She actually felt shame about the way she had treated him. She had dismissed the armed guard some while back, and agreed to untie James’ arms and legs, allowing him to move freely within his cage. She had given him the blanket he had asked for. In return, he had politely thanked her, even though she still refused to bring him live animals to eat. His behaviour had thrown her into confusion. Perhaps she was wrong to assume that the disease turned everyone into an evil monster.
‘Don’t try to make me feel guilty, Sarah. These creatures are dangerous, however they might appear. You don’t know them as well as I do. They don’t have any feelings or emotions. Any semblance of humanity is just an act.’
‘You can’t still believe that, Helen. You must know that James is kind and gentle.’
He was watching them now, from his cage. As always he was sitting in silence, his legs crossed, his arms folded neatly in his lap. His long straggly hair framed the fine bone structure of his face, which was now half-hidden by a bushy beard. He was a picture of calmness and tranquillity, only the slight movement of his head showing that he was a living person, and not a statue.
‘Yes.’ She had no choice but to admit it. James was completely not like Leanna Lloyd. She had known that something was wrong with Leanna within minutes of first meeting her. James had been in the cage for weeks now, and had never shown any sign of the fiendish behaviour she had accused him of.
‘I was justified in treating James like this,’ said Helen. ‘I was trying to find a cure for him.’ But she knew she was convincing no one. ‘I was just doing my best to help,’ she finished lamely.
‘Then let me help too,’ said Sarah. ‘Test the antitoxin on me.’
Chapter Forty
Gatwick Airport, West Sussex, full moon
The full moon became visible once the sun had set, and Liz felt that familiar tingle in her gums. She drew the curtains tightly shut against its cold light, and began to pace around the hotel suite, overflowing with nervous energy.
‘Sit down, love,’ said Kevin. ‘You’re driving us all crazy.’
Major Hall had ordered a full lockdown of the terminal buildings and all of the airport hotels, and imposed a strict curfew between dusk and daybreak. ‘Anyone found out of their room will be shot without warning,’ he had informed them, seeming almost to relish the prospect. ‘We are preparing for a full-scale assault on our defences by lycanthropes during the hours of darkness. All military personnel will be involved in the defence of the camp. We will not permit a single one of those animals to breach the perimeter fence.’
Jones and the Welsh Guards were involved in the operation too. Liz had run into Llewelyn that afternoon and found the Welshman unusually subdued. ‘Griffiths is getting worse,’ he told her. ‘His wound is infected and they’re running low on antibiotics. And they have no blood supplies either. The medics think he might not make it.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Liz. Griffiths had been shot and injured the night they’d left London. She had thought he was making a good recovery. ‘Good luck,’ she wished him. ‘For tonight, I mean. Stay safe.’
‘Thanks. And you make sure you stay safely indoors.’
‘Don’t worry, I will.’
Nothing could possibly induce her to step outside tonight. She was determined to keep as far away from the moonlight as possible. Even so, she could feel the pull of the moon as it rose above the horizon. Her heart rate rose and her breathing steadily quickened as the moon rose higher. The hairs on her skin became hyper-sensitive, and her teeth and fingernails ached with the desire for violence.
‘Damn it!’ she shouted, punching her fist against the thin wall of the hotel room. ‘I won’t let it take me!’
The others cowered back, giving her as much space as they could. As far as Liz knew, only Mihai and Kevin were aware that she was a vampire, but from the way the others behaved, she guessed they had all been warned what to expect. That was probably for the best. She couldn’t handle anyone asking questions about her behaviour.
As long as she stayed away from the window and the moonlight didn’t touch her, her felt sure she’d be okay. She reminded herself that she had harnessed her vampire powers for good in the past. She had rescued Vijay and his friends from rioters the first time she had turned; then saved Kevin from gangsters; and finally used her strength to fight off a pack of werewolves threatening Mihai and Lily. Use your power now, whispered a voice, very much like her own. Give yourself up to the light.
‘No!’ she bellowed, kicking the furniture with her foot.
It had felt good to be a vampire. That feeling of infinite power. The speed. The agility. The energy flowing from tip to toe. Let it happen, whispered the seductive voice. It’s only natural.
She pulled the Glock from her holster and thrust it toward Kevin. ‘Here. Take it. If I change, or if I try to harm anyone, if I even look like I’m going to do something, shoot me.’
He shook his head. ‘I ain’t gonna do that, love. Not in a million years.’
‘Take it!’ she screeched, forcing the gun into his hand. ‘Promise me you’ll kill me.’
‘No,’ said Kevin again. ‘No way.’
Anger flooded her senses at his refusal. Her fangs burst through her gums throwing a quick spatter of blood across his face. She opened her mouth wide and leaned in close to him. ‘Promise me!’ she roared.
Kevin’s face turned white. The gun was in his hands now and pointing in her direction. His fingers trembled wildly. ‘Okay,’ he mumbled. ‘I promise.’
With enormous effort she forced herself away from him and felt her teeth slowly retract. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’
Vijay’s grandmother rose from her chair and took her by the hand. She seemed entirely unafraid of Liz. ‘After my husband died I used to feel great anger too,’ she said. ‘I learned to find calm through breathing. Try it. Breathe slowly through your nose. In, then out. In, then out. It helps if you sit down.’
Liz did as instructed, sitting on the floor and breathing deeply in and out in time with the old lady.
‘You see?’ said Mrs Singh triumphantly. ‘It works.’
Very slowly the hours passed. No one slept that night, apart from Lily, who curled up in Samantha’s arms and snored softly. From time to time, Liz rose to her feet again, pacing the room, before allowing Mrs Singh to calm her down again.
Outside the night was punctuated with the noise of fighting. Single shots; sustained fire from machine guns and assault rifles; sometimes even distant explosions.
Once, Kevin parted the curtains to look out, and a sliver of moonlight found its way inside. Liz pushed herself away from it, and yelled at Kevin to draw the curtains back.
‘I only wanted to see what was happening,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Looks like Major Hall and his men are doing their best to keep the enemy at bay.’
Liz too, kept the voice in her head from tempting her into savagery. It was her inner voice that was her real enemy, not the moonlight. If she could silence the voice, she might find her true self again. She might learn to control the power that lived within her.
Mrs Singh and her breathing exercises kept her calm. Once, she even recovered enough humanity to think of Llewelyn Jones and his men, and hope that no harm had come to them. Even the Dogman didn’t deserve to die, however loudly he might argue that Liz herself ought to.
When daybreak came, she was completely calm, and utterly exhausted. Kevin returned the gun to her with a look of relief. The sunlight filtered weakly through the curtains, banishing all memory of the moon, and she lay her head on her pillow. She was asleep within seconds.
Chapter Forty-One
Pindar Bunker, Whitehall, Central London, waning moon
The cold, calm features of General Ney appeared on the Prime Minister’s computer screen in the Pindar bunker, his iron grey hair shorn brutally short, his bushy eyebrows joined together in a monobrow. His peaked cap was fixed rigidly in position, and his dark
blue uniform immaculately pressed as always. He was looking good, for a dead man. The only colour on the screen came from the General’s brightly striped medals ranged across his barrel chest, and the gold sashes and shoulder epaulettes that decorated his dark uniform.
The PM had watched the video hundreds of times already. After all, the General’s relentlessly booming voice had been her only source of human contact since becoming entombed in this place. She knew his script by heart, but it wouldn’t hurt to listen to his instructions one last time before she attempted to carry them out.
‘Prime Minister,’ bellowed the General through the speakers, ‘your first task will be to escape from the Defence Crisis Management Centre, known by its codename Pindar. I suspect that you shall be very glad to leave it behind after all this time.’
The man was certainly right about that. Cooped up in this claustrophobic hole in the ground, she had been driven almost as mad as the General himself. She had been here for well over a month now, ever since moving here at the start of the evacuation operation, when the General had deemed it unsafe for her to continue living above ground. The last four weeks had been spent entirely alone, if you discounted the presence of four dead bodies. She had eventually found the strength to drag the corpses from the comms centre and down the corridor into a storeroom, which she had locked carefully. She was by no means superstitious, but the prospect of spending a month alone in an underground bunker with a room full of cadavers had frayed even her nerves.
On screen, the General continued his briefing. ‘The Pindar bunker was constructed during the Cold War and was designed to withstand a nuclear attack by an enemy power. The main part of the three-storey building is located deep beneath the Ministry of Defence on Whitehall. The complex has three entrances, the first in the Ministry of Defence building itself, the second beneath Number Ten, Downing Street, and the third at the BT telecommunications tower. The latter two entrances are reached via access tunnels from the central part of the bunker.’
The General’s brows knotted fiercely as he continued. ‘But on no account should you attempt to leave the complex for at least one month following the nuclear explosions.’
The PM had been filled with dismay on first hearing this. A whole month in this mausoleum had seemed like an eternity. She had carefully marked the hours and days – sometimes even the minutes and seconds – as they had slowly passed. She had wondered at times if her sanity would survive intact as she waited for the month to end.
‘The attack that I launched against London consisted of three Trident II missiles, each equipped with three nuclear warheads. Each of these nine warheads had a yield of one hundred kilotons and was set to detonate at a height of two thousand metres. The total destructive force was approximately equal to seventy times that of the bomb dropped over Hiroshima, more than enough to kill all lycanthropes within a radius of fourteen miles.’
The PM grimaced in disgust. ‘Not to mention any people unfortunate enough to have remained within the city,’ she told him.
‘The shockwave and the heat burst from the blasts will almost certainly have eradicated anyone who was not fortunate to have been below ground in a bunker or sealed basement, or within a fortified structure. Within a one-mile radius of each strike, all buildings will have been flattened. Furthermore the heat bursts will have ignited large-scale firestorms that will have swept across large parts of the city. No one could survive such a fire. But the detonation altitude of two thousand metres was carefully calculated to prevent the fireballs produced by the airbursts from actually touching the ground. The effect of this was to greatly limit the radioactive fallout from the blasts. After one month has elapsed, radiation levels within the city should have returned to normal background readings, and all fires ought to have burned themselves out, or else been doused by rainfall. It will be safe for you to begin your journey.’
And I have followed your instructions to the letter, General. I have been patient, and I have prepared for my great escape.
‘The safest way out of London will be underground. I suggest that you leave the Pindar facility via its Whitehall entrance. Stay below ground and join the Q-Whitehall tunnel system which contains the secure link that connects Pindar and Whitehall to the national telecommunications system. Follow the tunnel north where it eventually connects to a shaft leading to the underground railway station at Charing Cross. From here you will be able to follow the Bakerloo Line to the station at Baker Street. Here, change to the Metropolitan Line, which will take you all the way to Northwood station. You will then only have a short journey above ground to reach Northwood Headquarters.’
You make it sound so easy, General, almost as if the trains might still be running.
‘Needless to say, you will be entirely alone as you make this trip. All communications with the outside world will have been lost.’ On screen, General Ney saluted her. ‘Prime Minister, as you know, I have every confidence in your ability to undertake this mission successfully, and to lead the country to a bright new future. I wish you luck on your journey.’
Wow, thanks, General. I will miss your wise words.
She clicked on the video to close it down, then logged out of the computer, still conscious of security. Old habits died hard, it seemed. But it was time for her to learn new skills and develop new ways of thinking. She didn’t fool herself that the journey would be as simple as the General made it sound.
She had carefully collected the weapons of the three soldiers who had been so callously murdered by General Ney. Her armoury consisted of two assault rifles and the service pistol that the General had taken from his brigadier. It was the gun that he had used to carry out his executions.
The assault rifles frightened her. She couldn’t imagine herself carrying one with her as she made her escape. They were too technical, and there was too much that might go wrong. The service pistol was more her style. She weighed it in her hand. It was heavy, but not too heavy to carry. She had never used a gun, but the basic principle was simple enough to grasp. Aim it. Pull the trigger.
How many bullets did it contain? The General had used six to kill the brigadier and the two infantrymen who had remained in the bunker as her protection force. He had fired one round to warn her off, and another to take his own life. Eight used in total. But she had no idea how many there had been in the first place. She considered taking the gun apart to see how many rounds remained, but worried that she might not be able to put it back together. She would have to pray that enough bullets remained if ever she needed to use them.
She placed the gun carefully in its holster and strapped it around her waist. She lifted the rucksack of supplies that she had packed and strapped it to her back. Kitted out with warm, waterproof clothing, sturdy shoes, and enough food and water to last a week, she felt warily cautious. She had no idea what to expect in the tunnels that lay beyond the bunker, but she was more than ready to find out. After so many weeks trapped inside this grim prison, she was ready for anything.
Chapter Forty-Two
Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, waning moon
Disease was beginning to spread through the camp like wildfire. Medical supplies were critically low, food was being rationed, and with little rainfall to replenish the lake, Chanita’s advisers had warned her that even their source of drinking water might soon come under threat.
‘What are we going to do about it?’ she asked, but no one had any easy answers for her.
She had given up querying Captain Rafferty about the whereabouts of Colonel Griffin. If any news came, she knew that she would be the first to be informed. She still clung to a small flame of hope. He couldn’t have been killed. He had to be alive, somewhere.
The only person with any good news for her this morning was Lieutenant Colonel Sharman. ‘We were braced for a full onslaught last night. But remarkably there was relatively little werewolf activity, even under the full moon. I don’t fully understand why. Anyway, I’m pleased to report that we fought off all attacks wi
thout sustaining a single casualty.’
She nodded. ‘Good work, Colonel. Excellent.’ It was all she was good for these days. Empty words, and an easy smile. Perhaps that was her job now. Nothing more than a figurehead. Someone to give the appearance of confidence, even as the ship went down in flames around her. Still, if that was what her role required, she would do it. She walked the hospital ward once more, dispensing platitudes, talking to the doctors and the nurses, offering kind words to the patients. Her presence seemed to lift their spirits, if only for a short time.
She noticed how thin they were looking in recent days, staff and patients alike. The stockpiles of food in the camp were all gone now. She was sending Colonel Sharman and his men ever further beyond the camp boundaries on missions to gather food and medicines, but each day they seemed to bring back less than the day before. And sometimes not all the men returned. It was dangerous out there, even for well-armed and combat-trained soldiers.
Chanita had long since given up on any hopes for rescue. Not only had central government failed, now the regions were falling too. Communications with the other evacuation camps had ceased. To continue to survive, they would have to fend for themselves.
She badly needed cheering up. She had been so preoccupied she hadn’t been to visit Helen Eastgate for ages. She decided to go and see her now.
Helen seemed in surprisingly good humour this morning. ‘Chanita, hi! Come on in. Let me introduce you to my new lab assistant, Sarah.’
Chanita entered the bustling lab and offered her hand in greeting. ‘Nice to meet you, Sarah.’
She had heard about Helen’s assistant but had been too busy to meet her. The new woman appeared very shy. She nodded meekly and accepted Chanita’s handshake timidly, her gaze lowered.
Chanita turned instead to regard the metal cage that took up one quarter of the room. ‘This must be your test werewolf.’ She stopped, stunned by recognition. ‘James? James Beaumont?’
Lycanthropic (Book 4): Moon Rise [The Age of the Werewolf] Page 18