Chapter 3

Ed and Hank immediately established a rapport and were on a first name basis from the moment they met. Ed ordered the chicken fried steak on Hank’s recommendation as that was what Hank was having. Ed began his pitch as soon as the orders had been placed.

“Hank, I am hunting Sho-Sho Mamu as you probably have guessed, and what I want is to hire you to back me up with your shotgun while I use a special load in my shotgun to do the hoped-for killing. I need you to back me up with the same kind of weapon and load that you used a few months ago when you drove the monster off.

“I want you to cover me in case my special load does not work the way I hope it will. I have it on the best authority that I can find that my slugs will penetrate the beast’s skin, but I don’t want to become an hors d’oeuvre because an expert was wrong. That’s where you come in. I want you to shoot in the beast’s face if it looks like my shots are not penetrating like I hope. Can you do that?”

“Sure, Ed, I can do that, but I’ll tell you that I won’t do such work on the cheap. I am very interested in the job if the pay is enough. How much are you offering?”

“You know about the bounty the local newspaper is offering for the elimination of the Sho-Sho Mamu threat, don’t you? Well, the last I saw, that was up to $47,000, and I propose to give you 100% of that to pay you for covering my back. Is that enough?”

“Hell, yes, that’s enough. But what will you get from the deal?”

“At this point, I don’t know the full answer to your question. Frankly, I am one of those rich bastards that you hear so much shit about, and I don’t need the money. I deeply want to get rid of Sho-Sho Mamu before anybody else dies, and I am willing to do it for nothing just to be sure that the job is done right. Does that answer your question?”

“Yeah, I guess so, but I just hope you don’t screw it up at the last minute and leave me holding the bag.”

“Well, that’s a reasonable concern. Does it help for you to know that I was an FBI Special Agent and have been in a few gunfights?”

“Okay, that’s good enough for me. Count me in. Now, how do we handle this with my boss?”

By this time, the food had been delivered, and they discussed how to broach the subject to the SDHP hierarchy. They concluded that the Highway Patrol should be happy to cooperate with ridding the state of Sho-Sho Mamu and shouldn’t make a lot of waves. Hank could take a day of vacation, he had a lot stored up, on the day of the full moon, and that should get him by the red tape. After all, a lot of the patrolmen went hunting on their days off. They finished the meal with apple pie a la mode and coffee and adjourned to Ed’s suite to discuss more of the details of the project.

Madam Artesia showed up a few days later and Ed approached her with some results of his own research done locally. Ed had taken a map and plotted where Sho-Sho Mamu had shown up. These all turned out to be within a two-mile radius of the summoning site. Madam Artesia agreed with Ed that the evidence indicated that Sho-Sho Mamu lived on Earth somewhere near the original summoning site and moved off from there looking for victims.

She agreed that Ed and Hank could establish an ambush at the summoning site and stand a very good chance of catching Sho-Sho Mamu when it showed up. And, NO, she was not interested in being present when the monster was dispatched. Madam Artesia had too much respect for Murphy’s Law to tempt fate that way. However, she did accept a $200 honorarium from Ed as her consulting fee, since that was her usual charge for such a short visit.

Okay, it looked like Ed and Hank were in business. They went to the summoning site two days before the expected visit from Sho-Sho Mamu to refine the details of their ambush. Madam Artesia went with them to help them decide where the monster was most likely to appear. Madam Artesia walked around the site a few times carrying a strange device which she claimed was a detector for “other world auras.”

After about half an hour of crisscrossing the site and seeming to stop to meditate on occasion, Madam Artesia scratched out a rough circle and announced that Sho-Sho Mamu was most likely to show up in that area. “If it shows up somewhere else, then all bets are off and we may well not survive the encounter.

“Yes, I did mean it when I said ‘we.’ I just realized that I would not miss this encounter for anything that I can imagine. There are so few times when someone devoted to studying the occult has a chance to actually see a demon in the flesh and survive that I could never forgive myself for missing the opportunity. However, I want my own shotgun just in case things do go wrong.”

“Okay, Irene, welcome aboard. We’ll hunt you down a shotgun as soon as we get back to town.”

Hank piped up with, “Great, Irene, it’s good to have you a part of the team. If for nothing else, I’ll feel better with an extra pair of eyes joining us. I have a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun at home that you can use. It’s sawed off, so it should fit better with your size. If we stand side by side, we are not likely to shoot each other.”

“Thank you. You are both gentlemen, and it will be a pleasure to share the upcoming adventure with you. How do you guys feel about inviting Angie Overson the reporter to join us? That way, we can have an unbiased reporter to record our fun.”

Ed said, “I agree with Hank that the more eyes the better, so I am all for Ms Overson joining us. I wonder if she has her own shotgun?”

They worked for a while longer deciding just where they were going to stand and what would be the shooting order. The consensus was that Ed would shoot first and the others would not shoot except in an emergency. They wanted to keep Sho-Sho Mamu around as long as possible so that Ed could be sure of getting at least one shot into the monster. They were afraid that Sho-Sho Mamu would run if it were peppered by too much buckshot too early in the game.

Ed did point out that the women should dress in jeans and shirts for the encounter as skirts might get in the way if they had to run. Irene agreed and promised to mention it to Angie when she was contacted about joining in on the adventure. They left in time for Hank to make it to work and to tell his boss that he wanted a day off on the day of Sho-Sho Mamu’s next visit.

Angie was thrilled to be invited to the ambush, but she said that she would be armed with a camera instead of a shotgun. Her idea was that the three people with guns could do more than enough to protect her, and she wanted a picture of the monster to publish in the newspaper. That was agreeable, and Ed and Irene took her out to the site and walked her through what they had in mind for the ambush so that she would be prepared and not get in the way. Ed was afraid that Angie would panic when she saw Sho-Sho Mamu and run away, but that was not a fundamental problem as long as she did not get in the line of fire.

Ed, Irene, and Angie had a little party the day before the expected encounter, but Hank had to work that night, so he missed the affair. It was really not much of a party, just dinner and a few drinks, but it did help to make Angie feel more a part of the team. She had already bonded with Irene over the course of writing the newspaper column, but this was her chance to get to know Ed. Unfortunately, she would just have to wait on Hank.

*********

It was still daylight when the commandos showed up at the ambush site. Angie had borrowed a super video camera from a friend at the local TV station, and she planned to record as much as possible with that. She also had a still camera if that would be appropriate for some shots and she had time to make the switch.

The others had their shotguns and arrayed themselves so that the original altar was between them and the projected site of Sho-Sho Mamu’s manifestation. The idea was to give themselves some operating room in case they had to shift position and had time to do it. They had brought along plenty of coffee to use to keep them awake and alert. Ed did wonder why they would need that with their lives depending on them staying awake and alert, but Angie brought it and nobody complained.