Target Rich Environment

by Larry Correia

  While his men worked, Bubba climbed atop a war wagon and scanned the horizon with his telescope. There was one rider in the tall grass behind them. Hannah Stone really had followed them. “Aw, damn it.”

  “What is it, boss?” Skirmish shouted at him. “We got Chenoo?”

  “Worse. Job applicant.” He’d been hoping she would get a little bit out of civilization and get cold feet, because it took guts to ride through the wilderness quiet and alone while you knew monsters were lurking about, but no: She was too hard-headed for that. It would be dark soon. It was one thing to brave Chenoo in his fortified encampment, but one girl alone on the plains would be easy pickings.

  “You want that I should scare her off?” Skirmish offered helpfully.

  “She’s likely to shoot you. I’ve got this.” Bubba climbed off the wagon, whistled for a dog, and walked to where he’d tied his horse. “I leave her out there alone and she’s gonna die.”

  “Well, that would certainly learn her,” Skirmish shouted after him.

  As he rode, there was an awful screech on the wind, a sound so angry and hungry that it caused all the hair on his arms to stand up. His hunting dog, Beaux, began to whimper. There were Chenoo near and hunting. If he sent Stone away, she’d never make it back to town before dark, and some of the nearer homesteads might not be much safer abodes. He reached her a few minutes later. Stone was riding, wary, with her repeating rifle in her hand. She’d heard the scream too.

  As Bubba drew near, he loudly hailed her, so as to avoid ending up like poor lipless Bob. “Damn your obstinate hide, girl. I can’t believe you’re going through with this.”

  “Yep.” She was scared—probably regretting her choice now that the Chenoo were making a bunch of racket nearby—but on the balance, mostly smug. “You want another gunhand yet?”

  “Well, you ain’t hired, that’s for damn sure, but come on. You’re at least staying close for safety.”

  Bubba Shackleford really couldn’t abide a failure of hospitality.

  The shrieks had increased in intensity, and they were much closer now. The sounds were blood curdling. Abrams and McKillington already had everyone in position and the bonfire was raging as Bubba and Hannah came tearing in at a full gallop.

  Bubba pointed out the men for Hannah. “You’ve met Balthazar Abrams already. The big one with the freckles is Skirmish McKillington. The real ugly fella with one eye is Sid Hagberg, loves himself some dynamite. The scarecrow-looking one is Orson K. Pangle, Esquire, solid with a gun. Harvey Garlick is the little one that used to be a preacher; pay him no mind if he gets spun up. Hub Bryan was a good cowboy but better monster killer. And Mexican George is over there on look out, but he’s our best rider and a crack shot.”

  “Why do you call him Mexican George?”

  “Because nobody in Alabama would call him Whore Hay. We had two Georges at first, though White George got his hand bit off and quit, so I suppose it could be just George now, but it stuck.”

  Hannah took in the roaring bonfire, and the position of the wagons. “You want the monsters to see you. You’re trying to draw them in.”

  Perceptive. “More I can draw off tonight, less I have to fight tomorrow inside a mineshaft. The dogs will warn us if they get close, and then we turn their ambush back on them.”

  “The doc told me they had to shoot that one cursed ice heart forty times,” Hannah pointed out.

  One of Scholar’s telegrams told of an Indian legend where you had to shoot a Chenoo in the heart with seven arrows for it to die, but he was a man of the modern industrial age. Bubba gestured at the machinegun mounted atop the nearest war wagon. “That’s what those are for.”

  Hanna looked at the Colt-Browning M1895 suspiciously. “Heard of these things. Seems wasteful, spraying all those bullets over the countryside.”

  Of course a sharpshooter would feel threatened by the idea of being replaced by volume. “Bullets are cheaper than men and I’d rather spend brass than blood. They’ll probably attack in the middle of the night. We let the Chenoo come to us through a wall of hot lead, and then you can do your thing. Try to listen for once, and you might live ’til morning.” He began to walk away.

  It appeared that it was beginning to sink in that she’d gotten herself into some dire circumstances. He had to admit he was enjoying her discomfort. It was one thing to talk about hunting monsters, but it was entirely different when you could actually hear them.

  “Wait, Mr. Shackleford, where are you going?”

  “To eat supper and get some sleep before my watch.”

  A Chenoo screeched. She jumped. This one had to be less than a quarter mile away. The hunting dogs began barking in response. “You can sleep through that?”

  “Well, they ain’t going to get this over with any faster if I’m tired with a growling stomach. Sleep well, Miss Stone.”

  The Chenoo struck in the darkest hour.

  The shrieking had stopped after midnight. Since the monster killers knew they were still out there watching, the quiet was worse than the noise. Only, their dogs were well-trained, so when the monsters tried to sneak up, rather than barking, they pointed. Hub Bryan and Orson Pangle were on watch, and they’d immediately gone to waking everyone else up.

  The men got out of their bedrolls without a sound, guns already in hand. Bubba had slept in his boots and the thick leather coat that served as armor against claws and teeth. He signaled everyone to move into position. Low and slow, his killers got ready. The last person he woke up was Hannah because he didn’t want her startled and making enough noise to warn the Chenoo. Only by the time he crawled over, she was already sitting up, next to a wheel on a war wagon, eyes wide, watching the swaying underbrush and shadows cast by their huge fire.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she whispered.

  Bubba was perfectly well-rested, but he’d done this sort of thing a lot.

  He spotted something white and glistening moving through the brown grass. The Chenoo may have lost their human reason, but they still had animal cunning. They were moving toward the homestead’s corral, probably to slaughter their horses, so there could be no escape. But he’d been ready for such a move, and one of the machineguns was already pointed in that direction.

  It was his first look at the monsters. Some were still shaped like men, only with skin so white they near glowed, and their flesh pulled tight over pointed bones, lips drawn back to show their naked teeth, red eyes bulging from their sockets. Some of those were still wearing scraps of their army uniforms. The ones who’d been cursed longer, they weren’t men at all anymore, but all twisted up, hands like claws, stooped like apes, speckled with spurs of bone and blue pustules, and giving off so much cold that the dew had frozen to them in shimmering sheets of ice that cracked and left sparkling dust as they stalked forward.

  Shivering despite the bonfire, Bubba knocked on the side of the wagon. “You got company, Balt. Far end of the corral. Get to threshing.” Then, using hand signals, he told the others to keep watching their appointed fields of fire. “Now!”

  Abrams popped his head and shoulders out the hatch on the top of the wagon and took up the potato digger’s grip. The gun’s nickname came from the reciprocating lever under the barrel, which would dig a hole in the dirt if you were shooting it prone. He’d had to repeatedly assure Skirmish that potato digger wasn’t some Yankee insult toward the Irish. Fire blossomed out the end of the potato digger in a continuous roar. Pangle must have seen something on the other side of the homestead, because he opened up with his machinegun too, and now both of them were burning money into noise. Bullet after bullet slammed into Chenoo, ripping off chunks and flinging them down, jerking and twitching. Their blood flowed like slush.

  “Goodness gracious! That was magnificent!” Hannah shouted as both guns ran through their belts. Sharpshooter snobbery only went so far in the face of such magnificent destruction. “I need one of those!”

  If only the Chenoo were so easily impressed, but the rest of the monsters sp
rang up from their hiding places and rushed the homestead. Bubba realized that this wasn’t a raid. This horde was every missing person in the region. Their unearthly screams pierced the night as the spirit-haunted husks rushed across the fields. All of the monster hunters started shooting, working levers and bolts as fast as they could.

  The monsters were tough to kill, and for each one dropped, others gained ground. Most of his men were shooting new Krag-Jorgenson rifles, which were fast to load, but they couldn’t keep up with this onslaught. Surprisingly, Hannah was as good as her show biz reputation suggested, and she was working her Winchester’s lever as quick as a sewing machine’s needle, methodically putting slugs through hearts and heads. Pangle and Abrams got their potato diggers reloaded, and their volume of fire increased dramatically again.

  He saw where several Chenoo had bunched up to climb the fence, and shouted for Skirmish to fire the cannon. It was loaded with grapeshot. The big man yanked the cord. There was a deafening boom and when the boiling cloud of smoke cleared out, there was nothing but a pile of splinters and frozen meat where they’d been standing.

  Skirmish moved to reload the cannon, but before he could do so, a boulder fell out of the sky and smashed it flat. His man sprang back to his feet, astonished but in one piece. However, their cannon was a goner. Did these damned things have a catapult or something?

  No. It was worse. Bubba spotted where the big rock had come from. And it hadn’t been launched. It had been thrown. The being was a hundred yards away, vaguely shaped like a man, only ten feet tall and wide as a wagon.

  “What is that?” Hannah Stone shouted.

  “Stonecoat,” he answered. And there was no path through the mass of rushing Chenoo to do what Plague of Crows’ message had told him to. “It’s an earth spirit who—”

  Only Hannah Stone hadn’t waited long enough to hear the answer, and had instead picked up her buffalo rifle and promptly dropped one heavy round, smack dab into the middle of the Stonecoat’s forehead. Gravel chips flew off, but it didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, it began ponderously moving their way.

  Bubba was watching and calculating all of this with a mind as cold as a Chenoo’s heart, and he saw exactly how the battle was going to unfold. The monsters weren’t dying easily, they were too numerous, and the swarm was nearly on top of them. “Into the wagons,” Bubba ordered. He didn’t like abandoning valuable horses, but didn’t see much choice.

  It was four men per wagon. They clambered through the doors and pulled them shut behind. The inside of his wagon was extra tight, because they had an extra body. It wasn’t exactly ladylike, but Stone crawled over Bubba’s legs so she could stick her sawed-off shotgun through the firing slit in the wall and promptly blew a hole through an old Chenoo’s head. His killers stuck their rifles through the other firing slits and kept up the onslaught. The interior quickly filled with choking fumes. The wagon rocked as the Chenoo crashed against it, like a boat in heavy waves. They began to scratch and tear at the seams.

  “Boss, the big one is coming this way!” Abrams shouted down through the hatch.

  “Good,” Bubba stated as he pulled the colorful, supposedly magic stick from out of his coat. Then he wouldn’t have to run as far to reach it. He began climbing up. “Move aside, Balthazar, I’m coming up.”

  He squeezed past and onto the roof. It was worse than he’d thought. Chenoo were strong, and they were sticking their claws through the slick sides and pulling themselves up. He turned just in time to witness the Stonecoat reach the other war wagon. The spirit stuck one great hand beneath, and effortlessly flipped the wagon on its side. It crushed a bunch of Chenoo in the process, but the Stonecoat didn’t seem to mind.

  It turned its attention toward their wagon and approached, rumbling and flowing across the ground. Its body was made of millions of moving pieces, it was like watching a rockslide . . . up. The Chenoo on that side of the wagon were smart enough to get out of the way, leaving Bubba a clear path to follow some very questionable advice.

  That witch had better be telling the truth.

  Bubba stood atop the war wagon and shouted at the Stonecoat. “I’m Bubba Shackleford, professional monster killer!” He pointed Plague of Crow’s stick at the spirit. He shook it and the beads rattled. “Go back to sleep, you old spirit! I protect this land now!”

  “What the hell are you doing, boss?” Abrams shouted as he struggled to clear a jam from the potato digger.

  “Establishing dominance.” Bubba replied.

  “It’s big as a locomotive!”

  “It’s a warrior thing. Yeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaa!” Then Bubba leapt over the side.

  The message Plague of Crows had scratched on his hotel room wall had been simple.

  Count coup.

  His boots hit the ground hard, and he rolled onto his shoulder, but nothing broke, and there wasn’t time to dither with tons of living gravel coming to crush him. Bubba sprang to his feet. The plains warriors counted coup by touching their foe and getting away, only as it loomed over him, he realized just how suicidal that was. Every sensible man in the world would have turned and run for his life, but sensible men did not become monster hunters. Bubba charged the behemoth.

  The Stonecoat ponderously lifted one huge arm overhead. Dirt and bits of rock rained down. It was prepared to deliver a blow that would smash an ox into paste, but Bubba ran right under that fist, still bellowing his war cry.

  Reaching up, he whacked the gigantic monster square in the face with a decorative stick.

  The spirit paused for just a moment. If it had eyes, it probably would have blinked.

  He’d touched his enemy in the middle of battle. Which was good, but the second part of counting coup was getting away alive.

  Bubba dived to the side as the fist came down. The impact shook Wyoming. It missed him by a cat’s whisker, but the ground beneath erupted upward in protest, flinging him through the air. He crashed back down to earth, flat on his face, then scrambled on his hands and knees as the monster lifted one epic foot to stomp him like a mouse. But by the time that impact came, he was already sprinting away.

  He ran toward the bonfire until he realized it wasn’t following him, so he turned around. Did it work? The Stonecoat was just standing there. It probably didn’t speak English, but Bubba taunted it anyway. “That’s right, Stonecoat. You got touched. So quit your bellyaching and take your ragged ass back to your hole.”

  Then he realized that his breath had come out as steam. Despite being twenty feet from a roaring blaze, it was freezing cold. Bubba looked around and realized he was now completely surrounded by ice hearted Chenoo. They hissed at him through their exposed teeth. The circle was slowly closing in.

  Maybe it was time to be diplomatic. Miners had blown up its house after all. He pointed the stick at the Stonecoat. “You leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Nobody will trouble your rest again.”

  It stood there for a glacially long time. It was obvious that the Chenoo were beholden to its will, because there was absolutely nothing stopping them from rending Bubba limb from limb. The hunters in his wagon had stopped shooting to watch, and the only noise was the crackling of flames and the shouting coming from the hunters in the rolled-over wagon who were now stuck.

  There was a rumbling, like an earthquake. Bubba knew that was the spirit talking. There were no words, but pictures formed in his head. Courage was sufficient. It was going back to the depths. Cover it in water and sand, and trouble it no more. The pact is done.

  “I’ll inform the governor.” This looked like a good spot to make a reservoir.

  The Stonecoat slowly lifted one hand. When it dropped it, every Chenoo soundlessly collapsed, like puppets with their strings cut. Then the Stonecoat itself was gone, the spirit whisked back to its hole. The body remained, but it was no longer animated, and the rocks parted in a shuddering cloud. When the dust cleared, all that remained was a tall pile of gravel.

  Bubba tossed Plague of Crows’ stick into the bonf
ire. He didn’t know if it was actually magic or not, but it was best not to trifle with such things. They always came with an unexpected cost . . . Besides, he had a sneaky suspicion he would run into her again one of these days.

  Other than some bumps and bruises, and Hub Bryan breaking an arm when the wagon flipped, they were unscathed. While they rode back towards Cheyenne, Abrams figured that even once they ate the cost of the ruined wagon and cannon, this was going to be by far their most lucrative job yet. Monster killers loved getting paid.

  “Split eight ways, it’s still the most gold any of us have ever seen,” Abrams shouted. The men cheered.

  Bubba was riding alongside Hannah Stone. The young woman hadn’t said much since the battle. She’d conducted herself admirably in the fight, and a flexibility of mind need not be limited to the supernatural.

  “Make that nine ways, Balthazar.” She looked over at him and grinned. This time the smile was real.

  BLOOD ON WATER

  By Hinkley Correia and Larry Correia

  “Blood on the Water” was coauthored with my sixteen year old daughter, Hinkley, and this is the first time it has appeared in print.

  The Diary of Hannah Stone

  As the first female member of Bubba Shackleford’s Professional Monster Killers, I believe it expedient that I begin a journal to document my experiences.

  I first joined the company approximately a month ago. I had left Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show due to creative differences, and was temporarily searching for work in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when the good Mr. Shackleford and company happened to pass through. Mr. Shackleford was leading a small hunting party to track down and exterminate a pack of Chenoo cannibals. When we happened to cross paths, I was invited to join their quest because Mr. Shackleford knew my illustrious reputation as the finest sharpshooter in the region.