There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (95 page)

“Hot, refers to how contagious a virus is. At the Center we also used the term to refer to a virus’s life span. From the original host to its last victim. The shorter, the
hotter
. For instance, Aids, while it’s a deadly disease, is not hot in terms of its life span. Not by our definition, anyway. It spreads out like waves in an ocean, going on and on. The opportunity to spread its destruction on a global scale, as history has taught us, is unlimited. On the other hand, a virus such as, say…
Ebola
…spreads out like big waves in a little pond; its opportunity to expand is limited to its environment and its extremely short lifespan, see? It burns through a community so quickly, in fact, that it usually doesn’t have a chance to spread outside of it.”

“And that’s hot?”

“Yes! And
that’s
what Clint Bidwell was looking for! A rabies virus so hot it would burn itself out before it could spread
outside
of the military target! A localized weapon of mass destruction, so to speak. Then again, not so hot that it would burn itself out before doing enough damage. The exact balance, as I said, is crucial. In the fall of 1996 Bidwell found it. Unfortunately it happened by accident, so he was unprepared for what happened next.”

“And what was that?” Bud asked, knowing full well the end result.

“Luke Taylor, who was not only the kennel manager but one of our laboratory assistants, was supposed to inject an untested male chimp with a new strain which was showing loads of potential: RS7. Bidwell’s seventh attempt at the Super Strain. For the past few years now we’ve done most of our testing on dogs. Because they’re so cheap to obtain. In 1996, however, the Center’s funding was through the roof. Back then we were strictly using chimpanzees in our testing. Because they most closely approximate the effects we’re looking for in humans.”

“Such as?” Josie asked.

“Rape. Cannibalism. Great rage and cunning. Above
all else, cunning! For without that intuitive quality all you had was a gibbering fool. Too addle-minded to sufficiently menace the populace. That’s the one element, you see, that inspires the most terror—the calculated cunning of those infected.”

Bud remembered the sadistic pleasure his mother’s killer took in tormenting him, the fact that the maniac had been functional enough to drive a car and read the address off a driver’s license. “If Josie wasn’t here right now, Mr. Cutter, I do believe I’d kill you”

Bill put his hand on Bud’s trembling shoulder. “John, you were saying there was an accident?”

Cutter glanced nervously at Bud Brown before answering. “Yes, sir. We only recently pieced it all together. We assume that instead of injecting a clean chimp with the new strain eight years ago, Luke Taylor must have given the shot to a chimp already infected with the
previous
rabies strain, RS6. Now RS6 is such a hot variety that it burns through the infected in two, three days tops. Useless from a military point of view. Then again, RS7, which had almost everything we were looking for, including a longer, more ideal life span, also was lacking something crucial.”

“Let me guess,” Josie said. “It lacked the cunning.”

“No. It had that stuff in spades!” Cutter realized he sounded a bit too proud for his own good. Even Bill was scowling at him now. He cleared his throat and wiped the smile from his face. “As long as you crossed its path,” he added soberly. “That’s why Bidwell was so enamored of it. Why there was never an RS8 or an RS9. No, the only thing wrong with RS7 was that it wasn’t
vindictive
enough! Didn’t have enough piss and vinegar. Not like the RS6 strain! RS7 carriers didn’t
seek
out
new victims. Sure, they attacked anything that got too close, like a Black Mamba will, but their main objective, once the incubation was over, was to find a place where they could die all alone in peace. Much like a terribly injured dog will do.”

“So what you’re really saying,” Josie asked, looking for clarification, “is it wasn’t hot enough?”

“Behaviorally speaking, that’s exactly right. RS7 carriers would’ve never gone to the lengths Taylor did with Mrs. Brown and young Bud, back in ‘96. In all likelihood, if Taylor had fled the Center with only RS7 in his system, he would’ve curled up somewhere hidden to die. Probably in one of those dark sinkholes. These things hate the sun.”

Bill didn’t care to torture himself with those kinds of maybes. “Was that the only difference, John? RS7 is just a tamer version of RS13?”

“There are a few zoological anomalies, Bill. The way the disease behaves in certain mammals. For instance, bats, a common carrier of typical rabies, seem resistant to RS13, and when they do catch it, the little buggers can’t fly! The virus somehow inhibits their sonar abilities. But yeah, except for some minor variations like that, there’s not much difference between RS7 and RS13. ”

Of course that was a boldface lie. RS7 carriers didn’t exhibit the red glowing eyes. Nor did they consume the blood of their victims! Cutter was surprised he would omit such significant details. His belief in God notwithstanding, John wasn’t a superstitious man. And yet there was something about RS13 that brought out the primitive awe in him. It was the culmination of an evil man’s quest for the world’s deadliest disease. Not to cure it, but to
enhance
it! It brought to mind what the world might have become had Hitler succeeded in his mad designs. What sort of doors might
that
have opened?

As he had in the past, Cutter pushed these bothersome concerns from his mind. He reminded himself again that he was a scientist, not a saint. “Well, that’s basically how we
re
-discovered the strain: By repeating the same mistake of eight years ago. Only on purpose this time! I personally didn’t think it would work. We were down to our last test subjects before shutting it all down for good. Bidwell had been convinced that RS-7 was his Super Virus. That there was some variant in the incubation stage we were missing, which would allow the rabies virus to mutate into the Super Strain. He was halfway right. It was right in front of us all along! It was the
combination
of the two strains…not the
single
strain of RS7, as we’d always assumed. So…six plus seven equals RS13.”

“Didn’t you have some general type of vaccine that could have staved off the disease?” Josie asked him.

“For the previous strains? Sure. But not with this hairy bug. Not yet, anyway. Against RS13, the typical rabies vaccine is no more effective than a couple of aspirin. So much about this virus took us by surprise. For instance, RS13 can be spread through sexual contact! A development we weren’t expecting at all…despite the proclivity the Rabid exhibit towards sexual violence.”

“Get back to what happened in ‘96.”

“Yeah. I’m getting to that, Bud. My other colleague from the CDC, Brian O’Reilly, discovered Luke Taylor’s absence while investigating a disturbance in kennel 13. The same kennel, incidentally, that Oscar Wilson was in charge of prior to this latest disaster. Unlucky 13, if you believe in that sort of thing. The place was a mess. A
calculated
mess,” Cutter added with emphasis. “Blood splattered all over the walls and floor, running down into the center drain. One of the chimps, an untested female, had been torn apart, her limbs and intestines strewn across the room. Draping the cages like streamers and party favors. Strangely enough the chimp’s baby was left unharmed in her cage, screeching for its mother.”

The significance of this detail suddenly struck Cutter speechless. He averted his eyes from the young man, now sobbing in silence. Josie clutched Bud’s hand in hers.

She glared at Cutter to get on with it.

John Cutter cleared his throat. “Whatever was responsible for the butchery had ripped the chimp's head from its body and placed it on top of a cage. So that when someone walked through the door, they couldn’t help but see the horrid thing. A lit cigarette smoldered between the chimp’s lips. Funny, huh?

Cutter’s empathy obviously extended only so far. He didn’t see the anguish his careless words had wrought. A typical absent-minded-professor, he droned on and on, oblivious. “Since all of the other chimps were accounted for, it was obvious the carnage must’ve been committed by the missing kennel worker, whose bare footprints, as I recall, were all over the place. The clean chimp that we scheduled for the RS7 injection, the one Bidwell
assumed
had gotten the shot, and further assumed had spread the virus to Taylor, was behaving perfectly normal. Despite that, we isolated and closely monitored him for the next two weeks, repeatedly tapping his spinal fluid, which of course turned out to be a waste of time. He didn’t have so much as a head cold. Meanwhile the RS6 chimp that Taylor erroneously injected with RS7 had slipped into a coma. It clearly was ill, but unfortunately we weren’t aware it had the Super Strain. Despite the fact it lingered for more than a week, twice as long as any other RS6 casualty, we didn’t make the obvious connection. We now know that Taylor got the two chimps mixed up. The original RS13 vector expired and Bidwell had its remains destroyed.” Cutter sighed, thinking back on all the incompetence. “Unbelievable, really. It was
this
chimp that at some point in time spread the RS13 virus to Taylor.”

Bill had a sudden insight. “What about the body fluids Taylor left behind? Wouldn’t they have held all the answers Clint Bidwell was looking for?”

“That was another dropped ball by the Center. Bidwell didn’t realize his Super Virus could also spread
via
seminal fluid. He was more focused on the saliva, which he’d found in significant dried quantities. Unfortunately, the virus was dead by that point; its nucleus fragmented. It doesn’t live for very long outside its host. By the time he considered testing the semen, it was too late; all of the samples were in the possession of the Beaufort County Police Department.”

Bud didn’t like hearing about semen samples. Semen taken from his mother’s dead body. It was sick. “Say semen again and I will lose my fucking mind.” 

Cutter wiped nervous sweat from his brow. “Well, getting back to the events following your mother’s, um, murder. At the time our primary concern was Luke Taylor’s whereabouts. For obvious reasons we were worried he might spread the virus before we could catch him. As I said before, back then our funding was through the roof. Bidwell sent out over a hundred men that night to look for Taylor, including myself, but as you know, the trail went cold. No trace of him was ever found. Once Bidwell was convinced that Luke Taylor had succumbed to the virus without spreading it any further, he circled the wagons and distanced himself even further from the Center, halting further testing until the heat died down.”

Bud spat on the floor. “I don’t buy that shit.”

Cutter looked amused. “Don’t buy what? Something specific or the whole damn thing.”

“The part about Luke Taylor’s disappearance. My dad tracked him into the Pines, heading
towards
the Army Base. The man didn’t just vanish without a trace, Cutter.”

“I’m sorry, Bud, but that’s exactly what I think happened. I think Taylor crawled into one of those sinkholes, which you
know
are so prevalent out there, slipped into a coma and perished. Maybe someday his bones’ll turn up, but believe me, Bidwell doesn’t have a clue as to that man’s whereabouts.”

“How can you be so certain, John? You have to admit, keeping Taylor’s remains under wraps would be to Bidwell’s advantage.”

“Think about it, Bill. Why would Bidwell have gone through all this trouble and expense over the years, searching for his precious virus, if he had had one of the original vectors in his grasp? No, sir. I would’ve known of such a discovery. Bidwell often lamented the loss of Luke Taylor’s last remains.”

“What about my mom? Did that sonofabitch
lament
what happened to her?”

“To be perfectly blunt, son, no. Her death didn’t give him any pause at all. Bidwell’s only real concern was that the military might catch wind of the tragedy out here, and put two-and-two together. For that would have been the end of our little tea party here on Moon. Clint Bidwell didn’t have a lick of humanity in him, I now regret to say.”

Bud finally relented. Cutter’s logic was unassailable. He wondered if he‘d ever played Hide and Seek in the same sinkhole where the Red Eyed Man’s remains lay moldering.
What a lost opportunity!
Had he known, he could’ve pissed on the bones.

He studied John Cutter more intently.

“What about you, then, Mr. Cutter? How could you work for a sick deviant like that? How could you help create a disease whose sole purpose was to perpetrate mayhem and strike terror in your fellow mans’ heart?”

This time Bill Brown didn’t admonish his son. It was an excellent question. His bared his canines as he waited for John Cutter’s reply.

Anger clouded over the researcher’s face. “I was on the control side of things, young man. I had nothing to do with the disease itself! Just the cure!” As soon as John’s objections left his mouth, he realized how specious they were. His shoulders slumped and he seemed to diminish right before their eyes. “You’re right, of course. No amount of rationalization on my part can erase my culpability in all this. I guess I just allowed myself to get caught up in the war against terror. That nothing was off the table when it came to dealing with terrorists. I mean,
nothing!
At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past eight years. That it had nothing to do with the vast sums of money Bidwell was promising us. Besides, I was in charge of the
vaccine
! The vaccine that would protect our soldiers in the fight against terror!” Cutter sighed hollowly. “The fight against terror. How karmacially ironic is that?”