Monster Hunter Legion-eARC (23 page)

“I love that one!” The Australian leader proclaimed. “It was mostly sheilas running around with their clothes off, but there was a giant spider in it. Not a very convincing one, but I see where you’re going.”

“Giant spider shows up in Nevada to somebody that probably had giant spider on the mind. Hugo kills the spider, and then monsters from his past appear in his room. My husband saw a specific type of ghoul, and even though he wasn’t familiar with it, Agent Franks seemed to be. Four events, three of which we know the victims had some knowledge of the thing that manifested. We don’t know what killed the other victims at the first attack site, but I’m betting whatever it was came from one of those people’s imagination or memories.”

Pretty and smart, plus a mean sucker punch. I’d married up. The Hunters exchanged glances, there was some mumbling, but nobody could outright reject what she’d said. It was a bizarre idea, but this was a bizarre business. “That’s quite the theory,” Pierre Darne said. “All conjecture, but slightly more likely than MHI trying to sabotage their competitors.” He held up his hands defensively and smiled. “Only joking, Julie. Please do not hit me.”

“Oh, Pierre, you’re far too charming. Anybody have any better ideas?”

Nobody had any. The Chinese Hunter then asked, “Assuming you’re right, then the question becomes, what’s causing these events?”
Oh, now he’s rational and non-accusatory.

“Or if it is going to happen again? Hell, who are we kidding? With our luck, when
will
it happen again?” I said. “Holy shit, if we’re talking about monsters appearing out of people’s imagination, can you think of a worse place to be than around a bunch of Hunters?” That was a sobering thought.

There was a sudden commotion at the entry hole. “Harbinger!” VanZant burst into the room.

“What is it, John?” Earl checked his watch. “Feds here? Took ’em long enough.”

“Yeah. We’ve got Feds.” VanZant was out of breath. “But they’re not coming inside. They’ve formed a perimeter around the parking lot and ordered all the first responders back. Nobody in or out. There’s an MCB agent with a bullhorn saying anyone that tries to leave the casino will be shot.”

“What?” I got off the bed and went to the remains of the balcony. Far below, the flashing police lights had formed a line and were blocking the strip. Men in blue windbreakers, surely MCB, were ushering people from the parking lot and stringing up caution tape. “What’re they doing?”

“They’re surrounding the place.” Earl’s voice was completely flat. “We’ve been quarantined.”

“Do not come any closer,” the man said, his voice amplified over a loudspeaker on one of the police cars. I couldn’t see very well since there were a lot of spotlights pointed at me. I could safely assume there were also guns pointed at me. “The disease is not dangerous, but it is very contagious. Stay calm and stay in the casino. Do not panic. You will be safe inside the casino. Representatives from the CDC will be here shortly with medicine.”

Man, that was lame.
“Cut the crap,” I shouted back. “I’m with MHI. Let me talk to Franks or somebody in charge.”

“Go back inside for your own safety. The disease is not dangerous, but—”

“Oh, come on! It isn’t a disease, it’s a…” I was the only person standing in the parking lot. There weren’t any bystanders to spill the beans on monsters. There were probably Las Vegas cops in range of my voice, but it was hard to tell with the lights. “You know what it is. See this?” I gestured at my armor. “Who else dresses like this? I know you’re watching me through a scope. Crank up the zoom.” I pointed at my happy-face patch. “See? I’m MHI. I know what’s up. Let me talk to Franks or Archer or somebody that has a clue. We’ve got a situation in here.” I began walking toward the cars.

“If you come any closer we will use force.”

“Just get Franks.”

“I’m warning you. Don’ t come any closer.”

“Listen, asshole—” I jumped when the bullet struck the pavement three feet from my boots. Fragments pelted my armored shins. “Shit! Okay, okay, I’m going back inside.” Turning, I walked back toward the front entrance. “Son of a bitch.”

There still hadn’t been any official word from the government as to why they’d locked us in here. All we knew was that they’d worked fast, completely containing the casino in less than half an hour from the initial alarm. The agents that had been staying here had been seen receiving calls and practically running out of the place. Someone had given them an order to pull out within minutes of the event. Who that someone was, and what they knew, was still a mystery.

My radio hissed in my ear. “Told you that would happen.”

She had warned me this wouldn’t work. “Thanks, dear. Any luck?”

Julie and a few other Hunters who had brought sniper rifles had gone up to the roof to get a better picture. “None of our regular MCB contacts are answering. They cut the landlines a few minutes ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a jammer here soon and shut down everything else. I think they’re instituting a complete communications blackout. I got off a message to Grandpa in Alabama, so at least somebody on the outside will know what’s happening.”

“Aw, hell. I’ll be there in a second.” I took one last look at the outside. As far as I could tell, the authorities had locked this place down tight. Other people had tried to leave from some of the other exits, but they’d been turned back too. Some of the anti-Hunting activists had even been turned back with a tear-gas canister, and a Hunter from Jai Jiwan Security from New Delhi had a nasty welt from a rubber bullet. The fact that they’d launched a real bullet in my general direction wasn’t a good sign that they were getting
more
patient.

The main lobby of the Last Dragon was in complete pandemonium. In addition to the hundreds of Hunters and assorted hangers-on that were here for ICMHP, there were also a bunch of hotel employees and some construction workers who were still finishing the upper floors. There were also a handful of non-ICMHP guests trapped, people who had been in the casino gambling when everything had been locked down. Luckily there weren’t that many of those at four in the morning, comparatively speaking, but it was still another hundred or so angry and frightened people that had no idea what was going on. A large percentage of them had gathered in the lobby, trying to figure out what was going on, or to loudly demand that they get to leave. I heard that an armored car was blocking the exit ramp of the parking garage and a couple from Florida had popped their tires driving over a set of spike strips and then been herded back inside by men with guns and gas masks. They were especially pissed off.

I felt really bad for the hotel employees. It was the night shift that had been stuck here, and they didn’t know any more than the guests. I walked past a few managers that were being browbeaten by angry customers. Since none of the people that had instituted the quarantine were actually in here with us, and there wasn’t anyone effective to yell at, they were shouting at whoever looked like they might have some authority.

“You there, security guard. I demand to speak to your supervisor!” A large old lady rolled up to me on her mobility scooter. “This sort of treatment is completely unacceptable. I want to speak to him immediately.”

I looked down at my armor. It had started out coyote brown, but a few years of abuse, tears, rips, burns, stains, and replacing various ruined parts had left it a mottled modular mess of different-colored pouches and stab-proof sheets, some of which I’d color-corrected with spray paint. Hell, I was wearing a kukri that was damn near a short sword. Even after repeatedly hosing down room 1613, I still had sixty rounds of 12-gauge in a drum and four magazines, a few 40mm grenades, two handguns, and six spare magazines of .45. As a big dude, when I was geared up, I looked particularly enormous. I would have to be the most heavily equipped security guard in history, but in our current circumstances, it was as reasonable an assumption as any. “Ma’am, I don’t work here.”

“You’re not security?” I shook my head
no
. “Police? The army?” Still no. She looked very displeased. “What are you?”

“I like clothes with lots of pockets.”

She made a noise that sounded like
harrumph,
then gunned her little scooter away, searching for someone else to feel her terrible Lark-powered wrath.

Earl had commandeered one of the ICMHP conference rooms to serve as Hunter Central. Trip met me on the way in and tossed over Abomination. If I had been wearing it when I’d tried to talk to the cops, it probably wouldn’t have been a warning shot. Earl was at the opposite end of the room, talking to a small group of people. “What’s going on?”

“He’s talking to casino management, trying to get them up to speed.”

“What’s he telling them?”

Trip smiled. “Surprisingly, a lot.” Normally we tried to keep things on the down low as much as possible to keep the MCB off our backs. “Earl seems really dead-set on protecting everyone he can. Not that he hasn’t always been willing to risk his life to protect the innocent and things like that. But I think he’s changed…It’s like he
cares
more.” Trip, the stalwart goody-two-shoes of our organization, seemed really pleased by this development.

“I take it you approve?”

“Well, yeah…I just hope Earl Harbinger isn’t getting soft in his old age.”

We both laughed at that absurdity. Earl Harbinger made Clint Eastwood look like Mr. Rogers. As a general rule, the more a situation sucks, the more humor you can find in the little things. Then I had a very somber thought. “Last night when we thought it was just a stupid spider in the desert, Earl could tell himself that his girlfriend wasn’t really missing. But after what we just saw…”

“I don’t know, man. If it was something like what appeared to the German, then she might be gone. I talked to the girl that was with Hugo. She said he jumped out of bed screaming
Nachtmar, Nachtmar
, and then one of the big metal things just rose up out of floor and started hacking him with a big rusty sword. That’s all she could get through, before she just kind of stared off into space repeating
so much blood
over and over.”

“That’s an awful introduction to this world.”

“I don’t know of any good ones. As for Earl’s girlfriend, werewolf or not, if that’s what happened to the Unicorn team…He seems to be focused on working right now, but whatever we’re up against, if it killed someone Earl cares about, I almost feel sorry for the thing. Almost.”

I’d prefer to have another great Old One gunning for me than an angry Harbinger, and if what was going on wasn’t caused by something that could be killed, then I would really hate to be Stricken. “Speaking of merciless badasses, you heard from Holly yet?”

Several MHI employees had been out when the monsters had appeared, including some of our most experienced people and our entire Las Vegas team, who had actual houses to sleep in, but Holly was the only member of my team outside the quarantine. “I left her a message but she didn’t answer. I’ll try again.” Trip pulled out his phone, then frowned at it. “That’s not good. I’ve got no service.”

My phone was also showing no signal. I checked my radio. “Com check. Can anybody hear me?” Nothing but static. “They’re jamming us. Damn it, Julie called it.”

Trip put his phone away. “I figured you’d be used to that by now.”

“She likes to remind me. What do we have to work with?”

“About half the companies have thrown in with us. The other half are off doing their own thing. Some of them were staying at other hotels, so we’ve got about three-quarters of the conference attendees here. Of the half that are with us, half of those actually like us, and the other half know that since we’ve got more locals we have the most ammo. Milo and some of the Australians are putting together an equipment inventory. Those guys over there…” Trip nodded toward another group that had come up with a map of the hotel, “are dividing everyone up into two-man teams and figuring out how to patrol this whole place.”

“Assuming the
phenomenon
happens again…”

“We get on it fast. You want to let it spread out and get really big before we find it next time? Didn’t think so. That group over there is collecting all the brainiacs. They’re trying to figure out what’s happening and how to stop it.” There were a dozen Hunters in that group, including Lee, Paxton, and Cody from MHI. Cody was actually writing equations on a dry-erase board. Julie hadn’t been kidding about him. “Another group is acting as go-betweens with the non-Hunter guests. Turns out one of our guys, Tyler Nelson from the New York team, knows all about the psychology. He said he would get them calmed down. He helped talk down Hugo’s girl too.”

“Nelson? Any relation to the Doctors Nelson?”

“Their grandson,” Trip said. “Small world, huh? Following in the family footsteps, got a degree, practiced, then got bored. Now if I ever have kids I’m going to encourage them to do something safe.”

“Look how well accounting worked for me…”

“Hey, do what you need to do fast, because we’re going on patrol in ten minutes. We’re going to clear this place, room by room. Shoot. I just realized without radios that is going to get a lot more complicated.”

“Don’t worry.” I patted Abomination. “We’ve got other ways of making noise.”

I hit the smart group first. Not wanting to interrupt, I hung back and listened. The debate was rather heated and they were trying to decide if it had been a pocket dimension, a portal, or a something I’d never heard of involving a whole bunch of PhDs’ names stuck together. Back in school, I had test scores high enough to get a MENSA invite, but this stuff was
way
over my head. Cody saw me and gestured for me to approach. He pointed a dry-erase marker at my heart. “You. Earl said Franks mentioned Decision Week?”

“He did, to someone I think was from STFU. Then the major at Dugway talked like the containment unit was left over from it.”

Cody turned his dry-erase marker on a bald Israeli. “See? I told you this had Decision Week stink all over it.” The burly, bushy-haired Vietnam vet turned back to his dry-erase board and began writing more numbers and symbols. “So, the question now is, whose work are we dealing with? Weiskopf? Silverman? He loved summoning things from Planck space. God help us if it was Hampson and his neurobiological demon bondings. Yuck.” Cody shuddered.