Monster Hunter International

Monster Hunter International

[Monster Hunter 01]

By

Larry Correia

Chapter 1

On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window.

Now, I didn't just wake up that morning and decide that I was going to kill my boss with my bare hands. It really was much more complicated than that. In my life up to that point I would never have even considered something that sounded so crazy. I was just a normal guy, a working stiff. Heck, I was an accountant. It doesn't get much more mundane than that.

That one screwed-up event changed my life. Little did I realize that turning my boss into sidewalk pizza would have so many bizarre consequences. Well, technically, he did not actually hit the sidewalk. He landed on the roof of a double-parked Lincoln Navigator, but I digress.

My name is Owen Zastava Pitt and this is my story.

The finance department of Hansen Industries, Inc. was on the fourteenth floor of a generic-looking office building in downtown Dallas. There were ten of us accountants, placed in ten cubicles in a narrow patch of office sandwiched between marketing and the women's restroom. It was your standard professional office, complete with blue industrial carpet, motivational posters, Dilbert cartoons, and some dead potted plants. I was the new guy.

It was a pretty good job. The pay was respectable. The work was semi-interesting. Most of my co-workers were easy to get along with. It was my first actual serious career-type job after college, or at least my first job that didn't require heavy lifting or bouncing drunks.

Now I had a 401k and dental benefits. My plan was to work hard, find myself a wife, have some kids, and settle down in the suburbs. I was a young professional, and my future looked bright.

There was only one major drawback to my job with such a fine, established company. My boss was an angry idiot. Mr. Huffman was the worst kind of boss, incompetent and always able to find an underling to blame for his own screw-ups. Plus he was mad at the world, not really for any specifics, mind you, but more mad at the world in a general way for being mean to him. Despite his laziness and stupidity, his little pig brain just could not comprehend why he was never promoted beyond the same position that he had held for the last decade. It was obvious to him that the world was out to wrong him. After getting to know the man, I could not blame the world one bit.

As the newest hire in the Hansen Industries Internal Auditing Department, I was the designated whipping boy for Mr. Huffman's fury. The previous newest hire had committed suicide, thereby creating the opening that I now filled. At the time I had not really made the connection between job satisfaction and the likelihood of taking a bottle of sleeping pills and washing it down with a fifth of scotch.

It had been another twelve-hour day, as had become my custom, always hopelessly behind, trying to learn as I went, and realizing that college really did not have much of anything to do with the real world. Since my supervisor, the vile Mr. Huffman, was supposed to train me, I was pretty much screwed from the get-go. Since I currently had no life outside of work (except for every Saturday when I worked on my hobby), I did not really mind staying late. Hopefully it would impress somebody important at the company, who might offer me a transfer to their department and out of Huffman's.

At least the month had been pleasant. Mr. Huffman had been on vacation camping at some national park or another. He had come back for a week, wherein he had stayed locked in his office, never speaking to anyone or returning any calls, and then went out on sick leave for a few more weeks. His annual vacation was usually my department's most productive time of the year. Go figure.

I glanced absently at my watch. 8:05 p.m. The surrounding gray-carpeted cubes were quiet. My stomach growled, signaling that the bag of Cheetos and the banana I had eaten for lunch had long since worn off. It was time to go. I logged out of my computer, locked up my files, and put on my coat as I headed for the door. Believing I was the only one there, I killed the lights on the way out. Then the intercom buzzed. It made me jump.

"Who's there?" The ponderous voice belonged to Mr. Huffman. That was a surprise. I had not known that he was back yet. Damn. I kept walking, deciding to pretend that I had not heard the intercom. If Huffman were here this late, then I did not want to get assigned whatever crap job he was working on, which, knowing what a lazy slug he was, was sure to happen. He would probably call it delegating, and pat himself on the back for being such a proactive member of the management team.

"Owen? Is that you? Come to my office immediately!"Busted."Now, Owen. This is important!" He sounded as officious and pompous as usual.

As I sulked toward his office I had to wonder how he had known it was me. Probably a lucky guess. He must have seen the lights go out from his office. I started thinking of excuses to give him about why I needed to leave, but knew from long experience that he would just shoot them all down. Martial arts class? Nope, he already thinks I'm too militant, and he doesn't even know about my gun collection. Church? Fat chance of that. Date? I wish. Sick mother? Worth a shot, I thought. So I approached his office preparing the story about how I needed to tend to my ill mother. She lived three states away, but what Huffman didn't know couldn't hurt him.

When I entered Huffman's office, all thoughts of my mom's imaginary sickness disappeared. The lights were off, which was very weird. I could not see my boss, as the back of his leather swivel chair was toward me. The city lights provided a small amount of illumination through the windows. I never could figure out how a toad like him had scored a corner office with a view. Perhaps he had some incriminating photos of the CFO with a hooker or something. His huge oak desk was a mess, and there was a stained paper sack sitting in the middle that must have been his dinner. Whatever was in the bag was slowly leaking a sloppy puddle onto the papers on the desk.

"Have a seat, Owen," Huffman rasped. His voice sounded strange. He did not turn around to look at me. From the top of his head it appeared that he was looking at the evening sky.

"Uh, no thanks, sir… I've really got to be going. My mom is sick and…"

"I… said… SIT!" he shouted as he spun around in his chair. I gasped, partly because Mr. Huffman had a look in his eyes like he was insane, but mostly because he was totally naked. Not something that I ever thought I would have to see. The lower half of his jowly face was stained with something dark and greasy, as if he had gone hog-wild at a barbeque.

Okay, that's certainly different. I raised my hands in front of me. "Look, sir, I've got to say that I don't swing that way. You do your thing. I don't care. Some guys would be flattered, but I'm out of here," I stated as I slowly backed toward the door.

"SILENCE!" he shouted, slamming his chubby fingers onto the desk hard enough to rattle it and knock over his dinner bag, spilling its contents. I froze, surprised at the fierce intensity of the command, which was unexpected coming from a man like Huffman, who had what could best be described as "jiggly man bosoms." "Do you know what tonight is, Owen? Do you? Tonight is a very special night!"

"Is it all-you-can-eat shrimp night at Sizzlers?" I replied calmly as I reached back and put my hand on the doorknob. It was official. Mr. Huffman had gone nuts. It looked like he was foaming at the mouth.

"Tonight I punish the wicked. A month ago I was given a gift. Now I'm king. I've seen how you and the others talk about me behind my back. How you don't respect my leadership." My boss's voice had lowered into a growl. His eyes darted about as if he were seeing exciting things in the dark corners of the office. "You're the worst, Owen. You're not a team player. You don't respect my authority. You want to steal my job. You want to stab me in the back!"

I didn't want to stab him in the back, but I was about ready to punch him in the face. My earlier assessment was right. He really was foaming at the mouth. Being attacked by fat, naked Mr. Huffman was not that much of a worry, as I was what could best be called a big fellow, and surprising for an accountant, knew how to kick some butt if necessary. The situation felt surreal and slightly amusing, but I knew that crazy people could be unpredictably dangerous. It was time to slip out and call for some professional help. I turned the door handle, idly wondering if our health plan covered psychiatric care.

"Just take it easy, Mr. Huffman. I'm not out to get you. I'm just going to step out for a second." Then I noticed what had spilled out of the dinner bag.

"Is that a hand?" I blurted.

Huffman ignored me and continued yelling and pounding the desk. Each strike made his layers of blubber ripple dangerously. It sure enough looked like a woman's hand, complete with painted nails, a wedding ring, and a jagged stump where the wrist bones were sticking out. Holy crap! My boss wasn't just a run-of-the-mill crazy. I was working for a serial killer.

The naked, crazy, fat man pointed out the window. "The time has come! Tonight I am a god!" he squealed.

His sausage-like finger was pointing at the full moon.

As I watched in the pale lunar glow and the yellowish backdrop of the city lights, that finger seemed to stretch. The hands began to elongate, and the fingernails thickened and spread. He looked at me, and I saw that his grin now stretched from ear to ear, literally, and his gums and teeth began to protrude menacingly past his lips. Thick dark hair was sprouting from his pores. Huffman screamed in pain and exhilaration as the popping and cracking of bones filled the room.

"Owen. You're mine now. I'm gonna eat your heart." His words were barely understandable through his dripping jaw and swelling tongue. His teeth were growing in length and sharpness.

For a second I froze, paralyzed by conflicting emotions as reason came to a screeching halt. The room was dark enough that the civilized part of my brain was trying to convince the primitive caveman section of my brain that this was just some sort of visual trick, a sick practical joke, or something else logical. Luckily for me, the caveman won.

To this day I don't know why at that moment I felt the need to make a confession to my rapidly mutating boss. Even though I was in accordance with Texas state law, I was in direct violation of the company's workplace safety rule.

"You know that 'no weapons at work' policy?" I asked the twitching and growing hairy monstrosity standing less than ten feet from me. His yellow eyes bored into me with raw animal hatred. There was nothing recognizably human in that look.

"I never did like that rule," I said as I bent down and drew my gun from my ankle holster, put the front sight on the target and rapidly fired all five shots from my snub-nosed.357 Smith & Wesson into Mr. Huffman's body. God bless Texas.

The creature that had been Huffman staggered back against the window, leaving a smear of blood and tissue as it slid down the glass onto the carpet. Some of the bullets had either missed or over-penetrated and cracked the thick window. Not staying to examine, I turned and ran, almost breaking my nose as I crashed into the door while trying to open it. I took the time to slam it behind me before sprinting down the narrow hallway, empty gun in one hand, fingers of my other hand groping through my coat pocket for my speed loader of extra ammo.

Huffman's office door flew open with a bang. The thing standing in the doorway was clearly more animal than man, but obviously not any normal animal. My supervisor's fatty bulk had been somehow twisted into a sleek and muscled form. Long claws tore divots into the blue industrial carpet. Coarse black hair covered his body, and the wolf face was a nightmare come to life. Lips pulled back into a drooling snarl, revealing a row of razor-like teeth. Now on all fours, he raised his muzzle and smelled the air, howling when he spotted me.

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

Running in the direction of the elevator, I snapped the cylinder of my revolver closed with five more Federal 125-grain hollow points inside. The creature was fast, much faster than an Olympic sprinter, and I was no Olympic sprinter. My lead down the hallway dwindled in seconds. I spun and fired as it leapt at me, striking the beast in the face. His snout turned on impact and momentum carried him into the wall, crushing the sheetrock. Immediately he started to rise, jagged fur bristling down his back.

I'm a very good shot. The tiny revolver was not my best weapon for accuracy, but I did my part. Focusing on the front sight, aiming for the creature's skull, I pulled the trigger. With each concussion I brought the little gun back down and repeated the process. I was rewarded with a flash of red and white as a.357 hollow point blossomed through Huffman's brain, but I kept pulling the trigger until the hammer clicked empty. I was out of ammo.

My vision had tunneled in on the threat. My pulse was pounding like a drum. The adrenaline running through my system had tuned out the horrendous muzzle blasts. I brought the gun down to my side. Huffman was dead.

I tried to control my breathing as I began to hyperventilate. Perhaps I was losing my mind, for lying not twenty feet from my cubicle was a dead werewolf. A monster from fairy tales, but somehow it was here, sprawled on the carpet, brains blown out. There had not been time to feel fear or any other emotion as the creature had been chasing me, but that all came out now as if a dam had burst. The uncontrollable shaking in my limbs was slow at first, but quickly gained in intensity as I got a better look at the beast on the floor. It was like being in a car wreck. The almost disbelief as the events unfolded. The lack of emotion during the impact. And finally the brutal realization of what had happened. I just killed a werewolf.

Then Mr. Huffman rose up and snarled at me.

The exposed brain matter pulsed back into his head, and with a crunching noise the plates of his skull rejoined. The creature stood on his hind legs somehow, even with knees twisted like a canine's. With one taloned finger he speared a chunk of tissue from his fur and tossed it into his maw, chewing his own discarded flesh. Returning gracefully to all fours he shook himself like a giant dog, splattering the blood from his wounds on the white walls and motivational posters in the hall.

The monster howled again, long and high-pitched, and the sound ignited some primal survival instinct buried deep within me. I turned and ran faster than I ever had before. Somehow I kept my wits, and rather than trying to outrun the creature to the elevator, I twisted hard to the right and through a doorway, slammed the door, locked it, and shoved a heavy desk in front of it. A computer monitor fell to the ground and sparked. I was in the marketing room. A poster with a kitten forlornly holding onto a clothesline had the caption: hang in there. Thanks for the advice, buddy.

There was no time to think. I kept moving, hoping that the door and the desk would slow Huffman down. It did, for a few seconds at least. In a cloud of splinters the werewolf began to tear the door apart, snarling, grunting, gradually pushing the desk out of the way. There was another doorway at the end of the office that led to a side corridor. I slammed the door behind me, but there was nothing there to block it with. Weapon. Need a weapon. My gun was still in hand, but it was empty, and a lightweight snub was definitely lacking as a club. I had a concealed weapons permit for defense against muggers and assorted scumbags. I had never thought I would need it to fight a creature from the Sci-Fi channel. There was a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall so I pulled it down and took it with me. It was better than nothing.

Down the corridor was the door to my department, if I could get through it and I had a shot at the elevator. Legs and heart pumping, I heard the door behind me crash off of its hinges. Not sparing the time to look, I yanked open the door to Finance and rushed through, trying to pull it closed behind me. The door slammed into Huffman's claws and muzzle. I tried in vain to close the door but he was far stronger than I was. He swiped his talons down across my chest, tearing cleanly through my clothing and into me. Pain. Unbelievable pain. Screaming, I fell on my back and activated the fire extinguisher, directing the spray into the werewolf's gaping mouth and eyes. The creature howled, reared up on its hind legs, and covered its face. I lashed out with my foot, kicked the creature in the ribs and knocked it back into the corridor. Scrambling to my feet, I pulled the door closed and locked it.

My chest burned from the lacerations. The injury looked bad, and blood was soaking across my shirt, but the pain was now just something throbbing in the background behind the wall of adrenaline rushing through my system. The hurt would come later. I had a monster to worry about right now.

The werewolf punched through the wooden door, talons narrowly missing my flesh as he searched for me. I raised the fire extinguisher above my head and lashed out at the hairy arm, smashing it again and again with blows that would easily have broken ordinary bones. Finally the forearm shattered with an audible snap, but Huffman was not deterred. The claws kept swinging, and within seconds the limb had seemingly healed. Shouting unintelligibly, I continued bringing the extinguisher down on Huffman, the metal echoing with each hit.

We were at an impasse. He could not push through with me crushing his arms. His animal mind must have come to that same realization. As fast as it had appeared, the arm disappeared, leaving nothing but a gaping hole through the heavy oak door.

My breath came in ragged gasps from the exertion. Nothing seemed to hurt him. I had to think of something… Silver. That's what always worked in the movies. Where was I going to get silver in my office? But I knew the answer to that one immediately. Nowhere.

If I could make it to the elevator I would be home free, but to do so I needed to cover forty feet of Finance, and then about a hundred feet of hallway. Cradling the fire extinguisher in my arms I stumbled for the door. In the darkness, the green light from the exit sign was my beacon. The blood running down my stomach was warm and slick. I made it as far as my cubicle before Huffman got a running start and crashed into the room. There was no way I could escape before he would be on me, claws and teeth flashing, and I would be a dead man.

Flight wasn't working, so now it was fight time. At least I was on my home turf.

"Huffman, you son of a bitch! Come and get me!" I roared as I sprayed him with the fire extinguisher. "This is my cube!"

The werewolf swatted my improvised weapon away, breaking my left hand on impact. He rammed into me and hurled me straight into the air. The ceiling tiles barely slowed my flight and I rebounded off of a heating duct with a resounding clang. I fell onto the top of my cube wall. It was not designed to take the impact of a three-hundred-pound man. It collapsed and I slammed onto my desk.

Keep going. Groaning and trying to catch my breath, I tried to think of something, anything, that I could do. The werewolf's head rose at the base of my desk. I kicked him hard in the face. Huffman bit my shoe off.

With leg muscles like coiled springs, the werewolf easily hopped up beside me, claws clicking on the hard surface like fingernails on a chalkboard. I felt the instinctive twinge down my spine. I tried to roll off the desk, but Huffman effortlessly sunk a claw deep into my thigh, pinning me down. I screamed in pain as the talon pierced through the muscle. Grabbing the back of his hairy claw with my one working hand, I tried to pull it out. It wouldn't budge.

He had me. I lay there bleeding with my leg pinned to my desk. The werewolf seemed to be enjoying himself, taking his sweet time, savoring my pain. I wondered if somewhere deep inside that animal Mr. Huffman was there, enjoying this, loving the power, finally being able to strike back at the world he hated so much.

My fear was replaced with anger.

The shooting pain in my leg was unbearable, and all reason told me that I was a dead man, but I would be damned if I was going to die at the hand of that fat piece of shit Mr. Huffman.

The werewolf opened his jaws slowly, impossibly wide, and lowered them toward my face. His breath was hot, and stunk like rotting meat. He was going to eat me and somehow I knew he was going to do it as slowly and painfully as possible. Trying to be inconspicuous I reached into my pocket. Huffman licked my face. The tongue was damp and rough and I cringed in revulsion. Bastard probably wanted to see what I tasted like first.

My pocketknife opened with a snap the instant before I jabbed it into his throat. The three-inch Spyderco was not really a fighting knife, but I put it to the test. Twisting and pulling, I tried to do as much damage as I could. Blood geysered across my cube as I severed his jugular. He jerked his claw out of my leg, and I almost fainted as blood flooded out the gaping hole. I pulled the little blade back and stabbed it into his eye. My knife, slick with fluids, slipped out of my hand as Huffman pulled away, and it remained stuck in his face. He lashed out, striking me in the head. The claw tore down to the skull, opening my flesh, dragging down across my face. I felt it in almost clinical detachment, knowing it was bad, but beyond the point of feeling or caring. My whole life had dilated down to one simple thought: Huffman must die. Lights flashed in my eyes as my enemy roared.

"Regenerate this!" I bellowed as I grabbed my letter opener off of my desk and stabbed it repeatedly into his chest. Reversing my grip, I thrust it up through his bottom jaw, lodging it deep into the roof of his mouth, pinning his muzzle shut. Then I kicked him in the balls and smashed my chair over his head for good measure. He hit me with a backhand that knocked me across the room like a human cannonball. I crashed through a potted plant and rolled across the carpet.

Disoriented, I left Huffman swirling about like a tornado of death while I limped away, trying to staunch the massive bleeding from my leg. The werewolf thrashed, trying to pry one little knife out of his eye socket and a letter opener out of his palate. I had landed near Huffman's office so I pulled myself through the door. Options were running out. I was going to pass out soon from blood loss. The only thing sustaining me was anger and determination, and that wouldn't last much longer. I needed to think of something, and I needed to think of it quick. Taking stock, I saw filing cabinets on each side of the door. Chair. Desk. Golf magazines. Some lady's hand. But nothing that I could use as a weapon.

I could hear the werewolf raging, smashing apart my cube, destroying anything within reach, ripping and snarling, then gradually quieting as he caught my scent. He was coming for me again. I was waiting for him.

But not where he expected. As Huffman charged in, led at this point only by instinct and pure animal fury, I jumped from the top of the filing cabinet onto his back. We collided with a great deal of force and he crashed snout first into his desk. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I choked him, straining as hard as I could. "Let's see how tough you are without air!" I screamed in his pointy ear. We flipped over the desk but I stubbornly held on. His jaws snapped shut but I was safely under them. He reached over and raked razor claws down my back. We spun crazily and crashed into the already damaged window, shattering it and sending shards raining to the ground below. By some miracle we did not fall. Keeping my damaged left arm around his throat, I grabbed his muzzle with my good hand and wrenched it to the side with all of the strength and anger and fear that I had left. I grunted under the strain and roared. The beast's spine was like rebar. Somehow I pulled harder.

The werewolf's neck broke with a sickening pop. Severed from the impulses firing in his brain, the creature's body spasmed wildly. The claws dropped away from my ravaged back and he lay under me, flopping violently. I rolled off and dragged myself away, barely able to stay conscious. Pulling myself along with one arm, shoving with one leg, the other leg limp and leaving a wide trail of blood, I made it to the other side of the desk and collapsed.

I heard the scraping of bones again as Huffman's vertebrae realigned. In a second he would be back up, and I would not be able to fight him off again. With my good hand I struggled up so I could see over the desk. There was Huffman's dinner, and in my brain that was running dangerously low on blood and oxygen, it struck me as funny. "Need a hand?" I asked nobody in particular and giggled.

The werewolf was starting to sit up. In another few seconds I would be providing him nourishment. Then he would be off killing innocent people at every full moon. On the other days of the month I was sure that he would just keep being the worst boss in the world. I don't know which one made me angrier.

Huffman swiveled his from head side to side as he regained his senses.

"Not this time, asshole!" I said as I heaved all of my weight against the heavy desk. With a groan of protest it moved from its depression in the carpet. Desperately shoving, my one good leg straining for traction, made even more difficult because I was missing my shoe, I pushed the desk into Huffman, knocking him over, and before the werewolf realized what was happening I had pushed him and his damned desk out of the window.

Chapter 2

I could tell I was dreaming. Everything had that fuzzy, disjointed dream feel to it. First I had flashes of dragging myself toward the elevator, my belt being used as an improvised tourniquet on my leg. However, in my dream it didn't hurt a bit. Movement was slow as though I were underwater. There were glimpses of an ambulance and men sticking me with needles and pounding on my chest.

The next scene was weird, since I usually dreamed in a first person perspective. I floated weightless as I looked down and watched people in masks shock my heart with a defibrillator.

Back in the first person again. Now I stood in a field. A good, strong, green crop of some kind. My feet were bare and I could feel the wetness of the dew as I wiggled my toes. The sky was dark blue and the air smelled fresh and clean like after a summer rainstorm. A herd of cows grazed in the distance.

A man stood nearby. He was old and bent. His white hair was wild and he had a kindly smile, but hard eyes behind small round glasses. He leaned on his cane and waved.

"Hello, Boy." The old man had some sort of heavy Eastern European accent.

"Are you God?" I asked.

He laughed hard. "Me? Ha! Is good one. 'Fraid not. I just friend."

"Am I dead?"

"Almost. But you need go back. You have work to do. Yes, much work."

"Work?"

"A calling. Is hard, but is good."

"A calling?"

"From before you born. How you say?"

"Preordination?"

"More like you get short straw. Now go. No time. I send you back."

"Will we meet again?"

"Only if you are slow-witted boy and get dead again."

The nice dream ended and my world exploded in pain.

There was a steady beeping noise. It matched pace with my heartbeat. Bump-bump. Two black shapes stood over me.

"I say we waste him now."

"Not yet."

"No way he's clean."

"You know the rules."

"The rules are wrong. I could smother him with his pillow and nobody would ever know."

"I would know."

I went back to sleep.

I awoke to the smell of hospital antiseptic. My eyes were matted shut, my mouth was horribly dry, and my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I had that weird, tingly, high on painkillers feeling, which I had not felt since the last time I had surgery years before. Forcing my eyes open and gradually adjusting to the muted light, I could see that I was in a hospital room. Hospitals make me nervous and uncomfortable, though right now it sure beat the alternative.

Trying to sit up, I realized that I had an IV running into my arm, bulky bandages placed on my chest, legs, and back, and my left hand was in a cast.

Wincing at the tightness in my scalp, I gingerly reached up and touched my forehead. There was no bandage there, and I counted at least fifty prickly stitches that ran from the crown of my head, right between my eyebrows, across the bridge of my nose, and ended on my cheek. I was thankful that I did not have a mirror. Being naturally curious, and of course fearless on a morphine drip, I lifted up the edge of the big bandage on my chest. They had used staples to close the deeper lacerations there. In my drug-induced stupor, it struck me as funny that the doctors had shaved my chest. That would probably itch bad later.

I did not remember how I had gotten here, or even how long I had been out. My watch could tell me what day it was, but it was missing, as were all my clothes. All I had on was a flimsy gown and a medical supply store's worth of bandages.

As my senses gradually returned, I started to remember what had happened to put me here. I had to admit that at first I blamed my strange memory on the drugs. Killer werewolf boss? Yep, whatever they gave me, it sure was some good stuff.

You imagined the whole thing, the logical part of my brain told me. You must have been in some sort of accident, and woke up here. There's no such thing as monsters. Mr. Huffman didn't turn into a werewolf. You didn't push him out a window. Those can't possibly be claw marks. They're from a car wreck or something. The whole thing is a bad hallucination. Everybody at work will laugh when they hear your crazy story. Huffman is probably there now, complaining that you are out and running up workers' comp.

Screw you, logical brain. I know what I saw.

There was one way to find out what put me in here. There was a call button attached to the IV. I pushed it and waited, trying not to dwell on the image of Huffman's face turning into an incisor-filled muzzle. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the door opened. Unfortunately, it was not a nurse.

"Mr. Pitt. I'm Special Agent Myers and this is Special Agent Franks. We're with the government." The two men flashed their credentials in my general direction. One agent was a dark brooding type, obviously muscular and grim of attitude. The speaker was older and looked more like a college professor than a Fed. They were both wearing off-the-rack suits, and neither looked very happy. They pulled up chairs. The professor crossed his legs, steepled his fingers, and scowled at me. The younger one pulled his gun.

"Move and I'll kill you," he said, and I did not doubt him for an instant. It was a Glock, and it had a sound suppressor screwed onto its muzzle. I did not know what caliber it was, but from where I was sitting the bore looked freaking huge. The suppressor did not waver. I did not move.

The professor spoke. "Mr. Pitt. Would you care to tell us what happened at your office?"

Speaking was difficult with my bad case of cottonmouth. "Msssph umm suh…" I told them. "Wah um fa?" They could probably tell that I was either asking for water or speaking in tongues. The professor hesitated and then obliged, taking a cup off of the dresser and pressing the straw to my lips. The cold wetness was the best thing in the world. The agent called Franks leaned slightly forward so he could still shoot me if necessary. That guy obviously took his job very seriously.

"Ahhh… Thanks," I croaked.

"You're welcome. Now tell us what happened before Agent Franks here gets cranky."

I paused, not really wanting to tell the FBI that my boss had transformed into a monster and tried to eat me, before I managed to snap his neck and shove him out the window. They would lock me up for sure if I said that, so I improvised.

"I fell down the stairs." Hey, I was on morphine. It was the best I could come up with on short notice.

The professor frowned. "Cut the crap, Pitt. We know what happened. We watched the security tapes already. Five days ago, your supervisor, one Cecil Huffman, transformed into a lycanthrope, a werewolf in this case, and attempted to kill you. You fought him off, and pushed him to his death."

I was shocked. The FBI agents seemed to not have a problem with the idea that my boss had turned into a werewolf. I was also surprised that I had been out for five straight days. But mostly I was surprised that Mr. Huffman's first name had been Cecil.

"It was self-defense. I'm the good guy here. Why the gun?"

"You know how people become werewolves, don't you, Mr. Pitt? That's one thing that the movies get right. If you're bitten by one you, too, will be infected. The DNA-altering virus lives in their saliva. If you're clawed there is a smaller chance that you can be infected, but it's still possible. If we had found a single clear bite mark on you, we would be disposing of your body right now. Under the Anti-Lycanthrope Act of '95 we're supposed to terminate all confirmed were creatures immediately. I'm sorry."

"I don't think he bit me," I squeaked. But I felt a lump of dread in my gut. He had mauled me pretty badly. Was I going to turn into a werewolf? Or was the FBI just going to shoot me first?

"Silver bullets," grunted Agent Franks. He kept the Glock centered on my head. I don't know what kind of Jackie Chan move he was expecting me to pull, but I wasn't planning on going anywhere. I could barely move. "Just in case."

"So now what?" I queried.

"We wait. A sample of your blood has been sent for testing. If it comes back positive you will have to be put down. If it comes back negative, you're free to go. We should be getting a call shortly."

He said "put down" like I was some sort of dog. This encounter was just strengthening my already strong anti-authoritarian tendencies.

"You'll just let me go?"

"Yes. Though if you ever speak of this in public you will be in violation of the Unearthly Forces Disclosure Act, and you'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Franks nodded and muttered, "Lead bullets." His conversation skills seemed rather limited.

Myers' eyes betrayed an emotion that I thought might have been pity. "Look, Mr. Pitt, this is for your own good. If you're infected, we're doing you a favor. Otherwise in three weeks you'll be eating little old ladies and babies. Hopefully the tests come back negative, and we forget this ever happened."

"So what now?"

"Just chill for a while," Agent Franks said.

"Easy for you to say."

A doctor came in and took my pulse and blood pressure. A nurse changed my IV and checked my bandages. The staff seemed intimidated by the Feds, and left without talking. Flowers were delivered. They were from Hansen Industries, with a card wishing me a speedy recovery. Along with the card there was also a letter on Hansen Industries stationary that informed me that I was fired for violating the Official Workplace Safety Code No Weapons in the Workplace Rule. If I did not want to risk an interruption to my Workers' Compensation, I had best not protest the firing. Hugs and kisses, Human Resources.

I pushed the button on the motorized bed so I could sit upright. Myers turned on the little TV and we watched Jeopardy. Watching television kept my brain occupied, and more importantly kept me from dwelling on the possibility of ending up dead, or even worse, like Huffman. Myers was pretty good, but I was destroying him. I'm a Trivia King. Franks kept the gun in his lap and sipped a Diet Coke. I tried not to think about the fact that the nice men from the government were here to shoot me in the brain with silver bullets. The feeling of helplessness was horrible. Alex Trebek had all of the answers. I just had questions.

"What is Constantinople? So, Myers, how bad was I injured?"

"You lost a lot of blood and technically died on the operating table for two minutes. No brain activity at all. You have about three hundred stitches and staples in you and some broken bones. If we don't have to shoot you, you should heal up just fine. But you won't ever be pretty. What is the Great Wall of China?"

The thought that I had actually been dead was interesting. That was kind of cool. I wondered if I could use that as a pickup line.

"Who is Ghandi? What happened to Mr. Huffman?"

"He landed on a Lincoln Navigator. The desk landed on him. He was pulped. Nobody else got hurt." He was frustrated. I was tearing him up in the Famous History category. I could tell the professor was used to winning. Ha ha sucker, eat hot trivia death!"What was the Magna Carta? Huffman didn't pull back together or anything did he?"

"Damn, you're fast. Nope. Lycanthropes can regenerate from just about anything other than silver, but it takes energy to restore tissue. There's only so much energy stored in one body, so if you inflict enough damage on them, they die."

"Fire," grunted Franks.

"Indeed, fire works great. Wait, I know this. What is uranium!" he shouted.

I made a buzzing sound. "Wrong. What is beryllium? Damn, Myers, I thought you had to have an education to be a G-man. You suck."

The senior FBI man changed the TV channel to CNN and sulked. Well, at least I had the satisfaction that if they were going to kill me, I had defended my honor on the field of useless knowledge. The news was saying something about a huge pipeline explosion in a remote part of Russia apparently caused by Chechen terrorists. I tuned it out and went back to harassing the Feds.

"Does this kind of thing happen all of the time? How did Huffman become a werewolf? Are there many more out there?"

"You ask too many questions," Franks said.

"My associate is correct, Mr. Pitt. This subject's on a need-to-know basis. You just need to know to keep your mouth shut."Fine. I figured I would just go back to sleep. Stupid Feds.

There was a knock on the door. It must have just been a mere courtesy knock because whoever it was immediately barged in. Franks barely had time to hide his Glock under an issue of Martha Stewart Living.

The man was of average height and lean, with short-cropped, sandy blond hair, probably in his mid-forties. With no really remarkable features, he was not a memorable-looking guy, but emanated an old-school toughness when he strutted into the room, an attitude like a Bogart or a Cagney from the golden age of movies. A cigarette hung lazily from the corner of his mouth in clear violation of hospital rules.

Myers grimaced and it looked like Franks gave some serious thought about pointing his gun at somebody else for a change.

"Well, if it ain't the junior danger rangers. How's the murdering witnesses business?" the man asked, reaching into the pocket of his leather bomber jacket and pulling out a business card. He stuck the card into the edge of my wrist cast. It stuck there, vibrating slightly.

"Screw you, Harbinger," Franks said.

"Situation's under control. No need for you here," the professor stated in a cold voice.

"I'll be ice-skating in hell before I believe that you federal weasels have anything under control."

"You better shut up," Franks growled.

"Or what?" the man said with calculated belligerence and just a touch of a southern accent. "Gonna arrest me? You might not like it much, but we're a legitimate business again. If you Feds hadn't booted us out of Yellowstone, that werewolf wouldn't have gotten away, that fat guy wouldn't have gotten bitten, and this guy never would have gotten attacked."

"National parks are our jurisdiction. Your people can't legally be armed in them, so you were out of luck. So you just need to calm down," Myers stated in a manner that suggested he was used to being obeyed.

The new guy sneered. "I need to calm down, Myers? Your bureaucratic nonsense caused this trail of bodies. You could have let us break a couple of stupid laws and you wouldn't have two dead people and this one." He jerked a thumb in my general direction.

"The rules are there for a reason. Not obeying the rules is what got you shut down the first time. I think it was a mistake to ever let your kind back into business."

Needless to say, the atmosphere in the room was very tense. I was pretty much forgotten in my heap of bandages and bedpans. Myers and the interloper were locked in a staring contest. Franks looked ready to escort our guest out, preferably headfirst down the stairs. Anybody who made these guys that uncomfortable was all right by me.

"Umm… Not to interrupt this love fest or anything, but who are you?"

Finally Myers must have blinked and ended the stare off. The stranger looked at me as if he was sizing me up. His eyes were cold, blue, and intimidating. After a long unblinking moment he finally must have decided I passed muster, since he held out his hand to shake mine. Franks removed the Martha Stewart magazine to display his gun, just to remind me not to try anything.

"Name's Earl Harbinger. I'm with MHI."

"Owen Pitt. CPA." His grip was like iron. "MHI? Is that like some top secret government agency or something?" I asked.

Agent Myers snickered. "Not even close."

Harbinger just scowled at them. "No. If I worked with these idiots I would kill myself. We're a private organization. We're a for-profit business, and if I do say so myself, we're the premier leader in our field. One which I would say that you would probably be pretty good at. You did good back there."

"Thanks, but I don't think it's going to be good enough. These guys tell me that I'm probably going to end up turning into something like my boss." It was an ugly thing to say, and I could feel a great cold weight in my chest as I said it. "I don't want to end up like that."

The stranger shook his head. "Don't worry about it."

"Recruiting some fresh cannon fodder, Harbinger?" Myers interrupted. "Right now Mr. Pitt is in our custody, and he doesn't go anywhere until I say so."

"I'm not recruiting, Myers, but if you're looking I hear Wal-Mart needs a new door greeter," he responded. Turning back to me, he continued speaking as if he had never been cut off. "Have you asked yourself why every one of your injuries is bandaged except for that great big slash on your head?"

Subconsciously I reached up and touched the nasty pile of stitches that snaked down my face. All I knew was that it was going to leave a horrible scar.

"It's uncovered so they could watch it. If you had started to heal unnaturally fast, they would have dropped you dead in a heartbeat. From the amount of damage you sustained, I'm sure they were positive that you were going to make the change. I don't think anybody has ever been that torn up by a were creature and lived. I'm also guessing that since you haven't started to heal yet, they've sent out for a blood test to be sure, because they're probably itching to finish you. But they don't dare, just in case you're still human."

"They said they were waiting for a test."

"Damn right they are. But let me tell you something. I wrote the book on these monsters. If you haven't shown any signs after five days, I give you my word that you ain't infected."

"Really?" I felt the first real surge of hope since I had woken up in this antiseptic dungeon.

"You're going to be fine. Look, when these jerk-offs get their test back negative, and you get out of here, give me a call. You have my card. We need to talk. Get some rest." Strangely enough, I believed the stranger's promise. He did not strike me as the kind of person to sugarcoat an ugly truth.

Harbinger stalked out, rudely bumping into Agent Myers on the way. The senior agent appeared ruffled but he did not speak until after the door shut and our guest was gone.

"You'd best stay away from that bunch, Pitt, if you know what's good for you. They're going to screw up some day and every last one of them is going to end up in prison or dead. They don't respect governmental authority."

Well, neither did I. I flipped the agents the bird. "You know what, I'm going back to sleep. I've had a crappy day. If your stupid test comes back positive, just shoot me and get it over with. If it comes back negative, get the hell out and leave me alone. Either way you don't need to wake me." I pushed the button to lower the bed back into a sleeping position. It wasn't as dramatic as a good door slam, but it would have to do.

It actually only took me a few minutes to fade out. My body was still wracked with painful injuries and the painkillers still hummed through my system, but I was careful to first safely cradle the business card in my hand.

The Feds went back to watching TV.

I had a strange dream. It was hazy and blurry, jerky and disjointed, violent and quick. Not like a normal dream at all.

There was a battle. I did not know when it took place, but somehow I knew that it had occurred in the past. Details were obscured by billowing clouds of snow. Huge numbers of soldiers defended against a single unnatural being, trying in vain to keep him from his goal, and dying by the score. The only thing that mattered to him had been taken, and he had come to reclaim it. He was the Guardian.

There was an evil thing in the dream, even more sinister than the Guardian. It too was old, cursed and blighted, and seething with rage and hate. It was weakened by failure, and retreated as the Guardian approached. Its final minions fell before the immortal killer as the cursed thing fled into the ruins.

The last soldier waited for the Guardian. He had been the leader of the blood-drenched, elite force. He stood defiant in his black uniform, towering over the body of a frail human sacrifice, proudly shouting that his lord would return to finish what they had started. The soldier placed his pistol against his temple and ended his life.

The final moments of the dream had a small bit of clarity to them. I was able to finally see the Guardian. He was a giant of a man. Every inch of his skin had been covered in strange tattoos. The ink lines moved like living things. He looked right at me across space and time. His eyes were solid pools of hate-filled black.

"Thou shalt die by my hand."

I woke up with a start. What a freaky dream… I had no idea what that had been about. Weird shapeless evil things, tattooed killers fighting in the snow, and a bunch of soldiers screaming in German. I blamed it on the drugs.

A cell phone was blaring an annoying downloaded ring tone. I think it was "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. There was some fumbling and then Agent Myers' voice. "Myers." I eavesdropped intently, hoping to get an early clue to my fate. By nature, I'm not a particularly religious man, but I found myself praying that the stranger had been right. Twenty-four was too young to die. I would miss my parents and my brother, and I wished that I had more time to fix my relationship with them. I wished that I hadn't wasted so much time on the little things. It was too late for that now. My life came down to the contents of a single phone call, and the trigger pull of a Glock.

"Uh-huh. Yep. Uh-huh… Okay… Sure… Bye."

Well, that end of the conversation sure didn't help much. I stiffened up and waited for the bullet to blow through my skull and mushroom in my gray matter. For a long moment I wondered if Franks was a good shot. The last thing I wanted was to end up as a vegetable. Would it hurt? I bit my tongue. There would be no begging; better to end it this way than twisted into something inhuman at the next full moon.

The wait seemed to last an eternity. There were a few whispers and a small rustle of movement, but no flash of gunpowder, no crack of muzzle blast. The only constant was the quiet beep-beep of the machine matching my heartbeat. That particular pulse was noticeably faster than it had been a moment before. It was hard to pretend to sleep when electronic devices were so ready to betray you. My lungs ached from holding my breath, and my stomach muscles were clenched painfully tight. Some sick part of me hoped that my exploding head would make a real nasty mess on their cheap suits. Dry-clean that, you jerks.

Finally I heard the agents move. The door opened slowly. I risked a quick peek as the two FBI men walked quietly from the room. Franks looked dejected, deprived of his chance to legally kill somebody, and surprisingly enough Myers appeared to be politely trying to keep the noise down. The door closed and they were gone.

Slow minutes passed as I made sure they weren't coming back, but all was still. The call had come. The stranger's promise had been true. I was not infected, was still human, and wasn't going to die. I laughed until I pulled something in one of the many lacerations in my back and then I cried in pain and then in relief. As I said earlier, I was not normally by nature a pious man, but on that night I sure was. I sobbed and heaved as all of the stress left me spent and wasted.

There were two final things to do before I went back to sleep. I grabbed the bouquet of get-well flowers from Hansen Industries and hurled it across the room. It had been a stupid job anyway. Then I pulled the business card out, brought it up close to my face, and tried to read it with my blurry eyes. I couldn't focus well enough to read the fine print, but I could read the heading.

Monster Hunter International

Monster Problems? Call the Professionals.

Established 1895

Chapter 3

Physical therapy sucks. Recuperation sucks. And the never-ending itching that comes from under a cast has to possibly be the worst form of torture known to man. The worst, unless you happen to have your parents invade your home in an attempt to comfort you. My folks had flown in when they had been informed of the "incident," and had immediately set about being a huge nuisance.

Before that, however, my hospital stay had dragged on for another week. Apparently, dying, even if only for a minute or two, could be quite a stressful event. The doctors had been impressed that I was even alive. When I had asked one of them approximately how much blood I had lost, he had responded wryly with "most of it."

Treatment had consisted of me trying to move around without tearing anything. Gradually my strength returned until I was able to hobble a few feet on my own and even digest some of the hospital food. Detectives from the Dallas PD had come out to interview me. They did not say anything about supernatural monsters or the FBI agents, and believe me, I did not bring them up either. Instead the cops were under the impression that Mr. Huffman had been some sort of deranged serial killer high on PCP and armed with a 14-inch bowie knife. I was sure that my new friends from the federal government had arranged the crime scene to show whatever story they wanted, and it certainly didn't involve werewolves. The police thanked me for ridding the world of a very bad man, and told me that their investigation showed a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide. There was no indication that I was going to be indicted for anything, and they even arranged to return my.357 once everything was cleared through the prosecutor's office.

The local papers had run stories about my heroic defense against the crazed serial killer Cecil Huffman. In an amusing note the cover story featured both of our employee pictures. I'm sure that most casual readers would conclude that my picture showed the insane murderer, since I was big, young, muscular, swarthy, generally ugly, and beady-eyed. Mr. Huffman looked more like the victim type, a fat, middle-aged, middle manager, with big sad eyes and triple chins. Looks could be deceiving. During my hospital stay I had repeatedly turned away reporters. The last thing I wanted to do was to make up a story, or screw something up and draw the ire of the FBI. I had even turned down a potential guest spot on Oprah. My mom had been royally ticked when she found out about that.

The folks had arrived right before I was discharged. Now, don't get me wrong. I honestly love my family. They are good people. Crazy, but good.

"Damn, boy, you look like shit," was the first thing that my father exclaimed when he saw my face.

My father was an upstanding citizen, a decorated war hero and member of the tight-knit Special Forces community, a man who was respected by his peers. At home, however, he was an emotionally distant and stern man who had a hard time relating to his children. When I was younger I had taken this to mean that he did not approve of us or even really like us much. I had dealt with that by trying to follow in his footsteps. My younger brother had dealt with that kind of thing by dropping out of high school and forming a heavy metal band. While I had become a CPA, my brother's band had landed a record deal and was always surrounded by hot groupies and wild parties. I think I got the shaft in that deal.

Apparently my father was a little ashamed that I had gotten so torn up by a corpulent schmuck, when I myself was young, fit, and-since I had been brought up right-carrying a gun. I imagine that if Huffman had succeeded in eating me, my father would have been more embarrassed that a Pitt had lost a fight, than saddened by my actual demise. The last time my father had been obviously ashamed of me was when the Army recruiters had turned me down because of flat feet and a childhood history of asthma attacks. That had been a tough day for him.

He had brought his sons up to follow in his soldiering footsteps. In fact, the idea for my first name came from the Owen submachine gun that he had used to save his life in the backcountry of Cambodia during a war that never officially existed. He thought the name had a nice ring to it, and the actual gun had come in handy for mowing down communist insurgents after he was trapped deep in enemy territory with nothing but an obsolete Australian weapon older than he was. Believe me, as kids, we had heard all of those stories.

"Oh my baby! My poor poor baby! How did this happen? You poor thing!" was the first thing from my mom. It continued like that for several minutes in a barrage of hugs, kisses, and dampened tissues. Mom was the emotional one in the family. She also showed her love by cooking, which is why I was always the chubby kid growing up. In my house, if you weren't eating, obviously you were not loved. Needless to say, the Pitts tended to be big people.

They had taken me back to my apartment, where to my surprise they promptly settled in for a stay. I tried to assure them that I would be fine, and that I would not need any help. Since I could barely walk and was still covered in bandages I don't think I made a very convincing argument in favor of my independence.

Weeks passed as I gradually healed. My strength was returning, and after a few doctors' visits, I was running out of staples. I had to admit that I loved my mom's cooking, and between the lack of exercise, atrophied muscles, and 3,000-calorie meals I was starting to put on some weight. The trade-off came in the constant questioning. "Why no girlfriend? When are you going to get married? When will you find another job? What are you going to do now?" These were always followed by invitations to move back home where I could find another job and meet a nice girl.

Friends came to visit several times. Mom rented lots of movies for me to watch. I caught up on my reading, and checked the want ads for a new job.

Dad mostly played golf.

This whole time the business card that I had received at the hospital lay discarded in a drawer in my bedroom. I had thought about calling the number, but couldn't bring myself to do so. It was much easier not to think about a world where creatures like Mr. Huffman existed.

The hardest part was not being able to talk to anybody about it.

One night I received a phone call from my brother Mosh. His real name was David, but it had been a long time since anybody other than our parents had called him that. Since I was the only one in the family that he ever spoke with, and that was only on rare occasions, he had not known about the Incident until then. He had called as soon as he had found out. We spoke for a while, him wanting the blow by blow, and me giving him the FBI approved version. Of everyone that I had spoken with, he was the one I was the most tempted to tell the truth to, but I really didn't want the government to kill me, so I refrained.

I had asked how he was doing. His band, Cabbage Point Killing Machine, was doing well and they were going to release their next album, Hold the Pig Steady, in the next month. I made him promise to send me a copy, and VIP passes for when his tour hit Dallas. He told me he would, as long as I managed to not get murdered before then. I gave him my word that I would try.

The night before my parents were scheduled to fly out, my father took me aside for a conversation. He waited until Mom was occupied in the kitchen cooking another four-course meal, then motioned me into the living room.

"Owen, we need to talk."

"Sure, Dad. What's up?" It was not very often that my father wanted to speak with me. He usually just spoke at me, but tonight he seemed rather agitated.

"Look, son, let me just come right out and say it. I know you aren't telling us everything."

"Huh?" This was a surprise. "What do you mean?"

"I've seen your injuries. I've seen knife wounds, hell, I've given knife wounds. Those aren't knife wounds."

He had me there. I didn't know what to say so I just nodded.

"Plus, I know what you did to put yourself through school, and I know that you never told us because you didn't want your mother to worry."

That made me jump. I had had no idea that he knew.

"What do you mean, Dad? I worked in a warehouse."

"Sure you did, for a while, except after that you bounced in a biker bar, and you used to compete in underground fights for money."

"How did you know?"

"Remember crazy Charlie from my office? He had a gambling problem. Old guy would bet on anything. He caught one of your performances one night. Called me the next morning to tell me how he had seen my boy kick the living hell out of some tough customers. So I did a little checking is all… Did it pay good?"

Early on in life, I had discovered that I had a remarkable gift for violence, which had been encouraged and cultivated by my father. That, coupled with my physical ability to soak up a beating, had enabled me to make some pretty decent money on more than a few occasions. It didn't have the perks of accounting, but I do have to admit that punching people in the face had its own certain charms.

"Twenty percent of the house if you win. Five if you lose. Very illegal. I did the bar gig for a while. I was the cooler; they actually just let me hang out in the back and do homework until they had a problem." I neglected to mention that we had had problems on an hourly basis and it was the kind of bar where the local paramedics had our address memorized. "I only did that kind of thing long enough to pay for school." That was a shameful lie, but I could never tell my father the truth about why I had quit. "How come you never said anything?" I asked after a time.

He looked a little sheepish for a minute. Confused by emotion he quickly turned up the gruffness. "Not my business, you were an adult."

I believe that was the closest he had ever come to giving me a compliment.

"But anyway, what I'm getting at is I'm guessing you've got experience handling guys with knives." He had no idea. My body had a lot more scars than just the new ones. "I want to know how that asshole managed to wipe the floor with you, break walls, smash furniture, get shot ten times, and still manage to rip you open?"

"Drugs, I guess," was the only response I could think of.

He continued, "I've seen wounds like that before. I saw a guy who'd been mauled by a tiger once. Looked like what happened to you. He got raked up and down, dragged around. The cat toyed with him for a while. Unlike you, he had the muscles on his back eaten right off, right down to the bone like we would eat a fried chicken, and that was 'fore he got flipped over, and cracked open so it could eat the sweet spots out from his guts." I remembered that story, if I recalled correctly. Dad had shared the long gory version as a bedtime story when I was about six.

"I don't know what to tell you, Dad."

He looked me hard in the eyes. He was still a remarkably intimidating man, physically and emotionally. "Look, I know there's some weird stuff out there. I've heard stories from people I trust. I've seen a few things myself back in the day that no rational man can explain." He shook his head vacantly as if he was trying to forget something. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know you didn't just tangle with a normal man. If you want to tell me the whole story, I'll listen."

I didn't reply.

He scowled, eventually tired of waiting, and left the room without saying another word, no doubt ashamed of me once again.

They flew out the next day.

I cursed and swore as I hobbled through my apartment, crutch banging randomly into objects as I tried to make my way to the entrance. The doorbell rang again, and this time they held it down, and wouldn't let up. It was a very shrill doorbell.

"Just a minute!" I bellowed as I stumbled around the couch. My leg was getting much better. That had been by far the worst wound, and it was still the most tender, especially when I tried to walk on it. The rest of my injuries were healing nicely, and even my hand cast had finally come off. I promised myself on my long journey across the living room that if the person ringing my doorbell was with the media, I was going to shove my crutch through the reporter's chest cavity and leave the corpse propped up in the hallway as a warning to the others.

Peering through the peephole, all I could see was darkness. The hallway light had burned out again. "Who is it?" I yelled through the door, ready to give the crutch treatment if they said anything about a newspaper or television station. The media were apparently drawn to my story like flies to garbage, probably due to the made-for-TV movie feel of the whole thing. Serial killer thrown from a high building? Sounds like a winner to me.

"Earl Harbinger," came the muffled reply. "We met at the hospital."

I had almost managed to forget about that business card. Almost.

"What do you want?" I shouted.

"I need help with my taxes, what do you think I want?"

I debated opening the door. On one hand I could go back to my normal life, find a job, pretend that the biggest dangers in the world were good old-fashioned bad people, and sleep well at night. On the other hand I could get some answers.

Curiosity won out in the end. I unlocked the two dead bolts and opened the door.

Harbinger had brought a friend.

She was beautiful. In fact she was possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was tall, with dark black hair, light skin, and big brown eyes. Her face was beautiful, not fake beautiful like a model or an actress, because she was obviously a real person, but rather Helen of Troy, launch-a-thousand-ships kind of good-looking. She wore glasses, and I was a sucker for a girl in corrective eyewear. Since I was ugly it was probably some sort of subconscious reaction in the hope that I might have a chance with a cute girl who couldn't see very well. She was dressed in a conservative business suit, but unlike most women I knew, she made it look good. If I were to guess I would have said that she was in her mid-twenties.

"Mr. Pitt?" she asked. Even her voice was pretty. She was a goddess.

I tried to answer, but no words would come out. Talk, idiot! "Um… Hi." Smooth… So far so good, keep going, big guy.

"You can, um… my name is… Owen. My friends call me Z. Because of my middle name. It starts with a Z. Or whatever works for you. Come in. Please!" Well, so much for smooth.

She smiled and held out her hand. "Julie Shackleford, pleased to meet you." Her grip was strong, with surprisingly callused, working hands. Her handshake sent the message that she was no wimp. Had I found the perfect woman?

Her eyes widened when she saw my face. The scar. It was healing nicely, but I knew that it was still grisly. Once the swelling went down I was left with a massive red strip that evenly halved my forehead, split the bridge of my many times broken nose and ended up on my cheek. It was brutal.

She looked away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare." She had a small hint of a Southern accent.

"It's no big deal. Just a scratch. Think of it as Harry Potter on steroids," I said, trying to make her feel comfortable. "Come in, grab a seat. You need anything to drink?"

"No thank you," Julie said. Julie… Such a pretty name.

"I'll take a beer," Harbinger growled.

"Sorry, no beer," almost adding that I didn't drink, but not wanting to look like a wuss. The truth was after spending so much time working around drunks, I never touched the stuff.

Harbinger just grunted in disappointment. They both sat down on my thrift store couch. It took me a minute to get my crutch repositioned so that I could move gingerly to a chair. It's hard to impress a pretty girl when you're a big clumsy oaf balancing on a stupid padded aluminum stick. I flopped down and dropped the crutch.

"Feeling better?" Harbinger asked.

"Much. Doctors say I'm healing fast. I got my cast off, and I can start doing upper body exercise again as long as I'm really careful not to push too hard."

"You lift?"

"A little bit," I answered. In truth, before the Incident I had been pushing just over a 400-pound bench press. I didn't look it, but that was the disadvantage of being both tall and stocky. Because of the injuries on my chest and the amount of time off, I knew that it was going to take a while to get up to that weight again.

"Careful you don't hurt yourself. You got banged up good. In fact I've never seen anybody take on a werewolf like that and live. Not without some good silver weapons at least, but tangling hand to hand, that's crazy. You were lucky." He talked about werewolves like it was a common and everyday item of no special interest. Like a normal person would refer to a vacuum cleaner or a toaster.

"Mr. Pitt… Sorry… Owen," Julie started, "what we're about to say may sound a little weird, but after your recent experience you of all people will understand that we're not crazy. Earl and I represent a company called Monster Hunter International."

"Okay. I'm listening." Julie could tell me that she was from the moons of Jupiter and I would give her my full attention. Less weird than that? Piece of cake.

"MHI is a private organization, and we handle monster-related problems. I guess you could say that we are in fact Monster Hunters."

"Sounds reasonable." I smiled. It didn't sound reasonable at all. It sounded wacky as all get out, but if I told a shrink about my Huffman experience I would be in a padded cell inside of fifteen minutes. So I listened.

"As you now are aware, monsters are very real. They're out there, and are a serious threat to the world. Our company specializes in neutralizing monster threats," she said.

"Good money in that?" I asked jokingly.

Harbinger reached inside his jacket, pulled out a plain envelope and tossed it to me. I caught it.

"What's this?"

"There's a federal bounty paid on undesirable unnaturals. It's called the PUFF," Harbinger stated.

"Puff?"

"Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund," Julie answered. "Teddy Roosevelt started it when he was president. PUFF is a tool for controlling monster populations. It's a big source of income for MHI. We make the rest in contracts set up with various municipalities, organizations, and private individuals with monster problems."

"Go ahead and open it," Harbinger suggested. "The Feds weren't going to tell you about it, but you killed a newly blooded adult werewolf by yourself. That makes you the sole recipient of any bounty for that particular creature. I took the liberty of doing the paperwork for you. I didn't think you would mind."

Inside the envelope was an ordinary-looking check. Sure enough it was from the Department of the Treasury, with PUFF stamped in green ink under their insignia. It was made out to one Owen Zastava Pitt in the amount of $50,000.

I think that the noise I made could best be described as a squeak, only less manly. This could not be real. My job, which I had been fired from so recently, had paid less than that in a year. "You have got to be freaking kidding me!" Fixing Julie with an incredulous look, I did my best to raise a single eyebrow.

"Nope," Julie laughed. She had a beautiful sounding laugh. "That check is totally legit. The bounties change depending on the severity of the monster populations, and the number of human casualties. In this case lycanthrope attacks are at an all-time high, and this particular specimen had already taken a few victims the night before. Now if he had been older, or had eaten more people, then you would be looking at a bigger bounty."

"So you're telling me that the government gives people money for killing werewolves?" I was prepared to take her word for it, but I was definitely going to limp down to the bank and try to deposit this thing as soon as they left.

"Yes, and other types of unnaturals."

"Others? So what else is out there?"

She shrugged. "Lots of things, but I don't want to get too far off of the subject. If you don't agree to our offer then anything I tell you can never be shared with the general public, or the government will arrange for you to have a chainsaw accident or something equally bad, and I'm not kidding about that one bit. They have a strict policy of keeping all of this secret. So before I tell you what else is out there, let me ask you if-"

I cut her off. "Zombies? Are there really zombies?"

"Owen, please, I need to…"

"Yes, there are zombies. A whole bunch of different kinds. Slow ones, fast ones. Nasty bastards," Harbinger said.

"Vampires?"

"Oh yeah. And let me tell you, they ain't the nice charming debonair kind of thing you see on TV, those suckers are meaner than hell. Trust me on this one; pop culture makes them all intellectual and sexy, there ain't nothing sexy about getting your carotid artery ripped out. There're actually a mess of different kinds of undead."

Julie sighed as she gave up on her pitch. I was going to find out what exactly was real, and Harbinger was more than willing to talk. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and also getting a kick out of Julie's discomfort.

"Bigfoot, the Yeti?"

"Yep, but no bounties because they ain't really a problem."

"Chupacabras?"

"Goat suckers. They'll tear you up."

"Giant mutant animals?"

"Sure, but the Japanese have cornered that market."

"Sea monsters?"

"Yes, but only bounties on the evil kind."

"Wow, no kidding? Space aliens?"

"No intelligent little green men, if that's what you're thinking of. If those are out there we haven't ever dealt with them."

"Ghosts?"

"We have a strict policy: we only hunt things that have physical bodies. No physical body, no contract, and no way to collect a bounty either. We stick with things that are flesh and blood, or at least bone, exoskeleton, or slime."

We continued on like that for a few minutes, with me thinking of every creature from every horror movie I had ever seen, and Harbinger letting me know if it was real or not. Every answer he gave was in total seriousness. If he was making any of this crazy monster stuff up, I sure would hate to play a game of poker against him.

Finally after asking about the creature from the black lagoon and finding out that that was actually based on a true story, Julie had had enough and jumped in. She elbowed Harbinger in the ribs. "Sorry guys, back to business. Owen, we're looking for new Hunters. Because of the nature of what we do, we can't exactly advertise. Usually we meet people through our business who have monster experience, and who have handled themselves well."

"I did okay, I guess."

Julie laughed again. Harbinger smirked. She pulled a DVD case out of her purse. "Do you mind?" I shook my head and she stood up and put the disk in the player and turned on my TV. "I don't think you've seen this. As far as your former company is concerned, and as far as the Dallas PD knows, this doesn't exist."

"Put it on channel three. There you go."

It was a black and white security video of the fourteenth floor of my former office building. The screen was split into four squares, each with a different view. It was surprising where some of the cameras were pointing, as I had never been aware of any cameras in those locations. There was even one that had a good view of Huffman's office.

"They have hidden cameras all over the place. I guess you folks have a big problem with employee theft," Harbinger stated. I knew I should never have taken those Post-It notes home.

The video started. The digital readout showed the time as 8:05. I thought that I looked silly, as most people do when they watch video of themselves. There was no sound, but it unfolded pretty much exactly as I remembered it. Only this time I was surprised by how fast everything happened. The transformation that had seemed to take forever actually happened rather quickly when seen from a strange angle in clinical detachment. The entire battle had been over in a matter of minutes, yet for me time had dilated down so that each fraction of a second had been an eternity. The creature was not nearly as intimidating on the screen as he had been when his hot breath was straining at my face. The third camera winked into static as my body was put through the ceiling tiles. We combatants would disappear from the cameras for a moment, only to reappear jerkily in another frame a few seconds later. In black and white I was surprised how plain all of our blood appeared on the walls. Finally I watched as I snapped the werewolf's neck and pushed the desk out the window.

I realized I was breathing hard.

Julie quietly shut the TV off and carefully placed the DVD back in its case.

"You just did okay, huh? Looks to me like you put up an amazing fight. You could have given up a bunch of times. You would be surprised. Most people faced with something out of their nightmares will just freeze up. Their brains can't begin to process what they're seeing, and by then it's too late, and next thing you know something from the great beyond is flossing with their spine. Hunters don't freeze. Hunters fight."

"Listen, I'm just a normal guy. I'm an accountant even. It doesn't get any more normal than that!" I exclaimed in defense of my average life.

Julie pulled a manila file folder out of her purse.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Your secret file from the Department of Homeland Security."

"If the government didn't want it stolen, they shouldn't just leave it out where any master hacker can break in and get it," Harbinger explained patiently.

"Owen Zastava Pitt, age 24. Born in Merced, California… Zastava?" Julie asked.

"My mom's family is mostly mixed Czech and Serb. It's an old family name. Like the place that made those little cars," I answered.

"Little cars?" she asked.

"You know, the Yugo."

"Oh." She continued, "Black belt in two martial arts. You wrestled in high school and took the state championship heavyweight division two years in a row. Homeland Security has you flagged because you're considered a militant right-wing gun nut. You became involved in competitive shooting at eight years old, and have a master rating in International Practical Shooting. You've placed in the top five in several different national level three-gun tactical competitions. You were ranked as one of the top young shooters in the country, though you've slipped over the last few years."

"Working too many hours, hard to keep up the practice routine." My father had been more drill instructor than dad, trying to prepare us for some kind of future apocalypse that existed in his paranoid imagination. I could hit targets at a quarter mile with a rifle before I could ride a bike. When normal kids went to summer camp and made crafts out of beads and twigs, my brother and I had gone on miniature death marches with giant rucksacks. Other children got sports, I got hand-to-hand combat training. I suppose showing up in a government database shouldn't have been too shocking.

"You tried to join the Army but were turned down due to some minor health problems. DHS also notes that you've participated in illegal pit fighting and in illegal sports gambling organizations."

I cringed, it not being something I was real proud of now.

"It says here that you earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in six years total, top of your class, passed the CPA exam the first time. National Honor Society," Julie continued.

After coming within a couple heartbeats of ending another fighter's life, I had devoted myself to being as boring as possible, no more pushing the limits, nothing but normal. And what was more normal than an accountant?

"You speak five languages fluently, mostly because of your extremely varied family background, and know enough to get by in several others. Your psychological profile says that you're a pathological overachiever with severe overcompensating tendencies as a result of your relationship with your father, and the fact that you were always the picked-on fat kid while growing up."

"Does it actually say 'fat kid'?" I asked in total bewilderment.

"Actually it says it in some sort of psychological mumbo-jumbo about body image and self-esteem, but I'm just paraphrasing."

"I wasn't fat. I was big-boned." I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temples. I was amazed that all of this was from some government database. Chalk up a few more points for my antiauthoritarian side.

"Look, Owen, you're not a normal person; none of us are normal, either. MHI is a family business, my family. My great-great-granddad founded the company, five generations of Hunters. You haven't seen weird until you've met my family, so don't feel bad." Julie patted my knee. She touched me! I perked right up.

"We're not looking for normal people. Normal people scream and run and get eaten. You have to be a little different to do the kind of stuff that we do. I mean, heck, looking at your shooting scores, I've been shooting pistols since I was a little kid, and your classifications blow mine away. Your National Match rifle scores are equal to mine, and I'm the team sharpshooter."

As Julie said this I realized that I had in fact met the woman of my dreams. Attractive, smart, and a shooter? Wow.

"I don't know. I don't have any experience with this kind of thing. Aren't you better off with soldiers or Marines or Navy SEALs and stuff like that? My gosh, I'm an office dweeb."

Harbinger answered this time. "We have all of those, and we also have former truck drivers, school teachers, farmers, doctors, a priest and a stripper, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It comes down to finding people who don't have a problem coping with weirdness. The best Hunters are people whose minds are… flexible."

"Well… the pay seems good," I said as I held up the check.

"Keep in mind that was for you on a solo bounty. When you work with a team you share bounties with the team, and the company. However, people who try monster hunting as individuals usually get real dead, real quick. Working with backup is the only way to stay alive. But with the amount of business that we do, the pay's good," Harbinger said.

"How good?"

Harbinger shrugged. "We have a real problem with our experienced people retiring and buying small countries."

"I'm guessing it's dangerous?"

Julie shrugged. "I won't lie to you. It's super dangerous. Our job is to go head to head with the forces of evil. We lose a lot of people, but with well trained groups that work together as a team, we do better than any other group of Hunters, and that includes the Feds."

I sat silently in thought. My visitors didn't say anything for a moment. Finally Julie tried one last thing.

"Look, I'm going to tell you the truth. We have the most insane job in the world, many of us die young, and sometimes in really horrible ways. But this is the best job there is. It's never boring, and you get to do something really worthwhile. We're the pros, the go-to people when all hell's broken loose. When the situation is totally hosed, we're the ones they call. We do the job that nobody else can do, and we do it good." She said this with deep and sincere emotion. Julie obviously had a passion for her work.

I absently rubbed my facial scar. A random thought popped into my mind and I instantly muttered it under my breath.

"What was that?" asked Julie.

"A calling. Is hard, but is good."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know, just something an old man said to me once. Short straw." I thought about the strange dream that I had had in the hospital. Had it happened while I was technically dead?

"Huh?"

"Never mind." I had to admit, I was interested in what they had been telling me, and I was a real chump when it came to a pretty girl, especially one who was smart, and into guns, to boot.

This was crazy. I had spent the last few years trying to be average just for once, until my boss had tried to have me for dinner and life had pulled the rug out from under me. The smart thing to do would be to push this whole incident to the back of my mind, and forget it ever happened.

But I did need a job, and Owen Z. Pitt, Monster Hunter, had a certain ring to it.

Ah, what the hell.

"Tell you what, Mr. Harbinger, Ms. Shackleford. I'm going to go down to the bank and try to deposit this check. If it's real, and I don't get arrested for trying to pass a make-believe check, I'm going to believe everything that you said. I'm in, on two conditions."

They waited for my terms. I paused as I screwed up my courage.

"If at any time I think this job is totally insane, I'm out of there. No questions, no ifs, ands, or buts. Don't think I'm kidding either. I've been shafted already, and I'm not going to do that again. You screw with me in any way, shape, or form and you can color me gone."

"We wouldn't have it any other way," Julie said. "And what else?"

"You, uh… need to have dinner with me tonight," I stammered, surprising myself with my own courage. There you go, Casanova. I had no idea why I had said that, it had just kind of popped out.

Julie looked momentarily taken aback. I could not tell from her reaction if she was flattered or insulted by my lame attempt to ask her out. Earl rolled his eyes.

"I guess you ain't talking about me," he said.

"No, I… uh… well, I just thought, you know…" It wasn't exactly poetry.

She did not respond immediately. I think I took her by surprise. I knew that surprise was good in war, but it wasn't necessarily what I was going for here. I have never been very good with women. Actually, that's an understatement. I turn into a bumbling incompetent oaf around them.

"Was that a lame attempt to ask me out?" she queried. "It's usually considered bad form to do that in what is basically a job interview."

"Well, I just wanted to… maybe ask some questions. About, you know-"

Earl cut me off. "There's some more business that I need to conduct anyway. I've got to go. Julie can fill you in on the rest of the details." He stood up. "You kids have fun."

"Earl, wait a second, what about…" Julie started to stand. My heart lurched. Had I offended her?

"Julie, you know what I'm talking about. You know what tonight is. Stick around. Fill Owen in on the details of our operation." He adjusted his bomber jacket.

She slowly slid back down the couch. Way to go, Earl! I thought happily. Harbinger made as if to leave. I tried to grab my crutch so I could stand to see him out.

"Not necessary," he said as he shook my hand. "I look forward to working with you."

"Me too," I responded before wincing at the amazing strength in the man's fingers as he easily crushed my much larger hand. He was far stronger than he appeared. I tried not to visibly show how much pain he was inflicting. He bent down and spoke low enough in my ear that Julie couldn't hear.

"That took guts, but be a gentleman with her, or I'll be displeased," he whispered. I had no doubt that his displeasure would somehow involve me becoming seriously injured.

I nodded. He let go, grinned evilly and patted me on the back, before swiftly leaving.

Julie Shackleford sat on my bargain basement furniture in my rundown apartment in a bad part of town and examined me quizzically. I had no idea what she was thinking. It was an awkward moment.

Finally she broke the silence.

"Want to order pizza?"

"So you know all about me because of that file," I said after swallowing a blob of cheese and pineapple. Delivery had been relatively swift, the pizza was good, and surprisingly enough Julie seemed to be enjoying our conversation. After the first few awkward minutes she had warmed up to my attempt at flirting, and was at least tolerating me. Her smile was contagious, and I felt better than I had in weeks. The sun was starting to set, and long orange shadows were cast through my barred apartment windows.

"Scary, isn't it? How much they keep track of people," she said, trying to be polite and not talk with her mouth full, and failing miserably. "You should see what mine says. If you read it you would probably be scared to be around me. They think I'm totally nuts."

"Oh, I don't know about that," I replied, going for another slice, trying not to lean forward on my bad leg too much. "You don't seem nuts to me, except for the whole good versus evil zombie werewolf thing at least."

She noticed my predicament and helpfully shoved the box closer on my little coffee table. My furniture was sparse and mostly cheap junk, but at least the place was clean, even if it was only because my mom had visited recently.

"They think everybody in this line of work is certifiable. They even think that about their own guys that Hunt."

"Like the two that visited me in the hospital?" I asked.

"Myers and Franks? Myers isn't so bad. Believe it or not, he worked for us before the government recruited him, but that was a long time ago. He had a bit of a falling out. Franks on the other hand is a jerk. I'm surprised he didn't kill you just to be on the safe side. We have to deal with the Feds once in a while. They watch us like hawks. They're actually in a special unit in the Justice Department, the Monster Control Bureau, that deals with problems like you."

"Problems like me, gee thanks. Anyway, I don't want to talk about those guys." I really did not. I wanted to talk about her. "Like I was saying, you've seen my file, so you have the advantage. Tell me about you."

"Well, first off, I'm in a relationship if that's what you want to know," she replied mischievously. "I'm just here as a professional courtesy."

Ouch.

"Really, I wasn't trying to say anything like that," I responded quickly.

"Owen, you may be a great accountant, and one heck of a shooter, but you're a horrible liar."

She leaned back on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table next to the pizza box. I noticed that she was wearing heavy-duty boots that did not really match her conservative suit. As she made herself comfortable and her jacket fell open revealing her fitted shirt, I realized two things: a) She had a great body, and b) she was carrying a gun in a leather pancake holster on her right hip.

Not able to comment on a) in a polite manner, I instead remarked on b).

"What are you carrying?"

"This?" She reached around, drew the gun, dropped the magazine, racked the slide and expertly caught the ejected round in her off hand. She then passed it over to me with the action open while she rattled off the stats only another gun nut would appreciate. "Commander-sized 1911, Baer slide and frame, match barrel. Heinie night sights. Thin Alumagrips. Bobtail conversion to the frame. All Greider tool steel parts. Trigger and action job. It's a good shooter. I've carried this one for a year now."

I examined her gun. It was a gorgeous piece of work. The slide was so smooth it felt like it was on rollers. It was obviously used hard, but well cared for.

"Mind if I try the trigger? I'm a 1911 guy myself."

"Go for it," she said with a grin. She was proud of her gun.

The break was clean and light with no detectable creep. It was a very good trigger job.

"Who did the work?" I asked. It was obviously a high quality custom build. Being a serious competitor on a limited budget I did my own gunsmithing. My stuff tended to be ugly but functional. This specimen was obviously functional but it was so well fitted that it was almost a work of art.

"I did most of it myself," Julie said with obvious pride.

"Will you marry me?" I blurted.

She laughed, and it was such a pretty laugh. I reluctantly handed her gun back. She reinserted the magazine, chambered a round, and then took the mag out to top it off with the extracted round she still had in her hand. She paused for a second and then tossed it to me. Reflexively I snatched it out of the air.

Examining the cartridge, I noticed it was a strange design. The case was normal brass, but the bullet itself was different. It was shaped like an ordinary.45 bullet, except that it appeared to be a standard jacketed hollow point, with a shiny metallic ball filling the cavity. The two pieces appeared to be sealed together into a solid projectile.

"What's this?

"Contrary to the Lone Ranger, silver bullets really suck compared to good old-fashioned lead. Silver's too hard, and it doesn't fully engage the rifling. It's lighter than lead, so you get really lightweight projectiles with lousy accuracy. It's pretty useless except for one thing: it's the only thing that will kill some of the stuff we face."

"Why is that, anyway?" I asked.

"Nobody knows for sure, but we have some theories. Most popular is it is a violent reaction of evil creatures to the thirty pieces of silver that Judas was paid. The Vatican's Hunter team says that it is because silver is a pure metal that represents goodness, while lead is a base metal of the earth. You get other weird ideas from Wiccans and mystics, but even science is stumped why silver works so much better on bona fide evil creatures. All we know is that it does. Lycanthropes can't regenerate, and even vampires feel pain from silver."

"Looks like a Corbon Pow'r Ball." That was a type of regular defensive ammunition that I had used a few times before. It used a ball stuck in a hollow cavity designed to squish back to force expansion of the bullet on impact, thereby increasing the severity of the wound.

"Good call. That's who we stole the idea from. The ball in front is pure silver. It penetrates well, and as the silver is forced back it expands the traditional lead slug around it. Usually the silver fragments off after a few inches and leaves a separate wound cavity. Best of both worlds. Still works like a regular bullet, shoots like a regular bullet, but enough silver to do a number on evil. We have them made for us specifically. They cost a fortune, so we only make them in.45 for pistols and subguns, and.308 for rifles. When we need lots of silver up close and fast, we use a modified silver double-aught buckshot."

"Now you're talking my language." I held up the bullet. "So I guess that's what the Feds were going to shoot me with if I had been infected."

"Nope, they use a sintered metal. Silver powder encased in a polymer matrix. Neat stuff, but the company that makes it only sells to the government." She caught the bullet when I tossed it back. She loaded it back in the magazine, inserted that back into her 1911 and reholstered without looking.

"You really know your stuff."

"Thanks. I love my job… I really shouldn't have another piece, but this stuff is great," she said as she went for another slice of pizza. "I think you'll fit right in at MHI. It really is a great thing that we do, and we're a good company to work for."

"So about this 'relationship'?" I used my fingers to make quotation marks. Julie rolled her eyes at me behind her glasses.

"You don't quit, do you?"

"Isn't that why you guys want to hire me?"

"Tenacity good. Stalking bad."

"Okay, agreed, stalking bad. Especially when the stalkee is packing heat. So are you and Earl an item?"

Julie snorted and started to choke on her pizza. I couldn't tell if she was trying to laugh or not die. So I didn't know if I should be in on the joke, or try to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

"Earl? You've got to be kidding me. No. Oh no. Hell no. We're related. This is a family business. Why would you even think that? Earl's much older than me."

"He doesn't look that old."

"Let's just say that the man has aged well. Earl has been like a dad to me. He pretty much raised me and my brothers." There was an audible trace of her Southern accent when she said that.

"Why?"

She thought about it for a moment, as if debating whether she should tell me or not, finally she shook her head in the negative.

"Never mind. It doesn't matter." It was obvious it did matter, but it was a sensitive topic and none of my business. On that subject she seemed to be wound tight as a spring. "Just know that Earl is probably the greatest Hunter alive. If he tells you something, listen."

"So is your boyfriend a Hunter too?"

"Yes he is, and if you ask me any more personal questions, I'm going to beat you to death with your own crutch." She was only half joking, and in my current physical condition, she could probably do it without elevating her heartbeat.

We finished the pizza as the afternoon slowly turned into evening. Julie gradually filled in the gaps in my knowledge about her company, though she was tight-lipped and uncomfortable talking about herself. I did learn more about this interesting woman as she talked about her work, because it was so obviously a big part of her. Julie had worked in this field since she was a child, and seemed to know it very well. As the daylight fled, she started to glance nervously toward the window. I did not ask why.

She was a veritable encyclopedia of monster-related knowledge, and she even let slip the fact that she had earned a degree in ancient history and a master's in archeology because it pertained so much to her life's work.

When I had asked why those particular fields, she explained that the battle did not start recently, and she left it at that. The open window kept drawing her attention. It was dark outside. Finally I could not help but ask, "So why are you so distracted? What're you looking for?"

Julie sighed, and brushed back her long dark hair, looking relieved. She yawned, stretched, and stood, adjusted her jacket and prepared to leave. She patted her gun to make sure it was properly holstered. "I've got to be going."

"Why?" I asked, puzzled by the sudden change.

"You don't realize what tonight is, do you?" she asked.

"Thursday?" I answered helpfully as I grabbed my crutch and pulled myself out of my chair.

"I wonder if we stole the right file, because for a genius you're not real fast on the uptake."

I shrugged. I had no idea. She grabbed my arm and helped me stand up. Julie looked me in the eye, and I could see my reflection in her thick glasses. Her brown eyes were beautiful.

"It's been one month since you were attacked. The test came back negative, but they're not always right."

She guided me as I hobbled over to the window. The full moon hung low and bright above the Dallas skyline. I realized now why she had stayed. Other than my still sore leg and healing muscles, I felt fine. I wasn't spouting any hair, at least not any more than my normal prodigious amount.

"So it was a test?"

"Nothing personal. We just had to make sure."

"Oh." I could not think of anything to say. She had been prepared to kill me all along.

We silently watched the sky. I realized that she was still holding my arm, standing close, and I could feel the warm, soft pressure of her body against mine. There together, in the light of the moon, just the slight tenseness of her hands on the muscles of my arm, I could feel her breath on my ear. It was a good moment. I wished that it could last forever. Unfortunately she was only holding me to help keep my pathetic crippled ass from falling down.

Once she was sure that I was stable on my crutch she let go. She reached into her purse, produced a card and handed it over. The card had a set of directions, a very basic map, and a picture of a green happy face with horns.

"We're putting together a training class. It's going to be brutally hard, because we only hire the best. Once you have had a chance to think about it, if you're still interested, be at the location on that card in three weeks." I put the card in my pocket.

"I'll be there," I promised.

"Good. Welcome to MHI." She shook my hand in a professional manner.

"Thanks."

"I'll let myself out," Julie said. She started to walk away, leaving me to watch the moon.

Julie Shackleford made it a few steps, and then surprised me by turning around and coming back. I felt her full lips brush softly against my cheek in a brief kiss. Luckily the crutch was well grounded or I might have fallen headfirst out the window in shock.

"You're a sweet guy, Owen. Thanks for the nice dinner. See you in a few weeks." Then she glided away.

At least I waited for the confirmation of my front door closing before grinning like an idiot. It had been a good day after all. I had gotten some of my questions answered. I had found a new job, one that at least sounded interesting, even if it was a bit of a career change on the insane side. I had, in theory at least, a check for $50,000 in my pocket. And best of all, a pretty girl had kissed me on the cheek. Yes, it had been a great day indeed.

I pulled the card and examined it. I was going to Alabama.

Chapter 4

The next three weeks had passed quickly. The PUFF check had surprisingly enough cleared. And with a bloated bank account, I had packed my bags, sold or given away most of my stuff, broken the lease on my apartment, and driven to the middle of nowhere, following the directions that Julie Shackleford had left me.

Everything that I still owned was stuffed into the back seat and trunk of my rust-brown Chevy Caprice. All I had was a couple duffel bags with clothing, my laptop, a few other supplies, and about a dozen guns. There was no way I was parting with those. It was a good thing that a Caprice's trunk is big enough to suit a Mafia don.

Julie's directions had been printed on a 3x5 card. Her parting instructions had been for me to meet at the location listed at a certain time and date. She had told me that food and lodging would be provided, but she had not given me any other details.

I had driven straight through from Dallas to Alabama, thoughts of the absurdity of what I was doing nagging at me the entire time. Welcome to the heart of Dixie, the sign on the border had proclaimed. I stopped once in Montgomery to pick up a better map. According to the card's directions the place I was driving to was nothing but an almost blank green spot on the map with only one road and one small dot for a town. Cazador, Alabama.

It took another two hours from Montgomery to arrive in Cazador, but a good half of that was spent driving lost through the forest. The trees were dense and the underbrush was thick and still over the iron-red soil. The country around Cazador consisted of beautiful rolling hills interspersed with many streams and creeks.

The town itself was really more of a village. There were a few small stores, a Baptist church directly across from a Church of Christ, and a scattering of houses. The buildings appeared old and weathered. An old sign near the road read simply ‘cazador, alabama, population 682’ A slightly newer sign beneath stated that guided tours of the catfish plant were available from noon until four. I'm sure that was a barrel of fun.

I stopped for overpriced gas, a soda, and to scrape the bugs off of my windows at the only convenience store in town. A few locals made eye contact but nobody spoke to me. I overheard a toothless geezer murmuring to the cashier something about fresh meat. I didn't care to guess if he was talking about me or the lunch menu.

Following the final directions on the card, I had taken a small, barely paved road through some more hills and into even deeper woods. It branched and I kept to the west for another mile. I almost missed the gravel turnoff. My main indication that I had found the home of Monster Hunter International was a small sign painted with the letters mhi and a green smiley face. The smiley face had horns. As my car bounced slowly down the gravel road I took note of the many no trespassing and trespassers will be shot warnings.

Finally I came to an open gate surrounded by high chain link and razor wire. Near the gate, a man sat in a folding chair under the shade of a large umbrella, relaxed and apparently listening to a big battery-powered radio. He waved lazily as I braked and rolled down my window.

He was an interesting-looking fellow, weathered to the point that it was difficult to guess his age, a little shorter than average, with a shaved head, small wire-rimmed glasses over a blunt freckled nose, and a thick red beard that was absurdly long and pointy. The end had even been braided with a few decorative beads. He was wearing a Rush Tom Sawyer T-shirt, cargo shorts, and Birkenstock sandals. He looked kind of like a granola-eating environmentalist type, except for the worn M4 carbine hanging idly from a tactical-sling draped over his shoulder. He was spitting the remains of sunflower seeds into a cup.

"Hi. I'm looking for MHI," I said.

The man adjusted his glasses and looked at me, head tilted at a slightly strange angle as he smiled absently. Suddenly he clicked his tongue and pointed at me.

"Big dude… Scar face. You must be that guy Earl found. Threw a werewolf out a window?"

"That would be me." I realized that the boom box was set to a talk radio station, and the subject was something to do with black helicopters and cattle mutilation. "Julie Shackleford offered me a job."

"She does that a lot. We're a little short-handed right now, but that's a long story. Drive straight in, park in front of the biggest building. You're a little early, but a few other Newbies are already here. The Boss said that he would say a few words to you guys, so just hang out."

"Newbie?"

"New hire. Greenies. Monster bait. Organ donors. You know. It's slang."

"Oh, okay… I'm Owen Pitt." I stuck my hand out the window.

"Milo Ivan Anderson. Jack of all trades, master of a couple. Call me Milo. If you live long enough I'm the guy that gets to teach you how all of the cool stuff works." He shook my hand and grinned. His beard stretched halfway to his shorts. "See you around."

I parked in the lot that Milo pointed out, locked the doors out of habit, and checked out the surroundings. The MHI property could probably best be described as a compound. The main building appeared to be the only permanent structure, being constructed of heavy red brick and steel. It was an office building, but with narrow windows, obviously thick walls, and iron bars. It looked like it could pass muster as a fortress if the need arose. I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a big pot, full of boiling oil, just out of sight on the wide flat roof. As I entered I realized that the main doors opened into a small room that funneled down to a smaller set of doors. Suspended overhead was what appeared to be a heavy portcullis that could be dropped to seal the secondary doors. Very interesting.

An older lady was seated behind a massive reception desk. She smiled at me as I approached. At least the staff here was friendly. She had to be in her sixties and looked plump and cheerful. She was wearing a matronly purple knit sweater, but the large-frame revolver in her shoulder holster was printing pretty badly through the fabric.

"Hello, dear. You must be here for the orientation," she said.

"Yes. My name's Owen Pitt."

"Oh, I recognize you. You're the one that kicked that werewolf's ass. That was some mighty fine brawling, sonny."

"Uh, thanks, I guess."

"No, thank you. Earl showed us all that video. It was right entertaining. I hate werewolves. Used to hunt the sons a bitches once my own self. Used to could do a fair job in my day, till one of the bastards took my leg. This one here is plastic." She knocked on her plastic leg for effect. It made a hollow noise. "My old one was made out of wood, but it would swell up when it got humid. I reckon it does get mighty wet in these parts. No place at all for a wood leg. Could be worse. Old Leroy had himself a wood eye. Painted it brown, same color as the other. Summer time roll around, damn thing would swell till it would get stuck pointing in one direction. Poor old Leroy. He was a good one. Oh well, sign in here."

My signature was quick and sloppy on the clipboard. As an accountant you have to sign your name a lot. You try to keep a pretty signature when you have to sign it a couple hundred times a day. There were at least twenty names ahead of mine.

"My name's Dorcas. Some kids nowadays snicker at that name. But my ma said that it was a right fine biblical name, and it has suited me for close to seventy years. Any punk kids make fun of my name, I'll put my plastic foot in their ass. Got that, boy?"

"Yes, ma'am." That was my instinctive response to crotchety old ladies. Especially former Monster Hunters strapped with what appeared to be a.44 magnum.

"Good, go down the hall. Double door on the right. That's the cafeteria and meeting hall. Now scat. I got business to conduct."

"Yes, ma'am." I hurried away so Dorcas could continue her game of solitaire on the computer.

As I strolled in the direction the receptionist had indicated, something caught my eye. I paused in front of a wall of small silver plaques. There had to be at least four hundred of them and they took up quite a bit of space. Not all of them had pictures, but all had a name, a birth date, and a death date. The oldest plaques mostly lacked photos, and the birth dates started clear back in the 1850s. It was a wall of remembrance for fallen comrades. There was an inscription in Latin carved into a large polished board at the top of the wall. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Being an auditor by trade I could not help but notice the curious fact that almost a hundred of the newest memorials shared the same death date: December 15, 1995.

Whatever had happened on that date must have been a black day for the Hunters.

Also strange, there was a span going forward from that day, with no new death dates until a few in the current year. The six-year gap was conspicuous by its absence.

A group was waiting in the cafeteria. There were a few small pockets of conversation, but mostly they had pulled up chairs by themselves and were waiting nervously. Not being one for socializing, I grabbed a metal folding chair and took up residence in the back of the room. The fellow to my right was snoring loudly. To my left was a young Asian man, warily watching the others. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Albert Lee. When I asked him how he had ended up here he muttered something about spiders. Big spiders.

More people gradually arrived. To pass the time I studied the others. I caught a few of them studying me back. The group was about eighty percent male, and I would guess that the average age was probably just under thirty. Most of the Newbies looked relatively fit, though surprisingly there were a few people I would call gravitationally challenged. The group was a good demographic cross section of America, with the biggest numbers being Caucasian, but also some Hispanics, Asians, Blacks, and a couple of people like me of indeterminate race. Don't bother to ask. My ancestors really got around.

Finally when I counted about forty others in the room, I heard a voice bellow for everybody to quiet down and take a seat. Earl Harbinger paced back and forth at the front of the cafeteria. He was wearing the same leather bomber jacket, and he had the same intense presence, as when I had first met him. Several other individuals entered and took seats behind him. I recognized Milo from the gate, and there was Julie Shackleford. She smiled when she saw me. My heart skipped a beat.

"Hello. My name is Earl Harbinger. Many of you know me already. I'm the Director of Operations here at MHI. Welcome to our new Hunter orientation. Let's get one thing straight right off the bat. We hunt monsters. That's what we do. Every one of you has had the experience to realize that there is a lot more out there than you've been led to believe. In the coming days I would just ask for one thing. Keep your mind flexible. Don't get caught up in what you're sure is real, because if you can't believe in them, you can't fight them."

Harbinger stopped speaking just as an older gentleman limped into the room. He was tall and gaunt. A black patch covered his obviously empty left eye socket, and the skin on that side of his face looked as if it had been badly burned at some point in the distant past. He had a stainless steel hook instead of a right hand. His hair was thick and white, and had been neatly combed. He wore an obviously expensive, dark Italian suit. He walked slowly, one foot slightly dragging.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Let me introduce Raymond Shackleford, President and CEO of Monster Hunter International." Harbinger quickly sat down. Most of us started to clap politely.

The senior Shackleford shushed us and waved his hook in our general direction. "Enough of that nonsense. I ain't no politician." He paused, folded his arms behind his back almost as if he was at parade rest and proudly addressed the room. He had the air of an old Southern gentleman. The boom of his voice did not fit his frail appearance.

"Welcome to Monster Hunter International. My name is Raymond Shackleford the Third. You can call me sir, Mr. Shackleford, or Boss. Today you are going to get a little history lesson, so pay attention." He cleared his throat loudly. "My grandfather founded this company in 1895. Raymond Shackleford the First, but around these parts everybody knew him as Bubba. Bubba Shackleford was born and raised in this very valley, here in the heart of Keene County. One winter the good folk of Keene County started to disappear: sadly, some of them even came back, only they were not quite human any more. My grandfather formed a group of concerned citizens, best could be described as an angry mob, and took care of the problem. The fault lay with what we now know to be a vampire. Grandpa Shackleford lynched the creature twice, and when it wouldn't die they finally, in frustration, burned it at the stake. One by one my grandfather's men found every newly created vampire, and destroyed each in turn, until finally the county and Cazador township was made safe."

The old man coughed, then pulled a white handkerchief from his suit coat and wiped his nose. It was plain to see that he was not in good shape, but it was obvious that he still maintained an amazingly strong will and presence. I had met a few people like that before, mostly at Veterans' Day functions. They were the kind of men that even my father saluted.

"Word spread across the state, and then across the South. Bubba's reputation grew. Turns out that there were many other towns that had their own supernatural problems. Grandpa was offered what was for the time princely sums of money to travel and dispatch other monsters. As time passed he assembled a group of strong men to assist him. They learned from their mistakes and they improved their methods. In December of 1895 they formed Bubba Shackleford's Professional Monster Killers. It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?" he asked rhetorically.

"A contemporary of my grandfather was one Theodore Roosevelt. As luck would have it, Teddy, being an adventurous sort, had had a few monster encounters of his own-once as the New York City police commissioner, and then again in Cuba during the Spanish American war. When Teddy became President he was hell bent on the creation of some means to keep the forces of evil in check. Thus the Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund was begun, or as we like to call it, PUFF. This was intended as a bounty system to award entrepreneurial brave men who would aid the nation by destroying dangerous monsters. My grandfather was the first person awarded a PUFF bounty.

"Since those early days this company has led the way in the fight against evil. After taking big jobs in Mexico for Standard Oil and in the Caribbean for United Fruit, the name was changed from Bubba Shackleford's Professional Monster Killers to something considered a bit more respectable: Monster Hunter International. Grandpa's company grew in stature and wealth, and he was even offered a position of some authority with the government's newly created Monster Control Bureau. He turned it down because he hated the government and had vowed never to work for any Yankees." There was some laughter at that.

"Eventually my grandfather died doing what he loved. His son, my father, took over the company at that time. He, too, was struck down. When I was old enough, I became the head of this company, and I have seen it change from a small operation into the premier monster hunting organization in the world."

He suddenly coughed again, this time with much greater intensity, a deep racking hack that sounded painful and wet. He covered his mouth with his hook, and Julie quickly stepped to her grandfather's side to offer assistance. He gently waved her away and, looking very concerned, she returned to her seat.

He continued as if nothing had happened. "For over a hundred years, this company has fought the good fight, the noble fight. We have always fought in secret because the powers that be don't want the sheep to be scared. We are the sheepdogs, and there are wolves out there, as all of you know firsthand. But things have changed. We have entered dark times indeed. For a brief time the fools in power, who should have known better, declared our business illegal. They caved in to monsters' rights groups, and the bureaucrats who assured them that federal agencies could handle the problem. There was an executive order. We were shut down, our assets confiscated, and any of us who opened our mouths were threatened with jail time. The damn nanny state couldn't handle the idea of private citizens taking care of their business." He was becoming visibly agitated. That explained the gap in the memorial plaques, but not what happened on December 15th.

"Ha! Ignorant bastards just had to have their fingers in everything. Monster attacks went up three thousand percent in the six years PUFF was shut down. The government has long had a policy to keep the truth secret. That is why so many of you here today were paid visits by agents and threatened with physical harm if you talked too much. But with incidents going through the roof, they were not going to be able to keep the lid on for much longer. Even with the full cooperation of the media, word was starting to spread. Not all of those crazy folks on that Internet thing are as crazy as you might think." He grinned widely, obviously amused at that thought. "Once enough voters were getting eaten, Congress had had enough and pressured the next President to reinstate PUFF and revoke the executive order that had banned professional monster hunting.

"So now we have restarted operations, and are trying to move past our dark days. Unfortunately we are short handed, and the monster problem is out of control. We are spread thin, with only small teams of experienced Hunters scattered around the country trying to put out fires. On the bright side, with so many attacks, it certainly makes finding and recruiting brave people like y'all much easier." He gestured at us with his hook.

"Thank you for coming. I look forward to working with each of you who make it through our training process. It will be hard. Earl here is gonna be a mean one, but it's for your own good. I must be going now."

We all stood and clapped as he shuffled out of the room. Judging by the man's injuries and attitude, I was willing to bet that he was a student of the lead-from-the-front school of management. His savaged appearance was sobering though, and I'm sure it made a few of the other Newbies question wanting to try monster hunting as a career.

Harbinger stood and addressed us again. "Every single person in this room was contacted after they survived some sort of monster encounter. Trust me, just surviving means that each one of you is statistically significant. We personally invited about double the number of people that you see here. Most of those decided not to come. That either makes you braver, or maybe stupider than the others." There were a few chuckles from the crowd.

"I ain't joking, people. I'm going to be flat-out honest here. I'm sure you all saw that wall outside. The one with all of the pretty silver things on it? Each one of those represents a fallen Monster Hunter. There is just over a hundred years of history on that wall. What we do is dangerous, sometimes stupidly dangerous, but it is necessary, more necessary than you might even realize for reasons that you'll come to understand with time. The only way that we win is if we work together as a team and be every bit as tough and ruthless and clever as the things we're chasing.

"Many of you will wash out of training, or get kicked out if you ain't up to snuff. That's fine, so don't get hurt feelings. This job is not for everybody. There ain't no shame in quitting. If at any time you decide that you want to quit, no problem. Talk to Dorcas, we'll write you out a check for your time and there are no hard feelings. Keep in mind, however, that if you talk about us in public, the nice men from the Monster Control Bureau, that most of you have already met, will probably kill you." Harbinger moved like a predator, eyeing the group with unnerving intensity.

"Your teachers will consist of experienced Hunters. Listen to them carefully. Read everything that you're given. Your life, or the lives of your teammates, may depend on your skill or knowledge." Harbinger pointed at the small knot of people sitting behind him. "We're not normally teachers. The folks sitting behind me are actually my personal team. I trust each of them with my life, and any of them would trust me with theirs. If any one of them decides that any one of you does not have what it takes to be a Hunter, then you're gone. That is all. Don't screw around with us. We're much better killers than we are babysitters." I knew Julie, and I had met Milo briefly, but I had no clue who the others were. One instructor had a giant mustache, looked like a cross between a cowboy and a truck driver, and reminded me of Kenny's dad from South Park.

"Some of you are here because you're tough, some are smart, some are warriors, some are not, it doesn't matter. Everybody will go through the same training. We recruited many of you because of your brains, and though you will probably never need to be on an actual hunting mission, you will still be trained to the same standards in weapons, tactics, and other skills. You need to understand the people you are supporting as good as you understand yourself. Those of you we recruited because you're fighters, you will need to learn every single bit of monster-related information that the smart folks learn. For those of you who think you are both smart and tough, don't get cocky because you will probably be the first one to get eaten." A few people started to snicker at that, but most of us realized that it was not meant to be funny. I was feeling rather sober and slightly intimidated.

"Training will last until we decide that you're good enough. After that you will be assigned to your duties. Some of you will be assigned to Hunter teams. We have teams stationed all around the country. Those teams respond to crises as they develop. Other people will work in direct support of the teams. We will go into greater details about how this entire thing works as training progresses. Every employee will be paid bimonthly according to your position. Any PUFF your personal team earns will be shared by the whole company, with your team getting the largest percentage. Think of it as profit sharing. That means that if your team wins a huge bounty you don't get to keep it all. Be careful not to bitch too much about that, however, because the next week it will probably be some other team that wins the big one and not you. Don't worry, though, the lowest paid employee we have probably made more than most of you did in the last year. Our business is monsters, and business is booming." He showed a lot of teeth when he smiled. It almost reminded me of when Mr. Huffman was about to eat me.

"Any questions?"

It was quiet. I was positive that there were many questions, but everyone was afraid to ask. I debated for a moment, but once again, curiosity got the better of me and I hesitantly raised my hand.

"Pitt." Harbinger pointed at me.

"What happened on December 15th, 1995?"

The instructors looked at each other uneasily. The pause was unnaturally long, and I realized from the creaking of folding chairs and the rustle of forty separate adjustments that the whole room was looking at me.

"How did you know something happened on that day?" asked one of the instructors in an accusatory tone. He was a handsome man, and was dressed more stylishly than the others. I immediately didn't like him.

"Lots of plaques with that date. Beginning of the big gap," I answered.

"Are you a detective or a reporter or something…"

Harbinger held up his hand and the other instructor shut up.

"Worse, he's an accountant." Harbinger nodded in my direction. "Very astute of you, Pitt. I'll answer your question, but not today. Most of you in this room are not going to make it through training. Those folks get to walk away from this place and never look back. They don't need to know. Trust me, they don't want to know. For those of you who make it, I'll tell you the story personally, because I was there, and it affects every single Hunter. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and got us shut down. It was the one hundred year anniversary of the founding of the company, and it was one hell of a Christmas party."

The room was quiet.

"Any more questions?"

No one else said a word.

"Okay, everybody grab your crap and follow me. I'll show you where you sleep, and then we get started. We have work to do."

Chapter 5

Over the last week I had become very familiar with the compound. There was the two-story office building/fortress, and several smaller buildings that served as barracks, classrooms, workshops and armories. A few hundred yards away was the hangar, housing one medium plane and one strange-looking helicopter of foreign origin. Behind the asphalt runway, just far enough away so that the noise would not be distracting, were the shooting ranges. Bulldozers had pushed up huge berms of red clay soil to serve as backstops. A razor-wire-topped chain link fence stretched around the entire property, intimidating and sharp wherever it had not been overtaken with kudzu vines.

At that moment I was standing in front of a small group of other recruits on one of the shooting ranges. Ten yards away were five eight-inch steel plates, each one about a yard apart. Snugly tucked into my shoulder was the rubber butt pad of a slicked up Remington 870, pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun. The muzzle was kept at the low ready, and my trigger finger was extended safely along the receiver. I could sense the instructor standing behind me, holding the PACT timer right behind my head.

"Shooter ready?" he asked, voice slightly amplified through my electronic earplugs. The MHI-issued plugs were the most advanced that I had ever used. Totally comfortable, and wired into a communications net, they would block all sounds over a certain decibel level, while normal conversation was perfectly audible, even if slightly directionally distorted. I nodded.

"Stand by," the instructor said mechanically. I waited.

The timer beeped. This was the moment I lived for. In one fluid motion I deactivated the safety and pulled the shotgun into position. Leaning forward with my center of gravity one with the shotgun, I focused on the plates and willed them to be shot. I had no conscious thought of controlling the trigger. Having practiced drills like this thousands of times, the muzzle automatically sought out the plates. With each shot my arm pulled the pump without thought or hesitation. The barrel rose slightly only to settle almost instantly on the next plate. I absorbed and rolled with the heavy recoil of the double-aught buckshot. I knew that each shot had been clean even before the last payload of shot had impacted the steel surface. I lowered the gun as the last two plates fell with a clang.

"Holy shit." The instructor's voice was incredulous as he glanced at the electronic timer. It was designed to pick up the sound of each shot and digitally record it. It was a very handy training device. "One-point-eight-seven seconds. You did a Dozier drill in one-point-eight-seven with a pump shotgun and full power buckshot. That was unbelievable."

I stayed facing downrange. My personal best on this particular drill had been several years earlier in a match at 1.75, but that was with one of my personal guns that I had worked over myself. Contrary to popular myth, a shotgun pattern is not a huge room-clearing boulder of death; at ten yards it is usually smaller than a basketball. The real key is learning how to be one with the recoil. I had been doing stuff like this since I was a little kid.

"It sounded like it was full-auto," one of the other newbies said.

"Fluke," said another voice that I had seriously grown to dislike. "Have him do it again."

"Okay," said the instructor, a former U.S. Navy SEAL turned Monster Hunter named Sam Haven. He was our main weapons and tactics instructor. Sam was a the walrus-mustached man, a burly guy with a penchant for western wear, rodeo belt buckles and Stetson hats. He was also a bad mofo, whom I would never on my best day want to mess with. "Load up."

Somebody else pushed the button to activate the pneumatic target system. The five plates reset themselves with a hiss. I decided to show off a little for the crowd. Since the action was open, I quickly plucked a spare round of buckshot from the elastic sidesaddle mounted on the shotgun's receiver. I dropped it into the chamber, and instantly slammed the pump forward. Instinctively my support hand moved to the bandoleer of spare shells strapped across my chest. Grasping four cases, I palmed them under the loading port and rapid fire shoved them in as if my hand itself was a spring-loaded mechanism. Snick, snick, snick, snick. Four shells loaded in under two seconds.

It was a trick used by three-gun competitors. We would often shoot in long field courses involving rifles, pistols and shotguns. The shotgun portions sometimes consisted of twenty or even thirty separate targets. Since we were scored according to our total time, and since shotguns are low capacity weapons of five to nine shots (with some exceptions), the winners were the people who could keep their weapons loaded the fastest. Combine large groups of hyper-competitive type A personality gun people, and I guarantee you will see some amazing and creative ways to do things.

I heard another Newbie say something about a magic trick. Not magic my friend, just the result of practicing until my thumbs were a mass of nerve-deadened scar tissue. I tucked the shotgun back into the correct position, positioned my feet, and squared off against the targets. I indicated my readiness to Sam.

He leaned in close and spoke loud enough that he knew I would pick it up, but quiet enough that the rest of the class would not. His breath smelled of Copenhagen chewing tobacco.

"You're gonna have to show me how you do that loading trick."

I grinned, and answered, "Shooter ready."

Beep. This time I was really in the zone. The five shots came out as a continuous thunder of buckshot pelting steel to the ground. I lowered the smoking muzzle.

Sam paused before saying the time. "One-point-eight-two seconds. Hot damn."

I could not help but gloat a little as I smiled for my nemesis. Grant Jefferson. The smug bastard had only been able to do it in 2.5, which was still pretty respectable, but not even close to as fast as mine. And the best part was that he knew it. He was the one who said my first run had been a fluke. Grant was not used to being bested at anything. I enjoyed watching as he stomped off in frustration. He did not like me, and the feeling was mutual. I handed the shotgun over for the next shooter.

Grant was no Newbie. He was a full-fledged member of MHI, and also one of our instructors, though he was the junior man on Harbinger's team. He had only come out to shoot in the hopes of showing us poor folks how it was done. Grant was totally my opposite. Lean and handsome, witty, charming, a product of the finest schools, and descended from the oldest established (as in super wealthy) New England families. He even had nice hair. He was the type of person everybody liked, and everybody wanted to be liked by.

I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. I thought he was a pompous ass from the moment I had met him, and I felt the primal and instinctual need to beat him up and take his lunch money.

But the real reason that I hated his guts was that he was Julie Shackleford's boyfriend.

Julie and I had only spoken briefly since my arrival at the compound, and that had been mostly a "Hi, how are you" kind of thing. I had been totally swamped with training, and she was always occupied with one piece of business or another. It wasn't like she had ever even given me any sort of indication that she liked me as anything other than as an employee, so I don't know why the thought of her dating a jerk like Grant bothered me so much. As much as I hated to admit it, I had a horrible crush on her.

Sam interrupted my reverie. "Pitt! I want you to tell everybody else how you shoot like that. I've told y'all what I know, and most of you still can't shoot for shit, you damn bunch of worthless derelicts, so let's get a fresh perspective. The pump is not your main weapon, or even your first choice, but there're times when it is the absolute best thing you can have. We have a lot of specialty rounds that won't run through a semi. Every one of you needs to know how to use this thing because one of these days it might save your life." Knowing how to do things because they might someday save your life was the mantra of our experienced Monster Hunters.

The former SEAL spit a mighty wad of tobacco juices into the gravel. That was good. I noticed that most of the time he just swallowed the stuff. That could not be healthy.

"Okay. Um…" I looked over the group and thought about what to say. "What I'm seeing from most of you is that you aren't really familiar with your weapons yet. You need to get to the point where your gun is an extension of your body. You don't think about shooting, because if you're thinking then you're going too slow. You just let the shot happen. Shotguns are more of an instinctive weapon than pistols or rifles. Some of you guys need to relax and let it flow."

I pointed at one of the other Newbies, a muscular black man with dreadlocks. "Trip here is a great example. When he uses the pump, it's shoot, dramatic pause, pump, pause, shoot, pause, pump. You're thinking too hard. Thinking takes time. It's just boom and go. Like playing an instrument, you don't think about the notes, you just play." He nodded in understanding. Trip and I had hit it off, and he was currently my bunkmate in the barracks. His real name was John Jermain Jones, and he was at a loss to explain what his folks had been thinking when they had come up with that combination. The nickname that had stuck was Triple J, and after a week, most of us just called him Trip.

Trip had been recruited by MHI after a voodoo priestess had placed a curse on his small Florida town and caused some of the recently deceased to rise from their graves to feast upon the brains of the living. He had solved the zombie problem with judicious use of a pickax. He was a great guy, and so far his only real challenge in training had been his lack of exposure to firearms, though he was coming along really well with the subguns. They just suited his personality more. Considering that a year ago he had been a high school chemistry teacher, he was actually one tough dude.

"Then the other problem I see is that some of you are just kind of recoil sensitive, like Holly." I pointed out the next Newbie. Holly Newcastle was an attractive young woman with bleached blond hair and an amazing boob job. She never told the rest of us how she ended up at MHI, but apparently she had worked as a stripper, or as she preferred, exotic dancer, before being recruited. The rumors were that it had involved a hot lesbian vampire, but I'm pretty sure that that was just wishful thinking by most of the guys in the barracks.

As far as I could tell she had exactly zero experience with any sort of firearms, but she was coming along gradually. She really surprised me when it came to the class portion of our training; she had an amazing ability to soak up knowledge and monster-related trivia. She may have looked like the stereotype, but she was no dumb blond. I had no doubt that whatever she had done to get herself recruited by MHI, she had done very well.

"Holly, the shotgun kicks, but once you master the correct form, you learn to just flow with the recoil and it's no big deal. It's all about proper fit, and how you hold it. If you're doing it right it doesn't hurt at all."

"So what you're saying, Z, is that it's kinda like sex. If it hurts, you must be doing it wrong?" She smiled seductively and winked. I blushed. Everybody else laughed, including Sam the instructor.

"Pretty much." I had a sneaky feeling that Holly wanted me to help her with more forms than just her shotgunning. It's kind of a bummer that for a person with such a dark complexion my cheeks turned red so easily. "Seriously though, fit is very important; we need to find you a stock that's a couple of inches shorter." I hurried along before anybody thought to make a nasty joke about that comment.

I continued my demonstration to the other new recruits. We were an odd collection. Ages ranged from mid-forties all the way down to barely old enough to drink. We had people from all parts of the country and all walks of life. We had everything from an Army Ranger to a taxi driver, from a narcotics cop to a librarian, and we even had a plumber. Take my word for it, you do not want to hear the detailed account of his first monster encounter.

Despite our differences, we all had a few things in common. Every single one of us had come face to face with something from mankind's darkest imagination, and every single one of us was a survivor.

At the beginning of our training we had been informed that not all of us would make it, and they had not been kidding. The experienced instructors made judgment calls as necessary, and many a recruit was sent packing with an extremely generous severance check and an admonition not to talk too freely about what they had learned. Other Newbies quit on their own. Some could not handle the physical stress, others, the mental. There was no real shame in quitting. Anyone was free to leave at any time, and many did. I thought about it a few times myself.

I was too stubborn to admit it to anyone, but every day that I had been here, I had struggled with the idea of what we were doing. I was torn, part of me loved the idea and the challenge, but the part of me that had sought to be normal for so long was having a real hard time adjusting to the fact that I was learning how to kill monsters for fun and profit.

The physical training was difficult, though according to our former Ranger it was a total sissified cakewalk. Personally, my leg was still tender and weak, and the running was killing me. I hate running. I was still walking with a limp, and I had despised running when I was totally healthy. Running is for skinny people.

Weapons and tactics was my favorite segment. Not just because it was what I had done for fun for most of my life anyway, but also because I excelled at it. Many of the Newbies struggled through, while others would never have what it took to work as a well-coordinated team, armed with lethal weapons, operating seamlessly together under intense pressure. That was fine. We had been told early on that not all of us would end up as the tip of the spear, on an actual fighting Hunter team. There was plenty of other work that also needed to be done-research, support, admin, technical stuff, and other jobs-but every employee of MHI was to be proficient enough that they could stand in as an emergency replacement if needed.

Out of our current group I was guessing that about half of us would be assigned to Hunting teams. Not bad considering that we had started with forty recruits and now we were down to only twenty. There were a few I was not sure about, who could probably go either way, and then there were the last few, who personally I was not comfortable with even having loaded weapons anywhere near me. Some people just did not have the proper mindset to ever rise above mere proficiency with a firearm.

The classroom sessions were by far the most educational for all of us, because regardless of what kind of bizarre background somebody might have hailed from, the things we were being taught were guaranteed to be new material.

Earl Harbinger sat with his feet up on the desk. In one hand he held the remote control for the slide show, and the other held a yardstick that he used to point out interesting things. The photos on the slide show were disturbing to say the least.

"There's many kinds of undead. Undead is basically a catchall term for any being that's scientifically dead, yet still animated. They range from your basic zombie, which is nothing more than a flesh-eating corpse, all the way up to your virtually invincible master vampires and pretty much anything you can think of in between. You'll need to know them all-their strengths and especially their weaknesses."Click. This slide showed a large number of chewed-up corpses littering a suburban street. It could have been in any town in the country. Some of the modest ranch-style homes in the background were on fire. "Undead are our bread and butter. In North America alone we average at least one incident involving them a month. Factor in South America and the Caribbean and we probably have a Hunter team working an undead outbreak at any given time. With your basic lower-level undead, the key is a swift response. They multiply like rabbits, and the denser the human population, the more danger there is."

Click. The next slide appeared to have been taken with a cheap disposable camera at a really bad angle. The subject was a woman lunging with filthy hands outstretched toward the unseen photographer. Most of her face was missing, and her lower jaw consisted only of exposed bone, but she did not appear to notice. Her eyes were wide and hungry.

"Zombie. The walking dead. Not very fast. Not very smart. They'll head straight for you, they never stop, they feel no pain, they never tire, and they never quit. Luckily they're about as creative as broccoli. The real danger is their bite, as the guy taking this picture found out. A single bite is infectious and the victim's destined to end up a zombie themselves. The worse the injury, the faster you die, the faster you come back. George Romero was an optimist. Yes, head shots work, but you've got to really damage their brains for a reliable stop." We had learned that oftentimes cultural and entertainment ideas about monsters had some basis in fact.

"Where do they come from?" one of the class asked.

"Voodoo," muttered Trip. The twenty remaining Newbies sat on metal folding chairs behind rickety plastic tables. We were in a small room located in the main building. The air conditioner kept us alive in the freshly arrived Alabama heat.

"That's one possibility, and a good thing to keep in mind. If you can bag the person that animated the dead to begin with, by all means do it. Animating the dead is a serious felony, and the Feds usually pay a good reward for renegade witch doctors or mad scientists. I've got to keep going, though, because we have a lot to cover. All of this information is in your packets, and I'll get to specifics later, today is just the overview. Last thing on zombies, PUFF is usually about $5,000 a head, depending on the severity of the outbreak."

Click. The thing in the picture had obviously once been a person, but was now a hunched and rotting pile of rags and jagged edges and pointed teeth. The creature held what appeared to be a human leg in its mostly skeletal hand. It looked as if its lunch had been rudely interrupted by the flash of the picture. "This is a ghoul. Think of it as a super zombie on crack. Much smarter, much faster, way harder to stop. Luckily they're rare, which is a good thing because the one in this picture soaked up about two hundred rounds before it finally quit kicking. Head shots don't usually work, though they tend to slow them down. Your best bet is to hammer them until you break down their skeletal structure to the point where they just can't fight anymore. Then burn them to be sure. They're usually found around cemeteries, as they're carrion feeders. PUFF for a ghoul runs around 20K."

Click. "This is a wight. Toughest of the zombie family. One of old Europe's least popular exports." This picture took me by surprise. Sure the creature was as nasty as expected, appearing to be a normal man except for his horribly distorted visage, sharp, black teeth and red eyes, but this picture caught my attention because it was an action shot. Julie Shackleford was in the corner of the frame, with a long spear in her hands, keeping the creature at bay while it clawed at her. She was wearing some sort of strange body armor that I did not recognize. Her dark hair had been captured flying wildly around her head like a halo, and there was an intense look of fear and concentration on her face. She was frozen in midmovement, gracefully lunging toward the claws of the undead beast. It was like a cover shot from Sports Illustrated only this time the sport was Mutant Tag and the penalty for losing was painful death.

I studied her face. She was much younger, far too young to be doing what she was doing. Not as gorgeous and distinct then as she would turn out to be, but obviously filled with courage. She was wearing her glasses, but I could still see her brown eyes, and her teeth were a hard white line in her face. My heart knotted at the sight of her in danger, though obviously that incident must have turned out just fine. She was beautiful.

I'm such a sap.

I snapped out of my reverie and tried to pay attention to Harbinger's lesson. I had missed part of what he had said, but I did not dare ask him to repeat it. He was finishing up on the dangers of facing wights.

"Their touch causes immediate paralysis, even through armor. It wears off quickly, but by then it's usually too late. They can be insanely strong. So don't screw around against these without backup and heavy weapons."

"What happened?" I blurted.

"Huh?" he answered.

"In the picture, with this… wight."

Harbinger paused. Probably debating whether he should rip me for butting in, or just tell the story. He was notorious amongst the Newbies for not telling the stories behind their adventures, as opposed to Sam or especially Milo who seemed to love it. Finally the internal battle was ended and he decided to share. However, the look he fixed me with let me know that I would be running laps until I puked because of the interruption.

"Outside of Sandusky, Ohio, October of '95. Just before Halloween. Crazy time of year in this business. My team was taking care of a ghoul problem at an old cemetery, when this one surprised us. We didn't expect a wight. It popped out of the ground right in front of our vehicle, crushed the whole front end with its bare hands, and smashed through the window like it was nothing. I was in the passenger seat and it was on me so fast that it was a blur. It hit me and all of my muscles locked right up like I was frozen. Milo was driving. It nailed him too. Julie was in the back seat. She opened up right between us with her pistol, surprised it apparently, because it quit trying to kill me and Milo. The wight jumped on the roof and started peeling it back to get her. She bailed out with that spear." He paused and chewed on his lower lip for a moment.

"Make a note, it was a good thing she didn't just keep using her gun. Firearms will stop a wight eventually, but eventually is the key word. See, the longer an undead like the wight exists, the stronger it becomes. New ones are pretty easy to kill, but this particular son of a bitch dated back to the Civil War. They can take forever to quit, so you work in teams, hold them off you while you pour fire into them. The rest of the team heard the commotion on the radio, and they were coming fast, but not fast enough.

"So anyways, Julie gets out and uses the spear to hold it back. Every time it moved, she would stick it. You can see in the slide that it has a catch past the blade to keep creatures from slipping down the shaft to get you. She kept sticking it and basically played keep away. It couldn't reach her as long as she kept stabbing it, but there was no way that spear was going to put it down. The guy that took the picture was no help. He was just some bozo bystander. Great shot though. Finally the feeling returned to my limbs enough to flop out of the Suburban and I lit him up."

"Lit him up?" somebody else asked.

"Flamethrower. Don't fight high-level undead without one. Once its flesh was on fire it was only a matter of time before it ran out of steam. Julie pinned it to a mausoleum door and held it there until it quit kicking. Took forever. Mean sons o' bitches."

"How old was she?" Holly asked.

Harbinger thought about it for a moment.

"She had just turned eighteen."

"Damn."

"It runs in the family." He returned to the lesson.

Sawing off a human head is harder than it looks. The body tends to flop around every time you hit it, and it makes a really nasty mess. Once goo gets on the handle of your knife, it gets even worse, and the next thing you know, your blade is glancing off of bones that you didn't even know were there. I grunted as I strained the blade against the rubbery flesh.

"Damn it, Pitt, don't saw. This ain't gardening. It's killing. Chop it!" Sam shouted at me. Sam always shouted.

Responding to the order, I raised the heavy knife over my head and brought it down with as much force as possible, this time chopping completely through the tissue and breaking the vertebrae. The cadaver's head rolled off the table and landed on the floor with a damp thud.

"Much better!" the instructor bellowed. "See that, class? Don't screw around with them. There are some things that don't quit until you take their heads off. If you have got to do it, do it quick. Solid whack like you're chopping wood. Don't pussyfoot around. And remember the fresh ones squirt more!"

Our class of remaining Newbies was slowly shaping up into a coherent team of Hunters. Currently we were standing in a small refrigerated room near the hangar, known as the Body Shack. MHI had saved the most disgusting lessons for the last of us. I'm sure that staking and beheading corpses was practical training, but I believed that the main reason we did this was to weed out the trainees who couldn't handle the sheer nastiness of lopping off a human head.

It probably would have been more efficient to do the horrific stuff first, as it really took out anyone with a weak stomach. According to Milo the reason we saved it for this late in the training was that it was hard to get a good supply of medical school leftover bodies. By saving this part until most of the trainees had washed out he had to scrounge up fewer corpses. Milo was a pretty efficient guy.

"Next team. Newcastle and Mead," Sam said to Holly and Chuck, the next people in line, as Milo used a hose to spray down the floor. Several of the other Newbies had lost their lunch on this exercise. Mingled fluids coagulated around the central drain.

Placing the gore-splattered knife on the table, I stumbled away to wash my hands. They were shaking badly and I felt a strong urge to vomit. Trip was already at the sink scrubbing furiously.

"Dude, that sucked," he hissed.

"Next time I stake, you chop," I replied.

"Hey, you called heads. Not my fault."

"At least it wasn't the Gut Crawl."

He frowned at me. "Come on, man, I'm already trying not to barf as it is, don't bring that up."

The Gut Crawl had consisted of a single Newbie wiggling through a long section of pipe filled with cow entrails. Between the dark, the smell, the heat of the pipe and the horrible squishiness of it all, it was probably the worst experience of my life, up to and including actually dying. Supposedly it had been a test of our ability to deal with disturbing surroundings and still keep our wits. Personally I thought it was Harbinger torturing us. Two of our class had quit rather than do it, and when I had been stuck halfway down that dark pipe, covered in slime and feces and intestines, I had envied them. One other trainee had made it halfway down the pipe, only to suffer a panic attack and lock up. All three of them had been given fat severance checks and sent home.

There were only a dozen of us left. Judging by the standards of our instructors, it was no surprise that MHI was currently short-handed. Harbinger had been very up-front about it though. He was a firm believer that the harder we sweated in practice, the less we would bleed when it was for real.

Holly finished her staking and came over to wash up. She seemed unperturbed by the minor fact that she had just used a hammer to drive a sharpened wooden shaft through what had once been a real live person's rib cage. I had been surprised by our former stripper. Nothing ever seemed to faze her, and she attacked every job with a vengeance. We still had not learned her story, but it was obvious that she well and truly hated the other team, and she was looking forward to exacting some payback. If that required crawling through guts, or chopping off limbs, no problem.

"That wasn't so bad. Chuck got stuck with the head. Poor guy, he brought it on himself though," she said, flashing us with a wicked grin.

"How?" asked Trip, still washing his hands. I had news for him, no amount of water was going to make us feel clean after what we had just done.

"He always goes rock. Never paper or scissors. Dumb ass." She examined the old blood staining her nails. "By the way, I overheard Dorcas talking to Milo. Harbinger's pretty happy with how we're doing. We're going to get the whole weekend off."

"Awesome," I exclaimed. We had been training hard for a solid month. I'd be more than ready for a break this weekend. With the prospect of an actual couple of days off, I suddenly didn't mind so much being covered in gore. "It'll be good to get out of here."

"No kidding," she replied, then turned toward Trip who was adding more soap and giving it another try. "Dude, Trip, you need to hurry up, the rest of us need a turn too."

"Ugh, you have no idea what kind of bacteria is in something like this," he said. "You've got to do a good job sanitizing."

"Weren't you a science teacher?" Holly asked.

"Chemistry, and I subbed band, and I was the assistant football coach. It was a small school." Being his roommate, I knew his story well. Having to cave in some students' heads once they had joined the ranks of the undead really tended to mess up a teaching career.

"I figured with all of the frog dissecting you wouldn't be so damn squeamish. Hey, you have some blood or snot or something in your dreads." As he reached up in disgust, Holly cut in front of him to wash her hands. "Sucker."

With a thwacking noise and a flourish Chuck took his cadaver's head off, and Sam bellowed at us the fact that we did not do too bad for a bunch of derelicts, thus ending another day of training.

My breath came in ragged gasps. I had long since passed the point where I could control it. The muscles in my legs were on fire, especially where Huffman's talons had pierced me, and my feet and knees ached with each footfall. Blinking away the sweat in my eyes, I pushed on, trying to once again find that point of oblivion where the pain didn't matter. I hate running. All big men hate running. Sure, I could sprint, but you don't see very many three-hundred-pound marathoners for good reason. Only crazy people run for fun.

The last mile of forest trail was the worst. It had the steepest hills and the most rutted path of the whole trek. But I took comfort as I made my way up the red dirt road, as we were almost done for the day. It had started just after dawn, with hours of physical training, tactics, armed and unarmed combat practice, monster class, and now the sun was down and we were limping in from a six-mile run from hell. Finally the trees thinned, and I even managed to smile as we passed the kudzu-covered chain link fence to enter the compound. Most of the Newbies had already arrived and were crashing out on the available benches or stretching on the grass. The good runners like Trip, Lee, and Mead looked almost relaxed and refreshed from the little jaunt. Trip's good natured thumbs-up made me want to beat him to death.

"About time, Pitt," Grant Jefferson shouted. He glanced at his stopwatch in disgust. "Pathetic. Just pathetic." He had led the run and had made most of the rest of us look bad. Of course, some of us came out looking worse than others. One of the other Newbies stumbled off to the side to puke. Grant just smirked. "All right. We're done for now. Stretch out tonight, because we're doing this twice tomorrow." Everyone groaned.

I sat on one of the empty benches and put my head in my hands. I knew that I was supposed to walk around and gradually let my heart rate subside to avoid muscle soreness, but man, I just needed a break. I excelled at everything physical except for this. Gradually my panting turned to normal breathing, and my heart was no longer pounding away. The other Newbies began to wander off toward the barracks for some much-needed sleep. I stayed on the bench to enjoy the cool twilight.

"Hi." A lovely voice spoke from behind me. "Mind if I have a seat?" It was Julie.

"No. Yes. I mean, of course," I stammered, sliding over so she could fit. She dropped down next to me with a smile. She was wearing shorts and looked like she had been working out. I tried not to stare at her well-muscled legs. I was suddenly very self-conscious about my sweat-soaked T-shirt. I bet I stunk.

"So how's everything going?" she asked.

"Fine, I'm doing okay. Except for that." I jerked my thumb toward the cross-country track. "That sucks."

She laughed, hopefully with me, and not at me. "I know it. I hate it too. Not all of us are like Grant." She pointed across the field. A lone figure stood a hundred yards away, throwing punches at invisible foes under the lights of the obstacle course.

Grant Jefferson had stuck around after the Newbies had left. He had stripped off his shirt and was practicing what appeared to be some extremely difficult martial exercises. I hated to admit it, but the man was a near-perfect physical specimen. If monster hunting didn't work out for him, I was sure he could get a gig as an underwear model.

"So… how long have you guys been dating?" I asked, trying not to sound jealous. I don't know if I succeeded.

"A couple months," she answered as she looked at me suspiciously. "Why?"

"Oh… I don't know. He just seems a little…"

"Arrogant?"

I paused, not quite sure how to answer that. "Uh, yeah, I guess. He just doesn't strike me as your type is all."

"And you know my type how?" she asked, studying me carefully. I swallowed, wanting to shout "Me." Thankfully she continued before I had to answer. "Yes, I know Grant comes off a little arrogant, but he really is a great guy. He's smart and ambitious. He was in Harvard Law School when we recruited him."

Figures, I thought to myself. "The CPA exam is way harder than passing the Bar," I muttered.

"What?"

"Uh… nothing."

"We hit it off when he arrived here. Grant's traveled the world. He's sophisticated, cultured, educated. He's done a lot of really interesting things. So he's kind of… confident. That comes off as cocky sometimes."

Comes off as an ass. I bit my tongue. I knew the truth. I bet he drowned sacks of puppies for fun. In the distance Grant had dropped down and started doing pushups.

"Well, good for you guys… I've got to get some sleep." I stood up to leave.

"Goodnight, Owen."

"Yeah, 'night, Julie." I wandered off. It figured that I had finally met the perfect woman, only to find out she wasn't interested in me. I kicked over the garbage can outside the barracks. Screw it. I was tired.

"What're you doing?" Trip asked me as he entered our tiny barracks room. The windows were open and loud insects chirped and whistled in the darkness outside.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. I was sitting on my bunk, suitcase open on the floor in front of me. My right hand ached from the impact it had taken an hour earlier. "Thinking about packing, I guess."

"You didn't strike me as a quitter," he said simply. "That was an accident with Green. You didn't mean to hurt him. Milo says he'll be out of the hospital in a week. It's just his collar bone and a concussion."

"I only hit him once."

We had been practicing going hands-on. Never a good choice against a monster, but a necessary skill to have nonetheless. They had paired me up with Green, a muscle-bound former narc. It had gotten kind of competitive.

"Stuff happens," Trip shrugged. "Don't be a baby about it."

"Sam said I wasn't being aggressive enough."

"He probably shouldn't have said that to somebody who beat up a werewolf." Trip sat on his bed. "When Green wakes up, he'll be cool. It was an accident."

I shook my head. "No. It wasn't. I got angry. I didn't hold back. Look, man, this is why I should probably go. When I get mad, when I lose control, people get hurt."

"You make it sound like you're the Hulk," he laughed. "You're training to be a Monster Hunter. We're supposed to hurt things. Come on, dude, what's the deal?"

Trip had become a good friend over the last few weeks of training, and I could tell that he did honestly want to help. I stared down at the open suitcase. "You know I used to fight for money, right?" I continued, not looking up. "A few years ago, I had a big one. My last one. Lots of cash on the table. The other guy was supposed to be a real badass. Supposedly he had killed a couple of people in prison. There were no rules, and it wasn't supposed to stop until one of us couldn't fight anymore. Last man standing got paid."

"Why would you do that?" he asked, sincerely perplexed. Trip was a good man, and the idea of inflicting violence on another human being for no good reason was truly foreign to him.

I sighed. "You've got to understand. My whole life, my father tried to prepare me for something. All he did was push. He had some sort of fucked-up vision of the future, and he wanted me to be ready for it. I guess I just needed to prove that I was as tough as he thought I was."

"So what happened?"

"The other fighter really was a bad dude. Meanest I had ever dealt with. I couldn't take him. He just wouldn't quit. Then, something happened… Something snapped, broke loose. No pain, just focus. Like when Huffman tried to eat me. Next thing I knew, I had blood up to my armpits and I was kneeling on this guy while I hit him until my knuckles broke."

Trip looked shocked. "You killed him?"

"Almost, and I would have, but the promoters pulled me off. They managed to stitch his skull back together, but he lost an eye, and I've heard he's still all messed up… I would've killed him. And right then, I wanted to kill him, and for what? How stupid is that?"

"Pretty stupid."

We sat in silence for a while, Trip not really knowing what to say. I knew from our talks that he was a devoutly religious man and was probably trying to think of how to politely tell me that I was surely going to hell. Finally I spoke. "You know why I became an accountant?"

"Pays better than teaching."

"I picked the most straight-laced, stereotypically boring thing that I could think of. My entire life I'd been taught to be a killer, but after that night, I just wanted to get as far away from it as I could."

"But you still carried a gun every day?"

"I didn't go looking for trouble, didn't mean I wasn't ready for trouble to look for me," I answered.

"Beats hitting zombies with a pickax…" he muttered.

"And now here I am. In this place, where all the things I've spent the last few years trying to distance myself from are not only encouraged, they're mandatory. And it seems like I might actually be pretty good at this. But I'm worried…"

"That you'll hurt somebody who don't need hurting?"

"Yeah, something like that." I clenched my scarred-up fists. My hand throbbed from where I had slugged Green. It had only been a brief instant, a flash of anger, but that was all it took.

Trip thought about it for a few long seconds, absently chewing on his lower lip, then stood. "The way I see it, we're here to do good. I don't know about you, but I came here to stop monsters from hurting folks. The Lord's given you a gift, a weird one, but still a gift, and the fact that you're worried about misusing it means that you're not a bad guy. So put that suitcase away, man up, and let's get to class before Harbinger realizes we're late. He kind of scares me." He thumped me on the shoulder, and walked out the door.

I waited a moment, listening to the angry buzz of the insects crashing against the window screen. Then I pushed the suitcase back under my bunk and went back to work.

I thought I understood discomfort and heat. I had lived in Texas for a few years, and I had grown up in the San Joaquin Valley of California. One was miserably hot and windy, and other was muggy from all of the open-air irrigation. But summer in the Heart of Dixie was a whole new type of evil. So hot that you couldn't think, and so wet you could almost drink the air. Summer had come to Alabama.

So of course this was the day when we were issued our body armor. It was heavy, and though well designed to be comfortable and breathable, during summers in Alabama a pair of shorts and a tank top were considered warm clothing. I was sweating profusely, not that that said much, considering that men of my bulk usually started sweating at room temperature, but this was particularly bad. Thankfully the armor came equipped with a CamelBak water bladder and drinking tube. As their ad so eloquently stated: Hydrate or Die.

Milo Anderson paced back and forth in front of the assembled Newbies. Today he was wearing a Violent Femmes T-shirt and his red beard had been braided into two separate forks, both seemingly long enough to rappel from. Occasionally he would stop before a Newbie, examine them critically, and then pause long enough to adjust some strap or buckle. He was the creator of the suit, as well as many of the other devices the Hunting teams used.

Grant Jefferson watched us smugly in our discomfort. He was wearing his armor, which had been tailored to suit him better. Holly had said that he was dashingly handsome, and even she, being so very jaded and cynical about men because of her background, found him very charismatic and charming. She told me that it was easy to see why Grant and Julie had hooked up. He was young, smart, good-looking, knew how to talk to people, and everybody loved him. I still wanted to kick his ass.

On Grant's shoulder was a patch with the green smiley face with horns that was the unofficial company logo, which only Harbinger's personal team wore. We had been told that the other teams made up their own logos. The only other team logo that I had seen here at the compound had been a fire-breathing warthog that Dorcas had engraved onto her plastic leg. Grant wore the smiley face with pride-apparently it was a real honor to end up on Harbinger's team. I had learned that he had only been a Hunter since the business had reopened, but he had shown so much potential in training that he had been picked to fill a void on what was considered the best team.

"You will learn to live in these suits for days at a time. This suit will save your life. This suit will become like a second skin to you." Grant was lecturing us, gesturing at his own gear. Milo stopped in front of me with a scowl and adjusted the webbing around my torso. Apparently Milo had never had to make a suit for somebody as big as I am, and it had been a bit of a challenge to come up with Kevlar sheets for a sixty-two-inch chest.

"Psst… Milo," I whispered. "Since these are supposed to be like second skins, where's yours?"

"Screw that. It's hot," he answered.

And he invented the darn thing. Testify brother, I thought.

"One time this suit saved my life. You can see right here where I was clawed by a golem. See, right there on the abdomen. Surely this would have been a mortal blow, but I was able to shrug it off and stay in the fight. I dispatched the monster and was able to rush to the aid of my team and save them from certain death," Grant told us, lifting up the front of his armor so we could all see his sculpted abs. The man must do crunches in his sleep to look like that. Grant had been talking forever, and unlike the other instructors, did not have a drop of humility in his soul. I was about ten minutes from a heat stroke, and we were stuck suffering in the sun while our teacher blathered.

Milo rolled his eyes and went back to adjusting straps. "Some golem. It was three feet tall," he muttered under his breath so it was barely audible to just me, "ass."

The armor was a modular system that could be configured by the user depending on what kind of threat we were going to face. A thick layer of stab-proof Kevlar covered the vital organs. Though not much heavier than regular thick clothing, the sleeves and pant legs had the same fibers sewn into the fabric. There was a neck guard that could be raised to resemble a turtle neck to protect against bites. Most of the threats we would face would involve teeth or claws, so unlike regular body armor, ours was designed for that rather than for bullet resistance. Milo informed us that the torso was rated the same as a traditional level IIIA bulletproof vest, able to stop most pistol rounds. There were pouches on the front and back designed to hold ceramic plates that could stop rifle rounds if the threat warranted it, and if the user didn't mind the extra weight. The system incorporated load-bearing gear and pouches for magazines, weapons, tools, medical kits, or whatever other useful things the Hunter might need.

There were two different types of gloves that came with the suit. One was a basic shooting glove that offered a small amount of protection, but still allowed good dexterity. And the other was a heavy armored gauntlet for when you needed maximum protection and just had to wade in and crush some heads. The heavy units could be attached to the end of the sleeves. There were also two types of helmets. The first was simply a modified hockey helmet, good basically to keep you from banging yourself in the skull when blundering around in the dark. The second, an armored monstrosity that looked kind of like a motorcycle helmet with a full visor and face shield, could be attached to the neck guard. With the heavy gloves and big helmet, a suited Monster Hunter could become a chew toy for a pile of zombies and come out gnawed on, but unbitten. Unfortunately for me, Milo did not have a helmet that would fit my enormous head so he had special-ordered one. Hopefully nothing would try to eat me before then.

The armor had lots of extras designed just for the people in our peculiar business. A CO2 cartridge was carried in the shoulder harness. In case of emergency it could be activated and the harness would inflate. Handy if you got dumped into deep water, because it was difficult to swim while strapped with piles of gear. My understanding was that Sam, our former SEAL, had insisted on that device. Each suit also had a GPS unit for navigation, which occasionally came in handy to locate a Hunter's body when the bad guys won.

The armor could be ordered in whatever color you wanted, as long as it was black, olive drab, or coyote brown. There was not a lot of use for festive colors in monster hunting, nor were there a lot of suppliers of heavyweight military strength Cordura in any other colors. I had gone with brown. Grant had gone with black. He probably thought it made him look tough. I thought he looked kind of like a silly version of Darth Vader. I took comfort in the fact that he had to be cooking in the sun right about now, though the bastard did not even give me the satisfaction of looking uncomfortable.

"Pay attention," Grant snapped at me. Milo rolled his eyes again. I snickered. Grant stormed toward us like a bulldog.

"Pitt. I don't like your attitude."

"Trust me, Grant. It's mutual," I snapped back.

"What did you say?" He poked me in the chest with his trigger finger. I couldn't feel a thing through the armor, but that did not change the fact that I did not like getting poked. It was hot, I was tired, and frankly in no mood to put up with any nonsense. Milo wisely moved aside.

"I said it's mutual. Meaning I don't like your attitude either."

"I'm trying to teach you Newbies how to stay alive."

"Then teach. All I'm hearing is stories about how great you are. I came here to learn how to kill stuff, not to join your fan club."

He stabbed me again. "I'm a pro. You need to shut your stupid Newbie mouth. You think you know so much. I saw that video. You got lucky with that werewolf, and now you think you're hot shit."

"You had best take that hand off of me," I said. The rest of the class was gradually spreading out around us. The group could sense trouble brewing and were ready for some entertainment. Apparently I was not the only one in a foul mood.

"Or what?" And he poked harder. It was really kind of a useless gesture considering the armor could stop a battle-ax. With years of experience bouncing rowdy people from bars, I had a good sense of when somebody was itching for trouble, and Grant was itching bad.

"I'll take it off and feed it to you." I smiled at him and winked. That really seemed to anger him. Grant's movie star face turned bright red. He was as tall as I was, but not nearly as big or as strong. I had no doubt that I could beat him mercilessly.

"I could have you kicked out of here like that." He took his hand away long enough to snap his fingers, then he went back to poking me.

"For what?" asked Milo, arms folded, studying the other instructor. Milo was by far the senior in experience, and in the amount of respect he received from the trainees. That was easy though, Milo Anderson was a likable guy. Grant on the other hand…

"Insubordination," Grant hissed. "One word to the Boss about your attitude and you're gone."

"If I'm going to get kicked out, believe me, I'm going to have some fun doing it." I felt my body tense as the adrenaline began to flow. If Grant wanted a piece of me, I was prepared to give that preppie piece of trash what he wanted.

"Grant." Milo spoke quietly. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You're picking a fight with somebody who outweighs you by a hundred pounds of muscle. Insubordination my butt. You say anything to the Boss and my side of the story will be that you were trying to commit suicide by accountant."

"I could take him," the junior instructor stated coldly. "He isn't as tough as everybody thinks."

"Grant, I could kick your ass. Pitt would make you his bitch."

That took the wind out of Grant's sails. I could see the realization dawn in his blue eyes, the realization that I could probably turn him into pulp. I just kept smiling, still prepared to mess up his pretty face and give him the opportunity to digest some of his perfectly white teeth. He had already pushed too far, though. He could not back off now without looking bad. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear.

"Stay away from Julie, you son of a bitch. I've seen you looking at her." I was surprised. So that was what this was all about. I had barely even seen her since training had started.

"Bite me," I replied.

"Enough!" Milo shouted. "Class is over. It's too hot and everybody's tempers are short. You've been working hard. Go grab some lunch."

Grant stepped back and glared at the little man. Milo met his gaze evenly. I think that my nemesis quickly realized that the other instructor had just given him a window of opportunity to back out of his potential beating and not look like a wimp in front of the others. Grant Jefferson may have been a prick, but he was no dummy.

"Fine. Class dismissed," Grant sneered. "I'll be seeing you around, Pitt." He spun on his polished boots and haughtily strode away.

"Looking forward to it," I rumbled under my breath as the group began to disperse. Milo shouted for all of us to turn our suits in to his workshop for adjustments before we left the compound for our weekend off. There were some relieved sighs as the Newbies unceremoniously began to remove their armor. I stomped away to avoid speaking to anybody.

Not that it did me much good. One person followed me. Trip patted me on my armored shoulder to get my attention. "Have I ever told you how much I respect your professionalism and restraint?"

"Some people just need a good beating."

"I agree. The man's a jerk. But last night I talked you out of quitting, so I don't want to see you get fired today," Trip said as we started toward the cafeteria, new suits creaking. Hopefully they would break in and soften up. My friend continued speaking as if I was one of his former ignorant teenage students. "You know why he hates you, right?"

I had spoken about my infatuation with Julie Shackleford to Trip. He was my roommate after all. "I suppose I do."

"Well, then, you would be wrong."

"Huh?"

"You think it's because of the girl. Grant probably thinks it's because of the girl too. That's because you're both idiots."

"Gee thanks, Trip." We continued walking slowly, talking quietly so the others wouldn't hear our conversation. "Well, if it isn't because of her, what's his problem?"

"You're his problem. I've seen this before. Grant is the golden boy. He came in here last year and tore stuff up. He's the best at everything. Even the big dogs took him under their wing. I bet he has won at everything he's ever tried. You come along, and you're naturally better than him at some things, so immediately he doesn't like you. It is all about pride, my friend, and Grant is stuffed so full of it it's a wonder he doesn't burst."

"Okay, I can see that."

"And you do keep staring at his woman like a slobbering moron."

"Slobbering?" That hurt.

"And you're a smart ass who can't help but show him up every chance that you get."

"Fair enough."

"And you can't handle losing just as bad as him. You're both torn up with pride and, like the Bible says, pride is the sin that will drag you down faster than anything else."

"Where does it say that?"

"Luke chapter… something or other. Well, that's what my mom said about it anyway."

"Thanks, Pastor Jones. I'll be sure to keep my pride and my slobbering in check from now on." I laughed. He was not that much older than I was, but somewhere along the line Trip had gained a lot more wisdom than I had.

"That's Father Reverend Elder Jones to you… heathen. Now let's get some lunch. We got the whole weekend off, and we're going to need our energy. I've got an auntie who lives in Wetumpka, up past Montgomery, and we're gonna have us a party. Have you ever had chitlins? Bona fide Southern delicacy."

"Can't say that I have. What the hell's a chitlin?" The way he said it, I didn't know if chitlins were a delicacy or a form of torture. Probably could go either way, depending on your perspective.

"Then you're going to have yourself one hell of a weekend, Z."

Chapter 6

I was dreaming. I found myself in the same field as I'd been in during the strange dream that I had experienced in the hospital. Once again, the crop was lush and green, and my feet were bare. The air was cool and fresh, so I definitely was not in Alabama. The sky was darker and thick black rain clouds were collecting on the horizon. It looked like it was going to be a terrible storm.

The Old Man was there also. This time he was sitting on a small grassy mound. His hair was still wild and white, his cane sat on the ground next to him, and he was absently polishing his small round glasses on a white handkerchief.

"Hello, Boy. Welcome again here." His accent was still thick, reminding me somewhat of my grandparents on my mom's side of the family. A deep Eastern European sound, but not from any of the languages that I spoke.

"What am I doing here?" I asked, sitting down on the grass next to him. We watched the storm front approach. The wind was beginning to pick up and the crop was waving under the onslaught. "I thought you said that we wouldn't meet again unless I did something stupid and got killed."

"I was wrong. I new at this too," he answered. "Is closer now. So I help more easy."

"What is closer now?"

"You will see. It comes." He pointed at the storm roiling across the distant landscape.

"What comes?"

"The storm. I show you when can. I help you if can."

"Help me with what?" This was a confusing dream, not helped at all by my host's mangled English.

"The evil comes. The Cursed One brings. You will stop, if can. If not, time will die." He stated it as if that cryptic information was a simple fact.

"Who are you?"

"I told you. I am friend. I here to help." He spit on his glasses and continued to polish them. I noticed that he wore a small Star of David around his neck. His clothes were old and simple, and appeared to be sewn by hand.

"What's your name?"

"No one ask that for long time."

"That doesn't answer the question," I replied.

"My name not matter now, Boy. I am just Old Man."

He held up the glasses and examined them, nodding in satisfaction before placing them on his face. "Is good. Help me up, please." I stood, and then lent him a hand as he slowly rose to his feet. I retrieved his cane and handed it over. The polished wood was surprisingly heavy and dense.

As I looked up I realized that somehow the storm had drawn impossibly close. The blue sky was blotted out and the wall that was approaching was a swirling mass of darkness, clouds, and lightning. The sky had taken on a green halo and I could feel the energy crackling through the ground. The crop was lying down or being torn out of the soil as powerful gusts struck us.

"We go now. I show you what I can. I need your help."

"Okay," I answered, not knowing what else to say.

"You help me. I help you. No can promise it will work, but I will try." He grasped my wrist. His cold hands were frail and arthritic.

He adjusted his glasses and watched with hard eyes as the storm approached. It was moving across the land like a tidal wave now, closing on us with what seemed like malevolent intent. As it grew closer I could see that there were shapes in the clouds-warriors, monsters, death, plague, famine, suffering, pestilence and war. My pleasant dream was changing into a nightmare. The roar of wind and crashing of thunder and wails of something else washed over us. The wall of black hit us, and we were swiftly engulfed.

Still dreaming. Only now, I was somehow above the MHI compound. I had no body, but somehow I could see, and not only that, I could see everything. Walls meant nothing to me. Maybe seeing wasn't the right term. I was aware of everything. I was not limited by the information that my eyes could register or that my brain could process. I found my body sleeping peacefully in the barracks. Trip, in the bunk above, was reading some pulp fantasy novel as he did every night. The man was a fantasy book addict.

The rest of my fellow trainees were sleeping or pretending to. In the women's barracks I was not surprised to learn that Holly Newcastle slept in the nude. As interesting as that sight was, I moved on. I was no Peeping Tom, or in this case a peeping ghost.

The office/fortress was totally open to me now. It was much larger than any of us had realized, with a huge underground level that was a complete secret to the trainees. In the dark corners I glimpsed that not all of the other employees were human. What a strange dream. On the top floor our instructors were holding a meeting around a huge table. Julie, Harbinger, Sam, Milo, and Grant were arguing about something. I focused in on that, and somehow my presence joined them in the room. Movements were cloudy, and the voices were indistinct and muffled because of all of the other sensations I was receiving without my normal faculties.

"No other teams are available. Just us and the Newbies. Boone's team's in Atlanta. They just finished a case, and they can meet us on the way. I can send them the schematics." Julie was speaking.

"We'll need extra men," Sam said, his voice echoing strangely. "Freighter that big is too hard to cover with just two teams. And we don't have an effing clue what we're facing."

"The Newbies aren't ready," Milo stated flatly. "Most of them would get killed if it gets hairy."

"Who do we have who's ready then?" Harbinger asked. "We can keep them in reserve. They don't need to be in front."

"Mead, Lee and maybe Triple J," Grant said. "Green could, except that oaf put him in the hospital."

"Newcastle can handle support," Milo added.

"Agreed," stated Harbinger.

"What about Pitt?" Julie asked.

"No way. He's out of control," Grant replied hotly.

"He's also the best shooter we have. I hate to admit it, but he's even better than I am," Sam said. The big cowboy banged the table for emphasis.

"Pitt's a hothead. He'll blow it," Grant retorted.

"He is a natural leader, however." Milo stuck up for me. "Put him in charge of the Newbie squad. The others will follow him."

"I vote that he goes," Julie said. "You heard the French. They lost a whole team on that boat. We don't know what's out there. We need every shooter we can get."

"I don't like the Frenchies, but their Hunters are first rate. I'll give them that," Milo said. "If something on that ship took out their team, then I'm guessing that it's bad news. I've got a feeling we're going to need trigger pullers."

"Done. Wake up Pitt, Jones, Mead, Lee and Newcastle. Let's move, folks. Clock's ticking," Harbinger ordered. Grant sulked and the rest of the team sprang into action.

Cool, I thought to my disembodied self. This was an interesting dream. Harbinger jumped as if somebody had startled him. He turned and scowled at the corner of the room that held my consciousness. Before he could act, my presence was suddenly jerked out of the room, through the roof, and into the night sky, leaving the man scowling in puzzlement at the now empty room. I heard the mysterious Old Man's voice.

"Sorry. Lost you for minute. I not done this before."

The ground flashed by below as my awareness sped through the air at what had to be a thousand miles an hour. The darkness was interrupted by the occasional lights of human activity, and finally a mass of lights on an otherwise dark coast came into focus as we appeared to slow. I could sense masses of people, most sleeping, a smaller number awake. The ocean stretched black and unrelenting before us, while above, unfettered by normal human senses, I could make out literally billions of stars. It was beautiful.

Then I was on a dark beach. Behind me was a patch of swampy forest, lit by incandescent gasses and teaming with life. Out to sea, something approached. I could sense the shape of men in a small lifeboat. The boat moved soundlessly toward the beach, propelled not by wind, oar or engine, but rather by some force that even in my dream state I could not understand. As the boat approached, the sounds of life behind us were suddenly silent as every living creature either fled or hid. Somehow I knew that even the fish in the water were swimming away from the boat in a panic. They knew something in their simple brains that all of the sleeping humans nearby did not. An unnatural fog, somehow icy in the humid southern air, swirled around the small craft.

"He comes," said the Old Man.

"Who is he?" my dream self asked.

"I know him as the Cursed One."

There were multiple shapes in the boat. Some appeared to be human, and were crouched low in the hull, red eyes scanning the beach, noses sniffing the air for prey. I recognized them from Harbinger's lectures. Vampires. The kings and queens of the undead, and from the vibe that I was getting from them, these were ancient and powerful beings. Master vampires. According to my lessons, masters were solitary creatures who had never been known to work together. Apparently the lessons had been very wrong. My dream was getting ugly.

Standing in the midst of the creatures was something. At first it appeared to be a man. Cloaked in a huge robe, only the reflection of what appeared to be a polished steel breastplate and helmet could be made out through the unnatural fog. The armor reminded me of the type that the conquistadors had worn. A sense of pure evil emanated from the cloaked being, an icy feeling of dread that I could feel piercing through my consciousness. I could not imagine how horrible it would have been if I had been there in my physical body instead of in this dream. As the image drew closer I could see a mass of withering blackness glistening between the creases of the armor and under the helmet. I could not comprehend what it was, but it certainly was not flesh. Somehow the twitching movement brought back memories of the boxes of live earthworms that my father used to fish with.

It looked almost like the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, only this time featuring a host of evil undead, and some hideous monstrosity in the place of the great general. There was a name painted on the side of the craft. Antoine-Henri. The lifeboat glided up onto the sand with a crunch, and the vampires immediately sprang out and formed a protective circle around the thing. Some splashed out into the surf to cover that direction. There were six of them, both male and female, and they were unnaturally graceful and swift. They were evil and savage, but somehow beautiful at the same time. A seventh vampire remained in the craft with its master. If the thing was the commander, then that vampire was its lieutenant. I felt a seething hatred around me. It was coming from the Old Man, and it was directed at that seventh and final vampire in particular. It was a tall, pale thing with a hatchet face, slicked back hair, and a dark trench coat that it wore like a uniform. The vampire actually stood at attention as the armored monstrosity glided onto the beach.

When the thing touched the sand, the whole universe jolted. A blast of discomfort rippled through every living being for hundreds of miles. You may have felt it yourself; an unexplained shiver, a sensation of fear that had come out of nowhere, a crawling feeling in the pit of your gut, a jolt that tore you out of sleep. That was the Cursed One setting foot on his new land.

The lead vampire announced something in a foreign language. It took me a moment to recognize it as Portuguese, or a dialect thereof. I knew enough of the language to understand.

"Welcome home, Lord Machado," the creature crowed, bowing deeply. All of the other vampires forming the perimeter immediately bowed as well, the ones in the surf submerging themselves completely in the saltwater waves. It did not matter to them. They did not need air. The abnormal fog drifted up onto the beach, serving as the fanfare for the abomination before us. "Your kingdom awaits."

The thing was silent. It slowly rotated, taking in the sight. Beneath the cloak and armor I could not tell how it moved, but it was black and damp and slithery. It turned until it looked right at us. I could feel its gaze sweep across us, and if I had been in my body I would have been trembling. I could not see eyes, but somehow it knew we were there. Instantly the vampires jerked up and followed their leader's gaze, somehow locking onto the Old Man and me. I felt fear greater than I ever had before. Greater than when I had died. Greater than anything I could imagine. The creature did not want my life. It wanted my very soul and the soul of every person I had ever loved.

"Hello, Byreika." The lead vampire smiled, revealing pointed incisors. "My, it certainly has been a while, hasn't it? I see you brought a friend."

The Cursed One raised a strangely jointed, cloaked limb and pointed at us. I could feel the flash of panic from my incorporeal companion. With an explosion of sand and seawater, several massive shapes crashed into the surf around us. I had not sensed them circling above. Giant horrific things with massive wings beating, they surrounded us, and moved toward us, murder in their blank eyes. They were enormous clawed beasts, horns and talons glistening with sea spray.

"Get us out of here!" I screamed.

The world jerked wildly around us as my consciousness was pulled again through the night sky, faster this time than before. The winged monsters below us sprang into pursuit, blasting holes through the ice fog with their gargantuan wings, but they were limited by their physical bodies and we were not. Far more terrifying than the monsters was the feeling of the Cursed One somehow trying to latch onto us to keep us from escaping. It was as if a net of blackness were being thrown, and we were the target. The creatures beneath us rapidly shrank from view. Somehow we slipped through the evil grip as my consciousness screamed across the sky at unbelievable speeds. I had one last view of the MHI compound before I flew through the roof of the barracks and slammed back into my body.

I awoke screaming, tearing at my sheets, and crying for the Old Man to save us from the Cursed One. Trip was standing at my bedside, shaking me.

"Owen! Dude! Wake up. It was a dream. Calm down."

Gasping for air and lying back on the sweat-stained sheets, it was only a dream. The storm. The Old Man. The Cursed One. The vampires. It was all a dream. Everything was fine.

"I had the worst nightmare," I gasped.

"No kidding. You were really freaking out. Everybody was. Just a couple of minutes ago everybody in the barracks woke up. Like the whole place was having a nightmare or something. I get the feeling that something really bad just happened."