Monster Hunter Alpha

Chapter 7

“Impressive,” the padre told me the next morning. “Even for a werewolf. Especially for one so young.”

I woke up inside the luska carcass, using its liver as a pillow. I was absolutely stuffed, stunk like fish blood and oil, was extremely sore, and human. I stumbled out of the canopy of ribs to go wash off in the surf. The priest followed me. I asked him if he was an expert on werewolves as I used sand to scour the ink from my skin.

“Why, yes, actually. I am.”

I paused and sniffed the air. He wasn’t like me. That was obvious. “Keep talking.”

“My name is Father Santiago. I was not always a simple parish priest. As a young man, I held a special assignment at the Vatican. Were you aware that the church has its own group of Hunters?”

For the record, I was raised Southern Baptist at my mother’s insistence, but me and religion hadn’t ever paid each other much mind. There were other rival organizations, even back then, but we’d never run into any churchy ones. Everybody we’d ever competed with had been in it for the money, same as us. “Makes sense, I suppose.”

“Your organization started in 1895. Ours started in twelfth century,” he continued. “I was an archivist, so I know a few things about werewolves.”

I betrayed my lack of schooling. “What’s an archivist?”

“Someone who keeps records. But as I was saying, I know werewolves. For example, I know that you are certainly an oddity.”

“Why’s that?”

“Most would be sitting in that luska ’s belly, but not quite so comfortably as you were. I do believe that luska should be digesting you, not the other way around. Also, most young werewolves are extremely erratic and easily provoked into rages, and you have not even attempted to kill me once.”

“Eh…I’ve been busy. I figured I’d get around to it.”

Father Santiago was carrying his shoes to keep from filling them with sand. He put his toes in the water. “What if I were to tell you that I know of a few cases in history where a lycanthrope with similar strength of character was able to control their curse enough to live a long and productive life?”

Nobody had ever accused me of being a quitter. “I’d say I’m listening.”

The cell phone had lost its signal. Agent Stark glared at the display. He had managed to call his office and do his mandatory check-in for the night, but it had cut off when he’d tried to get his wife. She always got bitchy when he didn’t check in. She said it was because she worried, but he knew it was because she was a control freak who wasn’t happy unless she was nagging him to death.

“Probably interference from the storm,” Agent Mosher supplied helpfully.

“Think so, Einstein?” Stark gestured out the front window of the Suburban. The snow was pounding down. The other cars in the hospital parking lot were quickly beginning to resemble white lumps. He would have sworn that it had dumped two inches in the last ten minutes. The wipers were going full blast just so he could still keep an eye on the parking lot. Stark tried his phone again, but it had gone from three bars to a big fat blinking No Signal.

A minute of uncomfortable silence passed. The junior agent could tell that his boss was in a bad mood. “Shouldn’t we head to the hotel?” Mosher suggested. “Why’d we come back here? You said the test was negative.”

“Intuition,” Stark lied. He was just waiting for Briarwood or MHI to show up. If it was Briarwood, he could go get some sleep. If it was Harbinger, he was going to go shoot himself a deputy. “Trust me, kid. I’ve been doing this a long time. Sometimes an agent just has to trust his gut.”

Mosher just nodded. The junior agent knew that Stark had been trained by the legendary Agent Franks, so if Stark said that was how it was, then you’d better believe that was how it was. There were certain bragging rights in the MCB that came from serving with Franks. That dude had killed everything. The new rumor was that he’d actually used some gizmo built by Isaac Newton to blow up an actual great Old One, but Myers was keeping the details of the New Zealand op top secret.

The deputy was on the top floor. Some of the lights were on up there. Stark could see a few people moving around, but overall the place seemed pretty quiet. This might not be so bad after all. Maybe the cops would have gone home for the night. Hospital staff were far easier to deal with, and there wouldn’t be too many of them. Stark scowled. However, there did seem to be some activity in the room directly above them. The blinds were partially open, and there was definitely movement. If he was remembering the layout correctly, that would have been the deputy’s room.

Stark checked his phone. Still no signal.

Mosher managed to stifle a yawn. “So, we’re here. What do you think is going to happen?”

“Something…I guess.” Stark returned his attention to the window just in time to watch it explode outward in a shower of sparkling glass as a man wearing blue scrubs was launched through. He tumbled wildly through the air, face-planting onto a car parked in the front row. The body came to a sudden stop hard enough to bend the roof.

“Did you see that?” Mosher shouted.

“Kind of hard to miss.” There was no way. It was too early. The full moon wasn’t for a few days, but the limp body staring at him upside down, turning the snow pink, wasn’t lying. “Come on,” Stark ordered as he opened his door.

“Damn, sir, you are good,” Mosher exclaimed as he followed.

Heather couldn’t back any farther into the corner, but she wished that she could. The doctor had tried to do something to Buckley, but Buckley had just swung at him and the doctor had just been gone. She looked up, following the trail of blood splattered across the ceiling and tracked the trail with her eyes to where it terminated at the shattered window. The blinds were hanging in tatters and a freezing wind pushed snow into the room. He’d swatted poor Dr. Glenn right out the window.

Buckley was sitting up in bed. The screaming had ceased. He was still panting, but he seemed calmer somehow. His golden eyes locked on hers as tears of blood rolled down his cheeks. “Kill me…please.” It was as if his tongue was too big and he had a hard time forming the words. His hospital gown was torn, and his body was covered in hair. Buckley looked down at his hand. It was dripping, and each of his fingers ended in a red point. “Please…” His mouth opened too wide, as if it was hinging farther back.

Deputy Temple was too shocked to move. The nurse took two steps back, tripped over something, and fell on her rear. Heather drew her pistol. “Joe?”

“Do it!” he roared. Another wave of pain hit Buckley, only instead of a normal human scream, out came a terrible howl. His entire body was rippling, skin pulsing. Heather couldn’t believe her eyes. The howl tapered off. Then the lights flickered twice, and they were plunged into darkness. The wailing of the machines stopped. An ominous silence fell as the background noises of the hospital died.

The only light was an eerie reflected white from the broken window. Heather raised her gun. Buckley’s bed rattled hard. “Joe?”

There was no answer, only heavy breathing. Heather had a painful knot in her stomach. It took all of her conscious effort to take a step away from the wall. A few seconds later, the emergency generator turned over. The fluorescents flickered to life at half strength. The light was dim and twitchy.

Buckley was gone. Something had taken his place in the bed. He-it-was staring at her. Her mouth tried to form words, but no sound came out. It was still Buckley, sort of…Skull cracking, his face had twisted into a horrific snout. Yet as he looked at her again, she somehow knew that it was no longer Joe inside there. Joe was gone. He rose from the bed, twisting and gasping, his gums stretching past his splitting lips.

The nurse cried out and started crawling for the door. The noise caught Buckley’s attention. His lengthening head whipped around, attention fixed on the woman. The attempted flight set something off. He leapt from the bed.

“Stop!” Heather cried, but she was already pulling the trigger. She didn’t even remember aiming the Beretta or flicking the safety off, but the glowing front sight was right there on his center of mass, just like she’d been trained. She pulled the trigger again as his feet hit the floor and then again as he pounced on the nurse. The woman screamed as Buckley’s teeth sank into her chest and his fingers into her neck. Buckley shook his head back and forth. The nurse was flung about helplessly, limbs flailing, crying, as Heather kept on shooting.

Buckley jerked as Heather shot him repeatedly in the back. He released the nurse, head rising, mouth spraying blood in a wide arc, and Heather shot him in the throat. Buckley got up, made it a few steps toward the exit, and then collapsed in a heap into the hallway.

Heather was shaking. The slide was locked back on her pistol. The Beretta 96 held eleven rounds in the magazine. Somehow she’d fired them all. The adrenaline had made the gunshots sound like insignificant pops. She realized she’d been holding her breath.

Focus, Kerkonen. Buckley wasn’t moving. His feet and legs were still in the room, only they weren’t shaped like feet anymore. She broke out of the tunnel vision. The nurse was coughing up blood. Her collarbone was visible. Temple was frozen. Heather reached for another magazine as she moved to the injured woman. It took her two tries with her suddenly clumsy fingers to get the new mag seated in her gun.

Heather squatted next to the nurse. The wound looked like she’d been hit with a chainsaw. Blood was pumping down her shirt. Buckley had bitten a chunk out of her. Terrified, the woman was trying to speak. “It’s okay,” Heather lied. Thumbing the safety down, she reholstered her pistol, just like she’d been trained. “Just stay calm. We’ll get you some help.” That’s what they’d taught her. Tell the injured that everything was going to be okay, even if you knew they were screwed. Freak out in front of them with a bunch of Oh man, you’re all messed up, you’re gonna die, and it was just like you’d killed them yourself. However, this was so far beyond Heather’s first-aid knowledge that she had no clue what to do. She tried to put direct pressure on the biggest hole. Blood came spurting between her fingers. But it didn’t matter. The flow dropped in intensity, then stopped. The nurse was dead. Heather didn’t know her name. She must have been new here.

Scrambling back, blood up to her elbows, Heather tried her radio, but there was no response, only static. She moved to the phone at the bedside, but it was dead, too. She needed help. People were gathering in the hall, a couple of mobile patients roused by the gunfire, and the final member of the skeleton crew of the night shift on this floor, and all of them were stopping and staring at Buckley’s mutated hairy body, facedown, bleeding out on the carpet.

Finally another nurse stepped gingerly over Buckley’s body and came to help his coworker. Heather recognized this one. Bailey Something, and he’d been nice enough while her grandfather had been dying here. “What happened?”

“Buckley… ate her,” Heather tried to explain.

“Where’s Doc Glenn?”

She awkwardly pointed at the window. Some weird shit had just gone down. Bailey went to work, though Heather knew it was too late. Heather tried to stay cool. Need help. “Chase?” The other deputy was still standing there, mouth agape. The young man didn’t respond. “Deputy Temple!” she shouted. “Draw your fucking sidearm!”

He jumped. “Yes, sir,” he finally responded, coming back to reality.

“Watch Buckley. If he moves, shoot him in the brain. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cringing, she passed over Buckley’s body while trying hard not to look at him, pushed past the patients, and made it around the corner to the nurse’s station, keying her radio the entire way, getting nothing but static, and found that the main phone was dead as well. Not even a dial tone. The power, phones, and radio were all down. “Damn it all to hell.” What else could go wrong?

Then the people behind her began to scream as Temple started shooting.

Luckily the power went off right before Agent Stark stepped into the elevator. Being trapped in an elevator with the power out while a werewolf was eating people would have been really embarrassing, the kind of thing that would become MCB lore. The other agents would never have let him live it down.

Mosher had his flashlight out in a split second. The brilliant Streamlight lit the entire lobby area. “Stairs?”

“Stairs,” Stark responded as he drew his Glock 20. “Go.” He’d gotten his own tac-light off his belt and clamped on to the dustcover of his 10mm by the time they found the stairwell, but by then the power had come back on. He jerked the door open and was greeted by the echo of gunfire.

They surprised a janitor on the stairs. The man just stared at the two armed men in suits. “Evacuate the building,” Stark ordered. “You’ve got a…uhm…” He paused, not having thought the cover through yet. He’d figured he had plenty of time until the full moon. Cleaning this up was going to be a royal pain in the ass. “There’s an escaped lunatic ax murderer upstairs. Run for your life!”

A patient hopped past her, one leg in a cast, crutch forgotten somewhere. He was terrified. Heather counterintuitively ran toward the danger. An older woman in a bathrobe was right behind the hopper. She screamed something incoherent, hobbled back into her room, and slammed the heavy door. Heather rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. She bit back a cry.

It was a bloodbath.

The hallway had been painted red. She’d only been gone for a few seconds. It looked like the scene of an industrial accident. Is that one body? Two? She wasn’t sure, and she couldn’t really tell now. There was just a jumbled mass of limbs in a pile. Unconsciously she started walking backward, toward safety.

Someone screamed inside Buckley’s room.

Her boot clicked on the linoleum, and Heather realized that she’d been retreating. She stopped. Despite her best judgment, all reason, and logic, Heather knew her job, and nobody had ever accused her of not doing her job. “Crap, crap, crap.” Drawing her Beretta, she flicked the safety off and raised it in both shaking hands, walking toward Buckley’s room.

Temple flopped into the hallway, slipping onto his hands and knees, scrambling madly through the blood. Shirt rent open, he was bleeding from several deep lacerations. “Help me!” He had made it a few feet toward her when a black mass of hair bounded into the hall at his heels. It was unbelievably fast, and it certainly wasn’t human. The animal grabbed Temple by the foot and in one smooth motion dragged him back into Buckley’s room. Her fellow deputy disappeared, a look of shocked disbelief on his face.

There was a drag trail through the blood. It had happened so quickly that Heather hadn’t even fired a shot. What was that? “Buckley?” Temple bellowed in agony. Heather forced herself forward. “Hang on, Chase! I’m coming!”

Then the beast moved back into the hall. It came so quickly that it just seemed to materialize. It saw her, and there was no hesitation. Growling, it charged on all fours. Heather yanked the trigger repeatedly. It covered the distance in a split second. The creature leapt high. There was no time to dodge. She shut her eyes before impact.

There was a bone-jarring bang, but the expected hit never arrived.

Heather opened her eyes. The creature was sliding down the floor away from her, wearing what she could have sworn was a too-human look of surprise on its awful canine face.

A man in a leather jacket had come out of nowhere and was standing protectively in front of her. He was shaking his right hand loose as if he’d just struck something hard. “Stay behind me.”

“Did you…Did you just punch that thing?”

“Seemed like the thing to do,” the stranger grinned, winked, and that’s when she recognized the annoying Southerner from the traffic stop earlier. “Any chance I can get you to rip up that ticket now?”

The animal came off the floor, roaring, and charged. “Look out!”

Nonchalant, the man turned back as a big stainless revolver appeared in his hand. He fired so quickly that the shots sounded like a continuous crackle. Every bullet struck home, right into the animal’s head. Blood and fur splattered the walls. It collapsed, limp, forward momentum sliding it onward. The man opened the cylinder of his revolver, punched out the spent casings, and slammed in a bundle of six more so fast that his gun was reloaded by the time the creature reached them. He casually raised one boot and put it down on the body, stopping it in place.

“How? What? How?” Heather stammered. The thing under the stranger’s boot was bizarre, unnatural. One of its claws had come to a stop only inches from her foot. “Ack!” She kicked the hand aside.

Taking his time, he put one last shot right between the animal’s eyes. Heather flinched. “Silver bullets,” he explained. He stuck his gun back into his holster, then took a cigarette out of his coat and put it in his mouth. “Your regular ones won’t do shit to a werewolf. I’ll give you a B for effort, though.”

Heather was stunned. The fearless weirdo showed up, punched a giant animal down the hall, shot the hell out of it, and now he was talking about werewolves. “Huh?”

“Grading on a curve, obviously. I’ve got to reserve the A for this kid that works for me, killed a werewolf with his bare hands one time. Got another with a pool cue.”

“Werewolf?”

“Yup. That there’s one dead-ass werewolf,” he explained, gesturing at the body. A Zippo appeared in his other hand, and he lit up. He took a long drag then blew out a cloud of smoke. “Name’s Earl. Earl Harbinger.”

She was still staring at the animal. “Uh. Yeah.”

The new guy was completely calm, not even bothered that there were fresh brains on his boot. “That would normally be the part where you tell me your name, Deputy…”

“Kerkonen.” Could that thing really be Joe Buckley? Harbinger had called it a werewolf, but that was just absurd.

“Talkative, ain’t ya? Well, Deputy Kerkonen. Congratulations. You just survived a monster attack. Welcome to big-boy town. Now, how about we go see if there are any other survivors?”

“Temple!” She stepped over the animal’s arm. Heather refused to think of it as a werewolf or Joe Buckley. She couldn’t think of that thing as Buckley without endangering her sanity. “There were others in that room.”

“Let’s go then,” he said, removing his boot from the animal.

She took one last look at the dead body. It had been mere inches from pouncing on her. “Thank you,” Heather stammered as she realized just how close she’d come to being torn apart. Pistol in hand, she started for Buckley’s room.

The two of them had only gone a few feet when the beast rose up behind them like a great black shadow and sunk its fangs into Heather’s shoulder.

Deputy Kerkonen looked at Earl with an expression of complete surprise as the teeth pierced her. The disbelief turned into realization, and she cried out as the pain hit. The werewolf lifted her off the floor, shook her, then hurled her down the hall. The cop hit hard and went skidding away. The werewolf turned toward Earl, bloody jaws wide.

Earl reacted and slammed his fist into the werewolf’s snout. Bones cracked. Teeth went flying. He slugged the werewolf again with a blow that would have surely killed any human, and then, as the werewolf staggered back, Earl kicked it in the stomach hard enough to knock the werewolf through a heavy wooden door and into the room beyond.

Impossible. He’d put multiple silver bullets into the new werewolf’s skull. There was absolutely no way that it could be alive. None. All werewolves were vulnerable to silver. Earl followed it into the room. There was an old lady on the bed, watching the creature on her floor in surprise. She took the oxygen mask away from her face to point and screech incoherently about wild animals waking her up.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Earl said politely. The new werewolf was rising. Earl slammed his boot into the back of its head and put it back down, holding it there. He drew his Smith, then paused. “Would you kindly cover your ears?” He waited for the old lady to comply. Then he pumped the remaining five rounds into the werewolf’s head. It made a ghastly mess on the floor. The patient began mashing her button to summon a nurse. “I don’t think anybody’s coming, ma’am.”

“What kind of lousy hospital is this?” she wheezed. Grumbling, she got out of bed, grabbed a cane, and headed for the door.

As the patient slowly fled the room, Earl watched the bullet wounds pull themselves closed. He took a moon-clip from his belt and checked it before reloading. Sure enough, it was standard MHI ammo; a silver ball sealed into a regular jacketed lead hollow point. The werewolf should be assuming room temperature, not twitching its way back up to ruin his day. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

The regeneration time was remarkable, faster this time than the first go around, almost like it was adapting on the spot. It was already rising. Strong, too…Earl was shoved back as the muscled beast forced itself from the floor.

Claws lashed out. Earl barely moved aside as they cleaved the air where his head had been. Too fast. Jaws flashed, and Earl calmly fed the werewolf his right arm. Teeth clamped down on his jacket and shook him from side to side. He could feel the intense pressure through the leather, but hardly anything on Earth could pierce minotaur hide. He kept a small, Entrek fixed-blade knife at the small of his back for just this sort of occasion. Calmly, Earl pulled the blade free with his left hand and drove it between the werewolf’s ribs.

The werewolf let go, surprised. Earl moved in a blur, slashing the blade across his enemy’s throat. The werewolf stumbled, gurgling, brain temporarily deprived of air, but Earl was already doing the math. The kid was too fast, too strong, and already healing. Earl wouldn’t be able to outfight him in human form, and it was too dangerous to invite a change with all these bystanders around. Unexpectedly, he had a real fight on his hands, and this kid needed to be put down before he hurt anyone else. The bigger weapons were in the truck, and he hadn’t thought to stick a hand grenade in his coat before dinner.

Then Earl spied the abandoned oxygen bottle and had an idea. As his daddy, Bubba Shackleford, the greatest Monster Hunter who’d ever lived, had always taught: when all else fails, kill it with fire.

Heather came to, flat on her back, looking at the dimly buzzing florescent lights. Her head throbbed from the impact. There was a warm slickness coating her chest. I’m bleeding. Disoriented, she reached up, pulled open her ruined shirt, and felt around her shoulder. The strap of her vest had stopped most of the damage, but there were several ghastly punctures in her skin, trickling slowly. It hurt, but nothing felt broken. Mostly her head ached from bouncing off the floor. Lucky. She could have ended up like the nurse. A wave of nausea hit as she stood. There was crashing and banging coming from a nearby room, probably that Harbinger dude getting killed, but Heather was focused on Buckley’s room. Chase Temple was injured and needed help. She had to get him out of here.

There was a path of giant red paw prints leading back to Buckley’s room. The blood on the floor made it slippery. She had to use the door frame to steady herself.

There was a man standing in the center of the hospital room. He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a black suit, and had his back toward her. There was a pistol in his hands, and something about his demeanor just screamed law enforcement. Help had arrived. Thank God.

Temple was on the floor, alive but hurt bad. Bailey was upside down in the far corner, obviously dead, nearly decapitated. The man was standing over Chase and asking, “Were you bitten? Did the creature bite you?”

“On my leg,” Chase answered through gritted teeth. “It’s bad. Help me, please.”

Heather caught the man’s profile as he shook his head sadly. He was young, beefy, with a buzz cut. “I’m really sorry, man.”

“What?” Chase reached out plaintively. “Just get me out of-”

The suit raised his pistol and coldly shot Chase twice in the chest and then once in the forehead.

The world dropped out from under Heather. Her mouth fell open in shocked disbelief, but no sound came out.

The murderer lowered his weapon and shouted, “Clear!”

Heather stumbled back, reaching for her Beretta, but her holster was empty. Her gun was somewhere back where she’d landed. Still dizzy, she tripped over a severed arm, slipped in the blood, and fell. The killer heard her and came into the hall, pistol trained on her face, finger on the trigger. “Don’t move! Agent Stark. Hallway. I’ve got another survivor.”

A different man appeared from a side room, also in a suit, also pointing a gun at her. This one was even bigger than the first, older, bald, and looked like he meant business. “Shit. Local cop…This is gonna mean a lot of paperwork. Where’s the creature, lady?”

Scared to death, she tried to keep her voice composed. These bastards had just executed poor Chase. She was next. “Back that way. Please. Don’t shoot.”

“Were you bitten? Did it bite you?” the murderer demanded.

He must not have realized that she’d witnessed what happened when he’d asked Chase that same question. “No! I’m fine,” Heather exclaimed. They’re going to kill me. She knew that if she made a sudden move they’d shoot, but she had to do something. She wished that she’d worn her backup gun, but the little. 380 she’d bought for that purpose was sitting in her sock drawer because she’d gotten lazy.

She had other tools on her belt though… Steady.

The older man got closer, gun still carefully trained on her, grabbed the tattered remains of her coat and pulled it back. She cringed as the fabric pulled at the wound. Biting his lip, he studied her bloody shoulder for a moment and then turned to his partner, shook his head, and stepped out of the way.

“Wait! I’m fine! What’re you doing?”

“I’m sorry. This is for the best,” Deputy Temple’s executioner apologized as he aimed at her heart.

“She’s wearing a vest,” corrected the older one.

“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. “Didn’t think of that.” The muzzle rose toward Heather’s forehead.

Then the hospital exploded.