Tour of Duty: Stories and Provocation

by Michael Z. Williamson

  “General Benet, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed I am, sir.” Benet bowed fractionally, and extended a hand.

  Brady shook it and said, “You seem a bit older than I recall. I met you as a colonel. I’m glad you had a long life.”

  “I was sorry to hear of your passing, even though it came after my own,” Benet replied.

  Brady’s face drooped slightly.

  “I’d hoped afterlife would be better than life. Instead, it seems perpetually to show me the worst of existence. I suppose that is punishment for my photographs.”

  Benet said, “It may be. Though you always showed things honestly.”

  Brady’s Van Dyke trembled.

  “That I did, or tried to. War needs no exaggeration. Nor, I found, does everyday torment.”

  Benet said, “So it seems. For your candor, sir, we must take you to Satan himself to be deposed.”

  “Deposed?”

  “This is the Coordinating Legal Airborne Platoon, Mr. Brady,” McCarthy interrupted, puffing himself up.

  “Ah,” Brady said. “Yes, there are jokes one could make, but it’s hardly worth doing so, is it?”

  Benet nodded, without rancor or humor. “You do speak the truth, Mr. Brady.”

  “So you need me to accompany you?”

  Benet said, “Actually, sir, I will be forthright with you, as a peer. We need only your head.”

  Brady slumped and sighed. He looked from Benet to Roger to Thurmond, to the rest of CLAP.

  “May I make a final request, then? Final for now, I suppose.”

  “What is that?” Benet asked.

  “Would someone capture a photograph of this event? Before I go? It can be delivered with the others.” He indicated the leather box, with a large label gummed to it.

  Benet said, “I can work the camera. I am familiar with the type. Mr. Howard, will you take my sword?”

  There was nothing Roger wanted less than to take Benet’s sword in hand. Death might not be permanent, but suffering was always remembered. Brady’s head would be turned over to higher authorities, perhaps to Satan himself. Roger looked around, hoping one of his colleagues would volunteer to do the deed. All the CLAP knew what Roger wanted. Everyone looked at their feet.

  “I regret this,” he said. “But I will do it.”

  There was no way to fight the inevitable. Brady led Benet to the tent. Roger followed slowly.

  “Let me prepare the plate and set the equipment,” Brady said wistfully.

  The two disappeared inside the tent, leaving Roger alone outside. In tight quarters, the two bumped canvas now and again.

  Behind Roger, McCarthy came up.

  “Are we ready, then?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roger agreed. “General Benet will take a photo of the scene as Brady’s last request.”

  “What the hell’s the point of that? Really. This is hell, if no one has noticed. It won’t go anywhere, accomplish anything . . . ”

  “I suppose a paper somewhere might print it, sir,” Roger said.

  “If anyone remembers who this man is. And he’ll be back, soon enough. I live for the day when I get to meet Karl Marx face to face.”

  “I’m sure you do, sir.” He leaned onto his good leg to ease the ache.

  “What is that supposed to mean? I’ve been watching you for some time, Howard. Didn’t you go to some fruity liberal school back east?”

  “Harvard, sir.”

  “Harvard. A stronghold of communist ideology in the decades following my death, I understand.”

  “Certain professors, yes, sir.”

  “I never did trust that type. Nor artists. This fellow,” he nodded his head toward the tent, “is one like that. Always wants to show the pathos, the tragedy, the art of misery. Next thing you know, people think the aggressor is some kind of tragic hero. Who was that little commie after I died? Made into some kind of tee-shirt icon for hippies and lowlifes?”

  “Che Guevara?” Roger guessed.

  “That’s him.”

  McCarthy finally shut up as Benet and Brady brushed the canvas aside and came out of the tent. Brady took a deep breath and shivered slightly. Benet placed a comforting hand on Brady’s shoulder. With the other, he drew his long, curved saber.

  Roger awkwardly accepted the heavy blade from Benet; he had little experience handling real swords, and a gimp leg. That was a problem.

  “Mr. Brady, I am ashamed,” he said, and hesitated. “I must ask you to kneel.”

  Brady’s eyes dampened, as he lowered himself to his knees with dignity, and bent forward.

  Benet was at the camera, under the hood, fiddling.

  Roger asked, “Sir, are you ready?”

  “Almost. This is not quite what I trained with. However, I have focus, I think. And flash powder.”

  He fumbled with the glass plate, reached back under the hood, and slid stuff around. He poured a measure of powder over what looked like a long match, and held it aloft.

  “You may proceed.”

  Brady shut his eyes and started praying. “Our Father, who art in heaven...”

  It was both touching and ridiculous. It could do no good here.

  Tears filled Roger’s eyes.

  Brady stopped praying when McCarthy made dismissive noises: “Great act.”

  Roger raised the sword. Its edge was keen. He must ensure his swing was straight. If he let his arm drop, then snapped his wrist, the blade should cut cleanly through Brady’s neck.

  Benet pulled the lens cap, then tugged the string that ignited the powder. The flash lit the lurid landscape, and the stench of sulfur filled the air, so familiar here.

  Roger dropped his arm convulsively, making sure to keep his eyes open, and snapped his wrist.

  The saber cut between the skull and the protruding vertebra at the shoulders, shearing through cleanly, and struck the rock underneath.

  McCarthy snapped, “Goddam it, Howard, don’t knick his sword.”

  Staring at the crimson fountain splashing out of Brady’s neck, Roger decided he’d had enough.

  He’d accept a court-martial. First, he had to earn one.

  Roger turned and thrust, as he’d learned in fencing class at Harvard, long ago. The saber didn’t respond like a foil, but with no opposing blade it worked well enough.

  The way the smug little McCarthy grunted and convulsed as the saber pierced his guts was most satisfying. A half turn to the right caused McCarthy’s eyes to bug out, and dropped the little commie-hunter to his knees.

  Seeing McCarthy kneeling there was too good an opportunity to resist; it made any pending punishment worth it.

  He withdrew smoothly, raised the saber, and swung a second time.

  McCarthy’s head tumbled onto the rocks. Roger stepped back to await further hellish torment.

  Instead, Benet said, “Brilliant, Mr. Howard. What could be more honest than monomaniacal purpose? But please do me one favor.”

  Roger’s brain spun as he tried to parse the unexpected praise. “Yes, sir?”

  “Please clean my sword. Thoroughly.”

  A Hard Day At The Office

  Once you start thinking about Hell, there’s no end to the characters and torment you can arrange. This time, I picked a character I liked, and let that inspire me to create a persona. The actual Peter Hathaway Capstick was a fine writer, and I highly recommend his books.

  Africa at night is awesome and vital. The cloying, damp heat with scents of rot, of animal and growth punching the nose. The discordant symphony of beasts, from crickets to lustful frogs to the warning growl of leopards on the prowl. Nowhere on earth can offer the immersion of sensation one finds in the Limpopo, Okavango, Serengeti or Kalahari. They’re all different and unique, constantly changing and fresh, and all part of the greatness known as Africa.

  Hellfrica, on the other hand, is everything Africa is, and less.

  It is just as vital. The scents are better described as stenches. The animals sound desolate, effete and bored. The
heat . . .

  Ah, yes, trust the Prince of Lies to make Hellfrica cold. Not all the time, of course. Hot and cold fight each other for supremacy, below the boiling sun and the scimitar curve of the moon, or at least it appears that way. What beauty Hellfrica has is illusionary. Hellish beasts aren’t concerned. Damned souls suffer, but never too much. Always does it change and irritate. The tsetse flies leave welts the size of a fist.

  I grew up hunting in rural New Jersey, when it was rural. A stint as a stockbroker bored me, and I turned back to hunting. Once bitten by the Africa bug, I’d never left. I had been a game officer, writer, and professional hunter, and I still was, sort of. At least I wasn’t Bowlegged Bwana, the taxidermist. In life, he’d mounted animals. . . .

  My client this day, at least, was worthy—or was once. I can easily understand how I made this descent, with liquor and hunting and overblown stories. “Nonfiction,” the spines said. Nonfiction they were. Dramatic elaboration, however, is apparently a sin. Or it might have had something to do with that bar bet in Nairobi...

  Mr. Roosevelt, of course, had done any number of things worthy of hell, politics among them. He’d also kept his Earthly persona in hell, and was still grounded in the early twentieth century, as I’m grounded in the latter half.

  Given my druthers, I’d carry a good double rifle in .470 Nitro Express. I’d be perfectly comfortable with a bolt action .416 (any hellish knockoff of a Remington or Rigby), a .458 Sinchester Magnum, or even the venerable .375 Helland and Helland. What I had, though, changed randomly in the morning. Some mornings I’d awake with a .22 and wish fervently the client could shoot. I remain allergic, even after death, to being kneaded by a Jumbo’s barstool-sized legs. One morning a few days ago, a .729 Redneck dislocated my shoulder. Once it had been a crossbow. I hesitate to mention a slingshot. I’m sure that’s waiting.

  Today I had a very marginal Lee-Enfield SMLE in .303 British. Teddy, God . . . well, somebody . . . bless him, had a late 1800s double gun in 8 gauge, the bores of which were rifled deeply enough to resemble transmission shaft splines. The cartridges within compared respectably to the largest cigars to come out of Cuba.

  I just hoped it was enough for hellephant.

  We crawled through crud. It would be hard to improve on the nastiness of the African swamps, and they hadn’t, as far as terrain. There was a croc here somewhere, though, and those damned baboons that fought with sticks and branches chewed into spears. Every beast of my past jockeyed for a bite of my favorite hide.

  Close alongside me, Teddy reeked. On Earth, he’d been a teetotaler most of his life, guzzling coffee the way a 1960s muscle-car guzzled gasoline. I could smell the coffee. I could also smell the gin, or what passed for gin in hell. Added to his sweat and mine, it was a piquant vapor to churn one’s guts. I’d never been a gin drinker. I’d gladly be so now, if I could tolerate drink in hell.

  “Well, Cappy Pete, I see we have sign.” Teddy Roosevelt was a good tracker, but in this case it was easy. The hellephant had left a trail about like that of a motor home, with grass and small trees crushed and bent. We’d have to walk through a tangle atop the muck.

  “Hopefully he’s right ahead. Are you in good shape to shoot that cannon, Teddy?”

  “Right as rain,” he slurred as he staggered. “Point me at our worthy trophy.” The muzzles swung dangerously past my face, looking like two bores of the Lincoln Tunnel.

  Then I heard a rumbling rustle to our left. I swung that way and something about the way the grass moved clued me in. I shifted my aim down, fingered the trigger, and as soon as I saw that triangular mark of death, I shot, cycled and shot again. I only had seven rounds in the Smelly, but crocoviles are no easier to kill than their earthly counterparts.

  I was blown off my feet, deafened and blinded: Teddy had cut loose with the shoulder cannon. Nausea gripped me, and I tumbled, got a knee beneath myself and gingerly rose up just as he snapped open the breech, the empty brass arcing over his shoulder with a POUNK while the sulfurous smoke wafted past to worsen my plight.

  “We got him, Cappy Pete!” Teddy announced. I hate being called that. It makes me sound like a comic strip character. My surname is Capstick. It’s a minor irritation, but of course, I am powerless to change it.

  Looking down, I saw we had indeed got the reptile. My two bullets had removed most of its brain pan. Teddy’s artillery shell had almost severed its neck. “A fine pair of boots and a nice case he’ll make.”

  I strongly doubted it. Though the beast’s skin would certainly suffice, being the size of an Austin Helly, it was unlikely the machinations of hell would permit Teddy luggage and good footwear. Then again, who knew? I was wearing a reasonably effective hell-made version of Rhodesian Army combat boots. This eon, at least, my feet suffered only wet, rot, ringworm and aches—but no blisters.

  Despite having been brained and cleft, the crocovile corpse still twitched. Real crocs do that. Here, I was sure it wouldn’t reanimate. At least not today. But I backed away quickly, drawing Teddy with me.

  “Leave him for the bearers,” I advised. “We must pursue the hellephant.”

  “Right you are!” Teddy snuffled through his impressive moustache and led the way.

  I don’t like clients to do that, but he was Roosevelt and this was my eternal damnation. What did it matter?

  Leaving the wiggling corpse, we trudged along the one-lane trail left by the Hellfrican Jumbo.

  The weather had shifted to hot, such as even Africa never knew. Salty sweat trickled into my eyes. My khaki collar abraded and begrimed my neck. Even more than the bourbon, I miss showers. In this eternity, I’ve had no bathing except in rain, usually shivery frigid.

  After much trudging, Teddy slowed, extended an arm and whispered, “I do believe I see a hint of the prey just ahead.”

  I looked where he pointed. Indeed I did (gratefully) see a touch of gray.

  “Slowly now,” I whispered.

  “Most certainly.” He very carefully broke the action of his double, ensured it was loaded, eased it closed and slid the safety off. We advanced in the high steps so beloved of comedians and cartoonists that nevertheless reduce noise and trace. The growth had been knocked down, but it wasn’t dead and would still rustle and crack.

  We inched forward with a favorable breeze in the miasmic humidity. Within a few feet I could smell the animal’s exudate, pungent, earthy and one of the least unpleasant things in Hellfrica.

  It smelled off, though; different than usual. The management were changing things again, for any reason or no reason.

  Closer. The hellephant was hidden by two scrubby trees and whipsaw grass, but I could gauge its size. It was a smaller one.

  “Not quite what we’re looking for,” I murmured to Teddy. “Best to bypass this one and look for another, or a herd.”

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “Perhaps—”

  That was when he stepped in a rut, twisted over on his ankle, and sprawled.

  The brute was thirty yards away, but they don’t need hearing aids. It rose up on what passed for tiptoe, turned in its own length, and charged.

  Then I realized why the smell had been off. It was not a hellephant. That long, oversized spike on its snout made this clear: it was a hellefino.

  Reaching with my left hand across my body, I tugged at Teddy while trying to steady the rifle over that forearm with my right. There wasn’t a chance I could kill it, even if it stood still, with such an anemic caliber weapon intended for use on Indian peasants, Frenchmen and the occasional German.

  The lumbering giant was charging, snorting breath like a locomotive building up steam, legs pumping and shaking the ground with its own stampede.

  “Run, lad!” Teddy shouted, fumbling his huge rifle up over his knee. I saw then that his ankle was bent at an angle rarely seen on Earth, and surmised he was about to meet the Undertaker.

  “Run!” he shouted again, balancing the barrels.

  I stepped back, hoping to confuse or distract
the monster, and mayhap that “rear-quartering brain shot” used by Karamojo Bell might work, if I got lined up right.

  Teddy touched off one barrel, which would have laid a lesser man prone. Through the pounding drum of the repercussion, I watched as he shrugged, snorted, and fired again.

  The first massive lead slug battered the hellefino between the eyes, tearing a furrow in its skull but missing its squirrel-sized brain. As on Earth, the only thing that might be stupider than one of these things would be two of them.

  The second round smashed through its throat with a splatting gurgle, and I’m sure I saw bone erupt as its spine was blown out the back. That made two impossible shots: from the ground, over a damaged leg, through the head and throat of a charging ungulate packing more power and less sensitivity than a Mack truck.

  The brute piled up like a cross between a runner sliding into home and a wreck on Turn Three at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The hellefino rolled, bounced; crashed down, crushed Teddy, and made two more tumbles before it stopped in a roil of dust, shuddering in an earthquake of dead meat.

  While alive, I never lost a client. In hell . . . I’ve had many fine conversations with Mr. Roosevelt, and they all seem to end the same.

  I sighed, rose and dusted myself off, little the worse for wear, considering. I was scratched, bruised, sore, scorched and bit, but alive.

  The illusionary sun was melting and dripping into the Limpoopoo. I limped toward it and the hunting camp. I’d’ve killed for a Land Rover or Land Cruiser, but why would the powers of hell allow me even that creaking, spine-breaking creature comfort?

  I awoke in the morning feeling hung over and raw, though, of course, I’d had nothing to drink. I get all the pain and none of the pleasure. My throat was sandpapery from too many cigarettes I hadn’t smoked. Breakfast sizzled on the fire, but I’d have to be much hungrier to eat it. I’d been a big fan of impala liver and scrambled ostrich egg while alive; but here, eggs are half-developed and I swear the impalas are cirrhotic. After the first thousand days or so, the dish lost its charm.