The Methuselah Gene (28 page)

I lifted the gas can, quickly screwing off its lid.
 
Well over a gallon inside.
 
Maybe two.
 
I sniffed at the volatile fumes.
 
Would it cover my
scent
to the door?

I dribbled the fuel behind me, brushing the rail to my left to keep to the side as I moved, hoping not to run into my nemesis should we intersect.
 
I felt other questing snouts poking against my hip as I passed blindly and tried to gauge my position against the vague and incomplete grid I conjured in my mind.
 
Twice I heard an overlong sloshing and grunting nearby that could not have been made by a hog trapped in a short pen.
 
Had the gasoline confused it, like perfume sprinkled about an area where a pig hunts truffles?

The remaining gasoline was half gone when my foot struck something blocking my path.
 
I reached out and felt a metallic cube with a spongy bottom, attached to a larger convex metal casing.

It was the air filter to the carburetor, and the engine of the generator.

But in which direction was the door?

Feeling for the generator's gas tank, I twisted open the cap, and poured at least a pint of gasoline into it.
 
Then I climbed atop the cart that suspended the engine above the wet floor.
 
Balancing myself and careful not to touch any metal, I found and pulled at the crank.
 
Once, twice, jerking at the nylon cord as it rasped and reeled.

The engine fired, coughing once, and died again.

I frantically felt for the
carb
, pulled out the choke, then cleared myself.
 
I was preparing to jerk at the cord again when I heard, not far away, a sloshing motion.
 
Like hooves approaching.

There was no way to brace myself for an attack.
 
I could only wait for it, bending forward, one hand grasping the starter grip, my other hand curled around the handle of the gasoline can.
 
Turning my ear toward the darkness in front of me, I tried to ignore the noisy tumult in the pens on all sides, to hear at last what I had not escaped in time.
 
Smarter than I thought, the thing had made the connection somehow, and followed the gasoline
scent
back to me.
 
Now it closed in for the kill, snorting its way to me in gloating anticipation.

Sure that it was wading in the puddle nearest me now, I planted my feet again on either side of the wooden cart that supported the engine, and jerked at the starter cord.

This time the engine sputtered to vibrating life, along with a new sound that met its steady rumble with what seemed almost a roar.
 
A spark, like the sustained flaring of a sulfur match, blossomed from beneath the cowling of the attached pump.
 
In that instant I glimpsed the blood streaked face of the animal which now shrieked as it sensed an electric current like a hard pinch felt everywhere at once.
 
It saw me too, and came at me, only enraged by the pain I had induced.
 
So I turned the gas can in my hands to let the remaining fuel splash down over the faulty pump below.

And gas found spark.

A geyser of flame rose between my arms.

I hurled the engulfed can at the hog's head.
 
It struck one of the animal's dirty egg eyes, flinging fire in a whistling cascade across its back.

Dazed by the bull's eye blow, the thing turned in a tight circle as though in a frantic effort to rid its forehead of the tiny flame that danced there like some holy spell of judgment.

I did not wait to see what might happen next.
 
The generator engine flamed as I leapt from my perch, and the pain from my leg wound felt worse at impact than the feeble current which had penetrated my shoes before I stamped out of the puddle behind me.
 
With grim resolution I limped toward the distant door that was illuminated by a flickering and dying light.
 
And by the time that light faded back into nightmare behind me I'd already targeted my escape, and soon blindly—but gratefully—groped for the doorknob . . .

Only to find that it was locked.

Pounding at the metal door, I yelled Julie's name, and was about to put my shoulder into it when I thought to check the locking mechanism.
 
Unless it included a double-keyed deadbolt, there should be a switch on the lockset, even though it wasn't self-canceling by turning the knob from inside.

I found the switch, and twisted it left against its internal spring.
 
Then I gripped the knob with my other hand and turned it to the right.
 
Miraculously, the door opened, and I kicked it aside.
 
It responded by rebounding back into my face.
 
Now I heard something approaching from behind me, from the darkness, and I quickly shambled out of the door's path to slam it home again.
 
There was a collision against both door and frame that rattled the entire corrugated metal side of the building.
 
A prolonged and guttural cry radiated from inside, but whether of pain or rage or disappointment I couldn't tell.
 
Much louder and closer than the bellowed chorus that accompanied it, the cry finally subsided into unmistakable disdain.
 
I tried the doorknob again and found it locked, as I suspected it would be.

“Julie, where—”

I had turned toward where I'd last seen her, only to find Julie missing.
 
She was nowhere in sight.

“Julie, where are you?” I called as loudly as I could muster, although my voice sounded strained and seemed to waver at the end as the words became ‘where are you' instead of ‘where were you.'

I heard a distant gunshot, followed by three more that seemed to get ever closer.
 
Then suddenly a green Jeep passed along the road where we had been walking, traveling fast as it billowed up a dust cloud in its wake.
 
In the open, I slumped to the ground.
 
But the driver and the passengers, whoever they were, did not appear to look in my direction.

Julie, no . . .

I struggled back to my feet and began to stumble through the drying muck back toward the road.
 
I imagined Julie lying to the side of the Jeep's tracks, just out of view.
 
Dead, or dying.

Then came a sound from behind me, but from a new direction.
 
It was a door slamming shut.
 
I whirled to see Julie standing just outside the side door of the farm house a hundred yards away, off to the right.
 
Both of her hands rose to her face, and she came forward, limping with short, stiff steps, as though being animated by an inexperienced puppeteer.
 
I stumbled to meet her, noticing as I drew closer that she was in shock.

“What's wrong?” I said.
 
“What is it?”

She did not respond except by collapsing into my arms, as exhaustion overtook her.
 
I held her against me like dead weight, feeling her heavy, labored breaths against the side of my throat.

“Are you all right?” I asked.
 
“Are you injured?”

She never cried.
 
Just when I thought she might, there was a hint of change inside her, as if a secret store of energy was summoned by my question, or the marionette strings were again pulled taut.
 
She stiffened slightly, and almost straightened.

“I'll be . . . okay,” came her weak reply, at last.
 
“Just let me . . . let me rest?”

I helped her walk over to sit on the same rock as she had before, although I was wary for any other traffic along the road.
 
I kneeled beside her.
 
“Better?”

“I heard gunshots,” she commented, almost casually.

I nodded.
 
“Someone in a Jeep roared by.
 
Shooting at something.”

“Or someone?”

“Maybe.
 
I thought it might be you.”

Julie shook her head once, looking toward the road.
 
“The hog, probably,” she suggested.

“What?”

“That's where it went.”

“It—you saw a—where did it come from?”

“The hog?”
 
She pointed almost casually back toward the metal building.
 
“Not an easy fit, through that small door.
 
Didn't you see it?”
 
She looked beyond my shoulder, as if in memory.
 
Her eyes seemed to widen as the image returned to her, recreated in her mind.
 
The thing must have been insane, too, meaning there was more than one of them on the loose.

“Is that why the door shut?” I asked.

She looked at me, her eyes going vacant again.
 
“Door?”

“Is that why you went to the farm house?”

She looked away, finally closing her eyes tightly.
 
Her head even bowed slightly, as though she didn't want to remember what happened next.

“Who's in there, Julie?”

“No one, anymore,” she responded.

“What do you mean, ‘anymore?'”
 
I paused.
 
“Did you try the phone?”

“Dead,” she said, and then looked up at me steadily, her eyes reanimated by a new nightmare.
 
“All dead.”

Okay, Alan?

I glanced back toward the house and the corrugated building, wondering what to do.
 
“Must be a car, a truck, something,” I said aloud, although mostly to myself.

“A truck,” Julie said, so low now that I almost didn't hear her.

“What?”

“A white pickup, in back.
 
But it has four flat tires.”

“Four?
 
You mean, like from gunshots?”

There was a long pause before she whispered, “That's what I mean,” and then she suddenly took my hand, leaning into me so I wouldn't see her face.

It was another awkward moment.
 
I put my other hand on the back of her head.
 
Her hair felt hot, as though from a fever.
 
“You don't have to tell me,” I said.
 
“I don't have to know.
 
Let's go, Julie.
 
Let's get out of here!”

I helped her up, and was about to lift her when she clutched my arm.
 
“Wait,” she said.
 
“I saw a can.
 
A big can out back, there.
 
Ten gallons, maybe, but empty.
 
It had a name on it.
 
Dichloro
. . .
diphanal
. . . something.
 
What's it mean?”

“
Diphenyl
trichloroethane
?”

“That's it.
 
How did you know?”

“It's DDT,” I said.

“Oh.”
 
She indicated that she'd try to walk, just using me as a crutch.
 
We hobbled unsteadily back to the road, but before we continued on it she asked, “What's happening to us?”

I wasn't sure she wanted an answer, even if I had one.
 
So I said nothing.
 
But I suspected she wouldn't be asking me again what happened in the other farm building—the nightmare setting I'd entered prior to her own experience.
 
Wanting to put whatever was happening behind us, we hurried over the next rise, hopefully beyond whatever influence those in Zion still had over the area around Jensen's Hog Farm.
 
Half an hour later, limping and hobbling all the way, we finally came to the end of the dirt road.
 
The sound of the hogs had long since dwindled by this point, as the silver moon slid down the bowl of sky behind us like melting ice.

Julie seemed to be in somewhat more pain, even with one arm around me for support.
 
I had become exhausted too.
 
Now we stared at a short barbed wire fence beyond where lay at least fifty bales of bundled hay.
 
A few of them appeared to have been pulled apart.
 
The ground around the massive pile was mostly grassy, an area several hundred yards square, and at the end a tall redwood fence encircled a corral of hard packed dirt.
 
No horses were visible though, and, thank God, no other animal sounds drifted to us on the hot but quiet air.

“A pair of horses would be nice,” Julie noted.
 
“Saddles or not.”

“I'd ride a cow, if there was a normal one somewhere,” I told her, truthfully.
 
“Or a bucking bull, all the way to
Macksburg
or Atlantic or wherever.”