Jump: The Fallen: Testament 1 Read online

  His laugh echoes through the emptiness. It’s maniacal and goosebumps prickle my whole body. My nostrils burn a little when I smell his breath. It’s confident and … final, a bit like the smoke after the last fireworks on a Fourth of Freedom barbecue. He’s definitely not where the molasses and cookie smell came from.

  “Ah,” he says, “the stories they tell you.”

  It’s weird, because it feels kinda like meeting the Prime Officer of the huge corporation you work for—I’m just trying not to make a mistake and he’s wondering how many credits I cost him, or why the hell I’m on the revenue-rolls at all.

  And he’s smiling like he just figured out a joke he was working on. I don’t think I wanna know the punchline.

  I should be afraid, but all I feel is … anger. “Apparently, they aren’t stories,” I say.

  “Yes … however,” he says. Then he stops, cocks his head to the side a little and sniffs in a blast of air.

  For a second the heat subsides, but when he breathes out through his mouth, I smell the warmth of … souls? The sound of wailing women, chained in agony, rushes past my face and I can smell the torment on his breath. Believe me, I know what misery smells like. But there’s something else, too … understanding. I can see it in his eyes.

  “You ever tell stories, Jake?” he asks.

  He knows my name. Santa Claus? Shit, I’m on the naughty list. We’re off to a bad start on that. I’m sure he knows I’ve told my fair share of stories. What else is there to do in a Protection smoke … other than drink shitty coffee?

  “Yes,” he says. Then he smiles so I can see all of his teeth. “I am sure you have.”

  His teeth are perfectly aligned, but they are … unnatural. Like an old cinewave star who’s had too much dental work. How he keeps them from being bloodstained red from all the— “Why are your teeth so white?” The questions are coming out too easy. I guess I’m curious. Anyway, I’m not going anywhere, so I might as well get some answers. Sure, the fear and the fog in my mind are fucking with me, but there must be a reason he hasn’t just eaten my soul by now. If that’s what they do.

  He rolls his eyes around a little. Kinda like he’s trying not to be impatient. His sockets are deep, but the eyes … light blue? “I like that about you,” he says.

  “What?”

  He folds his hands together, slowly weaving his long fingers, alternating one then another like he’s wrapping them around a bat. He grips them together like he’s done it a billion times, threatening me without saying anything. Silence is the best way to scare the shit out of someone. The results are better than yelling.

  Maybe it is just for effect … or maybe he wants to bash out my brains. Whatever he’s thinking, he keeps smiling, letting me imagine all the things he could do to me.

  “You are smart,” he says. “You are terrified, but you realize it is better to appear calm—a good contrivance, poker face. No, I’m not eating souls and ripping flesh apart any longer. I have no need for that. You are being tortured enough by life.” And he looks up into the air briefly and when he looks back down he’s got a grin like … I don’t even know what. “You are far more efficient than I ever was. Those are tales, nothing more. Remember?”

  “Well…” I struggle for the words. I know where this game ends. He’s toying with me—cat playing with his meal. “This must get … boring.”

  “You have no idea,” he says. “But my time is limited. Lots of work to do, you know … so, stories.”

  There’s a ray of truth in his words. What does he want? “Stories about the Dev—” I say it without thinking, but he cuts me off, then his face turns angry.

  “There’s no call to be vulgar!” he roars. Then he calms himself back down.

  Interrogation 101. Shit.

  He has a scowl on his face. “That word,” his voice is down to a low growl now, “so … negative.” He fakes a shiver on purpose. “Like saying … ‘guns,’ I imagine. No need to call someone evil, just say that they have an affinity for firearms. Then they are evil. Hah, ignorance, my favorite. Yet, I like them. One of your better inventions, actually.”

  Him, liking guns? I can imagine the Protection PR campaign on the PIN now: “Guns—Hell’s Christday present.” But, I never thought about the language part of it. I guess you say “Jew” in the wrong tone long enough, pretty soon …

  “Yes, exactly,” he says, “language, how I love it! Distorting, inflammatory … eviscerating. It is all language. That’s how you pervert the truth. Nothing is inherently good or evil. The line dividing them cuts through the hearts of every being. You know this is true. You can use a weapon to protect or you can use it to blow an innocent baby’s brains out. But the weapon isn’t evil, it’s the fist that wields it.” He pauses for a second, letting the truth of it sink in, I guess. But I think he likes the sound of his own voice, because that doesn’t last long. “In the same way, my name means what you’ve been told it does—evil, treachery, defiance. But … what if that’s not the truth.”

  “Preaching to the choir,” I say. I know he’s playing me, telling me what I want to hear. Trouble is, it’s working. It is what I want to hear. I want to talk to someone who hasn’t lost their ability to think. Too bad I have to go this far to find him. “Is this where you make me the offer I can’t refuse?” I ask. “Because I’ve had a rough day and I’m in no mood.” I wince the tiniest bit after I say—no idea who I’m messing with.

  He ignores me. “You’ve played the game,” he says. “With spirits and flame and lust in the air.”

  I know what he’s referring to. We were all animals. “What of it?”

  “That’s how it happens,” he says. “The truth, the lie … the Word. Someone—many of them in this case, actually. They whisper a little story in someone’s ear. Then that person whispers it to the next person. Then they decide to write books about it. And then—”

  “Ya know, I just jumped off a building,” I say, “so if you don’t mind—”

  His eyes glow a little red for a second and then they’re back to blue. When he speaks now, it sounds like an eagle screaming at a rabbit he just swooped down on, “Think about it, a story that’s over two thousand years old! You think that the version they tell today has any resemblance to the truth that was? You think I’m the soul-torturing monster in that book? You’ve witnessed the world you lived in. That angry mob is not my creation.” He pauses and closes his eyes for a brief second. Then he breaths in slow and exhales slower. “I am simply … crowd control. All of that…?” He tilts his head back and looks up. “I wish I could conceive of such misery—the vile putrescence you call life.”

  When he looks back down at me, I can tell he’s pleased with himself. And he tilts his head down farther, and then he rolls his eyes up and says, “Your life is a new beast of burden, never before seen in any eternity. Protection, compliance … submission to judgment. Some of you terrify—” He tilts his head back up and fakes a shiver through his shoulders. “You all scare the Hell right out of me.”

  I look up to see what he keeps looking at. Nothing up there but dark sky and the flicker of flames. Bet I can guess who’s up there, but then that would be… “So, why are you here?” I ask. “If you aren’t offering to…?”

  “About that,” he says. He unfolds his hands and points right at me, and all I can focus on is his finger. It feels like looking at the barrel of that PAIC’s big .60 cal, back on the roof. His voice is more serious now, though, “I’m not required to offer you anything. Technically, I already own you. You are part of the Word.” He looks up above his head. “Management does not approve of its subjects taking matters into their own hands—acting and thinking for themselves, you know.”

  I crane my head back and look above him again. For some reason, I can see the roof of the scraper this time. The one I just took a swan dive off. “I hear ya,” I say. “They don’t like it either.”

  He chuckles and it sounds like a raven cawing. Then flames roll up from his wings and above
his head. “We’ll get to them.”

  Holy shit! I think. What the…? Then I think about it for a second … but I don’t know where to go or what to say next. Clearly he’s here, and if he is, then a whole lotta other shit is real too. If that’s the case—ipso facto—the jump pretty much fucked me … for good.

  He laughs harder now and I can feel the heat on my face. We both look back down and into each other’s eyes. “Amusing,” he says.

  “What is?”

  “For good,” he says. “Interesting that you should put it that way.”

  “What?” I’m trying to keep up. It might be my only chance at—hell, I have no idea what’s going to happen—lake of fire, Purgatory, some other shit. I do know one thing, it won’t be good.

  “Exactly,” he says. He’s more excited now—teacher who sees the spark in his student. Then he puts his hands back together. I think I hear his knuckles crackle. Like an old-world fighter, getting ready to clean someone’s clock. “You may be mine for all life’s eternity…” He lets the words linger in the air like doom. Tortured in Hell forever. That’s what he’s talking about. As unpleasant as it sounds, he could have done it by now. “…and that will have nothing to do with good. However…”

  “However,” he keeps saying that word. I know that nothing before it means shit. The truth always comes after. He’s weaving lies and truth in together. Whatever he says next, that will be the meat of it.

  “Ah, meat,” he says, “fresh meat. I like how you think.”

  I can feel the pressure as his thoughts work their way through mine. He’s infecting his way in and around an idea, and my head is dizzy from it.

  Maybe if I stay in front of him? “I jumped,” I say. “I know what that means. So let’s get on with—”

  “I told you,” he says. Then he gets a look on his face that I don’t recognize. And he looks up again. “It’s not quite what you might believe.”

  If it is who I think up there, this is going to get weird. It’s not every day that you get to see the face of God. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s just one day. Too bad I had to die to do that, too. What the hell am I going to say to that guy?

  The light blasts me so hard that I can barely make out the shape of an … A…

  “Yes, Jake,” the voice is soft and comforting. It kinda sounds like a whale moan, but I can understand it.

  Where did that come from? “Whale moan?” That’s just too much nature feed on the PIN when I was a kid. I guess it doesn’t have to make any sense—no one knows what death is like. But the moan has that tone in it. Like when your mother or your wife catches you with contraband porn again—judgmental and shocked, as only a woman can be at a man’s obsession with sex.

  The ivory white feathers float around like a satin sheet and the hair is … no way to describe … it’s like no color at all. The sight is incredible. The form is familiar, like a best friend. About the only way I can describe it. But there is no mistaking the near-invisible wings … and the breasts.

  I know what you’re thinking, because I’m thinking it too. It is God, for Christ’s sake—how the hell can I be looking at her tits? But don’t give me any shit here—you know you would look.

  Anyway, I’m probably already headed to Hell, so how much worse can it get? If I’m here, she’s real … and I swear to God she… Maybe I shouldn’t swear to that.

  It takes me a second to speak, but holy shit! “You’re … God?” I ask. “You’re a woman.”

  “I am that I am,” she replies. “I am love, I am hope, I am all things to all. I am the beginning and I am the end.”

  I guess that clears that up, I think. I try not to look lost, but unraveling that statement is some confusing shit. No wonder the God-dogs fucked up the interpret—I cut the thought off and wonder if she can read my mind. He could, so it stands to reason—

  “Yes,” she says. And then she smiles. When she does, everything is warm. Not like the searing heat from him. Sort of like the tropical island screensaver when the PIN isn’t broadcasting—eighty-one degrees and sunny every day. To someone in Seattle, that’s … pacifying. But she looks strange.

  When I stop squinting from the light, I figure it out. That’s the trouble with a nice set of… It takes concentration to look her in the eyes. And hers are jet black—huge orbs of shining onyx. His were ice blue? I would have figured that the other way around.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “but you’re a—”

  “I am what you need me to be,” she says. “If you had needed me to be a man, I would appear to you as such.”

  “I did picture you as a man,” I say. “Everyone does, even women. But, so you’re saying that Moses wanted you to be a bush?”

  I can’t see him, but I feel the heat when he caws and laughs.

  Her face grimaces a little and she closes her eyes, obviously annoyed—I know the look. When she opens her eyes, the black is blacker—if that’s even possible.

  “A burning bush?” I say. “No offense, but that’s just … messed up.”

  “Times were different,” she says. “I have appeared as many things to many people since”

  I have a million questions. Who wouldn’t? When else are you going to get a chance to find out … about everything? But I don’t think this is Q&A time. “Look,” I say, “about the roof thing—”

  “There is still hope, Jacob,” she says.

  And that catches me off guard, because I’ve been prepping myself for the worst. “Um, how’s that?” I ask. “You mean I can still go to Heaven? But I … I jumped. Isn’t that against the rules?” I look around, trying to see where he’s gone. I can smell him out there in the dark, I just can’t see him.

  His voice burns through the air, “I told you as much. The story morphs. The next rewrite shall be no different.”

  Interrupting in class—wonder if they whip you up here?

  She looks up briefly and then back down. “These are different times—challenging circumstances,” she says. I can feel her annoyance growing. “The opportunity for you to choose remains.”

  “Challenging…” That’s politician-speak for “shitty.”

  So, what do I have that she could possibly want? “Free will?” I ask her. “That’s the answer?”

  “Yes.”

  It seems too simple. And what did I tell you about simple? “So, you’re telling me … that I can go around and break the rules—do anything I want—then repent when you show up at the end, and it’s all good?” I ask. I think that’s what she’s saying. “No wonder.”

  “Not exactly,” she says. “As long as you choose fai—”

  “A moment, please,” the voice burns down at us. It sends the temperature way up and I squint. He doesn’t reappear—just his voice—and it’s hotter now and it feels like my face is getting sunburned when he speaks. “He does not possess all the facts. How can you expect him to choose his own judgment without all the information? That … is not free will.”

  “What facts?” I ask. “I jumped and here we are—Purgatory, or Judgment Day, or whatever shit. Game over.”

  “He does not fully understand,” he says to her.

  Something is up his sleeve. It’s easy to see that. But curiosity… “Know what?” I ask.

  “He does not require this to make his decision,” she says. “Salvation is faith, not facts.”

  “Oh, I would vehemently disagree,” his voice is more confident. “In point of fact, she is the sole reason he jumped.”

  “Need to know what?” I ask. Maybe the confidence is wearing off on me. “What are you talking about? Kelly? I sent her to—”

  He appears next to her and he isn’t smiling like before. Something’s wrong. They both look just like the State doctor when he told us… “I went back to get my gun,” I say to them, “but they caught up to me on the street after.” I still have no idea how they found me. “Then they chased me onto the roof. Nowhere to go from there but down, so she gets away and I’m with you two.”

 
But they aren’t listening—it’s like I’m not even here. They sound like a couple of crows arguing over who gets the ass end of a deer carcass. Now I’m the one getting annoyed.

  When he does reappear, this time he looks different. Something is … he’s holding something. An old, red book. The thing is huge, but I can’t read the cover.

  “The Word is written,” he says to her. “He chooses his own judgment. He believes that she escaped. Given that…” He looks at me and sniffs. “Right now, he does not care which way the tide turns. I can smell it.”

  I scrunch my face. Watching bickering, still hard to tolerate. “She did get away,” I say.

  I look at her and her warm face has turned to sadness and … it’s not empathy, but it’s close. And her bright hair changes to alternating gray and black.

  He looks at me and tries to fake the same emotions. “Jake…” he says. The satisfaction in his voice tells me he already knows what I’m going to do. “You could not have predicted that they would do that. Do not blame yourself.”

  Now I’m getting really pissed. I got plenty of self-loathing—enough to fill up a sea of Hells—but what is he…? “Show me,” I say. I know they can. At least she can. He might, but I probably wouldn’t believe what I saw. Anyway, I’m done with the charade.

  He says my name again, “Jake”—each time he says it, I feel a twinge of heat go through my heart—“I’m on your side here.”

  I look at her, then at him. Shit, they’re both holding back. “I’m not stupid,” I say. “Show me what happened … now.”

  And then he slinks up to her, puts his long fingers on her shoulder, and leans into her ear. Then he whispers, “I think he’s serious.” It sounds like hissing.

  I can see the waves of heat leave his mouth. I wonder why she doesn’t just crack a bolt of lightning up his ass or something. I mean, she is God, right? CRACK!—Evil, extinguished for all eternity. But she doesn’t even flinch or try to move away. She just keeps staring at me, like she’s deciding.