I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1)

by Tony Monchinski

  Click.

  Music video. Three Times Dope were singing, “E-S-T, the Acknickulous One/ I’m the greatest man alive…”

  Boone thought about Hamilton and Madison, how they had gone home with those bitches two nights before. He wondered when he’d see them again, find out if they’d fucked them.

  “E-S-T the unusual fellow—”

  Click.

  Comedy Central. South Park repeat. Boone had seen it before. The boys were trying to cross-breed Kyle’s elephant with Cartman’s pot-bellied pig.

  No sign of Stash tonight.

  The light on his answering machine was flashing.

  When he reached over and pressed the button the robotic voice spoke.

  “You have two new messages.

  “Message number one. Thursday, 8:30 P.M.”

  Beep.

  “Hi Boone.”

  It was Jennifer.

  “Just wanted to say we had a good time seeing you today. Say hi, Greg.”

  “Hi Uncle Boone!”

  His nephew. Boone smiled.

  “And, Boone, listen. Why don’t you really think about going away with us? Okay? Think about it. Love you little brother.”

  Boone scoffed.

  “Thursday, one twenty, A.M.”

  “Now I know how all those white women felt,” Chef said on the television.

  “Boone…”

  A voice he didn’t recognize.

  “Boone, Boone, Boone…”

  He muted the television.

  “My name is Lein, and Boone, I have something I want you to listen to.”

  It sounded like the guy was talking to someone off the phone. “Say hi to your friend.”

  “He said say hi!” another voice, evil.

  “Boone…”

  He sat up on his couch.

  Bowie.

  “Boone…”

  “You should see your friend.” The voice that had identified itself as Lein spoke. “But you probably wouldn’t recognize him.”

  “Let me talk to him, let me talk to him...”

  A commotion as the phone was passed to someone else.

  “Ever wonder,” a new voice, the evil one, “how much blood a human being can lo

  se, and still live?”

  In the background: “Boone…”

  “Wait, your friend wants to say something to you.”

  “Boone.” Bowie’s voice sounded distressed. “Boone, you gotta, you gotta…” and just like that Bowie’s voice went from tortured to maniacal. “Boone, kill ‘em, kill all of them! Every last fucking one of—”

  It sounded like someone yanked the phone away from him and Bowie was muffled.

  “Lein here again, Boone. Now listen to me carefully, yes? I’m going to give you an address. Our little game with your friend, Bowie, that’s almost over. But you get here as soon as you can, maybe you can watch what we do to Gossitch.”

  As the call ended, Boone was shaking. He wanted to hurl the answering machine against the wall. But he had to listen to the message again, get the address. This time he jabbed the button, skipped Jennifer’s message.

  “…what we do to Gossitch. Okay, here it is.”

  Boone scribbled the address down on a pad he kept by the phone.

  “See you soon, Boone. We hope.”

  Someone laughed on the other end.

  “Arrivederci,” said the one with the hateful voice and the call ended.

  “End of new messages.”

  The answering machine smashed against the wall and landed on the carpet in three pieces.

  49.

  4:51 A.M.

  Boone was out of the BMW 318i, around the back, and in its trunk before Hamilton even had it in park.

  “Boone.” Hamilton watched the other man sling a bandolier of magazines over his shoulder. Boone pulled a Colt SMG out of the trunk and checked the mag in the well. There was a laser sight affixed to the carry handle. “Boone, the sun’s barely up.”

  “You get back in that car.” Boone’s voice was quavering. “Wait for me.”

  “Boone—”

  The conversation was over. Boone had already turned and walked off towards the warehouse.

  “Fuck.” Hamilton climbed back behind the wheel of the BMW, cradling his Ingram Mac 10.

  Boone strode from the car and across the street to the ominous building. The sky above him was purpling with the coming dawn. The blackened windows of the warehouse stared down at him portentously, hiding whatever was waiting behind them. Boone felt like he was being watched by a million eyes. The thought enraged him.

  One name echoed in his head as he walked up to the front door of the seemingly abandoned building. Gossitch.

  Clutching the Colt SMG close to his body, Boone tried the door. It opened onto a dark room.

  Across the street Hamilton watched Boone disappear inside.

  “Fuck,” he repeated. Boone was nuts.

  The first vampire attacked Boone as soon as he stepped into the dark. It launched itself from the opposite ceiling, covering the space between them in seconds, hissing, lips drawn back over its fangs. Boone swatted it out of the air with a buttstroke from the Colt.

  The creature skidded across the floor in the dark until it got its footing and rose to a crouch. It fixed an evil stare on him and hissed.

  “Fuck off—” The red laser beam flickered on its chest and Boone fired out half a clip, the silver bullets pulverizing its face and head. It collapsed in an inglorious heap.

  “I’m here motherfuckers!” Boone roared into the dark, his voice reverberating throughout the warehouse. The body disintegrated, crumbling to dust. “I’m here bitches!”

  Overhead came the sound of feet scrambling. Boone looked up and snarled. He tipped the barrel of the SMG to the ceiling and fired out the remainder of the clip, dust showering down into the room.

  “Come on then!” He screamed at the ceiling, into the darkened expanses of the building.

  “Boone.”

  A lone figure stood at the opposite end of the room, backlit in the door. Boone moved before it could, racing forward, covering half the distance between himself and the vampire, anticipation and adrenaline coursing through his body.

  The creature took a step back but it was too late. Boone had drawn the Colt back on the run and pitched it forward, hurling it from his body. The silver tipped bayonet secured to the barrel glinted in the light emanating from behind the thing before burying itself in the vampire’s center of mass.

  It immediately let out a howl, a cry of agony and disbelief as it clutched at the barrel protruding from its abdomen.

  Reaching the beast, Boone saw it was another male vampire, but not the one he’d hoped it would be. That angered him even more.

  “Fucker!”

  Boone wrapped one hand around the barrel of the SMG and another around the trigger guard and yanked the rifle free. The creature shrieked and immediately crumpled, the poison coursing its way through its body.

  Boone didn’t wait for the silver to do its job. He savagely thrust the bayonet into and out of the vampire—

  “fucker-fucker-fucker”

  —four, five, six, a dozen times, the beast shrieking—

  “fucker-fucker-fucker”

  –its cries fading in intensity as Boone speared it repeatedly.

  When the thing stopped writhing on the floor, Boone wrenched the bayonet free and spat down onto the corpse, which abruptly disintegrated.

  “You heard that?” He barked into the black. “I’m coming for you. For all ‘a you motherfuckers!”

  He dumped the magazine from the SMG and slammed home a fresh one as he left the room, stepping into a long hallway lit by bracketed torches. He could feel them nearby, somewhere close, their evil presence lurking, waiting.

  There were several doors off the hallway and Boone kicked each open, the barrel of the SMG leveled. When nothing jumped out at him from the dark he was disappointed and moved to the next door, continuing down the hall
unchallenged until he finally reached a stairwell.

  “Boone,” a vampire descending the stairs called his name. He appeared unarmed. “My name is Lein. Let us talk.”

  Boone let the Colt fall on its sling and snatched the thing from its feet and off the stairs, a hand around the beast’s throat. It clutched at Boone’s hand and fought back but Boone battered it against one wall and then the other. He drove the sharpened point of a silver tipped stake through the thing, pinning it to the hallway wall.

  “Let’s not.” Boone growled as Lein howled in agony, its feet kicking against the wall a good foot from the hallway floor.

  “Where are they?” Boone demanded of it. “Where are they?”

  Lein was in no shape to answer questions, clawing futilely at the stake affixing it to the wall.

  “Was it worth it?” Boone demanded of the vampire. “Is it everything you fucking thought it would be?”

  Boone left it there, like a bug pinned to a dissection table. He mounted the stairs, the cries and screams of the vampire stuck to the wall rising and then fading in intensity.

  Boone’s eyes had fully adjusted to the darkened interior of the warehouse. As he climbed the stairs he shattered the glass in the windows lining the stairwell, the feint light of dawn illuminating his passage.

  The door that let out onto the second floor was rusted shut and looked like it had been for some time. Boone ignored it and walked up to the third floor where a door loomed open, torchlight casting shadows in a cavernous room inside. There was the feint sound of dripping water from the room.

  Lein was still screaming downstairs.

  Boone stepped into and across the room and sensed something was amiss but couldn’t put a finger on it and didn’t care less.

  He stopped in the center of the room, in front of an empty throne of some sort.

  Drip…drip…drip…

  “Let’s go then,” he invited the dark.

  They came at him from three of the four corners of the room, “nuns” decked out in latex fetish garb and stiletto-heeled thigh high boots. They rushed him, wielding an assortment of Ninja armaments.

  Boone ducked and rolled as the weighted end of a kusarigama chain and sickle snapped through the air where his head had been. He dropped under the deadly swipe of a fighting claw, the razor sharp blades whistling inches past his head.

  Before he could stand the third nun was on him, thrusting with a katana and its scabbard. Boone protected himself with the Colt SMG, the steel of the katana raising sparks as it clashed with the SMG’s carry handle, a thrust of the scabbard knocking him back.

  He tumbled backwards and regained his feet, standing up and pressing forward. Driving the katana-wielding warrior nun back, her pendulous breasts swaying in the cut-out latex gear, Boone turned to face another of his attackers—

  A booted foot connected with his midsection and Boone allowed the blow to knock him back, the kama of the kusarigama cleaving the air in the space he’d just vacated.

  He abruptly halted and peered into the gloom.

  …drip…drip…drip…

  They emerged from the shadows into the light.

  Boone faced his three attackers in the flickering of the torches. He held the Colt in front of his body, one hand wrapped around the barrel, the other around the stock.

  His adversaries circled him at a distance, stepping into and out of the dark. As they moved he did too, keeping his own circle tight.

  …drip…drip…

  One of the warriors feigned with fighting-clawed hands, but Boone ignored her hands and the blades affixed there, knowing to get caught up in their hypnotic motions would open him to attack. He could hear the weighted end of the kusarigama twirling in the air as its wielder spun it close to her body. He listened for a change in its cadence as she stepped behind him. The katana glinted in the torchlight.

  They moved as an organic unit, three encircling one, testing for weaknesses, for an opening. Boone suppressed the urge to strike. An assault on any one would leave him vulnerable to the other two.

  There was a gaudy theater-prop chair in the center of the room. Boone kept it at his back, forcing them to encompass himself and the throne in their ring.

  Again, their assault was coordinated, and again, Boone rolled, knocking one from her feet. He twisted onto his back and fired the Commando, a savage burst that cleared the air, blowing the back of the chair to splinters, dispersing the warriors.

  He was regaining his feet when the weighted end of the kusarigama lassoed around the barrel and bayonet of the Colt. As the woman yanked back, Boone allowed the jerk to pull him into her. Letting the rifle fall from his hands, Boone clasped the woman’s wrist before she could bring the sharpened kama down. His other hand encircled her waist and Boone spun them both, the woman pirouetting off into the dark, Boone drawing the Smith & Wesson as he twirled.

  The razor sharp blades of the fighting claw slashed across his back. Boone grimaced in pain and anger, twisting to face his attacker. She had drawn one claw back behind her head, preparing to attack again. His blood dripped from the blades of the other. Boone fired the 529 once, the .44 magnum round vaporizing the woman’s hand.

  Lucky shot.

  As she stared down in disbelief at her pulsating stump, Boone twisted and faced the third attacker. They had fought until their backs were against one of the room’s walls. The warrior nun placed the guard of her katana against the wall and pulled herself up off the ground, her leg kicking out at Boone’s head. He blocked her stiletto heel with the pistol in his hand, the Smith & Wesson knocked from his grip.

  Boone wrapped both arms around her thigh and ripped her off the wall, heaving her off into the dark. She grunted and rolled, springing to a defensive crouch.

  The throwing star buried itself in his shoulder and Boone scowled. He ducked as a throwing dart whizzed by, embedding itself in the wall. Boone reached out and yanked the wounded nun—who was still staring at the end of her forearm where her hand had been—in front of his own body. She cried out as two more shuriken whistled through the dark and embedded in her upper body.

  Boone let her go, kicking her in the small of the back, the blow propelling her across the room. She dropped to her knees, the star-shaped throwing discs protruding from her upper chest, blood coursing down the pale skin of her breasts.

  Launching himself over the prostrated woman, Boone swung a silver tipped stake, knocking the scabbard from the katana-wielding nun’s hand. She parried with the sword itself, but Boone was in her space and on her, knocking her back with a knee to the midsection. He hugged her and twisted as the weighted end of the kusarigama parted the air, connecting with the sword fighter’s head. With a sickening crunch the woman in his arms went limp and Boone let her drop.

  He covered the space between himself and the final upright warrior in a few strides. Boone’s booted foot connected with her chest, the kusarigama clattering off into the black. She leapt back three steps and shook her head, coughing, regaining her senses. Her hands reached behind her body and when they reappeared she was wielding a pair of sai.

  In the torchlight of the cavernous room Boone and the woman faced one another. The entirety of their worlds was closed to them except this moment, this engagement. Both ignored the groan as the wounded nun on her knees held the bloody stub of her arm up and stared at it. For them, the only sounds were the panting of their breaths and the intermittent drop of water.

  They crouched, staring at each other. There was a red mark on the woman’s breasts from Boone’s boot.

  …drip…drip…

  “You are a worthy adversary, Boone,” she remarked, her voice devoid of any alarm.

  “You’re dead, bitch.”

  …drip…

  “You should have heard your friends die.” She smiled, an expression at once beautiful and ghastly, completely bereft of warmth. “Do you want to know how good they tasted?”

  She came at him with both sai, striking at him with each weapon. Boone leaned i
nto the attack, jabbing a mighty left hand through her defenses, one sai bouncing off his forearm. His clenched fist broke her jaw.

  As she dropped the sai and gagged out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, Boone raised his elbow and brought the stake down in a short, furious stroke. Its silver-tipped point punched through the woman’s lips and remaining teeth and down into her throat.

  She staggered back, hands scrabbling hopelessly at the shaft jutting from her throat.

  Boone reached out, grabbed the end of the stake that stuck out of her face, and pulled her close. Her eyes were bugging out of her head, jerking around frantically in their sockets as she suffocated on the stake and the blood that welled up and poured out of her mouth and down the sides of her face.

  “How good does that taste, bitch? Huh?”

  She made some kind of noise, an attempt at communication.

  Boone used the underside of his clenched fist like a hammer, pounding the stake deeper into the woman’s body with one blow.

  He left it buried in her face and neck. She clawed at the end protruding from her mouth until she slumped over, kicked her booted foot a few times, and lay still.

  …drip…drip…drip…

  The handless nun was still on her knees, shocked from blood loss and her dire wounds. Boone retrieved the kusarigama from the floor and stepped behind her. He wrapped the chain around her wimpled head and pulled it back against the kama’s handle. She struggled weakly until Boone twisted the kusarigama, effortlessly snapping her neck.

  He chucked the kusarigama off into the dark.

  …drip…

  The third and final nun lay unmoving on the floor. She was either dead or unconscious from the kusarigama blow she’d caught with her head. Boone stood over the prostate form and fired one round from the S&W 529, obliterating everything above her neck.

  He flexed the muscles of his back and snarled as the pain shot up his spine. Looking down, he spied the throwing star jutting from his chest. Boone snatched it out and tossed it away. He shrugged out of his ragged, bloody flannel. When he flexed his fists, the muscles of his forearms, biceps and triceps rippled and popped to life in his cut off grey t-shirt. He found his Commando SMG and checked the magazine.