The Nearest Place To Heaven (short story)
Howdy folks. This is a short alternate take on the Red Ring Rico story from PSO Episode 1. I hope you dig!
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The Nearest Place To Heaven
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She didn't know how long she had been walking. Her journey had an air of timelessness about it; in a way, her march was like the parade of puffy white cloud sculptures that lazily drifted through the sky. The sky, she thought warmly, that soft blue ocean of infinity that stretches on above and behind and ahead and on and on and forever and ever amen. Where does it go? Where does it end?
And to that, she had no answer. She frowned for a moment but her face soon relaxed again as her thoughts drifted on to something else. Her mind would continue investigating itself at a very leisurely pace, ambling from one thought to another, and soon it would be on to something else entirely, her last set of unknowns forgotten as easily as a childhood pair of shoes. It didn't bother her. The journey left a pleasant enough taste in her mouth, and not even once did she find herself comparing her apparent lack of progress in crossing the meadow as the sun beat hotly against her neck and shoulders to the feeling of lying in bed awake late at night, tossing and turning with a sore throat and nothing to watch but the numbers of her clock ticking slowly upward. She may have roughly brushed her leg once or twice to drive off some unwelcome insect or a clingy stalk of tall grass, but there was no static in her head. No ma'am, not today. Not until she realized she couldn't remember her name and that she had been whistling the same soft melody for the better part of an hour, anyway. Or had it been longer than an hour? Or shorter? Ten minutes? A day? She had no idea, but the notes never stopped. There were no words to her song, just notes that she formed her lips around and then pushed gently out with her breath as she put one foot in front of the other and watched the horizon rise and fall with the hills. They were notes she had never heard before, but she guessed she knew them by heart because the melody never dipped or paused or fumbled. It just kept on keeping on, one foot in front of the other, forever and ever amen.
Rico!
She shuddered.
She needs water! She's dying, you asshole!
No can do, goodbuddy.
"Shut up," she whispered resentfully under her breath, never taking her eyes off the horizon. And a few seconds later, the annoyed wrinkle in her brow faded away and her mouth rediscovered her tune. And a few seconds after that, she didn't even remember what had bothered her just a moment ago.
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"One two three four five sigs seven eightnineten," Olin Carrow mumbled through lips heavy with cold as his trembling fingers poked stupidly around in his pocket, searching for his lighter. Finally he felt his hand pressing against a solid rectangular shape, and with a dull stab of pain from his frostbitten fingers, he pulled it out of the pocket with one clumsy, directionless yank. Olin looked down at the lighter, held it tightly in his left hand, and then pulled his right thumb jerkily over the wheel.
Nothing but a spark.
He groaned and did it again, got another spark, and then did it much harder. A flame at last leapt up, but his thumb momentarily screamed in pain before immediately numbing again, like the shadow of a cloud crossing the sun vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
"Damn," he muttered, plucking one of his last cigarettes from his bag and lighting the tip. He shut the top of the lighter with a loud clap that echoed a bit before dying out, pushed the cigarette unceremoniously between his lips, pulled in a chestful of the only happiness he had left, and then blew it slowly out again. He looked down to Rico, unconscious on the floor next to him, and slowly leaned over to position his ear next to her cheek. Still breathing.
"One two three four five sigs seben eight nine ten," he mumbled again to himself. The calming technique never did much good, but he figured it couldn't do much harm, either. And it wasn't like he had a great deal of other, better things to be filling his time with anyway. Not locked in this nearly dark room with his dying comrade and an empty canteen. Not today, no sir. Not a plan in the world, goodbuddy.
The only thing more maddening than the guilt that pushed against his chest with each of Rico's labored breaths was the whistling coming from the next room, which was currently inhabited by Daron Folley, the third member of their party. Olin had taken an immediate dislike to Daron, and now he was cursing himself for not acting on his hunch earlier. Daron was a Ranger in maybe his forties or fifties who had throughout his career seen battle probably more times than Olin had flicked open his lighter, and it was now more than a little obvious that the man was no longer a force of good. His eyes twinkled darkly behind his long lashes and his smile was more sadistic than warm. He was humor without humanity, like a grinning, laughing skull with two blazing red points of firelight for eyes and drops of blood oozing from the tiny spaces between his teeth. Sometimes when Olin would turn and quickly catch sight of Daron, it was like the man had no face at all; just a dark hole where his features should go. Even through his helmet visor, it was as if there was less than there should logically have been to him.
Daron also never stopped whistling. Tunelessly, tastelessly, endlessly, he whistled on and on, without rhyme or reason. The joyless notes drifted hauntingly throughout the rooms of the abandoned ruins, sometimes quieting for a few moments as Daron moved further away, into other rooms to pursue whatever activity it was that he was currently busy with, but they always came back eventually. Olin hated the sound of that whistling. At times it got so bad that he considered gouging his own eardrums out, but he never had the guts. Not even two days into his imprisonment with Red Ring Rico did he ever find the courage to take his own hearing away, horrible and traitorous though it was.
"What's that, goodbuddy?" Daron called from someplace that sounded very far away. "You need somethin'?"
Olin growled under his breath as he listened to Daron laugh tonelessly at his own cruel joke. I need somethin' alright, goodbuddy. I need for you to go ahead and put a bullet right between your baby blues, ya hear? Also some water would be just dandy.
"You want this on you, Daron?" Olin shouted, surprised at the continued strength of his own lungs. He might have been hungry, thirsty, tired, and slowly freezing to death, but damned if he couldn't still project. "You want to be the one that killed the principal's daughter?"
"She's not going to die, goodbuddy," Daron called back cheerfully. "She's just going to come with me to a different place. You, though, you're dying." And then he laughed himself silly, ending with a terrific coughing fit.
"You don't sound too good yourself there, goodbuddy," Olin shouted into the dark room, still rooted to the spot he had remained in for the past six hours at least: slouched against the wall beside Rico.
"Just a low fever is all," Daron replied. "Got it all under control. How you doing in there?"
"I'm great, asswipe," Olin yelled. "But Rico isn't so lucky. I wasn't joking when I said she's dehydrating. If you don't let her drink something, fast, you'll be as dead as we will, because Tyrell will disembowel you himself. Assuming you make it back home in one piece, of course."
"No worries, my good friend. I've got it all under control," Daron called happily from what sounded like just one room removed from the one he'd shut them in.
Damn, Olin thought again as he took one final drag on his cigarette, plucked it from his mouth with fumbling, icy fingers, and tossed it aside.
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Rico slowly became aware that someone had been following her. It seemed as though maybe he always had, maybe all the way back to when her life had first begun, but she wasn't sure. It didn't seem all that important here in this beautiful, endless meadow that just rolled on and on and on. Nothing quite like putting one foot in front of the other and whistling a happy tune, after all. Especially not when almost half of your existence had been spent in sterile corridors and under domed ceilings that looked out into a vapid eternity of space. There was nothing blue or warm about Pioneer 1's sky. It was nothing like this, nothing at all like life.
"Sun feels good on our shoulders, doesn't it friend?" she called out behind her, even though she was quite sure that whatever was following her was not inherently good. It just didn't seem to matter much anymore.
"Sure does, friend," a voice called back. "Sure does seem like home, doesn't it?"
"Sure does," Rico called back, suddenly overcome with the urge to laugh.
"Sure does," the voice echoed again.
"What's your name?" Rico asked, still walking, still laughing warmly to herself.
"What's in a name, anyway?" the voice replied. "Just call me Home."
"Home," Rico repeated. "Sure does feel like home, Home." And with that, she laughed and laughed until her stomach ached and her lungs were sore.
"Coming up on the end real quick here," the voice called to her.
"Sure are, Home," Rico answered as she gazed upon a towering black monolith that stood arrow straight, directly ahead and not ten yards away, jutting up from the ground like a ten story tall dragon's tooth. Somehow she hadn't noticed it until just now.
"How would you like it if you and I stuck together, missy?" the voice asked as Rico approached the monolith and finally, for the first time since she could remember, stopped walking.
"That sounds just fine, Home," she said with a warm smile and a pleasant blankness in her eyes as she stared upward and listened to the birds sing.
"Sure does," the voice said.
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"Got everything under control," Daron repeated again as he moved closer. Olin heard his footsteps clicking lightly against the floor of frozen glass that bottomed the hallway outside the room as he approached the door.
"How would you like it if I let you out, soldier?" he asked, his footsteps finally stopping.
"I think I'll stay in, thanks," Olin replied, suddenly feeling a chill spread from his chest, a chill that was much deeper than what the physical cold could produce.
"Well that's unfortunate, goodbuddy, because I'm about ten seconds away from opening this door."
"You can open whatever you like, but if you don't bring some water in with you, you'd might as well not come in at all. We're fine on blankets, I put mine over Rico, but if you come in without anything for her to drink, may God help you, I'll put a dagger in your heart."
The words sounded foolish even as he said them.
"That's alright, goodbuddy," Daron said darkly. "I don't think you could find my heart if you tried. But I'm going to come in now, and if you don't want to leave, then I think I'll just kill you. How's that sound?"
The door slid open with a mechanical whoash noise, and Olin's eyes bulged as he saw that there was no one standing in the hallway. Even as the last of Daron's words echoed through and about the adjacent room and the door slowly finished opening, there was nobody where the man would have to have been standing for the door to have been activated. His mind spun with fear and his head pulsed with an icy fever that made his stomach turn.
"That sounds just fine, goodbuddy," Olin whispered shakily.
"Sure does," Rico suddenly said, sitting up and turning toward Olin. Her eyes were black, gaping pits, like the eyes of a deer, and her lips had pulled back to reveal a lunatic grin that was thick with the blood oozing through her teeth. In the dark room, that bloody smile was as black as space itself, contoured only by tiny glints of light reflected from the hallway and the ambient glow from the glass floor.
"Sure does," she repeated as Olin stared sadly into her eyes.
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