Project Elfhome

by Wen Spencer

  Pre-dawn started to lighten the sky to fragile gray. Mist hazed the Monongahela. The river lay nearly a thousand feet wide at this stretch, dark water hiding all sorts of evils. In the 1950s, a B-25 bomber had crashed into this section of the river. Fifty feet of airplane with a wingspan of seventy feet, swallowed up by water, never to be found. How many monsters were hidden in the waters?

  They stopped to put up the barrier at Becks Run Road and continued downriver to erect the last blockade.

  Her hand brushed against Taggart’s. She glanced down at the seat between them. If she shifted slightly, she could take hold of his. If she did, would he see it as her committing? She huffed out. Commit to what? Hand holding? Not like they’re going to be making out in the back of the Humvee with her little brothers in the front. It was a stupid time to even be thinking about it.

  If they killed the monsters, would Maynard repay them by extending Taggart’s visa? Would a few extra months actually make any difference? Two months. Two years. Sooner or later the visa would run out and he’d be gone. Unless of course they got married.

  She glanced at Taggart. He studied the misty river through his camera lens. A giddy warmth and painful shyness surged through her, making her want to take his hand and at the same time edge away from him like he was a dangerous thing.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she whispered. “Thinking of that? Now?”

  “Hm?” Taggart looked toward her.

  “Nothing,” Jane whispered. She covered her microphone and whispered a half-lie. “Just nervous. Hal and I deal with this kind of shit all the time but we always know what we’re fighting. How many. And we don’t get other people involved.”

  He took her hand and held it in silent comfort. He said no platitudes; he knew her fears were well grounded. His hand was warm and comforting.

  “Keeper, this is Chaser One and Two,” Guy reported, using the code words that Duff came up with. Joey and Boo had helped. “We’re in position. Waiting on the Seeker.”

  “Do you have hard cover?” Duff asked before Jane could.

  The tone of Guy’s voice indicated he was giving a teenage roll of eyes at the stupidity of the question. “Yes, there’s a large cinderblock garage in the back. We’ve got full cover.”

  “Set up and check the feeds on the cameras…” Duff read from “the plan.”

  “I know what we’re supposed to do,” Guy snapped.

  Duff skipped over what was written to add, “and keep an eye out for normal shit like steel spinners and wargs.”

  “I know,” Guy growled.

  God as her witness, she had to be insane to get her brothers involved in this.

  They hit the end of East Carson. Jane gave Taggart’s hand a squeeze and left his comforting presence to set out the last barricade. Luckily since this was the abandoned part of town, it was unlikely any real police would stumble across their fake roadblock.

  The world was pale and still and silent. The sun hadn’t risen and the birds hadn’t started their morning serenades. The only noise was the Humvee’s motor and the dark gurgle of the river.

  “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” Duff cried over the headsets.

  “What is it?” Jane started to run for the Humvee. Her heart climbing into her throat. Had something happened to Alton?

  “They’re in the city!” Duff cried. “They’re on Liberty Avenue! There’s two—maybe three. Bo is yelling for help. One of them overturned Bowman’s car and he’s pinned!”

  Bo Pedersen was married to their cousin Patty.

  “Damn it!” Jane climbed onto the Humvee and stripped the tarp off the cannon. “Change of plan! We’re intercepting them in the city! Move!”

  “You sure?” Geoffrey asked even as Marc punched the gas pedal. The Humvee leapt forward. “We’re going to be seen.”

  “Yes!” Jane snapped. “Liberty Avenue is nearly the heart of downtown. If you’ve ever had to chase a flock of damn turkeys all over downtown, one thing you learn is that unless you can fly, you can’t get from the river’s edge to Liberty Avenue. There’s a damn maze of jersey barriers, bridge abutments and retaining walls in the way. For more than one namazu to show up in the middle of downtown, they’re being led through the maze. The damn oni have a monster call just like we do and they’re using the namazu to terrorize the city.”

  “Seeker?” Guy cried over the com. “What’s our orders?”

  “Move to Mount Washington and find hard cover. Do not come into downtown!” And because he wouldn’t listen to that, she lied. “I want those trucks safe! We need them intact.”

  “Okay.” Guy sounded like he’d swallowed her lie. “We’re rolling!”

  * * *

  The morning sun was just starting to peer over the hills as they roared toward the skyscrapers of downtown. The very tips of the PPG glass castle gleamed brightly while the rest of the city was full of shadows.

  Jane was up in the gunner’s stand, growling out curses. They couldn’t sit by and let the damn things wipe out the remaining police force. Bertha, though, would chew the hell out of downtown if they open fired at street level. Almost every building had big glass storefronts. If they missed the monster, the bullet could plow through blocks before hitting stone.

  Whoever called the namazu into the city had the advantage; they knew the real commands that the monsters were bred to obey. Jane’s crew wouldn’t be able to drag the namazu out of the city unless they were the only ones commanding the creatures.

  “Keeper?” Jane cupped her mic to cut down the howl of the wind. “Somewhere downtown is an oni with a monster call just like ours. I need eyes on him!”

  “Okay. Okay. How do I find him? Shit! Shit! Shit! Seeker, can I bring in outside help?”

  “Yes! Do anything you need!”

  The communication line went silent for a few minutes until a stranger’s voice suddenly joined.

  “I’m patched into…” A young female voice paused to yawn deeply, “the cameras downtown. Explain again what I’m looking for.”

  Duff explained quickly and quietly. “Someone downtown at this minute with a whistle that they’re blowing.”

  “You woke me up to find a flutist?” the unknown girl asked sleepily.

  “It’s more like a bosun whistle,” Jane snapped. “Find it!”

  “Who is that?” the female asked the question that Jane wanted to ask.

  Duff kept to protocol. “You don’t need to know now. I’ll explain later. Lives are on the…”

  “Holy crapola!” the girl shouted. “What the heck are those things?”

  Well, the girl had just proved she had the ability to access downtown’s cameras.

  “The oni with the whistle is controlling them,” Jane stated as calmly as she could while wondering who the hell this girl was. “Find him!”

  “Okay,” the girl said before the words totally sunk in. “Wait! An oni? What does an oni look like?”

  “It’s five-freaking-thirty in the morning!” Jane shouted. “He’s going to be the only person downtown blowing a freaking whistle!”

  “Working!” the girl cried. “Working! Jimmy Crickets, those things are—whoa! Oh no, oh no, it’s trying to eat a cop!”

  “Where?” Jane, Marc, and Duff all cried.

  The girl made all sorts of sputtering noises and then cried, “Market Square! Market Square. We got to do something, D—”

  “No names!” Duff shouted to drown out the stranger. “No names! This is an unsecure line! I’m Keeper. You’re Beater One.”

  “Keeper!” Jane snapped.

  Duff understood the unasked question. “She’s the newest bunny, Seeker!”

  The bakery that Duff worked at employed illegal immigrants who all took rabbit names for some unknown reason. Babs Bunny. Clover. What was the new one? Widget No Problemo. (Jane could not understand how this was a rabbit name but the girl was nevertheless one of the bunnies.) It meant that the girl couldn’t go to the police or the EIA without endangering herself.

 
; There were more squeaks from the bunny that boded ill for Bo Pederson. They were still on the wrong side of the river, a mile away from Market Square. Jane couldn’t help but remember that the last time she saw Bowman, he had announced Patty was pregnant. Guy had grown up with no memory of his father. It left a hole that even four older brothers couldn’t fill. “Marc?”

  “Got the pedal nailed to the floor.” His voice was tense. He was the one that knew Bowman the best.

  They reached Smithfield Street Bridge and turned hard without slowing. The tires screamed in protest and the Humvee leaned.

  “Don’t roll us!” Jane leaned into the turn to counterbalance Bertha’s weight.

  “Working on it,” Marc stated calmly.

  In theory the bridge had two lanes of traffic inbound and outbound. Jersey barriers and high curbs, though, limited the inbound to one lane at the turn. They overshot it, ending up in the outbound lanes as they headed into the city.

  “Wrong side,” Geoffrey murmured to their little brother. “Get over.”

  “Not going to happen,” Marc replied. “Not at this speed.”

  They whipped past the first arch of steel girders that marked the start of the center lenticular trusses. Beyond that point, there was no way to cross back to the correct lanes.

  “Forbes Avenue has only three lanes,” Geoffrey warned.

  “Well aware of that,” Marc said.

  “Let the man drive!” Jane shouted. This was another reason why she didn’t want to get her brothers involved. Her brothers might be afraid of her, and they might do what she told them, but they’d fight with her and among themselves at every decision point. She had Hal trained to jump when she said jump. Her brothers might decide to override her at the worst possible moment. “Make sure we’re locked and loaded!”

  “We can’t fire Bertha in the city!” Marc shouted, confirming her fear that her brothers wouldn’t listen to her.

  “The hell we can’t!” Jane shouted back. “We’re not going to let these things eat Bowman! I’ve seen what they do to people!”

  “There’s going to be responding police and paramedics!” Marc shouted. “We’ll hit them with friendly fire!”

  She was normally the one urging caution to her younger brothers; of all the times for them to suddenly grow up! “We’ll be careful! Keeper, find me another kill zone! One-mile radius!”

  “What? What? What?” Widget cried in confusion and then must have spotted the Humvee incoming on the city’s many cameras. “Oh! That’s the cavalry? Oh, that rocks! You’ve got four targets in Market Square and two more on their way up the other end of Forbes Avenue.”

  Six total?

  Jane cursed and covered her mic. “Marc, take us through Market Square so we can save Bowman’s ass, and then head out of town. The plan is to pull them out of the city if we can.” She let go of her mic. “Beater One! Get eyes on the oni with the whistle!”

  “I’m looking!” Widget cried.

  They hit the end of the bridge and flashed into the city proper with towering buildings lining the street. They tore down Smithfield Street. Marc slowed for the sharp turn onto Forbes Avenue. The roar of the namazu came echoing up the artificial canyon. The namazu’s discharge flickered like a Tesla coil within the still-dark street, reflecting off all the big glass storefronts.

  Ahead was the full city-block-wide Market Square, bisected by Forbes Avenue and Market Street. It was a mix of brick and cobblestones and patches of grass. A dozen lampposts that looked like old-fashioned gas lamps still gleamed in the pre-dawn darkness. A clutter of trees, parking meters, trash cans, and café tables combined to make the kill zone a navigation hell. Lining the left hand side of the square were the half-dozen slick, black glass castles that been the Pittsburgh Plate Glass headquarters and now housed the EIA offices.

  This was going to be a running of the bulls through a china store.

  “Seeker, we’re in position!” Guy reported from across the river on Mount Washington. “We have hard cover and we’ve got eyes on you. We confirm that there are six targets. I repeat: six.”

  The EIA was not going to be happy with them.

  The piercing trill of the monster call echoed up the street. Somewhere ahead was also the oni commanding the namazu. A deafening roar of answering monsters washed over them in reply to the whistle. A moment later, a squad car went flipping past where Forbes Avenue opened into the square.

  “Bowman!” Marc cried.

  A namazu appeared at the intersection, blocking their way. Marc stomped on the brakes and they went skidding forward, several tons of metal about to meet several tons of angry electric fish.

  Jane opened fire.

  The big gun thundered as it shook in her hold, spitting out bullets faster than the eye could follow. The bullets slammed into the namazu, knocking it sideways as blood misted from the rapid-fire projectiles tearing it open. She strafed left, down the namazu’s body, away from the squad car.

  Marc veered hard to the right, gunning the Humvee. They shot past the nose of the namazu. It lunged at Jane in the gunner’s seat. She poured bullets into its open mouth.

  “Hold on!” Marc shouted.

  They swerved the other way at whiplash speed. There was a wall of scales and arcing electricity and a flash of teeth.

  Widget was making all sorts of yips and yelps over the com channel. “Nonononono! Yes. Yes! Watch out!”

  Geoffrey blew their monster call but the namazu seemed to pay no attention to him. “Come here” apparently didn’t work when practically standing on the creature. Either that or the oni’s commands took precedence over Geoffrey’s.

  “Find the oni with the whistle!” Jane fought to control the gun. The great glass castle of PPG was shattering under the hail of bullets that had missed the monster. She prayed that Widget was right about no one being in the line of fire. What direction was Bo? She risked a glance over her shoulder.

  The squad car had landed upside down. Roof crumbled, Pedersen was trapped inside. A namazu lumbered toward the car, guided either by hunger or the oni with the monster call. Jane couldn’t risk opening fire on the beast; the chance of hitting Pedersen was too high.

  “Seeker!” Duff shouted over the thunder of the bullets. “The only kill zone within a mile is inside the stadium! Three Rivers Stadium is the kill zone! Do you copy?”

  “I copy on the kill zone!” Jane shouted. “Three Rivers Stadium. Find me the damn oni!”

  “He’s on top of the PPG building!” Widget said. “Not the big one. Number Two. The little one all by itself on Market Square! I don’t think you can see him though! He ducked back behind one of the little pointy things on the roof.”

  Jane would blast the glass castle into shards but it could kill any innocent bystanders in the apartment buildings beyond it.

  “I can see him!” Guy announced from Mount Washington. “I have a clear shot straight down Market Street.”

  No! Not Guy! She didn’t want her baby brother to kill someone. He was only sixteen.

  “Take the shot!” Marc shouted. “They’re going to kill Bowman!”

  Jane gave a wordless shout in dismay and protest.

  “Damn it, I missed!” Guy cried. “He’s ducked down. I can’t see him.”

  There was a sudden fury of black wings overhead and a scream as someone plunged from the rooftop of the nearest glass castle.

  “She threw him off the roof!” Guy cried while Widget had been reduced to an endless stream of “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…”

  “I have a shot of the tengu.” Guy’s voice cracked and he sounded younger than sixteen. “What should I do?”

  “Hold fire!” It might be Yumiko. Jane prayed that it was Yumiko and that the female was helping them.

  The shrill notes of the whistle cut through everything. The namazu stopped, lifted their heads, and then started to move away from the overturned squad car.

  “What is she doing?” Geoffrey reloaded.

  “She’s leading them away
,” Jane said. “Keeper, ETA on paramedics for Pedersen?”

  “Three minutes,” Duff reported.

  “Get ahead of the namazu. We’ll take them to the stadium and open up on them.”

  Yumiko must have heard Jane shouting out the kill zone because the tengu headed toward Stanwix Street, which was the most direct route to the stadium. Marc raced across the Roberto Clemente Bridge as the yamabushi called the monsters up the on-ramp of the bigger Fort Duquesne Bridge.

  “Oh! Oh!” Widget cried over the com from wherever she was. “Guys! Guys! I don’t know if this is good or bad but we’re getting company. It’s the EIA; a whole platoon of them. They’re coming out of the Liberty Tunnel right now.”

  It meant that if the EIA had any clue what was going on downtown that they’d be on the Humvee’s tail in a matter of minutes.

  “What’s the plan?” Marc asked.

  “Do we have a plan?” Geoffrey asked.

  “We get the door open to the stadium,” Jane said. “Get the monsters inside and then shoot the hell out of them.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” Geoffrey said.

  “Then we look for nests,” Hal added.

  “Nests?” Jane asked.

  “I want to try some of that roe.” In typical television host fashion, he was using as many words possible to explain something simple. “Cautiously, of course, but I’m curious as to what it tastes like. It looks much more like salmon roe than sturgeon caviar.”

  “What nests?” Jane shouted.

  Nigel explained clearer. “If the oni are anywhere near intelligent, they made the namazu at least fifty percent female. There should be two more nests at minimum.”

  “We will deal with that later,” Jane growled. Hopefully. If they weren’t in jail. The fact there were nests, though, gave her an idea. “Chaser Two, call Maynard.”

  “Me?” Hal’s tone was clear that he didn’t think it was a good idea. “Maynard?”