By John Dixon
McClellan blocked the haymaker and countered with a right cross, clipping the big hillbilly on the jaw and dropping him to the muddy ground. The musclebound redneck sat there, rubbing his chin and shaking his head, obviously trying to clear the cobwebs and likely struggling to comprehend just how this hundred-and-sixty-pounder had gotten the best of him.
“You have the right to remain silent,” McClellan said, snapping cuffs over the young man’s thick wrists. “Anything you say can and—”
This brought the guy around. He staggered to a knee and glared up at McClellan, who continued to read him his rights. “Hey,” the redneck said. “You can’t do that. You’re not a cop.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” McClellan said. “I’m a game warden. That’s law enforcement, and you’re under arrest.”
“What charge?”
“Poaching deer,” McClellan said, “and assaulting an officer.”
The guy cursed and struggled to his feet. “I didn’t poach no deer. I got my uncle’s tag right here in my shirt pocket. Pull it out and see for yourself.”
McClellan pulled the tag. “Well, then,” he said, pausing to read the name, “I’ll see that Otis Yates gets a citation, too. This is hunting, son, not baseball. No pinch-hitting allowed.”
#
McClellan was just leaving the police barracks when a gray-haired officer stepped between him and the door. The man was obviously ex-military: short gray hair, squared-away uniform, ramrod posture, and hard-glittering eyes. He’d seen action. Undoubtedly against bloods in the V-Wars. Probably against beats, too, before that. Afghanistan, Iraq.
McClellan himself had waged war in these countries and others, first as line infantry, then with the 75th Ranger Regiment, and finally with Delta, before getting reassigned to a Homeland V-Team back in the States, where he’d seen enough action to last him ten lifetimes and had lost everything—including most of his soul—in the process.
“Officer McClellan,” the gray-haired policeman said, extending a hand. “I’m Dave Garrity, Harmony Hollow’s chief of police. Spare a minute?”
McClellan nodded, and Garrity led him into a small room that smelled strongly of new carpet. There was a metal desk and chairs and a mirror on the wall. Garrity sat on a corner of the desk. McClellan remained standing, took out his cigarettes, and offered one to Garrity. A few years earlier, smoking would have been strictly forbidden in a government office—and perhaps it still was, technically speaking—but the V-Wars had provided more pressing concerns than secondhand smoke. Thank God for small favors.
Garrity said, “That’s the fourth man you’ve brought us in… how long have you been here?”
“A week,” McClellan said. “Three days in the field.”
Garrity squinted over the cigarette. “Your predecessors… we didn’t see them often.”
“Perhaps if you had, I wouldn’t be here.”
Garrity took a deep drag, nodding and shrugging at the same time. “Perhaps.”
McClellan waited. He had an idea of what was coming but wanted to see how Garrity would handle it. He didn’t have to wait long.
Garrity said, “Harmony Hollow isn’t like other places. Its citizens are ridge runners to the core. You know the term? They have their own ways, largely settle their own disputes. Country justice, you might call it. And some don’t have much respect for the law.”
McClellan ashed his cigarette on the new carpet. “I can understand that.”
Garrity narrowed his eyes. “You have a dog in this fight, McClellan? What I mean is, is this personal for you? Off the record. Are you trying to start a war?”
McClellan said, “I’m just upholding the law, Chief.”
“Did you know Tartakower?”
McClellan took a long drag, looking Garrity in the eyes. “I’m not here to avenge his murder, if that’s what you’re getting at, but I’m not a passive man. It’s my duty to enforce the laws of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and if these boys step out of line, I’m going to run them in.”
Garrity considered this for a second, then offered what seemed to McClellan a measured smile. “I believe you might be suffering from a degree of culture shock. These folks aren’t bad, not really. They just take some getting used to. If you let your foot off the gas for a while, you’ll—”
“The law is uniform,” McClellan said. “If we can’t agree on that, we can’t agree on anything. Poaching here is just as illegal as it is in Philadelphia. No exceptions.”
Garrity rapped his knuckles on the desk. “When Hurricane Katrina hit back in ’05, I watched thugs on TV looting New Orleans and strutting around the Superdome with AK47s, and I thought, Nothing but a bunch of goddamned savages. Here in Harmony Hollow, we have problems—mostly DUIs and fellas knocking each other’s teeth out—but watching that mess on TV, I knew that if a Katrina-sized crisis hit my town, we would come together and take care of each other. And then the V-event hit and proved me right.”
McClellan listened as Garrity told how the townsfolk had come together, one and all, not with torches and pitchforks but with shotguns and deer rifles, to root out the common enemy and end the conflict between beats and bloods forever. There was no hiding among such a united population.
“We take care of our own here, McClellan,” Garrity said. “Ease into the job. Back off these good old boys for a couple of weeks, see how things work. In the meantime, I’ll ride out to the mountain and give them a talking to. All right?”
McClellan exhaled smoke as he shook his head. “My job is to manage wildlife and maintain a healthy herd.”
“I could say the same thing,” Garrity said, leaning forward. “And trust me: you’ll manage best if you work with me, Officer McClellan.”
Enough of this horseshit, McClellan thought, reaching past Garrity to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray. “The way I see it,” he said, “we’re both sworn to uphold the law. That means we are working together. And I plan on holding up my end of the deal.”
“Fair enough,” Garrity said, almost managing to disguise his annoyance. “I just want you to understand who it is you’re dealing with. People here in town are civil enough, but these boys you’re riling up are strictly backwoods, through and through. Dog-patch mean, most of them. Wouldn’t think twice about using a jackknife on you, and there are some that might even come after you with a double-barrel… if you provoke them.”
“They’d better hit me pretty good the first time,” McClellan said, and turned to leave.
“McClellan,” Garrity said.
McClellan turned in the doorway.
Garrity laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t fight a two-front war. I’m with you. Just take your time and watch your back.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, Chief.”
“I knew Tartakower,” Garrity said. “Hell of nice guy. He got in on our card game, Friday nights. You might even like to join us yourself.”
“I’m not much for games.”
Garrity spread his hands. Suit yourself, the gesture said. “The sons-of-bitches shot him in the back and dropped him in an old well, way out in the woods.” He shook his head. “According to the coroner, Tartakower survived for two days out there in that well. I can’t imagine dying that way. The pain, the despair, the feeling of abandonment.”
McClellan controlled himself. “That all, Chief?”
“One more thing. This Johnston boy, he might be a special problem. He’s kin to the Yates family. Heard the name?”
McClellan nodded. “Otis Yates?”
“The boy’s uncle… or maybe his cousin. They’re all tangled up, the Yateses and the Johnstons. Anybody by the name of Yates, you take extra special care. There’s a whole clan of them out on the mountain, and they’ve got one foot back in the Stone Age. They’re wily as bobcats and meaner than rattlesnakes, the Yateses. You’d do well to steer clear of them. We’ve got plenty of other poachers to keep you busy.”
“Where, exactly, do the Yateses live?”
Garrity gave him a hard stare.
McClellan forced a smile. “So I can avoid them.”
“They have a junkyard off of Fire Tower Road, up on top of Barstow Mountain. You see a sign for Yates’s Scrap and Salvage, you’ll know it’s time to turn around and come back to town.”
McClellan turned his back on the man and walked out.
He pushed through the station door and into a crisp autumn evening. The waxing moon, nearly full, was already peeking over the mountains. The good smell of wood smoke tinged the air, and all up and down the wide street, trees blazed in a stunning display of yellow and orange and red. From an adjacent playground came the shrill and gleeful voices of children, a sound that never failed to bring a smile to his face and an ache to his heart.
Don’t start, he cautioned himself. You can’t afford to hurt until this is all over.
Harmony Hollow was a beautiful town, almost perfect, with wide streets lined in stately Victorians with wraparound porches and black shutters and neatly manicured lawns boasting mature oaks and maples and sycamores. From the streetlamps hung nostalgic banners showcasing the pictures of local veterans who’d served in various conflicts down through the ages, from the Civil War to the V-Wars, the latter of which, although ongoing elsewhere, had obviously been put to rest by this little town. No MRAPS prowled these streets, nor even foot patrols of troopers in full battle-rattle. Also missing were boarded windows and caution tape, brick walls pocked by gunfire and scorched by flames, and shop windows covered over by metal gates writhing in graffiti propaganda. Stop the genocide! Beats 4 Bloods! People moved freely and fearlessly here, and Harmony Hollow appeared very much like some quaint little town straight out of the blessed days before the V-event had washed the world in blood.
Couldn’t Garrity see all this? Not just the beauty of Harmony Hollow but also the threat posed by the belligerent rednecks from its mountainous outskirts?
He couldn’t figure the man’s reluctance. Was the police chief afraid? It didn’t seem possible, given his hard-ass comportment and military background, but if fear didn’t have him by the balls, what did? Something even more loathsome than cowardice? Did Garrity have kin up on Barstow Mountain? Could he be on the take?
“Son of a bitch,” McClellan said, reaching his Ford. Someone had shattered the windshield. Lying in the driver’s seat, surrounded by pebbles of broken glass, was a brick, onto which someone had tied a note—as if this crime was the work of some unimaginative cartoon character.
Fuming, he picked up the brick and read its message.
YOU ARE A ASSHOLE!!! GO HOME FUCKFACE!!!
It’s “an” asshole, you illiterate bastards, he thought, and tossed the brick into the passenger foot well. It would take more than a brick and a broken windshield to scare him off. He hadn’t been entirely truthful with Garrity. This assignment was personal to him.
Jonas Tartakower had been a friend and more: a mentor, first in the army, showing McClellan the ropes and putting him in for Delta, then stateside, making a place for him on the V-Team. Later, after everything happened with Sara and the baby, and McClellan couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t carry on another day on the V-Team, killing, killing, killing, he’d confessed his emptiness to Jonas, who had by that time “retired” to the Game Commission. Jonas had opened a Commission door, nudged McClellan through it, and, in doing so, saved his life. Organization to organization, McClellan had followed his friend and mentor, leading him at last to this place, where he would sooner die alone in the woods a thousand times than leave his friend’s murder unsolved.
I will make these animals suffer, he vowed.
He brushed away the broken glass, and as he hoisted himself into the seat, he noticed the square of light that was the small window toward the back of the police station, and the face framed there, peering out at him. A second later, Garrity stepped back out of view, allowing the drape to fall shut—but not before McClellan had registered the delighted smile on the police chief’s face.
#
The next morning, McClellan dropped off his truck at Paulson’s Garage, where they told him it would take a day to replace his windshield. Then he walked across town to the Game Commission office, which was nothing but a converted house trailer conveniently adjacent to Ladrido’s Boarding House, where he’d rented a Spartan room.
“You sure do have the diner in a stir,” Desiree said. She was young—twenty-two or twenty-three, McClellan figured—but a competent office manager nonetheless, and he was glad to have her.
He gave her half a grin. “Happy to give them something to chew other than those third-rate pancakes.”
“Some of them think you’re just what the doctor ordered,” Desiree said. “Others call you the Cowboy.” She made a face. “I don’t think they mean that in a nice way.”
“Well,” McClellan said, “I’ll try not to let it hurt my feelings.” He straightened the framed photo of Jonas Tartakower that hung by the door, then returned to the counter, where he’d been leafing through Jonas’s old notebooks… to little avail.
The door slammed open, and into the office stormed a red-haired man with a squat pumpkin head set atop a mountainous body. He wore a ratty green-and-brown flannel with the sleeves rolled up, exposing meaty forearms matted in orange-red hair dense as orangutan fur. He waved a citation at McClellan, his upper lip lifting in a snarl. “You McClellan?”
“I am,” McClellan said. “You must be Otis Yates.”
“You’re goddamned right, I’m Otis Yates!” The gigantic redneck crumpled the citation and slammed his fist onto the counter. “I want to know what you mean, putting my name on this thing.”
“I cited you,” McClellan said, keeping his voice level, “because your nephew informed me that you had given him your deer tag.”
“Bullshit,” Yates said, poking the air between them with a stubby finger. He leaned forward, and the stink of the man slapped McClellan in the face. Not just sweat and cigarettes and booze but a rank animal odor, too, as if the burly man had spent the morning wrestling a wet dog. “He stole it from my house. Confessed to Garrity and everything.”
“That’s not the way he told it when I arrested him,” McClellan said.
A grin stretched grotesquely across Yates’s wide head. His teeth and eyes were yellow. “Garrity released him on his own recognizance this morning.”
Released him? McClellan thought. What was Garrity up to?
“My kin’s lived up on Barstow Mountain for two hundred and fifty years. We’ve had outsiders come here before, trying to boss us,” Yates said, and turned toward the framed photo of Jonas Tartakower. “They never last long. Do yourself a favor, city boy, and leave my kin alone.”
McClellan said, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Yates. I don’t know what kind of arrangement you’ve got with Garrity, but you so much as fart sideways out in those woods, and I’m going to haul you back to town and toss you in a cage.”
Yates’s smile curdled. His yellow eyes burned with menace, and tufts of red hair jutted like flame from his flaring nostrils. “Come out to my mountain and see what happens!” He slapped the counter and marched out, slamming the door so hard that the framed photo of Jonas Tartakower fell from the wall, shattering its glass. In the silence, McClellan could hear the crumpled citation Yates had left on the counter transforming, spreading out from its compressed state like a thing emerging from a chrysalis.
Desiree pushed her hands forward on her desk, fingers splayed, and released a shuddering breath. “I’ve never been so frightened in all my life,” she said. “That man scares me to death.”
“Don’t let him,” McClellan said. “He’s fixing to run head-on into a stone embankment.”
Desiree nodded but didn’t look convinced. She rose, went to where the picture had fallen, and started to whisk broken glass into a dustpan.
“Stop,” McClellan said. He knew now what he had to do. Tomorrow, when he had his truck back, he would pay a midnight visit to Barstow Mountain. With the cold snap, Yates would almost certainly have fresh meat hanging. And if McClellan spotted so much as a poached squirrel, he could get a search warrant without interference from Garrity. “Give me that broom,” he told her. “I clean up my own messes.”
#
The sun was just rising when Desiree pulled off the dirt road and parked beside the police cruisers. McClellan double-checked his sidearm, told his officer manager to stay put, and crossed the hilltop field, his boots brushing the frosty hay stubble until he joined the rough circle of men hunched like vultures around the carcass.
He shook hands with Garrity, who introduced his deputies and the aggrieved party, an old farmer named Orville Foskins. Shaking with palsy, the white-haired farmer nodded at McClellan then glared at the remains of his dead cow—what little was left of it—through eyes foggy and blue with cataracts.
McClellan crouched. The cow’s ribs had been pulled apart at the sternum, which, like nearly every scrap of flesh and hide and many of the bones, was missing. Several feet away lay a large femur. He got up and walked over and rolled it with the toe of his boot. Deep grooves in the bone there.
“Looks like a goddamned crocodile chewed on it,” Foskins said, fixing McClellan with his rheumy gaze. “What the hell did this?”
McClellan looked at Foskins, looked at the yawning ribcage between them, and looked back at the farmer.
Given this mess, the bite marks, and the previous night’s moon—nearly full—he figured he knew exactly what they were dealing with here.
So what’s the call?
If he shared his suspicions, Central would call Homeland. A W-Team would rush straight here, and he’d spend God only knew how long bolted to that investigation, when he needed the freedom to hunt Jonas’s murderers. So what he said was, “A big enough pack of wild dogs could clean a carcass like this.”
“And drag my heifer halfway across the damned field?” Foskins jerked around and jabbed a gnarled finger across the field to the hedgerow fence line and forest beyond.
“Could be a bear,” Garrity said. “Last season, a guy just south of here bagged one close to eight hundred pounds. Animal like that could drag your cow all the way to town.”
“Let’s walk over to where you say this thing was killed,” McClellan said. “I want to see what you’re talking about, Foskins, the abomination.”
“No need to hike across the field, Officer McClellan,” Garrity said. “Once the offices open, I’ll call in the evidence team.” He offered one of his fake smiles. “They’ll see things that guys like us might miss.”
McClellan wanted to tell the police chief to go to hell, but Foskins had initially called the police station, so this was a crime scene first and a wildlife conservation matter second. The word obstruction rose in McClellan’s mind like a bad moon. He put on his own false smile, saying, “I won’t mess up any of your evidence—and besides, I might notice something your boys don’t see every day… a track or a bit of fur. Might save them some time and”—turning to Foskins—“get this man any possible compensation as quickly as possible.”
The old man nodded sharply. “Let’s go, then,” he said, and marched jerkily across the field to the fence line, where another patch of field was beaten down and dark with blood. McClellan saw bone fragments and bristly cow hair and bits of unidentifiable tissue, buzzing with flies. Drawing nearer, he winced at the smell, a blend of coppery blood and cow manure and something else, something rancid and musky and hormonal, like a buck in ruck, only stronger, sour, and sharply offensive.
McClellan spotted the fence post. Foskins hadn’t exaggerated. Dark with blood and flies, it really did look like someone had painted the thing.
This is real, he told himself. You must face that—even if the timing is inconvenient.
But not yet. Not tonight. If Homeland got involved now, he’d be tied up for weeks. This could wait for a day. Full moon or no full moon, tonight he had to drive out to Barstow and see about catching the sons of bitches who’d let his friend suffer for two days before dying alone in a well.
All at once, McClellan was pointedly aware of the nearness of the trees. A stand of pines overhanging the barbed wire fence. Dark as midnight in there. It felt like the woods were staring back at him.
A cold wind moaned across the field, and McClellan thrilled with gooseflesh.
That’s not cold making you shudder.
“There’s your abomination,” Foskins said, pointing at the post. “Painted up just as red as a stop sign in hell,” he spat in disgust. “Think a pack of dogs did that, too?”
McClellan studied the scene. It was still dark here in the shade of the forest. A solitary fly landed on his face. He swatted it away, then thumbed his flashlight to life and panned across the matted hay. The ground around the post was covered in blood, too, almost as if…
He leaned over the post and lifted his beam, carving a tunnel of light into the branches overhead… and managed not to flinch when he saw it.
The other men gathered around, looking up.
“What in the hell?” someone said.
Twenty feet overhead, strung through the branches like strands of Christmas lights, the ropy entrails of the cow shone greasily in the light.
“That’s how the post got painted,” McClellan said. “Last night, it rained blood.”
Foskins stared up, all the color gone from his face. “Vampires!”
“No,” McClellan said. “Vampires wouldn’t waste so much blood… even cow’s blood.”
“A werewolf, then,” Foskins said.
Garrity chuckled. “Let’s not get crazy, Orville. Werewolves are rare. We’ve never had one in these parts before, and I doubt like hell we have one now.”
McClellan nodded in false agreement, thinking, Oh yes, we do have one… and judging by that fake smile, Chief Garrity, you know it.
#
He awoke just before midnight and sat up as stiffly as a robot, blinking in the half-darkness of his boarding house room. The light of the full moon fell silver-white through the open curtains. Automatically, his eyes went to his phone on the nightstand, and just as automatically, he thought of calling her.
But that would be a mistake.
Even if it wasn’t midnight, he knew what would happen. A cheery nurse answering, “Whispering Pines, this is so-and-so speaking, how may I help you?” Then a long wait for the nurse to return and tell him, “I’m sorry, Mr. McClellan, she doesn’t want to talk today.”
Sara… poor, broken Sara… come back to me… we can rebuild our life together…
But the room was small and cold, and he was alone, and he would remain alone until the impossible happened, and the V-Wars ended, allowing Sara to escape catatonia.
He rose and put on his black V-Team jumpsuit—sans insignia—his boots and body armor and holsters. He did not call. Instead, he picked up his phone and keys and left the room.
#
He pulled off Fire Tower Road onto a rutted log road, hiding the Ford from anyone who might drive past.
He slid the H&K MP7 machine pistol into its thigh holster, patted the Desert Eagle .50-caliber hand cannon on his hip, double-checked the .38 in his ankle holster, and pulled the stubby Mossberg 12-gauge from the truck. He’d loaded his pockets with first aid supplies, extra magazines, and two grenades. Overkill? Almost certainly. But as they said in the teams, Better safe than sorry, and better sorry than dead.
McClellan locked the truck and breathed in the good, crisp night air. Overhead, rags of cloud glowed silver in the moonlight. An owl hooted down in the hollow.
He walked back downhill to the Yates’s Scrap and Salvage sign. Duct-taped to this was a sheet of paper sheathed in kitchen cling wrap that caught the glare of his flashlight. In bold font, it announced, No Trees Passing!!!
He chuckled. Redneck auto correct at its finest.
His levity passed swiftly. On an eerie night like this, with the dark pines bending in the wind, sighing and creaking and groaning, it didn’t seem entirely impossible that some ancient elm might be walking, bent and black and hungry, through the forest.
He climbed up the driveway until the pines flanking it gave way to broadleaf and scrub, and off to the left, he could see a moonlit field. He went in this direction, wading through weeds and snagging against briars until he topped a rise and broke through a hedgerow onto a wide, mown field, where he whistled low, stopped by the sight awaiting him there.
Row upon row of cars stood deserted in the field, a maze of metal and glass and chrome shining in the moonlight. This was no rust bucket graveyard, however. Many of these cars were in great shape, practically new.
He saw plates from all over. Mostly Pennsylvania, but plenty from Jersey and New York. Others from Maryland, Ohio, and farther… Virginia, Maine, even one from Arizona.
Yates is running a chop shop, he thought. And one hell of a big one. And the fact that they were just sitting out in the open was additional proof that Yates knew that he had nothing to fear from the police.
Wonder what kind of car Garrity’s wife’s driving these days? McClellan thought.
But he wasn’t here to investigate auto theft.
At the edge of the car lot sat an unmarked tow truck. Beyond that, a road of sorts was beaten into the dirt. McClellan followed this through towering stacks of scrap. Approaching the mountaintop, he saw lights through the trees and heard dogs barking.
Good, he thought. Keep barking. That way, if the wind shifted and they scented him, they couldn’t sound the alarm—they would already be barking.
He reached the end of the scrap yard and stared out into the open, where the full moon washed the Yates compound in silvery light. At the center of several outbuildings stood what must have been the ancestral Yates home, a dilapidated farmhouse badly in need of a paint job and general rehabilitation. The wide wraparound porch sagged, held up at one corner by a pile of cement blocks… and in another, almost unbelievably, by an engine block. One shutter hung loose, reminding McClellan curiously of a winking eye. There were lights on in nearly every room.
Across the wide patch of matted weeds that passed for a yard stood a chain-link kennel filled with barking dogs—German shepherds, pit bulls, a Doberman—all going crazy, banging against the fencing. The dogs hadn’t noticed him, thanks to his concealment and the direction of the wind, but something sure had whipped them into a frenzy.
Across from the house was the chop shop, a hangar-style half-pipe garage of corrugated aluminum perhaps thirty feet high and four times as long. That’s where the deer would be hanging. The wide doorway and small windows glowed yellow. There was a big Dodge Power Ram parked on the gravel drive.
His attention was stop-punched, however, by a sight that made absolutely no sense. Between the hangar and the farmhouse, a massive blue silo jutted into the moonlit sky like the enormous phallus of some pagan god lying just beneath the soil of this sour ground.
Why would Yates have a silo up here? There was no farm, no herd.
He crept to the silo. Up close, he realized that it was ringed in caged HVAC units. Weird…
A spigot protruded from the silo over a catch grate. He crouched down, keeping the silo between the house and him, twisted his penlight to life, and grinned at the rusty brown stains beneath the spigot.
This wasn’t really a silo at all but a disguised meth factory, likely a multi-level operation that cooked, packaged, and readied the drug for distribution. The HVAC units controlled the temperature and vented the poisonous fumes, and the spigot allowed them to route away toxic run-off and spray down any residue, preventing any casual observer from discovering evidence. Well, McClellan was no casual observer.
He was going to break this syndicate wide open. Burn them for stealing cars, running a chop shop, cooking meth, and, yes, poaching animals. Much of this would be up to the police—the state police, he thought, not that crooked mother-shepherd, Garrity—but McClellan would push for prosecution of everything, including the dumping of toxic chemicals. Get the EPA involved, the IRS, everybody. But what he really needed was evidence that these assholes had murdered his friend. Jonas would have justice at last. With this in mind, he used his phone to start filming seconds later, when the pair of rednecks emerged from the hangar.
Despite the cold, Yates was shirtless, his naked upper torso a pale barrel furred in orange, jiggling with fat, and heavy with muscle. His face and chest and arms were splattered in blood. Were they butchering deer in there?
The squirrely looking slip of a guy with him had to be family, given the straggly orange hair and goatee. A son, maybe.
Something clanked overhead.
McClellan leaned back into the shadows and saw another man—Johnston, the burly nephew, by the look of his silhouette—crawling around on top of the hangar. “All set,” he called down. Yates said something to the skinny guy, who jogged across the gravel and climbed the silo ladder like a monkey until he was level with Johnston.
“Coming your way, Skeeter,” Johnston said, and there was a groaning of metal on metal as a long metal tube swung stiffly away from the top of the hangar.
The red-haired guy—Skeeter, McClellan told himself, thinking that was one name he wouldn’t need to write down to remember—reached out, grabbed the end of the pipe, and affixed it to a section of pipe that ran like a massive downspout the rest of the way up the silo.
Only it wasn’t a downspout, McClellan thought. It was an up-spout… a blower pipe, the tube farmers used to fill their silos with grain. Yates must be storing chemicals in the garage, then piping them over to his cleverly disguised meth lab as needed.
“Secure?” Yates called up.
“Tighter than a weasel’s asshole,” Skeeter called down.
Yates said, “Well, get down here, then. We don’t have much time.”
Johnston disappeared over the other side of the hangar, and Skeeter started his descent.
McClellan stayed very still, running his fingertip over the trigger guard of the shotgun.
He was filming again by the time Yates sent the others inside the hangar, telling them to get everything ready. Then Yates reached into the bed of the truck, grunted, and backed away, tugging. A black mass the size of a couch fell heavily to the ground.
It was a dead cow. A massive Angus… just like Orville Foskins raised. The animal had a length of blood-stained cloth wrapped around its neck. Yates grabbed the hind legs and started singlehandedly dragging the dead animal—which had to weigh close to a ton—across the gravel into the hangar.
That’s when McClellan understood. Yates wasn’t just a poacher and a car thief and a drug dealer and a probable murderer. He was a werewolf. Only that could explain his incredible strength. Lycanthropy mutated muscle architecture, surrendering fine motor skills for accelerated reflexes, explosive gross motor commitment, and superhuman strength. And what about the others? Were they fangs, too? Likely at least some of them, McClellan figured. After all, the condition was hereditary, just like vampirism.
After Yates dragged the cow into the garage, McClellan circled back into the deeper darkness and placed the call.
Desiree answered, sounding groggy. Once she understood who was calling, she woke quickly.
“Sorry to call so late,” he whispered. “I need your help.”
“No problem,” she said. “Anything.”
He told her where he was, what he’d seen, and that he needed her to contact Central Command and the state police, who were twenty minutes away in Towanda. “I’m emailing you some footage. Share it with them.”
“What about Chief Garrity?”
“No,” he said. The man was obviously dirty. No way could he have overlooked this operation otherwise. Remembering the police chief’s behavior in Foskins’s field, he wondered if Garrity had known all along that Yates was the werewolf.
“If he’s a…” Desiree said, “…a werewolf, you’d better get out of there, sir.”
“I’ll be okay,” McClellan said. The girl was right—staying was dangerous—but when the state police arrived, he wanted to take Yates down personally, look him in those yellow wolf eyes, and ask him point blank about Jonas Tartakower.
Within the hangar, a motor kicked on, low and rumbling. Then he heard the whine of power saws.
He thanked Desiree and hung up, then hurriedly sent the video clips her way.
From inside came a loud rattling clatter like someone feeding rakes into a wood chipper. Overhead, the chute that ran from the top of the hangar to the silo started to vibrate.
What the hell?
He double-timed it toward the nearest window, keeping the silo between himself and the barking dogs.
If Yates is a werewolf, why are the dogs contained? Everything McClellan had read on the subject said that werewolves let their dogs roam free. So why were Yates’s dogs locked up?
Can’t believe everything you’re taught, he thought. Especially when it comes to bloods and fangs.
Reaching the hangar, he peered through the window at a grisly scene. The bloody cloth that had been wrapped around the cow’s neck lay on the floor. The three rednecks stood, drinking beer and looking at the cow, which hung upside down at the center of the garage bay, draining blood like motor oil into a floor grate. After a time, they set down their beers and took out knives, and McClellan watched as they eviscerated the animal. Yates wrangled the tremendous gut pile a few feet away, where it oozed a stream of bright red blood across the bowed floor and into the grate. Johnston used a power saw to decapitate the cow, and the men worked in unison, skinning the carcass.
Behind them idled the grumbling machine with a stocky frame and a wide-mouthed hopper, like a wood chipper on steroids. From its base ran a pair of thick tubes. One disappeared out of McClellan’s view, toward the rear of the hangar; the other attached to a brass fixture in the floor near the drain. As gore oozed into the grate, the tube vibrated. A heavier hose rose from the top of the machine to the center of the ceiling—right where Johnston had swung the silage pipe to Skeeter.
McClellan filmed it all. What were these bastards up to?
When they finished flaying the cow, Skeeter rolled the hide and carted it off and tossed it onto a nearby workbench.
The saw whined again as Johnston powered it up the spine, cutting the carcass in half lengthwise, so that the halves wobbled back and forth like punching bags.
Yates leaned in and took a big bite out of one haunch. He let his head roll back and gobbled the meat, barely chewing before he choked down the flesh like a gorging hound.
McClellan considered stepping into the hangar and putting the scattergun on them, but if they didn’t respond well, this would quickly turn into one hell of a mess. And besides, who knew how many people—and werewolves—were in the big house?
Better to wait for the cavalry to arrive. Fifteen minutes had passed since he’d called Desiree. Only five or ten more minutes until—
Somewhere inside the hangar, a woman screamed.
McClellan jolted with surprise and watched Yates bark toward the back of the hangar, which was out of McClellan’s line of vision.
He crept to the back of the hangar, peered through the window there, and went cold. Hanging from the crossbeams were people. Not cows, not deer, but people. Living people, twenty or thirty men and women, naked and shackled by the wrists, hanging so that their toes barely touched the cement floor. Some struggled fruitlessly, while others hung still with eyes closed, as if praying. They were all gagged, save for the screaming woman whose gag had fallen away from her mouth.
McClellan stared in horror and revulsion. All those cars out there. Yates had been stealing not only vehicles but drivers. Why, though? Ransom? Sex trade?
Then, with a chill, he noted the floor beneath them. It was bowed like the floor beneath the cow, complete with a drain, near which the grumbling machine’s other hose vibrated. In a kind of slow-motion nightmare, he leaned, widening his field of vision and tracing the crimson trail from the mouth of the grate back to the red mess hanging in chunks, the modest-sized gut pile underneath, and the raven-haired human head lying decapitated beside it.
They were butchering not just beef but human flesh. McClellan felt his gorge rise, and with it rose his rage.
Johnston marched into view and slapped the woman hard in the face, yelling at her to shut up. He lifted the decapitated head by its long, black hair and leered at the woman, who started screaming again. He carried it out of view, and seconds later, McClellan winced at the rattling clatter of the chipper and the chunky tumbling sound as the tube overhead carried its unspeakable silage up into the silo.
And in that second, McClellan no longer cared what they were doing with their mysterious silo. The state police would be here any minute, but he could wait for them no longer. He had to stop these monsters.
Fingers tingling madly, he jogged into the hangar and put the Mossberg on Yates, who stood perhaps ten yards away—can’t-miss distance with a shotgun. “Hands up!”
Skeeter stuck his hands into the air, but Yates grinned his yellow smile. He didn’t even look surprised. “The game warden. Didn’t think you’d have the balls to actually show up here.”
“Hands up!” McClellan repeated. “Get them on top of your head.” Then, with a half-turn toward the rear of the hangar, “You, too, Johnston!”
But Johnston had dipped behind the shackled captives.
Shit.
McClellan could see his big shape moving behind them into the very back of the hangar.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Johnston,” McClellan shouted. “I see you back there. Come on out with your hands up. “And you two,” he said, swinging the barrel back toward Yates and Skeeter—the former of whom still hadn’t put up his hands. “I said to get your hands on top of your head.”
Yates took a step forward. His yellow eyes glowed brightly. “Or else what?”
“Or else this,” McClellan said, took three steps forward, and pulled the trigger. The shotgun boomed, and the side of beef swayed, a fist-sized hole blown through the ribs.
Skeeter half-squatted, whining with terror.
Yates laughed, but raised his hands slowly, looking bored and amused all at the same time.
“Look out,” the shackled woman called, “he’s got a gun!”
As McClellan broke for the door, he spotted the rifle barrel sticking out from between two frantically jerking captives and saw the muzzle flash.
Crack-crack-crack!
One round went wide. Another snapped close by his head. The third ricocheted off the hangar wall as he sprinted out the door. McClellan couldn’t return fire, not when Johnston was using the captives as human shields. Yates’s laughter roared and receded. He was on the move, no doubt getting a weapon… or transforming into one.
Johnston fired another burst, punching a line of holes in the aluminum hangar mere inches from McClellan. Time to move…
Then a sound caught his attention—approaching sirens—and glancing downhill, he saw a long line of vehicles winding up out of the valley.
Yes!
He just had to survive a few minutes until they arrived—no small feat in a gunfight.
He ran back to the silo, rounding its corner as behind him, a shotgun went boom!… chug-chug… boom!
McClellan hollered as pellets burned into his shoulder and lower leg and pinged off the silo. He’d caught two or three pieces of what felt like white-hot birdshot.
He leaned out from the silo and blasted away with the Mossberg—fire-pump-fire-pump-fire-pump—and watched Skeeter spill backward till only his boots and twitching legs were visible.
Served the dumb bastard right, matching birdshot against buck at fifty-some yards.
As McClellan thumbed more shells into the magazine, a tremendous bellow shook the hangar. It was unlike anything he had ever heard, more akin to a lion’s roar than any noise a dog or wolf might make. The roar was so loud and primal that he took an involuntary step backward, every hair on his body standing on end. The Yates-monster was coming for his blood.
Behind him, the penned dogs yipped and howled madly.
He glanced toward the steep driveway. He could hear the sirens growing louder and see lights bouncing uphill but still at range. Hurry, hurry, hurry!
A horrible racket, the barking and yowling of a wolf pack, erupted within the farmhouse, and turning in that direction, he saw silhouettes moving quickly behind the windows.
What kind of a hornets’ nest have you kicked?
He slung his shotgun over one shoulder, yanked the MP7 from its thigh holster, and twisted in the direction of the hangar doorway, which remained empty, save for the unmoving legs of Skeeter.
Good. He needed every second he could buy.
The farmhouse door slammed open, and the pack of abominations clambered onto the porch. He’d seen videos of werewolves during training, but he had never seen—and could never have anticipated the terror-inducing power—of actual fangs. They were horrible humanoid beasts, some on all fours, others tottering like dancing dogs on thin lower legs that swelled into massive thighs covered in dark fur brindled with orange. Some were lean, others fat. All possessed muscular frames and vaguely human hands sprouting wickedly curved claws. Their yellow eyes stared out from wolfish heads with bright fangs and lolling tongues. They yipped and snarled and howled as their muzzles bobbed, scenting the air.
McClellan wrestled against a primal urge to run. Coming here alone had been a colossal blunder—the act of a stupid man so distraught by the unraveling of his life that he’d ignored even the most basic tenets of not only police procedure but self-preservation—and now he was going to die for his foolishness.
Then—Oh, God—they had scented him, were looking this way, were coming off the porch, coming for him…
He opened up on them with the MP7, raking it back and forth. Werewolves hunched and tumbled and yipped and turned away, packing injured legs and retreating, but the core of the pack, several strong, loped straight at him, growling and barking. He dropped the empty magazine, reloaded, and blasted into the pack.
Fifty yards, forty…
He saw hunks of fur and muscle spinning away like bloody divots.
Thirty yards…
Another dropped, and another, and another, but two pressed on, eyes glowing and jaws snapping.
Twenty yards…
He shot one between the eyes… and his weapon was empty.
Ten yards.
Reflexively, he threw the empty machine pistol at the remaining wolf-thing, a massive dark-furred monster streaming blood from its dark coat streaked in orange as with flame. The weapon bounced harmlessly off its shoulder as it leapt growling for him.
He had just enough time to free his Desert Eagle .50-caliber from its holster before the wall of fur and muscle slammed into him. His hand bucked as the pistol fired, but then he was off his feet and tumbling through the air like a bull-tossed matador.
He crashed windless to the hard ground, half-paralyzed and expecting any second to feel the thing’s teeth sink into his flesh. But he lifted his head and saw it a few feet away, struggling to all fours and panting, streaming blood from an abdomen wound. It snarled, licking its fangs, glared with its bright yellow eyes, and lurched once more toward him.
Filled with pain, McClellan dragged his arm around and fired again, and half the thing’s head exploded in a red mist. The monster dropped, very dead, and instantly started to transform, fur reeling back in, muscles withering… a sight uncanny and terrifying and revolting and yet mesmerizing.
On the other side of the silo, he could hear the sirens arrive and go silent—they’d made it!—and their lights flip-flopped crazily, wobble-rolling across the farmhouse and the hangar and everything in between.
“You’re done for,” McClellan called to the werewolf he saw slink past the engine block and under the porch. Then, suddenly, the Desert Eagle was batted from his hand.
Before he could turn to face his attacker, something latched onto the back of his jumpsuit and hoisted him into the air like a puppy by the scruff of the neck. Struggling wildly, he lashed backward with an awkward kick. It was like stomping a mossy brick wall. Then his assailant spun him, and he was face to face with a slavering orange muzzle and yellow eyes that glowed like windows onto the fires of hell. Its lips peeled back, and its jaws opened slowly. McClellan smelled the beast’s horrible breath as strands of thick and bloody drool stretched from its yellow fangs.
“Yates,” McClellan said, and jabbed his fingers at the hateful yellow eyes—but the werewolf’s jaws snapped down on his hand like a bear trap. He screamed as fangs crunched through his flesh and bones.
Then the werewolf jerked its arm, and McClellan flew through the air, slammed into the silo, and crashed down on top of an HVAC unit. The impact knocked the wind from him, and fire lanced from his newly broken ribs.
“Help!” he cried breathlessly. The police were just around the silo, but they would never hear his urgent nightmare whisper. “I’m back here!”
The werewolf inched forward, licking its snarling lips, savoring McClellan’s pain.
McClellan couldn’t expect help, couldn’t wait for it. Feigning resignation, he rolled away to face the silo—and shoved his good hand into a cargo pocket. He gripped the cold globe inside, shoved the sphere into his mangled left hand, wrapped his right over this for strength, lifted the grenade to his teeth, and pulled the pin.
When the Yates-thing leaned over him, chortling, McClellan lashed out with his left, as he had before—and again the werewolf chomped down. McClellan shoved forward, pushing his fist deep into the thing’s mouth, and splayed his fingers as explosively as he could, propelling the grenade forward.
The Yates-thing released him and reared away, choking. McClellan bolted.
He’d just made it around the other side of the silo and into the full wash of the flip-flopping police car lights, when the grenade detonated with a muffled thump.
McClellan saw the shape of the state policemen coming toward him but focused on freeing the .38 from his ankle holster. The Yates-thing was certainly dead, but others might be lurking. With the small pistol drawn, he backed away from the nightmare scene to the front of the silo.
“You can drop that pistol, Mr. McClellan,” a familiar voice said.
McClellan whirled. “Garrity. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Garrity said, “considering the warnings I gave you.” Beside the police chief stood three of his officers. Each pointed a shotgun at McClellan. “Please disarm yourself. I’m not supposed to shoot you, but I will if you don’t comply.”
McClellan let the pistol drop to the ground. Behind the police cruisers, a line of headlights stretched all the way down the long driveway. He heard doors opening and closing, saw people coming out of their cars and trucks and minivans.
Something was wrong.
Townspeople were emerging from their vehicles, chatting excitedly, all of them dressed strangely—and uniformly—in tight, black, leather bodysuits. High-pitched laughter trilled out of the darkness.
“What the hell is going on here, Garrity?”
Garrity spread his hands and offered one of his fake smiles. “I told you that Harmony Hollow takes care of its own problems. I only wish you’d listened. You’ve caused a problem.”
“Caused a problem?” McClellan said. “Yates was a werewolf.”
Garrity shrugged. “He served his purpose. That silo behind you… it isn’t really a silo.”
“I know,” McClellan said. “It’s a meth lab.”
Now Garrity offered a genuine smile. “A meth lab? That’s good.”
One of his deputies chuckled. They still hadn’t lowered their weapons, McClellan was dismayed to see.
“It’s not a meth lab,” Garrity said, “though you do make a good parallel. That silo’s full of blood. Some of it human, some of it from animals run down by the werewolves. In fact, you might say that the Yates clan ‘cut’ the pure blood with other ‘agents’… cow blood, deer blood, whatever. The silo has a separator and an extractor, and it keeps the blood at a scrumptious 98.6 degrees.”
“You’re all vampires,” McClellan said. His insides had gone icy.
“No,” Garrity said. “Some of us are vampires… but we’re all in what you might call cahoots.”
“Well, you’re screwed now,” McClellan said. “I’ve been sending regular reports to Central. I disappear, they’re definitely launching an investigation.”
Garrity laughed. “Is that right? You’ve been delivering these messages yourself?”
“I—” And then he understood. After all, why else would Garrity be here?
Desiree stepped from behind the cruiser. In her tight and shiny black leather bodysuit, she looked like some nightmare twin of his innocent office manager. “Oh, sure thing, Officer McClellan, sir. I’ll send that right over to Central, honey,” Desiree said in a sugary sweet mocking voice.
“You, too, Desiree?”
She laughed with cruel delight.
“I’m sorry it had to go down like this, soldier,” a familiar voice that McClellan hadn’t heard for a very long time said. And his old mentor and friend, Jonas Tartakower, stepped from the darkness and put his arm around Desiree.
“Jonas,” McClellan said, and a tornado of emotions—elation, confusion, dread—spun within him. “I thought you were dead.”
“I apologize,” Jonas said. He was a small, slightly built man, with intense eyes that hinted at his brilliance and steadfast focus. He wore not black leather or game warden green but his old uniform from their V-Team days together. “I hated having to mislead you, Tommy.”
Tommy…
How long had it been since someone had called McClellan by his first name. He took a step toward his old friend. “It’s great to see you, Jonas.”
But then he noticed Jonas staring at his bloody hand—and saw the fangs descend.
No…
“Cover that injury, if you will,” Jonas said, gesturing toward the hand, his voice betraying none of the excitement suddenly burning in his eyes. “The smell is enticing enough, but the sight of all that blood might prove entirely too provocative.”
McClellan shoved both hands into his pockets. The left hand roared with pain. The right closed around his last grenade.
Townsfolk were coming uphill in pairs and trios, murmuring eagerly.
Garrity and his men blocked the gathering crowd. “Hold on, folks,” Garrity said. “We’ll tap the blood soon enough.”
“You’re having a blood party?” McClellan said.
Jonas’s eyes twinkled in the moonlight. “I’ve established an orderly, sustainable community. Everyone serves a purpose. Harmony Hollow has achieved a peace that shames the rest of the world. Bloods and beats live harmoniously side by side.”
“Oh, yeah?” McClellan said. “What about the people inside the hangar?”
“Outsiders, mostly,” Jonas said, “and a few locals who… failed to adapt. An unfortunate business, but times of great change sometimes necessitate extreme measures. The same goes for bloods who can’t pass. Everyone you see here,” he gestured behind him to the bright-eyed crowd, which vibrated with enthusiasm, “can pass as a perfectly ‘normal’ beat.”
McClellan panned the crowd. Dressed in skin-tight black leather and eying him hungrily, they looked like a wayward convention of fetishists. He saw his landlord, Mrs. Ladrido; his mechanic, Joe Paulson; the pretty young checkout girl from the supermarket, who always seemed so timid and soft-spoken and who now stared at him with eager eyes and fangs that flashed in the moonlight.
“As a wurdulak,” Jonas said, “it’s my pleasure to oversee these midnight ceremonies.” He didn’t have to explain. McClellan understood. A wurdulak would want no part of silo blood. Jonas would feed only on loved ones, family and close friends. “No worries, old friend. I didn’t recruit you as food.”
“Good to know,” McClellan said, thinking, How do I get out of here?
“On the teams, you and I worked together brilliantly,” Jonas said. “We knew our roles and shared a common mission. The citizens of Harmony Hollow are a team now, and we share a mission, too: the establishment of a unified, sustainable future.”
“And these others are just, what… collateral damage?”
Jonas smiled. “Exactly. You always were a top-notch operator, McClellan. That’s why I engineered your move here. I knew you would hunt my murderers.”
“Only they didn’t murder you,” McClellan said.
Jonas spread his hands. “The Yates clan has been very valuable to us. We don’t feed on the local population, but we still have our needs. This is our place for community. When we come here, we can let it all hang out.”
McClellan’s mind whirred, trying to devise a way out, but he could see none. There were too many of them. Dozens. All he had was a single grenade. Jonas and the police were armed, and the other vampires—all of them gyrating and giggling and transforming now—would happily tear him apart.
Around the silo, the dogs barked incessantly. Well, that was one mystery solved, anyway. The werewolves had been expecting these guests, and dogs hated bloods.
Jonas smiled. “This is what you’ve been looking for. We have order, rules, peace for beats and bloods.”
“I don’t understand peace that includes butchering people.”
“Oh no? You didn’t butcher in Iraq, Afghanistan, the V-Wars? Remember the William Penn Projects in Chester?”
McClellan suppressed a shudder, remembering how he and Jonas had stood ankle-deep in blood and fought back to back in a stairwell-become-oubliette. “That was different.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Jonas said. “In both cases, we shed blood to avoid bloodshed.”
McClellan opened his mouth but said nothing.
Then Jonas said, “Think of Sara.”
Her name hit McClellan like a punch to the gut. “I’m sorry the war broke her, Tommy, but we can put her back together. We’ll have her transferred here, to Harmony Hollow. She won’t need to know what’s happening. All she will know is that you’ve escaped the violence. All she will see here is tranquility. You can build the life she deserves.”
Jonas’s scenario stopped McClellan. Poor lost Sara. Here, he really could insulate her from the V-War, coax her from her catatonic state, and nurse her back to health. His grip loosened on the hand grenade. He pictured Sara smiling… the two of them living not in a Spartan boarding house, but sitting on the wide porch of white Victorian with black shutters, flowers in pots on the front steps, an American flag fluttering overhead, the whole scene suffused with good mountain air and beautiful fall foliage and…
“You were always like a son to me, Tommy,” Jonas said, outstretching his hand. “Join me now. Harmony Hollow will provide a template for the world. Together, we will finally end the V-Wars.”
That’s all I ever wanted, McClellan thought.
Inside the garage, the woman screamed again. The chilling sound hit McClellan like a bucket of ice water.
Laughter rippled across the crowd, drawing his attention… and he watched in terror as Mrs. Ladrido hissed and took a step forward, and an impossibly long tongue whipped from her mouth, writhing snakelike in the air. His landlady was clearly an aswang… the exact type of monster that had robbed Sara’s womb, stealing their unborn child, destroying Sara’s sanity, and ruining McClellan’s life.
“Go to hell,” McClellan said. He pulled the pin, hesitated, eying Jonas—a dangerous, dangerous man, despite his friendly demeanor and slight build, a lifelong special teams operator strengthened now through vampirism. This grenade could kill him and maybe even Garrity and his men, but there were so many others. The humans might flee, but the bloods would charge after him. So many of them. If only he could distract them…
Then he had it.
He lobbed the grenade—not toward Jonas and the vampires but against the base of the silo—and sprinted off, injuries be damned.
Behind him, the grenade exploded, and a nightmare chorus erupted as dozens of vampires cried out in gleeful bloodlust, surging at the torrent of blood rushing from the breached silo.
That’s it, McClellan thought. Come and get it!
Glancing back, he saw them diving greedily into the crimson flood, spilling onto the ground and squealing like kids on a gory Slip’n Slide.
He skirted the gory remains of Yates and stepped toward his shotgun, but there was a sharp crack, and a bullet snapped past his head. Reflexively, he backpedaled away, realizing he’d stepped briefly into Jonas’s line of fire.
“Forget the blood, you fools!” Jonas shouted at the blood-mad townsfolk. “Stop the intruder!”
Of course Jonas could resist the blood feast. As a wurdulak, the blood of random people would do him no good. He could only drink the blood of loved ones.
McClellan was his silo.
He couldn’t reach the shotgun, and there wasn’t time to search for the MP7. He could only run. Still backpedaling, he glanced at the piles of gleaming scrap. He could run that way, but they would hunt him in the junkyard and run him down in the maze of dead cars.
“Gluttons!” Jonas shouted. “I’ll do it myself.”
Here he comes…
McClellan had backed all the way to the kennel, where the dogs pounded against the chain link gate, insane with their own bloodlust.
That’s it!
As Jonas came around the silo, pistol in hand, McClellan threw the latch. The chain-link door banged into him, and the dogs, wild with rage, raced across the yard. Jonas got off three shots before the shepherds hit him. Then the pit bulls had him, and his screams knifed the night air.
Watching his former mentor die, McClellan felt a consuming emptiness as cold as the void of space. Jonas was gone, the baby was gone, even Sara—yes, he admitted to himself for the first time—even Sara was gone. His life was gone.
But he had found his purpose.
Tragedy had taken from him again and again, honing him to a lethal edge. He would exist forevermore in pursuit of only one shade of order: genocide. He would kill every last vampire on earth.
The woman in the hangar was screaming again, but she could wait. They all could. The world could…
All that mattered to him now was the slaying.
Calmly, McClellan retrieved the MP7, replaced its magazine, and charged the weapon. Then he went around the silo to where the monsters were lost to their feeding frenzy and opened up with all the hellfire burning in his soul…