Thank you dear readers. Another big thanks to Wanda W. for beta'ing this chapter in record time so I could get it out to all y'all so quickly :)
Chapter 29
"You don't use a Zippo," I said. "You need barbecue type lighters, you know, the long ones. Did Lance not bring them?"
She nodded, "Yes, he sent a dozen right here," she walked over to the table. "Let's go outside."
To the side of the tent I saw a small trailer loaded with all my requests. Bless Lance's heart, he did well; there was an entire flat of flour bags, a stack of coke cases, all of Jason's water guns, and five of the biggest potato cannons I had ever seen. "Did he get the concentrated lemon juice squeezers?" I asked. Pam pointed them out and I slipped a couple in my jacket pocket and zipped it.
I picked one of the cannons up, shifting it to my shoulder like a rocket launcher.
"You load it, get it in position, then light the switch," I showed her.
"What is the purpose of this contraption?"
"It's for shooting potatoes."
"Yes," she drawled, "I got that. Why do humans wish to launch potatoes?"
"For fun." She fixed me with a confused stare.
"It's primarily done by men, predominately redneck, but not necessarily so," I explained. "Country folks mostly, because you need a wide open space to do it."
"What does the potato hit?"
"You don't have an exact target, just a general area like a spot on the ground, a tree. I have heard of an unfortunate incident when a cow got hit between the eyes and died of a brain injury."
"That's how some humans kill cows? For food?" she perked up.
"No, it was an accident. The guns are just for amusement, like I said, for fun."
Pam continued to eye me expectantly.
"If you're waiting for a logical explanation," I said, "you're going to be standing there a long time." She snorted and picked up a flour bag, shoving it in the barrel of the gun.
I pointed toward an open area, checked the ignition and lit it. A loud, resounding "boom" followed as the flour sack shot forward about 40 feet into the air, the bag bursting and spraying the swampy grass.
"Wooo whoo," I yelled. The cloud of flour hung in the air. Pam looked at me again. "You're supposed to say that," I assured her as I handed over the cannon. She took it from me, loading up another bag of flour,
She put it on her shoulder and lit the ignition. Another perfect shot, although a little high. I had been afraid the bags would burst early, but thankfully they did not either time.
"Yooo whoo," Pam yelled, then turned to me and grinned with a proud expression. I grinned also. Not everyday you get to show a vampire a new trick. We practiced a few more rounds. Pam loved it, almost too much. We made a circle of flour around the camp perimeter.
"Now what are we going to do?"
"Let's load up your toy guns," Pam said. We sat down on the edge of the trailer and began pouring coke into the bazooka reserves and the Uzi and machine guns' clips. I briefly thought about how Jason and I would chase each other around with these things until Gran took them away from us. We hid them under the porch, under mattresses, everywhere. I told Pam about it as I worked.
"You miss your brother?" I was surprised she would ask such a question.
"A little," I admitted. "You have to remember, as a child he was my only playmate for a long time."
"I had a brother," she said, a bit of a faraway look on her face. "He preferred my company to that of my sisters. I think he sensed –something different in me, the way Eric did." She got up, clipping the last gun together. "Eric's my family now."
"You and he haven't always been together."
"No, we have separated from time to time, usually when one or the other takes a companion who we don't get along with," she said. "But you're all right, Sookie. I can't see me leaving Eric over you."
Good to know. We finished loading the coke in the guns, sprayed each other a little bit. I could tell we had a messy night ahead of us. We were already covered in flour some and now sticky coke syrup.
"I don't think Eric was too impressed with my weapons," I said, trying not to sound sulky and failing.
"I wouldn't say that," Pam replied thoughtfully. "He prefers hand-to-hand combat, being the warrior he is, but he's not stupid. He will consider all angles, believe me. It would be a mistake to underestimate him." Damned if that wasn't the truth, and how well I knew it.
"Eric and his troops are going to lure the Andromedas out into the swamp," Pam said. "Then you and I are going to try to go into the labs and see what we can find in the way of an antidote."
"Eric knows I'm going?"
"Well, he said for you to stay with me," Pam said reasonably, "and that's where I'm going to be."
"Fine." I guessed we'd just have to deal with a pissed-off Eric later if he objected to the plan. "Let's load up my boat," Pam said. She pointed to the bank where I saw the edge of a camouflage airboat drifting. There was an alligator's head painted on the front, his canines lengthened into definitive fangs. "I had it customized," she explained. We began loading the guns and three of the potato cannons in it. We loaded a case or two of flour and a case of coke also.
"We'll leave when I get word. I'm waiting for the signal." Pam explained, examining the face of her cell phone.
"You have the blueprints of the laboratories and the rest of the properties?" I asked her.
"Yes. Lance gave me two copies, I have one and Eric has the other," she said. "How was it that he knew how to get them?"
"Herveaux & Sons is a land surveying company, and has been for more than fifty years. They've worked all over the state. Lance's dad collected old plats and land records, as a hobby, and has the more historic and interesting ones hanging all over the three floors of the office building. I walk around on my breaks and look them all, and one day I saw those old plats of the leper colony just hanging on the wall like a picture. I guess someone thought they were interesting enough to mount. I told Eric about it when all this started and he asked for a copy." Boy did I owe Lance a big one.
Pam nodded. "Look here," she pointed to an altered spot on the plat. "Someone's gone back and added this. What is it?"
"I'm not sure, but I think it could be the infamous tunnel the residents dug to sneak off the property," I said. "They weren't allowed to leave, as people back then still thought leprosy was highly contagious. The patients were said to have dug out a tunnel under the fence to meet their friends and relatives; sometimes they got on boats to leave."
"The way that's drawn like it's under the perimeters, and the way it's right across from the river, it looks like that's what it might be," I pondered this for a minute. "You know, the Mississippi river was a big stop on the Underground Railroad, and I've heard folks say a smaller version of the tunnel was originally dug for that purpose."
We sat in the boat for a couple of minutes, waiting, letting the current push us to and fro.
"Excuse me," a familiar voice rang out across the grass, "Where do I report for duty?"
I looked up to see Wizno standing in front of me in the cutest little pair of paratrooper pants and combat boots I had ever seen. "Wizno!" I shrieked, running to him and grabbed him up in a big hug. I honestly don't know why I was so glad to see him; maybe it was just a familiar face.
"Miss Sookie, you sure are hard to find," he chuckled. "When that Herveaux boy came by to get the gun collection he told me about this place, and Octavia and Amelia both threw a fit. They wouldn't settle down until I told them I'd come see what was going on."
"How did you get here?"
"I rode with the Weres. Lance, Alcide, Sam, Tray and a bunch of others," he said.
"Where are they?"
"The Shreveport pack have another camp on the other side of the colony," Pam offered. "They're meeting Eric to fight."
New information to me. "On our side?"
"Yes, Sookie, on our side," she smiled. "It's their concern too, you know. I think they've realized how much worse Andromedas would be than vampires. Although I think their attachment to you did help broker the deal to pull forces together." I absorbed this in silence and decided Pam gave way me too much credit.
"I got the go ahead," Pam said, clicking her phone shut. We left a few Weres and vampires I'd never met guarding the camp. Pam, Wizno and I took off in the airboat.
As I have said before, the Mississippi is a scary river, wide and deep, brown and murky. We were lucky that the sky was bright and provided a little light; the airboat had headlights, but Pam refused to use them. We wore no life jackets. I realized that there were none for what we were about to face.
We had about a twenty minute ride to Carville. We rode mostly in silence, the only boat on the river, a strangely serene experience. I looked down and saw what appeared to be a family of water moccasins swim by and I shuddered. I reflected on Eric's comment about Niall. Although my gut reaction was that I did not want to fight against my great-grandfather, if he was willing to destroy those I held near and dear, I really had no choice. Nervously, I started going over my methods of defense in my mind. I pulled the lemon squeezers out of my pocket to make sure that the tops were on tight. I looked down at one and saw a grocery store price sticker on it, two for $1.49. This struck me as suddenly quite hysterical and I laughed out loud.
Pam shot me a look. "All my ammunition came from the Piggly Wiggly," I choked out in explanation, still giggling. "No wonder Eric wasn't bowled over."
"Shut up and get a hold of yourself," she snapped with a glare. "You can go back to acting like an idiot when this thing is over." That sobered me a bit, but I still chuckled quietly. Apparently I was a little punch-drunk, tension affects me that ways sometimes. Hey, I'm human. Mostly, anyway.
We killed the engine as we got close. We glided in next to Eric's fleet of boats. Pam put her finger to her lips. Wizno jumped out of the boat and pulled it to shore. We could hear noises coming from a swampy area to the left, terrifying noises, battle cries, blades hitting each other, blades hitting flesh. I grabbed three of the machine guns and a flashlight and jumped out of the boat with Pam.
"The tunnel should be somewhere along here," Pam said in a low voice. A line of trees, brush, and the ever-present kudzu separated the riverbank from the main house and outlying buildings. All of the property on the other side of the trees and overgrowth was surrounded by a heavy-duty fence. We searched along the line until Pam stopped. She pulled a Fangtasia matchbox out of the brush. 'Eric's calling card," she whispered with a smile. We pushed aside the brush and stepped into the tunnel.
I looked around. It felt like a hobbit hole, about five feet tall and four feet wide. Eric would have had to scrunch down all the way through here, I thought to myself. "How long is it?" I asked, feeling claustrophobic. I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket. Pam grabbed my wrist. "You can't use that," she warned. "You could attract attention."
So we made our way in the dark and I hated every second of it. The tunnel was probably less than fifty feet long but it seemed like a whole lot more. It appeared clean enough, and there was no evidence of animal infestation, although it smelled like dirt and clay and slightly mildewy. Finally we came to the end, which let out in another mess of brush on the backside of the main house.
I started toward the battle noise and Pam grabbed my arm. "Leave them be. Eric's fine, I would know it if he was injured too badly. We have a mission to accomplish." I searched the bond and realized Eric had tamped it down again, probably to protect me. I would have to depend on Pam for any news on that front.
I nodded and crouched along with her as we made our way past the main building. I knew we were headed for the laboratories behind the leprosarium, on the other side of the swamp from where the battle had commenced. We ran through the yard and around the back. The ground got soggier and I felt the wet grass slap against my legs as we continued to move. Pam led the way with Wizno and me closely behind.
"There it is," she whispered, pointing ahead of us to a long, low built structure. It looked like a military barracks, and the lights were on inside. "That's where they've been staying." We continued to move under the cover of a few trees, the Spanish moss acting as a curtain. We saw an access door and prepared to run out in the open to get to it.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "May I help you?" a woman's cultured, melodious voice rang out. I turned to see a dark figure, cloaked in a head-to-toe cape. The woman quickly covered the lower half of her face with her hand as if by instinct.
I screeched, I couldn't help it. I had never seen a leprosy victim before. Even in the moonlight her face was mottled, overgrown, bulbous and disfigured terribly. I felt immediately ashamed of my reaction.
"My name is Catherine," she spoke again in that disconcertingly beautiful voice, never letting go of my shoulder. "I am the caretaker here. Who would you be?"
I scanned her mind quickly. She was human, about sixty-five years old, not necessarily malicious. Highly intelligent, she honestly wanted to know who we were and our purpose.
"I need to know what's going on," she repeated. "You people told me you were working with the Katrina reconstruction, and that is clearly not the case."
"Beg pardon?" I squeaked. Pam came up behind me. "Unhand her," she directed Catherine, who ignored her. Wizno took a protective stance.
"You're not one of them, are you?" Catherine asked. I assumed she met the Andromedas, so I shook my head. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" I could tell by Pam's demeanor that she just wanted to kill her and get on with it. I held up my hand in a halting motion.
"My name is Sookie Stackhouse," I said. "This is Pam and that's Wizno. We're here to try to stop a bunch of galaxy-jumping blood-guzzling sons-of-bitches from turning Earth into their own personal Food Planet."
Catherine looked at Pam and Wizno, then back at me, square in the face and unblinkingly. She dropped her hand, sighed heavily and sat down on a tree stump.
"Good," she said. "Somebody sure needs to."
Thank you for all the wonderful reviews and PM's, they are the reason I carry on – other than the fun I'm having right now, that is! Chapter 30 is under way, maybe I will post sooner than a week if I'm lucky…diet update tonight ;)
