Chapter 6

"Excuse me?" I said as I climbed out of the jeep. "Dahell you talkin' about?"

"End of the world, man." Bobby replied, hitchin' his shotgun to his shoulder. "It's all over, we're just waiting for the wave that wipes us out for the last time."

I took a look 'round me. As a setting for the end o' the world, it was certainly fitting. Tumbleweeds gathered in the doorways of the boarded-up businesses, a light wind blowin' through the streets scatterin' old papers an' feathers from the suicide flock, a loose shutter creakin' somewhere in the distance. Someone coulda made a fortune doin' night tours o' this haunted town an' I woulda been the first person to line up an' verify the truth o' that. The place was abandoned, but it wasn't resting.

I took a cigar out o' my pocket an' lit it up, inhaling deeply. "Bub, I think you better start at the beginnin'."

Chris sighed an' his dog gave a soft chuff. "Well, that would be me, I suppose." He said. "Obviously, my parents didn't know I had XP right away. I wasn't actually diagnosed until I was about four. I don't remember it much, but I found out later that they moved here to Moonlight Bay shortly after that. As I was growing up, they told me it was because Dad got offered a job teaching literature over at Ashdon College, which was true. The part they didn't tell me was that Mom had been offered a job here at the Fort. I always thought she taught biology and other sciences at the college.

"Anyway, you already know my mom was a theoretical geneticist. What you probably don't know is what she did out here." He took a deep breath an' looked up at the moon. "I didn't know either, not until about a year ago, just after my dad died. He wrote it all down for me, in case anything ever happened to him. Mom was working on a project that would enhance certain characteristics in animals, then people. Make them smarter or stronger, whatever. She invented kind of a retrovirus that contained the DNA of people and used it to insert that DNA into different animals, mostly monkeys, cats and dogs." Orson gave a thin whine an' I looked down at him. He was lookin' right back at me an' it seemed like he nodded in agreement. "But now that I've met you, I wonder if they didn't use some of your DNA in the experiment."

"Whattaya mean?" I asked an' flicked the ash off my cigar.

"Well, whenever someone uses a retrovirus like this, they use a crippled one that does whatever it is it does, then dies. From what I understand, Mom's virus did that at first, but at some point something happened and it didn't die. In fact, it got stronger, started mutating faster than they could keep up with it and it began taking DNA from the test subjects and inserting it into the people in the lab." He looked me in the eye with an expression kinda like regret. "Logan, the virus healed itself and there's not supposed to be any way for it to do that."

I felt the blood rush from my face an' I had a sudden urge to sit down. I stumbled over to the nearest curb an' collapsed, lookin' down at my feet. "She used my DNA to do that? On purpose?"

"No, I don't think so." He replied softly. "I think Mom was using the first part of the experiment to see if the virus would transfer DNA properly in the first place. Once she found out it did, I think she inserted your DNA into a strain that she planned to use on…to cure me." He sighed an' Orson whined again. I looked up at them an' Chris was crouched next to the dog, stroking him gently. "And I think that the idiots up here found that strain and in their infinite incompetence, they shot it full of other DNA too and injected it into the test animals, not knowing that it was a different strain."

"Yeah, that sounds 'bout right for the military." I grunted, tossin' my cigar aside. "Just assume everythin's theirs for the takin', even people's lives." I shook my head an' scrubbed my hands over my face. "So, this new strain, it got out somehow?"

"Got it in one, my friend." Bobby said. "A rhesus escaped one day, attacked an old friend of ours. They managed to bag it and take it back, but it got out again and took some of its friends along with it." He shifted his gun to the other shoulder. "That first troop is real nasty, man. They'll kill you if they get the chance."

"I ain't so easy to kill, kid." I said an' stood up. "Better men than those monkeys have tried."

"That may be, but it still doesn't change the fact that they're not just vicious, they're SMART and vicious." Chris said. "And I don't just mean basic tool use and simple planning. They broke into a house one night while I was visiting a friend, killed her and set a fire to hide the evidence and try to kill me in the bargain."

"That's not all." Bobby added. "They stalked me for weeks, broke into my house and stole a camera I had out to try and get a picture of them. I bought one of those cheap disposable ones, left it out one night and they broke in and took that one too. And they left me a warning."

I snorted. "What, like a threatening note?"

"Kind of. They crapped on my bed. I think their meaning was pretty clear." He lowered the shotgun an' looked around. "A couple weeks later, they attacked us out at my house. We killed a bunch of them and got their leader in the bargain."

"President of the monkey union?"

"Actually no, it was a guy." Chris said. "One of the human test subjects to survive the experiments out here. I was told he was one of the few that made it out of there still sane, but what little I saw of him was enough to convince me otherwise." He stood up an' stuffed his hands in his pockets. "But we're way ahead of ourselves here. The first troop escaped and they couldn't get them back."

"There's more than one bunch of 'em out here?" I asked, surprised. "They didn't learn their lesson the first time?"

"No, they did. They must have engineered a less aggressive version of the rhesus, because they intentionally released another troop with transponders embedded in their skin to find the original troop. Within a few days, some of them chewed the devices out of each other. The rest found their way to Father Tom and he cut them out." He chuckled bitterly. "I don't know how they knew he'd help them, but they did. By then, the first troop had been out here for a little over three years, running rampant and breeding."

"So this second troop, what happened with 'em? They go native?"

"For the most part, but you can tell the difference between them even when they're together. It's like the second troop is a lot smarter than the first one. They tend to hang back when they attack, let the more aggressive ones go in and do the nasty business."

"Yeah, they're definitely military monkeys." Bobby said. "The smart ones stay back while the dumb grunts go on the front lines." Chris glared at him. "What? I'm just saying."

"I know, bro. But we're supposed to be telling this in some kind of order." Bobby shrugged an' Chris just shook his head before goin' on. "Anyway, it was a little after the first troop escaped that my Mom died. Her car crashed into a bridge abutment. They told me it was an accident, then later that she killed herself, but I think the people out here killed her, to keep her from telling anyone what happened.

"About a year and a half later, the base was decommissioned. After the end of the Cold War, they decided they didn't need it anymore. Just like that, over thirty thousand military personnel and their dependents were shipped all over the world, a lot of them infected with the new strain of the virus."

"Holy shit." I breathed. "Did they know?"

"No idea. It was over a year later that I even found out anything about what went on out here. Now it seems like everywhere I look, I see more people who are infected. The term that's used for it is 'becoming', but what it is they're becoming, we don't know."

"Mostly, they get really violent, fly into these rages that they can't control." Bobby said. "But we've seen people who had physical changes too, hands turned into lobster claws or their faces looking half animal. It's totally macking crazy."

I only half heard the last part o' his statement. I understood about flyin' into a rage that can't be controlled. Happens to me all the time an' I couldn't help but wonder if this was a part o' me that these people had gotten from that virus. Bad enough to have been made into a fuckin' killin' machine by Stryker, but to have a part in a doomsday virus? It was almost too much to bear.

"…all right? Logan? You still with us?" Chris was standin' in front of me, lookin' worried. "Logan?"

"Yeah, I'm fine kid." I whispered. "So, is there anythin' else I should know?"

"Yeah, I suppose there is." He said. "It's not just evil that came out of all this. The Christmas right before she died, my Mom brought Orson home to me." I looked down at the mutt an' he was noddin' again. I raised an eyebrow an' looked back up to Chris. "She brought him out of the lab, I think. And he's not the only one. There's some really smart cats about too. One of them, Mungojerrie, he saved my ass right after my dad died, then saved a bunch of kids from a serial killer a few months later."

"You're shittin' me."

"Nope, it's all true." Bobby said an' walked over to us. "A friend's kid got snatched one night, took him right out of his bed. Grabbed a bunch of others and Orson too. Was gonna torch them all alive, but Mungojerrie led us right to them, out here at good old Fort Wyvern." He grew quiet an' looked down. "I don't remember this part, but Chris and his woman told me I died out here."

"You look pretty lively to me."

"He is now," Chris said, "but he really did die down there, shot through the chest. Remember that other project I told you about, Mystery Train?" I nodded. "Something happened with that too, I guess it was our fault. We kind of restarted the machine or whatever it was and it made time go all wonky on us. When we were on the way out with the kids and Bobby's…well, the elevator opened and I realized it was us in there, on our way down from before, so I grabbed him and shoved the other one into the elevator before the doors closed."

"You're sayin' you took him outta his place in time?" All three of them nodded an' I swore softly. "Ya know, I've seen an' heard o' a lotta shit in my day, but that's gotta be the craziest thing ever."

"Tell me about it, bro." Bobby said. "I mean, I don't even remember getting shot, but all of them from the kids to Snowman's woman told me it was true."

"So what happened after that?"

He shrugged. "We bugged out of there fast as we could and watched the whole warehouse it was underneath just vanish. Don't know if it went to another time line or if it's still out there underneath another base, but it sure as hell isn't here anymore."

"One thing we do know, it didn't take Mom's work with it." Chris said. "We still have vicious killer monkeys, super smart cats and dogs and people who are becoming all around us." He looked me in the eye again. "And now you're here."

"Followin' my dreams to the other side o' the country." I finished for him. "Now I know I'm crazy."

"No more than the rest of the world." He walked back over to the jeep an' climbed in, followed by Bobby an' Orson. "Come on, we'll get you as far as the warehouses. You'll have to see if you can scout out where they are on your own from there."

I walked back to the jeep an' took my seat next to the dog. I looked at him an' snorted. "So, you think I'm crazy?" He shook his head slowly an' I raised an eyebrow. "Then why the hell else would I be out here in the middle of Armageddon?" He sighed an' nosed my hand, then licked my knuckles like he had earlier at the house. He looked back up at me an' chuffed softly. Believe me or not, but I think I understood what he was sayin' to me. I was here to kill 'em all.

AN: Sorry this update took a while to get out, but my internet connection is unstable these days and the callers at work have been going above and beyond the call of duty in the "piss Rowena off" department...anyway, this is the last chapter i actually have uploaded on this story...i have more ready to go, but with the touchy connection, i'm not sure when i'll be able to do that...i might have to put what i have on a jump drive and see if i can't have my fiancee upload them for me or something...::shrug::

Many thanks to Levanna for reviewing the last chapter...my apologies to anyone familiar with the books this crosses with for this chapter, but i thought it would be wise to break down the backstory of Moonlight Bay for those NOT familiar with it...:)

Last, but not least, for those of you reading this until my next story in my main series is done...i'm nearing the end of it even as we speak...i anticipate having it ready to go within the next couple of weeks...also, i'm not sure my muse is as done with that saga as i previously thought...we'll just have to see...:)

Please review.