Lycanthropic (Book 2): Wolf Moon (The Rise of the Werewolves)

by Morris, Steve

  ‘I was just hot,’ explained Chris. ‘I was panicked about being cooped up with all the werewolves. I thought they were going to eat us. I still do,’ he added.

  The nurse ignored his last statement. ‘And you say you’re hungry?’ she asked.

  ‘Starving,’ said Chris. ‘We’ve hardly had anything to eat for days.’

  ‘I can bring you some food and drink,’ she said kindly. ‘But I can’t offer more than that. We have to keep everyone under strict quarantine. You understand that we can’t risk releasing any of the infected patients.’

  ‘I understand that,’ said Chris, ‘but I’m scared they might eat us.’

  ‘This is a secure hospital under military protection,’ said Chanita. She pointed to a soldier standing at the entrance to the ward. ‘You’re safe here. If what you say is true, then we’ll be able to let you go once we’ve established that you pose no risk.’

  ‘So do you have a way of testing for the infection?’ asked Chris hopefully.

  ‘We’re working on it,’ said Chanita. ‘In the meantime, I’ll make sure you get food and water and that you come to no harm.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Chris. He looked around the ward nervously. Pairs of yellow eyes stared hungrily back in his direction.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  High Street, Brixton Hill, South London, crescent moon

  Kevin Bailey was feeling pretty pleased with himself. Only a month ago he’d been a wanted murderer, on the run from the police, unemployed, with his livelihood literally going up in smoke before his eyes, and no family either. His prospects had looked bleaker than they’d ever done, and Kevin was no stranger to bleak prospects. Now he was living the life of Riley. He was reconciled with his daughter, had acquired an unexpected grandson, and achieved a kind of security he hadn’t known for years, with a thriving business portfolio on the up and up. From where Kevin stood, this national catastrophe was working out very much for the best.

  ‘Give me a hand with these boxes, Kevin,’ said Gary the butcher. He was busy unloading packets of cigarettes from the back of the van.

  Kevin took a final drag on his cigarette and threw the stub on the ground, stamping it out under his boot. ‘Come on, kid,’ he said to Mihai, giving the boy a gentle shove in the direction of the van. ‘There’s work to be done.’

  Between the three of them they finished unloading the van in no time. Soon the packets were neatly stacked in the storeroom at the back of the butcher’s shop along with the other booty. Cigarettes, beer, bottles of spirits, pharmaceutical supplies and even camping gear. The butcher’s shop no longer stocked much meat behind its counter, but in the back room it had diversified into a store for all the goods people wanted most desperately when the apocalypse hit town. The kind of stuff that people were willing to pay good money for, now that shit had finally happened.

  ‘Is too heavy, carrying all this stuff,’ moaned Mihai.

  Kevin cuffed him lightly on the ear. ‘Quit moaning,’ he said in a friendly fashion. He knew the boy wasn’t lazy. He was a grafter, just like Kevin himself. And smart with it. Much smarter than Gary. But Gary had retail premises and transport, and the business needed him. Plus, local people trusted Gary. Apart from vegetarians, he supposed. Vegetarians probably had no time at all for a butcher. But Kevin had no time for vegetarians either. The salad-eaters would have to make do without ciggies and booze. This was payback time, after so many years when the world had seemed to be turning the opposite way to Kevin. ‘You know what this is, kid?’ he said to Mihai, waving his arms expansively to take in the stocked shelves of the storeroom.

  ‘Is hard work,’ complained Mihai.

  ‘This,’ said Kevin, with a feeling of satisfaction, ‘is opportunity.’ It was the biggest opportunity that had ever headed in Kevin’s direction, that was for sure. After a lifetime of drawing short straws, he’d got lucky at last. But luck was only part of it. You had to be ready to grab hold of an opportunity when it came your way. Opportunities had passed Kevin by before. He hadn’t spotted them quick enough, or hadn’t been ready to catch them. But he’d caught this one all right. Caught it and was running with it. He wasn’t gonna drop it, no matter what.

  ‘Why we sell cigarettes when people need food?’ asked Mihai once Gary had returned to the front of the shop to serve a customer.

  ‘We could sell food,’ acknowledged Kevin, ‘but food is harder to store, and cigarettes have more margin. We have to follow the money if we want to maximise our profits.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Mihai with a scowl. ‘Am not stupid. But men who sell cigarettes are very bad men. Is dangerous.’

  As usual the kid was right. The Serbians who supplied the cigarettes were a nerve-racking crowd to deal with. They scared the hell out of Kevin. The boss man, Zoran, had been some kind of military leader back in the days of the Bosnian War. Kevin wouldn’t have been surprised if the guy had come to London to avoid being prosecuted for war crimes. He had no doubt that Zoran would hurt him badly or even kill him if he ever tried to cross him. But Kevin knew enough about geezers like that to keep his head above water. The rules were simple. Always follow through on the deal you’d agreed, and never try to renegotiate terms at the last minute. Pulling a stunt like that was a good way to get your head blown off, and Kevin had no wish to lose his head, especially not now everything was going so well. ‘Don’t worry, kid,’ he said to Mihai. ‘Your Grandpa Kevin’s gonna take good care of you. Just listen and learn and you won’t get into no trouble.’

  The kid had sown a few doubts in his mind now, however. He lit up another cigarette while he thought it through. If things ever turned nasty with his supply chain, it would be better if he had a few more tricks up his sleeve. He had no doubt that he and Gary could take care of themselves well enough in a fist fight, but if one of the Serbians ever turned a gun on them, they’d be toast. Burnt toast at that, and full of holes too. Crumbs, basically.

  He’d feel a lot safer if he was tooled up with a shooter in his back pocket, just for emergencies. In fact, now he came to think of it, trading in iron and ammo might just be the next big opportunity for him to follow. His nose was beginning to twitch at the prospect, and Kevin always followed his nose.

  Where to get his hands on some guns though, that was the tricky question. It took a couple more smokes before the answer suddenly hit him. From the Serbians themselves. Why had he been so slow to work it out?

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, Whitehall, Central London, crescent moon

  Doctor Helen Eastgate hadn’t voted for the Prime Minister. She preferred a more compassionate approach to government. She had been appalled by the way the PM had deployed the army and allowed General Ney to impose a curfew following the New Year’s riots. And after the Trafalgar Square atrocity she had been on the brink of handing in her resignation as Special Scientific Adviser to the COBRA meetings. But her views were slowly changing.

  The private face of the Prime Minister was no different from her public one. Strong, authoritarian, and unyielding. But now Helen saw glimpses of something softer beneath the hard shell. The more she witnessed the PM wrestle with difficult decisions, the more Helen began to admire and understand the most powerful woman in the country.

  The Prime Minister always listened carefully to both sides of every argument, probed for facts, and grilled her advisers like an inquisitor, before finally reaching a decision. Her decisions were often made on much less information than Helen would have liked. As an academic, she would have been tempted to await more data, commission a further study, hold off until the evidence was conclusive. But that would be fatal here. The Prime Minister reached her conclusions swiftly, and she owned her decisions. Although Helen still preferred her politicians to wear their hearts on their sleeves, there was no denying that the PM acted with good intentions, and that she was fully aware of the consequences of her actions.

  She was grappling with another difficult decision right now. Helen, havin
g heard the arguments for and against, didn’t envy her.

  ‘I will not turn this country into Fortress Britain,’ declared the Prime Minister. ‘The restrictions on movement are already causing real hardship to ordinary people. Supplies of goods are becoming limited. People cannot easily get to work. Businesses are closing and the knock-on effects are in danger of becoming irreversible. I will not extend the restrictions further. That would be a gross infringement of human rights and economically disastrous.’

  The Home Secretary held a different opinion. ‘But Prime Minister, if we are to contain the violence and apprehend the ringleaders of the werewolves, some short-term sacrifices are necessary. The case for closing our external borders seems crystal clear to me. It is already apparent that the infection originated in mainland Europe.’ He indicated Helen’s presence at the table. ‘Doctor Eastgate’s information tells us for certain that the origin point of this disease – ground zero – if you like, was Romania. More Romanian citizens have been implicated in the spread of the disease, and many of the infected patients are in fact foreign citizens.’

  The new Foreign Secretary didn’t seem any more sympathetic to the PM’s view. ‘I must agree with the Home Secretary on this matter, Prime Minister. Refugees are fleeing Russia, the Middle East and countries in Eastern Europe, and heading for Britain. There are already backlogs of refugees in Calais, and reports of disease breakouts at camps close to the French ports. The United Kingdom enjoys a unique position in Europe by virtue of being an island nation. We must take advantage of this natural buffer against the disease, and close the ports immediately.’

  The PM glared at them both through steepled fingers. She turned to her military adviser, the old General with his steely face and his enormous eyebrows. ‘General, what is your opinion? Must we take this step?’

  Helen regarded General Sir Roland Ney warily. Of all the members of the COBRA committee, she trusted the Chief of the Defence Staff least of all. He always took a hardline view and seemed to have little regard for human rights.

  The General seemed in no hurry to respond. He appeared to be weighing his options, or else wondering how to word his reply. Eventually he leaned forward. ‘Prime Minister, the security policies already in place are yielding results. The curfew, the checkpoints, and the quarantined hospital are containing the infection, or at least slowing its spread. Anything that restricts movement further will only assist and support our existing operations. And it is imperative that we eliminate this threat before the next full moon. I speak as a military adviser, you understand. I cannot comment on other implications of shutting the ports, and I leave that to your civilian advisers.’

  The PM seemed to be outnumbered. ‘Does everyone here agree with the General?’ she asked the meeting in general.

  There was a broad murmuring of agreement, and nodding of heads around the table.

  The Prime Minister frowned. She crossed her hands and appeared to lose focus momentarily. Helen had come to recognize this as a sign that the PM was about to make a decision. But she didn’t make up her mind immediately. Instead she turned to Helen. ‘Doctor Eastgate, in your capacity as Scientific Adviser, what value do you think that closing the country’s borders would have on containing the spread of the disease?’

  Helen hadn’t expected to be asked such a direct question. So far she had mainly observed these meetings, occasionally being asked to explain some technical matter. No one had asked her to venture an opinion before now. ‘Prime Minister,’ she began uncertainly, ‘at present we don’t fully understand the transmission pathways of the disease. We know it can be passed from one host to another through bites, scratches and blood transfusions. It is quite possible that sexual transmission also exists, but we have no evidence of that. My best guess is that the disease cannot easily be passed by other means, if at all. That means we have a real chance to contain it, but only if we can isolate the carriers of the disease.’

  Helen stopped. Somehow her words seemed to be supporting the case put forth by the General. The idea of restricting people’s rights to go where they wished was against all her political views. She had emigrated to the UK herself, and had always assumed she would be able to travel freely wherever she wished. Until recently she’d entertained the idea of returning to the hot climate of her home country, but until Australia reopened its borders that was out of the question.

  But the scientific case was unassailable, and Helen was a scientist, not a politician. ‘Prime Minister,’ she continued, ‘I agree with the others here. The best way to control the disease is by restricting movement of people as much as possible. We have no definitive way to test patients for the disease, and we know that at least some of those infected are using the condition as a bioweapon, deliberately seeking to spread it. If I were in your position, I would certainly seek to control the borders. At the very least, I would quarantine all those who wished to enter the country.’

  The PM looked at her, her expression unchanged. Helen wondered whether her opinion would have any real influence on the outcome. She wasn’t even a member of government. By rights, she oughtn’t to be here at all, and one or two of the other cabinet members had even remarked on the fact. But she was here at the Prime Minister’s personal insistence. For some reason this strong, older woman with so much power at her disposal, and so many advisers to do her bidding, had decided to place her faith in a young Australian she hardly knew.

  The PM’s eyes glazed over for a fraction of a second, and then she spoke. ‘Thank you all for your input. Despite all that has happened, this country remains a democracy. We are answerable to our people. We are not at war. This country has faced many threats, from enemies without and within. Britain is, and always has been, a bastion of freedom. It is the cradle of democracy.

  ‘Foreign Secretary, speak to your counterparts in Dublin, Paris, and Brussels. Inform them that our borders will continue to remain open.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Holland Gardens, Kensington, London, new moon

  Warg Daddy dragged the screaming woman down the stairs and threw her onto the metal-framed bed. Her hands were already tied together behind her back, and Snakebite bound her to the bed frame using some evil-looking leather straps and metal buckles. When she was secured, he pulled the cloth bag from her head and let her take in her new surroundings. She screamed again, and Warg Daddy wasn’t surprised. He would have screamed too, if he’d been in her position.

  They were in a small basement room of the house, just off the underground garage. Unlike the opulent decor in the conference room and the rest of the building, this room was almost bare, with unfinished walls and a rough concrete floor. Glass vials, syringes and other medical equipment stood on metal shelving along one wall, and assorted surgical instruments were lined up ready for use on a table next to the bed. Leanna called the room her laboratory.

  Dungeon, thought Warg Daddy. It looked like a fucking dungeon to him. But if Leanna preferred to call it a laboratory, he would play along. ‘She’s ready,’ he said.

  Leanna and Adam were already waiting with their instruments of torture. Leanna’s face had healed enough for her to remove the dressing that had covered one eye. The eye was good, but her skin would never heal. One half of her face was reddened and scarred, and her mysterious disfigurement appeared to be permanent. Warg Daddy shivered at the sight. At least Leanna’s long golden hair covered some of the burned skin.

  Adam passed Leanna a syringe and she went over to the bed. The woman eyed the sharp point of the needle and shook her head desperately from side to side, begging for release. Leanna ignored her. Instead she carefully inserted the needle into the woman’s arm and administered the injection.

  Warg Daddy watched as the woman gasped, her chest heaving, taking breaths in gulps as if each might be her last. A minute passed. Then the woman’s arms began to quiver uncontrollably. She arched her back, her eyes rolled back in her skull, and a hideous screech erupted from her lips. Anaphylactic shock. He had se
en it enough times now, had endured it himself when he had first become infected with the condition. No matter how many times he saw it, it still creeped him out.

  The woman thrashed her limbs violently, straining the leather straps that bound her. Her screaming grew louder and more inhuman.

  ‘Is it working?’ asked Snakebite.

  Warg Daddy didn’t think so. The woman’s face was slowly turning red, and her screams died away to an agonising rasp.

  ‘Asphyxiation,’ muttered Adam. ‘The internal swelling has blocked her airway. She needs an adrenaline shot.’ He gave her a second injection, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The woman continued to jerk her limbs in silence. She was clearly choking to death now. There was nothing Adam or Leanna could do to save her. Eventually the woman’s arms and legs grew still. ‘She’s gone,’ said Adam at last. ‘Just like the others.’

  ‘Dammit!’ shouted Leanna, stamping her foot in rage.

  ‘Why didn’t we just bite her?’ asked Warg Daddy. ‘Like you did to us? Why did we have to bring her back here and inject her?’ This whole business made his flesh crawl. A werewolf should hunt, not engage in weird medical experiments.

  Leanna turned her burned face to him, her blue eyes sparking dangerously. ‘You wanted to be bitten. You asked me to bite you. Do you think she wanted to be bitten?’ The woman had gone quiet now. All life had left her.

  Warg Daddy shrugged. ‘I’m not afraid of biting anyone.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were afraid,’ snapped Leanna, her words like icicles, sharp enough to pierce flesh. ‘Don’t you understand why we do this?’

  Snakebite gave her the answer she wanted. ‘It’s so you can administer the virus under controlled conditions right? To increase the patient’s chances of survival.’

  Warg Daddy looked at the dead woman strapped to the bed, Adam bent uselessly over her inert body. The conditions didn’t look very controlled to Warg Daddy. He’d seen the Brothers exercise more control than this after an all-night drinking session down at The Tarnished Spoon. But Leanna and Adam were medical students. Creepy experiments in underground laboratories seemed to turn them on.