Armageddon Read online

  August 4, 1944, was the day Anne Frank and her family—after hiding from the Nazi occupiers for two years—were finally captured. Anne and her sister were taken to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, where they both died a few weeks before the British Army liberated the camp.

  Three weeks earlier, she had written what would become the most quoted entry in her famous diary: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

  My feelings exactly.

  But it was hard to picture people being “good at heart” with the Lord of the Flies himself, Abbadon, standing there, grinning triumphantly at me. He was dressed up in an appropriate period costume: a black fedora and a black leather trench coat with a swastika wrapped around its left sleeve. The red of the armband matched his sinister eyes. He laughed mercilessly when the German secret police roughly removed the Frank family from 263 Prinsengracht.

  “Poor little Annie,” he said with a sigh. “It seems a petty thief who has fallen on hard times called the authorities this morning. Ratted her out. Can you blame the poor soul? He desperately needed the reward money.”

  “There is good in this world!” I shouted.

  “Oh, I suppose you will find a bit of it scattered here and there, Daniel. But when all is said and done, these accursed creatures would gladly watch you die if it meant they might live another day. Why do you think so much of humanity has already fled to my side while you were left to fight for the planet’s future with, what? Four make-believe friends and a pathetic, hodgepodge assortment of over-zealous soldiers?”

  “This wasn’t the day I came here to see!”

  “No,” sneered Abbadon. “But it was the one you needed to see.”

  “You sent me here?”

  “For your own good, Daniel. After all, we’re cousins.”

  Things just kept getting worse.

  How could Abbadon’s creative powers override my own? How could he continue to force me to see things I had no desire to see?

  I had time-traveled into the past hoping to find his weaknesses.

  Instead, I found another one of his strengths: He could redirect my own creative abilities. He could mess with my mind!

  I definitely needed more information on this creepy cousin before I went up against him in a death match. I could think of only one place left to find it: our common home.

  Alpar Nok.

  So while Number 2 stood there disgustingly admiring the Nazis, who would someday be joining Abbadon in the circles of hell, I streaked off into outer space.

  Chapter 77

  MY FIRST STOP back home was an unbelievable zoo I know inside a hidden park beneath the universe’s biggest shatterproof solarium.

  I went to a vantage point overlooking a grasslands field filled with herd upon herd of elephants. The friend I was seeking saw me first. She approached my viewing platform very gracefully—especially for an elephant that weighs forty, maybe fifty thousand pounds. She extended her telephone pole–sized trunk to me and I gently stroked it.

  Welcome back, Daniel, she said in my mind.

  This was Chordata. I had known her as an infant and met up with her again when I set out on my first alien-hunting adventure.

  Why do you look so anxious, my young friend?

  I need your help.

  Then my help you shall have.

  Remember how you told me an elephant never forgets?

  Well, if I couldn’t remember saying it, how could it possibly be true?

  I grinned. Have you ever heard of another two-legged Alpar Nokian who calls himself Abbadon? He’s been on Earth for centuries, maybe since the dawn of human history.

  Ah, yes. The Fallen Soul.

  You knew him?

  No. He is far older than I. But I have heard the stories. It is a cautionary tale we still tell our children. A story of one who was given tremendous talents and powers, who, instead of using those gifts for a greater good, chose instead to selfishly enrich and prolong his own life. You see, Daniel, the one known as the Fallen Soul was granted not immortality but a vastly extended life by an evil god known as The Prayer. So long as the Fallen Soul did that god’s bidding and provided him with constant amusements, he would be granted life.

  I had wondered how Abbadon could’ve hung around Earth for so many years if he was truly an Alpar Nokian, like me. Yes, we live a very long time. But thousands of years?

  Well, I communicated to Chordata, he’s been keeping up his end of the deal, putting on quite a horror show for The Prayer’s amusement. But now he’s upping his game. He aims to wipe out the entire planet. And he’s doing a pretty good job of it. Now he’s eager to destroy me, too.

  You say he destroyed the planet?

  Yes. The civilized parts. I saw buildings topple. Whole cities were leveled. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode across the rubble.

  Are you sure of this, Daniel?

  I saw it with my own eyes.

  Ah. Then perhaps it did not happen.

  I shook my head to clear out the bafflement. Huh?

  Always remember, Daniel—the fallen one has the same powers you do. He can conjure up a reality and make you see it through the sheer force of his destructive imagination—especially if certain fears already lurk in your subconscious.

  My father had said something very similar about Abbadon: Trust none of what you hear, and less of what you see.

  So the cities of Earth aren’t really leveled?

  They might be, Daniel—so long as the one you call Abbadon imagines that they have been.

  I was beginning to understand.

  The things I create with my imagination only stay that way as long as I focus my creative energies on them. If I release an object or person from the grip of my transformative powers, they go back to being what they always were. I could not alter their essence, only their substance. Trust me, it’ll make sense one day, after you’ve read Aristotle’s Metaphysics or spent a little time in Plato’s Cave.

  I leaned down and gave Chordata a quick kiss on her wet snout.

  What was that for, Daniel?

  Hope. You’ve given me hope!

  Talking to Chordata, I finally realized that if I could defeat Number 2, then all the destruction he had conjured up with his twisted imagination would be erased the instant I erased him!

  There was only one problem: How could I do that?

  How could I defeat him?

  There was only one place I hadn’t looked for the answer: the future.

  Yes, it was a pretty sketchy, highly questionable idea, but I figured it might be my last chance to find some flaw in my nemesis. Maybe I could go just far enough into the future to watch our fight and see how he’d come at me, and then flip back to the present knowing how to foil his attack. Maybe I could see him kill me and then zip backward in time to stop it from actually happening on the do-over.

  Yes, it was complicated, but then again, saving a whole planet from imminent annihilation usually is.

  I concentrated every fiber of my being, every molecule in my body, every ounce of my creative powers on recalling exactly how it felt when Abbadon had sucker-punched me into the future. It was time to re-create that moment.

  Using cellular-level sensory recall, I blasted forward….

  Into the future.

  Chapter 78

  I WAS NEW at fast-forwarding, and unable to completely control exactly when (or even where) I reemerged in the time line.

  So I didn’t end up in the abyss, Number 2’s chosen arena for our final confrontation.

  Instead, I was once again in Kentucky. In the barnyard.

  “Daniel? Are you going to wear that for our ride?”

  Mel, looking maybe three or four years older than I remembered her (okay, looking like the cutest high school girl you can imagine), came out of the farmhouse in her riding clothes. “Seri
ously,” she joked. “You look like an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog… from five years ago.”

  So far, except for my geeky clothes, I liked what I saw in the future.

  For one thing, Mel was there.

  “Have you saddled up Xanthos?” she asked.

  Don’t forget my blanket, my brudda, said a familiar voice in my head.

  Awesome thing two about the future: my trusty white steed and spiritual advisor, Xanthos, was alive again. What Chordata theorized was true: once I destroyed Abbadon in our death match, I also erased all his destructive imaginings.

  “Hey, kids,” shouted Agent Judge from the back porch. “I packed you a picnic lunch.” He was holding a little wicker basket.

  Awesome future thing three: Agent Judge, and hopefully most of his strike force, had survived their trek out of the underworld.

  “I put in a couple of cartons of that new Coke you both love.”

  Awesome future thing four? A new kind of extremely refreshing organic Coca-Cola in eco-friendly, biodegradable packaging.

  “We’ll come back for it, Daddy,” said Mel. “We don’t want the food to get all wet when Daniel falls in the creek again.”

  “Hey,” I protested playfully, not completely recognizing my own voice. It was deeper. Richer.

  Awesome thing five: I’d conveniently skipped all that awkward puberty junk. Guess I was all grown up, too. Probably a high school senior, like Mel appeared to be. I definitely wanted to find a mirror so I could make sure my last few pimples had faded away like everybody promised me they would.

  Okay, there wasn’t much in this future to help me fight Abbadon back in the past except, of course, the knowledge that good (me) had somehow triumphed over evil (him). Plus, I saw flowers blooming. Heard birds chirping. Smelled the sweet smell of newly mown grass in the air.

  And, standing over by a greeting card–caliber wishing well, I saw both my mother and father.

  They were holding hands and waving at me. I swear there was a rainbow in the sky behind them.

  “Did you really think we could stay away forever?” joked my father. “Oh, and by the way, Daniel, I’m reading an incredibly interesting book about antigravity. It’s impossible to put down.”

  Yep, it was definitely him. The corny pun sealed the deal.

  I dashed across the barnyard.

  “How about we have pancakes for supper tonight, Daniel?” said my mother, sounding perky and chipper, the way I remembered her. “Your sister will join us.”

  “Is Pork Chop here?” I asked eagerly, even though she could be the most annoying little sister in the galaxy.

  “Not yet,” said my dad. “She had some sort of after-school water-ballet recital with the sea lions back home on Alpar Nok. But she’ll be coming down for dinner.”

  “I’ll tell Agent Judge to set another place.”

  As I said that, I glanced down into the well, hoping to check out my reflection in the smooth, glassy water.

  But when I looked down, I didn’t see myself.

  I saw him.

  Abbadon.

  He had followed me into the future, too!

  Chapter 79

  “YOU SILLY, SENTIMENTAL sap.” Abbadon’s rippling image sneered up at me from the dark well water.

  Suddenly I didn’t smell springtime anymore.

  I smelled foul sulfur and raw sewage and rancid, maggot-riddled hamburger meat.

  I yanked my head back.

  Abbadon was standing on the other side of the wishing well, which had transformed itself into an express chute down to the underworld. A jet of gaseous flame rocketed up from the silo, charring the rune-inscribed stones circling the mouth of the well.

  I looked back to the barn. It was on fire, roiling with flames and billowing black smoke. Beneath the roar of the blaze and the crackle of popping timbers I could hear Xanthos’s strangled screams.

  Mel was gone. So, too, were Agent Judge and my parents. In their place, I saw a zombie army of wretched souls dripping sludge carried from the muck pits in the fifth circle of hell, stumbling around the barren wasteland that had, seconds earlier, been lush meadows. Locusts and giant termites with wingspans the size of condors’ swarmed around the farmhouse and devoured it.

  “I wanted you to see the future of your dreams, Daniel. That way it would hurt all the more when you realized you will never, ever live to see such things. The future, dear cousin, belongs to me!”

  The four horses of the Apocalypse came charging out of the burning barn, their manes dripping fire. Abbadon pulled another four-way split and mounted his abominable steeds. The four hideous horses, each one spurred on by a different Abbadon, circled me in a dizzying blur of black, red, white, and pale green. I was trapped—penned in by a swirling wall of colored horseflesh, stomping hooves, and Number 2’s maniacal laughter.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

  Abbadon and I had made a joint leap in time and space to the windswept planes of the abyss beneath the dome of the underworld.

  “Of course, Daniel,” my enemy cooed seductively, “your future doesn’t have to end up quite so bleak. I am more than happy to share this planet with you. Just renounce your silly solemn vow to wipe out the alien outlaws inhabiting Terra Firma.”

  I shook my head. “No thanks.”

  “Why are you so stubborn, Daniel? Surely you have seen that these pathetic humans crave the darkness more than anything else. They long to be rich and comfortable and stuffed with food—to be just a little better off than their weakling neighbors. I can give them this, Daniel. And I can give it to you. Serve me and become one of Earth’s most pampered elites!”

  An army of docile servants joined us in the abyss. Maids, waiters, and butlers. Coachmen, masseuses, and limo drivers.

  Beneath the servant uniforms, I recognized many of the human faces I had seen in Washington and elsewhere, the ones who had been the first to stampede down into the safety of eternal slavery.

  “Can I polish your shoes for you, Mr. Daniel?” groveled one of the eternally enslaved.

  “No thanks. They’re Nikes.”

  “Some pancakes, perhaps?” cried out a fawning woman in a maid’s uniform. She held forth a platter piled high with a stack of hubcap-sized flapjacks that were dripping with butter and syrup. “I used your mother’s recipe.”

  “Sorry, but I’m pretty sure you left out her secret ingredient.”

  “Tell me what it is, and I’ll add it!”

  “Nope. Like I said, it’s a secret.”

  Abbadon snapped his fingers. The submissive ones disappeared.

  But a new man joined us.

  I recognized him immediately: the leader of the gopnik in Moscow.

  The young Russian street tough who had scarred Dana’s face with the broken vodka bottle!

  Chapter 80

  “YOU REMEMBER YURI,” Number 2 cooed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’ve met.”

  “Would you like to kill him, Daniel?”

  I felt something materialize in my hand.

  It was Lieutenant Russell’s survival knife.

  “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a cheek for a cheek,” said Abbadon.

  “Actually,” I said, tossing the knife to the ground, “I believe they revised that one. If someone strikes me in the cheek, I’m supposed to offer him the other one, too.”

  A second knife materialized in my hand.

  It looked even more deadly.

  “Forget all your antiquated morals, Daniel. In my new world, killing is not a sin. In fact, we encourage it. If someone strikes you, you are perfectly free to murder him.”

  I tossed the second knife away, too. If I became who Abbadon wanted me to be, sure, I’d be alive, but would I want to live with myself?

  “This is your lucky day, Yuri,” I said to the Russian, who was leering at me with hate in his eyes. “I’m not going to kill you, no matter how much your new Lord and Master begs me to.”

  Number 2 tsked. �
�Are you really that cowardly, Daniel? You won’t fight to defend your lady’s honor? Not much of a man, are you, boy?”

  “You are a wimp,” the Russian said with a grin. “The wussy.”

  Abbadon’s face filled with glee. “Did you hear what he called you, Daniel?”

  I could feel my ears burning. Rage surged through my veins. Abbadon, who moved like a magician, waved his hand.

  The Russian raised his jagged bottle and said, “I am going to cut your other girlfriend next.”

  “Oh, ho, ho!” said Abbadon. “Should I let him have a few moments alone with Miss Judge, Daniel? Shall I take this Russian lad to Melody’s cell?”

  “You leave her out of this,” I snarled.

  “That’s it, Daniel. Feel the hate. Feed on it. Take your revenge for Dana. Protect Mel! Strike this useless bag of Russian bones dead. Do it now!”

  I bent down and picked up the knife. The grip felt good in my hand.

  “Before I mark the girl,” the Russian boasted, “she and I will have some fun.” He puckered up his lips and blew fish kisses at me.

  Okay. I seriously wanted to do in the Russian sleazeball.

  More than anything in the world, I wanted him to pay the ultimate price.

  Chapter 81

  REMEMBER HOW I said Abbadon moved like a magician?

  Well, this wasn’t some kid’s birthday party, and I wasn’t going to become his willing volunteer from the audience.

  That rage rushing through my limbs and up into my head? I knew who put it there: Abbadon. It’s an Alpar Nokian mind trick, where you make somebody think they’re feeling emotions when actually you’re the one making them feel that way. How do I know this? I’ve used it myself in the past. It’s highly effective. Unless, of course, your target knows they’re being targeted.

  So I focused on the knife I held in my hand and transformed it into a Frisbee, which I flung at the Russian. He caught it with his left hand and, furious, came at me with the jagged bottle in his right.