“I don’t think we even got close,” Randell said. “But we were running low on ammo.”
“That bad?” Graham said.
“That bad,” Barb said, shrugging. “The cave was filled with them. I’m not sure how many we killed. A bunch. And I’m pretty sure there were more. We heard some scrabbling behind us on the way out.”
“Look, we’ll do something like a full report in the morning,” Janea said. “I’m whipped. And not in a good way. Sergeant Struletz? Do me a favor and after you get cleaned up, come over to the SC house. I need to worship. Oh, wait, you’d find that a sin, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Struletz said, unhappily. “And I don’t think that ‘I figured I could just confess’ would sit well with my priest.”
“Master Sergeant?” she said. “Married, right. Okay, Randell?”
“So I’m third choice?” the FBI agent said.
“I could go find a Delta if you’d prefer,” she said.
“Nope,” Randell said, raising a hand. “Be there with bells on. I’m not planning on converting, though.”
“Sharice,” Barb said happily, as Barb and Janea wandered into the kitchen of the house. “I’d hug you, but you don’t want to get this muck on you.”
The homes in the neighborhood still held most of the furniture and possessions of the owners. They had been seized under eminent domain, but the rules were “use carefully.” After the emergency was over, the owners would be back and the government would pay for any damages. Assuming the entire region wasn’t swarmed by Old Ones.
The old witch, who these days rarely left the compound of the Foundation, was one of Barb’s favorite people. Elderly, wise and accepting, she was also one of the most powerful Wiccans in the world. If anyone besides Barb could handle a skru-gnon, it would be Sharice.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Sharice said, smiling brightly. “And there is the cat,” she added, looking at Lazarus. He’d stopped to clean himself, as he’d been doing repeatedly since getting out of the cave. “I have some premium cat food around here for you. Vivian!”
“Yes, mistress,” a plump young brunette said, coming into the kitchen. “Welcome back, questers! Merry moon and a fair day.” She bobbed a curtsey and smiled. Like Sharice, she was wearing a paisley dress, and was about covered in silver jewelry.
“Merry moon,” Barb said, nodding to her. “We met in Chattanooga but I never got your name.”
“Vivian Le Strange, Janea and the redoubtable Mrs. Everette,” Sharice said. “Vivian is one of my proteges. Dear, if you could find a can of something for this poor stray that has wandered into the house? And then get started on something for our weary questers. They are not vegan. Steak and eggs?”
“Sounds great,” Barb said. “And thank you. Showers?”
“Upstairs,” Sharice said, standing up and waving to the door. “I’ll wait for you to eat before plying you with questions.”
“This is not good news,” Sharice said, sipping her tea. “The Gar could not have produced so many Hunters if it was not well fed. And it must have been in existence for some time.”
“We’d gotten that far,” Barb said. “The FBI is trying to figure out where all the food is going.”
“What you may not have considered is that the Gar is reported as continuously growing,” Sharice pointed out. “If it has been in existence on this plane for that long, if it has been so well fed as to produce hundreds, at least, of Hunters…it must be very large. The facility to hide such a thing would be, in turn, large.”
“It could be in a cave,” Janea said, doubtfully. “But most of the ones around here are pretty small.”
“That’s a piece of data,” Barb said. “One the FBI needs. Damn, I was looking forward to sleep…”
“That is interesting information,” Graham said, yawning. “This area doesn’t have a lot of large structures. How large are we talking about?”
“A building that has at least twenty thousand square feet of open area,” Barb said, shrugging. “It could be a very large barn. An old factory. A warehouse.”
“Figure it’s going to be a barn,” Janea said. “Running a bunch of cattle or pigs into a factory is going to raise questions. If you run a bunch of cattle into a barn, nobody’s really going to notice that they’re not coming out.”
“The problem being, none of the farms around here have been buying a lot of cattle,” Graham said. “Fewer than normal. There’s been a long-term drought in the area and there’s a bit of a glut. The price is actually down.”
“Who is buying?” Barb asked.
“Mostly feed-lots and slaughterhouses,” Graham said. “And that’s often more or less one operation. Most of those are over in the Midwest. There are a couple in the area. But a slaughterhouse is a big operation. Lots of workers. It’s not a one-man thing.”
“Special Agent, I got into this whole field when I stumbled upon an entire town that had been converted to the worship of Almadu,” Barbara said.
“And we’ve been ignoring the slaughterhouses,” Graham said, slapping his forehead. “We figured this couldn’t be a whole bunch of people involved.”
“I would suggest waiting until morning to check them out,” Barb said. “Have they been evacuated?”
“I’m not sure,” Graham admitted. “And I need some sleep, too. I’ll get somebody to run up a list overnight. Get some sleep. We’ll check it out in the morning.”
“We have work to do,” Barb said as they walked to the commo trailer.
She was tired and grouchy. Exhausted as she was when she went to bed, she had slept fitfully, her sleep constantly eroded by nightmares. There was the repetitive one, the one that she and Janea had identified as a Sending, of being held in a dark place. But she also woke up, more than once, with dreams that were memories of battling the hundreds of Hunters of the Dark. And she still suffered from nightmares of the battle against Almadu. They had eventually all rolled together.
She was starting to realize that PTSD really sucked and that she was, unfortunately, susceptible to it. Which meant she was going to have to find a PTSD therapist who either was already briefed in on Special Circumstance or who could actually be convinced she wasn’t totally crazy.
And now, instead of going and finding the Gar, they had to go to a videoconference.
“This operation has gotten huge,” Graham said. “Part of the work is coordination. You have to have it. And you two are the on-site SC experts.”
“This is usually the sort of thing that Germaine handles,” Janea said. “I can be…less than politic.”
“I already had a brief meeting setting it up with the aides of all the bosses that are going to be in the conference,” Graham said, waving to a golf cart. “I just pointed out that you ladies were the equivalent of mystical shooters and that they should expect shooter attitude.”
“I think I’m a bit more polite than that,” Barb said. “But I’ll admit I’m not at my best at the moment. Who’s going to be in the conference?”
“You don’t want to know,” Graham said, swallowing.
While the team had been in the cave, the operational tempo in the area had picked up. Goin had the look of a military post, with soldiers moving everywhere and several mobile command posts set up. Graham led them to a full-sized trailer with about a dozen antennas on top, and opened the personnel door.
The interior was lined by plasma screens, with workstations lining both sides. And it was occupied by only one technician.
“Bobby, we nearly up?”
“We’re going live in about thirty,” the technician said, waving to a set of three chairs. “Left side of the trailer and end. There’s a couple of minor players I’m having to shift to right, so if you have to look at them, you’ll have to spin around and everybody will be looking at the back of your head.” He handed Barb and Janea headsets and pointed to the chairs. “The cameras have pretty fair depth of field, but try not to move around a lot. If you’re wondering what you’re looking like, these are you,” he added, pointing to two small monitors at the work station.
