Paul Christopher: The Lucifer Gospel

She stooped, ducking low. Her nightmarish adversary was now directly below her, scanning the little enclosure. There were several ways she could have gone, but for the moment he hadn’t thought of looking up. His robe was charred along one edge and he was limping. It looked as though she had slowed him a little. He was making soft, animal noises, head slowly turning as he examined the area. Finn edged back, trying to get out of his potential line of sight should he suddenly look upward. Her foot sagged into a soft spot in the roof and a chunk of mortar or brick dropped down noisily into the room below. Instantly the man’s eyes flashed up. Finn didn’t wait. She turned and ran, heading for the far edge of the roof as the man with the machete began to climb the ladder, bellowing with rage or pain or both.

Finn reached the far side of the small building, paused, lurched then launched herself across the five-foot gap, landing hard on the next roof, the gravelly surface tearing at the palms of her hands and shredding the knees of her linen pants. She rolled upright and saw the son of a bitch with the sword in his hand stumbling across the far roof, one foot dragging. She looked ahead and to the sides. The next roof was closer, so she ran toward it and jumped the narrower gap easily, trying to keep herself lined up with the round mosque.

She leapt over a low parapet between two adjoining death houses and kept on going, feeling her breath hot and desperate pumping from her burning lungs. She turned for an instant and gasped out loud. Somehow the swordsman had managed to drastically shorten the distance between them, limp and all. Reaching the edge of the roof she stopped, horrified. It was twenty feet across open air to the next roof and fifteen feet to the ground. Below her was a bare patch of earth and several crumbling gravestones. Someone had arranged a scrap of cloth between poles to create a makeshift awning. She had no choice. She jumped, aiming for the sagging cloth.

Finn dropped, turning her shoulder with the fall. She crashed through the ragged piece of fabric and splintered the frail structure that held it up. A woman screamed, and there was a second crash as the few pots and pans that made up the kitchen Finn had just demolished clattered to the ground. Finn had a quick impression of a shrouded woman carrying a naked, wide-eyed child, and just beyond a piece of billboard with a line of Arabic script and the English word “Dreamland” in bright orange type.

Directly above her she heard a guttural roar, and suddenly the swordsman dropped the wreckage of the woman’s awning and stood in front of her, legs spread wide, the huge blade raised in his arms. He grunted out some incoherent oath and charged. Finn grabbed a tattered piece of the awning and pulled it downward into the man’s face, confusing him for a split second. To the left, on a raised stone coffin, were the plucked and gutted corpses of half a dozen pigeons, their ruffed heads severed at the neck and piled beside the bodies in a heap, eyes glazed, beaks wide. The cleaver that had done the job lay nearby, the blade still sticky with blood. Off to the side a green buzzing cloud of shiny-winged flies danced above a small wooden bowl that was filled with the small creatures’ entrails. Reaching out, Finn grabbed the cleaver and swung it blindly, feeling the heavy jolt as the blade cut into flesh and slid hard across bone. A strange high-pitched scream rose into the dense, filthy air, and Finn ran again.

She turned out of the small corner of abandoned ground she had tumbled into and found herself in a long, dark alleyway, a blank wall rising up in front of her like a cliff. Looking up she saw the familiar tear-shaped windows, with the chicken coop structure just visible on the right. The high wall had to be the rear of the mosque near the motorcycle.

Behind her she could hear the pounding of the swordsman’s bare feet on the path and his labored breathing, but she didn’t even try to look back. Instead she tried to run faster, eyes moving to the left and right. There was no door at the end of the dark, narrow passage, no ladders or opening to the side, no way out. It was a dead end. There was nowhere else to run, no other option except to turn and make a futile stand that could only end in savage pain and final oblivion.

The one faint hope was a window in the wall of the mosque, but as she continued to run forward she saw that it was much too high to reach. Besides, it was covered with an ornately carved and decorated wooden screen. It was no use, she was as good as dead. She looked on the ground in front of her, desperately hoping to find something she could use as a weapon, but there was nothing except hard bare ground and the ever-present layer of dust.

She hesitated, half turning to meet her fate, then turned back to the mosque, seeing a movement and a flash of color on the periphery of her vision. There was a crash and the wooden screen that blocked the high window shattered outward and a figure in a pink T-shirt appeared.

Baqir, the Care Bear bandit.

The boy yelled something incomprehensible in Arabic and leaned out of the window, extending both arms down the pale wall of the mosque. Beyond him Finn could see several of his young companions, anchoring him from behind. In a last frantic burst she reached the foot of the wall and jumped, clutching for the boy’s outstretched hands. She felt him grip her wrists and drag her upward. From behind her came a rush of air and the clattering smash of steel on stone as the swordsman hacked upward with his blade, missing the stroke, the machete biting into the wall instead of her flesh.

Baqir and his gang hauled Finn through the broken window and into the cool semidarkness of the mosque. They were on a raised gallery edged with more wooden screens like the one that had covered the window. Below was an empty prayer space covered with beautifully woven carpets facing a tall altarlike structure. Above there was nothing but the yawning emptiness of the dome, the arching barrel of the vault decorated in fantastic, complex mosaics of tile in blues, greens, and gold, like the sun shining down on the fields and streams of paradise.

Baqir and his friends pulled her toward a narrow flight of steps, then hurried her across the carpet-covered floor to an arched doorway on the other side of the high, open space. They headed out into the smoky haze. Ahead, two young boys were playing marbles on a gravestone. Baqir barked an order. The marble players looked up, replied quickly, then ran off. One of Baqir’s shorter lieutenants tugged at Finn’s sleeve and gestured with a word. They moved quickly down a broad pathway and through an old wrought-iron gate that led out into a surprisingly green garden of flowers growing in front of a small but obviously prosperous mausoleum, its walls freshly whitewashed, its windows covered with ornate wooden grilles.

Led by her crowing, chattering escort Finn raced down a narrow alley then burst out into a wider area bounded by more gravestones and awning-covered areas of shade like the one she’d crashed through a few moments before. It was another version of the animal market. The stench was almost overpowering. In one corner a rough table was stacked with what Finn knew had to be freshly butchered camel legs, lumps of yellow bone protruding from severed flesh and blood-clotted fur. Buckets were lined up, filled with goat, donkey, and sheep entrails. Old jars, tins, and drums stuffed with overflowing slabs of cow liver and raw fat sat cooking in the roasting sun. A hundred people crowded into a space no bigger than a couple of ordinary parking spaces.

“Ya’la! Ya’la!” a little boy beside her yelled, dragging her across the market. Small hands pushed her from behind, and ahead Baqir scouted the next alley. Less than a minute later, gasping and exhausted, Finn stumbled out into the court where she and Hilts had left the Norton. Baqir, grinning broadly, eyes flashing, pumped his fist triumphantly into the air. Finn made her way over to the bike and leaned on it, chest heaving. Relief welled up in her with a wracking sob. Suddenly her new sidekick screamed.