Hunter's moon

Running out of her parked car and straight into the woods in the ankle-deep snow, Dr. Avanti gasped out in panicking breaths, running towards the Amalgam nest as best she could, one hand clutching her coat while the other shielded her eyes from the sharp wind blowing more snow into her face. The winter winds blinded her, the sharp cold biting her cheeks and eyes, leaving her to run aimlessly in the hopes of reaching her destination.

“It’s all gone wrong… They must… They must know about this before it’s too late!”

Yelping when her foot sank into a deep pocket of snow, Sara lost her footing briefly before catching herself and falling back into a tree, the naked branches dumping their payload of heavy snow right onto her back and exposed hair. With cold tears in her eyes, Sara hobbled back onto her feet, scrambling back on the blurry path ahead, the day’s events still playing in her head and how all her hopes and dreams had all come crashing down around her!

***

3 hours earlier…

“What do you mean the project’s over?!” demanded Dr. Avanti hotly, standing up from her chair in Dr. Jordan’s office with her hands slamming against the wooden desk in front of her. Her two other co-workers sat next to her and watched the scene unfold before them with barely restrained mirth. The trio had been called in after Doctor Gregors, and Roberts gave a detailed report of their completed work. A fully working serum that could give temporary regeneration to whoever was injected, followed by the eventual flushing of the added DNA from the subject’s system per the Phage retrovirus. Leaning back in their chairs, the two watched on as Sara fumed and raved.

“How could they have finished the work? They didn’t even DO any work for the last two months!” She accused, waving a hand toward them.

“Doctor Avanti, please! Take your seat.” Spoke up, Doctor Jordan, his hand extended out to point back to her chair to sit. “I’ve gone over their reports and findings, and their serum is suitable.”

“WHAT SERUM?! They never even picked up a damn test tube!”

Meeting the woman eye to eye, Doctor Jordan snapped up to his own feet, slamming a fist over the solid oak desk and raising his voice for the first time since the meeting began. “ENOUGH! Sit back down NOW!”

Opening and closing her mouth in shock, Sara staggered back and slowly lowered herself to sit in the third chair at the front of the office desk. Gregors and Roberts held back snickering before clearing their throats to speak.

“It’s true, Sara, we’ve got a fully functioning serum in our possession, we’ve gone over dozens of tests, and it’s stable.” Tapping a folder at the desk, Roberts slid it forward to the head scientist in front of him with a smirk. “We’re so sure of it, we issued enough to help forty cases at the local hospital just to prove our point.”

Sara’s shock intensified, eyeing her two lab mates like they had slapped her across the face. “YOU DID WHAT?!”

Going over the folder and skipping page after page of documentation, Dr. Avanti’s eyes scanned it all in. Their work was thorough, detailing hours of research into the serum and its effects during every stage of infection and expulsion from the body. All their work was time-stamped and provided every detail of their findings. Going over it all, the young woman barked at her co-workers.

“YOU CAN’T GO STRAIGHT TO HUMAN TESTING SO SOON; YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE HERE!”

“Dr. Sara Avanti, SIT DOWN NOW!!!” Glaring at the tanned woman raising her voice, Jordan watched as her attention snapped back to him before slowly returning to her chair, her breath catching in her throat to keep calm, the room becoming deathly quiet before the older man started fresh. “According to this report, the serum is stable, it works… I’m going to approve its use at the local hospital as its introduction before being mass-produced. And as far as I’m concerned, you are off this project here and now.”

“But Doctor Jordan, you can’t…”

“About an hour before you came in here, Gregors and Roberts gave me evidence that you had been tampering with their work. I’ve gone over the folders and found discrepancies with the research you three have been doing.” Opening her mouth like a fish out of water, Sara looked to the men in the room in shock. Jordan continued. “A second batch of research separate from the main body of work; one would think that you were hoping to profit from a side project in this research…”

Shaking her head, a cold sensation ran up Sara’s legs all the way up to her spine. How did he find out about her work? Her research on the amalgams that had been living in the woods all these years. The one she kept secret and locked away for her own private use and study?

“S-Sir… That was something I was…”

“Clear out your things and hand in your ID badge at the front desk in the lobby. Anything you’ve been working on will be evaluated and handed over to Dr. Gregors and Dr. Roberts to continue after it’s been cross-examined with their work.”

Stunned back into her seat, Sara needed a minute to process what she had been told before slowly standing up from her chair. Baffled and numb, she stepped out of the office and stood outside the door in shock, leaning her shoulder against the wall of the hallway and feeling sick to her stomach. In the background, she could still hear the three men talking over the serum’s planned use for the general public. Unable to stand hearing anymore, she composed herself and made for her lab.

“How… How did they do it?”

Her eyes went wide when she considered how they did it, remembering the safe she used at her desk in the lab to store her private work. Worry began to worm itself into her mind; she had to know, and she had to find out if it was all still there. Quickly making her way back up to her lab on the third floor, Sara passed by doctors and researchers too busy with their own work and experiments to ask about the hurry. After running up two flights of stairs to the research floor, Sara nearly collided with the plexiglass slide door before fumbling her ID card over the scanner, her eyes closed, whispering a silent prayer that it would still work. With a soft beep from the scanner, the door slid open. Not even bothering to wait for it to open fully, Sara ran to her desk in the lab she shared with Gregors and Roberts.

“Come on, come on…” Practically shoving her office chair out of the way, she fumbled with the code to open the small safe under her desk, failing twice to open it before she finally heard the click of the lock tumbler release and the small metal door crack open before being slammed open. Looking inside, she feared the worst.

Everything was still there.

All her documents and research were still folded neatly in the vault, along with a tray of vials containing the blood samples she had taken. Sighing in relief, Sara slumped down onto her knees, thumbing through her files and documents slowly now that her heart wasn’t booming in her chest anymore. Her refined work still stood in its rack, right along with the row of blood samples she took from each of the Amalgams hiding in the forests. Slumping down heavily, Dr. Avanti felt relief slowly pulling her to the floor, pressing her forehead against the edge of her desk while a small chuckle escaped her lips.

“Heh… Heh… Maybe, maybe they DID get it. I’ve been too paranoid, all because of this.”

Pulling a vial from the rack, she held the glass tube gently in her hand, her thumb tracing over the rubber stopper and the label sticker over the glass. All her work, she kept her coworkers in the dark and sat precariously between her fingers. One rack held vials filled with the amalgam’s blood she studied; the other held the refined formula she created from it.

She pulled out the racks of vials for a once-over, then pulled out her latest work. She sighed in defeat at the serum in her hands. Painstaking work had yielded a successful regenerative serum, which she held gently between her fingers, thanks to the beasts living in secret deep in the woods. She could have helped millions with it. Her life’s work… Their life’s work. She had hoped that with enough time, she could find a way to reverse what had afflicted the former scientists, maybe help them regain their humanity. Sadly, it seemed that wouldn’t come to pass.

“Such a shame, I REALLY thought I could help them.”

She was about to put the vial back on the rack when something else caught her eye, her heart skipping a beat when she noticed one of the vials was missing. Pulling up the rack of vials, her eyes went over the labels, her eyes going wider and wider when she noticed that it wasn’t one of the serum vials missing, it was one of the blood samples.

“They took it… Oh no! Oh GOD no!”

They took one of the unaltered samples of the amalgam’s blood, without knowing ANYTHING about what that could do to a human test subject. Sweating and panicking, Sara had no idea what to do. She had to stop the open testing before it was too late. Picking herself up in a hurry, she ran to the padlock of the lab and rushed out the door, unaware that she had pocketed the vial she had in her hand into her coat in her mad rush to the door. When the glass partition slid open, she nearly ran headfirst into a pair of security officers and a lab technician already waiting for her outside. “PLEASE, you must let me see Dr. Jordan's NOW, before it's too late.”

Standing straight and holding the panicking doctor to the side, Sara watched on as the other guard and tech stepped into her portion of the lab and began gathering her research at the desk.

“Dr. Avanti? I have been given orders to gather your work for cross-examination; in addition, you are to relinquish your security and ID badge after gathering your personal effects.”

“THERE’S NO FUCKING TIME FOR THAT; I NEED TO SEE DOCTOR JORDAN NOW!”

Looking down sternly at the panicking woman, the tall security officer stepped her aside from the door to let the others gather her research for investigation. “Dr. Jordans has already left, as well as Doctors Gregors and Roberts. Please remain here to gather your things before you are…”

Forcing herself out of his grip, Sara ran for the door. Ignoring the barking yells of the security behind her, she headed to the elevator just as it was about to close and punched the ‘lobby’ button.

“Tina…”

She had to find her, find the amalgams! If she could convince them to come with her, they could convince the lab and hospital to stop the human testing altogether. When the elevator doors opened, she practically shoved the waiting lab workers out of her way to make a break for the exit, slamming the front doors open and running out into the parking lot. Running out into a forming blizzard outside, Dr. Avanti struggled to her car and fumbled for her keys. If she were fast enough, maybe this could all be avoided.

***

Opening his eyes slowly, John’s vision blurred from the overhead fluorescent lights, stinging his eyes and forcing him to turn his head away. The ceiling was unfamiliar, a polished white that just made it almost uncomfortably bright, along with a smell in the air that reminded him of the janitor’s closet back at the station. Sitting up, Officer Clemens winced and looked down at his cot, sighing with some effort, what with the odd pressure he felt in his chest. He was in a hospital gown, which he could already tell. His clothes and blood-stained uniform were gone along with his personal effects. Squirming to pick himself up, there was a numbness that started from his waist down to his legs, something that made his blood run cold when he tried to move his feet and found that he couldn’t. Looking around with clearer vision, he found an IV tube stuck to his arm, along with the soft beep of a health monitor nearby. A light scribbling noise drew his attention to his left, where he found a doctor writing on a clipboard and setting it down on a side table as he heard John sit up.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

Trying to sit up again and feeling another tightness in his chest, the officer was slowly calmed and gently pressed back into his bed by the doctor, now standing by his side.

“You were in a nasty state when the police responded to your call, I’m afraid you’ve got a few broken ribs… And a spinal injury.”

Sitting back with his head pressed against his pillow, John inhaled deeply, his hands gripping the blankets with what strength he still possessed. The morphine drip in his arm kept whatever pain he should be feeling to a dull ache, yet made him too lethargic even to sit up or resist the doctor’s hand keeping him down.

“Wha… What about the thing that attacked me? Did they find it? Did they find anything?” His voice was a croak from his dry mouth, raw from being cleaned out of the blood he had been **** on the last he remembered being awake.

“Shhh, no, they didn’t.” The doctor answered. “I don’t know much, but they told me you were attacked by something pretty bad.”

“Pretty bad… It is an understatement.”

Looking out over his right shoulder, he found himself in the same wing of the hospital that the attack victims were in. Rows upon rows of beds lined the walls on either side, just like he remembered the last time he visited, but now it seemed busier with activity. Almost every other cot had a doctor offering to add something to the patient’s IV drip, something that required a written signature on a bundle of papers before the doctor pulled a small vial from a cart nearby, where two men in lab coats talked about their ‘breakthrough’ and administering the new ****.

“What’s going on? What are those people being given?”

Picking the clipboard back up to fill out John’s medical report, the doctor pointed towards the other patients and explained.

“Gennex released a new **** they’ve been working on for quite some time, a regenerative serum they claim will fully repair the patients we have in our care.” Setting the board over a hanger in front of the police officer’s bed, the doctor turned back with a form in his hands. “It’s also why we transferred you to this wing; your injuries would warrant extensive surgery. But the serum being offered WOULD make that unnecessary, that is, of course, with your permission.”

Handing a small bundle of papers to the prone man, John looked through the agreements while looking back at the little girl he remembered from the other night. Her parents were sitting by her bed while the serum was administered through her IV drip. Watching intently, John witnessed the girl wince and whimper, her hands clutching her bedsheets when the bandages around her severed leg began to bulge.

John watched as the little girl and her parents saw the serum at work. Her bandages were pulled away to make room for a growth at her injury that slowly stretched and took shape, sprouting toes and a heel at the end before it stopped. Narrowing his eyes, John handed the unsigned papers back to the physician.

“I… I’ll think about it.”

***

“It’s all gone wrong… They must… They must know about this before it’s too late!”

The snow was blinding her, and the cold bit at her skin, forcing her to clutch at her lab coat more tightly to keep warm. The only thing she could see over the thick snow and sharp wind was a blanket of white and the tall stalks of blackened trees all around her. Yelping when her foot sank into a deep pocket of snow, Sara lost her footing briefly before catching herself and falling back into a tree, the naked branches dumping their payload of heavy snow right onto her back and exposed hair. With cold tears in her eyes, Sara hobbled back onto her feet, scrambling back on the blurry path ahead.

“TINA! DR. SIMMONS! DR. STRENTUM! Dr. CHAMBERS! … ANYBODY PLEASE ANSWER ME!”

Hearing her voice echo out into the cold, snowy forest and feeling her eyes sting from the thick snow, she heard a soft crunch behind her and turned around. She barely had the voice to scream when a clawed hand gripped her by the throat and pinned her against a tree, high enough that her feet dangled over a foot off the ground. Gasping for air, she stared into the eyes of the amalgam holding her there, his breath rotten and hot like the fumes of a furnace. Closing her eyes out of fear when he opened his fanged, lined jaws, a rush of cold air followed the impact of a backhand, sending the creature tumbling to its side and dropping Sara like a rock onto the snow-covered dirt below, and she coughed to fill her lungs with air again.

“Enough, Basil!” Growled the massive form of Cal, his shadow looming over Sara and her attacker, both while glaring down at his son. “We already told you she’s off limits!”

Picking herself off the ground and keeping an eye on the creature wiping its bloody snout, Sara looked around to find the rest of the amalgams coming out of hiding. When she spotted the rest of the original four making their presence known, Sara staggered to her feet and called them out.

“You’ve got to help me!” Sara cried out, drawing the attention of the former scientists as they gathered around the woman. “They don’t know what they’ve done.”

“What are you talking about?” Asked Rebecca, circling the terrified woman on all fours like a prowling tiger.

“I… I DID it! I created a working formula from your blood, your work, everything you strove for that turned you into… THIS.” She gestured to the four with both hands. “I found a way to create a phage sequence that grants regeneration WITHOUT turning the subject into an amalgam.”

Looking to each other, their eyes narrowing, the four amalgams nodded before Tina lowered herself to one knee to look Sara in the eye. “If you’ve succeeded, then why are you here in a panic like a frightened, frozen mouse?”

Clutching her head in both her hands, Sara caught herself and breathed in, closing her eyes to steady herself like she would in her exercises. When she had calmed, she looked back at Tina, who waited impatiently for an answer.

“My coworkers are the two doctors assigned to work on the project. Dr. Gregors and Roberts have stolen my work, no, worse, they’ve taken the blood samples I took from you and are claiming that’s THEIR work. They’ve removed me from the project and plan to use it on patients at the hospital! We’ve got to stop them before it's too late.”

Raising her horned head as if in shock, Tina looked to her pack mates, her fanged lip curled in what appeared to be a scowl of anger, until she began to chuff, snort and break into full-on laughter. Staring up in shock, Sara watched as Tina, Rebecca, Michelle, and Cal broke into uproarious laughter, the sound making the small woman take a step back. When the laughter died down, Tina looked back at Dr. Avanti with a churlish grin.

“Oh… Oh, that is RICH!” Raising a clawed finger and pressing her hand to her chest, Tina’s delight was still written on her fanged lips when she addressed Sara. “I KNEW sooner or later they’d use our work on the public after we gave them so many subjects to test on, but in just two weeks? Your compatriots must be REAL snake oil salesmen.”

Clasping her hands to her mouth in a silent gasp, Sara was beside herself. “It was YOU! It was you all along. YOU were the ones who injured all those people, why?”

“Well…” Chuckling, Rebecca, the amalgam still behind Sara as she stood to her full height and crossed her arms, tapping her fanged lip with her finger. “We didn’t have any real faith in you succeeding, oh no offence, you’d try for sure. But sooner or later, Gennex would want to test their long-awaited prize.”

“And when they DO.” Smiled Michelle. “All those little mice we crippled will wake up! They will wake up to become like us!!!”

Laughing heartily, the rest of her pack joined in. Terrifying Sara as she finally discovered the plot she had been dragged into. They didn’t bring her here to cure their condition; they humoured her the entire way through, so that they could create more of their kind.

“You… You monsters. You DEMONS!”

Rolling her eyes and chuckling to the others, Tina smiled down at the terrified woman.

“Please… We’re not monsters, we’re evolution.” Reaching out faster than Sara could ever have a chance to react to, the dark furred amalgam hoisted the panicking woman up by her neck and chin and brought her close to see eye to eye on HER terms. “WE are going to knock humanity off the top of the food chain! From here on, this is going to be our world! But… You did have a hand in all this, so I think a reward is only fair.”

Pinching her clawed finger between Sara’s closed mouth to **** it open, she brandished one of her clawed fingers and slit the woman’s tongue, causing her to scream, but Tina was not finished. With her free hand, she used her clawed thumb to cut a slit in her finger, drawing enough blood that she shoved her finger into Sara’s mouth, letting the blood swirl before dropping her to the ground unceremoniously like a stone. Watching as the woman began to twitch and spasm, crying out as she pawed at her throat and heard her bones creak and snap.

“You know the first rule of evolution, don't you, Dr. Sara Avanti?” Grinned Cal, watching the woman go through the changes he and the others had gone through so long ago. “Adapt or die!”

Turning to leave, the rest of the pack did the same, heading towards the town below and greeting the new members of their kind.

“Come, everyone, time to meet the new members of the pack…”

***

Breathing hoarsely and hiding behind the bunk of his cot in the hospital wing, John peeked his eyes over the blankets and mattress he hid behind when the screaming had started. It started so abruptly that no one knew how to react. At first, all the patients reacted positively to the IV mixtures being administered. One by one, all their injuries not only healed rapidly, but the impossible also happened when they each began to regrow their amputated limbs. Loved ones and nurses were overjoyed as the patients suddenly sat up with renewed strength, their legs regrown and fully healed as if they had never been injured in the first place. The two parents, who had been tending to their injured daughter the entire time, joined their little girl in sitting up in bed to dance excitedly.

Then the screaming started.

Several sitting up from their beds immediately slammed back into their pillows, writhing in agony as they were overtaken with sudden transformation, the nurses there rushing en masse to try and calm them. At the same time, the doctors who had administered the phage watched on in confusion and horror.

“Wha… What’s going on?!” Wondered Dr. Gregors out loud, watching a patient scream out as two nurses tried to hold him down, his hands and feet developing curved claws, and black fur crept up his arms and legs.

“I don’t know! YOU were the one who synthesized it.” Dr. Roberts panicked, seeing another patient roll onto her stomach, bringing a hand to his mouth to hold back losing his stomach when elongated spikes erupted from her spine.

“I KNEW we should have checked her samples before we did this.”

A scream from the child caught their attention as they spotted the mother and father trying to soothe and calm her down; the girl now stood almost as tall as they were, clutching her arms around herself. The crunch of bones and cartilage was audible even from the other end of the wing, along with everyone else’s when they witnessed the unthinkable, and the girl backhanded her father away and lunged for her mother, her eyes wild and insane as she opened her mouth to bite down on the woman’s shoulder with razor-sharp teeth.

A man prone in his bed reached out and bit down on the arm of the nurse trying to settle him, his face almost wolfish as his body was now covered in fur and he attacked the other nurse who tried to flee, screaming.

That was an hour ago.

John managed to avoid the blood bath by rolling himself out of bed and hiding under the mattress, keeping himself quiet as he heard people being torn apart like rag dolls.

The two doctors who had offered the treatment that caused all this lay on the ground as bloody stains and chunks after the patients in the wing had transformed into giant monsters. And they hadn’t stopped there. In a matter of minutes, they had barreled through the doors and attacked anything that so much as screamed or fought back, turning the hospital into a charnel house. Then it became quiet, save for the noise and screaming coming from outside.

Breathing with some difficulty, John peeked out from his hiding place and looked around. The lights overhead flickered in some parts of the hallway when he dragged himself with some effort out of the entryway to his part of the hospital. He didn’t have a plan, but he knew if he stayed where he was, sooner or later, one of those monsters would get him. Wincing as he dragged himself down the halls, all he could see were the ruins of people who were just there to get patched up or treated. The smell, once sterile and bleached, now smelled like raw meat. It was agony to move. Pushing himself to the corner of the hallway, he stopped and pulled himself back when he noticed a form around the corner.

One of those creatures hadn’t left the hospital. Pressing his back against the wall, he tried to find something to defend himself with, only to find a crutch that had been bent from something strong enough to bend aluminum like it was cardboard. He could hear its heavy footsteps as it checked each room, almost as if it were looking for something.

Holding the crutch in his arms, John remained silent, struggling to breathe, propped up against the wall. The bandages wrapped around him constricting him as he tasted a coppery taint in his mouth, discovering he was bleeding from his mouth and having trouble keeping from coughing. Bringing a hand to his mouth to stifle a cough, he heard the creature stop. His eyes clenching shut as he realized, he gave himself away. The heavy footsteps were heading straight for him.

Breathing harshly and slowly losing strength in his arms, John found he no longer had the strength even to hold his make-shift weapon when it slid down to rest in his lap. Looking up, his gaze met the reptilian eyes of the creature who finally turned the corner and looked down at him. Jet black fur could be seen through the tattered remnants of his white coat over its arms and shoulders, its horns swooping over its head like a gazelle as it lowered itself and raised a clawed hand. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw it reach out for him when he lost the strength even to prop himself up and find its claw gently holding him up and lift him off the floor, cradling him like a child in its arms and gasp out something to say.

“Officer Clemens!” It said in a deep, feminine voice. One he found familiar. “Thank heavens you’re alive!”

***

Slamming her forearm against the emergency exit of the hospital with enough **** to pry it off its moorings, Sara squeezed her way through the narrow space, careful to keep John steady in her arm as she made her way outside into the snow and wind. Keeping him close to keep warm, Sara looked around. The streets were like a warzone! Cars upturned and in flames, shop facades blown in like something had smashed through the windows, others blown out with trails of red that lead out towards a nearby alley. In the distance, she could hear alarms and screaming and the occasional roars of the Amalgams.

Some part of her wondered if John would have been safer in the hospital, hidden from sight, until she remembered how she found him—hunted like some wounded animal by mindless predators. No, he was better off with her.

“Wha… Where…?” She heard him murmur, his eyes looking dazed as he lolled his head back like a prone child.

“Shhh, you’re safe now.”

Hearing another explosion in the distance, along with gunfire, Sara’s ears darted back, knowing full well what was going on around her. Even in the dark and raging snowstorm, she could make out Amalgams hunting through the streets, dozens of brutish, unstoppable monsters attacking and killing whoever or whatever they could sink their teeth and claws into. And it was all her fault.

“What have I done?”

Hearing a howl nearby, Sara kept John close and tried to find a means of escape.