Monster Hunter Bloodlines - eARC by Larry Correia (read a book .txt) 📕

zip it shut, but I kept a ton of those on hand. “Pockets on the side of the case.” Then I saw a road sign warning me that there was a twenty-five mile an hour curve. I was going a hundred. “Hang on!” I hit the brakes on the way in. The truck managed to keep two whole tires on the road, but Sonya bounced off the back of my seat.

We made it around that turn at close to triple the recommended speed, but the Drekavac was right behind us, and we were deep in his fog bank. My headlights could only illuminate a few feet ahead, so I had no choice but to slow down.

All I could see of the Drekavac was its black silhouette in a blue halo, sitting tall in the saddle, using both hands to control its mount. Except then he reached down and pulled a weapon from a scabbard. From my vantage point it appeared to be shaped like an old timey blunderbuss with a big bell end.

“Stay down.” I swerved hard.

There was a brilliant flash as a crackling ball of lightning burned down the side of my truck. It zipped past, hit a tree, and blew it into splinters.

“What the hell was that?” My passenger-side mirror was gone. The paint had caught on fire.

“That’s what he blasted the Catholic dude with.”

In one smooth movement, I grabbed the sawed-off shotgun with my right hand, turned back, craning my neck to see, pointed it out the broken back window, and nailed ghost horse. It let out a terrible metallic wail and pulled hard to the side.

“That’s how you do it.” I’d been aiming for the rider, but Sonya didn’t need to know that. I broke open the shotgun, fished two more shells from my pocket, and dropped them in, which was a lot harder than it sounds while steering a speeding truck.

“I think I’ve got it reloaded,” Sonya said as she sat up. “There’s another trigger on the front of this—”

“Don’t touch that. You’ll blow us up. That’s the grenade launcher.”

“Who puts a grenade launcher on a shotgun?”

“A genius.” That had been Milo’s handiwork. When I checked my mirror, ghost horse had corrected, and was gaining again. But worse, glowing fog was swirling in the bed of the pickup. “Look out!”

One of the demon hounds appeared in the truck’s bed, and immediately started climbing in through the back window, snapping at Sonya. She shrieked but grabbed it by the ear and forced its head away. The girl had to be incredibly strong to shove that beast around like that, but she couldn’t maneuver Abomination into it. “Bad dog!”

I leaned back and shot the dog right between the shoulder blades. It ruptured, spraying fire all over the truck. Thankfully, the blue fire burned cold rather than hot, because that would have been awkward. This way we’d just have frostbite instead of third-degree burns.

The Drekavac was right behind us, and it was aiming the blunderbuss again. “Hold on.” I hit the brakes.

The monster fired. The lightning ball danced across the truck, burned a hole in the passenger seat, blew out the front window and rolled down the hood. But my sudden stop meant that ghost horse smashed right into my back bumper.

It must have weighed a lot more than it looked, because the impact shoved the truck sideways. We went spinning around, tires squealing, glass flying, right off the road. The horse was pulverized. The Drekavac was thrown violently from the saddle. I tried to steer out of the spin but the nose of the truck dropped suddenly as we crossed the edge of the road, and then we were going sharply downhill. A single thought went through my mind as we started sliding through the underbrush. This is going to hurt.

I stood on the brake pedal but it didn’t matter. We might as well have been riding a sled. We shot down, crashing through branches, and just kept going. I nearly bit my tongue off as we bounced off a boulder. It was a miracle we didn’t flip. Then the front end clipped a big tree trunk, hard enough to bounce the whole vehicle into the air. My air bag deployed and smacked the snot out of me.

We were stopped. I was dizzy. It took me a few seconds to bring myself back to reality. Everything ached. We were sitting at a really weird angle. That was because the driver’s side was partially submerged in a stream. I shook my head and safety glass fell out of my hair.

“Sonya? Are you alive?”

“You suck.” She sounded muffled because she was lying on the floor, partially squished beneath my seat.

“You can thank me for rescuing you later.” I looked around. I had no idea where we were, other than forest. Thankfully, my door still opened. When I unbuckled my seat belt, I slid into the stream and got soaked up to my knees. I splashed over to the back door and opened it. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”

The unnatural fog was slowly rolling down the hill after us.

Chapter 9

Sonya crawled out of the truck and landed in the stream. “Ooof.”

“Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk.” She swatted my offered hand away and got to her feet.

“Hopefully better than you can shoot.”

She looked up the trail of destruction and saw that we had ended up probably two hundred yards from the road. “Way to go, jackass.”

I grabbed my go bag, tore it open, and pulled out my vest. There was no time to fully armor up, but I wanted the pouches full of mags and grenades on my body. I threw it over my shoulders. I’d buckle everything up on the move. Then I took Abomination in one hand and the bag in the other and started walking. “There’s another shotgun on the front seat if you want it.” At least the borrowed one had fewer levers to confuse her.

“That’s it? We’re just going to hike