Moonlight Medicine: Inoculation

by Jen Haeger

  32

  As soon as David caught the scent of the humans on the breeze, he knew that they were in trouble. Kim was quick and spry and he honestly had trouble keeping up with her. He’d just barely got there in time before Kim endured a spray of quills from the porcupine, now as he sprinted after her following the much more enticing aroma of humans, he feared that he would be just a moment too late. He pushed his Wolfkin body hard, but found his strength waning, and blamed the exertion of carrying Kim and holding off the change so long. The distance between him and Kim was lengthening despite his efforts and he silently cursed himself for not coming up with a better system of communication with Kim before the transformation. As difficult as Evelyn had been to deal with when she first became a Wolfkin, David now saw how fortunate he was to have had Clem around to help and the enormous protected area of the Wolfkin Council’s forest in which to train her. Sure there were human attendants about, but they were wary and armed to the teeth with Tasers and tranquilizer darts, so David didn’t have to worry about them at all.

  The scent of the humans was getting much stronger, and David risked howling at Kim with as much Alpha-y authority in his voice as he could muster. David did think that she slowed ever so slightly, but she hadn’t come anywhere close to stopping. Howling again purely out of unbridled frustration, he tried to calm himself and focus. He obviously couldn’t catch or otherwise halt Kim, but perhaps his howls would warn the humans of the impending danger. He almost howled again until he considered that his howls would likely just strike fear into the wandering people and the scent of their fear might be even more irresistible to Kim. David’s boots made little sound as they trampled over dead leaves and he leapt over logs and stumps as he tore through the sparse underbrush of the spring forest, so his next low growl of frustration sounded abnormally loud.

  David wished Evelyn was there helping him. Together they might have been able to flank Kim and at least herd her away. He thought of Evelyn out there in the ravine, the grotesque twisting of her spine, the ugly lumpiness of her arms, the pain in her eyes, her helpless condition, and what people finding her like that as a Wolfkin might mean. This thought gave him an extra spur of will and David put on another burst of speed just as he began to hear voices.

  “I know you heard that! Screw this, I’m out.”

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  “That wasn’t a coyote! It sounded like a wolf.”

  “There aren’t any wolves in East Lansing. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Whatever, do your stupid cache if you want. I’m going to go wait by the emergency phone.”

  “Becky, come on, we’re almost there.”

  “Don’t ca-aare.”

  “Wait, wait, you don’t even know what direction out is. Here, I’m coming.”

  David saw two bobbing lights in the distance rapidly growing brighter. He had closed the gap considerably between himself and Kim, but she was still about fifteen yards in front of him and headed straight for the lights. By this time David knew that Kim must also have heard the voices and realized that she was going after humans, but yet she showed no signs of slowing down or altering her course. Knowing that he had to do something and it was now or never, he decelerated just enough to reach down and grab a hefty branch. He hurled it towards Kim’s back. The projectile of wood caught her square between the shoulder blades and Kim skidded to a halt and turned around with a snarl.

  David was briefly celebrating his triumph as she stalked towards him and away from the people, when one of the lights shined directly in his face and the woman let out a horrified scream. Kim immediately turned her attention back to the couple, and David cringed as the air filled with the intoxicating aroma of fearful prey. He heard the two humans begin to frantically crash their way through the forest and he understood that there was no way that he was going to be able to distract Kim from the couple now. Flinging himself forwards, he latched onto Kim’s leg to stop her from reaching the humans. At the same moment, Kim lurched ahead to pursue the couple again and so fell forwards off balance when she tried to move the leg David was grappling. She let out a vicious growl and kicked David’s muzzle with her free foot as she tried to squirm away.

  The blow stunned David, who couldn’t defend himself with both hands around her leg, but he held fast. Snarling and howling, Kim kicked him again, this time landing the heel of her boot in his eye. As pain exploded out into his entire head, David felt his grip slacken and Kim thrashed her captive leg free from his grasp. Howling in pain and despair, David watched through one good eye as Kim regained her feet and sprinted after the couple once more. He tried to rise and go after her again, but he was dizzy and disorientated from the blows to his head. Knowing that he couldn’t give up, David stumbled forwards, and tried to run, but his exhaustion and disorientation made him clumsy and his heart sank as he came to the realization that he was not going to catch up to Kim before she caught up to the humans. He didn’t want to picture her slaughtering the couple, but the images came unbidden into his mind anyway and he had a visceral response to them as he remembered his own accidental killing of his friend Tommy as a young werewolf. In desperation, David let out a high-pitched howl with only one interpretation: “No!”

  David couldn’t let this happen, he couldn’t let Kim hurt those people and suffer the burden of that for the rest of her life. David willed himself to focus, and willed himself to concentrate on catching up to Kim. Forcing himself to listen, even though he was terrified of what he might hear, David tried to calculate how long it would take for Kim to catch up to the terrified humans. He first heard the human couple noisily fleeing then spotted their headlamps, and as he slightly adjusted his course towards them, he spotted Kim closing in. Ignoring pain, ignoring exhaustion, David just ran. Even though he wouldn’t be able to reach them before Kim did, maybe he could still reach them before she did any irreparable damage.

  Suddenly the lights vanished and David heard a cry and the sounds of at least one of the humans tumbling down a slope. That was bad. If one of them was down, Kim would be on them in an instant, and he would arrive too late. Horrified, he watched as Kim gracefully swung over a fallen tree and disappeared down into the ravine with the humans. David strained forwards, but he felt like everything was moving in slow motion and the ravine didn’t seem to be getting any closer. Screams filled his ears like in his worst nightmares, then finally he reached the top of the slope and pitched himself down towards an unmoving light at the bottom.

  33

  At first, when David got closer to the light, he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was looking at. Then, when it finally sank in, he slowed and finally cautiously approached the scene and crouched next to the bodies of the two unfortunate humans. Evelyn was hunched over them, taking obvious care to observe their breathing and other vital signs. Kim lay splayed out in a clumsy array of furry limbs nearby. David couldn’t even imagine what scene had played out moments before his arrival, so he went over and checked on Kim, who appeared to be unconscious, and then sat on a convenient log and waited for Evelyn to try to pantomime an explanation. The two of them had more practice at Wolfkin charades than he and Kim, so with luck, he might be able to understand.

  Finally, Evelyn turned and acknowledged him with a stern glance and pointed at Kim. David whined softly and made an apologetic gesture. Evelyn picked up an empty syringe from the forest floor and mimed leaping out from behind the log and jabbing Kim. She winced and whined a little after the movements, and then pointed gingerly to a second syringe that still held some clear fluid. Pointing to the syringe, David placed both hands, palms together, under his own tilted head and briefly closed his eyes as though sleeping. After a moment he looked back up at Evelyn, who nodded slightly. David then understood that Evelyn had brought tranquilizer with her for just such an emergency.

  Huffing out a breath in relief, he glanced at the two prone humans. One of the pair was a young slender blond woman, wearing nice jeans, a green spring jacket, and very
muddy white tennis shoes. The other was a pale, but dark-haired young man wearing well-worn jeans, a long brown duster, and hiking boots. David had no idea what they were going to do with the two drugged coeds now, or how long the sedation would last. Dawn was still a few hours off, so certainly, they had to do something with them before then. Evelyn growled softly to get David’s attention, and she pointed to him and then to the pair and then pointed off to her right. She motioned picking the girl up and carrying her in that direction. Obviously wanting him to take them somewhere, Evelyn next pointed at the woman’s headlamp and then held her paw up to the side of her head with the middle three fingers curled down and the thumb and pinky extended.

  David had no idea what she was getting at with this mime, so when she stared at him expectantly he just tried to shrug. She let out a frustrated whump of air and repeated the mime, but David was still at sea. He motioned Evelyn coming with him, but she stood and whined in pain and then sat down again and shook her head, then repeated the motions again. David decided that he would have to recognize what she meant when he saw it, and also that if all else failed he would leave them under a lamppost where they would likely be spotted sooner rather than later. Nodding to Evelyn as she switched off the couple’s headlamps, he bent down and scooped up the woman and eased her over his left shoulder. Then he used his right hand to scoop up the man and position him slightly over his right shoulder. Their combined weight made it difficult for David to stand again, but he eventually rose and began tromping slowly in the direction Evelyn had pointed.

  David knew it was going to be quite some way carrying his two-person load because they had run as far into the middle of the woodlot as they could upon first arriving, but he wasn’t sure just how far because he wasn’t going out the way that they had entered. Considering this, David tried to pace himself and not think about his exhaustion, aching muscles, and sore head. He did try to stay alert for other sounds or scents of humans, even though having two humans right next to his nose wasn’t helping with picking up fresh scents. His stomach churned and reminded him that he hadn’t yet hunted that night and for the briefest moment he glanced sidelong at the young man and felt immediately horrid and guilty. Then, focusing on ignoring his empty stomach as well, he increased his pace.

  After what seemed like at least half an hour, David began to see a green light ahead through the trees. He had crossed two trails as he walked, and tried to avoid staying on them, but now the light appeared to be at the end of one of the trails. He also spotted the outer fence and a gate. The light was coming from a source just outside the gate and David hoped that this was the light that Evelyn was referencing in her gesticulations. Continuing on at a much slower and arguably stealthier pace, he listened intently for any sounds of humans now that he was so close to the fence and the gate. Since it was difficult to be sneaky carrying the two humans, he set them down gently and approached the gate along the fence from the side, keeping low to the ground and inside the shadows as much as possible.

  When he got closer to the gate, he saw that the green light was coming from an emergency phone, and suddenly Evelyn’s wolf-hand along the side of her head made sense. She had been mimicking a phone. This phone had a headset, just one large emergency button to push, and David saw that he could easily push the button to summon help for the couple. Unfortunately, the phone was a few feet outside the gate and, in addition to giving off its own light, was also just a few yards from a streetlight along a road and a sidewalk. Not currently seeing or hearing any people or traffic, David would be totally exposed if anyone did happen to walk or drive by. Snuffling out a frustrated breath, he ducked back from the fence and crept back to the couple. Picking up the girl first, he carried her towards the gate. Her eyes fluttered and she stirred in his furry arms, but to David’s immense relief she didn’t fully wake. Laying her down again just inside the gate, he then went back for the boy. David lay the boy down next to the girl then, listened intently, he scanned outside the gate again.

  Glancing nervously back and forth, David knew that the longer he waited, the more likely it was for someone to come along, so finally he darted out, trying to keep as low and in the shadows as possible. Knocking the phone off its cradle, he pressed the button just as headlights appeared over the hill to his left. He swore in a huff and dove back towards the gate, but in his haste he took the human-sized opening straight on instead of slightly sideways and got stuck. David let out an exasperated growl as he pressed forwards and the whole fence shook. Realizing that this was a futile approach, he backed up to get free and turned his body, catching his side on a sharp bit of chain-link that was sticking out and cutting himself. Since the car would be parallel with him in moments, David made one last ditch effort to crouch down and bend his body, then heaved himself through the gate to the relative cover and darkness of the woods.

  David heard, but didn’t see, the car as it continued past without slowing, and he huffed a wolf-sigh of relief that the driver was apparently either too tired or unobservant to spot him or the unconscious couple. A woman’s voice, attempting to get a response to the activated emergency phone, emanated from the dangling receiver outside the gate. David suspected that campus security would be by soon to check out the situation, so he hoisted himself up and stared down at the two humans he had repositioned just inside the gate. He couldn’t risk security driving by and not spying the drugged pair, so he scooped up the boy, paused as another car went by, and then swiftly maneuvered through the gate and deposited the young man’s body in plain sight on the path under the glowing green light of the phone.

  Twisting back through the gate as quickly as possible, David retreated slightly into the shadows of the trees, but watched carefully to make sure that both humans were breathing before he turned to go. He briefly considered waiting to confirm that campus security was actually coming, but then remembered that Kim was unconscious and Evelyn was incapacitated and things could get ugly if Kim awoke before he got back to them. That thought sent him jogging back into the thick interior of the forest.

  34

  Just before dawn, a steady rain fell over three sorry-looking Wolfkin in the middle of Baker Woodlot. Kim snarled and thrashed on the forest floor as she tried to shake off the clinging effects of the sedative. Between her and Evelyn, David lay in a hungry and exhausted heap, intermittently lifting his head to make sure that Kim wasn’t going after Evelyn. Evelyn sat propped up against a tree anticipating the pain that would come with the dawn, but also hoping that the pain of the change would take away the myriad other minor agonies she’d been suffering all night long. Tonight was a disaster from start to finish, Evelyn thought, hunching her shoulders against the chill of the rain and trying not to think of what they might find when they went back to the clinic to check on Clem. So much for teaching Kim control. A growl escaped the back of her throat. Mad at David for not being able to control Kim, or at least contain her, Evelyn knew that chewing him out when she had her voice back wasn’t going to solve anything.

  She tried to calm herself. Theoretically they still had one more day to work with Kim, and after that if they weren’t all killed during the battle with the Vulke, then she could scream at David about it. Her grim musings were interrupted as the horrible pressure of the change began to build, first in her head and then in the rest of her body. She couldn’t keep herself from whimpering because the pain was intensified over the many already stiff and painful sites on her body. This was without a doubt the worst the pain had ever been and Evelyn was lost in a world of torment as she fell over onto the ground and her body convulsed.

  “Hey, Evie?”

  David’s voice seemed hollow and very far away. Evelyn struggled to follow it up to the light. Eventually she felt the cold rain running down her face and bare torso as the night’s events came back to her is stark relief. Shivering in the brisk morning air, she wanted to move, but was afraid that she was still injured from her fall.

  “Evie, come on, we have to get up, we have to
go get Clem.”

  At the mention of Clem, Evelyn was able to overcome her dread. She opened her eyes and tried to lift her head. She didn’t feel immediate stabbing pain, so she took that as a good sign and worked to right herself further. Thankfully, the sharp horrible pain was gone, replaced by the normal dull ache of post-change. Tears stung her eyes as the coiled dread drained away and she felt the cool balm of relief, though it was short-lived as all of her other pressing worries swelled in to fill the void. To stave off thinking, Evelyn rose to her feet and glanced around for Kim to see if she had recovered from her sedation. Kim stood a way off with her bare back to them, hugging herself and trembling in the rain. Evelyn looked to David and mouthed, “Is she okay?”

  David raised a hand, palm splayed and level with the ground, and tilted it back and forth in a so-so gesture. Evelyn nodded and tried to determine the best response to the entire calamitous situation. As usual, when she was most stressed, Evelyn decided on humor.

  “Hey c’mon, Kim, we better go find our clothes before someone thinks that we’re starting some kind of hippie protest.”

  Kim half-turned and looked at Evelyn with a morose face. “Oh, Evie, I’m so sorr—“

  Evelyn cut her off. “Listen, it’s fine, it happens. Happened to me. In fact, I was really balls at control for a long time and I didn’t have nearly as much stress and doom hanging over my head as you do. We knew this was a bad idea from the get go, but I was just hoping we’d get lucky. We got the other, but no time to cry over spilled sedatives, we just have to move on. Time to go home, get some grub, and have a nice nap or maybe watch some bad Sci-Fi. That always cheers me up.” Evelyn walked over and placed a hand on Kim’s shoulder and gently prodded her forwards. “Ever see Mystery Science Theater 3000?”