Finally she broke the silence.
'Want to order pizza?'
'So you know all about me because of that file,' I said after swallowing a blob of cheese and pineapple. Delivery had been relatively swift, the pizza was good, and surprisingly enough Julie seemed to be enjoying our conversation. After the first few awkward minutes she had warmed up to my attempt at flirting, and was at least tolerating me. Her smile was contagious, and I felt better than I had in weeks. The sun was starting to set, and long orange shadows were cast through my barred apartment windows.
'Scary, isn't it? How much they keep track of people,' she said, trying to be polite and not talk with her mouth full, and failing miserably. 'You should see what mine says. If you read it you would probably be scared to be around me. They think I'm totally nuts.'
'Oh, I don't know about that,' I replied, going for another slice, trying not to lean forward on my bad leg too much. 'You don't seem nuts to me, except for the whole good versus evil zombie werewolf thing at least.'
She noticed my predicament and helpfully shoved the box closer on my little coffee table. My furniture was sparse and mostly cheap junk, but at least the place was clean, even if it was only because my mom had visited recently.
'They think everybody in this line of work is certifiable. They even think that about their own guys that Hunt.'
'Like the two that visited me in the hospital?' I asked.
'Myers and Franks? Myers isn't so bad. Believe it or not, he worked for us before the government recruited him, but that was a long time ago. He had a bit of a falling out. Franks on the other hand is a jerk. I'm surprised he didn't kill you just to be on the safe side. We have to deal with the Feds once in a while. They watch us like hawks. They're actually in a special unit in the Justice Department, the Monster Control Bureau, that deals with problems like you.'
'Problems like me, gee thanks. Anyway, I don't want to talk about those guys.' I really did not. I wanted to talk about her. 'Like I was saying, you've seen my file, so you have the advantage. Tell me about you.'
'Well, first off, I'm in a relationship if that's what you want to know,' she replied mischievously. 'I'm just here as a professional courtesy.'
Ouch.
'Really, I wasn't trying to say anything like that,' I responded quickly.
'Owen, you may be a great accountant, and one heck of a shooter, but you're a horrible liar.'
She leaned back on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table next to the pizza box. I noticed that she was wearing heavy-duty boots that did not really match her conservative suit. As she made herself comfortable and her jacket fell open revealing her fitted shirt, I realized two things: a) She had a great body, and b) she was carrying a gun in a leather pancake holster on her right hip.
Not able to comment on a) in a polite manner, I instead remarked on b).
'What are you carrying?'
'This?' She reached around, drew the gun, dropped the magazine, racked the slide and expertly caught the ejected round in her off hand. She then passed it over to me with the action open while she rattled off the stats only another gun nut would appreciate. 'Commander-sized 1911, Baer slide and frame, match barrel. Heinie night sights. Thin Alumagrips. Bobtail conversion to the frame. All Greider tool steel parts. Trigger and action job. It's a good shooter. I've carried this one for a year now.'
I examined her gun. It was a gorgeous piece of work. The slide was so smooth it felt like it was on rollers. It was obviously used hard, but well cared for.
'Mind if I try the trigger? I'm a 1911 guy myself.'
'Go for it,' she said with a grin. She was proud of her gun.
The break was clean and light with no detectable creep. It was a very good trigger job.
'Who did the work?' I asked. It was obviously a high quality custom build. Being a serious competitor on a limited budget I did my own gunsmithing. My stuff tended to be ugly but functional. This specimen was obviously functional but it was so well fitted that it was almost a work of art.
'I did most of it myself,' Julie said with obvious pride.
'Will you marry me?' I blurted.
She laughed, and it was such a pretty laugh. I reluctantly handed her gun back. She reinserted the magazine, chambered a round, and then took the mag out to top it off with the extracted round she still had in her hand. She paused for a second and then tossed it to me. Reflexively I snatched it out of the air.
Examining the cartridge, I noticed it was a strange design. The case was normal brass, but the bullet itself was different. It was shaped like an ordinary. 45 bullet, except that it appeared to be a standard jacketed hollowpoint, with a shiny metallic ball filling the cavity. The two pieces appeared to be sealed together into a solid projectile.
'What's this?
'Contrary to the Lone Ranger, silver bullets really suck compared to good old-fashioned lead. Silver's too hard, and it doesn't fully engage the rifling. It's lighter than lead, so you get really lightweight projectiles with lousy accuracy. It's pretty useless except for one thing: it's the only thing that will kill some of the stuff we face.'
'Why is that, anyway?' I asked.
'Nobody knows for sure, but we have some theories. Most popular is it is a violent reaction of evil creatures to the thirty pieces of silver that Judas was paid. The Vatican's Hunter team says that it is because silver is a pure metal that represents goodness, while lead is a base metal of the earth. You get other weird ideas from Wiccans and mystics, but even science is stumped why silver works so much better on bona fide evil creatures. All we know is that it does. Lycanthropes can't regenerate, and even vampires feel pain from silver.'
'Looks like a Corbon Pow'r Ball.' That was a type of regular defensive ammunition that I had used a few times before. It used a ball stuck in a hollow cavity designed to squish back to force expansion of the bullet on impact, thereby increasing the severity of the wound.
'Good call. That's who we stole the idea from. The ball in front is pure silver. It penetrates well, and as the silver is forced back it expands the traditional lead slug around it. Usually the silver fragments off after a few inches and leaves a separate wound cavity. Best of both worlds. Still works like a regular bullet, shoots like a regular bullet, but enough silver to do a number on evil. We have them made for us specifically. They cost a fortune, so we only make them in. 45 for pistols and subguns, and. 308 for rifles. When we need lots of silver up close and fast, we use a modified silver double-aught buckshot.'
'Now you're talking my language.' I held up the bullet. 'So I guess that's what the Feds were going to shoot me with if I had been infected.'
'Nope, they use a sintered metal. Silver powder encased in a polymer matrix. Neat stuff, but the company that makes it only sells to the government.' She caught the bullet when I tossed it back. She loaded it back in the magazine, inserted that back into her 1911 and reholstered without looking.
'You really know your stuff.'
'Thanks. I love my job… I really shouldn't have another piece, but this stuff is great,' she said as she went for another slice of pizza. 'I think you'll fit right in at MHI. It really is a great thing that we do, and we're a good company to work for.'
'So about this 'relationship'?' I used my fingers to make quotation marks. Julie rolled her eyes at me behind her glasses.
'You don't quit, do you?'
'Isn't that why you guys want to hire me?'
'Tenacity good. Stalking bad.'
'Okay, agreed, stalking bad. Especially when the stalkee is packing heat. So are you and Earl an item?'
Julie snorted and started to choke on her pizza. I couldn't tell if she was trying to laugh or not die. So I didn't know if I should be in on the joke, or try to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
'Earl? You've got to be kidding me. No. Oh no. Hell no. We're related. This is a family business. Why would you even think that? Earl's much older than me.'
'He doesn't look that old.'
'Let's just say that the man has aged well. Earl has been like a dad to me. He pretty much raised me and my brothers.' There was an audible trace of her Southern accent when she said that.
