There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (86 page)

             
All sorts of debris littered Moon’s main thoroughfare. The storm’s tidal surge, coming through the harbor, had had a straight, if not brief, shot right down Main Street. Some of the smaller cars took a ride on the tide, ending up in a clogged traffic jam, off the side of the dirt road ahead. The tidal surge had petered out after Main Street, and had left Huggins’ Way otherwise untouched. Several of the storefronts had suffered broken windows and doors—those entrances and doorways that weren’t sandbagged, anyway. Despite the soggy mess, it looked as if Moon had gotten off easy again. Nothing that couldn’t be put right in a week or two. At least such was the case on
this
end of the isle. Sure was quiet, though.

             
Too quiet, as the old cliché went.

             
“Where is everybody?” Tubby wondered. “I know the ferry didn’t bring any Mooners back to the island, but where are all the folks who came back on those boats docked in the harbor? Shouldn’t there be some of them poking around?”

             
“I don’t know, Ralphie. I guess they’re all home, cleaning up the mess.”

             
The only problem with this assessment was that several of the business owners on Main Street—like Mr. Pete, Tim Garfield, and Miss Beasley—lived in apartments over their stores. All of whom had stayed on the island. Like Bill Brown, their livelihoods included their homes; yet there was no sign of them, either. Their absence seemed ominous somehow. “Come on,” she said, tugging on Ralph’s arm, “let’s get going.”

             
It occurred to her that maybe she wasn’t the best choice to ask Bidwell for help. After all, she was more than likely responsible for neutering the bastard! She checked the loads in the .38 again and made a conscious decision to make the good doctor assist them—one way or another.

             
It seemed a moot point. Bidwell’s office door was locked. A note taped to the other side of the window declared he was on an extended vacation. Josie broke in anyway. She wrapped her jacket around her fist and let fly.

             
The sound of the shattering glass seemed awfully loud, and the two of them waited outside on the walkway to see if they had attracted any unwanted attention. Except for the stiff breeze nothing stirred below. The silence was unnatural, but they didn’t have time to consider it. The ransacked office took all their attention.

             
They checked the exam rooms and his private office; but like all of his files and personal photos, Bidwell was gone. “The note on the door says he’s on vacation or something,” Tubby remarked.

             
Josie shook her head. “That’s just to throw anyone interested off his scent. To give him some more time, you know? He’s in the wind now, and he ain’t coming back. As the old Chinese proverb says, Bidwell knows his life is about to become
very
interesting. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s assumed another identity by now.”

             
“You mean he’d let people die from his virus without even trying to help them? But he’s a doctor…he…he…he…”

             
Josie was too deep in thought to notice the strain in Ralph’s voice. She recalled the empty look in Bidwell’s eyes. Eyes with no morals, no honor, no
decency
. She doubted if the Hippocratic Oath meant a thing to the good doctor. “Not all doctors are good people, Ralphie. Ever hear of Mengele? Jeffery McDonald? Some people say Jack the Ripper was a doctor, too. I for one believe it.”

             
Josie pulled Tubby out of the office, and back onto the breezeway. “I know it’s unlikely, but maybe Clint Bidwell’s still at his house. Packing or whatnot. Let’s see if we can talk Rupert into locating him for us. Maybe run the doc over to the museum in his patrol car.”

             
“The sheriff?” Tubby said doubtfully.

             
“His office is right above the Firehouse we passed.”

             
“Why should
he
help us, Josie? Like Bud said, Rupert Henderson works for Bidwell!”

“Despite what Buddy boy says, Ralphie, old Rupert’s too slick to buck the tide. He might see this as an opportunity to put himself in a better light. That is if he hasn’t already jumped ship, like the mangy bilge rat he is. Anyway, even if he isn’t here, there’s a radio in his office we can use to hail the mainland.”

              “Good idea, Joe. Until we get the vaccine, Mr. Ham and my dad will be better off in the Beaufort Hospital.”

             
Josie didn’t point out the obvious—that no hospital in the world could save Tubby’s father without the vaccine to Bidwell’s virus. It wasn’t yet necessary to point out that sad fact. Of course, neither of them was aware it was already too late. “If the sheriff’s not there, we’ll do like Bud said: let Bilbo run this fecking show.”

             
“What if the doc isn’t home?” said Tubby, refusing to accept the fact that the man had already fled the island. 

             
“If all else fails, there’s still the Army Base, Ralphie. If there’s a vaccine, that’s where it’s gonna be.”

             
                            *******

Bud and Rusty had reached the boardwalk entrance of the harbor when they came to the same conclusion as their friends: something was wrong on Moon. The island was like a ghost town. Not a soul about. No cars tooling around, as was normal after a big blow, the locals doing some rubbernecking at all the storm damage. No children running about, either, laughing and enjoying the break in their dull routine, as only children can do in the face of ruin. No dogs barking. Hell, even the seagulls had taken a break from their incessant screeching. Bud looked around overhead;
in fact, where are all the damn seagulls?

             
Rusty nudged him as they passed the Jail/Firehouse. A cement and steel framed staircase led to an upper level breezeway, where a door stood ajar on the second floor. Beside the open doorway a large plate-glass window with
Moon Island Sheriff’s Office
painted on the outside reflected the surface of the sun dipping below the treeline. Under the breezeway, Moon Island’s sole fire truck, and paramedic wagon, stood parked in the open bays with their toothy grills facing outward.

             
A swath of blood in the driveway led back into the dim shadows. Earlier, Josie had mistaken it for an oil spill.

             
Seeing it, Bud stopped dead in his tracks.

             
Rusty put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It’s too old, Buddy boy. Blood’s too dry.”

             
Realizing his friend was right, Bud exhaled a little. “Where the hell are the volunteers?” he wondered aloud. He glanced over the rooftops of the buildings, hoping the
Betty Anne
would burn, but not explode in the harbor. At least not until they’d put some distance between it and them.
No sign of a fire yet, but I definitely smell smoke…

             
“I was thinking the same thing, Bud,” said Rusty, not realizing his friend’s true train of thought. “Those good ol’ boys live for these big storms. Do you think we should check it out? Maybe use their radio to call the mainland?”

             
Bud looked over at his friend. Rusty seemed calm now. Not upset like he was on the dock, where Bud had found him bereft. He’d explained away Ham’s outburst on the boat as a symptom of stress. Something on which he was an expert. “Ham just didn’t want you to hear him cry, is all,” was how he’d put it, and Rusty, usually so adept at sniffing out a lie had readily accepted the fabrication as truth. Bud knew that lie would cost him later on, maybe even his friendship with Rusty; but what else could he do?

             
“The radio?” Bud said, peering into the depths of the Firehouse. The idea of going into that shadowy garage made him shiver in the heat. He slowly shook his head. “No, we don’t have time for that.” He looked once more into the darkness beyond the trucks and shivered again, wondering why it unnerved him so.

             
                            *******

They smelled Pig before they saw him. The breeze, which had been blowing steadily all day, suddenly died, leaving the air still and malodorous. Josie brought her hand up to her nose. It was a rusty stench, like an open septic tank on a hot summer day. Walking down the stairs of the Town Hall Building, she pinched her nostrils shut and made a face.

              Tubby smelled it too.
“
P-U!
What stinks so bad?”

             
The Mastiff staggered out from behind the stairwell, where he’d been resting in the shade. Like most Mooners, Josie knew the mammoth dog on sight. He belonged to old Pops McCandles, the retired sea captain, who’d sold Jessie Huggins his first boat. Back when Main Street was no more than two sandy ruts in the tall weeds.

             
Pops had actually named the dog
Big
, in regards to the pup’s ridiculously
big
paws, but everyone heard it as
Pig
…so Pig he had become. And with his voracious appetite, the name just naturally fit.

             
Pig had caught the virus while chasing infected squirrels in the Pines. Unfortunately, he’d caught one. Or one had caught
him
. It was the one variable Bidwell hadn’t anticipated: RS13’s ability to infect squirrels and all their rodent cousins and make deadly carriers of them
all
.

             
Since rabies first reared its frenzied head, back before recorded time, it has been humanity’s salvation that the virus doesn’t typically spread through rats, mice, or squirrels—mammals that far outnumber our kind. If it had, we as a race would probably have perished by the Dark Ages, back when the Black Plague already had our species on the ropes—coincidently, another disease helped spread by the hairy vermin. Thankfully, Nature can be as merciful as she is cruel. She had spared us that little tweak in the virus’s design. Leave it to
Us
to provide the tweak to our own damnation. In the days and weeks to follow, this unforeseen variable would prove to be the primary cause for the virus’ explosive spread throughout the world. As Albert Feeny had posited, rodents were everywhere, in all shapes and forms, and even though their life span after becoming infected was limited to a few days, they spread RS13 with a manic vengeance. As if it was their
mission
. They burst out of the walls and sewers and trees, the arid deserts and the steamy jungles, the canyons of the city, and the sameness of all the suburbs, and bit every living creature within sight. Including themselves…

             
Thus, with its scarcity of the rodent species, Moon Island was spared this
one
ferocious side of the nightmare.

             
Elsewhere on earth, there literally was nowhere to hide from
The Red Tide
, as it quickly became known, the rodent outbreak always days ahead of the human epidemic. Followed by mass extinctions of the rodent populations. Dying, literally, everywhere. Their bodies, strangely enough, putrefying within mere hours of the last heartbeat.

             
Ironically, after thousands of years of our best efforts to eradicate them, RS13 would be responsible for eliminating rodents from all but the most remote regions on earth.
But not before they would repay the favor in kind…

             
                            *******

Some 24 hours after catching his squirrel, Pig had given Pops the shock of his long life by going right for his bewhiskered throat. If you had told Pops that he would end his days in the jaws of his peaceable, rather idiotic dog, he would’ve cackled right in your face. Pig hadn’t so much as growled at anyone in his whole life! Then again, that’s what made RS13 so deadly. It made the peaceful fierce, the loving twisted, and the kind hearted hateful.

              And it drove them all certifiably insane.

             
Pig stood at the foot of the stairs, a shaggy monolith of fur and teeth, blocking their egress as surely as if he was a brick wall. Josie took in a sharp breath. Tubby’s was a little louder. It was Friday in the Pines all over again. Only this time there was no nearby lake to jump into. The 211-pound Mastiff’s once-beautiful brindle-coat was now matted and filthy. Like a rat that’s just crawled out of a sewer pipe. Feces, foul and fluid, dripped from his feathered haunches and tail, steamy and rank. Yet that shitty stink didn’t fully explain the stench steaming off of the dog. It smelled as if Pig had been rolling around on a rotting carcass. Or was a rotting carcass
himself
. It was a trait all of the RS13 victims shared. An
ungodly
reek.

             
Dirty foam fell from his hanging jowls, splattering thickly on the cement sidewalk, where it sizzled and popped like the effluence from some mad experiment. The dog’s eyes were of course red, but were so gummy with pus and mucous that it was hard to see them through all the muck. His boxy head bobbled on the muscular stalk of his neck, seemingly in synch with the chattering of his teeth.