Pocket Apocalypse
Page 6

There was a time when the world’s therianthrope populations had their own ways of handling sickness. Infected individuals would retreat to caves or deep forests, where the majority of them would die without passing their infection along. The viruses that make up the lycanthropy family may be closely related to rabies, but they had to sacrifice some flexibility in exchange for the traits that enabled them to infect shapeshifters: they’re even harder to catch than rabies itself. Most often, the outbreak would claim one or two victims and then burn out, a victim of its own deadly nature.
The Covenant changed all that when they showed up and started hunting cryptids, like the therianthropes, into extinction. A sick therianthrope looked like an easy target; more and more, they found themselves followed into the places where they tried to hide. Maybe that would have been all right, if we’d been talking about a pox or a flu—the sick therianthrope could have used the Covenant teams as a means of suicide, convincing them that there were no other therianthropes in the area. And maybe the ones who weren’t already sick enough to have become irrational chose that method of death. Sadly, more had reached the stage where they bit and scratched at everything that moved. Some members of the Covenant were exposed to the virus. Most of the time that came to nothing. Jumping between species isn’t easy.
But it only had to happen once.
No one knows the name of the first werewolf, or how they reacted when they felt themselves getting sick. Maybe they prayed. Maybe they raged. Maybe they hid their infection out of fear that the Covenant that had sheltered them would now turn against them and put them to death for having become one of the monsters they were intended to fight. Whatever they did, they did it long enough for lycanthropy-w to finish rewiring their bodies and rewriting their minds, until the day came that they changed forms for the first time, and all hell broke loose.
There’s no such thing as a “good” werewolf. A werewolf in their original form is completely hidden, undetectable among a normal population; they can go anywhere, move freely without being detected. A werewolf in the grip of the change is a killing machine, designed for nothing more than feeding itself and spreading the virus that controls it. They feel very little pain, and absolutely no remorse. Stories of people successfully begging werewolves not to kill their own spouses or children are generally regarded as just that—stories, with no facts behind them. Werewolves kill. That’s all.
Even Australia, with its own share of dangerous beasts and dangerous people, wasn’t equipped to handle an outbreak of lycanthropy. No one ever was.
Shelby had been living with me since her apartment burned down, which made it easy to coordinate trip planning. We’d driven separate cars to the zoo—we didn’t keep identical hours, thanks to the largely public-facing nature of her work, and the largely private nature of mine—but we could meet back up at the house after work to plan further for the trip. She gave me a distracted kiss before she left to do the afternoon big cat show, leaving me alone with my thoughts—and with Crow, who cawed after her in a way that was practically guaranteed to attract attention.
“What am I going to do with you, huh?” I asked, leaning back in my chair and looking at him. “I can’t take you to Australia. There’s lying to customs to save my own skin and then there’s importing non-native wildlife because I want to. One of them is practical. The other is sort of a dick move.” Crow probably wouldn’t enjoy riding in the hold of the plane, either. We’d reach Brisbane and find that every suitcase on the plane had been mysteriously broken into and ransacked for treats.
Crow churred and began preening one wing.
“I guess I can ask Sarah to keep an eye on you. You like Sarah, don’t you?”
Crow ignored me.
“I’m glad we had this talk. Keep an eye on the office while I’m away, all right?” I rose, finally taking my zoo-issue lab coat off the back of the chair, and walked toward the door. It was time to tell Dee that I was going to be taking a little time off.
I found her wiping fingerprints off the glass front of Crunchy’s tank. She glanced over when she heard me approach, and asked, “Did you two have another fight? Shelby slouched out of here like she’d just been read the riot act.”
“No, actually, I agreed to everything she asked me, which is either a sign of true love or proof that I’ve lost my mind,” I said. “I’m going to be heading for the main office first thing tomorrow morning to file the papers for a leave of absence. Shelby and I need to go back to her place and check on her family. Can you keep an eye on my projects while I’m away?” I meant the basilisks, naturally; Dee was immune to their petrifying gaze, and would make a better caretaker for the chicks than anyone else I could have asked.
She straightened, lowering her washrag. “By her place you mean . . . ?”
“Australia.”
Dee dropped the washrag. “Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’ll fill you in before I go, but I wanted to give you as much warning as I could.”
“Well, when are you leaving?”
“If Shelby has her way, tomorrow night.” That was for the best, given the circumstances. The longer the outbreak had to burn, the more people it was going to hurt or kill. “We should only be gone for a couple of weeks.”
Dee frowned. “Are you sure the zoo is going to approve that on such short notice?”
“I’m not technically an employee: I’m a researcher on loan,” I said. “If they get too picky about the amount of notice, I can always point out that my residency is strictly voluntary on all sides.” It was a bluff that I didn’t want them to call, since I enjoyed my place in the reptile house, but we’d always known that this wasn’t a permanent position. If they asked me not to come back, I could get Dee to relocate the basilisks out to the farming fringe of her home community, and walk away without worrying about my responsibilities.
“I’m not sure I like this, Alex,” said Dee.
“I know I don’t like it,” I said. “I also know it’s necessary, or I wouldn’t be doing it.”
Dee looked around, making note of the few stragglers still peering at lizards or gazing in awe at snakes as big around as their arms. Her eyes swung back to me. “You’ll tell me what all this is about later, right?”