City Under the Moon (42 page)

Lon could remember the iconic theater in his mind’s eye, but now it was a smoky war zone. Furniture was overturned, the podium was wrecked, and one of the large monitors behind it had fallen. The windows in the observation mezzanines were cracked or shattered. A fire in one compartment billowed smoke over melted glass.

The werewolves came from the front, meeting the soldiers in the middle. Machinegun fire sent glowing sparks into their masses, but they still had the upper hand as they advanced up the slope, creeping through the rows, underneath the tables, and between the chairs. They used themselves as live ammunition, dark cannonballs firing at the pinned with crushing velocity.

“Three o’clock,” Beethoven yelled.

“
Every
o’clock!” Mantle hollered.

An explosion rocked the ceiling and debris rained down onto the contested zone before them. Shafts of light coming through the breached dome seemed to turn solid in the smoke. Soldiers dropped on rappelling lines, firing all the way.

The werewolves turned on these new targets, opening a window for the teams trapped at the back of the theater.

“Go go go!” Tildascow yelled.

Ilecko grabbed Lon’s arm and they raced down the aisle, advancing on the rostrum beneath the golden backdrop. Other soldiers fell in, covering their flanks. Angels with rifles hovered in the dust clouds above.

Shots came from everywhere. Halfway down the aisle, a werewolf slithered from beneath a desk, and Ilecko drove his sword into its head, never breaking his stride.

The walls popped and shattered, the UN emblem fell along with the rest of the backdrop, and the podium collapsed. The soldier on Lon’s right faceplanted into the back of a chair. The man behind him went down under a sharp growl. Up ahead, a werewolf launched across the aisle and a soldier disappeared into its grasp.

Each step brought that exit closer. A werewolf soared ten feet over their heads, looking like a hawk with its magnificent arms spread wide before its tapering torso and canine legs. It plowed into a rappelling soldier and they both disappeared into the smog.

Finally, their group narrowed to funnel through the exit.

But the tunnel beyond was hardly salvation. It was so dark in Ilecko’s shadow that Lon couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. White strobes of gunfire burned moving patterns in the blackness, making footing treacherous even as they were navigating scattered bodies. And the narrow hall trapped sound, turning each shot into an ear-piercing boom. Even their gasps were deafening. Ilecko directed him to put his hand on the wall as a guide.

“November Zero Zero One to UNACOM,“ Lon heard Beethoven say, “we need those access codes. Over.”

He was stopped by Ilecko’s hand at his chest. Someone yelled, “Eyes!”

They’d stopped outside of a room no larger than a cloak closet. Something had been torn away to reveal a deeper room inside and another door, one that was round-cornered and thick, like in a submarine. Frantic flashlights converged on a security system between the two doors. The face panel had been removed, exposing a jungle of wires and buttons and lights and circuit boards.

“Should I torch it?” Mantle asked.

“You can’t torch that door,” Tildascow said.

“UNACOM, we need the access code!” Beethoven radioed.

“Roger that, November, we’re working on it. Stand by.”

“No time to stand by!”

“Stand by, November!”

“How long we got?” Mantle asked.

“Twenty seven—”

Beethoven’s response was interrupted by a growl. Flashlights spun on snapping teeth. Swinging arms. Blinding, deafening gunfire.

Lon fell against the wall, lost behind Ilecko’s coat. Someone nearby collapsed amid directionless shouting.

“Fuck! Fuuuuck!”

“Reloading!”

“He’s okay!”

“He’s
not
okay!”

“We need to fall back!”

“Reloading!”

“No, advance, keep going, take this hall to the end!”

Footsteps all around.

“Go go go!”

“Get this door open!”

From the radio: “November, they’re opening the airlock door remotely.”

“Copy that, UNACOM!”

“Be advised, they’re saying the shelter has been locked down. The inner chamber can only be opened from inside.”

Under the radio chatter, the door let loose a depressurizing hiss and a heavenly whiff of fresh air.

“We’re in. We’re in!” Tildascow yelled, pushing the door open.

Ilecko helped Lon to his feet and they stepped around stacks of bodies and followed Tildascow through the hidden door, held for them by Beethoven.

Now they were in a narrow tube leading to the longest, fastest and steepest escalator Lon had ever seen. It descended beneath a close, curved ceiling with hidden lavender lighting.

“Close the door!” Tildascow yelled.

“Got it!” Beethoven called.

Tildascow led the charge, and Lon followed Ilecko as they tried to keep pace. The escalator was so fast that their hair would’ve been blowing if they’d just stayed put; skipping downward was like riding a motorcycle. Farther and farther they went as the comforting warm air charmed his eyes closed. He started to wonder if he wasn’t sleepwalking. He couldn’t see past Ilecko, but how deep could they possibly—

He slammed into Ilecko’s back, smacking his nose and
biting his fucking tongue
again.

Ilecko spun, his sword in his hand, all too ready for a fight.

“Well I cad’t zee bast you!” Lon yelled, holding his nose.

Ilecko offered to help him up, but Lon made his own way and pushed in front so he could at least see where they were going. The escalator had dumped them at a big metal door, just like the one at the top. It opened into a tight tube, only ten feet long, with a matching pressure door at the far end. Tildascow was inside waiting for them.

Lon hadn’t been mistaken; her eyes
had
turned yellow. And it was hard to be sure with all of the dirt and sweat, but her face seemed swollen. Ilecko entered, pushing him toward her. He wished he’d just stayed in the back.

“I’m okay,” she said, but the way she was panting through her shoulders made her look like a human wolf. Beethoven entered last and she rasped, “It’s an airlock. We have to seal that door.”

Beethoven put his shoulder into closing the heavy door, smearing bloody handprints across the shiny metal.

“Mantle!” Lon yelled, realizing they were another man down. “Wait for Mantle!”

But Beethoven didn’t wait. He put his back against the door and took deep breaths as it sealed and the air pressure shifted. His uniform was covered in new bloodstains, his face full of turmoil. One glance and Lon understood what had happened to Mantle.

Here the four of them stood, hands on their knees, in stillness for the first time in eons. Lon could have slept on his feet (maybe died on his feet). And yet, as the next door hissed, he found the strength to achieve locomotion again.

The next room was
spectacular
.

They entered a large, circular mission control room, the kind you might find at NASA. It was least 30 feet in diameter, with stations at several elevations, all facing a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking…

Well, overlooking Central Park.

They were twenty feet above a beautiful garden, where a stone walkway wandered past flower patches, wrought-iron benches, and garbage cans. The trees trembled in a tender breeze. Lon wouldn’t have believed they were underground if not for the crisp, clear night sky that he knew to be a lie. It had to be a projection, though it was far more convincing than the planetarium he’d visited in fourth grade.

In sci-fi books, people in space habitats adjusted their lighting for day or night to maintain the illusion of life on Earth, so they didn’t go all
Shining
. Lon thought they must’ve constructed this place with the same philosophy. And it was synchronized to real time; the trees on the horizon were backlit with the glow of the rising moon. Even as he stepped away from the thick curved window, he could barely break the illusion that he was looking outside.

Considering how amazing the shelter looked, the mission control room was hardly high-tech. In fact this stuff was probably outdated before Lon was born.
Black and white
monitors displaying temperature, oxygen rate, and humidity alongside
paper
seismographs and—wow—
corded
phones. He couldn’t place the names of some of the instruments; he’d only seen them in flea markets or old movies.

Everything was calm except for the console of mini TVs showing security camera feeds. As if the images weren’t dire enough, warning lights were flashing and some sort of automatic typewriter was clicking away.

On the far side of the control room, Tildascow had found the door into the shelter. She slammed it in frustration. “No handle!” she roared. No visible hinges, either. It had a small clear portal, through which you could see that it was at least six inches thick.

“Can we torch it?” Beethoven asked.

“Not enough time,” she said despondently, fingering the paper-thin crack between the door and its metal frame. “Try the window.”

Beethoven dropped to a knee and produced a torch and goggles from his pack. “Controls?” he asked.

“No,” she grunted. “This is just a monitoring station. They wouldn’t allow someone to open it from the outside and contaminate the ecosystem.”

Beethoven took his torch to the window.

Tildascow collapsed against the door, gasping desperation. Her limbs jerked as she fought the painful transformation. “Fuck,” she whispered. “Hurts.”

Ilecko leaned against a station within reach of her, staring her down.

“I’ve got it,” she whispered, and he did not answer.

“Not getting anywhere,” Beethoven said, blowing on the untarnished glass and starting over.

And then a Godlike voice echoed through the chamber, causing each of them to discover the speakers in the ceiling.

“Yannic Ilecko,” it said. It was deep and powerful, with a romantic Romanian accent that was in stark contrast to Ilecko’s clunky drubbing. “You promised we would not meet again.”

“
And you promised there would be no more death, Lord Valenkov,
” Ilecko responded in Romanian. He was solemn and unsurprised, and looking through the window at the garden below.

Lon followed Ilecko’s eyes and saw him, finally, just twenty feet away and looking up at them through the window.

Demetrius Valenkov.

Five

Airspace South of Manhattan

6:49 p.m.

The
Lunar Eclipse
cruised toward Manhattan at five hundred miles per hour. By all accounts, this was an easy run. No need for stealth, no fear of retribution, and a wide margin for deployment. The bomblets were like mini cropdusters, with GPS-controlled navigation systems that would direct them to low-altitude distribution zones and minimize wind dispersion. And since the biological weapon would die in the water, they could paint outside the lines.

Colonel Murdock ripped open the envelope given to him by President Weston and removed a plain sheet of paper with two simple series of random letters and numbers. “Home Room, this is the
Lunar Eclipse
. We are two minutes to Verification Point. Requesting code confirmation.”

General Ryan Jermaine, the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, responded with the authentication codes matching the first sequence, which would be Defense Secretary Ronald Greenberg’s gold code. “—Tango, Delta, Niner, Niner, Charlie, Echo.”

Murdock repeated the code back to him, and then a moment passed before he radioed again. Aside from system reports, the flight crew had been quiet for the entire run. “Roger that, Home Room. Verification confirmed.”

Next Jermaine radioed Weston’s gold code. Both codes would already have been authorized with the United States Strategic Command Headquarters in Nebraska and NORAD in Colorado. The weapons system computer would also confirm the code digitally before allowing launch.

“Roger, Home Room. Verification confirmed.”

The B-1B’s weapons system officer’s voice came through the radio next. “Home Room, we have 136 to VP, requesting permission to deploy.”

Six

6:50 p.m.

The White House Situation Room had gone silent.

All eyes were on the president, waiting for his order. But William Weston remained fixed on the grainy overhead footage from the exit zones. Werewolves were massed at the exits, but they hadn’t made a serious run at escape. They’d disengaged from conflict everywhere but the UN.

“They’re not attacking,” Leslie whispered, but even she knew that was irrelevant; they had to act ahead of the wolves, not in response to them. Were it even possible, containing the outbreak on the mainland could cost millions more lives.

But still. They weren’t attacking.

“Sir?” Jermaine asked. The
Lunar Eclipse
was waiting for a green light.

“Time is 18:50,” Truesdale said quietly, urging him to remember that they’d reached the pre-agreed deployment time.

“Negative,” Weston said into his steepled fingers. “Have them loiter.”

“
Lunar Eclipse
, light is yellow,” Jermaine radioed, pent-up tension rumbling under his voice. “Repeat, light is yellow.”

“Roger that, Home Room. Cycle time is 278.”

It would take 278 seconds for the bomber to return to its verification point.

“Contingency?” Truesdale asked. They had two contingency bombers behind the
Lunar Eclipse
, but Murdock would be credited with the flight no matter what. The identities of the back-up planes and their pilots would remain top secret forever.

Jermaine read over the shoulder of his flight control tech. “18:56 for number one. 18:59 for number two.”

“They’re in the bomb shelter?” Weston called, still never looking away from the monitor, as if he could hold off the werewolves himself.

An aide from the Watch Center responded from the doorway. “Yes sir, November team is in the airlock.”

“They can’t get into the shelter unless it’s opened from the inside,” Truesdale reminded them. No one had forgotten.