14

The Blackland High School Massacre, as the deadliest animal attack in the history of the US was most commonly referred to, had taken the country’s collective psyche by the throat in early May 2007. The grizzly details of the deaths of the students, school staff, and over a dozen deputies held the national news captive until the summer, running neck and neck with the Virginia Tech Shooting and other lucrative tragedies that could be capitalized on.

Nevertheless it was impossible to know what to make of the “Texas Tragedy,” as it did not lend itself well to the usual boogie-men of video games, guns, rock and roll, or new media. It was equally impossible to understand how it could have happened in the first place, especially in light of the announcement that an armed peace officer had been on scene at the doomed prom. No one could accept or believe that this officer, let alone the slew who ended up responding, could fail to kill one canine, and then go on to let it kill so many cops and teenagers.

The pernicious affair provided fodder for pundits of every political bent for months afterwards, and the FBI’s less than forthcoming explanations lent credence to a host of bizarre conspiracy theories regarding the event. Though not one touched upon the truth of the matter, their proponents were indeed right to be suspicious of the official story. The Blackland Massacre was far from a straight forward attack by any conventional animal, and the danger posed by the creature that ravaged the small town before escaping into the night went unappreciated by America even now.

Alvarez’ hands shook as he opened the file on the Blackland incident. He had no desire to retread memories he desperately wished to forget, or reopen old wounds. But Jenny Ledbetter had already reopened them when she returned with supernatural revelation. He eyed the last known photo of her, committed to both the FBI’s comprehensive report and the county’s own sizable write up on the event. Her section was somewhat more voluminous than the other students, owing to the odd, still unexplained facts surrounding her own involvement. Her parents had been found dead by the deputies who stopped to inform them of the horrific news, apparently mauled by some unknown animal, Jenny had exhibited extremely odd behavior during the days leading up to the fateful prom, she was suspected of possibly being a rape victim, and finally, her body was never recovered, despite all of the other students being found in the same area. Her disappearance was nevertheless considered a closed case by the FBI, which knew the true explanations for these odd facts; that report however was deeply classified, and extremely black, wrapped up in the cloak of secrecy that had absorbed Consistent Gale some months before. The local agencies were in the dark regarding how serious the situation was, something Alvarez had been told to simply continue, although he now realized that would only make his job here more difficult.

He lit a cigarette, ignoring whatever prohibitions TARP might place upon such activities in their building, and looked around. He was alone in his cubicle, the others still at lunch. With that he resumed his trip into a brief, hectic period that now defined his life. Jenny Ledbetter had led the seemingly perfect life. She was to be prom queen, the school rumors had informed him only a week before it all collapsed. With her brunette hair, blue eyes, and tall figure, Ledbetter would be on top of the world, the queen of her domain, and holding sway over any man she wanted. She would likely have become a powerful wife, and a reasonably successful mother. She had a look of innocence about her, but then most as young as her did.

Alvarez took a hard drag from his cigarette and blew smoke through his nose.

He had not known her well. She was just another student, another potential pain for him. An all too literal pain now. He shuffled through the file, skimmed the writing, and eyed the photo once more before tapping it on the desk. This was all the past, and it told him nothing he didn’t already know, revealed nothing regarding this strange new development. How she was still here was no mystery to him. Alvarez had no doubt of the eternal soul, and it was apparent to him that one could become shackled to earth, a true fate worse than death in his own estimation. Ledbetter had become an animal, but where did that leave her consciousness? The wolves were clearly simple animals, more intelligent than any canine he had seen before, but still animals, operating on cunning and instinct. So, Ledbetter could not really die and enter the hereafter until the animal was killed. That seemed simple enough, and he supposed that was the why behind her appearance. She could communicate with him, and he was the only person here who knew everything. How much she knew, and how she knew, he couldn’t begin to guess. It was nevertheless obvious that the situation had taken a complex new turn, and it angered him. He had enough to deal with before this had happened. He took his new frustration out on the desk, grinding out the smoldering butt as if to sadistically end its purpose.

He started to reach for another, but restrained himself. What he really wanted was a beer. Since that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, he tried to find a new way to busy himself. Michetti walked over and glanced down at the file. “Is that anything I can look at?”

“Knock yourself out.” He handed the thick folder over.

She pulled a chair over to the cubicle, sat down, and looked the file over for several minutes. “Holy shit,” she finally said. “How did this even happen?”

Alvarez shrugged. “Bad timing, I guess. From what I ended up working out on our end here it was cascading failure. Those things happen sometimes.” He stopped himself from rambling on. He was dangerously close to falling back into the loop of rationalization attempts that had led his mind in circles around itself for the past several years.

“All those poor kids…” she looked over the yearbook photos, and Alvarez felt himself grow cold. He didn’t want to remember the mutilated bodies, or the contrast they offered against the baby-faced teens when they were alive.

“God have mercy on them,” she said.

Alvarez almost snorted. “I think God ran out of mercy a long time ago.”

“Do you even believe in God?” she asked.

“Sure,” he replied, though his tone suggested that he might not mean it.

Before Michetti could answer Fisher walked in. “We’re going hunting tonight,” he said. “Be here at eighteen hundred. Have whatever you need to fly. I want to take care of this problem fast.”

“Well that makes two of us,” said Alvarez.

“What should I do?” Michetti asked.

“You’re with Alvarez, whatever he wants you to do,” said Fisher.

Michetti got the feeling that the sergeant did not like her any better than he did Alvarez. She could understand his position, though.

“I’m going home until tonight. So is everyone else. You guys are free to do whatever. Just be ready, I want as many of these canines dead tonight as we can manage.” He walked away, and they heard the click of the door shutting.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

He stood up and stretched. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m still tired. I’ve been sick the past few days. So I say we get something to eat then hole up in the motel until tonight.”

“Works for me,” she said, getting up and handing the folder back to him. They headed out, and Alvarez rubbed his eyes in the sun. He had not been exaggerating about his fatigue. It had been terrible ever since he swam across the Rio Grande. It was definitely one of the least intelligent things he had ever done, but it had been necessary. There was no telling what diseases he had contracted, both through the myriad wounds that laced his body or simply from swallowing the disgusting water when he passed out. As soon as he could he would have to see a doctor and find out just how bad of a state he was in. His back as well needed to be looked at. The pain that shot up from his lumbar was so sharp he wondered if he might have actually broken something. It would not be out of the question at all. He had destroyed himself, all to save a woman who was as good as dead the whole time, all without success. But what else could he have done? He could have simply fled, as he had here, but he had believed that Daniella had a chance. And perhaps he had merely been overestimating his own abilities. Questions like that haunted him constantly now, and he was increasingly unsuccessful at fending them off. He dreaded the nightmares sleeping through the day would bring, but he needed the rest. A slow death from the disease and fatigue was not anything he wanted to experience. He wanted his death to be fast.

Corporal Dean Evans pulled a radar gun out of the patrol room safe and placed his tire tread gauge in the pocket of his armored vest. With the tools of a traffic cop ready he found his trainee, Magan Rialto, and the two walked upstairs with the half dozen officers of day shift patrol. Evans was, as usual, the senior officer on the shift, with the five others answering to him and he answering to Sergeant Ramesh Jeebkate. Ten years prior Evans had joined the department as a nineteen year old local, and had quickly fallen in love with the job. Today he still loved his work; he had to, otherwise he would have left after the massacre, and he had been sorely tempted to walk away from law enforcement altogether back then.

Evans retrieved his M4 and Mossberg shotgun from his car and put them into the roof rack of his patrol vehicle, 412. 412, 413, and 414 were all Lykan Hypersports, brand new exotic vehicles dubbed “the Middle East’s first supercar.” Nate Coleman, the current sheriff, had taken notice of them and immediately decided that they would be perfect for traffic enforcement, on account of a 245 mile per hour top speed and software available from ekin Patrol that was ten years ahead of any other department in the country. And the cars were extremely impressive. Evans had ended a couple of pursuits before they could really even start, their software automatically read not only plates but also faces, and the small size of the vehicles made them very maneuverable, a desirable characteristic in a job where turns were made on a dime dozens of times a day.

But the cars had drawbacks as well. The size made it difficult to have two people in the car. And being a two door there was, of course, no cage, meaning any arrest required a backup unit. The advanced software was so advanced that it didn’t work with any other systems, not even within the department, and some features of the software didn’t even work in the US. The low height also made PITing difficult and unreliable. And good luck going off road. All in all Evans didn’t feel that the three point two million dollar price-tag per car was worth it, at least not for rural law enforcement. The year’s state budget had been blown on these things, and everyone on the shift was expecting furlough days any minute. But Evans never did feel he could trust the ACSD to make good decisions.

He shook his head as he placed his paperwork box and active shooter bag on the cupholders between the seats, while Rialto started a digital activity sheet. Ordinarily Evans would just put a rack in the passenger seat to hold his things; since the car was assigned to him he didn’t have to worry about anything being messed with or going missing. But now he had a trainee again. It was a cycle he hated. Evans had been an FTO for five years. He’d trained over three officers in his time, and he resented the job deeply. Being an FTO just wasn’t something people stood in line to do, at least no one Evans knew liked it. He was basically a babysitter, and he viewed trainees as risky liabilities at best, and worthless, moronic hazards at worst. Still, Evans was not lazy in his duties, just the opposite, in fact. He was one of the meanest training officers in the department. Evans had seen thirteen deputies killed responding to Blackland High School, and there was no way in hell anyone was dying on his watch because an officer was poorly trained or lazy.

Making a trainee get out and run for falling asleep or not knowing where they were, dumping them at the station all shift because their weapon wasn’t clean, shredding reports for minor mistakes, and profanity laced verbal beat-downs for whatever slightly annoyed him were all tactics in Evans’ fearsome arsenal of techniques. If you could survive Evans you could survive anyone in the department, and hopefully, his logic went, anything outside of it.

Coming out of the academy, and coming off field training, you felt invincible. At twenty four and newly promoted to corporal Evans had felt the same way. But the night of five May taught him how powerless they could be. Four of them had gone into the school: him, his trainee at the time, Juan Losa, old Hernando Corval, and Alvarez. And between four of them, three armed with shotguns and rifles, they still didn’t have enough firepower to kill that damn animal. That was why part of him knew it was irrational and unfair to despise Alvarez for not being able to stop the thing himself, especially when the man had been bleeding to death. But after ten years of seeing the worst things imaginable Evans had one emotion that could override the worn nubs of the ones he used to have; that was rage. And that rage told him to hate Alvarez all the same. It was a popular pastime in Arredondo County. No one knew why they hated Alvarez, they just did. Evans had tried to rationalize it before, but his emotions, or rather, emotion, told him not to. Hate Alvarez, his mind told him. It’s still his fault.

And that was all the logic Evans needed to hate him. That in turn was more fuel for the inferno Evans directed at the hapless Rialto four times a week. Evans needed an outlet for his bitter hatred, and she was that outlet, again he rationalized it now and then, when his conscience made an unexpected entrance, by telling himself that he was just preparing her for the rigors of the job. But of course, in some ways he was just as sadistic as Alvarez. He desperately wanted to see Rialto quit, wanted to drive her away, and to see her thoroughly crushed as she left. Why?

Who knew? Maybe because he’d been crushed too badly to ever truly enjoy anything again. Evans considered that he saw himself in the junior officers: young and more idealistic, and in that he saw his mistakes and defeats.

It was also possible Evans was merely taking his struggles at home out on some acceptable punching bags. Things were better at home now though. The first couple of years after the attack were horrible, with Evans often waking up to find his wife sleeping on the couch, because he had kicked her or punched her during one of his constant nightmares, or because he couldn’t stop screaming through the same terrors when he went to bed, or because he’d woken up and vomited all over the floor again. Even now Evans rarely slept more than four hours a night, and the nightmares hadn’t stopped, they had only gotten more sporadic, which still felt like a miracle. The panic attacks weren’t as frequent either. It still took all of his strength not to drink a liter of vodka every time he came home, but he didn’t want to end up like Alvarez. Evans never sought help for his problems, despite his wife bringing it up at every opportunity. No, Evans wanted to keep his job, and he was too worried about what a visit to a shrink would do to hurt his chances at sergeant.

So he did what he did every day: climbed in the car, put his video mic pack on his vest epaulet, and prepared to make Rialto suffer as much as he did every second of his existence. And as he laid into Rialto for not using Excel to set up the activity sheet his neglected emotional side realized that this was the only aspect of being an FTO he enjoyed, and with that came another realization: that something in his twisted experience at this place had indeed made him a sadist.

Francisco Garcia rested against the door to the Airbase and almost fell over when it swung open. He would have grumbled in annoyance out loud if there were anyone around to hear it. Garcia was Texas state trooper, and specifically a pilot, an enjoyable career he had longed for his entire life, and one that he found both fulfilling and varied enough to satisfy him, though the change of pace was a bitch to say the least.

As the pilot for TARP Garcia’s primary duty for the past several months had been training and proficiency flights with the team, as well as supporting the precisely two pursuits that the tri-county area had experienced that had gone on long enough to require air support this year. Occasionally he would support a SWAT raid or a state or Federal task force operation, and those were always fun, but now he was in charge of flying nearly every night for the next two weeks, and that was going to be hell on him and his airframe. The only upshot was the amount of flight hours he would get out of it.

Garcia opened his office and gathered his check lists for the helicopter. The EC-135 was set up for both the medical and tactical missions of TARP, and it was crammed full of various equipment for the team, which was fine with Garcia, even though it made the bird heavy and fuel hungry.

Now he had to prepare the aircraft for the first dog hunt, which was set for tonight, and this necessitated coming in during the day, despite the rest of the team not starting until the evening. It was annoying to say the least, and Garcia hoped that the two weeks would go by quickly, though he doubted it would work out that way.

His pre-flight ceremonies took the better part of an hour, and when it was done he decided that it wasn’t worth it to drive all the way back to his house. Instead he let his wife know that he would be out until very early the next day, and slept on a couch in the conference room.

Evans stepped out of the patrol car after he was done and headed back into the building and down the hall with the purposeful intensity of a man with a mission. The equipment on his belt clacked together as twenty pounds of tools rocked with his movement. He trotted quickly around the corner and pushed a heavy wooden open as if it were paper, letting it slam behind, echoing in the cinder block enclosure of the locker room. Evans stepped up to one of the urinals and, after the requisite fiddling with his BDU pants and negotiating his gun-belt, relieved himself of the morning’s first coffee.

He caught sight of someone else at the left urinal, and noticed movement from one of the stalls out of his peripheral vision. He didn’t recognize either man, and was not terribly concerned with who they were. They evidently did not recognize him either, as the first words from the man who left the urinal were, “I heard Alvarez is back,” as he and the other deputy washed their hands.

Evans started, and gripped the wall with his free hand to avoid pissing on himself. Alvarez? Why the hell would that cunt be here?

“What’s he doing back here?” one of them asked, in echo of Evans’ thoughts.

“He’s doing something with TARP,” said the other.

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. I heard it from Losa yesterday.”

“Oh, Losa saw him?”

“Said he was at the high school.”

Evans quietly zipped his pants, but stayed put. They would both clam up and leave if they knew he was listening, and he wanted to hear this. He glanced over his shoulder as best as possible, and made out who the speakers were. One was Neil Scoggins, the other looked to be Tobias Booker.

“So Losa doesn’t know what he’s doing?” Booker asked.

“I don’t think Alvarez told him what he was doing.”

“Alvarez is a Fed now, right?”

“Yeah, I think he’s Border Patrol,” said Scoggins.

“What would the Feds possibly be doing here?” said Booker.

“No clue,” replied Scoggins as the two walked out.

Evans tried to listen as they left, but couldn’t make anything out. He slowly turned and moved to wash his hands. Shit! So Alvarez was back? And on some federal mission? This didn’t bode well. It didn’t really matter why Alvarez was back, Evans didn’t want him anywhere around. Why couldn’t he have just died? After everything had gone down at the school Alvarez had been reported dead, and until he had reappeared for the investigation Evans and everyone else had assumed he was indeed killed. No one had gone to the hospital to check after all. They had had better things to do. He sighed in anger and fatigue as he dried his hands. The more desperately you tried to forget something the harder the memories came. It was all back now, fresh and clear as a frigid stream over his head. He silently cursed again as he slammed the door into the wall, walking out so fast an observer might have thought he was trying to escape something. He was, of course, but it was something you couldn’t run from. He would simply take this latest bout of pain out on Rialto. He considered for a moment that she didn’t deserve that, that this sadism was wrong and would only damage her in the long run as he was damaged. He conscientiously decided that he didn’t care. Someone else needed to suffer.

Fisher wasn’t used to working at night. Not anymore. He had left night shift long ago; TARP was primarily a daytime affair, with night details being rare, and relegated to times like these. Shakeups. He hated it, he hated Alvarez, he hated the ACSD, and he wasn’t very happy with Ketchum at the moment. Fisher liked the man personally but from what he had heard and seen the man would roll over at the first sign of difficulty from above, which was one of the most maddening aggravations of someone in Fisher’s position.

The others filed in, boisterous and annoyed. All had started on night shift, only two years before in the case of Bocker and Jebbins, and all had suffered the consequences. It was a miserable, unavoidable existence, simply one more unpleasantry of being a lawman, a necessary evil. Or unnecessary in this case, as far as Fisher was concerned. He selected Garcia from the heads standing among the cubicles, then directed the others. “Get the rifles ready,” he ordered.

All assembled knew what that meant, each had every setup for every weapon he used memorized. Fisher wanted to go over the plan with his pilot before anything else was done. The rest went to work, fitting their guns with thermal sights and night vision scopes, checking the batteries on their infrared aiming lasers, and fitting helmets with night vision goggles. Alvarez selected a thermal clip on sight and some extra batteries, and carried them outside to add to his Border Patrol issued AR-15. Outside the sky was turning pink, outlining a few cirrus clouds in the otherwise clear, dry air. As was typical for the early year it had been hot during the day, but now the temperature was dropping fast, with a harsh wind blowing over the barren fields around the building, and a difference of as much as forty degrees was expected during the night. Alvarez fitted his rifle, lit a cigarette, and stopped for a moment to watch the darkening horizon. It was a simple pastime, freely given as few things were by nature, a gift he felt he rarely took advantage of anymore, despite spending most of his time outside. The only sound was the wind, and the change in pressure brought his various injuries and ailments to the forefront of his mind, the pain pure as the alcohol he almost constantly sought to wash it away. His back twinged as he stood, his knees buckled with twin throbbing aches, his healing cuts burned, the scar that covered almost half his upper body itched, every broken bone he had experienced reminded him of its painful struggle and irregular healing. He ignored it all, sucking on the cigarette and clearing his head with the nicotine rush, though it was all too brief for what solace it offered. His work here was going to be more painful than any of the injuries. He hated the mental, emotional pains more than any of the progressive damage dealt to his body over the years.

It had only been five. Five years since life had changed, almost ended, ten years in law enforcement altogether; while the first five had come with their own injuries, the last five exacted a toll he was less and less sure that he could bear with each passing day. Being motivated by mere rage and hatred was an exhausting way to go through life, but he had long ago forgotten how he felt before any of it.

A long, wailing howl carried over the prairie. It was joined by another, and soon an eerie chorus reminded him of why he subjected himself to the insanity of being the one true hunter of the animals. He hated the wolves. He despised everything about them, the damage they had done to his ancestral homeland, the threat they carried to this one, their theft of his spouse and his life, and their ghastly resistance to dying. They had given him his own resistance to being killed, by animal or apparently human as well. They had remade him in the withering image of an existence he now occupied, an existence that was to be his own death eventually. And as much as he would welcome it, he saw in his own unique survivorship of the blurry, unhallowed night of the wolves his remade purpose and true mission. His meandering and seemingly lackluster journey through law enforcement was God’s roundabout mission to prepare him for his life in both Old and New Mexico, where the ugly, bastardized, clandestine existence he led these days saw him become the master of his appointed trade. He was to kill them, all of them, for he had been cosmically chosen for the purpose; and when God chose you for something, you did it, kicking and screaming though you might go. The abyss waited, Alvarez would not waste time rushing into it, for his brief death had been the only peace he had ever experienced. And the person who had brought him closest to earthly peace had experienced death for her trouble.

He heard her before he saw her. A slight, narrow figure flashed in the corner of his vision, and Michetti joined him at his side.

“What’s it like?” she asked, after listening for several seconds. “What’s it like hunting them?”

“As unfair as I can make it,” he replied. “Long range, large caliber weapons. As much technology as we can bring in.”

“They’re howling for communication, I bet,” she said as she nodded. “I wonder what it’s about though.”

“They’re just making noise,” he said bitterly. Alvarez was no biologist, although he had studied as much about animal behavior as possible when he began hunting. However, he was interested to hear Michetti’s opinions as a scientist once she started learning about the animals in earnest.

They gathered their weapons and helmets, and boarded the helicopter while Michetti stayed behind to work on an analysis of the wolves’ metabolism which she thought might aid in tracking them. Garcia started the aircraft, checked every system, and waited for Fisher’s go ahead confirming everyone was ready. Then, with the sergeant sitting in the co pilot’s seat next to him, Garcia took off.

They lifted quickly and headed into the dying twilight. Now they would fly over the tri-county area, using the helicopter’s various sensors to track the wolves, then kill them from the air. Their flight path would divide the terrain into a grid, which they would pass over for the next several hours. This would, presumably, allow them to cover every possible haunt of the animals, and efficiently and quickly wipe out the population before the next month.

The rumors going around were that the Arredondo County Commission was extremely worried about the reappearance of the strange canines, and the deaths they had already brought. As well they might be. Now, they wanted them dealt with quietly, as the five year memorial anniversary was coming up. Ostensibly the tight deadline on the operation was to ensure the safety of the town and to erase any lingering fears over a repeat attack during the anniversary. The more cynical side of Fisher wondered if the commissioners might not harbor ulterior motives, as a lack of dangerous animals could potentially boost attendance and recognition of their ceremony. The community had never truly recovered from the losses of 2007, and they never truly would, but the town of Blackland had been operating on autopilot for five years, and it made sense if the commission wanted to attempt to snap them out of the doldrums and reawaken a town that was stuck on a loop repeating the fifth of May day after day.

The night crept in, and they turned on the night vision goggles on their helmets, and the thermal imagers on their rifles and in the helicopter. Various wildlife popped into relief on the greyscale displays. Most proved to be deer or hogs, however, and Bocker and Jebbins simply looked at each as they sat halfway out of the cabin. Both wished they could shoot some of the animals, and remembered hearing that the New Orleans SWAT team shot nutrias at night for practice. The flight quickly became very dull, and after five hours, everyone’s batteries were low, along with their energy. Fisher loved flying, but a mission like this could cure anyone of the desire to ever sit in a helicopter again. He thought about doing it for the next two weeks, and felt the headache that his helmet had already brought on increase tenfold. He clenched his jaw and looked back at Alvarez, whose expression could not be read under the headgear. He then turned on his mic to speak to Garcia. “How long to bingo?” he asked, an expression indicating the length of time they had until refueling was necessary.

“Sixty mikes.”

“Roger. Let’s go on and head in,” Fisher ordered.

They turned back to the south, and the Airbase. After twenty minutes they touched down, and Fisher eased out of the aircraft, stretching and removing his helmet. Besides the NVGs, it was adorned with a camera, flashlight, visible, infrared, and thermal beacons, a battery pack for the goggles, and a radio headset, all of which made for a sore neck after hours of use. He had used something similar in the Middle East, but he had been younger then, he reflected with some trepidation and nostalgic pain. He could run six miles without blinking then, without his knees giving out. But now he had little cartilage remaining. It was a sad thought to conclude a lackluster night. There were a million better uses for a cop on such a night, and in his annoyance his headache flared again, and he tracked Alvarez down to reckon with him. “So how many of these blue ball sessions should we expect?” he demanded.

“It takes a lot of time to hunt these,” Alvarez replied. “Even one of them. They’re smart, and we’re all in one helicopter, there’s a lot of ground to cover.”

“Excuses, it sounds like to me.”

Alvarez shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. We both want this done fast but there’s only so much speed we can work at here. Smooth is fast, after all, and smooth is the only way to get them.”

“And you’re only as strong, or fast as your weakest link,” said Fisher. “Please don’t be the weak link that keeps us from getting this done.”

“I’m offering everything I know. That’s why I’m here. If you and your team want to listen, then we’ll get this done without too much pain.”

Fisher rubbed his neck. “I don’t see this getting done without a hell of a lot of a pain, but fine. We’ll go inside, do an AAR, and you can give us your opinion on how to kill something next time.”

They walked in, and the team stood in a loose semi circle beside the cubicles, save for Garcia, who was preparing and securing the helicopter for the next night. As soon as he entered, Alvarez began. “All right, I get that tonight was no joy, but this kind of thing isn’t an exact science. It’s like stalking any animal, sometimes you go home empty handed. I suggest we try bait, maybe a cow or a hog or something tomorrow night, and try to draw some in.”

The TARP members considered that. “That might work,” Bascomb nodded his head.

Jebbins started to open his mouth, but Fisher was not interested in his opinions.

“All right," he said. “That works for me. We’ll hash it out tomorrow night. We’ll start back here at seventeen hundred. Dismissed.” Without waiting he started outside, rifle in one hand to throw in the Camaro he was assigned. “I’m going to stop by the Blackland bar before I go home if anyone else wants to come.”

Bocker and Jebbins joined in behind him, carrying their own rifles.

For his part Alvarez would not have been interested in the bar that had eaten so many of his nights away even if he was welcome. Instead he turned to Michetti and asked if she was ready to leave.

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you need to stop for alcohol on the way back?”

“No, Mom,” Alvarez groaned. “I’ll manage tonight.”

In truth Michetti cared little how much he drank. He seemed to survive and put in a lot of work despite the excessive consumption. She simply didn’t like to be beholden to his alcohol schedule simply because they rode together.

Blackland was a one bar town. The local watering hole was quiet tonight, with no music, and few patrons. That suited Fisher just fine. He sat in a booth with his back to the wall, long hair protruding out from under a baseball cap, as Bocker and Jebbins took the seat across from him. “We need to talk about this Alvarez guy,” he told the men.

Heads nodded around the table.

Fisher was more than a little perturbed by the sudden addition of a new team member. Alvarez was an unknown factor in a team Fisher had running like a Swiss clock. He was already working on finding more out about the man: calling in favors, checking with friends at every level of government, and in general searching for information that would mitigate how much of a pain in the ass he expected Alvarez to be. He’d seen this kind of thing in the military. Superiors would move in, take a working dynamic between him and his men, and completely rearrange a team, with disastrous results.

“If it isn’t obvious, I don’t like any of this,” said Fisher. “This guy swoops in out of nowhere and we’re just supposed to accept it?”

The heads nodded again.

“I’ll give Alvarez a chance,” he told them, “but I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure he leaves, and get us back the way we were.” Fisher was a tall, powerfully built oak of a man, with dark eyes and jet black hair, whose appearance and demeanor only frightened people more when they learned he was a lawman. Fisher had spent most of his Army service in Special Forces, and had endured multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and various other places flung around the globe. All that was out of his system now, and he considered himself devoted to his wife and two young daughters.

He also considered himself adaptable, as an embodiment of the tenants stressed by special operators, but a monkey wrench being thrown into the mix at a stage like this was simply too much to take lying down. Fisher was beyond annoyed at so much changing so fast. Truth be told he had gotten used to routine since starting law enforcement, and, adaptable or not, he wanted and valued that routine. If he wanted it back he would have to remedy the situation himself.

“So,” he said to the two Arredondo men, “do either of you know anything about Alvarez?”

“He left before we even started,” said Bocker.

“I know, but there must be some stories about all of that stuff,” said Fisher.

“Well, Alvarez was the SRO back in, what was it, ‘07?” said Jebbins.

“Yeah,” said Bocker. “He was at the school for their junior or senior prom when that dog just showed up and started eating people.”

“Yeah I know about that,” said Fisher. “I heard about him being a school pogue too. Do you know anything about how he was as a cop in general?”

“He wasn’t scared to shoot,” said Jebbins. “He was in an OIS on patrol. He’s an asshole they tell me, well that seems true.”

“No problem,” said Fisher. “I’m a bigger asshole. So he fails to stop the school killing, gets run off basically, and the way he says it he’s killing these animals now with the Feds?”

“Here’s what I heard about that,” said Bocker. He paused to drink from his bottle of lager. “A friend of mine in DPS near Del Rio told me they’re on high alert for these things because they’re coming up from Mexico. They reassigned two ICE teams on the Rio Grande to monitor the shallow spots for canine tracks a month ago, and used the Trooper’s gunboats to pull security.”

“Son-of-a-bitch,” said Fisher. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“It’s all secret squirrel stuff apparently,” said Bocker. “Like I say I only found out from my buddy.”

“I’ll reach out to some of my Fed dudes,” said Fisher. “You’d think they would have better things to worry about.”

“There was a fuck huge gunfight in Nuevo Laredo like three days ago,” said Jebbins. “I wonder what the deal with that one is?”

“Mexicans being Mexicans,” said Bocker. “No one’s gonna care.”

“We need to find out what that operation that Alvarez and the woman are with is called.”

“How soon can you start talking to people?” Bocker asked.

“Tomorrow,” Fisher said before draining his beer. “Alvarez seems shady. I’ll see if I can come up with anything, ideally something that forces the sheriffs to kick him out.”

“Anything else we can do?” Asked Bocker.

“Not unless I do find something,” said Fisher. “The orders came from a lot higher up. If CBP wants something done the sheriffs aren’t going to oppose it. It’s bullshit, it’s hard to swallow, but it’s just the way things are for now. I’ll tell you from experience though this whole shitshow is going to feel like wiping your ass with sandpaper.”

Jebbins drained a bottle in one gulp. “So, I guess we just get paid to shoot dogs for a while.”

“That’s about the best we can make of it,” agreed Fisher. “Hopefully we at least get some decent overtime. It’s usually slow this time of year anyway. Is everyone maxed out on comp?”

“I am,” said Jebbins.

“So, some extra money for us.” Fisher shrugged. It was better than nothing. “We had some shit details in the army too. Just bear with this a while and do your best. We’ve got each others’ backs and I’m not really concerned about a FNG throwing us off too much. We know how we operate, Alvarez will fall by the wayside.” He slouched back in the booth and called for another beer, as did the other two. “Don’t get too drunk,” he cautioned. “I want us in the shoot house tomorrow.”

As soon as Alvarez stumbled into his motel room he opened a beer, his normal ritual upon returning home. It was time to try and forget his life, all over again. It was a simple cycle, the problem was that more and more lately there was more and more he didn’t want to be reminded of. Alvarez wished he could be rid of every second of the past five years, or at least rid himself of every emotion he had experienced during that time. Well, not every emotion. He’d had one month, the past month: joy. Joy like he hadn’t known in years. Lying with Daniella in his arms as time and space floated away, leaving only the two of them.

But that was all replaced now, supplanted by rage. Or was it grief? Or some combination of the two? She was the only good thing he’d had in five years, and now even she was gone. He wanted her back more than he had ever wanted anything, but she was gone, and that constant realization drove him to push more alcohol into himself. He was six beers in before he finally passed out. He wasn’t usually such a lightweight. Perhaps he was going soft, he thought as he drifted into a fitful sleep, nightmares piercing their way through the mental barricades he had attempted to set up.

He saw Daniella in his mind’s eye, standing in the gym, a sea of bodies between them, the bodies of the teenagers. Viscera flowed like molasses over the floor. To his left he saw Jenny’s corpse, feet stamping through a puddle of blood. She stared him down with a look that could drop a mule deer, then her body was ripped from within as the wolf shot out of it, slashing Alvarez, spinning him. He screamed as his chest was eviscerated by the claws. He noticed that he was wearing his deputy’s uniform, which tattered like wet paper as his blood soaked it. His vest slid off, his shirts disappeared, and he walked towards Daniella, aware of a cold blast on his wounded chest as he stepped over the bodies. Bones crunched and twisted under his boots, and he saw that he was no longer looking at Daniella across from him, but Ledbetter. Why couldn’t that frigid bitch leave him alone? Still, he was drawn to her, for what purpose he could not discern, but her draw was inexorable.

Shreds of cloth from her prom dress swirled around her like a slow-motion dust devil. As Alvarez approached she took his arms in hers, and slid her hands over his face. The digits were frozen, cold as a Wyoming stream, and stiff with rigor mortis. She brought her breasts against his chest, and Alvarez sighed as tingles ran through his body, as electrifying as a taser blast. He felt the floor sink away from him and opened his eyes to see that Jenny was floating above him. Her bloody, gray body flashed past his vision as she rose. He was planted on the earth but no longer felt it. He no longer felt like himself at all, and whether this dream registered as a nightmare or not was a moot point. Nothing registered as pain or pleasure anymore, only indifference. Still, he wondered, even as he realized this was all a dream, why Jenny Ledbetter would have such an effect on him, such a pull. He supposed it was part of her plan.

Michetti was sitting in the bed in her own room, watching TV, trying to concentrate on something other than Alvarez’ shouts and groans in his sleep. She had no idea what might be causing that. Nightmares, she suspected. He was also sick, with a stomach virus if she remembered correctly. It would be odd for such an illness to cause that amount of pain, though. In any case it was distracting. She hoped he would stop soon, she wanted to go to sleep. She knew little of him beyond what she had heard, and what little she had heard was hardly favorable. It made her more than a little apprehensive to work with him as a result, and the morning’s unpleasant run in with TARP had only reinforced those feelings. However, she was equally curious, both about his personal history and the overall past of this town, and the frightening events which had shaped it. It was eerie to imagine what had happened here, and the visit to the school had electrified her with an unhallowed excitement. She supposed that was the feeling people who were intrigued by murders and such crimes experienced. It was a new but fascinating sensation. Alvarez, due to his closeness to the tragedy here, brought that strange sensation with him, and it fueled the overall curiosity.

Michetti had landed her coveted federal job through an internship while she was obtaining her masters. She did better with the FBI than she could have at all but the most high profile universities, and viewed her position as though she had won the lottery. Biology degrees were not known for generating large or even reliable cashflow, but at eighteen a wide eyed, nature loving Alerie Michetti had not cared.

Four months prior to laying in the hard motel bed she now occupied she had considered herself beyond fortunate to land the FBI job. When she was transferred to her new position the senior researchers had been clear: the unidentified canines were indeed a new species, specimens were held in Quantico, and she would be the first scientist to describe their movements in the wild, something that had somehow not happened in five years since their discovery. Michetti blamed the Top Secret classification for that. The process to get cleared to study the cadavers had first amazed, then annoyed her. Hours filling out digital forms, waiting on interviews, and sitting through polygraph examinations finally yielded a mountain of notes and autopsy photos, as well as access to the few canine bodies the government had, but, as she had been told, not a single video or anything beyond some poor quality photos showed the things while they were alive.

But with the equipment here, the helicopter, and advanced optics, she would learn everything there was to know. One day, when it was all declassified, her papers would in every high impact journal in the world. She could even see a scientific name ending in michettii, or something of that nature.

Her introduction the Alvarez several weeks prior had caught her off guard. He took a much dimmer view of the animals, and while she knew the general story of the massacre from news stories and Wikipedia, she still struggled to grasp how it could all happen, no matter the creatures’ power, which, based on her examinations, was considerable. Still, ignoring the gunshots was extremely strange, and it revealed the large gaps in knowledge of the animals’ behavior that she sought to remedy.

Now, listening to Alvarez, she concluded that the effects of his previous time here were worse than she thought before. This revelation only fueled more curiosity, however. Something not only terrible, but truly bizarre had happened in this town, and she would get to the bottom of it, she assured herself.