Monster Hunter Legion-eARC

by Larry Correia

  Trip was standing over the dead man in the tie, his tomahawk dangling at his side, dripping dark blood. “That was Jim,” he said softly. “Friend of mine. Taught shop. Last time he was the one that broke in. He was the one that got the kids that I couldn’t save. I put those kids in there. I told them to barricade the doors and stay put. I went to get help. I told them to pray. I told them to have faith and everything would be okay. I told them to trust me, but I failed them. I was too slow, too weak…I wasn’t ready then. I didn’t know what I was doing then. I wasn’t prepared. Not this time…Never again.”

  I looked to the classroom. The screaming had stopped. It was quiet except for the buzz of the old lights. “What happens now?”

  “I don’t know. Last time I got this far they were already dead.” Trip put his tomahawk away and stuck a fresh mag into his subgun. “Let’s find out.”

  Stepping over corpses, we reached the classroom. The door was nearly destroyed. One sharp kick sent it flying inward.

  As promised, he’d given us our exit. The four of us stepped out onto the empty gambling floor of the Last Dragon casino. The door we’d just come through led to nothing but an empty janitorial closet.

  Chapter 17

  Earl Harbinger wasn’t even there for me to brief when we got back to the conference center. He was off taking care of another crisis called in by Mitch. Apparently, there was a kraken in the pool.

  Cody, Paxton, and the other smart Hunters had come back from the nightclub without incident. They’d walked right through the area where we’d been initially attacked by zombies, and there hadn’t even been a sign that anything had happened there at all. I gave them the rundown of what we’d seen, then had to repeat myself to Klaus Lindemann, who had been made the second-in-command of our operation. I hadn’t been around for that part. It struck me as a cagey move by Earl, though, since Grimm Berlin was respected by many of the companies that didn’t particularly care for us, and even the companies that didn’t like either of us would have a difficult time not listening to the combined experience of those two men.

  Nobody I briefed had a clue what the significance of topaz could be, but it immediately sent Lee on a research kick. We had monsters that had violent adverse reactions to silver, and more rarely from other substances like holy water, white oak jade, or salt, so why not topaz? Milo took a raiding party down to the gift shops to find some. There was bound to be some jewelry we could use. It would be nice to have another weapon to use against this thing.

  Of course, that was all assuming that the kid I’d talked to was even real and not some sort of trick of the Nachtmar’s. For all I knew the damn thing thought topaz was delicious and was using us to forage for snacks. I didn’t know what to believe, and since I’d just strolled through a hallway that had been filled with Florida, believing anything here was one hell of a risky assumption.

  Lindemann told me that he’d put together one group of Hunters, hotel employees, and a few surprisingly useful volunteers from among the tourists to explore possible avenues of escape should time run out. There are always sewer systems and steam tunnels under a building of this size, and if we were lucky not all of them would be blocked by the MCB. None of us were real hot on the idea of dying in this quarantine. So far there hadn’t been any luck.

  All of the spare equipment available had been gathered in the conference center. One of the Russian Hunters had been trapped outside the quarantine, and his gear had several loaded eight-round Saiga magazines in it, so I borrowed those to resupply Abomination. It was lunch time, and Milo’s raiders had brought back a literal ton of food. The conference center had facilities for everything, and the employees had gone to work preparing food. It kept their minds occupied and everyone else’s bellies full. After picking up a couple of plates, I found Trip sitting on the carpet outside the main conference room with a thousand-yard stare, so I gave him a turkey sandwich and a Coke and sat down next to him.

  “I’ve got no appetite,” he said after a minute of staring at his food. “Go figure.”

  “Reliving the worst moments of your life will do that to you. Eat. Come on. You’ll feel better…I know you want to.” Trip finally relented, unwrapped the sandwich, and took a bite. He chewed listlessly, still staring off into space. I let him drink some Coke before bothering him more. He needed the sugar. “How’re you doing?”

  “Better than expected.” Trip watched his hands for a bit. They were still trembling, but much less than before.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.” But when I didn’t go away, Trip sighed and gave in. “Really, I’m fine. That was just a shock to the system. After Florida, once I found out that there was such a thing as Hunters, for the very first time I knew what God wanted me to do with my life. I’d found my purpose. There was real evil in the world, but it was okay, because there were good guys that could fight it. Knowing that’s what got me by the first time. God had a plan for me.”

  Trip was a lot more religious than I was. I could only nod and agree. “Sounds reasonable.”

  “This Nachtmar wanted to scare me, wanted to break me, maybe? I don’t know. Assuming it even thinks like we do at all. But if that was what it was going for…Big mistake on his part.” Trip took a long drink of the Coke. “What just happened only reaffirmed my faith that I’m doing the right thing. When I was a normal guy, a whole bunch of innocents died because I didn’t have the skills that I do now. We plowed through more zombies in five minutes than I had in two hours back then. How many times have we saved the day, Z? How many innocent people are alive because we did our job?”

  Trip was a true believer. It was going to take a lot more than revisiting his past to shake him. “We’ve saved bunches.”

  “We’re the good guys. We’re the heroes.”

  “Damn good-looking ones, too. I knew you’d be okay.”

  “Eternal optimists.” Trip chuckled. “But I’ve been thinking. If this Nachtmar could do that with what I had in my head…My experiences are nothing compared to what some of these Hunters have been exposed to. What’s going to happen when it gets to someone like you? I mean, come on, you’ve been to hell.”

  “It wasn’t really hell. It was more of an infinite dimension of eternal suffering populated by awful beings beyond comprehension. Totally different.”

  “Uh-huh…”

  I tried to laugh it off. “Motherfucker can’t handle what’s in my brain.”

  Trip often chided me for swearing too much, but at least I could make him laugh. “I’m just glad Holly isn’t here. I mean, sure, she’d be valuable, kick butt, take names, and all that, but you know…I’m glad that no matter what she’ll be okay.”

  I understood exactly what he meant. Holly was one of us. We’d stood back-to-back surrounded by the forces of really pissed-off evil many times, kicked the crap out of it, and managed to walk away, but it was nice to know that no matter how bad things turned out in here, at least one of us would live on. I held out my soda and we clinked Coke cans. “Amen to that. Reminds me of something, though…” I got up with a grunt. “I need to talk with my wife.”

  “Want company?”

  This was going to be weird enough by myself. “Naw, it’s cool. Finish your lunch.”

  I probably should have taken some backup. Going anywhere alone was stupid. Everyone else was occupied working on something, and I was distracted by the idea of finally being able to talk to Julie about what Earl had told me earlier. It was a sloppy call, but I justified it to myself that it would only take a minute. I got to the elevators, tagged the button, and only had to wait a second for the last one on the left to ding and slide open.

  I swiped the card Mitch had given me that allowed access to restricted areas, then pushed the button for the roof. Deep in thought, I leaned against the back of the elevator car and thought about what I was going to say to Julie. There were surely better ways to find out you were pregnant than during a siege from an incorporeal nightmare creature. How would she reac
t? Happy at first, then terrified, then what? The doors slid closed.

  The elevator began going down.

  I reached out and pushed the roof button again. It wouldn’t stay lit.

  It was dropping so quickly that my stomach floated up into my lungs. This elevator wasn’t fucking around. There was a digital display above the door, and it counted down L3, L2, L1, B3, B2, B1 in under four seconds, then it was blank and I was still going down. There was an emergency stop button. It didn’t do anything. I hit the fire alarm. Nothing happened. “Crap.” There was an emergency phone. I yanked the panel open and pulled the phone out, hoping to contact Mitch, but it was dead. The elevator was still descending.

  There was a stab of fear. Had I just reentered the nightmare world?

  There had to be a way to stop this thing. There had to be a trap door in the elevator car’s roof, but as soon as I unslung Abomination, a voice came through a speaker in the wall. “Please remain calm, Mr. Pitt. Your excitable nature has already caused you to accrue significant charges since you began your stay here. Damaging one of my elevator cars would be exceedingly expensive.” The voice was deep and commanding. “Please put your firearm away.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the owner of this establishment as well as several other hotel-casino facilities in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. I am the primary sponsor and organizer of the First Annual International Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals. Most importantly, I am your host.”

  I lowered my shotgun. “You’re the one they call Management?”

  “That is I. You see, I normally operate through a group of intermediaries. Only a handful of my employees have ever met me in person. I do not take a hands-on approach very often. The duty of a good executive is to pick good managers, as they are my public face. Because of this, my existence has taken on something of an air of mystery, a situation which I do not find uncomfortable. I believe that a little fear improves employee productivity. Thus, you may call me Management for your convenience. That name will do as well as any.”

  The elevator was still cranking along. I had no idea how deep below the surface I had to be by now. Then the elevator stopped so suddenly that my knees clicked and I had to grab onto the handrails. The door slid smoothly open to reveal a…mine shaft? The walls were bare stone, roughly chipped into a rectangular passage, and reinforced every ten feet by a crisscrossing steel beams. Naked lightbulbs were affixed to the ceiling, following a single electrical cable. The tunnel descended into the unknown.

  I pushed the roof button repeatedly. The doors didn’t close.

  “Please, Mr. Pitt. Time is money. We both have pressing matters to deal with. My office is at the end of the tunnel.” I put my hand back on Abomination’s grip. “Please do not do that. Violence upsets me.”

  “Really? Because getting kidnapped upsets me.”

  There was no answer. The intercom was quiet. I punched the button one last frustrated time. Since my only other option was to try to climb up the elevator cable for probably twenty stories, that left the tunnel.

  The tunnel was clean of dust. The rocks were cool. It was a straight shot with no side branches. It sloped downward for a hundred yards before I noticed a much brighter source of light up ahead. The tunnel gradually widened until it opened up into a huge space.

  The cave appeared to have been formed naturally, and was at least as large as DeSoya Caverns, only this place was far brighter. You could play a football game in this cave and leave room for bleachers. The light was coming from intricate golden chandeliers hanging from the roof. Crystal formations were naturally growing out of the walls or sprouting from the floor, and they reflected the light in shades of purple, green, and blue. There were more lamps set all along the interior, some crafted metal, some made of exotic fabric, each of them different, but all of them gaudy.

  The entirety of the space was filled with stuff. There were great gleaming heaps of coins, goblets, jewelry, crowns, and other expensive trinkets. There were sacks casually stacked off to the side that were spilling over with diamonds. There were rolls of silk so shiny that at first I thought it was an optical illusion. Paintings were casually stacked and leaning everywhere, and though I myself knew very little about artwork, I recognized many of these as the originals that graced the pages of Julie’s many art books. There were pristine old classic cars parked down here, with even more stuff stacked on their roofs.

  I’d seen a TV show once about people with a mental problem that caused them to hoard things. This cave had that vibe, only instead of junk, stacks of old newspapers, and cats, this place was absolutely packed with valuables and items that reeked of money. I carefully stepped over what I was fairly certain was a Fabergé egg that had just been left on the floor.

  The cave smelled dry, sort of old, like an antique store, or an old lady’s house where all the furniture was covered in plastic and there would be an inevitable dish of hard candies that had gradually melted into a solid, colorful block, and then the grandmother would complain that nobody ever came to visit…But beneath that antique smell there was something else, something that took me a moment to place. Back in college I’d had a roommate with a pet iguana. So the cave smelled like an old lady’s house with a pet iguana.

  And judging by the thick, musky lizard smell, we’re talking a really big iguana.

  “Hello?” I called.

  “This way, Mr. Pitt,” came the thunderous response. The noise caused me to instinctively crouch for cover behind a taxidermied white rhino. “No need to be alarmed.” Management’s voice was terribly loud inside the cave. “Please, excuse the mess. I have been meaning to organize but I have been so very busy.”

  Peeking over the rhino’s butt, I couldn’t see the source of the epic voice. Cursing myself for being an idiot, I made my way around a suit of armor that had a placard saying that it had belonged to Henry the Eighth and a figure that could only be one of the terracotta warriors. Now I could see that in the center of the cave was a gigantic stone pillar, big as a city bus flipped onto its nose. Something vast moved around the stone. Scales whispered against rock.

  It was so big that it took me a second to sort out the images and categorize the horrific giant marvel with a word.

  It was a dragon.

  We’d covered dragons in Newbie training, but only briefly, since nobody ever thought we’d actually see one. There were two known types, eastern and western, and both were very powerful, dangerous, with intelligence ranging from smart to brilliant. They were so absurdly, extremely rare, and since no one had encountered one in generations, they were commonly assumed to be extinct.

  They were definitely not extinct. There was at least one slithering along right in front of me, and if he wanted to eat me there probably wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. The gigantic creature took my breath away. He was so big that my brain was having a hard time calculating the dimensions. His head was the size of a small car. His shoulders were like two elephants squeezed together. I could only see the front legs, but they were shaped more like hands, only he could palm a cow like I could palm a basketball. One of the claws hit the floor, but with surprising gentleness. The enormous head dipped, fence-post horns tilting to the side, eyeballs the size of my head blinked. The eyelids actually made an audible slap as they closed. “Have a seat, Mr. Pitt.”

  The only chair I saw nearby was a gray stone throne. I pointed at that questioningly, but no sounds would come out of my mouth.“Yes, yes. A nice piece. It belonged to Nebuchadnezzar, a fine specimen of human leadership. I picked that up at auction for a very reasonable price. Please, we have much to discuss and there is little time.” The massive head swung away as Management continued his path along the pillar.

  I very carefully lowered myself onto the priceless historical artifact. The seat was a little small. The dragon continued speaking, obviously trying to put me at ease. “Forgive my rudeness. I will attempt to keep my voice down. I do not receive many visitors. Would you care f
or anything to drink? I have some very nice 1907 Heidsieck, purchased for the Russian royal family but then lost at sea, and only recently discovered by divers.” I shook my head no. “Are you certain? It was a bargain at two hundred thousand a bottle. Ah yes, I forgot, my sources said you are a teetotaler. Very well, down to business then.”

  “You’re a dragon?” Considering my current circumstances, it was a remarkably stupid question, but to be fair, I was still suffering from the awe.

  “An astute observation. A dragon, the dark lords of the sky, the fire drakes, the savage lords of a time long since turned to dust. I am one of the last of my fading kind. A man of lesser fiber would have fled at the sight of me, but not you, Mr. Pitt. It appears that I picked the right human for the job.” I had the distinct impression that the giant lizard was trying very hard not to sound patronizing. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  The dragon turned, somehow not crashing any of its enormous body into any of the piled treasures. Now I could see that he had wings, but they were folded tight against his scaled back. The end of his tail whipped around the opposite end of the pillar, almost but not quite hitting a red supercar. It looked Italian. Too bad Mosh wasn’t here. He would’ve known what it was and probably had the courage to ask the dragon if he could take it for a spin. My mind was reeling, trying to recall everything I’d read in training. Management was obviously a western dragon. The four limbs, long neck, separate wings, and general dinosaur-like build made that obvious. That also meant he could probably breathe fire and fly, all of which were completely irrelevant factoids at this juncture. I wished fantasy-geek Trip was here. He would’ve flipped out.

  As Management moved, I realized for the first time that the stone pillar was absolutely covered in flat-screen TVs. There were hundreds of them, all on different channels. The dragon stopped. Once again, he was staring right at me. “Sell. Sell. Yes. Sell that too.”

  I looked around, then back at him, confused. “Sell what?”