The Colonel's Table: Session Eight

 

Hank the new recruit to the Colonel's Secret Cadre parked his Hilux down the road from the restaurant and entered to find Nadia Gage, Mick Bonnavera and Ozzy Packard working that night. Nadia kept her gun in her holster and told Hank that he wouldn't be working in the store tonight. He needed to go find Edgar, who had been told not to show up in the first place, and tell him that Nadia had been interrogated by federal agents. An FBI hood by the name of Special Agent In Charge Esme Parkreiner asked her if she knew anything about the big pile of ANFO the domestic terrorism unit found in an abandoned house in East Wenatchee. Nadia's face appeared on a conspiracist's pinboard found at the scene. Edgar would know what to do after that.

Nadia gave Hank a sack of three special orders. Chicken sandwiches and a thing of fries. He passed an elderly cyclist on the way out, clad in spandex and clasping a forty in a brown paper bag as he entered the restaurant.

 

Edgar was at the bowling alley in East Wenatchee. Hank didn't call him because he knew their phones were tapped, the meeting location was prearranged. The bowling alley shared a parking lot with the Burger King controlled by the Court. Edgar parked, got out of his truck, and noticed a pair of cops in black armor and ballcaps harassing the lady working the counter at the BK. She smoked a cigar and no sold whatever threats they made. Not his problem. Not yet anyway.

 

Inside the Bowling Alley, Edgar sat at the bar in his dorky private eye getup and sipped a glass of water. One of the high school kids he recruited as an informant excitedly explained a bunch of stuff he already knew. The police discovered an abandoned house with a bomber's lab inside, along with evidence of a plot against all the fast food places in the Greater Wenatchee area. Nobody's name was mentioned in the news but it was now a Federal case, taken over by the FBI. Edgar paid the kid and shooed him away so he could talk with Hank. He had been pursued by Agent Manny Mordigian and his pal Sebastian Tabajaras, but until now they had been operating on their own without official remit from the Bureau. But Manny worked in the Fertilizer Inspection Unit and had found an honest to god fertilizer bomb, making it a real case. The news hadn't mentioned the possessed guy the occult detectives escorted away from the scene after banishing the demon inside him. Either they arrested him off scene, or they were obscuring his involvement as an innocent victim of demonic possession and the case would never be solved.

 

Either way, Edgar and Hank agreed on a plan of attack. Edgar could impersonate people using his magick, but he needed to observe them in their natural habitat first. If he got a look at the Special Agent in Charge, he could disguise himself as Esme and start some shit that would completely torpedo the case and get everyone sent home.

 

 

The situation in the parking lot escalated while they were in the bowling alley. They came out and found the pair of black uniformed officers dragging a teenager out of the Burger King in handcuffs. Edgar recognized the kid as one of the ex Mormons who chased him in the alleys, and the police officers as the ICE goons from the Denny's. The short White guy and the fat Latin dude with the Homestuck tattoo on the back of his neck. Alice stood unbothered under the awning at the door and smoked. In between the agents and their car were the redcoated grunts of the 33rd Regiment of Foote. The core force of four men and women, plus a bunch of new recruits. Mexican and Salvadoran guys with wooden dummy rifles. Lieutenant Colonel Bhoja balanced an enormous Persian club on his shoulder in lieu of a sword. 

 

One of the agents called for backup. The other put a hand on his sidearm and told the strange protestors to disperse. The Colonel told his men to present arms. They brandished their wooden rifle and the Fed shot one of them. The Colonel hit the shooter with the huge club. The others should have broken and fled, they weren't expecting to get shot or fight the police. Their leader's bravery inspired the redcoats to surge forward and join the brawl. The guy on the phone was knocked down before he could draw. Alice took a mouthful of smoke from her cigar and cast a smoking spell to burn the agents' guns to ash. Hank freaked out and tried to assault her. He was back in the FOB getting mortared and someone had dropped a cigarette in a fuel spill. He wasn't going to let it happen again. Edgar restrained him before Alice could hit him with a blast. The Colonel pulled his men back and they retreated before the DHS goons' backup arrived, rescuing Alice's coworker in the process. She shouted through her steel dentures at the bruised and beaten cops as they retreated to their prowler. The kid was a citizen, he just didn't have a birth certificate because he was raised in a polygamous cult in the damn desert. Neal the assistant manager came out with his cane to see what the fuss was about. The Cadre got in Hank's truck and left before more cops showed up.

 

They didn't actually know where the FBI lady was staying. Edgar phoned Arch at Wenatchee PD and asked him, obliquely, if he knew what hotel the Special Agent in Charge was at. Arch was prepared for this and pretended to be mad at the "scam call". If he wasn't working he'd head right down to the Marriott and shoot the damn telemarketer in the face.

 

The plan was simple: get access to a computer in the hotel, figure out where Esme was staying, pretend to be housekeeping so they could get eyes on her. Edgar made up a story about a fentanyl addict vomiting in the elevator to get the front desk guy out of the way, then Hank used his active user session to find the feeb's room on the second floor. Edgar swiped a staff keycard and stole some uniforms from the laundry room. The pair went up to the second floor and ignored the do not disturb sign. They banged on Esme's door and she told them to leave. Edgar munched a special order and it turned him into a pool of chicken grease, which freaked Hank out but didn't bother the disgraced detective at all. He oozed under the door and found a middle aged woman with one eye, gun in hand, paranoid and expecting an ambush. She saw the slime oozing under the door and shouted that she had changed her mind, they could clean up the mess. She skirted the puddle, unlocked the door and allowed Hank entry.

 

Esme kept her gun behind her back and herself in between Hank and the case files on the hotel desk. He made small talk and asked if the Bureau was a good place to work. She told him it was fine but it was hard to get a job because of the periodic hiring freezes. He figured she didn't suspect him of anything personally, she just acted this way around strange visitors while working domestic terror assignments. Hank pretended to mop up Edgar and Edgar made a decision. He didn't want to just impersonate Esme, he wanted to remove her from the picture completely so his impersonation of her wouldn't be interrupted by the genuine article. He decided to transform into a duplicate of her, then attack her while she was too shocked to react.

The slime on the floor coalesced into the shape of a middle aged woman with one eye. Shocked by a duplicate of herself appearing out of the ooze, Esme shot and killed him instantly. 

 

The corpse that looked just like the feeb fell to the floor. She pointed the gun at Hank, who was just as shocked as she was. He played the innocent janitor and she refrained from shooting him, but held her gun on him while she picked up her phone and called Manny. She told him to get over here, there was a new development in the case that he needed to see. She needed someone she could trust on scene before the local black and whites arrived. Hank stepped away from the blood pooling on the hotel carpet and nudged the bag holding the two remaining special orders. He had avoided instant death by pretending to be hotel staff but his ruse would collapse under close scrutiny. He needed to escape before local cops and feds flooded the scene. He slowly picked up the bag, reassuring Esme Frozone style that he was just hungry. An inveterate stress eater, Esme took one of the remaining sandwiches and allowed him the other. She ate one handed, awkwardly rubbing napkins between her fingers.

They finished eating. The Colonel came out of the hotel bathroom. Esme whirled and shot him center mass. The bullet made a neat little hole in his white suit jacket, right over his heart. He apologized to her and touched her on the forehead. She disappeared. Hank saluted his superior officer and the Colonel bawled him out. This was a damn combat zone, there were snipers everywhere looking to grease an officer. He just sent that FBI agent to Kentucky and if Hank had any sense he'd also get the hell out of there while the getting was good. He left through the back stairs before the cops showed up, got into his truck and got the fuck out of town.

 

Damir Martin

Deacon Moses ran for his fucking life. He was an ordained minister with the Grace Church and he wished, again, that he had just kept his mouth shut and not investigated any disturbing developments at the in-development Gentry Orchards Bible museum. But that stupid chicken detective had put the idea in his head that something was going on. The migrant workers were disappearing and the orchardists knew something about it, so he went snooping and now he was being chased by a damn dinosaur.

 

Moses made it to the hole in the fence. The white feathered thing behind him made a sound like a chicken mixed with a komodo dragon. The Deacon scrambled through, ran out onto US2 and got hit by a car.

 

Hank slammed the brakes as the man went over the hood of his Hilux. The car fishtailed and Moses fell through the glass, stretching it like a soap bubble before snapping back into place. Like plastic. The Deacon fell into the bucket seat upside down. Something flashed in the rear view mirror. The teeth of a monster, caught in the truck's taillights before disappearing into the dark. The car slowed down and Moses shouted at Hank to drive, floor it, there was a monster chasing him.

  

Moses awkwardly turned himself right side up and buckled his seat belt, apparently no worse for wear after being hit by a car. Rather than explain the concept of special orders and their random beneficial effects, Hank asked the Deacon (who he recognized, being an occasional attendee at the megachurch) what the hell he was doing in the middle of the road at night. The Deacon explained that this washed up detective had told him about suspicious activity within the church. He hadn't believed the disgraced cop until he saw the monsters with his own eyes. Hank had some bad news about Edgar. 

 

Hank stood in front of a live studio audience. In front of him, a kitchen island with a pressure fryer. Plates of raw chicken. Egg wash. Breading. Original herbs and spices. A man in a suit and a woman in a dress asked him what the next step was. He said something about seasoning. They asked him what blend of spices he used. He rattled off the Colonel's secret formula on live television. He woke up to the sound of Moses on the phone with his wife, outside their hotel room in Leavenworth.

Hank left his truck in a turnoff on a forest service road outside of town. The cops would be looking for it. His fingerprints were all over the crime scene at the Marriott, though not on the service weapon that dispatched "Esme". His prints would be in a military database, and from that plus his face on the camera in the lobby they'd get his identity and his vehicle registration. Together with Moses he took a bus back into town. Moses went home to reassure his wife and Hank made sure he wasn't followed on the way to the KFC. Fonz the teenage frycook and Orlock the ex con were working that morning. Hank asked where Nadia was. She had the day off and Orlock didn't know where she was. He could find her, if necessary. Hank had something to tell her about Edgar. He pulled out his nonfunctional pocket watch, did his dowsing act, and announced that Nadia was in the trailer park in East Wenatchee. Moses pulled the car around, having reassured his wife that he was dealing with a former student-in-crisis from his high school counselor job. The smart thing would be for both men to abandon the mystery and get out of town, but they were committed to seeing this thing through to the end.

 

The mobile home park was just a couple blocks from the Douglas County building on the east side of the river. Moses parked in one of the guest spaces and the Cadre commenced their search. Alice Alcazar came out of a battered but well kept airstream, clad in her Bunk Moreland type bathrobe, and puffed on a cigar. Edgar recognized her as the smoke mage from the Court's skirmish with the ICE dicks. The Court must have had good lawyers if the cops didn't arrest her for her role in her teenage employee's escape. In his work for the church, Deacon Moses spent most of his time making sure the various outreach programs and activities functioned smoothly. He recognized Alice from the addiction counseling and food service outreach program that the Burger King did with the church as part of their corporate social responsibility effort. He was used to seeing her awkwardly stuffed into a sundress or blouse. He'd never seen her smoke. Whatever. He waved to her and she waved back, then swore at Hank. First he tried to pick a fight at the restaurant, now he was going to badger her at home? Hank waved her off. He was looking for Nadia, not Court lackeys, and the front office was the place to go for that.

 

Lester the elderly property manager had a curtain of braids at the back of his bald head. There was no Nadia Gage living in his park, but he recognized her physical description. He wanted to hear some gossip about her secret food conspiracy militia activities, and when the Cadre wouldn't share he clammed up. Moses got him talking. Lester was Catholic, on paper their respective denominations didn't even consider each other Christians but in reality they knew one another and shared a lot of common ground. Lester let slip that Nadia was in Alice's trailer. Moses went to go find her and Lester asked Hank if the Deacon was going to be weird about the red-scarfed Marxist fucking a woman. Hank decided to do the talking and banged on Alice's door ahead of Moses.

 

 

Alice answered the door partially dressed. Slacks, dress shirt, shoulder rig, Hi Power, but no jacket or tie. Hank asked to talk with Nadia and Alice said she wasn't here. It wasn't her job to track down people from the Coterie, it was their responsibility to find their boss. Hank said he had it on good authority that Nadia was here. Alice asked if they had some magick dowsing rod that gave them inaccurate information about people's whereabouts. Hank would neither confirm or deny this and Alice asked if it was the shirtless Death Grips looking guy who always yelled. Something fell over in the yard behind the trailer. Moses went around back and found Nadia trying to sneak away. She wasn't a churchgoing woman and didn't recognize him, but when Hank came around the house she slipped into her role as commissar and unit morale officer. She was only half dressed and her hair was all fucked up but she thanked him for coming into enemy territory to extract her from her reconnaissance mission. Her scarf hung limp around her shoulders and everyone saw the bruises on her neck, a crescent in the shape of metal teeth. Nadia made token threats at Alice, who nodded along and then made a "call me" gesture with her hand as the Cadre left with their commanding officer in tow.

 

In Moses' car, Hank told Nadia that Edgar was dead. She blamed herself, because she didn't explain to him that normal people would respond to magick with instant lethal violence roughly one third of the time, or for not explaining that assaulting federal agents was a bad idea, or for not accompanying him and providing backup. She held off writing a self criticism and dealt with Moses. She asked if he was ready to take the next step in his investigation of the corrupt heart of the megachurch and Work for the Colonel. She put her hand on her Tokarev for emphasis. He told her if she pointed a weapon at him, he was O. U. T. out. She mastered her instinctive urge to establish her authority at gunpoint. She had all the time in the world if she decided to shoot him later, and none of her spells could un-shoot someone.