What Would Satan Do?

by Anthony Miller

  The other major hurdle, of course, had been getting the Governor to buy into the idea that Cadmon could predict the future. Whitford might be a psychopathic turd of a man, but he was a pragmatic turd, and he wasn’t willing to accept on faith Cadmon’s promise of a giant, devastating storm. He’d wanted proof. And Cadmon hadn’t been able to say, “Well, this angel came down and he told me.” Whitford had demanded that Cadmon make good on his statement that he’d stake his personal fortune on the scheme, and had required the preacher to pony up the cash necessary to buy cots, portable housing, and food stuffs that would make it look like Whitford was actually trying to help the storm-struck citizens of Louisiana. All Whitford had to do was show up after the storm, give a press conference, and – hopefully – take it from there.

  But that wasn’t how it had worked out. Whitford had shown up, but then the bugs had attacked and he’d run away. He hadn’t looked like a leader or a savior. No, he’d looked like an idiot. And now he was back in his cave here in Texas.

  You’d think that carrying out God’s plan with the direct, personal assistance of an angel would go a little more smoothly. Cadmon sometimes wondered if this wasn’t the blind leading the blind.

  Cadmon clicked the mouse some more and turned up the volume to listen to the brief press conference Whitford had given before being driven away by the locusts. On the screen, Whitford grumbled and glowered and sneered. The Governor reminded Cadmon of something he’d seen in a movie once – that giant, green slug guy. What was his name? Java or something? He watched the way Whitford had hefted his weight back and forth, grunting his answers, and it reminded Cadmon of a nature program he’d watched about giant male seals croaking their angry-sounding mating calls to seal cows. He shook his head to try to get rid of the image.

  No, choosing Whitford was turning out to be a complete disaster, and the Louisiana catastrophe was only part of it. The angel had instructed Cadmon to get started on the next step, and had pointed out that Whitford would be very helpful with that. The preacher had done as he was asked, and dutifully (and casually) asked whether Whitford knew how to get a hold of some sarin gas. But in the weeks since, the Governor hadn’t said a word about it. In fact, as far as he knew, Whitford had forgotten entirely. But then, he didn’t really know at all. He couldn’t even get the bastard on the phone to ask.

  The angel was going to be pissed. That – not whether Whitford actually managed to do anything – was what made Cadmon nervous. Ezekiel was, when you got right down to it, a little scary. Cadmon needed to somehow get Whitford back on track. But how the hell was he going to do that? He couldn’t exactly reveal what was really going on. “Hey, guess what Dick – you’re the bad guy!”

  It was so unfair. It wasn’t as if he could post an ad: “Wanted: Antichrist.” Cadmon didn’t know any real dictator types, and traipsing through some South American jungle to get in touch with whatever military junta didn’t really seem like an appealing prospect. He’d been tempted to ask himself: What would Jesus do? How would Jesus find an antichrist? But he’d dismissed the idea, thinking that this problem was just too far afield for Jesus to be able to weigh in. Ironically, the man who’d authored a series of books with titles like How Would Jesus Invest? had been unable to wrap his mind around the notion that the most famous political revolutionary in history might have had something to say about the situation.

  The lights flickered and dimmed, and he heard a familiar buzz-saw sound.

  “Shit,” he said. It was too late. The angel was here. Now.

  He got up and scrambled out of his office. “Stay here!” he yelled to Janie.

  He could see the white-orange light fading as he ran up the hall toward the main auditorium. He started to sprint and bounded up the small set of stairs that led toward the back of the stage. The light had faded completely, and the angel was scanning back and forth, searching, by the time Cadmon reached him.

  He turned and saw Cadmon. “William Cadmon,” he said, “I am Ezekiel.”

  Cadmon said nothing. He was doubled over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  “There is a problem,” said Ezekiel.

  Cadmon held his hands up. “I know, I know. He’s just…” He stood there, shaking his head, searching for the words. “He’s just an asshole.” He shrugged.

  “Who is an asshole?” asked the angel.

  “Whitford.”

  Ezekiel looked confused. “Whitford? Why is Whitford an asshole? I do not understand why you’re bringing this up now.”

  “Well,” said Cadmon, “because—”

  Ezekiel waved his giant angel hands dismissively. “Never mind that,” he said. “We have a problem.”

  “I know,” said Cadmon. “That’s why I was—”

  “There has been a disturbance,” said Ezekiel.

  “What?”

  “Someone – something – is coming. And we must stop him.”

  Cadmon shook his head, unable to follow. “What?”

  “We will need your friend’s army.”

  “My friend? Who? What?” Cadmon put up his hands. “Wait a second! What the hell are you talking about?”

  Ezekiel grimaced. “There is someone coming,” he said. “Someone who would interfere with our plan.”

  “Our plan?”

  “God’s plan,” said the angel. “And he’s on the way here. Right now.”

  “Wait, do you mean—?”

  “We will go to meet your Governor friend together. We will need his army.”

  “Wait,” said Cadmon. He didn’t like the sound of that. Never mind how hard all of this was, he didn’t want to have to share the angel with anyone. They’d chosen him, not Whitford. And he wanted it to stay that way. “I have an army.”

  Not it was Ezekiel’s turn to be confused. “What?”

  “It’s true,” Cadmon lied. It wasn’t an army, per se. More of a rabble, really. What he had was a good and zealous friend who was one of the leaders of the idiots who ran around pretending to be resistance fighters for the Republic of Texas. They thought of themselves as an army, but a ragtag group of heterogeneously-armed, secessionist nutcases fond of professing their allegiance to the logically problematic hierarchy of “God,” “The Second Amendment,” and “The Republic of Texas,” was never going to merit that label. Even so, Cadmon had started recruiting the group of self-proclaimed “militia men” shortly after the angel had first appeared, thrilled and amused by the ease with which they’d flocked to him when he’d talked about his plans. Of course, he’d had to substitute the phrase “mighty, independent nation” for “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth,” but this was just a minor detail.

  Cadmon explained his “army” to Ezekiel, and Ezekiel just stared back at him.

  “No,” said Ezekiel.

  The preacher waited for the angel to continue, but “No” was apparently all he had to say on the matter. “No?”

  “No,” said Ezekiel. “We will go talk to your friend. Tomorrow. Make it happen.”

  Chapter 15. Clyde Parker Clogs Satan’s Commode

  Someone once said, “Move to New York if you like money; Move to D.C. if you like power.” Power, schmower – that someone was a gigantic dumbass. Unless you’ve been sent to the Nation’s Capital by voters or lobbyists or cronies or whoever it is that sends the Mr. Smiths of the world off to run things, you’re not going to get anything other than ridiculous traffic, an absurdly high cost of living, and long list of other things that suck. You definitely won’t get anything that resembles power. You probably won’t even see it, unless you get stuck at one of the road blocks police put up to let its motorcade go by.

  If you do move to Washington, D.C., you’ll need somewhere to lay your powerless head, which means you’ll pay an exorbitant rent to live in a space that is probably less comfortable and considerably smaller than the average jail cell. But unlike a prison inmate, you’ll have to leave every day, trudging out into the miserable, humid Hell that was built on donated swamp land so that
you can go to work to earn some money to pay the absurd rent on that crappy space.

  Clyde Parker, in the years he’d spent in the capital, had occasion to visit many of these miserable apartments. They were all, in his opinion, uniformly bad. Horrible fluorescent lighting. Cheap, industrial-grade carpeting or even linoleum. And the apartments themselves were miniscule. Microscopic even. It wasn’t how they did things back in Texas, and it was, in Parker’s opinion, just plain immoral. This building, however, was different.

  Parker’s heart raced as he made his way down the warmly-lit hallway, treading on thick, plush carpet that seemed to swallow sounds whole. There’d been a security guard downstairs, and he had just managed to keep his cool as he followed two women who were completely immersed in their own conversation. When the guard started to speak, he’d leaned over with a big, cowboy grin and said, “It’s all right, son. They’re both with me.”

  He reached his destination – apartment 18 – and noticed the doorbell. Another fancy touch. Parker looked up and down the hall and saw that all of the doors had them. Money, he thought. He took a deep breath and put on his tough guy face as he touched his finger to the button.

  The man who opened the door was the same one he’d seen at the FBI building, except that he was holding a glass of scotch and wearing a black, full-length cape.

  “Hello,” he said to the Devil. “My name is Clyde Parker.” He fingered the pearly handle of his large silver revolver.

  Satan smiled politely. “Hello, Mr. Parker. How may I be of assistance?” He didn’t bother to glance down at the gun.

  “I’m here on behalf of Dick Whitford.”

  Their eyes met, and for an instant, the smile disappeared from Satan’s face. But then the moment passed.

  “Won’t you come in?” said the Devil, smiling once again. He turned, leaving Parker standing at the door.

  Parker glanced around suspiciously, and then took a tentative step, leaning into the apartment. Nothing happened, so he went the rest of the way in. Satan had gone into a kitchen that was just off the entryway. Parker looked around, eyeing the immaculate and well-decorated room with a sneer. It seemed all wrong. There weren’t nearly enough dead things mounted on the wall. In fact, there were none. And not a scrap of cowhide anywhere. Parker tried to use bits of cow in all of his decorating.

  He noticed a painting in an expensive-looking frame leaned up against a large, metal box with little wheels on it. The box had a plastic spigot and a metal handle on the front, and looked as if it belonged in a restaurant kitchen. The picture was small and mostly blue, and looked a little out of place inside its ornate, hand-carved frame. It showed a bride standing next to a goat. The goat appeared to be playing a cello.

  “Nice painting,” said Parker, a snarky (but still very gritty and tough) look on his face.

  “Oh, that? It’s nothing,” called Satan from the small kitchen. Parker heard the tinkle of ice cubes being dropped in a glass.

  “It’s, uh… interesting.”

  Satan stepped out of the kitchen, shrugging. “It is what it is,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “Here’s your drink.”

  Parker took the glass, trying but failing entirely to not eye it suspiciously. “They told me not to approach you on my own,” he said.

  “They?”

  “The Governor.”

  “Well, he was probably right,” said Satan.

  “I figured we could work something out, though,” said Parker, regarding the Devil with a half-cocked smirk.

  “Hmmm—” Satan brought his hand to his chin and searched the ceiling for an answer. “Nope. Sorry. You figured incorrectly.” He said it pleasantly, as a simple matter of fact.

  They stared at each other for a moment. Parker steely eyed and serious; Satan smiling.

  Parker watched as the smile receded, replaced by a mix of anger – rage even – and what looked like pain. He failed to react to the change, however, because he was busy yelping and trying to free himself from Satan’s sudden, strong grasp.

  “Who sent you?” growled Satan. He grabbed Parker’s arm and pulled it backward, yanking it upwards so that Parker’s hand was up at the level of his shoulder blades. “Who sent you?”

  Parker twisted, trying to free himself, but the Devil, still holding onto the man’s arm, rushed forward to smash Parker face-first into the wall.

  “Who—?” Satan began again, but Parker continued to try to fight back, so Satan twisted Parker’s arm harder, further up the man’s back, until it made a nasty cracking sound.

  Parker screamed.

  “Shut up!” said Satan.

  Parker did not shut up, and so, after a further bit of struggling, some swearing, and a couple more screams, the tough-as-nails cowboy found himself upside down in a bathroom, smacking his head on a porcelain bowl and swallowing water.

  “How is it that you found me?” demanded Satan. His voice had changed. The refined British aristocrat had gone, and now he sounded like more than one voice; like a group of horrible, angry undead things, all trying to talk at the same time through Eddie Van Halen’s guitar amplifier.

  “I s-s-saw you—” Parker stammered and swallowed a mouthful of water. He started to choke. Satan pulled him up and shook, causing Parker’s head to bang against the toilet bowl again.

  Parker coughed and sputtered and regained his breath. “I saw you at the FBI building,” he said. He was surprised how difficult it was to talk while getting a swirly. Here he was, a man of so many talents, including resisting torture, but he hadn’t been prepared for this. Speaking coherently while having his head jammed into a flushing toilet was just not something he’d ever anticipated doing.

  The toilet flushed again, and Satan pulled the man up, just out of the water.

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” said the Devil. “You saw what happened today; what I did, and you thought it seemed like a good idea to follow me?”

  “I didn’t,” but Parker’s words turned to gurgles as Satan plunged the man back into the commode and flushed again.

  “You did!” Satan insisted as he pulled the man up.

  Parker caught his breath. “No, I didn’t have any other leads!”

  Satan stopped, curious. “Leads for what?”

  “Please! Please just put me down, and I’ll explain!”

  Satan hesitated, leaving Parker hanging. Parker reached out, grabbing the lip of the bowl to stop from hitting his head again as he dangled.

  “Oh, all right.” He dipped Parker back into the bowl, flushing once more, and then dropped the man’s feet to the floor. He grabbed some towels out of the cabinet. When he turned to hand them to Parker, the civilized Brit had returned. “Dry yourself,” he said, “and then wipe everything off very thoroughly. If there’s even a droplet of water, I’ll kill you in a slow and horribly painful way. Do you understand?”

  Parker grabbed a towel off the top of the stack, grunted, and started toweling his hair.

  “Excuse me! I asked you a question! You can at least do me the courtesy of giving me an answer.”

  Parker let his hands fall and stared at Satan in disbelief. “Yes.”

  He spent the next ten minutes cleaning Satan’s bathroom.

  When he finished, he gathered up the towels and took a few cautious steps out into the living room.

  Satan was relaxing on an expensive-looking sofa, apparently contemplating his scotch. “Put the towels down and have a seat there,” he said, pointing to a stool he’d placed in front of the fireplace.

  Parker was still damp and was grateful for the small fire. He hadn’t even sat down though when the interrogation began. “Why are you here?” asked Satan.

  Parker hesitated, and Satan’s crystal tumbler flew across the room, smacking the cowboy in the head, and smashed to bits on the fireplace behind him. He grabbed his head and hunched over.

  Satan did not wait before asking again. “What does Mr. Whitford want?”

  Still crouched and holding his head, Par
ker answered, “I— I’m not entirely sure.”

  Satan leapt off the sofa and stepped to the fireplace. He pulled an iron poker from the fire, its tip glowing red. Parker glanced up, the white parts his eyes somewhat larger than normal.

  “I doubt that a moron like yourself will ever be very sure of anything,” said Satan. “Nevertheless, I must insist that you try to answer my question.” He held the pointy bit of the poker toward Parker’s face.

  “He wants your help.”

  Satan glared at Parker. “Can we just assume that the next time you fail to provide a prompt response to one of my queries, I’ll put one of your eyes out with this?” He shook the poker for emphasis.

  Parker’s face twisted as a variety of mostly negative emotions tried to express themselves simultaneously. Satan swung the glowing tip of the implement around, holding it under Parker’s eye.

  “Y-Yes!” Parker stammered. He slipped off the stool, stumbling as he tried to get away from the red hot poker.

  “Good. Now, sit back down.” Satan pointed, using the poker, at the stool as he settled back onto the edge of a stylish coffee table. “Now. Why does Mr. Whitford want my help?”

  Parker did not answer immediately. Satan shot up, the brass implement making a wooshing sound worthy of a kung fu movie as its glowing tip tore through the air and plunged into the man’s thigh.

  Parker screamed and, of course, fell off the stool again. Satan kicked him. “Get up!” But Parker just rolled on the floor, holding his leg. So Satan kicked Parker again. “Get up, you maggot!” He snatched Parker up by the shirt, hoisting him upright, and slammed him back down, bottom first, onto the stool. Parker let go of his leg and grabbed at his lower back.