Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC

by Larry Correia

  We had only sent a small crew down to guard Sonya in Earl’s cell. Trip was in charge and he had his shit together, but if this many bodies came at them at once, they’d be overwhelmed.

  “Got it.” I dumped my last few shots the Drekavacs’ way and then followed Earl, reloading as I ran. I had a rifle in my hand, my shotgun bouncing at my side, and a bunch of drum mags slung over my shoulder, so it wasn’t exactly smooth. These were tight quarters so I threw Cazador around my back and switched to Abomination.

  It was just the two of us and there were monsters swarming everywhere. Earl had point, I kept looking back, which turned out to be smart because a couple Drekavacs crashed through a door behind us. I immediately wheeled about and started blasting. Silver buckshot ripped through their thin bodies, except this time I had to put several rounds into both of them before they came apart.

  It was like each of these shattered aspects was getting tougher. That was troubling.

  I got my confirmation of how that was happening a moment later as a Drekavac blundered around the corner right into Earl’s path. He ripped a long burst from his Tommy gun into the monster’s chest and head. It went down and ruptured into pieces as it hit the floor. The bits melted into glowing fog . . . which then flowed quickly along the ground and around the corner, to congeal around another Drekavac.

  Earl shot that one at least a dozen times before it went down. Only the monster was still alive and crawling by the time I got there and put an anchor shot in its cranium. It came apart, and this time the fog oozed up the wall and disappeared into a vent.

  For each of these we killed, some of their strength was being fed into the others. Each surviving Drekavac would get stronger and stronger, until there was just one left, who would probably be as powerful as the epic thing we’d just had to hit with a shit ton of anti-tank weapons to kill.

  Oh, shit.

  We reached the stairs to the basement before the Drekavac who’d breached the front door did. I could hear lots of gunfire coming from above and to a lesser extent below, which was a bad sign. Some of the monsters must have found another way into the basement.

  “Aw, hell . . . ” Earl looked back the way we’d come from. There was a lot of fog flowing in that direction and the eerie ghost light was growing. There were a bunch of Drekavacs heading this way and this narrow stairwell was the best place to delay them, but it sounded like the Hunters below needed our help too. “Alright, Z, I’ll stay up here, you go to the bottom of the stairs and kill anything that gets past me. But no matter what, help Trip and Cody protect Sonya. I made a promise to her mother.”

  “You going to wolf out?”

  “Probably have to in a minute.” Twice in two nights not even close to the full moon and around friendlies? That showed how incredibly desperate our situation was. “I sure hope their glowy shit don’t work like silver.”

  “I’ve got to warn you first. I think each one of these we kill, it feeds into the others. They’re getting stronger as they go.”

  “You got a better idea than killing them?”

  “Not yet.”

  “This job ain’t ever easy.” As Earl said that, a bunch of Drekavacs rushed around the corner. It was an angry mob of cold fire skeletons, and they shrieked when they saw us. “Go, kid.”

  I went down the stairs as fast as I could.

  This part of the building was mostly storage rooms and the entrance to the archives. On the other side of that was a straight shot to Earl’s cell. There was gunfire coming from that direction. I wanted to help, but they had a defensive position, and I’d help them a whole lot more by not letting another squad of Drekavacs down the stairs to join in.

  I could hear the chatter of Earl’s Thompson. Then a grenade went off. Then six fast shots from a revolver. During all that was a bunch of the hiss-cracks of the Drekavacs’ magic guns. Thankfully from the rate of fire, Silas Carver’s idea of guns was limited to the single shot types that he was familiar with from when he’d been alive. Earl appeared, stumbling down a few steps. There was a glowing impact on his leather jacket, but it hadn’t penetrated the incredibly tough minotaur hide.

  Then Earl got shot in the cheek. His head snapped around. Blood hit the wall as the bolt tore through him.

  “Earl!”

  Except my boss didn’t fall. He grabbed onto the railing to steady himself, shook his head like he’d just taken a punch, and spit out a tooth. There was a bloody, smoking hole right through both sides of his face. He reached up and touched the ghastly wound.

  “Nope. It ain’t even close to silver.” I could see the white of his jawbone through the dangling flesh as he talked. “I tell ya, that’s a relief!” Then Earl Harbinger leapt up the stairs and got right back into the fight. A second later a Drekavac was hurled violently down the stairs. I put a round of buckshot into its head as it bounced.

  The next few seconds really sucked, as I stood there, useless, not helping anybody, torn over which direction I should go, but also knowing that I was supposed to hold this spot. From the sound, Earl was going all savage werewolf on them. He’d been doing this so long, a full transformation only took him a few seconds, and he could fight while doing it. The Drekavacs were shrieking and Earl was roaring. I don’t know which one was scarier. Wire body parts were being thrown down the stairs: arms, legs, heads.

  And the whole time that damnable fog was drifting past my legs and into the archives. It was going to buff the monsters who were attacking the vault.

  Then the Drekavacs started pushing past Earl. They didn’t bother taking the stairs, they just vaulted over the railing and started dropping straight to the bottom. I opened up Abomination, nailing them before they even reached the ground. I went through a twenty-round drum in a few seconds, and by the time I got another one rocked into the gun, more Drekavacs had hit the ground. I blasted those at conversational distance. I took an arm off at the shoulder, and the ax it had been wielding still hacked into the doorway I was using for cover. Ghostly or not, those blades could cut.

  Our werewolf came tumbling over the edge. There were four Drekavacs wrestling him. One got its skull flattened on impact. Earl wrapped his claws around another monster’s neck and slammed him into the wall hard enough to put a crack in the concrete. He bit the third one on the neck and shook him. The fourth one ran Earl through the guts with his sword. I shot that asshole in the chest. Then Earl backhanded the wounded Drekavac and sent him flying. There was blue fire and red blood all over the stairwell.

  But then I had to concentrate on keeping myself alive. Monsters were cascading over the edge, and then getting right up to fight their way through me.

  I flipped Abomination to full-auto and dumped the rest of the drum into the mass of creatures. One made it through and I had to leap back as he swung a sword at me. I transitioned to my pistol and shot it in the eye. It still tackled me and we fell into the hall.

  The monster was on top of me. It was squirting ghost fire out of its shattered socket as it clawed for my throat. The thing was so damned cold that it felt like it was sucking the life right out of me. Good thing I had my anger to keep me warm. I caught its arm, levered it hard to the side, jammed my .45 into the spot where its ear would have been and shot it dead.

  I leapt to my feet as more monsters reached the door. I dumped them with my STI. I fired to slide lock, did a speed reload, and downed another Drekavac with a pair of hollowpoints to the head. There was a brief delay, so I holstered, grabbed Abomination and the last of my drum mags, and retreated.

  A few seconds later, monsters were pouring through the doorway. Some of them had already been deprived of limbs or were wearing claw marks, but they were leaving just enough bodies in the stairwell to keep Earl occupied while the rest headed for the Ward.

  I was standing in a T intersection. There was zero cover here, so I ran for the library. At some point the power had gone out, but I could still see by our dim emergency lights. Some of the Drekavacs went after me, but more veered off down the othe
r halls. Those would also get them to the vault, it was just a longer route.

  There was a series of blue flashes. I dove behind a bookshelf. Precious tomes were hit by bolts. Antique paper was turned into confetti. I tossed my last grenade into the hall. It landed and rolled between the feet of a bunch of Drekavac. The explosion took out the glass wall in front. Lee was probably at the vault with the others, but when he saw this mess, he was going to be furious.

  I got up, shouldered Abomination, and moved out. The Drekavacs were spreading out through the stacks. The instant I saw blue fire moving, I killed it, so these had learned to keep their heads down. They were crouched, shooting, moving. I moved behind another shelf. A couple of monsters thought that meant I couldn’t see them so they got up and moved my way. They were going to flank around both sides of the shelf, but I shoved a bunch of books off to make a gap in the shelf and gunned them down through it.

  There was a terrible impact on my back. It spun me around and sent me crashing into the books. My shoulder blade was on fire. A ghost bolt was lodged in my back. It hadn’t punched through my armor, but it was stuck there, cooking me. The weird blue fire that powered their bodies wasn’t hot, but their bullets burned like a motherfucker. I reached back, dug it out with my fingers, and then had to drop it on the carpet because it was making my gloves sizzle.

  The Drekavac who had shot me willed a sword into existence and chased after me. I turned around just in time to stick Abomination into his face. It was a good thing that the severed head thing didn’t reset the process now, because I literally blew his head off. That had been way too close.

  Moving into the aisle, I methodically worked my way toward the vault. It was look, shoot, move, duck, repeat. Monsters kept coming at me and I kept blasting them. Abomination ran dry and I yanked out my last drum. I was nearly out of shotgun shells, but on the bright side, I could toss my super awkward bandolier. I flung a couple rounds at the monsters pursuing me, and then sprinted for the rear door.

  Except a Drekavac appeared before me, pistol already raised. CRACK.

  It punched me in the sternum so hard it swept me off my feet. The pain was incredible, but I sat up just enough to cut that monster’s legs out from under it with Abomination. He fell facedown, and I put a final round through the top of his skull.

  Gasping for air, fire radiating through my torso, I stumbled upright. But the other monsters had caught up. I got shot again. Just a bit higher than the last one and I ended up flipping over Albert’s desk. My body took out his computer monitor and collection of Funko Pops before I landed on his office chair. The little wheels shot out from under it and I spilled onto the floor.

  I lay there for just a second, stunned, but having two molten slugs scorching your chest brings you back to reality fast. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to pull them out because the Drekavacs were approaching, swords and axes raised. I climbed up, rested Abomination on the desk, and started shooting as soon as my sight covered blue.

  MHI must have killed a slew of these things, because the remainder were getting really tough. I ran through the rest of Abomination’s ammo to drop three of them. There was still one left, and it was coming at me with only one arm and half his face torn off, so I dropped Abomination and picked up Albert’s chair. I hurled it. The monster slashed the chair out of the air with his sword. I used that time to draw my pistol. The Drekavac lunged at me but I pumped six rounds into him before he fell to pieces.

  Every monster in the archives was dead.

  Chapter 21

  Shit. Shit. That hurts. I put my STI on the desk, grabbed one of Al’s nice metal pens, and used that to pry the ghost bullets out of my armor. They were probably going to leave some severe little burns under there. But I couldn’t worry about that because there was still a lot of noise coming from Earl’s cell. Unfortunately, there was also a river of evil fog flowing in that direction. From the amount, there couldn’t be that many monsters left topside. The stuff was so thick and gave off such an unnatural vibe that it reminded me of the substance that had fed the Nachtmar at the Last Dragon. I really hated monsters who operated beyond our understanding of the laws of physics.

  Taking a quick inventory, I still had Cazador and about a hundred rounds for it. I was down to a couple pistol mags. I didn’t know how many monsters were between me and the vault, and it was taking an ever-increasing number of bullets to put each one down. I topped off my guns and moved out. All I had to do was follow the fog stream.

  The back of the archives was clear, but when I turned the corner there were a bunch of Drekavacs clustered around the corridor that led to Earl’s vault. The monsters were popping out and snapping off shots, but then having to duck back to keep from getting shredded by what sounded like a M240. Judging by the number of holes in the walls and gun smoke in the air, somebody had already run through a couple of belts to hold them off.

  “You never take Melvin alive! Come at me, scrub lords! Melvin is ripped!”

  It must have gotten pretty desperate down here for Trip to give our troll a machine gun.

  One of the Drekavac leaned out, shot, and must have gotten lucky, because Melvin let out a startled yelp.

  “It burns! It burns!” And then there was a clatter as he dropped the machine gun.

  The Drekavac immediately took advantage of that lull and rushed the vault.

  “Crap.” I went after them. They hadn’t seen me yet, so I popped a Drekavac in the back of the head. They’d absorbed so many lives that braining it didn’t even put it down, and the monster turned around, whipping blue fire across the wall from the exit wound where his nose had been. It shrieked. Two of its brothers heard and turned around to join it in charging me. The other dozen or so continued toward the vault.

  I kept hammering the lead Drekavac with Cazador until its body came apart, but the other two were nearly on me. A sword thrust meant to pierce my guts got knocked aside at the last instant by Cazador’s metal handguard. I kept shooting from the hip, but I wasn’t going to stop the other one in time.

  Only that Drekavac stumbled as it got shot in the back. Four Hunters were moving up the opposite direction, also converging on the vault. They were doing the combat glide, moving fast and smooth, carbines shouldered. So I dove for the floor to let them have a clear shot. It was more of a desperate instinct than a clear tactical decision, but either way, it was the smart play as those Hunters lit the two monsters up. Blue sparks rained on my head as the monsters twitched and jerked until they disintegrated.

  “Friendly!” I shouted, even though that should be obvious since I wasn’t a glowing skeleton.

  “Pitt?” It turned out to be Gutterres and his men. I wasn’t surprised to see them down here since they made no secret that they were in this for the Ward. “You hurt?”

  “I’m good.” I got up and immediately started reloading. There was a bunch of gunfire and shouting coming from down the corridor. “We’ve got to protect the vault.”

  “There’s another wave right behind us,” the big guy, Messina, warned. He was covering their rear with a Para SAW. “But there’s a friggin’ werewolf eating them!”

  “Don’t mess with the werewolf. He’s a friendly.”

  The mercs all gave me an incredulous look, but Gutterres took it in stride. “Very well.”

  “Seriously?” LoPresto asked.

  Gutterres shrugged. “The greatest knight in the history of the church was a werewolf.”

  “Sonya’s down this way.” I pointed. Judging by the way the fog from the monsters we’d just capped was heading past the Secret Guard guys, toward that next unseen wave, instead of the ones who were already hitting the vault, any of those Drekavacs who made it past Earl were going to be really nasty.

  “We’ll clear these first.” Gutterres signaled for his guys to halt. The corridor to the vault was between us. The corners the Drekavacs had just been using for cover had been chewed to bits. Melvin had done a real number on the drywall. “Warrington, LoPresto, first, then
me and Pitt. Messina watch our backs.”

  “Hang on.” This part was going to be really dangerous, not from the group of monsters we were about to box in, but because we didn’t want to get shot by our friends at the other end, and we didn’t want to shoot them through the monsters. So I shouted as loud as I could, “Hunters coming in!”

  I could barely hear Trip’s response over the gunfire and monster screeching. “Hurry up. Hold your fire, Melvin.” A long burst of machine-gun fire zipped between me and the Catholics. “No. Bad Melvin! Bad! Put that down.”

  “Melvin sorry.”

  “You’re good, Z!”

  Man, I hate this chaotic part. At least the teams were color-coordinated. The Catholics were all wearing regular street clothing with just plate carriers thrown on top. MHI armor was all various earth tones. “Only shoot the blue ones.”

  “Fuckin’ smurfs,” Warrington said.

  “Move,” Gutterres ordered.

  His men might not have been full-fledged Secret Guardsmen, but I had to hand it to them. They knew their shit. They were quick and smooth, sweeping into the hall and immediately engaging the monsters as they moved. Because storage space was always at a premium at MHI HQ, there were a lot of boxes and crates here, and the two used those for concealment as Gutterres and I moved in next.

  Trip had piled up a bunch of crap as a barricade, and the Hunters were hiding behind it. Between us there were half a dozen Drekavacs in the open. We shot them in the back. The vault crew shot them in the front. By some miracle we managed not to shoot each other. Thank you, Saint Hubert!

  Ten seconds of rapid but very carefully aimed fire later, the corridor was filled with the fog of dead Drekavacs. Unfortunately, it immediately went zipping down the hall past us, past Messina, and out of sight. It must have found the next batch of monsters to strengthen, because an ungodly screech came from somewhere inside the archives.