Mercury Rests Read online

  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.

  Contents

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  WITH THANKS TO:

  NOTES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  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

  PROLOGUE

  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.

  ONE

  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.”

  “OK,” said Mercury, trying to be patient. “But what is this place? A basement? A bomb shelter?”

  “It used to be a sort of train station,” Ernie said. “A long time ago. So, I don’t mean to be inhospitable, but where did you come from?”

  “Er,” Mercury started. “It’s difficult to explain. There was a sort of science experiment that went wrong. I got, well, imploded, and I ended up here.”

  Ernie nodded sympathetically, as if that explanation made perfect sense. Or at least as much sense as anything else in his experience. Ernie gave the impression of somebody who had pretty much given up making sense of things.

  “This may sound like a stupid question,” Mercury went on, “but do you know what plane this is?”

  Ernie nodded and smiled.

  Mercury frowned. “Well?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” replied Ernie. “I was just agreeing that it was a stupid question. We’re not in a plane. I thought I mentioned this was a train station.”

  “Yes,” replied Mercury, trying to remain patient. “But where is this train station?”

  Ernie looked confused. He gestured with his hands and spoke slowly. “It’s...right...here.”

  Mercury bit his lip in frustration. Is Ernie really this dense, or is he screwing with me?

  He began again: “OK, how about this: how do I get topside?”

  Ernie smiled and pointed. “Stairs that way. But there’s nothing up there.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? There has to be something up there.”

  Ernie nodded. “No, not really.”

  Mercury sighed. “I have to hand it to you,” he said. “You’ve got a gift for making a guy not want to ask any more questions.”

  He pulled another card from his pocket, squinting to read it in the dim light. “Six of diamonds,” he said to Ernie. “Got anything you want to say about that?”

  Ernie shook his head.

  “OK, then,” said Mercury, holding the card in his fingers. A flame appeared.

  Ernie smiled the way one might smile at a cat trying to bat at a bird fluttering on the other side of a window.

  Mercury shook his head and walked alone into the darkness.

  Soon he found a staircase leading up. A dim gray light filtered down from somewhere above. He trudged up the steps.

  He found himself on what must have been at one time a busy city street. The concrete sidewalk was badly cracked and littered with debris. An eerie horizon of dilapidated skyscrapers lay in the distance. The sky was a dark gray, and the cold air hung close, completely motionless. Beyond the skyscrapers an oppressive gray fog hung in the distance. Mercury shivered.

  “Whatcha doin’?” barked a voice from behind him, causing him to drop the flaming card again.

  Mercury spun around. “Damn it, Ernie. Stop doing that! I’m having a moment here.”

  “Sorry,” replied Ernie. “There’s nothing out here, you know.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?” Mercury said irritably. “This isn’t nothing.”

  “Hmm,” said Ernie doubtfully. Then something seemed to dawn on him. “Oh, wait, here’s something!” Ernie took off on a sort of slow, loping run. He moved more quickly than Mercury would have thought, given his apparent age. Mercury followed him dutifully.

  Ernie climbed a pile of rubble that seemed to be the remains of a collapsed brick building. “Check it out!” he said excitedly, pointing to something in the distance.

  Mercury came up behind him and looked in the direction Ernie was pointing. Something was sticking up out of the ground in the distance. At first it looked to Mercury like a man holding an apple above his head. Then he realized what it was.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s the Statue of Liberty!”

  “Oh,” said Ernie, scratching his head. “Is that what you call it? We just call it the Big Apple Guy. You know, because of the big apple he’s holding. Anyway, that’s about all there is to see around here. Unless you like rubble. We have lots of rubble.”

  “It’s not an apple,” Mercury said. “It’s a torch. And technically it’s a she. She’s pretty badly corroded.” A light went on in Mercury’s head. “Wait a second, this is Earth!”

  Ernie gave him an odd look. “Well, of course it’s Earth. Where did you think we were?”

  Mercury shook his head in disbelief. If this really was New York, then many centuries had passed since he left. Somehow by setting off the anti-bomb hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth, Mercury had opened a portal to the distant future. His heart sank as he realized that he would probably never be able to return to his own time. He had assumed that he would be transported by the anti-bomb to some backwater plane and that it might take some doing to get back, but this was something entirely unexpected. Not even the angels could make time run backward.

  He turned to face Ernie. “I suppose next you’re going to tell me that Earth is ruled by monkeys?”

  “Monkeys!” exclaimed Ernie, shaking his head. “Of course not. I mean, I understand there were a few rough years a while back.”

  Mercury’s brow fu
rrowed. “Wait, are you saying that Earth was ruled by monkeys at one point?”

  “Only very briefly,” said Ernie. “It didn’t really work out either time.”

  “Either time?” repeated Mercury incredulously.

  Ernie nodded. “It was during the second term that we realized monkeys probably weren’t the best choice. I say ‘we,’ although of course I wasn’t around. This was many years ago. Our records aren’t very good, but as I recall, it went Republicans, Democrats, Democrats, Republicans, monkeys, Democrats, Republicans, monkeys.”

  “Hmm,” Mercury replied thoughtfully. He was starting to see the appeal of the monkeys.

  “So,” Mercury continued. “What year is it?”

  Ernie seemed to cringe slightly at the question. “Maybe we should go back underground.”

  “Underground? Why?”

  “It’s not really safe out here. The fog drives people a little crazy.”

  Mercury wondered what might qualify as “crazy” in Ernie’s estimation. As if in response, there was a shout in the distance. It sounded like “Hwaaaaaah!”

  “What the hell is that?” Mercury asked. But when he turned back to Ernie, he saw that the old hobo was retreating back down the steps into the darkness. He heard the shout again.

  “Hwaaaaaah!”

  Mercury shrugged and walked toward the sound. After a few hundred feet, he rounded a pile of rubble to encounter a surprising sight: two men were playing Ping-Pong on a table set up in the middle of the street. They were engaged in an intense volley and appeared oblivious to his approach. The man on his left was sinewy and compact, with a stern expression on his face. His age was difficult to determine; at first glance he could have passed for thirty, but his sunken eyes and the lines worn in his face hinted at many more years. The man on the right was gray-haired and more sturdily built, but not much taller. His age too was difficult to determine. He had a bemused look on his face, as if he knew something that his opponent didn’t. There was something familiar about him, but Mercury couldn’t at first place where he had seen him before.

  “Hwaaaaaah!” the gray-haired man howled, the ball caroming wildly off his paddle toward Mercury. Mercury caught the ball and smiled apologetically. The smile froze as he realized who the gray-haired man was.