Jack Dalton, Monster Hunter, The Complete Serial Series (1-10): The History of the Magical Division

by T S Paul

  Halfway to town, he was stopped by a state highway patrolman and a local county sheriff.

  “You need to turn around and go the other way. This road is closed to all traffic.”

  Jack held out his badge. “Then I’m in the right place. My assignment is Bladenboro.”

  “Are you really from the FBI?” The local sheriff deputy scrutinized Jack’s badge, even calling over the state patrolman.

  “I’m here because of your monster problem. Can you tell me more about it?” He asked taking his credentials back from the officer.

  “We sent for the army, but they never showed up. The Governor said he was sending the Guard, but now we see you. What makes you so special?” The state patrolman asked.

  “I represent the Magical Division. Any cases related to the paranormal is supposed to go through my department. What can you tell me regarding your monster?” Jack asked again.

  “It isn’t my place to tell you stuff, Agent. Let me call the sheriff over.” The deputy climbed back into his car to use the radio.

  At more than six feet tall Sheriff Richard Singletary towered over nearly everyone present. As he climbed out of the patrol car, he appeared to get taller. “What’s this all about then?”

  Quickly, Jack explained the situation and his reason for coming. “What can you tell me concerning the monster?”

  Leaning back against his car the sheriff explained. “The beast is supposed to be fake. Mayor Donahoe thought the story might bring in tourists to town. There are always stories of big cats and wild animals that can sneak into your home and steal the souls of children, but nobody listened to those. Five years or so ago, a cat-like creature was spotted killing farm animals and stalking an elderly lady. We put a call out, and hunters came from everywhere. A large bobcat was caught and killed, but it gave the mayor his great idea. Old legends were dusted off and retold. We’ve got the annual Beast of Bladenboro parade and everything now. Tourists love it. It’s not supposed to be real! Not like that thing.”

  “What does this one look like?” Jack asked. While what the locals had done wasn’t illegal, it was unsavory to him.

  “Big. Really big. I put five rounds into it when it chased me from town. One of my deputies hit it with his truck,” Sheriff Singletary exclaimed.

  “I’m guessing it didn’t work. Were there deaths?” Jack braced himself for the answer.

  “To be honest, we’re not completely sure. Most of the town evacuated, but since we aren’t in communication with them, we don’t know who got out. We know it ate Chuck Williams’ prized heifer and the Velasquez family lost their entire flock of chickens. That’s how we found it in the first place. Feathers everywhere and one of my deputies got the scare of his life investigating it. We thought it was a cougar or escaped tiger. Half the town was looking for it with shotguns. That was until it showed up at city hall and tried to eat a visiting class from Cape Fear High School. Then we called for help,” Singletary explained.

  “So, this thing is big. What color is it?” Jack asked.

  “Black.” All three officers replied at once.

  “So big, black, cat-shaped, anything else you can think of?” Jack asked.

  “You’re gonna think I’m crazy here, but I could’ve sworn it had sparkling claws and spikes like a porcupine on its back. That was one of the reasons I called the military. We thought it might be one of those Demons on the loose.” Sheriff Singletary explained to Jack.

  “Let me take a look.” Jack turned toward his van, but at the last minute opened up the back. Carefully he removed the Wingmaster eight-seventy from the case and grabbed a pouch of special shells. Better to be safe than sorry.

  Once he was safely inside the van, Jack loaded the shotgun. The armory crew had included an extended magazine, and he loaded it as well. Seven shots of the special ammo would kill a Demon. Surely, this cat was no different.

  Big was the understatement of the year. Most likely the century. Jack got his first look right on the edge of town. A farm truck complete with trailer lay on its side blocking most of the road. Jack slowed and stopped to investigate.

  Shotgun at the ready, he approached the front of the truck. Bending he couldn’t see anyone in the cab, but there was what appeared to be blood splattered all over the inside. The driver’s side door had been torn off, the hinges ripped and twisted. Gigantic claw marks scarred the vehicle. Cautiously looking around Jack jogged back to get his camera. Documentation was needed for everything.

  Measuring carefully, each of the claw marks looked to be three inches apart. Jack tried to imagine what a house cat would look like fifty or sixty times larger. The mental picture wasn’t pretty. Where did something like the monster even come from?

  Looking at the shotgun in his hands he shook his head. More firepower was going to be needed.

  The streets leading into town were mostly undamaged. A few cars were overturned, and several blue post office boxes were lying in the street. The devastation didn’t start to become obvious until Jack reached the center of town and the courthouse.

  “Wow,” Jack muttered to himself. The courthouse still stood, but half of the large white columns in front were torn off and destroyed. The grass and park areas were torn and dug up. Piles of what can only be described as cat feces were everywhere.

  Parking the van on a side street, Jack loaded himself up. Figuring he might need it, he carefully loaded a backpack with extra silver ammo and two explosive shells for the modified bazooka he found among the van’s armament.

  The military had used the M20 and its predecessors effectively during the Demon war. Nothing says “hello nice to meet you,” like a nine pound anti-tank round. Two of the explosive shells added twenty extra pounds to his load. The launcher itself weighed another fifteen.

  Humping the extra weight and guns, Jack hurried to find cover near the courthouse. Somewhere in town was a monster that needed to be killed.

  Cats by nature are hunters. They stalk their prey before pouncing. Bladenboro’s beast was no different. The prey it stalked was holed up inside the courthouse. It wanted and needed to kill the human. Pain lanced across its head if it strayed. So far Alderman Sprunt had eluded the large cat, forcing it to stray from the courthouse and the den it had selected to hunt fleeing townspeople.

  James was kicking himself for not leaving when he had the chance. At first, the monster was only a rumor. The town had a parade for the blasted thing. Who knew it existed? If only he had listened to his parents, none of this might have happened.

  “Son, you’re making a mistake. That parcel of land has always been held in trust by our family.”

  James looked at his elderly father with scorn, “It’s potentially prime farmland. If we do it right and drain the swamp rerouting the creek and lining it up, we won’t have to irrigate the fields as much. We can double and triple our cotton production. Cotton is king right now. Why can’t you see that?”

  “Money is all you see. There is much more to life than just wealth. When my grandparents, your great-grandparents, came over from Scotland to settle here a bargain was struck. We were to keep the land inviolate until told otherwise. Our family has lived up to our side of the bargain and have never gone hungry. Now you are bringing upon us the wrath of that which you will never understand, and I pity you.” Peter Sprunt could only shake his head at his son’s actions. He wife beside him was speechless. While she knew her son didn’t value the past, she was shocked he would destroy his heritage so thoughtlessly.

  “My entire life you’ve told me of the trust and beings that never appear. If there were a document I could read or partners I could negotiate with, I would spare it, but you have none of that. Your word is worthless to me, old man. The very moment you signed a power of attorney and allowed yourselves to be placed here was the moment I achieved the first part of my dream, financial independence. Neither you nor some imaginary force is going to take it away from me.” James told off his father and never looked back. When both of his parents grew
ill several years later, he didn’t even bother to visit.

  Construction crews were brought in, and they drained the swamp. A body of water that once was half the size of the town was now a tiny shadow of itself. James only allowed a small pond to exist to keep members of the town happy. Frog gigging and fishing were still very popular even among judges and politicians.

  The original Beast of Bladenboro was spotted around the time he broke ground, but hunters promptly caught and killed a displaced bobcat. There were no supernaturals or paranormals around here.

  When the scratching and digging noises started up again, James hit the floor. It was back! The giant cat or whatever the thing was only wanted one person in town, and that was James. His house, barns, and cotton production facilities were the first to be destroyed. Only his chance stop at the courthouse saved his life.

  Big, big, BIG cat! That was the mantra Jack muttered to himself when he first caught sight of the beast. It had to be twenty feet at the shoulder easily. Sheriff Singletary was correct in remembering its back was covered in spikes, and the claws looked very sharp as they dug into the concrete.

  Something inside the courthouse was drawing it. The cat dug at the main doors trying to get inside for several minutes before running around to the rear, where it attempted the same thing.

  “There’s someone still inside.” It was the only answer. Jack’s goal was not to trap and kill the beast. Something of that size was impossible for a lone agent to capture. Stashing the bazooka and shells, he ran back to the van. This called for an experimental solution.

  During the drive and one overnight stay, Jack managed to read most of the weapons information provided by Mr. Pell and the others at the armory. The stun grenades were marketed as non-lethal, but they could kill in certain situations. The British government used them for extremist groups and the occasional Demon cult that popped up in their major cities from time to time. One grenade set off in a small room would pop the eardrums of everyone inside and have adverse effects on humans from smoke inhalation. But they might shock the beast and hold it in one place long enough to get a bead on it with the bazooka. He wouldn’t know until he tried it. The town was supposed to be evacuated. If he missed, one of the anti-tank shells could do tremendous of damage.

  Arriving back at the shattered storefront he used to hide his weapons, Jack realized the glaring hole in his plans. There was little cover between where he hid and the courthouse. To use the stun grenades he needed to get close to the beast. “Well, crap.”

  Two trees and a park bench were the best covers he could find near where the cat was trying to dig its way into the building. If he set up wrong and it came back the other way he was screwed.

  James had nearly given up hope when he spotted a man dressed completely in green moving around the drug store across the street. At first, he thought the guy was looting the place until he saw the shotgun in his hands. “That’s not enough firepower.”

  It was hard to tell from this far away, but the stranger might be military. That gave James hope he would be rescued. But he could still see only the one man.

  Before his brain could come up with a way to warn the man out there, the building shook. “It’s back.”

  Stumbling to the floor, James Sprunt crawled as fast as he could toward the other side of the building. When the cat first attacked, he was on the ground floor inside one of the smaller offices. He’d been searching in the files for a document when a gigantic paw, with razor-sharp claws extended, smashed through the window and attempted to pull him outside. Just as a rat trapped in a maze, the alderman ducked and dodged as he ran for the door, only to find sharp teeth and fetid breath waiting for him.

  Half the rear door gave way during the last assault, leaving the second floor James’s only option for safety. Like a kid reaching into a cookie jar, the cat had one paw inside reaching for him. He prayed the monster outside wasn’t smart enough to know the roof gave better access to the inside.

  Bang.

  If the window hadn’t been open James wouldn’t have heard the shot fired because the cat took that time to yowl and screech as if it were a banshee. Gazing out the window, he saw the man in green run across what was left of the courthouse yard and park. A small area of the park was the only section still undamaged.

  Yowl! The building shook and trembled as the cat redoubled its efforts to get inside. A loud cracking noise heralded the loss of the other half of the rear doors. The cat could not get its entire head inside the rear of the building quite yet. With the head would come the body and James could soon become kibble.

  “This couldn’t have been any better if I planned it this way,” Jack muttered to himself as he took cover behind the bench and small trees. The monster cat broke through part of the courthouse and left its ass-end hanging out. Whoever it was in the building that the monster wanted, must have done something exceptionally bad to deserve this.

  Jack had been a poor football player, but an excellent left fielder in high school. You needed to be able to throw a ball when you played with Weres. They run really fast. Taking aim, he pulled the pins and threw two stun grenades in succession into the building through the broken lower floor windows and hoped for the best.

  Blam. Blam.

  Any glass that remained on the lower floor shattered outward as both stun grenades exploded. Besides the overpressure effect, there was a two-thousand-degree flash that temporarily blinded the gigantic cat and shattered its eardrums.

  The cat shrieked, and its yowl could be heard for miles as it writhed in pain. Jack took a knee and picked up the bazooka. A two-man military team could generally get off six shots a minute using one of the weapons, but Jack was alone. Carefully he loaded the tube connecting the electric firing switch. A magneto in the trigger handle would ignite the rocket. Each shell was supposed to be filled with high explosive, silver flechettes, rock salt, and wood chips from oak, ash, and thorn trees. Each of the elements could kill a specific type of paranormal, but the rounds were primarily set up for Demons.

  Squinting, Jack tried to see through the tiny primitive scope. Framing the cat in the circle, he fired.

  Whoosh! The bazooka fired tossing Jack backward onto the ground. A huge explosion sounded with parts of courthouse doors flying about.

  There was another shriek as the cat bellowed in pain. Blood and other wiggling bits of creature lay scattered around the front of the building.

  Peering through the smoke, Jack could see it was still moving. He pulled out another shell and began loading the bazooka. If this didn’t kill it, he was in serious trouble.

  Squinting through the optical sight a second time, Jack tried to line up with the main body of the animal.

  Whoosh! The bazooka fired and once more Jack found himself on the ground from the blast. “There has to be a better way to do this.”

  The second explosion performed better than the first one. If the cat weren’t dead, it would be very soon. Climbing to his feet, Jack approached the front of the building.

  Blood and gore dripped everywhere. It was so thick on the stairs Jack didn’t even try to climb them. He circled the building with his shotgun at the ready. The front doors were buckled inward but were still locked shut. Peering through the windows, he could see what was left of the ‘monster.’ It wasn’t coming back from that. He had to be sure though. Carefully, Jack climbed through one of the windows and entered the building.

  Laying his shotgun beside the cat’s head, he delivered a coup de grace, but it wasn’t needed. That last blast had finished the monster off and destroyed the stairs to the second level at the same time. Whoever was up there wasn’t coming down the traditional way for a while.

  Jack pulled out his camera and began documentation. He snapped pictures of the body as well as damage to the courthouse. It was more of a reference point than anything else. The 1959 Magical Security Act provided amnesty for Magical Division officers in the performance of their duties. Neither he nor the FBI would be on the hook fo
r the damage.

  “Anybody up there?” Jack called out.

  The upper level was in complete silence. James Sprunt couldn’t hear Jack’s voice or question. He was huddled under the Mayor’s desk in a fetal position with both hands over his ears. A brave man he was not.

  “Not my problem anyway,” Jack muttered to himself. The beast of Bladenboro didn’t resemble any Demon in the official Government books or any known paranormal for that matter. There was nothing but speculation as to where it had come from.

  As far as Jack was concerned, he was now the official monster hunter of the United States, and this proved it. Placing the weapons back into his van, he wrote a note as a reminder. More rocket shells were definitely needed.

  The roadblock was in the exact place when Jack motored out of town.

  “What were all those explosions?” Sheriff Singletary asked.

  “Your monster is no longer with us. It was not Demonic, so you should be able to return to the town. There is a bit of damage downtown, but the rest looks OK.” Jack leaned out the window of his van and spoke to the police officers.

  “Really? What’d you hit it with?” The sheriff asked.

  “M20 anti-tank bazooka. Mine is different from the military ones. They’re loaded with salt and silver for paranormals,” Jack replied.

  “The carcass looks to be a regular animal, but I recommend burning it as soon as possible. Other than that, I wish you good luck. Call it in if another one shows up.” Jack smiled to himself. He sounded flippant, but he’d just taken out his first monster and was riding an adrenaline high.

  “You’re not staying to help us?” Sheriff Singletary asked looking shocked.

  “No, sir. I need to call this in, make my report, and move on to the next case. Our country is really big, and there is just little ol’ me to police it. Have a good day, Sheriff.” Jack leaned back inside and put the car in gear. If he was lucky, he could get back to Fayetteville for more coffee and lies.