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

by Josh Reynolds

“We’ll have to press our attacks closer,” Lilith Hawk advised as she reloaded her shotgun and rolled sideways left avoiding the monster’s right claws, “or employ heavier weapons.”

  Nodding agreement, Artie Slade retreated to their table and collected his duffle bag, soon producing an unregistered riot gun with its 40-mm rifled barrel, and then preparing the weapon after he brought it and the bag nearer their adversary. The team’s veterans noticed their leader sometimes acted too reckless in this work, as if his wife and children’s slaughter by a werewolf pack at their rural home outside Leadville, Colorado left him hollow. Lilith Hawk discarded her shotgun and drew a hand crossbow that shot armor-piercing tiny explosive bolts in the monster’s upper torso whenever victims were not in her line of fire. The ex-cop turned licensed gun dealer had first met both Jack Pike and Miranda Puccini in 2002—a summer news intern and circus acrobat seeking unconventional weapons against Malcolm Havoc’s brood—before ever joining this team.

  “Let the babe go!”

  After the left leg he slashed with the sword kicked at him, Ken Hara sliced a left side tentacle with the axe to free one blonde lady in her rainbow-colored mini dress and silver lace sandals as the monster dodged around gathering more victims. He carried her to the buffet area draped over his right shoulder, barely avoiding two tentacles almost touching them. Setting the tourist between trays of roast beef and fried chicken, Hara smiled and stared into her confused blue eyes with the sunglasses briefly lowered, making one offer before rejoining the battle.

  “You can thank me later. I’m in Room 313.”

  Slade’s heavier ammunition staggered the monster back toward the stage; two dancers crushed under the feet, before it kicked a table at Puccini to disarm her irritating flamethrower. One waiter used a nearby wall fire extinguisher to prevent its setting a curtain on fire.

  “Hey, get out of the way before you…” the midget then realized something odd, staring at that man, “can see we’re actually fighting a monster here!”

  After kicking the man’s crotch when he swung that extinguisher at her head, the acrobat did a cartwheel and landed behind the thing, checking no civilians were near it. Removing four of her necklace’s eight tiny baubles, Randi threw them at the creature’s head, close explosions temporarily blinding it. No longer eating audience members, the purple thing gave those six its full attention, hurling empty tables or chairs toward Slade first, before he dodged and continued firing heavy shotgun shells and explosive or incendiary grenades in return, and then Hawk when shooting bolts at its legs that missed but forced the band and surviving showgirls to retreat across the stage. The hunters could not prevent people at distant tables from occasionally being struck and sometimes seriously injured by flying furniture. Glancing at the disco balls and strobe lights still in operation, Jack pulled his own 14” pump-action shotgun from the coat’s left interior.

  Maybe those lights are hypnotizing people. Well, they’re definitely giving me a headache. If I can knock them out, maybe those folks will finally realize the show’s over.

  The special sunglasses had almost fallen off Pike’s face when a near-miss chair knocked his fedora away. Jack shot out lights and hanging mirrored glass balls, throwing the showroom into semi-darkness. Darrell fired his UV radiation beam on their opponent from the second gun, until a hurled chair smashed it out of the man’s grip. He and Jack then headed for the main exit before pausing at the bar upon seeing its light controls. Murphy stunned an interfering employee with the hypersonic gun as Pike employed his rifle’s stock against two more. They restored the normal lighting and noted nearby shelves lined with alcohol.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Brains?”

  “Yeah, but we can celebrate later, Jack.”

  “No, I don’t drink—too many alcoholics in my family.” Shaking his head, Pike pointed with his shotgun. “I meant we’ll make Molotov cocktails for our big purple friend.”

  Realizing the weapon potential, once Jack forced the last bartender on duty to back away by raising his gun, Murphy grabbed a dozen bottles (handing Pike half of them to carry), two bar rags and a decorative candle inside its short glass globe, before weaving around several audience members fleeing once they saw the big monster. Randi fired a compressed air gun and entangled her adversary’s feet within the expanding net before it fell forward and left near the buffet area. Losing his katana stuck in the monster’s lower left calf, the axe snatched away and crushed by its left claws; Ken seized one flagpole as his next weapon for the sharpened tip, when some drunken man whose family vanished down the monster’s maw earlier grabbed his jacket.

  “Hey, why are you—people bothering Mr. Marino, just because he’s big and purple?”

  Realizing the monster’s true form was visible to everyone now; Hara shoved aside the balding man in his rumpled gray suit and urged: “Stay out of our way.”

  The band and remaining dancers stood at the stage’s rear near the large doors where the ladies and Marino first emerged and observed the battle. Other staff members in the room hurried through the main exit behind fleeing panicked audience members, trying to calm them all down despite the chaotic battle continuing nearer the stage.

  “Pour it on,” Slade loaded the riot gun’s last grenades into the round magazine from his duffle bag, “don’t give the thing time to think or escape.”

  Jack and Darrell hurled their first whiskey bottles with lit rag strip fuses at the monster’s torso, successfully starting fires across the rough-textured skin.

  Good, the thing burns, Pike fixed more Molotov cocktails with Murphy at an abandoned table right of the stage, just like Randi’s flamethrower scorched its back slightly earlier.

  Ken drove his blue Nevada state flag’s pole into the creature’s left shoulder and neck, but was head butted against a wall, dazed before being grabbed by the clawed left hand.

  “Kenji, I’m coming—hold on!”

  Facing the front of their enemy, Randi climbed onto a tabletop and threw a stiletto knife at its left wrist forcing Hara’s release, but her sunglasses fell off after one of Lilith’s missed crossbow bolts exploded beneath the table. Puccini was grabbed around the left leg by one right tentacle, crying from frustration and pain being lifted into the air. Hawk’s next bolt struck the tentacle’s larger end and blasted it apart, freeing the midget whom she caught flying backwards through the air. Randi suffered only an injured ankle and some small shrapnel cuts. Slade fired two grenades at the thing’s left arm and the explosion severed the limb off its shoulder. Freed from the claws, Ken crawled behind the target and pulled his sword free of its left calf.

  “Get away from it, Kid,” the former marine urged his team’s rookie member, “we’ll blast that mother apart with our explosive ordinance!”

  Murphy and Pike hurled two more bottles at their adversary’s chest as the monster ripped the entangling net around both legs apart with its right claws. Randi threw her last four necklace mini-grenade spheres at the lower jaw, while limping on the twisted left leg after replacing the dropped sunglasses. Finally out of bolts, Lilith spotted four security guards wearing red blazers with black hair and large eyes approaching. She drew her 9-mm machine pistol and fired a burst into the ceiling as they stood still watching the battle with disbelieving expressions.

  “So, boys, you want to explain the deal about your hotel’s star attraction?”

  Slade shot his final grenade into the creature’s left eye, the phosphorus burning into and putting out the red-iris organ. Randi and Ken charged the upright creature together with a second stiletto knife and the katana, the midget leaping from one chair, before they each stabbed into its burning abdomen and she fell on red carpet below the legs. His blade stuck fast again, and Ken was covered in slimy gray juices, gushing from the compromised digestive system. He screamed when he and his weapon both disintegrated. Landing prone and hindered by a sprained ankle, Randi saw the acidic liquid headed toward her, until Jack pulled the lady clear by the dress’ hem when cr
ouched. The substance ate through carpet and floor as the creature looked pained.

  “It’s too late!” The ex-journalist demanded of his one-time lover from six years earlier as she tried leaving the table they were crouched under. “He’s gone, just like all those swallowed people earlier.”

  “It’s not fair,” Randi insisted, “Kenji was sweet. He didn’t deserve dying that way.”

  Mom told me her daddy was a great shot at age 17. Out of alcohol bottles to throw, Pike had a new idea, leaving Randi’s side and taking his .45-calibre M1911 pistol from its concealed holster sewn into the coat. Let’s see if I’ve inherited Grandpa Petrov’s marksmanship.

  “You think a forty-five will stop that? Mine didn’t. The bullets don’t penetrate.”

  Slade fired the mini-Uzi from cover at their pitiful-faced target swayed from cumulative wounds, while Murphy lobbed two final bottles with burning fuses to hit the right leg.

  “I’m guessing,” Jack ignored his older comrade’s skepticism, taking aim at the uninjured right red eye, “one spot is all I need to hit, Sarge.”

  Pike squeezed off four shots and put the monster’s last eye out, before it fell backwards against the stage, mournfully roaring as flames engulfed the body. Entering the showroom were about one-dozen well-dressed management types, joining the security men facing Lilith Hawk with accusing faces inside the wrecked showroom’s center.

  “We’re from Monstrum Venatores LLC,” Artie Slade took a fresh cigar and lit it with the candle-filled glass Darrell Murphy used from the bar, “and that thing was eating people right out from under your noses.”

  The staff Jack’s group viewed basically resembled other employees they had encountered here. One tall center man in a light-blue suit and gray tie addressed them as if never hearing one word Slade said.

  “What is the meaning of this? State law forbids smoking in our hotel’s dining areas.”

  Randi leaned on Jack as he took a seat and holstered the pistol after retrieving his fallen fedora off the floor. Darrell now retrieved a tubular hand-held X-ray scanner (pirated CIA tech obtained on the black market) from his suitcase and checked the staff, while Hawk and Slade awaited some explanation.

  “Maybe you should tell us,” lowering her pistol, as Slade grinned his triumph with arms crossed cradling the mini-Uzi against the chest, and the monster’s burnt stench filled this room, Lilith continued, “letting that thing pose as a singer, hypnotize your guests and eat them.”

  The tall man briefly laughed as the other staff moved toward the large doors opening for the exiting dancers and band members’ exit.

  “Our pet emitted a powerful hypnotic field, magnified by the room’s special lighting, and ingested organic matter for conversion into fuel,” his gold name tag read Terrence Mallory, General Manager, “entertaining guests as it ate for personal joy. The plan was proceeding and our craft would have been completely refueled for liftoff in a few more weeks.”

  “What’d you say?” Jack remarked scratching his head, as Darrell scanned the staff using fire extinguishers upon the unmoving beast, and Randi almost sobbed in choking on her words.

  “That thing was making fuel? Ken died—just so you—creeps…?”

  “Correct,” Mallory confirmed smugly through a bittersweet gaze before clarifying, “its rapid digestive process refined carbon-based life into deuterium required to depart this planet after our emergency forced landing here.”

  “You’re aliens?” Murphy showed Hawk and Slade his device’s LCD screen, displaying strange energy silhouettes from Mallory’s staff but no internal structures visible in an obscuring gray fog. “This hotel hid your activities?”

  “That device cannot penetrate our bio-shields. Slaying the Kelrog and proving your race dangerous, we must now depart with all available fuel. The converter will be deactivated inside our ship, and that is what perpetuates this hotel. It will cease to exist, never having been real.”

  “That’s why everyone in Vegas can’t remember the place being built,” Jack was a bigger sci-fi buff than Darrell, “your technology formed all this literally overnight after arriving.”

  “And formed enough converted local molecular source matter to give it some substance,” Mallory strolled toward the stage where his staff exited through the large doors appearing now as black metal within the rear wall, “while we secretly repaired and refueled our craft.”

  “But how did you make guests or the authorities forget some people and loved ones were missing after seeing this show, even if reported later?” Holstering her pistol, Hawk quizzed the man as he stepped on stage, pointed one silver tube at the monster and two crushed dancers, and then somehow dissolved each body into mist before their eyes. “Hypnosis alone kept audiences unaware how some of them were being eaten at every performance?”

  “Your race’s deductive skills are higher then we believed possible,” Mallory placed the tube back in his suit’s breast pocket, checking a wristwatch, “but no longer amusing. Our crew has boarded and I now join them. You should retreat to a safe distance before our craft’s engines launch.”

  Slade pointed his weapon at the smug manager, but Mallory shook his head once.

  “My shield will now block your projectiles. Leave here while you still can.”

  The general manager then stepped through those doors, which immediately slid closed with a clang. Seconds later, the room was filled by a low hum, before its ceiling, floor, furniture and walls shimmered and faded. Retreating from beside the remaining pyramid-shaped needle, Jack and his comrades were soon surrounded by confused guests, some dressed and others barely or undressed (grabbing any nearby article to cover themselves), and none having fallen from higher floors which also ceased to exist. Even other audience members from Vic Marino’s show now seemed disoriented about why The Delta Galaxy Casino Hotel just disappeared.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Slade urged everyone before they all fled the vacant field toward a parking lot predating the hotel, “if that’s a spaceship, it must be taking off.”

  Hawk carried Puccini in her arms to spare the short lady’s injured left ankle, followed by Murphy, Pike, Slade and hundreds of guests still uncertain why there were suddenly outdoors at night. The alien spacecraft vibrated as its engines roared to life.

  I wonder, Jack pondered, glancing backward once, is the Delta Galaxy their ship’s name or maybe a home space region? Guess we’ll—OWF.

  Stepping around other guests’ discarded possessions strewn across the field, Jack tripped over something hard and heavy. Helped up by Murphy and dusting off his coat, the ex-journalist soon realized he had discovered one missile weapon, probably from the military hardware show advertised as being held here inside a second floor conference room.

  “What is it?”

  “That’s an FIM-92,” Darrell volunteered, “or Stinger missile—anti-aircraft weapon.”

  Watching the spacecraft rise, as passing cars stopped on nearby streets to observe the strange unexpected sight, Jack had an idea while lifting up the 35-pound launcher and its single missile.

  Unless they’re all-powerful, maybe we can strike at these aliens for Ken and everyone their pet killed here.

  Quickly shown by the ex-USAF drone pilot how to deploy the Stinger, and hoping it was not some mock-up, Jack insisted on taking the shot as his team watched from a few feet behind him. The alien needle rose into the night sky with a blue flame exhaust from four pulsing rocket cones. Once the spacecraft reached about 1,000’ above Vegas, Jack Pike pressed the hand guard trigger that ejected the missile upward before the motor ignited, targeting one of the ship’s four engines. They spotted the Stinger impacting that spacecraft’s hull seconds later, but aside from one tiny visible explosion – nothing else happened.

  “Nice try,” Slade slapped Pike’s left shoulder, “but bringing them down with that thing probably never stood—”

  He was interrupted. A blue-glowing explosion approximately five miles above lit up the sky, followed
with a roar shaking the ground. Facing his team and hearing some applause from spectators, Pike set the launcher down.

  “Wow, I just destroyed an entire UFO.”

  Gateway

  Daniel Durrant

  “It’s close,” Mel whispered. “I can feel it.”

  Ryan checked their rear before activating his head-up display.

  “Nothing on the sniffer.” He nearly asked if she was sure, but checked the question. He trusted her abilities more than the machine. He waited, but the display remained blank. “How close?”

  “Close close.”

  Lacking her finely tuned senses, he felt blind without the device, but if it hadn’t registered the creature by now, it never would. Without results, the graphics were simply a distraction, and one that generated dangerous false confidence. With an act of will, he turned it off.

  “Which way?”

  She answered him by moving off, hugging the wall. The normally packed halls of the New York University Silver Centre were deserted. Summer break had expelled the students, and “pest control measures” had expelled everyone else, disinformation that was, like all good lies, nearly true.

  Carbine up, Mel peered around the corner. A body lay at the next intersection. She waited, straining every sense she had, but learned nothing.

  “Man down,” she whispered.

  They staggered their advance, each covering the other.

  Ryan dropped to examine the man. Casually dressed, but young, he looked like a teaching assistant. He sensed no life, but checked the pulse anyway.

  “Dead.” For the best, he thought. Huge chunks of muscle were missing, bordered by dissolved flesh where the creature had expelled catabolic enzyme before feeding.

  “This our boy?”

  “No.” He turned the body. “Head’s intact.”

  “Any eggs?” she asked, detecting the sweet smell of the musk they used to dope their victims.

  “No. Too hungry, maybe.”

  She opened a channel. “Control, one victim, no sign of the gateway. Moving—.” She felt the creature an instant before it appeared in the office ahead, the unnatural shape distorted further by the rippled glass. “Ryan. Tach.”