Altered Genes: Genesis

by Mark Kelly

  Bill hobbled up to the driver’s window with a grim look on his face. “We’re gonna have to go our separate ways now. You might want to get off here.”

  “Is it blocked?” Mei asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

  He nodded. “Only the big rigs are being allowed through. C’mon, you can see for yourself if you want.”

  She and Lucia left the van and followed him to the side of truck’s long trailer. He unhitched a light aluminum ladder. Simmons and Gong joined them as he placed it upright against the side.

  “What’s going on?” Simmons asked her.

  “The road ahead is blocked.” She gave him a worried look. “He says that only trucks are being allowed through.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Bill looked at Simmons and spoke. “I heard a fella on the CB say that cars are being checked for the bacteria. Go on up and take a look if you want. I’ll hold it, but be careful, it’s a fair ways down.”

  He handed Simmons a pair of binoculars, but Lucia snatched them away.

  “I’ll go,” she said and hung the binocular’s strap around her neck.

  Bill hurried to brace the ladder as she scampered up it. “She’s an odd one, ain’t she,” he said to no one in particular.

  Lucia reached the top and disappeared from their sight. A few minutes later she reappeared and beckoned down to them. “Come see.”

  Simmons turned to Bill and asked, “Can it hold us both?”

  “Sure—these intermodal containers are strong but don’t be falling off. The last thing I need is to be taking any of you to the hospital.”

  “I’m coming too,” Mei said and followed him up the ladder.

  They joined Lucia at the front of the trailer. Even without the binoculars, they could see the long line of traffic unfolding on the interstate in front of them. It started one or two miles ahead and filled the highway until it came to an abrupt end at an exit.

  Mei took the binoculars and scanned the horizon. A group of army trucks had blocked the road. They were diverting everything but the big transport trucks off the highway. Rolling hills and curves in the terrain obscured her view but far off in the distance, she could see what looked to be the tops of immense white tents.

  “What do you think?” she asked as she handed the binoculars to Simmons.

  He peered through them for a minute and then lowered them from his eyes. “Not good, but I think I know what it is. They aren’t testing the cars for bacteria, they’re testing the people for immunity.”

  She listened as he told her about his suggestion to Lexington, the director from Homeland security.

  “Should Lucia and I go get tested? We were both exposed to hundreds, maybe thousands of people who were infected.”

  Was it even possible? She never gave it much thought.

  His eyes darted back and forth between her and Lucia. She could see the gears grinding in his head as he thought about it. “It’s possible,” he said after a pause, “but not likely. You might have just been lucky.”

  “But we might be immune,” she said hopefully. “Wouldn’t that be helpful.”

  “If you tested positive for the antibodies, they’d take you away to study you,” he said, not answering her question.

  “But it would be helpful, right?”

  He studied her for a long second before speaking. “Yes,” he said reluctantly. “It would be helpful. But even if you have the antibodies, it will take months or even years to find a way to replicate them.”

  She turned away from him and stared off into the distance. But it would help people. Something she hadn’t been able to do in the hospital.

  “Look down there, Mei.” She felt his hand on her arm. “You’d be exposing yourself to thousands of people who might be infected. If you don’t have the antibodies, you’ll be putting yourself and Lucia in grave danger.”

  “But we might be immune.”

  He grabbed her and spun her around to face him. “Or you might not be—I don’t want to lose you again.” She could hear the anguish in his voice. “If you’re immune or have the antibodies, we’ll find out and we’ll use that knowledge to help people—but not down there, not that way.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  He opened his arms and she stepped into their fold.

  34

  LIGHT’S OUT

  April 11th, 18h40 GMT : Binghamton, New York

  They left Bill and the interstate behind and traveled northeast in a new seating arrangement. Emma and Lucia were in the van and everyone else in the car.

  Mei glanced at Saanvi. She was worried about the girl. Other than the occasional muttered word or two, Saanvi was silent most of the time. Even Emma, with her ebullient personality, could only get yeses and noes out of her.

  She watched Simmons stretch out in the seat in front of her and smiled at the back of his head. It was nice being with him again. But even nicer to be away from Emma’s babbling.

  “Pull over behind them,” she heard him tell Gong.

  She leaned forward to look out the front window and watched the van skid to a stop on the side of the road. Emma climbed out and slammed the passenger side door shut.

  “What’s going on, Tony?”

  He shrugged.

  Gong pulled the car in behind the van as Emma marched towards them.

  Mei rolled the window down. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s insufferable,” the younger woman yelled. “I’m not riding with her anymore. She has no right to tell me to shut-up.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at Mei, waiting for her to say something. Before she could open her mouth, Lucia stomped towards them.

  She yelled at Emma in angry Spanish. “Habla demasiado!”

  “I do not talk too much,” Emma screamed back.

  Lucia snapped her thumb and fingers together repeatedly as she pantomimed a mouth talking. “Blah blah blah blah blah.”

  She stopped and faced Mei. “I put up with her out of the kindness of my heart so that you could have time with the other one, but it is too much to bear. I can no longer tolerate it.”

  Emma frothed at the mouth, so angry she could barely get the words out. “You tolerate me—

  “Okay you two, that’s enough,” Mei said, tired of their bickering.

  She forced the car door open, using it to push the two of them back. She wasn’t even half-way out of the vehicle before they began to argue again.

  “I said that’s enough,” she yelled. “We have bigger things to deal with.”

  She pointed at Emma and then Lucia. “You get in the backseat…and you get back in the van.”

  She turned to face Simmons and Gong. “I’ll drive with—

  Simmons had a smile on his face that ran from cheek to cheek.

  “Wipe that grin off your face.” She slammed the door and stomped to the van.

  THEY STAYED off the highways and traveled on the local roads that meandered through rural Pennsylvania and New York state. Progress was slow and they burned through precious gasoline.

  Simmons was right, there was a black market for fuel but they couldn’t afford it, not without trading away all of their supplies and no one was ready to do that.

  A few miles before Binghamton, the van’s engine shuttered and coughed a few times before it finally gave up and quit. Lucia steered the vehicle to the side of the road.

  “What is it? Out of gas?” Mei asked.

  For the last twenty minutes, they’d both had their eyes fixed on the fuel gauge hoping the needle was on the generous side—It wasn’t.

  Lucia nodded.

  Shit. They were in the middle of nowhere…nothing but farmer’s fields and forest.

  The car was a few hundred yards down the road in front of them. Mei opened the van’s door and waited for Gong to turn it around and return to their location.

  “Out of gas?” Simmons yelled when they pulled up.

  “Probably—it just quit.”

  �
�Do you think we could buy some from one of the farmers?” he asked Gong, who had joined them.

  “No. They will know the value of it.”

  “We don’t really have any other options,” Simmons countered.

  “I have an idea,” Gong said. He walked to the car to talk to Emma. She climbed out and followed him to the back of the van. They watched as she rooted through the boxes and handed him a blue plastic five-gallon water jug.

  He took it. “Are there any large soft drink bottles?”

  She shook her head.

  He placed the plastic jug on the ground and walked up and down the side of the road staring into the ditch.

  What the heck is he doing?

  Mei watched him bend over and reach for something. “What are you looking for?”

  “This.” He waved an empty two-liter plastic bottle in the air.

  He returned to the van and asked Lucia for her large knife. “The one you took from the dead man.” She stared at him for a second and then retrieved it from the front seat.

  He took the knife, the water jug, and the pop bottle and placed them in the trunk of the car.

  “I will be back in a while.”

  “Where are you going? Mei asked

  “To get some gasoline.”

  She stared at him disbelief. “From where?”

  He pointed his finger down the road as if that explained everything.

  “I’ll come with you,” Simmons said and took a step towards the car.

  “No, stay here. I will return as quickly as possible.”

  They watched him drive away in the direction they had just come from.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Simmons asked her with a perplexed look on his face.

  She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  A little less than an hour later, he was back. His shirt and pants were dirty and he reeked of gasoline.

  He popped the car’s trunk open and pulled out the plastic water jug. It was three-quarters full.

  Emma ran over to him, her eyes wide. “Is that gas, Gong? Where did you get it?

  “From the broken down cars we passed earlier. Some were out of fuel but others weren’t. I drained the gas from them.”

  “How?”

  He held out the knife and showed her the pop bottle with its top cut off. “I poked a hole in the gas tank and collected the fuel.”

  “You’re crazy…weren’t you afraid it would explode?” She gave him a worried look. “You could have died.”

  He smiled slyly. “New cars have plastic gas tanks. There is no spark to ignite the fuel.” He took the plastic jug of gasoline and carefully poured it into the van.

  “Maybe we should look for a plastic hose to siphon gas,” Simmons suggested.

  “That would be helpful,” Gong agreed, “But it needs to be very small. Many cars have a small ball-shaped valve in the pipe that runs to the gas tank.”

  “Why?” Emma asked

  He grinned. “To stop people like me from siphoning the gas out.” As he finished pouring the last of it into the van, he looked at her. “There is always another way to do everything. You should remember that.”

  Mei squinted into the sky. “It’s probably five or six o’clock and we still need to skirt around Binghamton—that’ll take a few hours. What do you guys think, should we spend the night here?”

  No one objected. She didn’t expect they would. After a couple of close calls, they had made it a habit to avoid the larger towns and cities—especially at night.

  They packed up the vehicles and Gong led them a few miles down the road to a small dirt lane. It was covered with weeds and hadn’t been used in months. They followed it as it wound its way up to the top of a rolling hill. It ended abruptly at a closed gate that provided access to a farmer’s field with a panoramic view of the valley below.

  The last of their bottled water had run out that morning. Simmons gave Emma a large pot to fetch some from the small stream that ran along the bottom of a ravine.

  “Even it looks clean, don’t drink any until we purify it,” he warned her.

  When she returned, he broke one of the white iodine tablets into small chunks and dropped a piece in each of their cups. The last tablet went into the pot of water they would use to rehydrate the freeze-dried food.

  It was dusk by the time they finished eating and Gong insisted they put the fire out. “It’s too open here, we can be easily seen from the houses and roads down below.”

  As the sky grew darker, the stars began to appear. Simmons pointed to a bright light that was low in the sky.

  “That’s Jupiter, to the left and down from the moon. And way over there, to the right and up, is Orion—the hunter.”

  “Where’s the Big Dipper?” Emma asked as she scanned the sky.

  “You’re looking in the wrong direction.” Simmons laughed and turned her around. “Up there.”

  She followed his pointed finger. “I see it now but what’s that orange glow over the top of those hills?”

  “Lights from Binghamton. We’ll drive around it tomorrow.”

  Mei laid back and stared up into the sky. It was quiet. The grass rustled as a gentle breeze blew across the field. She heard Emma sigh and speak. “It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it? Almost like there’s nothing wrong with the world. I wish it was always this peace—What the hell?”

  Mei shot up, startled by the tone in Emma’s voice. “What is it?”

  “They’re gone,” the girl said. “All the lights where Professor Simmons said Binghamton was are gone.”

  She followed Emma’s outstretched arm. In the dim moonlight, she could see the outline of the hills around them but nothing else.

  “Power’s gone out,” Simmons said. “It’s beginning.”

  She knew what he meant.

  Seconds later, they heard the drone of something in the distance. It sounded like a lawnmower.

  “What’s that?”

  “A generator,” Gong answered. “Probably at one of the nearby farms.”

  “It sounds so close.”

  “Noise travels far in the still of the night. That generator is like a flashing neon sign inviting its owner to be robbed.”

  The mood broken, Mei stared in the direction where Binghamton used to be and waited in vain for the lights to come back on. They didn’t.

  “Come on you guys, we might as well get some sleep. If we get an early start, we might make it to the border tomorrow.”

  But then what?

  35

  THANKS FOR DINNER

  April 12th, 20h10 GMT : Helena, New York

  Aside from a scraggly brown dog that pawed through the garbage that had spilled from an overturned trash can, there were no other signs of life on the main street of the tiny town.

  Mei knew there were people around, they just weren’t making their presence known. This was their last stop before the border. Canada was ten miles away.

  “Slow down,” she said to Lucia as they passed in front of a tiny cedar-shingled building. The green sign in front looked as if someone had taken an upside down checkmark and jammed it into the earth. The word restaurant was spelled out in ancient red neon.

  She decided it was worth a chance. They needed to barter for food. “Pull in there.” She pointed to the parking lot at the side of the building.

  Lucia steered the van into the small space and the skittish dog turned suddenly at the sound. It eyed them warily for a few seconds and then went back to its business, pawing through the garbage for scraps of food.

  They climbed out of the van as Gong steered the car into the parking lot. After the outburst from the day before, she was traveling with Lucia and everyone else was in the car. It gave her no small amount of pleasure to hear Simmons complain about Emma’s non-stop chatter.

  “Maybe it’s open,” she said to Simmons as he walked over to the van. She wasn’t hopeful but even if it was closed, they’d all get a quick stretch and a dose of fresh air.

>   “Masks, everyone,” she shouted.

  To her surprise, the door was unlocked. She opened it cautiously and stepped inside. The restaurant was dimly lit and empty. The tables were covered with red tablecloths and cutlery neatly wrapped in paper napkins. Empty Chianti wine bottles with drip candles sat carefully placed in the center of each one. The walls were covered with kitschy knick-knacks and black and white photos from the fifties. Most showed a scene of some kind that included an older man with white tousled hair and a bushy mustache of the same color.

  “We’re closed,” a tired voice yelled from the kitchen.

  “Okay, thank you,” Mei answered. She searched for the man who had spoken. He was nowhere to be seen. “Sorry to bother you.” She sighed and dropped her head as she turned to leave.

  It had been worth a try.

  “Come on guys,” she said to the rest of them.

  “Hold on just a minute,” the voice called out. She turned and saw its owner peering through the small square window on the door that separated the kitchen from the dining area. A second later, he pushed it open and limped into the room.

  She did a double-take and craned her head around to look at the photographs on the wall. It was the same man, but how could that be? the photos must have been nearly seventy-years old.

  He saw her stare and grinned. “That’s my father. I’ve been told we look the same, but I’m much more handsome, don’t you think?” He winked at her and hobbled forward using his cane for support. “What can I do for you?”

  “We just wanted to see if you were open.”

  He shook his head. “Not really, there isn’t much food left.”

  Using his free hand, he dragged a chair out from beneath a nearby table and lowered himself into it with an exhausted grunt. “Excuse me for sitting, I had a hip replacement three months ago. It aches like a son-of-a-gun.”

  He used his cane to push back another chair from the table and beckoned to Mei. “If you aren’t in a hurry, please sit—and the rest of you, too. I haven’t had much company lately.”

  The group looked to Mei and she nodded.

  “I’m Joseph, by the way,” he said with a wave of his hand.