The Monster Hunter Files - eARC

by Larry Correia

  He released her hand and swatted at the insect, uttering a stream of curses.

  She said, “Watch your language, Henry! There are mummies present.”

  The bug was lost to sight. More specks buzzed here and there. A ladybug on the back of a man’s coat, a beetle perched on the rim of a dropped beer bottle, a cluster of bees flickering as they passed through the snowy light shed by a streetlamp.

  The three worked their way to the crowd’s edge, turned a corner, and were suddenly alone. They ran. Barefooted in the snow, Agnes could not keep pace. Imhotep picked her up and set her on his shoulder. Now Scrope scowled.

  They reached a narrow street. Frowning brick closed in one side. A row of warehouses loomed on the other. Beyond them, the dark water of the Thames glittered.

  Suddenly the streetlamps and lights from windows died. From afar came the wide noise of a crowd roaring in dismay.

  Scrope said, “MI20 always creates a blackout, just before they strike.”

  Agnes said, “Who, exactly, is coming?”

  “Our first man is Criswell. He was stranded on North Sentinel Island, whose people are the last to have no contact with civilization. At least, not human civilization. The witchdoctors forced a concoction of honey and larvae down his mouth and nose, and left him to die, eaten from the inside. Thanks to his study in Tibet, he made an…agreement…with the nest built in his lungs. He can command any insect, see through their eyes. Rains and winds impede him. The second of his team is Rabbi ben Bezalel who woke the golem, a living statue of clay. The third is Grendel.”

  Agnes said, “Who?”

  Scrope said, “Don’t you read the classics? One of the descendents of Cain who survived the deluge, interbred with elves and ogres and evil phantoms. Amphibious. Very strong. Charmed life, immune to fire and steel, blade and bullet. The Americans call him the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

  Agnes said, “We are in luck! A thunderstorm is hitting us in a few minutes. Thundersnowstorm, I suppose.”

  She sat atop the shoulder of Imhotep, slender and small in the bulky overcoat, a look of innocent guilelessness on her features. “I…ah…heard it on the weather report. Earlier. It will help with the bug man.”

  There was a silent flash of lightning from a distant storm. In the momentary glare, three things could be seen.

  The first was a hulking shape in the street before them, dressed not very convincingly in an oversized trenchcoat with a bowler hat pulled low over its slablike features. It stood bowlegged and its apelike arms fell below its knees. Slung from shoulder to hip was a voluminous bloodstained bag of lizardlike skins pebbled with bright patterns of scales, all knitted together with gold thread.

  The other was behind them, closer. It was even less likely to pass for human.

  It was fully nine feet tall, the brick-red face a scarred and half-melted ruin, and the skull was as pointed as a bishop’s miter. Its eyes were deep-set slits that ran from midbrow, slanting down left and right to touch the corners of its mouth, giving it an aspect of ghastly misery. Its mouth was a crooked slot held shut with three iron staples running through lip and jaw. It had no chin, no neck; the skull rose directly from the shoulders. It wore dungarees and bulky sweatshirt. A knitted longshoreman’s cap had been thrown across the horrid skull to disguise the shape.

  Above, a pitchy cloud of insects was pouring across the streets, murmuring, spreading.

  Scrope said, “That warehouse. Run.”

  Behind him, Imhotep ran down the dark street on silent steps, and the long hair of the girl on his shoulder was a banner. The slow golem was outdistanced, but Grendel grinned and charged on all fours, overcoat tails flapping.

  The dark man gently put Agnes down. His voice trembled, “Should I perish, and if it be a thousand years more, or ten thousand, never will I cease to love you, my Ankhesenamon. I shall return to you always.”

  So saying, he turned and fell upon Grendel, who reared up on hind legs to meet him.

  Scrope and Agnes ran on. A short concrete drive led to the warehouse. Before them was a large square garage door. He unlocked it.

  The wind was rising. A snow began to fall in pelting lines, mingled with icy rain. In the gloom behind them, two inhuman shapes grappled, cracking the pavement beneath their feet, scattering trash cans, smashing the red pillar of a postbox, and bending an unlit lamppost.

  Scrope pushed her inside. He pulled the heavy door shut and locked it.

  Agnes said, “It is not cricket to leave him behind.”

  “He will kill us as soon as—” Something was wrong. He turned, spooked.

  At the building rear was a boatslip that opened onto the Thames. It allowed boats to dock inside the warehouse and load cargo directly from the lofts overhead. A door of corrugated metal hung down between the river and the warehouse. There was a single beam of light coming down from the skylight. It was falling on a small, fast, cigarette boat in the slip.

  “We’re sailing to India in that?” asked Agnes.

  Scrope drew the H&K. He looked left and right, wondering what was setting his nerves on edge. “The yacht is in Calais. This is just to get us across the Channel.”

  Then he realized. That light was not coming from a lamp. A man was standing on the roof, looking down, torch in hand. Scrope shot a burst. He heard the noise of shattering glass and cursed himself for a fool.

  A buzzing filled the air. Down through the broken panes came a cloud of flying insects. He shot again, and the light went out. But the insects swarmed him, stinging at his eyes, trying to crawl into mouth and nose.

  He shoved Agnes toward the boat and ran up the creaking wooden staircase toward the door motor. He ran as fast as he could in the dark, his silver hand over his eyes, flight after flight, spitting. A hundred hot needles stung his jaws and neck, his shirt, his ankles.

  Then he was at the top loft. He parted his metal fingers to peek. In the snowy moonlight, he saw no one on the roof.

  Thirty feet below, Agnes, hidden in an insect cloud, ran toward the boat. She dove and vanished from sight, leaving behind a spreading pool of bugs on the surface.

  His left hand and face were beginning to stiffen and swell. Scrope turned on the door motor. It was not connected to the city power grid. It sputtered to life. The river door started to lift.

  Half the swarm fled Scrope and fell upon the engine, squeezing their bodies into the innards. It only took a pound of dead bugs crammed into the vents to choke it into silence. The doors halted two feet above the water, insufficient to let the boat escape.

  Scrope opened the door engine housing. A gush of fumes rose. The insects were startled and flew up. He had a moment before Criswell resumed control. There was an oil-soaked rag, large as a bath towel, near the engine. He tossed it over his head, an impromptu insect net, found a tear to peer through, and down the stairs he ran.

  He saw no sign of Agnes. How long could she hold her breath?

  He was on the second landing when a light appeared underfoot. Into view beneath him came a thin man in a wide-brimmed hat, dark sunglasses, an overcoat. He entered from the small door leading into the warehouse office. He carried a torch and a crowbar but no pistol. A carpet of poisonous centipedes crawled after him in an endless train along with scorpions and other deadly things. Criswell had descended the fire ladder connecting the office to the roof.

  Scrope raised his pistol, but the insects crawling on his hand warned Criswell, who doused his torch and threw the swarm into Scrope’s face. The oily cloth on his head saved his eyes, but he did not have a shot.

  He heard the sound of Criswell crowbarring open the main doors. Scrope ran down the next flight of stairs to the first landing, half blind.

  A flash of lightning spilling in through the opening main door and the broken skylight painted the scene with jagged, leaping shadows.

  Grendel still wore the tatters of his vast overcoat and the crushed shape of his bowler hat. His face was streaked with blood, and he was breathing heavily between his
white, sharp teeth. Impatiently, he forced the doors open, yanking them from their tracks.

  Behind him was Imhotep, limp as if his bones were broken, in the grip of the freakish, cone-skulled, nine-foot-tall statue-man. Imhotep did not bleed blood: instead, a thick, black oil was dripping from him.

  Next to the golem was a short, fat, little man in Osprey armor, and on his back a flamethrower, and in his hand a golden scroll. Scrope recognized him as Rabbi ben Bezalel.

  Criswell pointed at the water, made a gesture in sign language. Grendel loped across the concrete floor and dove. Criswell then snapped his fingers at the Rabbi and pointed at where Scrope crouched on the first landing in the pitch dark. Scrope shot at Criswell, but missed. The thin man did not even flinch as bullets ricocheted from the concrete at his feet.

  The Rabbi sprayed his flamethrower against the base of the wooden staircase and then up the stairs halfway to the first landing. Black smoke rolled upward, and the heat was like a bludgeon. Scrope shot a burst into the Rabbi, igniting the flamethrower canister. The chubby man ran, trying to flee his burning back, shrieking for help, clawing at the shoulder straps.

  Responding literally to his master’s call, the golem dropped Imhotep. It lumbered over to where Rabbi ben Bezalel was twisting in a pool of napalm, burning, and bent over the charred, still-moving body solicitously. “Avenge me!”

  Grendel leapt free of the water, Agnes writhing in his grip, the slick coat and sheer nightgown clinging to her.

  Scrope held his breath, ran down the burning stairs. The smoke drove the insects from him, but the heat was burning through his boots, and his silver arm grew hot.

  Imhotep’s voice rang out over the wind of the gathering storm. Let two hands from the Earth open my mouth: Let Seb, the Erpa of the gods, part my two jaws; let him open my two eyes which are closed, and give motion to my two hands which are powerless; and let Anubis give vigour to my legs, that I may raise myself up upon them. Be there given to me my mouth wherewith to speak, and my feet for walking; and let me have my arms wherewith to overthrow my adversaries. And may Sechit the divine one lift me up!

  And through the driving snow, the dead man stood and a thunderclap echoed from the heavens.

  Scrope fell back from the heat. It did not seem fair that the mummy could raise himself from the dead, and Scrope could not even get downstairs.

  The flames parted. The woe-eyed golem came toward Scrope up the burning stairs, slowly, methodically, unstoppably.

  Scrope retreated, but the stairs behind him collapsed with a roar and a storm of flying sparks. He fired his six remaining bullets point-blank into the sad, ruined, worn clay face of the lifeless monster. The golem clasped him.

  He felt his ribs bending and knew he was about to die. He also knew the weakness of the golem. The cabalistic letters forming the secret name of truth were written somewhere on its head. But where?

  Agnes screamed. Imhotep had rescued the girl from the hands of Grendel and was driving the quaking amphibious man backward merely with the pressure of his gaze. Grendel closed his eyes and lunged. The two figures wrestled with superhuman strength. They fell into the spreading pool of napalm.

  The stairs beneath the golem’s feet, eaten by fire, gave way. The golem fell a dozen feet, clutching Scrope. The fall jarred the golem’s grip, and Scrope managed to tear his silver arm free. He battered at the triangular, woebegone face, making dents like a sledgehammer would, but the spectacular damage he had done to metal bars and doors eluded him. The magic arm had no power over clay. But the three clamps holding the mouth shut were metal.

  He pried the first clamp up with his silver fingers with a snap. The golem tightened his grip. Scrope’s vision faded into a haze of red. Snap! The second clamp broke. He could no longer hear the roar of the storm, no longer feel the heat from the burning building. Snap! He was sure it was his bones breaking.

  His silver hand pried the scowling, lipless mouth open and gripped the tongue. In the wobbly, red haze of his vision, he could see the cabalistic letters printed on it. The golem did not notice or care. It was carrying out its master’s last order obediently, mindlessly. With the thumbnail of his living hand, Scrope scratched out the letter aleph. EMETH became METH, the word for death. Instantly, the statue perished.

  He was trapped in the motionless arms. He pounded at the clay hands.

  Imhotep, even with his back and one arm afire, was besting Grendel. With immense strength, the dark man threw Grendel spine-first onto a jagged stump in the midst of the burning lumber pile that had once been the staircase. Storm winds through the broken doors fanned the flames. Grendel fell. He groaned and clawed his way through the oily flames, dragging his limp and motionless legs behind him.

  Imhotep now turned toward Criswell, and the light in the eyes of the Egyptian was truly a nightmarish thing.

  Criswell had lost his hat, but not his sunglasses. He clutched Agnes and hid behind her, backing carefully toward the boat. The swarms of insects closed on Imhotep, but the flames from the dry and burning body prevented them from landing. The Egyptian trod scorpions, unhurt. Agnes worked one arm free, reached behind her, and clawed Criswell’s face. His sunglasses broke. The two empty eye sockets were filled the gray papery substance of wasps’ nests, and half a dozen queen wasps flew up from the vacant pits.

  A scream rent the air. It was not her scream, however.

  With her pinned arm, Agnes had at the same time drawn from the overcoat she wore the black injector shaped like a fountain pen Scrope had left in the pocket. She flicked open the needle and drove it into the large muscle in Criswell’s thigh. A mix of holy water and deadly toxins entered him. Wasps issued from his open mouth as he screamed. His feet slipped, and he fell into the water. She fell with him.

  Frantic, Scrope broke off one of the clay fingers, then another. He was almost free…

  Imhotep lumbered toward the water, staggering and being eaten by the flames. “My love will never die. Never. The whole dome of the sky will crack and topple to a withered, lifeless earth before I surrender her!”

  All the insects in the warehouse were directionless, dispersing. Agnes had not surfaced. There were no bubbles, no motion in the water.

  Grendel, by his right claw, pulled himself free of the oily flames. He was burned across his face and body. It seemed impossible that he still lived. But he held the same gold foil scroll that the Rabbi earlier had carried. It was red-hot, and Grendel’s fingers sizzled when he unrolled it.

  Imhotep dove into the waters, quelling his burning back. His skin grew dark and heavy and seemed to sag, but he was too buoyant to force himself below the waters.

  “Ankhesenamon! Ankhesenamon! I will find you! Even if you are drowned, I will revive you! You shall be with me, ever living, undying, greater than the gods themselves!”

  Grendel held up the scroll and spoke. His voice was a nasty, gargling croak, but the words were clear: “In the name of Isis, I call upon the river god of Thames, Nodens, to protect against this blasphemer of the mysteries. Let him be overthrown and slaughtered. His abode is transferred to the slaughtering block of the East, his head is cut away, his neck is crushed, his thighs lopped off, he is given to the great Annihilator who resideth in the Valley that he may not ever escape from under the custody of Seb. Come, thou Crocodile of the West, who livest on the Setting Stars. Come, thou Crocodile of the East, who livest upon those who devour their own foulness. Come, thou Crocodile of the South, who livest upon impurities. Come, thou Crocodile of the North, who livest upon that which lieth between the hours.”

  Four twelve-foot-long greenish shapes, like crocodiles but bearing pshents of gold and red-gold on their narrow skulls, surfaced in the waters and eyed Imhotep with strange, cruel eyes.

  “Ankhesenamon!” Imhotep called out in a great voice. “Do not again forget me! Of all the torments of hell, that is the worst!”

  “Is it?” said a deep voice from the deep waters. “Come. We shall see.”

  And the four crowned croc
odiles seized the arms and legs of Imhotep in their teeth and, spinning, ripped his limbs from him. The black oil he used for blood spread across the water. A whirlpool formed beneath him, and the waters swallowed the dismembered man.

  Grendel was now crawling, arm over arm, to where Scrope was still pinned and motionless. The monster was no more than four yards away. “The Jew told me to do that, in case he failed.”

  Three yards. Scrope battered frantically at the dead hands holding him. Scrope twisted and pulled, but he was caught fast.

  Two yards. Grendel’s claws scrabbled against the concrete. Scrope could already see the blisters sinking on the monster, the third-degree burns vanishing.

  “You wish your limbs grew back, Son of Seth, do you not? But you are not a Son of Cain, and you do not have the art. Of all these wounds, I shall heal, and forget, and dance beneath the waves with the nicors and sirens. But you shall die. I will eat your brain like cabbage.”

  Scrope pulled with all the strength of his silver arm, and an immense pain shot down from his right shoulder. He had dislocated it.

  Desperate, he twisted in the statue’s grip and drew his Webley.

  The creature saw the gun. “Why, Madhouse Harry! Are you going to stick your hand down my throat and fire? I will tell everyone in the department how bold you were up to the last!”

  One yard away. The creature reared up, drew back its great claw…

  Scrope fired point-blank into the thing’s broad chest. The creature flinched and then laughed. But the laughter turned into a long, dry, hideous sucking sound.

  “Damn you!” croaked the monster. “It is Dr. Serizawa’s oxygen destroyer! Only against the blood of the sea people does it do harm! How did you—?”

  His skin crinkled and flattened on his bones, as if a great vacuum were inside him. His eyes curled up like raisins, his tongue became a thin lash of flesh, his lips lost their hue. He collapsed inward on himself.

  The fire was spreading. Scrope pried himself loose from Grendel’s grip. Smoke filled the warehouse. Agnes had not surfaced. The corpse of Criswell was floating in the water, being busily devoured by his own insects. The winds howled. and the snow and hail poured through the broken skylight.