"Not much—until I went down into the basement. He had turned it into a lab, and from the looks of the setup, a pretty high-tech one, at that. It appeared innocent enough, until I found a large waste bin full of dissected rodents. However, my only motive at that time was just to find out a little about the man who was targeting me."
Hurley nodded. "Go on."
"What I did learn was that he was growing some kind of crop in a field near the house. We later learned he referred to it as Chinese herbs he was growing for market. Right after I left the house, he woke up. Instinct, I guess. Ever since my arrival here in Blue Creek, he's taken offense and has basically been stalking me. So when I started walking back home that night, I heard a truck coming down the road behind me and knew it was him. I had to get back to my house before he got there and found me gone. It would have confirmed his suspicions that I was the one who had been in his house."
"So what did he do when he got there and found you gone?" Hurley asked.
"I made it back in time to answer the door."
Hurley shook his head, but his respect for Wes Holden's abilities continued to grow.
Then Wes added, "And then there were the dead animals."
At that point, Dr. Shero from the CDC interrupted.
"Are you referring to the dissected rats you had found?"
"No," Wes said. "Wild animals...indigenous to the area. Deer, birds, skunks, squirrels and the like. Miss Monroe will confirm this. She saw a lot more than I did, along with some distinct behavior and personality changes in two of her family members who'd gone to work for Roland Storm, harvesting his crop."
Shero frowned. "But what led you to believe that this was anything more than, oh, I don't know...illegal weed, for God's sake, and maybe some people using animals for target practice?"
"The animals weren't shot...nor had they been devoured in any way by their normal predators. As Ally described, they were just there...rotting, which is definitely not the way the food chain operates, and you know it."
"And were these animals found throughout the forest?"
"I couldn't say," Wes said. "The ones Miss Monroe saw were confined to the perimeter around Roland Storm's property."
Hurley pointed at Wes with his pen. "Why did you think this was more than weed?"
"Danny and Porter Monroe, who are Ally Monroe's brothers—and by the way, still missing—were offered five thousand dollars apiece from Roland Storm to harvest the crop and keep quiet."
"Okay, you've got my attention," the DEA agent said.
"I still have questions," Dr. Shero countered. "I don't see any correlation between illegal drugs and an out-of-control disease."
"Something killed all the animals. Something turned two loving brothers into madmen. Something incited the insect world to the point of mass hysteria."
Shero leaned forward. "The insect world?"
"Ask Ally."
"We'll do just that."
"And for the record," Wes said, "I've been in a lot of places and dealt with chemical warfare, but I wouldn't set foot up there without a full protection suit and a tank of air on my back. I don't know for sure what's there, but I don't want any part of it."
Shero nodded, then eyed the other men. "Gentlemen, if you're through here, then I suggest we adjourn to the hospital to question Miss Monroe before we make any decisions as to what we should do."
Agent Black stood. "For sure we want to talk to Miss Monroe, but your business and mine don't necessarily coincide."
Hurley nodded. "I already have enough suspicion to investigate drug activity...with protective gear, of course," he added to satisfy Wes.
Wes began pocketing his things and looking for his room key.
"I'll be going with you," he said. "We would prefer to talk to Miss Monroe alone," Hurley said.
"Yeah, well, we don't always get what we want," Wes said. "I'm not going to interfere in any way, but I'm not having her be questioned as if she was the one who'd committed some guilty act, and before you get all pissy, you know that's how your mind works. If her brothers were involved, then in your mind, that makes her a guilty party, too."
Hurley's face turned a dark, angry red. "Listen, mister, you can't tell me how to run my business."
"I don't give a shit about your business," Wes said.
"But I care about these people, and something bad was going on up there. I don't know what started the fire, or how high up it was when it started, but if there's anything left of Storm's property, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot-pole."
Major Poteet moved to Wes's side.
"Colonel, you've made your point, and I'm sure these gentlemen will agree that there's nothing wrong with you being witness to Miss Monroe's statement. We have no reason to assign blame."
"And we have no reason to feel guilty," Wes said. "Think about it, for God's sake. If we did, do you think we would have called the government in?"
"You've made your point," Dr. Shero said. "Just don't interrupt our interrogation."
Wes pointed at him. "That's exactly what I was talking about. There's not going to be an interrogation. She's going to give you a statement regarding her serious concerns about her brothers and what she witnessed. It nearly cost her her life."
"How so?" Hurley asked.
"Ask her for the details," Wes said. "But Roland Storm chased her down the mountain with evil on his mind, and if I hadn't arrived home when I did, she would have become a victim instead of a witness."
"So let's go see the woman," Agent Black said.
At that point they all filed out the door. Wes got in Gideon's truck and drove himself to the hospital with the others falling in behind.
Ally was sitting up in bed, braiding her hair, when he walked into the room. He didn't intend to do any more than say hello, but when her face lit up at the sight of him, he walked straight over to the bed and took her into his arms.
“Did you sleep well?" he asked.
Her expression fell. "No. I'm worried sick about Danny and Porter."
"I know, honey, I know." Then he took the braid out of her hands and began to undo everything that she'd done.
"Wes... what are you—"
"It's so beautiful down," he said softly. "How's your dad?"
His nimble fingers quickly undid the braid, and when he combed his fingers through the tresses to remove the separations, she shivered with longing.
"He's stable and improving."
Before Wes could comment, the government arrived.
When Ally saw all the strangers, she frowned.
"Wes...who are these men?"
"Remember the calls I made at your father's house?"
She nodded.
"They responded " Then he pointed them out in succession. “Agent Hurley, DEA. Agent Black, FBI. Dr.Christopher Shero, CDC. Major Poteet and Lieutenant Williams from Fort Benning. They want to ask you some questions about Roland Storm and your brothers. Okay?"
“Oh. Yes, gladly." Ally said, then scooted over so that Wes could sit on the bed beside her.
"I'll just stand over here out of the way," Wes said.
She frowned but didn't insist, and the questioning began. She answered as best as she could but felt they were missing the point. Frowning, she finally interrupted Dr. Shero with a wave of her hand.
"Please...all of you...I don't think you're getting what I'm trying to say. May I just tell you what I know, and then you can ask specific questions later?"
Then, without waiting for them to give their consent, she began to talk.
"It began with my brothers looking for work. There's not much work around these parts, and Danny had just been laid off. He came home one day all happy because he'd gotten both himself and Porter a job. They were to harvest a crop of Chinese herbs for Roland Storm, and he was going to pay them five thousand dollars apiece. I didn't like it and said so, accusing my brothers of knowingly hiring on to harvest some kind of illegal drug. They denied it, but I think they both had their suspicions. It was at the end of their first day of work that everything changed."
She took a deep breath, then her voice started to shake. "Right now, we don't know if they're alive or dead."
"It's all right, Ally," Wes said. "They've seen tears before. If it makes you feel better, honey, then cry."
Dr. Shero scooted a box of tissues toward her, and Hurley pretended to check a spot on his shoe as they waited for her to regain her composure. Finally she was able to continue.
"As I was saying, the first night, when they came home, they were filthy. I've never seen anything like it in my life. And they'd stripped out of their clothes outside. You see, our laundry room is in a shed attached to the side of the house, so they had put their own clothing in to wash before coming into the house. I can't stress enough how unusual that was. Anyway, Danny wouldn't even speak, which is completely opposite to his personality, and Porter, my oldest brother, was angry, almost mean. He scared me."
She looked into each man's face as she continued. "I've never been afraid- of a member of my family...until that day. When I offered to wash their clothing, Porter turned on me. He was like a rabid dog. There was spittle at the corner of his mouth, his eyes were bloodshot, and the muscles in his face were twitching, as if he had some kind of facial tic. He yelled at me and told me never to touch anything they wore while working for Roland Storm. Then later, he said it again when I offered to get the clean clothes from the dryer. When I questioned him, he all but admitted he knew something was wrong, but he said that Danny wouldn't quit, and he wouldn't let his younger brother go back without him."
Hurley sighed. "Look, Miss Monroe, this is all interesting, but so far you haven't given me any concrete evidence to make me believe it was anything but some dealer growing weed. Your brothers' behaviors could have been nothing more than them coming down off a high."
His arrogance infuriated Ally. She swung her legs out from under the covers, giving them a perfect view of her injuries, as well as her crippled foot.
"My brothers do not do drugs. Besides that, after several days, their behavior changed to what I can only refer to as crazy. Before, they rarely ever disagreed with each other, but it got to the point where all they did was fight and snarl at each other. I was so upset and concerned for what they were doing that I snuck up to the property to see for myself. As you can see, I'm not exactly built for uphill hikes, so I rode an ATV partway, then managed about a mile walk to see for myself what was going on. A short distance from the field where my brothers were working, I began to find dead animals. Deer, squirrels, skunks, birds, you name it. It was as if they'd just dropped where they lay, only no carnivores had fed on the carcasses, and I can tell you, there are plenty of carnivores up in the hills. It was eerie. When I got to the field, my brothers were...frenzied. They were just walking around and tossing these long green stalks toward a flatbed trailer without paying attention to whether they landed on it or not. Danny was digging at his face and pulling at his hair and ears, and then he walked too close to Porter. Porter just turned around and punched him in the mouth and knocked out one of Danny's teeth. I saw him spit it out from where I was standing."
"Did they see you?" Hurley asked.
"Not then. It wasn't until I realized that Porter was covered in ants that I cried out. There were thousands of them, crawling on Porter's face and arms and all over his clothes. He was slapping himself in the face and on the head. I was so horrified, I guess I cried out."
Then she sighed and looked at Wes. She could tell he was just as appalled as the other men appeared to be. Dr. Shero stepped forward. "Your brothers...what did they do next?" he asked.
"My cry startled a bird in a tree above me. It flew out, and they saw it. I guess they figured something or someone had spooked it, and at that moment Roland Storm appeared. They pointed to the forest where I was hiding. I think he gave them some kind of orders, and then he started toward where I was hiding. I tried to run...but as you can see, that's not as easy for me as for some. I fell more times than I could count, but I made it to where I'd hidden my ATV. I would have gotten away, only it ran out of gas. Then I ran for my life, with Roland Storm in his truck right behind me. I made it to Wes's house and told him what was happening. Only he doesn't have a phone, so he carried me the two miles down the mountain to my house, and after I told him what I've just told you, he started making calls."
"What happened to Storm?" Hurley asked.
"I stopped him," Wes said.
Hurley frowned. "How?"
"I took a rifle and waited in the road for him. I could hear his truck coming over the hill. When he appeared, I aimed at him. He didn't stop soon enough, so I stopped him."