Xeno Sapiens (35 page)

Josh Hall’s mad laughter rang out above
the melee.

“
Where are you going,
brethren,”
he called out. “Do you not feel safe in the fold of God’s
Love? Have you seen the true face of the Lord and been frightened?”
Hall boomed his evil laugh again.

“
Have no fear, friends,” he implored.
“A dragon prowls through the night and wears the body of a
man.”

Hall’s wicked words rang louder as the
screaming exodus from the auditorium continued.

The storm had melted the mountain
slopes into an almost impenetrable bog. Seth had fled to them,
running from the auditorium like a man before the fury of a rising
tsunami. Still with no ability to think in abstracts, he could not
articulate the perfect terror he had felt at Hall’s blazing
stare.

He had descended to the auditorium in
the rain, moving silent and unseen through the shadowed byways of
the town. Clouds that had only thinly masked the moon had now
gathered in profusion. The wind whistled down the alleyways and
tugged at his heels. Even from a distance Seth sensed the energy
flowing from the auditorium, A building passion that was
overpowering. It struck out blindly, like groping
tendrils.

Hall’s thoughts were clear and
powerful, confined by definite parameters, never straying or
whirling off on tangents. They telegraphed through the air in
precise bolts of empathy. This close to the man, Seth felt two
opposing sets of energy fields coming into contact. Seth had
accepted the powerful, unseen webs of energy that accompanied him
as a natural part of his being. Now, a counterbalancing field of
power set itself against him. It was a new and frightening
experience, his first encounter with the physical power of
madness.

Seth had approached the rear of the
building. Though his aches and pains had mostly ceased, he had no
desire for another eyeball to eyeball confrontation, especially
with this man who was not like other men. He searched fruitlessly
for an obscure vantage point. There appeared to be no way to
observe Hall without going directly to the front of the
Auditorium.

Hall had begun his sermon and Seth
found the colors and textures of his emotions interesting in their
own right. As Hall had raved and spread himself more vigorously,
heating the crowd, Seth’s senses went up and out, leaving his
body.

The darkness was no hindrance to him,
but it blazed like a bonfire in comparison to the darkness in
Hall’s heart. Phrases, outlined in nightmare black and dripping
with hate, cascaded into his mind, merging with the red glow of his
fury.

“
...False prophets will come among
you...”

“
...They will bring false
teachings...”

“
...The lust for power...”

“
...The effrontery to insult
God...”

“
...They have created a
being...”

“
...He is a monster,
friends...”

The sky had opened for fair and cold
rain fell heavily. Some of the drops took on erratically spinning,
oblong shapes as they fell through the boundaries of the opposing
energy fields. Unnoticed by most, Alex Clifton had felt the static
zone where the fields collided, though he could not have told it as
such. It was that inexplicable sensation of power held in
precarious balance that had forced his gaze from Hall and toward
the lobby.

Seth had looked on the face of Josh
Hall for the first time. It was a face more handsome than most,
surely worlds away from the inflamed mass of shredded tissue and
semi-gangrenous flesh of his own. Hall’s eyes blazed like polished
diamonds and his body trembled as he had delivered the final words
that should have been the death knell for Ingrid, the Alamo, and
Seth.

Hall had shouted
“A sign from the Lord!”
and all of Seth’s rage had surfaced,
trembling at the edge of control. When Hall had shouted
“resurrection” the connotations of the word were so personal to
Seth that he felt it the grossest obscenity of all for this man to
utter it from his mouth. The energy fields trembled, two Goliaths
locked in mortal combat.

A familiar surge of energy had
literally torn itself from Seth’s body, as if some part of his
being had forcibly detached itself from his innards. The windows
before him had disintegrated in a glassy detonation.

The next sounds he had heard were
screams and the booming of thunder.

A swooning, rapturous euphoria overcame
Seth as he faced the monster. Hall was within Seth’s ability to
destroy, and he awaited Hall’s cowering submission.

“
Resurrection!”
Seth had screeched,
wild-voiced. He looked like a rain soaked phantom of the opera.
There were anguished cries of despair as Seth’s power grew and he
waited for the power to crush Hall.

Hall had not crumbled. He glared
lividly at Seth, his eyes those of a reanimated corpse. Seth felt a
whisper-like tremor as one of the energy fields drained. He sensed
the joy in Hall’s heart, the nightmarish glee that Seth’s
appearance had brought him. The colors were bright and gilt-edged,
as unreal as a portrait done by an artist on the fringe of
lunacy.

Hall had pointed a condemning finger,
his voice filled with the bright, mercurial bite of a maniac.
Hall’s power overwhelmed Seth. He had turned the tables, using the
frenzied might of his insanity as a weapon.

The renewed aches in Seth’s jaw
compounded the chaotic rush of new sensations that deluged his
brain. There was a mental overload; such a mass of information and
emotion that his mind could not handle it. He had underestimated
Hall and would be lucky to escape with his life.

He had turned and fled.

He had scrambled through the desolate
streets, catching an occasional glimpse of a curious eye peeping
from the corner of a drawn curtain. Eyes were raised in surprise at
the sight of a naked giant barreling through town on this rainy
night. Seth had returned to the woods, pushing through the
undergrowth, welcoming the wooden scrapes and scratches of dried
limbs that were the reminders of winter’s ravages. He made steady
progress uphill. Mud squelched coldly between his toes while the
driving rain beat a stinging drum roll against his inflamed
face.

He knew that Hall would pursue him. The others had, and
they were not nearly so dangerous as Hall. Hall was a hungry wolf.
Starved not for food, but for a curiously human trait Seth would
soon come to know:
vengeance.

Merrifield had convened the meeting
quickly. Seated around the conference table were Alan Caudill,
still blinking from his recently disrupted sleep; Jimmy Sunners;
Ingrid, a new strain showing on her face even before she heard the
news, and Alex Clifton, still in his dripping clothes. He had
called Merrifield from town and related the entire, sordid
tale.

Merrifield brought the distrait
assembly to order.

“
If you haven’t heard the rumors
already, here it is. Seth is gone. No surprise there. What is
surprising is that he turned up at Mr. Hall’s tent revival
tonight.”

There were a few raised eyebrows, but
nothing really spectacular in the way of reaction. Those assembled
had perhaps done their jobs too well.

“
Is he alright,” Ingrid asked. “I was
afraid he was never going to be found.”

Merrifield motioned to
Clifton.

“
He’s hurt,” Clifton said carefully.
“The newspaper said the old man that was attacked had cut his
assailant’s face. It looked bad. Infected. We have to get him back.
Quick.” Merrifield’s warning about the doomsday plan was heavy on
Clifton’s mind.

“
Oh,” Ingrid said, as if something had
just registered. “Do you approve, now?”

“
Yes,” Alex said tiredly. “Jon and I
had a little talk.”

“
That’s not important, now,”
Merrifield interrupted, stamping on any coming recriminations.
“I’ve gathered you all together to see if we can devise a plan of
action to track him down. The people in this room know him better
than anybody in the world.”

“
What about the guard,” Caudill asked.
His bald head shone like a full moon in the harshly lit conference
room. “I thought they were conducting the search.”

“
Were
is the key word. Two of the searchers have
failed to report back.”

“
They never checked in,” Alan
asked.

“
Never. They haven’t been seen or
heard from since late in the day.”

“
The guard is still conducting the
search though, isn’t it?”

Merrifield looked questioningly at
Clifton. He shook his head silently.

“
I’m afraid not,” Alex said. “We
believe the two guardsmen are dead.”

“
Dead,” Jimmy said. Sudden
understanding blanched his face beneath his red hair. “Do you
mean...”

“
We think Seth killed
them.”

From the corner of his eye, Alex saw
Ingrid draw her breath in sharply.

“
But why,” Jimmy asked.

“
We don’t know,” Merrifield answered.
“Any one of a million things could have gone wrong. He may have
felt threatened. As you know, Seth is not...usual.”

“
He seems to have met his match in
Hall,” Clifton murmured.

“
Mr. Hall’s involvement in this affair
is being attended to at this very moment,” Merrifield said. “As far
as the search for the missing guardsmen, as Alex has said, it will
have to wait.”

“
On whose authority was the search
canceled,” Ingrid asked, astonished that such a thing could
happen.

“
Someone very high up. Not that it
matters.” Merrifield briefly described the doomsday plan. “The blue
berets and FBI men will be here in the morning to take over. If
they get their hands on Seth first it will be the end for all of
us. God knows, we could all be lying under a pile of rubble by
then.”

He summed up the entire situation with
a chagrined shake of his head.

“
You’re saying we’re on our own?”
Jimmy tried to sound unruffled.

“
Until the morning, at least. Under
normal circumstances, we could live with that, and with the
doomsday plan.” He looked at the table for a few moments before
looking up. He looked at no-one in particular, preferring to
address his remarks to all.

“
The sad fact is we may not have until
morning. Mr. Clifton was witness to the debacle at the auditorium
tonight. It has been described to me in painful detail.” He ran his
finger around the inside of his collar.

“
We’re all aware of Mr. Hall’s past
endeavors. If there was ever any doubt he’s crazy as a goddam loon,
they should have been dispelled. He’ll be working against
us.”

“
He’s
been
working against us,” Ingrid said. “Why the hurry
now? He can’t work anything on his own. He needs help.”

“
Seth changed all that. We’re up and
on guard now and time is not his friend. He may be crazy, but his
credibility would suffer a disastrous blow if he’s unable to prove
his wild allegations. It would be just another Bigfoot story. He
knows he could never get the proof he needs out of us. No, what he
wants is Seth’s head. That will be his proof. Aside from that,
he
likes
to kill. He doesn’t care anymore. If he can’t get Seth,
he’ll come for me. And you, Ingrid.”

Ingrid looked ill.

“
You don’t know that,” she
said.

“
I anticipate,” Merrifield said in
answer, “a phone call at anytime. This phone call will be from one
of my accredited cronies who has been dispatched to scoop up the
local bobbies and have Mr. Hall arrested. It seems he has been into
much mischief.”

Despite everything, Merrifield almost
winked at Clifton.

“
This phone call will inform me that
Mr. Hall is nowhere to be found. I hope I’m mistaken, but I don’t
believe I will be.”

At that moment, true to prediction, the
phone buzzed. Merrifield didn’t waste the effort to look smug. He
picked up the receiver, listened briefly, then hung up.

“
Mr. Hall is loose. I have no idea how
many people will be coming up here beating on the front gate like
the mob in the Frankenstein movies, but Alex tells me they’ve had a
frightful time at Hall’s merriment. I think they’re the least of
our worries. Hall, however, cannot be taken lightly. Left to his
own devices, he might blow the building up around our
ears.”

“
Would he go that far,” Ingrid
asked.

“
The man has no love for me or my
work, or for you and your work. It’s what has driven his madness
for fifteen years. He knows Seth is alive. He can count on no help
from the authorities or the media. No-one is going to believe a
fifth rate reporter from some local rag, and the eyewitnesses will
be discounted. It was dark, they were in rapture, they were misled
by some otherwise mundane experience. If I know Jason Lewis, he’s
trying to figure out a way to foist the responsibility off on
someone else. This is Hall’s chance to destroy us all. He won’t let
it go by.”