Harry could no longer feel his feet from the cold and it felt as though he was walking around on nerveless stumps. Kath was obviously suffering too. She hadn’t spoken since they’d watched Nigel die. Lucas however seemed fine, unaffected by the cold for reasons that Harry was eager to find out. Was the man any more human than the hooded figures?
“So,” said Harry. “If the things wearing hoods are Angels, what are the dog things?”
Lucas continued looking forward as he walked, but answered the question promptly. “Hounds of Hell.”
Harry scratched his chin. “But don’t Angels come from Heaven.”
“Aye, they do, Harry Boy, but Angels have dominion over both heaven and hell during certain circumstances.”
Harry felt himself confused already. “Circumstances such as what?”
“You know, family reunions, birthdays, The Apocalypse.”
Harry spluttered. “The Apocalypse?”
“Aye, you know, Armageddon and all that, but it’s not as dramatic as you might think. There’re no horsemen, none of that fire and brimstone nonsense. The old man upstairs likes to do things a bit more efficiently. Biblical floods and such are more His style.”
“Or biblical snow storms,” Kath added glumly.
Lucas smiled. “Indeed, lass.”
Harry was trying to follow, but things still didn’t add up in his mind. If this really was the end of the world, and God intended to simply freeze the world to death, then why did he need…?
“The Angels,” said Harry. ”Why are they here?”
“Call them overseers if you will. God can’t just make the snow fall unendingly without having a presence on earth. He needs vessels to channel his power through - conduits. That’s why the Angels have come down here, to exercise His will.”
Harry nodded, an idea forming in his head. “So if we take out the angels, we can stop this?”
Lucas laughed, loud and hearty. “Do you know how many of them there are? We’re talking tens of thousands, and they don’t play nice. You can’t kill an Angel anyway.”
Harry sagged. “I still don’t understand why they are doing this. It can’t be because of me?”
“I already told you Harry Boy, it’s not just because of you, strictly speaking. It’s because of everyone, really. God gave Noah a second chance, but that’s all the big man had in his pocket of goodwill. He vowed that if the human race threw it in His face one more time then they wouldn’t get another reprieve. But that’s what you all went and did anyway, with your sinful ways and what not. Shagging, murdering, raping, stealing, cheating, Facebook. You name it; you people have over indulged in it. Over time, you all tipped the scales way past the point of no return.”
“But not everyone is like that. Why can he not just punish the bad?”
Kath sighed. “Because there were probably too few to make it worthwhile.”
Lucas nodded. “Aye, there are a few decent souls, admittedly, and He took that into consideration. He allowed man to pass judgement on man.”
“What do you mean?” asked Harry.
“I mean, that he decided to judge mankind by its own values. Harry, after your wife and son were mowed down you made the choice for everyone.”
Harry spat. “I had no choice. The guy had lost his license a year before, but got behind the wheel anyway. He was a lousy drunk and had probably mowed down a dozen children before he killed my son. He was an alcoholic. No good to anyone.”
“Sounds like you, Harry,” said Kath, spitefully.
It made Harry angry, but what was the use in arguing? “Maybe it is,” he conceded. “What would you have done after losing your family?”
“That’s the point,” said Lucas. “You had a choice. Did you get on with your life and make the memory of your family proud or did you give in to vice, rejecting the gifts God gave you? Did you know that the reason Thomas was a drunk was because he too lost a son in a tragic accident? Just like you, Harry. Ironic, no? Have you really behaved any differently than him?”
“No,” said Harry, understanding the hypocrisy. “But I never drove drunk. I never let my problems endanger anybody else.”
“No, you just got hammered one night and murdered the chap who accidently killed your family. Understandable, I guess, but definitely not the right path. God decided to judge humanity by your actions and your choice was vengeance. Now vengeance has been reaped upon you all. You committed man’s final sin – the last one that counted anyway - and you picked a gem: Though shall not kill.”
Harry thought about the night he’d murdered Thomas Morris; the night he crept into the hospital ward where the man had been admitted for a simple hernia operation. Getting past the lone prison guard was easy. It wasn’t as if they were going to place a highly-paid special detachment outside the door. It was just one guard who didn’t want to be stuck at a hospital at 3:00AM on a Friday night. Harry easily snuck past him and entered Thomas’s room. The man was in a deep sleep. Even after Harry shoved the plastic bag over his head.
It took several moments for Thomas to wake up and realise what was happening. The last thing he would have seen, through the clear plastic smothering his face, was Harry’s dark, grinning expression as he suffocated the life out of him.
When it was all over, Harry had vomited in the en-suite toilet, before hurrying out of the room and snagging the back of his hand on the sharp edge of an unused gurney in the corridor. The blood had gone everywhere and a nurse in a nearby ward had sat him down and stitched the wound, remarking on how much it resembled the shape of a star. Harry had been silent the entire time the nurse looked after him, staring into space like a zombie until she was done. Somehow he had walked out of the hospital that night without incident. He’d just killed a man and no one noticed a thing.
Harry had then gone home immediately and drank for seven days straight. Later he sold his successful furniture business, as well as his house and car. The sales left him with just over half-a-million-pounds to drink himself to death with. He had hoped it wouldn’t take long. A year later, here he was, responsible for the death of mankind.
“Bull!” he said finally.
Lucas put his hands up. “Hey, I don’t disagree. I don’t want the world to end any more than you do – I’d miss Manchester United playing, for one – but it is what it is.”
“And there’s nothing we can do?” Kath pleaded.
Lucas shook his head. “Unless you can convince the big man to change his mind – but I don’t think he’s listening. You can hold the choir off temporarily with objects of depravity like the porno mags. Same reason they can’t enter the pub: it’s a den of inequity and they can’t step their holy toes in it.”
“How do you know so much?” Harry demanded. The snow was sapping his strength and he needed answers before he was too tired to ask for them anymore. “How do you know so much about Angels?
“Because I used to be one, laddie. Long time ago.”
Harry understood. It came to him in a flash of inspiration. “They called you wormwood.”
“That they did, but I prefer you to use my rightful name; the name given to me by my lord.”
“And what’s that?” Kath asked, obviously not yet understanding what Harry did.
Lucas turned to the woman and grinned, pointy teeth shining. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Lucifer, the Prince of Hell. Pleased to meet you.”
Harry frowned. He should have been shouting ‘bull’, but somehow he knew it was true. Somehow the reality of the situation just could not be denied. He was trudging through the snow with the Devil, pursued by murderous angels. There was just one more thing that didn’t make sense. “Why the whole Irish jig then, Lucas Fergus?”