The War in Heaven (13 page)

She remembered the first time she’d mainlined this stuff. Wow, what a ride. Never in her wildest dreams did she expect that. How long ago was that, anyway? It seemed like an eternity ago, but it was just a year.

Back then she had a life, a career. She was a nurse, an RN, an intensive care unit registered nurse. She should have known better. But back then she believed in working hard and playing hard. To do that and maintain a demanding schedule, she had to prime the pump. Her amphetamines pumped her up in the afternoon for the long 12-hour night shift, and barbiturates put on the brakes in the morning to allow her to get some sleep. This worked for three years. It become a way of life. She knew what she was doing. She was, after all, a professional—an addict, a junky? No. Impossible. She had it all under control.

She had come face to face with the harder stuff at an upscale party. She knew well the chemistry of drugs like meth, knew their exact physiological effect upon the human body. Somehow she’d figured that meth would
be little more than a super boost. It would be stimulating, an interesting experiment to be observed and monitored. Only some weak-willed high school dropout would fall prey to it. She was wrong.

For a time, she balanced her meth use and her job; now meth was consuming a large chunk of her life. When the high wore off she crashed—hard. She started missing more and more of her work shifts. She had a bout with the flu, then an intestinal bug. That is what she had told her supervisor; and he’d bought it, at least for a time.

Then came that terrible day when the hospital administration conducted an unannounced drug screening for all employees. Her secret was out; her career was over. Her salary up to this point had been sufficient to cover the considerable expense of her addiction, now it was no more. She had gone through her savings in a matter of six months. Those savings had been earmarked for buying a home of her own near Pinnacle Peak; now they supported her love affair with methamphetamine.

She eventually moved from her upscale apartment in Scottsdale, sold her car, and settled into this low rent flop in south Phoenix where she was closer to her dealer. As her savings were depleting, she had to find another source of income. Working the night shift at the local convenience market probably wouldn’t cut it. In desperation, she had turned to the oldest profession in the world. Her dealer even helped her make the connections. After all, she had the looks and the moves to be a high-priced lady of the night, until meth finally took them away from her too.

She looked down at the empty syringe again. That was the last of it; and the way she was feeling now, it might have been too much. She had crossed the threshold of toxicity. Now death spread through her veins, burning her out on the cellular level.

She felt a coldness closing in around her. It wasn’t the drug—no, this was something else. A spirit of darkness had entered the room. It was death;
she was sure of it. The reaper had finally come calling. She wasn’t sure if she was frightened or relieved, but she knew she was slipping away.

“Come on and take me,” she mumbled. “I’ve been expecting you, expecting you for a long time.”

“Oh have you now?” came the reply.

Shocked, Leslie’s bloodshot eyes opened widely. Had she just heard a voice or was it only in her mind? She couldn’t tell. She looked around the room and saw no one.

“You’re slipping away,” said the deep voice, clearly that of a man. “There isn’t much time; but I might help you if you asked me real nice. Just let me come in and I’ll take you away from all of this. I’ll help you experience anew the joy that drug once gave you. Let me in, let me into you.”

“You’re not real!” she cried, in the loudest voice she could muster. “You’re not real.”

“Well, if I’m not real, then there is no harm in letting me in, is there? But if you don’t, you’re going to die. It’s your choice, but don’t wait too long. You can give me reign over your body and live for a little while longer, or you can let corruption have your flesh and Hell have your soul. Believe me, I’ll be a lot gentler on you. Still, like I said, it’s your choice, wench.”

Real or not real, the voice was right. Leslie’s extremities were growing numb and cold. The chill was moving from her limbs toward her vital organs. When they shut down, that would be it. Then what? Her heart would stop, her blood would stop circulating, and her brain would starve and die. Then her body would begin to decompose, but would her soul go to Hell? Did such a place really exist? She had never given it much thought.

She had seen a lot of patients die during her career. It was the nature of the business. Still, sometimes the experience of watching them die had been pretty spooky. Some patients had gone peacefully, others with a sense of fear and horror as if they suddenly knew some terrible secret that they could not
impart to her. She hadn’t dwelled on those experiences. She’d done her best to put them out of her mind. She had always focused on living, not dying. The way she had it figured—at least the way she wanted to figure it—death was lights out, the end. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“You know, you really should have contemplated your mortality and what lies beyond instead of burying your head in the sand, pretending death didn’t exist,” said the voice. “Now it’s far too late to alter your terrible destiny, for your life is nearly passed. When you enter my master’s kingdom, you won’t be able to pretend it doesn’t exist anymore, though you’ll wish it didn’t. I know not what fate he might have in store for you, but be assured, it will not be pleasant. Very soon you’ll know what pain really is; you’ll get intimate with it, and it will continue for all eternity.”

Leslie didn’t respond. She was too terrified to speak. There had to be a way out, a way for redemption, but right now she couldn’t see it.

“What shall it be?” asked the voice. “We don’t have all night. Actually, you’ve got about ten more minutes. What’s your pleasure?”

Leslie had a sense that she was opening the door to something worse than death. But right now it seemed the only alternative. If Hell was out there beyond this life, if it was fire and brimstone like that pastor had told her so long ago, she would do everything she could to delay it. “Come into me, then,” said Leslie, her voice soft and resigning. “Come in and die with me, if you want.”

A shock-like sensation permeated her entire body, then a sense of confusion. She was not alone in her own body, someone else was with her; it felt incredible. It made the high of meth pale by comparison. She rose to her feet, and as she did the room started to fade. Then she was largely lost to herself.

First she was in the shower, then putting on heavy makeup in an attempt to mask the ravages that the drug from hell had inflicted upon her. She
seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness, yet her body was on the move through it all—someone or something else was in control.

Then she was walking down Twenty-seventh Avenue, toward Buckeye Road. She was dressed very suggestively and she moved with a confidence she had not been able to find within her for several months. Surely she should be dead right now, but she wasn’t. She felt like a prisoner within her own body.

Again she faded from consciousness. Then she was with a man. She was in a hotel room standing over a man covered in blood who was lying on the bed. There were more than six knife wounds in his chest, and she was rifling through his wallet. She had committed murder, cold-blooded murder. She was done for.

“Didn’t you know that you should never pick up strange women?” she heard herself say. “My, you are loaded, $468. More than enough for what we have in mind. Thank you for your generosity, kind sir. The money will be put to good use, I assure you.” There was a pause.

“Go to sleep, little girl, this is none of your concern. We have a date with human destiny. We are going to help bring about the end of the world. Go to sleep.”

And she did. Leslie faded away once more. This was a nightmare, a waking nightmare, sleep was her only escape.

The mighty observatory dome closed with a dull thud. Another cold night of astronomical observing from Arizona’s Mogollon Rim ended. Twenty-six-year-old Sam Florence smiled as he looked at the electronic image displaying the new faint comet. “At last, there you are,” he exclaimed.

He had experienced an incredible run of bad luck when it came to this little guy. His area of study was trans-Neptunian objects, icy asteroids in orbit many billions of miles from Earth’s sun. He had discovered 21 of them during the last three years, a pretty good average for a graduate student. Most of them had been discovered right here at the Discovery Channel Telescope—northern Arizona’s premier astronomical instrument.

He had first seen this exceptionally faint object three months ago. Its tiny motion during the course of three nights told him that it was a member of the sun’s family and not a distant star. He’d managed to get a second series of images of it two months ago. From those two sets of images, he knew that this object was special. Last month it was on the observing list again. This third set of observations would have given him a rough orbit of this newly discovered member of the solar system. But on those nights, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. One of the nights was cloudy. On the other two nights, he was plagued with a series of improbable equipment problems. The three-night observing run had turned out to be a complete wash.

This month’s run was little different. Again he was plagued with a series of quirky equipment failures. Last night he had gone as far as to pray over the imaging camera. Never had he done such a thing, and he was totally serious when he did it. He was astonished when the 60-year-old telescope operator had joined him in the prayer.

“Wherever two or more are gathered, the Lord is in their midst,” the telescope operator had noted. Apparently, he too had taken it seriously.

It seemed rather foolish praying over a piece of optics and circuitry, but they had done it nonetheless. Amazingly, it had worked. Fortune, or perhaps the good Lord, had finally favored him, and he had obtained one good image of the object known only as 2014F22. Normally, he would have waited until he got back to the university to get the object’s coordinates and crank out an orbit for this troublesome minor planet, but not this time.
He was hard at work on the problem right there in the observatory control room. He felt a sense of urgency, though he didn’t know why. Perhaps after all the trouble he had gone through to get this image, he wanted to savor his victory, but maybe it was something else. Once he was finished here, he would head to Happy Jack and get a few hours of sleep before heading back to Tempe.

“How’s it coming, Sam?” asked the gray-haired telescope operator, looking over Sam’s shoulder.

“Just about have it, Ken,” announced Sam, as he hit the enter key.

“I reckon the prayer worked,” said Ken, adjusting his bifocals and focusing on the monitor as the orbital elements popped up. “Wow, look at that eccentricity. Now that’s one weird object you bagged, it looks like it is going to cross Jupiter’s orbit.”

Sam focused on the screen as an image of the actual orbit was displayed on the monitor. “More than that, it is going to nearly hit Jupiter … see?” He pointed to the incredibly unlikely crossing of two worlds. “Right now, this object is well beyond the orbit of Uranus, almost to Neptune; odd place for an object such as this. But it won’t be out there long … it is coming inward fast. It will encounter Jupiter in 42 months. If we can believe these rough projections, Jupiter will pump down its orbit still further, bringing it in even closer to the sun.”

They watched intently as the computer calculated the effect Jupiter’s enormous gravity would have on this new object. A new set of orbital elements appeared, and then the altered orbit.

“This is exceptionally rough,” cautioned Sam. “The actual orbit could be significantly different from this.”

Rough or not, the two men almost collectively jumped out of their skin when they saw the track of the new orbit traced out on the monitor. This was not encouraging.

“Oh crap,” said Sam under his breath. The computer displayed an orbit for the comet that carried it straight into Earth’s path.

“That comet is going to pass mighty close,” noted Ken, leaning toward the monitor. “This one will be the comet of the century all right. What a sight that will be! The tail might well stretch across the entire sky.” There was a brief pause. “That is assuming that it doesn’t turn around and hit us. That would ruin our whole day.”

“Well, let’s not jump to conclusions just yet,” cautioned Sam. “This orbit is based on only three observations. I’m sure we will be able to dismiss the possibility of an impact once we gather more data.”

“I reckon you’re right,” replied Ken, “but I’d rather error on the side of safety. There are people who need to be informed.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Sam. “Hey, what do you say we blow this joint and get some breakfast at Peg’s?”

“Now you’re talking,” said Ken. “Just give me about fifteen minutes to shut down and I’ll be ready to go.”

Ken headed out into the observatory to shut down the telescope. Sam remained in the control room, looking at the orbital projection. He had a bad feeling about this, really bad. He suspected that Ken did too. The story of Wormwood in the Book of Revelation did a bit more than just cross his mind. He saved the data and shut down the computer. He would have one more opportunity to observe this enigmatic object next month before it passed behind the sun. Then it would be two or three months before he would be able to measure its position again.