“Yeah,” Gordon said, looking around and shifting a bit in his chair. “We didn’t ask for enough money on this one.”
“Shit,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to lose my soul to the devil.”
“This thing, if it breaks out, is the end of the world,” I said seriously. “Full-up Revelations time. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Go right to the apocalypse. Killing it before it hatches is the only way to ensure the safety of the world.”
“If you’ve got a problem with any of this, walk away now,” Ray warned. “There’s no shame in knowing when to call it.”
None of the drillers left.
“Last point,” I said. “We won’t be repumping the mud. It’s going to be diluted ten to one with holy water then dumped.”
“You check with EPA on that one?” Gordon asked.
“We got permits for dumping the mud,” I said, shrugging. “We can’t exactly say it’s going to be mixed with the ichor of an unclean thing that has ravaged the human soul since the beginning of time and is just waiting to break free so that it can lay waste to all life on earth. But if you’d like to submit the paperwork…”
“Nah,” Gordon said, grinning. “I’m good.”
* * *
The smells and sights were too familiar. The smell of dead things and vomit and shit and chemicals not meant to exist on this planet. The horrible mucous on every wall, covering the colorful if crude drawings of houses and dogs and horses and kittens. The gold stars and decals of Disney characters.
This time the mava had hit a kindergarten classroom. Several children and a teacher had vanished, screaming.
Decay and I were the first on scene. “This didn’t have to happen, man.”
He was right. With our limited resources, it was taking weeks for MHI to set up a mission the MCB could have set up in days, if not hours.
“We gotta find the symbol here,” I said, looking around the destroyed classroom.
The floor was tile. I groaned at the thought of having to pull it all up looking for the fungus symbol.
The room beyond was a small storage room where the teacher kept all her special materials away from the students. There was a rolling cupboard in the corner filled with pencils, construction paper and crayons.
Pushing it aside we found the loathsome fungus symbol underneath.
“Now it’s time to get the pig,” I said, gritting my teeth.
An hour later the classroom was on fire, another pseudopod was burnt, and Special Agent Campbell was waiting for us in the parking lot. I was still trying to avoid MCB agents as much as possible, but Decay about lost his mind and had to be held back by a couple of other Hunters from punching Campbell out.
“Kids, Campbell!” Decay shouted. “It got little kids! How about MCB reassesses the situation now!”
The senior MCB agent had nothing to say in reply.
CHAPTER 21
The warehouse was very large and crowded.
In the center was the drill rig. I’d seen drill rigs around, who hasn’t, in the news and TV shows and even just driving through Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. They were big scaffold-looking things reaching up to the sky. Everybody knew that was what drill rigs looked like.
This wasn’t that drill rig. The rig was laid sideways on a trailer. They’d just driven it into the warehouse that way. The pipe, called a string, was held at an angle of about ten degrees and went into an already cut hole in the thick floor of the warehouse. The rig was laid in about fifty feet from the south wall and the full string and entry stretched halfway across the four-hundred-foot-long warehouse.
To both sides we had installed giant water tanks. They looked like aboveground swimming pools and even had ladders to climb in. Usually these would refill from the “mud” pumped out by the drill. But holy water needed “pure” water. So the diluted mud was being dumped into a storm drain and, at least in part illegally, then dumped into the nearby Mississippi. What would happen when the mava goop started being pumped out was anyone’s guess. Hopefully just a fish kill. A repeat of Mardi Gras or worse would be unpleasant.
North of the tanks were six fire trucks manned by volunteers from the New Orleans Fire Department. There hadn’t been a lot of takers on this one. NOFD liked hoodoo about as much as NOPD. But they’d previously lost some men to a kifo worm, so we’d managed to get enough volunteers.
There were lines from the trucks leading up to the roof of the warehouse as well as more inside. We were planning on throwing around a lot of fire. Having a way to put it out was a good idea. NOFD was willing to run the trucks, which was a specialized job. They weren’t willing to run the lines. The lines were going to be in harm’s way of hoodoo. Couldn’t say I blamed them.
In addition to the big tanks, the fire trucks, the drill rig and its peripheral equipment, there was our equipment. MHI had brought in every piece of lethal hardware in its inventory. We’d had to build in an ammo bunker for all the ammo. There were tanks of prepared napalm to refill the flamethrowers and Hunters to run it up to the flamethrower teams. Prestocked ammo supplies and preloaded magazines. Cases and cases of grenades, LAWs, RPGs, and Carl Gustavs. We’d put in extra orders for all the firepower we were planning on throwing. If this wasn’t a mava, we were going to lose a lot of money on this deal.
If it was, then the lowest estimate we’d gotten from the PUFF adjustor was astronomical. Even with all the costs of the operation, we’d make bank.
Our building was part of a regular block of identical prefab concrete warehouses. Each was four hundred feet long, a hundred and fifty feet wide, with a broad boulevard between them running north and south and narrower streets, still big enough to take two tractor trailers, running east-west. The doors were heavily reinforced to prevent burglary and the only windows were near the high roofs. Counting the thick precast concrete walls, they were virtually impregnable.
But virtually wasn’t good enough. Milo had been given a construction crew, the company checkbook, and told to make this place into a fortress. We still didn’t know what the mava was going to throw at us, but Milo had reinforced everything just in case. The already thick floors had been built up with rebar-reinforced concrete everywhere but our drill hole. It would take kifo worms a while to batter their way through that.
We’d set up double-height Jersey wall blockades on the broad boulevards, angled to push anything that couldn’t climb them into the narrower streets. That was where we’d also set up most of our firepower. The premise was that any attackers would be pushed into the kill zone. The kill zone was littered with claymores and other explosives. It was going to get hot in there. We’d ensured that the other warehouses didn’t have anything that would detonate from the heat and the concrete walls were pretty resistant.
The walls were high enough that even a shoggoth would need some time to slither over them, and they were back-stopped by more stacked Jersey walls to prevent pressure pushing them over. Hopefully, they’d hold.
But the mava would probably summon some ghouls, wights, vampires, what have you. They could climb right over the things. They could climb the walls of the freaking warehouse. Vampires and wights could climb the other warehouses and make the jump across the narrower sections.
Earl promised that he had some special secret weapon which would take care of any undead, but we’d see.
At six points up along the “long” sides of the warehouse we had belt-fed guns mounted. Two M2 .50 caliber Ma Deuces and four M-60 Pigs in .308. They were going to be putting plunging fire onto anything that got onto the boulevards. Two of the M2s were mounted at each end of the building and could swivel to cover the narrow “streets.” If the claymores, napalm bombs and other explosives didn’t do the trick, Ma Deuce was the gift that just kept giving.
Getting in and out of the warehouse was the tough part. We’d seriously bunkered up. The fastest way out was from the roof. Which was why LifeLift was also on standby. We were going to take casualties and would b
e carrying them out by helicopter.
Nearly every MHI employee in the country was here. I saw people I had not seen since training. Either the MCB did not know what we were up to, or if some figured it out they were smart enough not to alert their superiors. We hadn’t been shut down yet. Everything was ready.
Earl got on the warehouse intercom.
“Start the drill.”
* * *
For hours the priests had taken turns blessing the water. We needed the holy water not only for the drill mud but for mixing with the “stuff” coming out of the drill. We’d already noticed effects just from the mava’s shell. Get near the discharge and you were immediately assaulted by the presence of evil. How the last drill crew had managed was the real question—it probably hadn’t been as bad when the creature was asleep. This was bad, but the mava’s internal essence was supposed to be worse. Of course, we were mixing it with holy water which was unquestionably dropping the “pure evil” level. When it was fully diluted, you didn’t get any “feel” off of it at all. Just the initial stuff coming out of the hole.
“Father Coglin,” I said, walking over to my old confessor who was standing by the edge of one of the tanks. “Bit easier with help?”
“Do you know who that is?” Father Coglin asked quietly, gesturing with his chin at Father Madruga.
“That priest?” I said. “He’s one of the people my boss called—Father Madruga.”
“Monsignor Madruga. He’s Cuban,” Father Coglin said. “He was a priest when Castro took over. He had a way out but stayed behind to minister to his flock. He was horribly tortured by Castro’s people but refused to renounce his faith. Led an underground railroad to get people out until there was a definite kill order sent down against him. His junior priests and the surviving nuns had to more or less drag him to the boat. He literally had to be tied up to keep from returning. The scars are from where some of Castro’s torturers tossed gas in his face and set it on fire.”
“Jesus.” It’s worth noting that humans can be as bad as the things Hunters fight.
“Watch your tongue, Chad,” Father Coglin said. “Only in places and times where one is truly tested can you be sure of a person’s faith. For the rest it’s just words, to be believed or not. Only God knows the human heart. Monsignor Madruga is what every priest should aspire to be. As strong in faith as any human being on earth. Assured of sainthood. Except he’s apparently disappeared from the face of the Earth for the last few years and no one has known where he’s been.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. “In that case, very glad he’s here.”
“Time to suit up.” Earl radioed. “They’re through the shell and in the mava’s guts.”
We’d been told that it would be about several minutes before anything that they were drilling through reached the surface. So they had time to suit up before the mava gunk reached the drill site.
“Now we find out if this is what we think it is,” I said. “See you when we’re done, Father.”
“God will prevail this night, Chad,” Father Coglin said, making the sign of the cross. “Have faith.”
I headed for the drill rig. Since this was my brilliant idea, I was in charge of the crew and the Hunters around the hole. I wanted to be close when we broke through the shell to see just how bad this stuff was. And be in the circuit when we figured out what the Tibetans meant by “servants.”
“We’re through,” Frandsen said. Our geologist was all duded-up in a silver suit. “And we’re getting some really weird effects already. Stuff that wasn’t in the last drill.”
“Define weird,” I said.
“Drill head is in soft material but heating up way more than it should,” Al Gordon said. “And we’re getting spurious movement. Like there’s something hitting the string from the side.”
He pointed at the pipe that was the drill “string” and you could see it was jumping like something was hitting it.
“Is it going to break?” I asked.
“Don’t know. A thousand holes and I’ve never seen anything like that. Could crimp, yeah. But so far it’s holding. Just weird. Not sure what’s causing it. Could be something in the material we’re drilling has movement. Could be something in between.”
“What the hell?” one of the drillers yelled. “We got foam coming out!”
The mud, a mixture of various nontoxic chemicals, bentonite, and holy water, was now foaming. It smelled like…
“Kifo worm! Get your respirators on!” I shouted. Then I got on my radio. “This is Iron Hand at the drill. That’s kifo juice coming up. I can smell it. Incoming kifo!”
“It’s not going to be able to fit through the bore, is it?” Al asked.
“Hell if I know.” The borehole was about fourteen inches in diameter. The string took up six inches of that more or less in the middle. I wasn’t sure a kifo could get up the whole borehole much less past the string.
“We can’t keep it on track,” Frandsen said, looking at his readouts. “We’re getting a lot of anomalous movement. Something, and I’d say it’s your kifo worm, is banging the hell out of the string. Couple of hits. Stops. Couple more. From what I’m reading, it looks like they’re getting closer.”
“It’s sending up a pseudopod to find out who’s hurting it. Can you tell how far away?”
“Hang on,” Al said, starting to strip out of his suit.
“Careful,” I said. The stuff was foaming up even more when it hit the holy water being mixed into it, and giving off horrible smelling steam. The holy water was literally burning when it came in contact with evil. That explained the heat at the drill head. “Don’t touch the foam.”
“Ain’t gonna.” The upper part of Al’s silver suit was around his waist. He backed up onto the string and held up a hand to keep the driller from pushing forward. The string was still spinning but he put his hand on the string, carefully, and felt it. “Couple thousand feet at least. I can feel the impacts. They’re not hard. More like occasional soft pushes. I’d say you’re right. It’s trying to follow the string back to here. So what’re you gonna do about it? We can’t keep drilling if you’re shooting around my hole.”
I keyed my radio. “Boss, this is Hand. Kifo worm is working its way up the string to find the source of the attack. Two thousand feet and closing. May be a partial breakthrough at the string.”
“Got that,” Old Man Shackleford radioed back. Oh yeah. I said almost everybody had turned out for this. MHI had brought in the big guns. “So far there ain’t no reports of activity outside. Teams Two and Four, peel off and reinforce on the hole.”
The Hunters confirmed. If that kifo showed itself, it was in for a surprise.
“I can perhaps help,” a voice said over my shoulder.
It was another of the priests from the Secret Guard—Father Ferguson.
“The pseudopod will have to push its bulk up through the bore while being burned by holy water. Given the effect we are already seeing, I don’t see it doing so. However, if I am wrong, I can probably hold it at the bore opening.”
“With what, Father?” Gordon asked as he put his suit back on.
“The power of faith, young man,” Father Ferguson said. “This creature is ultimate evil. It burns from the mere touch of holy water. It cannot face the full holy power of God.”
“Well, Father, as you say.” Gordon hefted a .45-70 lever action. “You use the power of God. I’ll just shoot it, if you don’t mind.”
“As long as you pay mind to ricochets,” Father Ferguson said, smiling faintly. “I’m averse to friendly fire.”
“And I think we got mava juice,” I said, turning my face away with my hand over my nose.
The…stuff coming out of the borehole was now beyond foul. If the holy water had had any effect on it, the power had been spent in the long lift from the depths. Generally a gray-green to black, it was coming out in vile-smelling chunks and you could feel the evil coming off it in waves. I shook my head as my mind was assaulted by unclean ima
ges. It was like it was reaching into my brain and pulling out every sin I’d ever committed or thought about committing. If this was the remnant, post-cleansing essence of an Old One, I could see why a breakthrough would be bad on toast. Forget the “servants,” the zombies and wights and ghouls and vampires that would be called to it and wreak havoc in its unholy Name. Every human being in the range of its effect would act out every evil fantasy they’d ever had to the best of their ability. Total chaos would reign in seconds.
“That is quite unpleasant,” Father Ferguson said, apparently unperturbed.
I looked over at Al who was looking at the weapon in his hand.
“Al,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Just put it down.”
I didn’t know who he had enough of a problem with to want to kill. But I’d found myself fingering my silver-loaded .45 and contemplating that Earl, who I still blamed for the loss of my last team, was nearby and possibly wouldn’t see it coming. I knew what was going on, though. I’d faced something similar with a vampire one time. I knew how to fight it. It was hitting Gordon bad, though. The silver suits and respirators were useless against this stuff.
“Shit, shit, shit…” the driller was saying.
“Give me the weapon, Mr. Gordon,” Father Ferguson said calmly. He laid his hand on Al’s shoulder and placed the other hand on the weapon. “Don’t let this power take you. You are a good person, Mr. Gordon. This thing’s power is not greater than God’s. Feel the power of God upon you, Mr. Gordon. Feel the sin fall from your mind.”
Gordon blinked at that and slowly handed the priest the .45-70.
“That’s better,” Father Ferguson said, setting the rifle on the desk. “We are here on behalf of God, against which no evil can prevail. All of you! Fight the evil! Push it from your hearts and trust in God!”
This thing had to be put to bed permanently. Forget “strange aeons” and shit. It had to die now. That was the one dark part of me that I was willing to let loose at that moment. The sheer desire to rend this evil thing to permanent, unquestionable death.