Good Omens

obliged,” said Crowley, as he began to wind up the window.
    R. P. Tyler had to say something.
    â€œExcuse me, young man,” he said.
    â€œYes?”
    I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you don’t notice, your car being on fire .
    A tongue of flame licked across the charred dashboard.
    â€œFunny weather we’re having, isn’t it?” he said, lamely.
    â€œIs it?” said Crowley. “I honestly hadn’t noticed.” And he reversed back down the country lane in his burning car.
    â€œThat’s probably because your car is on fire,” said R. P. Tyler sharply. He jerked Shutzi’s lead, dragged the little dog to heel.
    To The Editor
    Sir ,
    I would like to draw your attention to a recent tendency I have noticed for today’s young people to ignore perfectly sensible safety precautions while driving. This evening I was asked for directions by a gentleman whose car was …
    No.
    Â Â Â Â Driving a car that …
    No.
    It was on fire …
    His temper getting worse, R. P. Tyler stomped the final stretch back into the village.
    â€œHOY!” SHOUTED R. P. TYLER. “YOUNG!”
    Mr. Young was in his front garden, sitting on his deck chair, smoking his pipe.
    This had more to do with Deirdre’s recent discovery of the menace of passive smoking and banning of smoking in the house than he would care to admit to his neighbors. It did not improve his temper. Neither did being addressed as Young by Mr. Tyler.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œYour son, Adam.”
    Mr. Young sighed. “What’s he done now?”
    â€œDo you know where he is?”
    Mr. Young checked his watch. “Getting ready for bed, I would assume.”
    Tyler grinned, tightly, triumphantly. “I doubt it. I saw him and his little fiends, and that appalling mongrel, not half an hour ago, cycling towards the air base.”
    Mr. Young puffed on his pipe.
    â€œYou know how strict they are up there,” said Mr. Tyler, in case Mr. Young hadn’t got the message.
    â€œYou know what a one your son is for pressing buttons and things,” he added.
    Mr. Young took his pipe out of his mouth and examined the stem thoughtfully.
    â€œHmp,” he said.
    â€œI see,” he said.
    â€œRight,” he said.
    And he went inside.
    AT EXACTLY THAT SAME MOMENT, four motorbikes swished to a halt a few hundred yards from the main gate. The riders switched off their engines and raised their helmet visors. Well, three of them did.
    â€œI was rather hoping we could crash through the barriers,” said War wistfully.
    â€œThat’d only cause trouble,” said Famine.
    â€œGood.”
    â€œTrouble for us, I mean. The power and phone lines must be down, but they’re bound to have generators and they’ll certainly have radio. If someone starts reporting that terrorists have invaded the base then people’ll start acting logically and the whole Plan collapses.”
    â€œHuh.”
    WE GO IN, WE DO THE JOB, WE GO OUT, WE LET HUMAN NATURE TAKE ITS COURSE, said Death.
    â€œThis isn’t how I imagined it, chaps,” said War. “I haven’t been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It’s not what you’d call dramatic . Albrecht Dürer didn’t waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that.”
    â€œI thought there’d be trumpets,” said Pollution.
    â€œLook at it like this,” said Famine. “It’s just groundwork. We get to do the riding forth afterwards. The proper riding forth. Wings of the storm and so on. You’ve got to be flexible.”
    â€œWeren’t we supposed to meet … someone?” said War.
    There was no sound but the metallic noises of cooling motorbike engines.
    Then Pollution said, slowly, “You know, I can’t say I imagined it’d be somewhere like this, either. I thought it’d be, well, a big city. Or a big country. New York, perhaps. Or Moscow. Or Armageddon itself.”
    There was another pause.
    Then War said, “Where is Armageddon, anyway?”
    â€œFunny you should ask,” said Famine. “I’ve always meant to look it up.”
    â€œThere’s an Armageddon, Pennsylvania,” said Pollution. “Or maybe it’s Massachusetts, or one of them places. Lots of guys in heavy beards and seriously black hats.”
    â€œNah,” said Famine.