Chapter 11

The radio was dead silent for a few moments, then Irene’s voice was heard to say, “I’m sorry about that, Ed. I just got carried away when I saw that many traces of Sho-Sho Mamu all at the same time. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

“Irene, that is completely understandable. There was no harm done this time, but shouting over the radio can actually interfere with getting your message through. Don’t worry about it, and let’s concentrate on killing off these four demons before they kill innocent people.”

Both drivers had done a great job of bringing the demons into sight. From what could be seen from their rear, there appeared to be three females and one male in the group. Did this represent the composition of a typical pack? Well, hopefully, the Sho-Sho Mamu would not be around long enough to give an answer to that question.

Hank was driving the lead Humvee, so there was no problem about him knowing and following SOP. Ed whispered a quiet instruction to Sue, and she said, “John, guide us on the lead Humvee.” Ed was trying to establish the habit of Sue being the source of commands for her unit.

Hank pulled up close behind the four demons and blew his horn. John drove in close behind Hank’s Humvee and stopped. The result was that the two Humvees were in line with their right sides facing the demons. The demons turned around at the same time that John pulled into place. That meant that the Humvees and the demons were facing each other at a distance of about 60 feet. The demons were all standing on their hind legs and appeared to be in the range of 9 feet tall, so they were apparently not fully grown, yet. That did not mean that they were not very dangerous killers.

The four humans nearest the demons jerked their shotguns into position, but Ed and Angie were the first to fire. That was simply a case of experience acting because Jill and Ben were very close behind. All four aimed at the belly of the appropriate demon and ran off half a drum of HE on full automatic fire. All four of the demons had charged the line of Humvee’s by the time the shooting started.

One of the females almost reached the Humvees before she was stopped, but even at that, the humans had the situation completely under control and were not in serious danger. Nevertheless, all eight people were sweating profusely by the time the shooting stopped. Yes, that was an exciting way to introduce the newbies to demon hunting!

Ed had Angie put one shot of HE into the head of each demon to make sure there were no surprises later on. Ed called in the cleanup squad, and they were ready to leave. He did take the time to congratulate the newbies on their demeanor during the firefight, and his courtesy was appreciated.

No other demons were indicated by the ADs, so Ed thought he would try an experiment. He was not very hopeful of success, but he figured that this was a good opportunity to find out if it was possible to backtrack the demons to their nest. He explained what he wanted to Irene and Sue, and the two women immediately started to work with their ADs. The women worked for about 15 minutes and did manage to mark the trail of the demons for about 500 yards before the signal faded.

Well, that was really more than Ed had actually expected, so he couldn’t complain. Irene did say that she thought that some more experimentation and practice might allow them to retrace the recent steps of the demons. However, she was not sure how long it would take to reach that goal.

They did follow the fading trace of the trail back as far as they could. As they moved back along the trail, they were able to pick up some additional traces, but the demons had stuck to the road this whole time so there was no more sign to guide them to the den. Ed was encouraged by the results of this first experiment because he knew that they were going to need some extra help when it came to tracking down the nests and dens. He didn’t know what would happen when the snow came, but the demons would probably have to search for a way to avoid freezing. That was when they would really need the help to find demons that were hidden away.

Well, that problem was still weeks if not months away. Ed was hoping that they would have some sort of solution to the problem of finding the hiding demons by then. In the meantime, he had to get busy training Team #2 so that they could act independently as a hunter-killer unit. Ed’s plan was to use what he learned training Team #2 to make it easier to train the later teams. Eventually, Ed hoped to have a total of six hunter-killer teams going after the demons. He was already planning for expanding their hunter-killer territory because he was very pessimistic about being able to kill all the demons. Just consider how tough it is to kill all of the rats in a town!

He had the two hunter-killer units operate as a single team for the rest of the day. He wanted to give them as much experience as possible before he turned them loose to hunt on their own. They headed for another section of the county where demon bats had been reported being seen. Ghost were too hard to find in bright sunlight because of their virtual transparency, so he wanted to concentrate on demon bats that were much easier to see in the daytime.

For some unknown reason, the ghosts had not been very active for the past couple of weeks. Ed was sure that it was not because they had eliminated all of the ghosts, but, rather, they just had not been able to find them. He knew that they were eventually going to have to chase the ghosts down, but he was going to concentrate on bats for training purposes. He just hoped that they could find some this afternoon before they quit for supper.

They had to travel about 15 miles to get to the area where the bats had been seen. That little trip wasn’t quite so bad because Angie had made a point of buying enough soft cushions to outfit both Humvees. As they got close to the target area, both Irene and Sue reported finding traces of demons by means of their ADs. So far, Sue had been right with Irene in reporting the finds, so it looked like Sue was competent to operate independently of Irene. That was great news because it was crucial to the concept of operating separate hunter-killer units.

Ed had the two Humvees stay close together as they moved into the bat-infested area. He told Sue and Irene that they were to work together to track down and kill any demons in the area, but he was going to try to stay out of their way and let them run the operation on their own. He could tell that both women were a bit nervous when handed the responsibility, but it was imperative that they learn to handle it.

They were lucky, and both women reported traces of bat activity in the area. The startling thing was that the two women were reporting the activity from different places. All of a sudden, the operation had taken an unexpected turn: there were two groups of demon bats active at the same time. They simply could not afford to lose the opportunity of wiping out this many bats. Therefore, Ed split the team. He sent Irene with Team #1 after the bats she had located, and Sue was directed to follow up with her team after the bats she had found.

Ed felt that Irene could handle her bat eradication without him leaning over her shoulder. On the other hand, he was not quite so sure about Sue. Therefore, he directed Sue to handle her bats, but he was there to back her up if she ran into trouble.

Hank took off under Irene’s direction, and Ed erased Irene’s team from his conscious thought. Sue directed John to drive to the other location. Sue gave him the address, and John knew the area well enough to drive directly to it. It took only minutes for them to find the demon bats, and the number they saw matched the number that Sue had gotten from her AD. Everybody switched over to buckshot and got ready to shoot.

The bats were circling around a school bus, and every once in a while, one would bang into the window glass. It was obvious that the bats were trying to break the glass so that they could get into the bus. There were no children visible through the windows, so Ed assumed that any children on the bus were lying on the floor.