The Methuselah Gene

by Jonathan Lowe

  16

  The ringing phone woke me first. I wasn’t sure how many times it had rung, but when I picked it up there was a click, a dial tone, and then the line went dead again. Julie became restless in my arms, the ceiling fan’s blades slowly turning above us in a rhythm that had matched my own. I stared at the clock on the nightstand beside her heavy pine four-poster, which now bore the softly illuminated numerals 5:41. Then I shook her warm shoulder. She made a purring sound, and turned into me. “Humm?”

  “Someone knows I’m here,” I whispered. “I have to go.”

  Her hand found mine. “You can’t,” she said, startled awake by the thought. “Not without me.”

  “I should have left last night,” I insisted. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “But you’re injured. You need me.”

  I slipped my free hand behind her head. “Yes, I do need you, but—”

  “You need me, Alan,” she repeated, with emphasis. In the near darkness I could just see her smile. I could also hear that she enjoyed saying it.

  “Okay, then,” I conceded. “But hurry. Let’s get dressed.”

  “Can’t we at least wait until sunrise?”

  I turned on the table lamp, then squinted past her to the nightstand on the other side. I blinked in disbelief at what I saw there. Noticing my shocked expression, Julie turned her head toward what I now stared at fixedly. Then she looked back at me, and met my gaze, her eyes own widening.

  “That glass,” I said, “is it half full . . . or half empty?”

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” she replied. “I . . . I must have . . . have gotten up, middle of the night. Thirsty.”

  “Oh Julie . . . no.”

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “No.”

  “It’s out of habit. It was an accident!”

  “Oh God. Maybe . . .”

  “What?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t enough to . . .”

  “To what?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Feel? I feel fine. Happy, until now. It’s not the water. We’re not even sure this is connected to the drinking water anymore, remember?” She paused, uncertainly. “How much would I have to drink to be affected, did you say?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think we should find out before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Fear and a suggestion of anger now edged into her voice. I was scaring her.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” I declared. “Maybe someone staying at the rooming house can drive us, or we’ll walk to the next town if we have to.”

  “On your leg? It’s eight miles to . . .” She stopped suddenly, cocking her head toward the window.

  “What is it?”

  “Hear that?”

  “What? No, I can’t—” But then I heard it too. The sound of tires over dirt and gravel. An approaching car, finally pulling up out front.

  “The Sheriff?” Julie asked, getting up.

  I gripped her arm, listening intently. The car’s idling engine stopped. A car door softly shut. Then another.

  Two men. Not one, but two. And the sun was not even up yet.

  I flung Julie’s pants to her, and pulled on my own. Shoes came next. No time to tie them. I stuffed our bed pillows under the sheet, then cut the light as we fled the room toward the back door.

  A crescent moon cast a funereal pall over the empty field behind the house. I stood in the open door, revolver in hand. Julie stood behind me. “Where are they?” she whispered.

  My heart thudded thickly in my chest as I stared at the ragged patch of grass we’d have to cross first, and at the dangerous open ground beyond it, stretching to the safety of the corn. I stuck my head outside and tried to see around the corner toward any possible shadows cast by the faint silver moonlight. “Maybe they’re waiting around the side,” I whispered back in the unnatural silence, “expecting us to run. I’ll go check the front windows. Wait here.”

  “No!” Julie insisted. “I’ll go. I should answer the door.”

  “But they haven’t rung the bell.”

  My words had a chilling effect on her. I felt her realization too, and cocked the revolver in my hand. We waited, listening to nothing except the faint buzz of the kitchen clock. “What if,” Julie mouthed, her words coming out in little gasps, “they’re here for me, not you?”

  I pulled her into me with one arm, tightly. I could feel her trembling, shivering with terror. How many times, I wondered, had she awakened from nightmares to stand like this with her rifle, listening to some imagined sound outside, wondering if someone had found her? But the car we’d heard had been no dream.

  Where were they now?

  We both stood motionless in the back door, prepared for the worst. The sky was getting lighter as the moon began to fade away into a shroud. Sunrise approached, a crimson glow to the east. I heard a sound from the living room. Barely audible.

  A rattling sound.

  The front doorknob.

  “Go!” I whispered closely, pointing toward the field and the corn beyond. “Run, and I’ll cover you!”

  “No, not without—”

  “I’ll come after. Go!”

  She ran like a gazelle, taking short leaping strides as though skipping across the backs of crocodiles in the dark. As she did, I lifted my revolver and walked unsteadily toward the corner of the house to intercept anyone who might come around the side and see her.

  Peering around the corner, I saw no one. Then—

  Two shadows.

  I jerked back before seeing their faces, or they mine. With no time to reach the other corner of the house, much less the field where the corn had swallowed Julie, I scrambled back toward the rear entrance of the house. Once inside, I quietly shut the door and locked it.

  Then an idea struck me.

  What if they’ve left their keys in the car?

  I started toward the front door, prepared to risk everything to escape, already imagining myself roaring away, head down, as the two men fired at me . . . but then another thought arrested me. The gate. Julie had relocked the gate. This was why it had taken so long for them to reach the front of the house.

  I backed into the hallway. What now . . . the closet? No . . .

  The attic.

  I reached up to pull down on the cord for the retractable ladder. The thing shot down at me on its well oiled metal carriage. I stopped its slide an inch from my face, and floored it quickly, then I ripped off the cord with one savage jerk so it wouldn’t be swaying and give me away. I climbed up frantically, my gun shoved into my belt. I made it up, ignoring the pain in my left leg, and had just retracted the ladder when the rear door imploded with a shattering of glass.

  I crouched in total darkness, beside the ladder well, afraid to move. Below me the two men entered and thundered through the rooms, banging doors, sliding open closets. Then came a shuffling sound and a settling in the hallway below me, followed by silence. A terrible pause as I imagined them both looking up at the closed attic door, with its missing cord, now in my pocket. Were they motioning with their guns? I tensed, aiming my own revolver at the retracted ladder in front of me, willing the sound of a chair being pulled under it not to come.

  “What now?” one of them asked, his voice sounding high but throaty, like a flute in a mine shaft.

  “The phone call must have spooked her.”

  “Or him?”

  “Let’s go.”

  I heard them walk into the kitchen below. Then another pause.

  “Got the radio?”

  “It’s in the car.”

  Shuffling feet again, then silence returned.

  A dead silence, an empty silence.

  When their car engine finally started I took in one deep and extended breath, and let it out slowly. I almost pushed down on the ladder right then . . . but something made me stop. Something innate, like a sixth sense. I felt along one of the rough wooden rungs as I waited for the sound of the car pulling away. But that soun
d did not come. Instead, there was the sound of the refrigerator door closing in the kitchen below. Then quicker steps retreating.

  Damn.

  Close. Very close.

  When at last the car pulled away, and my heart resumed beating normally, I kicked the trap door downward in a flash of frustration and anger. The ladder slid down to the end of its carriage with a metallic thump, swinging to the floor. I waited a moment more, tensing for any sound, then descended with revolver in hand.

  Suddenly, footsteps behind me. I whirled, gun cocked and lifted.

  “It’s me!” Julie yelled, raising one hand. “Don’t . . . shoot. Okay?”

  “Sorry,” I said, lowering the weapon. “You scared me.”

  “Scared you?”

  I stared beyond her, at the open back door. “Did you get a look at them? I didn’t recognize their voices.”

  She shrugged jumpily, like a nervous tic. “Never seen them before. They were dressed alike, though. Shirt and ties.”

  “Ties?”

  She nodded once, her eyes large and liquid.

  “Was one of them black?”

  “The ties?”

  “No, the men. I mean was one of them African American.”

  “Oh. No. Why?”

  “Never mind. Let’s pack something to eat, quickly.” I looked around the kitchen. “Have you got something we can use to carry things?”

  Julie ignored the question, and came to me. She leaned her head into my chest for comfort. I could feel her trembling again, or maybe it was me trembling. “Where we going?” she asked, at last.

  “Out of town.”

  “On foot?”

  “That’s right. Cross country. We can’t trust anybody, remember?”

  “What about the black helicopter?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  17

  She suggested we head east, toward Macksburg and the Thompson river. I told her that it was the way they’d expect us to go. Roadblocks could even be up by now. Then I pointed in the other direction, toward more trees that would afford cover from the air in case the producers of Survivor: Zion decided to test us with live ammunition. As I indicated the water tower, she told me that way meant an eight mile hike over mostly farmland, amid the hog farms she’d mentioned in her own theory about the origin of our distress. ‘From the frying pan into the fire’ was how she put it, but in the end curiosity got the better of us. My theory about roadblocks in the direction of Des Moines seemed to hold water for her, too, even if that ugly frog up there didn’t.

  We put what we needed in a backpack. Several canned sodas, some oranges, tissue, and material for bandages in case mine needed rewrapping. I kept the revolver in her pack’s front pocket for easy access. We walked briskly as the sun climbed a golden stepladder of clouds, and as Zion’s bird population heralded our every step with chirps, caws, and angelic songs. My leg throbbed with dull pain at each step, but I was used to it by then, and tried not to think about it.

  “Thanks for carrying the pack,” I whispered as we watched Earl’s house only a hundred yards to our right, curtains pulled and silent. “How do you feel?”

  “Like a moving target.” Then her deep brown eyes leveled an unreadable degree of fear or suspicion at me. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Like about how I’ll be having hallucinations soon, too?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “Even if the water tower is connected to the local supply now, I think the water was almost gone, because it sounded mostly hollow. It was hot yesterday, too. I could feel it up there, atop that thing. It was like laying on top of an oven.”

  “So?”

  “So viruses are sensitive to heat, and I’m not sure mine could even live in such an environment for long. So maybe, after yesterday, the heat neutralized it. Seems logical that they’d plan for that. No more evidence. I’m thinking they drained off some of the water so they wouldn’t need as much of the virus. Maybe there’s traces left of some kind of anti-inflammatory drug they used to combat the side effects, too, if they haven’t already drained what remains. I did see a hose coming off a bleeder valve on the base of it. Anyway, I think you were too late to be infected, even if you did drink enough tainted water to infect you normally.“

  She didn’t seem relieved. “There’s nothing normal about it. And if you’re wrong, what other side effects are possible, besides my seeing Jesus?”

  “Depends on whether there’s another drug at work, and what it is. I’d need a sample of it, unless we’re already too late. Especially if it’s something Jim Baxter didn’t have when he mainlined the stuff, undiluted.”

  Julie stopped walking, and so drifted behind me. “Who is Jim Baxter?”

  Startled by her distant voice, I turned, then went back to her. I took in a breath, and finally ran a hand through my thinning hair. “Jim was my assistant.”

  “Was? What happened to him?”

  “He died.” After saying it, I witnessed the momentary shock on her face harden into disappointment. But this time I didn’t try to paint a smiley face on Jim’s skull for her. I just added, “It was a suicide.”

  She resumed walking, in front of me this time, a renewed urgency to her pace between the rows of corn. I wanted to explain to her that the virus should die after delivering its attached gene to the major organs of the body, and that an anti-inflammatory just might prevent an interferon response long enough for that to happen, but as I brushed aside the tall stalks of green which whipped back at me from either side, I chose to shut up instead. After a full minute, which seemed longer, she asked, “When were you gonna tell me about him?”

  “Jim? I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody, just like you weren’t.” I started to add more, but decided against it just yet. Emotions take their own path, and needed time to find their way. Only after a few moments did I risk speaking. “There sure is one hell of a lot of corn in this state,” I tried, as a test.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just that they call this the Hawkeye State, but I think it should be called the Corn State.”

  “It is called that,” Julie announced, with obvious annoyance, “too.”

  “Bread basket to the world?”

  She glanced back at me in disbelief. Who was I, a student in her elementary school class, now? “In the Siouan dialect Iowa means ‘dusty faces,’ but it’s mostly pollen dust now.”

  “Oh.”

  Another minute passed.

  “A billion bushels of corn a year is average for the state, and so far there’s never been a total crop failure,” she added.

  “Let’s hope for India’s sake that doesn’t happen,” I said.

  “India? How about Iowa livestock. Most of the corn goes to feed them. Hogs, chickens.”

  “Hogs,” I repeated, before swapping roles. “That’s interesting, because, you know, there’s any number of ways to produce drugs. In one method human genes are inserted into bacterial cells, and the genetically altered bacteria then produce substances almost identical to what human cells produce. After a substance is isolated and purified, it’s given to patients whose own bodies can’t produce enough of it naturally.”

  “From bacteria?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yuck. But what’s that got to do with hogs?”

  “I’m getting to that. So anyway, substances like erytropoietin can be produced by bacteria, which is used to stimulate red blood cells. Or tissue plasminogen activator, a protein that dissolves blood clots. You’ve heard of interferons? They’re made from monoclonal antibodies, and can be used to fight diseases like cancer, or to boost the immune system. Of course the sources for drugs can be anything, not just bacteria or molds grown in petri dishes. There are thousands of plants, minerals, and animals used in pharmacology. Antibiotics, cardiotonics, analgesics—the list of sources for these things is endless.”

  “You mean, like, maybe . . . oh, I don’t know, hogs?”

  “Bingo. In fact, when I first heard Iowa was
the state possibly linked to the theft of the virus I was engineering, a red flag went up. But I wasn’t sure why.”

  “And now you are, Einstein?”

  “Well, hogs have always been big with researchers. Not as big as monkeys and mice, mind you, but the hog is top dog with many scientists, particularly organ transplant researchers.”

  “Really . . .”

  “Oh, absolutely. Insulin can be derived from the pancreas of hogs, and thyroxine from its thyroid gland. The hormone cortisol, the stuff that’s used to treat arthritis? It can be extracted from the adrenal glands of cows and sheep, too. Although the new science is producing these things synthetically with fewer side effects, and cheaper too.”

  “So you think, what . . . that your virus is being tested on hogs here too?”

  “Hogs could be used to develop the virus into a drug for humans. That’s really the way you would do it, if you were a scientist and not a terrorist. And if your theory is right about the source being localized to the area around the hog farms, maybe the virus isn’t being tested on people here at all, and the fact that some have symptoms is a mistake they’re trying to correct.”

  “With what’s in the water tower, you mean?”

  “Seems more likely than that terrorists are here, considering the black helicopter.”

  “But whoever they are,” she wondered, “why would they need a helicopter at all?”

  “Good question. Unless it’s to hunt me down before I expose them. Before they have a chance to clean up the mess they made.”

  The sun had cleared the horizon, and its bright light felt warm against my face as we came to the top of the hill within a hundred yards of the water tower. Julie looked skyward as though expecting to be intercepted any moment by a black Cobra with a mounted mini-gun. I could imagine other women who would be cursing and accusing me by this point, with obvious justification. But whatever her real name was, she appeared to be stronger than that, having adopted survival as a way of life. Regarding what lay to the west of the hill, she indicated more corn, wheat, soybeans, hogs, and a few scattered rednecks and country bumpkins living in farmhouses. Hopefully, though, one of those solid patriotic citizens also had an unmonitored and working telephone.