Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners - eARC

by John Ringo

  High hip-to-waist ratio, common trend of “hot” in Western cultures, indicates a high likelihood of being capable of carrying babies. Think Marilyn Monroe. That’s a girl who could have popped out a few. Raquel Welch, again, good potential breeder. Good hair, especially long, shows long-term quality diet and condition. (Think about someone with cancer and hair loss as a counter example.) Good skin? She lacks diseases and is young enough to provide many babies. Unk! Unk! Gronk like!

  I could go on about this stuff. I’ve analyzed it, spindled it and folded it. Bottom line, men aren’t as “shallow” as they’re made out to be. They’re analyzing things subconsciously for best reproductive partner.

  Women do the same thing when choosing potential reproductive, these days more pseudo-reproductive, partners. Women’s tendency to be more “complicated” is more complicated but only slightly. They have different drivers rather than more. Sliding scale again. Men have as many “things” on the scale but tend to focus on one at a time, that one becoming “big” on the scale. Women tend to distribute. Thus it looks more complicated but isn’t.

  But one key factor in women tends to be “security.” Evolutionarily and anthropologically, men tend to be the aggressors and defenders of a tribe. Tend. Isn’t universal. Nothing in anthropology is. But feminists who trot out exceptions are cherry-picking. They are, note, exceptions and every one is susceptible to analysis if you know enough about the individual example.

  It’s one of the reasons some girls tend to go for jocks and thugs. They’re violent and rough. “Pretty girls out walking with gorillas down my street.” The girls tend to feel protected from others, even if the guy they’re dating uses them like a punching bag. In many cases especially if they’re being used as a punching bag. I don’t know how many times Shelbye, one very bad news chick, came in sporting a shiner that wasn’t from fighting monsters.

  Women tend to also be driven by perceived social status and this counts even with women who are not drawn to being punching bags. Because in evolutionary times, the man’s status tended to equal how many resources were available to the woman and her child. “Marrying up” meant that your children were more likely to survive. And women who were good at that tended to pass on their genes.

  This is why rock stars get laid a lot.

  This is at the deep, subconscious, level which is immune to logic. And it’s that deep level, immune to logic, where the lounge-lizard must dwell. Fortunately, I am dangerous and rough. Probably my one problem with dating is I tend to be too much of a gentleman.

  As to social status, hoodoo squad in New Orleans was right on the same level as a member of the Saints. I was a very high status guy, decent looking, the growing facial scars only helped, obviously could provide security, and had a nice house.

  Bottom line, just as the drug gang was thrilled to have a member of hoodoo squad on their turf, ’cause they scare away the hoodoo, the women of New Orleans tended to be more than happy to spend a night in my arms. Fishing for hotties in New Orleans during my time there was like fishing with Pete in heaven. I was hoodoo squad. They swam right up to the line, took the bait and jumped in my arms.

  The real problem was getting them to leave.

  Thank God for Remi.

  * * *

  I wasn’t just banging hotties, finding places to stash guns and books and rearranging the furniture. (Well, directing Remi in that.)

  There are mourning traditions all over the world, ways to say goodbye to the dead. Ways to find closure. Humans have always wondered if we are truly gone when we die and hoped that we were not. Hoped for themselves, hoped for their loved ones.

  In the end, is my soul laid to rest with what’s left of my body?

  Or am I just a shell?

  The balloon ceremony is none of those traditions. It is my tradition and one that I really like. It is based on two, one Japanese involving a kite and one Chinese where you write a letter to the dead then burn it so that the smoke would carry your words to Heaven.

  When my arms were sort of working I asked Remi to find me some really good stationery. Something solid and preferably hand-made. Did not need to be personalized.

  Then I sat down to write.

  First, I wrote a letter to Jesse. I told him I missed him, hoped he was doing well. I’d stopped by and talked to his parents. I liked his family and I swore I hadn’t hit on his sister. Despite having bought a house, which I talked about a little it being on Dauphine Street, I was continuing to send some money to his family. He shouldn’t worry about them or me, we were all doing fine and hoped to see him soon.

  It wasn’t “I hope you’re in heaven” or anything. More like writing to a friend in India or something back in the days when you knew you probably weren’t going to get a reply any time soon.

  Hand written, did a couple of drafts on regular paper, wrote it as clearly as I could, sort of calligraphed.

  Then ones to Jonathan and Greg. Told them I hoped they were doing well. Discussed that the company had made sure Jonathan’s younger cousin was okay financially. He’d been looking out for her, long distance, since her parents were killed by hoodoo. Apologized I never had the time to get to know them better but promised we’d sit down when I got there and talk. Told them not to worry, we were doing fine. I even told them we were recruiting in the Truth and it was funny as hell.

  Then I took all three letters and wrapped them up tight in scroll form with a fine red ribbon.

  I walked down to the river by Jackson Square. The whole way from the house. Not a huge distance but this wasn’t something to just jump in Honeybear. Arms were still tender and I was trying manfully not to talk much but the legs were working fine.

  When I got there I found a balloon vendor and bought three plain rubber balloons. Then I tied each of the letters to an individual balloon and let it fly up to the heavens. I watched until the last balloon was out of sight then went home.

  * * *

  After things had gotten settled down enough I could quit croaking my way through recruiting duty, I made an overseas call.

  Back when I’d been in Seattle and had, you know, time, I’d spent quite a bit of it in England. The Van Helsing Institute had been around about as long as MHI but had a slightly different approach. They, too, had archives but they shared them with Oxford which was a premier center for the study of the occult, at least as it referred to fighting it. Cambridge was the “give vicious, violent monsters who want to rip our throats out a chance” university.

  I’d picked up a masters, long distance, from Oxford already based on my existing bachelors, and University of Maryland correspondence courses. The thesis was an analysis of the Sasquatch language and its relationship to Tibetan yeti. I’d started working on another degree when I’d chosen the wrong elf chick to bang.

  Bottom line, again, I had good relationships with both Van Helsing Institute and Oxford. And Oxford had been studying monsters back in the Dark Ages. The British Ethnological Society and the Royal Society for the Study of the Supernatural had done reams and reams of papers on every kind of hoodoo found in every corner of the world. Often it was wrong, but it was something. They were bound to have something on our tunnel borer.

  So I gave VHI a call.

  “Van Helsing Institute, Clara speaking, how may I help you?”

  “This is Mister Gardenier,” I croaked. “I’d like to arrange a consult call with Doctor Rigby.”

  “Doctor Rigby is out at the moment. When would be convenient?”

  “I’m recovering at the moment and home most days. If he cannot reach me for some reason, you can speak to my gentleman and arrange a better time.”

  He called the next day. I’d told Remi I was in.

  “Chad,” Doctor Rigby said. I could picture his massive, bushy eyebrows going up and down. “Are you seriously wounded, lad?”

  Doctor Rigby had nearly the same reputation in British circles as, say, the Old Man, Raymond Shackleford the Third. For good reason. WWII British Marine Commando
running ops into occupied France then Special Operations Executive working with French and German Resistance where he got involved in the supernatural. Got out after the war, completed his degree and joined Van Helsing. Top hunter in his day.

  “Gah,” I croaked. “Flesh wounds. I already had one injured arm, when some asshole shotgunned me panicking over mincers.” Mincers was the preferred English term for zombies. Mincers referred to the term “mincing” as a form of walking. Also “to mince” as in cut up food. They also called them sergeant majors and ministers. The latter referred to the Monty Python sketch, “the Ministry of Silly Walks.”

  Brits, what can you say? They’ve got an odd slang for, like totally, anything. What-ever. Gag me with a spoon.

  “Asshole got me in the other arm. Also in the throat which is why I sound like this. Worst part is, I’m out of arms to pleasure myself.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find someone to help with your dilemma,” he said, chuckling. “From experience, also rather painful to sleep on either side. You needed a consult?”

  “Want to fax some reports and descriptions of a recurring event,” I said. “MHI, MCB, nobody can figure out what is causing it. Want you to look.”

  “Be happy to,” Rigby said. “What is it?”

  “Something burrowing from underground and taking people out of their homes, but the details don’t match any creature we know of.”

  He didn’t insult me by suggesting something obvious like a grinder. “Interesting.”

  “Might take Oxford,” I said. “Must be rare and odd.”

  “Fax the report to me,” Rigby said. “I’ve seen my fair share of rare and odd. And I’ll send a copy to Doctor Witherspoon at Oxford.”

  “Thanks. Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  * * *

  Worst part of the ordeal? It wasn’t being unable to sleep on either side comfortably. It wasn’t being unable to “pleasure myself.” I had Points and Company visiting frequently. Wasn’t being unable to scratch my ass. Nope. Trevor called me in to help with the PUFF paperwork.

  You got any clue how much paperwork is involved in PUFF? It’s the Federal Freaking Government. Guess.

  Take a standard shambler mob. Say, fifteen shamblers. (Okay, there were twelve but this is New Orleans.)

  We’d get a receipt from Coroner. Fifteen shamblers, Federal Unearthly Creature Code Number (FUCCN and you know how that’s pronounced) 51487-A. Dave’s squiggle. Parish stamp. We’d get the Parish incident number or other police entity. All good.

  Each and every walker required a separate piece of paper. Form 248-36-C. Generally called a 248. The 248 had to have the FBI incident number, which was different from State or Local. This was a “Federal Incident Number, General.” (FING to which we’d add the “r” in general. Thus FINGr.) There was a box for state or local incident number but it was “non-binding.”

  Generally, MCB in New Orleans would fax over a sheet with their incident numbers (generically called “Giving us the FINGr”) and the corresponding State or Local along with Confirmation of Kill number. (COK, again, you know how it’s pronounced. “We finally got COK’d on that cockatrice.” Not like the drink, put it that way.) Sometimes there were incidents missing. You’d have to call one of the agents and get the FINGr and COK. Quite frequently, especially after the full moon, we’d have to wait a couple of weeks on COK. You couldn’t file til you had been COK’d. I frequently just used codes with Agent Marine when we were waiting on COK. “Come on, Bob! I’ve got the FUCCN, I’ve got the FINGr! I need my COK, man! This is FUBAR!”

  But anyway, back to the paperwork issue…

  Back in the ooold days, you’d laboriously fill in each piece of paper with the information. A few years back, MHI went “up-scale” and got software and computers to do this. Uh, huh.

  This “custom designed” POS, Supernatural Unified Computing Spreadsheet (SUCS) was possibly the worst piece of software in the history of bad software. First of all, it was designed to work with the Commodore 64, even then a system so out of date it was a plesiosaur. Second, it had no databases and no relational structure. If you could type it was better than filling it in by hand and possibly, not sure, better than a typewriter. If you could get it to work at all. And the way it worked you had to fill in the information then carefully insert a 248 in the printer and hope like hell that all the print lined up in the right boxes. The one good feature, it’s only “selling point” (hah!) was that if you had fifteen shamblers you, supposedly, only had to fill in the information once and it would generate all the forms for you.

  Supposedly. Because, get this, it didn’t save! I mean, it had no save feature whatsoever. So if you had fifteen shamblers and were on your sixth 248 and it was mis-aligned you had to do a complete refill of all information! Assuming it didn’t crash on you in the middle! In which case you had to start all over again! And for the 248, if there were fifteen shamblers, each of the forms had to be numbered 1-n. So imagine if you fucked up sheet six of fifteen. The actual box wanted “X of Y.” In this case “1 of 15.” You had the choice of either doing fifteen more sheets or saying you wanted fifteen, only printing one, whiting out the “1” in “1 of 15” and writing in “6.”

  Side note: The spot on the 248 had the “of” in it and two very small spaces to either side. When I was working on it I realized that at some point the Nelsons had had to do this for a couple hundred freaking giant spiders! I called them and asked them how they’d done it. Especially since with the computer font we were using you could not fit a three digit number in the “of blank” blank. It would only take at most two.

  The answer was, they’d done one sheet, whited out the “1 of 1,” written “158” very small in the provided spot, photocopied it then laboriously hand entered “1 of,” “2 of” etcetera.

  After I talked to the Nelsons I suggested to Trevor that we just run one sheet of whatever number it was supposed to be, photocopy it then hand number the increments. He was so relieved at the suggestion I thought he was going to kiss me. Hated freaking paperwork.

  But the bottom line was that the damned program was crap.

  Oh, and after doing all that we then had to fax it all to Cazador where someone, usually Susan, did the actual filing. And send signed copies later. ’Cause, of course, everything had to have a legal signature. Gah!

  Look, I’m a swordsman in every meaning of the word. I’m a cunning linguist. I’m not a computer geek. But I’d spent two years in Seattle, not quite Silicon Valley but closer than Cazador, and had spent half that time, I swear, in the basement of Microtel cleaning up their messes.

  Compared to Trevor I was Bill Freaking Gates. Or Ray, for that matter, who had been the guy who arranged the software buy. And programming is a language. I’m a linguist. I’d taken programming classes. I looked at the code and nearly puked. It was the code equivalent of the Truth. Misspellings, bad grammar, no syntax but in code speak. And absolutely zero documentation or notations. It sucked.

  So once my throat was getting better, I sat him down in the office, put my hand on his knee, looked him square in the eye and said:

  “Ray,” I said. “Buddy. Boss. You’re a great guy, really. But you are a freaking moron when it comes to computers.”

  I told him we needed new software. He agreed. Everybody hated it. I told him we needed an updatable relational database of all the Codes with an automated query look-up and daily polling. He started to look a bit confused.

  Look, Ray is an incredibly smart guy. I don’t know anyone better at reading musty old tomes of hoary dark lore. Not even the guys at Oxford. He gets hoodoo at a level I don’t. Possibly too good a level. Thankfully, he’s so level headed or I’d be worried about how much dark shit he knows.

  But computers? Not his thing. I had to try to put it in terms of a card file system in a library. He nodded like he understood what I was saying but I could tell from the slightly vacant expression I was using one of those languages that just doesn’t translate.

/>   “I’m out for a couple of weeks,” I said, finally. “You guys have got this. Let me go look for an alternate solution. May cost more but it’s going to be right. If we don’t have the budget, we don’t have the budget.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Works for me. We really do need something better. I know that. But…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Computers. I’ll find the right solution.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Working in a Coal Mine

  This presented the problem: Where do you find a software developer who is “read in” on the existence of the supernatural? A good one, that is. Not the idiot who’d written this. I had worried it was Milo but he wasn’t into computers. Hate to have insulted my best living friend.

  Well, I thought, the government has to have some computers to handle this stuff, right? I later learned the answer was “Sort of and you don’t want to know how bad.” The actual computers that handled PUFF management, then, were the main-frame equivalent of a Commodore and I don’t think they’ve ever been updated. I’m pretty sure they’re still using punch cards.

  But where would the government go for computers?

  The answer, see previous memoir, is whoever had bought the right congressmen and senators. But the basic answer was a large vendor probably.

  After thinking about it I called IBM. Fuck trying to find some little dink developer company where the owner and only programmer happened to know about PUFF. IBM was bound to have some department for it. And it wasn’t like we weren’t a potentially awesome client.

  Look, we were what’s called a “mid-cap” business. Medium capital. We weren’t Fortune Five Hundred but MHI was and is, non-publicly, about Fortune One Thousand. Yes, family owned and operated for at this point approaching one hundred years. We’re established and wealthy. Just the sort of client IBM likes. We weren’t “small business.” We were pushing millions of dollars in PUFF every year. I didn’t know how many millions at that time, I found out as part of this side-job. Proprietary is the answer but, whoa! If I’d had Ray’s money I’m not sure I’d keep hunting!