Pantheocide

Chapter Seventy One

Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD

“How are you feeling Maion?” Lieutenant Grace Zachariah looked at her patient with professional concern. A concern that felt slightly ridiculous given that the size differential between them was so marked. According to the medical records, Maion-Lan-Lemuel was about 20 feet tall standing up. Fortunately, she wasn’t doing that right now. She was laying while Lemuel was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside her. The other thing that made concern seem unnecessary was Maion’s beauty. Now the bruising had faded from her face and body, she was radiant.

“I am much better thank you. But I feel sick and my skin crawls. As if there were insects underneath it.”

“That’s you getting free of your drug addiction. Didn’t anybody in Heaven tell you to just say no to drugs? I’ll get you some methadone, you’re about due for a new shot anyway.” Lemuel’s expression was one of resentment at the prolonged treatment and Grace didn’t like that. “Not a word from you Lemuel. We’re detoxing you as well, remember?”

“How long is this going to last?” There was a hint of petulance in Maion’s voice, one that reminded Grace of car trips and her little sister asking ‘are we there yet?’

She hesitated before answering, partly because of a nurse’s instinctive caution in telling patients anything and partly because any answer she gave would be a guess. When the Salvation War had started, the last thing anybody had expected was the problems inherent in treating drug-addicted angels. “If you were human, it would take between three and six months to get you cleaned up. Angels, we just don’t know. We’re only just beginning to get a handle on how daemonic and angelic body chemistry differs from ours and without knowing that, our best predictions are guesswork.”

“How is our patient Nurse?” Doctor Zinder had arrived and was reading the patient’s clipboard.

“Suffering from mild drug withdrawal problems. I’m getting her daily methadone dose to deal with that. Otherwise, much recovered.”

“Very good. Memnon is waiting outside, would you ask him to step in please?” Zinder turned to Maion. “You are looking much better. But, you must have realized by now that something is seriously wrong with your wings.”

“They won’t move.” Zinder also noted the petulant intonation.

“Let me show you why. These are called X-rays, they’re a sort of photograph that shows the inside of your body. These white things are the bones of your wings, these very bright white bits are the screws we put in to hold the long bones together while they healed. Now, these are pictures of a healthy wing, they’re of Lemuel’s actually. Compare them with yours, you can see the difference in the wing joint here. Lemuel’s is a marvel, five bones coming together in a joint that has three axes of movement. Your joint, on the other hand, is just a fused mass of bone. Left to itself, it will never heal to anything more than that.”

Maion started to cry, causing Lemuel to grip her hand and wrap his wing over her head. Zinder paused for a second, then carried on. “There is another option. There’s somebody I would like you to meet.”

Lemuel looked around, then his eyes opened with shock. “A Fallen One. What is he doing here?” The question was directed at Zinder and had a degree of anger in it.

“This is Memnon, a senior member in the government of President Abigor. Memnon lost his wings in a battle with our forces. As you can see, he got them back. I’ll let him tell you the story.”

Zinder sat back while Memnon told the story of his adventures in Iraq and Hell to the two Angels. While he did so, Zinder watched him carefully, trying to learn as much as he could from what, he had no doubt, was the most unusual meeting ever held in Earth Hospital. When Memnon finished, Zinder took over the conversation. “We can’t be sure that angels regenerate the same way daemons do. So you have a choice Maion. You can stay with wings that are present, but paralysed and useless or we can amputate them and hope that they regrow. If they do, you should have fully functional wings again, if they do not, you’ll be wingless. Up to you. Something I have to add, you’re the most advanced patient we have here. What happens with you will determine how the other Angels are treated. Some of them are in much worse condition than you are. Their wings were broken and re-broken while some have had their legs injured the same way as well. If this amputation and regrowth doesn’t work, they won’t be able to walk, let alone fly.”

Maion started crying again. “That’s horrible.”

“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” Lemuel spoke belligerently. “The Fallen Ones are our enemies, they always have been. They have plotted against us for millennia.”

“As you have against us never-born. Your arrogance wearies me as it has done for centuries.” Memnon was equally belligerent and Zinder got the same sort of feeling he did when dealing with his children squabbling over who had the largest apple.

“Shut up both of you.” Zinder looked at them both with exasperation. “Lemuel, I got the medical records from the hospital that treated Memnon. It took a little time because it is an Army facility and this is a Navy installation but I’ve got them. I’ve even got the X-rays of his wings before and after the amputation and regrowth treatment. They confirm everything he has just told you. I wouldn’t have let him even mention this without checking out his story. Listen, both of you, it’s time to let old hatreds die. Isn’t it obvious by now that both Yahweh and Satan played you all for suckers? Us too, only now we’re doing something about it. Memnon, coming here to help was a generous and kindly gesture and you should appreciate it Lemuel. But this is a hospital and I’ll have no squabbling here. Either of you causes trouble and out you both go. The only person who really matters here is Maion and all that matters is what’s best for her. Get it?”

Memnon and Lemuel looked at each other, their mouths hanging open with shock.

“Err, yes.” Lemuel was speaking for them both. “My apologies, you too Memnon. We’d better forget what happened in the past or the humans might get angry with us.”

“Doctor, the wings I have will never work again. I do not need your pictures to know that.” She paused took her breath. “Lemuel, with your permission, please let them cut off these wings. They just get in the way now. I do not want to spend the rest of my life walking through doors sideways. Even if they don’t grow back properly, I’ll be better off.”

Lemuel nodded while Zinder made a cellphone call organizing an operating theater, as much white angelic blood as they had in stock and a couple of lumberjack-grade chainsaws. Then, he left the ward to get his surgical team ready. Memnon fell in beside him. Walking beside the daemon, Zinder couldn’t help but ask a question that had been bothering him.

“Memnon, all we have learned about the Great Celestial War says that you daemons rebelled against Yahweh. Before that you were all part of the same host. Now, your superficial appearance is utterly different. What happened?”

Memnon thought carefully for a few seconds. “We were all similar once. But then, soon after we took over Hell and made our home there, the great volcano that is now the Hellpit erupted. The old stories say it was terrible with a poisoned gas that smelled of bad eggs spewing over the land. Slowly, we became changed, loosing our white coats and feathers and becoming as you see us now. Our offspring also changed, a little bit at first, then more and more until we had split into all the groups you see today. It was always said that Yahweh caused the great eruption to try and destroy us but he only partly succeeded. Satan himself made things worse by experimenting with breeding one group with another. And there was….”

Suddenly the voice he had first heard in the deserts of Iraq whispered in his ear. That is enough. They need know no more. The end of your story is still far away. With those words in his mind, Memnon fell silent.

Headquarters, Human Expeditionary Army, Heaven.

“Are the latest damage assessment pictures in?”

The officer from the National Reconnaissance Office nodded. “They are, although I suggest we do not release them for publication. Or put them on the military intranet, we’ve got a problem with leakage there. Somebody doesn’t know where their final loyalties lay. We’ve had videos of some actions leaking out already.”

“I know.” Petraeus was annoyed by the development. “We’ve got the Criminal Investigative Services looking into it. What’s the situation?”

“Pretty grim. What’s left of the Army on which we dropped the hammer is wandering away from Ground Zero. I wouldn’t call it a retreat or a rout, it’s more like they’re stunned and just getting away from the scene. They’re dying like flies as they go. We can track the various groups of survivors by the trail of bodies they’re leaving behind them. Our estimate of the force subject to the laydown was around 450,000 human levies and around 50,000 angels. By counting up survivors and the dead outside the blast zone, we think the number of dead has reached 349,000 humans and 45,000 angels. It’s still climbing.”

“Not for much longer.” The Targeteer spoke from one corner of the room. “It should level off at roughly that level now as the last of the critically-exposed die off. We’ll see another surge in six to eight weeks when the longer-term exposure cases begin to expire. From what I’ve seen of the pictures, radiation poisoning is pretty much endemic to the survivors. Some of the close-ups already show humans loosing their hair while the surviving angels are shedding feathers. None of them seem able to fly any more by the way. They’re all walking.”

“The Trail of Tears.” Petraeus was thoughtful. “What’s the radiation count like?”

“Declining quickly. We have a small plume trailing south but it’s way sub-critical. We were lucky.” The NRO Officer had pictures showing the intensity of the contamination from the initiation. A great circle around Ground Zero with what looked like the tail on a comma pointing south.

“Luck had nothing to do with it. ” The Targeteer’s voice never deviated from its flat monotone. “We waited for still air and initiated high enough to reduce contamination to a minimum. What we can see now is what there’s going to be. We’ve sent out a warning to the troops to watch out for any snow-like particles and to get under cover immediately if any are reported. What we don’t know is how the spatial geography of Heaven is going to change things. We’ve never performed an initiation in a self-contained space before. At least we know that nuclear physics is more or less the same thing as on Earth. All the parameters we measured track with our Earthside results. One thing we should worry about, a lot of the potential fall-out got blasted high. On Earth, it wouldn’t come down for months and by the time it did, it would have decayed into insignificance. Here, who knows when it will come down.”

“Safe for troop movements?”

The Targeteer thought for a second. “If we have to. Armored forces anyway. However, I would urge that we keep out troops away from the area around Ground Zero and that fallout plume. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.”

Petraeus nodded vigorously “I agree. There’s no reason to take chances with the long term health of our troops. There’s enough good ground up here to give us plenty of other options. In fact, we’ve got nothing but options. There’s no real bottlenecks we have to go through that I can see. Thank you gentlemen, I’ll study your reports in detail later. Please be available if I have any questions to ask.”

Survivors, 23 miles West of Ground Zero. Heaven

Uxhalar-Lan-Sarael stopped to vomit but his stomach was already empty and ached from the constant retching. He had suffered from diarrhea as well but now his intestines were cramping as they tried to drive non-existent waste from his body. Walking was becoming more and more tiring and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could carry on. Members of the group he had joined were dropping out all the time, collapsing by the side of the path they had been following. One of them had been the angel he had first spoken with, Ursais-Lan-Anadiel. He had seemed to have survived except for his burns and the deep lacerations from his wounds, but the white blood from his veins had continued to flow despite all efforts to stop it. The wounds had been joined by bleeding from inside when Ursais had started to vomit blood and it had seeped from his ears, nose, eyes and back passage. The constant bleeding had weakened him fast and he had collapsed by the roadside. Uxhalar had wanted to stay with him but he had died almost immediately.

Overhead, a sharp, rolling clap of thunder caused the column of survivors to look up in fear. That fear faded when they saw it was not another flash-bang weapon but simply a pair of human aircraft flying overhead. The scream of their jets followed the boom of their passage and Uxhalar saw them disappear into the distance with dull disinterest. It was a measure of the times that the human aircraft were now less of a threat than the misery they now faced. As his stomach cramped again, he seriously started to regret that the passing aircraft hadn’t turned around to bomb and strafe them. That would have been a quick release from this slow, lingering death.

“Exalted One, please do not give up. Come, we will help you.” Uxhalar felt himself being lifted up. He didn’t remember having fallen or laying in the grass but he had. A group of four humans were struggling to get him to his feet again. They lacked the strength to really help, but their devotion and the effort they were making inspired him and he staggered to his feet again. It was unbecoming for a member of the Angelic Host to thank a mere human for efforts performed on his behalf so he left them behind and once again began the laborious effort of raising his feet and taking steps further away from the horror that had destroyed this army.

He didn’t get that much further. A few hundred paces more and a fit of coughing racked his body. He made a great effort and raised his hand to his mouth, seeing on it the traces of white blood that he had coughed up. There was more splattered on the path beneath him and his mind flickered back to Ursais-Lan-Anadiel. He felt dizzy, the coughing fit had disturbed something in his mind and he tried to walk further. It was too late, his legs were no longer strong enough to support him and he collapsed again. By the time some humans tried to help him, he was dead.

Presidential Palace, City of Dis, Hell

The problem with being a Lordly Daemon was that computer keyboards were simply not large enough or strong enough to survive his use. Abigor had destroyed six keyboards before he had learned to restrain his strength sufficiently to protect them. Then, he had managed to have some keyboards made that were actually large enough so that he didn’t press all the keys down at once with a single talon-stroke. Now, with a large monitor, his own keyboard and a small but growing knowledge of what computers could do, he was beginning to learn his way around cyber-space. He even had his own webpage, created for him by a friendly human, where he could post news about the daemonic community in Hell. He particularly enjoyed reading a page called “Ask Abigor” where humans could post questions to him about Hell and its inhabitants. He had a staff to find the answers of course but it was all part of his long-term plan to rebuild the image of daemons in human minds.

In his wanderings around the internet, Abigor had also discovered the vast variety of web communities where humans met with others of their kind. They had been confusing at first for what one group took as the undiluted and indisputable truth was viciously derided as imbecilic nonsense by the rest. Then, he had realized that disagreements were actually part of human strength for in the battle to prove “their” side right and “the other” side wrong their search to find the unanswerable argument had led to ever-deeper understanding of the world that surrounded them. On the other hands, some of the people on such sites were obviously completely nuts. Abigor had just finished reading a long dispute with somebody claiming that shooting people in the head wasn’t an efficient way of killing them. Abigor would have liked to introduce the writer to Asmodeus who had been killed very effectively by repeated rifle shots to the head. Unfortunately, nobody knew where daemons, angels or second-life humans went when they died. If, indeed, they went anywhere when they died.

His break over, it was time to get back to work. Abigor closed the discussion site down, wondering briefly if humans really thought they could destroy stars, and went back to the news pages. Yahoo now had a separate section for news from Hell and from Heaven. He opened up the Hell section, and wondered, equally briefly, why it was that he got all the best information on what was happening in his own country from a computer website based on Earth. There was nothing really spectacular happening, the Orcs were rioting again, demanding to be restored to their ancestral lands and possessions. Abigor sighed at that, it meant another morning negotiating with them, the humans and the other surviving Lordly Daemons in an effort to find a solution to the Orc problem. In a way, things had been much simpler in Satan’s day.

Out of curiosity, he opened up the heaven page to see what was happening in the human invasion of Heaven. Was Yahweh having as bad a time of it as Satan had? The first headline gave him all the information he needed on that. Yahweh had sent a force to attack the humans as they invaded Heaven. The humans had destroyed it, totally. That was no surprise, Abigor would have been more surprised if they hadn’t. What did shock him, on reading the story, was that they had done it with a single weapon. His mind flashed back to an afternoon two years earlier where he had watched the human film on the making of the atomic bomb and had met with one of the humans who planned its use. He had gained the distinct impression that humans were very reluctant to use those weapons but they had dropped one on Yahweh’s force with almost no hesitation.

Idly, Abigor wondered which of the Angelic forces had been destroyed. He was prepared to bet that it had been Yahweh’s personal guard, the Incomparable Legion of Light. Abigor had fought them once, when they had been commanded by Michael-Lan in the great charge that had swept the daemonic armies out of Heaven. Now, they were gone, swept away by humans. Did that mean that Michael-Lan himself was dead? Every so often, Abigor had been kept awake at nights, wondering if his decision to surrender to the humans had been correct. Looking at the story on his screen and the pictures of the place where the humans had struck, Abigor knew he would never have to ask himself that question again.