Angel

An excerpt from my short story, The Final Peal of the Dead, A Floundering

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The dripping sound hadn't stopped when I woke up. Well, my mind flickered to consciousness in the way the mind does when the eyes don't feel like opening yet. I'm not sure if that counts as waking up or not.

Drip, drip drip...

I tried not to think about what had just happened; a part of me—hopefully the smart part—seemed to have decided that I wouldn't like it when I realized. So for the moment, I hung there, eyes closed, motionless with lethargy and waited. I knew I was still in the truck, because I was hanging from something that felt an awful lot like a seatbelt.

I think it was the breeze that fucked up my careful application of not thinking about my surroundings. It whistled in my ears loudly, thickly. The city was too quiet somehow. Not that it hadn't been quiet ever since people quit bustling and started shuffling without much enthusiasm; it just felt different now. Worse, somehow.

My eyes opened reluctantly, giving grandose entrance to the sight of a thousand fires and a looming mushroom cloud where a city had once stood and it dawned on me: I was in a fallout zone. I was slowly, surely, being radiated to death. I would die of something bizarre like uvula cancer and nobody would ever know. I cursed my birth and shut my eyes again.

God did not exist and I was in hell. That, I decided, was the most intelligent solution to this whole fuckup. People didn't become zombies in real life. God didn't let them. But they had, and so He must not exist. And now the world around me was burning with fire and radiation just like hell must be. This was hell and God did not exist.

I fought back a wave of guilt at the thought, as if I had been caught in the act of doing something I shouldn't have. God didn't exist, right? So it didn't matter. It couldn't.

Eventually, I had my wits about me enough that freeing myself from the remains of the truck cab, which—I swear—looked a hell of a lot more like curly fries than any kind of vehicle. It was smashed and driven into the concrete wall that sided the freeway. I wasn't sure how I'd lived through this curious ordeal, but decided not to give it much thought. Some things are best left uncontemplated.

“Hello.”

My eyes opened almost hard enough to make my head rock back and forth. I couldn't move much, but gave a valiant effort to twisting and turning to see where the voice had come from. Nothing assauged my panicked curiousity.

“Would you like some help?” The voice was coming from somewhere nearby, but my ears were ringing for some reason, making it difficult to distinguish. It was deep, adult male, but carried a sort of wisened innocence that belayed anything I'd ever learned about anyone. Maybe it wasn't innocence, but a sort of willingness to help. That made more sense, at least.

“Sure,” I muttered. My throat felt raw for some reason. I didn't bother to think about it much.

My seat belt clicked free, leaving me free to flail before hitting the pavement spread eagle. It was warm and gritty and I'd skinned a knee. Reason enough to direct my slowly accumulated anger at the invisible voice.

“The hell? Hey, genius! What, do you have wings or something? 'Cause I don't. That hurt!”

He stepped out of the truck cab, which, I had to be impressed, was suspended a few feet above the pavement, embedded so firmly in the wall that it couldn't fall to the ground, and landed easily, bending his knees only a little to absorb the impact.

Swathed in dark jeans, black t-shirt and a coat the exact same hue, his face was framed in long, black hair that blanketed his shoulders in a messily tidy way and a decent beard framed his mouth. He looked like Jesus, only...darker. No halo on this mysterious figure. He wore a rifle slung over his shoulder and carried a handgun that slipped behind his coat before I could make out the model.

“How'd you get in there? Where did you come from? Who are you?”

“My name is Jacob. What's yours?”

“Call me Buddy. My name is no concern of yours. Who are you?”

“Okay, Buddy. I am an angel.”

I barked a laugh, couldn't help myself, at his words. “Like hell you are. Fine. What do you want?”

“I saved you.”

“Did you now? Last I checked, I just got nuked into a fucking wall. That's not what I'd call saving, Jake.”

“Jacob. And I did save you, but you don't have to believe me.” He started walking away.

“Hey!” I called after him. “Where are you going?”

“We have to leave now. Before they find us.”

I assumed he meant the zombies. “We? Why would I follow you?”

“Because I'm your angel.”

“Again with this angel shit!” I sputtered. “Look, delude yourself all you want, but don't try and suck me in, too. I'm fine with whatever just happened.”

“Obviously.” He continued walking as I hurried to catch up.

“Okay,” I conceded. “Where are we going?”

He looked over at me. “Wherever you're going, Buddy.”

I watched him for a moment, puzzled. “Uh, okay. Well I was looking for some friends.”

“You have friends?”

“Yeah, I—well, kind of. Come on.”

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(Like what you see? Look for an update in the near future for more information on where the rest of this is going.)