Red Moon Rising (10 page)

W
e're parked at an overlook near the quarry in Brockston. I crack the window, but I know the car is going to stink of burgers and fries for days.

“Sorry we're not eating in a restaurant,” Dad says, “but we can't risk anybody overhearing us.”

“It's fine. I don't mind.”

The waxing crescent moon is getting low, and I can't see its reflection in the water anymore. Dad has one of his oldies-mix CDs on. It's Dylan Zimmermann: “Wulf in Sheep's Clothes.” I've heard this one for as long as I can remember.

And then that famous chorus:

I admire that Dylan's a human fighting for wulf rights, but I just can't stand the guy's nasal voice.

Dad switches off the stereo. “I told the doctor about your pseudo-Change. He wants us to come back for a checkup. Also, there are things he can do to make the first Change a little easier.”

It's clear to me from his voice that he's trying to sound cool about this, like he's not worried. I know better.

“He's out of town at a conference, but we'll see him next week,” he says. “Right now, we have to start making some decisions. The next full moon is in less than four weeks.”

“Twenty-four days, actually.”

“Right. Well, the first thing we have to decide is whether we're going to register you.”

“If I register, then I go to a compound every month. And I could die there, right?”

“I'd try to get you into one of the easier ones.”

“You know people high up enough to get me assigned to an easy compound?”

“Not really, but the people who work at the registration bureau are underpaid government employees who can be bribed.” He pulls a pickle slice out of his burger, rolls down the window, and tosses it out.

“You have the money for that?” I ask.

“I'd find a way to get it.”

Wow. I believe him. “What do you mean by an easy compound?”

“Maybe one with older wulves, who mainly sleep during their Change. Or at a juvenile compound.”

I still don't know exactly what happened to Craig, but I know it happened at a juvenile compound.

“What's it really like?” I ask.

He takes a deep breath. I know he's trying to figure out how much to tell me. He leans his right wrist over the top of the steering wheel. There's his wulftag, dark and way more apparent than mine. I don't know why I never noticed before, but his forearms are massive. I'm not sure if that's from his wulf genes or from years of manual labor. Probably both.

He's still not talking, so I'd better get this going. “I need to know about the compounds,” I say. “I mean, I went on the fifth-grade class trip to one, of course.”

“Yeah, you got the nicey-nice tour, in between full moons. I'll bet it looked beautiful.”

“Sure. Rolling meadows, lots of trees, huge rock formations. Other than the fence and gate we passed through to get in, it looked like the nature preserve behind our house.”

“Which is the image the LPCB wants everyone to have. They don't show the less…
scenic
parts on the public tours.”

“Right. And I'm sure the stuff I've seen in movies isn't exactly accurate, either. Which is why I'm asking you.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, we can start with the buses.”

“I've seen them.” Government buses, army green, rundown and loud. Wulf faces staring out through the windows, expressionless.

“Once you get used to the smell, they're not bad. Ideally, you'd sleep on the way there. It's kind of a long ride, since the compounds are far away from towns.”

“Because nobody wants to live near a compound. Just like prisons.”

“Right. There's supposed to be a paramedic on every bus, but that only happens if they're due for an inspection.”

“Nice. Real concern for safety,” I say.

Dad takes his time sipping his soda. “You get there and they open the compound gates for the bus. Two electrical fences are on the outside. The inside one is known as the Shocker. It's got enough voltage to give a jolt you might remember even
after
the Change. Mostly that does the trick and turns back anyone who wandered over or is trying to get out. The outer fence is called the Fryer. That'll turn a werewulf into a smoking furburger.” He looks at me, probably realizing that he might have been more graphic than was necessary. “Then there's the compound itself. You have your thirty-foot-high concrete walls and, well, the guard towers.”

“The guards are armed.”

“Yeah. If the problem is inside the wall, they try tranquilizer darts.”

“If the problem is outside?”

He shakes his head. “It doesn't happen often, but if someone gets outside the walls, they use hardcore ammunition.” He looks at me. “I've never seen that.”

I'm pretty sure he's lying.

“When you get off the bus, your ID card and collar are scanned, and that info goes straight to the LPCB in D.C. so they know you've reported. Before nightfall, there are meals in the dining halls. Food's not as bad as you'd think. Anybody who's on medication goes to the compound hospital dispensary.”

“What happens in winter? You just stand around in the cold until the full moon comes out?”

“No, no. Until the Change, you stay in barracks. A lot like in the army. When you're…when the full moon is out, you wouldn't want to be cooped up inside. You'd go crazy.”

“And then there's the full moon, you Change, and the fun begins when you go outside and get attacked by other werewulves,” I say.

“You try to keep away from hostile ones.”

“How do you know which ones are hostile?”

“You can sense who's dangerous and you just keep away.”

“What if you can't avoid them? What if they come after you?”

Dad's left eyelid twitches and his lips go tight. “The hostiles only attack the ones they sense are weak. Weak or threatening. You won't be either of those.”

I believe half of that: I definitely won't be threatening.

He goes on. His casual tone sounds forced. “There's lots of room in the fields. There are places you can hide if you think they're after you.” He clears his throat and nods a few times. “Some compounds have caves. All of them have man-made half-indoor shelters. The cement floors are heated in winter, cooled in summer. It's not so horrible.”

“Yeah. It sounds like a resort. Do they have tennis courts and swimming pools, too?”

“Some of them have lakes. But there's not exactly an activity director. No bingo games, either. You run most of the night and sleep during the day, when your werewulf aggression hormones aren't so revved up by the moon. The truth is, you're not going to remember much of it. Your mind goes into a…simpler state. Kind of like when you're half asleep and can't form complete thoughts. Or when you have a high fever.”

“I've never
had
a fever.”

“Oh, right. I don't know, then. It's hard to explain. Werewulf thinking is more like…just sensations, I guess. Hunger. Fear. Anyway, when it's over and you Change back, you get your stuff, scan out, get back on the bus, and you're on your way home.”

I don't say anything. The compound sounds like just about the worst thing I can imagine. I'll get torn to pieces there. “Choice two?”

“Well, if you register and have lots of dough—which your mother does, thanks to her parents and her new husband—then you can go the medical route. An LRC.”

“Lycanthropic Rest Center? Isn't that just for movie stars?”

“Yeah, there are celebrities. And other rich people who aren't famous. It's expensive. Even though it's staffed by doctors and nurses, medical insurance considers it elective.”

“And they put you to sleep for the whole Change?”

“More or less. Basically, they put you in a light coma. But there's a high risk of complications.”

“Like what?”

“Like seizures, blowing blood vessels in your brain, permanent coma, and death.”

“What are the chances of any of that happening?”

“Sixty percent.”

“Bad odds.”

“Not great.” He unwraps another burger and takes a big bite.

I take a sip through my straw. “You know, in Tibet they have a good system. Before full moon, the wolves climb down rope ladders into the Tsangpo Canyon. Monks pull up the ladders, and the werewulves run totally free in this enormous gorge during the Change. After the full moon, the monks lower the ladders and help the wulves back up. They've been doing it for centuries.”

“Well, good for them, but we don't live in Tibet,” he says as he chews. He crumples the burger wrapper and stuffs it in the paper bag. “Then there's the other way.”

“Which is?”

“Which is illegal. You don't register.”

“Stay free,” I say, even though I know it's not that simple.

“Sure. Unless you're caught or killed, which happens to most moonrunners eventually. Some of them get shelter by paying a keeper.”

“Is that as bad as it looks in the movies?”

“It's probably worse in real life. You pay the keeper a lot of dough, then you get chained up—hands and feet—to bolts in the floor or walls of a basement. It's pretty disgusting. There's usually bad ventilation and little or no food. Lots of wulves die each month. Bodies get dumped in rivers or stuffed in landfills.”

“Aren't
any
keepers decent people?”

“Not that I've heard of. And some of them just turn the wulves in to the cops or the LPCB. The keepers pose as neighbors, say they heard noises. Lo and behold, when the authorities check it out, they find a basement full of captive werewolves. The keepers get a nice fat reward, while all the wulves—the ones still alive in the basement—get hauled off to federal penitentiary.”

I shake my head. Can this get any worse? “So the other choice is to be a moonrunner and try to hide somewhere.”

“Right, and then we're back to getting hunted and killed, either by the LPCB or by poachers, who collect their bounties when they deliver your carcass to the cops.”

“It sounds like we're out of options, if I don't register,” I say.

“Well, there's one other way. A chamber.”

“I thought that was just in movies.”

“It's real, but rare. It's done in a private home with someone who can be trusted. It costs money to build it right, so it's solid and escape-proof. And you need someone who's willing to keep an eye on you, make sure you have food and water. And since this is totally illegal, that person is technically an accomplice.”

“Do you know anybody who would do that?”

He takes a deep breath. “Your mother might.”

I laugh. “Are you kidding? I can just see it. You'll say, ‘Thought we'd let you know, Danny's going to become a werewulf. And, oh, by the way. We were wondering if you'd be cool with us building a chamber in your basement, which means you and your family will be committing a felony every single month while you shelter a moonrunner.' Is that what you had in mind?”

“That's not bad at all. You can do the talking, slick.”

He laughs, and I laugh, too. There's nothing funny about any of this, but being with him makes me feel a little less scared.

A little.

T
he last thing Dad told me before dropping me off was how important it was not to say anything about this to anyone. So what do I do, not twelve hours later?

“I'm not kidding,” I say to Claire. “You can't tell anyone.”

“I heard you the first twenty times.” She's looking down at the path through the woods that we take to school. She can't be seeing much, because there isn't a lot of moonlight. But I've seen her do this—look down while she's walking—at times when she's trying to figure something out. She's in her own head now, working this over, but I need her to hear me about this.

“Claire, you can't tell…
anybody
.
On
.
The
.
Planet
. Get it?
No
.
Body
.”

“That's twenty-one.”

“I'll keep saying it until I'm sure you get the point.”

“Okay, I get it. Seriously. You think I'd tell?”

“I'm just saying.”

She punches me lightly on the shoulder and we walk a few yards when she asks, “What about Juliet?”

“What about her?”

“Are you going to tell her?”

I stop walking. “What did I just finish telling you? Nobody.”

“Okay. I'm just asking. I mean, you're so crazy about her, I figured you'd want to tell her.”

“I want to, but the stakes here are just so big. I can't tell a soul.”

“You told
me
.”

“You're different.”

She nods. “And this doctor is
sure
you're going to Change?”

“Yeah. Like I said, I already went through half of one. Or a Change Lite. It's going to happen. Soon. And I don't know what I'm going to do.”

“You'll have to do
some
thing. Which choice seems the least horrendous?”

“All of them are terrible.” Like Claire, I look down at the path as we walk, but unlike Claire, I can see rocks, bumps, and a tree root that she's about to trip on. I give her a push, and before she can curse at me I say, “Tree root. You didn't see it.” She looks behind her, then doubles back, feeling the ground with her foot. “It's two steps ahead of you, but at your left foot,” I say. She finds it, then squints at me, trying to figure how I could have seen the root in the darkness.

“I told you. My vision is sharper. All my senses,” I say with a shrug. “Come on, we're going to be late.” We start walking again. “I don't want to go to the compounds, and I don't want to register. But my whole family could get in unbelievably serious trouble if they build me a chamber.”

“And so could I, now,” she says evenly.

“No. Nobody knows I'm telling you, so nobody could ever prove you knew anything.”

“So you're thinking the chamber thing?”

“Maybe. We have to tell my mother what's going on first. She might notice major construction in her basement.”

We come out of the woods and see the school on the other side of the playing fields. We walk under one of the goalposts.

Claire is still looking at the ground, but with the glow from the school windows, she can probably see the grass more clearly. “But if you do that, and you stay in that chamber for, like, three or four days during the full moon—”

“I know. I'll be out of school every month during the full moon, and they'll have to report it to the LPCB. We thought of that problem.”

“And what's your solution?”

“Don't have one yet.”

The halls are crowded and loud. Half these vamps look like they're still waking up; the other half make up for the quiet of the sleepy ones by shouting and laughing, hyped up like they just had a six-pack of SynHeme Triple Caf. Claire goes to A-wing, where her locker is, and I go to B-wing.

As soon as I turn the corner, I smell it. Something like cardboard and dust and, I don't know. Beef jerky, maybe.

I get to my locker. This part of the hall
really
stinks of it. I turn the dial on the lock, sniffing and trying to figure out what it is. I hit the third number, and as I pull the handle, I know.

Once the latch releases, the door swings open and an avalanche of small, dry brown nuggets, thousands and thousands of them, floods out. They scatter all the way across the hall. Some vamps laugh at me, some curse at me for stinking up the hallway.

Dog food.

Dry dog food.

It must have been loaded to the top of the locker. I don't know how it was done, but I'm pretty sure I know who did it.

“You okay?” I ask Juliet. “You looked like you were going to have a fit during Chem.”

“I'm nervous about that test,” she says.

“It's not going to be hard.”

“Not for you, maybe.” She's not looking me in the eyes, and from the way her shoulders are hunched forward, she's embarrassed, unhappy, or both. I feel bad for her.

“We can study together. If you want.”

“When?”

“After school? We can get in a few hours before I have to leave to beat the sunrise.”

“I'm leaving in a few minutes. And I can't stay up all night. Thanks, though.”

She puts her books in her bag and pulls on her coat. I can't miss this opportunity.

“You know what?” I say. “I only have Health, lunch, and Gym left today. I can skip them to study with you.”

She tilts her head and squints at me. “I don't want to be the reason for your academic downfall,” she says.

“I'm fairly sure my downfall won't be your fault. Come on. I could use the studying, too. If your father's getting you, maybe he could drop us off at the diner.”

“He only picks me up when he has to get fresh fish for the restaurant. But my parents like me to be home after school. We can go there.”

“To your house, you mean?”

“Yes—where I live. That's usually why it's called home.”

Oh, man. Phone calls and locker meetings. And now, going to her house? How have I not messed this up yet?

I must have scored some major points with her while we were studying. I found ways to explain stuff so she understood it better than she did in class. We worked for about an hour and a half, and now we're packing up our books.

I still can't believe I'm here. Juliet's living room has a lot of rugs, and the furniture is so soft, you just sink in. There are family pictures on the brick fireplace, which looks so much warmer than the slate one we have. In fact, this whole place is homier than my house.

She turns on the TV and puts her feet up on the couch so they're near my leg, almost touching.

“You won't get in trouble with your parents? I mean, they wouldn't be mad knowing we're down here alone?”

“No problem. They trust me.”

I nod. I'm not sure what to make of that. Does she mean that they're too trusting? Or does she mean that she
can
be trusted by them, in that she would never do anything with me to violate their trust, and I'm considered a total neuter?

Either way, if her parents knew that I was half-wulf, they might not be so easy about letting me hang out with their daughter. And if any of them knew I was going to Change…I don't even want to think about it.

“And anyway,” Juliet says, “it's almost two in the morning. They're dead asleep.” She puts her foot against my leg.

Then, finally, the long-awaited lip-lock. And it
is
all it's cracked up to be.

My right hand is behind her head, the left one on her hip. Should I make another move? Maybe not. She might not want that yet. Don't rush it.

She makes an
mmm
sound and pulls away. She smiles, looking happy and maybe almost sleepy.

“Are you tired?” I ask.

“Just relaxed. I didn't know if this would happen.”

“Me either. To tell you the truth, though, I hoped it might.”

“To tell
you
the truth? Me, too,” she says. “You know, in a way, we owe it all to Mr. Morrison.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he did the rebel yell, and you fell out of your chair and made me laugh. That was when we first talked at your locker.”

“You remember that?”

“Well, yeah. It was when we met for real.”

“You think we never would have gotten together if it wasn't for the rebel yell?” I ask.

“Who knows? But that's the way it happened, so we owe it to him.”

“Well, fine. Here's to the rebel yell. You want me to try it right now?”

“Why? Are you planning to attack me?”

“Maybe. Maybe a nice attack.”

“Then let's just skip the yelling part.”

She pulls me in close and I can't believe this is happening. She likes me, definitely.
Definitely
.

But she also doesn't know me, not completely. She doesn't know the one big thing. And I hate that I'll never be able to tell her.