Queen of wands

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I just got a call from the Director,” Randell said.

After the meeting had rapidly broken up, Barb, Janea, Randell and a team of Delta Force commandoes had started checking out the slaughterhouses.

There were three in the region, but only one, Conner Farm and Slaughter, that was near the site of the attacks. And its position made something like an equilateral triangle with all the encounters.

Barb and Janea had chosen to ride with one of the Delta platoons, all of them squeezed into an Expedition, while Randell had ridden with the other.

“And what did the Director have to say?” Barb asked as she got out of the Expedition.

“There’s a debate about whether you should be pulled off the mission,” Randell said, grimacing.

“Why?” Barb asked, angrily.

“It’s mostly for good reasons,” Randell said, sourly. “For values of good, as you said one time. Basically, one side of the debate is that you’re clearly too important to lose. I got the feeling that a couple of the flag guys got Jesus after your little communication.”

“Seeing someone actually channeling tends to do that,” Janea said. “That’s just the most public one I’ve ever seen.”

“It wasn’t public, though,” Barb said. “God doesn’t want worshippers that only worship because of miracles. The Lord wants Believers, people who believe without miracles. If the Lord had wanted to be public, He would have channeled through someone on national TV. You said that was one side of the debate. What’s the other?”

“Apparently members of the administration who were not present feel you are ‘compromised’ by your position,” Randell said, shaking his head.

“I am a warrior of God,” Barb said, confused. “What did they think I was before? Open-minded? Sort of agnostic on the subject?”

“This is probably taking a long time to sink in with some people,” Janea said, shrugging. “With this…incident, a lot of people who had, they thought, a pretty firm understanding of the world are suddenly having that worldview challenged, and challenged in a very big way. People, especially powerful people, don’t handle that well.”

“I take it I’m not pulled off the case,” Barb said.

“Your boss pointed out that he had authority over who does what,” Randell said. “Unless he says otherwise, you’re the mission commander. Speaking of which. Major Chap?”

“Sir?” the Delta platoon commander said.

“Normally I do this sort of thing with FBI,” Randell said. “They know the drill. The way this goes is, I serve the warrant, we clear the area of personnel, secure them away from the building and perform a search. Absent finding anything, we apologize and we leave. If we find the Gar, we detain the personnel as suspects, fall back and call for support.”

“Roger, sir,” the Delta said.

“My point being, and I’m not being sarcastic or humorous, that this is not a situation where we kill everyone in the building,” Randell said. “Detain for questioning.”

“We do that most of the time, sir,” the Delta said, nodding. “Rather more than the other way.”

“Very good,” Randell said, squaring his shoulders. “Ladies, if you get a sniff of the Gar…”

“We’re out of there,” Barb said, looking at the facility. “But, frankly, it’s here. Somewhere.”

“Really?” Randell said, puzzled. “Mystic vibes?”

“That,” Barb said, nodding. “Janea and I have both been getting Sendings in dreams and the…feeling is very strong now. But more than that. Smell.”

The suggestion was not so much hard as impossible to ignore. The entire area just stank. Most of it was the smell of cattle manure and urine, a heavy, thick tang of feces and ammonia. Overlaid on it, under it, behind it, was a very thick smell of rot. Not normal garbage, but a smell like gangrene and pus.

“Got it,” Randell said, nodding. “Smells like…Old One. And cattle shit. Time to serve the warrant.”

The front offices of the slaughterhouse were an old, two-story farmhouse from, probably, the twenties. It had been fixed up with nice landscaping and a manicured front lawn. Over the porch was a large sign that said Conner Farm and Slaughter.

Barb had figured that, given there were cars in the parking lot indicating people were around, someone would have been curious enough to come out front and see why a group of heavily armed strangers had pulled up in a couple of Expeditions. But nobody had so much as moved a curtain.

One platoon of Delta moved to the rear of the building while the second took up position on the porch flanking the front door. Which Randell walked up to and opened without knocking. He held the warrant over his head.

“FBI search warrant,” he called, loudly. “If everyone could please stand up and keep your hands in the open!”

The door opened on a large great room with smaller rooms to either side and a staircase to the rear. There were doors at the back of the room leading to the rest of the ground floor. It had been set up as a reception area, with a receptionist’s desk and comfortable chairs. On the wall were posters of happy cows ready for the slaughter and glossily unreal pieces of meat.

It was also empty of humans.

“Well, they were only keeping a skeleton crew,” Randell said as cries of “Clear” could be heard from the rear of the building.

“This doesn’t look good,” Janea said, walking over to the receptionist’s desk. There was a mug of tea on it, and she cupped it with her hand. “Warm.”

“Building clear,” Major Chap said as a pair of Deltas came down the stairs shaking their heads. “No occupants.”

“That leaves the slaughterhouse,” Randell said, waving to the rear of the building.

“I’m getting that shivery feeling,” Janea said, following him out.

The slaughterhouse was a massive structure, five stories high and nearly a football field long. To either side were equally massive covered stock pens. Which were totally empty.

A curving sidewalk led from the offices to the front door of the slaughterhouse. There were more personnel doors to either side, and on one end, a large loading dock.

Again, the area was entirely, eerily empty and quiet.

“Not even birds,” Janea pointed out.

“It’s in there,” Barb said.

“Oh, yeah,” Janea said. “The question is, do we even want to knock on the door to check?”

As she said that, the door opened and a naked woman walked out. She was skinny and brunette, covered in ichor, with open, pus-filled wounds covering her body. Another and another followed her, each of them staring into the distance as if unable to see. In all there were nearly twenty. And many were clearly pregnant. With what, Barb really didn’t want to think.

Barb recognized a few of them. Lora Cowper was there as well as Wendy and Titania Boone. And Lorna Ewing. She looked as if she was about dead, her body covered from head to foot in sores, and skinny as a rail. One of the women, a plump blonde in her twenties, was still wearing tatters of clothing. Barb suspected she was looking at the tea-loving receptionist.

The group stopped about thirty feet from the slaughterhouse and spread out, holding hands.

“You are come,” they said in sibilant unison. “You shall be my new acolytes. Send unto me the beasts of the field and the maidens of your kind. I shall render you great rewards. Failure shall be punished.”

“We are not here as your servants,” Randell said, shuddering. “We are here to return these…maidens to their rightful homes and to remove you from this place.”

He grabbed his head in pain and swayed as a wave of anger radiated from the slaughterhouse.

“Great punishment shall befall this world!” the women half-sang. “I who once was am again! You have no power before me! Obey my commands or die!”

“This is why you don’t send unprotecteds on SC,” Barb said. “We need Opus Dei. Major Chap.”

“Ma’am?” the major said. His face was more set, but if he was in pain it wasn’t evident.

“Each of your personnel will grab one of the women,” Barb said. “They will probably fight and protest. We will then return to the Expeditions and report.” She paused and breathed hard, aware of the horror of what she was about to say. There were more women than there were personnel. “Lora Cowper, Titania Boone and Wendy Boone are priority,” she continued, pointing to each. Then she took a deep breath. “Other than those, the priority is…the most fit. Leave the ones on death’s door.”

“Ma’am,” the Delta said. “Clear.”

“Execute.”

If any of the Delta Force commandoes were affected by the emanations coming from the Gar, it wasn’t apparent as they sprinted across the lawn and started snatching women. And they clearly had the snatch-and-grab down to an art. All of the women fought, and although a few were in fairly good shape and fairly large, they might as well have been babies. The Deltas picked them up in a complex hold and then sprinted back across the yard.

There was a tremendous bellow, so high and terrible that even Barbara swayed for a moment, and then the walls of the slaughterhouse started to bulge.

“Run!” Barb screamed, turning to run into the house. It was the most direct route to the Expeditions.

She paused at the door, aware that if anyone could look back without becoming Lot’s wife, it was herself. She still took the time to flip down the FLIR.

Under the FLIR, what was rapidly shredding the steel and concrete of the slaughterhouse wall wasn’t clear at all. Most of it appeared transparent with long pseudopods crashing through the walls. She shook her head, then flipped up the FLIR.

The only thing her brain could think, besides “RUN,” was of something like a four-story amoeba covered in cilia that were themselves as thick as the trunk of an elephant. The skin of the thing was covered in flickering colors, similar to a squid, but the colors were a leprous green and the purple of gangrene. She knew just seeing the thing was going to give her nightmares, and something in her brain was gibbering into madness.

After one look, she went with her lizard hindbrain and ran as fast as she could.

“Well, we found it,” Graham said. “We’ve lost two teams trying to get a good look at it; FLIR doesn’t seem to be enough with this thing. NRO even lost a computer system trying to get a look at it. The image processors froze. But we found it. The question is what we do about it.”

“Well, I’m Asatru, but even we know when to run,” Janea said. “I’m sure as hell not going to try to hack it to death with an axe. Maybe if I had a couple of really strong fighting bands that wouldn’t go crazy or be swayed into worship. But not by myself.”

“Is there any plan?” Barb asked.

“If we can get a lock on it, we can drop JDAMs,” Master Sergeant Attie said. “But we can’t even get a team in that can hit it with a targeting system. We lost a Predator driver, satellite systems lock up…You were right. This thing is insanity on a thousand legs.”

“We need to do something,” Randell said. “It apparently has some concept of direction. It’s moving-slowly, fortunately-in the direction of Goin. But who knows where it’s going to end up.”

“Where are the women and what’s their status?” Janea asked.

“In Knoxville at a sanitarium,” Graham said. “They still appear to be in contact. They’re not talking from it at present, but they are calling for it to come to them.”

“Is Goin on the route to Knoxville?” Janea asked.

“Yes,” Randell said. “Why?”

“That’s your answer,” Barb said, nodding. “It’s not going to Goin. It’s going to where we have its ‘maidens.’ Without the maidens it can’t create the Children. Is it eating?”

“Apparently,” Graham said. “A team checked out the slaughterhouse when they were sure it was gone. There were a lot of bones, most of them chemically charred. And they’ve found a few cattle that it found on its route.”

“Once it breeches the SC perimeter it’s going to be Katy Bar the Door,” Janea pointed out. “Somebody needs to make some decisions. Fast.”

“The answer was in the Sending,” Barb said. “This is a test of our faith. The only way that we’re going to get rid of it is to express our faith as a nation in a really convincing way.”

“That ain’t going to happen,” Randell said, shaking his head. “I mean, what do you want the government to do? Get the president on national television and ask everybody to pray to Jesus to drive a demon from our land?”

“Pretty much,” Barb said. “Doesn’t have to be Jesus. Just God in whatever form people wish to worship. God is love, remember? But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that’s the only thing that’s going to work.”

“That is unlikely to happen until all reasonable methods have been tried,” Graham said. “We’ve got a lot of firepower. We need to try that first.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Janea snapped. “Firepower is not going to stop this thing.”

“How do you know?” Randell asked. “We haven’t even been able to try.”

“Because…God said so?” Janea said, angrily.

“God’s never tried a JDAMs,” Randell answered, hotly.

“Look, if somebody can explain this JDAMs thing to me and it’s not too complicated, I can get a lock on it,” Barb said. “Looking at it under FLIR at the slaughterhouse was not too bad. I don’t want to try to tell you what looking at it with bare eyes was like. But I can look at it.”

“We can set that up,” Master Sergeant Attie said, nodding. “You don’t even have to get close. And one of the systems has a built-in FLIR. Probably best to use that.”

“Yeah,” Janea said. “On the fuzziest setting it’s got.”

“You sure you want to come along?” Barb asked as they headed to the helicopter.

“I’m Asatru, and I ran and didn’t even look back,” Janea said. “I’m feeling a little weak in the goddess region. So, yeah, I want to go along. For that matter, if I can look at this thing and not go mad, I’d appreciate being the one to order down the bomb. It’s sort of directing violence, which is up there for my goddess with having good sex.”

“You got it,” Barb said as she climbed into the Jet Ranger.

“If you ladies are buckled in?” the Army warrant asked.

“Pilot, are you briefed in on this?” Barb asked after donning headphones. “You can’t get near this threat. You cannot get in direct view. If you happen to make a mistake and get too high, don’t look at it.”

“We’re briefed in, ma’am,” the pilot responded as the helo climbed for height. “Your LZ is a clearing on a secondary hilltop. The mission target is a hill that should both overlook the threat and protect us from sight. May I ask a question?”

“Go,” Janea said, rereading the manual on the targeting system.

“May I ask why I can’t see it?”

“If you weren’t told then you don’t have the need-to-know,” Barb said. “But don’t get curious. On your life, don’t get curious. I’m deadly serious.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the pilot said.

“Well, here we go,” Janea said, looking at the woods in distaste. “Have I ever told you how much I prefer cities?”

“I’ve gotten that impression,” Barb said, grinning. “Let’s head up the hill.”

“FLIR,” Barb said as they reached the military crest of the hill.

“Oh, you betcha,” Janea said.

The device they were carrying included a telescope. But it wasn’t necessary to spot the Gar. The leprous monstrosity was slowly working its way down the road below. As Barb watched, it plowed into a house, leaving a splintered wreck in its wake.

“Oh, dear Freya aid,” Janea said, softly.

“You going to be okay?” Barb asked.

“I’m not sure that’s correct,” Janea said. “But I’m not going insane now. Don’t ask me about tonight.”

“Let’s get this set up,” Barb said, taking off her pack.

The target identifier was essentially a larger version of their headsets with a laser system and a GPS. By lasing the target it got a distance, direction and change of altitude. With that information it knew the precise location of the target and would automatically communicate that to whatever system was used to bring down the firepower, artillery, MLRS or JDAMs from aircraft.

“Don’t look at it with clear eyes,” Barb said. “But you need to take the FLIR off to target this thing.”

“Got it,” Janea said, taking off the FLIR with her eyes closed and fumbling forward to get her eye on the scope. “Damn…it’s a lot harder to look at with this thing. It’s more close up.”

“Still okay?” Barb asked.

“Hanging in there,” Janea said in a strained voice. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Roger,” Barb said, picking up a microphone. “Wildcat Four-Four, Wildcat Four-Four, this is Sierra Charlie One…”

“Don’t look at the ground,” Lieutenant Aaron Yin said bitchily. “What kind of stupid order is that?”

“It’s an order,” Captain Brandon Lovell said, banking his F-16 around to the east to keep in the target basket. “So don’t look at the ground.”

“Wildcat Four-Four, Wildcat Four-Four, this is Sierra Charlie One.”

“Roger, Sierra Charlie,” Captain Lovell said.

“Our device says it’s connected, Wildcat.”

“Roger, ma’am,” Lovell replied. “Got a good lock on your box.”

“Why Wildcat, I didn’t know you cared,” another female voice answered. It was a very throaty contralto, and Lovell had a sudden serious desire to meet the owner of the voice.

“We are doing target upload at this time,” the first voice said with a touch of asperity in her voice.

“Roger, have target data,” Lovell said. “Drop permission on file. Release.” His F-16 rocked a bit as the thousand-pound bomb dropped off its wing, but he corrected automatically. He’d dropped literally hundreds of JDAMs over Iraq and Afghanistan. “Twenty seconds to impact.” He watched the countdown clock, then started counting. “In ten…five…two…Impact.”

“Roger, Wildcat. Good drop. On target. Standby.”

“Sierra Charlie One, status of target,” another voice asked. Lovell looked at the connection data and blanched. It read: AF Six. The Chief of Staff of the Air Force was on the line.

“Negative effect,” the ground spotter said.

“Not a Freya-damned thing,” the contralto added. “This is stupid.”

“Retarget, Sierra Charlie,” AF Six said. “Wildcat, full ordnance drop on acquire.”

“Retargeted,” Sierra Charlie said a moment later.

“Positive acquisition,” Lovell said. “Wildcat Mission, full ordnance drop. Ordnance away.”

“RTB, Wildcat,” AF Six ordered.

“What the fuck did she mean, negative effect?” Yin asked over the local frequency.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Lovell said, banking his fighter around and heading back to base. “Ours not to question why…”

He paused as there was a scream from Yin’s aircraft, and looked over at it. Which was fortunate because his wingman was banking hard towards him and about to midair.

“Son of a bitch,” Lovell snapped, banking into a barrel roll. “Yin, what the fuck?”

“Wildcat. Status,” the air combat controller called.

“Wildcat Four Two is in OOC,” Lovell said, turning to look at the descending aircraft. Yin was in a flat spin and still screaming. “Tardis, punch it! EJECT, EJE…”

Then his eyes glanced to the ground.

Barbara shook her head as the spinning F-16 slammed into a distant mountaintop and exploded in fire.

“Lord, please send me the power to destroy this thing,” Barb whispered fiercely. “There are many faithful in this nation. Would You ignore Your Chosen because of those few who are blind? Please, Lord, give us Your mercy.”

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Janea said, flipping down her FLIR and picking up the target designator. “I think you’re getting Stern God on this one. Very Old Testament. Jesus need not apply. Believe or be damned.”

“I think you might be right,” Barb said. “And I’m not sure which way we’ll hop.”