That was true enough, Chris supposed. ‘We’ve still got the Japanese origami book I gave you for Christmas,’ he told Seth. ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Seth. ‘I never thanked you for that. I’m sorry.’
The traffic began to crawl slowly on again through the rain. They had been driving for two hours already, but had only just joined the A4 heading west out of Hammersmith. The A4 followed the route of the ancient road connecting London to the west of England in pre-Roman times. The west had always been steeped in history and myth, a place of magic and mystery, of pagan worship and legends of King Arthur and the Isle of Avalon. The Neolithic sites of Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor dated far back beyond the Roman settlement of England, into the mists of pre-history. It was perhaps appropriate that they were headed that way, leaving civilization behind, and returning to a simpler, more savage age.
The car picked up a little speed as the greater part of the traffic turned off the A4 and onto the motorway. Chris had insisted that they stay on the A4, following the old road. The old ways would be best from now on. He thumbed idly through the pages of the origami book as they pushed on through the rain and the lines of cars. ‘What did you think of the book?’ he asked.
Seth shrugged. ‘I never got around to reading it,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe there’ll be time for that when the apocalypse really kicks off.’ It was the first time he’d used the “A-word” since this whole thing had started. That was good. It was a sign of growing acceptance.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Chris. ‘Maybe there’ll be time for things like that.’
Chapter Fifteen
St George’s Crescent, Kensington & Chelsea, London, New Year’s Day
Doctor Helen Eastgate watched the news images flicker on the screen of her laptop. Carnage in central London overnight. Police battling with rioters. Crowds running from rampaging wolves. The official death toll rising steadily as the day went on. She felt horror as she watched, but also a grim sense of satisfaction. Her suspicions had been right all along. Werewolves were real, and they were here in London.
It was hardly something to be pleased about, but for Helen these events changed everything.
She had observed her student Leanna Lloyd closely for weeks now. It had been terrifying at first, knowing that a werewolf was working in the lab right alongside her and her other students. Her instinct had been to run, to scream, to call for help. But Helen was first and foremost a scientist. Her role was to study, to gather data, to test hypotheses. Who was better placed than her to study these creatures, to find out how they behaved? As far as Helen could tell, Leanna was some kind of ringleader. The opportunity to observe her at close quarters was too good to miss.
It helped that Leanna was so cold and distant. She didn’t interact socially with staff or students unless there was something she wanted from them. She had no friends at the university. She made no small talk. No genuine feeling animated her face, only simulated emotions intended to manipulate and deceive. Leanna’s crystal blue eyes remained dead at all times, and if a smile ever formed on her ruby red lips, Helen felt her skin crawl with disgust.
Helen had long since stopped thinking of Leanna as human. Better to see her for what she truly was. A monster wearing a woman’s mask.
She hadn’t embarked on her surveillance casually. At first she’d considered going to the police and telling them everything she knew. But that would have been a colossal waste of time. A werewolf in London? She would have been laughed at for sure. She’d had no evidence that werewolves existed, except for Professor Wiseman’s papers and copies of his research notes that she’d managed to get from the publishers of the journal. But Wiseman had been dismissed as a crank. His findings would convince no one.
But things had changed. After months of Beast sightings and gruesome Ripper murders, werewolves had finally appeared on the national news. The authorities would have to take her seriously now. She had amassed a good deal of evidence. She knew about Leanna, and the two other students who lived with her, Adam Knight and Samuel Smalling. She’d pieced together some of Leanna’s research work too. She would pass her information directly to the security services. This was too big for the police to handle.
She closed her laptop and put it into a rucksack ready to take with her. Most of the data she’d collected about Leanna was stored on the device, but she had other material in her office at the university. The more she could hand over to the authorities, the more likely they would be to take her seriously. Best of all would be the sample of Leanna’s DNA she had gathered. The DNA was irrefutable proof that a new non-human species existed.
Helen threw on a coat and hat and stepped out into the winter evening, the laptop safely tucked into her rucksack. Her tiny basement apartment in Chelsea was her refuge against the cold and the dark and she was loathe to leave it. Reluctantly she locked the door behind her and darted up the stone steps to street level. Back home in Australia her family had thrown barbeques at this time of year, and she and her little sister had played in the back yard in nothing but shorts and a thin top, spraying each other with water from a hosepipe to cool off. It was ten years since she’d left her home, and she’d never stopped missing it. People had told her she’d get used to the cold and damp of the British winter, but they’d been wrong. She hated it more and more as the years passed. She couldn’t imagine growing old in London. One day she would decide she’d finally had enough of the weather and would return to the southern hemisphere. One day soon, perhaps.
The January air was thickening with swirling mist, and she wrapped her scarf tightly over her face. She hesitated for a moment, torn between heading for the university to collect the extra information and going back inside to call the security services. She had told nobody about what she knew. If something were to happen to her, the evidence she had collected would be lost. Perhaps it would be wiser to go back inside, to the warmth and the safety.
But no. The root of her doubt was fear, pure and simple. Fear, like superstition, was a primitive force that fed off the cold and the dark. Helen had spent her life resisting such forces, arguing for rationality over emotion. Now was the time to face down her fear. Besides, the greatest risk of all was that the authorities would refuse to believe her. Show me the evidence, she always told her students. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Her own words rang loudly in her ears. She needed to gather all the evidence she could, to make her case as strong as possible. If she could show them everything she knew, they would have no choice but to believe her. She pulled her hat over her ears and set off at a brisk pace.
The route to Imperial College was one she had walked hundreds of times, thousands probably, and her feet knew the way for her. The mist grew thinner as she headed north away from the river, and lights from cafes and restaurants threw a warming glow across her path, but the area was strangely deserted. Normally the streets around Sloane Square bustled with activity, but this evening few people had ventured out. Some of the shops and restaurants were sealed up with steel rollers, and Helen guessed that wasn’t just because it was New Year’s Day. In the distance a police siren blared out, a brief echo of the troubles that had spilled onto the streets of London the previous night. The new curfew would begin later tonight, and she would have to be back in her apartment by then, or better still, showing all her evidence to an official at the security services.
The reminder stiffened her resolve and she hefted her rucksack firmly onto her back, feeling the reassuring weight of the laptop inside. She thrust her hands into her pockets and ploughed on. She walked quickly, avoiding making eye contact with the one or two hardy people who passed her. Trails of mist appeared in front of her again as she passed the Victorian brick-and-tile edifice of the Natural History Museum, the tops of its towers lost in the thickening fog.
The sight of Imperial College emerging from the damp and murk had never felt so welcoming, and she almost ran to the brightly-lit entrance of the new Biomedical Insti
tute and up the stairs to her office. It was only as she fished her keys out of her bag and fumbled them in the lock that she realized how much her hands were shaking.
She closed the door to her office and leaned back against it, switching the lights on and waiting for the fear to recede. Her job now was simple. Gather the evidence. Return to her apartment. Make the phone call.
In under a minute her breathing had returned to normal. She made her way over to her desk, stepping around the heaps of papers and books that filled much of the floor, wishing as usual that she could be a tidier person. Her foot caught one of the teetering piles, and papers spilled over the floor, scattering knowledge carelessly. Helen cursed herself for her lack of organization. If she’d been better organized, she would have kept all the information at home, and wouldn’t have needed to return now to fetch it.
The office safe was tucked away beneath the desk, and she keyed in the combination as quickly as she could. Inside were printed copies of Professor Wiseman’s notes and photographs that she had sweet-talked the editor of the journal into sending her. She gathered them up and dropped them into her rucksack, where they snuggled down next to the laptop. A brown paper envelope at the back of the safe stored a sample of Leanna’s DNA, and she added that to the rucksack too. Of all the evidence she had gathered, that was perhaps the most explosive, the one piece that was guaranteed to convince another scientist that her story was true. A simple brown envelope containing a single strand of human hair. Its genetic code held more information than all the books and papers scattered about this office.
It had taken perhaps one minute to transfer the contents of the safe into her rucksack. She wondered now why she had been so afraid to come. It had been the dark that had frightened her. Just the dark. Night fears that vanished as soon as an electric light was switched on. Quickly she closed the safe and left her office, locking the door behind her. She was about to head back down the stairs when she noticed a light from the genetics lab where Leanna and the other students worked.
There shouldn’t have been anyone here at this time. New Year’s Day was an official holiday, and the university was closed. Most of the students were away, still not back after the Christmas vacation. The light coming from the lab was dim, probably from a computer screen. Perhaps an experiment had been left running over the holiday period. If anyone had left something running, it was probably Leanna. Helen should leave it and go, but now that she had conquered her fear of the dark, it seemed that curiosity had got the better of her. She had never been able to resist its powerful lure. Curiosity was the path to knowledge, and knowledge displaced ignorance, just as light conquered the dark.
She peered through the glass window of the lab. As she’d suspected, the light came from the screen of a computer connected to a DNA sequencer. The desktop machine was one of many, arranged in a long row of metal boxes about the size of microwave ovens, each one capable of analyzing an entire human genome. All of the machines were switched on and running, the results of their analysis appearing on the screens next to them, gene by gene, nucleotide by nucleotide.
Helen glanced around cautiously, listening for the slightest sound that might indicate someone else was present. The building was empty. There was no one in the lab. She pushed the door open and went inside.
Chapter Sixteen
A secret military location, North London, New Year’s Day
The convoy sped along the road at high speed, the Prime Minister riding in her usual car, a black Jaguar XJ Sentinel. The triple-glazed windows of the car were made from darkened and bullet-proofed polycarbonate glass, making it hard to see clearly in the gloomy dusk that had already closed in on the city. In any case, the PM had more than enough documents to keep her attention firmly within the car.
The vehicle had been modified extensively for Prime Ministerial use, with 13mm explosive-proof steel armour plating, bullet-proof titanium and Kevlar lining in the cabin, and seals against biological and chemical attack. A pair of unmarked Range Rovers escorted the Prime Ministerial car, front and back. They were manned by officers from SO1 Protection Command armed with Glock 17 pistols. Motorcycle outriders rode ahead, their blue lights and sirens clearing a path through the London traffic.
None of that knowledge gave the PM much comfort. The crisis she faced now was one of the gravest faced by any leader. The public didn’t know the half of it, however much guessing and speculation the TV networks and newspapers engaged in. It is as bad as they fear, worse than I could have believed. In such times, a leader must have broad shoulders and show a brave face, but the burden of leadership weighed heavier now than at any other time since she had come to office. Difficult decisions had already been taken; harder ones lay ahead. She would not change her place with another though, however difficult the challenge. That was not her way.
Her greatest fear was not being remembered as the Prime Minister who brought the army onto the streets of Britain and imposed a curfew. It was that she had not gone far enough to ensure that this strange new threat was defeated.
The convoy swung off the main carriageway and down an unsigned road lined by a twelve-foot concrete wall topped with barbed wire. Security cameras fixed to metal poles observed the cars’ progress as they followed the road around a gentle curve, and the tops of fortified watch towers could be seen jutting above the wall. After a short distance the leading Range Rover turned sharply right and paused briefly as a solid steel gate slid slowly to one side, allowing it to enter. The PM’s car followed closely.
Once inside the gate, bright area lighting from the watchtowers lit the way, and the car drove up to the single building situated within the grounds. The building was almost featureless – a low brick structure with a flat roof, no windows, and just a pair of brutally-clipped shrubs to mark the main entrance. Uniformed soldiers stood to attention outside, and the PM recognized the bull-necked form of General Sir Roland Ney, Chief of the Defence Staff, standing stiffly in front, his row of medals shining brightly under the lights, his gunmetal eyebrows knotted together beneath his sharply peaked cap. Good. The General was nothing but efficient, and the PM had no time now for anything other than utmost efficiency. Nevertheless, she paused for a moment before leaving the car to remind herself of the General’s other qualities. He has a reputation as a ruthless man too. She feared she may also have need of that.
The General saluted her as she emerged from the car, then spun on his heel to escort her inside the facility. ‘Have you visited the hospital before, Prime Minister?’ he enquired.
The building was sparsely furnished and primitive, like something left over from the Second World War, the floors made from battered linoleum, the ceilings low and oppressive. Tangles of pipes and cables snaked along walls that had been splashed with paint in sickly hues.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Not many people have,’ he remarked. ‘We try to keep a low profile. This is the last of the United Kingdom’s military hospitals. All of our other hospitals were closed or turned over to the Ministry of Defence at the end of the Cold War and are now operated by civilian personnel.’ She sensed the disapproving tone in his voice. ‘Your predecessor wished to do the same with this facility,’ he said. ‘But fortunately for us he was unable to complete his legislative programme before his unexpected departure.’
‘Not so fortunate for him,’ commented the PM.
‘Perhaps not. But let us be grateful that the hospital survives, even in its woefully under-funded state.’
‘Noted, General. I will see what I can do.’
An incline of his head was all the acknowledgement he gave her. More than efficient, positively spartan in his habits. I like him.
A retinue of SO1 officers and military personnel had followed them into the building and they swept along in the wake of the General’s rapid strides. The PM had to half-walk, half-trot to match his pace, but she didn’t ask him to slow. Her impatience to see this thing for herself had become irresistible.
The
General opened a door that led to the top of a flight of steps. ‘We go down one level here,’ he commented. The concrete steps descended steeply underground to a corridor that felt more like a tunnel. The ceiling was lower than ever, the pipes and cables more thickly tangled than above ground. The General strode quickly past a series of doors marked with biohazard warnings.
They turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt outside a closed door marked Autopsy Room One. A long horizontal window allowed them to peer inside. The room visible through the glass panel was brightly lit, more modern in appearance than what she had seen so far of the hospital, and painted starkly white. A bank of small metal doors lined the back wall, and in the centre of the room stood a metal table, brightly lit by surgical lighting overhead.
A group of people dressed head to foot in white medical overalls stood around the table. Each wore white boots and gloves and a clear plastic helmet with face masks beneath. But the PM’s attention was drawn to the body of the creature lying on the table in the middle of the room. Stretched out, it measured perhaps seven feet long, heavily muscled, and clothed in thick black fur from head to tail. A large monitor screen suspended from the ceiling on metal stalks displayed a close-up image of the animal’s head. Its long snout was clearly visible, and there was no doubt that this was a wolf, despite its enormous size. Savage canine teeth protruded from its jaws.
She raised a hand involuntarily to her mouth. So this was the monster that had emerged from humanity’s darkest folk memories and fairy tales, the creature that had dared to enter the modern world where it so clearly did not belong.
Any residual doubts she may have held were wiped from her thoughts now that she had seen the creature for herself. It was a werewolf.
Lycanthropic (Book 2): Wolf Moon (The Rise of the Werewolves) Page 7
