GodBomb!

by Kit Power

  “No, really, this is not, ah, conducive to... I mean, look, the healings, they come when God commands me, I don’t control it, it’s not my power, it’s his...”

  “Okay, how about the spastic?”

  “It’s Cerebral Palsy, you ignorant fuck!” The anger shocks her, the words tearing at her throat as they pass through, leaving pain and a faint taste of blood. Her heart is hammering in earnest now, and her veins feel on fire with useless adrenaline.

  Where did that come from?

  He turns back to her. His face is still, his eyes dead. “Shout at me again like that, Deborah, and I will beat your pretty face until you lose consciousness, or I lose my grip. Clear?”

  She nods, the ice-cold bucket of fear mixing with the heat of her anger. She feels like she might retch.

  “Clear?”

  “Yes.” It’s an effort to talk now. Her jaw is swelling along with her lip.

  The room falls silent. Deborah can feel the weight of them behind her, the fears of the whole congregation weighing on her shoulders, willing her to not kill them all, to do what this madman wants. She feels her bottom lip trembling as she tries not to burst into tears. She can taste blood in her mouth.

  She holds his gaze as he stares, his image clear in one eye, fractal in the other, like a multi-headed monster. Wishing she had the power to jump up from her chair and rip that head off, kick it down the aisle like a football. The thought surprises her with its strength.

  “What do you think, Deborah? Do you think he has the power to heal you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  And there’s no time to consider, so she simply says, “Because I don’t believe in God anymore.”

  The bomber nods, face grave now. “Why not?”

  “Too many of these. Too many like him. I’m still... here.”

  He nods again, face turning thoughtful, even sad. “Well, I hope for everyone’s sake that you’re wrong. But at least, come the end, we’ll know.”

  “No.” She’s weary now, exhausted, the useless adrenaline sludging up her system, but he’s made her talk now, and she apparently can’t stop.

  “Yes. Either God comes, or we all die. And if we all die, we know he’s not real. We die knowing the answer that has plagued humanity since...”

  “Why not just kill us now? He’s not coming.” There are some shouts at this, and the preacher draws breath to speak, but the bomber points at him violently with the detonator hand, making him fall silent. His eyes never leave Deborah’s face. The grin is back, and it’s hateful.

  “Let’s see, shall we?” He turns to the crowd. “Silent prayer is best. I’m told. Begin. Beseech, reach out with your hearts and minds. Tell God I’m here, and I want to talk to him. The clock is ticking.”

  He takes them all in, finally turning to face the preacher, who lowers his head quickly, afraid to make eye contact. Deborah feels a wave of disgust, before a revelation slams into her, making her breath catch in her throat.

  She lied. She lied to the bomber, and he swallowed it whole. Because Deborah’s revelation is this – she does believe in God. She always has done, and that belief has not been changed one bit by any of the charlatans claiming to work in His name. Everything that’s happening is God’s design.

  God is real, and Deborah hates Him.

  Her eyes flick back to the bomber, posing with his arms outstretched, eyeballing the crowd, totally unaware of her. He didn’t spot it. He’s not as good as he thinks he is. It feels true, to Deborah, and exciting, but also dangerous.

  “Excellent. Let us pray.”

  Then he walks back over, sits in front of Deborah and leans forward. Deborah shrinks back into the chair, afraid he is going to kiss her, but he places his lips by her ear, and whispers,

  “Thank you.”

  He turns and climbs back to his feet without looking at her again. Deborah, jaw clenched, trembles and sweats. And thinks.

  The seconds crawl by, but the minutes fly. The congregation prays, or they try to. Some of the believers struggle with this hitherto most basic function, whilst some of the sceptics find themselves taking to it like a drunk to whisky, now they finally see the size and shape and depth of their own foxhole.

  Many think of escape too, but it’s an unprofitable line of enquiry. They are in a single room; no pillars, clear sightlines from the stage to every corner, and the young man does not seem to so much as blink.

  At the rear of the hall, the escape thing is a different calculation, because, look: if you’re seated in the back row, beloved of loafers and troublemakers from primary school on down, the exit is what, ten feet away? Best not to turn around, best to try and figure it from memory, but yes, ten feet feels right, surely no more than fifteen, and he says he’s got enough bang to take out the whole building, of course he does, but how could he possibly know? Enough to take out the front row? Sure. Maybe all the way to the centre aisles, even, but really? The whole building? Especially if you have your back to the blast, moving in the direction of travel, if you can dig it? Okay, maybe you get through the door a little quicker than you thought. Maybe your feet don’t touch the ground for the last few inches... but maybe you make it out alive and with a story to tell. Especially if you can get a jump somehow, if that maniac on stage is distracted, even for a few seconds.

  Chris, in his rear aisle seat, is certainly alive to these possibilities – it’s pretty much all he’s thought about since the bomber showed his hand. He can’t help risking glances to his left and right, trying to figure out who else this might have occurred to.

  It wouldn’t be good to be beaten to the punch.

  His opposite number seems safe – the male half of a middle-aged couple that has all the true believer hallmarks. The husband looks shocked and scared, but that raw panic that strips a man of everything but the will to survive is not yet manifest. He does not strike Chris as the kind of man that could conceal such a shift if it did come. The civilising presence of his wife may mean it never does.

  In front of him, the teenage girl/woman in a leather jacket seems a more likely candidate, but she’s either lost in prayer or despair at the moment. Further forward, the odds of misguided survival instinct trumping common sense diminish and absent blind panic, Chris is less worried. Directly in front of him is an old man – seventies, eighties. By the sound of his breathing, there’s every chance that he might beat them all to the answer.

  Chris is pretty sure no one who doesn’t have an aisle seat is in with a prayer, but of course eternal optimism is a curse of the species, so he tries to scope out the other back row denizens for flight risks. So far, so good. The only one that is giving him any concern is the guy right next to him.

  The dude is perspiring profusely, and he smells nasty. Fever or something else? One to watch anyway, and Chris does. He watches as close as he can, wondering what might be going on inside that sweaty brow. Hoping that he doesn’t blow a gasket.

  He’s right to worry, because Twitch is having a pretty terrible day. His rational mind, warped by many years of substance abuse and justification of same, is now experiencing an external pressure caused by the will of another. Twitch can almost feel himself creaking under the strain. He sort of prays, and it sounds like this:

  Please God please I’m sorry God I need a drink God why the fuck did I come here God please get me out God please get me a drink God I swear if you get me out of here I’ll check into rehab God please you know I’m telling the truth I’m cured Lord just set me free God oh God I need a drink God what the fuck am I doing here? God...

  You get the idea. Round and round and round, each circuit just a little more frantic. And there are physiological consequences of his failure to feed his addiction; a raised heart rate, an inability to fully catch breath. A sweat that begins to coat his dirty skin, making him slick, slippery under his clothes.

  Twitch is starting to twitch.

  Alex, now, Alex is thinking. Furiously. She went through shock and denial pre
tty quickly; was done with them before the nutter had finished speaking, and she seems to have skipped pain and guilt entirely. She is absolutely fucked if she’s going out like this. No, Alex has moved into casa anger, and she’s just fine there, thanks so much.

  Still, she takes a moment to contemplate the girl she’d been just a few minutes ago. Pissed off, but a happy kind of pissed off. Sure, she’d been dumped by her girlfriend. Outed by said dumper to her prude parents. Kicked out of home by said parents, and just sat her final A-level exam (which she’s pretty sure she aced, despite all the bullshit). But she’d seen the posters for this event, and something inside had just... snapped. Fucking fundy clappies with their bad haircuts and shitty, ripped-off-from-the-US sermons, so blatant they sometimes even slip into the accent (she remembers her drunken rants at The God Channel in the early hours, and wonders briefly how much that had to do with getting dumped) bringing their ugly, dumb, homophobic bullshit to her town?

  She remembers preparing the glitter bomb – pink paint, extra red glitter, and a little wood glue for consistency. Sewing the extra pocket into her jacket, just big enough for the glass jar. Getting here early. Getting a good aisle seat near the front. Listening to the band warm up without really listening. Wondering if the preacher would go after the gays on his own, or if she’d have to prompt him, and contemplating with a savage joy the look on his face when she flung the sparkling concoction at him and perfectly fucked up his day.

  Irony.

  She makes a promise to herself-that-was. She swears she’ll make it back to her.

  Her eyes go back to the stage. Take in the bomber. Her mind runs the situation over. The guy is clearly a maniac. They tend to have a far grander sense of their own abilities than the reality demonstrates. Maybe he’s wired his bang up wrong. Maybe he’s rigged the trigger wrong, and maybe even if it’s rigged right, he doesn’t have as much bang as he thinks, and maybe... Well, OK, that’s as far as she’s gotten, but she’s working on it. Thanks to her desire to be as close to the stage as possible, and her need for an aisle seat, she knows she doesn’t really have a shot at getting out, unless there’s a distraction of fairly major proportions. Besides, that’s not what she has in mind.

  What she has in mind is that chicken switch. Because the thing is, it doesn’t matter who’s holding that button down – as long as it is down, the bang can’t go off. Alex is not the praying type, but she does fervently hope that she’s not the only person in the room to have figured this out. Mr. Mad Bomber is relying on idiot fear to blind people to that very simple truth.

  He’s not the threat. The trigger is. And he’s not even an especially long streak of piss. It would take, what; two or three people to overpower him completely? Three max. You’d have to be quick, obviously, and close, and someone’s job has to be securing the button, but it’s absolutely doable. Given the options, Alex thinks it’s a pretty fucking good plan.

  So Alex is looking for candidates to help her in this endeavour, assuming she can somehow get close to or, even better, on that stage. Assuming he stays there and doesn’t go walkabout. Assuming some other thing doesn’t fuck up and kill them all, but Alex is not about to be swamped by that bullshit, fuck that noise, kids, let’s give ourselves a chance, shall we? And geographically speaking, her only real candidates are either the preacher or the band.

  She eyes up the priest, but what she sees does not inspire confidence. He doesn’t look like a man of action, for one. For another, he seems completely thrown. His eyes are tight shut, and his lips are moving, so he’s clearly taking the instruction to pray very seriously, and this is, in Alex’s mind, a Bad Sign. It’s bad because it means that he’s not thinking through the threat; that he’s bought into the story the arsehole is selling. That’s a pity, because out of the entire room, he’s the one best placed to make a move.

  Alex briefly considers praying for the priest to grow a pair, before deciding it’s probably better to focus on tools she knows work – this is no time to start investing capital in unproven hypotheses.

  She assesses the band instead. Drums, bass, two guitars, and the sax player. Strictly an instrumental affair. Her heart sinks further as she looks at them. The drummer is staring into space, looking like he’s either just pissed himself or is just about to. The three guitarists are actually holding hands; eyes closed, with the bass player crying, great big tears rolling down his cheeks and dripping from his chin onto his instrument.

  Standing apart from the group, the sax player also has his eyes closed, but she notices that he’s not crying and that his breathing is slow and steady – he could almost be sleeping. Straight back. Hands resting on his sax. He looks... serene. A preposterous word, given the circumstances, but there it is. After the apparently useless priest, he’s the closest to the nutter. So it’s him she focuses on, all her useless will bent to one thought: Open your fucking eyes, man.

  Mike prays. Mike has an edge over most here, including even the preacher. Mike doesn’t believe. He knows. He was a drunk and a drug addict and a bad person, well on his way to an early grave. Mike knows he was bound for destruction. He knows. And it was Jesus who prevented it.

  The moment is seared in his mind irrevocably – and how could it not be? It was, after all, the moment of his true birth – the moment he was saved and embraced his purpose as a child of God. The pivot upon which his whole life turns. On some fundamental level, this moment is always with him, endlessly replaying, a source of strength and peace. The sunlight through the dark clouds, the drizzle suddenly warm on his skin, making the hairs on his arm stand up, as the car drove away and the voice spoke in his mind, clear and strong, ringing his whole body like a bell.

  Mike, I’m calling you to the kingdom.

  He remembers, with a smile ghosting unnoticed across his lips, his reply – ‘Sure, God, sure, just, like, give me a little while to get myself sorted, you know...’ – and the reply, calm, gentle, firm.

  Mike. I’m not calling you tomorrow. I’m calling you now.

  And that was that. He found the nearest church service (a born-again ceremony, how could it not be?) declared the Lord and never looked back.

  Since then, he has felt God’s presence constantly in his life, in every moment he has been aware of God’s love, and it has guided his every action and his every thought. This silly boy with his silly bomb can’t threaten that. He can’t even scratch it. Mike’s eyes are closed, hands resting on the cool metal of his sax, and his mind and heart and soul fly free, fly into God’s loving arms. He feels no fear and no regrets. If this is your will, Lord, let it be done. He thinks, this could be it. I could really be going.

  He tries not to smile.

  Lord, as you will it. I am your instrument, however crude. Your vessel, however unworthy.

  I will Mike, I will. I hold you all in my hands. Evil will never win. Nothing can stand against my Love. I hold you all.

  Mike does smile at this. He can’t help it.

  Open your eyes, Mike. Open them, and see clearly.

  He does so immediately, and his gaze is pinned by that of a young lady with an aisle seat, three rows back. She’s almost handsome, he thinks, and glowing with life the way the young (especially young women) do. Her eyes are blazing. He sees the will of the Lord working in that gaze, and turns his own over to it. His smile broadens momentarily, and he inclines his head, just a fraction.

  She does the same, flashing a grin back.

  Next to Mike, oblivious to this communication but very aware of the passing of time, the preacher is lost in prayer. At least, he’s trying to be. He’s subvocalizing the Lord’s Prayer over and over, but that’s really just a mantra, something for his lips and upper mind to be doing, and yes, something for his audience. Not the congregation, so much – them too – but his real audience, the one that really matters, the kid with the bomb.

  It’s a kind of meditation (he would never call it such, but it is) and what it does is free his deeper thoughts to wander. And they do. He reaches
out into scripture, looking for injunctions against murder, against suicide, most of all, against testing God’s will. That seems to be the key. This kid is clearly deranged, perhaps even possessed, but there’s at least a surface logic at work. If the kid is telling the truth, there is a chance. If he can inject doubt into the kid’s mind about this insane test... if he can somehow convince him that this path he’s on will prove nothing, then maybe...

  So his thoughts run over scripture (mainly the New Testament – best stay clear of fire, brimstone and vengeance for the moment), but they also head in another direction. He cries out to God with his mind, with an urgency he rarely has before. Help me, Lord. Help us. Save us. Yours is the power and the Glory. Show your Power. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to stop this.

  Eventually, he feels brave enough to open his eyes. The clock hanging over the door shows 10:27 – almost an hour has passed. God, give me strength.

  The preacher clears his throat to talk. The boy turns to him.

  “May I speak with you?”

  Twitch hears this, but it comes to him as if from a great distance. The inside of Twitch is a ball of sweaty heat now, itchy, flaky, dark. Beneath his closed eyes, he keeps seeing his father falling down the stairs, his mother offering him an ice-cream, the kid at school that rubbed dog shit into his hair laughing at him, the ring popping on the last can of brew he drank, the foam squirting from the edges of the tab, frantically raising it to his lips, drinking, then his father...

  His father. How old is Twitch? Young. Young enough that his father is still a giant, a God, infallible, love and judgment, all powerful. He smells of tobacco smoke and beer and sweat and love. Twitch is in his jim-jams, has Ted in his hand, and he’s sitting on the stairs, scooting up backwards on his butt, laughing as his Dad crawls on all fours up after him, growling like a bear. He hears his mother's voice complaining, something about winding the boy up before bed, but Twitch is transported with a giggling fit, with glee and joy, scooting away from his father's grabbing hands, snatching his feet away just in time. When his father slips, the look of surprise on his face is so childlike, wide-eyed, comical, that Twitch laughs even harder, cackling helplessly as his father thud thud thuds down the steps, chin bouncing off each step, until Twitch sees his eyes roll back in their sockets, exposing dreadful whites. When his father hits the bottom of the stairs and crumples, he and his mother shriek in unison, in fear, and...