There's Blood on the Moon Tonight

by Bryn Roar

  “No.”

  “And I liked it!Dear God, please forgive me…I liked it!”

  That voice again. Bud shivered. “O-okay, Ham…okay…But Rusty will smell the smoke even before I can get off the boat. I’ll have to beat him unconscious just to keep him from coming back on board.”

  “You won’t have to set the fire, son. I wouldn’t ask that of you. I’ll do that from in here. I’ll give you fifteen minutes before I light the match. That’ll give me time to say my prayers and get right with the Lord. See if He and I can come to some understanding. Just let some of that gas run down the stairs to this hatch. Maybe run a trail to the fuel tanks, too. Leave the tanks uncapped. We’re standing right over the engine room, and the sooner the fire reaches it…the better it’s gonna be for me. If you get my meaning.”

  Silence filled the next two minutes. Bud didn’t want to leave. For once he walked up those stairs his course would be irrevocably set.

  “There ain’t no other way, son! Already I’m feeling the urge to get past this here door and…and…”

  “And what, Ham? Hurt me?”

  “It’s Josie I got my mind on! Do you hear me, boy? It’s my goddaughter!She’s on her monthly and I can smell it!”

  Bud stood there, stunned. That wasn't Ham. He didn't know who that was in there, but it sure as hell wasn't Ham. His skin broke out in a cold rash. Speaking of cold, Bud could see his breath in front of the door. As if he was standing inside of a walk-in freezer. “Ham? Is someone else in there with you?”

  “You’ve got to protect her, Bud. She ain’t safe on Moon. None of you are. But especially that girl! And look after my boy! Promise me that, and my last moments on earth won’t be such an agony! Promise me, Bud!”

  At last Bud relented. “All right. I promise you.” If Ham was willing to die, rather than risk hurting them (Josie…It’s Josie he has his mind on), then the least Bud could do was honor the man’s last wishes. “I’ll do my best, sir. I’ll take care of Rusty. I’ll watch over them all. To my very last breath, Mr. Huggins. You have my word.”

  Bud was heading up the stairs when Ham called him back. “I almost forgot! I got something I want you to give Rusty.” One of the louvered slats in the hatch started to bend upward and Ham’s thick fingers pushed through. Bud realized the only thing separating him from death right now was Ham’s indomitable spirit. If the big man had a mind to, that flimsy door wouldn’t stop him for a second.

  In the blink of a bug’s eye it would all be over.

  The sight of a necklace hanging from Ham’s calloused fingers broke this morbid musing. A silver dolphin pendant twinkled merrily at the end. It seemed to smile at Bud. “Give this to him, son. Tell him I’m sorry it had to be this way. Tell my little boy his parents loved him so. Lord, how we loved him! Tell my boy to remember his momma for what she was…not that red-eyed fiend he saw in here today! That…that wasn’t his momma.

  “I’ll tell him, Ham.” Bud took the necklace and tucked it deep into his pocket.

  Ham’s fingers retreated into the dark. The louvers creaked back into place. The blood, it continued to drip…

  *******

  A few minutes later, Ham toyed with the pack of matches he’d found in Frank Tolson’s pocket.

  The Moonlite Drive-In:

  Where the Stars always come out at night!

  (803) 555-SHOW

  Ham turned off the flashlight and sat as far away from the bloody lump of sheets as he could. The linen, he’d pulled off the bed, sat puddled over Emma Tolson’s head, in the middle of the floor. To keep it still. That shit alone had been enough to drive him insane.

  Betty Anne lay on their bunk, underneath a muslin shroud, her soul hopefully at peace now. Frank Tolson lay beside his poor wife, their terror at last over.

  Ham sniffed the air. Yes! He could smell the petrol. Hear it, too. Running down the stairs. A dieselfall of salvation. Coming to set him free! Lord, yes! The gas began soaking into his pants. Cold. So very, very cold.

  Lord, please hear my prayer…

  He said his prayers until at last that deviant chill left his side. The strange crimson light, which had filled his eyes with that unnatural glow, it too was gone now. The Lord was with him. At least for a little while. It wouldn’t do to wait too long, though. Ham didn’t want to die with that other spirit clinging once more to his soul. Better to ascend to Heaven without that dark weight in tow. The cabin was once again humid and rank. It stank of diesel fuel and blood. The blood was the worst, though. Worse even than those nasty chum buckets his daddy used to slop from, whenever they went shark fishing. The way the blood would ripen and rot in the heat, until Ham would start to puke over the side of the boat.

  Human blood, spilt in vast quantities, seemed even worse. He pulled a match loose from the book and set the head against the strike pad. Not yet, he thought. Not yet! Don’t die with that unhappy thought in your head! Think back…think back to the best day of your life…

  Ham closed his eyes and smiled, remembering that starry, starry night. Taking his best girl to the picture show for the first time. Knowing he’d found his True Love. For the life of him he couldn’t recall what was playing that evening. All he could see was Betty Anne’s lovely face…

  The match flared bright in the darkness.

  *******

  Right away they could tell something was wrong. Josie and Tubby hadn’t seen a soul since leaving their friends on the docks. They stopped at the corner of Town Hall Lane.

  From where they were, they could see the storm damage down along Main Street. Tubby pointed up the road. “Look, Josie! The marquee is gone!”

  Sure enough, the beautiful, multi-bulbed marquee, which had once hung so proudly over the sidewalk, was literally gone with the wind. Jack had plucked it from the main building and taken it to parts unknown. Josie wondered if the clubhouse on top of the building had met the same windy fate.

  “Check out that sailboat in the middle of the road!”

  “The Wilky Way,” said Josie. “That’s the Wilky’s sloop. I sure hope they weren’t on it.”

  All sorts of debris littered Moon’s main thoroughfare. The storm’s tidal surge, coming through the harbor, had had a straight, if not brief, shot right down Main Street. Some of the smaller cars took a ride on the tide, ending up in a clogged traffic jam, off the side of the dirt road ahead. The tidal surge had petered out after Main Street, and had left Huggins’ Way otherwise untouched. Several of the storefronts had suffered broken windows and doors—those entrances and doorways that weren’t sandbagged, anyway. Despite the soggy mess, it looked as if Moon had gotten off easy again. Nothing that couldn’t be put right in a week or two. At least such was the case on this end of the isle. Sure was quiet, though.

  Too quiet, as the old cliché went.

  “Where is everybody?” Tubby wondered. “I know the ferry didn’t bring any Mooners back to the island, but where are all the folks who came back on those boats docked in the harbor? Shouldn’t there be some of them poking around?”

  “I don’t know, Ralphie. I guess they’re all home, cleaning up the mess.”

  The only problem with this assessment was that several of the business owners on Main Street—like Mr. Pete, Tim Garfield, and Miss Beasley—lived in apartments over their stores. All of whom had stayed on the island. Like Bill Brown, their livelihoods included their homes; yet there was no sign of them, either. Their absence seemed ominous somehow. “Come on,” she said, tugging on Ralph’s arm, “let’s get going.”

  It occurred to her that maybe she wasn’t the best choice to ask Bidwell for help. After all, she was more than likely responsible for neutering the bastard! She checked the loads in the .38 again and made a conscious decision to make the good doctor assist them—one way or another.

  It seemed a moot point. Bidwell’s office door was locked. A note taped to the other side of the window declared he was on an extended vacation. Josie broke in anyway. She wrapped her jacket around her fist and let fl
y.

  The sound of the shattering glass seemed awfully loud, and the two of them waited outside on the walkway to see if they had attracted any unwanted attention. Except for the stiff breeze nothing stirred below. The silence was unnatural, but they didn’t have time to consider it. The ransacked office took all their attention.

  They checked the exam rooms and his private office; but like all of his files and personal photos, Bidwell was gone. “The note on the door says he’s on vacation or something,” Tubby remarked.

  Josie shook her head. “That’s just to throw anyone interested off his scent. To give him some more time, you know? He’s in the wind now, and he ain’t coming back. As the old Chinese proverb says, Bidwell knows his life is about to become very interesting. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s assumed another identity by now.”

  “You mean he’d let people die from his virus without even trying to help them? But he’s a doctor…he…he…he…”

  Josie was too deep in thought to notice the strain in Ralph’s voice. She recalled the empty look in Bidwell’s eyes. Eyes with no morals, no honor, no decency. She doubted if the Hippocratic Oath meant a thing to the good doctor. “Not all doctors are good people, Ralphie. Ever hear of Mengele? Jeffery McDonald? Some people say Jack the Ripper was a doctor, too. I for one believe it.”

  Josie pulled Tubby out of the office, and back onto the breezeway. “I know it’s unlikely, but maybe Clint Bidwell’s still at his house. Packing or whatnot. Let’s see if we can talk Rupert into locating him for us. Maybe run the doc over to the museum in his patrol car.”

  “The sheriff?” Tubby said doubtfully.

  “His office is right above the Firehouse we passed.”

  “Why should he help us, Josie? Like Bud said, Rupert Henderson works for Bidwell!”

  “Despite what Buddy boy says, Ralphie, old Rupert’s too slick to buck the tide. He might see this as an opportunity to put himself in a better light. That is if he hasn’t already jumped ship, like the mangy bilge rat he is. Anyway, even if he isn’t here, there’s a radio in his office we can use to hail the mainland.”

  “Good idea, Joe. Until we get the vaccine, Mr. Ham and my dad will be better off in the Beaufort Hospital.”

  Josie didn’t point out the obvious—that no hospital in the world could save Tubby’s father without the vaccine to Bidwell’s virus. It wasn’t yet necessary to point out that sad fact. Of course, neither of them was aware it was already too late. “If the sheriff’s not there, we’ll do like Bud said: let Bilbo run this fecking show.”

  “What if the doc isn’t home?” said Tubby, refusing to accept the fact that the man had already fled the island.

  “If all else fails, there’s still the Army Base, Ralphie. If there’s a vaccine, that’s where it’s gonna be.”

  *******

  Bud and Rusty had reached the boardwalk entrance of the harbor when they came to the same conclusion as their friends: something was wrong on Moon. The island was like a ghost town. Not a soul about. No cars tooling around, as was normal after a big blow, the locals doing some rubbernecking at all the storm damage. No children running about, either, laughing and enjoying the break in their dull routine, as only children can do in the face of ruin. No dogs barking. Hell, even the seagulls had taken a break from their incessant screeching. Bud looked around overhead; in fact, where are all the damn seagulls?

  Rusty nudged him as they passed the Jail/Firehouse. A cement and steel framed staircase led to an upper level breezeway, where a door stood ajar on the second floor. Beside the open doorway a large plate-glass window with Moon Island Sheriff’s Office painted on the outside reflected the surface of the sun dipping below the treeline. Under the breezeway, Moon Island’s sole fire truck, and paramedic wagon, stood parked in the open bays with their toothy grills facing outward.

  A swath of blood in the driveway led back into the dim shadows. Earlier, Josie had mistaken it for an oil spill.

  Seeing it, Bud stopped dead in his tracks.

  Rusty put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It’s too old, Buddy boy. Blood’s too dry.”

  Realizing his friend was right, Bud exhaled a little. “Where the hell are the volunteers?” he wondered aloud. He glanced over the rooftops of the buildings, hoping the Betty Anne would burn, but not explode in the harbor. At least not until they’d put some distance between it and them. No sign of a fire yet, but I definitely smell smoke…

  “I was thinking the same thing, Bud,” said Rusty, not realizing his friend’s true train of thought. “Those good ol’ boys live for these big storms. Do you think we should check it out? Maybe use their radio to call the mainland?”

  Bud looked over at his friend. Rusty seemed calm now. Not upset like he was on the dock, where Bud had found him bereft. He’d explained away Ham’s outburst on the boat as a symptom of stress. Something on which he was an expert. “Ham just didn’t want you to hear him cry, is all,” was how he’d put it, and Rusty, usually so adept at sniffing out a lie had readily accepted the fabrication as truth. Bud knew that lie would cost him later on, maybe even his friendship with Rusty; but what else could he do?

  “The radio?” Bud said, peering into the depths of the Firehouse. The idea of going into that shadowy garage made him shiver in the heat. He slowly shook his head. “No, we don’t have time for that.” He looked once more into the darkness beyond the trucks and shivered again, wondering why it unnerved him so.

  *******

  They smelled Pig before they saw him. The breeze, which had been blowing steadily all day, suddenly died, leaving the air still and malodorous. Josie brought her hand up to her nose. It was a rusty stench, like an open septic tank on a hot summer day. Walking down the stairs of the Town Hall Building, she pinched her nostrils shut and made a face.

  Tubby smelled it too. “P-U! What stinks so bad?”

  The Mastiff staggered out from behind the stairwell, where he’d been resting in the shade. Like most Mooners, Josie knew the mammoth dog on sight. He belonged to old Pops McCandles, the retired sea captain, who’d sold Jessie Huggins his first boat. Back when Main Street was no more than two sandy ruts in the tall weeds.

  Pops had actually named the dog Big, in regards to the pup’s ridiculously big paws, but everyone heard it as Pig…so Pig he had become. And with his voracious appetite, the name just naturally fit.

  Pig had caught the virus while chasing infected squirrels in the Pines. Unfortunately, he’d caught one. Or one had caught him. It was the one variable Bidwell hadn’t anticipated: RS13’s ability to infect squirrels and all their rodent cousins and make deadly carriers of them all.

  Since rabies first reared its frenzied head, back before recorded time, it has been humanity’s salvation that the virus doesn’t typically spread through rats, mice, or squirrels—mammals that far outnumber our kind. If it had, we as a race would probably have perished by the Dark Ages, back when the Black Plague already had our species on the ropes—coincidently, another disease helped spread by the hairy vermin. Thankfully, Nature can be as merciful as she is cruel. She had spared us that little tweak in the virus’s design. Leave it to Us to provide the tweak to our own damnation. In the days and weeks to follow, this unforeseen variable would prove to be the primary cause for the virus’ explosive spread throughout the world. As Albert Feeny had posited, rodents were everywhere, in all shapes and forms, and even though their life span after becoming infected was limited to a few days, they spread RS13 with a manic vengeance. As if it was their mission. They burst out of the walls and sewers and trees, the arid deserts and the steamy jungles, the canyons of the city, and the sameness of all the suburbs, and bit every living creature within sight. Including themselves…

  Thus, with its scarcity of the rodent species, Moon Island was spared this one ferocious side of the nightmare.

  Elsewhere on earth, there literally was nowhere to hide from The Red Tide, as it quickly became known, the rodent outbreak always days ahead of the human epidemic. Followed b
y mass extinctions of the rodent populations. Dying, literally, everywhere. Their bodies, strangely enough, putrefying within mere hours of the last heartbeat.