Read Online City Under the Moon by Hugh Sterbakov - Free Book Online Page B

her late 50’s. Face coated in bloody grime and raked with tear streaks. Her right eye had been beaten glassy; right shoulder hung at the wrong angle from a broken collarbone. More injuries beneath the gown, but nothing inhibiting mobility. With each step, her bloodstained feet peeled from the asphalt.
    “Get out of the way!” Tildascow yelled at the clustering onlookers. She kept pace with the woman as they crossed onto 44 th Street, moving west and away from UN Plaza.
    Sirens blared in the distance. As long as this woman remained calm, Tildascow would wait for the police and their stun guns. She wasn’t posing any kind of threat.
    “My… my…” she mumbled deliriously. “Where… where is my…”
    “What’s your name, ma’am?” Tildascow yelled.
    No acknowledgment. More onlookers crossed the street, pacing in front of the two of them, laughing and taking pictures. Fucking idiots. “FBI. Step across the street and get out of the way!”
    It was about to get worse: A news crew had been reporting from in front of the Millennium Hotel. Probably an update on—
    Ohmigod.
    “Where is he?” the woman whimpered, her drained eyes wandering in every direction. “Where is he?”
    The woman was Holly Cooke.
    “Where’s my baby?”

    Seven
    CDC Headquarters
    Diagnostic Study Laboratory
    Atlanta, Georgia
    December 31
    9:42 a.m.
    “She definitely has something ,” Jessica Tanner said.
    “But what is it?” Richard mumbled.
    Sure enough, an unidentified virus had been located in Melissa Kenzie’s blood. Jessica examined an analytical presentation of the pathogen, spread across several flat-screen monitors, as Richard and half a dozen members of his virology team peered over her shoulders. It was as if they were waiting for her to conjure some kind of magical diagnosis.
    The raw data from the pan-viral microarray analysis of RNA-Kenzie01 displayed as thousands of colored dots across a black matrix, each representing oligonucleotides , or features of the virus’ DNA. It resembled a nighttime cityscape, with all of its beauty and mystery.
    Data analysis suggested the pathogen was related to several disparate viruses at once. When the comparison fields were narrowed, the computer offered no codification whatsoever.
    “No homology,” Richard grumbled.
    She turned to the others: dumb faces across the board. “Can I see it?” she asked.
    The microarray analysis was replaced by an image of the virus itself, as seen on a low-temperature micrograph at 65,000 times magnification.
    “Look at the shape of the capsid,” Richard said. “So bizarre.”
    The capsid is the protein core containing the virus’ genetic material. They were usually shaped like helixes or twenty-sided polygons called icosahedrons. Variations weren’t unprecedented, but this particular shape had never been recorded. It looked like two flat pentagrams had been used to make a sandwich, and they’d been twisted to scrunch the filling.
    “It’s a pentagrammic crossed-antiprism,” explained one of the virologists.
    On its side, the capsid’s bookends resembled five-pointed stars. “Pentagrammic crossed-antiprism,” Jessica repeated.
    “It’s RNA-based, and enveloped,” said another of the virologists. Some viruses have protective envelopes, which are often created from stolen portions of the host cell’s membranes and used as disguise to facilitate further infiltration. Enveloped viruses tend to be fragile, so they don’t live on doorknobs or toilet seats, and they can’t spread through the air. Good news.
    And that was where the good news stopped.
    After her bizarre conversation with Rebekkah Luft, Jessica had assembled a team of physicists to match the spectral qualities of last night’s moonlight over New York. Using diffraction gratings and spectrophotometers (and guesswork to account for atmospheric scattering and other variables), her team adjusted the light’s frequency, polarity and phase to create a “moon lamp.”
    Werewolf,