A curving sidewalk led from the offices to the front door of the slaughterhouse. There were more personnel doors to either side, and on one end, a large loading dock.
Again, the area was entirely, eerily empty and quiet.
“Not even birds,” Janea pointed out.
“It’s in there,” Barb said.
“Oh, yeah,” Janea said. “The question is, do we even want to knock on the door to check?”
As she said that, the door opened and a naked woman walked out. She was skinny and brunette, covered in ichor, with open, pus-filled wounds covering her body. Another and another followed her, each of them staring into the distance as if unable to see. In all there were nearly twenty. And many were clearly pregnant. With what, Barb really didn’t want to think.
Barb recognized a few of them. Lora Cowper was there as well as Wendy and Titania Boone. And Lorna Ewing. She looked as if she was about dead, her body covered from head to foot in sores, and skinny as a rail. One of the women, a plump blonde in her twenties, was still wearing tatters of clothing. Barb suspected she was looking at the tea-loving receptionist.
The group stopped about thirty feet from the slaughterhouse and spread out, holding hands.
“You are come,” they said in sibilant unison. “You shall be my new acolytes. Send unto me the beasts of the field and the maidens of your kind. I shall render you great rewards. Failure shall be punished.”
“We are not here as your servants,” Randell said, shuddering. “We are here to return these…maidens to their rightful homes and to remove you from this place.”
He grabbed his head in pain and swayed as a wave of anger radiated from the slaughterhouse.
“Great punishment shall befall this world!” the women half-sang. “I who once was am again! You have no power before me! Obey my commands or die!”
“This is why you don’t send unprotecteds on SC,” Barb said. “We need Opus Dei. Major Chap.”
“Ma’am?” the major said. His face was more set, but if he was in pain it wasn’t evident.
“Each of your personnel will grab one of the women,” Barb said. “They will probably fight and protest. We will then return to the Expeditions and report.” She paused and breathed hard, aware of the horror of what she was about to say. There were more women than there were personnel. “Lora Cowper, Titania Boone and Wendy Boone are priority,” she continued, pointing to each. Then she took a deep breath. “Other than those, the priority is…the most fit. Leave the ones on death’s door.”
“Ma’am,” the Delta said. “Clear.”
“Execute.”
If any of the Delta Force commandoes were affected by the emanations coming from the Gar, it wasn’t apparent as they sprinted across the lawn and started snatching women. And they clearly had the snatch-and-grab down to an art. All of the women fought, and although a few were in fairly good shape and fairly large, they might as well have been babies. The Deltas picked them up in a complex hold and then sprinted back across the yard.
There was a tremendous bellow, so high and terrible that even Barbara swayed for a moment, and then the walls of the slaughterhouse started to bulge.
“Run!” Barb screamed, turning to run into the house. It was the most direct route to the Expeditions.
She paused at the door, aware that if anyone could look back without becoming Lot’s wife, it was herself. She still took the time to flip down the FLIR.
Under the FLIR, what was rapidly shredding the steel and concrete of the slaughterhouse wall wasn’t clear at all. Most of it appeared transparent with long pseudopods crashing through the walls. She shook her head, then flipped up the FLIR.
The only thing her brain could think, besides “RUN,” was of something like a four-story amoeba covered in cilia that were themselves as thick as the trunk of an elephant. The skin of the thing was covered in flickering colors, similar to a squid, but the colors were a leprous green and the purple of gangrene. She knew just seeing the thing was going to give her nightmares, and something in her brain was gibbering into madness.
After one look, she went with her lizard hindbrain and ran as fast as she could.
“Well, we found it,” Graham said. “We’ve lost two teams trying to get a good look at it; FLIR doesn’t seem to be enough with this thing. NRO even lost a computer system trying to get a look at it. The image processors froze. But we found it. The question is what we do about it.”
“Well, I’m Asatru, but even we know when to run,” Janea said. “I’m sure as hell not going to try to hack it to death with an axe. Maybe if I had a couple of really strong fighting bands that wouldn’t go crazy or be swayed into worship. But not by myself.”
“Is there any plan?” Barb asked.
“If we can get a lock on it, we can drop JDAMs,” Master Sergeant Attie said. “But we can’t even get a team in that can hit it with a targeting system. We lost a Predator driver, satellite systems lock up…You were right. This thing is insanity on a thousand legs.”
“We need to do something,” Randell said. “It apparently has some concept of direction. It’s moving-slowly, fortunately-in the direction of Goin. But who knows where it’s going to end up.”
“Where are the women and what’s their status?” Janea asked.
“In Knoxville at a sanitarium,” Graham said. “They still appear to be in contact. They’re not talking from it at present, but they are calling for it to come to them.”
“Is Goin on the route to Knoxville?” Janea asked.
“Yes,” Randell said. “Why?”
“That’s your answer,” Barb said, nodding. “It’s not going to Goin. It’s going to where we have its ‘maidens.’ Without the maidens it can’t create the Children. Is it eating?”
“Apparently,” Graham said. “A team checked out the slaughterhouse when they were sure it was gone. There were a lot of bones, most of them chemically charred. And they’ve found a few cattle that it found on its route.”
“Once it breeches the SC perimeter it’s going to be Katy Bar the Door,” Janea pointed out. “Somebody needs to make some decisions. Fast.”
“The answer was in the Sending,” Barb said. “This is a test of our faith. The only way that we’re going to get rid of it is to express our faith as a nation in a really convincing way.”
“That ain’t going to happen,” Randell said, shaking his head. “I mean, what do you want the government to do? Get the president on national television and ask everybody to pray to Jesus to drive a demon from our land?”
“Pretty much,” Barb said. “Doesn’t have to be Jesus. Just God in whatever form people wish to worship. God is love, remember? But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that’s the only thing that’s going to work.”
“That is unlikely to happen until all reasonable methods have been tried,” Graham said. “We’ve got a lot of firepower. We need to try that first.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Janea snapped. “Firepower is not going to stop this thing.”
“How do you know?” Randell asked. “We haven’t even been able to try.”
“Because…God said so?” Janea said, angrily.
“God’s never tried a JDAMs,” Randell answered, hotly.
“Look, if somebody can explain this JDAMs thing to me and it’s not too complicated, I can get a lock on it,” Barb said. “Looking at it under FLIR at the slaughterhouse was not too bad. I don’t want to try to tell you what looking at it with bare eyes was like. But I can look at it.”
“We can set that up,” Master Sergeant Attie said, nodding. “You don’t even have to get close. And one of the systems has a built-in FLIR. Probably best to use that.”
“Yeah,” Janea said. “On the fuzziest setting it’s got.”
“You sure you want to come along?” Barb asked as they headed to the helicopter.
“I’m Asatru, and I ran and didn’t even look back,” Janea said. “I’m feeling a little weak in the goddess region. So, yeah, I want to go along. For that matter, if I can look at this thing and not go mad, I’d appreciate being the one to order down the bomb. It’s sort of directing violence, which is up there for my goddess with having good sex.”
