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CHAPTER 20

Time of the Season


Reginald Katz, Esquire, and his new trophy wife, Claudine, were in the back by the pool. They were quite dead. They were both nude. It was midweek but perhaps he’d come home to celebrate after chucking an old woman out of the only home she’d ever known.

They were also mostly bones and those were dissolving.

There were huge, wet traces around the pool. From indications the superfrogs must have generated in the pool, come out and proceeded to pronounce the doom of the hoodoo on the twosome.

There were three frogs left in the backyard, throat sacks inflated, mournfully calling for mates. The sound was as insane as the rest of the mission.

BOOORAAAGAACK! BOOORAAAGAACK! BOOORAAAGAACK!

I had hearing protection in but it still shook my stomach and bones. It was like being at an AC/Dfrog concert.

I didn’t wait long to open fire.

Milo, the pussy, was lowering his Barrett into the prone. It wasn’t but fifty yards. I leaned in and fired offhand.

You can, yes, do that with a Barrett. You actually can get back into battery, back on target, faster offhand than in prone. But the damned thing is heavy as hell and you’d better have a really good stance.

The first round hit the frog on the left, right square in the kisser. One down. No princess for you, Superfrog!

That caused the other two to go full-on superfrog and head for points unknown. By the way, turned out there was another one which had already superfrogged away.

We all opened fire as the frogs took to the air. I don’t know if that was the right move or not. Yes, rounds come down and do occasionally injure or kill people. That wasn’t really the problem. The problem was, so do frogs the size of rhinoceri. I was pretty sure they could adjust their landings to land on something other than people. I mean, they might land on some minivan carpooling a soccer team, but I could just see one of those things coming down in a crowd in downtown, which wasn’t far. That would be bad.

Whether it was good or not to hit them on the way up, I was sure I had.

“I tagged the one on the left!” I shouted. I’d taken off the scope and was firing iron sights. It was like shooting skeet. Enormous, psychedelic skeet.

“So did I,” Shelbye said. “That one’s mine! What we bettin’ for?”

“Bragging rights,” I said.

“Whatever we’re betting for, they’re gone,” Ray said. “Okay. I’m calling up everybody. We need to get these things under control. Fast. Right now we’ll split into two-man teams. Uh…”

“I get Shelbye,” I said. “Sorry, bud, but we’re in competition.”

“I got Ray,” Milo said instantly.

“Team comp,” I said. “I’ll call Trevor and get him started on the pool.”

“This is not a…” Ray said. “Okay, fine. Whatever.” He paused and looked at Milo for a second. “Tell Trevor I got fifty bucks on Team Shackleford,” he said quickly.

“Done,” I said, trotting for Honeybear. “You comin’, Shelbye?”

“Jist about,” Shelbye said. “This is gonna be fun! And I got a hunnert says we get more!”

* * *

“Call dispatch,” I said. “Tell Juliette over there we’re in a betting race and she needs to call us before she calls Trevor. Fifty-yard-line tickets for the first Saints home game.”

Bertha was sitting across both our laps with the muzzle brake out the passenger side window. I wasn’t going to lose a shot ’cause I had to get her out of the trunk.

“That’s cheatin’!” Shelbye said, picking up the car phone. “I lahk it!”

Now I just had to get fifty-yard-line seats for the first Saints home game.

“I think that first one went towards Isidore,” I said, turning on lights and sirens and making the turn onto Octavia. I think the posted speed limit’s like twenty-five. I was doing seventy by the time I got to the stop sign. I slowed for that, honking my horn as well as hitting the AHOOOGAH siren, and pushed through. The next block I saw a heavy-set woman running. Fat women don’t run. Not even while jogging.

“Hey!” I yelled out the window. “Which way’d that giant frog go?”

“That way,” she screamed, pointing back over to the right.

“Thanks,” I yelled as we sped away.

“Best way that way?” I yelled to Shelbye.

“Hang a raht!” she yelled.

There were a couple cars going way too fast away from the direction of the Isidore Newman School. School would get out soon. That meant more traffic, and more potential victims. Also, for the MCB, more witnesses. I thought of the animal lover from the airport. Would Castro murder a school kid? Probably. I made the turn at Saratoga.

Some kids were running.

“I think we’re close!” Shelbye yelled.

“You think?” I asked. “What gave you your first clue?”

I drove up on the sidewalk, laying on the horn and trying not to kill kids, maneuvered around a bus, nearly hit two kids, and stuck my head out the window.

“Where is it?” I yelled.

“Ball field,” the girl yelled as she ran…away…fast.

Smart kid.

“You know where the ball field is?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Shelbye said. “We played Newman one time. Kicked their ass, the snooty pansies. Get back on Daneel. Raht!”

There was a lady hurriedly walking in the opposite direction. She was holding a young teenage boy in a school uniform by the hand. He didn’t look as if he minded. You could tell he’d normally be like “Ah, Mommm” but at the moment he was happy with the reassurance.

“Where’s it at?”

The lady just looked at me in shock for a second.

“The damned frog, lady,” I said, pulling Bertha out of the front seat.

“It went that way,” she said, pointing back over her shoulder.

“Ball field’s that way,” Shelbye said.

“One frog stew, coming up.”

“Beeg damn frog stew,” Shelbye said, grinning. “Gonna have us some good eats tonight!”

* * *

Imagine if you will.

On a standard football field there are two groups practicing. At one end is the male lacrosse team. At the other end is the female field hockey team. They are kept well dispersed to keep the players focused on their game. But, you know, there are looks. Hey, he looks good in shorts. Wow, Amanda is really hot today…

Suddenly, a fucking frog the size of a rhinoceros drops out of the clear blue sky.

Her name was Miss Janet Windersly. I mean, that wasn’t her fault or anything. I’ve had to suffer with Oliver Chadwick my entire life.

She was the assistant field hockey coach. Miss Windersly had never married. She lived in a house in Metairie with a very long term roommate, Claudette. To the extent that there were men in her life, they tended to be the type to steal her ball gowns.

Miss Windersly was athletic, muscular, horse-faced and just a touch manly. She was a force of dominance on the field hockey field, always bellowing at the girls in what might, kindly, be called a contralto.

She also made sure to stay near the center of the field so as to ensure that the girls kept their eyes on their play and not things on the other end of the field.

When what we will hereafter call Sierra Two, on its second hop, did, yes, use a bit of gliding ability to adjust its landing, it was looking for something big, clear and preferably green.

Why, look down there, Superfrog! A big, green spot to land!

So what if there were a few minor insects on it? It was using up a lot of calories in this weird place. Might as well pick up a snack.

Sierra Two landed within ten yards of Miss Windersly with a massive THUD.

Sierra Two maneuvered around a bit, assessing is surroundings. Then a twenty-yard-long tongue lashed out and Miss Windersly was sucked into its enormous maw.

Its mouth slapped shut with Miss Windersly’s field hockey stick still jutting from one side and a couple of thrashing legs out the other. The tongue rotated around a bit and both disappeared from view. A moment later the hockey stick came spitting out like a cherry pit and landed thirty yards away.

There was at this point a certain amount of screaming and running. Fortunately, both groups were athletic.

We happened to be coming in from the direction which was disgorging the field hockey players. A surprising number of them had retained their hockey sticks. I suppose if it was the only weapon I had in the face of Superfrog I’d probably have held onto it as well.

“Where?” I asked, grabbing one of the cuter hockey players by the arm. “Hoodoo Squad. Where?”

“Who?” she said, jerking her arm. “Let go of me, you pervert!”

I grabbed the next one coming along.

“Where?” I asked.

“Hoodoo Squad?” she asked.

“Well, duh,” I said, jiggling Bertha.

“Thank God,” she said. “Middle of the field last time I looked. It was heading the other way.”

Sierra Two had landed between the late, unfortunate Miss Windersly and the charges over which she kept such a personal and proprietary eye. It had, however, been pointed in the general direction of the other end of the field, the reason that Miss Windersly, standing guardingly on the fifty-yard line, had come to its attention.

However, it had been pointed in the general direction of the male lacrosse team. And when they screamed and ran, it gave chase. ’Cause all this exercise was making it hungry. And, well, FOOD.

Frogs generally think like this: Moving, food. Not moving, not food. Smells right, sings right, fuck it.

That’s pretty much frog motivations. Pro-tip if you will.

We ran onto the field and looked around. No frog. We could see a gym at the other end of the field and some figures inside.

“Scope that front,” I said, pointing.

“Just a bunch of kids and some coaches,” Shelbye said.

“Tell me it didn’t hop again,” I said, running that way.

Know how much a Barrett weighs? Thirty-five pounds. Know how much one round of .50 caliber weighs? Four ounces. Doesn’t sound like much. I was carrying forty rounds of .50 caliber in magazines. The magazines alone weighed a pound. Six grenades. More .45 mags. And I’m not a big guy. And I was just getting back in shape. The heat, the humidity. I was sweating my ass off running down that damned football field.

“Wait,” Shelbye said, holding up her hand. Shelbye was outrunning me. But the hell if I was facing Superfrog without the reassurance of Bertha the Big Blue Barrett. She looked through her scope again. “They’re trying to signal something…”

“What?”

“They keep pointing…Up?”

I looked at the top of the gym.

Superfrog looked back. Then it jumped.

At us.

I missed the head. I mean, give me a break, hitting the head would have required another miracle, but the .50 caliber round hit Superfrog in the body and really messed it up.

Unfortunately, we now had an enraged and wounded Superfrog headed right for us in mid-air.

When you have a good shoulder weld with a Barrett it just pushes you back. When there’s a gap, it has time to accelerate into your shoulder. Felt like being kicked by a mule. I still got the fuck out of Superfrog’s way.

It hit in a slide on the 45 line, leaving behind a trail of blood and some guts. Then it got up and now it was pissed. And looking at me. It looked like it was either choking or gathering up a loogie. Guphf, guphf, guphf.

I was on my back with Bertha five feet away and that might as well have been in the end zone. I scrambled back.

The acid loogie landed where I’d been lying.

The two of us shot the hell out of it. I emptied Bertha, then pulled my .45 and put a few magazines into Superfrog.

It finally croaked.

Sorry. You had to know that was coming.

“Fuck, yeah,” I said, grinning. The Superfrog was splayed flat out with its tongue hanging out.

“Oh, I bet they taste great,” Shelbye said, walking over. “Laissez les bons temps rouler!”

“Careful,” I said, reloading Bertha. “The skin on those is poisonous. At least the regular ones. I’d bet this one is, too.”

“We’ll figure out how to skin it,” Shelbye said. “Pump it full’n air prob’ly.”

“I get the trophy from the other one,” I said. “I wonder if somebody has a camera?”

Then it started to get up again.

Fucker’s regenerated.

“What do we do now?” Shelbye said. “Cain’t take its head. It’s poisonous. We’d need gear.”

“I should have brought Mo No Ken,” I said, still covering it. It started to get up again and I put another .50 round in it. “I got an idea. Cover me.”

I walked away, set Bertha down on her bipod and pulled out a white phosphorus grenade. There was another shot from Shelbye.

“You best hurry,” Shelbye said. “Three-oh-eight seems to jess piss it off.”

“Get ready to pry open its mouth,” I said.

I walked back over, pulled my pistol and shot it seven times in the head, right where you pith a frog.

“Now, pry open its mouth,” I said, holstering and pulling the pin on the incendiary grenade. While I was doing so, my .45 rounds started to pop out of its head, one by one.

Tough amphibian.

Hey, I’d just found a new way to do ballistics tests!

Shelbye inserted the barrel of her M14 into the thing’s mouth and pried it open. I knelt down, put the grenade into its mouth, let go of the spoon, shoved my hand and the grenade into its throat and then tried to pull my hand back out.

These days there’s a movement afoot to stop teaching kids dissection in high school biology because it’s a bad thing. But even if you’ve taken dissection, you generally gloss over the details of frog anatomy related to the esophagus. Thus even I, world expert on fucking everything, perfect C in frog anatomy, was unaware that there was a bit in there that was designed to make sure that food only went one way.

Which, in part due to a human leg, was trapping my right hand.

“Oh, hell. I’m stuck.”

“That ain’t good,” Shelbye said.

But I had an ace in the hole. I was wearing Nomex flight gloves. And they might be stuck but my hand wasn’t. I managed to wriggle out of them and backed off, fast.

There was a Poof and the most hellish smoke came pouring out of the damned thing.

Then the Superfrog started to deliquesce.

“AH, HEY-LL,” Shelbye yelled. “Not one of those! Shee-yit!”

“Well, we still got the PUFF,” I said. “That’s gonna have to be good on one of these.”

“I know, but still,” she said. “All this shit that done turn to goo. Seems like a waste of good meat, yuh know?”

“Is it dead?”

The man yelling looked like a coach.

“It’s dead,” I yelled back. “But we don’t know where the other ones went!”

“Other ones!”

* * *

We took a sample—there was a body in the stomach, which was the sort of thing we needed to prevent—and headed back to the car. By the time we got there, there was an NOPD car on scene. MCB was on the way. We left them to it and got on the phone.

“Trevor, Hand,” I said when I got through to the office. “Be advised. These things regenerate.”

“We know,” he said drily. “Fortunately it was MCB who was on site when the one you supposedly killed sat up and got…”

“Froggy?” I asked. “Well, we just got one at Newman school.”

“That’s not good.”

“It’s croaked. On a serious note, did they lose anybody?”

“No, but Higgins ain’t real happy with you.”

“Well, tell him he’s in on the pool,” I said. “By the way, I got two hundred bucks on Team Bertha.”

“Bertha?” Shelbye snarled. “Bertha?”

Shelbye was serious about watching her weight.

“The Barrett,” I said, putting my hand over the phone.

“Oh,” she said, mollified.

“We got any more reports?”

“All over the city. Dispatch has been going crazy. These things move.”

“MCB must be loving this,” I said, trying not to laugh. It wasn’t a laughing matter. People were dying. But…Superfrogs.

My radiophone began to ring and Shelbye picked it up. She waved at my call.

“Hey, Trev,” I said. “Gotta go. Call later. What?”

Shelbye was laughing like a loon as she hung up the phone.

“You ain’t gonna believe this!” she said, laughing so hard she was crying.

“What?” I asked. “Where am I going?”

“There’s one on the Superdome!”

“Well, shit,” I said. “There’s no way we’re getting…”

I picked up the phone and called home.

“Remi,” I said. “Didn’t you say that one of your previous employers owned a helicopter…?”


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