What Would Satan Do? (12 page)

“My home is here now,” said Satan.  He smiled again – a warm, comforting smile – and watched as Robertson’s flesh evaporated, leaving just a pile of bones and ash.

Satan stooped down to scoop up his own lifeless human body and stepped back into the elevator, pausing only to kick the smoldering remains of an agent out of the way.  He waited for a good thirty seconds as alarms sounded and the elevator doors failed to close.  Finally he peeked his head back out of the elevator, and strode off to find some stairs.

Outside, sitting in a cab on Pennsylvania Avenue, Clyde Parker waited.  The wad of twenties he’d handed to the cab driver had not, at first, been enough to persuade the man to stay put in the face of all of the fiery unpleasantness happening back at the Hoover Building.  The man had driven almost a block before Parker had managed to extract a small revolver from his boot.  Now Parker peered through the rear window of the car, watching as a handful of conspicuously non-descript cars roared up, surrounding the orange Lamborghini, and a phalanx of uniformed and plain-clothes men, all carrying firearms, formed a perimeter.  He watched as the men pointed and waved their hands and talked into walkie-talkies as more government cars arrived.  Finally, an extraordinarily tall man came out of the building’s main entrance.

“Would you look at that?” whispered Parker.  “Another goddamned angel!” 

That angel, who appeared to be carrying a sack of some sort, paused just outside the entryway with his enormous wings fanned out, and surveyed the scene. 

Parker saw one of the angel’s wings shudder and recoil an instant before he heard the loud popping noise that he recognized as the sound of a revolver.  He didn’t see what happened next because there was a blinding explosion of light, like a flashbulb on steroids.  He turned away involuntarily, shielding his face.

When he opened his eyes again, everyone had disappeared.  There had been, he estimated, at least twenty agents.  He scanned the scene, but they were all gone.  All of them.  And the cars were toppled all over the place like toys tossed by a giant toddler.  Except for the orange Lamborghini.  The angel was gone, too.

He watched as a man – he looked like the same man in the suit from before – climbed in to the brightly-hued automobile.  Seconds later, he heard the furious sound of the car’s engine howling and screaming its way back to life.  The car lurched, its rear end drifting slightly to the side as its tires smoked and screamed before finally catching and catapulting the vehicle forward.

“There!” he said.  He waved his gun at the rapidly-receding sports car.  “Turn the car around!”  He smacked the cab driver.  “Go!  Now!  Follow him!”  The cab driver turned the car, hitting the curb before tearing down Pennsylvania Avenue after the Lamborghini. 

Chapter 14.
          
Wanted: Antichrist

Bill Cadmon sat in his office in the bowels of the Driftwood Fellowship Church and worried.  It was an unpleasant sensation – one he usually dispensed with by assuring himself that God would simply work things out.  But that approach wasn’t available this time.  In fact, that was the problem.  God was relying on
him
to handle the situation.  Technically, it was Ezekiel – the weirdo dumbass angel – who had asked Cadmon to find an antichrist, but then he supposed that the angel was doing God’s work.

It was a strange deal.  Cadmon liked to talk about doing God’s work on Earth, but now he felt like he’d been asked to do God’s
job
.  It was like a parent calling up their college student and saying, “We need
you
to send
us
rent money this month.”  It made his brain hurt.

He leaned back in his over-priced ergonomic chair and sighed at his three-panel computer display.  Three screens is a lot when you need your secretary’s help just to turn the computer on, but Cadmon had the money, and he liked nice things. 

He let out a quiet groan, and then turned, calling out to his secretary over his shoulder.  “Janie!”

He’d hired Janie because she was a good Christian girl and because she knew exactly how to turn on his computer.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the numbers 36-26-36 or Janie’s habit of wearing short skirts.  The same was true of Laura, who handled the mail room.  And Stephanie, who did all his PR.  And Danielle, the girl who backed up Janie when the computer turning on got tough.  Cadmon couldn’t help it if the most talented candidates always seemed to look like supermodels.  The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Janie came in, and Cadmon said a little prayer of thanks for nice bottoms, but then sat forward, all business.  “I need to cancel my massage.  And the tailor – just tell her to drop by tomorrow.  And call over to Dick Whitford’s office and see if I can get some time to meet with him today.”

Janie stuck out her lower lip and made puppy dog eyes over the cancellation, pouting on Cadmon’s behalf.  “Aw!  No massage?”

“Say it’s urgent.  It’s extremely important that I talk to him,” he said.  “Today.”  He’d been trying to get some time with the bastard for almost a week.

“Okay, boss,” she said.

Janie left, and Cadmon turned back to his screens.  Each showed footage of Dick Whitford, the governor of Texas, and, as of a few days ago, Louisiana.  There were images of Whitford mumbling into a microphone; Whitford shooting dirty looks at reporters; Whitford flailing his arms against a swarm of bugs and being ushered off the stage.  It was an unmitigated disaster.  Cadmon shook his head slowly as he clicked the mouse.

He’d known Whitford for years – ever since they were fraternity brothers at the University of Texas.  And Whitford had been a cold-hearted, ambitious jerk even then.  The years since – particularly the ones Whitford spent as the vice president – only served to prove that he was an indefatigable penis.  And even though he’d only been the Vice President, Whitford had appeared to run the administration as a kind of imperial puppet master, which suggested that the man had developed a megalomaniacal streak.  That had made him an ideal candidate for the role Cadmon had been looking to fill.  Or so Cadmon had thought.

They’d argued when Cadmon had first approached Whitford with the opportunity. 

“Louisiana already has a governor,” Whitford had said. 

“They’re going to need a replacement.”

“Well, that’s what they’ve got a lieutenant governor for,” Whitford said.  “Wait, is that what they call it?  They’re Cajun, you know.  Got goddamned weird words and laws and all kinds of strange shit.  What do they call their lieutenant governor?  What’s the French word for honcho?”

“They call him the ‘lieutenant governor,’” said Cadmon, wondering if Whitford had forgotten to take his meds.

“No, no.  It’s got to be French.  Wait, Lieutenant… that
is
French, isn’t it?”  He pressed a button on his phone.  “Withers, what’s the French word for governor?”

Without hesitating, Ms. Withers’ voice replied though the speaker.  “
Gouverneur
, sir.”

“Goo-ver-nuhr?”  He pronounced each syllable as if, well, as if he were a Texan trying to speak French.

“Yes, sir. 
Gouverneur
.”

Whitford had muttered to himself as he clicked off the intercom.  “Goddamn surrender monkeys, stealing our language before we even thought to use it.”  He looked up at Cadmon.  “The phrase is Lieutenant Goovernuhr.  Although they probably screwed up the word order and put the damned adjective last.  So it’s Goo-ver-nuhr Lieutenant.” 

“Look,” said Cadmon, “they’re—”

“So what about the Goo-ver-nuhr Lieutenant?”  He dropped the ‘t’ off of ‘Lieutenant,’ replacing it with a curled lip and zesty Continental head shake.  “He can just step right in.  Although he probably wouldn’t step, would he?  He’d probably do some kind of queer French sashay.”

Cadmon breathed deep, slow breaths, calming himself.  “No,” he said finally.  “The Lieutenant Governor is going to be dead.”

At first, Whitford seemed not to notice that Cadmon had spoken.  “And even if he weren’t available, the next person in line is – wait a minute.  What did you say?”  Whitford leaned forward in his chair, his narrowed eyes boring into Cadmon.

“They’re all going to die,” said Cadmon.  “Everyone in line.  All dead.”

Whitford sat back in his chair, regarding Cadmon for a moment.  He tilted his head, giving Cadmon a sideways glance, his eyes suddenly piercing.  “Son,” he said, “what in the
hell
are you talking about?” 

Cadmon told him about the storm, and how it would destroy the State of Louisiana, putting the country’s oil reserves, refining, and pipelines at risk.  Said he’d had a vision and prayed and that he was confident enough that he’d stake his fortune.  In the end though, he’d had to sell the idea to Whitford as a money-making scheme.  That should have set off alarm bells, of course, but Cadmon figured that, once Whitford got a taste of the power, he would be amenable to the more ambitious aspects of the plan.  In fact, he’d really hoped that Whitford, in a fit of unbridled ambition, would just take the ball and run with it.  So he’d talked about the enormous amounts of money that were at stake.  Whitford’s eyes had grown bright, the man practically salivating as he contemplated the staggering sums of money he could make for himself and his oil-company friends.

The other major hurdle, of course, had been getting the Governor to buy into the idea that Cadmon could predict the future.  Whitford might be a psychopathic turd of a man, but he was a pragmatic turd, and he wasn’t willing to accept on faith Cadmon’s promise of a giant, devastating storm.  He’d wanted proof.  And Cadmon hadn’t been able to say, “Well, this angel came down and he told me.”  Whitford had demanded that Cadmon make good on his statement that he’d stake his personal fortune on the scheme, and had required the preacher to pony up the cash necessary to buy cots, portable housing, and food stuffs that would make it look like Whitford was actually trying to help the storm-struck citizens of Louisiana.  All Whitford had to do was show up after the storm, give a press conference, and – hopefully – take it from there.

But that wasn’t how it had worked out.  Whitford had shown up, but then the bugs had attacked and he’d run away.  He hadn’t looked like a leader or a savior.  No, he’d looked like an idiot.  And now he was back in his cave here in Texas. 

You’d think that carrying out God’s plan with the direct, personal assistance of an angel would go a little more smoothly.  Cadmon sometimes wondered if this wasn’t the blind leading the blind.

Cadmon clicked the mouse some more and turned up the volume to listen to the brief press conference Whitford had given before being driven away by the locusts.  On the screen, Whitford grumbled and glowered and sneered.  The Governor reminded Cadmon of something he’d seen in a movie once – that giant, green slug guy.  What was his name?  Java or something?  He watched the way Whitford had hefted his weight back and forth, grunting his answers, and it reminded Cadmon of a nature program he’d watched about giant male seals croaking their angry-sounding mating calls to seal cows.  He shook his head to try to get rid of the image. 

No, choosing Whitford was turning out to be a complete disaster, and the Louisiana catastrophe was only part of it.  The angel had instructed Cadmon to get started on the next step, and had pointed out that Whitford would be very helpful with that.  The preacher had done as he was asked, and dutifully (and casually) asked whether Whitford knew how to get a hold of some sarin gas.  But in the weeks since, the Governor hadn’t said a word about it.  In fact, as far as he knew, Whitford had forgotten entirely.  But then, he didn’t really know at all.  He couldn’t even get the bastard on the phone to ask.

The angel was going to be pissed.  That – not whether Whitford actually managed to do anything – was what made Cadmon nervous.  Ezekiel was, when you got right down to it, a little scary.  Cadmon needed to somehow get Whitford back on track.  But how the hell was he going to do that?  He couldn’t exactly reveal what was really going on.  “Hey, guess what Dick – you’re the bad guy!” 

It was so unfair.  It wasn’t as if he could post an ad: “Wanted: Antichrist.”  Cadmon didn’t know any
real
dictator types, and traipsing through some South American jungle to get in touch with whatever military junta didn’t really seem like an appealing prospect.  He’d been tempted to ask himself:  What would Jesus do?  How would Jesus find an antichrist?  But he’d dismissed the idea, thinking that this problem was just too far afield for Jesus to be able to weigh in.  Ironically, the man who’d authored a series of books with titles like
How Would Jesus Invest?
had been unable to wrap his mind around the notion that the most famous political revolutionary in history might have had something to say about the situation.

The lights flickered and dimmed, and he heard a familiar buzz-saw sound.

“Shit,” he said.  It was too late.  The angel was here.  Now. 

He got up and scrambled out of his office.  “Stay here!” he yelled to Janie.

He could see the white-orange light fading as he ran up the hall toward the main auditorium.  He started to sprint and bounded up the small set of stairs that led toward the back of the stage.  The light had faded completely, and the angel was scanning back and forth, searching, by the time Cadmon reached him. 

He turned and saw Cadmon.  “William Cadmon,” he said, “I am Ezekiel.”

Cadmon said nothing.  He was doubled over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“There is a problem,” said Ezekiel.

Cadmon held his hands up.  “I know, I know.  He’s just…”  He stood there, shaking his head, searching for the words.  “He’s just an asshole.”  He shrugged.

“Who is an asshole?” asked the angel.

“Whitford.”

Ezekiel looked confused.  “Whitford?  Why is Whitford an asshole?  I do not understand why you’re bringing this up now.”

“Well,” said Cadmon, “because—”

Ezekiel waved his giant angel hands dismissively.  “Never mind that,” he said.  “We have a problem.”

“I know,” said Cadmon.  “That’s why I was—”