Whitley Strieber: 2012: The War for Souls

To one side was a line of elaborate gas grills, all black and chrome. He recognized that they were Strathmores from home, the brand he had on his own deck, except that these were limousine models, with twelve burners instead of the usual four. Most of them were rolling spits, and on them some of the victims still twisted and squirmed. Behind each grill hung a complete body molt on a tall spike, a pale skin attesting to the youth and therefore tenderness of the person under preparation.

Echidna pointed to an empty grill. “That’ll be you,” she said.

He wanted to try to run, anything to avoid what seemed inevitable. But there was more, because he saw that this party was not to celebrate his capture, or not only that, it was also to celebrate an enormous event that was unfolding in a valley behind the building.

In the center of this valley was a gigantic circular lens of purest black, its surface reflecting the wan midday sun. And around it, stretching to every horizon, were what must be millions and millions of seraph, ready to pour through the moment the signal was given. He saw men, women, children, heard the booming of syrinxes, the chatter and whoops of other animals, and above it all the excited, argumentative shrieking of the seraph themselves as they jostled for position and accused one another of trying to break the baskets of black, oblong eggs the women all carried.

He assumed that he would die here today. He’d been living for years in an extremely dangerous situation with a wiped memory, and that made you vulnerable—so vulnerable, in fact, that it was probably just a matter of time before you ended up going through the funny little door in the woods. He loved his poor family, though, his striving, brilliant, lovely family. What would happen to them? Could they shift, he wondered? Did they, perhaps in secret, the children under their covers at night, Brooke in the privacy of her early mornings?

Ann had sidled closer, and he thought maybe he could cause a little confusion. In this class-ridden society, she was bound to have some prerogatives. Time wasn’t on his side, obviously, but distraction might be.

He turned to her. “Must I?”

She squared her shoulders. “Of course you must.”

He went toward her, and thus also toward the wall behind her.

“Guards,” Echidna said mildly. “Stay with him.”

Samson came, and with him his heavily armed escort.

Wylie was still bound, of course, but he came to Ann Coulter and looked down at her. Her scales fluttered and surged, and a black substance that smelled of sulfur began to ooze from under her eyelids.

“Ann,” her husband hissed, “you’re compromising yourself.”

She was really steaming. She loved a man in bondage, that was clear.

Wylie saw that he had a moment, and only one, and it was this moment. He opened his mouth and drew his tongue along the backs of his teeth in the best imitation of a whore that he could imagine.

She tittered. Her breath had in it the flat muskiness of death.

“Will somebody please remove these children?” Mugabe shouted. A number of them had foregathered to watch the fun.

“Part of their education,” Echidna said. Her husband now joined her. Wylie had forgotten the name of this huge being, but he was peerlessly imposing in his sleek black suit, with his shimmering skin and brilliant, watchful eyes. Another ancient ruler riding the ages on a foam of clones.

He tilted his head and felt Coulter’s kiss invading his mouth like a soaked chaw of somebody else’s tobacco.

With all the power in him, his every muscle singing, his whole heart and soul and mind devoted only to this one movement, he sprang upward. These lizard forms were not as earthbound as human bodies. They didn’t feel as much, either, not pain, not love, not pleasure. But they were ferociously strong, and he was strong, he had kept himself well, understanding now the obsessive hammering away he had done at Gold’s in Wichita. He’d scared people, the way he would swim laps like a machine. He hadn’t known why his body was like this, just that he needed the swimming, the running, the boxing, the karate, all of it, needed it and devoured it.

The guard had made one mistake, early on. He’d seen him as human and bound him as human, careful of the delicate skin of a much more fragile creature than a seraph. He ripped his arms free with ease.

Unfortunately, the gun had gone. They’d left it with him only to amuse themselves with his disappointment when it was taken. “These sell for a nice price,” the guard had said as he removed it.

For a moment, there was nobody between him and the great control panel. He grabbed a lever, pulled it. Grabbed another, did the same. The action was so damn satisfying that he growled, he screamed, as he pulled another and another.

Echidna roared, her husband—Beleth, that was the name—leaped toward him—and came crashing into Mugabe, who threw himself into his path. Samson turned, and Ann Coulter slashed him with a molting hook, drawing his skin open and revealing the muscles beneath. He shrieked in agony. It felt good to draw off dry molt, of course, but raw like this, it was torment.

Coulter Union! Her human disguise was brilliant—a spokesman for the aims of the Corporation so extreme that she made them look ridiculous.

Wylie leaped, giving Beleth a head kick that he could feel smash the skull. Gabbling, his brains flying, he pitched back into his own onrushing guards.

“Samson’s aircar,” Ann shouted. “Go!”

“It’s ensouled!”

“Of course it is, you damn fool, go!”

There was a whispering crackle and Ann flew into a thousand red chunks. One of the guards now turned his weapon toward Wylie, who hit the floor as he pushed Echidna into the line of fire.

Her legs and bottom half, spurting fountains of blood, ran a few steps and collapsed at the feet of the surprised guard, while the top half, which had hit the floor smack on its bloody, waist-level base, uttered whistling gasps, waved its arms, and tore at its hair as shrieking, laughing children, who had mistaken the whole thing for a game, surrounded it, running in and pinching and squealing and then running away.

As Wylie crossed the floor, he heard the snicker of more guns. Then a dozen outriders came swinging down from above on webs like thick ropes dripping with glue. But he was outside now, and the aircar was waiting there, its now unattended motorcycle escort lined up neatly on the ground.

He kicked them over and dove into the interior. Expecting the car to resist the entry of what would be a known enemy, he yanked the door down with all his might.

“Hello, Brother,” the car said, and the voice hit Wylie with a shock like freezing water and the joy of the first morning of the world.

He hadn’t heard his brother speak aloud in over thirty years, but he recognized his voice instantly.

When Wylie was just a tiny boy, his beloved older brother had been killed by Corporation marauders and his soul kidnapped. His brother had been a great soldier. They’d kept his Medal of Valor and his various orders in a glass case in the family room, proud mementos. Wylie had gone to the human world because it took courage, and he wanted to show that he, also, had the ability to fight well for the Union.

They swept into the air. “Brother,” he said, “did they steal your soul?”

The car did not answer, and a flash of unease went through him. Abaddon was a place of deceptions, so maybe—

But then he looked down at what they were circling, and saw that the lens below him was now surrounded by as vast a crowd as he had ever seen. But things were not going well. The blackness of it had turned angry red, and it was boiling like a lava pool, and the surging crowd, in trying to escape, was instead falling in from all sides. Smoke and steam rose from the massive pyre.