Smith's Monthly #6

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “We lost that war, remember?” Holcomb said, watching through the night scope on his glasses as the Aztec warriors scrambled around the cannons, pulling their dead leaders away from the mounds, leaving the cannons unattended.

  “So we make up for that here,” DeWitt said, focusing over the thick wall into the dark.

  Holcomb glanced at the Vietnam vet beside him. DeWitt was a tall guy, maybe six-two, and he had arms on him that could bench press more than Holcomb wanted to think about. The guy had military short hair and intense green eyes. He was originally from Montana and had served in Nam for two terms leading right up to the end of the war.

  He and DeWitt were both dressed as frontiersmen of the time, in soft deerskin jackets, cloth pants and heavy boots. They both had on a poncho-like gray cloth against the chill of the night.

  Along the top of the Alamo wall, the Texans and other fighters got back into position as the dust from the explosion drifted on the cool evening breeze, rifles poised and aiming into the pitch darkness of the night. Halfway down the west wall, Davy Crockett stood, staring into the blackness.

  Holcomb just shook his head and looked away. The real Davy Crockett looked nothing like Fess Parker, the actor who had played him on television when Holcomb was a kid.

  The real Davy Crockett was short. That had been a real disappointment.

  TWO

  May 18, 1981

  Portland, Oregon, USA

  Holcomb sat on the park bench staring out over the calm waters of the Willamette River, not really paying any attention to those walking the path behind him or the boats floating past on the river. The day had turned warm and brought hundreds out of their homes and offices to enjoy the afternoon sunshine and beautiful spring day along the waterfront.

  Holcomb hadn’t noticed any of it. He had just come from a doctor. All he could remember now from the conversation was the word “Cancer” and “two months to live.”

  It didn’t seem real, but it had been the third opinion, the third doctor, actually. He hadn’t trusted the first two, hadn’t believed them. But now it seemed there was no doubt. He was dying and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.

  A young woman laughed, the sound high and light, floating on the soft breeze. Before learning of the cancer, he would have sat here, watching her, enjoying the sun and the afternoon. He had spent many a warm afternoon on this bench, and even knew some of the nearby shop owners by name. This bench, beside this path in the narrow park along the river, had been his favorite place in the city. He called it his spot, and anyone he dated or his few friends at work knew where to find him on nice days. And Portland, in the spring and summer and fall, had a lot of nice days.

  Now, the sound of someone laughing just annoyed him. How could anyone be enjoying a day like today? He had just been given a death sentence. There was nothing worth laughing about today. He stood and, without a look at the beautiful calm river or the park around him, turned and headed back into the center of the city.

  His apartment was on the third floor of an old converted hotel six blocks from the river and he didn’t notice the walk, other than the few times he bumped into someone. All he could think about was dying. He had faced enemy fire a lot of times in Nam, had killed more than his share of the enemy, but never in all that time had he worried much about dying. Now that death faced him, like a train coming head on, he didn’t know how to deal with it.

  It just made him mad, actually.

  One thing for certain, he had no intention of going the way the first doctor at the VA had described, sitting in a hospice the last few weeks, medicated so that he wouldn’t feel the pain. He had bought a pistol after that little talk just for the occasion and now, with a solid third opinion, there sure didn’t seem to be any reason to put off the end. He would face it just as he had faced most things in his life.

  Head-on.

  He had no family since his parents had died in a car wreck the year after he got back from Nam, and even though he was liked for his dry sense of humor at work, he didn’t have any real friends to speak of, just a few old buddies from Nam. He was just too much of a loner to let anyone close. At least that’s what his last girlfriend, Sandra, had told him.

  He hadn’t argued with her. She had been right. No one would really miss him, and there certainly wasn’t anyone to take care of him in the next two months. Only the VA and he doubted they really wanted to see him at this point either, after the fuss he had made about getting a second and then a third opinion.

  He had no real money except the little bit his parents had left him and his job driving a city bus could be filled in ten minutes.

  The pistol would do everyone a favor.

  He opened the door to his single-bedroom apartment and tossed the key onto the small kitchen table after kicking the door closed behind him, leaving it unlocked.

  The place still smelled of the eggs and bacon he had made for himself for breakfast. It had been a good last meal for a condemned man.

  The apartment had been a pretty good place to live, so no point in staining it all up with his blood. He’d leave the world in the bathroom, in the tub, with the curtain shut. He just hoped someone found him quickly so that the smell wouldn’t ruin everything.

  “Not having a good day, huh?” a voice said from the big chair in his living room to the left of the main door.

  Holcomb spun around to face a man sitting in Holcomb’s favorite chair in front of the television. The guy had long gray hair combed back, dark eyes, and tan skin. He looked Native American or Mexican descent. He had on standard Oregon casual, jeans and a tan button-down dress shirt with his sleeves rolled up.

  The guy was clearly not the standard robber that Holcomb would expect going through these apartments. He’d been robbed twice in his four years living here, both times by hippie-types looking for drug money.

  Two steps and Holcomb had the pistol out of the kitchen drawer and pointed at the guy.

  The guy didn’t even flinch. “Thought you were going to use that on yourself?”

  Now the guy was just pissing Holcomb off. No one knew his plans. And no one but his doctors and a couple people at the VA knew about the cancer. He hadn’t told anyone, not even his friends at work. So how could this stranger know what he had been thinking?

  “Nice of you to do it in the shower,” the guy said, nodding. “Saved a lot of clean-up and they found your body in ten minutes because your neighbor heard the shot, so no real smell issues. A young married couple moves in here next month. Nice folks. You would have liked them, but of course, you’ll never get the chance to meet them, will you?”

  Holcomb couldn’t let the guy confuse him. He focused, got his mind clear like he used to do in the service before a mission.

  “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

  “Just call me Kontar. I know, strange name, but my father was Egyptian on his father’s side.” The guy shrugged as if any of that meant something.

  Holcomb waved the gun in frustration. The guy was really starting to make him angry. And a soon-to-be-dead man wasn’t a good person to piss off.

  “What I am doing here?” Kontar asked, smiling. “Actually, I’m here to recruit you to help in a fight for your country.”

  “Yeah, right,” Holcomb said, leveling the gun at the man. “Ten seconds to tell me the truth or they end up cleaning this place after all because of two bodies. As you seem to know, it will make no difference to me.”

  “You won’t believe the truth, but I’ll tell you anyway,” Kontar said. “I know you are about to kill yourself because of terminal cancer because I am from the future. Actually, looking back from my time, you killed yourself in that bathroom back there, curtains drawn, that gun in your mouth. Because you have no family or real friends, we figured you to be a perfect candidate to help us out with a mission to save your country.

  “And which government agency do you work for?” Holcomb asked, shaking his head. “The nut-ball service?”
<
br />   Kontar shook his head. “I don’t work for your government. I work for the Inca Nation. But the survival of your country is wrapped up in the survival of mine, which is why I need your help.”

  “In the future?” Holcomb said, still not believing a word this nut case was saying.

  “Actually, no,” Kontar said. “I need your help in the past. Since you’re going to die anyway today, or in a few months from cancer, I have a mission for you first.”

  “A suicide mission,” Holcomb said, disgusted and about ready to shoot the guy. “Right?”

  “Of course,” Kontar said, smiling, showing perfect, very white teeth. “But considering what you were about to do in your bathtub, I figured you wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

  THREE

  February 24, 1836

  Alamo Mission, Bexar, Republic of Texas

  WHEN THE SHOOTING from the other side of the long Alamo compound started, it woke up Holcomb. He had dozed off against the west wall, his gun across his legs.

  DeWitt snorted and came awake beside him. They watched as the Texans on the south wall laid down covering fire for someone coming to the gate. A few moments later the large wooden gate was opened in the wall built between the south buildings of the mission and the church itself. Five men came through leading twenty horses loaded down with supplies.

  “Looks like we’re eating tonight,” DeWitt said.

  “Yeah,” Holcomb said, taking in the scene in front of him. They had come in just after dark last night and he hadn’t gotten much of a chance to look around, since they went right to the wall and cut down the cannon fire from the Aztec cannons.

  The Alamo grounds were a lot larger than he had ever imagined from the movies and stories he had been told. Between the buildings along the west wall and the barrack wall on the east, it was a good half a football field wide, and one and a half fields long.

  A cannonade had been constructed right in the middle, large enough to let cannons turn in any direction and high enough to see over the walls in all four directions.

  There were also four cannons along the west wall, two on the top of the building on the north wall, four along the south wall, and three in the back of the old church facing east. In the fort there were twenty-one artillery pieces of different caliber, an impressive fortification.

  A guy by the name of Neill had managed to turn the old mission grounds into a pretty impressive fort in the months before they arrived.

  From what Holcomb could tell, there had to be a good hundred and fifty men here already, mostly volunteers like he and DeWitt were posing as. Two names from the history books of Holcomb’s time were in charge and he and DeWitt got to meet them both.

  Travis led the Texas Regular troops while Bowie seemed to be in charge of all the volunteers. Both men seemed much smaller to Holcomb than their legends led him to believe.

  And Travis was very, very young.

  DeWitt and Holcomb were put under Bowie with the volunteers, but at the moment Bowie seemed to be sick and Travis was doing just about everything. Considering how young the kid was, Holcomb found him impressive. Even Congressmen Crockett nodded to Travis as the man in charge.

  Supposedly, there were other teams from the future in the mix, but Holcomb hadn’t really spotted any in the short time he and DeWitt had been inside, since everyone was dressed for the time period and didn’t stand out. Supposedly, the Incas were also supplying much needed ammunition and food to the fighters inside the Alamo without anyone knowing about it, but both Holcomb and DeWitt had their own supplies in the form of small pills as food. Interestingly enough, the pills were filling. Not much fun to eat, but enough to keep them going.

  They both also had their medicine to keep them going long enough to die for the cause. DeWitt had less time left to live than Holcomb, and at times coughed so hard he spit up blood.

  Holcomb watched, his back against the west wall of the Alamo, as four men shut the gate at the other end of the compound and Travis welcomed the new volunteers and the supplies they brought.

  Holcomb had to admit that there were some brave men here, fighting for a cause they felt was right. Many of them had families and children at home they would never see again. Even if they lived and became a prisoner of the Aztec, they would be sacrificed and their hearts eaten, as was Aztec custom with war prisoners of this time period.

  Death was the only way out of this battle.

  Holcomb watched the small celebration around the new arrivals and wondered if he would have had the courage to fight this fight if he wasn’t dying anyway. He hoped so. Sometimes, your country, and a way of life you believed in, was worth fighting and dying for. He had thought that at first, when he joined the Army and was sent over to Vietnam.

  When he got home, he hadn’t been so sure anymore.

  He just hoped this time the fight was the lives and the blood and the pain. Davy Crockett and all the other men here sure seemed to think so.

  FOUR

  Unknown Date, 23rd Century

  Cuzco, Inca Nation

  HOLCOMB FELT LIKE HIS BRAIN was about to explode. Kontar had been trying to explain time travel and different universes to him and a guy by the name of DeWitt for the last half hour and none of it seemed to make sense.

  They were in what looked like a standard conference room, inside a huge building with no real character, inside the vast city of Cuzco, the capital city of the Incas.

  Flying in on some strange plane with porthole-like windows, Holcomb had been stunned by the beauty of the 23rd century city spread out below. But as Kontar said, there wouldn’t be time to look around. Holcomb, with his cancer, just didn’t have that much time left. But he had no doubt at all that he was in a future city from what little he did get to see. No city on his earth in his time looked like Cuzco.

  He had been shown a room to sleep for the night, a change of clothes and shower. After what felt like a short eight hours, he was given a breakfast that tasted a lot like cold Cream of Wheat cereal. He was assured it was good for him and would give him extra strength. Bacon and eggs would have tasted a hell of a lot better.

  After breakfast, there had been yet another physical that once again confirmed what the doctors in his time had told him. He didn’t have long to live.

  Great, a fourth opinion confirmed yet again he was going to die, and not even the medicine in the 23rd century could save him.

  After the physical, he had been introduced to another Vietnam vet from the east coast and put in a plain meeting room with tan walls to get their first briefing. If the first thirty minutes of this briefing were any indication, he and DeWitt might not live long enough to get through the lectures, let alone fight for their country.

  “Okay, hold on a second,” Holcomb said, holding up both his hands in a show of surrender. “Let me see if I got any of this right.”

  “Thank you,” DeWitt whispered, shaking his head.

  “DeWitt and I are from a timeline where the Spanish win over the Incas and the Aztecs and the Mayans. That forms what we know as Mexico and all the Central and South American countries. Right?”

  “Correct,” Kontar said, nodding.

  “Good, got my own history correct then,” Holcomb said.

  DeWitt actually applauded him.

  Holcomb went on. “You say we are sitting in a timeline where the Aztecs and the Incas both win against the Spanish and keep them out of Central America and South America. And you hate each other. Correct?”

  “Yes,” Kontar said.

  “And in this world, the United States still exists in pretty much the same configuration as it does in our time line.”

  “It does,” Kontar said, clicking something in his hand.

  The wall behind him showed an image of North and South America. The Inca Nation was South America, the Aztecs held Central America and Mexico, and the United States looked normal, as did Canada.

  “So why are we fighting at the Alamo again?”

  “Because, if the Texans
don’t hold off the Aztecs at that time and win, this is what the world looks like by 1850, just a short time after the Alamo battle.”

  The map on the wall changed to one showing the United States cut off below Georgia with a line extending to the Mississippi and then up, with the rest showing the color of the Aztec nation.

  “Without the Texans winning against the Aztecs, the Aztec/American war is never fought,” Kontar said

  “Like the Mexican/American war in our world,” DeWitt said.

  “Correct,” Kontar said. “When the Aztecs discover gold in California, they wipe out all English and European settlers on the west coast and cut off all westward expansion with the help of the native tribes. They then buy the Louisiana Purchase from the United States and basically close off the area. In this timeline, the Aztec take over all of North America in the late 1920s while Europe was still fighting what you call World War One. With the vast resources of North America, the Aztec become very powerful and we fall to them in 2010.”

  Holcomb didn’t much like the look of that map showing all of North and South America as bright red Aztec Nation. Not one bit.

  “How many timelines does that happen in?” DeWitt asked.

  “A great number,” Kontar said. “See why the battle at the Alamo is so important?”

  “Actually, no,” Holcomb said. “In my timeline, the battle of the Alamo was lost, and it made no real difference at all, other than as a rallying cry. If I have my own history correct, that is.”

  “You do, but it does in these timelines,” Kontar said, pointing to the ugly map showing all red of the Aztec empire covering everything. “If the Aztec win the battle of the Alamo easily, they simply sweep across Texas and don’t stop. They defeat the Texas army easily under Sam Houston and take Louisiana and Florida easily as well. Only a truce with the United States stops them at that point, but that’s too late.”