The Afterlife Series Omnibus: Heaven, Hell, Earth, Wasteland, War, Stones
Page 6
“That’s not too heartening,” Daniel said.
I thought about it. “I guess the thought of a bunch of gods that no one cares about anymore and a bunch of dead heroes having a final battle wouldn’t have much impact anywhere else.”
“And yet you were quite eager to help out one of those dead heroes.”
“Well, if you’re worried, what can we do about it?”
“I don’t know. What do you say when you start an avalanche? ‘Sorry!’”
I snickered. “Good point. Well, let’s try not to do it again; will that make you feel better?”
He shrugged and squinted ahead. “I’m beat. Let’s take a rest. You might want to call Jet back.”
Jet, who’d apparently pranced around Elysium while Daniel and I had had our adventures, had been leading the way into this heaven, sometimes running far ahead, then bounding back and barking at us, then running ahead again.
“Well, we could rest for the night. If there were a night here,” I said, looking at the gray sky.
“We got sleeping bags in these backpacks?” Daniel asked, pulling his off his back. I followed suit; mine held a poufy sleeping bag with Hello Kitty on it – Daniel snorted when he saw it – and a soft doggy bed. Jet ran back to us and immediately climbed onto her bed, turned round three times and lay down, staring at me. I scratched her behind her ears, and then she put her head on her paws and continued to watch me.
Although the sky was still a uniform gray, I was exhausted. I shook off Daniel’s offer of food and crawled inside my sleeping bag and drifted off.
What does one dream about in heaven? I honestly didn’t remember a lot of my dreams; when I was in the Christian heaven I usually woke up feeling blissful, but now that I was out on the road, I would awaken feeling disoriented, with an odd sense of foreboding. I’d woken up like this a lot when I was in high school, and after about sixteen I’d finally convinced myself that I was not psychic, just a weird dreamer.
This time, I’d dreamed of Hermes, naturally; only it wasn’t a sexual dream. He stood in the roundabout at the center of all the Heavens, frowning at me. His hair obscured his eyes and blood ran from a cut on his left cheek. He opened his mouth to speak, but I only heard the boom of thunder.
I woke up with a start, the damnable sky refusing to tell me how much time had passed. I rubbed my face and sighed, feeling worse than when I’d gone to sleep.
Lovely dream. I pulled a canteen out of my backpack and drank deeply. Jet and Daniel still slept, Jet’s paws twitching and her lips occasionally pulling back. She yipped quietly and I smiled, remembering the chasing dreams she’d had when we were alive. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, that was for sure, so I got out of my sleeping bag and put on my shoes.
It took only twenty paces further into this Heaven before I noticed that the fields had a distinct grassy smell, as if the grass had just been cut. I inhaled deeply, catching a scent of something small, something twitchy, something delicious.
I nearly dropped to my knees to find the source of the scent before I realized what was going on. I opened my eyes, unaware that I’d closed them.
The whole world was gray; not just the sky. Gray and drab, almost not worth keeping my eyes open. I laughed out loud, and caught sight of something on a hill in front of me. The sight told me very little, but the smell on the air told me everything.
I ran back to camp and shook Daniel awake. Jet raised her head from her bed and stared at me, thumping her tail on the ground.
“What the hell did you wake me up for? Claudia was just about to—” he protested, and I forced myself not to look at his sleeping bag for any tale-tell signs of, well, Claudia’s influence.
“I know where we are. I know what heaven we’re in!” I said. I went to my things and started stuffing them into my backpack.
“Well, is it dangerous?” he asked, dropped his head back onto his sleeping bag.
“Nope.”
“Then it can wait.” He rolled over.
I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back toward me. “No, it can’t. It’s too cool.”
“Tell me, then, and I’ll decide whether to kick your ass.”
“Dog Heaven.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It didn’t take much more to get Daniel out of his sleeping bag. Jet was already trotting ahead of us, completely at ease in an alien world.
“This is so not right,” Daniel mumbled.
“Why? It’s cool!” I said, trying to identify the dozen scents on the air. Each had a different signature, like a different color.
“Oh, it’s cool, all right. But I have this incredible desire to sniff your ass.”
I blushed, glad for the black and white world. I stuck out my hand and grabbed his, shaking it. “You already know me. You don’t need to confirm it with my scent. I’m Kate, and have no desire to have your nose in my butt.”
He laughed, but after I let him go he sidled a couple of steps away from me.
My blush intensified when I realized that I very likely smelled as if I’d just had sex, which I had. Where does one find a shower in Heaven?
The field stretched before us, much like Elysium had, but without the fountains and fruit trees. It looked like an unchanging landscape, but my nose told me otherwise. Dogs of all shapes-mutts, Great Danes, shi tzus, poodles and, of course, Labrador retrievers-bounded in the fields, barking loudly, sniffing and rolling. Jet dashed forward, pulling the silk from my hands. I let her go, watching the handmade leash wave back at me.
After a thought, I bounded after her. She was investigating everything, and I wanted to be with her since I could finally see out of her eyes. Or nose.
One area of the field was covered in foul scents-rotten meat, old fish, dog feces-that somehow, now, seemed oddly appealing. I followed Jet to this area and found carcasses in the grass. I managed to pull myself up, remembering my Homo sapiens status, and watched wistfully as she grabbed a decaying possum in her jaws, shook it hard, and tossed it into the air. She watched it land, and then dropped and rolled on it.
The desire to join her was overwhelming, so I decided to investigate the other areas instead. Dogs were everywhere, some pulling at a fresh cow carcass, which looked less disgusting and more delectable every minute. Others ran after balls that flew from unseen hands. Some simply dozed in the sun. I spied my first human sitting on the side of a sloping hill, rubbing a sheepdog’s belly, and ran to greet her.
“I didn’t think there would be other humans here,” I said as a greeting, fighting the urge to sniff her nether regions.
She grinned up at me, flipping her dark braid off her shoulder and shaking my hand. “Of course. Who else would give the belly rubs?” More humans waved to me at that point, each with one hand in the air and one on a dog’s belly.
“How do you get on here with just dogs?”
“It’s wonderful,” she said, her eyes misty. “All the dogs I ever had are here, and I’m able to make up the times that I didn’t walk, feed, or play with them. I have their senses now. I can finally see the world as they did.”
I wondered if this woman was serving out some kind of penance. I leaned forward to sniff the air around her and found nothing but sincerity. She was happy here.
“What brings you here? Your dog?” she asked.
I waved my hand in the direction of the area I’d begun to think of as Carcass Central. “She’s over there. She came to us in the Christian heaven and we’ve been wandering around as Travelers since.” I pulled the chain out of my shirt to reveal a running dog.
“’We’?” she asked.
“My friend Daniel. He’s, well, I don’t know where he is, but he’s here somewhere.”
She wrinkled her nose. “If he’s not all over you, then he’s doing his best to stay far away. You smell as if you’re in heat.”
I straightened from the belly I was rubbing, and another human ran in to take my place. “That’s really rude. Do you always address people you meet like that?”
“And if you think it was a good idea to leave an intact male alone in a dog Heaven, you’re stupider than you look,” she added.
If I backed down at this point, I’d give this woman Alpha status over me. But then, I had Daniel to consider.
“‘Intact male?’” I asked.
“Not fixed. Still in complete ownership of his testicles. Able to reproduce. Very attractive to bitches.” Her lip curled as she said it, the implied insult obvious.
I gasped, no longer caring about the alpha dominance games. “Where are the bitches in heat?” I asked.
Smiling in her superiority, the woman pointed to the top of the hill, where I saw a lone figure standing.
“Daniel!” I yelled, breaking into a run. The figure dropped to his knees, and I pushed myself to run faster. A small, sarcastic voice in the back of my head said that if I saw him doing what I feared he would be doing, I would pretty much lose my unrequited love for him forever.
When I reached him, he was clothed, on his knees, his hands covering his face. Bitches surrounded him, sniffing at his underarms, crotch, and neck. They licked whatever skin they could find. He sobbed into his hands, too weak to remove himself from the situation, but strong enough to resist the next step.
I shooed them away (gently, it was Dog Heaven after all) as best I could and pulled him to his feet. He peered at me through his fingers and said, “Get me out of here. Please.”
I dragged him away from the bitches, who whined and barked. But they were soon distracted by males, of which there seemed to be an unending number. One male came sniffing towards me and I bared my teeth and growled at him; he turned to find another female.
“I have to get out of here. I can’t stand it.” Daniel practically sobbed, leaning on my shoulder. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I can guess,” I said, pulling him faster. The scents were overwhelming now, mostly of Daniel: fear and desire and despair.
I dragged him past the sunny fields of dead carcasses and self-throwing balls to what looked like the edge of heaven, with color gently bleeding back into the gray, then deposited him into the grass. “Is this far enough away?”
He nodded, watching me with red-rimmed eyes. “Are you going back?” I’d never heard such petulance in his voice, such need.
“Only to get Jet, and I’ll be right back.”
Jet wasn’t in the Carcass Central, nor was she in the Belly Rub Bordello. I knew she wouldn’t be on the Hill of Love, since I’d had her fixed. A particularly gruesome section of the field crawled with squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks which the dogs raced after, always catching their prey and destroying it with a neat shake of the head… but Jet wasn’t there either.
I finally found her in the sunny area, lying in a patch of sunlight perfectly round, like a spotlight. I put my hand gently on her head and said, “Girl, it’s time to go.”
She raised her head and thumped her tail once. She whined low in her throat, and I caught her emotions on the air. Sadness. Desire to stay. And love. Overwhelming love. We think we know how much our dogs love us, but it’s nothing, nothing like reality. I sat down next to her and rubbed her belly, and the love and contentment came off her in waves. She was happy here. She belonged.
“I have to go, Jet. I might be able to be happy here, but I have to get Daniel out. He can’t stay.”
Jet rolled over and licked my hand once. I scratched her on the head behind her ears the way she liked. “Can I come visit?”
She wagged her tail again, and stretched out in the sun.
“Good dog,” I whispered.
When I saw Daniel waiting on me, I wiped my eyes hastily, but he just smiled his half-smile. “Where’s Jet?”
“Staying. I’m wondering if we were just supposed to bring her here and that was our mission.”
“Could be, who knows why we’re doing this,” he agreed, giving me a quick hug. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
I pulled back. I’d been too distracted when carting him away from his lady friends to notice, but this close it was clear. Loud and clear. The smell coming from him was sour and underhanded.
“You’re… lying,” I said.
“What?”
“Lying. About this traveling. Why we’re doing it. We’re not doing it to help people or deliver Jet to her Heaven or whatever. There’s another reason.”
Daniel’s jaw dropped open and his face flushed. We were far enough out of dog Heaven for me to catch the color in his cheeks, but still close enough for me to smell the strong scent of panic rising from him.
“Why did you lie, Daniel? Why are we really here?”
He just stared at me.
My fists clenched. “Fine. Don’t fucking tell me. But I’m not following you around anymore. I thought I could trust you.
“When I got to heaven, you want to know what happened? God sent me a fake you to hang around with, a perfect you who—” I still couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say, “Loved me.”
“When I found out he was fake, I decided to live alone. I can do it again, Daniel. If you’re lying to me, you’re not the friend I had in life. You’ve been sarcastic and aloof, but I always knew I could trust you. Now I don’t know.”
He still looked dumbfounded as I passed him and trudged up the road. I held the tears back by force of will, but I stopped when he finally spoke.
“I was your Heaven?” was all he said.
I turned around and faced him, the tears breaking my voice. “You really are an idiot, Daniel. You’ve had my hormones and emotions as an open book for the past few hours and you didn’t even see it. Smell it. Whatever. Why did I have to fall in love with a moron?”
I left him then, his face slack with shock, on the road leading from dog Heaven. I left the thing that loved me more than anything else in the world lying blissfully in a patch of sunshine, and I left the person I loved more than anything else in the world standing slack-jawed and stupid on the road.
#
The look on Daniel’s face was nearly gratifying in its relief as he approached me at the roundabout. I sat cross-legged on the sand and waited for him, stony-faced.
He didn’t say anything, just came and sat beside me.
I pointed down a narrow dirt path. “I’m pretty sure that’s a path to reincarnation. Tell me everything, or I’m heading down there. I might be a bug or a dog or something, but it’ll be better than following you around like a lovesick puppy when you don’t even tell me what’s going on.”
I knew I was right about the path, just like I knew Daniel was lying. The certainty lay cold and unemotional in my chest, keeping me calm.
Daniel’s voice was flat. He didn’t look at me. “I don’t think I ever told you this, but my sister Megan died when I was ten. She was four. When people find out, I usually tell them it was an accident or something. But it wasn’t. My mother went insane and killed her. I walked in right when she lost it, and tried to stop her. That’s how I got these.” He pushed up his sleeves to show me the long scars on his forearms. He’d always told me they were from a boy scouting accident.
“When I got to Heaven, the first thing I did was look for Megan. I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t imagine a girl that young going to Hell, so I tracked down God and asked Him what was going on. He said that some souls had gone missing, and He needed someone to investigate why. I asked Him when I could leave.”
He stopped. Although this was all new information for me, I waited. There was more; his face told me that much.
He sighed. “One of the reasons souls are going missing, He said, was that it’s time for the end of the world.”
My mouth went dry. “So Hermes was right.”
Daniel nodded.
“And it’s even bigger than he said. It’s not just Greek.” I
t wasn’t a question.
He nodded again.
I rubbed my face, trying to disbelieve. “So we’re supposed to find lost souls and… what?”
I’d never seen him so miserable. “Bring about the apocalypse,” he said. He frowned deeply and I realized he was trying not to cry. “The way I understand it, the end is coming whether we do this or not. But we need to be there. To witness or… help… or something. There are reasons He didn’t make clear to me. He just told me we had to find the souls.”
“What if we refuse?”
“I can’t. You can. I’m sorry I didn’t give you that option from the beginning, but I can’t. I have to find Megan. I’d always imagined her in Heaven, in some kind of little kid paradise, and the fact that she’s not there is killing me. If it takes witnessing the final battle to bring her back, I’ll do it.”
I tried to be understanding, but logical. “Daniel, we’re talking about the world here. The end of the world. Billions of people.”
“It’s going to happen anyway. And I have to look for her. Don’t you understand?”
My mouth was dry. “So it’s an inevitability? Destiny?”
“Yeah, that’s what He said.”
“So the world ends. Then what?”
“I don’t know. We’re already dead. It gets more populated up here? I don’t know. But every religion has an end of the world myth, doesn’t it?”
I nodded reluctantly.
“We’re just the ones who get to be around when it happens,” he said.
“Lucky us.” I sighed and rubbed my face again, trying to rub away the tears and frustration from the past hour. “So, where to next?”
He ventured a look at me. “You’re still coming with me?”
I nodded. “Daniel, I’ve always got your back. You just need to tell me what we’re up against. Besides, I don’t think we have much choice in the matter. Where to next?”
He pulled out a book in his backpack and flipped through it. “Well, what end of the world myths are there? Didn’t the Norse have a big one?”