The Hunting Tree

by Ike Hamill

  “Right again,” said Ken.

  “So it had to be an external indicator—something big enough to get him to you. Did someone think he was abused or something? I saw another case where the kid was reported as an abuse victim, but then they just figured out he couldn’t keep his feet under him.”

  “No, he came in for a punctured lung that was supposed to be from a fall. But his fall shouldn’t have caused what I was seeing,” said Dr. Stuart.

  “Cystic Fibrosis? Maybe Marfan syndrome?” asked Mike. He flipped through a couple of pages. “No, can’t be.”

  “Yeah, no, we ruled out both of those right away," said Ken. “But you already told me that. Nothing that’s been classified, remember?”

  “I thought maybe I’d missed something,” said Mike. “Not as much confidence as I used to have.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” said Ken. “So, have any other ideas?”

  “Well, if it’s something nobody has seen, then he’s a clean slate, right? How bad are the symptoms? Any organs misfiring?”

  “Symptoms aren’t bad—he’s clumsy sometimes, early puberty, gets these weird chalky marks on him, especially on his neck.”

  “Weird,” said Mike, looking towards the window.

  “Yeah, right? What else… He’s really smart, almost too smart for his age. Great memory, sight, hearing, all above average. He’s quite an athlete, too. Great kid, you should meet them. Him and his mom.”

  “No thanks,” said Mike. “I don’t know how you can do that. It would break my heart if I had to think of all these crazy diseases belonging to actual humans. I’ll leave that to you.”

  “I hear you,” said Ken. “It gets easier over time, but not much.”

  “So I’d get it published, see if anyone else is seeing the same thing, and then just treat the symptoms. You know, he’s got some unusual markers here, looks like they’re from the dad, but who knows, maybe you’re chasing ghosts. You have him with a shrink?”

  “Yeah, he started with John Tooley a few weeks ago,” said Ken.

  Mike nodded. “Wish there was something more I could tell you.”

  They sat silent for a few moments.

  “You ready for some lunch?” asked Ken.

  “Absolutely.”

  * * * * *

  DR. KEN STUART LED MIKE a few buildings down from his office to a steak house. They kept the conversation light while they walked down the block, in deference to the beautiful day. They joked about the weather and talked about old friends until they had settled in the privacy of a booth with menus tilted between them.

  “So how long are you out of a job—do you know?” Ken asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Who knows,” said Mike. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That’s cool,” said Ken.

  “I miss working—trying to combine the paranormal with my genetic research. That was my passion, you know? I really think I’m on to something, but now I can’t even work on it if I wanted to.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Ken. “Just because of the investigation and the lawsuits?”

  “That’s not the half of it,” Mike explained. “Our last case, the one where Gary died, was for this engineer guy, and he made me sign all these long documents. Turns out I was handing over my intellectual property if anything went wrong. I didn’t even realize that at the time, but when the shit hit the fan, I lost my rights to even work on anything combining technology with paranormal investigation.”

  “Wow,” said Ken.

  “Yeah. But seriously, let’s change the subject,” said Mike.

  “No problem.”

  “You know what’s weird? When I first got into paranormal research I ran into something that reminds me of your kid,” said Mike.

  “My kid?”

  “You know, the clumsy kid.”

  “Oh sure,” said Ken, realizing that Mike was referring to Davey Hunter.

  Their waiter approached as they talked.

  “I studied the history of genetics for a while. Before there was solid genetic theory, there were some surprising myths that had interesting scientific components wrapped into them. Hi there,” Mike said, turning to the waiter. “What do you have on draft?”

  The waiter looked at the ceiling and turned his head to the side as he recited, “Shipyard, Guinness, Bud.”

  “Let me get a Guinness,” said Mike. “Ken?”

  “Diet coke?” asked Ken.

  “Ready to order?” the waiter asked.

  “Give us a few,” said Mike. “Where was I?”

  “Ordering a liquid lunch?” smiled Ken. He liked catching up with Mike. It gave them both a chance to talk like they did when they were younger—before they had careers and responsibilities.

  “Yeah,” said Mike. “You’re buying right?” he asked, laughing. “Anyway, if you went back a couple thousand years, there were some sophisticated theories about how groups maintained their genetic health.”

  “Really?” asked Ken. “I thought natural selection was a silent partner.”

  “It was amongst the Romans or Greeks,” Mike explained. “What I’m talking about you’d have to go to more tribal areas. Away from big culture. Like Africa or North America—away from Europe, South America, or Asia, where people were forming big super-colonies. The tribal people had pretty interesting practices; eskimos too—they had the same ideas.”

  “What kind of ideas?” asked Ken.

  “Well, like beached whales, or dolphins. You’ve heard of mass strandings?” asked Mike.

  “I guess,” said Ken. “You mean when lots of dolphins all beach themselves at the same time?”

  “Exactly,” said Mike. “Marine biologists have tons of theories, but none very satisfactory. They’ll say things like there was a disturbance in the magnetic field, or the animals can’t see a slowly sloping beach or something. They want to blame the environment for everything, but animals have always needed to quickly adapt to changing environments. All those theories sound like a bunch of bullshit. Way back, tribal people displayed the same behaviors.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks. Mike took a long sip of his beer and wiped the foam from his stubble with his open hand.

  “Ready to order?” asked the waiter.

  Mike took another sip of his beer and pointed to Ken.

  “I’ll get the burger with cheddar, medium, and house fries,” said Ken.

  “Sir?” the waiter turned to Mike.

  “Fish and chips, the onion soup, and the Greek salad,” said Mike. “Lots of bread with the salad, please.”

  The waiter retreated, still writing on his pad.

  “Hungry?” asked Ken.

  “You have no idea,” said Mike. “So these whales and dolphins. There are a bunch of oral histories among indigenous North Americans talking about the same thing with people.”

  “Really?” asked Ken. “Mass suicides? Like the Heaven’s Gate cult, or Jim Jones, or something?”

  “Yeah,” said Mike, “mass suicide. And the reason they did it was because they knew that their genes were polluted. If the whole tribe had the same mutation, they’d figure it out. They knew that if any of them lived to breed, they would pass it around until the whole race would be doomed.”

  “How could they know that?” asked Ken.

  “It was like a highly specialized instinct. People who believe in it think that we don’t have a need for this instinct anymore because the population of man is thriving, but if you look at some of the marine mammals, they’re right on the hairy edge of survival all the time. If there was a mutation that shortened the lifespan, or caused the offspring to fail to thrive, they’d be sunk, so to speak. So when a group evolves with a trait like that, it carries with it this trigger. Get enough individuals together who all have the same trigger, and they get this uncontrollable urge to commit group suicide,” explained Mike.

  “I think I get it,” said Ken, “but it seems a little far fetched.”

  “Is
it really though?” asked Mike, sipping his beer. “Think about the complexity of other mechanisms that have evolved. There are some really intricate feedback loops and dependencies there. If we didn’t have any medicine and our population was really small, you’d need ways to ensure that truly worthy individuals breed. Something above simple survival of the fittest.”

  “Wouldn’t that just be handled case-by-case?” suggested Ken. “Some guy is sickly, so no woman will mate with him?”

  “True enough, but there are different kinds of mutations. You’ve got lethal mutations, loss-of-function, gain-of-function, dominant negative. Like your Marfan we were talking about before. What if there’s a type of mutation that goes unnoticed, or even becomes an attractor? You’ve heard of epigenetics?”

  “Sounds familiar,” said Ken. “Remind me.”

  “Epigenetics is when an environmental change influences the way a gene is expressed,” said Mike.

  Ken raised his eyebrows.

  “I’ll give you an example: you could be perfectly healthy, but you carry a gene for diabetes. You have one kid, and everything is fine. But then you go through a period of famine before you father your second kid. Your kids could have nearly identical DNA, but the famine flipped on the gene for the diabetes, so your second kid has it and your first never has a problem.”

  “Could that happen?” asked Ken.

  “Some studies link environmental effects to life expectancy of grandchildren,” said Mike.

  “Grandchildren? That’s unreal,” said Ken.

  “I know, right?" Mike sat back and finished his beer.

  “So why does that remind you of my case?” Ken waved back towards his office building.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Mike, reinvigorated. “That’s the most interesting part,” he hunched his shoulders and dove back into his narrative. “Along with these group suicides, you also get the rogues.” He twirled his fingers in the air. “A rogue mutation produces an individual who survives the mass suicide.”

  “To what purpose? Isn’t that individual also infected?”

  “Yes, but he never breeds. He prunes the dead branches of the genetic tree,” said Mike.

  “Say what?” said Ken, surprised.

  “This creature is born just to weed out the weak. A killer who’s skimming shallow end of the gene pool. Once every thousand generations a killer is born, and he’s somehow uniquely able to seek and destroy all the sick and weak members of his species. Cool, huh?”

  “I guess,” said Ken. “So this thing would kill its own species. I’ve heard of that with chimps, killing rival troupes and things. Or lions that take over a pride will kill all the cubs.”

  “Almost like that, but not exactly. Those are examples of animals who kill to increase the propagation of their own genes. The rogue is non-breeding. It acts on behalf of the whole species by only killing individuals with a genetic defect or communicable disease.”

  “Weird,” said Ken. “But what benefit is there to the individual?”

  “None,” said Mike. “It’s more like a hive mentality in that way. Doing the thing that’s best for the whole species so they don’t go extinct. It’s like a one-in-a-billion creature. It would only come out in the most dire of circumstances.”

  “And you think that my patient is one of these rogue mutations?” asked Ken. “I don’t get it.”

  “Nope, not at all,” said Mike. “The opposite, in fact.” He placed his empty beer glass near the edge of the table, to attract the attention of the waiter. “What have you told me about this kid? He’s good at sports, he’s developing early, he’s smart with a great memory, and he’s got heightened senses. This kid could be the perfect extinction vector. That would make him the target of the rogue.”

  Ken chuckled at the assertion—“How so?”

  “Take a look at the results when you get back to your desk. Look at the abnormalities I circled in his dad’s results and compare those to your kid. They’re nearly identical, and it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. Then glance at what you thought was contamination in the mom’s sample. Why did everyone assume it’s a contamination?”

  “Because it’s so out of place, and its clearly a duplicate from Davey’s results,” said Ken.

  “Right,” said Mike. “But what if it’s not? What if the kid somehow infected his mom with that genome.”

  “Like a retrovirus? Like HIV?”

  “Exactly,” agreed Mike. “But this abnormality is accompanied by early puberty, above average intelligence and senses—so he’s better able to survive and thrive—likability, and, best of all, situational clumsiness.” Mike ticked off the attributes on his fingers.

  “Why does the clumsiness help the disease?” asked Ken.

  “Imagine that this thing can spread through blood contact. What better way to gain blood contact than a clumsy kid? People will sometimes shy away from a bleeding adult, but everyone runs to help a bleeding kid,” said Mike.

  “That’s quite a theory,” said Ken. “So if I’ve got this straight, then this all starts with a terrible genetic defect that a whole group of people inherits.”

  “Yup,” said Mike, “the whole tribe has it.”

  “And they all commit suicide because they somehow realize that their existence threatens the whole species. But one of them survives, and he’s the perfect killer.”

  “That’s right,” said Mike.

  “But there’s also a kid. He’s a perfect extinction vector and the perfect killer wants to hunt the kid down?” asked Ken.

  “Makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective,” said Mike.

  Ken laughed. “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Well, you’ve got to test the viability of the species somehow,” explained Mike. “Otherwise we’re just taking up space when the crows, or snakes, or trees should be taking over. You’ve got to think of the whole ecosystem as one big machine. Dinosaurs go and mammals come up. It’s all one big optimization. You can’t narrow your focus on just one species without thinking about what’s optimal for the whole planet. So, you get this perfect disease and a perfect cure and let them battle it out.”

  Ken propped up his chin with his hand.

  “What do you think?” asked Mike as the waiter brought over two plates of food.

  “Two things,” said Ken. “First, you should stop drinking on an empty stomach. Second, I’m never letting you near any of my patients.”

  The men laughed and dug into their food.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Crooked Tree - Present Day

  THOUGHT RETURNED TO CROOKED TREE FIRST. His body knew instinctively to not breathe. Using the last energy in his muscles, he could draw a deep breath and flood his lungs with fresh oxygen, but that would bring quick death. His cells, confronted with a fresh supply of fuel after having been deprived so long, would explode—tearing themselves apart. He would die in a trillion tiny suicides.

  None of that occurred consciously to Crooked Tree. His body handled the process of waking up, sipping fuel from the fresh air leaking into the cave, automatically. Crooked Tree’s ancient synapses awoke thinking only of the boy. This boy was more dangerous than any of his previous conquests. The boy had the power to destroy all families; his sickness would spread like raging fire.

  As quickly as his consciousness returned, it began to fade. Crooked Tree drifted back to sleep.

  * * * * *

  THE NEXT TIME CROOKED TREE WOKE, almost a week later, he noted that his lungs had moved. He reached out with his mind and tried to sense the boy. It was difficult to locate his prey. The world around him seemed overcrowded with souls, packed into every corner. Sifting through all the competing voices, trying to find one particular boy, seemed too complex. He lay perfectly motionless—his body still recovering from its long slumber—when he felt his heart beat for the first time since his awakening. Fresh energy coursed through his core and then died away.

  As his new vitality faded away, Crooked Tree realized his mistake. H
e couldn’t find the boy again because he had regained too much power. His perception had recovered to the point where he was sensing all the signals, not just the strongest. With his focus narrowed, trying to not reach out, he once again sensed the boy. His prey was asleep, dreaming of him, and far away—farther than Crooked Tree had ever roamed.

  If Crooked Tree had regained control of his face, his next realization would have made him smile: the boy was undeveloped. His infection was immature, and not yet capable of spreading easily. This would give Crooked Tree time to find the boy and eliminate him before his disease could reach its full potential.

  He felt his energy once again seeping away as his consciousness washed away.

  * * * * *

  CROOKED TREE SAT UPRIGHT and gasped, sucking in an enormous volume of air. He had felt minor bursts of energy since the last time he had been awake, but he had ignored them, sleeping and recovering. This time the power surge was too much, and although the air burned his lungs, he was alive.

  He tried to blink in the near darkness, but one eyelid was sealed shut and the other glued open against a paper-dry cornea. His desiccated limbs creaked as he spun his body to find the source of the light. Over time, the rocks sealing his tomb had shifted or ground away, and he had a tiny window on dim stars, just big enough to fit his fist.

  While he considered the hole, the starlight was blotted for a moment as a tiny bat streaked through the hole to return to its roost. His hand shot out on its own and plucked the squeaking creature from the air. He brought its flapping form up to his unmoving, unblinking eye and then scraped his bony thumb across its tiny neck, decapitating the little mammal with his slow swipe.

  He caught the little squirt of blood in his open mouth and felt the liquid spread through his awaiting tissue.

  His eye blinked twice and he spotted another bat swopping into the cave.

  Almost half the colony fell victim to Crooked Tree that night before he returned to sleep in his narrow chamber.

  * * * * *

  WHEN CROOKED TREE AWOKE for the fourth time, he knew that this would be the night of his escape. He wasted no time on bats, and instead began to claw at the rocks around the small patch of starlight. By midnight he estimated that he might just barely fit through the opening, but he was too tired to try. Instead, he positioned himself at the mouth of the cave and snatched the last few bats brave enough to attempt refuge in the cave.