Standing Before Hell's Gate

by William Alan Webb

  “Listen up, jarheads. It’s time to earn your pay.”

  “Yut!”

  “We’re moving east toward Gallup, New Mexico. That’s about 45 miles east of here…” A low hum in the crowd made him pause. “What the fuck is going on back there?”

  “Sorry, Loot,” somebody called out. “L.C. Esserton is from Gallup.”

  “No shit? Esserton, when we’re ten klicks from the objective, put on a headset. I may have questions. The rest of you, sitfu!” He pronounced it sitfoo, Marine slang for shut the fuck up. “First Platoon is point, as usual. We stick to the interstate unless there’s a sinkhole. The rest of Dog follows us and is split on both flanks. Piccaldi and Snowtiger on my six. Any questions?” Nobody raised their hand. “Oscar Mike in five.”

  #

  Chapter 33

  Let me tear my eyes out,

  Lest I see her shade…

  Murder defendant in a Roman trial on why he killed his wife, circa 80 BC

  Truckee, California

  1126 hours, April 27

  Green Ghost leaned over the railing of the overpass of California Highway 89 over Interstate 80. Once upon a time, the roadway beneath them had hummed with thousands of cars either heading west to Sacramento or east to Reno, but the reek of burning oil and rubber had long since been replaced by the sweet smell of pines, and while once the honks of angry drivers and roaring engines would have made it hard for him and Jane to talk without shouting, now the only background noise came from the rushing waters of the Truckee River.

  “So this is Truckee,” he said. “Doesn’t look like much.”

  “What does?” Jane said, hands propped on the steel rail beside him. “I’ve scraped this place more times than I can count.”

  “Find anything good?”

  “A lot of ammo. I must’ve pulled fifty thousand rifle rounds out of this place, mostly thirty caliber.”

  “Hunting rifles.”

  She nodded.

  “Good to know. Where is it now?”

  “At my place.” She giggled, but not loud enough for him to hear. “I scraped the hand pump in my house here, too. Want me to show it to you?”

  He turned to her, considering the question, but then realized she’d been flirting and blushed. Setting his jaw, he turned to face the other way. Then his body stiffened.

  “Don’t be like that,” she said, trying to stop laughing. “I—”

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her down. Using his head, he indicated a line of trees one hundred yards to their right. “Somebody down there,” he said.

  Jane’s demeanor instantly changed. Crouching behind the concrete pillar into which the rails were mounted, both scanned the tree line.

  “You sure it wasn’t a bear?” she said.

  “Do bears have red hair?”

  “What color red?” There was an undercurrent of concern to her question.

  “I guess more orange than red.”

  “Bright orange? Big all the way around?”

  He cut his eyes to her. “Yeah… friend of yours?”

  “I think it’s Kody.” She cupped a hand to one side of her mouth and yelled. “Kody, is that you? It’s Jane!”

  Green Ghost felt a strange sensation in his stomach, which he realized was jealousy. Who the hell was Kody? He wanted to ask but that wasn’t his way, so he gritted his teeth so he didn’t blurt out the question.

  Which he did anyway, and then cursed himself.

  “Boyfriend?” Jane said. “Why do you care?” Before he could answer, she went on. “Her name is Kodiak Kate, so no, she’s not my boyfriend. Or girlfriend, either.”

  He looked at the sky, trying to think of how to respond, but was saved by a response from Kodiak Kate.

  “Jane! You bow-legged whore, where the flaming fuck are you?”

  “She’s a friend?” he said.

  Jane giggled again, and he assumed it was at his discomfort. “Kate has to be experienced to be understood.”

  They stood and Jane led her horse to the far end of the overpass, but Green Ghost couldn’t bring himself to follow immediately. He’d only survived the last fifteen years by constant wariness, so instead he kept his rifle at the ready, just in case. And when he saw what pushed through some underbrush, he almost opened fire out of sheer reflex.

  The figure stood at least seven feet tall and he guessed its weight at more than 300 pounds. Bright orange hair ringed a face with skin the color of dark chocolate. Kody’s shoulders would have earned her an invitation to the NFL combine, while a hunting rifle looked like a toy in her fist.

  “Girl!” She wrapped arms clad in animal-skin sleeves around Jane, who seemed to disappear in her grasp. Was this the Bigfoot Jane had alluded to? If so, he might have to change his opinion on their existence.

  During introductions, Kody winked at Jane and said loud enough for him to hear, “He’s cute… is he yours?”

  The woman stood a foot taller than him and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds, so when Jane answered, “Not yet,” he instinctively backed up two paces. Both women laughed and walked down the highway toward the town, leaving him to wonder what had just happened.

  They turned right at a traffic circle, where rusted signs identified the street as Donner Pass Road. Fifty yards away, and hidden behind a line of scrub pines fronting another stand of mature Ponderosa pines, a driveway curved back out of sight. Green Ghost recognized brick shrubbery planters lining it on both sides. After a short distance, the driveway branched off to either side and circled around a stand of trees. Behind the greenery was a large building with a partially caved-in ceiling and a sign that read TRUCKEE DONNER RECREATION AND PARKS DEPARTMENT COMMUNITY CENTER. Green Ghost followed Kody’s massive backside down the cracked driveway, but stopped by a huge pile of scat. It wasn’t bear or deer and appeared to be canine, but if it was, that was one big-ass dog.

  “Kody!” he called. When she turned, he pointed at it. “Coyote?”

  She came back a step, took two seconds to study it, and shook her head. “Wolf. They get big around here.”

  “A wolf left that?”

  Kody’s eyes fairly sparkled at his shock. “Probably not the pack leader, either. They can top 200 pounds.” She pulled up a leather sleeve to expose long scars on her left forearm. “Got that about ten years ago. A bitch went for my throat and I got my arm up just in time. While she was chewing on me, I got out a .357 Magnum and stuck it down her mouth. Now I wear her when it’s cold. So trust me when I tell you, by the time you hear them it’s too late.”

  He picked up the smell of smoke well outside the building, but it wasn’t the acrid smoke of a house fire or a forest fire; it reminded him of cooking meat. His mouth watered at the thought of fresh venison or sheep. They tied the horses so they could graze a large patch of grass as well as low-hanging pine boughs. Green Ghost took the water buckets and Kody showed him to a nearby stream that emptied into the river. While he filled up the buckets, Jane took off the saddles and gear. Once he’d lugged the water back so the horses could drink, they headed for the double doors where Kody had disappeared.

  Inside the building, they found Kody’s camp in a hallway where the roof hadn’t fallen in, although from the way it sagged Green Ghost thought that might happen any minute. Nevertheless, the cinderblock walls and solid steel security doors at either end of the hall made a secure location; they wouldn’t have to worry about sleeping that night.

  Smoke poured out of a large metal box with a door in the front, escaping through a cracked window high in one wall that kept the corridor from filling up and asphyxiating them. He looked for clues as to what kind of animal Kody had in the smoker but saw none.

  “Boar,” she said, anticipating him. “Plural. They’re all over the place. And lucky for you that’s the second batch. You like pork, soldier boy?”

  “I’m from Memphis,” he said, before remembering that he wasn’t supposed to reveal details about his life. Except… except that world no longer existed. Nobod
y cared who he was in the here and now, or where he came from.

  “Is that supposed to mean something?” Kody said, looking at Jane, who shrugged.

  “Memphis is… Memphis was known for its pork barbeque. Ribs, pulled pork, shoulder, there was even a festival on the banks of the Mississippi River every year. Everybody ate it.”

  Kody pulled out a package lined with, of all things, aluminum foil, and filled with strips of smoked pork that looked like bacon. She passed them out and when he tasted it, he realized it was bacon. Rarely had anything tasted so good.

  The room warmed quickly under the spring sun. With a full stomach, he began to relax and felt sleepy. Meanwhile, Kody had stripped off everything but pants and shirt of soft deer hide. That was when he realized that, despite her immense size, Kody had no fat on her body, only heavy, well-defined muscles under her dark skin. Despite being as large as the rest of her, Kody’s breasts were high on her chest. Where the orange hair came from, he couldn’t even guess.

  Sitting with her back against a metal desk with no legs, Kody pointed at Green Ghost like a customer selecting a lobster in a seafood restaurant. “Where did you find this tasty piece?” she asked Jane.

  For the next five minutes, he listened as Jane filled her in on him, the battle at Sierra, the parachute drop, and what he’d told her about Overtime. The room grew warmer and they all began to sweat. As Jane finished her story, Kody reached up, fiddled with her hair, and then removed a huge orange wig, revealing a scalp covered with the barest hint of stubble. It didn’t bother Jane but Green Ghost’s eyes widened.

  Kody shook the wig. “Keeps me from getting shot,” she said. “This far south, there’s other scrapers and hunters out there, and I know I look like a bear, so…”

  “Like an orange hunting vest,” he said.

  “Yeah, ’cept I can’t find one that fits. So you’re a soldier boy from the past, is that what Jane told me?”

  “Something like that.”

  Instead of immediately questioning him, or being suspicious, Kody rubbed her chin. “Huh… that’s weird. Do you know them navy boys up in Alaska?”

  Green Ghost sat up straight, leaning forward and suddenly tense. “Navy boys?”

  #

  Chapter 34

  Who’d a thunk it?

  Mortimer Snerd

  Painted Desert, Arizona

  1202 hours, April 27

  The chill night air gave way to the warming of day earlier and earlier as spring moved toward summer. Three hundred feet above the desert floor, Sara Snowtiger had greeted the new sun as she did on warm days, totally nude and sitting cross-legged on the ledge in front of her cave. The isolation of the place allowed her to put aside her innate modesty and enjoy the wind on her body and the sun on her bronzed skin. As the daylight grew, she moved back into the cave far enough to escape the sun’s harsh intensity.

  With eyes closed, she let her mind wander the lands below. She felt a kinship with living things that others couldn’t understand, or didn’t believe. For example, she truly believed that somewhere out there her lost twin sister walked the land in physical form of some sort. There was no denying the energy she felt. She also knew that Sevens had returned to Central Arizona. The evil of their intentions couldn’t be hidden from someone like her… with a start, she felt them now, and they were close and getting closer.

  Still naked, she stood and shaded her eyes. Far-sight was something she couldn’t explain to anyone who didn’t have it, but with it she saw a small group of horsemen galloping her way, perhaps a mile distant. And right behind them rode a much larger group, and Sara knew those were Sevens. What was worse, all of them were headed right for the isolated peak where she lived.

  What to do? She possessed no weapons and wouldn’t have known how to use them even if they were present. That was not who she was. After slipping on her robe, she did the only thing she knew to do; she tried to sense who that first group of horsemen might be.

  On hands and knees, she pressed her forehead to the dusty rock ledge. Eyes closed, she tried to sense the people coming, who they were and what their intentions might be. She acted on both instinct and intuition, as she had always done. With a sudden jump to her feet, she dragged the heavy rope ladder over to the edge and dropped it, as she’d done so many times for Govind.

  Six men pulled up at the base of the escarpment and dismounted, their weapons at the ready. The Sevens were about half a mile away when one of the first group rode away, leading the other horses by their reins. The five remaining men started the long climb up the mountainside. They hurried, obviously knowing, as she did, that if they were caught still climbing when the Sevens got within range, they would die. But it still seemed to take forever.

  Why were they going so slow? Their pursuers, who she instinctively felt had evil intent, drew close. It was only when the first man passed the halfway point that she realized they weren’t young, but in fact were her age. All had white hair, if they had hair at all. That meant they had all lived through the Collapse, just as she had. The first man’s long face was lean as he peered up at her, and a half-grown beard stood out snowy white against skin the color of burgundy leather, further reddened by the effort of climbing.

  Snowtiger stared down at them until strong hands pulled her out of the line of fire. It was the first man who’d come up, the tallest of them. Then he arched his back to make it easier to breathe.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but you coulda got shot,” he said. Leaning forward, hands on knees, he gulped a few breaths and then unslung his rifle. “You may want to… step into the cave… before… before…” He stopped and squinted at her. “Snowtiger?”

  She took two steps backward until she felt the cliff wall. “How do you know me?” All of her senses were on alert, yet she felt no ill intent coming from the man.

  “I was at your award ceremony with everybody else… but you look different, older. Your hair’s partly gray… what are you doing here?”

  “Skip!” yelled a voice behind him. “They’s about to start shootin’!”

  The big man helped a second, smaller man up onto the ledge and then he took aim at the Sevens, cracking off two shots. The small one helped the others up and soon all five were on the ledge. Someone pulled up the rope ladder. They all took carefully aimed shots at the twenty or so riders milling about below, and knocked three out of the saddle. They stopped firing when the Sevens rode out of rifle range, pausing about a quarter mile away. Within minutes, the Sevens were setting up camp for the night.

  Retreating within the cave, the men sprawled and panted, letting the ambient coolness dry up their sweat. Each man had a canteen and drank from it. Satisfied everyone was all right, the big man walked over to Sara. She stood near the entrance, wearing a defiant expression that promised if they tried to rape her she’d go over the cliff and die rather than submit. In her heart, however, she felt no intuition of danger from them.

  Once again the man who seemed to be in charge studied her face. He scratched his jaw and then shook his head. “You’re her, but you’re not her. What’s going on, Lara?”

  “Lara? Why did you call me that?”

  “Ain’t that your name?”

  “No, my name is Sara.”

  “I’ll be damned… you sure enough look just like her.”

  “Did you know this Lara? Who are you?”

  “Did I know her? Not until recently. My name’s Dennis Tompkins. I’m a general in the U.S. Army, although I admit I don’t look much like one. I do know your sister. She’s a sniper in our Marine battalion, won the Medal of Honor last year. Saved all of our butts.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “I don’t understand this.”

  “She’s still alive?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She almost died last year, but the doctors said a miracle saved her. She’s somewhere in New Mexico right now, I think. You look enough like her to be her mother, or maybe even a twin, although…”

  “I’m older than her.”

/>   “So you are related?”

  Sara slumped to the ground, staring at nothing, the way Tompkins had seen men look after too many days in battle. The original name for that condition had been shell shock.

  When Sara Snowtiger spoke again, it was in a soft voice that was hard to hear over the wind. “She’s my twin sister.”

  #

  Tompkins lay flat on the shelf of rock in front of the cave, staring at the two campfires half a mile away in the desert night.

  “This has got a familiar feel to it,” Thibodeaux said, lying next to him.

  “You thinking about that night when we rescued those women?”

  “I am for a fact. All them Sevens was down below, waitin’ for dawn, just like tonight. I didn’t like that much, me.”

  “We’d all be dead if it wasn’t for you, John. Hell, if it wasn’t for you, the whole Operation Overtime might still be in Long Sleep.”

  “You keep on sayin’ that, Skip, an’ I appreciate it an’ all, but you cain’t say that for a fact.”

  “Oh, I think it’s safe to say it as a fact. But I did learn a lesson that night and I’m fixin’ to do the same thing I did then. General Angriff made me bring a radio in case we ran into trouble and I think this qualifies.”

  “I reckon it does. I’ll fetch it for ya.”

  #

  Overtime Prime

  1208 hours

  Morgan Randall opened the door to her parents’ quarters, letting in her sister Nikki and Nikki’s boyfriend, Joe Ootoi. They stopped just inside.

  Nikki spoke in an urgent whisper. “Is there news about Joe?”

  “I’m glad I caught you before you left,” Morgan said. “It’s not about Joe… I’m sorry to mess up your hike... Mom and Cindy are both really sick. I wanted to call Dad, but Mom won’t let me. I thought maybe you could talk to her.”

  “Me? This really isn’t my thing, Morgan, and besides, while I love Mom, she’s not really my mother, she’s yours. What makes you think she might listen to me?”