Monster Hunter Nemesis

  “I have no name.”

  “I thought as much, but saying monster over and over grows tiresome. Since my men have taken to calling you Franks, in honor of the location you were built, I shall call you that as well.”

  He shrugged. “Fine.”

  “Very well, Franks. I have come to offer you a proposal.”

  “I won’t surrender. We fight, you die.”

  The man laughed. He must have been touched by madness. “Not that kind of proposal, my gigantic terrifying friend. You must understand, I have not chased you across half the empire out of any sort of noble ideal. I am no Secret Guard, and even those fanatics have tired of testing you, and have declared that you must have a place in the Almighty’s plan. My men are simply here because we have been paid a large sum by the Landgrave to remove you from this county. It is no different than being paid to kill Russians on behalf of the Swedes or to stomp on the Jacobites for the British.”

  He did not understand the humans’ use of money, because he simply took what he needed to survive, but it seemed to work for them. “You fight for . . . coin?”

  “Yes. And I must say, despite campaigning in many different lands, from Italy to the Spanish Netherlands, I have never had to work so hard as to fight you. So I said to myself, Karl, why should I squander so much effort to fight this beast who only wishes to be left alone, when I can simply hire him to work for me instead.”

  “Huh?”

  “You like to fight, don’t you, Franks?”

  He nodded.

  “From my observations, it seems you especially like to seek out the beasts of Satan’s horde to destroy them. Yes?”

  “That is my mission.”

  “Excellent. There is gold, fame, and goodwill to be earned in such endeavors, but you have already depopulated this part of Europe of all its vilest beasts and witches. Now you have nothing to do but hide from people like me. Why limit yourself to the darkest confines of the empire, when you can travel the world as part of my regiment instead? Think of the interesting things you could kill! You kill the monsters you would kill anyway, I get paid for it. You seem to enjoy battle, so in between your dispatching of whatever monsters we find, you can fight for me. As part of my regiment, you would be free from the petty harassment by the local authorities. We would claim you as one of our own. To the world you would be considered a monster no longer, but merely another soldier. You would have food, shelter, clothing, and an endless supply of gunpowder, and all I would ask in return is something that you would do regardless.”

  That did sound better than hiding in caves and barns and stealing pigs from villagers.

  “Think of it this way, Franks. If you stay outside of mankind, then eventually someone like me will destroy you. If you are part of my regiment, you will be seen by them as a man, nothing more.”

  “What is this . . . regiment?”

  “They call us many things, but for you we would be your new family, if you are willing to abide by our terms and regulations, of course.”

  He had killed just about everything worth killing in this part of the world, and knew absolutely nothing of the lands beyond. He shrugged.

  “Excellent, Franks! Welcome to the Hessians!”

  * * *

  Franks pulled his stolen car over just after crossing the Virginia state line. He got out and limped into the tall grass. MHI’s orc did fantastic work, even better than the MCB’s resident surgeons, but it still took time to get new limbs working correctly. If there had been any other drivers on the road they might have found the sight odd, a giant man in a black suit standing out in the weeds for no apparent reason, but the reason he was on this particular road was precisely because of the lack of other drivers.

  The suit, shirt, and tie were parting gifts from MHI. He didn’t know who’d left them in the Body Shack, but they had been neatly hung up and waiting for him. Even having lost some body mass from the fight and replacement parts, the suit almost fit correctly. There had been a note that said it had belonged to one of the Hunters they had lost in Vegas. That was good. Franks had not wanted to go into the fight of his life wearing Owen Pitt’s borrowed sweat pants.

  He held out his open palm with the St. Hubert’s Key he had taken from MHI in it. It grated on his new skin as it turned, pointing toward the north. The pull was very strong. A human would only be able to tell that there was a gathering of angry demons in one place, but the Fallen had a very long time to get to know each other, and one spirit in particular stood out from the others. That one had to be Kurst.

  Franks should have listened to the imp informant he’d shaken down off the coast of California. He’d done a cursory sweep after returning to duty back then, but had not picked up anything of note. Perhaps it was because the greater demon’s body hadn’t been fully formed yet, or maybe whatever process Stricken had used to grow the bodies had shielded them from Franks’ search. Perhaps, since he had been using a holy relic, the Creator had a sense for the dramatic and simply preferred their final showdown to happen this way. Franks didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. All that mattered was ending this once and for all.

  When he returned to the road, a motorcycle had stopped behind his stolen car. Gutterres was waiting for him. He saw what Franks had in his hand. “A St. Hubert’s Key? Is that what you went to Alabama for? I could have saved you a whole lot of time, not to mention a whole lot of getting your arms ripped off by a werewolf, if I’d known that beforehand . . . I guess the Lord really does work in mysterious ways.”

  He had no patience for people he liked, not that there were many of those, and even less for people he didn’t give a shit about. He felt like slugging the Hunter in the mouth, but Franks needed all the help he could get. “Kurst is that way.”

  “I’ve given those rally point coordinates to my people. They’ll be there in a few hours. What about yours?”

  Franks shrugged. For all he knew Jefferson was on his way to a country without extradition.

  “If I trusted you more, I’d ditch you and be there in half the time.” Gutterres patted the Ducati’s fuel tank like it was a loyal horse. “You need to get yourself a better set of wheels, Franks.”

  Franks knew how to ride a bike, but he’d needed room for his case, and if Gutterres kept annoying him, he’d need the trunk space to hide a body. He climbed back into his car.

  “And I thought they were exaggerating when they said you weren’t much for talking. What are you going to do if—”

  Franks closed the door in his face, put the car in gear, and drove away. He made sure to give it too much gas so the tires would spin and pelt the Hunter with gravel. In his rearview mirror he saw Gutterres give him a remarkably rude hand gesture for a holy warrior.

  He was right though, sticking to back roads made for a much longer trip, but truthfully, Franks needed the time to get his repaired body in order by forcing down another dose of the Elixir every hour. The new parts were assimilating quickly, but he was not operating at peak efficiency. His new arms had not been properly conditioned. His new bones had not had time to harden. Much of him was still held together with thread, wire, and staples. He was on his way to face one of the strongest demons to ever escape from Hell, wearing a body that was a perfectly tuned, high tech vessel designed for war, while Franks doubted if he’d be able to bench-press even a mere seven hundred pounds without blowing something out.

  Jefferson, Archer, and Strayhorn had better have come through for him or else this was going to be a very short and messy operation.

  Hours later he reached the rally point. He’d picked an old country church in a wooded, rural area in central Virginia. There was a small stone monument on the side of the road in remembrance of a Revolutionary War battle. That particular battle was a minor footnote in history, but it had been a pivotal moment for Franks.

  Franks spotted six black MCB vehicles parked in the clearing behind the boarded-up building, including one of the large armored trucks used by the Strike Team. So either his
agents had performed better than expected, or the MCB were here to arrest him, but realistically, if this was an elaborate takedown he would have expected more of them, as well as air support. He turned onto the dirt road, drove past the posted snipers and spotters, and pulled in behind the armored truck.

  At least a dozen armed men in full armor and tactical gear were in view, and he didn’t know how many others were in the trees or how many guns they had sighted on him. An MCB agent’s salary was on the standard GS federal employee scale, and Franks was worth a quarter billion dead, so he hoped that they all remembered that MCB employees were not allowed to collect PUFF. He looked in the rearview mirror and was not surprised to see that Gutterres had continued along the main road and not turned off after him. The Hunter might have talked a big game about his Lord working in mysterious ways, but he wasn’t stupid enough to follow Franks in until he saw whether the MCB riddled him with bullets or not.

  There were a lot of apprehensive agents watching him as he got out of the car. Jefferson intercepted him first and hissed, “Before you say anything, this is all Myers’ plan.”

  Franks raised an eyebrow.

  “To prove Stricken has committed treason. Just roll with it.”

  Whatever works . . . Franks followed Jefferson toward the armored truck. He recognized most of these men and women. Some agents met Franks’ gaze and gave him confident nods, like they’d always known he was innocent. Others looked at their boots as he passed. Those were the ones who’d thought he might have been guilty. They were probably here now because of their trust in Myers. Franks didn’t care what any of them had thought before, he was more worried about a potential third category, as in the ones that didn’t care about guilt or innocence, but who would just follow orders, no matter how stupid they might be.

  It did not immediately dawn on him that that thought might have been a little hypocritical.

  Archer was in the back of the armored truck, working on a computer. The shaved-headed, muscular, grizzled-looking warrior next to him was Special Agent Cueto, one of the Strike Team trigger-pullers who’d worked his way up to unit commander. He was one of the handful of humans Franks actually liked a small bit. “Afternoon, Franks. I suppose I should be placing you in custody now.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Believe me, I’d rather not. You care to explain what the fuck I’m doing out here?”

  “Hang on.” Franks took out the St. Hubert’s Key. It spun rapidly in his hand until it was pointing northeast. The agents made no comment. They’d all seen that sort of oddness before. “Archer. Note the direction.” They were close enough now that Franks could estimate the distance based upon the strength of the pull. “See whatever is approximately seventy clicks that way.”

  “What’s the deal, Franks?”

  Franks glanced around the crowd of curious, potentially dangerous, federal gunmen. “Walk with me,” he told their commander.

  They moved away from the truck and curious ears. “What the fuck happened to your face? Is your cheek held on with a staple gun? What did that to you?”

  “Werewolf.” Franks had worked with this man before, and even died with him in Natchy Bottom. Cueto had been recruited from the Army, and had been one of Myers’ oldest friends and confidants. If Jefferson had persuaded him, then they were set. If Cueto was unconvinced, then the Strike Team would kill them all. “Have you been briefed?”

  “Barely. They told me that Stricken created some supersoldiers, but they’ve been possessed by devils straight out of Hell.”

  “Yes.” He was glad Cueto’s men were here, but he didn’t like that they had shared the real dangers of Project Nemesis. It wouldn’t take too much of a leap for the government to figure out that Franks was one too.

  “Yeah . . . I can’t believe that son of a bitch Stricken would pull a false flag against the MCB. Archer’s been going over the evidence with me. There are too many parts where the video doesn’t match up with the forensic evidence, but they’ve been keeping the details from the rank and file. I knew it was bullshit. There was no way you were behind that attack . . . There were way too many survivors.”

  Franks nodded. He appreciated the compliment.

  “So what’s Myers’ plan?”

  Since he didn’t know what lies Jefferson had constructed, Franks wasn’t quite sure of that either. “We take down Nemesis. Expose everything.”

  “To those pussies on the Subcommittee? How’re we going to do that?”

  “A raid.”

  “On what?”

  “No idea yet.”

  “We’re on our own. I don’t even have my air assets. There’s no backup. Without orders from on high, you realize I’m aiding and abetting right now. If we move on this with you, we’re committing I don’t even know how many felonies. Not just me, all my men. They’re volunteers, Franks. This is off the books. We’re hanging our asses out in the wind because we trust you, and that’s asking a lot, but if Myers says this is how it is, then that’s how it is . . . I was hoping he’d be with you.”

  “Myers is dealing with the higher-ups now,” Franks said, and he meant every word of it.

  Cueto studied him for a long time. “You’d be a right-hard bastard to play poker against . . . Level with me, Franks. Dwayne is dead, isn’t he?”

  Franks paused. There was no use in dragging this out. “Yes.”

  “I’ll give it to Grant. The kid’s got skills, but you can’t bullshit somebody with a twenty-year career in professional government bullshitting.” Cueto sighed. “I thought something was up.”

  “Why are you here then?”

  Cueto reached up, placed one hand on Franks’ shoulder, and looked him square in the eyes, an act which took a lot of balls. “Because Myers was smarter than either of us, and he warned me months ago to be ready for some big clandestine bullshit. Because I know you’re a cold-ass motherfucker, but everything you do, no matter how squirrely it might seem, is always for the safety of this country. Because Stricken is a power-grubbing piece-of-shit wannabe tyrant and I didn’t sign up to work for the fucking Gestapo. But mostly because I took an oath to defend this nation from enemies foreign and domestic, and it don’t get more foreign than the fucking devil.” Cueto let go of Franks and stepped back. “That’s why.”

  “Thanks.” There he was, using that word again. The last week had set a new record for him.

  “Every last one of my boys would say the same thing, only they won’t ever have to, because if we get burned I’ve already instructed them to blame me and tell the authorities that I lied and said you were undercover the whole time, and I ordered them to help you.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Not really. If we get caught I intend to say the same thing, only that I got my orders from Myers, and they’re going to have a hell of a time interrogating him. Passing the blame is Fed 101. Now let’s go plan this illegal operation of yours.”

  They started back, but Franks paused to take a long look around. It was still easy to pick out the rocky ridge where he’d first met General Washington. The place really hadn’t changed that much.

  “You okay, Franks?”

  He’d been thinking about the hundreds of worthwhile humans he’d known, and how almost all of them were gone now, their brief lives sacrificed in the pursuit of something greater than themselves, but Franks just shook his head and kept walking.

  “I’ve got something interesting in that area, Franks,” Archer shouted when he saw them returning to the armored truck. “The only thing there is an old airfield with a few small hangar buildings on it. It’s privately owned now by a shell corporation that doesn’t seem to do anything else. No neighbors, on the end of an isolated road, and there’s plenty of land to hide something big. Stricken’s got a rep for being a hands-on guy, so this is close enough for him to visit and still commute to do his regular advisor job. And it is a quick chopper flight from where they went after you at the shipyard. If it smells like a secret base . . .”

  I
f it had been anybody other than Archer, he would have yelled at them for checking information that was surely flagged to warn Stricken, but this was Archer they were talking about, and Franks had heard that particular agent even had to take pills to keep his OCD in check. If anybody could poke around in that stuff and not tip off STFU, it was Archer. “Any other potential ties?”

  “I just checked the property records. The place was owned by the Air Force up until the eighties.”

  “Underground bunker?”

  “No record, but it wouldn’t surprise me.” Archer turned the laptop so Franks could see the map. Even one of the most well equipped tactical teams in the world still used Google Earth. “You think this is where they’re building Nemesis soldiers?”

  “It’s probable.” Judging by the cloud of demonic spirits hanging around the place, absolutely, but since the others wouldn’t be able to see them, talking about them would just complicate matters.

  Cueto moved in to get a better look at Archer’s screen. “That’s a good size chunk of property. They’ll see us coming for sure.” It didn’t matter how much combat experience any particular operative had, Franks had more. “How do you want to play this?”

  “Drop men off to approach through the trees here and here. Have your sniper team walk to that hilltop.” Franks pointed at the screen. “They’ll see us coming, but the rest of us will crash our up-armors through the fence there. Spread out, clear the buildings.”

  “I don’t have that many men, Franks. Hate to break it to you, but you’re not that popular.”

  “I’ll handle it. How are you set for equipment and explosives?”

  “Lucky for you the Strike Team got an anonymous but credible report of a hydra in the area, so I checked out everything I could from the inventory. Just from what I’ve got in this truck we could invade and conquer Canada.”

  He had lost the case containing his old armor at the shipyard. “Got any armor for me?”

  “Why no, Agent Franks, I thought me checking out some sextuple-X big and tall—or whatever the fuck size you are—body armor out of the inventory might have been a touch suspicious. I already had to fabricate an emergency so we could sneak out of the manhunt for a few hours. I guess you can borrow one of my vests, but it would fit you like a tactical sports bra.”