WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

 

Major Richard Blaine thought he was dying to save his men, but instead is rescued by an angel whose perfume was that of his lost love, Helen Mayfair.

Was it her ... and what does it mean for Helen's fate? Is there a future for a human and an angel?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

“Life is the tumultuous duet between the murmuring light within and the riotous light without. It reveals the world, its materiality, and its mystery. It is up to us to discern the melody and make it our own.” 

- Helen Mayfair

 

I was lying on tickling grass. I didn’t open my eyes. I had seen more than I wanted in that hellish tunnel. The darkness of closed lids was comforting.

Sentient huffed in my mind,

‘There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.’

‘I am sure that is quite profound, but I am simply too battered to parse it out. Was that Helen just now … with wings?’

‘I do not respond to nonsense.’

Taylor, being Taylor, intruded with a question asked of the world in general, “What the hell was that?”

Link said, “You just answered your own question, Stew.”

Rough fingertips prodded into my neck. From a distance, André asked, “Is he alive?”

Doc Tennyson said, “His pulse is erratic but still there.”

“Good, that means I can kill him!”

There was a sound of a blow and the thud of a body hitting the grass beside me as Cloverfield snapped, 

“Get over it, mate! Stone the crows! We all just went through hell. The Major didn’t cause it. He saved our hides from it.”

“Your Major dragged me into that hell! I want to kill him.”

Above me, the Rabbi, Lt. Stein, sighed, “You dragged yourself into this mess when you became a war correspondent.”

Opening my heavy eyes, I weakly propped myself up on my right elbow, and to derail all the hostility with confusion said, “Vita contin gi. Vive cum eo.”

Nurse Reynolds, despite extreme wobbliness, moved with her inerrant grace up to me.

“Life happens. Live with it? Rather I would have said: Stercus accidit. vive com eo.”

Refusing to be outdone in erudite obtrusion, Dickens smiled wearily and translated, “Shit ….”

He saw Theo’s glare and hastily amended, “Sorry, ah, lady present, dung happens, so live with it, right?”

“Too right,” I sighed and then, I spotted André working himself up to lunge at me.

I plucked up a hefty stone that just fit my left hand and squeezed.

There was a crunching groan, and I opened my throbbing hand to pour out the powdery corpse of the rock from my palm onto the grass between me and André.

“You really want to see where this dance leads?”

He wisely edged away, and I said, “This living moment … in which we touch life and all the energy of the past and future is precious. Don’t throw it away on foolish rage over something you have already survived.”

Nurse Reynolds scowled at me. “You wanker! Why did you sling your rifle back over your shoulder?”

“Because that Thing was a creature of Darkness just as the rifle was a weapon of Darkness. Bullets from it would have only strengthen that monster.”

She looked as if she didn’t buy my explanation. “Well, you scared bloody hell out of me when you did it.”

“Don’t worry,” I smiled back at her. “There’s plenty left.”

Glaring at André, Cloverfield helped me to my shaky feet and whispered in my ear, 

“We all saw that angel whisk you away to safety and seal that tunnel behind you.”

Ashamed at my not noticing the closed tunnel, I flicked a quick glance and was stunned to see no indication a tunnel had ever been there.

“Yeah, mate. We ain’t nowhere near Omaha Beach anymore.”

I turned to Theo, “Are the surroundings safe?”

My loyal sergeant breathed a sigh of long-suffering from my not ever expressing myself as a trained officer.

“Yes, Major, the perimeter is secure. I was waiting for you to recover before I had the men form up against that knoll and recon the area beyond and behind.”

Cloverfield whispered next to my ear. “I would rather have you as my officer than any textbook cadet. You sure you taught at West Point for a year?”

I shook my head. “Have no memory of it, but I’ve been hit on the head a lot.”

He drawled a lean smile. “Me, too, but I remember all too well things I’d rather not.”

Cloverfield leaned in closer. “We all saw that angel hoist you out of that tunnel, but only I saw that sketch of your Helen Mayfair you did for Rommel.”

“So?”

“That angel’s face was a twin image for your Helen. Do you think that means she’s dead?”

I squeezed my eyes shut tight. “Merde, I hope not.”

Link loped up to the two of us. “Haven’t either of you boys been to Sunday School?”

I forced my face to be stone. “Sunday School wasn’t exactly on the curriculum at St. Marok’s.”

Cloverfield shook his head. “Mum was afraid to send me as it might give me an idea or two for sins I hadn’t yet committed.”

Link said, 

“Well, angels were created before Man. They’re a different breed entirely from us. When we die, we don’t become angels or demons. We become citizens of the Hot Spot or the Nice One.”

André sneered, “And of course, you know exactly how we get to either locale, right?”

Link’s face brightened, “You really want to know?”

The rest of the Spartans made his face fall when they unanimously shouted, “No!”

I clamped a friendly hand on Link’s shoulder. “You have to let each person find their own way to the afterlife.”

Cloverfield chuckled, “That way they have no one to blame for the scorching but themselves.”

Link glumly nodded. “That makes sense I guess.”

He turned to me. “Well, at least you know your Helen can’t be an angel since she had a human father.”

My stomach sank at his words, and I shook my head. 

“Her father, the police commissioner of New Orleans, adopted her from St. Marok’s when a mobster tried to kill him and instead mortally wounded his wife.”

I drew in a deep breath. 

“On her deathbed, his wife made him promise to adopt a girl so as not to become a monster out of grief, not knowing he already was one.”

Earning a glare from Evans for his friend’s ignoring my unease, Taylor frowned, “Where to from here, Major?”

I made a face as Sentient murmured the answer to me.

“Oradour-sur-Glane, the Martyred Village.”

Cpl. Sam Wilson snorted, “Oh, that tourist attraction.”