Support Your Local Monster Hunter

by Dennis Liggio

  I put on my helmet. Yes, I had brought a helmet. I no longer had my WWI Kaiser helmet, so I had picked up a red and yellow football helmet from a thrift store. I buckled the chin strap and then gripped the hooked pipe. I turned to Ace.

  "Are we ready to do this, buddy?"

  Ace barked in agreement.

  I nodded and we jogged the last half block to Kelvin Automotive. I had considered my ways in and decided on full frontal. Razor wire was a concern for climbing any of the walls, but the front gate was just chain link with a chain and padlock to keep them closed. I had brought a small pair of cutters that I hoped would be able to deal with the chain, but once we got to the gate, I found we wouldn't need to use the cutters. The gate was closed, but the chain had been removed. The lock was gone. I could enter easily.

  I had the eerie feeling that I was expected.

  As I walked through the gate, I felt like we were in the post apocalypse. Football helmet, makeshift weapon, leather jacket, ferocious dog - if this wasn't Mad Max, it was something similar and radioactive. I hoped we would be at least somewhat imposing. Maybe I needed more spikes on my helmet. A job for later - assuming I survived this.

  I didn't see anyone in the abandoned car dealership. There was enough moonlight and illumination from elsewhere in the city that it was bright enough I could see the dark forms of the cars and the looming building, but I didn't see any man-sized forms nor any movement. Had they cleared out or were they all... I don't know, sitting at a massive table at the all-you-can-eat clone restaurant?

  I was maybe three steps into the lot when my phone started ringing. I had forgotten to put it on silent, because of course, nobody had been calling me recently. In the stillness of the abandoned dealership, the phone suddenly sounded really loud, the noise seeming to echo amongst the lot of cars. I cursed and fumbled in my pocket to turn it off, finally muting it on the fifth ring. The lot fell back into silence.

  The silence didn't last. I'm not sure if they had been waiting for me already or if the phone call had alerted them, but now they were moving. I heard the scuffle of shoes and the scrape of metal. I thought I saw movement between some far off cars, but it was hard to discern.

  And then the floodlights came on.

  Up on tall poles were high powered lights that the dealership would have used when having evening sales or just for security. I wouldn't have thought the lights would be intact or even still wired. But I was wrong. Those lights came on with a thump, illuminating the entire yard, but particularly Ace and I. We felt rather naked in those lights. Especially since we now had an audience.

  From around the edges of the lot now spilled Kelvins. One face was repeated in countless variations. These all seemed to be the angry type - short hair, various burn marks. They were all dressed in different clothes, as if they had raided a consignment store and had to share the entire stock amongst themselves. Some were dressed for the gym, some the office, some a party, one even seemed ready for a Hawaiian luau. Their faces were filled with rage as they closed in, a sea of David Kelvins that slowly moved toward us like a tide. There had to be at least a hundred Kelvins, but there were very likely more than that. What had been going on here?

  I raised my weapon, staring into their faces. They all stopped about twenty feet from me. I turned my head, seeing them surrounding us. I scanned all their faces, looking for some reaction. Why had they stopped? What were they plotting? Neither of us said anything for a long moment.

  "So are we going to do this or what?" I said, gripping my pipe with both hands and tensing for battle.

  "Have you come to give yourself up to judgment?" said one of the Kelvins.

  "What?" I said. "Judgment? Oh come on, don't tell me this is some religious thing. Are you clones and a cult?"

  "You are wanted for crimes against the collective," said a different Kelvin, causing me to turn to look at this new speaker.

  "Murderer!" shouted a Kelvin from within the pack. A few echoed this cry.

  Me? A murderer? I wasn't going to take that accusation, least of all from them.

  "Hey, you guys have been messing with me," I said. "You've helped to destroy my life. And then you tried to kill me!"

  My words seemed to fall upon deaf ears. The entire crowd didn't react, their faces impassive. I wondered if I needed to speak louder, but I didn't repeat my words. The whole crowd stood silently, unmoving, as if every one of them was listening to something I couldn't hear.

  Then they all nodded.

  "The judgment is death!" shouted one.

  "Death!" shouted another Kelvin.

  "Whoa, wait a minute," I said, suddenly uneasy, even though I had come here with the purpose of killing them.

  "Kill!" shouted another one of them, the crowd getting riled up.

  "Kill! Kill!" shouted another. And then in a second, they were all chanting the same thing. "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

  Then they all charged me at once, their chant continued.

  In my line of work - that of a largely unpaid monster hunter - I've had to deal with various types of threats. I'll admit that a horde or angry mob was new for me. Sure, I've dealt with large numbers of zombies, but they're lurching creatures of poor balance, questionable coordination, and slow movement. They may come at you in a group, but unless you're backed into a corner, it's all about separating them and taking each one at a time[14]. Ghouls were the only humanoid enemy we had ever dealt with in numbers that actually moved with speed but didn't use weapons. Typically they weren't a problem, as we hadn't ever dealt with more than a half dozen at a time, except for that one time with a whole goddamn ghoul tribe, and they had spears which made it a whole different experience. So in this situation, where I was dealing with a large amount of charging, coordinated, and generally hostile forms of David Kelvin, I was out of my depth.

  As the Kelvins rushed toward me, their angry faces frothing with rage and shouting, "Kill!" over and over, I sprung into movement, Ace following my lead. I used what I knew of the divide and conquer strategy here, adapting it to the situation. If I stood in one place and let them converge on me, I was dead. So instead, I ran toward the nearest Kelvin and swung the hooked pipe. That Kelvin went down, falling to the ground, blood on his head and my pipe. Turning, I ran a short distance and swung the pipe at another that was a farther away from the others. The effect was similar - dead Kelvin, blood on my pipe, and a throb in my arm muscles from the impact. That was two down out of infinity, as their numbers still seemed endless. I tried to channel my rage and not worry about how many I was taking out.

  Continuing my dodge around cars, I took a third and fourth Kelvin down. As they began swarming around me, I started running out of exits. I charged a Kelvin with the pipe, not worrying about killing him, but instead concerned with knocking him out of the way so I could get out of the press of bodies. The Kelvins didn't appear to have weapons, but they were playing a dangerous game of grab ass and I wanted none of it. Ace kept up with me, mostly just following rather than attacking, realizing that my lead was better than him simply chomping down on some Kelvins. His bulk helped to knock some of them off balance as he rushed by.

  But even this strategy had an expiration date. It seems stupid to keep saying, but there were just so many of them! It was like the car dealership was an angry ant hill full of Kelvins. They seemed to be just sprouting from behind the cars to join in the chant of "Kill!" My room to move was rapidly running out, so I thought outside the box. I climbed to the roof of a car, jumping off to slam down the pipe on another Kelvin, getting him out of my way and clearing a path.

  This is when I saw the weirdest thing so far. All the Kelvins I had been seeing were the angry type - short hair, random head scarring, enraged expression. The bald, nervous, exploding Kelvins were not here or were staying back, probably so they wouldn't get jostled. The exploders didn't seem worthwhile in a fight. But now I saw a different David Kelvin. Was this the original man? Or another variation? Something was wrong with this Kelvin. His face was odd, but
not quite scarred like the angry ones. It was just different, discolored. The other side of his face had pink skin and a normal eye. But whatever had discolored the other side of his face had also affected that eye. There was nothing human about that eye. It was just a red orb, pupil-less. That crimson eye stared at me without any recognition, dead like the eye of an insect.

  I stared at that face for what felt like a longer time than the quick moment. The exploding heads and the scarred faces were weird, along with their seemingly endless duplication of the same man, but they weren't disturbing. Though I had assumed the Kelvins were monsters, they hadn't been quite... well, monstrous yet. Now I had finally seen some of the monster that was lurking inside David Kelvin.

  "What the fuck are you?" I said.

  This new Kelvin simply opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to answer, but instead he let out a screech. High pitched and hissing, I recognized the noise. It had been on the other end of my call from the payphone. I steeled myself for this new Kelvin's assault, wondering if it had some strange quirk like the exploding heads. But rather than attack, this Kelvin fled. After screeching, it turned away from me and walked away, its movements more hobbling than the angry Kelvins. Two of the angry ones closed ranks to cover the monstrous one's retreat, shouting "Kill!" with the rest.

  I was too shocked and interested to let these two stop me. I swung my pipe at one, and following my lead, Ace tackled the other. I ran after that new strange Kelvin, pushing away all those that tried to stop me, knocking them into others to buy some time. I was not letting the monster go. We had to fight through a crowd of angry Kelvins, getting closer to them than I had been willing to be up until now, but I finally managed to get close enough to the fleeing monster Kelvin. With a yell, I swung my pipe, slamming it down on his head. Yes, I was curious about him and what he was, so my brutality seems a little out of place. Know that in the tide of battle, I express my curiosity about monsters by killing them with extreme prejudice - curious prejudice. Yes, I'm what's stopping scientific advancements, but I'm saving lives.

  The strange Kelvin died just as easily as the others, so he wasn't better suited for combat as far as I could tell. But his death had a strange effect. As soon as his body hit the ground, all around me for about fifteen feet, angry Kelvins stopped in their tracks. They clutched their head and ears as if there had been some ear-piercingly loud sound, writhing as pain wracked their bodies. I hadn't heard it; I had heard nothing but the chanting of the Kelvins. As I looked around, I noticed that Kelvins beyond fifteen feet were unaffected. They were pushing their writhing compatriots out of the way or climbing over them to come at me.

  Amateur Science Szandor decided that the strange Kelvin had somehow disabled the others. Maybe his scream was some sort of subvocal... something. Which did... something else. I really didn't have a good theory. But somehow killing him made the others freak out. I liked that. I could use that. Were there more than one of these strange, screeching Kelvins?

  The last grasping of a man drowning in a sea of angry chanting clones, I ran, climbing on cars and jumping off them. I swept angry Kelvins out of my way with my pipe, trying to find another strange mutated Kelvin. Some intuition told me there would be more.

  I paused over a dead Kelvin to catch my breath. My arms burned and my breathing was difficult, but I knew I had to keep going. I was running low on energy. There was still a sense that I could win this fight, that I could take them all. I just needed to find out how. That strange Kelvin was the key. There had to be more. I needed there to be more.

  As I fought through the crowd, I kept my attention on the Kelvins. Before I just considered them a frothing, chanting crowd. Now I was trying to examine their faces. It ended up that I didn't need to see their faces; I finally found another strange Kelvin without that recognition. I noticed him by the fact that he was moving away, his back already to me. In a massive battlefield where everyone else either wanted me dead or was a dog, that made him stick out.

  Adrenaline surged through me as I summoned what energy I had from my failing reserves to run after this opponent. More Kelvins fell before me, my fighting movements more reflex as my only set of conscious thoughts were on catching the strange Kelvin. He had to be the key. There were too many Kelvins for me to fight, I didn't have the energy to kill them all one by one. But if there were more of these new Kelvins, then this battle might still be won. With that glimmer of hope, I finally reached my target, and he turned around. I roared in excitement, pulling back my arms to strike.

  And when I looked upon his face, I froze in shock. I just didn't understand. And yet, things finally started to make sense, clues falling into place. But that realization was too much to take in with everything else. I'll admit that shock gave me a moment of weakness. I froze and then the tide overtook me. Kelvins grabbed onto me just as I remembered myself and tried to shake them off, but it was too late. I was fully in their grip, held by too many arms to get away. Next to me, Ace was also held down, his growling and barking fierce but futile.

  The backpack was stripped off me. My arms were pinned behind my back and I was pushed forward, so I could look at the Kelvin before me. There was no facial scarring on this one, but I would have preferred that to what I saw. This Kelvin had only a single eye, because the left half of his face was mutated and deformed. On the right side, he was David Kelvin. On the left side... well, it looked like a Spider was melded to his face. Three pale legs emerged from the mass of skin on his face, each leg dangling uselessly. This weird anomaly continued to the top of his head, where his scalp was similarly messed up. Near those legs was another red eye, like that screeching Kelvin I had killed. My mind turned over the possibilities, not wanting to admit what could be true. But now I couldn't deny what I had suspected for a long time.

  "You're... you're somehow Spiders," I gasped out. It all made sense now. The duplication, the stolen hive, David Kelvin's work at MT. I should have expected all of this, but I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to admit that Spiders could become men. And refusing to admit that had gotten me killed. I thought I could fight this battle, I thought I could win this war alone. But if these were men crossed with Spiders, I never had a chance and should have stayed away. Or I should have brought help, which I knew would now never arrive.

  The Kill chant died down. A deafening silence yawned across the crowd at once, as almost all Kelvins became slack and still. Only the arms that held me stayed tense. The mutated Kelvin before me opened his mouth, and that same screeching came out. One of the angry Kelvins spoke for him.

  "You have no idea what we really are."

  "What? What are you?" I said.

  "We're David Kelvin - the David Kelvin we were always meant to be."

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "You don't need to understand," said another Kelvin. "You're dead."

  Cosmic Monsters Inc

  Sometimes the cavalry arrives even when you're not expecting them. I went into this all High Noon, but it ended up some other movie... or perhaps just real life. A screech of tires distracted all the Kelvins at once, each of them freezing and inclining their heads toward the front of the dealership. A vehicle burst through the gate, then squealed to a halt, barely missing one of the decaying cars in the lot.

  The doors of the vehicle flew open, or at least it sounded like it. I couldn't see the car due to the Kelvins around me, but I heard the thunder of gunshots in the air, followed by the pattering roar of automatic weapon fire. My first thought was that it was Minerva Technics. They must have sent a squad of their best and brutalest, who had eschewed their shock guns for assault rifles - better for thinning the herd of Kelvins. The arms that held me released me as a confused panic set into many of the Kelvins around me. They were prepared for me, but not for an armed attack. They didn't have guns, so this threat would probably massacre them. Many Kelvins started to run, their movements halting as they were unsure where to go or what they were doing. Whatever bound all the Kelvins together
was now confused, and their retreat was clumsy and uncoordinated. In front of me, the severely mutated Spider Kelvin turned to go, one of the last to depart from my area, but I was not going to let him get away. I leapt upon him, tackling him to the ground. I didn't have a lot of fight left in me, but I definitely had enough for this. Brutal, I know, but I had few other options: I beat his head against the asphalt until he stopped struggling. Two of the Spider legs broke off at their first joint from my attack. My opponent now unmoving, I turned over and sat on the ground, trying to catch my breath and figure out what my next move was. Ace whined, not sure of what was happening, and I rubbed his neck. Gunfire continued behind me, as well as the panicked run of the Kelvins. But it seemed we were okay for the moment.

  Nearly all the Kelvins had exited the lot and those left were running, not wanting to stay around to get picked off by superior armaments. For as many as there had been, they disappeared quickly and easily, like ants or roaches. I envied the assault rifles and the easy time they were having with the Kelvins. Maybe I should have spent the effort to get a gun. It seemed to work wonders.

  Exhausted and unsure of what came next, I stayed sitting on the ground. I figured that if it was MT, this was a good way to show I was non-threatening and not messing with their work. If it was somehow the cops, I wasn't getting away at this point anyway, so why pretend I was going to run? And if it was someone else? Well, they could come talk to me as I rested on the ground. I lit a cigarette. I'd have offered one to Ace if he smoked.

  As I waited, I looked toward the front of the lot, able to see better without the Kelvins. To my surprise, I saw that the intruders hadn't come in a black, unmarked SWAT wagon, nor in any of the telltale signs of MT. I didn't see the red and blue lights of the police either. Instead, I saw with surprise that it was just an SUV, not even a black one. And my spirits rose in confusion, because I recognized that SUV. The cigarette nearly dropped from my lips in shock. Holy shit. I really didn't believe it. I didn't deserve it. But it was true. The ones who had come to my rescue were my friends.