Carter sat in pensive silence for a moment, perhaps to gather his thoughts. Then again, he could have been thinking about what he’d order for dinner later. He offered me a thoughtful look before he spoke again.

“What’s your name? Seems like I should know your name if you’ve decided we’re enemies.”

I shrugged. “Jericho Lott.”

There was another moment of quiet as he seemed to roll that around in his head. “It’s not your real name. But it’s real enough. Alright, Jericho, how long have you been doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Fighting evil. Or fighting what someone tells you is evil at any rate.”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

“It might. It depends on how new you are.”

I thought about it. “Four or five years, I guess.”

Carter nodded as if he’d expected such an answer. “A little longer than I’d have expected. That's certainly long enough that the new car smell is off the mission unless I miss my guess.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“So,” he said, standing and starting to pace a little, “answer me this. How often in those years have you come in on some awfulness and just known you were only seeing the tail end of a string of pure evil?”

It was my turn to roll an idea around in my head. Hell, I’d barely gotten back from something just like that right before all this new awfulness started. Just how often had it happened like he said? I gave up trying to count the incidents. “A lot. Too often to put a number to it.”

“That’s just the stuff that you see with your own eyes. How many places is something just as bad happening that you never even hear about, Jericho?”

I didn’t say anything. It didn’t strike me as the kind of question you answer.

He gave me a wan smile. “Everywhere. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening in every town, city, county, state, and country in the world. It’s happening every day. It’s happening right now, somewhere. Do you know why?”

I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Because some people are asshats?”

Carter considered that and started nodding like he’d never really thought it that way. “Well, yes, that’s certainly a part of it. It’s not the reason, though. It’s because people are corrupt. You, me, the President, and even the Pope. We’re all corrupt.”

“Seems like a stretch to say we’re all corrupt. There’s plenty of decent people in the world.”

“Maybe, but even the decent people are corrupt. You only have to look at that,” he said, waving a hand at George, “to see that that’s true. How often has he beaten his girlfriend or her children? How many people have seen the evidence? There are entire institutions that are supposed to protect them. Yet, it took you to even slow the abuse down. If people weren’t all corrupt, someone would have put a stop to that bullshit long before you came onto the scene. But no one did.”

I shook my head. “Sure, the system failed them, but it doesn’t fail everyone.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t always fail. Mostly, though, it doesn’t fail people with money and power. It doesn’t fail people who live in the right neighborhoods. That’s no kind of justice. It’s just more evidence of how deeply rotten the whole human race really is at its core. Then, if you object to how corrupt it all is, people whine and make excuses about bureaucracy and regulations. Like it all doesn’t somehow boil down to one human being looking at another human being in trouble and choosing to do exactly nothing useful.” Carter paused and gave me a sympathetic look. “Even you failed them.”

I jerked at that. “How did I fail them?”

“You saw the situation. You intervened, yes. It’s a lot more than anyone else did. Yet, did you really think that intervention would stop the problem permanently? Or, did you know in your heart, that eventually you’d have to do something,” he gestured around, “well, something like this?”

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I glared at Carter in angry, sullen silence. He accepted the look with impassive calm. I suspected he knew that I wasn’t really angry with him or even with the question. I was angry because he was right about me. I knew how abuse worked. I had known that nothing I did could really stop it in the long term. I’d hoped that my beating and none-too-subtle threats would keep him in check. Yet, I couldn’t even pretend to myself that I’d viewed that hope as anything but empty optimism. Based on my own subconscious planning, I’d been expecting to end up right here. I’d probably been expecting it from the start. I just hated that Carter knew it. As though he could read my thoughts, Carter raised his hands in a palms-up gesture that spoke more eloquently than any words. They said, there you go.

Carter leaned against the car again and fixed me with a penetrating look. It felt like he wanted to peer into the farthest reaches of my heart. “Haven’t you ever looked around and thought that it wasn’t supposed to be this way? Haven’t you ever thought that the universe couldn’t have intended for so much misery to be the lot of so many people?”

“Of course, I have. Everyone thinks things like that.”

“Everyone is right, Jericho. That’s the point. They’re right! No sane person would plan this kind of dysfunction. Now, what if you had the power to change all of it? Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you be obligated to do it?”

“Maybe. But change it to what, Carter? That’s always been the problem. We all know things could be better, a lot better, but knowing how to get there is something else. I’m not a god. I can’t see all the ramifications. Anything I changed could make things worse just as easily as make them better.”

Carter blinked at me in surprise. “Isn’t it obvious what’s wrong? I’ve known for years what the problem is. There has only ever been one way to make people behave like they have a conscience.”

I opened my mouth to say something, only no words came out. He seemed so utterly, bedrock certain. A part of me was morbidly curious. So, I asked. “What?”

“Fear. Or, more specifically, fear of punishment.”

“You think fear is the answer. We have laws. We punish people already. It hasn’t stopped shitty behavior. We’re no better off now than we were when some Sumerian invented ideas like laws and prisons.”

“No, I don’t mean fear of getting a ticket or fear of going to jail. I’m talking about fear of divine retribution. Not some hypothetical, after-you-die, kind of divine punishment, either. I’m talking about the kind of divine retribution that falls on you out of the sky before you can even start. That is the kind of fear that makes men better. That is the kind of world that She will bring. Men like that whimpering thing over there, murderers, rapists, despots, and tyrants, none of them will survive long in Her world. She will wipe them away like the dawn wipes away a bad dream. She will consume the guilty. The world that comes after, it will be a paradise.”

I stood there in stunned silence. I wanted to deny what he said, but there was a logic in what he was saying. It was a hideous, absolute, terrible kind of logic, but a logic all the same. The kind of fear he was talking about wouldn’t necessarily end all the ills of the world, but it would sure put one hell of a dent in it. If you knew, with certainty, that divine wrath would end your existence after you committed certain acts, the vast majority of people would never commit them. They wouldn’t dare. The kinds of people who did dare would only dare it once. Yet, it would come at a cost.

“What about free will? What about choice?”

Carter snorted in derision. “Jericho, what exactly have free will and choice given us? A world filled with rampant chaos, violence, terrorism, war, abuse, and neglect. I’d say free will and choice have had six thousand years to take their turn. It’s time for something else.”

A thought occurred to me. “What happens when your goddess runs out of murderers, rapists, and abusers?”

Carter cocked his head as if I’d spoken in some curious, foreign tongue. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I have to assume that she feeds on the sacrifice of the guilty. What happens when she runs out of people that we all agree the world is probably better off without? Who does she feed on then? Who do we sacrifice?”

Carter frowned at me in obvious consternation. I’d gone off script, apparently.

“She won’t need to feed on anyone. Why would she?”

“For the same reason anything eats. She’ll get hungry,” I said, as I thought it through. “I think what will happen is that smaller and smaller vices will become lethal offenses. Then, when people avoid even those, I think she’ll just start picking at random or her priests will. It’ll take a while. We’ll probably both be long-dead by then. But, it will happen. We’d sacrifice the future to save the now.

Carter shook his head in obvious disappointment. “I’d hoped to persuade you. The new world will need strong men and women to help guide everyone else. I thought you might be one of them, but that old woman has her hooks in too deep.”

Carter sighed, stood up straight, and walked over to the moaning George. An expression of utter loathing crossed Carter’s face as peered down at George. He looked up at me.

“You heard me out, Jericho. So, I’m going to do something for you. I’m going to set right something that’s wrong with the world. As She would, if she were here.”

With a casual motion, Carter snapped his fingers. The noise of that snap echoed like thunder around us, rebounding from every direction. A second later, George let out a gurgling shriek of pain as light erupted from inside him. It was so intense that I could see the bones in his face. The light grew ever brighter until I had to look away or risk being blinded by it. I squeezed my eyes closed and waited. George’s wet wails of agony rang in my ears. After a few more moments, the light faded and silence descended around me. I opened my eyes and blinked away the splotches that floated in my vision. When my sight cleared, there was no sign of Carter. All that remained of George were a few bits of floating ash. A sharp gust of wind blew past me and carried even those lingering fragments away.