Year Zero (2000), page 27
"Sure you will," Molly told her. "You use the bathroom, sweetie. Better take a seat, Elvis—this could take some time. " "No hurry, ma'am," Elvis assured them both.
It didn't take as long as it might have, but Molly made no attempt to rush. Like Cinderella, she didn't intend staying at the party after midnight, but that didn't mean that she was in a hurry to get there.
Elvis hummed the tune of "Heartbreak Hotel" while he drove south along roads that were eerily devoid of traffic, but Molly wasn't tempted to sing along and Angie was too young to know the words.
When they stopped outside the gate of the Devil's new palace, Elvis leapt out to open the door for his passengers. "That costume looks pretty good on you, ma'am," he lied, gallantly, "but if you'll forgive me sayin' so, that gun doesn't look real. Too shiny."
"It's not a gun," she told him. "It just looks like one."
Tom was no longer manning the door. Mephistopheles was there instead, sporting a garish major domo's uniform. "I tried to get my old job back, of course," he said, mournfully, "but it doesn't exist any more. This was all that was on offer."
"I understand," Molly said, gently. "There's no point retiring to the world of men if the world of men is finished. I suppose the others are all inside?"
"Serving drinks, mostly," Mephistopheles confessed, with a tiny tear in his eye. "Poor Beelzebub's on duty in the GENTS."
"It could be worse," Molly assured him, thinking of the greys shot down in flames and the scientists blown to smithereens—but Mephistopheles' wan smile suggested that he couldn't find it in his heart to agree. He guided them as far as the lift, then delivered them into the charge of Belphegor, who was manning the car. Belphegor seemed slightly more philosophical about his fate. "At least it's not one of those glass-sided things that goes up and down the outside of the building," he said. "I hate heights."
"Me too," said Angie.
Although time was getting on, the party still seemed to be in the warming-up phase. Neither the Devil nor Christine had yet put in an appearance, so Molly and Angie drifted aimlessly away from the lift. Molly didn't much want to talk to anyone, and was rather pleased when the vast majority of the guests seemed to be avoiding her, but Honeysuckle and Peaseblossom were prepared to be exceptions to almost any rule.
"So glad you could make it, " said Honeysuckle, forgetting all about her last parting shot. "There are so few designated victims around that I was afraid we'd have to go thirsty. You have no idea how boring the Devil's friends are. International financiers, arms-dealers, boardroom creeps ... honestly, darling, I'd expected gangsters and psychopaths! And their floozies. You just wouldn't believe that there were so many dead straight sluts in the world. Oh for the days when femme fatale actually meant something. No disrespect, darling, but that bulge ... it's so obviously not a real gun that it's not even worth making catty jokes about your being pleased to see me. Way too shiny."
"It's not a gun," Molly assured the lamia. "It just looks like one."
"You really ought to give it to the cloakroom attendant," Peaseblossom suggested nodding in the direction of the utterly glum Astarte, who was leaning on a wooden counter in one of the booths adjacent to the lift-doors.
"Somehow," Molly told the one-time fay, "I think that might be a bad move. I'll hang on to it, if you don't mind."
"We don't mind," Honeysuckle assured her, gently stroking Molly's chin with a long black fingernail, "but we know a man who does. I don't suppose we could borrow your daughter, could we?"
"Lay a finger on her," Molly said, "and I'll hammer a stake through your heart here and now."
"We wouldn't hurt her," Honeysuckle retorted, insouciantly. "We just wanted a little taste. We've already tried the other one—and she didn't mind at all. I do hope you're not going to turn out to be no fun. This is supposed to be the party to end all parties, but it's a real drag so far."
When Molly finally managed to get away from the lamias she saw that there was indeed a lot of real drag around, but she had to agree with Honeysuckle about the disappointing calibre of the Devil's friends. Even in fancy dress they seemed unutterably banal. If these were to be the fathers and mothers of a new humanity, Molly thought, they certainly weren't going to produce a race of giants. Most of them looked at her with suspicion and contempt, if they looked at her at all. They didn't seem to have the least idea who she was or why she was here, but they knew that she didn't fit in. She wasn't the only person accompanied by a child, but she was the only one who looked like a mother—and perhaps that was enough in itself to qualify her as a spectre at this feast. Given that the other guests included at least half a dozen figures costumed as the Red Death and three as the King in Yellow, Molly felt that this was a bit of an insult, but she would have felt worse if people of this sort had welcomed her as a kindred spirit.
Molly's isolation wouldn't have been so conspicuous if she'd been able to turn her back on the crowd and pretend that she was looking at something else, but in order to do that she'd have had to go to the window-wall circling the rotunda, and there was no way she was going to go that close to the apparent edge. It was something of a relief when Lilith finally decided that it was safe to take a break from waitress service and took Molly aside for a surreptitious chat.
"I don't know what he has planned, dear," the old lady said, "but you'll have to be careful. I think he told you the truth when he said that he can't simply take the deus ex machine off you, but he'll get it by trickery if he possibly can. I don't know where he intends to aim it, but I'm sure he wants to be the one who pulls the trigger."
"It's okay, Lil," Molly said. "You don't have to put yourself on the line for me. I think I have it all figured out—the only possible problem is Christine. From my viewpoint, she's the one and only loose cannon. As long as she stays out of it, I'll be fine."
61
Christine made her entrance some time after eleven. She looked magnificent, clad not in fabulous billows of red or black but in contemptuous bridal white. She didn't have any visible bulge yet, but she wouldn't have passed for a virgin anyway, given the smile on her face. She was radiant, but not with purity.
Molly wasn't entirely surprised. Everyone qualified for Heaven was long gone, and those who were not no longer had the slightest need to pretend.
Molly tried to move across the room to talk to her elder daughter, but Christine seemed just as intent as all the Red Deaths and Kings in Yellow on cutting her dead. Only the vampire fays were willing to trade conversation with cowgirls, it seemed, and only for the purpose of mockery. Unfortunately, it was very easy for Christine to avoid her mother; all she had to do when Molly drifted close was to make a bee-line for the windows, to set her ethereal whiteness against the starry dark and the sulphurous light-carpet that was Zombie London.
"This is boring," Angie complained.
"It's just cheap tactics," Molly informed her. "The Devil wants me good and rattled by the time the witching hour arrives—but it's not going to work. I've come to spoil the party, and I'm going to spoil it. He can't wait forever—one way or another, midnight will roll around, and then the Millennium ends."
"Mr. Jarvis said that it ended last December," Angie observed. "He said that people like you were just idiot pedants."
"And none of his machines clapped out," Molly snapped, "because they were all like him, Y2K compliant. Nobody here thinks that anything's over and done with. They all know that year zero has yet to expire, and that everything's still up for grabs."
"Not exactly, my dear," said the Vampire Queen of the Fays, who had just materialised at Molly's elbow. "We already have the music of the spheres, and the secret of life. This time, everything's in place. There won't be any undignified grabbing."
"Is that why you didn't let Elvis provide the cabaret?" Molly asked. "But you're not actually playing the music of the spheres, are you? No matter how tall the tower is, it can't touch the stars."
"Not yet, dear," said the Queen, smugly. "But we shall play the music of the spheres, and the tower will touch the stars. You can depend on it."
"You can't," Molly countered, defiantly. "You may think you can, but you can't."
It was at that moment that the Devil finally appeared amid the throng, wearing a dinner jacket of whose severity and simplicity Beau Brummell would have been proud. When Molly sneaked a look at her wristwatch she was astonished to see that there were only a few minutes to go till midnight.
"Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?" she murmured, far too softly for the Devil to hear—except that he did.
"No, my dear," he said, his voice cutting through the chatter like a knife. "It gets stolen—by procrastination. Which suggests to me, Molly, that you haven't yet made up your mind exactly what you're going to do."
"Oh but I have," said Molly, hauling the deus ex machine out of its holster and letting the glory of the haloed barrel show clearly for the first time. "I'm going to aim it at the place where your heart would be, if you had one, and I'm going to turn back time without you. I'm going to secure the rule of the head, and damn the heart!"
As she levelled the gleaming machine, which caught the light so brilliantly that it seemed to burn with holy fire, the crowd which stood between her and the Devil split into two and melted sideways, leaving her the clearest of shots.
"That would be a mistake, my love," the Devil said, lightly. "What you ought to do, as I suggested to you, is to aim it at yourself. You're the only person here qualified to be the beneficiary of a miracle, after all. But you think I'm lying, don't you? You think it's a double bluff—that I'm advising you to do it because I assume that you'll assume that my encouragement to do something else is a ploy—but you're still not sure, are you? Perhaps it's a triple bluff, you think, or maybe a quadruple. You're hesitating, Molly. If you had really made up your mind, you'd have taken the shot by now."
"It's not quite midnight," Molly said, pugnaciously. "I'm waiting for the first stroke of Big Ben. The angel said that I had to aim very carefully, you see—and I think timing is as important as direction. But as soon as I hear that first stroke, you're dead and gone forever. Eternity unwinds without you. And you can't take it off me, can you? That much is true. There's nothing you can do but stand there and wait."
"You know that's not true, Molly," the Devil said. "You might not be able to think more than one move ahead, but I know you've got that one covered."
He snapped his fingers, and a single figure emerged from the crowd to move gracefully into the line of fire.
"I can't let you do it, Mum," Christine said.
"Yes you can, darling," Molly countered. The Devil was right, of course. She'd anticipated this move. Now she really had to start talking. Everything depended on Christine's willingness or unwillingness to step aside.
"Give me the gun, Mum," Christine said, taking the first tentative step towards her mother while keeping the Devil's immaculate dinner jacket carefully shielded.
"It's not a gun, sweetie," Molly said. "It only looks like one. It's a deus ex machine. It has the power to put everything right, if we only let it. It can unwind time, remake the past, erase all our mistakes. Yours, mine, the world's. It can do anything, if it's only aimed well. All we have to do is take out the Devil. Just that—no more and no less. You have to trust me, Chris. I'm your mother. I've been a lousy mother, I admit, but all that will change if you only let it. We can begin again, and this time we can get it right. You have to do it, Christine. I'm your mother. You have to trust me. In spite of everything, you have to trust me."
As she pronounced the last words, Big Ben struck for the first time, beginning the twelve-part count-down to midnight. The sulphurous carpet that was London was lit up twice as brightly by the first wave of celebratory fireworks. The zombies didn't care that they had already welcomed the new Millennium once—they were more than prepared to do it all over again, for auld lang syne.
"Oh, give it a rest, Mum," Christine said, "and give me the fucking gun."
Big Ben seemed to go into overdrive, as if the fireworks had driven him into a frenzy. Suddenly, there was nothing stately about the procession of his chimes. Suddenly, time itself seemed to be coming apart.
62
Christine surged forward, without ever once exposing the Devil to the barrel of the deus ex machine, and she snatched the weapon out of Molly's hand. Molly could have fired, in spite of all the confusion, but she'd only have hit Christine. She'd already given serious consideration to the possibility that Christine ought to be the target, the agent of the miracle —but she'd rejected it.
"I can't take it off you," she heard the Devil say, "but I know someone who can!"
"Sorry, dear," Lilith's voice whispered in her ear, as Molly stood dumbfounded. "I had to tell him what you said. You know how these things are."
I sure do, Molly said to herself—but she said it silently, lest anyone should understand.
Christine gave the deus ex machine to the Devil, and Big Ben's panic attack died away. Time now seemed to have been suspended, between the eleventh stroke and the twelfth. The Devil wanted to enjoy the moment of his triumph to the full.
Until now, the Devil had carefully maintained his appearance as Francine's Adam, the apprentice ponce, but now he let his true colours show. Molly saw him now as she'd seen him in the back of Dean's Devil-driven car, in all his horrible glory. He was the foulest thing that she could imagine, and his eyes were ablaze with malice.
"You stupid little cunt!" he sneered. "Did you really think that you could save the world? Did you really think that you could even save yourself? Did you ever really think at all?"
Molly said nothing.
"You're worthless, Molly," the Devil sneered. "Utterly and completely worthless. You've never done anything right in your entire fucking life. Nothing. Do you know what this has always been about? No—of course you don't. You don't know anything. Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you why I wanted this little toy, why I needed it, and why I had to reconstruct the whole fucking universe just to make sure that it would be delivered to my care. Heaven would never have let it go otherwise, you see—I had to make sure that He'd not only feel the obligation to leave it behind but to leave it in the custody of the biggest fool in all Creation, the one person guaranteed to bring it here tonight and let it be plucked from her feeble fingers. The one nothing in all the world stupid enough to think she actually had a chance of turning the tables on me!
"The reason I wanted the deus ex machine, you stupid cunt, is because I've spent all eternity in Pandemonium, with nothing else to reach for but the Earth. It wasn't enough, Molly—to be bound in a nutshell by nightmare, while infinite space lay without. I wanted the stars, Molly. I wanted the galaxies, and the universe entire—and you've given it to me!"
As he spoke, he raised a scaly arm. The metal plates that had been covering the glass ceiling withdrew into their beds above the tower's central shaft, so that the outer part of the crown of the Devil's citadel became entirely transparent. Then the lights were dimmed, so that the stars could be seen in all their naked glory. The fireworks down below, frozen within the moment, seemed direly vulgar by comparison. The only other thing which glowed as bright was the barrel of the deus ex machine: the key to eternity.
It was a clear night, and the tower was very tall, but Molly had seen the stars shine even more brightly, and in much greater profusion, from the observation deck of the greys' mothership. She had seen them shine on alien skies, tinted and distorted by exotic atmospheres. There was nothing here to excite or appall her, except for her awareness of the tower's height.
The moon loomed over poisoned London, the message on its face half-obliterated by shadow, but the stars and galaxies were above and beyond it, filling infinity.
"All mine," said the Devil. "All mine, at last."
The delayed stroke of Big Ben sounded in slow motion as the Devil put the deus ex machine into his mouth, aiming upwards at his cerebrum, the seat of his wisdom and ambition: the device by which he intended to encompass everything this time around.
He pulled the trigger.
The bang was incredibly loud.
The top of the Devil's head exploded, and a vast cloud of bloody shards slowly expanded, separating into particles as it spattered the carefully-angled panes of glass. The Devil's guests could still see the stars, but they were red now, as if all the matter in the universe had been turned to luminous blood.
If the Devil had been merely human, he would have crumpled up like Mr. Wilson, albeit more slowly, but he wasn't. He continued to stand there, his unspeakable eyes wide with astonishment.
If he had been capable of speech, he would probably have asked Molly what she'd done, and she didn't want him to perish in ignorance, so she reached into her sleeve and brought out what looked like an empty ammunition clip. She knew that if there were anyone in the world capable of seeing beyond the apparent emptiness to the charge that was still contained within the clip, the Devil would be the one.
"Sometimes," she said, blandly, "you don't need a miracle. Sometimes, an ordinary bullet is all it takes to do the job."
The Devil just had time to look into her eyes, with awful realization dawning in his suddenly-ineffectual stare, before he finally began to fall.
Christine screamed, and hurled herself upon his crumpled body, covering her lovely white dress in sticky scarlet blood. Then she straightened up again, with the glowing deus ex machine clutched in her right hand and Hellish fury written all over her face.
"You fucking bitch!" she yelled, and fired.
The bullet hit Molly just to the right of her navel. Its subsequent trajectory was such that the shock wave trashed her small and large intestines and several minor organs before pulverising her right kidney.
"Oh shit," said Molly, with feeling, as she was overcome by a sudden urgent need to sit down. "That wasn't in the script."
