"I'm not going to lie to her."
"I don't want you to. But if the choice comes down to having the world blow up, or having a painful Shackleford family reunion, personally I would rather have the reunion."
"Why don't we just go speak to him ourselves?"
"He's real particular who he talks with," Milo whispered. Holly sounded the horn. She actually held it down for a full ten seconds. "Just stop by my workshop tonight, and we'll talk then. And I've got a piece of hardware I want you to try out. I think it might actually suit your personality."
"Little green book-keeper visor that clamps to my helmet?"
"Nah. Full auto, magazine-fed, 12-gauge shotgun."
My earlier hunch had been correct. Milo Anderson was a mad genius.
The drive back to Booneville and the return flight to the compound were uneventful. The rest of the Hunters were busy reading through old books or making phone calls. I helped give a short debriefing about the information we received from the Elf Queen. At the end of the little meeting I was taken to task for not telling the others about the Tattooed Man from the dreams.
"You should have said something. We could have been researching him too. Who knows what clues that might have turned up?" Julie snapped at me. She was tired and discouraged from a long day of research. I couldn't really blame her.
"Sorry. I didn't know. I thought they were just normal dreams."
"Yes, but your dreams are somehow tied to this case. I don't know how, but until we figure it out, you need to report every single dream you have." She pushed away from the table and stood to leave. "I'll go see if I can find any records matching the Tattooed Man's description. If you will excuse me, I've got a hundred years of dusty garbage to read."
After she stormed off, Harbinger assigned me to go to the range and help coach the remaining Newbies with their pistol shooting. At least there was one thing that I was good at. I stopped by the armory and picked up another pistol on the way. I needed to replace my poor broken Kimber. Stupid vampire.
There was an absurd number of weapons to choose from. The armory was actually a concrete bunker with a bomb-proof door, filled from floor to ceiling with weapons. I could spend hours in that room fondling and drooling over the various guns. There was a wall dedicated to just.45 caliber handguns: Colt, Springfield, Kimber, H&K, CZ, Sig, S&W, Beretta and other lesser known brands. I picked out a lightly customized CZ 97B. I was always a sucker for a big.45. Ten rounds in the mag, plus one in the chamber. I could carry it cocked and locked; it would not be in the armory if it had not passed the reliability test with our ammo. I took the CZ, an inside-the-waistband holster, and several extra magazines. Dorcas would make sure that it came out of my check.
That evening I stopped by Milo's workshop. It was a corrugated steel building located behind the main office. All manner of tools and gadgets were hung on the walls. Drill presses, welders, machine tools and worktables filled almost every square foot of the large space, leaving only narrow foot trails to navigate through the mess. A large American flag was taped up on the far wall. Huge speakers mounted in the corners were playing Oingo Boingo. Sparks flew as Milo used a grinder on some sort of massive device that appeared to be a harpoon launcher. He lifted his plastic face shield when he saw me coming.
"Ooo-wen. What's up, my man?" He bobbed his head to "Only a Lad."
"Milo, what the hell is that thing?"
"Harpoon launcher."
"What for?"
"In case we need to harpoon something."
I nodded slowly. I think even by the bizarre standards of Monster Hunters, there were still a few of us who marched to the beat of a slightly different drummer. In another corner there was a stuffed head mounted on the wall. It looked kind of like an alligator, but it had antlers. I did not dare ask if it was real.
"Check this thing out. We can still hit the range while there is a little bit of light left." He led me to a workbench where a strange-looking gun was mounted in a vise.
"Saiga?" I asked. That was a Russian shotgun that was based upon the action of an AK.
"At first. On this one I mounted an adjustable ACE stock, with recoil pad of course, FAL pistol grip, holographic sight system, EOTech in particular, night vision compatible. Full rail system, so you can mount lights or IR illuminators, or as you can see here, a Tula 6G15 40mm grenade launcher, front-loading, single-shot. The barrel has been cut down to twelve inches, modified choke, gave it the Vang comp treatment also so the patterns are good and tight and recoil is softer. I modified the trigger group, so top position is safe, middle is full, bottom is semi. I've got the gas adjusted so you are looking at about 700 RPM on full."
He was speaking my language. "Don't these only come with five-shot magazines?"
"I've got a bunch of nine-round box mags, and two twenty-round drums. I've tested them all, all are reliable, but on full you can run through the nine rounder in a second, so use it sparingly. Go ahead, check it out."
I gently picked up the massive weapon. It was short, but it was thick and heavy, and that was while it was empty. Add almost a box of shells and a grenade and it would be even more so. I worked the action. The bolt was slick and the spring was powerful. Milo had thoughtfully added a shelf to the safety so that it could be operated with the trigger finger. It pointed better than it looked when I snapped it into position.
"What about specialty munitions?"
"There is a gas regulator at the end of the hand guard. I machined a new one so that it now has three positions. If you have the regulator in the right spot for the right ammo, it isn't going to malfunction."
I ran my finger along the regulator, and found detents for the different power levels. There was also a mystery button. When I pushed it a hinge unlocked, and an eight-inch, heavy-duty bayonet was released. The blade was absurdly sharp and thick. With a flick of the muzzle it locked into place with a snap. It was not the world's best-balanced spear, but I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of it.
"No freaking way. That is awesome."
"I got the idea off of Czech CZ52, but I improved it. It folds to the side, out of the way of the grenade launcher. You don't hardly even know it's there until you need it. Bottom edge is good cutting steel, on the top edge is a silver inlay. You stick this in a lycanthrope and it's going to know it."
"Why did you paint it brown?" I asked as I slowly turned the monstrous weapon over in my hands. It felt good. I realized I was grinning like an idiot.
He shrugged. "I'm tired of black guns. Everybody has black guns. I wanted this to be a little different. Plus black gets hot in the sun. I tried to give it kind of a desert-tiger-stripe thing. So do you like it?"
"Milo… This is the coolest gun I have ever seen in my life. And I've seen a lot of guns. How does it shoot?"
"Let's go find out. From what I've seen from you in practice, and from what Julie told me about your shooting on the freighter, I have been waiting for somebody worthy of Abomination."
Abomination? That was just too cool. Milo handed me a sack of loaded magazines. "Okay, just one more question. Exactly how many gun laws does this break?"
Milo's red eyebrows scrunched together in thought. He started to count on his fingers, and then thought better of it.
"All of them."
The Abomination shot far better than I had expected it to. It was not sleek, it was not stylish, it could never be considered pretty. But it was reliable, and it was amazingly fast. The front-heavy weight swung quickly, and the heft helped keep the barrel down as I poured shell after shell into the targets. The holosight was amazingly fast. At close range you just put the target into the giant floating circle and pulled the trigger. I knocked down steel plates, I dusted clay pigeons out of the sky, and I put slugs into pie-plate-sized targets at a hundred yards with ease. The mag changes were so fast that it put my old reloading trick to shame. If I felt the need I could keep the rate of fire high enough to melt the barrel off of the mutant shotgun from hell.
I even got to run through a dozen flour-filled practice grenades, and even a handful of high explosive shells. Shove them in the front of the stubby launcher until they click, pull on the absurdly heavy trigger, and launch a blob of deadly high explosive out to the end of the range. The explosions threw clouds of red Alabama clay high into the air. What's not to love about that? By the last grenade I had figured out the approximate amount of holdover necessary to get hits out to two hundred and fifty yards. Well, perhaps not hits, but like the old saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
By the time I had emptied all of the magazines, it had been dark for hours, and I was standing in a sea of spent plastic hulls. My clothing reeked of unburned powder, and the muscles in my face hurt from smiling. What can I say? I'm a gun nut.
"Oh my gosh. That is so cool," I gushed. "I have to have one of these. This thing is going to rock against undead."
Milo was obviously proud of his latest creation. I had no idea how much he was paid by MHI, but whatever it was, he certainly deserved more. "Go ahead and take it. It's yours."
"For real?" I said, putting the warm gun over my shoulder.
"Yeah, you get to be the beta tester. If any other Hunters want one I can build more. Personally, I'm going to stick with my carbine. Abomination is a little on the clunky side for me."
"Thanks, dude." Christmas had come early for Owen Z. Pitt.
"You can consider it bribery. Remember what I was talking about earlier? About that…" He drew in close. I felt rather conspiratorial. "Look, here's the deal, after Julie's mom was lost on a mission, her dad kind of withdrew from the world. He spent all of his time down in the archives. He read and studied every book we had, and then he started gathering more from all over. It became his thing. You think Julie is smart? She gets that from Ray. He was probably the smartest Hunter we have ever had. If anybody has heard of this Cursed One it would be him."
"What happened to her dad? Why the falling out?"
"From all of his studying, he learned things that no human should have ever learned. It was stupid. Ray loved his wife and tried something desperate to get her back. It did not go according to plan."
"So why doesn't Julie want to speak to him, and why does her grandfather and her uncle freak out at the mention of his name?"
Milo jumped about a foot off of the ground when he heard Julie speak. "Because my dad is dangerous and insane." We had not heard her approach. I stupidly removed my ear plugs. I had shut down the amplification to avoid wasting the batteries. I found myself wishing that I had left them on.
"It didn't go according to plan?" Julie snapped at Milo. She strode between us, and stopped directly in front of him, arms folded. She was quite a bit taller than he was. "Didn't go according to plan? Don't you think that's a bit of an understatement?"
"Well… I suppose that you could say…"
"According to plan? According to plan? Milo, all hell broke loose. Literally. Ninety-seven Hunters were killed, and it was only a miracle that we didn't suck all of Alabama into another dimension. Even then the government shut us down, and put all of us out of work. Monster attacks on innocent people went through the roof because we weren't around to stop them, and Dad is responsible for that too." Milo shrank a little in the face of the onslaught. She whirled and faced me. "And you. What did I tell you before we left Georgia?"
"Stay out of your business?" I answered, feeling like an idiot.
"Do I need to put that on flashcards? Do I need to have it branded on your forehead? I could have it put on backwards; that way you could read it in the mirror." She was seething. "Were you two going to try and get me to talk to Dad? What the hell were you thinking?"
"Julie, listen. The bad guys want to destroy time. That sounds like a bad thing. We have seven Masters tromping around working as a gosh-darn team for heck's sake, and it has even scared the elves and the Feds. If the bad guys get to the Place of Power and turn on their evil gizmo, we could be screwed. Ray can probably tell us where that's going to be," Milo asserted.
"Yeah. What he said," was my addition to the argument. Julie gave me the evil eye.
"Owen. Listen to me very carefully. You have no idea what level of trouble we are talking about here. The reason Milo thinks my dad is going to know where this evil place is, is because it is similar to the insane stunt that he pulled. He risked the lives of every living person for thousands of miles."
"He did it for a good reason," Milo insisted. "He was crazy with grief. Your dad was desperate."
"He risked the lives of millions to try to bring back one single person who was already dead. That is the definition of insanity!" she raged, grabbing Milo by the shoulders and shaking him violently. "Don't you get that? My dad did evil things. He is one of the bad guys. If I had known just how far gone he was I would have shot him myself."
"Ray did evil things, but he wasn't in his right mind. I'm not saying that we should let him out, just that you should talk to him. Get information, prevent another big problem. If he could help us stop the Cursed One, then it would be a way for him to make up for some of what he did," Milo shouted back. "He is our best chance. We could still be screwing around in the archives when they set off their evil gizmo."
Julie dropped her hands and kicked some shotgun hulls angrily. Her face was drawn tight, and she was frowning. She tucked an errant strand of dark hair behind an ear. "I know," she muttered.
"And another thing!" Milo started to yell, and then stopped abruptly. "You know?"
"Yes. I know. That was why I was looking for you, you idiot. The situation has gotten worse. We just got word from Boone. He's been keeping tabs in Georgia. About forty-five minutes ago there was an attack on the home of another university professor, strong vampires, at least a couple. Right in the suburbs, just after sunset. They were looking for something. Unfortunately the prof was throwing a party at the house at the time. The place is crawling with the Feds' reaction team, so Boone couldn't get a good look, but he was guessing at least twenty dead."
"Let me guess. A colleague of Dr. Turley?"
"Yep. She was on our list to contact. A Ph.D. in anthropology, religion specialist."
"Smart vamps don't hit parties in the suburbs," Milo said. "That brings too much heat and attention. Vamps feed on the outskirts. It doesn't make sense."
"Unless the payoff is worth the risk," Julie said. "My guess is they're looking for the when and where to use their artifact."
"You think we're running out of time?"
"Why else would they risk having the Feds track them? The Monster Control Bureau guys are not the most efficient bunch, but they have resources we can only dream about. Vampires, especially old ones, don't pull stunts like this. That's how they lived to be old to begin with," she said with authority. "I don't think we are running out of time-I know it."
"So who's the idiot now?" Milo queried, somehow managing to look both smug and innocent at the same time.
"Don't push it. Milo, tomorrow you cover for me. Grandpa and Earl can't know what I'm going to do. Pitt…" That was a good indicator that she was not happy, she almost never called me by my last name.
"Yes?"
"Try to dream something useful tonight, because tomorrow you're going to meet my dad."
"Sounds like fun."
"It won't be."