Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC

by Larry Correia

  “What was that?” Mrs. Valikangas screeched.

  “The Value Sense just blew up,” Heather snapped. It was obvious. “Are you blind?”

  The woman just stared at the curtain of falling snow between them and Main. “How can you—”

  “Be quiet,” she hissed at the woman that had been her fifth-grade teacher. Heather had the sudden and uncharacteristic urge to smack the obstinate lady in her stupid mouth. A seething anger bubbled up inside, and Heather wanted nothing more than to jump up on that porch and—

  Calm down. Heather forced herself to take a deep breath. The angry feeling passed. “I told you. We’re under attack by a bunch of creatures.” It sounded asinine, but Heather didn’t have time to argue with every person in town. “Wake up your family and get your guns. Head for the bunker at the high school or stick around here and get eaten. I don’t care.”

  Not waiting for Mrs. Valikangas’s reaction, Heather stomped back to the truck, tossed her shotgun on the passenger seat, and climbed in. Mrs. Valikangas was shouting, but Heather ignored her; it was something about how Heather’s eyes were strange. But then she slammed the door and cut off the old teacher’s ramblings. The tires spun but found enough traction to get her moving toward the grocery store. The sight of multiple flashlights in her rearview mirror told her that at least somebody she’d contacted had listened.

  She’d found the silver ammo that Harbinger had told her about, and one of the cans had been 12 gauge, so she’d loaded the Winchester 1300 with it. Strangely enough, Heather was no longer afraid. It was the weirdest thing, but she was actually looking forward to finding one of those monsters. She fantasized about blasting the creatures into bloody bits with her shotgun. They’d killed her friends, attacked her town. This was her territory. She’d blow their heads off. Rip their hearts out. Then she would eat them.

  “What?” Heather hit the brakes and stopped in the middle of the street. “What are you doing?” Her gloves were on the steering wheel, vibrating uncontrollably, and it wasn’t from the engine. She had just been daydreaming about killing a monster and eating its still-beating heart. She was breathing too fast. Her heart was pounding in her chest. “Keep it together. Keep it together.”

  Surely it was the stress. It was from seeing her friends die. It was from having the men from the government try to murder her. It was from being attacked. It was just stress.

  The stress was making her hungry. “I’m starving.” Harbinger had packed the cooler with food, and she hurriedly removed a package of lunch meat, yanked open the plastic, stuffed it in her mouth, and started chewing. “Crap. I’m starving and I’m talking to myself,” she mumbled around a mouthful of roast beef. “I’m falling apart.”

  The protein calmed her down. She still had work to do. Heather got the truck moving again. Something was going down at the Value Sense, and it was her duty to help. Agitated, distracted, and increasingly erratic, Heather still had a purpose, and by the time she got to Main Street, she was focused on that.

  There was only one thing that was still bugging her. Where is that damn humming noise coming from?

  * * *

  Now, that hurt.

  Earl tried to roll over, but couldn’t. Something was wedged against his side—correction—in his side. All he could see was a red haze. His eyes had been pulverized. He gasped in a partial lungful of dust, and that immediately set off a painful cough thick with blood. It took him a moment to remember where he was.

  Nikolai, you sneaky son of a bitch.

  Anger gave Earl purpose. He had to move quickly. The Russian would be coming for him. What am I stuck on? His limbs didn’t want to respond at first. The bones in his right hand had been crushed and wouldn’t close into a fist, but he was able to leverage his left around, though it caused a terrible pain to radiate up his side as he turned. He found the source of his problem: he’d landed on a broken piece of shelving, and a jagged chunk of metal had been driven through his armor. Well…damn.

  Putting his hand flat against the shelf, he shoved himself up. Six inches of painted steel slid out from between his ribs. The pain was ridiculous. He was thankful for the ringing in his ears, because he was certain that pulling himself off that thing would have made an awful noise.

  He flopped down the shelf, rolling onto the floor into a pile of broken glass bottles. Vinegar? At least he could still smell. He’d landed in the pickle aisle. Earl hated pickles.

  Keep moving. Blind, he staggered upright. His body was already healing, reordering his cells back to one of its two distinct templates, but healing would take time that he didn’t have. Instinct told him to give in to the pain and the anger, to let the wolf free. But Nikolai had just used a bomb, which meant that he’d mop up with a gun, which meant that Earl needed his brain more than he needed his ferocity. If he was going to change, he needed to find a safe place to do it.

  Can’t see. Explosive concussion was hell on the soft jelly of the human eyeball. Hell. Nikolai was coming. He had to get to cover. Despite bleeding freely from his eyes and ears, Earl was perfectly calm as he quickly ran through his predicament. Smell. He inhaled more dust. The truck was smoking, but it wasn’t burning. It was a distraction, but under that…Milk. Meat. Escape. That way. Hurry. Coughing, Earl staggered for the back of the store. He made it three steps, tripped, fell, but forced himself back up again. His right ankle had snapped, so he dragged that boot along behind him.

  The blast had crippled him. Earl could feel the blood gushing from his body in great hot rivulets. He’d been torn open in multiple places. Bones ground unnaturally against each other. The pain would have rendered a lesser man incoherent. Groping blindly, Earl smelled milk as his boot dragged through the puddle.

  Earl fell against the coldness of the dairy case. The rips in his flesh burned as the skin pulled tight over them, pinching off the leaks. Clumsily, he touched his face and then cringed as he discovered that his cheek was hanging off, dangling slick and wet. He shoved it back over his exposed teeth. Nikolai would smell the blood and track him easily. Blind, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Hiding was out of the question.

  Use your head. Earl forced himself up, knowing what he had to do. He needed to be smart. He hit the back wall, smearing bloody handprints across the glass doors. By the time he found the swinging double doors of the stock room, the bones in his hands had reformed enough to make a fist.

  * * *

  Blood. Nikolai’s nostrils flared. Beneath the smoke, thousands of competing food, chemical smells, and dust was the smell of fresh blood. There were dead werewolves and humans inside, and the plow blade had smeared at least one body across half the space, further confusing matters, but Nikolai could smell Harbinger, and the smell was one of injury and weakness.

  No fear, though. Come to think of it, Nikolai had never smelled Harbinger’s fear.

  Got him. We got him! We’ve finally got him!

  The Tvar was eager. Nikolai’s pulse increased, his breathing came faster. The truck was in the back of the store, the dump bed full of sand barely visible beneath the collapsed ceiling tiles. He ran down the open path left by the plow, scanning back and forth, searching for Harbinger. The instant he saw him, Nikolai would put a silver round into his enemy’s head.

  It wasn’t sporting. It wasn’t fair. It certainly wasn’t the way that instinct demanded, but there was no time for such niceties. The amulet had been freed, and such a potent device could never be allowed to fall into the hands of a monster like Harbinger.

  Before he could even reach the back of the truck, the Tvar practically screamed inside his head. There!

  His other half, with its simple animal cunning, often noticed things far quicker than his analytical human mind could. Then he understood the reason for the excitement. There was where Harbinger had landed. A massive smear of warm blood was on a broken shelf and a thick trail of droplets led away from it. Nikolai turned to the utterly demolished cab of the truck and noted how the sheet metal had been peeled and twisted by the ex
plosive. The blast had hurled Harbinger twenty feet. He should have brought more explosives.

  A jagged shaft of metal was coated in blood, bits of flesh still clinging to it. A handprint showed him where Harbinger had forced himself up. There were bloody boot prints, but only from one foot; the other was a drag mark. Nikolai couldn’t tell if it was him or the Tvar, but one of them was extremely excited. Harbinger was vulnerable. Revenge was within his grasp. He lifted the Val and followed the trail.

  Harbinger had fallen and stopped here for a moment. Nikolai crouched next to a waist-high refrigerator unit filled with butter, studying the signs quickly. So much blood had been lost that Harbinger would be extremely weak, but Harbinger had gotten back up, and the droplets were fewer and farther between. Now there were two boot prints instead of a drag mark. His foe’s healing speed was impressive.

  Hurry. Kill him! Kill him!

  The Tvar was correct. He had to strike while Harbinger was weak. Nikolai moved faster; the trail was still easy to follow through the debris. Blood never lied. Harbinger had crashed into the glass doors of the dairy case, dragging himself along, and then he’d gone—

  He’s hiding in the back!

  There were two bright red handprints, one on each of the swinging doors to the stock room, clear as day, as obvious a sign as could be given. Driven by the Tvar, Nikolai kicked the doors open and stepped through…

  And saw nothing.

  The lights were on. A large generator was in the rear, chugging away. There were rows of shelves on both sides, but the blood trail had just stopped.…Fragments were strewn everywhere, and part of the truck’s plow was stuck through the wall, but there was no place for Harbinger to hide.

  No! No! Where is he? You should have let me do it!

  “Shut up!” Nikolai snapped. He knelt to smell the floor. Harbinger hadn’t come in here. He’d left his smell on the door…and backtracked. The blatant handprints on the door had been a trick. The blood hadn’t lied—Harbinger had. “Yob tvoyu mat!” Nikolai stood, turning back to the store, just as a cloud of grit hit him right in the eyes.

  * * *

  Nikolai was blinded by the fistful of road sand. Earl could still barely see anything himself. His opponent was nothing but an angry red blur, but Earl could see well enough to know that the long tubular thing in Nikolai’s hands was a rifle, so he knocked it away. The rifle clattered across the floor. With a roar, Earl grabbed Nikolai by the coat and hurled him out into the ruined grocery store.

  Earl had needed time to regenerate, and that meant a place to hide. After touching the back doors, he’d leapt as far as he could manage toward the truck, hoping the spilling diesel smell would temporarily cover his tracks. He’d found the cold metal of the truck bed and, not seeing any alternative, had climbed in and buried himself in the sand. Most of his bones had knit back together, the bleeding had mostly stopped, and he could hear, and even see a little, but he was still terribly weak, disoriented, and now had sand stuck in every crevice of his body, and was therefore in a really bad mood.

  Nikolai hit a shelf and went to the ground on his back. Earl was right behind. He landed on Nikolai and slugged him in the face. The Russian got his hands up, trying to shove Earl off, but Earl knocked the hands out of the way and hit him again. Then he got his weight onto Nikolai’s chest, and Earl’s fists were flying, one after another, slamming Nikolai’s head over and over again, beating his face into a bloody mess.

  “Cheatin’ asshole!” Earl roared as he cocked back another right and tried to drive it through Nikolai’s face. Nikolai’s hand shot up, and he managed to hook his thumb into Earl’s eye. The Hunter bellowed as Nikolai gouged it deep into the socket, but he didn’t let up. Earl took Nikolai’s head in both hands, raised it, and slammed it into the floor repeatedly. The second impact cracked the tile; the third, Nikolai’s skull.

  Gasping for breath, Earl raised his fist to strike again but stopped as a terrible pain shot up his side. He rolled off, cursing, reaching for the source of the agony, found the hilt of a folding knife sticking from his kidney, and jerked it out in a spray of blood. Nikolai raised one leg and kicked Earl in the chest, sending him crashing against the truck.

  Blinking through the blood, Earl stepped forward. His opponent had already risen and had picked up a can of creamed corn. Earl threw the knife and missed. Nikolai threw the corn and didn’t. The can smashed Earl’s nose flat.

  Nikolai used the moment to his advantage and charged, throwing his knee. He managed to hit Earl twice in the side while the Hunter’s hands had involuntarily flown to his broken nose. Each hit lifted Earl off the ground before he was able to shove Nikolai away.

  The two moved with incredible speed, striking, blocking, each impact sufficient to kill a normal man. Nikolai grabbed Earl by the straps of his armor and rolled, throwing him down the aisle. Earl landed hard on his shoulder, but his hand fell on a weapon. Nikolai came in fast, but Earl slammed the wine bottle over the Russian’s head. The thump echoed through the entire store. Earl tried to club him again, but the bottle shattered across Nikolai’s raised forearm. Wasting no time, Earl drove the jagged remains directly into Nikolai’s abdomen. Nikolai’s responding snap kick launched Earl through a snack display.

  They met in the next aisle. The two circled, breathing hard as their bodies healed.

  “You’ve gotten slow,” Nikolai said, holding the contents of his stomach in with one hand.

  “You’ve gotten sloppy,” Earl snapped. “I can’t believe you fell for that.”

  “You’re the fool picking up booby traps.…” Nikolai wiped the blood and sand from his face. “You snuck up on me. You could have changed first. You could have torn me apart. Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t need to be a werewolf to kill a punk like you. We’re in a town full of innocents,” Earl answered, blinking as his eye popped back into place. Everything was much clearer now. “How dare you bring a challenge here?”

  For a moment, Nikolai’s expression changed. His voice was suddenly too deep. “This is no challenge. You want a challenge? Let’s—” Then he grimaced, gnashing his teeth together. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to a normal pitch. “No…Not yet. You’re a nuisance, Harbinger. A scourge.”

  “You ain’t right,” Earl said. The Russian was nuttier than he remembered.

  “I’ll never let you have it.” Nikolai closed his eyes and shuddered. The other voice came back. “Enough! We end this my way.” Nikolai’s eyes flashed gold. The transformation had begun.

  “We can’t do this here!” Earl took a step back. “You lunatic. You psychotic fucking lunatic. We’re in a town. People live here.”

  “Their mistake!” Nikolai growled.

  A transformation was incredibly risky, but he had no choice. Nikolai was changing, and if he didn’t, he stood no chance. Earl knew that he’d just have to destroy Nikolai and then maintain enough control to get away from civilization until the blood lust died down. He unbuckled his armor. “You could’ve done this the old-fashioned way, and nobody else had to get hurt.”

  Nikolai’s strange voice roared, his hands curling into fists, teeth visible, every vein in his neck standing out, as he fought…something. “You have no room to talk!” The first Nikolai shouted. “You killed her! She was innocent, defenseless!”

  “I’ve killed a mess of folks. You’re gonna need to be more specific.”

  “Lila!” Nikolai was enraged. Bloody spit flew from his lips. “You murdered her. You murdered my wife.”

  Earl paused, scowling. “I’m drawing a blank.”

  Nikolai screamed as he leapt.

  * * *

  “I told you we’d have a good fight,” the Alpha said. The witch glowered at him, then went back to watching the battle. She didn’t like being proven wrong.

  He was pleased to see that he’d made the right choice. Harbinger and Petrov were both unbelievably fearsome while still in human form. He could only imagine what they would do in their purified state. Cert
ainly, he could defeat either of them in a challenge, but he was beyond such things. No slave to the old ways, he would set his own path, forge a new way for all of their kind. Harbinger’s foolish rules dictated that they were only men, nothing better, just different, and that they needed to live in humanity’s bloated shadow. On the other hand, at least Petrov understood that they were superior beings, super predators, but even then, he was content to remain a mere tool for human ideologies and lacked the imagination to do what needed to be done. Petrov had a slave’s mentality. Neither of them had the vision necessary to lead their kind into the future.

  His superior senses told him that many humans were coming out of their homes. They’d heard Petrov’s explosion. Some of them had realized that they were under attack and were spreading the word. The streets were coming alive. His children were confused. The magical storm had reached an unbelievable intensity. But none of that mattered. The important thing was which of the mighty werewolves below would be the one whose soul would power his ascension.

  It was a perfect struggle. Nature had selected these two as the ultimate predators in their sphere. One would die. One would live to feed his hunger. Which would fuel his metamorphosis? The excitement was unbearable.

  The witch pointed at the street below with her flesh hand. “We have visitors.”

  A black SUV was sliding into the parking lot of the Value Sense. The driver was clueless in the snow, and they gently collided with a light pole. The doors opened and five heavily armed humans got out. “MCB?” he asked. There should have been no way that they could have arrived through the storm. In fact, they wouldn’t even know about the slaughter of Copper Lake until morning.

  “Worse,” the witch muttered. “Hunters.” She held a very special hatred for monster hunters.

  “Harbinger’s men?” That seemed odd. His intelligence had said that Harbinger surely would have come alone. He would never involve his human pack in werewolf business.

  “No…not even close. I’d know if they were. MHI has a certain…swagger. Nothing would make me happier than the arrival of MHI,” the witch grumbled as she extricated herself from the thick snow of the roof. “Enjoy your show. I’ll handle these intruders.” She made a clicking noise, and one of her diggers stepped forward, ready to serve. Eight feet of armored monstrosity bowed before its witch. This time she pointed with her artificial hand. The steel gauntlet seemed disproportionately large sticking out from the sleeve of her fur coat. “Destroy those humans.”