Bloodstream

By Adam Moon

Werewolves! They're everywhere!
In a world infested by monsters, new rules must be obeyed.
Jack's job is to protect werewolves from vigilantes. He's a good cop, if a tad reckless. As he discovers what caused the initial outbreak fifty years ago he also uncovers an intricate plot to eradicate what's left of mankind...and it involves his bloodline.
Jack is vicious, gifted, and lucky but that might not be enough to stop the apocalypse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Moon
• Release date: May 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201532901

Adam Moon

Adam Moon was born in California, grew up in Scotland, and currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two young sons. His oldest son wants to grow up to be the first American President who is a space-ninja sniper-robot from the future. His youngest son likes to punch things and say bad words. His long suffering wife just wants some peace and quiet for a change. Adam writes science fiction and horror. You can visit his website at: www.moonwrites.com

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Bloodstream

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Adam Moon

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Bloodstream Copyright © Adam Moon 2021

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents:

New Moon

Blood work

Sins of the father

Waxing Crescent

Awakening Curse

Unleashed

First Quarter

Elders

Hunted

Waxing Gibbous

Enemy Within

Full Moon

Waning Gibbous

Third Quarter

Waning Crescent

New Moon

I opened the door to the wire mesh cage and plucked out the fattest chicken in a quiet, smooth motion. Closing the door, I noted the general disarray of the coop. I checked the time; it was too close to sundown now to clean it. I’d have to remember to take time tomorrow morning to clean up the chicken shit and lay down some fresh straw. These things were food but that was no reason for them to suffer. Holding the chicken, I stroked it gently, hoping its end came quick.

I walked to the cell door where Megan, my wife, waited. She kissed me, glancing forlornly at the peaceful bird in my hand, and then she locked herself inside the cell.

I stood and waited in silence. Sometimes she’d reach her hand through the feed hatch at the bottom of her cell door and we’d hold hands in the final moments before sundown but it was already too late for that tonight. I stroked the soft feathers of the bird as I waited for the inevitable.

Megan’s muffled voice reached me through the slat. Can you make sure to kill it first?

Of course, I lied. I love you sweetheart.

She didn’t respond; the sun must have already gone down because I could hear her changing. I closed my eyes, exhausted. The snarls and screams were both animal and human at once, and after it fully took hold of her, the humanity was gone altogether. My sweet wife was no more.

The door thudded heavily as she slammed against it, but it held. A throaty snarl came from the other side of the door and then the beast lost all control as it tried to break free of its confines.

It was always the same. I stared at the floor and sighed as I absently held the bird to my chest, resting its head against my warmth. I’d done this so often that it no longer affected me. After all, Megan had to feed.

I opened the hatch at the base of the door and placed the chicken in front of it. Before the poor thing could fully register the danger it was in, I nudged it through the slot with my foot and then quickly closed it.

I didn’t wait around for the cacophony. I made my way to the fortified saferoom at the far end of the basement, stepped inside, and locked the door behind me.

It was dark out now. You could always tell by the howling.

I snatched two beers from the fridge, both for me. This was my first night off in over a week, so it took me a few minutes to get ready for the long night ahead. The saferoom was chilly so I turned up the heat and then switched on the TV, turning the volume up high. The monsters roaming around out there wouldn’t be able to hear it, anyway, now that the door was closed. It was mostly soundproof, and for good reason. If one of them heard my TV and got inside the house, they wouldn’t be able to get at me or Megan, but they would probably trash the place while they tried, and definitely devour all of the chickens; that’s the last thing I needed. Thinking about the last time that had happened made me feel very small. It was the worst night of my life, the night Megan had gotten infected, and I knew it was partly my fault. I pushed the memory aside, took a long pull from the first beer, and proceeded to watch the news.

It was prerecorded for obvious reasons, but it didn’t matter anyway; it’s always the same these days. They spend a lot of airtime degrading other nations for the way they’ve handled the scourge, with the implication that we were handling it better than anyone else.

The plague that walks the earth are massive, man-eating monsters; Bentos is what we call them here in America. They’re called werewolves everywhere else.

Tonight, the newscasters turned their attention to the civil wars raging across most of Europe. Whereas America had designed a system whereby we could coexist with these monsters, no European country had followed suit, partly because they didn’t have the money to do so, but mostly because they didn’t want to. Great Britain had tried to emulate us in the early days, but it wasn’t long before the citizenry revolted.

The anchor, a petite brunette, emoted dramatically, The situation in France grows increasingly bloody as Bentos are systematically executed. Refugees are stopped and often gunned down as they try to flee the war-torn region. President Smith’s attempts to offer asylum to the French have been met with hostility by the French government. The President has threatened to cut all financial assistance to France if they continue persecuting Bentos and Bento sympathizers. The anchorwoman looked into the camera and said evenly, The situation in Africa continues to intensify.

I sighed and changed the channel. Even if you wanted to block the bullshit of this world out of your thoughts, they wouldn’t let you.

As I was channel-surfing, my cell phone chirped. I already knew who it was. I answered it with, What’s up, dumbass?

Olaf’s voice was strained and he was breathing heavily as he said, It’s crazy out here, dude. I already ran out of chickens trying to throw the Bentos off my scent. One of the bastards bit the fender and held on for half a block before I could shuck him off. I was following some guy who was out hunting and I watched as two Bentos ripped him in half. Then they started fighting over his man-meat and the bigger one killed the little one. I tranqued the big guy once he was done. He’s in the back of the truck right now, snoring like a grizzly bear. I’m just waiting for the dog catchers to take him off my hands. Hopefully he doesn’t wake up before they get here.

I exclaimed, Jesus! It’s gonna be a wild night.

I know. I wish you didn’t have the night off. You’d love it.

I said, Then come and get me.

You know I can’t. You’ll go to prison if you kill anything while you’re off the clock.

You know I rigged my door to open whenever I want it to, I reminded him. I could meet you out front and you can take credit for my kills and no one would know. I was getting excited. When a shift started out like this, the rest of the night was usually pretty intense, and I could use the adrenaline rush.

He sighed. I wish you hadn’t rigged the door. I know how much trouble it caused you the last time you left your saferoom.

I went silent, remembering the night I’d left the sanctuary of the saferoom; the night Megan was attacked and turned. My mood immediately soured. Let’s never talk about that again, okay?

Sorry, Jack. You know me. I never think before I speak. Then, more jovially, Don’t be jealous, dude. I’ll tell you all about tonight when I see you tomorrow.

Alright. Stay safe out there.

Bye.

Goodnight.

I hung up and stared off into space. I hated nights off; they bored me to tears, which was the main reason I drank on my off nights.

Olaf and I were part of an extremely exclusive task force. With our skill sets we were hand-picked for the most dangerous job on the entire planet, and possibly of all time. It was our job to protect Bentos from killers. You see, there are still plenty of Americans who don’t believe we should be living alongside monsters. There are also people who’ve lost loved ones to Bentos; sometimes these people just go online and spew their hatred into the internet abyss, but oftentimes they take it a step further, arming themselves to the teeth and venturing out into the night to kill werewolves. It’s our job to stop them. Werewolves are still considered people, so if you kill them, you’re a murderer, plain and simple. And since my wife was a Bento, I took it personally.

We called the murderers hunters and we called ourselves hunter-hunters. Officially, we were a part of Bento Protection Services, a division of the DoD, and therefore funded by tax dollars. We had prior experience in the same division as dog catchers, a name that was not official and could get you fired if the wrong person heard you say it aloud. The official title was the Bento Control Unit, but no one ever called it that unless a supervisor was within earshot.

Back then, it was our job to tranquilize wandering Bentos and take them to holding until morning. It was a fun job with a lot of risk, but this one was more intense. Now, we hunted down heavily-armed psychopaths while their would-be victims, blood-hungry werewolves, actively hunted us for our flesh. The rush from it was better than anything I’d felt as a dog catcher.

Olaf tended to concur. He’d been the best dog catcher they’d ever had, but it had started to bore the hell out of him. He wasn’t wired for a mundane existence, and facing down Bentos nightly had somehow become monotonous to him; I can’t say the same. It was horrific, exciting, rewarding, and the adrenaline rush could power Las Vegas for a week if you could harness it. But this job as a hunter-hunter is perfect for a maniac like Olaf because it’s impossible to get complacent when everyone and everything wants you dead.

The TV was boring me and I didn’t feel like spending the entire night channel surfing in vain, so I turned the volume down and reached under the sofa cushion for the old, weathered journal I always kept there.

I’d read my grandpa’s journal a hundred times but it never bored me. He was a typical old man with old-fashioned values, for better or worse; he’d lived his own truth and hadn’t cared if society agreed with his views or not. It was a breath of fresh air, even if he’d been a bigot and a dickhead from time to time.

I flipped the journal open to the middle and read a random page of my grandfather’s ramblings:

They call these things Bentos. No one even knows why, but I looked it up. It’s a Portuguese term from way back that has something to do with the seventh-born son becoming a werewolf. ‘Bento’ is Portuguese for ‘Benedict,’ which means ‘blessed’, and apparently just naming your son that is supposed to stop him from becoming a werewolf. It’s based on some dumb-assed myth and it’s ridiculous that we use the name at all. We can’t call them werewolves, monsters, lycans, or dogs, but we can call them that? And most people don’t even know why. I do. It’s so we don’t offend them by saying exactly what they are. Well guess what: It’s supposed to be offensive, asshole. Be offended by it just like we’re offended by your existence.

That was his bigoted side. I flipped a few pages in and read:

Those morons want us to believe that this is a plague that was designed in a lab and somehow got loose. That’s a lie. These are werewolves, no doubt about it. They’ve been warning us about them for thousands of years in the history books, and we just chuckled at the stupidity of those backwards ancestors of ours as if they’d just make this shit up for no good reason. No, these are the werewolves they wrote about, for sure. They look like them, howl like them, eat like them. They eat everything. I haven’t seen a deer in the yard in months. We used to get them a couple times a week. I’m sure they were all slaughtered by werewolves.

Some dumb bastard in Oregon died last week because he ate half a cow when he was a werewolf, and then after he changed back into a man, the cow bones ruptured his ‘human sized’ intestines. They usually shit before they change back, but not this idiot. Fuck him is what I say. Fuck them all. Why do we put up with it? Why haven’t we wiped them all out already?

They say China is uninhabitable these days. India is worse. Apparently, that’s a price we’re willing to pay to live with demons. This world is a nightmare and getting worse by the day. When I was a teenager they ran experiments on them to try and figure them out, maybe find a way to stop the damage they caused or whatever. Nowadays, they say that’s unethical. They won’t even let people volunteer for studies if they’re considered dangerous in any way. They banned them altogether. The wimps are leading the way and the strong stay silent because they’re outnumbered. It makes me sick.

I’m no killer but I have no problem at all with anyone who decides to hunt them. If you’re a werewolf out at night, that means you didn’t follow the rules, and if you’re doing that, then isn’t it willful murder? They only fine you for it if they catch you, you know. Even if you change back and shit out a baby’s skull, they’ll just give you a fine for breaking curfew and implant a tracking device (that doesn’t even stay inside the body after the next change) and then send your ass home. You’re free to do it again if you want. And that only happens to the few who get caught. Most get away with it entirely. But if the mother of that baby tracks you down and kills you for eating her child, she’ll get the electric chair. Just disgusting. The world is twisted inside-out. What’s worse is that kids these days don’t even notice how strange this Godforsaken place is. They were born into this hell. It’s normal to them.

Bill, my next-door neighbor, and a good man, ate a gun last week. He has a wife and three kids. Nancy, that bitch across the street says that he was probably clinically depressed. What a joke. Of course he was depressed, and terrified, and despondent. His life was as grotesque as the world around him. His entire family were all man-eating werewolves. He spent every night alone in his saferoom with the knowledge that his loved ones were trying to break out of their cells so they could get to him for a tasty snack. Every night he thought about that, alone. And every morning he had to shovel their shit up and hose down their cells and buy more rabbits or chickens or whatever the hell he fed them, as though that were a normal thing to do for your family. After enough time, all the drink in the world won’t wash that bitter taste out of your mouth. I do feel bad for his family, though. Last I heard, they were getting ready to move away. I wish that poor woman luck. She’s all alone in this now. There will be no one to replace Bill. No one wants the life or the family he left behind.

That entry always depressed me, so I snapped the journal shut and tucked it back under the cushion.

I swallowed down two sleeping pills with a third beer and waited for sleep to take me. I was glad for the soundproofing; otherwise I’d never be able to sleep through the chaos that was my wife, just ten feet away, clawing at the steel walls to get out.

Megan greeted me with a coffee in the morning and a cheery smile, but it was a façade to placate me; her eyes were dark and sunken, belying how she truly felt. She needed rest. I sat up to take the coffee, smelling the bleach that she’d used to cleanse her cell.

She asked, Did you kill it before you gave it to me?

She wouldn’t remember, so I didn’t need to worry about getting caught in the lie. Yep.

I had no choice. I’d tried to feed her dead hens in the past but she’d hardly touch them, and an unfed Bento is an unhealthy Bento. I learned long ago that she needed live prey, as all Bentos did. They’d eat dead things if they had to, as was obvious by the dug-up graves all across the world, but it was a last resort. They liked their food kicking and screaming; or, rather, clucking and flapping, in Megan’s case.

I tidied up the spent beer bottles before she could chastise me for my mess, and we traipsed upstairs to check for damage. The house was intact, so I asked, You hungry?

You know I’m not.

Just asking. I’m gonna make some breakfast. Let me know if you change your mind.

She rubbed her stomach and said, Maybe we should just feed me every other day until I lose this gut.

I looked at her quizzically and said, You don’t have a gut.

She smiled. I’m going to take a little nap, if that’s alright.

I nodded. You need some rest.

If I’m still asleep by noon, you’d better come and wake me up. I’ll be horny by then.

I laughed. It’s a date.

She kissed me, grabbed my butt for a squeeze, and left for bed.

God, I loved her. A lot of marriages don’t work after one person gets infected. There are obvious reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is that there are hardly any night jobs. A normal day for a normal, uninfected spouse would go like this: Wake up, go to work, come home, lock your spouse up in a cage, then go to bed alone. Repeat that long enough and it tears you apart. I’d never leave Megan, even if I wasn’t working nights. Plus, one thing that a lot of people don’t know is that the infected, for whatever reason, become extra sexual, even sort of animalistic between the sheets. That is a definite benefit for a guy like me. Also, I guess I just have a stronger stomach for this type of thing than normal people do. And she loves me with the same vigor, despite the fact that I often come home from work with the blood of her kind all over my clothes.

I made toast and eggs and another coffee. I sat at the kitchen table alone, waiting for my shift to start. The livestock guy would be around at 10 o’clock this morning with more chickens. I was well-paid for doing what I did, so money was no object, although I was starting to notice my bill was creeping upwards. The guy sold more than just chickens, but those seemed to be Megan’s favorite.

I’d fed her rabbit only once, buying one as a test to see if she’d like it. I left it in its own little cage beside the chicken coop.

Apparently, I forgot to tell her about it being a feed animal, so the next morning she woke up and asked where the rabbit was. She thought I’d bought it as a pet; she had even named the thing. I lied and told her that it must’ve escaped and that I’d get her another one, but I never did replace it. I know she knew I was lying, but she let me get away with it because she wouldn’t be able to bear hearing the truth aloud.

Rabbits scream when they’re eaten. I didn’t know that before she ate it, and I don’t ever want to hear that sound again. I don’t blame her; it was the werewolf that ate the rabbit, not my wife. My wife couldn’t hurt a fly.

When I heard a knock at the door around eight-thirty, I assumed the livestock man was early. To my surprise, a tubby, middle aged guy stood at my doorstep with a large case a few feet behind him. I knew right away that he was a salesman. I despised his kind.

The first thing he said was, I see you don’t have a mountain ash tree in your yard. Are you sure that’s wise?

I had time to spare so I let him talk. He told me about all of his wares: mistletoe, rye, wolfsbane,  crucifixes and cheap talismans, all designed, according to him, to ward off Bentos. I nodded approvingly and even let him hand me a silver cross that he said was infused with holy water.

After a few minutes of nonsense, I decided I’d had enough of his shit. I locked eyes with him and he froze, his lips trembling slightly as though he’d seen his own death. I tossed the cross past him, into the street, and said, I’m an officer of the law. I don’t have a mountain ash because it doesn’t work, and neither does any of this garbage that you’re selling. You murder people for money.

He opened his mouth and I knew he was about to deny any wrongdoing, so I elaborated forcefully, When you tell people that this crap makes them immune to Bentos, the idiots believe it. And then I find them at night, torn to pieces because you made them believe they were safe. If you really knew how terrible you were, you’d go home right now and hang yourself, just to make the world a better place. You’re a charlatan and a murderer, and if I see you around here again I will kill you.

His mouth did a little jig of confusion, and, as he turned to leave, I kicked him right in his flabby butt. I slammed the door behind him.

Those people fed on fear and myth. Sure, we lived among werewolves, but they don’t follow the traditional rules put forth by long-dead authors who’d never even seen a werewolf before. Silver bullets don’t affect them any more than lead. The full moon means nothing to them, or to their ability to change; they’d eat the cross right out of your righteous outstretched hand. The lore had spread for so long that even the hunters observed some of it, dangling mistletoe from their rearview mirrors.

Bentos remain mysterious, but I’d trust science over some two-bit salesman to unlock the mysteries for me. Plus, if anyone knew what it took to deter a Bento, it was me.

I looked through the blinds to make sure he’d left my neighborhood and decided I’d kick the shit out of him if I saw him again; life was hard enough and false hope just made it harder.

I saw the foot-tall grass that used to be a manicured lawn directly across the street. Bentos killed that guy three years ago. I think he was a drunk, but he always kept a neat lawn.

Three houses down was another empty, this one with broken windows, and two streets over was an entire empty block of houses. I always assumed someone would come along and demolish them all, but they’d remained that way for years. It amazed me that the banks still charged you a small fortune for a house when literally half the houses in America sat empty.

The livestock peddler showed up at ten on the button. You could always tell he was around by the stench of his truck. He tried to sell me a hog, saying that the infected loved them. He said he had a rich client up north who’d buy a horse from him every week. I didn’t believe him, but it didn’t matter anyway because Megan was doing just fine with the chickens.

Some believed that the bigger the animal that was eaten, the more vitality it gave to the Bento. Savvy salesmen would tell you that after a huge meal, a Bento will fall asleep, and once they transform back in the morning, they’ll be so well-rested that they won’t need to waste the rest of their day on sleep. It was all lies, and some people took things too far. When I was a kid, there was a young Hollywood starlet who believed she was special, so she had her handlers procure her a special meal each night; she got away with it for a couple months before she was caught. She’d been having her people feed her human beings because she thought satisfying the hunger would help her maintain her looks and vitality, kind of like the Countess Bathory. She screwed up and fired one of the wranglers who immediately turned her in for her crimes; I guess when you’re rich and famous you forget that you’re not untouchable. She’s still in prison to this day.

I had the peddler load the basement coop with a dozen more chickens, and he left once he figured out he wouldn’t be able to up-sell me.

Once he was gone, I took some time to clean the coop and chase down the birds that escaped, and then I went upstairs to wake Megan.

Blood work

Olaf did the pre-trip inspection of the truck while I checked to see if it had been restocked with ammo and chickens. Olaf was taller than most, with dark skin and even darker eyes. His name and his skin tone did not match. He wasn’t descended from the Nordic countries as you’d expect from his name. He didn’t share their pallid skin, light hair or blue eyes. My guess was that his parents probably had an odd sense of humor and named him Olaf merely to amuse themselves. The name didn’t seem to bother him, though, and it was hard to imagine calling him anything else once you knew him; it just seemed to fit. His forearms were twice the size of mine despite his thin frame, and he always made sure to roll his sleeves up to show them off. He was fast, agile, and strong, perfect for our line of work. With his bullish attitude, most people were wise not to get on his bad side. I’ve heard others describe him as intimidating but I didn’t see him that way.

I threw the ammo crates in the front and filled the chicken coop with as many birds as it would hold. The clang of the heavy back doors as I closed them reverberated throughout the depot.

The truck looked like an old-fashioned bread truck at first glance, but with the armor plating it weighed several times what a regular truck of its size would. Despite the extra weight, the silent electric engine had some real power. It was painted matte black for camouflage, and the windows were thick and bulletproof.

In the past, they thought we’d have flying cars by now. That would’ve made life a lot easier, but technology had halted in its tracks the moment Bentos appeared on the scene. In a lot of ways, we were no further advanced than our grandparents had been fifty years ago. All innovation took a back seat to simple survival.

I ran a hand along the outside of the truck. I wasn’t so sure I’d swap my trusty truck for a flying car, even if we had them.

Olaf threw the clipboard on the dash when he was done with the inspection. He walked over and reported to the tech guys that we’d need a new cow-catcher put on soon because ours had sustained too much damage. Then he got in an argument with them because they wanted him to grab a spare battery, as was mandated, but he told them that if he did that then they’d be getting a call in the middle of the night to come out and install it if our battery were to die mid-shift. Installing batteries was inherently dangerous at night, but getting stuck in a dead truck was probably more so. Each side had a point, but neither mattered in the end; procedure was all that mattered, and procedure dictated we take the spare.

They were getting loud, so I ducked around the corner to call Megan to wish her a good and safe night.

They were still arguing when I got done, so I walked past them all, grabbed the spare, and loaded it in the back between the chicken coop and the holding cage as they watched in silence. Then I said to Olaf, Get in the fucking truck. The sun’s almost down.

Olaf would’ve punched anyone else for talking to him like that, but we were like brothers, having saved each others’ lives more times than either of us could count.

He spat on the floor at the feet of the techs and then jumped into the passenger seat. He turned to me and said, You know the batteries weigh us down, dude. And it’s not right to expect us to change the battery in the middle of the night. Jimmy died that way, bent over his hood with his ass in the air.

I remembered Jimmy. He was a dog catcher back when we were too. He was a good guy but not the brightest. He should’ve called for someone to cover him while he swapped batteries. He did not and because of that, he was eaten alive. I didn’t mention any of it to Olaf. It’s not worth fighting about, man. We’re already running late.

He opened his mouth as if to argue, but instead shook his head and changed the subject. When we were dog catchers we had to do whatever the hell those assholes told us. It’s different now. Now we call the shots.

"I know, but it’s just not worth it. When we get done I want