“I have Jeremy Logan with me,” she said.
Feverbridge did not respond.
“Father—he knows everything.”
Another moment of silence. And then the door slowly opened and a dark figure appeared in the doorway. As it emerged into the light, Logan made out Chase Feverbridge. He was dressed, not in a lab coat, but in torn old trousers and a loose-fitting shirt of rough wool. He seemed even taller than Logan remembered, and as he looked from Logan to his own daughter, a strange light shone in his eyes. Over his shoulder, Logan could see the cot in the small back room. This time he could also make out the tar-paper-covered window, a large sink, and a bank of instrumentation, but precisely what its purpose was he could not discern in the dimness.
“What does he know, exactly?” the naturalist asked.
“He’s been to the Blakeney compound. He’s seen Zephraim’s transformation—and he knows about the DNA and plasma samples you took from him.”
“You told him?” Feverbridge said, turning sharply toward her.
“No, no, of course not. He’d already figured most of it out. I just filled in the last details.”
“Such as my killing that old man, I assume.”
“That was an accident! That wasn’t you. And I’ve explained how we’ve suppressed the violent tendencies that presented the first time you experienced the transformation.”
Feverbridge continued to look from one to the other. He seemed to be experiencing a strange mix of emotions: surprise, alarm, hostility, and—what Logan sensed most strongly—anticipation.
“Father, there’s a chance he can help.”
“How can he help?” And Feverbridge took a seat on one of the lab stools. “We’ve been working to reverse this for half a year now—without success.” He glanced out the open front door of the lab. “You have to leave now—both of you. I…I can’t bear to be seen during these times. Go, please.”
Instead, Logan casually sat down on a lab seat across from the older scientist. “Laura has told me you’ve managed to at least mitigate the effects,” he said. “Locking yourself in, keeping moonlight to a minimum. But I’m curious: what does it feel like? When the change comes over you, I mean.”
Feverbridge was silent a moment. “Discomfort. The pain is almost unbearable at first. Your skin, it…I don’t know how to describe it. But one also feels a certain…energy. But it isn’t a human strength—not exactly. It’s a physical sensation merely, id without intellect.”
“And the violence? Where does that emotion, that need, come from?”
“Laura told you,” Feverbridge said brusquely. “That has been ameliorated. I prefer not to think about that—time.”
“When you showed me that demonstration with the shrews—why were you unaffected?”
“I stood behind the light source—remember? It was trained directly on the animals: nowhere else.”
“But if you were to train it on yourself, you’d undergo the transformation?”
“I suppose so, yes, if the light was of sufficient intensity. But as we’ve told you, I’ve done everything I can to shield myself from the full moon.” He shifted impatiently on his seat. “I fail to see how this is in any way helpful to me.”
“It’s helpful to me, Dr. Feverbridge—in understanding exactly what’s been going on. I have just a few more questions. Tell me: why do you think you have made so little progress in reversing your condition? After all, six months is a long time to work on the problem.”
“If I knew that, perhaps we’d be making more progress than we have. There was something wrong with my initial hypothesis of how the imaginal discs would respond, such as those present in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar. I synthesized them to operate on a human scale and coded them to denaturate and reverse the transformation process. Instead, they seem to have bonded to my DNA, modified it. Trying to undo that modification is a process of trial and error—and dangerous if not done very carefully.”
“Every time we seem to make a breakthrough,” Laura said, “it turns out to be just another dead end.”
“Are you willing to let others—other scientists, I mean—help you?” Logan asked. “Work with you?”
Feverbridge laughed bitterly. “If they didn’t lock me up for killing that old man, they’d put me in a cage, point at me, experiment on me. And the scientific community that laughed at me all these years—think of what they’d say! Instead of seeing what I’ve accomplished, they’d see only failure: an inability to restore what I’ve changed.”
“So you insist on staying here, working on this alone,” Logan said.
Feverbridge gave a vigorous nod. “There’s no other way. Laura’s the only help I need.”
That was it, then. Logan paused a moment, collecting his thoughts. “Watching what happened to Zephraim Blakeney last night—well, it was a revelation, something that I will never forget, either professionally or personally. But there’s something else that sticks with me—something that his brother Nahum said. You see, I asked him why—if the effect of the moon-sickness was so painful—did Zephraim pry the wooden planks from his window, deliberately exposing himself directly to the rays of the full moon? Nahum told me, as best he could understand, that—despite everything—Zephraim was drawn to the moon. He called it a craving. He said that it gave Zephraim a feeling of power, animalistic power. You alluded to something similar just now, although you used the euphemism of ‘energy.’ ”
“Get to the point,” Feverbridge said. He had slid down off his chair and was now pacing the lab, the very picture of impatience.
“It’s just this: according to Laura, you reproduced the effects Zephraim experiences in yourself—except, thanks to the other accomplishments of your prior research, the result of your resequencing meant that you experienced the transformation on a far greater scale than Zephraim did.”
Feverbridge did not answer; he simply continued pacing.
“So doesn’t it stand to reason that you are drawn to the full moon all that much more—that you crave its light, crave the power it confers on you?”
“That’s not so!” Laura protested.
“This ‘energy’ you mention—I imagine it’s more like a well, something that you can tap almost at will. I can only imagine what that feels like.”
“This is crazy!” Laura said. “My father is humiliated, sick at heart by what’s happened, he—”
“That power, that craving—why would anybody want to have it taken away from them?” Logan asked Feverbridge. “I’d think just the opposite: they’d want to hold on to it any way they could. That’s why you dazzled me by demonstrating your earlier research—the research on moon dust—knowing I would not turn you in, but rather, in my ignorance, let you proceed with what now truly interested you—the end you’d always hoped for, but had never been able to achieve…until the Blakeneys came along.” He paused. “All these breakthroughs Laura mentions, the ones that turn out to be dead ends—did you engineer things so they would turn out that way? Is it possible the phenomena affecting you are becoming stronger, rather than weaker? That you are, in fact, addicted to the transformation—and this addiction maintains you through your calmer moments, preventing you from truly finding some way to undo what you’ve caused?”
“No!” Feverbridge cried in a hoarse voice.
“What is it you really do here by yourself, Dr. Feverbridge?” Logan pressed. “When you lock yourself in on the nights of the full moon, refusing to be seen even by your daughter. Are you really cowering in that back room, in the dark, with the tar paper covering the window?”
“Jeremy,” Laura said, her tone changing abruptly. “What are you saying?”
“And that initial violent aspect of the transformation, the one you so conveniently managed to cancel out—even though you’ve made no other progress on your condition—is it really gone? Or is that what you’ve just led your daughter to believe? Because in my job as enigmalogist, I have to suspend my disbelief again and again, take a lot of th
ings for granted—but one thing I never take for granted is coincidence. And the coincidence of your injecting yourself with that resequenced DNA, and the murders starting to take place shortly thereafter, is just a little too strong for me to accept.”
As they had been speaking, darkness had gathered around the laboratory. At that moment, a stripe of moonlight suddenly drifted through the open door—and fell directly on Feverbridge.
“You son of a bitch!” he roared in a strangled voice. “You tricked me!”
Even as he spoke, Logan saw a strange pigmentation begin to spread across the skin of his exposed throat, blossoming like brown food coloring dropped into a basin of water. Feverbridge clutched at his neck, making gargling sounds, and blood-filled weals began to appear on his fingers and the backs of his wrists. He twisted, first this way, then that—and then he dashed out the door and into the darkness beyond.
“Father!” Laura cried out in shock and pain. She rounded on Logan. “My God, what have you done to him—”
“Stay here!” he cried. Then, running out of the lab and slamming the door behind him, he hurried up the path to the main complex. He was just in time to see the shadow of Feverbridge dart past the headlights of the red pickup truck that was now pulling into the fire station.
“Looks like I got here just in time,” Albright said, getting out of his truck. “In the call you made earlier, you did say to arrive at moonrise.” He reached into the front seat, pulled out his rifle. “I knew when you saw me loading this up that I’d hear from you, sooner or later. When you asked me to meet you at the Feverbridge lab, I assumed we were talking about the dogs. But that was no dog that ran in front of my headlights just now.”
Logan did not reply. Instead, he ran to his Jeep, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out his own 9mm Sig Sauer. Then he rushed back to Albright.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing in the direction Feverbridge had gone. “We don’t have a moment to lose.”
37
They began racing down the gravel path toward the highway. Already, Feverbridge had vanished into the darkness ahead.
“What happened?” Albright asked as they ran. “Were you right—about what you mentioned when you called me, I mean?”
“It’s even worse than I thought,” Logan replied. “The resynthesized serum wasn’t administered to the dogs. Feverbridge gave it to himself.”
“Are you saying that was him who ran in front of my truck just now? But he died six months ago.”
“No. He killed a backpacker six months ago, a loner nobody would miss. Threw him off the top of Madder’s Gorge. His daughter Laura misidentified the body to make people think Feverbridge was dead, so the scientific community who’d always scoffed at his work would leave him in peace—that was her explanation, anyway. Ever since, she told me, they’ve been trying to find a way to reverse the effects of what he did to himself.”
“Which was what, exactly?”
“Inject himself with a highly potent and hybrid strain of Zephraim’s moon-sickness.”
“Holy shit. How did he do that?”
“I don’t know all the details. I assume he modified a DNA sequence to introduce new genetic code into his genome—a single gene, or more likely a series of genes. In essence, he managed to simulate the effects of a multifactorial inheritance disorder.”
“A what? How is that even possible?”
“It’s the other cornerstone of his research: introducing a mutation into otherwise normal genetic code, specifically to cause metamorphosis. But we can worry about the details later. Because the most important thing is that he’s not reverting to his old self, as he’d originally intended—if anything, he’s getting worse. He’s behind the four recent murders, and he seems to be getting more violent all the time.”
They reached the road and paused for a moment. “Should we call in the cavalry?” Logan asked as he checked to make sure a cartridge was in the chamber of his gun.
“You mean, Krenshaw? It would take him forty-five minutes to get here.”
“What about those troopers down the road, guarding the Blakeney compound?”
“It would take ten minutes to get them. And they’d just get in the way, slow us down. The longer we delay, the more chance Feverbridge has of killing again. Look, we’ve got a fresh trail to follow—and I can see it from here.” With his torch, Albright pointed across the road, where some brush had been torn free from the surrounding tree limbs.
Albright rushed across the road and plunged into the woods on the far side, Logan at his heels. With the aid of Albright’s torch, and the light of the full moon, they made their way through a maze of branches and heavy brush. More than once, Logan stumbled over an exposed tree root, protruding invisibly from the forest floor.
“It’s a herd path of sorts,” Albright said. “He’s been this way before.”
Now they entered a dense section of woods literally choked with pines. Logan forced his way forward, following Albright, who had slowed slightly in order not to lose Feverbridge’s track. The heavy pine needles scraped along Logan’s limbs as he pushed through them. Once, Albright lost the trail and they had to backtrack until he found it again. The pine forest descended into a muddy gully, which they splashed through before climbing the far bank. Suddenly, they broke free of the forest and found themselves on the remains of an ancient railroad, small trees growing up from between its rotting ties. It ran left and right, rails rusted and half covered in weeds, the screen of trees encroaching on both sides.
“What is this?” Logan asked, panting for breath.
“Private railroad,” Albright answered. “Rail was once the primary mode of transport, both for passengers and freight. Back in the late nineteenth century, there were dozens of operators. Died out in the thirties with the automobile. I think this was the Adirondack and Lake Champlain.” He knelt over the crumbling tracks, which shone an eerie yellow in the moonlight. “Look,” he said, pointing to a pair of ragged, muddy footprints. “They’re heading west, toward Desolation Mountain.” He took some of the mud between his fingers, rubbed it carefully. “This has been here less than five minutes. Seems like we’re gaining on him.”
“That hardly seems likely—” Logan began, but Albright was already running down the tracks, his rifle—slung over his back—bouncing crazily between his shoulder blades.
Logan dashed after him. Albright had at least twenty-five years on him, but nevertheless he found it hard to keep up. Jogging along the abandoned rail line proved more difficult than he’d expected: the ties were spaced at just the wrong distance for running, and the interstices were full of brambles, weeds, and treacherous sinkholes.
The muddy tracks grew fainter, and Albright slowed accordingly, but he did not stop. Now and then he would lance his torch left or right, shining it over the unbroken flanks of forest that threatened to engulf the line.
After about a quarter of a mile, Albright came to a dead halt. He shone his torch around more slowly and carefully, scanning the dark woods. “There,” he said after a minute, pointing to the left side of the tracks toward a stand of American beech. Logan had no idea what Albright had picked up, but he dutifully followed the man as he went tearing into the woods. Up ahead, he thought he could faintly make out the sound of crashing. His grip tightened around the handgun. He wondered for a moment what they would do if they caught up with Feverbridge—and then, almost immediately, he realized he already knew.
They scaled a height of land, then came out into a tiny clearing, ringed on all sides by beech. Ahead, rising above bare branches maybe half a mile away, was another fire tower—but unlike the one at the research site, this one appeared to be intact. It was a vast metal skeleton, perhaps two hundred feet tall, with a covered room at the top and a fire-escape-style ladder that switchbacked up its center from bottom to top. But Albright had taken off again, and Logan could not pause to examine it further.
“Phelps Fire Observation Station,” Albright said over his shoulder. “Aban
doned, of course.”
Crossing the clearing, the moon above them bright with a surrounding swath of clouds, they entered the woods on the far side. Logan could no longer hear any sound ahead. Despite the occasional slowdown or false lead, he was truly impressed by Albright’s knowledge of woodcraft. Whether through the tutelage of his father, Nahum Blakeney, his own youthful experience, or a combination of all three, he was somehow able to follow a trail that, to Logan, looked invisible.
The stand of beech gave way once again to pine, even thicker than before. “Strange,” Albright said, stopping to examine a newly broken branch at shoulder height, fragrant with sap. “He’s circling around to the south. It’s almost as if he’s doubling back—”
And at just that moment there came a sudden burst of sound to their right; the pine trees shook violently; and a creature of nightmare exploded out of the forest and onto them.
38
Laura Feverbridge stood in the doorway of the hidden lab. For a moment, she gathered herself to run after the others, but she remained immobile; it was as if the shocks of the last several minutes had left her paralyzed. She heard the sound of running footsteps, quickly receding; the squeal of brakes; a brief, urgent conversation—and then, silence.
Now, slowly, she turned around and walked back into the main room of the lab. Logan’s insinuations—accusations—were crazy. She had worked with her father for months, trying to reverse the effects of the serum. True, most of the work had been done by her father—that was necessary, since she had to maintain a presence in the primary lab during the day, with the two lab assistants—but she’d seen enough of his work, helped with enough of it. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, deceive her—not after the sacrifices she’d made for him.
“Father,” she murmured. “What have they done to you?”
At first, her steps had been slow, faltering, like a sleepwalker’s, as she wandered aimlessly from table to table. But the more she thought about this awful turn of events, the more agitated her movements became. What to do? What to do?