[Hunter: The Vigil 2e] Slayer J vs The Hunger (Part 3)

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Slayer J vs The Hunger

(Part 3)

I actually wrote this short story in 2007 to feature an NPC who had recently started his Vigil. Sources Taken from the nWoD Antagonists sourcebook, it actually picks right up the story header for The Hunger from the Antagonists book and incorporates it into a larger story.  This is the third and final part.  It reminds me of a cross between an Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) monster battle and the Supernatural TV show, which I hadn't seen until 2009.

I find this next part kinda racist.  But this is Jack Slayer's retelling, and he is a tactless cowboy with no cultural sensitivity and plenty of down-home white privilege.  This is the only apology I'm putting out for this.

I parked across the street, the restaurant had closed about an hour earlier but lights indicated people were still bustling about inside.  I knocked on the door a few times until a young China-man answered the door. 

"We closed."  He declared impolitely.

"I have to have some more." I cried, clutching my stomach. "I have money" I waved a few $20 bills in his face with my shorty-gloved left hand.

"You come back tomorrow!"  He said impatiently, beginning to close the door.

"You must let me eat more of the Hunger Special!"  

That stopped him; he eyed me and looked around behind me to see if anyone was watching.  "You Hunger?"

"I Hunger" I declared unhappily, making a great show of being famished.  

"Come in, fetch you to go."   

"Oh!" I stopped him as I walked into the dimly lit restaurant.  "And I would like mine extra rare please, cook very little!"  I smiled at him, doing my best to seem crazy with hunger.  

He smiled and scurried off.  I sat down at a table with the whole place to myself.

Sometime later he returned from the kitchen with a few of those little doggy bags and I opened before paying.  In the slimy stir-fry I thought I could see raw little pieces of grey soft material with pinkish edges.  It had groves that looked very familiar.  I looked up and smiled hungrily at the man and he smiled back.  I continued to inspect it until my head clicked and I realized I was starring at brain matter.  I smiled again as I tried to keep my supper down and made a reach into my jacket as to get my wallet.  Instead I drew the shotgun out and sighted it on his chest.  

"Me love you long time."  I said through clenched teeth as the China-guy threw up his hands.  I got to my feet and kept him out of grab-my-gun range.  "Now just what the fuck is going on here?  Is that human brain in there?  And why does it make people into monsters!?"  

The man stuttered in Chinese, quivering with fear, I was furious and thought about coring out this guy’s head with my shotgun… like Audrey… she didn’t deserve that shit.

"Don’t kill him, he is my nephew…" said a gravelly voice from the kitchen.  I walked around the man, putting my back to the door the nephew between me and the cook.  A hunched, lumbering creature came out from the shadows to stand off to the side of his nephew.  

Just like Daniel only her it had progressed further… he was a hairless pointed head with tan sandpapery skin and at least three rows of serrated teeth in his over sized mouth.  His fingers were elongated and ended in black wicked talons.  He stood still as if he knew the score; I'd blow them both away at first excuse.  But that fucker was huge.

"Kay, ugly, spill your guts, why are you turning people-"

"It’s called The Hunger," sharky interrupted me, somehow moving that huge horrid maw in ways in which to speak.  "It is the curse that befalls those who feast on the hearts and brains of his fellow man."

"You speak very clean English, for a mouth like that.  So you were a cannibal before this happened…"

"I had no choice," the monster said, beseeching me with his long fingered gestures.  "The angered spirits told me I had to infect ten others with The Hunger, by eating human brains and hearts, and then I would be forgiven and freed from the curse.  It was not easy, brains and hearts don’t always have the curse and eaters don’t contract it.  It has been very difficult, to get the resources, and after the first six the government wised up and I was forced to leave my ancestral home.  Then we came to America… I only need a few more… and I will be free of this."  

At this point he was getting a little angry or agitated I couldn’t really tell which.  His face was drawn over those teeth and his pitch black eyes seemed bigger than before.  He was getting really dialoguey and it was making me nervous. 

Sure enough, before I could mount a response to these new revelations I was jumped by another cook who must have been sneaking around from another door from the kitchen.  He knocked my gun down with a broomstick and then struck my face. 

I reeled backwards.  I clutched the shotgun with everything I had.  As the second bald half-beast in an apron tripped me the shotgun went off in my hands as I clenched it to hang on.  It was a real hip-shot, a misfire. Regardless, the buckshot was like a cannon next to my ear and hit the nephew square in the chest.  I couldn’t hear a fucking thing at this point, but I did see the nephew fall, his stomach a blossom of red through his black apron.  I landed on my ass and cocked the shotgun as I rolled under a table.

I heard the inhuman roar of the Hunger-stricken monster as it sprinted around the side of the tables to flank me.  I emptied a shell into the top of the table as the broomstick guy tried to jab his tool under the table.  He ran for cover after that, not sure if I had hit him.  

I cocked it for number three as the monster tore a beeline for me, showing immense strength through its shoulders and legs as it flung tables and chairs from its path with ease.  Even through that ridiculous uniform I could see this man was ripped.  I didn't know if he was a linebacker before he was an monster and it didn't matter right now.

I fired at his legs as he ran forward but he leaped as I fired.  I don't think I even grazed him.  I had a second to react before his massive body landed on the table I was under and it collapsed under his weight like a ton of bricks.  I rolled and cocked the gun as it came down on my head and chest, leaving me legs pinned under his weight and fragments of table.  

He lay on top of me, keeping the gun pressed against my chest and pointing at my feet.  With him on the table he set to work on my leg.  I could see my feet by looking at the bottom corner of my eyes.  A huge circular mouth of jagged sharpies clamped down on my right thigh.  I cried out and debated firing my gun between my legs, it was a tough call but I wanted to live.  As he bit deeper, dangerously close to the Femoral artery, I used the jolt of pain to flex my whole body up giving me a clearer shot as a fired.  If I wasn’t already deaf this would have blown out my ears.    I felt a few pellets burrow into my foot where the thing’s had had been a moment before.  Same damn foot that got bite earlier.  Blood splatted everywhere and the weight vanished from me.

I scrambled with my mangled leg out from under the table.  I cocked the my trusty shotty and noted I only two shots left before I would have to reload, and that would kill me for sure.  Once I was free and on my feet I noticed the monster crouched over his dead nephew, eating his chest and head with equal vigor.  The creature that had tried to protect relative had given into The Hunger quite literally and was fatally distracted.  

I sighted on the creature's bulky back when the broom handle come down over my neck.  I had a second to go with it.  I rocked back with the broom handle and head butted the sweeper guy in the nose.  I ducked under his stunned arms and hit backward with the butt of the gun as hard as I could.  He was down like a puppet with his strings cut, out of breath.  His head slammed into the floor and he stopped moving.

I spun around to kill the monster.  He was on his feet, hearing the commotion perhaps, and heading my way.  I sighted and fired, too quickly, the shot blasted into the monsters left arm as it sprung forward and rushed me.  I backed up to the wall, cocked, and fired again hitting him square in the chest.  He staggered and I had just enough time to dive behind a buffet table.  The creature darted past and become tangled in two chairs before falling over in a crash of broken wood.

No shells, I had to act fast, take this thing to hell. I could hear him getting up and moving closer, heavy malformed feet pounding the tile floor.  I pulled a pipe bomb from a cargo pocket and produced a lighter.  I had the thing lit with a 3 inch fuse... about 9 seconds.  

I got back to my feet as fast as I could, the fuse burning too fast and I wanted to make I made it count.  I peered over the buffet table.  Sharky was now crouched over the broomstick man, enjoying another free meal from one of his kin.  

I wasn’t a good fighter, I was a lucky fool, and that thing was a slave to its appetite.  I rolled the pipe across the floor.  The creature spun its big ugly head in time for me to give him the bird with one hand and pull out another pipe bomb with the other, the hissing bomb rolled between his legs and I ducked.  

"Fuck you!"  I cried from behind the buffet bar.  

KABOOM!  A piece of shrapnel simply appeared in my my left shin.  Same Goddamn leg again!  At least I still had one complete leg with no damage.  The metal was a burning lance of pain and I went down screaming as I struggled to get enough control of myself to light another pipe bomb. 

I heard a horrible howling sound.  I limped back over to the end of the table and looked out in time for both my legs to get scooped up by long talons.  He had me good; I kicked desperately, keeping that bloody mouth away from me, the pain in my right leg excruciating, pick a spot.  I didn’t let my head get smacked as I was pulled off my feet.  I slapped my arms down to prevent me from getting bonked on the head.  

I clenched the lit bomb like a lifeline.  It had about 2 inches left leaving me with a few seconds to get rid of it.  I could toss it away or behind him and let it eat me.  Maybe some shards would slow him down… yeah right.  The lower half of this thing was a bloody mess, legs torn to ribbons. Good.
But It wasn’t going to stop for a few more pock marks in its back.  At half an inch left on the fuse I plunged the bomb into that huge mouth with my right hand (my good hand) and it clamped down reflexively on it.  There was no getting my arm out of that, but it didn’t like the burning fuse in his mouth and opened again as I flung myself down and covered my head.  

His face exploded, jaw falling free and skull hitting the ceiling.  Of course I didn’t see that as more shrapnel torn into my body.

I lay there bleeding, feeling numb and stupid.  Luck and stupidity had seen me through to the revenge of Audrey and now I was sure I was bleeding out on the floor.  "Smile you sumbitch."  

I’m not sure how long I lay there, it could have been hours or minutes.  I didn't die.  The smell of smoke roused me from my fetal position of agony followed immediately by the fire alarms going off. Apparently my pipe bomb had started a small fire.  It was a crappy building and had no sprinkler system built in.  Somehow I dragged myself painfully to my feet and staggered all the way to my pickup outside.  It’s kind of a blur; I think I stopped off up the street due to loss of blood.

I woke up in the hospital and had to do a lot of explaining.  They pulled one of those shark-teeth out of my leg, and now I wear it as a necklace.  Long story short, I use private Doctor or myself from here on out.  From then on I had a new addiction. Hunting down the supernatural nasties.  Every time I kill one of them I get a piece of my old reality back.  A little more normal back into the world.

"Maybe someday I can forgive myself for letting Audrey die.  I work as a bartender when I can, travel, keep a light life so I can pick up and run if I have to.  I pay with cash, leave little trace, and keep a very low profile.  I’m not the only one either, I have some contacts with a homegrown organization called the Union and sometimes they point me in the right direction.  Their collective advice has saved my hide more times than I can count.  Most of the time I let the drunk people talk and try to steer the conversation to the weird and bizarre, I changed my name to Jack Slayer, to protect my remaining family and create an alias-"

“Ever kill a vampire?”  The man interrupted as casually as possible.  Jack was stunned.  First time he had spoken in a long time.  

“Once."  Jack replied, voice guarded.

“Ah yes, so it was you… I had doubts until this moment.”

"What do you mean?” Jack asked, he suddenly felt like he was rooted to the spot and unable to move.

“You killed my Sire.”  The pale man flashed a fanged grin.  Now Jack knew the score, he was being mentally manipulated by vampire and paralyzed.  He should have noticed.  It had started so subtly.

“Now we are going to take a little stroll outside so no one will see whatever happened to ole’ Jack Slayer,"  the man-in-white said as he got to his feet.

Jack felt the pull of the vamp’s will against his own and he was losing.  He would walk out of here and stand still and quiet while this dead thing drank him dry.  Unless he could by time, play upon the vampire's notoriously short temper and lack of self control when it comes to blood.

“Come along Jacky, my Sire will meet you there... in hell.”  The man stood, coaxing him out from the security of the counter.  The crowd had died down by then were largely ignoring them.  More vampire tricks, perhaps.

The man-in-white suddenly felt Jack resist and mentally pull away.  Jack hadn’t moved, it took all he could not to take the first step to his doom.  Jack got angry, fought against the chains wrapped around his brain.  He smiled suddenly, and clenched his fists and teeth.

“You’re Sire? Is that like your daddy?”  The vampire was surprised, and his frustration deepened.  Jack's smile widened.  “Guess that means I’m your daddy now…”  

That did it; the vampire released his mental grip and roared.  Drunken people yelled, screamed and dove out of the way as he tore forward and made to jump over the counter and attack Jack.  

Jack was nimble, Jack was quick, Jack grabbed his lighter and bottle of ever-clear.  And as the undead lord dove onto the counter to claw at jack with inhuman claws that had sprouted in an instant, Jack lit the top of the bottle and smashed it into the creatures head.  Flames roar over the counter as Jack withdrew quickly and the man-in-white became a screaming man-of -blazing-agony. 

Jack had learned from fighting the last vampire that they lit up like Christmas trees and were very scared of fire.  The anger had now turned to stark terror and the not-so-human torch bolted through the crowd.  It was time for Mr. Slayer to make a hasty exit.  He grabbed his bottle of Lord Calvert and ran out the back door after the vampire.  He would have to quit the job now, get a bartender job in another town.  It was a pity too many people saw that, he was just getting cozy here.

The vampire, completely engulfed in flame, tore around the back of the building, flesh blackened, and screaming.  He rolled around on the ground like a man having a seizure, moving supernaturally fast.  It put the flames out and clawed the ground, unaware of a few glimmering flames on its back.  

Jack walked purposefully around the building behind the smoking vampire.  Jack took one last long swig from the bottle of Lord Calvert and then chucked it at the vampire.  The bottle shattered across his back and the flames came back in full force.  The creature rolled around for a time and then stopped.  Then it popped like a bloated tick and burning entrails spilled across the ground.  It smoldered into a pile of tar and ash in a few minutes.

Jack was already gone.  He walked the other way muttering a little rhyme under his breath and fingering his toothed necklace.  “There once was a man who had a plan and his name was Slayer J…”