“Do either of you see the light switch?” Donny asked. I found the switch and flicked it on. Shedding light on the small sewage plant didn’t improve it. If anything, seeing the buildup that crusted some of the surfaces within the lower tier of the structure made it worse.
“Is that grease?”
“Let’s hope that’s what it is,” Dad said, moving across the walkway to the far side of the building. A splashing sound that wasn’t coming from his footfalls echoed through the room. I looked down into the pool with the debris separator. A snapping sound like stiff plastic in a strong wind drew my eye to the lee of the clanking machine.
Standing knee deep in effluent was a creature whose presence tugged at my gorge. While its overall form was roughly humanoid, having two legs and two arms, the resemblance deviated there. Its body was composed of chitinous plates whose iridescent surface varied from blue to green depending upon the angle you viewed it at. The horizontal bands overlapped in a clinker pattern. Weeping ichor and pus oozed in narrow dribbles from under each plate. Its hands were two widely separated claws with an opposing thumb. Four stiff, diaphanous, insectile wings stood out from its back, flicking from one place to the next in sharp, darting motions.
Its head tilted in similarly rapid jerks. Its eyes were neither purely human nor insectoid. Instead, they were a sickening hybrid of the two. Unevenly sized membrane sacs were packed on bulbous outgrowths on either side of its head. Each sac held a separate human-like eye, free to rotate independently of its peers. No two were alike in size, color, or degree of cloudiness. Some were bloodshot, others milky and blind. Where it should have had a mouth was instead an organic parody of a respirator mask. The ‘filter’ was rotted out, and a mass of tendrils and maggots clung to it. Half of its eyes stared up at us while the others stared off in a dozen different directions at once.
“Well, we found it,” Donny said. “Now what?”
Bluebottle surged out of the effluent pond, the suction of its sudden motion pulling a tide of sewage along behind it. Its legs ended in feet physically identical to its hands. In the blink of an eye, my view was cut off by a wall of metal bands Dad threw up between us and the creature. With a clang, eight claws punched through the metal and began bending the bands out of its way. A mass of eyes peered through the first gap to open up. Dad detached from the wall of metal, and we scrambled back towards the door. Bluebottle flung the shredded remains of his barrier aside and flew at us again. I snagged it in a force bubble in mid-flight. It slammed into the inside of the sphere of red static and its nimbus of shadow.
It looked around, a confused look on its dozens of eyes. I dared a brief smile, before the universe rebuked me. The creature’s claws tore through the bubble with a ripping sound not unlike that caused when it met magical weapons. The snapping of its wings sounded maliciously happy as it surged forward again. Dad got the door closed behind me as we rushed outside. Of course, the claw marks in that edifice spoke of how little good it would do as a barrier.
“Ideas?” Dad asked as the door shook from a heavy impact.
“I’m not sure how we’re going to be able to take this thing alive,” I said. My statement was reinforced by a pair of claws punching through the door and hooking against the outer surface. The tormented metal groaned as it buckled inward.
“Is it even sentient?” Donny asked. “I seem to recall mindless threats being an exception to the no killing clause.”
Our discussion was cut off as Bluebottle ripped the door from its moorings in a spray of brick dust. Dad extruded a blade and lopped off its lower leg. Immediately, he dropped the blade from his arm to avoid drawing in the putrescent ichor that bubbled from the wound. With the angry screech of stiff wings, it remained balanced on one leg. It threw the door at us, but my force bubble was much better at deflecting that than it had been at containing the creature. The severed limb rapidly rotted away into a noisome vapor as a replacement limb erupted from the stump, a pale pus-white in color and not yet as stiff.
“Oh, this just keeps getting better,” Dad said as we backed up again.
A splintering crack drew my attention to the trees by the side of the road. Donny had taken up a wide stance and balled his hands into fists. It was a posture he subconsciously adopted when he was doing something difficult with his powers. A second crack told me what it was. I dove aside as he tore the heartwood from the trunks and larger branches. The still-living parts of the trees not dragged long for the ride collapsed to the ground. Three trunks of green wood slammed into Bluebottle as it tried to take flight, pinning it to the pavement. As it began to claw at the restraint, smaller pieces wrapped about its limbs and pulled them down. The creature’s wings screeched and flickered as it pushed against the mass and pressure holding it against the asphalt.
“What the hell is that thing?” A new voice asked. I glanced over my shoulder. The voice belonged to the waitress who’d served us dinner last night. She stood at the forefront of a small crowd. Dad deliberately pitched his voice down a few octaves before addressing them.
“This is a dangerous creature,” he said. “Remain at a distance from it.” As if to emphasize his point, the wooden band pinning one of its arms shattered, and it began rending the wood of the trunks holding its torso. Donny peeled off a strip from the damaged trunk to wrap around the free arm and pull it back again. “Back away, now!” Dad growled at the crowd. After exchanging cautious glances, they slowly backed up.
I keyed my earpiece. “Tekton, we’ve pinned Bluebottle by the water works. But we’re going to need a more permanent containment option. You’re the closest thing we have to an expert on the scene.”
“That probably sounded better in your head,” Tekton said. “We could try to get it back into the spirit jar. But that requires getting the jar and me to the creature.”
“Well-” Before I could complete my thought, a different crack rang out. It didn’t sound at all like wood. It was too wet, too hollow. Before I realized it was splitting chitin, Bluebottle’s torso caved in, spewing putrescent pus-white ichor. Donny was the first to cry out in horror as the central trunk speared through Bluebottle and hit the pavement like a grotesque parody of the pins used to hold bugs in specimen collections. The creature went slack, its wings finally stilled. A gasp rolled through the crowd like a wave. I stepped closer to the body, still somewhat in shock.
It started to collapse in on itself, noisome vapor roiling off of it as though it were boiling away. Immediately, all of the maggots it had been shedding shriveled into dark brown nodules. At first, my thought was they were dying off. Then, the first one split, and I realized that they were instead rapidly pupating. A five-millimeter tall copy of Bluebottle ripped free of its pupal husk, followed by another, then a dozen. The first landed on the collapsing remains of the old Bluebottle and soaked in the roiling cloud. As it did so, it grew exponentially, soon standing a head taller than I did. Its wings snapped angrily and it cocked its head at the assembled crowd.
“That’s just great,” Dad said flatly. “Instant reincarnation.”
Bluebottle surged towards the crowd.
“Run!” Donny cried, swatting the creature with his tree trunks. It slammed into the brick wall of the water works. Having not hardened fully, it burst like a massive pustule. Another of the swarm was already growing to replace it. Fear replaced curiosity and the crowd ran.
“Push it back inside,” Dad called. He tossed something to me and I caught it by reflex. It was a set of car keys. “Get Tekton and the jars. We’ll try to keep this thing contained.”
“On it,” I said, running for the SUV. With the simple layout of the streets in Pigeonpot, I reached the Depot easily and pulled up alongside the Paragon Logistics truck. I pulled the passenger door of the SUV wide open before running to the cab. Tekton had finished off the bottle of water and was looking more awake than he used to. “Can you really get th
at thing back in the jar?” I asked.
“I can’t afford not to,” Tekton said. I reached an arm into the cab. He took it, and I hauled him out. He leaned on me, the stump of his severed leg hanging uselessly as he hopped along. “Some times this job sucks.” I helped him into the SUV and ran to move the jars into the back.
“I have Tekton and the jars,” I said over the radio.
“Situation is still volatile,” Dad said. The strain in his voice put me even more on edge than I had been. I closed the back end and climbed into the driver’s seat again. I didn’t bother to belt in before driving off, and an annoyed pinging announced the car’s unhappiness with the fact. It also felt wrong, but I tried to shake that off with excuses about the urgency of the situation. As I pulled into the water works lot, an orange fireball chased Dad and Donny out the door. The ‘crump’ of the explosion shook the SUV and knocked them flat on their faces.
“What was that?” I asked, half-climbing out of the car.
“A green energy initiative,” Dad quipped.
“Did that kill it?” Donny asked.
In a snap of oversized insect wings, Bluebottle rose to a standing posture on the roof, growing back to full size again. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“Son of a bitch,” Donny said. Dad slapped the back of his head.
“Language.”
“That’s one ugly sucker,” Tekton said.
With the screech of stiff wings snapping against the air, Bluebottle took flight, a swarm of smaller versions darting about in its turbulent wake. I belted in as Dad and Donny scrambled into the back seat. “After it!” Dad snapped.
“It’s not following any road,” I said, shifting back into gear.
“Any car is an off-road vehicle if you try hard enough,” Dad said. It wasn’t his usual style of fortune cookie wisdom, but was strangely apt. I pulled off the pavement and bounced through the grass, trying to close with a creature unobstructed by trees, bushes and hillocks. I flinched at the spray of shredded sod cast off from our tires.
Dad pulled out his phone and called Shiva again. “Where are those reinforcements at?”
“En route, ETA unknown.”
“We just blew up the water works in Pigeonpot, Alabama, and have had to leave the scene in pursuit of just one of these things. The other two are still very much at large. We need more people.”
“Local authorities will not be pleased,” Shiva said.
“Remind them of the active pursuit clause in the BHA Authorization Act.”
“Do you mean that literally?” Shiva asked as we bounced over a fold in the ground.
“Yes, call up the local authorities and give them enough information to keep them from trying to arrest us. Refer to what we’re chasing as creatures, not spirits.”
“Copy.”
The ground dropped away in front of me in a concrete hillside. I hit the brakes and reflexively snapped the wheel to the right to try to turn away from it. It was a bad combination, and we tipped ominously. I turned the wheels the other way as everyone leaned away from the direction the SUV was tipping. With the crunch of metal on concrete, our undercarriage clipped the lip of the drainage canal, and we skidded down the slope. I finally arrested our slide with the front tires in the lazy trickle of water. My heart strummed against my rib cage as I realized how close we’d come to rolling over.
“Switch places with me,” Dad said. We scurried around the outside of the SUV, piling back into the seat the other had occupied. I had barely gotten the door closed before Dad sent us hurtling up the other side of the canal. I swear we caught air as we crested the other side. Snapping my seat belt into place, I clutched the door handle with a white-knuckle grip.
“Where did you learn to drive?” Tekton asked, rhetorically.
“In the Redemptioners,” Dad said as he slewed us around a tree and floored the gas to try to close the distance with Bluebottle. “I’ve driven practically everything.”
“Even a tank?” Donny asked, looking a little green around the gills.
“Well, it was a BMP...” Dad said.
“You do realize that heroes are supposed to try to survive their missions?” Tekton asked.
Dad shot him a glance, but turned his attention back to the unpaved span before us.
“Guesses on where it’s headed?” Dad asked.
“Not my usual turf,” Tekton said. “I don’t know what’s in that direction.”
“Shiva, are you still on the line?”
“Yes,” Shiva said.
“What is north-northeast of Pigeonpot?”
“Close or far?”
“Start close,” Dad let out an ‘oof’ as we crossed a stiff dip in the ground.
“Immediately, there are a number of agricultural facilities, then Fort Garriot. Past that you’re nearing the suburbs of Montgomery.”
“What is at Fort Garriot?”
“It’s a mothballed facility used for deep storage by the Department of Defense. Unless you’re asking me to access classified records, I cannot tell you what is stored there.”
“Wait. Why are there no Fund members in Montgomery?”
“There is a sixty year old statute in Alabama requiring Licensed Heroes based in the state to operate under their real names along with a punitive tax on license holders,” Shiva said. “It was implemented in retaliation for the personal political activities of the Sixth Baron Mortis, and never repealed.”
“Are you telling me we’re in the only state in the union without a native Fund presence?”
“There are also no Fund members currently operating in Rhode Island,” Shiva said. “But I believe that to be an accident of geography.”
Part 4
Dad minced oaths when we lost sight of Bluebottle to avoid violating his own rule regarding language. We pulled onto a rural road and scanned the skies and any nearby plots of land for sign of the chitinous abomination. Not even its distinctive olfactory trail was anywhere to be found.
“What are the odds that Fort Garriot houses bio-weapons?” I asked.
“It could house anything,” Dad said. “But the Department of Defense tends to store things that can’t be more readily bought new.”
“So that’s not a no,” Tekton said.
“Lets get back on track. How certain are you that you can put this thing back in its jar once we find it again?”
“Maybe thirty percent,” Tekton said. “I’ve never tried any spells like this before.”
“That is not very reassuring.” Dad called Shiva again.
“I have made the phone calls to local authorities that you requested. They were skeptical of my identity,” Shiva said.
“What is the nearest Fund facility to us?”
“Rockstead Penitentiary, just across the Georgia line.”
“None of the staff there is powered.”
“I do have an update on reinforcements,” Shiva said. “Rookhound reports that he is half an hour out from landing at Garriot Field.”
From the subtle downward tilt of Dad’s head, I knew he was suppressing a significant urge to swear. “I take it that’s near Fort Garriot?”
“It used to be the Fort’s airstrip, but was sold off when the site was mothballed.”
The original Rookhound had been the first sidekick taken on by the Community Fund after its founding. Felix Walker had held onto the appellation for decades, though like most of the early heroes, didn’t make use of a secret identity. He had a street named after him in New Port Arthur. For whatever reason, he started a family rather late in life, and when Felix retired, his son, Joshua Walker, was just old enough to take on the name Rookhound. He did separate secret identity and code name, as things had started turning ugly around that time. Joshua Walker was still Rookhound, and was also my m
aternal grandfather. He and Dad had never been on warm terms, and I don’t recall having seen them in the same place since Mom died.
“Diverting to Garriot Field,” Dad said, reprogramming the GPS. From his expression, Tekton had noticed Dad’s change in tone, but kept quiet.
“Ending call,” Shiva said. Dad made sure his phone had hung up and we drove along in silence. Donny shot me an anxious look. On one hand, we hadn’t seen our grandfather in years. On the other, we both knew full well it was a potentially explosive situation. I wanted to reassure him that Tekton’s presence was a mitigating factor. Grandpa Walker was a professional, and wouldn’t air family business in front of strangers, especially in-costume. But I couldn’t even bring it up for the same reason - we weren’t alone.
The farms rolled past as we followed the machine directions, an uncomfortable tension building up inside the car. I could see Tekton debating broaching the subject, but ultimately deciding that decorum advised against it.
“This day is not going well,” Dad muttered as we drove past the gates of Fort Garriot and found the separate entrance for Garriot Field. Both the fort and the airfield shared the same architectural aesthetic - utilitarian concrete. A few of the buildings had brick facades, but those were in the minority.
“That is an understatement,” Tekton said. The chain link gates were not locked, and we were able to drive onto the tarmac without anyone interfering. Save for Tekton, we climbed out of the SUV and looked around. Tekton did open his door for ventilation.
“Did we beat him here?” Donny asked. To answer his question, a buzzing filled the air. While it sounded like an insect, it was nothing like the shriek Bluebottle’s wings made. It was a pair of aircraft propellers driving a gyrocopter in towards the airstrip. When I was little, I’d been of the impression that a gyrocopter worked like a helicopter. Grandpa Walker had quite loudly corrected me on that. While the helicopter’s rotor provided the motion for the aircraft, a gyrocopter’s motion turned its rotors. It felt counter-intuitive then, and still sort of struck me that way now. The Dart was large for a modern gyrocopter, with a body that looked more like the fuselage of a small airplane. Its propellers sat on outrigger engine pods that had some degree of tilt to help shorten the amount of runway it needed. If worst came to worst, the main rotor had tipjets to eliminate the need for a runway at all. Those just made a godawful racket and burned more fuel than normal operation.
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