Monster Hunter International, Second Edition

  The folks had arrived right before I was discharged. Now, don't get me wrong. I honestly love my family. They are good people. Crazy, but good.

  "Damn, boy, you look like shit," was the first thing that my father exclaimed when he saw my face.

  My father was an upstanding citizen, a decorated war hero and member of the tight-knit Special Forces community, a man who was respected by his peers. At home, however, he was an emotionally distant and stern man who had a hard time relating to his children. When I was younger I had taken this to mean that he did not approve of us or even really like us much. I had dealt with that by trying to follow in his footsteps. My younger brother had dealt with that kind of thing by dropping out of high school and forming a heavy metal band. While I had become a CPA, my brother's band had landed a record deal and was always surrounded by hot groupies and wild parties. I think I got the shaft in that deal.

  Apparently my father was a little ashamed that I had gotten so torn up by a corpulent schmuck, when I myself was young, fit, and—since I had been brought up right—carrying a gun. I imagine that if Huffman had succeeded in eating me, my father would have been more embarrassed that a Pitt had lost a fight, than saddened by my actual demise. The last time my father had been obviously ashamed of me was when the Army recruiters had turned me down because of flat feet and a childhood history of asthma attacks. That had been a tough day for him.

  He had brought his sons up to follow in his soldiering footsteps. In fact, the idea for my first name came from the Owen submachine gun that he had used to save his life in the backcountry of Cambodia during a war that never officially existed. He thought the name had a nice ring to it, and the actual gun had come in handy for mowing down communist insurgents after he was trapped deep in enemy territory with nothing but an obsolete Australian weapon older than he was. Believe me, as kids, we had heard all of those stories.

  "Oh my baby! My poor poor baby! How did this happen? You poor thing!" was the first thing from my mom. It continued like that for several minutes in a barrage of hugs, kisses, and dampened tissues. Mom was the emotional one in the family. She also showed her love by cooking, which is why I was always the chubby kid growing up. In my house, if you weren't eating, obviously you were not loved. Needless to say, the Pitts tended to be big people.

  They had taken me back to my apartment, where to my surprise they promptly settled in for a stay. I tried to assure them that I would be fine, and that I would not need any help. Since I could barely walk and was still covered in bandages I don't think I made a very convincing argument in favor of my independence.

  Weeks passed as I gradually healed. My strength was returning, and after a few doctors' visits, I was running out of staples. I had to admit that I loved my mom's cooking, and between the lack of exercise, atrophied muscles, and 3,000-calorie meals I was starting to put on some weight. The trade-off came in the constant questioning. "Why no girlfriend? When are you going to get married? When will you find another job? What are you going to do now?" These were always followed by invitations to move back home where I could find another job and meet a nice girl.

  Friends came to visit several times. Mom rented lots of movies for me to watch. I caught up on my reading, and checked the want ads for a new job.

  Dad mostly played golf.

  This whole time the business card that I had received at the hospital lay discarded in a drawer in my bedroom. I had thought about calling the number, but couldn't bring myself to do so. It was much easier not to think about a world where creatures like Mr. Huffman existed.

  The hardest part was not being able to talk to anybody about it.

  One night I received a phone call from my brother Mosh. His real name was David, but it had been a long time since anybody other than our parents had called him that. Since I was the only one in the family that he ever spoke with, and that was only on rare occasions, he had not known about the Incident until then. He had called as soon as he had found out. We spoke for a while, him wanting the blow by blow, and me giving him the FBI approved version. Of everyone that I had spoken with, he was the one I was the most tempted to tell the truth to, but I really didn't want the government to kill me, so I refrained.

  I had asked how he was doing. His band, Cabbage Point Killing Machine, was doing well and they were going to release their next album, Hold the Pig Steady, in the next month. I made him promise to send me a copy, and VIP passes for when his tour hit Dallas. He told me he would, as long as I managed to not get murdered before then. I gave him my word that I would try.

  The night before my parents were scheduled to fly out, my father took me aside for a conversation. He waited until Mom was occupied in the kitchen cooking another four-course meal, then motioned me into the living room.

  "Owen, we need to talk."

  "Sure, Dad. What's up?" It was not very often that my father wanted to speak with me. He usually just spoke at me, but tonight he seemed rather agitated.

  "Look, son, let me just come right out and say it. I know you aren't telling us everything."

  "Huh?" This was a surprise. "What do you mean?"

  "I've seen your injuries. I've seen knife wounds, hell, I've given knife wounds. Those aren't knife wounds."

  He had me there. I didn't know what to say so I just nodded.

  "Plus, I know what you did to put yourself through school, and I know that you never told us because you didn't want your mother to worry."

  That made me jump. I had had no idea that he knew.

  "What do you mean, Dad? I worked in a warehouse."

  "Sure you did, for a while, except after that you bounced in a biker bar, and you used to compete in underground fights for money."

  "How did you know?"

  "Remember crazy Charlie from my office? He had a gambling problem. Old guy would bet on anything. He caught one of your performances one night. Called me the next morning to tell me how he had seen my boy kick the living hell out of some tough customers. So I did a little checking is all . . . Did it pay good?"

  Early on in life, I had discovered that I had a remarkable gift for violence, which had been encouraged and cultivated by my father. That, coupled with my physical ability to soak up a beating, had enabled me to make some pretty decent money on more than a few occasions. It didn't have the perks of accounting, but I do have to admit that punching people in the face had its own certain charms.

  "Twenty percent of the house if you win. Five if you lose. Very illegal. I did the bar gig for a while. I was the cooler; they actually just let me hang out in the back and do homework until they had a problem." I neglected to mention that we had had problems on an hourly basis and it was the kind of bar where the local paramedics had our address memorized. "I only did that kind of thing long enough to pay for school." That was a shameful lie, but I could never tell my father the truth about why I had quit. "How come you never said anything?" I asked after a time.

  He looked a little sheepish for a minute. Confused by emotion he quickly turned up the gruffness. "Not my business, you were an adult."

  I believe that was the closest he had ever come to giving me a compliment.

  "But anyway, what I'm getting at is I'm guessing you've got experience handling guys with knives." He had no idea. My body had a lot more scars than just the new ones. "I want to know how that asshole managed to wipe the floor with you, break walls, smash furniture, get shot ten times, and still manage to rip you open?"

  "Drugs, I guess," was the only response I could think of.

  He continued, "I've seen wounds like that before. I saw a guy who'd been mauled by a tiger once. Looked like what happened to you. He got raked up and down, dragged around. The cat toyed with him for a while. Unlike you, he had the muscles on his back eaten right off, right down to the bone like we would eat a fried chicken, and that was 'fore he got flipped over, and cracked open so it could eat the sweet spots out from his guts." I remembered that story, if I recalled correctly. Dad had shared the long gory version a
s a bedtime story when I was about six.

  "I don't know what to tell you, Dad."

  He looked me hard in the eyes. He was still a remarkably intimidating man, physically and emotionally. "Look, I know there's some weird stuff out there. I've heard stories from people I trust. I've seen a few things myself back in the day that no rational man can explain." He shook his head vacantly as if he was trying to forget something. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know you didn't just tangle with a normal man. If you want to tell me the whole story, I'll listen."

  I didn't reply.

  He scowled, eventually tired of waiting, and left the room without saying another word, no doubt ashamed of me once again.

  They flew out the next day.

  I cursed and swore as I hobbled through my apartment, crutch banging randomly into objects as I tried to make my way to the entrance. The doorbell rang again, and this time they held it down, and wouldn't let up. It was a very shrill doorbell.

  "Just a minute!" I bellowed as I stumbled around the couch. My leg was getting much better. That had been by far the worst wound, and it was still the most tender, especially when I tried to walk on it. The rest of my injuries were healing nicely, and even my hand cast had finally come off. I promised myself on my long journey across the living room that if the person ringing my doorbell was with the media, I was going to shove my crutch through the reporter's chest cavity and leave the corpse propped up in the hallway as a warning to the others.

  Peering through the peephole, all I could see was darkness. The hallway light had burned out again. "Who is it?" I yelled through the door, ready to give the crutch treatment if they said anything about a newspaper or television station. The media were apparently drawn to my story like flies to garbage, probably due to the made-for-TV movie feel of the whole thing. Serial killer thrown from a high building? Sounds like a winner to me.

  "Earl Harbinger," came the muffled reply. "We met at the hospital."

  I had almost managed to forget about that business card. Almost.

  "What do you want?" I shouted.

  "I need help with my taxes, what do you think I want?"

  I debated opening the door. On one hand I could go back to my normal life, find a job, pretend that the biggest dangers in the world were good old-fashioned bad people, and sleep well at night. On the other hand I could get some answers.

  Curiosity won out in the end. I unlocked the two dead bolts and opened the door.

  Harbinger had brought a friend.

  She was beautiful. In fact she was possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was tall, with dark black hair, light skin, and big brown eyes. Her face was beautiful, not fake beautiful like a model or an actress, because she was obviously a real person, but rather Helen of Troy, launch-a-thousand-ships kind of good-looking. She wore glasses, and I was a sucker for a girl in corrective eyewear. Since I was ugly it was probably some sort of subconscious reaction in the hope that I might have a chance with a cute girl who couldn't see very well. She was dressed in a conservative business suit, but unlike most women I knew, she made it look good. If I were to guess I would have said that she was in her mid-twenties.

  "Mr. Pitt?" she asked. Even her voice was pretty. She was a goddess.

  I tried to answer, but no words would come out. Talk, idiot! "Um . . . Hi." Smooth . . . So far so good, keep going, big guy.

  "You can, um . . . my name is . . . Owen. My friends call me Z. Because of my middle name. It starts with a Z. Or whatever works for you. Come in. Please!" Well, so much for smooth.

  She smiled and held out her hand. "Julie Shackleford, pleased to meet you." Her grip was strong, with surprisingly callused, working hands. Her handshake sent the message that she was no wimp. Had I found the perfect woman?

  Her eyes widened when she saw my face. The scar. It was healing nicely, but I knew that it was still grisly. Once the swelling went down I was left with a massive red strip that evenly halved my forehead, split the bridge of my many times broken nose and ended up on my cheek. It was brutal.

  She looked away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare." She had a small hint of a Southern accent.

  "It's no big deal. Just a scratch. Think of it as Harry Potter on steroids," I said, trying to make her feel comfortable. "Come in, grab a seat. You need anything to drink?"

  "No thank you," Julie said. Julie . . . Such a pretty name.

  "I'll take a beer," Harbinger growled.

  "Sorry, no beer," almost adding that I didn't drink, but not wanting to look like a wuss. The truth was after spending so much time working around drunks, I never touched the stuff.

  Harbinger just grunted in disappointment. They both sat down on my thrift store couch. It took me a minute to get my crutch repositioned so that I could move gingerly to a chair. It's hard to impress a pretty girl when you're a big clumsy oaf balancing on a stupid padded aluminum stick. I flopped down and dropped the crutch.

  "Feeling better?" Harbinger asked.

  "Much. Doctors say I'm healing fast. I got my cast off, and I can start doing upper body exercise again as long as I'm really careful not to push too hard."

  "You lift?"

  "A little bit," I answered. In truth, before the Incident I had been pushing just over a 400-pound bench press. I didn't look it, but that was the disadvantage of being both tall and stocky. Because of the injuries on my chest and the amount of time off, I knew that it was going to take a while to get up to that weight again.

  "Careful you don't hurt yourself. You got banged up good. In fact I've never seen anybody take on a werewolf like that and live. Not without some good silver weapons at least, but tangling hand to hand, that's crazy. You were lucky." He talked about werewolves like it was a common and everyday item of no special interest. Like a normal person would refer to a vacuum cleaner or a toaster.

  "Mr. Pitt . . . Sorry . . . Owen," Julie started, "what we're about to say may sound a little weird, but after your recent experience you of all people will understand that we're not crazy. Earl and I represent a company called Monster Hunter International."

  "Okay. I'm listening." Julie could tell me that she was from the moons of Jupiter and I would give her my full attention. Less weird than that? Piece of cake.

  "MHI is a private organization, and we handle monster-related problems. I guess you could say that we are in fact Monster Hunters."

  "Sounds reasonable." I smiled. It didn't sound reasonable at all. It sounded wacky as all get out, but if I told a shrink about my Huffman experience I would be in a padded cell inside of fifteen minutes. So I listened.

  "As you now are aware, monsters are very real. They're out there, and are a serious threat to the world. Our company specializes in neutralizing monster threats," she said.

  "Good money in that?" I asked jokingly.

  Harbinger reached inside his jacket, pulled out a plain envelope and tossed it to me. I caught it.

  "What's this?"

  "There's a federal bounty paid on undesirable unnaturals. It's called the PUFF," Harbinger stated.

  "Puff?"

  "Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund," Julie answered. "Teddy Roosevelt started it when he was president. PUFF is a tool for controlling monster populations. It's a big source of income for MHI. We make the rest in contracts set up with various municipalities, organizations, and private individuals with monster problems."

  "Go ahead and open it," Harbinger suggested. "The Feds weren't going to tell you about it, but you killed a newly blooded adult werewolf by yourself. That makes you the sole recipient of any bounty for that particular creature. I took the liberty of doing the paperwork for you. I didn't think you would mind."

  Inside the envelope was an ordinary-looking check. Sure enough it was from the Department of the Treasury, with PUFF stamped in green ink under their insignia. It was made out to one Owen Zastava Pitt in the amount of $50,000.

  I think that the noise I made could best be described as a squeak, only less manly. This could not
be real. My job, which I had been fired from so recently, had paid less than that in a year. "You have got to be freaking kidding me!" Fixing Julie with an incredulous look, I did my best to raise a single eyebrow.

  "Nope," Julie laughed. She had a beautiful sounding laugh. "That check is totally legit. The bounties change depending on the severity of the monster populations, and the number of human casualties. In this case lycanthrope attacks are at an all-time high, and this particular specimen had already taken a few victims the night before. Now if he had been older, or had eaten more people, then you would be looking at a bigger bounty."

  "So you're telling me that the government gives people money for killing werewolves?" I was prepared to take her word for it, but I was definitely going to limp down to the bank and try to deposit this thing as soon as they left.

  "Yes, and other types of unnaturals."

  "Others? So what else is out there?"

  She shrugged. "Lots of things, but I don't want to get too far off of the subject. If you don't agree to our offer then anything I tell you can never be shared with the general public, or the government will arrange for you to have a chainsaw accident or something equally bad, and I'm not kidding about that one bit. They have a strict policy of keeping all of this secret. So before I tell you what else is out there, let me ask you if—"

  I cut her off. "Zombies? Are there really zombies?"

  "Owen, please, I need to . . ."

  "Yes, there are zombies. A whole bunch of different kinds. Slow ones, fast ones. Nasty bastards," Harbinger said.

  "Vampires?"

  "Oh yeah. And let me tell you, they ain't the nice charming debonair kind of thing you see on TV, those suckers are meaner than hell. Trust me on this one; pop culture makes them all intellectual and sexy, there ain't nothing sexy about getting your carotid artery ripped out. There're actually a mess of different kinds of undead."

  Julie sighed as she gave up on her pitch. I was going to find out what exactly was real, and Harbinger was more than willing to talk. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and also getting a kick out of Julie's discomfort.