Queen of Wands-eARC

by John Ringo

  “The upper passage is formed when an underground river finds a portion of softer rock,” Attie said, taking a pause under her position. “That’s the upper tube. Over time, it wears away at the lower rock, again finding channels through it, until it either dies, goes to easier rock to wear away, or whatever. Generally it forms something like this. They’re fairly common.”

  “First one I’ve seen,” Barb said. “Everybody good?”

  “Except for the drying mud caked in my hair, ears and nose?” Janea asked. “Peachy.”

  “Good,” Barb said, shining her light towards Lazarus. The cat had gone to full “Halloween cat” mode, back arched, tail straight up and bristled into a bush. “We’ve got company! IR mode!”

  The Sure-Fire built into the end of the boxy weapon had a flipped-down cover. Flipping it up, the light apparently disappeared. In fact, it was now filtered entirely for infrared. As the whole team followed suit, the light in the passage disappeared entirely.

  Dropping her FLIR down, Barb regained sight of the passage, the gun-light now acting as an infrared spotlight.

  “Laz!” Barb yelled. “Get out of there!”

  Her connection to the cat was something she barely understood. As far as she could comprehend it, they weren’t even two different individuals. The type of soul that was necessary for Barb to resurrect the cat was an indivisible part of a human being. To bring Lazarus back to life had required sharing the soul. They were now one being in two separate bodies.

  She wasn’t sure what would happen if Lazarus was ever killed. But she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be pleasant. The highest probability was that she would also die.

  Cats rarely obey orders but they do have a certain amount of common sense. As a tide of blackness roiled down the passageway, the cat turned and bolted for the rear, jumping lithely from side to side of the passage. However, as he passed Barb, he yowled a warning.

  “We’ve got company at the rear,” Barb said, flicking the light around to look over her shoulder. More of the Old Ones were clambering down the upper passageway behind her. “Could use some help here.”

  “On my way,” Randell said, starting to chimbley up the passage.

  “No time,” Barb said, opening fire on the group to the front.

  The .45-caliber frangible rounds poured into the mass of Old One spawn, blasting the two in the lead into a pile of ichor and goo. Unfortunately, that had forced her to clock out her magazine.

  She dropped the mag, not even bothering to catch it for a reload, and slid another in, fumbling the replacement slightly due to the unfamiliar weapon.

  The Old Ones had gotten into the domed area by then, spreading out to either side, with a couple coming across the roof. She took those out, and one of the ones on the walls then backed up so that they would have to come through the narrow portion to get her.

  She could hear Randell firing from behind her and just hoped he could keep the mass to the rear off her back.

  Master Sergeant Attie had moved to the opening below her and engaged the Old Ones above him in the domed area. His fire was solid and precise, the .45-caliber rounds shredding every Old One in sight. With the narrowness of the passage overhead, there was no way that they could get to the party from above. They had to either come at them on the floor or get past Barb to the wider portion behind her.

  “I’m good,” Randell said. “No more this way.” He was actually perched with his back braced to either side of the passage in a domed section, so he had a pretty good view.

  “And we’re clear here,” Master Sergeant Attie said as the last Old One dropped in a splatter to the floor.

  “Shamblers,” Janea said, reloading her weapon. She’d been covering the floor below Randell. “They’re easy enough with the right weapons. I’m not looking forward to running into another skru-gnon.”

  “Anybody get a count?” Attie asked.

  “About seven your way,” Struletz said. “Three to the rear.”

  “How many of these things are there?” Randell asked angrily. He’d slid down the passage to the floor again and reloaded. He also reloaded his expended magazines.

  “At a guess, it depends how long the Gar has been manifested and how much it’s had to eat,” Janea said, shrugging and starting to reload her magazines from the stores they’d brought with them. “The Gar spins these things off of its essence. If it’s been manifested for a short time and the food is limited, a few dozen. If it’s been a long time and pretty much unlimited food? Thousands?”

  “We don’t have enough ammo for thousands,” Struletz pointed out.

  “Catch,” Attie said, tossing Barb’s refilled magazine to her. “That hit me in the helmet, by the way.”

  “Sorry,” Barb said, shrugging. “I wasn’t exactly going to try to reholster it under the circumstances.”

  “Nope, we’re good,” Attie said. “Move out?”

  “Let’s take an alert break,” Barb said, thoughtfully. “That little firefight is bound to have attracted some attention. If somebody takes the other side of this dome, we’re in a good, defensible position. Let’s see what thing wicked this way comes.”

  “Any progress on finding where the Gar might be?” Janea asked, taking out a bottle of water.

  “Graham’s got a team coming up with lists of buyers in the area,” Randell said. “We figure it has to be cattle or pigs or something, from the description of how much this thing eats. There are several animal auctions in the area and they’ve gotten lists of all the purchases from them. So far, nothing’s standing out.”

  “Who buys the animals?” Struletz asked.

  “You want the short class on animal husbandry?” Randell asked with a chuckle. “My dad had a small farm. Cattle, it works like this. Farmer has a bunch of cows. The cows have babies, male and female. The females he keeps. The males he sells at auction. Other farmers, that don’t want to bother with breeding, buy the males and deball them. Those sit out on grass and feed up for a few years as steers. Feed-lots buy the steers and feed them up. Slaughterhouses buy the steers. From time to time the breeding farmer takes his bull to auction, sells it and gets a different one. Then he puts it to the cows, some of which are the daughters of the former bull. Which is why you’ve got to change bulls from time to time. So there’s some minor sales of cows when a farmer has too many or needs to raise cash, a few bulls change hands, but mostly it’s steers that get moved around. It’s all carefully tracked because of mad-cow and other stuff. So there’s plenty of records.”

  “So what are you looking for?” Janea asked.

  “Anomalies,” Randell said. “Farmers who are buying a lot of mature steers, mostly. Or a lot of cows. If you’re talking at least a head a day, that’s thirty head a month. Farmers don’t buy thirty head in a month. They don’t buy thirty calves a month, generally. Not in this area.”

  “Be back,” Barb said, sliding off her perch and moving forward.

  “Problems?” Attie asked.

  “Just an idea,” Barb said.

  She clambered down the passage to the next domed area, keeping a careful eye out in case any Old Ones had lingered, then paused at the next narrow section of the upper passage.

  Juggling her pack out was a bit awkward, but she removed a spool of wire from it and then put it back on her back.

  She used the wire first to attach one of her fragmentation grenades to the wall, then ran a section of wire across the passageway. Last, she straightened the cotter pin on the grenade, and then carefully tied the wire into the pin.

  “Set a little present for our friends in case they come back,” Barb said as she settled back into her perch. “Grenade IED. Give us some warning that doesn’t involve Laz spitting and hissing.” She stroked the cat gratefully. “Thanks, Laz.”

  “That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to be thinking of,” Attie said. “Want me to set one to the rear?”

  “Trail seemed to go this way,” Barb said. “The only thing to the rear is however Laz got in, an
d he got through presumably without running into any of them. Most of them should be to our front. Up to you, but it would just be a booby trap I’d have to get past. Not to mention Laz, who I don’t think understands tripwires.”

  “Point,” Attie said. “We don’t have any movement yet.”

  “Think I’m taking counsel of my fears?” Barb asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Attie said. “Just pointing out that we’re in here to see if we can find the lair of this Gar thing. Which we’re not doing.”

  “I’d like to see what responds to the fire,” Barb said. “Give it thirty minutes.”

  She dropped her pack again and pulled out a ration bar.

  “Besides, I’m hungry.”

  * * *

  She was on her third ration bar, and the thirty minutes were nearly up, when there was the crack and szting of a grenade going off down the passageway.

  “Heads up!” she shouted, dropping her FLIR and going to IR.

  She braced against the side, pointed at the narrow opening to the domed area, and waited. And waited.

  “Just a scout?” Attie said.

  “No,” Barb said a moment later. “Not just a scout!”

  This time the things attacked from every level. They were pouring down the upper passage in a mass but more were clambering along the sides and the ground. There seemed to be hundreds.

  “I’ve got ground,” Struletz said, taking a knee next to the standing master sergeant.

  “Middle,” Attie said, triggering a burst into the mass coming down the passage.

  “Top,” Barb said, firing into the mass. Targeting any one of the Old Ones was nearly impossible. The tentacled monstrosities were writhing into and across each other, and the small bodies were nearly impossible to make out between the FLIR and the way that they chaotically moved. Chopping them apart with .45 was the only way to go.

  “Take left,” Randell said, appearing to her side. “I’ll fire across to right.”

  “Got it,” Barb said, retargeting to the left of the domed area. The Old Ones were soaking up the fire to get to the party, pouring through the opening on the far side of the dome.

  She had nine magazines in ready pouches. She’d laid three of those out on the rocks, ready to hand. She ran through those in less than a minute, then scrabbled for more in her pouches.

  The only thing that kept them alive was that the Old Ones were choked by the opening to the dome, the narrowness of the passage and the two shooters on the top. None of them even got across the domed area. But the entire area was covered in ichor and deliquescing Old Ones by the time she slid in her last magazine.

  “We don’t have the ammo for this,” Attie said. “I’ve only got two hundred more rounds of forty-five.” With thirty rounds per magazine, that was only eight and a half mags. One more heavy firefight.

  “We’ve reduced their numbers, at least,” Barb said, her face tight. “But you’re right. We don’t have any clue how many more of these things there are. We need to pull out and regroup. If we’re going to do it this way, we need more people and more ammo.”

  “That means we have to go back in that damned mud,” Janea said. She’d been unhappily covering the back door alone during the fight.

  “Would you rather be eaten?” Barb asked.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “This whole caving thing is throwing off my sense of time,” Barb said as she dragged her aching body out of the cave opening above the Boone house. It was nearly three in the morning and raining.

  “Ah, clean water,” Janea said as she stood up gratefully. With the exception of the serpentine keyhole passage, the entire trip had been either crawling or on hands and knees. “I need a shower, a real meal and about two days’ sleep.”

  “We’ve got all three available,” a voice above her said.

  “Holy Freya!” Janea snapped, raising her weapon and triggering the light.

  “Ouch,” the ghillie-covered man said, raising an arm to shield his eyes. “That smarts. Mind taking that light out of my eyes?”

  “Who are you?” Barb asked, pointing her own light to the side.

  “Just a passing stranger who wondered what might come out of the cave,” the man said. “We’ve basically taken over the neighborhood. You can get a shower, and a meal, down the hill. Oh, welcome back, by the way. Although I just lost some money.”

  * * *

  “Delta Force,” Graham said to the first question asked when the team found him. “They’ve sent in a full squadron and are covering this opening as well as a couple of others. There’s a battalion from the 82nd that’s setting up in Goin, a SEAL team on the way from the Little Creek, and the National Guard is in the process of fully clearing the area. We’ve taken residence of most of the houses in the neighborhood. There’s even another SC team here. You can head over to their house for showers and some rest. What happened? Did you find the Gar?”

  “I don’t think we even got close,” Randell said. “But we were running low on ammo.”

  “That bad?” Graham said.

  “That bad,” Barb said, shrugging. “The cave was filled with them. I’m not sure how many we killed. A bunch. And I’m pretty sure there were more. We heard some scrabbling behind us on the way out.”

  “Look, we’ll do something like a full report in the morning,” Janea said. “I’m whipped. And not in a good way. Sergeant Struletz? Do me a favor and after you get cleaned up, come over to the SC house. I need to worship. Oh, wait, you’d find that a sin, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Struletz said, unhappily. “And I don’t think that ‘I figured I could just confess’ would sit well with my priest.”

  “Master Sergeant?” she said. “Married, right. Okay, Randell?”

  “So I’m third choice?” the FBI agent said.

  “I could go find a Delta if you’d prefer,” she said.

  “Nope,” Randell said, raising a hand. “Be there with bells on. I’m not planning on converting, though.”

  * * *

  “Sharice,” Barb said happily, as Barb and Janea wandered into the kitchen of the house. “I’d hug you, but you don’t want to get this muck on you.”

  The homes in the neighborhood still held most of the furniture and possessions of the owners. They had been seized under eminent domain, but the rules were “use carefully.” After the emergency was over, the owners would be back and the government would pay for any damages. Assuming the entire region wasn’t swarmed by Old Ones.

  The old witch, who these days rarely left the compound of the Foundation, was one of Barb’s favorite people. Elderly, wise and accepting, she was also one of the most powerful Wiccans in the world. If anyone besides Barb could handle a skru-gnon, it would be Sharice.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Sharice said, smiling brightly. “And there is the cat,” she added, looking at Lazarus. He’d stopped to clean himself, as he’d been doing repeatedly since getting out of the cave. “I have some premium cat food around here for you. Vivian!”

  “Yes, mistress,” a plump young brunette said, coming into the kitchen. “Welcome back, questers! Merry moon and a fair day.” She bobbed a curtsey and smiled. Like Sharice, she was wearing a paisley dress, and was about covered in silver jewelry.

  “Merry moon,” Barb said, nodding to her. “We met in Chattanooga but I never got your name.”

  “Vivian Le Strange, Janea and the redoubtable Mrs. Everette,” Sharice said. “Vivian is one of my protégés. Dear, if you could find a can of something for this poor stray that has wandered into the house? And then get started on something for our weary questers. They are not vegan. Steak and eggs?”

  “Sounds great,” Barb said. “And thank you. Showers?”

  “Upstairs,” Sharice said, standing up and waving to the door. “I’ll wait for you to eat before plying you with questions.”

  * * *

  “This is not good news,” Sharice said, sipping her tea. “The Gar could not have produced so many Hunters if it w
as not well fed. And it must have been in existence for some time.”

  “We’d gotten that far,” Barb said. “The FBI is trying to figure out where all the food is going.”

  “What you may not have considered is that the Gar is reported as continuously growing,” Sharice pointed out. “If it has been in existence on this plane for that long, if it has been so well fed as to produce hundreds, at least, of Hunters…it must be very large. The facility to hide such a thing would be, in turn, large.”

  “It could be in a cave,” Janea said, doubtfully. “But most of the ones around here are pretty small.”

  “That’s a piece of data,” Barb said. “One the FBI needs. Damn, I was looking forward to sleep.…”

  * * *

  “That is interesting information,” Graham said, yawning. “This area doesn’t have a lot of large structures. How large are we talking about?”

  “A building that has at least twenty thousand square feet of open area,” Barb said, shrugging. “It could be a very large barn. An old factory. A warehouse.”

  “Figure it’s going to be a barn,” Janea said. “Running a bunch of cattle or pigs into a factory is going to raise questions. If you run a bunch of cattle into a barn, nobody’s really going to notice that they’re not coming out.”

  “The problem being, none of the farms around here have been buying a lot of cattle,” Graham said. “Fewer than normal. There’s been a long-term drought in the area and there’s a bit of a glut. The price is actually down.”

  “Who is buying?” Barb asked.

  “Mostly feed-lots and slaughterhouses,” Graham said. “And that’s often more or less one operation. Most of those are over in the Midwest. There are a couple in the area. But a slaughterhouse is a big operation. Lots of workers. It’s not a one-man thing.”

  “Special Agent, I got into this whole field when I stumbled upon an entire town that had been converted to the worship of Almadu,” Barbara said.