Review
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Who's behind all this? None other than the Lord God Almighty, stepping in to rescue mankind. A pity his loyal messenger, the archangel Gabriel - "Do I have to Boss? They're cretins" - couldn't be a bit more enthusiastic. Still, give him his head, if that's what it takes ...
But will the plan work? Criminals, religious fundamentalists, corporate corruption. A maverick American President in election year. China, Britain, Spain, Africa. They're all wild cards. "Who'd be God?" muses the Almighty. "Yes, Guv", mutters Gabriel.
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"Have I ...?" began God, incredulously. He, who had created everything with the power of super-supernatural thought (much, much bigger than thought, really) and had somehow crammed it all - all - into a minuscule little blob that was too small for anyone other than Himself to even imagine. And then exploded it. Had He thought this through!
He looked at Gabriel from His safe distance and was relieved He was not close enough to distinguish sufficiently clearly the object of the angel's disgruntlement. Thank the Lord, He might have said, if He had been anyone else. Gabriel glanced up and noted the gathering clouds in the Almighty's expression. "Well, You know", he remarked, sounding slightly more conciliatory, which was probably wise in the circumstances, "You know what they're like. You think you're doing them a favour. I mean, look at when you stuck that road down the middle of the sea -"
"Parting the waters", God corrected him, with rather exaggerated patience.
"Yeh, yeh, whatever ... anyway, didn't work, did it?"
"They were my people", breathed the Lord, a little heavily.
"They're all your people, aren't they? That's what You sai -"
"They -". The Lord rumbled ominously, "Yes. As you well know. But they were bearing my message for their future - all 'mankind'. That was their role. They had to be saved".
"My point exactly", returned the archangel, wiping the now unadorned digit on a piece of loose garment. "Eventually they went back and they've all been fighting each other ever since".
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The whole of North America was dark. Yes, it was night, but this was really dark. Not a light shone anywhere, except maybe here and there some folks had groped around and found a generator but not many had one of those tucked away in a cupboard. Scarcely a light on the highways, either, because no-one was venturing out. What would be the point of driving from one dark house along an unlit road through blacked-out townships to another dark place? Here and there, just one or two lonely sets of headlights threaded their way through the black, like stray cats with nowhere to go.
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"It just stopped on me, I tell you! ... Yeh, that's right! Just seized up! Whaddya think I'd pull that old trick!"
The irate, disbelieving tones from the other end could be heard well beyond the cell phone, despite it being jammed to Tony Delgardo's ear.
"I was just giving her a ride home, for Christ's sake! Whaddya think! .... Whaddya mean, 'some brawd'!"
Ten years in Virginia had not softened the Italian Bronx accent which whined into the cold afternoon air. He was leaning with his back to the big white Chevvy, stuck dead as a doornail on the bleak highway and, inside, Suzy Rose beginning to shiver. More muffled invectives were crackling through the phone.
"My fucking secretary, for fuck's sake!" Tony was screaming back into the mobile.
"Exactly!" Any passer-by - of which there were none- would have quite distinctly heard that response, as Delgardo suddenly pulled the phone from his ear and glared at it, as people inexplicably do when someone hangs up, as though the explanation were somehow scrolling on the screen display in front of their eyes.
"Martha! ... Shit!" He thrust the phone in his pocket and jerked open the driver's door. Pretty blonde Suzy Rose leaned over, wrapped up in a fur coat, and not much else, by the looks of things.
"Sweetie!" she pleaded in a faltering voice, "Sweetie, I'm cold! Hold me!"
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Paul Best in London could not be accused of being a 'news junkie'. He was one of those - more common than the news media would like to believe - who more or less allowed most significant contemporary events to pass him by, at any rate until they became impossible to ignore or otherwise materialised as crude and unforgiving jokes in the pub. Tragic Princess Diana had been the butt of many of those, not to mention 'Nine-Eleven'. He picked up the occasional tabloid (popular not heavy) when pausing to buy cigarettes but these could only be relied upon to indicate whose torso had been publicly revealed recently, or indeed with whom that same torso had been entwined according to rumour, innuendo and jealous speculation. Thus, it was a few days, and courtesy of a better informed customer, before he became aware of the 'Virginia standstill'. It amused him. Bloody Yanks (with no due deference to his dear wife). Serve them right. Cars that big. All show-off. Of course they'll run out of fuel if they use that much. Only, it wasn't fuel, according to the customer as he peered at the unusually small print in the 'Best Cars' contract. They just stopped. Not all of them but quite a few. Enough for it to be a strange coincidence.
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"Oh, and Gabriel..."
The angel looked around, half over the edge.
"Yes, Boss?"
The Lord viewed him sternly.
"No wings".
