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

  “So much more charming up close,” Melissa said.

  Danielle giggled nervously. “Do they think we’re bin Laden? Someone should tell them we got bin Laden.”

  Tim, the team’s Emergency Response Specialist, turned in his seat and said, “Maybe they think we’re movie stars. Hey, Atwood, entertain us. Do your Don Corleone again.”

  “My Marlon Brando?” said Melissa.

  “No, your Don Corleone. I’ll be Fredo. Guys, check it out, Melissa’s gonna do her Don—”

  Melissa’s window shattered. A brick almost took her head off. A dozen hands reached through and grabbed hold of her.

  “Mel!” said Danielle.

  One of them tore at her jacket, another grabbed her hair and tugged.

  “Driver, stop!” said Martin.

  Grabby damn people. Rocking the van. Goddamn grabby. A snarling red-headed beauty-school type scratched her neck with hot pink press-on nails. Melissa wailed. Greg and Tim, both big guys, both nice enough to do it, took her by the arms and tried to pull her away from the window. Her shoulder popped loudly.

  “Damnit, driver, I said stop,” said Martin.

  Melissa said, “No! Don’t stop! Drive!”

  The driver shouted, “I can’t drive. I’ll run them over!”

  Gunfire rang out. Someone screamed. More gunfire. The million-tongued monster devolved into an ant-scatter. A voice buzzed and echoed like from a Burger King drive-thru speaker.

  It said, “All right, that’s enough! Disperse or we will fire live rounds!”

  Melissa couldn’t see what was happening. Grab, pull, scratch. Damn!

  “Disperse or we will fire on you!”

  Someone strong and saintly pried a few people off the van. Straining, struggling, until Melissa was finally free. She gasped and fell back into her seat.

  Danielle slid beside her and put a hand under her chin.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay, let me see.”

  She inspected Melissa, then flipped the bird at the retreating asshole crowd members.

  “Man, you believe that?” Amy said.

  “Everybody all right back there?” said the driver.

  A young Army captain approached and rapped his knuckles on the window.

  “You all right, ma’am?” he said.

  Melissa nodded.

  The drive-thru speaker voice came again. “Disperse or we will fire!” It was a soldier on a bullhorn.

  Melissa groaned and dabbed at her scratches. In no time at all, the captain and his company cleared a space around the van and room enough to drive ahead.

  “The hell was that about?” said Danielle

  Melissa sucked her fingers clean of blood. She was missing hair. She fucking knew she was missing hair.

  Tim said, “We’re trying to figure this whole thing out. Don’t see the point of acting like animals.”

  “They’re pissed, Tim,” Martin said. “Who’s not pissed? God’s dead.”

  “Yeah, God is dead,” Melissa croaked. “The God of fucking comedy.”

  Four

  Thanksgiving, huh? The giving of thanks? Just what the hell did anybody have to be thankful for? Giant, city-sized monsters had beaten each other to death in the most brutal manner possible. Better yet, they’d almost killed Harold in the process. Some rather prompt EMTs had somehow managed to find him in all the destruction and mud. They said it was a miracle he was still alive. His shoulder was on fire. His ribs were bruised, black and blue. Thanks and cheers for Vicodin, God. Thanks and cheers for Lou’s Tavern off Highway 160 in beautiful Pahrump, Nevada.

  Pahrump was a one-horse little desert burg, population, 36,500. There’d be no riots here. Harold loved it like a brother. Carmelo’s Pizza, the casinos, the awesome speedway out by the Walmart. Hell, the town was so quaint that when people stopped, it was usually on their way to and from Vegas. In Pahrump, the air was clean and the landscape vast. Not like how things were in New Haven. People there’d never even heard of rural hospitality, let alone demonstrated it a day in their lives.

  Didn’t matter anyway. Med school was a flop. Harold’s life was a flop. Here was something to be thankful for: watery rum and Coke and plenty of it.

  He set his elbows on the long pine bar, watching the television in the corner below the neon Jose Quervo sign. Four o’clock in the afternoon and what was on? The vacuous, glossy replay of last year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Fuck Macy’s. Fuck Thanksgiving Day. Fuck canned Broadway numbers and fat, bearded men wearing red, ushering in the one piece of shit holiday every adult in the country secretly despised but had to feign enthusiasm for, because aw shucks, the kids. Harold took a slug of his drink and reached for the stick pretzels, lazily packing them into his mouth. Kids. Fuck kids. And fuck lying women who trapped guys like him into having them.

  “I’ll take a double, Mike,” he muttered.

  Mike the bartender shook his head a grabbed a brown bottle from the shelf behind him. He poured beautiful amber liquid into Harold’s glass, wondering aloud at what he must’ve perceived as the oldest story in the book. “You look like you been through the wringer, kid. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me her name?”

  “What makes you think there’s a she?” said Harold.

  Mike shrugged and put the bottle back. “Don’t take a rocket scientist. She’s a real ball-breaker, huh?”

  Harold touched the cut above his eye and winced. “I’ve been hurt worse, Mike. And her name was Jehovah.”

  A silky feminine voice chuckled behind him. “If you need a double, I need a triple.”

  Harold turned and locked eyes with a tall, gorgeous brunette in a faded Johnny Cash t-shirt.

  “Sarah,” he uttered. “Hi, wow, didn’t … didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “Yeah, likewise, Harry. Just got in last night. Thanksgiving with the ‘rents. You know how it is.”

  “Right, yeah, I do.”

  Holy shit, Sarah Miller. The one girl Harold had absolutely lost his mind for in high school. She was kind, strong, profoundly affectionate. She sat beside him with a sigh and eyed his injuries woefully.

  “Let’s get a table, Harry,” she said. “The next one’s on me, all right?”

  * * * * *

  The years disappeared. The last six months—worst six months of his life—hadn’t happened at all. Sarah Miller was a state of mind. He was feeling very Sarah at the moment.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said. “Why exactly do you hate your fiancé?”

  Harold blanched. “What do you mean? I don’t hate her.”

  “Yes you do. I thought you’d die when you laid eyes on me just now.”

  “I haven’t seen you since two summers ago. We’ve got a history.”

  “Sure we do. Me, you, and Patty. She asked me to come find you, by the way. Said she was really worried.”

  He slouched in his seat. “Oh. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Little bit. You should be dead right now, Harold. I’m not sure that’s dawned on you. She said you blew up at her. Is that true? Can I help?”

  Help? Sarah? How perfectly ridiculous. He could see the moment clearly, the date and day his life veered left instead of continuing down the straight and narrow. Birth control? Who needs it? Or the truth, for that matter? Patty had lied to him. She’d seduced him at her apartment and lied about their chances of conceiving.

  Harold grimaced and looked at the television. President Planter was on, the leader of the free world, the old white dude with the ludicrous hair piece. The news ticker on the bottom of the screen said something about growing tensions between the US, Russia, and China. Oh good, yet one more reason to dread the future.

  “I had to drop out of school,” Harold said. He stared into his drink, sloshed it around a few times with a swizzle straw. “Faculty advisor said my grades were slipping so bad I probably wouldn’t make it through the semester, so I bailed.”

  “That sucks,” said Sarah. “Did it have anything to do with Patty?”

  Harold frowned. “What do you think? Mostly we just scream at each other. I’m going to say something right now, and I don’t want you to take offense, because I understand she’s your friend, but bitch is crazy. Straight up, Sarah, bitch is fucking crazy.”

  Sarah frowned. “Huh, Patty says pretty much the same about you.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me one bit. But I mean, who are you gonna believe? She seems normal most of the time, but then bam, she’ll go sideways on you like Stephen King’s Carrie.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” said Sarah.

  “I am not. I’m talking Carrie White at prom, bucket of pig’s blood on her head.”

  “And you’re blameless, right?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Harold,” said Sarah, “I want you to listen. I love you more than you’ll ever know, and I understand there’s things between us we’ve never resolved. But if this has anything to do with the past or what the three of us did or failed to do when it came to treating each other fairly, you need to let it go. You’re going to be a father, and if you’re not a good one, you’ll hate yourself the rest of your life.”

  Harold frowned deeply.

  “I didn’t expect this from either of you,” she said. “If you want my advice, you two need to have a long conversation. Patty and you can work. There is love there, and where there’s love there’s hope. Drinking doesn’t suit you, either.”

  “This is weird,” said Harold. “This conversation is very weird to me.”

  “Maybe it should be. Harry … did you ever think that perhaps this is how your life is supposed to be? You know, if fate were a thing, could you really argue with it?”

  “Fate?” he breathed. “Like from God?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Why not?”

  “Can you go away now so I can drown my sorrows a little longer?”

  Sarah took him by the hand. “And that’s another thing, pal. Who do you think you’re fooling? You can barely stomach orange juice.”

  “People change,” he said.

  “Yes, they most certainly do.”

  She hugged him on her way out the door. That was nice. God, she smelled great. They exchanged a few pleasant goodbyes, made plans to Skype sometime soon. Which they never would. Because Harold would be too freaked out to do it.

  “See you around, Harry,” she said.

  “Yeah, see you.”

  And then she was gone.

  Harold stared after her a long time. Thought about life. Zigs instead of zags. He paid for his drinks and wished Mike a Happy Thanksgiving. Out on the sidewalk, he breathed the evening air. Smells of the desert, dust and sagebrush. A pack of coyotes yipped and yapped somewhere in the night.

  Harold reached into his pocket for his phone, flicked at the lock screen, his finger poised over Patty’s number. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. He looked across the street to see a young boy of maybe eight or nine with dark features and pale, frowning lips, gazing directly at him. Something about him scared the shit out of Harold. The boy brought a thumb to his mouth and started sucking it. Sucking and staring, staring and sucking.

  A tiny voice sounded from Harold’s phone.

  “Harold, are you there?”

  The boy turned around. On his back, attached with safety pins or maybe Velcro, was a big red cape. A superhero cape, like from a comic book.

  “Harold, hello?”

  The voice roused him. Patty was on the line. He hadn’t realized he’d dialed her. Harold put the phone to his ear. “Patty? Hey, Patty?”

  “What do you want, Harold?”

  “Uh, want? I want … to say I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry. Really.”

  Harold looked across the street. The boy was … gone. Nowhere to be found. Harold looked east, west. Empty sidewalks, no one but him. And yet he still felt scared. Damndest thing.

  “We need to talk, Patty,” he uttered. “I think … maybe it’s time we put some things to bed.”

  Five

  In the days that followed, the city of Los Angeles came to know suffering on a scale rarely witnessed by human beings. There had never been more anger and grief concentrated in such a small part of the globe. Crowds of people walked the streets, crying for loved ones, screaming for those still missing and the thousands clinging to life in the city’s vastly overcrowded hospitals. The air was toxic in most areas of town, owing to the cloud of smoke that clung to the skyline like a dirty blanket. Many adopted surgical masks or soaked t-shirts wrapped around their faces, though there was little anyone could do to keep from hacking and wheezing.

  The sediment and city steel the monster had kicked up on impact had left craters and anguished holes the size of battleships all over town. Pieces of Pasadena resided at Venice Beach, thousands of tons of forest vegetation from the San Gabriels floated in the harbor. A seemingly insurmountable haze, which had only just begun to break, lent the sky a sinister orange aura.

  Eric eyed the destruction from his favorite doughnut shop just off the Hollywood freeway. He and his mentor, Lenny Appleman, had made it a habit to meet for coffee every Sunday morning for the past fifteen years. Like everyone else, they were exhausted, but the much older Lenny did his best to focus on the positive. His grandkids were safe, and so were Eric’s sister and niece. In the long and short of it, that was really all that mattered.

  “You never started a family. That’s your problem, kid,” said Len. “Who the hell cares about success? If you ain’t got someone to love, you ain’t got a thing.”

  Eric longed for blue skies. Who could think about family at a time like this? His father had married and divorced three different women. He’d started three families and at three separate times in his life had decided to cut bait and skip town. For Eric, women were great right until the moment they weren’t. He was dedicated to his career. It was the only thing that gave him a sense of purpose.

  “I was supposed to meet with Lionsgate next week,” he said.

  Lenny wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. “Lionsgate? Really?”

  “Allison said they like me. Said they like the project, anyway.”

  “Burn the World?” said Lenny. “They like Burn the World by Eric Barron?”

  Eric nodded. “She said they were really jazzed.”

  Lenny grinned a furtive, toothy grin. “Kid, you’ve been hawking that script around this town a decade.”

  “Don’t I know it? Ideas like that come once in a lifetime, if they come at all.”

  They sat in surprisingly comfy metal chairs at a table near the windows. The shop had decent ventilation, so the air was relatively clear. Nothing to do but watch traffic trickle down the freeway. Here a Bentley and a Rolls, there a convoy of military personnel trucks and big hulking earth movers traveling across the city to aid in wreckage clearance and body recovery. Complete, city-wide evacuation had been discussed in explicit detail. Then it’d been discussed some more. And then, to no solution and no seeming point, it’d been circumvented entirely and turned into a real prize-winning political issue. And to think, North Korea had seemed the fuck-up motherload of all. The country wasn’t what it once was. Nearly twenty-five years into the new millennium and America was a land of celebrity politicians and voters perpetually obsessed with reality television. Eric couldn’t remember a time the United States had been the big country with the big spirit. Big dreams. Big accomplishments.

  Bigness was overrated, he supposed. It didn’t seem to have done the Devil much good. Eric had no idea what the aftermath of an atomic bomb would look like, but he and the people of L.A. had all witnessed, by his estimation, a fair equivalent. As if the universe had gone mad, and higher sources of power and intelligence than God had pitched their best Judeo-Christian farce, here it was, the modern world, suddenly askew and rife with horror.

  Atop the Hollywood Hills, just above a sea of FEMA tents and teeming crowds of ant people, the enormous hand lay over the bumpy outcrop that’d once been Griffith Park. It was at least a quarter mile tall. It reminded Eric of a fortress wall, or perhaps, if he squinted his eyes, the verticality and width of the Grand Canyon. It was the Great Hand of Hollywood, Eric realized. Good damn thing he and Lenny had been spared.

  “It’s so messed up,” Eric said. “I see him. He’s right there. There’s blood in the streets and dead people everywhere. He’s the one who did that. But I cannot get my head around it.”

  “Maybe we’re not meant to.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Eric conceded. “What are we supposed to do with it? What do we do with all this … death?”

  “Hey, kid, it could be a hell of a lot worse. You may not believe it, but things being what they are, this whole city could be one giant smoking crater. And I’m grateful.”

  “Grateful?”

  “Sure. Death isn’t the end of anything, Eric. It’s good to remember that. I’ve believed in something higher than myself since I was a boy. I’m a Jew. That big guy there, he’s not even supposed to be a thing, you know what I mean? But nothing I’ve seen in sixty-eight years—present situation included—has changed my mind or my erased my faith. Hey, I got a question for you. It’s a morbid question. I won’t lie. I hate to even have to think about it. Still, you’re one of the smartest guys I know, so I need to ask.”

  “What a way to set up a question. Not a loaded question, I’m sure.”

  “Nah, not loaded. But definitely morbid. So we got this big friggin’ body here. And we got all these other bodies everywhere else. How do we handle them? He’s got to start rotting at some point, right? Somehow you’d have to dig a hole big enough to bury him.”

  Eric took a sip of coffee. “More likely they’ll have to push him out to sea. Who on earth knows how they’ll manage that. The immediate concern is sanitation.”

  “Sanitation, right.”

  “Why ask?” Eric pointed his cup at the hand. “That damn thing freaks me out. Guarantee you they’ve already greenlit the movie.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Lenny said. “Kid, I’m not sure how to broach this with you … I’m starting a new project.”