<br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Exterior of Simon’s Bull</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape Merrrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 10, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Delilah’s shell exploded into the creature’s back. The noises of sucking and licking, like a piggy family devouring a bucket of greasy Kentucky Fried Chicken, stopped. The thing slumped forward onto the corpse of the second cop it had murdered, its clawed hand forcing itself upward into the body cavity of the dead officer.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">It lay there for a moment, not breathing, as such was unnecessary for him since his embrace. He could feel the round in his flesh, and as he laid still, he allowed himself to “play dead” while the force of his blood, the power of his flesh forced the burn of the silver out of his body. When it was close to finished, he stood up all at once, though not empty handed. In his right arm, which had pushed deep into the body of the slain officer, he held an almost-black-with-blood heart. The thing turned its bestial features toward Delilah, and its long black hair which had covered its ears before, was tangled backward in the rain. Delilah could see there was something <em>wrong</em> about his ears. They weren’t human—not that his hands or face were, but these were just <em>not right</em>. They were long and pointed up and back from his face, were furred, like cat ears. They twitched subtly before the thing pointed at Delilah and said, “You stink of drink, hunter. How do you ever expect to sneak up on me that way?”</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Quickly then, he lifted the heart to his mouth and squeezed until it was a pulp of red tissue, blood and rain cascading down into his open mouth. The strength required to pulp heart muscle with such a simple gesture was inconceivable for humans. As suddenly as he had appeared, blood smeared on his laughing face, the man with the cat ears disappeared. He seemed to simply blink out of existence. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Interior of Simon’s Bull</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Merrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 10, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Detective Michaels’s mind rebelled and reeled, but she could not stop herself from backing out of the little bathroom and into the hallway. She felt her feet plodding endlessly toward the barroom and could not stop her legs from moving, could not stop herself from raising her firearm up in the stance that she had practiced for so long, first as a member of the military, and then as a police officer. Feet apart, shoulders squared to receive the recoil, Cori’s brain screamed out for her to STOP, but she was not in control of her body or its actions.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Six shots rang out in rapid succession. The uniformed officer who had entered the building and called for everyone to freeze felt something hot on his neck, and then he was gurgling and down, the second officer following him to the floor, trying to catch the man and hold his hand over his neck and the gaping wound that was pumping his blood out onto the roaches at their feet, riling them up. As he knelt, the second officer felt a bullet zing passed him, as did Allison. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cori’s mind was fighting the impulse to kill, but then with a sudden and brutal clasp, the vice on her brain tightened and she shifted direction suddenly, aiming toward Diane. The bullet entered into the woman’s cranium, exited and lodged itself in the crumbling plaster behind her. Her body fell to the floor, food for the roaches, and Det. Michaels felt a voice in her mind: “It’s so much easier if you don’t fight, dear.” In the time it took for that sentiment to echo in her head, her torso pivoted back toward the bar and Leof felt a bullet tear through the heavy jacket he wore and skim a deep furrow of his skin from his left arm; there was no bullet lodged there, but he was now bleeding freely. JJ beside him was not as lucky, and the bullet tore through his right collar bone, leaving a gaping wound. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">A moment later and Otis was shoving passed the short little man with one arm and knocking Cori into the doorframe, kicking her gun away into the skittering roaches that were attacking the dead and dying with renewed vigor. He spun around the barroom, trying to get a sense of what the fuck was going on. Then he saw it; the werewolf, taller and more muscled than the thing that had killed his family. A bellow raged up from his gut and he fired his shotgun from the center of the barroom at the creature as it gesticulated with its hands, the tiny frame of Sam perched on its back, face burrowed into the musky smelling fur of the animal. It seemed to grin when the slug made contact with its right shoulder and knocked it back a step or two. Then it howled, reached upward with one large clawed hand, ripped Sam from his back and through her bodily into Otis. Sam felt more alive than she had since before her rape; the blood from the werewolf coursed through her body, alleviating wounds, arousing her sexual desires, her gluttonous longing after blood stoked particularly for the potent blood she had just ingested. It was better than any other blood she had ever tasted—it was <em>more</em> than just the clean taste of JJ’s youthful blood. It made her high, like a kid on too much Halloween candy, and power of the things blood was already helping her to stitch closed the series of clawmarks across her back that had shredded her hoodie.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">As Sam floundered atop Otis, glutted on blood but longing for more—if she needed to breath she might be panting after it, a wanton bloodslut—a strange sort of portal appeared before the wolf thing. It wasn’t entirely visible, just a shimmering, almost aqueous looking door. He lept through, taking Michael’s ineffectual little pocket knife that was embedded in his ribs with him. From the portal, a small little thing was tossed out and onto the floor of Simon’s Bull. It was lost in the clutter and shifting roach carpet of the bar. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">In the back hallway, the short black man with one arm began backing toward the rear entrance, whispering “<em>Adurite, adurite, adurite</em>.” All around the bar little flames began springing upward, licking at the tables, the walls, even flowing over the bugs still roiling over the corpses that littered the bar. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Just then, a rat who had followed Otis into the back hallway after having been rudely kicked aside at first, scurried into the central barroom. It did not remain a rat for long, but quickly became a tall, emaciated man. He was naked, and he cradled his left side, as if he had been kicked recently. His gaunt form was pale and unattractive, the muscles wearied and nearly nonexistent. He looked around at the few people still unharmed and said, “Get everyone out, now.” It was an authoritative command, and then he began to shift again, the remains of the blood that had been matted in his fur earlier was mostly washed away from the rain, so those who were uninjured and still capable of looking around could see the painful looking shift in the man’s throat as his neck elongated, as fur sprouted from his back and a long pink tail emerged from his coccyx. He was just completing his transformation into a gigantically tall, thin rat when the floor bubbled beneath the roaches, and something white and fibrous seemed to grow up out of the floor. It threatened to block of Arathel’s and Michael’s position from the rest of the barroom unless they moved toward the bar itself soon.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The thing grew and grew, until it was the size of a pool table. It was a large, fat white grub (http://www.ent.iastate.edu/soybeaninsects/files/images/white%20grub%20profile%204%20copy.jpg), and from its anterior end pincers worked. Its posterior released some sort of white goo that seemed to dissolve the pool table behind it. The Rat-Man raised his hands above his head, and chanting something in a language no one here could understand, he made a sort of symbolic strike. In response the grub screamed, a piercing cry that deafens the occupants of Simon’s Bull temporarily, and then it began flailing, its goo spraying upward on the walls wildly, its pincers working maniacally but ineffectually. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Otis could barely make eye contact with Michael and Arathel as he disentangled himself from Sam. And although he could only feel the pressure of his words leaving his mouth rather than hear them over the grub, Otis still said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here, now” as he stood up, looking around to see who needed help. The cop not shot by Detective Michaels was dragging the roach covered and exsanguinating body of the other officer out the burning front door as he cried, hysterically.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cobb Theater, interior</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Merrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 10, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Trebs looked back at Reggy—he looked pitiful, all dripping wet. And as he was turning away, she said, “Hey hang on a minute, Reg. She went digging through a gigantic knit purse made with scrap bits of variegated yarn. The thing was hideous and matched nothing. Trebs thought it made her look like she might be able to knit when she carried it, and well, her best friend had given it to her, so she <em>had</em> to use it. After a moment or two of digging around in her rather horrid bag she came up with a garish Portland Pirates (http://www.c5sportsonline.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/2157.gif) beach towel and handed it to Reggy. She offered only this explication for the strange occurrence of having an oversize towel bearing a hockey team logo stuffed randomly into a bag that amounted to her purse, “I go to the public pool after work sometimes. It’s open late some nights. It’s clean, so use it if you want to dry up.” She smiled at him and said, “And don’t worry, Reg, I guess we all space out sometimes.” She flicked her damp hair back from her forehead and wandered back to her desk, settling in her chair, watching Reggy’s retreat, mildly curious about the dutiful and shy young man. “What was he doing up there?” she wondered idly before flipping back to shift paper work she needed to get done.</span>