Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #12

by Apex Authors

  "Is everything all right?” a voice asked from behind us.

  "Everything's fine. Wendal, you remember my daughter, Lyndsey? She's been assisting me in my work."

  "Wendal."

  "Lyndsey, it's been a while.” I held my head a little too high, not much hiding the smug, lusting gleam in my eye, although my throat had turned to lead. My arms opened, inviting a hug, even though she'd angled to the side, avoiding the full crush of her breasts against me. I thought I was prepared for the torrent of recognition. Extra primping time aside, I didn't want to let myself believe she'd actually be here. At best, I'd hoped the professor would report back to her how well I looked. And turned out.

  "Yes, it has been. Hopefully we'll have a chance to catch up.” Her voice recalled embarrassed laughter and nights spent snuggled on a couch, the quickly remembered good times. Long reddish-brown hair bled into a thatch of blonde roots and shrouded an elongated cherubic face whose amateur porn prettiness held me transfixed for hours. Her melancholy eyes, which had absorbed too many hurtful sights, contained an offness about them, as if the light didn't reflect properly. Hopefully she no longer saw the little boy flirting with manhood she'd once known, because I definitely wanted to give the voluptuous creature before me a chance to get to know me all over again. If I were honest with myself, that was what this meeting was all about—her giving me the chance to make up for past mistakes. She balled her hands within her sleeves, a nervous habit, one of those little quirks that friends noticed. “Would you like something to drink?"

  "Bless you.” My eyes followed the bounce of her behind down the hallway until I caught sight of a door.

  "Perhaps it would help if we gave you a tour of our facility.” The professor interrupted. “Phase I begins in our level one staging area. Phase II, through that door, is in the lower level. Laying all of my cards on the table, I need your help with Phase III, our final stage."

  The level one staging area turned out to be their garage. A room filled with test tubes, venting hoods, and lab benches, a mix of lab surplus equipment-probably gathered from dumpster diving outside of local labs-and shrewd purchases, like their thermal cycler. I pitied the man. The rumors had to be true: he was never the same after what happened to his wife, Susan. A wave of sadness overwhelmed me and I put my hand on the professor's shoulder. Roush turned with a beaming grin, apparently having taken the gesture as one of excitement.

  "Right this way, this way,” he said.

  Lyndsey joined us, much to my delight, with drink in hand. Her hands lingered on mine as she passed the glass to me, causing an adolescent surge of the old affection. Whatever anxiousness threatened calmed once she shadowed us, the heat of her close presence reminded me of our brief time together. Rousch had always joked that when a professor started to appear good to you, you'd spent too much time in the lab. He said nothing about professor's daughters.

  I pushed back the reality that things hadn't ended as well as I'd hoped. Though I never raised my voice at her, I was the master of the calculated coldness. Silence and distance used to flay the emotional meat from her bones; little cruelties dripped on her, turning the relationship into a crude Chinese water torture.

  "Humans are a product of their genetic make-up and their total environmental/cultural influences. Wild-type retroviruses can be altered and used as vectors to insert into genes. It's a simple process. Retroviral RNA is cloned into a plasmid and constructed into a vector. We collect cells from an affected individual, anyone would do. Basically changing functional genes of a human cell with the aim of correcting the genetic defect by gene transfer..."

  "Genetic defect?"

  "Sin, of course. An inherited proclivity to sin. We then select and grow the genetically corrected cells and infuse or transplant them back into the patient. That person becomes a universal donor. I'm trying to think of a catchy name for my vector. Something to be remembered for the ages. Anyway, that was Phase I."

  I knew I shouldn't have come. Maybe there was some truth to the old saw about not going home again. I always thought if I returned home, the rooms would feel smaller, suffocating. That I wouldn't belong. I held out hope it might be different with the professor. He was the father of my second life. The father that solely knew the Wendal who had to be the smartest, had to be the best, if just from fear of people seeing me as the fraud I thought I was.

  Science didn't answer the questions I asked. I wanted to kneel and pray, to believe a fraction of what my parents believed, but doubts cut into my knees like slivers of glass. Bible-thumping B.S. and a sycophant-craving God had no place in my world. I defined myself. So it was easier for me to distance myself from science and the professor than from faith and my parents. I chose to lose myself in climbing the food chain of the corporate laboratory until I was able to buy into the company, where the true money was. Not that business offered anything more by way of answers, it just didn't have the promise of journeying, of seeking answers to unanswerable questions, that science and faith proffered. Numbers never lied.

  Part of me felt all the more apostate to Professor Roush. Another part resented Lyndsey for never leaving her father to become her own person. But I chided myself for sounding like one of those people who escaped something—drinking, smoking, the projects—and they thought were better than the folks who hadn't—that anyone who failed to do so was weak and stupid.

  "Have you had any success?"

  "Much. Enough to move on to Phase II."

  "Phase II?” My hand pressed against my clammy forehead, my face suddenly flush with heat. I steadied myself against the wall, not wanting to betray any loss of cool.

  "Human trials.” The professor revealed an unctuous grin.

  "Hu ... Professor, you can't be serious."

  "But I am. At any rate, the last step would be final deployment."

  "Deployment?"

  "Put it in our water."

  I locked onto Roush's eyes. He was shit-slurping crazy. The glass of water felt suddenly heavy in my hands.

  "Dear me, are you all right.” Professor Roush's voice took on a sinister aspect in its feigned concern. “You look positively ... piqued."

  The world canted to and fro. The muscles in my legs gave out from under me, the dead weight of my body slid along the bracing wall. Lyndsey relieved me of the glass before it tumbled along with me and crashed to the ground. I'd hate to leave a mess, I thought as I put one hand on my queasy stomach, my eyelids heavy and my brain filled with wet cotton. My other hand searched for purchase along the wall. Lyndsey knelt over me, studying my face as I slipped into darkness, with the sage fascination of a child ready to step on an anthill. She grew impatient at my slow descent into unconsciousness, punched me in my face and...

  * * * *

  ...I drifted into the darkness, lost in a dream of another person's memories. Professor Roush left the world of academia for the more lucrative corporate world. Private labs spent more on research in a day than his entire yearly budget at the university; although the job came at a cost—one he was more than ready to pay: he arrived before any of the others and was the last to leave at night. Some people speculated that he kept a cot in his office so he could catch naps during the night rather than go home. Before too long, he ran the entire department, “It's all about the real estate” he was quick to say, as an entire building's wing full of scientists danced to the song of his research, all working on the human genome project. He saw Lyndsey and Susan when he could; after all, they were the reason he sacrificed his time, wanting to make the world a better place for them. Inevitable tragedies followed men of devotion. No sacrifice asked of them was too great since they expected a last-second reprieve, a surely-not-them moment of Abraham's knife spared from Isaac—too bad for the ram caught in the thickets offered up in his place—so the stillness of the house, after the professor returned from another long day at the labs shouldn't have alerted him to something being wrong ... but it did. Nothing specific, nothing he could put his finger on right away; however,
he called out “Susan?” Roush set his briefcase down, a frown ensconced on his face, no dread, no sense of welling fear, only a mild displeasure as he crept up the stairs, ignoring the fact that some part of his brain, some baser survival instinct, told him to not turn on the lights but to cling to the walls as he made his way. The door to his bedroom opened with a slight creak, the tenor of its slow whine stilling the burgeoning desire to call for his wife again; her name died in the back of his throat while a tear burned down the side of his face—even before he switched on the light—since the air was heavy with the smell of sex, sex mixed with something else. Her silk night gown sprawled on the floor, despite his repeated chiding of her to put away her previous night's clothes. Her body peeked from the mound of sheets on the bed, his mind registered that she was positioned too akimbo in the bed, but was unable to reconcile it with how her eyes peered at him from the closet. Opening the closet door more, he saw her head resting on its side, staring at him with dull, unfocused eyes. He backed out of the room, tripping on her nightgown on the way out, never quite the same again. He quit his job and fell off the grid to pursue his own independent research; what remained of his life was spent oscillating between his work and his daughter who...

  * * * *

  ...stood on the opposite end of the basement beside her father, cultured around a freezer and examined a series of vials. Borne on waves of nausea, I drifted back to consciousness studying their painfully obvious body language: Rousch's nervousness at her approach, the furtive glances, the way the professor fumbled with the vials then calmed at her touch—Roush feared her.

  My hands were manacled to the water line over my head, pain spasmed along my arms from being suspended too long in the same position. The ragged strips of my torn suit jacket, though the material was smooth against my wrists, held me at an odd angle and prevented me from getting enough leverage to sufficiently pull at my bonds. Wood sheeting guarded the windows against unwanted eyes. Turning, I noticed the body sitting next to me.

  Also handcuffed to the thick pipe, the slumped figure stank from a layer of grime coupled with the smell of rotting flesh. A pool of dried blood glued his tattered pants to the floor. Scars, some healed but most not, scored his hairless chest and thick arms. A delighted artist had etched his flesh; his tortured eyes remained open, his face a rictus of frozen terror.

  "I see you met ... what was his name again?” Lyndsey asked her father.

  "Marcus."

  "Yes, Marcus. He was delicious.” The word “delicious” rattled like wind-scattered bones in my ear. “A homeless gentleman I met through some of my work with the shelter. We go through the motions of charitable acts to prove that we are more than motes of dust with delusions of grandeur."

  "Do you know your Bible?” Roush asked.

  "The Bible?” I remembered my Sunday School lessons well.

  Professor Roush crouched down to eye level with me—close, but not too close—his fetid breath pouring on me like stink rising from steaming shit. “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'” We bit into the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and it bit back. Sin came into the world and it was passed down through him. Passed down could mean genes. What if the original bodies were perfect, that's why people lived 600, 800 years; but sin, once in place, slowly set in and corrupted the bodies?"

  "Professor ... Martin, you've been under a lot of strain..."

  "Eradicating sin nature, our ability to sin—by removing the option to sin, we can do what God couldn't. Wouldn't. He was afraid. Afraid and wanting people to come begging to him as worship."

  "What's life without the ability to make stupid choices?"

  "We can still choose, but we would only have good options. What we are doing here will eliminate the need for atonement. We could truly vanquish evil."

  "Like smallpox.” I stalled, hoping for an opportunity to present itself for me to escape. The conversation distracted me from the throbbing ache in my wrists.

  "Exactly like smallpox. Plagues come in many forms and we are dealing with the worst plague we've ever known. We've sat back too long without doing anything about it because we've lacked the technology. My synthetic T-cell invades genetic code and activates latent introns, the dormant sequences of DNA. This sets off a cascade of reactions, part of a gene super-family, behavioral and physical characteristics from perhaps millions of years ago. However..."

  "There have been some unanticipated complications.” I tugged at my restraints again. My struggles ceased once I caught the professor's faraway gaze. I followed it until I, too, landed on Lyndsey.

  "Genes have many different roles to play in the proper functioning of an organism. A defect in a gene expressed in one tissue might have a deleterious effect on other tissues. Lyndsey's DNA is in a state of ribostatic flux. Her genetic codes are being resequenced and her cells are mutating as a result. At a fundamental level, she is no longer human."

  Bereft of my compulsory need to flirt, I saw Lyndsey with a greater clarity. With her sleek and sullen face, she wore the mask of a funeral-goer. A haunting apathy filled her eyes, a hollowness unable to quite catch light because they had stared into the dark for far too long. Hers was a corruption in the code; almost as if the therapy drove out her soul.

  With the demeanor of an alcoholic sauntering into a bar, she walked over and straddled me. She brought a scalpel to bear and placed the cool flat of it against my face. I frantically pulled at my chains, attempting to shake either her off or myself free, but she pressed a thin and cruel finger to my lips. She caressed my cheek, her freezing fingertips producing an ache where they lingered too long. The gesture-meant to be tender, perhaps even seductive-had the calculation of someone approximating emotions with the skill of a child's first introduction to a piano. Suddenly, she seemed so young, a girl searching for the words to describe concepts she had little experience with. Her free hand trailed down my chest and reached into my lap, unbuckling my belt and unzipping my pants. She fished my manhood from my briefs, her eyes not breaking their gaze.

  "No.” Rage boiled inside me, my struggles chafing the skin from my wrists. I wondered how much a man could endure before he broke from who he was.

  "We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Roush offered.

  "Professor ... Martin, we make bad decisions every day of our lives. Please, you're making one now."

  "You think you're better than you are,” Lyndsey said.

  "The sin of pride,” Roush lowered his head as if weighed down by his thoughts.

  "Such a pretty face. It makes me want to keep it forever."

  The blade bit into my tender flesh, warm blood pooling then dribbling down the side of my face. She hesitated in her implied threat to peel the flesh from my skull, though she may have wanted to savor the moment, hypnotized by the tenor of my scream. Or vicariously experiencing the feelings she could no longer tap into. I swelled to rigidity despite myself, the word “no” forming and dying on my lips once more. Lyndsey's hips undulated until I slipped into her cold, velveteen embrace.

  Her father watched.

  "What was that about alchemists believing that watching the transformation of lead to gold purified the soul?” Roush's voice sounded so far away. “That's it, the alchemy of the soul. Metal transmutation as a means to an end; the act of witnessing the transformation purifies the soul. Change caused by witnessing atomic phenomena, rather similar to the idea of photons behaving like waves or particles depending on the intentions of the experimenters."

  Lyndsey thrust herself down upon me as I spasmed within her; another wan smile lit her face. I sat there as she pulled herself from me, angry tears welling in—but not escaping—my eyes.

  "'Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.’”

  "We have what we need.” Lyn
dsey patted her belly like a woman pushing away from a buffet.

  "What of him?” Roush glanced at my slumping figure.

  "He no longer matters. None of this does. We're done."

  "Are you sure?"

  "A mother always knows."

  * * * *

  We all make bad decisions.

  Overcast and pregnant with rain, the evening clouds were a snapshot of grief. Fatigue wormed its way into my bones with the tenacity of rage. Black chunks of silence haunted me as I stared out my windows. I had retreated to the routine of my life to process being alive, if not whole, but it was far short of living. Waiting in my empty house was too much. I relived the memories of that night for months. One day it struck me. Sometimes we can't bring ourselves to part with attachments to our past. Roush had kept his old home, the ghost of Susan still running about; perhaps hoping to redeem it, give it a second chance. My rage focused itself again and I stepped out, wanting some measure of control back. Maybe if I had told someone ... no, it was my burden, my shame to carry. In the end, we all carried our sins alone.

  A sickening wave of nausea hit me when I saw them. I could still feel the bite of metal cutting into my wrists. The helplessness. The powerlessness. I grew as still as an owl that had spied a field mouse—mice—caught in their own routine. They were reading of all things, nary a worry in the world: Roush a Bible and Lyndsey the day's newspaper. A baby monitor squawked beside her. Three generations of madness under one roof, all of them there of their own free will. All except the boy. I knew it was a boy without even seeing him. The boy never asked to be born, never asked to be caught up in their madness. Strains of classical music emanated from the monitor and from the stairwell.

  I wondered if she could know grief or if she would have to torture it out of someone else.

  Sidling up the stairs, I stretched my joints that had grown stiff from hiding and waiting. The bedroom door opened without a creak. A homemade mobile-with the letters A, C, T, and G dangling down-danced just out of reach. I didn't know what I believed anymore. Sometimes I wanted to—I needed to—believe someone was paying attention. During the many lonely nights, I'd been tempted to call out in the hope of catching His or Her ear; to remind them of the mess they left behind. I wanted to pretend someone was listening and that they cared. We all made bad decisions, we all wanted forgiveness, to cling to our ritual comforts and console ourselves. I stood over the crib, and the baby glanced at me with mild disinterest. A vague luminescence flickered in the boy's eyes. I knew I stared into a monstrous abyss. This baby born with an empty soul, or rather, a soul not infused by the hand of its Creator. Not capable of choice. Irrational. Instinctual. Spiritually, they had already killed it.