Apothecary slouched low as he stumbled from the helicopter, his arms raised to keep leaves and dust from blowing into his face. He had barely cleared the chopper before it lifted off, returning to Underground HQ. He shook his head – things had to be getting tough for them to send him into the field alone, no matter what Soothsayer said. Readjusting his backpack and tightening his grip on the two heavy water jugs, he replayed the mission profile in his head as he walked toward the town.

Sylvan Falls, California, population 229 in the last census, elevation 2,676 feet. The town was unincorporated, and the last fifteen miles of road leading to it had needed to be resurfaced since Reagan was governor. An Underground operative there had reported unusually high esometric readings before communications suddenly stopped. First objective: locate Scott Hendrickson, and discover why he stopped communicating. Second objective: ascertain the source of the esometric spike and evaluate the extent of any threat it might post.

Third objective: eliminate any such threat.

Threat to what, Apothecary wondered as he trudged through the undergrowth. Sylvan Falls was deep in the mountains, it didn’t provide anything for any of the major factions, and Underground only used it as a relay post and emergency safehouse. The local yeti enclave could have gone rabid and slaughtered the whole town, and it wouldn’t have been noticed for weeks if not for Hendrickson’s message. The government wouldn’t notice for a few months.

Why had they sent him out there? The area was of no value – there were dozens of other mountains he’d seen from the chopper they could put a relay station on, so it wasn’t vital that this one be secured. But if the threat was big enough even at this remote location, Apothecary wouldn’t be able deal with it by himself. He wasn’t that good – especially without his team.

Apothecary noticed some unusually horizontal contours up ahead, and realized after a moment that he’d come across the outskirts of the town. If he could see one side of it, the other side wasn’t far off. He paused a moment, putting one of the gallon jugs beneath his arm and taking a draught from his camelback. If only heavy water didn’t have to be so heavy. He swallowed, and strode quickly into the village.

Stepping from the pine needles onto the gravel road, he quickly pinpointed the evergreen roof belonging to the Pattersons. Hendrickson lived three houses to the south – or five pine trees, whichever was easier to count.

Apothecary crunched his way south along the road, glancing warily at each building as it passed. It was quiet – but not the quiet of the woods. Once the helicopter had left, nature had resumed its tumult. But here, even the birds seemed hushed and expectant. It wasn’t just quiet; it was slasher-movie quiet. Apothecary felt eyes behind every window shade, imagined rednecks with shotguns just waiting for the stranger to do something suspicious, expected one of the beat-up mountain trucks to spring suddenly to life and run him down. Outside Sylvan Falls, the forest ached to consume this little enclave of humanity. The space beneath the trees was dark, even in the afternoon sun low over a neighboring mountain.

“Hello?” he called out. The forest consumed his voice – so little of the sound came back, Apothecary wasn’t even sure he’d spoken.

There was no knowing yet what the problem was here… but he wanted to be ready for it. He probably wouldn’t be venturing far from the town right away, and the water jugs would look harmless to any of the adversaries he might have to face. And they were far too heavy to scout with. He stooped, depositing them at the corner of a house – the Lowrys – and pulled a plastic flask from his jacket pocket and twirled it absentmindedly in his hand as he stood back up. First objective: locate Scott Hendrickson.

He advanced warily on Hendrickson’s house, loosening the cap on the phial. He knocked, facing away from the door to make sure nothing flanked him. “Mr. Hendrickson?” Apothecary waited a precise quarter minute, before pounding louder on the door. “Hendrickson, are you there?”

No response came. He tried the knob, and was surprised to find the door unlocked. Even such a backwoods operative as this wouldn’t keep his door unlocked. That meant that he had probably been in a great hurry the last time he’d passed through the door. Apothecary doffed his backpack, setting it next to the welcome mat and pulling an esometric sensor out. Gripping the phial tightly in one hand with the sensor at his waist, he threw open the door.

No one. He looked through the living room, the kitchen, quickly checked each room in turn as he went down the hallway. Everything seemed in order – until he got to the bedroom. The closet door was open, showing Hendrickson’s communications equipment. It was only a few buttons and toggles away from being used. Across the room, a single, small pane of glass in the window had been broken in, the hole barely large enough for a softball. Judging from the leaves and water stains, it had been like that for a few days.

Apothecary went to Hendrickson’s equipment to report, and found that the power cord had been chewed through.

Hendrickson obviously wasn’t here. He wouldn’t abandon his equipment in the open unless something was seriously wrong, but there wasn’t any damage other than the four-inch hole in the window. Whatever it had been, there was no sign of it or of Hendrickson now – not so much as a blood stain. There weren’t many things that could kill someone that cleanly.

He had to be somewhere else in the town. But the town looked more or less abandoned. If something had scared Hendrickson enough to abandon his home and equipment, it was probably widespread – explaining why the whole town seemed so empty. But all the cars were still here, so where…

The mine. There was an old mine at the edge of the town, that was why the town existed in the first place. There was no town hall, no fire station, and if they had had a chance to flee, they’d have taken trucks. In fact, Apothecary couldn’t think of any reason they’d have hidden instead of driving away.

Shouldering his backpack again, Apothecary noticed movement from the battered brown Bronco across the way. As he watched, something crept up from behind the dashboard.

A child. A boy. How long had he been in that car? The apparition quickly vanished again behind the steering wheel. Perhaps the boy could tell Apothecary what it was up against.

He stalked to the driver’s side and knocked on the window. “What’s going on, kid?” The boy, frazzled and wide-eyed, pressed himself against the passenger door. Apothecary glanced down at the depressed door lock, and sighed.

A chemical smell tingled Apothecary’s nose behind the ambient pine. Oil? He ducked down, looking under the car. Oil pooled underneath the engine block. Something had dismantled the Bronco – and probably all the rest of the cars in the town. Wonderful. Damn, but he wished the rest of his team was with him on this one.

“Hey, kid, open the door would ya?” The boy shook his head, hugging himself in a yellow windbreaker.

Apothecary rolled his eyes, and loosened the cap on his vial enough to squeeze a few heavy drops out. A little concentration, and it froze – glacier-hard and razor-sharp. He traced a circle out on the window, letting a few crystals break off into the narrow groove, then melted the tip long enough to let more water out and freeze the whole phial to the center of his circle, as a handle. The crystals in the groove to reformed – expanded – while he pulled on the vial.

The glass circle shattered as it came free, dribbling shards to his feet. Shards, and bits of his water. “Shit.” He tossed the phial aside, pulling another quickly from his backpack. He had a good dozen left besides the two gallons he’d left at the Lowry’s, but he still shouldn’t be wasting any of it for things like this – especially when he could have just broken the window in. But the kid would be less cooperative if he’d been cut up.

Not that he looked overly cooperative as it is. Apothecary was sure he’d been too quick for the kid to notice he’d just used water instead of tools, and the brat probably wasn’t old enough to recognize a glass-cutter from a compass, but still… The center console creaked under the pressure from the kid’s feet as he tried to push himself further into the passenger door.

Apothecary reached through his hole and unlocked the truck. “Hey, what’s going on here, kid?”

The kid reached back for the latch on the passenger door, trying to throw himself out.

Apothecary grabbed his arm before he got out of the truck. The boy yelped, but silenced himself quickly.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to know what’s going on,” Apothecary explained.

“We have to hide,” the kid whimpered. His face was tear-stained and pale, and the car smelled as if he’d been in it for at least a full day.

Apothecary pulled himself into the car, closing the door behind him. “Why? What was it, kid?”

“It’ll get us… we hafta go.”

Apothecary sighed. “Look, I’ll keep it away if you just tell me what it is.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed as he looked away, sniffling. “Dad couldn’t.”

Apothecary nodded. At least one casualty. And whatever had caused all this was intelligent, since it disabled the cars. This was definitely not a one-man mission. “Well, maybe I can. That’s why I’m here. Now, tell me, kid, what am I up against?”

The kid opened his mouth, but licked his lips instead of speaking. Apothecary tilted his face forward insistently. Finally, the boy responded: “Squirrel. Monster squirrel.”