What Would Satan Do?

by Anthony Miller

  Festus took a deep breath, preparing to dive in. He’d practiced his speech. “In the Bible, Jesus—”

  “Son—” the priest’s voice boomed. Festus stopped, mouth agape. People usually ignored him, though he never knew whether it was because they regarded him as a harmless weirdo, or because they thought he was crusty. “This is serious business,” the priest said, “This isn’t just snack food we’re talking about here.” He glanced at the predatory old ladies moving ever closer toward their prey. He still had a little bit of time to kill. “Tell me son,” he said. “Have you ever heard of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Festus, shaking his head. “I’ve heard all that, and you know what? It’s crap. Total crap. They made it up. You know it, I know it, so please shut up, okay?” Festus lifted the water gun back up from where he’d let it hang down and waved at the congregation. The old priest took a step back, gathering up his vestments.

  Festus knew these people. He’d spent years with them – among them. Back then his name was Daniel – a good, Biblical name. And while he’d never had much in the way of faith or been much of a fan of what he considered the “mystical” side of the church, he’d understood that there was far more to it than that. He understood the role it played in people’s lives. And like so many people, he’d felt that he was a ship without a keel or a rudder or whatever. But maybe he shouldn’t have let it bother him so much. He was, after all, never really in to sailing. Or any sports or outdoor activity of any kind really.

  After high school, when people he knew went off to the military or college or jail, he’d enrolled in the seminary program of a small Catholic university. He’d spent the next six years studying theology, getting first a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree, always thinking that maybe he’d catch some spark of faith somewhere along the way. But he never did. In fact, the further he went, the more skeptical he became. Then, one day the Pope denounced a nine-year-old rape victim for having an abortion and proclaimed that condoms actually increased the likelihood of the spread of HIV. Daniel decided right then that he’d had enough; that he needed a change. And so he’d left.

  A year later, he was back. With a beard, a new name, a water gun, and something that was almost, but not entirely unlike a plan.

  “Bring me Jesus,” he said, but before the priest spoke the old ladies pounced. The water gun skidded across the floor and under a pew. The retirement-age velociraptors slid their claws through Festus’ arms, and started dragging him back toward the doors. At ninety pounds apiece, these grannies should have been no match for their quarry, but they had surprise on their side. Nobody ever expects to be attacked by a grandma, let alone two of them.

  “What the fuck?!” Festus tried to wrench his arms free from the vice-like grip of the diminutive septuagenarian killing machine in a floral dress on his right, but it was no use. Knitting apparently helped build incredible arm strength. He consoled himself for a moment by telling himself it wasn’t right to fight old ladies, even batty old dinosaur grandmas with claws of steel. There was also the fact that it really didn’t seem to matter whether he fought back. And so he did what any red-blooded beta male would do in his situation. He flailed wildly and screamed like a little girl.

  A few of the men in the audience had actually been enjoying church for the first time in a long time. After all, although the priest usually strung together a good homily, his sermons rarely involved intruders armed with water guns. But nobody liked to see a grown man cry like a that. One leaned over the back of the pew where he was sitting, and looking at Festus with disgust, called out, “Get a grip, man!” Another man picked up the water gun and began shooting Festus.

  Festus’ howls bumped up an octave.

  “Stop screaming, damnit!”

  The absurdity of the situation was beginning to take its toll on Festus. Of course, being pinned down by psycho-killer attack grandmas while being shot in the face with a high-caliber water bazooka probably would have been rough even for a man like Gregor Samsa, let alone a powder puff like Festus. The pressing issue, however, was not the grandmas or the water guns. It was the fact that he’d come in to this church as the weirdo troublemaker. And somehow he’d stumbled upon what might have been the most screwed up, psychotic congregation in Texas. He saw no option other than to howl like a maniac.

  One of the parishioners came up and tore the water gun out of the first man’s hands. “Stop it!” he said. “He’s never going to shut up if you keep spraying him in the face.”

  Festus spluttered and caught his breath, and looked up just in time to see the priest stride up, tearing off his vestments as he walked, leaving only a severe, black cassock. His face was dominated (and actually preceded) by a large, angular protrusion that he, presumably, regarded as a nose, but that looked more like a beak than anything else. Between his freakish nose and his black, man dress – which flowed and billowed behind him – the priest looked like a giant crow.

  Two old men in leather pants and black T-shirts fell in beside him as he walked. One of the old men had the word “Mother” tattooed on his arm. The other had leather wristbands adorned with half-inch metal spikes. Festus noticed that the parishioners were streaming out the side doors of the chapel. In fact, most had already left.

  “You’ve got no idea who you’re messing with, boy,” said the priest.

  “The Catholic Church?”

  The priest’s Village-People cohorts laughed. He held his hand up to silence them.

  “Young man, what you’ve done here today is an awful, awful thing. And you are going to pay for your sins.” He turned to the priest. “Bring me the host.”

  It was at this point that Festus went into full-on batshit comic-book-character mode. His eyes turned to slits, and he set his beard-covered jaw to give his best steely look. “Do your worst,” he said.

  Chapter 13. Friggin’ FBI Agents Everywhere

  Satan raised his hands slowly. Fifteen FBI agents stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a semicircle facing the open elevator, pointing guns of various sizes and shapes at him. Some of the weapons were very large and very unpleasant looking. His FBI nemesis, agent Bob Robertson, stood in the dead center of the group.

  “Lie down on the floor,” said Robertson. “Now.”

  Satan stared at Robertson. He lowered his hands and, leaning over, put them on his knees. He slid one leg back, as if he were about to lie down, and scanned the eyes of the men with all the guns. They were just men, he thought. Just men.

  The elevator lobby exploded with light.

  A few seconds later, Robertson sat up and looked around. His agents lay sprawled all over the floor. Satan’s body sat in an awkward heap near the elevator door. One of those “EXIT” signs with the red, illuminated letters dangled precariously from the ceiling and then fell, smashing to bits on the floor.

  Robertson turned to look up at the point on the ceiling from where the sign had fallen, but stopped as he spotted a very large, very well-lit man standing in front of the elevator. The man had wings. Really big wings, which seemed to stretch from one end of the lobby to the other. He was the most beautiful thing Robertson had ever seen.

  Satan rolled his neck and sighed. It was good to stretch his wings, even if it was only for a moment. He felt light and unencumbered. His mind raced, free of the thought-inhibiting sludge that slowed and muddied his thoughts as a human. He opened his eyes and stared down at Robertson, who was still on the floor, looking a little shocked.

  “What—?”

  The Devil pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” he said, and turned to lift his human body and place it just inside the open elevator. The door chime bonged as the door tried to shut, thwarted by the body of one of the agents. He turned back to Robertson with a kindly smile. “Relax, my friend.”

  A warm breeze began to blow there, in front of the elevators, and Robertson suddenly felt very calm and a little sleepy. He closed his eyes, feeling the warm air on his face, and let his head
drift back, as if he were settling into a bath.

  After just a moment, however, the breeze picked up, swirling and scattering papers and other garbage from the offices nearby. The temperature began to rise. The comfortable warmth on Robertson’s face faded, replaced by the sensation of having been out in the sun a little too long.

  The wind blew faster and began to make a faint, whistling sound that grew to an insistent howl. The small trashcan in front of the elevator suddenly burst into flames. One of the slumbering agents began to stir, apparently awakened as his clothes started to smolder. Robertson reached for his gun but immediately dropped it, yelling out in pain as he clutched his now burnt hand to his chest.

  The walls began to smoke; the paint blistered and bubbled and, after a few seconds, fell in ashy chunks to the floor. Flames burst out from the holes in the paint and spread across the walls. An alarm sounded and sprinkler heads dropped from the ceiling, but the nozzles sprayed no water – only steam.

  Satan stood over the scene with the beatific countenance of a priest at a wedding. He glanced over at Robertson, who was standing now and looking down at his shoes, the soles of which had melted to the floor. He glanced up from his liquefying footwear, meeting Satan’s eyes.

  “My home is here now,” said Satan. He smiled again – a warm, comforting smile – and watched as Robertson’s flesh evaporated, leaving just a pile of bones and ash.

  Satan stooped down to scoop up his own lifeless human body and stepped back into the elevator, pausing only to kick the smoldering remains of an agent out of the way. He waited for a good thirty seconds as alarms sounded and the elevator doors failed to close. Finally he peeked his head back out of the elevator, and strode off to find some stairs.

  Outside, sitting in a cab on Pennsylvania Avenue, Clyde Parker waited. The wad of twenties he’d handed to the cab driver had not, at first, been enough to persuade the man to stay put in the face of all of the fiery unpleasantness happening back at the Hoover Building. The man had driven almost a block before Parker had managed to extract a small revolver from his boot. Now Parker peered through the rear window of the car, watching as a handful of conspicuously non-descript cars roared up, surrounding the orange Lamborghini, and a phalanx of uniformed and plain-clothes men, all carrying firearms, formed a perimeter. He watched as the men pointed and waved their hands and talked into walkie-talkies as more government cars arrived. Finally, an extraordinarily tall man came out of the building’s main entrance.

  “Would you look at that?” whispered Parker. “Another goddamned angel!”

  That angel, who appeared to be carrying a sack of some sort, paused just outside the entryway with his enormous wings fanned out, and surveyed the scene.

  Parker saw one of the angel’s wings shudder and recoil an instant before he heard the loud popping noise that he recognized as the sound of a revolver. He didn’t see what happened next because there was a blinding explosion of light, like a flashbulb on steroids. He turned away involuntarily, shielding his face.

  When he opened his eyes again, everyone had disappeared. There had been, he estimated, at least twenty agents. He scanned the scene, but they were all gone. All of them. And the cars were toppled all over the place like toys tossed by a giant toddler. Except for the orange Lamborghini. The angel was gone, too.

  He watched as a man – he looked like the same man in the suit from before – climbed in to the brightly-hued automobile. Seconds later, he heard the furious sound of the car’s engine howling and screaming its way back to life. The car lurched, its rear end drifting slightly to the side as its tires smoked and screamed before finally catching and catapulting the vehicle forward.

  “There!” he said. He waved his gun at the rapidly-receding sports car. “Turn the car around!” He smacked the cab driver. “Go! Now! Follow him!” The cab driver turned the car, hitting the curb before tearing down Pennsylvania Avenue after the Lamborghini.

  Chapter 14. Wanted: Antichrist

  Bill Cadmon sat in his office in the bowels of the Driftwood Fellowship Church and worried. It was an unpleasant sensation – one he usually dispensed with by assuring himself that God would simply work things out. But that approach wasn’t available this time. In fact, that was the problem. God was relying on him to handle the situation. Technically, it was Ezekiel – the weirdo dumbass angel – who had asked Cadmon to find an antichrist, but then he supposed that the angel was doing God’s work.

  It was a strange deal. Cadmon liked to talk about doing God’s work on Earth, but now he felt like he’d been asked to do God’s job. It was like a parent calling up their college student and saying, “We need you to send us rent money this month.” It made his brain hurt.

  He leaned back in his over-priced ergonomic chair and sighed at his three-panel computer display. Three screens is a lot when you need your secretary’s help just to turn the computer on, but Cadmon had the money, and he liked nice things.

  He let out a quiet groan, and then turned, calling out to his secretary over his shoulder. “Janie!”

  He’d hired Janie because she was a good Christian girl and because she knew exactly how to turn on his computer. It had absolutely nothing to do with the numbers 36-26-36 or Janie’s habit of wearing short skirts. The same was true of Laura, who handled the mail room. And Stephanie, who did all his PR. And Danielle, the girl who backed up Janie when the computer turning on got tough. Cadmon couldn’t help it if the most talented candidates always seemed to look like supermodels. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

  Janie came in, and Cadmon said a little prayer of thanks for nice bottoms, but then sat forward, all business. “I need to cancel my massage. And the tailor – just tell her to drop by tomorrow. And call over to Dick Whitford’s office and see if I can get some time to meet with him today.”

  Janie stuck out her lower lip and made puppy dog eyes over the cancellation, pouting on Cadmon’s behalf. “Aw! No massage?”

  “Say it’s urgent. It’s extremely important that I talk to him,” he said. “Today.” He’d been trying to get some time with the bastard for almost a week.

  “Okay, boss,” she said.

  Janie left, and Cadmon turned back to his screens. Each showed footage of Dick Whitford, the governor of Texas, and, as of a few days ago, Louisiana. There were images of Whitford mumbling into a microphone; Whitford shooting dirty looks at reporters; Whitford flailing his arms against a swarm of bugs and being ushered off the stage. It was an unmitigated disaster. Cadmon shook his head slowly as he clicked the mouse.

  He’d known Whitford for years – ever since they were fraternity brothers at the University of Texas. And Whitford had been a cold-hearted, ambitious jerk even then. The years since – particularly the ones Whitford spent as the vice president – only served to prove that he was an indefatigable penis. And even though he’d only been the Vice President, Whitford had appeared to run the administration as a kind of imperial puppet master, which suggested that the man had developed a megalomaniacal streak. That had made him an ideal candidate for the role Cadmon had been looking to fill. Or so Cadmon had thought.

  They’d argued when Cadmon had first approached Whitford with the opportunity.

  “Louisiana already has a governor,” Whitford had said.

  “They’re going to need a replacement.”

  “Well, that’s what they’ve got a lieutenant governor for,” Whitford said. “Wait, is that what they call it? They’re Cajun, you know. Got goddamned weird words and laws and all kinds of strange shit. What do they call their lieutenant governor? What’s the French word for honcho?”

  “They call him the ‘lieutenant governor,’” said Cadmon, wondering if Whitford had forgotten to take his meds.

  “No, no. It’s got to be French. Wait, Lieutenant… that is French, isn’t it?” He pressed a button on his phone. “Withers, what’s the French word for governor?”

  Without hesitating, Ms. Withers’ voice replied though the speaker. “Gouverneur, sir.”
<
br />   “Goo-ver-nuhr?” He pronounced each syllable as if, well, as if he were a Texan trying to speak French.

  “Yes, sir. Gouverneur.”

  Whitford had muttered to himself as he clicked off the intercom. “Goddamn surrender monkeys, stealing our language before we even thought to use it.” He looked up at Cadmon. “The phrase is Lieutenant Goovernuhr. Although they probably screwed up the word order and put the damned adjective last. So it’s Goo-ver-nuhr Lieutenant.”

  “Look,” said Cadmon, “they’re—”

  “So what about the Goo-ver-nuhr Lieutenant?” He dropped the ‘t’ off of ‘Lieutenant,’ replacing it with a curled lip and zesty Continental head shake. “He can just step right in. Although he probably wouldn’t step, would he? He’d probably do some kind of queer French sashay.”

  Cadmon breathed deep, slow breaths, calming himself. “No,” he said finally. “The Lieutenant Governor is going to be dead.”

  At first, Whitford seemed not to notice that Cadmon had spoken. “And even if he weren’t available, the next person in line is – wait a minute. What did you say?” Whitford leaned forward in his chair, his narrowed eyes boring into Cadmon.

  “They’re all going to die,” said Cadmon. “Everyone in line. All dead.”

  Whitford sat back in his chair, regarding Cadmon for a moment. He tilted his head, giving Cadmon a sideways glance, his eyes suddenly piercing. “Son,” he said, “what in the hell are you talking about?”

  Cadmon told him about the storm, and how it would destroy the State of Louisiana, putting the country’s oil reserves, refining, and pipelines at risk. Said he’d had a vision and prayed and that he was confident enough that he’d stake his fortune. In the end though, he’d had to sell the idea to Whitford as a money-making scheme. That should have set off alarm bells, of course, but Cadmon figured that, once Whitford got a taste of the power, he would be amenable to the more ambitious aspects of the plan. In fact, he’d really hoped that Whitford, in a fit of unbridled ambition, would just take the ball and run with it. So he’d talked about the enormous amounts of money that were at stake. Whitford’s eyes had grown bright, the man practically salivating as he contemplated the staggering sums of money he could make for himself and his oil-company friends.