"The Death Cadets"
By John McGondel
(previously published in "Lost Worlds" Magazine.

Eddie's family was gathered in the hospital room. He could hear his parents, his young wife and little daughter crying. The chaplain was performing the last rites. Eddie tried to scream, but of course there was no sound forthcoming. They all finished praying, and at the priest's gentle urgings, left the room to sign the necessary documents. Eddie slid off into a dream...

He was swinging through the jungle treetops, master of all that he surveyed. Sometimes he leapt from branch to branch, at other times he would glide tree to tree, hanging onto a vine. Every now and then, he would pause to listen to the jungle, knowing its various sounds as an orchestra conductor knows each of his players' instruments. He scooped some cool water from the collecting hole in a tree's hollow. Looking up at a sound, he watched an eagle as it carried off a large, writhing snake. High above the jungle floor, he rested safely, breathing in great gulps of delicious air, enriched by the abundant, luscious, foliage. He gazed eastward as the sun began to rise, knowing that in a few short minutes, the heat would be sweltering.

On the way back to his nest, he searched for the day's food, and returned home with the carcass of a tender young Kudu buck. The spiral antlers would become knife handles; the skin would become water pouches. The entrails and bones he would give to Rall, the black leopard whom he had raised from a kitten, after having won a knife to fang death battle with its mother. The mother leopard's hide he had fashioned into a loincloth and a pair of leggings, for he wasted nothing. He raised the cub instead of killing it, thereby replenishing the mother's life.

By midmorning he was well fed and resting comfortably in his hammock, some forty feet above the jungle trail. He planned to sleep for a while, until when the cruel sun was at its hottest. Then he would awaken from the heat and take a refreshing swim under the cool waterfall. While there he would gather some underwater vegetables to have with his afternoon meal. He was always gathering fresh fruit, since it quickly went bad in the heat of the humid jungle. The old fruit he would leave on the balcony of his tree house for the many multicolored parrots that followed him and came to him when he beckoned. They would fly along overhead when he ran the jungle paths, alerting him to danger with cries of alarm, or leading him to prey with calls of distress.

But for now he would sleep a contented man, lacking in nothing. At peace with himself and the world around him...

His eyelids flitted, but the nurse, freshly on shift, didn't notice. The staff never paid attention to coma patients. Just check the vital signs, change the bedclothes, clean the body, refill the I.V. bottles and a quick shave, then it was on to the next patient.

Once the nurse left, Eddie was able to concentrate on his dreaming again. He had long ago learned to stop trying to communicate with his caretakers. They were not aware of his thoughts. He could neither talk, nor move, nor in any way gain their attention. So he just waited, listening to them and receiving their ministrations, until they, whether doctors, nurses, or visitors, left him alone. Then, when they were gone and he was once again in a pure and tranquil state, his mind would roam... At first he had roamed around the hospital. Then around the country. Then the world...And through time...And beyond.

Now he was Adam, the first man. The garden was his home. He walked upon the cool, soft moss of the garden's floor, which cushioned his bare feet, giving his steps a vibrant spring. He was not alone, for many other, smaller animals scampered about, some scurrying across his path, others chasing each other around bushes and trees. He fed the squirrels from his hand. He splashed in the clear river with his otter friends. The birds sang songs about him, in their own language. The world was almost perfect for him. Almost. Then Eve appeared from behind a tree. Together they laughed and played through the meadows, chasing butterflies and smelling the many flowers. They ran through a silent pool of cool water, stopping to watch the small purple fishes, which nibbled at their feet and toes. Finally, after much time spent in the enjoyment of each other's company, they lay down side by side in a large field of clover, basking in the warm sun and the blue sky. A light wind whispered over their exhausted young bodies. Adam reached out to gently caress Eve's tender face and she smiled innocently at him. He moved his trembling hand towards her slender white neck, and...

… the next shift's nurse came into his room, interrupting his reality. For, to Eddie, the hospital was as sleep to him. Of minor consequence, but which must be tolerated. But his thoughts, dreams, fantasies, or hallucinations, or whatever combination thereof, those were his reality, his life which he had long since accepted. He at first had felt angry whenever his keepers had disturbed his streams of unconsciousness. But he eventually adjusted. Then he found sadness and frustration upon learning that once interrupted, the trains of thought were gone forever.

And so he had come to accept the inevitable: That his life's thoughts and his reality was subject to being changed at any given moment, whether it be by routine nurse's visits, or by random visits from doctors or relatives and after which he would be plunged headlong into his next reality. Of course he had no sense of time, what with having nothing to relate time to. His life became a never-ending series of short movies, in which he was the star, and which were far better than anything the Hollywood film industry was capable of making. An existence of semi-conscious reality. For lately, had his caretakers taken the time to check or notice, his heart and respiration rates jumped in relation to his dream sequences. And his eyelids sometimes fluttered.

The nurse was finished and left the room, turning off the lights on her way out. Eddie's biorhythms came into line... Now this was something new. It was as if he was attached to the bottom of some sort of a plane or something. He was looking down at the Earth.

He felt as though he was a video camera mounted to a spaceship. The ship flashed right by the planet Earth, continuing on towards the sun. The light was blinding, as the ship whipped around the sun, swinging out past Mercury and Venus, back towards Earth. It was then that he noticed his being not alone. In addition to himself were many other cameras and devices. Along with them, he picked up various television and radio signals. News, weather, sitcoms, soap operas, as well as defense and military communications. Then, without stopping, he was heading blindly out past the other planets, into outer space. His last input from Earth was about the arrival of Halley's comet. The ship was Halley's comet, due back every generation or so. This ought to be one hell of a ride.

The far off stars slowly and silently swept by. The expanse of outer space was truly humbling. One star appeared not to move. All the others either moved left, right, up, down, or went by. This star must be their destination. It was orange, not white like most, or yellow like the Earth's. The closer that they approached, the more apparent the distinctions became. There were seventeen planets. Most had moons, some natural, some not. The great ship stopped just outside the gravitational pull of the outermost planet. A smaller ship headed for it. He was reminded of a tugboat going to a luxury liner. He felt as though... as though...

And then the sheets were being lifted off of him by the next shift nurse. Her name was Melba and she was a Haitian, and she talked to him softly in a heavy accent. Eddie was resigned to just waiting for her to be done and gone, and his mind silently screamed out: "Leave me alone!" The old nurse dropped her thermometer, and holding her hands over her matronly bosom, she sat down heavily in the nearest chair. She breathed in and out until her heartbeat was relatively normal.

Melba regarded the white boy in his head bandages, doomed forever to his coma-bed. Finally, she spoke to him, an eye on his monitor. "Can you hear me, my little white child?"

The monitor made funny signals, as her mind heard: "Leave me alone. You all keep interrupting my dreams!"

She wiped her eyes and held onto her purse, which held the medicines and magic pieces of her people. She was not facing the first spirit of her long lifetime. She answered Eddie: "My child, I do not think that you want me to leave. Now why not tell me your story, and then I will tell you mine own?" She felt instead of heard, as he unburdened his heart to her. He told her of swimming with the great whales, of diving deep into the oceans. And he spoke of loving. And the overwhelming sadness of knowing that he could never see or touch his loved ones again. The old woman felt his pain, as was her peoples’ way. She wept a silent tear. "My boy, can we not do anything for you now?" A moment passed, and he thought to her. The councilor for the hospital had apparently convinced his family to "write him off." There was virtually no chance of his emerging from the coma. And even if he did, there was zero chance of his ever moving anything from the neck down.

The armed services took care of their own. To a point. A decimal point. Somewhere there was someone whose nasty job was to save the agency any "non-justifiable" expenses. Eddie now lived in constant awareness of the fact that the next person in the door could be there to pull the plug on his life support services...

Melba's eyes were wet with tears for she could not help the dear boy. If she told the hospital administration about the voodoo, she would be either locked up or fired. And she dared not to use a zombie spell/curse to help him, for she had promised her dead grandmother many years ago to forsake the old magic and her Shamanism. It was far too risky...The old woman quietly left the room, to think...

As Eddie had poured his anguish out to the old nurse, he’d felt a tugging at the edge of his mind, as if someone or something was trying to gain his attention. Now with Melba gone, he tried to retreat to a dream-state, but there was that tugging again, only much stronger. He heard: "Are you with us or not? What's the problem?"

He answered: "Who are you?"

"Never mind us, Bub, how come we can't pull you in all the way?"

Eddie was completely confused: "Pull me where?"

"Through the induction line! You've gone and blocked it up! And right in the middle of our bonus incentive program, during our time of dire need!" Eddie thought that perhaps this might be another dream. "No, this is not a dream. You are dead, right?"

To this Eddie most indignantly replied: "NO, just a coma!"

"Coma? Well that's great! Tell, me, what was happening when you first heard my, er, voice?"

Eddie thought. "Well, I was talking to Melba, and she was telling me about voodoo..."

"No! No!! First a coma, now it's voodoo stuff. I knew I should've used up a sick day today. Well, this is a fine kettle of fish. Here I am trapped in a three-way link between a witch and a comatose person. I can't wait to write up the report."

Eddie spoke up: "You? You? What about me, trapped in a body that can't move, waiting for my own family to pull the plug on my life support systems, and the only ones who can hear me are an old voodoo nurse who can't tell anyone, and you. And just who the hell are you anyhow?"

"I am sergeant Hong. I guide in the New Volunteer Death Cadets, and bring them to the Academy, where they will be trained to become Soul Warriors. My information is that you had just killed yourself to join us, so here I am."

"Why kill myself?"

"Because that's the only way you can join. You have to be thinking about joining us as you pass from life, we latch onto your death signal, and you are inducted into the Corps. Something happened, you weren't ready, and here we are."

 Eddie thought fast: "What do you mean we?"

"It's like this: think of us like two telephone lines that got connected but cannot hang up. At least I can't. And I don't think that you are in any kind of a position to do much, are you."

Eddie took some time to absorb all of this. Finally he thought out to Sgt. Hong: "What are my options?"

"Well, when they come in to shut down your life supports, you could try to think of joining. But you'll probably pass out, which will break our connection, setting me free, and sending you off to the Probate Court. There you will be judged. After which you will either join us, or have to pay atonement for your past transgressions, or be sent to join the legion."

"What legion? The foreign legion?"

" Well, it's foreign all right. The Legion of the Damned! The bad guys. Our enemies. There're more of them than there are of us. That's why we have this bonus program for joining now."

"Bonus program?"

"Yep. Sign up now, become a Soul Warrior, and you are guaranteed a wonderful eternity."

Eddie was idly wondering again whether this was just another dream, when Melba walked back into the room. She had been tuned into the conversation, and touched her necklace and prayed. Eddie made up his mind about what to do. The three of them jumped into conversation. Once Melba was brought up to speed, Eddie explained what he needed from her. He could not risk losing contact with Hong during the dying time after being disconnected.

"It is agreed then, I shall use my voodoo powers to keep the channel open during the few minutes that it should take you to die after being disconnected. I shall think identical thoughts to yours, about these Death Cadets. All should be well, but I must go now to prepare for this battle. I can feel unseen beings, which would urge me not to do this thing. I will leave now, and come back for the service in the morning." She said nothing to them about her weakening heart...

During the night, Hong brought Eddie up to speed on the Faith Wars, which currently occupied most of the galaxies’ time, money and resources.

Morning finally came, with and Eddie and Hong still locked in thought-link. Eddie was tired of listening to Hong’s whining about the clog in the induction line. Eddie's family, the Dr., and nurse Melba filed into the room. All but Melba and the Dr. were tear-faced. They all prayed silently, together. After the family left the room, while Melba stayed behind to record the death, the ‘Healer‘ turned off the life support machinery, and slithered out of the room.

Melba was locked into the trilateral switchboard, and fingered her voodoo charms. She chanted half- forgotten words, along with desires to join the Cadets, and had to force herself to think through Eddie's mind into Hong's. As Eddie grew weaker, Melba worked harder, veins pulsing wildly in her forehead. Eddie finally slipped into unconsciousness, and Hong almost felt released. But Melba grunted and screamed the phrases until she felt Eddie's full passing, at which point she collapsed in a motionless heap, her great loving heart having given out.

The `Healer' discovered her dead body a little while later. Another fat person with a heart attack. "Shit," he thought, "Now I have two death reports to fill out."

"Wow, this is great!" Eddie said.

"Yeah, ain't it? Just aim towards that star over there. Enjoy the ride. Time means nothing anymore." Then Eddie and Hong heard a voice behind them:

"This better be good, cause I was ready for a raise back there!" warned Melba, as they raced together through space. Towards the Academy...