Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC

by Larry Correia

  Captain Israel Lyons was the head of the UF department of the Multnomah Sheriff’s office. Portland is in Multnomah County although the “greater Portland area” stretches outside it.

  Lyons had no official staff. He had some sergeants and lieutenants he knew on various shifts who had encountered enough weird-ass shit in their time what when something came up, frequently it being Portland, he’d call one of them to go handle it until he got there.

  Despite having no staff and no department and, apparently, no real job, his official title was “Special Actions Assistant to the Sheriff” and he had a choice, big, office right by the Sheriff’s. Because the way it worked back then was this:

  When a new Sheriff was elected he’d get all sorts of briefings. One of them was always from some nice fellow from the FBI who would talk about jurisdiction and cooperation. At the end of the meeting the nice fellow would mention that another department would be calling and would need to talk.

  Then someone from the MCB would call and say something like: “At some point in your county there may be something that happens which is extremely unusual. When it does, call us.”

  Newly elected Sheriffs would ask what “extremely unusual” meant and joke about little green men.

  “You’ll know it when you see it.”

  The Sheriffs would tend to forget the conversation until they saw it.

  Sheriff Greene had only had to deal with one “unusual event” before he delegated that job to then-Lieutenant Israel Lyons, second in command of Multnomah SWAT, in exchange for promotion to captain.

  Israel Lyons had a beeper. It always seemed to go off at three in the God-damned morning. He rued the day he’d let Sheriff Greene talk him into taking the fucking job. He also had a wife who had suffered through his job for ten damned years. That fucking beeper, those three AM phone calls, all the incredible horror he’d had to visit and especially the fucking MCB were not worth a choice office and a captain’s salary. But Israel Lyons also had a strong sense of duty. The reason that Sheriff Greene had chosen him. So he suffered through it.

  Then the Sheriff was T-boned by a drunk driver and took early retirement. And that fucker Schmidt took over.

  As one of his first cost-cutting moves, Schmidt tried to fire Lyons. He had a budget and an office but no real job as such. Schmidt didn’t even ask Lyons to explain what “Special Actions” were. It was clearly a cynosure for the ex-sheriff’s ass buddy. But Lyons was two years from retirement. That was hard.

  So he transferred Lyons to head of the Parking Department, in charge of all the meter maids. It was in the basement of the Sheriff’s Office. It hadn’t had a captain, for which it was slated, in twenty years. It was usually run by a politically unpopular lieutenant.

  And that brown-nosing fuck Kenneth Jones got Lyon’s office.

  He could have it. Maybe he’d get that fucking beeper too. Serve him right.

  Captain Lyons moved about half the stuff from his old, bigger, office down to Parking, took the rest of it home, moved into his cubicle of an office, put his feet up and took a deep, relieved, sigh. In his first few weeks he got reacquainted with his family, his grandkids, the game of golf and fishing, which back before fucking UF had been a passion. He arrived at eight AM after a full night’s sleep, went home at five on the dot every damned day. He only worked Monday through Friday. His fucking phone never went off at three AM. There were zero emergencies in fucking parking at three AM. The meter maids all went home at five when the meters went to “No need to pay.”

  He had a captain’s salary, no real work to speak of and he had fucking UF off his plate. Not to mention some of the meter maids were cute and none of them had heard his stories from his SWAT days. They ate those up. He couldn’t tell the UF stories, obviously.

  It was fucking heaven!

  So now we transfer to Sheriff Schmidt’s perspective.

  * * *

  Sheriff Bob Schmidt (Vote Schmidt, he’s the Shit! was a rejected campaign slogan) was peacefully sleeping at three AM a week after he’d taken office when his home phone rang. Sheriff Schmidt did not have a beeper. They were for lesser individuals.

  “Sheriff, we appear to have a UF incident.”

  “A what?” Sheriff Schmidt said.

  You see, Sheriff Bob Schmidt had worked beat in LAPD for a while then passed the detective exam. If there was a UF while he was on beat he was one of the guys on the perimeter who were being lied to assiduously. He did stolen cars, normal for intro to detective, not a place where you run into the supernatural, then a time in Narc, also not a big supernatural area.

  While in Narc he’d burned a supervisor for diverting some of the recovered cash into his own pocket. Give Schmidt props for honesty. Personally, I think he just wasn’t being offered a cut. But it made him unpopular with the regular Joes. So he wangled a transfer to Internal Affairs.

  IA is an important department. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes is actually an important question, one I’d posed to Congressmen about MCB and other groups several times. Cops are human and subject to a lot of pressures that normal civilians aren’t. Bribery, intimidation, all sorts of excesses happen. They do. Cops are important and special. But they’re not superheroes, any more than Monster Hunters are. We get watched like a hawk by MCB, trust me. IA is one of those sad, sorry, necessities.

  But IA is not a well liked department. And, very importantly in this case, it is very, very rare that anyone in IA encounters anything supernatural related. They’re internal affairs. Unless some narc cop turns out to be a werewolf they’re not going to get involved. (Happened once. Omaha. Seriously violated the rights of a guy who was pushing to young teens. Like, tore him into shreds then, unfortunately, tore into all the other narc cops present, the pusher’s family, et cetera. If it had been just the pusher, hey, more power. As it was, MHI had to chase him down and terminate with prejudice.)

  If he’d been homicide, it was guaranteed. Even missing persons it was likely. Narcotics and IA are the two departments least likely to encounter the supernatural. Although Narc sometimes does in gnomes.

  Bottom line, he’d never heard of Unearthly Forces, did not believe in Unearthly Forces and had a very hard time adjusting.

  At the insistence of the lieutenant then the precinct captain of Portland PD, who knew about UF but not my jurisdiction, thank you, not my plate, don’t want it on it, this is your job, he went out to the scene at Oh Dark Thirty on a rainy night. MCB was already there. A house had been torn apart and almost the entire family was dead. A twenty-something son was missing. His torn clothing was on the floor in his room. There were massive slash marks on the inside of the door and it was busted outwards.

  “Who’s your hunter company?” was practically the first thing out of the MCB agent’s mouth.

  “My what?”

  The more experienced agent’s question was more on point.

  “Where’s Captain Lyons? Doesn’t he handle werewolves anymore?”

  “Handle what?” was the new Sheriff’s response.

  At that point it started to sink in that maybe there was a reason for Lyons having a choice office other than being the previous Sheriff’s ass-buddy.

  So he had dispatch call Lyons.

  Dispatch called back and told him that Captain Lyon’s reply had been to laugh, tell them he didn’t do that anymore and hang up the phone. They didn’t add “hysterically” to the laugh comment. Dispatch knew all about UF, why Lyons had the job, why he’d been demoted and were trying not to laugh hysterically as well. They’d had three positions cut. The new broom was not particularly popular anywhere in the department.

  Lyons, though, had a sense of duty. So he called a lieutenant he knew was off-duty and had her shit together, Kay Shaw.

  Kay had broken through all the barriers. She was the first female lieutenant in the Multnomah Sheriff’s department, she was one of their premier homicide dicks and she’d already been one of Lyon’s go-to people. So at three AM on a night off she put on her rain
slicker and went to the scene.

  She arrived on scene and found the sheriff on the front porch trying to explain to a Monster Control Bureau agent that werewolves were something from a bad horror movie.

  “Morning, Sheriff,” Shaw said.

  “And you are…?” he said then remembered his premier and only female homicide detective. “Good to see you Lieutenant Shaw. Uh…Were you just driving by?”

  “Agent Flores,” she said, nodding at the MCB agent. “What do we got?”

  “Probable lycanthrope,” the agent said, appreciating that someone with their head in the game had turned up. “Probably the son. No survivors.”

  “Well, the good news is you don’t have to shoot them, then,” Shaw said. “We got any other calls?”

  “Looks like he took off,” Flores said. “No other reports we’ve picked up.”

  “I’ll clue in Dispatch to keep an eye out for Code W,” she said. “Sheriff, we need to talk.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant,” the Sheriff said. His butt buddy had been summoned and immediately followed.

  “Without Lieutenant Ass-boy,” Shaw said, pointedly.

  “Excuse me?” Lieutenant Jones said. “What did you call me?”

  “Sorry, make that Lieutenant Brown-nose,” Shaw said. “This conversation is between you and me, Sheriff, or I can let you go back to trying to figure this out yourself.”

  “Jones, give us a minute,” the Sheriff said.

  Kay led him around to the side of the wrap porch and looked through the windows into the house. It was a shambles.

  “Did the MCB cover that everything you’ve ever seen in a horror movie exists?” she asked.

  “This can’t be happening,” Schmidt insisted. “I was in LA for fifteen years! And this did not happen! Is this a Portland thing?”

  “You were IA,” Shaw said, distastefully. “Why would IA handle this crap? Any homicide detective runs into it eventually. To be immediately told to leave the premises, this is a Federal matter, and you didn’t see anything, this never happened. But you know about it. Ever have a potential ‘excessive force’ charge, probably resulting in the death of a suspect, mysteriously pulled by the FBI?”

  “A couple,” Schmidt said. “You mean…?”

  “Some cop ran into a monster,” Shaw said. “A real one. Not a metaphor. So get your fucking head in the game or say you never should have run for sheriff and resign. I don’t give a shit which. But you either pull it out of the sand or your ass or wherever it is, fast, or I’ll go back to bed and forget we had this conversation.”

  “I’m the Sheriff. Remember you work for me, lady.”

  “And if you try to fire me over this conversation, I’ll hit you with a screaming EEOC suit,” Shaw said, walking away. “Because it never happened. Good night. Have fun!”

  Sheriff Schmidt thought about it for a second then let her walk.

  “Jones!” he barked.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “You’re now in charge of…UF,” Schmidt said. “Apparently we’re supposed to use a contractor company. Who is our contractor for this?”

  “I don’t think we have one, sir,” Jones said.

  “Find one,” Schmidt said. “Give me a report in the morning…”

  For the next two nights, Portland was terrorized by the Gresham Serial Killer and then the attacks abruptly stopped. When the full moon passed.

  The next month, the Gresham Serial Killer was back. But it wasn’t just in Gresham anymore. There were at least four different killers. They were copy-cats, obviously, but it was like they were breeding!

  Jones had by that time gotten enough information, pulling hen’s teeth, that he’d found a Monster Hunter company.

  Troutdale Supernatural Issues was willing to guarantee 24/7/365 response, no more than three hours on site, for the measly price of five thousand dollars a month. Remember, we’d been getting a grand. And they deployed immediately to take care of the Gresham Werewolf.

  They managed to track two down without any casualties. The third one ate them a new asshole. And Troutdale Supernatural Issues went out of business when the owner and founder got a silver bullet through his head in the hospital courtesy of MCB. He sort of let himself get bit.

  MHI? That was about the time that we had more business than we could handle in Seattle. But we offered to send in a team before the next full moon. Since it was from out-of-town and weren’t you the one who canceled the previous contract? All expenses had to be paid up-front. Jones didn’t like that. He kept making calls.

  I think they went through four companies, two of which went out of business, in as many months before they’d gotten that one werewolf and its “offspring” under control. I think at one point they had seven werewolves running around, which I thought was seriously bad until I worked New Orleans. But by that time Portland had developed a vampire problem as bad as Seattle’s. Portland was still a major wood processing town and I swear they started running out of stakes.

  Look, MHI is the best for a reason. We only take people who have dealt proactively with supernatural outbreaks, we train the hell out of them and we support them aggressively. We only take the best, we expect the best and we get the best. There are always fly-by-night companies looking for that fat PUFF check. And there’s a reason those bounties are so high. This isn’t a business for amateurs.

  There are other groups that are as good as we are overseas and nearly as good as we are in the US. But they are all busy. So just because your particular town or county is getting overrun with werewolves, vampires, zombies, or whatever, an emergency on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours. Point being that everybody has emergencies. Constantly. That’s why we’ve been in business for damned near a hundred years. If you wanted us to respond like lightning bolts, you shouldn’t have cancelled the contract.

  Then MCB had had it. Vamps were out of control, and there was a werewolf surge going. That’s when they got permission to call in SRT. And the Sheriff got read the riot act by the Agent In Charge and got punched through a window by Agent Franks when he “responded hotly.”

  The Sheriff, sporting a newly broken nose and two black eyes, formed a Monster Control Squad. There were lots of volunteers. At first.

  There were six funerals of Sheriff’s Deputies in the next two months. And no good excuses for why. Half of them were killed in one “drug bust gone bad.”

  Even the bravest can freeze the first time they see a real, no-shit, vampire or kappa or gangrenous slime. People who haven’t seen the supernatural and lived through it, fought through it, should not be hunters. SRT members generally spend some time as regular MCB and the rumor is they’re trained on captured monsters.

  These guys were SWAT wannabes. Not bad people but most of them probably only sort-of believed in the briefing. And from reports most of them freaked out when every horror movie turned out to understate the danger.

  Then an entire bum camp disappeared. Just flat up and disappeared.

  And we had to respond. It was time.

  Again, I have to put it briefly from the perspective of the Multnomah Sheriff’s office.

  * * *

  Sheriff Schmidt walked through the scattered bedding and small shelters with his hand over his nose and mouth. Partially it was from the smell. Bums don’t regularly shower. Partially it was the natural human reaction to seeing every sign of a total massacre.

  Except the blood.

  “Why isn’t there any blood?” Sheriff Schmidt asked.

  The encampment was in one of those underground open areas that exist under any city. This one was a turning area for vehicles attached to a corridor that these days led to nothing that was in use. It was abandoned, empty and dry. The bums had just sort of occupied the empty and unused space.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Lieutenant Jones said.

  “Then what do you know, you idiot?”

  “Spiders,” Agent Duncan said. He was just about sick and tired of dealing with this idiot. “Sp
ecies probably Arachnidae Gigantus Sassus. That’s the most common species in this region. You can see the remnant silk.”

  “What?” Schmidt said. “Silk?”

  “Giant spider silk?” Duncan said, as if speaking to a candidate for the Special Olympics. He held some up. “This stuff? Left behind by giant spiders after they paralyze and bind their victims?”

  “So you’re saying some spiders did this?” Jones said, laughing.

  “You know you sound like a hyena when you laugh, Lieutenant?” Duncan said. “Sheriff, if MCB has to call in the SRT again, the Attorney General will remove you from office for complete and utter incompetence. There had to be other disappearances before this. This wasn’t one spider. This was a nest. And even if we were authorized to handle this, which we are not, it would take a full SRT. I’ve got a couple agents in Portland, and could not even dream of handling a Sassus nest by ourselves. We’re talking about fifty to two hundred spiders the size of horses. And it almost assuredly means a Spider Mother. Think tarantula the size of a mammoth. Sheriff, are you ever going to figure out that this is important, you fucking idiot?”

  “Special Agent,” his partner said.

  “No!” Duncan said, swearing. “You blithering God-damned idiot and your laughing hyena butt-fuck-buddy have caused the unnecessary deaths of dozens which we have had to cover up! If you don’t figure out how to deal with this shit I will personally put a bullet in your head and deal with the paperwork later! Do you understand me? I am absolutely serious! Fix this! Now!”

  The Special Agent stormed out.

  So Sheriff Schmidt went back to his office, picked up the phone and politely asked Captain Lyons, Parking, if he had a moment to spare.

  “Heard about the giant spider attack,” Lyons said, shuddering as he sat down without being invited. “A full nest? Just one is nasty as hell. Never had to deal with a freaking nest. Sucks to be you. Clean-up is going to be a bitch.”

  “You dealt with this for…”

  “Ten horrible years,” Lyons said. “Don’t ask. You can’t make me and the answer is no. It’s not worth the nice office and I’m already a captain. I even like parking. No stress.”