“God. I know I’m not a damned genius, Fred, but you are just a dumbass.”
That got to him. Fred slammed his fists down on the table and scattered donuts everywhere. “You’re just trying to make me look like an idiot!”
“I’m not trying,” I said. “Fred, that’s how you work a damned job. You get into it and you do it right. You work hard, and you do better.”
“Oh, bullshit!” Fred seethed. “You just want to be my boss!”
“So you call up a goddamned demon?” I demanded. “How petty can you get?”
“I didn’t have to call it up,” Fred spat. He rummaged in his coverall’s pocket and came out with a small leather-bound book. “See there? Ray Shackleford wrote it himself. Some kind of journal. He opened that big damned door to the Outside all those years ago—but what no one realizes is that it’s got a big-ass crack underneath it. And sometimes little things get through. Little things that you can make do things for you if you know how.” He shook the book. “It’s all in here.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, Fred. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?”
“I’ve cleaned up shit my whole damned life!” Fred screamed. His face was red and he was breathing hard. “My job is shit now, but I’m not letting you fuck it up for me, Sid! You got lucky in the shop! And that idiot jock got in the way last night! But now you’re a goddamned dead man!”
And, from somewhere above, there was a brassy, chilling shriek.
My belly turned to jelly. Oh, hell. The little monster was coming.
“I said the words and drew the star and it’s your blood it wants!” Fred screamed. “You’re a dead man, Beauregard!”
And from a ceiling vent the tiny terror exploded. It sailed down onto a tabletop and slammed its claws and its tail down at the same time, stopping it cold. It opened its overlarge jaws, still stained with Don’s blood, and shrieked again.
“Now!” I shouted.
There was the sudden sound of a high-pitched whistle being blown—and four ground vents in a square around the mess hall slammed down and disgorged precisely fifty rats apiece. Justinian’s Legion rushed forward, screaming high-pitched war cries.
Fred looked around, his eyes wide, and stumbled back from the table. He pointed at me and shouted something in a panicked, high-pitched voice—and the tiny terror on the table whirled toward me and flung itself forward, bounding down from the table and rushing across the floor.
I whipped my wrench and a claw hammer out of my tool belt and held my breath, trying to track the thing. It was coming like a fastball. I forced myself to wait for a fraction of a second and then swung the wrench—and connected. The critter let out a shriek of nine parts fury to one part pain, and even so it clawed the wrench out of my hand with terrible ferocity as it went. It flew to one side, hit a chair and knocked it from the table, and tumbled down beneath the table with a squall.
The Legion rushed forward, circling the thing and coming to their feet, shields raised, suddenly presenting a bristling fence of scalpel-sharp…scalpels. And X-acto knives. The critter whirled around, bigger than any three rats but outnumbered and, kept from leaping by the table overhead, let out another scream.
“What the fuck!” screamed Fred. “What the fuck is that?”
“Rattus ex machina,” I snarled. “Give me the book, Fred.”
“Fucking rats,” Fred snarled, drawing a petite revolver from his pocket.
Well. I could have run. But that would have left Justinian and his people alone against a demon summoner, as pathetic as he was, and a monster. They had shown up to fight for me, so I couldn’t do less.
I charged a man with a gun.
Fred shot at me, screaming. I’m not much of a gun guy, but I know that screaming while you shoot isn’t good. He got off three shots as I came toward him. I flung my hammer at him. It whirled through the air and forced him to duck. The handle bounced off his shoulder and he wasted a second screaming, “Ow!” That bought me a few more steps before the next shot, and something hot ripped across my left arm and it went numb. Then I slammed into Fred, lifted him off his feet, God was he heavy, and slammed him into the wall behind him.
The gun didn’t fly out of his hand like it always does in movies. He started to bring it to bear on me, and I had to reach across his body with my right arm and grab his wrist. He didn’t panic or keep pulling the trigger until it was empty, like they always do in movies.
I’m pretty strong for a guy my size, but Fred was bigger and heavier, if not exactly stronger—and he had two functioning arms. He slammed his left fist against my head a few times, but he didn’t know how to punch right—starting with the fact that you don’t punch a guy in the skull if you can avoid it. It took him until the third hit to figure that out, when he started wailing and cursing in pain.
I slammed my head against his chin. He responded by latching onto my ear with his teeth and biting hard.
Let me tell you, that hurts. Even by my standards.
We spun around a few times as I tried to keep the gun pointed away from me. Fred finally bit through and ripped some meat away from me. I screamed, lifted my foot, and stomped hard on the inside of Fred’s knee.
Fred screamed, and we fell.
The gun went off as we hit the ground, and this time, Fred did drop it. It went skittering away.
I started slamming my skull against Fred’s. That’s not a great idea, but I wasn’t giving it everything. I wanted to scare him with the ferocity of it, force him to try to get away. I screamed as hard as I could as I did it, and managed to spatter blood from my mangled ear into one of his eyes.
Fred did one of the only smart things I’d ever seen him do—he got his weight on top of me, despite the attack. He pinned my good arm down with his left forearm, and started punching the left side of my neck with his right hand.
Necks aren’t built to take that kind of thing for long. A couple of hits later, I felt like I’d been kicked in the groin across my whole damned body. I managed to get my shoulder up and to turn a little, and I shrugged the next couple off, but I was failing.
And then there was a trilling, tiny shriek, and Justinian Malleus flung himself forward, leaping up Fred’s planted arm, his X-acto spear held in both hands, and drove it with all the force of his charge into Fred’s neck.
That got him off of me. Fred rolled away screaming, clawing the X-acto knife out of his neck, and batting the white rat away. Justinian flew off and slammed into a table leg, spinning several feet further and laying still.
I.
Hate it.
When.
The big guy.
Hurts.
The little guy.
My vision went red and I kicked Fred’s legs out from under him. He fell. I rolled into a mount as he hit his back, and started slamming punches down at him with my good arm—and I know how to hit. I crushed his nose flat and pounded his head right through his uplifted arms. The hits didn’t hurt him—but the way his head kept hitting the floor beneath him every time a punch came down would scramble his brains pretty quick. My hand took too many hits and went half numb, so I shifted to slamming my elbow onto him until he stopped moving.
Another shriek made me look up to see the critter slamming its way out of the encircling knot of the Legion, bleeding black blood from a dozen fine wounds. It scattered the last few rat legionaries out of the way and rushed toward me across the open floor.
Right into the field of fire of the Legion’s artillery teams.
Three teams of two rats were in position. One rat held a piece of steel pipe on one shoulder, aiming it, while the second rat drew back a nail, an improvised firing pin, that had been fixed to layers of twisted rubber bands. An officer rat with them squeaked, and the miniature gunmen opened fire at the critter.
The little zip guns barked, twenty-twos maybe, and one of them scored a hit on the critter’s hindquarters. It spun the thing partway around, and it let out an unholy squall as it did, its rear legs suddenly going
limp. It rolled across the floor, snapping its jaws in such mindless rage that it bit off its own tongue and sprayed the air around its jaws with a black spray of blood.
I looked around wildly and spotted my claw hammer a few feet away. I seized it in my numbed fingers, whirled around through a hellish pain in my left arm, and brought the thing down on the critter, hard.
There was a crunching, wet, splattery sound.
Then the rat legionaries caught up to it and went to town with their spears.
* * *
Pitt was good to his word. He didn’t tell Earl about what had happened until they were done blowing up an infestation of mirelurks in Lousiana. As a result, the teams and MCB arrived at about the same time.
A big, ugly MCB agent stood at the end of my infirmary bed in a big cheap suit, scowling, while another one took my statement. I scowled back at the ugly one and answered in a calm voice. I told them about Fred and the critter. Fred and the thing’s body had already been taken into custody. I did not tell them about Justinian or his people, because fuck the government.
I’d had a rough day.
Once I was done, the big guy walked up next to the bed and poked my bandaged gunshot wound. I tried not to wince, but clenched my teeth.
“Thirty-two wound,” noted the ugly guy. “Pussy.”
“Don’t you got anything better to do?” I asked him.
“The other pissant janitor,” said the ugly guy, “says there were rats.”
“It’s rural Alabama and we don’t keep cats,” I said. “Duh.”
“Says there was an army of them,” said the ugly guy.
“That guy’s a fuckwit,” I said.
The big ugly guy leaned down, getting too close to my face. “You’re lying.”
You know. Any other day, maybe I would have taken a swing at the guy. I mean, it’s kind of my thing.
But maybe I didn’t have anything to prove to the jerk.
“Can’t really hear you,” I said and closed my eyes. “I’m down to one ear. Shock and blood loss. Whatever, fuck off.”
The MCB Agent, Franks or Hanks or something, made a sound in his chest that sounded like the kind of growl you’d hear from a patch of deep shade somewhere in Africa.
“There a problem here?” asked a new voice from the door.
I opened my eyes. Mister Earl had arrived. Mister Pitt loomed large behind him, splattered in enough sticky gore that I started laughing. It came out sort of jerky and unsteady, and really sounded more like I might have been choking.
Agent Franks held up the little leather-bound book and stared hard at Harbinger. “Fucking Raymond Shackleford’s journal.”
“One of them.” Harbinger stepped forward. He was a man of middle years, not of remarkable size, but balanced and quick-looking. He wore jeans and a leather bomber jacket, and there wasn’t a speck of grime or blood on him. “He had a couple dozen. What, you never found at least five of them, right? Now you’ve got one less to worry about.”
Franks growled again.
“Some idiot stumbled onto it in one of the subbasements,” Earl said. “You’re lucky it was a damned barely literate janitor.” Earl nodded toward me. “My man needs rest. You get his statement?”
Franks said nothing.
“Then I guess I’ll see you later.”
Franks stared at Mister Earl for a moment, and I thought that something might be about to happen. Then Franks grunted at the other agent and lumbered out. He smacked his shoulder against Pitt’s and knocked him aside like a large child. Then he was gone.
Pitt stared after him and muttered, “Slimed you. Take that. Prick.”
Earl waited until Franks had been gone a while and then eyed me. “Talk. Everything.”
I told him.
“Rats,” Harbinger muttered. “Goddamned rats, now.”
Pitt’s shoulders were quivering.
“They won’t cost much and they can earn their keep,” I said. “They just need some startup.”
“Earn their keep? Doing what?” Mister Earl growled.
“Taking care of small problems,” I said. “That thing that killed your trainee? According to that book, one of them comes through every year or two. Mostly they just wander off—but Justinian’s people can shut them down at the source. It’s in a crack in the foundation, by the way. You’d have to dig up the whole place to get to it. I figure if they save one trainee every ten years, you’re coming out at a big profit.”
“For the love of all that’s…” Mister Earl looked like he’d had a long day and wanted to take it out on someone. He whirled on Pitt and said, “This is on you. You do it.”
Pitt blinked. “Do what?”
“Whatever,” Mister Earl growled. “You put this guy on the job. This is your fault. Deal with it.”
And with that he stalked out.
Pitt looked at me and sighed.
“Justinian has a badly broken leg,” I said. “Some of his people got cut up pretty good. They need a vet.”
“The rat…needs a vet,” Pitt said.
“Rats. About twenty.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
I squinted up at him from my hospital bed. “We gonna have a problem now, Pitt?”
Pitt threw up his hands, turned to leave, and said, “For crying out loud.”
I sort of hazed out for a few minutes. Then Miss Holly showed up. She was still in her battle gear and looked great. Then I saw that she was carrying a tray of food and she looked even better.
“Hail the conquering hero,” she said and put the tray down on my lap. “Hey, how come Owen is looking for a vet?”
Cooper is one hell of a Hunter, but this job takes a personal toll on even the best of us. Sometimes a Hunter has to step away from the company for various reasons, but everybody still has to make a living somehow. —A.L.
Darkness Under the Mountain
Mike Kupari
The narrow ribbon of highway cut a straight line through otherwise uninhabited terrain. Rocky desert stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. The rugged, uneven terrain was broken by steep hills and barren cliffs. My nose was clogged with fine, talcum-powderlike dust even though the road was paved. The sights and smells brought back memories. It had been a long time since I’d last been to Afghanistan, but at that moment it was like I’d never left.
I sat in the passenger’s seat of a white Toyota Land Cruiser, part of a five-vehicle convoy speeding down the lonely Afghan highway. At the wheel was Cheng, our driver and interpreter. I guess he was fluent in Pashtun and English as well as his native Mandarin. His English was perfect, as a matter of fact, with no hint of an accent. He’d been provided by the Chinese mining company that was paying for this little expedition. He seemed personable enough, but I was positive he was a spy for the Chinese government.
Behind me was my old buddy Barb. His real name was Anthony Vincent Barbarino, and I knew him way back from Naval School, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. We’d come up through Air Force EOD together.
“This is kind of weird,” he said, scanning the horizon through Oakleys.
I nodded in agreement. “It’s weird being back here after so long.”
“For you, maybe. I deployed to the ’Stan again after you went back to your weekend warrior bullshit. I was just here a couple years ago. I meant it’s weird driving down an Afghan highway in an unarmored truck.”
“Yeah.” Both of us were habitually scanning the edges of the road, looking for the telltale signs of hidden IEDs.
Cheng looked over at me briefly, the horizon reflected in his mirrored aviator sunglasses. “Mr. Cooper, I assure you this road is quite safe. We haven’t had any problems with terrorists in almost a year.”
We were in a remote part of Afghanistan that had been quiet throughout most of the war. The road we were on had been originally paved by the International Security Assistance Force, paid for mostly by American tax dollars, but now was maintained by the Chinese. The region was rich in mineral
s and several Chinese-owned companies were pulling ore out of the ground, following the veins deeper and deeper into the earth.
“It is not dangerous malcontents that you need to be concerned with, Mr. Cooper,” Cheng continued. “There are worse things skulking about.”
“Yeah,” I said hesitantly. Talking to anyone who wasn’t a Hunter or MCB about this sort of thing made me uncomfortable. It was all authorized, of course. The job I’d been hired for was approved by both the State Department and the Monster Control Bureau, but I didn’t know Cheng.
“I was there, too,” Barb said. “It was crazy. Zombies—actual, no shit zombies. Coop’s team and mine were both in this village with an Army platoon and a company of ANA. It was this big operation to clear out the Taliban. There were insurgents and IEDs all over the place.”
“A lot of guys got killed,” I said grimly. “Mostly Afghans, but a few Americans, too. Then shit started to get weird. The next morning the dead insurgents were gone. Most of the villagers were, too. Then this woman in a burka attacks an ANA officer, bites his throat out.”
“She started eating him, right there in the road!” Barb said. “The ANA freaked out and ran. The Army guys shot her to pieces. She didn’t stay down until they hit her in the head.”
“We had been dropped off by a helicopter, and after the Army platoon leader reported what happened, they wouldn’t send another out to get us. We were told to find a defensible position and maintain radio silence until we were contacted. They left us out there for two fucking days while zombies killed off most of the remaining villagers. By nightfall of the second day, the compound we were holed up in was surrounded; there had to be hundreds of them. There were more of them than there were villagers in that town, so it must’ve been more widespread than that.”
“It would seem that you managed to escape intact,” Cheng said. “You were fortunate. I have read reports of this incident. Your government’s attempts to cover it up weren’t as effective as they might think.”
“Yeah, after they got us out they carpet-bombed a few villages. Just leveled them with B-52 strikes. They wouldn’t do that to the Taliban for risk of civilian casualties, but they’d do it to zombies. It was bullshit.”
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