Separation (12 page)

His voice died away, and Lambert offered a
shrug. “For what reason, I do not know, but this man is the devil
incarnate. I have never met him and do not wish to.”

“I have,” the guard said at the window said.
It was the first time he’d spoken, and his voice sounded like a
rusty chainsaw. “I remember my name. It is Rene. This trash, this
Allenby, he laughed after I woke up from the transformation. He
said I was to be the new face of his movement, and that was
all.

“After that, he and his men threw me away
like garbage. The man who is outside, he is my clone. I know that
much.” Anger rose in his voice. “If I see Allenby again, I will do
my best to kill him.”

“We have to get to the airport.” Anastasia’s
voice held a note of urgency in it. “If we leave now, we might be
able to make our flight. We have to get Istvan out of here.”

Lambert asked, “What time must you
leave?”

“Tuesday morning at eight-thirty.”

“We cannot go now,” he said. “It is daylight,
and there is a chance that if we are spotted in the daytime,
someone may turn us in or try to kill us. We will leave tomorrow.
Rest now and we will take you to the airport. You must be
patient.”

The plan seemed sound enough, and Istvan
sighed when he heard Lambert make his promise. “I shall sleep
now.”

“There are cots, enough for everyone,”
Lambert said. “Please get some rest.”

Istvan didn’t bother to hit the steps. He
curled up on the floor and soon passed out, and Leo joined him.
Harry felt like a little luxury was in order, and after nodding his
thanks, took Anastasia by the hand and mounted the steps. On the
second floor, they found a room with two cots in it. They weren’t
overly soft, but anything was better than a hard floor. “We both
need to sleep,” Anastasia said. “We’ll be home soon.”

“Good idea.”

Harry pulled the cots together and she lay
down. “I can’t wait to get back to the cabin,” Anastasia said.

“Yeah, me too,” he answered, trying to make
his voice sound convincing. She gave him a tired smile and soon
passed out.

He couldn’t sleep, though, and sat on the
edge of the bed, lost in thought. Wondering exactly who this
Allenby was, he sent a message to Jason.
What exactly is Allenby
like?

As soon as he sent the message, he regretted
it. Jason and Maze had to sleep, too. As their host had indicated,
patience was in order, so he shut off the computer and sacked out
beside his wife.

What seemed to be only a few minutes later,
Harry woke up with a start. A noise had startled him, and he
realized it was coming from a branch scraping against the side of
the window. Anastasia was still asleep, so he turned on his
computer and found a message waiting. The clock indicated he’d been
asleep for three hours.

Jason’s message read
this is basic info I
got on Allenby.

Harry read through it, and the more he read,
the more afraid he became. The initial impression he’d gotten from
Leo of Allenby as being a control freak was correct. Educated at
private schools throughout his early life—his parents were
multi-millionaires—he’d gotten top grades and shown a tremendous
aptitude for science and biology at an early age.

Allenby had grown up with a sense of
entitlement, that peculiar disease affecting many who never had to
work hard for their money. Thinking back to his childhood, Harry
realized that although his father had held a position at a
prestigious company, his upbringing had been strictly middle-class.
He’d also been home-schooled, but had never thought himself above
anyone else...

A beep from the computer alerted him to a new
message. Jason wrote
I got something else. This is from a guy
who was the former Parts and Acquisitions Director for ASR. Agent
Farrell made a few calls and Overton followed up on them.

The man’s name was Derry, Alan Derry, now a
resident of Baltimore, Maryland. Once the company had been sold,
he’d left and found a new position at a medical laboratory.

He brought me to his house one day,
Derry wrote.
He lived in a mansion outside Los Angeles and had
servants cater to him night and day.

A picture popped up that wouldn’t have looked
out of place in a magazine featuring royalty and their digs. A
beautiful house resembling a castle more than a run of the mill
abode stood on land the size of a football field. Swimming pools,
marble statues and more dotted the precisely groomed grounds and
flower beds. How could a guy like this fly under the radar?

The answer came when Harry read more details.
After Allenby’s parents had died, he’d inherited everything. “It’s
like giving the keys to a chocolate factory to an obese kid,” Harry
muttered as he continued to read.

When I worked for him, he expected
everyone to follow his orders blindly and without exception
wrote Derry
.

A question came from Overton.
Did you ship
parts to Europe?

Yes. Most of them went to France and Spain.
But there was a lot of stuff that went out and wasn’t put on the
books. It’s all unaccounted for...

Disgusted, Harry shut off the computer.
Allenby was into ruling, plain and simple, with an almost fanatical
attention to control and detail. Apparently, when the deal with the
FBI had been called off, he’d trashed his office and fired everyone
without paying them. He’d subsequently sold off his acquisitions
and fled the country.

“So he’s a control freak, clever and
dangerous,” Harry muttered again, and then yawned. He lay down
beside his wife. Right then and there, he vowed not to go home
until Allenby was found and stopped. And that could take a long
time.

“Wake up.”

Those two words stirred in Harry’s mind, and
he turned over, hoping to feel the warmth of his wife’s body next
to his. Instead, he felt the sheets of an empty cot. He sat up,
senses at full alert, and only relaxed when he saw his wife’s
yellow eyes staring at him in the darkened room. “What time is
it?”

“Past ten,” she answered with a faint smile.
“You’ve been asleep all day. I just got word from one of the
guards. It’s time to go.”

They made their way downstairs, and found
Lambert at the door, a look of worry on his face. “You were
sleeping for a long time. Your friends are in the van. We have
enough gasoline to get us to the airport. We know where you wish to
go.”

Outside, the evening air was pleasant and
warm, but immediately Harry got a feeling something wasn’t right.
The feeling that something was out there made the hair on the nape
of his neck prickle, but if there was a chance of getting out of
there on time, he had to take it, not just for him, but for his
wife and Istvan as well.

As they got underway, Harry asked why there
wasn’t more cooperation between their governments. “I do not know,”
Lambert answered. “Our government says this is an internal matter.
I think it is a foolish decision. If there is to be peace among
all, then all must cooperate.”

It was a most noble sentiment, but doubtful
anyone would listen. Lambert continued relating the troubles. “When
the transgenics first surfaced here, only a few objected. They were
treated with looks of curiosity, but not disdain. It was only after
more came that the curiosity turned to hatred.”

Reflecting on the very human trait of people
not being able to understand the different, the other, Harry
recalled the lynch mobs in New York. People were people no matter
which country. They feared change, feared something other than the
norm. It was human nature, and Lambert’s next words underscored his
thoughts.

“The hate groups started soon after I was
appointed by the Ministry of the Interior as a representative. I
tried to reason with them, but they would not listen. There are
many officials in the police department who have also turned a
blind eye.”

He offered a heavy sigh. “I can only do what
I can. As for the members of society—and by that, I mean
humans—they often attack at night, but their vision is limited.
Even when they have flashlights and night vision goggles, the
transgenics are generally able to avoid them. However, I am more
concerned with the transgenics who have been created by Allenby and
who have sided with him.”

It seemed legitimate. They continued on their
way, but as they rounded a turn on a road, Harry’s hypersensitive
ears picked up the click of impending death. “Get down!” he
cried.

Lambert immediately swerved to the side just
as a hail of bullets whizzed overhead. The van veered madly off the
road and crashed into a ditch. Harry got out of the passenger side,
ran to the rear of the van, and wrenched the door open. Anastasia
staggered out, holding onto Leo and Istvan.

“Time to sprawl,” he said and hauled them to
the hard ground.

Leo also took the hint and scampered off to
hide in some bushes. A millisecond later the sound of machine guns
opening up split the night. Both guards had gotten out the van, but
though they were armed, they died in the first round of shooting.
Lambert managed to extricate himself from the van, but a single
shot came from nowhere and he fell to the ground without a single
cry of protest.

Abruptly, silence descended, and only the
smell of gunpowder, overheated metal, and blood filled the air. A
voice, one with a flat mid-Western accent, called out, “We’ve
stopped firing. Put your hands up and get on your feet. You’re
surrounded, and I don’t want to kill you.”

Doing as the voice ordered, Harry got to his
feet. Anastasia began to growl, and Istvan did what he did best. He
hid behind Anastasia’s legs. A man emerged from out of the darkness
and walked over flanked by five other hybrids. The men looked
identical to one another, very similar, in fact, to Lambert, but
with vaguely insectoid features.

As for Allenby, he looked just like his
picture on the Internet—short, stocky, and with a shock of blond
hair over a pasty face and a port wine stain that lit up the night.
He glanced at the corpse of Lambert, shook his head, and then
turned around, wearing a pleasant smile. “My name is Horace
Allenby. I assume you’ve heard of me?”

“Go to hell,” Anastasia hissed.

“Politeness, young lady, is something I
always stress,” he replied, and snapped his fingers.

Harry felt something hard crash down on his
head. Stars flashed across his field of view, and out of the corner
of his eye, saw his wife and Istvan falling to the ground. Then the
darkness took over.

Harry awoke with a start and immediately let out a
groan. Waking up involved a splitting headache, nausea, and a
feeling of helpless rage. How long had he been out? He had no idea,
but looking around, he found himself in a small room, lying on a
cot. No window, but a small opening the size of a ping-pong ball in
the concrete wall allowed the moonlight to stream in.

Turning around to squint through the eyelet,
he estimated it was around one in the morning. His wife lay on
another cot across from him. Staggering to his feet, he went over
and gently shook her shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

She stirred, moaned, and then got off the cot
to fall to her knees and heave. “Stupid morning sickness,” she
muttered once she’d dumped her guts. “I just hope the rest of my
pregnancy isn’t this bad.”

Grim humor, but Harry did find it funny in a
warped way. “Let’s hope it doesn’t last too long,” he replied as he
helped her into a sitting position on the cot.

He tried the door, but it had been securely
locked, and even after extending his claws and slashing against the
hard wood, he got nowhere. They were locked in. “So, is this the
part where he comes in to tell us of his master plan?”

Anastasia’s question was expected. “He’s
creating clones,” Harry answered. “But why is he mixing animal DNA
in with the human cells? It doesn’t make sense.”

He sat alongside her and she rested her chin
in her hands, as if musing on the hows and whys. “Let’s figure this
out. He’s turning people into animals by using the Genesis
Chambers. How did he get his hands on them?”

Thinking about it, it was possible Allenby
had learned of the technology before the FBI had severed ties with
his company. And Derry had mentioned that many shipments had been
off the books. It was possible, but still...

“How he got them doesn’t matter so much,”
Harry replied. “What purpose could he have for...”

His voice trailed off as a thought,
ridiculous as it sounded, knifed through his head and temporarily
overrode his headache. “If he’s got clones, then how would it help
him, unless he wants to replace someone?”

Anastasia immediately got the idea.
“Replace... as in replace someone high up?”

High up
meant in the government or the
military or both. This plan, if it could be brought off, was not
only audacious and ambitious, it was also highly possible. The
clones would be identical to the government officials, while the
transgenics would serve as guards or an occupying army. It didn’t
seem possible, yet...

The sound of footsteps caused Harry to stop
thinking about the what-ifs. He had to focus on the here and now.
He had no idea where Istvan was, and Leo had gone missing.
Wondering whether or not the approaching footsteps signaled
temporary freedom or his doom, he held his wife’s hand and prayed
for the former.

With a sudden rush, the door opened, and two
men with feelers on their heads and faces like cockroaches—round,
brown, and horribly ugly—strode in. Both of them held machine guns,
and the way they held them, barrels up, indicated their willingness
to use them. “Come with us. Our master wishes to speak to you.”

One of them grabbed Harry’s arm while the
other reached for Anastasia. “Touch me,” she warned as her claws
sprang out, “and you’ll never touch anything else again. I’ll
go.”