The New Guy

Angus took a drink from his thermos and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was an old farmer with a new shot gun and a half full thermos of coffee sitting in the middle of fifty eight cows on three dog night. What a world.

He thought for a minute about the camera he had hanging around his neck, and wondered if it would work in this cold. He wasn’t a technical genius but he’d paid enough for that thing it should record, was the dishes, and shine his goddamn shoes. The moon was bright enough to get plenty of light but it also meant that he stayed seated on his fishing stool, his head never raised above the cows. Good reason too. He didn’t want to be seen.

Two weeks ago he’d lost a cow. It wasn’t a death, as most deaths go. Cows die, pigs die, farmers die, and shit happens. The world goes on. This was different though; the cow was looked damn near inside out when he found it. When he called the Police and reported he had an inside out cow the cops asked if he had been making moonshine on the side. Angus asked them just who the hell they thought they were and if they didn’t get the hell out here lickety split he’d bag up some of the cow and bring it down and show them. The cops showed up, held their noses, and called his dead cow vandalism. Goddamn $900 vandalism. What's worse, he really liked his cows. Most had names.

A week later he had another cow go dead, except not much was left of this one. Instead of being inside out she was inside gone. He’d had the herd off on the south 25, being loose as a goose and grazin’ themselves fat. This bessy had been pregnant so it was a two for one. He didn’t expect the Police to understand, but this wasn’t just vandalism anymore. This wasn’t some drunk frat boys. What kind of punk kids come out and just carry off cow parts? This time it still had a head, eyes, tail, legs, but it had been hollowed out, eaten like. The throat was gone and there wasn’t much mess but for enough blood to turn the soil to mud.

He reported it again. To the Police and to the paper this time. Someone had come on his property and mangled his herd twice now and he wanted folks to know he was pissed. The insurance company wouldn’t reimburse vandalized food stock more than once. They said it was in case the farmer was picking off sick stock and trying to make a buck. Even the one was going to be an investigation to beat the band. Reporting a second would just increase his rates. This left Angus quite literally out in the cold.

The police had said there wasn't much they could do. They couldn't exactly set up a sting operation and stake out his pasture waiting to catch spacemen in surgical gear sneaking into his fields at night to perform Cowsaerian Sections.

If they wouldn't help, it was screw you Mr. Doug Lewellyn and the People's Court, he was going to take the law into his owns hands.

Angus had lost a cow a week for the last two weeks, when they came for the third they would find a pissed off farmer, shotgun, Thermos of coffee, and video camera at the ready. If those fucking frat boy assholes showed up tonight he’d be ready by god. Of course the sherif had warned of murder this and prosecution that, but by god this was his land. This was his herd. His family had been doing the same thing since before his garndpap and he wasn't about to be an easy target. If those shitheads showed their faces tonight they’d high tail it home with a backside full of buckshot.

Angus took another slug of coffee, emptying his plastic cup. Morning was coming soon, and with the morning came chores. Feed the pigs, feed the chicken, feed the cows, feed himself, on and on. He yawned and gave serious thought about finishing his watch from inside, where it's warm. He yawned wide and noticed the heard was moving away from him.

The cows off to his left shuffled a bit, a few snorted and a few huffed. They were moving slow, then a bit faster, with a mission. They were leaving this area of the pen and heading for the other close corner. This one was beneath a large lamp, next to his house. The lights were set up every twenty or thirty feet around the edges of the pen to disuade just the kind of action he was out here waiting for. Angus had to scramble trying to keep up with them and did a poor job of it. His stool tipped over and he dropped his thermos.

Angus ducked down in the herd and hoped that if anybody was sneaking around out there they hadn’t seen him, or his left over stool. The pen fit five hundred cows at max, but he had been thinning down a bit, getting ready to sell and retire, only 58 wre left now. They huddled tightly beneath the lamp now, the light just enough to cover about half of them. Angus sat just out of the ring of light and cocked his shotgun as quiet as he could.

The herd bolted quick back the way it had come leaving Angus alone in a dark shot of pen. He snatched his camera up and walked a bit more out into the dark, scowling and scanning the pen from side to side with it. Something was spooking his cows quite a bit. Maybe whoever had been messing with his herd hadn’t washed their tools and a whif of blood had carried on the wind, or maybe there were dogs involved. That would explain the mother and calf at least, the missing throat and missing meat.

Angus peered into the dark, his flashlight was laying about fourty yards away next to his stool. Walking slowly towards his stool he kept his camera up and raised his gun to match.

“Who’s there?“ he asked.

His cows were acting more agitated than he’d expected, and he was starting to hope that it was a group of pranksters afterall. A mountain cat or stray wolves or some kind of unreported zoo escapee could be a good deal less fun to deal with. The last thing he needed was some goddamn lion running willy nilly about his farm.

“Listen up! I’ve got a brand new shotgun here, and a camera, so you might as well just go ahead and get gone. I guarantee it’s a might better than gettin' yerself dead.” he said.

The cows on the far side of the pen got vocal as hell at this.

A crunch of gravel behind him was his only answer. The gravel was outside the pen, next to the house. The lamp in the corner was atop a post, and angled so it shone into the pen and not straight down like a streetlight.

Angus had the shotgun held at hip level; he turned in a circle looking out into the night, camera and gun following him.

"I hope that was you leavin', cause the next thing I hear is gettin' shot. Twice!"

Somebody was out there, he heard a crunch of dried winter grass and a growl. It was deep enough that he wasn't sure if he'd imagined it or really heard it, but it didn't matter for shit, cows dodn't growl. He let the camera drop from it’s string about his neck and raised his gun to shoulder height. It was a smooth motion, he was old but he wasn't dead. You don't spend your life on a farm without learning how to shoot. One smooth motion had a shot fired towards the noise and a new round champered for the next. He was debating a quick dash to the house when there was another growl from inside the pen, between he and the cattle. The cows at the far end of the pen were raising a bloody ruckus now. He could hear more than one kicking the fence. His heart beat so hard his eyes were throbbing.

Angus turned and shot. His gun bucked in his arms, a feeling he knew and welcomed. It was a powerful comforting feel. The pop of flame from the end of the barrel lit up the pen right before him. Angus was too scared to run and too shocked to lock in another round. His breath churned out in fat clouds of white and grey.

This flash of gunfire had given him a glimpse of what was in the pen with him. About ten feet to his left; it was twice his size, not just tall but BIG. It crouched but was on two feet, it looked like one of them boys in the Olypmics ready to race, all hunkered down like. Hair covered its body, short enough that he could make out the shapes of ropey muscles. He had seen a mouth full of teeth and two smart yellow eyes in the brief flash. He didn't even have time to scream.

It was on him, tearing and biting and pulling. He didn’t feel any pain, but he felt a fear, he felt his belly open and for a second wondered at the explosion of steam in the night, it dwarfed his breath. He'd heard once that indians used to think that when you stabbed a man in the dead of winter, the steam was his soul, leaving the body. There was nothing he could do, even though he kicked and scratched and clawed and screamed he knew this was it. He felt its mouth around his throat, and then he couldn’t breathe. The lights in the pen were dimming. There were sounds of smacking, cracking, growling, and crying. All of it grew dimmer and dimmer. The last thing Angus thought as his world turned to black, as all feeling disappeared- God, I hope I didn't shoot a cow.


Angus was found three days later by a boy from the feed store. The boy wasted no time in getting the hell off that farm and into the sheriff’s office. The sheriff in turn wasted no time in getting out of the office and onto the farm. The mess in the pen was beyond their facilities, and the state was brought in.

Not only did some big city investigators show up, but so did the FBI. That wasn't quite what he'd expected.

The FBI had six men there within hours. Unknown to the sheriff, they had been monitoring the situation after the first complaint Angus had issued. They were automatically informed whenever a livestock mutilation report was made on any law enforcement network. A second report got a flag for investigation, a third got immediate attention. This was the first human casualty associated with such a situation. They shut down all other operations and cordoned off the entire area.

The agents confiscated every article of evidence from the scene. The gun, the stool, the flashlight, photographs, bits of bone and an undamaged but blood encrusted digital camcorder. The recorder had been torn from Angus almost immediately and with some amount of luck it had landed in a perfect position to capture the last few minutes of what had been Angus McCready.

Over the past nine months law enforcement agencies across the world had begun to receive more and more calls of strange and unexplainable phenomena; mutilated livestock, pets, people. People had been found drained of blood. Reports of haunted houses, witches, demons, bigfoot, la chupacapra, you name it, they were all through the roof. The video recorder found next to the body of this dead Nebraskan farmer was the best visual evidence yet.

On the camcorder was a man being attacked and eaten by what appeared a werewolf. The camera had a night filming filter on it, so the scene was an odd scatter of green and black, but it was clear. The creature was nearly twice his size and it had the man pinned to the ground. It was used it's mouth to tear pieces of him off while it used both hands to hold him down. A huge powerful jaw could be seen worrying at his him, it was tearing off pieces of farmer and taking them down gulp after gulp, not unlike a baby bird.

If it was a costume, it was an excellent costume. If it was a man in a costume then it was one hell of a mouth on this guy. They couldn't explain how he ate nearly 160 pounds of healthy mid American farmer. Drugs could explain the strength and perhaps motivations. Perhaps it was some sort of ritual, perhaps some kind of initiation, or psychotic fantasy. Perhaps it was a fucking werewolf.

It was their job to be paranoid and informed, to be suspicious and get to the bottom of things. They were facing a myth made real, a nightmare come to life, and nobody had a plausible explanation to what had happened to Angus. Life as these people knew it had changed, they had proof that the boogy man was real.



- Twenty Years Later -


1.

Charlie’s breath came quick. The night was cold enough to turn his ears red and his nose wet. He wore a thick black coat he’d only been given two days ago, the canvas outer was still stiff and coarse. The coat on the guy next to him was softer, grayer, and probably a hell of a lot warmer. Charlie didn’t own a piece of his outfit tonight, he was just wearing it. He hadn't truly earned it yet andeverybody in the truck, whether in the bed with him or in the cab, knew this. His stuff was so newly black it nearly glowed, even in the dark. You could probably pick him out of a shadow as the dark spot.

Everything Charlie wore was black. Coat, leather boots, gloves, beanie cap, watch, even a black sheath on his hip with a black bladed matte finished eight inch knife. He road in a big black truck with an open bed, two men in back, two men inside.

Charlie was on spotlight duty. His job was to run the spotlight over fences, yards, bushes, backyards, ditches, whatever they passed. It was his first trip out as a part of a team and he was nervous as hell. If he missed something, it could cost their lives. Hell, if he found something it could cost their lives.

The other guy in the back manned the M-60, a fully automatic combat machine gun. It was the big heavy one some guy always carried in the old Vietnam flicks. Always the burly guy with the sleeves rolled up and a shit eating grin. Firing the thing took both hands, even when it was mounted. Charlie had a gun too though his was slung across his back, smaller and easier to use. The Gunner was easily fifteen years his senior, his name was Evan, but everybody called him Turkey. He usually went by Turk. Turk crouched in the back, eyes never leaving the end of the spotlight . Turk never lost his balance, never made a sound. The clouds coming out of his mouth weren’t so fat or quick, and even that made Charlie nervous.

The patrol had been out for two hours now, up streets, down alleys, slowly making their way towards the outer edge of the city. The crew had about six hours left of active duty, which should end at just about day break. They crept along most of the night, like a group of violent frat boys cruising central. The average patrol didn’t find anything, but Charlie had been told most first timers pulled down some kind of crazy bad guy Karma. He half expected to see ‘ole Scratch pop out of a manhole and throw a pitchfork.

Charlie had applied for City Patrol a year and a half ago after spending some time with a recruiter. The recruiter had explained the history of the patrol, the ups, the downs, the pay, the benefits, and all about the chances of dieing. The patrol lost good men every year and it was a citizen's right, no, duty to take up the shield of protection. Fame and glory, chicks, adventure, reputation, that’s what most thought it was all about. Charlie just wasn't interested in school, he wasn't interested in working for a living, he wanted more. He wanted the adventure, the team, the entire life, and he'd wanted it for as long as he could remember.

When Charlie was eight he had ridden his bike out to Crazy Angus' house to see if he could earn a few bucks slingin' hay or feeding chickens. What he had found that day had changed him so fundamentally that he had always known this would be the path his life took. He would do something, anything, to protect the people he loved from what the world later learned was responsible for that chaos.

He was accepted just two months after applying. Along with the letter of acceptance came a schedule of meetings and checkups and workouts. He had six weeks to say his goodbyes, gather a small list of essentials, and be ready to ship out for training. The letter had some suggestions for him as well. Get in shape. Eat well. Change your sleep schedule, up nights, down days. Write a will. Be able to run far, fast, and with weight. Increase the salt in your diet. Learn sign language. Pick a religion.

He'd had done everything they said, and more. He thought he was ready for training, but it had been unlike anything he’d expected. It hadn’t killed him, but it had shaken him pretty bad. It wasn't just working out and running through obstacle courses at night. Everybody had heard stories, everybody knew a guy who knew a guy who'd become dinner. Everybody had seen something new, something wrong.

He spent thirteen months learning strengths, weaknesses, reactions, instincts, history, and strategy. It was everything he would need to survive. He could strip a Desert Eagle in thirty seconds and put it back blindfolded. He could tell you which bugs in the Oregon forest were ok to eat and which roots in China were not. He knew how to fall from a three story building and land without killing himself.
Then they shipped him off to Portland and gave him a shiny new uniform. Now he was part of the team, now he was on the job. It was the training he was thinking about now. Specifically the night he’d waken up to find his dorm empty but for himself and a spider the size of a golden retriever. Expect the unexpected, they’d said. If worst comes to worst, fight your way out with a bed sheet and alarm clock. It was the spider he was thinking of when Turkey pounded three times on the side of the truck before snapping up and grabbing the handles of the gun.

Charlie switched the light from red shift to white. The beam exploded on the night into the face of an alleyway. There it stood right in the light, big as life, a six foot shaggy Paul Bunyon, minus ax and creepy sidekick, a legend in the flesh, a myth eating somebody’s dog. Heavily muscled, tall pointed ears, and stub of a tail, crouched forward. It stood on its hind legs with its back to the truck, one hand on the ground, the other hand holding a wet red mess. There weren’t many stray cats or dogs these days, and this was one of the reasons.

The truck slowed to a crawl, the powerful electric motor making almost no noise. The beast was holding the dog like a wet burrito, but being very quiet about it. The puddle beneath it was large and black. Apparently dogs had a lot of blood. Charlie’d been taught that when these things fed they entered another state of consciousness, like when you stand in line at the grocery store and space out on Anna Nicole’s Surphing Corpse Husband Back from the Dead and realize that you're not staring at the corpse, but the cleavage.
These things lived to hunt and the climax of that hunt was feeding. A Werewolf in the throes of the feast was one of the safest of encounters he was every likely to have. He held his beam steady while Jax, the man in the front passenger side leaned out and took aim.

Jax was short for Jackson, and he was the tracker. Each truck consisted of a team. The average team was a Driver, Spot, Gunner, and Tracker. Some teams had two Spotters, and even more rarely a team went out with a fifth, a Guide. Those were usually special cases though; Guides were as common as teeth on your forehead. Most folks didn’t even talk about what it was they did, it was all kind of strange. Mostly rumors, since nobody he had met had ever even seen a Guide.

The tracker had a special rifle; it shot a powerfull tracking dart. The dart held a transmitter which sent its location to a GPS device in each truck and back at home base. If the creature got away, or if there was a pack, the call would go in and the shift would change from a Patrol to a Seek. That’s when it got dangerous. If the thing was hurt, and ran to its home, den, empty warehouse, what have you, it would take more than a team of four to rut it out. The last time a pack of werewolves had been tracked back to a den, the patrol had lost eleven men. Twenty had gone in. Charlie was one of the replacements.

Jax fired and a small green splatter of iridescent liquid blossomed on the side of the beast. This was the sign Turkey had been waiting for. The thing hardly had time to turn before flames erupted from the barrel of Turk’s gun. That bright green spot on the creature’s side turned into a vicious red explosion. The wolf was thrown back, dog carcass forgotten. For just a moment the thing’s sharp yellow eyes locked with Charlie’s, and it wasn’t fury, it wasn’t hunger, it was fear he saw before it died.

Charlie had managed to keep his spotlight trained on it, even as it was thrown back by the power of the impacts. When Turk let off on the trigger, the night went quiet like the basement of a library. Charlie had been holding his breath and let it out in one quick shock. Turk’s attention was still stuck on the corpse ready to hammer it a bit more should it move. It didn’t take silver bullets to drop these things, though they did help. Most of the Patrol had bullets which contained some silver, but that kind of ammunition got expensive and were only effective on a few creatures. Thirty seconds of uninterrupted devastation at the hands of a PT-301 was enough to put the lights out in just about anything they’d come across.

Jax opened his door and stepped out into the night. He flicked on his hi power flashlight and checked to the sides, up and down the street, checking the surrounding area, before moving on to the corpse of the wolf. This was Charlie’s key to sweep the surrounding area. He never had the chance.

Something, several something’s, leapt the side of the truck and took him head over heels out of the bed. He slammed the grass just past the road and had no idea which way was up. Turk was screaming and Jax was firing and Charlie was being thrown again. All he could see was a blur of color and a flash of white, a flash of yellow, a flash of black. Jax had taken down the wolf on top of Charlie and was turning to help Turk. Everything was in a blurry slow motion.
The gun across Charlie’s back wasn’t there anymore, it was in his hands. Charlie didn’t even know it, but he was already firing, round after round slapping into the chest and hips of the wolf that had scrambled up the hood of the truck. Puffs of blood erupted into the air behind the creature as rounds tore free from the far side and flew into the night.

The driver was already out the other side and had a smalle-use flame thrower in hand. The trucks had a meager arsenal between driver and tracker, this was one of the more popular items. It only had about a minute’s worth of fuel, but it got your point across.
One creature was fully aflame, lighting the night. Turk was a mess, half in the truck, half on the fence of the yard ten feet away. Jax had dropped his machine gun and Charlie could see he’d managed to land at least one tracking shot, took aim, and landed a second. The first tagged creature lept well over the second and tore into Jax. It looked like the thing had grabbed his spine through his stomach, and held him by it like the stem of a caramel apple. Jax shivered like he was being electrocuted, six inches off the ground, a human halloween treat. The wolf used it's free claws to pet his face and chest leaving red and white strikes of violence.

The Driver was screaming something at Charlie as he backed up, flames spitting and finally failing. The flamethrower reminded Charlie for a second of the old squirt guns he’d used as a kid, the Super Soaker’s he’d ruined by filling with pool water. The driver covered himself as he got back into the cab, taking shots into the night with his side arm. Charlie was already moving too, gun held at shoulder height sweeping for a target. Then he was in and the truck was moving, quick. The Driver was already on the radio relaying events as he tore the truck through a yard and onto a main street. Charlie was supposed to be either dealing with wounds or entering information about the encounter into the in-dash computer, but he couldn’t seem to figure out what to do first.

They were easily ten miles away before the driver spoke. He didn't take his eyes off the road.

“One hell of a first fucking night Kid.”



2.


Charlie sat in the mess hall cutting an apple into wedges. He'd just spent the last three hours in the med center getting checked over, head to foot. They couldn't exactly risk one of their team being contaminated or infected. Nobody wanted to bunk with someone that could flip out some night and eat them. It was unpopular.

Fitting a slice of apple in his mouth he was thinking about the Seek team that would be going out tomorrow afternoon. He was to head directly to the Commander's office after he got some food in him. There was a report to make and questions to answer. It seemed everybody in the hall was whipsering about him, stealing glances and wondering what went down. He was too tired to care, fighting for your life did that too you. Eat your beans and butter your bread assholes, you'll get the news soon enough.

Chewing a slightly too large chunk of apple, a bit of juice ran down his chin and dripped on his pants. It made the gaucamole green turn to a small black dot. He grinned at himself, tired enough to drool, when it hit him. The wolf, the one with fear in it's eyes, it hadn't had a single smear of blood on it's face. Not a DROP. The puddle of blood at it's feet had been huge. If Charlie couldn't eat a piece of fruit without getting juice on his face, how the fuck could a werewolf eat a dog without doing the same? Because it hadn't been eating. It should have had dog juice up to it's ears.

The wolf had only tore the dog up, and stood there, waiting, prentending to feed.

Charlie's feet tangled with his chair as he lept up. He took a hall silencing fall before scrambling up and tearing out through the double doors. It had been a setup, the entire thing had been a goddamn setup.

(to be continued)