FULL MOON COUNTRY (FULL MOON SERIES (vol. 2))

by Terry Yates

  “Yeah, but…Colonel!”

  “Those people are going to turn into one of those things. MY God! You saw what one’s done to East L.A.!”

  “But, you can’t just go around using words like terminate when you’re talking about human beings!” Kyler shot back, red-faced.

  “Can you think of anything else?”

  “Well, no…but…”

  “Gentlemen.”

  The two looked up to see Mueller staring at the both of them. Jesus, this guy must be tired, Kyler thought to himself. The man had a doctor and a colonel arguing about werewolf victims right smack dab in front of him, and he sat there looking like a mortician who’d lost a bundle betting against The Harlem Globetrotters. There was no shock…hell, there was barely any life in the man’s eyes.

  “Gentlemen, could we pretend that this is my office?” He inserted pointedly, again more of a command than a request.

  “Sorry,” Kyler and Potts managed to mutter.

  “It’s obvious that the both of you are passionate about these…things. So before I go relaying messages about werewolves, I best know what I’m talking about so the Army doesn’t think I’ve gone batshit. First, I want to know all you know about them as well as how to stop them, so…”

  Before he could finish, the door opened and in walked Tara. Her face told them that something was wrong.

  “What is it?” Mueller asked her. He’d been about to call her “Baby”, since she was the baby of the family, and that HAD been her childhood moniker.

  “It’s happened in Oklahoma, Daddy.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Mary Sue Carter was trying to dodge people, reporters and questions as she pushed against the tide of people moving down the hospital corridor.

  “Let me through, please!” she’d been yelling for the last several minutes. “Please! Come on, Folks!”

  She’d taken Rhonda Weaver and Denny Lusk to the fire station, and left them in the capable hands of Rex Murphy. They’d smiled awkwardly when they’d seen each other, but it hadn’t lasted long. They hadn’t had the time. Rhonda wasn’t looking well, but said that she felt okay. Rex cleaned her wound and changed her bandage. He’d put some Hydrogen Peroxide on it, as well as some iodine on her cut chin, and then placed an icepack on her elbow. Denny only had a few scratches on his leg from where he had fallen through the old, wooden floor, and a few splinters from where the monster had smashed in the front door. His arms and shoulders smarted a little, but they’d be all right.

  Mary Sue and Rex tried every form of communication that they could…the station radio, each of their cell phones, and Mary Sue’s walkie-talkie radio. They got the most out of Mary Sue’s radio. She’d managed to get hold of Earl Avery who was quick to tell her about how he’d fallen asleep and hadn’t heard any emergency calls. She knew that was bullshit. She figured he just chickened out when he realized that something catastrophic was happening in their little town, and he hightailed it into the woods or any number of places a person could disappear into.

  “Please, let me through!” Mary Sue screamed loudly, while almost elbowing Joe Sorrenson, a local man, out of her way. She’d have to apologize later, but she just didn’t have the time right now.

  She followed the corridor, then turned left at the sign that read “Emergency Room”. At last, she thought to herself. She had tried to park out front, but the place was packed with cars and trucks. The ambulances had had trouble getting through because of the traffic. Mary Sue had to park on the side of the building and walk into the hospital the long way. Before she’d gotten ten feet, she was bombarded with both local reporters, Sonny Smith and Stephanie Foster. It must be an emergency if those two were out on a Sunday. The paper, The Harmonville Optic Herald, only ran Monday through Friday, and had a circulation of about four hundred and fifty subscribers…both at home and abroad, and Sonny and Stephanie weren’t exactly what you called great journalists. They would fill all five pages of the local rag with two national articles, one police bust, usually a burglary…an article on someone who won an award of some kind, a Jaycees charity benefit, one political opinion article, a movie review, and several articles on the local sports teams. A few ads filled the back and that was it. One could finish the Optic Herald in about twenty minutes if one were an extremely slow reader. They tried to have a local cable show where they would debate politics, but since both were extremely conservative, it really didn’t work.

  “What were those things, Sheriff Carter?” Stephanie Foster asked in her southern, nasally, accent.

  “I just got here,” Mary Sue shot back still walking.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Not here.”

  Mary Sue had wanted to deck the twenty three year old, phony beauty pageant smile wearing, extremely thin boned ass bitch, but she thought better of it. Sonny Smith was taking pictures and Mary Sue could just imagine her picture on the front page of the paper flattening Stephanie Foster’s upturned nose.

  Both ER doors flew open just as Mary Sue was about to walk through them. Dr. Pritchard, one of the town’s two doctors came through the door so quickly that he almost knocked Mary Sue over.

  “Oh, Mary SSS…” the doctor started, looking down at Mary Sue and placing his hands on her shoulders. “Sheriff Carter…sorry.”

  “That okay, Dr. Pritchard,” Mary Sue replied, smiling up at him. “You can call me Mary Sue.” Dr. Bill Pritchard had been the family doctor since as far back as she could remember. Although he didn’t look it, he had to be close to retirement age. He was always tall and thin with silver and black hair. He didn’t always have the exhausted look on his face that he did then, but he seemed to be holding up considering the amount of people that he was probably dealing with.

  “Mary Sue, I need some help around here,” he said softly, his hands still on her shoulders.

  “What happened, Dr. Pritchard?” Mary Sue whispered, pulling him down, so everyone didn’t hear her. “I’ve just been down on Everton Road and it looks like an army of bears stampeded through there. I’ve only got two survivors that I know of. Rhonda Weaver was one. Her whole family was killed by those…things. She’s still in too much shock to tell me much, but Denny Lusk was the other one. He said there were two big ones and a small one. He didn’t get a look at the small one, but it was under the house with him for awhile.”

  “Under the house?” Dr. Pritchard asked.

  “The kid hid under an abandoned house all night long. Looks like it, too. When did you first find out about this, Dr. Pritchard?”

  “I got a call around two this morning from Gordon Hall. I thought he was drunk. He kept talking about bears or bigfoot or something that was killing everyone down on Lovington Avenue. I was about to hang up on him, when I heard someone trying to get through on Call Waiting. I’ve never had two calls at two o’clock in the morning since the Booster Club bus crash ten years ago.”

  “Who was the second caller?”

  “Claire Atchison.”

  “Dr. Atchison? Was she getting calls, too?”

  “No, her house is on Lovington. Someone or something was outside of it.”

  “Good lord. Where is she now? In there?” Mary Sue asked, nodding her head toward the ER doors. “God, the two of you must be worn out.”

  Pritchard took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes for a moment before replacing them. “Claire didn’t make it in. Ronnie Washington says he saw one of those things attack her as she was getting into her car. He said it tore her to bits…as well as Robby Kaufman, Stella and Woody Wilson, the entire Coleman family, Rita Hill…”

  “Shit…they’re all dead?”

  “Yep as well as Marty, Debbie, and Natalie Nesbitt, and little Carter Monroe.”

  “And pretty much everyone on Everton Road, including Harlan Gaskin,” Mary Sue added.

  “Harlan…Jesus.”

  Mary Sue took off her hat, leaned against the wall, and sighed.

  “It’s like everyone we know has died at once,” she said cl
osing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wall.

  “I’ve got at least thirty wounded,” Pritchard told her. “Mike Shearin, Joe Baab, Leslie Horton, and the entire Monroe family, sans little Carter, of course, and God knows how many more are out there that haven’t been found.”

  “What can I do?”

  “We need help. I had Earl put calls through to Tinker and Ft. Sill to help medically, there’s no National Guard…it’s in Alabama and Florida right now, and, I suppose if those things are still out there, we’ll need guns, although it seems like every redneck in the Indian Nation is out hunting them.”

  “From what I’ve seen those things do to people, I definitely don’t think I’d wanna be chasing ‘em,” Mary put her hat back on. “I guess I better go find the rednecks before they shoot someone or each other. Who do you have helping out here?”

  “All of the nursing staff and Jim Ponder…he’s a retired neurosurgeon from Stillwater, most of the volunteer firemen, the nursing staff, and a few volunteers…oh, and I put Earl to work. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. You can keep him. Did he get in touch with the military bases?”

  “They should be here soon. Earl spoke to them over an hour ago. Do me a favor, will ya’ Mary Sue?”

  “Sure, Doctor…anything.”

  “Could you let the rednecks be for a while?”

  “Huh?”

  “We need someone in charge around here. It’s been nothing but chaos. Besides, the military will be here soon. I’m sure they’ll want to take over when they get here.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “If anything, we need someone to help organize a search for the wounded. A couple of volunteers are out looking, but we’re not hearing much. Communication seems jammed all over the place.”

  “That I do know,” Mary Sue replied, tapping her radio. “Well, let me go get Rhonda Weaver and bring her over here whether she likes it or not.”

  Mary Sue smiled and touched Dr. Pritchard’s elbow before turning around and heading out the main entrance. She made it outside and had to sneak behind the hospital to get to her car. She felt like a coward for doing so…she didn’t want to seem to be dodging questions, but she had no answers right now other than three animals tore up part of the town. That was enough but she had to get organized. If the Army or the Air force…or both…came, she didn’t want to look like a stupid, small town, small time, Okie cop.

  As she reached her car, she was spotted by Sonny and Stephanie, who both tried to hail her down, but Mary Sue pretended not to hear them, got in her car, and drove away, the two reporters still chasing her on foot as she pulled out onto Main St.

  CHAPTER 35

  Simon Shoals slowly opened his eyes. His fluttering eyelids seemed to be sticky, and he had the taste of iron in his mouth. As his eyes adjusted to the morning light, Simon awoke staring at the smog filled L.A. sky. He had to think for a moment. Why was lying on his back in the wet grass. What had he done? Had the light gone bright, and he just didn’t remember it? He searched his brain for just a few seconds before reality began to set in. Once it did, he shot up into a sitting position and noticed that he was naked, and that most of his body was caked with blood. It’d happened! He’d turned into a werewolf! He put his hand to his mouth and giggled at the thought.

  “Sumbitch…” he said aloud, although softly, in his Texas twang.

  As he sat there, he closed his eyes, trying to recapture any memories from his turning. At first, nothing, but after a few minutes, he began to catch little glimpses here and there. He remembered some gangsters, and he remembered two black men. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered walking down the street swinging his arms/forelegs. And the light. He remembered the bright light…the same light that he saw when he did his killings, but this, this felt a hundred, no, a thousand times brighter and a thousand times more exhilarating. Simon was frustrated. The memories were flying by to fast, he wasn’t having time to enjoy them. It was like waking up from a dream…especially a good dream…and it suddenly disappears from your memory like sand through your fingers.

  Still sitting, he looked around. There were leaves and grass stuck to him from the caked blood. He slowly stood up, not sure if his legs were strong enough. When he finally straightened up, he looked up to see that he had spent the night in an empty lot where an empty husk of an old burnout house stood. It was mostly foundation, which gave Simon a good idea of what the house had once looked like. He had ended up somewhere around the living room.

  After a few minutes of standing up, Simon began to feel wonderful. Although frustrated by his lack of memory from the previous night, he had a feeling that he had been one badasssumbitch, mainly because he heard sirens…lots of them…coming from all directions, and he had an idea that he was, in no small part, the cause of most of them…at least he hoped so.

  “Country mouse goes to the city,” Simon chuckled aloud. “Shit, I better find me some drawers somewhere…or some Incredible Hulk pants, or somethin’.”

  Simon looked down as he slowly made his way out of the burnt ruins. He knew that he could no longer be killed by tetanus, but stepping on a nail would still hurt like a motherfucker. His nakedness didn’t bother him. It never had. He’d been told on more than one occasion that he had a fine body all the way around.

  He decided that if he was going to be naked, he’d best stick to the alleyways rather than the sidewalk. Once he got past the empty lot that he’d been lying in, he saw rows of houses on both sides of the alley. He had expected to see backyards filled with clotheslines, heavy with the summer wash…but he saw none. Didn’t anyone hang their clothes out anymore? This was East L.A. for God’s sake. How many workable washer/dryers could there be?

  He looked on both sides of the alleyway…it wasn’t that difficult because very few of the houses had back fences anymore, and those that did, were dilapidated beyond repair. They were little more than pieces of old, rotted wood held together by fifty-year-old nails.

  After the eighth or ninth house, he came to a house with a full clothesline in the back yard. He saw mostly sheets, but there were a few shirts, but most of them looked like children’s shirts or girls’ blouses. He might have to settle for a sheet for the time being and make a toga out of it, he guessed.

  He realized early on that he really hadn’t thought becoming a werewolf through. He hadn’t made provisions for clothes or money. He supposed he expected the world to just turn around over night, and it hadn’t. He was pretty sure he’d put a whoopin’ on a large chunk of Los Angeles County last night, but just like 9/11, people can be damn resilient.

  Simon went into a crouch and tiptoed into the yard, looking around for spying eyes. He didn’t care that much about being naked, but a naked man, especially a blond haired, blue-eyed gringo, would tend to stick out in a Mexican neighborhood.

  There were two lines stretch across a two single clothesline poles placed about fifteen feet apart. He lifted up a large white sheet and ducked under it. When he stood up, he found out there was another sheet on the other line, so he was temporarily hidden between the two sheets. He saw that the second line didn’t have much of a variety of clothes for him either. There was nothing but more small clothing. A sheet would have to do, he supposed. The sheet on the inner line looked larger, so he carefully reached down with one hand to hold it while he gently removed the two clothespins that were holding it onto the line. As it began to fall from the line, Simon twirled the sheet around him and pulled it tight around his shoulders. It wasn’t much, but if he could just make it to Venice Beach, he’d fit right in.

  As he turned to toward the house, he was shocked by the sudden appearance of a short, elderly, Mexican lady. She stood at his nipples and stared up at him. He searched her eyes, but saw very little signs of surprise, terror, caution, or even timidity for that matter. She just continued to look up at him. There was a short, awkward moment, which didn’t last long, because before Simon knew it, the little La
tin Lady’s mouth opened, and from it, there came a high-pitched scream. Simon didn’t know if it was his new sensitive, canine hearing, or if the lady just had the highest, shrillest, scream he’d ever heard. The old bitch had probably been one of those 50’s B-movie actresses. His first impulse had been to grab her throat and crush her larynx, but he had nothing personal against the old woman. In fact, he sort of liked her, because even though she was screaming, she was still looking him dead in the eye, completely unafraid. Her scream seemed more like one of the Body Snatchers in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that let out a loud, shrill cry whenever they found someone that hadn’t been turned into one of them. He liked her spunk. He thought about maybe just biting her, but figured against it. He’d let her live out what few years she probably had remaining. So instead, he simply turned around and ducked back under the first sheet, where he was met by at least ten neighborhood Mexican men, all armed with a various assortment of weaponry.

  “Quien eres?” the man who appeared to be the leader of the group asked. He was largish…not quite as tall as Simon, but the man had a good fifty pounds on him. He looked to be in his early forties, as did most of the men. One or two might have been in their twenties, but one thing they all had in common, was the fact that they all looked to be about ready to kick the shit out of Simon Shoals. Simon knew that with his newfound life, came newfound strength. He could feel it coursing through his veins. He could probably take them all, or at least most of them, but like the old lady, they weren’t really threatening him. They were more than likely concerned about what he had done last night.

  “Quien eres?” the leader asked again, this time slowly raising his tire iron.

  Having spent most of his life in West and South Texas, Simon understood Spanish as well as Navajo, but he’d always found it to his advantage to pretend that he didn’t understand it until he knew what people were saying, and being as Teutonic as a Hitler Youth, people spoke Spanish freely around him. The man had twice asked him his name, and twice he hadn’t answered. Not sure what to do, Simon waved his hand in front of his mouth in attempt to tell the men that he didn’t understand Spanish. With this, the leader slowly stepped back and began to speak to the men that were standing behind him.