Escaping Heaven (38 page)

*
             
*
             
*
             
*
             
*

             
J
ake was already at the Fillmore and had snuck in, despite the fact the place was closed. He passed through the doorway intangibly and then pulled his sword out, lighting it to use it as a torch to see by. He moved up the stairs and then down the hall and up the second set of stairs, before wandering around a little bit until he found the location Bob had described to him. The room had enough ambient lighting that Jake turned off his sword and stuck the hilt back into his belt, to free up his hands.

             
He unscrewed the top of the table from the stem and sure enough, the stem itself had a hollow near the top, and there was a small metallic film canister inside. Jake opened the canister and there were four notes in there already. He scanned through each of them quickly to make sure none of them were from Bob, and none of them were. He searched the area, and found there was a door on his left that lead into a small light and sound room, and there was a pad and pen there. In fact, he recognized the pad as being the source of paper for the other notes in the canister.

             
The paper made a soft ripping sound as he tore off a sheet from the top of the pad. He grabbed the pen and scribbled a quick note that read: “Bob: 8 a.m. Golden Gate Bridge. -J” He rolled the note up and put it into the canister with the other notes, then popped the cap back on the small black tube. Jake dropped it back into the hollow and screwed the table top back on, praying that Bob would come by soon. 8 a.m. was six hours away, and he wasn’t even sure he’d have that long, but it would have to do. He somehow had a feeling that Heaven might be chattering about the crazy loose soul who’d sent a few Taggers packing back to Heaven. If not, he would just have to keep out of Heaven’s grasp as many days as it took for Bob to get the note.

             
He sighed and headed back down one flight, moving to stand in the middle of the empty hall of the Fillmore, looking around him, glancing up at the dimly lit balcony, the walls lined with framed posters, so much history contained within, so many wonderful musicians over the years. He could see why Bob liked the location. It had history, grandeur. And the place just had class. There was a low purple glow from the lights, which weren’t completely off but set to very dim. It seemed like the kind of place the goth kids he knew back in high school would’ve held the senior prom, if they had made the decision.

             
His fingers moved back to his belt and slid inside to bring out the hilt once more, snapping the blade to life as he cut into the space, opening a doorway in the familiar motion. He had made the decision that he needed to stow the halo somewhere. It was possible they were using the halo to track him, and even if they weren’t it made him stand out a lot to anyone who could spot celestial beings on Earth. None of the loose souls he’d seen had halos, which meant he needed to ditch his somewhere. Still, he wanted to place it somewhere he could go back and get it again if he needed it.

             
Jake stepped through the portal and breathed that rich Rocky Mountain air with a smile. He looked up at the sky, stretching his neck as he started to move across the terrain over towards the cave.

             
“Hello Jake,” James said, stepping out of the woods.

             
Jake reacted immediately, pushing his thumb back on the gem of the sword to make the blade whip out suddenly as he spun to look at the voice. “You.”

             
“Easy! Easy Jake, I’m just here to talk,” the angel said, raising his hands in the air. “I give you my word, I’m just here to talk, nothing more.”

             
Of course, Jake didn’t lower the sword, keeping it leveled at the angel. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe you. You angels held me hostage and tried to brainwash me with an endless array of self-help manuals and arts & crafts. I think it’s understandable that I’m a little paranoid, don’t you?”

             
James nodded. “Absolutely. Keep the sword on me as long as you like. I don’t blame you one bit.” He looked around a bit before he spied a rock about waist height off a few feet to his left. “You mind if I sit while we talk?”

             
Jake looked over quickly, peering behind it, and saw there was no way the angel could have hid anything easily accessible, so he nodded towards it. “Sure. Sit.”

             
James moved towards the rock and sat down on it. He inhaled a long breath, looking around at the mountains, then turned to look back at Jake, not sure exactly where to start. “I’m not here to try and take you back to Heaven, Jake.”

             
“A handful of your boys already tried that, and I’m sure they’re bitching about it in Heaven right now, planning another assault any minute now.”

             
“You fought off Taggers?” James said with a surprise. “Your ex said you had a sword, but I wasn’t sure you knew how to use it. And you’ve got a halo too,” he added with a laugh. “What did you do, beat up an off-duty Tagger in the halls of Heaven, steal his sword, his halo and his lunch money?”

             
Jake moved over to a tree near James and leaned his back against it, lowering his arm and taking his thumb off the blade. If he needed to, he could whip it up again without hesitation, but keeping his arm raised and the blade pointed at James was making his arm tired. “Heaven gave it to me, actually. I wandered into a Tagger orientation and they just assumed I was a new recruit,” he said with a laugh. “You’d think they would have a list of names or something, but nope, just had to say that was where I was supposed to be, and next thing you know, I’m an armed felon.” He looked at James carefully. The angel was calm, his hands folded over one another in his lap. “If you’re not here to take me back to Heaven… what do you want?”

             
James closed his eyes with a laugh, shaking his head. “I don’t think you’re going to believe me. This was
such
a bad idea.”

             
Jake cocked his head to one side, peering at the angel cautiously. “Try me. I’ve had a hell of a few days, and I’m learning anything’s possible.”

             
The angel nodded sagely. “I’ll bet.” He bit his bottom lip, mulling over where to start for a minute or two before he spoke again. “Okay, look, I should probably start by saying I’m sorry.”

             
He squinted at the angel curiously. “You’re… sorry?”

             
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jake.” He looked down at his hands then forced himself to look back up at the man. “What we did was wrong. We shouldn’t have been forcing you to do all those things you didn’t want to. It’s supposed to be Heaven! People are supposed to be happy! Somewhere along the line… I don’t know where it happened, but someone in charge forgot that. And it turned from making people happy to keeping them busy. And we didn’t notice! Or, even worse, we did, and we just told ourselves that someone above us knew better!”

             
“Isn’t that the kind of thing soldiers have been saying since time began? ‘All of these horrible things, they aren’t my fault, because I was just following orders.’ That doesn’t make you any less guilty.”

             
“Oh God, Jake, I’m as guilty as you think I am. Probably a lot more. We all are. You’re completely right. Our complacency doesn’t excuse our actions. We should’ve asked questions, we should’ve spoken up, but we didn’t, and look where it lead us – drugging up souls in Heaven just to keep them from realizing the shit we surrounded them with,” James sighed.

             
“Yeah, I never took those sweets Byron kept trying to give me. I hid them and then disposed of them, or gave them to other people there, and just pretended I was doped up, so I could watch all of you. I’m kind of glad Terrance screwed up when he did. I don’t know how much longer I could’ve kept up the act. It… it was torture, you know that?”

             
“I don’t know how many times I can you how sorry I am, Jake, but I assure you, I’ve been miserable about it for days now. We were so angry when we started chasing you, but once we got away from the barracks… it was like we started thinking on our own again. We’d been on autopilot as much as the people we were taking care of. Once we were out, we… well, we started talking to each other. I don’t know if you noticed, but we angels never really talked to one another while we were in the quarters.”

             
“I noticed. It was kind of creepy, actually. For a while I thought you must have been telepathic or something… then I figured it out.”

             
James cocked his head. “Figured what out?”

             
“You’re clerks,” he said. “I mean, you’re office workers, drones, the kind of people who do a job day in and day out and never really give it much thought, until you’re completely on autopilot.” He inhaled a breath and then let it out. “What I’m saying is… you’re just like me. Or just like I used to be. ‘Do this. Go here.’ I used to go to a job I hated every day simply because it’s what I thought was expected of me. I mean, I had to pay the bills somehow. And I dated a girl for a long time after I stopped liking her… because I thought it was what was expected of me. And on my last day on Earth, the day I died… everything went wrong. I got laid off from my job, I found out my fiancée was cheating on me with my best friend… and then I died, and there was some part of me that thought to myself, ‘Well, thank God that’s over with. Now I can enjoy things.’ Except that I didn’t. I mean, there I was in Heaven, the afterlife, the eternal resting place, and it was
just like Earth
. People in dead end jobs. People doing what was expected of them instead of what they wanted. And I just decided, ‘Y’know what? Fuck it. What’s the worst they can do to me?’ So I ran. I ran from Heaven and back to Earth, and suddenly I’m seeing things in a whole…” he trailed off before he started to look at the angel oddly. A weird smile crossed Jake’s face. “You don’t want to go back,” he said, as it dawned on him.

             
The angel nodded. “We’re not going back. Three of us came out in search of you, and the longer we were away, the more we remembered how much we liked things on Earth. The air, the lights…”

             
“The colors,” Jake interjected.

             
“YES,” James gushed. “The
colors
. My god, did it bug you that everything in Heaven was white as far as the eye could see?”

             
Jake laughed. “Seriously. Why couldn’t they hire an interior decorator or two?”

             
The angel chuckled with him and nodded. “Exactly. And this is because of you, Jake. You taught us to question things, whether you meant to or not, because you did, and that rebellious spirit… it infected us. We want to stay on Earth… and stay with you, if you don’t mind.”

             
“With me?”

             
“Come on, Jake. We’ve been gone so long, we couldn’t blend in like you can. We just don’t know how any more. I mean, I was a Tagger for a while, but the last time I was on Earth and living, I was cutting stone to help build a giant tomb for someone claiming to be a God king in Egypt.”

             
“You helped build the pyramids?” Jake asked.

             
“I helped build
a
pyramid. One was more than enough. Those things take a long damn time, believe me,” James said as he rubbed his hands together to warm them. “It’s me, Shelly and Randall who came down looking for you, and none of us want to go back.”

             
“You’re sure?”

             
James laughed, a dusky laugh that exposed how long he’d been watching people. “Let me put it to you this way, Jake… I left Randall and Shelly alone together and came out to find you myself mostly to give the two of them some alone time.”

             
“Oh,” Jake said. “
OH.
You mean they’re…”

             
“Having their first sex in several lifetimes?” he replied with a laugh. “Correct. I don’t even want to go back there for a couple more hours. I can’t even imagine how many times they’re going to end up doing it before they start to run out of energy. They started flirting with one another even before we got out of Heaven, even though they’ve never so much as smiled at one another when we were in the barracks. I’m almost wondering if we were just as drugged as the people we were watching over.”

             
“I wouldn’t put it past Heaven,” Jake agreed. “Aren’t they going to send someone out to look for you guys, though? I mean, they sent out a hitsquad for me, so I can’t imagine they’ll just let you walk away.”

             
James smiled. “See, that’s my point, Jake, and I think that’s how I can convince you we’re on your side. If they don’t catch you, they’re going to assume we’re still looking for you. Hell, even if they catch you, they may just figure we never heard about your return, and they’ll simply let the Cherubim know that we should be told to return to Heaven if they happen to see us. But if we don’t come back, I don’t think they’ll ever get particularly nervous about it. They’ll consider us failures and figure wandering around on Earth for a hundred years or two to be ample punishment. And then they’ll just forget about us, because Heaven is a complete nightmare when it comes to details. Still, now I’ve told you this, if you get sent back to Heaven, you can tell them all this, and they’ll know we’re actually hiding from Heaven. And they’ll dig out our files from the archives, even if it takes a decade or so to find them, and then they’ll send Taggers out to try and get us. So we’ve got a vested interest in helping you avoid going back.”