* * *
Agents Stark and Mosher arrived in Copper Lake before sunset. The hospital had been easy enough to spot as it was one of the larger buildings in town. They’d used some of their many fabricated government IDs to lie their way in, take their sample, and get back out.
“What a hole,” Stark muttered as they walked outside. It was miserably wet. The weather report said it was going to turn to snow. Sitting in the Suburban for the long ride had made his old knee injury, received while chasing a stupid Bigfoot, act up. He unclipped the CDC ID from his coat and stuck it back in his pocket.
“I don’t know,” Mosher said. “This place used to be a lot bigger. They had a thriving mine business up here. The town used to have a lot more people, but then there was a big accident. The mining company went out of business. Lots of people lost their jobs. Everything kind of dried up after that. The place never really recovered.”
“How do you know this crap?”
“I checked the Internet after you said where we were going. And the people here do seem really friendly. The town has just had some hard times.”
Just like a jarhead to stick up for a bunch of hillbillies. “It’s a shit hole,” Stark pronounced with finality. This was the kind of place that he hated working in. When he had to cover up activity in a city, it was easy. People disappeared or died violently there all the time. Out here, it got tougher. Everybody knew each other, and they all liked to talk. Good thing there were wild animals to blame things on.
Agent Mosher was young and not quite educated on when to shut up. “Well—”
“Shit hole!” Stark snapped. He was in an especially foul mood because Grant Jefferson had neglected to mention that the victim was a cop. Offing a regular infected was one thing, but offing a cop was something entirely different. For one thing, it caused more paperwork. “This part of the country is only good for growing trees and gambling at the Indian casinos.”
“Yes, sir,” Mosher replied as he got into the driver’s seat of their government Suburban.
The primary responsibility of the MCB was keeping the existence of monsters secret. Most survivors could be intimidated into staying quiet. The stupid were taken care of in various ways, either through making them look like crackpots, or, if that didn’t work, then through more extreme measures. MCB agents were granted a lot of flexibility in dealing with that kind of problem. Stark liked to call it his license to kill.
So if this Deputy Buckley was infected by a werewolf, then Stark had every legal right in the world to put a silver bullet in him. But then the three other cops that had been sitting in the waiting room would probably end up shooting him. Which meant that if the test came back positive, he’d have to go talk to the sheriff and fill him in about the complete mission of the MCB, which would require paperwork, and then go kill the deputy, which would require even more paperwork. Stark hated paperwork.
He studied the glass vial in his hand. It was a werecreature field-test kit. The solution was a pinkish red from the drop of Buckley’s blood dissolving in it. It took up to a few hours for the chemical reaction to work. If it stayed red, then the deputy was clear, and if it was a false alarm he would only have to do a little bit of paperwork. If it turned blue, he’d have to do a lot of paperwork.
Stark had been doing this a long time, though. He’d looked at the extent of the unconscious man’s injuries and had spoken briefly with some of the cops who’d been to the scene. His gut told him that it was a werewolf. Which meant that there was one in the area, and since there were clear bite marks on the victim, on the next full moon there would be two.
Maybe he was thinking about this the wrong way.…
If Briarwood were to kill two werewolves, then Stark stood to make a lot more money, and if he didn’t have to pull the trigger on the deputy himself, that would save him from doing all that bothersome paperwork. He bounced the vial in his hand a few times. These tests aren’t always reliable. Nobody at headquarters would bat an eye if the test came up negative but the deputy turned anyway. That kind of thing had happened before.
“So, where to now?” Mosher asked, tapping his hand on the steering wheel.
If it turned blue, he’d just call Briarwood and then tell Mosher that it had come up negative. The werewolf would still get popped, society still got protected, only Agent Stark would actually get paid what he was worth for once. “Let’s see what there is to eat in this dump,” Stark ordered. He was feeling better already.
* * *
Earl Harbinger had driven another hundred miles after leaving Conover, before parking at a truck stop, pulling the brim of his ball cap over his eyes, and grabbing a few hours of sleep. He’d need his wits about him when he arrived.
Werewolves dream, just like anyone else. Yet he’d found that the closer it was to the full moon, the more his dreams turned to the fevered images of his animal state. Maybe it was early this time because of the nature of his current mission, but Earl awoke to the memory of running through the trees, hunting, killing, perfectly in his element. He took that as a good omen.
Back on the road, hours passed, fields turned into city, then back into fields, and then the view turned to trees. He had never been to upper Michigan before, but found it pretty. Hills and forest, just like home. But Alabamans were smart enough not to live someplace that got this damn cold. It seemed like whenever there was a break in the trees, there would be another abandoned mine hoist building, splintering wood and rusting steel constructions. Some of them were surprisingly tall. The industry of the area had fallen on hard times.
The clouds were thick and rolling in hard. Lights from the ground reflected against the snow in the air and gave the whole area a pinkish tint. It was just itching to snow hard. The hour was late by the time the GPS told him he’d reached his destination. The sign said that it had a population just over two thousand. There was a main street with one stoplight. The downtown area was made up of two-and three-story buildings, mostly brick, constructed back in the boom days. Many of them were empty now. There was a vast, pointy, Lutheran church across from the surprisingly big, ugly, Sixties-era high school. The cars parked along the street were humble. The people who lived here worked hard for a living. It was typical small-town America.
It positively stunk of werewolves.