Copyright Information
Heaven Painted as a Free Meal
Copyright © 2015 by Dean Wesley Smith
First published in a different form in Smith’s Monthly #19, April, 2015
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © 1971yes/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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For Kris.
Even more popcorn for the brain.
SECTION ONE
Jumping on Board
ONE
THE WIND HITTING his face around his goggles felt wonderful as Elliot West fell away from the drop plane just over sixty seconds before he was going to die.
The day around him was a perfect spring afternoon. From ten thousand feet, he could see hundreds of miles in all directions over the vast Treasure Valley in Idaho. All the spring colors of the patchwork farmlands shown in bright shades of brown and greens.
The clear air seemed to give everything a touch of vividness, a sharpness of detail that just couldn’t be imagined by anyone standing on the ground.
Bogus Basin Ski Area above Boise looked almost small from this height, with the snow still clinging to some of the ridgelines. He could see beyond Shaffer Butte into the towering peaks of the central Idaho Mountains, still mostly covered in pure white.
Below him and to the right was the wide gray ribbon of Interstate 80 that came out of the sprawling city and ran to the east toward the desert town of Mountain Home and to the west toward Oregon. Tiny dots of cars seemed to just creep along.
The Snake River twisted to his left, high from spring runoff, and he could even see from his position where the Boise River joined into the Snake River, something in all his jumps he had never noticed before.
Every time up here he noticed something new, felt something different, experienced a new high. Deanna, his girlfriend, called him a flat-out adrenaline junkie and at the moment he couldn’t have argued with her.
The sound of the wind increased as he picked up speed, holding in stable position for a moment.
Then he did a slow roll to look back up at the drop plane as two more jumpers cleared the back. One was his friend and law partner, Craig Daniels, and the other a newer member of the jump team named Ben.
Beyond the plane, white clouds drifted against a deep blue sky, framing the plane and the other jumpers perfectly. That would have been a beautiful picture if he had his camera with him.
This was just a free jump with all of the jumpers on their own, so since he was the first out, they needed to watch out for him. He didn’t need to worry about them at all.
On the next jump they would practice for some of the stunts they were going to do for the upcoming air show in eastern Idaho next weekend.
Elliot let himself drift back into stable position, just relaxing, the wind around him a familiar feeling, the silence wonderful. He treasured the time he could get away from the pressures of defending people in courts. He loved the job, but this simple act of falling kept him grounded more than anything else.
Sometimes, in the winter, snow skiing gave him this same feeling, especially standing on the top of the lift, alone, just before they were to turn off the lights in night skiing. That isolation also helped him get clear and focused on the work.
And in the late spring and into the depths of summer, he loved spending time rafting the really rough rapids of the Idaho and Oregon rivers. That felt like more pure adrenaline, except for those calm, lazy times in the warm sun between rapids.
Sometimes floating down a ski hill, floating down a river, or floating down through the air at ten thousand feet all felt the same.
And all of it charged him.
On beautiful spring evenings like today, it just didn’t get any better.
He rolled back over to see Deanna and Steve get out of the plane next. He and Deanna Teel had been dating for years now. But at thirty, he didn’t feel the need to get married just yet. He and Deanna were happy with what they had. She had been a year behind him out of law school, and they had actually met while clerking for the same judge.
He had to admit, he loved her more than he could have ever imagined loving another person. They had a wonderful life together and she managed her corporate law practice with the ease and sure hand of someone far beyond her twenty-eight years. They called her one of the best corporate attorneys in the northwest.
And his reputation as a defense attorney was climbing as well, mostly because he took the fearlessness from the sports into the courtroom to save his clients.
All his and Deanna’s free time away from their jobs they spent either skiing together or doing other sports or reading, sometimes far, far too late into the night when they both had to be up early the next day.
They both had a passion for reading and often shared novels they loved and often argued throughout a day about the meaning of something in a novel. Elliot found it great fun.
People said they seemed to match with their dark brown hair and dark eyes. He couldn’t imagine being with anyone else, but they had made no permanent plans yet to stay together. They just both seemed to know that they would.
As Deanna had said one night a few months ago when the topic of a future came up, “Let’s just not rock the boat. There will be time.”
Elliot let himself just relax into the wind and drift with the wonderful view of the patchwork farmland below him. He could just feel the stress of the day’s case easing away.
He let the moment last as long as he could, then checked his altimeter. Three thousand feet. He had a little time yet. He normally pulled at just under two thousand.
So with one more look around and a final roll to make sure no one was being stupid and was right above him, he flashed past two thousand feet and pulled his ripcord.
The familiar thump of the pilot chute releasing was fine, but then nothing.
He twisted around quickly to see that his chute had not deployed in the slightest. Even with the pilot chute doing its best to yank his main wing from his pack, nothing was happening.
He did a quick by-feel check of the snaps that held the chute in his pack, trying to pry them loose.
Nothing. He could get no leverage on them at all reaching around like that.
Damn it all to hell. He hated landing with his reserve. Just annoying.
He glanced at his altimeter. He was far too low. He should cut loose of his main and go to the reserve, but he flat didn’t have the time. Besides, he didn’t want to lose it in a swollen creek below.
He shifted position so that he was falling almost backwards and snapped his reserve out of the pack on his stomach.
It deployed perfectly, but then caught in the pilot chute for his main and yanked his main out as well.
Shit, shit, shit!
The two chutes tangled in what was called a streamer before he even had a chance to stop them or cut one loose.
When one chute went into a streamer, it meant that the chute was tangled and the weight of the falling body was pulling the chute along toward the ground like a string flapping in a high wind.
When both chutes tangled tog
ether in a streamer, Elliot knew he was finished.
Damn it all to hell.
He studied his chutes, looking for any hope at all.
Nothing.
He had nothing to even help him start to untangle them even if he had the time.
His speed had barely decreased.
He had seconds to live.
Not staring at the ground rushing up at him, he fought to the last second to untangle the chutes, cutting away his reserve in hopes it would flash free and let his main catch air.
No chance.
It just went up and tangled with his main even worse.
Today was not a lucky day.
Both chutes were tangled far, far too much to ever hope to be free.
“Damn!” he shouted into the wind, his last word, as far above him he caught sight of the tiny figure of Deanna.
It seemed she had been wrong. They didn’t have the time together he had hoped.
TWO
“SOME NEWS,” K.J. said, appearing out of nowhere and sitting down at the wooden table in the Golden Nugget buffet in Las Vegas. “Our team has gotten a promotion of sorts.”
“We’re getting a raise?” Tommy asked, shaking his head.
Dr. Jewel Kelly glanced up from her strawberry shortcake dessert. She had just gotten a second helping and was enjoying it more than she wanted to admit. Being dead made things taste a lot better, but it also meant that if she ate more, she had to work out more. It seemed ghosts could get fat just as easily as humans. Who knew?
Tomorrow, she’d have to put in an extra few miles of running to cancel out the second helping.
And her best friend, lover, and partner, Tommy Ralston, was going to have to join her on the run, considering he had already finished two helpings and had glanced back at the buffet like he was considering a third.
The strawberry shortcake really was that good. Light white cake, fresh strawberries in a sweet natural juice, and real whipped cream. Best dessert in Las Vegas, second to none in her opinion.
“No raise,” K.J. said, laughing.
“We’re dead,” Tommy said. “How can they promote us to being more dead?”
K.J. shrugged.
“More dead might mean better sex, better tasting food, and fewer missions to rescue people.”
“Not sure if I could handle better sex,” Jewel said. And she meant it. Sex was already amazing with Tommy.
Tommy looked at her. “We could try that—”
K.J. held up a hand into Tommy’s face.
“Too much information,” K.J. said, looking almost startled.
K.J. was a short man, with dark brown eyes and a love of partying and dressing in the wildest fashions Jewel had ever imagined.
He had been dead for over a hundred years and was their go-between with their bosses, the gods of death and dying and time and space and who knew what else.
This early spring evening, K.J. had dressed almost fashionably in a gray business suit, open pink shirt, and pink handkerchief tucked perfectly in his breast pocket.
If he had left it at that, all would have been fine, but the pink fluffy slippers and a pink Ben Hogan golf hat had just made Jewel laugh when she saw it.
K.J. was dapper all right, but just not in the normal definition of the word.
Jewel and Tommy were both dressed in their evening dinner clothes, which consisted of light shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes. Fashion statements, they were not.
Jewel had been a medical doctor before dying in the same car wreck as Tommy the year before. She had long brown hair she always kept pulled back and out of the way and green eyes that Tommy told her he loved more than anything.
Tommy had been in the Marines and joined the law enforcement after a couple of degrees in math and physics had bored him. He had been a deputy sheriff taking Jewel to a medical emergency in backwoods Montana when a deer jumped in front of them and Tommy lost control of the car and smashed them into a massive pine tree.
They had not crossed over into the next life as most dead people do. They had been left near the wreck, cold, wet, and very confused.
K.J. had appeared a few hours later and recruited them for the Ghost of a Chance organization, which consisted of a few hundred ghosts around the world who had not crossed into the next life, but who had been recruited to stay in this world and fight the bad guys and help where they could.
Since Jewel had been a doctor and Tommy a marine and a cop, they loved their new life. They got to continue to help people. It had taken some time to get used to being dead and learn all the tricks, but they had managed to do some really good things for people in the last year.
And just a few months back, near Christmas, they had helped the superhero Poker Boy and his team save the world from a real evil.
That had felt better than Jewel could have ever imagined.
Besides Jewel and Tommy, last fall Belle and Nancy had joined the team. They also now lived here in Las Vegas and were a wonderful couple. Belle and Nancy sometimes joined Jewel and Tommy for breakfast here at the Golden Nugget buffet.
This buffet had become the unofficial office for the team. They all talked about finding something official to call their office, but so far hadn’t found anything.
The Golden Nugget buffet was seldom crowded, so they always had a table that wasn’t bothered by living people. And the food was good at all times of the day or night.
“It seems,” K.J. said, staring at what was left of Jewel’s strawberry shortcake, “that the powers that be, after the job we did at Christmas, want us to focus on larger issues.”
“What about fighting the Brigade?” Tommy asked a half second before Jewel could.
The Brigade was a group of truly evil ghosts recruited to do deeds that would try to twist the world into conflicts and wars because certain powers got joy and satisfaction from death. Jewel and Tommy had managed to stop the Brigade a number of times in the last year.
“We won’t worry about them anymore,” K.J. said, giving them a wave of his hand as if swatting a fly, “unless they get in our way. And we’re going to get two more team members that we need to train before we get to the big jobs, whatever those jobs may be.”
That shocked Jewel. She had thought their team was pretty balanced. She was a doctor, Tommy was a cop, Belle knew corporations better than anyone alive, and Nancy was a whiz at computers and accounting. With K.J. directing, they had functioned great.
“Another couple?” Tommy asked.
K.J. nodded. “Yes, but not at first. They are joining us a few months apart.”
“Oh, that’s not going to be fun for them,” Tommy said, again eying the dessert area for yet another helping of strawberry shortcake.
“So who is coming in first?” Jewel asked.
“A real stud of a guy named Elliot West,” K.J. said, looking slightly dreamy-eyed. “Adventurer in a bunch of sports, knows the great outdoors, that sort of thing. The fearless type. And I understand he’s also a hell of a great defense attorney.”
“A real he-man, huh?” Tommy said, laughing at K.J.
“A fella could do worse,” K.J. said, looking suddenly embarrassed, which was hard to get K.J. to look.
K.J. sat there and pretend-fanned himself.
Over the last year, K.J. had let slip about his famous hot tub parties. It seemed that K.J. was the most famous of the dead party people around.
Jewel laughed. Clearly K.J.’s mind had gone places it should not have gone just yet with their new team member.
“So when is he getting killed?” Jewel asked.
“Skydiving accident,” K.J. said, glancing at his watch. “Outside of Boise.”
Belle and Nancy were both from Boise. And she and Tommy had been up in Montana. It seemed the Northwest was a prime place for recruiting Ghost of a Chance team members.
“When?” Tommy asked.
“Oh, shit,” K.J. said, staring at his watch. “About forty minutes ago. I forgot about the time difference. I really wanted to be on
time with this one. Honest I did.”
Jewel just shook her head. The poor Elliot guy was going to be a mess. It had taken some real work to help Belle and Nancy make the transition to understanding they were dead. And it had taken her and Tommy days to finally believe they were actually dead, since this death state they found themselves in felt so real.
Better than real, actually, since food tasted better and sex was far more intense.
Jewel took one more bite of the wonderful strawberry shortcake, pushed the plate forward, and said to K.J., “Jump us to him.”
THREE
ELLIOT HAD FOUND himself sitting under a large oak tree about two hundred yards from the runway the drop plane had left from. The big oak tree over him had just gotten its fresh leaves and the spring evening air smelled wonderful.
More intense than he could ever imagine.
He was still tied into his two worthless chutes and they were strung along the ground under the tree. He still had on his dive helmet and his goggles.
How in the hell had he survived that fall?
He should be very dead at this moment, or at least broken up and clinging to life. He had seen a couple other skydivers stream into the ground with tangled chutes. Neither of them had been pretty sights.
And neither had survived the impact.
He checked himself, but everything felt fine, no bones broken, no sprains, nothing. In fact, he felt better than when he had climbed on the plane for the jump.
He glanced back up through the tree, looking for broken branches. Had the chutes caught in the tree and broken his fall?
Was that even possible? If it was, he had to be the luckiest man to walk the planet.
He flexed his shoulders and back and then stood, dropping out of his two parachute packs and taking off his helmet and goggles and smoothing down his dark hair as best he could.
He felt great.
Clearly he had a lot of adrenaline still pumping through his system. He had no doubt that, when that cleared out, he would feel what had just happened.
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