The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

  “What’s with the candle, Pop?” I wheezed. “Forget to pay your ’lectric bill?”

  “Oh my boy, how’d you get out?”

  “I got out ’cause you saved me, Poppa!” I started feelin’ real shaky. “But how’d you know it wuz gonna happen?”

  He dodged my question, touchin’ my shoulders, my cheeks. “Oh son, I thought you was dead for sure!”

  “Yeah, me, too, Poppa. I did, too.” I wuz tremblin’ somethin’ fierce now. Poppa’d told me how a lamp’d burn way too bright just before it blew out. That’s how I felt. I was burnin’ way too bright. I knew Poppa seen it, too. “I thought I wuz gonna die. But I got out.” I laughed real loud. “I . . . aw, Jesus God—”

  It wuz like a dam suddenly breaked inside me. Tears come explodin’ out. All the emotion I been tryin’ to hold back so I could excape come floodin’ out. I squinted my eyes tight, wailin’ loud, “Poppa . . . Poppa . . .” I clawed at his shoulders with my scratched hands all filthy and bloody. I wuz gaspin’, “I had to put stuff on my face so’s I’d look dead. They dragged me onto a cart wid a buncha others and dumped us onto a pile outside the walls. By this huge old oak tree. Then they started to scoop up all the bloody corpses with a fuckin’ skip loader!” I couldn’t hardly breathe again, rememberin’ it all. “I had to crawl . . . crawl through . . . a pile of dead bodies . . . before guards . . . started to burn ’em in this great big pit . . .”

  Poppa held me tight. “Easy, son. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “Hundreds!” Tears wuz streamin’ down my bloody, dirty cheeks. “And all them corpses had they eyes open . . . they wuz . . . starin’ back at me . . . like axin’ ‘How come you alive, boy?! Huh? How come?’”

  Poppa tightened his arms round me even more. “It’s okay, son. I got you now.”

  I wuz sobbin’ all uncontrollable. “Like they wuz axin’, ‘What you done . . . to be worth bein’ alive, boy? Huh?! You ain’t worth shit,’” I shouted, near crazy, “Why the fuck you alive, boy?!”

  “God’s got his reasons, son,” Poppa said with certainty. “He surely does.” He held me close, whisperin’ real calm, “‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .’”

  I kept on achin’, sobbin’, lookin’ round. “Where’s Claire, Poppa? Kinda . . . late, ain’t it? When’ll she . . . be home? I need to . . . see her . . . tell her I’m sorry . . . ’bout so much . . .”

  Poppa looked at me, silent for a second. Then he said, “There’ll . . . be time for that, son. There’s a time for every purpose under heaven.” He was rockin’ me gentle. Like Momma used t’do. But his voice was strong. “And right now’s a time for you and me t’do important stuff. T’not sit idly by no more while the quality of mercy gets diminished.”

  26

  MARTYRDOM

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  In the three days since Chris’s discovery with the electron microscope, he and I had been doing delicate chemistry in shifts 24/7, trying to create the curative formula Chris thought might work. We’d first infected ten mice with the CAV. We saw them all get extraordinarily more adept at negotiating a maze—and also very aggressive.

  Throughout the process Chris was frowning and hunched over. I knew how tormented he was internally. A couple of times I’d reached out to touch his back sympathetically, but stopped myself an inch away. I knew even a loving touch might do more harm than good, might rekindle the turmoil he’d barely managed to get back in check.

  Once I turned away and caught Crash watching me, though he glanced away immediately. I appreciated his caring and was flattered by the mostly unspoken attraction Crash had evidenced for me. He was a very appealing man and certainly turned the heads of other women. I noticed Ronnie in particular eyeing him. I couldn’t blame her. His athletic stature, coal-black hair framing a face that was ruggedly handsome in spite of the brutal scar down his cheek, combined with his innate wisdom and dry sense of humor made him much admired.

  But once Chris reentered my life, I was entirely fixated on him because of our deep personal history and because of Chris’s profound importance to our cause. Crash respected that, but from occasional glances, I sensed that he wished the circumstances were different.

  Near midnight of the third day, we’d treated the mice with Chris’s formula. There was no immediate effect. I sat on the couch to wait, answered a couple of text messages, and promptly fell asleep. Awakening early the next morning, I saw Chris checking the rack of cages, but before I could investigate, I was distracted by shouts of trouble from inside the main warehouse door.

  Jared Doyle, a big Irish former cop friend of Ronnie’s, was roughly pushing two men to the floor with the help of Nate and others. Crash and I rushed over.

  “I said spread ’em!” Doyle snapped forcefully, pushing the men down face-first onto the concrete. I saw one was Joseph.

  “Wait, wait. It’s okay,” I said.

  “No!” Doyle insisted. “The screening unit said they’re infected.”

  Nate, Eric, and Javier all talked at once, “They’re infected?!” “Yes!” “See if they’re wired.”

  “Wait!” I shouted. “I know them. They texted they’d be coming. I fell asleep, sorry.”

  Doyle was gruff. “Well, if you don’t mind . . .” He pulled Joseph up off the floor and frisked him while Crash checked the younger man.

  “Ain’t got no fuckin’ wire, man!” the youth snarled. Crash confirmed he was clean.

  Joseph nodded respectfully. “Dr. Susan. This is my boy, James Joseph. We came to try and help y’all.”

  Nate chuckled cynically. “Dominant types don’t help.”

  Doyle was equally terse. “With Friends like them, who needs enemies?”

  Katie stepped forward, pointing at Joseph. “He did help.” We looked at her, surprised. “When my dad was after me at the hospital. He had me, but let me go.”

  Javier turned his wheelchair toward Katie, suspicious, “Why?”

  I spoke up, “Maybe because he was about the most religious and moral person I ever met—before Lauren infected him. Without him knowing, I imagine.”

  “That’d be right, Dr. Susan,” Joseph said quietly. “Told me after that I was a test case.”

  “He worked alongside us at the CDC for years.” I touched his shoulder sadly. “How’re you doing, Joseph?”

  “It’s been pretty hard, ma’am.”

  I told the others how his daughter, Claire, was the brave nurse who’d faced off against the SWAT vehicle at city hall and been killed by the ARPC. How the police later planted explosives in her purse to justify it. Joseph nodded sadly, but it stoked Jimmy-Joe’s fury, churned up an angry tear in his eye.

  “That’s why the fuck we come here, but if y’all don’t get it, you can just—”

  “Stop it, son.” Joseph meant business.

  Doyle was unmoved. “Okay, so the kid’s a loose cannon, and even if Joseph was a saint before, it don’t mean anything after they suck the comet.”

  “Maybe it does,” Katie said. “It also happened with Darren. I told you how he let me go, too.”

  Eric looked at her sourly. He still hadn’t forgiven her for making that dangerous trip to Ashton. But I was pondering. “So at least a few still hang on to some humanity and compassion.” I looked back at Joseph. “Why’d you come?”

  “After they killed Claire, they almost killed James up at Reidsville.”

  Nate stopped chewing his toothpick, looked sharply at the boy, worried. “That plague?”

  “Yes,” Joseph said, then looked at me. “Dr. Hutcherson caused it.”

  “Oh God.” I closed my eyes, aggrieved, whispering, “Oh, Hutch . . .”

  “Wait.” Crash frowned at Joseph, trying to get a grasp of the bizarre concept. “Are you saying that Hutcherson created something that killed all those prisoners?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s exactly right.” Joseph nodded.

  Nate had stepped back from Jimmy-Joe. “How do we know he hasn’t still got it?”

>   “I never did,” Jimmy-Joe grumbled. “Poppa smuggled a pill to me. I figure the warden and them guards musta got pills, too, or somebody put it in their food, ’cause none of them died neither.”

  “Bugger all,” Scottish Gwyneth growled. “Why would Hutch and them do such a dreadful thing?”

  Doyle sniffed. “Prisons are overflowing ’cause of all the people the Friends rounded up over the last year.”

  “Lot of ’em innocent biologists or other scientists,” Nate interjected.

  “Yeah, that they made us run in on trumped-up charges,” Doyle said. “S’why I bailed outta the PD.”

  “Dr. Susan, they gonna do other state prisons, too. And worse than that,” Joseph said. “They gettin’ ready to ship a mighty big load of CAV-B outta state to use somewhere else.”

  Everyone drew a breath. Nate nodded slowly, whispering the Nazi dream, “‘. . . Tomorrow the world.’”

  “My son and I figured enough’s enough,” Joseph said. “We come to try to help y’all.”

  “We heard that.” Crash was still sizing them up. “But trusting you is a whole—”

  “If you truly want to help,” Chris said, joining us, “then I have a challenge for you gentlemen.” He indicated the lab area. “Susan and her team did remarkable initial research. Building on that, I had an idea that might be an antidote for the virus.”

  I was startled that he revealed that. We’d kept the possibility quiet so others working on the problem wouldn’t slow their own efforts until we had more assurance. Now everyone had strong, positive reactions and a surge of questions.

  But Chris waved them down, saying, “Or . . . it might be very debilitating. Short-circuit neurology to the involuntary systems, which could be lethal.” He let that sink in. Then gave them the background on our animal studies and finally told them—and me—where we stood as of that morning. “Seven of the ten subject mice we treated last night seem to have reverted to preinfection normalcy.”

  Gwyneth asked for all of us, “And the other three?”

  “Are dead.”

  Rachel spoke up soberly, “Well, seventy percent is an excellent success rate for starters.”

  I nodded agreement. “But not high enough. We’ve got to do more testing—”

  “Of course,” Chris said. “But the bottom line is that ultimately it’ll need to be tested on someone infected with CAV who volunteers.” He looked at the father and son.

  “Wait a minute.” Simone Frederick had been standing on the periphery. “Are we willing to use tactics that we’d condemn the Friends for using?”

  Ronnie said, “I hear ya, Simone, but desperate times mean desperate measures.”

  Simone didn’t back down. “And that’s exactly why I’m here. But where do we draw the line about the ends justifying the means?”

  Joseph said to her quietly, “Ma’am, maybe that decision has to fall to the volunteer. I know they gonna be shipping out a lot of that dangerous stuff real soon. So y’all got time working against you.” Then he looked at Chris. “It’s sure good to see you again, Dr. Chris. And I’m ready when you are.”

  “Whoa! No way, Poppa!” Jimmy-Joe grabbed Joseph’s sleeve. “You’re too important. Why, you can spy for these folks right there on the inside!” Then the boy looked at Chris. “Anybody gonna take your cure, man, it’s me.” Jimmy-Joe saw his father draw a breath, and stonewalled any objection. “Don’t start, Pop. I need to do it.” He was clearly struggling against emotions to keep his voice steady as he looked into his father’s eyes. “For you. For what them bastards . . .”—his throat tightened up—“what they done to Claire. For an old guy I knowed in prison.” He forced a dark laugh. “And shit, I shoulda been fuckin’ dead already.” Then Jimmy-Joe looked at Chris, resolved. “You just say when, man.”

  The time came only four days later on a cloudy afternoon. We had maximized all the intervening hours with teams working around the clock. Simultaneously Ronnie sought info from her cop friends about the impending CAV shipment, which we wanted to intercept and destroy, but she had no luck. It was a closely guarded secret. Chris modified the formula slightly, and we tested almost a hundred more mice. The rate of apparent success edged up to 73 percent. All of us were concerned about proceeding, except Jimmy-Joe. He was determined.

  Finally a clear capsule of fine white powder sat in a Petri dish on the makeshift lab table. Jimmy-Joe eyed it nervously, his brow furrowed. He clearly had mixed emotions as the moment neared. The dominant drive from the virus was clearly tugging at his insides to flee and save himself. It seemed far stronger than the call of liquor to an alcoholic or the magnetic pull of narcotics or opioids to an addict. I could see his body stiffen, his muscles tightening into knots. But the person who most understood the burning conflict raging within Jimmy-Joe was his father. Joseph told me how he’d struggled against himself to let Katie go. He knew the extreme mental push-pull his son was experiencing. Jimmy-Joe was well aware that the medication might be the answer we needed. Or might kill him. Joseph put a comforting hand on his boy’s shoulder as Jimmy-Joe stared at the capsule, took a breath. “Thas it?”

  Chris nodded. Jimmy-Joe forced a smile to us who were watching silently from a respectful distance. “Well, I’m glad it’s a pill. I hate shots.” He chuckled nervously as I watched a dark shadow of dominant anger flicker across his face like a creature of the night. Jimmy-Joe struggled to suppress it as he looked at Chris beside him. “So. What’s gonna happen, Doc?”

  “My hope is it’ll close off the same neural channels the virus opened,” Chris said, “returning the subject to a preinfection state.”

  Jimmy-Joe blew out a little puff of air. “Well, this here is one subject that’s hopin’ his ass off right along with ya.” I saw his breathing grow shallow as he looked again at the capsule. I recalled once seeing a high diver standing on the tiny platform at the top of a pencil-thin tower, one hundred feet above a small tank of water below. If the diver hit the water in the precisely correct manner, all was well. But if there was the slightest miscalculation, it was like hitting concrete.

  Jimmy-Joe seemed to feel his resolve slipping and suddenly knew he had to hurry. He turned quickly to Joseph, who wrapped his arms around his boy. We watched them have a long hug. Simone looked away, her face tight with misgivings.

  Then Jimmy-Joe drew another breath and turned from his father to pick up the capsule.

  But it was gone. Jimmy-Joe was confused. “Where’d it go?”

  Then his head snapped around to see Joseph smiling gently and swallowing.

  We were all stunned. “Poppa!?” Jimmy-Joe went ashen. “No, goddammit!” He reached for his father, and Joseph pulled him tightly into a close embrace, holding him like a vise.

  “Sorry, son. Just couldn’t bear the thought of losing both my children.”

  Jimmy-Joe exploded with emotion, shaking free of Joseph’s grasp and clutching his shoulders. “No!” He glared at Chris. “You gotta stop him! Y’all can’t let him do this!”

  Chris and I were both unprepared for Joseph’s action, but before we could move, Joseph said calmly, “It’s okay, James. It’s done.”

  “Goddammit, Pop.” Jimmy-Joe was furious, unrelenting. “You’re important! Who’s gonna spy for ’em? Me? I don’t mean nothin’! I’m just a piece of shit! I ain’t gonna let you do it!”

  He grabbed Joseph, as though to turn him upside down and shake the pill out of him. But Joseph laughed, stopped him. “James. Son. It’s okay. This is the way I want it.”

  Crash and Ronnie stepped in to restrain Jimmy-Joe. He flung them off, turned back to his father, who smiled gently as he eased down onto a ratty couch. “It’ll be fine, son. You’ll see. Come sit beside your poppa.”

  Jimmy-Joe was still furious. “You stupid, stubborn ol’—”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Joseph consoled him, “I’m right where I belong, son. Right here in Jesus’s hands. Come sit with me.” Jimmy-Joe, collapsing internally, sagged to his father’s side.

&nbs
p; Eric leaned to Chris, whispered, “How long?” Chris shook his head. None of us knew.

  It turned out to be just under five hours. Darkness had fallen outside, and a pall pervaded the atmosphere inside the warehouse. Joseph was suffering. I listened to his failing heart with a stethoscope. My eyes carried the grim report to Chris’s. He turned away, angry with himself. Then I looked at Joseph. “What can I get you?”

  Despite being in obviously great pain, Joseph somehow maintained his peaceful exterior. He was incredibly composed. “I’d greatly appreciate . . . a little more water, Dr. Susan.”

  Katie appeared instantly with it. Joseph drank, wincing. Jimmy-Joe, standing to one side, saw it and blew up again, slamming his hand against a wall. He rushed at Chris, but watchful Crash intercepted him. He grabbed Jimmy-Joe. Ronnie caught his other arm.

  “You son of a bitch!” Jimmy-Joe shouted at Chris. “Lookit what you done! That ol’ man never hurt a fly, and lookit what you done to him!” He swung his searing gaze around. “All y’all!”

  Simone felt the censure very keenly. It was exactly what she’d feared would happen.

  “James Joseph,” his poppa called weakly, “come here, son. These folks ain’t done nothin’ but try their best to help us all.” The boy gruffly sat beside his dad. “Pull my covers up,” Joseph wheezed. “Gettin’ a mite cool in here.” Jimmy-Joe did so, and Joseph rested his weakening hand on Jimmy-Joe’s arm, which was trembling with anger and tension. “You got to keep the faith, son.”

  “Ain’t got none to keep,” Jimmy-Joe said, disconsolately.

  His father smiled. “Oh yes, you do. You got my blood runnin’ in you . . . so you got to have some of my faith, too. Just gotta let yourself own up to it.” His breathing was pained. Everyone who was watching felt it, Simone particularly. But Joseph stayed magnificently on top of it. “I want you to . . . help these people. Help everybody. You hear me, son?” Jimmy-Joe forced an angry nod. Joseph smiled again. “You might even try . . . reading your Bible once in a while.”