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

by Josh Reynolds

  “The next twenty five years, we did all right with the mine. We named it the Killibrew after my wife’s father. He’d grubstaked us. It never had a big payday. Not as big as we hoped. Just enough to build a place called Beaver Junction. The Tlingits must have taken all the gold out of it before they left. When the boys grew up they wanted to explore the shaft where we’d buried the Tlingits. But we told them to stay away from there. There wasn’t nothing there. Charlie, he was always curious about it. I guess his curiosity got the better of him and he went on down there where he wasn’t supposed to. He disturbed their resting place and he must’ve found the necklace down there. Now all Hell’s broke loose.”

  His voice sounded choked up. “Damn! He died thinking he’d brought all this on us.” He shook his head. “The sins of the fathers,” he said. “The sins of the fathers.” He looked up ahead. They were at the mine. “And now they got Cassie.”

  They pulled their horses up. “What are you going to do?” Slate asked.

  Foster dismounted and took the necklace out of his pocket. “Give them what they want.”

  “That’s not all they want,” Slate said.

  “I know it. Just promise, if I get Cassie out of there, you’ll get her down back to town.”

  Slate nodded.

  “If I was you, I’d get that Gatling Gun down off that pack horse,” Foster said and started up to the mine entrance.

  Slate got down from his horse. Out of the trees above them, half a dozen of the Undead Tlingits dropped down on them. Slate slid the Colt revolving rifle out of its saddle sleeve and blasted one of them as soon as it hit the dirt. But four of the others leaped on the pack-horse. The force of their attack brought the horse down and the Tlingits began chowing on him. The horse screamed in pain and panic. Blood was everywhere. Slate fired four quick shots and the undeads flew back on the ground. Slate fired another round into the horse’s head. The shrieking stopped.

  Shots fired next to him. Foster’s Winchester pumped bullets into three more undeads, but they kept coming toward him. Slate threw his poncho back, drew his .45 pistol from its silver studded holster and shot them down. They waited a minute. There weren’t any more of them.

  Without a word Foster continued on to the mine entrance. When he got there, Slate could see the white hair of the medicine man and the black hair of his daughter, shining in the moonlight. The three of them, Foster, the girl and the shaman disappeared into the darkness of the mineshaft. The wind whistled through the snowy pine trees, as Slate waited. He pulled the pipe out of his pocket and lit it, the flame momentarily lighting his face up in the darkness. Except for the wind it was quiet. He reloaded the Colt rifle’s two cylinders with silver bullets and slapped one of the cylinders into the gun. He stood ready by his horse.

  There was movement, a dark shadow in the mine entrance. It was Cassie. She seemed dazed, staggering. For a moment, the way she walked, he wondered if she had become one of them. But as she came down the incline, he could not see any marks on her. She wore only the light dress she had worn in the kitchen. There were shots suddenly from inside the mine. A dozen of them from a Winchester and than the sound of Foster screaming like a maniac. The girl was almost to Slate.

  “This way,” he said. Then from the mine entrance they came; dozens of them. Disgusting half decayed, rotting things with eyeless sockets and half-gone mouths, and arms and legs that only worked as well as a puppet with broken strings. Slate took something from his saddlebag and tucked it behind his belt under the poncho. He moved up past the girl. “Get on the horse,” he said. He walked toward the undeads and began firing. They dropped and the sight of the first ones falling made the others stop. Slate exchanged cylinders and shot more of them down. He moved closer. They saw him coming and suddenly they seemed afraid. He pulled his pistol and kept firing. They staggered back into the darkness of the mine.

  Slate reached under his poncho and pulled out the stick of dynamite he’d taken from the saddlebag. He holstered his pistol and lit the fuse with the glowing red ember in the bowl of his pipe. The fuse spit and sputtered and he tossed it into the mine.

  He turned his back and walked back down to his horse. The girl was in the saddle. Halfway to her, the ground shook with a deafening roar and a hot blast pushed him. The girl sat wide-eyed, staring at the dust billowing out of the mine entrance.

  “Dad!” she cried. “He told me to go,” she told Slate. “He said he was coming behind me. But I heard him scream! They got him!” She cried out and covered the tears that ran down her face with her hands.

  “Let’s go,” Slate said. He swung up into the saddle behind her. She was cold and shivering. Slate lifted the poncho up over his head and dropped it over her. “The Killibrew Mine has made its last payday,” he said, and his horse headed back down the mountain.

  Author Biographies

  Jennifer L. Barnes lives in New Albany, IN with her insanely patient and geeky husband and perhaps the world’s most ungraceful cat. She has an unhealthy obsession with things that go Bump In the Night and has been writing about them since childhood. Jennifer is currently featured on Jukepopserials.com can be reached at writerjennbarnes@gmail.com and would love to hear from her readers.

  Matthew Baugh is a longtime fan of monsters and westerns, and has loved the idea of crossing them over ever since learning about a pair of old movies called “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” and “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.” When not writing about intrepid heroes, terrible creatures, and horrors from the dawn of time, he works as a pastor in the greater Chicago area. His latest release, The Vampire Count of Monte Cristo, is available through Permuted Press and all major retailers.

  Gary Buettner lives in Indiana with his family. His fiction has appeared in the anthologies Rotting Tales, Gone With The Dirt: Undead Dixie, Dark Things V, Daily Bites of Flesh, Powers: A Superhero Anthology and online at Eschatology Journal. He is currently at work on Cure For the Dying, to be released by Emby Press in 2014.

  Miles Boothe is the editor of the Legends of the Monster Hunter anthology series and the publisher at Emby Press. If you’ve written a monster hunting yarn, check out EmbyPress.com for open submissions or drop Miles a message on facebook!

  Thom Brannan does his best to scare people as one-half of the creative team at DarkTomorrow.net and the author of Lords of Night, the Pavlov’s Dogs series and co-author of Survivors, the final book in Z.A. Recht’s Morningstar Saga Trilogy. His most important creation to date, however—for which he was also one-half of the creative team—is his daughter, Feby Lyn, who is scared of nothing.

  Lina Branter is a librarian and a writer who lives in Montreal with her husband, two daughters and a psychotic turtle.

  Liam Cadey lives in Bristol, England and has been driving along the long and winding road of writing in his favourite genre. Finding it to be a perilous yet pleasurable journey, he has been fortunate enough to be given lodging in a number of publications along the way, including Pill Hill Press’s own Rotting Tales, Leather, Denim & Silver, The Trigger Reflex and Daily Bites 2011 Anthologies.

  Chris Lewis Carter was born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, where he currently lives with his wife, Melissa, and their two cats, Muffin and Lila. His work has been featured in 3AM Magazine, The Cuffer Anthology Volume Two. Word Riot, and two other Pill Hill Press anthologies (2013: The Aftermath, and ePocalypse). He is currently working on his first novel, and can be reached at chrislewiscarter@gmail.com.

  Jaleta Clegg swore she’d never write another vampire story. One day, she’ll learn not to say never. She writes science fiction novels, silly horror, dabbles in fantasy, and sometimes writes more serious horror. Find more about her and her stories at www.jaletac.com.

  Daniel Durrant writes mainly in the horror and science fiction genres. The author of several short stories, he is currently working on his first full-length novel. He lives on the Norfolk coast in England.

  Brain Easton, the son of a Southern Illinois pastor, grew up a fan of clas
sic horror films during the 70’s. His favorite, as you might imagine, was The Wolfman.

  “When I was a baby, my mother used to rock me while watching Dark Shadows. I cut my teeth on a steady diet of Creature Feature and Night Gallery, the old school Universal Monsters and spaghetti westerns. I started writing when I was ten, after I was given a hand-me-down Royal typewriter.”

  He has studied the occult since 1985 and obtained a degree in anthropology to further his research. His first novel When the Autumn Moon is Bright and his second novel Heart of Scars were finalists in the 2003 & 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

  A.J. French has appeared in Abandoned Towers, The Absent Willow Review, and Golden Visions Magazine. He also has stories featured in the following anthologies: Ruthless: An Extreme Horror Anthology with introduction by Bentley Little; Pellucid Lunacy edited by Michael Bailey; M is for Monster compiled by John Prescott; Novus Creatura presented by Aurora Wolf Press; and many other fine Static Movement anthologies.

  T.W. Garland has a stack of Victorian novels that taunt him with their unbroken spines. He buys more books than he could hope to read and is glad not to have been born in the nineteenth century or in a novel by Dickens.

  Steven Gepp Steven is an Australian, married with two children, two university degrees, and a résumé that looks like a list of every job you could ever have without really trying, including stints as a performance acrobat and professional wrestler. He has been writing for 25 years with a list of short stories in more than 20 anthologies, covering horror, fantasy, science fiction and humour. He also has a novella, Relick, available. Further, he writes about pop culture for a number of online blog sites. A dull life.

  John X. Grey is the pen name for Southern Ohio native Edwin Ray Haney, writing fiction since August 1999, with various short stories and poems published or accepted at small presses starting in November 2009 and five novels from August 2011 – September 2012. In May 2013, he released his first short story collection The Orphaned Stories of John X. Grey through CreateSpace, and has a horror novel trilogy, The Nightmare of Aarontown, accepted for publication at Dark Moon Press in 2014-2015. For more about John X. Grey’s previous work, visit his Weebly.com page (http://themanyworldsofjohnxgrey.weebly.com/) or Amazon.com author page (http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004E5AHE6).

  H.J. Hill has been writing her stories for several years. Some of her work has appeared with Wily Writers, Pill Hill Press and Emby Press anthologies and in Crossed Genres magazine. She is the author of the Fire Wheel fantasy series.

  E.M. MacCallum Author of the late “Zombie-Killer Bill” novella and several short stories, E.M. has always had a fondness for the horror genre in her writing. And like any good introvert, she’s avoided the city and lives on a quiet acreage in Alberta, Canada.

  Michael McClung is from Texas, but now calls Singapore his home. His fantasy novel, THAGOTH, won the Del Rey Digital first novel competition and is available as an ebook. His short story ‘All the World a Grave’ appears in Pill Hill Press’s ‘Flesh & Bone’ anthology, and his story ‘Mandrake’s Children’ is included in the forthcoming ‘Big Book of New Short Horror’ from Pill Hill Press. He loves kickball, brooding and picking scabs. You can find his blog at somethingstickythiswaycomes.blogspot.com, but you probably shouldn’t.

  Indy McDaniel lives in Florida and has been writing stories since he figured out how to scrawl letters into dead trees. He’s had stories featured in a number of anthologies, including Fem-Fangs, Dark Things II and Dark Things III (from Pill Hill Press) and Bonded by Blood III (from SNM Horror Magazine). He’s currently working on his first novel, which involves vampires, werewolves and a Russian assassin caught in the middle. Follow his ramblings on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/steelcorpfilms/.

  Edward McKeown is a writer and editor specializing in science fiction and fantasy with occasional forays into literary and nonfiction. Ed escaped from NY, but his old hometown supplies much of the background to his humorous “Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess” shorts, as his new hometown in Charlotte, North Carolina does for his “Knights Templar” fantasy series. He enjoys a wide variety of interests from ballroom dance to the martial arts and has the good fortune to be married to the talented artist, Schelly Keefer. He has also edited the Sha’Daa anthologies of wry tales of the apocalypse and has authored a wide variety of short stories, but he is best known for his Robert Fenaday/Shasti Rainhell series of SF novels set on the Privateer Sidhe, issued by Hellfire Press. Find him on facebook and at www.edwardmckeown.weebly.com and at www.amazon.com/-/e/BOO4NM9ZU2.

  Derek Muk is a writer and social worker from California. His short stories have appeared in dozens of online and small press magazines and anthologies, including frequent appearances with Pill Hill Press and Emby press.

  He has three chapbooks published: “Three Parts,” “The Sacrifice and Other Stories,” and “Sin after Sin.” In addition to writing, he enjoys reading, traveling, museums, art, dining out, and meeting new people. He has a bachelors and masters degree in social work.

  “The Occult Files of Albert Taylor” is his first full-length collection of short stories. His website address is theoccultfilesofalberttaylor.wordpress.com.

  Christopher Nadeau is the author of “Dreamers at Infinity’s Core” through COM Publishing as well as short stories in The Horror Zine, Sci-Fi Short Story Magazine, the horror anthologies ‘Saturday Evening Ghost’ and ‘Leather, Denim & Silver’, “Shadows Within Shadows,” and several more slated for 2011 release. He was interviewed on Suspense Radio’s part up and coming authors program and collaborated on two “machinima” films with UK animator Celestial Elf called “The Gift,” and “The Deerhunter’s Tale,” which can be viewed on YoutTube.

  Chris is an active member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers and resides in Southeastern Michigan.

  Philip Norris has always loved fantasy, epic or otherwise and is frequently featured in Emby Press anthologies. Philip has a daughter and lives in the Southwest of England with his wife, two step-sons and four cats.

  James Ossuary (Damian Sheridan) is the author of the original play The Judas Cradle, a top pic at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. He is an author and editor for Parasitic Sands horror anthology, was featured in The Northern Lights speculative fiction anthology, Leather Denim & Silver and The Collectors, an allegorical musical comedy for the 2010 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

  Jason Papke lives with his wife and two daughters in Nebraska. He is an Airborne Infantryman with the United States Army and has served on multiple combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When he’s not overseas he can often be found writing fiction and playing with his ever growing gun collection.

  Rob Pegler hails from South Auckland, New Zealand. He’s a teacher by profession, which is both the best and worst job in the world. When he’s not working or writing he divides his time between filling the gaps on his bookshelf, exploring the more interesting corners of his hometown, taking photos and rambling around the internet looking for trouble. He has a co-authored story (with Thom Brannan) in the Permuted Press anthology Times of Trouble and will release his novel Coppertown Red through Emby Press in February 2014.

  Eric Pollarine is a writer who lives, writes, smokes and drinks far too much coffee in Cleveland, Ohio. His novella “A Man of Letters,” is available on Amazon; he will also have a collection of novellas and shorts published in 2011. He can be reached through Facebook, Twitter, carrier pigeon and smoke signals or his website www.unlikelyconvergence.com.

  Angel Propps is a femme leatherdyke, educator and writer. She has been accepted into a multitude of erotica, horror and nonfiction anthologies and is an accomplished poet and musician as well. She can be found in many cities, fighting evil as she finds it.

  Elisa F. B. Ramires lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil. She is passionate about books and movies, and loves to create characters and write stories.

  Joshua M. Reynolds is a freelance writer of moderate skill and exceptional confidence. He writes for th
e Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 tie-in fiction line through Black Library and Gold Eagle’s Executioner novel series. Joshis also the creator of The Adventures of the Royal Occultist and author of The Whitechapel Demon.

  Feel free to stop by his blog, [http://joshuamreynolds.blogspot.com/] to check up on Josh, or look up Charles St. Cyprian on facebook for the latest goings-on of the Royal Occultist himself.

  Paul Salvette is American expat who has lived in Bangkok, Thailand for two years with plans to reside in the country until he is deported. His scribbles have appeared in New Asian Writing, Thriller Killers N’ Chillers, and Thailand Stories. Learn more about him at paulsalvette.com.

  K.C. Shaw’s fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Her fantasy novel, The Weredeer is available from BeWrite Books. Visit her website at http://kcshaw.net.

  Mhairi Shaw is Scottish, married and works as a skiing instructor by day. When she’s not on the slopes, she likes to spend time with her friends and family. Mhairi writes because she loves to.

  Marc Sorondo Marc Sorondo lives with his wife and children in New York. He loves to read, and his interests range form fiction to comic books, physics to history, oceanography to cryptozoology, and just about everything in between. He’s a longtime student and occasional teacher. For more information, go to MarcSorondo.com.