Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (21 page)

“Fire!” Julie commanded.

I put the holographic reticule of my EOTech on the monstrosity and let Abomination roar. The other Hunters did the same. The muzzle blast from so many guns in such close proximity was brutal. The armored monstrosity shuddered and wheezed as hundreds of projectiles slammed into it. Holes puckered in the metal. An antler snapped off. Bullets hit the gray organic mass inside, but rather than puncture through, they impacted, deformed the surface, but didn’t penetrate. A terrible shriek came from the monster. I kept pulling the trigger, hammering alternating rounds of silver buckshot and heavy slugs into my target until the firing pin landed on the empty chamber with a sharp
click
.

It reeked of unburned powder and fear in the narrow space. As the guns fell silent and everyone scrambled to reload, the creature began walking slowly toward us again. Hugo’s head was discarded and swept away by the current. “The door’s a choke point. Fall back,” Julie said.

The weight of the Hunters around me broke and moved away. “I got this,” I said as I broke open the new grenade launcher mounted under Abomination’s handguard. Milo hadn’t been able to come up with a steady supply of the Russian grenades, so I’d switched to an American-made M203. Normally, firing a grenade launcher at a target inside the same hotel room would be suicide, except this hotel room was now the size of a park, and the metal monstrosity was just far enough away that I could blast it and not be hit myself with shrapnel. I dropped a hefty 40mm shell in and slid the launcher shut.

BLOOP
. The grenade hit the creature square in the chest and detonated in a flash of smoke. The explosion knocked it back into the river with a ponderous splash.

“Suck it!” Nate shook his fist. “How you like us now?”

The thing thrashed and clawed its way out of the mud. Metal creaked as it stood back up. It had shrugged off a direct hit from a 40mm. As disturbing as that fact was, the other dozen or so horns, antlers, and points popping up in the water behind it was much worse. It had brought friends.

“Fall back!” Julie shouted as she rocked another mag into her rifle.

I lumbered out of the room, yanking open a grenade pouch on my armor. Trip and Milo had taken up positions on either side of the door, and after I passed by, they started shooting.

Nobody in the hotel had slept through that. Hunters from all over the world were coming into the hall, trying to figure out what was going on. Lindemann pushed past the crowd, armed with nothing but a pistol and wearing one of the hotel bathrobes. “That’s Hugo’s room. What is going on?”

“Unknown monsters,” Julie said. “Looks like a pocket dimension opened up inside.”

“I must retrieve them—”

I blocked his way. “Hugo’s dead.”

“No. It can’t be.” Lindemann was shocked. “You are certain?”

I nodded. “It chopped his head off.”

“I must see.” He swatted my arm away with surprising strength. He reached Milo, and when he saw what was inside, began swearing vehemently in German. It was hard to hear him between the gunshots. He turned to Julie. “It is the beasts from Stuttgart!”

“What?”

“We have fought these before. The Stuttgart Massacre, but this is impossible.”

Earl Harbinger arrived. “I told you not to go in!” Earl snapped at my wife, but rather than continue on that futile path, he got right down to business. “What’ve we got?”

Julie began to explain. When Trip and Milo ran their guns dry, Lacoco and Nate took their place. More Hunters were filing down the hall with heavier weapons. I have no idea how the big Pole had managed to get a PKM into the country, but I was glad to see a belt-fed. Word of what was happening had spread quickly. The rooms on either side were secured, the alien forest that had somehow invaded our hotel hadn’t spilled through the walls. Instead, a single, maybe five-hundred-square-foot, room was holding several acres of forest.

Lacoco was firing a Remington 870 as fast as he could pump the action at the cumbersome monster. When he clicked empty, I grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him away before he even realized he’d run dry. He snarled at me but I shoved him aside. Personal beefs could wait. This was business. “Move your ass, Newbie!” I shouted as I took his spot. “Reload that gun!”

Half a dozen silver slugs later I got my first indication that shooting these things wasn’t completely futile. The original monster had been practically chewed into scrap by our small-arms fire, and collapsed in a clanking and wheezing heap twenty feet from the door to our reality. The metal shell had been hammered so badly that it was simply not capable of further movement. “Good news! They can be stopped.”

“Bad news is that I see at least ten more coming,” Nate warned.

The gray, seemingly bulletproof tumor that had been stuck inside the chest cavity of the first creature slid out into the grass. The disgusting blob was alive, and squealed in an obnoxious high pitch as Nate hit it with several rounds of .308. The slug was the size of a calf, and it oozed and rolled itself back toward the river, leaving a steaming trail of blood and mucus behind.

“Oh, that is just nasty,” I growled as I launched another grenade into the approaching wall of iron. “The slugs in the torso are driving the suits. Next!” I shouted as I moved away.

The big man from Poland took my spot. He hadn’t even bothered to put on a shirt before coming to fight. The tattoo of linked ammo he had around one big bicep matched the belt hanging from the Russian machine gun at his side. His booming laugh made me think of a pirate captain. “I got out of bed with many beautiful women for
this
?” He fired from the hip, working the PKM side to side. Despite the lack of aiming or fire discipline, he wasn’t missing, and there was a continuous stream of clangs as bullets struck metal. The dude was good with a machine gun.

Earl was shouting orders. Lindemann interrupted him by tugging on one sleeve of his Minotaur-hide jacket. “Harbinger, listen to me. This is impossible. This cannot be happening.”

“Get a hold of yourself, Klaus, your boy is dead—” The German leader hadn’t struck me as the type to go into denial, especially at a time like this.

“I mean that this is an impossibility. This is some sort of magic trick. I know these beasts. We destroyed them years ago. They only come from one very specific place in my country. They cannot simply appear here.”

“Well, they have.”

“So it appears.” Lindemann didn’t sound convinced. “
Something
is here.”

“Assuming these are your old pals, how do we kill them?”

“The suits are mecha-magical constructs. The creatures that live inside them are the intelligence and source of power. They are vulnerable to heat. They can only survive in cold and moist environments.”

“They aren’t going to like Vegas much,” I said.

“Anybody got a flamethrower?” Earl shouted. The call was repeated, but sadly, even Hunters aren’t prone to drag along anything that heavy, awkward, and potentially lethal on vacation. Plus, checking a flamethrower onto a commercial airliner is a pain in the ass. “Damn it. Find me some incendiaries. Make some Molotovs. Z, hold that doorway no matter what!”

The better-armed Hunters had formed a line to take a turn. Despite the language barrier, everybody had caught on pretty quick that we did not want whatever everyone else was shooting at in 1613 to get out. “Got it.” A quick glance confirmed that the monsters were getting closer, but they were having to funnel toward us, and as the armor-piercing rounds took them down, they were being forced to clamber over the fallen. We were chewing them to bits.

But there were still more coming out of the river…

“Here! These should help.” Esmeralda Paxton squeezed past the line of Hunters with an armful of liquor bottles and a set of curtains over one shoulder. She flipped open her knife and began slashing strips from the curtains. She handed me a bottle and a rag.

“Will this stuff burn?” I smelled it.
What was that, ninety proof?
“Gah, never mind.” I stuffed the strip of curtain into the neck of the bottle and swished it around until it was soaked. I didn’t smoke, but anybody who might need to set something or someone on fire should always carry a lighter. Before I could get mine out of my armor one of the Europeans reached over, flipped open a turbo lighter, and ignited the rag. “Thanks.” And to think that I’d complained about all those annoying smokers earlier.

I hurled the Molotov through the doorway. It shattered against one of the fallen monsters and ignited its carapace. The creatures around it shrieked and pulled away. The alcohol burned far too quickly and the monsters were back on the move. “More!” I turned back to find that the Hunters without rifles or shotguns had formed an assembly line, cutting, stuffing, and lighting. A flaming bottle was waiting for me. Another two shooters cycled through as I took the second Molotov and chucked it a different creature. It only burned for a few seconds of painful wailing. The dampness of the invading forest and less-than-ideal incendiaries was thwarting us. Two enterprising Australians had wrapped their curtains around lamps to make bundles and poured whiskey all over them. I got out of the way as they lit them and tossed the blossoming fireballs into 1613. The slugs made a chorus of painful shrieks.

We were the very model of efficient monster killing.

“Coming through! Make a hole! Bomb coming through.” Lee and Cooper were shoving their way down the hall, one dragging something big, the other pushing. The crowd parted and it was revealed to be the housekeeping cart.

Earl looked up, recognized his former Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech and his former Marine demolitions specialist, and smiled. “This should be interesting. Clear a path!”

Seeing who was involved, I was suddenly very nervous. The two of them stopped a few feet away. From the look of the cart, they had raided the janitor’s closet for cleaning supplies. Lee began pouring a big jug of a clear liquid into the trash can. Cooper dumped in a five-gallon bucket of something red. Lee began to stir it with a mop handle. The two explosives experts seemed positively giddy. That was a bad sign. “Somebody order fire?”

“Everybody except the next shooters fall back!” Earl shouted.

Milo came over, read the label on one of the empty bottles, and nodded approvingly. “Ooh, good idea. Hey, did you guys notice all this laundry soap?”

“Brilliant!” Lee exclaimed as he snatched up a box.

“Fall
way
back!” Earl clarified.

“Don’t worry. This should mostly just stick and burn rather than explode.” He sounded very excited, and If Milo was excited, then we should probably evacuate the city. “Mostly.”

If this was going to be it, I wanted to be where it was most dangerous, so I cut in line to be the last shooter. Lacoco took the other side. The nearest creature was only ten feet away, and as it took another halting, clanking step, and I realized that the carpet in front of me was receding, almost as if the dead grass was consuming and replacing our reality. The bathroom was gone. There was a tree where the coat closet had been. Their world was growing. “Hurry it up!”

The housekeeping cart rolled on squeaky wheels until it was between me and Lacoco. Everybody else retreated. Cooper reached into his cargo pants and came out with a white phosphorus grenade. “My only one. This is our initiator.” My team was the only one that had arrived directly off a mission, and with the corresponding armament. The rest were supposed to be on vacation.
How much deadly crap had Cooper stuck in his luggage?
“You’ll probably want to chuck this thing as
far
as you can.” He really emphasized the word
far
. “Ready?”

I looked at Lacoco. “Yeah.” He put his shotgun down and took hold of one side of the cart.

The nearest monster was lifting a gigantic spiked mace over its antlered head. It would be on us in seconds. I grabbed the other side. The cart came off the ground easily enough. “Far as we can. Gotcha.”

“Everybody take cover!” Earl warned.

Cooper yanked the pin on the hand grenade. The spoon popped off and he dropped it into the garbage can of chemical sludge with a
plop
. “Do it.”

We hadn’t exactly rehearsed this. There was no
one, two, three,
or an organized
heave, ho,
or any of that jazz. The fuse on a hand grenade is measured in a few short, very angry seconds. Lacoco and I both roared and flung the housekeeping cart as hard as we could. It sailed past the nearest monster, the lifeless helmet turning to watch it pass by, but then that was all I saw as Cooper reached out, grabbed the door, and yanked it shut.

“Get down!” Diving as far as I could, I hit the soggy carpet and covered my head.

FOOOOOOM!

The entire world shook, and the explosion was so loud that my hearing protection shut itself off for several seconds. The lights went out.

Somebody was coughing. Then I realized it was me. It was raining dust. Powerful flashlight beams appeared from both ends of the hall. Then something cold and wet was running under me. I rolled over and was glad to see that a pipe had busted in the ceiling and water was squirting into the hall, rather than it being the invader’s river water. The door to 1613 had been blown out and smashed through the opposite wall. Two feet of wall on either side of the door had been turned into splinters, and drywall chunks and the soggy carpet had been peeled back and shredded.

I wasn’t the only one coughing. The hallway was filled with a noxious smoke. I couldn’t see into 1613 at all. A shape leapt through the smoke and ran into the blast area. “Clear!” Earl called out from inside the room.

“Clear as in they’re all dead?” I shouted back.

“Clear as in they’re
gone.
Status?”

“Good,” I answered as I extricated myself out from under a few feet of building materials.

“I’m okay.” Lacoco came out of the smoke covered in dust and a trickle of red rolling down one cheek. He reached down for where he’d left his shotgun, but that whole section of wall was gone. He looked around and swore.

I shouldered Abomination, which was still faithfully tethered to my armor. “You’ll want to put a sling on that. Losing guns gets expensive.”