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"We've got very limited intel, Steven. There's almost nothing more that we can give you."

The twisted world that Ms. Schafer had introduced so many people to over the years was indeed a sheltered one, and it was hard for any outsiders to move to her town without her finding out about it. Anyone who stayed for more than a week was almost guaranteed to be corrupted, and their families were almost guaranteed to fall to the same fate.

"But we're absolutely sure that this town is where all of those people have disappeared to?"

"We've got census data that backs up the claim of several families moving from their prior locations to this one, and all of them have a different destination listed for their new addresses. Some of them list the city as Beaver Ridge, others as Wolf Creek, and there's even a couple mentions of Stonebury in there. None of those towns actually exist, meaning we've got a literal ghost town, where people are disappearing...but not far from the GPS coordinates of the same, there have been numerous sightings of werewolves, disfigured monsters, and even humans...but not the friendliest bunch of them, to say the least."

Steven was an agent of an underground team that prided themselves on keeping impure monsters from populating the entirety of the United States. They existed in secrecy because much of their work sounded ridiculous, but they dealt in the kind of occult occurrences that many people believed in, even if they refused to accept such.

Ghosts, werewolves, demons and all other manner of diabolical creatures were very real, and it was their job to keep everyone else on Earth wondering if that was the case.

"And did our man on the inside come up with anything?"

Sitting with one leg crossed over the other, Steven watched as a small portfolio slid across the table in front of him. He was locked in an office with one of his superiors, and the two of them were not to be disturbed for any reason, barring a threat to national security. "He was able to mail this many files out to us before they finally nipped him. I think he discovered too much about the town a little too quickly, but that could end up working out in our favor...damned shame that Hans won't be making it back to us, though."

"W-what? What do you mean by that?"

"If they got to him, he's a goner, Steven. At best, if he is alive, they're milking him to create more of those disgusting creatures, and if not, he's dead as a door nail. He knew that was the risk when he accepted the mission...I suppose it's only fair that I make those same risks known to you."

Steven wasn't that different from many of the men who ended up in the ghost town. Though he was rather well paid for his line of work, he was always looking to provide the best life that he could for his family, and he didn't want to risk their safety by bringing them to such a place.

"Then I'll go in alone."

"Not an option."

The normally calm, reserved Steven nearly tore the slipcover from his chair as he kept a grip on it. His nails nearly bled from the pressure he put upon them, and his teeth were gritted tight enough for his boss to hear the scrapes. "What? Why?!"

"We sent Hans in by himself. He didn't have an adequate cover, which made it that much easier to expose him. A man moving to a new town and mailing something out to a hidden address almost every single night arouses a lot of suspicion, and we need to go about this perfectly if we're going to take these twisted scumbags down."

"I've seen some of the case files," Steven immediately began to argue. "I've seen what happens to some of those men, but worse, I've seen what happens to their families. They were just looking to better their lives...they didn't think they would end up in that kind of a situation! If I know that there are these kinds risks involved, I'm not going to put my family in that line of fire!"

"Steven. Relax. We're sending you in with a solid cover, and your house will be bugged to the damn window frames. As long as your kids behave themselves, they won't get into any kind of trouble, and if you keep your mouth shut about anything, save for your cover job, you won't run into any problems. If you can collect a little more information than Hans did, we can mobilize the troops and shut the bastards down."

Clearly, Steven wasn't satisfied with the answer. His hair was already falling out of place, despite the gel that kept his solid, raven locks tucked back, and he couldn't keep from scratching his five o' clock shadow with an open palm as he considered the ramifications about anything going wrong.

"Why don't we just send them in now? One of our agents is down, possibly dead, and he sent us this entire case file of evidence. What more do we really need? This place doesn't even really exist; it's not like they can call the National Guard on us or something!"

"I'm not authorizing a military strike on a population until I can be absolutely certain that every person in the city is somehow involved in these practices. Every year, it gets harder and harder to cover this kind of stuff up, and there could very well be normal people living in this town, completely unaware of the things going on around them."

Grabbing the file and pulling the strings away on the package, Steven pulled out a few pages worth of text, along with a multitude of pictures that were taken within a large facility. The inner walls were clearly some kind of thick, powerful steel, much as one might expect of a shipping or storage facility, but the pictures revealed something more than the ordinary.

"These...t-these aren't people," Steven protested, as he flipped through a couple of different photos. The bodies were decidedly female, with long, hefty breasts and exposed labia, but collectively, their womanhood looked nothing like that of a human female, and attached to their swollen mammary glands were a set of tubes, sucking out copious amounts of milk. Further photos display a bottling line, and a shipping dock where trucks would leave the facilities to stock up local grocery stores with the evidently local brand of 'milk.' "These are beasts...some kind of canine beasts that they're milking for profit."

"Werewolves, Steven...and yes, they are. It's not just about profit, though. If this was just something to do with low grade milk, we'd notify the FDA and be done with it. The milk is a definitive link in what's causing people to disappear, however, which makes it directly linked to the transformations of the local townsfolk, as well."

"If the local brand is the most popular in that town-

"It almost certainly is," his boss suggested, "And it's likely that everyone has already sampled it at least once before."

"Then we don't need any further evidence to authorize a strike!"

"What about the people who might want to be saved, Steven? What if we could help them, instead?"

"And what if this stuff makes it out of their city? What if it makes it into the national water supply?" Steven argued, as he turned his attention back to Hans' report. "I'd feel terribly for those people involved, but for the greater good of this country, we need to wipe this place off the damn map, as fast as possible!"

"Do you know how difficult it is to send in a black book task force and take down a place like this without some kind of report making it to a major media outlet?"

"I do. We've already done it twice since I've come on board, sir, and I was directly on one of those task forces!"

Small trails of smoke came from the other side of the desk as Steven's direct supervisor lit a cigarette and took in a deep, heavy puff. "Mnnnn... yeah, you sure were. We killed almost ten thousand people between two task forces. Had to do literal years of back work to cover up how every single one of them had died, and further, we had to replace entire towns with farms to make sure that no evidence could ever be sought after. You really think we have the budget to do that again?"

"Natural disaster, sir. We ransack the place, wreck it, burn it to the damn ground take off. The place is over fifteen miles from any other form of civilization. We'd be halfway across the country before anyone even saw the smoke from the headers."

A quieter sigh came across the desk, thereafter. "You're too eager to just try and wipe things under the rug without actually cleaning the floor, Steven. If we can save even one family from that nightmare, we owe it to ourselves to do exactly that before we act with anything close to military force. You and your family will be relocated with a proper alibi and cover...you will collect all of the information you can without rousing any sort of suspicion, and if you do, you are to contact us immediately. We'll fake your death, get you a safe transport and get your family out of there in no time."

"I suppose you think it's easier to cover up one death than it is to cover up thousands."

"One man dies every day, a million times a day...but they don't all do it at once, Steven. That isn't how this country works."

Steven was beside himself. He knew that his only choice was to accept the task: He didn't have the kind of marketable skills to find a new career, and he didn't have enough of an emergency fund to keep his family afloat.

"You should be expecting a phone call very soon then, sir. Hans barely lasted a month."

**

As it stood, Steven Richards almost talked himself out of his job before the day was over.

Stressful as his discussion with his boss was, it was already turning out that much worse to discuss things with his wife.

"We like it here, Steven. I don't want to move."

"Neither do I, but...the kids are in college, we're still paying off the house, and we can't afford to have our cash flow cut off right now."

It wasn't easy for Tandy Richards to accept all of the facts about her husband. She thought she knew him inside and out, and for the most part, she trusted him every bit as much as one person could trust another, but she'd never known more than slivers about his job. He told her from the beginning that he was employed by the government, and that he couldn't explain anything further, for risk of endangering the family.

Moving away from their happy, comforting home of over twenty years, however, wasn't ever something she had to prepare for.

"And the kids are just supposed to stop learning? It's not like we can get the money back for their classes. It doesn't matter that it's community college...they're still going to fail everything they've taken this semester!"

"I've already talked to my boss. We're going to get financial help with the move, and we'll be compensated for anything that we have to drop early. I'm sure if the kids speak to their professors, they can at least get a withdraw credit. Some of their professors might even let them take the finals early."

"And that kind of stress is fair to them?"

Steven let out a quiet sigh as he stood up from the kitchen table and stepped over to his china hutch. He kept a myriad of different bottles of alcohol within, but only the strong, forceful bite of unfiltered bourbon could burn away his stresses that evening. "It isn't fair to them, Tandy. Not even a little bit," he admitted, as a long stream of amber fell from a bottle and splashed around carelessly in the bottom of a short, stout glass. "I hate the idea of having to put everyone else's life on hold for even a day, but if I don't do this-

"The kids already have part time jobs, Steven. I can pick up some work on the side. You can look for something more local. We can make this work, if you just give it a chance!"

It was impossible for Steven to erase the memory of the transformed women from his minds. He could still see the machines forcefully sucking milk out of their heavy, swollen nipples. He remembered their bodies moving in a blur in the photos as they clearly struggled to break free of their bondage.

They'd been stripped of their humanity, and he might be one of the only people left on the planet who could restore it.

"Tandy...you trust me, right?"

"With everything that I am, Steven. You're my husband...the light of my life."

Steven felt a warmth creeping across his cheeks that was greater than the burn of any alcohol. Rough bourbon tickled his throat, but it was the words of his sweet, endearing wife that sent a blush to his expression. "Nnnngh...then...you need to believe me, Tandy, when I'm telling you that we have to do this."

Tandy still trusted her husband, but her spirits were breaking, knowing that he'd already resolved himself to his choice. "Just tell me why, Steven."

"Top secr-

"Don't give me that bureaucratic bullshit!" she screamed at him, glad that their children weren't around to hear it. "I don't care about the specifics of your work, or what your boss said, or what terrible things you might be doing that I'll never know about! I just want to know why you feel you have to do this!"

"...They need us, Tandy."

Not knowing the true nature of Steven's work made it harder for Tandy to appreciate it, but she could recognize honesty in her husband's tone, even when he was talking about something that he kept a mystery. "Wh...what?"

"I can't be any more specific than that, but...they need our help, Tandy. I have to go. I have to do this."

Whatever burden Steven was putting on himself, or rather, the company was putting onto him, Tandy didn't think she'd be able to appreciate it fully, even if her husband ever gave her that information. No doubt, there was something terrible going on behind the scenes, and just like the rest of the country, it was best if she wasn't made privy to it.

She felt isolated with that knowledge, that she could only see her the struggle of her husband, and never know what it was about. It felt as though she could only watch him be driven to further madness by his work, and no matter what she did for him, it didn't seem to be enough to quell the sense of justice in him.

Tandy just wanted her husband to take a break from it all. She also knew that it wasn't within him to take a break when there was something important to be done, be it in his line of work, or any other part of his life.

"...Will you be safe, Steven?"

"I can't know that," he admitted, being entirely up front about the potential dangers of the job. "But you and the kids will be. If I so much as make the call, you'll be escorted to a safe house, and kept far, far away from any sort of dangerous activity. With any luck, I'd be able to join you there shortly after."

"And that's really all that you can tell me about this?"

"Giving out any further information wouldn't do us any good. I just need you to be a good mother to our kids, while I'm out being a terrible father."

Steven didn't get to take the next sip of his drink. He tried to lift it to his lips, but before he could, his wife stood up from the table and wrapped her arms tightly around his body. Her smaller arms looked pitiful in comparison to the thick, rigid muscles that Steven needed for his line of work, but they were no less useful in comforting someone when a touch was truly needed.

"You're an amazing father, Steven. You've done nothing but take great care of me and the kids your whole life, and I know how much it eats you up inside to have to be away from them all the time. At least, in this instance, you'll get to see them every day. You'll get to make up for lost time..."

"Tandy...?"

"Perhaps," she reconsidered, "It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if you took this job...but I want you to be who you are, Steven. I want you to get out there and finish whatever it is they need you to do, and I want you to do it fast. I don't want us to lose this house...I don't want us to lose the life that we've worked so hard for."

Surprise took Steven's face as his wife began to waver just slightly, but he smiled and set his drink upon the table. Arms that had taken Tandy in their relaxing grasp so many times before hugged the shorter woman in close to his broad, welcoming chest and eased the stress right out of her with a tight, loving squeeze.

"I'll do the best I can, Tandy...and if all goes well, we'll be back home before you know it."

The kids would be back from the community college any minute, but even if they'd walked in, nothing could break the embrace between Steven and Tandy in that moment. Just in his touch, Steven could infer the gravity of his current situation on his wife, and Tandy, being the strong and willful person that she was, helped to keep her husband on his feet as he prepared to make what could be a one way trip.

**

"So what's it really like in Stonebury, Dad?"

Steven and Tandy were blessed with a pair of wonderful children when they were a much younger couple. With a few years on them now, they had the good fortune to watch Tabitha grow all the way to the ripe age of twenty two, and her younger brother, Clyde, had just turned twenty the month before. Tabitha wasn't quite as close to her father, having taken on a light resentment for his always being away, but Clyde wanted to be just like his dad, even if he wasn't sure exactly what his old man did for a living.

"It's a wonderful little town, Clyde. Lots of friendly people with a small-town mentality, plenty of room to grow, and the houses are a lot bigger than they are here in Springfield. I think you two are gonna love living there."

"You literally asked us to pick up our lives, put them in a box and take off," Tabitha pointed out, the end of her tongue dripping with venom. "I wasn't planning on staying in Springfield too much longer anyway, but this kinda puts a huge wrench in my plans, Dad!"

"Sweetheart, you know it wasn't that simple."

"Whatever. If I didn't need you to help me pay for college..."

" Tabitha!" Tandy yelled back at her daughter, who certainly was the spitting image of her mother. The long, red-brown hair and sapphire eyes were spot on, and save for a mild fade from the test of time, Tandy still looked so much like her daughter that some people found it eerie. "Your father is doing the best that he can for this family, and he's hurting more about this move than you ever will, so try to show a little support for this family!"

It wasn't often that Tandy raised her voice at either of the kids. She didn't want to turn them against her, and early on, it took serious pleading to get Clyde in her husband's corner, so she wanted to establish right then and there that Tabitha wasn't to question her father's motives.

After all, if Steven had a choice in the matter, none of this ever would have happened.

The drive from Springfield to 'Stonebury' wasn't horribly far, and for such a hotbed of demonic activity to have popped up that close to headquarters was something of an embarrassment for Steven and his organization, but then again, as the van rolled down the road and they approached the city limits, nothing looked out of the ordinary.

Farmland sprung up on either side as far as the eye could see, but just as quickly as it appeared, it passed, and small houses and cul-de-sacs began to show up. After a little over a mile, most of them had given way to an old fashioned, American downtown strip, with a number of two and three story buildings, all made out of old, faded bricks. Store fronts that would have looked just as fitting in 1850 still had people coming and going from them, but not too far past Main Street, there were a couple of larger, chain grocery stores, as well, showing that the city was starting to look toward the realistic future.

They're hiding in plain sight. I can't really spot anyone suspicious, Steven thought, as he drove slowly down the main roads and scanned the sidewalks.

This is going to be harder than I thought...