City Under the Moon (25 page)

They did choose to tell her one thing, although she’d never understood why. Somewhere in Arlington, close enough to DARPA, there was a four-year-old girl in a foster family, a girl with Lucy Tildascow’s tender eyes and floral hair: a clone of Brianna the Girl Scout Brownie, before the tragedy and the training.

Someday they were hoping to take her mind and put it into the younger copy of her body. And if they could pull it off, she planned to let them. Why not live a second life and get done all the shit you didn’t get done the first time? Take another trip through her sexual prime, watch the rich keep getting richer and the Mets keep losing?

Sometimes she wondered what path her untarnished twin might take. Trophy wife? PR flack? Lawyer? Daddy’s daughter the plumber, or Mommy’s protégé the singer? Truthfully, she had no idea.

Part of her wished she could see what was going to come of this little Brianna. This girl who was somewhere out there, building a life, unaware that one day she was going to disappear inside herself.

Yeah, the cyclical aspect was nauseating.

She swallowed four unmarked pills as Ilecko turned off the stairs. Crossing through an open door, they left the castle’s stale air behind and emerged onto a loggia running across the front of the main structure, perhaps two hundred feet above the ground. Stone columns gave way to a breathtaking view of the snowy mountainscape glowing under bright starlight.

The inner corridor had been retrofitted with modern weatherproof windows. They couldn’t see through the heavy drawn curtains, but she felt movement on the other side. Maybe it was the aural tricks thrown by the loggia’s columns, making the whistling wind play hide and seek, or maybe it was the Stygian shadows that fell behind the columns, swallowing the stone walkway into whole blackness.

Or maybe she was ready to shit out a horror novel.

Ilecko stepped past a frozen Jaguar and started across the loggia. Tildascow nodded for him to get back on point.

“Stay focused,” she said, to herself as much as to Jaguar.

She cued Lon to remain at the cusp of the tower and he went sullen. His excitement must have temporarily surpassed his terror. A dangerous sensation on the battlefield or on prom night.

Weapon drawn, she crept toward the outer edge of the loggia, beside a low parapet designed as a battlement, trying for the best angle on these windows. Goddamn wind was pushing hard enough to wobble the windows, making it impossible to distinguish anything inside. And at the far end of the exposed walkway, one of the windows was either broken or open. The curtains swelled and retracted in an organic rhythm.

Ilecko approached the double-wide door halfway down the inner wall. Beethoven used hand motions to direct Jaguar and Mantle into—

The drapes shifted in the closest window.

Inside that room, someone—or some
thing
—had just moved. She silently alerted the others.

Ilecko put cautious fingers on the door’s handle and turned to catch her eye. Try as she might, she couldn’t find confidence on his face.

Now you’re telling me?

He took a breath and reaffirmed his grip on his shortsword, keeping it tight against the back of his arm.

With no resistance, the door creaked open.

Three

Clifton Road, Northeast of CDC Headquarters

Atlanta, GA

January 1

4:49 p.m.

Jessica Tanner edged through the traffic logjam on Clifton Road, a four-lane highway just north of CDC Headquarters. She was armed with a spritz bottle containing the most lethal biological weapon ever created by man. And onlookers thought she was made up as a clown.

Bacteria, like Sorcerer, are groups of single-celled organisms. Although they’re among the simplest life forms on the planet, they have a complex method of communication, called
quorum sensing
, in which they “speak” to one another by sending chemical signals. When they hear enough voices in the roll call, they know they have sufficient numbers to infect their host.

Quorum sensing might be a new exploitable weakness in our war against bacterial infection. Overexposure to antibiotics and the ever-present defense mechanism of mutagenesis might cause bacteria to develop into drug-resistant strains, but if we mute their voices, they’ll simply wait forever during roll call.

Vibrio fischeri
, a marine bacterium, is one specimen used in QS research. It employs a class of signaling molecules called
N
-Acyl homoserine lactones, which scientists have interrupted with a synthetic compound derived from plants. Either by luck or design—only God or USAMRIID might know—Sorcerer bacteria use
N
-Acyl homoserine lactones to communicate.

In fact, not only would the anti-QS technology shield her from infection, it proved to be the key to weaponizing Sorcerer in the first place. Storing the bacteria in a decaying anti-QS medium would keep it essentially hibernating until it reached its destination. As the anti-QS medium decomposed, it would take to the wind and distribute the dormant bacteria. When the anti-QS function ceased, Sorcerer would complete its roll call and commence infection.

The decaying process was based on a solution she’d developed herself, in a research paper examining a concern with bacteria used to consume biodegradable elements in sewage waste. Richard liked to remind her that Jessica Munroe was a brilliant scientist before she was buried under administration. Nice as that felt, conceiving the tech to successfully weaponize Sorcerer hardly felt like a noble achievement.

Nevertheless, here she was with the thick, white anti-QS lotion all over her body. If the passers-by mistook her for a clown, she couldn’t blame them.

On the far side of the highway, Atlanta PD, EMTs and CDC EIS were on the scene of a fresh car crash. One man was lying on the side of the road with major lacerations; two others were under body bags. She could only pray they’d contained any infections.

The trail of blood led Jessica toward the Emory Hotel across the highway. Police, state troopers, FD, and military were on the scene. They’d barricaded the parking lot, but that was unnecessary: The cats weren’t so curious as to peek in on a wild werewolf, not after news reports from New York. Officers and soldiers kept their cover, maintaining cautious aim on the building.

“Ma’am, you can’t be over there,” a trooper called from behind the cover of his vehicle’s door. As if the werewolf might shoot at him.

Several of the hotel’s exterior windows had been smashed, including the glass doors to The Emory Lounge, where CDC scientists often went to—

Jessica stopped cold.

—where
Richard
often went to—

The pentagram.

Oh my God no. Please, no.

This was the first place she ever saw him. He was meeting a friend from the Army, who had transferred to the CDC. She’d been reviewing reports with an alcoholic colleague.

The werewolf’s roar emanated from inside the darkened shop, followed by a frightful crash of wood and glass.

Jessica’s wobbly legs carried her across the lawn, toward the ruined entrance. She had to see.

“Ma’am, please! It’s not safe over there!“

“I’m with the CDC,” she called absently. “CDC.”

They kept yelling for her to stop, come back, but she couldn’t hear them. A firefighter came forward, but he backed off upon seeing the strange paste smeared on her face and hands.

She stepped through the tatters of the front door, the same door she had opened when she first saw him. Back then he was sitting at his favorite table, a two-seater by the window, and nursing Cordon Rouge.

And there he was now, sprawled on the floor by the window. His chest had been torn away, his ribcage wrenched open. His heart was gone.

His file on the lycanthropy virus was spread around the burgundy mahogany floor, floating across pools of blood and shattered glass.

There were other bodies strewn about. One had landed in the fireplace, another was draped over the wrecked bar. Something hung from the slow fan above, making a cyclical dragging noise.

Richard’s dead eyes stared, asking her
How could it end like this?

A guttural purr whispered from the far side of the lounge.

Yellow eyes rose from behind the wine bar. The werewolf slinked over the oak surface, blood dripping from its maw. Melissa Kenzie’s birdlike frame had disappeared inside this top-heavy beast, whose broad shoulders and thick arms tapered into a canine torso and rear legs.

It sniffed cautiously, maybe pondering the mossy odor of the anti-QS lotion, or wondering why she hadn’t fled. Its talons clacked as it approached, keeping time with the skipping fan. Now it was just two feet away.

Questioning Jessica with its eyes, the wolf reared back on its hind legs and roared. Jessica risked one last look at Richard as she tightened her grip on the spray bottle in her trembling hand.

The werewolf was too surprised to react when Jessica lunged forward and sprayed its face. It rolled backward and she backed away, footfalls splashing on the blood-soaked floor.

The wolf shook off the liquid, growling with renewed anger.

Jessica ducked behind an overturned table and the monster lunged. With a thunderous crash, the table buckled and the legs shattered, snaring her within the splinters.

She broke free, but the werewolf had already spun for another attack. Its claws shot out for her—

And then the wolf stumbled, jolted by an itch on its face. Then another.

The werewolf yelped and clawed deep gashes into itself, frantically trying to scratch everywhere at once.

Then Jessica heard the soft pitter-patter of blood, as the creature’s flesh began to lose cohesion. Still it thrashed, now throwing off its own skin.

She huddled behind the table, covering her ears from the shrieks and splats of the werewolf’s disintegration.

Finally, the monster fell against the bar and slid to the floor, leaving behind a trail of clinging flesh.

She lay there for a long moment as the wolf’s remains settled. If the anti-QS solution were going to fail, her flesh should begin to liquify any second now. But she hardly cared.

“Richard?” she called, hoping that maybe he would stand up and come to her, and this all would have been a terrible dream.

“Richard!” she screamed, ordering him to get up.

Moving lights crossed over her head. Distant voices were approaching. An urge flooded her body, telling her to wake him before the others arrived, or else it would all be real. If other people saw him, he couldn’t take it back. He’d really be dead.

As the voices grew louder, she forced herself to her knees. Ruffled pages from Richard’s lycanthropy file were all around her, bloodstained and pasted to the hardwood floor.

“Richard!”

She crawled toward him, dragging herself on her elbows, but it was too late. Men in hazmat suits stepped through the windows between her and Richard’s body. They regarded him and turned elsewhere with their flashlights, finding her.

She collapsed as they approached. Her eyes fell on a page from Richard’s lycanthropy file, pasted to the floor a few inches from her cheek.

It was his list of excuses for the pentagram symbol. He’d scratched something at the top while they were on the phone with the kid in Transylvania, and he’d retraced it over and over in the hours since.

Four

Oval Office

The White House

5:50 p.m.

During the last moments before moonrise on New Year’s Day, the country’s top officials were bracing for the worst.

Deaths from the previous night had soared past three hundred, with injuries into the thousands. And how many unaccounted for? How many undocumented infections?

How many werewolves tonight?

A resupply of silver ammunition was distributed to law enforcement officers as they sealed the perimeter of the island. Streets were cleared. Lockdowns for the infected were established in 26 Federal Plaza, One Police Plaza, One Times Square, and Riker’s Island. Several federal and local authorities had been detained for executing the infected, but many such incidents were likely going unreported.

Up to a million citizens were still trapped on the island. Bottlenecking had choked the bridges, and one of the primary exits didn’t work at all: Penn Station was kept closed by power outages and damaged tracks, despite the best efforts of AMTRAK and MTA technicians. In their report to the FBI, AMTRAK said they believed the werewolves had specifically targeted key systems.

Above Penn Station, Madison Square Garden held over twenty thousand stranded refugees from the Times Square celebration. They were questioned and inspected, and a dozen snipers were assigned to keep a close watch on the crowd.

It couldn’t be contained. Not tonight at least. Authorities’ realistic goals were to minimize the spread and buy them more precious hours. Orders were to shoot to kill werewolves on sight.

***

Americans spilling American blood on American soil,
President Weston had said to Alan Truesdale, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

He turned us against ourselves,
Truesdale had responded.