"Much. Doctors say I'm healing fast. I got my cast off, and I can start doing upper body exercise again as long as I'm really careful not to push too hard."
"You lift?"
"A little bit," I answered. In truth, before the Incident I had been pushing just over a 400-pound bench press. I didn't look it, but that was the disadvantage of being both tall and stocky. Because of the injuries on my chest and the amount of time off, I knew that it was going to take a while to get up to that weight again.
"Careful you don't hurt yourself. You got banged up good. In fact I've never seen anybody take on a werewolf like that and live. Not without some good silver weapons at least, but tangling hand to hand, that's crazy. You were lucky." He talked about werewolves like it was a common and everyday item of no special interest. Like a normal person would refer to a vacuum cleaner or a toaster.
"Mr. Pitt… Sorry… Owen," Julie started, "what we're about to say may sound a little weird, but after your recent experience you of all people will understand that we're not crazy. Earl and I represent a company called Monster Hunter International."
"Okay. I'm listening." Julie could tell me that she was from the moons of Jupiter and I would give her my full attention. Less weird than that? Piece of cake.
"MHI is a private organization, and we handle monster-related problems. I guess you could say that we are in fact Monster Hunters."
"Sounds reasonable." I smiled. It didn't sound reasonable at all. It sounded wacky as all get out, but if I told a shrink about my Huffman experience I would be in a padded cell inside of fifteen minutes. So I listened.
"As you now are aware, monsters are very real. They're out there, and are a serious threat to the world. Our company specializes in neutralizing monster threats," she said.
"Good money in that?" I asked jokingly.
Harbinger reached inside his jacket, pulled out a plain envelope and tossed it to me. I caught it.
"What's this?"
"There's a federal bounty paid on undesirable unnaturals. It's called the PUFF," Harbinger stated.
"Puff?"
"Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund," Julie answered. "Teddy Roosevelt started it when he was president. PUFF is a tool for controlling monster populations. It's a big source of income for MHI. We make the rest in contracts set up with various municipalities, organizations, and private individuals with monster problems."
"Go ahead and open it," Harbinger suggested. "The Feds weren't going to tell you about it, but you killed a newly blooded adult werewolf by yourself. That makes you the sole recipient of any bounty for that particular creature. I took the liberty of doing the paperwork for you. I didn't think you would mind."
Inside the envelope was an ordinary-looking check. Sure enough it was from the Department of the Treasury, with PUFF stamped in green ink under their insignia. It was made out to one Owen Zastava Pitt in the amount of $50,000.
I think that the noise I made could best be described as a squeak, only less manly. This could not be real. My job, which I had been fired from so recently, had paid less than that in a year. "You have got to be freaking kidding me!" Fixing Julie with an incredulous look, I did my best to raise a single eyebrow.
"Nope," Julie laughed. She had a beautiful sounding laugh. "That check is totally legit. The bounties change depending on the severity of the monster populations, and the number of human casualties. In this case lycanthrope attacks are at an all-time high, and this particular specimen had already taken a few victims the night before. Now if he had been older, or had eaten more people, then you would be looking at a bigger bounty."
"So you're telling me that the government gives people money for killing werewolves?" I was prepared to take her word for it, but I was definitely going to limp down to the bank and try to deposit this thing as soon as they left.
"Yes, and other types of unnaturals."
"Others? So what else is out there?"
She shrugged. "Lots of things, but I don't want to get too far off of the subject. If you don't agree to our offer then anything I tell you can never be shared with the general public, or the government will arrange for you to have a chainsaw accident or something equally bad, and I'm not kidding about that one bit. They have a strict policy of keeping all of this secret. So before I tell you what else is out there, let me ask you if-"
I cut her off. "Zombies? Are there really zombies?"
"Owen, please, I need to…"
"Yes, there are zombies. A whole bunch of different kinds. Slow ones, fast ones. Nasty bastards," Harbinger said.
"Vampires?"
"Oh yeah. And let me tell you, they ain't the nice charming debonair kind of thing you see on TV, those suckers are meaner than hell. Trust me on this one; pop culture makes them all intellectual and sexy, there ain't nothing sexy about getting your carotid artery ripped out. There're actually a mess of different kinds of undead."
Julie sighed as she gave up on her pitch. I was going to find out what exactly was real, and Harbinger was more than willing to talk. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and also getting a kick out of Julie's discomfort.
"Bigfoot, the Yeti?"
"Yep, but no bounties because they ain't really a problem."
"Chupacabras?"
"Goat suckers. They'll tear you up."
"Giant mutant animals?"
"Sure, but the Japanese have cornered that market."
"Sea monsters?"
"Yes, but only bounties on the evil kind."
"Wow, no kidding? Space aliens?"
"No intelligent little green men, if that's what you're thinking of. If those are out there we haven't ever dealt with them."
"Ghosts?"
"We have a strict policy: we only hunt things that have physical bodies. No physical body, no contract, and no way to collect a bounty either. We stick with things that are flesh and blood, or at least bone, exoskeleton, or slime."
We continued on like that for a few minutes, with me thinking of every creature from every horror movie I had ever seen, and Harbinger letting me know if it was real or not. Every answer he gave was in total seriousness. If he was making any of this crazy monster stuff up, I sure would hate to play a game of poker against him.
Finally after asking about the creature from the black lagoon and finding out that that was actually based on a true story, Julie had had enough and jumped in. She elbowed Harbinger in the ribs. "Sorry guys, back to business. Owen, we're looking for new Hunters. Because of the nature of what we do, we can't exactly advertise. Usually we meet people through our business who have monster experience, and who have handled themselves well."
"I did okay, I guess."
Julie laughed again. Harbinger smirked. She pulled a DVD case out of her purse. "Do you mind?" I shook my head and she stood up and put the disk in the player and turned on my TV. "I don't think you've seen this. As far as your former company is concerned, and as far as the Dallas PD knows, this doesn't exist."
"Put it on channel three. There you go."
It was a black and white security video of the fourteenth floor of my former office building. The screen was split into four squares, each with a different view. It was surprising where some of the cameras were pointing, as I had never been aware of any cameras in those locations. There was even one that had a good view of Huffman's office.
"They have hidden cameras all over the place. I guess you folks have a big problem with employee theft," Harbinger stated. I knew I should never have taken those Post-It notes home.
The video started. The digital readout showed the time as 8:05. I thought that I looked silly, as most people do when they watch video of themselves. There was no sound, but it unfolded pretty much exactly as I remembered it. Only this time I was surprised by how fast everything happened. The transformation that had seemed to take forever actually happened rather quickly when seen from a strange angle in clinical detachment. The entire battle had been over in a matter of minutes, yet for me time had dilated down so that each fraction of a second had been an eternity. The creature was not nearly as intimidating on the screen as he had been when his hot breath was straining at my face. The third camera winked into static as my body was put through the ceiling tiles. We combatants would disappear from the cameras for a moment, only to reappear jerkily in another frame a few seconds later. In black and white I was surprised how plain all of our blood appeared on the walls. Finally I watched as I snapped the werewolf's neck and pushed the desk out the window.
I realized I was breathing hard.
Julie quietly shut the TV off and carefully placed the DVD back in its case.
"You just did okay, huh? Looks to me like you put up an amazing fight. You could have given up a bunch of times. You would be surprised. Most people faced with something out of their nightmares will just freeze up. Their brains can't begin to process what they're seeing, and by then it's too late, and next thing you know something from the great beyond is flossing with their spine. Hunters don't freeze. Hunters fight."
"Listen, I'm just a normal guy. I'm an accountant even. It doesn't get any more normal than that!" I exclaimed in defense of my average life.
Julie pulled a manila file folder out of her purse.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Your secret file from the Department of Homeland Security."
"If the government didn't want it stolen, they shouldn't just leave it out where any master hacker can break in and get it," Harbinger explained patiently.
"Owen Zastava Pitt, age 24. Born in Merced, California… Zastava?" Julie asked.
"My mom's family is mostly mixed Czech and Serb. It's an old family name. Like the place that made those little cars," I answered.
"Little cars?" she asked.
"You know, the Yugo."
"Oh." She continued, "Black belt in two martial arts. You wrestled in high school and took the state championship heavyweight division two years in a row. Homeland Security has you flagged because you're considered a militant right-wing gun nut. You became involved in competitive shooting at eight years old, and have a master rating in International Practical Shooting. You've placed in the top five in several different national level three-gun tactical competitions. You were ranked as one of the top young shooters in the country, though you've slipped over the last few years."
"Working too many hours, hard to keep up the practice routine." My father had been more drill instructor than dad, trying to prepare us for some kind of future apocalypse that existed in his paranoid imagination. I could hit targets at a quarter mile with a rifle before I could ride a bike. When normal kids went to summer camp and made crafts out of beads and twigs, my brother and I had gone on miniature death marches with giant rucksacks. Other children got sports, I got hand-to-hand combat training. I suppose showing up in a government database shouldn't have been too shocking.
"You tried to join the Army but were turned down due to some minor health problems. DHS also notes that you've participated in illegal pit fighting and in illegal sports gambling organizations."
I cringed, it not being something I was real proud of now.
"It says here that you earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in six years total, top of your class, passed the CPA exam the first time. National Honor Society," Julie continued.
After coming within a couple heartbeats of ending another fighter's life, I had devoted myself to being as boring as possible, no more pushing the limits, nothing but normal. And what was more normal than an accountant?
"You speak five languages fluently, mostly because of your extremely varied family background, and know enough to get by in several others. Your psychological profile says that you're a pathological overachiever with severe overcompensating tendencies as a result of your relationship with your father, and the fact that you were always the picked-on fat kid while growing up."
"Does it actually say 'fat kid'?" I asked in total bewilderment.
"Actually it says it in some sort of psychological mumbo-jumbo about body image and self-esteem, but I'm just paraphrasing."
"I wasn't fat. I was big-boned." I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temples. I was amazed that all of this was from some government database. Chalk up a few more points for my antiauthoritarian side.
"Look, Owen, you're not a normal person; none of us are normal, either. MHI is a family business, my family. My great-great-granddad founded the company, five generations of Hunters. You haven't seen weird until you've met my family, so don't feel bad." Julie patted my knee. She touched me! I perked right up.
"We're not looking for normal people. Normal people scream and run and get eaten. You have to be a little different to do the kind of stuff that we do. I mean, heck, looking at your shooting scores, I've been shooting pistols since I was a little kid, and your classifications blow mine away. Your National Match rifle scores are equal to mine, and I'm the team sharpshooter."
As Julie said this I realized that I had in fact met the woman of my dreams. Attractive, smart, and a shooter? Wow.
"I don't know. I don't have any experience with this kind of thing. Aren't you better off with soldiers or Marines or Navy SEALs and stuff like that? My gosh, I'm an office dweeb."
Harbinger answered this time. "We have all of those, and we also have former truck drivers, school teachers, farmers, doctors, a priest and a stripper, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It comes down to finding people who don't have a problem coping with weirdness. The best Hunters are people whose minds are… flexible."
"Well… the pay seems good," I said as I held up the check.
"Keep in mind that was for you on a solo bounty. When you work with a team you share bounties with the team, and the company. However, people who try monster hunting as individuals usually get real dead, real quick. Working with backup is the only way to stay alive. But with the amount of business that we do, the pay's good," Harbinger said.
"How good?"
Harbinger shrugged. "We have a real problem with our experienced people retiring and buying small countries."
"I'm guessing it's dangerous?"
Julie shrugged. "I won't lie to you. It's super dangerous. Our job is to go head to head with the forces of evil. We lose a lot of people, but with well trained groups that work together as a team, we do better than any other group of Hunters, and that includes the Feds."
I sat silently in thought. My visitors didn't say anything for a moment. Finally Julie tried one last thing.
"Look, I'm going to tell you the truth. We have the most insane job in the world, many of us die young, and sometimes in really horrible ways. But this is the best job there is. It's never boring, and you get to do something really worthwhile. We're the pros, the go-to people when all hell's broken loose. When the situation is totally hosed, we're the ones they call. We do the job that nobody else can do, and we do it good." She said this with deep and sincere emotion. Julie obviously had a passion for her work.
I absently rubbed my facial scar. A random thought popped into my mind and I instantly muttered it under my breath.
"What was that?" asked Julie.
"A calling. Is hard, but is good."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, just something an old man said to me once. Short straw." I thought about the strange dream that I had had in the hospital. Had it happened while I was technically dead?
"Huh?"
"Never mind." I had to admit, I was interested in what they had been telling me, and I was a real chump when it came to a pretty girl, especially one who was smart, and into guns, to boot.
This was crazy. I had spent the last few years trying to be average just for once, until my boss had tried to have me for dinner and life had pulled the rug out from under me. The smart thing to do would be to push this whole incident to the back of my mind, and forget it ever happened.
But I did need a job, and Owen Z. Pitt, Monster Hunter, had a certain ring to it.
Ah, what the hell.
"Tell you what, Mr. Harbinger, Ms. Shackleford. I'm going to go down to the bank and try to deposit this check. If it's real, and I don't get arrested for trying to pass a make-believe check, I'm going to believe everything that you said. I'm in, on two conditions."
They waited for my terms. I paused as I screwed up my courage.