Afterworlds: The Book of Doom

T WAS THE T-shirt the boy was wearing that had first caught Zac’s eye. It was white, with yellow print on the front in the style of the Baywatch logo. The text read:

MY LIFEGUARD WALKS ON WATER

And then, underneath, for those struggling to work it out:

(BECAUSE HE’S JESUS)

The rest of Angelo wasn’t much more promising, either. He was a good fifteen to twenty centimetres shorter than Zac, and about half the width across the shoulders. The T-shirt hung loosely from his skinny frame, reaching down almost to his knees.

The knees themselves were on full display, knobbly and ever-so-slightly grass-stained. His legs were also bare, and Zac really hoped the boy was wearing some kind of shorts beneath the trailing shirt.

On his feet, Angelo wore flip-flops with I LOVE MAJORCA printed in jolly lettering across the plastic strap. They were the most violent shade of fluorescent green Zac had ever laid eyes on.

Zac’s gaze went from the feet to Angelo’s face. The boy looked young – eleven or twelve, at a guess – with eyes that seemed cartoonishly large. His hair was blond, like the angels’, but it was a dirty, brownish blond, cut into an uneven bowl shape round his head.

Angelo smiled nervously. “Good King Wenceslas walks into a pizza shop,” he said. His voice was wobbly and unbalanced, as if he were still learning how to use it.

“What?”

“It’s a joke,” Angelo explained. “Good King Wenceslas walks into a pizza shop, and the assistant asks, ‘How do you want your pizza?’ And Good King Wenceslas says, ‘Deep pan, crisp and even.’”

The boy’s huge eyes blinked several times. He watched Zac, waiting for a reaction.

“You know? The song,” he added. He began to sing. “Good King Wenceslas looked out...”

Zac nodded. “Yeah.”

“Deep pan, crisp and even.”

“Yeah.”

There was silence. Somewhere close by, Gabriel coughed gently.

“You don’t get it, do you,” Angelo said. “Deep pan—”

“No, no. I get it,” Zac cut in. He looked back at the archangels. “It’s not too late to change my mind, is it?”

Gabriel smiled his politician-smile and clapped Zac on the shoulder. “Oh, I think you two are going to get along like a house on fire.”

There was no mistaking Angelo’s room. It was like a bricks and mortar version of the boy himself.

The walls were a dull white, but decked out in brightly coloured posters. One picture showed an electric guitar with the words JESUS ROCKS! emblazoned across it in blue writing.

Keeping with the guitar theme, the next poster featured a large, gold-coloured plectrum. I PICK JESUS! was carved into the plectrum’s surface.

There were two or three other posters too, but the one that caught Zac’s eye was a full-length picture of Christ himself. It reminded Zac of a painting he’d stolen once, but this was no painting. It was a photograph.

Jesus was standing in a wheat field, with the sunlight casting a halo behind his head. With one hand he held a lamb, tucked up under his arm. With the other hand he was giving a thumbs up to camera, while flashing a smile so sincere it could’ve shattered concrete at a hundred paces.

“That’s Jesus,” Angelo said. He was sitting on the edge of the room’s narrow bed, his feet swinging a few centimetres off the bare wooden floor. “He’s my hero.”

Zac scanned over the other posters. “So I see.”

“Well, him or the Incredible Hulk. It’s hard to choose,” Angelo said. “I mean, Jesus is the son of God, and sacrificed himself for the sins of all mankind and everything, but the Hulk can punch a tank into outer space. So I don’t know who to pick.”

“Yeah,” replied Zac absent-mindedly, “it’s tricky.”

“I love the Hulk. I mean, I love all superheroes, but the Hulk is the best. Everyone thinks he’s a monster, but he’s not. He’s one of the good guys. He just wants people to stop trying to hurt him. He just wants a friend.” Angelo blushed and squeezed out a bashful smile. “Have you ever read any Hulk comics?”

Zac shook his head. “No. Not lately.”

“I’ve got loads of them here, if you want to borrow them,” Angelo said. “That’s... that’s what friends do, isn’t it? Lend each other stuff.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Zac said. He strolled over to Angelo’s bookcase. The room was tiny, so it didn’t take long. He cocked his head to the side and studied the shelves. It was mostly Bibles on there, all different shapes and sizes. Down on the bottom shelf, though, were several different versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, half a dozen superhero graphic novels, and a book full of diagrams of the USS Enterprise. There were also seven different editions of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD, each one only marginally different to the ones before.

“Have you ever met him?” Angelo asked.

“Jesus?”

“The Hulk.”

Zac looked back over his shoulder at Angelo. The boy was still perched on the bed, his huge eyes filled with hopeful expectation.

“No,” Zac said, turning his back on the bookcase. “Never met him.”

“He moves around a lot, that’s probably why,” said Angelo. “If you do ever meet him, whatever you do, don’t make him angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.”

“Right,” said Zac, with only a momentary pause. “I’ll keep that in mind. You like Jekyll and Hyde too, I see.”

“Not really,” Angelo shrugged. He shifted uneasily. “Gabriel keeps bringing them to me. He thinks it’s good for me to read them, with the whole half-blood thing. He got me into the Hulk to begin with too.”

“Right.” Zac looked around the room again. It was small and windowless, with just one door. There were only the two of them there, and they had only been in the room a few minutes, but already he was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

“So,” he began, looking Angelo up and down again. “Why you?”

Angelo smiled anxiously. “What do you mean?”

“They had you come and wait outside the door. They knew I’d say no to Michael coming with me, so they had you lined up. Why?”

“I don’t...”

“What did they say to you? Why did Michael tell you to wait outside?”

Angelo smiled bashfully. “They said they’d found me a friend. He said we could be friends. You and me. So, um... Can we?”

“No,” said Zac. “We can’t.”

Angelo’s smile stayed fixed, but he looked away from the boy in black. “What? Oh. Right. What? I mean, yes. OK.” He wriggled uncomfortably on his bed. “It’s just, see, I don’t have many friends.”