City Under the Moon

by Sterbakov, Hugh

  Man and wolf were going to meet in the middle.

  The Silver Bullet flew low over the promenade, only a dozen feet above the knotted gun sculpture, Non-Violence (damn thing pissed Tildascow off more now than ever). As they spun for clearance and set down on the lawn, Green Berets unlocked the hitchhikers from the helicopter’s fuselage. Jaguar’s body spilled into their arms.

  Tildascow caught Lon with an arm under his chest and brought him to a safe zone on the concrete. Mantle led Ilecko their way and looked back solemnly as they covered Jaguar’s body.

  She turned toward the marble and glass columns at the main entrance to the United Nations General Assembly Building. The temporary security tent had been razed and the bulletproof doors had met their match. The interior lit up with strobing pops of gunfire. Ringing, buzzing, and whooping alarms made it clear that—by the way—something was happening.

  The Silver Bullet’s gunner lifted off to make room for more traffic, but Beethoven had stripped his flight gear to join them. He broke open smelling salts to clear their heads and followed that up with fresh, silver-loaded Colt 9mm SMGs and mag pouches.

  “They found the entrance to the shelter, but they don’t have the passcode!” Beethoven yelled over the warfare. “They say it’s missing from the government servers! They’re on the horn with the UN now!”

  Tildascow gritted her teeth. Valenkov must’ve found some way to erase the code from the VPN, even the redundancies. It wouldn’t have been easy, but he could’ve wolfed out a UN security tech or a really talented hacker.

  Ilecko passed on the rifle, preferring his sword. His skin was frostbitten and his hair was thick with frozen sweat and dirt. He was sluggish, but steady. And he nodded his readiness, as if he knew he was being assessed.

  Lon was another story. He was curled up on the cement, covered in frozen clumps of muck. His eyes were clamped shut and he puckered like a thirsty fish.

  Beethoven had a rifle for him, but Tildascow took it and gave him a canteen instead.

  “He stays here,” she said. “Everyone ready?”

  Nods all around.

  “Let’s go.”

  Three

  White House Situation Room

  6:21 p.m.

  As everyone kept vigil on the flat-panel screens displaying aerial real-time footage from the UN Plaza, Billy Itz, William Weston’s top speechwriter, was furiously scribbling on a legal pad. A White House photographer had his back to the far wall, quietly snapping. Teddy wanted to put people in the room, so it wouldn’t be so easy to condemn their choices post-mortem.

  Weston’s mind kept creeping toward his shirt’s breast pocket, where he’d put the laminated card that contained today’s Gold Codes, the sequence needed to authorize the launch of a WMD. The codes were provided to him every morning by the National Security Agency, placed in that pocket and forgotten. No president since Reagan had had serious cause to contemplate the Gold Codes; today’s political landscape was far more complicated in its simplicity.

  Even the president couldn’t give authorization to launch WMDs on his own; a second set of Gold Codes was issued each day to his Defense Secretary, Ronald Greenberg. Only together could they issue the command, once both of their code sequences had been authorized.

  Greenberg was an older man with thin white hair and a vulture’s scowl. A businessman and engineer who had come up bouncing between private weapons R&D firms and federal defense appointments, he hadn’t served in the military in almost 40 years. But he had unlimited stamina and resolve, and if the laminated card in his pocket was wearing on his mind, it wasn’t showing.

  From the far end of the table, General Ryan Jermaine, the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, monitored communication with the Lunar Eclipse.

  Colonel Murdock’s voice filtered through the room. “Lunar Eclipse post-takeoff routine complete, we are flying high.”

  “Eclipse, this is Home Room, do you copy?” Jermaine responded.

  “Roger, Home Room, you are loud and clear. Weapons systems are online, we are proceeding to target zone.”

  Weston kept his eyes locked on the UN Plaza, praying the men down there would bring him a miracle.

  Four

  United Nations Plaza

  6:26 p.m.

  Lon’s team was leaving him behind.

  “Nnnmeee,” he heard himself mumble as he struggled to get up. Of course they couldn’t hear him over the war machines. He was too exhausted to shape his thoughts into reason, but he knew he had to keep going. He couldn’t let his team down.

  He forced himself to his feet. Moving spotlights in the sky cast veering shadows, doing nothing to help his balance.

  As his eyes came to focus, he saw a medic hunched over someone in the Shadow Stalkers’ uniform. He came closer, looking over the medic’s shoulder, to see that it was Jaguar.

  His chest was crushed, as if he’d been hit by a wrecking ball. Lon remembered now that a werewolf had hit their helicopter, and Jaguar had taken the impact. The medic startled Lon when he grabbed his kit and raced elsewhere, switching channels and leaving poor, broken Jaguar alone in the grass.

  “Come back!” Lon screamed, but the medic paid him no mind. Injured men were being carried in from the other side of the plaza.

  Lon knelt down to… well, he didn’t know what to do. Jaguar’s brown skin had gone blue. Probably there was nothing anyone could do.

  He remembered that he had to catch up with the others, but to leave would seem so disrespectful. God, he couldn’t even remember Jaguar’s real name.

  But the others had left. And he couldn’t let them down. He started toward the building, turning back once to see if Jaguar had moved. And then he ordered himself not to look back again.

  He trundled up the steps (more fucking steps) and pushed toward the entrance to the General Assembly Building. Soldiers rushed past with their weapons ready. A couple of them yelled something mean, like “get out of the way,” but he couldn’t make it out. Fuck them anyways.

  A tent of scorched grey canvas was deflated in front of the building, draped over security equipment. Its seal had been dragged away from the front doors, where those soldiers stormed into the lobby.

  A moment later, Lon stepped through the twisted doorframe. Glass crunched beneath his feet and the familiar reek of gun smoke enveloped him. Cloudy blue light seeped through the opaque window columns above, combining with the smoke to cast a watery ripple over the dead bodies that lay crumpled in every direction. They were of any age or race, wearing tatters of clothing or nothing at all. One girl—she couldn’t have been 30—was sprawled naked in the middle of the floor, her face frozen in a question. Haven’t you heard, lady? The wolves came to town.

  He’d never even seen a naked girl before. What a way to start.

  He stepped between the corpses and some ruined artworks and statues. Everything in sight was scorched, bloodstained, or broken. Toppled metal detectors had cut divots into the checkered marble floor. Blood puddles spawned decaying footsteps in all directions. Every wall was riddled with bullet holes.

  The latest soldiers were huddled to Lon’s left, firing into the darkness of a corridor that extended beneath the main balcony. Howls came in return, bouncing loony echoes. An information kiosk caught in the line of fire sizzled smoke and dust as errant shots hacked it apart. Lon tiptoed toward those men, but Tildascow and the others weren’t among them.

  A wide, shallow stairwell started to the right before turning around and sweeping over the lobby to the lowest of three white balconies. He found Ilecko in a dark corner beside the stairs, looming a head above everyone else. Beethoven was crouched before him, yelling into his radio.

  “Geronimo squad, this is November Zero Zero One. Do you read?” he radioed. “Any element this net, please respond. Over.”

  “This is UNACOM—”, the radio buzzed, but the rest of the message was lost in the din of gunfire.

  Ilecko pulled Lon close to him, where Mantle was covering them with o
ne of those big black rifles. They were by an elevator next to a smaller, private flight of stairs descending underneath the big one.

  “UNACOM, we need directions to the underground bunker,” Beethoven radioed. “Please advise.”

  “Stand by, November, we are—“ Again, the rattle of machinegun fire made it impossible to hear.

  “Say again, UNACOM,” said Beethoven. “All after ‘we are.’” The garbled response would have been unintelligible under the best of circumstances.

  Tildascow was behind Ilecko, searching her backpack for a pair of night-vision goggles. As she put them on, Lon could have sworn—

  She caught his curious glare, realizing just now that he’d arrived. With the goggles over her face, he couldn’t read her expression.

  Did she see him notice her yellow eyes?

  For a long moment, Lon had no idea what she was going to do. Finally, she went back into her pack and came out with another pistol like the ones Lon had already failed to use. She racked the slide and offered it to him.

  When he reached for it, she recoiled sharply. Her mouth hung agape as she stared at his hands.

  Startled, Lon looked them over. They were chapped and swollen, each with a thousand little cuts, but he didn’t see anything out of the—

  Lon’s heart dropped as he realized what she must have seen.

  A pentagram.

  Invisible to him, but to her it would an irrepressible craving. He watched her track every movement of his hands, her head tiling on her neck like a hungry predator.

  The others were too focused on the radio to notice. Which was for the best, because they might kill her if they saw it. But Lon knew in his scaredy-cat heart that she could keep herself under control.

  “I’ll take it,” he said, and reached for the gun with a big motion to retrieve her attention. When she snapped to, she put the handle firmly in his palm, right on top of the pentagram.

  “You’ll use this if you have to,” she said over the racket.

  “I won’t have to.”

  She gazed at him for a moment, probably deep into his eyes, but he couldn’t see through the night-vision goggles. Maybe she was developing romantic feelings? That’d be pretty cool, even though it’d leave him in a bit of a triangle with Elizabeth. And it’d be understandable, because, let’s face it, he’d been pulling off some major hero stuff here.

  She came toward him, and he thought they might be about to kiss. But then she passed him and went around Ilecko and the Shadows and stepped onto the stairwell leading to the balcony.

  “Shelter is accessible from a tunnel behind the GA Hall,” called Beethoven, relaying information he’d gotten over the radio. “Straighest route is through the theater.”

  “Let’s move,” Tildascow yelled, climbing the stairs.

  As they followed, Ilecko gave Lon a stern glare.

  “She’s okay!” Lon promised.

  “It will not be her,” he whispered in Romanian. But his eyes said it all: He’d killed the love of his life under the curse. Tildascow wouldn’t be able to stop herself.

  Ilecko led him up the stairs and stayed between him and Tildascow.

  At the top, a squad of soldiers was poised at the doors to the General Assembly Hall. They communicated directions with hand signals, and moved all at once on the squad leader’s silent mark. The doors belched smoke and gunfire cracks as they stormed the hall.

  “We go straight down the aisle,” Tildascow hollered as she took position next to the doors. Her voice was deep and scratchy. Maybe trembling. “There’s an exit behind the podium, leading to a hallway. The shelter entrance is straight down on the right-hand side. A team is already in place trying to get it open. Through this door, a few steps to a landing where we wait for clear. Once we move, we do not stop, no matter what you see, no matter if we lose anyone, even me.”

  After a moment of steeling, Beethoven opened the door and led the way, followed by Tildascow and then Ilecko, who kept a firm grasp on Lon’s arm. Mantle came last and moved up to cover Lon’s right side. They landed on the steps above one of the rows leading all the way down to the dais of the General Assembly Hall.

  Lon could remember the iconic theater in his mind’s eye, but now it was a smoky war zone. Furniture was overturned, the podium was wrecked, and one of the large monitors behind it had fallen. The windows in the observation mezzanines were cracked or shattered. A fire in one compartment billowed smoke over melted glass.

  The werewolves came from the front, meeting the soldiers in the middle. Machinegun fire sent glowing sparks into their masses, but they still had the upper hand as they advanced up the slope, creeping through the rows, underneath the tables, and between the chairs. They used themselves as live ammunition, dark cannonballs firing at the pinned with crushing velocity.

  “Three o’clock,” Beethoven yelled.

  “Every o’clock!” Mantle hollered.

  An explosion rocked the ceiling and debris rained down onto the contested zone before them. Shafts of light coming through the breached dome seemed to turn solid in the smoke. Soldiers dropped on rappelling lines, firing all the way.

  The werewolves turned on these new targets, opening a window for the teams trapped at the back of the theater.

  “Go go go!” Tildascow yelled.

  Ilecko grabbed Lon’s arm and they raced down the aisle, advancing on the rostrum beneath the golden backdrop. Other soldiers fell in, covering their flanks. Angels with rifles hovered in the dust clouds above.

  Shots came from everywhere. Halfway down the aisle, a werewolf slithered from beneath a desk, and Ilecko drove his sword into its head, never breaking his stride.

  The walls popped and shattered, the UN emblem fell along with the rest of the backdrop, and the podium collapsed. The soldier on Lon’s right faceplanted into the back of a chair. The man behind him went down under a sharp growl. Up ahead, a werewolf launched across the aisle and a soldier disappeared into its grasp.

  Each step brought that exit closer. A werewolf soared ten feet over their heads, looking like a hawk with its magnificent arms spread wide before its tapering torso and canine legs. It plowed into a rappelling soldier and they both disappeared into the smog.

  Finally, their group narrowed to funnel through the exit.

  But the tunnel beyond was hardly salvation. It was so dark in Ilecko’s shadow that Lon couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. White strobes of gunfire burned moving patterns in the blackness, making footing treacherous even as they were navigating scattered bodies. And the narrow hall trapped sound, turning each shot into an ear-piercing boom. Even their gasps were deafening. Ilecko directed him to put his hand on the wall as a guide.

  “November Zero Zero One to UNACOM,“ Lon heard Beethoven say, “we need those access codes. Over.”

  He was stopped by Ilecko’s hand at his chest. Someone yelled, “Eyes!”

  They’d stopped outside of a room no larger than a cloak closet. Something had been torn away to reveal a deeper room inside and another door, one that was round-cornered and thick, like in a submarine. Frantic flashlights converged on a security system between the two doors. The face panel had been removed, exposing a jungle of wires and buttons and lights and circuit boards.

  “Should I torch it?” Mantle asked.

  “You can’t torch that door,” Tildascow said.

  “UNACOM, we need the access code!” Beethoven radioed.

  “Roger that, November, we’re working on it. Stand by.”

  “No time to stand by!”

  “Stand by, November!”

  “How long we got?” Mantle asked.

  “Twenty seven—”

  Beethoven’s response was interrupted by a growl. Flashlights spun on snapping teeth. Swinging arms. Blinding, deafening gunfire.

  Lon fell against the wall, lost behind Ilecko’s coat. Someone nearby collapsed amid directionless shouting.

  “Fuck! Fuuuuck!”

  “Reloading!”

  “He’
s okay!”

  “He’s not okay!”

  “We need to fall back!”

  “Reloading!”

  “No, advance, keep going, take this hall to the end!”

  Footsteps all around.

  “Go go go!”

  “Get this door open!”

  From the radio: “November, they’re opening the airlock door remotely.”

  “Copy that, UNACOM!”

  “Be advised, they’re saying the shelter has been locked down. The inner chamber can only be opened from inside.”

  Under the radio chatter, the door let loose a depressurizing hiss and a heavenly whiff of fresh air.

  “We’re in. We’re in!” Tildascow yelled, pushing the door open.

  Ilecko helped Lon to his feet and they stepped around stacks of bodies and followed Tildascow through the hidden door, held for them by Beethoven.

  Now they were in a narrow tube leading to the longest, fastest and steepest escalator Lon had ever seen. It descended beneath a close, curved ceiling with hidden lavender lighting.

  “Close the door!” Tildascow yelled.

  “Got it!” Beethoven called.

  Tildascow led the charge, and Lon followed Ilecko as they tried to keep pace. The escalator was so fast that their hair would’ve been blowing if they’d just stayed put; skipping downward was like riding a motorcycle. Farther and farther they went as the comforting warm air charmed his eyes closed. He started to wonder if he wasn’t sleepwalking. He couldn’t see past Ilecko, but how deep could they possibly—

  He slammed into Ilecko’s back, smacking his nose and biting his fucking tongue again.

  Ilecko spun, his sword in his hand, all too ready for a fight.

  “Well I cad’t zee bast you!” Lon yelled, holding his nose.

  Ilecko offered to help him up, but Lon made his own way and pushed in front so he could at least see where they were going. The escalator had dumped them at a big metal door, just like the one at the top. It opened into a tight tube, only ten feet long, with a matching pressure door at the far end. Tildascow was inside waiting for them.

  Lon hadn’t been mistaken; her eyes had turned yellow. And it was hard to be sure with all of the dirt and sweat, but her face seemed swollen. Ilecko entered, pushing him toward her. He wished he’d just stayed in the back.