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“All this for one guy?” I said in awe.
“I’m guessing they’re a little freaked out,” Ben said.
Tyler shook his head. “Stafford never understood us. He thought this was just like any other training—that we can turn it on and off, that we can control it, when it’s really the other way around, isn’t it?”
All the men in Gordon’s unit ever wanted to do was their job. Serve their country the army way, and all that. Now look where they’d ended up.
Then we were through and making our way along the road to the hospital. The escort Humvee swerved past us and led the way. Other than that, we didn’t see any other cars or people. No sign of life, whether because of the blizzard or the lockdown.
“Sir,” Tyler said to Ben, which was kind of odd. “You said you had a weapon?”
“Yeah, in the glove box.”
“May I?” Tyler asked.
He would make better use of it than either of us, assuming Walters showed up in a murderous rage and wouldn’t listen to us. Which was what everyone was apparently assuming would happen. I handed the weapon, a matte-black semiautomatic pistol, to him grip first, along with the box of ammo.
“Be careful,” I said. “Silver bullets.”
The box felt warm, as if the silver was burning me through the plastic case. Tyler took the gun, ejected the magazine, and started inserting bullets into it—after wrapping his hand in a corner of his T-shirt. Even encumbered by the shirt, he loaded the gun with expert skill and speed. After he’d finished, he returned the box of remaining bullets to me, tucked the gun into the back of his waistband, and let his T-shirt fall over it. He gave a nod as if saying, now I’m ready.
“Can you really shoot your teammate if you have to?” I asked.
Tyler wouldn’t look at me. “We take care of our own. Last thing any of us want is to hurt anyone. What did you say at the start of all this—that if we couldn’t shape up then you’d pull the trigger on us?”
“That was a metaphor,” I said, frowning.
“I’m just taking responsibility,” he said, his voice flat.
We arrived at the hospital behind our
escort. A dozen or so cars were parked in the lot—people who’d arrived before the lockdown and now were stuck. I was thinking worst-case scenario.
“Any ideas?” Ben said as we climbed out of the car. We had to squint into the wind blowing at us. Driving snow stuck my arms like needles. The two soldiers climbed out of their Humvee and took up positions on the sidewalk outside the hospital’s main entrance, looking outward, rifles at the ready. I wondered how much Stafford had really told them about what to expect.
Tyler looked around. “We secure the perimeter—take a walk around the building and figure out if he’s been here yet. If he hasn’t, we go in and wait for him to show up. And if he has—we go in after him. How does that sound?”
My grin felt wry and stiff. “Sounds like a real military operation, sir.”
He glanced at our escorts, who nodded. I wondered if they’d done time overseas, they seemed so wary.
We moved forward at a careful pace—a hunting pace. Our chins up to take in the air, nostrils widening, we breathed. Mostly, the area smelled like exhaust, gun oil, and anxiety. Cold air stung my lungs. A sheen of icy mist covered my face, making my hair stick to my cheeks.
I caught the tang of blood, sharp, incongruous against the clean chill of the winter wind. Rich, heady—a treasure in this landscape, a promise of injured prey in hard times. Or so the Wolf thought. But I smelled a dead body. I bit my tongue to keep my mouth from watering and trotted ahead to the front door of the hospital. Ben and Tyler were right with me.
At some point this morning someone had tried to shovel the walks, leaving snow piled along the path. Since then, the storm had gotten the upper hand, sending drifts of snow sloping along the building. Recently, there had been a fight in front of the front door. Instead of a smooth plane of snow, there were trenches, rifts, snow kicked and swept aside. Not footprints as much as body prints, as though someone had charged through.
We found him a few feet off the sidewalk, facedown in a mound of snow that had been shoveled off the walk. Spatters of blood had sunk into the snow around him. They weren’t visible from the surface, which still looked clean, as if he’d just slipped and fallen. The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty or so. His black beret had been knocked off; his scalp showed through a pale crew cut.
I could smell that he was dead and quickly cooling. Putting a hand on his shoulder, I intended to turn him to see how he’d died, but I didn’t have to. His throat had been torn by something sharp and not very precise. Claws, teeth.
“What the—” one of Stafford’s soldiers exclaimed, peering over our shoulders.
Tyler stared down at him, lips pursed. Ben let out a sigh. I looked around. Wind had altered the tracks, making it harder to decipher what had happened. But I didn’t smell Vanderman. And the snow was only disturbed in one direction. I could almost see it: this poor guy had been walking by on some other duty. He spotted a crazed maniac, probably naked in freezing weather, running across the sidewalk. He’d yelled at the guy to stop. Threatened, his target had run at him. The soldier may not even have had time to fire the handgun now lying in its own bed of snow nearby.
Tyler retrieved the pistol, slid back the chamber, then threw the gun away.
“He got shots off,” Tyler said. “But the bullets aren’t silver.”
