ODDLY enough, it was vomit, not blood, that he slipped on, for one of the backsliders, Virginia, had thrown up after he'd shot the other three who were trying to escape and then put the gun to her head. Raymond's feet had shot out from under him, and he sat down hard on Virginia's head, cracking her skull as well as his coccyx. Pain stabbed through the base of his spine, and he cried out as tears streamed from his eyes. As he always did in moments of pain, sorrow, anger, confusion, or simply when he was feeling sorry for himself or otherwise out of sorts, he bowed his head in prayer.
"Dear Heavenly Father-—
Yo.
Raymond's head snapped up. He looked around, saw no one. "God… ?"
Over here.
Raymond looked to his left, toward the window, where a huge vulture sat perched on the sill, its black-and-crimson head cocked to one side, studying him with its yellow eyes.
Raymond slapped a hand over his own eyes, thrust out the other. "Get thee from me, Satan!"
He waited a few seconds, and when he heard a rustling of feathers he opened his fingers a crack and looked toward the open window. The vulture flapped its wings in a kind of shrugging motion, then hopped around as if to fly off.
Have it your way, Schmuck. It's your nickel. You called me.
"Wait!"
The bird twisted and curled its long, wattled neck, looked back at Raymond from beneath one outstretched wing.
What's the problem, Putz?
"You're not… Satan?"
You mean that hell guy some of you folks believe in?
"Uh… Yeah."
Born only half cooked, never made it out of intensive care. You can't expect a poor devil like Satan to keep truckin' for very long when you keep upstaging him.
"What are you talking about?"
The great black vulture hopped back around to face Raymond once again. Now the creature's yellow eyes seemed soulful, almost sad.
It never ceases to amaze me how any human with even a smidgeon of awareness of what the people on this planet routinely do to each other would worry his pea brain for one little second about ending up in some other unpleasant place called hell. Sheesh.
"I don't want to burn!"
Hoo, boy. I could have a bit of bad news for you. But not to worry about going to hell.
"You're saying hell doesn't exist."
The enormous vulture slowly shook its head.
You're a real pisser, Raymond. I'm afraid you've missed my point.
"What are you?"
God's the name, comedy's my game.
"You can't be God. You're a vulture."
Everybody's a critic. Somebody's got to clean up this mess you've made. I've designated the vulture as your planetary bird. What, you want I should have done my burning bush routine? Trust me on this: Before very long, you're going to have all the heat you can handle.
"What do you mean?"
In about five minutes those ATF and FBI boys outside are going to start to bulldoze this place, and then your nutso leader is going to torch the bunch of you.
"You're talking about David?"
The guy you let play hide the sausage with your wife and daughter.
"But David is your son!"
You have got to be kidding me.
"David… isn't your son?"
The meshugah can't even play decent guitar. You think any kid of mine couldn't at least play as good as Hendrix?
"What about Jesus?"
The man had steel balls the size of watermelons. Him I liked. We used to talk a lot.
"But Jesus was your son, wasn't he? By the Virgin Mary?"
Look, schmuck, first of all, if I did decide to have a kid with one of you humans, the woman I chose as the mother certainly wouldn't be a virgin when I'd finished with her. Male gods like a little nooky as much as the next guy. But I never had any children. I've got some emotional problems, and I didn't want to risk passing them on. You people have enough problems. Some of the other gods used to have an occasional roll in the hay with humans, but their progeny were nothing to write home about. It didn't really work out. I mean, how many people can earn a living throwing the discus?
"What… other gods?"
There used to be a whole slew of us. We shared responsibilities. One handled crops, another storms, another the oceans. That kind of thing. There was even a kind of forest ranger. A cast of thousands. If you wanted something taken care of, you prayed to the particular god in charge of that operation. Gods didn't answer prayers much more in those days than I do now, but at least you had a local representative.
"What did you do back then?"
Local maintenance. I was the superintendent of buildings and grounds. The bigwigs wouldn't give me any on-line Earth responsibilities. Said I was too unstable. They were right, of course. You wouldn't want to be around me when I'm in a snit.
"What happened to the others?"
I killed them. I am a jealous God.
"How did you kill them?"
Cut them off from their supply of faith. It takes a lot of believers to keep a decent-sized god alive.
"You… cut off their supply of faith?
Yeah. It took some doing, but a word here and a word there to the right people did wonders. While the others were busy doing their jobs, I'd come down here and talk to certain humans about there being only one God—me. My main man Moses was a joy to talk to. The man had a great ear for gossip, and an imagination like you wouldn't believe. He was truly an inspiration. The rest, as they say, is history.
"But there is a heaven?"
Home sweet home.
"And you'll take us there?"
Nooooo. I don't think so, Raymond. I don't have the power to do that: I never did have much of an aptitude for dealing with humans, which is why I was put in charge of buildings and grounds. But even if I did have the power to move you into my neighborhood, I'd be a fool to do it. Visiting with you from time to time is one thing, but I'd end up nuttier than I already am if I had to live with you. Sheesh.
"But you created us!"
Whoa, boss. You can't pin that one on me. You're not only a bloodthirsty, murderous crew of nest foulers, but your species has a serious design defect. The vast majority of you have a genetic predisposition to superstition, to believing some of the most breathtakingly preposterous things in order to justify your insane behavior. Insanity does beget insanity, you know, much like what you've got in your head ends up what you're sitting in.
"If you didn't create us, who did?"
Beats me. The fact of the matter is that you created me, and you keep me alive. I think you just kind of developed like all the other things on this planet.
"But where will I go when I die?"
You're not going anywhere, kiddo. It's lights out. End of the line. That's why they call it dead.
"You mean… this life is all I've got?"
Had. What did you want for your nickel?
"But David says the world is going to end now, and we're the only ones who will be saved!"
Sheesh. Your putz leader is just a meshugah like all the rest of you. I thought I explained that. The only difference is that he's an active loony, and the rest of you are passive loonies. The only thing in the world that's going to change after he torches you is that people are going to be telling jokes about the fried wackos in Waco. Did you hear the one about—?
"What do you mean by active and passive loonies?"
It's the difference between the foot and the grape. Taken as a whole, your species is psychotic. The fact that you're sitting there in a pool of blood on top of the skull of a woman whose brains you've just blown out while you carry on a conversation with a vulture is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.
"But you said you were God!"
I am. But most people talk to me when I'm not around to listen, not when I actually appear to them. I expected you'd have a heart attack. Talking to vultures who talk back is not usually considered a sign of mental health.
"I want to get out of here!"
That's the first reasonable thing I've heard you say. Maybe you should climb out this window like the four people you just killed were trying to do when you shot them.
"I can't move! I think I broke my tailbone."
Pity. To finish answering your question, passive loonies like you don't really know what you want, except that you always want something different from what you've got. And you expect me to give it to you. It's the same all over the planet. On the other hand, active loonies like your leader know exactly what they want, and sooner or later they manage to round up enough passive loonies to give them a shot at it. Usually active loonies want power, or money, or to kill a lot of people they don't like, or control television programming. But all your resident active loony ever wanted was to be a rock star, and the only reason he wanted that was so he could schtup a lot of women. But that plan didn't work out, because the man's got no talent. So he did the next best thing, which was to gather up a bunch of passive loonies he could convince he was God so he could at least schtup all the women and children in that group. You're not going to be pleased with the outcome of this, but the fact of the matter is that, as active loonies go, your boy is really small potatoes. The damage he's done to other people is relatively limited. I'm here to tell you that there are some real doozies out there.
"I don't want to burn to death!"
Then you'd better shoot yourself.
"I don't have any bullets left!"
Suddenly there was a grinding sound from the floor below, and the building began to shake. The vulture turned its head, looked down.
Time's up. The boobs have come to do some serious boob hunting. Adios, schmuck.
"Help me! I don't want to die!"
"Raymond, who the hell are you talking to?"
Raymond turned his head toward the doorway, where his leader stood with a pistol in one hand and a can of gasoline in the other. The man's long, light hair hung about his face in greasy ringlets, and his eyes gleamed.
"David, they're here!"
"I know," the man said, and grinned. "But we won't be for long. It's time for the Rapture and the world to end, just like I prophesized. Boy, are they ever going to be sorry they messed with me. I asked you who you were talking to."
Raymond pointed toward the giant bird still perched on the windowsill. "That's God, David! I've been talking to God!"
"What, are you crazy? That's just a vulture."
"Father, speak to him!" Raymond shouted at the vulture. "Tell him what you told me!"
He can't hear me, Raymond. He believes his own publicity. He thinks he's God.
"David, I've had a vision! I'm having a vision! I think maybe you should reconsider your course of action. Can we talk about this?"
The bright-eyed man's response was to raise his revolver and fire off three shots. The vultures head exploded in a fountain of blood and gore, and its great, feathered carcass fell off the sill and onto the floor with a loud thump. "What the hell's the matter with you, Raymond? Here we are getting ready to go to heaven, and you're sitting on your ass talking to a vulture. Nice job saving these others, by the way. They're going to be thanking you in a few minutes."
"David, I've been having some serious second thoughts about what we're doing here. God said the world isn't going to end at all, and that all that's going to happen is that people are going to be telling jokes about us."
The man walked over to Raymond, stood over him. "Get up off your ass, Raymond. I need your help."
"I can't, David! I hurt my back!"
"Then you can go first," the bright-eyed man said as he splashed gasoline over Raymond's head and body. "We're outta here!"