Matt Archer: Monster Summer (3 page)

The monster stalked a few steps toward me, its back claws
gouging deep trails in the dirt. I used its approach as an excuse to scoot
closer to the pack of Dingoes by the vehicle.

When it didn’t rise to the taunt, I said, “Well, you got
anything to say to that? Oh, wait…you aren’t going to answer my questions.” I
tightened my grip on the knife. This would be tight. “What’s the matter? Cat
got your tongue?”

The Lead-Dingo lunged and I brought the knife up just as a
huge “Boom!” echoed across the plain. The ground shuddered beneath my feet and
I dropped to my knees. The Lead-Dingo stumbled, howling something in his native
language. Two of the others took off running.

Another explosion came, closer this time, sending pebbles
sliding down the hill. In the confusion, I popped into a crouch and launched
myself at the Lead-Dingo. It scrambled backward as I slashed at its chest, but
it slipped on the loose rocks littering the ground and landed on its back.
Moving at warp speed, I was right there to land a blow to the heart before it
had a chance to stand. It jerked once as the knife slid between its ribs, then
was still.

The Dingo holding Will howled and slammed him against the
Humvee so hard, he went limp. I yanked the knife free from the carcass and
hurled it with all my might. The knife flew like a guided missile and slammed
into the thing’s chest, sending it toppling over backward. Will tumbled down on
top of it.

The last Dingo standing let out a yip and ran after the
others. I sprinted down the hill as fast as I could without sliding on the
carpet of pebbles and reached Will just as Schmitz came charging up the hill
from the other direction. Together we tugged Will off the dead Dingo.

Will groaned and sat up. His neck was red and scratched, but
otherwise he looked fine. “Holy Elway’s ghost, dude,” he said in a raspy voice,
“I thought we were dead this time.”

Relieved, I sat on the ground next to him. “Nah, just beat
up.” I looked up at Schmitz, who was peering across the desert. “Where’d the
other ones go?”

“Not sure. I figured they’d come after me when I set off
those grenades, but they kept running, right on out of sight. Even that last
one just passed me by like I wasn’t there,” Schmitz said. “Real Dingoes live in
packs, but there’s always an Alpha. Maybe losing the boss shook them up.”

There’s always a new leader,
the knife whispered.
Stay
alert.

I loved it when the knife was cheery and optimistic like
that. “I bet you’re right Master Sergeant.” I stretched, popping about six
vertebrae in the process. Tumbling in the dirt with a nine-foot-tall monster
wasn’t good for my back, apparently. “Anybody else ready to call it a day?”

“Amen to that,” Schmitz said.

*****

“What happened to you?” Uncle Mike was camped out in the
command tent, but he came around the map-covered table, eyes narrowed, as soon
as I showed up. “Schmitz said you ran into a ‘little problem.’ I’m assuming
that was an understatement.”

I dropped into a chair, wishing I had some kind of magic to
erase the giant kink in my lower back. “We got jumped by five Dingoes. We took
out two, but three got away.”

As I relayed the story, Uncle Mike’s face turned purple and
a vein popped out in his forehead. “I never should’ve sent you out there.”

I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Yes, you should have.
End of story.”

We stared at each other for a good minute before Mike
relaxed in his seat. “So three got away?”

I nodded. “Captain Hunter find anything?”

“I haven’t heard from her, yet.” Uncle Mike sighed.
“Besides, we have a bigger issue. Why do the monsters always show up where you
are, even if they’re supposed to be elsewhere?”

“No idea.” That was the million dollar question, and I
didn’t have an answer, not yet. Maybe it had something to do with my close
connection to my knife. Or maybe the monsters thought I was the weakest link
because I was the youngest wielder. Yeah, like that theory held water. “So we
have five left to hunt down, right?”

Uncle Mike returned to his seat. “If the other team hasn’t
found the one still on the loose, then yes, five more.”

I left Uncle Mike, wondering if Aunt Julie had found
anything. I checked my watch. It was six-thirty. Maybe that’s why Uncle Mike
looked so stressed out; his fiancée was running around the Outback, looking for
trouble. On purpose.

As uncomfortable as Julie made me sometimes, she
was
kind of a badass. Besides, if I was honest with myself, I felt a little guilty
for the things I’d said—and thought—this morning. Sure, I wanted to spend
one-on-one time with Mike, but not because his fiancée had been captured by
monsters. Hopefully the team was late for some stupid reason, like a flat tire
or dead battery. Never mind that Humvees were practically indestructible. That
wouldn’t explain the lack of communications, either.

By the time I made it back to our tent, Will had already
passed out on his bunk, and Schmitz had reduced his pistol down to parts on his
cot, cleaning each piece with painstaking attention.

Schmitz paused in his housekeeping. “The advance team report
back yet?”

I shook my head. “It’s weird. The major says he hasn’t heard
from them, but they have a satellite phone in addition to radios.”

 “I’m wondering if the major will send out a search
party if they aren’t back by tomorrow morning,” Schmitz said. I must’ve
flinched, because he hurried to add, “It’s probably just technical
difficulties. Don’t get too worked up—you need to sleep while we have the
chance.”

After the trap the Dingoes had sprung on us this afternoon,
I had a bad feeling about all this, and a strange hum teased the back of mind.
Was the knife warning me again? I wasn’t sure, but chills puckered the skin on
my arms; almost always a bad sign. Telling my uncle wasn’t a good idea, though.
He already worried too much about the burden I carried since being chosen as a
wielder. Asking him to spin up a search party now, based on a weird hunch and
supernatural voices in my head, would only freak him out more.

Instead, I kicked off my boots and lay down on my cot. A
breeze blew against the canvas walls, bringing the scent of campfire smoke with
it. Soldiers joked and talked outside, sounding strange without Julie’s
higher-pitched voice among them. Where was the advance team?

I rolled onto my side, gasping when a cramp seized up my
back. Wherever they were, I wasn’t in much shape to help. Hopefully everything
was fine, and by the time I woke up they’d be here.

Part Two

“Archer, wake up,” Schmitz said.

I cracked open an eye. The tent walls were bathed in a thin,
weak light. “Dawn already?”

“Yeah,” Schmitz said, giving me a little shake. “Major
Tannen wants to see you ASAP. The advance team didn’t make it in last night.
He’s organizing a search.”

Groaning, I sat up. My back muscles had loosened up while I
slept; now I just felt like I’d been in a bus crash instead of bent like a
pretzel. “I’ll be right there.”

After Schmitz disappeared through the tent flap, Will asked,
“Think we’re going?”

“Why wake us up if we’re not?” I pulled on my boots. “You
feeling up to this after yesterday?”

Will shrugged. “It was just an attempted strangling…nothing
serious. I’m good to go.”

“Oh, yeah…nothing serious,” I said, shaking my head. “Well,
then, let’s go see what the plan is.”

We hurried to the command tent, Will buttoning his jacket as
we jogged across camp. The morning was cool and I could see puffs of steam when
I exhaled. Even though most of the team was already up and about, camp was
quiet, but tense, and more than one soldier watched us duck inside HQ.

Uncle Mike looked like he hadn’t slept all night. His eyes
were bloodshot and puffy, and a giant cup of coffee steamed on the table in
front of him.

He motioned for us to take a seat as Schmitz slipped into
the tent. “Sir, I have a small team assembled as requested.”

“Thanks, Master Sergeant,” Mike answered. “Go tell them to be
ready to roll in ten.”

Schmitz nodded and ducked outside. Uncle Mike turned to me.
“So, I guess you know Captain Hunter’s team didn’t show up.”

“Yes, sir,” Will and I said.

“Okay—we’re going after them,” Uncle Mike said. “Based on
the coordinates from yesterday, there’s nothing but desert in the search grid,
so unless the earth swallowed them up, we should be able to find them.”

I didn’t point out that it was entirely possible that the
earth had swallowed them up. We weren’t dealing with your typical human enemy;
the other side had unusual skills. The worry-creases on Mike’s forehead kept me
from saying that out loud, though.

“Going after them may not be the smartest thing to do,”
Uncle Mike continued, “because my gut feeling is that the remaining Dingoes are
holding them somewhere, trying to lure us out.”

So we were going to play right into their hands. Well, that
was one way to go. I wasn’t sure how smart it was, either, but we didn’t have
too many options out here. “What’s the plan?”

“Two six-man teams. Blue team will travel out in the open,
heading directly to the hot spot.” Uncle Mike’s eyes hardened into the Major
Tannen Stare. Will and I sat up straighter; that look meant we were about to be
tasked with something hard. “I’ll lead red team—the two of you, Schmitz and two
back-ups. We’ll drive out to a series of buttes not fair from the rally point
and go on foot from there. We’ll use the terrain for cover and hopefully
surprise whatever crawls out from under the rocks to challenge the blue team.”

I turned to Will. A smirk was already spreading across his
face. A similar smiled tugged at my mouth. Yeah, we were up for something
stupid and dangerous. We always were.

“Sir, yes sir,” I said. “Let’s go give some Dingoes hell,
sir.”

*****

Twenty minutes later, we were speeding along the desert
floor. Even though the ride was rough enough to bounce me out of my seat,
Schmitz pushed the Humvee hard. We had to be doing at least fifty; scrubby
brush, red sand and rock formations blurred together as we flew toward our
destination. You had to hand it to the people who made Humvees; any other
vehicle would’ve had four flat tires and a bent axle—or two—with this kind of
abuse. Instead it motored on unfazed, while giving most of its passengers
bruises.

I just hoped we got there in time.

Peace,
the knife-spirit whispered. Then in
contradiction to its command to chill, it flooded my bloodstream with a buzz of
energy. I twitched hard in my seat and Will raised an eyebrow.

“You good?” he asked.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I said, “Yeah,” even
though I wasn’t totally sure. My vision seemed off…but not in a bad way. In
fact, it had sharpened. “That’s a little weird.”

“What?” Will asked.

“Huh?” Oh, wait, did I say that out loud? Crap. “Um,
nothing.”

Uncle Mike didn’t even notice our conversation. He was
staring out the window, an intense, almost ugly, expression on his face. Like
he’d personally wring the neck of any monster who dared mess with his woman. I
sucked in a breath. Was this what it took to reduce a guy to basic instinct? To
turn him back into a caveman? I thought about the time I saved my girlfriend
from a monster attack in the woods back home. Even though everything had turned
out okay, rage coiled deep in my belly, like it was happening to her right now.

Yeah, this was all it took; Mike’s face told the whole
story. If he lost Julie, I didn’t think I could stand to see what would happen
to him. It was too horrible to even think about.

Fine, my part in all this would be very simple, then—I’d
keep that pack of flea-ridden dogs from taking my future aunt away from Mike.
End of story.

“We’ll get them back, sir,” I said, my voice low and
strained with fury. “And we’ll finish this mission. Today.”

Uncle Mike’s eyes flicked my direction. “I’ll hold you to
that, Chief.”

“We’re coming up on the drop-off point, sir,” Schmitz
shouted from the front seat. The road noise made it nearly impossible to hear
someone sitting more than two feet away. “I’ve found us a place to stop.”

On cue, we all peered out the windows. A large sand dune,
rimmed with small trees and desert grass, was coming up on our right. Schmitz
maneuvered the Humvee between the trees and the base of the dune. The tires
skidded in the sand, but Schmitz fought it the whole way, keeping the vehicle
on the move until he parked us deep in shadow.

The two enlisted guys Schmitz had recruited hopped out and
started unloading gear. Will accepted a backpack with medical supplies,
canteens and survival gear. Even though Uncle Mike offered him a pistol, Will
refused to carry one, saying there wasn’t any point. He was right in a way—if a
monster got past my knife, the only option left would be to run like heck.
Bullets wouldn’t even leave a dent in a monster’s hide, so why bother with a
rifle?

The others weren’t of the same opinion, though. Schmitz was
packing both a rifle and a sidearm. Uncle Mike carried a rifle, too, although
he looked like a guy spoiling for a fist fight more than anything. One of the
enlisted guys—his name patch said Jeffers—had an M240L machine gun strapped to
his back, and the other one, Perkins, carried the extra ammo along with the
communications pack and, you guessed it, a rifle.

Well, at least we were prepared if we met any rabid
kangaroos.

While we were prepping the gear, Uncle Mike checked in with
blue team. They were ten miles out, moving slow to make sure they were seen,
but hadn’t spotted anything. “That gives us time to get into position,” Mike
said. “Let’s go.”