Читать книгу UNHEROIC - Marcus Calvert - Страница 8

“Welcome to Heaven, you sorry sacks of meat!”

Sgt. Avery Dawson must’ve been a drill instructor in his past life – probably Army. A Marine DI would’ve said something cooler. Still, the grayish-brown buzz cut, the way he yelled, and the downright meanness of his face could only come from a DI. Even though Dawson was short and loud, he wore a really cool uniform. He had mix of modern-day olive-drab fatigues, black combat boots … and silvery armor on the shoulders, torso, ankles, and wrists. His choice of weapons also caught my eye: a Colt 1911A pistol holster to his left hip, a gleaming longsword sheathed on his right hip, and a modified M-16A rifle slung across his back.

Then, of course, there was the fiery halo atop his head. But he didn’t have wings. It reminded me – and the long, long line of recently-deceased – that we were all, in fact, dead. My last memories were of running through a back street in Fallujah, at the head of my squad. Wertosky was warning us to keep an eye out for snipers. It figured I’d be the one who saw the gleam off a sniper scope right before the world went black.

And now I’m here in a white robe and brown sandals, just like all the other new arrivals – minus a halo or wings. Dawson paced down the long row of us, the angelic dead. I tuned out most of his rant and fingered the blank pair of silver dog tags around my neck. Everyone else had them too. I looked around and realized that we stood under a beautiful blue sky, complete with pleasant white clouds which moved to a gentle breeze. The sky reminded me of the picnics I had taken with Carrie Ann –

I jerked my mind back into the present. I was dead and she wasn’t.

We stood in front of Dawson on some kind of paved parade ground, with dozens of barracks on the other side. My guess was that recruits ended up there. The buildings beyond were those found on any modern-day base: administrative offices, warehouses, training grounds, et cetera.

Farther on was a massive plateau, upon which sat the largest, most beautiful urban skyline I’ve ever seen. The architecture was so futuristic that the place could’ve been out of a comic book. The buildings seemed to rise thousands of feet high and gleamed so brightly that they actually served as the source of all daylight in the place. Then I looked into the opposite direction – away from the screaming drill instructor.

Holy shit!

We were standing with our backs to a cliff. I could literally take a step back and enjoy a very deep fall. None of my fellow dead had bothered to turn around, yet. I gulped at the sight. Way, way, way at the bottom of the cliff was an enormous white wall – probably some heaven-based fortification. I saw countless little haloed figures pacing it. Beyond that was a red desert-like landscape with cracked, dried ground. On the other side of what looked to be miles of red desert was a huge mountain range with three distinctly-huge passes running through it. The clear, blue sky abruptly stopped halfway over the hellish desert. Dark, crimson clouds took over and ran clear across to the mountain range and beyond –

Dawson’s gauntleted hand suddenly snatched me by the chin and roughly jerked my face toward him.

“Are you paying attention to me, maggot?!”

“Sir. No sir,” I calmly replied, not surprised that his breath reeked of cigars.

The folks next to me looked at me like I was nuts. Odds were the “recruits” next to me had been regular folks who lived regular lives and died in rather plain ways. They must’ve been too scared to back-talk to one of God’s own.

Screw that.

I’ve seen friends and strangers die in a wide variety of violent and sadistic ways. And when I forgot about their deaths, I had my nightmares to remind me. Frankly, I didn’t scare so easily any more. Maybe that’s why I slapped Dawson’s hand away and shoved him back. Even Dawson looked surprised. But he quickly regained his composure and got right back into my face again. I ignored the heat from Dawson’s halo and glared down at this asshole.

“Let me get this straight: we force ourselves to be good and live by the rules. And then we die and end up in Heaven. But instead of eternal rest, we get to go through divine boot camp and then fight some damned war?!”

“That is correct!” Dawson yelled. “I’m glad you didn’t daydream through my entire speech –“

“Actually, I did,” I interrupted. “But I’ll guess the rest. We‘re fighting a defensive war against Hell. If we lose, Heaven and Earth come crashing down. But we can’t win, can we?”

Dawson folded his arms, unsure of whether or not he would belt me now or belt me later.

“And why do you figure that, you daffy piece of muleshit?”

“Because the war’s lasted this long,” I countered, surprised by my clarity. “How badly are we outnumbered?”

Dawson hesitated.

For all his bluster, he’s not used to shutting people up. Frankly, my old DI would’ve put me in the hospital if I said one word that threatened morale - especially with stakes like these. But I once made the mistake of hopping into a war on faith alone. I wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

“Hundreds-to-one.”

The other recruits started looking around. Audible whispers began as they noticed the hellscape behind them.

“Have you ever launched an all-out attack on Hell?”

“That would be stupid and futile.”

“Why?” I asked. “God’s got our backs, right?”

I could tell that Dawson wanted to lie to me. But for some weird reason, he couldn‘t. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s on the side of the angels.

“God’s not here right now,” Dawson admitted.

“Come again?”

“God’s left to create other planes of existence. This war is a test. If we can defend the gates of Heaven until his return, humanity will evolve to a higher level. If we fall, Hell spreads into both Heaven and Earth.”

“When will he be back?”

“We don’t know,” Dawson scowled. “It could be tomorrow. It could be thousands of years from now.”

“Why does Hell give a shit about conquering Heaven?”

Dawson paused for a nice, long while. He really didn’t want to answer that one. But some invisible force seemed to make him talk.

“If the armies of Hell win, our existence goes ‘poof’. Heaven, Earth, and Hell will simply cease to be … along with all of us. Should they win, the denizens of Hell would end their eternal suffering – at all of creation’s expense.”

Dawson could feel everyone’s eyes on him.

“And what if we don’t want to fight?” Some bearded guy asked.

Dawson glared at the potential recruit with unveiled disgust – like the guy was the worst kind of coward. He’s too fanatical to realize that this kind of Heaven wasn’t mentioned in Sunday school. Dawson decided to stop fighting the urge to give us candid answers. That was good, because the dead guy asked a good effing question.

“Then you get two more choices. Choice one is that we send you back. You get reincarnated.”

Hopeful murmurs passed through the line. A second shot at life sounded a lot better than fighting demons for eternity. Odds are that a lot of disenchanted souls had taken the choice as well – and probably more than once. But I already decided not to take that route. Dawson gave me an evil smile, thinking I was chickenshit.

“The problem with this is that you get no say over what you reincarnate as. You could come back as the kid of a billionaire, a serial killer, a poodle, cockroach, or anything else on the food chain. I’ve heard of people reincarnating as plants.”

“Interesting,” I folded my arms. “And if we die fighting for Heaven and Earth, what happens then?”

“You’ll self-resurrect and live to fight on – here,” the bastard raised his voice as he paced a few bodies away from me. “And before you think of losing your balsa wood spines, remember the folks you left behind! Parents, children, friends, and lovers who all live because of the sacrifices that Heaven’s legions have made throughout the eons. Without us, none of you would’ve ever been born! You apes owe us your lives …”

I tuned Dawson out as Carrie Ann came to mind again, with her curly brown locks and freckled facial perfection. We had just starting dating before I got deployed to Iraq. While we never spoke the “L” word, we had gotten serious. Running into a chick who can finish your sentences is too rare to take lightly. The sex was nice. She had more brains than me. And yet, we had way too much shit in common. And being an Army brat, she was down with our long-distance relationship.

Carrie Ann was the type of gal a soldier volunteers to fight wars for. She promised to wait for me until I got back, which would never happen now. I had already ordered the engagement ring, which I wore around my neck – for luck – until my dying day. Had I made it back, I would’ve dropped to both knees and begged her to marry me. Instead, I died six weeks before the end of my tour.

I mentally slapped myself into the present. I had a choice to make, even though I didn’t fully understand the angles of it. This choice would bind me for eternity. I needed to leave emotions out of it and rely on pure logic. As Dawson rambled on, I went over the pieces of this metaphysical puzzle.

While I knew that Dawson wasn’t lying to us, I knew that his argument wasn’t quite right either. If Hell was the big, bad threat he was making it out to be, then Heaven should’ve fallen a truly long time ago. No side wins a war by fighting pure defense, especially when they’re massively outnumbered! Maybe the rules of the game weren’t as simplistic as Dawson laid them out to be. I was missing something …

Then it hit me.

“You said we had two choices,” I said. “What’s the second?”

“You can go to Hell,” Dawson said.

Damn! That’s it!

“What’s that like?”

“Beats me,” Dawson replied. “Why? You wanna go find out for yourself?”

I gave Dawson a twisted grin and nodded.

I was surprised.

When Dawson opened up a portal and shoved me through, five more recruits went through with me. Even more of a surprise was that Hell wasn’t all that bad. The skyline was larger. The sulfur smog took some getting used to, but the demons looked human enough – except for the horns and tails. They took us in with open arms. After all, it wasn’t every eon that angelic souls abandoned Heaven for a place in Hell.

Then they explained the rules.

They assigned you a place to live and you had to go out and get a job. If you’re a decent kind of citizen, no one messed with you. Hell’s denizens have long understood that ending up in the Pit was like a big-time wakeup call. But most demon-folk were also relieved that the place wasn’t as bad as they were taught growing up. And the only reason Hell’s this nice was that Lucifer and all the other higher demons were slaughtered in a little “uprising” some fourteen centuries ago. In my humble opinion, Iraq was a scarier place than Hell.

As a matter of fact, Hell was a testament to second chances.

I really liked their justice system. If you broke the fairly-liberal laws in Hell, you got sent to prison. They also imprisoned anyone who really earned eternal damnation while they were alive – the true worst of the worst (like Saddam, for example). Anyway, once imprisoned, these scummy bastards were automatically drafted into Hell’s legions and tortured beyond madness.

And when there were enough prisoners for a decent assault force, they’d get sent out on a suicidal raid against Heaven - with no training, inferior numbers, and sub-standard weaponry. Every time they charged, Heaven’s artillery would reduce them to gooey chunks before they could even reach the outer wall. This form of “banishment” kept the worst of the worst from making Hell a really bad neighborhood. It also meant that our plane of existence should last until God returns.

No one ages down here, which makes the place interesting. I’ve met me some famous bastards, folks who weren’t evil enough to get banished. The odd thing is that demons can still die from accidents, murder, and/or sickness. And whenever a demon died, it randomly reincarnated on Earth as someone/something on the food chain – another oddity that Dawson neglected to mention.

Or maybe he really didn’t know.

I ended up becoming a cop. Being ex-military and ex-Heavenly looked good on my application. I quickly made detective, got assigned to Homicide, and ended up putting away rotten-assed demons who occasionally slipped through the nets of Hell’s justice system. On rare occasion, I’d even get sent back into the mortal world to catch the occasional escapee. Every time I went back, I’d get the job done and then look in on Carrie Ann on the way back. She’s moved on with her life but never married. Watching her from afar, I could see that she still missed me. While I wanted to tell her how things turned out, I’m forbidden to ever make contact with her.

Dawson’s words, about protecting the folks we left behind, did stick with me. If I had anything to say about it, no one down here would mess with the weird balance that Hell’s denizens have fought so hard to create amongst themselves. To my downright amazement, creation’s made it this far. Even better, I’ve stumbled into a cause I can actually believe in: protecting life.

I just hoped that Carrie Ann ends up living a happy life. The worst thing about dying was the realization that I actually do love her. And in spite of the nice demon ladies down here, I felt inclined to wait. After all, Carrie Ann and I thought way too much alike. Maybe, when she dies and runs into some asshole like Dawson, she’ll find her way down here too.