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

Trip was in charge and he had his shit together, but if this many bodies came at them at once, they’d be overwhelmed.

“Got it.” I dumped my last few shots the Drekavacs’ way and then followed Earl, reloading as I ran. I had a rifle in my hand, my shotgun bouncing at my side, and a bunch of drum mags slung over my shoulder, so it wasn’t exactly smooth. These were tight quarters so I threw Cazador around my back and switched to Abomination.

It was just the two of us and there were monsters swarming everywhere. Earl had point, I kept looking back, which turned out to be smart because a couple Drekavacs crashed through a door behind us. I immediately wheeled about and started blasting. Silver buckshot ripped through their thin bodies, except this time I had to put several rounds into both of them before they came apart.

It was like each of these shattered aspects was getting tougher. That was troubling.

I got my confirmation of how that was happening a moment later as a Drekavac blundered around the corner right into Earl’s path. He ripped a long burst from his Tommy gun into the monster’s chest and head. It went down and ruptured into pieces as it hit the floor. The bits melted into glowing fog . . . which then flowed quickly along the ground and around the corner, to congeal around another Drekavac.

Earl shot that one at least a dozen times before it went down. Only the monster was still alive and crawling by the time I got there and put an anchor shot in its cranium. It came apart, and this time the fog oozed up the wall and disappeared into a vent.

For each of these we killed, some of their strength was being fed into the others. Each surviving Drekavac would get stronger and stronger, until there was just one left, who would probably be as powerful as the epic thing we’d just had to hit with a shit ton of anti-tank weapons to kill.

Oh, shit.

We reached the stairs to the basement before the Drekavac who’d breached the front door did. I could hear lots of gunfire coming from above and to a lesser extent below, which was a bad sign. Some of the monsters must have found another way into the basement.

“Aw, hell . . . ” Earl looked back the way we’d come from. There was a lot of fog flowing in that direction and the eerie ghost light was growing. There were a bunch of Drekavacs heading this way and this narrow stairwell was the best place to delay them, but it sounded like the Hunters below needed our help too. “Alright, Z, I’ll stay up here, you go to the bottom of the stairs and kill anything that gets past me. But no matter what, help Trip and Cody protect Sonya. I made a promise to her mother.”

“You going to wolf out?”

“Probably have to in a minute.” Twice in two nights not even close to the full moon and around friendlies? That showed how incredibly desperate our situation was. “I sure hope their glowy shit don’t work like silver.”

“I’ve got to warn you first. I think each one of these we kill, it feeds into the others. They’re getting stronger as they go.”

“You got a better idea than killing them?”

“Not yet.”

“This job ain’t ever easy.” As Earl said that, a bunch of Drekavacs rushed around the corner. It was an angry mob of cold fire skeletons, and they shrieked when they saw us. “Go, kid.”

I went down the stairs as fast as I could.

This part of the building was mostly storage rooms and the entrance to the archives. On the other side of that was a straight shot to Earl’s cell. There was gunfire coming from that direction. I wanted to help, but they had a defensive position, and I’d help them a whole lot more by not letting another squad of Drekavacs down the stairs to join in.

I could hear the chatter of Earl’s Thompson. Then a grenade went off. Then six fast shots from a revolver. During all that was a bunch of the hiss-cracks of the Drekavacs’ magic guns. Thankfully from the rate of fire, Silas Carver’s idea of guns was limited to the single shot types that he was familiar with from when he’d been alive. Earl appeared, stumbling down a few steps. There was a glowing impact on his leather jacket, but it hadn’t penetrated the incredibly tough minotaur hide.

Then Earl got shot in the cheek. His head snapped around. Blood hit the wall as the bolt tore through him.

“Earl!”

Except my boss didn’t fall. He grabbed onto the railing to steady himself, shook his head like he’d just taken a punch, and spit out a tooth. There was a bloody, smoking hole right through both sides of his face. He reached up and touched the ghastly wound.

“Nope. It ain’t even close to silver.” I could see the white of his jawbone through the dangling flesh as he talked. “I tell ya, that’s a relief!” Then Earl Harbinger leapt up the stairs and got right back into the fight. A second later a Drekavac was hurled violently down the stairs. I put a round of buckshot into its head as it bounced.

The next few seconds really sucked, as I stood there, useless, not helping anybody, torn over which direction I should go, but also knowing that I was supposed to hold this spot. From the sound, Earl was going all savage werewolf on them. He’d been doing this so long, a full transformation only took him a few seconds, and he could fight while doing it. The Drekavacs were shrieking and Earl was roaring. I don’t know which one was scarier. Wire body parts were being thrown down the stairs: arms, legs, heads.

And the whole time that damnable fog was drifting past my legs and into the archives. It was going to buff the monsters who were attacking the vault.

Then the Drekavacs started pushing