Tangled Tales

By W.Wm. Mee

Hail and well met, Gentle Reader!
What you have before you is a 'taste' of my work.
Bits and pieces of my various scribblings, put together for you to browse through at your leisure.My areas of interest are:

Action Novels
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Historical Novels
(and my favorite)
Alternate History (18+)

Please, check out a few samples,but I warn you, some of the Alternate History stories are 'not for the faint of heart!'

So come, Gentle Reader, enter my world --- if you dare!

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.Wm. Mee
• Release date: Jan 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466116153

W.Wm. Mee

Wayne William Mee is a retired English teacher who enjoys hiking, sailing and walking his Beagle hound. He is also a 'living historian' or 'reenactor'. You can see Wayne's historical group on Facebook's 'McCaw's Privateers' 18th Century Naval Camp' page. Building & sailing wooden sailboats also takes up a chunk of Wayne's time, but along with his wife Maggie,son Jason and granddaughter Zoe, writing is his true love, the one he returns to let his imagination soar.Wayne would like you to 'look him up' on FACEBOOK and click the 'Friend' button or even zap him an e-mail.If you enjoyed any of his books, kindly leave a REVIEW here at Smashwords and/or say so on Facebook, Twitter, Tweeter or whatever other 'social network' you use.Thanks for stopping by ---and keep reading!!Drop him a line either there or at [e-mail]'ll be glad to hear from you!'Rest ye gentle --- sleep ye sound'

Book preview

Chapter 1: PAPERS SERVED

(This tale explains how the

World Plague got started)

Nellis Air Force Base,

Nevada June 21 Next Year

Sergeant David Henderson felt like shit. Gulping a ragged breath, he leaned against the wall of the underground complex and squinted up at the bright lights, the M-16 clutched tightly to his chest. He’d had one bitch of a night and the day didn’t look to be any better. To add insult to injury, the booze was wearing off and the fucking pills he’d taken hadn’t kicked in yet!

The M-16 trembled in his hands. Caressing it lovingly, he thought of his soon to be his EX wife, thought how he’d love to shove the barrel down her big mouth and empty the clip. THAT would shut her the fuck up once and for all! Always nagging him about his drinking, his gambling and his ‘other women’.

That last part struck him as funny. Booze and cards there’d been aplenty; but no other women. As far as Sergeant David Henderson was concerned, one nagging female was one fucking too many!

Not that he was any limp-wristed faggot! Christ no! His red-necked father had hated faggots and had gleefully passed on the feeling to his budding red-necked son. Lawyers too! Hell yes! Henderson’s sweating face smiled coldly as he dwelt on those bygone days of yore. Oh my, how his Old Man had dearly hated lawyers. Chased them off the farm with a shotgun when they’d come with the eviction notice!

‘Like the little prick that tried to serve me my divorce papers!’ Henderson muttered to himself. A cruel sneer crossed his haggard face. He’d beaten the shit out of the little queer and lost his field commission because of it. The brass had shuffled him off to a desk job, where he now sat shuffling goddamned computer printouts back and forth for a bunch of over-the-hill, lawyer-loving, ass-kissers! What kind of job was that for a fighting man?!

Then he’d met Willard Larsh in a seedy watering hole on the outskirts of Bakersfield. Willard was one of those egg-head civilian types working on some top-secret project at the base. Henderson thought at first that he was just another computer-geek faggot on the make, but Willard had surprised him. Half way through a bottle of scotch, Henderson found out that Wee Willie Larsh was scared. Not just scared of loosing his job/wife/kids/manhood scared, but REALLY scared! The kind of scared that leaves a fella wide awake in the middle of the night with his heart pounding, his throat dry and his shorts moist in the rear.

Some strange shit was going down back on the base. Some REALLY strange shit! When pressed, Willy-boy would only say that ‘it’ was all wrong, and that some bitch named Estelle wouldn’t listen to him. Henderson could sure as hell relate to that.

They’d met several times since, mostly at the same seedy strip-bar. Since Henderson’s wife had already moved out and Wee Willie always paid for the booze, Henderson was more than content to humor the little four-eyed runt. Yet as the hours slid by, listening to Willie ‘wine on’ while watching Suzy Rottencrotch bump n’ grind her way around the tiny stage, Sergeant David Henderson slowly began to get the ‘Big Picture’.

The brass, so sayeth Wee-Willy, were secretly working on a new type of nerve gas. Not just your average ‘wipe out the whole fucking village’ kind, but one ball-busting, cock-sucking GIANT kind! An honest ta Gawd ‘weapon of muther-fucking mass destruction!’

‘Agent C.D.’ was its code name. The letters stood for Crystallized Deterrent. When Henderson had asked what the fuck that meant, Wee Willie had grinned slyly and said: ‘Completely Demented.’ He’d gone on to explain how this new gas would make old soldiers like Henderson about as useful as tits on a nun. Grunts like the sarge would be looked on as dinosaurs. The ‘soldier of the future’, according to a three sheets to the wind Willy, would be ‘some skinny assed kid in a spacesuit, high on drugs, a face full of zits and a squirt gun filled with C.D.’

Henderson had not been a happy camper!

First the faggot lawyers had taken his wife, his money, his pride: and now they were after his goddamned job! Well, he sure the fuck knew how to put a stop to THAT right quick! When Wee Willie asked what he had meant, it had been Henderson’s turn to clam up.

That had been almost a week ago. Since then the old sarge had been a very busy boy. Now at last he was ready. Hell yes! Was he ever!

Feeling like his daddy must have as he’d waited on the farm, shotgun in hand, for the lawyers to serve the eviction papers, Sergeant David Henderson thumbed off the safety on his M-16 and stepped out into the hall. Corporal Phil Lavin was on guard duty at the far end. Henderson knew Lavin from way back. They weren’t real close, but they’d downed more than a few Ginger Ales together. Only a week ago they had played in the same poker game. As usual, Henderson had gotten plastered and started a fight just for the hell of it, thus living up to his nickname: ‘Deadly Dave’.

‘Hey, sarge! How they hangin’?"

Deadly Dave’s response was to shoot Lavin twice in the face.

The corporal’s body slammed back into the heavy door, then slid down into a lifeless heap. A thick smear of blood and brains marred the door’s stainless steel surface.

Grinning like the madman he was fast becoming, Henderson stepped over both the sanity line as well as the body and punched in the secret code. It had been changed that morning, but he knew that. He wasn’t supposed to. ‘Eyes Only’ shit. But they’d taken his gun and turned him into a paper shuffler, a fucking desk-jockey riding a computer console; a main-frame faggot who could surf the fucking net with the worst of them! Yet with knowledge came power, and the more knowledge the more power! So now he knew all about the famous-fucking ‘Door’ and what really went on behind it--- and that knowledge had driven him over the edge.

Bastards!, he muttered, saliva flecking the corners of his twisted smile. Cock-sucking job-stealing bastards!

The door swished open like the ones on Star Trek. Beam me up, Snotty. Henderson was through in an instant, the M-16 now on continual burst. Full metal jacket rounds tore through the guard just inside the door. At such close range the man’s stomach vaporized. Henderson was past the body before it hit the floor, the M-16 still coughing out death.

Estelle Dority, one of several non-military technicians working on Agent C.D., turned and screamed. The tumbling slugs ripped into her left side and spun her like a top. One more entered through her open mouth, exiting stage right and taking half her head with it. A mental picture of his wife flashed before him. Henderson began to smile.

Walking forward, Deadly Dave shot three more people. ‘Time is precious’ his mother had often told him, and Mrs. Henderson’s obedient offspring knew her to be right. He had a lot to do. Miles to go before I sleep. With that he commenced spraying poetic justice at the white lab coats scrambling madly for cover. When his fifty-round magazine finally emptied, a total of nine people lay dead, among them, Willard ‘Wee Willie’ Larsh.

But Sergeant Henderson’s one man crusade was far from over. He had eliminated the creators, but their job stealing creation itself still remained.

The smell of blood and cordite filled the room. Trembling as adrenaline pumped its way into his veins, Henderson tossed the spent clip aside and inserted a fresh one. His gaze tuned now to the room itself. Test tubes, beakers and jars littered the lab tables. Electronic machinery, each costing more than what a dedicated soldier like himself made in a year, lined the walls. From one corner a computer glared at him like an accusing eye. Henderson held the stare for as long as he could, then fired. Spent casings tapped out a staccato beat as they clattered on the tile floor. The thunder of the M-16 punched out the base, while his own screams filled in the high notes. ‘Rock n’ roll!’ the old Nam vets used to yell, joyfully wasting friend and foe alike. Henderson could do no less. Shattered glass fell like broken dreams as Deadly Dave boogied on down.

The noise was deafening.

He didn’t hear the door swish open behind him; the M.P.’s shouted command; the harsher, crisper sound as the M.P. fired his sidearm. So intent on blasting beakers was ol’ Dave that he never even felt the .45 slug that swung him around, his arms wide like Christ on His cross.

Startled, the two men stood facing each other. The silence hung in the air like a pop fly at its apex. Then gravity intervened and his smoking barrel began its fall back to earth. Half way through its arc, the M.P. fired again --- three times in rapid succession. Bang! Bang! Bang!

One after another, small holes stitched their way up Henderson’s chest, the last one hitting his nametag. Dead on his feet, Henderson’s finger tightened on the trigger. The dozen remaining rounds emptied into the far wall. One of them struck a small vile encased in clear plastic, exploding it like a grenade. The contents of the vile, left there by the late, great Estelle Dority, escaped unseen into the room.

Sergeant Henderson had just killed ten people in order to stop the experiment that Estelle and her esteemed colleagues had labored so long to create. Agent C.D. The ultimate weapon; a type of nerve gas that killed only apes, monkeys and humans, leaving all other forms of life unaffected. Entering through the pores of the skin, it attacked both the red and white blood cells, crystallizing all the liquid in the body and causing almost instant death.

Estelle’s team however, had been working on a little added bonus --- a way to make C.D. dispose of the bodies as well! Her team had found a way to continue the process so that not just the blood crystallized, but the entire body, including hair, bones and teeth. Only a gray, fragile parchment-like substance would remain, akin to an old wasps nest, easily blown away by the wind.

Just how this all actually worked, the recently late but far from great Sergeant Henderson could have cared less. When he’d finally broken the code on the ‘eyes only’ document Agent CD and read the bitter truth about what Eager-Beaver Estelle and her geek buddies had done, he decided to act. ‘The faggots are taking over!’, a long – deadyet familiar voice had warned him. ‘Someone should do something about those queer bastards right quick before they get the goddamn farm!’

In his own twisted way Henderson had set out to do just that, to destroy the creation of the wife/job stealing faggots before it was too late. In so doing he had killed the creators but set their creation itself free. The recently deceased Estelle Dority, B.A., M.A., Doctor of Nuclear Chemistry and an acute sufferer of P.M.S., had neglected to mention one small detail in her last report, (the same report that Sergeant Henderson had inadvertently read and that had set him off on his own personal stairway to heaven). The neglected detail was that there might just be one tiny drawback to the ‘new and improved’ version of CD. She suspected that this new gas she and her team were working on might not dissipate quite as quickly as the older, non-body disposing kind did.

It might, in fact, NOT dissipate at all!

Months earlier, junior adviser Willard ‘Wee Willie’ Larsh, after checking and double checking simulated tests on his computer, had reluctantly informed Ms. Dority of his findings. Young Willard claimed that once exposed to the air, said new gas would most probably undergo a chemical change --- a rather serious chemical change. Wee Willie had even gone so far as to call it a double-scoop mother-fucking RADICAL change! Not only wouldn’t it die off like smoke on the wind --- it would MUTATE AND MULTIPLY!

As was Sergeant Henderson when he ‘ruffled the placid governmental waters’, Young Willard was quickly and firmly shuffled off to shuffle his own endless stream of computer printouts. But by then the damage had been done. The divorce papers had been served, the farm had been sold, the scotch had been drunk --- and the seeds of destruction had been sown.

And Agent C.D., known affectionately as Crystallized Deterrent and/or Completely Demented, was set free on an unsuspecting world.

Had he lived long enough, Young Willard would have had the last laugh, perhaps even renaming it Agent Complete Destruction, for he had been right about the chemical change all along; new and improved Agent C.D. did indeed multiply. The only part Willie had miscalculated was just how fast.

Almost everyone on Nellis Air Force Base was dead by morning.

The rest of the world would take a little longer.

***

Chapter 2: Pussbag Smitty

Private Theodore Smith, called Smitty by a few and Pussbag by many, rocked back and forth in the corner of his barracks. His ferret-like eyes wild with maniacal fear, a dripping bayonet clutched in his bloody hand.

Close by was the body of a young soldier. Not one of those papery bee-hive things, but a honest-to-God flesh and bone body! Like the precious few other people left alive that morning, the young private had somehow been passed over by the late, great Estelle Dority’s infamous creation. A survivor who had survived only long enough to be killed by yet another survivor! Aint life a bitch? The irony of the situation however, was clearly lost on Pussbag. In point of fact, Pussbag himself had been lost for most of his miserable, psychotic life.

The child-soldier had come upon Pussbag trembling in a corner and offered him his hand. Thinking himself attacked by his many sins come to life, Pussbag Smitty had stabbed the hapless survivor till his arms tired.

Now, sitting in a puddle of his own urine, Pussbag cocked his head to one side. What was that? A motor? Yes? YES! Crawling on all fours to the nearest window, he timidly poked his head up just high enough to see out.

Pussbag couldn’t believe his eyes. A jeep! A Jesus to Christ jeep! Tooling along over the tarmac as nice as you please! There was just one guy in it and --- would ya look at that?! The fucker was smoking a cigarette and smiling!

Pussbag watched the dark stranger with ferret-like intensity. Something in that face reminded him of... of something he both desperately wanted to remember yet longed desperately to forget. A dead dream resurrected from his hellish childhood. The one nightmare he repeatedly pushed away had now suddenly come to life!

Unbidden, an image of his mother materialized in his maggoty brain. She was leaning over him, one hand clamped on his frail shoulder, the other pointing to an open book. Young Theodore had not wanted to look at the picture, but Mommy had insisted, and Mommy always got what she wanted.

"Look at Him, you little shit! LOOK AT HIM!!", her shrill voice had demanded. Even through the haze of years Pussbag could still smell the sent of cheap gin and religious ecstasy on her breath. Look at the Dark Stranger! If you’re naughty, He will come for you! Her ringed fingers had dug into his thin flesh, pushing him closer to the page. The Dark Stranger ALWAYS comes for naughty little boys!

His heart pounding, Pussbag absently wiped his snotty nose with the sleeve and fixed his gaze back on the man in the jeep. The handsome face was the same as the one in Mommy’s Good Book. When the jeep passed beyond his view, Pussbag Smitty silently followed, the bayonet still clutched in his bloody hand.

Jocco stopped the jeep at the back of the Officers Mess and looked around. Bodies were everywhere. Draped over crates; laying sprawled on the ground. One was half in, half out of the back door. All had been reduced to that paper-thin gray shit.

With all the finesse of a runaway garbage truck, the ghost of a plan Jocco had kept secretly locked away for years continued to push itself forward. Humdrum, every day thoughts were casually shunted aside as easily as the parchment thin bodies that littered the runway. Part of him tried to hold it back, to wait until he was certain. Yet another part, the wilder, savage part that always lurked just beyond the surface, urged him on.

Then someone staggered out the side door of the Officer’s Mess, leaned over the railing and puked. The bottle he’d been holding fell, exploding on the asphalt like a bomb. Looking up, their eyes met. The puker’s widened, flicked to the shattered bottle, then back to Jocco. His mouth fell open, a string of thick saliva trailing from his lower lip.

"You a ghost, man?"

Jocco grinned. Not likely. What are we drinking?

The man, in his early thirties, was big, balding, unarmed and drunk as a skunk. Jocco casually walked over and read the soldier’s nametag: Sampson.

"Nothing but the best, man, Sampson slurred. The fucking best!"

His hand close to the .45 at his hip, Jocco motioned towards the open door of the Mess. Set ‘em up then, friend. I’m buying.

Sampson seemed to find the casual remark extremely funny. Laughing as only a well practiced drunk can, he staggered back inside. Jocco followed.

Keep your money, man, Sampson grinned. Drinks are on the fucking house!

The room was littered with bodies. A good number were women, their skirts and dresses mingled with the uniforms like a cut close line. Officer’s wives, daughters, girlfriends. Jocco could care less. Sampson had found another bottle and was attempting to fill two glasses. His hand shook so much that most of the amber liquid ended up on the bar.

Fuck it!, he growled, sweeping the glasses away with his free hand, he grabbed another bottle and thrust it towards Jocco. Here, man. Help yourself.

Jocco took a sip, then placed the bottle gently on the dripping bar. Sampson was chugging his. Shock, Jocco reasoned. He’ll pass out soon. Soon turned out to be very soon. Sampson hadn’t half finished the bottle before it finished him. His eyes rolling white, he slid silently down behind the bar. What remained of the bartender was already there.

Jocco smiled, his mind racing. Over three thousand men were stationed at the China Lake Base. It seemed that only three of them were left alive. One in a thousand. He wondered if those odds held for off the base as well. The wild part of him hoped so.

One way to find out, he reasoned. He walked to the phone and dialed an outside line. A list of names and numbers was by the phone. He tried them all. State Police; Ridgecrest Hospital; Bakersfield Hospital; Los Angeles Airport; then, just to be sure, the Malamar Naval Air Base near San Diego. He got a number of machines, but nobody home. Some high roller had penciled in the number of The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Under that was scrawled: ‘For a sweet time call Candy’. A local number followed. Snake Eyes on the casino. Candy’s number got him a recorded ‘Moved. No forwarding address.’ Jocco grinned. Even the local whore-house had suddenly packed up and blown away.

His pulse raced. With every passing moment years of conditioning dropped away, leaving him stripped to the emotional bone. His smile widened. Ex-pimp, ex-pusher and now, ex-private in the army of the late-great United States of fucking-America! Ain’t life grand?!

Just then a horn sounded. Jocco saw a jeep stop out front. Lieutenant Pinkton from Personnel I presume? Jocco took the bottle from the bar and sat down facing the door. He then placed his .45 automatic on the table next to the bottle. He intended to give Pinkton a choice. Join his little team of carefree survivors or join the other silent snoozers that now seemed to litter the outside world.

It was while pondering such weighty questions as these that the plane passed overhead.

***

Chapter 3: The Antichrist

June 25, Barstow, California,

50 miles south of China Lake

Naval Weapons Center.

As the armored personnel carrier pulled into the parking lot of Barstow’s Holiday Inn, its six tractor tires crunched over the remains of several bodies. A large Troop Transport and two heavy trucks followed. Swirls of dust choked the air; not all of it from blown sand.

The door of the heavy APC swung open and Jocco climbed down. In the fading light, his first conquest lay before him: Barstow, located where I-40 continues west to Bakersfield and I-15 heads south through the San Gabriel Mountains all the way to LA.

It had taken Jocco two days to find and load all the little toys he would need to implement Part B of his Grand Plan. The trucks, weapons and manpower had been easy; the APC had not. At first he had wanted a tank, but Bobby-Joe Burlis, one of several other survivors that had willingly joined Jocco’s merry little band, had talked him out of it. Bobby-Joe had pointed out that they needed more speed rather than more firepower.

Sweet Jesus-on-a-stick!, Bobby-Joe had drawled in his thick southern accent. Why, you got enough ass-kick in them two trucks to start a goddamned war! Besides, a tank needs a trained crew; radar, gunner, navigation, the works. He’d jerked a thumb back in the direction of the motley bunch they had assembled in the China Base Hanger. Look, Jocco. I can drive just about anything with wheels, but I wouldn’t trust one of those assorted assholes near my daddy’s old tractor, let alone a fucking tank!

So Jocco had settled for the APC. It had front and back machine guns, a 50 mm. swivel cannon turret, and was heavy enough to either push aside or plow through wrecked cars. It could also, in Bobby-Joe’s own words; Hump along like a whore on a quart of moonshine!

George the Man leaned out the window of the Troop Transport. Hey, Boss. Where do you want me to park this fucker?

Jocco’s cruel smile took in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. Right in the front lobby, Georgie-boy. It looks like rain.

George’s eyes widened, then a cruel smile of his own lit up his pale face. Fucking-A, man! Fucking-A!

Moments later the high plate-glass windows shattered as Georgie – Porgie smashed his way into the lobby of Barstow’s Holiday Inn. Grinning like the savages they were fast becoming, Nathan Hight and Rege Shehe, the two other drivers Jocco had recruited, followed Georgie’s lead.

On a