Authors: Robert Kroese
Mercury Rests
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Robert Kroese
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612185842
ISBN-10: 1612185843
For Climber.
Dramatis Personae
Alistair Breem:
Physicist; Jacob Slater’s mentor
Cain (Colin Lang):
Biblical figure best known for killing his brother; cursed to walk the Earth until the End of Time
Christine Temetri:
Jaded religion reporter and Apocalypse magnet
Cody Lang:
Private investigator, actress, thigh model, conspiracy theorist; daughter of Colin Lang/Cain
Cravutius:
An important seraph
Dirk Lubbers:
Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI
Ederatz (Eddie Pratt):
A cherub who was misplaced by the Mundane Observation Corps
Elihu:
A young boy, contemporary of Job
Gamaliel:
A fallen cherub (demon); servant of Tiamat
Horace Finch:
Eccentric billionaire who built the Chrono-Collider Device (CCD) to uncover the fundamental secrets of the Universe; prior head of the Order of the Pillars of Babylon (OPB)
Izbazel:
A fallen cherub (demon); servant of Lucifer
Jacob Slater:
Forensic blast investigator for the FBI
Job:
Biblical character known for his patience
Karl Grissom:
Gaming geek; the Antichrist
Lucifer (Rezon):
The devil
Mercury:
A cherub employed by the Apocalypse Bureau
Michelle (Michael):
Archangel; the general of Heaven’s army
Nisroc:
A dim-witted cherub charged with guarding the interplanar portal in Glendale, California; aficionado of SpaghettiOs
Perpetiel (Perp):
A cherub who works as a porter/escort at the Planeport
Ramiel:
Nisroc’s partner in guarding the Glendale portal; servant of Lucifer
Roger Daltrey:
FBI agent
Tiamat (Katie Midford):
Demoness who is determined to rule the Universe
Travis Babcock:
President of the United States
Uzziel:
Former head of the Apocalypse Bureau
Wanda Kwan:
Acquiring editor for the Finch Group’s publishing company
To Your Holiness the High Council of the Seraphim,
Greetings from your humble servant, Ederatz,
Cherub First Class,
Order of the Mundane Observation Corps
First, allow me to apologize for the abrupt ending of my previous missive. We writers call such suspenseful endings “cliff-hangers” and generally employ them when we are worried about losing the interest of readers and consequently not being able to make our mortgage payments.
In this case, however, my concerns were more existential in nature. For reasons that will be clear to you if you’ve read the previous installments of this report, I was concerned that neither I nor the plane on which I currently reside would exist by the time I delivered my final report to you. So I sent the first two volumes ahead, in the hopes that even if the third didn’t survive, you’d at least have a partial account of the story.
Considering the deference typically accorded my reports, of course, I put the odds of you having read either of them at about
zilch. And then there’s the possibility that by now, the space-time continuum has been annihilated, a contingency that entails that even if you did at one point read my previous two reports, you have no longer read them, because they will at this point have never existed.
On the other hand, if you’re reading this report—and it seems that you are—we can reasonably assume that reality has not been annihilated, which is a pretty good start. This situation—you and the report both existing, and you reading it—suggests that Tiamat hasn’t completely bollixed up the space-time continuum. That’s good news, I suppose, although I think it’s safe to say that Heaven’s designs on the Mundane Plane have been, well,
disrupted
, to say the least. But then you know that. In fact, if you are reading this, it’s probably because you’re a little curious about how those pesky mortals managed to turn the tables on you and make a complete hash of your precious SPAM.
I took a few liberties with the end of the story. Obviously I wasn’t there when Lucifer showed up in Heaven with his little surprise, for instance, so I had to guess at the details. You’ll have to let me know if I got it right. If, you know, we all still exist.
Mercury awoke with a start, finding himself lying on an uncomfortable, molded plastic bench. He sat up and looked around. There was no way to know what time it was—or even
where
he was. It was pitch-dark except for the flicker of light coming from a fire that burned in a steel drum nearby. Around the fire, on makeshift mats of cardboard and blankets, lay seven very old and weathered-looking individuals, sleeping fitfully. Underneath them was a floor of concrete.
Angels technically have no need for sleep, but Mercury had been exceptionally tired—the sort of tired that you get from flying a hundred thousand miles into deep space to implode the moon. Well, not that
you
get, because you’ve probably never done that. But Mercury had.
Or had he? He was beginning to doubt his own memories. Why would he have thrown an anti-bomb at the moon? To prevent something worse from happening, he supposed, but he couldn’t put his finger on what that was. There had been some sort of experiment in Africa involving the anti-bomb and...croutons or something. And then he had been imploded along with the moon, presumably, and reincorporated here—wherever
here
was.
He studied the group of people sleeping on the concrete around the drum. There were four men and three women. They had told him their names, but he had forgotten them. One of them was Arnie, or Ernie, something like that. He made a mental note to devise some sort of mnemonic device to help himself remember them. Maybe an acronym with the first letters of their names.
And the fire—there was something about the fire. He had looked into it and seen...what? That memory too was fuzzy. All he knew was that he didn’t care to repeat the experience. His fingers went to his temples, as if he could somehow massage his memories into the right slots in his brain. Where was he? How did he get here? Who were these people? He could almost see the answers, but couldn’t quite get to them, like a man with a hundred-dollar bill standing in front of a vending machine.
He stood up, blinking in the glare of the fire. He walked a few paces from the drum, but his vision didn’t improve. The darkness was a palpable thing, enveloping him and threatening to extinguish even the very idea of light. And it was
cold
. It hadn’t exactly been balmy on the bench, but it got noticeably colder with every step he took away from the fire.
Mercury felt in his pockets for something to provide some light. He found a deck of cards, three Gummi Bears, the decapitated head of a Cobra Commander action figure, a business card, a black Sharpie marker, and a package of dental floss (unwaxed).
He shuddered, thinking of the last time he had used unwaxed dental floss. “Why do they even make this stuff?” he grumbled to himself. But as much as he hated it, he couldn’t make himself throw away forty-nine and a half yards of perfectly good dental floss. He put it back in his pocket, where it had resided for eight years, along with the rest of the jetsam—except for a single
playing card. He held the card between his thumb and forefinger and concentrated.
It took more effort than he expected—the amount of available interplanar energy here was almost negligible—but after a few seconds the edge of the card caught fire, providing a modicum of light. Mercury held the card up and peered into the darkness.
“Good morning!” barked an unnaturally chipper voice behind him, causing Mercury to jump and drop the card. It fluttered down and lodged itself in his pants pocket, where it continued to burn with a supernatural flame.
“Gaaahhh!” howled Mercury, swatting furiously at the card, which refused to go out. “Gaaahhh!” he howled again, hopping around madly as the flames licked up his shirt. Finally, he mustered the presence of mind to grab hold of the card and toss it onto the ground, where it continued to burn with defiant indifference.
Mercury stuck his fingers in his mouth and glared at the man. It was Arnie or Ernie.
“Playing with the queen of hearts, I see,” mused the man. Mercury was fairly certain it was Ernie.
“’on’t ay ip!” Mercury growled through his fingers.
“You know what they say,” Ernie continued. “It only—”
“I ’aid, ’ON’T AY IP!” Mercury yelled.
“Don’t say what?” Ernie asked.
Mercury removed his fingers from his mouth and studied them. “
You
know what,” said Mercury. “If you say it, I’ll have that song stuck in my head for the next five hundred years.”
Ernie shrugged. “Where are you going?”
“Just exploring a little,” replied Mercury. “Can you tell me where we are?”
“Well,” said Ernie, “underground, for starters.”