The Methuselah Gene (22 page)

“No!” Julie insisted.
 
“I'll go.
 
I should answer the door.”

“But they haven't rung the bell.”

My words had a chilling effect on her.
 
I felt her realization too, and cocked the revolver in my hand.
 
We waited, listening to nothing except the faint buzz of the kitchen clock.
 
“What if,” Julie mouthed, her words coming out in little gasps, “they're here for me, not you?”

I pulled her into me with one arm, tightly.
 
I could feel her trembling, shivering with terror.
 
How many times, I wondered, had she awakened from nightmares to stand like this with her rifle, listening to some imagined sound outside, wondering if someone had found her?
 
But the car we'd heard had been no dream.

Where were they now?

We both stood motionless in the back door, prepared for the worst.
 
The sky was getting lighter as the moon began to fade away into a shroud.
 
Sunrise approached, a crimson glow to the east.
 
I heard a sound from the living room.
 
Barely audible.

A rattling sound.

The front doorknob.

“Go!” I whispered closely, pointing toward the field and the corn beyond.
 
“Run, and I'll cover you!”

“No, not without—”

“I'll come after.
 
Go!”

She ran like a gazelle, taking short leaping strides as though skipping across the backs of crocodiles in the dark.
 
As she did, I lifted my revolver and walked unsteadily toward the corner of the house to intercept anyone who might come around the side and see her.

Peering around the corner, I saw no one.
 
Then—

Two shadows.

I jerked back before seeing their faces, or they mine.
 
With no time to reach the other corner of the house, much less the field where the corn had swallowed Julie, I scrambled back toward the rear entrance of the house.
 
Once inside, I quietly shut the door and locked it.

Then an idea struck me.

What if they've left their keys in the car?

I started toward the front door, prepared to risk everything to escape, already imagining myself roaring away, head down, as the two men fired at me . . . but then another thought arrested me.
 
The gate.
 
Julie had relocked the gate.
 
This was why it had taken so long for them to reach the front of the house.

I backed into the hallway.
 
What now . . . the closet?
 
No . . .

The attic.

I reached up to pull down on the cord for the retractable ladder.
 
The thing shot down at me on its well oiled metal carriage.
 
I stopped its slide an inch from my face, and floored it quickly, then I ripped off the cord with one savage jerk so it wouldn't be swaying and give me away.
 
I climbed up frantically, my gun shoved into my belt.
 
I made it up, ignoring the pain in my left leg, and had just retracted the ladder when the rear door imploded with a shattering of glass.

I crouched in total darkness, beside the ladder well, afraid to move.
 
Below me the two men entered and thundered through the rooms, banging doors, sliding open closets.
 
Then came a shuffling sound and a settling in the hallway below me, followed by silence.
 
A terrible pause as I imagined them both looking up at the closed attic door, with its missing cord, now in my pocket.
 
Were they motioning with their guns?
 
I tensed, aiming my own revolver at the retracted ladder in front of me, willing the sound of a chair being pulled under it not to come.

“What now?” one of them asked, his voice sounding high but throaty, like a flute in a mine shaft.

“The phone call must have spooked her.”

“Or him?”

“Let's go.”

I heard them walk into the kitchen below.
 
Then another pause.

“Got the radio?”

“It's in the car.”

Shuffling feet again, then silence returned.

A dead silence, an empty silence.

When their car engine finally started I took in one deep and extended breath, and let it out slowly.
 
I almost pushed down on the ladder right then . . . but something made me stop.
 
Something innate, like a sixth sense.
 
I felt along one of the rough wooden rungs as I waited for the sound of the car pulling away.
 
But that sound did not come.
 
Instead, there was the sound of the refrigerator door closing in the kitchen below.
 
Then quicker steps retreating.

Damn.

Close.
 
Very
close.

When at last the car pulled away, and my heart resumed beating normally, I kicked the trap door downward in a flash of frustration and anger.
 
The ladder slid down to the end of its carriage with a metallic thump, swinging to the floor.
 
I waited a moment more, tensing for any sound, then descended with revolver in hand.

Suddenly, footsteps behind me.
 
I whirled, gun cocked and lifted.

“It's me!” Julie yelled, raising one hand.
 
“Don't . . . shoot.
 
Okay?”

“Sorry,” I said, lowering the weapon.
 
“You scared me.”

“Scared you?”

I stared beyond her, at the open back door.
 
“Did you get a look at them?
 
I didn't recognize their voices.”

She shrugged jumpily, like a nervous tic.
 
“Never seen them before.
 
They were dressed alike, though.
 
Shirt and ties.”

“Ties?”

She nodded once, her eyes large and liquid.

“Was one of them black?”

“The ties?”

“No, the men.
 
I mean was one of them African American.”

“Oh.
 
No.
 
Why?”

“Never mind.
 
Let's pack something to eat, quickly.”
 
I looked around the kitchen.
 
“Have you got something we can use to carry things?”

Julie ignored the question, and came to me.
 
She leaned her head into my chest for comfort.
 
I could feel her trembling again, or maybe it was me trembling.
 
“Where we going?” she asked, at last.

“Out of town.”

“On foot?”

“That's right.
 
Cross country.
 
We can't trust anybody, remember?”

“What about the black helicopter?”

“Don't remind me.”

She suggested we head east, toward
Macksburg
and the Thompson river.
 
I told her that it was the way they'd expect us to go.
 
Roadblocks could even be up by now.
 
Then I pointed in the other direction, toward more trees that would afford cover from the air in case the producers of Survivor: Zion decided to test us with live ammunition.
 
As I indicated the water tower, she told me that way meant an eight mile hike over mostly farmland, amid the hog farms she'd mentioned in her own theory about the origin of our distress.
 
‘From the frying pan into the fire' was how she put it, but in the end curiosity got the better of us.
 
My theory about roadblocks in the direction of Des Moines seemed to hold water for her, too, even if that ugly frog up there didn't.

We put what we needed in a backpack.
 
Several canned sodas, some oranges, tissue, and material for bandages in case mine needed rewrapping.
 
I kept the revolver in her pack's front pocket for easy access.
 
We walked briskly as the sun climbed a golden stepladder of clouds, and as Zion's bird population heralded our every step with chirps, caws, and angelic songs.
 
My leg throbbed with dull pain at each step, but I was used to it by then, and tried not to think about it.

“Thanks for carrying the pack,” I whispered as we watched Earl's house only a hundred yards to our right, curtains pulled and silent.
 
“How do you feel?”

“Like a moving target.”
 
Then her deep brown eyes leveled an unreadable degree of fear or suspicion at me.
 
“Is there something you're not telling me?
 
Like about how I'll be having hallucinations soon, too?”

“Don't worry about that,” I said.
 
“Even if the water tower is connected to the local supply now, I think the water was almost gone, because it sounded mostly hollow.
 
It was hot yesterday, too.
 
I could feel it up there, atop that thing.
 
It was like laying on top of an oven.”

“So?”

“So viruses are sensitive to heat, and I'm not sure mine could even live in such an environment for long.
 
So maybe, after yesterday, the heat neutralized it.
 
Seems logical that they'd plan for that.
 
No more evidence.
 
I'm thinking they drained off some of the water so they wouldn't need as much of the virus.
 
Maybe there's traces left of some kind of anti-inflammatory drug they used to combat the side effects, too, if they haven't already drained what remains.
 
I did see a hose coming off a bleeder valve on the base of it.
 
Anyway, I think you were too late to be infected, even if you did drink enough tainted water to infect you normally.“

She didn't seem relieved.
 
“There's nothing normal about it.
 
And if you're wrong, what other side effects are possible, besides my seeing Jesus?”

“Depends on whether there's another drug at work, and what it is.
 
I'd need a sample of it, unless we're already too late.
 
Especially if it's something Jim Baxter didn't have when he mainlined the stuff, undiluted.”

Julie stopped walking, and so drifted behind me.
 
“Who is Jim Baxter?”

Startled by her distant voice, I turned, then went back to her.
 
I took in a breath, and finally ran a hand through my thinning hair.
 
“Jim was my assistant.”

“Was?
 
What happened to him?”

“He died.”
 
After saying it, I witnessed the momentary shock on her face harden into disappointment.
 
But this time I didn't try to paint a smiley face on Jim's skull for her.
 
I just added, “It was a suicide.”

She resumed walking, in front of me this time, a renewed urgency to her pace between the rows of corn.
 
I wanted to explain to her that the virus should die after delivering its attached gene to the major organs of the body, and that an anti-inflammatory just might prevent an interferon response long enough for that to happen, but as I brushed aside the tall stalks of green which whipped back at me from either side, I chose to shut up instead.
 
After a full minute, which seemed longer, she asked, “When were you gonna tell me about him?”

“Jim?
 
I wasn't supposed to tell anybody, just like you weren't.”
 
I started to add more, but decided against it just yet.
 
Emotions take their own path, and needed time to find their way.
 
Only after a few moments did I risk speaking.
 
“There sure is one hell of a lot of corn in this state,” I tried, as a test.

“What?”

“Nothing.
 
Just that they call this the Hawkeye State, but I think it should be called the Corn State.”

“It is called that,” Julie announced, with obvious annoyance, “too.”

“Bread basket to the world?”

She glanced back at me in disbelief.
 
Who was I, a student in her elementary school class, now?
 
“In the Siouan dialect Iowa means ‘dusty faces,' but it's mostly pollen dust now.”

“Oh.”

Another minute passed.

“A billion bushels of corn a year is average for the state, and so far there's never been a total crop failure,” she added.

“Let's hope for India's sake that doesn't happen,” I said.