(The following is the first excerpt from Chief O’Connor’s book, “Vikings, Vampires, and Mailmen,” currently seeking a publisher.  Click here to return to the main book page.)

I pulled out two flares from a harness on my left leg.  We had these specially made, too.  With a good grip, you could ignite three of these with one hand.  They were stowed upside-down, so when you pulled them out you exposed the igniters.  You’d grab a flare by the body, bang the igniter against something hard, and the thing would light up a room.  I pulled out the two with my left hand and got ready.

“One,” said Larry.

We never said anything else.  A moment later, the guys clicked on their spotlights.  Even before the sound of the switches had a chance to travel into the room, we were running.  I slammed the flares against the wall, followed Larry to the left, and tossed the flares overhead to my right one at a time.  If I threw them in front of me, Larry and I would have gone blind.

Oh shit, I thought.  It was a big room, and Larry was about to get a workout.

Right in front of Larry was the biggest class one bug I’d ever seen in my life.  He looked like a people-eating professional wrestler.  The only thing Larry had going for him was the bug didn’t charge.  The pike is a great weapon for taking out bugs because the bad guys almost always ran at you in a wild charge.  If you’re carrying a gun, you don’t stand a chance of knocking the bug back before he reaches you.  I’ve heard FBI agents claim a drugged out crazy can travel something like twenty feet and still reach you with a knife.  Imagine a creature that feels no pain, which can shred you with his nails and teeth - ten knives and an infected garbage disposal - looking to chew on your favorite face.  I’ve seen them run through bullets a lot further than twenty feet.  The pike helps fix that problem.

Larry caught the bug square in the chest and rushed him back as hard as he could.  Off-balance, the bug staggered back, but didn’t go flying like Larry usually made them.  You see, the pike is this gigantic iron spear, with a crossed t-bar about two feet from the tip.  This setup allows the wielder to stick the bug on it, but stop him before he slides all the way up the shaft into your sniffer.  We’d then pin them up against a wall, and they’re stuck flailing on it until somebody else could step up and finish them off.

That plan works wonderfully when the guy sticking the bug only has to charge the bug back a few feet into a wall.  As I shone my light at the bug and Larry, I didn’t immediately see the back wall.  We were in some kind of large hall, it seemed.  I know Larry can run the forty-yard dash pretty quickly, but I wasn’t so sure he was going to run it fast enough pushing that mother of all bugs.  It was like pushing the sled back in high school football practice, only if the sled was trying to rip you in half while you were doing it.

“Fuck Chief!  Paint ‘im!  PAINT ‘IM!” Larry yelled.  Part of our training was that we never fired our weapons until we knew for sure our buddies were clear.  You didn’t shoot a bug on a stick unless the stick was in the wall, bug pinned and buddy clear.

I also had a more important rule: do what Larry says.  I ran as fast as I could to catch up and aimed high.  I didn’t want bullets bouncing off the pike and hitting either of us.  The hose lit up the room as good as one of those flares.  I squeezed the trigger down, and it looked like an eight-foot flame was coming out of the gun.  For a moment I used the flame to aim, dropping my aim and switching to bursts to concentrate on hitting that wonderfully ugly face of the bug.  Hopefully I’d only need to connect with one.

The bug was swinging wildly.  I could see that his arms were longer than we’re used to.  Larry was getting slapped and clawed and this was definitely going to be a losing race.  We weren’t going to reach the wall before the bug caught some serious Larry real estate with one of those claws.  He was moving erratically and Larry couldn’t control him.  My bursts were flying left and right, always hitting where the bug’s head had been moments before.  It was time to improvise.

“Jump back Ler!” I screamed.  He didn’t hesitate.  Larry put one hand behind the base of the pike, planted his feet, and shoved the thing for all he was worth.  That was enough to topple the bug and put a few more precious feet between the two of them.  I stepped up and held the trigger down for good.  The bug was already getting his footing back.  He was looking right at me.  I didn’t want to make a night out of it, so I walked my fire into his side and then stitched it up the middle to a nose that I couldn’t have imagined ever being button cute.  His face opened up like a zipper as I twisted the fire just a bit to the sides to blow the pieces into smaller pieces.  No matter what they say in the movies, bugs without heads don’t come after you.  When you liberally apply their brain to the pavement they go to sleep for good.

“Fuuuuuuck!” came the yell of Sluggo behind me.  “Fuck FUCK fuck fuck fuuuuck  fuck!”

When he sang the word “fuck,” things were bad.  Unlike the rest of us, Sluggo didn’t curse much, and was quiet when things were tense.  He got quieter when things got rough.  He sang the Fuck Song when the shit hit the fan.

Pretty’s hose was bursting over and over much like mine had.  I didn’t know how many shots I had left, and I wanted to help, but if I ran, that left Larry alone.  Just like with fighter pilots, you never leave your wingman.  As quickly as I could, I panned my area with the spotlight on my gun.  I saw clear wall, which was good.  No doors.  If I found one, it was my job to cover it until somebody else took over doing so.  I could see another light panning the ceiling, which meant Larry had pulled out his hose and was making our search three-dimensional.  That’s a very important thing to do when you hunted creatures that could cling to ceilings and sometimes hid under floorboards.

“Confirm one dead bug, Chief,” he growled at me.  Obviously he was as anxious as I was to run over to help the other guys.  I turned and lit up the bug with my spotlight one more time.  He was as dead as they got.  He was in pieces, actually.

“Confirmed.  Let’s go!” and with that, we ran over to the other guys, yelling out we were coming along the way.

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