There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (7 page)

The man-thing reached up with her hairy hands and unlatched the cage…

Grinning, the Gray licked her foaming jowls.

                                         
*******

Yawning hugely, Oscar Wilson set the metal bowls on the pushcart. Having worked around the clock, he was in serious sleep debt. The Center had suffered some major cutbacks in their funding, and more than half of the staff had recently been let go. Despite this, the work continued unabated. Oscar, like so many at the Center these days, was doing the work of two, leaving him constantly tired and muddle-headed. He glanced over Dr. Bidwell’s instructions pasted to the kitchen wall, regarding meal preparations for the two large mix breeds at the end of the kennel:

Half a lb. ea. hamburger, mixed with dry kibble, cooked rice and vitamin supplements. Keep water dish full and clean. Record eating and drinking habits.
Especially any aversion to liquids
! Take stool samples. Note any changes in the coloration of the pupils and any aggressive tendencies. Excessive drool is of course a red flag! As always, maintain security precautions! Alert staff to any personal injuries or illness at once!
Remember
:
No scratch is insignificant! No headache irrelevant!

Wilson’s upper lip curled in disgust. Now he had to watch them eat and drink, as well as collect their fucking crap! That was a new low. Despite that, he knew how important these last two test subjects were to the future of the Research Center—not to mention his job as kennel manager. The dogs had both received injections with a combination of the RS-6 and the RS-7 strains, giving the new mutation the code name
RS-13
. Dr. Bidwell’s last hope at redemption. Of the thirteen kennels on the base, only one remained in action now. Unlucky 13.

The tests run there strictly Hush-Hush.

As in:
“The Public wouldn’t understand!”
As in:
“Keep your mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you!”

Kennels one-through-ten had run rather mundane research on human ailments, from the common cold to mumps—animal testing their main source of information. That kind of research, however, had run its course. The data already compiled sufficient enough for any future research. Kennels 11 and 12 had run tests on viruses that may or may not have had military applications—depending on who was asking and what their security clearance was.

Ebola, Anthrax, Small Pox, and such.

All very hot and lethal.

Those viruses, however, had proved too unstable, too virulent to work around without extreme cost measures, and thus, over time, the Center had eliminated that research as well. They had long ago put all their eggs into one nasty little basket.  A virus that wasn’t quite as hot as the others, yet even deadlier in terms of its mortality. A virus with which Dr. Clint Bidwell was well acquainted.

RABIES.

And Kennel Thirteen was where he performed his voodoo on the virus. Creating a bio-weapon he hoped would someday destroy al-Qaeda and its subsets forever. And in the process, make him an obscenely wealthy man. 

The assorted dogs, raccoons, and varied primates lined up on either side of kennel 13 had all received one of the previous strains of his mutant virus. Strains that in years of research and testing had yet to produce the desired results. Not unless you counted the accidental outbreak of eight years ago, which they’d been trying ever since to replicate. And Dr. Bidwell most assuredly marked that incident down in his Win column.

One Win amongst a legion of Losses.

In reality, Bidwell was down to his last two outs—the gray mutts at the end of the run. The rest of the animals, and the testing thereof, were really superfluous. They’d done it all countless times before. At this point, it was merely to eliminate those strains, once and for all. 

In any case, Oscar wasn’t holding his breath. RS13 was likely just another dead end. He had already begun applying for work on the mainland. Something, perhaps, in the public sector. Maybe not so militaristic in nature. He’d had his fill of secrecy and subterfuge. 

A couple of the raccoons, he noted, had died in the night, their bodies frozen in wretched poses of rictus.
Too soon
, he thought. That strain had worked much too fast on its host.
“Two down, eleven to go.”

Wilson took two of the bowls off the cart. He filled in the rest from memory, saving 138’s and 139’s for last. He wanted to get finished with his morning chores as soon as possible. He was the only man on the base at the moment, and thus had the run of the place.

Wilson checked his watch; he had at least four hours to catch up on some Z’s before the rest of the staff came back from their meeting and lunch in Beaufort. He’d fudge on the reports just this once.

They’d never know the difference.

The bowls now ready, Wilson began sliding each one in turn through the small slots at the end of each Plexiglas covered cage. The surgical gloves he wore whenever he handled the food bowls squeaked as he made a notation on the chart hanging from a hook on cage #3. The Rhesus monkey was sluggish and paid the bowl of sliced fruit scant attention. He’d be putting that one in a body bag by nightfall. The monkey’s littermate in #4 was in even worse condition, her breathing shallow and labored. Wilson didn’t bother feeding it. The spider monkeys in numbers 5 and 6 growled at Wilson, as he slid their dinners into their cages. He wasn’t concerned; their deadly saliva couldn’t get past the Plexiglas shield.

Sliding a food bowl into the German shepherd’s cage, Wilson heard the unmistakable sound of a latch lifting. He looked down the run to see his pet chimp had opened the gray bitch’s cage again.
“Weezy, what have I told you about that? Now you lock that cage right…”

Wilson watched in disbelief as the Gray threw itself at his ape, ignoring the painful lessons Wilson had himself taught her and her littermates. The chimp screamed as the big dog savaged her arm, nearly ripping it from her shoulder. Blood spattered the kennel floor and surrounding cages in pulsating jets. The screams from Wilson’s pet were shockingly similar to those of a child in abject terror.

“Let go of her!”
Wilson bellowed, at once forgetting the security directive to immediately isolate and dispatch any escaped animals. To that optimistic conclusion, loaded dartguns were clipped to the walls at either ends of the kennel. Despite having enough sedative in each hypodermic to put down a rampaging Grizzly Bear, Wilson didn’t even consider them. The cries of his chimp drove him to the heights of foolishness. Grabbing the cattle prod from his belt, he charged the slavering hound.

The Gray released the man-thing as soon as the shock stick struck her side, sending her sprawling on the polished concrete floor. Weezy escaped, climbing on top of the cages, crying out her outrage and pain. The others immediately took up her frenzied chorus.

Kennel 13 was now bedlam.

The lab tech was creeping up on the Gray with his shock stick, ready to deliver the coup de grace, when the rabid dog regained her feet. The first thing Wilson noticed was how bloodshot her eyes had become. So red they appeared to be shining. The next was the foaming jaws…

Fuck me,
was Wilson’s singular thought.

The Gray flew at the Overseer, her jaws wrapping around his throat before he could bring his hands even halfway up to defend himself. Blood spurted into her mouth. For a brief moment the madness in her mind receded like the tides. His subsequent screams brought the red waves crashing back to shore, though, flooding her senses with renewed fury. She released her grip on his throat and tore into his face. Her long canines sliced through his contorted visage, tearing off half the flesh in one long bloody peel. His bottom lip tore free and hit the floor like a raw piece of liver. The gray bitch shook the remnants of his face in her foaming jaws. She was about to finish the kill when a moment of clarity washed over her:

Escape before it’s too late! Run while you still can!!!

Maybe if she fled this place she might be able to purge the sickness coursing through her veins. Besides, now that she’d taken his blood, she felt an even stronger urge to spare his life
.
I
T
was in him now.

Wilson waited for death to take him away—yet despite the severity of his wounds, he kept right on breathing. He sat up slowly and looked up at his pet chimp.

Weezy was crying from her perch atop the cages. She stared down at him mournfully. The kennel was so noisy that Wilson could barely think.

“eezy, ‘om on down, girl. That ‘itch is gone,”
he said, his voice different with the loss of his lower lip—articulation now an impossibility. He forced himself to his feet and looked back to where he’d entered the kennel. Sure enough, the door stood wide open, revealing the manicured grounds of the base beyond. The gray bitch had flown the coop. But beyond the five hundred acres of the fenced-in base she had nowhere to go. No way to get out.

He’d deal with that four-legged cunt later. He turned back to his chimp and reached up to her.

“ ‘om ‘ere, eezy.  ‘om on down—’”

The chimp stared back at her mutilated master in terror. His shredded face unrecognizable. She recoiled from his outstretched hands, and raced along the tops of the cages, leaping for the opened door and freedom.

“ ‘—O, eezy!”
Wilson shouted.
“ ‘ome ack ‘ere!”

He stumbled out of the kennel and into the compound. Helpless, he watched Weezy run for the security fence in the distance. Despite her injured arm, she quickly scaled it, jumping to the swampland beyond, where she soon disappeared from view. 

Sobbing, Oscar Wilson staggered after her.

Rusty “Gnat” Huggin
s

Friday, October 8
th
, 2,004

Rusty Huggins squinted sleepily at the sunlight filtering through his bedroom window. Dust motes danced in the beams of light falling upon his bed.
“Fuck a duck,”
he said, slapping off the alarm clock, buzzing rudely beside his ear. He’d hit the snooze bar one too many times and now he was running late again. He collected his glasses from atop a tottering pile of books on his nightstand and slipped them on, pulling the thick rubber strap behind his head. The glasses had a tendency to slip down his small nose; the rubber strap kept them firmly in place otherwise. The lenses were Coke bottle thick, the frames heavy and black.

Butt ugly was what they were.

Rusty couldn’t have cared less. Over the years his Buddy Holly glasses had become a mask from which he could hide behind. A disguise to hide away his shame.

Not that Rusty had given it
that
much thought, mind you. He was a teenager, for God’s sake! Nevertheless, it was true. Aside from his parents and friends and old Doc Bidwell, no one had ever seen him without the glasses covering his peepers. He even wore them when taking a shower after gym class.
Shiiitt. Especially, then!

He rubbed his eyes under the frames and stumbled his way to the bathroom. He was, as Tubby Tolson had noted his first day on the island, painfully thin and small. The shortest person in his eleventh grade class, by a full foot-and-a-half (though, he’d skipped a grade, so Rusty didn’t think that comparison at all fair).

Except for his mom and dad, everyone called him Gnat—a nickname Rusty secretly despised.

Gnats, or as some people called them,
noseeums
, were tiny parasitic insects, even smaller than mosquitoes! Being compared to an insignificant insect was bad enough, but what really cooked Rusty’s ass was his body’s refusal to turn the corner into puberty. It shamed him to take showers after gym class. Probably even more so than it did that new fat kid in school.

What’s his name again, Tubby Tollhouse?

Unlike other boys Rusty’s age, he had yet to grow any hair down below. His balls were as bald as Lex Luthor, his penis not much bigger than a baby gherkin pickle.

His upper lip curled in disgust.
Shiiitt! And I thought all Brothers were supposed to be packing the sausage! Damn, but that’s one stereotype I wish was true!

Rusty was his actual birth name; a nickname usually reserved for white boys with red hair and freckles. “Ginger Kids,” as that hysterical eight-year-old racist from South Park called them. Didn’t bother Rusty. In fact, he was right proud to have the moniker. His dad had named him after his late friend, Joseph Rusty O’Hara. A real, Honest-to-God hero! A fearless man who’d saved Ham Huggins’s life on
two
separate occasions! Rusty Huggins single greatest desire was to someday be worthy of his own first name.

             
After getting ready for school, Rusty hurried into the kitchen for some breakfast. He was starving. He was
always
starving, though the endless calories he poured down his throat did little to further his growth.