True Heroes (96 page)

              Alice smiled. “At least he atoned for what he did.”

              The man’s face reset while looking at Alice before smiling to Caleb. “Ridiculous, the things they believe, aren’t they?”

              “He didn’t atone. He didn’t fix anything because there was nothing he could fix,” he said softly to Alice. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

              “I know the name ‘Caleb,’ but is that who you even are anymore?” His eyes began shifting at the space between Caleb and Alice before she looked down and away. “She’s not very happy with you right now.”

              “You wouldn’t be either,” she mumbled.

              “Oh, and it’s serious. Do tell. Stories keep this place warm for months.”

              Caleb turned to her. “This isn’t the moment.”

              “Or the place? Tell me when and where so I can be there.” ‘I snapped. That’s me snapping? Why? We were fine just a moment ago. Why not now?’ “He won’t say that he loves me.”

              “This has indeed become the tent of grander things now. What was his reason?”

              Caleb held his hand up to stop her voice. “Her love might be better suited for someone else.”

              “You think yourself unworthy?”

              “She could love the world instead.”

              “To what ends? The ends you drive towards are what matters most.”

              “Means matter as much as ends, and neither are a component of drive.”

              “Why, then?”

              “For her greatest happiness.”

              “The other why?”

              “No further pain.”

              “And the perfect choice?”

              Caleb looked down and back up into Alice’s eyes. “Because it would be the right thing to do.”

              “And the same for you, then?”

              “Yes.”

              “You are a rare man to have this choice so serendipitously configured and compacted. Perhaps the first. Give the lady her choice, and describe why you have yet to make yours.”

              He continued to look hard into her blinking eyes while sliding one hand onto hers. “The greatest love is the greatest choice of the logical world. So far above this one perceived daily. The choice everybody has to make: do I love the world, or do I love the man?” Caleb turned back to the man named Death. “This choice changes for nobody. Here, the choice is given to the world to decide nobody’s fate. There is no longer a person of ethical values or biased decisions. Nobody is simply a viewer of the world’s problems; precisely what’s right needs to be done, and is only able to be done, by this hallow. This world is no longer filled with wants or needs, but rather with whatever the world calls to be done.”

              “The choice is not yours then, as you are who you are. Dear Alice could choose differently at any time, and yet you abide by the choice you have made?”

              “This has to be done.”

              “You would not be sad?”

              Caleb twitched his lips into a frown as Alice watched on. “That’s a future assumption.”

              “She will die.”

              “She will also live.”

              “Perhaps your world needs to be pushed.” The man unsheathed a knife and threw it lightly to Caleb. “Stab yourself in the hand or she dies.”

              “There’s always a third option.”

              “The third option will still have her dead, but the relevant question here is how far you are willing to go for the world? A bad hand could inhibit you in battle, but would have you travelling with her strained support. Your third option is limited to killing me, so seeming, but your mind could find other options: vague rationalities that would delay the choice to an undefined timeline. Your perfect choice here takes quite a bit of faith. Either way,” he pulled a black handgun from his robe and pointed it at Alice, “you have five seconds to decide.”

              Caleb’s head turned down while Alice smiled at the gun barrel. ‘This guy doesn’t know too much about Caleb after all. His big-blue helper will make sure that bullet never reaches me. His head’s down to make this Death guy think that he’s thinking it over, I bet. Wait, that doesn’t sound like him. Why is his head down?’

              The trigger clicked on empty metal. Moments later, a loud report could be heard from outside the tent. Alice covered her ears while watching Caleb look up calmly to the man’s speech. “Remarkable. You held firm.”

              “Stabbing would’ve made her sad, and killing her wouldn’t accomplish your experiment. There was only ever one logical choice.”

              “Faith from you that the gun wouldn’t have a round chambered, and faith from you that she was who she was: logical perfection within the rational body. Truly astounding.”

              Caleb smiled again and stood. “Rue is probably looking for us. Stick around for a minute.”

              She smiled widely up at him as he walked hurriedly out of the structure. ‘The man’s staring at me lightly. Does he expect me to talk? I guess I could ask him a few questions….’ “Why’d you do that?”

              “Do you realize what happened just then?”

              “You made him make a choice.”

              “Between?”

              “Me and….”

              “Precisely. What is the other choice? Something only he could make? Perhaps, but yet you have made the same choice as he, until now. You seem the type that receives all from the world, which is why he called you ‘Everybody,’ and the choice he made was between you and the right choice—himself and what needs to happen.”

              “He chose against me?”

              “No,” he sat back against a sturdy support beam. “He can’t make a future choice. The special thing he is able to do is maintain the right choice until it is finished for the right reason, which is tremendous. There will be a point, when the right choice collides with him, when he will have to make a choice between what he wants, what he needs, and what the world needs of him. Then is when you should be worried.”

              “I’m not worried. He loves me I know he does.”

              “Perhaps he does, and if so, the only way it has a chance is if it is as true as the world; as right as the world.”

              Alice looked at his resting hands and shook her head. “It is. There’s never been any doubt of that.”

              He leaned forward with a sudden pull in his eyes that Alice could not resist; her head rose and bounced around the features of his face before finally meeting his eyes as he spoke. “This world needs that union. He is, perhaps, the one man that can undo every mistake in the world with a single choice, and you are the one that can show people how to love everything in the world as it is without reservation. A culmination of nobody and everybody: the complete separation of the world from itself. There is hope for that. There is hope for the world to be what it was meant to be.”

              ‘He’s smiling the same way Caleb does, with that far-away look in his eye. But he could still readily answer anything you throw his way. Like there’s somewhere else they answer all questions from. He’s missing something. Caleb always brings his eyes back to me after a few minutes. This guy can’t seem to do that.’ “Why do you care so much?”

              “The job here will always be secure, and the dispassion can return in departure of the sad-eyed morosity that this grassy village has become. There truly is nothing to fear here, but people have forgotten that. Most, anyways. All of those outside have flocked to find the answer under the cloak of eternal sleep, but what do they expect from the act? Over-whelming knowledge? Rapture? Absolution? What they seek from Death is what you should seek from Caleb: nothing. If there were ever something to relish between all things, relish the idea of the inability to live without it. Perhaps that is what they seek most: the final thrill of life. That is where you and they differ. You would seek an eternal life for him. They would seek no more life to live.”

              She felt her hands begin to writhe. “Do you know if he and I will be together forever?”

              “Yes.”

              “What are you answering?”

              “That is the question you two will have to face alone.”

---

              Caleb shuddered as a final heave of muscular spasm sent nothing but belched air up through his mouth as Rue patted his back sympathetically. Stanley kept his breaths shallow while not bothering to avoid the half-absorbed pile of stomach contents at Caleb’s feet with his eyes. The sick man stood up to a bottle of water from Stanley’s hand, which was emptied in various uses within seconds. He moved back to fold up the map and supplies while Caleb collected his thoughts for a moment. “The heat….”

              “I hear ya man; don’t worry about it. We haven’t been eating, and you’re the workhorse anyways.” Stanley opened another bottle of water, took a small drink, and passed it to the standing man. “Figured out where we are, by the way. We took the corner a little sharper than I thought we would through the pan-handle and now into Texas. He can’t be much farther; he’s running out of country.”

              “What makes you think he’s still in the country?”

              “He’s gotta be somewhere warm to improve the function of the stuff he has, apparently, and the type of fighter and payload he used against the Empire State Building only has enough fuel for about two-thousand miles, round-trip. My guess would be the Texas National Guard station, but I can’t be sure.”

              The last half of the water bottle was poured on the back of Caleb’s neck. “Call Major Howard.”

              “I thought you had the trail?”

              “Just to be sure.”

              “He’s going to want to send people to help.”

              Caleb looked beyond Stanley’s head. “As long as they do it for the right reason.”

              “They’re not like you, Caleb. Hell, they’re hardly like me.”

              “Never underestimate the power of choice.” Caleb flipped him the empty bottle while speedily walking by and back down to the platform. “Listen, please. There are questions out there, and there are ways to lose yourself within them, but there are answers for everything. You’re all here for one reason or another, but they all boil down to the unpredictability you sense in life. Some of you have guilt riding along your back because you never expected to be wrong. Others are here because you want to take the end of your rope in your hand and decide free of fate for once in your life. This…none of this is the truth. Rational things follow rational point after rational point. Death isn’t keeping you here or offering you anything besides a choice, but if you make this wrong choice, you will never have the chance to make anything right again. You can’t go back in time, but every single one of you can make the choice to do what is right for yourselves. Help show the world that to choose life is to choose correctly, and that there is nothing to fear from one moment to the next. Stand up to Death as an equal, if only for a few more short seconds, because you will never have the chance to again.”

              The shocked crowd looked at one another while Stanley eyed the cloaked man that exited with Alice at his side. He moved down quickly to the group as people on the stairs began to stand. The man in the black cloak smiled and pointed to the smaller shed across from them. “There are tents and food in there. None of them has ever chosen to look.”

              Caleb shot a smile under the hood before moving quickly to the shed door and throwing it above the frame. Rue felt the warmth of bodies behind him as two-dozen were suddenly crowding with authority in their eyes. His hands were filled with tightly rolled tent after bushel of food that he then passed back to the crowd until each of them were saddling themselves with materials, or recovering their strength. Alice moved to some of the bent over people while Caleb moved aside with the hooded man, leaving Rue to the side of the crowd with his satellite phone in hand. “Howard, it’s Rue. Give me a satellite uplink to find where the bastard’s holding up.”

              He listened as surprise held the commander’s tongue for only a moment before “Tell the man that he’ll have everything he needs in six hours” rang through Stanley’s ears.