Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC (22 page)

Then I shot it with a .30-06 silver round right through its heart.

I worked the bolt and fired a second time as it turned towards me. It had felt the first one but in its battle fury it could keep going for a few seconds without a heart. The second round took it just under the throat and to the left. That broke its right shoulder. It still launched itself at me. I dodged to the left, its wounded side, and butt-stroked it away with the BDL, keeping it from latching onto me as well.

I dropped the BDL and drew my 1911 from the holster. The damned thing had two silver rounds of .30-06 in it but it was still coming. Tough werewolf.

Seven rounds of .45 did it.

Poor Herman was leaning against the tree, moaning and crying and holding his badly wounded leg. I had no clue if Sasquatch could turn but I hoped not. Despite his fear he’d shown me the route to the werewolf. Courage isn’t being without fear. Courage is overcoming fear and Herman was the most courageous Sasquatch you’ll ever meet. They’re not big on courage. I got out my first aid kit and helped him as best as I could.

I’d checked with Doctor Lucius on what to do if I ended up killing the werewolf in the back-country. His suggestion was “don’t” but to get the PUFF I had to have a tissue sample. So I took both ears. Herman didn’t like that, either.

You ever have to help a Sasquatch with a wounded leg through twenty miles of broken terrain? I’m not going to quote the song. Brother or not, they are
very
heavy.

And the full moon was upon us.

The first night of the full moon I sat up all night in the cave, watching Herman sleep. I was out of food and worn to a frazzle but if he woke up and turned into a weresasquatch or something I was going to be ready. It took a human a month to turn, but who knew with Sasquatch?

Apparently, despite being clearly related to humans, Sasquatch are immune to the curse.

The tribe found us, we didn’t find them. By then Herman’s wound was infected and I was worried about him surviving. Sasquatch live hand-to-mouth and they don’t have access to advanced medical care.

But Joan was a wonder. She wandered off into the woods and came back chewing a whole wad of stuff. I don’t know what was in it but it was way better than what I’d given him. Herman cheered right up and you could tell the infection didn’t have a chance.

He’d been talking nonstop since we got back and the tribe all hooted along with his story as if repeating it. I couldn’t keep up with most of it and I was tired enough I didn’t really care. But Wanda came over with some berries which I accepted most graciously. The tribe really couldn’t spare the food but I was that hungry. After Herman was done talking, Earl rose up and strode over to where I was leaning on a tree.

“Kuu-kuh-ah-ah Mu! Mu! Hakk,” he grunted. “Kuu-kuh-ah-ah Mu! Mu! Rahk hakk.”

You’re a hunter of bad things. A great hunter of bad things.

And that’s how I befriended the Mount Howard tribe of Sasquatch.

It took me nearly two days to get to the Ranger station on the banks of Lake Wenatchee even with the help of another of the young males, Snyder. I came in covered in scratches, exhausted and I’d been out of food for days. I also had both ears from an experienced werewolf with a body count. Nice PUFF.

I’ve been back to visit the Sasquatch frequently. Herman fully recovered. Bad scarring but full recovery. As Earl got older it was Herman who stepped into the Alpha Male position easily. He got so much cred from going werewolf hunting with “Broken human” that none of the other males even thought about vying for the position. Any time there’s been a werewolf call around Mount Howard I’ve contacted them and they’ve been able to lead me to it easily. And through them I’ve made contact with most of the other Sasquatch in the region.

It was about six months after this that they did something extraordinary.

As usual I had to be busted up to take a vacation. I’d broken my left arm, this time, fighting an ogre (a story I won’t bother with) and I decided it wasn’t enough of an inconvenience to not visit my favorite tribe of Sasquatch. So, still in a cast, I headed to their late-summer foraging grounds close to where the Mount Howard werewolf had made his home.

When I got there, Joan chuffed and snorted over my broken arm. I told her it was all good. “Guh! Guh!” She didn’t seem to think so.

That night she led me back to the banks of Lake Wenatchee and more or less told me to take off all my clothes and get in.

Look, Lake Wenatchee is an upland lake in freaking
Washington State
. There is no word in Sasquatch for “hypothermia” but there is one for “cold.” Summer or not the water is very:

“Poo! Poo!” I snorted.

She was adamant. So I took off my clothes and, gritting my teeth, got in the water.

She started slapping the water and hooting, a low, long, call.

Nearby the water rippled after a few moments and something emerged.

The best I can do is “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” I recognized it immediately. It was a kappa, a Japanese version of nixie. The PUFF on one was extraordinary, the low end was fifty grand and they went as high as a half mil, they’re considered one of the more dangerous sort of fresh-water monsters, believed to be related to Deep Ones which are about as bad as it gets.

My balls couldn’t have drawn up any more. But I trusted Joan the Sasquatch. I’d saved her tribe from a werewolf that had been eating their young and she was a healer. She wasn’t going to sacrifice me to a kappa.

They exchanged words. I didn’t recognize the language and Joan clearly had problems with it. In the meantime, I was slowly dying of hypothermia.

Finally the kappa flipped over to me and started examining me from top to bottom. It made liquid sounds that I recognized as being unhappy. Unhappy about being around a human, certainly. But he also seemed less than thrilled about what the best human doctors money could buy had been doing with my bones.

I recalled that Kappa had the ability to heal bone injuries. But I wasn’t sure it could work with plates and pins. And I was dying of hypothermia.

It seemed to recognize that and placed both webbed hands on my chest. Suddenly my body flooded with heat. I was back to being warm and toasty.

Then it forced me to submerge the plaster cast in the water and it started working.

The feeling was pleasant. Just warmth, no pain. Some areas would get warm and it would suddenly emerge from the water and spit out a mouthful of metal. I realized they were the innumerable pins and plates I’d collected from the bombing.

It peeled the cast off as it softened until it could get to skin then did the same thing there, laying its hands on my arm and licking it with its frog like tongue.

I went to sleep about the time it got to my thigh. That would be interesting.

I woke up with Joan dragging me out of the water. I’d started to get cold again. The Kappa was gone.

I could tell that my bones were knitted back into shape again. The only one he’d apparently left alone was the right humerus, ’cause, like, there was no bone to work with.

I felt like a new man as I walked back to the Shushu. It felt great to have every freaking bone and joint be healed. I could tell I was going to have readjustment issues. I’d need about a week to get the muscles realigned. But it was like a miracle.

From a kappa of all things.

I spent a few days with the tribe, working on my dictionary of Sasquatch and taking notes on social aspects and other items to do a paper. I’d already decided Oxford needed a definitive paper on Sasquatch. I managed, with the limited language, to explain the general concept of monster hunting. They weren’t particularly interested. All they cared about was where their next meal was coming from and whether there were predators that threatened their young.

According to legend, kappa love cucumbers. After I left the tribe I went back down to the nearest town and just about bought the local supermarket out of cucumbers. That night I went back to the same spot Joan had taken me to, it was very near the Ranger Station, and slapped the water and hooted in a similar fashion. Then I stuck some of my pins, no longer needed, into a few of the cucumbers and floated them out onto the lake. I wanted them to know who sent the cucumbers.

It was like watching fish hitting the surface and swallowing bread. In a few moments, all the cucumbers had disappeared. I waited but the kappa, and there had to be more than one of them, never showed themselves.

Because I didn’t want anyone to get greedy about the PUFF I never told them exactly where the kappa were. But there’s a tribe of kappa in Lake Wenatchee. They’re friendly. Don’t kill them. But if you go down to the lake and slap the water like a beaver and hoot “Clo-clo! Clo-clo!” for a while, they might just surface and fix your broken bones.

Bring lots of cucumbers. And I’ve set a curse on anyone who kills one of them.

The curse is called Earl Harbinger.

CHAPTER 15

We were getting a lot of business right in the Seattle and Tacoma area. I’d stop by Saury most days I wasn’t working. And about once a month there’d be some origami bird or flower with generally an address and thankfully some description. That’s how we turned up the ogre that broke my arm. The werewolf spike had dwindled but there was always another vampire coven in town. Various undead and monsters.

About once a week I’d get some garbage and go to the rainwater outlet. Todd was another helpful source of information. As time went by I learned the gnoll terms for most of the city and if there was something I’d meet him closer to it the next day.

I got to know most of the city sewer maintenance people by name and my garbage collection contact didn’t even bitch. The garbage was always gone in the morning and they didn’t have to pay landfill fees so they were making money on the deal.

We’d gotten a replacement for Timmy named Roy Carroll. He came across as having the same issues as Timmy. He’d joined for revenge, his girlfriend had been killed by a death fiend, and for the PUFF money. But he was…excitable. Every hunt he’d start chattering as we got closer to the monster and sound like he was about to run. But he always hung in there. I didn’t give him a long life as a Monster Hunter but he always answered the page and we needed the body.

We were getting enough business from contacts that we had trouble filling some of our out-of-town contracts. But then we got a call from the Perry County Sheriff’s Office. They’d had a bad zombie outbreak in Rendon. Which was their county seat. And the call was from the only surviving deputy. The sheriff was, presumably, a zombie.

To describe Rendon as “the middle of nowhere” is an understatement. The nearest town was Omak. Have you ever heard of Omak, Washington? Didn’t think so. But that’s where we flew to in a chartered Beaver with all our gear to go zombie hunting.

The area was sparse and dry, not like the Cascades. It was just about on the border with Canada. Middle of freaking nowhere.

We rented a U-Haul for most of our gear, there fortunately was a U-Haul outlet in Omak, and had to buy a couple of used pick-up trucks to carry the team. Then we headed to Rendon.

The State Patrol had established a roadblock in the pass over Rendon. Doctor Lucius made contact with the surviving deputy there and got a more complete description of the situation. It wasn’t just zombies. We’d gotten that. There were apparently some wights since some people had been paralyzed by “something big and gray and fast.” They’d apparently attacked the local emergency station first, showing a degree of coordination that spoke volumes, then spread out and hit the whole town, concentrating the wights on leadership. The phone lines had also been cut.

“I got a radio call from the sheriff at his place,” the deputy was saying. It was the tone of someone who’d repeated his story multiple times. “He told me to just get to Omak and call you guys. Gave me your number. I could hear the shots over the phone. And it cut off. And I did what he told me.”

“Which was the right call,” Doctor Lucius said. “You did the right thing, son.”

“He said it was zombies, and to call you. He was reading me the number when he started shooting. Said ‘Call MHI!’ gave me your number. That was it. I called you then I called state police. They didn’t believe me. I’m not sure if I believe me. But that’s what the sheriff said. Do you think he made it, sir?”

“Sheriff Jackson’s a tough old guy,” Lucius said. “If anyone made it, he did.”

“And you guys…” the deputy paused as I pulled the flamethrower out of the truck. We’d brought the kitchen sink. “You…handle this stuff?”

“All the time,” Lucius said. “It’s what we do.”

MCB was already there. Some agents I didn’t know. One of them walked up and I expected the usual harangue.

“We’ve established an overwatch position.” The MCB Agent was dressed in BDU pants and a polo shirt and had his cap on backwards. “We’ve spotted multiple shamblers and two wights. The wights seem to be being used as heavy hitters. The shamblers are also acting in controlled fashion. Some are randomly shambling but large groups are moving in coordinate groups. Some of the houses seem to be holding out. They’re all surrounded. There is a large group by the school. They don’t seem to be attacking. Just standing there.”

“Like they’re on guard?” Doctor Joan asked. She’d kitted out and taken over so Lucius could get dressed.

“Appears that way. We’d had scattered reports of possible shambler activity in this area. But it makes no sense here.”

“It sounds as if someone is trying to create an army,” Doctor Joan said. “There’ve been other attempts. Bring about the apocalypse, ’cause the second coming, bring forth the Great Old Ones, whatever. Anyone who studies necromancy for any long period of time stands to suffer psychotic break and at that point direct logic, inductive or deductive, becomes moot, Special Agent.”

She pumped her shotgun.

“So we introduce the most direct logic possible,” she added, smiling.

“This almost calls for SRT,” the agent said. He sounded hesitant.

“If we can’t deal with it, I agree, call your Special Response Team,” Doctor Nelson said, loading another round. “But we can generally deal with it. I’m concerned about the school.”

“So am I…” the agent’s radio squawked.

“One of the houses failed,”
the other agent called.
“They’re in.”

“We need to get moving,” Doctor Joan said.

“Take a spare radio,” the agent offered. “We may be able to spot threats you don’t see.”

That guy was going to go
nowhere
in MCB.

* * *

Ten minutes later I was in the back of a pick-up truck, loaded for zombie and doing a rosary.

I’d started to write music. My mom had forced me to study violin before I got into total rebellion mode. But the truth was I liked music. I had even studied guitar on my own after I was out of the house. I’d recently heard some Christian rock and started to get into it. Totally Protestant stuff but I liked it. I was working on a few songs of my own. I was humming one as we approached the town.

“What are you humming?” Louis asked. “I’ve been trying to figure out where I’ve heard it.”

“I’m writing it,” I said. “All I’ve really got is the chorus.

I sang it for them.

“You are way too into this whole Holy Warrior kick, man,” Jesse said, grinning.

My primary was my Uzi. If they weren’t at extremely close range it was better to fill wights full of silver. Going Mo No Ken was for when they were on top of you. Better to use .45 in most cases.

Or grenades. We had those. Or a rocket launcher. We had those. And if we got chased into a defensive position we had claymores.

God helps him who helps himself. The God of Angel Armies might be on my side but so was a 1911 loaded with silver.

“Whom shall I fear?” I half hummed, half sung as I racked the charging handle. “I know who stands before me, I know who stands behind…”

“Shambler at the moment,” Louis said. “You ready to pay attention to killing zombies?”

The sign for Rendon was barely in sight. It was going to be a busy day.

“It’s where I started,” I said, getting up and looking over the cab. “Looking forward to it.”

Jesse targeted the shambler with his BDL. There was a crack. “Shambler down.”

“And it starts,” Louis said, hefting a shotgun.

We rounded a curve and entered undead city.

There was a small park on our right and it had several shamblers in it. The truck stopped and we opened up. I used the Uzi. Not great for the range but it would work. Jesse, frankly, got most of them, firing his BDL off-hand. Louis covered the other side of the truck and got a couple that tumbled down the hill.

As that cluster was cleared out we moved on.

There were shamblers everywhere. It really did look like some movie about the zombie apocalypse. Shamblers weren’t bothering me. I was worried about the wights. When the hordes got close the Uzi came into play and proved its worth. While everyone else was reloading I was still potting zombie brains. The one time that it looked like there might be too many, I dropped a bunch within feet of the truck and it was just “Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,” Zulu down with just about every round. And if I missed I had more rounds to back that one up.

We were on a dirt road called Portland Street headed to one of the houses the MCB said was surrounded when we encountered the wights. And, Lord praise, we got a call in advance.

“MCB says wights inbound,” Doctor Joan called from the cab. “From the west.”

I ducked down and grabbed a LAW. Why not?

“You’re going to use that back here?” Louis said.

“Backblast won’t bother us,” I said, opening the tube.

I oriented that way and was the first to spot them as they came out from around a house. And didn’t even hesitate. I’d already spotted the range and let go. They were running right at us and I hit the one on the left square in the chest. It vanished in a dust cloud and a clap of thunder.

“THAT’S GOTTA HURT!” I shouted then cackled madly.

When the dust cleared it was apparent that one had more or less vanished—I’m sure its bits were somewhere—and the other one was not in great shape. It stumbled to its feet, missing an arm, and came trotting at us much slower than normal.

“Save the other rocket launcher,” Doctor Lucius said as I bent down. “We might need it.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, targeting it with the Uzi.

All three of us in the back as well as the team in the trailing truck laid into it. The wight never even made it to the truck. Put enough destruction on them and they will lie down and be good dead.

Just to make sure, I got out, went over and tossed a Willie Pete grenade on it.

“We’re going to have to find the
pieces
of the other one to get the PUFF you realize,” Doctor Joan said as I walked back to the truck.

“I’m sure there are some around somewhere,” I said, grinning. “Pieces through superior firepower.”

“That’s just baaad,” Jesse said. “Shamblers incoming.”

A big crowd of them were headed our way from the direction of Adams Street. That was the direction of the house that was under threat.

“Got that covered,” Jesse said.

There were only about ten. My long range accuracy with the Uzi had improved. I think I got five. Not bad for head shots from fifty meters with a .45 subgun on moving targets. Jesse was more accurate but had to keep reloading. Louis was using an AR-15 but he really needed to spend more time at the range.

We followed the FBI directions to the house and knew which one it was when we saw the American flag being waved out a window.

A lot of the houses in town looked, frankly, worn. The area was definitely economically somewhat depressed. This was a newer house and very sturdily built. The walls were stone and the windows had had faux wood steel shutters that were functional. Some intelligent soul had closed them all. There was a new model pick-up, jacked up, in the driveway.

We pulled into the driveway and the, clearly reinforced, front door opened. A man in his forties stepped out holding an M-16 and looking around warily.

“All clear,” Doctor Joan said, stepping out of the truck. “At least at the moment.”

“Guess you’re the cavalry?” the man said. He had the look I’d come to know when people encountered Joan in her work clothes. She was a slight, cute woman and just had that academic look. You expected her to be wearing peasant dresses and big glasses not body armor and carrying a twelve gauge.

“Doctor Joan Nelson, sir, MHI.” She extended a business card.

“Elmer Norton,” the man said, taking the card then shaking her hand. He tucked the card in a pocket of his shooting jacket. “What the hell is happening, Doctor?”

“We were hoping you could shed some light. We got called in on a zombie outbreak but very little information got out. Do you have any?”

“I’ve seen ’em. But they ain’t acting like real zombies. At least not like the ones in the movies. They’re moving around in groups and there’s a couple of fast, strong ones.”

“Took care of those,” Joan said.

“How?” the man said. “I shot ’em a couple of times and it don’t faze ’em.”

I reached down and picked up the expended LAW tube before Doctor Joan could reply and held it overhead in a victory pose.

“Ooor, oor, arrrrr!” I howled, imitating a Sand People from
Star Wars
.

“Okay!” the man said, laughing. “I like how you roll, young man!”

I could see there were people peeking out from behind him. Including a cute little redhead holding a carbine. Probably a little young and given her probable dad…Need to be careful there.

“One thing you should know,” Mr. Norton said. “I’ve seen ’em herding girls down towards the school.”

“Girls?” Doctor Joan said.

“Yeah,” Norton said. “Just girls. Looks like they’ve been turning everybody else or tearing ’em up. But girls like Sally here,” he gestured to his, yes probably, daughter. “They’re not being turned. They’re begin taken towards the high school. Probably to it.”

“That fits with the intel we’ve gotten,” Doctor Joan said as there was a crack from the trail vehicle.

“One shambler down,” Brad called on the radio. “How long we going to sit here?”

“We need to go,” Joan said. “Other people to save.”

“Want help?” the man asked.

“Probably better if you lock back up and protect your family,” Joan said, walking back to the truck. “We’ve got this.”

There were a bunch of dead shamblers around the house. We were going to be filing some PUFF on Mr. Norton’s behalf.

“FBI says two more houses are surrounded,” Lucius radioed.

“There’s something going on at the school. We should stop that first, then clear the houses,” Joan radioed.

“Concur,” Lucius said.

The other two houses were about the same. They were both solidly built like Norton’s house. Even the wights had had a hard time getting into them. Lots of shambler bodies. Those three houses had done a fair job of clearing out the town. They’d have to wait.

That left the school. This place was too small to have a school this size, but the other small towns probably fed into it. MCB overwatch reported there were still shamblers outside the school. They were concentrated by the gym.