The Cygnus Virus

by Terry Zakreski

  She looks at the ceiling.

  “I guess I’ll feel better once we get out of here.”

  “Come on, it’s not so bad. Better than a barn, anyway.”

  She dreams about him.

  She dreams that he’s a rebel leader with powerful enemies. Religious leaders hate him. Millions follow him. She sees him leading a revolt against a great satanic power, which the religious leaders support.

  Then a voice.

  Behold your son King.

  The voice becomes a naked woman with a frightened face. She’s alone in a washroom looking in the mirror, Mother, why did you leave me, I am so lost? Tears rolling down her cheeks.

  The face turns older, and is leading a battle.

  The face turns into a tiger and leaps at her with a thundering roar and eyes burning bright.

  She bolts awake. Her heart’s pounding. She feels her stomach and imagines that he’s asleep, just like her husband, breathing slowly and deeply beside her. Purring. She tries to fall back to sleep too, but her monkey mind won’t let her.

  What does it mean, to be attacked by her son, who becomes a tiger?

  She checks the clock. It’s four-thirty. The alarm is set for six. She tries to trust that it will wake her and that she won’t sleep in. She does not want to miss their flight to Bathsheba. Then she realizes that it’s a private plane, wouldn’t they just wait?

  She still sees the face of that tiger and, in its rippling patterned stripes, she sees everything. The medical procedures, the trips to Las Pecado, how the insemination felt more like an abortion. The cold metal sliding into her. Just a few more moments, you’re doing just fine.

  She was scared about what they put in her at first. But everything seemed to develop normally. And then there was that first reassuring kick. Now her belly is so big, her button’s popped. Due, like a book from a library demanding itself returned.

  The tiger growls and stretches inside her.

  She lies still for a while, while Joe snores. She’s thinking and then it’s dawn and she can’t remember falling asleep, she gets out of bed and starts packing her things. Months earlier, she would have been sick at this hour. Seems so long ago.

  She runs through her morning tasks. She’s got everything parceled in little bags, suitcase and carry-on, all packed according to what she researched about airport security. She wakes her husband, so that he can shower and get ready.

  Her morning accelerates, in spite of her early start. Joe is soon ready and then room service arrives with breakfast. She ordered a granola yogurt fruit cup with an orange juice.

  Joe ordered French toast with bacon, orange juice and coffee. They have to use room service because they’re not allowed to eat in a public restaurant.

  Royal refugees.

  She waits for Joe to finish eating. Empty plates are scattered on the desk. He’s pouring coffee in his small white porcelain cup for the third time.

  “I dreamt about him last night.”

  “Oh? Was he a star quarterback?”

  “No, actually, he was a woman who prayed to me and then a tiger who attacked me.”

  “Wow, that’s weird. What do you suppose it means?”

  “Well, he’s not playing football. I am not sure, maybe a warning. Listen, Joe, I need you to promise me that should anything happen to me, that you’ll protect our son from this.”

  “Sweetheart. It was just a dream. All sorts of freaky stuff happens in our dreams. It’s just our brains doing random stuff when we’re not awake and at the steering wheel.”

  “Joe, promise me.”

  “Sweetheart. Nothing’s going to happen to you. You may be having a biblical child, but it’s not as though you are going back to biblical times where women died in childbirth all the time.”

  “Joe. I’m serious. I am worried about this life ruining him. I want us to be an ordinary family. I know we signed up for this but the deal included that we would raise him as though he were our own. And I don’t want him exposed to all this. Or if he’s exposed, I don’t want him to be ruined because of it. And anything can happen. Anything.”

  “Sweetheart. I promise.”

  He gathers her hands.

  “God forbid, anything should happen to you, I’ll raise him the way you would want me to.”

  The phone rings. Their limo’s there and Scott’s coming to get them.

  At the airport, Juliette wonders why she bothered putting anything in bags. There’s no airport security to go through in the private airport lounge. One of the pilots simply collected their bags, carry-on and all, and carted them off to the back of the jet.

  She uses one of the lounge’s modern bathrooms. She has the entire clean place to herself.

  They are soon away in their leather seats in their jet airplane, with bright blue stripes, a long pointy nose and two jet engines on the tail. Geoff offers them a lunch with real silverware and soft drinks and then leaves them at the back of the opulent plane.

  “I think wealth must be like this.”

  “How so?”

  “The wealthier you get, the larger the spaces that you live in and the emptier they are, until you’re living in a flying mansion cut off from everyone.”

  “Ho-lee, Juliette, why can’t you just relax and learn to enjoy things once in a while?”

  Juliette smiles and snuggles into Joe’s arms. She manages a good hour of sleep cradled next to him before they land.

  She sees the tiger. He’s yawning, watching her with ancient citrine eyes. Tail moving slowly in the tall wild grass.

  Waiting.

  Behold your son King.

  Chapter 37:

  Ezra Felderstein

  Andron looks out the tinted window of the Greyhound at the drivers beside him. The view from above gives him glimpses into their private lives, like he’s looking into their living rooms.

  Ever since his detox, his senses seem sharper, and not just the usual ones. He’s getting feelings off people. Nothing particularly psychic, just a heightened sense of backgrounds and trajectories.

  Maybe he’s been visited too many times by the fuck fairy.

  His subjects are unaware that they’re under observation by a bald passenger in a bus behind a tinted window pretending to be a Jew. But this is who he is.

  Two cars moving forward and back in the lane beside him offer a contrast. The blonde man in the Mustang with his gym bag and his chin poked forward. The small brunette lady in the Datsun with fear in her eyes and her hands in a death grip on the wheel.

  Mustang’s car has a wiped-down interior. Datsun’s looks like the inside of a purse. His heightened senses tell him they both had been stepped on badly at some point in their lives. She reacted by making herself smaller. He, by making himself into the boot that did it.

  He gets a feeling about what their moods were like earlier that day looking in the mirror. Mustang tried to convince himself that he was a tough guy instead of the broken kid he is. Datsun put on her makeup like a runner getting ready for a race she’d already lost.

  He’d give her a rose if he could.

  He mostly thinks about Naomi. Her feelings for him may have been fake but his weren’t. Maybe she thinks like Cygnus. That it was all about banging a hot chick.

  Okay, it was partially about that, but his feelings for her went deeper than the length of his dick. Sobering up brought them back.

  Fucking Cygnus, that virus needs to be control alt deleted.

  He catches his reflection in the bus window. His shaved head echoes it back. He needed to look more like Naomi’s dad since he borrowed his ID and credit cards. He’s a dead man in a dead man’s clothes.

  He’s Ezra Felderstein.

  The credit cards are still valid. The driver’s license is unexpired. He’s around the same height and weight. Ezra’s eyes were green. His are blue. Ezra was fifteen years older.

  Not a perfect match but no one’s going to crack an old man’s ID much less check his eye color. Alcohol and cigarettes cut into the a
ge gap. He thinks he can pull it off.

  Many guys shave their heads to make themselves look menacing. It makes Andron look like the frail old Jewish man he’s impersonating.

  If he meets Naomi, he’s going to bug her about the name change from Felderstein to Felder.

  If.

  He left his calling card. He made a pact with himself that he wouldn’t call her cell, even though he knows the number. A lot of memories would be deleted from his wetware server before that one goes.

  He wonders what she’ll say when she finds out that he took her father’s things. He doubts he could get out of that jam with some jewelry. It was selfish and he put her at risk.

  He’s banking on her dodging blame by claiming that she had no idea of the extent of his horrible plans, which is true. And that she planned to turn him in as soon as she uncovered them, which is also probably true.

  She’ll be okay.

  “Pardon me?”

  The elderly lady beside him.

  “Oh, I was just saying that there seems to be a lot of traffic today.”

  “Oh, yes. I think a lot of people are coming into town for the birth. Is that why you’re going?”

  “No, I’m hoping to see my daughter, and to say goodbye to an old friend, how about you?”

  “I’m here with my church.”

  “I imagine there’ll be a lot of church groups rolling into town, though I’m not sure what everyone expects will happen.”

  “Well, I guess we’re expecting our Lord Yeshua Christos to return. Not that that matters to you.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, didn’t you say your name was Ezra?”

  “I did.”

  “Isn’t that a Jew name?”

  Children, seniors and dogs. They all go straight to the biscuit.

  A few in her group are snickering. She’s staring at his nose.

  Bitch, if you knew the real reason for my visiting, you’d have a reason for that scrunched-up face.

  “I suppose it is, but I think that the first cloned human being in history will be an exciting thing for everyone.”

  “I guess it would. But it means much more to us.”

  “I can see that.”

  There’s no point arguing. Her religious ship has come in and she has no use for folks without a ticket, especially a Yeshua-murdering Jew — which Andron supposes he is, with his borrowed clothes and assassination plans.

  Ugly, bigoted old lady aside, he feels a growing unease the closer they get to Jefferson City. The long slow river he’s been riding is narrowing and accelerating.

  Rapids ahead. There’s a tell-tale drop in the horizon.

  He’s conflicted because Naomi stirred up emotions that are making him think about a future with her. But he has to ride the river. Over the falls if that’s what it takes.

  He wanted over before. Now he’s not so certain. He wonders if the great assassins of history were as conflicted. He feels that his assassination is necessary. But didn’t all lone assassins think that?

  The bus is pulling into the station. Air brakes hiss and then the door opens. He gets off, the Jew in the ointment among his fellow pilgrims.

  They’ve unloaded his borrowed suitcase. He has a few possessions in it. A cache of currency, dead man’s clothes, and something else.

  He found it with Ezra’s collection. It’s in mint condition, fully functional and fully loaded.

  It’s a Walther PPK.

  Andron splurges on a cab to a motel on the outskirts of Jefferson City, about forty miles from Bathsheba.

  “You here for the birth?”

  “I thought about it, but it doesn’t look like I’ll get very close with all the security everywhere.”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty tight. But there’s a park behind the hospital that most folks don’t know about. Should be a good place to hang out and wait for news. I can take you there later if you want.”

  The cabbie reaches over his shoulder to give Andron his card.

  “I may take you up on that…Nikko. Actually, can we go there now?”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  They withdraw into their separate worlds. Nikko into driving, and Andron into watching the scenery.

  “Here it is.”

  They turn into the grand boulevard leading to the hospital.

  Nikko didn’t need to say anything.

  Hundreds of news vans and satellite dishes line the street with hordes of people struggling to get near. It has the electricity of a major world event.

  There are tourists with fat guts, bright shirts, white shorts, and sandals walking aimlessly. The hobbled and the sick limp up. Churchgoers and misfits stand together. There are men in suits standing around touching their ears. Uniformed police everywhere.

  There are priests, nuns, flowerchildren and protesters. There are placards and sandwich boards.

  The place is a political convention, acid music festival, and cult gathering rolled into a joint. He’s reminded of a parade he witnessed in Berlin back on October 2, 1938, if only for the hype.

  But nothing can match this smoke show.

  Nikko’s true to his word about getting him near. He’s waved through a few checkpoints. Andron’s nervous about that, but no one pays much attention to him.

  “The park’s over there.”

  They go around side streets to the back of the hospital.

  “Oh, yeah. I can see it.”

  It looks like plenty of others are in on the secret, but it’s a fascinating tour and valuable information. Andron tries to capture all he can. He feels like he’s a headliner at a music festival touring the grounds before the show.

  “So, that was quite the circus, Nikko.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen many strange things in this town, but this something else.”

  “So how do you feel about what they’re doing?”

  “I am not sure what to think.”

  Nikko looks at him in the rearview.

  “Well, that’s probably best. I think too many people have strong of opinions about it, when nothing is clear.”

  “True, but I think that everyone will hafta pick a side.”

  Andron notices the cross dangling from Nikko’s mirror, and decides to disengage.

  “I suppose you’re right. I think for now I’d like to pick which side of the bed I should sleep on at my hotel. I’m dead tired.”

  “Ah, not to worry boss, it’s not that long of a drive.”

  At the hotel, Andron hands Nikko a generous tip and thanks him for the insider tour.

  “No problem, boss, God bless.”

  Check-in goes smoothly. He has to leave an imprint of Ezra’s card even though he plans on paying cash.

  “I see you’ve booked with us for a whole week. What brings you into town?”

  “I’m visiting with my daughter and I’m interested in being around for the big event.”

  “Very well, enjoy your stay, sir.”

  Andron needs his card to awaken the elevator and once awakened, it seems half asleep. There’s the muffled echo of his footsteps and the squeak of his pull-behind luggage until he’s in front of Room 323.

  On the fifth try, he’s green-lighted in.

  Fucking card key.

  Will this be his last residence before he checks out for good?

  His would-be final residence features a queen-sized bed and a large cabinet with pocket doors to hide a TV. There’s a narrow desk and a small chair in front of it.

  He places his luggage in the closet and hangs a few shirts on the non-removable metal hangers. He takes his bag of toiletries to the brightly lit bathroom with its aging fixtures and chipped faux-marble, lime-green countertop.

  He adjusts the wall air conditioner to stir the stale air. He twists open the floor-to-ceiling fat vertical blinds and is pleased to discover the view of the parking lot and the restaurant across the street in front of a hotel.

  He adjusts the plastic shower curtains in the tub and has a steaming high-pressure sh
ower. He thinks about his movement in life from lawyer to convict to prince to pauper to assassin.

  After the shower, he eats in the restaurant, picks up a burner phone across the street at an electronics store and visits the hotel’s business center to place a carefully worded personal ad.

  He studies bus schedules and maps. He scouts out nearby clothing and hardware stores for the rest of his supplies.

  He’s aware of the contradiction. He’s plotting a murder and a future. He knows he’ll have to pick one soon, since both cannot exist together.

  After a day or so, he gives up hope that Naomi will call. Maybe she’s gone to the police. Maybe he’s a fucking idiot.

  Meanwhile, his personal ad attracts a few lonely callers. He gets more depressed with each one.

  He thinks about arranging a date with one of them, as a send-off to his extinction or long-term incarceration.

  He thinks that the ad was stupid, a reckless mistake. He turns his attention on ridding the world of Cygnus. He’ll have to strike soon, since time, money and opportunity are running out.

  Falls are ahead.

  His cell phone buzzes on his nightstand. His newly acquired powers of intuition tell him who it is before he answers.

  Chapter 38:

  Fato e Destino

  Naomi steps out of the cab. Hank’s Grill. She’s meeting Andron for breakfast. She’s wearing her sapphire blue trench coat. She straightens herself and heads for the door, clutching her handbag.

  Her hair blows in the spring wind.

  She thinks about running her recorder but decides against it. He’s got a lot to answer for, but she’s worried about him. He sounded off on the phone. Not like he was ill or nervous. More like he was too matter-of-fact about everything.

  Her cell rings. It’s him. He tells her that there’s been a change of plans. That he wants to meet her at Serenities across the way. She turns and sees it. Okay, Andron, I get it, cloak and dagger. He tells her to turn off her cell phone after.

  “Roger that, Andron.”

  At Serenities, he waves to her.

  She hardly recognizes him. He’s wearing dress pants, a mustard-colored shirt and black shoes. He’s bald.