Moonlight Medicine: Inoculation

by Jen Haeger

  Caroline pointed into the battle. Evelyn’s gaze followed her finger and she watched horrified as a massive Vulke ripped Kim’s head off. “See, Kim’s doing her part.”

  Evelyn awoke with the phantom images of Kim’s gruesome death haunting her thoughts, and the taste of blood in her mouth. She fought to throw off the appalling visions as she wrenched off the covers and sat on the side of her bed with her bare feet touching the cold hardwood floor. As Evelyn peered over at Kim’s empty bed, she tried to reassure herself of reality through the chilled floorboards, breathing deeply and swallowing repeatedly to rid her mouth of the bitter taste of iron. When she thought that she could stand, Evelyn rose and swiftly tiptoed to the bathroom, where she locked herself in. Spitting rusty saliva into the white basin of the sink, she turned on the tap to wash it away and bowed her head under the spigot of water. She filled her mouth with the ice cold water and released it back into the sink, then took a long draw, swallowing many times until she had to pull away gasping for breath. She turned off the water and examined her mouth in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, steadfastly avoiding eye contact with her reflection. She had bitten the insides of her cheeks during the night, which accounted for the blood in her mouth, but it still whispered hints of the nightmare. She ran the water again and this time splashed it onto her face to further banish the horrors sleep had wrought. Drying her face with a towel, she finally forced herself to meet her own eyes in the mirror.

  “You are going to get through this. We are all going to make it through this.”

  Evelyn stared at her reflection willing herself to believe the words. The alternative was simply unbearable and she couldn’t allow it purchase in her mind now. It was too late for any doubts and no time for self-indulgent desperation and fear. From now until the battle tomorrow night she had to be strong and her resolve could not waver. She had no idea how many lives might depend on that resolve. Letting her gaze drop, she undressed and showered, performing each mundane motion with unnatural focus in an effort to shield her mind from unwanted thoughts. After her shower she dressed with similar robotic movements and took out extra clothing for the following day.

  Her mind slipped briefly when she found herself considering what one wears into a battle. She settled on green, loose-fitting hiking pants and a black Rush T-shirt that an old boyfriend had left behind in her apartment, and that she hadn’t bothered to give back or get rid of. She also packed a pair of scrubs for after the fighting, and then a pair of jeans and a comfortable longer-sleeved shirt for after that.

  Heading back into the bathroom, she packed a small case with a toothbrush and a few other toiletry items. Though she knew that brushing her teeth would likely be the last thing on her mind after fighting for her life and the lives of her friends, not packing these items seemed akin to saying that she wouldn’t be needing them after tomorrow night, and that was like giving up hope. Evelyn gave herself one last stern glare in the mirror and then headed downstairs to face her coming fate.

  *

  It was odd how all four of them had managed to avoid discussing where they were ultimately going as they packed up the SUV and piled in. She had previously asked Roberto if he wanted her to bring any medical supplies for the post fight, but he’d dismissed the idea, saying that other Wolfkin who were actually practicing medical doctors were taking care of that. It had been David’s responsibility to gather up a few other possibly necessary items for the battle, consisting of mainly camping gear type items. Evelyn had seen him cleaning his gun earlier and, although bringing weapons to the battle was strictly forbidden, she didn’t chastise him.

  David was driving and Evelyn helping to navigate from the passenger’s seat, though David pretty well knew where they were going. Kim sat behind David, after Clem ushered her into the car with an old-fashioned bow, then took the seat behind Evelyn. An uncomfortable silence followed them all the way to Northville, which even seemed to mute the pop rock music of the random radio channel that David had selected.

  The sun was getting low in the sky when they pulled into the rear parking lot of a strip mall and headed into the wooded area behind. Using a compass and descriptions and diagrams scoured from the internet, the quartet eventually found themselves at a decrepit brick building that was part of the sprawling former psychiatric complex. According to several intrepid blog accounts, the building contained an entrance to the tunnel systems beneath. David halted them at the edge of the woods and scanned the area with a pair of binoculars he pulled from his backpack before they approached the door. It was barred with a rusty chain and a new combination lock. Multiple online accounts of urban explorers claimed that this lock had actually been put there by trespassers to fool the security guards into thinking that the building was fortified. David had brought along a pair of bolt cutters, in case this was a lie, but he optimistically tried the combination.

  The lock opened easily and they all bustled inside the building, which had been a laundry facility according to the map, though the first room they entered was bare and sported just one overturned and dented washing machine. The tiles of the floor were cracked and crumbling and the drop-tile ceiling littered the floor, leaving a shadowy cavern of old pipes and wires that yawned above their heads. The air reeked of mildew and old dust, but would have smelled worse if not for the jagged hole in the corner of one of the windows. Graffiti covered most of the walls, including the words “You shall not pass” spray-painted in black above the inner doorway. They didn’t linger in this room, and David led the way to the next over the remains of the door which had fallen off its hinges and now lay in the threshold between the rooms. Kim followed close behind, then Evelyn, and finally Clem.

  The next room was illuminated by a few grimy windows perched high on the walls that let in a dingy glow from outside. It was cluttered with debris which included broken metal laundry baskets and moldering yellowed sheets. Old industrial clothes dryers that had been heavily vandalized lined the walls. Most were missing their doors, but one’s closed door was spray-painted over with a screaming skeletal face that made Evelyn shiver. The air in this room was thicker with the scent of disuse and decay, and their movement through it was slowed due to all the rubble and various piles of garbage. David picked his way through to the back of the room and stopped in front of a metal door that still held onto the wall, but was stuck ajar.

  The third room was dark; David donned a headlamp and passed out one each to Kim, Evelyn, and Clem. David squeezed through the doorway and scanned the room ahead before signaling Kim and the others to follow. This room was smaller than the other two and had a concrete floor and brick walls. There was surprisingly little garbage and debris in this room as well as less graffiti. To the left was a partially open elevator shaft that dropped down into utter darkness with the words, “Down you go!” sprayed in red paint above the mostly-open door. The internet instructions to the tunnels said that from here they were to climb down two stories and then use the ladder that someone had provided to climb into the elevator car at the bottom of the shaft. The side of the shaft had rungs to climb down into the blackness and, when David peered down into the shaft, he could see the elevator car and the ladder sticking up out of the emergency hatch.

  Evelyn thought that it all looked a lot more intimidating in reality than it had on the computer screen. She did not want to climb down into that abyss, but she knew that they had to. David, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. He shouldered the backpack, grabbed the first rung, placed a foot on another farther down the shaft, then swung his body over the chasm and climbed down to the elevator. Once David was a flush with the car, he stepped over onto its roof and inspected the inside before calling up to the others.

  “All good!”

  Kim tentatively reached out for a rung and stretched out to reach a lower one with her foot. She took a deep breath and then climbed down, as David had. Clem waited until David helped her onto the elevator before following them down the shaft, wincing intermittently as he climbed. W
hen it was her turn, Evelyn tried not to look down, but instead stared at the wall in front of her as she descended. The walls of the shaft also sported a host of graffiti, but she only really noticed the words that were written in between the rungs: “Haven’t-you-been-here-before?”

  She made it to the elevator and Clem helped her onto the roof as David and Kim had already climbed down the ladder. Clem motioned for Evelyn to go in front of him down the ladder but she gave him a stern look and he sighed, resigned. When Clem was down he called up softly to Evelyn. “Let’s go, Evie.”

  Evelyn had less trouble with the ladder, but when she stepped off onto the floor of the elevator it gave an ominous creak which echoed up the shaft and made her cringe. Once down, she scanned around and saw that the doors of the car were propped open and that the elevator was about a foot shy of the tunnel floor. Clem pulled the ladder down, and handed it to David who hid it out of sight in the hallway, so that anyone who might come by later would hopefully think twice before leaping into the elevator car. Clem then clambered down into the tunnel and helped Evelyn to do the same, though she could easily have managed on her own. David led the way down the corridor. The air here was close, stuffy, and thick with dust. Evelyn felt the twinges of claustrophobia as they went deeper into the tunnel. The low ceiling and walls were all crumbling concrete and the concrete floor was cracked in places.

  This tunnel soon opened up into the basement of one of the other buildings through a doorframe with no door anywhere in sight. The room had once been tiled, though most were missing or broken now, revealing concrete underneath. The ceiling was also concrete with broken fluorescent light fixtures secured under metal cages. There was a lot of debris in this room too: metal bed frames, dirty and mildewed linens, and garbage was strewn everywhere. There was also more graffiti here, but Evelyn didn’t dwell on it. She could feel the tension and prickling of the coming change and they were not yet where they needed to be in the compound. She began to panic slightly and second-guess her choice of locations for tonight’s change, but there was no going back now.

  David seemed to have a similar inkling as he rushed across the room to the stairwell, and ushered Kim down the stairs ahead of him. Clem moved without his cane and without a limp on flat ground, but he was slower on the stairs, and Evelyn’s anxiety grew with each passing minute. Finally, after two harrowing flights down the worn concrete steps, David forced his way through a stubborn metal door with the words “To Hell” painted on it in red along with a smiling horned demon. This was the corridor they were looking for. Here there were solitary confinement cells for some of the more violent patients. Wasting no time, David located one about halfway down that seemed less vandalized, and mostly serviceable. He tried the door and, though it wasn’t a perfect closure anymore, the outer latch still functioned. Kim pressed herself against the opposite wall and stared into the chamber mournfully as Clem eased by her and approached the cell. Evelyn followed close behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, it isn’t the Ritz Carlton, but at least you’ll have some privacy for the night and no nosey vet students poking around.”

  Clem gave her a half-hearted smile. “It’s alright, Evie. I’m just gonna think about the Vulke and let the wolf get all worked up for the rea-al show tomorrow night.”

  Evelyn tried not to let her smile waver, but Clem’s words were more upsetting to her than reassuring. She gave him a hug to hide her distress. “See you in the morning.”

  She turned away and saw David pulling a plastic-wrapped package of two T-bone steaks from his backpack. He handed it to Clem. “It’s a…midnight snack.”

  Clem nodded. He took the meat, shuffled into the cell and then turned to face them as David moved to lock him in. Suddenly Kim seemed to rouse herself from a stupor and looked up into Clem’s saddened eyes. “It’ll be okay, Cle—”

  Kim’s voice was cut-off by the resounding bong of the shutting door that reverberated up and down the hallway long after David secured the cell’s outer lock.

  37

  David led the way back down the hall to the door leading to the stairwell. When they were all through, he heaved that door shut again and wedged a piece of broken tile under the bottom edge. Evelyn thought that this was unnecessary since the cell door had appeared solid, but she didn’t give her thoughts voice. She turned her attention instead to Kim, who was looking more and more agitated. Evelyn knew that this would be her and David’s last opportunity to help Kim with her control before tomorrow night’s fight, and she worried that it just wouldn’t be enough time. They returned back the way they had come because the plan was to change inside the building, evaluate how Kim was handling things, and then go out into the nearby woods to really test her control so close to the mall and suburbs.

  They headed back up the stairs and paused in the larger room with the entrance to the tunnel connecting this building to the building with the elevator. David then spoke for the first time since leaving Clem.

  “Okay, we’ll stash the backpack here and change where we have some room, then we’ll explore the rest of this building a bit and maybe go back up the elevator shaft and into the woods.”

  Kim frowned, but nodded. David put the backpack down in front of her and then turned his back and pulled his shirt off. She and Evelyn removed their shirts and headlamps and placed them in the backpack. Kim folded her arms over her bare chest and Evelyn turned away and walked into a corner of the room.

  “Ready?”

  “Uhuh.”

  “Yep.”

  Peering over her shoulder, Evelyn saw David start when he turned back around with Kim’s half-naked presence so close to him. To his credit, he averted his eyes, grabbed the backpack, and turned away from her to stash it in a far corner as a steady flush crept up his face. No sooner had he placed the backpack behind a random fallen beam, and set his own headlamp beside it, than Kim’s screams filled the room. David didn’t resist the change tonight, but relinquished himself to it, changing about as fast as Evelyn had ever seen him and well before Kim was transformed.

  Evelyn huddled in the corner as her own change took her, and it was painful as always, but not nearly as painful as last night’s change. When the Wolfkin conversion was complete, she tentatively flexed first one arm, then the other, and then, feeling no pain, she stood tall and stretched her entire body. It felt amazingly good, and Evelyn had to check herself because she could feel the tension of the previous night’s frustration driving her to run and hunt, to bite and tear. She couldn’t stop herself from howling though, and was soon joined by Kim, their wolf-song echoing eerily through the defunct psychiatric hospital. Evelyn thought that she also heard the faint sounds of Clem answering their call. When she had released her pent up frustrations and fears she glanced over at David. He cocked his head and gave her a look of displeasure saying clearly, So, this is how you intend to teach Kim control?

  Evelyn did feel slightly chagrinned, but sometimes to gain control you had to let loose a little. She told him as much with a huff snort and shake of her furry head. Kim bounced on her heels and looked at Evelyn expectantly. Seeing no reason not to let off a little more steam here in the recesses and isolation of the abandoned complex, Evelyn playfully yipped at Kim and took off running down a random corridor. Kim gave chase, her boots scrabbling for purchase on the loose tiles, which of course incited a surge of adrenaline in Evelyn who tore down the hallway even faster, dodging around overturned wheelchairs and broken gurneys. David sounded a series of disapproving barks as the two of them sped away, but she ignored that. Girls’ night out! Evelyn thought giddily.

  When Evelyn reached a fork in the hallway, she dug her claws into the soft drywall to help her dash around the corner more sharply as Kim crashed against the wall behind her with a loud thump. Pushing herself forwards, Evelyn leapt over a pile of dirty linens. At the end of the hallway was a door to another stairwell, and Evelyn braced herself for impact with the door at speed. She hit the release bar of the door with such force that it d
ented in and the whole door shuddered, but time had corroded the hinges and the door only inched open as Evelyn’s boots slipped on the dusty floor. Sensing Kim close behind her, Evelyn dropped to the floor just as the other woman’s body flew over her head and hit the door with enough force that the rusty hinges gave way with a screech of metal and the door swung wide.

  Kim fell forwards into the stairwell and was only stopped from tumbling over the edge and plummeting down the central shaft by a metal safety cage that prevented patients of the hospital from doing just that. Kim let out a yip as her body struck the cage, which rattled loudly. She then slid to the floor with a comic look of surprise in her eyes. Evelyn got to her feet to continue the reckless chase, but David grabbed her arm. She turned on him and snarled, but he held fast and stared her down until her flash of rage had passed and a modicum of reason returned. Huffing in resignation, she jerked her arm away. Okay, okay, someone could have gotten seriously hurt. I get it, Evelyn grumbled in her own head. She reached down a clawed hand to Kim to help her up, but with a chuff of annoyance Kim used the handrail’s support to stand instead.

  David gave them both a chiding stare then started up the stairs at a more sedate pace. Kim hung her head and followed him up, but Evelyn lingered behind on the landing. Glancing back into the hallway they had come from, she had a sudden urge to go back to Clem and let him out. She stared down the corridor, utterly transfixed for a moment with her head cocked to the side. Then David’s “Come on” yip from the top of the stairs broke her out of her trance. Evelyn shook her head and snuffled, wondering what she had been thinking considering letting Clem out in his current state. This loss of concentration frightened her, and Evelyn scurried up the stairs to join David and Kim.

  When she reached the next landing, she found them struggling with another stubborn metal door. Although Evelyn had always wanted to explore the compound, tonight she felt little interest in wandering the decaying corridors. She wanted to be outside sprinting through the woods, breathing the fresh spring air, not cooped up inhaling the stale reek of dust, mold, and asbestos. Evelyn supposed that it was all good training for Kim to try to stay focused while indoors, but she hoped that the girl would show enough restraint tonight that David would decide that later they could head outside for a while. Finally, the door the other two were working on opened with a metallic shriek of protest and David headed through with Kim close behind.