Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] (3 page)
Read Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] Online
Authors: Nick Pollotta
Wait! Digging into her pants pockets the vet found a fistful of change. Most of it dime and quarters! Those were made of silver ... no! Furious, she dashed change to the ground and tromped on the coins. Darn money was only a copper disk with a thin electroplating of silver! Utterly useless.
Suddenly, a throaty laugh came from the door of the shed and Dr. Abernathy knew the beast had found her.
The entire cabin shuddered from the impact of something on the other side of the barred portal, the cord of wood toppled over and the hanging meat danced a ghastly jig. In heart-pounding fear, Abernathy glanced about the enclosed structure, but there was no place to run or hide. She was trapped. This was it. Tonight was her final day. Here was where she'd die. That foul beast would be the last thing she saw before death.
A great calm came upon the elderly woman, similar to the emotionless elation she experienced when performing a delicate operation. So what would be the final act of Dr. Joanne Gertrude Abernathy upon this Earth? Cowering submission? Hysterics? Suicide?
Several minutes later, the oak beam barring the door finally cracked and the wolf stooped over to enter the shed. Appended on a length of chain, the hundred kilos of hickory smoke, sugar cured, Big Boy slammed the beast in the face. Roaring in annoyance, the werewolf ripped the giant hog off the steel support hook and tossed the carcass into the litter filled yard. In the background, the cabin was on fire.
The dancing flames cast eerie shadows inside the darkened shed, but the wolf could still clearly see the old woman standing brazen. She held a machine thing in her hands.
"Okay,
lupine
, you want me?” Dr. Abernathy snarled. “Then come and get me!” With a snarl, she tore a piece off the machine.
The bold defiance puzzled the man-beast for a second, but as the elderly female did not hold the booming-device-which-killed, the wolf steadily advanced.
Yanking on the starter cord again, Abernathy got the chainsaw to come to deadly life. In a stuttering roar, the linked array of carbide-steel teeth moved in a thundering blur of speed, great billowing clouds of exhaust spewing from the rusty side-mounted muffler.
Brushing aside the brandished log-cutter, the wolf racked a paw at the woman's throat, but Dr. Abernathy raised an arm to block. The claws shredded cloth and flesh. Blood sprayed everywhere. Writhing in agony, Abernathy went sprawling upon the floor, trembling fingers trying to staunch the flow of blood from her slashed forearm.
The drooling beast came closer. Then from underneath, the old vet swung the small hand axe used to split kindling. The attack was so pitiful, the werewolf paused in astonishment. It was only for a single moment that he saw the tiny silver slug neatly impaled on the edge of the axe blade.
This was an impossible gambit and Dr. Abernathy's very last chance for life. A wild gamble on a possible flaw in the gypsy legend. A werewolf could only be killed by a silver bullet, that was stated plain and simple. No if, ands, or buts. Yet nowhere did it say the monster had to get
shot
.
Guided by the expert knowledge of a trained veterinarian, the axe blade sank into the chest of the beast, directly between the fifth and sixth rib, missing the sternum entirely and driving the misshapen silver slug deep into the animal's heart.
Galvanized into immobility, the wolf screamed in an amazingly human voice and its eyes rolled into its head until only the white showed. Dropping to his knees, black blood gushed in horrid amounts and the entire body began to shake.
In reverse motion, the full coat of hair withdrew into bare pink skin. The snout retracted and teeth blunted. The ears moved down the side of the changing skull, talons became fingernails. The Z-style joint of the lower canine legs twisted around to become a single knee. The body shortened, a face formed. And in mere seconds there lay on the floor of the shed a naked dead man with an axe in his chest.
Finished wrapping her plaid shirt around the gash in her arm, Dr. Abernathy climbed shakily to her feet and glared down at the would-be killer.
Sacre blu
, it had actually worked. Momentarily, she wondered who he was and what was his story. But Joanne Abernathy realized she would never know. He was dead and that meant she was safe. Safe!
Then the elderly woman frowned. Of course, she had the minor problem of a nude corpse on her hands and a home that resembled Quebec after the riots. But those were minor matters compared to the singular implications of her wound.
Deep as the slash was, the blood was slowing in an unnatural manner, which highly raised her suspicions. If the legends held true, and they had so far, then a bite from a werewolf made you one as well. But did getting clawed also result in the cursed transformation? Even if you killed the first werewolf? Was it an event chain that could be broken, or a series of isolated events each alone and independent. Dr. Abernathy didn't know, and wouldn't. Not until the next full moon.
Exiting the bloody shed, the exhausted woman stumbled into the yard and sat on Big Boy. The possibilities were endless and frightening. Every month to lose her humanity and become a non-sentient animal. To roam the woods and back alleys of towns searching for helpless people to slaughter. Then to eat.
Calmly watching her home burn to the ground, Abernathy came to a decision. No. It would never happen. Dr. Abernathy would not let that happen. She would wrap herself in chains every month. Get drunk. Use illegal narcotics to stupefy herself. Anything! But she would not kill again. Ever.
Facing the starry sky, Joanne Abernathy made a solemn vow. Doomed as an immortal slayer, a cannibal beast, the retired veterinarian would not rest until she found a cure for this artificial disease of lycanthropy. She would find it. Even if Abernathy had to move Heaven and Earth to do so!
Or even Hell, for that matter.
CLICK “Good evening and here now the news. Today, the president announced that ... RETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOP
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SECURITY LEVEL TEN
ULTRA-RED ALERT
ATTENTION ALL BUREAU 13 PERSONNEL:
Yesterday, at 14:43 Eastern Standard Time, there occurred somewhere in the continental United States an unprecedented disturbance in our plane of existence. Momentarily, a rift formed between the ethereal dimension and our own universe, a vibrating portal which released a wild energy burst of staggering proportions. In ordinary language: 12 hours ago somebody set off the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
Instantly, every telepath in North American was rendered unconscious and/or dead from the secondary psionic shock waves produced from the tremendous pulse of raw power. Plus, there's not a single functioning crystal ball remaining from the Panama Canal to the Arctic Circle. Temporarily, the Bureau has been made blind and deaf; sans such crude electromagnetic communications as this printed message overriding your local television broadcast. This is a totally unacceptable situation. Who knows what the hostile supernaturals of our country may be doing in this brief interim of unrestricted freedom? The mind boggles. While our physicians and mages try to resuscitate the comatose telepaths, replacement crystal balls are being flown in from around the world.
However, TechServ theorizes that the ethereal radiation has already dropped beneath detectable levels, and since there should be no physical destruction from the blast, it will be extremely difficult for us to find the epicenter of the disturbance. Yet pinpoint it we must. And fast. Before it occurs again with more permanent results.
ORDERS: As of this moment, all vacations and sick leaves are hereby cancelled. Students have graduated early from our Bangor-Maine Training Academy. Retired and/or dead agents have been recalled to active duty. Every field team and solo agent is directed to fully investigate any unusual occurrence, no matter how minor or seemingly inconsequential, even if it does not blatantly involve the supernatural. Especially any bloody crimes of violent murder involving cannibalism. Occult power such as this usually requires a human sacrifice. Maybe several.
Okay, people. We're dealing with the totally unknown here, even more so than usual, so get moving, stay hard, be alert.
And pray.
Horace Gordon
Division Chief, Bureau 13
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TOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRETTOPSECRET ...
Slam
! “Lucy! I'm home!
Aye carumba
! What have you done to your hair?” “Waa...!"
We headed for death at sixty miles per hour. Had to. That was the speed limit.
As I checked the loads in both of my .357 Magnums, the world moved silently past the bulletproof windows of the RV. Swiftly, the big recreational vehicle maneuvered through the thinning traffic of the West Virginia Highway, its sixteen-cylinder engine oblivious to the mountainous terrain we had to overcome. Deemed a major transportation route by the locals, I considered I-65 little more than a roller coaster ride cast in stone. Each steep hill peaked a valley with sharply declining sides and acute curves banked in serpentine ravines. Just over the edge of the berm was an astonishingly deep ravine filled with white-water rapids, jagged boulders and somber metallic signs saying ‘please do not feed the grizzly bears your hand'.
It sounded like a joke. But in truth, the doctors of West Virginia were the best trained physicians in the world on the tedious microsurgery involved in re-attaching severed limbs.
Trying to appear casual, I surreptitiously raised the Armorlite window. Just in case we encountered any hairy hitchhikers with a bad attitude and no respect for the law.
"Everybody ready?” I asked, angling the 38-foot van off the main road onto a paved secondary route. Traffic disappeared as we bumped over potholes and dead raccoons, while from the aft passenger section of the huge RV, a ragged chorus answered my question.
"Of course, we're prepared, dear,” Jessica Alvarez smiled.
"
Banzai
, Ed,” Mindy Jennings added.
"Rock-n-roll, chief,” George Renault grunted positively
"Anti-no,
kemo sabe
,” Raul Horta intoned, arms crossed mysteriously.
"
Da
, comrade Alvarez,” Katrina Somers said in a sultry Russian voice.
"Hssss...."
Taking a fast peek in the rear view mirror, I could see that my team was relaxed, alert and heavily armed. That last response had been from Amigo, the Gila lizard who traveled with us as a pet and bodyguard. At the moment, he was lying on the carpeted floor, sunning his belly and digesting a truly impressive meal of crickets. Only two feet long, with a pebbled hide the color of a rainbow, the softly burping desert reptile didn't appear very dangerous. Yet Amigo was more loyal than a dog, faster than a fish, smarter than an elected official and deadlier than a grenade in your shorts. If the tiny lizard ever had to battle a pack of rabid lions, it should be even money on the outcome. Should be, but wasn't. Amigo didn't fight fair.
Satisfied with our current status, I returned my attention to the road.
Hadleyville, here we come
.
Despite the ominous warning received on our television from the big boss, Horace Gordon, my team was still in good spirits. This morning we had coolly neutralized a haunted prison in Pittsburgh, ending a ten-year long rampage of death and destruction by the irate spirit as we reenacted the execution of The Evil Doctor Salvatore. But this time, just as my team was about to hang me disguised as the deceased physician, there was a last minute stay from the governor. The ghost was so overcome with elation that he lost his tenuous hold on this plane of reality and faded away forever. Ha! Child's play. Leaving the execution cell, we blessed the building, dynamited the prison and went for lunch. Cheeseburgers, coke, no ice. Burp.
This nifty victory was a pleasant success after our failure in the Yukon last month. A werewolf had escaped from us by the unprecedented ploy of jumping out of a moving jet plane at 40,000 feet. By the time we got the pilot to turn around, and decrease speed enough for us to parachute after the monster, the beast was already dead and a local vet had disappeared. Almost certainly bitten and now an unwilling enemy of Humanity. Poor soul. As one of our very few outright failures, the memory of the incident badly rankled us.
On the rear couch of the RV, a redheaded giant finished his prayers with a rumbling ‘amen'. Removing the purple sash from around his collar, Father Michael Xavier Donaher folded the cloth into a neat bundle and placed it inside a small suitcase with the rest of his priestly paraphernalia: rosary, Bible, scapula and shotgun. As always, the good Father was dressed in his usual outfit of black cassock, black pants and track shoes.
"Faith, and what do we know about the history of Hadleyville?” Father Donaher rumbled in his phony Irish brogue. He could turn it on and off at will. “Any known ghosts? Local monster legends? Devil cults? Young Republicans Club?"
"Nothing quite that bad,” Jessica chuckled, placing her 35mm Nikon camera back into the bag between us on the front seat. Then she pressed a few buttons on the dashboard and cycled up a small computer keyboard and monitor. Booting the on-board system, the Oriental beauty keyed in the security codes and accessed the West Virginia data file. This state had always been a hot bed of paranormal activity, so stopping while in Wheeling for gas, we used a cell phone modem to download the appropriate ASCII file into the van's gigabyte zip drive memory bank from our big InfoNet Cray SVG Mark IV mainframe located in Chicago.
Suddenly, I went cold. Ye god, I actually understood that hacker babble! Gotta get out more.
