The Monster Hunter Files - eARC

by Larry Correia

  “Don’t,” her dad said, still dragging her along.

  “What did I do?” she demanded when they got into the trailer.

  “I came home, and you weren’t here,” her dad said. He was rubbing his medicine bag, clattering the dice inside.

  “I took some boxes to the recycling pile, and the queen invited me in.”

  “Who?”

  “Our neighbor,” Glad explained. “She said to call her Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “The queen of what?” her dad muttered.

  “The queen of the Enchanted Forest,” Glad shot back. “Isn’t that great? There’s a queen for our new, fancy, enchanted forest!”

  “Now, Glad, calm down,” her dad said. “I know that this isn’t ideal. In fact, I think the dice may have been wrong about this one.” He looked so mournful that Glad bit back her snarky response. “That’s why I was in town so long. I was talking to Mom, looking into some other places. We don’t have a lot of money, but it’s not that bad.”

  He pointed outside the window. One of the tie-dyed curtains was pinned back, and it gave them a nice view of at least six rusted heaps on cinder blocks that used to be cars. Possibly. And an absolute shitload of gnomes.

  “What is with the gnomes?” Glad said, distracted. “I swear, there are like, fifty more since we moved in. One of them was on our lawn. That’s how I met the queen.”

  “Glad, are you listening to me?” her dad demanded. “Your mom is looking for something else for us. A realtor friend said that there’s a wild space called Natchy Bottom—”

  Glad snickered, but she didn’t take her eyes off the gnomes across the way. She was almost certain one of them was looking back at her. It had binoculars.

  “Natchy Bottom,” her dad said, in full teacher mode, “is a hotbed of urban legends, but very disturbing ones. Disappearances, violence, it’s most likely a hiding place for some sort of drug ring.”

  “And it’s right outside the Enchanted Forest?” she asked, dragging her attention away from the gnome, which hadn’t moved.

  Because lawn gnomes did not move. They were not squishy and warm, and they did. Not. Move.

  “Yes,” her dad said. “So, let’s pull those boxes out of the recycling, and just stack them over there.” He pointed to the corner of the room where any normal person would put a TV. “I don’t want to pack again just yet—we need to start on your lessons—but as soon as your mom can find something, we will.”

  “But I like the queen,” Glad said.

  “You like being given processed sugar and watching TV,” her dad said with a frown.

  “Whatever happened to peace and brotherly love?” she said. “And trust? And treating me like an equal?”

  “That ended when you almost killed someone.”

  Glad went to her room. She had nothing else to say to that. Her dad knew her arguments, and she knew his.

  But they didn’t reckon on the queen.

  Glad started lessons with her dad, where they found that if they stuck to the curriculum he’d ordered, they didn’t argue. After school hours, Glad was supposed to practice her clarinet and then use a YouTube tutorial to learn to knit, which the curriculum said promoted concentration and small motor skills.

  But promptly each day at five p.m., Elmo knocked on their door and asked if Glad could visit the queen. It turned out that he worked for her or was some kind of relative. He’d seemed shocked at the very idea that that he was her son, which Glad’s dad had first asked.

  “That would be presumptin’,” he’d said. “But she done take a fancy to your gal, and she wants her to come watch her shows.”

  “I could take my knitting,” Glad had said, holding up the mess of wool and bamboo needles.

  “Her Majesty useta crotchit,” Elmo said. “Mebbe she could teach ya.”

  “Crochet is good for your hands, too,” Glad had said hopefully.

  But her dad had said no, and shut the door on Elmo’s surprised face. But the mulleted hick would not be deterred, and so he appeared the next day, and the next. Then a woman with a massive ball of heavily backcombed and sprayed hair, wearing extremely tight jeans and an extremely cropped top had come by. She’d dropped off cookies and said it was a real shame that Glad couldn’t visit that nice lady next door.

  “Yew prolly remind her of her girl, Tanya,” the woman said. “She done run off with some hunters.”

  “Oh.” Glad said, blinking at this.

  “I’m so sorry,” her dad said stiffly, holding the plate of cookies as though they were a bomb. The plate looked none too clean, but Glad had to admit that the cookies smelled amazing.

  “She’ll come home one a these years,” the woman said comfortably. “Tanya were wild, but she done knew her place.” She nodded as though that meant something. “Her Majesty like to have a gal around, remind her a Tanya. She weren’t black or nuthin’, but she had that sassy look yew do,” she told Glad.

  “I’m biracial,” Glad said. “My mom is white.”

  “Good for her,” the woman said, oblivious to any insult. “Anywhoo, it ain’t nice to tell the queen ‘no.’” And she left.

  “This is freaking me out,” Glad said. “Slightly.”

  “Me too,” her dad admitted. “I’m gunna—going to—call your mother and see if she’s found anything.”

  Glad went back to her knitting, but she kept lifting the corner of the curtain behind the couch to peer at the queen’s trailer. There were a couple of old dogs sleeping on the couch on the porch, but other than that, nothing was moving.

  Nope. The gnomes. The gnomes were moving.

  There hadn’t been gnomes there the last time she’d looked, and now there were three. One of the dogs kept lifting its head and growling.

  “Dad,” Glad called.

  “Shh, honey, just a minute,” he said, holding the phone away from his mouth. He plugged his other ear. “Uh-huh, Uh-huh…right this minute?”

  “Dad!”

  “Glad, I’m on the phone!”

  But then he ended the call and grabbed his wallet and keys. “Come on,” he said. “There’s an apartment in town in our price range, but someone else is looking at it, so we need to go right now.”

  “Dad, the queen really hates gnomes, and there’s a bunch in her yard,” Glad said, putting on her shoes. “We should move them.”

  “Glad, we don’t have time to do that,” her father said. “This thing with the gnomes is even more reason to move!”

  “Because they’re freaky?”

  “Because you’re freaking out about them,” her dad said.

  But as they stepped down off the porch, even he paused. It was hard to deny that there was something going on. There were dozens of gnomes around every trailer. Three stood between Glad and her dad and their car.

  “It’s probably just a practical joke,” her dad said in a whisper.

  “Who would do this?” Glad demanded. “I’m the only kid living here! And the queen hates them: so who would risk her wrath by doing this?”

  “I don’t know, but we definitely need to get that apartment,” her dad said. “Come on.”

  “No,” Glad said, to her surprise and her father’s. “I’m going to get our boxes and get rid of them.” Her voice came out very shrill. “I want them to go away.”

  “Well, maybe later—” he began.

  Elmo came slamming out of another trailer, saw the gnomes, swore, and ran for the queen’s trailer. Glad bolted past her father after him. When she was through the screen door, she turned and made a shooing motion at her dad. He sighed, but got into the station wagon and left. Apparently his need to get them into a decent apartment was greater than his need to keep Glad from collecting gnomes and probably bingeing on Twinkies while she did it.

  When she turned around, she saw Elmo and the queen staring at her. The man was goggling, but the queen was giving her a narrow-eyed look, sizing her up.

  “What the hell is with all the gnomes?” Glad demanded.

 
“Yew just run on home, girlie,” Elmo said. “I got this.”

  “No,” Glad said. “They’re watching me, and I don’t like it!”

  “That’s some imagina—” he began, but the queen cut him off with a gesture.

  “What if I tole you them things is alive?” she said.

  “I would totally, one hundred percent believe you,” Glad told her.

  “Why?”

  “Because my teacher was a werewolf, and no one believed me,” Glad told the fat woman. She hesitated. “And I can’t stop thinking about the one I tried to put in your yard,” she admitted finally. “It was alive,” she finished in a whisper.

  “Them gnomes been gunnin’ for my land,” the queen said. “Since they hear I’m on gubmint pay and ain’t doin’ magic no more.”

  “It ain’t them B’ham gnomes,” Elmo said. “That’s a mercy. These’re fresh off the boat, lookin’ for turf. I’ma handle it fine mah ownself.”

  “Um, what?” That did take Glad a minute.

  “I hurt ma back,” the queen went on, ignoring Elmo to speak directly to Glad. “The gubmint done put me on the disability, but I cain’t do no more spells.” She said this all slowly, as though it would make more sense that way. “Them gnomes tryna take over.”

  “So the gnomes are alive?” Glad said, just to make sure they were on the same page.

  “Yep.”

  “And you…used to do magic?”

  “Still do,” the queen said, lowering her voice. “Just to keep mah hand in. Just don’t tell the gubmint.”

  Glad locked her lips and threw away the key, but she still looked at Elmo for an explanation.

  “This here’s Queen Ilrondelia of the Elves,” he said with pride. “I know yew wasn’t proper innerduced.”

  It was then that Glad’s brain registered what her eyes had been seeing since day one: the ears. The queen’s hair was always wound around pink curlers, which made it hard to miss her ears, which were very, very pointed. So were Elmo’s. In fact, they stuck up on each side of his trucker hat, like goal posts.

  “Oh. My.” Glad breathed in and out loudly. “You’re elves.”

  “That’s what we been sayin’,” the queen said. “Now, Elmo here’s ma best diviner, what with Tanya gone off with the Hunters.”

  Elmo rolled his eyes.

  “Too many of the young’uns done up and left the Enchanted Forest,” the queen said mournfully. “So it were real nice of y’all to move in and sit with a lonely young queen like myself.” She sat up in her recliner, and suddenly, even without the ears, Glad could see that this was no ordinary woman. The curlers might as well have been a crown. “Now. Yew gunna help?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Glad said. “I know just what to do.” She looked at Elmo. “Have you ever played the board game Mousetrap?”

  Elmo’s eyes gleamed. “Sure have.”

  “We’re going to need a lot of boxes, rope, and sticks,” she said. Then she looked at the queen. “Your Majesty? Do you have…could you do a spell that would make us invisible?”

  The queen threw back her head and laughed. “I like yew, I knew I did!”

  Elmo and Glad got to work. They weren’t invisible, but thanks to the queen, the eyes of the gnomes slid right past them, giving them time to set traps.

  They were stupid, really: boxes propped up with sticks, with a twine tripwire to drop the whole thing. Glad had gotten an A on her assignment to build a better mousetrap in sophomore science, so really, Mr. Stinson had no one to blame but himself for what had happened.

  Of course, stealing her band teacher’s keys so that she could sneak into the school and set the trap for Mr. Stinson had been a criminal act. And the box she’d rigged to trap him catching fire on a Bunsen burner and torching the science wing had been impossible to predict.

  “What do the gnomes want?” Glad asked. “Beside the Enchanted Forest, I mean?”

  “Beer,” Elmo said with a shrug. “Cigarettes. Same as us.”

  Glad was slightly taken aback. She was having a hard time, as they strung wires and propped up boxes around the oblivious gnomes, with reconciling the elves of the Lord of the Rings movies with the actuality around her. She was willing to accept that they were real, that the gnomes were alive, that her teacher was a werewolf…but still…They wanted beer and cigarettes?

  “Ooookay,” Glad said. “Well, we’re going to need some. For bait.”

  “Done and done,” Elmo told her.

  They baited the traps with beer, cigarettes, and cookies. It turned out that the woman with the big pouf of hair was also an elf named Lara. She provided cookies. And skepticism.

  “Ain’t they gunna know we’s tryna get rid of ’em?” she asked as she put another plate of cookies next to a pack of cigarettes and then backed out from under the hanging laundry basket. “They ain’t that dumb.”

  “These are tomte, right?” Glad asked.

  Elmo nodded.

  “Well, then, they should go for it,” she said. “My dad’s been teaching me all about European folktales. The tomte guarded farms, but only if you laid out food for them. They’ll see this and think that it’s their just desserts. Literally. In fact, they’ll probably be excited. If Neil Gaiman can be believed—and if he can’t, what’s the world coming to?—then they were brought to this country by believers from Europe, and then abandoned.”

  Lara just looked blank, but Elmo nodded.

  “These’re pure Norroway tomte,” he said to the woman. “They’ll think they done gone to Valhalla. Not like them city gnomes.” He slapped Glad on the back and nearly sent her face first into a pile of cookies laid over a noose.

  With everything in place, they went back to the queen’s trailer and she took the spell off them. She looked pale and sweaty from the effort, and Elmo called for pizzas while Glad got Her Majesty a cold Coke and some Ho Hos.

  A few minutes later, there was an almighty clatter and the sound of profanity. Glad grinned.

  “Well, ain’t yew just my bright gal,” the queen said, and gave her a Ho Ho.

  * * *

  A battered Volvo station wagon pulled up in front of the MHI headquarters. Two people got out, seemingly oblivious to the weapons that had just been pointed at them. There was a guy in his early forties with graying dreadlocks and a teenage girl with a crinkly cloud of dark hair and gray eyes. She waved cheerfully at the gates as the man opened the back of the station wagon and began unloading cardboard boxes with holes punched in them.

  “What the hell are you people doing?” Owen demanded, jogging over.

  “Z, I’ll take this,” Holly said, putting a hand on her arm. “Honey,” she said to the girl, “who are you and what is this?”

  “Oh, hi!” The girl stuck out her hand and Holly shook it, bemused. “This is my dad, Winston, and I’m Glad.” She kicked one of the boxes, and a stream of profanity issued from the holes. “And these are the gnomes that just tried to invade our turf.”

  More profanity while Owen stared at the dozen or so boxes that the guy was still pulling out of the Volvo.

  “The queen told us to leave them with you,” the girl said. “She’s pretty pissed. If you have any more questions, though, you’ll have to come to the Enchanted Forest.

  “You can ask for Sir Galadriel, the Knight Protector of the Enchanted Forest.” The girl beamed. “That’s me.”

  The British Supernatural Service is as tight-lipped as our MCB, so this one is difficult to verify, but during the Cold War years we know they messed around with a lot of unearthly forces. That always comes back to bite you eventually. —A.L.

  The Manticore Sanction

  John C. Wright

  When Her Majesty’s government decreed that he must murder his fiancée before New Year’s, Madhouse Harry thought it only reasonable.

  Sir Henry “Madhouse” Adrian Scrope, 24th Lord Scrope of Wormsley Hall, had served the Crown loyally for thirty years in hidden wars against unearthly horrors. MI4 was Manticore—Metahuman, Abnormal, o
r NonTerrestrial Invasive Cryptozoological Organism Research and Extermination—and it did not officially exist. In Serbia, he had lost his right arm, not to mention the Enfield revolver his grandfather had carried in the Boer War, in the teeth of a creature that also did not officially exist: an invulnerable lioness the size of a lorry. He still missed that piece.

  Scrope knew the risks. The girl he loved did not; she must never know. It was for that reason he intended never to carry through with the engagement. He had spent fifteen minutes, no longer, raging and refusing. Less than that would have seemed suspicious.

  His partner, William Fox, now stood next to him in the lift. Both wore sunglasses and overcoats. There the similarity ended. Fox had fifty pounds more muscle than Scrope, was five inches taller and five years younger. And he had both hands.

  One of those hands was in his overcoat pocket, holding the pistol that would put a bullet through Scrope’s back at the first sign of hesitation.

  As they were passing the tenth floor, Fox drew out Scrope’s Webley-Fosbery and passed it to him.

  “MI18 delivered the cartridge,” he said. “Only one shot. The target is drugged. Just put the barrel to her head.”

  MI18 was Special Weapons. They did not design silver hollowpoint Teflon bullets filled with holy water, or their other contrivances, just to kill normal humans.

  Scrope held up the pistol and worked the action lever awkwardly with his one hand. The cylinder-barrel section broke and tilted forward, exposing the chamber. He proffered it to his partner. “You mind?”

  “Not at all,” said Fox.

  Fox took a single cartridge out of a cedar box incised with Viking runes; it was a coppery-greenish segmented shape more like a stubby worm than like a bullet.

  “Hard business, this,” muttered Fox.

  It was a sign of weakness.

  “It’s the business we are in,” said Scrope calmly, putting his hand casually in his overcoat pocket. “No hard feelings. We can go for drinks after.”

  There were three things hidden inside his coat pocket lining. The first was his cellphone.