Bestial (11 page)

“Oh, Jesus,” George breathed.

Deputy Merrick’s black sunglasses seemed to fill the side mirror as the cruiser kept pace with George’s truck.

It was impossible to tell who had been turned and who hadn’t, but George knew the Sheriff’s Department was a threat. It seemed impossible that his friend Arlen Hurley had been sheriff just seven months ago. George and Hurley had not been terribly close, but they’d had a good working relationship. Hurley and his wife Ella had invited George over for a couple of barbecues, and he’d enjoyed their company. Hurley had been a good guy, a good sheriff, and George had trusted him. George’s job as deputy coroner seemed eons in the past, a life led by another person he’d heard about second-hand from someone else. It no longer seemed to have been
his
life. But it had not been long ago that it all had unraveled.

Things had gone bad in January with that smelly, naked corpse that had come into the morgue on a stormy night, its left eye missing from its socket. It was a rapist who had attacked a local woman whose car had broken down beside the road. The woman had killed him during the struggle, had driven a dirty old corkscrew she’d found on the ground straight into his left eye. The rapist was dead, there’d been no doubt about that. And yet it had gotten up and walked out. George hadn’t
seen
it walk out, but it soon became clear that it had, and after that, things had gone downhill fast. The animal attacks... the mangled, torn corpses... and then the arrival of that strange, badly scarred man who claimed to be a werewolf hunter, Daniel Fargo. The stranger was hunting werewolves in general, but one man in particular—the dead man who had walked out of George’s morgue. The idea that Big Rock had become infested with werewolves was one thing coming from the odd stranger with his scarred face, but when Hurley had become convinced, George began to worry. Hurley had been a reasonable, calm, clear-thinking man, the kind of guy George had listened to, taken seriously. So when
he
started saying there were werewolves in town, George had listened. Closely.

Now Hurley was dead. A
lot
of people were dead. Hurley and several of his deputies had died in an explosion and fire that had taken place in an old abandoned house. That was the official story, anyway. According to the Sheriff’s Department, the house was being investigated for possible drug activity. A meth lab had been set up in there, and while the deputies were investigating, the whole thing had blown sky-high. Although he wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, George did not believe
that
story for a moment. There had indeed been an explosion in the old Laramie house on Perryman Road, but George did not believe there had been a meth lab in there—he believed it had been a set-up to hide what
really
happened. He wasn’t sure what that was and he had not waited around to find out. Nor had he waited to see what would happen after the deaths of Hurley and all those deputies, after the abrupt disappearance of Daniel Fargo—he’d simply walked away from his life.

When his father died in 2005, he’d left George the family cabin in the mountains above Big Rock. It was secluded and spacious, but run-down. In February, George had poured a large chunk of his savings into quickly building up the cabin, locking it down, and stocking it with food and weapons. Shortly before his death, Hurley had mentioned that, according to Fargo, the old myth of silver bullets effectively dispatching werewolves was true. So George had gone to coin shops in all the surrounding towns and gathered up silver coins and bullion, purchased the proper tools and equipment, and melted the silver down. Then he’d inserted bits of silver into the tips of hollow point bullets for his .45 automatic and 30.06 rifle, which he kept loaded and ready. He’d been holed up in his cabin ever since, sleeping most of the day and being vigilant at night, starting at the slightest sound, wondering if they would ever find him up there.

It had not been only the deaths of Hurley and all those deputies back in January that had sent George running. It had been the new sheriff, a man who apparently had come from nowhere to take over for Hurley, calling himself the “interim sheriff” until the next election rolled around. He was a tall, slender man with a black patch over his left eye, and George had seen him before. His name was Irving Taggart, and George remembered the sight of him laid out on the table in the morgue with his left eye missing, hairy and bearded, unbathed and stinking, and quite dead. If all the animal attacks and deaths that had taken place in Big Rock back in January weren’t reason enough to get the hell out, George decided that having a dead man as sheriff certainly was, and he’d wasted no time in packing up and leaving. He only wished he could go farther away, but he had nowhere to go.

Deputy Merrick’s face seemed so stern beneath those big black sunglasses. Unable to see his eyes, George couldn’t shake the fear that they were locked on
him
. His heart drummed in his chest and his palms were slick against the steering wheel.

Then Merrick turned right onto another street and disappeared.

George heaved a sigh, his body deflating with relief. He picked up speed for a bit, until he drove past the Seventh-day Adventist church on Crozier Street. The church’s parking lot was full and others parked on the curb as church-goers made their way into the church, some crossing the street and forcing George to slow. An old green station wagon coming in the opposite direction took advantage of George’s decreased speed and turned left in front of him to pull into the church’s parking lot.

George told himself he would be back in the cabin again soon, and that made him feel a little better. He never felt safe anymore, but he felt much safer up there locked in his fortress than he felt here in the streets of Big Rock, a town that was no longer peaceful and serene.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Church

When the white pickup truck slowed, Bob took advantage of it and turned left into the church parking lot. He eased the car into a slot.

“Stop that, Michael!” Rochelle snapped in the back seat. Bob glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his brother-in-law Mike chewing on a fingernail. Mike sat by the window, with Rochelle beside him and Grandma next to her. Bob’s eleven-year-old nephew Peter sat in the rear of the old stationwagon. Rochelle slapped Mike’s hand away from his mouth. “He won’t stop, Mom. What’s that stuff you put on fingers to keep kids from biting their nails?”

“Just clear nail polish,” Mom said distractedly. “Bob, couldn’t you find a space closer to the church so I don’t have to walk so far?”

Bob was about to kill the engine, but stopped. “You want me to move?”

Mom rolled her eyes. “What did I just
say
, Bob?”

Sighing, he pulled out of the spot and found one closer.

“I ought to put some of that stuff on your fingers, Mike,” Rochelle said. “It’d serve you right, wearing nail polish like a girl. Nail biting is something nervous
children
do.”

“Nervous adults do it, too,” Mike muttered. He muttered a lot, almost as if he didn’t want to be heard. He was a short, bullet-shaped accountant with a bald pate, a fringe of short-cropped brown hair that was starting to grey, and a trimmed beard.

“Nervous, who’s
nervous
?” Rochelle said. She’d inherited Mom’s shrill voice and manner of speaking, but she had Dad’s long face and height—she stood a full six inches taller than Mike. Her blonde hair was long, but she usually kept it pinned up, as it was now. She’d never lost the weight she’d gained while carrying Peter, but still had a figure in spite of her thickened waist, it was just broader than it used to be. “What have
you
got to be nervous about, Michael?”

Grandma said, “He’s probably nervous about losing what little hair he’s got left.”

Bob looked at Peter in the rear of the car. The boy sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, staring out the window, lost in thought. He looked like his father—pudgy, same round, flat face, same dark hair and sad brown eyes.

“Well, what are we
waiting
for?” Mom said, opening her door.

“Peter,” Rochelle said, “get the macaroni salad and go on ahead of us. Go through the multi-purpose room into the kitchen and put the salad in the refrigerator.”

They piled out of the car. Mom always insisted that they all drive to church together—”Like a
family
,” she often said—so it had become tradition for Rochelle, Mike, and Peter to come to the house for breakfast on Sabbath morning before the six of them piled into the stationwagon to drive across town.

Bob helped Grandma out of the backseat, then walked slowly between her and Mom to the church. He felt warm and itchy in his charcoal suit from the Men’s Warehouse in Eureka—it was one of two, the other navy blue.

Rochelle complained about the poor state of the parking lot’s pavement, Grandma complained about her swollen ankles, and Mom complained about the fact that they were complaining so much on the Sabbath. Bob and Mike walked silently with them up the front steps and into the church while Peter went ahead with his arms wrapped around the big foil-covered bowl of macaroni salad Rochelle had made for the pot luck lunch after the church service.

They stopped in the foyer so Mom and Grandma could chat with their old-lady friends and discuss their aches and pains. Bob, Mike, and Peter stood silently as organ music whined reverently from the sanctuary.

Bob spotted Pastor Edson on his way into the sanctuary, smiling and greeting people as he passed. He was a tall man in his mid-sixties, shaped rather like a bowling pin—wide from the middle on down—with a large head made even larger by a thick shock of wavy silver hair. He had a booming, friendly voice that carried through the foyer as he spoke to members of the congregation. When he saw Bob, Pastor Edson changed his course and headed toward him, his friendly face darkening as he approached.

The pastor leaned close, and his lowered voice lost its friendliness, took on a tone fitting an underling. “Look, Bob, Mrs. Stockton mentioned to me earlier that one of the stalls in the ladies’ room had no toilet paper. It caused her some
inconvenience
, if you know what I mean. Now, I’ve spoken to you about this before. You
have
to make sure the restrooms have paper.” He cocked his head and added sarcastically, “Is that too much to ask, Bob?”

“I’m sorry, Pastor,” Bob said, nodding. “I’ll do better.”

“Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Pastor Edson turned to Bob’s mother, smiled, and said, “Good morning, Arlene.” He turned his smile to Grandma. “Marion, good to see you this morning.” He walked away and disappeared through the sanctuary’s open double doors.

“Hello, Sheriff!” Rochelle said.

Bob turned to see his sister approaching Sheriff Taggart as he entered the church with his usual group of deputies and friends.

“You look nice today, Rochelle,” the sheriff said, smiling.

Rochelle turned to one of the men with the sheriff and her posture changed subtly. Bob watched his sister drop ten years off her age as her eyes brightened and she put on her best smile. “Deputy Cross,” she said, her voice dropping in pitch and taking on an uncharacteristic shyness.

Mike had wandered away to chat with a friend and didn’t see the change in his wife. Bob frowned, surprised and puzzled to see Rochelle suddenly become so warm and girlish. She stepped closer to Deputy Cross and they spoke in hushed tones. She had mentioned several weeks ago that the sheriff and his deputies had started coming into the small restaurant where Rochelle was manager, some for breakfast, others for lunch. Bob knew that Sam’s Family Diner had become a sort of hangout for the deputies, but he didn’t know Rochelle had become so friendly with them—or at least with Deputy Cross.

Bob’s attention did not linger on his sister, though. The sheriff’s group included Vanessa Peterman, who stopped just inside the church entrance and looked around the foyer. She wore a simple green-and-white suit, but on her body, even the most modest and understated attire became sexy. She stepped over to another member of the sheriff’s group and whispered something to him. Bob kept his eyes on Vanessa while trying not to openly gawk at her like some kind of breathless horndog—but it wasn’t easy.

One Sabbath about three months ago, Sheriff Taggart, his companion, and a group of his deputies and friends showed up at church for the first time, and they’d been coming regularly ever since. There were about a dozen of them all together, and they came each week in two groups, then sat together during the service. They attended the pot luck lunches after church, the Wednesday night prayer meetings, and became involved in church activities as if they’d always been regular members. While cleaning the church during the week, Bob often overheard Pastor Edson on the phone, or chatting with people in his study, and from his casual eavesdropping, he’d learned that the sheriff had been raised an Adventist, had decided to start attending church again, and had talked some deputies and friends into accompanying him.

“I’m very pleased to have them,” Pastor Edson had told his secretary one afternoon while Bob was emptying the waste cans. “Having the sheriff and his deputies in our congregation looks good to the community. It’s a plus for us.”

However it looked to the community, Bob was just happy that the sheriff had brought Vanessa Peterman with him. He’d never spoken to her and had no plans to—his normal social awkwardness no doubt would be intensely magnified if he were to try to strike up a conversation with her. But he enjoyed watching her, being near her, catching an occasional whiff of her musky perfume as she walked by. He looked forward to it each week.