PROLOGUE
Hell’s Bells
A church bell was sounding midnight, wet as a marsh and still hot as the hinges of hell, as I prowled the deserted cemetery. I could hear my harsh breathing, the distant rumble of thunder and the incessant buzz of the fucking mosquitoes in this hell-spawned city. The cicadas were silent, a bad sign for sure. There was hardly any light with the moon stuck behind billowing banks of cloud.
Sweat was pouring down my face from the heat and situation. My body armor was stifling and I didn’t dare take my hand off my weapon long enough to take a drink from my canteen.
I was all alone and being hunted by a werewolf that had already killed a half-dozen people.
The elevated tombs of the cemetery crowded around me, blocking my vision and line of sight. All I had was my ears and nose, and I was up against a hyper-advanced predator with ten times my ability with both senses.
Then the howl of the loup-garou broke the stillness, an inarticulate cry, half-human, half-wolf, all bad news.
I was tired of this. I was tired of the heat. I was tired of the mosquitoes. I was tired of being the hunted instead of the hunter. I was one of the best MHI had to offer. That was why I was here. I once took a werewolf this bad in a pair of running shorts with a 1911. I was fucking Iron Hand and no fucking devil wolf was going to get my heart pounding fucking with me in the dark of this fucking cemetery.
I jumped onto one of the lower tombs then up again onto a higher one.
Standing up there I had a view around. But this loup-garou was cagey. It wasn’t going to just to walk into my sights. I caught a flash of moonlight off dark fur and fired a burst in that direction. The silencer on the Uzi muffled the rounds to a dull thup, thup, thup. The ricochets and sound of the action working were louder than the rounds.
I reloaded without thinking about it and did a three-sixty. The thing was circling around me and could come from any direction. It wouldn’t be bothered by the few feet of height. A jump like this was nothing to a loup-garou. But I might be able to spot it from up here.
No, it was slinking from tomb to tomb. It sensed I was a predator as well. Maybe because all the innocent people it had murdered had a racing heartbeat and mine was slow and regular. Innocent is not a description anyone would use for me.
I was tired of this. I decided to press the issue.
I raised my head to the full moon and howled. I couldn’t get the full timbre of a werewolf howl, but it got the picture. I was challenging it. Come out and fight.
I barely caught the skritch of claws on stone, and spun as the loup-garou flew through the air and impacted on my left arm. Somehow, it had gotten behind me. Its teeth sunk into my armor, just under the opening to my vest, but the teeth didn’t penetrate. The claws, though, those damned claws. Like nothing on anything natural, they were as long as daggers and tore my armor and legs to hell as I fell off the tomb.
It was too close for the Uzi. I reached down, pulled my 1911, stuck the barrel into its ribs and fired seven plus one into its body in one continuous thud, thud, thud.
It let go and rolled away, whining and licking at the wounds on its side. That put it right in the direction of the barrel of my Uzi. I dropped the 1911, clamped the trigger and walked the rounds into its head, riddling it from stem to stern.
I automatically dropped the Uzi magazine and inserted another, then picked up the 1911, reloaded and holstered.
“Good doggie.” It returned to human form as it died. The guy was skinny as a rail, probably a crack addict. Well, his problems were over. Absent having really fucked up, he was going to the Summer Lands where it was always green and the temperature was perfect and, I dunno, maybe for him the crack was free and didn’t have side effects.
“Go to God, kid,” I said. “Surely your sins are forgiven. God understands curses. He sure allows enough of them.”
I hadn’t been bitten, but I might have been scratched. Scratches weren’t often infectious, but bites always were. I pulled out my canteen and took a swig of sacramental wine. That might help stave off lycanthropy, or it might just be a wives’ tale, but it couldn’t hurt. I needed to bandage my leg, then call the coroner.
There was a rush of grinding claws and the second loup-garou charged out of the darkness.
I had neither firearm in my hand. As the werewolf flew through the air, the canteen hit the ground, spilling my wine. I stepped backwards between two of the tombs, and Mo No Ken, Sword of Mourning, flashed up from the scabbard and down. I didn’t even think about it. Just acted.
Which is why I’m one of the best of the best and had lived through the worst this damned town could throw at me while my buddies were going down the shitter every hellish day.
The werewolf’s body continued for another ten feet and its head kept rolling, stopping when it hit a tomb.
I flicked Mo No Ken to clear the blade of blood, took out a formerly white silk cloth, which had already been used that night, and wiped the blade clean carefully. Then I pulled out another cloth from behind my left arm and wiped the blade down, carefully, with holy oil blessed by the Rabbis of Jerusalem.
Ritual complete, I waited to see if another loup-garou was going to appear out of the darkness. Probably not. The cicadas were starting their incessant whining again. Fucking bugs, fucking heat, fucking humidity. Fucking City of the Fucking Undead. I loved and hated New Orleans. Loved the food. Loved a lot of the culture.
They called it the Big Easy. The only thing easy in this town was death. And half the time you ended up working overtime as a zombie or ghoul.
I got up on the tombs again, a bit harder this time with my left thigh cut to ribbons, and looked around. I howled a couple of times. I could swear I saw movement but no more loup-garou appeared. I sat down and bandaged my wounds as best I could with the small first aid pack I carried. I’d need to do more when I got to Honeybear.
I climbed down and started working my way out of the maze. Somewhere, there was a road through the cemetery and a gate.
I finally found both, unlocked the gate with the big skeleton key I’d been handed, and walked over to one of the NOPD cars parked outside the gates.
“Done!” I shouted through the rolled up window. The cop didn’t have the window rolled up just for the undoubtedly pleasant AC. He had it rolled up ’cause the NOPD had a deathly fear of loup-garou. They’d lost too many officers on details just like this one. They weren’t getting out of their cars until they were sure Hoodoo Squad had cleared the area. “Call the coroner! Got it?”
The guy made an “Okay” sign and picked up his radio. With any luck Tim would be on his way in a few minutes. Until I’d finished providing security for the Orleans Parish Special Incident Coroner’s Squad (SICS), we weren’t done—part of our contract with the parish and in this town, it made sense. Coroner’s teams had lost people just doing pickup.
I limped over to Honeybear, my personally rebuilt 1976 Cutlass Supreme, opened the trunk, rummaged, got out the big first aid kit and finished bandaging my thigh. Fucking loup-garou. I made a mental note to call Memorial and tell them to have my coffee mug ready. I made actual notes on the action, limped back to the squad car and got the incident number.
I took another drink, refilled my canteens and magazines, closed Honeybear’s trunk and limped back into the cemetery.
I started the process of finding the bodies, again. Another maze.
I rounded a tomb and knew right away I’d found the kill site ’cause it was covered in ghouls, ripping the first loup-garou’s body apart. The headless one was entirely missing.
A blast of wind hit as the storm reached the cemetery, the heavens opened up and water poured from the sky.
The ghouls turned, hissing at my lights, and got up from their meal.
More were closing in among the tombs. Their outline was revealed as lightning pounded the Big Easy like Thor’s hammer.
I was wounded, alone, stuck in a thunderstorm and surrounded by hungry ghouls. Then another freaking loup-garou, barely audible over the howling wind, bayed its challenge to the moon…
You might be wondering how I got myself into this predicament. I blame trailer park elf girls and the inventor of the tube top.
My name is Oliver Chadwick Gardenier. Call me Iron Hand.
This is my life. I’m a Monster Hunter.
Note:
This is the second volume of Chad’s old memoirs we discovered in the archives. There is a lot of useful information in these pages, so I’m passing it on to you.
Being honest, this one was tough for me. We lost a lot of good people there. I knew many of them personally, and they were some of the bravest men and women I’ve ever known. Evil loomed, and they held the line.
The Eighties were wild in New Orleans. Something horrible rolled into that town, and the only thing that stopped it from establishing hell on earth was Hoodoo Squad.
Chad loved to tell sea stories, and some of what you are about to read may sound crazy, but I was there. New Orleans really was lousy with monsters. Some of the PUFF collection records set by Hoodoo Squad still stand to this day.
That said, I think Chad totally exaggerated the parts about me. I was never that much of a dork. I’ve always been as cool and suave as I am now.
Milo Ivan Anderson
Monster Hunter International
Cazador, Alabama