10
None of these assholes had any insignia on their tactical gear, badges, or anything identifying them or their unit, so they weren’t sent by any legitimate government.Of course, no Earth government would have jurisdiction here, but I had a sneaking feeling that wouldn’t stop them if politicians could be convinced that magic was real and there was a whole world without guns just ripe for the picking.Then I giggled thinking about the first poor soldier who wandered over here and ran into a dragon.I don’t think the Army is ready for Smaug.
I stashed three of the four assholes in the gate house and hauled the last one out into the woods a ways, out of sight of the road.He looked younger than the rest, and something in his eyes was less jaded, so I felt like he would either be easier to flip on his team or he was going to be the biggest zealot of the bunch.If he was the first, he’d be easy to break.If he was a zealot, it would be easier to get him to screw up and tell me more than he wanted to.If I had time to interrogate him, and if I knew more about interrogation than I’d learned from Netflix.
“Why don’t we save ourselves some time and you some pain, and you tell me who you are and why you’re here?That way I don’t have to break off any pieces you want to keep, and you don’t have to bleed.”I thought that was a pretty reasonable idea, but didn’t expect him to take me up on my gracious offer.
He didn’t.“Screw you, asshole,” he said, and spit in the snow beside my boot.
“That’s not very nice,” I said, kneeling in front of where he sat in the snow.I slapped him across the face.More insulting than painful, but as cold as his cheeks probably were, it would have stung pretty good.“Now, look.You’re going to tell me everything I want to know eventually, so why not save us all a lot of time and do it now?What have you got to lose?”
“I’m not telling you shit, half-breed,” he spit at me again, this time getting a little stream of saliva across my boot.
This time I punched him.Not all that hard, just a little pop to the end of his nose to remind him which one of us was sitting handcuffed in the snow.“Let’s try that again.Who are you assholes and what are you doing here?”
“Bubba!”Geri called from the road.
“What?I’m interrogating a…peckerhead,” I replied after a moment’s hesitation.He wasn’t a suspect, so it took me a second to decide what to call him.
“You can stop.This one talked.Leave that asshole out there and let’s get a move on,” Geri called.I looked over to her, and she wasn’t standing anywhere near any of the other prisoners, but I got what she was doing.
“Okay!”I called back.“You think he’ll be able to get himself loose before the jabberwocky gets him?Or will he freeze to death first?”
“Who gives a shit?”she asked.“Jabberwock or frostbite—either one is fine with me.Leave his ass.We gotta get a move on to catch his buddies.”
I stood up, grinning down at the bound mercenary.“Sorry, pal.Gotta go.One of your buddies already told my friend everything he knows, so we don’t need your ass.Good luck.”I started walking back to the road but hadn’t gotten more than three steps before he called after me.
“Wait!Lester don’t know shit.I’m team leader.He’s only got half the mission parameters.I’ve got the whole briefing.”
I turned around, not believing that Geri got the whole “prisoner’s dilemma” thing to work in real life, but this guy obviously wasn’t hired for his brains.“Well, that’s great, but you made it pretty clear you weren’t going to cooperate, so I reckon I’m better off working on partial intel than on none.See ya!”
“Stop!I’ll talk.Just…don’t leave me out here with that jabber-thing.Please!”Now he sounded scared.Good.I’d figured he was half-terrified already, him being barely out of college and in a magical dimension where he probably thought everything in the woods wanted to eat him.To be fair, there are alotof things in Fairyland that think human brain is a delicacy, so he kinda had a point there.
I moved around to in front of him again and knelt in the snow.“Okay, dickhead,” I said.“Spill it.”
* * *
Half an hour later, we were back on the road, or at least Jarvis and Ash were.They were in the cart, rattling down the highway toward Mab’s palace, while Geri and I fought our way through the snow on our horses a few hundred yards ahead of them, staying within sight of the road but just barely.I was hoping that none of the assclowns we were trying to ambush set out patrols or tripwires in the trees because there was zero chance I’d be able to avoid them and I didn’t want the horses to get hurt.Or me and Geri, but mostly the horses.We volunteered for this shit; they didn’t.
Geri was a little ahead of me, and when she raised a fist like all the soldiers do in the movies, I reined in my horse and slid to the ground.She did the same, and I crept up to where she knelt behind a massive tree.
“You see them?”I asked, keeping my voice low.A whisper carries farther than a low murmur, so it’s better to just talk softly if you don’t want to be overheard.
She pointed ahead to a clearing just off the trail where more prefab metal-framed walls encircled a small camp with camouflage tents arranged in a circle.However these douchebags got there, they’d brought a lot of shit with them.This was looking less and less like an attack and more like an invasion with every bit of new information I uncovered.They even had guards patrolling just outside their walls, armed with AR-15s and outfitted in body armor and helmets.Unlike the shmucks at the guard post we’d overrun, these guys were kitted out in identical gear, all with distinctive “PC” logo patches on their arms.
“Shit,” I muttered.“Friggin’ Pest Control.Those assholes could screw up a wet dream.”We’d run into these haters of all things cryptid, paranormal, and supernatural a few times before, once in Florida, once on a hunt for a wampus cat, and once at my bachelor party, of all stupid times.They hated anything that wasn’t human or “natural,” so they were definitely not fans of mine.If they were here with this kind of hardware at the same time that a mysterious sickness was sweeping through Fairyland, there was no way it was a coincidence.
They were well-trained, well-armed, and morally bankrupt, so I had no illusions about their willingness to point their rifles at me and my team.We were going to need to try something I am usually very bad at—stealth.I turned to Geri.
“Think we can sneak up on them?”
“No chance,” she replied, pointing to the wall.“They’ve got platforms behind the wall so they can see over, and there’s a good ten yards between the end of the trees and their walls.We’d be cut down before we even got close.”
“Okay, so we stick with Plan A?”
She sighed.“Yeah, I guess.”
Plan A was a classic distraction, which was the one thing I figured we could count on Jarvis to pull off without getting himself killed.He was supposed to ride down the road singing loudly and badly, drawing as much attention as possible, and when the next group of bandits came out to hassle him, Geri and I were gonna hit them from the trees.Which was fine, if we were fighting dumbasses like were manning the gate a few miles back.Not so much with trained operatives like Pest Control.They’d be sure to spread their people out so we wouldn’t be able to take them all easily, and they’d put up more of a fight than their lackeys.Oh well, we didn’t have a whole lot of choice because I heard Jarvis’s horrific singing voice going through the trees and a whole beehive of activity erupted in the camp.
