by John Ringo
Down the street, a shotgun went off. The men from the dinner party I’d literally crashed were out on the balcony with double barrel shotguns. Henri was standing behind the gentlemen, calmly holding a large satchel full of shells. I guess the visitors had decided to get in on this New Orleans thing.
“Hand, Shelbye,” Shelbye radioed. “Uh…these things climb.”
I looked over at the cathedral. The walls and roof were crawling with mantis. And more were headed up the bell-tower. She was leaned out on one side, firing down. But there were more coming up behind her.
“Tell my folks to have a right nice fais doo-doo with these. Gonna be a hell of party. Sorry to miss it.”
About seven mantis made it over the back side of the bell tower. We could hear her shots. The gunfire stopped. Then the surviving mantis started climbing back out.
“Shelbye. Come in.” Nothing. There was no time to think about it. All I could do was go back to swinging.
I realized many of the SRT guys were already dead. The agent who had been calling the shots had been buried under a pile of falling claws. Franks was off in the intersection by himself, murdering piles of mantis. The big agent had drawn many of the monsters away, but it looked like the rest of the SRT was getting routed. Someone down there needed to step up and lead them.
“Alpha, reinforce MHI and SIU,” Myers said over the radio. “Charlie, hook left and block Royal that way. Bravo, right. Stop these things before they get to Bourbon. We hold the line here.”
The SRT listened and got their shit together.
“We got more crawfish coming up,” Caleb said, pointing at the next wave. “I should have stayed in California.”
“Stay up here. Stick and move. Don’t let them cross Royal.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
Most of the mantis were concentrating on Franks in that intersection. “I always like it when big guys plow the road for me,” I said, stepping lightly onto the coaming then jumping off.
I landed with one foot on the railing of the balcony, just slowing myself, then jumped off again. Both jumps were about a story and a half. No way Caleb was going to follow me down. And I didn’t want him to. Safer on the roof. Maybe he’d survive up there.
There was a clear spot where Franks had gone through. Well, clear of living mantis at least. And humans. Bodies of both were scattered everywhere.
Franks was bouncing around the intersection of Chartres and Saint Ann like a rabid squirrel, dodging mantis, firing in every direction. From time to time slinging his subgun, and wielding two Bren Tens at a time. Nobody could do that. Not and hit anything worth shit.
Franks could.
I sliced an incoming mantis out of the air and closed in from behind.
“Angel six!” I shouted. Not sure why I shouted that. Just made sense. I definitely wanted him to know that a friendly was coming up from behind. Franks didn’t seem like the kind of guy you wanted to surprise.
As I approached, a mantis managed to come in from behind as Franks was killing one to the front. It slammed its claw into his helmet. Lacking a cover, the helmet split in half, and fell to the ground.
That was bad news. I’d planned on my helmet protecting me.
Franks pulled the mantis off and tore it in half, but another landed on his shoulders as he was doing so. It lifted a claw.
I didn’t even think about it. I drew my 1911 and fired.
The round hit the mantis, but it continued through, and struck Franks right in the back of the skull. It was a killing wound.
But Franks just turned his head, his face covered in mantis blood and nodded. I took that to mean Thanks.
“Got six,” I said as I arrived. I holstered, hefted Mo No Ken and spun to cover the Agent’s back.
I don’t know how long we fought in that intersection. I’d just try to keep up with Franks as he moved back and forth. It was tough. The guy was clearly inhuman and inhumanly fast. But he was facing the mass of the remaining approaching mantis. I’m pretty quick, but I only had his back.
That was bad enough, but having finished off the inhabitants, the mantis were pouring back out of the nearby buildings. I could hear the continuous crackle of fire from up the street. Mantis kept leaping at us, but fortunately all the hits were cuts, nicks, and grazes. And we really didn’t have time to deal with grazes.
There wasn’t a moment to think. At one point in my early training, back in high school, Mister Brentwood would toss apples at me and I’d try to slice them out of the air with an old cheap katana.
It was like that. But more like a bunch of baseball guns firing thirty pound lobsters from random directions. When they landed, and several landed, they’d hit like, well, a thirty pound flying lobster.
I stumbled as one hit me square in right side of my head, and before I could even react, slammed me in the helmet so hard I saw stars. It was like being shot in the helmet with a pistol round. I was stunned by the impact. I could sort of hear the helmet crack and knew I was going to die. I fell to a knee and one hand, trying to prop myself up.
As the helmet fell away, carrying with it my commo, I sensed the weight come off my shoulders and heard another cracking noise.
I looked up as Franks was just done wringing the thing.
“You gonna lie there?” Franks asked, tossing the mantis over his shoulder.
I lunged up at him with Mo No Ken, drove the point within inches of his ear and speared the inbound mantis square in the brain.
“No,” I said, flicking the thing off my sword.
The nice thing about a blade is you never run out of ammo.
But damn were my arms getting tired.
That was part way through our knock-down, drag-out, party in the street. I couldn’t even tell you how long we fought.
* * *
Most of the monsters were dead. The street was littered with brightly dressed revelers, dead, their skulls split open, and fluorescent bodies of the mantis shrimp. I knew if someone could paint it properly it would sell for a pretty penny at the Salvadore Dali museum.
“We got more in the buildings,” I told Franks, shaking my head and looking around. “And I’m about flat out of rounds.”
A helicopter approached. I assumed it was Castro surveying the carnage.
Mais non. The helo dropped in close. I looked up to see my gentleman, Remi, hanging from the door. He lowered my spare assault ruck full of ammo from a rope.
Tom waved from the pilot seat. Borrowing that helicopter was getting to be a habit.
Once the gear hit the street and was grounded out, I unhooked the carabineer and thumbed for them to lift up again.
I made a mental note to invite the Lamberts to dinner.
“I need to link up with my people. What are you going to do?”
Franks didn’t answer. He just started walking up Saint Ann Street.
I let him go. There were more mantis to track down. Our male bonding moment was over and somehow I knew it was anything but.
I don’t get Franks. I don’t know what he is. He’s not a human and not a werewolf, I know that. But the truth is, I like him. I don’t like what he does most of the time but that covers MCB as a whole. All I know is when the shit hits the fan I’d rather have Franks at my back than Earl. And that’s saying something. We honestly combat click better.
Even with Mardi Gras NOPD had managed to set up a perimeter and close the zone to personnel or traffic. From Saint Peters to Dumaine, from the river to Royal, there was hardly a soul left alive. Bodies were everywhere. Coroner was going to shit a brick.
And there were more mantis scattered around. I let those come to me, shooting them as they crawled into jumping range. I stayed away from enclosed areas, just wandering the deserted streets.
Choppers were circling. FBI, NOPD, Sheriff’s office. Nobody came to my assistance. Bare is back without brother. I was out of commo but I was sure that if there had been a rest of the team they’d have found me. I wasn’t exactly hiding and w
as occasionally using my 1911 so they’d hear the shots. The only shots I was hearing were from up by Royal.
Occasionally I heard the distinct chatter of an MP5. It was coming from over by the front of St. Louis Cathedral. I knew who it was but there was no point in trying to link up with Franks. He did his thing. I did mine.
The MCB being the MCB was already spinning some story, and New Orleans, being New Orleans, had returned to celebrating. I could tell when it was midnight, the official end of Fat Tuesday. The sounds in the distance slowly died and the party was over.
The party was never over. Not in my book. This party, this job, this mission, wouldn’t be over until God let me go home.
I’m a monster hunter.
EPILOGUE
In the End
It was dawn of Ash Wednesday. The streets were covered with litter from the celebrations as tens of thousands of tourists and twice that many locals slept off their hangovers.
I watched the light grow as I sat on the steps of Saint Louis Cathedral. National Guard was picking up bodies, human and mantis. Doc Henry, New Orleans Parish Coroner, was out there managing things. The survivors of the SRT were out spreading joy amongst anyone who had had contact with the incident. A rookie MCB agent had stepped up and taken charge. New Orleans would be the first of Myers’ many commendations, but right then he was too busy telling the news that all that gunfire they had heard was from a battle between DEA and Colombian drug dealers. I was sure Washington would find some way to cover up all dead and missing.
It was only SRT talking to the witnesses because MCB New Orleans was gone. Even Bill Castro had landed and fought the mantis. He had died herding a bunch of tourists to safety. While Franks and I had battled in the intersection, other mantis had spread out, up Pirate Alley, down Chartres. MCB New Orleans had fought and died, defending the people they normally intimidated. I’m sure that Higgins and Buchanan preferred it that way. They had been wiped out.
So had SIU.
And so had MHI.
I found Trevor’s body. There wasn’t enough left to cut off his head.
Fred Ramsey and Brent Waters had managed to make it to the intersection of Royal and Saint Ann just in time to take the brunt of the mantis assault. SIU on scene, Tremaine, Carter, and four SIU officers, were already down. Fred and Brent held out until SRT got there and died with their boots on. Salvage had bought it stopping a probe up Pere Antoine Alley.
Caleb’s position on the roof had finally been compromised.
Shelbye was gone. I’d gotten Tim to get her out of the bell tower. I had a little discussion with a National Guard lieutenant and all her stuff had been gathered up as well for delivery to her family.
They had stood their ground.
Six little Indians. Five little Indians…Then there was one.
I’d had a chat with Doc Henry when he showed up. He promised to both get our people to our funeral home, today, and save some of the fresher mantis for the fais doo-doo. I promised him Shelbye’s family would like him to attend.
I wasn’t sure what to do.
Duty is heavier than mountains.
I got up and went back to Honeybear. There was still work to do. I needed to report in to headquarters on the incident and tell them we needed some new monster chow ASAP. Just because MHI was toast didn’t mean monsters were going to sit the next few days out. I’d have to contact the families. At some point, Doc Henry would have a count on the mantis. The PUFF paperwork on this was going to be complicated. We’d had support from MCB and SIU. I’d have to check with Susan how you shared that out. I wasn’t sure if we’d set up the computer system for that.
Funeral arrangements.
There were going to be five members of MHI cremated today.
It was dawn of Ash Wednesday.
