Upon A Pale Horse (Bio-Thriller)

by Russell Blake

  “The army was mutilating livestock?” Jeffrey asked in disbelief.

  “I know. That was my reaction. Why would the military be killing cows, seemingly at random? And only at night? Look, you have to understand where I was coming from. I set out to disprove the whack-job theories, and after two years of it I started sounding like the nut cases. But that’s what the facts were telling me. That a percentage, albeit a small one, of the slaughter was deliberate, and most likely being carried out by the government. Once I got comfortable with that idea, I parked it, and addressed the question of why – because simply speculating that it was happening was really no better than the tin foil hat crowd. I also began to suspect that some of the crazy ideas floating around might have been planted with the media to further obfuscate the true facts. Stuff like the alien experimentation. Of course, there were plenty of zealous loons willing to go along for that ride, but it just all seemed too…coordinated.”

  Sam appeared to falter at the thought, sputtering to a halt as old men sometimes did, and he took another quick sip of his drink, savoring the tea as it coated his throat with its subtle honey and lemon infusion. Jeffrey didn’t prod him, waiting for the account to continue at its own pace.

  “I eventually developed a comprehensive hypothesis that explained all aspects of the mutilations, discarding those accounts that were clearly natural deaths or predator kills, and focusing on the unexplainable ones. In seventy-six, I published my findings, expecting there to be a public outcry. Instead, it went unnoticed, and in four months I was out of a job for some trumped up reasons – a co-ed who claimed I’d sexually harassed her. Back then I was too naïve to understand what was happening, but in the passing years, it became obvious when I couldn’t get a job anywhere else, even though the girl’s inventions were eventually disproved: I’d stepped on the wrong toes, and dared to posit an explanation that was dangerous to the powers that be – an explanation that was probably the truth, if an incomplete one.”

  Jeffrey leaned toward him. “Which was?”

  “That the government was conducting experiments on livestock, presumably for its biological weapon program, in spite of assurances that it was doing no such thing. Remember that bio-weapons had been reclassified as weapons of mass destruction, with the U.S. leading the charge to ban them entirely. I believe that even as it talked out of one side of its mouth, it was carrying out a large-scale testing program. Because of the political climate and the anti-war movement, it couldn’t very well have thousands of head of cattle and whatnot penned for experiment.”

  “Why not? Surely the government’s capable of keeping a secret that involved bovines?”

  “The answer is ominous. It wanted the animals it was experimenting with to be out in the general population. I proposed two possible reasons – to mislead Congress or our adversaries so that it would appear that we had no active testing going on; or perhaps worse, because it wanted to test contagious agents and monitor how they spread in an uncontrolled setting. My guess is that one of those, or perhaps both, were on the money, because you’ve never seen a paper buried as quickly…and a life ruined. Even now, in the age of the internet, you won’t find any mention of my paper. At one point an acquaintance uploaded it to his website, and the site was hacked and everything on the servers wiped clean. Needless to say that freaked him out sufficiently to where he lost his interest in fostering controversy. So it’s as though the theory never existed. Revisionist history of the finest order.”

  “I…Professor, with all due respect, there are protections against that sort of abuse of power. Legal remedies. And the idea that the media would just go dark on something newsworthy…I mean, that was around Watergate, it was a new era of transparency.”

  “Bullshit, young man. And please. The name’s Sam. I haven’t held the title of Professor for almost four decades.”

  Jeffrey waited for Sam to make his point.

  “You think the media isn’t controlled one hundred percent by special interests that dictate to its owners what story gets told and what doesn’t? Don’t be childish. Even today, it’s the way of the world. Most people are uninformed, which the media relies on, and when there are those who point out that it’s all lies, it just pretends that nobody believes the accuser and that they never said anything. How do you think the public stays in the dark? The media doesn’t report the truth.”

  Sam cleared his throat to continue.

  “A great example would be the war on drugs. Did you know that most of the politicians who are the staunchest opponents of marijuana legalization own financial interests in companies that directly benefit from it remaining illegal? Drug testing companies, private prison operators, you name it, they own it. And yet you never hear about that from our media. Or how about when Bush and his gang were assuring the world that there were nuclear weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? A bald-faced lie, but the media went along in lockstep. Son, I could go on all day. But hopefully you take my point. The media is nothing more than a propaganda machine for those in power – the rich, the connected, the friends of the handful of men who own the companies that operate the largest networks and papers. And it’s always been like that. Trust me, in the early seventies it was the same.” Sam paused, catching his breath, his outrage evident.

  “I wasn’t born yet in the seventies, but I don’t disagree about the situation now.”

  “So you get it? Governments don’t like admitting to their populations that they’re a bunch of crooks, so the politicians close ranks and their media parrots the party line, and the truth gets buried. That’s the world we live in. I doubt you’ve read one true thing in your entire life if it was in the paper. And TV is even worse.”

  “Back to the cows. Do you have anything to support your theory?” Jeffrey asked, wanting to steer the subject away from tangents.

  “I had, and it went missing when I lost my job. Just disappeared. Of course the university claimed that it was all an administrative SNAFU and that it would be found in time, but that, like so many other promises, was never fulfilled. Years of careful research confiscated, literally overnight, and a career in ruins – all because I took on the wrong people. After I exhausted my savings I found work where I could, and became a pretty fair carpenter, which is honest labor and a real craft, unlike moving integers around in cyber-space or teaching propaganda to students in order to advance in the pecking order. I now live in harmony with nature, nobody bothers me, and the outside world can go to hell as far as I’m concerned. My job isn’t to save it.”

  “Back to your hypothesis…Not that I’m uninterested in how crooked the media is, but my brother thought you had a key piece of information I needed to know–”

  “Then you now know it,” Sam interrupted. “The military was experimenting on livestock in the early seventies to advance its biological weapons program, in secret, while denying everything and planting red herrings in the press to keep it quiet. I believe they were injecting animals with something ugly, and I mean really ugly, and then going back and pulling organ and blood samples for analysis. If you look at a significant number of the suspect animals I isolated, they had a remarkable incidence of bovine leukemia and unexplainable levels of chemicals that aren’t naturally occurring. I speculated that the government was testing viral agents that could be used to infect humans, using cows as hosts. Within weeks of proposing that, I was being accused, baselessly, I might add, of sexual misconduct, and shortly thereafter had been effectively blacklisted from academia.”

  Sam ran out of steam and shook his head. “That was my claim to fame, and I proved it, and it cost me everything. And nothing about it was ever covered by any news agency. So don’t expect anything out of the media. The media is a prostitute, diseased and crooked under its glossy exterior, and it went along with the lies, as it has with most of the big ones during your lifetime. And it worked. To this day, God help us all, it worked.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The End of the Story

  The afternoon
wore on, Sam rambling over the minutiae of his battle against the accusations that had poisoned his promising career, Jeffrey allowing him to talk and recount whatever seemed important to him, much as he was sure his brother had.

  Eventually Sam stopped talking, lost in the labyrinth of his memories, fighting unwinnable battles against long-dead adversaries over issues nobody remembered or cared about. Kaycee rounded the garage and came back to the porch, her stride confident and unassuming; a graceful dancer’s glide, Jeffrey thought. He watched as she mounted the stairs, brushing a lock of unruly hair from her eyes, and then fixed Jeffrey with a disapproving stare.

  “He tires easily. The medications do that. It’s time for him to rest now. I hope you got what you came for, because the meeting’s over,” she said, one hand on her hip, the other clutching a pair of work gloves.

  Sam returned from whatever internal neverland he’d retreated to and waved her off with a feeble hand.

  “Don’t be rude, Kaycee. Our guest was patiently entertaining my stories and asking some questions. This is the brother of the young man I spoke to when you were out buying supplies…what was that, a month and a half ago? I told you I’d had a visitor.”

  “That was right after the accident, so almost two months,” she said.

  “We were just talking about the past. Ghosts in the machine. The end of an era,” Sam said cryptically, finishing his last glass of tea, the pitcher now drained as the day had drifted past them.

  Jeffrey edged forward in his seat. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything my brother seemed particularly interested in?” he tried, hoping for more from Sam before he got preempted for good.

  Kaycee gave him a dark glare, annoyed that Jeffrey hadn’t taken her hint. “Why don’t you just ask him and leave my grandfather in peace?” she demanded, her tone still neutral but her eyes flashing with annoyance that he hadn’t stood and left yet.

  “Be hard to do, Kaycee. He passed on. So have some respect for the dead,” Sam chided, his voice low.

  She blinked twice, as though not registering the words, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry. Obviously, I didn’t know. But I have to insist on you winding this up. He really isn’t in any shape for a lengthy interrogation.”

  “Nonsense. We’re sitting on the porch having a drink. There isn’t even any booze in it. How much harm can it do?” Sam grumbled.

  “The doctor said you weren’t to exert yourself.”

  “I’m seated, not pole dancing,” Sam said.

  Jeffrey regarded them both. “Sam…Kaycee. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to meddle or disrupt anything here. I’m just looking for answers, and hoping to learn why my brother was so obsessed with the same topic that interested your grandfather years ago. Sam, if you’ve told me everything, I won’t keep you any longer.” He pushed back on his seat and rose, regarding the professor with resignation. “Then that’s the entirety of what you two discussed? Your theory about the livestock mutilation?”

  Kaycee’s mouth hardened into a determined line, and she took a step toward him. “That’s what you’re talking about?” she asked.

  “Don’t go off half-cocked, Kaycee. I don’t mind. It’s just a question, only words.” Sam turned his attention back to Jeffrey. “I wish I could remember anything more about that afternoon, but it was so soon after the fall, and I was on a lot of meds. I think that’s everything we covered. He seemed quite attentive about the detail – he was a very bright young fellow.”

  “Then he’s told you everything,” Kaycee said, obviously hoping to end the conversation. “There’s nothing more for you here.”

  Jeffrey nodded, and after a split second of internal battle, extended his hand to Sam, who was still seated, rocking slightly in his chair. “It was a real pleasure meeting you, Sam. Thanks for taking the time with me.” His brow furrowed. “Is there any way to get in touch with you if any more questions occur to me?”

  Sam scowled. “Don’t have a phone. No T.V., either. Don’t need ’em. Waste of money, if you ask me. Had a cell phone, but the service expired last month and I haven’t gotten around to paying for more. Unnecessary with Kaycee here. But on my to-do list…”

  Jeffrey turned to Kaycee, half afraid she was going to slap him. “Would it be possible to get your number?”

  She exhaled with exasperation, then turned and hopped from the porch to the ground, ignoring the stairs. “I’ll give it to you on the way to the car,” she called over her shoulder as she started down the path toward the gate. “You coming?”

  Jeffrey gave Sam a parting salute and followed after her. “What did I do that’s got you so angry? Whatever it is, I apologize,” he said.

  “You came here and interrupted an old man’s convalescence to stir up a painful past that just about destroyed him, and you want to know why I’m upset? He cries out in the middle of the night sometimes, did you know that? No. How could you? He’s had a very rough time of it for as long as I’ve been alive – my mother told me all about it once I was old enough to understand. He went from being a respected academic to an outcast, an intellectual forced to earn his living with his hands. Everyone he was close to either shunned him, or is dead – my mother, my grandmother, his supposed friends that wanted nothing to do with him once he was no longer the campus golden boy…I’m sorry about your brother, by the way. I never met him. But I’m still sorry.”

  “I…I didn’t realize. I’m sorry too, Kaycee. Really.”

  They walked along in silence, the treetops quivering from a light breeze, budding with the promise of spring, and Jeffrey tried a different tack.

  “What were you doing before you moved out here?”

  “I’m a translator. I took a sabbatical to look after him for ninety days, and I’ve been doing freelance work in the meantime. I’ll return to my job in another month, back in New York, and then he’ll be alone again, out here in the middle of God’s ass crack.”

  “A translator. That’s interesting. What language?”

  She stopped and turned to face him.

  “Look. Jeffrey, right? I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and you mean well, but I’m not in a great mood right now, and I’ve never been good with chitty chat. Don’t take it the wrong way, but we’re not going to go get a cup of coffee somewhere while I tell you all about my hopes and dreams. You came, you got what you wanted, and now you’re leaving. That’s all the contact we’ll ever have. So it doesn’t really matter what I do or what you do, does it? I’m just the rude chick who almost shot you today – it’s probably best if we leave it at that.”

  He returned her gaze, several responses on the tip of his tongue, then he thought better of it and offered a smile. “Thankfully, almost being shot’s like almost being pregnant. That would have seriously ruined my day. I guess I owe you one for not blowing my head off.”

  Her expression softened, and he noticed that she had tiny flecks of gold in her hazel irises that caught the sun when the light hit them just right. “Around here, I think they actually offer a reward for every lawyer you shoot,” she said.

  “I knew I liked the place for a reason.”

  They resumed walking down the path, startling a squirrel that scampered up a nearby tree, and Jeffrey was struck by how idyllic the setting was.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” he said, and she nodded.

  “I know. It is. And I’m sorry if I’m wound up. It’s just that it’s been such a struggle for him to get better, and each one of these episodes takes more out of him than you know. He’ll be up for days now, replaying things in his head, and it’ll just make things more difficult for us all. He’s not a young man, in case you didn’t notice, and for all his brave front, he almost died when he fell – he was all alone, and he easily could have. He lay on the floor for hours before he was able to crawl to the phone.” She paused as they neared the bend in the drive. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “What are you going to do once you have to go back to work?”

  “That’s one o
f my problems. I don’t know. He needs someone around, but I’m all he’s got. I figure I’ll tackle that in another month. Of course he says he’s fine, and that he’ll do okay by himself, but we’ve already seen how that turned out. A repeat performance, and he wouldn’t be so lucky…”

  “No. I can see how he wouldn’t be.”

  They arrived at the gate and Jeffrey offered her his hand. She took it, shaking it with a surprisingly strong grip, her shoulders square beneath the sweater as she studied him.

  “I thought you wanted my number.”

  “I do. Just tell me. I’ll remember it.”

  “You sure you will?”

  “I’m good with things like that. I will.”

  She gave him a 212 area code number and he repeated it back to her.

  “There. It’s now locked away in my memory banks, never to be forgotten. Kaycee and Sam. Have gun, will travel.”

  She laughed lightly and spun, leaving him to slip out the same way he had come in. “Take care, lawyer man.”

  “You too,” he said, and for a reason he couldn’t have explained, he felt like something important had just happened, something essential to his being that he didn’t understand but that was as tangible as a punch to the gut. Then his inner voice came to the rescue, chastising him for having improper thoughts about Kaycee when he was in a hot and heavy relationship with Monica – the new love of his life. That was unlike him. He was usually as ethical as they came. And yet the stirring in him that Kaycee had caused was undeniable.

  He watched as she made her way back up the drive, and when she disappeared into the grove of trees he felt unaccountably empty, as though a part of him had been taken with her as she returned to an old man on a rustic porch who was waiting for dusk, as, ultimately, were they all.

  TWENTY-FIVE