Xeno Sapiens (21 page)

“
God, I hope he doesn’t wake up right
now,” Bare panted. “He’d rip us limb from limb.”

“
Don’t even think about it,” Clifton
gasped. “That’s a pretty sore spot with me.”

“
Will you two can the crap and hurry
up,” Ingrid called from ahead of them. “You’re almost
there.”

Ingrid held open the infirmary door.
Bare and Clifton dragged Seth through the door only with great
effort. With the last of their combined strength they were able to
hoist him into the bed Clifton had erstwhile occupied. Their task
was accomplished only after a good deal of grunting and swearing
and when they were done, they panted with relief.

The attendant who had been dispatched
to fetch the sedative came into the infirmary. Ingrid snatched the
metal hypo and ampule from him. She filled the syringe with shaking
hands and jammed the needle into Seth’s buttocks.

“
Would you get me some antiseptic and
bandages, Alex?” She motioned absently at the cabinets over her
head. “They’re up there.”

Clifton retrieved some red oil and
bandages from the cabinet. He turned and saw Bare and the attendant
still with them, looking at a loss for something to do.

“
Why don’t you two go,” Clifton said.
“Randy, let Jon know what’s happened.”

Clifton gave the supplies to Ingrid.
She busied herself dressing the bleeding lacerations on Seth’s
shins. Clifton took his first, really good look at what had been
wrought in this laboratory. What he saw, combined with the effects
of his long torpor and loss of strength, nearly made him
dizzy.

Seth was seven and a half feet tall,
maybe more. His legs from the knee down hung completely over the
end of the six and a half foot long bed. Large bands of clearly
defined muscle were etched like a relief map beneath the gray
skin.

He was completely hairless, an
unbelievably perfect statue like those carved by the ancient
Greeks, and nearly the same marble color. It took Clifton only a
moment to assimilate the contradiction of the bulbous, alien head
which -truth be told- was not that different from a normal human
cranium. It was only the eyes -liquid, black, and irisless- that
discomfited him.

Clifton watched the strong beating of
the heart beneath the thick pectoral muscles; heard the steady
intake and exhale of air. Even under the effects of the sedative,
Seth’s fingers were loosely curved. They twitched
slightly.

Clifton swallowed hard. For a second he
refused to believe this is what had become of what had looked like
a half-dissected cadaver prior to his accident. Ingrid looked at
him and he saw in her glittering eyes, the half-smirk on her face,
that this was her ultimate moment in the sun. Clifton let the
sinking feeling that had wrested hold of him pass.

“
I think,” he said, in control of
himself again, “we should give him some oxygen.”

He fastened an oxygen feed to Seth’s
face, placing the barrels into the round, black nostrils of the
almost non-existent nose. But not before he carefully wiped away
the blood on Seth’s colorless lip and made sure his nasal passages
were clear. He turned on the oxygen and the hissing gas began to
flow in time with Seth’s respiration.

At three am the armed guard patrolling
the outer gate of the Alamo lit another cigarette. A flame flared
in his cupped hands and the smoke from his Chesterfield twirled
away in tatters, stolen by the stiff, cool wind that had blown all
night. The rain had ended a few hours earlier, but cold ghosts of
clouds still slipped across the face of the moon from time to time.
Trees bare with winter sleep stood in dark relief against the inky
sky. Their seams creaked in pain as the fairy-water river of wind
slipped through their branches like unseen fog.

He was smoking too much. His anxiety
over the loss of his buddy was echoed in the way he looked up
quickly with wary eyes at every sound he normally
dismissed.

Merrifield had come down to the gate
shortly after ten pm and escorted the other guard into the
facility. He had instructed the man who remained to be particularly
alert. Under no circumstances, Merrifield had told him, was anyone
to he allowed outside this gate tonight. If it meant shooting, then
shoot. The soldier disguised as a rent-a-cop had been disturbed by
Merrifield’s jitters and his robust efforts to make everything seem
normal. Up until this time, this had been an easy detail. The
soldier could think of nothing so terrible it would make
Merrifield, the human ice cube, lose even a fraction of his
sang-froid.

They had walked away, Merrifield with
his arm around the first soldier’s shoulder, his mouth to his ear,
whispering instructions. They had mingled as one into the
night.

Five hours later, the soldier at the
gate felt more and more uneasy. He didn’t like wearing the
rent-a-cop uniform, and he didn’t like being armed only with a
forty-five, locked away from the arsenal that was kept inside for
emergencies. The hours lingered endlessly without conversation and
the night was chilly, laden with intimations of some great
happening. He’d had all too many creepy feelings at this post. Why
he couldn’t have been sent to Berlin, or Tokyo, or even Fort Hood,
Texas, was a mystery to him.

Most of the lights within the facility
were out. In the hallways, only every third fluorescent was lit.
The workers had gone home to their apartments in town, or to bed in
their quarters in the facility. Most tossed restively, few slept
soundly. Some talked amongst themselves in hushed voices. The
daytime machinery had powered down and a near silence had fallen.
The footsteps made by restless workers heading for a cup of coffee
were as loud as gunshots in an echo chamber. The whishing of
slipper clad feet and the rustling of robes were like furtive
breezes inside the brooding tranquility.

The other armed soldier patrolled
outside the locked door of the infirmary. His instructions were to
allow no-one in or out of the room unless authorized by Merrifield
himself. The soldier shared his partner’s uneasiness. Merrifield
had looked like a canary whose tail feathers had just been yanked
out by a lunging cat. Once in a while, the guard looked at the
locked door, not really wanting to see what was in there, but
wondering what it was in this place that had to be locked and
guarded.

Ingrid slept in her quarters. Although
she had fought sleep adamantly, wanting to stay with Seth, Jon had
ordered her to bed.

“
Ingrid,” he had said, “I want you to
rest. You’ve been up for two straight days rushing around like a
chicken with its head hacked off. You go to sleep, or I’ll have you
sedated.” He had been kind but firm and Ingrid had offered only
token resistance. She had heavily sedated Seth and the last thing
she really worried about was his waking up.

“
Somebody has to stay with him,” she
protested weakly. “I need to make sure he isn’t hurt.”

“
Ingrid, he very nearly ripped the
incubator apart with his bare hands,” Merrifield said. “I don’t
think he needs to be coddled. Aside from that, there’s the very
real possibility he could be dangerous. I know you don’t want to
hear that, but it’s true. If the incubator wasn’t such a wreck, I’d
have him sequestered there. You’ve taken his vital signs and found
them perfect. Doesn’t that reassure you?”

“
He’s right,” Clifton added. “He’s out
with an assload of narcotics. All you can do is wring your hands.”
He smiled wearily. “You still look like shit.”

“
Could you have someone stay with
him,” Ingrid asked.

“
I’ll see to it,” Merrifield said.
What he had in mind was not a sitter, but a guard.

“
Alright,” Ingrid relented. Her face
was pale and unhealthy looking. She had lost weight and her cheeks
had hollowed out. Her mouth tasted like swamp water and she knew
she was functioning on sheer instinct and jagged
perseverance.

“
You’ll wake me if anything happens?
Deal?”

“
We’re not trying to keep anything
from you, Ingrid,” Merrifield said. “We’re thinking of your well
being. God knows, you won’t.”

“
I know,” she said, resigned. “Alex,
would you walk me to my room? I don’t know if I can make it alone.
I feel weak as a pup.”

Clifton helped her out of her chair. He
guessed she weighed no more than ninety pounds, down thirty from
when she had arrived. She seemed frail and weak at the moment, but
Clifton knew she could still be a snarling cat if the need arose.
She looked one last time at Seth before leaving the
infirmary.

Merrifield had walked outside with them
and looked at Ingrid oddly. “It’s not the best time to say it,”
Merrifield said bluntly, “but I think it’s in order.” He hugged
Ingrid affectionately and patted her on the back. “Congratulations
on a job very well done.”

He turned and walked away, obviously
embarrassed.

So it is,
Ingrid thought,
it’s actually done.

They walked down the hallway, Clifton’s
arm around her waist. To someone unfamiliar with the circumstances
they would have looked like two lovers. Ingrid closed her eyes,
feeling comforted for the first time in weeks. She was actually in
a walking daze when Clifton spoke to her.

“
Hmmm,” she murmured, her eyes still
closed.

“
He’s more than I expected,” Clifton
was saying. “More than I imagined. I’ve never seen such
strength.”

They had come to Ingrid’s quarters.
Clifton released her. They stood face to face.

“
Will he be alright,” Ingrid
asked.

“
We’ll look in on him first thing in
the morning.” Clifton bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “Get
some sleep.”

Impulsively, she reached up and put her
arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. He was surprised at the
strength in those tiny arms.

“
I’m so glad you’re back,” she
whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.” She let go of him and looked
at his face. Her eyes were red and moist. Clifton knew she was one
of the walking dead.

“
I’ll see you in the morning,” he said
carefully. “Good night, Ingrid.”

She let herself into her room and
closed the door. Clifton stayed at her door a bit longer, listening
to her move around inside. He heard the shower start. He walked
away down a corridor that had become stone empty. Somewhere in the
distance, he heard a telephone ringing.

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

Merrifield had locked himself in his
inner office. He leaned back in his chair, placed his hands flat on
his desk, closed his eyes, and tried to calm himself. All he had to
do was relax and everything would be better in the
morning.

His telephone rang.

He looked at it, irritated. Who in
Christ’s name would be calling him at midnight, especially after
the day he had just experienced? His office number wasn’t the kind
you could pluck out of the phone book. He picked up the
receiver.

“
Hello?”

“
Remember me, Jon?” a familiar voice
asked. Anger rose in Merrifield like a column of mercury. His
weariness dissolved in the solvent of hatred. His forearm seemed to
have turned to a bundle of contracting steel rods.

“
How did you get this number,”
he barked at Josh
Hall.

“
You’d be surprised what a man of God
can find out.”

“
It was Johnny Clark, wasn’t it?”
Merrifield’s hands itched to reach through the phone and throttle
Hall.

“
It may have been a sign from God.”
Hall chuckled. “Are you still as fat as you used to be? Do you
still look like you died and somebody stuffed you full of
chit’lin’s?”

“
Are you still hiding your true colors
behind the skirt of the Virgin Mother?”

“
God has given me strength to
withstand your insults,” Hall said placidly.

“
Then maybe He can give you the
strength to withstand this,” Merrifield said deliberately. “Fuck
off, asshole.” He was about to slam the phone in its cradle when he
heard what he had been expecting.

“
Project Change, Jon. It’s
out.”

Merrifield hesitated, caught in a
dilemma between calling Hall’s bluff and finding out how much he
actually knew. He placed the phone back to his ear. A pulse thumped
wretchedly in his temple.

“
You can’t blackmail me,” Merrifield
said. “One wrong move and you’ll find out there’s no God in
Leavenworth.”

“
I don’t think so,” Hall said calmly.
“Years ago, maybe, but now there’s such a thing as public opinion,
although you’re probably still ignoring that too. I’ve gathered my
sheep around me for the last ten years. They would offer themselves
up for the slaughter to protect me. I’m in Raleigh, Jon. I can be
at your mountain hideaway in five hours.”