Moonlight Medicine: Inoculation (21 page)

David heard, but didn’t see, the car as it continued past without slowing, and he huffed a wolf-sigh of relief that the driver was apparently either too tired or unobservant to spot him or the unconscious couple. A woman’s voice, attempting to get a response to the activated emergency phone, emanated from the dangling receiver outside the gate. David suspected that campus security would be by soon to check out the situation, so he hoisted himself up and stared down at the two humans he had repositioned just inside the gate. He couldn’t risk security driving by and not spying the drugged pair, so he scooped up the boy, paused as another car went by, and then swiftly maneuvered through the gate and deposited the young man’s body in plain sight on the path under the glowing green light of the phone.

Twisting back through the gate as quickly as possible, David retreated slightly into the shadows of the trees, but watched carefully to make sure that both humans were breathing before he turned to go. He briefly considered waiting to confirm that campus security was actually coming, but then remembered that Kim was unconscious and Evelyn was incapacitated and things could get ugly if Kim awoke before he got back to them. That thought sent him jogging back into the thick interior of the forest.

34

Just before dawn, a steady rain fell over three sorry-looking Wolfkin in the middle of Baker Woodlot. Kim snarled and thrashed on the forest floor as she tried to shake off the clinging effects of the sedative. Between her and Evelyn, David lay in a hungry and exhausted heap, intermittently lifting his head to make sure that Kim wasn’t going after Evelyn. Evelyn sat propped up against a tree anticipating the pain that would come with the dawn, but also hoping that the pain of the change would take away the myriad other minor agonies she’d been suffering all night long.
Tonight was a disaster from start to finish
, Evelyn thought, hunching her shoulders against the chill of the rain and trying not to think of what they might find when they went back to the clinic to check on Clem.
So much for teaching Kim control.
A growl escaped the back of her throat. Mad at David for not being able to control Kim, or at least contain her, Evelyn knew that chewing him out when she had her voice back wasn’t going to solve anything.

She tried to calm herself. Theoretically they still had one more day to work with Kim, and after that if they weren’t all killed during the battle with the Vulke, then she could scream at David about it. Her grim musings were interrupted as the horrible pressure of the change began to build, first in her head and then in the rest of her body. She couldn’t keep herself from whimpering because the pain was intensified over the many already stiff and painful sites on her body. This was without a doubt the worst the pain had ever been and Evelyn was lost in a world of torment as she fell over onto the ground and her body convulsed.

“Hey, Evie?”

David’s voice seemed hollow and very far away. Evelyn struggled to follow it up to the light. Eventually she felt the cold rain running down her face and bare torso as the night’s events came back to her is stark relief. Shivering in the brisk morning air, she wanted to move, but was afraid that she was still injured from her fall.

“Evie, come on, we have to get up, we have to go get Clem.”

At the mention of Clem, Evelyn was able to overcome her dread. She opened her eyes and tried to lift her head. She didn’t feel immediate stabbing pain, so she took that as a good sign and worked to right herself further. Thankfully, the sharp horrible pain was gone, replaced by the normal dull ache of post-change. Tears stung her eyes as the coiled dread drained away and she felt the cool balm of relief, though it was short-lived as all of her other pressing worries swelled in to fill the void. To stave off thinking, Evelyn rose to her feet and glanced around for Kim to see if she had recovered from her sedation. Kim stood a way off with her bare back to them, hugging herself and trembling in the rain. Evelyn looked to David and mouthed, “Is she okay?”

David raised a hand, palm splayed and level with the ground, and tilted it back and forth in a so-so gesture. Evelyn nodded and tried to determine the best response to the entire calamitous situation. As usual, when she was most stressed, Evelyn decided on humor.

“Hey c’mon, Kim, we better go find our clothes before someone thinks that we’re starting some kind of hippie protest.”

Kim half-turned and looked at Evelyn with a morose face. “Oh, Evie, I’m so sorr—“

Evelyn cut her off. “Listen, it’s fine, it happens. Happened to me. In fact, I was really balls at control for a long time and I didn’t have nearly as much stress and doom hanging over my head as you do. We knew this was a bad idea from the get go, but I was just hoping we’d get lucky. We got the other, but no time to cry over spilled sedatives, we just have to move on. Time to go home, get some grub, and have a nice nap or maybe watch some bad Sci-Fi. That always cheers me up.” Evelyn walked over and placed a hand on Kim’s shoulder and gently prodded her forwards. “Ever see Mystery Science Theater 3000?”

Kim smiled weakly as they made their way through the underbrush and out of the clearing.

*

David lingered behind the women and made sure to gather up the syringes and scour the ground for any other debris they had left behind. He was in a dark brooding mood and the debacle of the previous night leached an air of disaster to come. Feeling a weariness deep in his bones and a sense of inevitability in the unfolding of events made him feel helpless, and he hated that feeling more than anything else.

*

Eventually they found their soggy bag of emergency clothing, which David had left neatly folded behind an old stump, dressed, then slogged back to the rear gate of the woodlot. There was no time now to search for Kim or David’s ripped and ruined shirts, although David had collected Evelyn’s shredded articles back at the ravine. Fortunately, the earliness of the morning and suboptimal weather ensured that no one noticed their exit or subsequent squelch back to the car. Evelyn hadn’t anticipated the rain, so while Kim and David waited in the car, she donned her lab coat over her saturated clothes and went back into the clinic to release Clem. She wished that she wasn’t going to be alone when she witnessed the results of last night’s experiment with Clem’s control, but they couldn’t risk rousing too much suspicion if someone saw them in their soaked and muddy state in the clinic. Evelyn approached the door to the janitor’s closet and swallowed hard before putting the key in the lock.

“Clem?”

She turned the key and cracked the door. A wisp of white stuffing drifted out of the closet and whirled in the air before floating down slowly to the polished linoleum floor. Evelyn sucked in a breath. Knowing now what she was going to see, she struggled to keep her face neutral as she opened the door wider. More stuffing puffed out through the opening and she spotted one of the panda’s eyes just inside the door. She pulled the door halfway open and spotted Clem, looking ragged and miserable, crouched in the corner of the small concrete room with debris from the toy strewn about his feet. His sweatpants were mainly intact, but his flannel shirt was a shredded ruin. He didn’t look up.

“Clem, are you all right?”

“Better than Mr. Snuggles.”

“I’m…I’m going to go get your cane and find you a scrub top. Could you, um, gather the remains into the sink and I’ll also get a garbage bag?”

Clem nodded.

Evelyn hesitated. “I have to lock you inside until I get back in case someone comes.”

“Good.”

Evelyn didn’t like Clem’s answer, but they didn’t have a lot of time before the clinic started getting busier, so she closed the door and locked it, then hurried away to collect the needed items. They’d left Clem’s cane in a corner of the lab behind some boxes, and Evelyn knew that she could also collect a garbage bag for the remains of the stuffed animal there. Additionally, she needed to grab the flash drive from the video camera to verify that Clem really was having control issues and wasn’t just trying to get them to let him fight when he wasn’t up to it. But first Evelyn needed to find him a scrub top to wear out of the vet clinic, so she hurried past the lab, out of the secured basement lab area, and up the stairs to the main floor of the clinic. She slowed her pace and took on a more subdued, professional air as she strode into the hallway and headed for the small animal surgical suites, where one could, if they knew where to look, find a large canvas bin full of clean scrubs for the doctors.

Evelyn didn’t have any trouble surreptitiously snagging a fresh extra-large scrub shirt for Clem without running into anyone in the halls, but on the way back to the lab she passed a group of three veterinary students and tensed. They were too preoccupied with complaining about their clinicians, though, to notice her messy hair, damp lab coat, mud-streaked jeans, and hiking boots. Evelyn increased her pace as she passed them and sagged her shoulders in relief when she pushed through the door to the stairwell. She raced down the steps to the basement, fumbled with the security gate code, and finally reached the lab as her cell phone buzzed with a text from David.

What’s taking so long?

Impatiently she texted him back.
All O.K. Out soon.

She didn’t really have the time or inclination to explain more and hoped that David would just leave it at that as she climbed up onto the lab bench, switched off the camera receiver and pocketed the connected flash drive. Jumping down quickly, Evelyn was gathering Clem’s cane when the door to the lab opened. She expected to maybe see Kim’s concerned face peek around the corner, perhaps sent by a nervous David to see if Evelyn needed any help, but instead Melissa stepped inside and peered around the lab, letting the door fall closed when she noticed Evelyn. Melissa was much more observant than the vet students in the hallway upstairs had been and didn’t speak as she noted Evelyn’s appearance. Damp messy hair, damp clothing, muddy boots, and mud-splattered jeans did not denote a night spent hard at work in the lab. Evelyn could see the gears turning in the girl’s head and could tell that she had precious scarce moments to regain control of the situation before Melissa did something rash like contact the dean of the vet school about Evelyn. Straightening up, Evelyn tried not to look at all guilty.

“I’m sorry, Melissa, but the lab is still closed for another few hours today. If you want to come back around lunchtime, I should be done by then.” Evelyn watched Melissa’s eyes flit around the neat and tidy lab that looked precisely the same as it had last night when Evelyn had drawn her blood.

“Uhuh. Have you been here all night?”

“No, actually I had to run home and walk my dog, but I just came back to finish up a few things.”

Melissa looked a little less suspicious, but not entirely convinced, and Evelyn couldn’t grab Clem’s cane and let him out with her hanging about so she pressed the issue.

“I am really sorry for the inconvenience, but I did tell you in advance and it’s been quite a long night, so if you’ll excuse me I really just need to finish up these last few things.” Evelyn paced to the door and opened it for Melissa.

Melissa looked at the open door, back at the lab, then at Evelyn. “Have you gotten a chance to run my blood yet so I can know whether I can stop taking the antivirals?”

Evelyn concentrated on keeping a poker face as she frantically searched for an explanation as to why she wouldn’t have run the poor girl’s blood last night. She frowned. “I’m afraid not. I ran out of one of the reagents, but I should be getting more any day now, and I’ll call you as soon as I do and am able to run your blood.”

Melissa took a tentative step towards the door and all Evelyn could think was
pleasegopleasegopleasego
. Finally, the girl gave a small shrug and left the lab. Keeping a hold of the door as it closed so that she could watch Melissa walk down the hallway and disappear around the corner, Evelyn sprinted over to the corner of the lab to get Clem’s cane and dug through one of the lab cabinets for a garbage bag. When she stood up and closed the door to the cabinet, she noticed a bit of dried mud from her boot on the bench next to the fume hood where the camera receiver was hidden. As she grabbed a bottle of ethanol and furiously cleaned off the mud and sterilized that portion of the bench, Evelyn prayed that Melissa hadn’t noticed the mud.

Picking up the scrub top off the desk, Evelyn opened the lab door just enough to see into the hallway. It was empty, so she bustled through the door, closed it, and locked it behind her, then sped down the hall to let Clem out. When she reached the janitor’s closet and unlocked the door, Clem was standing and had gathered up the remains of the stuffed panda and his shirt in the sink. Evelyn handed him the scrub top and cane and then shook out the garbage bag and began scooping fuzzy black, white, and plaid fabric and white fluff into it with reckless abandon. Clem donned the fresh shirt and helped her to empty the sink of the last few stubborn wads of material. Evelyn scanned about the floor one last time for anything they had missed and then examined the hallway just outside the door for more debris, but the slight breeze of the building’s ventilation system had swept away the stuffing that she’d seen earlier.

As they exited the cramped room, Clem shut off the light and Evelyn locked the door again just to be safe. She wanted to say something to Clem, but she was distracted by having to get him out of the clinic and by the fact that she had only found one of the panda’s eyes amongst the debris.

35

On the way out to the car, Evelyn noticed that Clem wasn’t favoring his leg as much as he had been. Her professional mind raced with questions regarding the accelerated healing caused by the change. Not full and complete regeneration, but based on what she’d observed with Kim and Clem, she thought that she could at least make a case for hastening of healing and return to function. When she and Clem reached the car, the parking lot had begun to bustle with morning activity, and Evelyn tried to appear nonchalant, but continuously spied on people out of the corners of her eyes in an attempt to isolate anyone who might be paying too much attention to them. Fortunately, everyone seemed intent on their own tasks, problems, and morning drowsiness, paying her and Clem little attention.