6

“So, what is this?” Fisher asked, skeptical of anything Alvarez had come up with. Alvarez spread a series of aerial photos on the table of the airbase conference room. “Over the next three days a satellite is going to flyover us several times, and it’s going to photograph the area in several light wavelengths, until we figure out where the wolves are at different times, then we strike on them.”

“What makes you think this’ll work?” asked Fisher.

“We know they’re moving in this area. They operate in packs as far as we can tell, so it follows they’re in a pack somewhere around here, somewhere their heat signatures will show up when we examine the evidence and go looking.”

“OK,” said Fisher. “I’m tracking.”

“Let’s fuck some shit up,” said Jebbins.

“What do we do for three days?” Bocker asked.

Alvarez shrugged. “Fly around with a thermal I guess.”

“We’ll collate the information as it comes in.” Fisher recommended. “That way we’ll have a complete picture after those three days.”

The photos poured in over the next seventy two hours, misshapen blobs marking the movements and haunts of the intended prey. “Well, I’ll give it to you Alvarez,” said Fisher. “I think you might actually have something here.”

Alvarez grunted, more acknowledgment than thanks.

Fisher ignored it. “I say we check this lead out. Garcia, how fast can you get the helicopter up?”

“About two hours.”

“OK, let me know when it’s ready.”

“You want to fly during the day?” asked Brantwood.

“This picture,” Fisher tapped one of the printouts, “was taken at fourteen hundred. This looks to be where they’re bedding down during daylight, so I say we surprise them while they’re asleep.”

“Good idea,” said Alvarez.

“We really want to waste a flight on just some heat signatures?” protested Jebbins.

“You have a better idea?” Fisher asked. “I thought not. Get the rifles ready.”

The rotorwash from the helo barely cut down on the stifling heat. As they came up on the stretch of trees indicated in the satellite photos, Alvarez leaned forward to look for any indicators of movement on the ground below.

“Let’s get low,” Fisher ordered. “Try to flush them out.”

“Roger,” said Garcia. He descended to tree top level, and Alvarez felt as if his legs would catch some of the branches from the taller conifers. Garcia swooped over the stand, then circled around once more. The men scanned the plains surrounding the thicket, but the world was still. “I have an idea,” Jebbins suggested as they circled back. He extracted a flashbang grenade from his plate carrier, held it out, then dropped it into the forest once they were back over it. As the helicopter flew out over the open ground again, a stream of brown animation flowed out from the trees.

“Targets, ten o’clock,” Fisher called out.

Alvarez sighted in on the closest animal on his side. His first shot missed, he saw the dirt churn up in front of the wolf, which changed its trajectory. His second shot caught it in the right shoulder, and it flinched, slowing down. He followed up the shot, hitting it in the back, and it tumbled in the dirt. As the helicopter soared past it he looked down. The animal wasn’t dead, but if he had scored a critical hit on its tough spine it would not survive.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw more movement. One of the other wolves tumbled, felled by a shot from Fisher on the other side of the aircraft. Alvarez looked for more targets. Most of the wolves were disappearing into other stands of trees, but he saw a straggler, probably three hundred meters out. The shot was difficult, but not impossible. Just before the wolf vanished into the protective concealment of the foliage he saw it buck.

They circled around again to assess the kills. “Good shooting guys,” said Fisher. “I count five dead.” He had to smile at it. They had broken the case, found the Achilles heel of these damned beasts. Now, the fight could well turn in their favor, and this distasteful job concluded. They knew where these things hid, knew how to make their concealment worthless. For the first time, Fisher felt like he had in Iraq.

Alvarez was fairly pleased with himself when he got back to the hotel. He had left the air conditioner running all day, and the freezing room was merciful and relaxing after the baking fields and the cauldron wind the helicopter had slipped through. He opened the refrigerator and took stock of the alcohol. Damn, he thought, looking at the four remaining beers. He didn’t feel like going to the store. He was tired to begin with, he supposed he could simply drink these, go to bed, and try to get to sleep early and hope there would be no nightmares. Right. In a haunted room, in this Godforsaken town. He groaned as he sank into the old chair with a beer in hand. The air conditioner provided a therapeutic sound as he attempted to wind his mind down. He sat quietly for an indeterminate amount of time, only moving his arm, putting the can to his mouth.

The knock startled him. He jumped up, grabbed his handgun from the table, and stood next to the door, listening. Given his recent experience with the Gulf Cartel, Alvarez was past taking chances. He heard nothing for two or three seconds, then he leaned over and looked through the peephole. He didn’t see anything at first, but when he raised up and looked down he realized that Michetti was at the door. Huh, he thought, opening it.

She stood in jeans and socks, her FBI T-shirt untucked, holding a twenty-four pack of lager. “I thought you might be tired of drinking by yourself,” she said.

If he were being honest, he had to admit that he was. Five years was a long time to go it alone. And while he always knew he could spend the rest of his hopefully short life in that manner, that would never make it easier to bear. He stood to the side and directed her in. “You’re miserable enough for my company?” he asked.

“The TV gets old. It also gets old not having anyone around. I’m bored enough to hang out with you. You don’t have to talk, if you don’t want to.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and pushed the chairs across the table from each other. They sat, and drank. Michetti was as good as her word, and no conversation ensued. The two glanced out the window at the golden light, now slowly fading to orange. Alvarez drank fast, showing no deference to how many beers Michetti might want, and giving no credence to her money. Eventually he felt intoxicated enough to begin to relax. He was reassured by the alcohol. They had been successful, with luck the wolf murder would take off like a rocket now, and in a week they would all be dead, and he would be back in some remote corner of the west killing more, but regardless, it would not be here, and that was the important part.

He noticed that Michetti was looking at him. He looked back at her. Her stare was intense, and he could read a question forming in her mind. “What is it?”

“I want to know,” she said, “from someone who was there: what really happened at the high school?”

Alvarez gulped down the remainder of his beer and stood, recovered and opened a new can. He sat down on the bed and heaved, taking in a breath with extreme effort. He examined the can and didn’t speak for several seconds. “A bunch of kids got slaughtered. Exactly what the files say.”

“And you know I’ve read all of them. You know what I’m saying. If you don’t want to talk about it-”

“We weren’t prepared,” he interjected. “We had two days to figure out what we were dealing with, and a few hours to get a handle on it when we figured it out. And we weren’t ready at all. There was a major factor we weren’t prepared for.”

“The aggression? Or the resistance to bullets?”

Alvarez looked at her. She should know the truth about them, he decided. Regardless of whether she was read in or not he no longer cared. They were not in El Paso anymore. They were in the field, outnumbered, and in danger of a very unpleasant fate. She needed to know the whole story; whether she could believe was another matter. “You’re going to think I’m either full of shit, or my mind is completely gone here,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll listen.”

He answered quickly, it was too late to rethink the decision now at any rate. “They’re lycanthropes,” he said.

“What?”

“Werewolves. Every wolf we’re fighting right now was a human once. Jenny Ledbetter was the first one. She killed everyone at the station, killed her parents, then those deputies and the kids at the school.”

She didn’t answer right away. There was no easy way to accept such an idea, of course. His introduction to Jenny’s “condition” had been the security camera footage of her transformation, and he had tried every way possible to rule out fakery before hearing that it was genuine. Taking his word for something like this would be hard, if not impossible for her, he reasoned.

“We’ve worked together for how long, now?” she said. “Anyway, I respect you Ray. Hell, I like you even, I know most people don’t and you can be an asshole. What you’re telling me is... shit, if you’re not fucking with me, how am I supposed to take this? There’s never been any evidence these things were human when I’ve dissected them.”

“This is the no shit truth,” he said. “You have to take my word for it, that’s the best I can give you.”

“Well, fuck it. Assuming I believe that, do they change back? Is there any way to make them people again?”

“No,” he said. “Once you’re a werewolf, that’s it. Full moon doesn’t matter, silver bullets don’t matter, you’re screwed. The only way out is to die.”

“So you’ve been doing a lot of people favors for the past few years, huh?”

“It’s all I can do anymore,” he shrugged. “It’s the only thing I’m good at, at any rate.”

“You were at the school when it attacked, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. A couple of our- of ACSD’s guys tried to contain it, it got out, and headed for the high school.”

“Why there?”

“I’m not completely sure,” he said. “Maybe because her friends were there. Maybe it was some instinctive drive to kill them or try to infect them, I don’t know. She was intercepted when she got there, you saw that video, of course, and we talked about the problems there. But anyway, she got inside...” he trailed off. The alcohol was doing the talking now. He had never discussed this part of the story outside of official questioning. He felt water building up in his eyes, and for the first time, Alvarez considered that he should try to tell the story. He had no idea if it would help him, but it was better than going through life as a kind of mental cripple, unable to think about the past, yet unable to think of anything else. “When she got in I shot her, once, with a shotgun. But it didn’t stop her.” He sat straight and pulled up his shirt.

Michetti stared blankly, perplexed, until she saw his right arm. The bicep and upper chest were twisted and carved by deep, wide scars, a hideous mass of tissue that was not rebuilt by surgeries, but simply salvaged. He dropped his shirt back down and extended his right hand. The fingers twitched and jerked spastically as he tried to flex his hand. “Permanent nerve damage,” he said. “A lot of physical therapy before I could write again. Or shoot. Anyway, I was out, maybe this,” he pointed at the damaged hand, “gives you some idea why.

“And she killed them. Everything you saw in those photos, it took one, maybe two minutes. And I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move, I just laid there and listened to them. And smelled it. I’ll never forget that. Fuck.” His voice was extremely gravelly now, and he started to choke as he continued. “But I got back up. After she finished with them and went into the school, I got up. And I followed her. I figured if I was going to die I was going to take the bitch with me. But Evans, and Losa, and Corval were in there too. And I linked up with them, and we went after it. We passed my wife’s office and, uh, she was still there, she’d been working late. So, it got her, and one of the other admin people. I just looked long enough to confirm they were dead, and then we kept going. We followed that dog through half the damn school, and we fired, I don’t remember, something like five hundred rounds between us; I couldn’t tell you how many actually hit. And we cornered her. We finally cornered the fucking thing. And we ran dry. We switched to handguns and I guess she had enough, she jumped out the window, rushed the perimeter, and headed for the hills. And until last month that was the last time anyone saw her, or at least confirmed a sighting. And I’ve spent every damn minute I can trying to kill every last one ever since. Haven’t stopped thinking about that night for one second these past five years. Five years is a long time. But, that’s it. That’s the straight story.”

She sat, tomb silent, and watched him wipe the tears away. His throat burned, and a ball of hate clawed at it from the inside. He swallowed the rest of the beer in his hand. It was lukewarm now, but he didn’t care.

“Holy shit,” she said. “I- I didn’t realize it was that bad. You’ve been through the ringer. But we can, we can’t ever change it, but we can end all this here, can’t we? You think you’ll move on from this, once we kill them?”

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Then that’s what we have to do,” she said. She barely realized when she reached over and took his hand in hers.

He looked over at her, but said nothing. Neither said anything for a long time. She laid down on the bed, and Alvarez followed suit, lying next to her. She kissed him, and for the next several minutes they laid on top of the covers, alternating between kissing and looking at each other. Both were still dusty from the day’s work, both tasted of low grade beer, but neither cared. And when Alvarez’ arm went numb and he rolled onto his back, she crawled on top of him, and he realized how tired he was. He had not been so relaxed in months, not since Daniella. But she was dead, and for the first time he realized he could accept that. He would never get over her, he would never even get over Carol, as fractious as that relationship had been, but he would learn to live with it.

Michetti was already asleep, and he opted to keep her and himself where they were. If he could keep her alive this relationship could be different; less torrid, less violent energy. Stability might just do wonders for him. And he wanted her more than anything now, he realized. The final shock, which jerked him awake before he finally dozed off for good, was that he actually wanted to live again.