“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.”