Moonlight Medicine: Inoculation (23 page)

The next room was illuminated by a few grimy windows perched high on the walls that let in a dingy glow from outside. It was cluttered with debris which included broken metal laundry baskets and moldering yellowed sheets. Old industrial clothes dryers that had been heavily vandalized lined the walls. Most were missing their doors, but one’s closed door was spray-painted over with a screaming skeletal face that made Evelyn shiver. The air in this room was thicker with the scent of disuse and decay, and their movement through it was slowed due to all the rubble and various piles of garbage. David picked his way through to the back of the room and stopped in front of a metal door that still held onto the wall, but was stuck ajar.

The third room was dark; David donned a headlamp and passed out one each to Kim, Evelyn, and Clem. David squeezed through the doorway and scanned the room ahead before signaling Kim and the others to follow. This room was smaller than the other two and had a concrete floor and brick walls. There was surprisingly little garbage and debris in this room as well as less graffiti. To the left was a partially open elevator shaft that dropped down into utter darkness with the words, “Down you go!” sprayed in red paint above the mostly-open door. The internet instructions to the tunnels said that from here they were to climb down two stories and then use the ladder that someone had provided to climb into the elevator car at the bottom of the shaft. The side of the shaft had rungs to climb down into the blackness and, when David peered down into the shaft, he could see the elevator car and the ladder sticking up out of the emergency hatch.

Evelyn thought that it all looked a lot more intimidating in reality than it had on the computer screen. She did not want to climb down into that abyss, but she knew that they had to. David, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. He shouldered the backpack, grabbed the first rung, placed a foot on another farther down the shaft, then swung his body over the chasm and climbed down to the elevator. Once David was a flush with the car, he stepped over onto its roof and inspected the inside before calling up to the others.

“All good!”

Kim tentatively reached out for a rung and stretched out to reach a lower one with her foot. She took a deep breath and then climbed down, as David had. Clem waited until David helped her onto the elevator before following them down the shaft, wincing intermittently as he climbed. When it was her turn, Evelyn tried not to look down, but instead stared at the wall in front of her as she descended. The walls of the shaft also sported a host of graffiti, but she only really noticed the words that were written in between the rungs: “Haven’t-you-been-here-before?”

She made it to the elevator and Clem helped her onto the roof as David and Kim had already climbed down the ladder. Clem motioned for Evelyn to go in front of him down the ladder but she gave him a stern look and he sighed, resigned. When Clem was down he called up softly to Evelyn. “Let’s go, Evie.”

Evelyn had less trouble with the ladder, but when she stepped off onto the floor of the elevator it gave an ominous creak which echoed up the shaft and made her cringe. Once down, she scanned around and saw that the doors of the car were propped open and that the elevator was about a foot shy of the tunnel floor. Clem pulled the ladder down, and handed it to David who hid it out of sight in the hallway, so that anyone who might come by later would hopefully think twice before leaping into the elevator car. Clem then clambered down into the tunnel and helped Evelyn to do the same, though she could easily have managed on her own. David led the way down the corridor. The air here was close, stuffy, and thick with dust. Evelyn felt the twinges of claustrophobia as they went deeper into the tunnel. The low ceiling and walls were all crumbling concrete and the concrete floor was cracked in places.

This tunnel soon opened up into the basement of one of the other buildings through a doorframe with no door anywhere in sight. The room had once been tiled, though most were missing or broken now, revealing concrete underneath. The ceiling was also concrete with broken fluorescent light fixtures secured under metal cages. There was a lot of debris in this room too: metal bed frames, dirty and mildewed linens, and garbage was strewn everywhere. There was also more graffiti here, but Evelyn didn’t dwell on it. She could feel the tension and prickling of the coming change and they were not yet where they needed to be in the compound. She began to panic slightly and second-guess her choice of locations for tonight’s change, but there was no going back now.

David seemed to have a similar inkling as he rushed across the room to the stairwell, and ushered Kim down the stairs ahead of him. Clem moved without his cane and without a limp on flat ground, but he was slower on the stairs, and Evelyn’s anxiety grew with each passing minute. Finally, after two harrowing flights down the worn concrete steps, David forced his way through a stubborn metal door with the words “To Hell” painted on it in red along with a smiling horned demon. This was the corridor they were looking for. Here there were solitary confinement cells for some of the more violent patients. Wasting no time, David located one about halfway down that seemed less vandalized, and mostly serviceable. He tried the door and, though it wasn’t a perfect closure anymore, the outer latch still functioned. Kim pressed herself against the opposite wall and stared into the chamber mournfully as Clem eased by her and approached the cell. Evelyn followed close behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, it isn’t the Ritz Carlton, but at least you’ll have some privacy for the night and no nosey vet students poking around.”

Clem gave her a half-hearted smile. “It’s alright, Evie. I’m just gonna think about the Vulke and let the wolf get all worked up for the rea-al show tomorrow night.”

Evelyn tried not to let her smile waver, but Clem’s words were more upsetting to her than reassuring. She gave him a hug to hide her distress. “See you in the morning.”

She turned away and saw David pulling a plastic-wrapped package of two T-bone steaks from his backpack. He handed it to Clem. “It’s a…midnight snack.”

Clem nodded. He took the meat, shuffled into the cell and then turned to face them as David moved to lock him in. Suddenly Kim seemed to rouse herself from a stupor and looked up into Clem’s saddened eyes. “It’ll be okay, Cle—”

Kim’s voice was cut-off by the resounding bong of the shutting door that reverberated up and down the hallway long after David secured the cell’s outer lock.

37

David led the way back down the hall to the door leading to the stairwell. When they were all through, he heaved that door shut again and wedged a piece of broken tile under the bottom edge. Evelyn thought that this was unnecessary since the cell door had appeared solid, but she didn’t give her thoughts voice. She turned her attention instead to Kim, who was looking more and more agitated. Evelyn knew that this would be her and David’s last opportunity to help Kim with her control before tomorrow night’s fight, and she worried that it just wouldn’t be enough time. They returned back the way they had come because the plan was to change inside the building, evaluate how Kim was handling things, and then go out into the nearby woods to really test her control so close to the mall and suburbs.

They headed back up the stairs and paused in the larger room with the entrance to the tunnel connecting this building to the building with the elevator. David then spoke for the first time since leaving Clem.

“Okay, we’ll stash the backpack here and change where we have some room, then we’ll explore the rest of this building a bit and maybe go back up the elevator shaft and into the woods.”

Kim frowned, but nodded. David put the backpack down in front of her and then turned his back and pulled his shirt off. She and Evelyn removed their shirts and headlamps and placed them in the backpack. Kim folded her arms over her bare chest and Evelyn turned away and walked into a corner of the room.

“Ready?”

“Uhuh.”

“Yep.”

Peering over her shoulder, Evelyn saw David start when he turned back around with Kim’s half-naked presence so close to him. To his credit, he averted his eyes, grabbed the backpack, and turned away from her to stash it in a far corner as a steady flush crept up his face. No sooner had he placed the backpack behind a random fallen beam, and set his own headlamp beside it, than Kim’s screams filled the room. David didn’t resist the change tonight, but relinquished himself to it, changing about as fast as Evelyn had ever seen him and well before Kim was transformed.

Evelyn huddled in the corner as her own change took her, and it was painful as always, but not nearly as painful as last night’s change. When the Wolfkin conversion was complete, she tentatively flexed first one arm, then the other, and then, feeling no pain, she stood tall and stretched her entire body. It felt amazingly good, and Evelyn had to check herself because she could feel the tension of the previous night’s frustration driving her to run and hunt, to bite and tear. She couldn’t stop herself from howling though, and was soon joined by Kim, their wolf-song echoing eerily through the defunct psychiatric hospital. Evelyn thought that she also heard the faint sounds of Clem answering their call. When she had released her pent up frustrations and fears she glanced over at David. He cocked his head and gave her a look of displeasure saying clearly,
So, this is how you intend to teach Kim control?

Evelyn did feel slightly chagrinned, but sometimes to gain control you had to let loose a little. She told him as much with a huff snort and shake of her furry head. Kim bounced on her heels and looked at Evelyn expectantly. Seeing no reason not to let off a little more steam here in the recesses and isolation of the abandoned complex, Evelyn playfully yipped at Kim and took off running down a random corridor. Kim gave chase, her boots scrabbling for purchase on the loose tiles, which of course incited a surge of adrenaline in Evelyn who tore down the hallway even faster, dodging around overturned wheelchairs and broken gurneys. David sounded a series of disapproving barks as the two of them sped away, but she ignored that.
Girls’ night out!
Evelyn thought giddily.

When Evelyn reached a fork in the hallway, she dug her claws into the soft drywall to help her dash around the corner more sharply as Kim crashed against the wall behind her with a loud thump. Pushing herself forwards, Evelyn leapt over a pile of dirty linens. At the end of the hallway was a door to another stairwell, and Evelyn braced herself for impact with the door at speed. She hit the release bar of the door with such force that it dented in and the whole door shuddered, but time had corroded the hinges and the door only inched open as Evelyn’s boots slipped on the dusty floor. Sensing Kim close behind her, Evelyn dropped to the floor just as the other woman’s body flew over her head and hit the door with enough force that the rusty hinges gave way with a screech of metal and the door swung wide.

Kim fell forwards into the stairwell and was only stopped from tumbling over the edge and plummeting down the central shaft by a metal safety cage that prevented patients of the hospital from doing just that. Kim let out a yip as her body struck the cage, which rattled loudly. She then slid to the floor with a comic look of surprise in her eyes. Evelyn got to her feet to continue the reckless chase, but David grabbed her arm. She turned on him and snarled, but he held fast and stared her down until her flash of rage had passed and a modicum of reason returned. Huffing in resignation, she jerked her arm away.
Okay, okay, someone could have gotten seriously hurt. I get it,
Evelyn grumbled in her own head. She reached down a clawed hand to Kim to help her up, but with a chuff of annoyance Kim used the handrail’s support to stand instead.

David gave them both a chiding stare then started up the stairs at a more sedate pace. Kim hung her head and followed him up, but Evelyn lingered behind on the landing. Glancing back into the hallway they had come from, she had a sudden urge to go back to Clem and let him out. She stared down the corridor, utterly transfixed for a moment with her head cocked to the side. Then David’s “Come on” yip from the top of the stairs broke her out of her trance. Evelyn shook her head and snuffled, wondering what she had been thinking considering letting Clem out in his current state. This loss of concentration frightened her, and Evelyn scurried up the stairs to join David and Kim.

When she reached the next landing, she found them struggling with another stubborn metal door. Although Evelyn had always wanted to explore the compound, tonight she felt little interest in wandering the decaying corridors. She wanted to be outside sprinting through the woods, breathing the fresh spring air, not cooped up inhaling the stale reek of dust, mold, and asbestos. Evelyn supposed that it was all good training for Kim to try to stay focused while indoors, but she hoped that the girl would show enough restraint tonight that David would decide that later they could head outside for a while. Finally, the door the other two were working on opened with a metallic shriek of protest and David headed through with Kim close behind.

This corridor was less abused by vandals than the others had been. Walking through the doorway was like taking a step back in time, and Evelyn was unprepared for what lay on the other side. The hallway had a green, floral motif with a painted vine running along the length at about waist level. The paint was faded and peeling off the wall in places, but still lent the place a certain peace. There was also less debris here, like someone had taken the time to tidy up after the facility was shut down. The only mess on the tiled floor of the hallway was a copious covering of dust, flakes from the walls, and chunks of plaster fallen from the ceiling.

Evelyn stared at the walls and tried to imagine what they had looked like when they were freshly painted and vibrant. She closed her eyes to try to see them more clearly in her mind’s eye, but then her more acute sense of smell took over and the sinister odors of neglect and rot sullied the vision. Opening her eyes again, she spied David and Kim staring into a room a few paces ahead of her. The tension in David’s stance gave Evelyn pause, and Kim’s tail thrashed uneasily as she let out a soft whine. Evelyn’s curiosity propelled her forward and she angled in behind them to peek over their shoulders. The bright illumination from the nearly full moon outside lit the room’s interior through thick and dusty windows adding a spectral quality to the scene. Ward C3, as outlined by the stairwell door, must have been the children’s ward of the facility. Here a hidden fairy landscape played out on the walls in intricate, though vanishing, detail. The ceiling might have once been a pale blue to mimic the sky on a sunny day, but that color was now diminished and Evelyn could just barely make out the borders of a few fluffy clouds.