Eric Vall
DOOMSDAY HUNTER
Chapter 1
Well, this was it.
Six-hundred-fifty East Broadway Lane, Minneapolis, Minnesota. I always hated doing inspections in this part of the city, mostly because it always made me feel like a peasant, come to do the bidding of my noble masters.
When I finally rolled up to the two-story, white-washed brick facade of my destination, my feelings were only intensified.
The exhaust pipe of the beat-up, old, two-thousand-and-four Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan sputtered and spat as I slowed the vehicle to a halt, and for a minute, I wondered if one of these bougie neighbors was going to call in a noise complaint.
Hey, at least I had a company car. Even if it was a piece of shit.
I threw the ’ol girl into park, killed the ignition, unbuckled my seatbelt, and slid out onto the sidewalk. I tried to be discrete as I yanked open the sliding door of the red-and-yellow van and mentally prepared myself to try and find my equipment in the mess of the back.
It was always one of my favorite pastimes to watch peoples’ reactions whenever I opened the side panel of the vehicle. The Silhouette sported a large, cartoon image of a fly, flipped over onto its back and with little X marks where its eyes should be. It had been strategically placed on the van so that, whenever somebody opened up the side door, the poor little guy looked like he was being decapitated.
Cute, but a tad much.
Then again, you had to have a little bit of fun when you were an exterminator.
No… Pest Control Technician.
I had to keep reminding myself I’d recently been promoted. Now, instead of just going out and dealing with problems people already knew they had, I went around and looked at people’s houses to try and figure out what kind of problem they might have.
The eighteen dollars an hour was totally worth it, though.
Then again, that was peanuts compared to whatever the fuck the owners of this house were making.
Did they really need not one, not two, but three sets of bay windows? Not to mention, the brickwork in this place was authentically hand-laid, not the cheap, flat, plastic facade kinda shit you saw at the hardware store. Egyptian blue siding ran parallel to the ground in all the spots devoid of bricks, and white trim lined the exterior of every window, peak, and edge of the home.
This style was popular with the wealthy folk of Minneapolis. It was designed specifically to look cozy and beautiful when it snowed, a phenomenon that happened way too much up in this part of the world.
As I slid on my shoe protectors, mask, and gloves, I wondered if I was going to get a complaint about the “eyesore” of a van sitting out in the middle of the street of this community of multi-million-dollar houses. The old, rusty vehicle had apparently been with the company since it’d been brand new and had certainly seen better days. Most of the paint and graphics on the side had been worn down by a mixture of the harsh winters and countless hours of sitting out in the sun. The entire undercarriage was splotched with rust to the point where my coworkers joked it was going to fall out on us while we were driving down the road. All of this was compounded by the fact that my chump of a boss didn’t want to pay to have it repaired or re-painted, so we had to take this ‘ol rust bucket into all these fancy neighborhoods where we stuck out like a sore thumb.
Fortunately for Bugslayer, LLC, termites, roaches, and rats didn’t discriminate between rich and poor. These people needed my services just as much as anyone in the bad parts of town.
So, I picked up my clipboard and pen, slammed the sliding door shut with just the right amount of force to close the door but not break the slide track, and then beeped the key fob as I headed toward the front door.
Ugh. I never knew what to do when it came to these fancy places. Did I knock? Ring the doorbell? E-mail them again? Stand around and wait for the butler or maid to open the door?
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait for very long.
As soon as I reached the front steps, the wide brown door swung open to reveal a young woman. My heart leapt up into my throat when I saw her perfectly tan skin, dark green eyes, and chocolate brown locks tied back into a single ponytail. She was wearing a simple black turtleneck that hugged her tummy and perky breasts tightly, and on her lower half she wore a pair of tight pleated brown pants. She looked business-casual, but obviously super rich.
“Hunter Bragg!” I introduced myself as I tried not to get stupefied by her outrageous Laura Croft-like beauty. “Pest Control Technician, at your service.”
The woman’s emerald eyes stared back suspiciously as she looked me up and down, and then she motioned for me to step inside.
“This way,” the woman grumbled. “The laundry room is where the problem area seems to be. Also… what’s with the getup? It’s a termite problem, not an infectious disease.”
Well, nice to meet you, too.
“It’s just standard procedure,” I explained. “All Bugslayer employees have to wear this uniform wherever we go, even if it’s just for an inspection. You never know what kind of stuff you get into once you start crawling down in people’s basements and crawl spaces and all that.”
The woman raised her eyebrows and then let out a deep sigh.
“Look around,” she scoffed. “Does this look like the kind of place that would have bed bugs or cockroaches? My father always kept his house spic and span. If a horde of bugs or even a bunch of dust got into his shop, it could completely ruin his life’s work. I try to keep this place somewhat clean in his absence, but there’s only so much I can do when I’m always so busy with work.”
“That sounds pretty intense, Miss…?” I began as I looked around at the inside of the mansion.
“Nash,” she finished for me. “Karla Nash.”
“Right.” I nodded. “What exactly did your father do, Miss Nash?”
“My father’s work isn’t important.” The brunette woman shrugged. “Or at least, not to somebody of your profession. There’s too many quantum theorems and kinematical postulates and other complex terms at play. It’s hard for me to wrap my brain around sometimes, so I can only imagine what’d happen if I tried to explain it to you.”
“Oh, so he’s a physicist or something?”
“Or something,” she scoffed, and then she nodded toward where she wanted me to go.
Even though the outside of the dwelling was nice enough, the inside didn’t look much different than your standard ritzy home. All of the floors were a dark, polished hardwood, and the walls were all painted from top to bottom in a sterile white hue. The vaulted ceilings were lined with large wooden beams across their lengths, and every one of the doorways I could see were separated by a set of dark blue double doors covered with tiny windows.
But there was something off about the whole thing.
Just from a quick glance around, I could see everything in the house was covered with a thin layer of dust, almost as if it hadn’t been used in years. The chandelier that dangled from the ceiling was missing a few lightbulbs, and even the windows appeared to be glazed over by cobwebs and dirt.
“A scientist, huh?” I mused. “Am I gonna find some super-secret badass lab behind one of your closets or in the garage or something?”
Karla’s eyes narrowed as her pursed lips turned into a full-on scowl.
“My father wasn’t a mad scientist,” she muttered, and I noticed out of the corner of my eyes that her right fist was tightening. “Now, shall I show you to the laundry room?”
I stifled a gulp, but my heart was starting to beat against my sternum with the force of a war drum.