Monster Hunter Vendetta

  "I think it's a zombie bear," Grant said as he reloaded the Uzi, putting his shoulder against the table to help hold it.

  Franks braced himself against the table. "Armored zombie bear," he corrected.

  "I tried to shoot it in the brain, but it's got a helmet or something," Grant shouted. The creature crashed into the table again, sliding all three of us back a few inches. "A helmet! Who puts buckets on zombies' heads? That's not fair! Where's the ward?"

  The werewolf had been the leader. I hurried from the table, slipping on the bloody tile. The silver-haired woman was facedown. Her clothing was hanging in tatters. I had no idea what the stone looked like, but I assumed it was substantial. There was a black satchel on the floor. I ripped it open and my hands landed on something hard and cold.

  It looked like a perfect granite sphere, about the size of a Magic 8 Ball. I rolled it over in my hands and discovered that there was a row of archaic letters carved into it. It looked like gibberish.

  "Make it go!" Grant shouted. The zombie bear was crashing rhythmically into the table. My companions were sliding back against the relentless hammering.

  "Turn it on," Franks ordered. A massive limb erupted through the center of the table. It was hairless, pink exposed muscle, with steel spikes bolted onto the end of the paw in lieu of regular claws. The paw swung about, searching, then jerked back out when it didn't catch us. Franks poked the muzzle of his Glock through the hole and cranked off half a dozen rounds. "Turn it on now!"

  I touched the letters. Somehow, they turned like a combination lock. The letters were old-fashioned and spelled nothing. I randomly swiped my fingers across them, and they spun, symbols magically materializing on the smooth stone, spelling more nonsense. "I don't know how!" Earl had said that it needed to be tuned for a location. The cultists must have moved the combination when they picked it up.

  The zombie bear had a running start this time. This time the table blew right in half. Franks and Grant were sent sprawling. I dove for the AK-47.

  The beast was gigantic, big as a friggin' cow, hairless and pink, corded muscles bulging, with bands of steel and spikes welded together across its body. It was already riddled with puckered bullet holes, but showed no indication that it even knew. The head was an armored monstrosity, battleship plates bolted together into an armored box, then laced in razor wire and scalpel blades.

  It was blind.

  Now inside, it shuffled forward, clumsy limbs tearing rusty holes in everything, a snorting noise echoing from inside the helmet as it smelled us. It couldn't bite, but we were sure to be crushed or cut to ribbons as it stupidly tried. I hoisted the AK, jerked it to my shoulder, and fired at the helmet. The gun was set on full-auto, and the 30-caliber bullets bounced off in sparks and fragments. The best way to take out zombies was to destroy the brain, and that didn't look like an option here, not to mention it was covered in blades and weighed a thousand pounds. Catching my scent, it lumbered at me.

  Franks intercepted the bear. He had his fighting knife in one hand and a grenade in the other. He dodged under the swinging blades, cut a long gash between the monster's ribs, then slammed his fist through the gap, sinking clear up to his shoulder in organs. It dragged him along toward me. "Back," Franks ordered, jerking his gore-stained arm out of the hole with a disgusting squelching noise and falling away from the deadly legs. The grenade was gone. The zombie bear's roar reverberated inside the helmet. I sprinted down the hallway.

  The explosion was muffled inside the bear carcass. When I opened my eyes, a red cloud filled the recreation room. It was literally raining meat. Bits and pieces fell from the ceiling with wet thumps.

  We certainly wouldn't be using the rec room anytime soon. The armored zombie bear had been blown apart. The head and shoulders were filling the bullet-riddled doorway. The head was still moaning, but it didn't have any limbs to drive it. I kicked the box.

  Franks stepped out of the blood cloud. He was entirely coated in a viscous red slime. He was terrifying to look at, but I'm sure I didn't look much better. "Jefferson, get weapons. Pitt, ward."

  I tossed him the ball. He caught it with one hand. The noise from the compound indicated that there were more of these things out there, and MHI was responding with explosives, lots of explosives. Franks scowled as he studied the letters. Apparently he was as stumped as I was.

  "Let's get to a more defensible position while we figure that thing out," I suggested, jerking my head back the way I had come.

  Franks put the ward stone to his ear and shook it. "I hate puzzles."

  Chapter 16

  The most defensible rooms in the barracks were the bathrooms. There was only one entrance and no windows. If the cultists had grabbed this instead of the rec room, we wouldn't have been able to dislodge them. We took the women's instead of the men's because it was on the side away from the main building, where the undead seemed to be focusing their attention.

  Franks held the ward stone in his big hands and studied it with one black eye and one blue eye, unblinking. The letters were not cooperating. Grant and I covered the doorway. Grant had picked up another Uzi. I had kept the AK-47 and stuffed magazines into every pocket until the weight threatened to pull down my cargo pants. I had found my pistol in the hall and returned it to its holster, but it only had a couple of shots left.

  "Any luck?" I asked. Franks didn't answer, intent on the code. "What, they don't teach you this stuff at your fancy academy?"

  "Shut up," Grant muttered.

  "No, you shut up," I snapped. "I'm not done with you yet. We live through this and I'm going to beat your ass. The last one was just a warm-up."

  "You sucker-punched me at gunpoint. Try me in a fair fight, and we'll see how tough you are," Grant responded. He was delusional if he thought that would make a difference. "Torres would already have turned you over to his church if it wasn't for me."

  I turned back to the door. "Traitor," I muttered.

  Grant was ticked. "You've got no clue. I joined MHI to make a difference. But MHI's all about making money, not about making the world a better place. Myers was just like me once, disillusioned by MHI. He gave me a chance to do something important. MHI let me down, not the other way around. I thought that I had failed you guys, but it was the organization that failed me."

  "So you took Myers' job offer?"

  "Yes, I did. Best decision I've ever made. He needed somebody who could get on the inside, help catch his spy, and if that didn't work out, at least he had someone undercover to keep an eye on MHI before they did anything really stupid. I got into this to help people. The Monster Control Bureau represent the real heroes. They do a dirty job to protect this country. MHI is just out to make a buck."

  "Make a buck? That's right, that doesn't matter when you're born rich."

  "Quiet," Franks ordered, tired of our bickering.

  I glared at Grant, then went back to watching the entrance. He was a traitor, pure and simple. Myers had used me as bait to clean his own house, and now my friends were paying the price. When this was over, there were some accounts that needed settling.

  My face hurt from where the werewolf had clawed me. Touching it indicated that the flesh was rent open in a few parallel strips down my cheek, and I was bleeding badly. Grant had the door covered while Franks fiddled with that stupid thing, so I made my way over to the sink and turned it on. The cold water burned.

  Franks looked up from his task and saw me splashing the claw marks. "If you're infected, I'll have to—"

  "Kill me? Yeah, I know. That's how we met, remember?"

  Franks nodded and went back to the ward.

  It was when I looked back in the mirror that I noticed something amiss in one of the stalls. The door was closed, but there was a shadow dangling just under it. Shutting the water off, I approached the stall. I used the muzzle of the AK to push it open.

  "G-Nome?"

  The gnome had been shoved in the toilet. He was so small that most of his body was squished into the water,
and it was awfully pink. One boot was dangling down, and that was what I had seen. His red hat was crunched low on his head, and his white beard was smeared with blood. His breathing was rapid and shallow.

  I knelt next to the toilet and removed his hat. His eyes fluttered open weakly. He was badly injured. " 'Sup, tall one," he sputtered.

  I reached out and touched his hand. "What happened?"

  Black lightning struck and the bathroom vanished.

  This time was different than the others. It was the first time that I'd experienced a nonhuman's memories. The thoughts were subtly alien, and it took a moment for my brain to adjust and it couldn't quite settle into the first person, rather I was a spectator in G-Nome's head. He had confided in me Grant's treachery, and he'd left me, confused by how such a physically tough human, a man-mountain of ass-kicking, could be crying and moping like a baby. No self-respecting gnome badass would ever let his homies see him cry. Tall humans were so weird. He knew it came from all of that banging their heads on doorways and ceiling fans and shit.

  G-Nome had heard the shower turn on in the girls' bathroom, and though he enjoyed spying on human girls as much as the next gnome, he was excited to watch the Tall One shoot the Snitch. He was from Birmingham, so he'd seen plenty of humans shoot each other, and that never got old. But when he caught the smell of killing on the air, he knew something wasn't right. Suspicious, he'd left the tall human to his business and ported through the wall.

  The shower was on when he popped into the bathroom. G-Nome held extra still so the invisibility would hold. He knew from experience that humans freaked out when they caught you looking at them. He could smell which human it was immediately. There was something special about this one. He'd seen her around the compound, and she'd stuck out for some reason, even for a human. It was that younger human hottie, with the redneck accent . . . ​Dawn. He'd overheard that she was a human beauty queen, and he could see why—that human was smokin'. Momma had warned him about the dangers of human women, what with their tallness and lack of facial hair.

  G-Nome noticed Dawn's discarded clothes and he was reminded of the death smell that had gotten his attention to begin with. They were piled up at the foot of the shower, and they were all messy. She'd been splashed with blood. He got closer and checked them out. The red was in splatters, like she'd slaughtered a pig or something.

  Now that didn't make no sense. That red beard, Milo, wasn't having anybody do any work with bodies and guts today. And it was the day of the Hunters' big ceremony. So why was Dawn here, covered in blood, and not in the big building with everybody else? She had been up to something.

  G-Nome was known as the sharpest gnome on the North Side for a reason, and he knew right away that something was up. He snuck over real quiet and picked up her shirt. He sniffed it. The smell told him that it had come from one of the other new humans, but he couldn't remember the dude's name. G-Nome didn't know how much blood was inside a normal human, but if this much got spilled at one time, he was probably dead. He had to tell Harbinger.

  The shower turned off. G-Nome dropped the shirt and padded quickly to the corner. He was extra careful to stay still so the invisibility would hold. Dawn stepped out of the shower.

  The sight was enough to take his mind off the murder. Aw hells yeah, baby . . . ​She had the longest legs of any human he'd ever seen. G-Nome knew he better be paying attention now that he knew some weird shit was going down. She didn't bother to cover herself or dry off. Instead she picked up the clothes and stuffed them into the garbage. Then she stopped and lifted her pretty face to smell the air . . . ​He'd never seen a human do it like that before. Humans had terrible noses. G-Nome thought about just porting through the wall and getting the hell out of here, but he was too curious. Dawn's nostrils flared. She spun around, wet hair flying around her shoulders and she stared right at him.

  How could she see him? Humans couldn't see gnomes when they were still.

  Dawn blinked and then her eyes were solid, colorless, clear as ice cubes. "Tomte," she hissed, and her voice was all wrong, low and scary, and she used the old word for gnome. It took him a second to realize that he was dealing with a Fey and another second to realize that it was the worst kind of Fey of all.

  "Doppelganger!" G-Nome sputtered as he reached for the gun in his waistband. But by then it was too late. The creature descended on him.

  I jerked my hand away, a trail of black light drifted from his arm to my fingertips. It held for a moment, then drifted off like smoke. I could still feel the pressure of the shapeshifter's hands around my throat.

  "Yeah, crazy, huh?" G-Nome smiled weakly. "That was whack . . ." He trailed off.

  He was dead.

  I pulled his sopping body out of the toilet and set him gently on the ground. He didn't weigh much.

  "Where'd you get a gnome?" Franks asked.

  I shook my head. "The Condition has a doppelganger here. That's what Torres was talking about."

  "Who?" Grant asked.

  "The girl from Texas, Dawn. She must have been on guard duty and killed that other Newbie, then she came back to clean up here and murdered G-Nome." I knew almost nothing about doppelgangers, except that they were some kind of rare shapeshifter. "Then she went back and shot Harbinger."

  "So that's how you caught me." Grant muttered. "A gnome. . . ."

  "If the doppelganger got away, it could be anyone now," Franks said, not looking up from the ward stone. "I can't figure this out. You have to know the inventor's codes." There was a massive bang as something landed on our roof. Grant and I flinched and raised our weapons, but with a sudden tapping, the noise retreated. There were all sorts of undead out there. "Who could make it work?"

  I shrugged. "Earl, of course." I didn't add if he's still alive. "Maybe Julie, or one of the older Hunters, but they're all at the main building. Let's get back there and find somebody." Apparently Franks agreed. He handed the ward to me. I stuffed it in the bag and hoisted the stolen AK. "Tunnels?"

  Grant stood. "I don't really want to try the front door right now."

  The compound was a war zone. A few hundred yards away the main building was under siege. Black shapes were clambering up the walls. Occasional explosions highlighted more dimly-visible things moving in a circle around the structure directed by robed figures. Muzzle flashes flew from every window on the top floor. Continuous streams of tracers rained from the roof into the surroundings and a few worked patterns across the night sky.

  "What are they shooting at in the air?" Grant asked hesitantly.

  The three of us were clustered, kneeling next to the opening into the tunnels. The ladder stretched into the darkness below us. "I don't know," I said quickly. This asshole was creative enough to animate bears, so who the hell knew what he had for air support.

  Headquarters seemed to be holding its own. The heavy portcullis had been dropped over the front door. A mass of misshapen bodies was piling up at the entrance. Hammering and hacking could be heard even over the gunfire. Suddenly a brilliant streamer of fire ignited from the narrow windows above the door, as someone used a flamethrower to hose down the monsters at the gate. Flaming bodies stumbled about before collapsing.

  The flamethrower revealed something else charging out of the darkness. A massive shape, big as a truck, plowed through the burning dead and collided with the gate. The crash echoed across the entire compound.

  "What's that?" I hissed.

  Four streams of tracers lit into the giant, followed by more fire, and what had to be a chain of 40mm grenade detonations. The now-burning beast backed up for another run. "Hmmm . . . ​zombie elephant," Franks answered thoughtfully. "Unless it's a dinosaur. Hard to tell with the armor."

  So Hood had either murdered a zoo or he'd pulled a Jurassic Park, but either way, this was really bad. "Back door it is," I suggested, shining my flashlight down the ladder.

  Two dozen white eyes blinked back at me.

  "Shoggoth!" Franks bellowed. His palm struck me in the should
er, knocking me aside. A black tentacle exploded from the hole, splitting the air where I had been standing. It snapped back into the dark with a bullwhip crack. Franks yanked another grenade from his damaged suit coat, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the hole. "Back."

  I ran toward the barracks. I could hear Grant huffing along beside me. The grenade detonated, but rather than a boom, it was a hiss. Thermite. The shoggoth made an unbearable noise, a terrible distorted wail, like somebody had overloaded a bank of speakers by having an insane howler monkey attack the microphone. We clamped our hands over our ears. The noise faded away.

  When I turned around, smoke was pouring from the hole. "Is it dead?"

  Franks looked at me like I was stupid. Of course not. Harbinger had said that the warding kept out undead and transdimensional creatures, which apparently included the Condition's pet shoggoth. With the shield down, it must have burrowed right into our tunnels. "We've got to get back down there."

  "No more grenades," he replied.

  They were only vulnerable to fire. Now there was no way to get into the main building. "Damn it!" That thing would own us in the tunnels.

  "Quiet!" Grant exclaimed, holding up his hand. Large wings batted above us in the night. The shoggoth's scream must have gotten its attention. The three of us ducked back under the overhanging roof of the barracks. The thing circled for a moment, each beat of the wings ponderous and slow. As the noise stopped, something landed on the roof above us with a crash of breaking shingles.

  I held my breath. I was screwed. Monsters below us, monsters above us, monsters all around us. We were armed with a few stolen small arms and a magic rock that we didn't know how to work. We had nowhere to go, and my companions were a snitch and a psycho. Talk about bleak. Dust fell from the overhang as the winged monster above us shifted.

  There was a flash from the opposite side of the compound. There was a violent impact overhead and whatever it was above us crashed into the roof. The mystery creature leapt upward, visible for just a moment as a gray mass, before two wings spread wide and it jerked straight up and out of sight, absurdly fast.