MOONLIGHT

Chapter 8

 

Eddie and David exited the elevator back into the Pen. While David checked out keys for Van #12, Eddie waited by the chain link door that led to the garage. He could smell the oil and gas coming from the other side of the gate. But that wasn’t anything unusual. Anyone could smell that. Eddie senses dug deeper. One of the vans close to the door had not been cleaned after it had been in a chase through a cemetery outside of the city. Eddie could smell the dirt and grass on the crankshaft. Further down the line was a small transmission fluid leak that the mechanics has missed; the hiss of a tire slowly going flat was echoing to Eddie’s ears from around the corner. Most days Eddie ignored the information exposed to him by his heightened senses. But the full moon was just a few days away and, like walking from a dark room into the bright sunlight, everything became over-exposed.

David returned with the keys to van #12 and opened the gate with his hand and voice command. Eddie followed suit. They exited and Eddie glanced back over his shoulder to look at the place he called home. Chain link gates, guards, concrete floors and walls. He told himself over and over that things weren’t so bad. He had a roof over his head and a purpose in life. He was taught to manage his life within boundaries and was well taken care of. But in the light of his past, he felt he was a prisoner to a life he never asked for.

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The bloody corpse of Eddie Francisco lay in the campsite as his young son, Luke, ran at least a mile to the car for help. Eddie’s vacant eyes stared at the trees along the edge of his campsite. The last remaining streams of light from the campfire lit the bark of the maple trees surrounding him and his camp.

The trauma of the attack had left Eddie’s lifeless body in pieces: broken bones, punctured lungs from the shattered ribs, a collapsed chest, a scalp pulled back to expose the skull and muscle beneath it, the chest cavity and the organs held within it were rearranged and scarred with teeth marks.

As the minutes continued to passed, Eddie’s corpse cooled in the night air and slowly became rigid. The muscles atrophied and skin turned ashen. Without a beating heart, the body had already begun to decompose though no outward signs were obvious yet.

After fifteen minutes had passed, only the cloudless night noticed Eddie’s pinky finger twitch. Anywhere else it was just the common twitches associated with a body after death: the last remaining soldiers in a lost battle relinquishing their position.

This was not so in Eddie Francisco’s case.

What began with the twitch of a finger moved slowly up the arm and through the shoulders. A trickle of power became a surge and ran down the spine and into his ribs. It was as if electrically starved charges raged through his bones. The corpse of Eddie Francisco began to shake on the ground. The change continued to travel through his skeletal structure and finally reached his skull. Eddie Francisco’s eyes came alive and his sight returned to him. If he had been able to breathe he would have screamed with a pain he had never known.

Every muscle in his body was filled with boiling lead; bones once broken and splintered, re-grew then broke again, only to re-heal; twisted and damaged organs were placed back in position by ligaments and cartilage fingers crawling over his body in an attempt to reconstruct the damage.

The muscles now being reattached to the bone shook with spasms and the nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree. Eddie, lying on his back, arched his chest to the sky and silently screamed in anguish as his entire body rebuilt itself outside of his will. His torso heaved with contortions; breaking bones and tearing muscle in the process only to have the power crawling through him repair the damage.

Eddie was now fully alive and aware.

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David placed the keys in the ignition and started the van. The garage had over 35 underground exits and entrances. The orders instructed Eddie and David to use tunnel 15-T to exit the Pen. Eddie pulled the van into the narrow corridor. Tunnel 15 was 3 miles long and consisted of 32 alternate exits. Some exits went for miles and were only dead ends. Others looked like dead ends but really only required a code for the wall to move and expose the elevator. Some just connected to other tunnels in different corridors and brought you back to the garage. The Agency would randomly close tunnels and alter exit signs to keep Handlers and Wolves from gaining van access outside of a pre-planned strategy.

David drove slowly being sure to take notice of the tunnels exit signs. If he missed it he was not allowed to drive backwards. One way spikes lined the floor of the tunnel to protect against unwanted vehicle entry, and though only a phone call would lower them, the taunting would be too much to bear later.

“Which one are we watching for?” Eddie asked.

“15T.”

Both Eddie and David watched carefully as they passed holograms of tunnel exits, open holes that dropped into pits 20 feet in and the other exits that may or may not hold actual elevators. When leaving the Pen it was like walking through a fun house. Without the fun.

“There it is.” Eddie said.

“Where?” asked David. “I don’t see it?”

“You’ve got about 40 feet to go.” Eddie’s eyes had seen beyond the dark in tunnel up ahead.

“You and your marvelous yellow eyes…” David said.

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “Lucky me.”

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The violence of the transformation was terrible. Eddie’s body contorted on the ground. He felt his left ankle caught under a tree trunk he’d used as a seat. When his body threw him in the opposite direction, he felt his ankle snap in half and hang his foot to the side. The bottom of his leg now hung in a limp L formation. In a matter of moments though, the burning tendons which had torn under the violence of the seizure reached out to the renegade foot and pulled it back into place, healing the bones, muscles and tissue at the same time.

Eddie lungs repaired and the pain that had been waiting to escape was set free. He screamed as man in torture. Healing skin came together, itched like the devil, and then tore again as remaining bones rebroke and moved back into place.

Within about 10 minutes, Eddie’s regeneration to his former self had completed. Most of his clothing had been ripped off and he was lying naked in a semi-fetal position on the ground, covered in his own blood and dirt.

As if he were a toddler learning to walk, Eddie, freezing cold without his clothes or fire, rose on his reconstructed legs with the assistance of the closest tree. He stood and looked at the camp in shock. He remembered it all: flying through the air, the broken arm, the mauling, sending Luke into the forest.

Luke.

Eddie looked around the camp for a pair of pants to run after Luke. He didn’t care what had happened or how. He just wanted to find his son. He spotted his bag with a change of clothes next to the tent. That’s when he felt something wet running down the inside of his leg.

Blood was flowing from his genitals.

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David made a left turn into exit 15T and proceeded to the elevator a quarter mile in. He pulled the van onto the platform and waited. A bio-scan confirmed the information the guard and entered into the computer when David had checked the van out: #12, one human, one wolf. Their bio-rhythms were confirmed and SID, the computer with a woman’s voice, welcomed them and asked them to buckle their seatbelts for protection.

Eddie settled back into position and buckled himself in. David did the same. Though they didn’t know where the shaft would exit to, the school couldn’t be far. Eddie always looked forward to getting out of the Pen so that he was free to walk in the dark alleys and parks of the city. But tonight it was just surveillance. He would be in the van all night.

The platform rose slowly toward the city and recorded the weight of the van to ensure accuracy of the information recorded in the previous scan. While the van was pushed upward toward the exit position, Eddie and David would pass other corridors with steel doors. They were just outside the windows. They’d never been in them or been told what they were. Everyone suspected it was guard stations, mechanisms that ran the Pen, operational offices or labs for study.

As their platform neared the top David turned in his seat and said, “Ok… residential or commercial.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Eddie asked.

“Nope. Residential or commercial.”

“What’s the bet?”

“Same as last week,” said David.

This definitely peaked Eddie’s interest.

“Alright… I’m gonna say residential.”

The elevator stopped as if it heard Eddie’s choice. They looked out the van windowsnat the walls surrounding it: stainless steel all around. The panels in front of the van began to pull into one another and exposed a garage door. Once the exit was clear, the garage door rose and David pulled out.

Eddie looked out the one-way windows in the back to see where they had exited from: an abandoned house with a detached garage: Residential.

Eddie smiled. Looks like I’m getting out of the van tonight after all.

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Eddie looking at the blood flowing freely grabbed himself between his legs to try and stop the bleeding. In his hands he could feel his testicles beginning to swell. When he moved his hands and looked down again, his flesh was falling off like skin off a rotten tomato.

His crotch began to throb and the dull pain that only men can experience entered his belly. Eddie leaned against a tree as the sky began to spin. He reached down again to stop the blood flow only to experience more agony. Touching himself felt like millions of needles. He gritted his teeth and eyes against the pain. That’s when the first one fell off.

Eddie looked down and saw his left testicle, about the size of a softball, rolling away from him in the dirt and leaves. It was quickly followed by the second. He began to shake with fear as blood continued to pour from his crotch. Tears from the pain filled his eyes as he grabbed himself to stop the blood flowing. When he looked down, he cried out in shock.

His belly was swelling.

With no warning, Eddie Francisco’s newly recreated joints came alive with fire. The sudden onset of this new pain threw him to the ground onto all fours and knocked the breath out of him. He looked between his legs and watched as the last of his skinless genitals fell on the ground. Eddie couldn’t have care less.

As quickly as his body had been put together, he could feel it breaking again. The bones in his spine snapped down the middle; his sternum was pulled apart by expanding muscles and ribs; but worst of all the skin on the top of his head began to fall away to expose blood gorged muscle beneath.

Eddie’s skull felt like someone was hitting him with a sledgehammer: pounding, pounding away.

He sensed his skull cracking and then was distracted as he watched as his hands contort before his eyes. The bones in his fingers grew longer than the skin and pierce through the tips. Eddie’s eyes rolled with pain. He fell on his side asking God for death: Denied.

His shattered spine stiffened and his hip bone was jerked forward like a dentist tugging on a tooth that won’t give. The organs once supported by his diaphragm pulled up and in to a new, much larger ribcage. His clavicles broke, rehealed; broke and rehealed; over and over again as his shoulders broadened.

He rose to his knees and looked at the ground. As his teeth fell out one by one he felt nails push through and pierce the end of his toes. He reached into his mouth. He cut his gums with the nails on his new hands as he felt for his teeth. The lightest touch pulled them out by the root.

His muscles continued to swell and expand to support his new bone structure. Through the pain, he never fainted, even when he felt the front of his skull crack down the middle from between his eyes down to his chin. This new development threw Eddie on his back. He grasped the side of his head and screamed aloud.

New bone exploded from the skull outward, ripping the skin. The upper and lower portions of his mouth followed suit. The black hair that once covered the scalp of the man with an Italian heritage now began to poke through his skin all over.

Eddie fell to the ground and felt the change take over. He was helpless to fight. He could only writhe in pain on the ground of his camp site.

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Eddie and David drove to within two blocks of the school. David placed the car in park and shut if off.

“I’m gonna go get some coffee. You want anything?” David asked.

“I’m good for now. Thanks.”

“You sure? We’re gonna be here a while.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “I’m good.”

“Ok. I’ll be back in a minute.” Eddie got out of the van and walked a block back to the convenience store to grab a coffee and a bottle of water to take with his pills.

Eddie opened a side hatch located in the back of the van and pressed a red button. With that, twenty different panels located around the exterior of the van slid open and allowed the Wolf’s powerful nose access to the outside air. Eddie took a deep breath: coffee, perfume, exhaust, cigarettes (Kools to be exact), open beer in the car passing, fresh cut grass probably two blocks away, squirrels in the trees…

…the scents went on and on as Eddie took them in and filed them away in his memory…

…water in the sewer, pepperoni pizza down the road, soap on skin….

Eddie stopped. He was out of the Pen now and it was going to be a long night. He would take it slow; comb through scent after scent, sound after sound, searching for the one that was out of place; the one that was hiding the infectious sweet smell of something just below the surface, something just below the skin. If he did happen upon it, he and David would investigate. Maybe they would take action. Not without backup though. This Wolf was too big. Eddie had taken down rogue Wolves before but none of this size.

Eddie leaned back in the van, taking in the sounds and smells, and waited for David to return.

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Eddie Francisco had passed out. The starry sky above him watched as he slowly began to stir in his camp ground. He’d only been out a few minutes but would later think, as he watched others transform, that he was grateful for the blank spot in his memory.

His new senses rang in his head: the scratching of squirrels was like nails on a chalk board; a bird’s wing flap sounded like shotgun blasts; the river in the distance exploded with sound. His eyes refocused up close, then in the distant dark beyond the trees. It all seemed so close, only for his mind to deny it and tell him it was so far away. The smell of the camp, the smell of his clothes, the smell of the rabbit hiding in the brush 30 feet away. It was too much. It all rushed into his head.

How long have I been out? What’s going on? Where’s Luke? Eddie stumbled toward the trail that Luke traveled down. He took a step and looked down at his leg and foot and fell backward. He raised his hands and arms in front of his face and looked at the coarse black hair cover them. He began to push backwards as if he could crawl away from what he was witnessing. He rolled over onto all fours and stood to run only to find himself leaping through the air into the side of a large tree. He fell back, regained his wits and ran into the forest.

Panic set in and Eddie ran faster and faster. He crashed through the underbrush with relentless force. Without realizing it, he dropped to all fours and sprinted even faster through the trees. He flew through a clearing and tumbled face forward into the river he was planning on fishing in the following day. It had rained the day before and the river was swollen, but as he stood his powerful legs stood like marble pillars in the water. He jumped back to the edge of the river with a small leap and slipped off his feet on the mud of the bank. He crawled back to into the trees breathing heavily and scared out of his mind. The river, now that he was even closer, sounded like an artillery range.

Eddie rose and ran back into the forest as far from the water as possible.

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All story, pictures and characters are copyrighted material. 2007. There should a little “c” here somewhere. Jay Bowman.

If you’re just now joining us, be sure to read the first seven chapters of Moonlight unhindered!