CHAPTER 25
Bad to the Bone
I let Trevor handle the scene while Milo gave my injured left arm a little TLC courtesy of Betadine and lots of bandages. I swear, bandages and ammo had to be our two biggest costs.
Oh, and funerals.
When vampires roam in a pack, it can be bad news, but our timely intervention had saved a lot of lives. Some of the kids would die, but we’d interrupted the feeding frenzy early enough that most of those bitten would probably be saved. Alvin and Franklin had followed the ambulances, so if any of them died in surgery they’d get decapitated immediately, and not give Wohlrab, the night shift morgue attendant, any more surprise wake-ups in a few days.
As Milo was expertly wrapping bandages around my arm, there was a voice behind me.
“You’re Hoodoo Squad?” a girl asked.
I wasn’t worried about my six. I’d noticed Milo look up, then back down. No threat. I was watching his, he was watching mine. Nice to have a brother at your back.
“The same,” I said, grimacing as Milo tied the bandage tight. “Watch the arm!”
“Quit being a sissy,” Milo said.
“This stuff is real,” she said in a shell-shocked voice.
“Yep. You were there?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting down on the bench I was occupying.
My immediate reaction to a girl that pretty is normally “woof, woof!” I guess I was tired. I didn’t even pull out a card.
“You’ll get past it,” I said, shrugging. “There’s so many worse things in this shit, you wouldn’t believe.”
“It’s hard to even think.”
“Know that guy over there?” I said, gesturing with my chin at the kid who’d had the Automag.
“I think he’s a Sigma Nu. I don’t really know him but I recognize him.”
“Go make friends. He might not have stopped them, but he was the only one really trying. Guy like that should get some moral support and he’ll be a good shoulder to lean on.”
“Okay, I guess,” the girl said.
“You’re going to need somebody’s shoulder to sleep on for a while,” I said. “Helps keep away the nightmares.”
“I’m not that sort of girl,” she said, frowning.
“I said sleep, not fuck. Make friends. Some guys from the FBI will be here soon to tell you that you can’t talk about this. You can with him. Make friends. What you do after that is up to you.”
I’d been putting on my gear as I was talking and when I was done, I stood up.
“I’m impressed. You didn’t hit on that poor traumatized girl,” Milo said. “That was nearly gentlemanly. I must be a good influence on you.”
“More like you kill the mood. Come on, we have more monsters to put to bed.”
* * *
“You good to keep going?” Trevor asked.
“You kidding?” I asked. “’Tis only a flesh wound. Besides, there’s PUFF to be collected. You got any idea how much good help costs these days?”
Full moon in New Orleans is like Christmas season in retail.
“It sounds like zombies in St. Louis Cemetery,” Trevor said.
“Please tell me we’re going one team on shamblers,” I said. “I got a mortgage to make.”
“Nope. As soon as another team is open, I’m sending them after you and Milo.”
“The day I need backup for shamblers is the day I quit,” I muttered.
“That’s exactly what Greg Wise told me.”
* * *
St. Louis Cemetery was another old one off of I-10. It was in three sections, bisected by roads. The shambler outbreak was in the center section between Conti and Bienville.
All three cemeteries were surrounded by high walls, which acted as tombs themselves. The interior walls were lined with grave markers marking the bodies behind them. The rest of the cemetery was entirely tombs, with none of the low sarcophagi common in other cemeteries.
There were heavy iron gates at three points on the cemetery.
Honestly, it was clear whoever set the place up knew what they were doing when it came to undead outbreaks. It was half cemetery, half undead prison. No damned shamblers were getting out of that place. Wights, maybe, those things could climb like spiders, but even a ghoul would have a hard time with that fence.
“Whoa,” Milo said, looking at the gate. “This place is a fortress.”
“Back then people knew how to build a cemetery to contain the occasional undead outbreak.”
“Accent on occasional. Man, we really need to figure out what’s making the hoodoo go haywire, because I really don’t want to die in Louisiana.”
“It’s not so bad,” I said.
“The town is below sea level. I need mountains, Chad.”
The NOPD car had been parked about half a block away over on Conti. He’d already gotten a key to one of the gates. It was over on Claiborne, which was a hell of a walk, so we drove. Oops, had to go the wrong way on a one-way but there wasn’t much traffic this late.
So we had a key to this gate but I was thinking I didn’t want to use it. I could see that the place was another maze. And there were shamblers already waving their arms through the gate.
“You miss climbing,” I said, gesturing at the wall. “Let’s draw them in with lights and noise, then just shoot them from up there.”
Here’s a very important pro-tip that’s an extension of earlier ones.
Pro-tip: Bring shamblers to you and use any height or complexity advantage to keep them from getting to you and bringing them to where you can kill them easily. Don’t let them close unless you absolutely have to. And if you do, be aware you’re probably going to have to ask a friend to shoot you in the head.
“We can just shoot them through the gate,” Milo pointed out.
“We’re going to have to use it to get the bodies out,” I said. “Why block it? And from up there we can draw more in.”
“That makes an amazing amount of sense,” Milo said. “Especially coming from you.”
“Well, I suppose we could take ten hours to machine a special flamethrower for them if you’d prefer. In the meantime, why don’t you come up with some inventive way to get us up there?”
The wall was about sixteen feet high and there were no available handholds. Well designed, as I said. So we decided to drive around it and see if there was a way in.
The back side was a chain link fence surmounted by barbed wire. No way in there.
However, by the corner of Claiborne and Conti, there was a short section of brick wall. It was short enough to hop up onto and from there, we were up on the main wall. It was still high enough to hold in the walking dead. Really well designed.
A couple of zombies came around as we were climbing up. We ignored them and walked along the wide top of the wall to the gate.
The horde by the gate noticed our lights and came shambling over. So did the ones that had reacted to our getting up on the wall.
We both opened fire…slow, aimed fire. I had brought plenty of extra ammo. I’d learned my lesson on that at the battle in Greenwood.
“This is shooting ducks in a barrel,” Milo said. There were twelve shamblers down and we hadn’t come near being scratched.
Which is the way you should fight monsters. Fair is for children on a playground. Monster hunting is about efficient and fast. Kill monsters. Get paid. Live to collect the fat check.
The maze conditions of the cemetery meant that not all the shamblers had gotten over to us. We could hear more moaning down in and amongst the tombs. Somebody’s hex had gone horribly wrong. Again.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Over here! Come here, you idiots! This way…That’s right…Come to Papa Smurf…Your shot, Milo.”
“Thanks,” Milo said.
Shambler down.
“And I am not a smurf.”
“If the Birkenstocks fit,” I said. “Smurfette, then. This is going to take all night,” I said. “Those things are too stupid to all get over here in any decent time. And there’s other calls.”
“First you want to play it safe,” Milo said. “Now we got to get down off of here?”
“There are times to play it safe and others to take it to the ground,” I said. That’s another pro-tip. “Sounds like about six more. I say we go to them.”
Milo thought about it for a second.
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
“You want point or six?” I asked as we walked back to the low wall. We probably could have made the jump but why take the chance?
“Point, of course,” Milo said. “Who wants six?”
“Rock, paper, scissors?”
He won. He always wins. I have no idea how he does it.
There were seven more. Took about ten minutes.
“And now to get coroner.”
* * *
“Hey, Tim,” I said as the coroner’s assistant came over to the gate. It had only taken about half an hour which wasn’t bad. “Nineteen.”
“All old desiccated corpses. You sure you don’t want to break open some tombs and drag out some extras to shoot?”
“Thought about it, but it’s too hot.” I laughed like Tim had made a joke, because Milo would flip his lid at the idea of padding.
“You sure it’s clear?” Tim said as his assistants lowered the flat. “One of your new teams said Metairie was clear and it wasn’t.”
He sounded offended, but the coroner’s job was nearly as dangerous as ours and they weren’t as well-armed. Technically, they weren’t supposed to be armed at all. But all of them carried a gun when they worked. They weren’t stupid.
“Totally clearing Metairie is a daytime job,” I said. “You know that. And it’s why we stay for security. This one is clear.”
We’d walked the whole thing calling for more undead, but none showed.
“Okay,” Tim said. “Just keep an eye out. This job doesn’t pay enough to lose people.”
“Milo,” I said, “head back and call Trevor or Ray. See what’s up next.”
“Next?” Milo said. “Seriously?”
Our promised backup had never arrived which meant it was still busy out there.
Tim looked at Milo like he was a moron. “On the way in I heard there were some ghouls in Lafayette.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Milo said, shaking his head as he walked to the car. “This town sucks!”
“I’ll cover,” I said. “You ready?”
* * *
“Nineteen,” Tim said, handing me the yellow slip. “Thanks for stacking most of them in one spot.”
“And we made sure the gate was clear,” I pointed out. “But you’re welcome. Now away to the next call. See you in a bit.”
* * *
“What’s next?” I asked, pulling out a can of Budweiser.
I’d refilled my canteens and stuck them in the trunk. My arm was hurting like hell but it was time to roll.
“Everybody else is chasing down leads or waiting for coroners. It’s starting to quiet down. He’s got a weird call for us to check though,” Milo said. “In Carollton, according to Trevor. Last spotted near Fern and Jeanette. But he said the witness who called it in sounded stoned, so it might be nothing.”
“What did he see?”
“Some kind of giant rat.”
* * *
“Okay,” I said. “This is even affecting my sangfroid slightly.”
“Giant rat” was an understatement. It was the size of a small elephant. Naked and gray with pink eyes and really big teeth. As we watched, it was using those huge teeth to chew through the wall of a two-story brick house. The house next door had already been reduced to rubble.
A little hex had given us really big frogs. Out of control hoodoo was probably the cause of our weird bull-gorilla flesh golum, and probably the sobek too. But what dumbass had been using magic on this hideous thing?
“I think it’s time to break out the LAW,” Milo said.
He was spotting the thing with the spotlight but it wasn’t noticing. I was pretty sure it was a giant mole rat and they’re basically blind.
“Bertha maybe,” I said, getting her out. “But if it’s an actual animal and we mess it up, Shelbye will kill us.”
“What?” Milo said, getting out of the car. He kept the light focused on the massive rat.
“She’s going to want to eat it or stuff it.”
“I know you’re not big on asking for help, Chad, but…”
It was a mole rat the size of an elephant.
“Oh, I’m okay with it this time.”
Milo got on the radio, and started to call it in. Then he paused. “Uh oh. Listen.” Somebody was screaming. It was coming from the house the mole rat was demolishing. Imagine waking up to that. “Shoot. We’re on.”
The mole rat stopped for a moment, pointed its snout at the sky and let out a weird, high, squeaky cry. It was bizarre coming from such a massive beast.
It’s hard to transliterate “monster sounds” but it was something like:
“DOC! DOC, DOC, DOC, DOOOOC!”
I got out Bertha the Barrett and loaded up a magazine. I got out both LAWs as well and put them in the front seat. Just in case.
“You drive. Drive up parallel to it.” I sat on the hood. “If the first shot doesn’t do it, we take off and stay at range. If that don’t work, speed up, we get away, unpack the LAWs and finish it off.”
I had the little rubber bipod booties for when I had to shoot across the roof, but then I actually looked at Honeybear’s roof. The loup-garou had done a number on it. I loved that car. I’d rebuilt her so many times all by myself. It was just a shame. The impact of the werewolf had driven the top in two inches and it was scratched to shit. We were way past booties.
“Why am I driving and you’re shooting?”
“Well,” I said, “first of all, I won the marksmanship competition with the frogs.”
“Just because you cheated and got a helicopter. That’s not a real shooting competition. That’s a ‘who has the best contacts’ competition.”
“Second, ’cause this is my Bertha and your Barrett is in the van. Now shut up and drive, Smurfette.”
“I’m armed you know,” Milo said. But he got in the car.
“Also,” I said, yelling, “’cause would you trust my driving with you on the hood?”
“No!”
I held up a hand as we came parallel to the gargantuan beast. The real question was where to shoot it. I was sort of familiar with rat anatomy courtesy of a perfect C in biology. The heart should be right behind the shoulder.
The mole rat had gotten its head into the house and was pushing through the wall with the aforementioned shoulder. The inhabitants were not enjoying the experience. I heard a blast from a shotgun but that was pissing in the wind. It was past time to take the shot.
Then I made a mistake.
Pro-tip: You can fire most big powerful rifles from any of several positions. Prone is most people’s preference. Offhand—standing—works if you’ve got the upper body strength. You can even do it kneeling. I’ve tried it.
Seated, the recoil is going to rock you back. Especially when you are seated on a waxed metal car hood.
It made the most sense for what we were planning. I’d just never actually tried it with a Barrett before. The problem is traverse. When you fire an M82, you are going back. I’m not a big guy. Someone with arms like Trevor can shoot a .50 offhand and barely move. When I fire it offhand, I have to lean into it. Then I ride it back about four or six inches. Very fun and very effective.
It turns out you don’t have that distance, and keep your balance, when you’re in seated position on the edge of a slippery car hood.
I fired and found myself rolling backwards trying to control 35 pounds of steel that had just aggressively shoved me over the side.
I ended up on the ground on the street. I’d managed to hold onto Bertha and even protect the scope, but at the cost of a bloody nose and my dignity.
Offhand, yes. Kneeling, maybe. Prone, definitely. Sitting, never.
I’d say end pro-tip but there’s a second one.
Pro-tip: If you’ve ever hunted, say, deer, you may have noticed that heart shots, even perfect ones, rarely kill immediately. If you’re smart, when you know you’ve nailed a critter and it takes off, you just let it run and wait a minute. That way it goes a little ways, stops to see what hurt it, and drops dead. If you chase, it will keep going on adrenaline for a long way.
Humans can even survive getting shot in the heart for a bit if they are accustomed to violence and pumped up. Emergency personnel call gang-bangers “human cockroaches” for a reason and long-term professional Monster Hunters get the same way. After a while it gets harder and harder to kill us because we’ve been nearly killed so many times, our bodies get used to trauma and adjust. Just like animals. Ditto professional soldiers in a long-term war. And I’m of the personal opinion that having some alcohol in your system helps. Just from watching who does and does not survive severe trauma.
Whether the mole rat was drunk as a loon, or just very robust, or regenerated, was, at that point, unknown. What was known was that it could hear, could figure out that loud noise and sudden pain were probably connected and did not drop right away from a heart shot.
“Get on the car!” Milo yelled. “Get on! Get on!”
I was sort of dizzy from getting kicked off the hood by Bertha. I got up and looked to see what all the excitement was about.
The mole rat was running at us faster than anything that big should be able to run. I mean it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger as I watched.
Adrenaline is an amazing drug. One moment I was standing up, shaking my head, wishing I could maybe, you know, go home and take a long shower, maybe a nap…The next instant I was up on the hood, lying on my back on the windshield and pulling out Bertha’s bipod.
Adrenaline is amazing stuff. Don’t even know how I got there.
For once, Milo did not drive like a little old lady. Honeybear peeled out in a cloud of blue smoke and burning rubber smell and the chase was on!
Oh, that mole rat was pissed! Damned near hit us as we peeled out, then turned faster than it should have been able to and followed the smell of burned rubber and the roaring sound of a Delta 88 at full rev.
“DOC! DOOOOOC!” it was squealing. I didn’t speak mole rat but I think that meant “I’m going to kill you and eat your bones! Bwahahahah!”
“Slow down. We’re losing it!”
“Good!” Milo shouted. But he slowed down. Because he was coming to a stop sign. And if you’re a little old lady, you STOP at stop signs.
As I lined up the shot, I noticed something. We were at the corner of Fern and Birch.
“You’re driving the wrong way on a one-way street!”
BOOM! Another .50 cal round right through the chest. It kept running. I was starting to think this thing regenerated.
Milo was carefully checking both ways for traffic as I lined up the next shot. Either this one had better work or Milo had better, you know, go or we were about to be mole rat chow.
Problem being there was another car in the intersection.
A minivan.
We just sat there. I looked over my shoulder and could see the lady in the minivan signaling for Milo to go through.
I suspect Milo was signaling frantically for her to go through. If we went first she’d be in the intersection when the mole rat arrived and it would probably eat her and her soccer spawn.
She was probably thinking she wanted crazy people with guns as far away as possible and not realizing there was a reason I was firing over the back of the car. This was Louisiana. People do that sort of thing for fun.
I fired off the rest of my magazine, rapid aimed fire, then leaned back to pull out another mag from my vest. I knew no matter how fast I went, I wasn’t going to stop the mole rat before it got to us and did one hell of a lot of damage to Honeybear. Not to mention, well, eat us.
Milo bailed out of the driver’s side with a LAW. But it takes a few seconds to pull the pins, get it up on your shoulder…I really should have had it extended.
The mole rat reached Honeybear and bit my fucking trunk! Its massive upper teeth went right through my trunk lid! The bastard!
Fortunately, it was concentrating on killing the big metal thing that had hurt it. Honeybear shook back and forth and I heard my bumper give way.
I got a mag seated and aimed right between its beady pink eyes. Boom!
Brains splattered out of its tiny bullet head. Who knew a mole rat even had brains?
But that got it. It dropped, its head still attached to Honeybear’s trunk lid. My car settled on its leaf springs with an unpleasant metallic noise. Grinnngg.
Fucking mole rats!
I heard a squeal of tires as the minivan peeled out of the intersection and drove away as fast as mommy could manage.
I didn’t even know you could peel one of those out. Learn something new every day.
* * *
The tow truck was the sort usually used to tow semitrailers. It had a flatbed trailer attached on back.
A chain had been gotten around the mole rat’s neck and it was being dragged onto the trailer by one big-ass crane. It had not deliquesced. Shelbye was going to be ecstatic.
The teeth were still embedded in my trunk lid. We’d cut them off with a borrowed axe to get the head off Honeybear’s rear end. Which was absolutely trashed. Fucking mole rats.
“You know Shelbye’s going to want it,” I said, taking the yellow slip from Tim.
“As long as Dr. Henry gets invited to the fais do-do,” Tim said.
“I think you can bring the whole department,” I said. “And SIU. MCB. Them Cajuns gonna be eating right for a month.”
* * *
Recipe for giant mole rat jambalaya.
1. Catch one giant mole rat.
2. Dice fine.
3. Make jambalaya.