Larry Correia - Monster Hunter Alpha

That was a tough one. “My condolences.”

“Really screwed it up, too. He was in the hospital in a coma for weeks before he slipped away. He really should’ve asked me for advice. Heaven knows I’ve responded to enough suicides to know how to do it right…Wow. That’s morbid. Sorry.”

Earl didn’t know how to respond to that.

“I guess I’m still a little angry at him. Sad, but bitter, too. Well, anyways, everybody is gone, but I don’t know…After Dad died, I just felt like I should stay here. I can’t explain what changed. You know, I moved away from Copper Lake as soon as I could when I was younger. I used to hate this place. But somehow I ended up right back where I started.”

“Life’s funny like that.” He moved to the next picture. “This your grandpa?”

Her head popped out of the closet. Heather had discarded her skullcap, and her hair hung in front of one eye. “Yep. That’s the famous Aksel Kerkonen.”

He was a weathered old man, scowling hard at the camera with his wiry arms folded. A gangly teenage girl stood next to him, and it was only the hair color that tipped Earl off that it was a much younger Heather in the picture. “He don’t look friendly.”

“He wasn’t.” Heather went back to looking. “He was a morose, bitter drunk, with an awful temper. He was kind of a local legend, since he kicked the crap out of roughnecks a third his age, got into a few knife fights, and the only reason I think he never went to prison is because everybody in town was too scared of him to testify.”

“You didn’t like him, I take it.”

She came out with a long wooden box and set it on the bed. “Oh, I didn’t say that. I loved Grandpa Aksel. I was about the only person he liked. The guy was a real character.” Heather opened the clasps and lifted the lid. “This was his. He was a sniper during the Winter War.”

Earl shined his flashlight onto the bed. The rifle was an old Mosin Nagant. “May I?” Heather nodded, and Earl lifted the long bolt action from the case. The wood had been worn smooth by hands and much use. The bolt worked easily for a Nagant, probably polished by a good smith at some point. No scope, which was odd by American precision-rifle standards, but scopes hadn’t been as good back then, and not nearly fog proof, which really mattered when you were fighting in the miserable cold, spitting distance from the Arctic circle. Earl knew his tools and could tell that this rifle had been used hard but well cared for. “M28.” He moved the receiver into the light. “Sako. 1939. The Finnish ones are supposed to be more accurate, I hear.”

Heather was removing items that had been stashed under the rifle and setting them on the bed. “You seem like somebody who knows guns.”

Earl shrugged. “Eh. I got shot by one of these once. Right in the kisser. Pow! That hurt.” She gave him a strange look. “It was a Russian version, though, back in ’45. Race to loot Hitler’s experimental occult bunker…Long story. Never mind. What’re you looking for?”

Heather held up a small book. “This belonged to Grandpa, too.” She flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “I’d forgotten about this, but your Russian friend was asking about an amulet that Grandpa might have had. Check it out.”

He traded her the rifle for the book. It wasn’t that different than the little leather-bound journal in his own pocket. Earl held up his flashlight to the yellowed pages. The letters were rough, almost drawn rather than written. “I can’t read Finnish.”

“Me, either, and Grandpa was barely literate anyway, but look at the picture.”

Earl found the little ink drawing she was talking about. Aksel Kerkonen hadn’t been much of an artist, either. “It looks like a pointy blob with a hand in it.”

“That’s what I thought when I first found this after he died, but look at the line around the back. But if that’s a claw, then it’s what I was asked about earlier. Now I’m thinking that line means it’s supposed to be a necklace.” It could be the amulet. After all, Earl hadn’t got the best look at it while it had been ripping him to pieces. The claw in the picture was also short a finger. “And check this out.” She moved in close to him and turned the page. “What’s that look like to you?”

There were a bunch of stick figures, one of which had a gun, a couple of directional arrows, more words in Finnish, and a very cartoonish picture of an explosion. It took him a second to realize what he was looking at. The stick figure’s actions were numbered. “These are instructions.”

“Bingo!” Heather said excitedly. “The prisoner said Grandpa stole their amulet, and I’m betting this is about how he did it. Maybe it can help us get it back, and I can get cured.”

Earl realized that she was standing uncomfortably close, close enough to feel the feverish warmth coming from Heather’s skin. Distracted by the book, she brushed against his chest. Her hip touched his leg. Earl stepped back politely.

Heather caught his uncomfortable reaction and frowned. “Chill out, Harbinger. I’m not going to eat you.”

Though it was a possibility, it actually hadn’t been what he’d been thinking about at that particular moment, but Earl Harbinger had been raised to be a gentlemen. He tried to get back on task. “Know anybody who reads Finnish?”

“A bunch of the old timers will. We’ve got a pretty big immigrant community here. There were a few at the gym.” Heather placed the archaic Mosin on her bed. “Let’s get back.”

Earl noticed something gleaming in the case. “Hang on a sec.” There was a stripper clip loaded with five rounds of ammunition. He picked up the clip and examined it under his flashlight. It was 7.62x54R for the Mosin, but there was something extremely odd about the projectiles. “Strange. These are sabots.”

“He had a box of those with the rifle. What’s a sabot?”

“An undersized bullet that doesn’t fit the rifling, so it’s held in place by a cup that falls off in flight,” he explained. Heather shrugged; that meant nothing to her. “Pure silver bullets are junk. Stuff’s too light, too hard, and a pain in the ass to make right, so I’ve seen Hunters improvise things like this before. These are silver, but it doesn’t look quite right. They’re too shiny.”

“Let me see,” Heather said, the impatience obvious in her voice. She held out one hand and Earl dropped the stripper clip onto her palm. As one of the bullet tips touched her skin, there was a flash of orange sparks and an audible snap. Heather jerked away and cried out. The ammo went flying. She clutched her hand to her chest. “It shocked me!”

“Let me see,” Earl said. Heather stuck out her injured hand hesitantly. There was an obvious burn mark where the bullet tip had touched her skin. Heather withdrew her hand and put it to her mouth, wincing. Earl picked up the old ammo. “That ain’t normal. Just touching silver should irritate a werewolf, maybe burn a little, but nothing like that. It don’t mess you up unless it’s put inside you, usually at high velocities. What is this stuff?”

Heather took her hand away from her mouth long enough to say “Electric-shock death bullets.”

Earl gathered up the strange ammo. It could come in handy. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

It got dirty from then on. I would change and hunt. Nikolai would respond with a new challenge. I’d kill his side, and then he’d kill mine. The body count climbed. He’d hit a village on our side and arrange the bodies like they were posing for a portrait. I responded by crawling into a tunnel complex and painting it red. Months passed.

He was goading me, pushing me to dark places that I’d thought I’d long ago controlled. I was transforming constantly. It was beginning to change me, to affect my judgment. Santiago would have been very disappointed in my behavior.