The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

  I grabbed my small backpack and dived overboard a millisecond before my boat was hit and the gas tank exploded in a ball of flame the size of an SUV. The boat’s fiery wreckage smashed into a big cypress root, rupturing my backup tank and triggering a bigger fireball.

  I ducked low in the water behind a beaver mound as a water moccasin swam past my face and a loud humming approached. Flashing police lights drew nearer. The ARPC slowly loomed closer through the dark trees. It looked much like a Georgia State Patrol car except that it swept along eight feet over the water. Its two powerful xenon spotlights cut narrow swaths through the smoky haze and ground fog. The searchlights operated independently, like the eyes of a chameleon, swiveling in two different directions. The ARPC was kept aloft by internal Perini air turbines that kicked up a fine spray from the swamp. While airborne, the lower half of the side panels were folded out to become outrigger stabilizers containing smaller guidance turbines. This gave the craft an appearance of a menacing hooded cobra.

  It slowed, hovered, and rotated over the flaming wreckage like a dark bird of prey. It pivoted slowly, like it was sensing for my presence, but unable to pinpoint me. Yet. Then I heard an ugly slurping sound behind me. Two twelve-foot-long alligators were sliding off the muddy bank about twenty yards away and gliding in my direction. Their beady eyes were just above the water’s surface as they closed in on me.

  ARPC GSP Unit 774 (BETA 3) Cockpit Cam A/V - Date: 03/31/21 Time: 23:51:13

  Transcript Analysis [Abridged]

  Air Speed: Hover, Rotation C/W

  Dash Cam: Shows swamp across dash; turbine wash kicking up mist.

  Pilot Schoen.: You got anything, Miller?

  Co-P Miller: Nada.

  Pilot Schoen.: Bump up the hi-con night eyes.

  Co-P Miller: Did that.

  Pilot Schoen.: Well, kick it higher.

  Heads-Up Display: Hi-con switches to level 3. Night Viz: to contrast/enhanced.

  Targeting Grid: Crosshair Active. High-contrast image of swamp area brighter but grainy, low-res.

  Pilot Schoen.: C’mon, goddammit. Wanta be sure she’s toast.

  Co-P Miller: Got somethin’! Gimme some left pedal.

  Altitude Indicator: ARPC rotates 7 degrees CC/W.

  Display: Targeting screen: dark shape moving through reeds at water level.

  Co-P Miller: Think I got her! Hit the bow lights! Give her a shout.

  Bow Lights: To On.

  Pilot Schoen.: [keys PA] You, in the water. Stay where you are!

  Targeting screen: Image zooms in closer.

  Co-P Miller: Aw shit. Just a coupla goddamn gators.

  Targeting screen: Image zooms in closer on alligators. Target crosshair lock. Trigger: active.

  Co-P Miller: Dumb fuckers. Fire in the hole. Rifle. Rifle.

  El-Stat: Discharged.

  Courtesy GSP, FBI

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  The ARPC guns flashed, firing the golf ball–sized electrical pulses that streaked inches overtop me and blasted the alligators out of the water in a geyser of reptile fragments and blood that showered down on me. Half of an alligator jawbone with its rows of sharp teeth splashed right in front of my face and sank past my wide eyes.

  A man’s voice shouted. “Holy shit!”

  The ARPC crew heard it, too. The craft instantly rotated, and I was surprised to see one of the glaring searchlights flash on to an astonished man, probably midforties, who’d been poling his flatboat through the darkness nearby. He’d probably been handsome once, but now had a long, badly healed scar that zigzagged from above his left eye, across his cheek, to below his ear. He had a three-day beard. His hair was long, straight, black, with a leather headband crossing his forehead. Seemed like he might have been part–Native American. He wore a faded flower-print shirt with sleeves cut off, showing tattooed arms. His denims were also cutoffs. His legs and arms were muscular and deeply tanned. A cigar stub was clenched between his teeth.

  He stared wide eyed into the blinding spotlights of the dark, hovering craft, like he’d never seen an ARPC. It sounded like he murmured a prayer—or curse—in what sounded like a Muskogean dialect. The craft moved menacingly closer to him, inspecting him very carefully. I was impressed that he faced it boldly, eyes alert, breathing slow.

  The craft finally shut off its emergency lights, pivoted, and hummed away, disappearing back among the trees into the darkness of the swamp. The man stared after it for a second in the flickering firelight from the wreckage of my boat, then slowly poled over toward me. He must’ve had eyes like an owl, because I was well hidden in a thicket of undergrowth with only my eyes above water. “Hey,” he called out, “y’in one piece?”

  “Yeah. I think so,” I said. He came alongside, reached down to me. “Take this first.” I handed up the backpack then tried to pull myself up, but discovered my arms were like rubber. He grasped them with strong hands and strained with my nearly deadweight.

  “C’mon, work with me, babe.”

  I pulled my aching body up and flopped over onto the bottom of his old flatboat. I was still stunned from the explosion, but managed to nod thanks.

  The man looked off again toward where the ARPC had disappeared. “What the hell was that? Martians finally land?”

  I was short of breath, fearful that I’d broken a rib. “ARPC.” His look was blank. “Airborne patrol craft. You’ve never seen one on the news?”

  “Nope.” He was still scanning the darkness, but seeming to take some comfort in the sound of the bullfrogs that had started up their low drone again.

  “Been living in here a while, then,” I said, looking to see why my side hurt.

  “Yeah. Lost count. Name’s Carl Wilder. Folks call me Crash.”

  “Susan. Perry.” For extra substance I added, “Doctor.” I lifted my bloody shirttail and grimaced from pain and annoyance when I saw my wounded side. I grumbled, “Aw, shit.”

  Wilder shined a flashlight on it. “Got a ripe one there, Doc. Let’s get something on it.” From a nearby tree he peeled off a wide strip of bark, handed it to me. “Press it on.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Don’t kid about open wounds, honey. It’ll keep the infection out. Trust me, it’s the real deal.” He saw my still-dubious look. “Swamp willow, okay? Loaded with salicylic acid. You heard o’that?” Adding with a barb, “Doc?”

  “Yeah. Natural aspirin.” I nodded thanks and applied the willow bark to my very tender, bloodied side. “You gonna tell me this is an old Indian trick?”

  “Nah. Old Honduran trick. Ancient native guy taught me one of the times I ditched a chopper down there.”

  “One of the times?”

  “Yeah. I took a few headers.”

  “Ah. Crash,” I deadpanned. “Now I get it.”

  “So what the hell’s an ARPC? New kinda cop car?”

  I was tying my shirttail to keep the bark strip in place. “One of the nifty new tools they use to keep people scared and in line.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The Friends of America.”

  He hadn’t a clue what I was talking about, but his eyes narrowed slyly at me. “So, what am I dealing with here? Some kind of notorious desperado or . . . ?”

  “Ever come across a man named Christopher Smith? I know he lives in here and—”

  “And he likes his privacy.”

  My eyes lit up. “You know him? Is he out near Big Water Lake?”

  “Maybe.” Wilder chewed slowly on his unlit cigar, eyeing me carefully top to bottom like maybe he was thinking about chewing on me. I eased my hand down to the Bowie knife I always had strapped to my right ankle. “That’s back in there quite a ways, babe. Over on the Middle Fork.”

  He might have been lying, but I had to go for it, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “North of where Bird Wing Run flows into the Middle Fork, yeah.”

  “Y’gonna need more than a Bowie knife t’get there.”

  That focused me. “Well.
I’ve also got determination.” I pulled a small watertight bag out of my sodden backpack. In it was a GPS locater, which I turned on.

  “Whoa, whoa,” he cautioned, “better not. Your pals can likely track that.”

  “Not if it’s on less than seven point three seconds. Supposedly.” That’s what Chunhua’d said when she gave it to me. I took a quick bearing, shut it off, and got to the point. “Can I rent your boat?”

  “Listen, I ain’t seen Smith in a while. You sure he’s even still there?”

  “No, but it’s the best lead I’ve got. Can I rent it?”

  “You his ol’ lady?” He traced a finger down the ugly scar on his cheek. “He run out on ya?”

  None of your business, pal. “He ran out on the world, Mr. Wilder. Look, I’ve got to find him. You can’t imagine how important this is.”

  He chewed his cigar butt with a faint smile. Maybe he was impressed with what Gramma Lula used to call “my grit.” Or maybe I was just the first woman he’d seen in a long time. I realized my wet shirt was clinging tightly to my breasts, giving more than a hint of what was underneath it. But I pressed on, trying to be as professional as possible. “Listen, Mr. Wilder, this is a really vital medical mission. I can’t pay you much, but—”

  “Don’t use money, babe,” he said with a slow grin, “but maybe we can work us somethin’ out.”

  I ignored the sexual innuendo as I grabbed an oar. “Great. Let’s move.”

  “No, no, no. Lemme do it,” he chuckled. “If you’re in such a goddamn hurry, I better get us a little more speed.” He took an oily tarp off a tiny, ancient outboard. He pulled on the frayed starter cord three times before it finally sputtered limply to life.

  Then he gave me another pruriently sloe-eyed grin as he guided the boat deeper into the dark swamp.

  The Documentarian. . .

  The GSP/ATL PD Central Command Control Room in Atlanta was 272 miles north of Folkston. It resembled a darkened situation room in the Pentagon basement. To all who entered for the first time, it felt like a mysterious seat of power. Wraparound video display walls plus many desk console screens showed topographical maps and shifting views of the southern Georgia area, including traffic cameras, night-vision, and satellite images. Even of the Okefenokee Swamp. Men and women in Georgia State Patrol or Atlanta PD uniforms were at various stations in the control room or moved through with iPads in hand.

  Records from that particular night show that the duty officer was GSP Captain Winona P. Dushku, a sharp young woman whom many of her underlings didn’t like. She was well tailored, upwardly mobile, and politically astute. Her shrewd natural talents let her easily leapfrog over others who had more seniority. Anyone who knew what to look for, like Katie McLane or Susan Perry, would have noted the steely-eyed dominance in Captain Dushku’s manner as she leaned closer to one monitor showing a digital replay from the ARPC Unit 774 gun camera of Susan Perry’s boat exploding into two fireballs.

  An adjacent monitor showed the two patrollers who were in a briefing room at Folkston station for the teleconference. They could likewise see Captain Dushku onscreen in Folkston. The following transcript picks up after the officers Schoengarth and Miller had provided their initial description of their actions.

  Teleconference #7780963 - Date: 04/01/21 Time: 00:51:49

  Participants: GSP/ATL PD CentCom, DO Cpt. Dushku, Winona P.

  Folkston, GA GSP Station 372, Sgt. Schoengarth, Ptrl. First Class Miller

  Visual: Two-way link [Abridged]

  DO Dushku: I’m confused. We trust you with one of the beta tests of our hottest new vehicle in an ideal venue, and this is how you handle the assignment? Why didn’t you report in immediately?

  Sgt. Schoengarth: Trouble with our high-gain, ma’am.

  DO Dushku: And you didn’t go to sideband because . . . ?

  P1stCl Miller: Uh, we were havin’ trouble with that one, too, ma’am, it was sorta—

  DO Dushku: You’re as bad a liar as your partner. Probably just went 10-7 for a doughnut, so cut the bullshit, both of you. Where’s her body?

  Sgt. Schoengarth: She had to be dead, ma’am.

  DO Dushku: Then where the hell is her body?

  Sgt. Schoengarth: Wasn’t one, ma’am.

  P1stCl Miller: With all due respect, ma’am, you can see the size o’that fireball. Nobody coulda—

  DO Dushku: With no due respect, patrollers, you’re going to get your lazy asses back into that goddamned swamp. I want Perry absolutely verified dead or—much more preferably—captured. And since you each obviously need help finding your ass with both hands, I’m bringing in an ARPC from Ashton with two more skillful patrollers. The moment they arrive, you’ll follow them out as their backup. But if I don’t get satisfaction, you two will spend the rest of your careers on dog-shit patrol. Do I make myself clear?

  Sgt. Schoengarth & P1stCl Miller: Ma’am! Yes, ma’am!

  End Teleconference

  Courtesy GSP, ATL PD

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  The moon was low on the horizon directly in front of the flatboat and created a shimmery pathway reaching out to us across the broad expanse of water that locals referred to as a “prairie.” It had opened up in front of me and the man called Crash. Fireflies twinkled above the water lilies and floating vegetation that dotted the water like small islands. He steered the old boat between them over the dark water. He’d been listening to my story. “So you been hiding out since that night at the church?”

  “Yes. And gathering as many other scientists as possible. Trying to find an antidote to counteract the virus. Organize a Resistance. The last year’s been a nightmare.”

  Crash frowned knowingly. “Bein’ on the run can eat y’up pretty bad.”

  “Speaking from experience?”

  He chewed his cigar stub, looking ahead to steer the boat and also back into his past. “Last time I ditched was Honduras. ’Bout three years ago now. During all that coup shit. But to rescue us, Uncle Sam woulda had to admit our Air Cav unit was down there. That wasn’t gonna happen.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  “Very fuckin’ slow.” It was clearly a harsh memory. “Near three months crawlin’ through that goddamn jungle. Both sides down there wanted the four of us dead.”

  I studied his scarred face as he stared off. “How many made it?”

  “‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee.’” He sat in silence, his lips drawn tight. Then he sucked in a breath. “Finally got home. Ta da!” His words had a bitter bite. “Yeah, right.”

  I thought I understood. “Vets seem to get a raw deal so often.”

  “No shit. The Nam guys were all”—he looked at me with a wild-eyed expression—“crazy potheads, doncha know. And lotsa my bunch were PTSD whackos.” Then he added, darkly, “After some o’the shit we saw . . . and some we did . . . I guess a few of us really were.”

  The boat approached the entrance to a narrow channel, more fireflies winked from among the trees. I looked at the dense swamp surrounding us. “So you went back into the jungle?”

  “Well, I sorta had to. Kinda trashed a liquor store.”

  I prodded gently, “‘Sorta,’ ‘kinda’?”

  “Aw, this shitheel punk was givin’ a wheelchair bro a hard time. Pissed me off. I didn’t hurt nobody. Well, not too much. But it was stupid.” He looked around at the black gum trees crowding in from either side of the narrow channel. “I like it in here. And hey, beats jail.”

  “’Specially nowadays. Cops’re cracking down so hard, prisons are overflowing.” I studied him. “Does it get lonely in here?”

  “The lady alligators do get nervous when they see me.” He grinned sideways at me. “Sounds like it’s better in here than out there, though. Like you’re up against a brand-new master race?”

  “Yes. But the Nazis only believed they were a master race. These people”—I shook my head as I had a thousand times, trying to get my mind around it—“the ones that the virus got into, really seem to
have evolved overnight into almost a new species. A smarter one.”

  “Which’d seem like a good thing on the surface.” He steered the boat between some cypresses. “Being smarter’s what lifted us up above Neanderthals and all the knuckle draggers.”

  “Right. But when their upward evolution also brings a massive desire to dominate others emotionally, physically, even brutally or murderously, and at the same time drastically drops the levels of empathy and compassion—”

  “Y’mean that old-fashioned stuff we call humanity?” He chuckled ironically. “Sure begs the question ’bout what really makes a better human being. And leaves us in some deep shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So Smith’s some kinda hotshot scientist who might be able to help y’all out?”

  “He’s a genius,” I said matter-of-factly, “in molecular and viral biology. Maybe the best mind in the world for this kind of theoretical research.”

  “Humph.” Wilder rubbed his scar, musing. “And all this time I thought he just played a sweet clarinet.” He glanced ahead through the mist that was beginning to glow with the first light of dawn. “We’ll be comin’ up on him soon now.”

  Jimmy-Joe Hartman. . .

  Lookin’ out through them barred winders, I seen that it wuz just startin’ to get daylight in spite of the gray drizzle of rain. Been three days or so since I got busted. I ain’t sure ’zactly, ’cause they kep’ up what they called their enhanced interrogation. Nice way of sayin’ leavin’ me naked in a freezin’ ass concrete cell, wakin’ me up every time I dozed by hosin’ me down, then layin’ me out on a board half–upside down and pouring water on my head till I like to drownded. All tryin’ t’get more info outta me I didn’t have none of. I think they mostly did it all just ’cause they liked doin’ it. Then they give me an old worn-out-lookin’ lawyer guy who smelled like stale cigarettes and said I had oughta just plead guilty and get on to prison. Claire’d been really mad. Tried to get me a different lawyer, but they said it wuz too late.

  They marched ’bout fifty of us out that mornin’, all shackled together, leadin’ us to the bus. It had “Georgia State Prison” on the side and barred winders, too. I seen Poppa and Claire standin’ other side of the chain-link fence with the razor wire on top.