by Ray Wallace
“It will start here, in this cast off world. A long ignored place where my presence will not be immediately noticed. The perfect place to stage my rebellion, to discover just how much Father’s influence has waned. Now that I’m here, now that I’m free of that... prison... I’m afraid there’s really no limit to what I can do.”
That’s when Thomas noticed the hair standing up on his arms, could feel it rising up on his head, like the very air surrounding him was alive with electricity.
He raised his eyes and looked to where Lucifer stood. The fallen angel held his staff high, had turned away from those gathered before him, was looking toward the dome. Thomas could see where the wings would have once emerged from Lucifer’s back, just below the shoulder blades, where now there were only two lumps of scar tissue, cruel reminders of what had been done to him, of what he had once been.
No wonder the hatred, thought Thomas despite himself. No wonder the insanity.
Lucifer shouted a string of words that Thomas did not understand but, nonetheless, caused the breath to catch in his throat just as the top of the dome exploded. The heavy, rune-carved pieces from which the building had been constructed rained down upon some members of the crowd gathered there, badly injuring some and killing others. One section landed in front of Thomas an arm’s length away. As he watched, winged creatures came streaming up through the shattered dome, spread out and hovered a hundred feet or so above the heads of Thomas and his fellow survivors. The eclipse shifted, allowing a bit more of the crimson light to seep into the sky, granting a better view of the flying creatures. Thomas knew that he had seen them before, during the hallucination inflicted upon him by the insect powder. Winged demons, with long, barbed tails similar in appearance to those that had been born of the Great Worm but slightly smaller, clutching various weapons in their clawed hands—all manner of whips and clubs and long, pointed instruments. Dana was next to him, eyes wide and mouth open in a silent scream. Tanya placed an arm around her, held her close. To calm her? To keep her from dashing away aimlessly as many other people were doing? Thomas was about to tell Tanya to follow him, although he really had no idea where he would lead the two women. Away from where they were, certainly. Anywhere else had to be better. As he opened his mouth to speak, some new phenomenom distracted him. Instead of issuing the command to leave, he pointed and shouted:
“Look! The sky!”
More shouts, other exclamations of fear and surprise erupted from all around him. Near the eclipse a hole had opened in the darkness, a bright, radiant circle that evoked a startled cry from the steadily growing numbers of winged demons hovering in the air.
“No. It can’t be!” The voice shook the ground. “You will not take this from me!”
Thomas looked to the where Lucifer stood, his pale, scarred flesh seemingly aglow in the ethereal light streaming down from the heavens, head tilted back and rune staff pointed toward the sky. “Not this time!”
Shifting his attention, Thomas saw what appeared to be the onset of a battle taking place in the air above him. A different group of winged figures was descending from the opening in the sky and closing ranks with the demons. These new arrivals were mere specks at first but grew in size and definition the lower they came. They wore long robes that fluttered about them, were taller with wider wingspans than the demons. Thomas watched as members of these two disparate groups came together, grappled with one another and tumbled through the air.
“We need to go,” said Thomas, reaching out to grab Tanya by the shoulder. “Now.”
She looked at him and nodded, gave Dana a gentle shake who seemed paralyzed by what was happening. “Let’s go, honey.”
People were running in every imaginable direction. As Thomas turned away from the shattered dome, started to make his way toward the Wal-Mart parking lot and Dana’s car waiting there, a screaming sound could be heard, descending in pitch as it grew louder. He looked up just in time to see a winged figure fall out of the sky and land to the left of him on the road’s hard, unforgiving surface with a sickening thud! The figure had the appearance of a man, tall with long, golden hair and Lucifer’s pale skin, dressed in a flowing white robe with a pair of wide, feathered wings sprouting from its back. The figure—the angel—twitched once, twice, then lay still.
After that, everywhere he turned Thomas saw demons and angels falling out of the sky.
*
All things do, of course, come to an end. Some much more quickly than others. The good times... The moments you wish would just go on and on… Like Christmas morning, when you’re a kid. There are just never enough presents to open. You could open a hundred and you’d still want more, more, more because that last box is there before you know it.
A first kiss. I can remember mine and Julia’s vividly to this day. We’d gone to a movie. I still couldn’t believe I’d found the nerve to ask her out, couldn’t believe that she’d said “yes.” We had left the theater, were walking across the parking lot over toward where the car was parked.
“What a beautiful night,” she said. And it was. The air was crisp and cool, the sky practically devoid of clouds, the moon and the stars plainly visible between the few clouds that were there.
“Not as beautiful as you,” I said. The second the words came out of my mouth, I was mortified. It had to have sounded like the worst come-on of all time. She would ask me to take her home. There wouldn’t be another date. Another date? Hell, she’d tell everyone she could about what I’d said. I’d be a laughing stock…
A second passed. Two. Maybe three. They seemed to stretch on and on forever. I was on the verge of offering an apology when she took me by the hand, stepped around in front of me, stood on her toes and gave me a kiss. In an instant it came and went, one of those moments you want to hold onto, one that left me a little off balance, a little unsure of what had just happened.
I took her back to my place that night where we sat on the couch and talked for a long time about nothing and everything, enjoying the simple fact that we were there together. When she left we kissed again. As it turned out there was a second date, of course, and many more to follow.
There are whole days that fly by, the really memorable ones you spend with those you love. Christmas again, even as an adult, opening those presents, seeing the joy in the eyes of your children. Lazy days off, spent at the beach or on the back porch if the weather’s nice, simple, relaxing days where you wish the clock would take things easy too, work about half as hard as it usually does. But instead it does exactly the opposite, compensates for your lack of effort. The afternoon turns to evening, the evening to night. And then, before you know it, it’s all over.
In contrast, there are those times that seem as though they might never end. A dread of public speaking can make the minutes up there in front of the class drag on for an eternity. The same is true of boredom. Those rainy summer days during childhood when you are trapped in the house with nothing to do. And regular old fear, of course. The night before you are to undergo a scheduled surgery. Or your child is sick and has to be taken to the emergency room...
Or you find yourself in the midst of a battle waged by otherworldly powers and have to face the very real possibility that either you or someone you know might not make it out alive.
*
They had lost Tanya.
During the chaotic dash across the Wal-Mart parking lot, just as they came in sight of Dana’s car, Ron had appeared. He grabbed Tanya from behind, his arm encircling her neck. His eyes were wide, his mouth twisted in a sneer as he shouted, “Where do you think you’re going?!”
Tanya replied with a stomp to his foot, a hard elbow to his mid-section, and the back of her fist across the side of his head. Ron staggered backward, stunned by the unexpected attack, looking like a drunken fool in his red tuxedo. At some point he had lost the top hat. Tanya was stepping away from him when she was lifted into the air.
“No!” Dana cried and started to move toward the spot where Tanya had been s
tanding but Thomas tightened his grip on her hand, pulled her to him. There was nothing they could do. A demon had taken her in its long, clawed fingers, was flying quickly skyward. Soon she was lost to sight amid the chaos there. Thomas looked down to see Ron laughing and waving his hands at the sky.
“See what you get?” he screamed. “See what you get?!”
That’s when an angel swooped down and took him. His screams were quickly swallowed by the din of battle, his ascent seeming to take him straight into the heart of the black and crimson eclipse.
“Come on,” said Thomas, pulling on Dana’s hand, not wanting to leave Tanya behind but unable to think of any way that they couldn’t. “We have to get out of here.”
A minute later, Thomas was driving Dana’s car along the fire lane in front of the Wal-Mart. He had to stop a couple of times as people ran across his path, had to steer around the bodies of fallen demons. All the while Dana sobbed uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands. At the parking lot’s side entrance Thomas hung a right and headed north away from the store. His house was located in the opposite direction but he had no desire to return there. It wasn’t really his home, after all. Not any more. Just an empty reminder of what once had been. He knew that now. No point in tormenting himself further by going there.
He drove until they reached a pair of red painted posts that marked the barrier, tried to keep going, felt as though he and Dana were on the verge of passing through… They didn’t make it, though. He found himself turned around, the beginnings of a headache coming on, stomach tied in knots. So he pulled down a side street, completely at random, made his way through a nondescript housing development filled with cookie cutter houses sporting single car garages. Thomas saw another pair of painted posts ahead where the barrier intersected the road. Figuring that this was as far from the action as he was going to get, he pulled up to the last house before the wooden posts, killed the engine and got out of the car. Then he walked up to the front door of the house, found it locked, kicked it several times before it gave way. After coercing Dana out of the car, he led her into the house, into one of the bedrooms, found her some water in the long defunct refrigerator and a few sleeping pills in the bathroom medicine cabinet, urged her to take them and lie down. A little while later he walked out into the front yard, surmised that they were as safe as they could hope to be, all things considered.
Across the distance separating him from the Wal-Mart, Thomas could hear the battle taking place there: the shouts, the cries, the roaring eruptions of power. When night fell, he could see the sky alight with sheets of fire or what appeared to be controlled blasts of lightning. On occasion a glowing mushroom cloud would rise from the ground, a second sun that would make the figures warring in the heavens plainly visible.
The following day, Thomas would look out through a slit in the blinds of the living room window, use a pair of binoculars to watch what he could of the distant fighting taking place high above the ground. The hole in the sky through which the angels had entered the fray was still there. From his present vantage point, it was hard if not impossible to say who was winning the battle. He tried to convince himself that he saw fewer and fewer demons as the melee wore on, but that could have been wishful thinking.
Three days passed.
And still the battle raged on.
He and Dana spent most of that time in silence. There wasn’t much to say, really, and Dana seemed to have slipped back into a near total unwillingness to speak. So Thomas spent his time scavenging food and water from the surrounding houses, sleeping, and keeping an eye on the action in the distance. It was impossible to tell which side was winning. Distant screams would reach him, barely audible. The much louder sounds of explosions. At times the night sky would light up like a Fourth of July celebration, a holiday that neither he nor any of his fellow survivors had celebrated this year, had even thought about celebrating. It had slipped by without a moment’s consideration, as far as he could recall. More pressing concerns, undoubtedly.
More than a week they spent at that house, all told, Thomas’s heart growing increasingly heavy at the thought of the people who had not been able to get away from the battle in time to save themselves and at the prospect that the war might never end.
He’d brought a recliner out onto the front porch and so that he could watch the action in comfort. On several occasions, he drifted off to sleep despite what was happening. One night into the second week of fighting he found himself coming to in that chair, the world still mostly dark, the sun creeping above the horizon. He thought about how quiet things were right then, as quiet as it had been in a long time. There was only one thing it could mean, he told himself as he got to his feet.
He went into the house to wake Dana and to let her know that it looked as though the battle was over.
*
Before making the drive over to the Wal-Mart, Thomas decided to test the barrier first. The sky was blue, the sun a bright yellow as they drove to the same spot where they were prevented from leaving the previous week. Not this time. There was no sense of disorientation. They were not turned around. The urge to keep driving without ever looking back was a powerful one. But he knew he couldn’t do that. Not yet, at least. He had to head back to the store, check for survivors. After that... He and Dana could take off, get as far away from this cursed place as they could.
But what about Julia and the kids? he asked himself.
“They’re not coming back.”
Dana spoke so rarely these days that the sound of her voice always took him a bit by surprise.
“None of them. Bill. Nina. Julia. Robert. Jenny. Not ever.” She blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Thomas nodded. It was a decision he could live with. “I just want to see if there are any others first.”
They drove in silence after that, taking in the devastation along the route leading back toward the Wal-Mart. Buildings to either side of the road lay in ruin. Rubble and burned out cars and massive craters littered and marred the street. It soon became clear that it would be easier to reach their destination on foot. So they abandoned the car and walked the last quarter mile or so to the store. It was like walking through a bombed out city during World War II, Thomas imagined. As though a German airstrike had leveled the place over the past several days, the attack so efficient it was almost impossible to believe anyone could have survived the assault.
He was pleasantly surprised to find a group of four people standing in the Wal-Mart parking lot, Patricia among them. Thomas looked at her hands and saw that they were empty. She had lost her Bible during the battle. Another woman was there along with two men. Thomas knew them in passing: Stella, Richard, and Jeff. He’d had brief conversations with them at one time or another.
“Have you seen anyone else?” asked Thomas.
Patricia shook her head. “No one.” She pointed toward the Wal-Mart, or what remained of it. “There are bodies in there. Recently dead it would seem since they haven’t disintegrated yet. If it still works that way. Who knows?” All of the windows along the front of the building had been blown inward. A big section of the wall had collapsed and it looked as though a good portion of the roof had caved in too. “If anyone else survived, they’ve already fled.”
“What do we do now?” It was one of the men who had spoken. Jeff. He was short. Stocky. Head shaved nearly bald. The look of someone utterly lost, the long stare of a refugee in his eyes, the same look the others wore. Thomas couldn’t help but wonder if a similar expression had settled onto his own face as well.
“Dana and I are leaving.” He scanned the parking lot, was relieved to see a few vehicles nearby that had not been destroyed in the chaos of recent days. There were some that looked capable of carrying all six of them if necessary. “You’re all welcome to come with us. It’s up to you.”
“Where will you go?” asked Patricia.
Thomas shrugged. “I’m not sure. Anywhere but here.”
As he drove Thomas thought about the towns they passed and the road they followed. Had none of this existed before he and his fellow survivors arrived in this world? Had the blueprint been plucked from their collective memories, from the shared knowledge of their own world which had been accumulated over the courses of their lives? Was such a thing even possible? Or the ramblings of a madman? Was there a simpler, much more logical explanation? If so, he couldn’t think of it.
Hours went by and they were nearing the Florida state line before it even dawned on him where he was headed. Pennsylvania. Just outside of Pittsburgh. A little town where he had grown up, had gone through all the experiences that had molded him into the man he was today, the man who had survived a season in Hell. He was leaving one home for another, the first home he had ever known. Maybe the familiarity of the place would help him cope with what he’d been through. And, in turn, he’d do what he could to help Dana and the others recover as well. That is, if they chose to stay with him. He could only hope that they would.