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The crowd buzzed with excitement. New mayors didn’t often receive so much fanfare, but this day offered a particularly auspicious occasion. One and a half years had ticked by since the beast tore through Rose Valley, an incident that most residents had been able to put behind them. On the surface, at least. A great number of them seemed to have developed a strange, unexpected pride in having overcome the adversity.
Though he showed no excitement for the inauguration, Jake insisted that they attend anyway. He and Cam would never be friends, but Jake still voted for him when the time came. Shandi agonized in the voting booth forever. Jake never asked who she voted for.
Arrowhead cooperated once Deirdre implicated them. They insisted that she acted alone without authorization to use the seeker serum and assured the Sheriff’s Department that all vestiges of the project would be destroyed. Jake harbored doubts.
Billy’s remains had been cremated. He would certainly not be coming back now. Since Arrowhead maintained that the serum was a misunderstood drug, Jake didn’t know whether there would be any long-term side effects. With Billy dead, though, the nightmares had abated.
The crazy story about the immortal World War II soldier had made the rounds on the internet for a few days, but the pain of it all only lived on in a select few. It was just one more weird government experiment to throw on the pile, ripe for conspiracy theorists to pick apart and blame for other, unrelated things. Jake suspected that there was a lab somewhere looking into it, but the official response insisted that it was a failed experiment that would never be revisited.
Jake and Shandi stood holding hands, waiting for Cam to take the stage in front of the city limit sign. The faded red billboard that previously pictured cheetahs and giraffes now sat shrouded in a large black tarp. Jake felt uneasy at the sorts of things that might adorn the sign now.
Shandi’s phone rang. She let go of Jake’s hands and answered it.
“It’s Macy,” she said to Jake as she tapped the answer button. “Hey, baby.”
Jake strained to hear Macy’s voice on the other end, but only managed to pick up faint murmurs. Any hints as to the conversation only came when Shandi spoke again. “I know, right? The man has good tastes.”
Shandi held her left hand out in front of her as she answered. The late autumn sun danced off the diamond on her ring finger.
“No, it’s okay. I understand. You’re a big college girl now,” Shandi said into her phone.
After a moment, she asked, “How’re Miriam and Tanner?”
Jake spotted Karen across the crowd. He tapped Shandi on the shoulder and whispered, “I’m going to go say hi to Karen.”
Shandi nodded, as Jake snaked his way through the crowd. When Karen saw him, her eyes teared up. She took his hand with both of hers. “Jake. It’s good to see you.”
Though he found it awkward, Jake pulled her in and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the funeral. I’m sorry about your father.”
Karen backed away from his embrace and dabbed her face with the back of her hand. “Thanks, Jake. He was ready to go. We really appreciate what you did for him. Seeing his father one last time. It meant a lot, regardless of the outcome.”
Though he wanted to be sensitive, Jake’s curiosity got the better of him. “How’s the lawsuit going?”
“Oh, you know lawyers,” Karen said with a dismissive wave. “They won’t let me talk about it. But there’s hope that some good might come out of all this. It’s hard to stay strong, though. Some days I just want to give up on all of it.”
“Don’t give up. Billy. Your dad. Your whole family needs this.”
Karen smiled, giving Jake the distinct impression that she was already nearing the end of her rope. He could relate. He’d been talking to a lawyer about a lawsuit of his own, but Arrowhead had worked hard to pin as much blame on Deirdre as they could, and their lawyers had far more resources than he. As indignant as he had been at one time, each day stole away a little more of his resolve.
A hush fell on the crowd as Mayor Cam Donner took the stage. He wore a suit instead of a police uniform. He had abandoned his mustache in favor of a clean shave, his hair exposed without a hat and lightly tousled by the wind. Though no smaller than he had been as Sheriff, he seemed more agile and slippery than before. Jake respected the help that Cam offered when they needed it the most, and he knew that Cam would be inextricably linked to him via Shandi for the rest of his life, but he still found Cam’s desire for approval and power unsettling.
Jake said his goodbyes with Karen and made his way back to Shandi’s side as Dub Higgins followed Cam onstage. Dub’s neatly pressed khakis broadcasted an attention to detail that the previous sheriff lacked. His hand had long been out of the cast, but his fingers still curled up in an unnatural position still. It didn’t seem to faze him, and it certainly hadn’t stopped him from being elected sheriff after Cam had resigned to run for mayor.
“I gotta go, baby. Your dad’s about to give his speech.” She paused before continuing, “No. I’m sure he understands. You’re far away. You can’t come back for every little thing. Okay. I’ll call you later. Bye!”
Cam smiled into the crowd, considerably more adept at public speaking than he had been over a year ago. “Citizens of Rose Valley. I am deeply honored to have been elected as your mayor.”
The crowd erupted into cheers, claps, and hollers. It was more noise than a crowd that small should have been able to produce. Despite Miriam being the one that had taken down the beast, Cam had received the credit. To the townspeople, he saved Rose Valley from certain destruction.
“We have been through a lot. I know we have. And we stood strong. We were not deterred by our adversity. We grew from it. We are stronger now. We embraced it.”
On cue, the black tarp on the sign behind Cam fell away to reveal a new, mostly black sign. Two yellow serpentine eyes floated among a field of stars. A silhouette of the city sat below. Cursive letters adorned the top with Welcome to Rose Valley, leading into the bottom block letters spelling out: Home of the Beast.
Cheers filled the air again. Jake shuddered. Shandi looked equally horrified. They felt alone in a sea of people. They had both grown up in Rose Valley. Neither of them really wanted to leave, but it seemed inevitable to Jake in that moment that they would have to. The agony of living in a town that glorified his pain would eventually be too much for him to handle.
Jake felt a clap on his back and turned to find Steve next to him. Cory appeared beside Steve and said, “Well, this is crazypants.”
Jake just nodded, as Cam continued, “Wes. Come on up.”
Wes Morris walked up on the stage sporting an all-black football jersey, the numbers crisp and sharp. Rose Valley lost out on going to state the previous year, primarily because Wes shattered one of his wrists when the beast attacked him. Without football, he’d chosen to skip college entirely and stay in Rose Valley to work on his father’s ranch. Macy broke up with him when he gave up on his future.
Cam motioned to Wes. “This is the look of your new football team—The Rose Valley Beasts!”
More cheers. Despite a century of being the Rose Valley Jaguars, now they would play as the Beasts. Just like that, the entire identity of a town had shifted.
“We’ll also be renovating the football facilities with state-of-the-art tech. The city council voted unanimously to rename the field to the Bernard Jones Memorial Stadium!”
Cam had really pulled out all the stops to ingrain himself with the townspeople. Jake agreed with this one, though. Bernard would have loved nothing more than to have become synonymous with football in Rose Valley.
“Now a few words from a good friend of Rose Valley—Skylar Brooks!”
Again, more clapping as Skylar took the stage. He looked exactly as before, except Miriam and Tanner didn’t flank him this time. He stood alone.
Skylar spoke into the microphone. “Rose Valley inspired me with its bravery. You were all a pleasure to work with. I regret that we weren’t able study the beast, but we did the best we could on that fateful night.”
Shandi made a face that Jake fully understood the meaning of. Skylar contributed nothing to putting an end to the nightmare except for having sired Miriam. In fact, if not for his zealotry, they might have had a real shot at saving Billy instead of killing him.
Skylar continued, “Today I am proud to announce that next January, I will be opening a new cryptozoology museum in Rose Valley—The Skylar Brooks Center for Cryptozoological Research. It will revolutionize the field, and you will all be a part of it!”
After a lifetime of not really finding any monsters, it came as no surprise that Skylar would latch on to the one time he had finally found one. Billy was hardly a cryptozoological discovery, but such details didn’t stop Skylar from capitalizing on the horror to further his own fame.
Steve let out a sigh. “Seriously? I don’t know if I can take this anymore. I’ll catch you guys later.”
Steve and Cory disappeared into the crowd, leaving Jake and Shandi suddenly more alone. Jake looked at her and she looked back. Everything drowned away. It didn’t matter what Cam or Skylar did. It didn’t matter if the Rose Valley mascot changed from jaguars to “beasts.” All of that presented only a distraction. He and Shandi would build a beautiful life together, and that’s what mattered the most.
Without thinking about it, Jake said, “Let’s just go. Let’s leave Rose Valley. Let them have their circus.”
She looked apprehensive, surely hesitant to leave her home. Jake immediately felt bad for even suggesting it, realizing that he asked an unfair sacrifice of her. “Nevermind. Silly idea.”
She took both of his hands, tip-toed up for a kiss, then melted into a hug. Jake felt so happy and so comfortable in that moment. He didn’t know what would become of Rose Valley, but at least he had her.
Shandi murmured from his chest, but he couldn’t make out what she said. She must have realized it, because she unentangled herself from his grasp, leaned back, looked deep into his eyes, and nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
But... don’t stop here. Please keep reading for more, including our Bonus Content—not just one, but two Special Sneak Previews:
THE KRAKEN OF CAPE MADRE by J.P. Barnett
and
THE POSSESSION by A.K. Kuykendall
