“How many?” Jane asked. “And are they all heading toward Oakland?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Durrack said. “We have the small problem that on Earth trees don’t walk. We’re kind of out of our element here.”
It was becoming Durrack’s catch phrase as the Earth-raised agents tried to deal with the dangerous Elfhome flora and fauna.
When Jane glanced back at Durrack, he was standing beside her with Hannah Briggs.
Durrack was in blue jeans and a Team Tinker T-shirt stretched tight across his muscled chest; he could have passed as a local. Briggs wore something that resembled a superhero outfit, made from a matte-black fabric that looked sprayed onto her highly toned body. Both had on blue Hal’s Heroes boonie hats.
“Stop doing that!” Jane lowered the pistol that she had raised out of habit.
“I hate that I have to keep asking this question, but how do you kill that?” Durrack had asked the question every time Maynard sent them to check on their filming. (Apparently Maynard didn’t like them blowing up local landmarks, regardless of what the elves said.) Briggs said that the vespers gave Durrack nightmares afterward.
“Dynamite and chickens,” Jane said. She waved toward the crate of large white leghorns that they had managed to buy on short notice. “Unless you have a grenade launcher handy.”
She kind of hoped Durrack did have access to a grenade launcher or something similar. Nigel had made unhappy noises at the idea of using the chickens. She’d ignored him, thinking that there was only one tree to bait. She was clenching down on her own unhappy noises at the idea of having to deal with multiple trees.
Durrack didn’t volunteer a grenade launcher. “Chickens?”
“They’re bait. You kill the chicken, tie on a stick of dynamite, light it up, and throw it into the path of the black willow.”
It was horrible delivery system with a hundred things that could go wrong with it. They couldn’t possibly survive doing it multiple times. Perhaps they should fall back and find another weapon.
“I suppose that’s humane,” Durrack said. “Since you kill the chicken first.”
“You don’t want a frightened chicken with a lit stick of dynamite tied to it running around.” Jane decided not to explain how they had learned this. (Yes, it had been Hal’s idea but she’d been desperate enough to try it. At least it hadn’t been an entire flock of chickens like Hal had first suggested.)
“Why a chicken?” Briggs said.
“They’re easy to get. Rabbits work too,” Jane said. “Anything small and recently dead. It’s either body heat or smell of blood or something. The black willow will eat it, dynamite and all.”
“Fresh out of chickens and rabbits.” Durrack dodged being volunteered for the duty. “I take it that the dynamite doesn’t work all by itself?”
“We’re usually called in when a black willow has hunkered down in someone’s backyard. It gives us a lot less room to move around in.” Jane didn’t mention that there was also structural damage to buildings to consider. “The tree can sense the vibration in the ground from any movement, so it’s usually moving toward you as you try to get into position to hit it. It’s slow moving, but it usually can walk past anything you throw with a long enough fuse to let you stay out of range of its branches. The tree has a reach of nearly a hundred and fifty feet. It can reach over, around, and into anything you try to use as cover.”
Durrack whistled softly. “Getting close enough to toss a stick of dynamite where it will actually damage the tree must be nearly impossible without getting yourself killed.”
“That’s our experience.” It had been a difficult learning curve. “We need to get footage for both Monsters in Our Midst and Chased by Monsters and then we’ll start in on the chickens.”
“Can’t you use the same footage?”
“Two different hosts. We’re still filming Nigel’s show for when Pittsburgh is reconnected with Earth.” While replacing the “lost” footage was their first priority, Jane didn’t want to lose momentum on Chased by Monsters. It was still shy of a full season. The oni couldn’t have known that Tinker was going to crash the orbital gate. Some were still on Earth, telling the humans only God knew what. Sooner or later, Pittsburgh would be reconnected to Earth. Nigel’s show could be important propaganda to counter the oni influence in United States.
Durrack grunted and tugged on the brim of his boonie hat. “Good thinking.”
Hal had awarded the two NSA agents their Hal’s Heroes hats last week, off-camera, as they didn’t want to be filmed. Jane hadn’t expected Durrack and Briggs to actually wear them.
“Are you really that short on hats?” Jane asked.
Durrack looked confused by the question.
“You guys do good work,” Briggs said quietly. “We’re fans.”
The woman turned away before Jane could be sure if the color on her cheeks was a blush or not.
Briggs had the silent-bitch routine perfected but Jane had caught glimpses of a naturally quiet and shy woman underneath the tough exterior. Jane imagined that she would be a lot like Briggs if she’d waded through the war zones that the two agents had worked in.
“Thanks,” Jane said. “Let me check with my sources and see if I can get a lead on the other black willows. We’re almost ready to fire up this tree. If you stick around, we can team up on the rest.”
Durrack and Briggs nodded their agreement to the plan.
“It’s me,” Jane said when Duff answered his phone. “We’ve got a problem. EIA is saying that there’s more than — oh shit! Hal! Hal!”
Hal had produced a sling made out of paracord. She thought she had confiscated and burned it long ago. The idiot must have made a new one. As she shouted at him, he lit the fuse on a piece of dynamite tucked into the sling’s pouch.
“Don’t you dare!” she shouted.
“What’s he doing?” Duff asked.
Hal helicoptered the sling over his head, the fuse leaving a smoke contrail.
This was why she hated black willows. They were dangerous to kill before you added dynamite and Hal into the equation.
“Get back!” she yelled at Taggart and Nigel. “Fire in the hole!”
Hal flung the dynamite. It went wide, smashed thru the front window of a house beside the black willow, and exploded.
“Jesus Christ, Mary, Joseph, and all the carpenters!” Jane swore.
“Did Hal just blow himself up?” Duff asked. “Should I send an ambulance to your location?”
“No!” Jane snapped as she pointed at Hal. “Search him! Make sure he doesn’t have any more dynamite!”
Durrack glanced behind him as if he thought she was talking to someone else. Realizing that she did mean him, he dashed across the street. Jane scanned the now-windowless house with smoke leaking out of it. Did anyone live there? It looked abandoned. The yard hadn’t been mowed in years. The door was a peeling green. There didn’t seem to be any obvious takens. Maybe they got lucky. It was a big, brick house with a driveway on either side of it. Even if it went up in flames, they weren’t going to set the entire neighborhood on fire.
Probably.
Jane eyed the smoke, trying to decide whether they should call their favorite accidentally reoccurring guest star, the fire marshal. This was one of the many reasons she hated black willows.
Duff took the delegation of tasks to mean that Jane was free to talk. “Hey, I just got off the phone with Mom. She wanted to know if I have a girlfriend.”
“What?” Jane’s mind was on the house — possibly not abandoned — possibly about to burn down. The smoke had gotten thicker.
“She says you need two more girls for the party,” Duff clarified only slightly.