he was a pure angel again.

  How strange, he thought. Donna made me human in the first place. Now she dehumanizes me, demonizes me, redeifies me.

  It’s no wonder I love her.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “What’s wrong?” the nurse asked. “Concentrate on your breathing.”

  “He’s here,” Donna rasped out, bearing down. “I know it. He’s here.”

  “He’s not here yet. Don’t push. Save your strength,”

  said the woman, middle-aged and motherly.

  “Not the baby. Samael. The Son of Samael. He’s here, in this hospital,” Donna insisted. “I can feel it.”

  “You’ve got two officers outside your door. They’ll keep you and the baby safe,” the nurse soothed. In her white polyester pants and jacket, she seemed almost a Felinni clown. “Pant blow, now.”

  For the hundredth time, Donna began the breathing pattern – small comfort against the contractions. “They can’t stop him. He’s not dead. He has no limbs anymore, but somehow he got here. He can do anything. He kills whomever he wants.”

  “Calm down. Are you sure you don’t have any allergies to morphine?”

  “I tell you, he’s here.”

  “Who’s here?” asked Doctor Lien as he walked into the birthing room. The man’s eyes were bright and mildly chiding. “The baby? Well, let’s see.”

  Without invitation, he moved past the nurse, dragged a stool from beneath the foot of the bed, and sat down between Donna’s legs. Donning a rubber glove, he felt for the baby.

  “Yes, he is here. Ten centimeters. Plus one station. Congratulations, Ms. Leland. It’s time for you to push.”

  “Thank God,” Donna growled, bearing down with a contraction. She gripped the handles the nurse had just inserted into the bed. Her body grew as tight as a recurved bow. Cords stood out down her neck, and her face reddened.

  “All right, relax for a second. Breathe. Good. Very good. You’re making good progress. Down another station. He’s positioned right. All right, try another push.”

  All the while, the doctor was quietly sliding shelves and sections of bed into position, readying a bucket for the afterbirth. “Yes, excellent. Breathe. Then give me another just like it. Good. Good. He’s advancing. Are you comfortable with my finger there?”

  “I’m not comfortable, period,” Donna gasped out.

  “Let’s just push this baby out.”

  “All right,” the doctor said, leaning his forehead seriously inward. “Push again.”

  Donna did, rising up in the bed, hands clutching tightly to the handles. She watched her own trembling thighs and growled, saw the doctor’s slick black hair between her legs. In that mad, red instant, she wondered if it was him, Samael. He was the right height, the right build…

  “Another push. Come on. You’re almost there.”

  She hadn’t realized she had stopped pushing. It had been eighteen hours of hard labor. She was so weary, she was nodding off between contractions.

  “One more good one, Donna, and he’ll be here.”

  She pushed, roaring, and felt a looseness and a tearing.

  “Stop so I can clear his nose.”

  “You stop!” she shouted, though she struggled to hold back.

  “All right, one last!” In a terrific rush of flesh and fluid, the baby was born. “There he is, bigger than life!”

  Doctor Lien lifted up a blue creature, squirming and squalling. It was not purple, like the babies she had seen in the films, but truly blue. With each breath it took, its blood-mottled skin cleared, until the screaming baby was a ghastly white. The doctor fastened a set of clamps and snipped the cord.

  “Well, look here! An albino. I bet he’s got eyes as pink as a rabbit’s,” Doctor Lien said. Donna’s stomach turned in her. The baby looked like a chicken carcass hung in a butcher’s window. She threw up green bile on the floor, spattering the doctor’s feet. She is here. The baby has just arrived, too. I can feel it. It was no easy thing, getting to this hospital. I’d bumped my way through four different medical communities before reaching Froedtert. All the while, it was doctors and charities and community activists that called the shots. Once my health was stabilized, they all agreed on one thing – the unknown, blind, mute homeless man should have a new face to replace the one the rats ate.

  They’ve cut a hunk of tendon from my shoulder socket and carved it into a nose. They’ve reconstructed the gnawed cheekbones, stitched muscles into place, and moved skin grafts from my side to my skull. Those four surgeries are finished, and ten more are planned to reconstruct my brow, lips, and chin. Of course, they can’t give me new eyes, or a new tongue.

  Why have they done all this? To them, I am a symbol of human tenacity. They have made me a living unknown soldier, the manifestation of all human torment, all human hope. They think I cling to life out of sheer determination and undying hope.

  In fact, I remain only to slay my child. The rats hadn’t been enough. They ate away most of me, yes, and it was quick work for them. By the time the garbage men found me in the alley, I had no limbs, no face, no lips, and no eyes. What was lost grew back – spirit arms and legs, a spirit face and eyes. I am mos
tly angel now, thanks to the rats.

  But they could not eat away the one parcel of flesh that truly binds me to the world. My child. My newborn child. It is time to go see him.

  I lift my spirit hands before me and curve them inward. The fingertips sink through flesh as though it were only shadow. They sink until they surround my heart. I can feel the wild, determined flailing of that angry muscle. It is strong, very strong. It wants to live. But what if I squeeze it like this? What if I suffocate my own heart with my very fingers?

  Ah, even I can hear that beeping alarm as my pulse goes wild – even I, who have no external ears, but only holes in my head like the ears of a lizard. They will come running soon. They will shock me with those pads, never knowing that electricity can do nothing to this adamantine grip of mine. They will stick a needle into my heart and pump it full of adrenaline, which will only make the thing tear itself to pieces. They will crack me open like a turkey and massage the muscle by hand.

  The heart machine is buzzing in flatline. My body is bucking atop the table. It’s quite a show. The doctor who did my grafts is here. He stares despairingly at the two triangles of flesh that he calls my face.

  “No response. Nothing. BP dropping. We’re losing him.”

  They’re losing me. I’m gaining them.

  I do not feel the scalpel carve into my chest, so sharp it is, but I see the hot red line and hear the ratchet sound of rib spreaders cracking the bone. Then one of them darts a gloved hand into the space and grabs the still hunk of meat. It doesn’t matter to me. I can already feel necrosis setting in. My touch is a touch of death. Rarely has it erred – once, with a certain police officer, but it will not err now.

  My death must be perfect.

  I am rising above my body. Cameras start going off from the hallway. There is an orderly pushing reporters and photographers back – ah, Blake Gaines. It is good to see you again! You want more pictures of me? Color shots of puddling blood and wide-eyed surgeons and orderlies forming human chains and Right to Lifers in a round-the-clock prayer vigil?