Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) (6 page)

“Why not?” Michael said with a shrug. “Could improve the story, huh?”

“Oh, it will most definitely help the story. If something’s really happening down there, this could be the story of the year.”

Pulitzer Prize, here I come,
John thought, making sure his camera bag was secure on his shoulder.

“And this could do a good turn for my people?” John asked.

“Yeah, yeah, sure it will. Now let’s go tunnel crawling.”

They stood and walked out of the McDonald’s, heading for the 40th Street subway entrance. The air had a chill to it. He didn’t spot any more rodents, and the street was nearly cleared of people. As they made their way to the entrance, John noticed that nobody was exiting the subway. It was strangely silent for this time of day. He again wondered where all the people had gone.

Probably scared of the rats,
he thought.
Who could blame them? Those buggers were huge.

“This is the easiest way in,” Michael said. “Only there’s usually a crowd. Maybe you’re lucky. We won’t have to sneak around so much.”

They walked down the steps into the station, and John felt that same pricking sensation along his spine. It usually boded a good story, but he wondered if this time it was a warning not to go any farther.

They wove down the steps, past the white tile that gleamed as though someone had just buffed it. Movie posters, some of them comically defaced, adorned the walls.

“Come on, we need to get on the tracks heading south,” Michael said.

“We’re going to Flatbush?” John asked.

“No. We’re going down, like you wanted.”

There were very few people on the platform – an elderly Hassidic Jew fingering his prayer shawl, a pretty blond woman talking to a tough looking African-American woman with a buzz cut and a sleeveless T-shirt, an elderly woman with a cart full of grocery bags, and a rather fat businessman with a briefcase. A young African-American man in sweats leaned against a wall, tapping his feet in rhythm with a song on his iPod. Sitting at one of the benches was an athletic girl in a New York Nets jersey, probably high-school aged, and an attractive Spanish-looking woman in a gray suit. They were deep in conversation, and John overheard them say, “There can’t be any more of them. If there were lots of them, you’d see it on the news. Relax.”

“This way,” Michael said, leading the reporter to the edge of the platform of the number 2 and 3 lines heading toward Brooklyn. “Is anyone watching?”

John joined him and looked down onto the tracks that led off into darkness.

“I asked if anyone was watching.”

In the distance, John heard a train rumbling, heading for the station. It screeched against the tracks. He turned, looked at the small group of people. They were all peering down the tunnel in the direction of a gathering light – the B train heading downtown.

“Yes, they’re all looking this way,” John said.

“Then we wait till the train leaves.”

Within a few moments, the downtown B train had pulled up to the station and had opened its doors. The small group of people shuffled inside, looking around at the empty car as though just realizing they were nearly alone. With a hiss, the doors of the subway car closed, and it squealed as it took off for the next station.

“Now,” Michael said, leaping off the platform, landing between two rails. “Hey, look at this. We’re lucky.”

He held up two yellow construction hats, hard plastic, with lights built into the bills. He handed one to John, who immediately put it on and tested the brightness of the beam of light.

“I feel like a coal miner,” he said with a grin.

“Okay, come on down here. Watch out for the third rail.”

“I thought that was a myth,” John said, jumping off the platform. He stumbled a bit upon landing.

“So are giant rats and werewolves,” John said. “You wanna take the chance?”

He headed north into the near darkness, and John followed.

“You ever seen any alligators down here?” he asked as they headed for the island platform.

“Little ones,” Michael said nonchalantly.

That cold, tingly feeling was racing up and down John Creed’s spine again.

12:10 p.m.

Nicole Truitt paced her hotel room, anxious for Sandy’s return. In the background, CNN blasted yet another story about killer mutant animals appearing in New York City. Nicole tried not to worry about it, but her girlfriend had been gone for the morning, and she wished Sandy would call to tell her she was all right. She chastised herself; just because Sandy hadn’t called didn’t mean she’d been devoured by some freak of nature from the monster gene pool.

There was a knock on the door, and she stepped over and opened it. General Taylor Burns stood in the hallway, looking sheepish. He appeared smaller in his civilian clothes, loose black jeans and a faded gray sweatshirt, but his broad John Wayne-ish face grinned back at her with pearly white teeth, his brown eyes turned down at the corners so he always looked a little remorseful – a basset hound with a tan. Sighing, Nicole motioned him into the room, knowing he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

He had followed her and Sandy to New York, claiming he wanted to see the botanical gardens, but the women knew he had no interest in plants and butterflies. If there had been a gun and knife show, maybe they could have believed his assertions. They knew he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He had no family, no close friends. Other than his connections in the Lycan Sniper Team, he had very little in the way of human connections. So he stayed close to his favorites, and Nicole was at the top of that list. Usually, she didn’t mind him tagging along, but she had been craving some quality time with her girlfriend, and his presence felt like a bit of an intrusion.

She still hadn’t told him about her real relationship with Sandy. She knew he couldn’t get her kicked out of the Armed Services, not since “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” had been repealed, but she didn’t want their professional relationship to change, either. She liked him, his solid world view, the way he brightened when she showed him any attention. She figured he had to at least suspect what she and Sandy did behind locked hotel doors, but he was old school, and he wasn’t about to ask her about her personal life. Nicole wondered if this had anything to do with the fact that he had no personal life of his own.

“You watching the news?” he asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.Sighing, Nicole flopped down next to him. If Sandy came back now, they would end up spending the whole day talking about how to destroy more werewolves and how the country had gone into the hairy-assed toilet. Burns was staunchly anti-Lycanthrope. After the things he had witnessed in Cincinnati over the three-day outbreak, he found himself dreaming about transformed Lycans. He often had nightmares about the dead and the monstrous things that had massacred so many innocent people.

And he would always be certain to tell Nicole all about these feelings he had. It was as certain as the tides.

“Yeah,” she answered, sitting next to him, preparing herself for the oncoming tirade.

“You can’t tell me these giant rats have nothing to do with the Lycan Virus. You see where some of the people they’ve bitten have started turning into beasts. It’s just too similar to be a coincidence.”

The television was showing a hospital in New York City where a tired looking reporter was interviewing a series of doctors. They were announcing an influx of rat bite victims in the past several hours, and the patients were being observed.

“There are rumors,” the reporter said, “that those who were bitten have changed into Lycanthropes, just as though there was a full moon outside. Can you verify this claim?”

“No comment,” the first doctor said, turning and leaving the interview.

“That’s as much as an agreement,” Taylor Burns said, shifting on the bed.

“Seems like it,” Nicole said, biting her lip. “General…”

“How many times have I told you, Nicole – you can call me Taylor. We’re just friends here, not superior and inferior officers. Matter of fact, we’ve worked together long enough, you should call me by my given name any time you want to.”

“Thanks, General, but it’s not that easy to curb old habits.”

“Ain’t that the goddamn truth?”

“And, well, about old habits. You know I came here with Sandy, right?”

He nodded, not taking his eyes off the television set. The cameraman was following the reporter down the hospital hallway.

“Well, we hoped to kind of get away from it all. Have a nice little vacation. We’re, um, very close, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Nice girl, that Sandy. I like her.”

Nicole rolled her eyes, wondering if she would have to bluntly tell him to screw off while she had a date with her girlfriend. Instead, she took a long breath and calmly said, “I like her a lot, too.”

“It’s good you have a friend,” Burns said.

“Yes, but she’s more than that. She’s a lot more than a friend.”

The news reporter was saying something about sneaking into the room of one of the rat bite victims, a woman who was attacked near Central Park. The camerawork was extremely shaky.

Burns was concentrating on the news footage with intense interest, paying little mind to Nicole’s pathetic attempt at coming out of the closet. She gave a long sigh, and he held up a finger to shush her for a moment while he finished watching the program.

“I need to see this. We both do.”

When Nicole turned her attention to the television set, she saw the cameraman open a door and creep into a hospital room. The room was dark, and everything went black for a moment before he got his light operating with a high-pitched buzzing sound. The reporter snuck in front of the camera, brushing a hand through his wavy, dark hair. He smiled brightly, motioning his comrade to follow him to the bed. His teeth were distractingly white.

“In this room,” the reporter droned, “is Christina Brunner, who was bitten by one of the monster rats this afternoon while walking through Central Park. Let’s see how she feels.”

“I don’t think this is gonna be good,” General Burns said in a low voice.

The reporter pulled back the curtain, revealing a large creature strapped down to the hospital bed with long leather bindings. It was one of the Lycanthropes, teeth gnashing, eyes rolling. It made feeble, sad attempts at freeing its arms, but it was obviously drugged to the gills. It looked over at the reporter, its movements sluggish. Its body was covered with coarse black and brown hair, and its snout was long and pointed like a wolf’s. The teeth in its head seemed to be going in every direction at once – an orthodontist’s nightmare – and it snapped angrily at the cameraman.

“My God,” the reporter gasped. “The rumors are true. The rat bites seem to be infectious, spreading some new variation on the Lycanthrope Virus. Are you getting this, Fred?”

The cameraman got closer, zooming in on the rolling yellow eyes of the beast. The creature struggled for a bit, seemed to get its bearings in the confines of the bed. The reporter inched closer, careful not to step out of frame. Heedful of the beast’s slavering jaws, he reached behind himself and yanked the curtains open, letting the bright afternoon sunshine flood the room.

The beast howled, shutting its eyes tightly against the glare. Its pointed ears lay back flat against its triangular head.

“As you can see, folks, this is the middle of the day. This is a live broadcast, and this monster isn’t turning back into a human being. This new form of the virus doesn’t appear to be affected by the full moon as the original Lycanthrope Virus was. This new strain seems to be…”

With a triumphant growl, the creature pulled its arms forward, snapping one of the leather straps in two. A piece of it hung from the thing’s thick, muscular wrist. It whooped in triumph, slashing out at the reporter and catching the side of his face in its long, black claws. Blood gushed from four parallel wounds that opened up on the man’s cheek and nose, and he fell out of the frame, screaming. The cameraman backed away from the scene as the reporter cursed and held his hands against the wound.

“Hoo boy!” Burns said, and whistled. “Here we go again.”

The cameraman was at the door when a doctor in a white lab coat and two police officers stormed past him toward the bed. They reached it as the monster freed its other arm. The cops drew their weapons, standing in a firing stance as the doctor pushed a hypodermic needle into the creature’s leg. It screamed, sounding almost human, and then it slashed out at the doctor, tearing out half the man’s throat. He fell to the tiled floor, tubes sticking out from his neck, arterial blood spraying across the white walls of the room.

General Burns inched his butt forward until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Nicole discovered she had already perched on the corner of the mattress, anxiously watching the gory live footage. She chewed a fingernail, a nervous habit she’d often tried to quit.

The creature attempted to stand, pulling the hospital bed over onto its side as the police fired at it. Bloody holes appeared on its rough fur, and it stumbled, the bed toppling over onto it. The cameraman had backed into the doorway and the focus was getting sloppy, but he was still shooting the scene.