Free Matt Archer: Monster Summer by Kendra C. Highley Page A

“Permission to enter, sir?”
    “Come in, Matt,” Uncle Mike called.
    I pushed my way through the tent flap. Uncle Mike and
Captain Hunter (she told me call her Julie, just not on ops) were sitting at a
long metal table, going over the daily intelligence reports. Their heads were
close together, but there wasn’t anything going on. My lucky day.
    Julie looked up, her nose wrinkled. “Do you smell
something?”
    Maybe it was time to do laundry. “No, ma’am.”
    The corner of Uncle Mike’s mouth twitched, but shook his
head at Julie. “Me, neither. Must just be you.”
    “Uh huh,” Julie said, giving me a long stare. I shrank a
little under her gaze; she intimidated the crap out of me. Julie looked like a
supermodel with her long brown hair and great body—even wearing camo—but she
also was Military Intelligence and supposedly able to kill a grown man with one
hand. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out how.
    Finally I broke eye-contact. Man, she was good. “Okay,
okay...I’ll try to air out my BDUs or something.”
    That made her smile, and Ms. Scary-Pants disappeared. “You
want to know a trick? Sprinkle them with baby powder and hang them up outside.
That’ll help.”
    Because of course I packed baby powder in my gear. What
self-respecting guy didn’t? Seriously, reeking of gym socks was better than
smelling like a nursery. “Uh, yeah. Thanks for the tip.”
    I settled down at the table across from Mike, waiting to
find out why he’d called me in. He didn’t say anything right away, engrossed in
the reports. Every once in a while, he’d make a mark on an aerial map of the
desert. I watched him work. For a long time, I thought I’d look exactly like
him when I got older, but today I was struck by the differences. Sure, we were
both tall, and I was on track to be almost as broad in the shoulders, but my
hair had turned a darker shade of brown than his and my build was longer and
leaner. In a way, that disappointed me. Growing up, I’d always wanted to look
like, and be like, Uncle Mike. My siblings resembled him—and Mom—a lot more
than I did, and it bugged me some.
    “Matt?”
    Uncle Mike was watching me, a puzzled smile on his face.
Crap, he caught me staring. “Yes, sir?”
    “Just wondering where you drifted off to.” Uncle Mike
stacked his papers into a neat pile, lining the corners up square with the edge
of the table. “The drones picked up something interesting last night. They
spotted a pack of Dingoes eighteen miles due west of here. This may be the
break we’ve been looking for.”
    He pushed a grainy black and white picture across the table.
I could just make out a group of five dog-like creatures huddled together in a
patch of scrub-brush. Even in a picture taken from a distance by a drone
flight, there was no mistaking what they were, though. “Definitely looks like Dingoes.”
    The Dingoes—our code name for the particular breed of
monster we’d been called out to hunt—were a sight to see. The Wookiee-like
Bears I’d fought in Montana last winter had their own kind of weird, but the
Dingoes really took it to another level. They had canine ears, elongated
muzzles with pointed teeth, and reddish-brown fur that allowed them to blend in
with the sand and rocks of their native terrain. But that’s where any
resemblance to an actual dog stopped. The rest of a Dingo’s body could be mistaken
for a barrel-chested pro-wrestler—ropy muscles, thick neck and all. Well,
except for the tail and giant paws.
    I handed Julie the picture and crossed my arms over my chest
against the chill seeping into the tent. “So are we going after them?”
    Uncle Mike frowned and I could practically see the wheels
turning in his head. Risk his fifteen-year-old nephew’s life by making him
fight off five monsters with only backup support, or wait to call in an
additional knife-wielder and risk losing the pack.
    Tough spot, but I didn’t sympathize. After being chosen to
wield one of five