Monster Hunter Vendetta

  He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and lifted me with ease. I tried to grasp his hands to apply a wristlock, but there was nothing there. He crushed me against the wall with brute force, pushing me through a layer of drywall.

  "I'm taking you with me, Hunter, whether you like it or not." The Englishman's voice seemed to radiate from all around me. There was a frigid weight pushing against my chest as I swung my forearm through it in vain. The darkness swirled around my arm like smoke, and the pressure increased on my lungs, making it impossible to breathe. My back slid up the wall and I left the ground. I panicked, lashed out with my feet, my knees, my elbows, my fists, but it was like moving through water. Whatever had me trapped was incorporeal, and I was blacking out.

  "It's useless," he chuckled through my futile strikes. "I can't believe you're the one. This is pathetic. I was at least expecting a fight. Can you truly be the one who defeated Lord Machado?"

  That name. Not again. No, not again. The bad chemical taste of fear was suddenly in my mouth.

  My body was hoisted effortlessly into the air, and tossed casually across the room. I slammed into the wall near the bathroom and crumpled to the carpet. My head was swimming but I immediately began to crawl toward my stash of weapons on the bed. Now that I was a few feet away, I could see the giant shadow shape moving across the room, almost as if it were pacing, agitated. My assailant continued to speak. "You must be important though. It took some time for the message to reach me. I was shocked to receive something from the other side. You have no idea how rare it is for the Old Ones to take the time to communicate with this world. Oh, the Dread Overlord is going to be happy when I deliver you. I don't know how you managed to get on his bad books, but you're bloody well fucked."

  As the big shadow moved, it passed in front of the sliver of light emanating from the balcony curtains. The shape was gone, and it was just the man again, but as he left the light, his body seemed to drift into smoke and the shadow returned.

  Light. I need light. Whatever he was, he only seemed to have a body in the light. "The Old Ones can kiss my ass . . . ​Stupid mollusks." I reached the bed, but the shadow was on me in an instant, freezing tendrils clamped around my wrist. He jerked me around and dragged me across the floor toward the exit.

  "Time to go. The Overlord awaits."

  I thrashed, fought, but only managed to give myself a nasty carpet burn.

  There was a flicker of green light across the room. The black force around my wrist coalesced into normal human fingers. He was flesh again. The shadow man frowned.

  Fireworks. They were setting off fireworks at the party.

  My bare foot collided with his ribs. He stumbled back from the brutal kick, falling through the bathroom door. With no time to spare, I leapt up, reached the bed, and searched through the dark for a weapon. My hand closed around the leather-wrapped handle of my Ganga Ram, a Himalayan kukri. I jerked the massive knife from the scabbard.

  A metallic screeching noise came from the shadows of the bathroom as something was torn free. The next firework blossomed red. The illumination was just enough for me to see the flash of a large white object hurtling at me. Flinging myself down, I could feel the wind as the toilet barely missed my head. It shattered the balcony door, tore through the curtains, and flew into the night.

  More light from the party flooded into the room. The black shape glided out of the bathroom toward me, but it shrunk into the form of the Englishman as he left the shadows. He charged with a roar. "Oh, it's on now," I grunted as I got back to my feet and drove my knife forward. His face registered the shock as the curved blade of the Ganga Ram slammed through his ribs and out his back. He looked down in surprise. I twisted the blade with all my might, cutting upward through his torso.

  I've managed to hack a few things to death with this knife over the last year. I should have been splattered with blood, but there was nothing, no liquid at all; it was like I was sawing through a bone-in ham. He glared back up, eyebrows creasing together in rage as more fireworks exploded outside, and clamped a brutal hand around my throat. The air to my brain was choked off as he hoisted me off the floor.

  With a foot of steel driven through his guts, he shouted in my face. "I tried to be polite, and now you have to make me do this the hard way. I wanted to deliver you to the Old Ones with your mind in one piece, but nooo, you have to be difficult . . ." I continued to saw the blade back and forth, searching for his heart, but he didn't seem to notice. "Fine then. We'll just devour your brain and give the Old Ones a vegetable. They don't respect humans enough to know the difference anyway." He paused as his neck suddenly ballooned up like a puffer fish. "Snack time, little friend . . ." He opened his mouth wide, tilting his head back, and some thing came up his throat, black claws pushing past his lips, tiny red eyes blinking into existence over a circular mouth filled with fishhook teeth, crawling, struggling upward, heading right for my face, and strangely enough, I somehow could tell it was hungry.

  Screw that!

  I yanked the kukri out of his chest, lifted it high overhead, and swung down, chopping his hand off at the wrist. I fell to the floor, gasping for air as the pressure was released from my throat. His running shoe collided with my stomach as he punted me across the room. I rolled painfully to a stop by the balcony, realized that his severed hand was still clawing at my neck, and tore it away. The little shadow monster crawling out of the Englishman's mouth shrieked in an insanely high pitch as he seemed to choke it back down, and with a hard swallow, it was gone. He raised the stump of his ruined arm. Writhing shadow leapt from the end, instantly twisting and re-forming into a new hand. He balled the fresh hand into a fist, lowered his head, and started toward me.

  A man has to know his limitations, and I was way out of my league on this one. Instantly back to my feet, I ran for the balcony, bare feet crunching on a piece of broken glass. "Ouch! Ouch!" Heedless of the danger, I vaulted over the railing and plummeted into the party below.

  Landing brutally hard, lightning cascading up my legs, I crashed through a rosebush and onto the porcelain shards of the broken toilet. I lay there, gasping for a moment. As a very large man, gymnastic feats were not really my specialty. I struggled through the plants and tumbled onto the tile by the pool, -scattering college students like bowling pins. My left ankle throbbed from the impact, but I stood, hobbling, and raised my kukri, which I had somehow managed not to impale myself on.

  I roared up at my room, "Come and get me!" The shadow man was leaning on the railing, glowering down at me, fireworks exploding overhead. There was enough light down here that I somehow knew he wasn't going to follow. Several partygoers shrieked, spilled their beers, and ran as I shook my kukri with one hand and extended my middle finger with the other. "Yeah, I thought so, you pansy!"

  "This isn't over," the Englishman shouted over the music. He turned his attention away from me for a moment, and nodded at someone on the far side of the party. I had no idea who or what he was signaling, but it probably wasn't the wet tee shirt contest. He returned his attention to me and smiled. "Well done. For now . . . ​but, dead or alive, I'll deliver you to the Dread Overlord eventually."

  "Better things than you have tried."

  "Farewell, Hunter. We will meet again . . . ​assuming you live through the next few minutes, that is." He faded back into the shadows and was gone.

  If I could get to my radio, I could rouse the team and chase this puke down. I took a step forward, flinching violently as the pressure hit a piece of broken glass impaled in my heel. Swearing, I paused to yank the tiny shard out and toss it into the bushes.

  "Oh, man, dude, are you okay?" one of the bystanders asked stupidly. "You totally like fell out the window!"

  I snarled. He cringed back. The partiers gave me a wide berth. I glared at them angrily and anyone who was even vaguely contemplating saying anything retreated a few more feet. Turning my attention to gathering reinforcements, I started limping for the entrance, but there was a commotion on the far
side of the pool. Some of the partygoers were screaming now, real cries of terror that could be heard even above the din of the dance music. I turned back toward them, dripping blood, holding a giant knife, and bellowed, "What now?"

  Zombies. Lots of zombies.

  The party was officially over.

  Someone had backed a package truck up to the entrance of the pool area. The rear doors were open and corpses were tumbling out. These undead were in an advanced state of decomposition. Their flesh was rotten and sloughing off. Many of them were missing eyes, noses, and ears. There were so many that they must have been literally stacked on top of each other inside the truck's hold.

  There are many different variations of undead, with your basic zombie being the simplest of all. A zombie is just an animated corpse, wandering around in search of one thing: flesh. The big problem with zombies is that they multiply like rabbits. Their bites are always eventually fatal, and the bitten always rise as zombies themselves. Their poison travels instantly through the nervous system, and not even amputation of the bitten limb can stop the transformation. Basically, they're a major pain in the ass, the Monster Hunter's equivalent to cockroaches. Usually stupid, and normally slow, zombies are not much of a challenge for an experienced Hunter, provided that said Hunter has a decent gun and friends with guns. I was pretty much alone, had just gotten the crap kicked out of me, and was armed with only a knife. The kukri was a great big freaking knife, mind you, but still it was only a knife. Not a good recipe for success.

  I could have run away. Even with one ankle already swelling, there was no way they could have caught me. I could rally my team and come back to the pool with some real armament. That would be the safe thing to do. But as I watched, one of the tourists, a guy just barely out of his teens, was pulled down by some of the corpses. They descended on him like a pack of dogs, and his screaming and kicking stopped in an instant. The zombies were falling out the back of the truck into a pile, but spurred on by the nearness of meat, they were driving themselves to their feet and lumbering into the mob. The tourists panicked as they saw their friends getting disemboweled right in front of them. Hundreds of people began to crash into each other, trying to shove their way to safety. The small and the weak were smashed underfoot, just more zombie fodder.

  The smell of decay hit my nostrils.

  MHI was a private company. We weren't cops. We weren't the Fed's Monster Control Bureau. We were contractors, mercenaries. We had no obligation to protect the innocent unless they were paying us to do it. To jump in was suicide.

  "Aw . . . ​damn it." I raised my Ganga Ram and charged the truck of undead. I pushed past the fleeing partiers. There were lots of them, but I'm a big man, and when I pick a direction, I'm hard to stop. My bare feet slipped on the water that splashed onto the tile as the crowd knocked people into the pool. The patio was packed. You could feel the panic of the herd.

  The mostly sober were able to flee, but those that had been in the water were sitting ducks. A young woman was trying to climb out, but one of the zombies had grabbed her by the hair and was tugging her toward its jagged mouth, maggots wriggling in its face. I lopped the creature's arm off at the elbow. The girl flew back with a splash. The zombie turned automatically toward me and I removed the top of its head right above the eye sockets. It went limp. It pays to know your monsters. With zombies, destroy the brain, and they go right down.

  Another zombie saw me, locked on, and charged. This one had been an old woman once. "Whoa!" I jumped back as it swiped at me. These zombies were fast. I had dealt with regular zombies before, but I'd only heard rumors of faster ones. It kept coming, head bent, lipless mouth open and snapping. If those teeth broke my skin, I was worse than dead. I shattered one of its knees in a cloud of dust with my bloody heel and it toppled into the pool.

  Hacking and slashing, zombies to the front, zombies to the side. Have to protect these kids. An ironic thought considering most of them were about my age. A man went down with one of the undead on his back, biting at his neck. They were too far away; I wouldn't make it in time. I spied a half-empty beer bottle lying on its side, scooped it up and threw it at the creature. The bottle shattered over the thing's skull, but it was far too distracted by food. The man screamed as the zombie latched onto his throat. The scream bubbled off into a gurgle.

  I lowered my shoulder and dived, crashing into the undead, feeling its bones snap beneath papery skin. I rolled to my knees much faster than it did, and with a brutal chop sent the zombie's head spinning away from its neck. My blade came away coated in spider webs and blackened ooze with the consistency of mud. These zombies were far from fresh. I gagged on the stink.

  The creatures were everywhere. There must have been fifty in that truck, and already they were multiplying, as some of the tourists' bodies began to convulse. The music was still playing. Fireworks were still erupting. The scene was utter chaos. If we didn't stop these things now, we were going to have a full-fledged outbreak, right in a population center, and that's a nightmare. A nearby girl, obviously stoned out of her mind, began to giggle and point at the sillier looking zombies, oblivious to the other one that was heading right for her. Friggin' stoners. I started toward her.

  A hand locked around my injured ankle with a grip like iron. Looking down, I saw the man who had been bitten. He pulled at me, his mouth open, hungry, his brain already dead, his system now overcome with only one impulse . . . ​food . . . ​me. That was near instantaneous reanimation after death, the sign of a bad strain. "Sorry, dude." I bent over and smashed open the top of his head. I was instantly splattered with brains. After two swings he quit moving. The fresh ones are harder to shut down. The distraction distracted me long enough that by the time I was done, stoner chick was missing her nose. "Damn it!"

  There was a gunshot. A security guard had come out from the hotel to see what the commotion was. His eyes were wide, staring as the creatures soaked up bullets and kept coming. One of the shots missed and, thankfully, put the bleating stereo out of commission. The patio was now quiet except for the moaning of the recently deceased and the screams of the fleeing.

  "Shoot them in the head! Cabeza!" I shouted, leaping over dead and twitching bodies, running for the hapless guard. "Despidalos en las cabezas!" I took the nearest zombie from behind, driving my blade through its dusty throat and wrenching the head aside. The security guard fell to his knees, his hands stretched in front of him as a zombie in a yellowed wedding dress bore down on him. Too far. My Ganga Ram was not balanced for throwing, but I hurled it end over end to strike the zombie in the head.

  Unfortunately it hit handle first. That got the creature's attention long enough. I reached it as it turned its attention back to the guard, grabbed it by the bottom of its rotting jaw and the top of its head and wrenched the skull until the spine broke and its open eye sockets were staring at me. The zombie flopped to the ground. Apparently that works too.

  Breathing hard, I picked up my knife. The pool, which now had a definite pink tint to it, was cleared out except for a few zombies wandering around the bottom and a couple of torn bodies bobbing on the surface. Everything that was still alive had run. The remaining original zombies were venturing into the resort, chasing after the scattering crowds, spreading their curse. The recently dead were just starting to rise and would be following shortly. The resort was right on the edge of town, and there were fifty thousand people sleeping down there. This could get real ugly, real fast.

  The guard crossed himself as he surveyed the blood-soaked patio. "Madre de Dios!" I had to remind myself that regular people were always shocked by how fast the carnage happened. I guess I'd kind of gotten used to it.

  "Yeah, okay, if you aren't going to use that . . ." I retrieved his gun. It was an ancient Smith Military & Police revolver, in obviously neglected condition. I opened the rusty cylinder and ejected the empties. "Um . . . ​cartuchos?" The guard reached into his pocket with one shaking hand, and dropped six tarnished .38 specials cartridges onto the gr
ound. He got up and ran for the exit. I can't say I blamed him. I knelt down and gathered up the cartridges.

  "Z! Look out!" There was a sharp crack of a gunshot and something warm splattered all over my back. The fresh corpse fell onto the patio, skull smashed wide open. "Zombies? How the hell are there zombies?"

  "Holly. I'm glad to see you," I answered as I snapped the cylinder shut on the old revolver. Holly Newcastle was running across the tile, rifle in hand, and about half of her armor flapping unbuckled around her torso. "We got a problem."

  "Ya think?" she exclaimed, as she turned and mercilessly blasted the rising undead tourists. Holly had certainly become a better shot over the last year. I stuck my fingers in my ears to block out the deafening noise. She had put in her electronic earpieces, but mine were still up in my room. Her .308 Vepr was a loud rifle. "I was down on the beach, saw a bunch of people come out screaming, so I grabbed my stuff. What the hell's going on? Where are the others?" I realized she was wearing nothing but a yellow bikini and flip-flops under her hastily donned vest.

  "I don't know." I heard a chattering noise from the street on the other side of the parked truck, a suppressed subgun. "Well, there's Trip. Looks like he's got that end covered." I surveyed the area. There were two other paths out of the pool area between the buildings. "You follow those, I'll go this way. I don't have my radio, so try to raise the others. We've got to take them all before it spreads out of control."

  "Got it," she said as she rocked a fresh magazine into her gun. "So how would you tell the locals, Go inside, lock your doors, there are zombies out . . . ​I knew I should have taken Spanish."

  "Vaya adentro. Cierren sus puertas. Um . . . ​didn't exactly cover this in high school . . ." I speak five languages fluently—Spanish isn't one of them. "Hay muertos andandos afuera. And one more thing, watch out for an Englishman, blond guy, short hair, mean-looking, dark clothing," I ordered. "If you see him, shoot him a lot. And use your flashlight."