Authors: Cliff Hicks
“But…” Max started to say.
“No buts,” the guard replied, cutting him off. “People making exceptions and breaking rules is how we got into this mess in the first place. Now either we do it my way, or you can keep that body for as long as you like. Seeing as he should be waking up in four or five minutes, it’s up to you.”
Max grumbled, then nodded to Yael. “Alright, let’s go.” The rest of the Taggers stepped back and away, almost glad to distance themselves from the mess this whole situation had snowballed into, as if being even near the unconscious form of Jake disgusted them to their very cores.
Max and Yael moved with the gurney, and the two guards who had stepped out of concealment moved with them. They pushed Jake’s body into the darkest area of Heaven, one that simply wasn’t very well lit. Everything around them was still white, but the lighting was simply turned down, as the area didn’t see a constant flow of traffic all day every day, like almost every other area of Heaven.
They looked at the wall as they moved down one corridor then another, before one of the guarded pointed to a section over to the side. The Taggers wheeled the gurney over, and then brought it to a stop.
The section of wall they moved towards had a number of square doors along its surface, with clear crystalline glass allowing insight to the section’s contents. The guard looked into one, shook his head, moved to the next, looked again and then he nodded affirmatively. “Here’ll do,” he said, as he opened the door.
Max moved to the open section of wall and pulled out a metal tray from inside of it, sliding it outward before moving back to the gurney. “On three,” he told Yael. “One, two, three!” They lifted Jake Ragar’s body up and transferred it over to the metal tray, before Max pushed it back into the wall. “You’re a bastard, Jake,” Max said, “and I’m glad you’re in here.”
He closed the door and then looked to the dial next to it, which had golden numbers written on it ranging from zero to ten, the needle currently pointing to zero. He turned the dial until the needle pointed at ten, and there was a soft hissing sound coming from inside of the chamber. Max leaned his head down and looked inside of the chamber. The air around Jake’s body was slowly being filled with a gold mist. After about five seconds, the mist was so thick, it was nearly impossible to see the top of Jake’s head.
“
Ten’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?” Yael asked him.
Max stood upright again and looked her dead in the eye. “You heard the Captain as well as I did. He wanted this man so heavily drugged, he wouldn’t ever be a threat. So we’ve got him on max sedation and he won’t ever bother anyone again.”
One of the two guards nodded at them. “He’ll be safe and sound in here, don’t you worry. You won’t be hearing from Jake Altford again,” he said, as the two guards started to usher them back the way they came.
Yael stopped for a second and looked over her shoulder, down along the walls. There were tens of thousands of chambers just like the one they had put Jake into, running down as far as the eye could see, dozens of rows, one after the other, each with a soul trapped inside of them for all of eternity. This was an area that almost no one ever saw in Heaven.
The Eternal Slumber.
“
We’re nearly full up,” she said. “We’re going to need to build another sleeper block.”
*
*
*
*
*
J
ake, Bob and the three angels had met up in a nice little sleepy café overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a small town called Pacifica, on the outskirts of San Francisco. They were sitting on the patio, looking out as the sun was starting to come up behind them.
“You think they bought it?” Jake asked, as Bob motioned for the waitress to bring him another cappuccino.
“They did,” Bob said. “I doubled up to Heaven real quick while you guys were finding the coffee shop, and nearly every Tagger in Heaven was gathered up in Tagger central, waiting for you, er,
him
to re-form. They said they were going to put him into cold storage, so he won’t be talking about me, you or anything else.”
“They must really be afraid of you,” Randall said, his fingers running through Shelly’s hair. “I’ve never even heard of that kind of a processional.”
Jake shrugged slightly. “They’re not afraid of me, they’re afraid of what I represent. If one guy shows it’s possible to get out of Heaven, they’re worried about more and more people trying it. But if they make a big point about how anyone who leaves Heaven is brought back, the illusion’s safe.”
“Illusion?” Bob asked, sipping from his cup.
Jake closed his eyes, let out a deep sigh then opened his eyes once more to look at them. “Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the living room, then. I think it’s pretty clear that Hell isn’t taking new applicants any more, yeah?”
Bob bit his bottom lip, then nodded. “I was wondering if you were going to ask about that.”
James and the other two angels turned to look at Bob with surprise on their faces. “What’s he mean, Bob?” Shelly asked.
The Cherubim laughed a little bit, looking out at the ocean waves, feeling the cool breeze blowing into his face. “Nobody goes to Hell any more. Not that I can tell, anyway. It’s the big thing the Cherubim just don’t talk about. In my time doing this, I’ve seen all sorts of people. Saints and sinners, saviors and psychopaths, martyrs and mass murderers,” he said, before falling silent for a long moment. “And every single one of them, I’ve been told to bring back to Heaven. I’ve watched the last hours of people who would make you sick with disgust. And not just every so often. A lot more than I think anyone is comfortable admitting. That’s why I told Jake the other Jake was such a horrible person… because I knew that he was. His file told me that much. And I know that for every horrific thing there’s listed in the file I’m given, I can go back and read up on the guy or gal, and there’s a million things more not even listed.”
“How long has this been going on, Bob?” James asked him.
Bob shrugged slightly. “As long as I’ve been doing this. I started being a Cherubim in 1967, so it’s been going more than a little while now, obviously. We Cherubim just don’t talk about it. We can bitch and moan to each other about how much of a pain so-and-so was to get up to Heaven, or how paperwork changed where we were supposed to take them right as we were about to drop them off, but nobody says word one about whether or not these people actually
deserve
to be coming up to Heaven. The entire matter goes unspoken. The answer’s clear to me, though. A lot of them don’t. Way more than I think anyone even realizes.”
Randall chuckled bitterly. “Maybe Hell’s full.”
“Maybe,” Jake agreed. “Or maybe it’s something else.”
“What are you saying, Jake?” James asked him.
“I don’t know, James,” Jake sighed. “I don’t know what it means, but I know it means something. It’s something we can think about, though, I suppose, what with all the free time we have on our hands now.”
“Aren’t we going to have to get jobs or something?” Randall said. “I mean, we still need to make money to pay for things, don’t we, unless we want to be sleeping in stolen hotel rooms for the rest of our existence.”
Bob laughed, waving a hand at him. “I’ve got that covered, kid. See, the Cherubim keep a list.”
“A list?” James asked.
“Sure,” Jake said. “The Cherubim may be relaying souls back and forth most of the time, but they sneak off to Earth every now and then, kick back and relax. And they have to pay for all of that somehow.”
“A Cherubim named Viktor, about three hundred years ago, started compiling a list. Any time he picked up a new soul, he asked them if they had buried treasure or anything they had left behind. Since they weren’t using it, would they mind terribly telling him where it was?”
Shelly grinned. “No!”
Bob nodded. “Since then, the Cherubim have been keeping a master list for hundreds of years. Buried treasure, Nazi gold, lost art masterpieces, Swiss bank accounts… we’ve got it all. But we barely touch any of it. Anyway, about twenty years ago, Viktor got tired of compiling the list and having to dispense it any time the Cherubim wanted to have a party down on Earth. So he gave it to me. And since I’ve only had to organize one whole party in that time, I figure we can pretty much use it without worrying about anything.”
“How much…”
“Billions. Billions upon billions. We don’t ever have to worry about money, believe you me, sweetheart,” he said to Shelly, that infectious grin spread from ear to ear.
James nodded. “That’s good. We have a lot to learn about the how much the world has changed since we’ve been away. And, if the rest of you don’t mind, I would like to travel some. I would like to see this modern world in every way we can.”
“Oh, I think we’re going to be doing a lot of traveling,” Jake said, as he looked at them, a newly forming smile lighting up his face. “If you guys still want to stay with me, that is.”
“Kid,” Bob said with a laugh, “I think we’d pretty much follow you to the end of the world. Why, what did you have in mind?”
Jake slowly rose from his chair and started walking across the street over to the beach. Bob tossed a pair of twenties down on the table, and the four of them moved to follow him, as he moved to a gap in the fence and onto the beach area.
“Kid?” Bob asked, trying to keep up with him.
Jake kept moving until he was nearly at the edge of the cliff, a steep drop down to the beach and the water beneath, not that the fall would do anything to him. He looked out at the crashing waves, the smell of tide shifting, his eyes twinkling, turning back.
“You sure you wanna follow me on this one?” he asked them, that grin almost playful now. “Not too late to back out now.”
James scratched his chin with a smile. “It’s far too late for us to change our minds now, Jake. We’re with you ‘til the end. Why, what are we doing?”
Jake turned to look back out at the ocean, then leaned his head back, feeling the breeze blow into him full force. The cool ocean air was refreshing, invigorating. He felt absolutely alive again. He inhaled a deep breath again, then let it out. He looked over his shoulder, and with a wry grin, he told them.
“Isn’t it obvious? We’re going to go find Lucifer. And we’re going to ask him what the Hell is going on…”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
So many people to thank, and so little time.
Or page space.
Thank you to the many people who have supported this book through its multi-year journey from manuscript to the printed form you have in your hands now. Some of those include: Greg Dean, Christy Moore, Sean Frost, Avri Rahamim, Jes McConville, Dom Nguyen – my pre-readers who offered thoughts, criticism and most of all, support and faith.
Thank you to Topher Charnley, for giving me a wonderful book cover, and thanks to Greg Dean for helping me getting it framed right. Also, if you don't like the font, blame Greg, who convinced me to use Garamond instead of Times New-Roman. He says he can
feel
the difference. I, myself, am skeptical.
Thank you to Elizabeth Gauthier and Acacia Stevens, for being the first two people I didn’t know who enjoyed the book a great deal, and weren’t ashamed to tell me so. One almost become my publisher, the other almost became my agent. Hopefully they both go on to do great things, other than briefly stroke my ego once, many years ago, obviously.
Thanks to my parents, and my brother Curt, for being family, and doing all the things that family does.
Thanks to my uncle, Steven Hicks, for subtly pressuring me to keep writing, even when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
Thanks to Chris Wiig, for reminding me that sometimes I just needed to do something. It helps to have someone to fan the flames of your punk spirit on those days when it’s starting to fade to just embers.
Thanks to Larry Townsend, for walking me through my first publishing contract, even if it never went anywhere.
A debt of gratitude to all the authors who have been kind to me over the years, answering odd questions via email, even when they didn’t have to, most especially Steven Brust and Warren Ellis, whose works have also been something of an inspiration. If you aren’t reading their works, let me direct you thataway.
Many thanks to Thorsten Wingenfelder, Kai Wingenfelder, Christof Stein, Rainer Schumann, Gero Drnek and Christian Decker, better known as the band Fury In The Slaughterhouse, for providing much of the soundtrack for the writing of this novel, and for playing a song live for me personally at one of their farewell concerts. If you aren’t familiar with Fury In The Slaughterhouse, do yourself a favor and buy everything they ever made.
Thanks to the director Kevin Smith, for reminding me and everyone else that sometimes you just have to take a big fat risk and show people what you’ve got.
Many thanks to all the people I’m forgetting to thank.
And most of all, thanks to anyone who bought a copy of the book. Want more? Obviously, there’s more to this particular story, but I want to be sure there’s an audience for it before I keep on writing it. You know how to make that happen. Buy a copy and give it to your friends. Convince other people to pick up a copy. If enough people keep buying ’em, I’ll keep writing ’em.