"Hot stock tips? Free iPods? Discount Viagra? Enlarge your- What the hell?" I asked, as Julie handed printed e-mails to me.
Dear Sir, I am Barrister Kojima Loima of Nigeria and I must approach you concerning an opportunity of extreme urgency. My client former Prime Minister Katanga has requested that I safely move his fortune from our country to the U.S. in secrecy. I must transfer a sum of sixty-two million dollars to your bank account- It just went on and on.
"What is this?"
"Spam," Milo said solemnly.
"Trolls are spammers?" Julie asked.
"Oh, and so much more!" Milo exclaimed. "Open it, Trip."
Holly tightened up on her rifle. Trip turned the key and popped the lid. The trunk appeared to be filled with a bunch of greasy rubber hoses. Suddenly, the pile moved, revealing it to be one solid mass curled into an uncomfortable fetal position. Giant clawed hands and feet had been chained together and padlocked. Two round yellow eyes opened and blinked at us. It had a pointy nose, hooked over a mouth full of dingy blunt teeth.
"You are the suck!" the creature hissed. It started to rise. Trip moved forward, cocked one fist back and slugged the monster right in its massive mouth. The creature winced back.
I looked at Trip in surprise. He was normally the nicest person I knew. "I hate spammers," he explained as he shook his aching hand.
"Milo?" Julie asked slowly. "Why is there a troll in your trunk?"
The little man was really excited now. "When we hit the target, we were expecting a bunch of these things, and instead only found this one. He'd fallen asleep with his head sitting on a desk with a bunch of computers running on it."
"There was a pile a foot deep of empty energy-drink cans and Ho-Ho wrappers on the floor," Holly added. "He'd been playing online games, arguing with random people on like fifty different internet forums, writing spam. It was really pathetic. Most of it was totally incoherent."
"And the punctuation…" Trip muttered, obviously offended. "According to his MySpace page, he's a sixteen-year-old girl named Brittany who likes to post pictures of herself in her underwear."
The thing in the trunk stirred, glaring at each of us angrily. It was an intimidating beast, lean, with limbs that even though they were crammed into the trunk, were obviously too long. "So internet trolls…are really trolls?"
Julie folded her arms. "No, Milo. You can't keep him as a pet."
Milo was indignant. "Of course not; I remember what happened when I tried to raise that sasquatch. How was I supposed to know it was going to eat Sam's dog? Poor Squeaky…" I didn't know if that was the name of Milo Anderson's bigfoot or Sam Haven's deceased pooch. Milo lifted one last bunch of papers. "Anyway, this is why I brought him back."
The logo on this e-mail was the same sky squid as the Condition handout Myers had presented to us. I took it from him and read. The message was brief.
Attention creatures of the darkness, the Shadow Lord, High Priest of the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition, extends his benevolent hand in friendship. Join our mighty legion. No longer must you live in secret beneath the blighted cancer of humanity. A new age is coming. A dark new dawn breaks.
It was an invitation. It was dated several weeks ago.
The troll continued to glare at me and gnash its dirty teeth. "Are you a member of the Condition?" I asked.
"No," it hissed. "Condition is not to be trusted." The troll's voice was wheezy, like its lungs were filled with cobwebs and its vocal cords were coated in rust.
I distrusted it immediately. This thing was just plain icky. "What's your name? And I know it isn't Brittany."
Air escaped from its mouth in a series of puffs. Laughter. "Tell you nothing, human."
Holly leaned forward and jammed the muzzle of her AK into the side of his head. "Start talking, spam-boy, or I'm going to let out some pent-up aggression on your face!"
That got its attention. "Okay…okay. Don't let the pretty one hurt me!"
"Aw…he likes you," Trip said.
"Melvin, humans call me Melvin," the troll said quickly, raising one chained hand to protect his face. The dirty claws extended from the end of each fingertip at least half an inch. "My pack joined Condition, but Melvin stayed. Not trust Condition."
"Where's your pack now?" Julie asked.
"They go to join army. But trolls are lazy. He not want lazy servants. Dead servants never lazy. So he made them all dead. Now Melvin is alone. All alone…"
That almost made me sad. Almost. "Do you know where to find them?"
He shook his head. "Let me go free. I tell you, then you kill poor Melvin."
Poor Melvin was an eight-foot-tall, carnivorous killing machine. Letting him go wasn't really an option. But I needed him to talk. Maybe if I treated him with a little respect, he might open up. If that didn't work, we could always let Holly have a crack at him. She seemed the least morally adverse to beating the truth out of something. "Let him out."
"What, Z?" Trip asked. "Serious?" Julie looked at me like I was nuts, but didn't say anything. She drew her.45 from her holster and held it low by her side.
Milo stepped off to the side and retrieved a Mossberg shotgun from one of the many racks. He pumped a shell into the chamber. "Don't trust him, Owen. I'm a moderator on a forum. You can't ever trust a troll."
"Listen, Melvin. We're going to let you out of the car. If you try anything stupid, we're going to shoot your arms and legs off and then we're going to burn you to ashes. Got it?"
"Melvin play nice," the troll promised. He began to slowly unfold himself out of the trunk. First one long leg came out, chains clanking, until claws clicked on the concrete floor, then it took a minute to get his spindly torso out of the narrow space. Finally the troll stood, all twisted and gangly, wrists chained together in front of its narrow chest. His flesh really did look like row after row of dirty garden hose stacked into a rough humanoid shape. I had to crane my neck to look him in the eye. There was a mass of stringy black hair matted together on his head. The other Hunters kept their guns trained as I stepped closer.
"Okay, Melvin. I'm going to level with you. I really need to know how to find the Condition. Help me avenge your pack's murder."
He laughed again. "Not care about rest of pack. Pack was stupid. Got turned into zombies. Now they not hog Melvin's bandwidth." His breath stank of stale Red Bull and his teeth hadn't been cleaned lately, if ever. "They are the Fail. No, Hunter. You let Melvin go. Then I tell you where pack went."
I was afraid of that, but I had an idea. Twice in the last few days I had been able to live somebody else's memories: Myers', and only a few minutes ago, my father's. Susan had exposed me to that cursed artifact so that I would have the ability to fight this Condition. If it worked on people, maybe it would work on monsters. If he wouldn't tell me what I needed to know, then maybe I could just take it. It was worth a shot. I extended one hand slowly toward Melvin's clawed hand.
"What are you doing?" Julie asked.
"Trust me."
The troll regarded me suspiciously. Finally I touched his hand. He felt warm and squishy. Nothing happened. No black magic lightning. Nada.
Melvin screamed. "It burns! It burns!" I jerked my hand away. The other Hunters took an involuntary step back. The troll smiled, showing off row after row of rotten teeth. "I kid. I kid." Then he head-butted me.
His rubbery skull rebounded off mine, flaring pain through my brain, sending me flailing back, blocking Julie's shot. He moved with surprising speed for his size. One fist swung out, slamming into Holly's stomach and knocking her to the ground. Milo blasted him in the back, the buckshot sending chunks of green meat in every direction. Melvin didn't seem to notice. He surged forward, grabbed Trip by the shirt and tossed him headfirst into the trunk of the Crown Vic. Then Melvin slammed it shut.