Standing Before Hell's Gate

by William Alan Webb

  The cut-stone stage doubled as a speaker’s dais for group meetings, trials, elections, and the like. Much like the Clam Shell at Operation Overtime, rows of stone bench seats marched up the eastern face of the mountain, with room for at least five hundred people. Another two hundred could stand at ground level below the stage.

  Rainwater greeted everyone who entered but kept his demeanor serious. As much as he personally wanted to get into the field and eject the Sevens from their lands, being the leader meant that he had to consider all possibilities for the people he led, including whether they should defend Shangri-La at all. He knew how they’d answer that question, of course. They’d spent decades readying for this very moment and felt confident in their defenses. But this time, the Sevens had come in much greater strength than anyone had ever anticipated they could.

  Ten others joined Rainwater on the rostrum, the elected representatives of the ten tribes, tribes being used in the ancient Roman sense of the word. The citizens were equally and arbitrarily divided ten ways to elect one man or woman to represent them in debates and in the enacting of laws. If it came to a tie, it was up to Rainwater, as the elected president, to break it.

  When citizens filled most of the seats and the angle of the sun suggested there were less than three hours of daylight left, Rainwater nodded to a large woman standing below the rostrum. She lifted a dented bugle and blew three shrill blasts. The chatter of the crowd died off.

  Rainwater lifted his arms to quiet the few people still talking. “Friends, time is short, so listen to me. The day we have prepared for has come. The Sevens have a large army at Albuquerque and we must decide what to do, whether to stay and defend our homes, or flee and wait for them to leave. I have already sent the Ready Guard south to warn us of imminent attack, and to block all roads and passes leading to Shangri-La, so we have a brief time to discuss what to do in the face of this crisis. What say you?”

  In the raucous manner of their typical debates, people shouted over each other for a full minute, getting out their energy before lapsing into a moderated discussion. Rainwater listened closely to the yells. His personal instinct was to fight. The people of Shangri-La had spent five decades and countless man-hours constructing clever defenses for their special sanctuary. Simply abandoning it without a fight seemed unconscionable… and yet Johnny Rainwater, the president, knew that standing and fighting could lead to the massacre of his entire people.

  The debate went back and forth for more than an hour before Rainwater decided the time had come to vote. “Any questions before the decision is cast?”

  One person stood, but when she did the entire gathering quieted. Reddish-brown skin stretched over her small, bony framework, like animal hide dried too long in the sun. Rainwater waited for the final murmurs to end before addressing her.

  “’Máá ba’litso,” he said, using her native tongue, Jacarilla Apache. It meant Mother Wolf, a sign of the universal respect she held within Shangri-La. “I would hear your words on this subject.”

  No one knew exactly how old Mother Wolf was. Some said eighty, some said a hundred, and some said even older than a hundred, but everyone agreed she’d been past her youth when the Collapse had come. Regardless, her back was as ramrod straight as if she were twenty, and her brown eyes darted this way and that, missing nothing. She rarely spoke. When she did, mothers hushed their children so as not to miss her soft words.

  “Peace is not possible with enemies at your door,” she said. “Unless you are prepared to give up the sun.”

  Then she sat down again.

  Discussion was over. Rainwater knew it and so did everyone else in attendance. So powerful were the old woman’s words that he felt the vote might be unanimous. The way it worked was that the ten tribes would tally their own votes and then pass the result on to their elected representative on the stage, quaintly named Tribunes by Ballinger when he’d set up the refuge, very much like the old voting system of the Roman Republic except without a Senate.

  As Rainwater had suspected, it was unanimous: the people of Shangri-La would fight for their homes and either win or die.

  #

  Chapter 25

  But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.

  Robert E. Howard

  Northern California

  1749 hours, April 25

  They left an hour before sunset.

  “Bring me up to date,” Green Ghost said. “What did those people tell you?”

  “I wondered if you’d ever ask. I thought maybe you were just following me.”

  Again he gave her the look she’d come to expect, deadpan expression followed by blinking. Only this time he said something. “Let’s save the repartee for after the mission, okay?”

  She wasn’t sure what repartee meant, but it sounded promising. “Okay. Those people said they had a homestead near a place called Cascade Creek. Their family had lived there since before the Collapse. What did they call it? Living off the grid? Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, it meant living without electricity or cell phones or anything like that… some people called them survivalists and made fun of them.”

  “I guess they found out who was right. Anyway, three couples lived there. The younger couple had seven children and the two couples you saw had four more who were grown, three boys and a girl. Everything worked well because they’d been there so long. They even had a family cemetery under a big tree. When the Chinese came, most of them moved farther north, but the Chinese mostly stayed around Los Angeles and to the south, until San Francisco asked the Chinese to come in and run their city.”

  “Wait, they wanted the Chinese to run San Francisco?”

  “Sure… everybody knows that.”

  “Go on.”

  “They never moved too far inland, but kept close to the coast. A few years ago, they started sending scouts into the mountains and forests of the north, and of course you know what happened when they went after Sierra. Five days ago… no, wait, six days ago, the Chinese showed up at their homestead without warning. A convoy of trucks carried soldiers who told them they no longer owned the homestead, that it now belonged to the People’s Republic of California—”

  “That still sounds like somebody’s making it up.”

  “And then this big man showed up wearing a uniform. He said his name was Adder and anybody who didn’t like being part of the PRC had fifteen minutes to leave. They couldn’t take any animals except one horse for each wagon, nor could they take any food. The only weapons they were allowed were the homemade ones. Everybody was determined to get out, but then Adder laughed and said the younger adults had to stay and work for the Chinese. When the older couples heard this, they changed their mind and wanted to stay, too, except now Adder wouldn’t let them. He said they’d have to take their chance out in the mountains. They begged me to help the ones left behind and I said I’d go see what I could do. Then I sent them on to Lake Tahoe. I’ve got a friend there who will take them in.”

  “Damn. How far is it to Cascade Creek?”

  “I don’t know exactly. We could make better time during the day, but I don’t know how far north Chinese patrols might have come.”

  “We kicked their ass pretty bad last week.”

  “How will they react to that?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  #

  Chapter 26

  Only the impossible has any real charm; the possible has been vulgarized by happening too often.

  Clark Ashton Smith

  Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  2128 hours, April 25

  Angriff lay on his bunk, reading. Twilight had darkened into full night and the only light in the tent came from his tablet, which he held a foot from his face with his right hand. The glow of the device’s e-reader mode cast shadows over his rugged features and, in his mind’s eye, he imagined that he made a frightening noir pastiche, like some grotesque villain in a story about the
Shadow. He tucked his left hand under the back of his head.

  He’d been devouring the book for the better part of an hour, a rare chance to relax and forget the world, and Voices of the Dead by John Babb was exactly the kind of thing he loved, well-researched historical fiction. It was set in Memphis, Tennessee, during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, and since the twins had been born and raised in Memphis, he’d been trying to learn more about the city. He tried not to think about its ultimate fate.

  Beside his outside tent flap hung a small square of wood for visitors to knock on. After two loud knocks his orderly, Kiki, put his head in. “Sorry to disturb you, General.”

  “It’s fine, Kiki. Is it Kona?”

  “No, sir, somebody found an old shoe with lots of holes and she’s been chewing that for the last half hour.”

  “I had a German shepherd once before, right after Mrs. Angriff and I got married, named Mack. He was a big boy, ate the linoleum floor in our kitchen… sorry, what’s going on?”

  “Major Iskold would like to speak with you, sir.”

  “Gimme a minute to put my pants on.”

  He clicked on the battle lamp next to his bunk. In addition to his ACU pants, he put the shirt on over his T-shirt and pulled on his boots, including socks, and tied them. Although not a marionette like Steeple, Angriff figured if you were going to wear part of your uniform, you might as well wear the whole thing.

  “Send her in, Kiki.”

  Even in the dim lighting, he could see the dark blotches where blood stained her uniform, and the deep lines in her face. He’d always thought of her as young, but now he realized she was older than he’d first thought. “You look tired, Alexis.”

  “I am, sir, and after this I’m headed for my sleeping bag, but I wanted to update you on the boy.”

  Angriff nodded, then nodded again, before realizing she probably couldn’t see him well enough to see the gesture. “Go ahead.”

  “His name is Nera. He’s part of what I gather are the remnants of a family or tribe here in Las Vegas. From what I could gather, all of the adults are dead and other tribes, gangs, families, it’s hard to tell exactly what the power structures are… all of the adults are either dead or badly injured. His tribe are called Zentinis.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “It did to me, too, so I pulled it up from the command computer. Giovanni Zentini was a West Coast Mafia boss who rose to power in the twenty-teens, and there were rumors he was involved in the drug trade in Nevada.”

  “So the kid is the grandson of a Mafia boss?”

  “No idea, sir. He drifted in and out of consciousness. I got the impression there’s at least three other families or tribes out there, but the only one he named he called simply the Russians.”

  “Do we know why he was shooting arrows at us?”

  She looked down. “His sister was one of the girls with the shotguns. He blames us for killing her.”

  “Did we?”

  “It’s hard to tell without an autopsy. I think the kids had invaded Russian territory looking for food or weapons when they were discovered and chased back to their own part of the city, which includes Nellis. The Zentinis are expecting a Russian attack and don’t have the weapons to fight them off any more.”

  “Thus the bow and arrows?”

  “Maybe, but I got the impression that Nera prefers a bow.”

  “Huh. Makes you wonder if maybe he knows something we don’t. Anything else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Let’s hope those Russians don’t pick tonight. It’s been a long day and I could use the sleep.”

  #

  Near Cascade Creek, California

  0415 hours, April 26

  Another bright night gave all the illumination needed to crawl close to their objective. From where he crouched in the tree line, Green Ghost could see the entire compound spread out before him, six structures, two of which appeared to be barns and another was clearly the chicken coop. A goat wandered around the buildings, while he could see cows on the far side of the cleared space, some two hundred yards away.

  He only saw one guard, seated at the entrance to what appeared to be the main house. Because the guard was leaning back against the wall, Green Ghost thought he was asleep and a quick look through his scope verified it. But he hadn’t brought the silencer for his M-4 with him when he’d parachuted into Sierra, and shooting the guard would wake up everyone else.

  Leaning close to Jane’s ear, he cupped hands to keep his whisper from traveling and being overheard. “The prisoners should be in the big house. I think the guards are in the other one, to our left. I’ll take out the guard, then we both go in and I’ll clear the house. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  The guard was about thirty yards away from their position. Green Ghost held his personal sidearm, a Sig Sauer 1911 which he’d also brought with him from the old days, in his left hand, and drew the Marine Ka-Bar fighting knife from its sheath with his right. Without NVGs, he inspected the ground by moon and starlight, looking for holes, rocks, or sticks that might cause sound. Then he carefully moved out in a crouch, stopping every five feet or so to make sure he hadn’t missed any obstacles.

  With only ten feet left, he re-holstered the pistol and covered the last ten feet in one surge. The guard was sleeping and never felt Ghost’s hand cover his mouth, or the tip of the knife slice through the left side of his neck and sever both the jugular vein and carotid artery. The man struggled as blood poured from the wound, but only for a few seconds, then he slumped to the ground. Green Ghost noticed that he was young and appeared to be Latino. He knew in his mind the term ‘Chinese’ had become a nationality and not a race, but only then did it sink in.

  After wiping his knife blade on the dying man’s uniform, he re-sheathed it and brought his rifle to the ready at his shoulder, switching on the IR sight as he did so. Waving Jane forward, he waited for her to join him and then pushed open the door to the house. The rusty hinges squealed, but Green Ghost had been taught long before that one long noise indicated confidence opening the door, like the person opening it belonged inside, whereas hesitation trying to minimize the squeal meant an effort at stealth and probably an enemy.

  He let Jane enter first while he covered the door to the other building, the one where he suspected the guards were sleeping. As he knelt in the doorway, Green Ghost heard muffled voices behind him, then shuffling and rustling. Despite the chill of the early morning air, he felt sweat trickling down his temples and the back of his neck. Like most special ops veterans, he had a built-in stopwatch in his brain that kept accurate track of the passing of time. Eventually another guard would exit the building he believed they were in, and he wanted as much distance between those people and his as possible. But it was only after three minutes had dragged by that he started to actually worry. Then he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

  “Ready,” Jane whispered.

  He nodded and stepped aside, the muzzle of his M-4 never leaving the doorway. Behind him, six distinct footstep patterns preceded a blur of people exiting the house and turning left to sprint toward the trees. One person, it sounded like a man, stumbled and cursed, but no other guards came to investigate. Then in his peripheral vision, he saw the outline of Junker Jane on his left. He felt her lips brush his ear and it felt like an electric current ran through his body.

  “When I get to the trees, I’ll cover you.”

  “Go!” he said in a hush, as much to stop the distraction of her being so near as anything else.

  She made it safely to the edge, and he could barely make out the outline of her kneeling and pointing her rifle. He knew he should leave immediately, but there was one more thing he had to do first. It was distinctly irresponsible and he knew it, but the impulse was too much to fight. Drawing his knife again, he dipped the tip in the dead guard’s congealing blood and, using it like ink with a quill pen, wrote something beside the doorway. The whole time he expec
ted to feel the burn of a bullet sizzling into his back. Once finished, he again put rifle to his shoulder and backed out in the ready position.

  “What was that all about?” Jane said.

  “I’ll tell you later. Let’s get out of here.”

  #

  Chapter 27

  The true nature of evil is it is so very casual.

  James St. James

  Malibu, California

  0631 hours, April 26

  Károly Rosos yawned and let the incoming tide lap at his toes. Deep blue tinged with purple still blurred the western horizon, but as much as he hated getting up this early, it beat the hell out of North Dakota. The clear water washed sand off his toes, reminding him of the days of his childhood before he’d become old enough to worry about his father’s operations.

  “Mr. Rosos!” He turned. The teenage boy assigned to see to his needs bounded toward him across the beach, holding the satellite phone. What was the kid’s name? He couldn’t remember and then forget about it; his name didn’t matter.

  “This had better be important,” Rosos said, even though he knew it had to be. Only two people could call him on the sat. phone, his father and his brother. Neither would do so without urgent cause.

  Trembling, the boy handed him the phone and stood waiting for further orders. When Rosos scowled at him, the boy ran back inside. Rosos laughed, rose, and let waves lap over his toes. “Károly here,” he said into the phone.

  “Is Adder with you?”

  “Good morning, brother. How nice of you to call.”

  “Cut the shit. This is important.”

  “I assumed that when you called me.”

  “Angriff is gone.”

  Rosos had been walking in the surf, but that brought him to a stop. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Angriff has left Overtime to inspect some air force base, which gives us a narrow window to get Steeple back into power there.”