Last Call
Page 1
Last Call
Book Three of The Shadow Lands
By
Lloyd Behm, II
PUBLISHED BY: Blood Moon Press
Copyright © 2019 Lloyd Behm, II
All Rights Reserved
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Get the free Four Horsemen prelude story “Shattered Crucible”
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Cover Design and Original Art by Elartwyne Estole
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To the uncle I never got to meet, William Edward Betros, 19 July 1937—11 May 1953.
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1 And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. 2 And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets. 3 And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. 4 And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. 5 And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. 6 And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. 7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. 8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; 9 And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. 10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; 11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. 12 And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. 13 And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!
Revelations 8: 1-13, The New King James Version
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Contents
Chapter 1 – Jesse
Chapter 2 – Diindiisi
Chapter 3 – Jesse
Chapter 4 – Diindiisi
Chapter 5 – Jesse
Chapter 6 – Diindiisi
Chapter 7 – Jesse
Chapter 8 – Diindiisi
Chapter 9 – Jesse
Chapter 10 – Diindiisi
Chapter 11 – Jesse
Chapter 12 – Diindiisi
Chapter 13 – Jesse
Chapter 14 – Diindiisi
Chapter 15 – Jesse
Chapter 16 – Diindiisi
Chapter 17 – Jesse
Chapter 18 – Diindiisi
Chapter 19 – Jesse
Chapter 20 – Diindiisi
Chapter 21 – Jesse
Chapter 22 – Diindiisi
Chapter 23 – Jesse
Chapter 24 – Diindiisi
Chapter 25 – Jesse
Chapter 26 – Diindiisi
Chapter 27 – Jesse
Chapter 28 – Diindiisi
Chapter 29 – Jesse
Author’s Afterward
About the Author
Excerpt from Book One of The Fallen World
Excerpt from Book One of The Devil’s Gunman
Excerpt from Book One of The Darkness War
Excerpt from Book One of the Turning Point
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Chapter 1 – Jesse
“Malone, this is Jody,” Jed shouted over the roar of the engines on one of the Black Hawks. “Do not enter the zone until we get there.”
“Malone to Jody. Negative. Say again, negative. We’ve got to close this before anything else comes through,” I replied.
Everyone else was ready—we had all the firepower, and the dwarfs were shouldering truly massive packs of ammo and supplies. I could put this off, but as I’d told Jed, the longer we waited, the better the chance something would come out of there we couldn’t handle.
“Damnit, Jesse, wait a minute…” Jed said as I stepped into the column.
There was a moment of free fall, and then…
“Fucking pack!” I shouted, stumbling to one knee on the flat grey surface. No one answered. If nothing else, Padgett should have been giving my fall a score from the Russian Judge. All I could see around me was a featureless gray plane.
Okay, this ain’t good. Last time I was alone like this was Iraq…
“Excuse me.”
I turned, shouldering my UMP. A kid stood there, looking like the poster child of 1950s Small Town America, from the brown soles of his black canvas Chucks to the top of his stylish Brylcreem pompadour.
I lowered the muzzle a bit. “Can I help you?”
“Actually, I’m here to help you,” he said, brandishing a clipboard officiously. “Your name?”
I pointed to the nametape on my flak jacket. My pack strap might have been slightly obscuring the nametape. Well, you could see the S and the R.
“Name? You don’t look like the last name starting S ending in R that’s on my list. Although, given some modern trends…” the kid said.
I grinned. “Salazar.”
He went down the list again. “No…first name?”
“Jesse.”
“Are you sure you’re supposed to be here?”
I dropped my submachine gun to hang by the sling. “I don’t know. To really answer your question, I need to know where ‘here’ is.”
“Sorry, you’re in Limbo.”
I shook my head for a minute. “Limbo. I’m guessing you mean the dwelling place of unbaptized infants and the righteous who died before the coming of Christ, not the dance that originated in Trinidad.”
“Yes,” he replied with a sigh. “The first one, not the second one. Any other questions?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” He fumbled in a pocket, finally handing me a card. “I’m your spirit guide. My name is Billy.”
Text covered the card, mostly explaining where I was and what was happening. On the reverse side was a picture of the kid, and his name.
“You can keep the card,” Billy the Kid said.
“So, what does a spirit guide do for me?”
“As many people were dying without either achieving a state of grace or falling to the wiles of Hell, the Powers That Be instituted a new policy of spirit guides. It is my job to guide you on your journey through Limbo, helping you shed the earthly troubles that won’t allow y
ou to advance to heaven or hell,” he repeated in a singsong voice that screamed ‘rote memory’ to me. He flourished the clipboard. “To do that, my superiors give me a list of things we need to work on. In your case, I’ve got nothing.”
I took the clipboard he offered me. On the single page clipped to it was a list of names, each with a careful check mark in the ‘Completed’ column. I followed my finger to the bottom of the list.
“Looks like I was supposed to be Jessica Snyder. I wonder what happened to her.”
“Not my problem,” Billy snapped, taking the clipboard back. “You are. I guess we can work around the paperwork, as long as we get you where you are supposed to be. What, in your opinion, is holding you back from completing your journey to your eternal rest?”
I’ll give him this—he was trying to be serious. His voice breaking on ‘your’ didn’t help. Besides, as I’ve said before, in situations like this, my mouth overloads my ass every time.
“Hmm. Could be I left my wife and my team facing a horde of marauding zombies being raised by the combined efforts of the followers of an ancient Akkadian god and the followers of the diabolic prince of greed. Or it could be that I just stepped into the wrong spell,” I replied with a shrug.
“Wrong spell…did you die before you came here?”
“If by die, you mean did I see my life flash before my eyes or my honored forbearers beckoning me on to the afterlife wearing nothing more than their underwear, no. As far as I know, I’m still corporate, here in Limbo.”
“That’s not good,” Billy said ominously. “Oh, that’s really not good. Menkhat is supervising today.”
“Menkhat? The name sounds Egyptian. What’s so bad about an Egyptian supervisor?”
“Menkhat was a priest of Anubis when he was alive.”
I pursed my lips and shrugged. “I’m a priest of Christ, if that makes a difference.”
“Not to Menkhat, no. He doesn’t have a lot of…sympathy for followers of a ‘debased god of slaves,’” Billy said, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me off across the grayness. “Besides, Anubis was the Guide of Souls.”
“I’m still not tracking,” I said, stumbling in his wake.
“One of Anubis’ other jobs was as the Guardian of the Scales,” he said, stopping and looking me in the eyes. “The Scales that were used to weigh a person’s heart against the feather of Truth.”
“I’m guessing he’s old school when it comes to getting the heart out,” I said, striding off in the direction Billy’d been leading.
“You could say that. There was a wizard or magician came through here still corporate, oh, ten-fifteen years ago, I think—time doesn’t flow quite the same when I’m not working. Most of the guides still talk about Menkhat removing the wizard’s internal organs using a bronze dagger. The wizard was still alive for the process—well, at least until Menkhat removed his brain.” He paused a moment. “Even with that, we never have been able to convince Menkhat that the brain, not the heart, is the seat of the human soul.”
“I’ll admit, having someone scramble my brain through my nose after I’ve been gutted alive with a bronze dagger is pretty far down on my bucket list. Where are we going?”
“Place I know here,” Billy said as the air around us filled with music.
“Harps? I thought we were in Limbo, not heaven,” I snarked.
“It’s a lyre, not a harp—give me a minute.” He made a complicated gesture with his right hand and pulled an ancient Bakelite phone handset out of the air. “Yes?”
Have you ever watched an old TV show where someone’s talking on the phone? All you can hear of the other side of the conversation most times is noise at best, the Charlie Brown adult Wa-Wah at worst. What I heard was a guttural Wa-Wah that Billy answered in English. The choppy flow of the harsh Wa-Wah sounded vaguely familiar.
Billy dropped his clipboard—it hung at a convenient height in the air—and started taking notes on the pristine sheet of paper that appeared on it.
The voice on the phone made interrogative noises.
“Yes, I’ve got it. No, I haven’t seen anyone meeting that description, but I’ll let someone—”
The voice on the phone rose in a crescendo.
“Fine! I’ll call only you,” Billy said, dropping the handset. It actually made the noise of a phone slamming down before disappearing. “You mentioned an Akkadian god earlier. Who’d you upset?”
“Depends on how you define upset,” I replied. “I blew Tiamat’s head into a fine, bloody mist in the Shadow Lands. Abzu might have been a little upset by that, so his agents on Earth might be looking for me for a bit of revenge…”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. About the only thing I’m not humping is the grenade launcher I used to commit the crime,” I replied, shifting my pack so it rubbed a different spot on my back.
“That explains why Apuulluunideeszu is looking for you,” Billy said, striding off in a direction I could only call ‘that-a-way.’
“Gesundheit,” I said to his back
He stiffened and continued walking.
I relented and started following Billy across Limbo. “Apuu-who?”
“Apuulluunideeszu. He’s another supervisor. He also used to be a priest.”
“Akkadian?” I asked as I caught up to Billy.
“Yeah. Priest of their god of the dead and war, Nergal.”
“Oh, that’s just peachy, now I’ve got a priest of Papa Nergal looking for me,” I said, almost tripping over him as he stopped short.
“Wait here a minute,” he said before doing the hand thing again and disappearing.
What else was I going to do? I pulled the back of my glove out of the way and glanced at the Doxa Searambler strapped on my left wrist.
“Huh. Buy a watch rated to withstand pressure to 1500 meters but take it outside reality, and it stops. Figures.”
“Who are you talking to?” Billy asked, sliding out of nothingness.
“Myself. Are you going to teach me that trick?”
He looked down for a minute. “Can’t. It comes with the job. I can, however, get you out of here, which is the important bit—hold onto my left arm.”
“It isn’t that I don’t trust you…” I started.
“But you got shifted into Limbo with a price on your head.” He laughed. “Fine, hold on a minute.”
“Price on my head? What is this, Limbo or Death Valley?” I asked as he walked to my left side and faced the opposite direction so we were left hand to left hand.
“Feel better? Can you use your…what is that?”
“UMP. Submachine gun. HUNDK?” I tried.
“You’ll have to explain why you’re carrying a German-sounding gun,” Billy said.
“It’s a long story,” I said as he gestured.
We left Limbo for…a shiplap house and yard.
“Are we in the Shadow Lands?” I asked, looking around me.
“No. This is…was and is, my home,” Billy said, bowing me toward the single-story wood frame house.
Oak, hackberry, and pecan trees surrounded the house, their late spring leaves drooping in the heat of what felt like a May morning in Central Texas.
“Is it May?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied sadly.
“So I’ve travelled in time as well as to Limbo?” I asked.
“No. It’s…it’s always May here. May 11, 1953, to be precise,” he said, turning and going up the steps to the porch.
I’m slow, but I’m not that slow. If you were born in Central Texas, May 11, 1953 has a special meaning, even sixty-six years after the event. I followed him onto the porch, where he sat down on a porch glider.
“Waco?”
“How’d you know?” he asked.
“One of my great uncles was an eighteen-year-old private stationed at Fort Hood when the tornado hit. He was sent to help with the cleanup,” I said.
“Lucky him,” Billy replied. “I was…let’s just say I didn’t make
it and leave it at that.”
“Figured.”
“You can have the bedroom at the end of the hall—it was my parents’, but they’re not here,” he said. “Everything works, and there’s food in the kitchen if you’re hungry. I’m going to sit out here and think a bit.”
I went inside and dropped my gear in the bedroom at the end of the hall. Outside, storm clouds were gathering, and from what Billy had said, would continue to gather until I left Limbo.
* * * * *
Chapter 2 – Diindiisi
Fred led what was left of Malone element and his dwarfs into the lakebed to look for any clues to what had happened to Jesse. I was watching them when the Black Hawks came thundering up and hovered. Ropes tumbled from the helicopters to the ground, and Jed’s Brute Squad fast-roped down near the Tahoes. I’d put my fireteam on overwatch while Fred was on a fool’s errand.
“Diindiisi? Where’s Jesse?” Jed asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, looking at what had been a lake. “Hopefully he isn’t with the water. He went into the column and it disappeared.”
“I told him to wait,” Jed said as a second set of Black Hawks repeated the dance.
“You wouldn’t have waited,” I replied. “He couldn’t wait, either; you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” Jed replied as Fred led three figures in wetsuits out of the lakebed.
“These three idiots,” Fred pointed, “survived the casting. They claim to be human, not therianthropes. We shot the werewolves.”
“Why?” Hovis asked.
“Resisting,” Fred replied with a feral look. “Besides, if they were with this lot, their heads would probably have exploded anyway.”