How the fuck did an ancient blood cult have what looked like fifty or sixty members in this day and age?
Jimmy lay on the ground in a circle of cultists, these wearing red robes and holding weird hatchets in their hands. He was tied hand to foot. His hair still swept up and back into the massive mullet he rocked with abandon. Even in the dark I could see his eye swollen shut over the gag stuffed into his mouth.
He’d gone down swinging.
Good for him.
More cultists stood around the elephant, who had been put on its knees in front of what had to be the high priest in a white robe. The mighty beast knelt there, its massive head drooping, resting on short shorn tusks. Black eyes shone in the light, glassy. They must have doped the creature to make it so passive.
The high priest held a claymore sword, its four-foot steel blade sweeping up and over his shoulder, where he let it lie as he gestured and spoke in some weird version of language — Sumerian, I assumed. The longer he spoke the tighter the band around my skull became.
He was heading toward the finale.
A short podium stood next to him and on it a black box. Slim and sleek, it just sat there, unassuming.
“I don’t see a trigger,” Ledger said.
I shrugged. It wasn’t my area of expertise.
“I could drop him from here, but if he has a dead man’s switch or someone else has the trigger then it’ll do no good.”
“We don’t have much time,” I said.
He nodded, taking my word for it.
With a flourish, the high priest screamed out a guttural sound and swung the claymore over his head.
I was pushing through the foliage, moving toward the high priest, when I heard Ledger say: “Gotcha, motherfucker.” One second before his gun went off.
I cleared a short rise of dirt and saw one of the cultists, this one in a yellow robe with a widening red stain, lying on the ground bonelessly. Six inches from his outstretched hand lay a black tube that looked like a flashlight with a button on top.
The trigger.
I wasn’t going to touch it, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else, either. Two long strides and it was at my feet. Then I started shooting motherfuckers in robes.
I dropped the high priest first as he ran toward me with his sword. Two quick shots in his chest turned his robe pink from the inside. He stumbled past me as the life ran out of him. The sword fell and stuck in the ground, jolting him to a stop until he slewed sideways and collapsed.
Cultists swarmed in confusion, looking for someone to hurt. I jerked my head around, watching in all directions. Any of them that started my way, I put down, so close that aiming became instinctive. Pull the trigger, pivot, acquire target, pull the trigger; pivot, acquire target, rinse and repeat; eject magazines when empty and replace them as fast as possible.
Cultists tried to circle me, but they were disrupted by Ledger coming up firing into them. Every time they would slide into formation, a formation that would easily take me down if they charged, Ledger popped another one.
I didn’t know how much ammunition Ledger had left, but I was running low. You can only carry so many backup magazines. Once I was out, I would have just my backup gun from the small of my back, with its six bullets.
After that, I was going for the claymore.
The cultists had stopped trying to close in, their numbers shredded but still more than ours. They seethed on the other side of a short field of their fallen brothers. Ledger stepped beside me, scooping up the trigger as he did. One quick hand motion and he had the thing in two pieces. Lowering his head, he brought the wires inside to his mouth and bit through a yellow one, pulling it loose with a jerk of his head.
He spit the wire out and dropped the trigger into the dirt. “There. One less thing to worry about.”
He holstered his gun.
“What are you doing?”
He grinned. “I’m out.”
I raised my Colt. “My last clip.”
He tilted his head behind me. “Save it.”
I turned my head to find the elephant climbing to its feet. On its back was one rightfully pissed-off Jimmy the Zookeeper, his face twisted in rage, his hair twisted like a tornado. He gave a rebel yell and leaned forward over the elephant’s forehead, pointing toward the cultists. The elephant stumbled a little, obviously groggy, but those big black eyes locked on the ones who tried to kill it, and from where we stood I could see that this mighty creature knew and it was going to deliver retribution. Even as the elephant tripped forward, it picked up speed, charging the cultists like a runaway freight train.
Robes are terrible for running away in a panic, all trippy and tangly.
Some of them made it.
Most didn’t.
“This has been a really weird day,” Ledger said.
I shrugged as we watched Jimmy ride the elephant across the paddock, knocking over cultists like bowling pins. “Not overly.”
I pulled the Comet up to the entrance of the Atlanta airport and left it running as we got out. I didn’t ask how Ledger was going to fly with the M4 he had in a bag over his shoulder. Being affiliated with a secret military organization has its benefits. We stood at the back of the car and shook hands.
“I’m sure we’ll run into each other again,” Ledger said.
“More than likely.”
We held each other’s grips for a moment. I don’t do good-byes very well. I wasn’t choked up or anything, they’ve just always been foreign to me.
We’d just let go when a noise from the trunk made us both look.
Oh. Damn.
I went around and popped the lid.
The smell that rolled out was atrocious.
Big Jolly blinked up at us. He’d been in there for over ten hours.
He’d had to go to the bathroom about five hours before this.
He smelled like a chicken-processing plant on a hot summer day.
“That is your problem,” I told Ledger.
He grimaced and hauled Jolly up and out of my car. “I’ll give him to TSA to hose off.”
“I’ll send you a bill for cleaning my trunk,” I said as he walked away, pushing Big Jolly in front of him.
“You do that.”
James R. Tuck writes the Deacon Chalk series and the Robin Hood: Demon’s Bane series (with Debbie Viguie) and edits anthologies such as Mama Tried: Crime Fiction Inspired by Outlaw Country Music. He also writes the Mythos series as Levi Black. He’s on the Internet, look him up.
WET TUESDAY
BY DAVID FARLAND
Some people are too evil to live. I know because I work with them every day. Take this case just a few days ago.
“This had better be critical,” I groused, “waking me on a Sunday morning.” My head throbbed dully from the aftermath of last night’s party.
Church stood at my door beneath a black umbrella. He looked pastier than normal, as if he’d grown five years older in the past day. His lack of sympathy for my hangover carried in his tone. “Got a dead Saudi prince.” He handed me a photo fresh off the AP newswire.
I squinted at it.
I’d seen what was left after car bombs before. Usually a fractured frame from a car, lots of smoke stains full of the explosive’s residue, and a charred corpse or two. What remained of the prince’s stretch limo and its passengers resembled a can of diced tomatoes that’d been blown up over a bonfire. Too many body parts for just one person.