I Kill Monsters

by Dennis Liggio

  I nodded glumly and took a drink. A long moment passed as I considered my actions. "I feel like I stepped in it," I said.

  "Szandor, look at our situation. Missing client, paramilitary commandos, religious ghouls, mysterious instructions, and absolutely zero money to show for it? Shit, we both stepped in it. The question is if we can get anything out of this shit sandwich or if we should just wipe our hands of the whole goddamn mess."

  Strangely, I was somewhat rested for my next day of work. We had gotten home from our little excursion and gotten drunk at a decent hour. After we had talked, Mikkel had put on Pink Floyd's The Wall. Mikkel is a heavy cinephile. Permanent Netflix subscription, lots of Criterion edition movies, and a movie collection that overflowed off his shelves. My occupation of the couch had been putting a halt to him watching movies on the big TV when drunk, and he decided that I'd just have to deal with The Wall. Luckily, it was slow enough that I drifted off to a nice sleep. Mikkel was just finishing the old Bakshi Wizards when I woke up. No sanitation work meant he was getting ready to go to sleep.

  "Oh, look who's our morning sunshine," he said chidingly as I peered out of the blankets in my groggy state.

  "You're the one with dark circles under his eyes," I said.

  "Well, yeah, staying up all night and drinking a whole bottle of Makers will make you tired. Luckily, I'm going to sleep now. You're the one who has to work," he said, putting a cigarette out in an ash tray and wandering toward the bedroom.

  "Thanks for the morning pep talk," I said.

  "Don't mention it," he said. "All part of the Mikkel experience."

  I wanted to make some snide comment about his girlfriends getting the Mikkel experience, but he closed the bedroom door before I had thought of anything halfway witty. So I fixed myself a cup of coffee instead.

  I'm not sure if it was getting a good night's sleep, getting a good night's drunk, or just a side effect of not running for my life, but work wasn't so bad. I didn't hate my customers as much as usual. Frank didn't seem quite as douchey as usual. I may have even laughed at his lame joke at one point. And I also wasn't angry at Yasmin. That conflict had dulled in my mind. Of course, that didn't mean I went out of my way to talk to her. Or that she talked to me. But it felt slightly less tense, and less awkward glares were hurled across the aisle.

  Lunchtime meant another lame Hot Pocket and checking my work email. It meant another email from E. He or she acknowledged what we did (but not my anger) and said we should meet. No apologies about the situation last night, about the risk to our lives, or about telling us nothing we needed to know. It was an email solely about meeting. And it was even evasive. Basically we'd set the time, and right beforehand E would give us the meeting place. Few things say paranoid and flighty than last minute meeting locations. I guess paranoid went well with identifying yourself only by a single letter of the alphabet.

  At 3pm, I got a text from Mikkel. I need you here ASAP.

  I cursed. That meant I needed to bail on work. If someone else sent me a text like that, I'd take it with a grain of salt. But Mikkel wouldn't say ASAP if he didn't really mean as soon as possible.

  I hit Frank's office where I faked a stomach ache. I'm not sure if he believed me and he wasn't pleased. But I was only ditching on two hours of work, so he wasn't going to be an ass about it unless he was just feeling that way. Luckily he was not.

  On my way back to my desk, I bumped into Yasmin, who was going to the breakroom. I gracefully stepped aside to let her pass and not interact, but she stopped me.

  "Look, I think we both said some stupid things yesterday," she said. "Maybe after work we can go somewhere to sit down and talk. It's stupid for us to work across from each other and be mad."

  "I think that's actually a good idea," I said. "But I'm actually about to leave. I'm going home sick."

  She looked at me. "Sick?"

  "That's the official version," I said. "I just have an emergency and I have to bail."

  "Oh." A frown.

  "But what about tomorrow?" I said. "We could get together after work."

  She smiled. "I would like that."

  "Good, then it's a da - it's something we're doing!" I said, fumbling over my false start on the word date.

  She smiled again. "Okay, now get yourself out of here, sickie."

  I smiled too, then went back to my desk to shut down my computer and grab my bag. When I finally got back to Mikkel's apartment, I found him surprisingly dressed and putting gear in a satchel. With all day off, I'd expect him just waking up or watching a Kurosawa film. Did we have a job? Something was amiss.

  "Get ready," he said when I came through the door. "We have work to do."

  "I have news, though." I explained E's cryptic message.

  Mikkel just nodded. "You can write him or her back that we might be able to get with them late tonight, but otherwise we're booked up tonight."

  "We have a job?" I wondered. I had seen no new emails through the website, but Mikkel always had connections.

  "Not our job, at least," he said. "Paulie contacted me. There's a Call to Arms."

  "Fuck," I said.

  Those in the not-trade of monster hunting tend to be solitary individuals. Most hunt alone. That Mikkel and I hunt together is rare, but it happens occasionally. It's better understood when they learn we're family. Monster hunters seem to not get along very well long term. Having known a few, it seems to be personalities, not the job. But maybe the job attracts those personalities. Maybe you have to be somewhat broken to keep getting into situations where fantastically deadly creatures are attempting to kill you and instead you kill them.

  Despite being solitary, some of us know each other. There's an information network - it's always nice to know how to kill something if you've never encountered it before. Odds are someone else has had to kill it before and can save you the scars you'd get figuring out its weakness. Paulie was our first contact with this world, but he wasn't the last. Unfortunately, the other monster hunters rubbed us the wrong way... something they often did to each other. So we tended to keep to ourselves, and they went about their own business. It worked well for everyone.

  Being solitary typically isn't a problem. We're not soldiers in a war, we're just hunters who have a rarer and more dangerous prey. Usually we're looking for one monster, a few zombies, maybe at best a nest of ghouls. While it can get dicey, none of those are unreasonable for a skilled, well-prepared, and ruthless hunter to deal with. Maybe you call the other monster hunter you're least estranged from for backup. But that's as far as things typically go.

  Unfortunately, part of hunting is turning over rocks that many would suggest should stay covered. We might start on a trail that turns into something big... much bigger than we can handle. Something we can't do alone. Something that requires some serious backup. Not just one hunter. A whole team. That's when you put out a Call to Arms.

  When you put out a Call to Arms, you basically contact every known hunter in your area asking for help. You're basically saying that you have something huge that one or two hunters can't deal with. You're saying that you have some serious shit that's going down. You want a makeshift posse of other hunters to come lay the smack down on a lot of monsters. If you put out the Call, you better have something, it better be big, it better be dangerous, and you better be willing to do it now. It has to be now. For one, other hunters don't like dropping what they're doing for someone else's shit, and if they are, they want it done quick. Second, there are the personality clashes. Leading a bunch of freelancers doing you a favor is herding a bunch of angry cats who don't get along and are armed with various types of deadly weaponry. I've never heard of two monster hunters killing each other, but I imagine they've come close a few times.

  So all and all, a Call to Arms is a pain in the ass. Yes, it's for the greater good and we do our part, but it's a very dangerous and uncomfortable experience with a rogue's gallery of people I'd rather not interact with. And it never works out the way you hope.r />
  We met in the parking lot of a gas station just off the highway up in Glenntown. I saw one vehicle I recognized and one I didn't. Unless the other hunters were gassing up, this was a pretty low turnout. Mikkel parked the Pork Chop Express and we got out to meet the hunters.

  The most obvious person was the biggest. This was Meat, probably the last person I actually wanted with us. A big slab of a man, he constantly rubbed me the wrong way. At least a head taller than me and even an inch or two above Mikkel's towering height, Meat was imposing. His hair was always shaved into a permanent buzz cut and his forty something year old ex-marine physique was wedged into army surplus clothes. He constantly wore aviator sunglasses. His neck was never visible, hidden somewhere under his beard in his torso within muscle and fat. He could be rather frightening even when not intending to be. When he gave me an unwanted and enthusiastic bear hug I could feel at least two handguns pressing into me uncomfortably. Meat never spoke in anything less than a bellow, as if every sentence was a command barked out to a squad of rookies. Whether acknowledged or not, he always assumed he was in command - his way was always the best way. I knew Meat and I were going to clash over something by the end of the night. It was more a matter of when and over what. But for all that, Meat's greeting was enthusiastic and friendly. Either forgetting disagreements we've had in the past or purposely glossing over them, he seemed to be willing to be friendly.

  That would not be necessarily bad, but he had strange ideas about nearly everything. Though not nearly as bad as Paulie, he was a conspiracy nut and seemed to have all sorts of theories about where monsters came from and how They were tracking him. Paulie and he were somewhat friends, which is the main reason I knew Meat.

  Paulie was as I knew him - nervous and pale. His facial twitch had become worse over the years. Still, I'd seen him take down a pack of six ghouls all by himself, so I knew he was far more dangerous than he appeared. It was just a matter of getting him to do something. He'd spend far more time chronicling a web of conspiracy and the secret causes inherent in situations than going out and killing monsters. To him it was all a conspiracy. The monsters were coming from somewhere, that was his primary obsession. He had many theories of a Who or a What that could be causing the monster proliferation. While if we had reliable info on why there were monsters (assuming it was a recent thing and not a centuries old thing like folklore would make us believe) we'd act on it, his endless theorizing seemed like he was always spinning his wheels. So I was a little surprised that he was in the field. Then again, he had an air of reluctance.

  Neither of them put out the Call to Arms, however. That had been put out by the two I hadn't ever met before: Dixie and Delilah. Another team of hunters like Mikkel and I, I wasn't sure their exact relationship. Sisters? Cousins? Friends? Lovers? I had no idea. I guessed them both in their early thirties or late twenties, putting Mikkel and I as the youngest in the group by a fair margin. As long as everyone took us seriously, this would be okay. Since it was Delilah leading this call, I at least didn't have to deal with Meat's bossiness.

  Dixie was the no-nonsense part of the duo. She was up front and no bullshit about things. I got the feeling she was tough as nails. She was also blonde, pretty and in amazing shape due to hunting, so admittedly she was hot. All these things along with a few scars that didn't detract from her hotness actually made her intimidating to me. Mikkel on the other hand warmed up to her immediately. I listened for more facts about her to maybe make me a little less nervous about her. Maybe if I heard she was a conspiracy nut like Meat and Paulie.

  Delilah was the shyer one of the two. But of course, that's shy for a hunter and shy next to Dixie. I still knew she could gut a ghoul from crotch to sternum with the wicked looking knife at her belt because Dixie had boasted about that fact during our talking. Delilah seemed to be the gear specialist, as she handled technical questions. She had light brown hair and was also cute. I was more comfortable around her, but I'm pretty sure neither woman really cared much for the attention of a far younger man. Delilah seemed to think my youth made me learning impaired, as she felt the need to describe everything in exasperating detail (for both of us) when I was the intended audience.

  Before getting down to business, it was customary to share info on other hunters. Supposedly this is an old tradition, so the fact that the internet had mostly replaced the need for it was ignored. Besides, I said mostly because there are some monster hunters who ignore the internet or even most forms of communication. They either are paranoid like Paulie or just don't care for it.

  "Tor says he wants to train you boys to hunt trolls at some point," said Meat to Mikkel and myself. Tor was one of those who were off the grid. He lived in wooded areas full time, pausing only to pack up his gear and drive to another area that needed him. An accomplished tracker and hunter, his main accomplishment was knowing the most about hunting trolls. Mikkel and I had never dealt with a troll, since we're pretty urban, but at some point we might.

  "Uh, I guess we'll take him up on that at some point," I said after sharing a look with Mikkel.

  "I'll let him know," said Meat with a nod.

  "Have any of you heard from Hudson?" asked Dixie.

  I had never heard of Hudson nor had Mikkel. But Paulie and Meat had.

  "It's been two months, but I heard he was heading up into the hills," said Meat.

  "He mentioned vaguely checking out the mines," said Paulie. "He wanted to look at my maps."

  "That fits up to what we heard," said Delilah, looking to Dixie with a nod.

  "Nobody's heard anything from him in about two months," said Dixie with a frown.

  "Maybe the trail just lead him elsewhere," said Meat. "We don't know anything for sure." I don't think Meat knew what trail Hudson was on, he was just talking in general. His tone and Dixie's frown made me wonder if there was something between Hudson and Dixie. Ooo, drama!

  "We'll figure it out, Dix," said Delilah. "But we have our own troubles first."

  Dixie nodded and her demeanor became confident again. "I'll make this quick, since we're burning daylight. This is a standard sweep and kill. Emphasis on the hive. We've been tracking them for a while and have it narrowed to a farmhouse in the foothills. We're pretty sure there's been no contamination outside it yet. No local neighbors. Nobody is going to hear us and nobody is going to help us out. This is a full auto op - no hand weapons unless you're out of ammo, and even then you're better off running.

  "We're taking three vehicles. In the interest of team building in the short time we have, we're mixing up the riders. You will not be riding with your partner, if you have one." Next to her, Delilah frowned. Either she didn't know or thought it was a bad idea. I thought it was a dumb idea too. Even dumber when I saw the matchups. Dixie with Paulie. Mikkel with Delilah. Me and Meat. This was going to be a long trip.

  Meat drove an older SUV that was covered with all-terrain improvements. While I was used to the Pork Chop Express, somehow in the passenger seat of the SUV I felt like I was ten feet off the ground. From the moment I got in, things went poorly. First I was told that I couldn't have my legs up on the passenger side dash. Then I wasn't allowed to fiddle with the radio. And then he bitched at me for lighting up a cigarette. Knowing the drive would take a little while, he conceded I could smoke as long as I kept holding the cigarette out the window.

  Despite these initial clashes, Meat was still social. As if I hadn't heard them before, he decided to go over his new insights, as if he were some walking, talking magazine possibly called Conspiracy Today. His current pet theories were that all the monsters we were encountering were created by the American Military-Industrial Complex as possible military weaponry, likely centered in the nearby Fort Edgar. He explained that the monsters could be air dropped into countries we don't like to create social panics which would then enable the CIA to topple their forms of government. I'm sure there were some details I missed that made that make more sense, but I just didn't see how cannibalistic ghouls or slow m
oving zombies would help the CIA take over a country. Perhaps that is why I would be a poor choice for the international intelligence field.

  Sometimes I really wondered about Meat. I know he had served in the Marines. He had seen action in some foreign country with a complicated name I was too arsed to remember in history class because I just didn't care about it. I knew he also left the Marines in good standing, so I didn't understand why he so distrusted the government. Hell, he still went by his Marine nickname. As you might have guessed, Meat was not his given name. He had the distinction of having the very delicate name of Benthem Heath. In addition to sounding like a character out of a Jane Austen novel, nobody who has ever heard that name has ever thought it fit Meat; in fact, it usually produced more laughter than anything else. So early in Marine training some genius shortened the sound of a slurred "Benthem Heath" into just Meat. The name stuck and he's gone by that ever since.

  When there was a brief lull in his conversation about CIA monster projects, I decided to raise a concern that was bothering me.

  "Do you... do you think ghouls might have some sort of society?"

  "Society?" said Meat, turning his head from the road. "What are you talking about, Szandor? They're ghouls. They eat people. Hell, they might even eat each other when there's nobody around."

  "But what if we're wrong?" I suggested. "Like, what if we found out that they have some organization? Religion or something."

  "Szandor, you need to get your head in the game," he said. "Thinking like that is going to have you going soft when you need to kill. And that's going to get you killed. It doesn't matter if ghouls have some sort of society when they're still trying to kill us."

  I said nothing and frowned out the window. I'm not sure what he would have said to the ghoul worshippers I saw, but I didn't want to bring it up. Maybe I would pause the next time I fought a ghoul. But that didn't matter this time, because we were out to kill Spiders.