City Under the Moon Page 11

  She’d commandeered twelve research assistants and assigned them to data mining in the FBI’s Sentinel database. The public (and, more importantly, the enemy) still thought Sentinel was a broken mess, but in truth it was a nice improvement over the old Automated Case Support system. Case files, leads, suspects, forensics, and intrabureau communications, all linked for cross-referencing. Her favorite Intelligence Analyst, Charlie Frank, had all quarters reporting to him while she free-swam through the database.

  They sifted local and federal criminal case files, security tapes, plane manifests, passports, and driver’s licenses, trying to make a connection to a man they could barely see.

  That wasn’t by his design, though. He’d stood right in front of the cameras at the UN and at Bellevue.

  This guy wanted to be seen. And he got what he wanted.

  Her BlackBerry buzzed with a text message from the Assistant to the Director of the FBI: “Concentrate on Romania / Transylvania.”

  Nice. Had anyone thought to dig up Lon Chaney’s corpse?

  Tildascow rubbed her temples. She’d reminded herself a hundred times that debating the likelihood of this thing would only slow her down. She’d seen it with her baby blues. And if there were werewolves, they might as well be from Transylvania.

  9:56.

  “Charlie, look at inbound transportation from Europe,” she called out. “Focus on Transylvania or Romania or nearby, including transfers.”

  “Hear ya,” he hollered from one of the other cubicles in the maze. The sexiest thing about Charlie was that “hear ya” was all he ever said until he had pertinent and concise information. She didn’t give a shit about anyone’s family or their take on the weather.

  She typed “Transylvania” into Sentinel’s aggregator field and cross-referenced it against her man’s image.

  9:57.

  The search would take a while and she’d go crazy staring at the clock. Was there somewhere around here to find a werewolf movie on DVD? Watch it in fast-forward?

  Ping.

  That fast?

  As the data mining continued, she linked out the first hit to an adjacent monitor. It was a December 18th security tape from the Newark airport. Facial recognition scans of passengers from Lufthansa flight 412 from Munich, where several passengers had connected from Bucharest.

  And there he was.

  “Charlie, I need a manifest on Lufthansa flight 412 from Munich, December 18. Right now.”

  “Hear ya.”

  He was 6’ 1” and a lithe 175 pounds. Salt and pepper stubble, long and unkempt black hair. She linked to surveillance footage from the flight’s deplaning and spun the jog wheel to find him emerging from the jetway. Fucker glided right through the logjam of passengers, slippery slippery. His eyes—bright brown, practically yellow—carefully scanned the concourse before settling on the camera’s point of view.

  He looked right at her.

  That tee was already stretched over his shirt. It was cleaner and clearer eleven days prior to the footage from the UN. The message was awkwardly scrawled in lower-case letters. She thought from the previous images that it was written in marker, but here it seemed like some kind of brushed ink.

  Her watch’s alarm buzzed.

  9:58.

  Nine

  Moonrise

  December 31

  In the basement of 26 Federal Plaza, six guards and four EIS Officers looked up from their poker game.

  Nobody needed an explanation for what they’d just heard.

  They approached the monitors with their mouths full of half-chewed tortilla chips. An hour ago the inmates had been gassed with enough tranqs to knock them out for a couple of days. But here they were, already awake and thrashing in pain.

  One by one, they began to howl.

  “Ern’t no two ways ‘bout it,” said Conor Burns, the head guard. “Them folks is werewolves.”

  ***

  Just before 10 p.m., the stars of the Twilight film series made a surprise appearance on the TV screen at Times Square Studios, creating an unexpected crush of screaming fans. NYPD officers were taken by surprise as stampeding began in several of the pens.

  Officer Mack Meely had been feeling sick even before it happened. His joints ached like he was coming down with something. He hoped he didn’t catch anything from that dog at the butcher shop last night. Fuck, coulda been rabies.

  When the pushing started, one of the pen’s metal barriers was lifted from its mounts and got stuck between a lamppost and a tree. A woman at the front was being crushed against the barrier. She wasn’t trying to loose herself, and Meely realized that it was because she was using her arms to protect her two kids.

  Meely wedged himself into the crowd and pushed against the metal crossbar to create room for the mother to escape. She followed her kids out of the crowd and breathlessly turned to thank—

  Then she screamed bloody hell.

  Meely tried to calm her but she stumbled to the ground, taking her kids with her. He reached to help her up and that’s when he realized his hands were covered in thick grey fur.

  His body seized and his joints contorted, forcing him to the cold, hard cement. Was he having a heart attack? But the fur, what the fuck was—

  The mother wouldn’t stop screaming. Her kids joined in, ringing aggravation on top of the pain. Everything began to spin. He was getting angrier—angrier. His back was breaking and he wanted to—

  Roar.

  ***

  In the park on Second and 15th, seven blocks south of Gramercy Meat Market, several NYU cinema students were filming in front of the statue of the peglegged colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant. They had no permit, and their actress would have to scream in this shot, so they only expected to get off a couple of takes before cops showed up. Hopefully the New Year’s Eve stuff would distract them.

  The redheaded actress had been sleeping with the director to make sure she got the lead role. He’d told her he had a lead on financing for a big-budget version, so she kept him on the hook even if he was a colossal douche.

  “You stupid motherfucking asshole!” the director shouted at their fourth sound guy in four nights. His French accent made his anger sound like fear. “What does it mean to you when I say keep the mic above the statue? Does that mean you should drop it down to here, so it’s in the shot?” He held his puny little hand at his eyebrows, barely five feet off the ground.

  The producer and the production assistant, both also students, politely kept their eyes down, each praying they’d never have to work with this—

  A howl echoed through the park, silencing the director.

  The sound guy was a too-skinny hipster wearing big headphones. He turned his boom mic toward the darkness behind the statue. His eyes grew wide as he listened to something the others couldn’t hear.

  He dropped the mic and backed away, but his headphones were still attached to the heavy-duty digital recorder resting on its metal cart. The whole thing came down with an expensive crash.

  The sound guy took off in a sprint. From near the exit of the park, he screamed back at them, “Geeyaaouuuaathere!”

  “Typical American work ethic!” the director yelled after him. “You will not get credit for this!”

  When he turned back, an animal was on top of his redheaded actress. Her scream was cut short as the animal ripped into her chest.

  The director ran for his life, ducking branches and leaping rocks. His lungs burned as he stumbled into the street with nearly horizontal bounds.

  Something hit him hard, and then he was in the air, flipping maybe, but he was still okay, and then the ground was rushing up toward him and he felt snaps first in his ankle and then his wrist, and then his face popped like a flashbulb.

  A car had just hit him. It was okay, though, because there were lights and that had to mean safety from that beast.

  “Help me!” he pleaded.

  And then the animal landed on the car and slid across the hood, leading with its black cla
ws, and he felt fire on his chest and—

  ***

  Milena Castro was alone in a crowd of a million people. She clutched her two children as the police officer wriggled on the ground.

  He had just helped them escape the crowd. Dozens of other people were trapped and crying for help. None of them noticed what was happening.

  The officer had turned into some kind of monster. He was covered in black hair. His nose protruded like a dog’s. His lips parted to reveal fangs and he screamed at the sky.

  ***

  Max Cafolla hated his whole damn family.

  Everyone was feeling sick from the pot roast, which his cheapskate parents had bought at a discount from Gramercy Meat Market, no matter that they’d had some kind of problem over there last night. The meat never smelled right, and the blood in the wax paper had a damn weird consistency. He told his wife not to feed it to their kids, but that nagging bitch never listened.

  So all he ate was the vegetables while everyone raved about the roast. Now they were all complaining about the flu and he was shitting his guts out in a bathroom the size of a phone booth.

  He gripped the sink and shivered through the latest siege of cramps. Fucking lactose. His mother said there was no milk in the creamed corn. Probably didn’t even listen to what he’d asked. Nobody ever listened to him.

  Best he could hope was that his miserable wife would just up and die from whatever the roast had done to her.

  He flushed and forced himself to his feet. The medicine cabinet was fogged up from his gasping and sweating. He braved through another wave of cramps and then threw open the bathroom door.

  “I thought you said there was no fucking milk in the corn!“

  Grandma, Dad, Mom, Becca, and both of their toddlers turned to him. He only recognized them by their clothes, because they had all become—

  ***

  Just three blocks from Times Square, newlyweds Robbie and Kaylie Johnson had started their own kind of celebration. Unable to wait for their New Year’s Eve kiss, they’d stolen away from the crowd and now they were making out on a car hidden behind a tree. With hardly anybody on the street, Robbie thought he might be able to get Kaylie to hit it right there. What a story to tell at his poker game.

  He was just about to slip down her panties when he heard the crash. At first he thought it was fireworks, then he realized something had hit the car.

  Robbie cradled his wife in his arms, shielding her from the thing standing on the roof.

  But then Kaylie screamed over his shoulder. Things (animals? people?) were jumping out of a window above. One, then another, then smaller ones. They were the shape and size of people, with faces like dogs.

  They landed quietly, almost magnetically, snarling in harmony.

  Robbie and Kaylie were surrounded.

  ***

  The rush had died down, but the crowd was still packed tight. Girls were all screaming as the Twilight guys said some shit nobody could hear.

  The tallest person in the crowd was a high school basketball player and aspiring poet named Joaquin. He could see to the edge of the pen, but it didn’t look like anyone was in charge up there. Where were all the police?

  All the way at the front, something flew up in the air and then fell back into the crowd.

  Joaquin squinted. Could he have imagined that?

  He waited, unsure what to do. Nobody else reacted, so...

  Then it happened again. A woman shot up, face to the sky, six feet over the crowd. Blood squirted from her neck, all over the people below.

  Then the crowd rippled backward.

  Next a guy got launched, twice as high as the woman. By the time he landed, the sea had parted enough for Joaquin to see his head splatter like a water balloon.

  And now he could see the cause of it all.

  A motherfucking werewolf was ripping shit up.

  Joaquin got the fuck out.

  ***

  “Break break break, this is Black Heart One,” yelled Grim Reaper into the radio. “Possible tango spotted in the crowd, east side of the square, on Broadway near Seventh.”

  Staff Sergeant Christopher “Grim Reaper” Angelone was the mission commander of this bullshit. He and his Surveillance and Target Acquisition platoon were operating under the worst possible conditions. They’d been called up on two hours’ notice and forced to swap out their M40A3 sniper rifles for fucktastic close-quarter MP5Ks because some fool—probably not even military—insisted they use 9mm cartridges.

  Arming snipers with close-quarter weapons was like asking a surgeon to operate with chopsticks.

  Grim Reaper radioed: “Interrogative Black Heart Two and Three: Do you have eyes on possible tango? Over!” He searched the crowd through his tripod-mounted spotter’s scope. Gunnery Sergeant Richard “Lunk” Hedd lay prone before him, tracking through his own MP5K’s crosshairs.

  “Negative, One, we do not have a visual,” radioed the spotter for Team Two. “I repeat: We do not have a visual.”

  “Break break break! This is Black Heart Three, we have picked up possible tango, spotted in police uniform in the crowd.”

  “Roger, Three,” Reaper responded as he adjusted his scope.

  “Tango has engaged multiple civilians. Request permission to fire. Over.”

  “Engaged civilians how?” asked Reaper. He couldn’t see a damn thing. Firing into the crowd was a tough call. “Do you see a weapon?”

  “Negative, Sir. I don’t think the tango is human! Looks like a—I think it’s a werewolf, sir! There are bodies all over! He’s killing civilians!”

  “Did he say ‘werewolf’?“ Lunk asked.

  “Permission to fire granted,” radioed Reaper.

  “Fuck! We lost him. Tango moved northeast on the same street. Three, can you pick him up?”

  “This is Three. Negative, we do not have a visual.”

  “Break break break! This is Four, we have another possible Tango, approaching from southwest corner, repeat southwest corner—there may be multiple—“

  “Break break break! This is Three, we have visual, there are at least two, engaging civilians—“

  “All teams, fire when ready!” called Reaper.

  Lunk found the commotion in front of Times Square Studios. He couldn’t see the target, but civilians were flying into the air—whatever it was, it was fucking people the fuck up.

  “I have the location, but I don’t have a clear shot—“

  “Stay on it,” said Reaper, tracking Lunk’s target through his scope.

  The crowd finally shifted and they could see… whatever it was.

  “Target acquired.”

  “Fire!”

  ***

  CNN broke the story first. Anderson Cooper, bundled in a black overcoat and scarf, had been addressing viewers from a platform elevated above the street when his cameraman caught the melee in the crowd.

  The east pen closest to 42nd Street had burst. The mob stampeded in every direction, pummeling anything in its way. Police were overwhelmed. Even horses were toppled in the scramble.

  And then a high-pitched gunshot pierced the sky.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Cooper ducked as he yelled at the camera, “Something is happening in Times Square! We have shots fired—“

  Ten

  White House Situation Room

  10:11 p.m.

  The president and his advisors watched silently as CNN broke the story.

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Alan Truesdale, entered the private phone booth and called the mission commander in New York. National Security Advisor Rebekkah Luft checked the status of military and CDC prep teams in place for the quarantine procedure. Chief of Staff Teddy Harrison and his team of speechwriters shifted into overdrive.

  Lon turned to the president, whose expression was hidden behind his steepled fingers.

  Truesdale opened the phone booth door. Everyone watched as he nodded at the president with some kind of solemn confirmation.

  West
on sat back in his seat and took a long moment to say: “Go.”

  “We are a go for Operation Wolf’s Den,” confirmed Truesdale. Everyone at the table went to work. “Initiate all contingencies, tell the CDC to go. We’re cutting all transportation in and out of Manhattan. Mister Secretary—”

  Greenberg was on his way into another phone booth. “The RDF is en route,” he said.

  “Seal it up.”

  Eleven

  Times Square

  The first shot came so close to the werewolf that the snipers saw its draft ruffle the creature’s fur.

  They’d never seen anything of that size move with such speed. It was nearly impossible to track. Uncertain shots were risky with the crowd in flux, but that thing had to be stopped.

  The werewolf loped through the crowd, caroming from body to body, leaving behind gruesome claw wounds. Another shot zipped above its head and punctured the chest of a nearby civilian.

  The wolf continued west along Broadway, bounded into a tree, and pounced on an unsuspecting cop, crushing the poor guy like a bug. Never losing momentum, the wolf took off in another crazy leap, narrowly escaping the third sniper’s shot.

  It landed in front of mounted police officer Jason Orlandi, a member of the JTTF and five-time marksmanship award winner. Orlandi fired three silver “tranquilizer” rounds into the werewolf’s chest.

  The creature bucked and shrieked and clawed at the burning wounds as it collapsed. Orlandi moved his nervous horse closer and squinted at the thing. That was no dog.

  In fact, the whatever it was was…changing.

  Where a wolf fell was now a man. A cop.

  “Hold on—we’ll get help!” he shouted. “Dispatch, we have a ten double zero at Times Square. Request ambulance immediately!” No immediate response.

  Jesus, had he just shot a cop?

  “Dispatch, are you there? Request—“

  Now screams from behind. He twisted in his horse’s saddle to find two new creatures loping through the crowd at jungle cat velocity, mowing down civilians in their path.