Heaven's Messenger

Genre: General/Sci-fi?
Word Count: 1412

It was a cold night to be out, but I wasn’t going to be the one complaining.

“How much farther?” Hal asked, his breath coming out in a mist from his mouth. He thumped his gloved hands together. “It’s cold out.”

“It is,” Angela huddled close to me. She wrapped her hands around her as she walked.

“Oh, come on, Angie,” Hal thumped his hands again, “You have a hat and everything—coat, scarf, gloves, earmuffs—”

“My legs are freezing,” she huddled closer to me, and I put a hand over her shoulder, bringing her in.

Hal threw up his hands. “Oh, come on, you even have Joel to cuddle with.”

“Quiet,” Nolan stopped moving and shone his flashlight at the trees all around us. I finally saw that the path split ahead, and the light danced between the two trails. I almost considered losing face and going back to grab another layer, but finally, the beam stopped on the left path. “Alright,” he said calmly, and started walking again.

The three of us followed him, I on the left, a bit behind him, Angela next to me, and Hal on her right, a little behind.

“Damn, it’s cold,” Hal said finally, breaking the repetitive crunching sound of our feet stepping on the woodchip-covered path.

“It’s going to snow tomorrow,” Nolan said calmly without turning around.

“Ugh,” I stuffed my hands into my pockets, but Angela relocated my arm so she could hang on to it, “Snow. I hate it. It gets everything—shoes, floor, the bottom of my jeans—ugh!” She shivered. “I wish I lived somewhere else.”

“Really.” I thought I might have sounded a bit too unconcerned. Too late to go back now.

“Well, I wish you were there, too, of course,” she smiled at me, looking almost like a completely different person all wrapped up in her winter-wear.

“How much longer?” Hal’s voice came out again.

“Oh, not long now, I think,” Nolan’s reply was prompt. He flashed his light around, and showed that the woods were starting to thin. “We’re almost there.”

“Good.”

“Oh, come on, Hal,” Angela imitated. “You have a coat and everything. Joel’s only got a jacket.”

Hal wasn’t deterred at all. “That’s only because I’m not dumb enough to walk out here wearing that little. I mean, come on.”

I was freezing. I wasn’t even sure I could feel my ears anymore. Angela seemed to be looking at me expectantly, though, so I tried to ignore all of that. “I’m fine.”

“See?” she turned triumphantly. “He’s fine.”

I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. It’s an odd thing, something you’d never think could actually happen sometimes. It’s just one of those things that you read about in stories and that’s about it. You’d never expect it to actually happen. I tried to move my hands around inside the pockets to make sure they were still attached—they were, thankfully enough.

Below, the woodchips were more sparsely layered, and there were some dark stalks of grass poking through now and then.

Angela sighed loudly. “Look at the sky. It’s amazing.”

I looked up at the vast expanse of lights shining above us. The tree cover had dropped away behind us, and we could see the night sky naked before our eyes.

“There’re so many of them,” she breathed. “I never thought you could see so many.”

“It’s the lights in the city,” Nolan said, pausing for a moment to look up. “There’s too much light around to see the stars real well.”

The sky was like an inviting dark blanket with little sparkles thrown all over it. It was just full of stars, burning spheres of light, almost inviting —nothing like the sky I had grown so used to. I thought about how the first humans must have seen the heavens, resting around the fire after stuffing themselves with that day’s hunt. Warm. Comfortable. I almost asked to borrow a hat.

Angela took my arm again. “Thinking about something?”

“Nothing really,” I caught Hal in the corner of my vision, looking as if he were about to echo me mockingly, but he noticed that I had seen him and said nothing. “I was just thinking about how it must have been before…” I thought for another moment, “before electricity and cities and cars and all that.”

“Of course,” Hal said scathingly.

“Hal!”

“What?”

Nolan cleared his throat. “We’re almost there—we don’t want to miss it.”

“What time is it?” Hal looked to me questioningly.

“Time for you to get a watch,” Angela said quickly.

He ignored her. Reluctantly, I jerked my left hand out of my pocket and tried to make out the numbers in the dark. I brought my other hand out quickly and jabbed at the button to make the numbers light up. I stuffed the hand back. “Eleven fifty.”

“A few more minutes, huh?” Hal looked back into the sky.

I slid my left hand back into the pockets. I could barely tell the difference in temperature. Somehow, I didn’t think that was a good sign. Either my pockets were pretty cold—which they were bound to be—or my hands were starting to lose their feeling. For a moment, I tried to remember the symptoms of frostbite and the conditions needed, but I just couldn’t recall them. That only made me feel colder.

Nolan stopped and switched off his light. “Here we are.”

Hal looked around. I could make out his figure in the starlight. “We’re on a hill.”

“Yeah,” Nolan answered.

“We walked all the way out here to sit on a hill.”

“That sounds about right,” Nolan nodded. “Yeah.”

Hal looked confused. “Is there something really special about this hill?”

“Not really, no. We can go to another one if you want. What time is it now?”

I checked my watch again. “Fifty-six.”

Angela intercepted my hands before they could make it back to their shelters. She clutched them in her gloves. “Cold?”

I thought I saw Hal look gloatingly over. “A little bit,” I admitted.

“Want to borrow my hat?” she started taking off the pink, red, and white hat she was wearing. “I’ve got a hood on my coat.” She shoved the thing into my hand.

It felt warm, and I let some of the heat pass into my freezing hands.

“Well,” she put her earmuffs back on and then flipped the hood of her coat over her head. “Put it on.”

“Put it on!” Hall imitated.

“Oh, shut up, Hal,” she punched at him, but he skipped lightly away.

“You missed.”

Angela didn’t answer. I pulled the woolen hat onto my head, glad it was dark and glad that I couldn’t see myself wearing it. It made me feel warmer for a bit, but then the heat seemed to fade away and I couldn’t help but notice that I was trembling slightly.

“It should be about time,” Nolan stared up into the sky.

I checked my watch again. Twelve one, it blinked. Any time now.

“Where do you think it’ll be?” Hal asked.

Nolan took a few seconds to answer. “I don’t know.”

Angela pressed towards me. “Aren’t you glad it’s going to miss us?” she whispered, so that only I could hear.

“Yeah,” I breathed softly, watching the light mist of my breath disappear quickly in the night air. “But we were lucky.”

She suddenly pointed out into the sky a little above the tree line. “Is that it?”

As I looked out at the horizon, I saw a narrow streak of light burning through the night sky.

“There it is,” Nolan pointed as well.

Hal was surprisingly silent.

For a moment, I almost forgot about being cold as I watched the streak of light move across the sky. The line grew thicker and brighter as the asteroid moved deeper into the atmosphere. It would only miss by a few hundred miles. I shivered, nearly asked for the scarf.

The front end of the line ignited and now it glowed a glaringly bright white, obscuring the long tail of heat it left behind. The spectacle passed out of view behind the trees.

I realized that I had been holding my breath and let it rush out. “It’s over then.”

Nolan seemed to be nodding. “Thank God it’s over.”

“Amen,” Hal said quietly.

We turned and started walking back towards the car. I was in a mood for hot chocolate.

Written: Before 12/8/2007