Larry Correia - Monster Hunter Alpha

Scrambling back, blood up to her elbows, Heather tried her radio, but there was no response, only static. She moved to the phone at the bedside, but it was dead, too. She needed help. People were gathering in the hall, a couple of mobile patients roused by the gunfire, and the final member of the skeleton crew of the night shift on this floor, and all of them were stopping and staring at Buckley’s mutated hairy body, facedown, bleeding out on the carpet.

Finally another nurse stepped gingerly over Buckley’s body and came to help his coworker. Heather recognized this one. Bailey Something, and he’d been nice enough while her grandfather had been dying here. “What happened?”

“Buckley… ate her,” Heather tried to explain.

“Where’s Doc Glenn?”

She awkwardly pointed at the window. Some weird shit had just gone down. Bailey went to work, though Heather knew it was too late. Heather tried to stay cool. Need help. “Chase?” The other deputy was still standing there, mouth agape. The young man didn’t respond. “Deputy Temple!” she shouted. “Draw your fucking sidearm!”

He jumped. “Yes, sir,” he finally responded, coming back to reality.

“Watch Buckley. If he moves, shoot him in the brain. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cringing, she passed over Buckley’s body while trying hard not to look at him, pushed past the patients, and made it around the corner to the nurse’s station, keying her radio the entire way, getting nothing but static, and found that the main phone was dead as well. Not even a dial tone. The power, phones, and radio were all down. “Damn it all to hell.” What else could go wrong?

Then the people behind her began to scream as Temple started shooting.

Luckily the power went off right before Agent Stark stepped into the elevator. Being trapped in an elevator with the power out while a werewolf was eating people would have been really embarrassing, the kind of thing that would become MCB lore. The other agents would never have let him live it down.

Mosher had his flashlight out in a split second. The brilliant Streamlight lit the entire lobby area. “Stairs?”

“Stairs,” Stark responded as he drew his Glock 20. “Go.” He’d gotten his own tac-light off his belt and clamped on to the dustcover of his 10mm by the time they found the stairwell, but by then the power had come back on. He jerked the door open and was greeted by the echo of gunfire.

They surprised a janitor on the stairs. The man just stared at the two armed men in suits. “Evacuate the building,” Stark ordered. “You’ve got a…uhm…” He paused, not having thought the cover through yet. He’d figured he had plenty of time until the full moon. Cleaning this up was going to be a royal pain in the ass. “There’s an escaped lunatic ax murderer upstairs. Run for your life!”

A patient hopped past her, one leg in a cast, crutch forgotten somewhere. He was terrified. Heather counterintuitively ran toward the danger. An older woman in a bathrobe was right behind the hopper. She screamed something incoherent, hobbled back into her room, and slammed the heavy door. Heather rounded the corner and skidded to a halt. She bit back a cry.

It was a bloodbath.

The hallway had been painted red. She’d only been gone for a few seconds. It looked like the scene of an industrial accident. Is that one body? Two? She wasn’t sure, and she couldn’t really tell now. There was just a jumbled mass of limbs in a pile. Unconsciously she started walking backward, toward safety.

Someone screamed inside Buckley’s room.

Her boot clicked on the linoleum, and Heather realized that she’d been retreating. She stopped. Despite her best judgment, all reason, and logic, Heather knew her job, and nobody had ever accused her of not doing her job. “Crap, crap, crap.” Drawing her Beretta, she flicked the safety off and raised it in both shaking hands, walking toward Buckley’s room.

Temple flopped into the hallway, slipping onto his hands and knees, scrambling madly through the blood. Shirt rent open, he was bleeding from several deep lacerations. “Help me!” He had made it a few feet toward her when a black mass of hair bounded into the hall at his heels. It was unbelievably fast, and it certainly wasn’t human. The animal grabbed Temple by the foot and in one smooth motion dragged him back into Buckley’s room. Her fellow deputy disappeared, a look of shocked disbelief on his face.

There was a drag trail through the blood. It had happened so quickly that Heather hadn’t even fired a shot. What was that? “Buckley?” Temple bellowed in agony. Heather forced herself forward. “Hang on, Chase! I’m coming!”

Then the beast moved back into the hall. It came so quickly that it just seemed to materialize. It saw her, and there was no hesitation. Growling, it charged on all fours. Heather yanked the trigger repeatedly. It covered the distance in a split second. The creature leapt high. There was no time to dodge. She shut her eyes before impact.

There was a bone-jarring bang, but the expected hit never arrived.

Heather opened her eyes. The creature was sliding down the floor away from her, wearing what she could have sworn was a too-human look of surprise on its awful canine face.

A man in a leather jacket had come out of nowhere and was standing protectively in front of her. He was shaking his right hand loose as if he’d just struck something hard. “Stay behind me.”

“Did you…Did you just punch that thing?”

“Seemed like the thing to do,” the stranger grinned, winked, and that’s when she recognized the annoying Southerner from the traffic stop earlier. “Any chance I can get you to rip up that ticket now?”

The animal came off the floor, roaring, and charged. “Look out!”

Nonchalant, the man turned back as a big stainless revolver appeared in his hand. He fired so quickly that the shots sounded like a continuous crackle. Every bullet struck home, right into the animal’s head. Blood and fur splattered the walls. It collapsed, limp, forward momentum sliding it onward. The man opened the cylinder of his revolver, punched out the spent casings, and slammed in a bundle of six more so fast that his gun was reloaded by the time the creature reached them. He casually raised one boot and put it down on the body, stopping it in place.

“How? What? How?” Heather stammered. The thing under the stranger’s boot was bizarre, unnatural. One of its claws had come to a stop only inches from her foot. “Ack!” She kicked the hand aside.

Taking his time, he put one last shot right between the animal’s eyes. Heather flinched. “Silver bullets,” he explained. He stuck his gun back into his holster, then took a cigarette out of his coat and put it in his mouth. “Your regular ones won’t do shit to a werewolf. I’ll give you a B for effort, though.”

Heather was stunned. The fearless weirdo showed up, punched a giant animal down the hall, shot the hell out of it, and now he was talking about werewolves. “Huh?”

“Grading on a curve, obviously. I’ve got to reserve the A for this kid that works for me, killed a werewolf with his bare hands one time. Got another with a pool cue.”

“Werewolf?”

“Yup. That there’s one dead-ass werewolf,” he explained, gesturing at the body. A Zippo appeared in his other hand, and he lit up. He took a long drag then blew out a cloud of smoke. “Name’s Earl. Earl Harbinger.”

She was still staring at the animal. “Uh. Yeah.”

The new guy was completely calm, not even bothered that there were fresh brains on his boot. “That would normally be the part where you tell me your name, Deputy…”

“Kerkonen.” Could that thing really be Joe Buckley? Harbinger had called it a werewolf, but that was just absurd.