Gideon

Grinning, I pressed the phone to my ear.

“Gideon! My main man!” said a jovial voice. “I thought I felt a disturbance in the force.”

“Dude, you’re into Star Wars now? Haven’t you been dead for like a hundred and fifty years?” I kidded. I swear I knew this kid’s name. He was tall, lanky and had a long mop of bone straight brown hair, but name? About all I could connect him to was that he had been J.A.C. Dispatch for a ridiculously long time, mostly because he was glued to the live feed on the department boob tube. There was only one channel: MTV. Not the cable station. It’s Mortal TV, and he gets to watch everything the humans watch. Which is a whole lot of movies, tv and video games, ten screens at a time.

“That’s the crux of being born before TV, entertainment was pretty thin in my time. Now I’m addicted to it.”

I laughed. “No wonder you’re stuck in JAC. But, seeing as you saved my backside, I’ll let it slide. What’s up?”

“Your Mortal has been upgraded from Relatively Fine to Entering Danger,” he said. “I have to notify A.O.D., but I think you should get there first and check it out.”

I didn’t panic. If Guardians panicked every time our charges hit Entering Danger, we’d all be in a tizzy every second of the day. However, just in case, I took the stairs two at a time. If I hurried, maybe I could snag a bean bun on my way out.

“How badly in Danger are we talking?” I said. “Heading toward stupidity, or mild physical damage?”

“Uh…”

Over the phone, I could hear station static, chatter and laugh tracks times ten. The loudest being some sort of sports game that sounded heated. I paused on the second floor landing, trying to control my gastric juices from going haywire from the Chinese restaurant below me and pressed the silvery flip phone to my ear.

“Is that a football game?” I said.

“Seahawks and Vikings,” he muttered. “Tied game down to the wire and I’ve got about fifty of my Mortals watching the game. I’m telling you, the angles on this game are incredible! Yeah, baby! Whoever is on Guardian duty for the wide receiver is a flipping genius. The man runs like poetry.”

“Seriously?” I had a Mortal in danger and he was watching football. Sometimes the incompetence of the J.A.C. really got on my nerves.

“Oh HO! Someone called in a Miracle! That throw was beautiful,” he crowed.

“HEY!” I bellowed into the phone. “Snap out of it! I’ve got a Mortal in danger.”

“Keep your wings on,” he said. “I’m sure he’s fine…”

There was a long pause where all I could hear was channel surfing as the Dispatch agent flipped through Mortals on watch.

“Uh, not fine,” he said, all annoyance for his interrupted game gone. “Gideon, your Mortal is critical. You’d better get moving. I’ll transfer you to Transportation.”

“Wait!” The line clicked as I got transferred. I didn’t know the name of the Mortal in question. Not to mention I had five to choose from. I think. The last I checked I had an old guy sitting comfy in a hospital in a coma. The other four were pretty mobile.

“Fetch!” I grumbled under my breath. I raced down the last flight of stairs listening to crummy elevator Muzak, angel style, over the line. For some reason, the Angel Corps had a thing for Kenny G doped up on heavy-duty muscle relaxants. It’d put me to sleep if I was on hold for too long.

The plan was to head straight out the door, but the owner of the shop pulled fresh bean buns out of the cooker and they steamed like miniature white dough clouds. I rerouted behind him, snagged one while he wasn’t looking and stuffed it in my mouth. It was heavenly. Easily worth double what mortals paid for them.

Digging out a bullet from my back ammo pouch, I loaded a Petty Cash shell into the chamber and aimed at the register. I pulled the trigger and the bullet pinged off the plastic exterior with a loud cha-ching and disappeared. Sure the owner was a bun short, but he’d have a hard time making sense of the extra twenty bucks (I added a tip) when he did his bookkeeping tonight.

I slipped past a hungry looking man and his date at the door and tried to not collide too obviously with anyone on the sidewalk. New York was not a place for a second-class Angel too clumsy for his own feet. Chinatown was buzzing with activity in the middle of the night, swarming with Mortals, demons and angels, inter-mixing in a maddening haze of moving bodies.

Out in the street, the Muzak clicked off and I was finally patched through.

“Transportation,” said a chipper female voice over the line.

“Uh, hi?” I said. I really wished I had a fully functioning brain. I needed transport to a charge who I didn’t know and had no idea where he (or she) was at. “I need to…um…”

“Transportation for how many?” she said, plowing on as if I were fully competent.

“One.”

“Connection code please and I’ll connect you.”

I gulped the bun down hard. I’d prepped for this. The last time I was up in Alpha and Omega Records (where angels pretty much spend eternity jotting down every mortal action from nose picking to epic battles) I swiped a permanent marker to write down all the codes for J.A.C. on the palm of my hand. I was supposed to have them memorized…

I searched first my right hand and then my left for the correct codes. I found it, written half way up my pinky finger. Randomly I picked one of my Mortals. I had to start somewhere.

“Five, two, two dash seven two six, six nine,” I said.

“JAC connected,” she chirruped. “Step into the light on your immediate right. Have a nice day!”

Click!

There was something supremely messed up about Angel Travel. Don’t get me wrong, we traveled by the speed of light, (which is cool) but there was always a sadistic twist to it I swear they reserved for just us Second-Classmen. To my right was oncoming traffic. As in a totally crazy, speeding like the devil himself was at the wheel, taxi headed straight at me with his high beams on.

My jaw dropped and my cell plopped into my open hand. She wanted me to do what, exactly? Step into the light, which happened to be going at least fifty miles an hour hurtling a couple hundred pounds of metal in my direction. She was insane!

For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I could die twice. It was an idiotic thought, but I didn’t relish the idea of my immortal guts getting flattened to the streets of New York and the subsequent task of putting myself back together. Regardless, I put my foot out, shot a quick prayer to Headquarters and did what any JAC would do… I stepped in front of a crazy cabbie’s headlights. The lights flashed so bright, I was blinded. I expected to see stars, but the hit never came. Blinking once, then twice, I let my eyes adjust.

The deafening noise of the city was replaced by the rosy evening glow of the west coast sun going down on in California. My charge was three years old and she was a cute kid. I didn’t stop in very often on her. For three, she had life pretty well handled. It was eat, sleep and play. She hadn’t hit the dreaded fours yet where kids go from seeing angels to ignoring we exist. Then at five they go from ignoring to not seeing us completely.

My mortal was cool. She had a total rat’s nest of curls on her head and big gaps between her teeth. She usually liked to play superhero with me, but she had one major drawback. At the sudden appearance of a glowing angelic being in her room, she spun around with a grin.

“Hey kid,” I said. The last time I checked in on her, I spent hours teaching her my name. She usually called me…

“Pretty!” she said excitedly.

Yeah, that. “Gideon,” I corrected, but she wasn’t phased at all. We’d have to work on my name later. “How you doing, kid? Everything good?”

“I happy, Pretty!”

“Great. Stay out of trouble.”

One down. I flipped open my phone and redialed transportation. I got the same angel on duty again. She was probably good at her job and never had troubles hooking angels to their destinations. She coolly directed me toward a night light; a request that made me think twice about calling her again. Small beams of light stung. The smaller, weaker the light, the harder it is to travel. Anything covered in shadow gets left behind. I might be immortal, but I left behind half a butt cheek once and it was less than pleasant. I couldn’t sit for a week until I tracked it down and reattached it.

Crouching into a tight ball, I got myself in the nightlight’s beam and popped out of California and into the darkened seat of a squad car somewhere in the burbs of Chicago.

My Mortal was out cold. Snoring with his hands folded over his belly, my police officer was taking a catnap with his radar gun propped up on the window, taking speeds of no cars in the empty street.

Nope. No danger here.

Regardless, I snapped my fingers in front of his nose a few times. It wouldn’t do to have my Mortal slacking off. He didn’t stir until I kicked up some static with my boots shuffling on his carpeted floor and zapped him with it. He jumped awake in time to take the reading of the lone car puttering by, going five under the speed limit.

This time when I called Transportation, Miss Travel Lady was terse.

“Connection code!” she snapped.

I checked my hand again.

“Uh, five two two dash five two five three,” I said apologetically. This next Mortal was constantly in trouble and I hoped he was in danger because I had a feeling that if I called one more time, she’d have me pass through disco ball beams and I’d have severed body parts left all over the place.

Luckily she had me flip on the once again snoozing officer’s flashlight and popped me out of the squad car and onto a high tower. This twenty-something male was hard to catch on most days. He was constantly moving, which usually meant I caught him mid air doing tricks, flips and who knows what else. On a good day he was just driving recklessly. Now that I was thinking about it, I should have started with him and saved myself the headache.

I took a quick account of my surroundings. Tall tower, harness, cell phone recording everything and, wound around my left ankle, a long line of bungee cord.

“Oh, heck no,” I groaned. “Come on! Are you nuts or were you born with half a brain?”

I had no time to talk sense into him or at least shoot him with a Voice of Reason. Those usually worked. I lunge-tackled my mortal around the knees as he did a perfect swan dive off the side. Wind and G-forces flattened my hair on my head as we fell. He whooped for joy. I gulped back barf. I wasn’t one for joy rides or adrenaline pumping antics. We paused for a breath of a second as the cord reached full extension and then we sprang back upwards with sickening speed. I scrunched my eyes shut as we descended again and clung to his legs for dear life.

Ring! Ring!

It was bad timing to get a call in the middle of a bungee jump. Immortal or not, I didn’t relish the thought of letting go and becoming scrambled angel-splat at the base of a rickety old tower; I’d still feel it.

My phone rang and rang and I let it until we stopped the stomach churning swinging. We hung there, me and my insane mortal, as his friends struggled to pull him back up for round two. Hands shaking, I dug my phone out of my pocket, grateful it didn’t fall out. Amazingly, it was still ringing angrily.

“Yo?”

“What are you doing, Gid?” the kid from Dispatch bellowed at me, his voice doing that annoying puberty break mid-sentence.

“I…uh, just my job. Why?”

“Joy riding on the job is more like it. Dude, didn’t I say your guy was critical?”

“I know. My Mortal jumped off a tower. I’m telling you, I barely got here in time. Who knows what would have happened…”

“How about death.”

My heart rate was already up as I checked out my Mortal once again. He was laughing with his friends, giving high fives all around. All I felt was tremendous relief. Thank goodness I’d gotten here in time.

“No worries, man, I made it here on time,” I said. “My Mortal has cheated death once again. Please tell me you got it all on camera. You can record it, right?”

“We have replay, but only for The Boss to review,” Dispatch said miserably.

“Dang! You have to admit it was pretty great. Tell me you saw it because I am not doing that again.”

Dispatch sighed. Usually he was a pretty jovial guy so I didn’t get why he was being such a downer. “Speaking of The Boss. He’s waiting for you.”

Judging by the lack of TV back noise on the line and Dispatch’s serious tone, meeting with The Boss was not going to be all that great. My victory got crushed in an instant.

“Uh, where at?”

“The hospital bed of Boyd Crawley.”

“Who?”

“The Mortal in Critical I was telling you about, Gideon. Get it together and bust a move over there.”

A light went off. He was the old dude I checked in on once a month to make sure he was still breathing. He was the easiest Mortal I had on my list. He wasn’t exactly tough to keep track of.

“Boyd? The guy has been in a coma for six months!”

“And now he’s dead.”