Armageddon?? (32 page)

“No.”
Her yellow slitted eyes darted around again, measuring up the people in the
room with her.

“Show
the film please. Lugasharmanaska this is film taken through our video
surveillance system at the mall. It shows a baldr…. a demon …. Attacking the
crowd.”

Luga
watched the film without any real interest. “So?”

“So
why this attack, why now?”

“Why
not.” Lugasharmanaska shrugged, a curiously human gesture. “This is nothing
new. Just another berserker attacking. Odd your people fought back though,
usually they do not.”

“Wait
a minute.” Secretary Rice jumped on the last phrase. “Usually, this has
happened before.”  Lugasharmanaska was almost impatient. “Of course it has. How
many times have you had mass killings in your schools or parks? How many times
has an isolated community been mysteriously wiped out? Always it was either us
or Yahweh. Sometimes our berserkers would do it themselves, other times they
would possess another human to do it.” She stirred slightly in excitement.
“That was always very good because we would let the person see what they had
done and know they would be punished for it. Their despair was joy to us.”

“Yahweh
did things like this?”

“Of
course.” Impatience had become scorn. “Most were his, to keep you frightened
and depending on him. Ours were just for sport.”

Bush
glanced around the assembled cabinet, gathering in the expressions of horror
and disgust on their faces. What must it be like working daily with a monster
like this, listening to these horrors?. “Always the attacks were on schools and
malls?” The question was soft, he was controlling his voice very carefully.

“Of
course. That is where fear and terror would be greatest.” Lugasharmanaska
paused for a second. “You were very wise keeping your guns out of such places,
it hid them from us.”

“But
you can go anywhere, appear anywhere.”

“No.”
Impatience returned again. “We need nephilim to home in on. In malls and such
there are large concentrations of people so the homing signal is strongest
there.”

“So
you can only appear where there are concentrations of people.”

“That
is what I said is it not?”

“So
the timing of this attack has nothing to do with the fighting in Iraq?”

“What
fighting?”

Bush
glanced at General Schatten who shook his head. They’d told Lugasharmanaska
nothing of the battles in the Iraqi desert. “Your army invaded us. We defeated
it, totally. Wiped it out at little cost to ourselves. What isn’t dead is
running. And don’t think this will end there. We fight to win.”

“Defeated?
Which Army?” Lugasharmanaska was stunned, she knew humans were unexpectedly
powerful but to defeat an entire Army? Lead by who? She gathered herself,
noting the renewed confidence in the humans. Her shock had cost her ground.
“No, this attack has nothing to do with that. The Duke who launched it may not
even know the war has started yet. Hell is a big place and communications are
very slow. By messenger mostly. Many parts may not have got the word yet.”

The
interrogation went on, pushing Lugasharmanaska for added details of the
berserker raids. In the background, one of James Randi’s JREF observers was
filming the whole process.

DIMO(N)
Conference Room, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA

“Notice
something odd about this film Robert?”

“About
a demon in the Conference room? Nothing at all odd. I’d guess in some previous
administrations there were several. I’ve always wondered about Robert McNamara
myself, he’s a good candidate for a fiend from hell.”

“Not
bright enough. No, look at how this meeting starts. See how everybody is
disgusted by Lugasharmanaska, repulsed by her. Combination of hatred, loathing,
abomination, abhorrence, you name it, every negative emotion imaginable. Now
look at these scenes at the end of the meeting. What do you see?”

“Doesn’t
look very different to me. The President is being charming but if looks could
kill, Condi’s laser gaze would have fried poor Lugasharmanaska on the spot.”

“Right,
and what is it we’ve noticed about people meeting Lugasharmanaska?”

“Everybody
accepts her and gets sympathetic, warm and fuzzy about her. Oh, I see what you
mean. The Cabinet didn’t.”

“And
they all had their caps on so it isn’t mind control. Whatever it is that she
does, it didn’t work there.”

“Must
be environmental, must be. How does that conference room differ from ours?”

“It’s
a lot bigger of course. And more expensively equipped. That’s all.”

“And
its air is screened.” General Schatten cut in from one corner

“General?”

“The
air is screened, its continually drawn out, filtered and recycled. There’s
quite an airflow but is through vents in the floor so people don’t notice it.
You can throw a tear gas bomb in there and the air will be scrubbed clean
before it hurts anybody.”

“The
air gets scrubbed clean. All the time. James – pheromones sound likely to you?”

“Ummm.”

“Scents
used by humans to modify behavior around them. For example, women who are
ovulating use them to be particularly attractive to men, pheromones from
pregnant women make people around them feel warm and fuzzy, its part of our
non-verbal communication system.”

“I
do not like thee Doctor Fell  Why this is I cannot tell  But I know this and
know full well  I do not like thee Doctor Fell.”

“Exactly
James, a lot of our subconscious likes and dislikes are determined by
pheromones. We’re only just beginning to get into what they do and the field’s
opening out. It may well be that our sense of smell is vastly more important
than we ever gave it credit for. The conference room is big, that means
Lugasharmanaska’s pheromones didn’t have time to build up the necessary
concentration before they were swept out and scrubbed out.”

“Does
that mean we have to wear a gas mask before we speak with her?”

“Might
not do any good, there’s some evidence that pheromones work by skin absorption
as well. The upside is that pheromone effects are insidious but if people are
aware of them, they can filter them out, recognize and discount them if you
like. Another good thing about this…”

“What’s
that Robert?”

“I
doubt if Lugasharmanaska understands what it is that makes people agreeable
around her. I bet she just takes it for granted that they will be. That means
she must be a very confused succubus right now.”

“Did
you see her face when the President told her about our victory in Iraq? She was
shaken to her very roots. She’s shaken up in more ways than one.”

Office
of the Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon, Washington DC

John
Warner sighed and rubbed his eyes. The logic laid out by the charming but
ice-cold Thai General was undeniable, especially with what they’d learned from
that foul monster General Schatten had brought into the White House. Baldricks
could teleport into any large group of people. So there had to be guards
everywhere. That meant a militia, well, the Constitution provided for that,
encouraged it even. And there were enough guns floating around in America to
arm it. His pen sketched doodles on a pad. Of course the term militia was out,
too many negative connotations these days. His eye rested on picture of the
American Civil War and the letters USV. United States Volunteers. That wasn’t
right though, these people would be defending their homes. Local Defense
Volunteers. That had a good ring to it and glossed over the fact that they were
going to be drafted.

Every
man and woman between the ages of 18 and 50 who wasn’t already part of the
armed forces, that was what the new draft would bring in. To be armed and sent
as patrols to sports stadiums, schools, malls, anywhere people would be
gathering. Average strength on any given day, 25 million. One more burden for a
nation that was already working long hours with little rest. Yet, the benefits
were already showing, new M270A2 rocket launchers, M2 Bradleys, M1 tanks were
starting to flow from the production line. Aircraft were the problem,
production would take a long time to ramp up and bring retired old aircraft
back from the graveyard could only achieve so much.

His
phone beeped. “Mister Secretary. A Ms O’Leary to see you. She’s your eleven
o’Clock.”

Warmer
sighed again. What did she want? “Miss O’Leary, How can I help you?”

“Secretary
Warner, I understand you’ll be needing a lot of guns, needing them quickly and
they have to be powerful enough to take down a baldrick with a minimum number
of shots.”

“That
is so.” More than you can possibly realize he thought.

“I
own a small custom gun producing company. We make a derivative of the M1 Garand
in.458 Winchester. Our production isn’t great but we can expand a bit and we
know other companies that can do the same. There are quite a few others,
including Springfield who make the M1A, a semi-automatic version of the M14,
who can retool to make .458 Winchester versions of that weapon. Between us we
can make a lot of these rifles. They’re accurate at longer range than the .50
M16s you’re introducing and they don’t use the same industry resources. We can
use furniture makers for the wooden stocks etc, and the parts are milled, not
stamped. There’s lots of small engineering companies that are hurting right
now, they aren’t into the high-tech stuff our modern weaponry requires. But for
something at World War Two levels, they’re perfect. And they want in on the war
effort.”

And
in on the profits Warner thought. But she was right, and this would help arm
the Local Defense Volunteers. And it did make use of small industrial capacity.
“An excellent idea Miss O’Leary. Let’s talk money on this.”

Chapter
Twenty Four

The
Banks of the Styx, Fifth Ring, Hell

Chondrakerntolis
rode his Beast carefully along the banks of the Styx. Something worried him
about this area, not so very long before, his Beast had been alarmed by
something along just this stretch of road. And then there was the mysterious
death of Jarakeflaxis. They’d found his mangled body, studded with stab wounds
and crucified on one of the rocky outcrops. The letters PFLH had been scrawled
over his head, in his own blood. Nobody could make sense of it, or them come to
think of it. PFLH? No sense at all.

Somebody
was up to no good that was certain. Crucifixion pointed to Yahweh and his
people but they rarely came down this way. He had heard that a delegation from
Yahweh was on its way to visit Satan but who knew what for. Wise demons did not
involve themselves in the affairs of those so high up for when giants fought,
midgets got trampled. The most likely bet was that one of the Dukes was making
a power-play, trying to expand his influence over the netherworld at the
expense of Chondrakerntolis’s Duke. Now that would make sense.

Something
weird had been happening recently. The number of souls that had been arriving
in hell had suddenly accelerated, rising by orders of magnitude. They’d been
dispatched to the various regions of hell of course but at every level the
numbers were being hidden so that their essence could be used by the
lower-level demons instead of restricted to those of higher caste. Was that why
Jarakeflaxis had been killed? Had one of the Dukes or Greater Demons found out
that human life essence was being diverted and settled for that public
punishment. But if it was an example, why was there no indication of what it
was an example of?

That
question so Chondrakerntolis that he never noticed the thin wire stretched
across the pathway. His Beast saw it but the threat it represented didn’t
register. The prime characteristic of a Beast was its unthinking ferocity,
caution was not a desired attribute. As a result of their inattention, neither
was quite aware of what happened next or the skill with which it had been
planned. The wires were attached to push-pull detonators fixed to four claymore
mines, placed so that their victim was the center of an X defined by the cones
of cubical metal shrapnel they generated. The wires also tripped a timer switch
on four one-kilogram blocks of Semtex that had been buried under the path’s
surface.

Chondrakerntolis
tried to make his brain work, he was surrounded by flying mud and dust, his
body ripped by wounds that sprayed his green blood around. His Beast was down,
its front legs and one of its claws torn off, it’s body broken and bleeding.
Even as he watched, the path surface erupted, shredding the already-dying Beast
and throwing its parts around. The connection was inevitable, whatever the
reason for the death of Jarakeflaxis, he was also to be its victim.

The
mud and mist stirred and three figures emerged. HUMANS!. Chondrakerntolis
cudgeled his dying brain into absorbing this data. Humans had done this? How?
They were cattle, prey to be milked of their life essence, nothing more. They
had killed him? How?

A
human female knelt beside him and he heard her voice. “Somebody told us you
couldn’t be killed. Guess they were wrong huh?”