The Colonel's Table: Session Seven

 

Three people died and twenty eight were injured in the blaze. EMS who triaged the scene assumed Jazzy was just another smoke damaged attendee. They pulled him aside and he was worried he'd been identified as one of the perpetrators. They told him he had a heart attack and was lucky to be alive. They didn't find the dimple where the adrenaline autoinjector pierced him through the thigh.

 

At the restaurant on the following night, Fonz excitedly filled Jazzy and Edgar in on what he heard at school: that paranormal investigating fat kid Byron Irons who they fed a special order that one time rescued everyone. They were locked in the ball room but he got the door open somehow and they got out before the place caught fire. He felt bad because he could have saved more people but he was a hero!

 

There was no mention, from the news or from Fonz' classmates, of what happened to the monster in the basement. Or whether the police had discovered the bodies with machete wounds. 

Jazzy explained the whole thing to Orlock in the back of the restaurant. The shirtless ex con let him talk, but interjected to ask about the guys in yellow raincoats. When he learned at least two of them died in the festivities, he clapped Jazzy on the shoulder and congratulated him. Those guys were New Inquisition. A nasty occult crime syndicate who caused a lot of trouble for the Colonel's people back in '03. Killing them was cause for celebration and he poured shots into red plastic cups from a pint bottle of Kentucky Deluxe hidden behind the breakroom shelf. They raised a glass to Lil Skeez and heard glass break in the front of the restaurant.

 

A guy stood at the register, dialogue with Fonz interrupted by Chelan County Sheriff Deputy Rob Dogma. The enormous cop stood in the doorway with a fleshy hand clasped around the handle, glass broken where she inadvertently bent the metal frame. She stooped to enter and told the customer he was in violation of his parole. He was associating with a known felon. She gestured to Orlock in the back, who raised his glass and pounded the whiskey flavored grain spirit therein. The guy stammered something and Rob laughed. Look at his face. She pushed him aside, attempting to do it gently but sending him skidding across the freshly mopped floor. Fonz was enraptured by the giant woman and they talked privately before she announced what she had to say to Edgar and Jazzy: the Grace Church was privately fingering the Cadre as the culprits for the fire, but there was no evidence linking them to the crime. It was being investigated as a potential arson but some attendees were still missing. Ed Christ and her goons were nowhere to be found after issuing a very well crafted statement.

 

Rob asked for a special order so she could buff up before a high risk warrant service. Fonz got it without asking his superior officers. He wrote something on the receipt and handed the greasy bag to the musclebound policewoman. She laughed when she read it, which devastated him. She paused on the way out the door, looked back and made an obscene hand gesture at him. A violent thrust of her clenched fist and forearm through the circled fingers of her other hand.

 

Edgar and Jazzy decided to find the demon Fancy Pants, who had escaped after Maria summoned him and then blew up her house using the Del Rubio necklace. The demon's occult knowledge could help them with the other factions chasing them around town and give them solutions to social problems in town. Orlock pulled out his faceless watch and let it dangle on its chain. He glowered at it while it swung around, then announced Fancy Pants was in an abandoned house in East Wenatchee. Fired up by Rob's apparent interest in fisting, Fonz shared another news story that had been bumped from the headlines by the fire: the 33rd Regiment of Foote's test firing of their record breaking unrifled black powder cannon had been interrupted by a freak dustbowl. Alice Alcazar and Neal Zamorro helped the attendees escape the "skinning storm" into a nearby roadhouse. The Cadre weren't the only ones rescuing people and making friends around town.

 

It was cold and without Laine's car the Cadre had to walk. They used the pedestrian bridge across the river and at the apex of the bridge they found Sauza the Bridge Troll shaking down a cyclist. The old guy begged for help escaping the giant monster. He didn't take his wallet or phone with him when he wore spandex and didn't have anything to pay off the mugger with. Edgar negotiated with the troll and paid him a special order (the Cadre brought three on the mission), eleven dollars, and an offered favor to let them and the cyclist go unbothered. Because he liked them, the mutated extortionist explained who the cowboy hat guy with the farmhands was. The orchardist Sebastian Gentry was incensed that the Cadre had freed the apple maggots from his secret orchard and stolen one of his black apples. He was going to set a trap for them.

 

Neither man carried a cell phone up the hill into East Wenatchee. They went across the highway and through the strip malls and restaurants into the suburbs and found the address by memory. An abandoned house below the row of shallow cliffs that marked the transition from valley to the plains of eastern Washington. Edgar spotted the red glow of a cigar in a parked car down the street. He went over and talked with Alice Alcazar. The steel-toothed burger warrior wore a sharp thrift store suit and kept a pair of armed teenagers in the back of the vehicle, the Mormon-looking kids the Cadre had seen at the Burger King on their abortive raid a few nights ago. Alice was guarded and seemed amused, but thanked Edgar sincerely for saving Ada from herself and from the cops. She gave up very little when questioned and asked him what he was doing on the east side of the river. There were lots of hiking trails and public paths in the city and no need to wander into this piece of shit suburb if he wanted to walk at night. She drove away and left him to his covert operation.

 

The abandoned house was locked and boarded but the basement window was broken and the glass cleared away. The Cadre wormed their way inside. There were empty bottles and the remains of a trash can fire in the basement. Jazzy smelled fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate fuel oil. Someone paced and talked to himself one floor above them. Edgar went up the stairs and knocked on the door. A middle aged guy in a Hawaiian shirt and Hawaiian print pants opened the door. He held a lighter behind him so that if someone tried to grab or shoot him it would fall into the mess he made on the floor while converting the room to a mad bomber's workshop. He had a big tub and chemistry shit strewn all around. On the wall was a conspiracy board with images of the KFC, the Burger King and Maria. 

Edgar tried to negotiate with the demon. He got nowhere at first. He was a former cop and he worked for Marxist Leninist Maoists, which was as bad as Monarchism. Fancy Pants was not going to ally with Trotsky so he could end up like Nestor Makhno. He was going to bring death to the enemies of the workers and all his careful planning was now unnecessary because the enemies of the workers had come to him. The Cadre convinced him not to explode everyone right there. Blowing up two people was small time and if he exercised a little restraint he could kill a lot more cops and fascists and class traitors. They delayed him long enough for someone else to enter the house through the basement. Edgar went out in the hall and ran into the occult detectives Manny Mordigian and Sebastian Tabajaras. Special Agent Mordiggian slugged the disgraced cop. Normally the restraining influence, Tabajaras piled on with a second hammer blow. Edgar fled the scene out the front door, Jazzy following close behind. They tried to convince the cops of the danger in the house but ended up just insulting them. The Cadre fled into the night while the pair of paranormal investigators got distracted by Fancy Pants and his bomb workshop.

The burger warriors ran to what Jazzy believed was a safe distance, but there was no earth shattering kaboom. Edgar decided to test his luck with Epideromancy magick. If he set off Fancy Pants' bomb there was a chance he could just tank the damage. He told Jazzy not to follow him and ran back into the danger zone. He went around behind the building and tried to start a fire, but didn't have anything to light the wet wood. He crawled into the basement and tried to find alcohol or something else flammable. He heard conversation upstairs. Detective Mordigian speaking to Fancy Pants, who didn't rant or try to blow up the house.

This is not your home.

It isn't yours, this cold and narrow bed.

This coffin of flesh.

There is no guilt or innocence, that is passed.

Depart from me now, shade of the unborn years

Trouble not the day that is mine

 

Then the conversation stopped. Someone sobbed in a voice that sounded like Fancy Pants, but unlike him. Edgar heard footsteps, then no sound. He crept upstairs and found the occult detectives loading the middle aged guy, whose affect had changed quite a bit, into their car. Edgar photographed the conspiracy board in the mad bomber lab and fled the scene. He was embarrassed that the occult detectives had saved the man possessed by the demon Fancy Pants, who the disgraced cop had been ready to explode. 

Jazzy worked his way through the alleys between the houses of the suburb. A cloud of smoke followed him. Too close. He peered over a fence and saw Alice smoking a cigar on the other side of the yard, directing the teenagers to flank him while she talked with someone on her phone. He turned to run but his escape was cut off when one of the boys stepped into the alley and pointed a gun at him. He talked the kid out of it. He'd been down that path himself and it didn't lead anywhere good. He made it over the fence before Alice caught up, and outran both her and the cloud of smoke she sent to track his progress.

 

A second car came into the subdivision as Edgar tried to exfiltrate. A third child soldier and a man with a cane got out. Neal Zamorro leaned on the hood of the car and sent the ex Mormon to join the search for the Cadre, admonishing him to take them alive and not accidentally shoot any of his brothers. Edgar raised his phone to take a picture of Neal but he had the flash on and gave up his position. Neal shouted to the child, who came running back to capture Edgar. The Epideromancer fled and used his magick to temporarily alter his appearance. He couldn't do anything about his clothes and there weren't any clothes lines out in the middle of October to steal a new outfit from. But there weren't many streetlights in the suburb and in the dark his silhouette was different enough that the Courtiers didn't recognize him. Neal and Lot told the middle aged Korean woman that she should get inside, there was a man with a gun on the loose. A washed up decrepit middle aged man with a gun. She said she'd get off the street and they left her alone. Disguised Edgar waited until they broke line of sight, then left the scene.

 

A van pulled into the suburb. A work van with a fist grabbing an apple tree on the side. Jazzy recognized it as the Agrimancer's work truck. Sebastian Gentry and his farmhands got out. The Latin men spread out, brandished agricultural tools and asked the boss why he had such a hardon for these guys. Gentry explained that they let his apple maggots escape and stole his black apple. Jazzy had almost forgotten about the apple, it had been in his coat pocket for a few days now. A moose came up the road behind the van. The farmhands shied away and warned Sebastian that those things were dangerous. The boss held out a handful of dirt, which the moose sniffed before approaching the car Jazzy was hid behind. The beast rounded the vehicle and stood enormous in front of him. The farmers approached cautiously behind. Jazzy fed the monster the black apple and it was transformed. An even larger prehistoric moose stood before the burger warrior. The farmhands backed off. The monster kicked out and one of them scrambled over a car hood to get away. What the fuck boss, they yelled, didn't you tame this thing with your magick? 

 

More afraid of the orchardists than the paleolithic moose, Jazzy approached the beast. It knelt and allowed him to climb aboard. The farmers brandished their weapons and one threw his shovel as the hulking ungulate carried the ex con away. There was no saddle and Jazzy held on for dear life, exhilarated even though every bone in his bruised body protested the repeat shocks the bareback ride sent through him.

 

With no car and no phone to contact Jazzy, Edgar went to the East Wenatchee bowling alley for a drink. He ordered a Shirley Temple while a trio of elderly Mexican men drank beers and watched their grandkids bowl. Edgar made small talk with them and gave them KFC coupons. When they realized he was with the Cadre, one of them handed him a coin. They didn't want it anymore, he could take it back. They told him that migrant workers had been disappearing from Gentry orchards. It could be ICE or it could be something else.

 

Jazzy rode his moose down across the highway and toward the Columbia river. The beast was almost hit by a car and it might have given him pneumonia when it dunked him up to his waist in the near-freezing water. It didn't matter, he loved every minute of it. On the east Wenatchee side he noticed new signs on the loop trail, illuminated by the Chelan Public Utility District lights along the sandy strip of surplus WSDOT property by the bike path. Future home of Fisher Court permanently affordable housing complex. The creature climbed ashore on the west side of the river and knelt in front of the dog park so he could get off. The beasts behind the fence howled and snarled and the owners took photos of the monster with their phones. 

 

The three guys gave Edgar a ride across the river to the KFC to rejoin Jazzy. Fonz sat in a booth with his hands over his ears, shouting at the Health Inspector to shut up while he sang a Tom Waits piece and peered under the appliances. Orlock tapped his foot, irritated, but waited patiently for the pink-suited singer to finish his grim work. Edgar asked him to sing quietly, one of the employees had a sensory processing issue. The Inspector dropped a couple octaves and finished interrogating the fryer baskets. He told them that there was nothing necessitating an immediate shutdown of the restaurant. Just some stuff that would go in a file drawer to be held against them in the future. They had held up their end of the bargain with Vespier and for now, they were safe. Fonz threw a drink cup at the door as he left.

The Cadre went over the failed operation with Orlock. There were too many pieces on the board. They spent every operation dealing with blowback from all the factions they pissed off. It was too much. They needed to go on the offensive or they couldn't accomplish anything.