As they breached the rear door, Corwin half-turned and the chef brushed past him, sprinting to meet the demons with another cleaver held high. Shots were fired and just as fast deflected, a window shattering in their path. Torn between fleeing and joining the fight, Corwin’s choice was made for him when a third agent burst from the kitchen door. Obsidian steel rang against his cleaver.
The weapon might have lacked the elegance of Ransom’s katana, but it was a soulrender nonetheless. Corwin could feel it guiding his motions, hungry for a chance to draw blood.
The demon bore down with a heavy slash and he leapt out of range. Landing, his shoulders bumped the man behind him. He and the chef stood back-to-back. They exchanged a quick glance. The chef was a robust man with a bushy black beard. And there was something else about him . . .
Haven’t I seen that face before?
A sword thrust grazed Corwin’s neck. He swatted the blade aside and slapped the demon with the blunt rear edge of his cleaver. At his back, the chef ducked. He sensed it and did the same, just as a dark katana skimmed both of their heads. An unspoken understanding passed between them and simultaneously they traded opponents. Corwin dealt a crippling blow to one of the agents while the chef parried the other and rammed a fist into his jaw.
“Thanks for the hand,” said Corwin. He glanced at his ally again and his memory finally placed him. “Wait a second! Aren’t you that bum? What the heck happened to you?”
“I sobered up,” the chef gruffly replied.
He moved like a black-haired whirlwind with a cleaver, spinning and hacking the life from his foes.
“Must have been one hell of a twelve-step program,” mumbled Corwin.
“When I finally got things straightened out, I figured I owed you one,” said his ally as the last demon crumpled in the aisle. “The name’s Rodney.”
Several more agents were already charging their way from the adjacent train cars, and even with help, Corwin knew that he couldn’t fight them off forever.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a plan?”
“Through the window!” Rodney shouted. “Head for the engine car! I’ll hold them off.”
Corwin kicked out the glass shards that clung along the rim of the window broken earlier by gunfire. With one foot on the frame, he angled his head through.
“What about you?” he yelled back to Rodney.
“My time here is limited. Hurry!”
A wall of hot, ash-flecked wind assailed him and Corwin hugged the side of the train as he climbed. Pistols blared and blades clashed in the dining car. Hooking one hand over the roof’s edge, he began to climb, and was almost to safety when his left foot slipped. His other hand shot to the rooftop, saving him from a fall, but at the cost of his only weapon. The shining cleaver tumbled out of sight.
Cursing his luck, Corwin swung a leg onto the roof and rolled atop it. Though the wind blew fierce, he found that he could stand without crouching. The mountain passage was more spacious than any ordinary railroad tunnel. Sulfur tinged the air, and what he had taken for electric lamps set in the walls revealed themselves to be torches. Up ahead, their twin trails diverged with the broadening cavern. The floor fell away and a column of stone arches suspended the rails like a Roman aqueduct. A reddish glow crept up from the chasm. The heat was growing stronger.
Loud, metallic raps sounded at his feet as bullets pierced the roof. Corwin hastily scrambled forward, stopping short of jumping to the next car.
They always make this look so easy in the movies . . .
He made the mistake of looking down. Far, far below burned a magma river, its bubbles belching flames as they burst.
Why was I ever afraid of heights? Now lava, that’s scary!
Corwin stepped back from the edge to give himself a short runway. Any trepidation was promptly erased when an onyx blade speared upwards between his legs. He bolted and leapt, flying clear over the gap, but was nearly tossed from the next car by a torrid blast of air and the sloping roof. Hands appeared along its edges.
The first demon to lift his head got a taste of Corwin’s boot. So intense was the heat that his body ignited a dozen yards above the molten flow.
Corwin vaulted onto the car ahead, finding a dagger-wielding agent already on his feet. He couldn’t afford to slow down. The knife tore a hole in his coat, but he twisted, throwing his shoulder into the man and sending him to join his comrade. The engine car was in sight.
In his haste, Corwin didn’t even notice the air vent. He tripped in full stride and his skull bounced off the unforgiving floor. The world swam as he looked up, dim shapes resolving into a pair of polished leather shoes. Wasting no words, the demon savagely raised his blade.
He jolted, a sword’s tip blossoming from his chest.
The sword turned and the demon with it. Corwin’s savior kicked the lifeless fiend loose and then reached down to lend him a hand. It was a woman’s hand, small but strong.
“Mary!” With a rush of joy, he opened his arms. “It’s really you!”
Her slap stuck his cheek so hard that Corwin went horizontal.
“That’s for mistaking a demon for me!”
“Sorry,” he squeaked. “But she was one good-looking demon!”
Mary pulled him to her and they locked in an embrace.
“But why are you here?” questioned Corwin. “I thought I’d be waiting decades to see you.”
“Where I am, there is no waiting.”
So much had happened so quickly, leaving Corwin with more questions than he knew how to ask, but one thing that he didn’t have was doubt. Death wasn’t the end, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to spend his afterlife begrudging God his victory.
“The way I died . . . I don’t regret it, but I regret not being there for you.”
“There’s nothing to regret,” said Mary. “Because you jumped onto those tracks, I didn’t. Because you died that day, I didn’t. If I had been hit by that train, your soul would have darkened. You would never had made it this far. But you did! Do you understand, Corwin? He brings goodness even out of evil! When you saved that man—when you saved me—you also saved yourself!”
Atop the rear cars, a mob of agents was fast approaching. Mary laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Now you had better get going.”
“As if I would leave you!” protested Corwin.
“You need to keep . . .” her hand closed, firmly gripping his coat, “moving forward!”
Swept off his feet, Corwin sailed almost an entire car-length before hitting the roof. He might have rolled right off it if his fingers hadn’t found another air vent.
“Mary!” he shouted as his gaze darted back.
She dropped, disappearing between the cars, and Corwin heard the sharp swish-clang of her katana rending steel. Losing speed, the train’s severed tail began drifting away. Mary hung in the retreating doorway.
“This isn’t goodbye!” she called. “Forever is just beginning!”
Corwin stared wistfully. He knew what he had to do. He knew also that there was no need to fear. The demons couldn’t hurt Mary. No one could. It was time that he put his own soul in order. He turned and faced into the wind.
One of the bridge’s supports broke away as he hopped onto the engine car. Like a huge cedar felled by a lumberjack, it collapsed into the seething lava. The bridge held, but the splash that erupted illuminated the entire cavern in fiery hues of red and gold. And Corwin saw him. At the head of the car he waited, a silhouette untouched by the light.
“You disappoint me,” said Isley. “With your tenacity, you could have gone far at the firm. Those beneath you would have cowered at the sound of your name, but in the Father’s Kingdom you will have no glory. You will be the very least of his groveling servants. Is that really what you want? In your earthly life, you boldly questioned that which lesser men took for granted. Godless and unafraid, you bent the knee to no one. Why betray all that you are?”
“Because I’m not godless!” declar
ed Corwin. “What I really am is a prodigal son, and I’m going home! I may not know much about His ways, I may not know much about anything, but now I know that I don’t know anything! I believe in truth and love and goodness and something higher than all the physical matter in all the universe! And that goes for any other universes out there as well! I will never be like you!”
“No, you won’t,” agreed the Prosecutor.
Behind him, a glow pricked the distant shadows.
“I am Isley Drakensun, Archlord of the Eighth Circle. You are no one. Your name won’t even be remembered.”
The train was racing closer, the light swelling in size and radiance.
“I am Corwin Holiday, least of the Father’s children, and all your power will not gain you my soul!”
“You have no holy blade, no angel to protect you.” Isley spread his arms and wings of darkness unfurled. “How can you hope to defeat me?”
“I don’t have to,” said Corwin. “He already has.”
The glow’s reflection flashed in his eyes.
“What?” Isley spun. “No!”
Pure white light rushed over them as the train rocketed out of the cavern.
“No!”
He guarded himself beneath folded wings, but to no avail. The light incinerated all that rejected it. Wreathed in silvery flames, Isley’s charred skin cracked and burst. A terrible scream pealed, as if his very spirit were crying out, the sound lingering in the wake of his windswept ashes. And then Isley was no more.
Corwin released a shuddering breath.
It’s done.
Glancing down, he saw with a start that he, too, was on fire. Strips of blackened crust marred his body, each one ablaze, but though the flames stung, Corwin felt no despair. The light wasn’t destroying him. It was purifying him, burning away the sin that clung to his soul.
Despite the pain, his spirit soared. Corwin hoped bigger than he had ever dared to hope in his mortal life. With a penitent heart, he lifted his gaze. At first there was only the light. Sheer and infinite, it birthed a parade of soft silver shadows. Slowly his vision sharpened.
“The ride was a little bumpy, but you can’t beat the view.”
A landscape that transcended the senses unfolded, plunging in long, magnificent valleys and soaring in impossibly steep, cloud-ringed peaks. A crystal city reared from the center of a lake and a daylight aurora gilded the sky. And the colors! He had no words for them. Shades beyond the spectrum of the human eye painted the world in a dazzling array. Every tree and every flower and every blade of grass shone with a crisp glow, more vivid than even the fields of Eden, as if all things in this place were living light sources, prisms that magnified each other’s splendor. If he stared at any one spot for long, the colors changed, and sometimes the land itself became something new. Overwhelming his mind, the kaleidoscopic sight blurred again into a silver-white haze, slashes of the rainbow vista flitting past, slipping from sight when he tried to look upon them directly.
It was clear that the train was still speeding onward, yet the belligerent headwind had relented. A breezy tailwind whistled, warm against his back.
“Stare too hard and you’ll hurt yourself,” spoke a voice from above.
Corwin turned to see his angelic attorney descending on wings of light.
“I didn’t think you had wings.”
Alighting on the roof, Ransom cracked his roguish grin.
“Wings like razors.”
“You missed all the excitement,” said Corwin.
“Sorry about that. The prosecution is allowed one test in which I can’t interfere. I’ll admit that I had my doubts, but apparently it was nothing you couldn’t handle.”
“Yeah, well, I had some help.”
Ransom’s hand vanished into his coat, reappearing with a familiar flask.
“Care for a drink?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.”
As Ransom staved off the perils of dehydration, Corwin blithely shook his head.
“So about how many years of Purgatory am I looking at?”
“Can’t say, but I wouldn’t let it get you down. A sentence to Purgatory means that you’re going to Heaven.” Ransom poked at a blotch of burning crust on Corwin’s arm. “You just need a bath first.”
“And what’s next for the illustrious Ransom J. Garrett?” inquired Corwin. “Does this mean that you’ll be getting your old job back?”
“After I’ve tied up a few loose ends. This profession isn’t the sort of thing that one just walks away from, at least not without training a replacement. It would have to be someone extremely stubborn, preferably with a debt to pay.” The angel cocked an eyebrow. “Come to think of it, you haven’t seen my legal fees yet . . .”
Corwin fixed his attorney with a humorless stare.
“I think I’ll take that drink now.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In so far as the arguments presented in Dead & Godless are sound and insightful, it’s thanks to them being thought up by wiser men than myself. C.S. Lewis and Blaise Pascal laid the foundation, and Peter Kreeft and Scott Hahn reinforced the walls.
A steady diet of fantasy and science fiction novels (along with plenty of comics, manga and 80’s cartoons) fed the fires of my imagination, with J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas, Gene Wolfe and many others playing prominent roles.
For their encouragement, inspiration and constructive criticism, I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents, my sister Christine and my friends and fellow Write Night compatriots, including Joshua Searles, Jen Klassen and The Three Steves: Steve Jiencke, Steve Skojec and Steve Kospender.
Penny Fletcher’s editing services were invaluable in toning down my literary offenses (though she will no doubt bemoan my stubborn reluctance to follow every rule!), and Renu Sharma’s artistic talents are to thank for bringing my vision for the cover wonderfully to life.
If you enjoyed this book, please recommend it to others. A great many young adults leave the Church when they leave home, and while fine books of Christian theology and apologetics are not in short supply, they are often either too dry (straight theological works) to hold the attention of those who aren’t frequent readers, or too full of vague platitudes (many religious novels) to offer concrete answers to the challenges of atheism. It is my hope that Dead & Godless can help bridge that gap. Something needs to.
To learn more about this novel or to reach me, visit: DeadAndGodless.com
Table of Contents
Copyright
1 - The Reaper Rides the J Line
2 - Legal Representation
3 - Shades of Change
4 - Dark Winds Rising
5 - The Longest Night
6 - When Science is Silent
7 - An Absurd Hope
8 - Shadows in the Storm
9 - Apples and Razor Blades
10 - The Divine Supermarket
11 - Supernatural Flying Space Geezer
12 - The Lunatic’s Labyrinth
13 - The Soulless Stranger
14 - A Savior to Some
15 - Love Machines
16 - The Price of Paradise
17 - Dead on the Inside
18 - The Boardroom of the Beast
19 - Yesterday’s Sins
20 - Enslaved to Happiness
21 - A Heart-Shaped Cage
22 - Wars and Rumors of Wars
23 - Riddles and Revelations
24 - The Risk of Redemption
25 - The Cistern and the Seal
26 - Recovering from Reality
27 - The Last Great Adventure
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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