Matt Archer: Monster Summer (6 page)

What the heck could it be? Was it
some kind of alien? A scientific experiment gone horribly wrong? Did we have a
Dr. Frankenstein living in Billings? Seriously, the creature looked like a
resurrected Wookiee made from spare parts.

Utterly creeped out, I pulled the
knife out of the beast’s back and dropped it on the ground. My hands had blood
on them, dark stains glistening in the moonlight, and now that I wasn’t
fighting for my life, I shivered, half-freezing and clueless about what to do
next.

Someone groaned outside.

I scrambled out of the tent,
fighting my way free of the shredded nylon to find Mike. He lay crumpled in a
heap just past the fire ring. Shallow claw marks had ripped through his flannel
shirt, but not his undershirt or skin, and his forehead had only a small gash
at the hairline. We’d been lucky.

“Uncle Mike, wake up!” I shook
him. Fear thudded in my chest at a random thought. What if there were more
creatures out here? “Come on, wake up!”

Mike groaned again and rolled onto
his side. “I’ll take a quad Venti Latte.”

I shook him again, hoping his
brains hadn’t been scrambled by that punch to the head. He blinked, looked
around, then sat up and grabbed my arm in a vice grip. “Where is it, Matt? Did
it hurt you? How’d you get away?”

“It’s dead, in what’s left of the
tent.” I swallowed hard, realizing what I’d just said. “I killed it.”

Mike didn’t freak out; he didn’t
even act surprised. “How?”

“I found a knife in your bag,” I
said. “I-I stabbed it.”

And with that, I jumped up and ran
to the bushes to throw up. Oh, my God…I killed something. I’d never killed
anything, except flies, and those don’t count. Holy crap, what was happening
out here? What were those things? I heaved again, unable to stop my mind from
replaying the scene over and over and over.

When I was done puking, Mike put
his hands on my shoulders and steered me toward the Jeep. “Get in; we’re
leaving. Be right back.”

I climbed into my seat, staring straight
ahead, seeing nothing but the underside of the beast and my hand thrusting the
knife into its gut. Flashes of light danced in front of my eyes and I broke out
in a cold sweat. Having never fainted, I wasn’t sure if I was about to or not.
Either way, better safe than sorry, so I put my head between my knees. I caught
a whiff of the creature—its smell was all over my clothes—and I had to pop the
door and barf again.

Mike ran to the Jeep and got in.
All he had was our backpacks, his GPS and the white-handled knife.

“What about the tent and our
gear?” I croaked while wiping puke off my chin with a trembling hand.

“We don’t need anything else, and
we’ve got to get out of here. I rolled the carcass down a ravine and threw some
dead brush on top of it.” He slammed the Jeep in reverse and laid tread,
peeling out from the parking slot. “Hopefully no one will find it before...”

“Before what?” I asked.

Mike shook his head. He drove a
few miles, not saying anything, then pulled over at a rest stop. By then, black
spots were dancing in front of my eyes again and my skull felt too heavy for my
neck. When he parked, Mike reached over and slapped me pretty hard. My head hit
the headrest and I brought my hand up to my cheek in a daze.

“Matt! Stay with me. We’ve got a lot
to cover and I need you to focus,” he said. He blew out a harsh breath. “I
can’t believe the knife let you wield it.”

I blinked fast to clear my vision,
not understanding a word he said. “What?”

“You remember when I went on that
short mission last year?”

Mike’s voice had a steeliness to
it. Freaked out or not, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like where this was
headed. I gulped and cleared my throat; my mouth tasted all skanky. It was all
I could do to keep from throwing up again, so I just nodded in answer.

“I got sent to South America—to
Peru—on a highly classified mission,” he said. “People started disappearing and
the local government asked the U.S. to send some specialists down there to
check it out. What we found was pretty surprising.”

How this had anything to do with
giant beasts in the woods of Montana was beyond me. “What did you find?”

Uncle Mike clamped his hands to
the steering wheel. “Turns out monsters are real.”

*****

Thanks for reading! Interested in more? Sample the first few
chapters of
Matt Archer: Monster Hunter
online at
Amazon.com
.

And stay tuned for the second book in the Matt Archer
series.
Matt Archer: Blade’s Edge
will hit online bookstores in early
2013!

Kendra C. Highley lives in north Texas with her husband and
two children. She also serves as staff to two self-important and high-powered
cats. This, according to the cats, is her most important job. Find out more at
www.kendrachighley.com
There, you can
follow the Monsters and Mayhem blog and subscribe to the newsletter to hear
about new releases first.

Twitter:
www.twitter.com/kendrahighley

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/kchighley

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lindsay, Amelia, Maria, Becca and Ryan for
beta-reading this story. It was a huge help!