Chapter 4
Twenty minutes later, the tie was undone, sleeves rolled up, stuffy decorum had been ditched, and I was at the far end of the hall, surrounded by a crowd of Hunters as I told them the story about facing off against the Dread Overlord in its home dimension. After the Australians had drawn attention, I’d picked up a mess of assorted Europeans, some Brazilians, two guys from India, and an absolutely stunning woman from South Korea. Apparently, obliterating a great Old One with a doomsday device designed by Isaac Newton was so awesome that it transcended all cultural and language barriers, plus it helped that I did great sound effects.
Careful to leave out the classified or embarrassing parts, such as me being the Chosen One and surviving zombie bites, Agent Franks’ real identity, the fact that the MCB had been infiltrated by a death cult, or that the Condition’s necromancer had once been a member of MHI, it still made for a pretty nifty story. Plus it had been a while since I’d had an audience where it was legal for me to actually tell it to. Everyone at MHI had already heard it a dozen times.
Earl and Julie came by at one point, with Earl just shaking his head in amazement. I wasn’t getting the information that he wanted, but I was certainly succeeding as MHI’s goodwill ambassador. Offending the gnomes and getting beat up that one time had been an aberration on my diplomatic resume. I could be perfectly decent at networking when I put my mind to it. Julie seemed rather proud of me, and gave me one of those wifely I knew you could do it smiles.
I folded the restraining order into a paper airplane and sailed it over to Julie without even interrupting my narrative. She caught, unfolded, and read it while mouthing something that looked suspiciously like ducking mother truckers, but I’m not very good at lip reading. Julie immediately whipped out her phone, surely to call MHI’s own attorneys. Our little spat with PT was about to get even uglier. You did not want to play business hardball against Julie.
I was surprised when Agent Archer had joined my crowd, though he had probably been sent over to make sure I wasn’t giving away any state secrets. So I pointed him out as one of the heroes of the Arbmunep fight, not that I had any idea what he had actually done during that particular fight, since I’d been rather preoccupied at the time. The young agent’s cheeks grew red with embarrassment, but since I’d now singled him out as one of the good guys, he was pretty much trapped into agreeing with me about how stupendous everything had been.
I finished the story with, “And the worst part, since the Dread Overlord wasn’t actually on Earth, we didn’t get to put in for the PUFF bounty!” Most of the Hunters laughed, while a couple of translators hurried to finish the story, and then their charges laughed too. A few of the Hunters didn’t join in, and these were the ones that thought I was full of crap. I couldn’t particularly blame them, since if I hadn’t witnessed the mountain-sized squid god, I wouldn’t have believed myself either.
One German in particular was looking at me like I’d pushed his grandmother off her walker. “You speak about creatures of unbelievable horror so flippantly, I wonder perhaps if you have ever actually seen one.” He was of average height, fit but not big, probably forty, with a neatly trimmed beard and a very stern demeanor. “A great Old One is nothing to joke about. Even speaking of them draws their ire.”
“You think talking about them makes them angry, try hitting one with an alchemical super weapon. I don’t think we’ve met…”
He immediately handed me a rather nice business card. “Klaus Lindemann. I am the commander of Grimm Berlin.” That was one of the companies that Earl had referred to as all right. Several of the other Hunters had apparently heard of the German team as well, because there were some impressed-sounding whispers from the crowd. I stuck the card in my pocket. “I intend no disrespect—”
“That’s normally what someone usually says right before they disrespect you,” I said as I handed him one of my business cards. Owen Z. Pitt. Combat Accountant.
“Yes…but your tale is absurd.”
“You don’t have to take my word for it.”
Lindemann sniffed. “I did not intend to.”
“Agent Archer!”
The Fed jumped, not used to being pointed out in a group of Hunters. He swallowed hard, and Archer was one of those skinny types with the pronounced Adam’s apple, so his discomfort was extra obvious. “Yeah?”
“Sorry about blowing your cover.” Several of the Hunters laughed at that, since the guys with black suits and earpieces were obviously MCB. It didn’t matter what country you were from, every Hunter knew about the MCB, if not personally, then at least by reputation. “Care to tell our honored guests about how me and Franks blasted the Dread Overlord?”
Archer was like a deer in the headlights. I knew from experience that he was pretty decent at lying to the press, but this wasn’t a bunch of ignorant dupes to be led around by the nose. These folks made their livings killing things that weren’t supposed to exist. “I…uh, can neither confirm nor deny…” He looked around nervously at all the waiting Hunters. “There’s an official MCB press release concerning the events in New Zealand…and…Shoot…That’s all I can say.”
“Thank you, Agent.” Just having the official type corroborate that something had happened was even better, because now their imaginations would fill in the blanks. It gave my story a certain air of legitimacy. “It was really neat. Giant alien death tree and crazy cultists. You guys would’ve loved it.” Archer realized too late that since he hadn’t simply shot me down, he had sort of verified my story to the others, which I’m positive hadn’t been his assignment. The young agent tried to be discreet as he fled the crowd, probably worried that his superiors were going to chew him a new one.
“It’s real enough,” an Englishman told Lindemann. “The New Zealand government has a mutual assistance treaty with the BSS.” His tone suggested that their feelings about their British Supernatural Service were equivalent to our opinion of the MCB. “Their Select Group were carrying on about one of our contracts at the time, but they left in a hurry to help damage control. Word from a chap on the inside was that they had to hide a big one.”
“I’ve seen the aftermath of this Arbmunep beasty,” the leader of the Australians said. “The whole area’s been cordoned off by military research. There’s a new building on the spot. Looks rather like a very unnecessarily big silo, and they won’t say what’s inside.”
Lindemann adjusted his sport coat. “So it seems that something extraordinary did occur in New Zealand.” The admission seemed to pain him. “I stand corrected, Mr. Pitt. You have my apologies.”
“I know what’s in that silo. They’re studying the Arbmunep. From what the cult leader told me, there are more of those things buried all over the world.” Earl had wanted us to gather intel, so it was worth a shot. “And that’s not the weirdest thing we’ve seen lately. MHI has had a few really odd cases over the last few years…Mr. Lindemann used the word extraordinary. I’d say that fits. What about you guys? Anything extraordinary in your neck of the woods?”
One of the other Europeans, a stout older man, leaned forward and said something to his translator. The translator hurried and spoke. “Like this thing that came from underground, there are things beneath Serbia. Tunnels from the middle of the world. The…diggers?” The older man repeated himself. “The diggers of the holes are coming into the light. These are new things, but legend says they have been here before.”
“Us too,” said a bulky man with spiky black hair. “I am from Orzel Biaiy Wojskowy Zawierajacy Kontrakt…White Eagle Military Contracting of Poland. Over last two years, we have seen many things come from below. Monsters came out of ground, revealed entrance to tunnels beneath Lodz. Things were…how you say…hibernating. For a very long time, but they woke up and now they are gone.”
Several others began to speak at once, talking about strange new monsters awaking and dragging themselves out of the earth. My Portuguese sucked, mostly because I’d learned it magically from a five-hundred-year-old dialect, but I could’ve swore one of the Brazilians said something about whole towns going missing. His translator was still trying to catch up when one of the Indians began telling us about how their government had forbidden his company from investigating a village that had been mysteriously depopulated on the border with Pakistan. Both countries were blaming the other, but the initial army scouts had reported finding freshly dug tunnels that led to what appeared to be the ruins of a city deep beneath the surface.
That had only been two months ago.