by Jen Haeger
“Well, I’ll have something to say about that. You’ll do absolutely nothing but rest without a full examination and my express permission.”
“Now Evie, I’m a grown werewolf,” Clem paused, racked by a harsh coughing spell then continued, “and I’ll do as I dang well please…but if you’re lookin’ for an excuse to visit, I’m not gonna stop ya.”
Evelyn chuckled.
“Or I could come visit you jest as soon as my other jail- ah, ah, I mean caretaker, caretaker—jeez Karen, I’m still re-co-ver-ing here!—lets me. But if you do decide to have a visit, we’re back in Kare’s house and don’t you worry too much about any un-in-vi-ted guest, if you guess my meanin’.” Another coughing fit resulted in a softer, thinner tone from Clem. “Good ole’ Gabe installed a fancy alarm system, and a big part of it’s a new German shepherd “puppy,” as Robbie likes to call him, that jest happens to be a beast weighing a good one-hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Well, I hope you don’t expect free veterinary care.”
“Nah…”
More coughing echoed in Evelyn’s ears.
“Sorry, Evie, but I’ma being ordered to rest up now.”
“Well, I’ll let you go then, but I’ll see you soon, alright?”
“Right. You take care ‘o’ yourself and your Alphaman ‘till then, okey dokey?”
“I will. And you just get better.”
“That’s…plan A.”
“Bye, Clem.”
“So long, Evie.”
A warm feeling of relief spread through Evelyn after her conversation with Clem. To have him healing from his horrific ordeal so soon was nothing short of a miracle, though she knew he was probably pushing himself too hard to recover. Yet she had little time to enjoy the bit of good news in the face of other more urgent concerns like getting back into a lab and researching again.
As the meeting with Dr. Jonson drew near, Evelyn’s stomach began to flutter. There really wasn’t any reason to be nervous, since he had offered to help them, but she still didn’t cherish the thought of invading his lab. The good news was that his research focus was brucellosis, a venereal disease in cattle that also happened to be zoonotic, so his lab would have a similar level of biosecurity as a rabies lab and the general protocols that she had used in her own lab, although she’d had to ramp it up due to the DNA sequencing to avoid contamination of the DNA sequences. Evelyn guessed that with recent advances in brucellosis research, the lab would also do a fair amount of DNA sequencing. However, the big difference was it would probably be animal DNA which had no chance of being contaminated by the DNA of the humans handling it. Her brain jogged through possible solutions, but the best would be having separate rooms for DNA extraction, quantification and PCR preparation, and the quantification and sequencing of the DNA. Her own lab had actually been suboptimal in that she had only been able to separate the procedures into different corners of the room, and that might have to suffice again.
Adding to Evelyn’s stress was the new and daunting task of getting ready for the lab meeting in conjunction with Kim with some semblance of a normal routine. Fortunately, they were able to stagger their breakfasts and showers such that they didn’t get in each other’s way too badly. David, however, was left on the outside of the bathroom grumbling until the girls had both finished with it. At first miffed at not being included in the lab group anymore, he didn’t complain much after Evelyn and he sat down and they agreed on how important it was that he gather more information about the strays so that they could figure out a way to stop the spread of the mutant.
As she and Kim were pulling out onto the street to go to the meeting, Evelyn’s thoughts raced between her conversation with Clem the previous night and concerns about the new lab. She felt like she needed to take time to see Clem, but knew that it was impossible until the new lab was at least up and running smoothly. In just under ten minutes, the pair pulled into the parking lot of the Children’s Garden across the street from the veterinary school and Evelyn bought special tokens for the meter which allowed them to park there for a mere three dollars an hour. Evelyn had decided that the best way to enter the clinic clandestinely was through one of the large back doors that were typically open mid-morning for cleaning out the large animal stalls, so they jaywalked across the street and crossed the large animal clinic parking lot to reach the open doors and slipped inside. Within were the wide, high-ceilinged, barn-like halls of the large animal clinic with stalls on both sides. Since she didn’t practice on large animals, Evelyn had not been in this part of the building since graduating from vet school but it was important to look like you knew where you were going, so she marched on until reaching a vaguely familiar area that led her to the proper stairwell to take them down into the basement. There were a few prestigious laboratories that garnered more public interest and funding on the top floors of the building, but Evelyn knew that most of the labs, especially ones that might be targeted by groups like PETA were tucked down in the basement of the school.
They turned a corner and came to a sealed door with a punch code pad under the knob. Evelyn pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket, dialed in the needed code, and the door popped open with a beep and a click. She held the door for Kim and the other woman strode through it into the hallway beyond. Dr. Jonson’s lab proved to be the second to last one down a dim and neglected-feeling corridor that Evelyn knew few people had ever set foot in. The door to the lab was closed, but knocking produced Dr. Jonson himself with a half-eaten ham sandwich in his hand.
“Ah, Dr. Eisenhart I presume, I’m Dr. Jonson.” He shifted his sandwich to his left hand and held the lab door open with his foot to shake Evelyn’s hand. “And this is…?”
“My lab assistant Kim, er…” Evelyn began.
“Kim Panders,” Kim finished extending her hand.
Dr. Jonson shook it and then opened the door wider so that the two ladies could enter the lab. “Please, follow me on this side of the yellow line. I have a small office just there.”
Evelyn did not approve of the professor eating in his work space, but did appreciate that he at least tried to keep the contamination contained from the rest of the lab. The lab wasn’t small, but it was going to be a little bit of a tight fit for both sets of research to go on simultaneously. Sadly, the equipment was mostly dated, but there were a few newer pieces scattered throughout, and once she gave Roberto a list of what she needed, there would be more. Surprisingly there weren’t any students around, but the more Evelyn thought about it, it wasn’t that strange. First and second year vet students would generally have classes well into the late afternoon and third and fourth year students would be at their clinical rotations until 5:00p.m. at the very earliest. Maybe we can work in the mornings?
Kim and Evelyn followed Dr. Jonson into his tiny, cluttered office and sat down in chairs that appeared, judging by the dust impressions on the green, vinyl seats, to have been recently cleared and their contents piled next to them. The professor took another bite of his sandwich and then settled himself into his desk chair.
“So, you want to borrow my lab to research a cure for the werewolf virus?” he said unceremoniously.
Evelyn was a bit taken aback by his forward approach since he hadn’t even bothered to shut his office door, but tried to take things in stride. “Yep.”
“Hmmmm, never really thought about it myself. I’m much better with bacteria, they just make so much more sense to me than viruses. They’re tiny organisms while viruses seem, I don’t know, freakish and alien? You know, it’s still a hot debate as to whether they should be classified as actually being alive or not.”
Evelyn nodded politely.
Dr. Jonson continued his rant. “And retroviruses weaving their DNA into our genetic loom, just bizarre. Anyways, I’m guessing that you are assuming a blending of wolf and human DNA facilitated by the virus?”
Again Evelyn nodded. “I’ve detected wolf DNA using primers developed to help ferret out wolf hybrids in dog bite
cases, but I’m mainly concentrating on trying to excise the viral DNA with the assumption that the wolf DNA will always be tagged with viral DNA.”
“Sounds fascinating. I don’t want to be too forward, but are you both turned? I mean infected?”
Evelyn didn’t want to out Kim, but the other woman nodded, so Evelyn also nodded then blurted out, “Accidentally.”
“Accidentally, well, I can see why you’d be so interested in a cure then.”
Kim also seemed unable to hold her tongue. “How can you stand it knowing that the virus will drive you mad and eventually kill you?”
Evelyn bit her lip as she waited for the man’s response. Dr. Jonson’s eyes drifted up towards the ceiling and his face contorted in deep thought.
“Well, I guess I just thought it was a fair price to pay for such a rare gift. I mean, everything has a price, and for all the amazing things I’ve gotten to experience, and for the lives I used to save, I think it was worth it.”
Evelyn picked up on his phrasing. “Used to save?”
The professor focused on the two women again and leaned forward slightly in his chair. “I was a bit of a vigilante in my younger days, but now I know that I can save far more lives by researching diseases like brucellosis.”
Evelyn’s respect for Dr. Jonson grew with his statement, but since he was being so candid, she didn’t stop there. “And what made you choose theriogenology as a specialty?”
“Ah, the miracle of life, of course.”
Evelyn didn’t know quite what to say to that, so she tried to switch topics without a clutch. “Do you have many students in your lab?”
“Just the three right now, well actually two. Tyler is doing an externship in Chicago for the next three weeks. Margo and Melissa are both second year students, so they come in during the afternoon and usually work until around eight or nine.”
“So we could probably come into the lab early in the morning and work until mid-afternoon?”
“Well, I know that your research is very important, especially since I heard that there is a contagious mutation running amok? But sometimes the students do come in early in the morning to start projects, check on them between classes, and then return in the late afternoon or evening to finish them. I’m told that this all isn’t exactly official with the university and that you’re trying to keep a low profile, so best to avoid my students if possible. I mean obviously they will know that something is going on, but I’ll tell them that I received new funding based on a lab sharing program…Still, they are smart and curious which could be a dangerous combination for you.”
Evelyn’s hopes for sleeping normal hours were dashed. “Of course you’re right. Are you getting us parking passes and after-hours access to the building or should I contact Roberto?”
Dr. Jonson opened a drawer of his desk and rifled around inside it. “Oh, I’m glad you reminded me. This was in my faculty mailbox this morning.”
He handed Evelyn a blank manila envelope. Inside were two blank building access cards and a faculty parking pass. Evelyn pocketed one of the passes and gave the other to Kim. “Don’t lose that.”
Kim examined the card and then put it in her pocket. “I won’t.”
“One more thing, Dr. Jonson—“
“Oh, sorry, please call me Pat.”
“One more thing, Pat, any chance that we can get access to more than one room to keep the DNA sequencing separate from the extraction and PCR prep?”
Dr. Jonson straightened up in his chair. “Actually, we get a number of human samples in this lab, so we already have a separate room for the prep, and the PCR and sequencing machines are in a room down the hall. Here, I can give you the code.”
He searched around his desk for a spare bit of paper and ended up tearing the corner off a photocopy of a journal article. He wrote the number on the slip of paper and passed it over to Evelyn who put it in the envelope with the parking pass.
“Can I take a look around the lab to see what we are going to need equipment-wise?”
Dr. Jonson smiled broadly and winked at her while rubbing his hands together. “Certainly! And even if we have something already, it wouldn’t hurt if you wanted your own, say, set of brand new pipettes or PCR machines or negative-eighty freezer…”
13
The next few days were spent in a whirl of ordering equipment and reagents for the lab, with David constantly on the phone with one pack after another gathering information about the various strays. So far he had confirmed eleven strays, seven men and four women of varying ages, though it seemed that Katie was an isolated incident and no other children were reported. David also sat Kim down and interviewed her officially, entering all of her answers into a spreadsheet that he had made to log the responses and try to coax the data into a pattern. In addition to Kim and Katie, there was a male stray discovered by the Alonso during the last full moon cycle; the other known strays came from packs in other countries, though mainly from Europe and Asia. It was frustrating because both David and Evelyn knew that there were more strays out there, but they wouldn’t be able to track them again until the next full moon. They also had no way of knowing how many other people were becoming infected on a daily basis because the virus didn’t manifest symptoms until close to the completion of the lunar cycle.
After five days of interviews, compiling data, and mapping possible accounts of stray activity gleaned from the internet, David presented his findings to Evelyn and Kim as they sat around the dining room table after dinner.
“Alright, here’s what we know so far. First, the outbreaks are pretty well-defined and almost always follow with news reports of animal attack in the same areas where known strays live, sometimes only miles away. However, a couple of times the reports were definitely not connected to the known stray according to the resident pack.”
“Okay…so that suggests small scale infections that can be closely monitored and controlled.” Evelyn let out a long breath and nodded. “Makes complete sense if the Vulke intend to kidnap and draft the strays. They’d want to know exactly where they could expect a stray to pop up.”
“And they sure seemed to know where to find me,” said Kim frowning.
David cringed in sympathy before he continued. “Second, the target demographic was confirmed to be healthy males generally between the ages of fifteen and fifty, and not just healthy males, but males who exercised on a regular basis. In fact, every single stray admitted to being concerned with health and fitness.”
“Were all of them members of a gym?” Evelyn’s eyebrows shot up in excitement.
“I was getting to that, but no, not all of them were members of a gym.”
Evelyn deflated. “I guess the idea of a location being the source of infection is pretty much out then.”
“Yeah, and other than commitment to exercise, there really aren’t any other common connections.”
Kim interjected, “But that doesn’t really tie in with Katie’s infection.”
David sighed. “Nope.”
“So,” added Evelyn, “either Katie’s the key to figuring out the mutant etiology…or she’s an outlier in the data set whose infection is different from the rest of the strays. Great.”
“Well, one pretty unanimous thing is that none of the strays have any clue how they got infected, so it’s not just you, Kim. And according to the other pack’s interactions with the strays, you’ve been handling the whole thing pretty damn well. Most of the other strays are pretty much freaking out. It’s a big mess in some places as you can imagine. I didn’t mention the possibility of a cure to any of them. I didn’t want to…” he glanced up at Evelyn, his face coloring, “…well, most of them weren’t really grasping what was going on anyway, so…”
She smiled with only half her mouth. “It’s okay, David. I know you have confidence in me, but the truth is, we’re still a long way from success. A cure could be years away and we’re not even sure what’s going to happen in the next few weeks.”
Sile
nce reigned for several minutes, until abruptly broken by David. “Gah! The more I think about it, the more I think that we’re missing something obvious.”
“Okay, let’s think about things in the simplest terms. The Vulke wanted to make infection easier and less recognizable than a bite wound. They could have tried blood transfusions, but those are rare and it would be difficult to control who got the blood unless they controlled the whole hospital. Now I’m willing to believe that the Vulke have resources we don’t know about, but I find it hard to believe that a bunch of crazy sadistic werewolves are in control of an entire hospital.”
Kim sat forward in her chair. “Maybe it wasn’t people receiving blood transfusions, but the Vulke infecting healthy people who were giving blood? They could control who got the contaminated needles and who got sterile ones.”
Evelyn mulled Kim’s idea over in her mind, but then shook her head. “But they wouldn’t need to mutate the virus for any infection route that involved blood or injections, so we’re left with oral and aerosol infection, and we’ve already pretty much ruled out aerosol infection because it would be difficult to control and we can’t pinpoint a place that the aerosol would’ve been released.”
Kim nodded. “So that leaves oral infection, right? But do viruses really spread that way?” She and David both looked to Evelyn expectantly.
Evelyn knitted her eyebrows in thought. “Well, rabies has been known to spread that way, when animals eat the infected tissues of other animals, so I guess, yeah that’s totally possible.”
David banged his fist on the table. “Great! So now all we have to do is ask all of the strays to remember everything they ate in the past month or so, and it could always be Vulke waiters slipping the virus into the food of healthy young males at restaurants.”
Evelyn frowned at David. “Sure, it would be nearly impossible to track the mutant if it was being administered in restaurants, and really difficult to cross-reference what all the strays have been eating, but it’s a place to start at least.”
