Last God Standing (30 page)

I felt warm, even cozy. But that didn’t make sense. I was dead… and loving it? My attention shifted, seeking the source of the warmth. It was above me, high overhead, a shining point of light. The light shone, white and gold, and millions of other colors that I’d never imagined; utterly different from the light I saw aboard Amon-Ra’s Barque of a Million Years.

What is that?

It was drawing closer, its warmth growing greater. I felt the urge to rise and meet the light, to–

Join us

But what was it?

Come along

Is this what humans see when they die?

I received only a surge of pleasure as the glow strengthened–

Join us

I’m ready. Whatever this is, I want in. I’m ready to blow this dimensional popsicle stand and head for the stars.

Surabhi. Are you in there?

“Yahweh is fallen!”
Yuri shouted.
“Now dawns a New Order. Now begins a new Ascencion!”

Despite my best efforts, I looked back.

“The Shining Orders have served in humanity’s shadow for too long! Served those whom we should rule!”

“Rule!”

“Now
is the moment for which the divine Orders have prepared! When we declare War upon the scum that has infected this world for too long!”

Yuri raised his right hand, his fingers clawing toward the heavens. A long tongue of fire shot from those fingers, intensifying until the flame resolved itself into a blazing sword.
“War!”

“War!”

“Kill the humans!”

“Power to the Principalities!”

“Yuriel Kalashnikov!”

Mitsuko Leavenworth stepped out of the throng of revolutionaries, her pale face reflecting the flames from Yuri’s sword.

Wait a minute... I know that sword.

“I am Benzaiten, of the
Shiji Fukujin. Spirit of fortune and daughter of mighty Munetsuchi.”

As she moved toward Yuri she assumed her most alluring Aspect: Benzaiten, Sister to the Snake, radiant with the full beauty and beneficence of the Goddess of Love. Her divine light would surely fade in time, as would the brilliance of all those gathered below, but at that moment she shone bright enough to melt stone.

“My life force flows in the deepest waters of this world. I am the daughter of immortals.”

Then she dropped her glamour, became Mitsuko Leavenworth again. When she spoke, her voice was unaffected by any hint of divinity.

“But it’s as a mortal that I choose to share my days with you. Come back to me.”

“No!”
Yuri snarled. The flames licking along the blazing blade flared even brighter.
“Deceiver! Stay back!”

Mitsuko moved closer, placing her hands first upon her breast then extending them toward Yuri. Yuri brandished his sword, kept its point between them.

“Remember yourself, Yuri,”
Benzaiten whispered, her face streaked with tears like drops of molten silver.

“Remember, O Satan, the darkness you renounced. Remember the life we created. Together.”

Mitsuko reached up and laid her fingers against the tip of the burning blade. With the other, she caressed her abdomen.

Yuri unleashed a stream of profanity so blasphemous that several Seraphim dropped out of the sky. Then he dropped the burning sword and clapped his fists against his temples.

“Get…
OUT!”

Hovering in the limbo between life and death, I saw what happened next but couldn’t believe it: spectral black dragon’s wings burst from Yuri’s back. Then a shadow stepped out of his body. For a moment the two of them struggled there, the shadow clutching at Yuri’s throat, fighting to occupy the same space at the exact same time. Then the Archangel Gabriel fell to the stony battlefield.

“There!” Mitsuko cried. “It was Gabriel who conspired with the Coming. Gabriel who plotted with Holiday!”

Sheer elemental malice ignited Gabriel’s countenance; twin crimson suns burned where his angelic eyes had once been.

“Pitiful, damned fools!”

To say Gabriel had changed would be putting it lightly. Where once he stood tall, the epitome of angelic perfection, he now crouched, his once flawless physique twisted, as if broken by the pressure of containing raw malice. He was putting out heat like a blast furnace, the air around him shrieking as if his very presence burned it raw. His once luminescent skin had turned a chalky white, the color of an ancient nightshade, mottled with red and black scales. His eyes burned bright red-orange, the pupils elongated into feline slits.

The new Devil flapped his leathery wings, fanning nuclear heat I could feel even across the boundary between life and death. Then he raised one clawed hand. A cloud of black smoke that stank of brimstone streamed from a crack in the earth. His Voice boomed over the assembled Host.

“If Heaven is forbidden to me, I will rule in Hell.”
Gabriel turned his eyes upon the gathered gods, demons and spirits.
“But I will not haunt an empty mansion.”

The Host screamed.

“Waste,”
Gabriel said.
“Such… pathetic… waste.”

The Hell Portal fissioned into three-dimensional space. The Adversary stalked toward the portal, his bare feet leaving burning clawprints in the dust. He paused, then he looked up at me, where I hovered, bodiless and intangible.

“Be warned. The Final Assault has begun.”

Then, with a glare that can only be described as Satanic, the new Prince of Darkness leaped into the glowing portal. There was a flash of light and the stench of rotten flesh, followed by much rending and gnashing of teeth. When my astral eyes cleared, the plains were empty. The gathered Host was gone. Damned to a hell even I couldn’t imagine.

“Well,” Yuri said, after a while. “That can’t be good.”

Then he saw my body lying at his feet.

“Oh my God!”

Yuri threw himself to the ground, lifted my head and cradled it in his lap. With one hand he spread my swollen lips apart. With the other, he reached into his shirt pocket and produced a vial filled with some dark, purplish liquid.

“You’re not getting off that easy, old boy.”

Then he tilted back my head and poured the liquid into my open mouth. There was an overwhelming sensation of…

PURPLE

…then I was slam-dunked back into my body. I opened my eyes.

“Dude, you can’t die, we’ve got a show to do.”

“What… what was in that vial?”

Yuri shrugged. “Oh that? Just the last of my hidden lifeforce reserve.”

“You kept a ‘hidden lifeforce reserve’?”

“Yeah. In case I ever needed a quick resurrection.”

“But that’s cheating.”

“Dude… I’m the Devil.” Yuri looked around the now empty plain, and shuddered. “Or at least… I was.”

Then Yuri shrugged and offered his most rakish grin.

“I guess if I had to expend a little survival magic to keep my best client up and bitchin’ for another sixty or seventy years… it was worth it.”

And there we sat, the former incarnations of the Abrahamic Deity and his Eternal Enemy, crying and hugging like a couple of old farts. I could feel my bones re-knitting. My mouth hummed where new teeth had shrugged their way through my gums and the pain was already a distant memory.

“You never told me you were the Devil.”

“You never asked.”

They helped me to my feet.

“After we incarnated I thought it best if I kept discrete tabs.”

“You were spying on me?”

“Somebody had to. Who better than me? You were right, by the way.”

“About what?”

“Well,” he grinned. “There may come a day when I regret giving up that lifeforce.”

He drew Mitsuko into an embrace.

“A little extra life insurance would have been the smart move. But you were dying. For the first time in two thousand years… I acted without an ulterior motive.”

“And?”

“It feels pretty damned good.”

Benzaiten reached up and touched Yuri’s shoulder. Yuri turned to her.

“Lucy… you got a lotta splainin to do.”

They embraced, seemingly forgetting about the world as they fell into each other’s eyes. Watching them wrenched something inside my chest.

“I’m sorry about the lightning bolts,” I said. “I didn’t know about Gabriel.”

“And I’m sorry I tried to overthrow Heaven and take over the world. My bad.”

“You were possessed: the Devil made you do it.”

“I love you, Lando Cooper.”

There was no brimstone. No black smoke. Yuri had nearly murdered me. Then he’d given up the last dregs of his immortality to save my life. Our friendship had given the Devil a shot at redemption and he’d taken it.

“What about Surabhi?”

I told him. I think that was the hardest part of all.

“But you can save her, right? I mean… you can just… make things like they were.”

“I can’t feel my Aspects. I thought maybe with the extra kick from that concoction you fed me… but nothing happened. I think the power is gone.”

The sick expression on Yuri’s face echoed the emptiness in the center of my chest: we’d found a lantern in the sea of eternal darkness. We’d saved the world and made our dreams come true: we were real – human at last.

But I needed the power of a god.

It was Amon-Ra who gave me the idea. Amon-Ra who showed me that what I’d come to suspect in my previous incarnation – that the time of gods had passed – might also provide the key to defeating Owen Holiday and the Coming.

It was a matter of belief. Belief is the lifeblood of any god, faith the basis of a god’s power to affect the mortal world. Amon-Ra’s story of the Morning People, his tale of the races he’d encountered on the way to the black hole at the center of the galaxy, had formed the metaphorical diving board from which I was able to dive into the wellspring of the collective human conciousness. Inspired by a kind of godly affirmation, I was able to offer a gentle push. I guess I wasn’t the only divinity who’d sussed out his rapidly dwindling options.

Half the battle is getting the people’s attention. Once you have it the question becomes: what will you do with all that potential?

I’d diverted the rush of human creativity away from the Coming and toward an idea that most people already suspected: that the human race is ultimately responsible for its own salvation. Or damnation. And like the printing press, the discovery of fire or the reality show, it’s an idea whose time has come.

Large-scale conflicts are down. Once humans recognized the potential for divinity in themselves and in each other, the desire to destroy each other over philosophical differences decreased exponentially. These days it’s hard to find a real war. Most of the world’s powerful nations focus their resources on things like education and social justice. Even the People’s Republic of China became one of the world’s foremost democracies even as the uprisings in the Middle East took on greater urgency.

Violent crime is down. Of course there are sociopaths who commit heinous crimes, but once people understood that the person standing next to them in line at the grocery store was a part of a shared phenomenon, the Quantum Step, even drug abuse was greatly reduced. People prefer to be awake, finding the thrill of living in the present intoxicating enough.

Most people held on to their traditional belief systems, at least for as long as those systems served the shared paradigm shift that is rapidly transforming the world, but now a pronounced humanism underlay those traditions. Suddenly the content of a person’s character became more important than their religious/political views.

People have begun to practice a kind of practical morality, instead of religiosity. Israel and Palestine ended their mutual animosity when soldiers on both sides of the divide “recognized” each other. After all, the Human Race evolved together, splitting into its myriad tribes only as time and distance separated them.

People from all walks of Life are mixing like Woodstock or
MTV Cribs
. Amon-Ra’s advice was dead perfect: once faced with the loss of its need for gods, the choice between intellectual annihilation or rapid evolution toward a more perfect destiny, humanity chose to evolve. They saw the edge of the cliff rearing up before them, sensed the end of the road in the fretful promises of the Coming, and guided themselves onto a better path.

A miracle for all the ages. Thank you, Amon-Ra.

That was fifteen years ago; a decade and a half filled with wonders of the perfectly human variety, to be sure, but in the wake of all the big changes, the smaller, more personal ones have been no less miraculous.

Maya Otsunde imigrated to France and became a journalist and human rights activist. After drawing attention to the plight of the people in her village she took to the world stage, winning a Nobel Peace Prize at the age of seventeen. By her twentieth birthday she’d founded the Human Action Network, a global initiative that brings hope and help to the disenfranchised citizens of more than two dozen African and Asian nations. She currently teaches International Studies and Philosophy at Oxford.

Herb and Barbara finally got sick of their longtime love/hate affair and got a divorce. They sold the family house and got on with it. After the strange disappearance of Owen Holiday, Barbara declared herself a “Happy Lesbian”, sold her taverns and moved to the Pacific Northwest with her therapist to open a rehabilitation facility called Barb and Fran’s Green Mountain Serenity Bed & Breakfast.

Recently, she ran for mayor of their small town. When she lost the election by a landslide, Barbara stormed the Mayor’s office with a Glock 9mm and took the incumbent mayor hostage. After a nine hour stand-off with local and federal authorities she voluntarily surrendered to her wife/therapist. After a psychological evaluation, it was discovered that my new stepmother had overprescribed Barbara’s mood stabilizers. After their attorney convinced local authorities that the therapist was at fault, all charges were dropped. Barbara then checked herself into the Green Mountain Serenity Bed & Breakfast’s Twelve Steps to Wellness program, becoming its first successful resident. We talk two or three times a day by phone. She apologizes constantly.

Herb and Missy Tang got married and opened four more Cooper & Sons locations. Herb got his new wife involved in all aspects of running the family business, including the commercials. Missy, a frustrated actress since before her days as a frustrated exotic dancer, took to her new duties with relish, playing a variety of roles in a new and controversial series of ads, including Nervous Housewife, Ms Balbuster, Immigrant Lady 1, Schoolgirl With Mastiff, and Nearsighted Female Asian Driver.

In protest, Chick Flaunt left Cooper & Sons and opened his own business: Flaunt It! Luxury Autosupply. He even tried his hand at making commercials, the most infamous being “A Day At The Ostrich Races”, during which Flaunt was nearly kicked to death on camera by the company mascot. It was later discovered that Flaunt had abused the ostrich by forcing it to wear a Herb Cooper mask and pelting it with Boston Crème Pies. The absence of dramatic tension between Flaunt and a voluntary scene partner eventually forced him to declare bankrupty. He later found religion, married his bible study leader and relocated to Mexico City.

Other relationships needed ironing out too, and some of them weren’t so simple. Standing on the plains outside the little Italian village of Armageddo, freshly resurrected by the former Prince of Darkness, I was sorely in need of an explanation. He’d tried to kill me, then turned around and saved my life. It wasn’t until later home that I’d remembered what Benzaiten had said, right before the Coming’s attack.

We fell in love. I made him vulnerable to what came next.

What had “come next” was an unprecedented abomination: an angelic possession. Gabriel and Holiday had used the power of the Coming to overcome Yuri’s considerable psychic defenses. When Yuri attacked me, it was really Gabriel wielding Lucifer’s dwindling powers; Gabriel who convinced the disgruntled pantheons to side with the Coming.

Yuri later told me that during the fight at the North Pole, he’d been able to reassume control from Gabriel long enough to redirect the hammer’s attack, using it instead to open an inter-dimensional doorway and eject me into Amon-Ra’s universe, deceiving Gabriel into believing he had killed me. He was almost right: if not for Yuri’s satanic tampering, I would have died the real death. Even so, the audacity of Holiday’s plan was breathtaking: the Archangel Gabriel, once God’s messenger, using stolen divinity to possess the Devil and foment a divine revolt in order to enslave humanity. But because of his love for Mitsuko, their unborn child, and for me, Yuri Kalashnikov had performed an even rarer wonder: an auto-exorcism. He’d saved my life, twice. He’d saved the world for the sake of love. When we assumed mortality, my ancient adversary had truly turned over a new leaf. The former Prince of Darkness was now the unsung savior of the human race.

Yuriel Kalashnikov married Mitsuko Leavenworth in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. The ceremony was lavish, well attended by friends and families of both bride and groom. It was later reported by many of the wedding guests that several inexplicable events occurred at the reception, showers of gold raining down on the heads of selected guests, indoor thunderstorms, and a minor invasion of talking snakes who, though terrifying to the groom’s parents, nevertheless insisted upon wishing them “Eternal good fortune”.

The Kalashnikovs live in the suburbs now, the happiest of happy families. At seven years old, Yuri and Mitsuko’s son, Lucien Lando Daikokuten Kalashnikov already displays uncanny intelligence, a frightening acuity for games of strategy, and sleight of hand. He’s also an unbelievable dancer and a real hit with the ladies.

Surabhi and I live with our three children in an old Tudor not far from…

Oh? Did I neglect to mention that Surabhi’s alive and well? That the Molokes never boarded their flight at Heathrow? Sorry – it’s amazing, the amount of information I forget. Sometimes I worry about that, the forgetting. Flashes from my “old life” come back to me but only rarely and only in dreams: after centuries of observing from afar, like a voyeur in the last row of a darkened porno house… I have my own dreams.

But you were asking about Surabhi. As it turns out, two hours before they were due to leave for Heathrow, Calliope Moloke announced her intention to elope with her spiritual leader, Master Omar. From the driver’s seat of their mobile base of operations (Master Omar’s 1988 Chevy Crown Victoria) Calliope vowed “…to destroy the Whore of Western Decadence called Great Britain in a firestorm of righteous fury.” Five minutes later, a bomb went off at the American Embassy in London. Five minutes after that, Master Omar appeared on YouTube claiming responsibility for the attack in the name of the Coming God.

As he was tackled and led away in handcuffs, Master Omar took the opportunity to propose on-camera to his “…sexually voracious spiritual disciple… Calliope Moloke.” And five minutes after that, the Moloke home was surrounded by representatives of Scotland Yard, MI5 and London’s elite anti-terrorist squad.

The Molokes were detained and held for questioning at a CIA “black site”. Surabhi’s mobile phone and laptop were confiscated. She used a neighbor’s mobile to call me, leaving me a dozen frantic messages, but I missed the call because I was trapped in an alternate universe. Duh.

Master Omar also claimed responsibility for the bomb that brought down the Molokes’ plane, or would have brought it down, if Master Omar’s chosen assassin had actually managed to ignite his underwear as they’d planned. It was the assassin’s first time in a plane. When turbulence struck, just off the Irish coastline, the would-be bomber wet himself. A sharpnosed passenger smelled him trying to ignite his sopping underthings and tackled him.

Another passenger recorded the struggle on his cellphone and uploaded it to YouTube with the headline, “We’re Going Down!” The plane landed safely in an undisclosed location. The video went viral in minutes. Cooperating intelligence agencies saw fit to allow the world to believe the attack was successful in order to draw those who claimed responsibility for it into the light. Fortunately for the gene pool, Master Omar made their work ridiculously easy.

After learning that she was merely an expendable pawn in her spiritual leader’s plot to kill her mother and destroy Great Britain, Calliope lost eighty-five pounds. While in custody she fell in love with a CIA operative codenamed “White Rhino”. She remained a “person of interest”, and would grace international terrorist watchlists for the rest of her life.

Sir Magnus Moloke lost a lot of the public’s good will. Several of his franchises were linked to organizations that were linked to “terrorist-friendly” activities in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. By the time the Molokes returned to America, the latest addition to Her Majesty’s Royal Retinue had been cleared of all charges. But he too was a changed Moloke. At our commitment ceremony he embraced me like the son he never had. The fact that my career was ramping up may have helped him with the transition, but I didn’t care: he and Marian and a crewcut-wearing Calliope sat in the front row of our Unitarian church, right next to my parents and their respective spouses. White Rhino observed from an undisclosed location.

I told Surabhi the truth in the only way that could possibly make sense. I sat her down and gave her the facts. Despite the widespread awareness engendered by the Quantum Step phenomenon, she wrestled me to the floor of her apartment.

“Don’t play games with me, Lando. I’ve been through enough as it is.”

Then, drawing from the dregs of the tiny bit of divinity I still remembered, I grabbed her hands in mine, looked deeply into her eyes… and showed her my story. All of it.

Afterward, we sat together on the sofa.

“Considering that you’re an avowed agnostic I think you’re taking this pretty well.”

“What about Heaven and Hell? You’re telling me all that stuff is real?”

“It’s incredibly subjective. Heaven, Hell… they aren’t so much places as…”

“States of mind.”

“Yes. The communal mind anyway.”

“What about religion, Lando? Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, atheists? You’re telling me that nobody’s right?”

“Everybody’s right. Until they’re wrong.”

“But how can that be? How can everyone be right and wrong?”

“Funny. I suppose I knew the answer to that question once…”

“And now?”

“I forgot.”

Before she could kick me out, I got down on one knee and opened the heart shaped black box I’d held for nearly a year.

“Surabhi Moloke… will you marry me?”

She looked at the ring for a long time. Then she looked into my eyes for so long I thought she was going to toss me out her apartment window.

“But now… it’s over. You’re… mortal?”

“Cut me and I’ll bleed all over your sofa.”

“But then what? I mean if you’re God…”

“Was.”

“If you were God, and that function is empty now. What happens when… if you died?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that great?”

“But, Lando… I still don’t believe in traditional marriage. Especially after… well all this.”

“But it worked for your parents. Their daughter is a wanted fugitive but they stayed together. And my parents…”

“Exactly. Look, babe, it’s archaic and denigrating to all parties involved. And what’s the point? You stay with someone or you don’t. A piece of paper won’t change anything.”

“True.”

“It’s a tired old dinosaur created by a patriarchal paradigm shambling toward the cultural tar pit. Marriage is so last century.”

“It doesn’t have to be. We can make it work.”

“We already work, babe,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “I love you, Lando Cooper. I want to spend my life with you. I want to bear your children. You feel me?”

“Ouch.”

“What?”

“Brit hip hop alert.”

She punched me, but not as hard as she could have. We laughed. Home, the possibility of her was an ache at the center of me.

“Well, I want to spend my life with you too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know me. And I was hoping to bear your children. So…”

“So aren’t we already together in all the ways that matter?”

I basked in the warmth of a sunlight that can only be generated by two people in love, took her hands in mine and kissed her.

“I do.”

We have three children, the oldest: twins Oliver and Olivia, and the baby boy, Herbert-Hasani. My children and my wife have shown me the truest sweetness contained in the evolutionary fruit basket that is the human story: to love, and to be loved, unconditionally in each mortal moment. You may remember the title from my bestselling memoir. It spent twelve weeks atop the
New York Times
Bestseller list. It’s been optioned for a big screen treatment: screenplay co-written by my best friend, and Executive Producer of my hit late night talk show,
The Lateside with Lando Cooper
. It was Yuri, after all, who foresaw the show’s potential. I merely made a wish, one that, luckily, came true.

I still wonder about my old allies and enemies among the gods. The Morrigan, Agni, Ares, Zeus. Did they really die? Can a god ever really die? I still see the Buddha at the occasional comic book convention. He’s lost most of his hair and gained seventy-five pounds. He remains blissful. Baron Samedi just opened an autobiographical one man show on Broadway:
Dance, Papa Voodoo!
Ticket sales are through the roof.

I wonder about Gabriel, humanity’s newest Adversary. Where is he? What’s he planning? Every once in a while I catch hints of brimstone in the air over some national tragedy or environmental disaster. I turn, dreading that he’ll be looming behind me. His whereabouts remain a mystery.

Most of all, I wonder about Changing Woman; my Connie. Esmerelda Sanchez, her last prophet, died at the Arctic Circle. Had Connie gone off to live with her worshippers as a bodiless nature spirit in the new West? Had she been claimed by the same oblivion that claimed Zeus and the other victims of the Coming? Yes, I wonder about Connie. And sometimes, when I’m faced with some perfectly human dilemma, I miss her singing.

Occasionally I run into a minor deity at the odd flea market. Once I thought I saw Dionysus skulking in the background of a culinary arts reality show called Head Chef in Charge. He’d lost at least fifty pounds and was wearing a wig. Many gods have taken on full-time human identities. I suspect some of them have thrown their hats into the mortal lottery the way Lucifer and I did. Many of them are still unaccounted for. I still remember Gabriel’s last words on the battle plain of Armageddo.

Beware. The Final Assault has begun.

But happily, the future of humanity is no longer my sole responsibility. The gods of antiquity have officially joined the party. We’re just faces in the crowd.

But…

Occasionally, when I can’t sleep, I’ll leave Surabhi snoring in our bed. Our rambling Tudor overlooks the north shore of Lake Michigan, minutes away from Northwestern University and the television studios where I spend my days. Usually, round midnight, I’ll pass the kids’ rooms. Oliver and Olivia are thirteen now, their minds occupied with the things thirteen year-olds care about. They sleep like the dead.

When I check on Lil’ Herb, he’s usually sleeping soundly, his butt pointing skyward, comfortable in that boneless way of which only seven year-olds seem capable, our golden retriever, CZ Domino, snoring softly at the foot of his bed. But sometimes Little Herb lies awake, his eyes staring into the space directly over his head, singing songs in a language I know but can’t quite remember. Tonight, I sit in the big armchair, watching him sing, and I fall asleep.

And I dream.

I dream of a little boy with my father’s face, walking hand-in-hand with a tall man who shines like the sun. They turn and wave at me.

“Thank you, Ra. For a story told and a promise kept.”

“Be mindful, Understudy. The play has just begun.”

Then the man who is the sun sweeps the boy into his arms and they spin, laughing, together, dancing as I am swept away. When I wake up, Herbert-Hasani, my Herbert-Hasani, is looking at me with the fires of Creation burning in his eyes. I look closer, amazed, as suns and planets and galaxies swirl around his head like a halo made of stars. In the moonlight streaming through the window, a golden lady with oversized eyeglasses, spiky black crewcut and a University of New Mexico sweatshirt stands next to his bed, pointing at the spinning stars and whispering into his ear.

My Herbert-Hasani laughs and claps his hands.

And I wonder what happens next.