Chapter 1

My name is Michael.

I used to have another name, but that was long ago before the Change.

I had never believed in werewolves, witches, vampires and such. There were enough real life monsters on TV and walking the streets. There was no need of anything more to scare a sensible person.

I was a loner after I left the Army, never quite fitting in with civilian society. I had my pickup and my travel trailer, and that was more than enough for me. I could pick up my home and travel from town to town and from job to job whenever I took the notion. And I took the notion about every 3 or 4 months.

I joined the Army at age 17 to avoid going to jail. The recruiter had promised me that the Army would teach me a trade. I did learn a trade in the Army and they taught me all too well. When I left the army 20 years later, the one thing I could do better than almost anyone else was kill people. Point me at a target, and the target dies.

There is the regular Army. Then there are the Special Forces. Then you have guys like me.

Ever wonder who gets the jobs that are too disgusting or "sensitive" for even Delta Force or the Navy SEALS?

We did. They called us, "The Ghosts." Because we weren't on any military payroll, we never lived on any known military base. Officially, we didn't exist. Did someone want to make an example out of someone and their whole family? Send in the Ghosts.

Twenty years of killing men, women and children. Two decades of putting my soul in a box and forgetting it existed. Over half of my life being one of the most evil fuckers ever to walk the planet. Then the day when they decide that it's no longer "politically expedient" to keep us around.

'Thank you, have a nice life, and please try not to kill anyone. And by the way, since you were never on any military records, you won't be getting any retirement check or VA benefits."

Thanks a fucking lot.

Those of us with any sense had accumulated a tidy bankroll stashed away somewhere. A lot of the others suicided.

I bought myself a camper and a truck and started drifting. I had to. Too long in one place and everybody starts looking like a target.

After three years of being a loner. Avoiding making friends. Finding a hooker when I needed to have that need met. And then traveling on again.

I wasn't worried about my ex-employers sending out someone to get rid of me. They knew better. If the hit team missed, I would go after the ones who gave the orders. And there wasn't a single person in the country that any of the Ghosts couldn't get to eventually. Not even the president.

Then some idiot managed to release the Hellbug.

I still don't know who or why, or even what the Hellbug is exactly. But I damn sure know what it does. When people get infected with the Hellbug, they either die horribly, or they Change. The ones who die are the lucky ones.

I was up in Montana, way the hell up in the mountains when the Hellbug plague hit.

In less than a month, 80% of the world's population died. Most of the rest Changed, becoming something less than human. But at the time it all started, I had no idea that anything unusual had happened. I was too busy enjoying the solitude of my mountain cabin. No TV, no radio, no mail, and nobody else within 30 miles.

I had just come down from the mountains to get some supplies. I had noticed the lack of traffic on the way into Billings, but didn't give it much thought at the time. Billings itself was like a ghost town. I pulled my truck into a Wal-Mart parking lot and sat there a moment to take stock. There should have been people moving in and out of the store, to and from their cars. There were vehicles in the parking lot, but there was an eerie stillness to the scene.

I reached under the seat and hauled out my gun belt and strapped it on. As I got out of the truck, I finally heard something. A woman screaming in terror. I am real familiar with that sound, having been the cause of it myself so many times. I drew my .45 and checked the load, then headed toward the noise.

As I rounded the side of the building, I saw that there was not one, but two women there. And what was attacking them was straight out of a nightmare. I had been isolated in the mountains, and I hadn't heard a thing about the Hellbug plague.

But I knew that what had just now ripped the throat out of one of the women wasn't something that I wanted to get any closer to. While it was feeding on the still quivering corpse of the first woman, I put two 230-grain hollowpoints into its head.

The second woman looked up at me when she heard the gunshots and scrambled to her feet. She looked at the dead bodies for a moment, then came running over toward me. "Come on!" she said as she passed me. "Where there's one of them there's more."

After what I had just seen, I figured that the best place to be was elsewhere, so I turned and followed her. "The blue truck with the trailer!" I called out to her. She altered her course towards my truck.

By the time I got there, she was trying to open the locked doors to get inside. I used my remote to unlock the doors, and she scooted inside and shut the door as fast and she could move.

Once I was inside the truck, I turned to the woman, the gun in my hand now pointed at her, and asked. "OK, you want to tell me what the fuck is going on around here? Where IS everybody?"

She looked at the .45 and went very still. "My name is Melissa Carter. And that was a Changeling that you shot back there."

"What the hell is a Changeling?"

Melissa brought me up to date on the whole Hellbug plague. "A Changeling looks like a stereotypical Hollywood werewolf. You saw the damn thing, and like a werewolf from the movies, they can transmit the virus or whatever the hell it is, through a bite or a scratch. If the person bitten or scratched survives the attack, within days, they either die, or Change. Thank God the Changelings don't have the intelligence to use weapons or vehicles."

"So you mean to tell me that that creature used to be human?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, and you saw how it acted. More beast than human," she replied. "They kill anyone who isn't a Changeling, and when there are no humans around, they kill each other."

"Fucking wonderful." I spat.

"We'd best be getting out of here before more of those things show up." Melissa said nervously.

I holstered the .45 and started the truck. "Where can I find some gas around here?" I asked. "And sooner or later, we're going to need some supplies."

Melissa thought for a moment. "You could probably siphon some fuel out of the tanks at a filling station. If you're quick enough, we might even avoid attracting the notice of a Changeling pack."

I followed her directions to a gas station on the outskirts of town. It had a clear field of fire in three directions. Only the shell of the station building offered a blind spot.

"Can you use a gun?" I asked Melissa. She nodded. I reached into the back seat of the truck and hauled out a gun case. I handed it to her. "There's a 12 gauge shotgun in there loaded with five rounds of 00 buckshot. You see anything at all, shoot it and figure out what it was later."

She unzipped the case and slid the shotgun out. She kept the muzzle pointed at the floor as she worked the slide to chamber a round. I eased out of the pickup and reached into the back for my siphon hose and pump. As Melissa prowled on the other side of the truck, I pried open the lid to one of the big underground tanks and started feeding the hose down the hole. I filled two 10-gallon cans and used them to fill the tank on the truck, then filled all five 10-gallon cans that I had with me. I stowed the siphon hose and pump and loaded the gas cans into the bed of the truck.

"Cover me," I told Melissa. "I have to get inside the station and see if there's any thing there that we can use."

'Just hurry up," she said. "The longer we're out here, the more likely that a Changeling will catch our scent." I didn't bother replying. I just headed for the station, keeping low and fast.

Inside the station, there were a couple of long dead bodies, but nothing living, I grabbed a flat cart that still had boxes of canned goods on it ready to be stocked on the shelves. To the load I added anything that looked useful, including a few cases of motor oil. As an afterthought, I took every scrap of tobacco and every lighter, and every flashlight and battery I could find. I hauled the cart with its precarious load out to where Melissa waited and started stacking the boxes into the bed of the truck.

Just as I finished fastening a tarp over the load, I heard the shotgun boom twice in rapid succession. I turned around and saw two dead Changelings about 10 feet from the corner of the building. "Into the truck and lets get the fuck outta here!" I said.

Melissa was in the truck before I was, and was cranking her window down to poke the shotgun out. I was starting to like this gal.

As we pulled out and headed off down the highway, I could see the rest of the changeling pack emerge from around the side of the station and begin feeding on the bodies of their fallen comrades. When my pulse had slowed a bit, I looked over at Melissa. "Good shooting back there." "Thanks," she said. "I used to hunt ducks with my dad when I was a kid."

"So who was that that got killed back where I found you?" I asked. "That was my sister in law," she said. "We went into the Wal-Mart to look for guns, but there was a pack of Changelings laired up in there."

"Have you had any contact with anyone else that is still human?" "Only by radio." she said. "And that stopped a week or so ago."

"How did you manage to avoid catching the Hellbug?" I asked. "Same as you I suppose," she replied. "There was four of us living way the hell out in the country, and we stayed put through the worst of it." She shuddered. "Our husbands went into town a week ago to scavenge supplies, but they never returned, so Amy and I went looking for them."

Now that the immediate action was over, Melissa slumped down in the seat and gave way to the shakes. I looked over and saw the tears streaming silently down her cheeks. "I'm sorry that I wasn't in time to save your sister in law." I said. "But at least you're safe now."

She wiped the tears from her eyes and sat up a little straighter. "I didn't really know Amy all that well, and she could be a real dumb bitch at times, but she was all I had left," she said after a while. 'I met her when Charlie took me out to his brother's ranch so that we could work on saving our marriage," She made a noise that was half snort and half sob." The day I made up my mind to tell him that it was no use and that I was going to go back to L.A., the TV started showing the news about the Hellbug plague. So I stayed were I was. It was too risky to go back to a city where the plague would spread like wildfire."

Melissa looked around. "Where are we going?" "Back up into the hills," I answered. "It stands to reason that we have a better chance of finding other survivors away from population centers, and most likely, a lot fewer Changelings." She shrugged. "Makes sense I suppose," was all she said.

Actually, the main reason I wanted to get back to my place was to get my hands on my weapons cache. I had enough serious firepower there to fight a medium sized war. Damn near all of it was illegal, not that that was a consideration anymore. And I figured that we were going to need more than a shotgun and a couple of .45's if we were going to survive for very long.

Several hours later, we were at my cabin. Melissa helped unload the truck and unhitch the camper. I nodded to myself. She was willing to pull her own weight, she didn't ask a lot of questions, and most importantly, she had proved that she could shoot and kill without hesitation.

Once we had everything stowed, I left Melissa to fix something to eat while I went up to the cave about a mile from the cabin to raid my cache.

On the way up and back I had the time to think. If there was a God, he had one sick sense of humor. I finally get away from killing people, and some dumb fuck in a lab sets something loose that kills more people than anyone else in history. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the irony. I put those thoughts from my mind as I approached the cabin with my load of weapons and ammunition. The only thing to do now was concentrate on survival. Crying over the past was a waste of time.

When I returned, Melissa had a meal ready on the table and had even done the dishes that I had let go for a couple of days. I took an appreciative sniff of the tempting odors wafting up from the table. "Smells heavenly," I said. "Even more so since I didn't have to cook it."

She gave me a wan smile and seated herself across from me. The food was as delicious as it smelled, and I told her so, "Thank you," she said. "I wanted to let you know that I am not going to be dead weight around here." "Never thought you were." I replied. "Anyone who can shoot like you do is welcome to ride with me anytime."

After dinner, while she cleared and washed the dishes, I unpacked the weapons I had brought down from the cave.

"Who the hell are you anyway. Rambo?" I looked up to see Melissa staring in awe at the weaponry laid out on the living room floor. "Naw," I said with a grin. "Rambo was a pussy." Melissa chuckled. Not a girlish giggle despite her apparent youth, but a full-throated laugh from deep in her belly.

She sank down easily to sit cross-legged beside me. "Teach me how to use them."

As I started to describe the function of each weapon, I covertly studied Melissa as she sat there absorbing every word I said. She had taken off the flannel shirt she had been wearing when I found her, and was now wearing a tight sleeveless T-shirt and jeans that looked as if they had been painted on. She was about a foot shorter than my 6'1" and couldn't weigh more than 110. Small breasted and lean, she looked to be in better shape than I was. Her hair was a bit past shoulder length and she had pulled it back into a ponytail. When I realized I was staring, I turned my eyes away from her and picked up another weapon to demonstrate. When I had run through all the weapons, Melissa picked up each one and repeated everything I had said, word for word. I was impressed.

She caught my look and gave me a smug grin. "I was an Army brat," she said. "Daddy never had any sons, so he taught me all the 'boy stuff' instead."

I loaded all the weapons and positioned them around the cabin for easy access. Melissa watched my every move without stirring from her spot on the floor. When I was done, I opened a cabinet and took out sheets and blankets. "You can have the room down here. I'll sleep upstairs where I can have a clear field of fire out of the upper windows."

Melissa seemed to flow to her feet. "I'd rather not sleep alone" she said. "All I have to bring to this partnership is myself." She reached down and pulled her T-shirt off in one smooth move, exposing her pert breasts with the small pinkish brown nipples already starting to stiffen in the cool air if the cabin. "All of me."

I wasn't about to turn her down. It had been a long time since I had been with a woman, and God only knew if I would ever get the chance again. I put the bedding back in the cabinet and gestured for her to precede me up the stairs to the loft.

In the morning, we were both up at dawn. "Time for weapons practice." I told Melissa after breakfast.

She followed me outside to the area I used for target shooting. I took an H&K MP5K out of the duffel bag I was carrying and threaded a suppressor into the barrel. "We can't afford to attract attention with gunshots." I told her. "So we'll practice with suppressed weapons for now."

Melissa proved to be an apt pupil, and by the end of the morning could feather the trigger to get off three shot bursts in full auto mode. She shredded the hell out of any target I pointed her at. After the target practice, I told her to police up the spent brass for reloading while I went up to the cave for the rest of the weapons and explosives.

When I came back down, Melissa had a surprise for me. She had seen movement down in the trees and had gone to investigate. What she had found was a very scared teenager named Sandra. Sandra was filthy and stank to high heaven. I had Melissa take her into the bathroom and clean her up.

Over the next few days, I wondered just how Sandra had survived for so long. She was lazy, uncooperative, and thought she had all the answers to life. Typical 16 year old.

Even Melissa was losing patience with Sandra. The teenager refused to help with the dishes or any of the other chores, instead spending her time bitching about the lack of electricity, TV, etc. Me, I would have simply thrown the little bitch out on her ass the first day if Melissa hadn't taken such an interest in her.

About three weeks after Sandra showed up, we found another couple of strays. A woman named Connie and her 9-year-old daughter Ashley. Connie's story was all too familiar. Her husband and teenaged son had gone into town for supplies and had never returned. With all the extra mouths, it was time for another run to town. We left Connie and Ashley at the cabin. Sandra insisted on coming along with us since Connie had steadfastly refused to tolerate her bullshit.

We approached Billings cautiously. This time when we stopped at that gas station, Melissa had more than enough firepower to handle anything that might arise until I could get into action as well. Sandra refused to even touch a gun. "They're icky," she sneered.

Once we had all the fuel the truck would hold, we moved carefully toward downtown Billings. There were burned out houses and businesses everywhere we looked. But finally we found a store that looked relatively intact. I posted Melissa at the door as a guard while I explored the interior of the store. I loaded cart after cart with canned good and staples like beans, flour, sugar, rice and canned shortening. We had gutted the camper trailer to better use it for cargo, and in a couple of hours I had the trailer as full as I could safely get it.

When I signaled Melissa to return to the truck, I noticed that Sandra was missing. She had been sulking in the cab of the truck when I'd entered the store.

"Hey," I called to Melissa. "Where the hell's the kid?" "She stomped off a while ago. Said she was going to try to find a CD player and some music. I told her to wait, but she gave me the finger and took off that way." And she pointed toward the center of downtown.

"Let's go find her before the Changelings do." I said.

As we got into the truck, I looked at Melissa and said, "I'm gonna beat some brains into that little bitch before she gets us all killed." She just nodded her agreement.

We spotted Sandra walking downtown. She had changed clothes and was wearing a half T-shirt and low slung jeans with brand new Nikes. She had a portable CD player in her hand and headphones over her ears. "She must be suicidal!" exclaimed Melissa.

I pulled the truck to a stop a half block ahead of her and got out. "Sandra!" I yelled. "Get your ass over to the truck right now and quit screwing around." She gave me an insolent look and slowed her walk even further.

I spotted a movement out of the corner of my eye and went for my gun. But the Changeling was too close and already moving. I got off one shot just as it buried its fangs into Sandra's shoulder. The Changeling fell dead as Sandra tried to scramble away from it. The teenager managed to get to her feet, and started to stumble towards us, crying and holding her bleeding shoulder. "It's gonna be OK." I said comfortingly as she got closer to me. I put my arms out to her just as a three shot burst sounded from behind me. As I was looking at Sandra at the time, I saw the bullets rip into her belly, jerking her upright. She swayed there with a look of blank astonishment on her face, then another three shot burst nearly tore the girl's head off.

I spun around, and pointed my gun at Melissa. "Why the hell did you do that?" I yelled. "The wounds weren't anywhere near fatal." Melissa let her H&K dangle from its sling as she sobbed. "She was dead already!" she cried. "Do you think I wanted to kill her?"

I put her back into the truck and then got into the driver's seat. As we drove back to the cabin, Melissa leaned against my shoulder and cried as if her heart were broken.