The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

I mouthed the words of the prayer, which I was surprised I actually knew. But I didn’t bow my head.

  No way.

  If this was like really going to be IT: then I was determined to face it with my eyes open, looking into the sky.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  I had brought Lilly out to stand beside me on our apartment’s balcony overlooking Atlanta. She stood patiently with her normal, slightly glazed expression on her gentle and very pretty face. She glanced down at her iPad, which she held like a security blanket. I knew she was eager to continue reading whatever she had been, usually some scientific document that I knew she couldn’t really comprehend. But Lilly enjoyed the words themselves, bless her sweet soul.

  I was struggling to control my overwhelming sadness at the thought of Aniha whom I’d saved in Bangladesh and of all the children everywhere who might never grow up. My heart had swelled with grief for the unaware, innocents whose lives could be snuffed out in the next few seconds. Emotion had tightened up my throat so that I could barely speak. “I love you, Lilly . . . Here it comes.”

  “Okay, S-Susie.” Lilly’s voice was flat. Her face had its regular, unemotional quality.

  The echoing TV voice was also nervous now, tremulous: “Here it comes. God be with us all! Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”

  Concetta Cordaro. . .

  In Starfire’s control room all eyes were riveted on the image of Comet Avery that was nearly filling the telescope’s screen as the captain said, “. . . three . . . two . . . one. Impact!”

  The screen went into a completely silent whiteout.

  The silence was prolonged.

  And we all held our breath. Then the lieutenant next to Manchu shouted, “The radar! Look at the radar!” We did. And we saw. We saw that the single large blip on the radar screen was now thousands of tiny blips.

  Jubilation! Everyone erupted, cheering with joy and peals of laughter! Of greatest, exuberant elation!

  Everyone, that is, except Captain Manchu O’Hara and myself. I was fascinated to see that, like me, he also remained completely silent and motionless, even as the cheering, deafening, teary celebration swirled enthusiastically around us. It was as though we were alone, in the silent eye of a hurricane. Even when several patted us on the back and then went to hug someone else, the captain and I sat, unmoving. Over the com link I heard, “Starfire, this is Houston. Status report? . . . Starfire, Houston: Do you read?”

  Finally Manchu O’Hara drew a slow breath and pivoted to look back directly into my eyes. It was a moment that I’ll remember forever.

  Then, still gazing into my eyes, he touched his com key and spoke with quiet, consummate professionalism, “Houston, this is Starfire . . . Mission accomplished.”

  Katie McLane. . .

  All of us near the church heard a radio newsman’s voice echoing across the town square: “Direct hits! On all missiles!” We gasped and hung suspended till we heard, “Radar reports that . . . that . . . Yes! The comet has been shattered!”

  Everybody went crazy with shrieks of joy, cheers, and tears! I was a cheerer. My mom was sobbing. She clutched me so tight I could hardly breathe.

  Lisa McLane. . .

  By our pond Charley and I were hugging each other while jumping up and down amid the glorious wildflowers like little schoolchildren. Then we shared a heartfelt kiss as tears of happiness flowed bountifully. And we burst out laughing boisterously through our tears.

  Charley grabbed my hand manfully, and we rushed off to share the joy we knew would be rampant in town.

  Jimmy-Joe Hartman. . .

  Poppa was on his knees in the middle of Sylvan Road, thankin’ “God the father Almighty.” Claire kneeled down beside him. I hung for a sec, but got to feelin’ kinda embarrassed. I just patted their shoulders, said, “Shit, I told y’all it’d be okay.” Then I headed off with a springy step to see if ol’ Scooter’d survived the ’Pocalypse.

  Clarence Frederick. . .

  With a trembling hand I wiped the perspiration off my brow and laughed nervously. Simone was smiling at me through her tortoiseshell glasses with a sweet I-told-you-so look.

  LeBron gave his mother a hug. “You know, Mom, maybe the Braves’ll win again after all.”

  Katie McLane. . .

  Darren’s big brother Tim was swinging Darren around giddily. Then Darren pointed to the sky, shouting, “Katie! Look! Fireworks!”

  In the eastern sky dozens of bright streamers were flaming down. A meteor shower. Another radio voice said, “Radar shows some small fragments of the comet falling through the stratosphere, but experts assure us that most all of them will burn up long before they can reach the surface.”

  Darren came over beside me. “Cool, huh?”

  “Totally,” I said quietly. But I remember frowning a little as I gazed into the sky. Something about the sparkling, shooting stars was mesmerizing. Strange, even. All those little pieces of cosmic stuff that had traveled billions of miles from deep space, glittering and sprinkling down.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  From our balcony we’d gotten a hint of the nuclear flash low in the eastern sky and heard cheering in the streets and nearby apartments.

  I slowly exhaled as I put both arms around Lilly and held her close. A newsman’s voice from our TV said, “NASA reports that falling shards of the comet may damage a few weather and communication satellites. The debris field, the area where any small meteorites may actually reach Earth, is surprisingly small, only an ellipse about seventy miles across. It should go from about Valdosta, Georgia, in the south and extend northwest across the tip of Alabama to about Jackson, Tennessee.”

  I was only vaguely listening. I was feeling thankful to have dear expressionless Lilly leaning her head with its flyaway hair against me.

  And knowing that tomorrow we’d have another day.

  The Documentarian. . .

  At Lisa and Charley’s special place in the forest outside Ashton, there were no security cameras or monitoring devices. But from discoveries made later, we can reconstruct what happened after the comet had been shattered and the teenagers had happily left the area.

  At that pastoral hideaway the forest birds would have chirped cheerfully as a breeze ruffled the sycamore leaves.

  Then the birds likely grew suddenly quiet, sensing something coming.

  In an instant, a high-pitched whistling might have been heard. It would have grown louder until a small, glowing, softball-size object rocketed down through the trees, breaking branches, and impacting explosively into exposed bedrock near the bank of the pond as startled birds scattered frantically.

  Then silence returned.

  The object would have lay smoking in the small crater it had created. Moisture would have slowly begun appearing from the ice, likely frozen for eons, but which was now thawing. Drops dripped.

  They would have looked deceptively harmless.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  Lying awake in the darkness that night, I knew I wasn’t the only one in the world who was having trouble sleeping after the tumultuous emotions we’d all experienced. It was just after midnight, the new day we might never have seen. The events and outcome of the previous day must have also caused hundreds of millions of us to pause. And think.

  I slipped out of bed and looked in on Lilly, who was breathing peacefully. The sleep of the purely innocent.

  I felt drawn to go up to the roof of our tall building. A few of us had created a small garden area. Some potted green plants and flowers, some parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. The spices of life. I sat on one of the cedar Adirondack chairs, wrapped snugly in my favorite old shawl, looking up at the magnificent dome of stars above me. There was no moon, but some very soft light bathed the rooftop.

  I realized it was starlight. Pure starlight. The clean Georgia air allowed me to see the myriad stars and even the soft swath of our Milky Way galaxy above me. I gazed deeply into the heavens. Into the unknowable. Into the infinite mystery. Ever since I was a child
that vision had always been a profoundly spiritual experience.

  Not unlike the experience of the last twenty-four hours.

  Just as Avery’s Comet had been about to breach the outermost fringe of Earth’s atmosphere, just as it was only one second away from destroying all the very best and very worst of the human race, it had been met head-on by the unified strength of humankind, the international armada of defensive missiles had shattered the comet. We had saved our Earth.

  What we didn’t know was that we had also opened Pandora’s box.

  4

  AWAKENINGS

  Jacob Nichols, 76, Tennessee farmer. . .

  My wife, Lottie, was a good ol’ gal. We got together in eighth grade and never looked back. Goin’ on perty near fifty-five years. Lottie was a big-boned, ruddy-cheeked farmwoman, come o’German stock. She enjoyed the basics, Lottie did. A well-plowed field, enough rain, the smell of our barn. She liked her coffee black and her TV news programs to the point. She had no patience for that kinda over-jolly, forced camaraderie y’see on so many o’them local news teams.

  So every sunrise she drank her strong coffee in the kitchen of our farm here outside Dayton, Tennessee, and she watched the straight-ahead, no-frills morning news on Channel Six.

  She liked the clean-cut young anchorman, Gregg Brantley, particularly because he was a black fella. She’d seen a lotta Gregg’s race mistreated while she was growing up on her uncle’s farm in the fifties down in Miss-sippi. Oft times she’d sneaked the children among ’em some extra sweets or medicines. She thought it was good to see their people finally gettin’ at least a little more o’their fair share.

  I remember the mornin’ she was watching that Gregg fella doing a recap of the comet story while she was chompin’ on her extracrisp wheat toast. He said, “It was one month ago today that we all faced oblivion—and survived.” They showed some news clips of that comet comin’, gettin’ blowed up. Then they showed a farmhouse where a bunch o’scientific guys and gals prowled around a week later with some ’lectronic instruments, goin’ into a garage that been damaged by a little piece of that comet comin’ through the roof.

  Gregg said, “Amazingly, the only problems resulting from the comet were minor.” He told how most o’them fragments fell down in less populated areas, a few in Tennessee but mostly ’cross southwestern Georgia. Said civilian and military scientific teams was specially investigatin’ a few of them impact sites in certain areas where they found levels of radiation a little higher than it oughta be. Them particular areas got cordoned off till “further study could be done.” And they were still waiting to hear results.

  Lottie was watchin’ it all real intent. She licked her finger to pick up a few toast crumbs on the table by my plate, way she always did. Made me smile. Lottie never wasted a speck o’food. She swallered the last of her coffee while we seen on the news some military-lookin’ guys casually takin’ stations in front of the “Restricted Area” warning tape. At a coupla different places they showed, I member noticin’ this one guy who reminded me o’somebody. He was square-jawed, ’bout forty-five, and clearly the head honcho. His eyes was small, but real concentrated, hawklike. He had this intense look, knitted brow and all. Salt-and-pepper hair trimmed short, military-style.

  That’s when I ’membered who he called to mind: the hard-assed colonel who’d run my reserve unit. This guy on the TV had that same kinda look: athletic face and body that looked hard from regular, disciplined exercise. He wasn’t in uniform, but there warn’t no mistakin’ that iron kinda bearin’. He was a man accustomed to being at the top of a command structure. He was issuin’ orders. We heard one of the uniformed guys respondin’ to him, sayin’, “Yes sir, Mr. Mitchell.”

  Then Gregg come back on the screen with that warm voice o’his and finished up the story, sayin’ “And very quickly life returned to normal—”

  “Yes it did, Gregg,” Lottie said as she clicked off the TV. “And we gotta get on with it.” She stood and picked up her plate and cup from our old Formica table. She smiled, said t’me, “I cain’t wait to see that new knotty-pine table in here.”

  “Got an email from Walmart this mornin’,” I told her. “Deliverin’ tomorrow. ’Bout time we dumped this ol’ scratched-up thing, huh?”

  She leaned down and nipped my ear, sayin’, “Long as you don’t get any ideers ’bout dumpin’ your ol’ scratched-up wife.”

  I swatted at her, playful-like. Then I headed out round back t’finish tunin’ up our tractor. I knew Lottie’d be about her normal mornin’ chores on the other side.

  Few months earlier there’d been some hog stealin’ and other mischief hereabouts. We even heard some snoopy sounds at night. So I’d ordered up a coupla them security cameras from Amazon, set ’em up, and natcherly we hadn’t seen nothin’ unusual since.

  Till that day.

  That awful day.

  I didn’t see how the nightmare started that mornin’ till way late that night when Lottie’s cousin Randy brung me back from the hospital in his deputy sheriff car. He sat with me while I played back the video. TV showed pitchers from both cameras at the same time.

  On one side o’the screen I saw myself workin’ at the tractor out back o’the house, startin’ to rev up the engine. It’s a real loud sucker. On the other side I saw Lottie come out carryin’ her pail of slop for the hogs and let herself into the pen. Our two sweet ol’ hogs was round to the far side o’the trough, back in the shadows. Couldn’t hardly see ’em. But on the video I could hear her callin’ to ’em like always, “C’mon, Maribelle. George. Ooooo pig. Souieee.”

  Then I saw Lottie come to a standstill. Froze in her tracks. Like she was hearin’ a sound different’n anything she ever had. I turned up the volume on her half o’the video, and I heard it then: this real deep, ugly growlin’. It was eerie. Made the hairs stand up on the back o’my neck. Musta hit Lottie the same way. I saw her tilt her head toward where the hogs was in the shadows. She said, kinda worried-like, “. . . Maribelle?”

  What I seen next on that video made my heart turn inside out.

  Lottie barely had time to see them two huge hogs come chargin’ toward her, lookin’ like I ain’t never seen any hogs look: eyes glarin’, ears back! She stood there, froze for a split second, then dropped the pail and turned to run, but it was too late. Both o’them 250-pounders was on her. Attackin’ her! Vicious! Snappin’ at her legs, jumpin’ up on her! She cried out, panicked, “No! Oh my God! Jacob! JACOB!”

  But I was revvin’ the goddamn tractor engine. I didn’t hear.

  Them monstrous, slatherin’ hogs dragged Lottie down into the filth. Their cloven hooves clawed and gouged deep, tearin’ her skin. On the video I saw their red eyes gleamin’, their lips was curled back, teeth flashin’. I knew the stench of their foul breath musta been hot in Lottie’s face while she was tryin’ to beat ’em back. And screamin’ for me.

  But I didn’t hear. God a’mighty, it was awful. And there I was right round the corner. But revvin’ the goddamn engine. Frustrated that I couldn’t get the damn distributor to work smooth.

  Then on the video I seen myself look up. I ’membered that moment. Over the engine roar I finally heard Lottie shriekin’. I took off round the corner of the barn.

  The rest of it I seen with my own eyes.

  I couldn’t never thought o’seein’ that kinda horror. Them huge hogs had trampled Lottie right down into the thick muck. Their powerful jaws was rippin’ ugly gashes in her flesh. Lottie’s face was twisted up like a nightmare. Her mouth was open wide screamin’, but no sound come out ’cause them monsters had tore open her throat. Blood was spoutin’ out like fountains from her severed arteries.

  I went bezerk. Bellowin’ with rage. I grabbed a shovel, saw Lottie slump unconscious down in the reekin’ mire as I leaped into the sty and started tryin’ to beat them beasts away. Them crazy-fierce hogs turned right on me. They was fiery eyed, covered with Lottie’s blood. Attacked me like wild razorback boars. I never seen such
big animals move so fast. So intense. So crazed and blood-hungry.

  But I was more crazed than them, by God. I was full o’pure fury. White hot. Didn’t even feel their teeth sink in clear to the bones o’my legs. I beat ’em and beat ’em till their blood was splatterin’ all over me. I beat ’em frantic till they was bloody and senseless, and finally lay dyin’ in the mud, muscles twitchin’ in spasms.

  I was gaspin’ and shakin’ all over. I scooped Lottie up. She was limp in my arms. That was when I saw what all they done to her. They’d ripped her whole stomach wide open. Her organs, liver, intestines was all exposed, ruptured open, gorged with blood and muddy manure.

  I was blind with tears. Threw my head back and let out a scream so hard and loud that the damn blood vessels in my throat burst.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  As I drove along toward my workplace that second week in August, I could hear the leaves of the oaks and yellow poplars rustling loudly, troubled by a disturbing wind. Those old-growth trees thickly line Clifton Road, a pleasant street that curves through a largely residential section on the northeast side of Atlanta. Eventually it reaches a campus-like complex of sparkling, elegant buildings nestled slightly below the street level among the green trees: the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  A sprawling federal agency, the CDC operates branch centers in many major cities, but the headquarters in Atlanta was the focal point for all. It coordinated ongoing research efforts against contagious diseases and provided a strike force of trained personnel whenever epidemics broke out anywhere in the country or the world. It was also the acknowledged world leader in the investigation of strange, seemingly unexplainable, biomedical phenomena.

  Two crescent-shaped ten-story glass and steel main buildings that faced Clifton Road dominated the campus. Just to the southeast across an inviting, broad green lawn was eleven-story Building 18, which housed several units including VSPB, the Viral Special Pathogens Branch, which I worked for.

  Everyone on the campus wore security badges around their necks. Lilly and I used ours to enter through the impressive two-story atrium. We always came in that way because Lilly was fond of the large, papery modern-art chandelier overhead. We walked beneath it. Her hand in mine as usual. Lilly’s other hand rested on her beloved iPad in its case hanging from her shoulder. I was in my favorite clothes: white Reeboks, faded jeans, and a powder-blue chambray shirt. Lilly always preferred simple, longish dresses with tiny, intricate pastel prints. She had a favorite thin, coral cardigan sweater, which she frequently wore over her dresses, though it often didn’t match. Lilly had little regard for her appearance. A few errant strands of hair always found their way in front of her eyes. She rarely noticed when I’d move them aside. My sweet sister looked particularly pretty in whatever she wore. It always made me smile when people whom she passed noted her admiringly, but Lilly was unaware and kept her eyes down.