by John Ringo
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry a notebook. Log every incident with notes on what you killed and where. Always get the incident number from NOPD or Sheriff’s. There’s times when you’re going to have to roll before the paperwork is complete. Always stay on site while the bodies are cleared to cover coroners unless you’re sure it’s completely clear and coroners agree. They’ll lose people if you don’t and they get nasty when they lose people. Don’t expect any help from anyone. Sheriff’s will but it’s rare. NOPD will watch you get ripped to pieces before they’ll get out of their cars. We’re contracted to protect coroners. Everyone else is just regular folks. But protect coroners. Any questions like what the hell is going on around here?” he finished with a grin. He had big, white teeth.
“No, got that,” I said, still looking slightly puzzled. “I need to find someplace to live.”
“We’ve got a bunk room here,” Trevor said. “We generally hold here most nights and when we’re up to full roster we’ll keep an alert team on standby twenty-four until things get back to normal. So bunk here for now. I’ve already got a real estate agent ready to meet at your convenience. She’s, pardon, a wizard at finding the right place. Next.”
“When I cleared the zombies, the coroners gave me a receipt for every corpse, including the ones that hadn’t gotten up yet.”
“Ah,” Trevor said, nodding. “We usually try to ease people into that. This is New Orleans.”
“I saw the sign on the way in, sir.”
“Everybody is on the take,” Trevor said. “And I do mean everyone. Well, except MCB. I think. We have to pay the coroner’s office for prompt response or we’ll be sitting there for hours especially on the full moon. Then there’s the Sheriff’s office, local politicians to keep our contracts. It’s a long list. So the coroner’s will add a couple of PUFF here and there.”
“Ah,” I said. Given the rest what was another major violation of Federal Law? “Thank you. Clarified, sir.”
“Just roll with it,” Trevor said, shrugging. “And welcome to the Big Easy.”
* * *
Shelbye turned out to be a brunette white lady in her thirties. Curly brown hair pulled back in a pony-tail, scarred, rode hard but nice body from what I could see under the body armor. She had an American flag bandana tied on her head as a doo-rag and was walking with a slight limp and favoring her right ribs. Flesh golem.
We’d rigged up and were in the team room hanging out. Our cars were out front in case we got a call-out. I’d borrowed Trevor’s Wahl clippers and now had a boot buzz for the first time in years. I’d put on a doo-rag as well. Helmet in direct contact with buzz was uncomfortable and it would help keep the sweat out of my eyes.
The sun had set and business was booming for the drug dealers across the street. There were even a few Beemers passing by with decent suburban folk picking up their evening blow or weed before they headed home to their nice, safe, suburban homes and got the hell out of New Orleans.
Shelbye wasn’t talkative and I let her have the silence. We mostly watched the evening news. Several people had died in a gas leak at a high school. There was nothing about a demon in a cemetery or…
“And in news of the weird,” the anchor said, grinning with that look of someone playing a joke. “There were reports a vampire went shopping in Metairie!” There was what looked like a stock photo of a strip mall. It wasn’t even the same strip mall. “Police were called to reports of a vampire in a small store in Metairie! When they checked it out it was an old clothes dummy dressed as a vampire.”
“Gotta love the Big Easy, Paul,” the anchorwoman said, shaking her head and laughing.
“And that’s the news this night,” the anchor said, smiling. “Good night.”
“And they’re clear,” Shelbye said. “And they’ll shake their heads and shudder. The producers probably know the actual story, but run the cover faxed to them by MCB.”
“People were waving when I came out,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s different. I know, welcome to the Big Easy.”
“Only thing easy here is dying,” Shelbye said, fatalistically. The phone rang. “And it starts.”
CHAPTER 5
All Along The Watchtower
Notes from my first night working the Big Easy.
0017 Rpt “sumpin big wif scales an teef” Bayou Saint John. Naga. Term. Y-313-248-R. Receipt.
0234 Oh, you’ve got to be freaking…Ghouls in Merritt Cemetery, Violet. Term. Inc# 254-96, Parish. Receipt.
Okay, some fill-in.
The naga was freaking big. Think snake man. Ten feet long and it weighed a ton. It had broken into a home and tried to kill the family. When cops responded to a report of domestic dispute it ripped one of them wide open while the other ran. Then it proceeded to begin its reign of terror.
It probably could be called a “domestic dispute.” The man in the house was shacked up with the lady who lived there and whose family, four kids, one his, lived in the house. His wife had taken exception to her man sleeping around and, according to later reports, dropped a very nice insurance settlement she’d recently gotten from slipping on a grape while “going grocery” on a houdoun woman for a big curse. Said houdoun woman summoned the naga—or local houdoun equivalent—it was a giant water moccasin instead of a cobra, to show that man not to sleep around. Unfortunately, three of the four children were killed, one eaten. The fourth made it out the window and hoofed it.
After the fleeing officer radioed it in, Captain Otis called us.
When we got there the naga had begun slithering through the neighborhood, terrorizing everyone. It kept trying to get into houses but there were more reasons than burglary for bars on the windows of houses in New Orleans.
We split up in our cars, looking for it. As I was crossing Lopez I saw something down the street to my right. A quick turn, up on the sidewalk for a bit but Honeybear don’t do sharp, and the massive reptile-man was in my headlights.
I gunned it.
There was a THUH-BUMP! and it felt like going over one a speed bump.
“Hey,” I radioed, backing up. THUH-BUMP! “It’s over on Lopez by…” I looked up at the street sign. “Dumaine.”
I backed up and took a look. It was still writhing. I’d broken its back but apparently nagas regenerate. And now it was headed my way and it was pissed.
I backed to the end of the street, gunned it and hit the reptiloid with my front bumper doing about forty. It was maybe doing ten so say combined about fifty. Say what you will about American cars, I have my pet peeves, there’s nothing like a couple tons of Detroit steel to put the fear of God into a monster.
I was a bit afraid it was going to come through the window but it got flipped under the car instead and dragged along the street. I could hear it hammering at Honeybear’s undercarriage as I drove towards Dumaine. Finally I dislodged it by driving into a driveway then up on the curb.
I backed up and assessed. Still moving.
“I got this,” Shelbye radioed. The naga’s cottonmouth head exploded as a rifle round went through it. “Thet’ll make a nice little trophy.”
I wasn’t sure if she was serious. She was. When I got invited to her place she had taxidermied monster heads or other bits on every wall.
Then it started to get back up again. They regenerate. You have to take the head off.
“I think this is going to be my trophy.” I got out, pulled Sword of Mourning off the floor where I’d jammed it. I had been riding around with my Uzi on its sling.
The naga was fast. It charged right at me, hissing, its muscular human arms held wide. It’s humanoid, scaled, torso was broad as a muscle-head and the arms reminded me of Trevor’s. There was another shot but this time Shelbye missed the moving target. Head was bobbing and weaving, not her fault.
On the other hand, it was headed right at me and a really big target. I aimed the Uzi low and let the slight recoil carry it up, stitching the naga from the base of its humanoid torso to its head.
<
br /> I trotted forward, drawing Mo No Ken as it was getting up again.
Before it could orient itself, or I could take the head, another .308 round went through its skull.
“Hold off,” I radioed, standing at high port. I waited for it to start rising before I took it’s head off. “You can still have the trophy.”
“Why’d you wait?” Shelbye replied. She was laid across the hood of her Dodge Charger, rifle set up on a bipod.
“This sword costs about as much as a Ferrari. I wiped down Mo No Ken. “I wasn’t going to slash it into the ground now, was I?”
“Gotcha. I’ll remember for next time.”
“Fuck it’s hot,” I muttered, taking a swig of water out of my canteen.
The door to the nearest house opened up and a woman peered out. Black, round and in her forties, she was wearing a flowered dress and curlers in her hair.
“It daid?” she shouted.
“It daid,” I yelled.
“Hoodoo squad done kilt it!” the woman shouted in the house.
In a second it seemed like, the deliquescing naga was surrounded by people oohing and ahhing.
MCB was going to flip.
About that time, MCB showed up, lights flashing, along with NOPD. NOPD set up a perimeter but it was to keep out cars. Locals were flooding out to see what hoodoo squad had caught.
Agent Three walked over and waved his hands as if driving chickens. “Go on, now, folks,” he said in a New York accent. “Nothing to see here.”
“What was it Mister Hoodoo?” one of the boys asked. The naga was almost entirely deliquesced at this point.
“You’d have to ask the FBI,” I answered. “Sorry, kid.”
“What I wants to know is who gonna clean up this mess!” the woman from the house asked, angrily. “I ain’t havin’ no snake goo all over my driveway!”
“We’ll take care of that, lady,” Agent Three said, tiredly. “You and your family just go on back in your house.”
“Somebody ought to do somethin’ ’bout all this hoodoo!” the woman said. “Streets ain’t safe! We pay our taxes!”
Based on the houses in this neighborhood, I doubted most of them paid much in taxes.
“Yeah!” someone in the crowd shouted. “Too much hoodoo! We got rights!”
It took the MCB agent a few minutes to get the people calmed down and back inside. He came back, looking tired. “Can you see now why in some neighborhoods around here Castro skips the whole coerce and intimidate thing?”
“Works for me. I sort of missed the names at the bar. Or forgot it with all the shots. Chad Gardenier, MHI.” I held out my hand.
“Special Agent Jody Buchanan. Naga?”
“Cottonmouth, but yeah,” Shelbye said. She bent down to get a sample and winced.
“Let me get it,” I said. I pulled out a baggy and scooped up some of the goo.
“You kinda fucked up your car, man,” Jody said.
Honeybear’s grill was seriously trashed. But that was about all.
“I can bend it out,” I said. “Assuming I get any time off to do so.”
“I know a good body shop,” Shelbye said. “Cousin runs it. Fix it up in no time.”
“I guess I’ll have to go that route. I usually do all my own work.”
“Won’t get no time,” Shelbye said.
I handed the sample to Jody and got a receipt. In the middle of the mess was what looked like the spine and head of a snake. I added that to the sample bag.
“Hey, y’all,” one of the NOPD officers said. “Gots nother call. Over Vilet.”
Make that Violet, Louisiana. Which was on the other side of the freaking city.
* * *
We were in Arabi on Louisiana 46 going like a bat out of hell, with me following Shelbye, who drove about like Bob but without a red light stuck on top of her car, when a state trooper pulled in behind us with his lights on. We were weaving in and out of traffic, blowing through red lights and going about twice the posted 45 mile per hour speed limit so it made sense.
I slowed down, getting ready for the ticket. I figured part of our pay-off money was to cover tickets and such. Back in Seattle generally the sheriff’s office we were responding to would handle it for us.
The trooper pulled in close behind me, practically tailgating, then pulled over and up to my window and made motion for me to roll my window down. Shelbye was, at this point, long gone.
“You heading Vi’let?” the trooper yelled.
“Yeah!” I yelled back.
He sped up and got in front of me to clear traffic. We eventually caught up to Shelbye whose Charger, sorry, wasn’t nearly as good as my Cutlass or his Impala. I’d done some work on Honeybear.
The trooper pulled off when we saw the blue lights ahead and joined the blockade around the cemetery.
We pulled further forward on State Road 46 and Shelbye stopped her car right in the road. Traffic had been stopped in both directions, not that there was much this time of night. I pulled in behind her.
The small cemetery consisted entirely of sarcophagi. Big concrete and marble things. It didn’t have the scenic aspect of the older one in town but it was in much better condition. There was a chain-link fence which had also been missing in the in-town cemeteries.
Oddly, from my perspective, it was planted right next to a small ball field. It just seemed like an odd place to put a cemetery. I suspected it was the disliked chubby kid who had to go retrieve the errant pop-flies. “I’m not going into the cemetery to get the ball!” “You hit it, you have to get it!” “Let’s make Larry get it!”
Shelbye got out, holding a hand-held spotlight that had seen some use over the years, and shined it into the cemetery. There were no lights in the area. Even the field lights were shut down. The closest light was some sort of port facility about a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the road.
I got out and walked over.
“There they at,” she said, spotting the ghouls. They were feeding, of course. Their heads were bobbing up and down as they ate, occasionally glancing at the spot and hissing. They looked for all the world like some weird deer herd being spotted at night. Or a lion pack. “Shit.”
I counted four. In Seattle we’d have a five man team. I was starting to realize in New Orleans this was not a big issue.
“They down,” she said. “Cain’t get no shot.”
She looked back down the road to the road-block.
“Be right back.”
She got in her car and drove down to the roadblock then a few minutes later came back driving a Fish and Game pick-up truck.
“Told the poacher man I needed his truck,” she said, grinning. She had a very obvious plate replacing her front teeth. Good work. The reason it was obvious was the condition of the rest of her teeth. “You come on in from over left,” she said. “I’ll cover.”
“Works,” I said. It was at least getting cooler. Not cool, mind you, just not blazing hot.
I filled my canteens from the five-gallon can of holy water in my trunk. It was rubber tasting but it was water. I drained one, filled it, took a piss, something I’d been dearly needing since the naga incident, then headed out into the darkness.
Shelbye had used the spots on the Poacher Man truck to illuminate the ghouls. I was coming in from out of the darkness.
But they were about done with whoever or whatever they were eating and I was fresh meat. As soon as I got close they started to get up.
There was a series of cracks from the direction of the road. Say what you will about Shelbye, the girl could shoot. She dropped one, but immediately the rest were ducking and weaving like one of the gangbangers across the street from headquarters. They were headed right for me. Ghouls are tough. A head shot, even from a silver .308 did not necessarily kill them. Just ruined their night.
I started putting bursts into the oncoming ghouls. Short bursts to the heads. I’d long ago learned one .45 round just sort of pissed them off.
I kept
that up, had to reload, and moved forward. They were badly chewed up by the time I got to the group, so I pulled out Mo No Ken and more or less worked my way through the four that way.
“That’s a pretty nice sword you got there,” Shelbye radioed. “Right nice.”
“Wouldn’t believe how much it cost,” I said. “And I got a deal.”
Ghouls don’t deliquesce. We were left with four dismembered bodies. In a cemetery, which was convenient.
They’d been eating a deer.
When the coroner team arrived it was led by a guy named Tim Best. Best way to describe Tim is John Cleese as an undertaker but without the humor. Tall, he had a faint Commonwealth accent and a distinguished manner. I never saw him except at scenes.
“You’re sure it’s clear?” he asked as he approached the bodies.
“If it’s not Shelbye’s on overwatch and I’m here,” I said.
The assistants were a set of burly black men in their forties. Same size, same build, same looks, they never really talked. Just did the job.
The scene was cleared and I walked back to my car. It was pushing four AM, about the same time I’d gotten up the previous day, and I was bushed.
“We have another call?” I asked when I got back to the cars.
“Nope,” Shelbye said. She’d switched her Charger out again when the scene was being cleared. So much for being on overwatch. “We’re green. Back to the hoodoo shack.”
* * *
The wet bar had a keg on tap. Now I knew why. I pulled a sixteen ounce cup of Budweiser and just about drained it. Shelbye was right behind me.
“I got to reload magazines,” I said. I was still in my ghoul-ichor covered armor.
“Got a room downstairs,” Shelbye said.
The ammo room had something I’d never seen before: Mag reloaders. There were three that could be switched out for various calibers and with attachments for various magazines.
Shelbye put one of her M14 mags in the reloader, the reloader had a well just like an M14, dropped a bunch of .308 rounds into the hopper and pulled a lever. Mag reloaded.