Blood Moon (39 page)

The main gates opened and a squad of soldiers swarmed through, firing as they went. Against most opposition, this would have been devastating, and their silver bullets scythed through the charging moonstruck with deadly effect, but they were overwhelmed in seconds, their lives ending in screams of terror and the tearing of flesh. The air was filled with the stench of gunpowder and blood, almost sending his own wolf into a frenzy. More troops emerged from the barracks, filling the air with silver, slowing the monsters down. The moonstruck were forced to filter through the open gates, and being funnelled through such a confined area meant the soldiers could concentrate their fire. The moonstruck people of High Moor were cut down by the dozen, their shattered bodies piled high in the snow. Still, some escaped the initial onslaught and covered the distance to the soldiers. Then the screaming began anew.

John knew their window for action was limited, growing smaller by the second. These few brave, doomed men would not stem the tide of the moonstruck for long, and Colonel Richards, having seen what sort of mess a werewolf could do to trained military personnel, would not have left anything to chance. There would be reinforcements coming. Most likely in something that was impenetrable to teeth and claws. Like a helicopter gunship. Or a tank. Worryingly, though, so far, not one newly transformed werewolf had emerged from the other three huts. He tried to focus his senses on the closest, but there was too much noise and too much blood in the air for him to make out anything specific in the building.

He struggled to his feet and made a decision. He needed to get whoever was left out of those buildings and fast. He knew that not everyone in the other huts would have managed to transform properly. There would be moonstruck in there with them, of that there was no doubt. And, as those who retained their minds struggled with the influx of sensory information, the moonstruck would tear them apart. Ignoring the agony of his ruptured insides and the buzzing of high velocity silver rounds whizzing past him, he raced across the compound to where the first of the wooden shelters stood. He didn’t stand on ceremony and threw his entire weight against the door, shattering it into kindling as easily as if it had been made of balsa wood.

He brought himself up short as he surveyed the interior of the building and cursed himself for being so stupid. He was too late. Perhaps twenty eviscerated corpses were spread over the walls, floor and beds – it was hard to tell because their destruction had been so absolute. He took all of this in in a fraction of a second because his attention was drawn to the other occupants of the wooden hut. Moonstruck werewolves. Around thirty of them. Every single one of them regarding him with a look of utter feral rage.

***

Sharon looked up at the towering monster that had been her niece, trying to find some fragment of recognition in those blazing yellow eyes, some hint that Mandy knew who she was, and came to the conclusion that there was nothing of the young girl remaining in the creature before her. Mandy was lost. A small, insignificant voice trapped within the consciousness of the werewolf.

The beast was nightmarish. Sharon had thought the monsters that had slaughtered so many on New Year’s Eve in High Moor had been bad, but she understood now that they had been nothing at all compared to what she faced now. It stood almost seven feet tall, with corded muscles moving with liquid ease beneath thick brown fur. Its hands were still roughly human shaped, but were elongated and misshapen, with a vicious curved talon at the end of each finger. Ragged triangular ears protruded from the side of its head, flattened against the fur in aggression, while the long snout that had once been her niece’s pretty face wrinkled in a snarl, with black lips pulled back to reveal glinting ivory fangs the length of Sharon’s forefinger. A howl rang out from somewhere behind her – a joyous lament filled with anger and loss. Another beast joined the chorus. Then another. And another. Then Mandy threw her head back and let out a long, pained wail that broke Sharon’s heart. She knew, at that moment, at least half of the occupants of her hut were like Mandy. Savage, unreasoning monsters that would kill without pity or remorse. To remain here would seal her fate. As the chorus of howling reached its crescendo, Sharon bunched her muscles and launched herself into the air, twisting mid-flight so that her clawed feet connected with Mandy’s chest, using the moonstruck as a springboard to propel herself straight towards the window.

The glass exploded in a shower of razor fragments, each seeming to slice through Sharon’s flesh in a brief but painful burst of discomfort. She barely noticed them, and the wounds had healed before she landed on the snow-covered ground outside. The air was filled with the smell of blood and smoke, mingling with the sound of gunfire and screaming to form a terrible tapestry of sensation that threatened to overwhelm her. For a moment, she struggled to process it all, wanting nothing more than to find somewhere quiet and dark until she could make sense of it. Then she remembered what the others had told her. Get out of the building. Join up with the others. Rely on the strength of numbers to survive.

She took a few tentative steps away from the hut, her mind struggling to co-ordinate movement on four legs instead of two. Then the wall of the hut seemed to fly apart as Mandy hurled herself at the wooden barrier between them.

Sharon wanted nothing more at that point than to run to the others, but she knew if she did, with Mandy in pursuit, her niece would inflict terrible damage on the pack werewolves. They were no match for her individually, and worse, as a group, they would most likely tear Mandy to pieces. And Matthew was with the others. She could not – would not – lead this monster back to her young nephew and put him in danger. If Mandy hurt him, assuming she survived the night, she would never forgive herself. That only left her with one option. Sharon turned to face the monster that had once been the young girl she’d loved from the moment she was born. She tensed her muscles, curled back her lips into a growl and launched herself into the attack.

***

Paul Patterson checked his weapon for the fourth or fifth time and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He hated flying. Even the few rare commercial flights he’d taken had terrified him to the point of gripping the armrests on take-off and landing. And the experience of being crammed into an RAF Merlin helicopter with thirty fully armed Special Forces soldiers was about as far removed from a comfortable commercial flight as it was possible to get. He was in the lead helicopter, along with Colonel Richards and any troops with first-hand experience of fighting werewolves. The other four aircraft followed behind in a tight formation. Each carrying thirty combat ready soldiers within their steel bellies, plus two men manning the heavy machine guns on either side. One hundred and fifty of the most highly trained men in the British armed forces against God knows how many werewolves. Somehow it didn’t feel like nearly enough.

Colonel Richards’ mood had not improved since they had become airborne. He screamed orders into his headset and was becoming increasingly agitated. The thermobaric bomb was supposed to have taken care of the problem once and for all, but the C-130 carrying it had crashed into an industrial estate on the southern fringes of Doncaster with no one seeming to have any idea as to how or why. At least the airburst weapon had not actually gone off or a large portion of the city would have been levelled. Paul understood the reasons, politically at least, why they’d had to wait until moonrise before wiping the cursed inhabitants of High Moor out, but as far as he was concerned, it had been a ridiculous decision, motivated more by their new interim Prime Minister’s desire to hold on to power than practicality. They should have simply walked through the compound, gunning down every single creature inside it while they were still human. Even if they’d held off with the High Moor survivors, they should have at least taken out the pack werewolves. The whole operation was a massive clusterfuck. A balls-up of the highest magnitude. The men in the choppers were supposed to have been a mop-up squad. A massive show of strength to deal with any stragglers or anything else that somehow survived the explosion. Now it seemed barely adequate at best. Pitifully outmatched at worst.

Colonel Richards’ face turned a darker shade of crimson as he bellowed into the radio. “I don’t give a damn about that. Where are my fucking Apaches? Well, what’s their ETA? Forty five minutes? Forty five bloody minutes? What the hell were they doing in Wattisham? I know it’s in fucking Suffolk! What I don’t understand is why my air support is half way across the bloody country. What about the drones? I know there are dozens of targets. Well, aim for the biggest bloody groups of them! Yes! Now!” He shook his head in disgust and turned to the assembled soldiers. “We will be onsite in two minutes. I want a fast deployment, form up in squads and shoot anything that moves. The Merlins will stay on station with the machine gunners providing support and taking out any creatures that breach the perimeter. I need you to go in hard, fast and without any mercy whatsoever. If you hesitate for even a fraction of a second, these things will tear you apart. Are we clear?”

The troops turned to face the Colonel and shouted “Sir, yes, Sir!” as one.

Paul checked his weapon one last time and couldn’t help but grin. There would be no prisoners. No capture and retrieval. Not this time. They were finally going to put these monsters down, once and for all. “Fucking payback time,” he whispered under his breath. Damn, if he wasn’t looking forward to this.

Chapter 24

11th January 2009. Lindholme Detention Centre, Doncaster. 03:34

Steven saw the look on Phil’s face and understood what his friend intended to do. His every instinct screamed at him that they could find another way. That there had to be something they’d overlooked. Some way they could escape from the monstrosities advancing towards them. There wasn’t. As fast and as powerful as he was, just one of those abominations had swatted him aside as if he were a child. They were faster than him. Immeasurably stronger. And completely insane. Their twisted faces held nothing of the people they had been a few short minutes ago. There was a malevolent intelligence there to be sure, but they were devoid of anything approaching compassion or reason. They terrified Steven more than any werewolf he’d ever faced. Just one of them outmatched him by more than he wanted to think about. And there were six of them. Phil was right. They had to be stopped, and there was no way they were both getting out of here alive.

Phil gave him a look devoid of all hope. “Save my wife, Steven,” he said, and removed his zippo lighter from his pocket. The fumes in the air were thick; the light distorted by the flammable chemicals. The creatures surged across the room, recognising the danger they were in. Steven gave his friend one last look, wanting to remember the brave man who had come here to save him, then threw himself at the laboratory window.

The glass exploded around him as he twisted in mid-air so his body was facing along the corridor. He hit the ground in a full run, his claws sinking into the cheap linoleum, shredding the plastic, hurling him away from the laboratory and the horrors it contained. He registered Phil’s screams as the beasts fell upon him. Then, for a fraction of a second, there was a horrible silence as the air in the corridor rushed past him. It was as if the room he’d escaped was taking a breath, inhaling every last scrap of oxygen available to it. Steven knew he’d run out of time. He had no chance of getting clear. He threw himself at the door of a supply cupboard to his left, just as the fireball tore through the building.

The world was filled with noise and searing pain. Steven’s fur ignited. He breathed chemical fire into his lungs, burning his mouth and throat. His flesh began to bubble, crack and blister. He could no longer see anything other than a terrible redness, and realised his eyeballs had started to boil in his skull. The pain was terrible. Even after the torture Doctor Channing had inflicted on him, he’d never experienced anything like this. The feeling of being slowly burned alive while his wolf side did its best to heal the massive damage. There were limits even to his regenerative abilities, and right at that moment, Steven Wilkinson wished for death. For the sweet, cool oblivion of the grave instead of the endless burning of his flesh. He was in Hell. Condemned to an eternity of agony as he combusted and regenerated, only for the new flesh to be stripped away in the conflagration.

Steven lay in the burning building and waited for death to claim him. When his eyeballs grew back in a white flash of unmitigated agony, he knew that he was not going to be that lucky. Smoke and heat dried out his eyes, but he was unable to blink to clear them. His eyelids had not grown back yet. He needed to get outside, away from the inferno that had been Lindholme Prison. He forced his ruined body to stand, each second more painful than the last, every movement, no matter how slight, sending a cascade of torture through his seared nerve endings as he drove himself to move through the blazing corridors and the thick, acrid smoke to where his tormented wolf sensed clean, cold air.