Free Monster Hunter Alpha-ARC by Larry Correia Page A

wouldn’t have changed. It smelled like he had been mistaken.
    There was an open-late diner down the road a short distance from the hospital. It looked like it had been around for a while, the kind of small-town place where crusty old locals would sit and smoke and talk to whoever was willing to listen about anything that was new or out of place. It was exactly the kind of establishment where a Hunter could grab a cold beer and a hot steak, shoot the bull, leave a huge tip, and get some intel on what was actually going on. In other words, it was Earl’s kind of place.
    Which was probably why the sight of the Suburban with the government plates in the parking lot immediately made him mad. Earl swore to himself as he parked the MHI truck behind the black vehicle. It might have been from some innocuous federal agency, but the number of extra antennas and dark window tint in a town teeming with werewolves just screamed Monster Control Bureau. “Well, ain’t that my luck?”
    If the Feds were here because they knew about Nikolai, they’d surely screw it up. The Russian would go to ground and disappear for another decade. Earl took his time deciding on a course of action. He could get back on the road and drive around looking for werewolves or he could go inside and try to listen in on the Feds. Odds were that it wouldn’t be anyone who’d recognize him, and if that were the case, he might actually be able to overhear something useful from them. His sense of hearing was better than a normal man’s, so it was worth a shot.
    Worst-case scenario, if it turned out to be a familiar Fed, he could try to pick an argument with them to see if they might slip up and say something they shouldn’t. MCB loved to throw their weight around, and one of his favorite hobbies was provoking the easily provoked MCB agents. The thought of confrontation was so tempting that Earl almost left his MHI hat on. Discretion finally won out, and he left it in the truck.
    The diner was warm and smelled of good cooking inside. The place was relatively busy for how late it was, but it was a Friday night. Earl took a spot at the bar with a few older gentlemen who were busy complaining about politics. A teenage waiter with hair covering his eyes had a menu in front of Earl a minute later. The Feds were easy enough to spot in a corner booth, being the only customers wearing ties. Ties stand out even more when almost everyone else is wearing flannel. The younger of the pair was unfamiliar but had that typical MCB look, being an intense, muscle-bound, square-jawed specimen of ass-kicking and witness intimidation. The senior one had his back toward the bar, but that raspy bass voice was familiar. The senior agent was a thickset man, totally bald, with jowls and a big nose. What was it? Storm? Stork? He’d been Franks’ partner years ago.…Sam had punched his lights out once at some Navy thing.…Stark. That was it. Stark was a prick. So much for not being recognized.
    The Feds were talking. Like most men who’d spent a lifetime around gunfire, Agent Stark spoke with the unconsciously raised volume of someone with some hearing loss. He was complaining about the weather, the locals, and the audacity of Copper Lake for not being Chicago, but nothing of any use to Earl. The waiter came back, and Earl surprised the kid by ordering two sixteen-ounce T-bone dinners, extra rare, extra everything. The waiter asked if he was expecting a guest. He just smiled, said that he’d been blessed with a fast metabolism, and went back to listening.
    It wasn’t the Fed’s conversation that caught his attention, though. It was one of the locals.
    “The thing must’a been a monster. I heard it was bad. Like it clawed him to bits.”
    “Damn straight. I never seen the like. It ate part of Joe’s stomach. That boy’s lucky to be alive.”
    Earl turned toward the two men sharing the bar to his left. “Sorry to interrupt…But did you say that somebody got eaten ?”
    “By a