Rise of the Transgenics (18 page)

“She’s a transgenic,” Harry piped up.

“What the hell does that mean?” someone
called out.

“It means she was a guy once and now she’s a
girl,” another man said. Large, bald, in his twenties, he carried a
length of chain in his meaty hands and nodded with certainty at his
answer.

Harry didn’t know whether to display a
face-palm, shake his head, or wonder where that person’s education
went wrong—if he’d ever made it out of junior high. Even the man’s
friends stared at him. “There’s just no cure for stupid,” Anastasia
muttered, and even a few of the mob members laughed.

“Uh, buddy,” Harry addressed the man,
“transgenic means that someone mixed animals genes with human DNA.
Trust me, she’s a girl.”

“Oh.”

Dumb response received, Harry explained
further and raised his voice. “I’m a researcher. I’m trying to help
my, uh, girlfriend, become human again.”

His remark brought gasps of disbelief.
“You’re a researcher?” one woman asked. “You’re a kid. And that
thing can’t be your girlfriend!”

Anastasia’s eyes narrowed, and Harry’s first
thought was
Oh, here we go again.

“Well, if one of you has a smartphone, look
on the Internet under the name of Marvin Goldman. He was my father.
He was a transgenic researcher and I’m doing the same thing,” Harry
offered, heartily wishing that no one would keep referring to him
as a kid. When was this going to end, when he was thirty? It had to
be the curse of looking like a baby robin.

“And there’s something else,” he added.
“Anastasia is not a
thing.
She’s a girl, and yeah, she’s my
girlfriend.”

More muttering broke out, this time of a
deeper, more primal variety. Now the collective look of the people
here shifted from a loosely cobbled together group of individuals
that had formed into a mob to that of a pack with one goal, one
purpose, and he knew that this wasn’t going to end well.

As if scripted, the leader took another step
forward, swinging his knife back and forth in a steady, rhythmical
manner.

After taking a few steps forward and throwing
a cautious glance at the two fallen transgenics, he put up his hand
as a signal for the rest of the group to stop. They halted,
waiting. “All right, say we believe you,” he said. “We take you
in,” the rest of the people moved forward en masse as he spoke,
“and you explain yourself to the authorities. They’ll listen.”

Listening to this crap, it sounded just as
insincere as when he’d first heard it, and Harry instinctively
retreated. He expected that Anastasia would do the same. She didn’t
though, and stayed right where she was. “They don’t believe me,” he
said to her, and then directed his next comment at the mob. “I just
got taken to jail and broken out of jail a short time ago.”

“He’s right,” another man called out, holding
up a smartphone. “I heard it on the news. The Forty-Third Precinct
got raided, eighty people dead, most of them cops. This kid
couldn’t have done it, not by himself. Look at him—he’s a skinny
weak punk.”

“Thanks a lot,” Harry said. Truth or not, it
stung.

“So he had a little help,” Mr. Leader
snarled. This time he marched forward until he stood three feet
away from Harry. “We’ll take you in, take in the cat-ladies and
that...whatever it is,” he added, pointing at Piotr who’d just
shaken himself awake, “and you can explain yourself.”

From the narrowed eyes, the savage grins, the
smirks, and the fact that everyone was either waving a chain or a
knife or something lethal, it was a given that they’d do no such
thing. Harry smelled something now, different from the odors in the
room. He smelled fear and hatred along with something darker, more
primal, and it didn’t come from his girlfriend or the Russian
duo.

It was something that emanated from the mob,
a feeling of something deep and ancient that the human race had
suppressed thousands of years ago, but had never suppressed
entirely. It was the fear of the unknown, and fear often led to
irrational mindsets. Kill the outsider. Kill that which is
different. Make them pay for their crimes, we’ll deliver our own
version of justice and explain our position later.

By now, both mad Russians had gotten to their
feet, Lyudmila with her claws out and extended, Piotr pawing the
ground. They had their eyes fixed on their targets, and sensing the
ensuing bloodbath, Harry made one last push for peace. “Guys, you’d
better back off.”

Lyudmila surveyed the mob with disdain and
her voice dripped with barely disguised hatred. “All these pathetic
wretches think that they are going to hurt us?”

Another gasp came from the group.

Harry then chimed in, “I gotta tell you, my
girlfriend doesn’t want to ruin anyone’s day, but these two others
do. It’s your choice.”

“You can’t find yourself a regular girl, so
you’re going out with a cat-lady?” one person asked. “She’s a
friggin’ freak!”

More voices called out insults, the insults
turned to threats, and finally, instead of either of the mad
Russians taking the first shot, Anastasia growled, “The hell with
this. They just messed with the wrong person.”

Messing was what the mob had in mind. Human
nature—the worst parts of it—overrode reason, and giving a
collective cry of rage, the mob charged as one, their weapons
raised high, ready for the kill.

Both cat-girls leapt back a distance of
perhaps twenty feet. As Anastasia did so, she grabbed Harry’s
shoulder and pulled him back with her, landing lightly on her feet.
Once at the far wall, she said, “Stay here. I’ll come back for
you.”

With a snarl, she charged forward and slashed
at the mob members. Her moves, fast and sure, struck out at limbs
and hands, causing the people to drop their weapons. With even
faster strikes, she temporarily immobilized them in an effort to
disarm and not kill.

In contrast, Lyudmila did the slice-and-dice
thing all too well. Soon, at least ten people lay dead or mortally
wounded. More came, though, hacked and slashed and clubbed—and
still more got laid out temporarily or permanently.

“Now it is my turn!” Piotr roared. With a
savage grin splitting his face, he charged his way into the pack,
heedless of their weapons or the damage they could do. He was too
busy goring or trampling his opponents, and cries of agony rent the
air.

While he was mutilating the mob, he received
a fair number of cuts and slashes, and at least one person had a
pistol. Piotr didn’t stop, though, just kept up his assault,
snorting and grunting with pleasure when he gored someone, and
occasionally squealing in rage and pain when someone shot him.

Soon another gun went off, and then another.
One stray ricochet, that was all it took, and if luck wasn’t on his
side, Harry knew that he could say goodbye to any possibility of
getting out of there alive. Anastasia sprinted to where he was
crouching and grabbed his hand. “We’re going up,” she said,
pointing to a large boarded up window. “Hang on!”

With a mighty leap, she sprang to the ledge.
The sudden yank on his shoulder almost tore it out of its socket,
and he let out a yell. She grabbed onto the ledge with her free
hand and with the other, tossed him higher to a safe spot. Panting,
he reached down, she gave him her hand, and he hauled her up,
although he doubted that she needed any help. “What now?” he
asked.

“We leave,” she said, and used her elbow to
smash the wood out.

Light and the cold from outside flooded in,
and below them, Piotr and Lyudmila were still in the process of
decimating the mob. It seemed that they reveled in the slaughter as
they shouted with each fresh kill, and the smell of blood and
entrails lay heavily upon the air. “C’mon,” Anastasia urged, and
grabbed his hand. “We can do this.”

Doing it
meant jumping from a height
of maybe twenty feet to the concrete below. Harry’s heart
jackhammered with fear, but there was no other choice.

“I know your shoulder hurts, but you have to
jump. Just drop and roll at the bottom,” Anastasia counseled.

Now or never, he thought, and took the leap.
Just as his feet touched ground, he shifted his body’s position and
rolled over onto his side. He kept rolling over until he slammed up
against the side of another building. “Where are we?” he asked, his
head spinning.

Anastasia had gotten up to survey their
surroundings. “We’re in an alleyway.”

Slowly getting to his feet, Harry listened to
the screams of agony coming from the nearby building, and they
chilled him more than the winter weather did. Then the sound of
sirens cut through the air. This was not going to be good, not good
at all. “You got a plan?” he asked.

“Yep,” Anastasia grinned and pointed to a
manhole cover. “We go down.”

He’d hidden out in sewers before, and while
it wasn’t on his to-do list, not many options remained. “This is
like déjà vu all over again,” he said.

She giggled as she easily pulled the cover
off and gestured for him to go first. “You lead. Someone’s gotta
put the manhole back into place.”

Like most sewers, this one stank, but
considering it was winter, the steam and smell output seemed to be
a lot higher. Harry climbed down the ladder into a gloomy world,
dropped the last two feet to the bottom, and immediately slipped on
the wet concrete and fell into the river of filth.

Standing up, he wiped the slime from his head
and face and then gave up in disgust. “Crap,” he muttered, feeling
the slime soak his skin with its particular brand of nastiness. His
shoulder still hurt like crazy. He figured it had to be partially
if not totally dislocated.

A number of light bulbs had been set up on
the ceiling, sending a stream of light into the surroundings and
illuminating it in a sickly yellow glow. This particular part of
the sewer system seemed to be older than the one he’d been in once
before, as rust showed clearly on the ceiling and the walls. A few
rats scurried away carrying something in their mouths...he didn’t
know what it was, nor did he want to know.

“Hey, you okay?” Anastasia asked as she
dropped down on the ledge, landing gracefully. Her ears twitched
overtime, as did her nose.

“My shoulder still hurts,” he grunted out.
“Are they following us?”

Anastasia looked up at the manhole. “When I
pulled the manhole into place, I didn’t see anyone following us.”
She tested the air with her nose, and shook her head. “I can’t
smell any people. And if you’re going to ask me if I can smell the
opposition, don’t. I can’t smell much of anything except the
garbage that’s down here.”

Suddenly Harry let out a cry of agony. He’d
been trying to shunt the pain to another part of his mind, and it
didn’t work. He bit his lip to stifle the pain. Sound carried. He
didn’t want anyone to hear. “This...isn’t good.”

“Yeah, your shoulder’s sort of out of
position,” she said after surveying his stance. “Hang on.”

Before he could say anything, she grabbed his
arm with one hand and his elbow with the other and jammed the
shoulder back into place. The sudden stab of pain made him yell and
he cut it short by biting the inside of his mouth. He bit it so
hard, blood flowed out between his lips and he spit it into the
river of sludge. “Thanks...let’s get going,” he said.

Keep moving...they had to keep moving.
Undoubtedly the police would come and more than likely start
searching the sewers. And like the mob, they would come to kill.
Harry, pain and all, managed to heave his body out of the slimy
river and onto the opposite side. He noticed that the tide was
rising. They had to get to higher ground. If not, they might
drown.

Anastasia gracefully leapt out of the water
to join him. “You did well back there.”

Perhaps she’d meant to be nice, but Harry
knew different. “I didn’t do anything at all,” he said, bitter that
he was supposedly stuck in a permanent state of weakness. “You and
the others did—well, you won,” he finished, feeling lame beyond
lame.

Anastasia didn’t seem bothered by it. “This
is what happened. I don’t want to be this way, you know, but this
is what I am.” She touched him gently on the hand. “Thanks for
sticking up for me.”

Lousy atmosphere or not, her very touch
caused him to mumble, “You’re my girlfriend. I don’t care what you
look like.”

Anastasia snorted in disgust. “You don’t, but
they did. I’m not a freak, but I’m also not going to apologize for
what happened back there.”

She pointed to a number of gashes, slashes
and wounds on her torso. To Harry’s eyes, they seemed to be healing
fast, but still, they had to hurt, and what with all the pollutants
in the water, he wondered if they’d cause an infection. “In case
you haven’t figured it out, we’re fugitives, and that was a mob.
They wanted to kill us.”

“I know.”

Tired and dispirited, he nevertheless began
to trudge down the narrow walkway, Anastasia following behind. The
path twisted and turned and the smell never left. In fact, it
seemed to get even stronger, and Harry’s eyes began to water. His
shoulder hurt abominably and he hadn’t eaten since...he’d
forgotten.

He stumbled and she caught him around the
waist. “Can you do this?”

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

Their journey continued on for what seemed
like miles, neither of them saying a word with only the sound of
the rushing water for company. After another twenty minutes of
continuous walking by his estimate, he slumped back against the
wall. “I gotta sit down. I don’t even know where we are.”

“Sit tight,” she said. “There’s a ladder up
ahead. I’ll check.”

Trotting off, he watched her form disappear
up the ladder and she came back a few minutes later. “It looks like
mid-afternoon. We’re on Worth Street. That’s still the Bowery.
There are police cars everywhere and I saw a lot of patrolmen. I
don’t think they’re going to search down here—yet—but we can’t go
up, not at this time. Maybe tonight it’ll be a little clearer.”