I wasn’t the only one with crazy news to report. The South Africans had confirmed to Priest that there had been reports of isolated villages being found totally emptied of people, cooking fires still burning, vehicles still running, all with signs of tunneling nearby. Lee had managed to get a similar story to that of the Korean woman out of one of the Chinese Hunters about the underwater city. National security was one thing, but most Hunters realized that there were some threats out there a lot bigger than any one country. The PLA interpreter was going to have a cow, but none of us gave a crap about their lost submarine, when we were more worried about what had destroyed it. Julie had gotten rumors of strange new activity in the Paris underground from the French, and Earl had heard that one of the Russian companies had lost an entire team to an unknown entity that had begun terrorizing a mine in Siberia.
Earl had ordered us to meet back in his room. A cartoony world map had been bought from the hotel gift shop and affixed to the wall. Pushpins were stuck into various locations as more Hunters reported in. Over the last hour we’d gone through a fifty-pack of pushpins, and there were still more stories coming in.
“How could we have not heard?” Julie asked in amazement. “This is staggering.”
“It isn’t like we all hang out together, and you think our government-mandated secrecy is bad, we’re nothing compared to some of these places.” Earl read a message off of his phone, shook his head sadly, and stuck another pin into a comically distorted Mongolia. “More tunnels…Of course we’ve heard of some of these, but we always thought of them as random monster attacks, outbreaks, craziness…But this…” He stepped away, as if he was trying to see the whole picture.
The three of us studied the map. I couldn’t put my finger on what was troubling me. “Rates have been up before. When I first got hired we were at an all-time high.”
“Sure, but that was stateside, and mostly because of the private Hunting ban. It was individuals, monsters here and there, the natural growth of a predatory population that had lost the best thing that kept it in check. These, on the other hand…” Julie stroked her neck thoughtfully. “These are oddball events with bigger repercussions, and all over the last few years. MHI alone has faced two since then that if they’d gotten out—”
“Three,” Earl corrected. “Copper Lake was another tip-of-the-iceberg type event. If I hadn’t shut that down quick, it could’ve turned a lot worse. Ours were all connected, though. Machado was being used by the Old Ones, then Hood was working for the same Old One, and his daughter was somehow involved in Copper Lake.”
“But that was after we killed their god, Earl! That’s hard for a religion to bounce back from.”
“Christianity seemed to do all right,” he said.
“That’s because it didn’t stick…So, three events related tangentially to the minions of a specific Old One, but he, it…whatever, is toast. So do we think something like him is pulling these strings? These new events, they’re like ours, little things that could spiral out of control in no time.”
“A few,” I answered. “But there are so many where we don’t know what happened. People missing, or some type of creature shows up and then disappears, and most of them with an underground connection.”
“Like they’ve been sleeping for a long time and they’re all starting to wake up. But why, and where are they going? So we’ve got a rash of two types of events, things waking up, and other things poking us with a stick. Testing us.” Earl muttered, staring at the map. “These aren’t outbreaks…This is a mobilization.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know, but this is what Myers was seeing. And now I think I know why that son of a bitch was suffering from insomnia. Hell, makes you wonder what else he knew about and couldn’t tell us.”
“You should call Dwayne,” Julie suggested.
“Got his number?” It was a testament to how troubling the situation seemed that Earl wasn’t joking.
“So have we decided all these things are connected?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but hoping to be wrong. “We making this official?”
“I just don’t know how…We’ll need to talk to everyone, get as many Hunters on the lookout as possible,” Earl ordered. “Shouldn’t be a problem, though. From what I saw, word’s already gotten out. Most of us are a suspicious bunch by nature. After the bunch with Z started swapping stories, all the sharp Hunters know something’s up. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are ten maps just like this one in this hotel by now.”
“Thank goodness for this conference or we might not have put things together…” Julie trailed off.
“What?” Then I realized what she’d thought of. “The conference.”
“Thought of that already,” Earl said. “The timing seems a little suspicious to be holding the first annual one of these things. Almost like they wanted all these different bunches of Hunters to put their heads together.”
“One hell of a coincidence. Did the MCB want us to figure this out on our own?” Then I shook my head and answered my own question. “That doesn’t make any sense. They didn’t put this on, but if they were trying to keep these trends secret, why allow the conference to take place at all? Why not just send us all an email and say, ‘Attention, Hunters, be on the lookout for an invasion of mole people.’”
“Maybe it isn’t the MCB pulling the strings…” Earl said.
“Who then?” Julie asked. “Ick-mip has private organizers, but there’s no way they’d be allowed to do this without government approval.”
“Nobody. Never mind.” Earl looked around. Then picked up the notepad from the nightstand table and scribbled a brief note. Not now. Room might be bugged.
Julie and I glanced at the walls nervously.
Earl nodded, deadly serious.
What the hell had we gotten ourselves into?