New Orleans, the Crescent City, the Big Easy. The birthplace of jazz music and the city that care forgot. It goes by many names, but the only name Hunter, a professional exterminator, thought fit it was Garbage. Hunter didn’t like New Orleans, in fact, he hated it. But, in his line of work, there is no better place to make a quick buck, and he only needed a few more to retire.
If it were up to him, Hunter would have preferred to work up north and closer to home. Not just because he felt more comfortable up there, but because the longer and colder months made his job easier. Humans don’t like the cold, but most of his targets didn’t care, making the openings where he could take them out undetected more plentiful.
However, new recruits fresh out of training were flooding the northern market making competition steep for even the most undesirable of contracts. He ended up spending more time fighting with overconfident pea-brained recruits over jobs they didn’t have enough experience to even try than he did actually doing them. So he packed up his stuff and went to New Orleans, at least there wouldn’t be much competition there.
Unlike the places he was used to working, the streets of New Orleans were always alive. People moved to and from bars, parties, and “covert” prostitute hangouts. This constant activity made sure the wide streets in the French Quarter were always buzzing with activity all day every day. It's a wonder New York got the nickname “The City that Never Sleeps” instead of New Orleans. Today, however, Hunter wasn’t in the French Quarter. He was in the Lower Ninth Ward.
It has been years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans back in 2005 and the Lower Ninth Ward was still recovering. The areas closer to the center of the city were in decent condition. Long shotgun houses of varying colors and styles were sporadically spaced on large patches of dirt, gravel, and grass.
Going further into the Lower Ninth the effects of Katrina were evident. The worn shotgun houses were replaced with abandoned rotting homes of varying styles and sizes with overgrown knee-high grass lawns and vines snaking up the walls and across the cracked pavement. The houses, once painted in vibrant colors, alive with bright lights, and happy people were now dark, empty, and a dull white and gray with rotting black ceilings. Perfect conditions for the beginning of an infestation.
Hunter slowed down his old van and carefully watched the windows of the run-down houses. His eyes searched for anything out of place. Normally this task wouldn’t be too difficult, but the violent bouncing of his car from the poorly paved road and the large potholes on every block made the task more difficult.
The streets in New Orleans were particularly shitty compared to the rest of the US, but the Lower 9th was a whole new level of crap. He would be better off driving in the grass than on the street. Hunter was tempted to do it too, but he needed to be covert, his targets would flee if they thought he was nearby.
House after house, Hunter saw nothing but dark shadows clawing at the dirty window panes. It was like ghosts of the house's previous tenets were trying to escape their rotting prison. Though as far as Hunter knew there were no haunted houses outside of the French Quarter. Finally, Hunter saw it, the flicker of candlelight coming from the second floor of a Greek revival-style house.
“Bingo,” Hunter muttered as his van slowed to a stop.
Hunter's van was a cheap hunk of junk he found on Craigslist. He bought it during an expedition in San Francisco way back in 2001 and it has been with him ever since. It looked like a poor man's version of the van the bug monster drove in the first Men in Black movie. It was long and boxy with the back of the van connected to the front via a door frame. It had a red and yellow bug-shaped logo from some long-defunct company on the side, its name had worn away with time. Leaving the car running just in case he needed a quick escape, Hunter moved out of the driver's seat and into the back of the van.
The right wall of the van had a long metal rack with a rifle, shotgun, sniper, grenade launcher, katana, and pistol mounted on it. Underneath the rack was a small workbench and dresser. The workbench was nothing remarkable. It had everything a humble workbench would have if the owner was a gunsmith that is. The workbench was covered in a mess of weapon parts, shell casings, bullets, and lots and lots of gunpowder.
The dresser was a cheap hunk of junk that looked like it was made of cardboard, glue, and cheap wood held together with scotch tape. Its glossy amber varnish was ruined by dark stains from grease, blood, and other mysterious liquids. The top drawer of the dresser had several loaded magazines and plastic salami containers full of ammo. After rooting around through the containers for a few seconds, Hunter grabbed two white pistol magazines loaded with pointy silver bullets and a handful of shotgun shells spray-painted white.
As he went to close the ammo drawer, Hunter hesitated. His instincts whispered to him that he would need a little something else. New Orleans was the stomping ground for blood-hungry pests, and experience had taught him it never hurt to bring light equipment he didn’t need in case he found something unexpected. His hand hovered over the collection of multicolored pistol magazines before he grabbed a green one with crucifixes etched on the flat tip of bullets made from strange green plastic.
Hunter closed the top drawer and opened the second one down to get his work clothes. Inside is a brown leather jacket, a shoulder pistol holster, a black leather ammo belt, a sheathed combat knife, a black belt, blue jeans, a black ski mask, black mirror ski goggles, and gloves with long lines of silver running down the palms and across the knuckles. The rest of his gear had silver lines on them as well. Every seam, cuff, stitch, pocket, and line on his gear was lined with silver that almost seemed to glow with soft moonlight.
After setting his clothes down on the top of the dresser, Hunter opened the third drawer on his dresser to grab his gadgets. They consisted of normal things such as small knives and smoke bombs to the bizarre such as a pack of hand-rolled cigarettes and a pair of metal arm harnesses with a contraption made of strange metal tubes welded to the top.
Hunter took off his large brown cowboy hat and placed it on the dresser as he slipped into his work clothes, dumping his casual wear on the floor with little care. Hunter then began the slow process of storing his gadgets in the many hidden pockets inside his clothes. Once he was done, Hunter grabbed his pistol off the rack, a worn M1911 with a black and silver barrel and a textured wooden grip. He loaded one of the white magazines into the pistol and chambered a round. Hunter placed the two other magazines into the side of the shoulder holster along with his pistol.
Hunter took his shotgun off the rack, a SPAS-12 with a silver-lined grip and barrel, and loaded it with white shotgun shells. He then took the few leftover shells and slotted them into the ammo belt around his chest. Satisfied with his loadout, Hunter put his hat back on his head, unlocked the double doors on the back of his van, and jumped out into the street. This proved to be a mistake as he nearly broke his ankle after jumping toward a large pothole right behind his van.
With the agility of a tiger but with the grace of a drunk, Hunter quickly spread out his legs, nearly doing the splits, and successfully avoided his eighth trip to the sawbones that month. “Fucking New Orleans,” Hunter grumbled as he awkwardly shifted his way over the pothole.
Free from the death pit behind his van, Hunter stalked his way up to the building with the flickering candlelight as he started the timer on his watch, a habit from his squad days he had yet to shake. Not a sound was made as he stalked up the steps to the front door. Not the dried leaves on the ground or the rotting black wood of each step threatening to shatter under the exterminator's weight. It was like Hunter was a ghost passing through the objects in his way.
Hunter went to open the door but stopped when he noticed the rusty hinges. He adjusted his grip on the doorknob and in one swift motion, he opened the door without making a sound. Hunter's eyes narrowed with concern as he stepped inside the decrepit house as the magic concealing the inside dissipated causing the inside of the building to change. The interior of rotting wood and furniture along with the smell of dirt and wet wood faded away to reveal a slightly renovated interior stinking of wet paint and fresh drywall.
In front of Hunter was a long hallway with two rooms on either side. At the end of the hallway was a doorway revealing a kitchen where a man was blending something as he hummed an old jazzy tune.
Not a single noise was made as Hunter moved down the hallway, only stopping to try to check the two rooms on either side, but they were nothing but empty bedrooms. Satisfied he wouldn’t have anyone attacking him from behind, Hunted began sneaking up behind his target. Stopping just outside the doorway, the exterminator slowly raised his shotgun, taking aim at the man’s head as he entered the kitchen.
Click!
“Huh?” the man said as he turned around, revealing a hand crank-powered blender full of de-nailed human fingers.
“Oh shit,” Hunter said. He had forgotten to rack a round into the chamber of his shotgun.
The man, after carefully placing the blender down on the counter, let out an inhuman roar as his body rapidly changed. He instantly grew to almost 7 feet tall. The sounds of ripping clothes, breaking bones, and tearing flesh could be heard as his body shifted into a bestial form. Gray hair shot out of his body as his face elongated into that of a hound and his fingers and toenails grew into razor-sharp claws, finally revealing the man’s true form, a werewolf.
“Oh, shit,” Hunter said as his shotgun charging handle refused to move. “Lousy piece of shiiiiiit!”
The werewolf tackled Hunter into the hallway and onto the ground but quickly let go as his fur began to burn and his flesh bubbled with a hiss of steam from touching Hunter's silver-lined clothes. The werewolf let out a series of pained yelps as he scrambled away from the exterminator, but it was too late. Hunter seized the opening and punched the werewolf in the abdomen to weaken the beast before smashing the palm of his hand into the beast's snout. The combination of prolonged contact with pure silver and sudden physical force was enough to shatter the monster's snout.
The werewolf tumbled away, letting out doglike yipes of pain as shattered teeth fell out and black blood leaked from its face. Hunter quickly got to his feet and tried once again to use the charging handle on his shotgun, but to no avail. The werewolf struggled to its feet as its snout began to heal and new teeth replaced the broken and missing ones in a matter of seconds.
“Fuck this!” Hunter cursed as he flipped a custom switch installed on the shotgun setting it from semi-auto to pump-action mode.
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Recovering from its injuries and the silver, the werewolf slashed at Hunter with his long razor-sharp claws as it let out a roar of pure hatred. His hand was moving so fast it was nothing more than a blur, but Hunter was ready for it. The monster's long razor sharp sliced through the floor scattering splinters of rotting wood all over the floor as Hunter dived out of the way narrowly avoiding the beast's attack. Hunter hit the ground rolling and got up onto one knee. He slammed the stock of the shotgun on the ground to rack a shell into the chamber of his shotgun and pointed it at the werewolf.
Not bothering to aim, Hunter quickly fired his shotgun from the hip. The werewolf screamed in pain as black blood and gore splattered across the walls as the silver buckshot blew open the monster's chest. The werewolf flew backward and smashed through the kitchen counter causing the marble counter to shatter and the blender to spill its contents all over the floor leaving the werewolf in a heap of rubble stained with black and red blood.
Hunter kept his shotgun aimed at the doorway and waited for any potential reinforcements the monster may have. After an agonizingly long minute of silence, Hunter finally relaxed. Standing up, Hunter walks over to the bleeding werewolf. Despite having a beachball-sized hole going clean through his chest, the monster was still breathing. His heart still barely managed to pump the monster's black blood through its body despite the marble-sized hole in the center. The werewolf’s lungs looked like black Swiss Cheese but they still managed to weakly suck in air.
Hunter began pocking around the werewolf's chest, examining the damage to the heart. The monster tried to slash at Hunter, but the exterminator blocked the monster's hand and shattered it with a single crushing squeeze.
“Damn, hearts no good…” Hunter said, pointing his shotgun at the werewolf's head.
Suddenly, a bat flew into the kitchen from the doorway behind Hunter. As it slowed down to land its body began to grow and change. A disgusting mass of blood, flesh, and bone swarmed around the bat like angry bees as it transformed into a pale-skinned lanky girl with raven black hair and blood-red eyes with sickly yellow pupils mid-flight. Loose black and red clothing materialized out of thin air and covered up the woman's nude body. She looked at Hunter with shock and confusion, clearly not expecting to see a human in her home.
“The fuck?” Hunter exclaimed as he recognized the monster. He raised his shotgun to take a shot at the monster, but her confusion didn’t last long.
After a moment of hesitation, the vampire hissed with rage revealing two large gleaming white saliva-coated fangs protruding from her mouth. Her nails rapidly grew to the size of knitting needles and became sharper than razors. With inhuman speed, she dashed to the left narrowly avoiding the silver buckshot from Hunter's shotgun. She bounced off the kitchen wall and shot toward Hunter in an attempt to gouge out the exterminator's eyes.
With no time to shoot and the monster moving too fast to dodge, Hunter used his shotgun as a shield. The monster spread out her fingers to try and get around the weapon blocking her attack, but Hunter extended his arms at the last possible second and just barely managed to block the monster's elongated claws just inches from his goggles.
The vampire was initially surprised by this move but quickly recovered and grabbed the shotgun. She nearly ripped Hunter’s arms out of their sockets as the monster tried to yank the shotgun out of his hands. However, a steel grip developed from decades of fighting kept the shotgun firmly in his hands as the two spun around like a top, struggling for the weapon.
Letting go with one hand and holding the shotgun with the other, Hunter punched the bloodsucker in the throat. This proved to be a mistake. The vampire's flesh was harder than stone and Hunter's fist nearly broke upon hitting her. The bloodsucker didn’t even flinch from the blow that glanced off her throat.
With only one hand on the shotgun, the monster finally had the advantage in their struggle. She swung Hunter around, lifting him off his feet. The shotgun slipped from the exterminator's hand she whipped Hunter towards the wall.
The air left Hunter's lungs as he crashed into the wall. While it was covered in fresh paint and drywall the renovation job was sloppy and the rotted wood of the house wasn’t replaced. In a bundle of soggy drywall and splinters glued to his coat by the paint, Hunter smashed straight through the wall and into a bedroom. The wall was weak enough that the exterminator didn’t break any bones, but it also failed to slow him down.
Thankfully, Hunter managed to land on the bed, softening his landing significantly but the old mattress still stressed his ribs to their limit and forced all the air out of his lungs. Despite this, the exterminator didn’t hesitate to make his next move. With one hand, Hunter swatted away at the building materials covering his face and drew his sidearm with the other. As he wheezed heavily, Hunter ejected the white magazine from his pistol and loaded the green one in its place.
Hunter raised his pistol and aimed at the vampire through the hole in the wall, but before he could shoot, the monster threw the shotgun at him with surprising accuracy. The butt of the shotgun hit Hunter in the head, knocking him off the bed and onto the floor. Hunter fell flat on his back as the vampire flew through the hole in the wall on a path straight toward Hunter as she screamed with sadistic glee.
However, her joy was short-lived as Hunter had just enough time to take aim at the bloodsucker with his sidearm.
BANG!
The vampire let out a scream of pain as the bullet made itself at home in her skull. She completely missed Hunter and crashed through the wall behind him revealing an ugly blue tile bathroom.
“Fucking vampire bitch…” Hunter said between labored breaths as he got to his feet.
That was when Hunter noticed a white 45mm ammo casing on the ground next to his feet. He checked the chamber of his pistol and saw one green bullet. His mind flashed back to when he was prepping his gear in the van. While he didn’t chamber his shotgun, he did chamber his pistol.
Suddenly, a screech of bloodlust, rage, and hatred came from behind Hunter. He spun around just in time to see the vampire was on her feet, and she was angry. The wound on her head rapidly healed right in front of Hunter's eyes. Black blood bubbled out of her wound in her skull and a silver bullet popped out of the wound and the bleeding suddenly stopped.
Hunter fired every round in his pistol at the vampire not bothering to aim for her vitals. She charged down Hunter, her body a blur as she serpentined left and right to avoid the volley of bullets from Hunter's gun. Most of his shots missed but two struck her stomach causing the vampire to trip and fall to the floor writhing in pain as steam billowed from her stomach.
Hunter dropped his pistol and charged down the vampire. He grabbed her by her long hair and drew his knife, revealing its silver blade and ironwood tip. Hunter yanked the monster back by the hair and slammed her head into the bathroom wall with enough force to shatter the ceramic tiles. Hunter brought his knife down on her chest toward her heart, but the vampire stopped the knife by impaling it on her hand.
Unlike the silver bullet, the silver metal on the knife caused her flesh to bubble and steam. With a scream of rage and fury, the vampire ripped the hair off her skull, freeing her from Hunter's grasp, and kicked the exterminator with enough force to send him flying through the glass door of the bathroom shower. It took all of his will to keep himself upright in a seated position. Black spots clouded Hunter's vision and his eyes began seeing double.
With a scream of fury, the vampire charged toward Hunter, but the two bullets in her gut slowed her movements down. Instead of moving and supernatural speed, she was slightly slower than the average man, but Hunter knew that didn’t make her any less dangerous. The second the vampire was within striking distance she lunged at him, thirsty for blood. Despite his double vision, Hunter managed to lean to the right and avoid the monster's claws.
Her left hand stabbed into the shower wall just narrowly missing his neck but Hunter couldn’t avoid her right hand. The vampire's long nails nearly impaled the monster hunter through the shoulder but he just barely managed to catch her by the wrist. The monster's claw pressed against his shoulder but the exterminator's jacket kept them from puncturing his skin.
With a hungry look in her evil red eyes, the vampire began to salivate like a rabid dog as she pressed Hunter against the shower wall. Despite her weakened state, the vampire was still leagues stronger than the exterminator. With his free hand, Hunter grabbed the monster by the throat, but it took every ounce of strength Hunter had to keep the vampire's fangs away from his neck and her claws out of his shoulder. The vampire let out uncontrollable psychotic giggles as her mouth inched closer to his neck as he struggled to keep the monster at bay.
If she got any closer, the vampire would bite Hunter and suck him dry. If he let go of her wrist, she would spear him through the shoulder and pin him to the wall. Then she would bite Hunter and suck him dry. That left him with one option, and it would take a whole lot of luck for Hunter to pull it off.
Hunter stopped trying to push the vampire away. Instead, he pulled closer. Using the vampire's strength against her, Hunter pulled the monster's face over his shoulder, smashing her head through the shower wall. Her claws ripped up his jacket, but Hunter managed to pull them away just enough to miss his flesh and stick them into the wall. Now the vampire was hurt, dazed, and had both hands temporarily immobilized, giving Hunter one second to make his move. With his free hand, Hunter turned the shower on to full blast to exploit one little-known fact about vampires, they are weak to running water.
The vampire screeched with pain and tried to pull away as the running water disintegrated her flesh, but Hunter didn’t let her get away. He grabbed the vampire by the throat and squeezed with both of his hands as tightly as he could all the while her flesh became softer and softer. Black blood and water drenched the exterminator as the vampire desperately tried to free herself from his grasp.
Hunter pressed his mouth closed as tightly as he could and held his breath to keep the flying chunks of vampire meat out of his mouth as she continued to thrash and struggle. Her flesh peeled off her skull like an orange peel as the water made it under her skin. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the vampire stopped struggling as her head turned into mush and Hunter's finger pushed through the flesh on her neck like wet sand.
The monster hunter pushed the vampire corpse away from him. With a wet pop, her arms separated from her corpse as it fell to the ground. Turning off the water, Hunter stepped out of the shower and took a seat on the toilet.
“Ugh. That was gross…” Hunter said after he pulled off his mask.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, Hunter checked the drain of the shower and spotted a set of vampire fangs. Hunter’s ribs sent spikes of sharp pain up his spine as he bent over to collect his reward, but he powered through it.
Hunter moved through the hole in the bathroom wall and into the bedroom to pick up his shotgun before moving into the kitchen in search of his hat but stopped when he noticed the werewolf crawling across the floor. The hole in his chest was nearly healed but his wound still stemmed and bubbled from the silver buckshot in the werewolf flesh. The monster looked over its shoulder at Hunter, its eyes going wide with raw primal fear.
“So this is how it ends for me, huh?” the werewolf choked out trying to hide his fear behind false bravado. “Dying at the hands of an honorless bastard….”
Hunter checked his shotgun to make sure it wasn’t broken as the werewolf coughed up gobs of congealed black blood as he sat up against the kitchen wall. His heart was still exposed and slowly pushing out a ball of silver buckshot. Hunter glanced down at his watch and began counting down in his head as he stood over the werewolf.
“I trained for decades in preparation for the day you people would come after me,” the werewolf wheezed. “I was the best of my pack, an undefeated champion of champions! You have no idea how lucky you got, Wolfsbane- AUGH!”
The werewolf gagged as the monster hunter shoved the barrel of his shotgun into his mouth.
“Shut up,” Hunter said as he racked a shell into his shotgun.
The werewolf's arms shot up to grab Hunter in a final desperate attempt to survive, but it didn’t matter.
BANG!
The werewolf's brains splattered all over the kitchen walls just as its heart fully healed. Hunter moved away from the werewolf's body and stopped the timer on his watch. “2 minutes 45, not bad for a total shit show,” Hunter muttered to himself.