Christopher Moore - Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“Loony,” said the old soldier, looking at me.

Joshua looked at me one last time, then closed his eyes and died.

“Come away, Biff,” a woman’s voice said in my ear. “Come away.” They turned me around and started marching me toward the city. I could feel a chill running over me as the wind came up and the sky started to darken under a sudden storm. There was still screaming, going on and on, and when Johanna clamped her hand over my mouth I realized it was me who had been screaming. I blinked tears out of my eyes, again and again, trying to at least see where they were leading me, but as soon as my sight would clear another sob would rock my body and the water would rise again.

They were leading me to the Gennath Gate, that much I could tell, and there was a dark figure standing on the wall above the gate, watching us. I blinked and caught a single second of clarity as I saw who it was.

“Judas!” I screamed until my voice shattered. I shook off the women and ran through the gate, swung myself up on top of one of the huge doors, and leapt to the wall. Judas ran south along the wall, looking from side to side for a place to jump off.

There was no thought to what I was doing, nothing but grief gone to anger, love gone to hatred. I followed Judas across the roofs of Jerusalem, tossing aside anyone who got in my way, shattering pottery, crashing down rooftop chicken cages, pulling down lines of hanging clothes. When he came to a roof that led no further, Judas jumped two stories to the ground and came up limping as he ran down the street toward the Essene Gate at Ben Hinnon. I came off the roof full stride and landed without losing a step. Although I heard something tear in my ankle I couldn’t feel it.

There was a line of people trying to get into the city at the Essene Gate, probably seeking shelter from the impending storm. Lightning crackled across the sky and raindrops as big as frogs began to plop onto the streets, leaving craters in the dust and painting the city with a thin coat of mud. Judas fought through the crowd as if he were swimming in pitch, pulling people past him on either side, moving a step forward only to be carried back a step.

I saw a ladder leaning against the city wall and ran up it. There were Roman soldiers stationed here on the wall and I brushed by them, ducking spears and swords as I made my way to the gate, then over it, then to the wall on the other side. I could see Judas below me. He’d broken out of the crowd and was making his way along a ridge that ran parallel to the wall. It was too far to jump, so I followed him from above until I came to the corner of the battlement, where the wall sloped down to accommodate the thickness required to hold the corner. I slid down the wet limestone on my feet and hands and hit the ground ten paces behind the Zealot.

He didn’t know I was there. The rain came down now in sheets and the thunder was so frequent and loud that I could hear nothing myself but the roaring anger in my head. Judas came to a cypress tree that jutted over a high cliff with hundreds of tombs gouged into it. The path passed between a wall of tombs and the cypress tree; past the tree was a fifty-yard drop. Judas pulled a purse from his belt, pulled a small stone out of the opening to one of the tombs, then shoved the purse inside. I caught him by the back of the neck and he shrieked.

“Go ahead, put the stone back,” I said.

He tried to wheel on me and hit me with the stone. I took it from him and fitted it back into the tomb, then kicked his feet out from under him and dragged him to the edge of the cliff. I clamped onto his windpipe and, holding the cypress tree with my free hand, I leaned him out over the cliff.

“Don’t struggle!” I shouted. “You’ll only free yourself to the fall.”

“I couldn’t let him live,” Judas said. “You can’t have someone like him alive.” I pulled the Zealot back up on the cliff and whipped the sash from around his tunic.

“He knew he had to die,” Judas said. “How do you think I knew he’d be at Gethsemane, not at Simon’s? He told me!”

“You didn’t have to give him up!” I screamed. I wrapped the sash around his neck, then pulled it tight over the crook of a cypress branch.

“Don’t. Don’t do this. I had to do it. Someone did. He would have just reminded us of what we’ll never be.”

“Yep,” I said. I shoved him backward over the cliff and caught the end of the sash as it tightened around the branch. The sash twanged when it took his weight and his neck snapped with the sound of a knuckle cracking. I let go of the sash and Judas’ body fell into the darkness. The boom of thunder concealed the sound of impact.

The anger ran out of me then, leaving me feeling as if my very bones were losing their structure. I looked forward, straight over the Ben Hinnon valley, into a sheet of lightning-bleached rain. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I stepped off the cliff. I felt a bolt of pain, and then nothing.

That’s all I remember.

The angel took the book from him, then went out the door and across the hall, where he knocked on the door. “He’s finished,” the angel said to someone in the room.

“What, you’re leaving? I can just go?” asked Levi who was called Biff.

The door across the hall opened, and there stood another angel, this one seeming to have more a female aspect than Raziel. She too held a book. She stepped into the hall to reveal a woman standing behind her, wearing jeans and a green cotton blouse. Her hair was long and straight, dark with reddish highlights, and her eyes were crystal blue and seemed to glow in contrast to her dark skin.

“Maggie,” said Levi.

“Hi, Biff.”

“Maggie finished her Gospel weeks ago,” said Raziel.

“Really?”

The Magdalene smiled. “Well, I didn’t have as much to write as you did. I didn’t see you guys for sixteen years.”

“Oh, right.”

“It is the will of the Son that you two go out together into this new world,” said the female angel.

Levi went across the hall and took her in his arms. They kissed for a long time until the angels began to clear their throats and murmur “Get a room” under their breaths.

They held each other at arm’s length. Levi said, “Maggie, is this going to be like it always was? You know, you’re with me, and you love me and everything, but it’s only because you can’t have Josh?”

“Of course.”

“That’s so pathetic.”

“You don’t want to be together?”

“No, I want to, it’s just pathetic.”

“I have money,” she said. “They gave me money.”

“That’s good.”

“Go,” said Raziel, losing his patience. “Go, go, go. Go away.” He pointed down the hallway.

They started walking down the hallway, arm in arm, tentatively, looking back at the angels every few steps, until at last they looked back and the angels were gone.

“You should have stuck around,” the Magdalene said.

“I couldn’t. It hurt too much.”

“He came back.”

“I know, I read about it.”

“He was sad because of what you had done.”

“Yeah, so was I.”

“The others were angry with you. They said that you had the greatest reason to believe.”

“That why they edited me out of their Gospels?”

“Good guess,” she said.

They stepped into the elevator and the Magdalene pushed the button for the lobby. “By the way, it was Hallowed,” she said.

“What was Hallowed?”

“The H. His middle name. It was Hallowed. It’s a family name, remember, ‘Our father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.’”

“Damn, I would have guessed Harvey,” Biff said.