The alleyway reeked of alcohol, garbage, the muck of society that had not been cleaned up, and of course, the stench of a decaying body. It had been discovered that morning, and the news of it had sent shock waves through the Barken police department. It had been the first murder since the DDD incident, as it was now commonly called. What was more was that it was the first murder and skinning within the town of Barken itself. Never before in Davis's memory had a resident been skinned while still in the town of Barken, it was always when they were out past the perimeter of the town, or too careless and had gone beyond Highway Hill. Now they had a skinning in the back alley next to the liquor store, with no traces left to identify the killer.

     Davis stood at the front of the alley, watching as Bill Budd picked through the alley, and Olympia Sparks picked over the body. Budd was quite frustrated by his search. Two of the other sentries had been called down form the hills to help investigate this case, and boy where they ever throwing their backs into it. However, despite their searches, no fingerprints could be found on either the body or anywhere in the alley. There were of course fingerprints, but none from the night before, which is what they were looking for.

     Hair and fibre analysis was their best bet, but of course they didn't have the facilities to take care of that here, so all their samples would have to be sent to Houston. It would probably be a few days before they got any results back on that, and by then their killer may have escaped. However, their killer was from Cherry, and it would be difficult to explain why they wanted to find the man who had skinned a dog, so they had to contact people who would of course understand their predicament. He knew just who to call.

     "So what do we have here?" Davis asked them as they scoured over the body. There were some onlookers but they stayed behind the police line.

     "It looks like somebody crushed his skull with a large blunt object. Probably killed him instantly." Sparks told him, not liking what she saw. She was the only one of the five scientists who had stayed here even after project RED was over. Davis had watched in merriment as one of his best sentries was being slowly pulled under the power of the quite flirtatious Olympia Sparks. She was not too unattractive, and she was very kind, and intelligent. She knew what his job was, and she liked him too, and it had just been a matter of time. It was still a matter of time, though, but he knew that the proposal would be too long of. Now however, tragedy struck, and he wondered just what reverberations this would cause.

     "Can you tell what it was?" Davis asked.

     "St. Bernard, I'd guess. However the way his skull is crushed, he might be something else, but I doubt it. He's too big to be any other dog, and the set of his chest is too wide for him to be a Great Dane." Sparks answered.

     "We have two other St. Bernard's in town. I'm going to guess this is George Thompson, the proprietor of the liquor store." Davis told them. "Bill, what have you got?"

     Bill rose from his hands and knees and held between two gloved fingers a beer bottle. "This looks like it was just recently drunk. We found a shopping bag from the liquor store in the dumpster, the receipt was still inside." he handed Davis a ziplock bag with a receipt inside. "As you can see the purchase was made last night at around quarter to midnight. Also you can see that whoever bought this stuff, bought a six pack of Red Dog, and a very expensive bottle of
Chardonnay dated 1863."

     "That's some good wine." Davis noted. "Now why in the world would anybody buy wine and a six pack at the same time?"

     "I don't know, sir." Bill replied quite candidly.

     "Well, if indeed this was George Thompson, then we should be able to use that to our advantage. I think it's safe to say that the person who bought this is at the very least a suspect." Davis held the plastic bag, looking at it quite distractedly. "Did you find any finger prints on the bottles?"

     "No, there were no finger prints on them either." Bill replied, looking back over his shoulder at the scene. He had a cast-iron stomach, so the sight of a dog eviscerated did not make him nauseous, and Olympia had been performing on people for a long time now. The reason she was here and not Dr. Shishido was that he was out of town at the moment visiting relatives in San Fransisco. Davis had made it clear he would have preferred a more experienced hand in dealing with this, but Olympia had not objected.

     "That makes him an even more likely suspect." Davis said quite candidly. "I wonder, Olympia, do you think a large bottle of wine could have been used to crush his skull?"

     "Quite possibly, it would do this sort of damage." Olympia remarked all business. "On the other hand, if he did use a wine bottle, I'd expect to see glass shards embedded in his skull, and there aren't any. In fact there appears to be no cuts whatsoever on the body except for the chest and stomach. The rest looks like a professional skinning job. I've only seen better done by a taxidermist."

     "Cherry," Bill replied, spitting the word out as if it were a curse. "I thought we took care of that problem for a good long while last year!"

     "One of them escaped. Besides, there were more residents from Cherry than just those fifty-one we killed." Davis reminded him.

     "Don't forget the five we put in the lock up." Bill added.

     Davis smiled mischievously, remembering their cries of anguish when they realized their fate. It had been quite satisfactory to hear them moan in the irony of their situation. "I haven't forgotten anything. Nor must we forget that Cherry still represents a threat, despite the beating they took. Whoever did this was smart, very smart. They're also quite uninhibited, not even Eddie had the guts to skin somebody while still in town."

     Bill furrowed his brow in frustration. Things had been quite pleasant this last year, and now this had to happen. In all likelihood, they would never catch the killer. Even when they did find out who the killer was, they generally couldn't do much about it, at least when they were from Cherry. That was the whole problem with their situation, neither side could very well tell any higher authorities for two distinct reasons. For Barken, it was a matter of innumerable investigations, and probable deportation to some lab to be treated as guinea pigs the rest of their natural lives. For Cherry, it meant the arrest and prosecution of nearly half the population for murder and the rest for manslaughter and for harbouring known criminals. Either way, both towns could only be destroyed by telling higher authorities.

     Of course, several government agencies probably knew already, if Will Bryant was to be believed. That they did nothing about it made him wonder even more. Could they possibly already know everything they needed to know, and we re no longer interested as long as the situation stayed well in hand? He didn't know, and yet the question nagged at him, but there was really very little he could do about it.

     "At any rate." Davis continued. "I know Thompson has a security camera set up in his store, in case anybody tries to steal anything. See if he has any tapes of what happened that night."

     "Want me to go check now?"

     "Yes, go do that now." Davis motioned for him to head off. "Olympia, move that body to the vet's office, and take care of it there. The rest of you, finish up this place as quickly as possible, we've already created enough of a scene as is."

     His name was Tyler Goode. His name was Tyler Goode. His name was Tyler Goode. Collapsing back against the wall, he nearly broke down into tears again. What was the point of it all. It changed nothing. He looked at his hand, it was still a hand, but he could feel it underneath him try to break out, trying desperately to reshape him against his will. He felt like he was ready to collapse again, there was nothing more to it. He'd been holding it off for over a week now, and there was little he could do to hold it back.

     Then again, there was little else he could do, in a jail cell.

     He'd spent the last year of his life living in this cell. The Sheriff was nice enough, giving them books to read, and every once in a while letting them have a newspaper. He'd given them one on the election, and the results made him squeamish, not another four years of a Democratic administration! Then again, what could he do to stop it? He was locked up with no chance of bail or even a trial, and from what he understood, very little chance of ever getting out.

     There had once been five of them, but now there were only four. The one died when the Sheriff shot him through he head. Tyler was glad the Sheriff had done so because it had saved his life. It had been only a month after they had first been brought in here, and all five had been locked up in the same cell. Being in such cramped quarters, and constantly under the fear of falling under the curse of Barken had brought a measure of cabin fever to them all. On the day of his death, Tyler had been subsumed by the spirit of Barken, and immediately the one who died set out to strangle him, uttering curses against him, for betraying God and all that. Davis had shot him through the head, and had put him in a private cell.

     Each night he prayed the nightmare would end, but each day he woke up tot he same thing: dog food. They fed him nothing but dog food, and he couldn't brig himself to eat it as a man, but as a dog he heartily gobbled it down. They were trying to make him a dog, and there was nothing he could do, after a time he would be simply so hungry that he would will himself to be a dog.

     Occasionally they would be rewarded with real food, but what the sheriff required of them was quite painful. He required them to write out statements that made what Barken was out to be good, and what they had done for Cherry out to be bad. He didn't want to admit it, but the more he wrote those sentences, the more he felt like there was some truth in them. However, they still fed him every morning dog food. They only asked him once a week to write a sentence, and that had been four days ago. He had fasted since that binge, but he could feel the hunger and the smell of the dog food pushing at him, pushing him to become a dog, so that he could freely eat it.

     His name was Tyler Goode! His name was Tyler Goode! His name was Tyler Goode!

     As he continued his mantra, he heard footsteps coming down the hallway. He scrambled over to the bars, and peered down the hallway. Sheriff Davis was walking down, looking in each of the cells as he passed. He could hear some curses at him, and he even heard one of them bark (probably Harry Carello from the sound of it). Davis however stopped at his cell and looked in at him.

     "Not eating again I see." Davis looked casually at the untouched bowls of dog food.

     "What do you want now?" Tyler asked, shrinking back from the bars and lying on the floor. There were no beds in the cells, they expected them to sleep on the floor like dogs too. He admitted it was more comfortable that way, but he could not let that happen.

     "I've asked you this before, and you've never told me. Who escaped that night?"

     Tyler remembered that night. It had been at one moment quite a glorious experience, they had been about to wipe Barken off the face of the world, when suddenly, the world fell apart in a hail of firepower and death. He had escaped injury, only by dropping to the ground when he saw his best friend get his head blown off. He did indeed know who had gotten away, but he was never going to betray him, no matter how weird he thought he was. They could turn him into a dog, they could make him right things down he didn't believe in, they could do all this stuff, but they could not force him to betray that man.

     "I do not know." he lied. He had been saying that from day one, and each time it became easier, almost effortless. Davis stomped away, knowing that he would never get anything else out of him. Tyler sat smug, though his nose kept being distracted by the scent of the food. The hunger was beginning to overpower him, despite his best efforts. Then, shrugging, he figured there was nothing he could do, besides, he'd done it already over twenty times. Once more wouldn't hurt any more than the others.

     Jason Kubelik stared at the computer screen in his home. It was the latest model, which on his new salary he was able to afford. He liked being able to stay up as late as he was, nearly midnight, and the ability to be a mixed-morph again made him quite happy. He had stayed in Barken with the research team the whole time they were there, a whole six months after the DDD incident, though Rehberger told him he would not be getting his new salary until he came back to work for him officially. That was fine with him, and it was indeed time well spent. He couldn't remember a happier time in his life then those six months. He'd spent most of it as a husky, practically being the pet of the Barclay's. Knowing that he was not stuck as a dog made the experience all the worth while, and he found it odd that he rather enjoyed being that way.

     He was playing one of those computer games with the intense graphics, and the point and click interface. His right hand pointed and clicked the mouse, while his left casually gripped the pencil, tapping it against the table. He was leaning forward on the back of the chair, having turned it around, so that his tail would be comfortable. It was late September, and he would no longer have to keep the air conditioning on full blast.

     He had left his curtains open, he wondered if the move had been entirely intelligent, but then again, the window behind him was pointed at the forest, there were no houses back there, and no people either. Besides, he liked to be able to look out there, and he didn't want to have to shut himself out from the world, just because of what he could do.

     He sat up straight, thinking about the problem in the game. Looking it over, he began to fiddle with the pencil in mid air, when he dropped it. He reached down to pick it up, when he heard a crack of glass. Looking up at the computer, he saw a bullet hole right in the middle of the screen. Turning he saw that there was a similar hole in his glass windows. Scrambling in fear, he crawled all the way out of the room, and then he looked at the clock on the wall for no apparent reason.

     It was just after midnight.