Joseph was sat at the far end of the living room across from Foster. The man had documents detailing the sites of bodies that were recently dug up around White Tree that were related to the Blackriver Killer. The room was silent as Foster waited for the small team to get settled and Joseph studied the board on which the map of Blackriver County with colored pins denoting exhumation sites and crime scenes. The sheer amount told Joseph that either the Blackriver Killer had been at this for a long while or he was very productive. Finally, Foster cleared his throat and all eyes were on him, Joseph’s included. Before he spoke, he wondered just how much Foster would divulge.

“Gentlemen,” Foster began, then nodded at Pari, “Lady. Two days ago, 2200 hours, Officer Morales of the West Virginia State Police was the first responder to the residence of Daniel and Vicki Mulligan on his patrol. His last correspondence with the dispatcher that night was confirming that he had made it to the scene. After further requests to respond as to his status, Sherriff Deputies in the area were called in to clear the smoke and find out what was going on.”

“They found the Mulligans gone, Morales was nowhere to be found. There were no signs of a struggle outside, no shell casings. There was a lot of blood found in the bedroom of the Mulligans residence, though. Obvious who the suspect is. We are led to believe that the most likely cause is that the Blackriver killer had the drop on Morales and it all went downhill from there. Morales’ cruiser was found about a mile down the road going towards the Vera Corporation mining operation.” He said, pointing to one of the colored pins on the map, where the Mulligan residence was, “Maryanne Roy is waiting for some of our team at the scene as we speak, so we’ll make this fast as we can.”

His finger circled the town of White Tree proper on the map, “I want the other section of our team canvassing the town. Our second priority is figuring out just where the hell the CDC team sent to White Tree went. They’d arrived a few days before Morales’ disappearance to investigate the appearance of the black welts on many of the townsfolk and haven’t sent home since.” Foster folded his arms, “We’ve got quite the case here in this small spit of a town, Lady and Gentlemen. State Trooper Marvin McClintock here is our resident expert on this town, he knows the ins-and-outs and layout of Blackriver better than any of us.”

Foster looked to Joseph, “Anything to add?”

Joseph nodded, looking out over the small assembled team they had here. Clint was the black sheep, but Foster needed him for this. They needed an inside man in Blackriver to lend a friendly, familiar face to the investigation. Or, at least, just a familiar one. Joseph cleared his throat, “We stick to each other out there like flies on shit. No going solo, you all have the cellphones we gave you, use them whenever you need to.” Joseph patted his holster, “I don’t want service weapons out unless someone’s coming at you. The last thing we need is to get in trouble because we turned White Tree into the OK Corral.”

He sighed then, running his hand along his beard, “I’m not going to elaborate, so take this at face value and remember it well.” He looked each of them in the eye, “We all know just how weird the world gets sometimes. You know [i]exactly what I mean.[/i]" His eyes were hard at that, that street dog in him bearing its teeth at falling bombs, "You find something that weird out here in Blackriver, you don’t hesitate to call me or Foster. Don’t read anything that seems weird, don’t touch anything that seems weird. [i]Call.[/i]”

Foster nodded slow, eyebrows raised as he fidgeted with the cufflinks on his suit, “Alright, people, let’s get mounted up. Joseph, take Jason and get into town, start interviewing people about the CDC and the killings while you’re at it.” He pointed to Clint and Pari, “Clint, introduce Pari to Maryanne Roy at the Mulligan’s.”

They split up. They mounted up. They drove. Joseph hoped he spooked them enough with that speech, he hoped everything would go as well as it could. But he knew White Tree would be the death of their innocence in the face of the things they would soon have to fight away. Blackriver was a hornet's nest of lies, poverty, intrigue, and more than likely- something far, far darker that usually only had the bravery to crop up in the far-flung vestiges of frontiers the world had. Joseph frowned as he shut the door of the Ford Focus, he'd seen it in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia. [i]Not in my yard...[/i]

The truth of White Tree and Blackriver County is that it is one of the most poverty-ridden areas of the United States. Joseph flipped through the files on Blackriver he'd brought with him, Jason in the driver's seat, the litany of modern savagery and death throes of the American Dream here contained on the pages in his hands. Mining and farming conglomerates have swooped down on White Tree and the surrounding small mining towns like leviathans after crumbs. Unemployment was the norm here long before the latest financial crisis. Local schools are falling apart and Joseph found it unnerving that there are scarcely few children in White Tree. Farming is done almost exclusively by agrobusiness giants, using Roundup Ready crops and titanic machines on fields so big they demonstrate the curvature of the Earth.

Joseph and the others reached the mining district in Blackriver that's been active on and off for more than a century and a half, a mere fifteen minutes from the safehosue. Its locals feel their lives depend on that activity, which resumed about two years back due to high oil prices. The last time the mines closed, it was due to unionization and talking to OSHA, so the locals won't be trying that again. They distrust strangers and bear a deep, dark faith in God and television. This is because they recently escaped from a level of poverty that involved getting shot at in the dark while tearing up crops sprayed with dangerous quantities of glyphosate, just to eat. These are desperate people, ready to kill for their oppressors.


[hr]

>WHITE TREE
>0712 HOURS…///

Joseph was only used to sites like these in foreign countries. Though, it remained to be said that the town itself they split off from Clint and Pari in wasn’t unlike the tiny, chewed up trailer town he grew up in back in Texas. The same one he spent a few eventful years as a Sherriff’s Deputy in, arresting so-and-so for such-and-such on any given day only to never see them again or to be reminded of their existence when he was once again pounding on their door for them to open up because his warrant said his boot would also serve as a key to their house. He had an errant thought of just how he’d try to single-handedly fix this town like he tried with the other one. Probably with the same results.

White Tree was very much the picture of what Steve Foster described in the morning briefing. It might have been picturesque at one point, but the financial crises of the 2000s had left its hand on White Tree, though the damage done was most definitely not done in one fell swoop. Even just fifteen minutes spent in the parking lot of the gas station in White Tree was enough. At the edges, a mangy dog sniffed at a paper bag and took off running when it sighted a pair of men walking towards it. The two men fixed Joseph and Jason with wary stares before turning their heads away and going about their business. The Ford Focus was the only car in the parking lot and it wasn’t hard to notice that cars sat destitute in the driveways of homes on the way to town from the safehouse.

The denizens of the tiny spit of the town of White Tree milled about on errands or just seemingly aimlessly at their own leisure, though there was noticeably few of them whatever they were out for. One might guess at it being work-hours at the mines, or just the fact that anyone who’d sensed what the town would become years and years ago already jumped ship and left the poor fools to fend for themselves. To their credit, as life always does, it persisted past the horrific advance of corporate industry and financial crises. Albeit, just as the wildlife of Fukushima or Chernobyl, life here was scarred and ugly. The two people around the Ford Focus were left to run rough-shod through the town with their questioning or just act as observers to this alien world. A passing group of teenagers eyed the duo from a safe distance. “Fucking lost tourists.” Said loud enough by one before he spat at them and they continued walking, laughing in the blood-boiling manner only a gaggle of street-youths could. These were the people they were here to save.

Joseph watched the youths walk away from them, shaking his head. “Fucking kids.” He took the last drag of his cigarette and dropped it smoldering on the ground, “Let’s get to it.”

[hr]

>BLACKRIVER COUNTY
>0720 HOURS...///

Windy mountain roads, trees, but the  far-off plumes of black like devils trying to smoke the angels from their heavens evident from the porch of the safehouse. Even now, the smell still lingered in the car, diesel mingling with the smell of the forest. White Tree is a town seemingly only in name. There is one restaurant, Vicky’s Diner, no relation to the late Vicki Mulligan. A gas station, a general store, the very bare amenities for anyone scraping a living out of the mountain dirt. The neighborhoods are about what you’d expect, a sprinkling of tiny houses sitting in solitude and near destitution, far away from each other that even going along at 35 miles per hour on the almost jarringly rigid straightaways of White Tree’s gravel and dirt roads it takes thirty seconds to get from one dirt-road driveway to the next.

It’s easy to see why anyone distrusting of the city life, their fellow man or their president would live out here. As the duo passed a family walking down the road hard-eyed, dirty and callused, with a road sign behind them that read [i]Jesus Loves You[/i] under the moss and dirt, it’s easy to see why being born here would make you such. 

Police lights, finally. The closer they got, the clearer the scene became- this was a checkpoint. The road ahead was blocked off for some reason with three sherriff’s Ford Crown Vics arrayed with two of the vehicles on one side of the road with the remaining one on the opposite. There was a hold to let people through, but it was blocked off by two sherriff’s deputies- one holding a shotgun and the other an AR-15- as well as a spike strip deployed in front of them.

The two Deputies raised their hands for the car to stop, which it did. One of the Deputies to the side of the road approached the car on Pieter’s side while yet another walked up from the opposite. The Deputy on Clint’s side motioned for him to roll down his window, “Where you folks headed? I’m afraid this route’s blocked off for a while.” The Deputy said after Clint’s window was down.