Outside, the moonlight seemed to track her like a searchlight along the sidewalk. She watched her breath steam and glisten in the glow. The nearness of the moon made her want to buy a telescope and put it on their little balcony, where she and grandfather could try to look at planets and stars. She realized that they couldn’t see many. It was the skies of Antarctica she was remembering, and the great exploding smear of stars upon the sky there.

The ground had a rime of frost on it. She saw nobody about, but it was so cold, there would be no one out. No lovers. Thinking that as she climbed in and started the engine, she imagined herself and Costin naked in snow. Now, why was that so arousing?

The door of her car was flung back suddenly. Before she fully comprehended, fully turned, a fist slammed into her cheek. Hurtled across the front seat, she struck her bag and it flipped, spilling its contents onto the floor. The shift lever stabbed at her belly. Sparkles scattered everywhere. Her thoughts refused to coalesce — what had happened? Someone had a hold of her, was turning her onto her back, at least she wasn’t on the shift knob now. Fingers dug at her hips, under her slacks, her panties, yanking all of it down. Abstractly she understood what was happening and kicked out. Heard her shoe hit the pavement, heard the breathing. Then came the pressure on top of her, his stinking mouth on hers. She heard his blood whooshing through his arteries.

Lightning crackled through the car. It lit his scruffy face: Dark eyes wide, slavering lips — but almost immediately the face twisted with terror. A claw hooked the corner of his mouth and sliced it open, all the way to the ear. His scream must have shattered windows for a mile. A flash and she stood outside the car, above him. He was trying to crawl away. Her blood raced, heart hammered. She rose up, saw the moon all red now, and then lunged into blackness.

— 11 —

Blue lights were flashing all around. Ruksana began to choke, turned her head and spat out the fluid in her mouth. It tasted foul. She felt a hand on her and instinctively fought, kicked out. Then she realized it was a young police officer, who was saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t move.” She stopped. What was this?

She sprawled in the driver’s seat, half tilted into the car, and naked from the waist down. Her coat was gone, her blouse in tatters. She covered her sex, looked at the cop accusingly, but he was trying to hand her his own coat. She grabbed and spread it across her lap. The lights flashed from three different cars and a medical vehicle, and she realized now there were more police behind this one, in the darkness beyond the door of her car.

“You were attacked,” said the policeman, pulling her attention back to him. “Do you remember anything?”

She blinked, and took a moment to reassemble the fragments of her memory. “He had to have been waiting, watching me.”

“You teach here?”

“He hit me.” She reached up, touched her cheek. It stung. She could feel that it was swollen. When she looked at her hand, it was smeared with blood. Staring at it, she added automatically, “I’m on sabbatical.”

Another car pulled up, screeching to a halt. The officer turned and started for it.

“My shoes, where are my shoes?” she asked, but he was already out of earshot. Ruksana carefully slid down until her bare feet touched the cold pavement. She kept the coat wrapped around her and stood up. That was when she saw what the other police were focused on: A body, half-dismembered, so freshly dead that steam still rose from its exposed entrails. It so little resembled a human beneath the blood and gore that she hardly reacted. It was like seeing something in a movie, separate from her and easily compartmentalized, denied.

“Here,” said one of the inspectors who’d just arrived, “you shouldn’t move, miss. We don’t know the extent of your injuries.”

“I’m looking for my shoes.”

The inspector appeared to have raced here without shaving or brushing his thinning hair. He told her his name, but she forgot it even as she heard him. All that stuck was his rank: Inspector Principal. He stared carefully at her, then came closer and said, “I’ll find the shoes for you. You stay in your car.” She nodded and sat down again. The inspector turned back to the young officer and said, “She’s in shock. See if you can find her shoes. If they aren’t attached to that bastard, give them to her.”

They were, as it turned out, under her car, but spattered with blood.

She rode to the hospital on a gurney although she insisted she didn’t need this. On the way, one of the medical nurses asked her questions, which she forgot as fast as she replied. At one point she said, “Oh, I need to give that policeman his coat back,” then realized she was lying under a blanket and the coat was no longer covering her. She didn’t think she had her shoes on, either, and couldn’t see them around her.

At the hospital, she was carefully examined, smears and samples taken amidst apologies for the invasiveness of this necessary procedure. It seemed to amaze everyone who paraded into her room that she had no external wounds other than where he’d hit her and a few minor abrasions. Once they had established that she wasn’t bleeding or otherwise injured beyond a mild concussion, they let her shower. As a river of pink water poured from her and circled her feet, she began to understand why they were all so surprised and upset.

When she finally saw herself in the mirror, she almost overlooked the discolored swelling of her cheek because of her hair. The spade-shaped white spot above her forehead had tripled in size. “What is happening to me?” she asked her image. She put on the paper gown they’d left her and then sat down to wait for whatever came next.

Shortly, the same inspector turned up. He too expressed amazement that she hadn’t been torn apart by the dogs.

“Dogs?” she asked.

“It seems fairly certain. He was clawed and mauled to pieces, and while you had some of his skin under your fingernails, I think we can rule you out as the perpetrator in this. I am curious if you had a dog with you, or even if one rides with you often perhaps, because whatever pack did this responded to something, and another dog, you know, the barking, the smell — ”

“Dogs,” she said again. It was preposterous. “No, I’ve never owned a dog.”

“Oh.” He looked down, disappointed by the news. “Well, it’s no matter. My suspicion is, his being wedged in the door of your car accidentally saved your life, kept the pack from getting at you. And it’s poetic justice, too. We’re fairly certain he’s a local rapist who has eluded us for some time. The M.O. matches and he has a record. You would have been his sixth victim.” His eyes met hers again. “You’re very lucky, Miss Vulpes. He did not succeed, and you’ll never be bothered by him again. Nobody will.” He dragged the plastic chair across the room and sat in front of her. “So, please, even though you may not remember very much, walk me through whatever you do remember.”

Eventually, after she had related everything she could recall, the inspector released her to her grandfather. He had brought with him clothes for her, which were passed to her in the room so that she could change there. She still had no coat or shoes. It seemed the police had kept them.

Decebal stood up as she came out, and she experienced a moment of déjà vu as if she was in the airport again, arriving home anew. A policewoman sat next to him. He hugged her to him, more tightly than the last time, and he snuffled against her, in tears. The woman had her coat and shoes. The coat was spotted with dried blood. The rest of her clothes, shredded and torn, would be kept as evidence.

A squad car drove them both home. Her car was being held for the moment as well. On the drive home she realized that the inspector’s version of events made no sense: If her clothing was ripped up, too, why were there no cuts on her skin to match the … she hesitated to call him the victim, but for a second she flashed on the ghastly corpse she’d seen from her car door.

At home Decebal embraced her again. He had regained control of himself. He kept his arms on her shoulders, looked at her critically. It seemed to her he wanted to ask something, but finally he just ruffled her hair. “If you keep going with traumas like this, you’ll be a white haired old lady before you’re thirty.” He sat her down and made her eat the last of the stew he’d made and drink some wine.

In her bedroom, he started talking and couldn’t seem to stop himself. “I had to go through your things for the hospital, so here, I laid out your nightgown for you. I want you to rest now, dearest. They gave me something to help you sleep if you need it. Tomorrow you’re going to have a very bad bruise on your cheek, but no bones are broken they said. I suppose you’ll have to go back for more rabies shots, and if you want, I’ll change any dressings before you sleep — but, that is to say, they didn’t tell me where you were bitten or how badly, and I —”

“I wasn’t. I wasn’t bitten.”

“But it was a dog attack. They told me.”

“I know. But if it was, the dogs didn’t bite me. They attacked the man who was trying to …” The word rape burst in her head. She couldn’t speak it. The shock caught up with her then, rolling across her like a thunderstorm. Her body shook and she suddenly began to cry, collapsing on the floor like a rag doll.

Decebal held her in his arms and rocked her; but under his breath he was saying, “Impossible,” over and over, and she knew he was right.

"escalatIon"

Jonathan Maberry

— 1 —

New York

Fifteen Days after the V-Event

“Professor Luther Swann?” asked the big man in the black suit. He wore sunglasses and had a wire coiled behind his ear. His partner looked like a clone, and a third almost identical man stood by the open door of a smoke gray Crown Victoria.

Swann paused, the key to his Toyota Prius almost into the keyhole. He knew who these men had to be. FBI or worse. It saddened him. And scared him.

“I’m Swann.”

The first man opened a leather identification case. Swann read as far as the initials and his stomach seemed to fill with ice water.