CHAPTER 11
Before we could deal with the hag, we got another call. Southern California was definitely heating up.
Something had woken up while construction workers were digging up the earth to add new rides at an amusement park up in the Santa Clarita Valley. A worker had been killed before the creature slipped back beneath the ground. Per the new contract MHI had with the county, we were obliged to deal with it.
Given the description of the monster in question—“a large, snakelike thing”—we’d need all our capable Hunters for this one. Which meant Rhino, still nursing a broken leg, was stuck back at headquarters, still angrily manning the radio. Since they’d blown up his van, we didn’t have as much hauling capacity as before so we took three cars. The next biggest trunk belonged to Alex’s beast of an Oldsmobile, so he got to transport the explosives. I told him to pray his deathtrap didn’t get rearended on the way to the job. My black Chevelle was next, so I got the extra guns, ammo, and a bag of grenades, just in case. Kimpton’s little car didn’t offer much cargo space, but got better mileage than Melanie’s station wagon, so the duo rode up together. Justin still wasn’t speaking to me much, and after one exploding car incident too many this month, Lizz didn’t want to ride in the Oldsmobile of death. So Justin accepted his fate of riding with our excitable nerd for the hour-plus drive. Once we all had maps and directions, Lizz climbed into my car, and our convoy headed northwest toward the Santa Clarita Valley.
Justin had mostly avoided me since the incident behind the broadcasting station at Mount Lee. I knew he was freaked out by my father’s avatar—and really, who wouldn’t be? Everybody had taken it differently, but for whatever reason Justin was acting like I’d somehow betrayed them all. We needed to trust each other for this team to work. If Justin couldn’t have faith in me to watch his back during a firefight, then he wasn’t going to be focused on killing monsters and staying alive. We’d been busy, but I really needed to talk to him one-on-one after this job was done. We needed to have it out or one of us needed to transfer to a different team.
Kimpton wasn’t as bad, but he had been suspicious to start with. It was like he went through life expecting everyone to let him down anyway. There was a lot of anger built up in the poor kid. My guess was that most of it was left over from Vietnam. He’d come back from the war completely disillusioned, spit on, abused by people he’d thought were his friends before he’d been drafted. It boggled my mind why anyone would blame the soldiers. If anything, they should be blaming the ones who sent them there in the first place, but . . . people are strange.
Dealing with people is a lot more complicated than monsters sometimes.
It was a long drive, so I hashed out plans with Lizz. She was great for bouncing ideas off of. Though she hated the fact that I’d had to call the MCB to tell them we’d found the hag. More specifically, I’d had to tell Agent Franks. Killing the thing and collecting the massive bounty should still be our responsibility. But if they found out I’d hidden that from them, MHI would have been in deep shit with the government. Besides, this meant somebody else could keep an eye on Siren’s Last Call while we were hanging out at amusement parks.
Santa Clarita Valley was unincorporated territory still, but there were housing developments going up around the south end of the valley. It was a pretty barren place overall to live, but if one could appreciate the aesthetic beauty of rugged California before it was settled, this area would be ideal. Given the current sprawl of Los Angeles and how fast the population there was growing, I figured it wouldn’t be but ten, fifteen more years, tops, before the Santa Clarita Valley was nothing but homes and strip malls, and the cities to tax them.
Alex’s enthusiasm must have been contagious, because cresting the hill and spotting the large, rainbow-colored tower off in the distance got my heart pumping a little. There was something neat about a place designed to create joy and laughter for people of all ages. Sure, I was an old, jaded monster killer, but that was just kind of neat.
We weren’t supposed to go into the park itself. According to Alex, there weren’t a lot of rides done yet, and the problem was in the area that was still under construction. We were directed to a rear entrance that took us behind a large hill, away from the main park. Due to the “accident,” the park hadn’t opened for the day just yet, but apparently delays happened all the time and the park visitors were still patiently waiting to get in. The line wasn’t superlong, but it was still a decent crowd out at the main gate.
We parked where we were directed, well out of sight of the witnesses, and my team started kitting up.
“I wonder why nobody’s chasing those people away?” Melanie asked.
“It’s probably something small enough they just assume we’ll handle it fast, and then they can open like normal and start making money,” Alex answered.
“That’s optimistic of them.” Melanie pulled her long, blond hair back into a ponytail, something I’d not seen her do before. Seeing my interest, she explained. “Dinner plans. If this takes too long, I won’t have time to shower.”
“Nobody’ll say anything about you smelling like gunpowder or anything?”
“I’ll just say I went out into the desert and did some shooting for fun. Some guys find that hot,” she replied before looking at the surrounding hillsides. “Eh. It’s almost desert here.”
Just then, a burly man with an unshaven face walked over to where we were gathered. He looked around at us, the skepticism clear on his rough features. He’d clearly been expecting something a little more . . . military. After a moment he sighed.
“You the hunter folk?” He looked especially close at tiny Lizz as he asked this.
“Yeah,” I nodded and stuck out my hand. “Chloe Mendoza. Nice to meet you.”
“I don’t know why, but I was expecting a lot of men with even more guns,” the foreman admitted as he shook my hand. He had remarkable calluses, which told me quite a bit about his work ethic. Probably a good boss not afraid to do the work he asked his people to.
“Don’t worry, sir. We’ve got plenty of guns. We try not to drag them out until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Sheriff said you handle this stuff a lot.” When he caught sight of Justin and Kimpton, I could see the foreman relax a little, as if these were the real hunters of the group. It made the client feel better to see some seriously tough-looking dudes, and it made me a little irritated at Rhino for being stupid and breaking his leg, because that man looked like he’d killed one of everything. Things would be a lot easier if he were around. Maybe.
For a moment, I was reminded just how well Special Task Force Manticore worked together during World War II, and how nobody had ever doubted our capabilities. It’d been almost all men in my unit, except for me. Nobody ever looked at them and wondered when the pros were going to show up. Of course, when one of your team members was a massive half ogre who looked like he could toss a Sherman tank a hundred yards, not a single person dared question your viability in combat.
“So what’s our critter?” I asked, shaking off the memories.
“Big, black thing with lots of teeth, was burrowed underground,” the man said with a wave of his hand. “Scariest damn thing I ever saw. Ate five of my crew before we bailed on the site.”
“Five?” They’d only said one on the phone. “We were told it hadn’t moved since. Is that still the case?”
“Yeah. I think it’s taking a nap.”
“Big, dark-colored, underground, lots of teeth, sleeps while it digests. Alex ain’t the only one who can read a book,” Justin said. Ignoring me, he glanced over at Kimpton. “Five bucks says it’s a grinder.”
“Five dollars?” Kimpton looked over at his friend before nodding. “Sure, why not?”
“Seriously doubt it’s a grinder, Justin,” Alex interjected. “I wouldn’t make that bet.”
“You know what? Let’s make it ten, since the nerd thinks I’m wrong,” Justin said.
“Naw, I’m good with just taking your five,” Kimpton stated. “You’re on.”
“Afraid of losing ten bucks?” Justin egged him on.
“I’m worried you don’t have ten to lose,” Kimpton countered. “You’ll need the gas money. If you can find a station out here that has some, I mean.”
“I’m telling you guys, grinders aren’t native to California,” Alex said.
“Neither are Ewaipanoma except we blew up one with the van. Fine, five bucks.”
“You’re on,” Kimpton stated, and they shook on it.
Alex shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.”
“Anyway . . . ” I cut them off and turned back to the site foreman. “Can you take us to a spot where we can see the thing without getting too close?”
“Sure. That way.” The foreman gave us directions but didn’t want to go with us. We went through the back gate and up a steep hill. Lizz had problems keeping up, so Justin hung back and volunteered to carry her gun case. On the way up, Alex and Kimpton were gawking at all the rides they could see in the distance. A tram car on tracks looked impressive until I realized it was nothing more than a people mover leading to the top of the hill. One of the shops along the path was barbecuing chicken nearby and it made my mouth water. I’d forgotten to eat anything that morning except for some gas station coffee, which should have been illegal to sell since it was more like molasses in a cup than anything else. Lizz had finished two cups of the stuff and proclaimed it the best coffee she’d had in weeks, which caused me to make a mental note to get my friend some psychiatric help. Or new taste buds.
Straddling the top of the hill was the large, rainbow-painted tower we’d seen when we first arrived. The forestry service used towers this like as fire watch stations all across the state, though they fell into disuse as the sprawl of Los Angeles reached them. The park had kept the foundations after purchasing the land and proceeded to build their giant tower on top of it. The height allowed for a complete view of the entire Santa Clarita Valley, as well as parts of the San Fernando Valley in the distance. It also gave us an unobstructed view of the construction site where the monster was.
Once we were up at the top of the hill—with Lizz swearing the entire way—we quickly spotted what had caused the call in the first place. I used my binoculars to get a better look at the monster below. I felt a little bad for Justin. I passed the binoculars over to Alex, because if anybody would recognize the precise species we were looking at, it would be him.
“Holy crap . . . that thing is big.” Alex whistled. There was a huge smile on his face as he handed the binoculars to Justin. The former Marine peered through them and started to frown. Alex continued. “That’s not a grinder, though, is it? Justin? Any comment? Nothing? Hey, Chloe? I’m pretty sure the thing which clearly isn’t a grinder is big enough to swallow a car whole.”
It was a snake. Probably the biggest damn snake any of us would ever see in our lifetimes. It was thicker than the steel beam it was wrapped around. Looking at its head, Alex wasn’t exaggerating, and it probably could fit a car in there. At least a compact. Maybe. It was hard to tell from here—with it being coiled around itself instead of stretched out, I guessed it had to be eighty or a hundred feet long. That was one big snake.
“You sure it’s not a grinder?” Justin adjusted the focus on the binos. It was clear he was stalling. “Aww, come on. The foreman said it was a giant black thing with lots of teeth. It’s only got two fangs. And that’s not black. I’m black! That ain’t even a dark brown! It’s . . . warm beige, maybe!”
“How much we getting paid for a giant snake?” Lizz asked.
“The PUFF always depends on the type and size of the giant serpent.” Alex got a thoughtful expression. “That one looks like a rattlesnake. See the tail? I bet when it rattles the noise could shatter our eardrums. Like standing next to a million tambourines going off at the same time. Given its size? I’d say mid five figures, easy.”
“Not too shabby,” I replied, except we’d not been prepared to deal with anything quite like this. “How do we kill it?”
“Oh, I’ve got just the thing,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together. He looked positively gleeful, which made me nervous. “If I use up all the explosives in my trunk, I don’t have to worry about driving them home!”
“Let’s not forget the important thing here,” Kimpton said as he stuck his hand out. “Pay me, sucker.”
“Can’t believe I lost five bucks.” Justin opened his wallet and passed a crisp bill over to Kimpton, who accepted it in stony silence. There might have been a slight smile on his face, but since he was always gracious in his victories, it was probably just the sun playing tricks on my eyes. “That’s some bullshit right there.”
“Focus, boys. Lizz? Can you put a round through its head and kill it so Alex doesn’t accidentally blow up half the state?”
“Maybe if I had some sort of anti-tank weapon. It’s an easy shot, but the skull on that thing has to be thicker than anything I’ve ever seen before. My little old bullets are just gonna annoy it.”
“What happened to the 90mm we had in inventory?”
“It was in Rhino’s van,” Kimpton said.
Oh yeah. Oops.
“I brought enough explosives to kill the thing,” Alex assured me. He looked a little too eager to play bombmaker. This made me doubly nervous, because in my experience, guys who really wanted to blow things up that badly were one slipup away from vaporizing themselves and their city block. “I mean, I brought enough to take down a building or three. Let me blow it up, Chloe. Please?”
“I know you brought enough,” I acknowledged. I wasn’t ready to give in just yet. “What about fire?”
“And burn down half of Southern California in the process?” Melanie said and shook her head. “Look how dry the brush is. Those new EPA feds are annoying and love whining and fining.”
“Can the National Guard call in some sort of training exercise and use artillery?” I continued to ignore Alex and instead asked Justin. He stared at me in stony silence before shrugging. As much as Justin was upset with me, a Marine always knew the mission came first.
“In a few days, maybe,” Lizz answered. “Calling in something like that is MCB territory. They’d have to do it. And at that point they just cut us out and we don’t get paid at all.”
“What about a little bomb . . . ?” Alex whined. “Kimpton, back me up here. You were a demo guy!”
“How much dynamite did you bring, anyway?” Kimpton asked.
“Ten ten-pound cases.”
“I can’t believe I rode with yo crazy ass,” Justin muttered.
We were running out of options. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for my old contacts in the IDF right now. One phone call and I could call in an airstrike. No more snake. If we left to get bigger weapons, the serpent might have moved on. Or eaten more people. Or slithered halfway to Los Angeles. That would be a sight. Santa Clarita Valley wasn’t very populated, but there were civilians nearby. A snake this size could be seen all the way from I-5 if it started moving. And the reason we got these jobs was because our clients knew we offered a fast and discreet service.
Kimpton had taken the binoculars. “Damn. That’s one fat snake. I wonder how it tastes?”
“Ew!” Melanie grimaced. “You’re so gross. You’d probably eat octopus.”
“Adobong pusit is really good. I mean, it’s squid and not octopus, but you should try it sometime,” Kimpton added for good measure, pushing his hair out of his face.
“Eww!”
“How the hell that putz not recognize a snake when he saw one?” Justin asked, still grumpy about losing his five dollars.
“A bomb, Chloe. Just a small one. Think about it,” Alex continued to beg. “Please?”
“Enough,” I snapped, because I’d noticed the snake was starting to move. The need to kill something was strong in my heart. War drums, beating. No. I shook my head. We needed to kill this thing, and fast.
I looked over at Alex, who had the face of a hopeful little boy on the first night of Hanukah.
“Okay, blow it up.”
“Sweet.”
“Blow up the serpent, and not the entire park!”
“Fine, Mom. Sheesh.”
“And no secondary fires either.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Alex and Kimpton can put together a bomb, but how do we intend to deliver it?” Lizz asked.
“I . . . got an idea,” Justin said, his eyes drifting back toward the barbeque shack.
* * *
Watching Alex and Kimpton work together to build a bomb was like mixing an overly complicated drink—one part giddy schoolboy, one part seasoned professional who wanted to keep all his fingers, stirred—not shaken—with a hundred pounds of high explosive, five buckets of chicken gizzards and blood splashed around, and one borrowed golf cart, courtesy of the park staff.
Alex’s constant giggling was kind of disturbing.
I went off to hammer out some of details with the site foreman, who was still so angry about his employees getting eaten that he said he’d be happy to deal with any bomb damage. In fact, if we made a big enough crater, they could amend the plans and put in a lake. Fuck that snake.
When I came back, Justin was having a quiet conversation with Melanie away from the others. They didn’t hear my approach, and with my better than normal hearing I caught some of what they were saying. Melanie was much easier to listen in on, since her voice kept rising and falling as she grew more irritated with him.
“I don’t care what you think. Earl Harbinger trusts her. Rhino trusts her. Lizz trusts her. So you need to trust her.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” Melanie countered hotly. “There’s no way we can function as a team if you don’t.”
“Then she shouldn’t have lied to us.”
“Gah! She didn’t lie, she just didn’t volunteer everything about herself. Big difference. Omission isn’t lying.”
“You sound like a lawyer . . . stop dipping in my Kool-Aid.”
“Hey, guys.” I interrupted their conversation from far enough away to be polite. They both looked over at me. Justin was clearly bothered still, while Melanie seemed mad at him. Great. My amazing teambuilding skills had done one heck of a job . . . tearing it apart. Not for the first time did I silently blame Marco for all of this, because if he’d been here, he would have squashed this before it got to this point. Maybe.
Or not.
“We’re just sorting a few things out,” Melanie replied. I nodded slowly as Justin threw his hands up in disgust. Turning, he walked away. She didn’t bother trying to stop him, so I let him go.
Meanwhile, the giant serpent seemed to be enjoying the warmth of the metal support beam it had curled around, the earlier violence and destruction apparently forgotten while it snoozed after its midmorning snack. The hole it had emerged from was right in the middle of the excavation site. I idly wondered which ride was going to be put in here. From the looks of the beams, it was a big one.
Where had this damned thing come from? Giant snakes were weird and rare. It could have been hibernating underground for centuries. Luckily for us, there weren’t any special rules pertaining to these things. Were they magical? We had no clue. My working theory was that they were just big, dumb reptiles. They weren’t protected. Fish and Game wasn’t going to make us sedate it and drive it to North Dakota. When Hunters found one, it was shoot, shovel, and shut up.
Which, frankly, was rather refreshing.
Lizz had taken position on top of a row of nearby porta potties, her rifle trained on the head of the giant serpent. It was highly unlikely that she would be able to kill the thing, but if it moved she could possibly take out its eyes and blind it. Considering how tough these things were, I didn’t have much faith there. Plus, being blind might cause it to thrash and panic, which could cause more harm than good.
Alex and Kimpton worked surprisingly well together. I’d expected more machismo or posturing between them, but Alex took a back seat to Kimpton’s real-life expertise when it came to the bombmaking, while the latter listened to Alex’s book learning when it came to odd monsters and how to properly kill them.
Alex had pointed out that most rattlesnakes were ambush hunters, which meant they’d be lazy and wait until something stumbled in its path. It would bite them, then follow slowly along until the prey dropped dead from the venom. To encourage our giant serpent to eat the bomb the crazy duo were making, Justin grabbed buckets of guts, blood, and bits from the park’s food shacks. It had to have looked suspicious as hell, as they had no idea what was going on in the construction zone, but those employees had been told to shut up and cooperate. He’d used that nasty mess to paint the golf cart.
It was good thinking on Justin’s part, and I told him so. He simply grunted and carried on with his gruesome work. I watched in silence for a few moments before I decided I needed to say something.
“I’m sorry.”
He paused in the midst of applying chicken gizzards to the hood of the golf cart and looked my way. The anger was still there, but he did his best to keep it from showing on his face, even though it burned through in his eyes. “Okay?”
“Look, I’ve been dealing with this for a long time. Not everyone reacts in a good way when they find out. The more people I tell, the harder it makes my life. I felt that it was easier to work with you guys first, and get to know the team, instead of making it complicated. I guess that was a bad call. So again, I’m sorry.”
“Alright.”
“Look, Justin, I’m trying to apologize here.”
He didn’t reply, instead focusing on his gruesome task. I left him to it, because if I stuck around with his bullheaded stubbornness it probably wasn’t going to end well for either of us.
I checked on Lizz, who looked rather comfortable on top of the porta potties. If the smell of the johns and our sacrificial golf cart were bothering her, she wasn’t letting on. I knew she’d seen some shit while in St. Louis, but her blasé attitude toward this kind of thing had a calming effect on me. My frustration toward Justin faded as we spoke.
“Ya think we could talk Ray into buying me a proper elephant rifle on company funds?”
“Earl did send us with a bazooka.”
She tilted her head slightly. “I never needed anything bigger than my regular trusty old rifle in St. Louis. But then, we never had a giant rattlesnake show up. Undead, sure. City was full of them—ghouls, wights, hordes of the dang things.”
I’d only run into a wight once. The idea of them being a common thing gave me chills. “How’s the snake?”
“Snoozing still.” She checked it through her scope again. “Looks pretty content. I hope it didn’t get full on the construction crew and doesn’t want the blood cart.”
A few minutes later, Alex called out, “We’re ready.”
I looked over at the converted golf cart and grimaced. While Alex and Kimpton had gotten the bomb secured into the back, Justin had painted blood flames on the front of the golf cart. He’d also used a nailgun he’d found somewhere to pin on some chicken wings and trash bags filled with other disgusting things.
Unfortunately, Justin decided he really wanted to share.
“When the snake bites it, all that blood and gizzards’ll pop open and give it a treat. When the bomb goes off, the treat gets spicy.”
“I hope it does more than that,” I told him as I gave the other boys a look. They seemed almost too pleased with themselves, which made that little spot in my guts tingle nervously. The sensation was similar to the we’re going to die feeling I always got when plans were about to go sideways. The others must have shared my apprehension because nobody replied. “Are we far enough back?”
“We should be out of the blast radius,” Kimpton said before frowning, and ticking off numbers on his fingers. “I think.”
“If y’all excuse me, I’m gonna hide behind something more solid.” Lizz quietly slid down from the porta potties. Shouldering her rifle, she and I moved farther away from the site without another word. Alex, after consulting quietly with Kimpton, joined us.
There was a heavy construction excavator nearby that I took refuge behind. Lizz climbed up into the abandoned cabin for a better view. It was open air, so she took her rifle along, just in case. “This is gonna be great.”
It was almost as if Earl had purposefully given me a gang of extremely violent children. We were going to have a talk the next time I saw him.
“All set,” Kimpton called out as he finished taping the steering wheel of the golf cart in place. He’d prepositioned it so the front end of the cart was pointed directly at the snake. The road down was more of a dirt path, but it was straight and led almost directly past where the serpent was. Given the immensity of the beast it would be a miracle if he missed. He was using a cinder block to hold down the gas pedal.
The engine of the golf cart didn’t sound like it had enough power to make it to the snake, much less carry all the weight from the bomb, but the guys had faith in their tiny kamikaze vehicle of death.
“Clear the cart,” Kimpton instructed. He had a radio detonator, and there was a nice, long spool of wire ready to be played out as the cart moved toward the snake. That way if one method failed, we had a backup.
With a final check to make certain the cart was lined up properly and the spool of wire prepared, Kimpton gently set the cinder block down on the gas petal. The golf cart immediately lurched forward and began slowly making its way down toward the snoozing rattler. Kimpton was watching the spool of wire carefully.
Closer. Closer.
Kimpton extended the antenna on his first detonator.
“We’ve got its attention,” Justin informed us. “Look.”
The giant serpent’s head had slowly lifted off the ground and was watching the golf cart lazily cruise along in its direction. I really wished we’d picked one with a little more get-up-and-go, but a Hunter worked with what they had. A few pieces of chicken fell off during the transit, but the two most important parts of the plan appeared to be intact still: the bag of blood and guts on the top, and the giant makeshift bomb.
The sound of a million angry hornets filled our ears as the snake’s tail began to shake rapidly. Its tongue flicked out to taste the air. The buzzing grew loud enough to hurt my ears. Alex began to swear.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It thinks it’s in danger,” he explained. “They don’t use the rattle when hunting.”
“Will it bite the cart?”
“Oh yeah,” Alex confirmed. “It just won’t eat it.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
“I can time it to blow when it bites the cart,” Kimpton said, holding the detonator in his hands.
“Ever seen a snake strike before? They’re fast, almost faster than the eye can see,” Alex stated, a frown on his face. “I’ve got no idea how fast this one will be.”
We all stared at the golf cart as it rumbled merrily along, completely unconcerned or aware of its fate. Timing was everything. Too early, and the blast might not be close enough to kill the snake. Too late, and its strike could disable the bomb.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Kimpton put his finger on the button.
The buzzing sound somehow grew even louder. Even though we were a good distance away and wearing ear protection, it was bad enough that I could feel it in my teeth. It was a good thing we’d demanded that the nearby area be evacuated, because everybody within miles had to be hearing this.
The snake’s strike was fast, but not nearly as fast as I’d expected it to be. It was still quick, though, and considering it was bigger than a city bus, something that big flinging itself was absolutely terrifying. Fortunately, our brave little golf cart was inanimate or else it would have screamed in fear and tried to run away.
The snake’s bite completely destroyed Justin’s giblet bag. Blood sprayed as each of the two-meter-long fangs punctured through the plastic roof of the golf cart.
Kimpton hit the button.
Nothing happened.
The ride must have jostled something loose. The electric engine of the golf cart gave a high-pitched whine before giving up the ghost. The wheels stopped turning and our bomb package delivery system was officially dead. I could hear something sizzling, and it took me a moment to realize the snake’s venom was so highly corrosive it was eating away at the plastic of the ruined cart.
“Plan B!” Kimpton squatted down next to the spool, took the bare ends of the wire, and struck them to a waiting battery. He looked up hopefully, and when it still wasn’t exploding, said, “Oh shit.”
Lizz was watching through her scope. “The strike knocked the wire out! The wire’s on the ground.”
There wasn’t a Plan C, beyond shoot it a whole lot, but before I could give the command to open fire on the snake and hope for the best, Justin shouted at Melanie.
“Lighter! Give me your lighter!”
“What?”
“Fucking lighter! Give!” he shouted as the sound of ten thousand angry hornets rose once more.
The snake, clearly irritated, also seemed a bit confused by the sudden turn of events. The long tongue of the serpent kept flickering in and out as it struggled to grasp why the golf cart it had bitten was still there and not running away. It struck a second time, with similar results—only this time there were more golf cart pieces flying around in place of drumsticks and gizzards. The giant head reared back for a third strike but it hesitated, confused. The horn of the golf cart gave a sad little beep as a drumstick slid off the roof and landed on the steering wheel. The snake hissed at the sound.
Nobody ever said giant serpents were particularly smart.
Melanie tossed her lighter to Justin, who snatched it out of the air as he ran, his eyes frantically searching for something, until they locked onto the porta johns. Sprinting over, he grabbed the latch on the closest door and yanked it open, then fumbled around inside for a moment before backing out, holding a large roll of toilet paper.
I realized now what he was going to try . . . and just how stupid it was. There was zero chance a flaming roll of toilet paper could be thrown to hit the golf cart from such a distance. Unfortunately, I was wrong again, since Justin had no intention of simply throwing a flaming roll at the golf cart and hoping for some luck; instead, he started running toward the damned thing.
“Fire’s not gonna work!” Kimpton shouted at us, his voice barely audible to me over the thunderous and constant buzzing. “Stick the wire back in the cap!”
“Wait! Stop!” I shouted at Justin, except there was no way he could hear us over that damned rattle, and he continued running toward the bomb, and the dude was fast. “I’ll fix the bomb. The second we’re clear, hit it!” Swearing up a storm, I went after Justin. This was an incredibly bad idea.
Justin hauled ass downhill, sliding to a stop about twenty feet from the golf cart. That close the buzzing from the rattler had to be absolutely deafening. He flipped the Zippo open and tried to light the roll of toilet paper, only the damned lighter wouldn’t light. Catching up with him, I considered the paper for a moment before deciding it was a waste of time. Kimpton knew what he was doing, so if he said setting it on fire wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t work. The wire needed to be reattached. But would it blow up the moment I did it?
No idea. It didn’t matter. The snake was super pissed and moving, so it was kill it now or a whole lot of innocent people were going to be in danger. The snake had to die.
Steeling myself, I sprinted past Justin to the fallen detonator line. The snake’s wide head turned and it looked at me, tongue flickering in and out as it tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Dodging left to right, I tried not to stay in a straight line in case the serpent decided to try and take a bite out of me. I was faster than most, true. But was I faster than the RV-sized rattlesnake?
“Stupid fucking lighter!” I barely heard Justin bellow in frustration somewhere behind me.
The line had landed only a few feet away from the ruined golf cart. I kept a wary eye on the pissed-off snake while I snatched it out of the dirt.
When working with the Kidon, one learns many interesting tricks to the trade. Killing monsters was, after all, their real forte. However, the one thing I’d actively avoided was bombmaking. Honestly, it scared me. “Elegant bombs for inelegant beings” might as well have been their unofficial motto. Sure, I always appreciated the end results. The bigger, the better. Especially when dealing with the myriad crop of monsters that always popped up in the Middle East. But building one? Not my cup of sachlav.
However, Kimpton and Alex’s hasty bomb wasn’t that complicated, and even I could see exactly where the cord had fallen out. The question remained: would it blow up when I stuck it back in?
There was no time like the present to find out. “Justin, get down!”
I reattached it . . . and didn’t blow up.
Hooray.
The angry snake just looked down at me unblinking, like, Are you fucking kidding me?
Justin came running up to me, Zippo in one hand and toilet paper in the other, looking absolutely ridiculous. I opened up my mouth to yell at him for his own stupidity but instinct shrieked at me that the snake was striking. I threw myself against Justin, taking us both out of the way as the massive head whistled past. Fangs dug a trench in the ground where we’d just been. Venom squirted out. Oddly enough, it smelled like cucumbers.
Justin and I both scrambled to our feet and ran as the snake’s head lifted, bits of dirt and gravel raining from its mouth onto us. We needed to find someplace safe from the blast so Kimpton could hurry and nuke this thing.
I spotted the original snake hole the same moment that Justin did. We shared a look, and immediately made a break for it. The snake, clearly confused by potential prey running toward it, reared up higher, and we were in its shadow.
Deep inside, the nagualii pushed against my control in eager anticipation. It loved when I was in dangerous situations. The likelier I was to die, the more I needed it, but I’d rather die than let the monster out. One day the nagualii might win, but today wasn’t going to be that day.
Legs pumping as fast as they could go, we got away from the cart, and dove into the hole just as the snake’s body came crashing down. It slammed into the earth, only we were still falling. And oh shit. Falling.
Flailing into the dark, we suddenly hit the ground. I landed on my feet and rolled. Justin belly-flopped, and the only reason he didn’t break bones was that the ground was remarkably squishy. It wasn’t like diving into a pool of water. More like Jell-O.
Hot, sticky, wet . . . Jell-O.
Laying there gasping, I looked toward the light above, except it was immediately blocked by the head of a very angry super snake, which was probably wondering what we were doing inside its house.
Kimpton must have pushed the button.
There was a thunderous roar. The ground shook, and we were instantly covered in a shower of falling dirt and snake blood.
The two of us lay there, eyes closed, breath held, as we got splattered and pelted.
The ground beneath us was soft but at the same time, hot. Absurdly hot. I inhaled a mouthful of dust and began to cough uncontrollably. There was so much dust and blood and chaos that I had no idea what was going on anymore.
My eyelids cracked open. It should have been pretty dark this far down the snake hole, but light was streaming in from above, because the explosion had made the hole even bigger, caving it in around us. Then I realized that most of me was buried in soft dirt, and I began to thrash, trying to get myself free.
I had a vague recollection of where Justin had landed, and when I looked over, he was totally buried beneath under at least a foot of dirt. “Shit!” I got myself free, rolled over, and started digging desperately. My fingernails hit chest, and then I traced that up to his neck, found his head, and started trying to shove dirt out of the way so he could breathe.
Justin came up gasping like I’d just saved him from drowning. “Jesus!”
“You okay?”
“Yeah!” He wiped the dirt from his eyes, looked up, and blinked. “That was a bigger drop than I thought it was gonna be.”
“What the hell were you thinking? Flaming toilet paper?”
“Woman, we needed to kill the snake!”
Somewhere above us, the rattle noise started again. One problem. It wasn’t dead.
The rattle was so loud that we could barely hear the gunfire as the team opened up on it.
“Come on.” I got to my feet. Luckily, the snake hole wasn’t a vertical shaft, and there was enough of an angle we could scramble back up it. The ground beneath my boots felt very unnatural—soft, but not too much give, like we were standing on a water bed. Which caused me to have a terrible thought. What exactly had broken our fall?
Justin must have been wondering the same thing, because he pulled the crook-neck flashlight off his flak jacket, and aimed it farther down the hole. “Are them eggs?”
The shaft we were in kept going down and opened up into a larger chamber. The eggs were everywhere, embedded in some kind of gelatinous snake goo. There had to be over sixty man-sized eggs down here, embedded in the weird nest. Each egg was oblong in shape and white but seemed to pulse with life. Then I realized the texture on the wall immediately around us was actually skin. The giant rattlesnake had shed and used that to pad its nest. Bones—some human, some not—stuck out at seemingly random points.
One of the eggs moved on its own.
“Screw this. I’m out.” And Justin started climbing.
Up top, the snake was severely injured but pissed. There was a new crater in the ground where the golf cart had blown up, and chicken and snake chunks everywhere. A random tire was rolling away, partially on fire. With the threatening golf cart dead, the snake was heading for the next most menacing thing, which was apparently the humans shooting it with rifles. It was slithering away from me and Justin, straight up the hill toward the others.
Alex, Justin, and Melanie were firing as fast as they could, but it didn’t even seem to notice the bullets. The snake was slower than it had been before, and was leaking blood by the gallon, but it was going to reach them in a matter of seconds. They needed to run. Why weren’t they running?
Except then I realized the big construction excavator we’d used for cover earlier was rotating. I didn’t know anything about heavy equipment, but this thing was like a big crane on tracks, and at the end of the arm were giant scooping jaws. That scoop stopped—bouncing on its cables—directly over where the snake was rushing at my team. A loud twang echoed as the crane thing released and the scoop fell to the ground.
Tons of steel hit the snake right on the head.
Its skull must have gotten smashed, but even better it was driven deep into the ground. The rest of the body began to twist and thrash, crushing everything nearby, but its head was pinned. The rest of it hitting the ground over and over made it feel like we were in an earthquake.
Everybody kept shooting. For me and Justin, our rifles were still up top, and I very much doubted a 9mm or a .45 would even sorta make it through that level of snakeskin, but we pulled our pistols and joined in anyway. It felt good to be doing something. The rest of the team treated it like a pincushion.
The golf cart explosion had done a number on the snake, and it was squirting blood from a bunch of lacerations, so it wasn’t quite strong enough to wiggle out from under the scoop, but it was furiously making progress. Except the more it pushed the steel jaws to the side, the more it dragged down the huge cables, and as it dug itself free, those got wrapped around its wounded head. The entire crane began rocking back and forth as the snake thrashed.
Lizz leapt out of the crane cabin, just as the entire thing toppled.
The crane arm came down on the snake. A large dust plume erupted from the impact. Blood splashed everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The entire construction site got coated in a fine mist of snake.
The violent thrashing was done. Thankfully, that awful rattling had stopped. A loud hissing sound filled the air as the snake exhaled its final breath. Now it was just postmortem twitching.
We still shot it a few hundred more times, just to be on the safe side.
When we were a hundred percent sure it was dead, my team approached the body.
“Son of a bitch!” Kimpton kicked it in the head for good measure. “I just did laundry.”
“I think I got snake in my mouth,” Alex added, looking a little queasy. He eyeballed one of the snake’s now-exposed fangs. “Hmm . . . I wonder what’s the going rate on giant serpent venom? Is there a black market for monster remains out there? You’d think there would be.”
I gave Lizz a thumbs-up, impressed, as I hadn’t realized she could jump that far, considering how much her leg bothered her. She was clearly in some pain from it, though. That was the worst of our injuries, though, and in exchange we had just pulled off one hell of a kill.
“Chloe . . . ” Justin interrupted the celebration before it could get going. “What about the eggs?”
“Eggs?” Melanie asked. “It was a momma snake?”
I led them back toward the hole. It was like Justin and I both felt like we had to be the ones to handle it—a little unfinished business. Alex was the only one excited enough to climb down with us. Everybody else was happy to stay at the top after I’d described what was down there.
I was no giant herpetologist, but these eggs were clearly fertilized and looked damn-near ready to hatch. If there were dozens of these things slithering around, the MCB would probably carpet-bomb Santa Clarita into the Stone Age if we didn’t do something.
“Think this slime will burn?” Justin palmed the borrowed Zippo, his expression grim. “It feels really oily and this old snake skin is super dry. We just need something to start a fire with.”
Something gently bumped my foot. I almost screamed in terror but managed to keep it to a sharp inhale. Looking down, I saw the roll of toilet paper resting there against my boot. Somehow it had managed to survive to eventually roll perfectly into the depths of the cavern without losing one sheet of single-ply to end up precisely where we needed it at the most opportune time.
Sometimes when weird, unnatural things like that happened, I was tempted to accept it as the blessings of Tezcatlipoca. Because my father worked in mysterious—and creepy—ways. But we’d probably just been fortunate and I could chalk it up to clean living and hunter’s luck.
Scooping up the roll, Justin eyeballed the eggs before flicking the lighter. It lit easily this time, the flame bright in the darkness. “Oh, now you work.”
“I really hope those eggs are flammable . . . ” Alex murmured.
Turns out, they were. Extremely.
* * *
The hole was still smoking—as was the newly created crater—but things had calmed down. The foreman and a few other high-ranking park employees who had been in the know had come out to see how bad the damage was once it was safe. Somehow, Lizz had bummed a bag of ice off one of them and was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, icing her knee.
“Good job on that crane. How’d you know what to do?”
“I just guessed how to use the controls. Proof that God loves fools, drunks, and children,” she declared. “Pure instinct.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay, sure, maybe my uncle owned a construction company and I may have ridden in one of these before. But instinct sounds cooler.”
“Well, good call.” We really should have come up with a Plan C before going in. I’d almost pulled a Rhino.
Some of the braver employees approached the snake, but they were hesitant, as though it might rise up and swallow them whole at some random moment. But Melanie was still eyeballing the dead serpent suspiciously and herded them away from it. Rightly so, in my opinion. The snake might be dead but it was still dangerous. The fangs, for example, were longer than I was tall, and wickedly sharp. I was pretty sure the venom sacs inside the rattler’s mouth had to be big as a Saint Bernard, and whatever they were filled with was so caustic it had melted plastic.
Kimpton was having a rather animated discussion with one of the park employees. Curious, I ambled over to listen.
“Dunno yet,” the man replied to Kimpton with a shrug.
“Come on. Rattlesnake is delicious. It’ll be great with a dry rub.”
Judging by the outfit and apron, I was betting this was the guy who ran all the cook shacks Justin had raided, and he was looking over the dead rattler with calculating eyes. After a long pause he began to nod, and in a slow, South Texas drawl, he said, “Yep. I can probably barbecue that thing.”
Before I could tell them they really shouldn’t try to harvest ten thousand rattlesnake steaks, the MCB rolled up in their typical subtle manner. Five cars, each filled to the gills with armed and angry federal agents, parked in a half circle around our dead snake.
With Beesley gone, Agent Stewart appeared to be the man in charge now, and he went straight to where I was sitting. “Sitrep, Mendoza?”
I gave him the fast version. He wouldn’t care about details. And then because I was trying to keep the MCB off my back, I helpfully provided him with the pertinent stuff to make his job easier. “Five dead construction workers. Eight other witnesses that I know of, and I believe all of them are currently here. Nobody outside of the immediate vicinity saw it as far as I know, but you’ll need a cover story for the noise, because that rattle was really loud.”
“Thank you, Ms. Mendoza.” He put his hands on his hips and looked around. “Construction accident clearly. Crane collapse. The noise was from the resulting high pressure gas leak. The gun shots were oxy-acetylene tanks from the cutting torches exploding. Five workers were crushed or caught in the blast. Very tragic.”
The site foreman must have realized Stewart was the big-shot government man, because he came over and said, “That’s not what happened here. We were digging and hit a giant monster that came out of the ground and started eating us.”
“Wrong. Giant monsters are imaginary,” Stewart declared, even though we were fifty yards away from a dead one. “Only crazy people say otherwise.”
“Who is this asshole?” the foreman asked me.
“He’s from the government.”
“What part?”
“The not-fucking-around part,” I answered, dead serious.
Stewart patted the foreman on the shoulder in a very patronizing manner. “This is nothing more than a tragic workplace accident involving the crane tipping over when one of your crew improperly balanced it.”
“That’s . . . that’s not how it all went down!” the foreman protested. “That big-assed snake ate my crew!”
“Construction accident,” Agent Stewart proclaimed, eyeing the agitated site foreman critically. “Tragic workplace accident. Happens all the time on construction jobs. Isn’t that right?”
“But—”
“Fight me on this and the paperwork will say it was your fault. You’ll get your license pulled and never work again,” Agent Stewart told the innocent man. “Go with the official story and keep your business. Argue, and lose it. Don’t worry, I’ll give you and all the other witnesses the official story. Then I will be watching for the rest of your life, and if you fail to stick to the official story, I will happily ruin your reputation, bankrupt you, foreclose on your house, and put you in an insane asylum. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be. Your call.”
The foreman stared long and hard at the MCB Agent before swallowing his angry words and nodding. I felt bad for the guy. Dealing with the super-secret agency always left a bad taste in the mouth, especially when it came to covering up the deaths of people who worked for you. “Yes, sir,” he finally managed to not-quite spit out. “Workplace accident.”
“And you.” Agent Stewart turned and looked at me. “I’ll have my secretary send you the PUFF claim number.”
“Eggs, too?”
“Eggs?” he asked.
“About sixty of them. Fertilized and about to hatch, if that makes a difference. They’re in that hole.”
He paled a little at that. Agent Stewart didn’t like going underground, apparently. “Eggs too.”
“Great. Where’s your partner?”
“Franks is occupied elsewhere.”
I assumed elsewhere was in a sniper’s nest outside the Siren’s Last Call. “How’s Beesley doing?” It wasn’t like we were friends or anything, but Agent Beesley and I had fought a monster together. Well, sort of. I’d carried her over one shoulder while I’d fought a monster, but there was always a special bond forged between girls during a gunfight.
“I’m surprised you care,” the MCB agent stated. “She’s doing better, but she’s not very communicative yet, so we’ve not been able to get her side of the story, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Actually, I’m a decent human being—”
“Half,” he corrected.
You fucker, I didn’t say. “Half-decent human being who just wants to know if Beesley’s going to be alright.”
Stewart relented. “It appears she’ll recover, but it’ll take time.”
“Thanks.” Beesley might be a pain in the ass MCB agent, but she seemed like she had a pretty good head on her shoulders, all things considered. As competent as she might be, though, I’d never let her on my MHI team.
“Why is that man in the apron taking a meat cleaver to the snake?” Agent Stewart asked, looking past me.
“I think he’s the head cook, and they’re going to butcher and barbeque it.”
“What?”
“You need to get rid of the evidence, right? Park guests will eat any sort of meat as long as it’s smoked and tastes good. Besides, it’s just a big, dumb snake.”
“They can’t eat it,” Stewart snapped. “It could be something more. You haven’t even tested it to see if it’s radioactive! It could be diseased. What if it’s eldritch cursed? Or magically tainted? Consuming magically tainted snake flesh? That might be how snake people are created!”
“Is that actually a thing?”
“Not that I know of, but I don’t feel like trying to cover up an outbreak of food poisoning too. You there! Off the snake!”