“The head vampire called the Old Man Bar Eeka?”
“As near as I could tell. Something like that.”
“Could he be a wraith? Maybe a revenant even?” Julie asked. “No, wait, those have bodies. How about a shade?”
“Beats me.”
“There is a possibility,” Harbinger stated. “I’ve heard some weird stories since I’ve been doing this kind of thing. He could be a ghost, and he could have hooked up with you while you were dead on the operating table. You might have actually met him on the other side and brought him back. Now he’s using you somehow. Problem is, we don’t know jack about ghosts, so how do we figure out why he’s trying to help you?”
“Be sure to ask him that the next time you see him,” Milo told me.
“Except I only see him when I’m dead, or about to come close to death,” I added sardonically.
“That will be convenient for you then. You’re a Monster Hunter now. Plenty of good opportunities to die all of the time!”
The ocean rushed by below. The interior of the Hind was very loud, and that was not helped by the fact that our pilot felt the need to blare heavy metal through the intercom. Excellent selection though. Disturbed, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, and even the latest single by my brother’s band. I figured I would have to let the pilot know that I knew Cabbage Point Killing Machine’s guitarist once we landed. I had not met the pilot yet, and all that I had been told about him was when Milo had jokingly said that he had been included in the purchase of the chopper. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. All that I had seen so far had been the back of his helmeted head.
I had never ridden in a helicopter before, and it was kind of exciting, loud and with painful vibrations, but still fun. Almost like a roller coaster ride with the added advantage that it could shear a bolt and kill you in a matter of seconds.
We were sitting in the cramped crew compartment. The Hind had originally been used to move Russian infantry, though this particular specimen had been tweaked and customized extensively by MHI. It was still tight, but I was given to understand that it was downright plush compared to what it had once been.
Almost all of the other Hunters had immediately gone to sleep. They understood the basic principle of “sleep when you can, because you don’t know when you are going to get to do it again.” I couldn’t do it, so I passed the time by picking silver buckshot pellets out of my armor. I made a mental note to add Milo Anderson to my Christmas card list.
I held up one of the silver pellets, now deformed from the impact, and studied it, deep in thought. I had almost died today. Now that the adrenaline had left my system, I found my exhausted brain once again pondering just what the hell I was doing, and truthfully, I didn’t have an answer.
Julie’s head was rolled to the side and she was snoring. She had hardly spoken to me since she had found out about my little altercation with Grant. I was not about to apologize. He had left me to get eaten, and I did not like that one bit.
Harbinger opened his eyes. He had been awake. He checked to make sure Julie was out, and then unbuckled his seatbelt and moved next to me, flopping solidly into the uncomfortable chair. He turned and shouted in my ear.
“I wanted to talk to you about Grant.”
“Okay,” I shouted back.
“I know about what happened.”
“He left me behind to save his own skin.”
“I know,” he yelled. It was hard to have a conversation by shouting. “Grant says that he didn’t think he could save you . . . That you would both have been killed.”
Perhaps. I did not respond, not knowing what to say, and not wanting to admit that Grant very well might have been right, and honestly not really knowing what I would have done if our situations had been reversed.
“Don’t ever let something like that happen again. I’m the boss. I take care of discipline. You undermined my authority.”
“That’s it? You aren’t mad at me for hitting him?”
“Oh, if I was mad, you’d be swimming home.”
“Serious?” I asked.
Earl sighed and rubbed his face.
“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“What are you going to do with Grant?” I said, turning up the volume.
“I don’t know yet. Maybe Grant’s right, and he would’ve died keeping that door open, and I don’t believe in committing suicide to prove a point.”
“Sam said something about it being easier to be brave when others are watching you. Maybe Grant isn’t so tough when there aren’t any witnesses,” I insisted.
“Yeah, Sam’s a regular philosopher,” Earl responded. “You can face some really scary shit, and be just fine, as long as you’re doing it for your team.” He grew suddenly serious, and I had to look away from those cold eyes. “Either way, it ain’t none of your business now. Don’t ever do something like that again. Hunters can’t lose control. Got that? You never lose control. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, sir.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the rotors beat the air, and some amazing guitar playing by my brother. From the expression on Harbinger’s face, I don’t think that he cared for metal. I refrained from banging my head in deference to his tender sensibilities.
“What about Julie?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“Does she believe that Grant abandoned me?”
“None of my business. She’s a grown-up.” The look he gave me told me to shut it. He quickly changed the subject. “Let me ask you this, Pitt. You’ve been with us for a few months. You’ve gone on exactly one mission. Could you leave now and go back to your spreadsheets and your tax forms?”
I did not answer. Did Earl know how much I was doubting the path that I was on? He was the experienced one, maybe he could see what I could not.
“Well, you’ll probably need to.”
My heart sank. So this was it. Was he going to let me go because of my rash actions? If he felt he could not trust me then I would be out. Did he think that I was too hotheaded and impulsive to be a member of the team?
“I got a letter yesterday. The IRS is going to audit us. I’m gonna need your help; our books are a mess. Once we handle this little vampire problem, of course.”
I grinned. That I could handle.
“I can deal with the IRS. They’re a little easier than vampires. Not much, but a little.”
“Will sunlight banish them?”
“Maybe. I haven’t tried that before.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg though. OSHA is crawling all over us for—I kid you not—workplace safety violations. As if there is anything safe about what we do at all. The EPA is angry about some of the pollution we have caused by burning certain kinds of monsters. Fish and Wildlife wants to fine us for killing a giant mutant Tennessee River catfish because it was endangered. Sure it had just crawled up on land and eaten some teenagers, but it was still an endangered species. We’re in trouble with the BATF for some missing compliance paperwork for the machine guns and explosives—paperwork which they lost. And Immigration is investigating us for employing some illegal aliens.”
“Are we?”
“Sure, but who doesn’t? Do you think you just put an ad in the paper for people who can fly Russian attack helicopters?”
“Why are the Feds hammering us?”
“We’ve pissed a lot of people off in Washington. Our company was shut down for a long time. PUFF was only reactivated by the slimmest of margins. There are a lot of bureaucrats who are itching for us to fail. They’re making it damn near impossible to get our jobs done.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Harbinger grinned savagely. “From the amount of money we made on this job, I’m going to buy me some congressmen, maybe even a senator.”
I was shocked. “Are you talking about bribery?”
“Why? Does that offend you?” he asked.
“Oh hell no. I’m a libertarian at heart. Screw ’em.”
Chapter 11
That night I dreamed again. But it was not about my apparent friend, the Old Man with the poor English. Nor was it about the Cursed One and his gang of abominations. This was something different.
A lone mountain rose out of a bleak, dead forest. The side of the peak had been torn asunder in some sort of huge explosion. Trees had been shattered, stripped of their bark, or bent to the earth. Rock was charred and broken, the very foundations of the mountain had been cracked, and the face of the mighty peak had collapsed in an avalanche.
Amongst the shale and gravel was a low spot where the rubble had settled into what had once been a natural cavern or perhaps an underground structure. In the deepest depression, small bits of gravel and dust began to stir as something pushed against them from underneath, gradually and laboriously moving the weight of the earth above. Finally a dirt-encrusted hand thrust its way into the air, followed by a massively muscled arm. The torn and bloodied fingers clenched into an angry fist.
It was covered in black, swirling tattoos.
I woke up the next morning, groggy, sore, and cranky. We were staying at the bug-infested Radio City Motor Lodge in some little Georgia town that made Cazador look like a thriving metropolis. It had been the closest lodging to the dirt strip that passed for the local airport. It is hard to sleep when roaches keep skittering across your body. My understanding is that since roaches can’t shift into reverse, if one of them crawls into your ear canal it can get really nasty and potentially kill you. Sleep on that.
The injured Hunters had been dispersed to seek medical care. The cargo plane had dropped off Boone’s two injured men at their home city of Atlanta. Roberts’ body had gone with them. The plane had then continued west, delivering Albert Lee and his fractured rib back to Alabama. Grant Jefferson had flown the plane. He had been sent back to the compound supposedly to take over and continue the Newbies’ training. I figured that I probably needed some medical care as well, but Harbinger wanted to keep me around because of my dreams, and also possibly because he worried that I might murder Grant once I was left unsupervised.
So that left ten of us in coastal Georgia. Eleven if you counted our mysterious helicopter pilot, who had apparently slept in the chopper. I still had not seen the man without his face-shielding helmet, and he never seemed to speak. The experienced Hunters seemed used to the odd behavior and did not even bother to remark upon it.
There had only been three available rooms. The ladies had taken the nicest one, meaning that the toilet worked, and there weren’t as many unidentifiable spots on the walls. I had bunked with Trip, Mead and Milo. Taking pity on me because of the beating I had received, they gave me one of the twin beds. Milo had seniority so he got the other. Trip had won a game of rock, paper, scissors (of course Chuck went rock) to get the couch. Mead got to sleep on the carpet with the mystery stains.
We gathered in Harbinger’s room not long after dawn. A large map of Georgia had been purchased and was stuck to the wall with someone’s throwing knives. Julie and Boone both had powerful laptops open and running. Boxes of our gear and munitions had been hastily piled into the corners. We had hired a flatbed to move it from the docks to here.
The group was sitting around in their shorts and T-shirts, all except for the Newbie squad who had not known to bring any clothing other than our armor. Holly had borrowed some clothing from Julie. Trip and Chuck had stolen some from somebody else. Since I was the only 4XL I stood in the corner wearing my boxer shorts and a towel for modesty. I had hosed the undead juices off of my armor. The suit was still drying in the shower.
“Pitt. This is an informal meeting. You shouldn’t dress up so much,” Sam told me. At least he didn’t try to steal my towel and flick me with it. I could tell he was tempted.
“Okay, everybody. Here’s the situation,” Harbinger began, a cigarette dangling unlit from his lips. “We have seven very powerful vampires, possibly Masters, that landed somewhere near here, along with some other monsters of unknown type. They must have arrived sometime in the last three days. If they launched as soon as the freighter turned south down the coast they would have arrived near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, though my gut feeling’s that they didn’t do that. The ship dropped anchor off this coast for a reason. If they came straight to shore they would’ve landed in this area east of us.” He put his finger on a spot of coastline. There were a lot of islands, peninsulas and inlets under that fingertip.
“If they started moving as soon as they landed, then they could be almost anywhere. They could still be on foot, or they could have secured some transportation. If they’re in a vehicle then they could be in Florida, Alabama, or South Carolina by now.”
“Vampires can drive?” Chuck asked blankly.
“Yes, Mead. Vampires can drive. Just not during the daylight. If they secured a truck with a trailer, it would give them a place to sleep during the daylight hours too.”
“What if they split up?” Milo asked.
“They won’t,” I answered. Nine heads swiveled in my direction. I tried to cover myself with the towel as best as I could. I was a little self-conscious, especially with all of the thick red scar tissue on my chest and back. “They’re like a protective detail. The Cursed One is their principal. They’re guarding him. Wherever he goes, they go.”
“Yeah, about that. I’ve been meaning to ask, how do we know you aren’t just bloody nuts?” Priest asked. “No offense intended.”
“None taken. To be honest, I don’t know. But the seven coffins is a pretty good indicator.”
“Fair enough,” he answered.
“What about this Cursed One? Do we have anything on record about that?” Milo asked.
“Negative. I can’t find anything. Lots of things with curses, but not that match this one. Nothing comes up in a search, and nothing under Lord Machado. No entries about anything wearing a suit of armor either. I’ve got a bunch of folks hitting the books back at the compound looking for something. There might be something in the old archives that hasn’t been scanned in yet.” MHI kept meticulous records of all known monster encounters, and also drew upon a massive library of information gathered from around the world. The stuff that we dealt with did not just pop up during a Google search.
“Maybe if we had a better description it might help,” Julie said coldly. She was still pretty mad at me.
“Sorry, I was incorporeal at the time.”
“Machado is a Portagee last name. It means ax. Like the kind that an executioner would use,” Sam told us. His useful information was a bit of a surprise. His teammates regarded him strangely. The cowboy spent a lot more time busting heads than he did studying monster history. “What? I had a master chief with that last name. He thought the ax thing was pretty cool.”
“We’re listening to the local police bands. If we’re lucky somebody will see something and call it in; if we’re unlucky, somebody is going to end up as lunch. So we are also listening for any missing persons reports. This is Boone’s turf so he’s trying to contact some of the locals who might be first in line for information.”
“First in line?” Holly queried.
“Cops, coroners, reporters. In this case, I’m going to contact hookers, pimps, and drug dealers. Also some backwoods hillfolk that I’ve dealt with before. When vampires feed, they will usually go after the underbelly of society. They keep off the radar that way.”
“How often do they need to feed?” Trip asked.
“Unknown. The usual low-level vamps that we deal with seem to do it every chance they get, with probably a minimum of about once a month. I know that the Feds have captured a few in the past and done testing on them, even starved a few, but they don’t share that kind of info with us,” Julie said.
“Speaking of the Feds, I had to call them,” Harbinger said sadly. He paused during the inevitable cursing long enough to light his cigarette and take a long drag. “Didn’t have much
choice. We’re still short-handed. We have to face the fact that we might not be able to tackle all of them, especially if they’re roaming together.”
“What did they say?” Milo asked.
“Nothing basically. They said thanks for the tip. That was it. I think they thought I was nuts.”
“We can handle them, Earl. We don’t need no Feds,” Sam said.
“Maybe if we catch them while they’re sleeping and toss in a couple hundred pounds of C4. Facing them while they’re awake? No way.” There was some murmuring at that. We were a testosterone-charged, confident, well-trained team. “No offense, but I’m the only person here who has actually killed a Master. I’m one of the only people alive who has even seen one. And I was just lucky. Trust me on this one. We’re good, but we ain’t that good. If we find them, we wait until they hole up, and then we blow it to hell with bombs or napalm or something. Face to face, no thanks.”
“Who else can we call in?” Boone asked.
Julie played with her laptop for a minute. “Closest other Hunters are Hurley’s team out of Miami, but they’re on a case in the Bahamas.”
“Lucky bastards,” Sam grunted.
“Nope, they’re tracking a luska.” She shuddered.
“Oh, never mind,” he said quickly. I did not know what a luska was, but if Sam or Julie did not want to mess with one, neither did I.
“After that the only other MHI personnel in the south are Boone’s guys, and then the Newbies and a few others at the compound. I don’t think we want to call up Grandpa or Dorcas. Going out from there we have two teams in the northeast, both on cases right now in New York and Baltimore. Next closest after that is Phillips, who’s currently dealing with some devil monkeys in St. Paul. Only five other teams left, and they’re out west or out of the country. Every single team is working a case.”