What Would Satan Do? (2 page)

“Right, that’s what I’m talking about,” said the be-sweatered Southerner.  “Do you think it’s the end of the world as we know it?”  The other students started nodding and yeahing at each other.

Satan seethed for a moment, and then burst.  “I had nothing to do with any of that!” he screamed.  “Nothing!  And if I didn’t do it, it can’t be happening!  So it’s nothing!”  He paused, wide eyed, and scanned his stunned and silent audience.

One student was neither stunned nor silent.  She had on a burlap sack.  “But I thought—” she started to say, but didn’t finish on account of the fact that, at that instant, there was an abrupt step change in the amount of entropy in the room.  All of the atoms that had made up the stage at the front of Gaston Hall for the hundred or so years of its existence spontaneously rearranged themselves into a diffuse, unstructured array.  This they accomplished with the assistance of a great deal of heat, some flames, a lot of noise, and a shockwave that lifted the first few rows of students (along with their seats and various personal belongings) into the air, depositing them approximately fifteen feet backward in the auditorium.

The students’ reaction to the explosion was fairly normal, which is to say that there was a lot of screaming and hollering and falling over or lying very still under fiery debris. 

Satan stood, seething amidst clouds of swirling, settling dust, and muttered to himself. 

“Oh, God!” said one student.

The Devil’s head snapped up.  “Where?”

“I think she’s dead!” said another.  “Oh my God, she’s dead!”

The earnestly-sweatered Southerner lurched out from underneath a pile of debris.  He stood, wiped at a line of blood that trickled down his forehead, and surveyed the mayhem with wide eyes.  Fortunately, his sweater seemed to have escaped the blast unharmed.  “Professor?”

Satan didn’t notice.  He’d gone back to his ranting.  “How dare He?!  It’s my job!  Mine!  And if I choose not to do it…”  He turned, started to pace, stopped, and turned again. 

“Professor?”

“He can’t just start it without me!  That’s the whole reason I came here!”  The fancy paintings on the walls burst into flames, one-by-one.  He threw up his arms, and the glass in the windows shattered and sprayed into the room. 

There was some more screaming.  The student who’d been making startled statements about the deceased state of one of his fellow students encountered more fallen comrades, and lamented their passing as well. 

From out of nowhere, a frog zipped through the air and splattered against the wall.  Satan let slip a tiny smirk, and swept over to the young man in the sweater.  “It’s not happening,” he said.

“What?  What?”

“None of it,” said the Devil.  He shrugged and smiled. 

Sirens outside announced the arrival of one or more emergency vehicles.

“I—I don’t understand what—”

“This!”  Satan grabbed the student by the collar, and flung his free arm out to indicate all of this.  He smiled broadly, but then let go, jerking back at the sound of a distressed cry from the squirrely girl, whose hand he’d apparently been standing on.  He took a moment to kick her and turned back to face the student in the sweater. 

The young man made a confused, squinty face at the Devil. 

“Nope,” said Satan, surveying the damage he’d done.  “Not happening.”  He spun, his eyes wide and defiant, and grabbed the young man by the sweater again, this time with more enthusiasm.  “But what if it is?”

Chapter 2.
                
Behold: Megachurch

Pastor William Earl Cadmon stood on the stage of his church and practiced smiling.  He’d just had veneers installed, and felt as if he were shining a spotlight every time he opened his mouth – kind of a toothy Bat Signal.  He flexed his jaw a couple of times and wriggled his lips, doing a pretty good Mr. Ed impression – he’d just have to get used to his new teeth before the service tomorrow.  He closed his lips, pursing them as he did so, turned his head slightly to the left, and made his eyes all action-hero squinty.  There were no cameras on him, but he found it was always best to practice as if there were. 

The old stadium seemed cozier now – replacing the metal railings and folding chairs with wood paneling and upholstered seats had helped – but it still didn’t seem all that churchy.  He’d have to fix that.  At some point.

He looked up at the rows and rows of empty seats, and thought about coming here with his Mom back when it was called the Pinnacle Arena to see his father perform with the circus.  It was hard to imagine trapeze artists, lions, and elephants where he now preached the Word of God
^TM
.  Down on the floor – in the “Corinthians” section, rows J, K, and L – was where it had happened.  He pictured the little red car, his dad, and the other clowns – those heartless bastards – and closed his eyes to say a quiet prayer. 

Bill Cadmon was the pastor of Austin’s Driftwood Fellowship, a non-denominational, evangelical Christian megachurch.  It was the biggest house of worship in the world, if you didn’t count those Korean jerks and their Yoshi-yosho-buttrado-Kung-Pao thing.  Cadmon sure didn’t.  After all, he ran a live, closed-circuit feed to a whole other campus every Sunday.  Plus, his television ministry reached out to over twenty million people in more than one hundred countries every week.  And anyway, they were friggin’ Koreans.  They could just go suck it.

He stepped down off the stage and walked the aisles, pausing here and there to thumb through stacks of promotional materials piled on the seats – like he did every week.  These days it was just a spot check, but when he’d started, he’d taken a sort of pride in making sure that everything was in order; that each and every person who came in had a copy of the week’s program.  But the church had grown – exploded really – so he’d long since had to delegate that task.  And nowadays, folks got way more than just a program.  They got glossy, full-color brochures advertising all kinds of interesting, faith-based services that the church now offered.  But he still liked to walk the aisles.

As he worked his way up the lower bowl of the arena, Cadmon thought about what an insane ride it had been over the last few years.  He’d begun expanding his business empire – “
fellowship
,” he reminded himself – with a line of books, taking the catchy phrase, “What would Jesus do?” and turning it into faith-based guidance for daily living.  His most recent book –
How Would Jesus Lose Weight?
– was at the top of the
New York Times
Best Seller List, and had been there for six weeks already. 

More recently, the fellowship had begun offering a variety of End Times-related services, the most successful of which was a planning business designed to help folks get their worldly affairs in order before Judgment Day hit.  A last will and testament is great if you actually die, but what is the legal effect of being among the Chosen – those the Lord takes up to Heaven during the Rapture, before all the really bad, fiery, end-of-the-world stuff happens?  Cadmon had experts standing by 24-7, ready to help figure that out.  Of course, that kind of service would really only work if you could convince people that the end of the world was near.  But he wasn’t worried about that.  He had inside information.

He stopped and sat down at the end of a row, leaning back and propping his boots up on the seat in front of him.  Things were good.  Real good.  And now he needed to do some thinking; to figure out his next step.

There is a strange kind of quiet that comes with being in a big, empty enclosed space like that.  It hits you in the pit of your stomach, almost like a touch of vertigo.  Cadmon took a deep breath. 
What the Hell would Jesus do now?  Would he get the convertible?  Or would He just say, “Fuck it,” and go for the Turbo?

He’d just closed his eyes to ponder this weighty inquiry when the giant speakers that hung from the ceiling erupted with a furious sound – a robotic buzz saw that tore through the cavernous arena.  At the same time, every light ramped up to full brightness, flooding the building with brilliant light.  One exploded in a shower of sparks. 

The metallic racket worked its way down from a high-pitched static to a low rumble that shook the floor.  Cadmon jumped, startled by the blast of sound, and tried to stand, but his elephant-skin cowboy boot slid, and he fell awkwardly over the top of the chair, sprawling across the seats in the next row.  The noise was overwhelming, and he could barely think, but he had to get up and do something.  For a second Cadmon thought about Ray, the audio tech, wondering if the idiot was blasting his damned 80’s music again.  But then he realized that he recognized the sound. 
Shit
, he thought, disentangling himself. 
It’s the middle of the day!
 

Then it was gone.  The light and noise had quit just as quickly as they had started, leaving the arena in total darkness.  The change caught Cadmon by surprise, but he grabbed a handrail and managed to avoid falling on his face.  He crept slowly down the steps toward the main floor, his eyes locked on the scene before him.

Down on the stage, a glowing, white-orange light appeared, bobbing and hovering three feet off the floor.  In the center of the orb, Cadmon could see shapes and shadows moving as if through a window.  The light grew brighter and taller, and as the preacher arrived at the foot of the stage, the shadows resolved themselves into the shape of a very tall man.  The man stepped forward, and the light seemed to shrink and close behind him. 

His eyes were shut and his hands clasped in front of him.  At last he looked up, letting his hands fall by his sides.  “William Cadmon,” the angel said, “I am Ezekiel.”

Cadmon stopped, frozen – he couldn’t help it.  He shook the feeling off, and stormed up the steps to the stage, ready to tear the angel a new one. 

“Yes, hello again, Ezekiel.”  The angel always introduced himself as if it were the first time. 
What an idiot
, thought the preacher.  The novelty of meeting someone who’d spent time face-to-face with God had worn off.  “Can’t you just come in the door or something?” He threw his arms up in exasperation.  “Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost me to fix all those lights and speakers again?”

The angel turned his head slowly, looking down at the little human.  He glowed with a light that pulsed and ebbed, making him look like he’d just spent some quality time inside a nuclear reactor.  His eyes narrowed and seemed to Cadmon just a little bit fiery.  “You have made a lot of money since I started visiting,” he said.  “You can afford it.”

“Yeah, okay.  So that’s true,” Cadmon admitted.  And it was.  The angel had told him that if he wrote the books, they would sell, and they’d sold.  The angel had told him to start up the automated, computer-based prayer service, and now that was raking in millions.  Perhaps the most important information that the angel had shared, however, was a warning about a series of natural disasters that had struck over the last eighteen months – earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and plagues of gross things.  And that, more than anything else, was what had allowed Cadmon to grow his empire.

The preacher had started by sprinkling a few relatively benign statements about the coming Day of Judgment into his sermons.  After the first earthquake had struck Paris, he’d started a two-month series on Judgment Day and the Book of Revelation.  He was two weeks into that when the first swarm of locusts had showed up.  A week later, two tornadoes ripped through Manhattan and central London almost simultaneously.  He’d got a call that night from a producer on CNN, asking if he was available for some on air commentary.  And so he’d begun his rise to national prominence.

The angel cleared his throat and Cadmon snapped out of his daydream.  The slight smile faded from the preacher’s face, replaced by an expression that was either pain or constipation.  He gritted his teeth and glanced around to see if any of the staff was watching. 

“You shouldn’t be here now,” he said.  “It’s the middle of the goddamned day!  Someone is going to see you!”  Cadmon ran his eyes up and down the angel. 
He was
, thought Cadmon, searching for the right word,
crusty
.  Apart from the whole glowing thing, he hardly appeared angelic or heavenly at all.  And the glow really only made him look like a Chernobyl victim.  His clothing looked like a rough bed sheet or maybe a curtain. 
At least he’s got wings
, thought Cadmon.

“There is a storm coming,” said Ezekiel.

“Yeah, yeah, end of the world.  We’ve been over this.  I’m doing what I can.  I already told you—”

“No, I speak of an actual storm,” Ezekiel said, staring off into the unknown void.  “A very large storm.  One that will breach the shores of this state and those of your neighbor.  Many will perish.”

“Oh,” said Cadmon, surprised.  The angel had never before warned him about anything like that.  At least, not in Texas.  Usually, the things that happened here were relatively benign.  Fucking annoying, sure, but nobody was getting hurt by a bunch of stupid bugs or toads.  The really bad stuff struck far away, and earthquakes or floods wiping out brown people in some far-off country somewhere didn’t bother him.  In fact, he found it helpful.  A frightened flock was a good thing.  A dead flock, on the other hand, wasn’t going to keep the lights on.  A scary thought occurred to him.  “I’m not going to perish, am I?”

The angel whipped his head around.  “No,” he said.

Cadmon rubbed his chin.  “So,” he said, trying to remember the weather report he’d seen, “you’re talking about that storm in the Caribbean.”  He tilted his head and regarded Ezekiel through squinty, skeptical eyes.  “The tropical storm?  You know where it’s going to hit?”

“Yes,” said Ezekiel, “and now it is time for us to begin.”

Chapter 3.
                
Enorma Was Round, Like Sputnik

Explosions always just seem to make people go crazy.  It’s weird.  And the students at Georgetown University were not the unique and individual snowflakes they’d have you believe.  No, when Gaston Hall blew up, they went nuts and started freaking out just like people always do.