Altered Genes: Genesis

by Mark Kelly

  Locked. Thank god!

  He stood to leave but stopped when Raine spoke. “You told me last night everything was fine. What the hell is going on Sylvia?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought about it again this morning. The Metronidazole file was open. I’m certain that I didn’t leave it open the last time I used the software. I don’t know how long Tony was sitting at the computer. I was only gone for twenty minutes.“

  They were talking about him. He tilted his head closer to the door.

  “How could you do something so stupid?” Raine spat. “Leaving everything on the computer was careless but walking away while you were logged on was idiotic.”

  “I know. I deleted everything this morning. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s a little late for that. What if he copied the files?”

  What the hell are they talking about? What files? He listened as Raine moved about the office cursing under his breath.

  Mayer spoke and apologized in a desperate voice. “John, I said I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “How did he behave?” Raine asked. “Was he acting strangely?”

  “A little maybe…After I caught him at the computer, he kept asking me if I needed anything. He sounded tense.”

  “Shit! I bumped into him last night. He said he was going to talk to Young.”

  “About what?”

  “The vaccine…but he was probably lying. He had that stupid look on his face. Goddamn it. This is the last thing I need right now.”

  “Do you think he said anything to Young?” Mayer asked.

  “Maybe, but not enough to have us arrested. We’d be locked up already if he had. But if he copied your files, we’re fucked.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  What the hell have you two done? Simmons wondered. The sound of his pulse was like a drum beating in his ear. He strained to hear their voices.

  “Find him and find out what he knows. If he’s a problem, I’ll kill him.”

  Simmons blinked, uncertain if he had heard Raine correctly.

  “John—No!”

  “There’s no other option,” Raine spat. “Remember, you’ll go down with me.”

  “What about the vaccine.”

  “Figure it out without him. You said the others—that woman from John Hopkins—were just as good.” Simmons heard a chair scrap against the floor. “Get back to work. I need to figure out how to find out what that bastard knows.”

  The door slammed shut and the room next door went quiet. They were gone. He had to get to the colonel and tell him what he had heard—tell him about the files that were so incriminating, Raine was willing to kill for them. Maybe they could recover them from backups.

  He slowly opened the conference room door and poked his head out. It was clear. He stepped out as Raine rounded the corner. The CIA agent stopped and stared at him with a look so malevolent, his blood ran cold.

  He ran.

  He was fifty pounds lighter and made it to the stairwell before Raine had even taken a couple of steps. As he thrust the door open, he half-expected a bullet to strike him in the back. But Raine wouldn’t kill him in public—would he?

  Colonel Young’s office was one floor down. He took the stairs three at a time. Thirty seconds later he thrust Young’s office door open. The words jetted from his mouth like water rushing over a set of rapids. “Raine is after me. He and Dr. Mayer are involved in something—I heard him tell her he’s going to kill me.”

  Young held his hands up in the air. “Whoa, slow down, Professor. What’s going on?”

  “There’s no time.” He rushed towards the desk and pleaded with his eyes for Young’s help. “Raine thinks I know something. He’s going to kill me because of the files.”

  The colonel looked past him and scowled. “What the hell is going on, Raine?”

  Eyes wide in panic, Simmons lurched backwards as Raine stepped through the door and closed it.

  The CIA man spoke coldly as he pointed an accusing finger at Simmons. “Dr. Mayer caught him sabotaging the project. This bastard altered some of the test results, but she doesn’t know which ones. I need to take him with me. It’s critical that we find out what—“

  “He’s lying!” Simmons yelled and stepped towards Young.

  Young pushed back his chair and stood. “I don’t know what’s going on with you two but it needs to stop.”

  He looked at Raine and reached for the phone on his desk. “You’re not taking him anywhere. If Professor Simmons has done something, we’ll find out what it was and take care of it. I’m going to call the MPs.”

  Simmons watched with surprise as Raine nodded his agreement.

  “I understand, Colonel,” Raine said as he reached into the pocket of his overcoat. “Normally, that would be a good idea—but not today.” He drew a pistol and pulled the trigger.

  “Pht…Pht”

  The two subsonic bullets, quieted by the silencer on his gun, were barely louder than a cork popping from a champagne bottle. They struck Young in the chest and he slumped back into his chair, a surprised look on his face. The front of his jacket was dark with blood. His eyelids fluttered a couple of times and then closed.

  Horror-struck, Simmons backed up against the wall. He stared at Raine who lowered his weapon and calmly stepped towards Young’s desk. The CIA agent placed the pistol on it and raised his hands in the air.

  Confused by Raine’s bizarre action, Simmons remained rooted in place for a few seconds before he regained his wits and rushed the desk. He grabbed the gun, held it with both hands and pointed it at Raine.

  “Don’t move you bastard. You killed the colonel.”

  Raine smiled and reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a smaller pistol and pointed it at him. “Not so fast, Professor.”

  Simmons tried to pull the trigger on his gun. Nothing. He tried again, and then again.

  Raine’s smile grew wider. “I didn’t kill the colonel, Professor, you did—with the gun in your hands. Your fingerprints are all over it. I got here just in time to stop you from escaping. Unfortunately, I had to shoot you.”

  He motioned to the gun Simmons held. “I took a chance you didn’t know anything about weapons. I flipped the safety on before I put it down—Good bye, Prof—”

  The door burst open as the young corporal from upstairs rushed in, a stack of papers in her arms. “Colonel Young, here’s the—“

  She stopped mid-sentence and stared, eyes wide, at Young’s body slumped over in his chair.

  Raine reacted first and yelled, “He killed the colonel.”

  She looked at Simmons who stared back. “I didn’t,” he pleaded. He could tell she didn’t believe him. She was looking at the gun in his hand.

  Without thinking, he dropped it and ran past her, knocking her into Raine. Her shouts filled the hallway as he crashed through the door into the stairwell. It took him half as long as the night before to reach the ground floor. He ran, blindly at first, and then slowed to a fast walk, aware he had to be inconspicuous.

  He needed to get somewhere private, somewhere he could think.

  The small library was on the top floor of a much larger building. It was empty aside from the lone clerk who sat at the front desk reading a paperback. He glanced up when Simmons entered.

  “Morning, I’m looking for a book to read,” Simmons said, feeling the need to explain himself.

  The clerk stared at him.

  Does he know? He felt the sick feeling in his stomach return.

  “It’s a library. I’m sure you’ll find something,” the man said in a droll voice and returned to his book.

  Simmons nodded weakly and headed to the farthest reaches of the library. He grabbed a random book off a shelf as he passed down an aisle and plopped himself down in one of the tiny study carrels.

  The place was dingy and uninviting, he wouldn’t be bothered here—at least not for a while. His mind swirled as he rocked back and forth in his chair.

  Raine was wearing gloves. His
fingerprints wouldn’t be on the gun. Who would they believe, an outsider or one of their own. The Corporal saw him with the gun. He could tell them about the files but what if Raine got to him first. He had to get off the base, get away and hide until he had time to figure things out.

  His throat tightened as he realized just how screwed he was. Frustrated and scared, he slammed the book down onto the desk. The clap of paper hitting the hard surface echoed in the empty library. He glanced at the cover—Live Green, A handbook on Recycling.

  The sound of a siren broke the silence. It was muffled by the building walls and closed windows.

  He had an idea but it was time to go.

  He rose and walked to the exit. The clerk looked up from his book. “You’ll have to stay here, Sir. That’s the shelter-in-place alert. Something’s going on.”

  Simmons forced himself to speak calmly. “No problem. Mother Nature is calling. I’ll be right back.” He pointed at the door and kept talking as he walked out, “Just going to use the restroom.”

  The door shut behind him as he walked through it.

  He didn’t return.

  22

  LONG LOST

  April 5th, 13h45 GMT : Bellevue Hospital, NYC

  Mei wearily pushed the gurney into the hospital’s loading bay and waited for the soldier to raise his hand. That was the first signal. She knew the drill, had done it countless times over the last week. Hands at her sides to show she wasn’t armed, she stepped back from the gurney and the shiny black plastic body bag that lay on top of it.

  She didn’t bother speaking. In the early days of the quarantine, the soldiers were talkative, even friendly. Not anymore. Now they were just scared.

  A second soldier garbed head to toe in a protective suit opened the bag and checked it contained a dead body. She handed him a sheet of paper with the patient’s details scrawled on it. He took it and placed it on the body.

  He grabbed the zipper with his thick green glove. The z-z-z-z-z-zip sound of it closing was the second signal. She pushed the gurney against the wall where it joined another dozen waiting to be loaded into trucks and taken away.

  Probably to be incinerated…there had been hundreds of bodies in the last few days.

  She had repeated these steps so many times they had become automatic. The first time was the most difficult. The body bag was child-sized and contained the little Latino girl, Blanca. After the girl, it was her brother, the nurse from maternity. There were dozens more and then two days ago, Jason Grant.

  Or was it the day before? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter anymore. Her brain was a jumbled mess from lack of sleep and too much death. Death that was everywhere, in the hospital rooms and hallways, in the overflowing morgue, in the countless gurneys she trudged behind.

  She grabbed an empty gurney and pushed it out of the loading bay. The once bustling nurses’s station was empty. She deposited the stretcher in the empty hallway below a white hospital phone. The phone was of no use, there wasn’t any service—hadn’t been since shortly after her call with Tony.

  I wonder how he’s doing? She often thought of him, of her dead parents, the people she missed.

  “Morning, Doc.”

  So wrapped up in her own thoughts, the words didn’t register until she was five steps past the person who had spoken them. She turned to see Charlie Samson standing by the elevators, his leathery old hands on a push-trolley full of linens.

  If there was such a thing as a human institution, he was it. He knew everyone and everything at Bellevue. She hadn’t seen him in days, didn’t even know he was still alive.

  “Morning, Charlie,” she said apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”

  “No matter, Doc. I saw you staring at the phone like it was a long-lost friend that left you behind.”

  The sadness came in an overwhelming swell of loneliness and the words gushed out. “I was on the phone when we lost service…didn’t get to finish the call.”

  I didn’t get to say goodbye.

  “Do you want to go?”

  His question didn’t make any sense.

  “Go?”

  He nodded. “Leave the hospital. I can show you a way out.”

  She stared at him and he blinked. His lips were pressed together. His head was tilted slightly to the side.

  He was serious.

  When she didn’t speak, he took a step closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. “There ain’t nothing you can do here. Take that woman you’ve been looking after and go.”

  “I can’t do that Charlie, I can’t just leave.” She needed to explain. “The hospital’s under a quarantine. I have patients to look after.”

  He squeezed her shoulder and sighed a sad chuckle. “Doc, there ain’t no one left to look after. You’ve been so busy taking care of everyone that you forgot about you.”

  He dropped his hand to his side and turned back to the trolley. “Let me know if you change your mind, but don’t wait too long.”

  She shoved her hands into the pocket of her scrubs and watched him push the trolley down the hallway. Only when he disappeared, did she return to the second floor and Lucia.

  23

  SIT AND WAIT

  April 6th, 13h25 GMT : Fort Detrick, Maryland

  The putrid stench of rotten meat and decomposed vegetables filled his lungs. Simmons nearly vomited as the garbage truck made its way off the base. It had been hours since he climbed into the food recycling bin behind the mess hall, hoping a waste pickup was scheduled and that the truck would be allowed to leave without being searched.

  All he could do now was wait until he arrived at his destination, where ever that might be. Fortunately for him, he didn’t have to wait long.

  With the screech of brakes and a sudden jolt forward, the vehicle came to an abrupt stop. The truck reversed and its hydraulic system hissed. His heart raced as the compactor plate pushed him backward and crushed him against the garbage.

  I’m going to die, he thought as he tumbled head over heels, pushed along by the giant metal plate as it slowly moved from front to back. The pressure on his chest was so great he could barely breathe. Suddenly, the rear gate opened and he was ejected, half-buried in the pile of waste.

  He dug himself out. A massive yellow bulldozer moved back and forth along one side of the pile, its treads clanking against the concrete as its blade pushed the garbage up against a wall. He half-crawled half-tumbled to the other side of the pile away from the operator’s sightline.

  A bunch of old white enamel appliances were stacked haphazardly against the fence that lined the property. He ran towards them, praying he could make it without being seen. The space between a pair of washing machines offered just enough room for him to squeeze into. He crawled in feet first and looked around.

  A rusted and broken down chain-link fence surrounded the dump. It wouldn’t be hard to break through, but where would he go? He was somewhere outside of the city with no money, covered in stinking garbage. The police and the soldiers on the base would be hunting him. His options were limited.

  Over the next few hours, he lay in wait as a handful of garbage trucks arrived and dumped their loads. The sun was still high in the mid-afternoon sky when the weight station attendant emerged from his shack and closed the door. The bulldozer’s operator joined him. Simmons watched the two men leave in a pick-up truck. They locked the gate behind them.

  Are they gone for good or just taking a break?

  He waited until he couldn’t wait any longer and then scurried from his hiding place to the side of the shack. The door was unlocked. His heart pounded with a mixture of fear and elation as he slipped inside. He grabbed the phone on the graffiti-covered desk and called directory assistance. Please…please don’t be unlisted. The automated system gave him the number and he called it.

  “Emma—It’s me, Tony—Professor Simmons. Do you have a car?”

  24

  GOODBYE

  April 7th, 14h20 GMT : Bellevue Hospita
l, NYC

  The smell of mildew and wet mortar permeated everything. Mei stooped under the rusted pipe that hung from the ceiling of the tunnel and struggled to keep her footing. With each awkward step, the beam of her flashlight danced on the walls. She looked for the rats she imagined scurried around her feet.

  "Another few minutes," the man in front said.

  It had been two long days since he had first offered to help her leave. She had turned him down then but now there was no one left. Even the soldiers who ringed the hospital now stood guard in reduced numbers.

  ”Charlie, how long did you work at Bellevue?” she asked as she brushed away the sweat that beaded on her forehead.

  “Long time, Doc.” He stopped and waited at the intersection of two tunnels. The water, or whatever it was, wasn't deep, but she had to stretch to cross it.

  "What are you going to do next?"

  "Help you get out of here."

  "No, I mean after...after we're out of the tunnel."

  "I'll go back."

  She stopped, frozen in place.

  “Go back? I thought you were coming with us.”

  ”Nothing out there for me, Doc,” he said solemnly. “I’m going back to the hospital—that's my job, my life.”

  “What about your family?”

  “Ain’t got one and besides—”

  She waited for him to finish but he didn’t offer anything more. As his shadow moved further down the tunnel, getting smaller with each step, her sense of guilt grew.

  “Come on, Doc. Ain’t nothing for you back there.” His words echoed off the walls.

  The sound of footsteps splashing through the water came from behind. She turned to see Lucia emerge from the darkness. The Latino woman brushed past her without a word. Her sunken face covered by the mask she wore.

  "We're almost there," he called back to them.

  When they caught up to him, he was at the top of a rusted iron ladder in a wider section of the tunnel. The rungs were cemented to the wall and ran to a trapdoor far above.