The Paradise Prophecy

by Robert Browne

  And he could see that she was about to bolt.

  “Wait!” he called. “Stop! I’m a friend of Michael’s!”

  But she didn’t stop. She took off like a startled kitten, tore down the hall and skidded around the corner, disappearing from view. Batty called out again, was about to go after her, when he heard her yelp in terror.

  Then a guy with long hair and sunglasses came back around the corner, one hand over the girl’s mouth, a dagger in the other. Batty didn’t need an illustrated guide book to know who he was.

  Beelzebub.

  The girl was squirming, trying to get away, her screams muffled against his palm, but his grip was strong. He smiled at Batty and said, “Quod apertum est, id aperiri non potest.”

  What is opened, cannot be closed.

  The sacred incantation.

  Batty felt something thud in his stomach as Beelzebub sliced the dagger through the air, opening a hole in the atmosphere.

  Then they were gone.

  50

  Batty turned to Michael. “Tell me you know where he’s taking her.”

  “I have a guess. I only hope I’m right.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “To Eden.”

  “Eden? ” Callahan said as she came up the stairs behind them. “As in the Garden of?”

  “Yes. Or at least what used to be Eden, before the corruption began. He’s taking her to the spot where the tree of knowledge once stood. It’s his way of thumbing his nose at the father. It doesn’t hurt that they’ll have a perfect view of the fourth blood moon.”

  “Can you get us there?” Batty asked.

  “Are you ready to do what needs to be done?”

  Batty looked at the sword in his hand, then glanced at Callahan. She was covered with dust, looking as if she’d rolled around inside a vacuum cleaner bag.

  Then he said to Michael, “Just get me there and you’ll find out.”

  “I can’t get us to the exact spot, but I can get close. But be warned, a lot has changed since we left. The unrest will have escalated and the eclipse is about to begin. We need to work fast to make this happen.”

  “Then maybe we should stop talking and get moving,” Batty said.

  Michael nodded and sliced open a hole.

  Michael wasn’t kidding when he said things had changed.

  Callahan could barely believe her eyes. When they squeezed through the hole he’d made, what she saw was a city under siege, a battleground that lay beneath a turbulent night sky, the thunder of guns pounding her eardrums.

  “Moloch and Mammon have done their work well,” Michael said. “It won’t take much to tip the scale.”

  Callahan was stunned. “This isn’t tipped?”

  The city was in chaos, a riot gone viral, men and women with weapons darting through burning rubble, pausing to fire on one another, some in police uniforms, others in street clothes. But Callahan got the feeling it was every man for himself-although she couldn’t be sure who was human here and who wasn’t.

  What surprised her most of all, however, was that they stood in a city she knew. A city she had just visited.

  They were in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” LaLaurie said to Michael. “I thought we were going to Eden.”

  Machine-gun chatter forced them to duck. They all dropped down, taking cover behind a row of parked cars. This was insanity.

  “We are,” Michael said. Then he jumped up and darted to an abandoned Chevy in the middle of the street, its engine still running. He climbed in, spun the wheel and hit the accelerator, backing toward them.

  “Get in.”

  Callahan glanced at LaLaurie and he looked just as confused as she was. Then she ran to the passenger side and jumped in, LaLaurie following close behind. When they were both inside, Michael punched the accelerator and they took off down the street.

  Callahan checked the sky and saw a huge moon, a centimeter of shadow washing across it.

  “It’s starting,” she said. “The eclipse is starting.”

  They brought the girl up the stairs to the rooftop.

  Belial couldn’t quite believe how beautiful she looked, all dressed up in that ceremonial robe. She had been drugged, but still she resisted, showing a lot of spirit.

  Belial wished she’d could have taken some time alone with the girl. It would have been her last chance to understand what it meant to be a woman.

  The two drudges had her by the arms. They stopped in the doorway, Jenna struggling between them, and waited for Belial to give her approval.

  Moving in close, she smiled and ran a finger under Jenna’s chin.

  “So beautiful,” she said.

  The girl jerked her head away, tears filling her eyes, her speech slurred by the drugs. “Why are you doing this? What you want from me?”

  “Michael didn’t tell you?”

  “Leave me alone,” she cried. “I wanna go home. I want my mother.”

  “Your mother?” Belial said. “Now why would you want to go home to that vile creature? Isn’t she the one who betrayed you, brought that man into your happy home? Or is that story all a lie?”

  “Please… ,” she begged. “Please, let me go . . .”

  “That’s exactly what we’re about to do, my darling. By freeing you, we free the world.”

  Stepping back, she nodded to the two drudges and they carried Jenna past her toward the center of the rooftop, which was crowded with otherworld dignitaries.

  Before they got her there, however, the earth rumbled, shaking the building, and everyone cheered as they looked up at the moon.

  It hung low in the night sky like a giant blind eye, a shadow slowly creeping across it.

  The new beginning was near.

  Did you feel that?” Batty asked.

  They were blasting down an eerily vacant highway, and this was the first time he’d ever felt an earthquake while riding in a car.

  “It’s starting,” Michael said. “The opening of the Abaddon. And unless we get to that girl soon, all seven levels of hell will be released on earth and Lucifer will be free.”

  They looked at one another, the thought of this a lingering foul odor.

  Then Batty glanced at the shadow on the moon. “It seems to be moving faster than usual.”

  “You can’t think of this as a natural event anymore. The speed of the eclipse will accelerate with each new soul corrupted.”

  “How long before we’re in full eclipse?” Callahan asked.

  “Minutes, rather than hours.”

  The earth rumbled again and the rooftop swayed.

  More cheers went up as lights blew out in the distance, then buildings started to topple, a spray of yellow-orange lava erupting into the air.

  The two drudges pushed Jenna to the ground, and Beelzebub-who stood nearby, looking quite handsome in his own ceremonial robe-signaled to Belial that it was time to begin.

  She nodded, then moved over and knelt before the girl, still smiling as she grabbed hold of the robe Jenna was wearing.

  “I think we can dispense with this.”

  She pulled the robe up over the girl’s head and Jenna, naked underneath, flung her arms around herself and started crying again.

  Belial leaned forward and kissed her tears, murmuring against her cheek. “Don’t fret, my darling. This will soon be over.”

  Then she looked directly into Jenna’s eyes.

  Probing them.

  Going in deep.

  The orange light of the lava was reflected in her tears and after a moment Jenna started to relax, letting her arms drop to her sides, not so concerned anymore about modesty.

  “That’s right, my darling. Let us see you, in all your glory. Present yourself to the Lord Satan and ask him to bring you home.”

  Then, as if in answer, the earth rumbled again.

  This one was a doozy. The earth shifted and everything around them started to sway. Suddenly the road cracked, a fissure opening up in
front of them.

  Michael slammed the brakes and spun the wheel, the Chevy’s tires burning up blacktop as they came to a screeching halt-

  – just as a gusher of lava shot into the air.

  They all jumped out and scrambled back, barely avoiding molten patches of the stuff that landed at their feet.

  Heat radiated off it, and they fell back even farther as the earth rumbled again.

  Batty looked up at the moon and saw that the eclipse had hit the halfway mark. They didn’t have a minute to spare.

  “Enough of this bullshit,” he said to Michael. “Where are we going? Where is she? Where did they take her?”

  Michael moved over to him, got very close, staring him directly in the eyes.

  “Are you ready to do what has to be done?”

  Batty couldn’t look away from him.

  And he couldn’t lie, either.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t do what you want. I can’t kill an innocent human being.”

  “Then what do you plan to do? How do you plan to stop this?”

  “They won’t succeed without her. I know they can’t. This can be fixed. We’ve done it before.”

  “Look what’s happening around you, Sebastian. This is just the beginning of it. What you’re about to witness is hell come to earth. Is that what you want?”

  Batty’s head was spinning. What he wanted was to scream.

  The world was falling apart around them, but he had to believe. He had to have faith. And he couldn’t bring himself to say what the angel wanted to hear.

  “Just tell me where they took her.”

  Michael studied him, searching his eyes, then backed away and pointed. “There,” he said. “They took her in there.”

  Batty looked across the street. Michael was pointing toward a cluster of ramshackle shacks. A shantytown made of plywood and aluminum siding.

  One of the shacks had a word spray-painted across it in Day-Glo green:

  Paraisopolis.

  “Holy shit,” Callahan muttered. She was standing beside him now, gaping at the shantytown. “You’ve gotta be kidding me? The favela? This is Eden?”

  “What does it say,” Batty asked.

  She looked at him. “Paradise City.”

  51

  Batty hadn’t expected this.

  For centuries, biblical scholars had been arguing over the location of Eden. Some believed it could be found in the heart of Iraq, while others said they had uncovered evidence of it in the industrial city of Tabriz, Iran. Still others claimed Turkey or Egypt or India.

  There were those who pointed to Mount Olivet, in Jerusalem, where Jesus wept, was crucified and rose from the dead. Where he had ascended to heaven.

  Batty himself had always thought of Eden as a frame of mind. An ideal. A symbol that didn’t really exist. It didn’t matter where it was located, but what it represented.

  The dawn of sentience.

  But if Michael were to be believed-and Batty saw no reason not to believe him-then the ground on which this shantytown stood had once been Paradise.

  And apparently still was.

  Paraisopolis.

  Paradise City.

  The earth rumbled again, and somewhere in the distance behind him Batty heard cries of pain. He realized that he was still gripping the sword, had carried it with him from the car, and as he thought about what Michael had said, he found himself starting to have second thoughts.

  What if he was wrong about this?

  What if it couldn’t be fixed without sacrificing that poor girl?

  Yes, she was an innocent, but hadn’t innocents died before in the name of freedom?

  And wasn’t this about the ultimate freedom? The freedom of thought?

  John Milton had fought strenuously, had risked his life in the name of free expression, had burned those pages because he feared they’d fall into the wrong hands and humankind would be stripped of that freedom forever.

  And now that they had fallen into the wrong hands-because of Batty when it came down it-wasn’t it his duty to set things right? Not merely slow their progress by snatching the girl away from them, but to create the heaven on earth that so many desired?

  Yet it kept coming back to the girl.

  That single, breathing, walking, talking, living human being.

  And as he and Callahan and Michael crossed the street toward Paradise City, he had absolutely no idea what choice he would ultimately make.

  Beelzebub watched as the others gathered around Belial and the girl. Make no mistake about it, Belial was a master at what she did, and he could see young Jenna succumbing to her power, giving in to her will.

  It was thing of beauty. A true gift. And as he looked up at the darkening moon he was happy he had trusted Belial’s instincts. Was happy that Michael had betrayed the traveler with his impulsiveness. Had it not been for him, they never would have known that she was one.

  That was something he’d have to live with for a long, long time, as he sat in his cell in the seventh city.

  Beelzebub thought it only fitting that they had brought the girl here to this rooftop. The place where the tree had once grown. It was, he thought, a final, symbolic fuck-you to their fraudulent, self-aggrandizing father and his precious creation.

  All along the skyline, he saw more eruptions, the earth giving way to a seething abyss. The gates breaking open.

  And he knew it was like this all around the world. Soon his brother would rise from the fires of Abyssus, once and for all, and take possession of his true dominion.

  Lord of the Earth.

  King of the New Creation.

  Father to all who embraced his sovereignty.

  And Beelzebub was fairly certain they would not be given a choice in the matter. This was one of God’s mistakes that his brother would not repeat.

  What a shame, he thought, that he didn’t have a piece of fruit with which to tempt the girl. That idea, however, seemed a bit simplistic now. Human beings had become such complex animals over the years, and while they could certainly be predictable, they couldn’t always be relied upon to succumb to such easy temptation.

  Better to let Belial do what she did best. To persuade the girl to take her life in the name of Satan.

  The moon was in three-quarters eclipse now.

  Batty, Callahan and Michael moved together through the favela, Michael taking the lead. They wound through its streets, surprised to find it curiously empty, but then many of the people here had probably fled during the chaos, and those who were left had undoubtedly gathered near where the ceremony was to be held.

  Except for the dead. As the three guardians moved from street to alleyway and back to the street again, there were bodies everywhere. Some with weapons at their side. Others shot down without mercy.

  Michael snatched up a couple of guns along the way and tossed them to Batty and Callahan.

  “Through here,” he said, then cut to the right, moving up a narrow cement pathway. The shacks on either side were in ruins, thick black smoke billowing from within them, spewing its noxious fumes into the air.

  They were turning the corner when the earth began to shake again and before them a row of shacks shuddered and collapsed, sinking into a fissure in the ground.

  Fire shot up in front of them and they pulled back, quickly changing direction.

  But then something moved from inside the fissure.

  “Look out!” Batty shouted.

  And out of the fire and smoke came a platoon of creatures, the likes of which Batty had never before seen, their skin charred, their teeth barred as their feral eyes took the three guardians in with a hunger that sent chills up his spine.

  One of them dove for Callahan, but she ducked away as Michael jerked his knife from his waistband and cut the thing in two. It howled and burst into flames, tumbling to the ground, as three of its friends advanced on Callahan.

  She brought her shotgun up, shot one in the chest, then kicked, whirled, and kicked again, knocking t
he other two aside as Michael quickly finished them off with a couple bullets of his own.

  But still more came at them, and Batty brought his own gun up, blasting them back into the hole.

  Then it was over. For now, at least.

  But as they gathered themselves and continued on, Batty knew there would be more to come.

  It was time for the ceremony, and it looked as if Belial had the girl primed and ready. She came over to Beelzebub now.

  “She’s all yours,” Belial said. “When she sees that dagger, she’ll think it’s candy.”

  Beelzebub smiled and kissed her full on the lips. And they were very nice lips indeed. “I really do like this new skin.”

  “The girlfriend of the local drug lord. He used to own this place.”

  “Used to?”

  She smiled. “He’s one of ours now. Are we ready to begin?”

  Beelzebub checked the moon. “Just waiting on Moloch and Mammon. Where are those fools?”

  A voice behind him said, “I’d watch that tongue, if I were you.”

  They turned to find Moloch and Mammon walking toward them across the rooftop.

  “I have to congratulate you two,” Mammon said. “You were right after all.” There was a sneer in his voice that led Beelzebub to question his sincerity. “But before we begin, we have a little surprise.”

  “Surprise?”

  Now Moloch stepped forward and pointed toward the far horizon. “Watch,” he said.

  Within milliseconds of speaking the word, a mushroom cloud rose in the distance, followed by a thunderous boom.

  The shockwave rolled out across the landscape, toppling everything in its path.

  Down!” LaLaurie shouted, “Get down!”

  Callahan dove to the ground, feeling the earth rumble beneath her as the shockwave leveled the buildings behind them, stopping just short of the favela.

  “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus,” she moaned, buffeted by a hot, harsh wind.