“Serves you right. I’ve been yelling into this for ten minutes.”
“I was driving. What is it?”
“I talked to Alok. He said—”
“Tell me when I get there.” I can’t ask what I need to over an open channel. Erin deserves better than that. “I’m about fifteen minutes out and I’ve run out of patience.”
“I’ll see you in ten, then. Out.”
Shane started the bike and kicked it into gear. His back tire threw off blue smoke as he peeled out of the lot.
Nine-and-a-half minutes later, he pulled up in front of Holly’s house. Her landscaping had suffered for her busyness and the heat over the last few months. Even the decorative cactus had slimmed down and started to dry out around the edges. Shane’s yard didn’t look much better. So much for drought-tolerant plants that stay nice even when you can’t give less of a shit.
The front door opened. Holly looked as poorly rested as Rigo had, though Shane suspected she’d spent most of the night on her house phone. “I’ve got answers you probably aren’t going to like,” she said without preamble. “Come inside. I took notes. There’s water in the fridge.”
Stepping inside provided a welcome break from the scalding heat, though Shane couldn’t tell if the air conditioner chilled him more than the dread in her voice. “Where’s he been?”
“Dealing with the fallout of a laboratory break-in. He wasn’t involved with the project anymore, but a couple government inquiry panels wanted answers from an expert. Which is an eerie game of Six Degrees of Separation, because he thinks we’re dealing with the fallout of it, too.” Holly led the way into the kitchen and plopped down on a stool at the counter.
Shane noted the pad of paper and pen in front of her. Messy writing covered the page. “The barrels?”
“Yep. He about had a litter of kittens when I described them. Then almost had an aneurysm when I told him where we’d found them.” Holly picked up the pen but didn’t click the ballpoint out. Instead, she used the plastic tip as a pointer to guide herself through her notes. “After I told him what had happened, then shouted at him when he tried to use the words ‘confidential’ and ‘security clearance’, he was pretty forthcoming.”
“I’ll bet.” Shane pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge.
“The background on the virus is pretty illuminating to what’s happening out here now. Like the smart Ferals. Turns out, I was right. The labs weren’t just developing one strain of what became the Great Beast Plague. That one was, mm, a base virus. Their starting point. The ‘let’s see if we can do this thing’ entry into the Contagious Illness contest at the county fair.”
“No wonder I’ve never cared for the fair. Here I thought it was just the deathtrap rides.”
“No, it’s the deathtrap viruses. The base virus produced the Ferals we know and love. Stupid, hungry, more beasts than humans. Their main drives are to survive, reproduce, and spread the virus. Standard.” Holly moved the pen tip down another point. “Once they had that one producing anything like reliable results, they started to branch out into purpose-built versions. Designer strains that would allow them to tailor what the virus enhanced.”
“Wait.” Shane sat next to her on a barstool. “Did they really want the stupid, hungry version? Is that what they were going for?”
Holly shook her head. “Their end goal was us, only with more variety. Werewolves weren’t good enough for them, or weretigers, or any of the other were-sorts. They wanted to pick and choose what traits passed over and allow greater control over the product. As Alok put it, they took a condition they didn’t fully understand then tried to teach it to sit and stay.”
He frowned. “That’s dumb as fuck.”
“Probably the words spoken three sentences before some scientist said, ‘Hold my beer.’ So, designer strains. They planned two to begin with, as well as some vague plan for consumer-marketable strains that gave people ears or tails or whatever. The first planned one made me roll my eyes. They wanted beast-enhanced super soldiers. Strong, fast, ferocious, probably with big dicks and fur growing in the shape of the word ‘alpha male’ on their foreheads.” Holly rolled her eyes again.
Shane did, too. “Whoever decided that assholes and shitlords should use that term should come talk to me. My fist wants a word with them.”
“Can I help? Nevermind. The second designer strain was meant both as a complement to the soldier strain and as a beast unto its own purpose. Alok called this the pack strain. Its purpose was to provide long-distance communication and coordination options that an enemy couldn’t intercept.”
“That’s clever.”
Holly glared at her paper. “It is. He said it was like a pack howling at each other. Packs communicate in sounds only wolves understand. This is communicating in a way only this particular strain understands, only silent to everyone but the Ferals themselves. He didn’t want to use the term ‘telepathy’. ‘Music in a register only they can hear,’ he said. I guess they often dream with each other, too. Then we had to have another argument, because I was the one who told him about how packs communicate.”
Shane’s veins turned to ice. Dreams. They dream together. Erin said she dreamed about the Ferals, and they knew she was watching. “What else?”
The words came out as a growl. Holly glanced up at him. “Boss?”
“What else, Holly.”
“The soldier strain had a lot of problems. Mostly with the subjects killing each other. Or themselves. They couldn’t contain the inherent viciousness, and I get the idea they couldn’t contain the existential horror, either. It hadn’t gotten very far. The pack strain showed a lot more promise, but it was also fragile, and it behaved in ways they didn’t understand, starting with how it spread.”
Shane took a drink of water to wash down the lump in his throat and said nothing.
Holly continued. “When a lone subject was infected with the virus, it often didn’t take. They’d get some redness and then the immune system fought it off like any other infection. It was about a sixteen percent success rate. That number climbed dramatically when groups of people were infected together, or when a single subject was exposed, then put in proximity to other infected subjects.”
“Why?”
“They have no idea.” Holly shrugged. “Alok guesses it probably has to do with the pack nature of the virus, the lycanthropy strain used, and a bunch of scientific words I took to mean ‘we’re lost here and trying to sound like we know what we’re doing’. Whatever it is, it was consistently repeatable. That fragile strain that couldn’t fight off white blood cells got a whole lot stronger when you put it with its friends. Even then, they had to nurture it along until it really took hold. Which they considered all to the good for a while, because it let the packs bond.”
“For a while.”
“Yeah, that whole ‘pack bond’ thing became a problem, too. They turned obsessive and too attached to each other. They were family in the most extreme meaning of the word. Then they’d eat people who tried to, say, poke a pack member for a blood sample.”
Your mate will join the pack that waits for her. They sing in joy for her coming. “All right.”
“About that point, Alok left the program. When the outbreak happened, he heard it was just the base strain that got out. He didn’t hear about the reports of ‘smart’ Ferals until later, and even then, it seemed within the realm of normal mutations that some might retain some intellect. It happened a couple times in the lab. Until recently.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
She took a deep breath. “There was a break-in at one of the secured facilities in California where they’d stored the more advanced strains of the virus, just before they started bombing the area. They didn’t have time to destroy them before they had to evacuate, and who was going to wade into Ground Zero, which was full of Ferals who thought people were chew toys?”
“Other Ferals.”
“Winner winner, chicken dinner. Turns out that big, bad Feral that A
nita saw got into the place. They still had remote cameras transmitting in the labs until he disabled them.”
“How did he know they were there?”
“Not a question Alok would answer. He sounded— Let’s say I didn’t push it, because the last time I heard him sound that way, it was a Pandora’s Box I regretted opening up again for him. I’ll have to wear him down.” Holly pursed her lips.
Shane nodded. “So that Feral leader stole those barrels of virus.”
“Yep. From what Alok told me, Big Bad grabbed a variety pack of a refined version of the base strain and all the pack strain he could find. No soldier strain. But that wasn’t all he grabbed.” Holly tapped a point on her notepad with her pen. “Alok said they’d been testing methods to refine their exposure process. One of the things they fought with was controlling how the virus transmitted itself.”
“All of California is Feral. I’m not sure it has a problem with transmission.”
“The base strain? No. The base strain will set up shop in whatever living host it can latch onto. As long as that host isn’t a werewolf, or other sort of were-critter, it’s pouring the cheap prosecco and putting on the sexy time soundtrack.”
“That’s vivid.”
“Tell me I’m wrong. The soldier strain, though, it required a direct introduction to a wound in the body. They could inject it, but it worked best through saliva in a bite.”
“Sounds to me like they’re finding out what we’ve known all along. The wolf picks who the wolf wants. We call it ‘paranormal’ for a reason. It doesn’t behave by normal rules.”
Holly gazed skyward. “I’ve said that to Alok for years. ‘Science doesn’t explain everything, Alok.’ He just told me he accepted the challenge. So the soldier strain didn’t play nice and no one wants it to sit at their lunch table. The pack strain, as you can guess, liked broader transmission methods. A bunch of test subjects getting injected with it at once, which took a lot of manpower for such spotty results. They decided they’d try an airborne mass dispersal method to do it. That way, they could put a bunch of subjects in a room, hit the disperser, and everyone could breathe in the sweet, sweet smell of Beast Plague. Who needs essential oils when you can have a viral contagion in your diffuser instead?”
“And it worked?”
“Kind of? Like everything else in this project, they got mixed results. The thing they’d designed it for, the pack strain, didn’t see improvements in infection rates. Blood and spit and, ah— You know, let’s just stay with blood and spit.” Her nose wrinkled, and her face pinched in with disgust. “Ugh. Blood and spit. Those were still the best transmission methods for the pack strain. One of the researchers decided to try out one of the newest advanced base strain versions and got great results with it. More retention of sentience and sapience, better coherence and cognition, good strides towards actually reaching their goal.”
Shane watched the rim of the water’s surface swirl against the plastic inside the bottle. “Holly, how much of this was tested on humans?”
“I did not ask. Because if I asked, I might have gotten the answer. Then I couldn’t live in willful ignorance while I continue speaking to my ex. Instead, I like to think they decided to try human testing and Alok noped out.” Her lips flattened to a thin line.
He wondered how deeply she believed that, and how badly it would hurt her to discover a truth far beyond what she wanted to consider possible. “Why are you telling me about transmission methods? Does this have something to do with the shit we’re dealing with?”
“Oh! Yes. See, that airborne mass dispersal machine? The Big Bad Feral stole all the prototypes of it. There were three, I guess, and he took them all. Alok said it wasn’t exactly a fancy deal. A tank where you pour the carrier medium that keeps the virus stable while it’s dispersed. A tank for the virus. Some pipes to mix it up, and an overglorified bug fogger on the top. Add power and compressed air, and poof. Virus everywhere.”
Water erupted out the top of Shane’s water bottle as he squeezed the vessel too hard. It slopped over his hands to puddle on the counter and drip onto the floor. “Holly, have you talked to Rigo?”
“Not since this morning. Why?”
“The Ferals in Levalle raided the hardware store. They stole generators and air compressors.”
Holly paused in the act of reaching for the dish towel on the other side of the counter. Realization dawned over her face. “They stole a bunch of virus. They stole a way to spread it. Now, they have the parts to use it. Oh, shit, Shane.”
Her words sounded far away, dim against the loud rush of thoughts as they churned in his mind. Stealing this virus can’t have been easy. That was a job that took planning, effort, and a difficult acquisition of resources. The samples of virus are the last of their kind. No one’s making more of the undiluted stuff. It’s all Feral-to-human transmission now. If he knew enough to break into a lab, destroy cameras, and make off with both the virus and a specialized transmission method, he had to know there wouldn’t be more to steal later. What he did with this stuff had to count.
What did he want to do? Bomb Coyote Trail with it so the people here would pay for us defying him? So he could get control of us, and the other towns out here, like he said he wanted? No. This can’t be about Coyote Trail. Maybe he would have used us as a test, but there had to be a greater plan. Erin thinks so, and she—
“Did you ask Alok about overcoming a small exposure to the virus? Fighting it off?”
Only by Holly’s open mouth and visible surprise did he realize she’d continued talking after his thoughts had consumed him. His question had interrupted her. “I did,” she said.
“I am so sorry, Holly. I didn’t mean to interrupt you or ignore what you were saying.”
“It was mostly cuss words and panic, so you didn’t miss much.” Holly nodded once to him in a gesture he knew meant she accepted the apology. “To answer your question, yes. I talked to Alok. He said it depended on the strain of virus the person was exposed to. If it was the base strain, the infected person has little chance at all. They’ll be a Feral within half a day, and that’s pushing it. ‘Hours’ is more likely.”
Shane gripped the crumpled, wet remains of his water bottle harder. Greg. But not Erin. No. Not Erin. “The other strains?”
“The soldier strain would probably not take. It was picky about transmission methods. Something to do with pain endorphins and adrenaline and aggression and the hoodoo Alok doesn’t want to talk about.”
“And the pack strain?”
“That’s where it gets fuzzy. If a person were to experience a mild exposure to the pack strain, they have a good chance of fighting it off on their own. White blood cells are tough little bastards and that strain of virus is delicate. They might experience some of the side effects of an infection, including the weird dreams, but they’ll probably be all right if they don’t come near others with that strain. Probably.” Holly spread her hands.
If they don’t come near others with that strain. Like dreaming with them every night. Or going to a town taken over by them, walking into a grocery store where they’re sleeping… Erin’s wound had worsened after her scouting trip to Levalle. She went there to help me. Us. And she may have doomed herself doing it.
“When is it too late to fight that strain off? How do you know a person won’t beat it?” He almost couldn’t force the words out of his throat.
“That strain is different than the others. It doesn’t show the same signs as the base strain we’re used to. The cognitive effects often hit first, as the infected subject turns inward to the bond with their new pack. Even then, Alok said the real, physical tipping point is the infiltration of the lymphatic system. Once it’s taken that over, the white blood cells don’t attack the virus anymore. They just roll out the welcome mat. After that, it’s a downhill slide you can’t stop.”
Memories sharpened to cut through the knot of hopes that held Shane together. The redness on her arm gone, in favor of streaks through
her hand and arm, up to knits in her elbow and stretching into her shirt. High school biology class laughing about the word “groin” as the teacher explained the lymph nodes were there, and in the neck and armpits.
“She has it, Holly,” Shane said quietly.
Holly fell still. “What? Who has it? Oh, no. Not Erin.”
“Yes. Erin. My mate.”
Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. “Shane… God.”
“When she killed those Ferals at the truck, she had a small cut. One of the Ferals bled on her. She had the dreams but seemed all right. Until yesterday. Her cut got worse when she was close to them. Last night, all she did was dream. It looked like her arm was getting better today. Not as red. Just streaks.” With a trembling hand, he traced the lines where he’d seen the redness on Erin’s arm.
Holly closed her eyes and bowed her head. A soft breath gusted out of her. “Lymphatic system. Those streaks run straight through the epitrochlear nodes and into the axillary nodes.”
He stared at her. “What?”
Holly opened her eyes to look at him through a fallen lock of her hair. “I had a whole life before I came to Coyote Trail, Shane. One that included the term ‘epitrochlear nodes’. I’m so sorry about Erin. Just— So sorry. Those words aren’t even enough. If it’s in her lymphatic system, she’s as good as turned. It’s only a matter of time. I wish you didn’t already know the best thing we can do for her, because no mate should ever have to think about that.”
13
The Heart is a Lighthouse on the Umbral Seas of Fear
Meghan held out her hand, fur a soft shadow over her tender skin. “Come, sister. Take my hand. Your family wants to sing your welcome. Come Fixer, sister, your pack waits for you.”
Erin didn’t understand, but understanding seemed so unimportant now when she had a family who wanted her. All her life, she had hoped for a mother and father who looked forward to the times when they could be together. Who approved of her, who she was, what she did, who accepted what she had made of her life after childhood left her behind. For aunts and uncles who reached out, cousins who gathered to enjoy the closeness of kin.
Brave the Night: A Bully Boys Novel Page 16
