12

Michetti had said she wanted to go over the school. That had not bothered Alvarez, but the fact that she wanted him to come along did. It was a terrible idea, but he had been unable to convince her of that fact. When he eventually relented, alcohol had played a large part in the surrender.

He had risen early today, drunk half a fifth of Jim Beam, and practically beaten Michetti’s door down waking her up. It was his revenge for the errand, although if Michetti was annoyed by it she did not show it. The demeanor between the two had been lukewarm, but not hostile, and was owed more to a lack of caffeine than animosity. Nevertheless, Alvarez had not said a word since getting in the car with the biologist. He sat still and stared out the window at the dewy morning and hoped she didn’t smell the liquor he now exhaled. He was not sure if this trip counted as on the job, but he also did not care.

Alvarez dispensed with spirits only when he knew guns were going to be used; he had somehow managed that grip on his faculties so far, with only a few unplanned exceptions. On normal occasions which called for firearms he simply doubled his nicotine intake, but he would wait for a cigarette this morning in deference to Michetti, who disliked the odor and the smoke. She still cared about her body, he figured.

The school was still active, with students arriving in a spurting, curtailed stream. Blackland High School never had many students. The doomed graduating class of 2007 had boasted a mere fifty. There seemed to be more than that now, perhaps one or two hundred. One in four was probably related to one of the dead in some way or another. Alvarez would not be walking among simply literal ghosts in this private hell.

Alvarez had been a decent student, his own parents were professors in his hometown of Austin, so he had experienced a full education and a push to excel in academics. But as an adult he had come to hate schools. He hated the old, dirty, often polluted buildings, he hated the recalcitrant students who knew everything at sixteen, he hated the unique challenges that such structures posed in tactical situations. That had been one of the reasons they failed to kill the first wolf. Naturally, he hated this school more than all, and he shrunk into the hood of his sweatshirt as they entered.

He let Michetti do the talking. They walked up to the office entrance and found an administrator Alvarez did not recognize. He presented his badge, essentially a formality since his shirt displayed “POLICE FEDERAL AGENT” in massive gold letters, then turned the conversation over to Michetti. The administrator was understandably confused, but said she had no issue with the two looking around. Alvarez was annoyed and jumpy, despite the alcohol, and he decided to risk lighting a cigarette.

“Excuse me sir,” said the administrator. “You can’t smoke in here.”

Alvarez stared her down as a lion would stare down a taunting hyena. He had a volley of crude replies ready that he would have opted for in any other situation, but he didn’t have the energy today. He withdrew the tobacco and dropped it in a cup of coffee that sat on a table set against the wall. Michetti looked as if she could not decide to be annoyed or aghast, so Alvarez decided he should defuse the matter. “Sorry, Ms…”

“Marrika Waldencia,” she extended her hand.

“Ma’am,” he nodded. “Say.” He finally had the urge to ask a question that had been bothering him for several seconds, but had just now formed an exact definition in his head, “did you take over for Carol Alvarez?”

“I guess you could put it that way,” she replied, clearly uncomfortable at discussing one of the attack victims so frankly.

Alvarez was equally uncomfortable discussing his wife, though for more reasons than one. “I’m sure she was hard to replace,” he said.

“Well, I never knew her. I saw the opening here and applied, and they didn’t tell me until after they hired me that I was replacing her.”

“Oh,” Alvarez nodded, feigning interest in that particular. Michetti had not introduced him by last name, and he preferred that Ms. Waldencia not find out what it was. “We won’t take up any more of your time than we have to,” he said, before nodding Michetti in the direction of the hall they stood in. “Thank you,” he said, then walked off.

Michetti walked fast behind him, trying to match his stride. “Did you say ‘Carol Alvarez’ back there?” She asked.

“I did.”

“So you were related to someone who was…” She looked around. The tragedy had suddenly become more real to her, “who was killed here?”

“Yeah.” He glanced around, trying to avoid further questions, and spotted something that would help. “There,” he pointed at the floor, where the wall met the old, varnished wood.

“What?”

“Scratch marks,” he answered. “The bitch scratched the floor here, probably trying to get traction.” Two sets of three more or less straight lines scarred the heavily used surface. The indentations were shallow now, but still obvious.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It looks pretty smooth, and it’s not too deep.”

“They tried to buff it out,” he said. “But those are scratch marks, you can bet on it.” He stood and looked at the walls. Here and there he could make out patches of off-color material covering small holes, the artifacts of nearly four hundred rounds that night. “There’s some bullet holes,” he said.

“Hmm?” Michetti was on one knee, studying the claw marks. Now she looked up at the area he was pointing to.

“Those white squares,” he said. “That’s where they filled in the holes. I’m going to go look at something.” He walked off before she could respond. Hopefully she would notice enough items of interest to keep herself occupied for a while, he thought. He rounded a corner in the hall and walked down a deserted corridor. The classes were in session now, and no one was out. He was drawn to something. He saw himself objectively, walking trancelike into another unknown, and inevitable encounter, with a ghost. He knew from previous supernatural encounters that the fear in this school didn’t come from ghosts, or from the animals that had deposited the girl’s spirit here. The fear in this school came from something else, something much more existentially dreadful. He had no desire to figure out exactly what, though he had no doubt he would find out eventually, whether he wanted to or not.

He stopped. Something felt off. Or perhaps it felt the way he should expect it to. He grew cold, lethargic, and almost panicky. The unknown was one of the most unnerving things one could experience. He stared down the hallway, and the expected form came into view again, bleeding into the world as a silhouette.

Ledbetter.

He saw her standing in front of him, the same kind of mist surrounding her. The cold pierced through his sweatshirt, and her dead eyes pierced through his own. As before, she was bloody, even her hair was slick with hemoglobular fluid. And as he stared, neither moving nor speaking, he saw more, her victims, gradually appearing in grisly audience around her. There was Hunter Carver, his intestines spilling out of his torso, Billy Banders, with half his head missing, a boy Alvarez couldn’t identify, because his entire head was missing. They were in various states of mutilation; it would be hard to classify some as still humanoid, even though they stood. “I guess the Indians were right,” Alvarez muttered.

Ledbetter opened her mouth, and finally spoke. “What are you doing back here? You came here to kill the wolves.”

“Field trip. And what are doing reappearing? Did you bring all of them here just to ask me why I’m here now? It looks like a fucking exhumation.”

“They’re a kind of baggage for me,” she explained. “Until I die, they stay here.”

“That’s quite an albatross on you,” said Alvarez.

“I told you this place is a living hell.”

“I knew that already,” he said.

“Our existence is torture,” she agreed. “I’ll end it for you if you end it for me.”

Her tone suggested she was toying with him, and Alvarez was in no mood for games. It was too early, and the ghastly parade with the girl unnerved him beyond belief. In a sudden fit of anger, he closed the distance between them, and tried to grab her hair, but found that, while it bunched in his fist and he was able to tug at it, he did not feel it at all in the conventional sense. An overpowering cold seeped through his hand down into his bones. It swept through his shirts and gripped his chest like a vice, as though his ribs had been opened for a surgery and the air was taking the breath away from him. All the while his hand seemed to grip empty space, as though he were shoving into a vacuum. The look in her eyes was a dead abyss beyond time and space, beyond age, and though her body suggested her chronological death her eyes were more wicked and tired than they could possibly have been had she lived to one hundred. The pain, fatigue, and torment penetrated his own soul like icy blades, and he held back a gasp at seeing true despair personified. These were the eyes of one truly cut off from God and hope.

She knew exactly what he saw in her eyes, and she smiled as the psychic overload brought him to his knees, tears streaming from burning sockets. She knelt down and grabbed his own hair, and again he experienced a sensation of eternal void, this time brushing his scalp, moving his hair without causing any physical change to it. The attempt of two incompatible bodies to enter an intimate physical contact, overcoming what was perhaps a natural repulsion by fundamental laws.

He sucked in a breath and looked up at her: the woman, the girl, the thing that had finally brought him down. “Tu freo puta,” he groaned at her, as she continued to smile like a mad woman.

She ran her hand down his face, freezing it as she brushed the stubble and grasped his chin. “I think I need to leave this place,” she whispered.

“Yes,” was all he could whisper in return.

“Hurry,” she whispered again. “I can’t help you find them, or control them, but you know what to do. Butcher them. Send us home. No matter what it takes. Because you know this is it for you.” With her free hand she slipped their fingers together and froze his metacarpals to icicles. “When this is all over, you can die. And then: peace.”

“Yes.”

“So why wait?”

“I’m not. I won’t. You’re as good as dead.” His voice would not have disturbed a tomb. The commanding bravado with which he normally controlled others was lost, and the diagnosis of his own desire for death and void reduced his defensive mechanisms to mere shells. An eighteen year old girl was, for the moment, the most terrifying thing he had ever encountered.

She stood, leaving stains of blood on the floor, but none on him. “Until death,” she said, backing away into the mist that slowly overcame her and the horrid assembly.

Alvarez sat on the floor for several minutes at least before rising. “Dammit Jenny,” he muttered.

“Are you OK?” The voice from down the hall took Alvarez by surprise, he half jumped before he realized it was Maarika Waldencia walking towards him. “I thought I heard screaming and- have you been crying?”

“N-no,” Alvarez stammered as he wiped the tears from eyes. “I was, dust in my eyes,” he tried to smile.

“Oh, what were you doing over here anyway?”

“Just looking at some old bullet holes. Just some fucking bullet holes,” he muttered quietly.

She made a face at the mere thought of such things, and Alvarez turned to leave, and saw Michetti running up. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” his voice was gruff. “Are you done here?”

“I guess so. I thought I heard someone screaming.”

“I did too,” he said. “But everything looks OK.” Nothing would ever be OK here, he thought.

“If you say so,” she replied. “Well, yeah, I guess we’re done here. Thanks again.”

“Of course,” said Waldencia.

“You don’t look so good, Alvarez,” she said as they walked out.

“It’s because I got up too early,” he complained.

“Well you can sleep this afternoon.”

He almost laughed. “It’s going to be awhile before I can sleep again.”

“Let’s get breakfast then,” she said.

“Good idea. Actually, how about lunch? I’ll introduce you to the Mexican place, Rancho Grande.”

“Is it good?”

He shrugged. “As good as anything you’ll find around here. We can’t go to Denton, since we’re on call.”

“OK.”

They walked out into the blinding light of rapidly departing morning. As soon as they were outside Alvarez lit a cigarette. He was not about to heed any objection to it now.

“Where to now?” She asked as they boarded the car.

“The motel. By way of a gas station.”

“One with more liquor?” her tone was disapproving.

“No. I need coffee now.”

“You always need something,” she said, as if she had known him for years instead of a couple of months.

“You’ll find I can bitch about anything,” he said from behind sunglasses. “I need a hobby, and it’s either that or more drinking.”

“You need to do something constructive.”

“This operation is going to be the most constructive thing I’ve done in years,” he said.

She didn’t reply. Her mind had gone back to whoever Carol Alvarez was, and how this new information fit in to what had happened here. Michetti had no doubt that she lacked the whole story. She had read the FBI report, but pieces were missing from it, she was sure of it. If she could dry Alvarez out enough to get him to talk more she might arrive at some real answers. It was a longshot, realistically, but it was all she could go on at the moment. The deputies back at the air station probably knew more than her, even if Alvarez knew the most, but she knew better than to assume they would be much help to her. There were strange forces working here that were bigger than she, or the men, or Alvarez, although if anyone did in fact know exactly what they were or how powerful, it would be Alvarez. She needed his information, or at least she wanted it. Like most people, she did not like being kept in the dark. She would have to see to it that she found something undeniably true, and concrete, as soon as possible. Alvarez suggested that what they were dealing with was more dangerous than anyone gave it credit for. She had to know why, and she had to know soon. What could be so frightening about these animals that someone like Ray Alvarez feared them? Was that what had driven him to the state he now existed in? What existential or physical terror could have such an effect on someone? Michetti wished she knew, not yet realizing that she in fact did not want to know, and that the danger was more terrifying than she could fathom.

When the two arrived at the restaurant Alvarez quickly ordered a booth, and insisted on sitting with his back against the wall. Michetti eyed his furtive glances and immediately became concerned. “Are you alright?”

“Sure,” he said unconvincingly. “Just making sure we’re all good here.”

“I don’t think any wolves are going to attack us here,” she laughed.

“I’ve learned you can’t be too careful.” In truth it was not just the wolves he was afraid of. The Gulf Cartel most likely knew he was still alive, and it was only a matter of time before they discovered his whereabouts. The people here at the moment were few in number and normal looking enough, but it was not as though effective killers advertised their intentions. Alvarez let himself relax a little, not just for Michetti’s sake either. His weapon was openly carried, and he had home field advantage. He would never forget this place, not even after five years. They ordered, with Alvarez caving to his desire for alcohol despite being armed and having to watch his life for the foreseeable future. He simply wouldn’t drink more than two beers, he told himself. Michetti did not look pleased, however. She was not his concern, though. She glanced around the room for several seconds, then spoke. “What’s up with this town? Everything just feels kind of off.”

“Name another place that’s experienced anything like this one did, at least in recent history.”

“I guess. Old wounds healing slowly?”

“Something like that,” said Alvarez as their drinks arrived and he gulped at his Modelo.

“How exactly did it all happen?” she asked. “The lead up to it, and where it went down before the school, all that?”

“Well the animal itself ran through one of the neighborhoods around here, I don’t know the exact route, but it basically made a beeline towards the school according to the unit that chased it.”

“Any idea why?”

“No,” he replied, only half lying. The wolf’s interest in the school was merely a matter of speculation for even him, and he wondered if it would get him anywhere to ask Jenny about it if he saw her again. It certainly wasn’t important enough to go back to the damned school for, however.

“Were there indicators of anything leading up to the attack?” Michetti asked. “I read some wolf sightings happened about a week before the massacre, and that couple was found dead in their house, but I couldn’t find anything more out about it.”

“There were some sightings,” he said, unwilling to go into detail regarding his own involvement in those sightings. “Nothing spectacular, and nothing to indicate what was coming.” That was not entirely true either. Alvarez was hit with a sudden rush of guilt regarding the three days before the tragedy, and he wished Michetti would stop talking. But, he decided, that guilt would never be assuaged, so it didn’t really matter, and answering her questions now might prevent a stream of them later.

“So just out of the blue, huh? That’s so weird. Things like that almost never happen. But lately there’s been an uptick in it.”

“Gevaudan is the only instance of something like that I know of,” he said. The Gevaudan region of France had, in the early 1700s, seen multiple attacks by an unusually aggressive quadruped, with at least several dozen people killed before the attacks mysteriously stopped.

“This is an unknown species,” said Michetti, “but I don’t know why’d they would be so aggressive.”

Alvarez shrugged.

“I don’t guess you really care, do you?” she chuckled.

“If it helps me kill them I care, but I don’t think knowing they have anger issues really does much for my job. Might as well ask why humans are so aggressive. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter.”

Michetti decided to change the subject slightly. “I guess your involvement with all this fast tracked you into IWARP?”

He nodded around his bottle. “Yeah. I healed up, got out of this shithole, and tried out for BORTAC the first chance I got. As soon as they formed IWARP and realized where I had started out they said ‘oh shit, we need this guy,’ and I became useful to someone again.”

“That simple, huh?”

“That’s the short version. The story’s kind of complicated, but I’m not. Let your yes be a simple yes and your no be a simple no.”

“Matthew 5:37,” she nodded.

“I’ll take your word for it. That’s one book I haven’t read in a long time.”

“From what you said earlier I didn’t think you were religious, but, not to pry, but you said you believe in God.”

“I definitely believe. I just don’t think He likes me very much.”

“Because of the attack?”

“That, my wife, the whole past five years really. I was raised Catholic, it just didn’t do me any good.”

“Lapsed Catholic,” she said, nodding again. “The clock-maker deity? Or the celestial equivalent of leaving a baby in a garbage can?”

“Pretty much. This place is gearing up for something bad all over again. No one wants to recognize it yet, but if you’re right then it’s going to be another goatfuck, and you’ll see how fast people you depend on throw you under a bus, and how much help God actually provides when things go south.”

“You expect another massacre?”

“I’m a good seventy to eighty percent sure,” he said. “From what we saw in New Mexico, I don’t think it’s just one this time. It’s going to be bad.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“Burn this place down until even the roaches can’t live,” he said, laughing bitterly. “But realistically all we can do is arm up and work our ass off hunting them. And I guess you can pray.”

“You don’t have to be like that,” she said.

“I’m not trying to tell you don’t do it, just don’t expect it to get us anywhere.”

Fisher stood at the head of the conference table at the Airbase, eyeing the team without emotion. “We’ve got a problem here,” he said. “Clearly we’re being too haphazard and lackadaisical just flying around looking for these things. We need to come up with a tracking strategy.”

“Well, what about the Starchaser?” asked Jebbins.

“What about it?” said Fisher.

“Do you think it would stick to a dog?” said Jebbins.

“I...,” Fisher stroked his beard in thought. “It might. We’d have to find one first, but...you think you could hit one with it?”

“Damn right I can hit one, Sarge.”

Starchaser was a system for managing or avoiding pursuits of suspect vehicles. Both TARP’s Tahoe and Ketchum’s Charger were equipped with the system. A dual launcher in the vehicles’ grilles fired a GPS tracker that resembled a 40 millimeter grenade. The front of the tracker was coated with adhesive. TARP additionally possessed a hand held launcher for the trackers.

“All right,” said Fisher. “We’ll try it then. Too easy.”

Fisher called Ketchum, who was finishing a meeting at ACSD headquarters. He ordered Fisher to meet him there, and the men left the building and piled into their Tahoe. Fisher drove while Jebbins manned the laptop and pneumatic launcher. Alvarez, Brantwood, Bocker, and Bascomb managed to squeeze into the back seat.

The sun was down and the night watch beginning when they arrived at the law enforcement entrance in the back. As they pulled in a Crown Vic left the lot and hit the highway, accelerating to over sixty miles an hour and shooting into the night like a meteor. Ketchum stepped out and watched the tailights disappear over the low horizon while Fisher parked in front of the steps.

“This idea sounds kind of stupid to be honest,” said Ketchum as he descended the steps. “It’s a long shot at the very least.”

“Wish I had a better idea,” said Fisher.

“Well, screw it then,” said Ketchum. “Have to do something. Brantwood, Bocker, you guys come with me.”

Once everyone was situated they started off, leaving the town outskirts and heading into the patches of woods towards the Oklahoma border. It was thoroughly dark now, and the stars came out in a panorama. It was dark enough to see them arc overhead like a painting on a ceiling, and Alvarez rolled down the back window and stared up as he lit a cigarette. He gazed up at the sky for a few seconds, then his thoughts drifted to Daniella. He quickly looked down, tried to drown the thoughts of the Mexican woman as quickly as possible. He started thinking of Michetti, though he wasn’t sure if that was better or not. The two had been working together intermittently since January, and though he found her attractive from the start they had said little regarding how they felt, with the exception of an admission of sexual tension some weeks before, and their tryst in the New Mexico forest, a make out session that was possibly just a release of all the pressure they were under. Alvarez considered that the time might be right to do something while they were here, assuming that they should act on such feelings to begin with. His world had changed too much, and in too many ways over the past few months, he reflected. He had almost been comfortable with his increasingly empty existence, but then Michetti had drawn him back towards women anew, and then Daniella had entered his life and threatened everything, and now she was dead, Michetti was an unknown factor, and he might as well be alone again, all things considered.

They drove for around twenty minutes before splitting off, with Ketchum staying on the main road while Fisher took a barely paved county track through a field. Fisher’s truck had a FLIR camera attached to its spotlight, and he activated it, sending the feed to his laptop as he drove. Alvarez, Jebbins, and Bascomb scanned the area with their own thermals as the road became rougher and rougher. Fisher finally stopped and moved the spotlight over the field, listening as he did so, attempting to home in on a particular sound to narrow his search area.

After fifteen minutes with no movement he drove off, found a new location, and repeated the process. They did this five times over the next several hours, but saw nothing. Fisher updated Ketchum every thirty minutes, but the lieutenant had not seen anything either.

“Let’s go west,” Fisher eventually suggested. While they drove the passengers continued to attempt scanning the area, but Fisher’s speed made it nearly impossible to identify any of the blobs the thermals showed them. They were going over fifty miles an hour when Jebbins noticed something odd, something that seemed to be moving. “Hold up!” he ordered.

Fisher slammed the brakes, and looked behind himself. “What is it?”

Jebbins leaned out of the window and peered through the scope. “I think I saw one.”

Fisher backed the truck up and stopped when Jebbins said they were in the right area. The night was tomb quiet as they looked.

“Jebbins, I-” Fisher was cut off by the younger man.

“I’ve got it!” Jebbins whispered in excitement. “It’s by a tree about thirty yards that way,” he pointed in the general direction.

“I’ve got it too,” said Alvarez.

“Hang on a minute,” Fisher backed the truck around in the road so that it was facing the area Jebbins had specified. He pointed his spotlight camera at the tree and saw, just beyond the range of the headlights, a brown canine form. It was standing still, and seemed to be watching them. “You sure it’s not just a dog?” he asked.

“No way,” said Bascomb. “That’s too big to be a dog.”

“All right,” said Fisher. “Jebbins, get that launcher ready.” Jebbins complied, reaching slowly between the seats and hoisting the gun like apparatus.

Fisher armed the truck mounted launcher. He planned to try it first. It held two shots, and moreover, he wanted the laser it was fitted with to have a better chance at hitting his target. The laser now appeared as a small green dot, still beyond headlight range. He would have to get closer, he realized. The thermal scope would not help him to fire, as a laser would not appear on it. He crept forward, driving with his left hand, holding his right on the FIRE button, hoping the thing didn’t run. When the headlights began to illuminate the brown form the wolf, as if reading his mind, bolted. “Ah, fuck,” he groaned, as he gunned the engine.

The animal ran right past him, and Fisher whipped the truck left and headed back onto the pavement. The wolf was already running at over thirty miles an hour, and it sped up as the truck closed the distance. They crested a hill and accelerated even more on the down slope. The wolf was sprinting at over seventy miles an hour now. Fisher was not worried about speed, he was confident the Tahoe could outpace any animal, and no creature could keep up such a pace for long. Maneuverability was a different matter. He had a feeling it would cut left or right any second, and he would have to stand on the brakes to match its turn when that happened.

He was overtaking it now. The wolf split between them and a solitary car as it decelerated. Fisher glanced left to see what it would do, then, without warning, it was gone. Just as he expected to do, Fisher was immediately standing up, both feet on the brake, sending the truck into a donut in the middle of the road, while profanity filled the cab.

“He’s going right! My right! Passenger side!” Bascomb yelled.

Fisher took back off like a shot, leaving the road and bouncing over an empty field, the headlights barely keeping the animal in his field of view, the laser bouncing wildly around the whipping tail. The grass turned to mud, and the truck slid across a wetland the consistency of melting butter. Fisher snapped the wheel around and contorted his upper body angrily. The truck fishtailed through the marsh, then came straight, and roared ahead, almost ramming the wolf. “I’m about to run this bastard over!” Fisher shouted.

It shot ahead of them again, and Fisher said, “Jebbins, stand by to fire the vehicle launcher.” His voice was now so calm as to be eerie, but if Jebbins noticed the tone it did not slow him down. He placed his hand on the button, and waited as gobs of mud flew like hail around them.

“All right,” Fisher breathed, watching the laser. “All right...fire!”

Jebbins pushed the button as though his life depended on it, and a black and grey blur sailed out ahead of them, glanced off the wolf, and fell somewhere out of view.

“Dammit!” Fisher yelled, “Stand by on the second one!”

They were zigzagging through the plain now, trying to match the snapping changes in the wolf’s trajectory. It cut left, then came back right, and Fisher realized that, for a split second, it would be perpendicular to them, presenting the bulk of its mass to the launcher. He waited to give the order until just before it crossed the laser’s path. “Fire!”

The second tracker hit the flank of the wolf, then bounced off and rolled away. Jebbins retrieved the hand launcher. As soon as Fisher turned right to continue the pursuit Jebbins fired, sending the canister flying to the right of the animal. He thrust himself back into the seat and reloaded.

They were forming a large arc, coming back to the direction of the road, and Fisher wondered if they were tiring the wolf at all. It was still running over forty miles an hour, but perhaps not for long. They hit the dry area of the field again, and a blizzard of dust enveloped the truck. Fisher activated the wipers and cleaner fluid, while Jebbins leaned out again. The animal’s back profile was narrow and fleeting. It was a shot beyond questionable. It was more along the lines of insane. He had no choice, however. Jebbins breathed as slowly and deeply as he could through the dust and bouncing and excitement. With his left hand he gripped the handle inside, while trying to aim with his right. He hated shooting with his right hand. The wolf started to pull away, then Fisher closed the distance, and it drifted back toward him. Again he tried to aim. As it pulled away, he fired.

He barely saw the canister leave the barrel. He did see the animal flinch, and limp for a second. It recovered and ran off, cutting right with a burst of energy that could only come from adrenaline. To Jebbins, that meant he must have hit it. As it ran off he could see the canister, flopping in the mass of fur, looking something like an aluminum can, but definitely attached. He pulled himself back into the cab and sat down. “I hit it!” he said in jubilation.

“That’s what it looked like to me too,” said Fisher. He slowed the truck, then stopped, and opened the computer. They all four leaned forward and watched the signal from the GPS. It was moving away from their position at a high rate of speed, updating and showing a new position every few seconds.

“You hit it all right,” said Fisher. “That was a hell of a shot!”

Jebbins was breathing hard, trying to steady himself and control the adrenaline which was now surging through him. “So,” he said as casually as he could. “Do we get the helicopter now?”

“No,” said Alvarez. “Let’s see what it does for a while.” He leaned back in the seat and extracted his phone to let Michetti know what had happened.

Alerie Michetti sat at her desk in the Airbase, setting up her computer. She had just gotten off the phone with Alvarez, and she was excited to see what the tracking program would yield. She was even more excited for the dashcam video of the expedition, and she was prepared to stay late and wait for the wireless download when they returned so she could watch the footage as soon as possible.

While she waited she let her mind wander to distract from her excitement. Alvarez’ explanations of the events here had not satisfied her, she knew there was more she hadn’t heard. Finding it out wouldn’t be easy though. Maybe she should simply get Alvarez and let him talked she chuckled to herself. Still, she might be able to pry more details out if she bided her time, though time was short.

Alvarez himself also remained a mystery. Even his odd thoughts on religion and theology bore evidence of being formed by the trauma that had brutally readjusted his life. He was unstable, to oversimplify it, and if his present course continued the alcohol or the smoking would no doubt kill him before the wolves could. She wondered whether he could actually be helped or if death would be the greater mercy now.

Her mind went farther back, to their first romantic encounter. He and she, tearing at each other’s bodies in the woods on their patrol as part of Consistent Gale, raw primal passion awakening between them, sparks of lust, and perhaps something deeper. Or perhaps she had merely been living like this for too long.

The back door beeped quietly, then swung open with hurricane force as the boisterous party entered. Michetti turned back to her computer and re-checked the tracking program. The wolf now appeared.

“Well, you obviously know: we got him,” Jebbins bragged.

“Can you see it yet?” asked Fisher.

“Yeah,” she said, motioning them over then standing up so they could look. “Is the dash camera going to download?”

“Yeah, it shouldn’t take long,” said Fisher.

“How did it act?” she asked.

“I’ve never seen anything run like that,” Fisher said. “We’re lucky Jebbins shoots a launcher as well as he shoots his mouth.”

“So what’s next?” said Bocker.

“We track it for a while,” said Michetti. “Look for patterns, and see where it spends its time. After a day or two, go back out and use that intel to track some down and shoot them.”

“We’re going to cheat more than just that,” said Fisher, turning to Alvarez. “Next time we’re going with your idea and using bait.”