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

the sky. She landed and nailed a zombie right in the forehead with the tomahawk’s back spike. She ripped the spike out and congealed black ooze sprayed out of the hole like its head had been pressurized. “Go! Go!” I blasted zombies until Sonya and Holly were outside, then I hurried and squeezed through the door after them.

As soon as I was clear, Trip and Milo immediately began trying to force the rusted roller door shut, but a pile of dead flesh crashed against it. Several arms shot through the gap, and the only reason the barn didn’t barf out an army of zombies was because the stupid things were temporarily getting in each other’s way. It was five zombies trying to fit through a one-zombie hole.

But while we were plugging the hole, the barn was still falling down, and if the front fell over on us . . .

Holly yanked an incendiary grenade off her vest. I realized what she was trying to do, so I stepped back and immediately blasted a couple rounds of buckshot through the door. This close the buckshot pattern just chewed a single big hole through the wood. “Grenade!” Holly yanked the pin and shoved the grenade through the hole. The canister bounced across bare zombie feet. “Move!”

The rest of us didn’t need much encouragement. As soon as Trip and Milo let go, the door burst open and zombies piled out, but that only mattered for a second, because then they were all bathed in chemical fire. The whole front of the barn was consumed in a flash. The zombies were so dry they went up like kindling.

Fire leapt up the walls. Just as it reached the last remaining section of roof, the whole front of the barn collapsed. Heavy beams landed where we’d just been standing. The impact launched a cloud of choking dust outward.

I turned back and gunned down one of the burning zombies which had made it through. Milo head-shot the last one. Zombies don’t feel anything, but it never seems right to let something that was once a person wander around burning until it quits kicking.

The barn was just a pile of wood now, and most of the stuff buried beneath must have been extremely flammable, because it went up fast. Zombies who hadn’t gotten their heads smashed were still struggling to get free. Arms poked through the debris but the fire was spreading fast. All those buried zombies would get burned to a crisp. We had to move away because the heat was becoming too intense.

Boone got on the radio. “What is your status, Alabama?”

Milo responded. “Watch out for zombies. Their boss is a lich. Earl is fighting him. We don’t know where they are. We’ve recovered the hostage and are falling back.”

“Gregorius, ready the SMAW. Milo, we’re headed your way. Come in, overwatch.”

“This is Shannon.”

“If you see a werewolf, do not shoot the werewolf. I repeat. Do not shoot the werewolf.”

“Don’t worry. We already know about him. Make sure you warn the new guy though.”

Milo keyed his radio. “Boone, the lich is Phipps.”

“I didn’t catch that. Say again.”

“Colonel Buford Phipps.”

“Oh shit. Not that asshole! Everybody prepare to fall back. Hit the lich with the biggest guns you’ve got and retreat toward the vehicles.”

Boone was clearly scared, which didn’t happen very often.

“Milo, who is Phipps?” Trip asked.

“A total freaking whackadoodle jerkface. I’m talking eugenics, mad-science nutball stuff before he discovered necromancy.”

“Is he powerful?”

“Crazy powerful. This is why we shouldn’t go on rescue missions without doing our homework.” Then Milo pointed. “There’s Earl!”

I turned my flashlight that way just as our werewolf boss got hurled across a field. Phipps must hit like a truck because Earl was airborne for fifty feet before he hit the ground and rolled through the weeds. He lay there, a great hairy mass, breathing hard, and bleeding from several deep lacerations. Werewolves regenerate crazy fast, and Earl made a regular werewolf look like a wimp, but as he started to get up, he wobbled, then sank back down into the grass. Even the king of the werewolves needed some time to heal.

“That’s bad,” Holly said, because anything that could kick the ass of Earl Harbinger, could eat us mere mortals for breakfast.

The lich came out of the forest. His slender form didn’t look that physically dangerous, but there was a frightening energy building in the air. Phipps wasn’t walking. He was levitating a few feet off the ground, and he slowly began rising higher in the air. The plants around us wilted and crumbled to dust as he sucked the life force out of them to power his magic.

We opened fire. Dozens of bullets smacked into the hovering form, but they seemed to zip right through with little effect. A rifle bullet shattered one of Phipp’s arm bones, tearing the thin limb right off. Only instead of falling, the arm seemed to hover for a moment before suctioning back into place.

Phipps gave us an almost dismissive gesture, and my entire team got knocked off our feet by a wave of telekinetic energy. I crashed into a fence. Milo ended up in an old horse trough. Sonya ran away.

“Hunters!” Phipps voice was loud enough now that it could be heard even above the crackling flames of the barn. “I despise Hunters. I only wanted to be left alone, to continue my study of unnatural philosophy in peace. I was at the cusp of ridding mankind of its impurities when that cur Sherman burned my first laboratory. And every time I have tried to rebuild since, you damnable Shacklefords have been nipping at my heels. When will you subhuman filth learn to let me be?”

I struggled to my feet and launched a grenade at the lich, but he merely floated to the side as the 40mm projectile zipped past. My grenade exploded out in a field.

Phipps looked down at his burning barn. “You’ve destroyed all the subjects of my anatomical study! Do you have any idea how long it takes