00

  Alvarez rolled over on the bed covers. He had slept on top of the bed again. Michetti was collapsed in one of the chairs. He vaguely remembered her lying next to him during the night. He was remarkably clear headed, owing to his lack of alcohol the previous night. He would be craving it in an hour or so, but he would simply have to do his best to ignore the wish. As far as he knew he was not yet physically dependent on liquor, so he did not anticipate any withdrawal symptoms.

  He got up and headed for the bathroom. After using the toilet and brushing his teeth, he stepped into the shower. Something felt off, and he realized that it was because he was used to drinking a beer in the shower. The cravings were coming on faster than he had expected. There was no way this day would go well. He didn’t expect to be alive at the end of it, all things considered. He was still somewhat ambivalent on that issue, but Michetti’s declaration of love the previous night rang in his ears. He had to consider her now, had to consider that she wanted him to live. And he had to consider the possibility that he was in love with her as well. He had been in love with Daniella, though would it have lasted? He still believed it might have, though their circumstances would most likely have doomed their affair regardless. He was still not sure if he had loved Carol. He had certainly thought he did, at the time. As had she. But it never would have worked in the long run. That had made things somewhat easier when she was killed. But Alvarez thought himself foolish enough to believe this romance might actually stand. He just had to survive long enough to give it a real chance.

  When Alvarez and Michetti arrived at the Airbase the others were already gearing up. Fisher, Bocker, Jebbins, Brantwood, and Bascomb wore ranger green combat uniforms and belts loaded down with handguns, magazines, and med kits, while their plate carriers and rifles sat on their own desks. Ketchum and Alvarez would wear plain clothes but carry just as much firepower in their Tahoe. Ketchum had selected one of the AA-12s for himself and loaded it with a drum magazine. Alvarez intended to be lighter; he loaded up one of the short barreled M4s, and started experimenting with how many extra magazines he could fit on himself. His primary concession to heavy firepower was a backup handgun, a Smith and Wesson 500 Magnum which he had discovered was quite effective against the wolves at close range. If it came time to use it he was sure it would be because things had gotten as bad as they possibly could, but he would never allow himself to be an easy kill.

  “All right, let’s get to the conference room,” Fisher ordered.

  As they filed in they saw that Ketchum had taped a large aerial photo of the town park on the wall at the front of the room. Everything was labeled, and a similarly labeled topographic map had been taped on the opposite side of the whiteboard at the room’s front. This briefing was different from most that the team held. As they sat down there were no jokes, insults, quips, or any speaking at all. Everyone sat down without a word while scrutinizing the photo and map. Even though Fisher had gone over the plan the day before, no one was going to enter into this fray “with their dick in their hand.”

  “All right,” Fisher began when they were seated. “To go over the plan again here, according to Lieutenant Ketchum we expect anywhere from two to four hundred people here, and we’re looking at, if we’re lucky, one hundred deputies in the area. Now that obviously limits our aerial capabilities if things hit the fan. And if we have to go on the ground there aren’t enough of us to be a completely effective team, not with Alvarez and L-T on the ground in front, which means possibly working in pairs and trying to link up with more people, which I don’t like but we might have to do it. L-T, the plan for you and Alvarez on the ground is to mill around the perimeter, correct?”

  “Right,” said Ketchum.

  “Garcia, what’s your time from here to Blackland?” asked Fisher.

  “Fully loaded, less than ten minutes.”

  Fisher nodded. “That’s about as good a response time as you can hope for. We have all the .458 loaded in the helo already, correct?”

  Bocker held up a set of checklists, as he was in charge of munitions and explosives for the team. “I double checked it all. Everything’s in there.”

  “All right, good to go,” said Fisher. “We’re going to be dependent on our ground troops here. Our response has to be flexible, and where Alvarez and the L-T guide us is where we’ll go for our targets. You all know your gun safety, don’t take any shot if you’re not one hundred percent on the accountability; like I said it’ll be crowded.

  “Oh, and you also know, but I’m emphasizing it again: don’t expect any help from the SRT. Grayson and Cooke are on standby even though Arredondo doesn’t want them in the county; so we have them but response time is up to thirty or forty minutes. If you haven’t already gotten your head around it, we are alone. Help is a long way off if things really go south, so get your mind right and be prepared to not quit, if things get ugly they’re going to get real fucking ugly.”

  After the briefing the team members split up to go over their individual responsibilities and last minute preparations once again. For his part Fisher went back to his office to go over checklists he had created to track the ammunition, explosives, and various kit he wanted to have ready for the evening. Five curious looking pieces of gear sat leaned against the corner in front of his desk, and he read over the information sheet that had arrived with them. Each one was mushroom shaped, black and sleek, with fins on the bottom. A baton like protrusion jetted out from the top of the “mushroom’s” head. It was known as a SIMON, and it was essentially a rifle grenade optimized for breaching doors. He had no idea if it might be useful or not, but Fisher was done taking chances.

  He was more than willing to move on from his earlier reticence at Alvarez’ warnings and this mission. Fisher had always dedicated himself to his mission more than anything else. Whatever the task was that he was given, he would pursue it to its finish at the exclusion of anything that got in the way or distracted him. Or at least, he had been that way. He supposed his ego had grown as he had aged. He had bragging rights, few ever accomplished all the things he had, nor would most even be able to. But he had to admit that such triumphs hardly made him infallible, and he was fighting something alien to himself now. That did not change his fundamental understanding of combat. Speed, surprise, and violence of action were the central tenets of close quarters conflict, and they needed all three. Fisher was praying for the best case scenario now while expecting the worst. He just might be in for the most violent law enforcement confrontation in history tonight.

  TARP spent several hours on their preparations; by the end it was primarily busy work, as they tried to fill time before the ceremony started, listening to the radio, hating the suspense, wishing that if the battle was coming that it would just hurry up and come.

  They donned all of their combat gear: plate carriers with extra magazines, and all manner of gas and flashbang grenades. Their medical kits and rifles sat on their desks while the team sat at the cleaning table with a radio placed in the middle, already sweating in their gear. Jebbins in particular was clearly suffering, as he wore heavy entry armor, complete with the groin and deltoid protectors, along with shin guards and hard gloves, while the others had gone for lighter, more mobile get ups.

  “Jebbins you are an idiot,” Fisher remarked when he saw the man. “You look like sea turtle.”

  Jebbins didn’t seem to be fazed by the remarks, and he added some comic relief to the tension in any case.

  Alvarez and Ketchum double checked the stab resistant panels they had placed in their armor vests, then they geared up and left in one of the Tahoes, so that they could get into position early, before the throngs of townsfolk arrived.

  Michetti glanced nervously at Alvarez as he left, and thought about the other teams members, about how they were as ignorant as she had been regarding he truth of the animals, and whether it mattered tonight. She decided it was probably best that they remain in the dark, and part of her wished that she had herself. Assuming Alvarez was right, or truthful about it all. She had no reason to believe him, but when this was over she was going to find out from the FBI, one way or another, what the truth was.

  A mass of people had turned out for the ceremony. Alvarez guessed several hundred to be there already. According to the ACSD they had one hundred personnel on scene, which was really as much as he could expect, as the department only had one hundred thirty sworn at any given time. He stood next to TARP’s black pick up in plain clothes, a plaid shirt and jeans, with his gear worn underneath: body armor, radio, and an assortment of magazines. He had at least forty pounds of kit beneath the over-sized shirt, but he still felt small and exposed against the onslaught he watched like a hawk for. His arm twitched, and electric pain shot through it, a curious tic he had noted often happened when was excited or frightened. He decided to go ahead and take out his rifle, which he braced across the hood. Any supervisor who ordered him to move it would deal with an extremely terse “fuck off” on this evening.

  After setting up he peered out over the heads of the crowd for the third time in two minutes. “Where are you fuckers?” he whispered. “Let’s get this over with.” The enemy could come at any time, from any direction, and his backup was hamstrung. The suspense of it had him shaking like a meth addict, and he cursed again at the tension. He took a breath, gripped the rifle, and went back to scanning, trying to push all the fear and anger to the back of his thoughts. There would be a lot of killing tonight, and he wanted to be doing as much of it as possible.

  Forman was idly milling around the periphery of the crowd, taking photographs while Bellows tried to interview a resident here or there, but the response was the same every time. After several minutes he spotted a distinct gaggle of obvious strangers, hippies with signs and a banner proclaiming their indignation at the slaughter of the local wolves. Bellows decided they were as good a subject as any to include in his story, and he walked over to Forman to get the photographer to focus on them. He hoped that some kind of ruckus would start between the eco-warriors and the army of deputies, but he doubted that possibility. Despite their shouts and chants it didn’t look like these students knew the meaning of the word “violence.”

  Coleman approached the podium set up on the small concrete stage in the middle of the park green. The flags of the U.S. and Texas fluttered above him as he extracted some notes and prepared to give his remarks. “Good evening,” he began. “Thank you all for being here. Five years ago tonight a great tragedy occurred, rivaled by few events in our state’s history, and horrifically unique to our community.

  “The Blackland High School Massacre remains the worst loss of life in a school in this country, as well as the deadliest animal attack in recent memory. Tonight we honor the memory of those fifty two students and staff, and thirteen deputies who lost their lives on that terrible night. If you look to my left you can see the memorial with their names etched on it. Some of you I’m sure remember the prom that night-”

  Alvarez absently listened to the speech, but his eyes darted around to the park, and past the buildings beyond. He expected to see the unimaginable any minute. He tapped his handgun under his plaid shirt, barely touching it for reassurance. He wondered how long any of them would last, even with weapons, in the outdoor confines of the park. Close quarters combat was one of the most difficult, and, according to some, the most insane things a human could take part in. The helicopter was the best armor he could have right now, and he didn’t even have that. It made him livid to think about how exposed they were. How many people might be about to die because of the commission’s insistence on looking nonthreatening?

  There were several hundred people here, easy. There was no effective way to defend them if it came to a shooting match. They were all screwed, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Evans sat in his car, staring down the highway. He and Rialto had been assigned to traffic duty during the ceremony, ostensibly because they needed some cops to work during this day, but he knew the real reason was their assumption that Evans would go off the deep end at any time, and if there was one event that would trigger him eating a bullet, this day was it. He didn’t care. Evans had no intention of killing himself, he never had, but perception had a way of becoming reality for most people, a fact that was becoming more apparent in his life and career every day.

  So he dutifully sat bored and watched for speeders. He figured they would get a ticket or two here, then get as close as they could the ceremony. Although he probably wouldn’t have gone even if he had a choice he wished Rialto could see it. Against all odds she was showing the makings of a decent cop, of course he wasn’t about to tell her that. He didn’t need her getting cocky on him.

  He stared out at the sun setting on the vast horizon, and that was when he saw it. Before he even realized what he was looking at it was bearing down on them. And then came another, and another still. Alvarez radioed Ketchum. “Ralph, are you seeing this?”

  “10-4,” he practically shouted back. “Get some cover Ray, I’m bringing the truck.”

  Alvarez bolted for a nearby marked cruiser, ripped his outer shirt open, exposing his handgun, and set his rifle up on the hood. The first one slammed into a woman standing in the back. A blur of brown fur tumbled to the ground. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to scream before a steak sized chunk of flesh was ripped from her leg. People were turning now, looking at the source of the screams coming from all corners of the crowd.

  And then they ran. The difficult shots now became impossible as panic swept through the assembly. Officers sprinted for their cars to recover rifles and shotguns. A few poor bastards fired back with handguns, most of them not landing so much as one shot before they were cut down. One animal leapt from the top of a patrol car and grabbed a deputy by the throat. It flipped, snapping his neck like a stick as it hit the ground.

  Everything was happening at the speed of light. Where was Ketchum? They were too fast to kill. They whipped around the herd of people like dragonflies, ripping, tearing, and slashing their prey to shreds. Fuck it, Alvarez thought. He sprinted for a nearby truck, crawled under, and took a few shots at some of the slower canines. He bounced his bullets across the pavement, where they harassed the legs of his targets, who collapsed only to get back up and renew their attacks with vigor.

  Alvarez saw Shawn and Dynamo, the department’s two canines, trading bites with the werewolves, only to have their throats ripped away like wet cardboard. Alvarez squeezed his rifle so tight it shook in his already unsteady grip. He had to get out of here, had to get to a vantage point where he could kill these sons-of-bitches. He extracted his radio. “Sierra One Golf, I’m in contact! This is it!”

  Jeebkate stood by his car, watching the ceremony from the edge of the crowd. He hated the anniversaries as much as any of the deputies, he hated the memories, he hated the disinterest from the young people, but it was necessary. Hating was better than forgetting in this case. He sighed against the heavy fabric and restricting Sam Browne belt of the dress uniform. He was counting the days until the lieutenant’s test, so that he could dispense with standing around in the formations at these events. They still had not fully replaced the lost officers, but the chain of command must endure, and he would take over for one of the shifts, most likely the night weekend watch to start out. But it was slightly more money, and other benefits. This idle thought kept his mind off the heat and soreness as Coleman droned on. Jeebkate was far enough away that he barely heard, of course it was not as if he would learn anything new from listening.

  The flash of motion barely registered at first. A brown blur flew across the peripheral subconscious of his eyesight. It slammed into one of the disinterested stragglers on the edge of the crowd, and the bundle of skin and fur hit the pavement with a loud release of air. Jeebkate snatched his head around to look, and saw the wolf tear at the head of the woman it had pinned. Flesh peeled off in bloody tracks, but the skull is a tough object, and the bone maintained itself against the force. The woman started to scream, writhed under the beast, and alerted the rest of the crowd, who broke, running into and over each other in their haste to escape. There more now. More flashes striking against the crowd, sending waves of people running in three and four directions, and they trampled each other in a flood of desperation.

  Jeebkate ran towards the nearest wolf, fighting his leather holster to get his Glock out. The woman appeared to be dead. Blood pooled around the body, and the wolf’s snout was solid red. He brought the gun up but was stymied when someone ran in front of him. The wolf took the opportunity to leap up and plow into another person. It snapped the man’s arm and catapulted him hard into the ground. Jeebkate fired, and the animal flinched. It turned to face him, and he fired again. It rushed forward and he mag dumped into its chest. Perhaps a third of the rounds actually hit. Most embedded themselves in trees, cars, and panicked citizens. The nine-millimeter hollow points that hit the target fragmented and created canals in the soft tissue while ripping and shredding bone, but the damage they did was too minor, and the rage of the animal was too severe, to matter in the short term.

  Jeebkate jumped and rolled to the side in time to avoid its claws, and he scrambled up and ran as fast as he could manage to the nearest patrol car, hoping it was unlocked and contained a shotgun. He ejected the empty magazine and loaded the pistol. He only had two spare magazines, and he could see dozens of wolves tearing into dozens of people as he ran. He bumped into men and women and tripped over children abandoned by their parents. Two magazines were nowhere near enough.

  Fisher, Jebbins, Bocker, Bascomb, Brantwood, Michetti, and Garcia sat around the radio at the air station, listening raptly.

  “I’m pinned down, I need you now!” Alvarez yelled.

  Fisher signaled for Garcia to start the helicopter while he grabbed the radio. “Alvarez I hear you, we’re coming.” He jumped up. “All right, get on the helo! Let’s move! Move! MOVE!”

  They were already geared up, and with that they ran for the helicopter with rifles in hand and readied themselves for the battle of their careers. Michetti followed them outside, and Fisher ushered her into the helicopter and handed her a helmet. “Can you operate a FLIR?” he asked.

  “I’ll figure it out,” she yelled over the engine.

  “Fair enough.” Fisher climbed in next to her, donned a headset, and plugged it and her helmet into a jack in the compartment. Everyone buckled in, and they took off as fast as Garcia could manage. On the road below two patrol cars were already racing towards the town. The violence was escalating.

  Evans yawned, and debated whether he should go ahead and leave, when he heard the alarm tone.

  “107, double zero!”

  Evans glanced down at his radio display. Instead of the usual SDDISP, it now read *RXEMER*. And then more calls poured in, bringing the beeps of officers keying up over each other, and more tones clearing the channel for emergency traffic. “211, officers down!”

  “102 double ze-”

  “411 officer dow-”

  “106 double zero!”

  “Shots fired, shots fired, shots fired.”

  “Town square, double zero,” said the dispatcher, “all units respond.”

  “Hang on,” Evans ordered. He switched on the lights and hyperyelp siren, whipped the car around in a trooper turn, and hit one hundred and thirty before he crested the hill.

  As one animal ran towards him, Alvarez dropped on his back and fired underneath the truck. The wolf yelped and hobbled when one of its front legs snapped. It kept moving but mrap

was no longer running. Alvarez scanned the area and took the opportunity to get up and run himself. As yet, he didn’t have a plan. He just needed some real cover. Panicked citizens swarmed over him, fighting to outrun each other and the werewolves. One of the Lykan Hypersports lit up. The driver hit the hyperyelp siren, and several wolves bayed and cowered away from the high pitched warning as the car tried to negotiate the crowd around it. A few brave or foolhardy souls were still shooting at the werewolves, some trying to cover their retreat, some in a forlorn attempt to actually stop the things. But all around were screams, curses, and howls.

  The deputies who still fired did so wildly, with errant rounds hitting human and beast. As shotguns and the few rifles ran dry, the survivors ran with their handguns out, shooting to cover too slow retreats, or desperately trying to take cover in vehicles. Alvarez had barely fired. He couldn’t with all of the people running away. There were too many to get away quickly. Still, there was enough open ground around the park that they fanned out in a hurry, and Alvarez now saw an opening. He laid down fire on several of the animals and sprinted for his truck. He got to it, slammed against it, and fumbled with the latch. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted animal movement, and he hit the ground and rolled under the truck as the werewolf ran up. Alvarez fired and sent it back howling.

  As the helicopter approached town Fisher looked down at another ACSD cruiser heading in. It appeared to be one of the rare Hypersports. He was surprised to see it keeping pace with the helicopter.

  Evans got on his radio to warn other units of his approach. “199 northbound on 31, speed’s two hundred, make a hole.”

  Patrol cars, converging like ants, pulled aside as Evans shot by. Several miles out he began slowing his car down from its top speed of two forty-five. The town was going to be crawling with additional units, plus he didn’t want to hit one of the frenetic pedestrians. He was still doing ninety as he approached the square, when he saw one of the animals run across his path. Evans could only watch as its lower jaw disintegrated, taking his headlight with it. And just like that the car was careening over the slick grass of the park.

  Another one of the wolves was standing dead in front of him, as though squaring up against the Lykan. Evans was standing on the brake, but it was no good. He slammed into the wolf at fifty miles an hour and slid through the front door of the school. The animal didn’t even seem fazed. It jumped on top of the hood and clawed at the windshield. Behind it Evans could see its friends running up as well.

  He ripped his Glock out of its holster and emptied the magazine through the windshield, tearing the animal’s face to pieces. He hit the gun lock, then hit it again. Evans had always hated the way their gun locks were designed. You had to wait a second before it actually released, then you had to use two hands to get the actual weapon out. He tossed the shotgun to his partner, pulled his AR free, grabbed his active shooter bag, and rolled out of the car, running then shooting his way deeper into the school.

  One wolf darted around a corner as Evans fired his rifle at it, completely unable to tell if he had hit it at all. His voice was eerie calm, not rising above the hideous gunfire as he commentated on the animals, “you cocksucking motherfuckers.”

  As they rounded the corner two came running at them. Evans switched to full auto and fired, tearing chunks from their faces. Rialto fired the shotgun at the second, emptying it into the animal, snapping one of its front legs like a matchstick. It collapsed howling and they ran past its crippled form. “Reload that shotgun!” Evans ordered as they continued. “Reload the fucking gun!”

  Rialto fumbled with the gun, dropping shells on the floor as she tried to push more into the tubular magazine. She was shaking like a freezing leaf, untrained and unprepared to deal with the emergency. This was beyond anything she had expected to ever happen; even if she had known that no one was prepared for this it would not have mattered. She had sunk to what little training she possessed, without even the benefit of experience to draw from. But the monsters had no sympathy for her inability to cope with the horror. She was now robotic in her actions, and completely dependent on the frantic orders Evans was shouting.

  In the wake of the 2007 massacre Arredondo County had established agreements with the surrounding municipalities to lend assistance in the event of another mass casualty incident. Twenty minutes after the attack began Arredondo dispatch issued an automatic mutual aid request. Every available unit in Grayson and Cooke Counties, along with the local ambulance and fire services, headed under code towards Blackland.

  As the situation and its full magnitude became apparent more calls were issued, and the dozens of agencies in the Dallas Fort Worth combined statistical area put themselves in service and headed out or prepared to stage. Texas DPS activated both the regional trooper SWAT team and the Rangers team, as well as the full time trooper tactical team in Austin. All DPS helicopters took off. Oklahoma Highway Patrol followed the same course.

  One of the federal agencies to immediately take note of the situation was the U.S. Border Patrol’s Dallas office, where Special Operations Supervisor Rafael Ortez sat with his staff, listening to the ACSD radio traffic. When Alvarez was heard screaming for assistance Ortez leapt up, sending his chair smashing against a wall. “OK,” he shouted, “to the Tahoes, now! Get ICE and the Marshals out there too!”

  Five minutes later the convoy of CBP vehicles was racing away from Dallas Fort Worth Airport with the DFW Airport SWAT team trailing behind. Inside the lead Tahoe Ortez was on his phone, calling El Paso to request interdiction from BORTAC and BORSTAR. He alternated between shouting orders in English and cursing in Spanish for the rest of the trip. The gaggle of vehicles hit the Sam Rayburn Tollway and accelerated to well over one hundred twenty miles per hour, joining the two dozen law enforcement agencies streaming north.

  Henton Wilcox was an annoyed man. He was an insurance adjuster by trade, and his job required occasional travel, a fact he hated. He would have been content to never leave Tarrant County, but, as luck would have it, he had spent the past week in Oklahoma, his least favorite state. Taking his wife and daughters had helped less than he had expected it would, and worst of all was the town they had just passed through.

  He didn’t know the significance of Blackland. He’d heard of it of course, but had long since forgotten the massacre. It was history, and he had little interest in history. “What a lame town,” he lamented to his family, his anger exacerbated by not being able to be use words stronger than ‘lame’ since his kids were born. “I guarantee you nothing important has ever happened in that town and nothing ever will.”

  As they crested a hill he suddenly noticed a blaze of red and blue lights coming down the pike. He pulled to the side and stared as twenty seven vehicles from Arredondo, Cooke, and Grayson counties, and TXDPS came screaming by. They were followed by two MRAPS, a tractor trailer carrying an M113, a tower ladder, a heavy rescue apparatus, and three ambulances. Wilcox slowly pulled back onto the road, stupefied at the massive presence he had just witnessed, and confused about what could possibly be happening in the boring town he had just left.

  Pandemonium had engulfed the small park, and the panic spread to the deputies in the area. Coleman had been whisked away by the majors and captains on scene, now men and women fought their way to their cars to retrieve long guns. Few made it. Those closest to their vehicles had, for the most part, managed to bring the rifles and more common shotguns into the fight. Still, the shots were mainly ineffective. Even professional shooters lose most of their motor ability and logical thinking when a gunfight is at hand. In the case of the ACSD, the skills of the deputies on hand ranged from competent to barely qualified in the use of arms. Shots went wild, stray rounds hit the civilians and other officers, while the volleys that did make contact with their targets were mostly ineffective.

  Alvarez, seeing this, switched his radio to the main dispatch channel and issued an advisory. He doubted anyone would hear. “All units, use slugs if possible! Ram them if possible!”

  Angela Franks, one of the officers who had made it inside her patrol car, did hear this message. Like Evans she drove a Lykan, and she turned on the hyperyelp siren to move the humans out of her way as she bore in on one of the terrifying dogs. The sound enraged the thing. Its tail shot between its legs, but it snarled as wickedly as ever. She floored the accelerator and slammed into it. The car pushed it across the pavement and onto the grass where the excess vehicles had parked. Finally, she pinned it against the wall of the city hall, jumped out, and fired two twelve gauge slugs into its head, spattering pieces of brain across the green hood of the car. Hers would be one of the few successful stories of the night.

  Resh Grenheim, himself a twelve year veteran of the department, was trying desperately to make it to his own Charger. He had not heard Alvarez’ order, nor would it have mattered if he had. Part of his mind was still in shock that the animals from the high school massacre were indeed as dangerous as Alvarez had claimed. Another part of his mind was in shock from his bleeding, raw right arm, which flopped like wet pasta below the elbow. A wolf, bigger than any canine he had ever seen, had bitten and slashed his right side until the shoulder, the torso, and the arm were practically destroyed. He retained his shotgun, which he could still fire with one hand. He was trained in injured shooter tactics, but they would no longer serve him. Had he known the truth about the wolves he would also have known he was dead already. In any case, it did not matter. Grenheim dragged himself, trailing blood that others slipped in. He dragged himself as they trampled over him. He dragged himself to his car and snatched pleadingly at the handle, nearly crying with pain and fear. He couldn’t hear the paws clattering over the pavement behind him. He heard only screams and gunshots. He barely had the door open, started to pull the door free of the pillar when his spine was crushed.

  Every officer on the scene was in autopilot. Fewer than a dozen made it off the grounds of the park alive. Fewer still made it out uninjured. Most did hold off their attackers until their guns went dry. Reloading takes time; although it can be done extremely quickly with practice, the werewolves moved faster than most of the officers could, and there was little reliable cover in the area.

  The event was quick, brutal, a rout. Some wolves were killed, some limped away, wounded themselves. On the whole, however, the victims were human. The memorial park became a killing field. As the survivors fled, running or speeding off in every direction, so too did the predators. A few stayed behind, feeding on the corpses or those too hurt to move.

  Alvarez stared out from under the truck. Blood was pooled like small lakes everywhere he looked. Every corpse was mangled, headless, disemboweled, torn beyond recognition. A sea of green uniforms stood out from the multicolored civilian bodies. His brothers and sisters, dead as cops, hands still clutching at full magazines or trying to clear jammed weapons. He blinked away the tears and tried to concentrate on how to survive. Things were beginning to look very bleak.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Michetti exclaimed.

  Everyone heard her, but said nothing. She was looking at the FLIR. White figures of humans littered the ground below. Some still moved, but, judging by the white chunks around them, that would quickly end. Her hands shook, and she gripped the display to steady them. She scanned for Alvarez, but there was no sign of the man. The agent wore a thermal beacon on his vest that would blink white under the grayscale screen, but there was no sign of it. “Sierra One Golf,” she radioed, remembering to stay professional and be calm, as the others would need her to. “Sierra One Golf, do you copy my traffic?”

  “Sierra One Golf, go ahead.”

  She smiled slightly. Hearing him alive was a more amazing feeling than she would have expected under different circumstances. “Sierra One Golf, what’s your twenty?”

  “I’m under a...ah, hell, I don’t know what the make is, but I’m under an SUV on the...south side of the parking lot.”

  “10-4,” she acknowledged. “Can you move?”

  “Give me a couple of mikes and maybe. There’s a lot moving around here right now, but it looks like they’re on their way out.”

  She rotated the camera to check. “Roger. They are. They’re moving, but not fast.”

  “Roge, that’s my assessment down here too. Can you put down?”

  “Negative,” Garica cut in. “Power lines.”

  “I copy,” said Alvarez.

  Fisher, who had initially not even looked inside at Michetti, now interjected. “Sierra One Golf, I copy your traffic. Hang tight, we’re going to give you some cover fire. We’ll advise when you’re good to move.”

  “Roger that.”

  Fisher was looking down at the carnage below. It would be dark soon, and then the details that were sinking into the worst parts of his mind would be less distinct. The impressions had already been made by now of course. Even Afghanistan had not been this bad. He had once seen this many Taliban bodies, after his JTAC had called in an airstrike against a hard compound. An AC-130 had leveled the collection of buildings with every weapon it possessed. The results had been predictable, graphic, and overpowering. This was different. These were civilians, not soldiers. Americans, who were more like him than the farmers he had killed overseas. Like it or not, the effect on him was different. Alvarez had compared their operation to low intensity warfare. There was nothing low intensity about this, and the effect of seeing so many brothers in arms killed was the same as it had been when a soldier was killed in GWOT, merely magnified, and without any potential baggage the killing of another human might entail. This situation was unprecedented, but Fisher knew now exactly how to respond. Overkill was called for, and with that thought he remembered the SIMONs he had loaded into the helicopter earlier. It all reminded Fisher, an Episcopalian, of the stories he had been told in Sunday school, of God’s anger with various heathen cities, and His destruction of the same. “Michetti,” he said. “Hand me one of those rifle grenades. We’re going Old Testament on these bastards. Sierra One Golf, keep your head down. We’re putting explosives on the ground.”

  Michetti handed the long black mushroom tube to him, and he fitted it on the end of an M4. A perfect target was at his eight o’clock, gnawing at a corpse and totally oblivious to his air superiority.

  Darkness was slowly descending as Slatamont approached the wolf. It was feeding on one of the bodies, ripping chunks away by raking the flesh from the connective tissue. It choked and coughed on the clothes of the man it was eating, but continued unabated even so. She prayed to Gaia, the living Earth, to help her. She would end this by communicating with this animal. It turned its head, blood and gobbets dripping from its jaws. She had a connection! She reached her arms out.

  Then it leapt. It slammed her onto the ground, pinned her with its claws. She kicked in panic, screaming as she tried to push it off. But it was too strong. Her screams amplified in response. It reached down and bit into her neck. Poker hot teeth sliced through her blood vessels as she felt her collarbone cracking. She flailed her left arm wildly, and in the course of the histrionics, one of her fingers made contact with the wolf’s eye. It yelped in pain and snatched away. Slatamont reached out again, stabbing her thumb deep into the socket. It rolled away, swiped at Trey, made contact with his chest, and collapsed several of the ribs on his right side. The force flailed his lung, and he fell to the ground as Slatamont forced herself up. She ran, and the wolf, instinctively knowing it had bitten her successfully, decided to focus on Trey. He was writhing in mad terror, unable to scream. No one in the area could have helped at any rate. The crushing, heart stopping discomfort was bad enough that he was completely unprepared for the pain when the thing bit out his thigh. It tossed the chunk to the ground, then snapped his femur. The severed artery that came with it was almost a mercy. Trey Wilkins would not have survived had he been on an operating table at that moment. The artery bled out within a minute, leaving him unconscious, unaware that within another minute still there was very little of him left.

  The animal continued to rip the body to shreds. The clothes and artificial materials their victims wore had baffled and slowed their efforts at killing and devouring the prey since the beginning, and while this body wore much simpler attire than some of them, the situation was much the same. Of course, this by no means stopped the werewolf in its ravenous efforts. Could it have considered its existential boundaries, it might have thought to itself that humans, far and away the deadliest species ever to exist, had finally met their match. The wolf was however, governed by much baser drives, and so it ignored the rumbling buzz above it. It did hear a whistle, which was annoying enough to its sensitive ears to draw a glance upward. It barely had time to see the arcing black dot.

  The explosive payload on board the SIMON was designed to punch holes in hard targets, but not to demolish them, and, like most explosives used for breaching, it was most effective indoors. This did not stop it from performing exactly as Fisher had intended. The wolf cartwheeled upward from the smoky cloud of shrapnel, spinning like a furry rag doll, spewing pieces of entrails around the lot, and slapping unceremoniously onto the blacktop, more dead than any Fisher had killed yet.

  He nodded with satisfaction at the destruction.

  “Hey,” said Michetti. “Someone ran away from that one.”

  “10-9?” said Fisher, the Arredondo code for “say again.”

  “It had someone on the ground but they got up and ran off. They’re in the stand of trees now... our eleven o’clock.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” said Fisher, sounding surprised. “Let’s see if we can pick them up.”

  The grove of trees Michetti referred to was small, essentially a collection that had avoided the bulldozers when the business and government section of the town was built. Michetti watched as the white humanoid shape plowed through the trees, dodging branches and stumbling and slowing now and again. It would be in the clear soon, hopefully somewhere Garcia could land.

  Slatamont had never run as hard in her life as she did now. She was used to hiking, used to the woods, but the darkness and injuries slowed her. In spite of them she was pushing herself beyond what she would have ever believed she was capable of, running on pure fear. She burst out from the trees into a semi open field, the backyard of a business apparently. Here she slowed, waited, and listened. When she stopped the pain came flooding back, and she flopped onto the ground and cried out. A flash of brown darted from around the building’s corner, like a moth to flame, albeit in reverse, as the danger here was moving to meet her. Despite the fear, and the overwhelming fight or flight desire to get away, her punished body would take no more. She kicked weakly at the beast, but it only roared like some angry dinosaur. She screamed, her mind blank of any other ideas. The sounds meant nothing to her executioner, and she pushed herself on three limbs, fighting against the fate of a wounded animal.

  The sharp crack caught both her and the wolf by surprise, as did the animal’s reaction. The back sagged and dropped in the middle, like a dying bridge. The hind limbs went totally limp, and it yelped and cried, dragging itself in a circle as Slatamont pushed herself around and cried again. The second crack dropped the wolf. It hit the grass and leaked blood from under its wet snout, and Slatamont looked up, blinded, as a search light passed over her. The sound of a helicopter was suddenly deafening, and she saw a figure in the light, then two, who grabbed her up, ignored her protests of sharp, unbearable pain, and thrust her into the back of the helicopter, which took back off before they even had her fully strapped in.

  When her eyes adjusted she saw her rescuers, illuminated by a red cabin light. A wild eyed, tattooed man, who reminded her of a pirate was saying something to a small, blond woman. They were speaking into mics and she could hear nothing but the roar of the engines. The man held up a pair of shears, ran them over her shirt, then pulled the shredded garment away. He packed her wounds with gauze, shouting something to her about how well they were clotted, then started running his hands over her. She shouted almost immediately, trying to tell him about her collar bone. He shouted something about it as well, and she simply yelled “collarbone” back to him. He then placed her arm in a sling, told her something along the lines of “stay put,” and gave more orders to the woman. She handed him a strange, black object, and he slid across the cabin to the open door, fitted the contraption to the end of a rifle, and leaned almost completely outside the aircraft. He fired the thing off the end, then followed up with gunfire from the rifle.

  Bellows and his photographer were squeezing themselves under a car. It was a tight fit, and Bellows realized there was only room for one to safely situate himself. Then he heard it. A low, guttural growl. His head darted around, looking for the animal; he saw it, and panicked, pushing himself beneath the undercarriage, pushing his camerman out. “Help me!” he shrieked at Bellows. “Please Gar, please!” His begging only alerted the werewolf, which lurched for them seemingly at the speed of sound. It slammed into the photographer and ripped one of his arms off as they tumbled to a stop. He tried to get up and run, but it was on his back, biting and clawing. Its snout came up, and the man’s intestines roiled out from the abdomen, spilling onto the pavement in a noodle like mess. Despite the crippling injury he rolled over and tried to crawl, trailing the digestive organs behind, his hand and knees soaked in the blood and causing him to slip. He was trying to either scream or speak, but was too out of breath for either. The wolf followed him, harrying and almost curious, wondering perhaps, at the stamina of its prey. The man’s energy did not save him. The wolf bit into his leg and snatched back, flipping him like a doll. He slammed into the ground and rolled twice, then the wolf slashed him from trachea to sternum, and the scream from the splitting throat was inhuman, high pitched and quickly drowned by the air and blood mixing. He groped wildly with his stump and remaining arm. The blood was shooting from the wounds like a water gun now. The legs could no longer kick. The resistance was still determined, but only token. The wolf dipped its jaws into the abdomen again, one of its front paws kicked against the head, and the neck cracked. It was hard to tell if this killed the man or not. The body still writhed, but perhaps only due to the animal now tearing it apart. One organ was not distinguishable from another, save the looping intestines strewn across a full two parking spaces. The eyes stared blankly up, as a glazed look overtook them.

  Bellows watched in horrific curiosity. Then he saw the camera, dropped and lying only a few feet from him. He could reach it if he was fast. He pushed out from the car, grabbed twice before his shaking hands found a purchase, and zipped back to the relative safety of the vehicle. Then he began photographing. There wasn’t much left of his photographer to shoot, but he noticed a family several yards away. A man and woman were crawling behind a line of cars. The woman held a toddler, and was attempting to quiet the terrified boy. Bellows looked back at the wolf. It was thoroughly occupied for the moment, its snout still buried in the body. Bellows decided that now was his chance. He raced up to the family and cut between the man and woman, pushing the man to the ground as he ran. Before he could stop himself the man let out a brief yell.

  The head snapped up, eyes scanning and ears held high, listening. The wolf sniffed, then caught the movement as the man got up while his wife held the child in one hand and tried to aid her husband with the other. Bellows was almost to the treeline beyond the parking lot. The family tried to make a break for it as well. They had seen the wolf as it spotted them and they were just starting to run in earnest when it took off. It was across the lot in a second and it jumped when it reached the blacktop’s end, landing full force on the woman. The toddler went flying as the wolf rotated its body, jaws closed on the woman’s shoulder and upper arm. The counter motion of the attack flung the boy back over the parking lot, just in time for Bellows to stop and look back, panting and leaning against a tree. There was a loud crack as the boy skipped across the pavement like a stone on water. The wolf and the woman careened into the ground, her knees and elbows a mess of road burn. It bit down as she wailed, and the sound was something like an enormous wishbone breaking. The motion of the boy bouncing to a stop in the middle of the parking lot caused the wolf to snap its head back up without letting go of the woman, and her upper tendons snapped and frayed as they were pulled like overworked bands of elastic.

  The man had immediately darted back after the woman, but stopped to watch his son, and try to determine which one to help, not realizing the only thing he could have done now would be to bolt and pray the animal wasn’t interested in him. The wolf dropped the woman and ran across the lot, where it snatched the boy up and, somewhat confused by the small, noisy animal it now had, bit down, crushing his ribcage and spurting blood like a burst fruit.

  By now Bellows had the camera up, and was trying to steady his breathing. He started taking a few blurry shots, then braced against a tree to improve his stability. The woman was screaming like a dying pig now, alternating between panicked howls and tearful pleading as she shouted at the top of her lungs for God to help her. Bellows realized the wolf might notice him if it turned to look her way, and he wished she would shut up.

  As the boy’s own screams stopped the man finally made his decision, and he raced forward and grabbed hold of the wolf, trying desperately to wrench his son from its maw. It responded by dropping the twisted corpse and swiping a claw across the man’s groin. The loud exclamation was followed by the man collapsing to the ground and clutching his detached genitals in bloody hands. The wolf brought a paw down on his head and lowered its own, twisting it and opening its mouth wide to take his arm in it. Strangely, the force seemed gentle. It lithely brought the man’s left arm away from his body, so carefully Bellows could have sworn it was in slow motion. Its bite was equally slow as it bit down on the arm, the man’s demeanor not even changing. He simply lay, fetal and sobbing, as the wolf continued to bite. Its teeth scraped against the man’s watch face, and it snarled, curling its lips back. The head jerked backward and the jaws closed as fast as a bear trap, smashing the watch to pieces and the arm along with it. For a second Bellows thought the scream was another siren, but then the man’s breath was gone, and try as he might, he could not regain it. Sound still emanated from him however. A series of strange, almost funny sounding yelps, groans, and cries filled the night, creating a bizarre and terrifying chorus against the woman’s continuing howls as the wolf did its work.

  Bellows was hit with a sudden wave of nausea and fear like he had never experienced. He didn’t want to look at what was happening. He closed his eyes and simply pushed the button by feeling, hitting it over and over, like a compulsion. He opened his eyes briefly and saw something dark pooling around the man’s body. He thought it to be dam at first, but there was too much of it. It looked so much like it, though, brown and vile. He didn’t know what it was or could be, he didn’t know what the yellow bulbous gelatin that the wolf had in its mouth was, and he didn’t want to know. He had to get out of here. He looked behind himself. It was dark. Dark woods. Woods where more beasts could be hiding. It was too dark to run through. His mind went blank, wiped like a dead computer. He had no idea what to do and no idea how to even begin to try and figure out a plan.

  “Help!” The plea was wavering and beyond desperate.

  He looked over to see the woman staring at him. Shit! He thought. She noticed him.

  “Help! Please! Help!” she sobbed and wailed, and terrified Bellows, who glanced back at the wolf, saw its head raise, and felt himself freeze solid and go tighter than a drum. Fuck this, he thought. He turned and bolted into the woods, the camera, on a strap around his neck, slapping him in the chest. The woman’s plaintive begging resumed behind him, and followed him into the thicket. Shut up! he thought again. If she wanted help then God should have come down and helped her earlier. But He wouldn’t, Bellows thought. Because He didn’t exist. What little credence Bellows ever might give to the thought of a supreme being, especially one benevolent, was gone now, purged by the terror he had seen and felt. What little piece of his subconscious that was left unaffected and rational realized that there was no hope, no caring, and no sense to the universe. His mind rejected the notion of his own eternal inferiority even as it was forced to accept it. The existential terror the feeling brought collided with the pure and primal horror he knew at the moment, and drove him like a hunted gazelle through pitch blackness. Cobwebs and twigs harassed him, he knocked against several trees, but he continued on, no plan, no hope, only the instinct to escape and survive. He might well be running into the mouth of another monster, he tried not to think.

  But he ran on. Bellows was now faced with terrors he had never even known to exist. He could not believe or accept, but nevertheless must acknowledge, that he was at the bottom of the food chain here, that facing such a predatory threat was something he had never experienced nor prepared for, and that he had absolutely no idea how to survive. He almost wanted to pray to a god, or a devil, or anything that had the power to intervene and save him from this. He wanted more than anything to be somewhere else. The scream was so guttural and inhuman, like nothing he had heard even during the attack, that he did not even realize he was producing it. It took him by surprise that he was screaming like that, it took him by surprise that he was whimpering, and it took him by surprise when he tripped on a root and cartwheeled into the dirt. He felt his way up, not noticing the untied shoelace that stymied him or the albatross camera still attached and trying to strangle him. He only noticed the sniffing, then the grunt, from one of the animals. His eyes darted blindly around. He groped in the darkness, feeling only a tree. He heard footsteps. With no frame of reference he could not tell where any of it was coming from.

  He vomited, puke dribbling down the front of his polo. He reached out again, felt something wet and unyielding, and jerked back, feet scrambling to get up. His untied shoe caught on something and he yanked the leg backward, tearing the sneaker off. “Help!” he screamed. “Somebody! Help me!” He fought his way to his feet and took off again, head and flailing arms beating against more branches, each of which felt more and more like jagged teeth. He continued to scream, sobbed, and tried hard to detect something other than the empty void around him as he ran. He was beyond panic now. It was on his heels, breathing hot and angry behind him. He didn’t know how he was running so fast, he didn’t know if it was sweat or urine his pants were wet with. But, he of course did not care either. Survival, no matter in what form, was somehow better than the oblivion he knew must follow death. But the situation still presented a seemingly insurmountable obstacle; Bellows was having to fend for himself, something never before required of him. He had no idea what to do, he simply continued to run. He didn’t know how close it was anymore, but he could see distant lights now, peering through breaks in the foliage. His lungs were ablaze, but he didn’t notice. The world collapsed like a dying star into discreet focus on the lights. They were the closest conceivable thing to Heaven, and he had to get to them. He continued to run, started to retch, and coughed up more vomit. The animal growl was becoming a freight train, bearing down behind him. But the lights were almost in reach. He never considered whether they emanated from anything that actually offered safety or not. The lights were his new salvation, no matter their source, he was convinced of it. His body was rebelling against the effort now, but fear overrode everything else. He continued to run. He was almost there…

  To run would be suicide. Alvarez debated his next move. He could start this SUV, possibly, but he needed to time his move perfectly. Off in the distance he heard more automatic fire, and screaming. He writhed around and adjusted his position to get a better view.

  There were several bodies around the truck, nothing that would get in his way though. He couldn’t see any werewolves. That did not mean there were none of course. The bastards could know where he was this very second. Well, he was no doubt dead either way, he would just have to risk it.

  All of a sudden he saw two fat legs running up to the SUV. He recognized the pants. It was one of the commissioners. Before Alvarez could move he heard it starting. It backed up with a start. Alvarez felt his arm slam into the muffler, felt his leg run over by a tire, and felt his ribs smash against the transmission. He was jerked like a ragdoll and smashed into one of the eviscerated bodies. He tried to leap up, but the pain shot through him with a jolt and knocked him down. He got back up, stumbled, and scanned for wolves. Nothing. And with that Alvarez bolted for the nearby supermarket, ignoring the pain, hobbling like an old man. He didn’t know how much ammo he had left. Probably not enough. He never had enough. For the first time in a long time, Alvarez prayed. He had something to live for now. He wanted to see Michetti again, wanted to feel her again, and didn’t want to die here in this God-forsaken town. This place was the vehicle of all his misery, and the thought of dying here, to these former residents, was too much for him to abide.

  The automatic door wasn’t working, so he forced it open and collapsed inside. He saw a dozen or so deputies and townsfolk, all terrified. Outside the large glass windows running the length of the front he saw the wolves, silhouetted by the settling darkness, making furtive motions around the building. He quickly located a sergeant and approached him. “Listen,” Alvarez ordered. “We’ve got at least two dozen of those things outside from the looks of it, and we’re surrounded. Put your people at every choke point, every entrance or exit, and conserve your ammo. Don’t fire without a clean shot. We’re at a real disadvantage here in the dark.”

  “OK,” the sergeant replied, apparently satisfied that Alvarez knew what he was talking about.

  Alvarez extracted his radio and called Ketchum. “I’m in the market,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of movement outside.”

  “Roger that,” replied Ketchum. “Hang tight, I’m coming to you.”

  Alvarez found a position by a front window and prepared for the worst.

  “Mister,” said a child behind him. “Are we gonna die?”

  Alvarez kept looking outside. “Yes,” he replied. “Probably so.” He didn’t see any point in lying to the kid.

  Bellows burst forth from the trees and saw his apparent safe zone now. It wasn’t entirely clear, as he was still running. The building in front of him was hazy in detail, but was clearly large and fortified. He rushed up to an entrance, ground to a halt, and recognized it from his visit during the daytime. The school. It stood towering above, two stories that could just as well have been as castle as far as he was concerned. He would be safe inside, he was sure, he only needed to get in. The doors were locked, as expected, so he began trying windows. He pulled himself up on one of the raised sills, still breathing hard, and played with the latch. It would not give, and he dropped down, stumbled, and turned to go down the side, his intention being to try the next one down. But as he turned he was met with something in his path.

  A young boy, a teenager, stood in front of him. Bellows nearly walked into him. The reporter stopped himself, however, and gaped. The teen was pale, almost grey, staring slack jawed at him. His abdomen was sliced down the middle, and bleeding intestines poured from it, so thick and long that they concealed his feet. He wore a tuxedo, which was bright blue, and the blood contrasted with the rayon and polyester that it must be sewn from and gave him a bizarre, hyper real appearance.

  Bellows stepped back in horror, suddenly nauseated again. He turned to run, but only saw another youth in his intended path. This one was also a boy, also in formal clothes, but headless. He gripped a decapitated cranium by the hair, letting it hang at his side. Ragged strips of skin, trachea, and veins curled out from his disheveled collar. The eyes of the head bore down on Bellows, shrinking him, and freezing his soul. They did not affect his limbs, though, and he jerked forward, running away from the school, only to see a girl in a yellow dress, the contrast of fabric and blood was like ketchup and mustard, almost comical, or it could have been if he had not been even more terrified now than he was in the thicket. The girl’s chest was torn open, exposing ribs and destroyed organs. Her left arm was brutally severed, crossways at the bicep. Some pink, gelatinous substance was caught in the mess of her hair.

  Bellows ran around her, ran around the side of the school, only to be confronted with an army of bloody, ghoulish teens. They were silent, vacant, and every one of them was completely wrecked and torn. The shuffled about like zombies, coming towards him. His mind would not work. Who were they? Tonight’s victims? The ghosts he had read of? That was a ridiculous thought, but he was not consciously thinking at all. He stood still for several seconds, trying to make his mind operate, before he could no longer stand it. He rushed forward again, pushing between the corpses or whatever they were, feeling cold as he never had in his life. As he forced his way past the host screamed, shouted in pain, and moaned, and cried. Bellows was crying too. He was convinced he was going to die now. The safety he had so quickly bet his life on was gone, snatched away and replaced by a horrible and everlasting fate that would quite possibly end with him joining these things. The pass through the crowd seemed like an eternity, although he accomplished it in two seconds. There was a raised loading dock on the school’s side, and he was about to run into it and reevaluate his situation when a final, ugly surprise confronted him.

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  A wolf stood between the dock and the back parking lot of the school. Bellows stopped so fast he had to grab the dock railing to complete the halt. He choked back a scream, and bit his fist to stop from crying out loud. The damned animal did not notice him yet. It was prone over the body of a deputy. The man lay contorted on his back, with an empty shotgun by its side. Spent shells littered the ground. The wolf reached its snout into the man’s stomach, and worked its head under the vest. There was a cracking sound, and it drew its head back out with some kind of viscera in its mouth. The fur was matted with blood, and a spreading pool of the liquid stained the green uniform and grass black in the darkness.

Bellows wanted to scream, in anger and frustration as much as anything. A final, desperate idea occurred to him. The dead cop seemed to be alone. He must have a car somewhere around, Bellows reasoned. If he could get to the car he could survive. He crouched behind some boxes and a stack of bread trays left on the dock. If he remained still and kept as quiet as possible that wolf would probably go away eventually. Then he could get to the cop’s car. He only had to wait, he thought. He had to wait, and to be absolutely sure of the right time when he made his move.

  The wolves had the store surrounded, or at least had the area Alvarez could see surrounded. They were probing, almost like a military operation, looking for ways in. He heard a crash behind him, and turned to see people running, screaming, and tripping over one another. They had gotten in. He took cover behind a register and tried to aim past the fleeing townsfolk. “Where’s the SRT?” Alvarez demanded of no one in particular.

  The SRT was, in fact, already enroute to the store, having been alerted that the fight had shifted there before they were ready to deploy. They sat in the back of their APC in their heavy armor and gas masks. The response now would involve all the firepower they had available.

  When they reached the store the driver pushed past the parked vehicles, slammed through the glass windows in the front, and pulled back before dropping the armored vehicle’s ramp, letting the team file out. They took cover behind a shield as flashbang and gas grenades were thrown to bolster their approach.

  The wolves went for the shield like a bull after a matador. One slammed into the heavy rectangle, but the pointman was strong, and supported by a follow on assaulter who braced himself against his teammate. The shield man fired his handgun into the wolf’s mouth, and it bucked backward with a yelp. More came, flanking the team, and ramming into them, cutting them off from the rest of the stack, reducing them to single men who made for easier, but not soft, targets.

  Grady was brought down in a tumble, and he felt his mask rip from his face, taking his helmet and headset with it. He landed on his back and groped for his rifle. He found it, brought it up, and fired into the hellish animal that was ineffectively biting at his vest. He jumped to his feet and ran, scanning for his team members as he went. He saw no one, no one save for blurry, panicked survivors of the initial onslaught on the store. He had to reassemble the team, or whatever was left of it, before they were all killed.

  TARP was orbiting a mere hundred feet over the town. So far they had successfully killed a solid ten or twelve of the animals, but Fisher did not like what he was seeing. The animals seemed to be headed towards the school, at least in some roundabout fashion; they were killing anyone in their path along the way. “Bocker, Bascomb,” he said. “I’m putting you down on the school roof. Breach it however you need to.”

  Bocker raised his thumb as Garcia angled the helicopter over the roof, carefully watching for powerlines. As soon as they were close enough the two leapt off and scrambled for the door. Bocker quickly placed an explosive charge on the handle and detonated it with a shock tube initiator. With that they rushed inside, Bocker covering the front, Bascomb behind, each terrified of what they might find.

  “Jebbins, you and Brantwood are going on the ground, link up with Alvarez in the market,” said Fisher.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Garcia had to land across the street, in a vacant lot behind the town motel, with the liquor store on the other side. The two hit the ground running, smashing out a window to the store and crawling inside, where, panting, they sized up the situation. The supermarket sat on the other side of a parking lot, at least fifty yards across.

  “Bounding cover?” Brantwood asked.

  Jebbins looked at the market again. “Yeah.” He moved up to the automatic doors, unlocked them, and forced them open. “Keep me covered,” he said, although it was rhetorical. Brantwood knew how it worked, and they had trained together enough to have a good idea of each other’s speed and abilities. Jebbins looked around, saw no movement, and was about to run through the front door when they attacked. The pack came from his right, rushing around the corner and slamming into his abdomen. The man and animal tumbled into a shelf, knocking bottles aside. Jebbins’ feet skidded on the floor as he fought to stand. He brought his rifle up and fired wildly, succeeded only in knocking out some security lights. Jebbins dropped back down, aimed his boots at one of the dark forms, and kicked hard. There was a muffled escape of air as the wind was knocked from it. It recovered quickly, but Jebbins had enough time to roll down the aisle behind himself and get to his feet. He looked around for Brantwood, head darting madly. A scream caught his attention, and he turned to look.

  Brantwood was on his back. A wolf was on top of him and his right arm was caught in its mouth. With a flick of its neck it twisted and tore the arm at the elbow. The blood was beady and slick against the black skin. The hand, still encased in a glove, flopped limply. Jebbins aimed, truly aimed, rather than point shooting, at the wolf and fired a burst into its side. It jerked, looked at him, and growled. Before he could fire again three were on top of him, slashing at him and biting. He had his rifle up, protecting his mostly exposed arms, but he felt the weight and the bites against his armor. Nothing seemed to be penetrating. The stab panels and the plates were working.

  He was still dead if he didn’t do something though. He heard Brantwood screaming, but his teammate was behind another aisle, and Jebbins couldn’t see him. He had somehow remained quite calm and detached up until now. But the combination of his friends’ screams with not being able to see him set something off in Jebbins, and all of a sudden he was no longer calm at all. An explosion went off in his mind, and he fired again as the rifle barrel brushed fur. If he managed to hit he could not tell. He fired again, felt the rifle tear away from his hands, then felt the sling jerking around his neck, strangling him. It snatched back against his larynx, with the rough Cordura material cutting the skin. He groped for the release buckle, missed it, groped again, missed again. His vision was going around the edges, the whole world was fading. He finally got a hold of a buckle, hit it, and rolled forward against the pressure.

  He tried to get up, but was pushed onto his stomach as one jumped on his back. He screamed, shouted curses, and reached for his Glock. When he drew it he raised it over his head, stabbed the barrel into the mass sinking its claws into his vest, and fired on automatic. He felt blood splattering across him, and a sudden relief as the mass rolled off. Jebbins pushed himself up and ran, sprinting across the parking lot, dragging the handgun by its lanyard, panting hard but unable to get a decent breath. The APC was parked in front of the store. He could get to it, he thought. He could get to it and be safe-

  He fell again as one of the wolves careened into him, hitting his lower back like a ram. He drew his knife and slashed maniacally. He made contact twice, but had no idea if he was inflicting any real damage. He was crawling now; three enraged animals were on top of him, stymied by the anti-slash cloth he was covered in and only emboldened in their efforts to kill him. With one biting his leg, one on his arm, and one tearing his belt, he dragged himself over the blacktop. The APC was his only chance now. The M113 had a folding ramp in the back, which was closed, as well as a small, oval shaped hatch, which was also closed. When Jebbins finally reached the vehicle he rolled hard left, shaking the animals off long enough to grab the hatch handle and swing the heavy steel open. He thrust himself inside head first and swung the hatch again. It banged against the head of a wolf trying to force its way in. He slammed the hatch against its head with as much force as he could manage. It was still there, still poking though, and he kept slamming. The tiny door clanged over and over against the creature’s head. Jebbins heard a loud crack as he hit the animal again and, finally, it moved back and the door hit home.

  The interior was empty, and Jebbins opened the top hatch and peered out, carefully. The wolves were running into the grocery store. He had a solution for that. The APC was equipped with a minigun, six spinning barrels of 7.62 NATO which could shred even the hardy monsters they were fighting. He took control of the double handle, swung the barrels toward the fleeing animals, and the storefront, as they spun up, and then depressed the trigger. The flash was as blinding as the sun. One hundred rounds of copper and lead shattered the plate glass windows of the building, while the tracers interspersed in the ammunition magazine scorched the interior and danced when, still burning, they ricocheted. At such a rate of fire the sound was no longer the rapid cracking of an assault rifle but an angry, almost insect buzz that has been likened to an enormous zipper. The red hot bullets formed a stream which wavered like contorting magma as Jebbins swept across the building.

  Inside, the bullets tore through metals shelves, walls, terrified survivors, and two of the marauding wolves, who were ripped through like dolls and danced and yipped in pain and torment before collapsing on the dingy, sticky floor. Spent brass fell like rain into the troop compartment of the APC, and it was by now shrouded in smoke and gave the appearance of a squat and angry dragon, as though the man and machine had formed into a behemoth every bit as livid as either Jebbins himself or the animals he now reveled in killing. The energy of hatred took its physical manifestation as six thousand rounds turned the market to wreckage.

  Alvarez hit the floor as bullets whizzed over his head and spanged off metal shelves. He crawled over to the Grady, who like wise hugged the dirty linoleum. “Tell them to cease fire!” he yelled at the sergeant.

  It was no good of course. Jebbins wasn’t on the ACSD tac net, and he had excluded everything but the lead ridden world he now occupied. The barrels of the gun glowed orange as he ran through the last of the ammo. The report echoed around him. Jebbins slumped down in the turret and took his breath in heaves. He didn’t hear the paws clawing their way up the side. He did hear the roar however, and he jerked backward into the vehicle when the jaws almost closed on him. Jebbins grabbed the controls, flipped the APC around in a turn, ran over one of the wolves, and drove full speed out of the parking lot, taking several of the animals with him as they ran after the metal creature that presented a new threat to their kin.

  The silence had a deafness about it, an unnerving quality. Alvarez watched as the wolves ran after Jebbins. It was time to move. He rushed to the back of the store. “Ketchum, what’s your ETA?” he asked.

  “About two mikes.”

  “10-4. 23 with me behind the store,” said Alvarez. He burst through the emergency exit, panting, as Ketchum rolled up in his pickup and slammed on the brakes.

  Alvarez leapt off the loading dock. “I’m driving,” he said.

  “I need you to take it. We’re broken up down here,” Clearborn radioed to Fisher. The SRT was regrouping, heading for the school at the order of Jebbins, but they were down by six men, either killed, wounded, or simply separated, forcing the response to be coordinated from the air. Clearborn may have been arrogant and did not mince words when it came to how he felt regarding Fisher, but he was enough of a professional to recognize the tactical situation at hand.

  “Roger.” Fisher replied. “Do you still have snipers?

  “I have two.”

  “Affirm. Get them in position for a sniper-initiated assault and prepare to breach on my mark. Ah, wait one.” He switched back to the in-aircraft comms. “Garcia, put us on the south side of the school.”

  “You got it.”

  Fisher looked at what appeared to be a pair of open double doors, but it was hard to tell at their altitude, and there was a set of tread marks leading up to them. Had someone crashed a vehicle into the school? He dismissed that area as a possible entrance just in case there was an obstacle inside. Nothing could slow this train down once they got started. If that happened the results would simply be more death, and a failed operation, one of the most important ops of his life. “Echo One,” he said, using Clearborn’s callsign. The main SRT members were “Echos,” for “entry,” while “Sierras” represented snipers. “Position your team on the Alpha entrance and prepare for entry. Be advised you will need an explosive breach. We only have enough personnel for one breach point, break. Have your Sierras set up on the corners facing the windows, if they get a shot I am to know immediately. We move off them, on my mark, break. Advise when in position over the ACSD tac net.”

  “Roger, switching.”

  At this point several things began to happen at once. The snipers moved to set up hasty positions in the grass and brush beyond the school, on the edge of the front parking lot. They were not ideal positions, but they would get the job done. The entry team stacked up in a “conga line” at the door, where the breacher applied a larger than necessary C4 charge to the heavy metal entrance and prepared a shock tube to detonate it. Behind him the point man waited, rifle at the high ready. The snipers took aim at some silhouettes inside. The forms were amorphous, shadowy blobs but they would be good enough targets. Each event had to happen right as the others did, all set to the tempo dictated by Fisher, but with the guns and explosive providing the instruments in this destructive orchestra. As soon as the sergeant gave his signal Clearborn called the snipers, and as soon as the snipers called back that they were ready Clearborn called Fisher, who confirmed all that needed to happen. “Sniper initiated, I say again, sniper initiated. All parties stand by to confirm,” he ordered. “Echos.”

  “Ready,” they replied.

  “Sierras.”

  “Ready.”

  “Aircrew.”

  “Ready,” said Garcia.

  “Ground element commander.”

  “Ready,” confirmed Clearborn.

  “Roger,” said Fisher. “I copy all parties clear to drop. Shooters: this is command, I have control. Stand by for a long count. Five...four...three...two...one. Execute, execute, execute.”

  As soon as Fisher began his countdown everything happened just as the manuals outlined they should. The snipers took their shots as Fisher went through the numbers, the breacher set off his charge, blew the heavy metal doors practically off the hinges, and rolled to the back of the line, while the team moved in. Everything went as planned, until they entered the school itself. The pointman immediately spotted a werewolf and fired at it. When it ran at them the second assaulter in the line tossed a flashbang at it, barely shouting his warning in time. The explosion sent it reeling back, and it decided to run down the hall, going back the way it had come.

  “Gas that fucker!” shouted Grady.

  One of the team members responded by firing two CS gas canisters from a six barreled grenade launcher. They bounced off the ceiling and landed just behind the retreating canine as it rounded a corner by the administration office. The SRT bunched up at the turnoff, and the pointman and flashbang thrower held the corner while three of the men sank back into the office and found a breaker for the school premises. “Be advised,” Grady said over the radio for Fisher’s and Clearborn’s benefit. “We’re cutting the lights to the school.”

  “Roger.” Fisher replied. As he looked down every window in the squat, two story structure went dark, followed by the perimeter lights. He had no idea if that would affect the dogs or not, but they needed every possible advantage right now. With the lights off and the office cleared the team donned their NVGs and continued down the hall. When they reached the first staircase the sergeant elected to put them on the second floor. There were more patrol units arriving every minute, and they were about to unleash everything they had on these damn things. Patrol could handle the perimeter and the lower level, if there was anything on top, he decided, it would not be alive for long.

  Alvarez was flooring the gas, pushing the truck to ninety miles an hour as they raced towards the school. He could see one of the werewolves pacing in front of the building, and he gunned the truck in its direction, tunnel vision forcing him on a ramming course. He wasn’t slowing down as the school raced up to them.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Ketchum demanded, but Alvarez didn’t hear.

  He reached down and grabbed his gun, driving one handed as he prepared to hit his target. The wolf realized too late what this metal creature was planning, and before it could bolt the truck smashed into it, pinning it to the wall and rupturing its organs. The impact set off the airbags, and Alvarez slammed into the white, acrid explosion of gas full force as the vehicle careened into the wall. As he lay against the steering wheel, groaning in pain, he saw a werewolf rushing at him. Alvarez ripped his Glock from his holster and, with his off hand, grabbed a large knife from his belt. He cut through the airbag, climbed onto the hood, and unloaded into the animal, full auto. It was almost on him when its face finally disintegrated, sending it tumbling into the grass. Alvarez rolled off the hood and grabbed an M4 and a BreakNRake from the truck. “Ketchum, let’s go!” he shouted. The dazed lieutenant pushed past the inflated passenger airbag and grabbed his shotgun.

  Alvarez smashed a bathroom window out and pulled himself through it. More wolves were converging outside as he crawled inside. As soon as he and Ketchum reached the door they heard the animals crawling through the window after them. Ketchum pulled a door charge from his backpack. “Go!” He ordered. “I’m about to kill these bastards!”

  Alvarez brought his rifle up and trotted down the hall as Ketchum planted the charge on the door. He sliced around a corner, and then he saw her at the end of the hall.

  Jenny.

  She stood centered in the hallway, smiling madly at him. She was coated in blood now. The liquid seemed to be flowing from every hole in her body. Even her eyes welled with it. It cascaded down her long hair, flowed between her breasts and legs, and pooled beneath her bare feet.

  Alvarez ran towards her, slowing only to check for open doors. As he rushed up she looked directly at him and grinned, blood dribbling from her mouth. “Yes! Go Alvarez! Kill them! Kill them all!” she gleefully shrieked.

  Alvarez sliced past her at the end of the hall and saw one of the werewolves running away. He emptied a mag of .458 into it until it fell, shaking and gasping. He sprinted now, searching for more. Jenny was on his every move. All at once she was in front of him, beside him. He saw her out of the corner of his eye and felt her frigid breath on his neck as she cackled. “Kill them! Kill them!” He rushed into an intersection of hallways, too fast for safety, and saw one of the werewolves facing him. He knew it was her even before the ghost spoke. “There I am, Alvarez. Kill me!” she commanded over his shoulder.

  Alvarez fired into her as she ran for him. “Come on you bitch!” he roared.

  She jumped on top of him, crushing him under her weight as he pushed his rifle into the chest and fired. The wolf rolled off and fled back down one of the dark halls.

  “Kill me!” Jenny shouted again as she lorded over him. Alvarez grunted as he pushed up and ran after the werewolf, forcing himself onward through the pain, motivated by Jenny’s goading and self-harming motivation. He saw another wolf, just as he was dropping an empty magazine. He pulled the BreakNRake from his back and swung it into the animal, slicing its jugular open. He slid through the blood as he got to his feet, jammed a fresh magazine into the rifle, and continued on, Jenny’s maniacal laughter trailing him the whole way.

  As she watched the chaotic proceedings throughout the school Jenny Ledbetter’s ghost balled her ephemeral hands into fists, as five years of pent-up psychic energy climaxed like an exploding dam. She was approaching release from this retched purgatory, the buildup so volatile and powerful it was forcing poltergeist activity through the entire building, and not like the minor happenings of previous anniversaries. Desks and chairs were flying, papers blasting down the halls, lights bursting.

  Of course, everyone inside was too concerned with staying alive to worry about any of that right now, and Ledbetter had no control over it. She had no control over anything anymore, which was why she just watched and laughed, enveloped in her blood bath, gradually edging towards a loss of sanity beyond even what the previous years of guilt and emotional torture had managed.

  DPS had arrived and was pushing into the school parking lot, with the armored vehicles thrusting first to provide cover to dismounted officers behind. The larger of the two MRAPS moved in slowly, pushing abandoned cars out of the way as the driver listened to the shouted guidance of the sniper in the hatch, and tried not to crush too many of the bodies outside the building. Troopers in the back pointed their rifles out of firing ports, taking sporadic shots at flitting movement in their small sectors.

  The werewolves in the open stared at the puzzling new objects, but, while they made no attempt to run, they decided to avoid getting too close. The driver of the first MRAP noticed this skittishness and decided that he could take advantage of it. He gunned the massive engine and the huge truck lumbered forward, catapulting a Crown Vic aside as it lurched. With a maze of vehicles to negotiate to escape the line of armor, a few of the animals were caught in the growling procession of steel, and their howls of despair pierced even the two-inch-thick hull of the MRAP to terrify and galvanize its occupants.

  The vehicles breached the makeshift perimeter that was forming around the school and spread out to finally stop so that the snipers could climb to the roofs and the teams inside could take better bearings on closer targets. The responders finally had something their enemy could do nothing against. The battle was starting to turn.

  The wolf that Bellows had been watching was on its hind legs, and seemed to be looking into a window. It was eerie to look at, its intelligence like nothing he would have expected from any dog.

  Suddenly something rumbled around the side of the school, and the dog ran to meet the sound. This was his chance, thought Bellows.

  He lurched forward, jelly legs pulling him down. With hot, bleating breath he sprinted, bolting for the sheriff’s car and snatching at the back door. He ripped it open, catapulted himself inside, and slammed it as he lay down against the plastic seat, lest one of the animals see him. He was locked in, the inside handles didn’t work, but he was safe for the time being. At least, he hoped he was.

  Fisher hit his PTT. “Bocker, you guys stay off the second floor, I’ve got SRT engaging up there. They’re moving a lot of lead.”

  “10-4.”

  The SRT fanned out on the floor of the long hallway and fired on two wolves that tried charging them.

  “Gas, gas, gas!” ordered Grady.

  CS grenades popped as the team fired, mixing with the concrete dust the rifle rounds kicked up and turning the dust into flurries that stuck to the men’s gear while they advanced.

  Grady could barely hear the hissing of his breath behind the mask. The weapons fire reverberated through the halls and drowned out everything else, despite his headset. They threw flashbangs two or three at a time, and the small explosions flashed like strobes, lighting the dark building momentarily, then plunging it back into tar shade.

  The team was destroying the second story. Werewolves were yelping and bounding through the shadows between the doors of the rooms that were open, and those rooms were being systematically cleared. It seemed that the ACSD SRT had discovered the solution to the danger posed by the animals with a combination of confined spaces, aggressive action, and overwhelming firepower. Almost half the team was dead or missing, but Grady now felt, as he heard another flashbang rock one of the classrooms, that there would be no more casualties for his people tonight. He was smart enough not to bet on that, of course.

  Alvarez was not quite running. It would be difficult to run regardless, with his leg injuries. Still, even if he could have, it would not have been a good idea. Stealth and precision were his primary weapons now, and he needed to be prepared for one of the hellhounds to come around a corner or through a door and take the barrel of his rifle in its maw before he could fire. He had to be smarter than the animals, as well as slower. It was a question of attrition now.

  He smelled something odd and sniffed. It took only a second for the memory to hit him, along with the effects. A distinctive, sharp, chemical odor, one that was never forgotten. CS. Tear gas, he thought. The SRT must be flooding the building. He had no idea if that would affect the werewolves or not, though he knew how it would affect him. All at once he was in a cloud of it, as the fumes poured out of the air conditioner. Alvarez had been through the gas chamber, he knew he would be blinded, he knew he would feel like he was suffocating. As a result, he did not panic. He found an open classroom, checked as best as he could that it was clear, and rushed inside.

  There was a wall mounted air conditioner, and he turned it on full blast and leaned against it, holding his eyes open as the gas pierced them like needles. The cool air made the pain bearable, and he braced his rifle against the wall beside himself and used two hands to hold his lids open. The sounds of gunshots and the helicopter were muffled. His radio was quiet on the TARP channel. For a moment, everything was almost normal, and he felt a surreal sensation coming over him. He had known it before, in lulls of combat, and he forced himself to focus. He would die here if he allowed himself to be sidetracked in such a way.

  Bocker and Bascomb range walked through the dark school, moving slowly and systematically. Every room and corner had to be cleared, and the threat’s locations were unknown, and changing. They could come from anywhere. The closest they had come to preparing for this scenario was a virtual school shooting involving multiple gunmen. Bocker expected one of the furry bastards to be around every corner, and the screams and howls piercing through the unremitting gunfire trundling down every hall did not help.

  He rounded a corner and saw a flash of brown, then signaled to Bascomb. The two squared off in front of a classroom entrance, ready to shoot at the first sign of movement. One of the animals screeched around a corner, and Bocker emptied his magazine into it, as he and Bascomb dove into the classroom, and slammed the door. The wolf pounded and scratched at the closed door, sending splinters flying. Bocker tossed a flashbang and fired at the animal in the room with them. It lurched, faltered, and finally dropped to the floor. Now they had to figure a way out with the thing’s friend outside, but, for the moment, this room was the safest place to be. He shoved desks and chairs aside as he made for the door, then opened it an inch and placed his gun barrel against the wall to look down his scope. Nothing. For the moment, they appeared to be in the clear. He signaled to Bascomb, and the two made their way further into the school, towards more monsters. As they rounded another corner both registered a flash of brown. Bascomb ducked into a dark classroom, slamming into chairs and desks. “Matt?” he shouted. He could hear it. Then he heard a second animal sound, coming from behind. He heard its feet scratching the linoleum, felt it slam him in the back and pitch him forward, into the waiting maw of the first wolf. He fired wildly, tracers burning through the room. One of them ripped his arm off, and Bascomb screamed. He screamed until he ran out of breath, and then he felt his leg being torn from his body. The left boot flopped limply into his field of view. As a third animal rushed in and bit down on his throat, he screamed one final time.

  Ketchum raced through the school, slowing only to clear each open door. The decision to split away from Alvarez had not been a good one, he decided, nor had the decision for TARP to split up at all. There was choice now, of course. The AA-12 was unwieldy despite the gloves he wore. The gloves were already soaked in sweat, which did not help his grip on the large firearm.

  He stopped at a corner in order to listen. He wore a communication headset which would amplify ambient noise, and he heard claws on the wood floor. He crouched low, peered around the corner, reached the gun around and fired. The Frag-12 rounds did their job, striking two of the wolves and blowing huge pieces of blood and sinew from their backs. One round exploded on the wall, and Ketchum felt shrapnel ricochet off his glasses. More were coming down the hall, and Ketchum fired again. The muzzle flash lit up like a flamethrower in the dark hallway. Small, brilliant explosions burst in front of him, and he pushed forward, feeling the hot shells eject from the side, smashing against his arm over and over. He expected to go dry any second and had no idea how many he had killed. Finally, his vision cleared, and he saw only animal corpses and baying, mortally wounded ones. He ran ahead, knowing aggression was his best defense as long as he kept stock of his surroundings. He had to keep moving, and keep killing them, until he could escape the school. He reached another junction, caught sight of four of the animals splitting off down the hall. One went off in another direction while three continued his way. He tossed a flashbang once they were close enough, then dispatched them with the shotgun.

  The drum magazine was empty now, and he inserted a smaller capacity magazine and continued. Though his only thoughts were on survival and killing the werewolves Ketchum recognized that this had already been going on for too long. Longer than the first incident already. The longer it went, the greater their disadvantage. He was already in an extremely precarious vantage. He flashed his gun light to see, shut it off, and ran forward a few more meters. He wasn’t sure where he could get out, he only knew that his time was slipping away fast.

  Evans felt a puddle on his shoulder from Rialto’s sweating hand. His own hands were shaking so hard he could barely grip his gun, and his knees buckled in fear and excitement. Blam! Blam! Blam! went another volley of gunfire from one of the halls. His ears were starting to hurt. His mind, his body, everything told him to turn and run the other way, but somehow he forced himself on, certain that he was going to die tonight. Evans was not necessarily a brave man, but he had an iron sense of duty. He was a cop, and was going to die a cop, even die violently as one if that’s what it took to stop these damn things. “Rialto,” he whispered. She looked back at him, eyes wide as saucers in fear. “You can do this,” he coached. “You’re a good cop. Really. You’ve got it.”

  She smiled slightly, and nodded at him.

  They were most likely dead, but he had to tell her something. They pushed forward, down another pitch dark hallway, alternating between unspeakable silence and overbearing noise. Every scream, every gunshot, every step brought them closer to their foe. Evans was ready not just to confront the demons from his past, but to kill them.

  He heard footsteps from around one of the hard hallway corners. They were human, lacking the clicks of the four-legged claws. “Blue,” he called quietly as he came around. “Losa?” The other deputy appeared in the path of Evans’ gun light, sweating and haggard.

  “Evans. Thank God,” he said.

  “Let’s move,” whispered Evans. They went quickly, in a standard ALERRT formation, covering as much area as possible. Losa caught himself glancing up at the ceiling a couple of times, used as he was to covering every angle, not ruling out any possible quarter of attack on this the worst night of his life.

  He heard several clicks and recognized it immediately. One of the wolves. With quivering hands he shouldered his rifle and waited for it to come around the corner. They stood in grim formation, still as statues. Without warning three hit at once, ripping, tearing, snapping their jaws at the deputies. Evans fired wildly, blinding himself with muzzle flashes. Through hazy vision he saw Losa pulled around the corner, boots skidding along the floor.

  “Losa!” he screamed, as he unloaded around the corner and through the hall. His rifle bolt snapped back, and he reached for another magazine. None. He was out. He drew his pistol and dumped a magazine into the faces of three of the animals, backing up as he fired. It was not enough. The slide locked back, and Evans was dry again. The animals rushed him with hellish volition and his back was to the wall. He careened backwards into a classroom, hitting a desk. In desperation Evans drew his mace and coated one of the wolves with it. Again, no effect. He drew his taser and fired. Pop! went the nitrogen cartridge. Evans relaxed his body as he prepared for death, for release from his tormented life at the paws of his very tormentors. But his execution was stayed as the maced wolf lit up like a torch and darted from the room, the other two tagging along, the dying one summoning a final scream from hell. Evans had read about this effect but never seen it in action. Their mace was oil based, which meant that it was flammable. The electric discharge of a taser was all that was needed to set off a fire.

  Evans breathed in relief and stumbled carefully out into the hall, searching for Rialto. There was no sign of Losa. “Rialto,” he whispered. “Rialto,” louder this time. “Rialto!” he shouted. “Dammit.” He crept along the dark wall. He was out of ammo and out of options. The only thing to do now was get out of this God forsaken school alive. He had done all he could here. Evans unsheathed his baton, his last serviceable weapon, and looked for an exit as he headed back outside, and towards more monsters.

  “Put me on the roof,” ordered Fisher. The animals were all inside the school now, it was time to take the fight to them, he decided. Before he jumped out he turned to Garcia and Michetti. “Well,” he said, resigned to whatever fate awaited him. “It’s been a pleasure serving with you. God go with us.” He jumped onto the school roof and crouched low as the helicopter took back off, spitting debris and dust around his silhouetted form. It was fully dark now, and he attached NVGs to his helmet before proceeding in.

  He flipped the NVGs over his eyes and turned the world green. He owned the darkness now; and with that he descended the stairs Bocker had breached, descended into the sound and feeling of death, chaos, and pain.

  Alvarez coughed and retched, his body rebelling against the lacrymator. The air conditioner was finally alleviating the worst of it when he heard the panting. He turned slowly, knowing what he would find, bringing his rifle up toward his shoulder just as slowly. The wolf was in the door way, staring him down, seemingly viewing him as nothing beyond the prey he was to it. At the last second he jerked the rifle up and fired a burst at it. It charged, and Alvarez ducked behind the student desks and pushed one forward like a shield. The claws punched straight through, ripped his vest, but could not penetrate the stab inserts. With his right hand he drew the handgun and slammed it into the long head, fired through the thick skull. Chunks erupted from the cranium, brain matter shot out in gobbet fulls. It rolled to the side, one hemisphere crippled, though far from dead. He kicked the vegetated body out of the way and scrambled to his feet.

  At the door he inserted a full magazine into the rifle, checked the halls, and rushed out.

  Bocker continued alone, hoping he would link up with someone soon, but so far he had only come across dead bodies. He went up a flight of stairs, white light on to blind the opposition. He heard it before he saw it. A deep, guttural growl, and the click of the claws. Bocker stared the werewolf down for only a second, all the time he needed to gauge his surroundings. Unfortunately, it did not look good. He saw now they were at opposite ends of a gantry built over the auditorium. All he could do was back up, shooting as he walked if possible.

  He set his sights on the head, and the animal responded by lowering its ears, and crouching down. Bocker set one foot back and pulled the trigger. The shots reverberated like the inside of a drum in the dark theater. Bocker could barely see, even with his silencer masking some of the flash. He felt the blow before he saw or heard it.

  The wolf slammed into him like a wrecking ball, knocking the air from his lungs, and sending them both crashing down to the stage below. Bocker shook his head, and tried to stand. He was blocked by several stage lights and pieces of the collapsed gantry. He could sit up, but that was all. His rifle? Where was it? Blinded by ancient dust, Bocker felt his way to the weapon. The wolf came again, before he could get his bearings, before he could reach his weapon. It slammed him against the wall, debris piled behind him, and twisted its head sideways, biting down on his abdomen, where his armor didn’t cover. He pulled his Glock out and wrangled it over the wolf’s head with both hands, dumping a magazine into it. It was no use.

  It ripped back, splattering blood across the stage. Then it went to work with its claws, slashing, ripping, and tearing Matt Bocker to pieces. He reached for his rifle on instinct, on virtue of his training, aware of the pain but ignoring it, unable to fully process it. The injuries were too grave for that. He felt the rifle receiver, felt his hand slip across his intestines as he tried to raise it. The wolf pulled back now, stopping its attack as its feet slid in the mass of organs spilling around Bocker. He slumped forward, crushed, the debris falling around him. “Elizabeth,” he moaned, calling for his wife as he still tried to bring his rifle up. It was prayer like, barely audible as it left his mouth. “Elizabeth.”

  Rialto had no idea where she was. Her light barely illuminated enough for her to move, and she jerked it back and forth, each direction promising a long snout and gleaming eyes. She was fighting back tears and hating herself for choosing this job as she felt along the wall. She heard more shooting, but couldn’t tell where it came from. It was impossible to ascertain the direction of any sound now. Her left eardrum had already burst, and something sticky was running out of her right. She sniffled, her nose running from all the gunpowder in the school. With a hoarse, raspy cry she plead for anyone else listening to the radio to come help her. But no one answered. She turned a corner and found only another long hallway. Either by some logic she still held onto or from instinctive memory she ran down the hall under the expectation that it must have an exit at the end. She couldn’t tell for sure. It was impossible to see a sign, even with her glasses. She sprinted so fast she almost tripped over the bodies.

  A pile of uniformed corpses littered the hallway, their outfits stained black from blood, entrails spread like salsa around the wood floor. Rialto stepped over the bodies themselves, ignoring the viscera she slipped in. She was far too frightened to worry about the mess. She pushed past them, and as she started running again her swinging gun light missed the furry mass that leapt from around a corner. Rialto barely saw the leg swipe down against her arm. The paw knocked her gun from her hand, and though the claws missed her, she now found herself unarmed. Her shotgun had gone dry long ago, and she had discarded it. She had no time to react before the next swipe caught her abdomen, sending her reeling into the wall, her head knocking it hard enough to see stars. She tried to scream, but had no idea how muffled the “help!” she got out really was. In an unthinking, blinding terror, she simply groped in the dark, feeling where the floor and the wall met and trying to grab something to help herself up. But when she braced her boots against the floor and tried to stand the bloody soles slipped, and she fell against the wall. An incredible wave of torrential pain hit her worse than the animal even had, and she writhed on the floor, groping at the source, unseeing, and more terrified at what she would feel than anything else. She touched something warm, slick, and pulpous, and could tell it was supposed to be inside her body. She kept writhing, kept groping at the wound, and kept trying to scream, though only tears came as she waited for the monster to come back and dispatch her. It didn’t come though. The suspense of waiting was even worse than the attack. She couldn’t hear or see, and the pain and fear battled for supremacy in her mind while she plead and wished for anything to end all this. She would give anything for it all to just stop.

  She felt something wet and sticky flowing down her back, her groin, and her legs. It had to be blood. She began to feel cold, and gradually the motivation to move and try to escape the pain drained away, despite the piercing torture remaining. She had no sense of time, no idea how long she was curled on the grimy floor before every muscle in her body finally, mercifully relaxed, and she let herself sink into welcome, warm oblivion.

  Evans pushed a desk against the pile of chairs he had placed against the classroom door, and stopped to pant for a minute. This would buy him some time. He had heard more of the wolves and ducked into this classroom. Now that he had a barricade in place it was time to escape this horrible school. He ran to one of the windows and smashed his baton against it. It did not give at all, but if he kept it up he could-

  The door arched in its jamb as something heavy pounded against it. Evans hit the window again, harder. The door arced like a collapsing bridge. He swung a third time as the door exploded, splinters showering through the room. Evans whipped around and smashed the metal stick across the thing’s head. He slapped it over and over, retreating towards the back of the room, though that only made him cornered, there was nothing that would stop the thing. “You fucking bastard!” he screamed in anguish. It bit down on the baton and bent the weapon, but Evans snatched it back and beat the monster’s eye. “I’m not dying here with you!” he belted.

  The stick snapped in half, and when the dog reared up Evans stabbed the throat, sending blood spraying. He stabbed over and over, like a prisoner shanking a rival. Still it persisted, parrying each of his thrusts with its mammoth teeth. Evans didn’t see the flash of shadow entering the room, and in his panic his damaged ears barely heard the command.

  “Get out of the way!”

  Evans saw the massive revolver come up, and he kicked the wolf and jumped back. It recovered and lunged, but the enormous bullet caught its back and blew a spat of flesh and fur to the other side of the room.

  It started at that, dropping slightly and changing its focus. Another round followed the first, tearing out a part of its neck beside the wounds Evans had given it. A burst of small explosions followed, expanding light that shone like flash bulbs in the tar black room. The animal could not even growl as its throat erupted in a gusher of fluid. Its hind limps went out from under it, and it rolled and scratched along the linoleum as the figure reloaded and put two final rounds in the skull.

  Evans braced himself against a closet door, panting and gasping for more oxygen. The figure walked up and grasped his shoulder.

  “You gonna make it?”

  “Y-yeah,” Evans nodded.

  “All right. We have to get out of here.”

  Evans agreed wholeheartedly with that plan. “I’m out of ammo,” he said. And anything else. The baton was his last weapon.

  “Here.”

  Evans felt a handgun thrust into his hand, and he took out his flashlight to examine it. The pale figure was lit up by the ghostly glow. “Alvarez?” Evans had suspected the man would be in the area tonight, but running into him was still not something he had expected at all.

  “Evans? Ah, hell, it is you.” Alvarez was equally surprised, and wondered how angry Evans was to see him. There was no time for any rivalry now, though. They were both logical enough to realize that, too.

  Evans was already past the wonder, and examined the handgun. A Glock 18, he saw. Alvarez handed him two extended magazines for it. “You just have a handgun?” asked Evans.

  “Yeah.” Alvarez looked forlorn as he nodded. “I had a rifle, but it ran dry. This is it for me.” He displayed a Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum.

  “What’s the plan, then?”

  “Get somewhere we can get out,” said Alvarez. “A door, open window, whatever. But we have to get out. We can’t keep fighting now.”

  “Right. My car’s at the north entrance. It’ll be open. We can head that way.”

  “Let’s move.” They scanned the hallway, found it empty, and crept out, moving quickly and quietly away, knowing that if they ran into more wolves they probably wouldn’t have enough bullets to kill them all.

  Ketchum had a decision to make. He had failed to stay linked up with anyone, and now he was in a corner classroom, and he was out of ammo, and out of grenades. He had a knife, and the idea of using the short thing almost made him laugh in the face of this hell. He still had his breacher bag, and several pounds of explosives on him. That gave him the tools to get out, but could he use them as weapons? He had in the bathroom, but this was a different kind of place. The room was large, the concussion would be powerful enough it might just kill him. Still...

  The door did not lock, and he expected that any minute a werewolf would burst through. He considered his move quickly, but carefully, then arrived at a possible solution. He set a charge on the window, then set out constructing a bigger one for the door. He used hardback books to form the body against which the C4 would be placed. It was slower than normal working in the dark, and he was grateful for the prescription safety glasses he wore.

  He heard the clicking noise of the creatures running, and he increased his pace. He heard their panting, and knew he did not have enough time. There was no margin for error with explosives, but if it came down to being blown up or being eaten, he was going with the one that killed him faster. His hands shook like a freezing man as he plunged a detonator into the clay like explosive. He ran another detonator to the charge on the window, and, flipping a desk to use as a crude shield, he attached the second detonator to the explosive, then connected both cords for the detonators to a shock tube initiator. It would fire one charge at a time, which was perfect for Ralph Ketchum’s needs. He lay down in a fetal position, opened his mouth, and fired the charge next to the window. The glass sucked in then flexed out, shattering, and flying as if driven by a hurricane. Ketchum felt several hot pieces ricochet into his armor, but felt no pain. He jumped up, and started to climb through the window when the wolves, attracted by the loud noise, thrust themselves through the door.

  Ketchum responded by detonating the second charge. The room lit up like day; the explosion was so hot it produced plasma, which scorched the animal’s fur in a millisecond, then was sucked out into the hall by the incredible concussion. It smashed their lungs, boiled their eyes, punctured their ears like a pencil through paper, and knocked them against the far wall.

  Ketchum dove through the window as soon as he set off the initiator. The light caught his eyes as he tumbled. The world went nuclear bright, then collapsed like a singularity into a black, distinct, and silent point. He hit the ground like a sack of bricks, and his ceramic plates dug into his back, chest, and sides. He rolled on the ground, fighting for breath, and forced himself to get up, unable to hear the scream of exertion he unleashed. He fought to stand against the grass, limped up, and ran towards the lights his eyes were just permitting him to see again.

  He slammed himself into a patrol car, and had a half dozen deputies swarming him, getting him out of his gear and shouting questions and concerns he could not yet process. He yelled past his retching to ask for water, and a bottle was duly provided, a firefighter helping him to drink it slower than he wanted to. His vest came off, the cold of his perspiration hit, and he felt alighted with wings, elated and relieved beyond anything he had ever experienced. He had made it. He didn’t know how many animals were left, he didn’t know how many of his people were left, who had died, who lived still, he did not know anything. But just now he didn’t care. He had survived something horrible, and beyond his abilities to process. The reptile brain that guided his immediate moves told him only that he and nature had locked horns, and nature had been subdued. He was happier than he could believe, for all of a few wonderful seconds.

  He looked around now, senses not only back but tuned higher than a precision instrument. He saw the terrified faces of deputies so young he thought they must have just graduated this school. He saw the troopers and medics rushing to pull wounded and dying men and women into the MRAPs and ambulances; all the vehicles were stuffed with bleeding casualties, all were fleeing to hospitals that could not hope to deal with the influx. He was sick again, wondering what the toll was this time, whether they were truly winning, and if any of his own men were still alive. He had to call Fisher.

  Alvarez kicked the door to the auditorium open. He and Evans had realized they were passing it and opted to check the doors there, since they exited right into one of the parking lots. The room looked empty. He rushed up an aisle by the wall, and headed up the stairs to the stage. There was a pile of garbage in the middle, and on the edge he made out... a head of hair? He stepped closer, slowly and carefully, fearing what awaited. At his feet he made out the still form of Bocker, his long brown hair cascading through a puddle of blood, hiding his face. An M4 lay next to the body. Alvarez grabbed it, and stood up to see a wolf, staring him down. He raised the gun slowly, as deliberately as possible, knowing he was about to die even so. His radio squelched to life. “Sierra One Golf, I’m on the south side of the school, where do you need me?”

  That was Jebbins, and Jebbins was in an APC. Alvarez remembered the layout of the school. He should after three years as SRO. The auditorium opened onto the front parking lot. Deliberation was gone now, speed was the game as Alvarez shouted into his mic. “Jebbins bring it through the wall now!” And then it was on him, jaws snapping, claws bucking against the gun he used as a shield. They tumbled off the stage and onto the floor as the APC smashed through the wall and careened over the seats, Jebbins pursing the wolf like a giant steel predator. Alvarez got his feet under the dog and pushed hard, kicking free. He bolted towards a wall, away from the danger, trying to give Jebbins room to run it down.

  Evans, at the periphery of the stage, fired wildly at the pursuing animal, the bullets tearing through seats and carpet. The wolf forgot Alvarez as it turned toward the far wall, seeking escape from the metal beast and the harrying fire of the Glock.

  They were bounding down the terraced levels of the auditorium, jumping seats like hurdles in a race. It was a kind of race, of course, one with only one ultimate prize. Alvarez leaped over a set of red folding seats, slammed against the next in the series, rolled and picked himself up, and jumped the next ones. Jebbins was rolling down the room behind them, smashing everything, the diesel engine was roaring, so close Alvarez could smell the fumes even in the massive room. He hoped Jebbins was as good at driving as he claimed to be. Hell, he hoped the dumbass was actually qualified to drive an armored vehicle. But it was too late to worry about such things. As Alvarez got back to the stage, and leapt clear of the vehicle’s path, onto the open floor below the stage, Jebbins found his mark.

  The scream was horrific, damned, and not of earth or even the supernatural world he had come to know. It was worse than Sergio’s when Alvarez had snapped the man’s elbow, worse than his own when he had looked down at Daniella’s wrecked head. It was a scream of defeat, of one hellbound, and of release. Alvarez knew in the moment he would never stop hearing it.

  The M113 plowed over the animal, tracks crushing it into pulp. The vehicle slammed to a halt, leaving the wolf trapped underneath, its fore-end still exposed, still alive as it howled like the devil. Alvarez rushed over, jumping crumpled seats and piles of cinder blocks. He stood over the wolf as it tried vainly to bite him. Something moved at the edge of his vision, and he looked up to see Jenny again, still tormented, still screaming.

  “Kill me!” she pleaded.

  Alvarez pivoted the rifle over the wolf’s head and paused for only a second. “Goodbye Jenny.” The shot rang like a cathedral bell through the room, taking out the hearing in Alvarez’ left ear, and blowing the werewolf’s brain all over his calves. Alvarez ignored it and looked up again. Jenny Ledbetter was gone.

  Evans ran up, stared down at the shredded corpse, and sighed as the new bout of adrenaline inebriated him.

  Jebbins popped the driver’s hatch open, looked around, surveyed Alvarez’ handiwork, and laughed. “You showed that bitch,” he chortled.

  “Yeah,” said Alvarez, without conviction. “Come on,” he said as Jebbins jumped down. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” The same words Evans had uttered when they had failed the first time. Perhaps he’d been too hard on the man. Perhaps they’d been too hard on each other. They really were two of a kind, even if they would never admit it. Alvarez’ words had the same quality and resignation as the corporal’s had all those years ago. There was little emotion, maybe a rush of it would come later? Certainly the adrenaline dump would. But Alvarez was most likely too corroded to ever really feel any of it, his soul eroded away beyond recovery. This final death and the end of a bitter chapter of his and this town’s history brought merely a feeling of relief. It was over. It was done. His business with this provincial dirt stop was concluded.

  Thank God.

  Fisher blew the lock on the door with his shotgun, and kicked it open, seeing the wolf as he did so. He jerked the shotgun up and fired two rounds in immediate succession, slapping the trigger on the second. That round clipped the animal’s neck, and Fisher followed up with a third shot point blank, which tore through the face and splintered the skull. The wolf fell, gurgling, and Fisher stepped over the body.

  It was a mop up operation now, most of them were dead or dying. It was not 2007 all over again, this would be worse, he could tell already, yet this time they had “won,” after a fashion. The victory was Pyrrhic, but a victory nonetheless. There might be a hundred or more dead, but he had made it. His daughters would get to see him again. How many families could say the same tonight?

  He entered a hall and heard ragged breathing. He brought his rifle up, hanging the shotgun over his shoulder by the sling. Whatever was breathing, it didn’t sound like it was in good shape. So much the better. He would put this fucker out of his misery. He’d put his gun on automatic and stand over it, turn it to pulp if necessary.

  He hit the source of the gasps with his flashlight, and quickly safed his rifle. It was a cop. A young woman with dark hair, which was coming loose from its bun. The nametag read RIALTO. She was lying in a pool of blood, her intestines spilling from a hole in her abdomen. “Jebbins,” he radioed, “get to my position. I’ve got a downed officer.” He gave a rough description of where he was in the school.

  Jebbins, who was outside by now, came running, arriving nearly five minutes later. Fisher tossed his medical pack on the floor and got to work cutting the deputy’s clothes and gear off. He was careful to avoid the intestines. Jebbins came around and hit the floor on his knees, practically skidding to a stop.

  “Keep her airway open,” ordered Fisher. “I’ll stabilize the guts.” Proper treatment in this situation called for the protruding organ to be stabilized in place, trying to push it back in might exacerbate the problem. Fisher tried to gauge how much blood she had lost, but since she was on her back he couldn’t see all of it, he just knew it was a lot. He cut off her pants, and a rank smell hit them.

  “What the fuck is that?” Jebbins asked.

  “Piss, blood, and mucus,” said Fisher. “Get that second smallest oro in her.”

  He cut her boots and pulled them off to finish exposing her. Her body was nearly as white as the socks that remained as her only clothing, her skin quivered with gooseflesh. As he shined his light over her he noted with small comfort that the blood seemed to all be coming from the single slashing wound to her abdomen. It was oozing, which was also a good sign, as it meant no arteries were cut. Still, she was in shock, no telling for how long. It could be irreversible, but regardless, she needed to be evacuated. “Land the helo, and get the backboard,” said Fisher.

  “10-4, just a second.” Jebbins was inserting an oropharyngeal airway, so that Fisher could work alone. He finished, stood up and jogged down the hall. Fisher heard a burst of gunfire from somewhere else in the school and backed against the wall, rifle ready. The killing wasn’t over yet.

  Jebbins returned after several minutes, and Fisher grasped the girl’s head, holding it against possible spinal damage while the other man strapped her to the backboard and secured her body. Then they counted to three and lifted, carrying the board one handed, Fisher with his handgun out and Jebbins still holding his rifle, both scanning for threats.

  They turned a corner and Jebbins screamed. “Contact!” he shouted. Gunfire reverberated through the hall as Fisher clenched his fists. He couldn’t drop her but he needed to try reaching for his weapon. Just as got his arm free Jebbins yelled, “it’s down.” His voice was strained, probably damaged from the night’s combat. “I’m dry,” he called.

  “Shit,” groaned Fisher. “All right, sidearm out and let’s hurry. Pray.” His hands shook with fear and fatigue. They were dead if attacked. Maybe he could use his Glock to kill himself in time, or, failing that, arch his neck and let the thing tear it out fast and easy. They came within sight of the entrance and Fisher relaxed slightly. “Garcia,” he radioed, hand clumsy on the push to talk. “We’re bringing one to you. Female officer. Priority.”

  “Roger.”

  Fisher wanted to dodge triage with her. They needed to get her to Dallas or Ft Worth. The local hospitals were about to be overwhelmed. “Jebbins,” said Fisher as they half jogged down the school steps. “Take her in. Get an IV in her ASAP. Shock protocols. Do what you have to do.”

  “Roger that, boss.” He wished someone besides Jebbins could do it. He was still less than confident in the man’s medical skills. Jebbins was an excellent shot but fairly dumb otherwise. He wanted Jebbins to continue hunting, but someone had to keep the poor girl alive. They placed her on the stretcher in the helicopter, and wrapped her shaking form in a thermal blanket. Michetti helped secure the officer, and Fisher ordered her to go with Jebbins. She had no medical training as far as he was aware, but it wouldn’t hurt to have someone to hand Jebbins tools on the way. Fisher cleared away as they took off and rocketed south. He turned away from the departing helo. No one got left behind. Not even goners.

  He surveyed the scene. It was a mess, with rescuers running everywhere, shouts and orders filling the air. Fisher supposed he was the incident commander for the time being. He had the most ICS training of anyone on the team.

  Two more helicopters were circling, their searchlights illuminating the ghastly landscape of severed limbs and bloody puddles. One of the ACSD deputies was weeping over his dog’s body as the fire medics prepared to move him. His left leg was a mass of shredded muscle and dangling fat, while the surviving portion above the knee was egg colored below a tourniquet. Fisher turned away, unable to deal with it. He’d seen dogs lost in Afghanistan, the response always the same, always as severe as if one of his own men had died, and the thoughts that dog dredged up made him want to vomit. So he turned away. As he did so he noticed Alvarez, wandering aimlessly among the other first responders.

  “Alvarez,” he called.

  The agent looked up.

  “You OK?” Fisher asked, walking up. “Have you seen the rest of the guys?”

  Alvarez shook his head. “I found Bocker’s body in the auditorium.”

  Fisher sighed and went limp as that bombshell sunk in. “Have you seen Bascomb?”

  “No,” said Alvarez.

  “I can’t raise him,” said Fisher, not saying what both already knew. They would have to recover him or whatever was left of him. “How about you?” said Fisher, deferring the next unpleasant task of a horribly unpleasant evening.

  “I’m pretty dehydrated,” said Alvarez. “One of those bastards on the commission ran over me.”

  “He what?” Fisher’s eyes went wide and livid.

  “Yeah,” said Alvarez. “I don’t know how injured I am but it’s hurting.”

  “Do you know which one it was?”

  Alvarez shook his head. “No. Couldn’t see enough of him.”

  “All right, go get yourself looked at. And don’t let me near any of those fucks,” ordered Fisher.

  “OK.” Alvarez walked off, leaving Fisher alone with his thoughts once more. He walked towards the state troopers’ vehicles. It was going to be a long night.

  Evans was frantically searching for Rialto, or at least some word on what had happened to her. “Has anyone seen my trainee?” he practically screamed at anyone he knew. He saw Fisher conversing with one of the troopers, and jogged up to the two of them. “Sergeant,” he said, breath short. “Have you seen my trainee? Short, Hispanic female-”

  “What’s her name?” Fisher asked.

  “Rialto.”

  Fisher visibly paled. “We airlifted her to Dallas.”

  “Oh. How is she?”

  “She’s... she’s hanging on.”

  “Oh, I, OK. OK, thanks,” stammered Evans, who faltered as he stepped away. Fisher looked over at the trooper and shook his head. Barring a miracle, the girl was dead.

  Evans walked into the massive throng of first responders converging on the school. Someone passed him a bottle of water, which he quickly accepted. He was suddenly and acutely aware of his severe dehydration. He peeled off his sweaty vest and polo, untucked his T-shirt, and collapsed against a patrol car. He had lost two trainees tonight, one former, one current. Losa killed right in front of him, his friend for the past five years gone. Just like that. Who was going to tell his wife? Evans wanted to volunteer for the notification but wasn’t sure if he could stand to do it. The weight of these deaths sat on his shoulders like cinderblocks, crushing him, the pain so physical he could hardly breathe. His breaths came in gasps, almost agonal, burning. He was practically dead inside.

  Baylor University Medical Center was one of the top cancer treatment centers in the country, however, like most major hospitals, it had its own emergency department. The hospital was a massive, block like sprawl of buildings outside of downtown Dallas, and thousands of patients could be expected to pass through every day.

  The initial arrivals of dead and dying Arredondo County residents had been sporadic, and they trickled in to the area hospitals, either due to their injuries being beyond the scope of Denton’s facilities, or due to diversion, as the Denton surgeons and emergency doctors realized they were about to deal with a mass casualty event. In any case, the wounded came, by ambulance, police car, personal vehicle, and in Magan Rialto’s case, helicopter.

  Garcia was flaring to land, coming in quickly, but without concern for the speed; he was low on fuel as it stood, and the helicopter was almost as light as it could get. The nurses stood ready to extract the dying Rialto and do their best to reverse the process. She was now in hypovolemic shock, a broad type of emergency that resulted from insufficient bodily fluids. In her case it was both dehydration and blood loss, and the dehydration brought with it a critical shortage of sodium, potassium, and other minerals needed for the brain and muscles to continue their functions. By the same token, a lack of blood meant a lack of oxygen reaching the brain and other organs, which would kill her faster than anything else.

  Jebbins and Michetti wrenched the backboard and stretcher from the helicopter. As Rialto was pushed into the ER Jebbins gave his report to the head nurse. “Nineteen years of age, evisceration wound to the left lower quadrant, we don’t know how long, unconscious when we found her. Carotid pulse is weak, one thirty, no radial or pedal pulses, O2 sat is eighty, respirations thirty five per minute, B-P ninety over sixty, gag reflex intact,” he read off from the report, noting in his mind how the oropharyngeal airway had not worked. Rialto had vomited twice on the flight. Fortunately Michetti had no issue helping him to scrape the vomitus out of her mouth.

  Michetti helped Jebbins wheel the stretcher into a trauma bay, and took a position beside him as he rattled off the report once again and prepared to assist the team in moving Rialto from the stretcher to a bed.

  “Ready?” the doctor asked. “On three. One, two, three.”

  They slid Rialto, whose breath now came in silent gasps, across the gulf, onto the bed, and she was fitted with leads, IVs, and probes by the precise trauma staff. Michetti followed Jebbins outside the room and to a charge desk. He got a signature for his run report and turned to leave. Michetti started to follow, but he shook his head. “Stay here with her,” he said.

  “What can I do?” she demanded.

  “Tell them whatever they need to know.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To pick up more,” he called over his shoulder, as he jogged away.

  Michetti sat down on a still unused bed in the hallway, and listened to the helicopter take off. The sound slowly faded away, and she was left alone with thoughts she had no desire to pursue. She looked in on Rialto, peering around the curtain into the room. They had intubabted her, and an assortment of IV lines snaked into her arms. A catheter had been placed as well, and rust colored urine seeped into the bag hanging from the side of the bed. Michetti shuddered at the sight. The woman was younger than her, barely more than a girl, really, she thought to herself. She turned away and went back to the bed. Her phone vibrated, and she absently took it out to see who was calling. Fisher. She answered, and he told her that Alvarez was being transported to Baylor. She assured him that she would make contact with the agent as soon as he arrived. With that done, she hung up, and let Fisher continue with his incident command duties. She felt singularly useless here. Her job was to examine death, not prevent it, not directly at least. Jebbins probably just thought that she was no use because she was a woman, but in a medical setting she simply was indeed not of much help. There was nothing to do but sit, and wait for Alvarez to arrive.

  Bellows was found by a group of DPS troopers who were marking the bodies and pieces of bodies. When they discovered the twisted remains of the deputy beside the school they elected to also clear his vehicle, and opened the back door to find a cramped and still terrified Bellows curled in the plastic seat. He stumbled out limply and was given a bottle of water before being escorted to the rally point near the incident command center. No one thought to confiscate the camera that he still clutched, and after sitting down in the crowd of beleaguered survivors and draining the bottle, he decided to pass the time by studying the photos on the card. Most were unusable blurs, but several proved to be remarkably clear and graphic. He skipped through all of them quickly, not wanting to focus on any of the gruesome evidence, but after a few minutes he forced himself to reexamine the clear ones of his ill-fated photographer, and of the family. He gulped hard at the details he had been too terrified to notice in the night and tried to forget the reptilian fear that had reduced him to screaming panic.

  He closed out the screen and gazed off at nothing in particular, contemplating what he could do with such photos, and whether he should publish them at all. It took all of five minutes to solidify his decision. Bellows smiled, as much as he could for the moment at least, then got up and tried to find someone who could help him leave this sickening place.