How the World Ends (26 page)

Nothing comes for us in the night. I keep wondering if I wish something would come, just to break the monotony of our vigil. But there is only the darkness and our hushed breathing.

…

Lucifer

He is testing me.

We walk halfway between the realms of thought and reality. He speaks softly to me the whole time, leading me into paths of thought that I have dared not tread for many turns of the screw. He does not remind me of any other, and it is not like the last time I was tested, when I failed miserably, only to find myself doing the bidding of those whom I would have rather observed than take part with.

I remember the crowds that pressed me away from a decent view back then. I remember struggling to see while the flails stripped flesh from bone and best friends turned their eyes away and others looked me right in the eye when they had no business seeing me at all. They did not like what they saw in me that day, and it turned them against hope and into despair – and I with them.

I believe now that the wonder and hatred of that self image drove me into another form, and into the non-human shape that was easier to bear, because then I could fool myself into believing that my failed test was not the intended disaster. How else could I escape my own image but to alter it until I was indistinguishable as myself, until I was someone else? How else for me to escape but to flee?

Gabriel and Michael were still there to deliver the news as they saw fit. They always had been, and so they always would be. Weaker in might, but stronger in spirit, they endured where I could not. I was always the one who needed saving most.

And my appearance has not changed that much, it would appear; Jonah looks me in the eye, and he does not flee into hopelessness. That alone gives me respite enough to continue on with him and to try to make amends.

To me it is still a test, but it is also a challenge to do better this time around.

“They should be here by now,” he says to me.

“They are doing what they do best while I bungle about and the children starve,” I reply. “You should eat the horse.”

“I can’t kill my horse, he’s too important to us.”

“Fine,” I say. “But you are killing these people while you loll around like a dead chicken with no head.”

“Maybe we should send someone to find them.”

“Michael doesn’t just fall behind and get lost. He disappears from this earth and returns when he thinks the time is right. And Gabriel the same – those two are always in it together.”

“Maybe you should go find your brother.”

“I can’t do that. Not anymore. Didn’t Michael tell you about me?”

“No, he didn’t tell me anything about you.”

“In a way I’m glad. If you knew the truth you may not wish me to stay. In fact, maybe its best if I didn’t. I’m not sure I can help your people in the way you need. I’m not who I used to be.”

“If you want to leave us, that’s fine, archangel. It’s not like you haven’t been sitting under a rock while the world rots for the last few centuries.

“I deserve your hatred,” I say. “I really do.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

We don’t speak for a while. Jonah walks straight on ahead and I sense that his indomitable exterior is only a shell overtop of a deep well of indecision and worry. It is like looking into a mirror, if such a comparison between man and angel can be possible.

I place my hand on his shoulder, a gesture unheard of between our kind at one time, and into that intimate transfer of touch and sensation I pour all the empathy that I can muster. For a fleeting moment we glance at each other and we are just like two men, with real problems and emotions and things that belong right here in this world and not in the realm beyond this consciousness.

For an instant, a brief moment carved out from the space between the worlds, we understand each other.

And then I abandon this world for a time, and journey off to revisit another place in that kingdom across the sea and sands of all combination of thought and substance.

…

Jonah

Only for a time.

That is the thought that sticks in my mind, and I wonder where it is generated, and I struggle for a moment to send it towards Rachel, Jewel and Gwyn. I pause for a few moments, but then the creeping forward clock of the daylight jolts me out of my silent reverie.

I turn and look over the long line of three of four hundred who follow after me in the grass along the side of the road. I see despair and hope pitted against one another in the eyes of those near to me and on down the line. I don’t know whether it is the faltering light or my own wavering eyesight, but several folk, old and young, seem on the verge of toppling over, and I notice my legs carrying me quickly over the beaten path towards a child, a girl of about seven or eight, as she slides limply to the ground. I can’t help but look at her lips and I notice that she doesn’t have the telltale green stain that chewing on cattails produces. She hasn’t eaten her greens.

I sigh and carry her heavily over to Earnest and lay her gently across his wide back. I have to stop for a moment with the effort and lean against his flank. He has stopped the heaving that he was doing earlier, but I know he isn’t back to himself yet. The girl was slight to start with though, and she probably hadn’t eaten in days. Not a heavy load for Ernest to bear.

In my head I start to calculate times and distances, leaning there against the stallion. I have to make myself stop, to straighten up and try to keep Rachel and Jewel and Gwyn out of my thoughts and definitely not think of help from anywhere else. When this world is too hard even for angels to endure, the rest of us have to toughen up. I smile a broad, goofy country-boy smile.

And hold it for a moment.

“She’ll be alright. She just needs to rest a bit.”

The smile falters after I turn my head and plod forward.

We walk on. And on. And on. I am surprised at the distance we must have travelled to get across to the east-side towns from way out on the west end of the old city.

Eventually we come across an area where the soil has been eroded a bit, and isn’t as fertile as the rest of the land around. I search around a bit and find what I am looking for: wild strawberries, and a fairly sizable patch. The tiny berries make up in taste what they lack in size, and soon everyone has had a few of them, and most have grown smiles on their faces. Then we move on again.

“Let’s camp out up ahead. Maybe a fire tonight won’t be too much risk.”

A bit of the misery fades away from the faces I can still make out in the falling light, and I even fool myself a bit. Enough that I fall asleep easily and dreamlessly this night, stretched out on the green, new grass of late spring that nature has provided for our beds.

Chapter Seven – Capture at Dawn

Jonah

I awaken just after midnight to start my watch. It is the hardest shift and while I usually try to take the first watch to help the others feel more comfortable, this time I felt the need for a good early rest to keep my strength, and Ralph volunteered to take the first watch, with Jones taking the second. I still don’t understand how the first name or last name thing is supposed to work with the military folks, or the ex-military, as I suppose they now are, but some of them just seemed to suit a first name more than simply a last.

So I sit with my back to a hard maple tree at the edge of our camp. The soft sound of snoring mixed with whimpering and hushed whispering makes it relatively difficult to hear the sounds of the night, at first. But then, as midnight turns to two and then three in the morning, the silence of the night overtakes the murmur of sleep and I begin to pick out the nocturnal twitches that make the night time so exciting for a watcher capable of remaining wakeful throughout this time.

I can picture it easier from above, with my eyes closed, especially when I hear the owl’s wings beat slowly and with resounding strength as she reacts with speed and stealth to the tick and scamper of a field mouse – caught unawares and out in the open. With grace and skill the massive bird – a great horned owl, I believe – skims the green grass where it has been packed down by our feet and plucks the grey and brown morsel from a footprint in the shadow of the moonlight.

How does she know with such precision the intimate details of time and distance within such tight parameters of light and sound? With so many layers of evolution and natural selection, it seems oddly fitting that the sideways-cocked head of an angel might be the first thing that catches my eye after the great bird fades back into the shadows with her prey.

Michael. In the first light of dawn, yet blind to its beacon of hope. He is my messenger again, it seems. I rise and walk over to him, careful to mask the sound of my footfalls by stepping along the balls of my feet. He smiles at me in the non-light and I catch a glimpse of his preternaturally white teeth. At once all the fatigue is gone from my shoulders and back, and I feel somehow renewed, as if this is my chance to start over with all of this angel business.

I am, of course, wrong. With Michael, everything is a continuation of something else, and each continuation is simply another piece in a large and complex puzzle – each of varying shape and size. And another one is delivered to me now:

“
Beware the dawn this day. It is a stolen friendship and may threaten faithfulness. Don’t be afraid to succumb to fear, for that fear is put in place by your very nature to protect you
.”

“That’s a funny thing to say.”

“You should be afraid.”

“Why? What else could happen that could possibly strike fear into my heart?”

“I believe I could name a few things,” he says, a wry smile twisting its way across his lips. “From memory.”

“So why don’t you just tell me what it is I am supposed to be afraid of, and I’ll let you know if it’s working,” I reply. “Okay?”

“That ain’t how it works. It breaks the whole spirit of the
message
. The entire essence of what I am trying to tell you relies on your fear of it, and since you will naturally be more afraid of something that you can’t explain or understand, it follows that I should only tell you what you already know.”

“Why?”

“Why can’t I tell you what it is you’re afraid of?” he asks. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that either.”

“Yes,” I say, possibly too quickly to be kind, “You
are
quite afraid, aren’t you?”

He doesn’t respond. I can feel the tables shifting – like a test of my mettle is being turned to a test of his. His eyes open a bit, and he looks at me through eyes that are obviously not blind.

“Tell me where he went, boy.”

“I think he went home.”

“What did he look like?”

“Just like you, but with normal teeth. And eyes that can see.”

“My eyes are just fine.”

“You’re a blind man! Your eyes don’t work.”

“Those eyes don’t matter.”

“Find the others for me, then.”

Michael does nothing, says nothing, for a long moment. “I hoped you would be able to help me find him.”

“Because you can’t get home?”

There is a pause.

“Not without him. I can’t go back without him.”

“Whose edict is that?” I ask, wondering where the word comes from.

His face turns to the sky, and he looks directly at the rising sun, his eyes soaking up the rays of the sun and his black skin reflecting a sheen of sweat in the growing heat.

“It’s mine. I can’t face home without my friend.”

“I’m your friend, Michael.”

“You don’t count. Not like that. You’re just a brief moment on a vast sea of endless struggle against despair,” he says, with tears in his eyes. I almost believe him.

“So stop despairing,” I say, turning back towards the others who are slowly rising and stretching out their stiffness and searching for water. I point to the northwest and in small groups folks start off for the small gurgling stream that is about fifty yards away. A great feeling of tiredness descends on me as even Michael stares expectantly at me. I feel his gaze and that of others tearing into my own need to have a direction provided to me – isn’t that what Michael was supposed to offer?

Now that’s who I am – now that’s what expected of me. From everyone.

I turn back to Michael, asking, “Where’s Gabe?”

“He took the horse back west to find Steven and the others. He said there was a great danger near them.”

“How did he know that?”

“He has good vision.”

“Why did he take the horse? Obviously you don’t need it to travel.”

“Heh, heh,” Michael chuckles. “I think he’s taken a liking to that mare.”

“So do we follow him or head home?”

Michael says nothing. He just stands there with his bottom lip trembling, looking very much the personification of an old, tired man at the end of his endurance for this life.

“What’s home, Jonah?” he asks. “Is it a place or is it a thing or is it a feeling?”

“Mmm hmm,” I murmur, tiring of these questions, moving off towards the stream to get a drink of my own. I wonder with a growing icy dread in the bottom of my chest what could possibly be of great danger to Bill Thomas.

…

Bill

They come at dawn.

One of them grapples with Lewis from behind him, and after his muffled cry of surprise I roll to my left behind the tree which I have been sleeping under. I quickly count eleven men darting into our camp with knives and pistols at the ready – yet they fire no shots. Within seconds they have everyone up and pistols to the head of each of the men, and the others with the women and children, silent on their knees.

“Where’s the leader?” demands the man holding the weapon to Chapin’s head. “Where’s Truth? Give him to us and you can all go free.”

There is a long pause. I hold myself tight against the tree, wondering what the best course of action might be. The man mustn’t be very patient, and before more than thirty seconds have elapsed he takes the gun away from Chapin’s head and fires it into the air. Chapin takes the opportunity and grabs the man’s wrist and begins to struggle for control of the weapon.