The Darwin Variant

by Kenneth Johnson

He marched toward his cabin, but I kept pace, getting in his face. “What about all the people that don’t deserve that?! People who got infected without a choice?” My rage ramped up. “Can’t you see exactly where this domination is headed? They’re going to end up destroying a lot of innocent people!” Chris stopped dead, looked fiercely at me.

  Shit. I hadn’t wanted to say it that way. It came out of my mouth before I could stop it. I closed my eyes tightly, gritted my teeth. But it was too late. I wanted to kill myself. Because I knew how he’d react. And he did. Chris’s glare was deadly. “Innocents?” Then he laughed bitterly. “Well, I sure know a little about that, don’t I, Susie? Some of my technology destroyed a few innocent people, huh?” He put on a cheery voice, imitating the bureaucrats he hated with a passion, “‘Gee, thanks, Dr. Smith, for creating this miraculous recombinant DNA fertilizer. It’ll really help the agriculture in developing countries, Dr. Smith.’”

  “And it did, Chris!” I said insistently. “You couldn’t’ve known that they’d—”

  “‘Oh, by the way,’” he continued imitating, “‘we know you won’t mind if the government of India sells it to Somalia who’ll twist it just a little—probably with illegal help from BioTeck—to make chemical weaponry and kill a million people or so. In agony.’”

  Crash was stunned and silent. This was Chris’s old, deep, unhealed wound. My voice was low, sincere. “Chris, that wasn’t your fault.” His glance was so sour that as he opened his mouth to ream me, I scrambled mentally to pivot. “All right, I know you’re convinced it was. It’s why you’re living here. Alone. But then can’t you see this as an opportunity for you to make up for that?”

  “Make up for?!” He flared. “I can’t fucking make up for it! Ever! Those people are dead! You don’t—!” Though still furious, he suddenly turned icy calm, his face became expressionless, his voice low. “You have no comprehension what it’s like living with that. You don’t get it.”

  “Of course I get it, Chris.” I was equally furious, but followed his focused-intensity lead. “Who tried to help you through that trauma? Why the hell do you think I came in here through snakes and alligators and patrollers? Because we’re trying like hell to save what’s left of this poor, pathetic planet. And the people on it. Just like you always were. And only with your help do we have a prayer of doing it. Chris, it’s like living in the middle of a tumor out there. The Friends are a cancer growing more out of control every day. And just like cancer, they’re gonna consume and destroy their host. Only in this case, Dr. Smith, the host is the earth and all of us on it.”

  “And what, Dr. Perry? You’re trying to lead the little white corpuscles to fight back?”

  “Somebody’s got to! Because the clock is ticking. So far as we know, they’ve only corrupted people within the state, but it’s obvious that Georgia’s just an out-of-town tryout.”

  Crash caught the wave. “Yeah. I been thinkin’ about that one: pretty soon they’ll try t’go national and then—”

  “Yes,” I said categorically. “We’ve got to stop them before it’s too late.” Then I leaned closer to Chris, speaking in a still lower key. “Look, I was plenty pissed that you just bagged it all and walked away from everything. From me. That really hurt. I loved you. I’ve never stopped missing you. But this is not about you and me.” He glanced up. I seized it as encouragement, tried to press it. “We need you out there, Chris. We need your stubborn, opinionated, outside-the-box, one-of-a-kind invaluable brain working with us.”

  Chris stared at me, still noncommittal. Crash jumped in. “I’ll tell ya one thing, man. I think you were a major putz for ever blowin’ off this chick.” Then he looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “You remind me of my granddad. He fought like a banshee to keep his tribal land. His way of life. I ain’t no big-time biologist-type, but if you can use me, lady, I’m game.”

  I nodded appreciatively. Then looked at Chris. He stared at me, then looked at his cabin, his solitude, his sanctuary from a world gone haywire, from the unintentional, horrific tragedy he’d caused. I could see he was still unconvinced, still on the fence. I touched his arm. “Chris . . .”

  “Too late, sucker.” Chris and I glanced at Crash, who had suddenly snapped to alert, antenna up, eyes riveted on the swamp. “Decision’s been made for ya.”

  We looked up the channel and heard the turbine whine of an approaching ARPC.

  Crash rubbed his scar. “Don’t suppose you got a helicopter?”

  Chris was angry; glaring at me. “I’ll get you for this.”

  He reached into his cabin, pulled out a bow and fistful of arrows that he held out to Crash, who guffawed. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?! Who you think I am? Fuckin’ Geronimo?” Then Crash took command. Pointing at the cabin, he snapped at Chris, “Hide your ass in there and when you get a clean shot, you take it.” Then he looked at me. “You stay out in the open. Down by the shoreline so they see you. Don’t resist ’em. Go.”

  “And then what?” My heart was pounding.

  “Just go!” Crash was bolting toward his boat. I moved quickly to the open space and looked back to see Chris disappear into his cabin just before the ARPC came humming in overtop and zeroed in on me.

  An amplified voice blared, “Halt! Down on your knees. Hands on your head. Now!” I complied as the ARPC settled in between me and the cabin, the turbines kicking up prop wash, blowing over Chris’s makeshift dining table as the vehicle touched down. One patroller jumped out of the passenger side, his pistol aimed at me, shouting as he approached, “Facedown on the ground! Hands behind you! Do it, bitch!”

  I did. The ARPC pilot had opened his door, using it for cover, and aimed his gun over it at me. “Got your six, Timbo!”

  The first patroller stopped right over me, holstered his gun, and reached for his cuffs. At that instant an arrow came zinging out of the cabin and buried itself deep in the driver’s left thigh. He yelped and spun to the ground, dropping his gun. The cop over me fumbled the cuffs to redraw his gun as Crash rose up from under a tarp on his boat, aiming the biggest rifle I’d ever seen, shouting, “Freeze, guys!” as he fired a warning shot just over their heads.

  ARPC GSP Unit 774 Cockpit Cam A/V - Date: 04/01/21 Time: 08:21:32

  Transcript Analysis [Abridged] by: Fields, Vernon, GSP #876254

  Dash Cam: Swamp seen W/SW, Bearing 245.

  Pilot: Schoengarth, John, GSP #767540; Copilot: Miller, Alicia S., GSP #846530

  Co-P Miller: Was that a shot fired?

  Pilot Schoen.: It’s a good excuse, either way. Let’s take us a peek, Miller.

  Flight data rec: From hover to 17 MPH forward.

  Courtesy GSP, FBI

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  Crash commanded the cops, “Don’t move a fucking muscle.” They did as told. Crash shouted to the one above me, “Reach across with your left hand, remove your weapon with your thumb and forefinger, and drop it in front of the lady.” He did so. “Pick it up, Doc,” Crash said, “and step away from the gentleman who will now go facedown, hands behind.”

  Meanwhile Chris, with another hunting arrow notched, drawn, and aimed, had come out swiftly to the downed driver and kicked the fallen gun away. Then Chris glanced over his left shoulder. He’d heard something else.

  ARPC GSP Unit 774 Cockpit Cam A/V - Date: 04/01/21 Time: 08:21:40

  Transcript Analysis [Abridged]

  Dash Cam: Swamp encampment appearing. Unit 504 patrollers appear compromised.

  Pilot: Schoengarth, John, GSP #767540; Copilot: Miller, Alicia S., GSP #846530

  Pilot Schoen.: Ho! The Ashton guys screwed the pooch. This is great. We get t’save their sorry asses!

  Co-P Miller: And make the bust. Yes!

  Courtesy GSP, FBI

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  My heart dropped as I saw that second ARPC gliding slowly in. Chris looked back sharply at Crash, who was keeping the patrollers covered while glancing at the approaching ARPC. His voice was dead calm. “Stand yo
ur ground. Let ’em come.”

  The PA voice blared, “Put down your weapons.”

  I was petrified. “Uh . . . Crash?” I saw a bright laser pinpoint start dancing across his chest.

  “We have you targeted,” the PA voice insisted. “Put down your weapons.”

  Crash was confident and assured, saying to us, “Stand still. Let ’em come . . . to right . . . there.”

  He dropped low and fired a shot directly below the incoming ARPC—into Chris’s stash of propane tanks. The resulting massive fireball boiled upward, completely engulfing the ARPC momentarily. Flames got sucked into its turbines, which screeched and malfunctioned. It rotated wildly over the channel, finally flipping upside down and crashing into the swamp water a half mile away, where it kept chugging, convulsing, and sputtering.

  The three of us quickly stripped our two patrollers of their radios and other gear. Once both were securely restrained, I removed the arrow from the pilot’s leg and dressed his wound. Chris angrily packed up his essentials—which I was pleased to note included a photo of me and him working the cholera pandemic in Uganda. I helped Crash trundle the pilot, named Brice Patton, out to the ARPC to get a flying lesson. Patton refused. Crash sighed, asked me, “Doc, borrow your Bowie?” I handed him my big knife, and he said casually, “Hey, Brice, see this scar on my face?” Crash grinned, making it appear particularly gruesome. “Want one?”

  Ten minutes later we had the patrollers trussed up only moderately, but definitely without means of communication. We climbed aboard the ARPC. Crash eased it off the ground, but overcorrected, and we skittered sideways toward a disastrous collision with Chris’s cabin, which Crash barely avoided. Then he gained altitude, and within a minute it was like he’d been flying the craft for years. He disengaged the transponder, putting us in stealth mode. We cruised low over where the other craft lay inverted, smoking, and mostly under the swamp water. Its crew of two had just floundered to the nearby shore, disheveled, exhausted, but alive enough to fend off several inquisitive alligators.

  As Crash flew us away across the swamp at—or sometimes frighteningly below—treetop level, I said to him, “Pretty amazing.”

  He glanced around the high-tech cockpit of the ARPC. “Yeah. Interesting ride.”

  “I meant you.”

  He glanced at me. Then shrugged it off. But I gave him a pat on the knee. He looked down at my hand, managed a tiny smile at it, then focused on flying. I studied him a moment, then looked back at Chris in the back seat. He was gazing out across the swamp with a grim, thousand-yard stare. I knew he didn’t want to be here. I decided to try anyway. “Hope you brought your clarinet.”

  I was sad that he didn’t respond. But I hoped that inside his tormented brain might be the answer we needed so desperately.

  23

  UPRISING

  Jimmy-Joe Hartman. . .

  The heavy iron-barred door slammed loud behind me and the other fifty newbies. Now I seen why that awful smellin’ bus been so crowded. Fuckin’ Reidsville prison was jam-packed. Smelled like piss, too. I looked up at the three-story main cellblock they wuz takin’ us into. I tried to hang tough while we wuz goin’ past guys inside their cells, but they wuz scary. Buncha beefy-fisted ones hooted and whistled, one shoutin’ right at me, “Oooo-eee, fresh white meat!” Others wuz sayin’, “See your ass in the showers, cutie! Welcome to Camp Reidsville!”

  The guards give out blankets and taked us up to the cells one at a time. This tall, black guard opened the barred door on mine. It wuz ’bout six-by-ten with two bunks. A big hulkin’-ass Latino guy was asleep, facin’ the wall on the top one. A wormy little white dude with one eye swollen shut wuz sittin’ on the bottom one with his bare legs crossed, girlie-like. The guard shoved me in, slid the door closed. “Hey, hang on,” I said, “where the fuck I s’posed to sleep?”

  “On the floor, pal, and you better enjoy it. Next week we gonna be stackin’ you assholes like cordwood.” Then he walked off. I wuz pissed.

  “It’s not so bad,” Wormy said. “Some of these cells have four or five in ’em.”

  I looked down and growled-like, “I ain’t sleepin’ on no fuckin’ floor. Move.”

  “You know, I would,” he said all whiny-like, “but that’d make my husband angry.” He glanced up at the huge guy. “And believe me, you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.”

  Right then a bell rang, and all the cell doors clanged open. A guard waved us out to join the line headed to the big concrete mess hall for lunch. They wuz a few dozen long metal picnic-kinda tables bolted to the floor. I heard it’s ’posed t’hold ’bout six hundred, but there wuz over a thousand smelly guys crammin’ in, tryin’ to get somma the crap food they wuz dishin’ out. I wuz standin’ in line and seen a lotta guys sizin’ me up. One old black guy ’cross the room had wire-frame glasses like Poppa. He kept starin’ like he knowed me or somethin’.

  I didn’t get no food ’cause a guy grabbed my ass. I heard you gotta be tough, so I whipped round and slugged him hard and bam—three guys jumped me to the ground, beatin’ me up worse’n the cops had. Knocked me plum out.

  Simone Frederick. . .

  My concerns continued to increase about the extent that Mitchell’s backroom maneuvers were taking our state government in a dark direction. I’d picked up snippets of rumors that there might even be some kind of mysterious drug involved. That sounded like tabloid conspiracy theory nonsense until I also heard it from a few respectable press people like a local NPR reporter plus the Journal’s Nate Balfour, and a couple others. Even then I didn’t pay much attention until I got to thinking about how Clarence was different, too. Meticulous guy that he was, he always told me about his doings at Everett Biochemical, sometimes in excruciating detail. But in the last few months, except for mentioning a couple of nasty chemical spill accidents, he’d gone quiet. I’d been suspicious that he might be having a dalliance with his boss, Shelly Navarro, at Everett, but maybe something even worse was going on over there.

  I also worried as a mom. LeBron’s grades had been slipping. Then I saw a letter come in for him from some modeling agency. He took it to his room to read. When he never mentioned it, I asked, and he said in his offhand manner that they had offered him some modeling jobs. “Like the girls are always saying I oughta do.” He smirked and added, “As if. I’ve got waaaay better things to do.”

  But when I dumped some recyclables that night, I spotted the letter in our bin and couldn’t resist. Seems that he had applied to the agency. And been rejected. I knew he must’ve been disappointed, but part of me thought it was a good lesson: that he wasn’t the only handsome black teen in Atlanta. At the same time I was worried about what was ahead for him.

  And for all of us.

  Clarence Frederick. . .

  I felt very upbeat as I pulled the Prius into the driveway and saw LeBron coming up the sidewalk. I called out cheerfully, “Hey, son. Help me with the groceries, huh?” He nodded as I opened the trunk. “Got some good news today. Everett’s doing so well that Ms. Navarro got me a raise. Hinted she might even be able to get me another small stock option.”

  “She really likes you, huh?”

  “Well, I’m doing my job.” I pulled out one of the bags. “Working hard so that—”

  “Is it true there’s some kinda new drug that makes people smarter?”

  I paused, forced a chuckle. “I wish. Where’d you hear something like that?”

  “Kid in school—who got suspended next day.” He spoke quieter, “And listen, Dad, I can keep a secret, and I could really use something that’d give me a brain boost so—”

  “No secret sauce, sorry. I think all you need to do is buckle down. Study harder and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been doing all that, Dad.” He continued plying, “But if Everett was making something that’d help me, and that Navarro woman likes you so much,” he said with an inappropriate innuendo, “then couldn’t you just, like, use that to get me some—”

  “That
’s enough!” I saw red. “Now you listen here, boy. I’m making better money than I have in years, and we’re getting along fine. I don’t have any desire to—”

  “Rock the boat,” LeBron muttered, turning away. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks a lot, Dad.”

  One of those new police cars drove by at that moment. Its light bar on top started flashing, then its stabilizer outriggers folded out as the Perini turbines whined to life. The craft lifted smoothly into the air and banked away from us to answer a police call. “Be so cool to fly one of those,” LeBron said, mesmerized. “Maybe I’ll be a cop.” Then he grumbled sourly, “Sure not getting any help around here.”

  I grabbed the other bag from him and walked angrily toward the house. He called after me, “And don’t think you’re fooling Mom. She knows you’ve got something going on the side.”

  I just kept walking. I had no choice.

  Dr. Susan Perry. . .

  We waited till night to approach Atlanta, on the ground, and on less traveled roads. Crash hid the ARPC under a tarp in a junkyard operated by one of his vet pals who loaned us an old car. From his office trailer phone, I called Justinia.

  Hearing what Hutch had done to Lilly was like being struck by lightning. I screamed with rage—startling Chris and Crash—as tears gushed from my eyes. I was utterly devastated for the trauma my absence had caused her.

  I struggled with my anguish as Crash drove us to where Justinia told me Katie had taken Lilly: an unused spur of the Southern Railway. Pulling into the abandoned industrial area that night, we could see it’d been idle for decades. The rails were rusted, and weeds had long ago taken over the gravel grading and the rotting cottonwood ties. Dilapidated redbrick buildings dating back to the 1800s were grimy, forgotten monuments to a bygone era. We stopped a hundred yards away from one and flashed our headlights as we’d been told: three short and one last long one. I later learned that particular code had been Chunhua’s idea: Morse code for the letter V, as in “victory.” We saw a flashlight blink back to us from the darkness, and we drove up to where young Princeton biochemist Alex was waiting.