Part XLVII

Part XLVII

It was a two bedroom, so I pulled the sheets of the bed and laid plastic across it. I took inventory and laid out all the equipment Bruce had sent. I liked the look of a bed full of guns. The crate contained seven pelican cases, each custom fitted to its contents. The first one I checked was the one labeled with a skull and cross bones. The skull had horns and really big teeth. The gun inside was creatively named The Reaper Weeper. It was designed to fire 2000 needles of frozen mercury a minute. It was good for killing, but bad for the environment. The case contained the gun and three magazines of Bruce's own design that contained liquid nitrogen vapor. You definitely needed goggles to use it, and in one of the smaller cases were the goggles; they were full spectrum and fully sealed. Bruce had fitted in a digital laser range finder and put it all in a snug steampunk looking package that included a snap on helmet and spooky looking fear inspiring respirator, all covered in hand tooled leather.

Another case held a back sheathe which housed pure silver samurai swords; these were his babies. They had been custom made by one of the last sword makers in Japan. They were folded steel, with thin layers of silver added between each fold. The finished sword was then electro-plated with a silver finish. If I lost or damaged these babies, I'd owe him more than a new eye. He'd also sent along an Australian range jacket waterproofed with a special oil infused with mistletoe, nightshade, wolfsbane, belladonna, and lavender. It smelled like the Old Man had drunk lavender water and then threw up, but it worked.

The nine mil's were standard, but the bullets were an herb mix Bruce called “Popuri of Death”. He dried and then ground everything down into powder and formed the bullets using high pressure. They hit, making the demon laugh at you until their face changed as the bullets started to dissolve; then they cried and either blew-up, melted, or smoked. I loved the look of confusion that interrupted their laughter.

He'd thrown in The Big Sleep, but I wasn't sure I was going to needed it as long as The Reaper Weeper didn't freeze up. There was also a small tear down blowgun with darts made from the bones of Saints. I didn't want to know which ones. The last case was a hodgepodge of little things that clipped to the mesh vest and straps. Pretty much everything but a Holy Hand Grenade, although Bruce had been trying for years to make a real one. The casing was easy, but he never quite figured out what would actually be in one. That's what you get trying to reproduce a Monty Python weapon that actually worked. Plus, as kitschy as the casing was, it was impractical. Crosses, as they were in the real world, were little more than decoration and meant nothing to the things I was going to fight.

I tried everything on for comfort and set the straps, locks, buttons and zippers. I looked at myself in the mirrored closet and thought I looked ridiculous. But I'd rather look stupid and stay alive then look stylish and die with a set of ten inch claws clipping my spine, or my eyes melting; some of them spit.

I grabbed some kit from the van and pulled out the few pots and pans the hotel provided. I set to making some sauce. Two hours later the room smelled like something had died in it. I opened the balcony doors and set the thermostat to FAN. While the room cleared out, I walked a few blocks away to a nice little place called Poplar Street Pub. They had a full bar and a number of beers on tap. Being Utah though, the taps were 3.2 % by volume, so I got a bottle of Squatters IPA and backed it with a jack.

The atmosphere was nice. It had three separate rooms and a back patio. While I waited for the alcohol to hit my system, I chatted with a few of the locals and the bartenders. A couple were Jack Mormons, but mostly it was tourists in for one convention or another. When they asked me what I did, I told them I was location scouting for a low budget film. I didn't know what I was getting in to, because before I left I had three business cards and four or five napkins full of names and numbers of people who needed work. Evidently film was dead here too.

I got the bison burger for the old man and got a club salad for myself. Back in the room, the Old Man clawed the bread off the burger and hissed at the lettuce until he decided it wouldn't move on its own. I reached down and picked it away so her could get at the meat. He fell asleep on my lap while I watched Leno die a horrible ten 0'clock time slot death. I fell asleep listening to Letterman talk about screwing his staff.

The next morning, I pulled out of the Residence Inn and drove toward the Wasatch mountains.

There's a bit of lost history about what Brigham Young did when he moved into the Wasatch Valley. Sure they had to endure the harsh winters, but they also had to deal with a brood of nightmares that lived beneath the mountains. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was a direct result of Young and his militia, along with his Native American allies, trying to purge the infestation. In retaliation, the demon brood possessed his men and made them turn their guns upon the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train. The media fury, trials and general outrage of this caused Young, the then Governor of the Utah territory, to make a secret pact. The Mormons could keep the valley, but the nightmares got the mountains. It's even rumored that the persistence of polygamy was necessary to provide enough children to both keep the population of Salt Lake City growing, while supplying enough surplus offspring to make the required sacrifices the pact called for.

Polygamy only went out of style in the 1910 excommunication of polygamists from the church. Like the relationship of the knights Templar to the Catholic Church, the excommunication was a cover. The secret reason was that certain families had been chosen to provide the sacrifices solely, and the excommunication was enacted to distance the church from the secret pact. In 1917, as the First World War was beginning to take its final breath, the polygamist Knights of the Later Days went deep into the Wasatch mountains and fought what would be known as the War of Final Sacrifice. The brood never recovered, and at last count there are less than twelve demons still calling the Wasatch mountains home. I only needed to see one of them, but I was willing to finish the job the Mormons had started if I had to.