“Jesus comes down.He marries the Church.There’s a new Heaven, new Earth.”
“Okay, so Jesus comes down and fucks our ass?”
“Can you try having some respect?”Tadeo sighed harshly, cold rosary like a noose under his shirt.
“Fuck your religion,” Dante said.“But it doesn’t matter what I think, does it?If that’s how the book ends, I just don’t think that’s what the devil wants.”
Curling some of the rein around a finger, Tadeo decided to leave the conversation there.He’d thought — or had he?— Dina wanted to save humanity to keep evil subdued longer, but that would just be delaying God’s apocalypse.Why delay the end?Prophecies were cruel; they were an impatient hint of the end, one that made you helpless.Why fight?Why try to save anyone?Why not just kill everyone to spare them the pain of life and allow them to enter Heaven as children?It was these kinds of questions that Tadeo remembered asking as a child in church.He’d tried to be an atheist as a child; he really had.
Ahead, there were a few smoking buildings but otherwise, the town was perfectly standing still, and the chaos was less from the airstrikes and more from the hungry stars above.As Tadeo rode onto the main street, though far from the couple cars speeding in any direction out of town — the people began to notice him.Masses of them, first a handful but rapidly swelling into dozens of humans, hurried to him and called his name.It was the first time Tadeo had ever heard it from strangers.All this time, he’d been their secret, the Beast of whispers, and now — with their hands all reaching out to him, some of their faces grayed from ash — they shouted, “Tadeo!”Help us.Save us.
“Wait.”Heart building to hammer against his chest.Tadeo stammered.“Let me— Let me find my family—” he tried, even when hands, frantically, clawed at his horse.“I’m sorry,” he said when a young man tried to shuffle an injured teenager toward him — blood trickling down the left side of her face, reddening the whites of an eye.“I’ll try to help you all soon.I’ll return.”Where were the soldiers?The authorities?Often, his family, his neighbors, spoke of feeling abandoned, but it seemed more true now than it’d ever been.
‘It's not true,’ Tadeo was thinking warily as Dante waved the people away.‘It’s not true that God wants the world to end.And it’s not true that I’m the anti-Christ.Because if it’s true, then what?’Pleading, the people tugged on his clothes.‘What about all these people?What about me?’He knew how Revelation ended, as did God, as did Satan.‘What now?’
His home; they reached it half an hour later.Tadeo, however, didn’t recognize it immediately.His family’s house had never been slanted to the left, and a collapsed roof was nothing unusual in this neighborhood but one hadn’t belonged to them.The windows were shattered, the uneven remnants shining like crystals over the ground, in between the slabs of wall that’d been blown off.Miraculously, amid the rubble, their pepper plant still stood with Tadeo’s family huddled beside it.Enough time had passed now that they’d cleaned themselves of ash.Streaks of the gray remained, however, gathered beneath their nails, in the creases of their knuckles.The oldest woman among them, Tadeo’s grandmother, rose her head first, her body still shaking — like the ash, some blood lingered — and called his name.When all the other family turned, saw him, Tadeo yanked the horse to a halt, ignoring her startled neighing.He swung his body off before Dante could even taken the reins the anti-Christ shoved into his hands.
“Wela!”he called for his grandmother, then, “Welo—” He found himself coughing, suddenly, inexplicably, as if he’d made himself sick from shock.Nearby, the crowd watched as Tadeo went for the unlocked gate, pushed it open, shoved it closed behind him to dissuade his followers from harassing the family.“What,” he called, stumbling into the yard, “happened to the house?”
His grandfather had a distant look in his eyes as he shuffled closer to his wife and said, “They hit our home.I don’t know why.Over the last few days.They hit a few places, just a few— All over town—” On the ground between his grandparents, Tadeo’s mother was sitting, her face twitching with a cognition that the anti-Christ hadn’t seen in over a decade.
“Tadeo,” called a cousin, hurrying over and taking his arm.“OurtíoJoaquín—” The one who’d lent Tadeo the horse.“Ana Karen is screaming in there with her baby—” That was his daughter.“I think they’re okay, but she won't leave him.The rest of us were lucky— Joana got us out of the house, into the yard right before, but ourtíojust got in— He didn’t—” Here, her voice began to break and the sinking feeling in Tadeo’s own chest fell into his stomach, twisted it.
“No,” Tadeo whispered, shook his head, eyes already beginning to burn.“Don’t tell me that.Where is he?”His jaw ached from a sudden tensing at the hinges, and Tadeo frantically grabbed his cousin, taking her sleeves.“Tell me where he is.”
“Tadeo,” called the hoarse, chainsmoker voice of only one person, and the anti-Christ’s head jerked to the open door to a house half-collapsed.“I told you— Dammit, I told you—” Joana looked like the others, but her clothing was grayer; she hadn’t cleaned it off like the others.Against the doorway, she leaned, eyes bloodshot, mouth pressed fine — her expression like she’d been the one to aim the strikes, to kill Tadeo’s uncle, to cause all of this.“He’s not in one piece, Tadeo.He’s dead.Don’t go see it.There’s a reason they’re all out here.”
The crowd was still watching, and the anti-Christ glanced behind briefly, saw Dante on the horse still.Distantly, there were the honks of traffic, the desperate using the last of their gasoline they’d saved for emergencies.Breathing, breathing, Tadeo reached for his hat, tugged it off, revealing hair stuck to his sweated forehead.Initially, he didn’t say a word to her, felt that he should be furious at her for even implying that this could be his fault, but it was.‘It’s my fault in a way guiltier than you probably meant it.’He stumbled, bringing his hat now to one hand, holding it tight at the rim, whereas his other fingers began to comb back his hair anxiously.
“Don’t listen to her,” said the cousin.“It was— There was nothing you could have done.”
Tadeo heard the words, but he could do no more than nod in acknowledgment before he took a step forward, another two, until he’d reached Joana, whose face was still set in a mutilated anger, in deep sorrow.
“Joana,” he called, voice uncertain, afraid, lowering the hand in his hair.‘I need to tell you what I’ve done.That maybe you were right.That maybe I shouldn’t have gone with Dina.That maybe I’ve doomed us all.’He stumbled up to her, taking his hat with both hands, then opened his mouth slowly.He wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry.’
But Joana whispered —“I’m sorry.”And Tadeo blinked, once, twice.“I really am.”Her face suddenly grimaced deeply, eyes softening.“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tadeo said softly.“You saved most of my family?—”
“I’m sorry for your uncle too,” she cut off, still in a whisper so that no one else could hear.“But that’s not why I’m apologizing.”When Tadeo waited, patient for her to explain, Joana confessed: “You’re the anti-Christ.”‘No,’ Tadeo thought.‘No.’But the emptiness, the horror in him was so painful that all his muscles had seized up.“You’re meant to kill us all — your own family, me, everyone in town, the whole world— And I knew.I’ve always known.”
“What?”Tadeo breathed, his throat tightening, burning.
“I found you because I knew.”She staggered back, gaze flashing to Tadeo’s family with a strike of grief before she spoke again and looked at him.“I met the angel Michael before I met you.He told me who you were.He told me what you could do.”Momentarily, Tadeo couldn’t even remember when he met Joana, like she’d always been there beside him.That didn’t feel so far from the truth.She’d been the one to tell Tadeo to stop hiding from the world, to free the town from all the violence.He’d resurrected, but he hadn’t really stopped being dead until she stepped into his life as a little girl with a gun and a wrestler mask.“He told me he’d kill you when the time was right.”
Taking a step back, Tadeo felt his eyes widen and a gash in his chest cut itself deeper.‘Hurt’ felt like such a juvenile word, but it was more accurate than any other; he felt small, shrinking, young, confused.He hurt like a scraped knee.
Joana’s gaze was exhausted.“But I wanted to use you first before Michael killed you.I wanted to save this place.It’s all I wanted— I thought it would be easy to know who’s good, who’s bad.I started listening to the wrong people.I didn’t mean to.It’s all so complicated.I’m sorry.To you, to everyone.Fuck.I thought it would be easy.”
‘You thought you could just kill the right people.Like all the evil of living is concentrated in some.Like there are demons and angels of humans.’Tadeo, slowly, began to turn back to the street and crowd.‘But it’s the angels that want to end the world.’“I did too,” he replied; it was a confession; he was a sinner, but there was no priest on the other side of the confessional.‘You groomed me into a good lamb to slaughter.’But he couldn’t blame her, could he?
“Where are you going?”her voice finally rose, shaking, feeble, sounding like she never had before — but when Tadeo spoke again, it was to his grandmother.
“I’ll be back in a moment, is that alright?”His skin itched, and the monster inside of him twisted and turned, despite how hollow he felt.Tadeo’s grandmother looked at him, then seemed to understand.She nodded, and Tadeo instantly leaned over to kiss her cheek before stepping away, heading toward the gate once more and the people there, waiting on their savior.Their anti-Christ.Without thinking, Tadeo lifted his hat back over his hair, and he grit his teeth and told himself to stay on his feet.To not fall — onto his knees — in grief and screams and cries despite a wobble on his bottom lip.But there was no helping the bombardment of images in his mind of his uncle’s face, of his voice, his touch, his laugh.He’d never hear it again.He was still waiting to hear his father’s voice again.He was still waiting to hear his mother talk too.
We spend so much time waiting for the long lost.
Tadeo reached the gate, opened it to climb onto the sidewalk, and a breath fell out of his mouth.He shut the exit blindly behind him, then caught Dante finally climbing off the mare.Swallowing, Tadeo turned away, began walking away from him, from the house.The crowd, shockingly, didn’t follow — at least not closely.They shuffled their feet from a distance, like stray dogs trailing a stranger.
