Misery County

Chapter 15 - Part 2

The 4.6 liter V8 engine rumbled as Eric drove the two of them through a wooded area, the car cutting through the mist like an icebreaker motoring through Arctic waters.

"Hey, partner, I was thinking something."

"Go on," Eric responded, eyes fixed on the narrow, winding road.

"You still got that body camera you took off of... uh, you know?"

"No, I donated it to the Salvation Army."

"Come on, seriously now."

"Yeah, I have it. What else would I have done with it?"

"So you haven't destroyed it?"

"Correct."

"Well, why don't we give it to the Sheriff's Department?"

Eric briefly glanced over at her through the corner of his eye. "Uh huh, and why would we do that exactly?"

"To get them on our side. The footage shows exactly what happened to Jerry. It can convince them that the threat is real. We could certainly use the backup."

"If videos of werewolves convinced people that they exist, the film industry would have done that for us a thousand times already."

"But this is –"

"And even if they choose to entertain it – and I guarantee entertaining it is the absolute most they'd be doing – we'd be exposing ourselves to going to prison on felony murder charges."

"But we only killed those werewolves in self-defense."

"That's not how felony murder works. We'd be going down for Jerry's death, not the werewolves, but now that you mention it, most of the werewolves in that building were in their human forms and didn't actually lay a hand on us nor on Jerry, so I suppose we could go down for gunning all them down as well."

"Wait a minute, you can't have it both ways. How can they disbelieve what the video shows but at the same time use it to put us behind bars?"

"I don't know, Cassie, but I do know this – absolutely nothing good could possibly come out of giving them that footage. At the very least, they'd nail us for looting government equipment off of a dead cop."

"Well, of course it sounds bad when you say it like that."

"I'm only saying it how those people would see it."

"And how would you know that? You've never been a cop."

"I worked in law enforcement," Eric said defensively.

"What, when?"

"Back when I was working for Holmesbrook."

"Holmesbrook? The security company?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"Eric, you were a security guard."

"I was."

"And you – I mean, you realize that's not law enforcement, right?"

"How the hell is it not?"

"Do you honestly believe that –"

She was interrupted by an alien voice calling out her name, distant and yet sounding like it was coming from inside the car at the same time.

"Tell me you heard that," Cassie said, visibly startled.

"Oh, I heard it," said Eric, who was now glancing over his shoulder and into his mirrors.

"I'm not insane, right? That was very clearly a human voice shouting my name, right?"

"Maybe it was some sort of crow or something," Eric offered. "It's a little-known fact, but they can mimic human voices in the same way that some parrots are famous for."

"Even if a crow had been following us from the motel and somehow keeping up with the car, how would we hear it so clearly over the noise from your engine?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's –"

Eric trailed off as his attention was captured by a figure underneath and to the side of the small bridge they were approaching. The woman's long, grey hair washed messily over her shoulders and upper back as she scrubbed her hands in the stream. As the car slowed down to match the speed limit for the bridge, the woman turned around to face them, her gaunt face burning itself onto Eric's retinas.

"Do you think she needs help?" Cassie asked, apparently equally captivated by this sight.

"Not from us."

"I don't like this, partner. I don't like any of this."

"It's the veil," Eric said through a dry mouth.

"The what?"

"The veil between the natural and the unnatural. It's being corrupted by whatever's brought the monsters to Missouri County. I've seen this before, but never on this scale."

"Are you suggesting that the woman at the creek was some sort of ghost?"

"Frankly, it would be stranger for her to be a normal human grandmother that's gone this deep into the woods just to paddle in a stream."

"I can't beat logic like that."