If his mind hadn’t been so occupied by the feeling of panic as he fell from somewhere in orbit toward a world that didn’t look much like the globe he remembered from school, Lucas would have wondered why there were doors that led to nowhere in a strip mall version of purgatory.
Instead, he just arched his back and spread his arms and legs to stop his tumbling, the same way he’d learned when he used to go skydiving. This didn’t make any sense, but it didn’t have to make sense to be a wild ride.
Lucas didn’t know why he wasn’t suffocating in the vacuum of space or burning up in orbit or whatever it was he was supposed to be doing up here. Neither one was happening, though. Instead, he was listening to the sound of his hazmat suit ripple in the breeze and enjoying what might have been the single dumbest thing he’d ever done.
That was when he heard the wings flapping behind him. Lucas didn’t have to turn to know that Darius was going to be there flying after him, but he did anyway, just to see what the dude’s wings looked like.
What he saw made him laugh. Darius was definitely an angel, and the man’s wings were definitely impressive, but the whole effect was spoiled by the way the man’s now untucked shirt and his rumpled suit flapped in the breeze.
Lucas wanted to make a joke about the guy’s dry cleaning bill, but he knew he’d never be heard over the roar of the wind. He didn’t want to be caught, either. So, instead, he tucked his arms and legs back into a more aerodynamic profile, determined to race this guy to the ground.
The faster I hit, the less it’s going to hurt, he told himself as he noticed just how fast the world below him was starting to come up. It was getting real now.
Still, he didn’t flinch, even though the planet had gone from the size of a dinner plate to a sphere so large that he couldn’t take it all in without turning his head. He wasn’t concerned with the whole thing, though. He was just concerned with where it was he was going to land.
And that patch of earth was coming closer, in ever-increasing detail. He could make out two snow-capped mountain ranges, a couple of rivers, and a perfectly picturesque forest. As the scenery rushed up to meet him, Lucas even saw what he thought was a city of some type.
Before he could examine that too closely, though, Darius shouted, “Mr. Sharpe! It’s not too late for you to change your mind. You are making a serious mistake here! If you don’t come back with me right this instant, it’s going to go on your permanent record!”
“Hah!” Lucas laughed out loud. “That’s the threat? My permanent record? I haven’t cared about that shit since junior high!”
Still, even as he blew the guy off, he watched cagily from the corner of his watering eyes, waiting to see if the man would try to follow his words with action, and it turned out he did. After another few seconds of waiting for his charge to see reason, the angel made a grab for Lucas’s ankle, but he was ready for it.
Lucas pulled his leg forward far enough that it was just out of reach, and when the angel made to grab for it, he kicked hard into the man’s face. Lucas was under no illusions that he could actually hurt the bastard; he’d played enough video games to know that you probably needed a flaming sword or some shit to do that.
He also knew just enough about extreme sports to know just how wildly the two of them would diverge after that kind of motion. His kick sent Lucas tumbling in one direction and Darius in another, and though the angel had managed to grab him at the last minute, he’d only succeeded in stealing one of Lucas’s rubber boots he wore when he was cooking.
Lucas actually stabilized before the angel, but only because those big wings of his had to be untangled carefully. By the time Darius was ready to start flapping and give chase again, Lucas was already diving hard directly away from him as fast as the air resistance would allow.
At this point, it didn’t really matter where they landed. Even if he aimed for the lake, he could see the water would still be like concrete by the time he hit it. He was dead no matter what.
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So he didn’t focus on that. He just focused on trying to stay ahead of this angel prick by picking up as much speed as possible and steering as far away from him as possible.
“This is your last chance!” Darius shouted. “After this, there will be no going back!”
He extended his hand to Lucas again, but Lucas flipped the man the bird again and yelled, “That’s the whole point! I’m never going back there!”
Then, with a sad look in his eyes, the angel opened his wings wide and went straight up. In seconds, Lucas had to crane his neck to see the man. That really drove home just how fast Lucas was falling, though. The angel hadn’t even started going up yet. He’d just stopped going down.
Lucas, on the other hand, was going to see if he bounced or left a crater, given the speed he was moving. He swallowed hard as the fear started to flow through him then. It was one thing to be on the run from an angelic asshole, but it was quite another to be 20 seconds from your death and falling fast.
Still, he kept his shit together. He watched the trees grow and farm fields resolve. It was only when he had seconds to go that he realized the rural town he was falling toward had a tiny graveyard on the north side and adjusted his aim slightly.
Wouldn’t that be funny, he thought to himself. Bodies fall from the sky, but at least they have the decency to do it in the graveyard so no one has to clean it up.
He would have laughed at his own joke, but it was too late for laughter. The ground was dangerously close now, and three seconds later, he impacted it like a fly on a windshield.
After that, all was darkness, but it was only when he thought to himself, That was one hell of an exit, that he realized he wasn’t dead yet.
What in the hell… he cursed as he groped around and found himself in a less than well-built box of some kind. It only took a few seconds for a smart guy like him to work out that it was a coffin.
“Did someone’s corpse break my damn fall?” he asked, suddenly creeped out.
Fortunately, that did not seem to be the case. He felt all around and found nothing inside it but him. That raised other questions, though, like how he’d gotten in here without blowing a big ass hole in the top of the thing.
“Fuck this!” Lucas shouted, angrily punching at the roof of his prison as he raged. “You think this is hilarious, don’t you, Darius, but this is horse shit. I’m fine with being pavement pizza, but suffocating in a damn box? No way!”
Neither his struggles nor his words did anything, but when he found a loose board, he was able to wiggle it back and forth until it broke. Then it felt like half the earth above this grave caved in on him right there. Lucas realized that he’d gone from suffocating in a few hours to suffocating in a minute or two as he felt the moist earth fill the casket.
Still, even though that made him miserable and filthy, it reduced the weight on the boards that remained, and he was able to move a second one out of the way and force himself through the narrow gap of the two missing boards deep into the earth like some kind of groundhog.
For a moment, he wondered what would happen if he came to the surface and saw his shadow. Is that like six more weeks of winter or six more lives of bullshit, or what, he wondered to himself.
He’d never get an answer, though, because by the time he got to the surface, it was night, and the moon was hanging high in the sky. That made no sense, of course, because it had very clearly been daytime when he was falling, but before he could do too much more thinking about that, a scream shattered the night.
Lucas joined in, screaming in shock, as he looked for the source. He quickly found a man with a shovel sitting on the pile of dirt that was probably eventually meant for this hole, as white as a sheet. The guy had obviously been on break enjoying his jug of hootch, but when he ran off screaming into the night, he was kind enough to leave it behind.
“Zombiesss!” he slurred. “The dead have risen! Run furrr yur lives!”
“Yeah, man, I’ll drink to that,” Lucas said, reaching for the jug.
It was only then, as Lucas reached for the jug, that a little pop-up window appeared, and he stopped.
Tainted Rotgut (5 doses): 1 Poison, - 2 int. Purifying agent. Remove 25% of the negative effects of a single reagent.
“What in the hell is this bullshit?” he said, examining the window and wondering why he should care about the alchemical properties of the rotgut he was about to drink.
“Booze is fuckin’ booze, alright?” he sighed, completely exasperated with how the day was going. It was only after he felt the burn that he wondered why he’d even hallucinate a window like that in the first place.