The general smiled and removed his hat. “My wife has a garden,” he said. “She lives for that fucking thing. It makes her happy, but sometimes the garden gets bugs. Do you know what she has to do when she gets bugs?”

“Does she spray?”

“No,” he went on. “She buys a predator bug and places it in the garden to go after and kill the harmful bugs.”

I looked around. Was there a point to all this?

I shrugged.

The general pointed. “You’re the predator bug,” he said. “Near as we can tell you don’t hurt anybody . . . except the bugs that hurt people, so we tolerate you.”

“I’m a bug?”

I knew what he was saying. I didn’t really give a shit and it didn’t surprise me that they knew who I was. They’d have to be pretty stupid not to keep tabs on me. What I couldn’t figure out was if they believed that there were monsters in the world. He seemed to imply they did, but they were fine letting me deal with it.

That made me mad. I was just one guy up against an entire subspecies, a separate populace who hunted humans, and this flippant attitude pissed me off. All I could think was that if I had the military on my side, the monster population of the world could be seriously damaged, if not wiped out entirely. I wondered if they realized how many murders around the world were committed by unnatural creatures?

The general leaned in. “Mr. McDonald, what I’m telling you is you’re free to go.”

I stood.

“But . . .”

I froze.

“. . . we’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

I shrugged. “Can I offer you a little advice?”

The general took a turn shrugging. “Sure.”

“You may or may not believe in the things I know exist in the world,” I said. “But that rock you pulled out of that old lady’s gut is extremely dangerous. I think it would be in the world’s best interest if you destroyed it instead of taking it away for study.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“You should.”

“I will.”

“You’d better.”

As confrontations go, it was pretty weak.

I walked out of the mobile interrogation room and into a military occupation of Mendez, California. The roads were blocked off, the dead were covered or gone, and everywhere I looked guys in uniforms were talking to survivors. I walked back the way I’d marched through town and found my Catalina parked where I left it.

My cell phone was lying on the seat with a note attached.

It read, “Cal. The Feds showed, so we left. Found your phone in a field. See you back in Los Angeles.”

It was signed, Mo’Lock.