Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (16 page)

The death smell was stronger in here, as was the stink of werewolf. A male had marked his territory toward the back of the building. The scent battered his senses and offended him on an instinctive level. There were several overturned metal benches in the waiting area. There was a reception desk. Blood was splattered on the darkened monitor, but the body that had been there had been dragged to the back to be consumed in privacy. He moved forward, silent as a ghost.

It was pitch black inside the station. Unlike the new guns that most of his Hunters used, which were covered in rails for everything from flashlights to lasers to wind socks and cheese graters, the Thompson was utilitarian bare wood and Parkerized steel. But then again, most of those Hunters couldn’t see in the dark, either. Unless he was at the bottom of a really deep hole, Earl didn’t need a flashlight to see. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, the world turned into a gray place where the tiniest bit of motion screamed for attention.

Past the reception desk was a semi-open area with a few workspaces. There were dozens of spent shell casings littering the hardwood and bullet holes puncturing the walls. Kneeling, he picked up a case. It was .40 S&W, a pretty standard police caliber. Whoever had been manning the night shift hadn’t gone out without a fight.

There was a hallway at the back of the main room leading to the jail cells. It didn’t take Earl’s sensitive hearing to pick up the sound of eating. Apparently the werewolf hadn’t heard him yet.
Amateur.
This was his opportunity to get some answers, so Earl quietly slung his Thompson and stuck one hand into his medical pouch.

There was movement at the corner of his eye, a reflection against a window. There was a flashlight moving along the outside wall of the building, probably somebody heading for the back door. The wind was taking the smell away from him, but he sure hoped it wasn’t Stark coming to interfere. He really didn’t have time for that, and if a senior MCB agent got eaten, Myers would probably become extra meddlesome.

The chewing noise stopped. Earl froze. But the werewolf hadn’t heard him; it had seen the gleam of the newcomer’s flashlight. Earl swore to himself. Now he had to hurry before the werewolf ripped apart their visitor. Still crouching, Earl moved between the desks and took cover.

There was a noise as the knob was tested. The side door was locked. A low growl came from the darkness near the cells in response. Within seconds a shadow moved along the floor, low crawling on its belly, approaching the door. The deadbolt rattled as someone inserted a key.

As soon as the door opened, the werewolf would leap on whoever it was. They’d be dead before they even knew what had hit them. Earl removed the hypodermic from the pouch and pulled the plastic cap off the needle with his teeth. It would still take some time for the horse tranquilizer to knock out a charged-up werewolf, and during that time he was going to have one hell of a wrestling match. He might as well take advantage of the distraction.

There was a sliver of white and a sudden gust of freezing wind as the door cracked open. The werewolf surged from the floor just as Earl let out a roar, stepped onto a desk, and launched himself across the room.

Earl hit the surprised werewolf with his shoulder. Momentum sent them crashing into a vending machine, shattering the heavy glass. Earl ended up on top, briefly, before a hairy claw struck him in the chest and sent him sailing back. Earl hit a chalkboard hard enough to crack it and the wall behind, but he’d gotten what he wanted.

Roaring, the werewolf knocked the empty syringe out of its neck. The drugs would act rapidly. Earl had an idea and was already covering the distance when the side door opened with a bang. Howling wind flooded the room with snow, flinging every loose bit of paper chaotically across the office. Not having time to see who the newcomer was, Earl grabbed the vending machine and tugged hard. A toe claw caught him in the calf, and he grimaced at the hit, but the armor protected him.

The vending machine toppled over as Earl jumped back. The werewolf let out a painful squeal as the vending machine landed on it with a terrible crash. Candy bars and packages of doughnuts spilled across the floor.

The werewolf howled and thrashed but couldn’t get out from under the vending machine. “That should hold you,” Earl said as he stepped away. All four limbs were hanging out the edges, clawing wildly. By the time he got out from under there, the drugs should have kicked in. Earl turned to see who was at the door and had to shield his dark-adapted eyes from the sudden scalding light.

The bitten deputy, Kerkonen, was standing in the billowing snow with a 12 gauge shotgun with a big flashlight on it aimed right at his head. Wearing an angry expression, she pumped a round into the chamber.

“Whoa there,” Earl said, raising his hands.

“Down!” she ordered.

Earl heard the rustle of fur and felt the flash of warmth as a second werewolf rushed from the cells. He threw himself aside as Kerkonen pulled the trigger. The shotgun thundered in the enclosed space. She pumped the shotgun and fired again. The werewolf shrieked but kept coming. She shot it a third time as Earl quickly drew his 625 and shot the werewolf right through the brain.

He managed to hit it five more times, had risen, reloaded, and reholstered, before the werewolf hit the ground. Sure enough, it was already healing. Not taking any chances, and only needing one prisoner to question, Earl landed on the werewolf’s back, heavy Bowie knife already in hand. He drove it through the beast’s neck so hard the blade struck the tile. He started slicing. “Hold still, damn it!” Hot blood sprayed up his arms.

“Oh, that’s nasty,” the deputy said, gagging.

A few seconds later the head came free in a great pumping mass. Earl rolled off the body and sat on the floor. Still illuminated by the shotgun’s flashlight, he looked down at the red mess on his brand new armor and asked, “You got any paper towels around here?”

* * *

“Who’s Marsters?” Harbinger asked as he came out of the jail-cell area. He tossed a gold name tag on Heather’s desk.

With one giant animal with a severed head on the floor, an unconscious one squished under the vending machine, and the bodies of two more of her coworkers dismembered in the back, Heather had needed to take a seat. She’d picked her regular desk. It was familiar, and therefore slightly comforting.

“Bill Marsters was one of our deputies.” She picked up the name tag. It was splattered with blood. “They got Bill, too?”

“More like Bill got them,” he answered. She’d found one of their battery-powered camping lanterns, and that gave an even measure of light. The unnerving man who fought like something out of a superhero movie stepped from the shadows in front of her desk and pointed at the decapitated animal. “That
is
Bill.”

“Bullshit,” she stated, opening her bottom drawer and taking out a box of shotgun shells. She furiously thumbed more slugs into her Winchester. “Absolute bullshit.”

“You’ll see in a minute.” He pulled up a rolling chair and took a seat. His strange armor creaked as he put his boots up on a desk. She was about to tell him not to do that, but what did it matter? That desk had belonged to Chase, and he was dead, just like everybody else.

“Why? What’ll I see? Is it like the wolfman movies? Once they die they turn right back into people?” She laughed angrily.

“Naw. That’d be silly. It takes a bit. Well, unless you mortally wound one, and it has time to calm down. Then it’ll return to human form before kicking the bucket. But that’s pretty rare. Sure, as the body cools off it’ll start to look human. That’s one reason they can keep lycanthropes secret. No forensic evidence. But we ain’t got all night. I’m talking about this other guy.” He jerked his thumb at the unconscious creature under the vending machine. “Judging by the way the cell door was smashed out from the inside, I’m guessing this dude was locked up.”

“We had one crazy prisoner. State troopers found him wandering around a campsite preaching about Armageddon.” She had just assumed that he’d gotten eaten like the others when the strange creatures had invaded, but then she chided herself for being in denial. She’d seen Buckley change.
Girl, you don’t know what you’ve seen.

“He was planted here,” Harbinger stated, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Interesting.”

She got her older Beretta 96 out of the bottom drawer along with a few spare magazines and a box of .40 Speer Gold Dots. Loading magazines was therapeutic. “What the hell are you?” she asked finally.

“Mind if I smoke?” he didn’t wait for her to respond before he’d already lit up. “Well, I’m with a company called Monster Hunter International,” he replied. “I kill supernatural critters for a living.”

“So this is all in a day’s work for you.”

He shrugged. “It’s got its perks.”

That didn’t explain how he moved twice as fast as anyone else she’d ever seen. He sat there smoking, which was an obnoxious habit, but he didn’t offer any further explanation. Once her mags were loaded, she stood. “I need a doughnut.” Luckily there were a few packages that had spilled clear of the unconscious creature, because even as much as she needed sugar, she didn’t need it bad enough to get close to that thing, sleeping or not. She found some old-fashioned crumbly doughnuts and returned to her desk.

“How’s your shoulder?” he asked finally.

After running from the hospital, she’d gone into a gas-station bathroom, rinsed it out, and taped a bandage over the punctures. It itched and felt unnaturally hot. The sensible thing to do would be to get tested for rabies, but then sensible didn’t take into account the strange men with guns trying to murder her. She could still see the little red hole appearing in Chase’s forehead and how the back of his head had come off every time she closed her eyes. She didn’t trust this Harbinger. For all she knew, he was with the same outfit as the murderers. “None of your damn business.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said softly. “I ain’t your problem. Those men were from the government, and I’m afraid they won’t stop looking for you until you’re dead. They’re very persistent. I’ll give them that.”

“Screw them,” she said as she shoved a doughnut in her mouth and crunched the wonderful staleness. She was terribly hungry all of a sudden. “Why?” she asked with an impolite mouthful. “Why did they try to kill me? Why’d they shoot Chase?”

Harbinger took his feet off the desk and placed his hands on his knees. Talking about this seemed to pain him. “I’ll be straight with you. You’ve been bitten by a werewolf. Which means you’re cursed. You’re gonna turn into one of them.”

“That’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m telling the truth.” He let out a long sigh. “At the next full moon, you’ll turn into a werewolf. You’ll be completely out of control, and you’ll kill anyone unlucky enough to get in your way. But odds are that you’ll descend into a homicidal psychosis before that, though. It ain’t pretty.”

Heather laughed—until she began to choke on the doughnut. Then she couldn’t help but start to cry a bit, because the men who’d shot Chase sure believed it. “You actually believe that?”

“Sorry,” he answered sincerely. “It’s on my head. If I’d been a little faster, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

Get a hold of yourself.
She hurriedly wiped her eyes and strengthened her resolve. She was not going to cry in front of this weirdo. “Look, Harbinger, is it? This town’s in danger. Somebody needs to warn everyone about these
things
. I’m going back out to do my job. If I see those assholes, I’ll deal with them.”

“You’ll feel it soon. The hunger first, then the strength, then the urges.” He shook his head sadly. “Your injury will be gone soon. By then, the change is in full swing. You don’t believe me. I suppose it’ll take some time for this to sink in…” He trailed off, looking at her strangely.

“Oh, what the hell now?” she asked.

“
Time
…Hey, your buddy at the hospital, how long ago was he mauled?”

“His name was Joe Buckley.” Time seemed so compressed. It seemed like forever. “Just over twenty-four hours ago.”

“And Bill, did he get injured recently? A bite or a scratch?”

“Not that I know of.” She paused mid-doughnut, thinking of the crazy prisoner biting him during their wrestling match. “Wait. The prisoner did take a chunk out of his hand yesterday.”

“Yesterday? Impossible.” Harbinger scowled. “And he must have been in human form…Holy shit. That’s bad news.”

“Why?” she asked, but Harbinger was distracted, looking toward the vending machine. He got up and walked to the now-stirring monster. “Is he awake?” She didn’t realize that she’d switched from
it
to
he
.

“Sorta,” Harbinger said, slinging his stubby weapon, then bending over and picking up the vending machine. It had to weigh a couple hundred pounds, but he didn’t so much as grunt as he put it back upright.
Crap, he’s strong.
Snack foods cascaded down onto the hairy form.

Heather picked up her shotgun as she got up. “Careful.”

There was a crinkle of cellophane wrappers as the pile of snacks seemed to compress, only Heather realized that it wasn’t the plastic moving: it was the body under it seemingly shrinking. She watched one twitching paw. The fur didn’t seem so thick now. When she blinked, it seemed more like the hair on a man’s arm. The long black claws seemed to retract. Their color lightened, turning white. The skin around the nails seemed
moist
, pliable, almost squishy.

The head was obscured by wrappers. Heather was nauseous, but she had to see. “His face. I need to see his face.” Harbinger nodded, then squatted down, knocking away the packages. She recoiled in disgust.

The head wasn’t exactly canine, but it was similar. The animal had long jaws, but instead of a nose like a pad, it was more like the nostrils on the end of the snout were holes in the skin stretched tight over the bone. The skull wasn’t low and flat like a wolf, but rounder, like a
human
. As the covering mask of dark hair receded, individual hairs crawling back into the skin for their proteins to be reabsorbed, the skin beneath went from gray to sick pink. Heather shuddered at the sound of cracking bone.