I Did Not Come to Bring Peace...

...But a Sword...


>BLACKRIVER COUNTY
>WHITE TREE, WEST VIRGINIA
>UNITED STATES
>0541HRS...///

The cold winds cutting along the porch of the run-down shack of a safehouse complemented the dark iron of the clouds well. The smell of the woods and the mountain air was tainted by the smell of diesel and smoke from the nearby mines, the only thing that drowned the stench of the tireless, obstinate march of industry was the cigarette held between Joseph’s lips. He took a draw and exhaled, letting it disperse on the air, watching the cloud drift off to be lost among the morning mists.

The medium-sized house had been procured a week before Joseph and Steve’s landing, the accoutrements and vehicles set up by nameless, faceless busy-bodies of the Agency. All of it- the vehicles, the house itself, the living arrangements, decorations, and the sizeable stockpile of ammunition, weapons and tactical gear- was paid for by Steve Foster’s slice of the CIA black budget offshore account, untraceable by local authorities and anyone else without proper clearance. At least it had good location, perched atop a hill where a lookout could be posted and see anyone approaching from any direction.

More importantly, deep-down, in the places where Joseph refused to let soldiering and tradecraft taint, he loved to be able to see the sprawling mountains in every direction and the lights speckled about the hills and the town at night. The relatively low light-pollution lent the night sky a clear complexion, an unimpeded view of the stars when it wasn’t cloudy. Although, despite even his hardest efforts to beat back the rigors of work, the front door from the porch to the living room creaked open. Footsteps, slow. “Review the files yet?”

Joseph shook his head. He could hear Foster sigh, “You know they’ll be here. You should look at their dossiers and get a feel for them.”

Joseph nodded. He turned around and brushed past Foster, entering the living room where the dossiers were arranged neatly in columns on the coffee table. He took a seat and grabbed up the first one, Jimenez, Jason.

After a good hour of reading and review of each of the team handpicked by Steve, he leaned back on the couch, took a swig from his flask and then walked back outside, sitting on the rocking chair on the porch. “How much do they know?”

“Hmm?” Steve asked, following him closely and leaning on the porch’s banister.

“The team.” Joseph frowned, “How much do they know?”

“About the same I told you on your first.” Foster said.

“Well, that really addresses my concerns.” Joseph said. He shook his head and sighed, “Do they at least meet the criteria?”

“All. I made sure they’re not completely blind. That McClintock fellow is a native here, part of the town.” Steve raised his eyebrows, as if that made things all better. “The rest know there’s things out there at the fringes of our sight. Things the rest of the world, the public, the average joe shouldn’t know. Just not enough to be locked up like a gibbering mess.” Foster turned around and leaned over the banister, his hands propping him up as he looked out over the town, “Pretty soon, Joseph, we’re going to be old and grey. Or at least I hope we reach that, but...”

“More fuel for the flames.” Joseph nodded, more to himself than Steve, “I’ve got a few more fires in me.”

“Of course you do,” Foster said, “I do too. But that time will come, where we either find a good reason to use that special bullet we all keep secret, or we accept a little house on the prairie with a comfortable sum of money lest we trip and fall and accidentally shoot ourselves twice in the chest and once in the head.”

Foster didn’t have to elaborate any more. Joseph only nodded in agreement, knowing the old lions of the Delta Green pride were nearing the end of their reigns. “Well.” Joseph sighed, “Ain’t that a nice thought.”

"Oh darlin', oh darlin', what have I done?" The low drawl hummed over the defiant engine as McClintock's Ford roared to life. The beast knew the trek to the precinct as well as the old lawman and it lurched to be free. The gunshot echoed as the tailpipe backfired, a war cry in the early morning light. Moralez was dead. The roar settled into a droning purr as the charioteer dropped into gear. The beast was a quiet hunter when it wanted, two gleaming eyes shone bright as it careened through the sleepy streets dodging potholes and stop signs alike.

"Oh darlin', oh darlin', what have I done? Can I stop at one? Or have I just begun?" The wizened voice mumbled nasally again, spilling out from under a grey mustache and dribbling down a stolen deputy's uniform. No, not stolen. Never returned. Earned through years of service and hidden through a black and bloody night, illuminated by the blaze of several lifetimes lost. But this was not that night - however much the fire in the man's veins felt the same. The heat bubbling just beneath the surface, lips taut around the taste.

Steely eyes scanned the horizon as the world zipped past. Some suits had come to Blackriver to investigate the recent string of murders and McClintock would be damned if he wasn't there when they did. Too many times those straight black suits hid shriveled black hearts and Roy wasn't going to be just another victim of the sick bastard. The engine roared as the beast took yet longer strides, the speedometer climbing. Bright white teeth with gnarled lies behind, he'd seen it in 'nam and he'd seen it at home; no man can be trusted with dominion over another. The eyes winced as he remembered the night Sheriff Hayes let a guilty man go free to cover the department's ass. It was the last straw, his last night as a Black River County Deputy...

The beast simmered as the gravel greeted its tires, McClintock pulling into the drive already half full with dark vehicles and no doubt darker intentions. It was time.

He knew they'd seen him. Two on the front porch, younger than him but carried a world between them. The beast returned to its slumber as the old cowboy sat a while in the silence, a stretch of land between him and whoever these falcons were that swooped in and took the case. Seemed odd suits would care for a local killer but as long as Roy was avenged it didn't matter. McClintock took a deep breath and slid from the clutches of the beast as he began his trudge toward the house, his last refrain dying on chapped lips.

"The blood'll fill the gutters and stain the mornin' sun."

>MIDDLE-EAST
>AMMAN, JORDAN
>THREE DAYS PRIOR
>1340 HRS...///

The young man was on his knees, behind him seven men obscured in dusty shemaghs. He was looking at the ground in front of him; disheveled, his body slumped forward and exhaustedly calm, near lifeless. He was broken. Behind them were the upraised canopies of Palestine Oaks, Mediterranean timbers, and a black Da’ish flag wavering in the wind. Jason knew the man. His name was Anis al-Shamard. He was 19.

The video had been posted early the same morning on a known Islamic State media account, though it was likely post dated and occurred a week or two before today. Jason knew what was coming next. The proclamations bitterly spat from the lead man behind Anis had stopped, and from behind him the flash of a knife blade came over his shoulder and cross his neck.

“Why don’t they fight?” asked Rich Weidman, standing to Jason’s left in the dimly lit room of the compound. “I don't get why they never fight back.”

“By the time it's the real deal they usually go through a bunch of mock executions,” one of Jason's teammates answered the DEA liaison. “They never know what's real or fake.”

Anis’s head was pulled back but Jason could still see his brow scrunch up in pain, and his lips mouth out gurgled words. The knives were always dull, and the executor began to saw into Anis's neck, locking in the young man's agonizing expression as he began to remove Anis's head. Anis was 19. He had worked in Syria selling hot coals on the street. He had wanted to leave Jordan and live in France.

“I ain't going down like that,” Rich said. “Soon as I feel them cutting I'm fighting.”

Jason had thought that way too once. He had told himself defiance until the bitter end, to always rage against the dying of the light. But he had never been where Anis had been. He had never been beaten and tortured and sodomized and at the imagined brink of death over and over again until living had become one fleeting moment to next, like worthless terminal breathes. He had never been broken.

It was Jason that convinced Anis to spy for his team. Anis had already lost his brother at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, but when the Islamic State began their campaign of terror across the middle east Anis had lost his father and his only two sisters as well. It was all too easy for the DIA to recruit him.

“If I were in the same position you were in I'd do something,” Jason had told Anis in a crowded cafe in Amman, Jordan. “I'd get out of that refugee holding pen-”

“Holding pen?” Anis had asked.

“What you stuff cattle into,” Jason had answered. “I'd get out of there and help kill whoever was responsible. To help stop them.”

It seemed noble at the time, to spur a man into righteous danger, to handle him like an ideal on a leash. That was all anyone was to this cause, anyway, Jason included. If I were in the same position, Jason would tell himself. Anis wasn’t the first Jason had seen fall. There was nothing noble in seeing Anis's head dangling in the dirt caked bloody hands of an amphetamine chemist cooking “go” pills for terrorists.

The man shifted towards the camera with Anis's head, muttering repeatedly a phrase softly in Arabic. Something dark in the background caught Jason’s attention, something over the man's shoulder. It looked like the dark outline of people standing in the background shade of the Syrian forest.

“Do you see that?” Rich asked.

“See what?” a team member said.

“Dan, what's he saying over and over again?” Jason asked, focusing on the outlines in the background. There was a sudden depth to the grainy video, like Jason was sinking into the background, pulled into the warped timbers and goblet shaped spruces like coral in sea of darkness, on the edge of nothing. Their stuffy room in Amman began to squeeze inward, suddenly smaller.

“Someone is in the background,” Rich answered. “Look—three guys in the shade. Pause it.”

Dan Treston, their linguist, was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Jimmy,” he said to Jason, “sounds like he’s murmuring ‘come and see’ over and over again.” Without Jason’s response Dan rewound the video and played it again.

تعال وشاهد (Tueal washahid). Come and see, come and see.

The room’s VOSIP phone erupted into life and Jason jerked away from his trance on the three figures in the background. Three figures Rich Weidman, Dan Treston, and two other people saw with Jason. He had to remind himself of that. They had seen it too. Three figures behind Anis al-Shamard’s killing. The phone continued its electronic wail. Jason bound for the phone as Rich was remarking about never hearing the landline ring before. Dan agreed, and the entire room went silent watching Jason.

“Jason Jimenez, DIA Amman.”

“Pack your shit, Jimenez. You’re headed stateside.”

>BLACKRIVER COUNTY
>WHITE TREE, WEST VIRGINIA
>UNITED STATES
>0605HRS...///

The air was different here, but Jason didn’t think it clean. It was clear and brisk, but it filled his lungs with a cold, dead bite like a fog could settle inside him any moment.Through the cracked asphalt veins of roads slithering through the Appalachian green hills there clung what meant to be a city, but White Tree seemed another world to Jason. It was some fringe place hidden in some forgotten frontier, and he felt he was deep in the womb of the past in all of its mystery and savagery. It reminded him of the most run down towns hollowing out along the Texas highways in his youth, but unlike those soon to be ghost towns White Tree was filled with people as far as he could tell.

Jason had flown into Lewisburg right as his jet lag from Jordan to Washington, D.C. had set in and the ambien was wearing off. On the drive from Lewisburg to White Tree he felt like he was drifting forward more than approaching his next assignment, slipping away into the eerie beauty of rural West Virginia.The director that had called him in for this special assignment had little to say, leaving Jason with the suspicion his superior wasn’t exactly in the know. The agencies involved, and what little he was told about Morales’s death, had Jason’s mind reeling—but he also felt like he was coming to something different, something that was meant to happen.

Now he was drifting ever deeper into the woods, feeling choked and lonely. The drive was beautiful but the more lucid he was becoming the more he ached to be fucked up, and perhaps more. The urge came on like an anxiety, something roiling and nagging in his stomach. There were some pain pills, a few hits of LSD, and a laughably small dose of MDMA he had left stateside that he had now, and although any mix of them could get the job done Jason was worried he was hungry for something more. Now that he was back in the states old habits were bubbling up again, and he did his best to focus on the trees, on Moralez, and on whatever dark state op he had been selected for.

Jason, driving a rental sudan, crested over the rise of the road as it peaked towards the safehouse. There were several cars parked on its closest side, and after finding a place of his own Jason followed in behind Clint and Pari just minutes after their arrival...

Joseph was sat at the far end of the living room across from Foster. The man had documents detailing the sites of bodies that were recently dug up around White Tree that were related to the Blackriver Killer. The room was silent as Foster waited for the small team to get settled and Joseph studied the board on which the map of Blackriver County with colored pins denoting exhumation sites and crime scenes. The sheer amount told Joseph that either the Blackriver Killer had been at this for a long while or he was very productive. Finally, Foster cleared his throat and all eyes were on him, Joseph’s included. Before he spoke, he wondered just how much Foster would divulge.

“Gentlemen,” Foster began, then nodded at Pari, “Lady. Two days ago, 2200 hours, Officer Morales of the West Virginia State Police was the first responder to the residence of Daniel and Vicki Mulligan on his patrol. His last correspondence with the dispatcher that night was confirming that he had made it to the scene. After further requests to respond as to his status, Sherriff Deputies in the area were called in to clear the smoke and find out what was going on.”

“They found the Mulligans gone, Morales was nowhere to be found. There were no signs of a struggle outside, no shell casings. There was a lot of blood found in the bedroom of the Mulligans residence, though. Obvious who the suspect is. We are led to believe that the most likely cause is that the Blackriver killer had the drop on Morales and it all went downhill from there. Morales’ cruiser was found about a mile down the road going towards the Vera Corporation mining operation.” He said, pointing to one of the colored pins on the map, where the Mulligan residence was, “Maryanne Roy is waiting for some of our team at the scene as we speak, so we’ll make this fast as we can.”

His finger circled the town of White Tree proper on the map, “I want the other section of our team canvassing the town. Our second priority is figuring out just where the hell the CDC team sent to White Tree went. They’d arrived a few days before Morales’ disappearance to investigate the appearance of the black welts on many of the townsfolk and haven’t sent home since.” Foster folded his arms, “We’ve got quite the case here in this small spit of a town, Lady and Gentlemen. State Trooper Marvin McClintock here is our resident expert on this town, he knows the ins-and-outs and layout of Blackriver better than any of us.”

Foster looked to Joseph, “Anything to add?”

Joseph nodded, looking out over the small assembled team they had here. Clint was the black sheep, but Foster needed him for this. They needed an inside man in Blackriver to lend a friendly, familiar face to the investigation. Or, at least, just a familiar one. Joseph cleared his throat, “We stick to each other out there like flies on shit. No going solo, you all have the cellphones we gave you, use them whenever you need to.” Joseph patted his holster, “I don’t want service weapons out unless someone’s coming at you. The last thing we need is to get in trouble because we turned White Tree into the OK Corral.”

He sighed then, running his hand along his beard, “I’m not going to elaborate, so take this at face value and remember it well.” He looked each of them in the eye, “We all know just how weird the world gets sometimes. You know exactly what I mean." His eyes were hard at that, that street dog in him bearing its teeth at falling bombs, "You find something that weird out here in Blackriver, you don’t hesitate to call me or Foster. Don’t read anything that seems weird, don’t touch anything that seems weird. Call.”

Foster nodded slow, eyebrows raised as he fidgeted with the cufflinks on his suit, “Alright, people, let’s get mounted up. Joseph, take Jason and get into town, start interviewing people about the CDC and the killings while you’re at it.” He pointed to Clint and Pari, “Clint, introduce Pari to Maryanne Roy at the Mulligan’s.”

They split up. They mounted up. They drove. Joseph hoped he spooked them enough with that speech, he hoped everything would go as well as it could. But he knew White Tree would be the death of their innocence in the face of the things they would soon have to fight away. Blackriver was a hornet's nest of lies, poverty, intrigue, and more than likely- something far, far darker that usually only had the bravery to crop up in the far-flung vestiges of frontiers the world had. Joseph frowned as he shut the door of the Ford Focus, he'd seen it in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia. Not in my yard...

The truth of White Tree and Blackriver County is that it is one of the most poverty-ridden areas of the United States. Joseph flipped through the files on Blackriver he'd brought with him, Jason in the driver's seat, the litany of modern savagery and death throes of the American Dream here contained on the pages in his hands. Mining and farming conglomerates have swooped down on White Tree and the surrounding small mining towns like leviathans after crumbs. Unemployment was the norm here long before the latest financial crisis. Local schools are falling apart and Joseph found it unnerving that there are scarcely few children in White Tree. Farming is done almost exclusively by agrobusiness giants, using Roundup Ready crops and titanic machines on fields so big they demonstrate the curvature of the Earth.

Joseph and the others reached the mining district in Blackriver that's been active on and off for more than a century and a half, a mere fifteen minutes from the safehosue. Its locals feel their lives depend on that activity, which resumed about two years back due to high oil prices. The last time the mines closed, it was due to unionization and talking to OSHA, so the locals won't be trying that again. They distrust strangers and bear a deep, dark faith in God and television. This is because they recently escaped from a level of poverty that involved getting shot at in the dark while tearing up crops sprayed with dangerous quantities of glyphosate, just to eat. These are desperate people, ready to kill for their oppressors.

---

>WHITE TREE
>0712 HOURS…///

Joseph was only used to sites like these in foreign countries. Though, it remained to be said that the town itself they split off from Clint and Pari in wasn’t unlike the tiny, chewed up trailer town he grew up in back in Texas. The same one he spent a few eventful years as a Sherriff’s Deputy in, arresting so-and-so for such-and-such on any given day only to never see them again or to be reminded of their existence when he was once again pounding on their door for them to open up because his warrant said his boot would also serve as a key to their house. He had an errant thought of just how he’d try to single-handedly fix this town like he tried with the other one. Probably with the same results.

White Tree was very much the picture of what Steve Foster described in the morning briefing. It might have been picturesque at one point, but the financial crises of the 2000s had left its hand on White Tree, though the damage done was most definitely not done in one fell swoop. Even just fifteen minutes spent in the parking lot of the gas station in White Tree was enough. At the edges, a mangy dog sniffed at a paper bag and took off running when it sighted a pair of men walking towards it. The two men fixed Joseph and Jason with wary stares before turning their heads away and going about their business. The Ford Focus was the only car in the parking lot and it wasn’t hard to notice that cars sat destitute in the driveways of homes on the way to town from the safehouse.

The denizens of the tiny spit of the town of White Tree milled about on errands or just seemingly aimlessly at their own leisure, though there was noticeably few of them whatever they were out for. One might guess at it being work-hours at the mines, or just the fact that anyone who’d sensed what the town would become years and years ago already jumped ship and left the poor fools to fend for themselves. To their credit, as life always does, it persisted past the horrific advance of corporate industry and financial crises. Albeit, just as the wildlife of Fukushima or Chernobyl, life here was scarred and ugly. The two people around the Ford Focus were left to run rough-shod through the town with their questioning or just act as observers to this alien world. A passing group of teenagers eyed the duo from a safe distance. “Fucking lost tourists.” Said loud enough by one before he spat at them and they continued walking, laughing in the blood-boiling manner only a gaggle of street-youths could. These were the people they were here to save.

Joseph watched the youths walk away from them, shaking his head. “Fucking kids.” He took the last drag of his cigarette and dropped it smoldering on the ground, “Let’s get to it.”

---

>BLACKRIVER COUNTY
>0720 HOURS...///

Windy mountain roads, trees, but the far-off plumes of black like devils trying to smoke the angels from their heavens evident from the porch of the safehouse. Even now, the smell still lingered in the car, diesel mingling with the smell of the forest. White Tree is a town seemingly only in name. There is one restaurant, Vicky’s Diner, no relation to the late Vicki Mulligan. A gas station, a general store, the very bare amenities for anyone scraping a living out of the mountain dirt. The neighborhoods are about what you’d expect, a sprinkling of tiny houses sitting in solitude and near destitution, far away from each other that even going along at 35 miles per hour on the almost jarringly rigid straightaways of White Tree’s gravel and dirt roads it takes thirty seconds to get from one dirt-road driveway to the next.

It’s easy to see why anyone distrusting of the city life, their fellow man or their president would live out here. As the duo passed a family walking down the road hard-eyed, dirty and callused, with a road sign behind them that read Jesus Loves You under the moss and dirt, it’s easy to see why being born here would make you such.

Police lights, finally. The closer they got, the clearer the scene became- this was a checkpoint. The road ahead was blocked off for some reason with three sherriff’s Ford Crown Vics arrayed with two of the vehicles on one side of the road with the remaining one on the opposite. There was a hold to let people through, but it was blocked off by two sherriff’s deputies- one holding a shotgun and the other an AR-15- as well as a spike strip deployed in front of them.

The two Deputies raised their hands for the car to stop, which it did. One of the Deputies to the side of the road approached the car on Pieter’s side while yet another walked up from the opposite. The Deputy on Clint’s side motioned for him to roll down his window, “Where you folks headed? I’m afraid this route’s blocked off for a while.” The Deputy said after Clint’s window was down.

A collab with @Leidenschaft & @WittyReference


"Cut the shit Chase, you know why we're here." Clint's tone was biting but steady. Deputy Sheriff Chase Hillock, mountain of a man. Played center back when the school was worth the bricks. Joined the force about the time McClintock was on his way out, a young man's game.

"I'm sorry sir, that's Deputy Hillock if you please. " The deputy's tone dripped with the same apple pie and bless your heart, saccharine venom just beneath the crust. "This is a crime scene as you seem to be aware, sir," the large lawman's kind eyes bore fuck you into Clint's own, "and while we appreciate the state troopers interest in this matter, we have it well under control." A smile simmered on his lips as his mass leaned against the dark vehicle defiantly.

Clint turned to Pari, his eyes as narrow and bleak as the road ahead. "Show him the damn badge."

His eyes were intense - an intensity that communicated a lot to her about him. For a start, how seriously he was taking this case, as he should be. This was his town. These were his people. The thought of whether this would be a help or a hindrance to the investigation did cross her mind briefly.

Deputy Hillock may have been a big man, but Pari was not intimidated, men like this were a dime a dozen in law enforcement. He was not the first and he would not be the last that she would bypass to reach a crime scene. Before Clint could even ask, the badge was in her hand - folded in it's wallet, she leaned across Clint, her own deep mahogany eyes fixated on the Deputy with a smile that harboured a slight arrogance. “Parinaaz Bhatt, homicide investigator for the FBI. We aren't here to step on your toes Deputy, I certainly wouldn't dream of it,” she pulled the badge back and nodded at Clint, “but we've been asked to attend this scene. I'd appreciate to not have to call any of my superiors and make a show of this... You will not even notice us.”

Clint interjected as Bhatt's nimble fingers flipped her identification closed with practiced grace. “You're a prick, Hillock but you're a damn fine deputy. You know how well I trust suits but if it takes a monster to catch a monster we need to give them all the help we can. This goes above Hayes so you need to keep that fat mouth shut.”

Hillock stared a while at the young woman's credentials. He'd never seen an FBI agent but she hardly fit his mental image. Maybe that was the point. He scoffed. He was a damn fine deputy and it was high time the old bastard admitted it. It was a hollow victory however as anything that made the old man grovel was bad news. His bravado slackened as he waved the car through the checkpoint. “You're still an ass, Clint. Detective Roy is waiting for you. You're not the only one they let in on their little secrets, you old fuck. S'cuse my language, Miss.”

McClintock sighed as the vehicle began rolling again. He turned toward Pari slowly. “I doubt the boys'll fuck up a chance to catch this bastard. S'cuse my language. They're stubborn but they're good people. They're worth savin’, ma'am.”

“I wouldn’t have thought otherwise, I want to catch them too - whoever is behind it. Believe me, we will.” Her voice trailed off and she tilted her head to watch the scene outside of the window, the mountains - the forest. It was a world away from Seattle, a universe from Mumbai. There was a chilling dissonance here that only seemed to become more unnerving as the car approached the destination.

“You know, McClintock - I believe that a lot can be said for human intuition and gut feeling,” as she spoke softly, she placed her badge back in the inside pocket of her jacket. “You’ve lived here your whole life - correct me if I’m wrong - out of our small team, you know this area and the people the best, yes? Tell me - what does you gut tell you about this right now?” There was a seriousness to her tone, but not an uncomfortable one. To her, everything was part of the investigation, and while she did not mean to put her new colleague on the spot like that, she knew that his thoughts would be of fundamental value.

Her tone was inviting, warm even, but her tongue flashed the Sword of Damocles. For what awaits all in power? That omnipresent threat of destruction, it sung malice to the hearts of kings but what of the guard sent to protect them? To give your life in the line of duty, the fear of the martyr and every damn lawman just trying to get home. And now Moralez never would. After a long while Clint spoke. “Well miss,” his tone was deliberate. “Miss, I’m afraid whatever happened to the Mulligans also befell my friend. I’m afraid we’ll find Moralez dead and butchered and there won’t be enough for his family to bury. I’m afraid Roy won’t have a lick of evidence that can point us to the killer, and I’m afraid we’ll be the ones to find the two of those heartbreaking discoveries are one.” He dropped back into silence then, the air heavy in his lungs.

“I’m sorry in advance for what we might see, I imagine there’s not much dismemberment in your office.” A breeze of levity, a knowing jab, it was all he could muster. As the tires ached toward their destination the rumbling whine seemed to match the lawman’s dread. “We’ll be there soon I think, Roy’ll want to meet y’as soon as we arrive.” Gone was the song on his lips and the fire in his eyes, all that remained was the gravedigger’s guilt. “Miss, I shouldn’t’a left him alone that night.” His voice trailed off as he turned towards the quickly approaching reds and blues ahead.

Pari could only listen to the man. He was an older gentleman, it was apparent not only in his appearance, but his manner and way of speaking with her. It was refreshing, she liked that he had some old-fashioned class about him. But there was more than that buried beneath it. “Don't apologise for that,” was about all she could muster at first. She just let herself look into his eyes with a comforting smile - as much as she could manage, at least. They were still very new acquaintances, and she didn't think it appropriate to extend any further words on the matter of the crime scene.

“Try not to think that way, you'll pollute your own mind with toxicity when it must remain clear now. Do not let yourself feel blame,” she spoke firmly, knowing that the words would fall on deaf ears. She had seen it before, she had witnessed how guilt like that could unravel a person. She herself had unraveled over less… She would need to keep an eye on Clint. As the car stopped, she felt an anxiety form in her stomach, how bad could it be?

If there had been an atmosphere before, it was nothing compared to this. The scene was in slow motion, captured and held there in a heavy and morose ambiance, threat and terror looming over the horizon - something quietly sinister stirring below. It was as though the whole thing would collapse at any moment. She felt eyes on their car, not everyone, but enough for it to make her feel uncomfortable and like the stranger that she was. She was out of place here completely and it only caused the anxiety to further stab at her guts. She took a deep breath in and clicked her finger against the button of her seatbelt. “Alright, let's find Roy…” her tone was subdued and heavy, followed by the long exhalation from her nose.

“Right. No sense wastin’ any more time. Now, if anyone gives you trouble out here you let me know. They may not like me but at least they respect me.” With that the lawman slid from the dark vehicle and began his march toward Roy when the dark figures caught his eye from the bushes. Kitted out and dangerous, he figured there would be plenty of time to discuss their “guests” later. For now there was work to be done and he’d need to knock the cobwebs lose. “Howdy Detective. This here is Parinaaz Bhatt and I’m hoping I’m pronouncing that correctly. Miss Pari, this is Detective Roy and she’ll be our info drop on this.”

“Clint.” Roy said, a genuine smile to see the old man here and in such high company, as far as the pecking order of Law Enforcement went. She cut a very different figure than the rest of the police about the scene. Dressed in slacks and a dress shirt, her hair done up in a tight bun and thick-rimmed glasses, looking like she’d be more home in a less rural police force. Her accent was all the same familiarity of the hills to Clint, though, “You must be Pari.”

The two women shook hands and Roy wasted no time, only worrying about her job when she was wearing the badge, “I trust you know the background of all this. None of us have been here long and I haven’t even gotten a chance to really survey the scene. I’ll leave that to you, I guess,” Roy nodded and smiled to Pari, “Have a look in the trailer if you’d like, it’s where I’d start. Far as outside goes, I noticed tire tracks and marked off some boot prints.”

“Clint, I guess you can stay with me. I haven’t had a chance to greet our fuckin’ guests over there.” She shook her head, all dagger-eyed at the two black-fatigued men at the edges of the scene like carrion birds, “Fuckin’ dressed to impress, though.”

“I noticed that as well, wish you’d have told me we were having folks over I’d have brought more whiskey.” Clint raised a finger and tapped on the tin of tobacco in his breast pocket. He’d need to stop by the gas station in the morning, he had a feeling this was going to be a long morning. With practiced ease the lawman lipped his dip and turned to face the detective once more. “Boot prints might be regulation, easy way to rule them out as Moralez’. Shall we see what our esteemed colleagues want before all that gear gives’em heat stroke?”

---

Roy had seemed affable enough, which gave Pari some relief. The only thing worse than one lawman with an attitude was two lawmen with attitude. She was grateful for the woman’s straight forwardness. She did as she was asked - and headed to the trailer, snapping on a pair of blue nitrile gloves as she walked. The scent was familiar, and that familiarity was a brief and welcome distraction from the severity of the situation at hand.

The first thing to note was that there were no signs of struggle inside the trailer, that much was certain. In fact the entire trailer was clean and lingering on the air inside was the subtle scent of the air freshener that they used. Lemons, possibly with some kind of flower.

At first glance nothing seemed amiss, but that was of course the mask of what had happened. It hadn’t happened in this room - no struggle after all. Pari wondered if it was Vicki or Daniel who kept the place so clean - she wondered what kind of couple they were. Did they share responsibilities? Or did Vicki manage everything? Whoever is was keeping house, they clearly took pride in it. She’d never really know now. She could see their faces in the framed photographs adorning the trailer. They looked happy, sociable, well-liked. Seeing them in their moments made her feel slightly closer to them, a glance at them and she felt the warmth of the couple - and a realisation of why the atmosphere was so damn cold around here now. Pari sighed.

On the kitchen bench, there sat a can filled with cigarette butts. Someone was a smoker, more than likely Daniel. It explained why there was such a presence of air freshener - maybe Vicki didn’t particularly encourage his habit. Pari was careful not to disturb the muddy footprints on the flooring. Boots, they’d walked straight to the bedroom - not stopping to disturb a thing, no slight turn to look at a photo or take something from a drawer. Whoever they were, they worked with absolute efficiency in their task to kill. They were methodical and cold about it.

As she paced around - in her own methodical manner - she wanted to observe everything. She took her notes on a small wirebound notebook with a mechanical pencil. A long list of short bullet points.

The bedroom was entirely different. The bed was soaked through with blood stains. It was grisly, but not unexpected. None of it had gotten anywhere else, there were no splashes or splatters on the wall, no drips on the floor. It was all contained in their bed. Two bibles sat on the bedside tables either side of the bed. They were a happy, religious couple that were well liked in the area. Something about the scene wasn’t adding up for Pari. Her thoughts were that this was a deliberate act intended to shock and shock alone.

The way that the tire tracks headed out of the Mulligan residence and were lost after the dirt road indicated that whomever this was, they knew their way here. The agents had discussed the probability of them living in one of the towns connected to the road to be the culprit. A possibility, but too early to say in Pari’s mind. Still, she added it to the bullet list.

The last item of note was a Mossberg 870 in the the closet. Clean - as clean as the rest of the trailer, and it didn’t appear to have been fired recently. For show perhaps? The box of shells sat beside it. It was a standard crime scene, it was unremarkable - it was like so many that she had seen before. So why was there such a heavy atmosphere and tension lingering. That was the concern, that’s where this slipped from an everyday homicide to something that had required their special team. She had to do her best on this one.

She removed the gloves, placing them in her jacket pocket for now as she got far enough away from the trailer and scanned the area to Clint. She had to share her findings and thoughts.

---

“You know, Clint,” Roy said as they sauntered over to the two gear-laden, black-fatigued men in the small tactical buggy, “You ever get that feeling in your gut that somebody you’re going to approach while working a case is just going to be a fucking asshole?”

Clint chuckled, at least some semblance of warmth to it. “I guess I didn’t tell you we ran into Hillock down the hill, did I?” He gave a knowing look to Roy as she continued.

“Hillock’s just another boy who never thought about being a man because he grew up a few miles from here in the city. Those assholes don’t give a shit about White Tree until now because it’s a big case.” She shook her head. “I’ve seen him in so many others when I was in Internal Affairs. I’m getting the gut feeling that these guys are going to be fucking assholes, Clint. Like the rest of them around you and me.”

Just as expected, one of them rose and the other followed just a tick off from unison. Roy knew who the leader was. Roy waved but the two men wordlessly got in their buggy, the thing roaring to life and spitting up a rooster’s tail of dirt as it disappeared in a smoke of exhaust and the feeling left behind after you’d just been a prick to. “Alright, Clint. What’s your detailed analysis of the fuckery?”

“If I had to hazard a guess, I imagine Vera doesn’t care too much for state enforcement.” He spat the word. “Bastards.”

“I wouldn’t either if I was the asshole dealing with the one set of people in West Virginia that won’t bend over for me.” The two turned around just as Pari was finished following some of the tire tracks. Roy waved across the distance, “Think the girl will do good? Morales deserves a good team looking for him.”

“She seems too kind for the work she does. Hasn’t made her a hard ass prick like us yet.” Another knowing look. Roy may have been all business but she’d always been amiable. Not like those fuckers in blue. “I think we’ll find out once we hear what she’s found.”

“Give it some time.” Roy nudged Clint, the old lawman was salty, sure but Roy knew him to be one of the only people around here who was genuinely in it to make things different around here, for the better. “You either start drinking because you find out you barely make a difference, or you start drinking because it’s the only reward you get for making that little difference.”

“Alright, Pari,” Roy said as the three of them rejoined each other’s company, “What’s to do about the trailer?”

“A little early to say… But I have some theories of course. I want to check where those boot prints end and begin too. This killer is cold though, he deliberately chose the Mulligans but he didn’t care about them. He cared about what they represent to this town I’d say… A pair of upstanding, Christian people.” She thumbed the pages of her notebook as she spoke to Roy and Clint, meeting both of their eyes in turns. “It’s my belief that they weren’t his real target, there was no struggle, nothing disturbed inside. It was quick, they probably didn't even know...” her stare held on Clint this time before she looked over her shoulder towards the tyre marks and footprints again.

“I would really like to know about Morales, his life, hobbies, interests…Everything. That’s where I’d go next…”

“Morales was a good man. Loved his family, did his job, protected the people. It was no secret he didn’t care much for Vera, none of us do, but he had this suspicion the sheriff's office was in their pocket. Rumors start everyday over there but it may have something to do with his disappearance.”

Roy pointed to the tire tracks, “Three sets. Different treads. One of them is Morales’ cruiser, they matched up to his car- which we found about a mile towards the city.” Roy shook her head, “The other two, I’ve got no clue. You might want to check those boot prints.”

A short walk brought them to a space in the field where a set of tire tracks looped around the sharpest. “I figure somebody came here, stayed for a bit, and went. Two different people, because I’ve never seen somebody who can drive two cars at once.”

“It had to have been a team, Clint, Pari. The Cruiser was gone before the deputies got here and driving here after Morales checked in, disposing his car, walking back and then going on their own merry way in their own vehicle would’ve taken a long time.” Roy looked both Clint and then Pari in the eye, “I figured it was too professional for some backwoods hillbilly bullshit like White Tree. No offense, Clint, but we both know the stock that grows up here. We did.”

She hiked up the legs of her pants to bend down, putting her hand out, fingers spread and sweeping over the field, “Lots of activity. Maybe cleaning up. Morales was ex-military and it’s usually quiet this far into the sticks. Nobody could’ve snuck up on nobody, much less a soldier-boy, out here unless they knew he was coming and ready as hell.” Roy got back up, “Twenty dollars says you check these boot prints and they’ll be too many sets to prove me wrong on this.”

Sure enough, after a bit of a walk around the property, it was revealed that Roy was right to both Clint and Pari. The two returned to her, “Their dog was taken out. Knife. One long cut on the throat.” She shook her head and it looked as shaken as she should be at this, “How the hell are you going to sneak up on a damn German Shepherd? The thing must have been rooted, scared shitless. You find me a man alive that can put the fear in a hound set on protecting its family.”

Roy put her hand on her hips, “That’s all I found. I just needed you to get into that trailer. I wanted another pair of eyes to get in there and figure I ain’t finally crazy after all the shit I seen.” Roy frowned, “Thoughts?”

“I think it’s high time we check those prints.”

“After looking? I’m only more confused now… Something truly strange has happened here - that’s for sure. I want to get to the bottom of it, and believe me I will. It’s not the first time I’ve dealt with the truly strange and depraved…” Pari folded her notebook into her pocket, eyes narrowing as she took one last long look over the entire scene from where she stood - her breathing slow and arms folded over her chest.

“Any luck with those men?” She asked the two, in a voice that suggested she was still giving her concentration to the scene.

Her eyes broke from the scene and she turned once more to Roy, “Ma’am, I’d like a call when the forensic analysis begins at the lab. I’d like to be there - if it hasn’t already started. Let me know. In the meantime I’d like to take a look through town and get a feel for this place if that is alright with you Clint.”

A collab by Schaft and @Ionisus

Joseph closed the manila envelope the case files on Blackriver were in, deciding that it’d be best for him if he stopped reading all the shit that reminded him too much of little towns tucked away in his past and the people in them. The tree line zipped past his errant gaze as Jason took them on a course from the mountain roads that snakes down from the hills the safehouse was tucked away in and the depressing excuse for a town that White Tree was. His eyes fixed on the Explorer that Clint and Pari were in, wondering just how the old salt and that girl would get along. Well, he hoped.

As the Explorer took a turn down the road towards the Mulligan residence, he looked to Jason. Wondering now just how he and this fellow intelligence officer would get along. Surely, behind those business-first eyes of his, he was wondering what the hell kind of use a DIA agent was going to be on a homicide case. Foster had a nasty habit of putting all the theatrics into his agents’ first Operation. Making questions start to just boil over but before they could and those questions come frothing out of angry, frowning, heated mouths, he’d break the whole thing open as if their admittance into the unapologetically criminal conspiracy that was Delta Green was a gift.

It was years ago that the mountains of Afghanistan had shown Joseph just what they were hiding. Not just evils leftover from the CIA’s meddling there in the Cold War, but evils far darker and more ancient than the religions there that put Kalashnikovs in young men’s hands and Jihad in their hearts. It was the same unknowable evils under black marker in both Joseph and Jason’s files, tucked away and flagged by the Delta Green recruiters.

Although Jason’s attention was on the narrow trek of road snaking down the steep hill, every time Joseph flipped through the manila foldered files he was instantly distracted and looked over. Thankfully the winding turns kept him from swerving. He wanted to see the files, see all of this the way Joseph did. There was something in his look, something like a sour taste or a bitter word held on the back of his tongue. It surprisingly worried Jason. It wasn’t that nothing added up between the agencies, the tasking, or that he was told practically nothing but a suspected serial killing. It was that stare. The way Joseph looked like he needed to look away.

It never occurred to Jason until now that was how he had always been. When it wasn’t supposed to be seen, when you had to look away—those were the things he found irresistible.

“I read your file.” Joseph finally said, still staring out the window at nothing in particular. “Or what I could of it. Air Force PJ, Afghanistan. I was there too. My ODA was stationed near the Pakistani border. Before that, I was kicking in doors with the Ranger Battalions, cozying up with SEALs and even Delta a few times. You ever work with them boys much?” He asked.

“Yeah, I was a flyboy,” Jason said. “Selected for some highspeed shit, but uh…” He looked out at the hills rolling into the morning haze on the horizon. There wasn’t an answer waiting for him, just a dreary sky smothering the mountains. “Yeah, I was patching up Rangers all the time when they’d let me. Supported some SEALs and what I thought was Delta, but I was never given the chance to work with them. Worked with spooks in SOUTHCOM mostly.”

Jason smirked, and asked, “What side of the Pakistani border?”

Joseph let out a single bark of a laugh at that. Jason was an intelligence officer, an operator before him just like he was. The simple fact that there was so much damn black in his file meant he lived the things people made conspiracies out of. But to speak so coyly and nonchalant about it was still something that burned Joseph’s tongue. Not because of legality or some sense of morality, but because his mouth just refused to fit around the words. “Afghan mountains.” Joseph said, simply, “We worked with a spook once, said he was a Combat Controller.”

‘Probably was once,” jason replied of the spook. That’s how it worked, wasn’t it? A grain above the rest, a propensity for killing. And smart. Jason knew they needed to be smart enough to stay alive. Ghazni crept up from somewhere deep in his mind like the swallowing shadows between the trees blurring past them. Had he been smart then, or savage? Or was it luck?

“Foster said you were hunting Daesh meth cooks. I spent some time tracking their recruiters and people smugglers in the Middle East,”Joseph said, deciding he’d let on a little bit about where he’d come from. He knew this was a game to them, for a couple of spooks, secrecy was the word. Half-truths, fast-talking, outright lies.

“No shit? Syria then. Lebanon, maybe Turkey.” Jason replied, nodded in thought. He felt a little more at home next to the grizzled wolf that was Joseph knowing they had played in the same yard. “Yeah, mostly chemists cooking up meth. You’d be surprised how much other shit they like to make. Crude blister agents, chlorine based gases, explosives—but you know that.”

By now they had entered the town, but it was no less choked by the forest. Old stones of grimy buildings peaked up from ancient, defiant treetops. Nothing concrete was newly set, but looked steadily reclaimed by the hungry hills. Cracks were filled with dark earth and twisted grass. Paint was always faded, washed out in the filter of an overcast sky. Jason was just as foreign here as he was in Jordan, this time displaced in the shed skin of deep Appalachian country.

“What’s your impression of Foster?” Joseph asked.

Jason made an effort to look everywhere but Joseph's eyes. “He’s your boy, isn’t he? No bullshit it’s too early to tell.” They eased up to a stop sign, a testy nissan pickup coughing in rattles as it crossed the road in front of them. Joseph followed the vehicle with his eyes as Jason kept looking in the distance, adding, “No, not sure yet. Whatever this is I’m guessing it’s an interview. You want to see how we work.”

Jason wanted to tell Joseph he saw that look in his eyes, that he practically fell in its depth, but it wasn’t fear. He thought it was concern. Joseph knew something. Any one of the team members had to already be guessing there was more to this. Whatever it was had Joseph feeling something, but he couldn’t tell them. Jason was perplexed at this.

“But he likes me,” Jason went on, the Explorer rolling forward and ever closer to the Mulligan Residence. “Someone does, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Joseph chuckled, “Yeah, if being with him on assignments means he likes you, he fucking loves me.” It remained to be said that Foster only ever called him for assignments like these. Not ever things like assassinate a people smuggler in France or interrogate some ISIS asshole attempting to get into the US in Panama. It was always asset recovery of some strange books with oblivious flyboys just like Jason used to be, running SIGINT or HUMINT collection with Intelligence Support Activity operators in support of something shady he and Delta Green were at work at. Butt into a Homeland Security raid on antiquity smugglers, once. “And yeah, I want to see how you all work. I might have known Foster for a bit but the guy keeps you at arm’s length unless he thinks it’s time.” He frowned, “If he ever does. But that’s how it goes sometimes, you know.”

“Turkey, by the way.” He said, “Spent a lot of time there doing morally ambiguous things to the locals, as it were. When I wasn’t teaching Kurds how to kill ISIS.”

Joseph’s acknowledgement was something. It made Jason feel less like he was being toyed with. That they didn’t have to talk around, didn’t have to keep stepping in tune with the dance. From what Joseph was saying it sounded like Foster was one of those deep state guys you only see for a moment, someone far up the marionette wire. His mystique made Jason almost excited. Somewhere something in these hills was bringing them together. It had taken Moralez. He was the purpose, but it was morbid curiosity that had Jason hooked.

“So we aren’t focusing on Moralez, not the two of us. What’s our angle?” It was a meaningless question, but it opened up dialogue about the case. Unless otherwise directed, sometimes there was no angle for intelligence gathering, not when there was little known about their ‘target.’ The pattern would reveal itself weaved in the minds of White Tree. Buried deep in their secrets, in their fears, was whoever killed Moralez. Buried like the others meant to be forgotten in the hills.

“The CDC. One of Foster’s people knew them.” Joseph said, “Black welts in the town caught the attention of the CDC. The CDC caught the attention of somebody else, somebody who didn’t like them much apparently.”

Joseph, sucked his teeth, shaking his head. He wasn’t allowed to tell them the truth, not until Foster deemed it the right time or if they happened upon something that blew the assignment wide open for them and laid the truth bare. He found it appropriate the dark iron of the clouds pressed down on White Tree and the hills beyond with the same weight. The hills and mountains seemed to go on forever until they were just faint rumors in the mists beyond.

“I was telling the truth, Jason.” He said, fishing around in the inside pocket of his coat for his cigarettes and something else they’d need. “When I said to leave any weird shit we might find out here alone. Let’s just focus on finding this team or whatever happened to them. One step at a time.”

That was it, it seemed. Find the CDC team, see how it links up with Moralez. Jason tried to piece it together rationally, in the way his military analyst brain was trained to do. The black welts could be a biological weapon and its controllers disposed of the team. Moralez finds their trail and gets murdered. Jason shook his head, knowing that linking Moralez to the CDC team was mental red herring. Moralez was responding to a domestic call, yet something was nagging at Jason, telling him they were somehow linked. Nothing but conjecture, he thought, shitty spitballing.

“You know,” he said coming out of his reverie, “if you and I being in this car in the middle of strip mine, USA isn’t weird enough I can’t wait to see ‘weird’. You’re telling a bull to polish the china. So what, domestic terrorists leaked agents and dosed the locals?”

Then why not have Homeland Security and the F.B.I. in on this, Jason wondered. Nothing was adding up, but conjecture was only making him anxious. He wanted to be where they were heading, but the town’s 25 mile speed limit bade him wait.

Joseph chuckled at Jason’s quip. He’d have to save that one for sometime. If domestic terrorists were behind this, he could breathe just a tad bit easier. He thought that to be ludicrous coming from anybody else, but in his line of work, that would’ve only welcomed a sense of normalcy back into things. He shrugged, “Maybe, but that’s what we’re here to find out. I can’t imagine the town’s soil and water to be the cleanest after all the pesticides and chemicals tainting everything in a miles-wide radius.” He said, “But that’s what the CDC was surveying, now it’s our job to figure out why a cop got dusted, a killer’s loose, and the CDC team is dead. Why no fucking news outlet is giving this shit airtime is… well, what did I tell you about weird?”

“You get a town no one wants to remember and it’s easy to carve your own little slice of bad news from it. Also easier to cover up,” Jason replied.

“Stop here.” Joseph pointed to a condemned gas station to their left, and Jason parked it as inconspicuously as he could. The pair got out, Joseph surveying the surroundings before lighting his cigarette and walking to the trunk of the car. Jason stepped out and hung his arms over the car roof and the door, surveying the rusted out squalor with the hills looming all around them.

“I was reading about this area—about Blackriver in general,” Jason said, Joseph rummaging through the trunk. “The rivers turn black from all the plant tannins. Decay, you know? Black in the water, black coal in the hills. On their skin now.” He joined Joseph, “Why the fuck they name this place White Tree.”

Joseph shrugged, “Wishful thinking?” He shoved his hands in his pockets,. “Why the fuck’d they name it Greenland?”

In the trunk was tactical gear for the both of them that Joseph was very much hoping they wouldn’t need this early. He brushed the ballistic vests away to reveal a strongbox. He rustled around in his jacket pocket and produced a key, which fit neatly in the strongbox’s hole. A quick turn sent the lid swinging open on its own to reveal Velcro patches and a few wallets. POLICE, SECURITY, DEA, ICE, SHERIFF, FBI and whatever other agency or organization that wasn’t his emblazoned in bold on the patches. He grabbed two of the wallets, tossing one to Jason.

“If you’re familiar with the law, Jason, I’m not even supposed to be here in official capacity. Freeze, scumbag.” He flipped open the wallet to reveal an FBI badge belonging to Joseph Holt, “Unless I’m working in tandem with a federal agency. It’s a good thing Pari is with us. As for you and me slipping her leash, we’ll want these.”

He took another drag of his cigarette just as a gob of spit landed dangerously close to him, followed by a young voice calling him a fucking lost tourist. “Fucking kids.” He dropped his cigarette and placed his badge in the inside pocket of his coat. “Let’s get to it. Where to, Special Agent Jimenez?”

Without answering Joseph, Jason broke out in a trot after the teenagers. He peeled up his best fake, warm smile while Joseph followed after Jason like a hunter and his bird dog. There wasn’t any black marks on the teenagers’ as far as Jason could see, and he received defiant scowls his examining gaze.

“Not a tourist, just out here like those CDC fellas. You run into those guys at all? Asking about those marks cropping up around town?”

“Lot of good those pricks did,” one kid said.His hook nose peaked out from the shadow of his sweat stained ball cap. An almost vacant look gleamed like stones under the brim of his hat.

The other was almost a foot taller than him and rounded in every place imaginable. A mean-spirited stare soured his boyish, rosy-cheeked face, and Jason could tell he was being sized up. It was their outsider appearance, their otherness that assured the teenager victory. Jason hated both stupid and strong in one person.

“Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Well, I’ll tell you what-” Jason said, flashing his fake badge as Joseph came up on them. Both teenagers sucked in through their teeth, physically recoiling.

“Hey man, we didn’t-”

“Save it,” Jason interrupted, his warm front going cold. He retrieved two twenty dollar bills from his wallet and rubbed them twice between his thumb and fingers. The pair seemed shocked at the offer at first, but the longer Jason held the money in front of them the more a wickedness began to glimmer in their eyes. Twenty dollars, their stare said. A bribe from a cop.

“Listen, we just want to help. Honest. Give me something worthwhile and I’ll help you two even more. You understand that, right?”

“We never saw ‘em,” the hook nosed one said.

“Yeah,” the baby faced one added.

“But you heard about them?” Jason asked.

“Most people thought they were government men tryin’ to close the mines again,” the hook nosed one said. “People had them sores and what not but didn’t show ‘em anything at first.”

“I saw ‘em once, the welts,” the big one said. “Down the way from my house.”

“Most folks went to the doc if they had ‘em,” The other went on.

“What doctor?” Jason asked.

“Mrs. Anne Levy,” the hooked nosed one answered. “Treats a lot of us.”

“Horse shit,” the baby faced one said. “That girl down my street went to her and didn’t get fixed. She was a praying woman and it healed her. I saw it. Welts were gone. I saw it.” He said it as if he dared anyone to question him, like it was an invitation to ball up his fatty hands and prove his own faith.

His friend scoffed at that, then nodded expectedly at the money in Jason’s hand. “So we, uh, in trouble or…”

Jason handed over the money, thankful the boys were walking away as quickly as they could. He had given kids money in the Middle East all the time, and it shamed him to feel so dirty about it here and now. Jason tried to chalk it up to Joseph’s presence but he knew better. He also knew he detested the big one, now watching the lumbering teenager shove and demand his twenty from the other one that had actually earned it. Stupid and strong and god fearing people. It was the Middle East all over again.

“If the CDC was smart they’d have caught wind of this doctor and questioned her. I guess that’s where we start.”

Joseph nodded, “I guess it is.” He watched the kids shrink into the distance, “Just have to ask around for her whereabouts. Let’s hit up the bar, bartenders usually know a lot of the gossip around town and anybody who isn’t in the mines could be there.”

---

Diner was a nice word for the place. Of course, nice words weren’t always true words, as it were, and the sentiment held true for Vicky’s Diner. More a bar than anything else, seeing as the tables were empty and only a lonely soul hung at the edges of the bar, mooning into his glass of whatever beer they had in these parts. Despite the fixtures for bulbs being there in the ceiling, Most of the lighting was done by that big ball of fire in the sky and some strings of white, green and red Christmas lights hung about the walls.

It was what you’d expect of a dive bar in the middle of a mining town in West Virginia. Manning the bar was a younger woman, busying herself with the task of wiping down glasses for nobody in particular it seemed. Her dusty blonde hair was done up in a bun and she equipped herself with a soft smile as she smoothed her shirt down, nodding to the two men who’d just entered. “How ya folks doin’? Have a seat wherever you’d like, got beer and whiskey.”

“Well, thank you kindly.” Joseph’s warm smile brought him to the bar, an errant glance thrown to the old-timer at the far end. Skinny from age and grey, gnarled like the rest of the town, he looked to be as appropriately placed here as the big nose on his face, “Say, ma’am, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Go right ahead, hon.”

“My friend and I, we’re looking for Dr. Anne Levy.” He said.

“Couple of newcomers to the town looking for the doctor?” She asked, “Sick?”

“Just got some questions for her.” He said, “Wanting to figure out what she knew about the black welts and whatnot on some of the townfolk.”

“More of you government boys?” The gravelly voice from the far end of the counter rattled out of the man sitting on his lonesome, “People ‘round these parts don’t like strangers getting into everybody’s business.”

“I’m not looking to get into everybody’s business, sir, just Doc Levy’s.” The old man huffed at that, but remained quiet. Thankfully. “We were talking, Miss?”

“Mary. Mary Easton.” She nodded, “Don’t mind Clement, he’s harmless. Yeah, Doc Levy’s office is about a couple miles down the road towards the city from here.”

“Why the fuck are you helping these fools, Mary?” The old man protested from his seat. Joseph was beginning to grow tired of the old coot, “Them other folk didn’t do anyone good ‘fore they up and disappeared.”

“Thank you for your help, ma’am.” Joseph said, casting a glance to the old-timer. So was it common knowledge that the CDC team poofed into thin air? Joseph mentally noted that as he rose and went for the door, Jason in tow.

Jason could like any place with the right company, but it was the vague nostalgia that made him feel somewhat comfortable in Vicky’s Diner. Cigarettes and spilled beer had soaked the wood ages ago and the stale perfume held a hint of Texas with it. Jason found it grounding. When Mary talked he listened, committing everything to memory while trying to flash his most wolfish smile. A smile that said he could be open to anything, that he was handsome and fun and whatever Mary would want him to be.She wasn’t particularly pretty or striking to Jason, but he did it all the same. At least this time he was doing it on purpose and not helpless to an urge.

When Joseph led, he followed, finding the fresh mountain air sobering and liberating. Bars could bring the worst out in Jason. It wasn’t the alcohol or mean-spirited and hurting fluttering to bartop; it was the possibilities. If anything could be said about someone going into a bar it was that they longed for something, and Jason was no exception. In that longing and absence alcohol could fill it up, or at least people tried. And when that didn’t work sex was the next best thing—or the next step up in Jason’s view. He knew he was going to have to stay busy tonight, or get fucked up. Anything to keep him distracted.