by Bob Mayer
“Why don’t they just bust it?” Roland wondered. “If it can throw that grill, it can bust glass.”
“Fireflies have never been known for their smarts,” Doc said, backing up and tapping Roland to join him. They moved away from the glass. The tentacles finally gave up and retreated back to the pool. Doc stopped filming.
Their earpieces came alive. “Sitrep?” Moms asked.
“We’ve got a Firefly,” Doc said.
“Acme is coming in the gate. We’ll meet you there.”
The radio went quiet. “Keep an eye out,” Doc said to Roland. “I will meet them in the garage.”
He retraced his steps, the eyes of the Lindsays peering at him from numerous frames in every room. He got to the garage as Moms pulled in with Eagle, Nada, Kirk, and Scout. They piled out of the SUV as a Support driver in a Senators Club patrol car pulled in the drive. A man got out and Moms waved him into the garage as Nada hit the close button for the door.
“Doctor Kelsey?” Doc always took points with Acme. “I’m Doctor Ghatar.” Doctor on doctor, it always worked better than Moms or Nada as Acmes tended to view the military as Neanderthals.
Kelsey was a surprisingly young man, one they’d never worked with before on a mission. He had black, thick-framed glasses and carried a briefcase tucked tight under one arm. They always carried briefcases.
“It was a surprise and a pleasure to be called,” Kelsey said. “Very exciting. They picked me up right off the campus at Duke in a helicopter.”
Behind Kelsey, Nada rolled his eyes and Scout giggled.
“Should that girl be here?” Kelsey asked, pointing at her. “I was told this could be dangerous.”
“We gotta kill a pool,” Nada said. “You let us worry about her. She’s the one who figured it out.”
Kelsey forgot about Scout just as quickly as he noticed her. “Yes, yes, the pool. I was given the rough parameters of the situation. A possessed pool. How exotic.”
“It killed a squirrel,” Doc said, “and it almost killed our weapons man. Threw a two-hundred-pound grill at him.”
“Sounds like an angry pool.” Kelsey laughed at his own joke.
No one else did.
“Come on,” Doc said, taking Kelsey by the arm before Nada pulled his machete out.
They trooped through the house to join Roland standing in the kitchen, staring out at the killer pool.
“Watch this,” Doc said, taking out his phone and putting it in front of Kelsey. He played the grill assault.
“Fascinating!” Kelsey said when it came to an end. “The force required to move the water molecules like that in a coherent form. But I wonder why it simply didn’t break the glass when it came after you?”
Roland shot Doc a triumphant grin.
“And you still don’t know what this Firefly thing is that has caused this?” Kelsey asked.
“Not a clue,” Doc said, which earned him a hard look from Kirk.
“I read the reports on your encounters in the form of Fireflies when I signed on,” Kelsey said. “I must say, they act rather irrationally on all levels.”
“We’re not here to analyze it,” Nada said. “We’re here to kill it.”
“Well, that is the key question, isn’t it?” Kelsey said, and they all, except Kirk and Scout, who’d never worked with an Acme before, knew what was coming: the theories every Acme spouted, proving Kelsey had actually taken some science courses and earned his doctorate. They always went to the theories when standing around a group of people armed with guns and intent on killing something, because it made them very insecure at a primeval level. Like they had to prove themselves to the Neanderthals.
“It depends,” Kelsey said. “Do we want spectacular or clever.” It wasn’t a question and no one replied. They knew they had to wait this through. “From a clever standpoint, I’d be tempted to add cornstarch or some other polymerizing agent. From the scientific standpoint, once the cornstarch polymerizes you have a non-Newtonian fluid. Which means that its viscosity increases with applied force. At the very least that would slow the pool down.
“You put enough in, in this case,” he looked out the window, “I would say at least a thousand pounds, it would make it so that you could actually probably run across the surface.”
“But until it solidifies,” Doc said, playing his role, which was bubble-burster on bad ideas, “you’re slowing it down, but you’re also making it more powerful in potential force and coherence. So we could end with the water taking a more solid form and literally climbing out of the pool and killing us.”
“Uh, well, yes.” Kelsey recovered quickly. “And, frankly, we don’t know how the chemicals that are in the pool will affect the process, so I’d say we move on from that idea. It was just a warm-up.”
“Right,” Roland muttered. He was fingering his machine gun, which Kelsey failed to note.
“Water is tricky. Evaporating it is a possibility, but that would require a ridiculous amount of energy.”
“We can get a ridiculous amount of energy,” Doc said, “if it would work, but I definitely would not want the Firefly to go into a single gaseous cloud, which it might be able to do if we evaporated the entire pool.”
“Is ridiculous a scientific term?” Eagle wondered, which earned him a high five from Scout.
“Electrolysis,” Kelsey said.
“Hey!” Roland stepped forward. “That’s what I wanted to do.”
“Not electrocution,” Doc corrected the big man. “He said electrolysis.”
Kelsey nodded. “Apply an electric field to the water and disassociate the H2O molecules into H2 and O, both of which are gases, but”—he quickly added with a glance at Doc—“not a cloud.” As Doc was about to speak, he jumped into the breach once more. “However, it would be dangerous because it would become explosive, very quickly.”
“Water explosive?” Roland said. “Mac would love that.”
“Who is Mac?” Kelsey asked.
“Forget that,” Moms said. “Continue.”
“The other problem is,” Kelsey said, “I don’t know how to electrolyze that much mass.” He nodded toward the pool.
“Whoa!” Eagle said, getting everyone’s attention. “Check it out.”
A column of water about six inches in diameter was rising out of the pool, straight up.
“Fascinating,” Kelsey said.
The water went up, passing above fifty feet.
Moms was on the radio. “Support, we’ve got a situation here. You might get some calls on a column of water.”
The column was now at a hundred feet. The level in the pool was now down appreciably.
“To keep coherence of that much weight in the face of gravity,” Kelsey said, “is truly remarkable. And powerful.”
The column reached over one hundred and fifty feet, then wavered.
A second later all the water came pouring straight down, splashing into the pool.
“Well, what the hell was that about?” Kirk asked.
“I don’t like it,” Nada said. “It’s planning something.”
“Planning indicates intelligence,” Kelsey said. “The Firefly reports have never been—”
“How do we fucking kill it?” Nada demanded.
“Oh. Uh. As far as electrolysis, it would take more than this house is wired for anyway. Too much thermal mass in the water. Going back to the cornstarch, we could add a zeolite.”
“A what?” Kirk asked.
“The stuff that comes in those little packets in things like baby diapers; my wife just had a little boy by the way. Those packets are stamped ‘Do not eat’ and it makes diapers ultra-absorbent. Hmm, you know, if you add a strong acid to water it becomes exothermic. You can boil a pot of water just by pouring acid into it. Again, though, it would take several tankers full of acid to tackle this.”
“I can get several tankers of acid here within an hour,” Moms said.
“Cloud,” Doc repeated. “With acid. Not good.”
&
nbsp; “Got it,” Moms replied.
Kelsey was off in his theoretical wonderland. “For spectacular, there are things that react negatively with water. Sodium, lithium, and cesium all react violently and produce an explosion.”
“That much water,” Doc said, “and that much metal, we’d take out the entire neighborhood. And it would disperse the water everywhere and the Firefly might stay in part of it.”
Kelsey sighed. “Supersaturated sodium acetate will instantly crystallize when added to water, but you’d need a lot.”
“That still doesn’t kill it,” Nada said.
“How do you usually kill a Firefly?” Scout asked.
Kelsey ignored her. “More simply, how about we drain the pool into a tanker? That would contain it.”
“Unless it decided to punch a hole in the side of the tanker,” Doc said.
“We flame it,” Roland said to Scout, ignoring Kelsey. “If it’s in an animal or plant, we flame it. I usually do the flaming.”
“What a surprise,” Scout said.
“And if it’s in a mechanical object,” Nada said, also ignoring Kelsey in favor of the girl, “we blast it, like the other night on the golf course, until it’s so structurally destroyed that even the Firefly can’t keep it coherent.”
“Be that as it may.” Kelsey was getting irritated that the adults were talking to the child and not focusing on his words of wisdom. “Perhaps we could use Occam’s razor. We don’t know if the Firefly inhabits all of an object or part of it.”
“Part,” Nada said. “I chopped a rabbit in half and the Firefly kept the front going, but not the back.”
“You killed a bunny?” Scout looked about to cry.
“It was a bad bunny,” Nada said defensively.
“Kidding,” Scout said with a playful punch into Nada’s body armor. “Ouch.”
“We divide the water into portions,” Kelsey said, “trying to isolate the part where the Firefly is.”
“I don’t know,” Moms said. “And while we’re doing that? One of those tentacles could eat one of my people.”
“Flame it,” Scout said.
Roland was eyeing the pool. “I don’t have enough napalm.”
Scout shook her head. “What he said earlier,” she jerked a thumb at Kelsey. “Baby diapers. They absorb water, right? A lot of water. But they can also be burned, right?”
Everyone stared at Scout.
“Get me Support,” Moms said to Kirk.
“You’re on,” Kirk replied after tapping his PNR.
“Support. We’re going to need a bunch of baby diapers. And tampons. Enough to absorb”—she looked at Doc—“how many gallons?”
Doc did some quick mental calculations and supplied the number.
“Roger,” Support responded. “Diapers and tampons.”
“I’m gonna need a lot more flamers,” Roland said, smiling at the thought.
Moms clicked off the radio and smiled bitterly. “I remember the code line in the Special Forces resupply report for tampons. They used that as my nickname in the Q-Course.”
“They were assholes,” Roland said.
“Yeah,” Scout threw in. “Assholes.”
CHAPTER 23
Back at the Winslows’, everyone was shedding their vests, armor, and outer clothes, which were saturated with a mixture of water and soot from flamed wet tampons and diapers. Roland had gone through fourteen flamers, another record in the secret history of the Nightstalkers. They’d dashed to the pool in relays, tossing in cases of diapers and tampons, while Roland flamed the surface.
The Firefly had fought back. Kelsey, cowering behind a lawn chair, had suffered a broken arm, and Support had taken him away afterward for medical treatment. Kirk, keeping his record intact, had suffered a dislocated shoulder when a tentacle grabbed his hand and tried to drag him into the flaming pool. He’d simply walked over to the wall of the house and slammed it back into the socket.
The Firefly had dissipated when they were down to three feet of water left and their copious supply of diapers, tampons, and napalm was running dangerously low.
“Maybe you need to go home, Scout?” Moms said as she noted the team in a state of half-undress.
“You know how to use the washers and dryers?” Scout asked. “They have one on every floor.”
“Why?” Nada asked.
“You think anyone around here carries laundry up the stairs?” Scout said.
“I doubt anyone who lives here carries their laundry anywhere,” Moms said.
From the room off the hallway from the garage they heard Roland cursing. “Anyone know how to turn this thing on?”
“See?” Scout said.
“Everyone get some pants on,” Moms ordered, “while the kid dries our cammies.”
The guys trooped upstairs while Moms and Scout gathered clothes off the floor.
“Thanks,” Moms said as she removed magazines from a sopping combat vest, along with a radio, grenades, and other assorted goodies.
Scout looked over at her in surprise. “For what?”
“That was a good idea. More importantly, it worked and no one got killed.”
Scout shrugged. “I just put what the guy was saying together.”
“I know,” Moms said, “but you did it quick. That’s important. That’s a talent.”
Scout flushed. “You should see me ride. Now that, I’m talented at.”
“I’d like to someday,” Moms said.
The conversation was over as the team came back down dressed in their civvies, with bundles of sopping camouflage fatigues in their hands. Scout dispatched them to all three floors with orders to put them in the washers. Then she went from floor to floor, loading each machine with detergent and softener and setting them correctly.
The team sat around on leather sofas while their clothes began to whirl. A loud clanking sound came from the upstairs laundry.
“Eagle,” Moms said. “Where’s your Mark-23?”
“Just great,” Roland muttered and he went upstairs with Scout and retrieved the wet gun from the washer. He sat down with it and ejected the magazine.
“Can you show me how to take it apart?” Scout asked, startling Roland.
“Sure.”
So while the big guy and the little girl took a large-caliber pistol apart, the rest of the team decompressed. Roland didn’t even realize he was rubbing his fungus-covered feet along a carpet that cost more than the house he grew up in. Doc was eyeing the bourbon in the crystal decanter, but decided he’d had enough of liquids that could kill him for the day. Kirk was looking at a photo that had been in his pocket and gotten soaked, setting it so it would dry but not be seen by the rest of the team. Eagle was upstairs on over-watch. Nada had taken out his machete to sharpen it, but realized he hadn’t used it in the Great Water Battle, as they had decided to name it on the way back, so he put it on the coffee table that cost as much as his MK-23 pistol. Moms was typing up her after-action report.
Roland had finished taking apart Eagle’s gun and then he walked Scout through the steps. Moms watched them, torn between pride and disapproval. When Scout did it correctly, on the first try, the girl did a flip, then went to a handstand in the center of the room on top of the coffee table next to Nada’s machete.
“I’ll give you a dollar to stop doing that,” Moms said, feeling bad because she knew the real reason it bothered her was Scout’s exuberance and energy. Moms couldn’t remember ever feeling that way.
Scout was still on her hands and looked at Moms. “Do you mean four quarters or a hundred bucks?”
Roland looked up from the gun, stunned. “She’s a gambler. That’s what they call a hundred bucks.”
Scout flipped and stood upright. “No. I don’t gamble, but Doctor Carruthers, two blocks over, is a bookie. And his son, Tad, was my BF, for a while. And I think he was my BF because his dad was so interesting and he let me listen as he took bets. I like to listen.”
“Of course you do,” Moms said, run
ning a hand through Scout’s damp hair, avoiding her burn from the killer curler. “Four quarters. On my tab.”
Scout sat down, yoga style, on the plush rug being invaded by Roland’s fungus ten feet away. “Sure, but there’s a vig on the tab.” Then to no one and everyone she began speaking, the words rushing forth. “Did you know the term vig comes from vigorish, which is how they supposedly treated you when you owed money? Broke your knees with vigor?”
“No, I didn’t,” Nada said, with a warning look at the others, and they all realized what he meant. Scout was finally coming down off the action by talking and everyone had a different way of doing it.
“But Doctor Carruthers said that was mostly movie BS, because how’s someone going to pay you if they got broken knees? He said the worst thing you can do to a degenerate gambler is cut them off from gambling. Which makes sense, right?”
“Right,” Nada said.
Scout looked at Kirk, who was looking at the drying picture. “How’s your shoulder?”
Kirk looked up, startled, his mind 990 miles away in Parthenon, Arkansas. “Huh?”
“Your shoulder?” Scout repeated.
“Oh.” Kirk rotated it with a wince. “It works.”
Scout nodded toward the picture. “Girlfriend?”
Everyone on the team went still, because no one ever asked personal questions.
“My kin,” Kirk said.
“You guys don’t seem like you have families,” Scout said. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
Kirk didn’t seem to notice the rest of the team, only Scout. “My older sister, Dee. Two younger brothers and little Becca. She’s the baby of the family. Just turned six.”
“I wish I had a brother,” Scout said. “A sister, maybe not. We’d probably fight.”
“Right,” Roland said. “You not getting along with someone.”
A bunch of dings started going off and Scout jumped up. “Washer to dryer. I’ll take care of it.” She ran up the closest set of stairs, not the ones Roland had taken.
Moms looked at her exhausted team. “We’ve got two Fireflies left. We were lucky we had Scout on this one. That stupid Acme would have blown us all up.”
