“Dad?” Kyle asked, shocked.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Jared asked.
“It’s a long story, boys,” Wiley said tiredly. “And you have to get down there and finish what we started.”
“I don’t know,” Jared said uneasily. “Even with all this firepower, there must be nearly a hundred of those…things down there.”
“Hobgoblins,” Wiley clarified. “They’re called hobgoblins—mean as piss and twice as rank.”
“Whatever you call them,” Jared continued, “I don’t see how we can get them all.”
Kyle looked at the ammo box Wiley had tossed to him and eyed the gas containers on the trailer.
“Did we bring all those Styrofoam plates?” he asked, looking at his brother.
“Yeah,” Jared replied. “Three big bags of them.”
“Then I have an idea.” Kyle’s grin was malevolent.
Wiley’s eyebrow went up, paired with an appreciative grin. “You got a mean streak, son,” he said.
“Gee,” Kyle said sweetly, locking eyes with Wiley. “I wonder where I got that from.”
He strode over to the back seat of the ATV and rummaged through a duffle bag filled with their camp gear. “Now help me put these plates to good use.”
* * *
The drums had settled into a steady throb that echoed up the spiraling passage. The seven bodies—two human and five hobgoblin—had been right where the brothers were forced to leave them.
Now at the bottom of the passage, Kyle peered over the lip, his heart pounding in his chest. Little had changed from the last time he looked at the hobgoblin party. The bulk of them were grouped up between the lip and the altar, stomping and grunting to the drums. The only real difference was that a handful of what Kyle guessed were females surrounded the obviously sated spider, rubbing red paint over its legs. Cindy’s shriveled corpse, still prone on the altar, looked like a gray raisin, her limbs twisted at awkward angles.
Kyle adjusted the wheel chock he’d set against the rocky lip, lining it up between the passage and the altar. He crawled back and rose to a kneeling position just inside the passage. He took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles. The trick to skeet shooting was to let the barrel lead the target and fire.
With a glance over his shoulder, he gave a thumb’s-up and waited.
Further into the passage, Jared kicked the starter and fired up the dirt bike. He revved the engine once, dropped the clutch, and raced down the passage.
Kyle rose, took a step to the side, and moved to the lip. He didn’t see a sea of startled pig-faces look up at the commotion. He didn’t see the spider kick the females aside and move toward the altar. All he saw was the shot he was about to make. He visualized it. His finger drifted towards the trigger of the heavy weapon in his hands. He’d never even fired the thing before. And if this didn’t work, he and his brother were dead meat.
Jared shifted into second gear, goosed the throttle, and pushed off the back of the bike as hard as he could, making sure to clear the gas cans strapped on either side of the rear seat.
The hobgoblins squealed and howled their rage.
The spider hissed.
The bike hit the chock hard, bouncing the front tire up and then the rear one, sending it into a forward tumble as it sailed through the air.
Jared pulled the trigger on his AA-12 and held it down.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The white phosphorous rounds Wiley had given him hammered into the dirt bike, burning everything it touched at five thousand degrees. The already tumbling motorcycle twisted in midair.
Whoofff! The gas tank detonated, sending flaming gasoline in a spiral pattern.
Boom!—WHOOFFFF!!
All four gas cans detonated simultaneously. The Styrofoam-gasoline mixture inside blossomed into a sticky cloud raining liquid hell upon the shrieking pig-faces, burning a swath thirty feet wide across living flesh.
The dirt bike, a spinning ball of flame, slammed into the giant spider, caving in most of its thorax as it sent the ruined creature hurtling into the rock wall. The big hobgoblin dove to the side, flames licking along its armor.
Kyle drifted the barrel down into the line of drummers and let his own twenty-round drum of Willie Petes beat out its own rhythm. The drummers burned as they scattered.
Jared grabbed his father’s FN and stepped up behind his brother, and he held his fire.
The last drummer went down screaming when the AA-12 clicked empty.
“SWITCH!” Kyle shouted and stepped back.
Jared stepped up to the lip, staring at a pit of flaming carnage. The incinerated heap of the spider twitched, and most of the hobgoblins in the middle writhed within the flames of a now smoke-filled cavern. Through the haze swam a mob of hateful goblin faces, all turned up toward the brothers.
Jared pictured the dead faces of his friends and did what came naturally. He leveled the FN at a crowd of pig-faces on the left as they surged forward.
THUD!-THUD!-THUD!-THUD!-THUD!
The HE rounds Wiley had provided ripped the hobgoblins to pieces. Great chunks of meat blew out their backs. Limbs tore free, driving the mob back.
The FN clicked empty.
“SWITCH!” he shouted and stepped backward.
Kyle stepped in, leveled the AA-12, and opened up. White hot death poured into the hobgoblins who now scrambled over one another to find cover. “On the right!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Jared stepped forward, pulled the bolt back, and poured a thirty-round magazine into the handful of pig-faces moving towards him. He spotted the bruiser stepping out of the cave, its fur singed. The thing bellowed something in its own language and the hobgoblins around the boys began to retreat. Twenty or thirty remained, scrambling back as smoke burned the boys’ eyes and lungs.
“Fall back!” Jared yelled.
One at a time, they reloaded with the last magazine and drum as they backed out of the passage, straining to hear any sort of pursuit as they moved.
A couple minutes later, the big one roared, and a stampede of little feet echoed around the passage.
“Here they come!” Kyle shouted.
A mob of small, raging hobgoblins raced around the corner, all brandishing their ill-crafted weapons. At twenty feet the boys opened up to the left and right as they’d agreed. In perfect syncopation, the brothers mowed down the onslaught—one-shot-one-kill-one-shot-one-kill. The hobgoblins scrambled over their fallen comrades, and then the big one came into view. Finally, Kyle blasted the face off the last of the small ones as Jared took aim at the bruiser. He pulled the trigger.
Click!
The bruiser smiled.
Kyle raised the shotgun and aimed. It was too far of a shot to guarantee a kill, but the bruiser got the message. He scowled and disappeared around the curve.
“Keep going,” Kyle hissed.
As they moved backwards, Jared asked, “Why didn’t you take the shot?”
“Because there isn’t one. I’m empty.”
“What about the pistol?” Jared accused.
Kyle looked embarrassed, realizing that it was holstered at his hip. Then he frowned. “What about yours?”
Jared got a sheepish grin. “Guess we’re a little new at this, huh?”
“I guess so.”
Making sure the bruiser didn’t follow, they emerged from the passage to find Wiley on the phone. “Yeah, boss. It’s time you met ’em.…Vegas, huh? I thought she might be coming to see you…Alright. I’ll see you soon.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket and smiled at them.
“Good news, boys. I just—”
A massive shadow dropped from above and landed in front of Wiley.
The giant hobgoblin roared and swung its mattock, a hammering blow that caught Wiley in the chest and sent the old man sailing into the darkness. The brothers heard the old man slam into a canyon wall and drop.
The bruiser spun, raising the mattock above his head.
The Schaeffer
brothers moved in unison. The Colts slipped free of their holsters, the hammers clicked back, and a thundering hailstorm of .45 ACP blasted into the giant hobgoblin. A few rounds ricocheted off its armor, but most found gaps at elbow and neck.
Finally, Jared aimed at its forehead and put his last round dead between the bruiser’s eyes.
The mattock dropped to the ground and the monster tumbled backward with a tremendous thud.
Something moved in the darkness. Kyle dove for the baseball bats they’d left on the ground and came up in a fighting stance.
“Easy, Kyle,” Wiley said, wheezing. “Oh, shit that hurts.”
“You alright?” Jared asked.
“Some broken ribs, to be sure, and one hell of a lump on my skull, but I’ve had worse.” Wiley stepped up and gave the boys an appraising eye. “You boys are gonna do just fine.”
* * *
Jared and Kyle sat on their living room sofa, worried looks on their faces as their mother paced back and forth like an angry tigress. They’d just told her the entire story. Wiley sat on one arm, wincing with every breath and picking at the medical tape wrapped around his chest.
“How could you?” she screamed at all three of them. “Especially you, Wiley, after what happened to Jimmy!”
“That wasn’t your fault, Heather,” Wiley said gently. “You couldn’t help being pregnant any more than either of you could help getting into this business.” He took off his hat and dropped it on the coffee table. “We are what we are, and sometimes the choice is taken away from us.”
“I never said I thought it was my fault.”
“Yeah, you did, Heather. Not in so many words, but it was always there—the guilt you felt because you weren’t there to watch Jimmy’s back.”
“I don’t know…” She stopped pacing. “Maybe…”
“Heather, I know you may hate me for all of this, but this was fate. You know how it works in this business. Your sons are naturals. Just like you and Jimmy were.” She got an agonized look on her face. “Together, there wasn’t a thing you two couldn’t handle. You were unstoppable. It’s the same for your sons. They were born for this. And born to avenge their father.”
“Boys,” Wiley turning to them, “there’s a man outside who I think you should meet. Feds are gonna be here in a while, and he can help you get through the debriefing.”
“Debriefing?” Jared asked.
“Just go talk to him. Your mother and I need to talk.”
Kyle nodded and got up off the sofa. His brother followed him out into the driveway where a lean, average-sized man with sandy-blond hair leaned against Wiley’s jeep, smoking a cigarette. Putting the cigarette out under a dusty boot, he stepped up to them with a slight smile.
“Evening, boys. Or should I say good morning?” He held out a hand. “I’m Earl Harbinger, and I knew your father.” He shook hands with the speechless brothers, and then his ears perked up. Turning, he stared down the long dusty drive that led from town to the Schaeffer house. Two black sedans were headed their way, brimming with spooks.
“Listen to me very carefully because I don’t have much time, and you need to get this right. Those agents are gonna grill you pretty hard about what happened in the desert today. Tell them the whole story, especially about how many of those things you killed. Stay cool and swear to keep quiet about what you saw.” He reached into his brown leather jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Pulling one out, he said, “Oh, one other thing.” Producing a Zippo from his pocket, he lit the cigarette. “They’ll probably ask what you would have done if you ran into humans rather than monsters. “Just tell them you didn’t think that far ahead. Remind them that you’re just kids, after all.”
He turned and walked off towards the open desert, a trail of smoke drifting around his head. Harbinger paused for a moment and turned, giving them a wolfish grin, “And keep in mind, after today, you boys are gonna be rich.”
Since the secret government program Which Shall Not Be Named has been “under new management,” MHI has teamed up with them a few times. These events take place after Operation Siege. —A.L.
The Troll Factory
Alex Shvartsman
When the zombies rushed our position, I froze up.
They moved fast—nothing like the shambling dim-witted creatures from the movies—a half dozen of them coming straight for us. My fellow Newbies didn’t hesitate. To my left, Carl fired methodically, a lit cigarette dangling forgotten from the corner of his mouth. Paula whooped and cackled as she let loose with her 12-gauge shotgun. I was certain others were in their element too, having finally been given a chance to take down real baddies after months of training. Me, I stared at the ugly critters through the scope of my rifle and couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.
It’s not that I had any qualms about eradicating the unnatural things. Far from it. I’d joined Monster Hunter International to do just that. But when push came to shove, this wasn’t like video games or shooting ranges. All I could think of was the night my life got ruined.
We had just gotten married, Audrey and me, and were honeymooning in Florida. The newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Mike Cantor enjoyed a few days of hiking and camping in the Apalachicola National Forest. We were setting up a tent for the night when a half-man half-spider thing attacked us.
To this day, I only recall flashes. The monster’s sharp claws ripping into my flesh, its fangs dripping with venom…I got between it and Audrey and fought back, armed with nothing but a small hatchet and aluminum tent pole. I screamed for her to run, but she stayed and fought by my side until it pinned me with its legs and bit, its venom burning like molten led as it paralyzed my body.
I woke up in a hospital. I was lucky, I was told. The team of Hunters had pursued this rare Philippine spider demon for days, and caught up to it before it finished me off. Audrey…wasn’t so lucky. We had to have a closed-casket funeral.
It took me weeks to recover, physically. Mentally was another story. At the hospital they had told me I had some form of PTSD. Not a night went by without me waking up in cold sweat from nightmares featuring giant spiders.
The two remaining zombies were almost upon us. I could see the rotting flesh of their faces, could smell the stench of their decay. Still, I was unable to shoot. I’d joined MHI because I couldn’t go back to my past life, the life where everything reminded me of the happiness I could have had with Audrey. Instead, I figured I’d dedicate myself to eradicating demons, vampires, and zombies so other couples could go on honeymoons and live to tell the tale. The world around me felt like it was in slow motion as I willed my finger to pull the trigger. It wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, the hairy, disgusting spiders ran rampant through my mind.
A blast from Paula’s shotgun blew a zombie’s head like a watermelon. Carl put a pair of bullets through the eye socket of another. Just like that, it was over. I lowered my gun and looked around, ashamed and afraid. But it seemed the others had been too busy fighting to notice how epically I had choked. There was much celebrating and high-fiving. I did my best to imitate everyone else’s excitement.
When we climbed into the SUVs, I pulled my cap over my eyes and pretended to sleep all the way back to Cazador, Alabama.
* * *
The next morning Carl woke me from yet another nightmare. “You okay, man? You were sweating and moaning, like Casper the Friendly Ghost on LSD.”
I rubbed my eyes and mumbled something intentionally incomprehensible.
Carl shrugged. “Harbinger wants to see you, so maybe splash some water on your face, eh?”
Well, crap. That didn’t bode well. Surely the boss had some experienced Hunters watch our first outing. Surely they’d seen me fail. I cleaned myself up and got dressed, all while trying to figure out how to maintain my dignity as I got booted from the ranks. Inside my mind, the spiders scratched in earnest.
When I got there, Earl Harbinger was chatting with a pretty redhead I didn’t recognize. “Mike,” Harbinger said amicably. “
Meet Heather Kerkonen.”
The lady and I shook hands. She had a solid grip. I wondered if she was a PR person who conducted exit interviews.
“You used to be a computer hacker before you joined up, right?” asked Heather.
I never cared for that term. “Not exactly. I was a network security expert. So, really, the opposite.”
“I see.” She sized me up. “Do a lot of security experts have aliases, Black Neo?”
“Neo used to be my handle on a pro video game circuit. But then there was another Neo, and the guys…” I pointed at my face and shrugged. “The name stuck.”
The spiders scratching at my brain reminded me that I never really fit in. Not growing up as a mixed-ethnicity inner city kid in the Bronx, not among the mostly entitled suburban teenagers at gaming tournaments, and not with my fellow IT nerds at work…And now I was finding out I may not be a good fit as a Hunter.
“Either way,” said Harbinger, “Mike is our top computer expert.” He turned to me. “We could use your help.”
Maybe they weren’t going to fire me. But were they going to stick me in the server room somewhere? Not a lot of monster-slaying potential, unless you count an occasional computer virus.
“There’s a corporate data center in Podolsk, Russia,” said Harbinger, “and in that data center, they employ several trolls.”
He didn’t sound like he was passing judgment, nor should he. MHI cooperated with orcs and elves and other nonhumans, and even had its own troll running the IT department.
“This didn’t work out well for them,” said Heather. “The trolls have run amok, taken over the facility, and eaten their corporate overlords. Local Hunters have been retained to clean up the mess.”
“There’s a company near Moscow. We worked with them last year,” said Harbinger. “It turns out they’re all right.” Harbinger seemed to divide all Monster Hunter outlets into two groups: those that were assholes and those that were all right. The all right ones you could trust with your life.
“Problem is, there’s some sensitive data stored at that facility,” said Heather. “I’m going to lead a small team to liaise with the Russians and retrieve that data.” She nodded at me. “That’s where you come in.”
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