Moonlight Medicine: Epidemic (The Moonlight Medicine Trilogy Book 2)

by Jen Haeger

  James was a cop, and the only cop who was actually concerned about justice, in his opinion. Most of the officers in his department lived for the thrill of life and death situations, or thrived on the adrenaline of drawing their guns and holding another person’s life in their hands, while a few insisted that they loved their job because they got to help people. James didn’t care about any of that. He became a cop to bring forth justice and get crazy, dangerous people off the streets.

  It had been almost two years now, he reckoned, since he had come out of his drug-induced paranoia long enough to seek help from his family. He had been a mess back then, and even been convinced that one of his best friends, David, was a werewolf who wanted to hunt him down and kill him. Crazy. Of course, David had killed their friend, Tommy, right in front of him in while high on drugs, so it was understandable that James had been a bit scarred from the ordeal.

  Tommy’s death had officially been ruled an animal attack, but James knew better. Yeah, maybe a stray dog had gotten to Tommy just before he died, but he clearly remembered David attacking him first. David and Tommy had been nuts about the occult and David had actually convinced himself that he was a werewolf. James thought that was pretty ironic, considering the fact that it was he that was in therapy now and not David. His therapist wanted to continue their sessions, but James was pretty much done with therapy now. It was true that he had needed it at first when he had thought that David was an actual werewolf, but he had not thought that for a long time now. He knew that David was just a regular guy, a regular guy who had gotten away with murder.

  James had tried to get Tommy’s case reopened through official channels, but to no avail. The detectives in their fancy suits were all too happy with the neat little package in which they had wrapped up the case. Obviously Tommy, a known neighborhood hoodlum, had passed out in an abandoned building after a night of drinking and drugs and been attacked by a stray dog. There was absolutely no evidence that a human being had been involved with the death. Case closed. Still, James had pressed until his superiors had threatened his job unless he let the whole thing go. Even though his uncle was the mayor and it was his string-pulling that got James on that Podunk police department to begin with, he still didn’t have enough sway to get the case reopened. Bullshit.

  His therapist had also been trying for months to dissuade him from what she called “self-destructive tendencies”. She tried to tell him that the subconscious demons of his past were just trying to disrupt his new life, and that he had to “let go of the past, to free himself for the future.” When she said things like that James had a hard time not laughing in her face, but over time he had learned all of the tricks to make her all smiley and pleased with herself at the end of their sessions. He would say things like, “Deep down, I know that you’re right,” or “It’s just so difficult sometimes to express how I feel about that.” Occasionally, if the session was particularly boring, he would pretend to break down and get all teary eyed just so that she could comfort him and pat his shoulder. She would tell him that sometimes we as human beings just need to cry and that it was O.K., that he shouldn’t be embarrassed. What garbage.

  It was ridiculous, fluffy talk like this that prevented people from meting out real justice in the world. Human beings needed to suck it up and stop ignoring things just to feel all warm and comfy inside. He could see it in the faces of criminal scum who knew that they could rely on a doughy lawyer to hide behind “innocent until proven guilty” when their client’s guilt was blatantly staring them in the face. They used that softness, that desire to see the good in people, that blindness to the facts of the world around them to dance around the law, feigning remorse for their wrongdoings. It made James physically ill to think about it.

  James didn’t stand for any of that malarkey. When he picked up a lawbreaker on his watch, they got punished, one way or the other. He wasn’t some crackpot vigilante trying to guard the night or anything silly like that, but justice was a force unto itself and sometimes bad things happened to bad people. James was proud of the work he had done both on and off the job for the glory of justice, but always he thought back to David and the injustice of him being out there somewhere, sick and twisted and never having paid for his crime. But all that was about to change.

  After years of feeling hunted by David, James had finally turned the tables. He had tracked David to Michigan, and it really hadn’t been as difficult as he supposed. David wasn’t even using a different name. James had banked some time off, and he was going to pay his old friend a little visit. Justice would finally be served.

  16

  As predicted, the week went by painfully slow and the clinic was a madhouse to boot. Evelyn ended up spending more time working on records than being able to research, and it bugged her. Additionally, Dr. Alverez was in a particularly bad mood because his mother-in-law was in town. Relief washed over Evelyn when Thursday night rolled around. David was spending the night so that they could leave as early as possible on Friday morning, and Evelyn made them a casual dinner of spaghetti, as well as some sandwiches for the car ride. She also got together the usual road munchies and provisions for the weekend. They had packed up most of the articles and books that they wanted to bring along with them, so they decided to take a night off and watch a movie before hitting the sack early.

  As they sat on the couch together watching The Mummy with Brendan Fraser, things almost felt normal. Evelyn was nearly able to put Clem, Katie, and the lab out of her mind as she leaned against David on the couch, and even chuckled aloud at a few of the more amusing lines. Exhaustion from the hectic week settled over them as David absently played with a lock of Evelyn’s hair and Peko curled up in a little ball of kitten between them. Evelyn’s eyes drifted shut a couple of times during the movie, and then David was gently nudging her. She blinked her dry and tired eyes, glancing over at the dark television screen.

  “’S the movie over?” she slurred, her tongue still coated in sleep.

  “Yep. Time for bed.”

  Evelyn stretched languidly, enjoying the drowsy haze she was feeling and not wanting to get up off the couch and break the spell. She looked into David’s eyes and let herself be lost in their fascinating green depths.

  “D’you want…” Evelyn had to stop herself from inviting David into the bedroom. She knew that while it seemed like a really good idea right then, it would only cause problems this close to the full moon. “Another pillow or blanket?” she said turning away, sitting upright, and putting some distance been her and David on the couch.

  “No thanks, I’m good.”

  “O.K.” Evelyn rose and walked over to her open bedroom door. As she turned and peered back at David, it felt like there was a leaden weight suddenly on her chest. “Goodnight.”

  “Night.”

  Evelyn hesitated for a beat then reluctantly went into the bedroom and shut the door. Even with David just out in the living room, her room felt awfully lonely, especially after she turned off her bedside lamp.

  *

  The next morning, David and Evelyn were up and out the door well before dawn. David took the first several hour shift of driving then handed the wheel over to Evelyn for the last push when they stopped to get gas. They made good time and managed to pull into the rural commuter lot where they normally left the car right around two o’ clock in the afternoon. They had recently finished the sandwiches and were fresh and ready for the hike out to the lab. It would take them another hour or so of well-paced hiking to actually get to the lab, so they packed up their deluxe backpacker rucksacks, David grabbed the small, but adequate, cooler, and they headed off into the thick Tennessee woods.

  For a while they followed a trail, but eventually departed from that and headed more directly into the wilderness. They had a GPS and tried to never take the exact same route for fear they would leave not only a visual trail, but also a scent trail behind. The day was fine and the hike a pleasant one. Evelyn found herself in a better and better mood as they
got closer to their destination. She couldn’t wait to get back into the lab and working again. She was especially excited to do some sequencing on the saliva sample she had surreptitiously obtained from Katie.

  In what seemed like no time at all, they reached the lab, which looked, for all intents and purposes, like an old, tumbledown shack built right up next to the side of a hill with a slightly lopsided windmill spinning lazily in the breeze. Evelyn was always amazed at its deceptiveness. They had spent weeks looking for a contractor who specialized in bomb shelters and survivalist cabins. After that the financial support from the shadowy Council member had done wonders to get the place built and supplied with sophisticated dual low fuel, geothermal generators as well as to get a well and septic system dug out. For its outward rickety appearance, inside were all of the modern conveniences one could want: electric lights, stove, refrigerator, microwave, heat, and air conditioning. Not to mention the place was actually a fortress with bulletproof glass and steel- and concrete-lined walls, so even if someone did stumble upon it, they would be hard-pressed to find a way in. A closed circuit security system provided even more peace of mind with cameras equipped with infra-red monitoring the front door, the lab, and the surrounding area. There was also a nice kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom, and in the bedroom closet there was a hidden door to the lab and the area with the generators.

  The lab had been cut into the hillside and was not overly large, just ten feet by twenty feet, but it was jam packed with equipment. There were two large biohazard hoods at opposite ends of the room and another smaller one off to one side. There was also a culture growing cabinet connected to several upright gas tanks, a refrigerator, a -80°C freezer, and a large tank of liquid nitrogen. The counter along the rest of the walls held various machines needed to perform PCR and sequence DNA, among other things. Above this was a neat set of shelves with yet more equipment and also some books, and below were white cabinets containing various necessary chemicals and solutions for sequencing and analyzing DNA. Down the center of the room was the main lab bench, which Evelyn insisted on keeping immaculately clean and sterile, and at the far end of this were two small desks that faced each other, each with a very new and shiny computer. Of course no lab was truly complete without a whiteboard and this was on the wall just to the left of the door. To the right of the door was an area for gowning and gloving up. This was another thing that Evelyn had insisted upon, as well as caps and booties, not because either of them was at risk of becoming infected, but because they risked contaminating the DNA samples with their own DNA.

  The lab would have been a dead end had David and Evelyn not thought ahead and had their contractor not been obsessed with security. Inside one the cabinets was an escape tunnel that led out to a hidden hatch in the hillside. The hatch was barred from the inside, both at the exit and at the entrance, so it was one way only, although one could also lock it behind them when exiting the lab to prevent pursuit. No one could accuse them of not being paranoid.

  As Evelyn and David approached the front door of the lab, they were slow and cautious, and alert for any signs of disturbance. Everything appeared untouched, so they continued to the front door and unlocked the three deadbolts of the formidable door. Once inside Evelyn quickly ditched her pack, left David to put away the food, changed into scrubs, and headed into the lab with Katie’s sample. She had already been working for about half an hour when David joined her. He might not have had all of Evelyn’s education, but he was a quick study and one of the best lab technicians Evelyn had ever dealt with.

  He currently had his own little project and went to work on it while Evelyn extracted Katie’s DNA from the inner cheek cells in her saliva and prepared to perform PCR to amplify and duplicate the strands thousands of times. From there she would sequence the DNA hoping to compare it to her own and David’s. It was a complicated task to ferret out the virus’s DNA from their own, although Evelyn had had some success in using viral DNA primers from other retroviral models and in matching viral sequences that were similar to some viruses that had already been sequenced online. It would take most of the night and next day to sequence Katie’s DNA, so Evelyn stretched out her neck and mentally prepared herself for some solid hours of work.

  *

  Around five o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, Evelyn stared at a printout of several longer sections of Katie’s DNA. She had been meticulously going over the pages and pages of data for over an hour. Exhaustion was finally catching up to her after not having slept the previous night. David had been able to snag a few hours of sleep at a point when there was not much for him to do, and had forced Evelyn to take a few breaks and eat something, but she refused to rest. Now she could feel the day ebbing away and was exhausted and really crabby because she knew that they would lose a whole night due to the change. She hurriedly cleaned up in the lab and shut down her computer and some of the machines for the night, grabbing a couple of large binders on her way out. She kept the printout with her because she thought that she might get just a few minutes to look it over before they headed outside.

  I could really use a shower, thought Evelyn as she changed into her jeans. Maybe she could go run through a stream tonight. David was already in his hiking boots, jeans, and a worn flannel shirt when Evelyn came out of the bedroom. He looked at his watch.

  “We should probably get a move on,” he said when Evelyn sat down on the couch with the papers and the binders.

  “Just give me a minute. I want to go over a couple more of Katie’s sequences and compare them to yours.”

  She opened up the binder and flipped through it until she found what she was looking for. David exhaled an impatient huff, but sat down on the couch next to her. Evelyn knew that he knew better than to argue with her when she was like this, especially when she had not gotten much sleep. Evelyn smoothed down the page in the folder and then held up the papers next to it and squinted down at them appraisingly. Almost twenty minutes went by with Evelyn comparing the data and David checking his watch until finally David cleared his throat.

  “Evie, I know this is really important, but it’s almost time,” he said, his voice urgent.

  The sun had begun to sink low on the horizon and was just barely filtering through the trees. They wouldn’t be able to get very far away from the lab now before they changed. They tried to distance themselves from the lab before the transformation and when in Wolfkin form because their scent could attract other Wolfkin to the area. There were not supposed to be any current Wahya members residing in Tennessee. Clem had at least found that out for them when Evelyn had “innocently” asked where most of the Wahya members lived. However, this hadn’t stopped one from passing through last time they were in Tennessee. Evelyn continued to ignore David and he was about to get substantially more insistent when she let out a little cry of victory.

  “Yep, right there!” she shouted triumphantly, smacking the paper with her hand. “That is definitely a viral sequence in the same…” her voice trailed off as she peered down at the paper more closely. “Wait,” she said faintly, “that can’t be right.” She traced her finger over a spot on first one page and then the other her brow furrowing. “It’s different,” she muttered. She looked up at David with eyes filled with confusion and uncertainty. “Her virus is different than yours.”

  17

  Nicholas kicked at a smoldering plank in the wreckage of the manor house. Things had not gone as smoothly as he hoped. He had been convinced that the Council was weak and complacent, an easy target. But there had been resistance, much more than expected. He had underestimated the Council’s numerous attendants. The Council may have been a bunch of fools, but the generations of body guards and loyal servants had obviously become more wary and organized in the two years since the challenge. His soldiers caught them flat-footed, certainly, but still, the attendants fought back, and now not all of the council members were accounted for. Taras would not be pleased. Bah!

  Nicholas barked more
orders as his soldiers searched through the rubble. It would be dawn soon and they couldn’t risk being spotted. Any more mistakes and Taras would have his head on a pike. He shouldn’t even have been here in France. Nicholas spat onto the crumbling stones of the building’s foundation. If he had just kept his mouth shut, he could’ve concentrated on the distribution of the virus. Now if anything went amiss there, Nicholas shuddered as he thought of what Taras would do to him.

  It wasn’t fair. Hadn’t it been Nicholas who had come up with an optimal way to spread the virus? The others had all doubted him, and Iarina had laughed in his face, but he convinced Taras and now they were all jealous of the prestige Nicholas enjoyed. He was Taras’ second in command, even higher in practical status than Iarina, though she was Beta. Little did they know the price one paid for being “close” to Taras: it only meant that he was that much closer to the Alpha’s fist when he was angry.

  Nicholas forced himself out of that unpleasant path of thinking. It wasn’t going to get him anywhere. No, the idea to use power bars to spread the mutated virus wasn’t sexy, but it got the job done. They knew exactly where the contaminated boxes were going, and the most likely consumers: strong, healthy, athletic men. It had been all too easy to place several Vulke in the manufacturing plant in Duisburg. From there, Nicholas just had to follow the distribution chain and estimate consumption. They started small of course. A single case destined for Japan, the second largest market for sports bars next to the United States. With the miracle of technology, they tracked the bars and waited for the full moon.