Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners - eARC

by John Ringo

  MCB was not happy. Mister Everette was not happy. The airport got reopened. That’s what the contract specified. Besides, I didn’t give them much time to bitch. Before anyone else got out there, I already had another call. Coroner was on scene fast and the body was gone before you knew it.

  They wanted me to stay to hear their bitching. Then Buchanan got a call. Loup Garou on Bourbon Street. Right in tourist town.

  Yeah, I got to go, then.

  LBA Airport. One LG. No vic. #114-8(Fed). Receipt Parish.

  * * *

  Thursday night and Bourbon Street was filled end to end with tourists. Didn’t matter if there was a werewolf running around. They were too drunk to notice.

  Right up until it ripped their guts out.

  Screaming? Hey, let’s scream along! Woooo! Go Green Bay! Gunfire? Hey, is that fireworks? Let’s go see the fireworks! Woooo! I love New Orleans!

  Fucking tourists. If it’s called tourist season, is there a bag limit?

  It was all hands. The loup garou was running wild through the center of tourist central. Some dead, number unknown so far, when I arrived. More injured and anyone bitten would have to be put down by MCB probably. And with tourists, MCB would have to do their full on “if you talk about this, we’ll kill you” routine.

  We didn’t know where it was, so my team was scattered from all over the area. I ended up going the wrong way on Conti Street. I didn’t care. I’d hit a hundred and twenty on I-10, purple light flashing and siren going Aguuuughah! What, you thought I’d installed a pissy little cop siren?

  I drove the wrong way on Conti Street, dodging honking cars, stopped in the intersection of Bourbon and bailed out. Full rigged. Some douchebag in a Honda nearly ran me down. I seriously considered putting a magazine into his car as an incentive to learn manners.

  “This is Iron Hand,” I said on my radio. I might finally be in range of a team-mate. “I’m at Conti and Bourbon. Any contact?”

  “Hand, Ben,” Ben replied. “Last seen on Dauphine near Conti.”

  Well, hell, Dauphine was a block over.

  I got back in Honeybear, cars weaving around me, and just backed her up. Technically I was going the right way.

  When I got to Conti and Dauphine I bailed out again. Then, grumbling a little, I jumped up on Honeybear’s hood then onto the roof for a better look around.

  Now, picture this for a moment. You’re some tourist looking for a parking space to stop so you can go enjoy the fruits of New Orleans’ night-life. You’re driving down a one-way street, your wife bitching at you that you should have just paid for parking, when you see a maroon 1976 Cutlass Supreme parked at a major intersection. There’s a guy standing on the roof, holding a silenced Uzi submachine gun and dressed up in tactical gear up to and including a Kevlar helmet. Which, by the way, has a nasty set of gouge marks in it from troll claws.

  Now, question for the audience. Do you go around? Do you back up to avoid the crazy person?

  Do you stop and ask for directions?

  “Hey, buddy!”

  I looked around. There was a Cadillac stopped by Honeybear. It was blocking traffic even more which if there was a loup garou inbound was probably a good thing. There was a well-dressed middle aged couple in the Cadillac. The wife was clearly pissed. The husband, driver, was just as clearly drunk.

  “How do I find some some parking around here?”

  “Same way I did!” I shouted.

  The man’s window rolled up and I could vaguely hear the argument. Horns were honking.

  There was screaming from up Dauphine.

  I leapt off Honeybear and headed for the screams.

  Okay, so maybe I’m no better than the tourists.

  * * *

  Her name was Lindsey Carpenter. She and her friend Christina Hines had dropped out of college after one spring break and moved to New Orleans to enjoy the good life.

  They were walking down Dauphine Street when from out of nowhere a huge dog creature rushed her and ripped her guts wide open.

  Christina screamed and ran. The dog creature had to give chase.

  She made it through the doors of a club. The dog creature followed. There it attacked several patrons. It was indoors, surrounded by screaming people and confused by the plethora of prey.

  It followed one of the prey back out onto the street.

  * * *

  I ran down Dauphine Street, in the road, dodging cars because it was easier than dodging people, when a man ran straight into a car. Just ran into the road full tilt and was hit by a late model Impala. The impact tossed him fifteen feet through the air to land with a thud.

  The loup garou jumped onto the hood of the now stopped Impala, pointed its snout at the sky and howled, long and deep.

  I dropped the point-shoot sight onto its side and hit it with three rounds of silver .45. Couple more cracked the guy’s windshield.

  The werewolf turned, biting at the pain. The Impala suddenly accelerated, still with the werewolf on its hood. It was also headed right at me.

  I dodged out of the way onto the hood of one of the cars parked on the street, rolled across and came back to my feet.

  The Impala had to dodge Honeybear. The loup garou rolled off as it did and, wouldn’t you know it, thumped into the Caddy which was still blocking traffic. The drunk tourist was out on the passenger side trying to convince his wife that the cop or whatever had said it was okay to just park there.

  The werewolf impacted on his right-front quarter panel with a thud I could hear from half way down the street. Then it got up. It was hurt but the rounds hadn’t hit anything super-critical.

  The man just stood there, looking at this massive wolf that had just hit his car.

  I sort of wanted to let the loup garou have the idiot but at the same time he was in that predicament in part because of my being a wise-ass.

  I jumped onto another parked car and lined up the shot. The wounded werewolf was getting ready to take down another victim.

  There was the super-sonic crack of a rifle. The loup garou dropped with its brains splattered all over the quarter panel of the Caddy. The right front tire began to deflate.

  “Were you just going to sit there?” Shelbye radioed.

  “I was thinking about it,” I said, touching my throat mike. “That guy’s an asshole.”

  “I’ll cover up the wild animal, or whatever the feds will call it.” Carter radioed. “Hand, check on the wounded.”

  I walked back to the bar. There was a young woman lying in a pool of blood outside. She was still alive but she didn’t have much time. Intestines were scattered on the sidewalk.

  A friend was beside her, clearly with no clue how to handle a disembowelment. People were gathering around to gawk. Most of them were too wasted to realize this was real.

  “Hoodoo Squad,” I said. “Clear the area.”

  “The what?” some douchebag said, laughing.

  The speaker was a fat man wearing a Bama T-shirt and ball cap.

  “The guy with the Uzi and a really short temper,” I said, putting the warm barrel of the silencer up under his chin. “Clear the fucking area! Clear out!”

  That got through to him and he fled. I bent down on one knee by the victim.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.” I looked at the nearly catatonic friend. “What’s her name?”

  “Lindsey,” the brunette said.

  Lindsey was pretty or had been. Five ten, one twenty…When all her guts were in place.

  “Lindsey, this looks bad but you’re going to be fine,” I said, looking her in the eye. “Paramedics are on the way. You’re going to be great.”

  I took out a morphine ampoule and slammed it into the inside of her thigh. I wasn’t sure if it would spread through her body what with the ripped arteries in her stomach.

  “That’ll help with the pain. You just stay calm. Rest. It’s okay if you pass out. Just stay calm and close your eyes. You’re going to be just fine.”

  Li
ndsey trusted me. I knew what I was talking about. She was going to be fine. She closed her eyes and let the pain seep away.

  A moment later they opened back up and her mouth fell open. Lindsey was gone to the Summer Lands where it was a party every night and no loup garou came in to ruin it.

  “You said she was going to be fine!” the friend screamed.

  “She is,” I said, letting go of the flaccid hand. “She’s in heaven. We’re stuck on this shithole. She’s a lot better off than we are.”

  MCB arrived on the scene already talking about a “rabid dog.” And because they were so helpful, the people who had been scratched or bitten would get this free easy “rabies test,” only this was the kind of rabies where testing positive got you shot with a silver bullet.

  I walked into the bar ignoring the rest of the mess. I walked into the bathroom. Plenty of people hadn’t made it to the toilets to puke. I ignored the smell like I’d ignored the smell of spilled drinks, shit and iron in the bar.

  I shoved my way up to one of the sinks. The guy I shoved didn’t seem to like that but took one look at how I was rigged out and my face and didn’t make an issue.

  I wear Nomex flight gloves. They keep my hands from slipping on my weapons. They were covered in Lindsey’s blood.

  I took them off and rinsed them in the sink, wringing out the blood over and over again until the water ran clear. Then I rinsed my hands and dried them with a paper towel. I wrung out the gloves one more time and put them back on.

  I reloaded my Uzi. I wasn’t sure whether I had or not.

  I walked back out.

  The Caddy was gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  Let’s Dance

  For a change of pace, my next call was not a loup garou.

  “What the hell is a zoo-nu…?” I asked as I headed for Little Vietnam.

  New Orleans wasn’t just French. The French had settled on top of Native Americans. Then Americans, northern European/English derivative, moved in on the French. And there were two kinds of French. The Creole, who were descendants of the French aristocrats and such who were the early owners of trading companies and plantations, and the Cajun, Acadians, who were resettled from Newfoundland, before the British got Canada.

  Then there were the slaves, West Africans from places like modern Ghana and Ivory Coast, by way of the Caribbean Islands and French Guyana.

  New Orleans really was a land of immigrants.

  And every immigrant population brings three things: its own native infections like malaria and yellow fever, its own food and its own hoodoo.

  So, just as New Orleans had more different kinds of food than you could find anywhere else in the US, at least at that time, it had more different kinds of hoodoo. We’d at least gotten rid of most of the infections, although AIDS was a bit rampant.

  Since the slavery days there had been more and more groups come there for various reasons. Oil was and is big. Goes up and down but there’s oil in them there bayous. Lots of fishing.

  There were Hungarian enclaves and who knew Hungarians were fishermen? (The country is land-locked.) They’d brought their food, culture and hoodoo. There were pure African enclaves and they’d brought their kind of food, culture and hoodoo. Lots of Spanish influence. Food was good. Senoritas were foxes. South American hoodoo? Some of that is insane, brother. Guara hoodoo is fucked up.

  Then there were the Vietnamese. They were recent transplants, refugees of a failed war. They’d settled, heavily, in the coastal regions of Texas and Louisiana to fish the fertile waters of the Gulf. And, yup, they’d brought their hoodoo.

  Mostly they lived out US 90 in a little neighborhood near Michoud Boulevard.

  I was already on I-10 doing my usual 130. Even though 90 was a main downtown street, it was actually faster to get on the 10 and go waaay out of your way then down to the 510 to get out there. At least if you could do 130 and the cops left you alone. 90 was always chock-a-block traffic and street-lights. Yes, I’d blow red-lights. Also a good way to get T-boned. I’d take the interstates.

  “Zoovnuj Txeeg Txivneej,” Trevor said over the phone. I could tell it was fluent whatever the hell the language was. “Man of the Forest in Hmong. Some villages treat them like minor fertility god, and leave offerings to appease them. Sometimes they carry off the local girls.”

  I may be a little short but I always take no for an answer. “Vietnamese hob.”

  “Right,” Trevor said. “Orang Malat, kukobomo, they’re all over the world. There’s all sorts of ritual offerings necessary to dispel it from an area. You’re on your own for this one, but they aren’t too dangerous if you know what you’re doing. In Laos we discovered that filling it full of lead or silver just pisses it off. On the other hand, it also knocks it down long enough to throw a Willy Pete on it. And fire does for them.”

  “Roger,” I said, sliding through the I-10, 510 interchange. I had to be somewhat aggressive with an idiot in a minivan at the merge point. He and his idiot family would live. The rest of the lane was clear, smooth and a curve designed for about 75.

  I did it at 112. Then I was on the 510. Traffic was light. My foot was not.

  “It’s outside Tot Tot Thuc Pham,” Trevor said as if I knew what that meant. “Just go out US 90 past Michoud, look for the blue lights. 13612 Chef Menteur Highway.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  I finally made it to the 90, 510 interchange, blew through a red-light at the intersection, nearly getting T-boned, and hammered it up Chef Menteur until I saw the blue lights. US 90 in that area was semi-rural US four lane highway one each. There were scattered buildings along the road, some strip malls, a set of crappy apartments. Lots of low scrub. Just to the south was the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility where they did the fuel tanks for the Space Shuttle.

  It’s generally considered to be about twenty minutes from downtown to that area in light traffic. I did it in seven. Did I ever mention how much I hate the double nickel and how much I enjoy violating the hell out of it?

  I slowed down as I passed the state trooper car then started looking for whatever was causing the issue. It was a sign that caught my attention. Most of the lettering was Vietnamese, which I hadn’t learned, yet. Very small on the bottom it said “Tot Tot Thuc Pham” and even smaller was “Good Good Food Here.”

  Ah. Tot, Tot, Thuc Pham. Thanks, Trevor.

  The building was long, low, cinderblock, painted salmon, with small windows, heavily barred, a heavy steel door and a window AC in the front. There was a flashing neon Open sign in one of the small windows. It looked less like a restaurant than a pawn shop. The parking lot was gravel and dirt.

  The food was either going to be incredible, or kill you with botulism, and probably both.

  There were a few parked cars. Off to one side, well to one side, was a cluster of people, Vietnamese, looking scared, and ready to run.

  Outside the steel front door was a small, bright purple, pot-bellied humanoid. It was screaming and ranting and pounding at the door. In front of the door were dozens of broken dishes and a bunch of scattered food. Not as much as should be from the dishes but the place was a wreck.

  As I watched the door cautiously opened and another dish was shoved out. It dove into the food, gulping and chewing and in the process tossing bits of it all over the place.

  When it was done, quickly, it shattered the plate on the steel door and started hammering again.

  I got out, walked over and shot it in the back with my Uzi.

  That got its attention.

  It turned around. Its face was shaped like a bat with a very long nose and huge tusks jutting from its lower jaw. Call it a pig-bat face. Ugly. I’d seen so much worse in my time. I’d seen Fey Queens and Huntsmen without their glamour. There ain’t no ugly like Fey ugly.

  The Forest Man howled at me and charged.

  I emptied the rest of the magazine into it. That put it down.

  Purple haze was in the air from its blood but it was shaking off the effects quickly. I
t got back to its feet, shook its head back and forth rapidly, its jowls shaking and going “Blablablablabblable” then hissed and charged again.

  I’d reloaded. More .45. Down again.

  This time it was far enough away from the building I pulled a white phosphorus grenade off my belt, pulled the pin and lobbed it across the parking lot to land at its feet. I was just outside the bursting radius. I reloaded.

  The Forest Man got up again, shaking his head, and looked at the hissing grenade at its feet. Then it picked it up and held it over its head, gobbling in Forest Man gobble, shrieking and hopping up and down as if it had captured my soul or something.

  Then the grenade went off and it was covered in burning white phosphorus.

  It ran around in circles, burning and howling, trailing white smoke.

  I walked over and put a full magazine into its head. It stopped moving.

  Just in case I put a thermite grenade on it and walked about ten feet away.

  Everything went white. Probably should have warned the witnesses to cover their eyes.

  When the light died down I walked back. All there was left was a burned circle.

  “Is it done?”

  I looked at the building and just the cutest little Vietnamese girl was framed in the light from the doorway. She was wearing a skirt but no slip as was obvious. What a body! Nice legs!

  “Yeah,” I said, walking over. I handed her one of my special cards. The kind with my personal phone number written on the back. “Chad Gardenier. MHI,” I said, shaking her hand. “All done. No need to worry about it anymore.”

  “Thank you,” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. Nice boobs for an Asian chick. Very squeezable. “It had come for me! We were trying to appease it with the offerings of food, but…”

  “Those things are a pest,” I said, smoothly, hugging her comfortingly and patting her on the back. “But we’ll always be here to protect nice girls like you.”

  “Stay please, eat!”

  I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since three. I’d eaten a lot at Sasson’s, but I’d also been expending a lot of calories. The Vietnamese food smelled great.