2013: Beyond Armageddon (32 page)

Did he believe?

Yes. The mirror had clinched it.

Jesus Himself had enlisted his help. And had promised to be there when the time came.

Put your trust in the Lord.

That would have to be enough.

Zeke walked toward the vault door with purposeful strides, his confidence level growing with every step. His fate was in God’s hands now.

Unger had positioned two chairs in the center of his sanctuary. He and Zeke sat a few feet apart, facing each other.

“Did you see?” Unger said.

“I saw.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Jesus spoke to me from the mirror. He asked for my help, for me to pave the way.”

Jesus had chosen Ezekiel over him. Unger hid his disappointment well, but in his head a voice shouted that after all his years of dedication, it wasn’t fair. It was the voice of his former self, Anthony Unger, the covetous sinner he’d never been completely able to extinguish.

“Then it has been decided,” he said. “You are the one.”

“‘Put your trust in the Lord,’ He said to me.”

“And so we shall.”

“You seem okay with it.”

Unger forced a smile. “I bow to the will of the Lord. I am his to use in whatever way He sees fit.”

“We’re on the same page there,” Zeke said. “We need to talk about the relics, then.” He nodded toward the vault door. “Are you willing to let me use them?”

“I’m sure you can understand my insistence on not allowing them out of my sight. Still, some arrangement might be worked out. First I would need to know exactly where you are at in your search for Satan, and how these precious relics would be used.” He saw hesitation, reluctance. “It is time to take our trust to a whole new level.” Unger watched him thinking it over.

“You’re right,” Zeke finally said. “Trust goes both ways.”

Unger listened intently as a man named Ezekiel told of his dig for Hell at the Dead Sea. “As for how the relics would be used,” he said, “I haven’t figured that out yet. Initially I would simply want them at our dig to—hopefully—ward off any Satanic presence. Beyond that, if we do find Hell, I’m thinking I might take as many as I can carry—probably in a backpack, something like that—hoping that their divine power will protect me. Jesus has said as much.”

“I can accept that. There can be no greater use for these sacred objects than to summon their divine power in the final showdown with Satan. I could let you borrow them, but on two conditions.”

“What are they?”

“These are the most sought-after items on earth. I would need your assurance that they would be housed in a secure location. At least as secure as my vault. Anything easily broken into would simply not do.”

“I agree,” Zeke said. “I can hire a security expert to convert a space in our headquarters into something vaultlike. What’s the other condition?”

“I come with them—for several reasons. I have spent my life preparing for exactly what you are seeking, Ezekiel: the final confrontation. I cannot have blazed the trail this far and stop. Communing with these relics daily is an indispensable part of my hesychastic ritual. There is also the matter of antiquities thieves. They are relentless, and they have a way of sniffing out any unusual movements. However secure a room you create, I could not sleep without being able to keep a close watch on my collection. On a more practical level, I can give the perspective of a trained eschatologist on a moment I’ve spent my whole life studying and preparing for. Armageddon.”

Another hesitation, but this one lasted only a couple seconds. “You’re right,” Ezekiel said. “With your academic background, I’m sure we could find ways for you to be useful. We have lodging. You could have a floor to yourself and a room next to the relics.”

“Perfect. I would welcome the opportunity to be useful.”

“Then welcome to the dig for Hell.” They clasped hands. “Creating a secure location for the relics might take a little time. That will give you time to pack them up. When all that’s done, I’ll come and get you and your collection.”

“Very well. The problem will be getting the relics loaded onto your vehicle when you come. We cannot do that from here. It might reveal the location of my sanctuary. And we are too far from the road. If anyone saw us carrying them through Kidron Valley, it could arouse suspicion. We must find another way.”

“I could come up at night, when people are least likely to be around. Say three in the morning. You and I could load them up then, when it’s pitch dark.”

Unger shook his head. “It would still be several trips across rough terrain, and wherever you parked your car it might draw attention.”

“The relics have to be gotten from here to my van. However we do it, there’s going to be some risk. We just try to minimize it as much as we can. I could park where the road comes closest to your house. You show me where that is now, and I’ll take some pictures of that spot. I can use the pictures to make some kind of camouflage screen that would blend into the landscape. I’d hide the van behind that. If you have the relics all packed and ready by your front door, the whole transfer could be done in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re right,” Unger said. “There is no perfect way, but your way sounds best.”

“Let’s go then. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”

They left Unger’s Sanctum Sanctorum and walked down the stony path in silence.

Dig Headquarters

By the time Zeke made it back to the dig that evening, everyone was wrapping up a long day’s work and getting ready to head up to their rooms. Zeke told the Hell Squad to meet him in the lounge so they could fill each other in on the day’s events.

Darkness had fallen by the time they gathered around a table over beers. Leah, Mordecai, and Hassan listened in rapt attention as Zeke recounted his underground encounter with Anthony Unger.

“He’s kind of a latter-day John the Baptist. That’s how he sees himself. Wear’s a monk’s outfit, the whole bit.” He saw the skeptical looks. “I know. But the but the power of his relics could not be denied.” He told of the lightning inside the silver crucifixes and the visions in Pilate’s mirror. “He has documentation, but we all know the authenticity of these things can never be proven. All I can tell you is that, after what I saw and felt, I’m utterly convinced.”

“Of course it sounds impossible,” Mordecai said. “But nothing surprises me anymore. Science is out the window.”

“We need those relics,” Zeke said. “So I made a deal with him. He agreed to let us use them if he could be part of the dig. By training he’s an eschatologist. Taught it for years at Catholic University.” Assuming archaeologists working in the Holy Land would know about eschatology, Zeke directed his explanation primarily at Leah.

“Eschatology is the branch of theology concerned with the end of the world: Armageddon, the Second Coming, Judgment Day, all of that. Unger made a good point that since that’s exactly what we’re looking at, his expertise could be valuable in interpreting whatever unfolds. Besides, I figured since we’ll have the Satanic perspective when Michael Price gets here, it wouldn’t hurt to have a spokesman for God’s point of view. I could team them up, get kind of a point/counterpoint interpretation of anything paranormal. Call them the Fringe Group, maybe. Something like that. If nothing else it would keep them busy.

“The bottom line is I want us to have those relics. So he’s coming to stay with us. Part of the deal is converting some space here into a secure location for storing the relics. I’m talking like a vault. Mordecai, can you get somebody out here to take care of that?”

“No problem.”

Zeke took a swig from his beer and sat back. “So. Tell me about your day.”

“It was about as exciting as archaeology gets,” Mordecai said. He described the discovery of the two mummified corpses, their remarkable state of preservation, what that might mean for science. “There was one disturbing aspect. They were engaged in anal intercourse.”

“Sodomy,” Zeke said.

“That’s the first word that came into my mind too,” Leah said. “How could it not?”

Hassan responded quietly, as he always did, but with an intensity they had not seen. “The obvious religious interpretation would be that this was Allah’s punishment for engaging in homosexuality. The Koran and the Bible condemn it.”

“The Torah refers to it as ‘an abomination,’” Mordecai said.

“I used to be a devout Muslim,” Hassan said, “and I personally believe that homosexuality is not the natural order of things. Otherwise there would be no human race. But I have met many gay people over the years, and they are no better or worse than anyone else. I decided I could not embrace any teaching that includes killing and hate. It is that kind of extremism that gives us the suicide bombers. That got Norah killed. That is destroying the world. It is why I am here.” He looked at the faces around the table. “I have not been inside a mosque in years. When the killing in the name of Allah stops, I will go back.”

The discussion of the find and its implications went around the table. The conversation reminded Zeke of many he’d had in philosophy classes at Catholic University, endless speculation that went nowhere. Wanting to move along, after everyone had weighed in he said “Amen.”

Leah finished her beer. “Gentlemen, congratulations on a very exciting day, but I need to go to bed.”

“I’ll be up shortly,” Zeke said. She pecked him on the cheek and left. Zeke saw Mordecai staring absently, shaking his head. “What’s the matter?”

“I was just thinking about the fact that we’re on a mission to find Satan himself. I can’t help but wonder what kind of a being we might find, considering all the mythology developed to explain him through the centuries.”

“Catholic mythology, primarily,” Zeke said. “We practically invented Satan.”

Mordecai smiled. “Well, if you didn’t invent him, you certainly perfected him. Still, no one knows the precise nature or form of the Devil. We know what we saw last night on the television, but perhaps that is just one of many forms.”

He leaned forward and raised a forefinger.

“I was thinking of all the religious tradition, the theology—mythology—that has been passed along through the ages, like a torch. Now we are the keepers of that flame. The Hell Squad, carrying that torch into the darkness, searching for one of the two forces, good and evil, that spawned
all
religion. For thousands of years, all those religions have developed their own versions of good and evil. The three Abrahamic religions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—are all represented right here at this table. We are certainly qualified to speak for them. But what had me shaking my head was that, through all these thousands of years of discussion, one voice has been conspicuously absent.”

They waited for him to supply the name. A long moment later, he did. “Who speaks for Satan?”

The voice from the doorway hit them like a blast of icy air.

“I do.”

Michael Price emerged from the shadows and saw their startled looks.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare everyone. I tried calling you Zeke, to let you know I was on my way from the airport, but there wasn’t any answer. You said to just come on ahead whenever I was ready.”

Zeke had turned his cell phone off so they could talk in peace. He made a mental note to start making sure all the outer doors were locked every night and beckoned Price over. “This is Michael Price, the man I told you about. The expert in Satanic murders. And Satanism in general.” No one moved to shake his hand, so Price merely pulled up a chair and sat to the left of Zeke. “Explain to these gentlemen what you meant about speaking for Satan.”

Price told of his Ph.D. in Abnormal Psychology, his career interviewing “the devil made me do it” murderers on death row, and his exhaustive research into Satanism.

Hassan seemed troubled. “Did you come to believe in Satan yourself?”

“In some cases, yes. Sitting in the cell with them, closer than I am to you, I could look deep into their eyes. Windows to the soul, as they say. And I know I saw—if not the Devil, then certainly something not human. Pure, depraved evil was leering back at me. This was in the very worst cases. Cases where—whatever name you want to give it—evil had clearly, inarguably, defeated good.”

“Cases such as?” Mordecai asked, warily.

Price detailed a litany of atrocities committed under alleged Satanic influence that had them wincing and moaning in revulsion.

He told of a baby disemboweled by a babysitter who was a devoted follower of Satanic metal music; of a steelworker who murdered his two young sons by boiling them in a cauldron of molten ore on Christmas Day; of a teenager claiming to be a vampire and slaughtering his family as they slept.

The clinical way in which Price described the horrors disturbed his listeners almost as much as the stories themselves. As Zeke’s newly reborn faith struggled to shield him from thinking of these incidents as victories over God, he wondered if too much time spent in the presence of such evil might not cause a person to absorb it to some degree. Possibly even embrace it. “Do you think Satan can be defeated?” he said.

“I don’t know. The idea has never really been put to the test. According to the Bible, Jesus banished Satan when he tried to tempt Him in the desert. But then Jesus got crucified. If you believe the Devil was behind that—and many do—then he has already proven he can win. In my personal experience good is often defeated by evil. Not only that, but I think an overconfident reliance on the Bible’s account of things could be deadly when the time came. As powerful a Book as it is—no offense to anyone’s religion—it’s still ambiguous hearsay evidence.”

Zeke wanted to argue the point but couldn’t. When it came down to it he believed the same thing.

He looked at his watch. Almost ten. They had a pre-work meeting at five-thirty. “Let’s call it a night. We can talk about whatever we need to talk about in the morning.”

Zeke and Mordecai went into the lobby and waited while Price got what he needed from his rental car. Zeke watched him bringing in his bags and suddenly felt very weary. Mordecai was also watching, a bothered expression on his face. “What’s wrong?” Zeke asked him.