Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC (13 page)

“Looks pretty much like the last time I was here,” Brad said, thoughtfully.

“Oh, God,” Jesse said, breathing shakily. “Not the blue screen of death. Not that again.”

There was another scuttling noise and something darted from one table to the next.

“Target!” I yelled, firing a round of buckshot at the creature.

There was a screech as the silver buckshot tagged the creature but didn’t stop it. It darted out of sight.

“What the hell is it this time?” Jesse asked.

“Probably something we’re going to have to update the PUFF table again. You know you can never know what’s going to emerge from the blue screen of death.”

As Brad said that it happened. A creature began pulling itself out of one of the monitors. First two green clawed hands appeared. Then bat ears. Then, between the bat ears and on top of the skull, four large multifaceted purple eyes. A mouth surrounded by tentacles. Hairs that writhed like snakes. A body like a twisted, four-armed, baboon.

It hissed at us then stuck two of its four thumbs into its bat ears and waggled its fingers and spare thumbs at us, cackling in a mad, high tone.

“Cridex!” It squealed at us. “Gamification! Apness! Apness! APNESS!”

“Eat holy water!” Jesse yelled.

As the holy water hit the creature it began to smoke and let out a long scream.

“CAPTCHA! BizDee! BizDee! NewPig!” it wailed.

I shot it in the face with the shotgun. One of the purple eyes deflated and released a gray smoke. The screen shattered and it was caught in the middle, its body sticking half out like Jesse’s late friend, continually screeching in whatever eldritch tongue it was speaking. I blasted it two more times and it finally whimpered into silence.

“Ray-boot,” it whimpered as it died. “Ray-boot, by-ossse…”

The body deliquesced into a foul gray-green ichor and dripped down the now smashed computer monitor.

“Okay, good,” Brad said. “These aren’t so tough. Better than that slime demon that crawled out the last time. I thought we’d never kill that thing.”

I reloaded, turned on the Maglite taped to my Winchester 1200 and squatted down to flash the light under the tables. There were more intestines stretched around underneath like some crazed gut-web. I saw another of the things scuttling and fired at it. Between the chairs, the trestles and the guts, most of the pellets ricocheted away.

“Watch your fire,” Brad said, considering the room. “Let’s just turn the tables over. Jesse, get ready to soak them.”

“On it.”

Brad gestured at the first table and squatted to cover me. With a heave the table turned over, computers and monitors hitting the floor in an electronics cascade.

Jesse splashed it. There was a screech from one of the demons then a couple of shotgun blasts.

“That’s two,” Brad said.

As I went to the next table, one of the demons scuttled out and dove into a screen. I could see it emerge further down the way as if instantly transporting through the screen.

“That’s new,” Brad said, thoughtfully. “And it’s going to be a problem. I think the first thing we’re going to have to do is shoot all the monitors.”

“Works for me,” I said, hefting my Winchester.

For the next few minutes as Jesse covered us with the sprayer, Brad and I carefully targeted and blasted every single blue screen of death in the big room. It seemed like an awful waste of silver ammo but given it was the blue screen of death you could never be too sure.

“I wonder how these things react to fire?” I asked.

“Toss a Willie P and let’s find out.”

I threw a white phosphorus grenade towards the end of the room and was rewarded with shrieks. Two of the demons jumped up on a far table, batting at the phosphorus covering their blasphemous green pelts. Brad and I both opened up on them and turned them into demon-offal.

Suddenly one charged out from under a table, screaming a terrible eldritch war cry.

“KATMAI! KATMAI! KATMAI!” it gibbered, its claws raised and squamous face-tentacles writhing.

Jesse hit it in the face with holy water and I followed up with two rounds of buckshot. The thing popped like a balloon and covered us in ichor.

Another jumped on a table and leapt through the air at me.

“Pee-bee-yahb! Jee-Cur! Jee-Cur!”

It was too close to shoot. I let go of the Winchester and Sword of Mourning flashed through the air, slicing the fetid beast in twain. The rent asunder upper half still landed on me and face tentacles writhed on my chest as the beasts remaining claw scrabbled at my combat vest.

“Dee-ban…” it croaked at me, its hideous breath whistling in my face. Its gibbous eyes were mere inches from my own. “Deee…”

It finally, mercifully, died and deliquesced. Ichor dripped down the front of my combat suit.

“Guess that sword really does have a purpose,” Brad commented.

“Christ, these things don’t half stink, do they?” I said.

I flicked the sword to remove the ichor then pulled a white silk cloth from a pocket on my vest and wiped it down. The blade cleaned, I removed another silk cloth from a small pouch on the left, rear of my vest and carefully reannointed the sword in oil blessed by the Rabbis of Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall. There must have been faint remaining traces of the demon’s ichor on the blade since the holy oil hissed slightly as I oiled the sword. Last I resheathed it and hefted my Winchester.

“Takes forever to get that shit out of your gear,” Jesse said.

It took about an hour of careful clearance to get the last of the demons. They were neither big nor tough but they were wily and very nimble. Between the guts everywhere, the packed chairs and tables and the unholy lighting it was just a bug-hunt. Other than the one that had landed on me, the closest shave we had was one that managed to add another scar to Brad’s face.

The last demon was cornered in the back of the room by herding it with squirts of holy water. It tried to hide under a table from our fire but Brad and I just kept pouring twelve gauge into the area until it died.

By the time we were done we were all covered in ichor, blood and less recognizable remnants of the poor souls in the QC department. We did one more sweep, turning over tables, stumbling on chair legs and sliding in guts, until we were sure the large room was completely clear of the blue screen demons.

“I’m starting to get the gut crawl in training,” I said as we went back out through the man-trap. “I’m glad we don’t have to clean this up. Cleaning our gear is going to be bad enough.”

We’d taken samples of each of the demon’s ichor remains as well as Polaroids of partial demons that hadn’t deliquesced yet to turn in for the PUFF. Whatever the PUFF on this one might be.

“Microtel has a forensics cleaning company on contract as well,” Brad said. “By tomorrow this will look like it never happened and HR will have the place full of ignorant demon fodder again.”

“How often does this happen?” I asked.

“Oh, every few months they have something,” Jesse said. “Definitely our number one client.”

I swore then and there to never buy Microtel stock. There was no way that fucked up company was ever going to last.

In retrospect…Bad call financially. Spiritually, probably the right decision.

We got the PUFF report a few months later. The entities were categorized as imps. Based on the casualties and our report on their toughness they were worth eight grand apiece. Twenty-six times eight, not bad for a couple hour’s work.

It was not the last time I visited Microtel. They really were our best customer.

They still suck.

CHAPTER 9

Pro-tip of this chapter is this: Trolls aren’t as dumb as you think.

Trolls are a lot like my brother. They’re big, mean, nasty, extremely violent and also very smart. They are aware of human literature, to be exact. At least that literature that relates to trolls.

And they do
not
appreciate billy-goat jokes.

I was in the University library, nose deep in a book on Japanese mythology, when my pager went off. I checked the LED readout and it was a 911 call. And it’s off on another hunt.

I had a five minute walk to my apartment where my car was parked. The apartment complex had fenced parking so I’d taken the chance on leaving my stuff in the car trunk. I picked up my radiophone and called the office.

“This is Chad.”

“We got a call from Spokane,” Lucius said. “Sounds like trolls. Meet at the office. We’ll take the van.”

“On my way.” I was hoping it this was a real call. We’d had our fair share of false alarms and the last good PUFF bounty we’d gotten was the blue-screen demons at Microtel. Hunters can sometimes go months between bounties, which was why the company did the profit sharing thing, to keep us from wandering off to find normal jobs.

Drive to the office, move my bags and cases to the van. Draw straws for who was driving. I got a long straw, picked a seat towards the back.

Normally, that would be the point where I’d pass out. This time I decided to stay awake and enjoy the ride.

I really love the Northwest. I don’t like the politics but the girls are hot, the food is good and the scenery is first rate.

We took the 405 to 90 and headed up, up, up into the Cascades. The scenery was really gorgeous the whole way. Towering, tree-covered mountains, occasional glimpses of Mount Rainier. The day was overcast, it was the Pacific Northwest after all, but for a change it wasn’t raining. Really nice day.

Once you pass Keechelus Lake the environment starts to slowly dry out. When you get to Cle Elum it changes abruptly and you’re on the dry side of the range. It seems like one moment you’re in temperate rain-forest and the next you’re in a desert.

The back side of the range, though, is heavily farmed with lots of irrigation courtesy of all the rain and snow in the mountains. By Ellensburg it’s like the only green you see is irrigated fields. Everything else is dry, sere and brown. Even the trees feel stunted compared to the soaring furs just an hour back in the mountains.

Past Moses Lake even the irrigation gives out and you might as well be driving in Wyoming. You’ve suddenly gone from green-clad, soaring mountains to brown, arid plains. It’s a really odd transition.

By Spokane the green is starting to return. The Coeur D’Alene mountains beyond Spokane, if not the Cascades, are still green and fertile. The bit in the middle, though, is unsettling.

Spokane is a low, sprawling city. It has a few tall office buildings but mostly it’s five or six story, max, and the majority is just a couple. With plenty of room it just sprawls rather than going up like Seattle or New York. And while the green is starting to return, it’s mostly still arid. Yards are watered but everywhere else is about as dry as Salt Lake. Abandoned lots run to tough, arid grasses and weeds. I even saw a few tumbleweeds.

The troll problem was located in a construction area. An old building was being torn down to make way for, you guessed it, a parking deck. Apparently there’d been a nest of trolls in the basement of the structure for who knows how long. The old building had housed various businesses over the years. There were rumors for years it was “haunted” and stuff, and people sometimes mysteriously vanishing.

It would be nice to give some general tips to the public. Things like: If you’ve got a persistent petty theft problem and employees occasionally just up and disappear, you might want to check your basement for trolls.

Just saying.

The demolition crew had gotten the upper floors demolished and were working on the lower when two of them disappeared into a hole. The foreman, figuring they were malingering, went in to find them. And disappeared. At that point the cops were called. Two officers went into the hole, there was a sound of gunshots and screaming and…We got called. One of the workers had gotten a glimpse of something big, gray-green and rubbery. Ergo: trolls. Hopefully.

We pulled into the construction area and started clambering out. Two guys in suits immediately button-holed Doctor Nelson, Joan, and started haranguing her. I tuned it out as usual and just started suiting up.

“I thought trolls hid under bridges,” I said to Phil.

“They used to in the old days.” He was checking his incendiary ordnance. “Because bridges were good shelter and they could steal stuff from passersby. These days, you find them everywhere but mostly underground.”

“They aren’t turned to stone by sunlight but they’re somewhat photosensitive,” I said, recalling my training. “Tough, strong, regenerate like mad. Fire’s the best choice.”

“Yup,” Louis said, pulling out the flame-thrower. “Kill them with fire! It’s the only way to be sure.”

“No flamethrowers,” Doctor Nelson said, her face pinched. “Minimal use of incendiaries.”

“What?” Phil said, frowning. “They’re trolls. Trolls, fire.”

“The event has so far been ‘maintained,’” Doctor Nelson said, starting to strip down to her underclothes to put on her gear. “MCB said they don’t want any fires, flames or explosions bringing attention to the incident.”

“So let
them
go in there with nothing but small arms!” Phil said. “I’ve got a ten pound thermite satchel charge all ready to go!”

I loved how Phil’s mind worked.

“Maybe we should just send Chad in there with his sword?” Louis asked. “That will keep the incident sort of quiet.”

“I’m up for that.”

“You’ve never actually fought trolls, Chad,” Doctor Nelson said, exasperated. “Bring the flamethrower over to the entrance and definitely bring the satchel charges. I told them we’d try to be discreet but I’m not taking casualties just to satisfy the MCB. I did point out that there was, at least, going to be a good bit of gunfire. They asked if we could use only silenced weapons and I told them to stuff it.”

I switched out my frag grenades for a couple of thermite instead. Two WP, two thermite. That would hopefully do the trick.

“Any sort of a count?” Brad asked.

Up to that point, Brad hadn’t said anything at all. Just kept getting his gear ready.

“Not a good one,” Doctor Nelson said. “At least two but could be any number from there up.”

I drew Mo No Ken and carefully oiled the blade again. I sharpened her at least once a day on silk. I was pretty sure she’d go through a troll’s neck like butter. Of course, that didn’t kill them. The only way you could kill them was burning. Wasn’t sure what we were going to do about that.

The construction company had blueprints of the building. The stairs that the various victims had descended went to a basement. There were two more subbasements on the blueprints and the foreman warned that given the age of the building and how often it had been renovated the blueprints were, at best, a guideline.

The sun had set on the drive over, not that it would matter down below. The area around the pit was lit by Klieg lights, which was just going to impede our night-vision when we descended.

We carried all the spare gear over to the hole. As we did, one of the MCB guys came striding over with fury writ on his face.

“We said no flamethrowers!” he snapped, angrily.

“It’s a back-up,” Doctor Nelson snapped back. “We’re going to have to burn them somehow and at some point. That’s the only way to kill trolls. And if there are more than two we’re going to have to use incendiaries. Trolls don’t die for anything but fire.”

“And no explosives!” he said, ignoring her and pointing at the satchel charges Phil was carrying. The satchel charges were claymore bags wrapped thoroughly in rigger tape.

“They’re not explosives,” Phil said. “They’re thermite.”

“Just let us do our job and you go…intimidate a witness or something,” Doctor Nelson said, wearily. The Nelsons disliked the MCB even more than most hunters. “We’ll keep this as discreet as we can.”

Based on the crowd gathered outside the chain-link fence, that wasn’t going to be terribly discreet. The MCB Agent went over to try and scare them off.

“I’ve got point,” I said as Doctor Nelson started to lead the way. I held up the Uzi. “Better for this sort of work.” Doctor Nelson was carrying an FN-FAL which would be difficult to use in tight conditions.

“Very well,” Joan said. “Just don’t get yourself killed. And no grandstanding with your sword.”

I really should have listened to her on that point. We turned on our flashlights on and descended into the musty darkness. The blueprints showed the basements to be a maze. This was going to be fun.

As I reached the base of the stairs I swung the Uzi around, checking the shadows for trolls. The base of the stairs was an open room. The room was mostly filled with debris from the demolition above. Dust, brick ranging from bits to whole blocks, some broken two-by-fours. There were two entries, one forward, one to the left. Both of them had doors that were smashed open and lying on the floor. The damage looked to be old. On the right wall was an old, framed photograph of what was probably Spokane in the 1950s. It didn’t look to have changed much.

I looked over my shoulder at the good doctor and gestured left and forward.

She pointed left. Left it was.

Left was a corridor that ended at a right turn. It had rooms off of it at intervals. Some of them had smashed open doors, others were open. We cleared each cautiously. Louis, at the trail position, carefully sprayed paint on the walls indicating the best way out, a simple sideways V pointed towards the exit.

We slowly cleared the entire basement. Some of the rooms were filled with the debris of years of businesses coming and going from the building above. Others were swept clean. In one we found what looked to be a partial human carcass. We marked it on the map for later. Seriously, how bad does a business have to be to notice it was losing employees in the basement?

Then I thought about Microtel. Whoever it was probably just got terminated for failing to show up the next day.

In many areas the dust had been scuffed by something large. In one spot there was a clear footprint. Doctor Nelson pointed it out to me and mouthed: “Troll.”

So now I knew what a troll print looked like.

The stairs we’d taken down only led to this level. The next two levels down shared a stairwell that was catty-corner from the one we’d used. Getting back to the air was going to be a bitch if we had to run.

Doctor Nelson obviously had thought of the same thing.

“Louis, Brad, head back to the top and get the spare gear,” Joan said. “We’ll cache it here before we head down.”

“Will do,” Brad said.

The stairs down were open, not a closed stairwell like modern buildings. I peaked over the side and sighed.

“Be nice to just throw a bunch of incendiaries into this place and torch it,” I said. The construction internally seemed to be mostly wood.

“If we have to use fire it’s going to be bad, anyway,” Joan said. “We’ll be trapped below-ground with fire all around us. That’s not a good position to be in.”

“Plus it’s hard to collect the PUFF when all the evidence is burned up,” Phil said. “The last time we had to get a PUFF adjuster.”

I took off my helmet and donned my protective mask. It wouldn’t give me oxygen in the event of a fire but it would screen out the smoke and was rated to reduce the air temperature.

“What’s a PUFF adjuster?” I asked, my voice muffled.

“Somebody you never want to deal with,” Joan said, pulling out her own mask.

“Think MCB is bad?” Phil said, donning his. “PUFF adjusters are worse than shoggoths.”

“They can be a tad intimidating,” Joan said.

Phil and Louis finally turned up with the spare gear, took one look at us wearing our masks and donned theirs.

“Ready?” Doctor Nelson asked.

I rotated my neck. The drive had left me horribly bound up. I wanted to just stretch for about thirty minutes to get the kinks out.

“As I’ll ever be,” I said.

I took the stairs sideways, shining the light downward, looking for any threats. Nothing.

The next level down was much like the first, a maze of twisty passages all alike. There were three directions to go, right, left and an office forward. The door was half wood, with a frosted glass window on it that read “Quality Control Department.” Surprisingly, it was undamaged.

Doctor Nelson gestured at the door and I tried the knob. Locked. I slammed my foot into the door and the ancient, rusty, latch gave way. Then the door slammed back into my face and I was nose to nose with my first troll.

The thing was about six-eight, gray-green, skeletally thin and looked like a mass of rubber tubes all bound together. It swiped at me before I could dodge and knocked me sideways so hard I flew ten feet down the passageway. I managed to turn in mid-air, thanks to copious limbering exercises and martial arts training, and skidded instead of slamming. Before I’d even stopped I was firing.

The whole team was pouring fire into the troll but it wasn’t stopping. The troll hit Doctor Nelson and she flew the other way, slamming into a wall and falling in a heap.

I stopped firing as the troll raked Phil’s armor and tore the front open like it was paper. I came back to my feet in a roll and drew Mo No Ken.

“Assei!”
I screamed, charging forward and slashing at the troll’s left arm.

It came off with an audible “Pop” and dropped to the floor.

“MY ARM!” the troll bellowed, looking down at the twitching limb. “FILTHY HUMAN!”

“Sorry,” I said, taking a high stance. “Did that get your goat?”

“NOT MAKE BILLY-GOAT JOKE!” The troll leapt at me and swiping with its one good arm.

I didn’t so much cut as hold Mo No Ken out, simply lean back and slide it downwards. The troll’s arm went right through the sword, about half way up its forearm. The hand continued due to momentum and landed on my chest. It even managed to hold on and started finger walking up towards my neck.