And if we fight them aboveground, a rocket launcher would be nice. You have to see these things to understand.”
“But if I do see them, they’ll drive me insane,” Randell said. “Great.”
“Hey,” Janea said, “that’s what Thorazine is for.”
“So we’re going to sit here all night?” Janea asked.
The hillside was covered in secondary growth, mostly poplar and pine with scrubby undergrowth. Barb had carefully pointed out the poison ivy to her less-than-outdoors-oriented partner. She’d found a clear spot above the cave opening with a good view of it and the rest of the hillside, and settled down for a long stalk.
The cave opening was larger than the one by the trailer, irregularly shaped, again, but nearly the size of a manhole cover.
“Unless we get a visitor earlier,” Barb said, taking a sip of coffee. She was on short sleep from the night before, she’d had some very vivid and really awful dreams, and it had been a long day. It was working up to be a longer night.
“I don’t sit still very well,” Janea pointed out.
Especially with Janea around.
“Try,” Barb said.
“Fighting these things in the dark is going to suck,” Janea said about five seconds later.
“That’s what night-vision systems are for,” Barb said, holding up a set of thermal goggles.
“Yeah,” Janea said, picking hers up and turning them on. “Cool. You can see the FBI guys standing over in the shadows.”
“That’s because they pick up on heat sources,” Barb said.
“Which means they might be next to useless with these things,” Janea said, setting her goggles down.
“Huh?”
“We don’t even know if they’re exothermic,” Janea pointed out.
“Exo…?”
“Hot-blooded,” Janea said. “They could be, you know, like insects. They don’t give off heat. We don’t really know anything about them.”
“How’s it going?” Graham said over the radio. Both women were wearing tactical headsets.
“It would be fine if Janea could understand the basic premise of hunting,” Barb said. “Which is to be quiet. For that matter, if you keep asking me every five minutes, I am going to come down there and take your radio away.”
“We need regular commo checks,” Graham said.
“Agreed,” Barb said. “Nominal.”
“Out.”
“You really are way too into this,” Janea said. “I’m starting to agree with Stan. We need to study them.”
“The problem being that anyone who studies them goes insane,” Barb pointed out.
“Maybe do it like ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Joke,’” Janea said.
“What?”
“You never watch Monty Python?” Janea asked, surprised.
“I tried to watch that…what was it? The Meaning of Life?” Barb said. “I didn’t get it. I don’t get most British comedy.”
“Aesir shit!” Janea said. “How the Hel did I get you for a partner?”
“Language.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Janea said. “Let me rephrase. Fecal matter of a Great Old One. How in Niflheim did I get a stuck-up, prissy, doesn’t-get-British-comedy person like you as a partner?”
“Because you know more about this stuff than I do and I’m better at killing things than you are,” Barb said. “Now this is supposed to be a stakeout. Which means we need to be qui-et so that they won’t know we’re here.”
“Barb.”
“Yes?”
“We’re two reproductive-age females,” Janea said. “We’re not a stakeout, we’re bait. You probably survived that skru-gnon because it wanted you alive.”
“You put the most pleasant spin on things,” Barb said.
“I just thought of it,” Janea said. “I think we should have waited for the rocket launcher to do this.”
“Master Sergeant,” Major Esgar said. “Sorry to get you out at this time of night. Please sit down.”
Master Sergeant Scott Attie, five foot nine inches, one hundred and ninety-five pounds, brown hair and eyes, was a fifteen-year veteran of the Special Forces. As such, he was used to callouts at any time of night. But this one was different. Just as he was getting to bed, on his first real downtime in five years of constant deployments to Afghanistan, he’d been told to report to an office at Joint Special Operations Command, wear civilian clothes, and be prepared to be TDY-on temporary duty-for an unspecified period.
His wife, who had been wearing a negligee that left nothing to hide at the time, had been less than amused.
“Yes, sir,” Attie said, taking a seat and trying not to sigh. He enjoyed his job, but he’d really been looking forward to some downtime. Maybe heading over to the Cape for some fishing.
“All of the following is Top Secret, Special Compartment Intelligence,” the major said. He looked tired, as if Attie’s brief was just one more item to be checked off in a very long day. “There is a priority need for someone with combat experience and experience working in caves for a rapid-deployment mission. Your bio states that you have extensive civilian caving experience with additional military experience in Afghanistan. The mission will be undercover, civilian clothes, has a high risk of loss of life, and will be in CONUS.”
“Uh, sir?” Attie said, looking puzzled. “Posse Comitatus?”
Posse Comitatus was an act passed just after the Civil War that prohibited the military from being used within states of the United States for anything other than disaster relief and suppression of rebellion. It was holy writ in the military that you did not violate Posse Comitatus.
“There will be a more complete briefing,” the major said. “But to cover that, there is a formal and secret determination by the Supreme Court that in matters of Special Circumstance, Posse Comitatus does not apply.”
“Special Circumstance, sir?” Attie said, realizing he was getting out of his depth.
“There was a reason I told you to sit down.”
“Janea. Wake up.”
Janea, despite Barb’s mostly monosyllabic replies, had chattered fairly constantly for two hours and then fallen asleep on Barb’s shoulder. She was clearly having nightmares at a couple of points, but Barb couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep at all. Given where they were and what they were waiting for, tired as she was, Barb could not imagine sleeping.
But when she started to hear stirrings from within the cave, it seemed like a good idea to wake up her partner.
“Freya hjelpe!” Janea muttered then came awake. “Freya aid, that was a horrible dream.”
“Quiet,” Barb whispered. “I think we have company.”
“That’s just what you were saying,” Janea said, shaking her head. “I am awake, right?”
“Just grab your axe,” Barb hissed.
Barb recognized the major aid that she was receiving from the Lord was simply to be able to look upon these horrors with some degree of calm. But as the tentacles slowly crept into the moonlight, she had to hold hard to her sanity. They were causing flashbacks to the battle in the cavern, the skru-gnon questing for any opening to flow into. There was a special horror to it as a woman. She’d never been raped, but what the skru-gnon did was beyond any rape by mortal being or even demon.
She slowly drew her katana, as quietly as she could, then slid to her feet. She had borrowed an MP-5 from the FBI, and she’d use it if it turned out to be effective. But she already knew that, with God’s aid, the katana would
