“Damn, that’s one hell of a woman,” William said. “She available?”
“No, she’s married,” I said with a wry look.
“Her husband’s a hell of a lucky man.”
“Some days, yeah,” Jed said, slapping me on the back. “Where are the shelters? We’re going to have to evacuate them just to be sure.”
“Where the hell are you going to put the people?” Kent the sheriff asked.
“Sheriff…” Jed paused, reading his nameplate, “Des Rochers, we’re going to get them the hell out of London County.”
“If we can find a clear road,” I said. “Any word from the ground element?”
“They’re on the way still,” the dwarf with the radio rumbled in a voice like rocks in a tumbler. “The elf reports no issues that he can’t handle, so far.”
The dwarf looked like he was going to spit.
“Jed, get on the horn to Director Goodhart and Michael,” I said, going to my ruck and pulling out a tablet. “Tell them we’re going to need to evacuate Piccadilly, at a minimum, and it looks like the closet place we can put them is going to be Junction. We’re going to need more teams as well.”
“You want them to invoke Plan Zulu?” he asked.
Plan Zulu was the ultimate shit has gone to hell plan. The ‘Christ has returned and loosed the Archangel Michael and the hosts of Heaven against Lucifer and the Hordes of Hell’ plan.
“Negative. But see if we can get some support from the governor and the National Guard on this one,” I replied with a sigh. “It’s gonna be fucking Fallujah all over again, without armor or artillery support.”
“Yeah,” Jed scoffed, walking to the other side of the store.
Diindiisi and her fire team came back, splashed with blood and other, less savory things. I turned to face her.
“It’s Abzu,” she said, handing me a cell phone.
I scrolled through the photos. Dead, dog-faced imps stared at me, their eyes glazing. Dead daemons and dead zombies lay in windrows.
“We’re going to have to clear the town and close the rift,” I said. “Fast.”
“But how did he get here?” Holt asked, looking at the photos.
“We’ll figure that out when we’re done rescuing people,” Diindiisi replied.
* * * * *
Chapter Eight
We had full rucks, limited air support, and a whole lot of people to rescue. Des Rochers gave us a map showing the shelter locations, and William gave us the cell phone numbers for everyone he could think of who was operating in town, moving people to the shelters. Jed and I sat down and argued out a plan, with everyone tossing in his or her opinions.
“We could wait for the support team to get here. He’s usually useless as tits on a boar, but Sola’s magic might make a difference,” Jed said.
“Abzu’s minions could break into one of the shelters while we’re waiting,” Diindiisi argued. “Every person they eat grants them more power and widens the rift.”
“Kinda wish we had Thing One and Thing Two,” Dalma muttered. “For the firepower, if nothing else.”
Our plan was stone axe simple—hey-diddle-diddle, right up the middle. Most of the shelters were spaced along the main drag into Piccadilly. At least they didn’t form a five-pointed star or other occult symbol. Once we’d cleared the area around a shelter, we’d cover the people extracting south toward Junction, handing them off to the air elements once they were out of town.
“One thing,” Jed said, grinning as we were all checking each other’s loads, “an event this size is going to kill any attempt by the government to cover it up.”
“Yeah, that’s not the problem,” I said, tightening a strap on my ruck.
“What is?” he replied with a raised eyebrow.
“Some bright asshole in Congress is going to use this to pass the anti-magic equivalent of the fucking Patriot Act, and any practitioner of magic is going to have to be licensed by Uncle Sugar, or face jail time or worse.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Jed replied.
“What’s so bad about licensing magic practitioners?” Dalma asked as we filed out of the Gas N’ Go.
“Think about it for a minute. Sure, you can cut your kid’s hair, but if you charge to cut your neighbor’s hair, the government is up your ass about it,” Padgett said. “Besides, we’re fairly busy now. Who are they going to call to check out every little bruja who’s spelling bugs off their neighbor’s tomatoes for twenty bucks? Damn sure ain’t going to be the FBI.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Dalma admitted.
“And while we’re running down minor shit, someone’s going to get killed, and it’ll be our fault,” Hovis said.
We paused while Fred and the dwarves picked up a beat up, black 1967 Impala and moved it so we could exit the Gas N’ Go, then moved it back in place. Cletus jumped on top of the hood when the car was back in the wall again.
“We’ll get everyone moving south when y’all send them here,” he said with a bow. “If you see my big brother, tell him to watch his ass.”
“Will do,” I said with a wave as we walked toward town.
There are competing theories on the best way to patrol on foot—either jumping at every rock fall, or smoking and joking. Either way, it’s not something we at Group do normally—you go in, apply the old ultra-violence to the target, then move on to the next target after the cleaners release you. Jed and I had experience running foot patrols in Iraq—usually supported by Humvees with heavy weapons, with air support or artillery as needed. We were splitting the difference—the fire teams on either side of the street, with Fred’s dwarves following. The dwarves were putting the ‘heavy’ in heavy weapons. One of them was carrying a variant of the M240 in fifty cal. If he hadn’t been a dwarf, it probably would have knocked him ass over teakettle to fire it.
“Malone, Dragon.”
“Go for Malone.”
“Two things. First, I’m handing off to Night Stalker. He’s back on station, and Sledgehammer should follow shortly. Second, you should have drone coverage shortly.”
“Understood.”
“Dragon out.”
“Malone out.”
We’d just made it past the actual city limits—the sign was shot full of holes, with a special emphasis paid to knocking out the centers of the zeros in the population number—when we stumbled upon the first horde of zombies at the post office. I halted the patrol, pulled out my phone, and ran a finger down the list of phone numbers.
“Is this QMG?” a male voice rasped.
“Yeah. Bubba?”
“If not, he’s gonna be pissed, because I’m wearing his underwear,” Bubba replied. “Cletus called to warn me about your number. Where the hell are you?”
“Quarter of a mile south of you,” I said, “watching the shamblers circle the post office so they can get at the soft, chewy center. How many people you have there?”
“Thirty or so. Most of them down in the shelter. We’re running low on ammo,” he said.
“Yeah, I figured. We’ll see the shamblers off. You might want to duck,” I said.
“Got it,” Bubba said, hanging up.
I flipped my mike live.
“Night Stalker, this is Malone.”
Night Stalker’s real name was Kolchek. He’d picked up the call sign Night Stalker back when he flew with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, because one of the other pilots had watched the old TV show with Darren McGavin.
“Go for Night Stalker.”
“Can you put some fire on the crowd around the post office?”
“Roger.”
The Black Hawk dropped to street level, and both door gunners opened up on the shamblers around the building. The shamblers flowed toward the bird hovering over the street.
“Building’s clear—heavy weapons, light them up!” I shouted.
The dwarf from Fred’s team opened fire with his fifty; a second dwarf braced him with a shoulder in the back. Sh
ortly there were no zombies standing.
“Cease fire and reload,” I said, dialing Bubba again.
“Damn, where’d you get the firepower?” he asked.
“One of the benefits of working for the professionals is you can afford something besides family heirloom lever-action shootin’ irons,” I replied in the worst John Wayne accent ever. “Can you get your people moving?”
“We’re on the way out,” he said.
A stream of people came out the door of the post office and started piling into vehicles. Four figures detached themselves from the stream and walked to where I stood in the street, keeping an eye out for loose shamblers to shoot.
“Hell, Jesse, I shoulda known they’d send you,” Bubba said, enveloping me in a bear hug.
“Eh, didn’t have anything else to do,” I replied. “Anything we need to know?”
“Yeah, Mina and Lou are somewhere in town,” he said. “They’re not in one of the shelters, so I’m hoping they’ve holed up somewhere safe.”
Lou might be an issue. He was one of the Oddities of Piccadilly—the local werewolf who made a living as a private eye. Abzu might try to gain control of him for reasons of power, if nothing else.
“We’ll keep an eye out for them,” I said. “Get out of here.”
The last car had hauled ass south out of town while we’d been chatting.
Diindiisi had examined the zombies lying in shattered pieces around the post office.
“Some of these should never have risen,” she said, gesturing to the piles of bodies. “Even for zombies, they are ancient.”
“Side effect of being buried in Piccadilly,” Bubba said with a Gallic shrug. “There’s so much extraneous power around here, even the dead don’t get to decay decently. Instead they’re preserved and rise from the grave to haunt the living.”
“A couple of years ago it was really bad,” one of his shooters added. “Spontaneous rising of the undead on Halloween. William’s been trying to get the county to pass an ordinance requiring all bodies be cremated, but every time they do, some well-meaning idiot or necromancer trying to raise a family takes them to court and gets the ordinance tossed on religious grounds.”
“They know about things like this and still fight against preventing them?” Diindiisi asked, taken aback.
“Yeah, humans are dumb like that sometimes. Go figure,” I said, turning and leading the way deeper into town.
* * * * *
Chapter Nine
We cleared the next two shelters with no issues. Zombies or daemons didn’t surround them, so we all knew the next one was going to be bad. The sky had darkened as we’d worked our way into town as well. We found Mina a block from the courthouse shelter, crying in frustration as she watched daemons herd citizens toward pens of bone near the rift.
“Mina,” I called, crouching behind her.
“Who?” She spun, raising a Remington 870. “Father Salazar? Is that you?”
“Guilty as charged,” I replied, pulling down my shemagh. “Have they forced anyone through the rift?”
“They grabbed Garrett and shuffled him that way, but I had to break contact, so I don’t know if they took him through or not,” Mina replied. “Other than that, those things have been putting them in pens on the other side of the courthouse until now. They ate one or two of them at first, then this guy dressed in a skirt and a cone-shaped hat put an end to that.”
My team and the dwarves drifted into covering positions around the alley. Someone muttered a question about the whale draped across three buildings behind the courthouse. In response, someone else snapped, “You’ve never seen Fortean phenomenon before?”
“Cone-shaped hat and skirt?” I asked, checking dispositions and keeping an eye on the daemons and imps herding humans around. Nothing was coming through the rift right now.
“Yeah, he’s around here somewhere…there he is!” she hissed, pointing at a four-wheeled cart that was coming around the edge of the courthouse.
Glowing donkeys were towing it, and the driver and archer were both skeletons. The figure in the back didn’t look too healthy himself, but the daemons were following his instructions, beyond a doubt.
“Hovis,” I called.
“Here boss.”
“You carrying any surprises in your bag?”
“You could say that.” You could hear the big, cheese-eating grin in his reply. “Problem is we’ll need to draw the daemons into the target zone. One of these buildings should work, but to be on the safe side, it shouldn’t be one facing the pens over there.”
I looked around. The only one that didn’t face the pens on this side of the courthouse was a bar called Ringo’s.
“There’s always the bar over there. Let’s get set up, and we’ll figure it out from there,” I said.
In Hollywood, the next half hour would be a montage—us rigging explosives in the bar, the dwarves kicking down doors above it to find good fighting positions, and Dalma and a pair of dwarves taking up positions on the roof, all set to some motivating rock anthem. Instead, we busted our asses for thirty minutes, and then realized we were missing a key component of the ambush. Bait for the daemons. Until Mina showed up wearing a thin silk slip, and not a whole lot else, over a pair of combat boots.
“Damn,” Hovis said before turning away.
“Why, Ms. Harker, I do declare, the monsters should find you attractive in that get up,” I said, averting my eyes after a first glance.
At six-foot tall and two-hundred-plus pounds, Mina Harker was a far different person than her scholarly ancestress. I pity the vampire who tries to make that farm girl drink its blood, she’ll probably behead it with her bare hands.
“It’s traditional wear for a damsel in distress. Well, except for the Doc Martens,” she drawled with a grin. “How far into the bar do I need to be when y’all set off the mines?”
“Past the line of tables, just to be safe,” Hovis said, pointing. “The M-PIMS have less of a backblast than the old Claymores, but they’ve still got one.”
“Okay,” she replied. “I’ll go then?”
“Give it a minute,” I said, keying my mike. “Forgemaster, Malone, and Tortelli elements, are you in place?”
I got multiple clicks in response. I said a quick blessing over Mina, then watched her head out the door before ducking behind the solid oak bar.
“Something’s coming through the rift,” Dalma reported from the roof.
“Roger that. Keep an eye on it,” I replied.
Outside, Mina did a fair imitation of a Hollywierd damsel-in-distress call—“I’m so wasted!”—and ran for the bar with ten daemons in tow.
“Don’t trip, don’t fucking trip!” Hovis chanted as she came through the door and dashed for the safe line.
“Fire in the hole!” Hovis shouted, squeezing the clacker three times.
Outside the door, there were several daemon-shattering Kabooms! The first daemon through the door disappeared in the explosion, while things shrieked in pain.
“Hey, boss, you got their attention,” Dalma said from the roof.
“Move!” I shouted into the radio as I vaulted the bar one-handed.
I could hear the team on the second floor moving into position, and we shoved the remains of furniture into the door as a block. Outside, daemons thrashed in pain.
“Guess they didn’t get the memo,” Dalma said, firing at something near the courthouse.
“Holy shit!” Padgett shouted. “There’s a giant, winged fucking snake coming out the gate.”
“We’ve got it,” Fred said. “Ozzy?”
“The gun’s set up, cousin. Alfie’s ready to take the shot.”
“Send it.”
There was a boom from the roof.
“Jesse, I’ve got to get one of these,” Dalma said.
“I don’t know what it is, but put in a requisition when we’re less busy,” I said, shooting at a daemon through the window. It dropped like a poleaxed steer.
“W
hat the hell is that?” came over the net.
That was something with the head and torso of a man, and the body of a scorpion. They were scuttling toward us on human hands, and there was a metric shit ton of them.
“Fuck if I know,” Wilson said, putting one down.
I held up a hand, and the commo dwarf slapped the handset into it before shooting a daemon that had somehow made it to the windows.
“Sledgehammer Lead, this is Malone.”
“Send it.”
“We could use some assistance near the courthouse,” I said.
“Roger that. ETA one minute.”
“We’ll mark the target with smoke,” I said, gesturing to Hovis.
He pulled a smoke grenade from somewhere and tossed it out the window, where it began to vomit purple smoke. Several imps paused in their rush toward the building, inhaling smoke and blowing it out as smoke rings.
“Call the smoke,” I said.
“Purple.”
“Roger that, Sledgehammer. Be advised there are civilians in the pens west and south of our positions.”
“We’ll try to avoid collateral damage,” came the response.
Whatever monster gun the dwarves were firing from the roof boomed again, and a huge, bovine head slammed into the ground as it emerged from the rift.
“Yes!”
“Damnit, Dalma, quit playing around,” I said. “Anyone know what the hell it is about Piccadilly and giant fucking cows?”
“Sorry, Jesse, there’s just not a lot of targets for me,” she said, her next shot immediately giving the lie as she took out yet another scorpion man as it emerged from the rift.
As counterpoint, one of the Apaches came down the main drag, its rotors just above the height of the streetlights, and started firing. They’d replaced the Hellfire missiles on the inner hard points with another set of Hydra rocket launchers. Sledgehammer-1 was taking the governor at his word, and ripple-fired all four pods into the mass of daemons and imps in front of our position.
“Damn, Sledgehammer, you do fine work,” I said, eyeing the destruction.
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