To Be a Hero Ch. 01

Fire raged in a burning torrent through the bomb blasted school as Ginny Taig rushed to find the exit. The smoke was thick and dark as midnight as she tried to make herself heard over the cries and screams of the children she was trying to lead to safety.

"This way!" She shouted through the burning murk. "Come this way!"

The children might not have understood the words she used but they followed her voice. In a frightened mob they found her and she ushered them as fast as she could out the door. The medics outside gathered them up as they escaped the flames to see to their burns and make sure they were clear of the three-story building that was starting to collapse.

Ginny was about to get clear, herself, when she heard a scream from inside. She knew the building was on its way down, and going back in was suicide. She also knew there was a child somewhere in that building possibly hurt.

Running back into the smoke thick hall, she followed the cries to a room. There in the clearer air she saw a young boy. He was curled up in a corner, tears streaming down his face in the sunlight from the windows.

Ginny ran over to him. He was a small thing, probably about seven years old, the same age as her daughter. As she started to pick him up to carry him out a groaning crash from the floor above told her that her time had run out.

Thinking fast, she grabbed a desk and slammed it into the window. The panel she knocked out was big enough for the child. As the ceiling above her started to collapse, she picked him up and threw him outside.

The groaning noise sounded again. As the collapsing building crushed the life out of her, she thought one last time of her daughter Sarah, who she would never see again.

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Lieutenant John Rogers stood outside the collapsed school, trying not to cry. He had seen one of his soldiers, Corporal Virginia Taig, rush back into the school's rear doors. He hadn't known why she had gone back in. The building was obviously about to fall. From where he was standing, trying to enforce some type of order on the chaotic mess, he hadn't heard the cries of the child inside.

He had seen the plastic windowpane fly out from its heavy frame. He had seen her throw the child to safety. Then the building had collapsed into a heap of burning rubble.

He didn't know her very well. She had just arrived in this horrible place a few weeks ago, and now she was dead. The crew had found her body crushed and burned, under the rubble of the room in which she had died. All that was recognizable on the badly mutilated corpse was the tiny silver axe she had worn on a chain around her neck.

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Ginny was lying on something softer than she had ever felt. Was this a cloud, like she had seen in the cartoonist's idea of a Christian heaven when she was a child? Looking around she saw that it was not a cloud. It was a very big, very fluffy, feather bed like the one her grandmother. Looking at it a bit closer, she realized it was the same bed. She could see the v she had scratched into one of the posts as a child.

"What the hell?" She said. "Where am I?"

"Not in Hell," a voice answered from behind her. "But where you really are will take a bit of explaining."

Ginny sat up and turned to look at the source of this voice. He was a big, heavily muscled man with bright red hair and a wild, full beard growing halfway down his chest. He was wearing what looked to be some sort of scale and leather armor, and he was carrying a tray covered in food.

Her stomach growled loudly at the sight of all that food. The man grinned and motioned her over to a table she could swear had not been there the second before. She took a seat and tore into the food.

"My name is Eric." The man said once she had eaten. "And you might as well call this place Valhalla."

"Do what?" Ginny gasped in surprise. "But that's just a myth."

"Well it's the best we could do to match your beliefs." He replied in a hurt tone. "You pagans seem to try to make your religions as eclectic and confusing as you possibly can."

Ginny burst out laughing at the testy note in his voice. He scowled at her a moment and then started laughing with her. He had a big booming laugh that fit his Viking appearance as perfectly as the almost whining voice he had just used did not.

"So why am I here?" She asked after her laughter died away. "Is this the afterlife for people who died of stupidity?"

"Not at all!" Eric answered. "This is the place heroes come after they die."

The words struck all the mirth from Ginny. Her a hero? There had to be some mistake. She was no hero. She had never done great deeds to be passed down in songs.

"You are a hero." He went on, as if he had read her thoughts. "You died saving the life of that boy. You ran back into what you knew was probably death to do it."

"I am no warrior." She said. "I have no love of battle. I hate war. I just joined up to pay for my college. I didn't even believe in what we were doing."

"You truly are a hero, or heroine if you prefer." Eric replied. "Being a hero is not about politics Virginia. It is not about soldiers, or wars. Heroism is the courage to put yourself on the line against the forces of destruction. Heroism is the willingness to give everything you have if it will save the lives, homes, or ideals that you hold dear. Death is the easy part. It is having the courage to make that stand. To say to the world ‘I will give all I am and all I have for this one thing'. That is why you are a hero Virginia. And that is why you are here."

Ginny took a swallow from a mug that had appeared while she was distracted. She had never liked alcohol but this stuff, it must be mead, was just what she needed. It calmed her nerves enough to let her think.

After a long time in silent thought, she finally asked. "So what is this place really? What do I do here? Am I going to have to go out and fight all day every day? Will I spend the evenings in mead halls attended by willing wenches? Not that I would mind that last so much." She finished with a grin.

"If that is what you want." Eric replied with a grin of his own. "But mostly this place is about rest. It is a place to come to heal from the hurts of the world and enjoy whatever pleasures you desire until you are ready to take a chance at life again."