This is where Kryss has her book (when it’s not in her hands!). Where are you reading After Time Ends? Send me a pic!
Wow! Top o’ the Stack!
After Time Ends
Available Now on Kindle, paperback, hardback and many other formats! (Including Apple, Smashwords, Everand, Tolino, Gardeners, Vivlio, BorrowBox, Fable, Nook, Bookshop, CloudLibrary, Overdrive and Kobo!)
Gabriel’s trumpet has sounded.
In a flash, the wicked have been swept away and only the saved are left. All aches and pains and worries are gone, but this isn’t what those left were expecting. It’s not what they had been taught.
One by one, the saved are finding themselves drawn together; in praise, in worship, in Scripture. The children aren’t children and the elderly are no longer old. There is no more sorrow and no more death.
What comes next?
And where is the Lord?
Sample passage
Clarity woke up suddenly, thinking she had heard some incredibly loud sound, but sitting up in bed with her heart pounding she couldn’t remember what it was. A car back-firing? The city’s tornado sirens? She had no idea and, if a siren, it wasn’t blaring now.
Looking to her left, she was surprised to see that the bed was empty. Had he heard the sound, too, and jumped up to go see what made it? Had someone broken in? Had something fallen somewhere in the house?
It was only then that it registered on her just how light it was outside. As she rubbed her eyes, she mumbled, “Just how late is it?” She glanced over at the clock but it’s face was dark. No numbers, nothing. She glanced up and saw that the ceiling fan wasn’t turning.
“No power,” she muttered. As she got out of bed and put on her summer robe, she assumed then that the noise she had heard was probably what had knocked out the power. Maybe someone had plowed into that transformer on 44th. That seemed the most likely, for there were frequent crashes and fender-benders on that street. How long had it been since that motorcyclist had been hit and killed? Two months? Three?
Stretching, she then walked out into the house calling, “Tim? Are you up?
“Of course he’s up,” she chuckled to herself. “If he weren’t up, he’d still be in bed.” She knew that wasn’t true, for some nights he couldn’t sleep and went out to the living room to watch TV or read and then fell asleep in the recliner.
But no voice answered in return.
Clarity glanced into the guest bedroom as she passed it, for he sometimes slept there rather than come back to bed and wake her up, but no one was there. The home office was equally bereft of occupants. “Tim?” she called again, seeing that no one was in the living room. Neither did any sounds come from the kitchen. The back deck, pleasant at that time of year, was empty as well.
It was coming on to summer, so maybe—she reasoned—he took off early for his daily walk. When she glanced out the window and saw that both cars were there, she nodded, thinking that had to be it. He just went out on his morning walk and would be back at any time. He had done that before. And while he was usually really careful about closing the front door as he left, she was betting the wind had jerked it out of his hand and that was the loud noise she had heard.
Stretching again, yawning, she went to the fridge and pulled out the milk for her cereal. Even knowing that the power was out, she was still surprised when the fridge was dark inside. She laughed at herself for that.
As she sat down to eat her bowl of frosted wheats, she noticed that Tim’s phone was still on the counter. She frowned, but not really with worry. She was always reminding him to take his phone with him when he went on walks. He had never, in all their years of marriage, needed to call her from a walk, but she always wanted him to be able to, should he need to. The truth was, she admitted, that she had always wanted the ability to call him, though that need had rarely arisen. (And the times of “need” were a loose definition of the word.)
“Oh well,” she said with a chuckle and a shrug. He would be back in a bit and she’d give him a light-hearted scolding and he would say, “I’m fine, see?” and they would both laugh at her worry.
Breakfast came and went, though, without his return. She rinsed her dishes and then headed to the bathroom. She left the bathroom door open so she wouldn’t have to shower in the dark, but she still hastened through the ablutions for some reason. “Who am I expecting to walk in?” she asked aloud, with a chuckle. The kids would all be at work by that time, so she need not worry about one of them dropping in—not that they had ever dropped in that early anyway, even when they had lived in town.
When she was dressed and he still hadn’t come back, though, she thought she ought to go look for him. Surely nothing had happened, but if something had, he had no way of calling her. She was betting he had been outside when whoever had plowed into the transformer and, like a little boy, was over there watching the police and firemen and people from the electric company take care of the business at hand.
“But there haven’t been any sirens,” she mumbled aloud. In fact, she thought to herself, I’m not hearing any traffic. The house had new, double-pane windows—put in just last year—and while they had cut down on outside noises considerably, they hadn’t eliminated them entirely. She wasn’t hearing anything, though. Normally, there would be the sound of at least one hopped-up ride on the main street a block away, or just the dull hum of traffic in general.
And it was Tuesday. Shouldn’t she have heard the trash trucks by now? And all the dogs barking at the trash trucks? Even her wonderful windows couldn’t completely eliminate that!
She decided, then, to make up the bed and, if Tim weren’t back by the time she was done, she’d go for a walk herself. She’d head for that transformer first, she determined with a smile, sure to catch all the grown-up men of the neighborhood watching the heavy machinery like little boys. Some of them with their little boys in hand.
She picked up Tim’s pillow and, beneath it, there lay his wedding ring. She picked it up curiously, noting within herself that there were no thoughts of panic or approbation. Just curiosity.
With the ring still in her hand, she pulled back the covers so as to straighten the sheets—how Tim could wrinkle the sheets for a guy who rarely ever moved once asleep!—and there were his boxer shorts. She started to reach for them, then realized they were right where they would be if—
And the ring. He often slept on his stomach—as the shorts would indicate—with his hands under the pillow. The ring was right where it would be if—
Slipping the ring into her pocket and her feet into her shoes, she rushed from the bedroom and out of the front door. Down the steps and into the yard, she looked around and …
Didn’t see another soul.
No one. That the neighborhood would contain empty front yards was not strange, for hadn’t she and Tim both remarked over the years that people just didn’t hang out on front porches anymore? Some even had furniture on their front porches—nice little matching chair and table sets—but she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen people sitting thusly. People came out of their houses just long enough to get to their cars, or go from their cars to their houses. If no one were mowing, no one was in their yard. There were lots of times when she had gone out herself and seen no one else.
But there were no cars moving along 44th, one of the city’s major arteries. And there were no sounds of cars in the distance, or airplanes. Or much of anything else. No machinery at all. No air conditioners spinning. The only sounds she was hearing were that of a few birds, maybe one distant dog barking, and the sound of a sprinkler three houses to the north.
She looked at the sprinkler and watched it spin for a moment. Just a simple, old-fashioned sprinkler on a hose. But it, the wind, the birds and that one dog were the only sounds she could hear. Now there were two dogs barking, but neither seemed frantic. Just the normal greeting of dog to dog.
And yet, she wasn’t afraid. She thought maybe she should be, but she wasn’t.
“Tim!” she called loudly, and then again.
There was no answer, from anyone.
“Maybe I’m dead,” she said, in a normal, casual voice. The thought didn’t scare her.
She was curious, though. What was going on? Where was everyone?
“Surely I’m still asleep,” she said with a laugh. “Yeah. I have to be.” She took a few steps out onto the grass of her front lawn and said, “Yeah. That’s got to be it. Doesn’t feel like a dream—feels too real—but it’s got to be a dream. If this were real, there would be stickers,” she added with a chuckle.
“What else could it be?”
She dropped to her knees and began to pray, but didn’t know what to pray for. She realized, though, that she knew what had happened and where Tim was. With perfect clarity of mind, Clarity still found herself weeping, wondering what she could have done differently, while still praising God for his sovereignty.
Available Now on Kindle, paperback, hardback! Also available on Smashwords and Nook, Kobo & more!
Where Are YOU Reading “After Time Ends”?
This is where Phil is reading “After Time Ends”. How about you?
Noiné’s Eyes – Martyr’s Fire – Book 3 available now!
Order your Kindle copy today! Click here. For the paperback, click here!
AD 5252 and all of the western world is at war.
Led by King Vykyant, a coalition of more than a dozen nations has come together to fight an evil on a far-off continent. “We will fight it there to protect our families here.”
But the families at home are not free of danger, for the fight is being waged there, too.
Thousands of soldiers marching, fighting and dying in a foreign land. People at home getting spotty information at best.
A world at war, as told through the eyes of the people on every front line.
Now available for Kindle & paperback. (Due to the length of this novel, it will not be available in hardback.)
Sample Reading
Three thousand years before, the continent had been a land with everything: verdant forests, wide rivers, harsh deserts. There had been cities and towns and beaches and places where men and women went for leisure and many places where they worked. It had been a land of mystery, and legends, and ghosts.
There had been people of education and what was called sophistication, often living just feet from those who didn’t receive those accolades. There had been people in the finest clothes, often living not so far away from people who had the barest rags, then a little further away were people who didn’t know what clothes were for and—had they known—couldn’t have imagined wearing them. Technology had existed side-by-side with stone tools.
When the first of great wars had come, the majority of the continent had remained relatively unscathed. Relative being a relative term, for there had been fights and squabbles, but almost none of the large-scale harm that had affected every other continent on the planet. Some of the survivors from other continents moved to that continent thinking it would always be that way.
When the wars returned—though in the myopic view of the future’s rear view, all the wars were one—the continent was mostly spared, though circumstances made it isolated.
The continent was still rich in many ways, but especially in tyrants and graft. Its resources were plundered and sold, leaving the majority of its population in even more poverty and want than they had been before—and they had been among the planet’s poorest back then. Its great forests were plundered not just for the wood, but for the precious metals that lay beneath, a process that had begun before the wars, then accelerated after even though the booty was just being sold to fellow residents of the continent.
But then came more wars that finally poisoned the rest of the planet. That southern continent was more protected than all the others, or so it seemed at first. Very few military strikes landed there. It was not attacked with the poisons that were levied against practically everywhere else and atmospheric conditions swirled them away. The last of the people who could escape from the other continents came to the southern continent.
They brought their wealth with them—some of which had come originally from that continent, ironically. The richest brought their own security forces with them, setting up little fiefdoms, assuming that to do so was their right even as they ran those who had been on the land for time out of mind off of it. Those so displaced headed to the already crowded cities, making life even harder—or deeper into the jungle.
And then the winds shifted. Not the political winds, but the actual winds, and the poisons everyone thought they had escaped came to the southern continent.
Millions were wiped out in just months’ time.
As in the rest of the world, those who survived, survived in pockets. Perhaps more people survived on the southern continent than on others. Some estimated that while elsewhere in the world ninety percent of the population was wiped out by the wars and their poisons, on the southern continent it was “only” eighty percent. Those who survived quickly stopped burying their dead and just threw them into the rivers or natural ravines. This exacerbated the poison, and the stench.
Technology was lost.
Commerce between the pockets was impossible.
Mankind was reduced to its most primitive state as every waking hour was spent scrabbling for food and shelter. And on that continent, in its pockets, there were more people fighting for the few resources the poisons hadn’t killed. The men and women of those lands became more vicious than in the rest of the world because they had to if they wanted to survive.
A millennium later, as the poisons dissipated and people all over the world began to venture bravely beyond the piece of ground they had known for a thousand years, there was some conflict of course, as is the nature of man. In some places there was cooperation, though, as the people met others who had goods or services they didn’t have themselves. In some cases across the globe rival pockets still spoke a semblance of the same language, but in some they were so divided they couldn’t even sign to one another. There was fighting at times, too.
The southern continent knew nothing of cooperation. For a thousand years and more, all anyone had known was a mad struggle for life amidst death and when they encountered someone they didn’t know, the first thought on every mind was challenge, and murder. Pockets of stronger people conquered pockets of weaker people, though there were no pockets of weak people. The strongest took over, killing or enslaving the weaker until only the very strongest ruled. Tin-pot dictators were overrun by tyrants, and tyrants were squashed by despots. When finally a potentate arose for a time who was over the whole continent, it was with an army of people who were only biologically men, for in reality they were animals.
Like with animals, as the leader began to show weakness, he was slaughtered by a younger, stronger, lieutenant who would then rule until the same fate befell him. And so it went. For two thousand years the plants grew back, deformed and twisted from the lingering effects of the wars, but not so deformed and twisted as the men and women who occupied the lands.
Their languages were guttural and rarely written down. Their thoughts were of conquest and survival and not worth being written. Every thought was toward evil and their own advancement.
It was only natural that the puppet who was the latest to rise to “command” of the whole continent could be easily persuaded to look beyond the continent, to the lands to the north, where it was said there were good lands and weak people who would fall easily before his blade.
Noiné’s Prayer – Martyr’s Fire – Book Two!
Available now on Kindle and in paperback and hardback!
5233 A.D.
Soldiers sent on a mission of diplomacy from their king are murdered. Was it an ambush by the mysterious enemy to the south? Did the king himself have them murdered? How did the survivors make it back alive, and will they be allowed to stay that way?
Elo has found her nephew and a family beyond her reckoning. They are numerous and friendly and share her faith … and possess technology beyond the dreams of the people on the plains. Yet it is not paradise, for beneath the surface in those cold, snowy mountains is a past no one wants to recall.
And John. He is becoming a man, with a man’s ambitions and desires, but is forever haunted by the mother he never got to know. Even if he wanted to forget her, he is constantly reminded—by seemingly everyone—that he is Noiné’s child … and her prayer.
Sample reading
“Hard to breathe up here, isn’t it?” said the older man to the younger.
The younger, in his youthful pride, had been trying not to admit to that difficulty but since the other had brought it up was less embarrassed to say, “Yes.” He wanted to say more, but at the moment he could not. He stopped and tried to fill his lungs, but was not as successful as he would have liked to have been.
The two sat down on a rock, the summit in sight but not appearing to be that much closer than the last time they had stopped. The younger man told himself he was stopping so often for the sake of the older, but in his heart he knew that he was stopping because he was out of wind.
Why?
He was pretty sure he had climbed mountains this tall before. Had they given him such trouble and he just didn’t remember it?
And how was the older man making it at all?
Maybe it was just the temperature, for it was—if not cold—brisk. And the little bits of wind that blew by seemed like they were taking away what breath he had.
“Not much further,” said the older man, standing up and gesturing towards the summit so tantalizingly close.
As the younger man stood up, he asked himself just how old the older man was. Fifty? Sixty? He had been told that such numbers didn’t mean much, and had met men and women both who were much older than those numbers. They generally didn’t walk so far and climb so high, though, seeming content to just stay near their own front porches.
Still, the older man at times didn’t look all that old. For most of this trip, in fact, he had been the first to set out and the last to stop, taking the steps—even the steep ones—with a spryness to his gait the younger man had to think about to match. On horseback, few could match him.
Yet other times—as when they sat by the fire the night before—the older man could look even older than usual. Had it just been the firelight highlighting the deep lines in the old skin? The younger man didn’t think so, for he had noticed similar appearances at other times.
But did not everyone have such times? Times when they didn’t know (or care) they were being watched and their mind had gone back—back to where? Probably different for each person, he reasoned. Some remembered an old romance, or an old homestead, or a missed opportunity. Many remembered friends who had passed away or perhaps just gone away. In that moment, more cares than usual piled up on the countenance, making the person look older and much more careworn than they were. Or, maybe it was the person seeing who had gone away, leaving behind someone they now wished they couldn’t see.
Was that true of his old friend? He knew to a certain extent it was. The man spoke of many things he had left behind—some of his own volition and some just because he had to, forced by persons or circumstances. Perhaps the man was even younger than his young friend thought but had so many such remembrances that they had worn grooves in his countenance.
His old friend, he thought as he watched the man’s steps eat up the mountain side as if it were nothing, had many cares that might have caused the marks. While the man had never seemed shy about sharing all he knew with his young friend, surely he kept some things to himself. And maybe those things didn’t necessarily wear on him, but led to a pensiveness now and then.
The younger man realized suddenly that, in his reverie, he had allowed the older man to gain on him and quickly began to make up the space, his youthful pride unable to allow anything else.
As they neared the summit of their hike, a sort of bench between two mountain peaks, the younger man began to realize that not all of the giant shapes on the ground were boulders, though they were rocks. Some of them had been carved at one time, but what they had been in the shape of he did not at first know.
Then, he saw what appeared to be a carving of a hand—larger than his own torso—holding on to something. What had it been holding? A sword hilt? A walking stick—such as he used himself?
He was about to ask the question, when he realized that some of the other carven rocks he could see must have been a part of the same statue. A shoed foot here, another hand. Most of a britches-clad leg. A very large rock that might have been a torso, carved to look like someone wearing a fur coat with a prominent collar. And then a third foot.
Then, as they reached the summit, he saw a cleared off space. Not just cleared, though, but smoothed by some sort of concrete or like substance poured between the boulders to make a flat space. There were giant footprints on the flat space, where the statues must have stood, leaving imprints where some of the flat had been pulled up—and one part of a giant carven shoe.
The older man stepped up on the flat space and—rather than looking around at the magnificent alpine vista, looked at the space as if he could … what? See through it to the mountain as it looked once before? Then, he was looking up somewhat, but still appeared to be focused primarily on the detritus of the statues, which stretched out across the tundra to the northwest.
“These statues,” the younger man asked, once he had his breath and was standing near his mentor, “Who were they of, Papa?”
The older man smiled, for the younger had called him that since childhood, and replied, “There is something of a debate about that, Son. There were, it is said, two statues, one of a man and one of a woman. They were perhaps attached—one ancient drawing I have seen shows them holding hands—so one might argue it was a single statue. As to who they were, that is where the debate comes in. It is generally agreed among all historians I have read that the man depicted was a forebear of the mountain people, named Josh.”
“And the woman?”
“That is where the debate is,” the older replied with a smile. “Some say the statue was of his wife, but others say it was of his sister, for both figure prominently in the history of the mountain people. The only agreement is that the man was Josh.”
“You have spoken of him. He was not actually the founder of the family, but he carried them through a hard time, didn’t he?”
The older man smiled and said, “You have a good memory, for I believe it to have been very long since we discussed such things.”
“Yes,” the younger replied, though it was somewhat unclear to which statement he was agreeing, perhaps to both.
“Yet, as I have thought about it, I think the credit should go to Josh. His forebear, John, may have named the family, but it was really Josh who set them aside. And who brought the name of the mountain people not just to those of bloodline, but to all those under his care.”
“Still, I like to think that John was the founder,” said the younger with a smile.
“You would,” the older man replied with a chortle.
“So who built the statues, and who tore them down?”
“There is some debate as to the answer of those questions as well.” He took a deep breath of the thin air, then said, “Look. Just look. We can have questions in a moment.”
The younger man almost bristled as he had as a child, but had learned to express some patience with his mentor’s style, but also to enjoy the brief return to the old words, for how many times had the older man said something so like that while teaching?
Where they stood was spectacular. They were not actually on the summit of the mountain, but something of a saddle between three summits, one which was probably a hundred feet higher than where they stood and the other four times that much—the third summit shorter than both, which had allowed it to be hidden as they approached. Snow still clung to those peaks in little patches. Around them in every direction, they could see peaks and valleys, rivers and lakes, as far as the eye could see. It was a mountain panorama to take one’s breath away if the elevation hadn’t already done so.
It was worth stopping to look at, the younger man admitted to himself. Over there, to the north, some of the peaks still had so much snow it looked like they were still in winter. In the valleys below—in every direction—there were green fields and the pale white trees were spreading their shimmery green leaves. And one could catch a bright sparkle of light reflecting off cascading water from miles away—in some cases from streams that were so narrow the young man could have jumped over them, but they were at just the right angle to catch and reflect the light like a diamond dropped from the stars.
They had stood there like that for many minutes before the older man bade, “Come, let us see if we can find something I was told about that might answer your second question, if not the first.”
It took the younger man some steps before he remembered what his questions had been.
Across the mountain they went, though not straight down, angling to the northwest to follow the path of the debris. Aiming for what appeared at first to be a more ovoid shape than the other pieces they could see, they neared it and the younger man asked, “Is that a head?”
As they got closer, the younger man could see that it was, indeed, a head hewn from rock. While the features had never been intricate, it was clear that it had been the head of the female figure. Her hair had been tied back in a bow, though the hair which emerged from that bow had been broken off at some point. The younger man glanced around and thought he saw a rock that might been the hair—or part of it—but he wasn’t sure.
“Look,” said the older man, “At her face. The smooth cheekbones, the simple nose, the faint smile on her lips.”
“She looks … almost happy laying there,” commented the younger man.
His mentor nodded and then said, “Now, look over here. Just where I was told.” He pointed to another ovoid rock, not far away. They stepped up to it and found another proud face, laying sidewise on the ground, looking pleased. There was a crack in the face’s nose, but otherwise it was in good shape.
“That must be Josh,” said the younger man, to which the older nodded. “So, was the other his wife or his sister?”
“Does it matter?”
“It did to them,” the younger man said with a laugh.
The older man laughed, then said, “I suppose it did. Personally, I think the female statue was of Josh’s wife, whom they name Adaline in the old stories.”
“Like the people who take care of the sick and help doctors?”
“Yes. That order is probably named for your ancestor.”
“I always wondered where that term came from. I’ve heard of Josh, but never Adaline. Wasn’t his sister named Clara?”
“Claire, I believe.”
“So who built the statues and who tore them down?”
The older man nodded, then thought a moment before saying, “It is believed that the mountain people themselves built the statues, descendants of Josh and Adaline—or Josh and Claire, his sister, for she is said to have not only had many children, but to have been just as much of a leader in the early years as her brother. As to when, I have read many scholars and they believe the statues were built about a thousand years after Josh actually lived. They were torn down about a thousand years later, perhaps twelve hundred years later.”
“I do not remember tales of there being wars then,” the younger man injected.
“There are always wars,” said the old man sagely. “But you are thinking as I am. You see, there are many among the mountain people who come to this spot—as something of a pilgrimage—and many hold that the statues were torn down by the people of the plains during one of the wars. But if the timing is correct—whether eight hundred years ago or a thousand—there is no record of warfare between the two peoples just then. In fact, in most stories there was said to have been about five hundred years of peace and relative cooperation during that time as they banded together to protect from an enemy from the north.”
“Who, then, tore the statues down?” pressed the younger man.
“Look at this head.” Then he walked uphill to the first head they had come to and bade, “Now look as well on this head. I want you to notice something very specific about both.”
The younger man walked all about both heads, then stood partway between them—but a little closer to the woman’s head—with his hands on his hips. Finally, he admitted, “I do not know what you want me to see.”
The older man walked closer to the statue of the woman, the head that was twice as long as he was tall, and said, “Imagine you are the enemy. You have come all the way to this spot, across rivers and mountains and past countless enemies. You arrive at the statue of your hated enemy’s forebear. What do you do to such a statue?”
“You tear it down,” the younger man answered, as if speaking the obvious.
“Correct. You tear it down and, then what?”
“Go on to fight the enemy. The people who are your enemy.”
The older man shook his head and said, “Think of what it took to get to this point. You want to triumph over your enemy by casting down his heroes, correct? You want to show your triumph not just to the people of the day, but to anyone who might come back—especially anyone who might come back with the hope of rebuilding the statues.”
After several minutes, the younger man shrugged and—just a little bit petulantly—said, “I do not see what you think I should.”
“If you were a warrior and had chopped off the head of your enemy’s king, what would you do with that head?”
The younger man wanted to bristle, tired of being “taught” but managed to say, “Throw it away?”
“Yes. But if you are like most soldiers throughout history, you wouldn’t just do that. You would use it for a football if it were much smaller, you would throw it in a pond, or perhaps take turns striking it.”
The younger man was trying to figure out what his mentor was driving at while still bristling and telling himself he was too old to be taught this way when it suddenly came to him, “If these statues had been blasted by an enemy, or even pulled down with ropes, the heads would have rolled much further away, or they would have been broken to pieces—the ears and noses chopped off. Foul scribblings carved into the very rock.”
Seeing the older man nodding proudly, the younger man hypothesized, “Whoever took down these statues, respected the heads. They respected the memories of Josh and Adaline—or Claire. Why? Why would they do that?” He paused, waiting for an answer, then said, “They were not enemies of Josh and Claire, or Adaline. They were … who? Mountain people? If so, why would they tear down the statues?”
The older man led the way over to a rock about midway between the two heads—a rock that didn’t appear to have been part of the statues—and motioned for the younger man to sit as he did the same. When seated, he chided, “Though you don’t seem to remember their names, remember what I taught you about Josh and Adaline, and even Claire?” As the young man nodded, he continued, “Does Josh seem like the sort of person who would have wanted a statue in his honor?”
“I can’t claim to know that much about him,” the young man said with a laugh.
The laugh was shared, then the older man said, “Think about who Josh and his sister and his wife—and his sister’s husband—served. And all their children, and the others they gave their name to. Did he not say, ‘You shall have no graven images before me’?”
“But they didn’t worship at these statues, did they?” the younger man challenged. “They were just to honor the forebears, weren’t they?”
“I believe so. Still, I think two things happened over time. While people might not have worshiped these statues, some came here thinking more highly of who they represented than they should have. You know the stories. Josh and Adaline were not perfect. They were leaders, but not saviors—”
“There’s only one of those.”
“Precisely. I think there was a movement among some of the mountain people to think more highly of their founders than they ought. That was the first thing I believe happened. The second thing I believe happened was that some of the descendants of Josh and Adaline realized this so they took the statues down. Yet, they couldn’t bring themselves to despoil them, for they honored their ancestors as well.”
“So they took down the statues, but left the heads intact? Why?”
“You, more than anyone else, should be able to understand.”
The younger man wanted to get angry again, but managed to say, “But I do not.”
The older man smiled warmly and said, “You know all the stories I have told you of your mother. You want her honored, but do you want her worshiped?”
“Well, I—”
“What if someone were to build a statue in honor of your mother and start to worship that statue, or just give it more reverence than what your mother stood for. Would you not try to stop them? To change their minds? To tell them the truth about your mother and who she worshiped?”
“I, um, I suppose.”
“What if you were to rush into the town square and take down the false idol erected to your mother? You tear it down just as you believe she would. Yet, it is carved to look just like her. Could you bring yourself to despoil her face?”
“I—” the younger man started to say one thing, then exhaled what little breath he could gather and nodded, saying, “I think I understand. That’s what happened here?”
“It’s what I think happened here,” said the older man with a smile. “Some of the mountain people still say it was enemies who tore down these statues, and I suppose they could be right though no one knows for sure. It is just my thought that that those who tore down the statues did it to honor Josh and Adaline—or Claire—just as those who built the statues had set out to do.”
After a bit, the younger man said, “That does make sense. I think you’re right.” After a bit, the younger man asked, “I saw a giant hand when we were first approaching the place where the statues stood. It appeared to be holding something, but I do not know what. Do you know what the statue was holding?”
With a shrug the older man replied, “Not for sure. I have seen drawings, though none were made by people who had actually seen the statues. Some were purported to have been made by people who had talked to people who saw the statues, though that is in doubt in most cases. Some say that Josh was holding onto a sword, but I found that doubtful for there is no reliable story of him ever using a sword. There is one prominent story of him using what we would call a percussion weapon—”
“I remember that,” the young man said excitedly. “When he shot the man who had tried to attack his sister.”
“Yes. But whatever was in his hand didn’t look like any sort of percussion weapon I’ve ever seen. It might have been a plow handle or a hoe or some implement like that. I find that most likely, for he was a mighty man of the soil, as most of his descendants are now.”
“Do we know for sure it was Josh’s hand? What if it were Adaline’s, holding onto some sort of medical implement? She was a doctor, wasn’t she?” he asked, the story about her coming back to him. Why had he not remembered her name? he wondered.
“Yes, she was. I have never seen a drawing depicting such, but you could be right.” He smiled and said, “I like to think you are right, that it was her hand, not his. Doctor or farmer, what made Josh and Adaline memorable—or Claire, who was said have been a seamstress as well as a mother—was their faith and their overarching hope in the future. As the world was falling apart around them, they were said to have clung to their faith—the faith you share with them—to see them through.” He patted the younger man on the shoulder and said, “I like that idea. Perhaps she was holding some implement a doctor of her day would use. Bringing healing of body and soul to the people.”
The younger man nodded, then prompted, “You say it’s the faith I share with them. Do you still not share it with us Cyro?”
The older man smiled and replied, “I do, but sometimes I am like some of those people who came to worship at these statues. I forget to worship the God the people depicted worshiped and find myself only honoring your mother.”
“She would not want to be worshiped.”
“I know that,” Cyro said with a wan smile. “On the other hand, the faith she showed me was the most genuine thing I have ever known—save perhaps your faith. I spent many years denying that faith—any faith—and that is a hard habit to rid oneself of.” He stood up suddenly and said, “We will speak of this more. But first, John, let us find a good place to have a fire and a camp for the night for it will be most cold up here after dark.”
All of Sam’s westerns now available, on many platforms!
All twelve of Samuel Ben White’s westerns are now available on multiple platforms here! Make sure you order them all!
The Gunfighting Gunfighters of Gunfighter’s Gulch
Available now on Apple, Kobo, and many other formats! Coming soon in paperback!
When Portly Ben Rousterman tried to hold up the Third National Bank, he paid for the mistake with his life, and roiled the far west Texas town of Gunfighter’s Gulch.
Into the story with a fierce indifference ride the principals:
- Raccoon Jack Carter, big game hunter with an oversized personality and a powerful thirst for avenging his fallen brother.
- Sheriff Darren, the overweight, poor-on-the shoot sheriff with the massive wife must contain the trouble before it gets out of hand.
- Hiram C. Cort, president of the Third National Bank who has ambition, drive and plans—all of which may be thwarted by an infestation of owls.
- And lovely Lacy Halverson, the prettiest girl in Gunfighter’s Gulch, under a constant barrage of marriage proposals, and maybe the only one who really knows what happened to Portly Ben.
All these characters and more in one hilarious night of bullets, dancing, fowl and water as the gunfighting gunfighters collide in Gunfighter’s Gulch.
“At first I was mad at Sam White, when I shot coffee out my nose after he caught me off guard and made me laugh out-loud. I loved the book and I don’t normally read ‘smoke burners’, as I call them. If you want to travel back to the old west, and then laugh when you step out of the saddle, this is your book! WARNING – Do not read while drinking coffee.” —Steve Sederwall, Cold West Investigations
Read a sample chapter …
Chapter One
It was a hot day in Gunfighter’s Gulch, the sun overhead as red as an undersized banana and beating down on man and beast. It hadn’t rained in time out of mind and the east town doctor was beginning to worry that insanity would set in sooner than usual this year.
It was such a day as that that Portly Ben Rousterman left his spotless appaloosa in the corral to the east and walked to the Third National Bank of Gunfighter’s Gulch. Hitching his twin Allen five-shot pistols into a more comfortable position on that part of his body where he once remembered having hips, he stepped up on the boardwalk.
And promptly went through as the heft of his girth cracked the dried wood. With a foul oath his mother had taught him on his lips, he stepped out of the hole and to the door of the bank. Throwing it open, he wedged himself through with much effort and difficulty for not only was it narrow and he wide, it was a revolving door—the only revolving door between Dallas and Los Angeles and, therefore, almost impossible to get parts for.
With an effort, Portly Ben finally shoved his way into the lobby and was told politely by the bank guard, “You might want to try the loading docks in the back when leaving, sir.”
“Obliged,” sneered Portly Ben before pulling out his twin Allens, their maple grips feeling comforting in his big beefy paws, and said, “This is a stick-up. Take me to the vault.”
A woman screamed. Another used that same word Portly Ben had used out on the boardwalk. Several people gasped at the use of such a word in public. A child asked his mother what it meant, to which she replied, “Ask me after the hold-up, please dear one.”
The nearest teller, a man so tall he could actually see over the cage, said, “Good sir, we have no funds in the vault at this time.” Eliciting more use of that same word from earlier from all the people who had come to withdraw various sums so that they might pay their bookies, he elaborated, “If only you had come tomorrow. That’s when the enormous secret gold shipment is due to be inexplicably deposited here.”
While Portly Ben mulled over this information with a strange light in his eyes, the bank guard couldn’t help but think there was something he should have been doing. The other teller, meanwhile, was Lacy Halverson, prettiest woman in the bank—and possibly Gunfighter’s Gulch—and a crack shot. She had jet-blonde hair and an alluring if strictly off-limits body and piercing mismatched eyes. She dreamed of one day going on the stage, and taking that stage to some place where she might find a theater production to watch and then become a part of, where she might spurn many protestations of love and die a romantic but unrequited life.
“Just give me what’s in the vault,” Portly Ben demanded, his voice low and gravelly for he had forgotten to drink water that day, “And no one will get hurt.”
Whipping the ancient LeMat revolver from her cash drawer, where she kept it both for defense of the bank and her person, but also as a conversation piece as there was so rarely money in the drawer, Lacy pointed it at Portly Ben and said, “Kind sir, please either put your guns away or move a step closer for when I shoot you I do not want to hit anyone else.”
Portly Ben was surprised and, as he looked in Lacy’s one beautiful blue eye (the other being brown and only so-so), he saw that he truly could die. He had never thought that before.
Well, he reasoned, that wasn’t exactly true. He supposed he had always known he would die, but he expected it to be from either old age or cliff-diving, possibly hanging. He carried guns, and he had used them, often as firearms, so he knew that man could die by the gun. He just never thought it would be him because so far it never had been.
They stood there like that, in a New Mexican standoff—for the bank was in more than half of the town that was in the New Mexico Territory on account of the Texas side of town having more laws against fraud—until Percy McGoon, a slightly-built man with massive forearms and a taste for spinach said, “If you people don’t mind, I really need to make my deposit and get to work.”
“I don’t mind,” said Portly Ben and waved Percy to go ahead.
“Why does this always have to happen to me?” Percy whined as the very tall cashier—Very Tall Paul Bigman—counted the three dollars Percy was depositing and then made him out a receipt for the majority of the amount. Taking his receipt and vowing in his mind to one day avenge all that had been stolen from him by this bank for years, Percy wished all a good day and left. He thought about informing the sheriff that the bank was being robbed, but he had already been late for work every day that week and didn’t want to try his boss’s patience any further.
In the bank. Portly Ben and Lovely Lacy said in unison, “What’s it going to be, Pal?” and then he chuckled and she tittered at their harmony.
The bank guard happened to glance at the clock just then, saw it was his break time, and so sat down and picked up the nearest copy of Puck and began to read. Chuckling, he kept his daily vow to not think at all about the bank or it’s problems for the next fifteen minutes. He did think about going in the back and getting a cup of coffee, but he hated coffee, so he didn’t.
Portly Ben was a patient man, but he could be pushed past the point of endurance. It came just then and he said, “I’m going to count to three, and if you bankers don’t start handing me sacks of money, I’m going to let loose with these guns and heaven help whoever’s on the other end!”
Those still paying attention were scared, for he sounded like he meant it and they all knew about Allens. Five-barreled guns where the barrels rotated instead of just the chambers, they were notoriously unreliable but, if their triggers were pulled, bullets almost always came out the other end. In the hands of a skilled user, they knew, an Allen could do much random damage and, unlike Portly Ben and living in the west as they did, they knew one and all that they could die that day.
The tall cashier, already bored out of his mind since Percy had left, could only hope that one of the bullets would catch him and end the afternoon sooner rather than later. He sighed with exasperation, but such didn’t trigger Portly Ben’s trigger finger. Tall Paul Bigman would have sighed again, more loudly, if he could have generated the interest in doing so.
He couldn’t, and so just remained silent, wondering if the would-be outlaw would mind terribly if he balanced his drawer, especially now that there was three dollars in it.
“All I want’s what’s in the vault,” Portly Ben demanded. “Just let me by and I’ll go in there and get it myself if it’s too much trouble for you to get it for me.”
Lovely Lacy replied, “The vault is for authorized personnel only. Now you, just turn around and squeeze yourself back through the door and don’t come back.”
Portly Ben was not used to having anything he desired denied him. Things he commanded were always carried out. Who was this remarkably attractive girl to deny him anything, he wondered, and would she go out with me when this is all over? He happened to know there was a barn dance over in Friona the next Friday night and he was going to be there robbing the stagecoach anyway, so maybe—
While no one but the Good Lord ever knows for sure, it is quite possible that the Friona Quilt Store Jamboree and Hog Call was the last thought to pass through Portly Ben’s mind. It is quite possible that his thoughts were more along the lines of, “Wait! That’s a LeMat, the gun of the Confederacy that not only had six revolving chambers but a second barrel bored out to either 16- or 20-guage with which the user could fire a raft of buckshot!”
Accidentally waving his left-hand gun in a more threatening manner than he perhaps intended, he received the full brunt of the 16-gauge in the chest, which spun him around (twice). As, with his last breath and more from autonomic function than intention, he stumbled toward the front door, Lacy fired off the six rounds of .36 caliber bullets, knowing as she did that a .36 didn’t pack the wallop of a .45 and one couldn’t be too careful.
With his dying breath, Portly Ben Rousterman wedged himself into the front door of the Third National Bank of Gunfighter’s Gulch. Portly Ben dropped his two guns, the one from the right hand going off on impact with the floor, its bullet destroying the framed portrait of Aaron Burr which hung over the bank president’s desk for reasons that probably don’t come up in this story.
Someone screamed, several other people said that word, and all of them wondered how they were going to get out with the front door clogged up that way and the loading dock door the guard had mentioned blocked by that old train car.
The Body in the Floor
Published by Outlaws Publishing and available on ebook (in many formats) and in paperback!
See all of the Ira “Doc” Pearson novels here!
The Van Bent courthouse burns down and a body is found to have been stuffed into the floorboards years before, when the building was built. Ira Pearson is determined to discover the identity of the woman, but Sheriff Wood has little interest in the matter for he has more important matters on his hands–including a numbers runner and big city tough who came to Van Bent for some reason and promptly lost a thumb in an alley fight. Could the back alley fight and the woman in the floor somehow be connected?
Sample passage
“What’s going on, Chief?”
“I just—you need to see, first.”
The chief led the way over to the smoldering remains of the courthouse and to a ladder that had been lowered into the basement. He handed Ira some big, rubber boots, saying, “Put these on. Foller me. It’s safe,” Buckler directed as he descended the ladder.
Ira hesitated, but the man seemed to be going down with no fear. And it did look like everything was safe but soaked, hence the boots, which he put on. He took a breath, then followed the man down the ladder and into the pit that had so recently been the courthouse basement. He was glad of the rubber boots if for no other reason than that they came up to his knees and the piles of muddy ash were at least that deep.
They slogged over to a space almost in the center of the building’s footprint—which seemed surprisingly small to Ira, now that the building was gone—and Buckler knelt down and pointed. “Looky here, Doc.”
Ira bent over and saw instantly what the man was pointing at. “Human hand, ain’t it?” Buckler asked.
“Sure looks like it. Right hand.”
“No chance it’s just a fake of some kind? I seen a human skeleton over to El Paso once made out of plaster. This looks real to me, but I ain’t seen all that many human bones in my day.”
Ira moved in closer and peered at the strange object before him. “My early thought is that it’s real. Is there more?”
“We stopped work when we seen this,” Buckler answered. “If there is, I reckon it extends in under that pile there,” he continued, pointing. “I didn’t want to go no further ‘til we had you here to supervise. Thought you could tell us if this person died in the fire.”
“At an early guess, I’m going to say no. As hot as that fire was, if this were a, um, ‘fresh body’, there would probably still be more signs of flesh. And the burn marks on the bones would be different if flesh were melted off or if it were just bones in the fire.”
Buckler nodded and said, “I git ya, Doc.”
“Chief, you know of any reason there would be a skeleton in the courthouse?”
“None I can think of. Nobody had one in an office or anything—that I know of.”
“And this is on top of some things,” Ira commented, mostly to himself. Realizing he had said it out loud, he explained, “Not like this courthouse was built on top of an old cemetery and this was someone buried here. This person is above the rock of the basement. Any chance this person was stored in the basement?”
“What for?” Buckler asked, almost laughing.
“Who knows? Any old rumor that there was a body in the basement, though?”
“None that I ever heard. An’ I been here since the foundation was laid on this place. Before that, even. I helped to dig the hole.”
“All right,” Ira said, standing up. He looked around, then said, “This person’s dead, so it’s not like we can hurt him—or her—in any way. Still, let’s see if we can dig him out without jostling the bones around any more than we have to.”
“Okey-dokey,” Buckler said. “We’re going to need to brace that west wall, though. It’s bucklin’ a little and liable to collapse on us if we don’t.”
Ira nodded and said, “You get some men on that. You and me, let’s get some shovels and maybe a pry bar and see if we can find out whether there’s more under here than just a hand.” As the fire chief went off to put those instructions into action, Ira looked at the hand and remembered how finding a hand like this had landed his friends the Jameses in all sorts of trouble. He hadn’t been there, but he had heard the story. He also had thought over the years that, if he had been there, he could have kept Polly from spending that year in prison that she hadn’t deserved.
Buckler was soon back and, as three men worked to shore up the west wall, he went to work with Ira at pushing the ash and dirt away from the hand.
Soon, they were seeing a wrist, and then part of a forearm. And then, it seemed as if the arm were reaching out from within a wooden frame. “A casket?” Buckler asked as he looked at the wood.
Ira took up one of the shovels and scraped some of the dirt and ash away, then said, “Look at this, Chief. This isn’t a casket. Not built like that.”
Buckler shoved some of the dirt away himself and said, “That there’s flooring.” As Ira nodded, Buckler commented in worried awe, “This body was inside a floor! Somebody hid a body in the floor.” He reached out and rubbed some ash away from the top, saying, “That’s the tile from the first floor. I’m picturing in my mind and them joists for the first floor was foot-wide beams. Two foot on center.”
“Plenty of room to hide a body,” Ira commented.
Buckler tried to made a joke as he said, “Ain’t nobody goin’ to fit me in a foot-by-two space lessen they squeeze me down a might.” He looked up suddenly and asked, “You don’t reckon it’s a child, do ya, Doc?”
“Based on the size of that hand, I’d say it’s at least someone fifteen years old, or more. Not a big person. Might be a lady.”
Buckler took off his hat, as if at a funeral, and said with reverence, “God be with us.”
Ira raised up, tapped through the mud and ash in a couple places, then said, “Looks like there’s a fair-sized portion of that floor here still intact. Relatively speaking, anyway. Let’s clear it off and get some more pry-bars over here.”
“Think the whole body’s still together?”
“I’d have to say that would be beyond belief, but finding this at all is pretty incredible. And somebody better go fetch Sheriff Wood.”
“After all this time?”
“Whether we can figure out how this person got here I have my doubts, but it’s not likely to have been for benign reasons that someone hid a body in between floorboards. I think the sheriff needs to know.”
Buckler nodded again, then detailed someone to go get the sheriff and the other two men to help them pry the boards apart. It was not easy for the floor had been well made and they were trying to not disturb the bones any more than absolutely necessary.
Sheriff Wood was with them a while later—and quite a crowd had gathered nearby though the volunteer fire department men and Wood’s deputy Chubby were keeping them back—when they finally got the right boards pried up. There were a couple of reverent exclamations, the Catholics present crossed themselves, and Ira was the first to articulate any recognizable words.
“This was a woman,” he said. Though the visage before them was mostly of bones, there was just enough muscle and tendons still clinging to the form to keep the skeleton intact.
“How old, you reckon?” Buckler asked, watching with great curiosity, but also with a clear reluctance as to touching the bones.
Ira shook his head, but leaned closer and said, “I can give a better answer with more study, but her hips make me think she was old enough to have given birth. There was no sign of arthritis in that hand we saw first.” He then pointed and said, mostly to Wood, “Look there, Sheriff. However she came to be between these boards, someone murdered her to get her here.”
Wood looked, as did the other men close by, and could see the crack in the skull Ira was pointing to. Wood, feeling the need to say something, “She was either dead when she was put in here or close to it. Nobody would have lived long after a rap like that.”
Ira nodded in agreement then said, “It’s been a long time, Sheriff. Trail’s going to be colder than a polar bear. But this fire just revealed a murder.”
A Thousand Miles Away
Edward Garrett finds himself washed up on the shore of a foreign land, shipwrecked! As he tries to find his way home, he becomes involved with The People, a friendly—but reserved—people who live along the coast and are being harassed by brigands from the mountains known as the Brazee.
Thinking that Marcus has brought him here for just this reason, Edward agrees to lead a posse into the mountains to try and retrieve four teenage girls who were captured by the Brazee. Edward’s greatest desire is to leave, to go find his beloved Marianne and let her know he didn’t die in the great battle by the river. In the process of freeing the girls, however, he is shot and lands in a Brazee prison. There, he is forced into gladiatorial games where the only way to freedom … is death. A futuristic fantasy in the tradition of Louis L’Amour.
Order today for Kindle or Paperback
And don’t forget the two prequels to this novel: “All the Time in Our World” and “Some of the Time“!
Reading Sample
Running up the stairs of the tallest parapet of the grotesque castle that overlooked the river we in my day called the Mississippi, I was bleeding from a few minor cuts and my skin was bruised in many places, but I had never felt more alive. Nor had I felt more joyful.
Ahead of me ran Marcus, carrying his sword and with a light step as one who is running for pleasurable exercise. One might even say he carried the sword casually, though Marcus did nothing casually. All he did was carefully planned and meticulously executed. If Marcus had stopped to admire the sunset, anyone watching would have just assumed that was what he had always intended to do at that moment, for those who knew him knew that none of his steps, moves or halts were in waste.
Holding my own sword in my right hand, it’s blade still flecked with black blood for I had had no opportunity to clean it, my mind went back briefly to how we had come to be there. I say briefly for it was just a matter of steps, but the mind works in overdrive when in battle and a million thoughts may rush through a mind in their completeness in less time than it has taken me now to write this sentence.
We had crossed the great plains that I had once known as the land of Oklahoma with relative ease, though it hadn’t seemed so at the time. The logistics of moving such a great force of such disparate abilities and technologies had been one of the problems. The skirmishes we had fought against advance scouts of the Enemy had been another difficulty, though as we looked back later those battles had been like swatting mosquitoes.
As we had crossed into what had been known in my time as Arkansas and Missouri it seemed as if every valley and each forest held a new host of enemies lying in wait to ambush us. We had excellent scouts of our own, but it soon became obvious that it was not a position that promised a long lifespan. Though, as we went further, experience taught our scouts much and those who made it to the river with us were woodsmen indeed.
We came to the river fully six months after setting out on this excursion. We had been joined by additional members of the Gund Nation, as well as more Overstreets (who proved to be the best scouts for they could move through the forest more quietly than the wind itself) and even a large contingent of warriors from a people known as the T’rah’mra, who lived far to the southwest of Green River, along the sea coast. Somehow Marcus had gotten word to them and though they had set out before us it was some time before they could catch up to us. They were a people who were mighty in the skills of boat building and their service when we got to the river was immeasurable.
Still six days from the river, we had been met by a most surprising delegation. Eight men and five women—all taller than my six foot and appearing to me made of whipcord and muscle dressed in clothing that looked like something the Polynesians of my day might have enjoyed—arrived at our camp, also saying they had been summoned by Marcus. How they had received said summons none were ever clear, but Marcus greeted them warmly and assured us he had called for them. They were a people who called themselves a name which meant “Land of Wet Ground” but they were known in rumor and legend to the Gund as the Treemors.
They were somewhat darker of skin than I, but not so dark as the Cherokee or the T’rah’mra and, as I say, they were all tall. Some of them approached seven foot, though most were around six and a half. I was to find out later that they came from the deep woods that I once knew as Georgia and Northern Florida. Even with their bright clothing, they could disappear into a forest almost as well and quickly as an Overstreet.
The delegation of thirteen—a number of some significance in their reckoning—brought us the welcome news that they had a force of some hundred thousands amassed on the far side of the river, not twenty miles from the Enemy’s castle. They were the most advanced of the surface-dwelling people and maintained a primitive radio communication among their people. It was subject to disruption and had a limited range, but they assured me that they could and would work in concert with us when the time came to attack.
That time was soon. We knew the Enemy was aware of our presence and we were also certain he knew why we were coming, for he was not a being who welcomed casual visitors. While we hoped that we could maintain some element of surprise as to the “how-to’s” and “where-fore’s” of our attack, we knew that our only real hope lie in the justness of our cause. More than that, of course, was that Marcus was on our side and he had never been defeated—nor would he ever be we were sure.
I split our forces into three main divisions, though two of the divisions were—numerically—vastly superior. The smaller division—which was itself bifurcated—was our demolitions team. Half of them were to work their way to the western shore of the river and, on signal, begin to bombard the city with bombs my good friend Lomar would have relished to handle. The other half, meanwhile, had taken themselves up river approximately two hundred miles, to an ancient dam on the river that created what Marcus said was the largest inland, manmade, lake in the history of the world, larger even than the Lochs he, Marianne, Daniel and I had marveled at many years ago on our first journey. Upon reaching the dam, they would set charges and—from a safe distance—blow them and release the water of the lake.
Book of Tales – The Last Valley – Book 3
Jerry was just a college kid trying to catch one more weekend of fun before senior year when the ash hit. His college, his home town, his family—all wiped out in the blink of an eye. With the nation teetering on the edge of ruin, he joins the military to help with the search and rescue but finds that the powers that be want to use this natural disaster as cover for an unnatural war. The last war. Winner take all that’s left.
In the satellite photos, though, he sees evidence that the lands where he grew up might still have some green grass. With no idea whether anyone still lives there, Jerry dreams of someday returning to those pastures, even if it means living there all alone.
Meanwhile, Josh, Adaline, Claire and the rest of the denizens of the last valley have built a thriving community—and even have contact with another community across the mountains. But a disease is sweeping through Overstreet, one that could wipe them all out. Twenty years before, the cure would have been easy to affect, but now, their isolation may be their doom.
They can only pray for a miracle.
Make you read how this all started in “Ashes to Ashes” and “Crazy on the Mountain“!
Order today for Kindle or paperback!
…
Sample reading
The man on the other side of Jerry from Darren—a stout, middle-aged man in a white plantation hat, shorts too short for his build and a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned so as to display his hairy chest and ample gut—suddenly said, “Bartender. That TV got any sound?”
The bartender looked like he was about to say something negative or sarcastic in reply, but his attention went to the TV, and then he was grabbing for the remote and fumbling with it as if it were hot before he got control of it. As he turned up the sound, everyone sitting at the bar turned their attention to see—not the usual sports anchors but one of the nightly anchors from the parent network that owned the sports channel. He was dressed in a suit and tie, but he looked uncomfortable and his skin tone was different (owing to not having the time to be made up) as he said, “To repeat, we have reports from people in Wyoming and Idaho that an enormous plume of ash and smoke has been seen spewing from the ground in Yellowstone National Park. According to these reports, the cloud was spotted by people more than a hundred miles outside the park and is estimated to be rising to a height of—“ He touched his ear in that way anchors do when getting important updates, then swallowed hard as he looked off-camera and asked, “How reliable is—“
The TV went to that picture channels use when having technical difficulties, then suddenly there appeared a harried-looking woman, standing at the podium of the White House. She took a deep breath, then said, “We apologize for breaking in on your expected programming, but we must insist that everyone in the western United States get inside the nearest building. Shut the doors and windows and, if you have breathing masks, please apply them.”
As the TV began to play a loop of what the woman had just said, several people were saying things like, “It’s even saying that on my phone!”
“And my watch!”
“It’s all that’s on the radio.”
Several swear words were heard as people began to ask questions.
“What happened?”
“A nuke?”
“That first guy mentioned Wyoming. Haven’t they always said there was a giant volcano under Yellowstone?”
“They’ve been saying that for two hundred years,” someone argued in response to that last question.
Suddenly, the alarms were sounding, telling everyone to get off the beach. Lifeguards were using bullhorns to tell specific people to get out of the water, and shore patrol boats were appearing as if out of nowhere and making sure everyone could make it to the sand safely. The warning sirens of the town of Galveston could be heard in the distance.
Darren wasn’t too steady (or cognizant of the danger), so Jerry helped him get to their motel, a ratty little place near the beach which suddenly looked better than it had all week as the traffic jam of people exiting in cars began to pile up. Ineffectual honking was added to the general din of the warning sirens—now aided by police and fire sirens. People could be heard shouting, and screaming, as they tried to obey the order to get off the beach. Voices shouted at the car in front of them, as if the person driving that car were just sitting still to be obstinate and not backed up behind a row of stopped cars, all waiting for a break in the traffic. The repeated warning from the White House could be heard coming from a thousand phones and car radios.
In the motel room, Jerry turned on the TV, to see the same warning being repeated on every channel. He stumbled across one network on which a person at a news desk was saying, “We have an unconfirmed report that the famed Yellowstone volcano has erupt—“ before the feed went down, to be replaced by the government loop. Darren’s brain had almost caught up to the moment, then, and he asked Jerry, “What’s goin’ on, bro?”
It momentarily crossed Jerry’s mind to make some comment about the stupidity of Darren’s recent attempts to talk like a surfer—or like he imagined surfers talked, for none of the actual ones did—but he replied, “Not sure. Sounds like a volcano, though.”
“In Houston?” Darren asked, squinting at the TV as if doing so would improve his perception.
“In Yellowstone,” Jerry replied shortly, staring at the TV himself, trying to will it to give more details.
Darren was about to make an attempt at humor along the lines of hoping Yogi Bear was OK, when the President of the United States appeared, standing at the podium that the spokeswoman had been standing at for the looped message. He had that calm, measured look he always carried, but Jerry noticed he appeared to be just a little short of breath. Like he had hastily dressed and run to this room from another part of the White House. He eschewed his famous winning smile to look reserved, paternal and constipated as he said, “My fellow Americans. Exactly seventy-eight minutes ago, there was an eruption of gas and ash from what we have known for years as the Yellowstone Dome. Eighteen minutes after that,” he paused and looked down, appearing to his constituency as a man who was grasping for his sanity in the face of bad news. After a moment, he looked back at the camera and said, “Eighteen minutes after that, the largest eruption in the recorded history of mankind began. Many of you have felt the tremors and even those of us who didn’t will, the experts tell me, soon be seeing a cloud of ash and dust from the arctic circle to the Yucatan peninsula and, perhaps, beyond. I must ask you to stay off all land-lines and hold all other forms of communication to a minimum as we dedicate all the resources of this great nation to our first responders. Stay off the roads and highways. Listen to your local authorities.”
He took another deep breath, stared downward at the podium for a moment that seemed excruciatingly long but was probably only a couple seconds, then looked back up at the camera and said, “’Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ If you are a praying person, or even if you have never prayed in your life, Marion and I ask you to join us in supplication before the God of the Universe.”
And then most of the stations went blank and the few that remained on the air began to loop the president’s announcement. Jerry was sitting there numbly as Darren commented, “Think we can get back to college before classes start?”
“What?” Jerry had an idea that any reply was going to be wasted, but he told Darren, “I think college is over, Darren. I think everything may be over.”
“No kidding? You mean we, like, graduated?”
Jerry thought of several sarcastic replies, but finally just said, “Yeah. Just like that.”
Darren swore, but it wasn’t clear what at or to what purpose. It might have even been a word of triumph, based on the look on his face.
Jerry tried to call his parents, but no lines were available even though his phone said he was getting plenty of signal. He tried and tried again, with no success. Even tried going outside, as if that might help.
What he saw outside was the continued chaos of people trying to leave the beach, of cars jammed to a halt on the roadways, and many people just standing and watching in numb fear as an ash cloud miles high came near. It was visible first as a dark line on the horizon, but after the President’s announcement, several people had been watching for it and more than one voice had called out, “There it is!”
Then, word had spread through the crowd and even those in cars—who had so recently been honking or shouting—got out and stood, looking to the northwest as the dark line grew closer and closer. At first, it just looked like a rapidly approaching storm, but then it became clear that it was darker than most storms, and far taller, reaching hundreds or even thousands of feet into the air as it approach like a wall. Swear words were heard, as well as prayers. Some people fell on their faces, crying out prayers of repentance while others screamed or just stood numbly. Jerry even saw one woman walk to the beach, taking off her clothes as she went, and then walk calmly into the water until it was over her head. He ran close to try and find her—even enlisted a lifeguard who was still nearby and had seen the woman as well—but they never found any sign of her.
Email the author (garisonfitch@gmail.com) to find out about purchasing an autographed copy or getting the trilogy in paperback at a discount.
Be sure and read how this story started in “Ashes to Ashes” and concludes in “Book of Tales“!
Sample passage
I happened to ask, “Deanna, how long have you lived in Vail?”
“What? Oh, you might say I’ve lived there all my life.” Adaline and I looked at each other in surprise, for this was not said with the hick voice Deanna had mostly been using of late. It also made us wonder about our earlier thought that she was from Denver. She continued, in a somewhat conspiratorial tone, “My great-grandfather was the first of the family to come to Vail. The story that he told his family was that he had been a banker in Birmingham, Alabama,” the names of the city and state were said with a deep, southern accent. “But the bank had gone bust—through no fault of his own, of course, so he had headed west to seek his fortune. He said he worked several jobs in towns both big and small before landing in Vail, broke and starving, worried about his wife and kids back home for it had been some time since he had been able to send them money.
“But it was ski season and he took a job in a kitchen at one of the hotels. He worked hard and sent money back to his family and, by the end of the ski season, had worked his way up to waiter. Over the summer months, he proved himself invaluable and was made assistant manager of the restaurant, and then manager. At that point, he sent for his wife and kids and was ever so happy to see them. He got his kids—who were teenagers by then—jobs in Vail and they saved their money and, would you believe it, one day they bought the restaurant! Using all of his banking and monetary skills, he was eventually able to buy the building the restaurant was in, and his ‘empire’ was begun!”
Deanna chuckled, then said, still in the refined voice of someone who had grown up on the tonier side of life, “And thus began the Coventry empire of Vail. Pembleton is my married name, of course. I grew up attending the best schools, a member of all Vail’s best clubs, and groomed for a career in hoteliery. Yes, I know that’s not really a word, but my father always said it should be. But, I went off to college and fell in love and got married and, well, the last thing I wanted to do was to come back to Vail for anything other than a visit. Best laid plans of mice and men, right? My father had a stroke when I was just about to turn thirty, so my husband and I came back to watch over the business while he recovered. What was supposed to just be a few weeks in Vail became years, with my own children going to those same schools I did, joining the same clubs, being the same spoiled, rich brat I was. Oh how I wish we had never left Denver. My husband, Paul Pembleton, he rose to great heights in Vail, sat on all the important boards and had chairmanships in all the clubs, but I think he always resented the thought that he had only gotten there because of my family connections. It wasn’t true, of course, but it’s how men think sometimes. You know, I think he actually appreciated the ash cloud, for it allowed us all to go back to square one, with no one being anything more or less than what they could contribute.”
In a sly voice, she continued, “But speaking of square one. When my own grandmother was nearing the end of her life, I went and sat with her for many an hour, listening to her stories of growing up in Alabama, of earlier days in Vail than I had ever known. And one night, when she was strangely lucid,” a phrase that got both mine and Adaline’s attention, for we had both been thinking it in relation to Deanna, “She told me a story. According to her, my great-grandfather hadn’t been an innocent bystander in the failure of that bank, but the main instigator. His father was the actual president of the bank, you see, and my great-grandfather had been manipulating loans in some way that allowed him to pocket a sizable sum on the side. Undeclared, you might say.
“Then, one day, maybe he thought his father was about to get on to him, he withdrew an enormous sum of cash from his personal account, walked out of the bank, and no one knew where he went. Didn’t go home or anything. When my great-grandmother called her father-in-law that evening, he said they should call the police, thinking something nefarious had happened to the up-and-coming young banker. Perhaps a ransom call would come in any moment. It was then, so the story goes, that the bank president first realized what his son had been doing. He called his daughter-in-law and convinced her not to file a missing person’s report, for fear of what the publicity would do to the bank. He did agree, however, to engage the services of a private detective.”
Deanna was still speaking in a normal voice, though it became a little dreamy as she said, “I wondered if it were a private eye like in the movies: snap-brim hat, long trench coat, steel-jawed chin. Anyway, the private eye had little trouble following my great-grandfather—though ‘great’ is probably the wrong word for him,” she said with an ironic chortle. “It seems my progenitor had left a bread-crumb trail of prostitutes visited and affairs started that led all the way to Vail, where he was working as a lift attendant at the ski area while, um, serving a rich lady at night while her husband attended to his … let’s say: board functions.
“When the bank president learned of this, he brought his daughter-in-law and the kids out to Vail for a ski trip, hoping to engender one of those movie moments where the miscreant is surprised by his one true love and repents of his wicked ways. According to my grandmother, it was almost like that. Her father was happy to see his children, but not so happy to see his wife. Still, he stopped the fooling around, for a while, and took his family in. His father got him a respectable job as the manager of one of the local restaurants and my great-grandfather gave all appearances of becoming a respectable citizen again. What he was actually doing, though, was continuing his association with the rich lady. He got money out of her somehow and bought the restaurant. Set his wife up as the general manager, dumped the rich lady for a younger mistress, and made his children managers of other properties he had acquired. By the time I came along, great-grandfather was dead and his true story had been buried longer than he had.” She laughed heartily before adding, “There’s even a picture of him in the museum, all dressed up and looking distinguished, with a little plaque about how he was one of Vail’s leading citizens and top philanthropists. He even gave enough money to one of the local churches that they named the recreation building after him. Can’t you just see some youth minister telling the kids who came out to play volleyball, ‘And this building was named after a notorious sinner, who would have slept with any of your mothers who let him, in Jesus’ name, Amen!’” She cackled with laughter and then slipped back into one of her songs. Adaline and I looked at each other strangely, but continued on without a word. We did discuss later how much of the story we thought was true, but had no way to come to a conclusion. And we still thought Deanna was unhinged at best.
We made it to Vail in less than a week, which really encouraged me—and made Adaline wonder why I had thought it would take three weeks. The thing was, I hadn’t been counting on the Interstate being in such good shape, which it was. There were only a couple places where the ash had slid across it, and neither of them deep. And while Black Gore Creek ran strong in some places, it didn’t cross the highway at any point. As we pulled up in sight of Vail, I was smiling and telling Adaline how surprised everyone would be if we pulled back into town before they even came to look for our signal.
“Where are your people?” I asked Deanna, once we had her attention for she had been in the middle of a rousing rendition of either “Amazing Grace” or “I Fought the Law” (it was hard to tell).
She crawled up to crouch behind the front seat and, pointing, said, “Up yonder. You cain’t see it from here, but it’s the other side of that big white building by the ski slopes. I heared you talking about how the wind blew that gash in the ash—gash in the ash,” she repeated with a laugh, “And we had something just like that. People to the left and right was all dead, but our little gash was just fine. All things considered, I mean.”
“Think we can make it before nightfall,” I asked, for we were still a good five miles out, “Or should we make camp and get there in the morning?”
She looked up at the bright spot of the sun that almost shown through the ash and said, “Let’s see if we can push through. If we can’t, at least we can stay in one of the buildings on the edge of town. We might make’er this evenin’, though. Them’s good horses you got there.” This was a surprising statement, for she had frequently complained when we stopped to water the horses or, worse, gave them a lengthy breather and roll when we came upon that rare meadow of thick grass—or any grass. I couldn’t blame her for being anxious to get to her people, but I did get tired of her complaining—especially as we had been making such good time.
As we pulled closer to the town of Vail, some thunderheads started building to the west. “I hate to say it, Deanna, but we may need to pull up and find shelter.”
I had expected an objection, but she looked at the sky and said, “Them’s buildin’ up to be gully-washers, all right.” She pointed off to the right and said, “They’s an old mechanic’s shop up yonder. You’d be able to pull the horses into the dry.”
With impeccable timing we got the old garage doors open and the horses inside the bay just before a wall of summer rain came through. I enjoyed seeing it, though, for it made me think of the rains we used to have when I was growing up. They would come up on us all of a sudden, pelt you with raindrops the size of golf balls, then pass through as quickly as they had arrived. I could see some sunlight to the west, creating a golden line on the mountains in that direction, which made me think this would be one of those storms. It was, but by the time it had passed through it was too late to go anywhere so we set up camp in the old automotive shop. I was afraid Deanna would be upset by us stopping that close to her goal, but she just curled up on a couch in the manager’s office and went to sleep.