“It’s fine Officer, We’ll be fine.”
“Officer, its it true the Empire State has been hit?” The voice had a German accent, a tourist? There were such things even with the war on.
“No. All the damage is on the west side of the Island. The last four or five hits went into the Hudson so I think we’ve seen the worst of things here. Just stay calm and everything will be all right.”
She urged her horse forward and moved along the path, watching out for any signs of trouble. Some people faded away into the shadows when they saw her approach but she had neither the time nor the ability to chase after them. Overhead, there was another streak across the sky as a rock hurtled over their heads. A few seconds later, there was the orange glow of a hit on land. It looked like New Jersey was about to get its baptism of fire.
Or was it? The orange streak of the falling rock was immediately answered by two brilliant white streaks form the ground. They screamed overhead, the supersonic bang from their passing causing another wave of panic to start forming in the crowds of refugees. The white flashes ended as quickly as they had formed, vanishing through the portal high over New York.
Plain of Mapheloistamitos, Hell
Azrael knew that the attack was running into its final stages. His work teams were having to bring the great rounded 100-ton rocks in from further away and that meant an ever-increasing delay between the strikes. Soon, he would have to close down this site and evacuate the area. Still, it had been a highly successful attack, almost a hundred rocks had been dumped on the city the other side of the portal. The seventh Bowl of Wrath had been well and truly poured on the humans below. Now, all that was left was to invade them with the Angelic Host and all would be well. Normality would be restored and the divine order of things returned to its rightful place. What, therefore, happened next was the cause of a very brief episode of cognitive dissonance on his part.
The Ares missile was a kludge. Basically it took the airframe and engine of the GMD interceptor and armed it with an EBU-6 warhead. This was simply a larger and more powerful version of the weapon used to close down Belial’s Sky Volcanos Everything non-essential had been stripped out of the system to get the greatest possible payload and that included the guidance system. It was, therefore, good shooting that put both missiles through the portal over Manhattan island.
The fuzing system was also lightweight, a simple timer that had been pre-set to explode the warhead a few seconds after launch. The ground computers had known to a millisecond how long it would take for the missiles to reach the portal. They’d added a few milliseconds on top of that to let the missile get some height above the portal and that had been that. Both EBU-6 warheads had exploded in the same millisecond. It was as near to simultaneous as could be managed.
The explosions shut down the portal instantly. They also devastated the arrays of copper rods that had made the portal system possible. The explosions also tore apart the pre-notched steel coil that surrounded the warhead and turned it into a hail of deadly spinning steel fragments that scythed through the work teams that were still gathered around the portal site. Finally, as the metal fragments tore into him, Azrael realized that Michael had been right, it was extremely unwise to underestimate humans. It was a lesson he would need to remember.
News Studio, KOCO Television, Oklahoma City
“And the latest news is that missiles fired by the New York Defense System have closed the portal. A total of 98 rocks each weighing an estimated 100 tons have landed on Manhattan and New Jersey, inflicting catastrophic damage on the west side of Manhattan Island. Known casualties are already in the thousands and we will be getting more accurate figures as the dead start arriving in Hell. Already questions are being asked, why did it take so long to fire the missiles that ended the attack? What went wrong with the system that kept the portal from being closed until after this catastrophic damage had been suffered? This is Brandon Breyer reporting from the Bronx in stricken New York City.”
“Thank you Brandon. Well, there is no doubt that this is the long-awaited Seventh Bowl of Wrath, supposedly Heaven’s knock-out blow against us. Well, we’re still standing Yahweh. The hero of the attack was Norman Orwell, Curator of the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space museum in New York. After the carrier was hit by one of the rocks, he led an emergency team of museum staff into the wreckage to pull out the survivors from the destroyed ship. Thanks to his efforts, and those of his colleagues of course, nineteen of the twenty two people known to be on board the Intrepid were rescued alive. Sadly, just after completing this daring rescue, Doctor Orwell suffered a heart attack and died from his exertions. We will be broadcasting an interview with him shortly.
“The surviving senior managerial staff of the Goldman-Sachs bank have just released a press statement. It states that their headquarters building was totally destroyed by a direct hit from a rock with heavy casualties to the partners and senior staff. Due to the resulting reduction in their pension commitments for the next thirty years, the profitability of the bank will be significantly improved this year. As a result, the surviving partners have awarded themselves a special bonus to reflect the improved financial standing of Goldman-Sachs.”
Anita Blanton brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Well, nothing to be surprised at there I suppose.” She looked away for a moment and her eyes widened. With a level of relish in her voice, she then resumed. “A late breaking piece of news. The deceased partners and senior staff of Goldmans-Sachs Bank have applied for a restraining order against the living partners and senior staff, requesting that they be restrained from awarding themselves a bonus using the assets of the bank pension fund. The deceased members of staff claim that the terms of their contracts do not stipulate that they will lose rights to their pensions by dying and that they are entitled to continuance of their normal pension payments. They also claim that they are being discriminated against simply because they are dead and that they are fully entitled to any bonus payments that are made to living bank members. They are requesting the ACLU take up this case on their behalf.
“Attorneys for the deceased members of Goldmans-Sachs, the law firm of Bleedum, Grabbit and Runne, have also filed suit before the Federal Court asking for an injunction against the Securities Exchange Commission prohibiting the SEC from cancelling the trading licenses of the deceased Goldman-Sachs employees. Filing the action, attorney William Crook said ‘Being dead is no reason why somebody should not be a good banker.’ The case is expected to go to the Supreme Court before any resolution is reached.”
“Yes, Anita, but whose Supreme Court? There’s a lot of dead Justices in Hell. They could end up claiming jurisdiction.”
“Don’t ask me Brandon. I just read the news. On to our next item. With the first oil supplies arriving from Hell, the civilian oil price dropped below three hundred dollars a barrel today for the first time in almost two years…. “
Chapter Fifty Six
Interrogation Room, DIMO(N) Field Facility, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
“I have nothing to say.” Kathryn Branch had been left with little to hold on to in her life. Her family were either dead or under arrest, her faith had been shattered with the conquest of Hell and the war against Heaven. The long spell in a woman’s prison had robbed her of her values and self-respect. She’d even lost the ‘modest’ clothing she’d worn from choice. Now, she had to wear a standard women’s prison overalls, orange and cheap. All she did have left was her dogmatic refusal to answer questions and to that she clung desperately.
“Now that is unfortunate.” Agent-In-Charge ‘Kamikaze’ Smith was being cautious but the evidence gained here was not intended to be presented in court so the usual rules did not apply. “Several other nations have expressed an interest in interviewing you so we may well have to extradite you to them.”
“You can’t threaten me. The judge said… “
“That applies to a court hearing only. Anyway, if we hand you over to another country, what happens there is entirely up to their legal system. You may have heard of ‘extraordinary rendition’. By the way, don’t think that dying gets you off the hook. We’ll just be waiting for you at the other side and will carry on where we left off. One way or another Kathryn, we are going to get to the bottom of this. Unless you know you’re going to Heaven of course. We haven’t kicked the gates open there. Yet. But, you won’t need to worry about that, you are on your way to Hell.”
“No I am not! Hell is for those who turned their backs on the True Faith. The Faithful are exempt.” The words came out in a rush, an affirmation of belief that revealed desperation as much as anything else.
