Standing in the Storm

by William Alan Webb

  After admiring the view for a few more minutes, he called to his friends. “Let’s head west and ford the river. There’s a town over there called Cameron. Maybe we can put a roof over our heads tonight.”

  “That’s the first sense you’ve made in days,” Vapor said.

  Nipple couldn’t help chipping in. “More like years.”

  Second Epilogue

  Idaho Jack grabbed his lever-action Winchester 94 Short Rifle and scooted backward out of the circle of firelight. He’d heard the horse nicker as it topped a nearby ridge. Bright moonlight picked out the rider’s outline. Jack had long since learned not to take chances in the open desert, so he slid behind a large rock and took aim as the rider dismounted.

  “Ho in the camp!” the rider yelled. Fifty yards separated them, but Jack thought he recognized the voice. He was not willing to bet his life on it, though. “Can I come in? I don’t mean no harm.”

  Jack didn’t respond. The newcomer might be harmless, he might even be a friend, but answering would pinpoint his own location and that wasn’t a risk he wanted to take.

  “C’mon, now, don’t be like that.” The man kept walking forward, slowly.

  Jack put his sight square on the man’s chest.

  “I ain’t meanin’ no harm! I saw the light and thought it might be my old friend Idaho Jack. If that ain’t Jack cooking that rabbit I smell, say so and I’ll be on my way.”

  The man had gotten within thirty yards. Whoever it was knew his name, and he did think he recognized the voice, but still…

  “If you’ve got a name, you’d best give it,” Jack shouted back. “I’ve got a bullet aimed right at your heart.”

  Instead of showing fear, the stranger laughed. “I ain’t got no heart, you old buzzard! You said so yourself!”

  “Jingle Bob?”

  “Who the hell else would it be?”

  The men embraced, two souls wandering a desolate wasteland filled with dangers who for one moment found a spark of friendship in the ruins. Jack took the spit with the roasted desert cottontail and passed it to Jingle Bob. He followed it with a plastic bottle filled with water.

  The two men devoured the greasy meat and joked. Companionship in the desert was rarer than a meal you didn’t have to hunt for yourself. When the rabbit was nothing more than a picked-clean skeleton, Jack let Jingle Bob have the heart while he ate the liver.

  “You’re a helluva man, Jack,” Jingle Bob said. He leaned back and patted his stomach. “I was thinking tonight was another one without supper.”

  “It’s damned good to see you, Bob. Have you seen Steve lately?”

  “Steve?”

  “Steve Higdon.”

  “Oh, Shangri-La.” Bob shrugged. “I got by there last spring, but Steve ain’t in charge any more. He got real sick, cancer, I think, although nobody came out and said it. Johnny Rainwater’s top man now. I sold ’em some scrap metal; they’ll take all I can find. You, too, I’m bettin’.”

  Jack scratched his chin. “What do they need with so much metal?”

  “Johnny’s not real talkative, not like Steve at all that way. Steve would talk your ear off for news from outside, but Johnny, he thinks about ten words for every one he speaks. But other people talk. Looks like the Sevens are starting to probe their way near Shangri-La, and my guess is they’re getting’ ready for a fight.”

  “I hate hearin’ that about the Sevens. I’ll see what I can round up that they might be able to use and get down there soon as the snow melts. So what else is going on?”

  “A while back I tried to scrape that battlefield outside Phoenix,” Bob said, “but there were too many soldier boys. Govind said they were friendly, but I ain’t lived this long by taking chances.”

  Jack perked up. “Battlefield? I spent this year up north. Started to go south last week but turned around, it bein’ so late in the year. What’s this about a battle?”

  “You didn’t know? A bunch of soldiers came outta nowhere and kicked the shit out of the Sevens.”

  Only one bunch of soldiers it could be. “Patton’s crew?”

  But Bob shook his head. “Hell, no. Govind said these were real soldiers, and lemme tell you, they flattened those cultist bastards. Hundreds of cars and trucks all over the desert, from outside Phoenix to Badger Mountain. And I heard tell they took Prescott away from Patton, too, and while they were at it beat the shit outta the Chinese. You didn’t hear about it?”

  “I said I didn’t, didn’t I?”

  “I heard they was fightin’ from Skull Valley damn near to Phoenix. Wrecks everywhere, guns lying around for the takin’. Plenty to scrape if it weren’t for them army boys.”

  “And you heard this from Govind direct, not one of his brothers?” Jack asked.

  “May the Lord strike me dead if I didn’t.”

  “It’s just so hard to believe. And you don’t have any idea who these soldiers are?”

  “Not me,” Bob said. “I figured you’d know, since they’ve been followin’ you and all.”

  Jack froze. “Whoa, now. Following me?”

  “Sure, for about thirty miles. They turned back at the river.”

  “I got no notion who they could be. I didn’t know they were back there.”

  “You’re getting’ old, Jack. You gotta be more careful.”

  “I lost ’em at the river, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  Idaho Jack stroked the long beard hairs on his chin while staring at the sky. “I saw another soldier,” he said. “A couple of months ago. Just one, about halfway from here to Shangri-La, up in the Painted Desert. I figured he was one of Patton’s men, but that’s a long way from Prescott. Now I don’t know who he was.”

  “Wasn’t one of Dennis Tompkins’ men, was he?”

  “Dennis Tompkins… there’s a name I’d forgotten. No, this guy was young, good looking… he hadn’t missed any meals. Had on a nice clean uniform, too. Maybe one of these soldiers you’re talking about.”

  Bob shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe there’s more of them somewhere else.”

  “If that’s true, I wonder if they know about each other?”

  Third Epilogue

  “Run me through what happened.”

  Claw had no smart-assed response. Despite his profession, he resented authority, but tolerated the military structure of the Nameless because he loved mainlining the adrenaline that came with covert operations. Outside officers could kiss his ass and be damned.

  Except this one.

  It wasn’t the five stars on the slender man’s uniform collar that intimidated him. Despite towering over the general, Claw feared the man himself.

  “Your idiot engineers were by that big cracked boulder,” he said, pointing down the rocky slope. “They claim to have deployed sentries, but I seriously doubt that. They had cleared away most of the camouflage from the main gate when one of them caught a glint on a hill. See that little rise, with the two saguaros? There. Once the engineer pointed it out, the glint disappeared. The lieutenant in charge of the detail sent somebody to investigate, and inside a dust cloud he saw a rider.”

  The trim general paused and absorbed the information. “And then?”

  “Then the dumbasses finished the detail before telling me.”

  “So we’ve been discovered. How much of a head start does this guy have?”

  “Two hours, give or take.”

  “And there’s no indication of where he came from?”

  Claw shrugged. “No, sir. Maybe Overtime, maybe one of those Indians we’ve seen, maybe somebody we don’t know about yet. I strongly suggest you authorize pursuit.”

  “Pursuit, or elimination of a potential threat?”

  “Both.”

  “If he’s from Overtime, we’re killing an American soldier.”

  “It won’t be the first time.”

  “That was before the Collapse. Now we need every last service person… all right, if you can catch him, do it. You’re authorized to use dead
ly force, but if it is an American serviceman, you’re only authorized to do so if you can recover the body. Got it?”

  “I’ve got it. I’ll send Scope; she’s supposed to be a top sniper.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve never worked with her, but her personnel record includes sniper school. Her scores were impressive.”

  “Do it.” Claw tensed as the general turned toward him and poked his chest. “But do not fuck this up.”

  “Roger that, General Steeple.”

  It was already a long shot at a moving target. Scope estimated she had less than a minute to get off a shot with any realistic chance of hitting the rider. He was crossing the valley below at a leisurely canter, obviously unaware of being targeted, but the range was close to five hundred yards and increasing.

  Instead of sighting on her target, however, Scope used her binoculars to check out the FOB across the valley. A long ramp led to a flat plateau some two hundred feet above the valley floor. Walls of stacked stones acted as breastworks. Inside the small compound, she saw a number of egg-shaped structures with antenna and solar panels on top. Nobody appeared to be keeping watch on the desert.

  She returned to the scope of her rifle and centered on the man’s back, following it as he bounced up and down with the rhythm of the horse, centering on the area least likely to move after she fired. She didn’t have to kill him with the first shot, not if she knocked him out of the saddle. Once prone on the ground, she could kill him almost at her ease.

  Despite the distance, she saw damp stains soaking through the armpits of his brown shirt. The horse shone with sweat under the midday sun.

  She took a deep breath, let part of it out, and squeezed the trigger.

  About the Author

  Bill is a proud member of the Society For Military History and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

  He's the world's oldest teenager. Reading, writing, rock & roll and an awesome wife make for the perfect life. The occasional beach doesn't hurt, either.

  Bill grew up in West Tennessee, riding his bike on narrow rural roads lined with wild blackberry bushes, in the days before urban sprawl. He spent those long rides dreaming of new worlds of adventure. Childhood for him was one interesting activity after another, from front yard football to naval miniatures, but from the very beginning reading was the central pillar of his life.

  Any and all military history books fascinated him, beginning before age 8. By his teenage years he had discovered J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, Robert Heinlein and Fritz Leiber. College found him searching for his identity, first majoring in forestry but discovering Creative Writing and knowing he had found his life's work.

  He turned to writing history and non-fiction and was published a number of times, including in World War Two magazine.

  In September of 2014 he wrote the first pages of what would become Standing The Final Watch and its direct sequel, Standing In The Storm (coming late 2016). Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? And if you like his work, a whole slew of new books are on the schedule of 2017 and 2018.

  His sincerest hope is that you enjoy his works and share them with your friends.

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  Also from Dingbat Publishing

  late evening, Saturday, 24 August 1940

  over the village of Patchbourne, England

  Something soft and annoying whooshed past his face. Faust brushed at it, but it was already gone and he was too damn sleepy to care. He dropped his arm to the bed.

  There was no bed.

  There wasn’t anything. His arm was dangling out in space. So was the rest of him. Faust snapped his eyes open. A strong wind pummeled him, tumbled him arse over head. The ground was a long way down. He was falling and it was real, not some stupid nightmare.

  Panic leapt like a predator through his veins. He twisted, fighting against gravity. An icicle of light from the distant ground stabbed at his eyes, swept past him, and far below, several red flashes popped in quick succession. A rumbling vibrated the air around him, something that sounded like an artillery round exploded nearby, and sharp chemical smoke scoured his nostrils.

  Then tight cords wrapped about his body, between his legs, jerking him upright and throwing him higher, dangling him across the light-slashed night sky. The rumbling intensified. His head snapped back. Above him, a parachute canopy blazed white in the spotlight from below. Beyond it loomed a huge dark beast, moving past in impossible slow motion. It towered over him. The parachute danced closer, second by drawn-out second; then it bowed, canted, and slid away, laying Faust on his back as it hauled him aside.

  He gripped the harness shroudlines, his chest and belly flinching. It was the bomber, the one he’d been riding in. The belly hatch framed Erhard’s laughing face, lit from below by a spotlight. With one hand, Erhard clutched the rubber coaming, cupping the other about his mouth. He yelled something — something short — that was overwhelmed by the racket and growing distance.

  Maybe the plane was having mechanical problems — but Faust, Erhard, and the mechanics had tuned the Heinkel’s twin engines all afternoon. No one else was bailing out.

  Erhard had thrown him overboard.

  It didn’t matter how much schnapps he’d slugged nor how drunk he remained. When Faust hit the ground, Erhard was toast.

  The spotlight’s cone slid from the front half of the bomber to the tail fin, the glare flashing across the metal and leaving a dark, mysterious line at the tailfin’s hinge. The line and the glare slid across the matte metal, twisting and writhing, finally falling off the back edge. The bomber was turning from the light. It pirouetted in a slow, graceful curtsy like a prancing war horse and plowed into the side of the neighboring plane. Metal screeched and crumpled. The two bombers hung motionless, pinned to the night sky by the fingers of light from below. Then Erhard’s plane rolled the other one over. Flames spiraled from the mass of cartwheeling metal.

  From between the bombers fell a squirming, thrashing human. Another white canopy blossomed above it. But within moments the parachute silk convulsed in scarlet flames, melted to flaring sparks of gold and orange, and crumpled to nothingness. In a clear, bizarre second, Faust again glimpsed Erhard’s face, no longer laughing but mouth open in a scream not drowned by the clamor as he fell beyond the spotlight’s reach.

  The entwined bombers exploded. Faust twisted, wrapping his elbows about his face, hands clutching the shroudlines. Something sharp and hot punched his right shoulder. Heat flared across his back. But when he twisted back around, the night sky was empty. The droning engines ebbed away and the searchlights vanished one by one. A final, embarrassingly late flak round exploded well behind the departing squadron and black smoke drifted through the lone remaining searchlight finger.

  The light fastened onto him and his slaloming parachute, tracking his descent. He exhaled, one relieved whoosh. He’d been trained on parachutes before the invasion of Norway, months ago, but this was his first real jump. Okay, it wasn’t that bad. But he couldn’t wait for the ground crews to find him so he could scramble back to Paris, and if he never flew again, it would be too soon.

  His breath caught. German groundfire had no reason to shoot at German planes.

  Where the hell was he?

  The spotlight vanished, leaving him blind upon his stage. He glanced down just as his feet slammed into something solid. His knees buckled, tumbling him backward into stubbly stalks. The scent of fresh-mown grass was overlaid with the acrid tang of burning metal. Clouds lowered the night sky almost within reach. Shoot, he didn’t want to deal with Erhard’s mess tonight, no matter where he was. Faust lay on his back and closed his eyes, letting the alcohol fuzz take over again. The klaxon of the air-raid alarm seemed to fade, not to silence but to an incomprehensible distance, like waves creaming over a remote Dover beach. Matthew Arnold wrote that one, about pebbles being drawn back then flung ashore by waves on the Sea of Faith. Ah, love, let
us be true to one another…

  But the unpoetical parachute harness tugged at his torso and groin, jerking him awake and dragging him prone across the field. The canopy billowed about. Sharp stubble poked his shoulders and back. He grunted, eyes jolting open.

  There was a quick release snap somewhere. He fumbled with the harness, found something, and pressed it. It clicked and the pressure about his chest released, letting him twist from the harness. Any possibility of carefully gathering the miles of cloth into a manageable bundle was swept away when the rousing breeze yanked the ’chute right out of his hands. Crouched on his knees, he watched the white silk sail away, like some demented specter, toward a distant stand of dark waving trees, and tried to decide if it mattered a damn. Parachutes were reusable, weren’t they? Should he try to chase the thing down? He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. Nope, he was still drunk, worrying about a frigging parachute when he should be worrying about himself.

  A quivering voice blew with the breeze across the dark void surrounding him. “Jake, you sure he came down out here? I thought he was heading nearer town.”

  Faust’s eyes flew open. The wind gusting over his exposed skin, face and hands, was suddenly chill. He shivered and hugged himself. The twisting in the pit of his stomach was more than just alcohol coming back to haunt him. Some deep part of his soul, something as primeval as the night itself, quaked beneath his skin. But his conscious mind hadn’t yet figured out why.

  A second voice spoke, more quietly than the first, and steadier. “Be quiet, you daft bugger.”

  Another gust of cold air splashed across his face, reaching through his skin into his heart and brain and being. Faust heard his breath rasping in the night’s quiet and tried to still it. But the beating of his heart was just as loud and would not be calmed.