Chương 180: CDM 3, Chapter 56: Out of State

We needed two hours at the CDM garage to pack tents, sleeping bags, miscellaneous camping gear, and our personal luggage into a small trailer hitched to the ice cream truck. Road trips were already tight to begin with. We simply didn't have the room to properly prepare for an indefinite journey, and that space got even tighter with the addition of a second drone. Since this was an off-the-books operation, de Saint wouldn't have access to RAID drones even if the program was up and running in West Virginia–it wasn't.

Where Nathan's drone was small and nimble, de Saint's was larger to accommodate more advanced and precise hardware. She wouldn't need to get nearly as close with her drone to see the same level of detail as Nathan's, making it a good substitute for the big-picture perspective we relied on RAID drones to provide. As Beth promised, she picked up the magnets from the sign shop the previous evening, so they were already waiting for us on the first floor of the guild hall the next morning.

We packed those into the trailer as well, planning to slap them on when it was time to film. For the majority of the trip, the faded photos of frozen treats were less conspicuous than big, bright magnets for Jessie's Cookies, Steel Town Bow & Arrow, Nad-Nade, Gate Girl Glitter, and Ironskin Rashguards. We crossed the state line around 11 a. m.

"It's pretty damn beautiful," Giago said, looking out the window at the Appalachian Mountains rising in the distance with forested peaks and valleys layered in between.

"I thought all of those 'Country Roads' sing-alongs were bullshit, but nope."

"First time in West Virginia?" Megan asked.

"Yep."

"Hornby, what about you?"

"Driven through a couple of times," Hornby answered.

"I always liked it. If I wasn't allowed back in Kentucky for some reason, West Virginia seemed like a good runner-up."

"How close to home is this for you, Gray?" Giago asked.

"We were a lot further west," I answered, "but it's pretty similar to this."

"We'll be at the first point of interest in about 30 minutes," de Saint announced.

"A homestead off Statler Run Road was believed to be raided by bugbears six days ago. That's about 10 miles west of Morgantown."

"Is Morgantown significant?" Giago asked.

"West Virginia University is there," I answered.

"It's the only halfway functional city in the state because the university gets so much funding."

"Oh, okay, WVU. I know them. Big football program, right?"

"Yeah, and basketball." De Saint continued, "State Police did the initial investigation, and they only included a photo of the house's exterior. Doesn't show much." She dropped it in the group chat, and I agreed it wasn't very helpful. The doublewide trailer was in rough shape–broken windows, missing siding, and holes in the roof patched with tarps–but most of that looked more like wear and tear rather than consequences of a violent bugbear raid.

"A husband and a wife lived there with his mother and four children," de Saint added.

"The oldest was 9." Megan squinted as she stretched and zoomed the photo on her phone.

"Any notes on where the bugbears might have gone after?"

"None," de Saint answered.

"It's rained the last three days," Hornby pointed out.

"We're going to have a hell of a time finding tracks six days old after that much weather."

"We have other places to investigate if this turns out to be a dead end," Megan said.

"We're only stopping here first because it's closest." We ended up needing another hour to get there. The eastern end of Statler Run Road was washed out and impassable, so we backtracked to go around and come at the point of interest from the west. This end of the road was slightly more intact, but it was still mostly dirt with a little bit of gravel and a bevy of potholes and sharp ravines where years of rainwater carved paths down the hill and across the street.

"Should we turn on the music so the kids know the ice cream truck is here?" Nathan joked as the terrain bounced him side to side in his seat.

"Bugbears probably like ice cream," de Saint added. Hornby chuckled.

"Of course they do. Who doesn't like ice cream?"

"I think this is it," Nathan announced, not that he needed to. Though we could see the ghosts of a few overgrown foundations, the doublewide was the only house left on the street. The front deck looked like it had rotted through at some point, but instead of removing all of it, the residents tore out just enough to stack cinderblocks to make new stairs to the door.

A pickup truck and an old camper rusted in the front yard, and a few dozen sun-bleached plastic toys–like trikes and dollhouses–were scattered all around the house. The chicken coop out back looked like it hadn't been used in some time, and the barbed wire fence around the large garden next door sagged in the few places where posts were still upright. Like the chicken coop, the height and density of weeds suggested nothing had been planted here in a while, well before bugbears ever came through.

"Kimmy, Rainy, let's get drones in the air," Megan said.

"Giago, you and I are going to clear the house. Hornby and Gray, watch the front and back doors for us." Megan's caution was justified but ended up being unnecessary. The bugbears were long gone. While Nathan and de Saint scouted the area, I took a look inside. And regretted it. The West Virginia State Police had cleaned up the bodies, but the sprays of blood and loose pieces of flesh were left to rot.

"Family had a meth habit," Giago observed, pointing to a pipe on the floor.

"What makes you certain it's meth?" Megan asked.

"My mom and dad were addicts."

"Oh, sorry." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Giago shook his head.

"Don't be. No idea where my father ended up, but my mom got clean eventually. She's doing good now."

"Don't hear happy endings in meth stories very often," Hornby added.

"Yeah, my brother and I got lucky," Giago said. While Megan, Hornby, and Giago searched the trailer, I stepped back outside. I doubted that anything about the gore would point us in the right direction, so I opted to spare myself the memories of bloody bunk beds. Like Hornby had said, it rained recently, so faint tracks weren't likely to survive. Sure, the claw marks around the doors and windows were easy enough to spot, but where did the bugbears go when they were done with the raid?

Based on the skulls scattered about and the hind legs of a deer still hanging to be bled, the man of the house had been a hunter. He wouldn't have left a fourth of a deer strung up like that, and he certainly wasn't the one who ripped the rest of the meat and bones off the body. Bugbears might have, or scavengers who came through after could have been to blame. That said, I didn't see signs of bears or raccoons. A few turkey vultures, maybe.

"There are a couple of footpaths going out the back of the property," I radioed.

"Dad was a hunter, so he probably has a stand or two in the woods." Hornby appeared next to me a few minutes later.

"Buncha bugbears moving from camp to camp would leave a trail, but if they used one already there… Makes it tougher for us." I heard Kimmy hover overhead before she zipped over the forest, following one of the paths I had pointed out.

"Might have an old camp a few dozen yards in," Nathan reported. Hornby and I made the short hike down the trail and found the burned-out firepit that had tipped Nathan off. Fortunately, the impressions left by tents and bedrolls were difficult to hide. I counted 11 of those. As I turned to scan the site again, I saw Hornby kneeling near some leaves, poking at something with a stick.

"Think it's a femur," he said as I approached.

"Too small to be an adult."

"Does it look to you like they might have gone down the hill over there?" I asked. Hornby went to the area I indicated.

"Yeah, could be." Leaves trapped rainwater, so the path down the hill was still muddy, but it looked like several bugbears dragging a sled or two had gone that way.

"We got a lead," Hornby said over the radio.

"I'm with you, Hornby," de Saint replied. That meant her drone was overhead and would follow us as we continued down the trail. We climbed a smaller hill after the first and found a low spot soupy with stagnant water. The barefoot tracks of bugbears were plain to see here. The size and volume of traffic made the mud pit look like it had been tilled for planting, though not in any neat and orderly way. The footprints that were intact had sharp toenail markings that pointed south.

Another three minutes of walking brought us to a small creek. The bugbears had crossed here, and we followed dried mud wiped on trees deeper into the woods. But then we hit a rocky stretch.

"Son of a bitch," Hornby spat after three hours of trying to find the trail again. In theory, a tribe of monsters as big as bugbears should leave obvious tracks, but though we could discern where they came into this area, we couldn't find where they left it. Worse, we guessed that there were three possible routes they might have taken. One was up a hillside of exposed boulders that went east. The other two were washed-out trails that went southish or southwest.

"Hey Osheski," Hornby radioed.

"We lost the trail."

"Roger that. We're taking a look at some maps if you and Gray want to head back."

"On our way." Soon, we joined the rest of our party in studying the maps of the area. We attempted to look up more online, but none of us could get service, and that was likely to be an ongoing problem for as long as we traipsed around West Virginia.

"Aimlessly wandering the woods isn't going to help us much," Megan said after a while, "especially if they have a six-day head start. There's a town called Fairview down the road a bit. Let's go there and see if anyone has heard anything. Rainy, if you get reception, maybe Domestic Dungeons has something we could use. Both of those are longshots, but I don't see a better use of our time." No one disagreed, so we packed up and drove south to Fairview. The town was a cluster of buildings around a Y in the road.

Two brick storefronts still stood, and the other dozen structures were homes, about half of which were single-wide trailers.

"I was hoping for a motel at least," Megan said as we pulled off the side of the road in Fairview.

"Can I help you folks?" a gangly man in denim overalls called from one of the storefronts.

"Yes!" Megan yelled back. She and Nathan walked down the street to speak with him while the rest of us waited with the truck.

"It's really amazing your mom got clean," de Saint said to Giago to pass the time.

"I had an uncle and aunt get hooked on pain pills. It was painful and heartbreaking to want to help them but find that nothing stuck."

"She definitely put in the work."

"Had to have been work for you too. Being around for that isn't easy." Giago wobbled his head.

"Child services took us from our parents when it got really bad. I ended up with an aunt in Florida, and my younger brother with an uncle in Wisconsin. I was 13 when we left, and I was 16 when my brother called me one day to say that mom was doing really good. He ran away from our uncle, made it all the way back to Michigan, and found that mom had been clean for a while. Had a job. Went to meetings. The whole shebang."

"Your aunt must have been happy to hear that," de Saint offered. He chuckled uncomfortably.

"I wasn't really a person to my aunt and uncle. They cashed their check each month and basically made me the kid living under the stairs, if you've read that story. I did a bunch of chores while my cousins lived normal lives. They got to do sports and hang out with friends. If I wasn't at school, I had to be home cleaning."

"I'm sorry. I'm an asshole for poking at that."

"Don't be sorry. When I heard from my brother, I threw my stuff in a bookbag and rode my skateboard to the airport. Flew out that day. Things have been good ever since, and I know I'm one of the lucky ones. Most families broken by addiction never get fixed." Megan and Nathan's return interrupted the conversation.

"Got a little bit of a lead," Megan reported, unfolding a map.

"Robinson Run Road was supposed to tie in with Statler at one point, but it never got finished. The north end just stops, and the south end connects to what becomes this town's main street."

"Wild Bill," Nathan paused.

"I swear, that's what he told us to call him. Wild Bill said three families that lived along Robinson Run fled bugbears three days ago. A family living closest to the dead end got hit. They didn't survive, but the other three got out." De Saint frowned.

"We don't have any bugbear attack reports for that road."

"Wild Bill says a lot of people around here don't bother reporting things," Megan explained.

"No point to it since they're on their own anyway. Fairview has kept a night watch ever since the Statler attack. A day ago, someone passed through and said they saw bugbears near Grant Town. Or whatever used to be Grant Town, rather. It got flattened in the first month of gates being open, apparently." Hornby turned the map toward him for a better look.

"We saw their tracks potentially going south. Robinson Run is south of Statler, and Grant Town is farther south still. That's not the world's greatest set of clues, but it's something." Megan nodded.

"I agree. It's going to be dark soon, so we'll camp here and check out Grant Town in the morning. If we don't find anything, we'll take a trip up Robinson Run to see about finding their trail again." We all nodded our agreement.

"I'll take first watch unless someone else wants to," I volunteered.

"If the people living here are worried about bugbears attacking at night, we should have our guard up too."

"Thanks, Dor," Megan said.

"Wild Bill says there's a clearing behind his place where we can park. Let's get set up and make some dinner. I'm starving." Everyone was hungry, really. Other than a few pieces of beef jerky, we hadn't eaten since we left Pittsburgh that morning. We divided up duties and set about making camp.