Chapter 12
In which a evil man departs in a smoking arc
When Xander Smith-Samson found out that his daughter had some important guests he couldn’t be stopped from inviting them into the main part of the house. Elgin faded into the background before they had gone through the front door.
He stood on the gravel turnaround in front of the ranch house and the old bunk house and thought. “Mrow?” Humph enquired as he sat down, the tip of his tail over his head, rocking back and forth restlessly. Elgin reached down to stroke his friends head.
The door of the bunkhouse opened, after a pause Mitch’s live in girlfriend appeared, dressed for biking, carrying a backpack, she looked around, seeing nothing she relaxed slightly and headed for the side where she kept her ruby red Kawasaki.
The simple, quiet, “Hey Betty,” almost made Betty Jones scream. She spun to find Elgin a few feet away his dusty old tan Stetson in place, one boot braced on the boardwalk that ran the width of the old bunkhouse. He couldn’t have snuck up on her, but he hadn’t been there a moment before?
“Uh, hi Elgin,” She knew her voice was shaky and her smile false, she was also shaking, “You, uh, startled me, I, uh was heading for town, to uh take in a movie.”
“Where’s Mitch?”
“Uh? Mitch...he’s...out somewhere.” She waved towards the paddocks, away from where he was, at the ‘factory’ trying to get the last batch cooked up before all hell broke loose.
Betty was bugging out now, not in a little while. The Claw wasn’t known for discrimination. Legend had it that he’d spent time south of the border in one of the drug cartels, rising to the level of major enforcer before being caught up in a gang war that had left his organization too crippled to protect itself from the Federales. He’d gone underground for years before reappearing in Beauty at the head of the biker gang.
When Mitch had called the Claw to tell him that the main authors of his setback would be here the Claw had told Mitch to get any product he had finished packed up and out of there and had hung up.
The silence had stretched uncomfortably long and she was afraid she could hear something approaching. “Uh Elgin, I’ve gotta go.”
“I hear them too Betty, how many?”
She shook her head, “I don’t know.”
“They’re coming overland, if you take the main road you’ll be clear. Don’t come back.”
She felt a rising horror, there was something elemental, implacable about Elgin, nothing left of the easy going ne’er do well she’d made the center piece of many daydreams.
The black clad figure crouched low over the red rocket vanished into the dying daylight leaving a trail of dust and bouncing stones.
“Hey Elgin!” It was Zeph, “Who was that.”
“Betty, getting the hell out of Dodge City, the Claw’s coming and I doubt it’s for a cup of tea. Tell the Sheriff, clean out her truck, get indoors, if any of those guns in the great room are workable and have ammo get them out.”
She froze, “Elgin, its no use, they’re werewolves, you can’t kill them.”
“Separate the brain from the lower gut and the wolf will die, blow the head completely apart or chop it off, blow it in half with a grenade. They and the human die then. Move Zeph.”
He ran for the trailer park, but as he’d hoped it was empty, those not up on the high pasture were in town. That left Mitch, who knew the ranch too well for Elgin’s comfort.
“Elgin!” It was the sheriff, she had body armor thrown over her shoulder, two M14 carbines in her arms and boxes of ammo, she jerked her head at the back of the van, “A riot gun and ammo in there, I assume you can use it?”
Nodding Elgin trotted over, “Thanks. You call in?”
“We’re jammed and cut off.”
“Okay, I’m going to round up Mitch, I don’t want him outside with us inside.”
“Wait.”
“I know the ranch, I’ll be quick, get everyone inside and get them behind something solid. And listen to Zeph, she fought the Claws before.”
He took off at a trot, heading for the ‘processing’ building. The ranch had once had its own butchering operation, which had been converted to house a composting system that provided methane gas for heat and power to the ranch.
The building was a partial dugout behind a ripple in the ground that hid it completely from the ranch. There were four doors two big ones, one for bringing in the cow manure and other material at the start and another for the sludge truck that sucked out the essentially sterile output. There was an access door into the ‘engineering spaces,’ and finally a plain unmarked door at the other end. In front of that door one of the ranch trucks was parked, its engine running.
Elgin turned the truck off and pocketed the keys. Turning he walked at the door, just before touching it he ‘turned’ slightly and the world was faintly orange, the structure was only an impression the door a haze he stepped through before turning back into the anchor realm. It was faintly red inside, and the air stank of methane and other compost gasses, but with a hint of other chemicals. There were several large suitcases by the door, one open and half full of packages. Ahead a crude light baffle had been formed from stacked cardboard boxes with the names of various chemical companies on them.
“Huh, not particularly discrete Mitch,” Elgin muttered to himself.
He had slung the gun over his shoulder, he hadn’t wanted to tell the sheriff that he didn’t like guns and while he’d fired just about every type his father could beg borrow or steal at one time or another he hadn’t touched one since his father had died twelve years before.
Soft footed Elgin passed around the light baffle, on the other side there was a long bench with a confusing jumble of gear, mostly reminiscent of a mad scientists lab that had been jumbled up with an upper crust cooking store. There was a big open vat with a vent hood at the far end of the room, Mitch was crouched over the furthest end with a gas mask on.
Elgin unslung the riot gun, figuring it would make more of an impression in his hands than on his shoulder. Mitch was utterly oblivious in the view restricting mask, as he did obscure things to something in the vat.
“Mitch, times up.” Elgin called out.
The big man jerked to look at Elgin, looking like some alien or bad science fiction super soldier. He dropped something, ducked and scrabbled for it, the vat buffed a cloud of foul looking smoke, most of which got sucked into the vent, but enough reached Elgin to make him gag and his head spin. He backed up, his hand gripping the riot gun, not totally sure that the drop had been an accident.
He couldn’t see the big man through the column of smoke going up the flue now. Elgin held his breath, backed towards the cardboard boxes, Mitch stepped out from around the column of smoke, a stubby black shape in his hand, he was looking down, expecting Elgin to be down. He recovered quickly, the machinegun stuttered and he leapt behind the smoke again.
Elgin felt a tug at his shirt but the burst missed. Now he worked the slide on the riot gun, “Mitch don’t make this worse than it already is.” The response to which was a sustained burst of gunfire at waist level pivoting from one side of the long narrow room to the other, fancy pots, pans, glass retorts and tubes danced and exploded and the stink of chemicals got infinitely worse.
Elgin had dodged behind the concrete based heavy wooden support column which adsorbed the pistol caliber rounds with ease. He brought the riot gun around and fired, There was a muffled scream from the wounded man. “Mitch this is not going to end well for you.”
Fire was already running along the workbench and he knew he was out of time.
“Damn it Mitch, I’m getting out, run for it!”
A wild burst of gunfire pursued Elgin as he ducked through the piles of cardboard, and then out into the darkness and fresh air. He was still running hard when he was lifted off his feet by a massive explosion, followed a few seconds later by a second, even larger one, as the methane storage tanks blew
. A string of follow up crumps hammered the air as other things exploded one after the other.
Half stunned, lying on his back Elgin saw the fireballs open the metal sheathed post and beam building up like a toy, and various bits of burning debris arching this way and that. One particularly big object pin-wheeled as it arced through the sky leaving a trail of fire and sparks, finally falling behind the rise, somewhere near the Ranch house.
On his feet again Elgin ran for the Ranch house, he was going up the rise when two lupine shapes appeared, yellow eyes blazing, fanged mouths gaping, the first took a full load of buckshot in the mouth , blowing the lower back of the skull apart, separating it from the rest of the body. As the wolf collapsed into a flailing doll it dissolved in a bright flash of orange leaving the nearly headless body of a heavily tattooed man behind.
Elgin rolled under the leaping lunge of the second wolf, working the slide he fired, the buckshot ruined the right hind leg of the monster which went down with a screaming snarl. But it was spinning on its three good legs, coming back at him. He fired again and it went down with most of its head gone. A third shot separated the regenerating head from the body and an instant later the body of another headless biker lay in the dirt.
He ran towards the crackle of gunfire and the hissing crash of mage fire.
There were four powerful all terrain vehicles parked behind the main barn, that would indicate eight Claws, scratch two, that meant six.
Something hammered into his back and he staggered, flopped forward, his legs suddenly no longer part of his body. A harsh scream of victory, not from a were, but a human throat. Somehow Elgin twisted his body, and the riot gun around, his attacker had thought him done. She died surprised, head flopping over sideways, her spine and right shoulder blown away, the assassin flopped backwards like a piece of meat.
Now it was Elgin’s turn to lay his head in the dirt, his eyes were closed.
Then the Iffrit was looking down at the dead assassin and an abandoned riot gun, the pain in its back faded, and was gone as repair mechanisms dealt with the wound and routed any critical power and control circuits around the damage. One of the hairy opposition came charging around the corner of the barn. Seeing the Iffrit it fell on its haunches, scrabbling with its front claws to stop and get away. It was far too slow, the Iffrit bit it in half and swallowed it in two gulps, it tasted awful, but it was at least something and the Iffrit was hungry.
An annoying little bit of the Iffrit’s mind giggled, and counted down, “Four down, Four to go.”
The Iffrit let out a call to battle, the thunder of its voice echoing off the hills and more distant mountains. Then it came to its full height, wings mantling, ready to take flight if need be. But there was a roar of sound and something boxy raced away from the housing structure, taking with it the stink of living enemy.
The front of the housing structure was a ruin, and much of it in flames, he could smell two more of the enemies, dead ones, one burning, the other just beginning to spoil. There was a big water tank next to the house, the Iffrit dipped its head into the tank and drew it down more than a quarter of the way, sucking the liquid into what were primarily air sacs, a powerful contraction blew a powerful mist of water into the fire,two more great huffs and the fire was gone.
An instant later Elgin was standing over the riot gun he had dropped. The whippet thin woman who’d attacked him at the Claws compound, Valery, if he remembered correctly, lay nearby, sprawled in death, her expression more surprised than pained.
He leaned down to scoop up the riot gun. At his feet he saw something very nasty looking, heavy bladed, razor sharp, he realized that it was some kind of throwing axe, one that had chopped through his spine. He hadn’t sensed her until he was already dead, she’d been a skilled assassin.
He turned and walked towards the house, still lit by the outside lights powered from the grid now the recycling plant and the backup diesel genset had been blown to hell.
He walked around the back, which was disturbingly undisturbed compared to the front of the building. “Hello the house, anyone hear me?”
-o-
“Damn it dad, get it through your head that these people will not be coming for a conversation.” Zeph snapped at her father as she strapped on a flack jacket. TwoShoes was struggling with another set when Hong came up and started helping.
“Zephyr, this is Wyoming!” Her mother protested.
Caitlin clattered in with a third load of weapons and ammo, “Zeph, you’re going to have to explain what Elgin meant when he said that the you’d fought the Claws before.”
Zeph nodded, looked at Hong, “Did you lock all the windows?” He nodded, Zeph saw TwoShoes looking rather dubious, “The windows are all armor glass, in metal frames, the insurance company insisted.” They were in the great room that essentially ran from the front to the back of the house. With a half story drop between the front and back half. The wings were accessed through an archway on either side of the great room. Choke points that should be easy to hold.. In the middle of the lower back section there was a big local rock fireplace facing the back yard which was well lit.
Hong had gone and unlocked the gun cabinet, he had two hunting rifles and a big hunting revolver as well as two Beretta nine millimeters all gleaming clean and loaded. He handed one of the rifles to Zephs mother and the other to TwoShoes, the pistol was her father’s. Hong kept the two automatics, one in his waistband.
Zeph took a deep breath, “Okay, look they will come at us and they will not stop, they may shoot a volley or so but I think they will blow in the door with a grenade launcher and then charge us. They’re hard to stop, I shot a couple of them several times and they kept coming. But they will go down if you hit them hard enough and frequently enough. I think they will come in the front door.” She pointed out back, “Otherwise they have to approach over the lighted lawn. The front looks stronger but they have cover up to the last few feet. And my experience is that they aren’t subtle.”
There was a growing mutter that exploded into a roar as whatever it was came out from behind cover, then the silence. Hong was looking at a tablet, “Four vehicles, eight intruders, Uh....what just happened?” he sounded shaken.
Zeph, pointed at the TV, “Show us Hong.”
The screen flicked, suddenly they were looking at the end of the barn, four low four wheeled shapes skidded to a stop and figures leapt out, four of them took several steps and the screen stuttered, and now there were four massive, lanky shapes loping towards the building.
“Oh, I guess I should have mentioned that some of them are likely to be werewolves.” Zeph said into the dead silence, and jacked a buckshot into the breach of her riot gun. “If you get a chance, blow their heads off or cut them off, that way they won’t get up again, otherwise you just keep wasting rounds on them.”
The figures on the ground started firing at the house, and the front windows began to craze and shiver in their frames, dust blew out of the heavy logs and bullets blew out chunks of the caulking between the massive yellow pine logs that made up the wall.
Everyone was crouched down now, guns in hands pointing generally at the front. Zeph tapped Hong and her mother on their shoulders and pointed to the back and the rock fireplace, in case there were more coming from the back, though the bullet proof glass made it as impossible to shoot out as it did to shoot in.
On the big monitor one of the human figures made an odd pushing movement, an instant later a bolt of yellow white fire split the night. The front door shuddered and flame spurted through the central decorative glass pane and all around the periphery.
An instant later the scene outside lit up as something exploded, and a moment later the ground and the air shook with a series of massive blasts, the first burst of light had been white, the next more green, the last and longest lit the night red yellow. A light had turned red on the wall under the monitor and a warning buzzer had started to sound.
“What the hell
was that? They weren’t expecting it, look some of them have split off to check it out.” Caitlin said, her eyes fixed on the monitor.
There was a little scream and a yelp from the rear. Zeph spun, “What, mom? What did you see.”
“Something on fire fell into the flower bed near the grill, sorry dear, just startled me.”
Hong was nodding in agreement.
Zeph’s father was crouched by the house system console, “That was our composting system and generator system blowing up,” he ground out, white with fury, “What the dickens did they do that for?”
“They didn’t, they weren’t expecting it.” The sheriff pointed out.
There was another flash on the screen and one of the bay windows flanking the door blew in spraying splinters and flame across the entry way. A shape appeared in the frame and was blown backwards as Caitlin’s M14 stuttered on full auto and TwoShoes hunting rifle spoke with massive authority, as fast as he could work the bolt. There was another house shaking crack, as something hit one of the bedroom wings.
An instant later the other bay window blew in and a massive shape seemed to explode out of the spinning flaming debris. Zeph’s riot gun had a ‘death dot’ sight she lined it up and fired, hitting it in the chest, staggering it to a stop. She cycled and aimed for the head, her fathers huge fifty caliber pistol roared, her shotgun hammered once and again. The creature was a headless trunk staggering forward, then it was a swelling swirl of orange sparks, then a headless man in tattoos and leather flopping forward to bleed out on the already ruined carpet.
The front door blew in, the thick steel reinforced panel flipping and spinning to slam to a stop against the kitchen counter. The panel was followed by another werewolf. It was in and leaping at them before they had a chance to reset after the first attack. The sheriff’s M14 was cycling rounds and TwoShoes gun roared, Zeph pumped buckshot at the blur. If anything hit the werewolf it didn’t seem to notice, but it dropped behind the kitchen counter, out of the line of fire.
Then there was the blast of a horn, and the creature leapt from cover, this time heading out, but everyone had a bead on it this time, it was hurled against the wall by a hail of hot metal, and a few seconds later a headless ragdoll figure lay in a pool of blood.
In the fury of the fight Zeph hadn’t noticed that the whole front part of the ranch was now ablaze. And then there was a weird heavy spray of something, of water falling, spraying onto the front of the house, the fire sizzled and sputtered, then flickered out.
“Nothing out back Miss Zephyr” Hong called into the sudden quiet.
One of the monitors showed the four dune buggy like vehicles still there. A body sprawled in front of the storage shed. A single figure moved at the edge of one of the monitors, the Stetson and riot gun showed it was Elgin.
“Damn it, they stole my truck.” The sheriff snarled.
From outside Elgin called, “Hello the house, can anybody hear me?”
-o-
Elgin saw a figure wave from behind the glass curtain and then the glass panels folded back, “Come on, we think they’re all gone but there might be stragglers.” Sally Smith-Samson called, she was holding a hunting rifle, next to her was a small asian man who Elgin had seen a few times before, some kind of butler, general factotum for the family. Currently carrying a Beretta in one hand with another stuffed in his waist band.
“They’re all gone or dead Ma’am, mostly dead.”
He walked over the putting green smooth back ‘yard,’ onto the flagstone patio, jarringly normal, and into the house, which stank of expended propellant, fire, blood, and other things. Most of the front room was a smoking ruim. Walking up the steps he had to search for the two sprawled headless bodies among the ruins of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture and artwork. He sighed, sensing Cutter-Iffrits feeling of loss and anger at the useless destruction.
“So Elgin Chalmers, how is it that you know so much about our biker werewolves from hell?” Zeph asked, pointing at one of the corpses.
“They are a little bit like you aren’t they?” TwoShoes was looking at him with a frown, peering as if trying to see something just a little too far away to make out.
Elgin shrugged, “In some ways yes, in most ways no. They are creatures of the shadow realms, alternate ‘what could have beens’ buy like my other aspect the wolves remain folded away most of the time.”
“Your’re a were of some kind?” The sheriff asked gruffly, fingering the M14 hanging from its tactical strap.
“Of some kind, but unlike the wolves my other nature is not only stronger, faster and more capable, but also smarter, infinitely more knowledgeable and more civilized than I am.” Elgin smiled slightly.
“None of those things say that you’re safe to be around or have our best interest at heart.” Xandar Smith-Samson pointed out from the low wall that separated upper and lower spaces, he was there with his arm around his wife.
Elgin turned a little to face him, “I’m still Elgin Chalmers, most of the time and the reason I’m this way is to provide that human element and human understanding for my second nature. Its powerful and not particularly empathic.”
He raised his hands, “Questions will have to wait, we need to do something about this mess.” He glanced around, then at the wall clock, “The rest of the crew will be back in an hour or so, but someone has got to have heard or seen the methane plant blow up.”
Caitlin looked broodingly at the two corpses, “We’re going to have a hard time explaining them being blown to pieces with no sign of them carrying any weapons.”
“They blew the front of my house to wreckage and tried to burn us out.” Xander protested.
The Sheriff shrugged, “Ain’t going to matter when people see the pictures.”
“Can’t we say they were killed by their own side, by accident?” Sally asked.
“The forensics would prove that bogus in the first few seconds.”
Elgin walked through the wreckage he collected up a selection of debris, deep in his mind he could feel the Iffrit ‘doing’ things. His palms were sweating and he rubbed them across the wreckage he had picked up. The heat seemed to be sucked out of them and out of him, he stepped back onto the relatively clear area where the others stood and dropped the pieces in a line along the edge of the main debris fans.
The pieces dissolved into gray dust falls before touching the ground, spreading as it fell, falling and spreading faster than simple gravity or air movement could explain. The air in the room started to chill down, Elgin turned to the middle aged asian who had been watching all of this with a bland face and enigmatic eyes, “Turn up the heat would you, the thermal balance is going to get upset.”
“What are you doing? those are priceless antiques!” Xander cried out as he saw the iridescent gray cloud spreading, enveloping the floor, the rugs, the furniture....the nearest body.
“Think of them as the clean up and repair crew Mr. Smith-Samson, the fight at the house is never going to have happened.” Elgin said flatly.
The nano machines, from the size of a virus, all the way up to the size of spider mites, spread out, mapping this, disassembling that, creating more of their own, many of which were simply moving material from one place to another, only to be broken down for rebuilding as something else.
In a minute the thick gray fog was spreading quickly, flowing to envelope the whole front of the great room. As the shocked fighters watched it touched the wall and swept up covering the walls, the glass and the fire damaged ceiling before slowing and finally stopping. For a few moments the gray mist thickened, swirling and rippling with an eerie life.
Then the first of the bodies, discreetly, thankfully, draped in swirling gray cotton wool settled into the floor and flowed away. The big mahogany table flipped on its side, also draped in gray, collapsed, then its ghostly shape reformed where it had originally stood, first in wisps of gray then in dense gray as if the table were covered by a gray drop clot
h. Then the mist flowed back leaving the apparently untouched table in all its red black glory behind. The empty holes where there had been windows filled in with gray mist that solidified to almost black before flowing away leaving gleaming glass and polished wood. The fire damaged rafters were enveloped and then a few moments later the mist seemed to adsorb into gleaming aged yellow pine beams.
There was silence as they all looked at the apparently untouched front half of the great room. The only sign of what had gone before the bright cylinders of spent shell casings and the droop shouldered humans.
“I’m going to go police up a few other things.” Elgin said into the deep silence, “I think the story is that the Claws came to get whatever drugs Mitch was cooking in the methane plant and possibly shoot up the ranch. Betty, Mitch’s live in, tipped us off which is why we forted up, something went wrong with the drug pickup and the plant blew up and for some reason the survivors stole your truck for their getaway.”
Everyone looked at him as if he was an alien, he shrugged, “Just my suggestion anyway.” He walked to the front door, as he started to close it he found Zephyr right behind him, carrying her riot gun. He bobbed his head and let her close the door behind her and strode into the night.
In the near distance he could see lights on the road that led mainly to the CircleSBarS ranch and flashing lights as well. “Here come the cavalry.”
The female assassin sprawled in ugly death her eyes now coated with dust giving her an unreal look. Zeph looked down at her, “Never saw her before.”
Elgin leaned down and picked up the throwing axe that had split his spine. “You ever see one of these before?” there was red blood on the blade and haft, his blood.
Zeph frowned, “That’s nasty looking, and looks like it did some damage to someone.”
Elgin grunted, he tossed the weapon to land with a thud on the assassin’s body, the gray mist welled up from the weapon to envelope her as they turned away.
She followed him, she watched as he picked up spent shotgun shell cases and dropped them on the two bodies on the slope by the smoldering ruin of the methane power plant. By the time they started to walk back the bodies were fading wisps of almost smoke.
“I’ve read and seen science fiction and fantasy. That’s not pixie dust, its some kind of nano bot cloud. And I thought there was a lot of concern about letting nano bots loose in the environment?”
“They can be devastating, but most of the time they’re more susceptible to the natural environment than the other way around. The ones here are extremely limited in purpose and functional life.”
She looked away, hugged herself as if a cool breeze had sprung up, “That was the other part of you speaking, wasn’t it Elgin?”
“Yes. It’s his knowledge.”
By the time they got back to the front of the house two of the crew’s cars were parked by the trailer park, an ambulance, two sheriff’s cars and the local fire marshal’s truck were all parked out front and people were milling around. The sheriff had her deputies start a search ‘to make sure the rascals were gone.’ The fire marshal was climbing into his truck with Xandar Smith-Samson to go look at the methane plant.
Elgin was sitting on a stool in the ranch munching on a sandwich produced by the newly introduced Hong when there was something like a scream from out back. He wasn’t quite sure how he made it out into the garden, but he and Hong were the first and second persons on the scene as one of the younger deputies lost his dinner in the dahlias.
The object of the deputy’s distress was sprawled at the edge of the flower bed. Naked, hairless, skin blackened and with the rubber and plastic of the breathing mask melted to his face Mitch was something out of a bad horror movie. Fortunately for all he was quite dead, had undoubtedly been dead when Elgin saw his burning body pin-wheeling through the air right after the blast.
Hong uncocked his pistol, “That the crew boss, Mitch?”
Elgin checked to make sure he hadn’t chambered a round in the riot gun, it was safe, “Yep, I always figured he was a bit of a shooting star.” Which he knew was cruel, but Hong found it quite funny.