Full Moonster

  * * *

  Wildside Press

  www.WildsidePress.com

  Copyright ©1991, 2001 by Nick Pollotta

  * * *

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  An original publication of

  WILDSIDE PRESS.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  Printing history: 1991, Ace Books, New York.

  1995 Armada Press, Moscow

  2002 Wildside Press, New Jersey

  “A Matter of Taste” Time of the Vampires, Ed. P.N. Elrod, copyright © 1996; “A Matter of Taste” Challenging Destiny Magazine, copyright © 1998; “A Matter of Taste” Phantom Magazine, Moscow, copyright © 2000.

  “Bureau 13” is based upon the RPG “Stalking The Night Fantastic” copyright © 1982 by TriTac Games. www.TriTacGames.com

  Join the “Bureau 13” fan club! www.Bureau-13.com

  DEDICATION

  With fond memories and warmest regards to the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, and the Sunday afternoon gang of crazies at Chestnut Hall: Oz Fontecchio, Barbara Higgins, Luke Thalmeyer, Frank Richards, JoAnne Lawler, Larry Gelfand, Joyce Carrol, John Prentis, T-Burn, John and Laura Symms, and especially to the vivacious Debbie Malamut.

  Okay, who brought the pizza?

  INITIATION

  PROLOGUE

  The scream came from out of nowhere.

  Steadily, the howl of pain grew in volume until it split the forest night like an endless explosion. Rapidly increasing, the raw-throated cry of anguish wavered and wassailed until it abruptly ended in a meaty thump. In perfect harmony, the mountain cabin shook; pictures and diplomas went lopsided, mugs danced off bookshelves and the glass door of a surgical instrument cabinet cracked.

  Quickly rising from her easy chair by the fireplace, Dr. Joanne Abernathy threw aside the medical journal and hobbled over to a window. Dear God, what was that horrible noise? Had somebody fallen off Deadman's Cliff?

  As she drew back the lace curtains, the panels of thermal tempered glass segmented her view of the Canadian forest into tiny squares. Pressing her nose flat against the glass, the veterinarian frantically glanced about. Illuminated by the full moon overhead, the trees were frosted by the silver light, making green seem black and black turn invisible. Completely filling the northern horizon was the ragged gray expanse of the MacKenzie Palisades, an irregular series of sheer angular foothills that bisected this isolated area of the Yukon wilderness like an insane granite wall.

  Then the howl sounded again, closer this time, and faintly overhead could be heard a jetliner streaked off into the distance. An odd thought came to Abernathy. The old woman promptly dismissed it as nonsense. Anybody falling out of a plane would be dead before they hit the ground from cranial blood loss. And afterwards? Well, you'd simply fill in the impact crater with a bulldozer and put a tombstone any ol’ damn place that seemed proper.

  However, if the noise of the passenger jet had frightened some poor bastard into tumbling off the cliff...

  Hurriedly, the retired vet retrieved her teeth from a glass of water set on the stone hearth, pulled on her walking shoes and grabbed a flashlight. After forty years of birthing calves, inoculating sheep and fixing broken bones for both man and beast, there was little she couldn't patch. If the luckless son-of-a-bitch was still alive when she got there, he had a good chance of staying that way. As the closest thing to a doctor in these parts, Abernathy was duty bound to heal even incompetent hunters who tumbled off mountains. Darn fool was probably drunk. Frightened by a plane, indeed. Hurmph!

  Pulling on a light cloth coat, she paused for a moment at the gun rack. This wasn't downtown Whitehead. There were pumas and grizzly in this area, neither of which gave a hoot about her Hellenic oath, but only how tasty old folk were. Bypassing the big bore 30.06 Winchester as too cumbersome to use with her arthritis, she started to take the Browning .22 carbine, but then decided no. It was only a varmint rifle and so incredibly lightweight that it floated if dropped in water. Obviously, a compromise was the answer.

  Yanking open the hall closet, she retrieved a bulky leather belt from a peg on the wall. Dutifully, the vet strapped it about her waist and checked the load in the shiny clean Webley .44 revolver. She had never fired the weapon except in practice sessions and once, only once, to put a rabid opossum out of its misery. Afterwards she had burned the corpse and gotten royally drunk. As with all the women in her family, Joanne hated to kill anything. Being a pacifist just seemed to run in her blood.

  Unbolting the front door, she clicked on the porch lights and stepped outside. The forest was strangely quiet. Weird. Testing the wind with a damp finger, she guesstimated that the noise had come from the direction of the old salt lick and started east. After a few dozen meters the trail angled off in another direction, so Abernathy took advantage of a fresh bear tunnel to continue towards the cliff. She moved fast and silent along the collapsed line of bushes that marked the regular passage of a large bear. A griz, perhaps. Thankfully, the droppings smelled old.

  Minutes later, she found the moaning creature buried under a pile of leaves by a copse of tall evergreen trees. The white beam of her flashlight displayed little of the animal besides its hind legs, but those were enough. Joanne knew a wolf when she saw one, and this was the biggest ever. The paws were large as a grown man's foot. Enormous!

  Laying her flashlight on the rocky ground to shine on the wolf, the ranger gently brushed aside the leaves and uncovered the wounded animal. The beast whimpered at the intrusion, but offered no resistance. Black blood was matted heavily on the chest, and there was reddish foam about its snout. Joanne frowned. Damn. Possible internal bleeding. There wasn't much she could do for that here. Glancing upwards, she was not surprised to see a leafy hole through the tree branches overhead. The ground here was a flat outcropping of stone, torn branches and smashed bushes forming a natural cushion under the dying wolf. Hmm, the angle was wrong, but the creature must have fallen off the cliff. What else made sense?

  Keeping well clear of the dagger-sharp teeth, Abernathy examined the beast more closely. The wolf was shivering and panting, but its nose was bone dry. Trained fingers checked its ears and eased back an eyelid. Damnation, the pulse rate was down, while the temperature was up. The wolf seemed to be suffering from more than mere impact damage. Suspicious, the vet turned her flashlight directly on the bloody chest and got an answer. Yep, it was also gunshot. But the wound in chest was only superficial, made by a .22, or .32 at the most. Ye god, were the frigging poachers using poisoned bullets again? Anything to save the pelt from additional damage. Damn them. There was a difference between hunting for food and killing for fashion. Morally, ethically and legally.

  Furious, Abernathy hoped that the slug hadn't hit any bones so the ballistics lab of the Royal Mounties could get a good reading off the round. With any luck they would be able to track the poacher's by the identifying marking from his or her rifle and slam the stupid sonofabitch into jail! Wolves were an endangered species, protected by international law!

  On the other hand, if there were massive internal injuries compounded by poisoning, there might be nothing she could do to help. Tentatively, Dr. Abernathy drew the Webley .44. Unexpectedly, the beast extended a shaking paw to gently touch the gun barrel and push it away in an amazingly human gesture.

  In ragged stages, Abernathy holstered the handgun and knelt alongside the wolf to tend
erly stroke its head. A hot tongue licked at her wrist.

  “Okay, lupin,” she softly crooned. “No mercy killing. I'd rather not anyway. Somehow, I'll get you back to the cabin and fix you proper. Qui, mon ami?"

  There was no response. The wolf had fallen unconscious.

  Realizing that time was now against her, the elderly vet moved fast. Placing her pocket handkerchief on the oozing wound, she cinched her belt tight about the chest. The wolf stirred and mewed in pain, but did not lash out with its deadly paws, and the bleeding slowed.

  Using her belt knife, the woman split some of the fallen tree limbs and crisscrossed the branches through the sleeves of her coat to jury-rig a drag. Gently, she rolled the huge animal onto the makeshift litter, and the limp wolf actually seemed to assist in the task. She smiled at that. Either this was a hell of an intelligent animal, or else somebody's escaped pet.

  Buttoning the coat closed to keep the wolf in place, Abernathy grabbed the pockets of the garment and began the arduous task of dragging the wounded beast through the woods. An hour of backbreaking labor later, the panting vet and patient reached the cabin. Gasping, the elderly woman thanked God for the new bear tunnel or else she never would have made it here. The colossal animal must weigh a hundred kilos! Almost as much as a full-grown man. Maybe more.

  The shed at the rear of the cabin was on ground level, easy to get into, but unheated. So she nearly busted a gut hauling the hairy giant up the inclined wooden ramp used for conveying fireplace logs into the house.

  As she closed the front door, Dr. Abernathy took a moment to catch her breath. Getting the poor thing onto the dining table was out of the question. The surgery would have to be done here in the living room. It would be messy, but the battered rug had seen worse. Her monthly poker game with the local Eskimo tribe always added a few more beer and bloody-nose stains to the overlapping montage on the old Sears two-ply. Someday, she really would have to give the rug a serious cleaning. Or maybe just burn it and buy a new one.

  Retrieving her medical bag from the hall closet, Abernathy loaded a glass hypodermic needle with a clear liquid, tapped out the air bubble and injected the moaning animal with 10cc of morphine. Audibly, the beast sighed in relief as the pain diminished. She followed with a wide spectrum antibiotic. The bacteriological compound was an inexpensive sulfur mixture; trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole. The only type she could afford. It wasn't as powerful as the new crystal silver formulas, but it didn't require refrigeration after mixing and would do the job. Wisely, she decided that the distemper and rabies vaccine could wait till later. Step one: get that bullet out.

  Going into the kitchen, Dr. Abernathy threw an assortment of instruments into a sterilization steamer and washed her hands. Returning to the living room, she switched on every light in the place. Grabbing a jack-and-shackle arrangement from the top of a bookcase, Abernathy knelt to tie the animal's fore legs to a plastic support. Carefully, she extended the framework to separate the legs and expose the chest for ease of accessibility. Gently, Joanne removed the belt and handkerchief and washed the chest wound clean with an astringent solution and white cotton cloth. The animal moaned weakly and she touched the big vein in a stiff ear. Pulse rate was low, but steady. She had bought some time. Hopefully it would be enough.

  Rummaging in her medical bag, the elderly vet found what she wanted and used electric clippers to tenderly shave the area around the entry wound bare. Next, the she packed the opening with #4 surgical sponges, finishing just in time for the sterilizer to ding.

  Racing over, she used potholders to handle the hot instruments and, returning to the living room, she laid them down on a pristine rectangle of white cloth. Then, taking a slim steel rod in hand, Abernathy softly spoke to the delirious animal as she began to judiciously probe for the bullet. Abernathy knew that wild animals responded to words and could feel your true intentions better than most people. Many a fur trapper faking friendship found that out the hard way. Wolves were smart.

  Surprisingly, the elderly vet located the slug immediately, lodged just under the outer layer of fatty tissue, directly between the main lateral pectoral muscle and the forth rib. A glancing entry. Thank God.

  Extracting the probe, Dr. Abernathy used long-finger forceps to carefully remove the silvery blob of metal. There came the expected well of blood with its removal, but that soon stopped. Wary of the poisonous coating, she placed the slug on a cotton gauze pad and then into a plastic specimen bottle, which she dropped into a pocket. There, the Mounties would want to see that. Odd, though. The bullet didn't appear to be coated with anything, and the metal was surprisingly soft. The forceps had disfigured the material. Definitely not steel, or cold iron. It resembled silver. That gave her pause. Somebody had shot a wolf with a silver bullet? The breathing of the wolf increased and it moaned softly.

  Shaking the wild thoughts from her mind, Abernathy pivoted to gather needle and thread from her medical bag. But as she turned to suture the wound, the hole was already closed. Eh? Dr. Abernathy blinked to clear her eyes of the illusion. Yet the impossible scene stayed the same. The wound had shut by itself. Incredible!

  Then as the dumbfounded vet watched, the bullet hole healed completely, without even the slightest puckering or discoloration of the skin to mark its presence. The hair began to grow with fantastic speed, filling the shaved patch in mere moments.

  Horrified, the vet backed away from the undamaged thing lying sprawled on her rug and retreated to the bedroom. She slammed and locked the door in an automatic response. With shaky knees, she dropped into a chair.

  Dr. Abernathy tried opening her mouth to speak, but no words would come. Frantically, the veterinarian searched for a scientific explanation to the phenomenon, but none presented itself. Facing the mirror above her dresser, she examined the conjunctiva/rectus under her eyes, extended a tongue, then checked pulse and temperature. Mentally, she juggled a few algebraic equations, then nodded.

  Okay, not ill or blatantly senile. Well then, what had she just witnessed? Magic? Preposterous!

  Yet the folk who lived in the deep woods swapped stories about magical creatures they encountered. Beings who talked, or changed shape, or couldn't be killed; human ghosts, angekok, Indian spirits, the wendigo and countless sasquatch. But to actually encounter a ... a ... werewolf?

  Without conscious thought, Joanne Abernathy reached into the night table alongside her bed and withdrew a half-full bottle of Alaskan Gold whiskey. She pulled the cork with her teeth, almost losing her dentures in the act, and proceeded to liberally administer a heroic dose of liquid courage to herself.

  Just then, something crashed against the locked door and began clawing at the oak planks in a wild frenzy of frustration.

  Choking on the blended 90 proof, Abernathy dropped the bottle and took refuge behind her chair. Mon dieu! The beast was moving already? How fast did this thing heal? Carefully, she listened to the noises coming from the living room. It didn't sound as if the wolf was smashing furniture randomly. The animal's efforts seemed to be directed against that door. But why? It must smell her and desperately want in. To kill her?

  Steadfastly denying that notion, the old woman grew adamant. No. The wolf was only disoriented from the morphine and the operation. The animal could have no wish to actually hurt her. She had saved its life!

  Forcing herself to stay calm, Dr. Abernathy moved swiftly across the room and stood flat against the wall alongside the trembling door. She had to try reasoning with the creature. Werewolves were half human, so they must be able to think. A pause. Or could they? Which was the dominant half, man or beast? The vet didn't know.

  “Hush, it's okay,” Abernathy said in soothing tones. “There's only me in here. You're in no danger. I'm the person who saved your life. I took out the bullet. Remember? The old lady with the white hair? I found you in the forest and fixed your wound."

  Silence.

  “Remember? Please, remember!” she implored. “I'm your friend! Friend!"

  A str
ident growl was the only response, and the door violently vibrated in the framework as a hundred-plus kilos of muscle slammed against the stout portal. Again and again.

  As Dr. Abernathy listened, the growls turned to slavering, a noise the vet had heard before in her work. The beast wanted what every patient needed after some serious blood loss and an operation. Nourishment.

  She relaxed with the thought. Yes, of course. That was it. Hunger could make even the most mild of animals crazy. Well, born and raised French Canadian, Dr. Joanne Abernathy had the solution to that minor problem! However, getting to the kitchen was another matter.

  The pounding on the door increased and the hinges started to rattle as Abernathy slid the bed in front of the portal, then tipped over her dresser as an additional barricade. Screws popped from the jamb and the door began to sag. Trying to control her panic with Lamaze breathing, Dr. Abernathy stood with one hand on the light switch and the other on the latch to the hallway door. Any second now.

  In an explosion of splinters, the first door collapsed. Abernathy cut the lights, threw open the kitchen door, dashed through and locked it behind her. A moment later that door violently shuddered.

  Moving fast, she raced to the freezer and unearthed a fifty pound slab of sugar-cured moose rump that the vet had won with a royal straight flush. Thank God for wild cards. It was a tight fit into the microwave, but she forced the roast in and turned the dial to maximum and high. Precious seconds ticked away as the tremendous haunch of meat was electronically thawed and the werewolf clawed a hole in the kitchen door.

  With a musical ding, the microwave won the race. Yanking out the bloody roast, Dr. Abernathy slammed it onto the kitchen table and scooted into the living room, closing the flimsy louvered doors and slid the bolt. Designed more for decoration than protection, these wouldn't stop an angry human for very long. But at least the panels hid her from sight.