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Spells, Salt, & Steel

Season One

by
Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin

Genre:
Comedic Horror

“When all else fails, the ass end of a carp makes a damn fine weapon.”

Your new favorite monster hunter has arrived! Bubba the Monster Hunter has
some competition in this horror comedy collection from best-selling
author duo Gail Z. & Larry N. Martin!

By day, Mark Wojcik can be found elbow-deep in engine grease, making
cars and trucks safe for the highway. By night, he can be found
traipsing through the wilds of Pennsylvania, making the world safe
for humans. He’s more than just a mechanic, he’s a New Templar
Knight. He travels the backroads and byways fighting weresquonks,
ningen, selkies, ghosts, and…gnomes? Is that gnome…naked? (sigh).

Season One collects the first four novellas in the Spells, Salt, & Steel
series –

Spells, Salt, & Steel

Open Season

Deep Trouble

Close Encounters

Goodreads * Amazon

The old Keystone Ordnance Works looked even more ominous in the dark. The full moon

should have let me navigate easily, but the cloud cover kept blocking the moonlight. We’re in

one of the spots in the US that has the most cloudy days, and I’d been told that was one reason

the TNT plant got located here—because aerial surveillance didn’t work well. Tonight, it made

my job that much harder.

Forget about climbing the fence. I found a hole in the chain link and crawled through.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d decided to ignore the warnings. Thanks to the maps and

Chiara’s research, I’d come in near the old water tower instead of near the front, because the site

covered acres and I didn’t want to hike through tick-infested scrub or fall into a polluted

catchment pond.

The clouds broke, and I could see clearly. In the distance, I could make out the silhouette of

one of the larger buildings, like a hulking shadow. Ahead of me, I saw the water tower, and to its

right, a stand of trees.

I’ve got to admit, I was feeling pretty jazzed about this hunt. My grandad fought in “Dubya-

Dubya-Two” as he called it, and now here I was, picking off a Heinie sniper. I felt like Indiana

Jones and the Hunt for the Last Nazi.

Shoulda known it was all gonna go right to hell.

The weeds tangled around my legs like tripwire, dragging at my jeans with burrs. Mosquitos

rose into a fierce, bloodsucking cloud, and I wondered if I could get turned into a mutant

superhero by getting bitten by one, considering the stuff that probably got dumped in the shallow

ponds. The ground beneath my feet felt rutted and squishy, probably from the rain we’d had

lately. Bats dive-bombed me, swooping out of the broken windowpanes like a squadron on a

mission.

Great. Bats, mosquitos, ticks, and Nazis.

That’s when I tripped over a rusted piece of equipment, landed flat on my face in the mud,

and added “lockjaw” to the list. I got to my feet, and then I realized there were two water towers

and I had no idea which one held the ghost of Helmut the sniper.

A shot rang out. I heard the cha-ka-ching of the bolt and guessed Helmut had a Mauser K98k,

one of the deadliest guns of the war. Ghost or no ghost, I ducked and ran for cover. Another shot,

and son of a bitch if the dirt didn’t kick up close to me. Fucking ghost sniper was shooting

fucking ghost bullets.

I didn’t intend to find out whether or not those shots would kill me. I dodged into the stand of

trees between the water towers and weighed my options. The clouds parted again, and I could

make out some cattle far down the field, apparently oblivious to the spectral sniper. Then I

looked from one water tower to another and spotted my quarry.

“Gotcha,” I murmured, watching the silvery shape of a man in an outdated uniform scan for

his next shot, with his rifle sighted and ready.

Except, I didn’t have him, not yet. I knew where Helmut was, but I had fully expected him to

come down from his perch and hunt me like a man. Fortunately, I’d come prepared. I shrugged

out of my backpack and pulled out my paintball grenade launcher pistol. I grabbed a paintball

shell I had repurposed, pre-filled with salted holy water and an iron BB inside, and let fly.

The first shell hit the tower just over Helmut’s head, and I heard cursing in German as the

water splashed the rusted catwalk where the sniper had just been. His ghost winked out, only to

reappear at a better vantage point to take a shot at me, and I threw myself out of the way as a

bullet cracked against the tree trunk behind me.

I popped up, got off another shot, and this time, the shell went right through Helmut’s chest

before it hit the tank behind it and splashed all over everything. The yowl of pain might have

been from the salt, iron, or holy water, or a little of all of them. Damn, this was even more fun

than firing holy water balloons with my hunting slingshot.

Helmut showed up again, a few feet to the right along the walkway by the tank, and I nailed

him again with another paintball shell. His shot nearly parted my hair, forcing me to scramble to

change positions before I discovered whether his bullets were “real” enough to do damage. I had

the feeling we could shoot at each other all night and still be at a draw come morning.

According to what Chiara and I had found in the records, the Feds took Helmut Zinzer’s

body away and disposed of it, so salting and burning his bones wasn’t an option. But I had

Eugene’s button, and a half-assed plan, and that was as good as any of my jobs ever got.

First, to distract Helmut. I had made a run over the Ohio line earlier in the day and came back

with a trunk full of fireworks I couldn’t buy locally. I pulled out a string of firecrackers, tied it to

a stone so it would fly when I threw it, then lit them and tossed them so they hit to the right of

the water tower.

They went off like a series of loud pops, and in the distance, the cows mooed their

annoyance.

Then I pulled out a big cylindrical container of salt that I had duct taped onto an M80, lit the

fuse, and lobbed it under the water tower where Helmut’s ghost was still firing at my dummy

shooter.

The M80 exploded, tearing the canister to bits and spraying salt in a wide radius that

effectively trapped Helmut on the tower. I used my grenade launcher pistol to send another holy

water paintball shell through Helmut, momentarily dispelling him and buying myself enough

time to run headlong for the safest place—directly under the water tower. Helmut couldn’t come

down to ground level because of the salt, and he couldn’t see me from the catwalk. The water

tower tank and its catwalk might be steel, but the rusted support structure was iron, which ghosts

hate.

I pulled out the old button and clutched it in my palm. Ghostly footsteps paced above me,

and the cows sounded downright pissed. I had to hurry because the firecrackers had been loud

and I didn’t want to explain myself to either a local cop or a security guard.

I put the old button in a tin can that I’d brought for that purpose, filled the can with kindling,

gave a squirt of lighter fluid, and dropped the button into the flames, followed by a generous

handful of salt and iron shavings.

Overhead, I heard a man’s shriek followed by what I guess was some creative cursing—

everything sounds worse in German. All the research Chiara and I found said that burning a

personal possession in the place where a troubled spirit manifested with plenty of salt, iron, and

holy water should do the trick if the bones were not available. I hoped that was right because I’d

sure as hell had enough of the KOW to last a lifetime.

Once the fire burned out, I dusted off my hands and stared up at the catwalk overhead. The

clouds slid free of the moon, but I did not see any trace of Helmut’s ghostly silhouette.

Cautiously, I edged out from under the water tower, ready to dive back to shelter if a shot rang

out, but nothing happened, and I sighed in relief.

The galloping hoof beats echoed in the quiet night, and I looked up to see a wild-eyed, fullgrown,

big as fuck bull coming right at me like a hellhound with horns.

I grabbed my backpack and ran. I’d faced down wendigo and werewolves, vengeful ghosts

and possessed raccoons, but right now, I was reenacting the Running of the Bulls in Bumfuck,

Pennsylvania, in the middle of the night, and my money, if I were a betting man, was on the bull.

I lit a cherry bomb and threw it behind me, barely slowing my pace. It exploded, and the bull

made a noise between a snort and a whinny that told me it intended to have Wojcik-kabob for

dinner.

The fence loomed up ahead of me, and now that I looked at the cut I had used to enter, I

wondered whether or not the bull could tear right through after me. I’m thirty-five, so I’ve

slowed down a bit since my teenage years, but tonight, my legs ran like I was seventeen again. I

threw myself at the fence like a two-strikes junkie caught with a pocket full of dime bags and

scrambled up the metal links before my manly ass could get deflowered on the point of that

bull’s pointy horns. As I flipped over the barbed wire at the top and shredded my jacket, I

thought about how easy they make this look in the movies.

Just before I could let go, the bull hit the fence full speed, catapulting me free. I might have

pissed myself, just a little. Or maybe I landed in a puddle. Either way, I came down hard and

landed with an inglorious splat.

The bull stared at me with pure malice in its beady black eyes, huffing and snorting on the

other side of a chain link fence that looked as delicate as lace to me right then. It backed up a few

steps, and when I saw how the fence support posts had tilted after its last charge, I had visions of

it chasing me all the way back to Adamsville.

Screw that. I reached for my grenade launcher, grabbed another paintball shell, and took my

shot. The shell hit the chain link fence and exploded all over the bull, spraying holy salt water in

its eyes and pinging it on the nose with the iron BB. I didn’t wait; I ran for all I was worth, legs

pumping, chest heaving, and I didn’t stop until I collapsed next to my big, black Silverado pickup,

Elvira. I damn near threw up on my boots, and I sat on the running boards until I could

breathe without gasping, then I hauled my ass into the driver’s seat and spun out on the gravel,

before that bull could follow.

Gail Z. Martin
discovered her passion for science fiction, fantasy and ghost stories
in elementary school. The first story she wrote at age five was about
a vampire. Her favorite TV show as a preschooler was Dark Shadows. At
age 14, she decided to become a writer. She enjoys attending science
fiction/fantasy conventions, Renaissance fairs and living history sites.

Larry N. Martin is the author of the new sci-fi adventure novel Salvage Rat.
He is the co-author (with Gail Z. Martin) of the Spells, Salt, and
Steel/New Templars series; the Steampunk series Iron & Blood; and
a collection of short stories and novellas: The Storm & Fury
Adventures set in the Iron & Blood universe. He is also the
co-author of the upcoming Wasteland Marshals series and the Joe Mack
Cauldron/Secret Council series.

The Martins have three children, a Maltese, and a Golden Retriever.