The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly)

by John Corwin

  Nibbles, where are you?

  I focused, picturing a stone wall between us. Instead, a single red feather floated down. I looked behind me, expecting Nibbles to be staring down the horde with his green eyes. But he wasn't there. Had I made that feather?

  I turned to see another and another feather drift from the ceiling. Then a flurry of red feathers dumped from the air like a red blizzard, carpeting the floor and the people. I backed up to the wall as the Sunday school horde closed to fifty yards. The feathers fell thicker until they blinded me. People were yelling and spitting feathers out of their mouths. I flew to the top of the corridor and positioned myself against the corner. I pictured a clear corridor just my size through the feathers along the edge. A gentle breezed puffed the feathers out of my way. I could see down to the corner ahead. Nobody blocked my way. I zipped over the blind worshippers leaving a cloud of red feathers whirling in my wake.

  I turned right at the corner and zoomed onward. The rain of feathers continued for a distance down the hall and then ended. The hall was clear of the throng of people as well. Something growled and leapt from the darkness of a side corridor. I dodged as one of the mammoth brown hounds smashed into the stone ceiling.

  Another appeared ahead and leapt, gaping maw and slobbering canine teeth snapping on empty air as I jerked to a halt. The hounds formed a circle, their black eyes watching my hovering form. I couldn't move without one of them landing a chomp on me. The one against the wall to my left pounced. I held up my arm reflexively willing it to protect me.

  The dog yelped and bounced off a shimmering wall in the air about two inches from my bare arm. Another attacked and hit the same resistance. I gritted my teeth. My arm felt like a wet noodle. I had a feeling another couple hits like that and my shield or whatever it was fending them off might go with it. Forget super powers. What I really needed now was a hundred pounds of beef.

  I pictured a huge mound of ground chuck on the floor. Nothing happened. Anger snapped through me. "Give me something at least!" The crystal clear image of a raw t-bone formed in my mind. A tyrannosaurus-sized version appeared in the air and thudded on the floor. The hounds looked at the steak. They looked at me. They looked back at the steak, sniffed it, and made a decision. I could wait. The steak, on the other hand, could not. They tore into it.

  T-bone. Dogs. Classic.

  Or maybe just luck. Whoever had created those dogs may have given them abnormal size but at least they had the same instincts as normal dogs. I'd managed to occupy the dogs but I still didn't know how to escape from this blasted church.

  I saw a familiar landmark ahead. On the right was the entrance to Ms. Tate's cavernous sanctuary, a marble arch. She looked up, saw me, and raised the cross. A beam of light seared from it, blasting a chunk of mortar inches away from my face. I raised my arm. My shield slammed into a chunk of stone. Pain jolted through my bones. I ricocheted downward and slammed into Ms. Tate. She tumbled away. Her staff slid across the floor. I stopped cold.

  I staggered to my feet in time to see Anna's fist in closer detail than I wanted to. It intersected my face. The blow lifted me off my feet and I slid across the floor. I pushed myself up. My shield arm had gone numb. My nose felt broken. The charred spot on my chest ached. I sat on my knees, vision swimming with tears. I tasted blood on my lips. No use asking how or why I was bleeding. It was happening and it hurt like hell.

  Anna grabbed a handful of my hair and dragged me across the floor. Ms. Tate lay a few feet away. She wasn't moving. I clutched at Anna's hand. Grabbed her arm. I tried to merge but I could barely muster enough of my senses to keep my eyes open, much less meditate. She kept pulling me as I kicked and screamed and flailed. I punched backward at an awkward angle. She grunted. Released me. I spun, scrambling to my knees, fists up like a boxer. She was gone.

  I saw her slumped against the wall near Ms. Tate. Damn, I must really pack a punch, I thought.

  Then I saw Kyle, Chris, and Mike hovering in the air. Kyle was nursing his fist. Chris landed, cradled me up in his arms like a baby.

  "Let's jet," Kyle said.

  We flew through a series of holes in the thick church walls until we reached open skies.

  "How'd you do that?" I asked, my voice sounding thick, my tongue rubbery.

  "I was pissed," Kyle said. "Didn't know I had it in me to hit a girl."

  I looked into Chris's deep blue eyes. His face was blurry and my head kept lolling from wooziness. I probably looked like something from a horror movie: bleeding face, split lip, busted nose, burnt chest, and the coordination of a drunk.

  "I love you," I said to him, although it sounded more like "I luuu ooo." I felt blood bubbles on my lips. Attractive.

  Chris smiled. He looked kind of like Superman at that moment, flying me out of danger.

  I bobbed in and out of consciousness but I didn't care. I was in Chris's arms.

  * * * * *

  I jerked awake. Looked around. I was in the Shaval ship in Diana's quarters. I looked at my body, half expecting to see Diana's curves, but no, the curves I saw were all my own. My burned shirt was gone and I was back in a yellow summer dress. I pulled down the front, holding my breath. If my boobs were burnt, I was going to cry. But the flesh was whole. Not even a hint of trauma except the flesh was slightly paler in spots. My lips felt fine. I gently touched my nose. It was firmly in place.

  A dozen roses sat on the floor next to me. They smelled wonderful.

  Chris?

  You're awake, he sent back and appeared a second later. He hugged me and kissed me on my forehead.

  "I'm not messed up anymore."

  "We were worried sick but there wasn't jack we could do about it. Kyle noticed your lips were healing so we figured you just needed rest."

  "Thank Go--I mean--my lucky stars. Damn, I need some other entity else to thank now."

  He laughed. "Lucy, I know things went bad between us. I tried so hard to do the friends things."

  My heart sank a little bit. "It's not working for you?"

  He shook his head. "I can't do it. It's too hard."

  "Please don't give up on me. I don't know what I did wrong--"

  "You haven't done anything wrong."

  "But--"

  He put a finger to my lips. "Hush for a minute. I'm not finished." He took my hand and kissed it and gazed into my eyes.

  I whimpered.

  "I love you, Lucy. I can't deny it anymore. What you did with Nick hurt me more than anything I've ever felt. I was so angry with you, but after a while I realized it was because I care for you like no other girl and any little thing you did could hurt me. I felt so vulnerable and I'm not used to that."

  "What about Bethany?"

  "She's been a good friend to me. She's the one who told me I needed to man up and beg for you to come back."

  "I thought you two were a couple."

  He laughed. "No, we've always been good friends. We grew up together and I guess she's like a sister to me."

  Tears pooled in my eyes and my lower lip quivered and scrunched up. I've seen myself cry and it's not pretty. Just my luck I'd ruin this romantic moment with one of my scrunchy-cry faces.

  Chris brushed a tear from my cheek, just like in a chick flick. Then he kissed me. His warm lips melted into mine. I pressed my hands to his cheeks and felt that wonderful stubble on his face and pressed myself into him. I started laughing in between sobs of joy. Lucy Morgan, you're a complete wreck.

  But Chris still loved me and that was the only thing that mattered.

  "You're not mad at me that I gave you the fat Shaval as a host?" I asked after I regained a bit of sanity.

  "Heck no, I love Gabriel. He doesn't use meds or surgery to keep himself looking like an athlete. And he's really smart."

  "I think he and Diana should have a date."

  "Oh, you're a naughty girl." He clucked his tongue.

  "I'm curious to see what it feels like."

  "So wrong, but oh so right."

  "Let's do it
."

  "You got it, babe."

  Later, much later, I assembled a squad meeting. We went over final preparations. The Rrilk put the gel cases with our bodies in the stasis chamber of the Shaval ship. The chamber was more or less the Shaval equivalent of an industrial-sized freezer that didn't actually freeze anything with cold temperatures. It also ignored living tissue so the Rrilk could walk in and out without effect. We rigged the security in one of the bedrooms so only the Rrilk could open the portal and we could lock the Shaval inside. It was time to go.

  While the others were saying goodbye to friends and family, I went back home and took a long last look at the place I'd grown up. I looked down the street at the quiet houses. I saw the tree where Kyle and I had carved a heart around the names of two neighbors who were married to other people just to see what trouble we could stir up. I saw where we put up our lemonade stand one summer. After our concocted lemonade gave five kids diarrhea, we'd had to go out of business.

  I chuckled at the memories. We'd been little hellions. Life had been fun.

  A red feather drifted onto my nose. I heard a plaintive meow as Nibbles stretched his claws through my jeans and into my leg. I laughed and jerked back. Bent over and picked him up.

  "I'll be back soon, kitty." I nuzzled his little nose and set him down. "By the way, your little feather trick saved my life."

  He meowed again, staring at me with those feline eyes. I wondered if he'd been a human in another life. Sometimes he seemed to be trying to tell me something. Nibbles raised a paw, almost like a dog would do to shake. I knelt and took his paw. He meowed again. He sounded almost sad to me. Then he started to fade away. I clenched his paw.

  "You're leaving me?" I said.

  He meowed.

  "No, please don't. I want you to stay with me."

  He meowed again.

  His paw slipped from my fingers. His eyelids drooped languidly and he regarded me through the slits. Then he was gone. A single red feather drifted gently to the ground where he'd been.

  A rasping noise scraped from my throat and sobs shook my body. I picked up the red feather and kissed it and hugged it like a little baby. I lay on my back and stared at the stars as the tears cascaded from the corners of my eyes and over my ears. I hoped Nibbles was in kitty heaven. I hoped he had all the feathers he wanted to play with.

  I hoped the god of kitties had nicer followers than the human god. People like Ms. Tate dragged the entire human race down. I'd questioned myself so much over the past few days about what made us worth saving. Why not let the Shaval take stewardship of our planet? They'd probably be a lot nicer to it than we were. But I knew the answer. I knew why I'd risk everything to save humans. I suspected even Nibbles knew the answer to that.

  Because there were people like Kyle and Chris, Mike and Anil, Bethany and Missy. The rest of the people on my team were humans worth fighting for, worth dying for. They were my brothers and sisters. They deserved a good life and all the bad ones could go to Ms. Tate. Somehow I suspected that was a worse fate than Hell.

  Anil had known why we were fighting before his end. We carried a part of him with us now. And it was our duty to make sure his death wasn't in vain. I stood up, wiped away my tears, and kissed Nibbles's feather one more time before tucking it into my pocket. I looked up at the stars.

  Zalista, here we come.

  Chapter 28

  The journey to Zalista wasn't really a journey in the usual sense. Kyle, using his host Bob, swiped a few commands on the holographic console. Once we left Earth orbit there was a slight moment of disorientation as the Shaval craft shifted space. Kyle was fascinated with the process and tried to explain it to me. He told me that the ship shifted into a parallel universe where physics worked a little differently and there the ship travelled faster than light.

  "Is there another Earth in this universe?" I asked.

  "No. It's still very young."

  "But there are other universes with other Earths?"

  "Might be. Shaval space-time theory allows for multiple universes but so far they've only discovered five. The universe we share with them is the only one with life according to their probes."

  "Is Heavenly another universe?"

  He nodded. "I guess so. I'd love to have Shaval scientists give me the lowdown on that."

  I looked through the holographic window as the stars of another universe streaked past like white lasers. "Do you believe in magic?"

  He chuckled. "Luce, I believe in a hell of a lot more now than I did before dying. That stuff going on in Heavenly fits my definition of magic."

  "So maybe there are universes where things work a lot differently than our own. I wish I understood how we ended up there and why we aren't all truly dead."

  "Yeah, well welcome to the universe, kiddo."

  "Maybe the deaths of billions of people all at once created a new universe."

  "I'd like to think we're that important," Kyle said, "but it's a stretch."

  "Humans are most definitely not the creators of Heavenly," Harb said from the entrance to the cockpit.

  I whipped my head toward him. "Yeah, so what do you think?"

  He smiled. "I think the universe has many great things in store for me."

  "For you?"

  "For us, of course. I see a certain order to things now." He turned and left.

  I faced Kyle. "I think Harb is treading the thin line between sanity and lunacy."

  "Nah, he's just a kid, Luce. He wants to feel important. Let him have his fun so long as he does his job."

  I wanted to remind Kyle that we were all just kids, still teenagers for the most part but I didn't want him to think I lacked confidence. Instead, I sat back and watched the lights flash by.

  * * * * *

  A couple days later, the ship slowed, stopped, and shifted back into our universe. A glowing blue orb hung in the void outside. The colors looked familiar but the landmasses were obviously different. A thick gray ring circled the planet like a metal bracelet. Vague shapes zipped and drifted between the ring and the planet. A monstrous ship to our left (or port as Kyle insisted was the correct geek terminology) hovered upside down relative to us. It was sleek and organic in design, similar to our own ship, only a heck of a lot bigger.

  Kyle let out a long whistle. "That's one of their battleships."

  "That thing has a crew of only five?"

  "According to their records."

  Shaval symbols flashed on the screen. Harb stepped forward in Azriel's body and sent symbols back. Another symbol appeared, allowing us to proceed. And we were on our way to the planet and its capital city, Chandara.

  Zhrrii and Ciirr trembled as the world grew larger in the view port. I'd asked them to accompany us as the two Rrilk I knew best. I could trust them with our corpses which in essence still held sway over our lives. Zhrrii locked the Shaval in their room. I called a meeting in the conference room to go over final plans.

  Kyle located the closest battleships. Three of them were in orbit around Zalista. The rest were deployed to parts unknown. Considering how the Shaval had killed us I wondered why they needed such massive things. Throwing a switch had been a clean way to commit genocide. Not as messy as blasting a planet to ruins.

  Eight people were going with Kyle to carjack the battleships. Eight were going with me. Although most committees rarely met in person, the permanent committees were required to meet in person at regular intervals. Our target, the database committee, had a meeting scheduled in two Shaval days. In the meantime my team would split up and locate their assigned members by address. All eight of us had to be in control of our hosts by the scheduled meeting.

  That set my nerves on edge. It would be hard to keep an eye on their progress even though we'd be meeting every day.

  Kyle's team would divide into groups of two since each ship had two executive officers that controlled ship activities. We planned to have them take the ships to Earth where we'd disembark the crews and detain them. Kyle had agreed to
take Harb on his team. Harb had consented without much comment. I hoped he'd take orders and do his job.

  "You nervous?" Kyle asked as our ship settled down in Chandara's primary spaceport.

  I gazed out at the amazing spires and unearthly fluid, curved structures of Zalista's capital city. The city itself seemed alive and the buildings like tenuous molds of mercury that could change at any moment. Silvery curved vehicles, like smaller versions of our ship, zipped back and forth between buildings and through the air. Pink-tinged clouds served as backdrop to the cityscape while the sun set.

  "I'm terrified," I said. "You sure nobody's going to come snooping around the ship?"

  "Everything appears automated so I don't think anyone will notice that nobody disembarked the ship. We had the other Shaval on Earth send their relatives messages saying they wouldn't be back for a few cycles due to meetings, so that base is covered. We should have a few days to get things done."

  As we talked, the sky grew darker. The city lit up around us. I stared in wonder and could think of nothing comparable on Earth. Many lights had no obvious origins. Such a damned shame the occupants of this place were the neighborhood bullies.

  "I hope you're right. I can't help feeling anxious."

  "Think how Zhrrii and Ciirr feel. They can die a lot easier than us."

  "True." In the event they were found, it was likely we'd all die together.

  I pulled my crew together for one last pep talk and we split up, leaving for the homes of those we needed to control. Chris would assimilate the database administrator. I was headed for the committee chairperson. I wondered if "person" or "people" were correct terms to use in reference to an alien species and decided since the grammar Nazis were all dead, I could do as I pleased. In fact, if we were successful in reviving the human race, I'd be sure to get in on the ground floor when it came to rule making. That way our successors could wonder just what the hell we were thinking when we came up with all our stupid rules.

  I arrived at my soon-to-be host's place. I'd tried to think of a name for her since transliteration from Shaval made no sense at all but gave up. It was hard enough keeping up with the names of the Shaval we had on Earth, much less the ones we'd be in control of here. She lived in one of the mercurial high rises near the edge of the city. It overlooked a vast natural park that extended for miles. I'd planned to take the elevator or whatever the Shaval used to go up floors in the building but quickly found that what they used to zip between floors wasn't anything like what I'd expected. Individuals simply stepped into the hallways and an invisible force pushed them up through the floor as if it were a tenuous membrane. It was magic. Then again, I guess magic is anything that's beyond the beholder's ability to understand.