Doomsday Hunter

by Eric Vall

  I watched as Natalie kicked one of the roaches in the face, jumped up onto its back, and then pumped it full of lead from behind. Just as two more of the creatures reached out for her, she catapulted over them, landed on the ground upright, and tore them to shreds with her bullets.

  One of the mutated bees tried to skewer her with its stinger, but she simply spun out of the way. Then Natalie grabbed the insect’s stinger as she twirled, gave it a yank, and pulled the bee’s guts out of its body. Before the creature could bleed out, the Scavenger stabbed its own stinger into its head and put an end to its suffering.

  Damn… I was glad Natalie was on my side.

  Another small wave of cockroaches descended on me as I fired at them haphazardly. Some of them were cut down, but they still charged at me with pure vitriol in their eyes.

  Then my worst fears came true.

  Click.

  My Beretta was empty, and Natalie’s bag of ammo was at least a few dozen feet away from me.

  “Shit,” I grumbled as I holstered my pistol and looked around for any sort of makeshift weapon.

  Suddenly, the lightbulb went off.

  The E-Tool.

  I’d seen a million different instances in military shows and books where soldiers had used the E-Tool as a makeshift weapon, and it was now my time to emulate their actions.

  So, I reached back into the open backpack, fumbled around until I felt the cold metal of the tool, and drew it from its seclusion. I unfolded the spade just as the first cockroach got to me, and then I lashed out with the deadly, serrated shovel.

  It struck the roach in square at the joint of one of its legs, and the creature screamed as its appendage was severed from its body. The first cockroach scuttled away, but I didn’t have time to finish it off before the next one attacked.

  I threw up the pointed end of the E-Tool straight into the cockroach’s chest, and the weapon made a wet shlocking sound as it punctured through the thorax. The roach writhed on my spade for a moment before I kicked it off onto the ground and watched it curl up and die.

  I came around swinging at another roach and sliced his abdomen clean open.

  Alright… I could get used to this thing. Right now, it was working out for me way better than the pistol.

  I lopped off the head of another roach before I turned to face two large, mutated bees that were headed my way. I ducked out of the way of one of the machete-sized stingers and stabbed my shovel right into the crease where the barb met the abdomen. Then I used my leverage to push down and separate the bee’s guts from its body.

  I only had seconds to sidestep the second bee’s stinger, but its pointed end slammed into the E-Tool and sent it flying from my hands. It landed in the foliage about ten feet away from me, far out of my reach.

  The bee jabbed at me again, and I was just able to get out of the way before the stinger would have stabbed my foot.

  I took off in a dead sprint toward my fallen weapon, with the mutated creature hot on my tracks.

  The drone of the bee’s beating wings followed me like a constant warning siren, accompanied occasionally by the sound of its deadly barb swishing through the air as it tried to skewer me.

  I was about ten feet away from my weapon when I heard another sound, one that made my entire body tense up in fear.

  The sound of fluttering wings. Dozens of them.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see there was another wave or roaches approaching through the air, headed straight toward me.

  Crap. Crapcrapcrap.

  I forced my legs muscles to work even harder, but it was no use.

  The roaches were moving too quickly.

  As I reached out for my E-Tool, something grabbed onto my backpack from behind. Then, before I could make a move, my legs were lifted off the ground, and I was carried upward into the sky.

  “Hunter!” Natalie screamed as she watched me being carried away.

  The cockroaches’ scuttling sounds were now so loud they completely droned out everything around me. I heard their disgusting pinchers gnashing against each other, surely anticipating what a tasty meal I was going to be.

  Then a set of pinchers snapped down on my left ankle and began to pull. A wave of pain shot through my leg, and I tensed up as I wondered if my ankle bones were now shattered.

  Either way, I had to try and fight these bastards off.

  So, I brought up my right foot and slammed the heel of my boot between the cockroach’s eyes.

  It squealed as it released my ankle, but then I followed up with a swift kick to knock it off guard.

  Suddenly, another set of pinchers slammed down on my right arm and then firmly jerked it away from my body.

  “Fuck!” I growled.

  I normally wasn’t one for swearing like a sailor, but when I was about to be ripped to pieces by a swarm of bloodthirsty roaches, I would gladly make a fucking exception.

  Another roach clamped down onto my leg, and I continued to struggle against their grasp. However, it was completely in vain.

  I was done for.

  In a few seconds, I’d be nothing more than cockroach food.

  Suddenly, the rat-a-tat of a machine gun rang out from down below, and I heard bullets zipping through the air around me. Several of the roaches screamed as they plummeted downward to their demise, but I was still moving upward.

  I was now just about near the canopy of the forest. Once I was above that and out of her sight, there was nothing Natalie could do to help me.

  Luckily for me, she was on top of things.

  There was another round of gunfire as warm, gooey liquid splashed onto my head from behind. Then my trajectory came to an abrupt halt, and I looked down to see the body of a giant cockroach falling back down to Earth.

  I felt completely weightless for a second as my body hung in the air. My stomach was down in my feet as I prepared for what came next, and then gravity took its course.

  I rocketed straight back down toward the ground, with nothing in between myself and the forest floor but a few dozen feet of open air.

  Even if the impact from this height didn’t kill me, I’d be lucky if I wasn’t a paraplegic for the rest of my life.

  This was bad. This was very, very bad.

  My only hope was to try and slow my descent somehow. I looked around hopelessly as I plummeted downward and searched for my solace, but there was only one thing I could possibly do.

  I was within arm’s reach from the branch of a nearby Radon’s Root tree, so I reached out in an effort to grab on and slow my fall. My hand caught the branch, which cracked and snapped from the momentum of my fall.

  However, it was enough to change my trajectory. Suddenly, my body went from plummeting downward to swinging horizontally.

  Straight into the trunk of the Radon’s Root.

  My entire body ached as I slammed into the tree trunk, released my grip on the branch, and bounced like a plinko chip off the various branches. When I finally caught myself on another large bough, my momentum was halted, and I had a chance to catch my breath.

  I could feel blood trickling down my nose, and my head was throbbing like nothing else. There were large bruises on my wrists from where the cockroaches had attacked me, but everything still seemed to be in one piece.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have very long to recover.

  Down below, more of the mutated cockroaches were beginning to scuttle up the tree.

  I flipped the bag off my shoulders and quickly inspected its contents to see if there was anything that could help me gain the advantage.

  Wait a minute… Baking soda. Holy crap, I’d forgotten all about roaches and baking soda.

  It was a trick the old timers at Bugslayer LLC. had taught me back when I first started out. Roaches didn’t have a way to create gas like us mammals did. So, if you wanted a simple way to kill the little buggers, you’d just mix a little bit of baking soda with sugar, and then they’d eat it up and die of an exploded stomach.

  I may n
ot have had time to put out any full-on traps, but I sure as hell could force them to eat this crap. As I yanked the tin from my bag and twisted off the lid, I prepared to rain powdery hell down on the cockroaches below.

  The tricky part? I needed to patiently wait until the bloodthirsty beasts were almost upon me. If I wanted to make sure the deadly powder got down their gullets, I had to wait until I could see the whites of their eyes.

  Er… I guess it would be “the blacks of their eyes” in this case.

  “Hunter, get out of there!” Natalie demanded from down below, and her voice was immediately followed by a series of gunshots.

  “I’ve got an idea!” I held my ground as I watched the roaches approaching.

  Then I reached up, snapped off the dangling branch that had broken my fall, and held it above my head like a deadly club.

  As soon as the roaches were only a few feet away from me, I started to dump the baking soda down onto them. They continued to climb as they gobbled up the powdery substance, and that’s when I started to strike them with the thick branch.

  I knocked the scuttling bastards away from the tree with a hearty thwack of the stick and then watched then plummet to the ground below. A few of them caught themselves on their wings, but they didn’t get much further before the baking soda began to kick in.

  Suddenly, the roaches’ abdomens began to bloat and swell up as they struggled to move. One-by-one, they let out a strange gurgling sound as they began to gasp for air. Then the mutated bastards started to drop like flies, and their corpses splattered against the ground as they landed.

  I could breathe easy, but only for a moment.

  I was sure there would be more of the little buggers coming around any time now, and I didn’t want to leave myself as a sitting duck. So, I rummaged around inside of the bag until I found something that might actually be helpful.

  I still had some folding pans and some cans of food and the stuff to make a fire, but none of that was going to do much against a swarm of angry, mutated bees and roaches.

  Bug spray?

  Nah… That stuff was a repellant, not an insecticide. Not to mention, it had no effect on either of the insects I was dealing with here.

  Well, crap. There wasn’t anything else in here that was going to make a difference.

  If I wanted to be of use in this fight, I needed to get to Natalie and snatch up some more ammo.

  Or at least grab the shotgun she’d strung around her back. She may have looked like a certifiable badass with two giant guns over her shoulders, but she certainly couldn’t use both of them at the same time.

  I just had to get down to her, and fast.

  And that meant climbing down this Radon’s Root.

  I was still about thirty feet or so up in the air, so jumping off wasn’t an option. Instead, I was going to have to jump down branch by branch.

  The first one was about five feet below me, off to the right. So, I zipped up my backpack, slung it back over my shoulder, and bent down to prepare myself for the descent.

  Here goes nothing.

  I propelled myself off the tree, spread out my arms, and then caught them around the branch below. The impact from the fall knocked the wind out of me, and a sharp pain shot across my chest. Then I pulled myself back to my feet and looked for the next stepping stone down to the ground.

  It took me five more jumps before I landed solidly on the ground, and each one was just as painful as the one before it. My entire body ached and throbbed as I made my way over toward the sound of Natalie’s AK-47, but I couldn’t stop now.

  Bodies of the giant bees and roaches littered the area around us, but there were still more on their way. Luckily for me, they weren’t too focused on my position.

  However, that meant each and every one of the bastards was currently swarming Natalie.

  The blonde woman was acrobatically tumbling across the ground, and she fired off rounds as she tumbled and lashed out at the beasts around her.

  As fit as the Scavenger was, though, she wasn’t going to be able to keep that up forever.

  I needed to help her, and I needed to do it quickly.

  But first, I needed my weapon.

  I ran over and began to dig around in the foliage where the E-Tool had landed. It took me a few seconds, but eventually the deadly spade was back in my hands and ready for another round with these ugly bugs.

  “Over here, you six-legged, garbage eating freaks!” I called out as I charged at the swarm.

  I doubted insulting the insentient insects was going to do much, but I hoped the noise would at least draw their attention away from Natalie.

  Sure enough, several of the roaches and bees suddenly turned toward me and then screeched as they changed their trajectory. Now, half of the swarm was headed straight for me.

  Careful what you wish for, I guess.

  I lopped off the first roach’s head with my E-Tool and then hopped backward just as one of the bee’s stingers stabbed at my feet. He was eviscerated with a quick swipe from my spade, but then the rest of the roaches began to overwhelm me.

  There were five of these things, and only one of me. I didn’t stand a chance.

  I lashed out wildly with my E-Tool and felt it make contact, but the scene around me was way too much of a clusterfuck for me to see what I’d even hit.

  The next thing I knew, there were pinchers on my ankles and arms, and then the insects began to stretch me out like they were trying to quarter my body. The roaches pulled as hard as they could, and I could feel my joints slowly beginning to pop out of place.

  This was it.

  At least my death would come with a sense of irony. Hunter Bragg, the Pest Control Technician, killed by cockroaches.

  It’d be a hilarious thing to put on my tombstone. If I would even get one.

  Thankfully, fate had other plans for me.

  I heard one of the canisters from my backpack hit the ground behind me, and then the cockroaches suddenly released their grip on my appendages. I quickly rolled away from the swarming roaches, popped up to my feet, and watched as they all fought over the white, crystalized substance on the ground.

  Sugar. I had just been saved by a canister of sugar.

  With the roaches preoccupied, I readied my E-Tool and got to work. I cut the first two roaches clean in half with my spade and then split the third one’s head open from behind. Bug brains and white ooze splattered from his head as he collapsed into a heap, right onto the pile of sugar.

  There was only one giant roach left, and he was not happy that I’d just ruined his meal.

  He hissed as he charged at me, but I was more than ready for him.

  I simply held out the spade in front of my body, and he ran straight into it like the mindless drone he was.

  The point of the E-Tool hit the roach right between the eyes as his momentum carried him further onto the deadly blade. I braced my feet into the ground to keep my balance and then watched as the spade made contact with his brain.

  I yanked the weapon out of the roach’s head as he fell to the ground, dead, and then I turned around to check on Natalie.

  What’s going on, Hunter? Karla’s voice demanded. Your heart rate is through the roof, and it looks like you have multiple minor lesions and tissue damage across your body.

  “Just fighting off mutant cockroaches and giant bees,” I chuckled with amusement.

  Are you in combat right now? the voice questioned.

  “Just kicking some bug ass!”

  Get out of there right now, Karla ordered. You’re a few miles away from the power plant, and if you head due north, I estimate you’ll be there soon.

  “What are you talking about?” I growled. “I’m not leaving Natalie.”

  Hunter, you are the key to saving lots of different dimensions, the voice pleaded. Do you remember our chat earlier? Natalie may be a potential asset, but she’s expendable. My father predicts your chances of success on this mission are going down by the minute, so you need to
get a move on it.

  “She’s not expendable,” I shot back and readied my E-Tool. “Not to me, she’s not.”

  Hunter, don’t even try it! Karla hissed. That’s an order.

  I really wasn’t one to take orders. That’s why it took me so long to get my damn promotion at Bugslayer.

  And I especially wasn’t taking orders from Karla the backseat driver.

  As I ran toward Natalie, I realized she was now in dire straits.

  The blonde woman’s gun was no longer firing, and her backpack had been ripped off and laid on the ground far away from her position. She continued to dodge the incoming attacks and counter with the butt of her rifle, but that seemed to be doing little.

  I needed to get rid of all these bugs as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t do that with just a simple hand-to-hand weapon. I needed something with a little more firepower…

  Then it hit me. Fire.

  Bugs may have loved the warmth, but they absolutely despised fire.

  I laid my weapon down on the ground, pulled my backpack off my shoulders, and then fumbled around inside until I found the zippo lighter. As I was searching for the small metal gadget, the light bulb went off once more.

  The bug spray.

  It might not have worked on bees and cockroaches, but it was highly flammable. And, if it was flammable, it could create a big boom.

  I held the zippo lighter in my right hand and the bug spray in my left. Then I took a deep breath and charged forward. Once I got to within a few feet of the swarm, I flipped open the lighter and ignited the small flame inside.

  Holy crap, was I really about to do this? This was the kind of stuff I’d only seen in an action movie, and I had no idea if it was actually going to work.

  Still, I had to try.

  I moved the nozzle of the bug spray canister a few inches away from the flame and pressed down on the button at its top.

  The liquid from the canister struck the flame of the lighter, and suddenly a stream of flames erupted from the mixture.

  I aimed the blast right at the nearest bee, and he squealed in agony as the fur on his body caught fire.

  Within seconds, the entire mutated bee was engulfed in flames, and he wheezed as his charred remains fell to the ground.