Last Call

by Lloyd Behm II

  “What?”

  “Sorry, Gunny, sounds like monkeys howling out in the desert.”

  “If you’re done listening to wildlife, could you finish the sea story?”

  “So the civilian digs the doors out, and it takes both of them to get the doors open—the dogs and the hinges are full of moon dust, and the grease on them is set like concrete.” I rinsed my mouth from my CamelBak, spitting over the side of the Humvee before taking a deep drink. “They get the doors open just enough that the civilian can fit between them, and he slips in—Benjamin said he could see the guy pull out a moonbeam and turn it on, and he could hear his boots ringing on the wooden deck of the conex. Benjamin says he said, ‘Come on in here, because I don’t believe this shit, and I want to make sure I’m not going crazy.’”

  “What did your buddy do?” Barre, Gunny’s driver asked.

  “He gets off the forklift and goes in the conex. I don’t know what he was expecting to see—NCIS put some cash in a couple of conexes from the Exchange a month or so earlier, trying catch folks taking it, so he said he thought it could be something like that. The civilian, he’s standing all the way at the back wall of the conex, shining his moonbeam on a number ten can of corn.”

  “Bullshit,” Gunny replied.

  “My hand to Jesus, Gunny, that’s what Benjamin told me. There was this stack of boxes, kinda like an altar, and a dusty tablecloth with an ears of corn pattern on it. On top and in the center of that was a number ten can of corn.”

  “Creamed corn, or niblets?” Barre asked.

  “How the fuck do I know?” I replied.

  The howling in the desert was getting closer.

  “I thought your buddy might have told you,” Barre replied.

  “Fuck you, Barre, you fucking pogue. Benjamin said he looked at the civilian, who’s just shaking his head at that shit. ‘Man, that is some fucked up shit, you know?’ the civilian says. Benjamin says back, ‘I just hope I go home before I start worshiping a fucking can of corn.”

  Someone breaking squelch twice on the radio interrupted Gunny’s laugh.

  “Send it,” he replied.

  “Gunny, this is Fox Two. You see the LT?”

  Fox Two was Master Sergeant Schmidt.

  “Negative, Top. What’s up?”

  “He dismounted and said he was going to check on the company. He’s been checking in as he goes along. He left Donatelli’s position about ten minutes ago.”

  Donatelli’s Humvee was to our right, about a hundred yards away. The LT could have crawled a hundred yards in ten minutes. I cranked the turret so I could look for the LT—who knows, he could still be talking to Donatelli.

  Something twitched and flickered in the green light of my night vision gear.

  “Gunny, there’s something between us and Donatelli. You want me to dismount and check it out?”

  It sounds cliché, but what he said next saved my life.

  “Negative. Hold one.” He keyed the mike again. “Top, we’ve got something between us and Donatelli to starboard. Permission to put some light on things?”

  While Gunny was arguing with Top, I flipped my NVGs over to IR. I could see three or four shapes gathered around something on the ground halfway between Donatelli’s Humvee and ours. The thing on the ground was rapidly cooling in the night air.

  “Gunny, there’s something going on.”

  “Shut your pie hole,” Gunny growled.

  “Fox Two to Fox Ten. Take a look. All Fox elements, Fox Ten is going to turn on a moonbeam.”

  “Salazar, you heard Top. Turn on that new light.”

  “Roger that, Gunny,” I said, hitting the switch on the light I’d mounted next to Ma Deuce in the turret yesterday.

  I’d been kinda disappointed—it was only two hundred candlepower. Turning it on, however, was like Luke turning on his light saber for the first time—a bright, square beam of light lit up the figures on the ground.

  “What the fuck, over?”

  I could see a pair of legs and boots in the light. Crouching over the legs were four emaciated, blood-spattered figures—human in outline and form, but with larger ears and large, deep black eyes. Their arms were red with gore, and one of them had several feet of intestine hanging from its hand. The figures whined when the light fell on them, shielding their eyes. I really wanted to puke.

  “Firing!”

  I slipped the trigger block out of the way and pressed the butterfly trigger home, counting to four before releasing. I walked the burst across the things that were feeding, smashing them into goo.

  “Cease fire!”

  I raised the light to shine on Donatelli’s Humvee. The things were crawling all over it. One of them lifted Donatelli’s head to shield its face from the light.

  “Fuck me,” Barre said. I heard someone in the cab firing, the strobes lighting up the night.

  “Light them up!” Gunny shouted.

  I started working the gun over the things crowded around Donatelli’s Humvee. Two short bursts later and the gun was dry. I grabbed a belt of ammo from a box in the ready rack in the turret.

  “Displacing,” Barre said, throwing the Humvee in reverse and backing onto the hardball parking lot of the Primate Center.

  Sawed off little fucker had been a tanker before transferring to infantry. The upside was he drove the Humvee as if it was an M1—he still hadn’t found an obstacle he wouldn’t try to cross, and I’d damn near lost my head when he drove through a building when we were chasing some idiots who’d fired on a convoy we were escorting.

  Around us, the night lit with muzzle flashes—from what I could see as I slammed the top cover back down and grabbed the charging handle, all the positions were engaged in fighting the things that had crawled out of the night.

  Barre’s quick reversal had gotten us out from under an onrushing wave of the things. I cranked the turret and went to work, killing them in short bursts. Gunny started passing ammo up from the cab. He was talking to someone, probably Top, on the radio, and we fell back on the main structure across the parking lot. The things didn’t follow.

  The SEAL team’s vehicles had been overrun; the things were busy chowing down on the four SEALs who’d been pulling security.

  “The fuck, Gunny?” I asked.

  Pale, gray-skinned, corpse-like things shuffled out of the building.

  “Here,” Gunny said, handing up an ancient M79 grenade launcher and a bandoleer of reloads—he’d “acquired” the thump gun from a bunch of reservists who were pulling convoy duty.

  “HE up the spout!” Gunny said, dropping his window and firing his M4 at the crowd around the Humvees.

  I guesstimated the range and fired.

  BLOOP.

  I hit the lever and broke the grenade launcher open, pulling the spent round and tossing it out of the turret. I slammed another round in the breech and fired again. I repeated the process until I was out of reloads in the bandoleer, dropping the thumper back down into the cab.

  “Cease fire!” Gunny said after the last grenade exploded.

  “Good shootin’ there, Tex,” Barre said.

  I’d stopped the wave attack at six rounds a minute. I’d also chewed the front of the building up with the grenades.

  Of the twenty-five Humvees we’d brought on mission, fifteen, including ours, sat in a rough semi-circle in front of the main research building. I could see plumes of smoke from at least three that hadn’t made it—rather than being lunch, the last survivors had pulled the pins on grenades. The laager bristled with weapons—someone was going through the gear in the SEAL team vehicles, pulling ammo and other useable supplies out and distributing it among the survivors.

  Gunny and Top had dismounted and were standing, arguing near the door.

  “Hey, Barre, what the fuck, over?” I asked, taking a couple of boxes of fifty ammo from Vasquez on the ground.

  “There’s SEALs still alive down there,” Barre said. “Top wants to beat feet and return with a whole lot of suppor
t. Gunny’s arguing that we should go ahead and go in after them.”

  “Gunny’s fucking nuts, man.”

  “No shit, dude.”

  Gunny and Top finished their argument and shook hands.

  TO&E for a Marine Rifle Company at full strength is 150 swinging dicks. You only saw such a beast in training or garrison, and even then, you’d have guys out sick, off doing training, or out on leave. We’d rolled out the gate at TQ with a hundred guys—we’d be lucky to bring sixty back.

  Gunny was walking to each vehicle in turn—he would say something, then shake hands and walk on. Sometimes one of the Marines would dismount. Other times they wouldn’t. He finally made it to where I sat behind the fifty, scanning the area around us.

  The hooting things had fled under the punishment of the guns—they were still out there; they were just being cagey about it.

  “Barre, Salazar, I’m looking for volunteers.”

  “Volunteers to die, Gunny?” Barre asked.

  “Yeah, could be. But we can’t leave those men in there,” Gunny replied.

  I surprised myself—I unbuckled the turret harness and dropped down into the cab of the Humvee, collecting my personal weapon before stepping out.

  “Jesse? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Barre asked.

  “Joined the Corps, didn’t I?”

  “Hang on a minute,” Gunny said, reaching into the Humvee and handing me the M79 and a second bandoleer. “Those are all buckshot rounds. You burned off all the HE I had.”

  “I thought I put them to pretty good use,” I replied, hanging the bandoleer across my chest before slinging the M79 muzzle down and slantwise.

  “Dumb bastard. Didn’t you learn not to volunteer for suicide missions?” Barre said to my back as we walked toward the main building.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 14 – Diindiisi

  Three days later, the elvish delegation from Europe arrived with all due pomp and ceremony. QMG and the elves had laid the groundwork with the press, sending out hundreds of press releases about the “real” reason for their visit. Jesse would have laughed—officially, the elves were in Austin to examine the old growth forest of the Buschgrossmutter. Not that she was in Austin anymore—she had decamped for the Piney Woods just before Jesse had gone plane-walking.

  The first meetings were in the official office space QMG rented in the Frost Bank Building downtown, as the conference facilities were much more amenable to such a high-level delegation, and to hell with the traffic snarls it would cause. I think Sola was worried they would see his R&D facilities as quaint, but he did not ask me for my input.

  My team pulled security downstairs. Fred and his cousin Ozzie were upstairs, waiting on the elves. Among his many talents, Fred ranked as an accredited diplomat with the Elvish courts of Europe. When I asked him about it, he just shrugged.

  We were waiting in a large conference room when the elves stepped into the elevator foyer. First to step from the elevators were a pair of QMG “minders”—corporate security types in expensive, dark suits and sunglasses. The elvish security types followed, dressed in similar suits—although the elvish suits combined metal and spider silk, unlike the Kevlar of the humans. Four elves, carrying the traditional elvish long bow and wearing traditional elvish armor, stepped off next, taking positions where they could watch the elevators.

  Finally, the delegation, led by Ar’th,fwwl stepped from the elevators. They were dressed in a mix of traditional elvish robes and more modern dress. Ar’th,fwwl looked comfortable in a very bespoke suit that had probably cost him the equivalent of a small nation’s gross national product.

  A more traditionally dressed elf stepped past Ar’th,fwwl, staring at our delegation.

  “Were you not informed of our protocols?” the elf asked Sola in elvish. “Why are there so many females here? Are you holding an orgy?”

  Sola had the grace to look embarrassed by his European cousins. Elves in Europe cloistered their unmarried females. After marriage, the number of restrictions placed on their movement by elvish traditions and customs made the Taliban look liberal. They were not quite slaves required to produce heirs, males preferred, but they were close.

  I stepped forward, standing directly in the elf’s path.

  “I am Blue Bird of the Early Morning Light,” I replied in the same tongue. “A woman covered all over in the power of her people, and the wife of the one we seek. My claim to be here is far greater than yours, elf.”

  “I find I must, once again, apologize for my backward cousin,” Ar’th,fwwl said, bowing low. “I am He Who Answers the Call of the Sun, leader of this party. I believe we have met before?”

  “Yes,” I answered, curtsying to his bow. “France, wasn’t it?”

  “I believe so, yes,” he replied as Director Goodhart entered the room.

  “Please, take your seats,” Goodhart said, gesturing.

  At the center of the room was an oblong table. It was somewhat fitting, given what we were there to discuss. The crowd sorted itself out based on nametags. The seating arrangements were…interesting, and I saw Jed’s hand in them—placing the representatives of the Church between the dwarfs and elves fit his sense of humor.

  Once everyone was in place and drinks passed around, Goodhart looked to me.

  “We are here,” I began in elvish, “to discuss many things. There’s an intrusion of ancient magic, and there are signs pointing to a great struggle for the future of all our peoples. We seek ways to end the threat of a god and devils.”

  Sola had cast a spell of understanding, which translated my speech into the native tongues of those around the table. It was strange to hear myself speaking not only Elvish, but also English and Dwarfish simultaneously.

  “At least we’re no longer fucking around,” Fred Blyballong rumbled.

  “Are you as insane as the dwarf?” the intemperate elf asked. “At least he has the excuse of inbreeding.”

  There was an ominous thump from where Fred sat.

  Call of the Sun laid a hand on his follower, who froze.

  “I apologize for the unnamed one’s behavior,” Call of the Sun said. “It was thought he had the breeding and training for this mission. I believed his knowledge and training to be vital to entering into discussions with both your races. I can see those who recommended him were wrong. They shall rue their mistake.”

  Two elves in the traditional armor stepped into the room and took the offender by the arms, raising him from his seat and dragging him from the room.

  “Discipline problems aside, we are here to discuss Akkadian magic and killing a god,” Goodhart said. “Suggestions?”

  “Which god or gods?” Call of the Sun asked.

  “Tiamat and Abzu, along with the diabolic prince Oeillet,” I replied, pouring a glass of water.

  “You set your sights high, Blue Bird,” Call of the Sun replied. “Humans have tried to end the threat of Oeillet in the past, have they not?”

  “We got the spell wrong,” Henry Keith admitted.

  He had been a last-minute addition to the conference, arriving late last night with Michelangelo.

  “That happens,” Call of the Sun replied. “Our seers have seen signs of troubled times ahead. If you had not requested our aid with the implants you have found, Sola Stellus, we would have requested a meeting through other channels soon.”

  “Good,” Goodhart said, cueing up a projector. “In your packets, you will find copies of everything I’m about to discuss.”

  Goodhart delivered a quick briefing of everything we had discovered so far. Father Miller winced when he realized QMG was sharing information from the Church with the elves.

  “Are there any questions?” Goodhart asked, ending his presentation thirty minutes later.

  One of the elves stood.

  “I am known in English as ‘He who speaks.’ You may call me, Speaker,” he said, bowing to the table.

  Everyone nodded in return, Fred mumbling something about ‘damned sti
ff-necked elves.’

  “While your data supports ours,” Speaker began, “you have not stated a viable reason why we should leave our strongholds and aid the other races against this threat.”

  Fred rose, facing Speaker.

  “The threat falls equally upon all of us,” Fred said. “Even if Saint John were mad as a March hare, that does not mean the doom will not fall upon all of us.”

  “We, like your people, have ridden out the dooms of mankind before,” Speaker replied.

  “Unlike those distant times, if the forces of darkness take control of human society, humanity has the tools at its disposal to end all non-human life forms.”

  “Surely you and the Mine Leaders you represent do not believe that humans would use their nuclear weapons, the so-called final deterrent, to end the Enclaves?” Speaker asked.

  Fred pulled a small pouch out of his pocket and shook the contents out into his hand before placing them on the table in front of Call of the Sun.

  “Why rely on such crude devices, Speaker, when they have been supplied with the means to break the forgings of the most ancient dwarfs and control the most rebellious of spirits, the therianthropes? One need not destroy entire cities or Enclaves of the Fair Folk when one can require such implants to travel the world at large.”

  “Why should we accede to such a request?”

  “There are millions of the Fair Folk and billions of humans. Easily manipulated humans due to the ancient sins manifest in their flesh at creation. How long do you truly believe the Fair Folk would be able to resist the sheer numbers of humans?”

  “We are not without power or allies,” Speaker said.

  “The Folk of Stone would withdraw to our deepest holds, sealing the tunnels behind us and hoping to ride out the cycle. Your less powerful allies face the same arithmetic as the Fair Folk—as a human general put it, quantity has a quality of its own. Do you think the Seelie Courts will wait long to join their brethren in the Unseelie when the choice is life or death?”

  Call of the Sun was examining the devices Fred had placed on the table. Before Speaker could respond to Fred’s last statement, Call of the Sun rose from his seat.