The Colonel's Table: Session Six

At about 9 PM, the Cadre boarded the shuttle bus for the religious retreat Edgar Vespier invited them to the night before. Mick warned them beforehand that they'd be searched, so they each ate a special order prepared by Nadia before she got off work for the night.

• Laine the elderly Fool
• Jazzy the Mad Bomber 
• Jonah Klein, a new recruit to the Colonel's operation

Like an undercover cop doing coke to fit in with hoodlums, Klein told himself that eating a mouthful of delicious fried chicken was an unpleasant but necessary step on the road to his dream of animal liberation.

 

The bus was full of people from the same rung of society as the Cadre. Drug addicts, petty criminals, night shift workers at dead end jobs. They recognized a couple of them. The fat kid who they fed a Special Order the night before. Also Jazzy's cousin Lil' Skeez, the Soundcloud mumble rapper who he rescued from the ICE raid on the trailer park.

 

Part of the reason the Cadre agreed to attend the event, besides getting Edgar off their back so he wouldn't sic his pet health inspector on the KFC, was to get inside the church, gain information and wreck the place. The first sign of trouble came when the bus drove right past the megachurch on the north side of town. Up US2 into the mountains. The shuttle took them up through Leavenworth and off the highway onto a county road. Then a bumpy forest service road through the dark woods. Then a private gravel driveway that snaked up to an old hunting lodge. The driver read a prepared speech over the intercom, talking about the hunting lodge and the mysterious dolmen underneath. It was the only such tomb in the western united states but he lost interest, crumpled up and tossed the page the organizers asked him to read before finishing.

 

 

There were a bunch of similar busses parked outside the old hotel. Theirs was the last one in. They disembarked and facilitators wearing yellow raincoats herded everyone inside. Into a lobby where they confiscated everyone's cell phones before the festivities began. Laine was old school and didn't carry a cell phone, Jazzy left his at home because he feared the FBI agent tracking his location. Jonah made enough of a fuss that they let him keep his rather than hold up the line. He noticed the man had a machete hidden under his raincoat.

The lobby was a once handsome hardwood space, mutilated in an attempt to update the decor so it looked like an airport conference room. There was fresh bread, butter and a fruit salad with zero filler. Nectarines and pineapple and raspberries. There were a couple hundred people in the room. Jazzy went to talk with his cousin, who didn't seem like the religious type. He learned that Lil Skeez had gotten picked up by the local police almost immediately after escaping the ICE ambush at the trailer park, high out of his mind and making trouble at a club downtown. Law enforcement dropped the charges in exchange for attending the Grace Church's retreat. The description of the arresting officer didn't sound like Arch, so at least he wasn't involved. Laine discovered a number of fentanyl addicts among the group with similar stories. He was able to score off one of the hopheads he met at the train station a few nights ago, who remembered the old guy offering him a hit before projectile vomiting and getting ejected from the premises. It seemed like there were three basic categories of person attending the event.

• People conscripted into attending as an alternative to legal consequences
• People looking for free food
• Sincere religious believers

Jonah looked at the artifacts on display in the lobby. Instead of pieces by local artists there were curious archaeological displays. A curiously preserved cave bear skin dug up from a cave in upstate New York, suspended from wires over a heap of knapped flint blades discovered at the scene. He photographed the display to post on Instagram as evidence of man's ancient genocidal war against the animal kingdom.

 

 

A woman in a yellow blazer and opera gloves stood on a chair and initiated the main event. The conference organizer, Ed Christ. She knew everyone was tired and there was no coffee or alcohol to be had, but they'd feel better after the main event. His power would move them. A pair of Raincoats opened the doors to the ballroom. A low ceilinged space with a hardwood floor and catwalks above for the lighting system and powerful speakers. The more enthusiastic attendees filed in. The raincoats herded the less enthused members of the group.

 

Jazzy entered and, concerned that there was only one door out of the ballroom, climbed up a curtain ten feet to the gantries above while the yellow coats dealt with the rest of the guests. Lil Skeez spotted him and called out to him. Jazzy helped his cousin up. The fat kid they talked with on the bus was nervous about entering a confined space with one entrance and hundreds of people. The raincoats shoved him inside. Laine said he had to piss and one of them escorted him to the bathroom. Jonah entered the ballroom without any fuss. He saw his favorite local musician Lil Skeez climb up and out of the room and shouted to him. The lights went out.

 

The guard escorted Laine to the restroom and stood uncomfortably close to him while he pissed. Laine turned mid-stream and doused the man's leg. The yellow raincoat caught most of the splash but a switch flipped in the guy's head. Some threat response that broke through his flat affect and prompted him to lash out with the hunting knife in his belt. Laine fell over and the enormous blade hit the guy in the adjacent stall as he stepped out to see what the fuss was about. The innocent victim fell to the floor clutching his jugular and expired quickly, which Laine had not expected to happen. He snorted the gel cap he got from the addict in the lobby to steady his nerves and ran out of the room before the slasher could extract his blade from the victim's throat. He wasn't out of the woods yet. A group of farmhands bearing wicked looking agricultural tools spotted him in the hallway and gave chase. They recognized him from someplace and shouted in Spanish as he fled through a random door.

 

The ballroom was almost completely dark. The event organizer talked through the speakers. She told the attendees to walk in a circle. They'd start slow. Music came through the speakers. Drums and a flute. Ever the underemployed English graduate, Jonah recognized it as a Shaker spiral dance. Not something you expected from a normie Evangelical Protestant church. Skeez didn't like the beat. It needed more bass. The music got louder. The crowd moved faster, everyone walking ahead of everyone else to avoid being crushed in the confined space. Jonah fought his way through the crowd to the edge of the room and ducked behind a heavy curtain Polonius style. Pressed in the tiny alcove between the curtain and the window, he saw the tail lights of the busses receding into the darkness. They were leaving.

A voice amid in the crush yelled that they had to stop before somebody got trampled. The music swallowed the sound. Someone tried to force their way into Jonah's hiding place and he shoved them back into the press. He found the latch on the window and opened it. It was a twelve foot drop to the level below, he fed the curtain out the window to use as a rope and inadvertently dislodged a guy who was trying to climb it and escape the crowd crush. 

 

The lights flashed briefly and Jazzy saw Ed on the catwalk with a handful of raincoated servitors. She disappeared into a side door before she spotted him. He took Lil Skeez with him and followed her. The door led to a stairwell that went down to the bottom floor of the hotel. Jazzy and Skeez descended a level and the fire door flew open. Laine stumbled into the pair and Skeez reflexively struck him. Jazzy ducked and the mumble rapper tumbled down to the landing below. Ed heard the commotion from the bottom floor. She told her goons to take out their earpro and investigate, then went through the basement door. The goons filled their hands with machetes and ascended the stairs.

 

Jazzy jumped over the railing and dropped on top of them. The pair thrashed around with their blades and he tried to run past. One of them grabbed his pant leg in the confusion. He lunged free and fell on his belly. With nothing to lose, afraid of the blades and of being trapped in a confined space, the mad bomber jabbed himself with the epi pen he stole from the hospital. The rush of adrenaline let him scramble free and follow Ed into the unknown depths below. Lil Skeez fled the machete armed goons but Laine shoved him down the stairs on top of them. It was a good pratfall but there was something missing. The death of the guy in the restroom, now the sacrifice of Jazzy's cousin so he could escape... Through the fog of whatever it was he snorted, the whole thing felt too serious for a Fool such as himself. He stumbled after Jazzy. Behind him the flat affect men got to their feet and went to work on Skeez. He shouted that they didn't have to do him like this, then shouted in pain, then went quiet.

 

 

Jazzy entered the next room without attracting the attention of the occupants. Sloped earth floor. Walls of ancient timber, stacked so high they disappeared in the dark space before the ceiling was visible. A dolmen of ancient megaliths. Around it, Ed Christ and four goons. One held a movie camera, two held a big syringe, the fourth wielded nothing. Ed pressed her hand to the rock. Red ochre or blood smeared on her palm highlighted shapes embossed on the stone. Something made a squelching sound inside, not visible from Jazzy's location. Ed took a pistol from a small of the back holster and ordered the fourth raincoat to go inside the tomb. He told her to get fucked, he wasn't going in there. Her hand shook but she kept her composure. Rather than threaten him with a weapon she rattled off a codephrase.

 

Wolfe. Aubergine. Algedonic.

 

The man stiffened like a manakin. She ordered him again and he went into the grave. A huge hand shot out, covered with hooks or possibly suckers. It pulled him into the dark and his brief, upset sound ended in a horrible squelch. 

Jonah used a chair from the deck to break into the closed restaurant on the floor below the ballroom, where the music still hammered. He cleared the glass away and climbed inside. He went looking for the breaker to shut off the power.

 

The monster came out of the dolmen. Grossly fat, slavering from a maw filled with teeth that fluttered on the ends of little probes. Grasping with flabby hands. Bright studio lights stunned the creature. The goons with the big syringe advanced. Laine ran into the room behind Jazzy and the noise startled Ed. She pointed her pistol reflexively at the intruders.

 

The lights went out when Jonah cut the power.

 

Ed fired on instinct. She hit nothing and the old timber wall ate the ricochet. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated her and the thing lurching out of the pit. Then the blinking light on the battery powered camera was the only illumination in the windowless room. Then that disappeared too with a crunch and a wet slurp. Jazzy tried to communicate with the monster. He asked its name. Was it a demon? It didn't speak but a voice in his head spoke for it.

 

BELPHEGORBELPHEGOR

BELPHEGORBELPHEGOR

BELPHEGORBELPHEGOR 

 

In a loop. Drawing closer and doppler effected as the thing approached. Laine approached the snuffling monster. He had to touch it. Determine if it was real. His hand sank a finger length into the damp flesh of the torso. It embraced him with its flabby claws and licked at his withered flesh with its barbed tendrils. The last thing he felt was it caress his neck. Then Jazzy was alone.

 

For a moment, anyway. Jonah opened an interior door and shone a flashlight from the utility room into the chamber. The beam fell on the flabby beast and the body in its clutches. A plastic statue of a man in a 1950s type white uniform. Maybe a milkman? The animal rights activist immediately decided this room wasn't for him. He slammed the door and fled back to the kitchen. The monster moved toward the door, then Ed tripped on something and swore in the dark. It moved toward her, then Jazzy shouted for it again. It moved toward him and he decided that there wasn't any communicating with this thing. He fled toward the door through which he entered. One machete armed goon stood over a body that Jazzy didn't want to look at, because he knew who it was. The blood-soaked flat affect man swung his blade and Jazzy barreled into him, pinning the weapon hand above the killer's body. The second goon came down the stairs to assist his partner. Belphegor burst through the fire door, squeezing its flabby body into the confined space. One of the raincoats freaked out and fled. Whatever brainwashing they did to him, it didn't condition him against that. The other held his ground, but the blood covering his mackintosh made him a more appetizing meal than Jazzy. The beast slurped him up, letting the mad bomber run up the stairs. Over the body of his cousin Skeez, who had previously tried to flee but inadvertently covered his escape.

 

Jonah went to the kitchen and started a fire. This place had to go. He used grease and oil and cleaning products to start the blaze and went out on the deck. The hotel was on a slope and if he climbed over the balcony at the point closest to the building he could lower himself down safely. He went over the side and dropped down right in front of Ed Christ as she escaped the monster via an exterior door. She pointed her gun at him and he raised up his hands. They were two of a kind, said he. Not like those ignoramuses inside. There was no reason for her to shoot him. She fired twice and missed both times as he fled into the woods, calling her a fucking fascist and decrying her senseless attempt on his life.

Laine stood outside in the cold, no memory of how he got there. He was coming down off whatever was in the gel cap. The special order he scarfed before the mission saved him from Belphegor's clutches but now he was on his own. There were two vans parked. A white panel van and a work van with a logo on the side. A fist grabbing an apple tree with the text NO FLOWER WITHERS IN OUR HANDS. A group came out the front entrance to the lodge. Latin farmhands in work clothes and a white guy in a cowboy hat with a red apple pin that caught the moon through the clouds. One of the orchardists carried a milk crate full of midnight black apples, the same ones Laine saw on the tree in the Apple Maggot Quarantine Zone. 

 

The old man didn't let his lack of Fool powers and his strange sense of emptiness stop him from causing mischief. He let the air out of the tires on the apple van while the group crossed the gravel parking lot, bickering all the way. Some idiot set the building on fire before he could catch the dicks that fucked up his orchard, but this whole event was a bit too pagan in the first place for his liking. Dancing wasn't pagan, replied his fieldhands. You don't understand, you're Catholic, said he. The farmhands objected to the implication that Catholicism wasn't proper Christianity and he agreed to drop the issue. Laine hid behind the white panel van while the orchardists loaded into the van, realized their tires were empty and got out to reinflate them. The building was really burning now and people came streaming out. Rather than wait around to reinflate all four tires, the cowboy hat guy grumbled and pressed his hand to each wheel in turn. It was a lot of juice to spend but he wanted to get the fuck out of there. The van raised up on freshly filled tires and they peeled the fuck out rather than deal with the crowd. They left a trail of sap in the gravel as they sped down the bumpy road.

 

 

Jazzy ran up the staircase, away from Belphegor and the flames eating the hotel. He inhaled a lot of smoke and stumbled, coughing, out the entrance with the crowd. The adrenaline from the autoinjector wore off and he fell to his knees and vomited. His cousin was dead. The puke came out in the shape of a chicken bone made of ash. The Colonel's protection saved his lungs from the fires.

 

Ed Christ came up the hill, stuffed the pistol back in the SOB holster and played conference organizer. She told everyone to get away from the building in case of secondaries and tried to get a headcount. Did anyone have a first aid kit? An AED? Where were her yellow jacketed facilitators? Jonah crept out of the woods and tried to take the gun out of her waistband. She turned and almost drew on him, composed herself and told him to join the other guests away from the burning structure. She couldn't gun him down in front of everyone. 

 

He lunged for the gun again when he thought she wasn't looking. She drew and shot him in a single smooth motion. 

 

The 9mm ball went right through at close range. Jonah had eaten a Special Order but the Colonel, seeing that the wound wasn't fatal, let his soldier take the pain. The new recruit winced but didn't drop. He told her through gritted teeth that she was a God damned Nazi, but didn't try for the gun again. Just watched the flames eat the building.

 

Ed opened up her white van and went through the plastic tub of cell phones stored there by her goons. She found one that had signal and dialed 9/11. She could get out of this easy if she controlled the narrative. Laine snuck up and peeked inside the cooler stored in the back of the van. It was full of ice but nothing else. They were hoping to take something away from the lodge with them when they escaped, but didn't get it.