by John Ringo
It took me about two days of talking to different departments looking for someone who was read in on PUFF. I finally found it in one of their departments that wouldn’t disclose who their customers were except “Entities of the Federal Government.”
“I need a salesman on the commercial side read-in on PUFF and we’ll probably need custom development,” I said. “We need individual turn-key systems at multiple offices, probably polling, probably Microtel compatible systems with other office software compatibility, training, support and ongoing PUFF update. We’re a mid-cap, private firm.”
I’d asked, along the way, the right terminology for what we were and what we wanted without getting into exactly what we do. When people asked I’d use either “classified contractual work for the Federal government” or “proprietary” or just “classified.”
“Can you tell me the general area of your business?” the guy asked.
“Can you tell me the meaning of the third word in PUFF?” I asked.
“Forces,” the guy said. “First word?”
“Perpetual. We’re a hunter company.”
“Which one?” he asked. “Honestly, you’re going to need to be pretty big for IBM to want to look at custom dev.”
“MHI.”
“Oh. I’ve heard of you guys. I’m going to get such a nice bonus from this referral…”
I don’t know if he did or not but about a week later a salesman and a development specialist were dispatched from IBM home office to New Orleans and met with Ray and me. I fobbed the salesman off on Ray and I sat down with the developer. Both had experience with entities. The salesman had lost a family member. The other had been in development long enough to have had his own little issues.
“I used to work in Seattle,” I told him. “We had the Microtel account.”
“Their QC department?” he asked, eyes wide. “Good heavens!”
“More like hell.”
“Nobody ever comes out of there alive,” he said, grimly. “Nobody.”
IBM didn’t have the same issues as Microtel, nobody had the same issues as Microtel, but they did have issues. They had a hunter company under contract at the time. We ended up snaking the account based on the fact that we had nation-wide coverage and they had nation-wide issues. We picked up some of the employees from the NY based company that had handled their main research farm so it wasn’t all downside for them. Company president ended up as one of our team leads. Never mind. Hunter business is like any other. Mergers, acquisitions. It’s just that hostile take-over has a whole new meaning. The pen, trust me, is not mightier than the sword.
One aspect was the question what the maximum possible Y was in X of Y? One of how many maximum?
I asked Earl the question one evening.
* * *
“Earl,” I said. “We’re working on this new software package.”
“That damned thing,” Earl growled. I don’t think the guy knew how to just speak in a normal tone. It was like he barked and growled everything.
“Thing is, what’s the most number of things MHI has ever had to file of one type in one incident? How many of whatever? One of three hundred? Five hundred?”
We were eating dinner at my place. Earl had declined the invitation to stay. Most of the team were in a pretty decent motel. New Orleans had plenty of them and even if there were prior scheduled guests, even the Hilton in New Orleans was glad to have Hoodoo Squad on premises.
He thought about the question while masticating some shrimp etoufee. I’d asked Remi if I really had to get a cook. He’d tried to keep the offense off his face, then cooked dinner.
Anyway, he thought about it for what seemed a very long time then cleared his throat.
“One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six,” he said, then went back to eating.
“Wait. One thousand, what? Seriously?”
There were things that swarmed. Certain types of small, supernatural, deadly, insects mostly. I hated those but most of them were susceptible to Raid. I’d heard there was one, a swarm of cannibalistic locusts, that had taken a crop-duster. I’d heard of some major killer frog swarms, but, again, swarms. You listed those as “swarm.” As individual items?
“Those zombie squirrels?” Ray asked.
“Nope,” Earl said.
“Come on,” I said. “Story time.”
“Ah, hell,” he said, taking a sip of beer. He refused to drink it from a glass. It had to be from a can or bottle. Remi just put the can or bottle out in a little holder. I think they cordially liked each other but Ray refused to be “high falutin’” and Remi refused to allow him to be entirely red-neck. It was a game I loved to watch. But to the story.
“We were down in Ecuador. Been a bunch of weird things going on. Middle of another civil war so we had to be on our toes. Bunch of gringos running around and about six sides in the war killing each other, some of them using gringo mercs, which was what we looked like. That was before your…”
He’d gestured at Ray but paused and cleared his throat.
“It was a while back. Anyway, me and a team were down there checking out a bunch of undead that kept spotting up. Thing was, we couldn’t track down the necromancer that was causing it. Creative fella, turned out he’d been a professor. Anyway, we tracked him down to this little village down in the jungle side of Equador. And he spotted us and ran. We followed him up into the hills and he finally went to ground in a cave. Sun was falling and we were closing in.”
He paused and frowned.
“We knew we had him dead to rights. We knew he had some kid with him but we didn’t really know what we were facing. Sun set as we got up to the cave. We weren’t worried. He wasn’t a vamp, we knew that. He’d been walking around in the sunlight. Thought he might plan on turning the kid but we’d only be facing one undead and an old man. No problem. Then, right as the sun set, there was this just god-awful unholy flapping of wings. They landed on Joey first…”
“What?” I asked.
“He’d used that poor kid as a sacrifice to power some some necromantic spell that killed and reanimated all the fruitbats in that cave. And I ain’t talking mere zombies, but vampiric.”
“Holy shit,” Ray said. “I never heard that story.”
“Actual vampire bats?” I said. There was a species called a vampire bat that would cut wounds into victims, including humans, and lick the blood. But they weren’t actual vampires. I’d heard of zombie animals but never vampire animals. “Were they infective?”
“Yep,” Earl said. “Just like any vampire. One bite and you were infected. Sucked blood, big fangs. Powerful, nasty, everywhere. Killed and you rose from the dead. Blotted out the sky. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-six as it turned out. Wingspan like this,” he added, spreading his arms wide. “We had some armor, but they were all over us. Hitting every major artery. On our faces, arms, legs. I swear they picked Saul up in the air and nearly flew off with him.”
“How’d you survive that?” I asked. I’d once faced one hundred and fifty sassus giant spiders with a similar team but we were prepared and it was on a single vector. At the time I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like.
“Shotguns,” he said, shrugging. “Knives. Machetes. You ain’t the only guy who knows how to swing a blade, Hand. Everyone went to killing until our arms gave out. We were waist deep in bats by the end, but I was the only one who survived. Then I went into that cave and chopped that guy to pieces.
“But, yeah, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six. We’d never seen it and I filed as ‘previously unknown entity.’ Then an adjuster turned up. He actually had heard of something similar, even had a name for it. That was before all this code bullshit. I tried to convince him it was a swarm but we had to file one piece of paper for every single damn bat. Financially it was worth it. Made a killing. Most of it went to families. Vampiric, infective and flying? Even back then they were worth a thousand dollars apiece. And back then for a thousand bucks you could buy two
ca…Made a packet.”
I thought about the story later as I was getting ready for bed. I wasn’t a huge student of South American history. There were plenty of others who could beat me in that category in Jeopardy. But I didn’t recall Ecuador having a civil war in…It had been a while. Coup d’etat maybe? Sometimes those dragged on in the country.
It was puzzling at the time. I’m sure at least some of my gentle readers know the answer.
* * *
The salesman and developer stayed for three days. The salesman, realizing that Earl was one of the decision-makers, tried to schmooze Earl. Hit and bounced. It was funny as hell to see.
The developer was good. In the opinion of a power user, a good developer is one who looks at the existing process, might suggest some improvements, but develops a custom solution that fits the process rather than creating a solution that’s his idea of how it should work or taking a completely different process and trying to ram it down the customer’s throat.
Despite some qualms, see below, he hung in there, studying what we had to file and how we had to file it and eventually a team at IBM developed a really good system. They do good work and MHI has stayed with them ever since. Because, well, IBM.
Not that there were some…issues.
One issue that was funny as hell was their reactions to the team. See, we were meeting at the team shack. First of all, they were less than thrilled about being in the ghetto. We told the boys on the block to keep an eye on their rental. “Yes, Mister Hoodoo!” Mostly anything parked out front was okay, but some idiot might come by and break into it since it didn’t have a hoodoo sticker.
But then they were in the office the first day when one of the teams came in from an “incident,” covered in blood and ichor and smelling like a mortuary.
“Five shamblers, and one dumbass junior necro,” Shelbye said, tossing the receipts on the desk. “Bagged and tagged.”
She was still carrying her M14, her face was splattered with blood and she generally, from the point of view of a nice salesman and a computer geek, must have looked like the reincarnation of Morrigan.
“Right,” I said, looking at the receipt. “No incident number.”
“Shit,” she said, pulling out her notebook. “Shee-yit.” She scrawled the incident number on it and handed it back. “There.”
“Thanks,” I said, putting it in the box until we got the FINGr from the MCB.
“So…” the developer said, looking at the receipt. It had a bloody fingerprint on it. “That’s how it works?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “At this end. Later we get a Federal Incident Number: General, from the FBI as well as a Confirmation of Kill. We talked about those.”
“Okay,” he said, his face green. “And shamblers are…?”
“Zombies, human, slow,” I said. “FUCCN 51487-A. Pretty much our bread and butter.”
“So they were just…” the salesman said.
“Out shooting walking dead in the head,” I said, tapping my index finger into the side of my own. “Ever seen a Romero flick? You’ve got to blow their brains out, you know. And one human who raised them. Technically, you don’t have to shoot them in the head but we usually do ’cause better safe than sorry.”
The developer retched a couple of times.
“Bathroom’s that way. Or use the trash can.”
He ran out of the room. There was a sound of vomiting from in the bathroom.
“Hey!” Shelbye said, banging on the door. “How long you gonna be? I gotta wash this guy’s brains off’n my face!”
The salesman made it to the trashcan.
We are bad, bad people.
* * *
The developer and salesman were gone. I’m sure they heaved a sigh of relief. Trevor was out of his cast. I was starting to be able to do work-outs again.
We got the call from the hospital that there’d been a “Code Blue” and they’d been unable to revive Ben Carter.
We’d been taking turns going to the hospital but it wasn’t a twenty-four hour watch. Nobody was there when he passed.
Our usual funeral home picked up the body. Trevor did the honors of taking off his head. The funeral was going to be tomorrow. Milo, God help me, wanted to say some words.
I asked Shelbye who you called for one of those big New Orleans funerals. The one with a marching band and all. She knew people.
The next day there was a Second Line. The whole team plus most of Earl’s team turned out. We all went to the crematorium and this time waited for our friend to burn to ash. It takes a surprisingly long time. We waited.
When we walked out there was one of those big New Orleans marching bands and a carriage followed by a caparisoned steed, boots reversed. There was a flag bearer carrying the banner of Team Hoodoo, a shrunken human head, and another carrying an American flag. We placed Ben’s urn on the carriage, took our places behind it, Trevor took charge of the Team Hoodoo flag, I took the American, Shelbye and Alvin acted as flag guards and we started walking.
It is a long damned way to the riverfront at Jackson Square. Right through, if not the busiest part of town, than an extremely busy one.
The band played slow dirges as we walked. The main one was When the Saints Go Marching In. Most people don’t understand that hymn. What it refers to is the Final Battle when the Warrior Saints fight by the side of the Angels. When all the warriors who have gone to Heaven, or Valhalla or the Summerlands, rise up to return to earth to fight the hordes of Satan.
Ben would be there that day. I would. Jesse would be there. Those guys that Earl talked about in Ecuador. We’d all motherfucking be back that day. That last fine day of Perfect Battle.
Ben was going to march back in at the side of the angels When the Saints Go Marching In.
People stood by the side of the road and bowed their heads. They did that anyway for a funeral but this was a member of hoodoo squad. For those in the know, we were their simple, flawed line between the light and the darkness.
Cars honked as we blocked traffic. There’d been no planning, no official filing. Second Line. Suck it, bitches. Fuck you and your mini-van. I don’t care if your precious baby is late for soccer practice. Slowly State Trooper and Sheriff’s Office and NOPD cars turned up to block intersections and wave cars onto alternate routes. Officers got out of their cars and stood at attention as the urn passed. At one intersection Bob and Jody along with a couple of junior MCB agents joined the procession.
Finally we reached Riverfront. I’d asked everybody to write a letter to Ben. Mine, as with most I think, included apologies for not being there when he died. But he understood, I’m sure. Death is lighter than a feather…I told him it was fun hunting with him and he’d been a great guide. I told him I’d see him soon.
Everyone wrapped their letters in ribbons and we got balloons. Finally, together, we released them into the air. We watched until they were out of sight then struck up the band.
The wake at Maurice’s is still the stuff of legend.
CHAPTER 19
Back in Black
I was off physical tyranny, out of the office and back on the job. Thank God. I swore then and there I’d never be a team lead.
There are reasons to want to be a team lead. Some people really like being the boss. Nothing against them. Earl’s like that as are both adult Rays. Trevor was a natural born leader. There are jerks who are that way, but MHI’s “corporate culture” generally avoids them.
Team leads get paid more. They get a cut of the entire team’s action even if they’re sitting in an office or at a conference in Maui. That’s nice. Money for nothing, right?
They also have to inform the family of the departed, make arrangements thereof, and notably, handle most of the paperwork. I never even got into the paperwork for being end users for the sort of ammo, weapons and explosives we use. That’s another nightmare.
I have stated definitely I will never be a team lead. Have zero desire. Some people think I have leadership skills. Ok
ay, I’m fine with leading a field team. I’ll train newbies on an area or back at Cazador if I must. I’ll do that stuff. I don’t really have a problem with taking responsibility for the deaths of people I’m leading.
I don’t know anyone who likes informing the families, and I hate the freaking paperwork. I make enough money and I really don’t like the responsibilities.
Doctors, not knowing the horror they had unleashed, had cleared me for real work. I was once again free to kill shit and make money. Telling me I could go back to work was practically a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. “First do no harm.” I was about to do some serious harm. Just as soon as I got a fricking call!
“Please, God, I’m begging You, gimme a call!” I said, watching Sally Jesse Raphael. “Can you imagine if some of us went on this stupid show? ‘Well, Sally, my problem is I haven’t shot a zombie in the head in weeks! It’s driving me nuts!’”
“You need to cut down on the coffee, Chad,” Milo said.
“Don’t you even start,” I said, taking a sip of coffee. “Next thing you’ll tell me is to quit fortifying it!”
“Alcohol cuts down on fine motor skills,” Milo said. “Which is why I shoot better than you.”
“Oh, you did not,” Shelbye said, making a “oooh” face.
“Since when?” I shouted. “Are you disrespecting Marine marksmanship?”
“No,” Milo said. “Just yours.”
“Oh!” I shouted, pointing in his face. “Oh! It is on!”
“We got a call,” Trevor said.
“Thank you, God,” Shelbye said. “I was afraid they were going to get into a shooting match right here.”
“What we got?” I asked, popping to my feet.
“Some sort of giant frog problem over on Saint Charles,” Trevor said, handing Shelbye the slip.
“Hoooweee,” Shelbye said. “We goin’ uptown!”
