God's Body: Book One - The Fall (The God's Body Chronicles 1) Read online

  GOD’S BODY

  BOOK ONE: THE FALL

  JEFF BOWLES

  Copyright © 2019 God Machine Publishing

  All rights reserved

  Cover and interior design by Pat R. Steiner

  Illustrations by Pat R. Steiner

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Visit Jeff Bowles online:

  Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffRyanBowles

  Twitter at: https://twitter.com/JeffBowlesLives

  Amazon.com author page at: https://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Bowles/e/B01L7GXCU0

  YouTube’s Jeff Bowles Central at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uMxedp3VxxUCS4zn3ulgQ

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, June 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1070827421

  To the SEEKERS . . .

  Illustrations

  God’s Toe

  Satan’s Storm

  Dylan Watches CNN Broadcast the End of Times

  Chaos Reigns

  Ruminations with Rum & Coke

  Mister Tweedy Does Jazz Hands

  Killing Time at LAX

  Lazarus Lad Vs. the Giant Cicada

  Carrion Comfort Food

  Raven-Haired Death—with Freckles

  Moon Madness

  Rattled: Souvenirs from the Massacre

  Coldfire

  Cookie Monster, aka Hollywood

  Courtesy Threat

  Chariot of Spider

  Mountain God

  Love Gun

  Berry Cribsmas!—From the White House

  Russian Bear: It da Bomb

  or How Archangel Michael Never Stops Worrying

  Dimensional Dumpster Dive

  TABLE OF CONTeNTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE ILLUSTRATOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For my wonderful, beautiful Carrie. So much of this book is you. So much of what I am would be much, much less impressive if you hadn't always been there for me. Thanks lots and lots for being in my life, Care.

  One

  The toe was an ungodly mountain of flesh. As massive as it was inexplicable. It clung to the Earth like a bulbous pink tumor. Enormous, all-encompassing, the height of a skyscraper, the breadth of Niagara Falls. Rain water washed through its thick patchwork of crevasses and cracks. Long vertical rivers lapped at skin-cell canyon walls. There were flash creeks and tidal waves. The toenail itself was the hanging shelf of the world.

  Then Harold looked higher and saw the rest. Lord God Almighty. In the murky green haze of a sudden and tempestuous thunderstorm, the creature looked like God, with the classic God robe and the classic God beard and the stern, fatherly expression one would expect God to wear. This was God. It was. Harold knew it was, even if reason and relative plausibility eluded him. If God was five miles tall, he would not have been surprised.

  Harold backed into the still-open door of his truck. He’d left it idling there in the middle of the road, thumping around on the asphalt each time the behemoth shifted its weight. Rain pelted Harold. Hailstones dropped hard enough to bruise. He didn’t care, couldn’t care. God rose, slow, rumbling, shifting and displacing atmosphere. He took a pause, a moment of monolithic stillness, then His colossal foot lifted from the Earth. The step was like a phase of the moon. It passed high over Harold, blotted the sky, parted the storm with a great woosh. Nevada mud showered Route 160 and fell in clumps and condo-sized splatters. The foot thundered, traversed, traveled. It landed again with a deep resounding quake.

  Not since the age of ten, when his Sunday school teacher had explained to him the Rapture, had Harold felt such sheer religious terror. He dropped to his knees. Numbness and mortal shame overcame him. It so happened he’d never absorbed the much-exalted virtues of Sunday school. Consciously oblivious in both the moral and spiritual sense, avid semi-regular pot user, got caught fucking with a girl in the clergy office. And all these years later, he’d gone the extra mile and had knocked up a woman he had no business being with. Patty, old friend from high school, on the regular now, Harold’s new fiancé.

  And here was God. There was God’s foot. Seeing Him was like watching the planets align, like the sinuous, deliberate progression of the stars through the sky. Muscles shifted. The enormous robe swayed. Skin, tendons, and veins. Will, movement, spirit. The Lord is a warrior. Jehovah is His name.

  Off in the east, from the wind and churning rain, a second monster emerged. It filled Harold’s vision like a galaxy destroying supervillain from some comic book. Its skin was a deep, ruddy red, knotted and tangled black hair running swiftly down the sprawling lower regions of its legs to two enormous cloven hooves.

  God’s hands disappeared into the storm. Lightning flashed. The rain swirled and churned. An enormous red chin appeared. It hovered there, lorded over the world. Lips came with it. Sneering, cracked, diseased black lips. A forked tongue slithered between them. God’s knee connected. The red monster—Satan! The monster was Satan!—Satan’s head rocked up into the haze. Harold couldn’t see it after that. He felt a terrible impact, then a deep rumbling growl that shook his truck and rattled his brain. One behemoth rushed the other. They were airborne a terrifying few moments, then they crashed into Charleston Peak. The Earth shook. Ejected loads of mountain shrapnel careened through the sky. One climbed atop the other. It brought down million-ton fists like wrecking balls. Down. Down. Again and again.

  Harold jumped into the truck and slammed the door. The deluge spattered Route 160. It smashed his windshield. He reached for his phone to call Patty. She picked up after one ring.

  “Oh my God, Harry, what’s happening?” she said. “Are you all right? Are you seeing this?”

  “I think I’d like to split up with you,” said Harold.

  “What?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m going to die and I’d rather be single. Is that okay?”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Are you seeing this? The red one is like—oh my God, are you seeing this?”

  A spiraling mud missile flattened the front end of the truck. Harold’s back tires lifted four feet in the air and then crashed down heavily.

  “Did you just say you want to split up?” said Patty.

  “Yes, I did. I’m not ready to be a dad. Plus I don’t think we’re any good together.”

  “Are you serious? Are you serious right now? You fucking suck, Harold Math! Oh, shit. Shit! He is about to snap the Devil’s—”

  Crack!

  Patty’s voice cut out. A massive explosion erupted somewhere off in the west. Patty cut back in.

  “Harold, are you—”

&nbs
p; She cut out.

  “Patty?” said Harold. “Patty!?”

  A towering landmass of flesh landed on the road. It kicked up a giant tidal wave of earth and mud. The truck lifted. It mounted and rode the wave, slid over it, down it, fifty yards, one hundred, and then it crashed onto its side. Harold’s head slammed against the window. Pain buffeted his ribs as the steering column crumpled into him. It seemed to him the deluge would never end. The rain would never cease. Worse yet there would be fire, righteous cleansing fire that would reign a million years. Forever, forever, until there was nothing left. And the heavens would cry judgment. And the Earth would be a scorched, shapeless void spinning in the—

  The storm ended. The mud stopped falling. The rain became a drizzle and the thunder died on the breeze. Harold had shut his eyes. He hadn’t realized. He’d balled his hands into trembling fists. His knuckles had gone white and his fingers ached to spread.

  He touched his head. Bleeding. His left side felt like someone had pummeled it with a tire iron. Harold hauled himself out of his seat and crawled for the door. Scraping and clawing, gasping from the pain. He threw his weight against the door. Nothing. He threw himself again. Mud flowed over him, washed into his mouth. This was not the Nevada he knew. Nevada was desert and hills. This was mud, more mud, footprints like rock quarries, thick rheumy air like swampland. Erie silence. Uncanny calm.

  The landmass of flesh stretched east and west and filled his sight and all his senses. Skin cell ridge patterns spun circuitously all along its face. Spinning, diverging, joining. It was a fingerprint. Harold understood this. He lay at the tip of a finger, the blueprint and signature of individuality. A galaxy of divinely constructed flesh; touching God, touching Harold, touching God. The world grew darker, deeper. He mumbled something vaguely obscene about Thanksgiving. And then his head hit muck and he passed out cold.

  * * * * *

  Eric Barron, longtime L.A. screenwriter, cut his niece’s PB&J sandwich into two perfect triangles. Scraping the knife clean against the rim of the peanut butter jar, he smiled at her and slid the plate across the kitchen table.

  “Here you are, jellybean,” he said. “She may not be pretty, but she’s got it where it counts.”

  Penny frowned at him. “It’s a sandwich, uncle Eric, not a she. You wouldn’t call a banana a he.”

  “Point duly observed. Now go ahead and eat it for me, huh?”

  Penny took a bite of the sandwich, holding both pinkies high and away, lest the peanut butter make a mess of her freshly glossed nails. Kids. Running before they could walk. The sun streamed in through his open window, making his cramped apartment seem twice as large. As usual for Southern California, it was too damn hot for November.

  “You like it?” he asked.

  “Good. Needs more jelly.”

  “Everyone’s a critic.”

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Eric wiped his hands and stepped away from the table to answer it.

  “Hello?” he said.

  The voice of Carl Jensen, his aviation research guy at LAX, came over hurriedly. “Eric, you still trying to write that storm movie?”

  Carl had flown horror missions over Vietnam, Afghanistan, some additional military contract work he rarely spoke about. Now he just jockeyed for wealthy adventurer types.

  “Yeah, still kicking it around,” Eric said.

  “Okay, good. Listen, there’s a crazy amount of discharge over the San Gabriels. I just radioed the tower for confirmation. It’s choppy up there, but look, it’s almost four. If you can get over here in the next half hour, I’ll show you something that’ll blow your damn mind.”

  Eric glanced at Penny and began formulating an excuse for dropping her back off at her mother’s. Samantha would kill him, but nobody said he’d win brother of the year, let alone uncle of the moment.

  “Uh, listen, Penn. I got a thing I need to—”

  “You gotta go. I figured. Have anything to do with work?”

  “Yeah, it does,” he said.

  “Then let’s get a move on. Wouldn’t want you to have a heart attack or something”

  Eric laughed. “I appreciate that.”

  She smiled broadly, and he tussled her dirty-blonde hair.

  * * * * *

  Eric stepped aboard Carl’s ancient, weather-beaten Piper single-prop just as the sun passed behind the ugliest damn thunderhead he had ever seen. He dropped his canvas bag into the divot beside his seat, slouched in place beside Carl, slipped his coms set over his ears, and watched the sky closely.

  “You ever seen anything like it?” Carl asked.

  “It’s green,” said Eric. “Darker than that. Almost black.”

  Carl rolled off his credentials to traffic control, and after a few minutes, they taxied out to the runway. Eric reached for the bag and pulled out his camera, snapping a few reference photos for later. He hadn’t sold a script in several years. People in the industry were beginning to say he’d lost his edge, so he was determined to draft something unforgettable.

  Beside him, Carl adjusted his coms set and shouted, “See all that buildup? Just fucking massive.”

  Eric eyed the flashes of light and tendrils of blinding electrostatic discharge that scorched and lashed in stunning criss-cross patterns.

  “You sure it’s safe to go up there?” he said.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Carl. “Don’t worry, we’ll hang back far enough.”

  Eric didn’t argue, and after a brief pre-flight rundown and credentials check, they set off, skipping and juddering down the runway. At a low, loping angle, the plane lifted into the sky. They sailed over LAX, bearing due east for the outermost edge of the storm. Eric felt his guts tighten. Los Angeles below became a wide tapestry of murk and concrete. He did his best to breathe evenly as he snapped the photos.

  “How big is it?” he shouted.

  “The weather service has it rolling all the way out to Nevada.”

  “No shit?”

  Carl nodded. “They’re gonna have to ground pretty much every major—”

  A heavy blast of wind rocked the Piper. The radio crackled. A series of loud clicks came over their coms.

  “Control delta-eight, adjust heading immediately,” said traffic control.

  Carl read his instruments. He glanced at Eric and turned white as a sheet.

  “Something massive, delta-eight,” the controller shouted. “Repeat, adjust heading—”

  The coms cut out. A bolt of lightning shot past the single-prop, nearly taking a wing with it. Eric braced himself against the forward console. The plane lost altitude, dropping hard and fast. An enormous red hand, the likes of which Eric had never seen, hung like an interloping planetoid in the sky, knifing through the largest of the nasty green thunderheads. Horrible cuts and scraped stood out all over its palm and down into the deep wrinkles of its knuckles. Severe, tarry black nails jutted from its fingertips like pointed talons. Lightning crackled over its rubicund flesh, the fine intricate details of which made him sick to his stomach.

  “Eric, see that lever? Pull it!” shouted Carl.

  Eric struggled to gain his bearings. His heart thudding in his chest, he yanked the small yellow lever and heard a loud ka-chunk. Carl flipped a series of switches and pulled at his yolk until the single-prop sluggishly leveled out. Breathless, Eric scanned the sky for the hand. To his dismay, it was gone.

  “It fell,” said Carl obliquely. “Eric, I think that damn thing is going to land on the city.”

  Two

  Dylan D’Angelo knew for a fact comic books were the single most awesome thing in the universe. Without exception, without fail, they meant more to him than school or friends or even his favorite Nintendo games. He was a straight-C student at Longstreet Middle School, though he was bright for his age and everyone seemed to know it. All the other kids hated him, which made paying attention difficult. You know when you’re not wanted. It’s hard to miss it when they say it to your face.

  “Or
phan!”

  “Drug baby!”

  “Eggplant parmesan!”

  That last one Dylan had had to Google for an hour. Eggplant Parmesan, epithet, noun, a person or persons of mixed race, specifically, African American and Italian.

  Dylan was the new kid in school. He’d only lived with his grandma seven months. Alabama meant nothing to him before that time. And these kids, these nasty kids, they formed cliques early and despised newcomers. Dylan considered himself an artist. He’d designed his own team of comic book superheroes, and he put them through their paces every afternoon.

  The muscular, imposing U.S. Patriot, his super-uniform adorned in spangled red, white, and blue. Lazarus Lad, his sidekick. Skinny and nerdy, just like Dylan, only he was a frickin’ powerhouse, too. Dylan’s bedroom was like a fortress, a cave, a secret, impenetrable lair of which only he knew the secrets. As the sun set outside, the twilight lent his room a gloomy, creepy, Legion of Doom vibe. Dylan sharpened his pencil, narrowed his eyes, and stuck out his tongue in deep concentration. He set the pencil tip to Lazarus Lad’s still-unshaded mask. There was nothing better in the entire world than life amongst his heroes.

  A car horn blared down on the street. Dylan ignored it. His pencil rode over the paper. Another horn blared, then a door slammed and someone screamed. This broke Dylan’s concentration. He heard the words, “Oh, Jesus! Oh help us, Jesus!” He recognized the voice as Marcia from across the street. Nice old lady. She sounded upset. More doors slammed. More car horns. What the frick?

  Dylan got up from his desk and went to the window. Someone knocked on his bedroom door.

  “Dylan, baby, come out here.”

  “In a second, Grandma,” said Dylan.

  “No, Dylan, now.” Grandma’s voice had a serious, not-joking edge. Dylan’s stomach dropped. Classic reflexes. She caught me doing something wrong.

  Only Dylan hadn’t done anything, not in a while. His hands trembled. He felt anxiety, dread, but what for? Why? He went to the door and followed Grandma D’Angelo down to the living room. The TV flickered on its stand, the newscaster on-screen crying her eyes out. Wow, that was mind blowing. Dylan had never seen a news person cry before.