Larry Correia - Monster Hunter Alpha

“I killed him,” she whispered.

“What?” There was another step. A glass shard ground between his sole and the floor.

“Otto. I killed Otto.” She held the cooling mass of blood-soaked fur tightly in her arms as she rocked back and forth. She’d pulled another one of his legs off. Had the evil part of her thought that was funny? “I killed him and I ate him.”

The Hunter was quiet. Her mind’s eye could see the old gun at his shoulder as he lined the sights up on the back of her head. She’d never see it coming. She deserved it. But instead of putting her out of her misery, he said, “It was an accident. You reined it in quick. That’s a good thing.”

“Shoot me, Harbinger.”

“Only if I have to.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” There was a metal-on-metal click as Harbinger put the safety on and a creak of a nylon strap as he set the weapon down. There were two more steps and then a gentle hand on her shoulder. His voice was soft. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

The memories are murky here. I’m missing days, and sometimes even weeks from this period. Rocky hurt me badly here.

STFU had been working well together for several months when we were sent to operate out of an area known as Salem House. During this time we may or may not have hypothetically entered another country, like say…Cambodia, for example. We were inserted by a CH-3, which is a huge and very handy helicopter. All of this riding in helicopters for the last few months had convinced me that MHI really needed a chopper, and I promised myself that when I got home, I was going to buy us one.

A long-range patrol had disappeared. It was believed to be the work of the mysterious Russian. Conover hoped to pin down if this Nikolai even existed, and if so, what he was and how we should best go about killing him.

We found the remains of the patrol in short order. They’d been wiped out so fast that they hadn’t even tried to use the radio. Only two of them had time to fire their weapons. It hadn’t done them any good. I could smell the other werewolf everywhere. He’d left me a note, written on the back of a map and pinned to a dead soldier with his own bayonet.

You kill mine. I kill yours. It is a game. Who is better? Let us find out, brother.

— Nikolai

That was the real beginning of our war.

STFU ambushed a supply train the following day. We killed ten men. I left a note on the leader.

Come out and face me like a man.

Two days later we responded to a raid on a firebase. We were requested by name, which Conover found embarrassing for a unit that did not actually exist. Four men on guard duty had been killed silently, before the intruder had made it all the way to the center of the camp, where he’d left a note on the commanding officer’s cot. He’d taken the major’s head with him. Nobody else had heard a sound.

Dear Mr. Wolf and Special Task Force Unicorn

You are not trying very hard to impress me. You can do better than this.

— Nikolai

The next night was the full moon. I informed Conover that there would be no need to dig a hole. I was going out alone. He pulled the task force inside the perimeter and issued silver bullets.

Saying that the bridge was out was an understatement. A better description would be that the bridge had been blown to bits. Though rusty, Stark knew his way around demolitions, and he could tell that whoever had taken out the bridge had not known what they were doing, so had made up for it with volume. A few well-placed small charges would have dumped the whole thing into the river. Instead it looked like one really big one had been set square in the middle and detonated. It had worked, though. Nobody would be driving across the scorched remains of that thing anytime soon.

Agent Mosher thumped the steering wheel in frustration. This was the second bridge they’d checked. The first had been just as ruined. “Not again!”

“At least there aren’t any bodies at this one,” Stark pointed out. There had been a pair of snowmobiles abandoned at the last bridge. They’d gotten out to investigate and found where the riders had gone downstream a bit and attempted to cross the icy river at a low spot. The werewolves had picked them off on the far side. A few bloody limbs sticking out of the snow had been the only evidence. Stark checked his watch. They’d be covered by now, probably invisible until spring.

There was one other route out, but Stark had no doubt that it, too, would be covered. Even sitting here, he could tell they were being watched. The trees were thick on each side of the road, surely crawling with werewolves. This was abnormal behavior. Werewolves never showed this kind of coordination or planning. Even the most organized packs the MCB had ever encountered hadn’t shown nearly this level of sophistication.

“Maybe we should try to ford it. It doesn’t look too deep,” Mosher suggested.

The kid’s desire to be the hero was coloring his judgment and making him stupid. “They’d like that, I bet. The river isn’t frozen solid enough yet to walk across. We don’t have wet suits. You fall in that water and you’re in trouble, trust me. And they’ll just be waiting on the other side to pounce, just like those assholes at the last place. Wet, freezing, you’re an easy target.”

Agent Mosher cursed under his breath. It took a while to get the Suburban turned around. Plows weren’t running, and they’d be lucky to make it back to town without getting stuck. “Careful,” Stark ordered. If they got trapped out here, he knew that they were as good as werewolf chow. “Nice and easy.”

“I can drive in this, sir. I’ll get us there. Map shows a third route,” Mosher said. “The next town is to the southwest, and it’s on the same side of the river, so no bridges. Let’s try that next.”

Stark’s contrarian nature made him want to argue. They could easily get stuck or slide off the road, and then they could either walk out and get eaten by werewolves, or they could stay put in the Suburban until they ran out of gas to run the heater, in which case they could freeze to death or be eaten by werewolves. So he really didn’t have any other ideas.

The drive was nerve-wracking. It was a black-and-white, wind-whipping, snow hurling world outside their windshield. They passed a car abandoned on the side of the road. The doors were open, the interior filling with snow. There was no sign of the driver. Mosher knew better than to even ask about stopping to check. Slowly they made their way through the slippery countryside.

They drove for half an hour. The silence was uncomfortable. Stark missed the constant chatter of the radio. He needed to make conversation. “So, Mosher, how’d you get recruited?”

“Akkadian sand demon attacked my convoy heading out of Faluja.” Mosher laughed nervously as their rear end slipped, but they straightened out and managed not to end up in a ditch. “Though none of us knew what an Akkadian sand demon was at the time. We just thought of it as a giant skeleton-mummy that sand-blasted people to death. Turns out they’re all over the place in Iraq. Official story said we’d hit an IED. A couple of us survived, got recruited. How about you, sir?”

“Deep Ones,” Stark said.

“I hear fish people are nasty,” Mosher said. “We’ve been torpedoing their cities since, what, the Thirties?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” As deepwater imaging had gotten better, every country that could afford subs had gone to work eradicating those vermin. They were down to hiding in tiny settlements off the coast, and the last of their cities were too deep to reach. “Scaly bastards climbed up a cruise ship, ate the men, kidnapped the women. I had just joined SEAL Team Two. We were nearby on a training mission. Small team got inserted by chopper before the sardines could escape. Smoked them all, saved a few hostages, but lost some good men.”