Mercury Falls (13 page)

She had accepted the proposal, she realized now, mainly at the urging of her family, who were concerned for her long-term financial prospects, very much enjoyed the use of the second Sedgwick's pool and hot tub, and wanted her to marry while her breasts could still command top dollar. There was no denying that breasts like hers were a ticking time bomb; the effects of age and gravity could only be deferred for so long. So she had married the second Sedgwick to get them off her back (her family, not the breasts, which remained firmly attached to her front), but now that she was miles away from him, she felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

The weight returned when she sat upright, but it was a good kind of weight—the kind of weight that meant that she was finally on her own, finally responsible for her own fate. For the first time in her life, she was free.

Getting to her feet, she regarded her surroundings. Where was she? Somewhere in the desert outside of Los Angeles, she guessed. Tire tracks led down to what looked like a highway in the distance. Lying on either side of her were half a dozen corpses.

Who were these people? she wondered. Other wedding reception attendees who had drunk too much and fallen over the side of the
Aztec Princess
? It seemed unlikely. She didn't recognize any of them, and none of them were wearing formal attire. Also, three of them had bullet holes in their foreheads.

She gave up trying to make sense of the situation. Whatever had happened to these people, it was clear that her life had been spared. It didn't matter why or by whom. She had been given a second chance. That's all that mattered.

She would walk to the road, hitchhike into town. . .and then what? Change her name, get a job as a waitress? It didn't matter. Things would work out. She was young and alive, and she still had a good three, maybe three and a half years to secure her future before her breasts gave out. She was free.

Isabella Gonzalez took a deep breath and smiled, her head held high. She strode boldly toward the highway—toward her limitless future.

She got three steps before she was engulfed in a pillar of fire.

"You'll be sorry you did this," said Izbazel.

Mercury shrugged. "I doubt it," he replied. "You overestimate my capacity for introspection."

"You've had your fun," Izbazel chided. "You've done your part to make sure this pointless war goes on as planned. We'll never catch up to the Antichrist. Now hand over the case."

"I think I'll hold on to it for a while," said Mercury. "I like the pretty pictures it makes."

"I suppose you're going to hand it over to Uzziel, like a good angel? Get back into Heaven's good graces?"

Mercury shrugged again.

"You're an angel," Izbazel said. "You can't just sit out the Apocalypse."

"I'm a contentious objector."

"You mean conscientious."

"No, there's nothing conscientious about it. I'm just objecting, for the sake of objecting. I'm a highly contentious objector."

"You have to pick a side," Gamaliel said.

"Why?" asked Mercury. "You didn't."

"Of course we did," replied Gamaliel. "There really are only two sides: pro-Apocalypse and anti-Apocalypse. You know this whole thing is a charade. The two supposedly opposing sides have been hammering out the details of this 'war' for millennia. The real opposition—the only real choice—is to try to stop this senseless carnage."

"Senseless carnage, right," Mercury repeated. "So who are you working for?"

"Sorry?" said Gamaliel.

"Come on, guys. You didn't hatch this little revolt on your own."

Gamaliel said, "I assure you, we're acting autonomously."

"No, you're not."

"How would you know?"

"First of all," Mercury said, "there are two of you."

"Right," said Gamaliel. "We're working autonomously together."

"And how many other autonomous angels are on the team?"

Gamaliel started, "That's none of your—"

"OK, Merc, listen," said Izbazel. "There are a few others. You know I can't give you names at this point. But we've got several high-placed angels. . ."

"Higher than you, I take it?" said Mercury.

Izbazel sat back and smiled. "If you really want to know, hand over the case. I might even put in a good word for you. Maybe find you a place on the team."

Mercury cocked his head thoughtfully. "A place on the team, eh? What positions are still open, now that you two have filled the moron and backup moron spots?"

"Dammit, Mercury!" Izbazel growled. "You think you're so high and mighty, staying above the fray and all. You know what you are? You're a coward, not to mention a fool. You think your wisecracks are going to help you when all Hell breaks loose on this plane? You're going to be wishing you had picked a side. At least we'll go down with a fight. You're going to get rolled over like. . .an ant."

"An ant?" Mercury said, frowning. "You almost had me when I thought you were going to say 'turtle.' I wouldn't want to get rolled over if I were a turtle. But an
ant
. . ."

"Fine," said Izbazel. "Let's agree to disagree and go our separate ways. But, Mercury, you're going to have a hard time claiming neutrality if they catch you holding on to that case. If the Apocalypse does happen and Heaven wins, like everybody expects, you're going to be in some serious trouble. But if you hand the case over to us, then you can't be charged with anything more serious than being AWOL. In fact, you could argue that you tried to do your part by saving the Antichrist from us. The case is no use to you. Just hand it over, and we'll walk away."

"What do you even need the case for?" asked Mercury. "All it does is pinpoint centers of violence. How does that help you?"

"Just trying to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands," said Gamaliel.

"I have an idea," said Mercury.

"Yes?" said Izbazel.

"You wanna see a magic trick?"

"Come on, Mercury," said Gamaliel. "You know what happened the last time you tried a card trick."

"No, not a card trick," said Mercury. "A real magic trick. Watch." Mercury picked up a spoon from the table and held it up, gently pinching the neck with his thumb and forefinger.

"Seriously, Mercury," said Izbazel. "No more 'magic.' They have a bead on you. We'll be lucky if it's only a Class Three this time. They'll probably blast this whole town just to make sure you don't get away."

Mercury squinted and began to slowly caress the spoon with his thumb.

"Come on, Mercury," said Gamaliel. "You may be a little crazy, but you're not suicidal."

Mercury stared at the spoon, deep in concentration.

Izbazel pleaded, "Merc, think of all the people in this restaurant. All the people in this town. You want to get them all killed over a stupid magic trick?"

Conversations ceased at other tables as all of the diners turned their eyes to Mercury.

"Merc," said Izbazel.

Mercury's eyes closed. His hand began to move rhythmically back and forth.

"Merc, come on."

Sweat beaded on Mercury's forehead. His breathing deepened.

"Mercury, dammit! Stop!" Izbazel was near panic.

The head of the spoon began to move, ever so slightly, at odds with the handle.

"Mercury, you lunatic, Stop it!"

The head of the spoon bent forward.

There was a collective gasp from the restaurant's patrons.

Izbazel and Gamaliel both leapt to their feet. They ran to the door, flung it open, hopped on their motorcycles, and screeched away.

The head of the spoon sagged and wilted, then fell to the table. Mercury held only the handle. He picked up the fallen piece and held both pieces up, one in each palm.

The restaurant erupted into applause.

A small boy who had been sitting nearby walked up to the table.

"How. . .did you. . .do that?" he gasped.

Mercury smiled. "Trick spoon." He snapped the pieces together and handed them to the boy.

The boy stared at the spoon in his hand. "How do I. . .?"

"You'll figure it out," said Mercury. "Anybody can do it. Just remember, the real trick is in the presentation."

Mercury paid the bill and left.

The Antichrist had spent the night on Christine's couch. As if she hadn't been through enough, she had heard on the drive down that a minor earthquake, centered just north of Los Angeles, had hit the area. Fortunately, it had apparently done little damage. She was so exhausted from the drive and the day's events that she fell asleep with her clothes on as soon as she had satisfied herself that her linoleum was no worse for wear.

Christine had leveled with Karl, explaining what had happened in Lodi. Well, she had
almost
leveled with him. She had to tell him that she was a Secret Service agent to get him back in the car, and she had kept up the ruse so that he'd let her take him to meet Harry.

She wasn't entirely certain why she was taking him to meet Harry; it just seemed like the thing to do. Until now, Harry's tendency to commingle the spiritual with the temporal had always made her a little uncomfortable, but now that the two had collided in the unlikely form of Karl Grissom, she found herself envying Harry's way of looking at things. If anyone would know what to do about Karl, it would be Harry.

She had told Karl that Harry was the director of a covert branch of the Secret Service based in Los Angeles that was charged with protecting Drew Barrymore and the Antichrist. Karl was the kind of person who would readily accept an absurd story if it were filled out with enough bizarre and arbitrary details.

The next morning they met Harry in his office at the headquarters of the
Banner
. Despite her ambivalence toward Harry, she was relieved to be in the company of a more-or-less normal, sane individual.

Harry was, inexplicably, completely taken with Karl.

"So you weren't wearing the helmet? On the video, it looks like. . ."

"I guess I ducked," said Karl. "Yeah, I have pretty fast reflexes."

"He bent over to pick up his keys," Christine said. "The bullet missed him completely."

Harry closed his eyes and spoke aloud. "'And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.'"

"Is that from a book?" asked Karl.

"Revelation thirteen verse three," said Harry.

"That's pretty cool, I guess," said Karl. "I know almost all the lyrics to R.E.M's 'The End of the World as We Know It.'"

Christine started, "
Everyone
knows almost all the—"

"That's great, Karl," said Harry. "You obviously have a lot of potential."

"So did you get him yet?" Karl asked.

Harry said, "Whom?"

"The guy who tried to shoot me, of course. Did you catch him or what?"

"Er," Harry said.

"Harry isn't at liberty to discuss such matters," Christine said. She added, for good measure, "National security."

Harry gave Christine a puzzled look. Christine found her attention drawn to an interesting tuft of carpet. She wondered how her linoleum was holding up.

"Karl, would you like a soda?" asked Harry. He held out a dollar. "There's a machine in the lobby, on the first floor."

"About friggin' time," said Karl. "I'm practically dying of thirst." He stomped out of the room.

"Sorry," said Christine. "I had to tell him you were Secret Service to get him down here."

Harry nodded, as if he had figured it was something like that. He sat down behind his desk and motioned for Christine to take a seat in one of the chairs opposite him. In the middle of Harry's desk, next to his flat panel monitor, was a beautiful, leather-bound King James Bible.

Christine proceeded to tell Harry an edited version of the previous day's events. She left out Mercury and the pillar of fire. In her version, Gamaliel and Izbazel were a couple of anti–Charlie Nyx fanatics who had threatened Karl in Lodi.

"I'm not really sure what to do with him," Christine concluded. "Should we take him to the police?"

"I'd like to do a story on him," said Harry. "Have you interviewed him yet?"

"Uh," Christine began. "Does listening to someone talk about Charlie Nyx until you start to consider the merits of swerving into oncoming traffic count as an interview?"

"He's a person of. . .he's an important person," said Harry.

"No," said Christine. "He's a. . ." Only one word came to mind.

"He's a what?"

"A. . .dickweed," said Christine.

"That's not really for us to say," admonished Harry. "A lot of people think that this Antichrist contest is the final straw in the mockery of religion. I'd like to hear what Karl has to say about that."

"Honestly, Harry, I don't think he's put a lot of thought into it. And frankly, Karl is only a story because people like us are saying he's a story. You do realize that the Charlie Nyx marketing people are using you, right? The more we whine about their stupid pseudo-satanic marketing gimmicks, the more books they sell."

"Pseudo-satanic?" said Harry. "That's an interesting distinction. 'He who is not with me is against me.' Matthew twelve verse thirty. On what side of that line are your pseudo-Satanists?"

Christine was getting fed up with Harry's deliberate obtuseness. "Harry, please. You can't honestly believe you understand what's going on here well enough to report on it. What if you're only seeing a very small part of the picture? What if there are. . ." She struggled to convey the baffling complexity of the situation without referring to motorcycle-riding cherubim, magical briefcases, or pillars of fire. "What if there are forces beyond your understanding at work here? What if you're just a prawn, er,
pawn
, being manipulated on a chessboard?"

"Then I have a responsibility to report what I see from my square on the board."

"OK, but you also have a responsibility to not pretend that you can see the entire board."

"I'm not following you, Christine. Where are you going with this?"

"Look," said Christine, grabbing the Bible from Harry's desk. She flipped it open to near the end and began to read:

"And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. And the ten horns which thou saw are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth."

She closed the book. "Are you going to tell me, Harry, that you understand all of that?"

"Revelation seventeen," said Harry. "That passage refers to the Whore of Babylon, who appears at the very end of the tribulations. Many scholars think that she signifies Rome, although during the Middle Ages it was commonly thought that—"

"The fact is," said Christine, wagging the Bible at Harry, "you have no idea who or what the Whore of Babylon is. It's all conjecture. So while you waste your time looking for the Whore of Babylon in the current events section of the paper as if it were some kind of diabolical version of
Where's Waldo
, real events are occurring that people need to know about. I mean, I hear there's a war going on somewhere."

"We'll cover that, too," said Harry. "It's all. . ."

"Connected?"

"I was going to say 'important.' All of this stuff—the situation in the Middle East, Karl, the thing with the corn in South Africa. . ."

"The corn in South Africa?"

"Oh, the AP just reported it. There's some kind of mutant strain of corn that's taking over South Africa. We've got Dave looking into it."

"Mutant corn? Are we talking about twelve-foot stalks of corn walking down Main Street or what?"

"Nothing that dramatic. A biotech company down there has been doing some testing of biogenetically altered, pesticide-tolerant corn. Evidently some of it got away from them, and they're having a hard time getting it under control."

Christine was dubious. "Doesn't corn move kind of. . .slowly? It sounds like they're not trying very hard."

"I don't know the details, but I guess a lot of people are concerned. They were counting on this new strain of corn to ease poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, but now it looks like this corn might actually wipe out a lot of other crops. Crazy stuff."

"Yeah," said Christine. That
was
weird.

"And then there's this thing with the morgues. Have you heard? Somebody broke into a morgue downtown yesterday and stole a dozen corpses. Then this morning they broke into another morgue and stole ten more. Explain
that
to me."

"Easy," said Christine. "Somebody underestimated the number of corpses they needed."

"The point is," said Harry, "there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world, and the public needs a sane voice to explain it to them."

For a moment Christine didn't follow him. "Oh!" she eventually said. "You mean
us
."

"The
Banner
, Christine. We have a responsibility to report all of these events as part of a coherent narrative that people can understand."

"But that's my point," sighed Christine. "You don't know the whole story, so the only way you can come up with a narrative is to
make one up
."

"We've been given the narrative. God tells us of His unfolding plan for creation."

"And you feel that you understand this plan?"

"God has given us His blueprint for history. We just need to open our eyes and ears."

"So you believe with one hundred percent certainty that we're headed toward Armageddon?"

"We've always been headed toward Armageddon. It's just a question of proximity. Look, we're not going to go on the record as saying, yes, this is the beginning of the Apocalypse, but I certainly do think it's our responsibility to point out how our current situation mirrors the teachings about the End Times found in the Bible."

"Fine," said Christine. "Let's say you're right. Let's say—hypothetically speaking—that we really are in the End Times. In that case, hypothetically, what would our position be?"

"Position? I don't follow you. We're a news magazine. We don't take positions; we report the news."

"But clearly we do take positions. I mean, this is a Christian publication. So we take the Christian position. Or at least
a
Christian position."

"Of course," said Harry. "But that's like saying we take the position of truth over falsity. It goes without saying that we are on the side of truth.
Time
and
Newsweek
claim to be on the side of truth, too, of course, but they have a different understanding of truth. A deficient one, in my opinion. Any conception of truth that leaves out God—or makes God only a contingent possibility—is inherently deficient. There is no truth apart from God."

It was rare for Harry to go off on such an abstract tangent, and it was throwing Christine off her train of thought. "I guess what I mean," she said, "is. . .are we pro-Apocalypse or anti-Apocalypse?"

Harry laughed. "You might as well ask whether we're pro-earthquake or anti-earthquake."

"OK," said Christine. "Are we pro-earthquake or anti-earthquake?"

"What difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference," said Christine. "If you could stop an earthquake, would you?"

"Of course, but that's a ridiculous. . ."

"What if we could stop the Apocalypse?"

"You can't stop the Apocalypse. It's part of God's plan."

"But what if you could? I mean, you and I have our differences in how we interpret 'God's plan,' but you know that I appreciate the way our staff covers natural disasters. Even when that meteor hit the Bellagio last year, we never even mentioned the possibility that it was some sort of divine retribution. Which is, of course, more than I can say for a lot of religious media outlets. . ."

"What's your point, Christine?"

"When an earthquake or a hurricane hits, we treat it as a tragedy—in other words, as something that should not have happened. An objectively bad thing that we would have prevented if we could have. I mean, maybe it's God's will that thirty-three thousand people died in an earthquake in Pakistan last year, but we don't cover it like, 'Sorry, folks, God's will, you know. Better luck next time.' We may acknowledge that it's part of God's plan, but we also acknowledge that sometimes God's plan
sucks
. So how is the Apocalypse different? I mean, if we can see it coming, shouldn't we try to stop it?"

"You're talking about the Second Coming, Christine. Christ returning in glory. It's not a bad thing."

"Right, but evidently Christ can't return until the earth has been turned into a molten slag heap, which kind of blows. I just don't get why the Prince of Peace has such a destruction fetish. Can't He just swing by in glory some sunny Tuesday after lunch?"

"Careful, Christine. Remember that the tribulations of the End Times are the result of man's sin. It isn't Christ who desires destruction."

"Exactly! He doesn't want it, we don't want it. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, let's call the whole thing off."

The Antichrist returned, bearing a Dr Pepper. "The selection of snacks in your vending machine sucks. Did you say something about potato chips?"

"No," Christine said. "We were talking about—"

"Stopping earthquakes," said Harry.

"That's stupid," said Karl. "You can't stop earthquakes."

"Precisely," said Harry. "They just. . ."

Karl pulled the tab on the can. There was a pop and a hiss.