Xeno Sapiens (36 page)

Alan stroked his long chin
thoughtfully. “Should we be in fear for our lives?” He asked the
question without melodrama, fully expecting an honest
answer.

“
You know him,” Merrifield said.
“Better than most what he can and will do. We can sit here and be
safe while he hunts Seth down, then comes for us; let the doomsday
plan unfold and lose everything. Or we can be men and try to
protect him, and ourselves. What do you think?”

“
I’ve had it,” Alex said darkly. “I’m
angry, wet, tired, and ready to put an end to this thing. We can’t
sit around and wait for shit to happen. Is that about
it?”

“
If Hall gets to Seth before we do,
he’ll kill him. I can’t be any more blunt than that.” Merrifield
rubbed the back of his neck harshly. If Ingrid thought she had been
awake long hours, she could have asked Merrifield about the red eye
special.

“
Hall is a trained killer. He tried
for me once before and a man like him won’t miss a twice.”
Merrifield looked around the table. “I’m not speaking out of fear
for my life. What kind of life will any of us have if Hall goes
parading up and down the halls of congress with Seth’s head on a
spiked pole?” Merrifield shook his head. “We have to get him
back.”

Sunners was the next to
speak.

“
I’ll go,” he said softly, “it’s my
fault, anyway.” He looked at the gathering, his eyes red. “It was
the codon sequences. It had to be. On the day the wringer blew up,
something must have happened to them; something that made Seth go
nuts. It’s my responsibility; my bad.”

“
What we need right now,” Merrifield
said, “is hands, not someone in sackcloth and ashes. That you’re
willing to help is enough.” Merrifield looked at Jimmy skeptically.
“How old are you, anyway?”

“
Twenty-four.”

“
That is brash,” Merrifield said
broodingly.

“
You know,” Caudill said, “we’re going
to make the most motley collection of monster hunters in history,
don’t you? I haven’t fired a weapon in five years, or spent much
time schlepping around in the mud. You’re certainly in no condition
to go on this expedition. This could turn into a
bloodbath.”

“
What else can we do,” Merrifield
said, finally reduced to a man with no options. And for a man like
Merrifield, that had to stick in his craw. “I don’t think any of us
can sit here and wait for the end. If Seth went into town, maybe
he’ll come back here. He’s hurt. What else does he
know?”

“
What about me,” Ingrid asked. “What
do I do?”

“
I know how you feel about Seth, but
it’s more important that you remain safe. You’ll be the only one
able to control him when we get him back.”

“
You mean ‘if’, don’t you?”

“
I mean
when
. There’s more than enough for everybody to do. I
want you to prepare the infirmary and get everybody ready to go for
the time we get back with Seth.”

Ingrid hated Merrifield for weighting
the scheme like this. Emotions of pique were useless. Merrifield
had played the game longer. He had taken the choice out of her
hands.

“
I don’t like it, Jon,” she said, “but
you’ve got me again. What should I do?”

“
Get on the phone and call every
employee that works here. Get them up here tonight. I’ll send a
couple of people to the front gate with specific instructions not
to allow anyone they don’t personally recognize in. Not the cops,
not the townspeople. I want everybody on standby with the medical
facilities re-outfitted. The only people that know about the
doomsday plan are in this room, and I want to keep it that way.
When all that’s done, I want you to lock yourself in my office
until you hear from me again.”

“
Lock myself in?”

“
There is a .45 in the top drawer of
my cabinet. You’ll find it behind my booze.”

Merrifield looked around for reaction
and found none. His boozing was apparently common
knowledge.

“
I want you to get it -the gun, not
the booze- cock it, and sit there, even if you have a hundred
people up here. I pray you have no reason to pull the trigger, but
if Hall gets past us, he’ll come for you.”

“
You’re giving him an awful lot of
credit. He’s not Superman.”

“
He can do it,” Merrifield said.
“Anyone else I wouldn’t worry about. I want you as safe as can be
under the circumstances. You understand?”

“
Yes.”

Merrifield seemed satisfied.

“
Gentlemen?”

They got up. The chair legs made a
shuddering scraping sound as they were pushed back.

“
It looks like we’re on our own,” Alex
said to Ingrid. “Christ, I’m beginning to wonder if this night will
ever end.”

“
Let’s go,” Merrifield said. He was
at, the door with his right arm extended, “The night will end.
We’ll be back before you know it.”

Ingrid wondered if she should say good
bye. Merrifield had done his best to lighten the situation and she
could almost believe they would return unscathed with Seth intact.
But her heart knew the possibility that some of all of them might
die was very real. Either by Seth’s hand or those of Josh Hall. The
time to brass up for her Godlike accomplishments had come and there
was nothing she could do about it. In the end she said neither good
bye nor good luck, feeling it would be an admission of
defeat.

Instead, she got up and kissed Alex on
the cheek before he left. The door closed behind them and Ingrid
sat alone for a brief time, waiting for them to get out of sight
before she left for Merrifield’s office.

“
I never expected you to have a
frigging arsenal in this place,” Jimmy said.

They had come to a door with a quiet
sign marked “Supplies”. After they had left Ingrid, they had not
spoken, each man alone with his thoughts.

Alex felt sorry for Caudill and
Sunners. Their only stake in this was the work they had
contributed. Jimmy was brash, as Merrifield had pointed out, but
Caudill was a man on the back nine of his youth. His
accomplishments were unrecognized by the public at large, and he
was being asked to put his life on the line for a project that
would probably be met with a zip gun hail of criticism even as it
saved lives. Fuck it, he thought. This wasn’t the time to
philosophize.

Merrifield arrived at a set of lockers
from which he pulled out several pairs of white coveralls. He may
have been a man in a hurry, but was prudent enough to spend ten
minutes changing out of a thousand dollar suit and into clothing
which allowed more agility in the slick mud and brittle, dormant
bushes.

“
We use these in the clean sections.
Not the recommended garb for slogging through the mud, but
preferable to Hugo Boss suits and Gucci loafers. You’ll find some
rubber boots in that cabinet over there.”

Merrifield spoke to Alex as the men
dressed.

“
I’m going to send Joel and Leon down
to the gate. I’ll pick up some raincoats on the way back. In the
meantime,” he said, picking up his dress trousers and fishing a key
ring out of them, “I want you to outfit everybody with whatever
weapons we have.” He gave the keys to Alex.

“
We have a couple of extra .45’s,
courtesy of our recently departed guards. Some others are in that
chest in the corner.”

Merrifield departed, looking very
different and somehow darkly humorous in his white suit and squeaky
black boots. It was slowly dawning on them that they had shifted
suddenly from a mundane, workday existence into a horror movie,
seemingly without effort and without warning.

Clifton unlocked the chest and swung
the lid back. A layer of white, cotton cloth stained with gun oil
lay inside. The cloying smell of the Cosmoline protectant drifted
out. Clifton peeled back the lining to reveal six handguns lying
blackly against the cloth. Smears of gun oil had crept around the
edges of the pistols, giving them a sinister, black
aura.

“
Jon expected this,” Clifton said
darkly.

“
No,” Caudill said quietly. “Not this.
I think he only planned for it.”

Alex pulled one of the pistols out and
handed it to Jimmy.

“
You know how to use this?”

Jimmy took the pistol, his eyes wide.
Clifton dug a clip out of the chest and gave it to him. Jimmy
shoved the clip into the butt of the gun and snapped the well-oiled
slide action back. He flipped the safety to the on
position.

“
I feel like fucking Roy Rogers,”
Jimmy said. “You got a holster for this thing? I’m sure as hell not
sticking it in my waistband.”

Clifton rummaged around a bit more and
came up with three, black leather holsters.

He gave one each to Jimmy and Caudill
before taking one for himself. Caudill, still looking more like a
college professor than anything else, belted his holster on with a
studied precision that belied his scholarly appearance. It was not
an action with which he was unfamiliar.

“
How do I look,” he asked.

“
Straight out of Sergio Leone,”
Clifton said.

Merrifield returned, toting three,
mustard yellow raincoats. He sported a black slicker for himself.
Clifton retrieved a fourth holster for Merrifield.

“
The rain has picked up,” he said.
“Visibility is practically zero and will get worse once the fog
sets in. Fickle Lady Fortune is not smiling. Does anyone want to
back out now?”

Merrifield looked at his group. He saw
no real fear, just a slight uneasiness on Sunners’ face.

“
You can use that firearm,” Merrifield
asked.

Jimmy smiled like a broken
moon.

“
In a pinch, I guess.”

“
That pinch may come tonight.” He
spoke to Alex. “There are two walkie talkies lurking in that chest
somewhere. Do you think you could get them, please?”

Alex had already run across the
transceivers. Merrifield had stocked his own private arsenal with
high grade weapons and they were an incongruous fit with the cheap
walkie talkies with the K-Mart emblem on them. It was almost
funny.

Merrifield produced another pistol from
beneath the voluminous folds of his raincoat. He held a clip with a
set of blank cartridges. Tucked feathers were visible at the ribbed
edges of the casings. If Ingrid had known about the tranquilizer
gun, Merrifield knew, she would have had an incendiary
stroke.

“
Alan and I will form one team,” he
said. “We will remain in constant radio contact. I trust you and
Jimmy can handle yourselves if push comes to shove.”

Alex handed out the radios. They turned
on their sets and were rewarded with crackles of static.

“
Alan and I will scour the area north
and east of the camp,” Merrifield said. “I’d like you and Jimmy to
search south and west, I can make no definite area of limit, but I
think Seth is making his way back here. Use your best
judgment.”

“
Why do you think he’s on his way
here,” Alex asked.

“
Just a feeling,” Merrifield said,
recalling the beast that lurked in the hallways of the Alamo. “I
can’t give you a why. I think you’ll know when Seth is
around.”

“
But will we know when
Hall
is around,” Alex
said. “That’s the real worry.”

“
Hope you run into Seth first. Hall
won’t be far behind. You can get the drop on him.”

“
And if we run into Hall first,” Jimmy
asked. “What then?”

Merrifield looked at Alex,

“
I’ll handle that if it comes up,
Jimmy,” Alex said firmly.

“
We’ll take the tranquilizer gun,”
Merrifield said. “I never thought I’d say this, but don’t take any
chances, especially not with Hall. I don’t see the makings of a
goddam hero anywhere in this room, and I want it to stay that way.
We’re doing nothing but looking for a lost child. The guns are only
in case there are...wild things in the forest. We’ll be best served
if we look at it that way. Is everybody sure of my
instructions?”

There were no comments.

“
Fine,” Merrifield said. “There are
flashlights on the way out. For God’s sake, make sure they’re
working before you get outside where you need them. It’s eleven
o’clock now. Let’s say we report back here by five am. But I have a
feeling we’ll be done long before then.”

Just a shadow, the man moved his two
hundred pounds through the forest like a silent, ebony leopard. His
black suit was woven of a tight, nylon-cotton blend that would not
snag on branches or other obstacles. His face was darkened with an
oil based pigment that would not run in the rain and his silicone
treated goggles were fog-proof. Rubber-soled shoes with deep, firm
treads assured good purchase on the muddy hillsides.