The Hunt for Avon's Ghost

By D.B. Dakota

The leader of the US immigrant colony is a fake caliph and trafficker of stolen goods. His snatcher, a student, steals the university's 400-year old architect's scale model used to build Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The fence kingpin can't sell the million-dollar showpiece because the PI's phony buyers thwart his efforts. His lover leaves him, alone with the cursed treasure, setting him up to be captured for possessing contraband.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613092293

Book preview

One

Swerving, jouncing alongside gullies and potholes, dodging slabs of protruding rock on the hillside road, heading for his clan’s outpost on the Colorado hillside, the young Arabian—guy, not horse—swung his stolen car off the dirt trail up and onto the hardtop bypass.

Diss be bettah, the immigrant muttered, sounding like the townies he ran with on the street. A’right, where do da guard be at? he thought, scanning for houses, troops, munitions, a cabin, campsite, turn-off, trespass sign, anything. By then he should have spotted some evidence of his home colony’s settlement in their new homeland on the desolate open range, carved out of Colorado, a multi-race state of Americans.

Creeping along...nothing there, left or right, above the road or below, not even signs of a former ranch or two. To make room for the immigrating tribe, ranchers had been kicked off their spreads in a deal put together by busy bee activists doing what they do...sting. Yeah, well, he thought, screw ’em. Who? Everybody. He kept chugging. Leastwise, the dirt road was no worse. Whose idea of a stupid colony was it, no-how?

He? Who dat? If names matter, he be Attar Hakim, messed up college freshie. Expatriate, because he was entering his own country, the border of which was around there somewhere—Colorado? Yes.

He glanced over at the magnificent relic jostling around in the passenger seat, a big-ticket artifact, really big. Valuable, and how. He’d just picked it up, if you please. Now for a place to store it, safe and unlikely. Like a bank vault. Not really...selling it for a million dollars was the plan. He knew just where—someplace in El Ecbat Colony, his new home country, the new commune, fort, whatever. So far, nada, because he couldn’t find the place. Just vacant territory, that’s all there was, back of beyond. He slammed on the brakes and cut loose with a string of butchered Farsi and raspberries aimed at the speedometer, and he turned up the radio.

"YEE-HA! ’MORNIN’, AMERICA! Me again, ya’all, foamin’ at the mouth at our stuntman in the White House, rippin’ off a corner of our country and waddin’ it up into a spitball. I mean, what else do you think those desert nomads are going to do with it? They make gypsies look like paragons of virtue. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? That’s what you’ve got your radio for, because I’m gonna tell you again.

That El Ecbat thing? I mean, how’s about that new district, that political enclave, carved out of Colorado’s Fremont County, just whacked right out of it? I’ve got details. Hey, I’m up to speed. El Ecbat Colony, it’s called. Colony—you understand? I mean, do you know what a colony is? What it does? Just lying there? Soaking up taxes? Do I have to go look it up for you?

The region, a colony, was defined as a portion of territory, within or surrounded by, a larger territory, whose inhabitants are culturally or ethnically distinct.

"You gotta for sure remember me from yesterday, but let me haul off and introduce myself, Buzzy Redstone, and pardon my cold, I’m all girl, not frog. I’ve got all the talk that’s fit to listen to, so let’s pick out our ears and dive right into it, that El Ecbat farce.

"You know about the Constitution, what it is? Heard of it? Our old ancestor-created checklist of freedoms that’s being tromped on? Know the one I’m talking about? The Constitution thing you heard about in school but weren’t taught the contents of? Or importance? Huh? Furgit about it. That’s what the president did, yep, turned his head, ignored it.

"Not many people know about that clown’s newest white paper, his little foreign affairs skirmish—I mean, ordinance. Never heard of that, either, eh?

You, Swami? Buzzy asked her screener over the intercom on the other side of the glass. How about you? Know about the country’s latest give-away amendment by executive order?

Swami shook his head.

Thought not. By the prez’s decree and a stroke of his sneaky little red pen—just red, no white and blue on it—the dictator in the faded white house—otherwise, say pink house—in Washington DC gave birth to—ta-da!—the Colony of El Ecbat.

What! snapped a sidekick voice, I never even heard about it!

You’re repeating yourself, stoopid, Buzzy responded as herself. "Hear not much, anyway. Yep, the territory is now called El Ecbat Colony, a, uh, province, outpost, you might call it, that—

"No, put it this way. Don’t you see? El Prezidenté didn’t want to bother the citizenry with thorny stuff, like the creation of a new foreign colony. Minor bookkeeping. Stop your bitchin’.

"And what, you ask, is this Ecbat thing? Hey! I’ll tell you right now, it’s not that tailor-made masked movie cowboy dude, crackin’ his whip at the black-hats about to rustle a herd out here on the Texas range. You’re thinking of Cowboy Echo, or maybe it’s Zoro, I’m talking about, no, not about Christianity, either, not Islam, but pre-Islam...way, way back, not a couple dozen other dogmas, and counting, oh, no.

"I’m talking Ecbatana. Yeah, him, Lord Ecbatana, the Persian prophet of the sixth century B.C. Also the capital of Media...all that oil, baby, you know? Wait. Hmmmm. Where have all the youngins gone—remember that? That old folk song? Key of F-sharp. Hmmmmm.

"How come the prophets, they’re not around? Not around?

"All packed off, packed off, can’t be found?

"Passing, gone, passing, gone?

"Long time now and moving on.

"Way, way back in Apollo’s time, moving on.

"Before Christ and then some and far away.

"Back then and there, no one left but the Ecbat way.

"E-c-b-a-t. Forever Ecbats. Nothing’s changed except the date. But they’ve got no home now. Their mother country kicked them out—long time passing, centuries and centuries. Where have all those Ecbats gone?

"Aw, no, don’t tell me. Hold on. Make that d-i-d, did have no home.

"Theme music, please...da tada dot ta da! Our good ole US President Pushover his very self to the rescue! Here’s what. The Executive Branch, meaning you know who, with an overnight rush-hush order, set up a home strictly for your hapless friends, the Ecbat immigrants. Like that, do you, hmmm? Know who?

"You’d better like that. Prez carved this first-class territory out of your very own Colorado exclusively for the Ecbats. Or maybe it’s the Ecbat Ecbatanas. Ask him which it is at the next press conference.

"You know about Colorado, the state that’s our complete, whole state for a long time...to come no longer? One of the lower forty-eight? Very low now in President Whozit’s Bloatocracy, apparently. You folks there don’t vote to suit the man, so, pow!

"Neither is Colorado itself as big size-wise as it was last month. Colorado had its appendix disconnected—yuk...a glob of land, a pretty good size nuisance to certain developers out there in the jack-rabbit scrub. For comparison, it’s about the size of Rhode Island minus Narragansatt Bay’s water and islands.

"Colorado’s appendix is dislodged by El Ecbat Colony. Not far from Colorado Springs...down the road from the Springs twenty-five miles on a crows’ odometer. El Ecbat Colony has a river chugging along, right on through it, the colony has. It’s next to Fort Carson Military Base and airfield. So. So vagabond refugees, without any immigration rigmarole, can be flown directly into their own new country. All their own. It’s right across the road from the landing strip.

Wait. How’s that? Disoriented, Buzzy asked, Now they’ve got what?

Their own airfield, dummy! a ventriloquist’s voice croaked.

My Lord, where have I been? asked Buzzy. El Ecbat Colony has everything, then, that Ecbats need, see? To pretend they’re in the Old, Old Ecbats...down on all fours, hands and knees, staring that-a-way through their eyelids...praying toward daybreak on top of Mount Damavana, where all good things come from. They’re squatters on our territory set aside for displaced persons, and that’s code for the immigrant type pretenders, Ecbats pretenders.

A national monument or something? the sidekick asked.

Something smelly, you clever dog, you. A live monument made of humans. Something different from other national monuments...a flesh-and-blood landmark twenty-five miles long. Ecbatanas migrating there, and you can watch ’em settling in, homesteading, keeping to themselves, shunning American culture—and still warring with each other just like they’ve done in the Middle East for years by the thousands. Lovely animation, huh? Thanks, Mr. President...take a—yes, uh, what is it, Sid?

Excuse, pliz, folks, this is Buzzy booger’s producer. Go, girl.

Not time for one—? A’right, spike it. Back tomorrow.

ATTAR HAKIM KEPT AT it, driving around, looking for the entrance to his new homeland, scouting the hillsides for El Ecbats. Slight, spry, 20, of Middle Eastern extraction, doctrinal, gung-ho even, about his sect, Attar had a thing about symbols...forever censuring. Slamming what? The hand that fed him, essentially. Anything out there, everything ...political ...ethnic ...racial, the validity of his own people, because his primitive race, nation so-called, was dying out, being adulterated, smothered, overwhelmed, Westernized.

How? Under orders of and by decree of the president of the United States of America, Attar was not an illegal alien—although, what else? What a guy, that president, thought Attar—ya’ gotta love him.

Now streamlined by TV to street ways, Attar’s wheels was a heap; he could barely afford gas. Not without skills, though, the guy had a few, like siphoning gas from cars and shoplifting.

But, look, he knew some Shakespeare, which he was studying at Colorado University’s conservatory. Very useful, considering what he was going to do with it...bone up on the enemy. Who dat? Someone likely to accuse him of something. The chip on his shoulder was a big’n.

TO GET TO WHERE HE now found himself—close to being lost—the night before he had zipped away from CU, Colorado Springs, sailed westward to I-25, south thru the Springs for forty miles, down past Fort Carson, the military base, to a turn-off westbound. The back road, really bad, poetically insufferable, shunted him northward roundabout to a place far-fetched totally. El Ecbat Colony, a sign read. It was home, the US enclave of immigrants, with roots in the Middle East, going back centuries...several, actually. To former Colorado residents, those displaced ranchers and cowboys, pre-invasion? What about them? Gone. The place was bizarre and heartbreaking. Jeez was it.

Their airfield—they had one, with the help of earth-movers—was centered in the colony’s hundred square mile west side between Fourmile River and Currant River. A daytime, dusty landing strip, the field was strictly for freight; no passenger traffic, except for the initial airlift.

The transient crowd would fill a football stadium, it was estimated. Upwards of 120,000 Ecbats, English-speaking inhabitants, were moved out of Asia, anticipating better treatment under tutelage of the US. As to climate, the new one was no worse than the old one in Asia. Better wasn’t a word worth considering.

Known as the Ecbat tribe, the ancestors, way, way back, record has it, were persecuted in Persia, their homeland, because of their Ecbatana religion. The lot of them, those remaining, got resettled a long time ago in a neighboring country just off the Arabian Sea. That didn’t work out. Why not? Because they wouldn’t switch religions to samadhi and sit cross-legged to worship. Stubborn, the Ecbats were a united community, well educated, give them that, and although small as a force, according to the American president’s press release, they were important economically, it said. Really.

At the ninety-nine cent store? a commentator quipped. Think Buzzy.

The US political leader with the title of president, not without an ego, savoring renown after he croaked, flexing his new role as president pro tem, testing his notability while he had some, was fixing that flaw in global equality. He went about rescuing and relocating the culture of the vanishing Ecbats’ ethnic and extending the lineage. El Presidenté—he clung to his Mexican name, El, etc.—needed all the minority groups he could muster up, bribe or win over to support him in his reign as the current in-the-media US hot-damn revolutionary. Anything to bypass that futzy old Constitution.

He was photogenic with biting wit. To hell with—meaning, downplay—Plymouth Rock and what came after. That was then. This, what else? Was now, exactly. Yes. In modern anti-media media, headlines were unkind.

Ecbats customs? Some. Over the centuries they had acquired ways. Imitators, they had none. Mainstream comics never even heard of them. Environmentalists didn’t know how to rate and score them. Customs different, say, from what? Well, who else was as frugal and considerate of wildlife and the planet? For example, to avoid contaminating fire, earth or water—remember those three—they disposed of their dead by exposing corpses, the bodies, in circular towers, where vultures devoured them. No report on how buzzards, the long-wing vulture species, made out with the custom delivery service. Fed Ex, eat your heart out. Please. Pass the salt.

Two

Attar spotted his destination . They moved the thing! Then— That’s it? That tent? They call that a fort? Teeny white pup tent? No sign? Nope, nothing.

Alongside the shelter, a high white flagpole was stuck in the ground, a wobbly irrigation pipe swiped out of some rancher’s sprinkler system. Its flag on top was white with a red Z stenciled on.

Leaning against the pole, a bearded relic, a wrinkled oldster in a turban, shifted his skeleton, hunkered down on his haunches and huddled inside his kaftan, a flowing black gown, twisted around his neck to form a burka with slobber on it. He looked the part. In character.

Upon arrival of the visitor, with both hands grasping a long, weathered walking stick, and hesitant effort, the sentry straight out of Arabian Nights hoisted himself upright, swiped sweat off his face, stood still to steady his legs and his breath, and slouched out to challenge the newcomer.

As television producers had discovered—and been denied access for interviews—this checkpoint was the main and only public access to a New World settlement. What settlement was that? Publicity was in order. Salient point headlines: El Ecbat Colony. Pilgrims. Several thousand. From the Far, Far East, pre-Mohammad, BC, before Aristotle even, initially from persecution by host nations. Scarcely tolerated, these guys and their women weren’t well liked.

Other routes surrounding minor roadways were blocked off. What was farther up inside the territory was not detailed by curious media speculation. The press couldn’t get in. And El Ecbat Colony had no media of the modern kind. Someday, maybe electricity. Flyovers revealed little detail about the colony, other than rolling barren meadow, woods here and there, desert and tents, tent after tent, nomad style, scattered around in the scrub.

Inhabitants just wanted to be left alone, and apparently were. Cooking up an invasion were they? Revolution? Outsiders wondered if they were peaceful.

Beyond the guard post checkpoint, up ahead was a row of tents...a camel here, a camel there...itinerant Bedouins...camped out. For the duration, inhabitants stated, whatever that meant. How long would it be, the duration? Till the world caved to Ecbatanaism? What’s that? Their cult. No, no, not cult—religion, spin doctors cued.

Or were