Blood Moon (34 page)

Rose used her key card to gain access to the makeshift medical facility, but instead of continuing to her own offices, she carried on along the corridor, through two more sets of doors to where Doctor Channing had set up shop. There didn’t seem to be anyone around, but she didn’t want to risk being discovered. She had a flimsy excuse prepared if she was challenged, but knew that it would not stand up to close scrutiny. The last thing she wanted right now was to get another bollocking from the Colonel. She felt that she was on rather thin ice with him as it stood. Any more insubordination from her was likely to see her being put on a charge at the very least.

She paused outside Doctor Channing’s laboratory – in reality it had been the prison’s medical centre before all of the inmates had been shipped out to other facilities. This was it. The moment of truth. She fought to contain the nervous fluttering in her stomach, then pushed down all the fear and uncertainty and strode through the doors, ready to face the consequences or, if need be, lie through her teeth.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she found that Doctor Channing was not in the room, but regretted it when the stench of the place hit her. The smell of disinfectant did little to disguise the mingled stink of blood and human excrement. The laboratory was disgusting. Surgical implements covered in drying blood covered every surface. Microscope slides were scattered across benches and empty food wrappers rested in pools of gore. Canisters of volatile chemicals were stacked haphazardly on top of one another. Blood-stained curtains were drawn around individual beds, with some of the blood-spatter bearing the unmistakable patterns of arterial spray. This wasn’t a laboratory. Any samples in this room would be hopelessly contaminated – worthless. It was like something out of a horror movie. Or a slaughterhouse. Doctor Channing had clearly lost his grip on what little sanity he had left.

She reached for a blood-stained stack of medical charts. The writing was largely indecipherable, even for a doctor’s handwriting, but she eventually managed to find Steven’s among the dozens of others. Dozens? What the hell was going on here?

That question could wait until she found Steven. She checked the bed number on the chart and carefully made her way across the filthy room, making sure to avoid any obvious patches of blood or other bodily fluids, until she came to the curtain around Steven’s bed. Taking a pen from her pocket to avoid touching the soiled plastic sheeting, she pushed them aside, crying out in spite of herself. She thought she’d prepared herself for the worst. In reality, she couldn’t have expected this. It was… inhuman.

Steven Wilkinson was strapped naked to a bed. No one had bothered to clean him up, or even attend to his most basic of needs. The mattress was stained with blood, urine and excrement. They’d not even bothered to catheterise him. But that was far from the worst thing. It was not even close. The old man had been opened up from crotch to throat – his entire torso cut open and laid bare. Silver clamps prevented the wounds from healing themselves. His ribs had been sawn open and some of them removed to allow Doctor Channing easier access to his internal organs. He had, in essence, been autopsied while he was still alive – and worse – fully conscious. There were no drips beside his bed. No fluids, morphine, blood or antibiotics were being administered. He rolled his eyes towards Rose and there was, for the briefest of moments, a flicker of recognition among the unmistakable clouds of agony that he was clearly in. A tear rolled down his cheek and he mouthed the words. “Help me…”

Rose backed away, her hand across her mouth. This was worse than anything she’d ever witnessed. It was beyond barbaric. It was absolutely monstrous and she knew that she had to stop it. Colonel Richards, for all his faults, would never have agreed to this. No one deserved to be condemned to this living hell. She didn’t want to look behind the other curtains. She had a pretty good idea of what she would find. Instead she turned and hurried from Doctor Channing’s ‘laboratory’ and made her way back towards Colonel Richards’ office, any pretence of composure long forgotten.

The door to the Colonel’s office was slightly ajar. She was about to knock, then let herself in, when she heard a voice she recognised. The voice of the country’s new interim Prime Minister. A man that had visited the facility at Crickhowell before events had escalated. She paused outside the door and listened into the conversation.

“How are matters progressing with the relocation, Colonel?”

“We’ve moved out all essential personnel and most of the pertinent research material. We’ve had to keep a strong enough force in place to avoid suspicion, and of course, Doctors Fisher and Channing are still at the facility. They will be among the unavoidable casualties when the plan goes into effect.”

“Good. Very good. We can’t take any chances, Colonel. The timing of the strike needs to be precise. The public outcry would be unfortunate if they discovered we were targeting civilians and members of our own armed forces along with the lycanthropes.”

“Everything is arranged, Sir. When the moon rises on the eleventh, we will have a Hercules inbound from Brize Norton and the thermobaric device will be deployed before any of them have a chance to complete their transformation. The complex and anything within it will be utterly destroyed, but in the event that anything manages to escape the blast, the drones will finish them off. We can then explain that we were left with no alternatives.”

“Very good, Colonel. What about collateral damage outside of the target area?”

“I’d expect catastrophic damage to anything within a mile of the target, and probably significant structural damage to anything within five. It might be wise to close the motorway and Doncaster airport to be on the safe side.”

“Out of the question, Colonel. This cannot appear to have been premeditated. If the press get a sniff of it there will be hell to pay, and I don’t need to remind you that there will be a general election in the next few weeks. Rest assured, Colonel Richards, there will be a rather comfortable position for you in the MOD after this operation concludes.”

“Thank you, Sir. I won’t let you down.”

Rose didn’t wait any longer. She’d heard enough. She fought back her tears and hurried away from Colonel Richards’ office. They were going to sacrifice her – sacrifice everyone not already redeployed from the facility – to wipe the werewolves off the face of the earth. She had to do something, but for the life of her, had no idea what. She was utterly alone here, with no one she could enlist for help. Then a thought occurred to her. There was one person she might be able to turn to. One potential ally. Rose straightened her clothes, wiped the moisture from her eyes, and headed towards the room where Phil Fletcher was being held.

9th January 2009. Newcastle International Airport. 21:55

Marie stepped out of the KLM twin prop aircraft and made her way towards the waiting shuttle bus. The frigid air stung her cheeks and hurt her throat when she inhaled it, but it was still considerably warmer than Moscow had been. Her wolf was forced as far down as she could and it lay quiet in the depths of her subconscious, making her more susceptible to the cold. It may have been warmer than Moscow, but she felt the chill much more keenly than she ordinarily would. The journey had been considerably less fraught than she’d imagined. While there had been increased security at the airport in Moscow, there had not been, as far as she could tell, any special measures put in place. Not yet, anyway. The Russian’s experience with werewolves was limited and, for the moment, it didn’t look like the British had shared much intelligence on them. Certainly not the countermeasures they’d had from Steven Wilkinson. They’d boarded the Aeroflot flight to Amsterdam without incident and the transfer to the KLM flight had been similarly straightforward. It was only here that they were in any real danger. She remembered the video footage of Dmitri, Kasha and Adam trying to flee from Exeter and suppressed a shudder. Silver bullets would not affect the other field operatives, but the scars on her wrists left her under no illusion that she wouldn’t be so lucky if things went wrong.

The flight had been almost empty. Only around a dozen passengers had boarded in Amsterdam in addition to herself and her strike team. Most of them were dazed-looking young men, clearly returning from the Dutch capital. There were not many flights in or out of Newcastle at this time of night and she hoped the police officers present would be more interested in the other passengers and any souvenirs they may have brought back from the coffee shops than in a well-groomed woman wearing a business suit. If not… well, at least if things got bloody there would be limited civilian casualties.

The bus lurched into motion and headed towards the terminal building. Marie made a show of checking her telephone and avoided eye contact with the others. She’d been in dangerous situations before, but this was different. There had never been so much at stake. Fifteen field operatives, plus those with Daniel, against an army who were as prepared for the enemy they faced as they could be. She’d made contingency plans, of course, but even those were as dependent on luck as sound strategy. Steffan had put things in motion at his end, and she’d done her best to cover as many angles as she could, but in the end, she’d simply run out of time. The full moon was less than thirty hours away. Whatever actions she took needed to happen by then.

The bus came to a stop and the passengers filed off, hurrying to get into the warmth of the terminal building. The airport was almost empty now. Most of the shops had closed, or were in the process of closing, and bored staff members looked at their watches, hoping they would not have to deal with any more passengers for one day. She stopped at a coffee shop and ordered an espresso, to the dismay of the girl behind the counter, then followed the rest of the passengers towards baggage collection and passport control. The other wolves had also held back, allowing the returning stag party to get ahead of them. How the customs officials treated those new arrivals should at least give some indication as to how closely they were monitoring things. If they were lucky, the border control staff would be as tired and ready to go home as the people in the shops and cafés.

It only took a few minutes for their luggage to appear on the carousel. Some of the stag party seemed content to wait for the rest of their friends, while others grabbed rucksacks and began making their way towards the exit. When the first few made it through without opposition, she followed, trying to control the racing of her heartbeat and fixing her face in a mask of irritation to hide the nervousness she was sure must be radiating from her.

She need not have worried. The customs official at the desk barely glanced at her passport and she made it out into the empty foyer without incident. She almost felt like crying out in relief. Instead she took her phone out of her pockets and sent a single text message, then made her way out of the airport towards the car park, with the other members of her team following behind her. Once out of the terminal building, she removed the earplugs she’d been wearing. A white minibus waited for them at the entrance, with a young blonde woman in the driver’s seat. Marie opened the side door. “Melissa?”

The girl grinned. “Welcome back to the UK. No problems on your flight, I hope?”

Marie climbed into one of the empty seats and fastened her seatbelt. “No, plain sailing. The security measures don’t seem to be in place for inbound passengers. Not yet anyway. Is everything ready?”

Melissa nodded. “Everything is set. The others are ready and Daniel… well, he’s got a surprise for you. Apparently he ran into an old friend of yours.”

Marie’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Old friend?”

Chapter 21

Earlier that day…

9th January 2009. Finningley, Doncaster. 17:10

Rose sat in her car and drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. The village of Finningley was quiet. A few cars were parked outside the public house; people unwinding after a long week at work, or stopping off for a meal. She herself had gone there several times when off duty, preferring the food and the company to that served up by the army chefs at the detention facility. She’d found it relaxing to sit and watch the other customers, appreciating the interactions between them. It reminded her that outside of the confines of the prison and the horrors it contained, real people were happily living their lives. Normal lives, with no monsters and no imminent threat of death. That was the pretence she’d used when she’d driven out of Lindholme earlier. She was just sticking to a routine that she’d established and she hoped that no one would consider it in any way out of the ordinary. Not that she was planning to eat at the pub today, despite the protests from her stomach. There was another reason she’d come here. Finningley was right next to Doncaster Airport.

There were not many flights in or out of such a small place at this time of year. Most of them were to skiing resorts in France or to popular destinations like Dublin. Those destinations were not the ones she had in mind, however. She needed to disappear. The shit was going to hit the fan in two days’ time, and when that happened, she wanted to be as far away from it as she could be. Somewhere she could hide out relatively inexpensively until the dust settled. Of course, there was a damned good chance that they would hunt her down, especially when she released what evidence she’d been able to gather to the media. It wasn’t much, but if she couldn’t prevent the tragedy, she was at least going to make certain the bastards who orchestrated it were held accountable for their actions.