Life Everlasting?

Kate knew she would use all of her green stamps one day ... She hoped they find her body. She thought of her family and her body and the funeral. She did not want a funeral; maybe she does not want anyone to find her body. She will be gone, absent from the body.

"Oh grave, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?"

Scriptures from the many funerals Kate reluctantly attended over many years for friends, colleagues, and family paraded through her memory.

She was not dead yet. She was in a crumbling crypt in the "St Louis" cemetery, a necropolis, the city of the dead they call it. Kate thought she was in the right place, but she did not want to wind up there forever! Her head felt horrible, but there was no blood, only a bump that was tender to the touch. Cautiously, she stretched her hands out to the sides of her body and peered about her but saw nothing but dusky stagnant shadows.

Rolling over slowly, she rose onto her hands and knees and began crawling forward like a zombie armadillo, but the hard stone was not easy to move upon; her knees hurt like crazy.

Something brushed past her skittering away, with a loud squeak. It was as scared as Kate. She resumed her slow crawl across the stone but stopped leaning back on her heels listening, searching for light, squinting, and looking in all directions, trying to give her knees a break.

As her eyes adjusted, she saw the opening and the low stone bench she had not seen when she had slipped into this niche trying to hide. "Smooth move," she thought, "stumbling over a bench".

She wanted to pee and speculated how cool it would be to be a man who could just "whip it out," cut loose, baptizing everything and marking his territory.

Kate knew she made a poor choice in this case of espionage.

Why would she take off on her own to follow that man?

She must stop thinking she was twenty-five, strong, able to walk, and participate in this chess game called life. No, Kate was merely in the back of the audience, on the edge of her seat, watching, holding her breath, pulling for the dark horse to triumph.

She should have returned to the tour bus and gone back to the Quarter, where she would be safe with Steve and the other ops. She should not be chasing terrorists with no backup. Steve would be pissed about this unscheduled escapade if things do not pan out.

She resumed her exploration, hoping to find her walker. Yes, Kate was in the middle of a graveyard alone, in pursuit of an unknown suspect. The weather was humid and getting hot, too hot for a fifty-year-old woman with an autoimmune condition. She cannot walk, much less run in this debilitating stifling heat. There were not enough adjectives to describe Louisiana's heat, and it was only March.

Where was her gun? Instinctively, she reached for her back where she found an empty holster that should hold a Baby Glock. To keep her on the same playing field as the bad guys, the weapon of choice was an equalizer.

Kate kept moving in the direction of the voices. She found a wall and stood up leaning on the wall. She regained her balance, hoping to find the opening, but she found the walker. She pulled it closer and began the search for the Glock. She retraced her steps slowly, feeling the stone floor with her foot. "Ah, pay off," she reached down, hoping to pick up nothing more than the weapon.

The voices grew louder as the crypt entry was flooded with light. Everyone looked shocked to see each other. Obviously, no one expected anyone to be in there.

Kate looked at the man holding the light and saw the sudden recognition on his face from the diner this morning.

Kate had followed the man out of the diner, while Steve and the others were paying the bill. She had heard they were catching the bus to meet in the old graveyards. One of the other men saw Kate and recognized her immediately from the diner and growled pulling out a concealed gun.

Kate was in the City of Death, an old cemetery in Metairie just outside of New Orleans. The irony was not lost on Kate as she stood among the crumbling ghostly white crypts that entomb generations.

Kate was facing two men, one of whom was pointing an impressive gun at her.

She was in a precarious disadvantage and stood a great risk of being very dead.

The other man saw Kate fiddling with her weapon but hesitated just long enough for her to fire at him, hitting him in the thigh. She did not want to hit the knee just to drop him.

She shot the other in the shoulder; hence, one man was up, and one man was down. Fortunately, he dropped his weapon when he saw Kate pointing her gun, preparing to fire upon him again.

It had been a while since Kate had to discharge her weapon against flesh and blood, but she liked staying alive.

Kate prayed for one more chance to make it home.

The two men were moaning and cursing Kate in Arabic, but she caught a few impolite words she learned from Rosetta Stone.

Kate was standing by her old rolling walker, while one of the bleeding men on the floor was trying to reach his weapon. Kate gripped her gun, pointing it at him, and growled, "Don't do it!" She was not happy.

Now What?

As she frowned at the wounded, cursing men struggling to reach her, Kate searched for her phone and found it still attached to the basket of the walker. Again, she asked herself, "Why are you here?" She got an uneasy feeling that the situation could escalate. Would she get out of there alive or who else was out there and why did she follow those men alone?

She was too old for these games, and the fact she was unable to walk made her question the wisdom in pursuing killers alone using a walker. Her family accused Kate of having a death wish. Kate did not want to die, but she could not let these men get away.

Kate heard more voices and scooted back toward the wall and prepared for another assault as she grabbed the men's guns from the ground.

Kate realized she was operating on pure instinct gained from thirty years of working in special operations, and of course, the adrenalin helped too. However, she was supposed to be retired!

Staying alive!

Kate waited, holding her breath, gripping the gun tightly, and praying there were no more gunmen.

She waited listening to the voices of two men whispering. They sounded young to her, kids perhaps. She allowed herself to breathe and braced herself against the cold stone bench she had tripped over inside the crypt.

The next scenario did not surprise Kate when she heard a gasp and a stifled yell, "Oh my god, what the ..." Kate heard a voice beyond the tomb enclosure.

"No, no, get back, shhh!" another nervous voice whispered.

"Wait, don't go!" Kate hoped this would not end badly and spoke calmly because she needed to get out of there in one piece, so Kate attempted to enlist help.

Two young men, maybe late teens, cautiously stepped within the walls of the dingy stone crypt through the wrought-iron gate that creaked loudly protesting, as it swung open to reveal the aftermath of the skirmish that had played itself out in the lazy, sticky, and steamy city.

Kate watched the two hesitating before completely stepping forward.

"Mmmm, uh, hello," she tried testing her voice. "Um could you please come here a minute?" Kate tried to project friendliness in spite of the gun and two bloody men at her...