The Book of Daniel (16 page)

The angels’ swords were not the only thing vying for my attention, however. The stairs provided a superb vantage point from which to survey the rest of New Jerusalem, and all that I could see only served to reinforce my initial impressions of its expanse and the state it was in. I wondered how many millions of souls must be living there, huddled together behind the city walls, forced to fight for their lives every day without clear reason or guidance, and with no chance to petition for reprieve. How were any of them supposed to grow to love a God who put them through such an ordeal?

On the back of such thoughts, I began to look forward to meeting the other inmates of this spiritual concentration camp. I wondered how those dearest to me in my old life had coped with being here—Jo in particular, of course. Saint Peter had said that she had already passed on to Heaven, which was some comfort. I didn’t want to picture her fighting for her eternal soul against a horde of demons. George, on the other hand, I could easily imagine up to his neck in combat. I smiled inwardly as I pictured his astonishment upon discovering that his carefully cultivated beer belly had been replaced with the body of an athlete—and his fearful thrill on hearing how he would have to use it—but I was sure the prospect of such combat would reawaken his old fighting spirit. The fact that he’d died only a short time before I had, coupled with the fact that he was as staunch an atheist as you could meet, stirred a hope in me that George at least was still somewhere here in Purgatory.

The other person I would have wished by my side in the upcoming struggles was Lewis, but I was far less optimistic that I would be reunited with him again. Even if he still remained somewhere in Purgatory, it would be a miracle if I was able to find him amongst all the other lost souls, and I hadn’t believed in miracles for a long time. I hoped George, at least, might have been delivered to the same drop-off point that Saint Peter was leading me now. Quite apart from anything else, I wanted to shake his hand—hell, give him a hug—for all that he had done to try to save my life. I supposed that being able to buy him a beer would be out of the question.

In addition to my friends, there was one other person I was hoping to run into—Sam—although if there was any kind of justice in the afterlife, that fucker would have gone straight to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds. I hoped that after their string of impeccably timed misses, the police had at least managed to arrive in time to stop the bastard from getting away after he had murdered Jo. With a bit of luck, there might even have been an armed response team that would have levelled the score there and then. I liked that idea even better.

I’ll always wonder if what happened next was God giving me a slap on the wrist for these uncharitable daydreams of vengeance. One moment, my mind was simmering with retribution; the next, all thoughts of punishing Sam suddenly fled as the roaring whoosh of another of the Fallen filled the air. I looked up, trying to locate the missile. It didn’t take me long. It’s difficult to miss something the size of a small house, and doubly so when it’s headed straight towards you.

“Look out!” I yelled, scrambling back up the stairs. “Don’t just stand there!”

But that’s exactly what the rows of Temple guards continued to do. Saint Peter, too, stood serenely on the steps, looking up at the demon, as seemingly uninterested as if he were observing a raincloud rather than impending death. Incredulous, I looked up at the juggernaut again, just in time to see it lurch sharply off to one side, the smoky trail of its wake the only clue that it had originally been heading directly towards us. An unholy scream issued from the missile, the rage and frustration of its passenger too much to bear, as it careened off into a large open space near the cathedral. The demon thumped into the ground and the scream abruptly ceased.

I turned to Saint Peter, thunderstruck, partly by the noise, partly by the miracle I had just witnessed, but mostly because I had just had my first brush with death in the afterlife: real death, permanent death, death with no second chances. Despite Saint Peter’s earlier reassurances that the angels would not permit me to die if there remained a chance of redemption, and despite the evidence of my own eyes, I still felt a chill as if someone had walked across my grave—wherever that might be. For the first time, the reality of my situation hit me, harder than the impact of any infernal artillery.

“How did you do that? You knocked that thing out of the air like it was made of paper!”

“I didn’t do anything, Daniel. I didn’t need to. The shield of faith is all that is needed to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. God protects the Temple from any direct harm in the same way He protects all His agents here in Purgatory. Why do you think we have no fear in the face of such opponents?”

“So why doesn’t He just protect the whole city? If this shield of faith covered everything instead of just the Temple, the demons would never be able to get in and Heaven would be perfectly safe.”

“For the same reason He allows suffering back in the mortal world. Of course He could seal the city off from the demons if He wanted to, but in order for Purgatory to mean anything, there comes a point at which God must relinquish His protection. Think about this. It is not God that causes suffering, either here or on Earth. Suffering is caused by the selfish actions perpetrated by the free will of others, the same free will that God grants us all. Even natural disasters and terminal diseases are simply a consequence of Satan exercising his free will. God cannot prevent suffering without imposing His will on others and forcing their actions, and that is something He rarely does. Instead, He works within the framework of the suffering we experience, to bridge the separation that has existed between Himself and mankind ever since the Fall. It’s what you choose to do in the face of suffering that gives you the chance to meet with God, that defines your relationship with Him. Some people, like yourself, choose to rail against Him and turn their backs; others choose instead to seek His comfort in the face of adversity—a comfort that is free for the asking. The reason why God does not shield the entirety of New Jerusalem from Satan’s might, as you suggest, is because then there would be no suffering here… and without the challenges and dynamics that suffering inspires, the faith of the Purgatorians would stagnate, causing them to languish here for all eternity. That is why it is only the Temple that is shielded. As with all temples, its existence is a testament to the glory of God, a sign that His offer of salvation is the only constant, the only solid reality in this desolate place.”

“Are there
any
questions I can ask you without getting a sermon in response?”

We finally reached the bottom of the stairs, and from there began to make our way through the city. An eerie, infectious silence filled the air, and I found myself sticking close to Saint Peter. Around us, the city seemed to sleep—or cower—and the redness of the sky bathed the buildings in a soft, pink haze; but there was no warmth in the glow. A quick scan of the sky revealed that there was, in fact, no sun up there to provide such heat, so that made some sort of sense, but then where did the light come from? As far as I could tell, there was nothing up there at all; no clouds, no stars, nothing, just endless red. There were no obvious signs of Heaven, either, but then that was nothing new as far as I was concerned.

In addition to the endless ruins of the city itself, I also finally got to catch my first glimpses of its inhabitants. There was no opportunity for me to stop to talk to them, not without losing Saint Peter, but then their behaviour did little to encourage me to do so. Most of them were hiding amongst the rubble, peering suspiciously at us from behind the rocks—and the grime that smeared their faces—until we had passed on. Some were crying. Some were lying prone on the ground, only the occasional groan giving any indication that they were not in fact dead. Not that anybody seemed interested in checking on them, including Saint Peter. Some saint. Almost everyone we saw was alone.

There was plenty of time to ponder the behaviour of these people as we picked our way through the ruins. Saint Peter had already told me that most of the other inhabitants of Purgatory were engaged in battle, so it stood to reason that those we passed must have been the ones who had opted out of God’s war, the ones who had decided that it was better to stay out of it for whatever reason—fear, disgust, disbelief, denial, pick your poison. I was glad that I had chosen not to go down that route; at least not yet. Maybe some of them were already veterans of the war and had seen enough, so much so that they were even prepared to endure the known misery of life in Purgatory rather than face the prospect of eternal damnation if they were to die out on the battlefield. Without being given the opportunity to talk to them, it was impossible to tell, and it was an opportunity that Saint Peter’s pace did not let me take.

It quickly became clear where we were heading. The city wall stretched across the entire horizon, the only break in its otherwise monotonous appearance being a huge arched gateway that we steadily marched towards. The closer we got to the gates, the more frequently we passed impact craters from the Fallen, many of them still obviously fresh. The dark pillars of smoke that streamed up from them dispersed reluctantly in the wind, each gust bringing a strong dose of the smell I had first noticed when emerging from the cathedral.

As we drew closer to the wall, new sounds began to fill the air, too. It began with sporadic yells for assistance from those who had been unfortunate enough to be caught by the bombardment, or those who were trying to help them. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, these yells were joined by others that I soon determined were coming from outside the city; more shouts for assistance, but also battle cries, howls of pain, exclamations of surprise. The sharp sounds of metal striking metal—and metal striking other, less easily identifiable substances—slowly joined the symphony, until eventually they underlined everything. And most terrifying of all were the increasingly frequent and increasingly loud noises that were impossible to recognise the sources of, punctuating the general cacophony like the peals of thunder in a storm: a deep bellow; an irregular, earth-shuddering series of thumps; the whoosh of an enormous explosion; a protracted, piercing wail that felt like a knife going into my skull. With each step, I grew more and more fearful of what could be behind such an unearthly din.

Eventually, we reached the foot of the gates, thankfully closed tight against the battle raging outside them. All around us, men, women and angels rushed to and fro, all of them clad in elaborate suits of armour. For the humans, the armour was dull, the colour of slate, whilst the angels’ was a brilliant, dazzling white. That wasn’t the only difference: each of the angels’ suits also came equipped with a pair of tall spines rising up above the crowd—not wings in any obvious sense, but it wasn’t hard to see why they might be mistaken for such. Whether worn by human or angel, all of the armour looked heavy and unwieldy, but the speed with which the wearers moved suggested otherwise. Closer inspection revealed that the suits were covered with intricate machinery similar to that on the hands of Saint Peter, and I supposed that that was what gave the wearers such unexpected grace. Nevertheless, it looked horribly impractical: such delicate machinery would most likely become easily damaged in combat, at which point surely the armour would become more of a handicap than a form of protection.

We made our way through the melee towards a squat, smoking building that hunkered down by the side of the gates. This close to the battlefield, the few structures that remained standing bore the scars of war, looking as grim and bedraggled as some of the combatants that limped amongst the crowd. This was particularly true of the building that we now approached. Millennia worth of graffiti covered its walls, and on the roof, an uneven row of spikes thrust towards the sky. Although the shapes that crowned many of the spikes were unidentifiable, I could tell from the sprays of dried—and fresh—blood that trailed down from them, splattering the walls and running along the scoring of the graffiti, that they were grisly trophies of some kind. Perhaps it was for the best that they were too high up for me to be able to discern any more than that.

We came to a stop at the back of a short queue that led through a set of tall, forbidding metal gates and into the building. “Here we are, Daniel. This is the Forge, the first port of call for all of the Newborn once they have left the Temple, and the final stop on our journey together. This is where you will be given the final pieces of equipment you need for the trials ahead.”

“Wait a second. I thought you were going to take me to meet my new comrades.”

“Look around you, Daniel, and take your pick. But your sword and your armour are as valuable a pair of allies as any other you will meet during your time in Purgatory. They await you within; and once you re-emerge, it is over to you. I would wish you luck, but faith will be more useful. I truly hope that you will be able to resolve the conflict that you have with God, and that you will not need to remain in this terrible place for long.” Saint Peter extended his hand towards me, and I instinctively shook it, even though if I had thought about whose hand it was and whom he represented, I might not have. His hand was surprisingly warm.

As he turned and left, I felt a sudden pang of fear. All the while I had been walking with Saint Peter, I had known that I was safe from harm; I mean, no-one is going to let Saint Peter die, right? But now I was moving out from under his wing, so to speak, being left to fend for myself, and judging by the sounds coming from the other side of the city gates, I was soon going to be in grim trouble. Even with all the desire in the world to get back to Jo, even with my new body and all the arms and armour I could carry, I would be fighting against an army—and not just any army, either. All it would take would be one slip, and I’d be going to Hell, with no chance of seeing Jo again, ever. With that thought, the helplessness I had felt when I first came round in the Temple of Rebirth slid back into my mind like an icicle.