Rise of the Poison Moon Page 3

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You should edit quickly and transmit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Electricity is at a premium, Susan. I support your use of hospital computers and power outlets because you are doing important work and because you’re usually good at it. But you need to stay focused on the crisis at hand.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Lives depend on you, as much as they depend on me and my colleagues.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Elizabeth sighed as she walked away. “Oh—and, Susan.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “The ‘experience,’ as you call it, is absolutely outstanding. But it has nothing to do with what the man can do under a crescent moon. It has everything to do with his love for you, his depth of commitment, and his . . . willingness to learn.”

  Susan grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “One more thing. As far as Jennifer knows, you and I never had this conversation.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Jennifer

  Jennifer Scales caught her mother as she was coming in from the hospital parking lot. Beyond her, Susan and Gautierre were smiling and fiddling with their electronic equipment.

  “How’d the interview go?”

  To Jennifer’s surprise, Elizabeth turned bright red. “It went well. What do you need?”

  “What do you mean, what do I need? Watch shift. I’m headed up to the roof.”

  “Ah. So where’s Catherine?”

  “I think she’s already up there. She volunteered for last shift, too.”

  “She’s been pulling an awful lot of shifts.”

  “You’re complaining? She’s a quick study with that rifle.”

  “I’m noting that as recently as two months ago, she was in daily rehab learning to walk again.”

  “Yes, well, she’s fine now. You cleared her yourself.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Catherine Brandfire, granddaughter of the late Winona Brandfire, had spent much of the last year in a hospital bed recovering from a vicious wound to her spinal cord. The cut had meant to hobble her out-of-dragon form and cripple her limbs, but Jennifer’s powers as the Ancient Furnace and Elizabeth’s skill as a surgeon had restored Catherine’s ability to walk and shift.

  “I still wouldn’t suggest she try flying soon.”

  “You and me both. She’s a trampler. She always sucked at that. Can’t even whomp worth a damn.”

  “Sniper duty sounds about right, then.”

  “Um, Dr. Georges?”

  “Georges-Scales,” Elizabeth said automatically, looking over her daughter’s shoulder. Jennifer felt a surge of irritation—not at being interrupted, nor at the incomplete use of her mother’s name, but at the fact that the doctor never seemed to catch five minutes around here. Everybody looked for her.

  Everybody found her.

  “Right. Um. Hi, Jennifer.”

  Jennifer nodded tersely at Anna-Lisa, formerly an administrative assistant in the administration wing, now a war scout. Anna-Lisa and her team of determined medical secretaries explored the town for medical supplies of any kind. It had become difficult work once the pharmacies were empty, because recognizing the most useful supplies required both basic medical knowledge (to avoid duplicative effort) and excellent reflexes (to avoid attacks from enemies).

  Anna-Lisa turned to Elizabeth. “Dr. Georges-Scales? Um, we were thinking? That maybe we would try the homeopathic remedy store? In the strip mall by the cinema?”

  Jennifer loathed it when women said things as questions? Because it was so annoying? Not to mention wishywashy? She had never heard a man talk like that.

  She had mentioned it to her mother once, who had pointed out that Anna- Lisa was busting her ass with limited military medic training. If she talked like this? It wasn’t worth quibbling about.

  Still, it was as irritating as a centipede navigating a groin rash?

  “That sounds fine, Anna- Lisa. I doubt you’ll find much real medicine, but bring the homeopathics back. They may have a useful placebo effect in some situations.”

  The petite brunette, who apparently grew new freckles across her nose and cheeks by the day, nodded.

  “Okay, so, we’ll do that? But the reason I came out?”

  “Someone needs me back inside.”

  “Yeah. They do. And Dr. Paige thinks Mrs. Gremmel’s foot is going to have to come off.”

  Elizabeth nodded grimly. Jennifer knew that expression. She also knew Mrs. Gremmel’s case—a nice sixty-eight-year-old woman who had suffered exactly zero attacks from any dragon, spider, beaststalker, or rogue raccoon in town. She was simply diabetic, with poor circulation. She’d received the town’s last known dose of insulin back in July. She now sported a gangrenous foot, and Dr. Georges-Scales had limited options. A few antibiotics. No propofol. No halothane. No nitrous oxide. No thiopental. Very little ketamine. Even fewer fentanyl. Maybe a little bit of etomidate.

  Soon, Jennifer figured, they would all be reduced to hitting patients over the head.

  Hey. Then I can be a surgeon, like Mom!

  She had banished the inappropriate thought and was about to suggest to Anna-Lisa that she bludgeon Mrs. Gremmel so her own mother could get more than a minute’s rest herself, when she heard the air horn and cry outside.

  “DRAGON! DRAGON! DRAGON!”

  A rifle fired once, then again a few seconds later. Then there was a commotion on the roof—one thump as something landed, then another, then another, and another . . .

  Catherine! Jennifer was out the door and sprouting wings before the last of the dragons had landed on the roof. The watch-and-sniper’s structure built alongside a roof exit door was crude but sturdy: a ten-foot-high cylinder of balanced bricks and stones transported from ruined houses around town, dotted with plenty of sniper holes and covered with asbestos-lined sheet metal.

  Except now, one of the walls had been torn down, and seven dragons were sticking their snouts into the opening and wrestling with the occupants. Flames sprouted from their mouths, ammunition exploded in a fierce staccato, and a man inside screamed.

  The dragons were pulling someone else out with their jaws. It was Catherine—who thankfully had shifted into dragon form—but her fireproof scales would not prevent these monsters from tearing her apart.

  In a blink, Jennifer was among them, smashing one dragon with her bulk, whipping another’s snout with her tail, and clawing at a third with an extended wing. The other four immediately dropped Catherine and backed up to assess the new threat. The largest was immediately recognizable—a middle-aged dasher, at seven feet no longer than the juveniles who surrounded her, but remarkable because her tail ended in two swollen stumps instead of the lethal spiked fork most dashers used.

  “Ember Longtail!”

  The raiding party’s leader straightened up, near-black scales glistening in the sun. The mere sight of Jennifer infuriated her. The peach markings on the undersides of her wings expanded and contracted violently, and a blast of fire came out.

  “What is the point of that?” Jennifer asked, eyes closed and her head turned slightly. The flames felt ticklish and warm on her skin.

  Ember answered with a charge, which caught the younger dragons by surprise and sent them in a somersault—half electric blue scales, half dark spines. Jennifer felt her adversary’s teeth dig into her neck, and she cursed herself for her carelessness as blood spilled over her throat.

  She didn’t dare shift back into human form—it was far more fragile than this one. The only recourse she had was to bite back, and so she did. Ember’s left wing was available, albeit not very tasty.

  The dasher grunted in pain, but her jaws remained fixed. Jennifer blinked, wondering why she was losing peripheral vision, then realized it was because her jugular was pouring her lifeblood into open air.

  Get her off, get her OFF. Her triple- forked tail swung around and smacked Ember on the back of her spiny head. Nothing
. She tried again, harder. Sparks bounced off the other’s skull. Still, nothing.

  Desperately wishing for a way to melt out of this death grip, she tried plunging a tail tip into Ember’s eye socket. A near miss—they were both still moving, and Jennifer’s aim was worsening as she lost more vision. She began to feel dizzy. Off in the distance, Catherine bravely fended off the others. Gautierre, thankfully not far away when the attack started, was next to her.

  I hope that means Susan is inside and safe.

  Now there were new voices—had more allies come out the exit door and worked their way through the rubble?

  The answer came in the form of a brilliant shock wave, which took both Ember and Jennifer by surprise. The former unclenched her jaw with an exclamation of pain at the sudden flow of sound and light, and Jennifer squeezed her eyes and ears shut while shifting back into human form.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the blood loss, or the beaststalker’s shout that had overwhelmed her dragon senses, or both. She blacked out.

  CHAPTER 4

  Jennifer

  Jennifer woke up in a hospital bed with bandages wrapped around her throat. Catherine, Susan, and Gautierre surrounded her in sea-green-cushioned visitor chairs.

  Her thoughts went immediately to the dragons’ fire, the explosions, and the scream. “Who died?”

  “Mark,” Catherine answered. Her dark- skinned face was covered in dried tears. “I tried to cover him after they punched through the shelter wall, but they kept pulling me off. There were seven of them, Jennifer! I couldn’t fight them all.”

  Gautierre put a comforting arm around her.

  “Anyone else?”

  “No.” But Jennifer could hear it in Gautierre’s tone: Mark was enough. He was one of their sharpest eyes, and a brilliant lab tech to boot. It had been the eager, just-out-of-college Mark who had hit upon a critical countermeasure to enemy creepers in camouflage: converting digital infrared thermal-imaging machines that the hospital used for diagnostics, to portable equipment for recon sweeps. Dragons showed up beautifully on infrared. Because of Mark, Ember had no creepers left in her gang. His was a powerful loss.

  “We get any of them?”

  “Jack,” he replied.

  “Jack?”

  “You know—Jack-o’-Lantern? The orange trampler, roly-poly fellow, blasted the front lobby doors last spring? He managed to keep his feet after your mother’s shout, and he tried to take her down.”

  “Oh.” Jennifer’s heart fell—not for the trampler, who deserved to die for daring to attack her mother. But Dr. Elizabeth Georges-Scales had not killed a dragon since she was forced into a rite of passage on her fifteenth birthday. Jennifer knew the woman would be wracked with guilt, no matter how justified she was.

  “It wasn’t your mother,” Susan interjected, reading Jennifer’s thoughts. “Gautierre defended your mom. He was fantastic. Heroic. His tail moved so fast and cut the asshole’s throat right before he crashed into your mom.” The girl turned to the boy. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Please, Susan. I didn’t want to kill him. But something inside me . . .” Gautierre was a mix of embarrassed and horrified. Plainly, he was still coming to terms with the kill. Before today, he was one of the dwindling number of innocents among them. Now he, like the rest of them, knew what it felt like to take a life. Jennifer felt bad for him, and grateful.

  “Thanks.”

  “The urge is so hard to control,” he continued. He wasn’t talking to any of them. “In that shape. Hearing Mark scream, watching that trampler go after Dr. Georges-Scales . . . I don’t feel like I’m defending a single person. I feel like I’m defending family. My own. I—geez! Every attack feels so personal.” Jennifer could feel herself nodding with him. “There’s no room for thinking. Just acting.”

  Susan rubbed his arm. “It saved Jenn’s mom. Maybe yours, too.”

  “How did Ember get away?”

  “Your mother’s shout hurt most of them,” Catherine explained, “but based on Jack’s autopsy, we think they purposely plugged their ears with tree sap. Only the light would have affected them, so they could scramble. If Jack had been smarter, he’d have escaped, too—but he couldn’t resist the idea of taking out the great Dr. Georges-Scales.”

  “Sap in their ears.” Jennifer lay back in bed. “That’s why they were so bold. They’ve never landed on the rooftop before. Never risked groups of more than three. Now they’ll try again.”

  “Maybe not. They must be down to—what, now? Twelve? And Jack was one of their most experienced. Everyone else in Ember’s gang is a juvenile, some young dumb-ass who came along for the destruction when Winona led the Blaze here. The older dragons still alive under this dome are either allies or loners in the woods by now.”

  “You are suggesting that attrition can win this conflict.” Elizabeth stood in the doorway now, hands on hips; the gaunt form of Jonathan Scales loomed behind her. Jennifer saw relief and irritation in her mother’s tired expression; worry and pride in her father’s. As wretched as things were beneath the dome, Jennifer never forgot how lucky she was: her family, at least, was together under Big Blue.

  Gautierre stretched out his hands and stared at his fingertips; Jennifer thought of Lady Macbeth in a ninth-grade English class an eternity ago, with the Midwestern twist her teach spun on it. Out out, ya dang spot! Geez, now, out!

  “I don’t want to see anyone else die, Dr. Georges-Scales.” He sighed. “And it doesn’t make up for Mark. But I’m still glad there are fewer of them. They can’t keep this up for much longer. Wherever their hideout is, winter’s going to be awful for them.”

  “It’s going to be awful for all of us. You are a brave soul, Gautierre Longtail. And I’m grateful you had my back up there on the roof.”

  “Me, too,” Jonathan Scales said quietly, his long, pale fingers grasping his wife’s shoulder.

  “But dragons are notoriously bad planners, and you are no exception.”

  “Feted and slammed,” Catherine teased, and got the ghost of a grin as a reward.

  “Your theory of attrition only works with two assumptions: first, that the unfriendly beaststalkers in this town do not decide to resume hostilities, with us or anyone else. Second, that we can get out of this dome someday soon. Knowing what I do about this dome and Hank Blacktooth, neither assumption seems realistic.”

  “Oh, that weiner,” Susan muttered darkly.

  “You think Hank Blacktooth will attack again? He hasn’t since spring.”

  “He hasn’t attacked us since spring. If Ember’s on the move again, he and his so-called police force will be looking for her or someone else to kill. If killing doesn’t work, then he’ll be looking for someone to blame, which will get his people fired up, and they’ll go looking to kill. Us, Ember, innocent people—it really won’t matter. We’re all starting to look the same to each other.” She didn’t say it out loud, and didn’t have to: they were all thinking the same thing.

  We look like prey.

  “All the more reason for Ember and her gang to die now,” Jennifer snapped. “We’ve got to patrol more aggressively. Try the sewer system. Ember stank like no one’s business. Way worse than usual.” Blurgh.

  “Try not to talk, ace,” her father advised. “You’ll undo all your mother’s hard work.”

  Elizabeth seemed less nurturing. “Aggressive patrols, Jennifer? Would that be anything like Hank’s aggressive patrols from the spring? Or the ones Glorianna used to send to other towns, at their ‘request’?”

  “You know it’s nothing like that, Mom.” She widened her eyes at her father, a full-blooded dragon in his prime, hoping he would back her up. “Just because it’s an idea someone else had, and used against us, doesn’t make it a bad one, you know?”

  “I know no such thing.”

  “Again, ace: no talking. And your mother’s right.”

  Dammit! He’s sucking up to her. He’s clearly a traitor. Or a seriously whipped husband.

  “Drago
ns ambush, beaststalkers patrol, somewhere out there a few arachnids are doubtless laying traps,” her mother continued in the cool, informative tone she used to teach med students how to pull an infected appendix. “It’s all perfectly well-intentioned, you see—they’re fighting back, or exacting a justifiable price, or ridding the world of an imminent threat, or bringing an unreasonable group into line, or making more room for whatever master race is the flavor of the day. Meanwhile, we celebrate the fact that the older ones are dying, and all that’s left to fight each other is children . . .”

  Jennifer couldn’t help it; she rolled her eyes, knowing her mother hated it, but completely unable to resist the reflex. Besides, her mom had it wrong. “Not what I’m saying, and c’mon, you know that . . .”

  “Still using your voice against medical advice,” Jonathan reminded her.

  “Fine,” Elizabeth snapped, ignoring her husband’s gesture to end the conversation. “Whatever you’re saying, I’m saying that it’s children fighting children. I’m sick of it. Let’s not worry about more patrols, people. Let’s focus on our mission: healing, protecting, living in peace.” Elizabeth stripped off her surgical gloves and stuffed them into the red biohazard box by the door. These weren’t for waste removal: a former cafeteria worker or janitor would come by every evening, collect the boxes, carefully sterilize the contents, and return them for reuse. “I’m glad you’re okay, honey. Feel better soon.”

  She brushed past her husband and out of sight.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jennifer

  Later that night, Jennifer felt well enough to morph into dragon shape, which made her feel immediately better. She could feel the tissues around her jugular regenerate, and she decided she was well enough to get up and walk.

  Of course, she knew her mother would not agree. Fortunately, Jennifer was nearly as good at camouflage as her father.

  Dressed in jaunty, rippling tones of pea green paint and white linoleum (why, I look like a spring day in the countryside! Ha!), she made her way calmly down the hall. Her recovery room was within the wing most staff here used as makeshift residences. There was no need to be overly precise with the colors or noise. Most lights were off, and all medical staff would be elsewhere in the hospital, busy tending to far worse cases than Jennifer. The nearest nurses’ station, like so many throughout the building, was empty. Down the hall another thirty yards, two seated nurse’s aides faced each other, reading and chatting. Jennifer knew they had sharp eyes—but it had been weeks since the late Mark’s infrared technology had helped snuff out the last enemy creeper. Camouflage, they were not looking for.