Grunge (ARC)

by Larry Correia

  The lich, on the other hand, burst into flames and tumbled down the stairs.

  I looked at Milo who was looking at me and we both grinned ear to ear and began cackling madly.

  “Oorah!”

  “Get some!” Milo shouted back.

  We were running right into the cone of fire of the Happy Face team but the fire was slacking off, anyway. Doctors Nelson and Phil had dispensed with firearms and were happily throwing WP and thermite grenades into the crowd of undead while Louis and Brad engaged with flame-throwers. Timmy was taking the occasional pot-shot but was mostly just hunkered down. The Happy Face team had more or less paused to let Dwayne do most of the work. Fire is an excellent weapon against more than just trolls.

  The problem of the lich remained. By the time Milo and I got to the dais, it had regained its feet. It immediately grabbed a necklace around its throat and waved a hand at the Happy Face team which was closer.

  The fire from Dwayne’s flame-thrower turned back and to the side, catching Papa Shackleford in its cone.

  The oldest Shackleford jumped back immediately, but his right side was covered in fire. Stop, drop and roll only goes so far. He’d had a thermite grenade in his right hand and that popped and began to glow. He dropped it but the damage was done.

  Bad things were happening on the Happy Face team.

  In the meantime, we’d attained the dais and as the flaming lich prepared to cast another spell, we angled our weapons again and fired.

  The near simultaneous blasts again pounded the lich, driving it into the container like it was being struck by the hammer of the gods. We didn’t bother to celebrate this time, we just opened fire.

  By that time, Dwayne, Louis and Brad had moved up on our right. The extremely banged up lich got to its feet again just in time to receive a faceful of napalm from three different sources. Dwayne’s ran out quickly, he’d been using it for longer than the rest, but Louis and Brad kept on cooking.

  The lich was trying to run away from the fire. It ran left then right then straight at the two flamethrowers. It was clearly trying to activate a spell but with the flamethrowers pounding it from the outside, and our slugs burning its insides, it wasn’t getting very far. On the other hand, they didn’t seem to be killing it, either.

  It didn’t seem to be able to see. It might be able to regenerate eyeballs but it was covered in napalm. That generally cut down on that sort of thing.

  Remembering what had happened to Papa Shackleford I looked over towards the main doors. Earl was just getting done covering Papa in foam from an industrial fire-extinguisher. But he didn’t look real good and his right hand was burnt to a crisp.

  As first Louis’ then Brad’s flamethrower ran out of juice, I drew Sword of Mourning.

  “I’ll take the arms and head,” I said. “You jam the juice.”

  “Got it,” Milo said, grimly. He’d seen what had happened to the Boss as well.

  The lich was still aflame, napalm takes a while to burn out, but it was starting to get its bearings and that couldn’t happen. Before the last flames were out, we’d run it down, on the far side of the building from the main doors. It was trying to mouth words, a spell, screams of agony, it didn’t really matter. We were going to finish it.

  I darted forward and swept Mo No Ken across. The lich had its hands up in what is called the “final defense position.” Any person who has ever seen a human burned by fire knows the position. The hands and arms curl up and inward towards the face. Mo No Ken cut through both hands at the wrists and they dropped to the floor. There was some question about whether the entire body of a lich had a “death touch” effect but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  The lich turned away, trying to run, and Mo No Ken swept back, cutting through its crisped head at the jaw line. Any ability it might have had to cast spells was now gone. It also definitely could not see. The upper part of the head was on the floor and had landed eyes down.

  Milo stepped forward, placed the shotgun against the crippled lich’s back and fired. The magnesium back and began to flare white. But the lich was still up and moving.

  I repeated the blow with my own shotgun, keeping Sword of Mourning up and to the side ready to strike. I fired two rounds, keeping them as close to the lich’s heart as I could get.

  Still wasn’t down. And it was spinning around, trying to hit us and trying to find its hands.

  “Hell with this,” I said, slashing downwards. One leg out and it was on the ground, writhing.

  “Sure as hell takes a lot to kill these things,” Earl said as he came over, looking down at the writhing lich.

  “How’s the Boss?” I asked.

  “Ray’s rushing him to the hospital. He’s tough. He’ll live.” Earl was really pissed. “But I think he’s going to lose that hand.”

  “They do wonders with prosthetics these days. You know I’ve got a titanium humerus, right?”

  Milo was reloaded and punched more magnesium slugs into the lich’s back. All that did was cause it to roll over.

  “I got this,” I said. I took Mo No Ken and slashed downwards, once, twice, three times and the sternum was separated from the ribs.

  The magnesium slugs were in there, burning away. But the heart was still black and glistening and pumping.

  “Hold on for a second,” Earl ordered.

  He pulled out a thermite grenade and carefully, avoiding the thrashing arms, leaned over and jammed it into the cavity the sternum had exposed. There was an unearthly howling noise as the thermite tried to burn its way through the lich’s recalcitrant heart. Finally there was a nasty blurch sound, a wave of the most vile smoke imaginable and a scream like a thousand souls trapped in hell.

  The Seattle Lich was truly dead.

  The body immediately began to deliquesce and in moments there was nothing but an ugly pile of greenish-black goo.

  The virgin sacrifice had survived, although for the first twenty minutes or so we had to shout at her to make ourselves intelligible. She was definitely going to have some permanent hearing loss.

  There were more hostages in the container. They’d been nearly cooked, four were wounded and the container was punctured with about seven thousand bullet holes but amazingly none of them had been killed in the crossfire.

  The mystery of how they were disposing of the bodies was also solved. Ghouls ate them, bones and all.

  All of the girls were from the United States. They’d been kidnapped from various towns and cities in the Midwest and West. In many cases, their families had been slaughtered while sleeping peacefully in their beds. Others had been ferreted out in the middle of the night, snatched off the street, etcetera. More girls had been kidnapped than those in the container. The ones that didn’t meet the requirements, virgins, had been taken elsewhere. There appeared to be some sort of organized conspiracy and given some of the descriptions of entities the girls had encountered, it involved multiple types of undead.

  How very good.

  Papa Shackleford had been, amazingly enough, our only serious casualty. The burns on his face were bad, and the hand was effectively gone, but he’d survived and would live to fight another day.

  The MCB showed up right on time, complaining vociferously about how we’d caused a major incident without any warning and what bad people we were. Screw the fact that we’d stopped a wight production factory. Forget the fact that we’d rescued fifteen young women. We’d caused them extra paperwork and they were going to have to intimidate more witnesses.

  One reason I’m never going to be a team lead: I’d have to deal with the MCB at every incident.

  * * ** * *

  About two weeks after the incident I was pumping weights in the gym when I got a page. The number was unfamiliar, a DC area code, but I called it anyway.

  “Chad Gardenier. You called?”

  “Mr. Gardenier, this is Assistant Deputy Director Wilson. How are you?”

  “Just fine, sir,” I said. What did those MCB assholes want now? And an A
DD? Just how much trouble was I in?

  “I was just calling to thank you for your assistance,” the ADD said. “We’d been tracking a series of mysterious serial killings and kidnappings across the US for the last two years. The…incident you were involved in, that I’m given to understand by your boss you broke, is the first real lead we’ve had. So my sincere thanks.”

  “Anything I can do to serve my country, sir. Any clue where the bottom is at?”

  “We’re still questioning the witnesses. Over the screaming objections of MCB I might add. But it’s given us some leads.”

  “I take it if it leads back to something you know that you have to call MCB. Your regular agents do not want to take on the…individuals involved in this ring.”

  “We got that message loud and clear,” Wilson said. “And I don’t want to be involved in anything that MCB is involved in. But kidnapping and serial murder fall under Violent Crime. So until the MCB actually learns to do, you know, investigations, it’s on us.”

  I had to kind of chuckle at that. Apparently the rest of the “regular” FBI liked MCB about as much as we did.

  “Well, if you do track it down and would consider outsourcing I know a company that handles that particular issue,” I said, grinning.

  “I doubt that would work out, but it’s a thought. However it works out, thanks again. And if you turn up any more leads, please call.”

  “Any time.”

  Will wonders never cease. I’ve got a contact who’s a yakuza boss, another who’s a SSA and just got an attaboy from the freaking FBI.

  Something bad was going to happen. Something real bad.

  Right afterwards I got a page from the office. Microtel had called again. Something big, green and slimy was in QC.

  My world righted immediately.

  Three weeks later I walked into Saury and ordered my usual udon and salmon roll.

  When I paid the tab I put under “tip” $67,525. I’d checked that the company Gold Card would handle it.

  Oshi was going to be one very happy camper. He wasn’t the only one.

  * * *

  I forgot one detail.

  About a week after the Happy Face left I got a call from Earl.

  “Something’s been bugging me,” Earl said.

  I wondered what I’d done now.

  “Yes, sir?” I asked.

  “All you martial arts types have all these weird screams,” Earl said.

  “They’re called kiai.”

  “Yeah. Whatever. Only one I really remember is ‘Ichiki Banzai’ and that one tends to stick in your head.”

  That made me seriously wonder how old Earl was. He looked about forty.

  “You screamed one when you were taking the lich’s head off,” he said. “Wasn’t the normal sort of sound. Sounded more like a battle cry.”

  “Assei. It’s my nickname from back when I was first studying kendo. Silly background story. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Does it mean anything?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t make me reach through this phone,” Earl growled.

  “It means Iron Hand. There’s other cultural meanings in Japanese. Sort of ‘Swordsman’ or ‘In your face swordsman.’ I’ve always been very aggressive in kendo. Doesn’t work out sometimes against really good swordsmen. It was sort of an insult by my instructor. One who charges in without regard is one way to translate it. One who strikes before he thinks.”

  “Got it,” Earl said. “Iron Hand.”

  And he hung up.

  The next time he had anything to bring up about me, minor matter, he just referred to me as Iron Hand. Which was how my old insulting nickname from junior kendo got hung on me in MHI.

  I’ll take it. In your face works for me.

  CHAPTER 14

  There was a werewolf in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. Hereafter Okano. We knew that. It was up somewhere around Lake Wenatchee. Every other full moon, some group of hikers or a family in a cabin would get torn up.

  We went up there month after month trying to track it down. No luck.

  I had an idea but it wasn’t a good one. It would take me out of pocket for a long time even if it worked. But it was the only idea I had.

  You see, the Okano was also one of those areas that there were frequent Bigfoot sightings.

  Sasquatch studiously avoided humans but they weren’t invisible. People saw them from time to time and more often their sign. Lots of people studied them. Very few realized they were semi-intelligent with a definite language. The real problem was, nobody had a handle on the language.

  So I requested some time off from the Nelsons to go hunt bigfoot and see if I could get them to communicate with me.

  Making contact was going to be the hard part. All the yeti species were shy. But I had the records of Sir Edmund Hillary, the ones that were never publicly published, to guide me. Hillary had written the book on yeti. Some of that had to transfer over.

  Yeti were addicted to a certain ginger candy made in Tibet. There was a similar one made in China and even produced locally in Seattle. I filled up my pack with those as well as some other types of candy. I got a bunch of camping gear. I hadn’t been camping since being in Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children and civilian camping was different.

  Then in a wet and miserable spring rain I parked Honeybear at a trail head, got out a massive pack filled with everything I should need for a couple of weeks in the mountains and started hiking up the trail into the Cascades. The Nelsons were going to come up and pick up Honeybear when they got done with another vampire hunt.

  I hiked for two days into those mountains, going up and up. I knew what sort of terrain and conditions I was looking for and found them near the head of the Little Wenatchee River. I kept in mind that there might be a werewolf in the area as well. I was armed with my old BDL, a .45 and both were loaded with silver.

  I set up camp uphill from the river and started patrolling the countryside. I was looking for certain sign and found it in a clearing on the slopes of Mount Howard. Early spring berries had been foraged and there was scat which to the casual observer would look like bear.

  I pulled out some candy and placed it on bark stripped from an aspen tree, one candy per piece of bark. Some of it was the Chinese version of the ginger candy Sir Edmund recommended. I also had other candies, ginseng and lemon and even chocolate.

  I left them there and went back to camp. I’d brought some books and I spent most of the time reading and doing the occasional patrol. But I stayed away from the candy.

  I went back two days later and the candy was gone. Bear could have got it but most of the sign pointed to sasquatch.

  I put some closer to my camp. Less, I only had so much with me.

  This time I heard them. They were quiet but in the early morning “blue time” what’s called Before Morning Nautical Twilight, I heard movement in the area I’d left the candy. I didn’t react, I didn’t want to startle them. But the sasquatch were here. Then they left.

  The third time I put the candy in the same place, bit more. But this time I set up a hooch, a poncho held up with twine, and slept there. I woke up when I heard them approach and climbed out from under the hooch acting in the most nonthreatening manner I could. They were cautious but they could smell that mouth-watering candy and they wanted it.

  I just sat there, cross-legged, and waited. Finally one of them, a younger one from the size, crept out from the trees. It looked at me with big, brown, eyes and sidled to the candy. I just watched it.

  Finally, it picked up one of the pieces of chocolate, unwrapped Hershey’s kisses, and popped it in its mouth. When I didn’t do anything it grabbed a few pieces and lumbered back into the trees.

  I could hear low hooting from the assembled tribe. They weren’t sure what to do.

  The tones were so low it was hard to pick out any words. So I tried some North Chinese Yeti.

  “Uh! Oomp! Oomp!” Friend, Good-Good.

  That caus
ed them all to pause.

  “Guh! Guh!” one of them called. It didn’t seem to be a threatening tone.

  “Guh! Guh!” I replied. I wasn’t sure what it meant but it was close in sound to Uh!, friend in North Chinese yeti. So I hoped it was the Sasquatch for “Friend.”

  Which I later learned it was. Also their standard greeting and invitation to get closer, equivalent to the nearly universal in Native American “How.” Yes, it was a real word and, yes, it was one of the few nearly universal words in North American Native languages. It meant more or less “Person who is not of your tribe who is not hostile wishes to speak with you.”

  Because the various yeti tribes in North America have gotten so spread out there is no real universal but Guh! Guh! is still somewhat recognized by Louisiana and South Florida Swamp Apes. The actual word in Louisiana Swamp Ape is Yut! In South Florida it is a very mellow Yoh! Which I think might have created the slang term in English, by the way. The first time I heard someone go “Yo!” I swore to God they were speaking Everglades Swamp Ape. The Laurentian Yeti uses a more chopped Kuhk!

  But if you’re ever in the Everglades trying to make contact with swamp apes just let out a long, mellow “Yoooooh!” and they’d know what you’re trying to say. They might not appear but they probably will leave you alone. Otherwise they tend to be the most hostile of the North American yeti species. Seriously territorial. Several reported “alligator attacks” in Florida were Swamp Ape. Despite that we generally leave them alone.

  Two more sasquatch, juvenile females, moved up to the candy and gathered it all up. They cast occasional looks my way. They were wary but accepted that I might not be hostile. I made sketches of them as they worked. Then they left.

  Initial friendly contact made.

  I won’t do a full Jane Goodall but that’s more or less what I did. I eventually found the clearing where they spent most of their time, at least at this time of year. There was a massive Alpha male who never really liked me much but allowed me around. I called him Earl after the boss. There were seven adult females, Joan, Wanda, Brenda, Susan, Janet, Claudine and Marissa. There were nine adult or close to adult males. I won’t bother with their names except for Herman who was the one who had first made contact. He was a young adult male, human equivalent of probably sixteen. There were an additional ten mixed male and female juveniles.