Days of Blood and Fire

By Jason Brannon

"Is it red and black or white and black?" he muttered to himself as he tried to remember how the bomb went together. The sweat stains were beginning to spread beneath his armpits and his palms were wet, but he kept the panic at bay by studying the art on the walls. If he ever had any doubt about killing a bunch of grade school children, the pictures were enough to convince him otherwise. Sure, the crooked lines and pastel shades made the drawings seem harmless enough, but the images were much darker than the colors that made them. A black rainbow in an otherwise blue sky. A ragged hole in the clouds that bled fallen angels. Disciples impaled on stakes for their faith. And all done in crayon or marker by the unsure hands of seven-year-olds.

"Suffer the children," he muttered to himself as he worked.

The bomb wasn't coming together quite like he had hoped, and for a brief moment, he wondered if he was wrong about everything. He connected and disconnected wires in the hope of happening upon the right combination, but the only thing that came to mind was the harsh memory of a Centurion's whip and the uncontrollable urge to call down a legion of angels from heaven. The memories definitely seemed real, however, Michael couldn't be sure. It was only when his palms began to bleed that everything clicked into place. He breathed a temporary sigh of relief as he saw the stigmata and praised God for the blood. Then he went back to work on the bomb. This time the explosives nearly wired themselves.

"What can wash away my sins?" he sang as he started the timer. "Nothing but the blood of Jesus."

The wounds in Michael's hands wept crimson tears as he walked down the hallway of the school, and he was loathe to staunch the flow. He knew how much the world needed redemption and squeezed both fists until the blood splashed to the floor like fiery rain. Although he knew they didn't deserve it, the least he could do for these people was offer them a way of escape before he pushed the tiny red button and brought heaven's fire down on their insignificant little world. And so he bled.

"I am the last thing these people will ever see," he said to his horse as they rode away from the school. "And they won't eventheir eyes to have a look."

Still the blood dripped from the gashes in his palms, staining the earth. Flowers along the way drooped as if bowing to a mighty king. He plucked the blooms from the ground and placed them in a worn saddlebag.

"They deserve mercy," he said. "The people are a different story."

The church, aptly enough, was his next stop.

The priest was in the middle of a confession which made it easier for Michael to slip in unnoticed. Even from the start, the pulpit had seemed the obvious place for the bomb. Give them a little of the ol' hellfire and brimstone for old times sake, he thought to himself. One way or another, he would make believers out of them again and then make them sorry they had ever doubted. But by then it would be too late. By the sound of it, however, some people were taking stock of themselves early. From the confessional booth, he could hear what appeared to be an old woman crying for her sins, and the laughter inside him quickly died. One of the children was hurting. He finished wiring the bomb anyway despite what he felt. Misgivings were for the weak. Maybe that was why the horseman felt the strength leave his legs when he left the church.

The police station, he knew, would be trickier than the church, and he would have to be careful. But being an instrument of the Father had its advantages. Chief among them was the ability to dress the part. Once in front of the station, he adjusted his clerical collar, smoothed his hair back, and grabbed a Bible from one of the saddlebags. The horse snorted his approval and kicked up a small cloud of dust with its front hoof. Michael didn't need any further encouragement.

The officer at the front desk studied him curiously from behind the glass partition and cocked a quizzical eyebrow in his direction.

"Help you?" he said in between bites of what looked like a corned beef sandwich.

Michael put his nose against the glass and told the cop to come closer, whispering as if he had a secret that the walls might hear. The man leaned forward enough for Michael to smell the stench of meat on his breath. That smell brought back memories of Centurions flogging him until the skin broke and the blood flowed and the tender red flesh of his back was exposed to the searing heat of the noonday sun. Like a piece of meat being beaten and worked over. Oblivious to the thoughts in Michael's head, the cop smiled sheepishly revealing the hunk of corned beef that was caught between his teeth. It was proof enough of his guilt. Michael suspected that this fellow knew all too well what an innocent man tasted like, and he knew how to handle him. A few spoken words, the blink of an eye, and the policeman slumped over onto his desk, grinding the corned beef sandwich into the counter with his jaw. Michael reached through the window and snatched the keys from the fallen policeman.

Unlocking the entrance to the jail cells, he flung the door wide and peered into the black, unlit maw of the holding area, wondering whether or not he should flirt with the darkness. The flight of steps leading down into the shadows welcomed him home, and he took a tentative step. He knew something of the nature of the men held deep in the bowels of the building, however he had no idea who they were and what parts they had played in the history of the world. Maybe that was for the best.

Someone had apparently grown bored of prison life and broken all but one of the lightbulbs in the jail's hallway. That was probably why Michael never saw the hand ease its way through the bars like a snake and grab him by the shirt collar.

"Easy," the voice said with some force as it slammed him against the reinforced steel of the cell. "I won't hurt you. I just want to talk."

The man's grip on his shirt eased up, and slowly, Michael turned around to face his assailant. The man, if he could aptly be called that anymore, looked like a walking corpse. Michael could clearly see the rope burns around his neck and knew that the man had tried, if not succeeded, to hang himself. Michael thought he knew him from somewhere.

"Michael," Judas said from the darkness, and the memories came flooding back from an unknown life.

"What are you doing here?" Michael asked, knowing the man somehow without ever having met him.

"Waiting to die," Judas replied. "Waiting for you to punish us for our sins?"

"Us?"

"Us," another voice replied from out of the darkness.

"Identify yourself."

And he did, illuminating the cell in an otherworldly light that put the bare bulb in the center of the hallway to shame. Michael saw the wings and somehow knew who he was.

"Samael," he said, pulling the name up from somewhere in his subconscious. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"The feeling's mutual," the fallen angel replied.

"Who else is down here?" Michael asked, curious.

Judas spoke up. "Barabbas is here somewhere. Simon Peter's in the corner cell. Pilate's being held in solitary. There are two Centurions in the cells at the end of the hall. And then there's a spattering of onlookers who could have spoken up to turn the tide at the hearing."

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"Why else? To be cleansed by fire. That is your mission, isn't it? Revenge."

Michael nodded his head and slowly began to understand. Judas, of course, had betrayed Christ. Samael, he had heard, was the angel who had circled the crucified Jesus like a buzzard, spitting on him and laughing at his helplessness. Barabbas had been set free so the Saviour could die. Simon Peter had betrayed the Lord. Pilate had issued the order of crucifixion. The Centurions drove the nails. And the onlookers were the ones who had started it all, corrupting the world with their sins. Looking down, Michael noticed his palms had begun bleeding again, the woundsd by time and memories. It had been millennia since the crucifixion. But the images were still vivid in his mind even though he had never stood on Golgotha.

"And you accept your punishment just like that?"

"Not at all," Judas replied. "You could let us out if you wanted to. Haven't we suffered enough?"

Michael didn't know the answer to that question. But he did know that what these men had done to his Lord was inexcusable. Never mind the fact that most of them should have been dead for two thousand years. They were beasts, the whole lot of them, and he knew a fitting punishment.

"I'll take that as a no," Judas said as he watched Michael unpack the explosives, the blasting caps, the timers. Michael smiled as he wired the bomb, thinking all the while how handsomely he would be rewarded in heaven for his works down here on earth.

He left the crucifixion party with a grim sense of satisfaction, knowing that he was doing something to right the wrongs that had been inflicted upon the Father. But that didn't make it any easier to shake off the feeling that something was wrong. The vultures were circling the air high above the town, waiting for it to die so that they might swoop down and dine. That should have been a reassurance. It wasn't. The skies looked bruised and rotten like the skin of overripe fruit. That also should have been some measure of comfort. It wasn't. The holes in Michael's hands bled like eyes weeping bloody tears. That should have been proof enough of the reality of it all. Still, it wasn't. Despite everything that had happened thus far, Michael just couldn't bring himself to believe that he was doing the right thing. And yet he made no move to stop what he had already started.

Leaving his horse tied to the bumper of one of the patrol cars, Michael picked a street and began walking. He knew what was going to happen to this town in a matter of minutes and felt a little like a fly on a hunk of dead flesh. The vultures would have their dinner soon enough.

He had the components for three more bombs in the knapsack on his shoulder. All he needed now were suitable places to plant them. As he walked past it, the Post Office seemed to scream at him to feed it some plastique, and he was happy to oblige it. He knew the sorts of things that were transported in the United States mail and knew that they were better off burned to bits than in the hands of an impressionable child. After the Post Office came McAllister Park. Specifically, the gazebo. And it made sense. After all, it was here, amidst the leaves and the pigeon shit and the used condoms that the old played their games and the young took note. Yet the danger wasn't in the playing. It was in the learning. The young could glean much about cruelty and the dealing out of it from men who had seen the worst that the world could offer. Men who had escaped from Auschwitz with their German-made tattoos and their sallow skin. Men who had done their time in the state penitentiary, fighting hard to stay alive. Men who had beaten their wives when drunk and secretly slashed their skin with razor blades when sober. Men who had played the games that mattered and lived to tell about it. Michael wanted to make sure that those sorts of survival classes weren't taught anymore.

The vultures still made their rounds high above where the air was a bit fresher and the smell of death couldn't reach. And then Michael noticed that they weren't vultures.

The angel was a kamikaze diving madly toward the earth, a meteorite falling from the sky, and Michael's first instinct was to duck. But then the creature pulled out of its stall and glided across the air like an arrow. Right away, Michael could tell that this angel was different from any he had ever seen. Something about him seemed regal, princely, as though he received his instructions directly from God. Maybe it was the flaming sword that he brandished in one taloned hand. Maybe it was cabalistic symbol that was tattooed across his chest like a mark of honor. Or maybe it was what looked like the blood of murdered men on his plumage that made him an angel of death rather than mercy. An angel that defied his nature and killed because God told him to.

Although Michael was curious, he wasn't afraid. After all, he murdered in the name of the Lord too.

"It looks like you're getting ready for some trouble," the angel said.

Michael nodded his head as he dug for a cigarette.

"These people need to be punished," he remarked, at last finding a crumpled package of Marlboros in his jacket pocket.

The angel eyed the cigarettes hungrily.

"Want one?" Michael asked out of politeness. The angel nodded his head and accepted the Marlboro. He put it up to his lips uncertainly as if he had no idea how to go about smoking it. Michael smiled a little, trying hard not to let his amusement show.

"You don't smoke much?" he said. It was more of a fact than a question.

"Not really."

"Let me help you out then," Michael suggested. "I've smoked enough to become somewhat of an expert."

"Fair enough," the angel said with a smirk. "I can offer you a bit of advice on killing the masses. I've murdered enough to become somewhat of an expert."

Strangely enough, Michael believed him and decided to listen and take note.

"Don't go too fast at first," he instructed as he lit the angel's cigarette. "You'll start to cough."

"The same goes for killing," the angel said. "You really should start slow so you don't gag on the taste of it. Only a few men are born with a palate for blood. The rest develop it, building up their resistance to death little by little until it's an acceptable thing. It's a different feeling, killing a man, and you have to be prepared to lose your stomach and your humanity. Luckily, I didn't have to give up that much. After all, I'm not really what you would call human, and I've seen much worse than a little blood and gore.

"I've been at this business for a long, long time," he said in between coughing spells, "and there are some ways of getting rid of vermin that are better than others. Take, for instance, the Egyptian plagues. The swarms of locusts and the endless famines were good for starters, but they weren't enough. It took something a little more severe to get the Pharaoh's attention, and by then, it was too late for anyone to do anything but weep and let me kill their first born sons."

Michael's eyes widened a little as he realized who he was speaking to.

"Don't try to choreograph the killings or dramatize the bloodshed. This isn't cinematography. It's a judgment and you are the executioner."

Judgment. The word hung heavy in the air. Michael turned it over and over again in his mouth until it sounded right and seemed to fit. He said it aloud once to see what it felt like coming from his lips. Much to his surprise, it felt natural.

"Remember what I told you," the angel of death said as he stamped his cigarette out on the dirty pavement. "I'll be watching." And then he flew off to join the circling seraphim above. Michael continued walking up the street in search of a place for his last bomb.

Dr. Benford's office was situated on the edge of town, and it seemed mysteriously perfect. Although he didn't know why, it brought back memories of morphine and shock treatment. Michael thought of the numerous times he had been forced into a straight jacket or coerced into swallowing a Xanax and wondered what life that had taken place in. Surely not this one. This life had been used to exact God's vengeance on the weak and the heathen. Not to mumble nursery rhymes and drool uncontrollably in some padded room.

He would see what was what soon enough. The blonde receptionist had just gotten into her dirty red Toyota and pulled away when Michael slipped in the front door. The waiting room was empty which left the office silent save for the sound of carpentry work in one of the back rooms. Michael headed in that direction, going even faster once he heard the scream. When he got there the woman was in tears and rightly so. Bound to a chair and gagged with a long strip of duck tape, she whimpered as the doctor did his work on her. Michael saw the hammer go up and felt it come down as Benford drove the nails into her hands.

"Stop," Michael shouted, throwing the doorwide.

Benford wheeled on him with the hammer, his eyes aglow with torture, his skin clammy with sweat. The sadist in him died quickly as he recognized the man in his office.

"Michael," he said feverishly. A dribble of saliva ran down one corner of his mouth.

Michael eyed the hammer with caution and stepped closer, his hands tingling as if they were electric.

"Father," he said, momentarily remembering the face of God. Benford smiled warmly at his patient's recognition of him and furtively slid his free hand into thepocket of his lab coat. The hand fumbled there for a minute, searching for something, and then, finding it, went still. Although Michael couldn't tell it, the doctor was holding his breath and a syringe filled with a fast-acting tranquilizer that could bring a horse down in under a minute.

"You've returned," the doctor replied, holding his arms out to receive the prodigal son. The gleam of a needle was enough to keep Michael where he was. It was also enough to make him take stock of himself. For the first time or maybe the hundredth time, he looked at the bruised, discolored flesh of his forearms and realized that he knew that particular needle well. The woman in the chair had seen the opportunity to escape the pain, quickly fainting when Benford's attention was first diverted away from her. He scarcely even noticed her now as he and Michael circled the chair like ballroom dancers.

"You weren't supposed to break out," Benford said, the hammer still clutched madly in his hand. "I wasn't done recording all the results, and there were other bits of research I wanted to do before I let you out into the world. But my plans went sour when you got loose. Apparently you were growing immune to the tranquilizers I was giving you, and while I imagined you to be sleeping, you ran away. I looked for you, of course, but I made you in my image so I knew that you wouldn't be caught. I did, however, believe you would return."

"Looks like I did," Michael said grimly, unshouldering his backpack as he moved. "But I only came here because I had business, not because of you."

Benford tested the weight of the hammer and smiled pitifully at Michael as he made his third trip around the unconscious girl in the chair.

"Business," he said, savoring the word. "Of course. Tending to the work of God I presume."

Michael nodded. "God has grown tired of the indifference in the world. He sent me here to shake things up a bit, make people realize how lax they have become."

"Delusions of grandeur is a classic symptom of your illness, Michael. And you've had it from the start. That was the point of this entire experiment. To see just how far you would go with the lie that your mind was feeding you. You said you were a messenger sent by God to punish the world. Isn't that right?"

Michael held up his nail-scarred hands to the doctor as proof, praying all the while that Benford wouldn't get any of the blood on him. He didn't deserve to be saved.

"Fine. Fine. Yes. That's all well and good. But if you'll look closely at the girl between us, you'll notice she's just as divine as you."

Michael clenched his fists and let the blood drip from his knuckles onto the floor. It didn't eat its way through the white tile like he expected. It didn't even fizz and bubble. It just pooled like blood was supposed to. Nothing divine about that. Benford eyed the stained floor and cracked just the slightest hint of a smile.

"Paranoid schizophrenia is nothing to be ashamed of," he said as he glanced at the door and weighed his chances for escape. "But being a phony is."

The blood inched its way across the slick floor, no longer the stuff of redemption. Michael clenched his fists tighter and willed his heart to empty his veins onto the white tile.

"You may think that the Almighty is responsible for those," Benford said, referring to the holes in Michael's hands, "but I'm completely to blame for the delusion. Your mind was weak, and you needed to be part of something important. With your self-esteem, it wasn't hard to make you believe that you were a servant of God."

"I am a servant of God," Michael screamed as he let the blood flow.

Benford took a tentative step toward the exit, stopping only long enough to have one last look at the man he had made. He never noticed the sticky red pool that was creeping up on him like a slow death. He had other matters on his mind. The hammer felt good in his hands, comfortable like a weapon should, and he tipped it at Michael in salute.

"Sorry to spoil your purpose in life," he said, not really meaning it at all, "but planting those thoughts in your head was just my way of having a little fun. And the hammering? That's nothing more than my way of getting patients toup to me. I drive the railroad spikes through their hands, and they tell me their darkest secrets, the ones that they are too ashamed to say otherwise. Take this girl here for instance. Got liquored up one night and unknowingly slept with her stepfather. Isn't that wild?"

The blood had found the door by now and was spreading out in front of it like a living carpet.

"You'll burn," Michael said, hating Benford for what he was and for what he was capable of.

"In your deluded mind, I suppose I will," the doctor replied. Michael watched him take another step toward the door and knew what was coming. But Benford made no effort to hide his intentions. Instead, he gave the girl in the chair a kiss on the forehead and winked once at Michael before flinging the hammer at him and running for his life.

The hammer went wide, missing Michael's head by only inches, and Benford went for the door, missing it by even less. He had taken two strides and was into his third when his feet hit the bloody slick, and the floor was yanked out from under him. On his way down he managed to grab the doorknob and stop himself from falling. But the blood wasn't satisfied. It ran up his legs like a sentient acid, burning the sin and flesh off of him and pulling him to the floor. He screamed like a little girl as the quivering red puddle ate its way across his chest and over his face, judging him slowly for the things he had done. Michael couldn't help but smile as hed his knapsack to the sounds of a malicious doctor being brought to his knees. He didn't have to think at all about where this bomb should go.

When the blood was done with Benford, it was Michael's turn. The man had passed out, from pain or fright, which made it easier to strap the plastique to his chest. Michael slapped him hard across what was left of his jaw. Groaning, Benford raised up, steadying himself long enough to see what had been done to him and what was about to be done. The panic spread across his face like a sweat.

"What are you doing?" he asked with what remained of his lips.

"Having mercy on you," Michael replied as he connected the last of the wires. "You deserve so much worse."

"You really believe that you are on some sort of divine mission from heaven," Benford mumbled, spitting out a tooth between sentences. "Let's think about that for a moment. Why would God pick a nutcase like you to do His work? You're certifiably unstable. That's why you came to me in the first place."

"I've wondered about my sanity more times than I can count," Michael said. "And while I may not remember what happened during our therapy sessions, I do remember the call from God. It was as clear as if He were there in my mind, whispering the instructions to my subconscious, commanding me to act. You had nothing to do with it. And I wasn't crazy when I heard it. Nobody believed Elijah either when he challenged the prophets of Baal. At least not until God sent down the fire from heaven. They did, however, come around eventually. But by then it was too late."

He let the implications of this last sentence sink in and walked to the door. The stream of blood parted as surely as if Moses had been there with his staff to guide the Israelites through. Benford watched in horror as the separate red puddles flowed together like drops of crimson mercury. But he didn't scream until the slick pool of maroon came back to cleanse him of sin for a second time. Once, it seemed, wasn't enough to wash away all of his iniquity.

"You say you're an instrument of the Almighty," he screamed as the blood did its work. "So prove it. Do some healing or something. Go to the water cooler and make me some wine. Show me a miracle."

And then the blood silenced the man.

The explosives were set to detonate in reverse order in three minute intervals which meant that Benford would be the first to go when Michael hit the button. The doctor didn't know it, but it was miracle enough that he wasn't dead already. Even now, as Michael went back to the police station for his horse, the urge to start the countdown was growing stronger by the minute like a cancerous cell that multiplies and multiplies until it is a legion instead of an anomaly. The horse, meanwhile, stood where he had left it, tied to the bumper of a city cruiser. He snorted once when he saw his master and whinnied to show his fear of the coming disaster, but all Michael could hear was the sound of Benford antagonizing him over and over again.

Show me a miracle, he heard Benford saying. Make me believe in you or otherwise I won't. Convince me that you're part of some grand plan devised by God. Show me.

Clamping his hands over his ears, Michael couldn't stand to hear any more. At that moment, all he wanted to do was shut that damned doctor up, but the voice was trapped in his head. Overhead a peal of thunder shook the sky with heavy hands. It was all the persuasion Michael needed. He pressed the little red button with a smile on his face, knowing all the while that Benford's ranting and raving would be over in three short minutes. He hoped that this was what the doctor wanted. But was wiring a bomb really that much of a miracle? If so then there were thousands of would-be prophets roaming the back alleys and slums of the world. No, what he had done was something less than that, something much less.

Show me a miracle, he heard Benford saying over and over again in his mind as he mounted his horse. And try as he might, he couldn't do anything more spectacular than make a quarter disappear from one hand and magically reappear from behind someone's ear. Why was that, he wondered. God's servants were renowned for their ability to make the impossible happen. Samson tore down an entire Philistine temple with his bare hands. Joshua and his men brought down the Walls of Jericho with nothing more than their stride and a flurry of trumpets. John the Baptist even wrote The Book of Revelation after being given a divine vision from God. If these men could do such wonderful and amazing things, why, then, couldn't he also be a conduit for such holy power? Maybe Benford was right. Maybe he wasn't an instrument of the Lord. But after everything he had seen and done, how could he not be? The angels, the jailed apostles, the Centurions, Barabbas.

Michael knew that he couldn't go through with the judgment until he was absolutely sure of everything. And right now he wasn't. That meant dismantling the explosives. Benford, however, wasn't a concern which meant there were five rather than six bombs to deal with.

The horse seemed to sense the urgency of the situation, racing through the center of town, a white blur streaking past offices and storefronts. The Post Office and McAllister Park came and went, and Michael passed them by without so much as a wave goodbye. There was no harm in letting them burn. The Post Office was closed and therefore empty. The park wasn't well lit, and most people avoided it at night. Even now the sun was creeping down behind the skyline, hiding from the world, burning itself slowly out like a dying candle. Michael felt secure about leaving the park to burn. No one would be there. He was sure of it.

The jail, however, was a different story. But the people there weren't worth saving. They deserved everything they got and then some. So Michael did the only thing he could do and left the prison to burn.

The city was a haze on either side of him, passing like streaks of brilliant color fading to black. Up ahead, the church loomed like a stained-glass tomb. The rituals had become tired, and the people had long since forgotten what they meant. For them, the motions and the pantomime were enough to grant them passage into Heaven. But while their eyes were full of life, their souls were dead, and Michael saw no reason to prolong their misery any longer. Instead, he raced toward the school, hoping to stop what might well be the biggest mistake of his life. The murder of men and women were one thing. They had lived their lives without remorse and chosen to sin. The children, on the other hand, hadn't even been given the chance for redemption. And that was something they deserved.

Although it was dark outside and the school should have been empty, the parking lot was crammed full with minivans and station wagons. Michael had done his homework this time. Tonight was the annual Parent-Teacher conference which meant that not only would the students be there but their mothers and fathers would be there as well. In the beginning, that had meant killing two birds with one stone. Now, that meant disaster if he didn't dismantle the bomb.

After tethering his horse to one of the bicycle racks, it wasn't hard getting inside the school. He looked enough like a parent to pass himself off as one if the need arose. It didn't. Everyone was too busy thinking of questions to ask about their child to notice one man who had apparently come to the conference alone.

The parents had just gone into the auditorium for the general assembly and the children were on their way to the cafeteria for cookies and Kool-Aid when Michael slipped into Mrs. Henderson's class. He watched through the pane of glass in the door as the kids marched by like little soldiers. One of the children, a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl of about seven, happened to glance in at Michael as she walked by and winked at him as if she knew a secret. Something about this struck a dissonant chord in Michael, and he hurriedly dug his wire pliers out of his jacket, eager to finish what he had started. The girl tapped the boy in front of her on the shoulder and whispered something in his ear all the while keeping her eyes firmly focused on the strange man in Mrs. Henderson's class. Although the boy kept walking, there was an undisguised smile on his face. Kids, Michael thought wearily and went to work.

He had stripped the insulation off of the wires and was getting ready to clip them when the first drop of red dripped from his hands and landed on the bomb casing. It sizzled like acid, and Michael held up his palms to have a look at the weeping nail scars. The stigmata were there and so was the blood. But that was ordinary fare. Michael had seen it dozens of times before, and although the timing was odd, nothing else about the phenomenon seemed out of the ordinary. It was only as drops of blood began to pop out on his brow like beads of sweat that he began to wonder if he should just let the school go up in a ball of flame and trust that he was doing the right thing.

Then somewhere on the other side of town Benford cried out to God as his body was blown to messy little bits. Suddenly, Michael's options weren't quite so clear cut anymore. The commotion in the hall was immediate, and he knew that he had to act quickly one way or the other. He could hear parents frantically searching the halls for their youngsters, calling out their names in a roar of panic. It would only be a matter of time before someone looked in here, and by then, it might be too late to dismantle the explosive. But what about the blood and the signs of the cross and the imprint left on his brow by a crown of sharp thorns? Had he been right after all? Michael had no idea. Sure, it was possible that he was an ordained killer of God. But it was also just as possible that he was out of his ever-loving mind. He couldn't take the chance. This sort of insanity had too great a price attached to it.

He used the pair of snips in his hip pocket to clip the red wire, and the gazebo in McAllister Park exploded in a hail of toothpicks and kindling wood. He cut the blue wire and the Post Office went up in a ball of flame, scattering hundreds of smoldering letters into the night sky. With every snip that he made on the bomb's circuitry, the countdown to extinction quickened. The parents, as they were prone to do, were still screaming in the halls, scurrying toward the exits in their high heels and wingtips.

Michael knew that he had to hurry. The jail was only seconds away from being blown to Kingdom Come and the church would be next. And then the school. But only the black wire remained, and he clipped it with a sigh. Whether he was right or wrong, it didn't matter now. The explosions would never happen and he had stopped what would have been a tragedy. Or so he thought until a pair of tiny hands wrapped themselves around his neck and began to choke the life out of him. In all the commotion, he had never heard the door being eased Apparently, the children or whatever they were had come back for him.

He could feel the blood spurting from his hands, a definite sign of the truth, but now such a revelation was pointless. The crimson stains hit the floor like a sacred rain from above, like the tears of martyred saints, and Michael knew for certain that he hadn't been crazy after all. The children whispered snatches of Hebrew to each other in lilting voices that were better suited to kids than killers, but the words were lost in the air. Michael listened to the plotting grade schoolers and wished more than anything else that he hadn't cut that wire. It didn't matter now. Someone kicked him in the small of his back right above the kidneys, and he went down with a grunt. The next thing he knew numerous Lilliputian hands were holding him down while one particularly sadistic child drove newly sharpened number two pencils through the holes in his palms. The pain was blinding, like the feel of a crucifixion, and the world quickly blurred before his eyes.

When he woke up, the first thing he saw was that the bomb had been rewired. The second was that fifty small children were staring at him, the looks on their faces coming as close to hate as anything he had ever seen. And the last and most important thing was that he was only one minute away from meeting his maker. He knew now that he should have never doubted God, but that wasn't much help.

From what he could tell the explosive had been rewired exactly as he had done it before only now instead of being strapped to the underside of one of the desks it was sitting on top like something one of the children had brought for show-and-tell. Michael thought of Benford's cry for a miracle and of Samson's cry for one final burst of strength when he needed it the most. He prayed for both. The timer was down to twenty-five seconds, and the sweat was running down his face like drops of blood from a thorny crown. Which would it be, he wondered, martyrdom or extinction?

It appeared to be neither as the large, pale horse he rode in on stormed through the window, dragging what was left of the bicycle rack along behind it. The children scattered like flies from offal, wanting only to get away from the confusion and the giant hooves. Michael screamed to his horse through the chaos. Eyeing him with something akin to sentience, the steed clamped its teeth down on his leg and pulled him out of the room, saving him from fire and judgment.

Some of the first graders weren't frightened by the horse, however, and had taken up arms. They stabbed at its flanks with dull scissors and sharp number two pencils, kicked at it with their tennis-shoed feet, held tight to its mane in some desperate attempt to stop its rescue. But the horse, despite its wounds, never slowed down until they were safely in the parking lot, wedged between a Volkswagon Beetle and a station wagon.

With only five seconds left to go, Michael looked to the night skies and thought about how perfect they looked with tiny pinpricks of starlight punching holes in the darkness. And then the explosion shook the night sky like thunder, and the fire lit the heavens like the Bethlehem Star. The blaze gleamed in Michael's eyes like a religious zeal, and he couldn't help but think that his purpose in life had been confirmed.

After the blast came the buzzards, circling the planets, still waiting for the town to die. Michael turned his eyes toward heaven and watched as one of the stars fell from the sky, burning like an ember on its way down. And then it swooped like a hawk, skimming the ground for only a brief second before rejoining the others. Although he couldn't be entirely sure that his eyes weren't deceiving him, he thought he saw a cigarette jutting from the death angel's mouth. The funny thing was he was smoking it like he had done it hundreds of times before. Apparently, the seraphim had learned and he had too. Maybe he was a part of God's plan after all even though the wounds in his hands had healed and the sight of frail grade school limbs jutting up from the rubble like weeds in a cemetery still made his stomach roll. He would just try to remain a stoic and not look at what bothered him. Misgivings were definitely for the weak. And if he wanted a place in the court of a God who would spill the blood of children, he would have to become like a rock.

Silently, Michael threw up underneath the Volkswagon and prayed for fortitude. After all, he would probably kill again, and the prospect was a distressing one. Unlike the angel of death, he hadn't acquired the taste for spilling blood yet. And the scary thing was that, given time, he would. Lying on his back, struggling to keep the remaining contents of his stomach down, Michael looked at the stars again and thought they seemed even further away than ever. The god who ruled them was impossibly distant. Either that or Michael just didn't have the strength to reach him.

With the night spread out above him like a celestial quilt, Michael thought of what a great price heaven demanded and then considered how easy hell was. He didn't know if he could kill again but knew that he would have to if he wanted access to the Kingdom. It would have almost been easier to burn. But that wasn't what he wanted. He only hoped that the angel had been right about needing time to get used to the idea of murder because his palms were beginning to tingle and the blood was starting to flow. Downhearted and desperate, Michael did the only thing he could do and threw up again, hoping all the while that he actually was crazy while knowing in his heart that he wasn't. Oblivious to everything but the death below, the vultures swooped through the sky, and Michael knew that they would destroy what was left of the town once he left. That only made the bleeding worse.

The death angel soared through the darkening sky like an eagle, smoking his cigarette and eyeing the world below. Michael watched him darting in and out of the clouds and knew that there was more to all of this than he could possibly know. And yet he was almost afraid to find out the whole story. The angel obviously knew more than he let on about. Someone that close to God had to.

Michael watched him swoop and dive among the stars, so close to the creator and so far from earth. And it made him think about how lucky that angel was to know his role in the grand scheme of things. He wished more than anything else that God would give him some sort of clearly defined message about who he was and what he was supposed to do. But he knew that things like that rarely happened.

The angel seemed to smile as if reading his thoughts. Michael watched as he pulled a piece of paper out of his plumage and begin to fold it into a familiar shape. Then, once he was done folding the paper, he let it go. Not surprisingly, it didn't fall. It didn't plummet. Instead, it glided like a feather on air. The paper airplane landed at his feet, and for the first time he noticed that the paper used to make the aircraft had been torn from the Book of Revelation. Unfolding the scriptures, he noticed that a particular verse had been highlighted from the sixth chapter. His horse snorted in anticipation of the message.

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over a fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

After all this time, he had been right. Although never in a million years would he have imagined that he would have this great a role in the end of the world. And even now the earth was coming apart at the seams as the other three horsemen did their work. The death angel looked at him from above with something akin to pity, and then he flew away, having finally seen the man who would help usher in the apocalypse. He knew that Michael would soon be a hated man and knew all too well how that felt.

From somewhere in the distance, the sirens were starting to wail, and Michael mounted his horse, a little regretful that he couldn't stay and watch. In the end, Benford had been wrong about the mission and he had been right. Never mind the hammer and nails, the syringes, the hypnotic suggestions, the schizophrenia. Those things didn't matter now that the town was in flames. Certainly, he might have been a paranoid schizophrenic and a little crazy in the head. But maybe that was the sort of person it took for this kind of calling. Who was to say how many other lunatics were walking around the city babbling about angels or demons while the rest of the world laughed? And who was to say how many of those lunatics were telling the truth? Maybe it was just possible that the insane were one step closer to heaven than the rest of the world. Maybe that was their mark of redemption, their blessing. The ability to know that the impossible was true. And maybe he was one of the blessed. His anointment, one of blood and insanity.

The sirens were close now, and the end was nigh. But he still had work to do. As he raced out of town on his horse, Michael thought to himself that misgivings were definitely for the weak and that he had never felt stronger in his entire life. Not so strangely now, his palms were beginning to bleed again. And for once that felt like more of an assurance than a curse.

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