She waited for an answer, but received none.
The monolithic remained still and silent beneath its robes.
Kath jabbed and wiggled the broom in the angel’s face, not getting close enough to make contact, but making her willingness to do so clear enough. “I asked you a question, so have some manners. Remove your hood and answer me!”
Incredibly, the angel obliged. He reached up and lowered his hood.
Beneath the old, grey cloth was unexpected. The angel’s golden hair spilled over his shoulders beneath a beautiful face with an exquisite complexion. His sparkling eyes were breathtaking cyan, and they were studying Kath curiously.
Lucas moved up beside Harry and whispered. “That would be Lord Michael himself.”
Harry considered for a moment. “You mean from the bible?”
“No, I mean from real life. That is God’s Field General himself, Archangel Michael. My brother, the Angel of death.”
“If he’s your brother can’t you make him stop? Talk to him?”
“You really don’t understand family do you, Harry boy? One thing about Michael is that the only person he listens to is his dear daddy. That’s why he was always favourite. Bloody eejit!”
Something was happening up ahead. The angel standing in front of Kath – the Archangel Michael. Jeez! – produced something from within his cloak. Something long and metallic that ignited in flames as soon as it hit the air.
“There she is,” said Lucas. “The beauty herself. You know, back in the day, that sword belonged to me. Michael took it from me during the Holy War. It looks better on him, anyway.”
Harry shook his head. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
“The fiery sword of damnation. The sword that turned Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes.”
Harry rubbed at his face with ice-cold fingers. This was really it. The end of the world. God had called last orders on mankind and there was only enough time to get one last drink in.
Michael raised his fiery sword, singing the cold air and creating acrid smoke. Kath stood before him, mesmerised. All of her earlier bluster had evaporated and she was nothing more than a puny human standing before a giant.
Michael brought down his flaming sword with a brutal slash. The blade hissed and spat as Kath’s blood instantly congealed on its shaft, turning to black powder and peppering the snow. It had cut through her like a scalpel through cheese.
Kath turned around and faced Harry and Lucas. For a moment it looked like she was okay. Then her head started to tilt forward, independent of the rest of her body. Harry winced as Kath’s headless body fell forward into the snow, turning it red.
Harry ran, leaving Lucas behind; not seeing any reason to ask him to follow. He ploughed through the snow with all his energy, kicking and clawing with only one thing on his mind: Steph! He had no idea where he was going and only hoped that it was towards The Trumpet. With the apocalyptic freeze, as well as an army of flawless Angels trying to send him to Hell, Harry knew that the rest of his life was measured in minutes rather than hours or days. For so long he had wanted nothing but to die, to leave the world and all its pain behind him, but, right now, staying alive long enough to reach Steph was his only motivation.
The snowfall seemed to increase with every second. It was up to Harry’s waist now and still rising. Before long, there would be no world left. No buildings, no roads, no rivers. Nothing. Just unending snow, rising. Rising. Rising.
Harry struggled onwards, each step seizing up his calves, stabbing the tender muscle with icy daggers. If only he could go back and do the right thing. He’d known killing Thomas Morris was wrong. Had known it for sure when he saw the regret and the sorrow in the man’s eyes just before he died. Thomas Morris had killed Harry’s family, but at the moment of his death, he had been deeply sorry. Harry knew that because Thomas never struggled.
Now the whole world was accepting punishment for what Harry had done. He imagined the billions of people who had already frozen to death. He wondered how many people were still alive, trying to convince their children that the snow would stop soon and that everything would be okay, that it was just bad weather. Harry started to weep, but wiped the tears away before they froze. He had to keep going, didn’t deserve time to stop and cry. When the angels finally sent him to Hell he would welcome it, because that was where he belonged. But not now. Not yet.
Ahead, Harry saw the dark rectangle of a building up on a hill. It had to be The Trumpet. With renewed vigour, he began to dive and leap through the snow, sinking and climbing with every step. He was moving at a snail’s pace, but gradually, slowly, the building came into view. And it was indeed a pub.
“Thank God. Actually…screw that. Fuck God.”
He reached the bottom of the hill and looked up. The pub was dark, deserted. Lifeless. A dead building in a dead world.
As he climbed the hill, Harry felt the angels nearby. “Damn you,” he shouted back at them. They stood at the bottom of the hill, each of them now with their hoods down, exposing their beautiful faces and gossamer hair. Harry knew they brought only death and misery. “Damn you,” he shouted again. “Just let me see her.”
Lucas had said that angels could not set foot inside a den of iniquity. That meant Steph might still be safe inside.
He was nearly there, only a few more metres to the doorway.
Harry stopped in his tracks, falling into the snow and looking up at the figure blocking his way. He’d been so close. “Okay, you got me. Just get it over with.”
“Get what over with, Harry Boy?”
Harry looked up. “Lucas!”
“Aye,” Lucas offered out his hand and helped Harry to his feet. “I thought you were never going to get here, fella. Took your sweet time.”
Harry smiled, happy to see the Devil. But he wasted no time in pushing past him and barging the pub’s door.
It was frozen shut.
Harry was about to howl out in defeat when Lucas strolled up beside him.
“Keep your hair on, lad.” He placed a hand on the door. Steam came from his touch and the frost began to melt. Lucas banged his fist once, twice, and the door swung open slowly. He looked at Harry and grinned. “Three millennium in the Hellzone Boy Scouts.”
“No shit?” Harry made his way inside and headed straight for the bar, the sudden feeling of an even, solid floor disorientating his weary legs. The room was in darkness with the flickering flame of only a single candle left, but Harry had been there enough times to know where he was going blind. He made it to the bar in six memorised steps and was shocked to find Peter’s dead body on the floor. There was no time to fret about it now, though.
Grabbing the remaining candle, Harry made his way behind the bar and into the corridor. Immediately, the freezing temperature told him something was wrong. Earlier the corridor had acted as a flume for the warm air of the fire in the cellar below, but now the air was frigid. That meant the fire was out.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Harry took the steps two at a time, lucky to make it down to the bottom without tripping. As his feet planted on the cellar floor, he moved the candle in a quick semi-circle. The room smelt heavily of smoke, but the dustbin fire was unlit. Next to it was the unmoving form of Old Graham. Harry felt his gorge rise, the fear and sickness taking a hold of him as his mind screamed out with grief. He turned around slowly, illuminating the dark corners of the cellar, searching desperately…
He found Damien first. The lad was slumped in the corner. Harry knelt down to feel the lad’s cheek and quickly realised he was dead. Damien’s mid-section was covered in blood from some kind of deep wound. Was it the work of Nigel? Despite the freezing cold, Damien was without his thick puffer jacket.
Harry found it nearby, wrapped around Jess. She was dead too. Harry shone the candle light over her face and saw her lips and frosted eyelids. She had finally succumbed to the cold. Had she taken Damien’s jacket after he had died? Or had he offered it to her before?
The third
body wrapped beneath the blankets made Harry feel feint, paralysed with fear.
Steph lay, swaddled up to the eyeballs by layer upon layer of sheets and blankets. She looked as delicate and as beautiful as Harry had ever seen her and he finally allowed himself to cry. He reached out and touched her face. Like the other’s it was ice cold. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that I caused all this and that I never got to say goodbye. I used to think I came here every night to get drunk and forget about the past, but tonight I’ve realised I kept coming back to see you. You were the only person who allowed me to see tomorrow and know that it would be easier than today. It was you that took away my pain, not the booze.”
“…Harry?”
The word was barely a whisper. A few moments passed and Harry started to think that his crippled mind was playing tricks on him.
“Harry,” Steph whispered again, louder this time.
“Steph! Steph, yes it’s me, Harry?”
It didn’t seem like she could, but she knew he was there. It was obvious by the look in her eyes. “Harry…I was worried about you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it back sooner.”
“It’s…okay. I knew you’d come back. You’re a good man, Harry.”
Harry bit his lip so hard that he tasted blood in his mouth. “I wish that were true, but I let everyone down. This is all my fault.”
Steph shook her head, eyes still closed as though she were reciting a dream. “No, Harry. The only person you ever let down was y-yourself. It’s not your fault what happened...what happened…to you.”
Harry wiped tears and snot from his face. “You know what I wish, Steph?”
“No, Harry. What do you…wish?”
“I wish that instead of killing Thomas Morris that night, I’d have met you instead. Maybe you could have saved me. If God is going to judge us all, then he should have tested someone like you, not a loser like me. God stacked the deck against us all when he took my family and left me to be the judge.”
Steph’s face lit up in a smile that stuck for a moment before falling away. She went very still and did not reply.
“Steph,” Harry said softly, but it was no use. She was gone.
Harry moved forward and kissed Steph on her lips. He wanted nothing more than for her to be alive a moment longer so that she could kiss him back, but was thankful that he at least got to say goodbye.
Harry left the cellar and went back upstairs into the pub. He lit the way with the last dying candle. Lucas was already waiting for him, propped up at the bar with a beer in his hand.
“Harry Boy, how about one for the road.” He offered Harry a bottle, who took it from him silently. His sobriety didn’t matter much anymore. There would be no opportunity for him to clean himself up and make amends.
“It’s time isn’t it?” he said after sipping down some of the beer.
Lucas nodded. “Up to you, lad. To be honest I’m only here tonight because I’m duty-bound. The apocalypse and all that, you know? It’s kind of traditional that I be here. It would be like having a party without cake if the Devil didn’t turn up at the End.”
Harry took another sip of beer, before disagreeing. “That can’t be the only reason. You didn’t have to turn up at the pub tonight. You didn’t have to try and help.”
Lucas laughed his charming Irishman laugh. “Aye, that much is true. Michael summoned me here to watch the destruction of mankind as a kind of punishment. I suppose he thinks I had a hand in bringing down the ceiling – leading men astray and all that hokum.”
Harry shrugged. “Didn’t you?”
Lucas swigged his beer down to the bottom third. “Well, yes and no. When I fell from Heaven I hated you all with a fury unrivalled – God’s most prized creation and the keepers of freewill, yada yada yada. I sought to corrupt you all, to bring you down into the dirt so that God would see how lowly you little fellas were. You know what I learned, though?”
“What?”
“I realised that I was wasting my time. Man was doing a fine thing of fucking things up on their own. I had a hand, here and there, sure; but Hitler, Bin Laden, that plucky fella Ted Bundy, the nuclear-feckin-bomb? All that wickedness was on you. The worst, most corrupt men who ever lived are mostly men I’ve never met. I may be the Devil, but you lot are evil.”
“Then why does Heaven blame you? Why have they brought you here to watch us die?”
“Because I fell in love with humanity. I rebelled against God because I wanted to live by my own rules. After a few hundred years I realised that humanity was no different. I realised that man wasn’t in God’s image, but in mine. Men have spent hundreds of years fighting for their freedom, the same way I did in Heaven. Eventually I stopped trying to destroy you and started living amongst you. I buried my anger with God and stopped being the bogeyman you write books about. The only reason I’m here is so that Michael can make a point.”
“What point?”
“That anyone who goes against God’s will are destined to fall.”
Harry laughed.
“Why do you laugh, Harry Boy?”
“Nothing. I just find it amusing that the Devil is benevolent and God is wrathful.”
Lucas laughed too. “Well, I hope it teaches you not to believe what the media says. Especially the ancient Aramaic right-wing media. The bible got me all wrong, I tell you.”
The two of them shared a laugh and finished their beers. After a few moments, Harry put his empty bottle on the bar. “Time to go, I guess, but before I do, can I ask you a question?”
Lucas shrugged. “You’ve done little else for the past few hours. Why stop now?”
Harry took that to mean ‘yes’, so he asked his question: “You mentioned the levels of Hell, earlier?”
“Aye, I did.”
“Which is the worst?”
Lucas didn’t seem comfortable at the question. “Well…it’s all relative, really. The punishment fits the crime.”
“I know that.” Harry could feel his body shutting down under the constant attack of the cold. He had to finish this before he gave in to hyperthermia. “But surely some layers are worse than others. Where do the very worst go, like Hitler? People like that?”
“Well, if you listen to Dante Alighieri then there are just seven levels, but in truth the regions of Hell are never ending and infinitely wide. Time and space is eternal and there are an unfathomable number of planes of existence, but the deepest deepest level is reserved only for pure, irredeemable evil. Light doesn’t exist there and neither does hope of any kind. It is suffering and despair without beginning or end, a place where agony reigns and flays the skin of any soul unfortunate to end up there. It is a Hell beyond human understanding, and no human, not even the vilest, has ever committed sin harsh enough to be sent there. It is deserving of no man. It was created to hold one being: me.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “A Hell so bad that it was made to torture the Devil himself?”
Lucas nodded and seemed upset by the thought of it. “Aye, they call it…The Abyss.”
Harry took that information in and held onto it. The Abyss. The darkest, most desperate level of hell that is fit only for the Devil himself. A place of torture beyond anything a man could imagine.
“Lucas,” Harry said. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you and I sincerely hope that the Abyss never claims you. Sounds strange to say, but I think you might actually be one of the good guys.”
Lucas laughed. “I have many names, but that’s a first.”
Harry shook the Devil’s hand and walked away, leaving his candle on the bar and entering the darkness outside.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The blizzard had finally begun to die down, its job almost completed. The world had been rendered featureless. Everywhere Harry looked was buried beneath giant snow banks. Across the street, the tops of buildings were just about visible, but their doorways were covered up past their lintels. Lucas might have had something to do with the fact the Trum
pet was not yet being buried.
At the bottom of the hill stood the angels, forming a line that seemed to stretch on forever.
Harry hailed them. “I’m coming down. I give up, okay?”
Archangel Michael nodded. He raised his arms out in front of him and shot fire.
“Hey!” Harry protested. “I said I’m coming down.”
But burning him wasn’t Michael’s intention. The stone steps leading down from the pub appeared beneath the rapidly melting snow as the fires quickly burned out.
Harry cleared his throat. “Oh, eh…cheers.”
He took the newly uncovered steps slowly, in no rush to test out the theory brewing in his head.
Michael was patient. Time probably meant little when you were eternal
When Harry eventually reached the bottom of the steps, he saw that Michael was smiling at him reassuringly, like a Dentist about to perform a root canal filling.
“Welcome, Sinner,” said Michael in a voice far than he’d used in previous instances. His presence was no less awesome because of it.
“It’s Harry.”
“As you wish, Harry Jobson.”
“Just Harry is fine…you know what, don’t even worry about it.”
“Are you ready? It is time.”
“I just have a couple of questions first.”
Harry thought he saw irritation stream through the archangel’s eyes. Obviously, The Angel of Death didn’t appreciate being delayed by a mere mortal. He probably found it ‘impertinent’.
“Ask your questions quickly, Sinner.”
There’s that word again. Fucker!
Harry decided not to let it bother him. He would have far worse to endure.
“After what I did, after I committed the….final sin, or whatever it is; it condemned everyone to Hell, right?”
Michael nodded.
“Do you think that’s fair?”
“It is His will.”
Harry nodded. “Right, right, didn’t think appealing to your better nature would work, so I guess I should skip straight to plan B.”
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