I Kill Monsters

by Dennis Liggio

  Need help, said Mikkel's muffled voice. Can't lift Meat.

  Neither can I.

  We'll lift him together, said Mikkel.

  We headed back down into the basement. We both stood in front of Meat's bulky, limp body and visibly sighed. We shook our heads but were resigned to our fate. I appreciated that Mikkel had put a spare gas mask on Meat when he was down to grab Dixie. Meat was still unconscious, but at least he wasn't going to suffocate from red fog.

  Mikkel grabbed Meat's shoulders and I grabbed his legs. On the third mumble of Heave! we finally got him into the air. Only maybe a foot off the ground and with lots of groaning from us, but we did lift him. Doing a crouched crab walk, we maneuvered him over to the stairs. I couldn't hear his words that clearly as we were both straining, but I was pretty sure Mikkel was cursing the entire time. So was I.

  The stairs were a bigger problem. I got to carry the legs up the stairs first, mostly because Mikkel had the weight and height advantage on me, something he hated. It was still a heavy and painful load for both of us. We nearly dropped him due to exhaustion near the top of the stairs, but Dixie, finally breathing normally, showed up to give some help to carry him the final mile.

  A few minutes later Meat woke to sudden consciousness, aiming a pistol wildly, looking for an enemy. He eventually calmed without shooting anyone.

  "What the hell happened?" he said with a cough.

  "We saved your asses," I said.

  "Things were perfectly under control," Meat coughed.

  "No they weren't," said Dixie.

  Meat conceded the point with a facial expression, but no words. Then he asked, "How's Del?"

  Dixie looked back to Delilah with a sad expression. "She's breathing, but still paralyzed."

  "Is she going to make it?" I asked.

  Dixie nodded. "Probably. Only maybe three bites. But I don't think she's moving for another hour."

  "That's sort of good news," I said.

  Dixie just nodded.

  "Well, now that we're all safe, we made a discovery," said Mikkel.

  "The red fog?" said Meat.

  "A red fog that paralyzes Spiders," said Mikkel triumphantly.

  "What does it do to people?" asked Paulie, who had just joined us, rifle over his shoulder.

  Mikkel shrugged. To Dixie and Meat: "You might all have cancer now. I have no idea. But it works great on Spiders!"

  Dixie's eyes went wide.

  "Next time give us some warning on that reckless crap," grumbled Meat.

  "We tried. We couldn't get you on walkie," I said.

  "That explains why we couldn't get you for backup," said Dixie.

  "How did you get the red smoke down there?" asked Meat.

  Mikkel raised the bandolier of canisters. "My Christmas present."

  "Where did you find those?" said Paulie.

  We explained about the dead commando. Since we weren't sure about it ourselves, we omitted the part about him having a Minerva Technics badge. Meat and Paulie had enough conspiracy theories, and we otherwise didn't want anyone involved with the Jessica situation just yet.

  "So they gassed the farmhouse, left their guy dead in there, and didn't destroy the hive?" said Meat. "That doesn't make sense."

  "No, it doesn't," I said. Then it hit me. They didn't destroy the nest, but they left a long term countermeasure to paralyze the Spiders but keep them alive. They had been collaring ghouls at my apartment and in the tunnels. What if they left the farmhouse gassed so they could grab paralyzed Spiders whenever they needed?

  "What is it?" said Paulie, staring at me. He had obviously seen my expression.

  "It's... nothing," I said.

  "What is?" pushed Paulie.

  "Nothing," I said. "A stupid idea," I lied.

  "It could have been just the one guy," said Mikkel, either covering for me or not having reached the same solution.

  Meat shrugged. "He's not a hunter I know from your description."

  "Nobody else was supposed to be working in this area," said Dixie.

  "So some poor guy who went in alone," said Paulie glumly.

  "On the plus side, we have found the hive," I said.

  Gas masks were donned. Dixie, Meat, and Paulie checked out the hive for themselves. They also took Rick Molina's gas mask off and confirmed it was no one they knew. I kept the ID in my pocket.

  They returned from the barn.

  "Interesting. I wish I knew what it meant," said Dixie.

  "Maybe an easier way to do our jobs?" suggested Meat.

  "Or new competition," said Dixie, her look distant.

  "What now?" I asked.

  Dixie snapped out of her thought. She signaled us and we followed her to her hearse. She opened up the back and pulled out some gas cans. "We burn the barn until it's razed to the ground."

  I sat on the front bumper of the Pork Chop Express watching the barn and the house burn down, smoking a cigarette. Paulie stood near me, smoking his own cigarette after he bummed a light from me. Delilah lay on the ground not far from us. She could move, but she was weak and she was dizzy when she tried to stand. She was laying on the ground until she felt better. I've had hangovers like that.

  Meat was up near the barn, his Steyr pistols reloaded, watching the barn burn. Dixie stood next to him with her AK-47; she wanted to make sure the hive was destroyed. There was some concern that the red fog would keep the barn from burning, but it lit just fine.

  Mikkel was pacing near Dixie, the shock rifle in his arms. He was itching for a chance to try it out. He also wore the bandolier of spare fog canisters. There had been a brief argument about what to do with them, but Mikkel claimed full ownership of the canisters. He conceded one to Dixie for a followup to this, but otherwise he refused to give them up. He volunteered our help if there were more Spider infestations, but Mikkel loved his weaponry and was not about to give up a new toy. This was grudgingly appreciated by Meat, who had his own beloved arsenal. Dixie had decided to give up the argument.

  Shockingly, Meat let me keep the shotgun, even though it was part of his arsenal. He mentioned it was a stock item he hadn't modified at all. It seemed he didn't trust me with anything he cared about, so he didn't really care if I took it. He suggested I could practice with it, and then maybe, just maybe, he might give me something better next time. I told him to fuck off but kept the shotgun; you never know when you might need a shotgun.

  Turns out, I needed it sooner than I thought.

  Well Paid Scientist

  I am not a learned man, despite what you might read in these pages. I may know things, but I am far from well-educated. I know what I know because the knowledge has to do with the things that matter to me - things like how to not get killed, how to kill the thing that is trying to kill me, how to help others to kill the things that are trying to kill them, etc. I hated school. I suck at math. I don't know much about stuff I don't care about. I know about monsters, I know the history of punk well enough to get up there and scream my lungs out, and I know enough about consumer tech to make the person on the other side of the tech support call feel like an idiot. But not much more than that. Don't confuse me for an educated man.

  In contrast, the man we were about to meet was an educated man. Over educated. Perhaps you'll hate him as I did. We would soon be finally sitting across from the mysterious E who had sent us into harm's way. He'd be lucky if he didn't get punched before we sat down.

  After watching the farmhouse and barn burn down to a blackened, smoldering mess, Mikkel and I had gotten into the van for a long drive home. We just listened to one of Mikkel's Weezer albums in silence and exhaustion. The adrenaline had left us and we were experiencing after-fight crash. Now that nothing wanted to kill us, we felt tired and hollow. I just stared out the window aimlessly, the Pork Chop Express lit only be the dashboard lights. Lola Mandragora stared sightlessly at me, her hula motion gentle due to the easy drive.

  Halfway home I got restless enough that I checked my emails. I'm told it's a
horrible testament to today's youth that I couldn't just sit in one place and let my brain numb itself to death, but those emails were not going to read themselves.

  There was an email from our mysterious contact E, sent much earlier in the evening. E was willing to meet any time until very late at night. It seemed meeting us was very important. E had some restrictions on the meeting, because of course E was a demanding jackass, but there was nothing too unreasonable.

  I ran the idea by Mikkel. He sat in silence for a long moment before responding, just staring at the road. Part of me wanted him to say no so that we could just go home and sleep.

  "Okay," he finally said.

  I frowned, but wasn't going to say anything. I left the decision up to him and he made it. Objecting now would make me just passive aggressive. I just accepted that this was a thing we were doing.

  We made an emergency stop for coffee on our way home, getting two gigantic mochafrappasomething-or-others. The important part is that they put a shot of espresso in them - or at least that was the lie they told us to get us to buy them. Then we headed home where each of us took one of the best showers we ever had. The water that ran down into the drain had a pinkish tinge to it. I hadn't realized how much of the red fog had stuck with me. Then it was a change of clothes and back into the van. A short while later we were pulling into the parking lot of the diner.

  E had not wanted to meet anywhere within the New Avalon city limits. It was one of his restrictions on meeting. Something about New Avalon itself made him paranoid. Weird, but not something we couldn't work with. He wanted to meet in Glenntown, the suburb just north of New Avalon we had met the other monster hunters in. It was still the Avalon Metro, but I guess he was a stickler for city limits.

  As we turned off the interstate, I saw the rows of strip malls hiding residential streets that I knew as Glenntown. No matter how many times I was up here, I was never comfortable in the suburbs. I was a city kid, and even just barely out of town, I was out of my element. Glenntown just felt plastic and plastered with company logos, and that's from someone who works around Midtown, which is drowning in corporate advertising. Somehow the suburbs lacked the gritty bite of raw humanity that I saw in downtown New Avalon. I always thought Glenntown was the graveyard you ended up when you gave up trying to fight and settled into a comfortable family life. In my mind, this is where rebellion went to die, festering into a cocoon of middle age. Then you emerged from the cocoon in old age, realizing the lie they sold you, but you were too old to rebel and you died lonely and unfulfilled. This may have been solely my own issue.

  Despite it being suburbia, the Lighthouse Diner[41] was almost exactly the same as a downtown diner, it just had a bigger parking lot. It had the same comfortable booths with red faux leather, it was just as strangely bright, it was just as obviously run by Greek immigrants, and I was able to get pretty much the same plate of greasy cheese fries as some of my favorite diners downtown.

  We matched E up with his description and slid into the booth. E was thin, almost gangly. He had shoulder length brownish blonde hair that was showing a fair amount of gray. His features were slight and sharp. He had very white teeth and would have had a friendly toothy grin, but the thinness of his face turned it into a skull-like smile that unnerved for no reason you could casually point out. He was well-dressed while still being casual. He was nervous, though. It was hard not to draw similarities between him and Paulie; the man before us could be Paulie if his life had gone in another direction.

  "We're -" I started to say.

  "I know who you are," he said, taking a sip of coffee. This should have been a confident and probably dominant act, but I noticed his hand that held the coffee cup was shaking. "If I hadn't seen the dirt on your clothes from a distance, surely the stench of cigarettes and coffee would have alerted me to the fact that you were the Nowak brothers."

  "As a matter of fact, I could use a cup of coffee," said Mikkel with a mocking smile, calling for the waiter's attention. He put in two orders of coffee and an order of cheese fries at my request.

  "Okay, it's time to cut at least some of the bullshit," I said. "We did the shit you asked. We went where you wanted, saw what you wanted, nearly got killed - possibly what you wanted. We've had a long fucking night already, so right now we're not in the mood to be played. We are not happy campers."

  At first he was shocked and insulted, but then the man nodded. "I guess I owe that to you. I have my own reasons for secrecy, but I had no intention of coming off so antagonistic. Even if I normally would frown on your little amateur business, I admit that we can help each other."

  "Listen to this guy," said Mikkel with his same mocking smile. "Even his apologies sound like insults."

  "I apologize," said the man. "I'm not used to asking for help and I am used to working with a different... class of associates. Perhaps my manners might seem brusque to you, but I do not intend to be hostile. I guess to start at the beginning, my name is Ezra Ross. I am the head of a research team over at Minerva Technics. I work with Jessica."

  "Not right now you don't," said Mikkel before I could say anything.

  "Just so," said Ezra. "Jessica is missing. But even more so, I am taking a... unannounced hiatus from my position at the company."

  "So you're laying low too," I said.

  "Afraid that someone is going to kidnap you as well?" said Mikkel.

  "In a word - yes," said Ezra. "I believe I am in nearly as much danger as her. I am taking a risk just meeting you two, if that makes you feel better about the countermeasures and evasiveness in our communications and meetings. I am simply trying to not waste your time but keep myself safe at the same time."

  "Spill it, then," I said. "Why was Jessica kidnapped and why are you in danger?"

  "Inter-office politics," he said simply.

  The cheese fries showed up, as well as two coffees. Mikkel proceeded to take five sugar packets, stack them in his hand, rip their tops off together in one movement, and dump it all in his coffee.

  I waited until the waiter had left to resume conversation. "Inter-office politics? I'm pretty sure that under most circumstances that is not a satisfactory explanation for kidnapping and assorted violence."

  Ezra gave a wan smile. "When you work for Minerva Technics it is. Or it is these days."

  "So stop beating around the bush," I said. "Why is it so dangerous? Why is your company so crazy? And why didn't you leave?"

  "Minerva Technics has its hands in many different things," said Ezra. "The research we do here in New Avalon is of particular worth. As I mentioned, I headed up a research team. I handled the actual research while Jessica was the project manager - she handled budgets, schedules, and the things my team and I didn't want to be bothered with. As for our work, we were studying one of the unique features of New Avalon."

  "Is it monsters? I think it's the monsters," I said. "Mikkel, what do you think?"

  "It's totally the monsters," he said. Yes, we were mocking Ezra, but we needed him to stop acting like we were complete idiots.

  "Yes, well, that is correct," said Ezra. "Yes, Minerva Technics have been studying some of the more... specialized species that seem to only be found in the New Avalon area."

  "And you have your death squads who go out and get them for you," I volunteered. "You've been studying, what, ghouls, Spiders... what else?" I remembered the commandos and the access card.

  Ezra had a moment of shock but then nodded. "Yes, that's all correct. I wanted to make sure you saw the specimen acquisition and containment. I know it was of some risk to you, but I needed you to understand the extent of Minerva's operations. I wasn't sure if you would believe me if I just told you."

  "We might have," said Mikkel. "We don't have to be risking our lives to believe something is true."

  Ezra nodded slowly. "I'm sorry. I forget that you have some experience in this area."

  "That's why you contacted us, isn't it?" I said.

  "Yes and no," said Ezra. "The main reas
on was that Jessica had already contracted your services. And then you had encountered the MT Extraction Force personally at your apartment. The fact that you already had encountered some aberrant species was just a useful part of it. No offense intended, but those at Minerva do not have such high opinions of you two and your work."

  "I'm impressed they've even heard of us," said Mikkel.

  "Hey, if we had a huge budget like corporate teams do, we could be doing a much better job," I suggested. "We do the best we can with the gear we have."

  "No, it's not just the gear," said Ezra with a slow shake of his head. "You kill things."

  "Well, yeah, they're monsters," I said, Mikkel nodding with me. "They're killing people. So we kill the monsters."

  "Yes, we find that barbaric," said Ezra with only a slight upturn of his nose.

  "Well what the fuck do you guys do with them?" I said incredulously. "I call bullshit on the idea that you guys have some happy free range ghoul habitat somewhere."

  "No, of course not," said Ezra. "But we have research facilities. There is so much we can learn from these aberrant species. There are mysteries in their morphology and DNA that can lead us to answers which can help the whole human race."

  "So you don't kill them?" I said. "They're just milling about and being tested?"

  "They are put to scientific use," said Ezra gravely.

  "What does that even mean exactly?" I said.

  "The specimens are incarcerated in holding cells," said Ezra. "We take blood and tissue samples on a regular basis. When needed, we subject the specimens themselves to various tests, then we dissect them to view the results -"

  "Whoa, whoa whoa," I said. "You dissect them?"

  "Yes, to see the internal changes based on testing," said Ezra. "There are certain neurological changes we can only see if dissected immediately after testing."

  "What the hell are you getting up our asses about then?" I said. "You do kill them!"

  "After a period of scientific research, yes, we may need to dispose of a sample so that we can better examine the results," said Ezra. "But this is for scientific research! It's for humanity!"