Shoot for the Stars

I woke up in darkness so pure I couldn’t tell the difference between having my eyes open or closed.

I could tell, as my mind became self-aware again, that I was moving somehow. A gentle rocking threatened to take me back into the rest I was trying to climb out of. Slowly, like I was defrosting, I began to move my head back and forth to try and find some light from my surroundings.

Nothing.

I brought my hand up to my face, once again slowly. In the process though I found that I was being covered by something. More than covered, wrapped in something.

Now if this was the first time this had happened to me, I probably would have panicked more, but this wasn’t, so I calmly felt for and found the zipper to the body bag I has been placed in. I unzip it and immediately blinded by the overhead light above me.

Cold, that was the next sensation. So damn cold, which probably explained why I was moving so slowly.

It probably didn’t help that I was in a body bag the metal floor of whatever room I was in. Unpacking myself from the bag and probably looking like a zombie from one of the old lame movies, I stood and finally had a chance to look around.

The room was small, and now with a height advantage I didn’t have before, the sway I felt was more pronounced. I try and walk, because the act of standing can be easier than walking after you’ve been dead for an uncertain amount of time.

I take a step, then another, the practiced movement coming easily which tells me I wasn’t out cold as long this time.

A door at then end of this long room opens, two men talking together without really paying attention to their soundings walk in.

“Jim, I told you she just fell over dead in the door right when the train was pulling away from the station.”

“Like a heat attack?” Jim, I assumed, asked back.

“No like she was shot, blood all over the place.”

I look down and sure enough my shirt is covered with my own blood. I lift it, finding the newest scar in my chest, right next to 4 gunshot scars and a few knife punctures mostly hidden by my bra.

I need to get better about this not dying thing.

The conversation had stopped. I drop my shirt and look at the same time to see the men staring at me.

“Shot is a fair assessment,” I say, trying to smile and not scare the hell out of the two men. I accidently did that once and got shot again by a paranoid prepper who assumed the zombie apocalypse was finally beginning.

One man, handlebar mustache substituting for hair on his scalp, was dressed like you would expect most train conductors to, hat under his arm and ticket stubs in a satchel he wore around his waist. Fanny pack I mean, satchel sounded cooler than what it really was. The other man, younger and way more excited than the first, was obviously security of some kind. Uniformed up and a belt with all kinds of gadgets on it, though I didn’t see a pistol like so many wore.

“Yeah… shot,” said not Jim, the security guy must be Jim then. I’ll call this one Handlebar.

“Well this seems to be a case a mistaken identity,” I say putting my hands up in an effort to calm down their shock.

“My ass look at the blood!” Jim yells. Ah yes, the first moments of panic. Always funny for me to watch, though can be dangerous.

“Missed my vitals!” I say excitedly hoping to match their energy.

“But you should still be bleeding! It was a gunshot!” Handlebar is getting in the groove too.

“Yeah I guess so,” I say deflated.

“What the hell is happening?” Jim says while backing up. His right hand goes down to what I assume is a taser of some kind. To be honest, I haven’t had much experience with tasers up until now, just saw what happens in movies, and I really don’t feel like trying to ride the lightening myself.

“Well, simple. I died, then I woke up.” I answer as suave as I can muster while still being covered with my own blood.

“You died?” Handlebar asks, scared and confused.

“Yep!” I answer quickly, “But here’s the big question.”

I stop. I lean forward slowly and conspiratorially. The pair lean in too, I think their shock has made them more gullible.

“Who would believe you?” I ask them.

They look at one another, then back at me. I’m close enough now to see that handlebar is sweating and Jim needs to shave his five o’clock shadow.

“Who would believe you if you told them a dead girl was actively up and walking around now?” I ask again hoping they would get the message.

“Well,” Handlebar says turning back to face me. “You’re still covered in blood so probably plenty of people.”

“Well crap,” I said in counter argument.

“Tom, she has a point. It’s 2134 after all, who knows what’s really possible these days,” says Jim.

Ok cool, mental filing cabinet opened to a folder of Handlebar and changed to Tom. Just because I died again doesn’t mean I couldn’t keep learning new things.

“Yeah Tom,” I say.

Tom looks at us both, this guy must be tired cause he just takes a deep breath and says “I should have just stayed on the ground.”

Ground. Ground? Like earth? This is news to me.

“Can I level with you too?” I ask them, one fully accepted of the situation, the other just wishing to be elsewhere.

“I don’t see why not,” says Jim, hand still on taser in case I want to eat his face. I don’t by the way, but I can understand his concern.

“Look, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

“What’s a rodeo?” asked Jim.

“Nothing, nevermind. What I’m saying is this whole wake up from the dead thing.. well it happens a lot. There’s just one issue I need your help with.”

“Ok?” asked Tom, more tired than even a minute ago, like I was about to ask him to where the bathroom was for the 27,000th time.

“Well when I die, I loose memory of what I was doing right before I died. Sometimes it’s a few minutes, other times it’s a few days. So I need some information from you to get my barring.”

“Um.. ok? But before we get started, can you like cover up cause the whole gunshot thing is weirding me out,” asked Jim.

Looking down, and once again being greeted by my blood soaked shirt, I nod in agreement. “Shame, I liked this shirt too.”

Jim left, and Tom held his hand up to keep me from starting my questions. “Look,” he said in the way an old wise dude does, just tired and not willing to put up with much anymore. “I’ll help Jim answer your questions, but as soon as we’re done I have questions for you. And frankly I don’t want to ask them cause this is my last ride before retirement and I don’t need anything going any more wrong than it already has gone.”

Raising my hands in defeat I keep my initial question to myself.

“Rough day huh?” I ask and receive a glare that almost killed me again.

A few minutes later Jim is back with a white t-shirt and some Jeans, which I appreciated cause there was literally blood everywhere.

I change, the other two look away in the process, and I start asking questions.

“So first, you said train when you were walking in, and then you said you should still be on the ground? Something like that. My point, what the hell do you mean?”

“This is the first atmospheric train, it’s been all over the news for months,” says Jim, very excited about this fact.

“Ok,” I say while fishing my foot through the jeans, he was nice enough to get me a pair of skinny jeans that barely fit, “Explain cause I’m fuzzy on the details.”

“So there’s been commercial flights up to the stations in orbit right?”

“Yeah, knew that one,” I say replacing my shoes an becoming whole again.

“Well this is the first commercial train through the atmosphere to the stations up in orbit. It’s running on a magnetic rail line, the first to go this far. In fact this is the first commercial run.”

“That’s pretty cool, I’m the first to die on the first ride up to orbit.”

Tom, nun too pleased with my positive outlook, cuts in.

“Only one of my many headaches on this first launch. Now who the hell are you, why can you not die, and why the hell are you on my train?” He really must have had a long day already because he’s yelling at me towards the end.

“Well, I’m Alexis, and I’m a detective with the FBI. Unofficially. Actually not anymore, they thought I died a long time ago, which I did, but not really. Anyway, I’ve been working in an unofficial capacity for a while now.”

“FBI? Seriously?” asked Jim getting all excited about meeting an alphabet agency person. It was kind of cute actually.

“Was,” said Tom, obviously paying more attention than Jim. Then redirecting back to me he asks “So why the hell are you on my train?”

“I’ll have to work on that. Can’t remember everything remember? Let me ask you this, what else has been going on? You said I’m just one of the issues you’ve been having.”

“Yeah,” Tom takes a deep breath. “We’ve been on the move for about an hour, takes 5 to get up to the station. This is a big deal, whole world looking at this as an example of what to expect for the future and stuff. Well, about half an hour ago I got called up to the cab and the engineer is gone. Just up and gone, no idea where he is. We were at 4000 feet by then.”

“So you’re saying there’s no one piloting the train? Is piloting the right word, cause you know we’re in the air?”

“No, not the right word, it’s still a train. No one is driving the train, then I get word of you.”

“That you died trying to get on board,” Jim cuts in. “And someone literally dying to get on the train, plus a missing engineer, mean something is going on.”

“I died on the first ever run away Astro-train, Nice.” I say with a fist pump. Gotta be proud of the little things.

Tom was not impressed. “That is correct. So, FBI agent Alexis, find my engineer or we’re all screwed. And why the hell can’t you die?”