The trucks were peeling off, forming a circle, nearly bumper to bumper, but angled so that none of us were blocked in. The mounted guns were turned outward. The interior of the circle would provide us cover and room to work.
“Button up. Keep those doors closed. From here on make sure you’re wearing your radiation badges. Keep the alpha detectors on at all times. Wait for the signal before getting out.”
The delay was so our smart folks could check for radioactivity. Cody had been beating us over the head for months about how to avoid getting irradiated. When you open a room, don’t go charging in. Try not to disturb something that’s been sitting covered for years, and if you do, don’t breath the dust. So on and so forth. Enough time had passed that we should be fine, but we weren’t taking anything for granted. It was possible there could still be deadly pockets. We’d brought full environmental suits, but hoped we wouldn’t need them. Same with our portable decontamination showers here, and we had much nicer ones ready back at the Bride.
I reached up touched the dosimeter clipped to my vest to make sure it was still there. It had alarms preset for certain levels and cumulative exposure. This little thing was going to be my best friend. I really didn’t want to survive wave after wave of awful monsters to go home and die of cancer.
We sat there for a moment, engines still running. I watched out the window. The only thing I could see moving was the tattered remains of something Skippy had bombed whipping in the wind. It looked like sack cloth over a cow sized rib cage.
“Readings are clear. Move out.”
I swung open my heavy door. “Welcome to the City of Monsters.”
The instant my boots hit the rocks, black lightning flashed.
* * *
From high atop the gleaming silver pyramid, the Warlord looked down upon his army, and was pleased. They were crowded between the great obelisks, awaiting the word of their god. When the command came, they would go forth and drown the world in the blood of men. The Children of the Mountain were eager.
The Warlord lifted his four arms and began a chant.
Great Asag had carved them from the mountain and given them life. They lived to kill. They killed to live.
A hundred thousand voices took up the chant.
Their anger was growing. The Warlord fed on their rage. For too long the Children of the Mountain had hid in the depths. Their god had gone to defeat the champion of man once and for all, and once Nimrod fell, the blood would flow. There were seven other cities with seven other armies with seven other warlords, all like this one, beneath every corner of the land, ready. There waited five other cities beneath five oceans, their armies made of a different species, but united in purpose. At the killing time they would hunt the men in their fields and in their homes. They would dig beneath their castles and cause their walls to crumble. In the end there would be no place to hide. The Children of Adam would be slaughtered by the Children of the Mountain.
They killed to live. They lived to kill.
They would slaughter and take what was theirs. They would consume all flesh and live beneath their sun. Once every man was gone then the Children would destroy each other until none remained, because Great Asag willed it.
A mighty flash of lightning, black as the deep earth, tore across the top of the world.
It was over. A champion had fallen.
Rain began to fall. The Warlord raised his arms, and watched as his white flesh was speckled with red. His four outstretched hands were quickly covered in blood.
It was a sign, but not the one they had been waiting for. Their god had been defeated. Man had won. The Warlord screamed. Furious, the Children of the Mountain clawed and rent their own skin, howling their rage up at the sky as the falling blood turned to fire.
In the distance there was a wall of smoke. He returns. Great Asag was not quite dead, but all his Children could feel his weakness, and the Children wept.
Their god had been crippled. Now was not their time. The world beneath the sun would not be theirs today. Great Asag would descend below until he was strong again. Yet it takes a long time for a god to heal. A multitude of threats would come to try and steal his mantle.
The Warlord knew what must be done. Many of the Children would go below, to wait, to breed, to guard the deeps and watch over their lord’s slumber. But for the rest…
As the Warlord slashed his own throat, the Children turned on each other, and the army disintegrated into tearing flesh and breaking bones. If they could not slay man today, then they would slay each other instead, forever cursing this place, and sacrificing their lives to feed their god.
They killed so Asag may live.
* * *
Reality returned with a machine gun’s roar.
My head cleared. I was still standing next to our truck. Except now Milo was shouting something, trying to be heard over the Browning M2 pounding away on the roof of our truck.
“Down! Down! Take cover!”
Something whizzed past my head. Flung rocks smashed into my open door as I took a knee. More of the obsidian creatures we’d seen on the way in had appeared in the ruins of the pyramid. I hadn’t been able to hear them before while we were driving with the bullet proof windows up, but they were a screechy bunch. There was a high-pitched hooting noise as they attacked. Little rocks were coming in straight, while bigger ones were being lobbed on high trajectories like mortar shells. There were so many impacts it was like being in a hail storm.
It took a second for the vision to fade. That memory had been so full of…It was hard to describe…Malice, jealousy, fanaticism…And the feeling was lingering. I wanted to puke.
I knew time compressed whenever I experienced a vision like that. Only a second or two had passed in the real world, but even zoning out that long had nearly gotten my head taken off. “Listen, whoever you are, I know you’re trying to help here, but put the Chosen One magic bullshit on hold until I’m behind cover next time!”
Milo was lying prone on the driver’s side. He shouted at me under the truck, “What?”
“I’m not talking to you,” I said as I leaned around the door and shouldered Cazador. Two hundred yards away, one of the little baboon looking bastards was scurrying across the open toward us. The scope was so clear it was like I could reach out and touch him. I put the cross hairs on its chest and pulled the trigger. With the suppressor attached the rifle made nothing but a whump noise. The creature fell on its face, skidding through the gravel. Immediately, I had to pull back as half a dozen rocks bounced off my armored door. I waited a second, rolled out again, spotted a pair of glowing jade eyes, and snapped off another shot. One of the lights went out and the thing dropped.
That’s what you get for bringing rocks to a gunfight.
But then I had to pull back again as a rock the size of my fist cracked my armored window. Another big one bounced off the open door behind me, hard enough to slam it on the Hunter who was trying to get out.
Enough of this shit. I got on my belly below the door, and started picking off monkey monsters as fast as I could.
Only Earl was even more impatient than I was, because he straight up called for an artillery strike. The 105mm round made an eerie noise as it flew over us. I’d seen it fired, but I had never been near one of the impacts before. It turned out to be a far different experience.
The shell landed on the opposite side of the pyramid, right where a bunch of the creatures were rallying, and obliterated them. One instant they were there, the next they were gone. A plume of dust rose into the air as monster parts came spiraling out of the sky. This island had once seen Tsar Bomba, and this was nothing compared to that, but any mushroom shaped cloud is still pretty damned impressive when you’re right next to it.
A whole bunch of jade eyes turned fearfully toward the explosion. Whatever these things were, they weren’t stupid. They knew when they were outgunned. The panicked hooting must have signaled a retreat, because they turned tail and fled. All of us kept shooting
until they disappeared deeper into the ruins. I hit two more before they got away.
“That’s right! There’s a new sheriff in town!”
In the great monster turf war, mankind had just claimed another block.
Cody came over the radio. “Everybody back inside and button up! Now!”
The howitzer’s explosion had looked neat, but we were downwind. That meant we needed to hide until Cody could make sure we weren’t going to get irradiated by the dust cloud it had stirred up. I would have gotten back into Milo’s truck, but I heard Earl shouting my name. He was gesturing for me to run over. I looked at the approaching cloud, then back at him. Harbinger was scarier. I sprinted over.
“What’s up?”
“Climb in. Hurry.”
I crammed into the back, shoulder to shoulder with some other Hunters. It was really tight. Earl was up front. He looked back as I got in and slammed the door behind me. “We closed? Good.” He was in leader mode. Earl got intense at times like this. “I saw your blank slack jawed expression when we came under attack. What did you see this time?”
He knew me too well. I glanced around to see who else was in the truck. They were mostly strangers. “It can wait.”
“No. It can’t. Talk.”
I tried to keep the Chosen thing to myself. I felt like it either made me a target or it would make some Hunters trust me less. Too many people at MHI knew already. I hated talking about it in front of anybody I didn’t have to. You’d think a guy who’d been keeping his lycanthropy a secret for so long would understand that, but no, Earl had to put the safety of a thousand other Hunters first, and he was right to do so.
“I got a vision of what this place was like a long time ago. Couldn’t tell you when. The things that lived here, from Nikolai’s description it’s the Asakku, or what they’re descended from at least. Asag created them to be his soldiers, and they worshipped him like a god. This was his prepared fallback spot if he was ever defeated, where he could recover, and wait for another chance to rise again. He got hurt badly and fled here.”
“Any clue how Asag lost last time?”
“Rigby and Management were right. The Asakku blamed Nimrod the Hunter, and they just thought he was a mortal man. I didn’t see how he did it, just the aftermath. It’s hard to give too many specifics, because the mind the memory came from was really messed up, and it’s not like it was thinking in clear English, but that’s my take on it.”
When I started talking about visions and alien memories, our Finnish rally car champ just looked at me in the rear view mirror and frowned. But come to think of it, that was the only facial expression I’d ever seen from him.
Earl thought about it as the potentially deadly dust rolled across our windows. “Any actionable intel in your visions? Anything that can help us right now?”
“I can tell you why the island is cursed slash haunted as hell though. It’s because a hundred thousand of those assholes genocided themselves in a mass suicide orgy right where we’re standing.”
I didn’t know the Hunter sitting next to me, but from the accent he was an Australian. “You’re a psychic?”
“Something like that. Long story. Sometimes they give me visions from the past to be helpful.”
“Who’s they?”
“Longer story.”
Earl stopped the perplexed Hunter before he could ask another question. “The Asakku are still down there, what about their capabilities, weaknesses?”
“This mind was so screwed up it was hard to tell. Brutal but smart. They always see red. I’m talking angry and super fanatical. They’ve got a perpetual desire to kill hardwired into them. They’re way weirder to read than a gnome, but not nearly as alien as a Shoggoth memory.”
“Fuck me sideways,” said the Australian. The Finn grunted in agreement.
Cody’s voice came over the radio. “Checking for alpha particles…Radiation levels are elevated, but acceptable. Watch your damned badges.”
“Go tell the elves about this vision in case it helps them tune in their mystical crap. They’re big on the whole dreamer business,” Earl told me, then he keyed his radio. “This is Harbinger. Everyone move out and secure the perimeter.”
I got out, thankfully without any crazy magic lightning brain strokes this time.
On the other side of the circle was the truck we had given the elves. It was easy to spot because it had been spray painted with logos to look like something off of NASCAR. I’m fairly certain they weren’t actually being sponsored by Pizza Hut and Mountain Dew.
Nate Shackleford was their driver. If I thought I’d been screwed by getting stuck on the Bride for the awful trip over, at least I hadn’t been made Speaker to the Elves. Trip was lucky he’d gotten that head injury, because otherwise he would have been partnered with Nate today, because he was actually pretty patient with elves. As a show of respect to the Queen, part of our deal was that MHI’s Liaison to the Elven Nation would be a Shackleford, because by Hunter standards, Shacklefords were royalty. And the Queen appreciated her some royalty.
Nate had matured a lot since I’d first met him. He had still been a kid when his father had gone off the deep end. As the youngest, he’d been in the shadow of his badass older brother, Ray, and after his death when Julie had stepped up to fulfill Ray’s duties, Nate had kind of just been swept along. He wasn’t a natural born leader like his siblings were, but he had made such a heroic stand at the Last Dragon that it had restored a lot of the faith in the Shackleford family name with our allied companies. I really liked my brother in law.
He saw me coming. “Hey, Z. Julie told me about your dad. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay.” As long as I focused on work, I didn’t have time to be sad.
“She said that you wouldn’t talk about it much with her either. She’s worried about you. If you need somebody to talk to…” The Shackleford kids knew a thing or two about losing parents, only their story was far more tragic. “Or if there’s anything I can do, just ask. We’re family.”
I changed the subject. “How’s elf sitting going?”
Nate grimaced. “They smoke more than Earl. And if I have to listen to any more banjo music I swear I’m going to eat my Glock.”
“Don’t talk like that. This island is doom and gloom like Natchy Bottom. It’ll get in your head and find a way to make bad things come true.”
“Banjo music, Z. Bad things have already come true. Luckily, our elves will ward off curses and insanity, unless their music gets us first.”
“It can’t be that bad—” And then an elf got out of the back of the truck carrying an actual banjo. “Whoa…I thought you were just talking like on the radio or something.”
“Oh no. I could tune that out. The elf queen decided this much powerful magic means we needed a bard to chronicle our exploits.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I wish.” Nate turned around and pointed at the debarking elves. “You know Tanya. That’s Eugene with the bow, Elmo’s their senior tracker wizard whatever, and the Deliverance looking one with the banjo is Gilroy. Gilroy Starfire. Again. Not making that up.” More elves were piling out of the truck. You could really cram them in there like a clown car. “That’s Clete, Boomer, Hershel, and the slow one they just call Frog.”
“No shit.” Honestly I couldn’t tell them apart. All of the humans around us were either in body armor or winter gear. The elves were in mismatched deer hunting camouflage. Except for Tanya, who had managed to score a pink camo parka and fur boots. The one I thought was Elmo was drinking a Bud Light. Two of the elves had bumped heads getting out, they exchanged insults, then began shoving each other. It quickly turned into a wrestling match. This was supposed to be our only defense against the island’s invisible ghostly threats.
“We’re so going to die,” Nate muttered.
“Get your skinny asses off the ground!” Tanya shouted. “Rolling around like a bunch of morons! Y’all are embarrassing me in front of my fellow
Monster Hunters.” She went over and kicked the top elf in the butt with her fuzzy boot with remarkable force. That knocked him on his side. Elmo laughed at him, but then she smacked the beer out of his hand. “Get your shit together and look professional!”
“Maybe not,” I whispered back to Nate. It was possible there was some steel left in the elven royal line after all.
Elmo looked down upon his spilled beer with great sadness. “Yes, your highness.” But then he got into the spirit. “Y’all heard the princess. Start marking some spells! I don’t wanna see no spirits or haints floating ’round these here round ears!”
The elves moved out. They had guns too, but if this went according to plan, their best weapon would be in the form of chalk, paint, and Sharpies. We had lots of people who could shoot, but none of us humans could do what these elves could—supposedly—do.
“Sorry about that,” Tanya said to us. “My kin get a little rambunctious. They don’t get out of the Enchanted Forest.”
“I can see that.”
“Ed!” Tanya shrieked, as Edward the Orc walked past me. I hadn’t even heard him coming, but Ed was basically a ninja, so that wasn’t surprising. She ran over, jumped up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and her legs around his torso, and squealed, “My bodyguard has arrived!”
Poor Ed just stood there awkwardly with the elf girl on him. You couldn’t read his expression with the mask and goggles, but his composure said Beats me, I just work here. Orcs weren’t huge on public displays of affection.
Tanya let go and dropped off of him. “Why ain’t you wearing the good luck charm I gave you?”
Ed had once defiantly faced down a dragon solo, but he humored his girlfriend, reached into his parka, pulled out a badly crumpled cowboy hat, and put it on top of his ski mask. Backwards.
“That look actually works for you, Ed,” I told him. It was kind of odd. The cold, oppressive feeling of the island was dragging most of us down, but Tanya was positively glowing. “Are your people ready for this?”
“Better than okay!” The princess gave me an enthusiastic grin. She was having a blast. “You don’t get it. My mama has kept us hid for a long time. For our own safety, looking out for us, I know, but my people need adventuring. It’s in our blood. For y’all this is a job. For us, it’s the future. We pull this off, all the elves in all the trailer parks in the world gonna be talking ’bout what we did here. No more sitting on their fat asses collecting welfare. Imagine elves getting out in the big world! Imagine more elves getting jobs at MHI!”
Monster Hunter Siege-eARC Page 26
