'And you know my type how?' she asked, studying me carefully. I swallowed, wanting to shout 'Me.' Thankfully she continued before I had to answer. 'Yes, I know Grant comes off a little arrogant, but he really is a great guy. He's smart and ambitious. He was in Harvard Law School when we recruited him.'
Figures, I thought to myself. 'The CPA exam is way harder than passing the Bar,' I muttered.
'What?'
'Uh… nothing.'
'We hit it off when he arrived here. Grant's traveled the world. He's sophisticated, cultured, educated. He's done a lot of really interesting things. So he's kind of… confident. That comes off as cocky sometimes.'
Comes off as an ass. I bit my tongue. I knew the truth. I bet he drowned sacks of puppies for fun. In the distance Grant had dropped down and started doing pushups.
'Well, good for you guys… I've got to get some sleep.' I stood up to leave.
'Goodnight, Owen.'
'Yeah, 'night, Julie.' I wandered off. It figured that I had finally met the perfect woman, only to find out she wasn't interested in me. I kicked over the garbage can outside the barracks. Screw it. I was tired.
'What're you doing?' Trip asked me as he entered our tiny barracks room. The windows were open and loud insects chirped and whistled in the darkness outside.
'I don't know,' I answered honestly. I was sitting on my bunk, suitcase open on the floor in front of me. My right hand ached from the impact it had taken an hour earlier. 'Thinking about packing, I guess.'
'You didn't strike me as a quitter,' he said simply. 'That was an accident with Green. You didn't mean to hurt him. Milo says he'll be out of the hospital in a week. It's just his collar bone and a concussion.'
'I only hit him once.'
We had been practicing going hands-on. Never a good choice against a monster, but a necessary skill to have nonetheless. They had paired me up with Green, a muscle-bound former narc. It had gotten kind of competitive.
'Stuff happens,' Trip shrugged. 'Don't be a baby about it.'
'Sam said I wasn't being aggressive enough.'
'He probably shouldn't have said that to somebody who beat up a werewolf.' Trip sat on his bed. 'When Green wakes up, he'll be cool. It was an accident.'
I shook my head. 'No. It wasn't. I got angry. I didn't hold back. Look, man, this is why I should probably go. When I get mad, when I lose control, people get hurt.'
'You make it sound like you're the Hulk,' he laughed. 'You're training to be a Monster Hunter. We're supposed to hurt things. Come on, dude, what's the deal?'
Trip had become a good friend over the last few weeks of training, and I could tell that he did honestly want to help. I stared down at the open suitcase. 'You know I used to fight for money, right?' I continued, not looking up. 'A few years ago, I had a big one. My last one. Lots of cash on the table. The other guy was supposed to be a real badass. Supposedly he had killed a couple of people in prison. There were no rules, and it wasn't supposed to stop until one of us couldn't fight anymore. Last man standing got paid.'
'Why would you do that?' he asked, sincerely perplexed. Trip was a good man, and the idea of inflicting violence on another human being for no good reason was truly foreign to him.
I sighed. 'You've got to understand. My whole life, my father tried to prepare me for something. All he did was push. He had some sort of fucked-up vision of the future, and he wanted me to be ready for it. I guess I just needed to prove that I was as tough as he thought I was.'
'So what happened?'
'The other fighter really was a bad dude. Meanest I had ever dealt with. I couldn't take him. He just wouldn't quit. Then, something happened… Something snapped, broke loose. No pain, just focus. Like when Huffman tried to eat me. Next thing I knew, I had blood up to my armpits and I was kneeling on this guy while I hit him until my knuckles broke.'
Trip looked shocked. 'You killed him?'
'Almost, and I would have, but the promoters pulled me off. They managed to stitch his skull back together, but he lost an eye, and I've heard he's still all messed up… I would've killed him. And right then, I wanted to kill him, and for what? How stupid is that?'
'Pretty stupid.'
We sat in silence for a while, Trip not really knowing what to say. I knew from our talks that he was a devoutly religious man and was probably trying to think of how to politely tell me that I was surely going to hell. Finally I spoke. 'You know why I became an accountant?'
'Pays better than teaching.'
'I picked the most straight-laced, stereotypically boring thing that I could think of. My entire life I'd been taught to be a killer, but after that night, I just wanted to get as far away from it as I could.'
'But you still carried a gun everyday?'
'I didn't go looking for trouble, didn't mean I wasn't ready for trouble to look for me,' I answered.
'Beats hitting zombies with a pickax…' he muttered.
'And now here I am. In this place, where all the things I've spent the last few years trying to distance myself from are not only encouraged, they're mandatory. And it seems like I might actually be pretty good at this. But I'm worried…'
'That you'll hurt somebody who don't need hurting?'
'Yeah, something like that.' I clenched my scarred-up fists. My hand throbbed from where I had slugged Green. It had only been a brief instant, a flash of anger, but that was all it took.
Trip thought about it for a few long seconds, absently chewing on his lower lip, then stood. 'The way I see it, we're here to do good. I don't know about you, but I came here to stop monsters from hurting folks. The Lord's given you a gift, a weird one, but still a gift, and the fact that you're worried about misusing it means that you're not a bad guy. So put that suitcase away, man up, and let's get to class before Harbinger realizes we're late. He kind of scares me.' He thumped me on the shoulder, and walked out the door.
I waited a moment, listening to the angry buzz of the insects crashing against the window screen. Then I pushed the suitcase back under my bunk and went back to work.
I thought I understood discomfort and heat. I had lived in Texas for a few years, and I had grown up in the San Joaquin Valley of California. One was miserably hot and windy, and other was muggy from all of the open-air irrigation. But summer in the Heart of Dixie was a whole new type of evil. So hot that you couldn't think, and so wet you could almost drink the air. Summer had come to Alabama.
So of course this was the day when we were issued our body armor. It was heavy, and though well designed to be comfortable and breathable, during summers in Alabama a pair of shorts and a tank top were considered warm clothing. I was sweating profusely, not that that said much, considering that men of my bulk usually started sweating at room temperature, but this was particularly bad. Thankfully the armor came equipped with a CamelBak water bladder and drinking tube. As their ad so eloquently stated: Hydrate or Die.
Milo Anderson paced back and forth in front of the assembled Newbies. Today he was wearing a Violent Femmes T-shirt and his red beard had been braided into two separate forks, both seemingly long enough to rappel from. Occasionally he would stop before a Newbie, examine them critically, and then pause long enough to adjust some strap or buckle. He was the creator of the suit, as well as many of the other devices the Hunting teams used.
Grant Jefferson watched us smugly in our discomfort. He was wearing his armor, which had been tailored to suit him better. Holly had said that he was dashingly handsome, and even she, being so very jaded and cynical about men because of her background, found him very charismatic and charming. She told me that it was easy to see why Grant and Julie had hooked up. He was young, smart, good-looking, knew how to talk to people, and everybody loved him. I still wanted to kick his ass.
On Grant's shoulder was a patch with the green smiley face with horns that was the unofficial company logo, which only Harbinger's personal team wore. We had been told that the other teams made up their own logos. The only other team logo that I had seen here at the compound had been a fire-breathing warthog that Dorcas had engraved onto her plastic leg. Grant wore the smiley face with pride-apparently it was a real honor to end up on Harbinger's team. I had learned that he had only been a Hunter since the business had reopened, but he had shown so much potential in training that he had been picked to fill a void on what was considered the best team.
