Orange and white barrels blocked the on-ramp onto I-90. I didn’t let the barrels concern me. Op Nine jerked in his seat when I took them out at sixty-five and his jaw clenched as I hit the interstate at ninety-seven. Then we really booked. After twelve minutes and taking out another set of barrels, we were on I-65 heading south toward Indianapolis pushing 240 miles per hour.
It was about ten o’clock in the morning, but it seemed like twilight under the low gray clouds spitting burning chunks of ice. The hell-storm was beginning to slack off though. I didn’t know what that was about but maybe the demon hordes were honoring my request to back off so I could deliver the goods.
“There are faces in the clouds,” Op Nine murmured. “Do you see them?”
I could see them. Distorted human faces that bulged and receded, some laughing, some snarling, some with hooded eyes and crooked noses and some blank as masks, which was scarier in a different way.
“Does the name Abalam mean anything to you, Alfred?”
he asked, staring into the clouds.
“It sounds familiar.”
“Is it my name?”
“I think it’s the name of a demon. One of the lackeys to Paimon.”
“Paimon?”
“He’s the one who took the Seal.”
He looked over at me. “The Seal?”
“The Seal of Solomon. This ring you use to control the demons. Only Paimon has it now, so he’s in control.”
“In control . . . of Abalam?”
“Of all of them. There’s about sixteen million. Abalam’s probably the one we met at Mike’s house, and that’s why you remember its name.”
He shook his head. “This is all very strange. Very strange.”
“You’re telling me.”
“We are two—against sixteen million?”
“More like one against sixteen million: You’re at half speed right now and I’ve always been, so that’s the math. Not very good odds, but you gotta hope. You told me that once. Do you remember?”
“I wish I could. But I am somewhat glad I can’t.”
I nodded. “Dude, I know the feeling.”
The interstate was deserted. Occasionally we roared past abandoned cars parked in the median or in the emergency lane. The only moving vehicles I saw between Chicago and Louisville was a convoy of National Guardsmen, the soldiers crammed into the backs of canvas-covered trucks, and they craned their necks to stare as I barreled past them.
I turned on the radio. I expected every station to be talking about this first phase of the last war, but only the talk stations were jabbering about the crazy weather that had brought the entire world to a standstill. The music stations stayed with their programming, like the dance band on the Titanic. I found a PBS station out of Chicago where somebody from the government droned on about how the latest “meteorological crisis” demonstrated we still have a long way to go in our understanding of global atmospheric phenomenon. I laughed out loud.
“What?” Op Nine asked. “Why is that humorous?”
“Well,” I said. “At least your personality’s still intact.”
I turned off the radio. He said, “What did you say my name was?”
“I didn’t because I don’t know. Your code name was ‘Operative Nine.’ ”
“Why did I have a code name?”
“Because you’re a Superseding Protocol Agent.”
“And what is that?”
“It basically means the rule book’s out the window.”
“What rule book?”
“Every rule book.” It felt strange to me, being the one in the know. “You work for a super-secret agency called OIPEP. Right now we’re hunting down a rogue agent named Mike Arnold. Mike stole the Seals of Solomon from the OIPEP vaults or whatever you call them, and then he tried to kill me, I guess because he knew my blood was the only thing that could do some damage to the demons. But he lost the ring—I mean, I lost it—to King Paimon, and now Paimon wants the Vessel basically to avoid ever being shut up in it again. So you and me went to Chicago to hunt Mike down and to get the Seal from him—the Lesser Seal, not the Great Seal—only the demons got there before we did and they were waiting for us in Mike’s house. You left me in the car and went in alone and I guess Abalam got hold of you and made you look into its eyes.”
“I should not have done that?”
“Oh, you most definitely shouldn’t have done that.”
“I remember a whirlpool of fire and, in the center, utter darkness.” He shook his head. “But that is all I remember.”
I pulled off at the next exit for gas and to pee. There were three stations at this exit, but only one was open, manned by a very nervous clerk who kept playing with the metal stud in his bottom lip. He told me he was shutting down the station as soon as his girlfriend got there with the car and he didn’t care if they fired him. Then he asked what happened to my face. I paid for the gas and some munchies with the company credit card and dropped Op Nine’s snack into his lap.
“What is this?” he asked.
“A corn dog.”
“Why a corn dog?”
“It’s for luck.”
He peeled off the yellow wrapping paper and took a bite, chewing it very slowly.
“Corn dogs are lucky? Is this something else I’ve forgotten?” “I had one the last time I saved the world. Or actually, come to think of it, I had two.”
He glanced at me. “You are an agent for this OIPEP?”
“No, I’m just an oversized kid whose hobby happens to be riding to the world’s rescue.”
“You are being facetious.”
“I’m working on laughing in the face of despair.”
I jumped back on the interstate and we drove in silence for a few minutes. The speedometer went up to 250, and the needle hovered just above the number. My driver’s ed teacher had talked about “acceleration desensitization,” the phenomenon where you get used to the speed you’re going and are lulled into a false sense of security. But I didn’t think there was any danger of my developing a false sense of security in this situation.
“So we still pursue this Mike Arnold?” he asked.
“You bet.”
“To gain the—what did you call it?—Holy Vessel.”
“Right.”
“That we may do what with it?”
“Well, I’ve got about thirty hours left to rendezvous with Abalam and his boys at the devil’s door.”
“Devil’s door?”
“Wherever that is.”
“And there we will imprison them in the Vessel?”
“We can’t. Nobody can without the Great Seal, and they have that.”
“Then why do we bring them the Vessel?”
“So they won’t consume the world.”
“What is to stop them once they have it?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
He was silent for a couple miles.
“This mission does not make sense to me,” he said.
“Well, I’m doing the best I can. I don’t have a choice now but to get the Vessel. If I don’t get it, we don’t have a prayer.”
“We seem not to have one either way.”
“We’re smack dab in the middle of it,” I admitted.
“The middle of what?”
“The place between desperation and despair. That’s where my father told me Fortune often smiles.”
I saw it then, a gray wall of smoke or fog looming up ahead. I eased up on the gas, but still we plunged into the fog at over two hundred miles per hour. Suddenly I couldn’t see two feet in front of the headlights.
“This is quite dangerous,” Op Nine said.
I ground my teeth and didn’t say anything, gripping the wheel hard with both hands.
“Alfred,” he said. “We must slow down.”
“I’m not slowing down,” I hissed between my grinding teeth.
With no points of reference, we hardly seemed to be moving at all. Of course, Op Nine was right. If I hit something going two hundred miles per hour, we’d be vaporized, but what choice did I have?
Mixed now with my fear was an expanding pocket of rage. What did they hope to accomplish with this? Did they want me to get the Vessel or not? My jaw was aching by this point and my fingers cramping from gripping the steering wheel so hard.
“Alfred, I really must insist—”
I lost it. “Look, buddy, you’re not in the position to insist on anything. I’ve been literally put through hell because of you people and I think I’m doing pretty well considering I’m completely cut off from any help whatsoever, plus the fact that I’m slowly being driven mad with cracks in my brain and weeping pustules and the knowledge that when it really comes down to brass tacks, there is no hope. That’s how they get you in the end, with hope, don’t you understand? They dangle it in front of you and yank it away again—until you can’t take it anymore.”
He stared at me for a second. “In the medieval renderings of hell, the souls of the damned writhe in eternal agony as demons prod them with flaming brands.”
“That’s right! You got it!” I was sweating by this point, and the salt in my sweat burned in the open sores covering my body. I wanted to leap out of my own skin. “Flaming freakin’ brands of fire!”
“Or the Greek story of Tantalus,” he went on, “who in Hades suffered of starvation while a bunch of grapes dangled just beyond his reach.”
“Damn straight!” I shouted. “Flaming brands up your ass, the itch you can’t scratch, the grapes you can’t reach!”
“Perhaps they torment you because it is already too late, Alfred. The day is lost and it delights them to torture you with hope.”
“I’m not dead yet,” I breathed. Then I shouted it at the top of my lungs. “I’M NOT DEAD YET, YOU HEAR ME? YOU GOT THAT? SO BRING IT ON! BRING! IT! ON!”
I shouldn’t have said that.