The Colonel's Table: Session Ten

 

Pagan the troubled foster kid was excited. One of his friends at school was a member of a secret magickal paramilitary organization and invited him to join. He spent the last few days working at a shitty fast food place on the state highway but tonight was the night he would be initiated into the mysteries.

 

He arrived at the Wenatchee KFC at around 9 PM to find it closed. The lights were off, the doors and windows barricaded from the inside with furniture. Fonz Trepanier, Pagan's learning disabled friend from school, shouted down to him from the roof. A hand reached up and yanked the kid down out of the line of fire. A fat guy in a uniform ballcap peered much more cautiously over the parapet. When he saw Pagan he quickly lowered a stepladder down to ground level. Pagan climbed while the fat guy covered him. 

 

On the roof:

• Mick Redhook, portly ex-military type with a lisp and an AR/Red Dot combo 
• Commissar Nadia Gage, clad in her signature red scarf and toting an SKS
• Fonz Trepanier, excited to be there and rocking a Mini 14 

They told Pagan to keep his head down. The Church's goons had showed up armed (like Nadia told them to if they were ever going to show their faces again) and were somewhere out there in the dark. But they could handle it. Right now they needed Pagan to find Moses, who would have orders for him. Fonz was excited to tell his friend all about his adventures but the adults sent him on his way. Nobody shot at him out of the dark on the way down the ladder.

 

Moses slept in a hammock under the bridge over the Columbia River.  He rigged it so he was at constant risk of falling out so he could get charges while he slept. He was prevented from doing so by Sauza the bridge troll, who caught him before he could plummet into the icy depths. The Troll admonished the Deacon that while he was sleeping rough, Moses was under his protection. Everyone ate and drank on his score and he wasn't going to let any of his people die. If Moses wanted to kill himself, or risk doing so for magick power, he needed to do it somewhere else. Or get his life together and move back in with his wife, up to him.

 

The troll smelled the box of special orders that the Coterie gave Pagan. Rather than extort the kid he let him in to talk with Moses. The Deacon was dismayed to see the kid joined the Coterie. He was a frequent flyer at Moses' day job as a high school counselor. He wanted something better for the troubled youth. Pagan told him to shove it. The old man didn't try to get Fonz out, but he was too good for the life of magick? Get real.

 

Moses explained the mission. They needed to break up the alliance between the Court of the Burger Queen and some local cabals. The Court was allied with the 33rd Regiment of Foote, a Revolutionary War living history troupe, and How Do You Like Them Apples, an agricultural outfit run by the orchardist Sebastian Gentry. Intelligence obtained from a demon suggested that Gentry Orchards was kidnapping migrant workers for his Garden of Eden scheme. The 33rd Regiment recruited a lot of migrant workers into its auxiliary arm to defend against ICE raids. Evidence of the kidnapping would break up the alliance and force the Court to choose who it wanted to keep in its corner.

 

No doubt any evidence would be kept at the Gentry Bible Museum, the one Moses got chased out of a couple nights ago. The pair got into the Deacon's car.

 

Up US2 by night, then a County road once they got past Cashmere. Into the orchards that hadn't yet been converted to second homes for millionaires. They took a circuitous route and parked on the shoulder a couple parcels away from the museum. They approached from the back through a plot of disused agricultural land. Old coils of barbed wire in the undergrowth ate at their pants and shoes. They reached the perimeter fence. The lights were on at the museum, a two story building in the middle of a working apple orchard. Pagan climbed what he thought was a weak spot in the defenses with no barbed wire atop the fence. He realized at the top, as he hopped over, that the fence was strung with sturdy black nylon rope, connected to clothing shop dummies clad in costume. One dressed like a Roman in lorica and helmet, one in a priestly breastplate glittering with fake gems, another in robes... Moses tried to do a backflip off the fence and landed on his back, injuring himself to get an Entropomancy charge. The kid asked what the hell he was doing and he refused to explain.

The apples in the orchard were normal, not liquid black like the ones poor dead Edgar mentioned in his report to Moses a week or so prior. The Deacon almost stepped in a large pile of what looked like chicken shit. Dinosaur droppings, he told Pagan. It made Moses nervous, being back here.

 

There was a loading dock in the back of the museum. The lights were on behind the second story windows. Pagan climbed up to take a look while Moses went around the side. He walked past a cattle door that smelled strongly of dinosaur shit. Around the front to the parking lot and guest-facing facade of the museum. There were cars in the parking lot and guests visible in the reception area. He took pictures of the car license plates and then went inside. This was clearly a church event and, although Ed Vespier had attacked his credit score, he hadn't tried to kick him out of the ministry.

 

 

Ed acted happy to see the Deacon. This was a Church event, after all. It was a little sacrilegious for him to come into God's house wearing that on his hand (he pointed to the glove covering the 666 burned into Moses' hand) but everyone found their own path to Him. Most of the guests were normal churchgoers unaffiliated with any occult conspiracies, but Ed spotted the four farmhands who always accompanied the orchardist Sebastian Gentry amid the crowd. The health inspector sang Widow's Grove at the kareoke booth and Ed offered Moses a glass of Gentry's special applejack, last year's batch. Distilled by freezing.

Pagan broke a window on the second floor and entered the employees only area of the museum. He didn't recognize any of the artifacts on the shelves. Cuneiform tablets and clay bowls. He took the hard drive from a computer before checking out the rest of the floor. A fire evacuation map on the wall showed him some interesting room labels. The Colosseum. The Nephilim. He decided to head through the Garden of Eden and check out the suspicious locker room that connected with the loading dock.

The Garden was dark except for the light of the EXIT sign above the door to the locker room. Pagan entered the room and the lights came on in the display. Not a diorama. A terrarium like at the zoo, the size of a room on the other side of the glass. Inside, amid the plastic trees and water features: a bunch of big humanoid leeches with red, yellow and mottled green skin. They realized someone was observing them and pressed their jawless faces to the glass, giving Pagan a view of their rings of teeth. Above the glass, in light up text: FACE DOWN IN THE GARDEN. Pagan kept his cool, playing with leeches wasn't his responsibility. He went through the door to the locker room.

 

Moses talked with the health inspector. The guy liked working with Ed Vespier. It was annoying when he couldn't do his job because the County Commissioners meddled on behalf of private industry. Ed made sure that didn't happen. The Deacon nodded and noticed the four farmhands leave the room.

Bosch
 

The locker room had lockers, plastic tubs for clothing, a fridge, and a big pile of shoes. A disturbing sign that many people had passed through here and not returned for their things. Pagan took pictures and opened the fridge to find a plastic bag full of midnight black apples. The four ranch hands came in and he hid in the fridge with the apple. The kid pissed himself as he frantically texted a warning to Moses, afraid of the armed men and the fate which had befallen the missing workers.

 

Ed Vespier announced that it was time for the main event. Everyone should grab a drink and a bite to eat if they weren't already full and accompany him to the Colosseum. Moses got Pagan's message and went the other way, toward the Garden of Eden. Ed told him he was mixed up, the bathrooms were over here. They were alone and the car salesman clearly wanted an excuse for a magick duel. Moses denied him that catharsis and went to take a piss. He waited until he was sure Ed had moved on, then went to the Garden to rescue his wayward student. The lights came on and illuminated Ed, one of the farmhands wielding a shotgun, and the display with the leechmen. Moses stood stunned by the horrible sight of the humanoid annelids.

From inside the fridge, Pagan heard Ed shout that they could forget about the kid, he had who he wanted. The farmers left him alone. He took one of the black apples out of the bag, ate it and transformed into a leechman. Humanity temporarily forgotten, he slithered out from inside the fridge and pounced upon the last rancher before he could exit the locker room. The guy got his pistol halfway out of its holster before the ring of teeth sank into his neck.

 

They tied Moses up in the pit. To a pole next to a petite, fit lady in a yellow subigaculum. The floor was covered with sand. Above the walls of the pit was an arena. Moses realized it was modeled after a Roman arena. He was about to suffer damnatio ad bestias in the role of a Christian martyr during the time of Diocletian. He was gagged, maybe to stop him crying out to the audience and maybe because Ed thought it would prevent him from casting. Up in the stands, Sebastian Gentry spoke to the excited crowd. They were about to witness the results of his farm's experimental breeding program, bringing back monsters from the age of the Bible.

 

A feathered tyrannosaurid entered through a cattle door. The crowd went wild, unaware or uncaring that the creature was actually about to eat people. The lady in yellow freaked out but Moses kept his cool. He cast a defensive buff on her with the last of his charges, which she appeared to recognize even though she had no way of knowing what he was up to. Then he decided to get more by attracting the attention of the horrible lizard. By pissing himself. The dino took a bite out of him and he got enough charges to cast the Entropomancer's ace in the hole: emergency demon summoning directly into his own body.

 

But what answered his psychic summons wasn't a spirit from the other side. It was something asleep down the hall in a stone vault, painstakingly transplanted to the Nephilim room. It spoke to him in his mind but it only had one thing to say.

BELPHEGORBELPHEGORBELPHEGOR

 

On repeat. Drawing closer. 

 

The feathered dinosaur slurped down whatever piece it bit off Moses and clawed the bound woman with an enormous talon. Moses' protection only worked about half the time. One floor up, in the stands, the flabby thing that answered the Deacon's summons squirted through the double doors into the room.

The audience thought it was part of the show. The dinosaur thought it was a challenger, come to steal its kill, and tried unsuccessfully to fly out of the pit like a chicken to confront it. The bloated humanoid lurched into the audience and shoveled a soccermom into its hungry mouth. Moses froze, stupefied again by the horrible monster. Ed Vespier and Sebastian Gentry sprang into action. Gentry shook a stick, Vespier brandished a coin, and both spoke in tongues as they cast magick on the rampaging creature.

 

Brad Hicks

 

The leechman tried to rescue his trapped brothers from the enclosure, sucking ineffectually on the glass. He was distracted by the smell of blood from the arena and went slithering down the hall, climbing on the walls and ceiling. Leech Pagan entered the room and resisted the urge to feed on Moses, restored to humanity by the sound of a person he recognized. He leaped into the pit, where the T Rex was still trying to climb out and attack Belphegor. Belphegor attacked the audience, shrugging off magick and shotgun blasts. The leech realized that Moses was already free, the dinosaur bite that took his arm off also severed the ropes. But the Deacon was stunned, insensate. The lady next to him had recovered her wits. Leech Pagan bit through the rope with his sharp teeth and freed her. She ran away, paused, and came back to help the Deacon. She hauled him to the edge of the pit and shouted for help getting out. It was hard to get the crowd's attention in the chaos but she was good at working a room. A Facebook Gen Xer with ballcap, shades and a beard reached down to haul them one by one out of the hole.

 

With Moses rescued, Leech Pagan scuttled around the pit and sank his fangs into someone as they cast a magick spell. He couldn't tell who it was without eyes and without recognizing the voice of someone he had never met before. A fistful of buckshot knocked him off the beast and sent him scuttling under the bleachers, where he slid through a vent and left the building instinctively.

 

Moses' route to freedom was less certain. He didn't want to leave the building without Pagan, who he didn't realize was the leechman. Belphegor waddled through the stands on tiny feet and came after him. The lady in the yellow bikini ran for the door and the Deacon leaped onto the back of the dinosaur, which couldn't reach onto its own neck with its tiny forearms. Ed Vespier straightened his jacket and followed Belphegor out the door, annoyed. Sebastian Gentry lay downed and bleeding from leech inflicted wounds. One of his farmhands tried to help him up and spotted Moses riding the dinosaur. The rancher had to choose fast between getting his boss to safety and killing the one armed Entropomancer. It wasn't a hard decision. He raised his scattergun and blew the Deacon away. 

 

 

The leechman smelled food. Better than blood. It scuttled through the apple orchard and under the perimeter fence. It squeezed a slimy paw through the gap between the window and the car door to unlock it, squirmed inside and devoured a chicken leg from the bag of Special Orders Pagan got from Nadia for the mission. Pagan covered his eyes to protect them from the blinding light. He was in the back of the car, naked, transformed back into a human, shielding himself from the car's dome light. He took stock of the situation. Moses was somewhere in the building, along with the black apples and his phone with the pictures of the kidnapped migrant laborers' belongings in the room where they were "processed". He had to go back inside. He went through the stuff in the trunk and found an emergency rain poncho the Deacon left inside. Thus attired he hopped the fence again and returned to the museum.

 

Pagan ignored the people streaming out of the front entrance and made for the loading dock. The door swung open and the woman in the yellow underwear stumbled out. She was dressed in clothing taken from the laundry bins and she had the plastic bag of black apples. She asked what the hell Pagan was doing. They needed to get out of there, something horrible happened inside and there was still a killer on the loose. Pagan said he had a car, but he left his keys inside. He went into the locker room, picked up his phone from inside the fridge, and found the dead farmhand he exsanguinated while in leech form. Killing a guy in self defense while transformed wasn't an issue for him, but the man was now missing his pistol.

 

Pagan came out with shoes, pants and his phone. He took the lady to Moses' car. She was in bad shape, with a big dinosaur scar on her face that exposed her teeth through her cheek Ben Daimio style. She reacted with mild irritation when she examined it in the rear view mirror. She was hardened, no stranger to supernatural violence. Pagan drove her back to town and asked her how she got tied up in the pit. She introduced herself as Ed Christ, a dance instructor who helped people feel the Holy Spirit move them. She did some work for the megachurch and they decided to use her as dinosaur food. 

 

Pagan drove Ed to the hospital after she asked not to be taken to the KFC first. She gave him one of the black apples from the bag when he asked her nicely, along with her phone number in case he needed her to return the favor. Call and tell them Ed sent you. Then he drove Moses' car back to the restaurant for a debrief.

 

 

The KFC was open and the furniture replaced like nothing happened. Pagan entered and Fonz brandished his carbine from behind the register, demanding to know who sent him. Nadia came out with her Tokarev in hand, assuming Fonz was serious. She holstered the piece when she saw it was her other teenage child soldier employee returned from his mission and admonished Fonz for pointing his gun at a friendly as a joke. She asked Pagan what happened and where Moses went. He gave her the breakdown.

  

Nadia was concerned that he didn't know what happened to the Deacon, and very concerned that he had let Ed Christ get away. She was New Inquisition, a very dangerous conspiracy opposed to the Coterie. But Pagan accomplished the mission and got the evidence necessary to compromise the Court's alliance, while also dealing damage to Ed Vespier and the How Do You Like Them Apples operation. She told him he did a good job and she'd take care of the rest. She shouted to Mick that she was going out to do a job. He went into the breakroom with her and they discussed what had to be done, out of earshot of the kids. They came out and Nadia left the restaurant.

Mick took Pagan aside when the endless stream of cars at the drive through window slacked off, right before closing. Together they'd learn what happened to Moses. He got something from the freezer. A chicken bone with a plastic tag. He put it in a bucket and tossed the bucket into the pressure Tophet. A plume of colored smoke rose out of the fryer. Red and black and white. It coalesced into the silhouette of the Deacon. Mick exhaled, as though he was afraid of this outcome. But at the same time relieved. It simplified things.

Moses blinked. He rode the dino, he got struck with something that felt like a baseball bat, and now he was back in the restaurant. He asked what was going on. Mick told him it was a debrief. He needed to know what happened in the Bible Museum after he got separated from Pagan. Moses told his story, and by the time he finished he had already realized he was dead. But that was alright. He stayed in the building because he wanted to make sure the kid got out okay, and here he was right in front of him. Mick asked if Moses needed anything done. Not conspiracy stuff, personal like. Moses told him to make sure his wife got out from under all this ok, and to check his notebook for problems the kids at the school had. Then he asked God to bless them and said nothing more.