Randy’s eyes lit up. “Sure. Sure I can do that. I’d be honored.”
“Good. When you’re done with that drink you get another on the house. Plus I’ll give you your usual fee for both portraits. Now you get him just as he was, you here?” Roy nodded to a customer at the other end of the bar who had raised his hand for attention. “I got to go serve that guy. Take care, my friend. And don’t forget to draw David as he was. Exactly as he looked.”
As Roy walked away from the artist to help the other customer, he said under his breath, “This time they’re not going to forget what you looked like.”
***
Yu-jin watched the distant shore from the prow of the launch. The freighter had moored some way out to sea and she, Rachel, Clyde, and his two guards were taking the boat back. Clyde sat next to her, scanning the coastline with an expert eye.
“Hope everything’s all right,” Clyde said.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Yu-jn asked.
They had stayed near the well for three days to check on the work. It had been going well. The first step had been to pour a large amount of sand into the well. That had cut off the worst of the fumes so the workers could start building the concrete dome. Rachel estimated the work would be done in a week. The freighter would evacuate any survivors, although none would have much of a life left. A few of the weaker ones had already dropped.
Clyde shook his head, still studying the coastline. “I don’t know. Just got a feeling.”
“Relax. Things are getting better.”
Clyde gave a short laugh. “Nice to hear optimism.”
“If someone like David can change, anyone can.”
Clyde’s eyes lit up and he turned to Yu-jin. “He was something, wasn’t he?”
“A miracle.”
She wished she could put her whole heart behind her words. Seeing those ragged people board the ship after they had lain down their weapons, Yu-jin had felt pity for them. Perhaps that was because she had been so deep in the mountains when they had attacked New City that she didn’t even hear about it until she came down for the season. Everyone said it had been terrifying, and everyone had lost friends.
Clyde didn’t seem to have been affected by the sight of those scrawny arms and sunken cheeks, or the looks of gratitude when the Chinese gave them a hot meal. But he hadn’t shown his usual bluster either.
When they had sailed up next to the derrick and offloaded the workers and machinery, all unessential crew were told to stay below decks. Yu-jin couldn’t. She had gone up on deck, as had Clyde. They had stood together as David, half a dozen Chinese engineers, and several hundred cultists had disembarked to their deaths.
Yu-jin had felt ill ever since. She had tried to tell herself the fumes had leaked through her gas mask.
As they headed for home, Yu-jin felt as if she had snuck out of an obligation.
She glanced at Clyde. He had a somber look on his face. Clyde glanced her direction and she quickly looked away.
After a moment he spoke.
“Feel bad?”
Yu-jin nodded.
“So do I. What they did was … incredible. They volunteered.” Clyde sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “But, you know, it doesn’t sit right. I mean, I was gunning those guys down by the dozen in battle. If the armory had a big enough bomb I would have blown every one of them to smithereens. This felt different, though. Kinda …”
“Dirty?”
Clyde nodded. “Yeah. We were the good guys and they were the bad guys. Somehow David reversed that.”
“I think he felt guilty for everything he had done.”
“Yeah. That’s how things are in this world. I’ve done some bad shit in my day to keep it all together. You got to learn to live with your mistakes and keep on going, keep trying to build it all up. I think he finally realized that.” Clyde paused for a moment, uncertain, then went on. “Look, if you want to stand for citizen again, I’ll speak for you. You earned it.”
Yu-jin smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“Can’t speak for my men, though.”
“Didn’t expect you to.”
Clyde grinned and elbowed her. “But you don’t get to be on the Watch. I’ve seen you at the range. Your shooting is lousy.”
Yu-jin laughed. “That’s OK. Kevlar and guns aren’t really my thing.”
They were drawing close to the peninsula on which New City stood. Yu-jin gazed happily at the comfortable buildings. Soon that would be her home.
Then she saw the black cloth draped over the front of the warehouse.
“What’s that?” she cried, pointing.
No one had an answer. They docked at the small New City pier. A group of citizens stood waiting to meet them with long faces. Ahmed, Reginald’s best nurse, stood in front. There were tears in his eyes.
“What happened?” Clyde and Yu-jin said at the same time.
“The Doctor,” Ahmed said, his voice choked. “His condition had been worsening ever since you left. We didn’t mention anything in the radio communication because we didn’t want to jeopardize the mission.”
“How is he now?” Clyde demanded.
Ahmed wiped his eyes.
“He’s dead. He died this morning.”
About the Author
Sean McLachlan worked for ten years as an archaeologist in Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and the United States before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books, which are listed on the following pages. When he’s not writing, he enjoys hiking, reading, traveling, and, most of all, teaching his son about the world. He divides his time between Madrid, Oxford, and Cairo.
To find out more about Sean’s work and travels, visit him at his Amazon page or his blog, and feel free to friend him on Goodreads, Twitter, and Facebook.
You might also enjoy his newsletter, Sean’s Travels and Tales, which comes out every one or two months. Each issue features a short story, a travel article, a coupon for a free or discounted book, and updates on future projects. You can subscribe using this link. Your email will not be shared with anyone else.
Fiction by Sean McLachlan
Tangier Bank Heist: An Interzone Mystery
Right after the war, Tangier was the craziest town in North Africa. Everything was for sale and the price was cheap. The perverts came for the flesh. The addicts came for the drugs. A whole army of hustlers and grifters came for the loose laws and free flow of cash and contraband.
So why was I here? Because it was the only place that would have me. Besides, it was a great place to be a detective. You got cases like in no other place I’d ever been, and I’d been all over. Cases you couldn’t believe ever happened. Like when I had to track down the guy who stole the bank.
No, he didn’t rob the bank, he stole it.
Here’s how it happened . . .
Available in electronic edition! Print edition coming soon!
Three Passports to Trouble (Interzone Mystery Book 2)
Back in the days when Tangier was an International Zone, the city was full of refugees. People fleeing Stalin. People fleeing Franco. People fleeing the Nuremburg Trials. Tangier offered a safe haven from the chaos of Europe.
The International Council had to keep a delicate balance, tolerating everything from anti-capitalist agitators to Germans with murky pasts. It was the only way to keep the peace, and it worked.
Until an anarchist was found dead with a fascist dagger in his chest.
And I got stuck with the case just when I had to smuggle a couple of Party operatives out of town.
Available in electronic edition! Print edition coming soon!
The Case of the Purloined Pyramid (The Masked Man of Cairo Book One)
An ancient mystery. A modern murder.
Sir Augustus Wall, a horribly mutilated veteran of the Great War, has left Europe behind to open an antiquities shop in Cairo. But Europe’s troubles follow him as a priceless inscription is stolen and those who know its secr
ets start turning up dead. Teaming up with Egyptology expert Moustafa Ghani, and Faisal, an irritating street urchin he just can't shake, Sir Wall must unravel an ancient secret and face his own dark past.
Available in electronic and print editions!
The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus (The Masked Man of Cairo Book Two)
An Old Kingdom coffin. A body from yesterday.
Sir Augustus Wall had seen a lot of death. From the fields of Flanders to the alleys of Cairo, he’d solved several murders and sent many men to their grave. But he’s never had a body delivered to his antiquities shop encased in a 5,000 year-old coffin.
Soon he finds himself fighting a vicious street gang bent on causing national mayhem while his assistant, Moustafa Ghani, faces his own enemies in the form of colonial powers determined to ruin him. Throughout all this runs the street urchin Faisal. Ignored as usual, dismissed as usual, he has the most important fight of all.
Available in electronic edition! Print edition coming soon!
Radio Hope (Toxic World Book One)
In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease…
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future—Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.
Available in print and electronic editions!
Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book Two)
When you only have one shot, you better aim true.
In a ravaged world, civilization’s last outpost is reeling after fighting off the fanatical warriors of the Righteous Horde. Sheriff Annette Cruz becomes New City’s long arm of vengeance as she sets off across the wildlands to take out the cult’s leader. All she has is a sniper’s rifle with one bullet and a former cultist with his own agenda. Meanwhile, one of the cult’s escaped slaves makes a discovery that could tear New City apart…
Refugees from the Righteous Horde continues the Toxic World series started in Radio Hope, an ongoing narrative of humanity’s struggle to rebuild the world it ruined.
Available in electronic edition!
We Had Flags (Toxic World Book Three)
A law doesn't work if everyone breaks it.
For forty years, New City has been a bastion of order in a fallen world. One crucial law has maintained the peace: it is illegal to place responsibility for the collapse of civilization on any one group. Anyone found guilty of Blaming is branded and stripped of citizenship.
But when some unwelcome visitors arrive from across the sea, old wounds break open, and no one is safe from Blame.
Available in electronic edition!
The Scavenger (A Toxic World Novelette)
In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it’s stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows—a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.
Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.
Available in electronic edition!
Trench Raiders (Trench Raiders Book One)
September 1914: The British Expeditionary Force has the Germans on the run, or so they think.
After a month of bitter fighting, the British are battered, exhausted, and down to half their strength, yet they’ve helped save Paris and are pushing towards Berlin. Then the retreating Germans decide to make a stand. Holding a steep slope beside the River Aisne, the entrenched Germans mow down the advancing British with machine gun fire. Soon the British dig in too, and it looks like the war might grind down into deadly stalemate.
Searching through No-Man’s Land in the darkness, Private Timothy Crawford of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry finds a chink in the German armor. But can this lowly private, who spends as much time in the battalion guardhouse as he does on the parade ground, convince his commanding officer to risk everything for a chance to break through?
Available in electronic edition!
Digging In (Trench Raiders Book Two)
October 1914: The British line is about to break.
After two months of hard fighting, the British Expeditionary Force is short of men, ammunition, and ideas. With their line stretched to the breaking point, aerial reconnaissance spots German reinforcements massing for the big push. As their trenches are hammered by a German artillery battery, the men of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry come up with a desperate plan—a daring raid behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy guns and give the British a chance to stop the German army from breaking through.
Available in electronic edition!
No Man’s Land (Trench Raiders Book Three)
No Man’s Land—a hellscape of shell craters and dead bodies. Soldiers have fought over it, charged across it, and bled on it for a year of grueling war, but neither side has dominated it.
Until now.
An elite German raiding party is passing through No Man’s Land every night, attacking the British trenches at will. The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry need to reassert control over their front lines.
So the exhausted men of Company E decide to set a trap, a nighttime ambush in the middle of No Man’s Land, where any mistake can be fatal. But the few surviving veterans are leading recruits who have only been in the trenches for two weeks. Mistakes are inevitable.
Available in electronic edition!
Christmas Truce
Christmas 1914
In the cold, muddy trenches of the Western Front, there is a strange silence. As the members of a crack English trench raiding team enjoy their first day of peace in months, they call out holiday greetings to the men on the German line. Soon both sides are fraternizing in No Man’s Land.
But when the English recognize some enemy raiders who only a few days before launched a deadly attack on their position, can they keep the peace through the Christmas truce?
Available in electronic edition!
Warpath into Sonora
Arizona 1846
Nantan, a young Apache warrior, is building a name for himself by leading raids against Mexican ranches to impress his war chief, and the chief’s lovely daughter. But there is one thing he and all other Apaches fear—a ruthless band of Mexican scalp hunters who slaughter entire villages.
Nantan and his friends have sworn to fight back, but they are inexperienced, and led by a war chief driven mad with a thirst for revenge. Can they track their tribe’s worst enemy into unknown territory and defeat them?
Available in electronic edition!
A Fine Likeness (House Divided Book One)
A Confederate guerrilla and a Union captain discover there’s something more dangerous in the woods than each other.
Jimmy Rawlins is a teenage bushwhacker who leads his friends on ambushes of Union patrols. They join infamous guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson on a raid through Missouri, but Jimmy questions his commitment to the cause when he discovers this madman plans to sacrifice a Union prisoner in a hellish ritual to raise the Confederate dead.
Richard Addison is an aging captain of a lackluster Union militia. Depressed over his son’s death in battle, a glimpse of Jimmy changes his life. Jimmy and his son look so much alike that Addison becomes obsessed with saving him from Bloody Bill. Captain Addison must wreck his reputation to win this war within a war, while J
immy must decide whether to betray the Confederacy to stop the evil arising in the woods of Missouri.
Available in print and electronic editions!
The River of Desperation (House Divided Book Two)
In the waning days of the Civil War, a secret conflict still rages…
Lieutenant Allen Addison of the USS Essex is looking forward to the South's defeat so he can build the life he's always wanted. Love and a promising business await him in St. Louis, but he is swept up in a primeval war between the forces of Order and Chaos, a struggle he doesn't understand and can barely believe in. Soon he is fighting to keep a grip on his sanity as he tries to save St. Louis from destruction.
The long-awaited sequel to A Fine Likeness continues the story of two opposing forces that threaten to tear the world apart.
Available in electronic edition!
The Last Hotel Room
He came to Tangier to die, but life isn’t done with him yet.
Tom Miller has lost his job, his wife, and his dreams. Broke and alone, he ends up in a flophouse in Morocco, ready to end it all. But soon he finds himself tangled in a web of danger and duty as he’s pulled into scamming tourists for a crooked cop while trying to help a Syrian refugee boy survive life on the streets. Can a lifelong loser do something good for a change?
A portion of my royalties will go to a charity for Syrian refugees.
Available in electronic and print editions!
The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and Other Dark Tales
A spectral dinner party goes horribly wrong…
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