out.
'It's useless,' he chuckled through my futile strikes. 'I can't believe you're the one. This is pathetic. I was at least expecting a fight. Can you truly be the one who defeated Lord Machado?'
That name. Not again. No, not again. The bad chemical taste of fear was suddenly in my mouth.
My body was hoisted effortlessly into the air, and tossed casually across the room. I slammed into the wall near the bathroom and crumpled to the carpet. My head was swimming but I immediately began to crawl toward my stash of weapons on the bed. Now that I was a few feet away, I could see the giant shadow shape moving across the room, almost as if it were pacing, agitated. My assailant continued to speak. 'You must be important though. It took some time for the message to reach me. I was shocked to receive something from the other side. You have no idea how rare it is for the Old Ones to take the time to communicate with this world. Oh, the Dread Overlord is going to be happy when I deliver you. I don't know how you managed to get on his bad books, but you're bloody well fucked.'
As the big shadow moved, it passed in front of the sliver of light emanating from the balcony curtains. The shape was gone, and it was just the man again, but as he left the light, his body seemed to drift into smoke and the shadow returned.
Light. I need light. Whatever he was, he only seemed to have a body in the light. 'The Old Ones can kiss my ass… Stupid mollusks.' I reached the bed, but the shadow was on me in an instant, freezing tendrils clamped around my wrist. He jerked me around and dragged me across the floor toward the exit.
'Time to go. The Overlord awaits.'
I thrashed, fought, but only managed to give myself a nasty carpet burn.
There was a flicker of green light across the room. The black force around my wrist coalesced into normal human fingers. He was flesh again. The shadow man frowned.
Fireworks. They were setting off fireworks at the party.
My bare foot collided with his ribs. He stumbled back from the brutal kick, falling through the bathroom door. With no time to spare, I leapt up, reached the bed, and searched through the dark for a weapon. My hand closed around the leather-wrapped handle of my Ganga Ram, a Himalayan kukri. I jerked the massive knife from the scabbard.
A metallic screeching noise came from the shadows of the bathroom as something was torn free. The next firework blossomed red. The illumination was just enough for me to see the flash of a large white object hurtling at me. Flinging myself down, I could feel the wind as the toilet barely missed my head. It shattered the balcony door, tore through the curtains, and flew into the night.
More light from the party flooded into the room. The black shape glided out of the bathroom toward me, but it shrunk into the form of the Englishman as he left the shadows. He charged with a roar. 'Oh, it's on now,' I grunted as I got back to my feet and drove my knife forward. His face registered the shock as the curved blade of the Ganga Ram slammed through his ribs and out his back. He looked down in surprise. I twisted the blade with all my might, cutting upward through his torso.
I've managed to hack a few things to death with this knife over the last year. I should have been splattered with blood, but there was nothing, no liquid at all; it was like I was sawing through a bone-in ham. He glared back up, eyebrows creasing together in rage as more fireworks exploded outside, and clamped a brutal hand around my throat. The air to my brain was choked off as he hoisted me off the floor.
With a foot of steel driven through his guts, he shouted in my face. 'I tried to be polite, and now you have to make me do this the hard way. I wanted to deliver you to the Old Ones with your mind in one piece, but nooo, you have to be difficult…' I continued to saw the blade back and forth, searching for his heart, but he didn't seem to notice. 'Fine then. We'll just devour your brain and give the Old Ones a vegetable. They don't respect humans enough to know the difference anyway.' He paused as his neck suddenly ballooned up like a puffer fish. 'Snack time, little friend…' He opened his mouth wide, tilting his head back, and some thing came up his throat, black claws pushing past his lips, tiny red eyes blinking into existence over a circular mouth filled with fishhook teeth, crawling, struggling upward, heading right for my face, and strangely enough, I somehow could tell it was hungry.
Screw that!
I yanked the kukri out of his chest, lifted it high overhead, and swung down, chopping his hand off at the wrist. I fell to the floor, gasping for air as the pressure was released from my throat. His running shoe collided with my stomach as he punted me across the room. I rolled painfully to a stop by the balcony, realized that his severed hand was still clawing at my neck, and tore it away. The little shadow monster crawling out of the Englishman's mouth shrieked in an insanely high pitch as he seemed to choke it back down, and with a hard swallow, it was gone. He raised the stump of his ruined arm. Writhing shadow leapt from the end, instantly twisting and re-forming into a new hand. He balled the fresh hand into a fist, lowered his head, and started toward me.
A man has to know his limitations, and I was way out of my league on this one. Instantly back to my feet, I ran for the balcony, bare feet crunching on a piece of broken glass. 'Ouch! Ouch!' Heedless of the danger, I vaulted over the railing and plummeted into the party below.
Landing brutally hard, lightning cascading up my legs, I crashed through a rosebush and onto the porcelain shards of the broken toilet. I lay there, gasping for a moment. As a very large man, gymnastic feats were not really my specialty. I struggled through the plants and tumbled onto the tile by the pool, — scattering college students like bowling pins. My left ankle throbbed from the impact, but I stood, hobbling, and raised my kukri, which I had somehow managed not to impale myself on.
I roared up at my room, 'Come and get me!' The shadow man was leaning on the railing, glowering down at me, fireworks exploding overhead. There was enough light down here that I somehow knew he wasn't going to follow. Several partygoers shrieked, spilled their beers, and ran as I shook my kukri with one hand and extended my middle finger with the other. 'Yeah, I thought so, you pansy!'
'This isn't over,' the Englishman shouted over the music. He turned his attention away from me for a moment, and nodded at someone on the far side of the party. I had no idea who or what he was signaling, but it probably wasn't the wet tee shirt contest. He returned his attention to me and smiled. 'Well done. For now… but, dead or alive, I'll deliver you to the Dread Overlord eventually.'
'Better things than you have tried.'
'Farewell, Hunter. We will meet again… assuming you live through the next few minutes, that is.' He faded back into the shadows and was gone.
If I could get to my radio, I could rouse the team and chase this puke down. I took a step forward, flinching violently as the pressure hit a piece of broken glass impaled in my heel. Swearing, I paused to yank the tiny shard out and toss it into the bushes.
'Oh, man, dude, are you okay?' one of the bystanders asked stupidly. 'You totally like fell out the window!'
I snarled. He cringed back. The partiers gave me a wide berth. I glared at them angrily and anyone who was even vaguely contemplating saying anything retreated a few more feet. Turning my attention to gathering reinforcements, I started limping for the entrance, but there was a commotion on the far side of the pool. Some of the partygoers were screaming now, real cries of terror that could be heard even above the din of the dance music. I turned back toward them, dripping blood, holding a giant knife, and bellowed, 'What now?'
Zombies. Lots of zombies.
The party was officially over.
Someone had backed a package truck up to the entrance of the pool area. The rear doors were open and corpses were tumbling out. These undead were in an advanced state of decomposition. Their flesh was rotten and sloughing off. Many of them were missing eyes, noses, and ears. There were so many that they must have been literally stacked on top of each other inside the truck's hold.
There are many different variations of undead, with your basic zombie being the simplest of all. A zombie is just an animated corpse, wandering around in search of one thing: flesh. The big problem with zombies is that they multiply like rabbits. Their bites are always eventually fatal, and the bitten always rise as zombies themselves. Their poison travels instantly through the nervous system, and not even amputation of the bitten limb can stop the transformation. Basically, they're a major pain in the ass, the Monster Hunter's equivalent to cockroaches. Usually stupid, and normally slow, zombies are not much of a challenge for an experienced Hunter, provided that said Hunter has a decent gun and friends with guns. I was pretty much alone, had just gotten the crap kicked out of me, and was armed with only a knife. The kukri was a great big freaking knife, mind you, but still it was only a knife. Not
