The tech assisted Lon as he tried to negotiate the steep—
Well, he fell into the plane.
“Y’okay?” asked Mantle.
Lon hated Mantle too much to answer him.
The tech went prone to lean over and help Lon with his helmet, a two-part assembly with a breathing regulator.
Now Mantle’s voice came through a speaker. “The hypersonic propulsion thrusters use nuclear pulse projection, which means tiny atomic bombs are this puppy’s fuel—“
“Could we stop talking?” Lon asked.
“Give the kid a break,” said Beethoven over the radio.
But Lon didn’t hear Mantle’s response, because his heart went into his throat when the tech produced a syringe.
“I-don’t-need-that-why-would-I-need-that!”
“You need an IV. Won’t hurt at all.” The tech ripped open a Velcro double-flap panel on the inner elbow of Lon’s flight suit. The cold swab of alcohol made him feel pukey, but his arm was trapped in the shape of the seat. An IV port with two bags of clear liquid was built into the side of the cockpit.
“No, but no—Fuck!”
But the tech stuck him anyway. None of these fucking people ever listened! Lon’s legs quivered as the tech taped down the needle and closed the flap. The pulling in his skin made him burp vomit.
Mantle stood up and leaned over the back of his seat to demonstrate as he inserted his own IV. “This’ll keep you hydrated and help you relax. Pressure will be wowee intense. We’re gonna be movin’ almost three times the speed of a bullet. You could lose five pounds during this here flight. ”
Pills, IVs… Were these yutzes military or were they pharmacists?
Lon looked around, wondering if he could still escape from this mess. Tildascow waved at him from the cockpit of the next Aurora. Christ, it felt like she was stalking him. And he was trapped against his will, all Clockwork Orange—
“Hey… How old do you think I am?” Mantle asked.
“I don’t know,” Lon whimpered. “How old are you?”
“Almost 28. I look younger than I am, right? Youngest Shadow Stalker pilot they’s ever been.” He slapped the Shadow Stalkers patch on his sleeve. The emblem featured a gryphon (body of a lion, head and wings of an eagle) pointing a glowing sword toward a crescent moon. Symbological cross-pollination, Lon thought. Bizarre and uninformed.
These people have no idea what they’re doing!
Mantle settled in his seat as the motorized platform wheeled away. Lon’s seat jolted forward—FUCK!—and locked into place.
The aircraft’s vibration increased, like a snake hissing before it unleashed. Well maybe he didn’t want it to unleash while he was inside of it!
Oh man, oh no.
The plane lurched forward with a rising electronic hum. Cross-chatter on the headset told them various systems were ready. They were clear for taxi. Mantle gave a thumbs-up to someone on the ground.
“You ain’t afraid of heights, are you?” Mantle chuckled.
“No.”
“Then we’ll have no problemo, jalapeño.”
“I’m afraid of pain.”
“Oh. Well, this is gonna hurt.”
As the Auroras taxied to the runway, the Andrews Control Tower released a concentrated electromagnetic pulse toward the sky to interrupt satellite photography.
The nuclear pulse engines roared to life, and Lon was thrown against his seat. A series of escalating booms crashed from somewhere beyond the confines of his deafening mask. His body vibrated into numbness.
Suddenly, he felt sleepy.
The three planes launched eastward over the Atlantic, quaking the sky.
Six
Situation Room
9:25 a.m.
President Weston watched constant updates on CNN.
Cellphone cameras had the mayhem covered like the Super Bowl. His old-fashioned sensibilities wanted the media to show some restraint with the hyper-violent imagery, but wishful thinking didn’t mix with politics. The broadcast networks had blown past their standards, the FCC be damned, and all but the most obscure cable channels had been pre-empted for wall-to-wall werewolves. Reporters had already been killed, but the rest just kept up the charge. The police were having as much trouble wrangling the press as they were the creatures.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Alan Truesdale, National Security Advisor Rebekkah Luft, and White House Chief of Staff Teddy Harrison were at the president’s side. It felt like the entire world was watching over their shoulders.
With no warning, MSNBC broadcast a stomach-churning shot of a werewolf ripping out a woman’s guts as her two children shrieked in horror.
Teddy rubbed his temples. “We should consider blocking transmissions from the island,” he muttered, somewhere between question and statement.
“Not yet,” said Truesdale. “Let them see. The liberals can’t complain if they don’t want these monsters in their backyards.”
Weston couldn’t disagree.
“And it will justify whatever we have to do,” Truesdale added. “Later.”
Weston nodded. Later was too foreboding a concept to dwell on at the moment. “It’s a step we may want to take at some point. What are we doing about the injuries from last night, the ones who may be infected?”
“Locking them up,” said Truesdale. “Hospital rooms. Police stations. We’re requisitioning hotel rooms. We have the upper floors of One Times Square. We’re also looking at clearing some space at Riker’s Island.”
“Can we be sure they’re all accounted for?”
Truesdale’s solemn eyes turned toward him. Of course not.
“There are so many,” Luft thought out loud. “Scared and confused, in denial, maybe injured badly or even unconscious.”
“We’ll be more prepared tonight,” Teddy said half-heartedly.
“We have to consider worst-case scenarios,” said Truesdale.
Weston diverted his gaze as more violence unfolded on TV. “Draw up some options.”
Seven
CDC Observation Room
January 1
11:25 a.m.
Jessica Tanner and her expanding team had worked through the night.
Everyone but the janitors had been diverted to lycanthropy study. Experts recruited by the Department of Health and Human Services were steadily arriving by helicopter, and each of them brought their own mini-teams of colleagues and assistants: more lungs taking up air, more stray bottles of water, more shuffling papers. And their collective data was regularly being uploaded to a WHO server for the worldwide think tank. The more brains the better, but their in-house team had been siphoned into so many teleconferences that the collective was losing touch with the latest empirical data (which in the past hour had been a report on the virus’ effect on certain hormones and glands). Every report brought the same conclusion: No one had ever seen anything like this, not outside of movies or nightmares.
The herd crowded into the observation room just before 11:10 a.m., officially-predicted moonset in Atlanta. As they waited, observing their captive werewolf through the two-way mirror, the stink of coffee breath grew so powerful that Jessica thought she might have to run back to the bathroom.
Within minutes, the werewolf lost consciousness. Its heart rate dropped, breathing slowed, and the lupine physical characteristics regressed. The reverse transformation lasted just over a minute, and then they were once again left with the fragile Dr. Melissa Kenzie.
“H-1 interval was six minutes, thirty seconds,” Richard said, reviewing data over the shoulder of a CDC analyst. “A full minute less than we recorded during our first study cycle last night.”
“Was the H-1 interval the only inconsistency?” asked Dr. Diana Benrubi, Director for Biodefense at the University of Texas Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“Not at all,” said a CDC analyst, directing them to a monitor with side-by-side images of the Kenzie werewolf’s two transformations. “Look
at this.”
To the naked eye, the lycanthropic effect was more pronounced during their second study of the cycle. Kenzie the werewolf’s ears had grown bigger, her maxilla stretched into the beginnings of a canine snout and her fangs extended further. Her neck had also bulged wider, toward broader shoulders.
“Higher moonlight intensity, more transformation,” noted an uptight female virologist from the Viral Diseases Division at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Jessica had already forgotten her name twice. “Makes you wonder how far it can go.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Richard sniped. He’d been steadily losing patience all night as lycanthropy evaded their diagnoses. “There’s no such thing as ‘moonlight.’ It’s sunlight reflected off the moon. Why aren’t they transformed by sunlight?”
“We’re working on that,” replied a hotshot physicist from Yale, Timothy something-or-other. “The moon absorbs selected elements of the spectrum, so the characteristics of moonlight aren’t quite the same as sunlight. We’ve been testing the spectral response of the virus, but we haven’t been able to find the precise ratios that catalyze the transformation.”
“If we find that wavelength, could we block it with sunscreen?” asked a Korean man from WRAIR’s Retrovirology Division.
Thus began another lap on the track they’d circled all night long. Bright minds tossing out bright ideas, all of which fell into one of two categories: things they’d already tried or things they couldn’t try.
“Solid walls can’t even block it,” Jessica said. “She transformed in the containment room, and those walls are reinforced with 55 millimeters of lead to block nine hundred kilovolts of x-rays.”
Next they asked about polarization, or strobing another light source to interrupt the light of the moon. Good theories, but absurd in practicality. A dog whistle … of course they’d tested it, to no effect. Weiko Tsong, Richard’s old friend from USAMRIID’s Department of Vector Assessment, Virology Division, suggested applied lethal mutagenesis, a dangerously irresponsible technology that they couldn’t begin to implement in time. Although Richard made her laugh by suggesting that might turn them into weretyrannosaurs.
Someone mentioned Ribavirin. Another asked about comparing antibodies from either phase of the transformation. Tried, useless. The woman from WRAIR suggested attaching something to the virus, a target the white blood cells could track, but the virus’ rapid and massively error-prone replication would leave the WBCs chasing its fecal matter.
“My God, have we checked the host vectors?” asked Dr. Lisa Rohr, one of Richard’s virologists. “What if it infects rats or mosquitoes?”
And then, as usual, the conversation devolved into trampling voices as fear conquered reason. These roundtables were just sped-up, melodramatic versions of the same Abbott and Costello routines she’d endured at her conferences. Who’s on first? What’s on second? How can a virus do these things—third base!
“It just—it does things it’s not supposed to do,” Rohr complained, right on schedule. “Things it can’t do.”
Having come to this conclusion herself, and observing everyone else arriving at their own pace, Jessica was left with only one explanation—one she probably wouldn’t have blurted in such distinguished company had she not been so damn tired.
“It may just be what the movies say it is. Supernatural.”
The word hung in the room. Supernatural. A sacrilege.
Richard scowled at her, as if she’d committed treason. “So, what, we should put out a call for witches and exorcists? This is not magic, this is a virus; a biological entity we can quantify, study and attack. It’s ahead of us, but we’ll catch it.”
Jessica withered in her seat, wishing she’d just kept quiet. The others cast piteous glances her way. How embarrassing for the poor woman, she’s crumbled under the pressure.
“What we need is a place to start,” said Tsong.
“Patient zero,” said Rohr.
“Still waiting for the cultures on Holly Cooke,” said Benrubi.
“She’s a secondary,” said Rohr. “She was attacked before she was brought into the hospital. Whoever or whatever started this is still out there.“
“That’s who we need,” said Richard.
Eight
Henri Coandă International Airport
Bucharest, Romania
6:30 p.m. Eastern European Time
The flight was rough.
As the Aurora crashed through the upper layer of the atmosphere, the G-forces crushed Tildascow’s body like a 200-pound blanket. Meditation helped, as well as the steady flow of oxygen and the effects of her anti-G flight suit. Still, every damn second was harrowing.
From strip to strip, the 4,880-mile jaunt was just under two hours. They were traveling at less than of half the Aurora’s maximum speed, because Romania wasn’t far enough to safely achieve Mach 8 and decelerate—and she and Lon didn’t have the training to handle that kind of speed.
When they touched down, the three Auroras taxied off an unassuming airstrip into a UN Special Ops Hangar at the Romanian Air Force 90th Airlift Base. They were just outside Aeroportul Internaţional Henri Coandă, the primary public airport of Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
This place occupied a black hole in Tildascow’s professional interests. Institutional corruption and bickering with Hungary had kept them from the international playfield, and the region offered no geographical or political advantage for adversaries of the United States. She’d taken a cursory look at FBI intelligence, but as she looked out over snow-covered Bucharest, she might as well have been scoping Mars.
Like so many European countries, Romania was struggling through puberty into a modern globalized culture. They’d experienced an economic boom after their 1989 overthrow of communism, and symbols of their oppression, like the stadium-sized “Hunger Circus” domes once used as food distribution centers, were being repopulated with hotels and malls. Restorations of surviving medieval architecture were underway to attract tourists.
The population was comprised of Vlachs, Hungarians, Saxons, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and the secretive, nomadic Ţigani, also known as Gypsies. Werewolf lore frequently pinged on Gypsy legends of hexes and curses. In the original Wolf Man, the first werewolf was the son of a Gypsy fortuneteller.
That last bit of information had come from Lon, of course. He’d also said he’d know the way once they arrived. And she’d have to rely on him, because they had a wide-open map. She’d thought Transylvania was a city, but it was actually a massive plateau separated from the rest of the country by the reverse-L-shaped swath of the Eastern and Southern Carpathian Mountains. The region occupied nine counties and more than half of Romania.
Her boots crunched unspoiled snow as she stepped onto a balcony at the rear of the hangar. Fresh air and quiet were godsends after that torturous flight. The temperature was the same as in New York, but the crisp wind, clear sky, and evergreen aroma were decidedly Un-American.
So fuck nature, she thought with a smile.
And there was the moon, blazing bright on the horizon. So close to full.
“Please, I need a bathroom. Or a trash can.” Lon’s husky whines carried across the hangar.
Beethoven, Jaguar, and Mantle were busy securing the Auroras, making sure the UN and Romanian Air Force understood that they had to be kept out from under the prying eyes of satellites. They’d left the poor kid to fend for himself. He was bent over, hands on his knees, in position to let loose from either orifice. She decided to leave him alone for a minute, to see if he could recover on his own, and maybe spare his pride.
She’d had a few minutes to look over Lon’s website during the layover at Andrews. The details were obsessive and indignant, and most of the discussions in the forum went his way or an ugly way. This identity he’d created as a werewolf expert reeked of faithless hubris and hollow vanity—both indicators of low self-esteem.
She also scanned his therapist’s notes, which were well
kept, insightful, and surprisingly accurate. And she wasn’t surprised that Lon had suffered a major trauma during early childhood.
When Lon was five, his father developed a brain tumor. It spread quickly and mercilessly, causing memory loss, hallucinations, impaired speech and motor skills and, finally, a lonely death. Most importantly, noted the shrink, his father’s personality took sudden turns, leaving baby Lon to try to understand why a stranger was in his father’s body.
By the end of the father’s life, Lon’s mother had already suffered and dealt, and relief was all she had left. She thought Lon felt the same: He didn’t cry for Daddy, he didn’t get sick, he didn’t even alter his preschool routine. The mother was a simple woman trying to crawl out of someone else’s grave, hardly capable of recognizing the child’s clinical dissociation.
His nightmares began two years later.
It was tougher to forgive her missing the connection between the father’s shapeshifting identity and the werewolves running through the kid’s night terrors. But she’d started a new relationship—which she was probably desperate to keep—and Lon was keeping her boyfriend awake.
Cut to the beginning of high school, and Lon has grown into a perfect instrument of self-destruction. He’s convinced that people dislike him, even before they have a chance to make up their own minds. He says the nightmares are gone (he won’t even acknowledge they ever existed) and his father’s death is a non-issue because it happened before he can remember. The interest in werewolves is purely scientific, he insists, and his social problems come from interactions with what he describes as “untellects.”
Untellects. Made her smile.
The kid was clever. And his enthusiasm was infectious… even cute. But he’d have to learn to get out of his own way. And come to terms with his awkwardness…
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