Standing the Final Watch

by William Alan Webb

  “That’s a good way of putting it,” Fleming said.

  “Makes as much sense as anything else. The people on the wall when the barbarians launched their final assault tried to rally the defense, but the rest of the country ignored them.”

  “Except in our case, the walls were gone. Everybody was too absorbed with their own agendas to notice their enemies had torn them down.”

  “From the inside out,” Angriff said. “And now we’re standing watch in the ruins.”

  “That’s about it. We’re standing the final watch. After us, there’s nobody left.”

  “Standing the final watch… Are we kidding ourselves, Norm? On the surface of it, this mission looks impossible. Before The Collapse there were nearly four hundred million U.S. citizens. How many can possibly still be alive? One percent? Less? Our mission is to restore the nation, and while we’ve got some impressive firepower for a unit our size, there are less than thirteen thousand of us. That’s not even a good sized town.

  “We have no idea what infrastructure can be salvaged, if any, or who is on our side and who isn’t, although we do know that there is some sort of Islamic state set up throughout the southwest. I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but I don’t want to buy into a fantasy, either. I can’t say these things around anybody else, but you need to tell me if I’m being delusional. You need to promise me that.”

  Fleming smiled. “I’ve never minded telling you when you were wrong before. Why would I start now? As for the mission, hell, how should I know? Nobody has ever tried anything like this. We might as well be Lewis and Clark. But I don’t think we can afford to worry about those kinds of things right now. All we can do is plow forward, do what we think is best, and see what happens.”

  “Well, beyond that horizon, there are a whole lot of windmills just waiting to be jousted with. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s all we can do.”

  Fleming stepped back and inspected his friend: scuffed black boots, green fatigues, and a brown bomber jacket. He could have passed as a sergeant. “If you’re going for the medieval Spanish look you might want to work on it. You don’t look much like Don Quixote to me. Maybe we need to thaw out one of those horses.”

  “Thank you, Sancho, but that’s not necessary,” Angriff said. “I wish that was all we really had to worry about, though, a few damned windmills. I can’t get over my own people kidnapping my daughter, assaulting my XO, and trying to kill me. Who would have thought it possible? And a caliphate, a fucking Islamic kingdom set up in my country… what next?”

  He paused so long Fleming thought him finished and started back inside. But as he turned away Angriff stopped him. “As XO, there’s something you need to know. This stays between us. We have nukes.”

  Fleming’s jaw dropped, without words.

  “Not the big ones, although presumably those are still in their silos. We have tacticals, more than ten. I have no intention of using them, but they’re an option and if something happens to me you need to be prepared.”

  “They’re just different ordnance,” Fleming said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Keep telling yourself that. It might make it easier if you ever have to use them. What a mission we’ve been given. We were trained to destroy, but after that we have to learn how to build.”

  Angriff went silent again, brooding, staring off into the distance. Long minutes passed, and Fleming shuffled his feet before Angriff spoke again. “Can you smell that, Norm?”

  Fleming shook his head. “Smell what?”

  Angriff tilted his head back and sniffed. “Vegetation. Plants. Things growing in the ground. I think I even smell sage. That’s the smell of America, the smell of home. It inspires me.”

  I might agree if I could smell anything other than cigar smoke, Fleming thought. “Sure, Nick. It’s inspirational.”

  Angriff, however, was too absorbed to hear him. “One good thing came out of all this, anyway. The bastards who brought all this on are dead and gone. It’s like killing cancer — sometimes you almost kill the body getting rid of it, but until the cancer is gone the body can’t begin to heal. Anybody left in this command who might have been fellow travelers will think twice about crossing me again. And all those greedy sons of bitches who destroyed America from the inside are rotting in the ground somewhere. It might be the most they’ve ever contributed to this country, by fertilizing the soil.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “What do you mean, you hope I’m right? You don’t think they’re still alive, do you? After fifty years?”

  “They froze us,” Fleming said. “Why not themselves?”

  Angriff said nothing, but after a few seconds he grunted. “You don’t know how much it means to me, having you here now. You see things I don’t, and I see things you’d miss. Together we make a damned good team. You’re the only man I can talk to on a personal level, and I need that. I’m going to lean on you a lot in the coming months, Norm.”

  “I’m glad I could be here.”

  “I know, but thanks. I really mean that. Now, before we start hugging each other, it’s time we was fixin’ to get on with it, as my dad would say. Time to go down the rabbit hole. Not every problem can be solved with a bomb or a bullet, but most of the ones we’re facing can, so it’s time to start killing the bad people and saving the good. Let’s hope we don’t have to use nukes to do it.”

  Epilogue

  “That’s them.” Vapor sharpened the focus on his binoculars. “The dumbass shits must have thought they could whip into a drive-through for a burger and lemonade.”

  “They’re looking pretty ragged.” Green Ghost lay beside him at the crest of the little rise. “There’s only four of them. We’re missing one.”

  “Probably dead. You take off into this desert with no supplies or skills, you deserve to be part of the food chain. Maybe the others ate him.”

  “Her. The one missing is a female.”

  “How could you tell? She could’ve played defensive end. Why did your crazy sister have to kill the one decent-looking chick?”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Nipple said. “She died.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” Ghost admonished. “I’m not a fucking referee. Anybody got any ideas where they might be headed?”

  “Shit if I know,” Vapor said. “All I can see is cactus and rattlesnakes out to the horizon. I think they’re wandering around like Joshua leading the Jews out of Egypt.”

  “Moses,” Nipple said. “Even I know that.”

  “We’re losing the light, so they’ll be making camp soon,” Ghost said. “At zero hours we move in for a snatch. Prisoners are critical; we need the intel. Got it? I want these people alive. Vapor, you and Wingnut circle behind that ridge over there. Me and Nipple will move in from here. No shooting unless you have to. The more prisoners, the better. Got your NV gear?”

  “Roger that.” Vapor and Wingnut took off in a crouch.

  “Eat something,” Ghost said. “I’ll take the watch.”

  “They’re still moving, big brother,” Nipple said. “Why are you so sure they’ll stop?”

  “Most people are afraid of what they can’t see, so they hunker down and pretend it makes them safer. It’s the only way they can sleep. They’re from the city. They think this desert is actually more dangerous than a place like Chicago or D.C. You watch. They’ll have a fire going within twenty minutes.”

  Exact almost to the minute, a campfire lit the growing darkness. Green Ghost settled down for the five-hour wait, never taking his eyes off his prey. The flames of their fire rose and he could see them walking around in its flicker.

  At 2345 hours he shook his sister awake from a sound sleep. By zero hours they were ready to move out, M16s loaded and ready, while third-generation night vision goggles lit the landscape an electric green.

  Six hundred fifty yards across the valley, Vapor and Wingnut started moving toward their target with the precision of long practice and experience. Within minutes t
hey had all spread out and approached from four directions. Nobody would get away.

  But within the circle of firelight, they found no one. The gear remained, including two half-full plastic jugs of water. But no humans.

  “This is fucked up,” Vapor said. “I had the watch. I didn’t see anybody leave.”

  “Somehow they must have spotted us,” Green Ghost said. “If they saw us without us seeing them, they’re damned good. Spread out, find some tracks. They can’t have gotten far.”

  Throughout the night they searched for some clue of how their quarry escaped, or if their quarry escaped. They found nothing until dawn, when sunlight finally betrayed faint footprints leading north. Vapor was their best tracker, so Green Ghost waited as he walked back and forth, then got down on all fours and lay down beside the tracks. Whenever he did this routine, it reminded Ghost of a searching dog. After fifteen minutes he quit, satisfied.

  “Flat soles, probably five individuals. The tracks leading away are deeper, so they were carrying something heavy, obviously our targets. They got them first and went north. Just over this hill are hoofprints. Ten horses, maybe nine carrying riders. Somebody beat us to the kidnapping.”

  “How did we not hear them?” Green Ghost said.

  “I don’t know, man. I’m just telling you what I found.”

  “If you’re right about the number, that means they brought enough horses for five riders.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not thinking anything. I just don’t understand how they could pull this off with us watching the whole time.”

  “Me, either. Whoever these people are, they’re studs. I hope they’re on our side.”

  “Nobody is that good. Except ghosts,” Green Ghost said.

  The End

  About the Author

  Native Memphian Bill grew up eating wild blackberries while riding his bicycle on back-country roads, day-dreaming about spaceships and devouring books. He has read The Lord of the Rings 32 times so far.

  Grooming four acres of land east of Memphis maintains his boyish figure. Bill loves nothing more than reading (and writing!) an enthralling book, while ignoring eight barking dogs and two cranky old cats, four nests of screeching hawks bordering his property, various bobcats and coyotes, and a constant barrage of cartoons aimed at a three year old.

  His indulgent wife just shakes her head and smiles.

  Also from Dingbat Publishing

  Chapter One

  current time

  Three neat entry wounds drilled through the silk of Aunt Edith's blouse, stiffened and blackened by crusted blood. The underlying color was unrecognizable. I only knew it was supposed to be green because she wore it during our unfriendly dinner the previous evening and I remembered. Lying on the sidewalk with her legs crumpled beneath her, she seemed even tinier than normal, like a toy that had been roughly played with and then pitched aside.

  I dropped to my knees beside her. Her eyes were wide, staring at the dawn breaking beyond the storefronts, and her mouth gaped. She was such a private person, so contained, elegant, brilliant as gold beside the base metals of the rest of us. Death seemed an exposure, a stripping of her secrets. A humiliation.

  I reached out to stroke the drifting black and silver tendrils of her hair into place. But a hand snatched my wrist and twisted it aside. I jerked my head up—

  —the picture window of the Carr Gallery, just overhead, was splattered with something dark. More of it sprayed the polished maple door, the brass railing and handle and mail slot. A small hole in the door, at waist level, had been marked with chalk—

  —more dark stains, lit obliquely by the dawn light, trickled down the red brick, dripped from one concrete step to the next, painted the sidewalk. I suddenly realized I could smell it—

  —I ignored the background crump of artillery fire and panned the rifle's scope along the enemy emplacement, atop the ridge overlooking our sandbagged trench. Beneath the camouflage netting and wilting tree branches I made out one big field gun with its muzzle recoiling, another, a third—

  —the enemy spotter stood contemptuously in full view, binoculars to his eyes, gazing off to my left but sweeping this way. The rangefinder showed the distance at eight hundred meters. I set the elevation turret and aligned the sight's upper chevron on his center of mass, drifting aside by one hash mark to compensate for the gentle flow of air across my right cheek. Binocular lenses flashed sunsparks. His lips moved as I took up the initial pressure on the trigger—

  —flashback with visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory hallucinations. Hadn't happened in months. It was impossible to prevent it, stop it, tone it down, or predict its arrival. But we were intimate enemies, my flashback and I, and I knew its script. I clenched every muscle I possessed, including my eyes, and froze in place, ignoring it all. It's how I'd taught myself to respond when the city street morphed into a battlefield without warning, and so far it had prevented anyone from locking me up. I was even able to fool most acquaintances into thinking I was still sane.

  But nothing blocked the sights, sounds, or other manifestations. Machine gun fire hammered into the nonexistent sandbags, thuds echoing in my bones, and the dust and acrid gunpowder caught at the back of my throat. Someone screamed, a long shrill sound that climbed higher in pitch and volume, scraping across my nerves. The enemy guns chattered again and a fire of agony spurted across my back. Wavery, sick-feeling blackness rushed in behind the pain. I refused to wobble. I ignored the war zone and the adrenaline tearing me apart, and waited for the screaming in my damaged memory to stop. For several more seconds it dragged on, a horrible rising shriek, but finally it cut out in its usual abrupt manner, as if someone hit a neurological mute button.

  The flashback lost. It couldn't control my actions nor force me to betray my internal damage to the civilians. I wanted to collapse with relief. I refused to do that, too.

  Ambient city noises resumed. There were lots of voices around, both live ones and the scratchy overlay of radio transmissions, and in the distance someone called my name. Even with my eyes squeezed tight, popping emergency lights strobed across my retinas. I still smelled the blood.

  I failed Aunt Edith. Everything inside me wrenched. I failed her and now she's dead. That particular fear, of failing someone important, always followed the flashback. Knowing it was coming never prevented the reaction. I wouldn't show that, either.

  Only when I knew I was back in real time did I open my eyes.

  Dawn and Boston had returned. The battlefield was gone, replaced by the street of upscale shops, converted from historic red-brick row houses. Picture windows with discreet painted logos and black wrought-iron bars alternated with concrete steps rising to entries, each landing decorated with trees or flowers in wooden barrels. Blood painted the steps and façade of the Carr Gallery, Aunt Edith lay dead and hidden beside the entryway stairs, and there on her other side was a doughy face like something a baker played with before rolling it out. Its expression was outraged and the hand attached to the equally doughy body still gripped my wrist, our arms crossing above Aunt Edith's neck.

  "Don't muck up my crime scene, man," he said in pure Brooklynese.

  Ice clogged my veins. My field of vision constricted until all I could see was his face before me. I could control my physical behavior during the flashback and even my awareness, once I realized its game was on; I couldn't chain the emotions, nor the adrenaline. The muscles I'd released tautened again. Flight wasn't an option, but pounding something was. "She's not a crime scene."

  He glanced down, as if only then realizing Aunt Edith was, or had been, human. "She is now."

  I went for him. But strong arms hauled me back and away.

  One of the live voices sniggered in my ear. "What a circus."

  No sense fighting. It wasn't the policemen restraining me nor the crime scene technician I wanted to pound. I wanted the spotter, the one that got away during the war. If I could find the murderer who'd dossed down
my Aunt Edith, he'd do, as well.

  "Charles!"

  That was my cousin Patricia's voice, piercing the enshrouding mental fog. I ignored the hands gripping me and peered over my shoulder. She stood alone, makeup smeared and lipstick chewed off, in the midst of the curious bystanders behind a strip of yellow tape. Flimsy as it looked, that tape represented the boundaries of the permissible and therefore was sufficient to stop her. Had they put that up behind me? I couldn't remember seeing it, much less ducking beneath it.

  Patty seemed safe, so I turned back to Aunt Edith and eased from the policemen's holds. But a man stepped between the crime scene technician and me — between Aunt Edith and me. "Mr. Ellandun?"

  I looked around him and didn't bother being subtle about it. Aunt Edith stared back, the heavy emptiness of the dead replacing her usual honest and level gaze, neither judgmental nor compassionate, with something blank. One of her pumps had fallen off and a chalk circle had been drawn around it. A bit of trash; the most amazing woman I'd ever met, and she'd been tossed aside like a bit of trash. It was beyond wrong. It was obscene.

  "It's captain, actually," I said. "Captain Charles Ellandun."

  He kept speaking, but as usual, Aunt Edith dominated the scene without trying. Only now it wasn't her elegant vivacity accomplishing that feat, but its absence. She had been the Rock of Gibraltar in my life since I'd been eleven and meeting her had been the watershed moment of my watershed year. She'd always been vital, compelling, more alive than the city itself. It was impossible for her to be dead.

  Her skirt was the same as last night, as well, woven wool in the Hunter tartan plaid, the one she'd worn the day I first met her. Likely she'd returned to the art gallery directly after dinner, then. She still wore her wedding ring, as usual her only jewelry. There was no sign of her purse.

  "Captain?" It was the man who'd stepped between us, a plainclothes detective in a button-down shirt and dark slacks.