City Under the Moon Page 5

  Dating? Never. No askers, no takers. There were compliments, particularly on her red hair, but no contemplations. She’d had her desires like everyone else, but how to make sex happen? And they said it was supposed to be easy for a woman. Eventually she abandoned the idea as hypothesis disproven. Most evenings, her CDC colleagues flirted over dinners and drinks while Jessica remained behind her microscope.

  Research and dissertation. Research and dissertation.

  Consequently, she leapfrogged her counterparts to become Director of the CDC. Gone was the safety of the lab; now she’d been thrust into the dirty world of politics. She’d become the administrator of hundreds of scientists, but she couldn’t negotiate a personal conversation with any one of them.

  That all had ended when she met Richard Tanner.

  “My love,” he said as he kissed her cheek. “Feeling any better?”

  She hadn’t even noticed his entrance. And no, she wasn’t feeling better, but his touch and his cologne were comforting. “Yeah, better.”

  “We’ll have a quiet night in tonight. Get some sushi; watch the ball drop. There might be a foot rub in it for you.”

  He was a handsome fireball of curiosity, ambition, and charisma. Five years her junior, and so beyond her stratum that his initial interest seemed preposterous. It took him three long years to convince her that he was serious; that he saw something in her that she’d never seen in herself. What had she done to attract him, or even to deserve him?

  Someday you’re going to have to believe in me, Jess, he’d say.

  Her abdomen wanted to burst. She gripped Richard’s hand on her shoulder and held her breath until the cramp subsided.

  A knock came at the door, exactly the distraction she was looking for. “Come in,” she hollered, rather than risk standing.

  Leilei entered. She was Jessica’s assistant, rocket-fueled as always and armed with the day’s itinerary. “Good morning, Dr. Tanner. And Dr. Tanner.” She was well short of five feet, so their eyes were level with Jessica seated.

  Richard’s hand slipped from her grasp. “I’ll meet you there. I have to check on something.” He was out the door before Jessica managed to stand.

  “Are you ready for this?” Leilei asked.

  Jessica nodded. She took the only file on her desk and they slowly left her office, starting out on their routine morning walk.

  “Possible E. Coli in Topeka. We’ve got a team on it. Bill Mariani from Cincinnati is the lead and Amy Neely is awaiting his report. Seven sick in Baker City, Oregon, waiting on cultures. They suspect it’s from a batch of eggs shipped from Idaho. The farm is organizing for a recall.”

  Jessica’s title, “Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,” was as thankless as it was exhausting to say. It was a presidential appointment—a tremendous honor—but in politics, the spotlight only ever shined on failure or fear. The list of complaints was long and ineradicable. The CDC wasn’t prepared for H1N1; they hadn’t jumped on AIDS fast enough; maintaining their live virus samples was too dangerous. And where were this year’s flu shots already?

  “Nick Ross is talking with Pfizer about…” something something something. Leilei had learned to regulate Jessica’s attention with her tone of voice. Unimportant updates—which staff member was negotiating with which pharmaceutical company in which country to get flu shots to which region—were delivered in a you can ignore this melody.

  They made their way to the high-security conference room. It was a spacious improvement from the safe room in the old CDC headquarters, but it was also a long walk from Jessica’s office. The brand-new CDC building was designed to discourage the use of elevators in favor of exercise and energy conservation. Not exactly accommodating for her next wave of cramps.

  They took the stairs to the twelfth floor and proceeded along the curved perimeter corridor, looking out over a panoramic view of Emory University. It was a bright morning. People and trees shivering in the wind.

  Leilei raised her voice to pay attention now: “You’re okay for the call with USAMRIID? I tried to reschedule, but they shut me down.”

  “It’s okay. Dr. Tanner has the lead. The other Dr. Tanner.”

  “That’s good. Take it easy. Don’t forget, I won’t be able to listen in on this one,” Leilei reminded her, meaning Jessica would have to take her own notes.

  “Of course,” she said, relieved that they’d reached the end of their walk.

  “Buzz me if you need anything,” Leilei said, off on her merry way.

  The conference room was known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility; it was a steel trap designed according to the government’s TEMPEST standards for classified information. Jessica turned the door’s combination lock and took a seat at the long conference table. The decor was thoroughly utilitarian: simple chairs, empty walls, and one lonely speakerphone designed by the best techies in the country. Other than bizarre acoustics, it didn’t feel special at all.

  She opened the thick envelope she’d taken from the security filing cabinet that had been installed in her office by the US General Services Administration. The envelope was white, with a thick orange border, and labeled TOP SECRET at the top and bottom. The file inside had a matching cover and, again, it was labeled TOP SECRET at the top and bottom, with a caveat that always made Jessica laugh: “This cover sheet is unclassified.”

  (U) Project BLUSHBED (TS-codeword)

  The title was standard government jargon. The (U), or unclassified title, Blushbed, followed by the indication that the material is (TS) Top Secret and known by another codeword (the codeword itself being classified).

  This is what happens when you put men in charge of the world.

  The classified codeword, the title of the project, and the baddest-ass bioweapon Jessica had ever seen, was SORCERER.

  Sorcerer, a bacterium the military initially labeled “M7949,” had (apparently) been found in an abandoned laboratory in the Sar-e Pol province of Afghanistan. These things never made their way straight to the CDC; they’d take a long detour through the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases Special Operations, in Fort Detrick, Maryland. The biodefense guys at USAMRIID always had home-field advantage on so-called select agents. The scary ones.

  And Sorcerer was very scary.

  “Staphylococcus 241,” as it was known within the CDC, was a multidrug-resistant bacterium causing rapid, deadly flesh-eating disease. It could be delivered as an aerosol, and it would disperse quickly after exhausting any harvestable flesh—which meant it was a perfect biological flash bomb. Wipe out a town, a city, or a country and move in on top of them a few days later. Just sweep the bones out of the way and take up shop.

  The problem (or the solution, depending on how you looked at it) was that Sorcerer was impossible to transport unless it was frozen. The bacteria were dying if they weren’t eating, and no growth medium could keep up with their appetite.

  Since USAMRIID had delivered Sorcerer to the CDC, accompanied by comically redacted documentation, they’d found every which way to ask questions without asking the question.

  Can it be turned into an effective weapon?

  The CDC was running out of ways to give answers without giving the answer.

  Once again, her knight in shining lab coat would sweep in to save the day. Richard’s short route to the acting head of the CDC’s Special Pathogens Branch began when he was a wunderkind at USAMRIID, where he was known as Lt. Col. Richard Tanner, Ph.D., of the Center for Aerobiological Sciences. He’d retired from the service, but he could speak the government’s language and still maintain the renegade mirth of private sector scientists.

  Richard blew in, kissed her on the cheek, sat down, checked his watch, and opened his own Sorcerer file.

  “They’ll call any second,” he said. “Don’t hesitate if you need to leave.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Doctor Tanne
r?” Leilei’s voice came through the triangular speakerphone at the center of the glass table. “Should I put them through?”

  They steeled each other with deep breaths. “Go ahead, Leilei.”

  “You have Col. Stefan Massey, Lt. Col. Oliver Osman, and Dr. Lynn Bailey from USAMRIID, and Adam Henston from the Department of Defense.” Jessica consulted a buck slip in her file to remind her who these people were. Massey was the top dog, the Chief of the Biological Agent Identification and Counterterrorism Division.

  A click was followed by a scruffy, white-haired-sounding voice. “Hello?”

  “Stefan!” Richard exclaimed. “You alcoholic son of a bitch! How’s that miserable wench you never should’ve married?”

  They all dissolved into frat-house laughter.

  But Jessica wasn’t laughing. Richard’s familiarity with these men always made her nervous. It reminded her of something once said to her by Alan Hoxie, Richard’s predecessor as head of Special Pathogens. Literally on his way out the door, he warned her that Richard was a plant by the military. His advancement through USAMRIID had been too quick, no matter his skills or his charm, and he had oddly close relationships with men who should have been his superior officers. She thanked Alan, an old (but still undeniably sharp) man, and promised him she’d watch Richard closely. She didn’t tell him they’d already begun a relationship.

  But she trusted Richard. Wanted to trust him. And whenever her conviction waivered, he was there with his charming smile.

  Someday you’re going to have to believe in me, Jess.

  Nausea boiled in her stomach again. Suddenly she had to get out of there. Between his rapid-fire jokes, Richard nodded goodbye.

  Head floating, she stumbled across the hallway, crashed into the women’s room, collapsed onto a toilet and dropped her head between her knees. She couldn’t even muster energy to kick the stall door closed. By the grace of Galileo, the bathroom was empty.

  Her consciousness faded, as if someone had pulled the plug on her heart. Scary as it was, she’d been here before. Literally, on this very toilet. She knew it would pass in a few minutes.

  They’d scheduled this procedure for the 31st, expecting to have the day off. But this call had to be today, the government guys insisted.

  Why, though? Why today?

  Not so she’d be distracted, right? If Richard were going to conduct espionage, would he—Oh, what are you even thinking?

  Her phone buzzed: text message.

  Christ, don’t tell me they need me back in there.

  She patted at her lab coat pocket, found her iPhone and let it sit on her thigh. The text was from Leilei: “Call me. 911.”

  Oh God no.

  Deep breath. She returned the call.

  “Doctor Tanner,” Leilei sounded flustered. “I’m sorry to interrupt your call, but they told me I had to.”

  “Who?”

  “The office of the National Security Advisor.”

  “Who?”

  “Rebekkah Luft is requesting a videoconference immediately.”

  ***

  Jessica wiped her face with a wet rag as Leilei prepared her computer. They so rarely used her office’s encrypted videoconferencing that she’d never bothered to learn how to work it herself.

  She scanned Rebekkah Luft’s Wikipedia entry via her iPhone. She’d never spoken with the woman. Communications with the White House traditionally went through the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

  The White House logo appeared on her monitor. There had been days when Jessica sat in front of that image for more than an hour, waiting for—

  “Good morning, Dr. Tanner.” Luft appeared in mid-sentence. She was a well-dressed black woman with an authoritative voice. Her Wikipedia entry said she was 61, but she looked good for early 50s. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m going to get right into it, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of cour—“

  “Last night there were over a dozen reported incidents of violent animal attacks in Manhattan. We have videotape of the first one, from Bellevue Hospital, which we’re about to show you.”

  Luft nodded to an off-camera assistant and the image switched to grainy, silent security-camera footage. It was a wide, overhead angle of a hospital corridor, with a patient’s room in the center, situated across from a nurses’ desk and next to a long picture window.

  After a moment of normal hospital traffic, everyone on the tape reacts to something off-frame to their left. They all move in that direction. A minute later, something else happens in that center room. There’s confusion, and then a man stumbles out of—

  It looked like his face had been ripped off.

  A doctor rushes to his aid, but he’s knocked down.

  Jessica grimaced, but forced herself to keep watching.

  The doctor is sent hurtling backward, so hard that his spine breaks backward over the nurses’ desk. A nurse appears from off-screen, spinning around as a geyser of blood erupts from her back.

  Whatever caused it steps forward into the shot… a man. A large man. Is he… wearing something black, or is he covered in hair?

  And then he moves, and it’s not right. Not human.

  “Is that a baboon?” Jessica asked.

  “We don’t think so.”

  He—it—pounces on another doctor, a woman. The creature lunges downward, delivering a fearsome bite. And then it recoils—gunshots. Several gunshots. But they hardly slow it down. It rolls over, charges the window, and cannonballs right through the reinforced glass.

  And then Luft’s face reappeared on the screen.

  “What was it?” Jessica asked.

  Luft’s response seemed guarded. “It seems to have been a patient. She was brought into the ER the previous night, after she herself was the victim of a severe animal attack. She scratched a nurse while they were tending to her wounds. The next night—last night—both of them became these things.”

  “Became?”

  “That video is in your personal FTP folder now,” Luft said, taking a cue from someone else in the room. “This sounds as absurd to me as it does to you, Doctor Tanner, but these animals were responsible for attacks all over the city last night.”

  “You’re saying the patient and the nurse… transformed? In… to…?” Luft dealt with the other in her office, letting Jessica sputter until she finally reached, “…werewolves?”

  Luft nodded, validating both her conclusion and her incredulity. “More than a million people will be in Times Square tonight. Drop everything else.”

  “Of course.”

  “We’re bringing a victim to you, the lady doctor you saw bitten in the video. You need to determine if she has an infection. This is a 14c.”

  Section 14c was a Top Secret clause in the United States’ Biological Threat Assessment Protocol, a drastic measure giving clearance to conduct extreme tests on a human subject. It meant they could kill this doctor if necessary.

  “Also, Doctor Tanner, you should know that the first victim, on the night of December 29, was a diplomat’s wife. She did a lot of traveling. That may not be relevant, since she was the victim of an attack herself, but I’ll have her file sent over to you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s still missing.”

  “I understand,” Jessica said, not really understanding. “We should quarantine the hospital and anyone exposed. At least until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “That’s just it, Doctor Tanner. I need you to tell me what we’re dealing with. Godspeed.”

  And then she was gone. Maddening that she didn’t respond to the request for quarantine.

  Jessica paged Leilei via her intercom.

  “Yes, Doctor Tanner?”

  “I need the heads of staff in here immediately.”

  Five

  CDC Headquarters

  Atlanta, Georgia

  December 31

  8:50 a.m.

  The red and white EMS helicopter glimmered in the morning sun as i
t came to a soft landing on the CDC’s rooftop helipad. Richard Tanner led the nurses and techs against the pulverizing wind as they met the in-flight EMTs.

  Jessica waited by the door, eagerly anticipating a look at this patient. When the gurney hit the roof, Jessica felt the impact in the lump in her throat, as if it were some kind of physical assault on her trained scientist’s skepticism.

  The patient was wearing a muzzle.

  Werewolves?

  When she was a kid, Jessica frequently watched the Sunday creature double features on the UHF stations. It was against her parents’ strict orders, but her mother was always in the garden and father on the golf course. In the daytime safety of their wood-paneled living room, the monsters were as exciting as the mad science creating them.

  Nighttime was different, though—that was when the monsters came out. Her father had said night terrors were the hallmark of an active imagination, a sure sign of superior intelligence. But that was hardly consoling when even Michael Jackson conspired to fill her mind with werewolves and zombies.

  But those sleepless nights were forever ago, and there were real things to fear nowadays. A bacterium like Sorcerer, for example. IVF treatments. A mortgage taken before the bubble burst. And yet, Jessica realized, nothing quite stings like the irrational dread of childhood nightmares.

  They wheeled the patient closer.

  What to expect…? Fangs? Fur?

  Not at all. Jessica exhaled with the same sensation she got from the false alarm stingers in those silly horror movies.

  Even muzzled, this petite, shriveled woman couldn’t suggest less of a threat. Her thin skin, already Irish pale, looked chalky from blood loss. Her brown hair was trapped beneath a surgeon’s cap, and her body was practically mummified in bandages.

  Jessica held the door for the gurney train. The patient’s silver necklace glimmered just before it slipped from beneath the sunlight.

  ***

  “Dr. Kenzie, my name is Richard Tanner. I’m the head of the CDC’s biochem team. This is my wife, Jessica Tanner, Director of the CDC. You’re here with us in Atlanta. And you’re okay. We’re just going to run some tests on you.”