The Last Pilgrims

by Michael Bunker

  He prodded the wound with his fingers, before rolling his eyes and dabbing at the blood with a cloth he kept in his pocket. “I guess it’s more beer and garlic for me.”

  David pulled back his collar and examined the wound. “It’s not too serious. Through and through; but as soon as this battle is over, a hospital will be set up in the barn, and you are to immediately report to Ana for treatment.”

  Gareth painfully worked the shoulder before replying. “Certainly, David, I will do as you say.”

  The assault on the Wall Ranch was over almost as soon as it started. The guns in the pillboxes poured down incessant and deadly fire on what was left of the Aztlani forces. David and Gareth fed ammo to the gunners and reminded them to let the barrels cool when they got too hot.

  After a few minutes of mind-rending fire, the militia gunmen pointed down the hill and Gareth could see white flags flying all along the Aztlani lines.

  The dead bodies were piled thick and high as David and Gareth rode out among the surrendered forces. They looked around, as the men had thrown down their weapons and were huddled together now at the place that had been the center of the assault.

  He estimated the remnants of the once great Aztlani army to be at less than 300 men, all of whom were now wide-eyed and pensive.

  Pacing back and forth on his horse before the enemy host, he glowered down on their officers with unmasked hatred, as blood dripped from his fingertips, flowing down from the wound in his shoulder.

  “Who is in command of this force?” he bellowed.

  An Aztlani Colonel stepped forward, and finally recognized his Prince. He stood there in stunned silence for a moment before dropping to his knee in reverence.

  “Stand up, dog!” he shouted. “Stand up you cowardly murderer of women and children! So you are in command of this rabble?”

  “Yes, Your Grace!”

  He paced once again the full length of the Aztlani front, and then returned to the quivering Colonel. “Command your men to pick up their arms and continue fighting! There is no surrender for you here! We are under the black flag, and you knew that before you began this murderous spree amongst the free and peaceful people of Texas!”

  “Under the rules of war, Your Grace, we surrender our army to you!” the Colonel replied.

  “Your army?!?” The anger and hatred of what Aztlan was, and what it had become, flushed through him as he withdrew his pistol and shot the Colonel through the head.

  “I’ll ask again… who is now in command of this army?!”

  Another officer sheepishly stepped forward and bowed before the Crown Prince of Aztlan. “I am, Your Grace.”

  “Command these men to take up their arms and continue the battle! We are under the black flag, and there is no surrender for you. You will all die today for your crimes” he said as he pointed across the aligned Aztlani soldiers with his pistol. “You may fight and die like men, or you will be shot down or hung like dogs! Now… take up your arms!”

  “Great Prince,” the soldier interrupted, “the day is lost. We are beaten. We must surrender. Please honorably observe the rules of war, Your Grace, and accept our unconditional surrender!”

  “Where were your ‘rules of war’ when you murdered 2000 innocent Vallenses at Comanche? Where was your honor then?”

  “We did not participate in the death of the Vallenses, Your Grace! Looters and highwaymen killed those people!”

  Gareth raised the pistol, and shot the soldier in the face. The man fell backwards and started to twitch uncontrollably on the ground.

  “Again! Who is in command of this army?!”

  “You are!” several of the Aztlani soldiers shouted.

  “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Finally, I have a correct answer! Now, as the Crown Prince of Aztlan and as commander of this army, I order you to take up your arms and fight. Alternatively, if you are a coward, you may try to flee… However, what you will not do is surrender! You have thirty seconds to comply, or you will be shot as criminals one by one!”

  Gareth rode back up the hill towards the militia lines. Seeing no way out, and desirous of ending the painful and frightening process, the Aztlani soldiers rushed to their weapons. They were cut down like weeds by the relentless punishing fire from militia guns.

  It was all over in minutes.

  The whole day would have been a smashing success, had it not been for the last news the command center received less than an hour after the final shots were fired. Militia dead were being buried, and the wounded were being hauled to the hay barn when word came that a lone Aztlani deserter had found and blown the charges on the Penateka Dam. The one flaw in the plans for the day was that no one had remembered to remove and secure the charges on the dam.

  As the wounded were being treated, and as the spoils of war were being collected into militia wagons, billions of gallons of precious water—the lifeblood of hundreds of Vallensian farmers and fishermen—washed downstream as a fifty-foot wall of water flooded farms and villages, unceremoniously removing the bodies of the dead from the battlefield at the base of what had been the Penateka Dam.

  Chapter 18 - English

  As Pano worked above him to re-seal the entrance and to obscure any easy recognition of the existence of the tunnel, English clung to the ladder—an old, partially rotted contraption that clung precariously to its title only by the strength of some rusted nails and wishes.

  The time he spent in the British Special Air Service as a young man taught him to remain calm even when in peril. However, no amount of training will make you feel comfortable or safe while in pitch darkness, suspended over a hole of unknown depth, clinging to rotted boards nailed together by uneducated drug mules over two decades ago.

  About 15 feet down, all light disappeared into inky darkness and the ladder swung freely, hanging by hope and tradition more than by any really tangible reason. When Pano finished hiding the entrance to the hole, even the faint light from the top disappeared and the absolute darkness overwhelmed them.

  “How far down to the bottom of this hole?” he whispered.

  “It reaches all the way to the bottom, boss,” Pano said, sarcastically.

  “Idiot!” he muttered. “I’m about to plummet down this shaft, and I’d like to know how long I’ll fall before I’m crushed into a bloody heap at the bottom… if there is one.”

  Pano exhaled loudly. “If you hang from the bottom rung you should be able to touch the ground… unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless a portion of the ladder has fallen off, then you might, indeed, plummet to your death.”

  At about 25 feet down, he reached the bottom rung and lowered himself cautiously until he felt his feet scrape the ground at the bottom of the hole. He dropped down and blindly moved to one side, feeling for the tunnel wall with his hands.

  When, at last, Pano joined him, English had a million questions rushing through his brain.

  “Ok, I’m going to ask you a series of questions. If you smart off, I’m going to choke you out, do you understand?”

  “Yes, boss. Of course.”

  “Good, we understand each other. First question… what do we do for light?”

  “Well, we could go back up, because there is plenty of light up there; but instead I recommend we use a torch. I’ve got one right here.”

  “A flashlight?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand what you are saying,” Pano said.

  “You have a torch?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Would you light it, or turn it on, or whatever you intend to do with it?”

  He could hear some struggling and muted motion as Pano readied the torch, then he heard a flint strike and a flame quickly lit up the area.

  “Excellent,” he said, “so now we are burning up the oxygen down here, which leads to my second question. Is there any oxygen down here?”

  “Yes, boss. There are large pipes every so often that reach to the surface, providing oxygen supply o
ver the entire length of the tunnel. Most are hidden in dilapidated structures and rubble or under rock piles on the surface.”

  “Ok, great. Next question!” He knelt down to feel the ground and examined the tunnel as best as he could with the flickering light that was available. “We have a ten mile trek ahead of us, and all of it is underground. How safe is this tunnel? Are there any gas deposits that are going to blow us up? Have any bears or rattlesnakes taken up residence down here? What about looters or deserters? Would the structure hold, or cave in? Does anyone else know about this tunnel?”

  “Easy, boss; that’s more than one question.” Pano looked at him with a grin on his face. “First, let me say—and I mean no sarcasm or disrespect—that going back that way,” he pointed towards the surface, “will get you killed with 100% probability. Head rolling on the ground, neck-spewing blood everywhere—the whole nasty mess that goes along with beheadings. However… going this way,” he said as he indicated down the tunnel, “who knows? Maybe death, maybe not. So, I’ll tell you what. Let’s get moving and I’ll fill you in along the way.”

  “Ok, Pano… you have the torch. You lead the way.”

  Pano took the lead, but kept a manageable pace, considering that they had a good half a day’s walk ahead of them.

  “This tunnel was built during the last decade of the 20th century, before the unprecedented violence that led to the border becoming one of the most violent and deadly places on Earth. It was managed on both ends by federal forces working in conjunction to maintain the monetary benefits and the necessary edifice of the so-called ‘War on Drugs’.

  “Although governments and protected cartels brought drugs into the United States on aircraft, boats, and even submarines, this tunnel was still one of the primary routes for ‘official’, or, ‘white’ drugs in the world. ‘White drugs’ were those that were imported illegally by government agencies, shell organizations, and some crooked local officials to finance and support black operations and the secret agendas of the power elite.

  “One of the largest ‘white drug’ operations in the world had been exposed in the late 1980s. Members of the CIA and other covert operations agencies were exposed by some suicidal media types to be flying drugs into what was then Arkansas and a few other centrally located states. The contract mules usually flew into small rural airports where they would hand the drugs off to selected criminals, who would sell those drugs in the inner cities in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, etc. The operations brought in billions of dollars for black operations around the world, and kept up an increasing need for higher taxes and government spending on the War on Drugs.

  “After that operation was blown, it was decided that replicating it would be too complicated, it had too many moving parts, and was too easily exposed. So, not long after that, this tunnel was constructed to streamline and simplify the system.

  “As cover, the US and Mexican governments would ‘discover’ hundreds of drug tunnels in the opening decades of the 21st century; and they would be reported on widely. That gave citizens the mistaken idea that these types of operations were temporary, ineffective, and subject to exposure.

  “All of that aside… when the collapse came, with everything else going on in the world; the eradication of most borders; the end of the drug trade; the death of most of the interested parties; the tunnel was abandoned and, soon, it wasn’t even a memory.”

  “So how did you know about it?”

  “That, boss, is a meaty mystery, wrapped in an enigma tortilla, smothered in creamy top secret sauce. It will, however, become clear enough in time.”

  “You aren’t going to tell me?”

  “As I said, you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Something tells me that I might have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  “The tunnel does run both ways, boss,” Pano retorted, dragging his finger across his throat, simulating a cut by a knife.

  In a movement so fast that Pano didn’t even have time to react, English seized the diminutive assistant by the throat and lifted him clean off of the ground, slamming him into the wall of the tunnel.

  “Give me one reason that I shouldn’t just snap your neck and leave you here to rot!” he growled.

  Pano’s face turned red, and he struggled to speak, his feet dangling helplessly in the air. “Because…,” he grunted, “the people waiting for us… at the end of the tunnel… will be very unhappy if I am not with you.”

  He slowly lowered Pano back to the ground, releasing his grip. “I suspect you need to start being more forthcoming with me, Pano, if you don’t want me to go ahead and just risk their displeasure.”

  “Sheesh, boss! Lighten up! We need to get you another tunic.”

  “How about you just tell me what is going on?”

  “There is only so much that I can tell you, boss,” Pano said, rubbing his neck, trying to regain his composure. “I assure you, that the people who wanted me to get you out of La Chimenea Castle are very interested in you, and they might be able to help you get whatever it is you want. You are just going to have to be patient. If they wanted you dead, you’d be back there, and you’d already be a foot shorter.”

  “You are the one who is too short to be a spy.”

  “And you are too grumpy and neurotic to be a knight.”

  The tunnel was tall enough that they could stand upright, but the feeling of claustrophobia increased with every step they made. About 6 feet wide at the base, the tunnel was reinforced along most of its run with concrete, and about every 50 feet or so, there were heavy supports made of steel or thick, wooden beams. Conduit with electrical cable running through it was attached along the roof, and there were lights—long out of service—evenly spaced about 20 feet apart throughout the whole length of the tunnel.

  Without access to electric lights, Pano and English relied on the burning torch, and, as insurance, several more torches had been pre-placed at regular intervals along the way.

  English had some experience working underground from his early days with the Scots Guards before he had done his tour in SAS. The Guard unit he was assigned to primarily served as a ceremonial unit, but they were also in charge of security in and around many of the prominent royal and governmental facilities in London. Their function often required that they work in ‘Underground London’, securing the tunnels, tubes, and underground railway facilities—some hundreds of years old—throughout the city, during state functions.

  The Guards had taught him patience, respect, and the importance of form and tradition. However, his time in SAS had taught him to survive, to improvise, and to adapt. Unhappily, no one had taught him how to maintain hope and faith in a world that seemed to be collectively flying by the seat of its pants. In his current world, the things he despised the most—disorder and chaos, interspersed heavily with tyranny and despotism—seemed to rule.

  In the service, when he had worked in the tunnels under London, he may not have appreciated the mission, but he trusted in the system of order and honor he and his fellow soldiers lived by. In battle with the SAS, he may not have thought much about the politics and agenda behind his country’s mission, but he absolutely relied on discipline and duty in order to stay both alive, and sane.

  Over two decades ago, if he had been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or Iran, his name would have been inscribed on the SAS regimental clock tower at Sterling Lines. Because of that, surviving a mission was referred to as “beating the clock.” Oh, how ironic were those words today! He had indeed beaten the clock… and now here he was, centuries in the past, trying to find some way to get back home… whatever that meant now. He figured that the old regimental clock was probably gone now. The mind reels, he thought.

  Inscribed on the base of that regimental clock at Sterling Lines was a verse from the The Golden Road to Samarkand by James Elroy Flecker:

  We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

  Always a little further: it may be

>   Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow,

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

  He was beginning to realize that his hope was not in a return to some old and archaic sense of militaristic order, rooted in the inordinate reliance on enforced and inorganic systems designed to replace a more basic and natural life. That life now seemed so artificial. He thought of the Vallenses and all of their predecessors—the meek of the earth. For thousands of years, Kingdoms, princes and predacious religious authorities have tried to stomp out any peaceful people that—enabled and emboldened by their simple faith, their simple nature, and their work ethic—refused to become dependent on those same authorities.

  He thought about those peaceful farmers and ranchers in the Vallensian lands. He knew that anger and hatred—the foul product of the dark and bitter hearts of men—would be relentless in their attempts to root them out of the land and erase them from the world.

  The Vallenses were the real pilgrims… maybe they were even the last pilgrims. It was they who were always moving across the mountains and even the angry and glimmering sea if needs be, in order to find a place where they could live peaceably by the dictates of their God and their consciences. To English, they seemed to be the only truly free men—even amidst their bondage, struggles, and persecution.

  Perhaps the order and peace that he sought could be found in helping those who so often would refuse to help themselves. Maybe he should just go start a farm and, in this way, return to that time of his life that held the best and most fruitful of all of his memories.

  From his earliest days as a military man, he had always considered his uniform to be the last and best representation of the order and symmetry of life he had learned on his parents’ farm. Whatever difficulties or hardships there were in farm life, they were made understandable and even enjoyable by the knowledge that the order of nature, and the right management of that nature, provided for and satisfied the fundamental human need for structure, order and a connection with the creation. Somehow, maybe sub-consciously, his mind had latched onto his tunic as a thread or connection with all that he had lost.