Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1)

by Josh Reynolds

  The dance floor was packed, a hundred souls in black leather, black velvet, black silk, jack-boots, corsets and lace danced in the low-lit cavern. Peter stood in a corner and stared out at the crowd, beer bottle in one hand, a lit cigarette in the other. The entire club smelled of musk and frankincense.

  She came through the crowd, red corset, black skirt, black hair falling down to the small of her back. She was barefoot. The crowd parted around her like silk on a knife-edge. Peter took a drag and watched her approach.

  She walked up to him, looked him up and down. The tip of her tongue traced her upper lip. She looked him in the eye.

  “You’re more handsome than I thought you’d be.”

  For a second he was speechless. His stomach began to knot. He’d been made. He tried to put a hand to his ear, to activate the custom two-way. His arm wouldn’t move. He tried to look away from her eyes. He couldn’t. His heart was tripping like a jackhammer. He knew he was going to die.

  She put her hands on the wall, on either side of his head, and rubbed against him slowly and thoroughly. She kissed his ear, and whispered to him.

  “We don’t mind you taking a few fledglings, or the more stupid of the elders. It’s just another form of natural selection. But you have to consider your place on the food chain, Peter. I watched the Roman Empire collapse under the weight of its own rot. I watched the Black Plague plunge an entire continent into an orgy of chaos and despair. Did you really think an old man hugging a bible and a boy with a pretty face would be the end of me?” She tssked.

  “The jackal knows she can’t take the lioness, and now you know you can’t take me, don’t you?” She trailed her fingers down his face and neck, trailing down his chest, and lower. He would have shuddered if he could have moved.

  She sighed against his neck. “What am I going to do with you, Peter? I was going to send you back to your organization in little steel boxes, but now I see that you’re much too pretty a toy to break. You really are the perfect bait.” She kissed his jaw, a soft little peck, and leaned back.

  “I think I’ll just keep you,” and then he fell into the black fire of her eyes.

  Peter woke having no idea how long he’d been out. He was lying in a bed. The once-white sheets were brown and tacky with drying blood. His blood. He felt the puncture wounds burn like fire all over his body—limbs, torso, buttocks, and scrotum. Even his scalp had been bitten, everything but his face. He raised a shaking hand to his forehead.

  “I didn’t want to spoil your best feature, dear Peter.” She stood in a darkened doorway across the room. “Yours is a face I won’t grow tired of for a long time.” She stepped forward, naked. Her body was alabaster perfect. The sight of her made him sick. Flashes of the things she’d made him do came back to him. Disgusting things. Awful things.

  “I haven’t turned,” he said to himself.

  “Of course you haven’t, Peter. I haven’t let you feed.”

  “I won’t. I won’t ever feed.” A jagged memory of his father, that last night—I need you to help me with your mother tonight, Peter…

  “You’ll do what I command, if it comes to that. But it won’t. The thirst will drive you to it, and you’ll do it all on your own.” She climbed in bed with him, pushed him flat, held both his arms at the wrists with a one-handed iron grip. She plunged her canines into his neck. He screamed. Then the world blew up.

  The wall exploded and bullets stitched their way across the floor, up the bed, into her flesh. She flew off him and slammed into the wall. Then she launched herself at the black shadows pouring through the gaping hole opposite. Peter sprawled there on the bed, stunned and bleeding. The bullet in his thigh was normal, welcome pain compared to all the bites.

  Around him, Hunters were dying. Dobson’s decapitated body landed on the floor next to him, flame-thrower still strapped across his torso. He’d never even gotten the chance to use it. Peter dragged himself off the bed, slumping next to the headless body. Men were screaming and cursing all around.

  Peter didn’t bother trying to get the pack off Dobson’s back. He dragged the wand out of the corpse’s limp hand, pointed the nozzle at her, and pressed the trigger.

  It didn’t kill her, but it backed her into the corner. He kept the wand pointed at her, and the steady stream of flame cascading over her. She screamed, a high-pitched, inhuman shriek of pain and fury. She turned her scorched face to him and he could feel her force of will bearing down on him, grinding him into nothingness.

  He fought her with everything he had, but slowly, inexorably, his finger loosened on the trigger. He knew what would happen next; she showed it to him. He was going to turn it around, bite down on the tip, and press the trigger again.

  A small voice in his head wondered if that wouldn’t be the best thing. He had no real control over his life now he’d been bitten. He wasn’t even a useable tool, anymore.

  The second wave arrived, then, with the M-60.

  Even after they cut her in half with machine gun fire, she was still screaming. He could hear her screaming inside the box they put her head in, even after it was loaded in a van and taken away.

  They tightened a facemask and a straight jacket on him. The Hunter didn’t look him in the eyes as he fitted the mask.

  “Sorry, mate. Lester’s orders.”

  They dressed the bullet wound hastily, wrapped him in a sheet, and hustled him out to the waiting van. Unseen hands pushed him, not un-gently, into the back. Sirens wailed in the distance, coming nearer. The door slammed shut and the van lunged down the alley away from the carnage.

  Mr. Lester sat in the back seat, his wrinkled child’s face actually showing sorrow. He didn’t say anything for a long time, just gripped the armrest as the van took turns at top speed.

  “You look rough, boy,” was all Mr. Lester finally managed.

  Peter said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything to say. The van hit the on-ramp to I-35 and the ride smoothed out. Mr. Lester fished a cigarette out of a shirt pocket, lit up.

  “I could use one of those,” Peter said.

  “You’ve been bit, son.”

  “I could still use a cigarette. I’m not going to tear your throat out. Not yet at least. But I might break your fucking neck if I don’t get a cigarette soon.”

  “Watch your mouth, Peter.” But Lester undid the mask and placed the cigarette to Peter’s lips. Peter inhaled deeply, held it, and slowly let it out. It was menthol. He hated menthol.

  “Could use a drink, too.”

  “You’re plumb out of luck there, son. Don’t drink. Never have.”

  The first cramps hit Peter and he arched in pain.

  “You’re going to feel mighty rough for a while. We’ll put you in isolation for a few months, until the bloodlust settles down to a manageable level. You’ll live, but I’m afraid your hunting days are over. Can’t have you running around out among people. No temptation, no sin.”

  “What happens to me?” Peter gasped.

  “Your strength, your stamina, your reflexes will all increase. Your body’s regenerative powers will go into overdrive. Full sunlight will be almost unbearable for you for the rest of your life, though you can build up a tolerance. You’ll need to, where you’re going.” Mr. Lester cracked a window and flicked the cigarette out.

  “I started a new program about a year ago, call it the Farm. You’re going be a farmer, son.”

  There are two tin roofed, mud-brick buildings centered on an oblong acre’s worth of dirt. A mimosa tree grows in the back, and a rutted dirt road around the front leads off into thin Central American scrub. That’s what the daytime world consists of—that, and the distilled essence of sunlight that beats down day after day. Not including birds, snakes or scorpions, lizards, mosquitoes, or the yips and howls of half-glimpsed coyotes.

  There are also three bodies.

  They are staked out in front of the larger of the two buildings, between it and the road, so that they are the first thing you see as you drive up—three
naked, desiccated corpses. Two are male, one female. Each lies spread-eagled on the baked earth, steel-shackled limbs chained to steel pylons driven thirty feet into the ground and set in concrete. The corpses are spaced ten feet apart.

  When he arrived, there were files waiting for him on each of the vampires staked to the ground. Thick files filled with hard data from recent decades, scans of historical documents going back centuries, and page after page of speculation, psychic and psychological profiles, witness accounts, crime scene photos, and on and on, in literal litanies of blood.

  Peter burned them, unread, the first day. None of them are her.

  Strung geometrically between the tops of the pylons are cables, and hanging from the cables are a welter of items—sun faded photographs, tiny wooden Day of the Dead figurines, broken Klieg lights, the skulls of various animals, aluminum crosses and pewter pentagrams, dried twists of intestines, bunches of herbs, cheesecloth bags full of Dead Sea salt, other things much less identifiable. Some of the items supposedly have special significance to the individuals staked out below. Party favors from the Witch Corps. None of it does any good as far as Peter can tell, but neither does it hinder him.

  The ground below the three has been sown with the same salt that hangs above. Other than that, the dirt is just your average Central American landscape, save for all of the scorch marks.

  There are other places on earth that receive less rainfall, have fewer cloudy days. This place is a compromise, of sorts. It is as private as they can make it; more private, say, than Death Valley. There are no chance hikers here. Perhaps portions of the Gobi or the Sahara would be more isolated, but they all have the singular drawback of being closer to Europe.

  The days are calm—dull, even for a hermit like him. He sleeps for about four hours in the morning, and then has breakfast. Breakfast is comprised of choosing whatever can is closest to hand in the second building. He doesn’t bother to read the labels anymore, or to heat his meals. The days are generally hot enough without adding anything extra. He hasn’t really tasted his food for a long time.

  After breakfast, he takes a sponge bath. Water is scarce, and trucked in along with food once a month. He has to ration it. He’s never gotten used to its flat, iron taste. It makes him feel like some ingredient is missing.

  He locks himself in the warehouse when the truck comes. He doesn’t trust the driver not to come asking for something, to want to chat.

  No temptation means no sin.

  After his bath, he takes the water and feeds the mimosa with it. It’s enough to keep it alive, but the tree has never prospered. Nor has it ever bloomed. He sometimes dreams that he wakes to find it in full blossom, delicate pink flowers like cotton candy raining down on the bare earth. In his dream he can smell the blossoms, though he never has in real life, even before he came here.

  He spends the next hour walking the circle around the tree, the ba gua zhang exercise, hands place precisely so, one raised as if to warn away, the other almost as if to beckon. Footsteps slow and precise, one after the other, measured just as his breath must be measured. Half an hour around the tree, clockwise, twenty-seven slow rotations and with each step he projects his life energy into the tree, willing it to prosper. Then another twenty-seven rotations counterclockwise, with hands and feet reversed, still trying to impart his chi into that damned tree. But then, for all he knows, it’s walking the circle and not the bath water that’s keeping it alive. So he tells himself.

  He began walking the circle as meditation when he came here, but as the months passed, he came to realize just living here is meditation. Now he walks the circle for the tree.

  By the time it’s about two in the afternoon, he has lunch. Walking the circle makes him ravenous. Then he makes his scheduled call-in on the shortwave, gets brief summaries of the world news, and could get messages from those that are allowed to know he is here, if there were any such messages.

  There never have been.

  He’s never met the person on the other end of the shortwave. It’s just a crackling voice to him, as he is to it. Every day at sign-off, the voice says the same thing: “God bless the Watchers.”

  Peter doesn’t know how to tell him he stopped believing in God, so he never says anything in response.

  After the p.m. call-in he runs through equipment checks and inventories. At this point in the day there’s still a chance to airlift any necessary equipment that’s malfunctioning, any necessary stock that’s dangerously depleted. Water is not a necessity as it is for his sole use. Technically he should do the equipment check before the p.m. call-in, but he’s developed a rhythm, a routine, and they understand that for him the routine is more important than the protocol. It’s not as if any of them can come down and take over. Besides, there’s no harm in the way he runs his day, no real added danger.

  Once the checks are done, there’s nothing to do, really, until nightfall. Sometimes he reads one of the half-dozen books here, each as familiar to him as if he had written them himself. Dickens, Hemingway, Camus. The Bible, Shakespeare, Poe. Someone had remembered that he had received a degree in English once upon a time. He keeps them all together in a large, antique, ant-proof case. Not that any insects ever invade his acre.

  Sometimes he walks a short distance into the scrub, listening to the silence ripple outward from his passage, the small rustlings dying away, the insects become motionless, the bird song falling dead. They wait in silence for him to move on, for a shadow of the shadow of death to pass.

  Most times he lies in the hammock in the main house. Sometimes he imagines himself down by the river again, makeshift fishing pole by his side. In his half-dream he cups his hands into the water, and drinks. The river is not Lethe. It never grants him forgetfulness. It always tastes like blood.

  Usually he just lies in the heat and sweats, thinking of nothing at all, feeling in his blood the slow decline of the sun, knowing to the exact second when it will set. Even if he didn’t sense it, the silence in the surrounding brush would be a warning.

  A half-hour before nightfall, he lays out the equipment: Three five-gallon cans of gasoline, primary and backup flame thrower, a dozen incendiary grenades and a dozen shrapnel. Then there is the six foot, single edged executioner’s sword, the half dozen Molotov cocktails—in this case brown beer bottles filled with gasoline and a little dish soap to make it stick, bottle necks stuffed with cotton rags. Lastly there is an ancient metal lawn chair, a Zippo lighter and the single cigarette he allows himself daily.

  A few minutes before sunset he begins, liberally dousing all three corpses with gasoline. Too early, and it evaporates to the point of near-uselessness. Too late, and he risks being uncomfortably close when they wake.

  He knows to the second when the sun sets. So do they.

  The female usually shows signs of waking first. He thinks she must be impatient. The other two generally play possum, but none have lain still all night. Not once. The thirst drives them to rise and try to break their bonds.

  One day, supposedly, they won’t wake, or so Mr. Lester assured him. But they are old; very, very old, and he doesn’t kid himself it will be any time soon, even if Lester is right. How many lives have they taken over the centuries? There’s no way to know, but the theory is that the elders will die that many times before they die for real. That’s all it is, though. A theory.

  After all this time, the female still occasionally tries to seduce him. He used to think it was because she was stupid, but now he believes that she is insane, forgetful, or simply desperate. In any case, he supposes she loses nothing by trying.

  Even shackled directly to the pylons, she will somehow rise to a standing position, facing him where he sits in his lawn chair smoking his Camel. Flesh will flow, long lustrous brown hair will sprout, shriveled leathery bags of flesh will fill and firm into smooth, heavy breasts and she will smile, smile in such a way that a man’s blood will pulse down into his crotch and up into his jugular, and he will do anything, anything at all have
that body under him, on top of him, around him.

  He flicks his cigarette at her and watches her burn.

  Sometimes all he uses are the molotovs. Other nights he has to wade into them with the sword, parting their heads from their bodies. Even then, those severed heads will clamp on to foot, ankle, calf, and suck, though there’s no place for the blood to go. The bites are painful, but not to the degree hers were, and still are. When he thinks of those bites, he tells himself to forget the past. He doesn’t have to tell himself to forget the future.

  It goes on from sunset until sunrise, without pause. Left alone, they would soon grow powerful enough to break their bonds, even oceans and thousands of miles away from their native soil, even with the fetishes and holy salt, even with the drain of hours staked under the vicious sun.

  Even burned to fine ash, they would eventually coalesce.

  After a rainy or overcast day, it is always worse. Then, he generally tries to keep his distance, relying on the grenades to keep them down and using the flame-thrower on the pieces. He may be faster, tougher, stronger than anyone who hasn’t been bitten, but he’s still just a pale shadow of them and their power. At least a shadow is better than nothing at all.

  There is so much they still don’t know, or are uncertain of, or are simply wrong about. Come the dawn, there is always a faint hope, an impulse that he cannot deny, that the chunks of desiccated flesh will remain just that. And then he watches them mindlessly reattach of their own accord, and the impulse dies. He checks to make sure of their bonds and, dead-hearted, makes his way to his own rest.

  He never really believed in Mr. Lester’s promise of redemption anyway.

  Somewhere in Africa and Australia, there are other versions of this place. She is staked out somewhere in Australia, rising every night to be killed, again and again by someone like him.