Xeno Sapiens (23 page)

What now?

He contemplated whether to finish his
stretch or answer the telephone. The phone buzzed again and that
decided him. As he brought his arms down, they suddenly,
inexplicably stopped while still mostly over his head.

A bolt of raw terror surged through the
soldier’s limbs as if someone had jammed two steel rods through his
arms. Someone had slipped up behind him and wrapped their own arms
under his. Two huge hands laced themselves together at the back of
the soldier’s neck and he was lifted up to dangle a foot above the
earth. He kicked his feet, feeling his heels dig into what felt
like two stone posts. At the periphery of his vision he saw two
massive, gray forearms at the angle of his jaw. Moonlight glimmered
on the long muscles, stretched tight as drawn bands. The soldier
felt breath on the top of his head, the sharp intake of air as of a
man about to embark on a great feat of strength.

The owls started up again, hooting
their mournful lament. Ragged gusts of wind sliced through the
fence links, wailing like the screeching of caterwauling
tomcats.

The soldier was unable to utter a sound
as his head was pushed further and further forward by hands so
large they seemed to cover his entire head and neck. His air supply
was cut off as the trachea folded on itself like a bent straw. The
soldier was able to force out only a final, faint squeak before the
pressure became too much and the vertebrae in his neck separated
and crushed his spinal cord to a white mush.

Seth dropped the limp carcass of the
soldier. It slithered to the ground and sprawled like a wooden
marionette with no tension on its strings. Moonlight shimmered off
of Seth’s sweating ribcage, glinting like chrome on the raised
surfaces of his ribs, puddling like ink in the intercostal
pits.

The wind singing through the night
cooled his body from its labors. It was too early for insects, but
Seth would have welcomed them as fellow creatures in the natural
web. He was as one with the night. Until he saw the fence
surrounding the compound.

He launched himself wildly at it,
clawing at the interlocking metal strands, shaking the fence as if
he could tear it down by brute force. Blood ran through fingers
shredded by sharp globs of galvanized paint adhering to the links.
A hysterical jangling filled the night, the shaking fence even
louder than the wind. Something else threatened to drown out his
pathetic attempts at escape. The garbled transmissions he had heard
earlier were coming again, flickering in and out like a Halloween
candle in an open window. They were more urgent, now. The quick
organization of his pursuers terrified him anew and he used
precious moments to analyze his situation. If he
could...

“
...get out? Is it
possible...”

“
...no answer at the guard shack. Do
you think...”

“
...we should wake Ingrid. He’s her
pet. She would want...”

“
...to kill him...”

“
NO!”

“
...Ingrid, I have some bad news for
you...”

“
...find him. He couldn’t have gone
far...”

“
...the soldier at the
gate...”

“
...look at the soldier at the
door...”

“
...he’s bound to have gone to the
gate...”

“
...yes, the gate. Jon, will you
go...”

“
...to the gate...”

“
...I’m coming with you...”

“
...we’ll all go,
Ingrid...”

Seth looked around. A shining coin
smiled down at him, sailing through wisps of spun sugar like a
spaceship plowing a bed of stars. The moonlight shone off the
barbed wire atop the fence, running and melding with the changeable
cloud cover. With no further hesitation, he hooked his toes into
the openings of the fence and began climbing. Smears of blood
stained the metal fence where his flayed fingers gripped
it.

Lights came on all over the Alamo. Seth
no longer heard the voices in his head, but actual voices raised in
shouts. He hastened over the fence, the hateful barbed wire nicking
him. He stared back over his shoulder, wide, black eyes united with
the night. He lowered himself on the other side of the fence,
hitting the ground on his feet. Soft mud squelched between his toes
and splattered against the bandages on his shins. The air smelled
musty and humid, like life. The first doors of the Alamo opened
into the night.

Seth turned away, training his
wind-misted eyes on the giant forest trees. He ran toward them,
toward sanctuary. Toward freedom.

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

They gathered around the dead man’s
body like children around a game of marbles.

He lay face down. Small trenches
circled his knees where he had slid when he hit the muddy ground.
Ingrid had attended and performed enough dissections and autopsies
to believe she was immune to any sight, yet she could not look at
the dead man for more than a few seconds.

Where the guard’s neck joined his
shoulders was a huge, nearly razor perfect gash, four inches long.
It was gelatinous black in the moonlight, maroon in the beam from
Merrifield’s flashlight. Yellow globules of subcutaneous fat pushed
upward from the center of the wound, appearing to move and pulsate
liquidly in the shaky beam of the flashlight.

Ingrid found it all to easy to
reconstruct what had happened. Seth had come upon the man unawares,
immobilized his torso- probably with a Full Nelson- and wrenched
the soldier’s head forward. She couldn’t imagine the strength it
would take to rip skin, muscle and cartilage bare handed. The
tissues had stretched as far as they could stretch, and then split
like a rubber balloon. Ingrid knew the soldier had come revoltingly
close to having his entire head topple to the ground. Ingrid was
scraping bottom, her nerves at their limits. Now they were being
tested, pushed beyond their abilities.

“
Who was he,” Ingrid asked, almost
afraid to hear a name put with so much lifeless clay.

“
Trey Morris,” Merrifield said. Ingrid
heard a slight tremor in his voice for the first time since she had
known him. He turned away from the body and walked to the fence. He
played the light up and down its links, looking for a clue. A
break, a bend in the wire, anything. The beam fell upon a splotch
of wet blood. Merrifield let the light roam up the fence, following
the smears of blood.

“
That’s it,” he said. “He went up and
over. He’s running for the woods right now.”

“
Shit,” Clifton said. He looked at the
ground, distracted. He had taken the time to change out of the lab
coat and into jeans, a pull over shirt, and loafers with no socks.
Not all the effects of his coma had worn off and he looked up, a
somewhat, irrational gleam in his eyes.

“
We can’t leave him to run loose,” he
said rapidly. “He could drown in the river, or get hit by a car,
or, for that matter, he might kill anybody else that gets in his
way.”

“
No, he won’t,” Ingrid said. Her voice
was weak but sure. It was the voice of a ghost, and in the mist
that had condensed over the cool ground gathered around them,
she
did
look like a ghost. She was thin and so white that the brown
circles beneath her eyes seemed to be a part of them; made them
seem wide and staring. The moon showed her unhealthy pallor.
Shadows hid in the wasted hollows of her skin. Even her movements
were slow and purposeful. Clifton was fascinated at the way she
went on and on.

“
He reacted instinctively,” she
continued. “He’s not a killer. He’s trying to survive. That’s
all.”

“
There are two men dead,” Clifton said
painfully. “How can you say ‘that’s all’?”

“
Alex,” Merrifield said, “she’s right.
It’s a risk they knew when they took this job. Every one who
carries a gun faces the possibility of death. Brutal as it sounds,
they were expendable. Seth is not.”

“
To hear you talk,” Clifton said,
“everyone here is expendable. He’s out of control.”

“
He is
not
out of control,” Merrifield countered loudly. He
glared at Clifton, daring him to dispute him.

Clifton stared back for a few seconds,
then turned away and looked at the fence. He stared at it a long
time, trying to come to terms with what Merrifield had said. It was
logical to assume that Seth, at this stage, was no more than an
animal. Clifton wasn’t ready to let it go that easily, but he
decided to play it Merrifield’s way, for a while, at
least.

“
What do you suggest,” he said,
turning back to Merrifield.

“
We’ll have to call the police, at
least until I can get the M.P.’s here. All the police need to be
told is that a patient has suffered a delirium and escaped from the
infirmary. They will be told the patient is possibly dangerous in
his delirium.”

“
Will they buy it,” Clifton
asked.

“
Coming from me,” Merrifield said,
“they’ll run with it even if they don’t believe it.”

“
And what’s to keep Seth from killing
anyone else in his way?”

“
Human nature,” Ingrid said. Clifton
and Merrifield looked at her.

“
Be reasonable, Alex...” she
said.

“
I
am
reasonable. But I think you two have lost your
minds. He didn’t have to kill the guard at the gate. He could have
gone around him.”

“
Alex
, think,”
Ingrid said in a terse, clipped and
tensely enunciated voice. “Think about Seth. Would anybody in their
right mind fuck with an eight foot tall, naked man roaming the
streets? Especially one who looks like a goddammed
alien?”

“
Not on purpose, no. But what if he
sneaks up on somebody?”

“
I’m almost positive he’ll hole up.
Try to hide. All we have to do is find him. The town cops will help
with that.”

“
Before he kills someone
else?”

“
You’re so goddam full of bright
ideas, Alex,”
Ingrid exploded. “Maybe you can fill me in on what I’ve
been missing. What other choice do we have?”

Alex shut his mouth, stunned into
silence. Much as he hated to admit it, she was right. They had no
other choice. But once they found him, that was a zebra of a
different stripe.

“
Alright,” Alex said. “I was too
caught up, I guess. We can’t do anything else.”

“
Then let’s stop arguing and attend to
matters at hand,” Merrifield said. “I’ll notify the local police
and have them start the search. I’ll see to the bodies. Now, back
to the lab.”

“
I have to see this through,” Ingrid
said. “It’s my responsibility. If I hadn’t let you talk me into
leaving him tonight, this might not have happened.”

“
If you had stayed with him,”
Merrifield said, gesturing at the dead man, “this would have been
you. And Seth would still be gone.”

“
We have to have you later,” Clifton
said. “When Seth is found. Right now you’re a wreck.”

“
All that can be done will be done,”
Merrifield said. He spoke directly to Ingrid. “I’ve had experience
in these matters. We’ll have Seth back before morning.”

“
Do you really think so,” she asked
hopefully. There was still so much of a child in her, Merrifield
thought. He had used it against her many times, and would do it
again if he had to.

“
It’s not unreasonable,” Merrifield
asserted. “Seth’s a child. We’ll have him back in no
time.”

Walt Cagle tossed another branch on the
fire. The crashing of the limb dislodged burning cinders that
eddied upward in a twisting spiral. The March nights were still
cold and the heat from the fire baked his black face and warmed
it.

His son, Wayne, walked back along the
river bank. He held a stringer of four catfish, still squirming and
wriggling, their fins and whiskers waving. His blue work pants were
water spotted. He sat next to his father, hugging close to the
fire. He dumped the catfish on a filleting board and unsnapped
their gill clamps. They were in a natural clearing and the trees
surrounding them blunted the cutting wind. Most of the overcast had
cleared and the stars twinkled through the crystal-clear air like
still comets.

Less than twenty yards away, Seth sat
in the trees and watched the two men. The fire had drawn his
attention with its promise of heat and warmth. He had seen it from
a long way off, somehow knowing it would drive the chill of the
night away. The confused noises in his head had stopped as soon as
he had made a good distance from the Alamo. As he sat he vaguely
noted that his skin was lighter than that of the two men he
watched. He had tried the word that had so arrested his mind,
repeating it over and over as he moved toward the fire. It came out
roughly, slurred like a drunk trying to repeat a difficult phrase.
Still, he liked the sound of it.