Grunge (ARC)

by Larry Correia

  “What was the sign?”

  “Fifty-seven.”

  “As in Heinz?” he asked, laughing.

  “That was what was driving me nuts for months, yes,” I said, grinning. “Turned out it was a county road in West Virginia. Five slash seven. Deer jumped out as I was driving home in W-V, I swerved, tapped the sign for it. There was another sign for a church revival. After I got done laughing, I took the turn just to see if that was what God was talking about. I thought he wanted me to go to the revival. Turns out the preacher was a necromancer who was going around attacking, well, ‘religious’ folks with zombies. So by the time I got there, the zombie outbreak was going well. I stopped it. I took the whole thing as being a sign God wanted me to fight monsters. Don’t know why. I’m not otherwise terribly special. But here I am.”

  “So you’re on a mission from God,” Jesse said, wagging his head back and forth. “I guess that makes you pretty religious.”

  “I was raised atheist. I’ve converted to Catholicism since but, no, I’m not really what you’d call ‘religious.’ I’ve got a serious issue with temptations of the flesh. Girls tend to find me attractive and vice versa. So I’m no saint. I doubt I’ll ever be able to turn an undead. On the other hand, I figure that as long as you’re not a real ass about it, it matters less than most religious people think. Given that hunting is one of those ‘live fast, die young’ jobs…I think I’ll gather all the rosebuds I can while I may.”

  “Ah,” Jesse said. “I may finally have a wingman.”

  “Only if you’re willing to settle for the remora, man,” I said.

  The udon was great. When the tataki arrived I refused to do the “nibble at it” thing and took one of the thin strips of tuna covered in ginger and popped it in my mouth.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, chewing carefully. “I am in love.”

  The server was watching and smiled and nodded.

  “Of all of the great exports of the Land of the Rising Sun, this must be among the greatest,” I said then took another bite.

  I ended up sampling a number of dishes and loved all of them. I had to ask Mr. Brentwood the next time I called why he’d never introduced me to sushi. Of course, I later had sushi in Louisville and swore afterwards never to have any unless I was within two hours drive from a port. Gah!

  While we were sitting there two Japanese girls came in and sat next to Jesse. After listening to them for a bit I introduced myself. They had been talking about anime and I explained that I was a voice actor who occasionally did fill-in on anime and Jesse was my agent. I did that part in English so he’d know what role to play.

  Jesse tried not to show his amusement as I went about charming them. One of them, Yuki, was a foreign student at the University of Washington. Chiyo was visiting. They had stopped in for lunch on the way from SeaTac.

  They didn’t believe me at first when I said I did anime voice work. As part of what you could get in terms of Japanese culture in the 1980s in Louisville I’d watched quite a bit of anime. And one particular voice actor had a very similar voice. So I quoted one of his most famous lines to them in the same voice. I humbly admitted that I was just a fill-in for the more famous voice actor, rarely credited, but voice actors in Japan are given the sort of godlike status of movie stars in the United States. They’d met a real voice actor! And he was a cute gaijin who spoke Japanese! I even composed a haiku in honor of Chiyo’s arrival.

  I got Yuki’s phone number and a suggestion on another bento place in the University district.

  “Christ, you really are smooth, aren’t you?” Jesse said as they left.

  “Getting frequently laid as a bachelor is a matter of proper approach and seizing every opportunity,” I opined. “Meeting girls is not the issue. Convincing them you’re not going to put a ring on their finger without being an absolute and complete ass is the issue.”

  After three hours hanging out in the bento house we went back to find out if my phone had, in fact, been installed. It had. I picked up my pager, went back to the office and was officially on-call with the Flaming Warthogs.

  Which really pissed Yuki off when it beeped at one in the morning. Chiyo wasn’t really happy either since she and Jesse were in Yuki’s guest room…

  CHAPTER 7

  “It was a bear attack,” Jesse said, yawning and lifting a crate of ammo into the van.

  The Flaming Warthogs were not particularly happy to get another call from the King County sheriff about another “bear attack” in Skykomish. They’d driven half the way out there yesterday morning only to be told by the MCB that the death was a confirmed bear attack. The claw marks and tooth marks were definitely bear and the body had not shown signs of lycanthrope enzymes. Bear attack.

  “Just because it was mauled by a bear doesn’t mean it was a bear,” Lucius said as we continued to load the van. “The bear they darted had human remains in its stomach. But it was a black bear. Those don’t usually attack humans. And they’ve had another attack. Two dead. So…Possible lycanthrope.”

  “Not the full moon,” Jesse argued.

  “Give it up, Jesse,” I said. I was just as unhappy about the development as he was but when it’s time to hunt, it’s time to hunt. I won’t say Chiyo and Yuki could wait or anything. They’d more or less given me the high sign that read “don’t come back.” “We’re going to Skykomish. Wherever the hell Skykomish is.”

  “Skykomish makes Yuma look like the big city,” Jesse said. “Pretty area, though.”

  I’d give a description of the trip to Skykomish were it not for one thing. I learned in the Marines to sleep when you can. And given that I hadn’t been to sleep, yet, but had earned nature’s tranquilizer the best way…I passed out about the time the van hit the side street and woke up when Timmy shook my shoulder in Skykomish.

  “We there already?” I asked, blearily.

  Based on the blue lights from county and state police cars, the answer was yes.

  The night was partially overcast with intermittent drizzle and rain. When we got out of the van it was drizzle. Along the way it went to rain, then back to drizzle, rain, drizzle, clear sky, rain, drizzle and so on and so forth.

  Working in Washington state guaranteed that you were going to get wet and spend a lot of time wet and cold. I was fine with wet and cold. Better than sweating your ass off in the heat. When I was later transferred to New Orleans I finally found my inner bitch and complained about the weather unmercifully.

  While Doctor Nelson talked to the cops, I considered my load out. I really wanted to try out the Uzi in action but the conditions mitigated against it. Sub-guns were for close terrain; interior or really close brush. While the forest might be a bit close, it technically was open terrain. That said long-rifle. So I broke out the M-14. This was before the days of ready access to all sorts of high-speed night vision so the best I had was a pair of issue binocular NVGs. They weighed a ton back then.

  To go on top of my issue body armor I’d rigged vests depending on what weapon I was carrying. That way I could make the decision on site and not have to change a bunch of stuff. One vest was pre-loaded for “open country combat, M-14.” Nine magazines for the 14, two WP grenades, two frag grenades. Frags can get you in trouble inside but are the cat’s pajamas in brush or forest. All the vests contained 1911 mags with silver ammo, a first aid kit, flashlights, two one quart canteens and two small tactical knives. There was a point to attach a holster and I’d picked up one of the then new Aussie SAS “tactical” thigh holsters, what is now called a “drop” holster. That held my 1911 with two magazines on the holster. In addition I had a daypack. What would later be called an assault ruck when everybody started using them, this was just a brown LL Bean book bag that I’d done some configuring on. The main configuration being a place to lash my katana on the left side.

  Put on my armor, throw on the chosen vest, attach my primary weapon with a two point sling, throw on the backpack and I was ready to rumble.

  I noticed that I was t
he only one putting on a helmet.

  “No helmet?” I asked. I’d already decided I wasn’t a big fan of the MHI issue helmet. Kevlar had been good enough for me in Beirut and I’d decided to stick with it. The way it dropped down over the ear gave nearly as much protection as the issue MHI helmets to the head and it could stop light rounds that were bouncers. The “light” MHI helmets probably wouldn’t.

  “Cuts down on your hearing,” Jesse said. “And werewolves don’t generally go for the head at first. And it’s a pain in the ass with the radios.”

  In those days our radios were full, over the ear, cans with a throat mike. The system did not fit under my helmet very well. On the other hand, it didn’t fit under the issue ones very well, either.

  “I think I’ll keep the brain bucket.”

  I had to configure my load out in the pack but that didn’t take long. One hundred rounds of .308 in box, three more loaded mags, two more frags and two more WP grenades, two water bottles, more first aid and some pogie bait. I tended towards peanut M&Ms and Snickers bars. It wasn’t great for long duration but it was a good sugar boost. I threw in one MRE for the heck of it.

  Then I found some bushes and pissed.

  Pro-tip: This was something Mr. Brentwood told me the first time I went home after Basic and was later reinforced by a Gunny I got friendly with who had combat experience in Vietnam. If you know you’re going into combat, take a piss and take a dump. If you don’t, you’re probably going to do it in combat. The body dumps waste in stress situations to get them out of the gut and reduce all sorts of problems. Natural human reaction.

  If you don’t want to embarrass yourself, do it beforehand.

  The site of the suspected lycanthrope attack was up Beckler Road right by a bridge on Beckler Creek. After rigging up we got back in the vans and followed a sheriff’s car up to the attack site.

  The attack was a horror movie classic. A young local couple, Jody Valdez, fifteen, and Cory Drake, seventeen, had found the perfect place to make out. Or based on the state of their clothing, much of which was on the back floor of the 1972 Buick Skylark and untorn, possibly more. The window of the back-seat was shattered. They were more or less splashed all over the interior and exterior of the car. There wasn’t much left of either of them.

  “This wasn’t a bear,” Lieutenant Paulding said. The lieutenant was one of King County’s designated “this never happened” people. I had to wonder over the years how one got promoted when the cases you worked “never happened.”

  “This, I have to agree, was not a bear,” Doctor Nelson said. He looked mildly incongruous kitted out like a commando with his spectacles perched on his nose. He examined the scratches on the door and pulled out a tape measure. “Claw sizes and shape are all wrong. And based on their degree of decomposition and time of attack, there’s too much meat taken. Bears don’t eat people this fast or thoroughly.”

  One of the rookie cops pulled in to control the scene had to walk away and puke at that comment.

  “Jesse,” Lucius said. “Tracks.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jesse said, starting to work out from the attack.

  “Chad, cover him.”

  I had approximately zero experience at that point in tracking so I just kept my eyes out and ears open, which was hard with the radio head set. There was a dial you could dial up the ambient sound and I turned it up until Jesse said something and I got a squealing feedback.

  “Ouch.” I turned it down. “What you say?”

  “I said I got blood trail,” Jesse said. “Headed across the bridge. And, no, turning it up doesn’t help. Get Doctor Nelson.”

  The team crossed the bridge then down off the road, following Jesse. Once down off the road the brush closed in and I wondered if the M-14 had been the best call. The night was surprisingly still. I’d expected more sounds of insect life. I didn’t know if that was normal for these woods or not but I wasn’t going to ask.

  On the other side of the river there was a small flood-plain. That was where the brush was thickest. Our lights barely penetrated and I was expecting a massive werewolf to come crashing through the brush at any moment.

  “Loosen up, Chad,” Doctor Nelson said. I don’t know how he even knew I was tense. “The wolf’s going to hear us long before we hear it. Trying to creep up on it never works.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, rotating my shoulders and telling myself to loosen up. Didn’t work. The zombies I’d started with had been right there and easy to target. They weren’t super-improved predators where I was on their home ground. I was not a happy camper.

  The trail went up a slight slope which got progressively steeper. Pretty soon we were having to help each other up the slope. Then it turned sideways across the slope, down again and hit a small trail.

  “Firebreak?” I asked, looking around.

  “Yeah,” Jesse said, carefully considering the tracks. “And I think it’s headed back towards town.”

  “That wouldn’t be good,” Doctor Nelson said.

  The tracks continued down the, fortunately unused, firebreak until they hit US 2. We were back down on the floodplain again and it took him a bit to find where the lycanthrope had gone. He finally found a track across the road, down by the river and a slip mark on the bank of the river itself.

  We crossed the river, getting quite wet and cold in the process. The rain had the river up. Not flooding but it was swift. We formed a human chain to cross it.

  On the far side of the river was another paved road and the tracks ended there. There was no sign of recent breaks or activity across the road or for a hundred yards on either side of where it had reached the road. Either it had gotten better at covering its tracks or it had followed the paved road to avoid them.

  “Okay, who is this guy and where did he go?” Doctor Nelson asked, rhetorically.

  “We need more information,” Jesse said. “Any missing hikers in the area? Houses up this road? Recent arrivals?”

  “Agreed,” Lucius said. “And preferably a ride back to the van.”

  There were deputies and state troopers all over the area at this point. We found one on the road and Louis got a ride back to the van. When it returned, it was accompanied by our favorite people, Monster Control Bureau.

  I tuned the resultant acrimonious discussion out. MCB had called the previous attack on a hiker “Not lycanthrope related.” MHI had been paged on the way in and told to stand down. If they’d continued on and gotten a track then the two kids might still be alive.

  MCB, of course, could care less about that. Like most MCB agents, the New Orleans branch in my time being an exception, they were more focused on shutting down speculation and giving hunters a hard time. I know MCB thinks it can handle all this better than hunters but I’ve seen, at this point, the confidential GAO reports. They can’t. They cost too much and it’s much harder to cover up FBI and police casualties than “contractors.” If the FBI started to sustain our casualty rates the cat would get out of the bag quick. The only way for them to keep those casualties down would be to use three or four times as many agents on each case and since man-per-man hunters also cost one third the cost of agents…Start doing the math. And that doesn’t even get to effectiveness. New York proved that using “mercenary” hunters was a much better choice than cops who are paid by the hour and primarily want to make sure they just go home in one piece.

  End ranting pro-hunter argument.

  We needed more intel to have any chance of tracking down this werewolf before it killed again. If it hadn’t already. The MCB, again, could care less. We weren’t going to get anything from them so after the usual useless back and forth we made contact with Lieutenant Paulding.

  Lieutenant Paulding had already been doing the groundwork. The cover so far was “definitely not a serial killer.” But the usual questions had been asked. Any new people in town?

  Skykomish had once upon a time been a tiny but bustling metropolis of far more than the current two hundred or so residents. Th
at had been back when it was a major railway stop before Steven’s Pass and when the area had been heavy into timber and mining. The combination of the changes in the railroads, environmentalists killing any chance of cutting timber and the mines closing had reduced it to a fraction of its size. These days it was mostly a gateway to the local national forest. There were some survivalist types, “Hello!” that lived up in the hills but no new ones. Other than tourists passing through, no new people. Could it be one of the tourists or hikers?

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Timmy opined. “Why go all the way out here to attack people? I mean, if you’re from a metropolitan area, more targets there. And it’s not as if it just turned. Isn’t the full moon. It has to know what it’s doing.”

  “Might have come out here to get away from people,” Louis said. “It realized what it was, came out here to go live in the woods as a wolf and found out it’s a lot harder to hunt deer than people?”

  “Possible,” Lucius said. “Transforming takes energy. If it was stuck in wolf form, it might have had to eat to change back.”

  “Start looking for really skinny hikers?” Jesse said.

  “After two people you’d think it could put on some weight,” I said.

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Okay, if we go with that,” I said. “Guy goes out to the woods to live as nature and a bite from a werewolf intended him to be. Decent and reasonable thing to do. Try to keep away from people and just eat deer. Say he’s from the city with no real knowledge of the woods. Maybe he brings some food with him but it runs out quick. Finds that deer can smell him a mile off and run real fast. So he starts hunting people whether his human side wants him to or not. Starvation is a strong incentive. Now he’s probably changed back, right? He’ll go to his camp, collect his belongings and then what?”