Mercury Rests (11 page)

“Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Ruiz. “Don’t move!” she growled in the general direction of the back seat and exited the vehicle. She motioned to the agents in the SUV behind them, and several men came running forward to assist her. “FBI!” shouted Ruiz, drawing her pistol. “Drop the bat! Now!”

Jacob sat stock-still, watching the scene unfold as if it were a particularly unremarkable episode of
Law & Order
.

“Let’s go!” Christine hissed at him. He frowned and looked at her as if she had suggested changing the channel to
Glee
.

“Come on, Jacob,” she said urgently. “This is our chance!”

Jacob turned again toward the scene ahead of them. Ruiz had the bat-wielding teen on his knees, and the other agents were ordering people out of the streets. They seemed to have the situation nearly under control.

“My job—” Jacob started.

“Your job is done,” snapped Christine. “You don’t work for the FBI anymore. You’re their prisoner, got it? They have no idea what—or who—they’re messing with, and they’re going to hold on to us as long as they think we’re of use to them. And after that...God knows what they’ll do with us.” She was being a bit overdramatic, she knew, but she had no intention of being sequestered by the FBI indefinitely. Besides, if Lubbers was serious about launching a preemptive attack on Heaven, somebody needed to warn the Heavenly authorities. She needed to escape, and she had started to feel a little like an older sister to Jacob. She didn’t like the idea of him having to face endless interrogation by the FBI alone.

“I’m leaving,” said Christine, trying to sound decisive. “You’re not going to get another chance. Come with me or spend the rest of your life in FBI custody.” She scrambled between the front seats and pushed the driver’s-side door open just far enough to crawl out of the SUV. The SUV was angled so that it would be difficult for Ruiz and the others to see her if she kept close to the vehicle. Too frightened to check whether Jacob was following her, she crawled to the rear of the SUV and then stood up, walking briskly
toward the sidewalk. She half expected to hear Ruiz’s gruff voice shouting at her to stop, but she heard only the random cacophony of the crowd.

She made it to the sidewalk and pushed her way through the crowd, trying to put as many people between her and the scene as possible. The unruly crowd frightened her, but her even greater fear of being apprehended by the FBI propelled her forward. Just when she thought she had escaped, she tripped and fell headlong into a heavyset man who smelled of stale beer and sweat, knocking a Subway meatball sub out of his hand.

“The fuck, woman?” demanded the man.

“I’m sorry,” said Christine. “I just need to get—”

“You gonna be sorry,” said the man, puffing up his chest and glaring down at Christine.

“Step back, sir,” said a voice behind Christine. It was nervous but firm. Jacob. He must have been following Christine the whole time. He was now standing beside her.

The big man laughed. He towered at least a foot over Jacob. “I’ma give you options, little man,” he said to Jacob. “You know what options are?”

“I do,” said Jacob, calmly.

“Options is like an either/or situation,” explained the man. “For example, I’ma give your woman the option of
either
getting me another sammich,
or
the option of sucking my—”

Something happened at that point that caused the man to pause. Christine couldn’t be sure of what it was at first. There had been a flash of movement and suddenly the man stopped talking. He fell to his knees, unable to catch his breath.

“You know what the solar plexus is, asshole?” Jacob asked, his voice still calm. He was rubbing his left hand with his right.

Christine realized that she was standing with her mouth open, staring at Jacob. Had he
punched
the man? She had never seen someone move so fast.

“Come on,” she heard herself saying. “We need to get out of here.”

Jacob nodded.

They left the man wheezing on the concrete and took off down the street.

If Elihu was to be believed, Job spent another good twenty minutes cursing the day of his birth, but he never did curse God. Mercury decided it was time to change tacks. He had Elihu summon Job’s three friends for a huddle.

“Look, guys, I admire your loyalty to Job and all,” he said, “but I don’t think any of us wants to spend the rest of our lives sitting in ashes with some poor sap scraping his sores and cursing the day he was born. We need an exit strategy. It’s time to brainstorm. Come on, guys, don’t be afraid to toss out ideas.”

“Who
are
you?” asked Bildad. “What are you
doing
here?”

“I’m just a guy who wants to see Job’s ordeal end,” said Mercury. “Now, who’s got an idea of how we can make that happen?”

“Well,” said Eliphaz, “in my experience, suffering is caused by wrongdoing. God doesn’t just punish people for no reason. And God is also merciful. So if we can get Job to admit what he did wrong, maybe God will forgive him and end his suffering.”

“OK, good,” said Mercury, rubbing his chin. He had actually been hoping one of them might suggest euthanasia, but this seeking-forgiveness-for-wrongdoing idea had some potential too. “All right, we need to present a unified front. You guys should each
come at him from a slightly different point of view, but the gist has to be that Job has committed some sin for which he needs to beg forgiveness.”

The three friends nodded in agreement. They came up with three bang-up speeches, which they would deliver one after another. Job wouldn’t have a chance. He’d be begging God’s forgiveness just to get the three of them to shut up. Hopefully God would respond, maybe by striking Job by lightning or something, and this ordeal would finally end.

One by one, the three friends delivered their speeches imploring Job to admit his wrongdoing, but Job would not be swayed. He challenged each of them to point out where he had gone wrong, yet none of them could do so.

Job began weeping and mumbling to himself.

“Quick,” said Mercury to Elihu. “What’s he saying? Is he cursing God?”

Elihu ran over and listened for a bit. He returned, shaking his head. “Doesn’t sound like it. He’s pretty pissed off at those three guys, though. He called them ‘worthless physicians’ and told them to shut up.”

“Oh boy,” said Mercury. This was not going at all the way he had hoped. Rather than getting Job to either give up or change his attitude, they had only caused him to dig in and stick with his stubborn refusal to either admit guilt or cast blame. Mercury didn’t know what it was going to take to end this stalemate, but it seemed pretty clear that unless he did something drastic, they were going to be stuck out here in the ashes for a long time.

“OK, change of plans,” Mercury said to Elihu. “You need to talk to him.”

“Me?” asked Elihu. “I’m only nine years old!”

“No worries,” said Mercury thoughtfully. “Just tell Job that you don’t have to be old to possess wisdom.”

“Why don’t you do it?” Elihu asked.

“Oh, I can’t interfere,” said Mercury. “I’ve got to stay fifty paces from Job at all times. If you can pull this off, there will be a lot of mangoes in it for you.”

Elihu’s eyes lit up. “All right, what do I say?”

Mercury sighed. “Hell if I know. Anything to end this torment. Clearly we’re not getting anywhere trying to get him to confess his sins, so I think we’re back to trying to get him to curse God.”

Elihu frowned. “Curse God? You mean Marduk?”

Mercury snorted. “No, not Marduk, you dope. I curse Marduk sixteen times a day before lunch. Mucking Farduk. That hammer-brained jackaninny can suck a pig’s knuckle. No, Elihu, I’m talking about
the
God.”

Elihu’s brow furrowed.

“Jeez, you people. Monotheism is not that complicated. Don’t you live around here somewhere? Didn’t you ever listen to anything Job said? There’s just the one God. The rest of us are, you know, middle management.”

“So there’s one big God who’s in charge of the whole
universe
?” asked Elihu.

“Yep.”

“Wow,” said Elihu, staring open-mouthed at the sky, trying to take in this new information. “Like, in charge of the sun and the moon and the earth and the oceans and the deserts?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And all the people of the world, and all the animals and plants?”

“Correct.”

“And night and day and the seasons?”

“Right.”

“And the rain and clouds and wind and sickness and health and life and death?”

“Everything, Elihu. Ev-er-ree-thing. Everything. He’s in charge of
everything
.”

“And, uh, you want Job to curse him?”

“That’s the plan.”

Elihu was silent for some time, considering this notion. Finally he said, “That sounds like a bad idea.”

“Look, Elihu,” replied Mercury irritably. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it. Maybe you should go back to poking him with a stick. That damn kite is never going to fly, you know. You can run around like a moron all you want, but it’s not going anywhere without wind.”

Elihu began to cry.

“Oh, jeez,” muttered Mercury. “Hey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just frustrated. I used to be in charge of some pretty important ziggurats, and now I’m stuck here indefinitely, watching this blithering lump of self-righteousness bitch and moan about the day of his birth.”

Elihu nodded, wiping the tears from his face. He probably didn’t understand half of what Mercury was saying, but he seemed to get the gist of it.

“Seriously,” Mercury continued. “This guy has no freaking clue. I mean, I’m an angel. An
angel
, Elihu. I could torch this whole estate by calling down a pillar of fire if I wanted to. And even I have no idea why Job’s been singled out for this sort of treatment.” He was telling Elihu far more than he was authorized to, but he needed to vent to someone. Besides, the kid was nine. It’s not like anybody was going to believe anything he said.

Mercury continued, “Even my boss, Uzziel, director of the Apocalypse Bureau—I’m willing to bet you ten thousand mangoes that even he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on with Job. ‘Classified,’ he says. You know what that means. It means he doesn’t have a
freaking clue
!”

Mercury was now pacing back and forth under the palm tree, shaking his fists in agitation. “And Cravutius? One of the top seraphim. You think
he
knows anything? Of course not! I mean, sure, maybe he’s got a few more details than Uzziel, but does he really know anything? Does he know, in the grand scheme of things, why any of this is happening? Hell, even these supposed ‘Eternals,’ if they exist, probably don’t even know the full story. You see what I’m saying? This guy sits here in a pile of ashes trying to make sense of the Universe, and he has absolutely no idea just how far out of his league he is. He wants to know why God is picking on him. I mean, hello? Assuming that God exists, Job should be thrilled that God takes any notice of him at all. You know what I mean, Elihu?”

Mercury looked around, but Elihu was not to be found. Mercury had been talking to himself. “Brilliant,” he muttered. He looked over at Job and found that Elihu was addressing him and the other men.

“What the hell...?” Mercury murmured. He strained to hear what Elihu was saying, but a breeze had picked up and was muffling his speech. A storm was gathering in the west.

After some time, Elihu ran off, trailing the kite in the air behind him. A gust of wind caught the kite, and the boy let out a bit of string, letting it climb higher.

Meanwhile, Job’s hands were raised and he was crying out to the heavens. It began to rain.

“Wait!” yelled Mercury after Elihu. “What did you tell him?”

Elihu smiled and yelled something back.

“What?” yelled Mercury.

“It works!” hollered Elihu.

“What works?”

“The kite!” hollered Elihu. “There was nothing wrong with it! It just needs wind to fly!”

“That’s fantastic,” said Mercury. “But what did you...” But Elihu was too far away to hear him.

Rain was now coming down hard. Lightning flashed in the distance. Job’s three friends were trying desperately to get him to leave his ash heap, but he was oblivious to them, raising his hands to the heavens and shouting incomprehensibly. Finally, the three men left without him to seek shelter.

Mercury, confused and now soaking wet and shivering in the cold, tried to make sense of the situation. What had Elihu said to Job? And what the hell was Job doing? Had he finally lost his mind completely? And what was up with the weather?

“Hey!” he yelled to Job, forgetting his oath of noninterference. Job, taking no notice, continued to yell and wave his hands in the air.

Mercury walked a few steps closer. “Hey!” he yelled. “What are you doing? Are you cursing—”

As he spoke, there was a blinding flash and a tremendous boom. The earth shook and Mercury fell to the ground. Looking behind him, he saw that the tree he had been sitting under had splintered into thousands of pieces. A fire blazed on the remains of the stump, sizzling and hissing violently in the downpour. Still Job took no notice.

“OK, then!” Mercury exclaimed. “I’m going to go ahead and figure that you’ve cursed God and that it’s not really safe to hang around you anymore. Good luck!” And he left Job alone to howl in the rain.

It took Christine and Jacob a good ten minutes to break free of the unruly crowd. Once they were alone on the street, however, they became painfully aware of how exposed they were. Daltrey and Ruiz had probably put out an APB on them as soon as they had noticed their captives were missing. The area was swarming with police; it was only a matter of time before they were spotted. To make matters worse, Jacob and Christine were both bleary-eyed and exhausted. Adrenaline and hyperawareness had given way to the barely conscious placing of one foot in front of the other to keep moving. They were in no shape to run or even to spot danger in time to run from it. They were, in short, sitting ducks.