Unearthed by Robert J. Crane Page A

as she traced a path away, and Reeve just stood there, cursing Archibald Stan for not being what he was supposed to be—for not being here now, really—as he stood on the side of the road in the deepening twilight.

3.
    “How we gonna do this?” Hendricks asked as they crept through the last hundred yards of woods. He hadn’t drawn his sword yet, but Arch had his shiny new one in hand, a gift from Hendricks’s patroness that Arch still had no clue about. It was better that way, keeping him in the dark, since she’d shared a little detail about Arch that Hendricks didn’t feel either inclined to share or even necessarily believe at the moment.
    “Two in the front,” Arch said, “one in the back.”
    “Huh,” Hendricks said with a grin. “Like the shocker?”
    “The what?” Arch looked at him with a distinctly What the fuck? expression. Except Arch didn’t use words like that, which was too bad.
    “Don’t ask, sweetie,” Alison said, carrying her rifle case like it was a hell of a burden. She wouldn’t let anyone else carry it for her, though, that big beast of a .50. “You don’t really want to know.”
    “Marine’s on about ass again,” Bill said.
    “In fairness, the shocker is not just about ass,” Hendricks said. “But leave it up to the Army to ignore that it’s two-thirds about pussy, since none of you have ever seen one.”
    “Will you knock it off!” Arch hissed into the dark.
    Silence fell over them. The sun was well under the horizon now. Branches crackled as they moved through the woods, heralding their approach. A house lay in the distance, lights shining through the trees. Hendricks could see headlights farther off, to his left.
    They kept going through the quiet woods. There was conversation in the distance, too, a couple people walking and talking. They’d come from the headlights, Hendricks realized, and were heading toward the house. The trees thinned ahead, the quiet eeriness of the forest giving way to a still clearing with the house in the middle of it like a lone boat on the ocean.
    They slowed as they came to the edge of the woods and started the cell phone conference call that Bill had set up for them a while back. Hendricks threaded the wire and earbud into place, then snugged the phone on his belt. The wire got in his way during fights sometimes, but the microphone was live all the time. Which had been embarrassing the first time they’d staked out a demon haunt and he’d had to take a piss. There had been laughs. Lots of laughs. Hendricks didn’t care; it wasn’t like any of the others never took a piss. Except Duncan. He probably didn’t.
    “Motion,” Alison said, about ten feet from the edge of the woods. She was on the ground, low, had her case open and was starting to get set up. He couldn’t tell if she was winded at all by the trek, but she sure didn’t look it. Girl was full of surprises. He peeled his eyes off of her with a little difficulty.
    “Guess you’re setting up here, then,” Arch said, like he was a little miffed she’d taken the initiative.
    “It’s a good vantage,” she said, not looking up at him. She hefted the big Barrett rifle and set it on the bipod legs, pointing it down range toward the house. “I can cover the front door from here, can see in some of the windows.”
    The house looked like it might be a big L, with the top to Hendricks’s left. There was a porch out front, and he could see it from here. He pulled a small pair of binoculars out of his pocket and peered through. The low light didn’t give him much, but he could see in some of the windows, too. The bottom of the L came pointing toward him on the right, and he could plainly see into kitchen windows, with what looked like people milling around inside. There was a back door and a porch behind it, too.
    “I’ll set up at the back,” Bill said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “I should be able to cover the two sides of the house Alison can’t see from