<strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Otis’s Farmstead</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;">Early on November 11, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Otis looked over his beer bottle at both Micheal and Arathel. He sighed and worked one of his knotty hands back over his hair, fussing with the ponytail before he turned to Micheal and said, “Alright, so what happened? Why the fuck was my favorite bar suddenly FUBARed by a bunch of fucking skinshifting, magic-wielding motherfuckers?” He took a small sip of his beer. It was bitter as he licked his lips mildly, looked to Arathel and apologized for cursing. Otis had never been one to swear in front of a lady, but he felt he had to let out some of his frustrations. He’d not even had a chance to talk with Micheal at all about the murders. He’d walked into a shit storm and had no idea if the other folks at the bar were okay, let alone where the attackers had gotten off to. One thing was sure, he’d never seen a shifter cut open a hole in reality and step through. Whatever had walked into that bar, it’d been a fuck of a lot scarier than the shifters he’d seen before. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">He listened to Micheal’s version of the events with equanimity and as the night sky started to pale, Otis said, “We’ve got to get prepped. Whatever came to Simon’s Bull tonight came gunning for us. I dunno how those things knew we were there, but one thing is certain, we need to be a lot less out in the open now. It’s bad enough if any of those cops’ll have recognized me. Then I’ll have those guys sniffing around here. Let’s get down to the basement—we can replenish some ammo and such. I’ve got a few ounces of silver. If we can coat regular bullets for a small gun with the silver so that it fits our weapons, we’ll make it go further.” He stood up and stretched, disposed of his long since emptied beer bottle, rummaged in the fridge for a couple of egg salad sandwiches, handed one to Micheal, and headed down the rickety staircase to the basement. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The floor was packed dirt covered in sawdust; it was a testament to the hard work Otis had put in at his home, well the farm. He couldn’t bring himself to think of this place as his home. More like his workplace now. No place was home that didn’t have his family. Sometimes the voices of his children woke him up at night. They called out to him, asking him to come see them. Sometimes he got as far as positioning the shotgun just right so that the top of his head would be vaporized, but then the thought of being cut off from them, of being punished for being a suicide always stopped him. That and he doubted seriously he had the flexibility in his big toe to actually pull the damn trigger. And what if he flinched? Could he look himself in the mirror after that? These suicidal tendencies drove him to take unnecessary risks in fights. He almost hoped he would be killed trying to kill a monster, but so far, God had not seen fit to allow that. Instead he just allowed Otis to witness more and more of the horrible. Allowed him to know some fuck was disemboweling kids and doing something unspeakable with the body parts. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Sitting down at one of the well-lit workbenches, he began assembling the wires for a blasting cap that could be attached to some of the C4 he had stocked in his basement. As his eyes focused in on his work, he mumbled, “Son of a bitch must pay.”</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">There were also benches for sharpening and hardening wooden stakes and for assembling the ammo—this latter clear on the other end of the basement to keep the heat away from the explosives on Otis’s side of the basement. Some of those were homemade, some acquired quite illegally. Both of the men in the inner sanctum of Otis’s basement knew that they could hold up here for a long time. Otis’s wife had always insisted he help her with canning her vegetables and such. The farmland around his house was planted and tended by him, and he had a very large stockpile of food down here. Some was store-bought. He had more cans of Campbell soup than the damn grocery store probably, but he also had a large supply of home-grown and canned produce. Then there was the weapons closet. It featured a variety of shotguns, Otis’s weapon of choice when he wasn’t engaged with blowing shit up.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The damn thing even had a surveillance center; the long dirt drive up from the road was broadcast onto the small black and white television screens in the surveillance area. The porch, roof, and other areas of the farm were also clearly visible. So the men worked in peace, secure that if anything were to come for them, they’d know it. This was perhaps a foolish thing to believe, but Otis’s basement was a much calmer environment than any of the men had been in recently.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The Roads Heading East out of Cape Merrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 11, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Allison’s shabby car went unnoticed by the remaining emergency respondents outside of Simon’s Bull. The building was a structural nightmare, smoldering in the spitting rain and seeming to have melted in upon itself. There was no sign of Louie or roaches, though. But then again, it was still fairly dark.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The road out to Devil Bat Cave took Allison out past the Farmlands and the relatively deserted-looking state road was dotted only occasionally with farmhouses set back deep on their property. Some had windows that shone like black lights in the night; others still kept a porch or some other light on. The road was lonely, haunted. But things brightened up a bit once she was through the Farmlands and further toward the coast. Huffy’s Truck Depot glittered in the night like and island of warmth and calling, and then the VW’s gas light came on.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><hr/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Leof was greeted with continual but light rain as he drove out to Otis’s place. The trip wasn’t particularly long, but neither was it particularly pleasant with the sky pissing without cessation and the sunrise refusing to look anything like a proper sunrise and more like the bloated and red face of a hung over drunk struggling to pull himself up out of bed. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The only good thing about the rain was that the dust that would have coated Leof as he drove up the drive was instead merely mud, and the relatively high level of maintenance Otis kept his property with meant that there were no large washed away areas of the drive that left gaping puddles or holes that could cause trouble for motorists. The house stood quiet in the morning sun, though Otis’s truck and another car were nuzzled up close to the front porch.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span>