Matt Archer: Monster Hunter (Matt Archer #1) (24 page)

“’Bye Miguel. You watch out for monsters, okay?” I tickled
him under the chin. He grabbed my finger and tried to put it in his mouth.
“Dude, don’t think you want to do that. I washed my hands, but no telling what
those Gators left behind.” I pulled my finger loose then helped the guys load
him up.

I stood in the middle of camp, hands in my pockets, wearing
a cheesy grin as they drove away.

Best hunt of my life.

Ramirez called for me to join him in HQ for breakfast. The
French toast MREs weren’t quite as horrible as the burgers were, and I was
starving. I crammed the whole meal down in about three minutes.

“Goodness, Archer. You did eat yesterday, didn’t you?” I
nodded and he laughed. “Tannen told me you’ve been sprouting up pretty fast.
Guess it takes a lot of fuel to grow and hunt like you do.”

“Yeah. I eat all the time, but I’m still always hungry.” I
gulped down my last bite. “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

“As long as it’s not where that baby Gator came from,” he
said. “That’s the first one we’ve seen. I’m hoping it’s the last, or we’re in
trouble.”

“Yeah, my doors were kinda blown off by that, too. Maybe if
we exterminate them before they have any more we’ll be safe.” I paused. “What I
wanted to ask…all these visions got me thinking. What about the prophecy? The
one about the knife?” My knife hummed in my thigh pocket, like it was happy to
be part of the conversation.

“‘Born of the ground, tied to the heavens, the blades of
redemption will meet their brothers in unearthly combat to fight for men’s
souls.’ That prophecy, right?” Ramirez asked. “Well, what Jorge told me is
centuries ago some pre-Incan holy man had a vision of Armageddon. The world was
on the brink of destruction by evil spirits. All hope rested with magic knives
in the hands of powerful soldiers. Something like that.”

My knife shuddered again. I put my hand over my pocket. “Is
there more to it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but if so, Jorge hasn’t told us yet.
We’ve been a little busy killing nine-foot-tall lizards. Not much time to swap
stories around a campfire.”

I really wanted to meet Jorge. “You said he was on a
scouting trip. Why did he leave while the attacks are still happening?”

“More Gators,” he said. “The biggest infestation was here,
but we received reports of another nest somewhere deeper in the rainforest. He
asked us to keep up our end of the hunt while he checked it out. Since he’s not
back, I bet he found some, which means my count of a dozen here may be a little
high. Be good if he took down a few elsewhere.”

“Let’s hope,” I muttered.

The major stood. “All right. Enough chit-chat. We’ve got an
attack to plan.”

He punched me in the shoulder and left the tent, already
shouting orders.

Hooah.

* * *

Based on the morning’s scout reports, the major thought one
last op would finish the Gators off. His briefing to the team in the command
tent was short and sweet.

“The tracks are concentrated in one area.” Ramirez pointed
at a spot two miles from camp on the big map. “One of the tributaries for the
Amazon flows through there. Moreno and Smith found another underwater cave that
had some camouflage on its entrance. They didn’t run into any activity, but we
think that’s where the Gators set up shop after we blew a hole in their last
lair. If we push hard, force them out, maybe we can get them all tonight. They
know we’re coming, so let’s go in hot.”

“Regulators–saddle up!” Patterson yelled. Men dispersed in
all directions.

McAndrew, a pale guy with straw-blond hair and a Minnesota
accent, rolled his eyes. “Ya’ know, the lieutenant watches too many Westerns.”

Grinning, I tucked the knife into my thigh pocket.
“Yippee-Ki-Yay.”

“Archer,” Moreno called. “Time to suit up, man. I need to
brief you on gear.”

The grin slid off my face. “I have on my BDUs…”

His eyes crinkled up as he laughed. “Your underwater combat
gear. We’re going for a swim tonight. You don’t want to do that in your BDUs.”

They had to be kidding.

I followed Moreno into the tent next to HQ. Murphy was
pulling rubber suits out of a trunk. He gave us a smirk and left, carrying his
equipment. Moreno flipped a few other trunk lids open. He grabbed a rubber suit
that would cover a person’s whole body, down to the wrists and ankles. It even
had a hood. Flippers, gloves and the weirdest looking goggles I’d ever seen
completed the outfit.

“So, guess they didn’t tell you some of us were part of the
combat-diving detachment?” Moreno asked.

“Wait—the what?” I stared at the gear in bewilderment.

“Every company has an underwater combat team. Nearly all of
us have been through the training, but a few of us, like me, specialize in
underwater incursions.” He turned from the bins to look at me. “Please tell me
you swim.”

“I...I swim,” I said. “I don’t SCUBA though.”

“Don’t need to SCUBA. Snorkel’s enough. The streams rarely
get more than ten feet deep,” Moreno said, looking concerned now. “You ever
been snorkeling?”

I nodded fast. “Yeah. Hawaii last summer. My mom took us
there for vacation.” Thank God for family trips.

“Okay, then. Let’s get you kitted out.”

Putting on the dry-suit, the rubber thing, was like trying
to snake myself into a sausage casing. It took me ten minutes to shimmy into
it. The gloves and flippers were easy compared to that. The goggles,
though…those were truly awesome. The diving mask had a black night-vision scope
mounted where the lenses would have been.

“They’re Israeli-made,” Moreno said. “Those guys know their
combat gear. Basically, they’re monocular—single scope—night vision goggles
that can operate underwater. The base is a standard diving mask, but the rest
works like regular night vision scopes.”

I pulled it over my head. “It’s heavy. Wow.”

“Yeah, but underwater you won’t care, because they float.”
Moreno went around checking zippers and straps. “Good to go. Now take it all
off. We’ll change at the staging area.”

I groaned. “You mean I have to put this back on
again?
”

Amphibious monsters sucked.

* * *

After nightfall, the ten of us made the four-mile trek to
the staging area, marching single file along a narrow path edged by vegetation.
Ramirez was second in line and I was eighth, to cover both ends of the team.
The other men kept rifles and automatics at the ready, for what, I didn’t know.
Everyone scanned the dense jungle for Gators. We encountered nothing. That
bothered me, but I didn’t say so. These guys had been out here for months. If
there was cause to worry, they’d tell me.

At the staging area, a clearing about twenty feet wide that
glowed an eerie green under a quarter-moon, we suited up for underwater combat.
I could hear the stream bubbling nearby. Moreno had told me it was low this
time of year, and the current was gentle. Good thing, because I didn’t want to
drown in Peru. Mom would never forgive me.

Patterson guided me to the edge of the bank. We wore thick
soled water shoes and carried our flippers and goggles. The stream, murky-green
and about twelve feet across, flowed a foot below the bank.

“Okay, kid,” the lieutenant said, “stick to me like Velcro
on carpet, got it? The water’s muddy, so it’s hard to see sometimes.”

“Major, McAndrew and I are going in for a check,” Moreno
called.

Ramirez nodded and Moreno splashed into the water about
twenty feet upstream. McAndrew gave me a quick grin, then followed him. I
watched the surface, thinking there’d be a little ripple as they swam by, but
the water churned wildly, then bloomed with red.

“Lieutenant, what’s—”

Patterson hauled me back from the edge, swearing. Moments
later, an arm floated up, followed by a pair of goggles and a flipper. I turned
my back on the muddy-red water, wanting to scream.

“Ambush!” Ramirez shouted. “Everyone pull back.”

Torn to shreds. Right in front of me. My head swam. Three
hours ago, Moreno had been teaching me how to use my equipment and McAndrew had
been ribbing Patterson. Now they were gone. In all this time, I’d never seen a
monster kill a human. It was worse than I imagined. I squeezed my eyes shut,
feeling like I might cry and knowing I couldn’t. Not in front of the other men.

The team gathered together at the staging area. “What do we
do, sir?” I asked Patterson. My voice sounded shrill with panic. “What now?”

He squared his huge shoulders and turned to Major Ramirez.
“Well, the Gators are probably busy eating right now. Major? Send me into the
stream to check it out. If the enemy’s occupied, I’ll wave you in.”

My jaw dropped—the enemy was eating
Moreno
. Not a fish, or something. “Are
you suicidal?”

“Archer, better to risk us than babies like Miguel.” Ramirez
gave me a cold stare. “But we—”

Before he could say more, we heard splashes, loud ones, by
the bank. Hissing in the trees behind us. Shadows too big to be animals crept
all around.

“Um, major,” I whispered, “I don’t think we’re alone.”

“Fan out!” Ramirez barked. “Patterson, take Archer to the
stream. If they’re coming after us on land, use the time to find the lair and
set charges. Archer can take out any Gators still down there.”

“Yes, sir,” we answered before running for the water.

Patterson jumped into the stream as soon as we reached the
bank. “If I don’t come up in two minutes, try to get back to the major.” He
fastened his goggles and dove down. Thirty excruciating seconds later, he
resurfaced. “Nothing.”

A boom and a flash went off in the trees. Frantic shouts,
then one long, blood-curdling scream. Patterson yanked me into the water. I put
on my mask in case we needed to move fast.

Borden crashed through the vegetation, hurrying backward. He
sprayed the plants with rifle-fire in a panicked blast. A Gator leapt out after
him. It landed on top of Borden and they slammed to the muddy ground. I
couldn’t see what happened next, but I heard a series of pops. Like bones
breaking.

I sucked in a deep breath, about to cry out, but Patterson
clamped a hand over my mouth. “Hush,” he hissed. “It’ll come for us. Too late
to do anything now but hunt it down.”

We ducked low behind the bank as the Gator hauled Borden
toward the tributary. The sergeant hung limp, one leg caught in the monster’s
powerful jaws, with his head lolling back and forth. The Gator slipped over the
bank, pulling Borden with it.

They were picking us off.

Just like that. Borden was dead. Moreno and McAndrew were,
too. What was I doing here?

The knife, stowed in a diver’s sheath tied to my thigh,
burned so hot it seared my flesh through the rubber suit, telling me it was
time to avenge the fallen. Its rage filled me, and I took off swimming, my
brain an electric mess of shorted-out wiring.

Patterson shouted for me to wait, but I ignored him and
flicked on my night vision scope. That thing killed Borden. It wasn’t getting
away. The water turned gray-green on my scope’s screen, and something brighter
green swam in front of me—something with a long tail. I surged after it,
sucking down air through my snorkel. The Gator moved fast, but it was pulling
Borden’s body and that slowed it down.

I paddled hard to catch up and managed to stay right behind
it. The monster led me to a vine-covered rock jutting out from the bank. But it
wasn’t a solid rock; the Gator struggled through the vines with Borden’s body
and they floated back into place over the mouth of a cave. They’d been weighted
down with large pebbles to keep them from floating in the current. It was
camouflage.

I’d found the Gators’ den.

The entry was submerged. I detached my snorkel and dove
down. My chin scraped bottom, but I continued to follow the monster. I broke
surface about four feet up, arriving in a low-ceilinged cave, and poked my head
up cautiously. Tunnels had been dug into the dirt of the bank on either side of
the cave. That was how they were getting around without being seen. They
weren’t ghosts; they tunneled. And they were very good at it. Support beams
rimmed the entrances to the tunnels, and they looked too smooth to be hand-dug.
Scary how intelligent these things were. Seeing a Gator pop out of a hole in
the middle of a village like an unpleasant Jack-in-a-box had to be about the
worst thing I could imagine.

The beast was busy dragging Borden deeper into the cavern,
so I climbed the rock ramp, knife in hand. Pebbles slid loose under my feet and
fell into the water with a plop.

The Gator turned at the sound. “El niño.”

I froze. My Spanish wasn’t great, but I was pretty sure it
hadn’t said “a boy.” It’d said “
The
boy.” Did it know who I was?

Without pause, it dropped Borden on the floor and darted
toward me. I slid back into the water, pushing off the rock-ramp with my feet.
Once out of the cave, I surfaced and got one good breath before it snared me.
The Gator wrapped me up in its long legs and rolled me over and over. My mask
slipped off. Choking, half-blind, the blurred image of massive jaws snapped by
my head. My back pressed into the bottom of the stream. I couldn’t go any
deeper to escape. The Gator gave me a squeeze and I gulped down a mouthful of muddy
water.

Somehow I got my knees under it and pushed it back, then
kicked its jaw. It let go long enough for me to wrestle the knife free of its
sheath. Stabbing up, I slashed through its chest with my blade. Dark smears
flooded the water around me and its hold released.

The knife flashed; its contentment rolled over me, then was
gone. I shoved the Gator’s body away, letting the current take it. Wet and
shaking, I paddled to the bank. I’d floated far enough downstream that the
sounds of battle were lost. No Gators around either. I was alone in the dark. I
climbed out of the stream and sat on the bank, coughing up what seemed like a
gallon of dirty water.

The Gator knew me. They knew who I was. My teeth chattered
and I put my head between my knees. How did it know who I was?

A nearby splash startled me. Patterson pulled himself out of
the water and threw my lost goggles down on the bank. “You scared the crap out
of me, Archer. When you got that head start, I couldn’t see you through the
mud. Don’t lose me again, understand? Knife-wielder or not, you stick close, or
else.”

He had a point. The buddy system seemed like a really good
idea after my near miss. “Okay.”

Patterson shined his flashlight on my hands. “Kid, you
hurt?”

Dark mud was smeared all over my palms. Blood, too. Some
from a scratch on my arm that I hadn’t noticed getting. Some from the
slaughtered Gator.

Red and green and black.

The dream I’d had in the jet ran through my mind. Visions,
Ramirez had called them. Had I seen the future? The world slanted sideways and
I had to put my head between my knees again.

“Hang tight, Archer,” Patterson said. “We need to get you
back to base.”

“Wait,” I gasped. “I know where the den is. It’s empty. Do
you have any charges?”

That earned me a grim smirk. “I could blow up half a city
block with what I’m carrying. Think you’re up to taking me there?”

I put on my mask. “Yeah. But…Borden’s body is in the cave.
Let me pull him out first, okay?”

“We’d never leave a man behind,” Patterson said softly.
“Let’s go.”

Tired but determined, we headed back to where we’d entered
the stream. Patterson had hidden his equipment bag and radio behind a large
rock there. He retrieved the charges, then I led the lieutenant along the bank,
taking him to where I thought the lair might be. We searched underwater until
we found the vines, and I moved up the rock ramp with caution. Still no
activity. Borden lay in a heap, like a piece of trash, in the corner. The guy
who’d helped me save the baby was gone. I still had a hard time believing it.

The roof was too low for us to stand, so Patterson crawled
to the body. He picked Borden up and, shuffling on his knees, brought his body
to me. Borden’s head hung at unnatural angle—broken neck. He had bite marks on
his shoulder and thigh, but was otherwise unharmed. I had a sickening thought.
The Gators had just eaten Moreno and McAndrew. Was Borden leftovers for
tomorrow? I breathed in through my nose and out my mouth to calm my stomach.
Every time I thought the situation couldn’t get worse, it did.

Patterson finished attaching charges. “They remote detonate,
radio trigger. We’ll need to go upstream a ways to be safe.”

We swam, carrying Borden between us, and made it back to the
surface. After heaving the body onto the bank, we climbed out of the water. Patterson
picked Borden up again. We hiked about a hundred yards upstream, then the
lieutenant tucked Borden behind a boulder at the water’s edge. He pulled me
behind another one. With an almost crazy smile, he held out a black box.

“Fire in the hole!”

He smashed a button. There was a weird, gurgling rumble,
then a mighty whoosh. Water plumed upward, spraying in all directions. Mist
rained down on us. As we peered from behind our rock, the bank crumbled and
chunks of dirt and rock fell into the water. Two long troughs, six-inches deep,
headed out from the bank for at least forty feet. The tunnels had caved in,
wiping out the Gators’ underground advantage.

“Yeah!” I shouted, forgetting we were in the middle of a war
zone. We scored one for Borden. Now it was time take out more Gators for Moreno
and Smith.

“Glad you liked the fireworks show. Let’s get out of here
before the lizards come storming after us,” Patterson said. “We also need help
taking Borden to base.”

We ran to the edge of the tree-line, closer to the team.
Things were strangely quiet. Patterson ducked behind a large palm, then pulled
out a map to check our position with his flashlight. He cupped his hand around
the beam to hide the light.

“Where’s the team? We gotta be close.” He clicked his radio.
“Mission accomplished, red team. Please advise location.”

Static. We stared at each other. My heart pounded. We
couldn’t be alone, we just couldn’t. They weren’t all dead, were they?

“Come in, red team,” Patterson said. “Mission accomplished.
Advise location.”

More static.

Then, “Good work, blue team. Return; staging area two. The
remainder of the enemy has fled. Planning pursuit.”

With a relieved nod, Patterson stood, pulling me up with
him. “Let’s—”

It happened so fast.

A taloned hand whipped from a tree branch over our heads and
slashed Patterson across the chest. His face was drawn with surprise as blood
spurted out of his dry-suit. He fell to his knees, then crumpled to the ground.
His flashlight, still on, dropped next to his head, revealing pale skin growing
whiter by the second.

I went into overdrive, stabbing wildly at the claws with my
knife. The Gator howled in the shadows as I cut two of its three fingers off.
It slithered down the tree trunk with a snarl, its long snout open, snapping
its jagged, uneven teeth. I swung at its head, but missed. The monster pressed
forward, crawling on all fours like a croc, and it moved much faster than I
would have expected with a wounded hand. I scrambled away, but backed right
into something hard and scaly.

Terrified, I turned around and looked up.

Another, much larger Gator leaned over me, standing on its
hind legs. Its long, spiked tail whipped back and forth as it let out a
rattling growl. I stabbed at its chest, but it caught my wrist, twisted my arm
behind my back. Somehow, I hung on to the knife, or maybe it clung to me.
Everything was confused—snarls, shouts, pain in my shoulder. Patterson bleeding
out.

While the big one held me still, the smaller Gator rushed
forward to smack me on the side of the head with its good hand. I fell hard and
something sliced my right side. The pain took my breath away–I couldn’t even
yell for help. I craned my head to see what had happened. Blood seeped through
my suit along the side of my rib cage. The knife twinged my hand. I lifted it.

Red blood shone on the blade in the glow of Patterson’s
fallen flashlight.

I’d stabbed myself.

Patterson lay panting on the ground. He gestured at his
radio. “Help’s coming…” Foamy, pink bubbles stained his mouth and his eyes
rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness.

Men thrashed through the trees to our right, shouting our
names. I tried to scream, get the team’s attention, but the sound wouldn’t
come. I stared up at the nightmare around me. The big Gator gave a long, low,
gravelly-sounding call and two other Gators glided through the trees to join
us.

“Vamanos,” the leader croaked. “Rápidamente. Debemos
llevarlo a una tierra sagrada. Entonces vamos a sacrificarlo en el maestro.”

I didn’t understand them, but “sacrificarlo” sounded a lot like
sacrifice.

One of the new Gators reached down, grabbed my left ankle in
its taloned fingers and dragged me deeper into the jungle. The rest of the pack
followed. Too late for help, now. I shoved the knife into its sheath, out of
sight. Maybe I’d get one last chance to use it.

A twig scraped me as we started to move. I grabbed it and
broke off the end. Holding it in my fist, I dug a trench in the damp ground as
the monster dragged me along. The team could probably follow the blood trail
with their night-scopes, but this would help. Then Ramirez could find my body.
Take me home to Mom. The thought made me sick, for what this would do to her.

The Gators whispered together as they pulled me through
vines and trees and past strange flowers I didn’t have names for. The flowers
shimmered in a diamond haze in the weak moonlight. Everything did, even the
Gators. Their scales changed patterns before my eyes. Rocks cut into my back.
My head bumped along the ground and got slapped by my captor’s tail. I wasn’t
able to hold it up, and I didn’t feel like trying anymore. All I could do was
drag my stick and hope it would all be over soon.

Images zoomed through my head. Mom cooking dinner. Brent
texting at the kitchen table. Mamie crying in the airport conference room. Will’s
grin as he gave me a fist bump over our lunch table. Uncle Mike, his hair
covered in icing, laughing his head off.

Ella.

A hundred pictures of her. Smiling, crying, laughing, angry,
about to kiss me….her hands behind her back, two fingers pointed up, three
down…

My heart pumped hard. I still had the knife in my pocket;
the handle vibrated, as if it was begging me to keep going. So tired, though.
Cold, too. A rock scraped against my wound and I moaned, but it was like
someone else did, like the sound came from far away. One of the monsters
wheezed out a laugh.

We stopped in a tiny clearing surrounded by tall trees
dripping with water, everything smelling of mulch and reptiles. Dampness from
the ground soaked into my hair and I shivered despite the heat. The Gator
finally dropped my foot. I lay limp, grateful to be still, pulling in shallow
breaths, each one piercing my side with fire. Blood stained my side, my hand,
the ground; my life seeped away with each throb of my pulse.

The halo of shimmering light around the monsters grew
wavier, until the spikes on their heads moved like grass in the wind. Another
Gator arrived, carrying a fallen beast in its arms.

The one I’d killed in the stream.

Growls and hisses and snarls. All five of them closed in on
me. The big one squatted over me, teeth bared, talons out.

My eyes wanted to close, not to look, to sleep before it
happened. The knife hummed urgently, but my fingers were too numb to pull it
free.

“Ten cuidado,” a soft Gator voice croaked. Snorts of
agreement. “El muchacho es muy peligroso.”

I couldn’t look away. I wanted to, so badly, but I couldn’t,
even if a monster was the last thing I’d see. The big Gator flexed its hand and
raised its claws over my chest. God in heaven, let it be over quick.

The Gator chuckled. My body relaxed—time was up.
Fast…please…

A strong voice cried out words I didn’t understand. Not
Spanish. Not anything I knew. A flash of lightning, then all the Gators backed
away. The knife shot a current through my thigh as the blur of a small man ran
into view. The monsters scattered into the jungle, but not before the strange
man jumped on one’s back.