Up Jumps the Devil (44 page)

He got up in front of Congress and dared the country to put a man on the moon. (Challenging God on His own high-and-mighty turf. See how He liked that!)

Then he took JFK's wife on a working vacation to Dallas, and was drop-kicked out of the president's head by a bullet.

For years, the Devil read that JFK's last words went something like this:

The first lady of Texas had just turned around in her seat, supposedly, and said, “You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President!” to which he had replied, “No, you sure can't.”

The Devil knew, although he kept it to himself, that in fact he had just turned to his own first lady and said, “Gee, Jackie, this sure is a swell car.”

Then POW! The shining moment was over.

WHEN THE DEVIL WOKE UP
again in the hospital room, Memory had fallen back asleep.

This alarmed him, at first. But her breathing was the breath of a woman taking a nap. The twitch of her eyes beneath her eyelids was lively.

She'd wake up again, soon enough.

But … Aw, hell, he wouldn't be here. Today was a workday. They were broadcasting the comeback episode of
Think It Over
, somewhere in Ohio.

He stood. Found his jacket. Ran his fingers over stubbled cheeks.

He'd be back that night. That would have to be soon enough.

Kissing Memory's forehead, he felt happiness and frustration at war inside him.

Memory was awake! Memory was Arden!

The thought of going to work made him feel mean as a snake.

A lot of people probably feel that way on days they're going to get shot.

Dayton, Ohio, 2005

THE DEVIL FLEW TO OHIO
, where he met his TV crew at the Dayton airport. His heart and mind stayed behind with Memory. He saw her face on every woman-animal who walked by, even the trolls.

Then he saw something that sort of focused him.

Jenna Steele.

“Oh, fuck,” said the Devil.
Please, not her, not right now!

Jenna cracked her gum and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“Baby,” she cooed at him, head buried against his tie. “Welcome back from jail!”

He didn't have the energy, he found, to turn her away. He was still so tired. So he turned and led the march out of the airport, and she came with, popping her gum.

What if she got on camera—she always got on camera—and Memory saw?

Shit shit shit, he thought, stalking past the ticket counters, out the revolving doors, into a waiting limo. What could he do about it, with everyone watching? He didn't want to be filmed with her, but he couldn't afford to make a scene either.

Jenna piled in beside him.

The crew was probably already filming. Those guys were
always
filming.

LATER, DURING PRIME TIME
, a record-breaking audience watched John Scratch offer a loving couple a million dollars to split up. It was a terrible thing to do. He wasn't sure if he cared. He wanted to feel better about people, with Memory awake. With
Arden
back. But
did
he? Not yet. Maybe.

The woman took the money and broke her husband's heart.

It made people all over the world wonder if their wives and husbands loved them a million dollars' worth. The show caused a lot of arguments even before the second White Pill commercial was over.

Memory, watching, sitting up in bed, reached for the remote and turned the TV off.

“Asshole,” she said.

HE HOPED THE ZOMBIES
out in TV land at least learned a lot of hard, new truths, and he hoped they hurt. He was going to sit in his limo and smoke a bag of weed and think of all the reasons he had to be happy, and that was what the Devil was thinking when he saw Zachary Bull Horse step out of the crowd.

Zachary sort of bulldozed his way through. He sent a cameraman and an onlooker sprawling, and the Devil saw how strange and pale he looked.

“Big Zach,” the Devil started to say.

Something was wrong.

The Devil saw the gun.

The gun flashed and banged six times, and he felt every bullet tear through him.

Good thing the limo was right there. He kind of fell into it.

He didn't see Zachary tangle with the bodyguards, but he sensed, as he lost consciousness and felt the limo peel out for the hospital, that the big genius had gotten away. And he was glad. He wanted that fucker for himself.

He coughed blood.

He hurt so bad.

He had never been the same, really, since Gettysburg.

Everything went dark.

THEN EVERYTHING GOT LIGHT
again, and then dark again.

They kept having to explain to him that he'd been shot.

Dark again. Light again. Surgery. Dark again.

And in the twilight spaces between the light and dark, he knew he was dying. One of those slow, critical-condition deaths, with complications, where doctors said, “He's a fighter!” But every day you were weaker. You were losing blood, but from where?

And you weren't the tough old Devil you used to be, that much was certain. You were tired. When had you started getting tired? Was it just time? All that time? Was it knowing that you'd been wrong about practically everything for all that time?

Poor judgment became a theme, sleeping and waking. He had an attack of courage one day, and woke up and broke up with Jenna Steele, who shot him.

Great.

Dark again. Light again.

Was he tired because of Love? Loving thousands? Loving lots of women like Jenna Steele, but mostly loving someone who wasn't there?

SPEAKING OF LOVING SOMEONE
who wasn't there, where was she?

Surely Memory had been released from her own hospital by now. Why wasn't she here?

He asked the nurses about her.

“Jenna?” asked the nurses.

“Not Jenna,” said the Devil. “Memory Jones.”

The nurses didn't like it when the Devil asked about Memory.

“Don't know,” they said.

“Well”—he coughed—“could you find out?”

Grudgingly, they called the hospital in New York.

“She checked out,” they told him. That was all they knew. She didn't seem to be on TV, or in the news.

Then some of the nurses texted their friends and told them Johnny Scratch had been asking about Memory. The All-Celebrity News Channel got wind of it and sent reporters.

“Call me!” the Devil bellowed at the cameras.

“Who?” asked the reporters, never looking away from their viewfinders. “Memory Jones or Jenna Steele?”

The Devil made a cruel face and said, “Jenna
who
?”

Wow! The meaner the better! They couldn't get that streaming fast enough.

“Jenna
who
?” flashed out on Web, cable, and satellite within the minute. Flashed all the way down the hall, where Jenna Steele lay lightly sedated in chemical restraints.

“Baby,” she whispered, crying softly. “Oh, Johnny.”

Jenna Steele was both smarter and sicker than a lot of people gave her credit for. That night, focusing through a blue-edged drug haze, she leaned out of her bed and reached, straining for her IV. With every ounce of strength and will available to her, she turned up the drip on her chemical restraint, and collapsed back into bed.

Black sleep came at her with an open throttle. She barely had time to arrange herself and make herself look good before it softly ran her down.

Bells rang and alarms buzzed, and nurses came. Doctors followed.

They poked and prodded and shined lights, and announced that Jenna Steele was alive, but would probably never wake up again.

The announcement flashed out. Millions mourned.

The Coma Channel staff, recently unemployed, found themselves employed again. They rushed across Manhattan to the hospital, charging batteries and dusting off hidden cameras.

Jenna Steele was way deep asleep, but by God she'd still be on-screen 24/7. Millions sighed with relief.

And was it just their imagination, or did they detect, in the on-screen stillness of their sleeping beauty, the dreamy hint of a smile?

THE DEVIL THOUGHT
about Zachary, too.

Why? Why had he done it? Was he just protecting himself? Old-fashioned fear? A newfound sense of right and wrong? Didn't matter. You don't shoot the Devil, man. Why didn't people know that?

The Devil imagined eating Zachary, bones and all.

It made him feel better. At the same time, it brought the dark closer.

THE REAL DARK
, when it finally came for him, wasn't dark at all.

It was light.

A
tunnel
of light, just like in the movies.

You've got to be shitting me, thought the Devil.

He felt himself racing up. Racing forward.

And there was a Light in the middle of the light, the brightest light of all, and it was holding out its bright hands, beaming at him with its eternal, smug-ass face.

NO WORDS WERE NECESSARY
here. Never had been.

The Light reached inside him, and healed him. Took all his tiredness and uncertainty and petulance, and drained them like used oil.

Peace flooded him like an April breeze.

The Devil wept openly.

Was he forgiven? Could he come back?

He was forgiven. He could come back.

Oh God, he thought.

Behind him, all that horror and pettiness and savagery. So human, so animal.

Fun while it lasted.

The Great Light reached for him.

WHEN THE DEVIL'S MONITOR FLATLINED
, the data went out to the nurses' station, and to each nurse's beeper. It went to the beepers and cell phones of at least four separate doctors, two life insurance heavies, and a stringer for the All-Celebrity News Channel.

Even before anyone got the news, the world was a little different. It happened the way subconscious things happen, down deep, showing up later in the way things look or the way things happen.

The world without its rebel angel would be a world where rebellion had run out of juice. It was a better world in some ways, and in some ways not.

It was a world that felt less connected to the things that make rebels in the first place, like appreciating things of quiet value. Like seeing the aurora borealis, flying over mountains, or remembering what it was like to be three. It took self-belief to be a rebel. From now on, that belief would be hard to find.

It was a world where people felt hollow. Where they watched TV more, then slept more in front of the TV. Where they worried less, which sounds nice until you consider that the dead don't worry. The dead don't blush or embarrass themselves. They don't eat things they shouldn't or refuse to go to bed on time. They don't call in sick when they're not. They aren't fascinated by firecrackers. They don't celebrate, because they don't accomplish anything.

The world without the Devil was a world without certain kinds of fun. The kind you keep to yourself, like if women's shoes excite you or you like to eat dirt. It would be a world where the urges were shallow and sleepy, where you wanted to go to Mars less, wanted to get in shape less, wanted to do it doggie-style less.

Left behind were the Devil's mistakes and the mess he'd made of things, here and there. Things like always being in a hurry. Things like living with a broken heart until the broken heart felt normal. His absence spread over them like a plague, everywhere over the whole Earth.

It would be a world with less shouting, less pushing back. Less pushing all the elevator buttons just because you could. It would be the kind of world where people didn't build pyramids or Empire State Buildings or cars that ran on old french fries.

It would be like a stagnant pond. The big fish would work themselves to death eating the little fish. It would be a world where the best you could hope was that maybe, just maybe, being eaten wouldn't hurt very much. It was a shitty kind of hope, the kind that made hope feel like a joke. But in a world without rebels, it would suffice, just because no one had the balls to imagine anything better.

HEAVEN, FOR THE DEVIL
, was like walking into an old photo album.

Above, the exploding stars.

(
Let there be light!
)

Below, ankle-deep, the waters.

All around, circling, choir upon choir of divine music.

And he turned to the brightest of lights, walking beside him.

And he spoke with more peace and kindness in his voice than ever before.

He said, “No.”