Standing in the Storm

by William Alan Webb

  More bullets whizzed past him. A round grazed his shoulder and he dove for cover in a shallow depression behind a brittlebush. Bluish petals settled in his dark hair.

  Vapor returned fire on full automatic. His initial rounds chewed up both drivers’ side tires. Targeting this new threat, they returned fire, pinning him down.

  “Where the fuck are Wingnut and that lunatic sister of yours?”

  On cue, Wingnut and Nipple opened fire behind the three men. One twisted and jerked as rounds tore into his back. The other two spun to return fire, too late. Nipple never missed and she put three rounds into the face of the man on her left. Wingnut squeezed the trigger on full automatic and four rounds hit the other man in his chest.

  Even before the firing stopped, Green Ghost was running downhill. Rounding the front of the car, he smelled gasoline, and leaped over a stream pouring from under the car. The man Nipple had shot was missing half of his head, so he checked the other one. Despite blood-soaked clothes, the chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Grabbing him by the armpits, Green Ghost dragged him off the highway.

  Nipple and Wingnut approached, eyes to their scopes.

  “Put dirt on that gas!” he said. “A fire could attract their butt buddies.”

  They immediately started heaping dust onto the puddling fuel. Wingnut popped the hood and inspected the engine for damage.

  As they worked around the car, Green Ghost lifted the dying man’s head and patted his cheek. “Hey, don’t die on me yet. What’s your name? Where are you from?”

  The man’s eyes flickered open, but it was obvious he could not see.

  “Tell Sati I died facing my enemy,” he said in a whisper. “Tell him… I prayed to the prophet… with my last breath.”

  “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  “May Allah protect our beloved new prophet.” The man convulsed several times and coughed blood. Then he went rigid. After a long exhale, his body relaxed. Green Ghost wiped his bloody hands on the corpse’s pants.

  “The heap’s shot to shit,” Wingnut said. “And those cans are full. If this goes up, we need to be far away.”

  Green Ghost stood and inspected the damage. “We need to work on your marksmanship.”

  “Hey, I put him down, didn’t I?”

  “You put the car down with him. Do you like walking that much?”

  “I didn’t blow out the tires,” Wingnut said. He changed the subject. “Did the burp tell you anything?”

  He nudged the dead man with his boot. Flies buzzed into the corpse’s open mouth.

  “Yeah,” Ghost said. “I’m just not sure what.”

  11 miles south

  1649 hours

  Wazid steered the pickup truck past another sinkhole and accelerated to twenty miles per hour. The further he drove southwest, the more broken the old highway became. So far he had seen nothing of Paco and his men. Now, five miles from his friend and leader, Sati Bashara, he pulled to the right shoulder and cut the wheel hard left to turn around. But over his left shoulder, he spotted a body lying close by in the desert. He stopped in the middle of the road and lifted the M16 off the truck’s passenger seat. He chambered a round.

  In a crouch, he walked across the hot pavement. He paused, twisting at the hips to ensure nobody lurked nearby. Satisfied, he walked into the desert and knelt beside the prone figure. He brushed a scorpion off the man’s cheek.

  The man wore the khaki-colored cotton uniform of the Caliphate. Dried blood crusted the back of his shirt. He could not have been dead long, since no scavengers had yet feasted on his corpse.

  “Why did you come this way?” Wazid muttered.

  A prairie falcon circled high overhead, its shadow racing over the arid landscape. Wazid ignored it.

  Behind him, two figures covered in dirt and sand rose from shallow pits. They made no sound. Wazid had no warning before a sharpened iron spike struck the base of his skull, where the first cervical vertebrae joined the spine. The bones shattered with a loud crack! He toppled to one side, with only a rattle to mark his death.

  The prone figure, no longer quite so dead, jumped up and helped the other two drag the newly dead man into a shallow, pre-dug trench. Using a shovel, they refilled the hole until it was nothing more than a flat patch of desert. Together they rolled a large boulder onto the grave.

  Sweating, they turned to leave. Then they heard a voice and looked at each other.

  “Wazid, where are you? Come back right away. Wazid, can you hear me?” It went on like that without stopping, faint and muffled but audible.

  “Govind?” the youngest of the three said. The oldest shook his head.

  They erased the blood and footprints at the kill site, careful to brush away their own tracks. One of the men inspected Wazid’s still-running truck. Standing on the seat, he looked over the cab roof and nodded once. Govind pointed southwest and the man in the truck drove off in that direction. He and the remaining man then crossed over a small hill, where three horses stood tethered to a mesquite tree. Daylight faded as they rode off and vanished into the gathering darkness like ghosts of the desert.

  Chapter 1

  Who controls the past, controls the future.

  Psalms of the New Prophet, Chapter 7, Verse 21

  8 miles south of Green Ghost

  1719 hours, June 25

  Sati Bashara stood next to his battered Toyota pickup. He watched a prairie falcon fold its wings and dive. Skimming inches above the desert floor, its talons reached down and snatched its prey. Flapping skyward, it made for a distant ridgeline, dangling a snake in its claws.

  “Where are they?” Bashara said. “Why do they not answer?”

  “I don’t know, Sati,” said his best friend, Haleem. “Maybe their radios broke, or the batteries died. Maybe one blew a water hose, and the other hit a deep hole and turned over. How should I know?”

  “We cannot wait on Wazid or Ibrahim any longer. Keep trying to get them, but the day is dying and we must move on.”

  Two other trucks cooled on the shoulder of the highway, turned off to save fuel. Bashara smelled death and destruction nearby, even if his companions didn’t. Aside from the scent of decomposing bodies, smoldering ashes filled the air with tiny bits of carbonized rubber, like pollen. In a pristine desert, scents like charred truck tires acted as a beacon for those who could detect them. Sage, creosote, the indescribable earthiness after a rainstorm… those scents defined his childhood memories. His mind knew how the desert should smell. It didn’t smell that way now.

  “Death is close,” he said. “There has been fighting near here.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I smell it.”

  “But where, Sati? We are low on fuel and the sun is fading. We have been gone longer than expected and your uncle awaits our return.”

  “My uncle awaits answers, Haleem, and we have none to give him. Would you like to be the one to tell him we failed to find Paco? Because that I will not do, even if I have to walk back.”

  Bashara raised his nose again like a tracking dog. He turned in slow circles, moved side to side, and walked a few paces in one direction, followed by the reverse. He did this for three minutes and stopped.

  “There,” he said, pointing to the ridgeline on their right. “They must have pulled off the road. Let us find their tracks.”

  Leaning against the second truck, arms folded, Haleem rolled his eyes when Bashara wasn’t looking. He wound his finger in a circle, which meant let’s go. Driving into the open desert in late afternoon did not seem like a great idea, but it wasn’t his decision.

  “Slamming into a hole could break an axle,” he said.

  “Then do not slam into a hole,” Bashara said. “You are my dear friend, Haleem, but do not dispute me again.”

  Haleem drove with care as the light faded, leaving Bashara to search for fresh tracks. After a few minutes he pointed out the right window.

  “There,” he said. Dozens of tire imprints veered towar
d the ridge, following an old, crushed-stone road. They speeded up, heedless of holes, ruts, or rocks. Haleem crossed two bridges without slowing down. The rattle of the timbers made his heart race.

  Deep shadows lay close to the ridge. In the twilight, Bashara saw what had happened to the missing men. He spotted dozens of blasted cars and trucks, like a sprawling graveyard of elephants. The skeletal shells lay contorted like bodies twisted by rigor mortis.

  They parked on the outer edge of the killing field and crawled through the wreckage. Bodies and chunks of scorched metal lay scattered as if from a tornado. Bashara did not have to warn them to be wary of snakes and scorpions.

  He knelt and inspected the first few bodies they found, turning his head from the stench. Hordes of maggots crawled in the putrefied flesh. Scavengers had gnawed many of the corpses to bare bone. Flies swarmed the noses and mouths of the living. Despite the parasitic insects, Bashara held his hands palm down over the bodies. He seemed to sense their spirits.

  “Abulfazl,” he said, “you and Azeez go there and see what you see.” He pointed to the plateau high against the sheer rock wall of the ridge.

  “As you wish, Sati,” Abulfazl said, and the two men trotted off.

  As the afternoon waned, Bashara stood and walked further into the carnage, picturing in his mind what had happened. His other men spread out to look for survivors. It seemed impossible anyone could still be alive after three or four days in the open desert, but they looked anyway. Some of his men climbed the rocks, while others joined Azeez and Abulfazl on the plateau. All held rifles at the ready.

  Bashara picked up various bits of metal and turned over a glob of hardened meat with his boot. He had no idea what, or who, it had been. Shell casings littered the ground. Many came from much larger caliber weapons than the rifles Paco’s men had carried. He leaned close to the holes in the vehicles, sniffed them, and ran a finger over the seared but smooth edges. The ripped metal was not jagged. Only high velocity rounds melted metal like that.

  Abulfazl and Azeez ran back down the ramp, shirts drenched with sweat. Bending over, hands on knees, they gulped air for a few minutes before they could speak.

  “Up there,” Abulfazl said, still gasping for breath. “Three trucks, two of ours and another one. There’s a long wall of rocks, low, about this high.” He indicated a height halfway up his thigh. “Many dead men, all ours. Whatever killed them, Sati… they were ripped apart. Animals have been chewing them as well.”

  “The trucks,” Sati said. “Can they be driven?”

  Abulfazl shook his head. “Destroyed. Burned out. There is nothing to salvage.”

  “Sati, over here!” Haleem said.

  He jumped up and followed the sound of the shouting, almost stepping on a ruined head lying crushed beside a leg and foot. Slowing down, he trudged forward until he found Haleem kneeling beside a man propped against a truck. Crusty blood covered his upper torso. The man’s left leg had turned purple and swollen to twice its normal size. His head lolled to the side, but his chest rose and fell with shallow respiration.

  Bashara knelt beside Haleem and raised the man’s head. Ants crawled over his face and Bashara brushed them away. Lifting his water bottle, he wet the man’s cracked lips. When the mouth parted, he poured a few drops into his throat. His movements were deft and efficient. His long fingers explored for wounds or broken bones, and he took care to be gentle.

  “Who did this, Paco?” he whispered into the man’s ear. “If you can hear me, you must tell me who did this.”

  Paco Mohammed tried to lift his right hand, but couldn’t. “Agua,” he said in a dry voice.

  Bashara let him drink all he wanted.

  “Monstruos voladores,” he said, and this time his voice was strong enough to be heard. “Monstruos voladores gigantes. Con grandes alas y una marca blanca en un círculo.” Giant flying monsters, with large wings and a white mark in a circle. “I looked into the eyes of the monster and saw the souls of the men it had eaten.”

  Bashara and Haleem shared a glance, and Bashara patted Paco’s cheek. “You have been through much, my friend. We will take you back, and you will heal, and there we will talk more.”

  But Paco reached out with his good right hand and grabbed a fistful of Bashara’s shirt, pulling him closer. The rasp in his voice blurred the words. “I am not loco, Sati. This sun has burned me, but my mind is not cooked. They were monsters, I tell you. Giant monsters with wings on their heads, and a grande blanca mark on their side. And things my grandmother called letters; I don’t know what they said. And hanging below the belly of the monsters were guns like I have not seen before, guns that killed my men before they could move. When the monsters flew overhead, the bullets, they fell like hail.”

  “Guns?” Bashara said. Paco’s story began to make sense.

  “Yes, big guns. And rockets. When I was just a young boy, mi abuela told me of such monsters. When she was a girl, they would come and kill the men of her village in Mexico. She said they were terrible. She called them helicopteros, and she said they had guns. They were monsters from Hell, she said.”

  “Helicopters?” Bashara’s eyes narrowed and he drew in the sand with his finger. “This mark you saw, Paco, did it look like this?”

  “Si.” Paco nodded. “Pero blanca.”

  “Good, Paco, good. Now the letters, did they look anything like this?” Again he drew.

  “That is them!” Paco said. “How did you know, Sati? What do they spell? Who killed my men?”

  Bashara stood and motioned his men to load Paco into a truck. “He is close to death. We must go. Be gentle but quick. We will drive through the night.”

  “But Sati,” Haleem said. “The night… it’s very dark. The moon is new.”

  “Do as I say. Have we heard from Ibrahim or Wazid?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “We cannot wait. They will have to make their own way back.”

  Paco’s blood-caked hand grabbed Bashara’s pant leg. “Please, Sati, tell me who killed my friends?”

  “I do not know for certain, Paco. We know of men beyond Phoenix with such a mark on their vehicles, but they have not been our enemies in the past. I have met one of their lower-class leaders, a man they call Slick. He is an infidel, uncouth, not schooled in the ways of the New Prophet. In the past it has been convenient to cooperate with them in certain matters. They have been reliable, but if they have found such power and become our enemies, then my uncle must know.”

  “What is this mark, Sati? What does it mean?”

  “It is a star, Paco. These men bear the mark of an old enemy. If what you say is true, then your men were killed by helicopters of Los Estados Unidos.”

  “But there is no more Estados Unidos.”

  “I pray to our beloved New Prophet that you are right,” Sati Bashara said. “But it would appear to be otherwise.”

  Chapter 2

  Nothing is sinful that serves Him who alone knows the will of Allah.

  Psalms of the New Prophet, Chapter 1, Verse 2

  New Khorasan (formerly Tucson, AZ)

  1033 hours, June 26

  Yet another golf ball soared aloft and sliced left into the rough. Richard Lee Armstrong wanted to scream, but held his back-swing long enough to regain his composure. For three decades he had suppressed his identity, and so the placid smile he wore as a permanent mask fit his persona. Instead of kicking his golf bag, he displayed the tranquility befitting the Emir of New Khorasan. But just because he had mastered his facial expressions did not mean he was happy.

  The golf clubs were not the problem, nor the choppy greens or rough fairways. Improvements to the course required manpower and water he did not have anyway. The real problem was the balls; they all had nicks and cuts. No matter how much he practiced, a damaged golf ball did not go where aimed. In the early days new golf balls had been common, but those days were long gone. His followers had scoured New Khorasan, the city once called Tucson, for new ones, but found none.


  The Emir of New Khorasan, Superior Imam of the Foretold Caliphate of the New Prophet, had worked hard on his golf swing over the years. His latest drive first sailed skyward in a perfect arc. Then the air aloft caught a cut in the ball’s side and spun it off course, ruining his hard work. When the ball landed in a patch of scrub, he stood silent for several seconds with a serene look that hid his rage. All that practice wasted!

  Standing behind the first tee, the other members of his foursome clapped. They were his most senior lieutenants. He turned and smiled, but Richard Lee Armstrong knew kissing ass when he saw it. He had trained himself to read body language and facial expressions. He believed that under the right circumstances he could read people’s minds. For thirty years that talent had kept him alive at the top of a dangerous and fanatical religious cult. He did not need exotic methods to know that some within his inner circle would slit his throat if they knew the truth about him. The man known as Richard Lee Armstrong had not existed for thirty years. In his place stood Abdul-Qudoos Fadil el Mofty, Virtuous Servant of the Most Holy Who Holds the Fatwa, Superior Imam and Emir of New Khorasan.

  “Thank you, my beloved friends,” he said. “But that is not necessary. Muhsin, I believe it is your turn, is it not?”

  Ahead, slaves tended the fairways with primitive rakes and shovels. More slaves uprooted cacti and bushes that had sprouted on the field of play, all of them watched over by guards with rifles. Behind them, a team of sun-scorched men in ragged clothes dragged a stripped-out pickup truck across the fairway. In the pseudo-wagon’s bed was a perforated metal tank that rotated as the vehicle inched forward on skids. The tank dispensed wastewater from the septic system installed at the Superior Imam’s villa, beside the eighteenth green.

  The knot of golfers were halfway down the fairway at Hole Five when Muhsin covered his eyes and stared back in the direction of the first tee. A vehicle approached at high speed, raising a dust cloud on the gravel pathway.