Reunion

by J. S. Frankel

  Dmitri brought up the rear, shaking his head, seemingly frustrated at the futility of their mission. At the ladder, Harry caught him by the shoulder. “They’re not going to get anywhere like that. You have to make them listen.”

  “They will not even listen to me. What chance do you have?”

  Point made, Dmitri moved up the ladders and into the fading sunlight. Reluctantly, Harry followed and hoped he could make them see reason. He doubted they would, though. Pavel was the leader, and the others... maybe they were simply tired of being crapped on all the time.

  As they began to march, a fierce wind sprang up and blew dust in their faces. They moved along, the night rapidly closed in, and even with his enhanced vision, Harry couldn’t see very well through the dust. His nose worked fine enough, though. He tasted the air. It held the scent of leather, suede, canvas... oil. “Do you smell something?” he asked.

  Dmitri took his own turn at sniffing the air. “No, I smell nothing.”

  He called one of his men and spoke to him in Russian. The man, a mixture of goat and elephant, a goat’s body and elephant’s head but with human feet and hands instead of hooves, lifted his trunk and sampled the air. “Nyet,” he finally said.

  “My man smells nothing,” answered Dmitri.

  Too bad he didn’t, as a second later seven men erupted from either side of the road. Dressed in containment suits, they held assault rifles with infrared scopes aimed straight at the group. The sound of bolts being thrown back echoed in the night air. “Stop there,” a man said in English.

  This one wasn’t wearing a containment suit. Instead, he wore a sharply tailored uniform festooned with medals. Tall and broad-shouldered with steely gray, deep-set eyes and a sharp slit of a mouth, he gave the impression of having absolute authority. He held a flashlight in his hand and swept it over the group one by one until he came to Harry.

  “My name is General Anatoly Sharpova,” he said in a heavy though understandable accent. He looked at Harry. “I take it you are Harry Goldman?”

  “I am,” Harry answered. “General, we need to talk to you about Allenby and what he’s doing—”

  “I am aware of this foreigner’s presence. However, there are other things to discuss, and we will do so. But for now, I am asking all of you to put your weapons down.” He repeated the request in Russian and then added in English, “Please.”

  This was total crap. He was asking them to surrender and for what, to be sitting ducks?

  “And be massacred by you, is that right?”

  The question, asked in English, came from Pavel, and although he staggered and was breathing in ragged gasps, his anger and hatred of the army seemed to be giving him renewed strength.

  Sharpova shook his head. “No, we are only going to take you in. Our mandate has changed. I wish you to believe me on this.”

  He signaled his men and they lowered their weapons, but kept their fingers on the triggers. “That is to show our good faith,” the general added. “We need to talk and...”

  “Don’t trust them!”

  Fire opened up from behind Harry and lit up the night. He dove for the ground, listening to the bullets whiz over him. One of the boar-men had started shooting, and three of the soldiers fell. The Russian soldiers immediately scattered, regrouped, and returned fire.

  Caught in the crossfire, Harry crept away, hugging the land, and all he could think of was how stupid and wasteful this was going to turn out. The thought of not seeing his wife and daughter again ran through his mind, as did the cries for blood on both sides.

  With bullets tracing their way through the air and with the screams and shouts of the wounded and those not, it was difficult for him to get his bearings. The air soon became thick with the smell of blood. Confused, he tried to crawl to his left, but a hail of bullets forced him back. “Holy crap,” was his only response to the carnage.

  When it seemed all was lost, a hand came out of nowhere and pulled him away from the gunfire and into an undisturbed portion of the field. Harry came up to rest beside the body of another boar-man. He was dead. “Goldman,” a voice said.

  Looking around, he saw it was Pavel. Bleeding from his side, bleeding out fast, his breath came in tortured gasps. “Goldman... you must go now. I am sorry. If I must die, I shall die here.”

  With a snarl on his lips, he morphed into a different creature one last time. He became a boar by touching the skin of his dead comrade, and charged the soldiers. The cries of pain, the sound of flesh being torn from its bones—it cut through the night.

  Along with the sound of skin being flayed there was the rat-a-tat of the machine guns, a steady mechanical noise of death being dealt out. Harry stayed down and covered his head, hoping the bullets wouldn’t find him as a target. He tried to shut out the cries of the wounded and the death rattles that came from their throats...

  “It is all over.”

  Sharpova spoke and sounded disgusted. It was hard to tell what he was more disgusted over, the transgenics or the fact he’d had to resort to violence. “Get up, Goldman. It is all over,” he repeated.

  Rising to his feet, not daring to believe he’d come out of this unscathed, Harry stared at the scene in front of him. Bodies lay in every direction. Pavel’s form, large, lumpy, and covered in blood, stirred. Swiftly running over to him, Harry touched his shoulder. The man’s body had already begun to revert to its default state. It also started to grow cold. He didn’t have long. “Hey, you’re still here.”

  It wasn’t the most inspiring thing to say, but Pavel offered a brief and bloody smile. “You were right... Harry,” he whispered. “I should... I should have listened to you. I am sorry...”

  His voice trailed away and a rattling sound emerged from his throat. Then he stopped breathing.

  Shaking his head at the uselessness of conflict, Harry rose. Another figure caught his eye. It was the rabbit-girl. Quiet and small, she lay under the body of Dmitri. In his last moments he’d tried to protect her. It hadn’t done any good.

  Sighing, Harry turned back to look at the general. It was such a waste. It didn’t have to come to this. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he muttered.

  In turn, Sharpova surveyed the death scene with an impassive expression. He then shook his head in a slow, sorrowful manner. “To have killed all of them—it was not my intention. If only they had given themselves up, all of this could have been avoided.”

  “How?” By now, Harry was seething, and he bunched his fists in helpless rage. Pavel was dead, his people were dead, and even though Pavel hadn’t been a friend, at the very least he hadn’t been as bad or evil as Allenby. “Tell me how. You murdered him—”

  “As surely as he would have killed me and my men,” Sharpova interrupted. “As you can see, three of my men are already dead. Come, we must talk.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Harry knew the general wouldn’t let him go. There was no way he could escape, anyway. He had no means of getting out of this situation, at least, not alive. Trapped, he was truly trapped, and it had come to this, facing off against with the devil.

  “If you will not come of your own accord,” Sharapova’s voice was languid, “then we will have to use other means of persuasion.”

  “Do your worst.”

  Harry expected something heavy would hit him. When the blow came, he wasn’t surprised at all...

  Chapter Thirteen: Dance With the Devil

  Waking up turned out to be painful experience. Harry sat up with a groan, his head on fire and his mouth full of ashes. Expecting his surroundings to consist of stone walls and a lumpy cot, he was surprised to find himself in a warm room. His cot was actually a comfortable leather couch.

  Chairs, a large desk... computer... they sat five feet away. He was in an office. “All that’s missing is a portrait of fearless leader,” he muttered and took a look around. No, wrong again—a large, framed painting of the latest in Russian leaders hung on the far wall. With piercing eyes, thin lips and a high brow,
President Lisov seemed to be watching every square inch of the room. Harry didn’t know whether to be amused at the portrait or spit at it.

  Next to the portrait was a giant map of Russia with a number of red circles on it. Perhaps those circles pinpointed where the other transgenics had been located. Pavel and his friends were dead, but perhaps more lived. If so, he hoped they’d be able to elude the government’s hunting parties.

  A clock on the wall ticked away and showed the hour to be four in the morning. He’d been out how long? His sense of time had been disrupted, but for now, he was alive and unscathed. The only question was where. He got up, testing his body, and although his head hurt, the pain was swiftly dissipating.

  Going over and trying the door, he found it locked, and while he could have wrenched it off its hinges, he decided to wait. Returning to the couch, he sat and listened to his body heal. At least he could still regenerate.

  While waiting to heal, he thought of his wife. It was dangerous to do so, as wondering how she was would distract him from doing what needed to be done. He could not afford to let down his guard for a moment.

  Still, at that moment, he wondered how little Sara Emily was doing. When he’d held her, her body, so warm and soft, so fragile, she’d yawned and opened her eyes. They were a startling azure blue. Perhaps Anastasia had once had eyes that color. His baby had smiled at him.

  She’d smiled and he’d whispered back, “Hey, I’m your father.” Her arm had reached out and she’d touched his nose with a tiny forefinger. Newborns didn’t do that, but she’d already gained the ability to turn her head and focus her eyes. Very unusual, their child was.

  “Let me have her,” Anastasia had said. “Maybe she’s hungry.”

  He’d handed her over, and Anastasia had cradled Sara Emily in her arms. “I’m your mother, and you are going to be the most beautiful girl in the world. I can already tell.”

  Their daughter had looked at them, really looked at them as though she already understood what they’d been saying, and then yawned once more. She wasn’t hungry after all. A second later, she fell asleep. Couldn’t all days be like that... ?

  The sound of the door opening disturbed Harry’s flashback and forced him into the present. Shutting down the thoughts of his family and promising himself to think of them once the danger was over, he turned around to see Sharpova walk in. He was carrying a tray. On it was a teapot and two cups along with a glass jar. Harry sniffed the air. The jar held sugar. Sharpova set the tray down on the desk and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

  “Ah, I see you are awake.” A pleasant smile was on his face, a distinct change from his previous demeanor. “We shall have tea, Goldman, and discuss what needs to be discussed.”

  “Where am... where is this place?”

  “This,” said Sharpova as he began to pour from the teapot, “is my personal office. We are at an army base just outside Moscow. Not the gray, grim and dirty office you expected from a Russian general, did you?”

  In all honesty, no, but then again Harry had never expected to see the inside of any military base in Russia. He also wondered why he hadn’t already been killed. Still, one had to be grateful for the little things in life. “No,” he finally answered.

  “Ah, well, surprises are sometimes worth having.”

  Sharpova finished pouring the tea, set out the cup, and sat down behind the desk. He took a sip from his cup, added in two teaspoons of sugar, and sipped it again, slowly, savoring it. “Ah, this is most relaxing. Please, drink up,” he urged. “It is English breakfast tea, and it is not something most people have access to. Also, you will find it not laced with anything. We are here for a talk and not to drug you.”

  Hesitantly, Harry took another sniff, found it acceptable, and then drank. The hot liquid warmed his insides and he finished the tea in a few gulps. Setting the cup down, he asked, “What now?”

  “Now,” Sharpova said as he, too, finished his drink, “we shall talk about what to do. I will start by thanking you for the anti-cancer vaccine formula you sent us. Our doctors and oncologists have informed me that it has proven most effective in slowing down the spread of the disease.”

  “Glad it helped.”

  Notably absent from Harry’s thanks was any mention of Istvan’s blood. However, Sharpova cocked his head to one side. “You are thinking of someone else, are you not?” he asked. “If you are thinking of a certain tiny individual whose blood is the key to many things, rest assured we are thinking of him as well.

  “However, before we get into the logistics of which country he belongs to, there are other matters to discuss. We have a problem, your government and mine, and I would like to resolve it as quickly as possible.”

  It was more than a little difficult to take his answer at face value. “I thought you already had a solution. You shot everyone.”

  His statement earned him a grunt, one ostensibly meant to convey disapproval. “Believe it or not, this is not what I wanted. My superiors, yes, those with power in the Kremlin, they want every transgenic dead, but I do not. The ones we killed, they were the true radicals, as far as the government is concerned. Look at this.”

  Switching on his computer, he tapped a few buttons. A video began playing, one showing no less than fifteen transgenics demonstrating in front of the Kremlin. They were holding up signs and chanting. Most of them appeared youngish in appearance, although it was difficult to tell through the fur and distortions to their faces in some instances.

  “Who are they?” asked Harry. As he continued to look, a crowd of human youths—skinheads—formed around the transgenic demonstrators, bodies tensed for action. Perhaps twenty police officers hovered in the background.

  “They are—or were—university students,” replied Sharpova with a note of sadness. “We did not know of their troubles at first. This video was shot roughly one year ago. Apparently they had been kidnapped by,” he grimaced, “our scientists, Grushenko and Kulakov. You knew them.”

  “They’re dead.”

  Sharpova nodded. “And it is a good thing they are. At any rate,” he pointed at the screen, “those young people came forward, asked for help, and when they did not get it, they came to Moscow and protested in front of the Kremlin.”

  The video continued, showing the demonstrators getting more and more agitated, picking up rocks and hurling them at the building in front of them. The skinheads took the action as their cue and attacked the transgenics. The police then intervened and at that point the video went dark.

  “The transgenics were fortunate the police were there to prevent injury,” Sharpova said softly. “Usually they do nothing.”

  “What happened to them?”

  A shrug came as an answer. “Some of them were taken away by the police. Others, though, they escaped into the countryside.”

  Sharpova pointed to the red circles on the map. “Those are the major cities within this country. We found out some of the transgenics lived near Moscow. Others came from Stalingrad, Yakutsk, Omsk, and other, more heavily populated cities. Most of them were known to the government, but after being attacked as you saw in the video, many have elected to remain hidden.”

  He gave a sigh and finished off by saying, “They are out there and are of use to us. They are Russian citizens, after all. At least, most of them are.”

  Turning off the computer, he proceeded to outline the problems at hand. Since the existence of transgenics was now more or less well known throughout the country, the authorities had dispatched research teams to find out as much as they could. And they had come to the same conclusion the European and North American authorities had.

  One, most of the transgenics happened to be young, poorly educated and rootless. “Without direction, they are likely to be turned by Allenby or others like him,” Sharpova said. “This is something we cannot allow. We already have troubles with our own human youth. Those skinheads, they were the radicals I spoke of before. It is not the fault of those who have been genetically alt
ered.”

  The second problem lay in which side the transgenics were likely to fight for. “If they swore an oath to our country, that would be one thing, but they have not.”

  “Can you blame them?” Harry was incensed this man would declare such a bald-faced lie. According to the now-dead Dmitri, the government had done everything in its power to erase their existence. “Why give your allegiance to a country that hates you? Why would anyone do that?”

  “You did.”

  “We have a different system.”

  Sharpova offered a cold and calculating smile. Underneath the gentlemanly exterior was a chess master who played to win. Harry also realized this man, in his own way, was as ruthless an opponent as Allenby was. Nevertheless, he needed him to find the real monster.

  “Yes, you do,” said the general as he arose from his seat. “That is why we do what we do. I do not like it, but if it is in Russia’s best interests to keep her borders safe, this is what we shall do.”

  Once more he pointed at the map. “This is an immense country, sparsely populated in some areas and overpopulated in others. Where you live is no different. Our biggest problem is assessing how many hybrids are out there and where they will live, should they decide to stay.”

  “If you don’t kill them first,” countered Harry, thinking now it was in his best interests to leave and take his chances going solo against the enemy. A second later, he realized he couldn’t do it alone.

  “Yes, if we do not. I, for one, do not,” Sharpova said with a note of passion in his voice combined with warmth not previously shown. “I am prepared to fight for them, given time. I am also prepared to lose my commission. I will be reduced to nothing, but this, as someone who loves his country, is what I am ready for.”

  “Why?”

  The answer came out simply. “Because they are Russian and because they are our people. That is why.”

  Surprised at the statement he’d heard, Harry reassessed his initial ideas about Sharpova. He was also surprised to find the general speak so openly of his idea, considering the office had most likely been bugged.