Chapter Six
7 April 2018
After breakfast, it was training time. No live fire, but how to scoot n’ shoot. How not to stack up in doorways. What the damn hand signals meant.
“Um, isn’t this why we’ve got radios?” Holt asked at one point, having missed the signal for him to hose the target—a coffin, hey it’s a funeral home, okay?—down with ‘holy water,’ again.
“Yes and no,” I replied. “Look, everyone grab a seat.”
I waited while they sat. Father Miller was inside, checking his searches on the Codex. Everyone else was outside with me, running drills.
“So, let’s talk about yesterday in the Farmall. Say you’re carrying the holy water pump, okay? I point to you, followed by the shotgun signal, and point at the monster. What do you think I mean?”
“Hose the monster?” Holt replied.
“Hose the monster,” I said. “Which would have been a lot quieter than saying it, even over the radio. Truthfully, it’s a hell of a lot quieter than what ended up happening. We might not have had to fight the second daemon if the first hadn’t made all that noise before we shot the damn thing to doll rags.”
“Ok, that makes sense,” Holt said.
“That’s why we’re going over it,” I said. “Now, let’s do it again.”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
While we were at lunch, Miller updated us on his search. He had news. Neither good nor bad, just news.
“So, it looks like we’re not the first people recorded as having disappeared,” he said. “The earliest disappearance recorded is that of Benjamin Bathurst, an English envoy to Germany in 1809. There were probably other earlier examples, but Bathurst seems to have been the first one to make a splash, supernaturally. There are some records from both branches of the Quintus Society about the investigation, if you can read the early 19th century prose,” Miller said.
“Diindiisi told us about Earhart and Noonan the other day,” Dalma said.
“Yes. Could we talk about them later?” Miller asked Diindiisi.
“If you’d like,” she replied. “I don’t know much about their actual disappearance, just what they told me.”
“That’d be fine—I’d be able to update the Codex on their disappearance. There’s been a lot of argument about what happened to them. There was a report of strange phenomenon in the region from a Jesuit, but not a lot of support for it,” Miller said.
“So, we know people have come through to this side,” I said. “What about returning?”
“Yes, that,” Miller said with a frown. “I haven’t found any other good sources on a return, actually. The only source I’ve found so far that records a return was written by Diindiisi here.”
She smiled.
“Yes, Boston Corbett, the poor man,” she said. “Escaped from an insane asylum and disappeared. We’d heard he might be alive in Minnesota, so we tracked him there. He confirmed to me that he’d spent two years or so in the Shadow Lands before returning.”
“How did he do it?” Miller asked.
“He said his great purity led God to show him the way back,” she replied, primly. “He was a bit strange. The man castrated himself after an encounter with a pair of prostitutes, after all. Didn’t even have sex with them, just talked to them on the street.”
“Cas—sorry, castrated himself?” Padgett asked.
“Yes. With a pair of scissors. Even went to church and had a meal before seeking medical attention,” Diindiisi said.
“That is totally hard core,” Dalma said.
“Totally loony core,” I replied. “Were you able to get anything other than ‘God’ about his return?”
“No. The Great Hinckley Fire started shortly after we’d gotten him to talk to us about it. Corbett perished in the fire,” she said. “Henry and I barely escaped the fire, ourselves.”
I looked at her. There was a faraway look in her eyes.
“Besides, he didn’t have a lot of useful information for us. His time in the asylum had strengthened his faith, grinding away at his sanity further. He thought his two years here had been a gift from God, especially since he hadn’t seen any daemons or other creatures. Who knows? He might have been right, after all.”
“Ah. I’ve got to ask, though, was the fire that bad?” I said.
“Yes. Rail cars melted to the rails. Barrels of nails melted into a single mass. We barely escaped. If Henry hadn’t survived the Great London Fire, I don’t know that we’d have made it out. An efreet started it,” Diindiisi said.
“What’s an efreet?” Dalma asked.
“Fire daemon,” Holt replied.
“Let me guess, D&D?” Dalma said, snarkily.
“Maybe,” Holt drawled.
“Whatever his source, Holt is right,” Diindiisi said. “Some idiot had brought one back from a trip to the Ottoman Empire, and it had escaped his control. It wasn’t in a giving mood, unlike that blue djinn in that movie we watched the last night.”
Diindiisi liked movies. She’d seen a few flickering things back in the day. Now, she was catching up with a hundred plus years of cinema.
“Blue djinn? Padgett asked.
“Yes. Whoever wrote that motion picture did not do their research. Blue djinn are not trustworthy at all,” Diindiisi replied.
“The Hinckley Fire?” I asked, trying to get back on topic.
“Yes, the fire. Hopefully, the efreet got the idiot first, but the way luck works, he probably survived without a clue of what he’d unleashed,” Diindiisi said.
“Damn,” Padgett said. “What else is real?”
“If you’ve seen it in a movie or read it in a book, it’s probably out there,” I said.
“Dracula?”
“Yes, killed by Van Helsing. He and his companions, along with Henry Keith, founded the company that led to QMG,” I said. “When they told the story to Stoker, they, shall we say, embellished it a bit, moving the events in time to avoid the obvious connections to the Ripper case.”
“Frankenstein’s monster?”
“Yes, although he’s a whiney, emo little bitch,” Miller said, looking around. “I’ve met him. The Church keeps him locked up so he doesn’t run amok. He spends most of his days whining about it while trying to convince his keepers he won’t go on another killing rampage.”
“Dragons?”
“Rare, but they exist,” I said. “Mostly in places where they won’t have a lot of human contact these days—tops of high mountains, and such. Mostly the Chinese type, too.”
“Why’s that?” Holt asked.
“Because knights in Europe followed the model of Saint George, Dragon Slayer, and hunted the European dragons to near extinction.”
“What about elves?”
“Sorta. Most of the Fae or the elves or the dwarfs are withdrawn into enclaves where they don’t have to deal with humans. Dwarfs, for all their issues, are fairly solid folk to deal with. They don’t like humans, but they’re not out to screw us over, either. Most of the High Elves and Fae, they’re about as trustworthy as a late night TV pitchman. As a matter of fact, some of those guys are part Fae,” I said.
“That explains a lot,” Dalma said. “Anything else we need to look out for?”
“Yes,” Diindiisi temporized. “Remember that DVD we watched the other night? The one in New York City where they fought the man made of marshmallows?”
Dalma nodded.
“While some of the things we’ll face here have a fixed form, like the daemon you killed when you arrived, some won’t take form until you see them. They’re going to pick a form you esteem and twist it, to make you suffer more,” Diindiisi said.
“Which explains the monsters we fought yesterday,” Dalma said, sighing.
“Yes. There are also going to be some manifestations that are—like the ghost at your residence, John Padgett—tied to the other world. If we had a listing of all the sites here—” she started.
“That’s not going to happen,” I interrupted. “If I remember correctly, it’s thought that there have been people living here for 13,000 years or so. There’s no telling what was holy to who over that period.”
“That could be a problem, yes,” Diindiisi said with a slight smile.
“Not to change the subject,” Holt said.
“But to change the subject,” Dalma replied.
Holt ignored her.
“You said something about wanting to get some different vehicles last night, Jesse,” he said, turning to me.
“Be nice to have something with a mount for the Golf,” I said.
“What about the National Guard Armory?” he asked.
“The what? Where?”
“The National Guard Armory,” he answered. “It’s down by the river, next to the Public Library.”
“Oh my,” I said, with visions of avarice flashing before my eyes.
“Greed is a sin,” Miller said, not even looking up from his book.
“Yes, yes it is,” I replied. “I know it’s a shortcoming. I’ll talk to God about it in a bit—I’ll even apologize for my sins—but, we need to check things out.”
Miller sighed.
“Full court press?” he asked.
I thought.
“Hmm, we’ll take the Tacticool Tahoe with a spare driver for now, I think. If we find something, we’ll bring it back and go from there.”
“Take two,” he replied.
“Err?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Take two spares. That way, if you run into something, you’ve got a shooter in both vehicles,” he replied.
“You, know, Father Miller, for someone not of the Church Very Militant, you’re coming along nicely,” I said. “Who wants to go for a ride?”
“I can’t drive, but I can shoot,” Diindiisi said.
“You’ve got my bow,” Padgett said with a smile and bow.
We hadn’t gotten to fantasy movies—yet—so we’d probably be explaining the joke to Diindiisi.
“I’m game,” Dalma said. “It’s boring, sitting around here doing nothing.”
“Right. Meet y’all downstairs in ten minutes,” I said.
Ten minutes later, we were rolling. We’d learned a few things and adapted a few others I’d learned doing patrols in Iraq. While our approaches to the funeral home were limited by street layout—only two ways to get there—we had a whole lot of options for getting to or from it once we got off Comanche or Hutchinson. Today, it was north a short way on Comanche, right on Pat Garrison, then straight on until morning. Or there about. Things were quiet.
Too quiet. There was an oppressive quality to the air once we got away from the funeral home.
“Anyone else feel like something’s going on?” Dalma asked over the radio.
“Yeah,” Padgett replied.
“Keep your eyes open,” I replied as we crossed the San Marcos River.
I realized Diindiisi was chanting under her breath as we turned into the Armory.
“Wait for it,” I said when Padgett put the SUV in park.
He’d swung around the building, pointing back toward the street. Escape parking, like emergency pants, was something we’d started practicing.
“There!” Dalma shouted, pointing to the river.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Padgett said, looking over his shoulder. “Is that a fucking koi?”
I turned around on the seat I was standing on, stepping on Dalma in the process.
“Sorry,” I said.
Sure enough, I could see the fore body of a large white fish with a red patch on its head, bulking above the banks of the river.
“Damn, that’s as big as a semi,” Padgett said, putting the Tahoe back in gear.
The fish swam downstream, going around the bend.
“Right,” I said, unlocking the M240 and laying it on the roof behind me. I followed it out, handing it to Diindiisi before jumping down. “Padgett, you two stay here. If the fish comes back, fire a warning shot, but get the hell outta here, then come back for us, huh?”
I grabbed the ‘entry kit’ we’d put together, wishing there had been some C4 in the cache.
“Right. Let y’all get eaten by the big nasty fish while we bravely run away,” Dalma said snarkily, popping up through the sunroof.
“Something like that, yes,” I shot back with a leer.
The armory had probably originally been built in the 1930’s—it had the look of something built by the Civilian Construction Corps. But through the years, it had been updated, in part to probably ‘soften’ its look. The main doors were tempered glass, one of those safety updates mandated by Congress a few years back, to keep people from bleeding to death after falling into a plate glass door. That just made things a bit trickier, not impossible. I reached into the bright red tool bag we’d assembled, rummaged about, and pulled out a four pound cross peen hammer. Smiling at Diindiisi, I threw the hammer into the glass. The door crazed, deforming around the hammer, but the plastic inner layer between the outer sheets of glass kept the hammer from penetrating. I picked up the hammer and smashed it into the dimple caused by the first toss. The glass broke finally, and I hooked it with the hammer, pulling it out of the frame.
I turned, bowing to Diindiisi. She sniffed. The sniff said ‘Men.’ She walked over, pulled the other door open, while stepping carefully over the broken glass to enter the building.
“Shit,” I said, following her into the building. “How’d you know the door was open?”
“I didn’t, until I saw it bounce when the hammer hit it,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You looked like you wanted to show off,” she replied.
We followed the signs to the garage. Inside were two squat, ugly, up-armored Humvees, complete with turrets.
“Yes!” I shouted at the ceiling.
“I take it these are what you were hoping for?” Diindiisi asked.
“All that and a bag of chips,” I replied.
“I haven’t had chips in years,” she said.
There was an impish twinkle in her eyes when I turned to look at her.
“Do we need to find the keys for these vehicles?” she asked.
“No. These are Government Issue vehicles. No keys,” I replied, swinging the driver’s side door open.
The steering wheel was ‘locked’ with a chain running from a staple in the floor up through the steering wheel and back down to the staple. It took about ten seconds to pop the lock with a set of bolt cutters and toss the chain into the back of the Humvee. I twisted the starter, and it farted to life.
“Bingo!” I said.
I let the engine idle for a minute before I cut it off, opened the back door, and climbed into the turret.
“Wrong mount,” I said, dropping out of the turret and going to the other Humvee.
“Mount?” Diindiisi asked.
“That’s what holds the gun,” I said, climbing into the second Humvee. “Same problem here—they’re both rigged for Ma Deuce. Wonder if they’ve got the other mounts in the vault.”
I strode from the garage toward the weapons vault.
“What’s a Ma Deuce?” Diindiisi asked.
“Browning heavy machine gun, model M2,” I said, staring at the door to the weapons vault.
The door looked thick.
“We’re going to have to go to Plan B,” I said.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Go back to the funeral home to get that cutting torch rig I picked up, because there is no way in hell I’m getting through that wall with what’s in the bag,” I replied resignedly.
After a twenty-minute round trip, we were back at work. Miller and Holt came with us this time to pick up the second vehicle, so they left shortly after we got there. Padgett and Dalma were back on overwatch outside. I think Dalma was hoping the giant koi would cruise by again, because she’d brought a Barrett back and was itching to shoot something other than targets with it. Diindiisi looked for useful things to take with us when we left—we’d have room, after all.
I’m not a dab hand with a cutting torch. I’ve been through the “How to cut things open course” at QMG, but it took about an hour to cut through the door. For comedic purposes, Diindiisi should have shown up with the keys just as the door fell to the floor, but even in not-limbo, God’s sense of humor wasn’t quite that perverse. I wheeled the torch rig back out to the Tacticool Tahoe, and Padgett helped me load it. Inside, the door had cooled enough that I could step into the vault.
“Holy Saint John Moses Browning,” I said, crossing myself.
There were two M2’s in the vault. No ammo, but that didn’t stop me from getting Padgett to help load the eighty-three pound beasts into the back of the Humvee. We also loaded a few odds and ends, and both the Golf mounts, along with the goodie bags for the assorted machine guns. The only things that were missing were the M240’s themselves, along with the M-16’s normally stored in the vault. I swapped the mount out, dropping the Golf into place on the turret.
“That’s oddly beautiful,” Padgett said, watching me finish up.
“Who’s driving?” I asked, feeding a belt of silver core ammo into the Golf.
“Dalma. She won. We did rock-paper-scissors for it. I threw scissors. She threw rock.”
“There’s always tomorrow.”
He shrugged. “Where are you going to get ammo for the big guns?”
“Ma Deuce? No idea. But I find them comforting, I guess,” I replied.
He snapped his fingers. “I must be losing my mind.”
“Occupational hazard when one deals with the strange and unusual,” I said.
“No, there’s this place out Ranch Road 12 toward Johnson City,” he said. “Opened up, oh, a couple years back. They have machine guns you can fire.”
Be still my beating heart, because there’s always someone who wants to listen to Ma sing.
“That would be great,” I said. “But we’ll have to head that way tomorrow. With everybody.”
“Right,” he replied. He grabbed a couple of bags of office supplies Diindiisi had brought out to the garage and headed toward the waiting SUV. “See you back at the casa.”
* * * * *