Monster Hunter Alpha

Chapter 15

It was appropriate that the military acronym for my new unit was STFU. Because Shut The Fuck Up was also the primary directive in our security briefing. The taskforce was so beyond top secret that I didn’t even know if there was a word for the level that we occupied.

There were two teams on Unicorn. One human, one not so much. Since I looked normal, I got to attend both briefings.

First squad consisted of a collection of mortal ass-kickers, loaned from regular units to MACV-SOG, and then loaned to us. Even though it was obvious who was in charge, they had no official rank hierarchy. There were a lot of people with the rank of Mister. Their names were whatever was assigned by Conover’s unknown bosses or whatever nickname stuck. I was introduced as Mr. Wolf.

The most experienced man on first squad was a giant Polynesian that the others called Destroyer, or Augie to his friends, which I was not. He was ugly as sin, quietly judgmental, with a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit and arms that suggested he bench-pressed jeeps for fun. He smelled like a Green Beret NCO, and it was obvious he didn’t like me from the second we met. Many years later I would end up hiring his son, so it is a small world after all.

They were to provide our security, transport, and any other duties as assigned. They were not to look too hard at anyone on second squad. They were not to speak to second squad unless spoken to, and they were definitely not allowed to ask questions. I think it was all that enforced secrecy that made Destroyer dislike my team. After that, Conover herded me out of the room. I was guessing he didn’t want me to hear the part about how they were supposed to kill anyone on second squad who didn’t obey orders. There was no need. That had been standard operating procedure for this kind of unit since 1942.

Even though there were only three of us, second squad got their own, separate briefing. It was the first time I’d meet the others that I would be working with for the next year. As soon as we entered, I could smell trouble. The girl stood out. It’s hard not to when you’re supernaturally beautiful. Her skin almost glowed. She was so unnaturally perfect that you ached just looking at her. I pegged as some sort of divine-human cross. She was introduced as Sharon Mangum, code name, Singer. She gave me a polite nod, but didn’t speak.

It’s a pretty strong comment on Sharon’s looks that I noticed her before the thing sitting next to her. It had the head of a bull and the body of a man. It took me a moment to understand that it wasn’t just some stuffed cow head on a really big dude wearing huge green fatigues. His fur was dark brown, and his black eyes studied me with obvious intelligence.

It was the first time I’d seen an actual minotaur. I’d heard of them, big-time PUFF bounties, but I’d never seen one before. They were supposed to be solitary, rare, and deadly berserkers. Since he didn’t immediately charge and tear me into bits, they were obviously not as bestial as the stories indicated. “Howdy,” the minotaur said. His voice was very deep. “You must be the werewolf.”

“Yep. I’ve never met a minotaur before.”

“Minotaur?” The monster stood suddenly. He was over seven feet tall, and his horns stuck out a foot on each side. The floor creaked under his weight. I took an unconscious step back. “Do I look Greek to you, asshole?”

It is always best to assert dominance in these kinds of situations. “You best take it easy, or you’ll look like a steak dinner and a new pair of boots.”

The minotaur bared his blunt white teeth. “Why, you little mother-”

“Easy, Travis,” Sharon suggested, placing one hand on the minotaur’s massive hairy arm. Her voice was like soothing music. Even I felt a sudden sense of peace.

“Apologies, Ms. Sharon.” The minotaur slowly returned to his seat on the floor.

“No offense intended, friend,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “It was a long flight.”

“And you didn’t have to ride in cargo…Look, buddy, minotaur’s got all sorts of bad connotations.” Travis snorted. It was a thunderous noise. “My tribe’s from Texas, by God, and we prefer to be called Bullmen. I’m Travis Alamo Sam Houston of the East Texas Bullmen, and I’ve come to prove our loyalty to the US of A.”

“Don’t use your whole name,” Conover pointed out.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, Captain,” Travis responded. Looking back, that was kind of pointless. Were we worried spies might mistake him for a different six-hundred-pound bull-headed mythological monster? “I’m here to earn a PUFF exemption by putting hoof to commie ass for my country. It won’t happen again, sir.”

Conover just sighed. I kind of felt sorry for the kid. This was going to be a tough assignment.

Earl had showered in the men’s locker room, scrubbed off the blood, and gotten dressed, so he at least appeared semi-presentable to these people, even though he’d gone in three holes on his belt and probably looked like Famine from the Four Horsemen. He combed his hair and made sure his teeth weren’t stained red with blood. It would help to not look like a complete lunatic before giving this particular pep talk to a town of regular folks.

He finished his speech on werewolves. It was a condensed version of what he’d usually say at Newbie training, but it would have to do. “Any questions?” About a dozen hands went up. Those were the polite ones. The others just started to shout questions at him.

There were fifty men and women sitting on the wooden bleachers in front of him. The gym was even more crowded and noisy than it had been when he’d first woken up. The generators were running full blast, so they had light, heat, and a continuous trickle of townsfolk. Nancy Randall had gathered those that she said “had a clue,” and Phillip had taken a quick poll to find all the military veterans, gun nuts, and hunters; this being northern Michigan, that was a very healthy percentage. Heather Kerkonen had cherry-picked twenty people for her rescue patrols earlier, and they hadn’t returned yet, and they had more shooters on the roof and around the windows and doors. Earl liked the numbers, he just didn’t like the attitude.

“Are you nuts?” a burly man shouted from the highest row.

Earl shrugged. “Is that a question or a statement?”

“Both, asshole!”

He was used to dealing with Hunters. Even his greenest Newbie was a proven survivor who’d already made that leap of faith necessary to realize they didn’t know crap about how the real world worked. There was more shouting as those that had seen the werewolves, loose-skinned armored creatures, or dark-magic beam of light argued with those that hadn’t. Earl knew that he had to rein this in real quick if he was going to turn them into a coherent force. “ Zip it!” he bellowed. His voice echoed through the entire gymnasium.

Turning human hadn’t cost Earl’s command voice any of its power. The crowd shut up.

Pacing back and forth across the half-court line, Earl kept his voice raised. “I don’t care if you think I’m full of it. That don’t matter. What does is that something’s killing your town. You can all agree on that. If I’m right, then you need to work together to beat them. If I’m wrong, then you still need to work together to beat them.” There was a general murmur of assent. The people who hadn’t at least seen some mutilated bodies were a distinct minority. “If you want to live ’til dawn, you’re gonna have to fight.”

“Why don’t we go out there now, then?” a young guy on the front row asked. Earl guessed from his out-of-season tan and the fact that he seemed to be in really good shape that this was one of their recently returned vets. “Let’s go get them!”

“Because there’s like a thousand of them and they move so fast you can’t hardly see them and then it’s too late!” someone called from behind. “I say we stay here and let them come to us.”

Earl nodded. He had two distinct personalities here, offensive and defensive. Both were necessary. If they all went out there, just like in nature, the weak would be culled from the herd. If they all sat here, eventually they’d be surrounded, and then they were sitting ducks. “We do both. The creatures will mostly be working alone, but as the night goes on and they’ve got fewer targets of opportunity, the bloodlust will attract them to the survivors. We leave enough here to defend the women and children-”

“That’s sexist!” a girl exclaimed.

“Figure of speech,” Earl responded. “Grown-ups are talking, so cram the PC bullshit. The fallout shelter under this gym serves as the base. We hold it at all costs. We leave a force here to fend off the monsters. The rest of us form squads and take the fight to them. You go out there alone, they will pick you off.” Before he’d started, Nancy had explained how several individuals had set out in search of their loved ones. None of those had come back yet. “It don’t matter how tough you are. You can only look in one direction at a time, and they’re faster than you.”

“I saw one hop clear up to the roof of the bank!”

“Uh huh…,” Earl said as everyone else started babbling about what they’d seen. It wasn’t the werewolves that they’d seen that he was really worried about. It was the other things that were out there in the storm. Their capabilities were a mystery. He let the group work itself up with anecdotes about their night. Hearing it from their neighbors would convince the doubters far better than anything Earl could say himself.

“What about the injured?” a lady half-way up the bleachers asked.

“You can’t trust ’em,” Earl stated coldly. “Bites for sure, and maybe scratches. They’re infected and could turn on you.” As expected, those words caused a terrible uproar from the crowd. This was exactly why he always let Julie handle the negotiations. He was always too blunt.

Nancy Randall especially didn’t like it. “What?” The woman had enough of a reputation that as soon as she started speaking, the angry group quieted down. “Those are our friends, family. There’s no way.”

“Take my advice or leave it. Your call. I’d keep them isolated if I were you. If they start to change, do what you’ve got to do,” Earl said. Already, he could tell that most of them didn’t believe him. Sometimes the ugly truth was just too damn ugly.

Nancy scowled hard, mulling it over, but she held up her hand to silence the objections. “We’ll talk about that more later. Deputy Kerkonen said that she saw you kill a few of these things and that you were some sort of professional. How’d you know they were coming?”

“And why didn’t you warn us?” cried a different man. A friend put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he kept on. “My wife might still be alive.”

“Easy, Stan,” Nancy cautioned. “Well, Harbinger, answer the man’s question.”

They already didn’t believe him about werewolves, period; he wasn’t going to try to educate them on the finer points of lycanthropic society and the fact that Nikolai had just needed a good murdering. Luckily, before he could think of an answer, one of the guards at the main hall entrance shouted that they had movement in the parking lot. Everyone grabbed for their weapons but relaxed as word spread that it was one of the groups returning. Most of the doubters went back to cursing Earl.

The patrol came in brushing snow from their coats and stomping it from their boots. All of the scouts were shivering except for the one in the lead. Kerkonen was barely recognizable. She’d ditched her ragged sheriff’s department coat and found a big black parka. When she flipped back the hood, the difference was shocking. His human senses were weak; he felt blurry, slow and hungover, but he could already tell that she was well along the change. Her eyes gleamed just a shade too metallic, her skin was flushed, her movements too fluid. The others might not be able to tell, and she probably didn’t know it herself, but he recognized the signs from experience. Heather Kerkonen was a full-on werewolf.

And that change had occurred in a matter of hours… Normally it took weeks. Earl swallowed hard. That ain’t good.

“What’d you find, deputy?” asked Nancy.

“A lot of dead people and even more empty houses. But we found a few more survivors. They’re in the foyer getting checked for bites before I let them in,” she said. “The werewolves are on the move out there. We don’t need any in here.” That statement struck Earl as particularly ironic.

This time it was Phillip, the high-school principal, that interjected. “Not more of this werewolf nonsense. There’s got to be a rational explanation.”

Deadly serious, Heather put her shotgun over one shoulder and scanned the crowd. “I figured you might be having this conversation. I’ve got something everyone needs to see…” She motioned two men forward. Each was carrying one end of a tarp-wrapped object that was very clearly a body. “Show them.”

“Heather, there’s kids here,” said the man supporting the narrower end of the tarp. “Maybe we should-”

“They need to see it, too. There’s no time for doubt,” Heather said as she pulled her gloves off and eyed Phillip coldly. Earl had seen that look before. She was probably wondering what he tasted like. “Unwrap her.”

The two men dropped their burden. It hit the wood with a dull thud. As they pulled the blue tarp away, the crowd gasped. A few looked away.

“ Look at it,” Heather ordered.

The werewolf was female. Deprived of his sense of smell, estimating age was out of the question. Gold eyes open, the lips were pulled back over bloodstained teeth. The cause of death was obvious, since the ribcage had been broken open and the heart was gone. That would certainly do the deed. Even for the fiercest skeptics in the crowd, the mostly humanoid creature was a slap in the face.

“It must be some sort of undiscovered animal,” Phillip sputtered. “A cryptid! Or some genetic experiment that escaped.”

“Yep. There’s lots of money in crossing gorillas and timber wolves.” Earl snorted. “Those science types are downright full of wacky fun.”

Heather squatted beside the corpse, roughly grabbed one wrist, and lifted it without saying a word. The braver members of the front row got up and approached. The young vet was the first to notice Heather’s point. “It’s wearing a wedding ring.”

The skeptical faction turned to the principal, who had somehow gotten himself appointed as their leader in the last few seconds. “Somebody must have put a ring on the animal.”

“Crap. Why, Phillip?” someone shouted. “Are you retarded?”

Heather glared at Phillip. Then she roughly dropped the limb and reached for the gaping chest wound. “I noticed this while I was cutting the heart out before it could regenerate.”

There was a cluster of people around the werewolf now, looking almost like a football huddle. The soldier spoke again. “What are those bags?”

“Well, Matthew, those appear to be breast implants,” said Nancy as she stepped away from the huddle, rubbing her eyes. “Well, apparently this thing had a boob job.”

Phillip had no response to that revelation.

“There’s more,” Heather said. “Anybody recognize this?” There was a long moment of silence. The people in the circle all exchanged glances. The audience was struggling to see. Several of the witnesses began to swear.

“Rose Greer had that same tattoo, same place. We used to work together at the substation before she went to nights,” said one of them.

It was Nancy that spoke up again, loudly. “Phillip, can you think of any reason somebody would stick a wedding ring on a wild animal, give it breast implants, and then tattoo a little rose on its neck?”

Phillip, obviously, had no response. Earl was about to make a comment about the kind of weird stuff you could find on the Internet, but now was not the time for sarcasm.

Heather walked away from the body and turned to the bleachers. Her voice echoed through the entire gym. “Look at it. Look at her. Yesterday that thing was Rose…” She let that sink in for a moment. “After she killed everyone at the power company and wrecked the place, she walked home. I caught her eating her husband. That is what we’re facing. There’s more of these out there right now. Some of them are strangers, like the man who tore up our jail. Some of them are our friends, or neighbors, or people you see at the store, or people you go to church with. But not anymore.”

The huddle had broken up so that everyone could see the twisted corpse.

“Now they’re something else.” Heather walked over, angry, shotgun still over one shoulder, and kicked the dead werewolf, brutally hard, right in the snout. Blood flecks splattered down the tarp. Earl tensed a bit, but remarkably Heather seemed to be keeping it under control. “They’re the enemy. And we have to destroy them before they get the rest of us.”

The atmosphere in the room had changed. They were committed now. Heather, a local, had swayed them where he, an outsider, could not. Heather risked a quick glance Earl’s way, as if to see how she’d done. He nodded approvingly. She looked away, almost embarrassed, but not before he caught the flash of gold in her eyes. Tough, to the point, Heather would have made one hell of a good Hunter.

Too bad he was probably going to have to put her down before the night was through.

The volunteers left ten minutes later. There were three smaller teams, one for each way out of Copper Lake. Earl had made sure that each team had some of his silver ammo and some MHI phone numbers. Using snowmobiles and moving quick, they might have a chance. He suspected that this Alpha would have set some impediments in their way, and would have loved to go with them, but he was needed on offense. Two bigger teams were heading out momentarily to cause trouble and find survivors.

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 amp;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.”