 |
| Umar al-Ghaffari |
It was almost midnight, and it was dark, because they dared not have any light. Across the courtyard from their three storey building, was an active shooter, with a rifle, taking the occasional shot at any movement.
Down stairs, at ground level in the lounge, was a revolting stench of sewage and excrement, and ominous sounds of movement; another faecal shambling horror.
Miriam quickly asked the gendarmes to turn the kitchen bench on its side to try to block the stairs, in case it came up.
Then they all noisily argued what to do next:
- Stay and wait for the police reinforcements to arrive, but risk more faecal surprises?
- Make a break for it out the front door, at the risk of faecal surprises and then being shot?
- Make a break out of the roof door, and scurry away across the roofs, at the risk of being shot?
- Sneak over the roof and engage the shooter, at the risk of being shot?
So, brave Cooper snuck up the ladder into the bedroom above, quiet as the grave and invisible as a shadow, preparing to begin his journey of sneaking and skulking.
There was a loud CRACK and a breaking of glass, and Cooper tumbled down the ladder, unconscious, onto the floor, spurting blood, with a rifle bullet hole in his shoulder. Ow.
Dr Jacob was there in a flash, and he put a widdle sticking pwaster onto the widdle hole and kissed it all bwetter. This stopped the bleeding.
They changed tack and decided maybe running out the front door might be easier after all, and risk the faecal surprises.
Speaking of which, there was now something solid, bashing and pushing on the bench that was blocking the stairs. It wasn't strong enough to dislodge the four sturdy gendarmes, but the bench-top wood was starting to bend and splinter.
So, the party swapped places with the gendarmes; they held the bench. Then the gendarmes all drew their guns, stepped back. The bench was pulled back.
 |
| The shooter |
Bernard, Mezmer, Jacob and Miriam carried the unconscious Cooper down the stairs, followed by Gazala, and lead by the four gendarmes and Inspector Heroux.
The gendarmes left the front door first, and they provided some covering fire towards the shooter while everyone bolted. Sadly, two gendarmes were dropped during this manoeuvre, but everyone else got clear.
Mario Berlusconi [Kevin] was conveniently waiting around the corner, and he had with him another French lady called Fleur Jardin [Steven Krijnen - it was lockdown, so we were playing by Discord and this Steven could join]. Fleur worked for the paper too, and she was a medic, so she checked Cooper over and declared him stable.
Now that they were clear, Heroux gave his strained goodbyes. He would return here with more police forces.
"C'est trop dangereux pour vous tous," he said. "Retournez chez vous. Dieu vitesse!" (Go home. It's too dangerous.)
They found their Citroen outside the Medina, still intact, and drove back to the newspaper and their flat.
Wonton was there, so they updated him. Cooper was tended by the two medics.
Bernard was first to make ablutions for bed, but down in the basement toilet he made an alarming discovery. The male toilet end-cubicle was suspiciously messy. Fresh faeces spattered all over he floor, on the walls and some on the ceiling. This was ominous.
Mezmer was summoned, so he cleared a spot in the mess, knelt down and emptied his mind of all distractions. But he sensed no mythos disturbances.
"Maybe someone just had an irritable bowel," he said.
Fleur tried to clean the horrid mess, with a bucket and mop, but it was so disgusting that her delicate constitution was overwhelmed, and she vomitted herself silly.
After purging her stomach of all of her dinner, she used a fire hose to spray everything off. At least the water pressure down here was good.
They all retired for the night. The three women and the sickly Cooper claimed the bunk room tonight. The men slept in the living room and outside on the roof, next to the generator.
Cooper's wounds had been tended, so he was at least healing now. [D3 hp from the quacks, plus 1 hp per night of rest].
They kept guard in turns just in case.
Everyone got a restless haunted sleep - not helped by the diesel generator (and its shot bearings, and rust holes in the muffler), starting and stopping periodically during the whole night.
_____________________________________
They were having breakfast when one of the Calomnie receptionists came up to the flat. There was a man looking for Gazala. So Gazala, Miriam and Bernard went down.
The man was the Arab gentleman in Ahmed's Coffee House whom Gazala had insulted and threatened with a knife [two session's ago]. He had come here to beat her, or to witness her husband beating her. For her insolence.
Bernard bare-faced lied and told him that Gazala's husband was currently in Albania*, after all he was an Albanian. But that story didn't hold much water, and they final had to relent and "admit" that it was Cooper who was in fact Gazala's husband. But he was sick (that, at least, was true - he was still wounded in bed from the gun shot).
The man went up to the flat with the three, and spoke to Cooper (still in bed). Much abuse and invective was hurled: كنت الديوث وجلد كس !! Cooper was called a cuck and a simp, and how could he live with himself with such a prostitute wife. But the Arab gentleman was forced to leave it at that- he was severely outnumbered by the whole party. So, he went away fuming.
[ * = Gazala was from Algiers. But Richard mistakenly mixed up "Albania" and "Algeria" as to where Gazala's fictitious husband was. So it stuck.]
They went down to their offices and the editor, JK Simmons, was looking forward to printing the exciting story of last night's action. It would run on the front page of Calomnie de Tunis tomorrow.
"But why aren't there any photographs?" he shouted. "You fools!"
Miriam got out her sketch pad and did some drawings; drawings of the brave party, the brave police, the evil sniper. But she did not draw the faecal men. And she never saw the "gorilla".
They all went to the Commissariat de Police - the police station. The desk Sergeant told them that Heroux wasn't there, and that he was investigating a murder in Medina. Then he did a double-take:
"You are the Calomnie journalists!" he shouted. "Do not publish anything about last night."
The party sheepishly nodded, then left and returned to their paper. They would need to somehow convince the Editor not to run with the story.
 |
| Inspector Heroux |
Some time later that day, Inspector Heroux telephoned them, and they went in to the station for his update:
- The gendarme that Heroux had sent for reinforcements last night never showed up. He is now officially missing.
- Earlier this morning, Heroux and a large group of gendarmes, with heavy weapons, went to Umar's apartment. The faecal mess was still all over the floors as they had left it when they fled last night.
- The cold room door was thrown open, but it was just an empty room. No cold. No blackness. Just empty. Though there was a chalk pentagram on the floor.
- They found the site of the sniper last night. No sign of anything except some cigarette butts and rifle casings. It was a .30 06.
- The bodies of the gendarmes killed in the courtyard were recovered.
Gazala was impatient to do something about the Arab man who was harassing her. So, she got Miriam to draw a sketch, but it was crap. However, the gendarmes had a dedicated artist, and Gazala described her harasser to the artist as Miriam jealously looked on, and a perfect caricature resulted.
Heroux identified him as Subhi el-Asad. Mr el-Asad was on the police register because his wife went missing last year; he was suspected, but there was no evidence to arrest him.
The party asked if they could get a firearms carry permit. Heroux said certainly not. But he was impressed by their utility last night at Umar's, and could technically deputize them. They still could not carry, unless they went on a firearms training course. But that would take several weeks. And it would not be in Tunis. "Mais ..." but... "L'Arbitre dit que vous pouvez vous entraîner au maniement des armes pour le prochain module d'aventure." [The DM says maybe for the next adventure module]
Gazala protested that she needed protection. So, Heroux assigned two rookie gendarmes to the group: Armond and Maurice Seins.
Later on that day, the group got a call from the police. There had been a new occult murder on Rue Al Jazira, just off the SE corner of the Medina. So the group hopped in their Citroen and headed there.
Inspector Heroux and a gaggle of gendarmes were there poking around, and the party was let through. Heroux briefed them.
A body was found in deserted two-storey building by two homeless beggars who reported it when a passing gendarme saw them. These two were now sitting in the corner looking sheepish, and were chewing away nervously - probably the cheap chewing-tobacco. Or hashish.
This murder was different to others. And there wasn't a faceless corpse wandering around. The victim was found on the ground floor. He had been stabbed in back,
 |
| Medina & murder locations Scale: "1" to "2" is about 300m |
In common with the other two, a pentagram had been drawn with black chalk on second storey floor. And there were five black candles on each corner. But they had never been lit.
The group had their map of Tunis, so they drew on the three murder locations ("1", "2" and "3") and also Umar's apartment, and linked them up to see if there was any pattern.
Party medics Fleur and Jacob wanted to examine the body. So, they took the Citroen and headed off to the Hôpital Militaire hospital, and down to the morgue. They had a note from Heroux this time, so didn't need to bluff their way inside. The pathologist told them that the victim had not been IDed yet. He had been killed by a stab to the back, a few times. One stab had hit the heart. He came in dressed in beggar rags, but they were not the clothes he was killed in. And teeth, skin, hair, soles, and general health showed he was not a beggar.
Back at the scene, Mezmer did a purification ritual. Like last time, the whole floor jolted when the ritual was complete. It was a smaller shake than last time, but it was enough to dislodge some items off the top of a nearby shelf; some clothes fell out. They had blood on them, and they were high quality clothes - this must have been the victim's clothes
No comments:
Post a Comment