Mercury Revolts (23 page)

He supposed that he ended up here because it was a familiar
place, a sanctuary of sorts. He’d sought refuge here several times in the past.
He came here when he was in danger, or when he was feeling at loose ends. Right
now, he was both.

He should feel good about saving Grand Rapids. That had been
a good thing. But Eddie and Suzy were now Michelle’s captives. At least, he
assumed they were. Eddie had sent a transmission via Angel Band shortly before
the bomb went off indicating that Michelle’s men had found them. Eddie said
that they had a couple of Chaos Faction members with them, so Eddie decided not
to put up a fight and risk hurting Suzy. That was the last Mercury heard from
them. He had no idea where they were or what Michelle planned to do with them.
And even if he did, what chance did a lone cherub have against Michelle’s
massive security apparatus? She had the whole U.S. government at her disposal,
not to mention hundreds of angels. Perhaps it was best just to lay low.
Eventually the truth would come out about what Michelle was doing, and then she
wouldn’t be able to get away with it anymore. He was a little fuzzy on who was
going to stop her and how, but presumably things would work out in the end.
They always had in the past. Like during World War II, when it looked like the
Nazis were going to take over the whole world, but then Michelle and her
angels… OK, well, that was a bad example. It was more like the Cuban Missile
Crisis, when it looked like the U.S. and Russia were going to get into a
full-on nuclear war, but at the last minute Michelle…

It occurred to him that he couldn’t think of an example of a
potential worldwide catastrophe that hadn’t been forestalled at least in part
by Michelle and her Heavenly army. That was back when Michelle was taking
orders from the Heavenly Senate, though. When the job was done, she was always
called back to Heaven to await the next crisis. Now there was no one to call
her home, and no home for her to go to. Michelle was the ultimate authority on
Earth, and there was no one who could challenge her. Well,
almost
no
one. But there were some possibilities that were even more horrific to consider
than an all-powerful Michelle.

“Hey, Jorge,” said Mercury to the bartender. “Can you turn
that off?” The talking heads on the news had been blathering non-stop about the
explosion near Grand Rapids. They kept showing shaky video of the blast and
then three pictures: Eddie, Suzy and Mercury. Eddie’s looked like a security
camera photo; Suzy’s was her employee ID photo from the Brimstone project; and
Mercury’s was a composite drawing that made him look a little like the lead
singer of Coldplay. He resented this almost as much as the implication that he
was some kind of terrorist. Various government officials were blaming Chaos
Faction, the Babcock administration, and lax security protocols for the blast,
and crediting “quick-thinking federal agents” for getting the bomb out of the
city in time. It was repeatedly stressed that other attacks, perhaps with
chemical or biological agents, were expected. Martial law would continue
indefinitely in the high-risk cities, and the list of high-risk cities was
expected to grow as more intelligence was gathered.

Jorge shut off the TV and handed Mercury another beer.
Nobody in the bar complained; apparently all the other patrons were sick of
hearing about it too. There wasn’t anything anybody could do about nuclear
bombs going off halfway around the world, so there was no point in obsessing
over it. At least, that’s the general impression Mercury got of the sentiment
in the bar. Being rather addled at this point, he may not have been the best
judge.

In fact, it seemed that he was now hallucinating. For he was
looking at what appeared to be a small child wrapped in an overlong coat,
nursing a beer in the corner of the bar.

“Do you see that?” he asked Jorge.

“What?” Jorge replied.

“That little guy over there.”
Mercury blinked several times, but he still saw the diminutive figure.

“Sure,” Jorge said. “That’s Pete. He’s been coming in here
almost every day for the last three years. Odd looking guy, but nice enough.
Just don’t ask for his advice on anything.”

“Why’s that?”

“He never shuts up once he gets started. Always talking
about how to unstick zippers or keep mushrooms fresh or something.”

“You don’t say,” replied Mercury, regarding the tiny figure.
He realized why he hadn’t noticed the weird little guy before: the overcoat
covered most of the stool, giving the impression that he was a full-sized
person. He wasn’t hallucinating; he was suddenly seeing things as they really
were.

Mercury stumbled over to the table where the little person
sat. “This seat taken?” he asked, indicating a stool on the opposite side of
the table.

“Portugal is a free country,” said the little figure.
“For a little longer, anyway.
Power corrupts. Absolute power
corrupts absolutely.”

Mercury took a seat. “Your tips have gotten a bit more
philosophical,” he said, setting his beer down on the table.

“I don’t have much practical advice to give these days.
Everything seems so…
Mercury!”

Mercury grinned. “Good to see you, Perp. What are you doing
in Portugal? For that matter, what are you doing on the Mundane Plane?”

Perp sighed. “I’ve been here for three years. When I opened
that portal to get your friends back here, I decided to slip through myself.
Not that I didn’t trust you to defuse that bomb…”

“You made the right call,” said Mercury. “Who knows what
would have happened to you if you’d stayed in the planeport.”

“What happened to
you
?”

“Er,” Mercury said.
“Hard to explain.
I’ve sort of been on vacation. I got summoned back here by some idiot wannabe
Satanists.”

“Should have known when that bomb went off in Michigan,”
replied Perp. “Stuff explodes wherever you go. That’s two nuclear blasts you’re
responsible for. And you imploded most of Anaheim.
Plus the
Moon thing.
What is it with you and explosions?”

“Technically Anaheim and the Moon were
im
plosions.
And I’m pretty sure the second nuke was Chris Martin from Coldplay,” said
Mercury. “How did things get so screwed up, Perp?”

Perp shook his head. “Those who would give up essential
liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety.”

“But where did it all go wrong, Perp? I was here. I was
around when Lucifer was infiltrating the U.S. government with his agents. How
did I not notice? How did he manage to get demons into D.C. in the first place?
What happened to the barrier?”

“Flight 93,” replied Perp quietly.

“Huh?” asked Mercury.

“September 11, 2001. Flight 93 was one of the four planes
that were hijacked. Two of them hit the World Trade Center in New York and one hit
the Pentagon. Those were distractions, though. Flight 93 was the important one.
That’s the one that hit the Capitol Building.”

“Holy shit, Perp, that’s it!” cried Mercury. “It must have
damaged the MEOW device. How did that not occur to anybody?”

“It did,” replied Perp. “Lucifer was fully aware of it,
obviously, since he was the one behind the attacks. But he was clever about it.
Rather than send in his agents right away, he waited for Heaven to figure out
the barrier was down. He suspected that Michelle would try to take advantage of
the situation by infiltrating D.C. with her own agents. In fact, he knew
exactly which angels she would likely send, since they were mostly double
agents working for him. Once Michelle had her agents in place, Lucifer knew she
was in no position to insist that the Non-Involvement Agreement of 1791 be
honored. Over the next several years, he filled dozens of key advisory posts
inside the government with demons. Having planned for this for over a decade,
he was much better prepared to seize the reins of government than Michelle, and
by the time Michelle realized she’d been hoodwinked, it was too late for her to
say anything. The best she could do was to secretly plot against Lucifer behind
the scenes, trying to turn his agents against him. Her recruiting efforts were
not very successful.”

“Until Lucifer was captured.
And
Michelle was stranded on this plane.”

“Right.
She was perfectly situated
to take over where Lucifer had left off. And although Lucifer had managed to
fool her once, she’s quite a bit more capable than he, as you well know.”

“So that’s it, then,” said Mercury. “We’re screwed. Lucifer
put the machine in place, and now Michelle is running it. There’s no stopping
her from taking over the whole world and ruling it with an iron fist.”

“It doesn’t look good,” Perp agreed. “Most regimes built
around the personality of a charismatic leader collapse when the leader dies.
But with Michelle…”

“Yeah.”
Mercury sighed heavily. “I
wish there was something I could do about Suzy and Eddie, at least.”

“The terrorists who hang out with Chris
Martin?”

“They don’t hang out with Chris Martin!” Mercury protested.
“They’re friends of mine. They helped me get that bomb out of Grand Rapids. But
they got captured, and now I don’t know where they are.”

“Well,” replied Perp. “I can tell you where they’re likely
to end up.
Possum Kingdom.”

“They’re going to end up in a Toadies song?”

“Possum Kingdom is a state park in Texas, about half an hour
outside Dallas. A few years ago, a huge cave was discovered not far from the
park. The authorities put fences up around the area, supposedly because the
ground is unstable and could cave in. But a geologist from the University of
Texas claimed that was a bunch of bunk. And then a hiker uploaded pictures of the
fences they erected: thirty foot tall electrified chain-link fence topped with
razor wire. There are two fences, about fifty feet apart—one with the razor
wire facing out, and one with the razor wire facing in. Oh, and nobody knows
what happened to the guy who took the pictures.”

“So what?” asked Mercury
dubiously.
“They’re running some kind of top secret underground prison?”

“Have you heard of Chaos Faction?”

“Yeah, they’re the ones the government is blaming for the
bomb in Michigan.”

“Exactly.
The government keeps
trying to play up Chaos Faction as this big, bad terrorist organization,
blaming them for every kidnapping in Baghdad or natural gas explosion in
Pasadena. But I know for a fact that Tiamat and most of her minions were
captured during an attempted attack on Fort Knox.”

“Wait, Tiamat is part of Chaos Faction?”

“Of course!”
Perp exclaimed. “It’s
her organization! She started it to cause problems for Michelle, to put a few
speed bumps on the road to world domination. But Chaos Faction is a shell of
its former self. All the key members, including Tiamat, have been captured.
Which raises two key questions: first, who the hell is really running what’s
left of Chaos Faction these days? And second, where the hell are Tiamat and her
minions?”

“Well, we know the answer to number one,” said Mercury.
“Michelle has co-opted the group for her own purposes.”

“And I’ll bet you anything Tiamat and her minions are in
Possum Kingdom. And if your friends aren’t there yet, they soon will be. Along
with Chris Martin and anybody else Michelle considers a threat.”

“Where do you hear all this stuff?” Mercury asked.

“You know me,” said Perp. “I find things out. But most of
this stuff is available online. BitterAngels.net broke the story about Possum
Kingdom last year, but none of the mainstream news organizations picked it up.
I’m not sure if the news organizations are in Michelle’s pocket, or if they’re
just incompetent and lazy. Either way, the information is out there, but hardly
anybody seems to care.”

“Maybe they just don’t know what to do,” offered Mercury.

“Maybe,” said Perp. “But what’s the difference?”

Mercury nodded. It was true, as long as nobody stood up to
Michelle, nothing was going to change. But what could anyone do? Mercury was an
angel who had powers far surpassing those of an ordinary mortal, and he didn’t
have a clue what to do. Not about Michelle’s plan for world domination, anyway.
There was one thing he could do, though.

“So,” he said, “Let’s suppose you’re right about this Possum
Kingdom place. How would you go about breaking someone out?”

Perp grinned at him. “Fools rush in where angels fear to
tread,” he replied.

Chapter Thirty
        
 

Costa
Rica; August 2016

The
next day Mercury and Perp found themselves in the remote jungles of Costa Rica.
Perp claimed to have a lead on an idea for breaking into Possum Kingdom, and
Mercury, though dubious, had little choice but to go along.

“How do you even know where
this place is?” asked Mercury, as they trudged through the jungle. Well,
Mercury trudged, while Perp fluttered. They were on a sort of path, but it was
fairly overgrown and occasionally Perp would make a slashing motion and a vine
or branch would fall as if severed by an invisible machete.

“I told you,” said Perp. “I
know things. Avoid eating bright red berries.”

“Nice to know you’re back to
your old self,” replied Mercury. “Philosophical Perp was starting to get on my
nerves.”

“I think it’s just ahead,”
said Perp.

“OK,” said Mercury. “But for
the record, I’d like to say that I don’t trust anyone who lives by himself in a
remote cabin in the wilderness. It’s not normal. Also, those places smell
terrible.”

“Agreed,” said Perp. “Nobody
ever accused Balderhaz of being normal.”