CHAPTER 4
“What’s your name, kid?” the “boss” asked as two of the Monster Hunters helped me to my feet.
“Oliver Chadwick Gardenier, sir,” I answered. “All of which I hate. Call me Chad.”
“Carlos Alhambra,” the man said. “Team lead for Monster Hunter International.”
Carlos was probably late thirties, Hispanic, a little taller than me, and physically fit. He had a beard, long hair, and the chicks probably dug him.
“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir,” I said, limping in the general direction of the road.
“You really are banged up, aren’t you?” one of the other Hunters asked, taking an arm to help me walk.
“I’ve got more metal in me than the Terminator. But apparently God called me to fight monsters so I’m just going to have to figure out how to get in good enough shape.”
“God called you?” one of the others asked. It wasn’t an incredulous question. It sounded as if they were perfectly comfortable with the comment.
So I told them the general outline of my vision while “dead” in the rubble of the barracks. None of them seemed to have an issue with it.
“Appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to the FBI,” I said as I finished. We’d reached their vehicle by then. “I told the lead agent the reason I turned at the fork was classified above his level. Franks backed me up.”
“Wait, wait,” Carlos said, his voice for the first time indicating he thought I had to be lying. “Franks backed you up? Agent Franks?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Please allow me to avoid answering why. I think that’s probably classified even higher. Something I said in the interview seemed to really throw him.”
“All the rest I get,” the guy holding my arm said. “I’m not into the God stuff but you do this job long enough and you see things that sort of erase doubt. But something throwing Franks? That’ll be a cold day in Hell.”
“Every day in Hell is cold,” I said. The vehicle was a jacked-up ’73 Ford Bronco and I looked at the climb in with trepidation. “Any chance I could get some help getting in?”
* * *
The Iron Inn in Elkins had no more rooms available but Carlos agreed to share his.
“I’d taken one of them for myself by right of age and rank,” he said. “Two beds. You can have the other one.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, dumping my bag on the floor.
We’d stopped by the garage to pick up my overnight bag and cane. The owner of the shop was busy as hell with over a dozen cars suddenly dropped in his lap but he’d already deduced that the problem on most of them was the coil was burnt out. Given I wasn’t one of his regular customers, I could tell that I was well down the list of cars he was planning on fixing. I asked him if he would just order the part if I did most of the work myself and he agreed.
From there it was back to the motel where the team dropped off all their gear. And then dinner at the Western Steer Family Steakhouse.
When we’d gotten our trays and a table, the questions started.
“You’re using a cane but you took out fifty-three shamblers?” The questioner was Edward Malone, the guy who had complained about losing the PUFF bounty. Brown hair and eyes, broad shoulders with the vague look of a weight lifter. Not a pure muscle head but someone who pushed a lot of weights.
“All I can say is ‘adrenaline,’” I said as the waitress brought our orders. I took a sip of sweet tea and dug into the sirloin steak I’d ordered. I’d already had a light meal but the exertion had given me an appetite. “When those two girls came running to the car, it’s like I forgot I was hurt and just did it.”
“Want to start from the beginning?” Carlos said.
So I did, backing up to the accident and going through till the FBI questioning.
“After they were done, I just didn’t want to go try to find my car. So I lay down in the grass. Which was where you found me. And when we’re done eating, I’m probably going to have to get some help getting out of this seat. Or maybe not.”
I pulled out a pill bottle and popped a couple of Tylenol 3s.
“Prescription,” I said, shrugging. “More or less a permanent one according to the doctors.”
“If you really think God’s called you to this, Chad, you’re going to have to hope He’ll cure you as well.” That was Franklin Moore. He was the guy who’d helped me to the Bronco and helped me in. Black, medium build, late twenties. “This job is pretty damned physical if you know what I mean.”
“Really damned physical,” Malone said, flexing his bicep.
“I can do it,” I said. “I will do it. Would I want to as a career right now? No. I need to get back in shape. But that’s just a matter of time and effort. I’ll put in the time and effort.”
“Good attitude,” Carlos said, putting mashed potatoes on his steak and eating the bite combined.
“Can I ask some questions?” I asked.
“Shoot.”
“The PUFF bounty? How’s that work?”
“Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund. Set up by the Federal Government under Theodore Roosevelt to encourage hunting of supernatural entities. Monster Hunter International, our company, has been around since 1895 and it is, not blowing smoke, the premier company in the world. We’ve got contracts with various state, local and even Federal agencies to send teams to deal with supernatural events when they have them. For example, this is in Randolph County. We’ve got the contract with the sheriff’s office here. When there’s a supernatural event, they call us and we have a defined period to have a team here.”
“Which we always make,” Malone said. “Even if the situation is already dealt with,” he added, still clearly unhappy.
“Sorry,” I said. “I suppose I could have let everyone get eaten so you could collect the PUFF,” I added with a grin.
“Nah, man,” Malone said, shaking his head. “It’s all good. Just a long drive and we didn’t get to kill anything.”
“There’s always tomorrow,” Carlos said. “And the day after and the day after that. This job? There’s busy times and slow times but there’s always work. Take World War II. Just about every red-blooded male in America signed up to go fight Tojo and Hitler. But it was known that when they were defeated, they’d all go home. There was an end point.
“Join the Marines,” he added, gesturing at me. “You might figure you’re doing one tour or make a career. But at a certain point, you get out. This job? This war has been going on since pre-history and will be going on long after we all bite it, even if it’s from old age. Assuming you last long—and the casualty rate, let me warn you, is high—at some point you have to decide when you’ve run with the big dogs long enough. I’m about at that point.”
“You keep saying you’re going to retire,” Malone said. “Cold day in Hell, again.”
“Real problem is where to retire to,” Carlos said. “When I was young, the answer was ‘a tropical island.’ Deal with one luska and that starts to look less attractive.”
“Luska?” I asked. “Wait. Carib legend. Half shark, half squid, all nasty.”
“How’d you know that?” Malone asked, warily.
“My much hated mother is a professor of anthropology,” I said. “I’ve been exposed to a lot of legends over time. I used to dig into her books when she wasn’t looking, for that matter.”
“Much hated?” Franklin asked.
“I’d try to explain,” I said. “Let’s just say that this apple got windblown very far from that tree and is glad. Can I get back to bounty? Take what just happened. How much for a zombie?”
“Shamblers aren’t much,” Carlos said. “About two grand.”
“Two thousand dollars, less twenty percent, seems like pretty good money for the time spent,” I said. “Didn’t take more than twenty minutes, I’d guess. Even with the associated pain.”
“Dude,” Malone said, shaking his head. “Apiece. Two grand apiece.”
“Each?” I sort of squeaked.
“Each,” Carlos said. “You’re looking at making eighty grand plus off of this incident.”
“Now you know why I’m sort of grumpy about losing the PUFF,” Malone said, “but like the boss said, there’s always tomorrow.”
“The way it works with the company is everybody gets a bimonthly check,” Carlos said. “Team leads get a bit more than the regular shooters. The check is based on how the company is doing overall that month plus bonuses for any actions you’ve been involved in during that month.”
“If a zombie, which you can take out with a .22, is worth two grand,” I said, “how much is some of the other stuff worth?”
“Werewolves range from about ten grand up to about a hundred,” Franklin said. “Depends on how old they are, mostly. New ones that haven’t had many kills are the ten. Hundred are very rare old ones that have been killing for a long time. Vampires range from around the same as zombies for the new ones up to a few million for Master vamps.”
“But nobody hardly ever sees Masters, they’re so rare,” Carlos said. “And if you go in against a Master with a team of twenty and every heavy weapon in the arsenal, figure you might have five survivors and might actually kill the vamp. Masters are virtually indestructible. But, again, super rare.”
“And there’s different kinds of zombies,” Malone said. “Shamblers like you faced. Fast zombies are scarce, harder to kill and thus worth more. Ghouls, wights—which are seriously bad news—weird Asian zombies…”
“Pretty much anything you’ve ever read in a horror story or seen in a movie probably exists,” Franklin said. “I’m pretty sure the FBI leaks stories to the movie and TV industry to make the real a myth, you know what I mean?”
“Halloween?” I asked. “The movie,” I added to be clear.
“Revenant,” Carlos answered. “Type of zombie. Unlike most, it has some sentience. Very strong, quick, intelligent and violent. PUFF depends on how old and how powerful. The worst type of revenants are liches, which are…”
“Undead wizards,” I said, shaking my head. “Lovecraft?”
“Old Ones,” Franklin said. “Great Old Ones, almost never. But they’ve got lots of servants, things left over from when they were around and followers that cause problems.”
“And necromancy, all the undead stuff, probably is one of their powers,” Carlos said.
“I don’t suppose there are any books to study up?” I asked.
“Not with all of this being classified,” Carlos said. “But if you can get back in shape and decide to join the company, there’s training on it.”
“I’m definitely going to get back in shape,” I said. My head hadn’t really been in the game on that up to now. Why go through the agony of getting all my muscles back in trim when I was probably going to be stuck behind a desk the rest of my life? Now I had a reason.
Christ, it was going to suck.
The rest of your life is going to be no picnic.
Got it, Pete.
* * *
The upside to Detroit’s general lack of care in engineering and construction of vehicles is that part availability is, necessarily, high. Coils for a 1976 Cutlass Supreme are generally not hard to find.
Unless, that is, suddenly, in the middle of nowhere West Virginia, thirty vehicles, most of them American made, suddenly needed a new coil.
It would be at least three days before the shop got my part. I found that out when the Hunter team kindly dropped me at the garage on their way out of town. I’d given them all the information they needed to file the PUFF paperwork for me including my home of record, the Brentwoods’. Carlos told me it would be a few weeks to a month to get it all processed. That was fine. I wasn’t sure I’d ever really see the money and wasn’t sure what to do with eighty grand anyway.
In the meantime, I was standing in a garage bay with nothing to do.
“I’m pretty handy with a wrench,” I told the owner, who was also the main mechanic. “And putting in coils isn’t exactly hard work,” I added, gesturing with my cane. “Want some help? I work cheap.”
“Definitely,” the man said.
His name was Bryant Sutton, owner and chief cook and bottle washer of Sutton’s Auto Body and Repair, the premier auto repair shop in the town of Elkins. In his upper thirties, he’d worked in NASCAR for seven years before getting out and opening up his own place. Unlike most small town mechanics, the then-new electronic fuel injection systems and nascent computerized controls in engines didn’t throw him. Me, I preferred the old stuff but I could fumble my way around EFI and E prompts.
But coils really weren’t a big deal and I handled that while Mr. Sutton and his assistant mechanic Bert Henderson handled all the other “regular” repair jobs he had.
As I’d finish a car, I’d call the customer and tell them it was ready to pick up. One by one, survivors from the zombie attack would come in to pick up their repaired vehicle. To say the least, they were all surprised to find their savior now fixing their cars. They were even more surprised to see the cane. I got quite a few invitations to dinner.
Shortly after lunchtime a young lady came walking in. The face was vaguely familiar but the blond hair and chest, now barely covered by an overstretched tube top, was what clicked.
“I know you,” I said, grinning.
“It’s you!” the girl said, running over and giving me a very well-padded hug. “Oh, my God! I heard what you did! You’re our savior!”
“Jesus Christ is the savior,” I said, smiling. “I just happened to follow His directions.”
“How did you do all that with…” She seemed embarrassed to point out the cane.
“Adrenaline?” I said. “God’s hand? I dunno. Just seemed the thing to do at the time.”
“He used to be a Marine,” Sutton said. “Hi, Christy.”
“Hi, Mr. Sutton,” Christy said.
“I’m still a Marine,” I said. “Just medically retired. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Christy what?” I asked.
“Russell,” Christy said. “I’m here to pick up my parents’ car. Steve Russell.”
“Ford pickup,” I said. “All fixed.”
“You want to cash it out?” Sutton asked.
“Will do, sir.”
* * *
“How long are you going to be in town?” Christy asked as I was ringing up the repair.
“My car is down the list,” I said. “And the local warehouse is out of parts. So, couple of days?”
“What are you doing for dinner?”
“I’ve had a bunch of invitations, but I wouldn’t turn one down from you,” I said with a grin.
“I think my mom and dad would be fine with that,” Christy said, turning shy.
“Did you…lose anybody?”
“We didn’t,” Christy said, sadly. “My friend Amy—her mom and dad were killed.”
“The brunette?” I asked.
“Yes. Her dad got caught in the tent and her mom was dragged out of their car. We had run, but her brother and sister were in the car. They saw the whole thing.”
“Gray Chevy Caprice?” I asked.
“Yes,” Christy said, frowning.
“Yeah,” I said. That explained why only the woman was in that car. “Saw that.”
“It must have been terrible,” Christy said, tearing up. “The whole thing was just so…crazy. You know, I never really believed before? I’d go to church and get dragged to things like revivals but…I never really believed.”
“Getting attacked by zombies is what some people would call a come-to-Jesus moment,” I said. “I was raised atheist. Some stuff that happened when I got injured was my religious moment. But I was still a bit on the fence until this. Now? No real major questions anymore.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about it, yet,” Christy said, shrugging. “I’m sort of worried about it, really.”
“Why?” I asked. “Thirty-two fifty, by the way.”
“I’m kinda worried some of the stuff I’ve done…” She handed over two twenties, shrugged, then looked down at how she was dressed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t even think about it when I was getting dressed, but…”
“Jesus doesn’t care about how you dress,” I said, making change. “Trust me on that one. I’m not going to go all preacher on you, but most of the stuff that’s preached doesn’t really get Jesus. It’s not that God thinks you should just sleep around or whatever or dress sexy. It’s just not as important as other things. And it’s a matter of how you do it. I’ve had a number of girlfriends. I’m not going to change that even though, yeah, I know God exists and created some of those rules for a reason. But mostly it’s about how you treat other people. Do you make their lives better or worse? I think God would have more problems with a flaming bitch, you know, the ‘mean girl’ at school who was a total prude, than a lady who has had a ‘close personal friend’ or two but always treats other people with kindness and decency. As long as having a ‘close personal friend’ or two doesn’t ruin your view of yourself. Make any sense?”
“I guess,” Christy said. “And don’t get the impression I’m a slut or anything. I’m not.”
“I didn’t think you were,” I said, hoping against hope that she was. It had been a while, what with the deployment and getting all blowed up, since I’d gotten laid. “Just don’t sweat the little stuff about God and Jesus. Jesus is the savior. The only time Jesus ever got angry at people was at the Pharisees that were keeping people out of the temple who couldn’t pay. Put it this way, the guy who released those zombies? Totally going to Hell when his time comes. The people who died from them? Your friend’s mom and dad? Already in Heaven. Virtually guaranteed. They’d have to have done some pretty terrible stuff to get denied. I guarantee that nothing you’ve done in your life, or ever will do, is going to keep you from Heaven. Absent, you know, learning how to raise zombies and using them to kill a bunch of folks. You’re not a secret serial killer or anything, are you?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling just a little.
“There’s that smile,” I said, grinning. “The truth is, the lucky ones are the ones that died. They’re, truly, in a better place. Seen the edges of it. It’s nice. I keep thinking I should have stayed.”
“When did you see Heaven?” she asked, doubtfully. I could tell she was starting to question my sanity.
“Think all this came from tripping on stairs, honey?” I asked, holding my arms out with the cane in my hand. “Double-check on the dinner invite and I’ll tell you then. For now, got to fix people’s cars.” I handed her the receipt and the keys.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll call.”
“Please,” I said. “I’d like to see you again.”
“I’d like to see you again, too,” she said, shyly.
God, please let her be a slut. I know that’s a very bad thing to pray for, but…
* * *
A gentleman does not kiss and tell. But…wow. That girl could suck the chrome off a bumper. Not to mention she could shake daddy’s little money maker harder than Stevie Nicks…
* * *
The next day I got introduced to the mayor and met Sheriff Yates again. I was offered a position as a deputy if I went through an accredited academy as well as, quietly, given the “keys to the city.” Everyone had gotten the word that what happened “never happened.” It was a small town. Everybody knew the outline even if some of them had a hard time believing it.
There was no news on the identity of the mysterious “travelling preacher.” The identities he’d given were false. The sheriff was pretty sure even if the FBI caught up with him they’d never hear about it.
I met Mr. Anderson again, the man whose Cadillac I’d badly scuffed up. I apologized for that and he told me to quit being silly. Former Army tanker. He asked me why I’d chosen him to hand my magazines and I told him he looked as if he had his act together. I was offered several jobs by businessmen in town, both those who had been at the revival and their friends.
I attended two funerals, one a joint one for Amy’s parents. Christy asked me to go with her. More pats on the back from people. Amy’s brother and sister were pretty well catatonic through the whole thing. Both bodies had been cremated by order of the FBI.
Christy spent the whole night. I’d told her I wasn’t staying and she said she understood but I could tell she didn’t. I told her God had given me a sign that I had a job to do and I couldn’t exactly do it in Elkins. I could tell she wanted me to ask her to go with me.
I didn’t tell her the parts had come in for my car that day. After she dropped me off at the garage, I said goodbye to Mr. Sutton, drove back to the hotel in my repaired Honeybear, checked out and left town without saying goodbye or leaving a forwarding address.
Just slip out the back, Jack.
Make a new plan, Stan.
Just turn in the key, Lee.
And set yourself free.
Carlos hadn’t had to mention the casualty rates to hunting. More than once, the shamblers had nearly caught me, and I’d seen what would happen to me if they did. There was no way I was going to leave behind a young widow or put kids in a position of being hostages to fortune. Not down the road I was taking. Not everybody agrees. The Shacklefords have been fighting monsters, and breeding, for generations.
Personally, I think they’re nuts.
Or maybe I’m just a philandering ass like my dad.