That Nietzsche Thing (11 page)

“Tori-shima? No.”

“No, nobody has,” the General sighed. “This
was before Fat Man and Little Boy. We were pushing closer to the
coast of Japan, still looking for airfields. Of course, back then,
Tokyo was still the target for Little Boy. Tori-shima is only three
hundred miles from the Ginza.

“The 11th Airborne parachuted in. We were
expecting heavy resistance, after what the leathernecks had found
on Iwo Jima. And here we were right in the Tojo’s backyard. We
expected hell on earth. But the defenses we found had already been
picked clean. Bunkers, antiaircraft guns, artillery. It was all
there, just waiting. Ten thousand shells and a million rounds of
ammunition, but no Tojos. Not a single one. The whole Goddamn
island was abandoned. Or so we thought.

“The Paratroopers find signs of a firefight,
empty clips, bullet holes. But no bodies. Whatever had cleared out
the defenders had done it hit fast and clean. No mess. The 11th was
left with nothing to do. No enemy. Someone had done their job for
them. Tori-shima was taken without firing a shot.

“But who’d cleared out all the Nips? They
sure as shit hadn’t retreated of their own volition. Not this close
to the shores of Japan. Mutiny, perhaps? Was this a sign that the
Tojo’s grip on the rank and file was beginning to slip? No, it
turned out to be nothing so neat and clean. As the paratroopers
pushed deeper into the island, the found what had taken care of all
the Tojos.”

“That...thing?” I asked, lighting another
cigarette.

The General nodded. “They found an old well,
covered over with sheet steel, chained up and padlocked. On top of
that, the Nips had piled boulders, big enough that it required a
dozen men with block and tackle to move them. Whatever Tojos had
survived the attack, had locked something big...dangerous…down in
that well.

“But all the GIs found was that character,”
Groves pointed back toward the workshop’s door, “cowing in the
dark. Dog tags read PFC Michael Elton. They figured him for some
sort of POW. Maybe from the Philippines. Bataan. He was half-crazy,
rambling nonsense. Then the second they pull him out into the
daylight, his flesh catches fire, like someone had put a match to
him. Queerest thing. They put him out but they figure he’s dead. No
pulse. Nothing. Then it’s into a body bag and back onto the medical
frigate, as the 11th moves on, pushing closer into Japan.”

“But he wasn’t dead,” I said, already knowing
the answer.

“No,” the General said calmly. “In the night,
the frigate goes missing. Takes three days for the spotter planes
to track it down, adrift in amongst the Izu’s. Can’t be reached by
radio, no answer to semaphores or Morse. Rescue crew goes aboard
and find a ghost ship. Not a soul aboard.”

I nodded. “Except one.”

“Exactly. Cowering down in the bilge. One
bedraggled, insane PFC...”

“I take it he’s not, in actuality, Private
First Class Elton,” I asked as the General and I stepped back into
the workshop.

“No, Elton was MIA at Midway. How
this...thing...got his dog tags, and how he ended up on Tori-shima,
we have no idea.”

“Did you ask it?” I queried. “Does
it...speak?”

“Oh yes. English. Spanish. French. Japanese.
Any language you choose, when it’s lucid. But all he says is that
his real name is Cain. When he’s conscious, however, he’s
dangerous. Very dangerous. We’ve already lost six men. Only the
lights keep him in check. Sunlight burns him. These are
ultraviolet. Too little, and he’ll tear your head off. Too much and
it fries him to a crisp. But at just the right levels...”

“Why don’t you just destroy it?” I asked,
looking at the smoldering corpse in disgust. “If it’s so
dangerous?”

The General gave me a look that I couldn’t
quiet read, then stepped into the circle of light. From his
holster, he removed his .45 and proceeded to put three bullets into
the bound figure.

I recoiled in shock, horrified that the
General would act on my suggestion so literally. But as Groves
returned his weapon to its holster, I noticed the slumped figure
had hardly wavered from the impact of the shots. The bullet holes
in his flesh appeared to rapidly heal over, until twenty seconds
after being shot, there was no sign that the man had even been
injured.

“Dear God!” I exclaimed as the General
stepped out of the light.

“Except for direct sunlight, PFC Elton there
is almost totally invulnerable to physical attack. His strength is
easily that of twenty men. Whatever else that the PFC is, he is
most certainly a formidable weapon. The brass have taken note. The
White House has set up a new committee. Designation MJ-12. They’re
calling the shots on this one. They’re looking for anything that
might give us a leg up on the Pinkos. They sent him here for us to
study before he’s destroyed. They want to know if we might be able
to reproduce the technology that created him.”

“Technology?” I looked into the circle of
burning light. “But he’s not a machine. He’s a monster.”

“Mmm,” the General agreed. “But monsters have
their uses.”

Chapter 15

I’ll skip ahead here. There are pages and
pages of Dark recruiting a scientific team and setting up the
laboratory specifically to study the subject they’d codenamed
Cain.

It’s pretty dreary stuff. Lots of details.
Needless to say, the whole operation was strictly off-book with the
Army, but the mysterious executive committee, MJ-12 is able to
provide Groves and Dark with all the recourses they need.

Dark had no scientific experience himself,
but he’s acting as a sort of ideas man for the General. Groves, for
his part, cherry picks the best minds out of the post-war medical
and biological communities.

It all adds up to something about the size of
a Manhattan Project, Part Two. Both Groves and Dark are convinced
that Cain represents a new type of weapon, their atomic super
solider, one that can dominate whatever future fallout-soaked
battlefield America finds itself fighting on.

They’re desperate to weaponize their prisoner
in some fashion. They hope to somehow harness his strength and
agility without replicating the sun allergy or the loss of life
functions. With a whole platoon of soldiers like Cain, they know
that the U.S. Army would be unstoppable. It reads like something
lifted straight out of one of Dark’s pulp sci-fi novels. Novels he
hadn’t yet written.

Soon, they were making staggering advances,
inventing much of the science as they go along: DNA, genomeic
sequencing, endogenous retrovirus polymorphism. They’re breaking
ground on a lot of what we now know as molecular biology. Cain
represents, above all else, a genetic mystery. A mystery the
General and Dark are eager to solve.

Cain’s thirst for blood comes late to their
understanding. Keeping him in a constant torpor as they are, they
remain ignorant to the exact reasons behind his murderous
tendencies. But as time passes, and the PFC’s health seemed to
worsen, the scientist team are forced to examine how their patient
is able to stay alive at all. The longer they deny Cain blood, the
more human he seems to become. His ultraviolet sensitivity
diminishes, as does his apparent superhuman strength.

They are even able to detected slight life
signs in his inert body.

Paradoxically, the lack of blood doesn’t kill
Cain but causes him to appear more alive.

Not once in the book does Dark ever use the
word “vampire.” Maybe he was in denial about what 1728 really had
on its hands, but the ‘V’ word almost leaps off every page of his
book. Blood, sunlight...they do everything but test for an allergy
to garlic. Dark’s commentary might read like some dime horror
novel, but Dark writes with such banal attention of everyday detail
that it’s hard to think of it as anything but a faithful
documentation of fact.

But I’m editorializing. What I think of
Dark’s Last Novel
is beside the point. I’ll skip ahead to
where the book once again intersects with the Montavez case. Right
about when the relationship between Dark and Groves starts to break
down.

They’d had some success separating the
details of Cain’s genome from that of a normal human being’s.
They’d tagged the genetic divinations with markers and then
synthesized a retrovirus that replicates the strings in a healthy
genome.

But their animal test subjects fail to
manifest any of the characteristics they were hoping for. Instead
of increased strength and endurance, the genetically modified
chimpanzees demonstrate a punch-drunk, sloppy blissfulness.

Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s what I thought
as I read it. And Dark explicitly makes the connection as he’s
talking with the General:

#

...growing increasing concerned with the
General’s overall attitude to the Cain Project. When the results
from the last batch of test subjects arrived and were even less
encouraging that the early lots, I was seriously starting to
question the scientific merit of what we were attempting to
achieve.

We seemed to be inextricably escaping the
orbit of nation defense and straying into the murkier water of
eugenic curiosity.

Far be it for me to question Grove’s motives,
but his reaction to the daily results coming in from the
laboratories was beginning to disturb me. That our retrovirus was
showing no signs of replicating Cain’s unique abilities but was
instead showing pronounced narcotic effects, indicated to me that
the line of experimentation was reaching a dead-end.

But the General, somehow, saw the result as
encouraging.

What exactly was the Army’s definition of
success here? My concern grew with each new round of
experiments.

It was batch three hundred that finally put
me over the edge.

I stormed into the General’s office with
every intention of getting some answers. He was on a call when I
pushed past his secretary, steam billowing from my ears.

“I’ll need to call you back,” Groves said to
the handset as I paced before his large, oak desk. “Yes. Yes.
Fifteen minutes.” He hung up the phone. “This better be important,
Dark,” he said to me.

“It is.” I slammed the folder containing the
results of batch test 300 down onto his ink blotter.

The General, with his casual, military air,
did not react. “Are these the latest test results?” he asked,
without touching the manila envelope.

“Yes. I assume you’ve seen them?”

“I have,” the General confirmed.

“Then, do you want to explain them to
me?”

“Dark,” he said, in a condescending tone. “It
is not my job to explain test results to you...”

“That’s not what I meant!” I hollered,
throwing up my arms. “You and I both signed off on an
experimentation regiment, last week. We agreed that we were
excluding any more modifications to the alpha twenty-three
nucleotide chain. That the results we were seeing there were not
encouraging. Do you remember?”

“I do,” the General said calmly.

“Then, what is this?” I poked the folder
before Groves. “Thirty percent divination in the alpha twenty-three
chain? Are you going to tell me this was an accident?”

“No,” Grove said without emotion, reaching
for the tobacco pouch that sat next to the 300 test results.

“Well then?” I said, exasperated.

“Dark,” the General began, filling his cheek
with a slug of chew. “I think, in all the minutia, you might have
forgotten our mission here.”

“I most certainly have not,” I replied,
offended. “The alpha twenty-three nucleotide chain has produced
nothing but narcotic symptoms in the animal test subjects. Symptoms
we’ve been unable to counteract. We’ve had to extirpate two-hundred
chimpanzees to date.”

“No, Dark,” the General shook his head. “See?
This is exactly what I mean. Have you forgotten that we embarked on
this scientific exercise with the express goal of weaponizing the
Cain subject?”

“Yes, of course, but...but you can’t mean...”
I said in horror.

“It’s the first fruitful line of
experimentation we’ve discovered so far.”

“But...weaponize 300? That’s unfathomable.
That’s no tool of the battlefield. But a...but a...”

“Biological weapon. The MJ-12 boys are
calling it that.”

I baulked in disgust. “You can’t be
serious?”

“1728 is under pressure to show results,
Dark. Lot three-hundred is the first tangible evidence we have that
we’re actually accomplished something here.”

“But Cain possesses such remarkable
abilities,” I said, shifting from disgust to despair. “To say 300
is a result...it’s nothing but a horrific side effect.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Nevertheless? I just can’t, in good
conscience—”

“Your conscience has nothing to do with it,
Dark,” the General interrupted. “This is not your decision.”

“But what if it got loose? What if
they
got their hands on it?” I leaned forward across Grove’s
desk, almost pleading.

“It won’t,” he replied, handing my folder
back to me.

“It won’t? It won’t?” I wagged a finger out
of the window. “Like
that
would always be under our
control?” I was point off toward the Trinity bomb test site.

“That’s different,” Groves muttered.

“How is that different? You know the rumors.
That the Russians already have a program underway. Even if they
can’t develop the technology themselves, once they examine what
we’ve achieved. They’re not fools.”

“Our understanding of genetic science is in
its infancy, Dark. You know that better than anyone. It might take
years to fully understand and utilize what Cain is capable of.
Batch 300 is showing results now. All of this requires funding,
Dark. Funding that must be justified. That might not be of any
concern to yours, but it is mine. Do you want to see 1728 shut
down? Before we’ve had a chance to complete our work?”