City Under the Moon

by Sterbakov, Hugh

  Mantle flipped open a two-part mirror device on the barrel end of his SCAR rifle and eased it through the doorway. Tildascow leaned in for a look.

  A ghostly old woman stood in the corridor, backlit by smoky blue light that cast a shadow of her wiry frame onto her loose hospital gown. Gauze crisscrossed her body like scotch tape on a broken vase and her right eye was hidden beneath a patch.

  “Brianna Tildascow?” she whispered.

  Tildascow pushed Mantle’s weapon aside and stepped into the hallway, leading with her 1911. Jaguar followed to flank, checking behind, and Mantle stayed at the door, watching with Lon and Ilecko.

  She squared off, calling across the barrel of her gun. “Who are you?”

  “I don’t know,” the old woman sobbed. Her lips quivered, revealing a few withered, lonely teeth.

  “Were you attacked? Are you infected?”

  “I don’t know,” she cried.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “He told me.”

  “And who is he?” she asked, knowing goddamn well who “he” was.

  “I don’t know,” she sobbed, and her toothpick arms swayed as she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  All at once, her fear faded, her body went rigid and she raised her good eye in a dead lock with Tildascow’s.

  Now she sounded rehearsed: “He has a message for you, and for Yannic Ilecko and the United States of America.”

  “And what is that message?”

  She covered her ears and took a deep breath. And then she shrieked, “Find a cure!”

  It hurt Tildascow to watch. Spittle and blood shot from her throat as she screamed again.

  “Find a cure!” And again. “Find a cure!”

  “Okay, ma’am. Stop!” Tildascow shouted, but the woman couldn’t hear her. And she couldn’t stop if she tried.

  Now a new voice from behind them: “Find a cure!”

  Tildascow spun to find a wild-haired college student limping from another room. His arm was set in a cast and his face had turned savage purple as he screamed at a throat-ripping volume. “Find a cure!”

  They overlapped each other, like a tortured version of “Row Your Boat.”

  More patients filtered into the hall, coming from every direction, joining the disharmony. “Find a cure!”

  Put-put-put! Jaguar fired his rifle and shouted—

  The frail weight of the old woman landed on Tildascow’s back, and then she felt something tear at her neck. She whipped her elbow around and felt the woman’s brittle jaw and spine snap.

  She turned to find the woman on the floor, her head broken from her collar. Chunks of Tildascow’s flesh were stuck between her gravestone teeth. Blood trickled from her mouth.

  Then Tildascow felt the warm flow seeping down the back of her neck. She touched the wound and came back with fingers coated in blood.

  More voices now, rising up from other rooms. The infected stumbled about like zombies, covering their ears and shrieking. They were oblivious to Tildascow or anyone else, but the doctors and nurses and non-infected patients bolted for the exits. Some ran right between them, unimpressed by their weapons.

  And then the screams rose from the floors below, echoing up the stairwell. And from the streets outside, diminishing into oblivion. Voices in every direction, of every quality, bellowing mercilessly. Over and over.

  “Find a cure!”

  Twelve

  New York City

  2:14 p.m.

  It swept across the city like a tidal wave.

  They could hear it at the naval yard across Wallabout Bay, a strange din over the helicopters. It reached Rainey Park on the other side of Roosevelt Island, where the media had gathered with telescopes. Snipers protecting the shores even heard it in Edgewater, New Jersey, all the way across the Hudson River.

  The rioting in Columbus Circle ceased as the infected covered their ears and began screaming.

  Some of the non-infected joined in, trying to discipline the lunacy by turning the cacophony into a chant.

  But there would be no discipline.

  The message was the chaos.

  “Find a cure!”

  Thirteen

  The Oval Office

  2:34 p.m.

  President Weston stood to greet USAF Colonel James J. Murdock, Commander of the 28th Bomb Wing out of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. Murdock’s dossier sat on the president’s desk along with the personnel files of four other Wolfsbane candidates.

  General Alan Truesdale and Chief of Staff Teddy Harrison were also there to greet Murdock as he entered and introduced himself with a salute. Truesdale returned the salute, but Weston greeted him with a measured nod. Some servicemen and women found it distasteful for a civilian, even the CINC, to co-opt the salute. Weston chose to respond with a handshake whenever possible, or a constantly grateful nod. The pundits accused him of grandstanding by breaking a tradition begun by Ronald Reagan, but as far as he was concerned, his tenure was about mending the fences the last guy knocked down. No better place to start than with his own people.

  “Colonel James J. Murdock reports as ordered, sir.”

  “At ease, Colonel,” Truesdale said.

  “Have a seat.” Weston directed him to the hot seat. As an afterthought, he presented an awkward handshake that caught the colonel off guard. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s an honor, sir.”

  Weston searched the eyes of this man, who had dedicated his life to serving his country, and prepared to ask him to irreparably tarnish his name and his legacy.

  Murdock had received his commission from the USAF Academy in the spring of 1989. He’d served in positions from instructor pilot to Wing Weapons Officer to Strategic Warplanner for US Central Command. He had over twenty-five hundred flight hours in the B-1B Lancer strategic bomber and the T-38 Talon supersonic jet trainer. He’d garnered four major decorations, and President Clinton recognized him as a “Great American” in his 1998 State of the Union Address.

  For this job, he stood apart from the other candidates because he had no children.

  “You’ve been briefed on this operation, Colonel?” Weston knew he had, but he wanted to hear the tone of Murdock response.

  “Yes sir.” Appropriately somber, yet confident.

  “And you’re prepared to carry it out?”

  “Yes sir.” And firm.

  Murdock was starstruck, but Weston wanted a genuine reaction from the man, not the standard military spiel. Actually, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to be in the cockpit with him. Maybe he wanted to reassure him that he’d be by his side in the aftermath.

  Whatever it was, he just needed this guy to talk to him. “James—can I call you James? Or do you prefer Jim?”

  “Either, sir.”

  “Gentlemen, would you excuse us?” Weston asked Truesdale and Teddy.

  They nodded at Weston and Murdock on their way out.

  “Jim,” Weston began, “while we’re alone I’d like you to call me Will.”

  “Yes sir,” he said uncomfortably, before forcing out “Will.”

  “Jim. In 1945, Paul Tibbets and Charles Sweeny dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing over two hundred thousand people. They faced that reality in the public and in the mirror, every day, for the rest of their lives. Protesters hounded them. Churches cursed them. Some people said they were in league with the devil. They did what their CINC asked of them, and they came home to liberal hypocrites who apologized to the Japanese right under their noses. It never relented, until they died. After they died, even.”

  “I’m familiar with their story, sir.”

  “Did you know that Tibbets asked not to be buried, because he thought protesters would desecrate his grave?”

  The word “grave” hung in the air as Murdock nodded yes.

  “Are you prepared to drop a weapon of mass destruction over Manhattan?”

  “If those are my orders, sir, I will carry out my mission.” />
  Weston frowned and leaned forward. “What if we were to drop all the pretenses, Jim, and we had a man-to-man exchange instead of CINC to soldier? And what if, instead of ordering you to do this, I just asked you?”

  Murdock thought for a moment before responding, and in that moment, Weston realized that was what he wanted.

  “I’d say I appreciate your asking, Will. And I’d say I gladly and proudly serve at your discretion.”

  Weston cleared his throat and stood. Murdock also stood, although far more rigidly. They exchanged a nod of silent understanding, and then Weston reached beneath his personnel files for an envelope that was unmarked except for his own signature across the seal. “The codes.”

  Murdock took the envelope. “Thank you sir.”

  “I appreciate your service, Colonel Murdock. And so does your country.”

  “Thank you sir.”

  Murdock saluted. Weston shook his hand.

  Fourteen

  39th & Lexington

  3:07 p.m.

  Lon couldn’t stop shuddering, and it wasn’t because of the cold.

  Lexington Avenue looked as though it’d just hosted the most gruesome party ever. Dead bodies lay about like macabre confetti. The older ones had become snow popsicles. Some lay on the ground, staring at him like it was his job to wake them up. And there were dismembered limbs all over the place, little things people had just left behind. Like their arms or their legs.

  The Chrysler Building loomed above them on the right side of the street, across from a less-impressive counterpart skyscraper of reflective glass. The two of them reminded Lon of Master Tolkien’s The Two Towers.

  Infected were everywhere, leaning out of buildings, kneeling on the street, standing on cars. Their eyes bulged and their necks contorted as they kept up with their forced screams. Lon’s throat was killing him out of sympathy.

  He couldn’t have predicted Valenkov’s ability to enthrall his victims in such a manner; it wasn’t in any of his literature. Sure, a pact bond between master and minion was to be expected. Hell, it was practically a religion to the drama mamas writing erotic fan fics. But this sort of overt brainwashing, especially during the human phase, was completely unexpected.

  He was writing his doctoral thesis in his head.

  His body ached, but he still had energy. Maybe it’d come from Tildascow’s pills, or maybe his metabolism had caught up with newfound bravery—or maybe that’d come from the pills, too.

  They were power-walking right down the middle of the street, veering between abandoned cars. Tildascow was in the lead, followed by Jaguar. She kept scratching the bandage on her neck.

  Lon couldn’t shake the image of Mantle peppering that old lady with bullets. Little tiny red explosions all over her chest, punching her backward, but she couldn’t be stopped.

  The old woman had known Tildascow’s name. Valenkov must have targeted her. But why?

  “Will it happen tonight?” she’d asked Ilecko.

  “Cannot be sure.”

  And that was all that was said. Mantle disinfected and bandaged the wound. Since then, she’d only barked orders for them to keep moving.

  Lon followed their footsteps in the snow, stepping around occasional crimson patches and body parts. Ilecko kept pace next to him, looking at each screamer as if any one of them might have something new or interesting to say. In the VA hospital, in front of Bellevue and in the blocks north, they’d seen hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. And unseen voices came from everywhere. How many were inside these buildings?

  Mantle kept up the rear, looking around with a doomsday gaze. When he caught Lon looking, he faked a smiling wink.

  Lexington Avenue seemed to grow longer in front of them, an endless stretch of delis beneath four-story brownstones. Somehow Lon’s legs kept going.

  At 39th Street, an American flag hung above the entrance to a bar. The lower half had been slashed, and its red and white tendrils thrashed in the wind.

  At 40th, the buildings grew to six and eight stories, a running jump to the skyscrapers in the blocks ahead. The glut of cars thickened too, so they began climbing over them instead of walking around.

  Lon ducked as a low-flying helicopter thundered past. He’d get dizzy trying to count all of the aircraft in the sky. A banana ‘copter with two rotors was lowering an armored truck into the next intersection. From here it looked like the truck was sinking in a quicksand of taxis.

  The Shadows led them up the last great hill of vehicles before the Chrysler Building. Ilecko lifted Lon into Tildascow’s grip on the steeper climbs. She’d pat him on the shoulder after pulling him up, as if that made it better.

  They finally reached the military perimeter, half a block from the Chrysler Building at 42nd Street. Special ops soldiers stepped right over screamers to help them climb down the car pile.

  Lon couldn’t spin fast enough to take in all of the activity.

  Armored personnel carriers, Humvees, and two tanks had blocked off Lexington to the north at 43rd. To the west, 42nd was blocked by a three-story dam of abandoned vehicles. An APC headed their way from the east with soldiers clinging to its outside.

  Even the street markings were dizzying to this Ohio boy: A frantic crisscross pattern filled the intersection, surrounded on all sides by vertical lines. A woman had fallen in the middle of the street, her tattered clothing soaked in brown slush, her face the color of blood. Everyone went on ignoring her as she bucked and rasped through blown vocal chords, “Find a cure!”

  A salty-haired gruff called Major General Jefferson Beach—great pornstar name, Lon thought—told them his men were having trouble inside the Chrysler Building because thick groups of infecteds had the stairs blocked. He led them north on Lexington, toward the Chrysler Building’s entrance, which looked like a squat coffin lined with black marble (and that wasn’t just Lon’s goth soul making an observation).

  The tower was dizzying and dreary from its base, an endless ladder of gray stretching into the thick smoky sky. Twin twelve-story rectangles hugged the north and south sides of the structure, looking like the legs of—

  “A king on his throne,” Tildascow said to herself, some kind of profundity known only to her. If there was a king up there, he had a good view of himself in the mirrored Hyatt skyscraper across the street.

  On the ground level, a fashion store called Strawberry had been adapted into a makeshift holding pen. Green Berets kept their rifles trained on the growing collection of thrashing, shrieking captives.

  Each soldier’s backpack was affixed with Valenkov’s portrait from the airport security camera. It was a smart move, but it gave Lon the eerie feeling that Valenkov was watching them from everywhere. Hell, maybe he was. Lon found himself diverting his gaze every time it met Valenkov’s.

  Troops had busted through the window of a drug store called “duane reade.” Was that someone’s name, and was he morally opposed to capital letters? These drug stores and pizza shops on the ground floors of gigantic buildings—did they, like, pay rent or something? And the people who lived or worked above—weren’t they always hungry? And why would folks want to live so crammed together like this?

  He’d been trying not to think about his dark goddess Elizabeth, lest he be overcome with worry. But she’d said so many times that she felt lonely here in Manhattan. It seemed impossible to Lon, to be lonely in the most crowded city in America, until he touched the crushing sensation of New York. The gigantism of everything made any one thing—or person—seem pitifully insignificant. In Ohio, his street was his street. Nothing truly belonged to anyone here.

  Ilecko’s blood droplets crept toward the coffin entrance.

  “He’s in there,” Tildascow said, gazing up at the crown.

  “It’s taken a couple of hours to get to the 20th floor,” said Beach. “They got it stopped up good. We’re prepping to transport directly to the sixty-first-floor terrace.”

  “What’s holding you up?”

  “Nothing,” he frowned
, not liking her tone. “We’re readying the—“

  “Desperation One,” she abruptly radioed, “this is November, what’s your ETA to the Chrysler Building, over?”

  “Five minutes, November.”

  “Roger that, we need pickup on Lexington north of 42nd, plenty of room to get down here. Transport to a terrace on the sixty-first floor. Over.”

  “Roger, November. Desperation out.”

  Beach’s temper flared over his ‘stache. “I want to send a preliminary—“

  “All command units this net!” Tildascow interrupted again. “HPT is in the Chrysler Building; all units rally to this location,” she said, retrieving coordinates from her loathsome GPS device, “8333-3234. I say again, 8333-3234. Over.” Her “threes” sounded like “trees.” She stowed her GPS, still with her eyes to the sky, and brushed off Beach. “I apologize, sir, I’m just a bit eager.”

  “We’re all eager, Agent Tildascow.”

  “This is Central Command,” the radio blared. “8333-3234. Roger that. Wilco. Over.” That was followed by “Southeastern Command. Roger that. Over,” and “Southwestern Command. Roger that location. Over.”

  Tildascow turned to her team. “The Crash Hawk will take us up to the—” She stopped short as a strange sensation swept over the whole crowd.

  Thunderous silence. As if someone had hit the mute button on life.

  Each person registered the uncanny effect, slowly realizing…

  The screams had stopped.

  Tildascow turned toward the Strawberry store, where the captives were writhing in pain.

  Jaguar and Mantle followed her, rifles trained. Lon went with them, passing Ilecko, who was still gazing up at the sky.

  One of the victims was a petite 20 year-old girl. She struggled to her feet, sobbing and wheezing, ignoring the guards’ orders to sit back down, and groaned, “Help!”

  Tildascow came closer, keeping her hip turned to hide her gun.

  “Help,” the girl cried. “Please help.”

  “We’re going to help you, miss,” Tildascow called. “I promise.”

  “Help.” Now she could only mouth the word. “Help.”