by D V Wolfe
Joel, Vince, and I just looked at Mick.
“Is there a story behind this statement that you want to share?” I asked.
Vince rolled his eyes. “No, you don’t want to hear it. Suffice it to say we had to stop on the side of the road on our way here and there was some loose debris flying around while Mick was in a compromising position. Some slight bodily injuries occurred…” Mick opened his mouth to argue and Vince glared at him. “Which we do not need to discuss the severity of or location of.”
Mick was standing on one leg and he waddled slowly over to the loveseat where he gently plopped down, wincing as he did so. Vince turned to look at me. Rainwater ran in rivulets down his smooth shaved head and his expression had returned to serious as he focused on me. “Now, we have a plan?” I wanted to hug them. All three of them, but I knew that would make things awkward at the moment.
“I can’t thank you and Mick enough for coming with Joel. Did you get my message?” I asked.
Vince nodded. “It was the strangest thing. We were checking on an Angelic and the phone didn’t ring. I got a reminder thing that I had a message, I checked it and it was you asking for help. Then, this guy,” Vince nodded his head at Joel. “Called me and told Mick and I to get on the road and head down here.”
I shook my head. “Well, with you three, our chances for success just doubled.”
“So we’re at one hundred percent chance of success now?” Joel asked, happily.
“No,” I said. “More like thirty percent chance now.” I turned to the couch and shook Noah awake. He jumped and let out a squeak of surprise when he opened his eyes to see all four of us, looking down at him. Vince and Mick’s faces had gone through the Cynocephali change and were back to being dog heads. Noah sat up, blinked around at all of us, and then yawned before stumbling to his feet and heading down the hallway to the bathroom.
“I’ll wake Hilda,” Noah said, before closing the bathroom door behind him.
I turned back to the other three to see them all looking down the hallway, confused.
“I don’t think I want to know what he means by ‘waking Hilda’ if he does it in the bathroom,” Mick said.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a euphemism.”
“I don’t care, that still sounds like something I don’t want to hear about,” Mick added. I sighed and led Joel, Mick, and Vince into the kitchen, sat them down, and started walking them through the plan. Mick was having trouble standing or sitting for very long. I paused after the third time he’d made a face and gotten to his feet. “You ok there Mick?”
Mick opened his mouth to answer and Vince glared at him. “He’s fine. Just sore.”
“You’re in a house of healing my friend,” I said. “Hilda might be able to fix you right up.” I hooked a thumb under the parachute cord around my neck and held up the dead bat. “I mean she gave me this to keep the death visions at bay. I’ll bet if we twist her arm she could have a scoop full of nightcrawlers to dump down your tighty-whities to help with that genital discomfort.” Mick gave me the finger and we pressed on.
“Who’s Hilda?” Vince asked.
I held my arms wide and motioned to the house in general. “The proprietor of...all this.” As if she were Beetlejuice and we’d said her name too many times, I paused when I heard the cane-swish, cane-swish coming down the hallway. Joel, Mick, and Vince all looked up to see her when she came in. She was wearing a hot pink windbreaker jogging suit today and a fleece ski hat that had a pig snout, pig ears and beady black eyes on it. I heard all three men in the room collectively swallow their tongues.
“Good morning Hilda,” I said.
Hilda’s gaze snapped onto me. “What’s good about it? You’ve brought supernaturals into my house.” She raised her cane and pointed it at Vince and Mick who both slid back from the table and away from her in their chairs.
I shook my head. “They’re Cynocephali. They’re not baddies.”
Hilda glared at them but didn’t say anything else. Well, that was probably bad news for Mick trying to get any help from Hilda for his condition. Luckily we needed to get the plan rolling anyway.
“Ok,” I said. “We need to strike today because Mastick, the new tribe leader is planning to perform a Red Moon Rite, tonight, with Festus as the communion cracker. Since we’re attacking pre-demon-power-cementing-rite, the cannibals are still more or less human. But the ones Noah and I ran into were deranged and not weaklings. We built flamethrowers for everyone to help us break their ranks, distract and hopefully, get everyone in and out of there in one piece.” I moved a stack of notes aside so that we could all look down at the map. “We’ll split into two teams. One team will come up through here,” I traced a route following the path Noah and I had taken the night before, behind the warehouses and up through the back of the trailer park. “And the other team will come in from the road.” I traced the pathway in and through the fleet of parked cars.
I looked up at the rest of them. “Festus is being held by them, stashed somewhere, possibly one of the RVs…”
“The one with bars welded over the windows,” Noah piped in.
I nodded. “Joel, I don’t think you ever met Festus. He’s a guy about this tall.” I held up my hand about even with my height. “Probably wearing, a very dirty and battered this point, black suit. He’ll probably be an asshole when you rescue him. We need him alive. If he’s strong enough, give him a weapon.” I grinned,. “Dealer’s choice as to what kind of weapon. If he’s too weak, a member of the team will break off from the rest and get him back to one of the vehicles. The rest of the rescuing team will find someone from the other team and let them know, he’s been rescued. Then as soon as the rest of the tribe is neutralized, we do our best to clean up the mess and get the hell out. Got it?”
“And who is Festus again?” Joel asked.
“My accountant,” I said.
“The demon?!” Joel spat and it was almost surreal to see him lose his ‘surfer cool’. I nodded.
“Look,” I said, trying my best to keep calm. “Joel, you know about what I have to do, right?” I glared at him until he slowly nodded. “Well Festus is a part of that and I need him back. Got it?”
Joel locked eyes with me and I saw his face finally soften. He looked back down at the map. “We’ll need at least two cars,” he said. “And we should figure out the teams.”
I had planned to keep Noah with me, but we were the only two who had seen the trailer park and the layout in person. That put Noah and me on different teams. Hilda refused, point-blank, to be on the same team as Mick and Vince so it ended up making the teams; me, Vince and Mick and Noah, Hilda, and Joel. The teams were almost evenly matched, with Hilda’s cane and Mick’s injury. Noah was still so green. We decided that Noah, Hilda, and Joel would come up through the back of the trailer park, and Vince, Mick, and I would come in from the road. If there was going to be a lot of resistance, we would draw it.
We checked ammunition and everyone picked up a flamethrower, trying out the bungee straps we’d cobbled together as harnesses.
“If any of you ‘accidentally’ test those things out in here,” Hilda said, “I’m going to ‘accidentally’ lodge my cane up your poop chutes.” Mick winced and moved away from the look Hilda was giving him.
“We should probably ride with our teams,” Joel said. “We’ll be parking in different places. It’ll make it easier to get out of there too, in case something goes sideways.”
I nodded and looked at Vince and Mick.
“I’m driving,” Vince said, glaring at me. I thought that was probably best. There was no way all three of us were going to fit in Lucy. Vince and Mick were both over six feet tall and only slightly smaller than Gabe. I felt a sharp stab in my gut. I didn’t even know if he was alive. Noah was strapping on his flamethrower and he turned around, knocking me to the side as his CO2 tank made contact with my shoulder.
“Sorry,” Noah said. I looked him over. He was still white and his hands were shaki
ng a little as he gripped the bungee straps on the tank.
“You need a gun, don’t you?” I said.
Noah looked at his feet. “I already lost one of your guns.”
I shrugged. “Easy come, easy go.” I motioned him to follow me back into the front room and I knelt to open the black duffle bag. I pulled out my .45 and made sure the safety was on before I handed it to him. “Eight shots,” I said with a grin.
Noah’s expression was nervous excitement as he looked down at the gun in his hand. Then his gaze met mine. “What are you going to use then?”
I grinned and pulled Rosetta’s .45 out of the bag. “Forgot I had this.”
Noah swallowed hard. “If Rosetta finds out…” His expression softened as a quick stab of pain went through my chest. I had her gun and she might not ever get the chance to be pissed at me over it. “Bane,” Noah started. “Maybe they’re…” I held up a hand to make him stop and he changed tactics. “You should use yours. I’ll take Rosetta’s.”
I shook my head. “Nah if anything happens to it, I’d rather it be my hide than yours.”
I pulled out a box of ammo and exchanged it for the shotgun shells weighing down Noah’s pockets. I pulled my sawed-off out of the bag and dumped the fanny pack out. There was a residue of Solomon’s Spice in the duffle, coating everything. I wiped my hands on my shirt and filled the fanny pack with regular shotgun shells and ammo for the .45. I clipped on my duct tape and carabiner holsters and loaded the sawed-off before holstering it and reaching back into the bag for my machete.
As soon as we were all loaded up, we stood around, looking at each other like extras from a bad low-budget Ghostbusters vs. Mad Max movie.
“Well,” Vince said. “The day isn’t getting any younger. Let’s get this scavenger hunt on the road.”
I paused next to Vince and Mick’s Jeep to watch Joel struggling to help Hilda into the passenger seat of his blue Subaru. She didn’t want help, but the wind was trying to rip the door off while she took her time struggling to get in, holding onto her pig hat with one hand and her cane with the other.
“Bane, get your ass in,” Vince shouted, climbing up into the Jeep. “And if you’ve got anything sharp on you, you better make sure it doesn’t cut up my leather seats.”
I pulled the machete out and held it in my teeth before climbing up and into the tall Jeep. I pulled my arm and leg inside, just before the wind slammed the door on them. Vince was already in and he and I turned to watch Mick climbing the frame and running boards, rocking the Jeep from side to side, more than the wind was already doing. Mick was slow, and still having some issues with his tenderness. I thought about rolling down the window and calling to Joel to come give him a hand too. Probably not a good idea, now that we were all armed. I added my flamethrower to Mick and Vince’s, which sat on the seat next to me. I took comfort in knowing that if we were in a wreck and the tanks exploded, I definitely wouldn’t limp away from it.
Five minutes later, Joel had Hilda in and Noah had climbed into the backseat. “Alright,” Vince said, watching Joel flick his headlights on as the SUV rumbled to life behind us. “Let’s roll.” We pulled away from the curb and had to pause at the first intersection as a tree branch went tumbling by in the wind. Vince had the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip that only became more strained as we made it out of town and back onto the highway, heading for Sicily. At that moment, I was wondering if Vince was regretting the lift kit and putting monster truck tires on the Jeep. Luckily, with the storm and the early hour, the highway was deserted. We didn’t talk on the road. Mick was still in pain, and most likely the debris hitting the car and rolling by in front of us was bringing back painful memories for him. I didn’t want to risk distracting Vince, so I kept my thoughts to myself. I closed my eyes, trying to remember every detail I could, about how things were arranged in the trailer park. Twenty minutes later, I heard Mick say. “There’s the exit.”
I looked behind us and I could barely see the pinpricks of Joel’s SUV headlights. At least they were still with us. We took the off-ramp and the hail started up again.
“I swear, Bane,” Vince said through gritted teeth. “If this Jeep gets fucked up because of you and this bullshit…” He trailed off.
“You’ll what?” I asked. Mick had turned to look at him too.
“I’m sending you the body shop bill,” Vince muttered.
“Jeepers mister,” I said. “That’s an awful good threat.” Vince shot me a death glare in the rearview mirror. I directed them when we got into town. We found the road that followed the western outskirts and soon we were passing the warehouses. The storm was dying down around us.
“What the hell?” Vince asked.
“It’s some kind of supernatural protection. It’s like a hurricane, keeping people out but everything is calm in the eye,” I said. I remembered what Hilda was saying about Mastick controlling someone to keep the protection in place. Whoever that was, they needed to be freed too.
“Trippy,” Mick said. We drew even with the white gravel lot that led behind the warehouse Noah and I had parked behind last night.
“Stop the car,” I said to Vince. He hit the brakes and I rolled down my window. When Joel’s SUV came into view, I pointed at the gravel lot. Joel flicked his headlights to show me he understood and turned in. I rolled my window up and Vince kept driving. Black smoke was rolling up from the dying bonfire ahead and mixing with the dark reds and oranges from the dawn.
“No cop cars,” Mick said. “You’d think they’d have at least tried to get out here.”
“I don’t know if they even know what’s happening on this side of town. The storm is so bad, they may have just assumed everyone is just sheltering in place.” Vince caught my eye in the rearview mirror and Mick turned in his chair to look at me, wincing slightly. I sighed. “I know it’s unlikely, but I’m hoping they’re all on vacation or safely hidden somewhere other than this side of town. Noah and I didn’t find any innocents last night when we were here.”
We were all quiet for a moment, thinking of where the innocents probably were.
“It is summertime,” Vince said.
“Good time for a vacation,” Mick added.
I sighed. “Denial, the breakfast of champions.”
We passed the herd of Town Cars clogging the entry to the park and Vince turned down a driveway on the other side of the road a quarter of a mile past the park. There was an old barn at the back of their lot and Vince pulled behind it and cut his lights. We loaded up and took to the ditch on our side of the road as we headed back towards the trailer park. The tanks clinked softly against the bungee cord straps and I was annoyed that I hadn’t caught that before we’d left. Ten minutes with the gym sock tourniquets I kept in my glove box and a roll of duct tape and I could have fixed it. I hoped that little fuck up wouldn’t be the thing that got us noticed and subsequently killed.
We paused in the ditch directly across from the entry to the park and listened. It was quiet.
“Well that’s lucky,” Mick muttered. “Maybe we can get in and out before they’re up for breakfast.”
“Or they’re expecting us and it’s a trap,” Vince muttered. I felt a shiver run down my spine, thinking of Walter’s vision. I shook it off the best I could. Walter had said I was dead. Not the others. That was still a win.
“Well, we’re not going to find out which it is by just standing in this ditch,” I said. I climbed up the embankment and hurried across the road. I dropped into the ditch on the other side, right next to the back fender of one of the Town Cars. Vince and Mick clinked and scuffled across the road and piled into the ditch behind me. They were definitely not the stealthiest folks to have on a hunt. I’d seen them in action and their specialties ran more to kicking in doors and choking out supers.