2013: Beyond Armageddon (44 page)

Finally came an image obviously meant as the Grand Finale.

Standing on his throne now, arms outstretched like a priest calling his flock to Mass, the behemoth looked down from a dizzying height.

Only now he was a being of absolute purity. His human shape was more perfectly formed than any rendering of Michelangelo. Where genitals should have been, there was only smoothness. The figure’s dazzling, porcelain whiteness radiated a soothing light, pleasing and wholesome. He leaned down so Zeke could get a good look at his face.

Smiling beatifically was the most beautiful young male he had ever seen. Gone were the evil and loathing. The face was utterly smooth, pure, and full of love. Zeke glimpsed wings behind the outspread arms.

The soul-jarring incongruity of this version became clear.

He was looking at Lucifer, before his fall.

The moment was broken by noises to Zeke’s right. The creatures he’d noticed earlier had been watching—presumably the entire spectacle. Now they gibbered, and rattled their appendages, in a kind of obscene ovation for their Master’s performance.

Satan actually bowed.

Slowly he dissolved back into his original shape and, with great clattering and alien scraping noises, shifted his massive bulk back into a sitting position on his throne. He leaned forward until his enormous face was no more than twenty yards from Zeke’s, the glowing red eyes boring into him as if trying to read his soul. Almost mercifully, the riot of mind-bending impressions inside Zeke’s head was stopped dead by the loathsome voice.

“They also call me the Prince of Darkness.”

“And yet you are also called Lucifer. ‘Bearer of light.’”

“I love irony.”

“Scholars tell us Lucifer has nothing to do with you, it’s just a misinterpretation of scripture. According to them, those writers and prophets you mentioned made up the whole fall-from-Heaven story.”

“Scholars.” He dragged the word out with a silky, slithery contempt. “They and their intellect, their logic, their reason, convincing everyone that I am superstitious nonsense. They make it so much easier for me to go about my business.”

He leaned closer for emphasis.

“There
was
a war in Heaven. Your scholars are wrong. Their tortured conclusions are based on human mythology. They know nothing of the
real
me.

“I am not a myth. As you can see, I am very real. All of my manifestations are real. I have been many things, and in many places, through the ages. I am everywhere. And nowhere. I am untraceable. Where I have been, and what I have done, can never be plotted by your ‘scholars.’”

His huge taloned fingers made contemptuous quotation marks around the word.

“I
did
rebel in Heaven. I
am
his Archenemy. I burn to destroy Him and his most precious creation: Man. We have fought thousands, millions of battles in our war for dominion over the human race. I would have won long ago, if not for the most powerful weapon you humans possess: hope. But now…”

He tilted his head skyward while spreading his arms wide, delighting in some unseen triumph. He breathed in deeply, savoring the moment, then exhaled slowly while moaning in satisfaction. When he faced Zeke again, the demonic red slits of his eyes bore into him with all their burning intensity.

“…at long last, I have reduced that pilot light in your soul down to the final flickering of a candle. A candle about to be blown out by my ill wind.”

Satan leaned closer. His eyes burned hotter.

“I know you are here as the Forerunner. He will soon follow. Then will the final battle—so wrongly predicted throughout the ages, so long awaited—be joined. The
true
Armageddon.”

His nightmarish expression softened a hair as he leaned back and became expansive, a professor in his study, breaking down a difficult concept for a student. “Here is all you need to know. All you
can
know.

“
I
am the root of all evil. I have no name. I am the opposite of what you call God.” He shook his head, as if in pity. “You primitive creatures and your endless search for meaning. Either through the mind, or by creating countless gods, responsible for everything from earthquakes to wine. Empires have been built on such nonsense, empires I have all made to crumble into dust.”

His gloating, scornful chuckle aroused Zeke’s smoldering anger, but he kept it in check. Satan went on.

“All your religions, your scientific theories. Man-made creations in an endless search to understand why you exist. Yet they bring you no true understanding. All your words, your labels. All meaningless. Satan. Beelzebub. Lucifer. Call me what you will.

“Creation began long before the Bible was written. None of the writers was there. I was. The very first eyewitness. Now that you, my brave, foolish Ezekiel, have managed to find me, your Pyrrhic victory shall be rewarded. You shall be the first to hear the story of the true beginning.

“Your scientists come close with their big bang theory, but they don’t go far enough. They trace everything back to a single particle, but that particle remains a mystery. Either it always was, or someone created it.

“I began in the void beyond the threshold the scientists are just now reaching, long before time began. As Lucifer, the first Day Star, I was the light at the dawn of your universe. I saw more than your telescopes will ever see. Your universe is merely an outpost in the infinity of darkness beyond that threshold. Somewhere in that immeasurable, unknowable realm lies the power that created that particle. These forces are all nameless, but I shall use the names you humans have given them to help you try to fathom the unfathomable.

“Let us call the power that created that first particle—whoever, whatever it is—the true Supreme Being. The Creator of the Creator.”

Satan leaned close again and lowered his voice, as though confiding a secret to a friend.

“One of your physicists came up with a particularly clever name that I use for that first particle: the God particle. That which became God. How it big it was, where it came from…even God doesn’t know. All He knows is that He grew from it, and was ‘Good.’ In the great cosmic void, over eons, He gradually became larger and stronger. He became the first star, the all-powerful force that created your universe.”

He let out a low, guttural sigh. “Loneliness is a terrible thing. Alone in all that darkness, that nothingness, He made his big mistake. Long before the line appears in the Bible, He said ‘Let there be light.’ And He created what I shall call the Lucifer particle. That which became me. Lucifer. His first angel. The original Day Star.”

Caught up in this astounding explanation for the origin of the universe, Zeke lost all awareness of being in Hell or any kind of danger. Enthralled, he prompted Satan on with the story. “So then what? You expanded until you became a star also?”

“Correct. He had developed the power to greatly accelerate the process. The eons it took for Him to form took only days for me. But we weren’t ‘stars’ as you have come to know them. We were matter, but we were also spirits, intelligent beings who communicated.

“We lived in a state of perfect rapture. I worshipped Him. Our existence so pleased Him that He went on with his work of Creation. He created Heaven for the two of us. Then He decided to create an entire race of beings who could live in an eternal state of perfection. First came the angels, all with some duty to perform in his expanding universe. Most worshipped Him.

“Most. Not all. There was a fatal flaw in his design. Embedded in the Lucifer particle—me—was the genesis of all ‘Evil.’ From me came the one
true
original sin: enmity between a father and his child. The bitter envy of knowing He would always be considered the greater, that I could never measure up. As I increased in size and power, every atom of my being contained the Lucifer particle. It became my mission to destroy any race He created. Since all races start with the family, destroy the family and the race is doomed.”

In a flash of white-hot anger, Zeke realized that the monstrous beast before him
had
pulled the trigger that massacred his family. And that their lives and the lives of millions before them were nothing to Satan but fodder in his blind vendetta against God.

He burned to start hurling weapons, but his pack was a few steps away. By the time he got there and opened it Satan could easily overtake him. He needed to wait for a better opening. Still, he couldn’t let Satan go unchallenged. “Unless hope is stronger than evil.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said the Beast. “Hope is teetering on the brink already, and I have so many weapons in my arsenal. Greed, hatred, envy, jealousy, pride, just to name a few. All came from that first supreme sin, and they all started with me.

“And so my rebellion began. As his firstborn I had been his favorite. He had created a separate realm for me, my own celestial domain. There I was king, in a kingdom of one. I came and went as I pleased, but there was never any doubt: He was always The Creator. The One.”

“That’s how you saw it.”

“That’s how it
was
.”

Satan’s fierce gaze dared Zeke to disagree. Zeke stared back but said nothing. Clearly God had loved him as Lucifer, but arguing the point would be madness. Satan grunted and went on.

“In the privacy of my domain the seeds of my rebellion were sown. By creating all those other angels He had made his second big mistake.”

He covered his face with his hands, then slowly poked his face through. “Sibling rivalry reared its ugly head.” Pleased with his dramatics, he held the pose for a beat. “I used my…powers of persuasion…to recruit the weak and disgruntled into my army. As He watched what I became, and my growing band of followers, He realized his mistake. Read your Bible. He made many mistakes with human beings. Then your Great Forgiver would try to fix it by wiping them all out. But the genie was out of the bottle, so to speak. Iblis. And I wasn’t going back in.

“What you won’t find in your Bible is that, long before Noah, before Sodom and Gomorrah, before all the grief you fools have caused Him, He had to deal with me. His
first
begotten son.”

God was the Father of Satan.

Zeke’s mind reeled at the thought. His effort not to show it didn’t escape Satan’s heightened powers of perception.

“That’s right,” the Devil said. “I was his son long before little baby Jesus came along. The whole Jesus thing was an experiment.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself. I had torn the first family in Heaven apart. It was time to do the same on Earth.”

He flicked out a forked tongue. “The seeds I sowed bore quick and bitter fruit in the so-called Garden of Eden. Eve put up no resistance. I got her and Adam kicked out by page 4 of the Bible. The very first child they created became the first murderer. Cain. Sibling rivalry had passed its first earthly test with flying colors. The generations of Adam became a race so evil that your all-merciful God came up with his Flood plan: drown them all and start over with Noah.”

Satan shook his head, almost sadly. “I was on the ark, making sure the generations of Noah perpetuated the evil seed. Eventually Abraham came along and God decided he was the one to lead his chosen people to the Promised Land. Another fiasco.” Again the tongue flicked out. “Thanks to
me
. I poisoned as many families as I could, but there were a lot more now and they were getting bigger. I had to come up with a new poison: tribal warfare. I whispered in the ears of a lot of patriarchs to make sure their tribes didn’t just roll over while good ol’ Abe and his
Chosen
took their land.

“In the midst of all that strife Abraham led them to Sodom and Gomorrah, where I had been
very
busy. Abraham couldn’t find ten righteous souls to save them from the wrath of God. This time the Great Promiser tried a scorched-earth policy. Instead of drowning he burned them all.”

Satan made a dismissive wave with one huge taloned hand. “It changed nothing. For two thousand years God watched his children getting sucked deeper into my world. Finally, in his infinite wisdom, he came up with his Jesus plan. He decided that Mankind was so wicked only a Savior could redeem them. A Son would be born in his name so He could be crucified and wipe their sins clean.”

He swept an arm toward the ocean of fire. Countless tormented souls, mouths open in unheard screams, bobbed up and down on an endless sea of agony.

“So much for that brilliant idea. Then he told Muhammad he was the one, and muddied—bloodied—the waters of Galilee even further.” Satan shook his head in mock pity. “God is like Hamlet. He can’t make up his mind.”

Zeke prodded him back to the original story. “So how did it go from two stars warring in Heaven to all this? Somewhere in there the universe came into being. You were there. What happened?”

“We kept vying for dominance. He had a master plan for creation, but I did too. He wanted a race of angels living in Heaven, then a race of humans living on Earth, all worshiping Him. I wanted them all to serve my every desire.”

“You wanted to be the Boss.”

“Yes. Back and forth we went, getting bigger and stronger, me undermining Him, Him admonishing me, both knowing that one of us had to be in charge, that creation had to go one way or the other. Finally things reached critical mass.

“
We
were the big bang. We smashed into one another. The ultimate supercollision. Our elemental essence—our souls—stayed intact, but trillions beyond number of our particles flew into space. We became the universe. From that stardust He created the human race. Within you all are God particles and Lucifer particles. Yin and yang. Good and bad karma. Good and Evil. The Devil and his Creator. All names for the same thing. Your scientists—your scholars—have not yet discovered them because they have not discovered the soul. Only you now know the truth.

“Whatever you call us, we have warred from the beginning. And here I stand, on the brink of final victory. Your
scholars
say I do not exist. Am I real? Or are you imagining things?”

Zeke gave no answer to the rhetorical question, so Satan went on.