CHAPTER 5
All Along the Watchtower
Notes from my first night working the Big Easy.
0017 Rpt “sumpin big wif scales an teef” Bayou St. 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 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. Its humanoid, scaled torso was broad as a musclehead’s 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.
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 its head off. “You can still have the trophy.”
“Why’d you wait?” Shelbye replied. She was lying 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, Mr. 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 payoff 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 a 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 spotlight and hissing. They looked for all the world like some weird deer herd being spotted at night. Or a lion pride. “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 roadblock.
“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 pickup 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 A.M., 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.
“We don’t got one for your Uzi,” she said. “We’ll get that fixed. Like it, by the way. Where’d you get it?”
“I built it,” I said. “Want one?”
“I’ll stick with long guns,” she said. “Stayin’ back’s the only way I’ve survived this long. Gettin’ up close and personal generally don’t end well.”
“What got you started?” I asked as I started reloading mags. I needed to clean my weapons as well, soon. But ammo first.
“Humboldts,” she said darkly. She’d broken her 14 down and was cleaning it. “Hit our camp out the swamp. Killed some family. Took off with a cousin of mine. Didn’t know nothin’ ’bout Humboldts back then. I took off after her. Stupidest damned thing I ever done in my life and that’s saying something. They nearly got me but I found her. Turned out she was already one of them. She’d gone just plumb crazy.
“I was in it bad when MHI showed up. MHI fella put her down. He was right nice about it. Explained and everything. The green glow should have been a clue. Got a call from MHI a couple weeks later. They’d done the paperwork for the Humboldts they could find I’d done for. Asked me if I wanted a job. Been doin’ this for four years.”
I’d never dealt with Humboldt Folk but I heard they were pretty horrific. “That’s a tough introduction.”
“You?” she asked.
“Shamblers,” I said, frowning. “At a tent revival of all things. Long story why I was there. I had a .22 converter for my Colt. I just ran around popping them. I was really busted up at the time. That was about the only problem I had with it. Not as hard as your story.”
“Was pretty bad,” she said, shrugging. “Nobody else was willing to go. ’Fraid of the hoodoo. It was stupid but I ain’t never been known for my smarts.”
“You’re damned good with that,” I said, pointing at her rifle with my chin.
“Been huntin’ and shootin’ since I was a kid,” she said, shrugging. “But I’ll leave the stubby guns and swords and axes for y’all men.”
I was done reloading and pulled out a pack of gear to sharpen Mo No Ken. I always started with that when cleaning weapons if Mourning had been used.
The kit consisted of a tiger shark skin sharpening strap and another of cloth. I considered the edge and skipped the shark skin. I hooked the cloth, which was attached at both ends to hardwood dowels, to one of the tables and started swathing the blade on the cloth strap.
“You sharpen it on cotton?” Shelbye asked.
“Silk,” I said, continuing the sharpening process. “That’s why it goes through limbs like butter. I’ve put this through the arms and necks of trolls, wights, and both legs of a vampire. And the neck, obviously. You name it, Mo No Ken has killed it.”
“Mo No Ken?” she asked.
“Sword of Mourning,” I said. “Yes, it has a name. It’s a two-hundred-year-old, three-soul blade.”
“Okay then. Gotcha,” she said, reassembling her M14. “You all into that Oriental stuff?”
“You could say that,” I said, smiling slightly. “The way of the warrior is the way of duty,” I added in Japanese.
“Huh? I ain’t into all that mystical bullshit. I just shoot the monsters and get paid.”
“I got into it in high school,” I said, completing the sharpening. I anointed Mo No Ken again and put it away. “My unofficial foster father was into it. He’d had a buddy killed by a sword in World War II and got into it after that. He taught me kendo, the Japanese sword art. And about guns. Even gunsmithing; he was the school shop teacher which was where we met. My family was and is very fucked up. He and his wife were and are my real parents.
“Later I kept studying. When I decided to get into this, he helped me do the Uzi redesign and to find Mo No Ken. I’ve studied all sorts of martial arts, Oriental as you put it, and European. It’s all useful tricks.”
I broke down the Uzi next and did a rough clean. I wasn’t going to bother breaking down the silencer or the trigger group. It didn’t need it.
“Is there some point at which we can put down our heads?” I asked, reassembling the Uzi.
“Might as well,” Shelbye said. “Seems to have calmed down.”
I took a shower in my gear, hung it up to dry, took another out of gear, hit the rack and passed out like a light.
Thus ended my first day with New Orleans Hoodoo Squad.