Moonlight Medicine: Inoculation (6 page)

“Oh, do you want me to get these off here for you?”

“What do you meeen?”

“Do you want me to remove the house keys,” Evelyn said slowly, pausing between each word, “so I can give you back just the car keys?”

Madeline gave Evelyn a long-suffering look. “I don’t zee why. Zee car eez also for you.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Evelyn was still a bit confused because they should have dropped Kim and David off first if the car was for her to use. Evelyn was going to grill Madeline a bit more, but then the other woman pulled out her cell phone, texting as she walked away from Evelyn, so instead Evelyn just ambled up to the door of the condo and let herself in. David and Kim followed close behind. The entranceway of the condo opened into a comfortably large living room with hardwood floors and a gas fireplace. A cozy brown couch and matching chairs were arranged around the fireplace and a wooden coffee table on a brown, shaggy rug. Various little end tables and a book shelf occupied the nooks and crannies of the room. The opposite end of the living room opened up into another area that had a modest dining room table with four chairs and wrapped back around to the kitchen.

As they progressed into the kitchen, they found the first signs that someone had come into the condo before them. Some of Evelyn’s kitchen appliances had been haphazardly placed on the counter; there was also dish soap and a sponge near the sink and other necessities like dishwashing liquid under the sink, and upon inspection, the refrigerator and pantry were partially filled with recognizable foodstuffs from Evelyn’s apartment. Additionally, the cupboards contained dishes from both her and David’s apartments. As soon as Evelyn recognized the dishes from David’s apartment, a light bulb went on in her head and then burned brighter and brighter until it exploded.

“Wait a minute.”

Evelyn tore back through the living room and out the door. Madeline was nowhere in sight. Evelyn muttered a few choice curse words and then used the key-fob to lock the car before heading back into the living room, where Kim and David had congregated and were staring at her.

“Did anyone else think that we were all going to be living here together?”

Kim’s eyes sharpened. “Oh!”

David put a hand to his forehead. “No, but I should’ve.”

Evelyn looked down at the three keys on the keychain. “I mean it makes sense, I just assumed…”

Evelyn had another thought.
This condo is big, but it isn’t that big
. She explored further, this time up the stairs that were just off the main entry along with a small half-bathroom. Reaching the top of the stairs, she found three open doors and one closed door. Since she could see the bedrooms and bathroom through the open doors, she tried the closed door and discovered it was a large linen closet.

“Oh no.”

Evelyn dashed back down the stairs. David and Kim weren’t on the main floor, but a light shone from a carpeted stairway leading down near the back door. Kim and David’s discussion of the finished basement drifted up to Evelyn at the top of the stairs, and she descended to join them. The basement was carpeted and separated into two areas, one for entertainment and one for working. The first area, to the right of the stairs as one headed down, had another fireplace, a couch, and a large television cabinet with a sizable flat-screen television. The second area to the left of the stairs was set up as an office with a cheap wood desk and a second-hand desk chair, a tall, metal file cabinet, and two bookshelves. Several boxes containing books from Evelyn’s home library sat open on the floor and on the desk. Evelyn’s laptop was also waiting for her on the desk. An open doorway to the left of the desk led to the laundry room, and in between the two areas was another walled off, but windowed room. It was this room that Kim and David were standing in when Evelyn came down the stairs.

“This is interesting, don’t you think, Evie?” said Kim.

The room was a bastion of tile in the sea of carpeting of the basement and had ornately styled windows that looked into both the office area and recreational area of the basement. The room stood devoid of furniture, and Evelyn was a bit baffled as to its original purpose. “I suppose it could have been a kind of fancy kennel for dogs at one time, but with some counters, cabinets, and a bench, it would make a great home laboratory.”

“It’s like a conservatory, but only without the plants…or access to natural light,” David mused.

“Maybe that’s what it was. Maybe it was a marijuana grow room,” offered Evelyn.

Kim looked at Evelyn, eyebrows raised and a frown weighing down the corners of her lips. “Do you really think so?”

“Oh, I’m not sure, but with some UV lamps, anything is possible.”

“How are the bedrooms?”

Evelyn leveled an unhappy look at David. “Few.”

David quirked an eyebrow, and Kim perked up her ears.

“What do you mean few?” he asked.

“I mean that there are less than would be ideal. Come see for yourself.”

David and Kim followed Evelyn upstairs and then to the second story where they all bustled from one bedroom with two twin beds to the other with a single double bed. David’s things were in the room with the double bed and Evelyn’s belongings were stacked and hung in the closet of the bedroom with the twin beds in it. None of Kim’s belongings were present, but since she lived in Tennessee it would be more difficult to transport them up.

Kim glanced from one bedroom to the other with a forlorn expression, her eyes moistening. Evelyn felt bad for the girl. Kim had been having an awful few weeks and now she probably felt like a squeaky third wheel, so Evelyn spontaneously turned to Kim and gave her an enthusiastic hug.

“Roomies!”

10

In truth, Evelyn wasn’t at all thrilled to be sharing a bedroom with anyone, let alone Kim, but she consoled herself with the idea that she would be spending most of her time at the lab. The other slight complication was the single full bathroom for the three of them. It was a large bathroom, but it was still a strain to only have one shower. There was significant discussion of contacting Roberto for additional accommodations or attempting to convert the basement into a bedroom for David. But in the end they all agreed that they should all sleep upstairs, leaving Evelyn and Kim to be the obvious choice to bunk together. Once that was settled, they took turns showering and changing into more familiar and comfortable clothing with Kim borrowing her wardrobe from Evelyn in the short term, although Evelyn promised to go shopping with Kim in the very near future if her own clothing was much longer in coming.

Evelyn wanted to head down to the office area and go through some of her files as well as check her e-mail to see if she had replies from different viral researchers whom she’d queried in the past few weeks. It was around two-thirty in the afternoon and none of them had eaten anything since breakfast, so David offered to make some macaroni and cheese. Kim wandered down into the basement as Evelyn was going through files.

“Can I help you with anything?”

Evelyn didn’t look up from her sorting. “I don’t think so.”

“Listen, Evie, I’ve been thinking. I have a lot of lab experience. I mean I’m not a viral or genetics expert, but I know which end of the pipette is up and I’m a fast learner.”

Evelyn was distracted by a missing printout that she couldn’t locate in the shuffle of papers. “Uh huh.”

“What I’m trying to say is, I want to help you in the lab.”

This got Evelyn’s attention and she set down the files carefully and turned to Kim. Her immediate reaction was that the idea was a terrible one. They were already going to be stuck together as roommates, so there was no reason to spend even more time together. But Evelyn had to stop and take a step back emotionally. Since her difficult research was going to be split between two projects as it was, finding a cure and discovering the infectious source of the mutant, she really could use all the help she could get. Evelyn knew that Kim had been a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, but she couldn’t recall what she had been researching.

“What was your project in the lab?”

Kim looked down sheepishly. “Looking at the role of myosin proteins in the intracellular transport of organelles in
Vallisneria
.”

“
Vallisneria
?”

“Eelgrass.”

Evelyn tried to keep her face neutral. “Plant cells.”

“Like I said, I haven’t been studying anything like this virus, but I know my way around a lab and I can follow protocols.”

Evelyn considered her options in dealing with Kim’s request. Her first option was to deny the girl her clear desire to help and relegate her to, at best, becoming part of the team trying to track down more information on the strays and the Vulke’s recent activity, or at worst, several weeks of boredom and uselessness. Her second option was to offer to let Kim come into the lab and let her do some of the mundane tasks such as cleaning and ordering supplies, which would hopefully make Kim feel useful without Evelyn having to spend too much time training her. The third option was to accept Kim’s help entirely and get to work training her on working with human cells and human DNA. To help her decide, Evelyn had an idea and she picked up the envelopes with the hair samples from Zachary and Caroline that she had brought down and set them on the desk.

“These are the hair samples I collected yesterday. If I gave these to you to start processing in the lab, what do you think the first steps would be?”

Kim brightened up and stared at the envelopes thoughtfully for a moment. “Well, probably first we’d want to extract the DNA, and find the parts that have viral DNA mixed in…maybe using viral primers? Or do you look for wolf DNA?”

Kim’s answer was logical.

“We look for the wolf DNA. I’m trying to find it so that I can splice it out along with the viral DNA. More like gene therapy than a vaccine.”

“That makes sense.”

“Good. I guess that makes you my new lab assistant.”

“Oh thank you, Evie! I’ve wanted to help so bad, but I’ve just felt so—“

“Useless? Been there, so I know what a lousy feeling that is.”

Kim nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, there isn’t much time, since we’re meeting with Dr. Jonson tomorrow, but here are some articles to get you started on your new project.”

Evelyn reached into one of the folders and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers, handing them over to the other woman. Kim’s eyes widened at the imposing stack, but she recovered from her momentary shock and took the papers from Evelyn. “At least I won’t have to write a thesis.”

Evelyn smiled at her just as David called down the stairs to say that lunch was ready. Kim began to hurry up the stairs then glanced back at Evelyn. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll be right there.”

As she watched Kim disappear up the steps, Evelyn wondered if she had made a mistake in trusting Kim in the lab and committing herself to spend so much time in close quarters with the other girl. Evelyn took her time straightening a stack of papers.

Too late now
.

*

After their late lunch, they scattered about the condo: Evelyn retreated to the basement to continue organizing and preparing for getting into the lab the next day, Kim sank onto the couch in the living room to dig into the articles that Evelyn had given her, and David sat at the kitchen table and comprised lists of questions to ask other packs about the stray situation and to ask the strays themselves. He also brought his laptop down from where he’d found it in the bedroom to scan for more reports of strange sightings or animal attacks from the previous lunar cycle.

Several hours passed in relative silence, so when the land line of the condo rang it startled all three of them. Evelyn stared at the cordless handset in its charging station for three rings before answering, because she didn’t have any idea who would have the number, let alone be calling it, and the caller I.D. was no help, reading only “private”. In the end, she decided that it was more important to answer it in case it was some kind of emergency. Biting the inside of her cheek and with white-knuckled fingers, she picked up the device and pressed the answer button.

“Hello?”

Evelyn tried to disguise her voice in a higher tone and sound relaxed and airy, but none of her efforts fooled the person on the other end of the line.

“Evie, darlin’! It’s good to hear your voice. Roberto tells me that I’ve missed a few things that you would bring mw up to speed on.”

Evelyn’s bottom lip trembled and she let out a shaky sigh of relief. “Clem.”

11

Nicolas had only been on American soil for a few hours when the news of the botched assassination attempt at the meeting of the Betas reached him. He shook with fury, not just because it was sloppy and exposed the Vulke and their intentions to the other packs, but because Taras was going to blame him for it despite the fact that he hadn’t even been in the same country when it happened. But that didn’t matter to Taras; all that mattered to him was that he had recently assigned Nicolas head of the American campaign, so any snafus were his fault. The perpetrator had not even been a member of the Vulke, but one of the zealots from the Anubis pack, but Nicolas knew all that was without consequence.

Even though he hated to be overseas, especially smack dab in the middle of the idiocy and decadence that was the United States, Nicolas knew that Taras had sent him because the Wahya pack, their arrogant sidekicks the Amaruq, and their bastard offshoot the Inali were the only true threats to the Vulke revolution. Even Roberto could not hold the packs together if those packs should fall, and it was an honor to be given the responsibility of destroying them. That there was already a lynchpin in place, ready to topple the entire miserable lot of them, did not diminish that honor.

Nicolas peered out the window at the drab landscape of factories and billboards. It was his first trip to America, and so far he was not impressed. The training facility he was being taken to was in Gary, Indiana. He understood that it was in an industrial center, so the factories were expected, but it was the cloying, banal ads on the billboards that made Nicolas grind his teeth. Americans had so much, yet they always wanted more, and the rest of the world wanted what America had. He was all too familiar with the way black market Levis jeans and pirated DVDs flew off his shelves back when he had been in the import business. Nicolas was only sorry that he likely wouldn’t live long enough to see the true Vulke revolution when the Vulke would not only dominate the other packs, but the human world as well. It would have to be enough to be a vital part of the beginning, and with luck and skill he would see at least the Vulke’s victory over the other packs.