Xeno Sapiens (20 page)

“
I’m on my way there, now.”

“
Anyway,” Clifton went on, “the IG
finally said he would send somebody to remove Hall. I don’t guess
Jon expected to wake up later that night to find Josh Hall
murdering him in his bed.”

“
How did that happen?”

“
Hall punched in the access code to
Jon’s bedroom. Like I said, he was very resourceful so there’s not
much mystery about how he got the code, or how he got into the lab
to get the culture dish of anthrax. He poured it all over Jon’s
face while he slept.

“
Hall didn’t stick around to watch Jon
die. He’d seen what the bug did to lab animals. And wouldn’t you
know, for this particular midnight foray, Hall had worn a mask and
suit. Jon kept his wits. He and Alan had developed an antitoxin to
go right along with the plague. Jon had made it his personal
business to be sure Hall didn’t know about the antitoxin, even
though it’s standard procedure. You don’t want your guys dying
right along with the enemy. After Hall left, Jon crept away to the
lab and administered the antidote to himself. I only wish I could
have seen the look on Hall’s face the next morning when a very live
Jon Merrifield confronted him with a deputation of four MP’s to
haul his ass away.”

“
How is it that he’s a preacher
instead of in jail somewhere?”

“
It was swept under the rug,” Clifton
said. “SecureCom as well as the government that hired him knew
there was a very good chance that Hall had rigged some kind of dead
man’s trigger that would allow him to spill his guts about all he
knew should he turn up missing. He knew too much about bodies
quietly buried, and I think they decided to put him out to pasture
so those bones wouldn’t raise up and rattle anybody’s house. He
probably also had a lot of high powered patrons willing to go to
bat for him: people you seriously don’t want to piss off. There may
have had hopes of salvaging his talents, but after a battery of
psychiatry, everybody gave up. In the end Uncle Sam and SecureCom
hollered uncle and cut him loose him with a pension and a strong
warning that it was perfectly okay he had found Jesus, but it would
be in his best interest to stick with preaching and let what had
gone before die quietly.”

“
But why evangelism,” Ingrid asked. “I
don’t believe for a second he really has the calling.”

“
I thought initially it was just to
make a few quick bucks. Who wouldn’t pay to see a tortured soul,
drenched in the blood of innocent people, saved by the Glory of
God? The killer turned healer. It would be like Hitler converting.
Now, I don’t know. It’s gone on for too long, and it makes me
wonder what his real motive is.”

“
How much of this do you actually
believe?”

“
Most of it,” Clifton said. “Jon and
Josh have been in a silent, running feud for fifteen years. Jon
doesn’t spill the beans about Hall’s past; Hall doesn’t shoot his
mouth off about what Jon’s doing. Even though they would kill each
other on sight, they have that tacit agreement. Jon doesn’t talk
about it much, but when you’ve been around him as long as I have,
you learn to pick out the shit from the candy.”

“
It seems Mr. Hall has had his
pilfering hand in all our lives,” Ingrid said. She told Clifton of
how she was ‘saved’ at one of his crusades. She found it difficult
to explain the actual dread she had felt at his touch. Though she
had not been able to articulate it as such at the time, her
visceral reaction was that if Josh Hall were placed before a very
powerful light, it might reveal something underneath the skin
better not seen.

“
I didn’t like him very much,” she
finished, condensing all that she felt. “I didn’t know of the
things you told me. I just... didn’t like him.”

“
I have that same feeling,” Clifton
said moodily. “But after being here for two years, I’d almost
believe in fate. If somebody told me Jesus Christ was outside
walking on water, I’d have to take a look.”

Clifton shifted again. He looked like a
young boy who has just been thrashed by the local bully. His
hospital gown was too big and it billowed on his chest and hung
loosely around his neck. His greasy hair curled all over his head.
Ingrid noticed he continually flexed the fingers on his right hand.
He probably wasn’t even aware of it. An easy silence grew between
them. Ingrid heard the vague, distant patter of rain peppering down
the mountainsides.

“
Think you’ll play the Foggy Mountain
Breakdown with that arm,” Ingrid ventured.

“
Huh,” Clifton blinked twice. “Sorry.
I was musing to myself.”

“
About what?”

“
I was wondering how far along the
project is.”

“
Almost done,” Ingrid apologized.
“Sorry you missed it.”

“
I’ve got no complaints. There’ll be
other projects.”

“
Do you really feel that way,” Ingrid
asked anxiously.

Clifton looked at her strangely. “Did
you think I would feel some other way?”

“
I...” she began. “I really didn’t
know,” she finished in a small voice. “I didn’t know how you would
take it. Oh, shit, I might as well tell the truth. I was afraid you
might hate me.”

“
Now why,” he said, “do I think that’s
the craziest goddam thing I’ve ever heard?”

“
It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I
thought you might wake up and see yourself as somehow different,
maybe not quite what you would have liked to be... a sort of
monster. And what would that make me?”

“
I don’t feel any different, good or
bad, just grateful.” He looked steadily at Ingrid. “But you’re not
the same.”

“
No,” she said, averting her eyes.
“I’m not the same. I don’t know what it is. Playing Pollyanna for
so long is wearing on me.”

Clifton started to speak, but something
stilled him. Ingrid felt it, too. A sense of impending urgency like
the air before a hurricane strikes.

Racing footfalls sounded down the
hallway, corning rapidly closer. Running shadows bobbed by the
doorway. They lengthened as the steps became louder. Ingrid and
Alex looked at each other. The running became more ponderous, like
malevolent messengers. Clifton looked puzzled. Ingrid’s face was a
stark sketch of anxiety. Tension ticked in the room like a hidden
bomb.

Randy Bare rushed into the infirmary.
He had run all the way from the incubator, a distance of some two
hundred yards through corridors and around corners. Rivers of sweat
ran down his temples, the sides of his face, and into his collar.
His ribcage heaved with every breath and he placed his hands on the
door frame to steady himself.

“
He’s up,” Bare gasped
harshly.

“
Who’s up,” Ingrid said, thinking he
must mean Clifton, then suddenly understood.

“
Seth’s
up? He’s awake?”

“
He came right up off the table,” Bare
panted. “Ripped out all his tubing and stood right up. He was a
little unsteady and he fell...”

“
You let him fall down?”
Ingrid
shrieked.

“
He got right back up,” Bare said
quickly. “He’s going crazy trying to get out. Like an animal or
something, beating against the walls and trying to break the
glass...”

“
What did you do,” Ingrid
interrupted.

“
Do?”
Bare asked, wide-eyed. “I came to
get
you.”

“
Oh, you stupid little...” Ingrid
looked at Clifton to tell him she was leaving, but he had already
thrown his covers back.

“
What are you doing,” she asked, her
voice pitched a half step too high.

“
I’m going to help.”

“
There’s nothing you can do,
Alex.”

“
Like hell,” he said. “I’m
going.”

Ingrid bit her lip, torn between
ordering Clifton to stay in bed, or making certain Seth didn’t
splash his very special brains all over the walls of the
incubator.

“
You know the way,” she said
decisively. “Get there as quick as you can.”

Halfway down the hallway, she heard Clifton roar.
“Where are my
goddam clothes?”

********************

The viewing glass of the incubator was
smeared with blood by the time Ingrid arrived. Seth’s howls and
screams were clear long before she got there. They were the
frightened sounds of a trapped beast.

She was stunned to see that Seth’s
blows had put minute, spider web cracks in the three inch thick
glass. As she watched, he raised his massive, four fingered fists
(no pinkies) and smashed them against the glass. Ingrid felt the
vibrations reverberate through the soles of her feet. The shock was
accompanied by a wailing scream rising to the shriek of a mad man.
Seth’s black eyes rolled from side to side, glinting like oil. His
small lips were contorted in a snarl, tiny teeth glimmering
purple-white in the incubator’s twilight. Sweat dotted his gray
scalp. Tubing and slings snaked down from the ceiling or coiled on
the floor where they had been ripped down. Dark blood bubbled from
Seth’s nose where the nasogastric feeds had been ripped out. The
white, adhesive tape that had held it in place hung from Seth’s
thin, upper lip.

“
What are we going to do,” Randy
babbled, shocked into immobility by his inability to do anything.
Ingrid flashed back to a memory of earliest childhood; Karl Malden
on the television saying gravely:
“What will you do? What will you
do?”

“
Shut off the oxygen,” she said
quickly.

Randy’s eyes opened in abrupt
understanding. He snapped his fingers. “Right!” He ran to the
control panel and turned the oxygen control to two percent, its
lowest setting.

A knot of people had gathered at the
incubator, staring in wide-mouthed and open-eyed. Clifton
shouldered his way through the pack. He had not found his clothes
and had made do with a white lab coat he had belted around him. He
was barefoot and his present apparel hung a modest three inches
below his knees, but was not enough to conceal his naked, hairy
shins.

Seth began a methodical pacing, pulling
at any likely protrusion that might offer escape. His movements
became more labored as carbon dioxide levels increased. His eyelids
drooped, giving him a gummy eyed, calculating stare. His eyes
caught Ingrid’s and reopened in alarm. His nostrils flared
defiantly.

He staggered and lurched from side to
side, weaving like a street wino. His hugeness made his movements
appear slow and massive, like watching animated dinosaurs at the
movies. His left leg buckled into a grotesque shape like cooked
spaghetti as he fumbled vainly with a wall brace designed to hold a
plasma bag.

Ingrid moaned when he passed out and
hit the floor, his entire eight foot length rolling up like a pile
of Jell-O. His eyes closed slowly but his lips remained parted,
showing his peg-like teeth. His expression was more pain than
anger.

“
Turn it back on! Turn it back
on!”
Ingrid
railed at Randy. “Do you want to brain damage him?”

She turned and took in the crowd that
had gathered.

“
You,” she said, selecting a burly,
white-jacketed man. “Get me six cc’s of Premagan. I want him taken
to the infirmary and sedated.”

The man seemed somewhat confused and
made no move to comply with her order. He stood as if dazed. Ingrid
glared at him with eyes like flashing, double darts.

“
Move your ass, sonofabitch! What are
you waiting for?”

The man hastened away.

“
Here, Alex,” Ingrid said, accessing
the incubator door. “You and Randy help me get him into the
infirmary.”

Ingrid hurried into the incubator and
squatted by Seth more gracefully than Clifton would have thought
possible under the circumstances. He and Randy each grabbed one of
Seth’s arms and levered him up. He was pure, dead weight and both
of them grunted and strained just to get him to shoulder height.
Clifton’s joints and muscles, too long idle, screamed blue murder.
They were both fairly tall, but Seth’s knees still dragged on the
floor. His head flopped limply from side to side, finally coming to
rest on Clifton’s shoulder. His bloody nose smeared Clifton’s lab
coat.

They moved out of the incubator and
down the corridor. Ingrid led the way, looking over her shoulder
every few seconds. She was horrified that Seth’s knees were
dragging on the floor. She saw smears of blood on the chaste white
tile where his knees had been scraped raw. Clifton and Bare were
stooped over like aged, leather-skinned fishermen at the end of a
hard day.