Matt Archer: Monster Hunter (Matt Archer #1) (18 page)

I drifted on those bitter, ugly thoughts all evening, even
while my family sang “Happy Birthday” over my candlelit cake. Mom had moved her
laptop onto the foot of the kitchen table, so Mike could sing along with them
via streaming video. That didn’t cheer me up, either.

“Blow out your candles, dude,” Will said. He had one of
those stupid, paper-cone party hats on his head and his grin was too wide. I
could tell he was trying to make amends for the Ella disaster, refusing to
believe I’d already let him off the hook.

Not sure how to tell anyone just how bad, how anxious, how
confused I felt, I forced a smile and blew out all fifteen candles in one gust.
Mom bustled off to cut the cake, and Brent’s hands disappeared under the table.
He had his cell phone hidden in his lap; his newest girlfriend required a lot
of attention. Then Mike’s connection got lost, so Will went to the laptop to
see if he could fix it. I slumped in my chair, grateful that most of the
attention was diverted.

Mamie stared at me, a concerned frown on her face. She had
radar for bad moods; either that or she knew me too dang well. After glancing
about, she scooted her chair closer to mine. Her voice low, she asked, “Matt,
what’s wrong?”

“Girl trouble.” Maybe those two words would spare me a
longer explanation. It worked before.

“It’ll get better, it always does.” She paused, pulling at
the fringe on our tablecloth. “He missed mine, too.”

When she looked up, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“You have so much to do, so much responsibility. The things you’ve seen…I worry
about you all the time. Just remember, even if Dad forgets, we still love you.”

Mom and Will drifted back to their seats, and the
celebration went on. As I opened the new hiking boots Mom had bought me as a
birthday gift, I was able to suck it up and have some fun.

Thanks to Mamie.

The rest of the week dragged by. The weather warmed up into
the low fifties during the day, and the sun melted most of the snow. Winter
wasn’t over, the Groundhog told us that much, but it felt good to get a break.
Even better, Carter steered clear and Ella was able to talk to me without
blushing again. I finally relaxed some.

Then the Army called.

“Happy Birthday, Archer. Sorry I’m a few days late. How
about Happy Valentine’s Day instead?” Colonel Black said. “I’m afraid I don’t
have such a good present, though.”

At least he’d waited until after dinner. I flopped onto my
bed and rubbed my temples. “That’s no surprise. But I’m ready to get to work.
What’ve we got?”

“Sightings of Bigfoot again. And there’s more. Three hikers,
college students, disappeared over the weekend. No remains. The FBI put me on
alert once they determined there wasn’t any ‘human’ explanation for the
disappearances.” Colonel Black sounded tired. “So you’re up.”

“Yes, sir. Find the beast, take it out.”

“Archer…” There was a long pause. “Have the Bears done
anything more advanced recently? Like built shelters or pack hunt? Or shown
signs of increased vocabulary?”

“No, sir,” I said. “All they’ve said is ‘mun’ for man, and
yes or no. They still lumber around, too. A few of them, especially the
females, have been wily, but that’s it.”

“The other creatures are reaching near human vocabulary
levels, and are working in teams. Since the Bears showed up months after the
Gators and Pandas, we’re trying to understand what their learning curve is.” He
sighed. “Please keep me apprised of any changes.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send a report later tonight.” Maybe we were
lucky the Bears were still acting somewhat dense compared to the others,
considering it was just me and Will out there.

After the briefing, I put my plans in motion. Since it was a
Friday, sneaking out wasn’t a problem; I just told Mom that Will had invited me
to stay over. His parents would be out for Valentine’s Day.

“That sounds nice, honey. Need a ride?” Mom had her purse
and keys in hand before I answered.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Let me get my stuff.” I hurried to
my room for my hunting backpack and threw some clothes on top of the gear.

When we got to the Cruessan’s, Will was ready for me,
flinging his front door open before I rang the bell. “Millicent,” he called,
“Matt and I are going to play ping-pong in the garage for a few hours.”

After a muffled okay from his housekeeper, we waited in the
doorway until Mom pulled out of the driveway. Then Will led me around to the
garage, singing, “Here we come to save the day!”

“Mighty Mouse?” I said. “Come on, man, give us more credit
than that. I think Spiderman. Maybe even Batman, what with all the gadgets we
have.”

I checked the gas gauge on the ATV and made sure all the
flashlights worked. “You know, it’s not going to drop below freezing tonight,
we don’t have snow to deal with…good visibility, too. We’re due for a smooth
hunt, don’t you think?”

“Great, you just jinxed us.” Will opened the garage door and
we trooped out into the night. “Now we’ll have a catastrophe.”

“Wasn’t ‘catastrophe’ one of our vocabulary words last
week?” I put my ski mask on, folding the brim back up over my eyes like a watch
cap so I could see better.

He nodded and put on his ski mask, too. “‘Catastrophe’ is
relevant to the situation, Matthew.”

“Okay, Vocabulary King, let’s get on with it.” With a grunt,
I popped the ATV into neutral and gave it a shove. “Less talking, more
pushing.”

When we got to the spot where we normally fired up the
four-wheeler, the woods were silent. No owls hooting, no rustle of small
animals foraging through the brush. Dead quiet. The hairs on the back of my
neck prickled.

Will stood stiff, looking through the thick evergreens with
a tense expression. He pointed into the woods. “I don’t think we’ll have to go
far tonight.”

I followed his gaze. The head of a deer was spiked onto a
broken tree trunk. Its ears had been torn off. “Good God, look at that.”

“Matt, we’re less than half a mile from my house,” Will
said. “What if they start leaving the woods?”

“They haven’t yet. Maybe they’re too stupid to realize they
can.” I clapped him on the back to steady his nerves, wishing my own stomach
would stop churning. “Let’s leave the ATV here for now, track it on foot.”

I searched the ground around the decapitated deer head with
my flashlight. The footprints leading into the center of the forest were on the
small side—about as big as my new size-ten boots.

“Dude, I think we got another girl.”

“That makes my night,” Will grumbled. “The last one was a
handful.”

“We’ll get her,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

The trail gave us a hard time. She-Bears usually moved with
more caution than the males, so there were fewer broken plants to follow. We
had to rely on faint footprints left in the damp mold and dirt. When I lost the
trail for the third time, Will helped walk a perimeter, looking for fresh
tracks.

“Ahh!”

I spun around to see the top of Will’s head and outstretched
arm disappear. Scrambling through the brush, I ran to find that he’d fallen
into a crudely dug hole. I knelt down at the edge. “You okay?”

Will rolled from his side to his back, then sat up with a
groan. “Yeah. Stupid hole was covered with branches and pine needles and
surrounded by bushes. I didn’t realize it was here until I fell in. There’s
rocks down here, too; the floor’s really crunchy. Killed my back when I landed
on them.”

I shined my flashlight down into the hole and gasped. “Uh,
listen, we need to get you out of there.”

“Well, duh, Sherlock.” Will stood up. The top of the pit was
a good foot above his head. Cursing, he crouched, then jumped and caught the
edge . With a grunt, he hauled himself onto his forearms, feet scrabbling for
purchase on the walls. I grabbed him under the arms and helped pull him out of
the hole.

Will brushed dirt off his chest. “Where did this thing come
from anyway? Could’ve broken my leg or something.”

Once he was safely on the ground, I showed him.

The bottom of the pit wasn’t just littered with the branches
used to cover it or rocks like Will thought. Human skulls, femurs and ribs
covered the bottom. If I had to guess, Will had landed on a foot-deep pile of
bones.

“Oh, oh, oh…” Will staggered away, shoulders heaving.

While he puked against a tree, I examined the workmanship of
the pit. This wasn’t like a dog burying a bone in the backyard. The edges
weren’t gouged with claw marks. The walls were smooth, like they’d dug it using
their paws and a tool of some kind. The size and shape alone suggested a plan.
A group of Bears had worked together to build it. The hole was both a disposal
heap, and a trap.

They were advancing.

Trying not to freak, I said, “At least we know where some of
the victims ended up. Now the families can bury their remains.”

Will wiped his mouth. “We need to kill them faster. Before
they start raiding gas stations and day care centers.”

“Then let’s go find our girl,” I said.

We picked up the prints again. Around the next bend in the
trees, the She-Bear tracks mingled with larger prints for while, then split up.
Two trails in one night. We would be really out late.

“Which one do you want to go after first?” I asked.

“The girl. Get it over with,” Will said.

I marked the spot in my GPS, so we could find the other
tracks later, then set out after the She-Bear. Her trail led us downhill into a
section of the woods I wasn’t familiar with. The trees grew in weird clumps, with
bare sandy spots every so often. We found her less than a half-mile away, in a
perfectly circular clearing surrounded by tall pines. The only way in or out
was a narrow trail.

The She-Bear had dark fur, splotched with lighter patches.
She was also bigger than the first female we’d fought, with the longest tusks
I’d seen yet. Her eyes shone green through my night-vision goggles, and she
brushed her coat with sharply pointed claws. While I watched, she rose to sweep
the clearing’s floor with a dry pine branch. Once her spot was clean, she
glanced around, her pointed ears swiveling. Seeming satisfied that everything
was in order, she lay down with her back to us.

I passed Will the goggles. “You gotta see this.”

He checked her out. “Dude, she’s huge!”

“Did you see her sweeping up her spot?” I asked. “She had a
broom! A broom!”

“Who cares if she’s doing some early spring cleaning,” Will
said in a harsh whisper. He frowned and wrinkled his forehead like he was
thinking hard. “We need a better plan than me flushing her out. Sneak attack,
maybe?”

“Yeah…problem is, there are dead leaves all around that
clearing and I’d have to come in from the back side, downwind from her,” I
said, stumped. “She’d hear or smell me long before I got close enough to take
her out.”

Will made a frustrated face. “Then don’t get that close.
Throw the knife at her.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ve seen me play darts. I miss the
board half the time. Plus, I don’t have six throwing-daggers on me like some
Imperial assassin. If I miss, I’d have to chase down the knife with an angry
Bear on my tail.” I thought some more. “Maybe you could lead her into a trap?”

“What if she catches up this time? One of these days, the
monster
will
be faster than I am,” Will said.

That gave me an idea. “Look in my bag. I brought some
heavy-duty bungee cords with hooks on the ends. We’ll string them across the
trail, about shin high, and when you run past, jump the snare. She’ll trip,
then I’ll land on her back and stab her.”

“Worth a try.” Will stood. “Let’s go scout out a spot.”

We crawled closer to the clearing, careful to stay upwind.
The She-Bear was fast asleep; her snores sounded like a garbage disposal full
of old pizza crusts. We didn’t take any chances, though, stopping thirty paces
from the clearing, in the shadow of two mature pines.

“This is it,” Will whispered. “We tie the cord here, and you
climb one of the trees then wait for us to pass by. You’ll have to jump quick,
before she gets up. Can you do that?”

“You saw how well climbing a tree worked last time. I should
just hide behind one.” I pointed to a deep shadow behind the larger of the two
pines.

Will shook his head. “It’s too open out here. If she sees
you moving, she’ll dodge the trap and kill you before you know she’s there.”

After some debate, we stretched the black bungee cord around
the trees about knee-high, figuring that would catch the monster’s shins. We
strained to latch the hooks together, pulling the cord taut across the trail.
In the dim light, the black cord was really hard to see if you weren’t looking
right at it. Satisfied, I climbed the tree and got settled, perching as far out
on my branch as I dared.

“Okay. Ready,” I whispered. The knife trembled in my thigh
pocket. I pulled it out and it glowed blue. “So’s the knife.”

“Here goes nothing.” Will jogged off to the mouth of the
clearing and shouted, “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, what’cha doing?”

The Bear sat up with a start, whipping her head back and
forth. Will waved at her and jumped up and down. She got to her feet slowly,
like she was sizing him up.

“Mun.”

I could see Will’s back jerk nervously. Knowing they could
talk didn’t make it any easier to hear.

“Yeah, I’m a man,” he called. “What are you? A walking
carpet?”

She growled. That was a first. They usually shrieked or
howled. But she growled low in her chest, a deep rumble that sounded like a
hot-rod’s engine. Cocking her head to one side, she crept toward Will, her ears
pricked forward. Her tusks parted in what could have been a smile. Chills ran
down my spine.

He needed to run, right the hell now.

Before I could warn him, the Bear leapt. With a yelp, Will
turned and fled my direction. Somehow he kept his wits together enough to jump
the bungee cord before running down the trail, totally freaked. The She-Bear
ran after him at an astonishing speed. She was the fastest Bear I’d seen yet;
if she didn’t trip, we were both dead.

The knife buzzed in my hand.

“OOOF!” A sound like wind leaving bellows came from the
monster, and my tree branch swayed as she hit our trap. She sprawled flat on
her stomach, one ankle still caught on the bungee cord.

I jumped from the tree, knife at the ready, intending to
land on her back. But she wasn’t down for the count; she rolled over fast and I
hit the dirt on my knees. I sprang up, then ducked as she swung a giant paw at
my head. She rounded and slashed me across the collarbone, tearing my skin.

Ignoring the pain, I swung the knife, aiming for a torso
strike. She danced away. Pausing just long enough to steal a pointed look at my
knife, she took off running in the same direction as Will.

I chased her, huffing and puffing, but lost sight of her in
the dark. After five minutes, I slowed, then stopped. The She-Bear was gone,
I’d lost my wingman, and my lungs felt shredded. Out of ideas, I squatted down
to take a drink of water. How in the world would I find Will? Had the monster
caught up with him? Did my stupid idea get him killed out here somewhere?

No, I had to keep believing he was smart enough to hide from
her. So I’d wait. Watch.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, I’d gotten worried enough to consider
risking a text message to see if Will was safe when I heard footsteps pounding
my direction. Certain it was the She-Bear coming back to find me, I scaled the
nearest tree to watch the trail. Shouldn’t have bothered, though—Will’s wheezes
could be heard from fifty feet away. I slid down the trunk and waved him down.