Paul smiles. This is a good one. Each sermon has been sharper and hotter than the last. Paul sometimes wishes his friend would skip all the poetic preamble and just get to the point, but he has to remind himself that this is the point: to deliver a message that stings hearts. As satisfying as it is to set the fires, they are only a medium for the message, a bright blazing sign that can’t be ignored. It’s the message that will move the world to repentance. To acceptance. To surrender.
“So in exactly fifteen minutes,” Brother Atvist continues, “we are going to burn those houses down.”
They emerge onto the roof of the convention center and Denver spreads out around them, an endless flatness spiked with a few highrises. It glows the usual sickly orange against the night sky, but it’s dimmer than it should be. A third of the buildings are unlit, abandoned, darkness creeping across the city like a stain as the world unravels.
“But the Lord is not willing that any should perish.”
From up here his voice sounds even bigger, ringing through the streets as the stubborn holdouts gather around the speakers, pacing and squirming with mounting agitation.
“We don’t want to take your lives. We only want to show you that it’s time to give them back. To accept the end. To tell God we’re ready to go home.”
Paul nods approvingly. A solid conclusion. Now for the altar call…
But Brother Atvist doesn’t deliver the expected coda. His grip on the walkie tightens and he’s quiet for a moment. Then:
“Don’t you feel it?” His voice is softer now, and there’s a tremor in it. “Don’t you see that our road doesn’t go anywhere? That our battles were never winnable? Why are you still fighting when there’s nothing to fight for? Aren’t you tired?” His voice cracks and the walkie sags away from his mouth a little. “I am,” he tells the city of Denver. “I’m tired.”
And with that, he hands the walkie to Paul and sits on the edge of the roof.
Well. Not the most inspiring benediction. They won’t be gaining many converts from this particular outreach. But so be it. Seventy-two angry youths with jars of homemade napalm should be more than enough for now.
Paul checks his watch and raises the walkie. “In nine minutes, the fires will start. Within an hour, they will have spread across the city. Don’t wait for the authorities to stop this. They will not be able to.”
He feels the the thrill of expansion as his voice echoes through downtown Denver, the sense of being everywhere, a huge presence hovering over the city he’s about to destroy.
“The borders of the fire will be Highways 95, 225, 285, and 70. Everything outside should be safe. Everything inside will burn. Pack only what you need to live and evacuate immediately. We suggest taking I-25 to avoid congestion.”
He frowns. His announcements sound mundane, almost municipal after his friend’s grand oration. Where is his passion? Where is Pastor Bark? He thinks for a moment.
“We ask only for your city, to give it up as a burnt offering to God. But if your pride makes you give up your lives, he will accept those too.”
He smiles, nods, and joins his friend at the edge of the roof. He’s too excited to sit. He stands with his arms crossed, fidgeting from foot to foot.
“You had to end it like that?” his friend asks, still gazing out over the city.
“Like what?”
“Like a villain.”
Paul grunts. “Don’t bullshit yourself. The world never loves a prophet. We’ll always be villains to them.”
Down below, the city is lighting up with red and blue flashes, a preview of what’s to come. Police flood the streets and swarm the buildings. Firefighters ready their ladders and hoses. Even with the dying government’s desperate suppression of news, they have probably heard about Helena and Boise. Even with all the lines cut and signals jammed, a story that big still travels, so they should know that their efforts are useless. There aren’t enough police in the whole state to uproot seventy-two unremarkable teenagers planted loosely across the city. And even before the great decline, no fire department was ever equipped for arson on this scale.
It never happened before because no one decided to do it. The fire was always ready, always primed, just waiting for a reason to start.
“Three minutes,” Paul says. His excitement tightens his voice, makes it high and thin despite his best efforts, but it doesn’t matter here with his friend, who shows no interest in the pageantry of manliness.
“How many do you think it’ll take?” his friend murmurs. No excitement at all in his unaffected tenor. Paul can barely hear it over the sirens, the shouting, the distant tumult of evacuation. “How many do we have to burn before God accepts our surrender?”
A perfect response comes to Paul but he holds back for maximum effect. Thirty seconds…twenty…ten…
“‘The day of the Lord will come like a thief,’” Pastor Bark recites. “‘The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.’”
His watch beeps.
The tallest building in Denver flashes white. Burning bits of phosphorous spew out from its windows like a rain of shooting stars, scattering onto all the neighboring structures and scribbling the air with lines of white smoke. But that’s just the opening ceremony. A second or two later, spread evenly through the densest parts of the city, seventy-two Ardents ignite their jars of napalm. It’s not quite simultaneous, more a staccato of bursts than the single vast explosion Paul was hoping for. They’ll have to work on their timing for the next one. The hotter they can stoke the drama, the deeper the message will burn.
“‘Since everything will be destroyed in this way,’” he continues, his voice now trembling with exultation, “‘what kind of people ought you to be?’”
He looks at his friend as if for a response, like a preacher awaiting an “amen,” but his friend still hasn’t looked at him, eyes glued to the rapidly spreading hellscape below. So Paul finishes without him.
“‘You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God…and speed its coming.’”
Still no reaction. Paul lets it go. His friend has always been this way. Always lost in his head, straining toward some distant skylight that he is never going to reach. Is he blind to the achievement burning right in front of him? They are changing the face of the earth, clearing the overgrown land for the foundations of God’s Kingdom. If that’s not enough for him, what ever will be?
Paul stretches out his hands, feeling the heat of the fire in the wind, the bits of ash blowing against his cheeks like warm snowflakes. It’s spreading quickly. He knows they should leave soon, join up with the others and start skimming for converts in the stream of evacuees, but he wants to savor this as long as possible.
Playfully, boyishly, he pretends he’s the Angel of the Lord smiting Sodom for its sins. He imagines the power coursing through him, the brimstone gathering in his hands, the approving nod from his Father as he strikes. How wonderful, to be an angel. To be created perfect, not broken, not designed to crave evil and set loose on a path to Hell. To be born good, a child of innate worth who does not have to hate himself to be loved.
He blinks hard and glances around like someone pinched him. Where did that thought come from? Heretical, self-pitying, weak. It couldn’t have been his. A dart from the Devil, then, trying to poison him at the very moment of glory. His face flushes with shame and anger.