There's Blood on the Moon Tonight

by Bryn Roar

  “So what’re you saying, John? Two more weeks for RS13 to run its course?”

  “Best case scenario, Bill. I think we need to give it at least twenty-one days before showing ourselves, though. Just to be certain nothing of the virus remains in any life forms. Even then, we’ll need to be careful. The dead bodies might still be contagious. Disposal will be tricky. One intriguing blessing is that their dead seem to decompose at triple the normal rate! Don’t ask me why. Anyway, if we can outlast all the remaining carriers on Moon, then maybe…just maybe…the government will let us leave the island in peace.” Cutter gestured dismally at the meager weapons on hand. “Though I’ve got to tell you, if all you have is one small caliber rifle and a double barrel shotgun…then we’re all in big damn trouble. Good Lord, we might as well start saying our prayers right now!”

  “Don’t tell me you, a scientist, believes in God?”

  “Science is God, Bud. The evidence He leaves behind of His handiwork. Not every scientist believes that, mind you, but you’re looking at one that does.”

  “What about the lights?” Garfield asked, his high-pitched voice bordering on hysteria. “They’ve kept them at bay, haven’t they? We’re safe down here, aren’t we?”

  “For the time being, I think so. But once the Rabids go through the rest of the uninfected, the easier prey out there, they’ll zoom in on us like a lion to a three-legged gazelle. Then these lights,” he said, gesturing at the buzzing fluorescents overhead, “will barely slow them down.”

  “You mentioned something about the wildlife,” Bill said. “Shouldn’t there be more than enough of that in the Pines to keep them satisfied for now?”

  “Earlier today I saw dozens of deer, even raccoons and possums taking to the sea, like rats from a sinking ship. I believe they were swimming for the mainland.”

  Josie gasped. “Nothing could swim that turbulent gap! The cross currents out there are too strong!”

  “Maybe one in a hundred could. Can you imagine, though, the sort of desperation it would take to make those animals attempt such a feat? Unfortunately, that’s why I think this outbreak stayed undetected for so long. The infected were hiding out in the Pines. Limiting their attacks to the wildlife for the most part. Picking off the stray human, here and there. Till the animals fled in terror”

  “And now we’re the only little Indians left standing,” Bill said, looking around the room at all the frightened faces.

  “But why?” Tim demanded. “Why do these Rabids, as you all call them, bother with us at all?”

  “Because we’re healthy organisms. That’s what the virus was created to do: Attack healthy cells to propagate and extend the life of the virus! Once an organism has the virus, the infected lose all interest in it. They move on, seeking new cells to infect. As I said, the infected have been primarily seeking out the wildlife in the Pines, and those individuals and stray pets living on the fringes of the forest. But now that they’ve burned through that fuel they’ve become more daring, more desperate, more—”

  “More hungry,” Bill said.

  John nodded.

  “But why all the mayhem?” Bud asked. “I still don’t understand the level of madness and cruelty that’s so prevalent in this damn bug of yours.”

  “It’s that madness and cruelty that so intrigued the military in the first place.”

  “Huh?” Josie said. “What on earth would the Army want with a virus that causes criminal insanity? What would be the purpose of that?”

  “I know why,” Bud said, hawking a loogey on the floor. “It’s a demoralization weapon, isn’t it? For fighting terrorists and those who shelter them.”

  Cutter was taken aback. Clearly he’d underestimated the hulking boy. “Very astute of you, young man. That’s exactly why the Army was interested. So much so they were willing to circumvent international law to get it. Can you imagine a biological weapon that would cause the enemy to rape its own women, to defile their children in unspeakable fashion? To so terrify their own people that suicide becomes the only option left for the uninfected?” Cutter couldn’t help grinning. “By God, those ragheads would think their worst nightmares had come to life.”

  Josie held Bud’s hand. It was cold and clammy.

  Cutter continued; by now his lecture had them all enthralled. “Best of all this weapon was so biologically hot it would burn itself out in a matter of weeks! Ensuring any invading force that the danger had passed by the time of their ground offensive.”

  “What about the International law you just mentioned? The one banning the use of biological weapons? Not to mention the immorality of such a device.”

  Cutter laughed at Bill’s naivety. “Come on, man. Ever since the Geneva Convention passed that toothless decree, nations have been blithely ignoring it—including our own Red, White and Blue.”

  “Tell me,” Bud growled menacingly. “When did you guys first create this RS13 virus?”

  The tension in the room became palpable. Cutter cleared his throat. He eyed Bud’s shotgun warily, as did Josie and Bill. “I, uh…I already told this to your father.”

  Bud turned to his dad. The anger in his eyes fading. “That man. That red-eyed madman that killed mom…”

  Bill gently took the shotgun from his son. “Yes, he was the first. His name was Luke Taylor. Like Oscar Wilson, Luke was the kennel caretaker at the Center…

  Suddenly weary, Bill turned to Cutter. “John, will you please tell him the rest?” He motioned for Bud and Josie to sit down. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he wiped them away before Bud could see them fall.

  Cutter leaned against the work counter. “Now I wasn’t there that day. I was on the mainland, procuring more test animals, when your mother’s death occurred.”

  “Murder.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My mother didn’t die. She was murdered.”

  “Buddy boy,” Bill sighed.

  “That’s okay, Mr. Brown. I understand. I was only trying to be tactful, son.”

  Bud gritted his teeth. He didn’t like this man calling him "son", but neither did he want to antagonize him. He needed to know the truth.

  “At that time Bidwell was experimenting with his different strains of rabies, hoping to integrate the worst symptoms into one Super Strain. He had varying degrees of success, yet the one quality he needed above all others continued to elude him. Most of the strains weren’t nearly hot enough, while others were too hot! The exact balance had yet to be attained.”

  Josie raised her hand. “Hot. What does that mean in relation to a disease?”

  “Hot, refers to how contagious a virus is. At the Center we also used the term to refer to a virus’s life span. From the original host to its last victim. The shorter, the hotter. For instance, Aids, while it’s a deadly disease, is not hot in terms of its life span. Not by our definition, anyway. It spreads out like waves in an ocean, going on and on. The opportunity to spread its destruction on a global scale, as history has taught us, is unlimited. On the other hand, a virus such as, say…Ebola…spreads out like big waves in a little pond; its opportunity to expand is limited to its environment and its extremely short lifespan, see? It burns through a community so quickly, in fact, that it usually doesn’t have a chance to spread outside of it.”

  “And that’s hot?”

  “Yes! And that’s what Clint Bidwell was looking for! A rabies virus so hot it would burn itself out before it could spread outside of the military target! A localized weapon of mass destruction, so to speak. Then again, not so hot that it would burn itself out before doing enough damage. The exact balance, as I said, is crucial. In the fall of 1996 Bidwell found it. Unfortunately it happened by accident, so he was unprepared for what happened next.”

  “And what was that?” Bud asked, knowing full well the end result.

  “Luke Taylor, who was not only the kennel manager but one of our laboratory assistants, was supposed to inject an untested male chimp with a new strain which was showing loads of potent
ial: RS7. Bidwell’s seventh attempt at the Super Strain. For the past few years now we’ve done most of our testing on dogs. Because they’re so cheap to obtain. In 1996, however, the Center’s funding was through the roof. Back then we were strictly using chimpanzees in our testing. Because they most closely approximate the effects we’re looking for in humans.”

  “Such as?” Josie asked.

  “Rape. Cannibalism. Great rage and cunning. Above all else, cunning! For without that intuitive quality all you had was a gibbering fool. Too addle-minded to sufficiently menace the populace. That’s the one element, you see, that inspires the most terror—the calculated cunning of those infected.”

  Bud remembered the sadistic pleasure his mother’s killer took in tormenting him, the fact that the maniac had been functional enough to drive a car and read the address off a driver’s license. “If Josie wasn’t here right now, Mr. Cutter, I do believe I’d kill you”

  Bill put his hand on Bud’s trembling shoulder. “John, you were saying there was an accident?”

  Cutter glanced nervously at Bud Brown before answering. “Yes, sir. We only recently pieced it all together. We assume that instead of injecting a clean chimp with the new strain eight years ago, Luke Taylor must have given the shot to a chimp already infected with the previous rabies strain, RS6. Now RS6 is such a hot variety that it burns through the infected in two, three days tops. Useless from a military point of view. Then again, RS7, which had almost everything we were looking for, including a longer, more ideal life span, also was lacking something crucial.”

  “Let me guess,” Josie said. “It lacked the cunning.”

  “No. It had that stuff in spades!” Cutter realized he sounded a bit too proud for his own good. Even Bill was scowling at him now. He cleared his throat and wiped the smile from his face. “As long as you crossed its path,” he added soberly. “That’s why Bidwell was so enamored of it. Why there was never an RS8 or an RS9. No, the only thing wrong with RS7 was that it wasn’t vindictive enough! Didn’t have enough piss and vinegar. Not like the RS6 strain! RS7 carriers didn’t seek out new victims. Sure, they attacked anything that got too close, like a Black Mamba will, but their main objective, once the incubation was over, was to find a place where they could die all alone in peace. Much like a terribly injured dog will do.”

  “So what you’re really saying,” Josie asked, looking for clarification, “is it wasn’t hot enough?”

  “Behaviorally speaking, that’s exactly right. RS7 carriers would’ve never gone to the lengths Taylor did with Mrs. Brown and young Bud, back in ‘96. In all likelihood, if Taylor had fled the Center with only RS7 in his system, he would’ve curled up somewhere hidden to die. Probably in one of those dark sinkholes. These things hate the sun.”

  Bill didn’t care to torture himself with those kinds of maybes. “Was that the only difference, John? RS7 is just a tamer version of RS13?”

  “There are a few zoological anomalies, Bill. The way the disease behaves in certain mammals. For instance, bats, a common carrier of typical rabies, seem resistant to RS13, and when they do catch it, the little buggers can’t fly! The virus somehow inhibits their sonar abilities. But yeah, except for some minor variations like that, there’s not much difference between RS7 and RS13. ”

  Of course that was a boldface lie. RS7 carriers didn’t exhibit the red glowing eyes. Nor did they consume the blood of their victims! Cutter was surprised he would omit such significant details. His belief in God notwithstanding, John wasn’t a superstitious man. And yet there was something about RS13 that brought out the primitive awe in him. It was the culmination of an evil man’s quest for the world’s deadliest disease. Not to cure it, but to enhance it! It brought to mind what the world might have become had Hitler succeeded in his mad designs. What sort of doors might that have opened?

  As he had in the past, Cutter pushed these bothersome concerns from his mind. He reminded himself again that he was a scientist, not a saint. “Well, that’s basically how we re-discovered the strain: By repeating the same mistake of eight years ago. Only on purpose this time! I personally didn’t think it would work. We were down to our last test subjects before shutting it all down for good. Bidwell had been convinced that RS-7 was his Super Virus. That there was some variant in the incubation stage we were missing, which would allow the rabies virus to mutate into the Super Strain. He was halfway right. It was right in front of us all along! It was the combination of the two strains…not the single strain of RS7, as we’d always assumed. So…six plus seven equals RS13.”

  “Didn’t you have some general type of vaccine that could have staved off the disease?” Josie asked him.

  “For the previous strains? Sure. But not with this hairy bug. Not yet, anyway. Against RS13, the typical rabies vaccine is no more effective than a couple of aspirin. So much about this virus took us by surprise. For instance, RS13 can be spread through sexual contact! A development we weren’t expecting at all…despite the proclivity the Rabid exhibit towards sexual violence.”

  “Get back to what happened in ‘96.”

  “Yeah. I’m getting to that, Bud. My other colleague from the CDC, Brian O’Reilly, discovered Luke Taylor’s absence while investigating a disturbance in kennel 13. The same kennel, incidentally, that Oscar Wilson was in charge of prior to this latest disaster. Unlucky 13, if you believe in that sort of thing. The place was a mess. A calculated mess,” Cutter added with emphasis. “Blood splattered all over the walls and floor, running down into the center drain. One of the chimps, an untested female, had been torn apart, her limbs and intestines strewn across the room. Draping the cages like streamers and party favors. Strangely enough the chimp’s baby was left unharmed in her cage, screeching for its mother.”

  The significance of this detail suddenly struck Cutter speechless. He averted his eyes from the young man, now sobbing in silence. Josie clutched Bud’s hand in hers.

  She glared at Cutter to get on with it.

  John Cutter cleared his throat. “Whatever was responsible for the butchery had ripped the chimp's head from its body and placed it on top of a cage. So that when someone walked through the door, they couldn’t help but see the horrid thing. A lit cigarette smoldered between the chimp’s lips. Funny, huh?

  Cutter’s empathy obviously extended only so far. He didn’t see the anguish his careless words had wrought. A typical absent-minded-professor, he droned on and on, oblivious. “Since all of the other chimps were accounted for, it was obvious the carnage must’ve been committed by the missing kennel worker, whose bare footprints, as I recall, were all over the place. The clean chimp that we scheduled for the RS7 injection, the one Bidwell assumed had gotten the shot, and further assumed had spread the virus to Taylor, was behaving perfectly normal. Despite that, we isolated and closely monitored him for the next two weeks, repeatedly tapping his spinal fluid, which of course turned out to be a waste of time. He didn’t have so much as a head cold. Meanwhile the RS6 chimp that Taylor erroneously injected with RS7 had slipped into a coma. It clearly was ill, but unfortunately we weren’t aware it had the Super Strain. Despite the fact it lingered for more than a week, twice as long as any other RS6 casualty, we didn’t make the obvious connection. We now know that Taylor got the two chimps mixed up. The original RS13 vector expired and Bidwell had its remains destroyed.” Cutter sighed, thinking back on all the incompetence. “Unbelievable, really. It was this chimp that at some point in time spread the RS13 virus to Taylor.”

  Bill had a sudden insight. “What about the body fluids Taylor left behind? Wouldn’t they have held all the answers Clint Bidwell was looking for?”

  “That was another dropped ball by the Center. Bidwell didn’t realize his Super Virus could also spread via seminal fluid. He was more focused on the saliva, which he’d found in significant dried quantities. Unfortunately, the virus was dead by that point; its nucleus fragmented. It doesn’t live for very long outside its host. By the time he considered testing the semen, it was
too late; all of the samples were in the possession of the Beaufort County Police Department.”