The Eden Plague

by David VanDyke

  She said she had been an analyst before dying of cancer, that she had worked for them a couple of years…seemed about right. And what had she said – “Yeah, there’s a downside, at least for the Company.” Not for her, but for the Company. So it couldn’t be a shortened lifespan, I thought. Maybe it had no effect on lifespan. Maybe it froze your age just as you were, like in a vampire story. That might be nice, if you got it young.

  I sighed, rubbed my face. Too many questions, too many possibilities. And I needed answers, because whatever it was, it was inside me too.

  I had no way to contact Elise, so I would just have to hope she was all right and could get in touch with me sometime. I just had to put her out of my mind for now. I didn’t owe her anything. Leave her to rot.

  My conscience sharply disagreed with me. Kind of funny, because the serpent had held my conscience captive for quite a while. Maybe the XH was healing some brain damage. And if the XH healed my body too, got rid of the headaches and brain damage and bum knee and aching back and the persistent spiral fractures from too many hard landings and everything else, even if that was all it did, I guess I owed her a lot.

  But paying that debt would have to wait. First I wanted to get an idea of what was happening at my house.

  I drove to a beer joint I knew of in Quantico Town. This was a unique little municipality, a tenth of a square mile, entirely enclosed by Quantico Marine Base. Residents got passes to come and go, all five hundred of them or so. But what was even more unique, the unusual thing that I needed, was the pay phone inside. Not too many of those around but things didn’t change very fast in quaint old Quantico Town.

  I ignored the “closed” sign on the door of the Forward Observer pub and went on in. If you looked like you belonged, Felix the owner would ignore the archaic 18th-century law still on the books that said you can’t sell alcohol before noon. That’s why the door wasn’t locked, that and they made a few bucks in the mornings selling coffee and smokes and breakfast sandwiches and day-old donuts to guys on their way to work. Fortunately, Felix wasn’t in to recognize me, just a chesty young thing with a wedding ring, in too-tight jeans and a tee shirt, makeup over acne, probably the teen wife of a teen Marine, making a few extra bucks.

  “Whatcha want?” she said with that fake brightness servers put on. She stood hipshot, pointed with one long nail over her shoulder at the menu chalked on the wall. Ah, the confidence of the young.

  I didn’t sit down. “Three ham cheese and egg bagels, large coffee to go.” I pulled a gallon of milk out of a fridge. “This too. The head that way?” She nodded, and I went back in the direction of the facilities, which happened to be where the phone was too.

  My first call was to my next-door neighbor Trey, a friendly Creole from Louisiana who’d married a nice German girl on a tour in Bitburg and eventually settled down in Virginia after retiring from the Army. Even in the twenty-first century, a black man bringing a white girl home to “Nawlins” was a tough row to hoe.

  “No, nothing unusual going on, Dan, what’s up?” he asked.

  “Nobody in my driveway, no visitors, nothing like that?” We kept an eye on each other’s houses, because there were four schools in the area and a few kids always had sticky fingers.

  “Nope. Why, something wrong?” he pried gently.

  I’d love to have told him, the way I was feeling right now, but he was a neighbor, a fellow vet but not really a brother in arms. I could probably trust him to a point, but I didn’t want to involve him if I didn’t have to. So I dissembled, though it was painful to do so. “No, just missed a meeting with a friend, wondered if he came by there.”

  “Okay…well, you let me know if I can do anything.”

  I could tell he didn’t buy it, but I stuck to my plan. “Thanks, Trey. Hey I might be out of town for a week or two, could you pick up my mail and keep an eye on the place for me?”

  “Yeah Dan. Sure.” He sounded hurt.

  Man, I hated that.

  “Look – Trey, I can’t talk about it right now, okay? You know how it is. But I’ll tell you when I can.” With that half-lie and half-promise, I hung up. Then I called my work, told them I was really sick and wouldn’t be in for a week. In that time it probably either wouldn’t matter or it would be all over.

  I thought of calling my dad, who was a good guy to have with you in a situation. David Jonah Markis, Chief Warrant Officer Four, US Army retired. He’d fought in Vietnam, driving Hueys, and had been wounded a bunch of times flying guys in and out of hot landing zones. Purple Heart with oak leaf clusters, and a Silver Star for the time he went down and carried his wounded copilot seven miles through enemy territory to the nearest US firebase, with an AK round in his left lung. He lived in South Carolina now, had sixty acres and his own grass airstrip south of Blacksburg, and an old but airworthy Piper Cub to keep him busy. But if they knew who I was, they knew him too and might be watching him. If I wanted to talk to him I’d have to figure out a way to do it without bringing the trouble to him.

  But there were some guys that they didn’t know about, I hoped. They couldn’t cover everyone. No one had unlimited resources, not even the Agency. And they had limited powers inside the US anyway; they had already broken any number of laws and while a certain amount of that could be covered up, it became more and more risky the more they did. I had to depend on them not knowing I had the XH in me, that I was just a missed opportunity and they wouldn’t frame a federal charge to get the FBI and every other law enforcement agency in the country looking for me.

  I got out my beat-up Army-issue green memo book that I’d had forever, that I’d carried to the Gulf and back. It had long since been laminated and converted into my home address book and retired to a drawer, but I had grabbed it on the way out of my house and now I looked up Ezekiel “Zeke” Johnstone’s number. I had to risk it, and since I hadn’t contacted him since forever, I hoped they hadn’t connected him to me.

  I called, and got a screening service. Right, this number wasn’t on his safe list. I said “720th” at the beep, waited through “Please Enjoy The Music While We Reach Your Party,” and I almost gasped with relief when I heard Zeke’s voice. “Yeah?” he said, his voice neutral.

  “It’s me, man. DJ. Think a few years back. 720th, Kandahar. I can’t say any more, they might have a keyword trace.”

  “Yeah man, I got it. Let me call you back on a better line.”

  I could hear a woman’s voice, a shriek of childish mirth in the background. I closed my eyes as he hung up. Damn, I hated to drag him into this.

  A minute later the pay phone rang and I picked back up.

  “All right, I’m on a one-off. You sure they ain’t got your end?”

  “Not a hundred percent, but ninety-nine-point nine. It’s a pay phone and if they knew where I was they’d already have picked me up.”

  “All right. What you get into this time? Another loan shark?”

  I used to gamble, and lose. It was one risk of being an adrenaline junkie – when ops slowed down, you had to find something for a jolt. Some guys drank too much, chased women, or took up high-risk sports. Skydiving, that was a given. Bungee jumping, jet-ski, flying, racing…I did all of that, especially the drinking…I had also played craps. A lot. I had gotten stuck. The inevitable mathematics of the house odds had eventually got me, and I borrowed from the wrong people. Zeke and some of his guys had helped me out with that. I’d paid him back and I’d been clean ever since.

  “No, nothing so simple. This is something big, something black, blacker than black. Man, I hate to involve you, what with Cassie and the kids, but it’s either you or run for the border. I don’t want to run yet.”

  “It’s all right, man. You know what I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me your family. I think you need to cut them out. Get some distance.”

  I could see him there in my mind’s eye, thinking and chewing the inside of his cheek. “All right. Can you find the cabin?”

  “I was thinki
ng the same thing. Yeah, I can find it. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to lead them to it. And Zee-man…might want to put out a warning order for a few more guys, just in case. This is some through-the-looking-glass stuff, and I don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

  “Just don’t tell me I’m going to wake up in a tank full of goo with a tube down my throat.”

  “Well, I got a red pill for you here, if you want it.”

  He snorted. “All right, Morpheus. When can you be there?”

  I thought for a moment, trying to calculate the distance and time. About ten hours to Cave Run Lake, Kentucky. “Sometime tonight, I think. Same white van.”

  “Ok, brother. You take care, and I’ll see you tonight.”

  I put down the phone, used the latrine, then went out and paid for my food order. I brought it out to the van and ate a bagel sandwich sitting there in the seat, watching Quantico go about its morning routine. I drank a half a gallon of the milk and started on the coffee. The hunger pangs seemed to come and go, and apparently I had to feed them when they did.

  I got on the road, passing the inbound base traffic piled up at the gate. I took it easy, driving in the right lane south down I-95, letting my thoughts flow.

  Things were a thousand times better now. Yeah, I felt a little guilty for putting Zeke on the spot, but what were friends for, anyway, and I had saved his life, after all. In some cultures that meant I was responsible for him. Either way, me for him, him for me.

  There was nothing quite like the bond between men who had face death together. It sounded corny, even in my mind, but it was the unspoken truth that turned recruits into veterans and boys into men on the battlefield, and had for millennia. And it was more important than just about anything else, on a par with the love between husband and wife. In fact, I knew guys who would choose their brothers in arms before their wives, maybe even their kids. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying it’s that strong.

  But that didn’t mean you even liked the guys, always. Sometimes you couldn’t even stand them, outside of an op. And I was always a bit of a loner, so I hadn’t worried about keeping in touch. I could always find them later, I thought.

  Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. I hadn’t memorized many Bible verses, but that was one of them. I couldn’t remember who said it, but that guy really knew what he was talking about. I hope he died well, saving his friends. Couldn’t ask for a better way to go. I know I’d welcome it when it came, if I died doing my duty, so others could live.

  I shook off my melancholy thoughts. Maybe the XH meant I didn’t have to think about dying anymore, or my buddies dying or anyone. Maybe XH would put me out of business. That was a strange idea. This stuff was going to change the world, if the unknown downside didn’t turn out to be too bad.

  In any case, physically I felt great, better and better by the hour. My thoughts were clearer, my body hummed with vitality and health. It was an overnight revolution. And all I had to do was bite someone, I figured, to pass it on. I had a sudden feeling of power, of the ability to bestow a gift on my friends and withhold it from my enemies, whoever they were. Then I felt a sudden stab of conscience, realizing that I wouldn’t, I couldn’t withhold it from anyone that needed it. That Others May Live was my code. Not ‘That Others Who I Happened To Like May Live’. I knew then that everyone had to have this stuff.

  That conscience nagged at me as I drove, with nothing to do but think and listen to the radio. I started remembering stupid things I’d done as a kid, growing up in Omaha. I’d hurt people, emotionally and physically. I’d been a jerk, because I could be. I was big and tough and athletic and good-looking and I’d used and discarded girls like paper cups, drinking my fill then tossing them away. I’d done pretty much the same thing with women when I was grown. I’d had a filthy mouth, I’d gotten into fights, and I’d bullied weaker people around me. It was all for their own good, of course, and they deserved it, of course, and I deserved whatever I wanted from life, of course.

  Of course.

  I kept a purer part of myself compartmentalized, in a box marked “Duty,” and that was sacred. In that box I was a paladin. I did everything right, everything by the book unless completing the mission called for a deviation, and the mission was everything.

  But outside of duty, I was a son of a bitch.

  Then Becky came along. God, she was beautiful, with sandy straight hair in bangs, freckles, a generous figure that I found just right - and she had a young daughter. It was fireworks and flame for a while, and we got married.

  It lasted five years, until my drinking and my gambling and my jealousy of her daughter and their relationship – I know, I told you I was a son of a bitch – ruined it all. We didn’t have any kids of our own, either. It was me, my half of it. That poisoned the well too, just one more contributing factor. I couldn’t be much of a man if I was shooting blanks with my own wife, right? I had too much medical training to deny a low sperm count.

  A wave of guilt washed over me and I ground my teeth, tears of regret leaking out in the privacy of my van at sixty-five miles per hour. It was cathartic, a few minutes, but I felt infinitely better afterward. I don’t think I’d ever faced my own culpability, and it was cleansing to just accept it.

  Dr. Benchman used to tell me I had to take responsibility for things I’d done and I would feel better. I’d preferred Prozac and Ritalin and dexedrine, but I realized I didn’t want those now. I think the XH was fixing me.

  Was XH going to put the shrinks out of a job too?

  An inkling of the downside started to rattle around in the deep recesses of my thoughts, way down there where those things I don’t want to think about lurk. I couldn’t see it clearly but I figured that given time it would eventually surface.

  Feeling better, my thoughts turned to Elise. I’d shot her, she’d made a fool of me by escaping – had I let her go? Maybe I could have tried harder. I’d never killed a woman – not that I knew of, anyway. Never had a woman fire a weapon at me either. Maybe I had a soft spot? It wasn’t something I’d thought about much. Then I hadn’t tried very hard to keep her out of their clutches, but I might have had to kill four men in front of witnesses to do it, and she’d been so adamant…I turned it all over in my mind, trying to analyze my own feelings.

  Okay, I admitted it to myself. I was interested. She’d shown her spine, and every man likes a woman with a backbone, a woman he can respect. But there was something more there, a connection I felt. Part of it was the shared experience of combat, of the life and death stress that welds people together is unusual ways. But there was more to it than that. Was I fooling myself? It was the way she had looked at me, like she knew me.

  Well, I had all day to think about it.

  -7-

  Nine hours later I was muscling the van around the twists and turns of State 211 south out of Salt Lick, Kentucky, looking for Clear Creek Road, then Buck Creek Road. After that, it was all by memory, looking for the unmarked gate with a “Trespassers Will Be Violated” sign on it, then off into the wooded hills on the rutted dirt track. Branches scraped along the roof and sides of the van, adding to the innumerable dings already there. I’d got it cheap in a fleet auction, and never regretted it. If anything scraped too deep I just sprayed some white enamel over it.

  After ten minutes of rollercoaster I drove up to Zeke’s cabin. It was rustic but well-maintained. There was a big barn next to it, and I pulled up midway between, my headlights shining on the big door. I turned off the engine and the headlamps, leaving the parking lights on and turning on the dome light over my head. I put my hands on the steering wheel and I waited.

  A moment later I felt the pressure of observation from my left. This phenomenon is scientifically unproven but it’s a well-accepted principle in special ops, and even in ordinary hunting. A well-trained, situationally-aware operator will know when someone is looking at him, especially without the distractions of a busy urban environme
nt. So will an animal, sometimes. My dad had told me about it, from when he was evading the NVA and the Cong. Never look at the guys looking for you. They will feel it.

  I froze in place. If it was hostiles, I was screwed anyway. I had to believe it was Zeke or one of his guys, checking me out.

  A faint sound, like a breath, came from behind my left ear. My eyes flicked to my door mirror and I could see the barrel of an assault weapon with a short, dark figure behind it. About the same time, I saw Zeke come around the corner of the barn, dressed in some old BDUs. He was easy to identify, big and bearded. He’d gotten paunchy since retirement, but he still moved easily. He would be in his early fifties, about ten years older than I was.

  He walked confidently up to my open window, waving the gunman back. He reached through to clasp hands with me. “DJ!”

  “Zeke. Really good to see you, man. Is that Spooky back there?”

  “You know it. Still doing his thing.”

  Spooky was a little Asian guy, what my dad would have called a Montagnard. His name, what ended up on his documents anyway, was Nguyen Pham Tran. I think that was the Vietnamese equivalent of John Smith. He had come over as a teenager in the Boat People wave of the 1980s, and joined the US Army as soon as he could. Ninjas had nothing on Spooky in the bush. I think his family had been anticommunist insurgents, until they got sent to the reeducation camps. He didn’t talk about it much.

  “Hey, Spooky,” I called over my shoulder, now that I felt I could move without getting shot. I heard a grunt in reply. When I got out of the van, I didn’t see him anymore. He’d faded back into the woods.

  I hugged Zeke, slapping his back. “Good to see you, man.” I stretched, then bent over, touched my toes, loosening up my muscles after the long drive.

  “That physical therapy must be working,” he observed. “Let’s go inside. Spooky’s enjoying having woods to play in. We’re lucky he was between jobs.”

  The little man kept busy working for defense contractors, personal security. Sometimes that meant just what it sounded like – keeping VIPs safe in rough country. Sometimes it meant off-the-books clandestine and covert work, all plausibly deniable.