Hell, sir. I promise you that,” Nero said. “We won’t have to sell.”
Satan moaned, and rolled over so that he was facedown on the carpet. He knew all too well what would happen now. Heaven would offer Hell a buy-out: they would agree to pick up its debts and pay off this judgment in exchange for a controlling interest. The Ultimate Death Match would be a mere formality, if it was even held at all. Hell would belong to Heaven and Heaven had so much money that four hundred million was little more than an accounting error for them. Maybe it would slow down their plans to go green, but that was it. Heaven would quickly earn back its outlay by charging dead souls for reductions in punishment, letting souls have easier torments if they paid big fees, there were all kinds of ways to squeeze money out of the billions of tormented souls languishing in Hell. None of them were fair, but they were all easy.
Nero was hungry. He knew it was nothing more than a stress reaction, but that didn’t change the fact that the hunger weasel was gnawing its way through his guts. He checked on Satan, who was face down on the carpet and unlikely to go anywhere. He cracked the door and poked his head out into the hall. Empty. Everyone was at the press conference. Making sure he had enough change, he sprinted down the hall, toga flying behind him, to the vending machines. He paused as he tried to decide between Donut Stix and Fritos, then decided on salty instead of sweet, punched up some Fritos and ran back to the conference room and popped open the bag.
It took him a minute before he realized that it was empty. Not the bag. The room.
“Satan?” he called. Then, realizing that this was actually an extremely serious problem, he called louder, “Satan? Sir?”
No answer.
He ran out into the hall. Satan wasn’t to the left of him and he wasn’t to the right. Nero tried to put himself inside Satan’s head. Where would he go if he were the absolute ruler of Hell and had just lost his realm? To throw himself off the roof? To binge eat in the snack room? To drown himself in the bathroom? Or would he go home? Nero tried to figure out the quickest route home, and realized that Satan would have gone right, aiming for the courthouse exit. Nero ran, Fritos forgotten, and he reached the double glass doors just in time to see Satan pushing through them and walking out into the crowded parking lot.
“Sir!” Nero hissed, trying to grab his arm. But Satan was already outside. Nero followed and grabbed him from behind. He wrestled with Satan, trying to pull him back into the courthouse. Fortunately, the enormous mob was turned the other way, watching the victory press conference unfold on the other side of the parking lot. If Nero could just get him back inside quickly they might escape notice and the inevitable public lynching that would follow.
“Sir, please, we can’t be out here,” Nero whispered, but Satan ignored him and just forged ahead, trying to reach the airport and home. In front of them, a CNN News crew were shooting b-roll. To their left was a wall of backs. To their right were sheriff’s deputies. All around them was an ocean of people who hated them with every fiber of their beings.
“Don’t do this to me, sir,” Nero practically whimpered as he tried to pull Satan back by one arm. But his fingers slipped and Satan lurched forward, bumping into the CNN sound guy.
The hefty soundman turned to say something surly and then his face lit up.
“It’s Satan!” he said to his cameraman, and they suddenly had him pinned with their lens as they tried to pry a statement out of him.
Nero made a quick calculation and ran away from Satan and towards the deputies.
“Get a car, quick!” he said. “Get us out of here.”
But the deputies seemed disinclined to do anything for Satan. He was the Lord of Evil, after all, and a loser. Nero raced back to Satan who was trying to push past the CNN crew but was getting tangled up in their cables in the process. It was turning into a shoving match, and that was attracting even more attention, and then the cry went out.
“Satan’s over here! He’s over here!”
Fortunately they were in the press area, which meant that they