Relapse

He was looking bad, rough. You can tell when someone's had a relapse, and it doesn't take ALPS-heightened senses, either. They say recovering alcoholics can smell it when someone in their group has gone off the wagon.

Scott didn't smell funny, but clearly, he'd lost it. Normally the guy was overdressed to a fault and cheerful like a daytime game-show host. Then he went missing back in mid-January, and now here he was in group again, looking like something the cat had dragged in.

"Hi," he said. He looked up, started to make eye-contact, then went back to looking at his shoes. I saw they were scuffed and salt-stained; another bad sign. Crockett & Jones, Leeds, U.K., a thousand bucks a pair—we knew because he'd told us, repeatedly, and now here he was looking like he'd been playing street hockey in them.

"Hi," he tried again. "My name is Scott, and I'm a were-weasel."

"Hi, Scott."

He managed to look up and hold the eye-contact for a few seconds this time, and almost managed a smile. Progress.

He went back to looking at his shoes. "First off, I'd like to thank my sponsor, Tom, for getting me back into group."

Okay, no wonder he looked like something the cat had dragged in. He'd been dragged in by the cat.

"I—" he paused, gulped, swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. Yes, I've—" He looked up, around the circle, and nodded. "Yes, I've had a setback. I screwed up. I—" Another heavy sigh.

"I started doing politics again."

What could we do? Nod sympathetically. Encourage him to keep talking.

"I thought I could handle it. I thought, just a little taste. Just once, for old times' sake. I thought—" He shook his hands in the air, as if wrapping them around some invisible something right in front of his face, and then dropped them into his lap, and sighed.

"I couldn't handle it." He went back to looking at this shoes.

When it seemed like that was all he had to say, Tom cleared his throat. "Go on, Scott. Tell us the rest."

Scott locked eyes with Tom, took some kind of strength from it, and nodded. "Yeah. You're right. They need to know." He took another deep breath, sat up a little straighter in his chair, and then a bit of the Old Scott came back into his voice.

"As you've probably guessed," he said, "I've been down in D.C. for the last six weeks, angling for a job in the new administration, or at least a lobbying gig. I mean, were-weasel, politics: a natural fit, don't you think?" Everyone around the circle nodded sympathetically.

"Well let me tell you, friends, I didn't have a clue. You don't have a clue. There are things crawling through the halls of Congress now that... that...

"Look. This administration is like an enormous frickin' magnet for Dark Life."

Joe the Lion blinked. "Dark Life?"

"Y'know, dark matter? Dark energy?" Scott thumped himself on the chest. "Dark Life. Us. Cryptids. Beasties that go bump in the night. Creatures that don't officially exist—or at least we didn't, until the ALPS activists started coming out of the closet and getting into people's faces.

"I tell you, there are things going on that none of us have a clue about. There are things walking the streets of D.C. now that haven't seen the light of day since the Carter administration. You can't even get an interview for a contract job on K Street unless you're at least a sasquatch. I ran into a frickin' wendigo in the Dirksen Building!"

Joe the Lion was blinking again. "Wendigo?"

"It's Algonquin. Look it up later. While you're at it, look up cryptozoology, too.

"Look, people," he said to the rest of us, "there is—"

He paused, and pointed across the circle. "Hank, I've been following your blog. Don't worry about that Reverend Riley. Internment is the least of our worries. People, there is a frickin' war building up out there."

Joe the Lion nodded. "I knew it. Vampires versus were-beasts."

Scott scowled. "Oh, don't give me that comic-book crap. We're talking about war between the New Breeds—us—and the Old Line dark life; the ones who liked being in the shadows, because it gave them more power."

I finally had to interrupt. "War? Really, Scott, don't you think that's being just a little extreme?"

Scott turned and looked at me, and gave me the full-bore heavy sigh and rolling eyes treatment. "No, I don't think that's 'a little extreme.' Right now there are clashes going on out west between the were-cougars and the were-jaguars, who are trying to push north and muscle in on cougar territory. So far they've managed to cover it up and blame all the murders on drug gangs, but it's only a matter of time..."

He broke off, and sighed again. "Look. All I can say is, there is stuff going out there that scares the willies out of me. We are only scratching the surface; ALPS is only the tip of the iceberg. We think we understand this disease. We're only buying into the cover story. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am scared beyond my capacity for rational comprehension."

He sighed one more time, then shrugged, sat back, and tried to smile.

"But hey, what do I know? I'm just a weasel."