Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC (27 page)

Heather joined Earl as he was strapping into his older suit of armor. It was pocked with burn marks and holes, but he was glad that he’d packed the spare. His leather coat fit over it, too, and he needed the added warmth. Humans got cold really easy. They were in the shadows of the main hall; the lights were out to conserve the juice. Heather stopped, folded her arms, and leaned against the trophy case. She watched him for a while, but didn’t speak.

“This suit has seen better days,” Earl said, trying to make conversation. There was a holster on each hip, gunfighter style. He removed a S&W .45 Nightguard from the bag, checked to make sure the revolver was loaded, and stuffed it into the left holster. “I’m going back out there.”

“I know. And by the way, saying thank-you for me saving your life would be nice. You look pretty healthy for someone who didn’t have a pulse an hour ago.”

Actually, he was feeling all right. Clumsy, slow, less capable than he was used to, but healthy. He had a sneaking suspicion that he should be dead, but that either something had gone wrong, or that amulet had left him alive for some unknowable reason. “Thanks,” Earl answered. “Seriously. Thank you.”

She bit her lip as she summoned her courage. “Harbinger, level with me…”

He already knew what she was going to ask. “You’ve been cursed.” He kept his voice low so it wouldn’t carry into the auditorium.

“You sure?”

He took out the second .45, opened the cylinder, confirmed it was loaded, snapped it shut, and holstered. “I’m positive. Sorry.”

She nodded slowly. “I just thought maybe…never mind.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s not fair.” Heather stepped away from the trophy case, hands curled into fists. “Shit!” She slammed her fist into the heavy cabinet. The wood splintered, the glass shattered, and trophies and plaques spilled out. It made a terrible racket. Heather drew her hand back, shocked at the hole she’d put through the case. “How—”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more careful with your temper,” Earl suggested. “Super strength and hitting stuff when you get angry don’t go well together.”

Half a dozen townsfolk led by the principal converged on the noise within seconds, ready to blast the intruders. Earl waved them off. “Sorry. Kicked your case,” he explained while Heather hid her damaged hand behind her back. Phillip already didn’t like him, so he wasn’t out much taking the rap. “By accident…so back off.”

“Well, when this is over, you owe us a new one,” Phillip muttered as he stomped away.

When they were alone again, Earl went over to Heather. “Let me see your hand.”

Reluctantly, she held it out. “I didn’t hit it that hard.” Sure enough, the scratches were already pulling closed. Her hand was quivering. “I can’t believe this. This is just too much.”

On a purely technical level, Earl was astounded by the regeneration rate of the werewolves created since the surge. On a strictly practical level, he was holding the injured hand of a woman whose eyes were welling up with tears because she’d just realized that her life was over. “It’ll be okay.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Yes, it can,” he insisted. “You don’t have to end up like them. It can be controlled.”
And if you can’t control it, I’ll have to kill you.
Earl quickly dismissed that unpleasant thought.

“How do you know?” she sniffed.

He was not good at
comforting
. It was hard to say, but he didn’t think it mattered now. “Because I’m a werewolf, too.”

Surprised, Heather jerked her hand away. “What? Get away.” Her nose crinkled as she instinctively smelled to see if he was telling the truth. “No. No, you’re normal…Oh shit, what did I just do?” Her eyes widened. “I’m
smelling
people now! Oh God!”

Earl raised his hands apologetically. “Well, I
was
a werewolf. Up until that big magic light sucked it out of me.”

“Why? How? And why the hell do I
believe
you?” Heather asked, taking another step back. She folded her arms defensively. “That’s why you’ve got that cage in your truck. That’s how you moved so fast back at the station. But, but why aren’t you…
evil
?”

So she was getting the urges already. She was hiding it well. “Listen, Heather.” He took a step closer. “I know what you’re feeling right now. You aren’t what you think, you’re what you
do
. You can fight it.”

“But I want to
kill
everybody!” she hissed, then looked around to make sure nobody could hear them. She lowered her voice. “I want to just tear their stupid faces off. I want to break their bones with my bare hands.”

“That part doesn’t ever really go away, but it does get easier to tune out. The guy that helped me learn this stuff suggested prayer and meditation. So I took up smoking. That seemed to help. Crap…I might have to be one of those annoying people that tries to quit and then whines about it,” he muttered. “I
hate
those people.”

“You said you were cured by magic.” Heather’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. It did sound ludicrous, even by Earl’s standards. “Hell, why not? I didn’t believe in werewolves, either, so why not magic, too? But you said at the station that there was no cure. You said that people have been looking forever!”

“What can I say?” Earl shrugged. “Up until an hour ago, I didn’t think there was one.”

She responded with a sad little laugh. “You know that running joke, about how when a girl talks about her problems, the man just wants to solve the problem, and the girl doesn’t want it solved, she just wants to talk about it?” Heather wiped her eyes. “Screw that noise. How do I
solve
this?”

Earl hadn’t thought of that as an option. A cure had always seemed like such a pipe dream, it was either endure or die, but now he was living proof that there was a way. Could that amulet actually cure other werewolves? The possibilities took his breath away. “That amulet, the one your prisoner talked about. That’s the key. It cured me. We’ve got to find it.”

Having been given some small bit of hope, Heather latched on with both hands. “I can kind of feel it, I think. It’s like this weird buzzing noise that won’t go away.”

As a regular man, Earl could no longer sense the real Hum, let alone the false one. He was groping blind. The only way he was going to find that thing was with Heather’s help. There was still the matter of the Alpha and his forces to deal with, but Earl had been a damn effective Hunter before he’d been cursed. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve. “We’ll head out with the teams, then break off and follow the trail right to that amulet. We find it, and we find the asshole behind this.”

“Cure me, waste him, save the town. Sounds like a plan.”

Chapter 16

The Russians had started it this time.

Sure, there was a war going on. An awful one, by all accounts, but it was the Soviets that had to go and bring a supernatural element into a normal, shitty, human conflict. Let’s say that operations that didn’t actually exist, conducted by hypothetical units, across the border into countries that may or may not have actually been involved, had been too successful. And the Soviets had loaned a specialist of their own to their allies to deal with it. As you may have guessed, there are certain specifics that I’m not allowed to ever get into, especially in a journal.

A lieutenant colonel with no name and an old man in a shirt and tie with no name gave us the final briefing during the flight into Vietnam. If the communists wanted to escalate on the supernatural front, we were supposed to respond in kind. STFU’s mission was to be put into a location where Americans were not supposed to be, and then kill the shit out of the enemy. Move and repeat.

I did not like jobs like this. Not that I wasn’t good at them. In fact, I was really good. I’d come to terms with the fact that I was a monster, but I had to be careful just how much I let the animal out to play. Even monsters have rules. Well, some of us anyway.

Ideally, our actions would attract the attention of the Russian “advisor.” It was hoped that we would then be able to neutralize him. The men without names said that he was known as Nikolai.

So we went hunting.

* * *

After running from the monster, Horst and Lins had climbed over a chain-link fence and broken into a storage unit, where they hid, freezing, until they decided it was probably safe to return to their vehicle to make a run for it. Though scared, he was careful not to show it to Lins as the two huddled in stony silence and listened to the werewolves howl. This situation was so far out of Briarwood’s league that it was depressing.

The walk back to the Caddy took forever. He’d gotten turned around while running, the snow wasn’t helping matters, and he wouldn’t admit that he was lost. Their odd route was explained away because walking down the open streets seemed like a great way to get picked off by werewolves, so they’d gone through the backyards. After twenty minutes of hopping fences, they’d reached the scorched grocery store and his Cadillac. Horst had been surprised to find that any other members of his crew had survived.

Jason Lococo was sitting on the hood, scanning for threats. Having burned through his share of silver ammo in the SAW, Loco had taken Jo Ann’s M-4 carbine, which looked like a toy in his hands, to keep watch. Horst almost said something to him about scratching the paint, but the giant looked like he might just open fire, so he refrained.

“Loco, I’m happy to see you,” Horst said, glad that their big man had been too dumb to flee. Loco just grunted an acknowledgment. “I thought you were toast.”

“Whew. I’m just glad you didn’t take the car!” Lins exclaimed.

It was obvious Loco wasn’t happy. “You had the keys.” He hopped off the Caddy, and the shocks sprang up in relief. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s get out of this stinking town,” Horst agreed.

“No. We’ve got to get to the hospital,” Loco said as he went around and opened the rear door. “It puked her up.”

“Jo?” Horst got yet another surprise to find that his girlfriend was still alive. Loco had put her in the back of the Escalade. With the third-row seats put away, there was just enough room for her to lie down. The big man had done his best to clean her up, all of their bottled waters had been emptied, and he had thrown a blanket over her.

The inside of the Caddy reeked. That new-car scent had been replaced by the stench of monster puke. Jo Ann was shivering. Her face had taken on a sickly grayish yellow tone, and she was soaked with sweat. Clumps of her long hair had fallen out, leaving purple blotches on her exposed scalp.

“Ryan?” Jo Ann asked. Even her voice was scratchy. Her eyes were closed, and Horst cringed when he saw they were matted shut with a film of green boogers. “That you?”

His initial reaction was to tell her that she looked like death warmed over. “Yeah, baby, I came back for you,” Horst said instead.

“I knew you would,” she said. “Oh, I don’t feel so good.” Then she gagged and threw up all over the carpet. Horst took an involuntary step back.

“Oh, dude, she’s messed up,” Lins exclaimed, covering his mouth with his shirt. “She’s got a disease from being in that scarecrow’s stomach.”

Jo Ann Schneider was
seriously
ill. Horst tried to remember back to Newbie training. That hot blonde, Holly Newcastle, had run them through a big lecture on all the horrible things you could catch from monsters and what to do about them. Unfortunately, he’d spent most of that lesson ogling Holly and not paying attention. That stuff had mostly been aimed at the eggheads destined to end up in support roles, and Horst had known that he was destined to be a team leader instead. Only now Jo Ann was like
melting
or something, and it might even be contagious.

“She’s running a fever,” Loco said. “I thought about carrying her, but figured the monsters would’ve smelled her and got us. She needs antibiotics or something.”

“Antibiotics won’t fix that, man. That’s like Ebola or AIDS!” Lins insisted. “Bitch’s got Ebola-AIDS. I’m not getting in there with her. No way. No fu—”

Lins flinched as Loco reacted with surprising speed. One huge hand encircled Lins’s throat. He let out a pathetic squeaking noise as he was dragged eye to glass eye. “Then you can walk.” Loco didn’t so much as raise his voice, but it was obvious that Lins was seconds from getting his windpipe crushed. “Gimme the keys, Larry.” Eyes wide, Lins reached into his coat and pulled out the jangling ring of keys. Loco snatched the keys away, then held him there for another second, like he was contemplating just squeezing a
bit
harder, but then let go. Lins stumbled away, coughing.

Loco looked at Horst next. “You got a problem,
boss
?” Those too-small, not-quite-pointing-in-the-same-direction eyes were crazy. He certainly lived up to his nickname.

Embarrassed that he was scared of his own henchman, Horst just shook his head.

* * *

“You getting anything?” Harbinger asked her for the third time in as many minutes.

Heather thought about it, but wasn’t sure of how to answer. That buzzing noise had been stronger a little while ago, but it had faded out. “It’s weird. It was strong, but then it tapered off. Now there’s another one, like a background noise. It’s not as loud, but it seems bigger, if that makes sense.”

“That’s the moon,” Harbinger explained as they turned onto another familiar street. The snow chains were making a huge difference in traction, and despite her earlier assessment of Harbinger’s status as another stupid tourist driver, he actually knew what he was doing.

“So I can actually hear the
moon
?”

“Sorta. It’s complicated.”

“Well, I should probably learn it, don’t you think?” she replied. “Duh.”

“No need for sarcasm. I can spend our limited amount of time teaching you about werewolf minutia that I learned from dusty old books that are probably wrong, or I can stick with the important bits about how not to turn into a complete raving cannibal. Entirely your call.”

“Anybody ever tell you that you’re not a very likable person?”

“Once or twice.” Harbinger relented. “Well, near as I can figure, the Hum isn’t actually the moon itself, but the lunar cycle causes whatever makes it. That’s the Hum that we hear. It’s a low-frequency sound, stronger in some places, though nobody knows why. Even some humans can hear it once in a while, but it doesn’t affect them like it does us. Maybe it’s magnetic fields, and we’re just more sensitive. Maybe it’s something magical. Hell if I know, but whatever it is will trip our internal switch, guaranteed, right along with the full moon. You’ve got three nights a month where you will not be able to control it.”