Barb holstered the pistol and whipped out her katana, taking a cat stance.
“Lord,” she muttered. “I think we’re going to need a little help here.”
Randell continued firing burst after burst into the monster that was closing on him, backing up as he realized he was coming in range of its tentacles. But the high-velocity 5.56-millimeter rounds didn’t seem to have any effect.
As he ran out of his second magazine he, too, drew his sidearm, an issue. 40 Sig Sauer, and began pumping rounds into the beast. Finally, it stopped.
“Right again,” he muttered, dropping the magazine and inserting another. He stepped forward to try to help the other agents, when his FLIR suddenly blazed in white-out.
Barb waded into the mass of creatures, the five-hundred-year-old katana slicing through tentacles, eyes, mouths and bodies like a blender.
Two agents were down, one of them clearly dead. Wondering why the firing had stopped, she charged across the lawn to the fallen agent and sliced the creature that was on him in half, narrowly missing the agent himself.
Spinning in place, she saw that most of the line was shielding its eyes and backing up.
“Lord help them,” she muttered. “I hoped the FLIRs would work.”
Hers was working fine; the backyard of the house was lit like midday. Which was why she saw Janea dragged off her feet and towards the cave by one of the creatures.
Janea was trying to hack down one-handed with her axe, but the thing simply wrapped her arms and legs in tentacles and carted her off on its back.
“Oh, that ain’t happening,” Barb said. “ Shoot these things!”
But the remaining creatures clustered around her, blocking her way, no longer attacking the FBI agents and concentrating entirely on her. She suddenly found herself beset by a flood of the monsters, tentacles closing in from every direction.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s dance.”
Randell ripped off his FLIR, despite knowing that it was probably going to mean Thorazine for the rest of his life, and looked around.
The reason for the flare-out was immediately apparent. In the middle of the lawn, surrounded by beings out of nightmare, was the “soccer mom.” She was glowing a white so bright it was hard to look at with his bare eyes, and turning the monsters around her into sushi. Strangely enough, as horrible as the things were, he felt an immense peace and comfort. He just didn’t care that they were monsters from beyond any nightmare. He wasn’t sure the feeling would last, but it was good enough for now.
“Take off the FLIRs!” Randell shouted. “There’s light! Switch to forty caliber!”
Randell chose one of the monsters, and by emptying a full magazine into its center of mass, he managed to kill it. As other agents joined him they slowly reduced the crowd around Barb.
“Thanks for the help,” the ichor-covered Mrs. Everette said as the last of the creatures fell. “Gotta go.”
“What?” Randell shouted as the housewife sprinted for the back fence.
“One of them’s got Janea!”
It wasn’t until then that the agent realized the redhead was gone.
“Shit,” he muttered, sprinting after her. “ALICE,” he shouted, using the acronym for post-battle cleanup. “Take care of it!”
As he cleared the fence, he heard one of the agents saying, “Was she glowing?”
By the bright light that was coming from somewhere, Barb could see the thing that had Janea. And it was nearly to the cave.
She sped up, dodging through trees with a grace she normally used for heavy traffic.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, actually using Janea to bound over the thing and block the way to the cave.
“Nice to see you,” Janea said. She was tapping at one of the tentacles with her axe and looking thoroughly pissed. “Sort of. You’re doing your glowy thing and it’s whiting out my goggles.”
The thing was clearly in a quandary. It had a bunch of its tentacles wrapped around Janea, and more were necessary for propulsion. It tried to free up some of the ones holding Janea, and the redhead was able to nearly struggle free. Then it tried to use some of its ground tentacles and it nearly toppled over.
“Uff,” Janea said as she was tossed through the air.
All of those tentacles free, the thing attacked.
“Thank you,” Barb said, cutting off a half-dozen tentacles at once and driving the glowing katana deep into the belly of the beast. “Eat God’s power, you hell spawn.”
“You know,” Janea said, sprawled out on the ground. “It’s not exactly a sin, but it’s extremely embarrassing for an Asatru to get captured.”
“Be glad that’s all that happened,” Barb said. “Did you get any of them?”
“Two,” Janea admitted. “Not that I want these things as my servants in Valhalla. Freya, please note, I’d really prefer not to have these things as servants in Valhalla.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Your little firefight woke up the neighbors. We’re already getting queries from CNN, and it’s the middle of the night. The Director is not going to be a happy camper tomorrow.”
Assistant Deputy Director George Grosskopf was, for his sins, the FBI official in charge of managing Special Circumstances. What he was currently trying to figure out was how to manage the cover-up on this one.
“This may be too big for a cover-up, alas,” Germaine said over the videoconference. “And please note that the Great Powers are in agreement on maintaining confidentiality. It is possible that They may intervene to prevent a widening hysteria. But we cannot depend upon that. Their ways are ineffable.”
“Seismic sounding,” Janea said. “I just thought of it on the way over to the trailer. There’s a kind of seismic sounding system that uses a series of explosions, sonic something or another. Trot out a geologist to spin it as a way to map the cave system.”
“We need to clear this whole area,” Barb said. “There are probably more of these things. And what’s the word on our caving team?”
“The military has found a few personnel who are able. And willing to keep quiet about it,” ADD Grosskopf said. “They’re also bringing special weaponry. Refresh me on the thing with the rounds. The rifle didn’t work as well as a pistol? That sounds backwards.”
“Well, sir, the M-4’s not a real killer, sir,” Randell said. “Never has been.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Barb said. “And I have a theory. But that’s all it is.”
“Go,” the ADD said.
“These things are mostly a mass of tentacles with a very small body,” Barb said. “And they regenerate like mad. Even if you hit the body, you don’t kill them unless you break it up. And the same goes for the tentacles. You have to do a lot of damage. High velocity rounds kill and wound primarily through hydrostatic shock. These things don’t respond at all to hydrostatic shock. You have to really chop them up. The sword actually worked better than my pistol, you just have to get way too close for comfort. Bottom line is, the bigger the round, the better. Coupled with the more rounds you can put on target, the better. I’d suggest that the SF bring a really good forty-five SMG with them.”
“I’ll pass that on,” Grosskopf said. “The only one that comes to mind is a Thompson. There are some newer ones but most of them aren’t all that great.”
“I’d hate to have to work a Thompson through the caves,” Barb said with a sigh. “But if that’s what we have to work with, that’s what we’ll have to work with. God’s ways are, as Augustus said, ineffable.”
“Any thoughts on something that will allow us to clear the entire area and not be worse news, or as bad as, an invasion of demonic entities?” the ADD asked. “So far we’ve floated a meteor strike, radioactive release, and a spill of poison gas that was on its way to be destroyed. None of them are considered politically palatable enough. The Powers That Be would rather tell the truth than any of the above.”