Read Online Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC by Larry Correia - Free Book Online
Authors: Larry Correia
Ads: Link
stairs, and it ticked him off. Because it was the source of the legends, Number Six was where the morons liked to break in to impress their girlfriends, so Ethan always made sure he walked through it at least twice a night, even when it was piercing cold, like tonight. Though he wasn’t a religious man, Ethan thought of Number Six as a tomb, and therefore sacred, and not to be broken into by idiot teenagers.
Kids looking for a scare…They didn’t know what scared was. Scared was going back down that hole, even while the rock was screaming around you, ready to break again, and trying to cut your way to men who any sane person knew were probably already dead while choking on clouds of dust. Ethan had gone down twice, working twenty straight desperate hours. The really brave one had been that madman Aksel Kerkonen, the supervisor of Number Six, who’d gone down by himself one last time, even once they’d called the rescue off. That stubborn old bastard hadn’t known when to quit.
The footprints were visible in the dust. These kids were braver than most. They were going right down to the shaft entrance, following the crumbling railroad ties. The steel tracks had been pulled up and sold for scrap years ago. Ethan lost the prints on the metal catwalk.
Ahead and below were the twin giant spools of cable that raised and lowered the cars. It would take a particularly stupid teenager to go down there. It was pitch black, and there were lots of sharp bits of rusty metal to bang into. The holes had been covered with heavy grates for safety. Although the shafts themselves had crumbled during the cave in, leaving them choked with broken ledges that you could barely crawl between, even the shortest drop was still a couple hundred feet.
Ethan had stopped to pull the cobwebs from his hair when he heard the crunching. At first he thought it was boots on the gravel around the top of the shaft, but this was different. It was too loud, and it was more of a snapping that was echoing down the brick walls. Ethan wasn’t sure what he was hearing. It would be dangerous for someone to actually try to climb down the shaft. Even if they squeezed past the ledges, most of the bottom levels had flooded with seeping water as soon as the pumps had quit running. It would be easy for someone to get trapped down there and drown.
Once he was back on solid floor, Ethan played his light around, looking for more prints. There were prints with boot tread, others from athletic shoes, but then there was something else: drag marks. Now he was really curious. He kept watching the floor as he approached the noise. The dust was really disturbed in this area. Maybe some vagrant had moved into Number Six.…Maybe a crazy vagrant…Ethan suddenly realized how dark it was outside of his flashlight beam, and since company policy forbid security guards to have guns, all he had was a nightstick. Maybe he needed to just back out of here and call the sheriff’s department and let them deal with it.
There was a whiff of something rotten. Ethan saw something that made him wonder if the cold medicine was making him hallucinate. It was a paw print, only it was about the length of his size-ten shoe. He turned in a slow circle. There were paw prints everywhere. And then he saw the strangest track of all. It looked like a bird’s track, with three long toes and a spur on the back like a chicken. Only it was ten inches wide and two feet long.
The beam of light rose, shaking, and he saw what was making the crunching noise.
Bones. They glistened red in the beam of light. There were big living things in the shadows, and they were cracking bones.
“Oh, dear God,” he whispered.
The whisper that came over his shoulder almost made the night watchman leap out of his skin.
“He can’t help you here.”
Chapter 5
The padre was the kind of man who kept his cards close to the vest. He didn’t say too much about this supposed job, except that my odds of living through it were
Kids looking for a scare…They didn’t know what scared was. Scared was going back down that hole, even while the rock was screaming around you, ready to break again, and trying to cut your way to men who any sane person knew were probably already dead while choking on clouds of dust. Ethan had gone down twice, working twenty straight desperate hours. The really brave one had been that madman Aksel Kerkonen, the supervisor of Number Six, who’d gone down by himself one last time, even once they’d called the rescue off. That stubborn old bastard hadn’t known when to quit.
The footprints were visible in the dust. These kids were braver than most. They were going right down to the shaft entrance, following the crumbling railroad ties. The steel tracks had been pulled up and sold for scrap years ago. Ethan lost the prints on the metal catwalk.
Ahead and below were the twin giant spools of cable that raised and lowered the cars. It would take a particularly stupid teenager to go down there. It was pitch black, and there were lots of sharp bits of rusty metal to bang into. The holes had been covered with heavy grates for safety. Although the shafts themselves had crumbled during the cave in, leaving them choked with broken ledges that you could barely crawl between, even the shortest drop was still a couple hundred feet.
Ethan had stopped to pull the cobwebs from his hair when he heard the crunching. At first he thought it was boots on the gravel around the top of the shaft, but this was different. It was too loud, and it was more of a snapping that was echoing down the brick walls. Ethan wasn’t sure what he was hearing. It would be dangerous for someone to actually try to climb down the shaft. Even if they squeezed past the ledges, most of the bottom levels had flooded with seeping water as soon as the pumps had quit running. It would be easy for someone to get trapped down there and drown.
Once he was back on solid floor, Ethan played his light around, looking for more prints. There were prints with boot tread, others from athletic shoes, but then there was something else: drag marks. Now he was really curious. He kept watching the floor as he approached the noise. The dust was really disturbed in this area. Maybe some vagrant had moved into Number Six.…Maybe a crazy vagrant…Ethan suddenly realized how dark it was outside of his flashlight beam, and since company policy forbid security guards to have guns, all he had was a nightstick. Maybe he needed to just back out of here and call the sheriff’s department and let them deal with it.
There was a whiff of something rotten. Ethan saw something that made him wonder if the cold medicine was making him hallucinate. It was a paw print, only it was about the length of his size-ten shoe. He turned in a slow circle. There were paw prints everywhere. And then he saw the strangest track of all. It looked like a bird’s track, with three long toes and a spur on the back like a chicken. Only it was ten inches wide and two feet long.
The beam of light rose, shaking, and he saw what was making the crunching noise.
Bones. They glistened red in the beam of light. There were big living things in the shadows, and they were cracking bones.
“Oh, dear God,” he whispered.
The whisper that came over his shoulder almost made the night watchman leap out of his skin.
“He can’t help you here.”
Chapter 5
The padre was the kind of man who kept his cards close to the vest. He didn’t say too much about this supposed job, except that my odds of living through it were
Similar Books
