let one fingernail elongate into a point to poke a new hole in the belt so she could cinch the pants up tighter. “You could just leave it off. You’ve got a good body for a senior-senior-citizen.”
“Damn, woman, you are forward.” Earl checked the pockets. Sadly, it appeared that Adam Conover had been a nonsmoker. “In my day-”
“In your day they invented the airplane. Besides, somebody would just call it in and I’d have to arrest you for indecent exposure. Let’s see if anybody else survived and find us a ride out of here.”
Despite being too tired to think, Earl found himself smiling. The girl had spunk. If she didn’t degenerate into an insane killer, he could see this actually maybe working out. It would be nice to have some female company again. “Then some breakfast. I could eat a horse.”
“I know where some are near here. The Randall place is just over the hill. I’ll split one with you.”
Because of the fire, and the smoke, and the dozens of corpses, he couldn’t locate any of his companions by smell. So it took longer than he would’ve liked. They found Jason Lococo near the gates. The Hunter was in bad shape, covered in slime, barely conscious, but breathing. Close by was the exploded remains of one of the Old Ones’ diggers.
Earl knelt next to him. “How you feeling, Jason?”
He gestured weakly at an empty syringe on the ground. “Stark…Antidote.” Jason’s good eye rolled back in his head, and he was out. Earl checked the syringe. Atropine. Stark must have known the digger’s poison caused nerve damage. Nasty stuff, but it looked like it had been caught in time. His nose was telling him that Jason would live.
“Nice work, kid.” Lococo was probably twice his size, but it wouldn’t be difficult for Earl to carry him out. “Let’s get him to some medical help. Kid’s got real potential.”
“That just leaves Stark,” Heather said as she scanned the compound. “I wonder where he ran off to?”
Special Agent Douglas Stark of the Monster Control Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security watched the fire-haired werewolf through the scope of Harbinger’s precision rifle. The crosshairs were floating around on the back of her head. He had a solid position. There was zero wind. He’d known they would stop to help the injured Hunter. From the top of Number Six, the range was a piddly hundred and fifty yards. It was an easy kill.
“Agent Stark. Stark! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
Stark listened to the Bluetooth earpiece. He’d gotten headquarters. He’d gotten help on the way. National Guard out of Marquette were going to cordon off the area while the MCB airlifted in a cleanup team to bag the bodies and intimidate the witnesses. They’d come up with a plausible cover story, like they always did, and the whole Copper Lake mess would just go away.
“I’m here,” Stark whispered.
“There are choppers en route to your position. I’m trying to get an ETA. Are you secure?” Agent Archer asked.
There were three dead werewolves that had gotten in his way on the stairs. He was pretty proud of those kills. There were only two werewolves left down there, and he was glassing them with a sniper rifle. “Secure enough.”
“Good work, Stark, good work. The outbreak will be contained. Thanks.” Archer sounded like he was getting choked up. “Thank you.”
Stark moved the crosshairs over to Harbinger’s back. A few ounces of pressure on a trigger that would break like a glass rod, and that asshole was toast. Harbinger shouldn’t have punched Stark in the face. “What’re you talking about, Archer?”
“My hometown is right down the road. If you and Mosher hadn’t stopped the outbreak, we might have been forced to…Well…shit, sir. You know. Just…thanks.”
“Uh huh,” Stark said as he put his finger on the trigger. Obviously, he’d given headquarters his interpretation of the day’s events. There was still a lot of explaining to do, but nothing he couldn’t handle.
“Well, sir, you’re a hero. A real hero…”
That temporarily floored him. He had never been called that before. A hero. Previously, the biggest compliment he’d ever received in the line of duty was followed orders well.
Hero. That’s what they called you when you risked your life for somebody else, when you saved lives, and they’d probably saved a ton of lives. Anybody that lived through the night in that shitty little one-horse town, and the people in the neighboring towns that weren’t getting nuked to glass right now, was because of Harbinger and the people that had followed him.
He couldn’t shoot Harbinger or the redhead that had helped him. They really were heroes. They were what Mosher would’ve been if he’d gotten his way. He was what Sam Haven had been, and Stark was suddenly deeply ashamed of himself.
His finger came off the trigger. “It’s your lucky day, hero.”
Besides, there was a small chance that he could miss, and then Harbinger would be really mad…and that man was terrifying.
The responding MCB agents had taken Earl into custody and taken his statement before they’d passed him off to the military. After eating three complete MREs lifted from the Michigan National Guard, Earl had collapsed into a provided bunk and slept like the dead. It had been a long time since he’d been this tired, if ever. He’d slept so deep and dreamless that the pounding on the door had taken a while to even register.
He took the time to light a smoke before getting out of bed. The rubberized food packages hadn’t been the only things he’d managed to snag from the National Guard. He made it to the door and cracked it open, squinting at the sudden brightness. “What?”
It was a young lieutenant. “Mr. Harbinger, I need you to come with me, please.” He looked a little nervous, unsure why the secretive federal agency in charge of the incident had felt the need to stick this man into a room at the local roach motel and then post a dozen guards to make sure he didn’t leave. Their instructions had been to be polite, but firm. “Agent Myers wants to see you now.”
Earl looked around the hotel room, spotted the shoes and clothing that had been left for him neatly folded on a chair. His old, reliable minotaur coat had been thrown on the floor. “All right. Tell Dwayne to relax. I’ll be there in a minute. What time is it anyway?”
“Fifteen hundred, sir. He’s using the county office as a command center.”
“How’s my Hunter? The big fella with the glass eye?”
“We’ve got him cleaned up, sir. He’s very ill. The doctor said it could take him a while, but he should recover.”
That was good news. Earl took his time getting dressed. Myers could wait. He was probably busy anyway, what with organizing the cover-up. This one was sure to be one hell of a doozy. Hopefully, Myers wouldn’t use it as an excuse to finally have him executed. Satisfied that he was as presentable as he could be in a borrowed set of Army digital camouflage, Earl followed the officer out to a waiting Hummer. The air was crisp and the sky was clear. Copper Lake smelled like dead werewolves, blood, and smoke. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Special Agent Dwayne Myers was using what had been the mayor’s office. The room was packed with MCB agents and military personnel, poring over maps and arguing loudly. Myers just frowned when Earl entered and snapped, “Everybody out. Out.”
Earl waited as the men shuffled past him and out the door. “Hey, Dwayne.”
“Earl.” There was no offer to shake hands or any other false pleasantries. His old teammate had aged since they’d last spoken. His skin was pale, like he’d been spending too much time indoors, his hair was thinning, and he’d lost weight that he couldn’t afford to lose. Even his suit looked more battered than normal. Myers had been run ragged. He gestured at a metal folding chair.
Earl took a seat. He was still smoking but didn’t think the rules about not smoking inside government buildings applied after complete anarchy had set in. “So, what’s the story going to be this time?”
“Too rural for a plausible terrorist attack. One of my junior men talked to the press too quickly, said that the mine tunnels under the town had caught on fire and that hundreds had been killed in the resulting explosion. Moron forgot it’s a copper mine, not coal. Right now I’m leaning toward radon gas. But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”
Myers didn’t sit behind the desk, as Earl had expected, and instead wandered over to the window and
