City Under the Moon

by Sterbakov, Hugh

  “We will.”

  The woman’s face went into sudden shock. Her lids and cheeks were blackened by burst blood vessels, making her bloodshot eyes seem to glow red. For a horrible moment they rolled back and forth between Tildascow and the soldier, teasing some dark secret.

  She held her breath, still looking around.

  Was she about to pass out? Or die? Did she have a new message?

  “Hkkk--“ She choked.

  “Miss?” Tildascow asked. “Are you okay?”

  Her eyes rolled back in her head as she took a deep, sniffling breath…

  “Miss?”

  And then she howled.

  Fifteen

  Situation Room

  The White House

  3:48 p.m.

  The madmen at CNN were broadcasting live from their New York studios overlooking Columbus Circle. The shaky, handheld footage they’d shot through their windows offered the best available angle on the central command post.

  The heads of state watched along with the rest of the world as the soldiers staved off the rioters to maintain the landing zone for the never-ending traffic of Chinooks.

  With the infected screaming themselves silly and the civilians in hiding, the command post had operated unencumbered for a glorious ninety minutes. In fact, their efficiency was so monotonous that most in the Situation Room had stopped watching.

  Allison Leslie noticed it first. “Something’s happening!” she screamed.

  The room fell quiet as an aide turned up the TV’s volume. “—screaming stopped just a minute ago, and now the victims seem to be stirring.” The unseen CNN correspondents might have been shooting the footage themselves. “Yes, they’re definitely conscious now. The soldiers at the edge of Columbus Circle are yelling at them, but we can’t hear them.”

  The soldiers had their perimeter covered. The activity within the circle never slowed as the crowd came to their feet.

  “There’s so many of them,” said another CNN correspondent, panning across the southern end of Central Park. “There must be thousands.” As they sprouted like weeds, it became apparent just how decisively they outnumbered the military. “My God.”

  Quick pans with long-distance lenses made for nauseating viewing. Someone in the control room had the sense to cut to another camera, one with a birdseye shot of a victim who had already gotten to his feet—a teenage boy in tattered clothes, exhausted from his ordeal. The boy ran his hands through his hair and whimpered at the sky.

  “What’s he doing?” Luft asked, at the same time as the CNN correspondent.

  Sixteen

  405 Lexington Avenue at the Chrysler Building

  3:48 p.m.

  “Not yet! Not yet!” Lon’s voice cracked through five major scales.

  The victims’ eyes turned yellow, fur sprouted on their faces, and their lower teeth emerged from swelling underbites. It was only the first stage of the transformation.

  And it was three hours early.

  Soldiers called out for instructions. Reinforcements raced to the Strawberry, where the pack had begun sizing up their captors.

  The werewolves had their own reinforcements en route. A steady stream of wolfmen were traversing the vehicle pile and massing along the military perimeter.

  That woman who’d been lying in the intersection slowly rose to her knees. Her soaked, dirty clothes clung to the thin fur covering her body. She panted, her shoulders bobbing, while watching the rifles turn toward her. Yellow hatred glimmered in her eyes.

  “What’s happening?” Tildascow asked Ilecko.

  “It is when moon is bright and sky is thick,” Ilecko murmured, drawing his sword in his underhand style. “Wolves come early.”

  Lon looked up at the “thick” sky. Storm and smoke had created a thick umbrella over the city, reflecting the moonlight from beyond the horizon. Yet another detail that had escaped his research.

  “They will transform slowly,” Ilecko told him in Romanian. “We still have time. They will not attack.”

  Lon relayed that to—

  “This is information we could have used sooner,” Tildascow grunted, reaching for her radio: “Desperation, this is November! We need immediate extract, do you read?”

  “Roger that, November,” the Black Hawk pilot said over the radio. “We are one minute away. Stand by for evac.”

  Wolf eyes steadily materialized from corners and shadows, increasing in number and steadily closing in.

  The perimeter grew tighter as soldiers backed toward their team, forming a circle of protection.

  Lon wanted to believe Ilecko’s promise. “You said they wouldn’t attack, right?”

  Ilecko silently clocked the wolf men skulking in every direction.

  He said they wouldn’t attack, though. He did say that.

  “Switch to silver!” Tildascow yelled.

  Amid a chorus of “Hooah,” soldiers swapped out their tan SCARs in favor of smaller black rifles.

  Tildascow switched her pistol with another in her hip holster. She checked its chamber, flipped its safety, and proffered it to Lon. “Silver bullets.”

  But they’re not going to attack!

  “Take it, Lon.”

  No guns! No guns for him! Frak! “I—I don’t know what to do.”

  “Use both hands,” she said in a soothing tone, wrapping his fingers around the handle. “Lock your elbows. Point and fire.” She removed her cap and glasses and leaned in with bubblegum breath, her pretty blonde curls falling over her face. “Stay with me, kiddo.”

  “Uhhhkay,” he sputtered. He’d never held a gun that didn’t shoot water or make laser sounds. The real thing was heavier, as if to voice its serious intent.

  Tildascow turned him around and rifled through his backpack, causing his flab to jiggle. She emerged with a gun identical to the one in his hand. He’d been carrying a gun?

  “The werewolves are no longer civilians,” she yelled to the nearby soldiers. “They are enemy targets!” As if to demonstrate, she slid the rack and aimed at the wolf woman from the intersection, who had come to her feet and begun to approach. “Weapons free!”

  Bang! The crash made Lon flinch. The woman crumpled, with no reaction to the new hole in her forehead. Just like the guy outside the Cougar; no ceremony, no time to think about what it meant.

  Because that caused the werewolves to attack.

  A drumroll of gunfire. Howls and screams. Soldiers down. Shouts! Orders! Locations! “Reload!” “Fuck!” and a thousand variations.

  Werewolves coming from everywhere, running upright, moving in packs, leaping over vehicles, dropping in the deluge of silver bullets.

  Crashing windows, popping metal, exploding tires, shattering cement, splintering marble—everything dusted in blood.

  “Desperation, we need you here!” Tildascow radioed.

  Lon squeezed one shot off, but he couldn’t tell where it went. And shitballs the handle got hot!

  Ilecko pushed him down and crouched over him. His sword was at the ready, waiting for one of the pack to break through.

  A wolf man dropped from the sky, his swollen claws reaching like a bird’s talons—

  Mantle’s rifle swung upward put-put-put and the creature landed splat, convulsing in reverse transformation.

  Tildascow took one of the black rifles from a dead soldier and turned on the incoming wolves with new firepower.

  A thunderous vortex drowned out most of the noise as the Black Hawk descended between the Chrysler Building and the Hyatt Tower, blasting them with gun smoke. It hovered just a few feet off the ground, an incredible presence in the middle of a city street.

  Tildascow lifted Lon by his belt and midget-tossed him into the cabin. He bounced off the side-facing gunner’s seat and almost fell out before his foot found the rudder.

  Hairy fingers latched onto the ledge on the far side of the cabin. Then a wrist emerged, extending from a dirty, fuzzy sleeve.

  Lon screamed, but he couldn’t hear himself over the h
elicopter’s roar.

  It was a wolf man dressed as Santa Claus. And it wasn’t nearly as funny as it should’ve been.

  The Black Hawk’s pilot swung around and fired his gun, hitting weresanta in the chest and slamming it against the side-facing seat.

  Apparently they weren’t silver rounds. Weresanta sprang into the cockpit, and the helicopter rolled toward Lon, spilling him onto the street. He crashed onto his backpack and tumbled backward, pinching his neck and biting his motherhumping tongue again before ending up on his stomach. He rolled over—

  —blink blink—

  The Black Hawk was above him, rolled laterally so that he could see the sky straight through the cabin. And then the tail shaft whipped over like a gigantic windshield wiper. For half a breath, the Black Hawk was looking straight down at him. The cockpit window was covered in blood.

  That… that couldn’t be good.

  The blades cut into an armored personnel carrier—ching ching ching—bombarding soldiers and wolves with shrapnel.

  And then it belly-flopped into the Hyatt Tower.

  Shattering. A downpour of glass.

  Lon curled up on his knees, letting his backpack take the brunt of it. His ass burned hot.

  More screaming, howling, crashing. Endless gunfire. Liquid flames falling from the sky. Burning corpses in every direction. A gaping wound cut through the Hyatt, spitting flames so bright he could barely see the skeleton of the Black Hawk.

  Men and wolves flickered through the curtains of swirling smoke. A werewolf woman emerged from the darkness, on her belly and dragging herself toward Lon. Blackened blood seeped from her broken nose, making her grunts sound like sniffles. She tried to lunge, but her legs had—oh man—

  Her legs had been torn off at the knees.

  Lon’s mind screamed, but his muscles froze and his throat misfired.

  The werewolf grabbed his wrist—its palm felt like hot gravel—and it pulled him closer to those teeth—

  Put-Put-Put!

  The creature’s chin slammed into the asphalt. Tildascow’s black rifle was inches from its head. The sight of her made him want to cry, from relief or love or just because of his scorched ass.

  Her eyes looked like flashlights behind her soot-covered face. “Can you move?” she yelled, sounding like she was underwater. “Are you hurt?”

  Lon tried, but he couldn’t answer.

  She pulled him to unsteady feet and put a gun in his hand, maybe the same one she’d given him earlier. He couldn’t close his fingers on the grip.

  “You’re in shock, it’s perfectly normal,” she said, calmly. How the fuck could she be calm? “Breathe deep and—“ A rabid wolf man hurtled their way and she fired twice, flipping him backward, never breaking her thought. “Breathe deep and stay with me.”

  His eyes were heavy. The air was so thick, black and flickering orange.

  “This will pass, Lon. You’re okay. Hey…” She looked deep into his eyes and repeated his own words. “We are going to win this.”

  A massive figure surfaced through the smoke: Ilecko, blood-splattered and caked in soot. And then came Jaguar and Mantle, sidestepping toward them, eyes constantly shifting. The band was back together.

  A thunderous groan came from the Hyatt, where the upside-down helicopter shell lost its grip and fell to the street.

  “Get down!” Tildascow yelled.

  She pushed him to the ground, but it made no difference. A blast wave of smoke belched from the crash, blinding Lon and ripping the air from his lungs, leaving him in pure suffocation.

  And then he was floating, wondering if he was dead.

  No, he was being carried. By his shoulders. The ground was moving fast beneath his floating feet.

  A door slammed open and they burst into another world, one with precious cool air. Squeaky boots reminded him of gym class. Warm bodies were pressed close; they were running in a tight pack. Soldiers’ voices echoed off marble as their flashlights fenced in the darkness.

  “North clear!” “East clear!”

  A high, curved ceiling and red marble walls made it feel as though they were running into a living heart. Ceiling murals vomited Art Deco chic onto African colors. Lon found his bearings, and he realized they’d passed through the coffin-shaped entrance. Hideous as it was, they were in the lobby of the Chrysler Building. Mantle and Jaguar were sharing his weight, holding his arms around their necks.

  They hugged the right side of the triangular lobby, past an empty reception desk and elevator halls. A phalanx of soldiers barreled through another entrance and their groups merged as they cut right into a triangular stairwell, brass and gold on black marble, wrapping around a golden-piped chandelier.

  By Grabthar’s Hammer, did all of the lobbies in Manhattan look like Roddy McDowall’s evil lair?

  He floated up the stairs, following Tildascow’s very firm ass—hey now. No choice but to stare, since it was the only thing he could see.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Gunfire and screams from above.

  Tildascow stopped short, slamming her back into Lon’s nose. “This way!”

  They reached the next floor. More gunfire ahead. Fumbling footsteps and soldiers barking. Some men were backlit by the bright orange glow, kneeling over an injured comrade. “He got me,” the guy screamed. “Oh God, he got me!”

  “Through here!” Tildascow yelled.

  They kept moving, still in their cocoon of faceless soldiers, past a fire door and into a tight stairwell shaft. Helmet lights revealed steel platforms and cement walls. At the first landing, they pushed flat against the wall to let a torrent of soldiers rush past. Their footfalls were steady percussion against the mush of banging, screaming, and gunfire coming through the walls.

  Lon tried to wipe the black crud from his face, but his hands and sleeves were so dirty that he just moved it all around. He’d lost his glasses at some point, which would be a serious problem if he had to read the werewolves to death.

  Mantle pushed Lon toward the stairs, and they re-entered the flow. He kept steady pressure on his back as they chased Ilecko’s heels around the flights.

  Soldiers broke off at each floor, covering doors and storming hallways. The ranks thinned behind them and the men ahead gained on them. Soon their small team was isolated between pockets of traffic.

  His legs couldn’t settle on a method of torture. Hot, then heavy, then numb, then tingly. Each step seemed steeper than the last. Jaguar and Mantle pushed harder, then lifted him outright. But Ilecko had slowed down too, and the Shadows were gasping. Just before the 30th floor, the whole team collapsed at once.

  “Okay, take a breath,” Tildascow said, as if it were her choice. She dropped to a squat and rifled through her backpack. One deep breath erased any struggle in her lungs.

  “Not tired?” Ilecko rasped. Blackened sweat dripped from his nose.

  She smiled and winked. “You okay?”

  Ilecko nodded between gasps. Lon wanted that gun back, wherever the hell it was, because he wanted to shoot her.

  She removed the bandage on the back of her neck, revealing a clean patch of skin surrounding the red and purple wound from the old woman’s bite. According to lore, a werewolf bite might heal at a supernatural pace, but Lon had no way to gauge such a thing. It’d been a couple of hours, and the fist-sized tear was swollen purple, jagged with tooth marks and thick with coagulated blood. Tildascow barely registered any discomfort as she replaced the bandage.

  “Long way to go,” she said. “Maintain a pace.” She held her canteen under Lon’s nose. “Sips, not gulps.” As the water cut through the paste in his mouth, the stairwell rumbled. There’d been an explosion, maybe a grenade, or something bigger outside.

  “Central command,” Tildascow called over her radio, “this is November Zero Zero One. Do you read?”

  The Shadows’ headlamps converged on the radio, waiting for a response that didn’t come.

  “Fucked up, man,” Mantle muttered, shaking his head.

  “So
utheastern Command, this is November Zero Zero One, do you read?” She wiped skin-colored streaks into the soot on her face. “Southwestern Command. Come in.”

  “Sheezus,” Jaguar said, rubbing his head.

  “Don’t panic,” she said. “We may not have reception in here. We’ll try again from the terrace.”

  Another boom echoed through the stairwell.

  “May not be able to get up there,” Mantle said.

  “Guy’s been ahead of us every step of the way,” Jaguar said between sips from his canteen. “Every fucking step.”

  “We’ll catch him,” Tildascow said. “He’s up there.”

  “You really think that?” Jaguar asked. “Or is that just what he wants you to think?”

  Seventeen

  Chrysler Building

  55th Floor

  5:08 p.m.

  Lon couldn’t tell if he was climbing steps or dreaming that he was climbing steps. Also, he thought he saw Mister Spock give him the “Live Long and Prosper” sign back down there, and for some reason Spock had Miley Cyrus on a dog’s leash, but Miley had the body of a murloc from World of WarCraft.

  “Okay…“ Tildascow started, and everyone collapsed in response. “Take a break. Five minutes. Eyes open, backs to the wall. And tape up your injuries. They can smell the blood.”

  How did she know that? And also, why did she have a third eye on the side of her head? And was it staring at him?

  Mantle and Jaguar sat on either side of the middle landing, covering them from ahead and behind. But they hadn’t seen anyone in forever. Ilecko and Tildascow sat next to Lon, shoulder to shoulder against the wall. Steam rose from Ilecko’s sweaty head. The three of them must have looked like Three Stooges: The Next Generation. Or, at least, that’s what frog-legged Miley said. Except it sounded like blarrgargahhgargglalrlghr in murloctongue.

  Tildascow poured water into his mouth. “Small sips.” It burned.

  “Buh—“ he struggled to say. “Buh—buh—“

  Tildascow leaned in. “Whisper.”

  “Blarrgarglar,” he wheezed, trying to ask Miley for a napkin.

  “Lon?” Tildascow yelled, lifting his eyelids. He wanted to tell her he was okay, but his mouth wouldn’t work. And also, the blue chick from Avatar told him not to. There was that too.