* * *
Disgusted, Earl holstered his revolver and stomped away from the corpse. This was a nightmare scenario. An entire pack of werewolves had declared war on mankind.
Packs formed occasionally, and when they did, they’d often hunt, but always on the sly. They’d kidnap runaways and homeless, take them out to the sticks and chase them down, then melt away to do it again later. Every time he’d discovered this, he’d made sure that MHI had tracked them down and eliminated the rogue pack. This was different. This pack were assaulting an entire community. The town was cut off from the outside. People were isolated in their homes, unaware of what was coming. It would be a slaughter.
Werewolves lived on the periphery. Outright war with mankind was insanity. It would take an incredibly strong leader to force this kind of counter-instinctual behavior onto his followers. That level of suicidal loyalty was bizarre. This was unnatural, a perversion of the natural order of things. It broke his rules.
And that really pissed him off.
The deputy was still staring at the body, probably just now realizing that he hadn’t been lying, and that she was destined to that same fate. “Kerkonen,” he said. It took her a second to focus. “You said you were gonna warn everyone. What’s your plan?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“The pack will work its way inward, probably from multiple directions. They’ll kill the ones they think are threats first, while they’re not expecting it. Like this.” He gestured around the damaged station. “They’ll save the remainder for when they’ve got the time.”
She went back to staring at the body. “How do you know all this?”
“Because that’s how I’d do it. Wake everyone you can. Reliable folks first. Have them start spreading the word. Get into groups. There’s safety in numbers. Individuals and stragglers are easy to pick off. Is there a secure building in town? Something you can fortify?”
“A couple of the churches are pretty solid…” she began.
“Too flammable. They look like animals, but they ain’t stupid. They’ll burn you out.”
“The high school. The population used to be a lot bigger before the mines went away, so they built a giant gymnasium.”
“Why? That doesn’t sound very good.”
“Not this thing. It’s huge, its solid, and the windows are all up high. There’s even an old civil-defense bunker under it, because it was built back in the Sixties, and there used to be an Air Force base down the road back then. They still use the bomb shelter under the gym for storage. There’s only one way in, and it’s all concrete. Even the roof is metal. It’d be hard to set on fire.”
Earl nodded. That was good thinking. “Start moving people there. If space is limited get the women and kids inside and lock it up tight. And if anybody has a bite or a scratch, or you even suspect that they’ve got one, don’t you dare put them in that vault. I’ve got cases of silver ammo in three calibers in my truck you can have. Regular ammo will work, but they’ll heal quick, so hit them again while they’re down. Cut their heads off, remove their hearts, or set them on fire. No mercy.”
“We can do that,” she promised. Earl nodded approvingly. These U.P. folks had spine. “Where will you be?”
“Doing what I do best. I’m going on the offensive. The most effective thing I can do for your town is to start picking them off. The more I kill, the less your people have to worry about.”
“How many of these things are we talking about?”
“Unknown,” he answered truthfully. That probably would have been a good question to ask the dead guy, but it was a touch late for that. But from the complicated smells when he’d first arrived in town…“At least a dozen, maybe twice that.”
The more troubling question was what about the new ones? Normally it took weeks for the metamorphosis to take place and the power of the full moon to unleash it. He’d already seen two cases of the change happening in less than a day, and they had both been set off because of that unnatural surge.
He glanced at Kerkonen suspiciously. She was a ticking bomb and didn’t even realize it yet.
He’d tried to help others who’d been cursed, but Santiago had been right. It was almost impossible to learn to control the curse. It wasn’t just a physical mutation, it was a change at the most fundamental of psychological and philosophical levels. Over the years he’d had several of his Hunters end up bitten. They had each been a warrior, tough, hard as nails, but in the end every last one of them had failed. He’d tried to help dozens of the survivors that he’d met over the years. He’d had young werewolves instinctively seek him out, looking for guidance.…All of them were dead now. Most eventually by their own hand, or if they lacked the strength, by Earl’s.
Mastering the curse took more than locking yourself behind impenetrable walls a few nights a month. It made you into a perfect killer every single day. And it made you want it.
This was the hard part. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, Deputy Kerkonen. What I’m about to say is gonna be difficult. You’re infected. I need you to deal with that. These people need you right now.”
“Infected?” she asked incredulously. “Like a disease? What do we do?”
“There’s no cure. There never has been. Believe me, a lot of really smart folks have tried. Bites are always infectious. If you start to change, you’re gonna become part of the problem.” He drew his backup gun, a snub-nosed 625, spun it around in his hand and held it out to her, butt first. “This is the solution.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“It’s loaded with silver bullets. If you start to change, stick this in your mouth and pull the trigger.”
“That’s—”
“Necessary,” he stated coldly. “Otherwise when you change, you’ll murder everyone around you. You’ll kill, and kill, and kill again, until you’re bloated on blood, and then you’ll puke it up and go back for more. The first time is always the worst.”
“I don’t believe you,” she insisted, louder this time.
“Yes. Yes, you do.” The Smith & Wesson stayed there, between them. “Take this. I’ve got a spare.”
Finally, she asked, “Is there any other way?”
He had the portable time-lock cage in the truck, brought specifically just in case he was stuck out during the full moon.…But he’d brought that for himself. It barely fit one. If that surge came back any stronger, it was his life insurance.
Kerkonen was terrified, but trying not to show it. She put on a tough act. Earl could only tell because he could smell the fear on her skin. Her hand closed around the gun, and she took it from him hesitantly.
At least he would have a chance of controlling himself if the surge came again. She didn’t. The drugs were unreliable and a safe dose might not work fast enough. Enough to knock her out for sure was enough to kill her. Silver bullets hadn’t worked on the other new werewolf, so they might not on her, either, and he really didn’t want to kill the poor scared girl himself. He wasn’t some heartless MCB executioner.
Damn it…He made up his mind. “There is something. If you can secure yourself, you can wait it out. It’s got to be extremely solid, though. You saw what he did to your jail cell. Your strength goes through the roof. But I’ve got a box in the back of my truck that’ll hold a werewolf.” He pulled out his key ring and passed them over. “Take my truck. Get in there if you need to. Pull the lid shut behind you, and it’ll lock.”
“How do I get out?” she asked suspiciously. “Because that sounds like some creepy serial killer–type implement to just have in your truck there, Harry Houdini.”
“It’ll open automatically in eight hours.” He smiled. “So I’d suggest going to the bathroom first.”
She groaned. “I still think you’re full of shit…but assuming, just assuming that you’re not completely insane, how will I know it’s time?”
When the burning gets so bad that eating that .45 sounds like a great idea. “Oh, believe me you’ll know.…We better move out. Good luck out there, Kerkonen.”
“Heather,” she stated flatly as she tried to stuff the big revolver into her coat pocket. “My name’s Heather, and if you’re lying to me, you’ll regret it. See you at the bomb shelter.”