great piece. I luv the fact that this has got to deal with the exraodinary and not the 'never ending' love tales we are used to around here. Carry go, i dey ur back

Вotђë Ʊ̲̣̣̣̥ are too much, is like am watching thriller movie. More grace to your brain and finger, pls make sure Ʊ̲̣̣̣̥ upload in d evening ooooooo.

Thanks gyz.expect more.

^ we surely are

grt piece guy. Mayb i shud try out and see if i can wake up my composition skillz

Over the last week I had become very familiar with the compound. There was the two-story office building/fortress, and several smaller buildings that served as barracks, classrooms, workshops and armories. A few hundred yards away was the hangar, housing one medium plane and one strange-looking helicopter of foreign origin. Behind the asphalt runway, just far enough away so that the noise would not be distracting, were the shooting ranges. Bulldozers had pushed up huge chunks of red clay soil to serve as backstops. A razor- wire-topped chain link fence stretched around the entire property, intimidating and sharp wherever it had not been overtaken with kudzu vines.


At that moment I was standing in front of a small group of other recruits on one of the shooting ranges. Ten yards away were five eight-inch steel plates, each one about a yard apart. Snugly tucked into my shoulder was the rubber butt pad of a slicked up Remington 870, pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun. The muzzle was kept at the low ready, and my trigger finger was extended safely along the receiver. I could sense the instructor standing behind me, holding the PACT timer right behind my head.
"Shooter ready?" he asked, voice slightly amplified through my electronic earplugs. The MHI-issued plugs were the most advanced that I had ever used. Totally comfortable, and wired into a communications net, they would block all sounds over a certain sound level, while normal conversation was perfectly audible, even if slightly directionally distorted. I nodded.
"Stand by," the instructor said mechanically. I waited.
The timer beeped. This was the moment I lived for. In one fluid motion I deactivated the safety and pulled the shotgun into position. Leaning forward with my center of gravity one with the shotgun, I focused on the plates and willed them to be shot. I had no conscious thought of controlling the trigger. Having practiced drills like this thousands of times, the muzzle automatically sought out the plates. With each shot my arm pulled the pump without thought or hesitation. The barrel rose slightly only to settle almost instantly on the next plate. I absorbed and rolled with the heavy recoil of the double- aught buckshot. I knew that each shot had been clean even before the last payload of shot had impacted the steel surface. I lowered the gun as the last two plates fell with a clang.
"Holy shit." The instructor's voice was incredulous as he glanced at the electronic timer. It was designed to pick up the sound of each shot and digitally record it. It was a very handy training device. "One-point- eight-seven seconds. You did a very difficult drill in one-point-eight- seven with a pump shotgun and full power buckshot. That was unbelievable."
I stayed facing downrange. My personal best on this particular drill had been several years earlier in a match at 1.75, but that was with one of my personal guns that I had worked over myself. Contrary to popular myth, a shotgun pattern is not a huge room-clearing boulder of death; at ten yards it is usually smaller than a basketball. The real key is learning how to be one with the recoil. I had been doing stuff like this since I was a little kid.
"It sounded like it was full-auto," one of the other newbies said.
"Fluke," said another voice that I had seriously grown to dislike. "Have him do it again."
"Okay," said the instructor, a former U.S. Navy SEAL turned Monster Hunter named Sam Crepsley. He was our main weapons and tactics instructor. Sam was a the walrus- mustached man, a burly guy with a penchant for western wear, rodeo belt buckles and Stetson hats. He was also a bad mojo, whom I would never on my best day want to mess with. "Load up."



Somebody else pushed the button to activate the automatic target system. The five plates reset themselves with a hiss. I decided to show off a little for the crowd. Since the action was open, I quickly plucked a spare round of buckshot from the elastic sidesaddle mounted on the shotgun's receiver. I dropped it into the chamber, and instantly slammed the pump forward. Instinctively my support hand moved to the bandoleer of spare shells strapped across my chest. Grasping four cases, I palmed them under the loading port and rapid fire shoved them in as if my hand itself was a spring- loaded mechanism. Snick, snick, snick, snick. Four shells loaded in under two seconds.


I heard another Newbie say something about a magic trick. Not magic my friend, just the result of practicing until my thumbs were a mass of nerve- deadened scar tissue. I tucked the shotgun back into the correct position, positioned my feet, and squared off against the targets. I indicated my readiness to Sam.
He leaned in close and spoke loud enough that he knew I would pick it up, but quiet enough that the rest of the class would not. His breath smelled of tobacco.
"You're gonna have to show me how you do that loading trick."
I grinned, and answered, "Shooter ready."
Beep. This time I was really in the zone. The five shots came out as a continuous thunder of buckshot pelting steel to the ground. I lowered the smoking muzzle.


Sam paused before saying the time. "One-point-eight-two seconds. Hot damn."
I could not help but gloat a little as I smiled for my nemesis. Grant Jefferson. The smug bastard had only been able to do it in 2.5, which was still pretty respectable, but not even close to as fast as mine. And the best part was that he knew it. He was the one who said my first run had been a fluke. Grant was not used to being bested at anything. I enjoyed watching as he walked off in frustration. He did not like me, and the feeling was mutual.He was Juliet boyfriend.

I handed the shotgun over for the next shooter.
Grant was no Newbie. He was a full-fledged member of MHI, and also one of our instructors, though he was the junior man on Harbinger's team. He had only come out to shoot in the hopes of showing us poor folks how it was done. Grant was totally my opposite. Lean and handsome, witty, charming, a product of the finest schools, and descended from the oldest established (as in super rich) New England families. He even had nice hair. He was the type of person everybody liked, and everybody wanted to be liked by.
I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. I thought he was a pompous ass from the moment I had met him, and I felt the primal and instinctual need to beat him up and take his lunch money.


But the real reason that I hated his guts was that he was Juliet Shackleford's boyfriend.
Julie and I had only spoken briefly since my arrival at the compound, and that had been mostly a "Hi, how are you" kind of thing. I had been totally swamped with training, and she was always occupied with one piece of business or another. It wasn't like she had ever even given me any sort of indication that she liked me as anything other than as an employee, so I don't know why the thought of her dating a jerk like Grant bothered me so much. As much as I hated to admit it, I had a horrible crush on her

.
Sam interrupted my reverie. "Pitt! I want you to tell everybody else how you shoot like that. I've told y'all what I know, and most of you still can't shoot for shit, you damn bunch of worthless peepz, so let's get a fresh perspective. The pump is not your main weapon, or even your first choice, but there're times when it is the absolute best thing you can have. We have a lot of specialty rounds that won't run through a semi. Every one of you needs to know how to use this thing because one of these days it might save your life." Knowing how to do things because they might someday save your life was the mantra of our experienced Monster Hunters.
The former SEAL spit a mighty wad of tobacco juices into the gravel. That was good. I noticed that most of the time he just swallowed the stuff. That could not be healthy.
"Okay. Um…" I looked over the group and thought about what to say. "What I'm seeing from most of you is that you aren't really familiar with your weapons yet. You need to get to the point where your gun is an extension of your body. You don't think about shooting, because if you're thinking then you're going too slow. You just let the shot happen. Shotguns are more of an instinctive weapon than pistols or rifles. Some of you guys need to relax and let it flow."
I pointed at one of the other Newbies, a muscular black man with dreadlocks. "Trip here is a great example. When he uses the pump, it's shoot, dramatic pause, pump, pause, shoot, pause, pump. You're thinking too hard. Thinking takes time. It's just boom and go. Like playing an instrument, you don't think about the notes, you just play." He nodded in understanding. Trip and I had hit it off, and he was currently my bunkmate in the barracks. His real name was John Jermaine Jones, and he was at a loss to explain what his folks had been thinking when they had come up with that combination. The nickname that had stuck was Triple J, and after a week, most of us just called him Trip.
Trip had been recruited by MHI after a voodoo priestess had placed a curse on his small Florida town and caused some of the recently deceased to rise from their graves to feast upon the brains of the living. He had solved the zombie problem with judicious use of a pickax. He was a great guy, and so far his only real challenge in training had been his lack of exposure to firearms, though he was coming along really well with the subguns. They just suited his personality more. Considering that a year ago he had been a high school chemistry teacher, he was actually one tough dude.
"Then the other problem I see is that some of you are just kind of recoil sensitive, like Holly." I pointed out the next Newbie. Holly Newcastle was an attractive young woman with bleached blond hair and an amazing breast job. She never told the rest of us how she ended up at MHI, but apparently she had worked as a stripper, or as she preferred, exotic dancer, before being recruited. The rumors were that it had involved a hot lesbian vampire, but I'm pretty sure that that was just wishful thinking by most of the guys in the barracks.
As far as I could tell she had exactly zero experience with any sort of firearms, but she was coming along gradually. She really surprised me when it came to the class portion of our training; she had an amazing ability to soak up knowledge and monster-related trivia. She may have looked like a bimbo, but she was no dumb blond. I had no doubt that whatever she had done to get herself recruited by MHI, she had done very well.
"Holly, the shotgun kicks, but once you master the correct form, you learn to just flow with the recoil and it's no big deal. It's all about proper fit, and how you hold it. If you're doing it right it doesn't hurt at all."
"So what you're saying, Z, is that it's kinda like sex. If it hurts, you must be doing it wrong?" She smiled seductively and winked. I blushed. Everybody else laughed, including Sam the instructor.
"Pretty much." I had a sneaky feeling that Holly wanted me to help her with more forms than just her shotgunning. It's kind of embarrasing that for a person with such a dark complexion my cheeks turned red so easily. "Seriously though, fit is very important; we need to find you a stock that's a couple of inches shorter." I hurried along before anybody thought to make a nasty joke about that comment.
I continued my demonstration to the other new recruits. We were an odd collection. Ages ranged from mid-forties all the way down to barely old enough to drink. We had people from all parts of the country and all walks of life. We had everything from an Army Ranger to a taxi driver, from a narcotics cop to a librarian, and we even had a plumber. Take my word for it, you do not want to hear the detailed account of his first monster encounter.
Despite our differences, we all had a few things in common. Every single one of us had come face to face with something from mankind's darkest imagination, and every single one of us was a survivor.
At the beginning of our training we had been informed that not all of us would make it, and they had not been kidding. The experienced instructors made judgment calls as necessary, and many a recruit was sent packing with an extremely generous severance check and an admonition not to talk too freely about what they had learned. Other Newbies quit on their own. Some could not handle the physical stress, others, the mental. There was no real shame in quitting. Anyone was free to leave at any time, and many did. I thought about it a few times myself.
I was too stubborn to admit it to anyone, but every day that I had been here, I had struggled with the idea of what we were doing. I was torn, part of me loved the idea and the challenge, but the part of me that had sought to be normal for so long was having a real hard time adjusting to the fact that I was learning how to kill monsters for fun and profit.
The physical training was difficult, though according to our former Ranger it was a total sissified cakewalk. Personally, my leg was still tender and weak, and the running was killing me. I hate running. I was still walking with a limp, and I had despised running when I was totally healthy. Running is for skinny people.
Weapons and tactics was my favorite segment. Not just because it was what I had done for fun for most of my life anyway, but also because I excelled at it. Many of the Newbies struggled through, while others would never have what it took to work as a well-coordinated team, armed with lethal weapons, operating seamlessly together under intense pressure

. That was fine. We had been told early on that not all of us would end up as the tip of the spear, on an actual fighting Hunter team. There was plenty of other work that also needed to be done-research, support, administration, technical stuff, and other jobs-but every employee of MHI was to be proficient enough that they could stand in as an emergency replacement if needed.
Out of our current group I was guessing that about half of us would be assigned to Hunting teams. Not bad considering that we had started with forty recruits and now we were down to only twenty. There were a few I was not sure about, who could probably go either way, and then there were the last few, who personally I was not comfortable with even having loaded weapons anywhere near me. Some people just did not have the proper mindset to ever rise above mere proficiency with a firearm.
The classroom sessions were by far the most educational for all of us, because regardless of what kind of bizarre background somebody might have come from, the things we were being taught were guaranteed to be new material.

dz made my nyt

Edward Harbinger sat with his feet up on the desk. In one hand he held the remote control for the slide show, and the other held a yardstick that he used to point out interesting things. The photos on the slide show were disturbing to say the least.



"There's many kinds of undead. Undead is basically a all-round term for any being that's scientifically dead, yet still moving. They range from your basic zombie, which is nothing more than a flesh-eating corpse, all the way up to your virtually invincible master vampires and pretty much anything you can think of in between. You'll need to know them all-their strengths and especially their weaknesses."

Click. This slide showed a large number of chewed-up corpses littering a suburban street. It could have been in any town in the country. Some of the modest ranch-style homes in the background were on fire. "Undead are our bread and butter. Here alone we average at least one incident involving them a month. Factor in South America and the Caribbean and we probably have a Hunter team working an undead outbreak at any given time. With your basic lower-level undead, the key is a swift response. They multiply like rabbits, and the denser the human population, the more danger there is."
Click. The next slide appeared to have been taken with a cheap disposable camera at a really bad angle. The subject was a woman lunging with filthy hands outstretched toward the unseen photographer.

Most of her face was missing, and her lower jaw consisted only of exposed bone, but she did not appear to notice. Her eyes were wide and hungry.
"Zombie. The walking dead. Not very fast. Not very smart. They'll head straight for you, they never stop, they feel no pain, they never tire, and they never quit. Luckily they're about as creative as broccoli. The real danger is their bite, as the guy taking this picture found out. A single bite is infectious and the victim's destined to end up a zombie themselves. The worse the injury, the faster you die, the faster you come back.Yes, head shots work, but you've got to really damage their brains for a reliable stop."


"Where do they come from?" one of the class asked.
"Voodoo," whispered Trip. The twenty remaining Newbies sat on metal folding chairs behind rickety plastic tables. We were in a small room located in the main building. The air conditioner kept us alive in the freshly arrived Alabama heat.
"That's one possibility, and a good thing to keep in mind. If you can bag the person that animated the dead to begin with, by all means do it. Animating the dead is a serious felony, and the government usually pay a good reward for renegade witch doctors or mad scientists. I've got to keep going, though, because we have a lot to cover. All of this information is in your packets, and I'll get to specifics later, today is just the overview. Last thing on zombies, bounty is usually about $5,000 a head, depending on the severity of the outbreak."
Click. The thing in the picture had obviously once been a person, but was now a hunched and rotting pile of rags and jagged edges and pointed teeth. The creature held what appeared to be a human leg in its mostly skeletal hand. It looked as if its lunch had been rudely interrupted by the flash of the picture. "This is a ghoul. Think of it as a super zombie on crack. Much smarter, much faster, way harder to stop. Luckily they're rare, which is a good thing because the one in this picture soaked up about two hundred rounds before it finally quit kicking. Head shots don't usually work, though they tend to slow them down. Your best bet is to hammer them until you break down their skeletal structure to the point where they just can't fight anymore. Then burn them to be sure. They're usually found around cemeteries, as they're carrion feeders. Bounty for a ghoul runs around 20K."
Click. "This is a wight. Toughest of the zombie family. One of old Europe's least popular exports." This picture took me by surprise. Sure the creature was as nasty as expected, appearing to be a normal man except for his horribly distorted visage, sharp, black teeth and red eyes, but this picture caught my attention because it was an action shot. Juliet Shackleford was in the corner of the frame, with a long spear in her hands, keeping the creature at bay while it clawed at her. She was wearing some sort of strange body armor that I did not recognize. Her dark hair had been captured flying wildly around her head like a halo, and there was an intense look of fear and concentration on her face. She was frozen in midmovement, gracefully lunging toward the claws of the undead beast. It was like a cover shot from Sports Illustrated only this time the sport was Monster game and the penalty for losing was painful death.


Very painful death.

^:Watching you closely

Evad: ^:Watching you closely

following closely!

I snapped out of my reverie and tried to pay attention to Harbinger's lesson. I had missed part of what he had said, but I did not dare ask him to repeat it. He was finishing up on the dangers of facing wights.
"Their touch causes immediate paralysis, even through armor. It wears off quickly, but by then it's usually too late. They can be insanely strong. So don't screw around against these without backup and heavy weapons."




Sawing off a human head is harder than it looks. The body tends to flop around every time you hit it, and it makes a really nasty mess. Once slime gets on the handle of your knife, it gets even worse, and the next thing you know, your blade is glancing off of bones that you didn't even know were there. I grunted as I strained the blade against the rubbery flesh.
"Damn it, Pitt, don't saw. This isn't gardening. It's killing. Chop it!" Sam shouted at me. Sam always shouted.


Responding to the order, I raised the heavy knife over my head and brought it down with as much force as possible, this time chopping completely through the tissue and breaking the vertebrae. The dead body's head rolled off the table and landed on the floor with a damp thud.
"Much better!" the instructor bellowed. "See that, class? Don't screw around with them. There are some things that don't quit until you take their heads off. If you have got to do it, do it quick. Solid whack like you're chopping wood. Don't mess around."

Our class of remaining Newbies was slowly shaping up into a coherent team of Hunters. Currently we were standing in a small refrigerated room near the hangar, known as the Body Room. MHI had saved the most disgusting lessons for the last of us. I'm sure that staking and beheading corpses was practical training, but I believed that the main reason we did this was to weed out the trainees who couldn't handle the sheer nastiness of cutting off a human head.
It probably would have been more efficient to do the horrific stuff first, as it really took out anyone with a weak stomach.

According to Milo the reason we saved it for this late in the training was that it was hard to get a good supply of medical school leftover bodies. By saving this part until most of the trainees had washed out he had to scrounge up fewer corpses. Milo was a pretty efficient guy.
"Next team. Newcastle and Mead," Sam said to Holly and Chuck, the next people in line, as Milo used a hose to spray down the floor. Several of the other Newbies had lost their lunch on this exercise. Mingled fluids coagulated around the central drain.
Placing the gore-splattered knife on the table, I stumbled away to wash my hands. They were shaking badly and I felt a strong urge to vomit. Trip was already at the sink scrubbing furiously.
"Dude, that sucked," he hissed.
"Next time I stake, you chop," I replied.
"Hey, you called heads. Not my fault."
"At least it wasn't the Gut Crawl."

He frowned at me. "Come on, man, I'm already trying not to barf as it is, don't bring that up."
The Gut Crawl had consisted of a single Newbie wiggling through a long section of pipe filled with cow entrails. Between the dark, the smell, the heat of the pipe and the horrible squishiness of it all, it was probably the worst experience of my life, up to and including actually dying. Supposedly it had been a test of our ability to deal with disturbing surroundings and still keep our wits. Personally I thought it was Harbinger torturing us. Two of our class had quit rather than do it, and when I had been stuck halfway down that dark pipe, covered in slime and feces and intestines, I had envied them. One other trainee had made it halfway down the pipe, only to suffer a panic attack and lock up. All three of them had been given fat severance checks and sent home.

There were only a dozen of us left. Judging by the standards of our instructors, it was no surprise that MHI was currently short-handed. Harbinger had been very honest about it though. He was a firm believer that the harder we sweated in practice, the less we would bleed when it was for real.

[b][/b] [color=#990000][/color] mennnn bravo!!! Nice write up, dts was gud...nice work....plz biko no delay d update o......once again BRAVO!!!

damn kip it cumin!!

"What're you doing?" Trip asked me as he entered our tiny barracks room. The windows were open and loud insects chirped and whistled in the darkness outside.
"I don't know," I answered honestly. I was sitting on my bunk, suitcase open on the floor in front of me."Thinking about packing, I guess."
"You didn't strike me as a quitter," he said simply. "That was an accident with rudy. You didn't mean to hurt him. Milo says he'll be out of the hospital in a week. It's just his collar bone and a concussion."
"I only hit him once."
We had been practicing going hand-to-hand. Never a good choice against a monster, but a necessary skill to have nonetheless. They had paired me up with Rudy, a muscle- bound former narc. It had gotten kind of competitive.


"Stuff happens," Trip shrugged. "Don't be a baby about it."
"Sam said I wasn't being aggressive enough."
"He probably shouldn't have said that to somebody who beat up a werewolf." Trip sat on his bed. "When Rudy wakes up, he'll be cool. It was an accident."
I shook my head. "No. It wasn't. I got angry. I didn't hold back. Look, man, this is why I should probably go. When I get mad, when I lose control, people get hurt."
"You make it sound like you're the Hulk," he laughed. "You're training to be a Monster Hunter. We're supposed to hurt things. Come on, dude, what's the deal?"
Trip had become a good friend over the last few weeks of training, and I could tell that he did honestly want to help. I stared down at the open suitcase. "You know I used to fight for money, right?" I continued, not looking up. "A few years ago, I had a big one. My last one. Lots of cash on the table. The other guy was supposed to be a real badass. Supposedly he had killed a couple of people in prison. There were no rules, and it wasn't supposed to stop until one of us couldn't fight anymore. Last man standing got paid."


"Why would you do that?" he asked, sincerely perplexed. Trip was a good man, and the idea of inflicting violence on another human being for no good reason was truly foreign to him.
I sighed. "You've got to understand. My whole life, my father tried to prepare me for something. All he did was push. He had some sort of bleeped-up vision of the future, and he wanted me to be ready for it. I guess I just needed to prove that I was as tough as he thought I was."
"So what happened?"
"The other fighter really was a bad dude. Meanest I had ever dealt with. I couldn't take him. He just wouldn't quit. Then, something happened… Something snapped, broke loose. No pain, just focus. Like when Harry tried to eat me. Next thing I knew, I had blood up to my armpits and I was kneeling on this guy while I hit him until my knuckles broke."
Trip looked shocked. "You killed him?"
"Almost, and I would have, but the promoters pulled me off. They managed to stitch his skull back together, but he lost an eye, and I've heard he's still all messed up… I would've killed him. And right then, I wanted to kill him, and for what? How stupid is that?"
"Pretty stupid."
We sat in silence for a while, Trip not really knowing what to say. I knew from our talks that he was a devoutly religious man and was probably trying to think of how to politely tell me that I was surely going to hell.

Finally I spoke. "You know why I became an accountant?"
"Pays better than teaching."
"I picked the most straight-laced, stereotypically boring thing that I could think of. My entire life I'd been taught to be a killer, but after that night, I just wanted to get as far away from it as I could."
"But you still carried a gun every day?"
"I didn't go looking for trouble, didn't mean I wasn't ready for trouble to look for me," I answered.
"Beats hitting zombies with a pickax…" he muttered.
"And now here I am. In this place, where all the things I've spent the last few years trying to distance myself from are not only encouraged, they're mandatory. And it seems like I might actually be pretty good at this. But I'm worried…"
"That you'll hurt somebody who don't need hurting?"
"Yeah, something like that." I clenched my scarred-up fists. My hand throbbed from where I had punched Rudy. It had only been a brief instant, a flash of anger, but that was all it took.
Trip thought about it for a few long seconds, absently chewing on his lower lip, then stood. "The way I see it, we're here to do good. I don't know about you, but I came here to stop monsters from hurting folks. The Lord's given you a gift, a weird one, but still a gift, and the fact that you're worried about misusing it means that you're not a bad guy. So put that suitcase away, man up, and let's get to class before Harbinger realizes we're late. He kind of scares me." He thumped me on the shoulder, and walked out the door.

more please! more!!!

Updating.

Today was the day when we were going to be issued our body armor. It was heavy, and though well designed to be comfortable and breathable, during summers in Alabama the heat was usually intense. I was sweating profusely, not that that said much, considering that men of my bulk usually started sweating at room temperature, but this was particularly bad. Thankfully the armor came equipped with a water bladder and drinking tube.


Milo paced back and forth in front of the assembled Newbies. Today he was wearing a blue hawain shirt and his red beard had been braided into two separate forks.Occasionally he would stop before a Newbie, examine them critically, and then pause long enough to adjust some strap or buckle. He was the creator of the suit, as well as many of the other devices the Hunting teams used.



Grant Jefferson watched us smugly in our discomfort. He was wearing his armor, which had been tailored to suit him better. Holly had said that he was dashingly handsome, and even she, being so very sarcastic and cynical about men because of her background, found him very charismatic and charming. She told me that it was easy to see why Grant and Julie had hooked up. He was young, smart, good-looking, knew how to talk to people, and everybody loved him. I still wanted to kick his ass.


On Grant's shoulder was a patch with the green smiley face with horns that was the unofficial company logo, which only Harbinger's personal team wore. We had been told that the other teams made up their own logos. The only other team logo that I had seen here at the compound had been a fire-breathing warthog that Dorcas had engraved onto her plastic leg. Grant wore the smiley face with pride-apparently it was a real honor to end up on Harbinger's team. I had learned that he had only been a Hunter since the business had reopened, but he had shown so much potential in training that he had been picked to fill a void on what was considered the best team.
"You will learn to live in these suits for days at a time. This suit will save your life. This suit will become like a second skin to you." Grant was lecturing us, gesturing at his own gear. Milo stopped in front of me with a scowl and adjusted the webbing around my torso. Apparently Milo had never had to make a suit for somebody as big as I am, and it had been a bit of a challenge to come up with Kevlar sheets for a sixty- two-inch chest.


"Psst… Milo," I whispered. "Since these are supposed to be like second skins, where's yours?"
"Screw that. It's hot," he answered.
And he invented the darn thing. Testify brother, I thought.
"One time this suit saved my life. You can see right here where I was clawed by a ghoul. See, right there on the abdomen. Surely this would have been a mortal blow, but I was able to shrug it off and stay in the fight. I dispatched the monster and was able to rush to the aid of my team and save them from certain death," Grant told us, lifting up the front of his armor so we could all see his sculpted abs. The man must do push ups in his sleep to look like that.


Grant had been talking forever, and unlike the other instructors, did not have a drop of humility in his soul. I was about ten minutes from a heat stroke, and we were stuck suffering in the sun while our teacher blabbered.
Milo rolled his eyes and went back to adjusting straps. "Some ghoul. It was three feet tall," he muttered under his breath so it was barely audible to just me, "ass."

The armor was a modular system that could be configured by the user depending on what kind of threat we were going to face. A thick layer of stab-proof Kevlar covered the vital organs. Though not much heavier than regular thick clothing, the sleeves and pant legs had the same fibers sewn into the fabric. There was a neck guard that could be raised to resemble a turtle neck to protect against bites. Most of the threats we would face would involve teeth or claws, so unlike regular body armor, ours was designed for that rather than for bullet resistance. Milo informed us that the torso was rated the same as a traditional level bulletproof vest, able to stop most pistol rounds. There were pouches on the front and back designed to hold ceramic plates that could stop rifle rounds if the threat warranted it, and if the user didn't mind the extra weight. The system incorporated load-bearing gear and pouches for magazines, weapons, tools, medical kits, or whatever other useful things the Hunter might need.
There were two different types of gloves that came with the suit. One was a basic shooting glove that offered a small amount of protection, but still allowed good dexterity. And the other was a heavy armored gauntlet for when you needed maximum protection and just had to wade in and crush some head.The heavy units could be attached to the end of the sleeves.


There were also two types of helmets. The first was simply a modified hockey helmet, good basically to keep you from banging yourself in the skull when blundering around in the dark. The second, an armored monstrosity that looked kind of like a motorcycle helmet with a full visor and face shield, could be attached to the neck guard. With the heavy gloves and big helmet, a suited Monster Hunter could become a chew toy for a pile of zombies and come out gnawed on, but unbitten. Unfortunately for me, Milo did not have a helmet that would fit my enormous head so he had special-ordered one. Hopefully nothing would try to eat me before then.


The armor had lots of extras designed just for the people in our peculiar business. A cartridge was carried in the shoulder harness. In case of emergency it could be activated and the harness would inflate. Handy if you got dumped into deep water, because it was difficult to swim while strapped with piles of gear. My understanding was that Sam, our former SEAL, had insisted on that device. Each suit also had a GPS unit for navigation, which occasionally came in handy to locate a Hunter's body when the bad guys won.
The armor could be ordered in whatever color you wanted, as long as it was black, olive drab, or coyote brown. There was not a lot of use for festive colors in monster hunting, nor were there a lot of suppliers of heavyweight military strength in any other colors. I had gone with brown. Grant had gone with black. He probably thought it made him look tough. I thought he looked kind of like a silly version of Darth Vader. I took comfort in the fact that he had to be cooking in the sun right about now, though the bastard did not even give me the satisfaction of looking uncomfortable.
"Pay attention," Grant snapped at me. Milo rolled his eyes again. I snickered. Grant stormed toward us like a bulldog.
"Pitt. I don't like your attitude."


"Trust me, Grant. It's mutual," I snapped back.
"What did you say?" He poked me in the chest with his trigger finger. I couldn't feel a thing through the armor, but that did not change the fact that I did not like getting poked. It was hot, I was tired, and frankly in no mood to put up with any nonsense. Milo wisely moved aside.
"I said it's mutual. Meaning I don't like your attitude either."
"I'm trying to teach you Newbies how to stay alive."
"Then teach. All I'm hearing is stories about how great you are. I came here to learn how to kill stuff, not to join your fan club."
He stabbed me again. "I'm a pro. You need to shut your stupid Newbie mouth. You think you know so much. I saw that video. You got lucky with that werewolf, and now you think you're hot shit."
"You had best take that hand off of me," I said. The rest of the class was gradually spreading out around us. The group could sense trouble brewing and were ready for some entertainment. Apparently I was not the only one in a foul mood.
"Or what?" And he poked harder. It was really kind of a useless gesture considering the armor could stop a battle-ax. With years of experience bouncing rowdy people from bars, I had a good sense of when somebody was itching for trouble, and Grant was itching bad.


"I'll take it off and feed it to you." I smiled at him and winked. That really seemed to anger him. Grant's movie star face turned bright red. He was as tall as I was, but not nearly as big or as strong. I had no doubt that I could beat him mercilessly.
"I could have you kicked out of here like that." He took his hand away long enough to snap his fingers, then he went back to poking me.
"For what?" asked Milo, arms folded, studying the other instructor. Milo was by far the senior in experience, and in the amount of respect he received from the trainees. That was easy though, Milo Anderson was a likable guy. Grant on the other hand…
"Insubordination," Grant hissed. "One word to the Boss about your attitude and you're gone."
"If I'm going to get kicked out, believe me, I'm going to have some fun doing it." I felt my body tense as the adrenaline began to flow. If Grant wanted a piece of me, I was prepared to give that preppie piece of trash what he wanted.
"Grant." Milo spoke quietly. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You're picking a fight with somebody who outweighs you by a hundred pounds of muscle. Insubordination my butt. You say anything to the Boss and my side of the story will be that you were trying to commit suicide by accountant."

"I could take him," the junior instructor stated coldly. "He isn't as tough as everybody thinks."
"Grant, I could kick your ass. Pitt would make you his bitch."
That took the wind out of Grant. I could see the realization dawn in his blue eyes, the realization that I could probably beat him into pulp. I just kept smiling, still prepared to mess up his pretty face and give him the opportunity to digest some of his perfectly white teeth. He had already pushed too far, though. He could not back off now without looking bad. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear.
"Stay away from Julie, you son of a bitch. I've seen you looking at her." I was surprised. So that was what this was all about. I had barely even seen her since training had started.
"Bleep you," I replied.
"Enough!" Milo shouted. "Class is over. It's too hot and everybody's tempers are high. You've been working hard. Go grab some lunch."
Grant stepped back and glared at the little man. Milo met his gaze evenly. I think that my nemesis quickly realized that the other instructor had just given him an opportunity to back out of his potential beating and not look like a jerk in front of the others. Grant Jefferson may have been a prick, but he was no dummy.
"Fine. Class dismissed," Grant sneered. "I'll be seeing you around, Pitt." He spun on his polished boots and haughtily strode away.
"Looking forward to it," I rumbled under my breath as the group began to disperse. Milo shouted for all of us to turn our suits in to his workshop for adjustments before we left the compound for our weekend off. There were some relieved sighs as the Newbies unceremoniously began to remove their armor. I stomped away to avoid speaking to anybody.
Not that it did me much good. One person followed me. Trip patted me on my armored shoulder to get my attention. "Have I ever told you how much I respect your professionalism and restraint?"
"Some people just need a good beating."
"I agree. The man's a jerk. But last night I talked you out of quitting, so I don't want to see you get fired today," Trip said as we started toward the cafeteria, new suits creaking. Hopefully they would break in and soften up. My friend continued speaking as if I was one of his former ignorant teenage students. "You know why he hates you, right?"
I had spoken about my infatuation with Julie Shackleford to Trip. He was my roommate after all. "I suppose I do."
"Well, then, you would be wrong."
"Huh?"
"You think it's because of the girl. Grant probably thinks it's because of the girl too. That's because you're both idiots."
"Gee thanks, Trip." We continued walking slowly, talking quietly so the others wouldn't hear our conversation. "Well, if it isn't because of her, what's his problem?"




"You're his problem. I've seen this before. Grant is the golden boy. He came in here last year and tore stuff up. He's the best at everything. Even the big dogs took him under their wing. I bet he has won at everything he's ever tried. You come along, and you're naturally better than him at some things, so immediately he doesn't like you. It is all about pride, my friend, and Grant is stuffed so full of it it's a wonder he doesn't burst."
"Okay, I can see that."
"And you do keep staring at his woman like a slobbering slowpoke."
"Slobbering?" That hurt.
"And you're a smart ass who can't help but show him up every chance that you get."
"Fair enough."
"And you can't handle losing just as bad as him. You're both torn up with pride and, like the Bible says, pride is the sin that will drag you down faster than anything else."
"Where does it say that?"
"Luke chapter… something or other. Well, that's what my mom said about it anyway."
"Thanks, Pastor Jones. I'll be sure to keep my pride and my slobbering in check from now on." I laughed. He was not that much older than I was, but somewhere along the line Trip had gained a lot more wisdom than I had.
"That's Father Reverend Elder Jones to you… unbelievera. Now let's get some lunch. We got the whole weekend off, and we're going to need our energy. I've got an auntie who lives nearby.We going to go visiting.

interesting.. This grant, he could be worse than the monsters

adegwurulez: interesting.. This grant, he could be worse than the monsters

neva mind dude,just read................and see.

Ur story‘s nice

wen z d next update

at following......

Happy Christmas And Merry New Year In Advance.
https://www.nairaland.com/1565352/short-poem-christmas#20392878

Gud mrnin peeps.Wish u gys a merry christmas.

Lots of updates incoming.

@Op welldone, u're one of d best out there if nt d best. Ryt nw u're sky walking buh i think u can moonwalk. Merry xmas 2 y'all

Thanks dude.@wase 20019

Updating.

I was dreaming. I found myself in the same field as I'd been in during the strange dream that I had experienced in the hospital. Once again, the crop was lush and green, and my feet were bare. The air was cool and fresh, so I definitely was not in Alabama. The sky was darker and thick black rain clouds were gathering on the horizon. It looked like it was going to be a terrible storm.
The Old Man was there also. This time he was sitting on a small grassy hill. His hair was still wild and white, his stick sat on the ground next to him, and he was absently polishing his small round glasses on a white handkerchief.
"Hello, Boy. Welcome again here."


"What am I doing here?" I asked, sitting down on the grass next to him. We watched the storm front approach. The wind was beginning to pick up and the grass was waving under the onslaught. "I thought you said that we wouldn't meet again unless I did something stupid and got killed."
"I was wrong. I am new at this too," he answered. "It's closer now. So I help more easily."


"What is closer now?"
"You will see. It comes." He pointed at the storm roiling across the distant landscape.
"What comes?"
"The storm. I show you when can. I help you if can."
"Help me with what?" This was a confusing dream, not helped at all by my host's funny English.
"The evil comes. The Cursed One brings. You will stop, if you can. If not, time will die." He stated it as if that cryptic information was a simple fact.
"Who are you?"
"I told you. I am friend. I here to help." He spit on his glasses and continued to polish them. I noticed that he wore a small Star of David around his neck. His clothes were old and simple, and appeared to be sewn by hand.

"What's your name?"
"No one ask that for long time."
"That doesn't answer the question," I replied.
"My name not matter now, Boy. I am just Old Man."
He held up the glasses and examined them, nodding in satisfaction before placing them on his face. "Is good. Help me up, please." I stood, and then lent him a hand as he slowly rose to his feet. I retrieved his cane and handed it over. The polished wood was surprisingly heavy and dense.

As I looked up I realized that somehow the storm had drawn impossibly close. The blue sky was blotted out and the wall that was approaching was a swirling mass of darkness, clouds, and lightning. The sky had taken on a green halo and I could feel the energy crackling through the ground. The grass was lying down or being torn out of the soil as powerful gusts struck us.
"We go now. I show you what I can. I need your help."
"Okay," I answered, not knowing what else to say.
"You help me. I help you.Can't promise it will work, but I will try." He grasped my wrist. His cold hands were frail and arthritic.
He adjusted his glasses and watched with hard eyes as the storm approached. It was moving across the land like a tidal wave now, closing on us with what seemed like malevolent intent. As it grew closer I could see that there were shapes in the clouds- warriors, monsters, death, plague, famine, suffering, pestilence and war. My pleasant dream was changing into a nightmare.

The roar of wind and crashing of thunder and wails of something else washed over us. The wall of black hit us, and we were swiftly engulfed.
Still dreaming.

Only now, I was somehow above the MHI compound. I had no body, but somehow I could see, and not only that, I could see everything. Walls meant nothing to me. Maybe seeing wasn't the right term. I was aware of everything. I was not limited by the information that my eyes could register or that my brain could process. I found my body sleeping peacefully in the barracks. Trip, in the bunk above, was reading some fantasy novel as he did every night. The man was a fantasy book addict.
The rest of my fellow trainees were sleeping or pretending to. In the women's barracks I was not surprised to learn that Holly Newcastle slept in the nude. As interesting as that sight was, I moved on. I was no Peeping Tom, or in this case a peeping ghost.

The office/fortress was totally open to me now. It was much larger than any of us had realized, with a huge underground level that was a complete secret to the trainees. In the dark corners I glimpsed that not all of the other employees were human. What a strange dream. On the top floor our instructors were holding a meeting around a huge table. Juliet, Harbinger, Sam, Milo, and Grant were arguing about something. I focused in on that, and somehow my presence joined them in the room. Movements were cloudy, and the voices were unclear and muffled because of all of the other sensations I was receiving without my normal faculties."No other teams are available. Just us and the Newbies. Jack's, team's in Atlanta. They just finished a case, and they can meet us on the way. I can send them the schematics." Julie was speaking.
"We'll need extra men," Sam said, his voice echoing strangely. "Situation that big is too hard to cover with just two teams. And we don't have a single clue what we're facing."
"The Newbies aren't ready," Milo stated flatly. "Most of them would get killed if it gets tough."
"Who do we have who's ready then?" Harbinger asked. "We can keep them in reserve. They don't need to be in front."
"Mead, Lee and maybe Triple J," Grant said. "Rudy could, except that oaf put him in the hospital."
"Newcastle can handle support," Milo added.
"Agreed," stated Harbinger.
"What about Pitt?" Julie asked.
"No way. He's out of control," Grant replied hotly.
"He's also the best shooter we have. I hate to admit it, but he's even better than I am," Sam said. The big cowboy banged the table for emphasis.

"Pitt's a hothead. He'll blow it," Grant retorted.
"He is a natural leader, however." Milo stuck up for me. "Put him in charge of the Newbie squad. The others will follow him."


"I vote that he goes," Julie said. "You heard the French. They lost a whole team on that boat. We don't know what's out there. We need every shooter we can get."
"I don't like the Frenchies, but their Hunters are first rate. I'll give them that," Milo said. "If something on that ship took out their team, then I'm guessing that it's bad news. I've got a feeling we're going to need sharp shooterz."
"Done. Wake up Pitt, Jones, Mead, Lee and Newcastle. Let's move, folks. Clock's ticking," Harbinger ordered. Grant sulked and the rest of the team sprang into action.
Cool, I thought to my disembodied self. This was an interesting dream. Harbinger jumped as if somebody had startled him. He turned and scowled at the corner of the room that held my consciousness. Before he could act, my presence was suddenly jerked out of the room, through the roof, and into the night sky, leaving the man scowling in puzzlement at the now empty room. I heard the mysterious Old Man's voice.
"Sorry. Lost you for minute. I not done this before."
The ground flashed by below as my awareness sped through the air at what had to be a thousand miles an hour. The darkness was interrupted by the occasional lights of human activity, and finally a mass of lights on an otherwise dark coast came into focus as we appeared to slow. I could sense masses of people, most sleeping, a smaller number awake. The ocean stretched black and unrelenting before us, while above, unfettered by normal human senses, I could make out literally billions of stars. It was beautiful.
Then I was on a dark beach.Out to sea, something approached. I could sense the shape of men in a small lifeboat. The boat moved soundlessly toward the beach, propelled not by wind, oar or engine, but rather by some force that even in my dream state I could not understand.


As the boat approached, the sounds of life behind us were suddenly silent as every living creature either fled or hid. Somehow I knew that even the fish in the water were swimming away from the boat in a panic. They knew something in their simple brains that all of the sleeping humans nearby did not. An unnatural fog, somehow icy in the humid southern air, swirled around the small craft.
"He comes," said the Old Man.
"Who is he?" my dream self asked.
"I know him as the Cursed One."
There were multiple shapes in the boat. Some appeared to be human, and were crouched low in the hull, red eyes scanning the beach, noses sniffing the air for prey. I recognized them from Harbinger's lectures. Vampires. The kings and queens of the undead, and from the vibe that I was getting from them, these were ancient and powerful beings. Master vampires. According to my lessons, masters were solitary creatures who had never been known to work together. Apparently the lessons had been very wrong. My dream was getting ugly.
Standing in the midst of the creatures was something. At first it appeared to be a man. Cloaked in a huge robe, only the reflection of what appeared to be a polished steel breastplate and helmet could be made out through the unnatural fog. The armor reminded me of the type that the gladiators had worn. A sense of pure evil emanated from the cloaked being, an icy feeling of dread that I could feel piercing through my consciousness. I could not imagine how horrible it would have been if I had been there in my physical body instead of in this dream. As the image drew closer I could see a mass of twitching blackness glistening between the creases of the armor and under the helmet. I could not comprehend what it was, but it certainly was not flesh. Somehow the twitching movement brought back memories of the boxes of live earthworms that my father use to fish.
There was a name on the side of the boat.Sailors Delight.




I awoke screaming, tearing at my sheets, and crying for the Old Man to save us from the Cursed One. Trip was standing at my bedside, shaking me.
"Mike! Dude! Wake up. It was a dream. Calm down."
Gasping for air and lying back on the sweat-stained sheets, it was only a dream. The storm. The Old Man. The Cursed One. The vampires. It was all a dream. Everything was fine.
"I had the worst nightmare," I gasped.
"No kidding. You were really freaking out. Everybody was. Just a couple of minutes ago everybody in the barracks woke up. Like the whole place was having a nightmare or something. I get the feeling that something really bad just happened."



Then our door opened. Edward Harbinger and Sam Crespley were standing in the hall, both were suited up in full armor, bristling with ammunition and weapons.
"What's the racket?" Harbinger asked.
"Just a bad dream," I answered.
The Director of Operations frowned at me. He had felt the strange sensation as well. "Both of you. Grab your stuff. Get over to the armory and get suited up. We have a mission. Consider the weekend cancelled," Harbinger ordered, as he slung an ancient Thompson submachine gun over his shoulder.
"We have a ship to catch," grunted Sam, while twirling the ends of his mighty mustache. "Think of this as a field trip."

ghen ghen the field trip! ..... more please!

This guy is good! From the settngs , to plot, to story line. He writes like a renowned author.

The small boat rolled on the huge waves, leaving me with a slightly nauseous and uncomfortable feeling. I held onto the guardrail until my knuckles were white, or at least I'm sure they would have been if I could have seen them through my gloves. I had been uncomfortable since the shore had disappeared.

The ocean stretched as far as the eye could see. The sun had risen shortly before we launched, and now cast a golden light over the blue surface. I'm sure that if I wasn't mentally preparing myself to go into battle I might have found it a stunning sight. I had never really been out to sea before, other than brief trips on tourist boats off the California coast. I'm sure some of my father's islander ancestors would have scoffed at that.
There were ten of us Hunters on the small boat, which Harbinger had hired to transport us to our target.

It was a rusty, old, creaky thing, but it had been available, and even better, the crew didn't look like the type that talked too much.
We had assembled before midnight at the compound, burdened with all manner of equipment and weaponry. Most of us had been loaded into MHI's cargo plane, an old but serviceable former U.S. Mail carrier. It did not look like much, but it got the job done, and it could haul a ton of gear. Then we had flown first to a small airfield outside of Atlanta, where we had picked up another team of Hunters, before arriving at our final destination, another small airport on the Georgia coast. The rest had taken the slower, but necessary for this mission, helicopter and met with us there while Harbinger was securing us a boat. The team leaders had spent the flight memorizing diagrams e-mailed to us from a French shipyard.


In Georgia we had broken into two groups. The larger group boarded the boat under cover of darkness and the smaller group took the helicopter. The plan was for the airborne unit to fly over our target to scope it out, and then to drop some of the Hunters onto the ship. That unit would secure a rope ladder for the rest of us to climb up, while the helicopter provided covering fire if necessary. Both vehicles would stay nearby in case we needed a quick escape route.
It sounded simple enough. My job was to do exactly what the smart people told me, and carry lots of extra ammunition.
Trip stood beside me at the railing. Unlike me, he did not appear to be feeling seasick at all, but rather seemed to be enjoying himself. He was descended from Jamaican fishermen, so he must have been more in touch with his ancestors' seafaring genes than I was. I had told him about my dream.
"I still have nightmares. I think most of us do," he told me. I knew that some of the zombies that he had been forced to dispatch had been some of his friends and former students. Something like that is bound to weigh heavy on a man's mind. "Something weird was in the air last night."
"But I heard the instructors' meeting about us. I knew about this mission before they came to get us. Explain that."
He shrugged. "You know how it is when you wake up confused. Your brain chemistry's all screwed up. Your unconscious mind just fills in the blanks as needed. We found out about this right after your dream. Seems like the logical thing to me."
"Seems to me that if you want to be logical, you sure did go into the wrong line of work."
He ignored that. "And six master vampires working together? That isn't supposed to happen either."

"Seven," I corrected him.
"Either way. That has never happened. They're too powerful, and too territorial. According to Harbinger there probably aren't that many Masters in the whole world. Besides, how could you tell they were so powerful? All of them look the same." That much was true. From what we had been taught all vampires looked pretty much human, unless you caught them feeding.
"I don't know how I knew. I just did." I nervously checked my Remington 870 for the twentieth time. It was still there.
"Quit worrying about your dream, man. We've got real stuff to worry about. Let's put our game faces on." He slugged me in the arm, hard.

Sam Crespley had us gather at the rear of the boat for a briefing, away from the ears of the crew, who I was positive were already really curious what the ten strangers in body armor and carrying guns were doing on their boat. Lucky for us, fifteen thousand dollars in cash for one day of work was considered good enough money to put up with all manner of weirdness.Of course it was half up front, the other half after they picked us up. Since we were the waterborne team, Harbinger had placed our former Navy man in charge. Thus Sam was even louder than normal. He and Milo were on the boat with us, and the rest of their team was in the chopper.


"Listen up, folks. Here's the deal." Sam began to brief us as he methodically unloaded, checked each round and reloaded his rifle. The rear of the boat smelled like fish. "A few hours ago we were contacted by the French corporation that owns the ship. It was destined for the USA carrying an extremely valuable cargo. The ship lost contact a week ago in the Atlantic. The last transmissions indicated some sort of supernatural problem."
"What did they say?" asked one of the Hunters out of Atlanta, whom I had not met.
"Unknown. Mostly gibberish. They did say monsters, but they didn't say what kinds. But this was an experienced crew so it is doubtful if they did something stupid."

Sam's personal weapon was a very strange choice. It was a Marlin.45-70 lever action carbine. Very slow to reload. Low capacity. Slow rate of fire. But as he had pointed out while boarding, the 450-grain hard-cast bullets he was shooting could go through a buffalo longways. That was no small comfort, just in case the freighter had been taken over by militant evil bison.
"What's the ship's name?" someone asked.
Sam shrugged. "Something French. Hell if I know."
"Why did they contact us? The french hate hiring American Hunters." That was from the man named Jack. He was the leader of the other team, and from what I had seen so far, he was a serious professional. Jack was a lean and good-natured guy, and his team was ready to follow his lead into anything. I took that as a good sign. He had a stubby Russian Krinkov slung from his chest, and apparently his team's logo was a rabbit armed with a switchblade.


"We weren't their first choice. The day after they lost contact a French team was dispatched to intercept. They flew out to the ship, and their last transmission indicated that they'd landed and were starting to clear the ship. They haven't been heard from since."
"Well, that's great," Boone said.
"Wait, it gets better," Milo Anderson interjected. "Jean Darné was the leader of the French team."
Several of the experienced Hunters began to mutter. Jack swore.
"Who is this guy? And why is that bad?" I asked.
"He was the best that they had. Probably the best team lead in Europe. You know they didn't do anything sloppy. Whatever is on that boat is serious," said one of the experienced Hunters, a South African named Priest.
"So we're going in hard and fast." Sam worked the lever on his Marlin and chambered a round. "Since we don't know what's on that ship we're coming ready for anything. Everybody is armed with something that shoots silver, even if it is just your handgun. We have every specialty round for the shotguns that we can think of. Big fifties. RPGs, flamethrowers, thermite, C4, and I even have a chainsaw around here somewhere. The Hind will stay airborne and provide covering fire if we need to bail out."
"Mission parameters?" Jack asked.
"Don't hurt the cargo. Cargo is boxed in the hold. Apparently it's priceless art or some shit. So no bullet holes or fire in the hold. Rest of the ship is open game. If we can save any crew or the French Hunters, do it. Don't sink the ship."


"What's the contract worth?" Jack again.
"Juliet negotiated it, so of course it's a good deal. We got a million up front. If the cargo is unharmed then MHI gets another 3.5 million. The more the cargo is damaged, the less we get. If we sink the ship then we don't get nothing. So let's not sink the ship."

We continued to cover details. There had been thirty crew, a ten-man security detail for the cargo, and a dozen French Hunters. So if we were dealing with an undead infestation we were looking at over fifty potential hostiles, not including whatever started the infection to begin with. The Hunters hazarded guesses about what we could face on the ship, including weird, but not unheard of things.