by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler
My crew and I ran toward them, racing to help, and as I ran I raised my rifle to fire at the little green thing dancing madly on the roof. The trigger fell off in my hand, and then the stock, and then the entire gun seemed to field strip itself in a cascade of oily gunmetal. The bullets spiat and jumped on the ground like popcorn, their charges exploding impossibly in the dry dirt of the Brambles. My driver reached the truck’s door and yanked on the handle; I expected the handle to come off, but was surprised to see the entire door come flying off, knocking themy driver flat on his back as the sudden shift in weight unbalanced him. My gunner reached fortried the jammedlead engineer’s seatbelt with his knife in his hand, but the belt frayed before the knife even got close, evaporating like water, and the bomb tech fell out at a dead runit was jammed too tight to move. The little green man was dancing on the roof now, metal cracking and warping and rusting with each wrinkly footstep. I tried to open the backother door and pull the engineers to safety (the door didn’t come off, just peeled away in long, corroded strips), but as scared as they were they refused to leave without their bags.
“Just get out!” I said. Springs were bursting out of the seats like twisted daggers, sending puffs of upholstery wafting through the chaos like fat foam snowflakes.
“We need MREs!”
“What?” Somehow, despite the crazy green weirdo destroying the truck—or maybe because of it—this was the last thing I’d ever expected them to say.
“We need the MREs,” they continued, scouring madly through their bags,. “iIt’s the only way to stop it!”
“To stop the . . . green guy?” He was chewing on the ceiling now, literally tearing into it with his teeth and ripping out chunks of metal, cackling like a madman.
“Just help us!”
“You can look for them outside,” I said, and hauled the engineers out by anything I could reach, shoulders and necks and arms, throwing the men in the dirt and tossing their heavy packs on the ground beside them. My belt came apart as I worked, the buckle bending nearly in half like someone was crushing it with invisible pliers, and the truckvehicle bucked wildly as the tires exploded in a string of deafening bursts. I went for my sidearm, drawing on the wrinkly green man at close range, but the rack slid off like it wasn’t even attached, and the bullets sprayed up out of the clipmagazine like a bubbling metal fountain.
“This one caught shrapnel in his neck during that last burst,” my driver shouted, looking at the second engineer, but the otherlead engineer drowned him out with cries of “MREs! Find the MREs, as many as you can!” hHe was already tearing open a plastic bag, dumping the interior pouches in the dirt and fumbling for one in particular. I ranturned to the wounded engineer and found a twisted chunk of truck frame lodged in his neck. He was already dead.
“We need to get out of here!” I shouted.
“I found one!” cried the lead engineer, and he tore open the smallest pouch from the MRE, the salt, and threw a fistfulpinch of the stuff at the wrinkly green thing still tearing the truck to pieces. When the salt hit him the green man screamed, leaped off the truck, and scampered behind a boulder.
I stared in surprise, my eyes wide. I still didn’t know what was going on, but I didn’t need another demonstration to convince me. “We need more salt,” I said, and turned to the group with a shout. “Find more MREs!” Soon all of us were tearing open pouches of food, searching for the little packets of salt, and the engineer led us back to the flipped HumveeJERRV and directed us to dump the salt in a circle around it. We had barely enough to complete a thin, scattered border before the wrinkly green thing charged us in a rage, howling and brandishing a jagged tailpipe. When he came within a few feet of the salt circle his howl turned to a scream of fear, and he retreated again behindto the demolished truck, smashing it with wicked glee.
My breath came in gasps. “What,” I asked, “in the bright blue hell, is that thing?”
“It’s a BSE-7,” said the engineer, collapsing to the ground and leaning back against the HumveeJERRV. “Though it isn’t really bound anymore, so it’s just an SE. A supernatural entity: Llambda-class demon, minor manifestation.”
“Minor?”
“It’s a gremlin,” he said. “They destroy technology. Made them a bitch to study in the lab.”
I had no idea what to think, and my mouth seemed incapable of forming any words beyond the first aborted syllables of sentences: “To— A—I—.” I shook my head. “What?”
“That creature is the power source for the BSE-7 is a Bound Supernatural Entity,” said the engineer. “A Bound Supernatural Entity. The 7 refers to a gremlin, maliciously eager to destroy anything technological it comes across.”
“And you strapped it to my Humveetruck?”
“It was bound,” he said quickly. “Its energies were directed, like a . . . like a shaped explosive. All the tech-breaking power is pointed out and down, so anything you drive over, like a landmine or an IED, gets broken before it can do anything to hurt you. It can’t do anything to your own vehicle—unless, obviously, the binding breaks and it gets loose.” He gestured feebly at the truck, which the gremlin was now gleefully disemboweling.
“That thing came after us,” said the bomb techdriver. “Unless one of you’s a robot and didn’t tell me, I don’t think it limits its destruction to technological devices.”
“Case in point,” said mythe gunner, “your dead friend over there.”
“Now you understand why we needed to find the salt as quickly as possible,” said the engineer. “The salt will hold it, though, as long as nothing breaks the circle.”
“So we’re safe here until it the next stiff breeze,” I said, “or until we starve to death, whichever comes first.”
“We could probably retrieve the’ve got plenty of MREs without any major problems,” said the driver.
“I think I’d prefer to starve,” said the gunner.
“There’s got to be a way to kill it,” I said. “Our guns fell apart, but the knife didn’t—maybe that’s too simple a machine to be affected?”
“You can’t kill a demon,” said the lead engineer. “Trust us on this one. You can only bind it.”
“Exactly what kind of engineer are you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“WAnd we can’t forget the Taliban,” said my driver. “This is the fourth IED we’ve run across in the last hour. There’s a group here, and they’re active, and they’re doing something they don’t want anyone to see. And after all the noise our gremlin’s been making, they’re going to know we’re here.”
I turned to the engineers. “Can we use the radio with that thing’s . . . anti-technology field ruining everything?”
“Anything inside the salt circle should work fine.”
“Get it working,” I told my driver. “Tell them convoy where we are, and that we’ve been hit with an IED. Leave the . . . weirder details vague.” He saluted and climbed in through the window of the overturned vehicle. I looked at the engineer. “Now: tell me everything you know about this gremlin.”
“It would be probably be easier to just read the manual.”
“You have a manual for a gremlin?”
“The BSE-7 is intended for field use,” he said. “We have a Dash-10 operator’s manual already printed, though it’s obviously just a prototype.” He pulled a slim paper booklet from his backpack and handed it to me.
“‘BSE-7 Vehicle-Mounted Anti-Explosive Device,’” I read. “‘The BSE-7 is pow
ered by a Llambda-class demon, commonly called a gremlin. It is designed to be mounted under. . . .’” I skipped ahead, leafing past the usage sections to the fifth chapter: Maintenance. “‘If the device fails and the supernatural entity becomes unbound, it can be held at bay with salt.’ wWhich we’ve done. ‘Salt can be found in every MRE, and should be easy to come by, even in the field. Your first action should be to contain the demon in a circle of salt, as an unbound gremlin inside of a base or camp can be surprisingly destructive.’” I threw the manual down. “OIt says our first action should be to contain the demon, you idiot, not us.”
“The manual makes that sound a lot easier than it is.”
“They always do.” I picked up the booklet, found the same page again, and continued reading. “‘With the demon neutralized in a salt circle, report the malfunction immediately to your assigned demonologist.’ We have an assigned demonologist?”
“They’re still in training,” said the engineer, “with plans to deploy just before the BSEs go into general use. We’d never send a demon into the field without a trained demonologist to wrangle it.”
“AndWhich means you wouldn’t test it without one, either,” I said. “Is that you?”
He, and looked sadly at the corpse of the otherdead engineer, and I nodded. “Of course it’s . “Is that him. Awesome. I was worried this would be too easy.?”
The living engineer shrugged helplessly. “There should be’s a chapter on troubleshooting,” he said the engineer meekly.
I looked up at the gremlin, still loudly tearing the truck to pieces. “DoesIf it just say tocauses trouble, we shoot it?”
“I don’t recommend it.”
“We have an AT4RPG-7 in the trunkJERRV,” said the gunner. “Took it off some Taliban last week.”
“I really don’t recommend it,” the engineer insisted. “Any weapon you use against it will fail as soon as it leaves the salt circle, and I don’t think I have to tell you what happens when a rocket-propelled grenade fails.”
“It was just a suggestion,” said the gunner.
“‘Chapter 6,’” I read, “‘Troubleshooting. If you have no access to a demonologist, your first priority is to reinforce the salt circle containing the demon and requisition a new demonologist immediately.’ Thanks, that’s very helpful. ‘If you absolutely must attempt to control the demon without a trained expert, there are some tricks that may be be useful. One: Ggremlins love sugar.’ Seriously?”
“Absolutely love it,” said the engineer.
“Huh. ‘Two: the binding agent on the BSE-7, unless completely destroyed, can be used again, with the understanding that damaged binding agents are prone to unexpected catastrophic failure.’”
“Take a picture of him eating the truck,” said the driver, crawling back out of the HumveeJERRV. “You can put the photo in the manual as a perfect demonstration of ‘unexpected catastrophic failure.’”
“Did the radio work?” I asked him.
“Well enough. The good news is, the insurgents in this area won’t be coming after us, because they’re engaged in a firefight with a our baseconvoy.”
“And the bad news,” I said, “is that theyour convoy can’t come get us because they’re engaged in a firefight with insurgents.”
“Exact-a-mundo. And so far they’re losing, so they might not come get us at all. ThisIt’s a very big group of insurgents.”
I stood up and looked at the HumveeJERRV’s blackened undercarriage. “So we’re on our own, in enemy territory, under direct assault by a demon, and the only thing we can use to stop it is that thing.” I pointed at the shattered BSE-7, a charred lump that looked like an upside-downa pie plate. It had been torn open, and the inside was full of something dark and sticky.
“Smells sweet,” said the bomb techgunner.
“They like sugar,” said the engineer with a shrug.
“So it is a pie plate.” I leaned in and smelled it. “Smells like . . . strawberry jam.”
“That gremlin’s almost three feet tall,” said the gunner. “If he was crammed inside that tiny thing, it’s no wonder he’s pissed.”
“That goop—which, yes, probably contains strawberry jam—is the an arcane demon-binding agent,” said the lead engineer. “Once he’s bound into it, the physical space doesn’t really matter; you could bind him into a teaspoon, and that’s all the space you’d need. The majority of the BSE-7 is made up of the shaping agents that direct the gremlin’s power away from the vehicle.”
“How do we get it back in?”
“The manual explains it in detail,” said the engineer, “but the basic gist is fire and symbols and blood.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s a demon,” he said,. “wWhat did you expect?”
I sat down again, a plan slowly forming in my head. “What kind of grenades tdo we have for the AT4captured RPG?”
“Donkey PunchersPG-2s,” said the gunner. “Old Soviet stuff.”
“You really don’t want to shoot him,” said the lead engineer.
“Sure I do,” I told him, skimming through the section on demon binding. It was far more gruesome than expected. “Just not in the way you think.” I pointed atturned to the gunner. “Get me a grenade. And you,” I said, pointing at; take off the bomb tech, “take it apart.” I pointed atcasing.” I told the driver, “you to get a fire going,”, and last I pointed at the engineer. “One of those MREs we dumped out looking for salt was Sspaghetti, which means that somewhere out there is a pouch full of cherry cobbler. Go get it.”
“Out thereside of the circle?”
“Unless you brought it with you, yeah.”
“That’s.But . . . On the other side of the salt line? Tthere’s a gremlin out there.”
“There’s you’re gremlin out there,” I said, “so anything it does to you, you probably deserve. Don’t be scared, though, I’m coming with you—I”’ll grabet the body, you get me the cobbler.”
“Why do you need the body?”
“Have you read these demon binding notesmanual?”
His face went pale. “Cobbler. Check.”
I took a pinch of salt from the edge of the circle, careful not to break it completely, and on three we ran, me for the dead man and the engineer for the pile of scattered MRE pouches. The gremlin ignored us at first, too busy trashing the truck, but as I dragged the body back toward the HumveeJERRV he finally noticed us, and leaped ftorward the engineer with a cry of wickedmalicious joy. I threw the dead body into the circle and ran back toward the engineer, still scrambling on his hands and knees for the cherry cobbler. I threw the salt at ithe gremlin, buying us a few precious seconds, and together we found the pouch of cobbler and ran back to the HumveeJERRV. The engineer’s shirt pocket was stained dark blue, and his pants and belt were singed.
“All my pens broke,” he said sadly.”, gesturing at the stains.
“And the burn marks?”
“My phone caught fire.”
I tore open the cobbler pack, reached out past the salt, and placed it on the ground. The gremlin snarled at us, furious that we’d gotten away a second time, but soon he paused, sniffed the air, and crept closer. He looked at the cobbler, then at the salt, then at us. He sniffed again and took another step. A few moments later he was sitting by the open dessert pouch, his hands and face smeared with thick red syrup as he munched happily on the cherries.
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br /> “That’s the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen,” said the gunner.
“You got my grenade?”
“Here.” The bomb techHe handed me an HEDP 50PG-2, the ‘High Explosive Donkey Punch,’ basically a metal tube with a short, stubby pointmetal cone on the end. He’d removed the tapered endpiece, exposing a cone of explosives inside, and I set that part down far away from the fire. The empty endpiece I filled with binding agent from the BSE-7, scooping it out with the flat of my knife, and then I sat back, looking at the others.
“This is going to get gross.”
They nodded, eyes grim. I took a deep breath, propped open the demon’s Dash-10 manual with a rock, and proceeded to perform unspeakably horrible acts on the body of the dead engineer. The lead engineer fainted twice before the ritual was done, and I admit that I was pretty woozy as well—from disgust rather than blood loss, since I only needed a couple of drops of my own. With the bloody symbols drawn on the sides of the grenade, and the endpiece thoroughly smeared with horrifically-newly reinforced binding goop, I took a deep breath, said a quick a prayer (apologizing, as I did, for dabbling in demonology), and tossed the endpiece out past the salt and into the gremlin’s half-finished cobbler. The Dash-10 included a handy pronunciation guide for the incantation, and as I recited the words the gremlin was sucked into the binding agent like a genie going back into a bottle.