Mutant Blood

by Thomas Porter

  When Maya reached the pool, she took the net off the fence and scooped some grasshoppers off the water.

  "Ew," she said as she turned the net upside down and dropped them in the wheelbarrow, left near the net by Abel the morning before. "Just.....ew," she said and dropped the net onto the cement. She dragged a chair onto the sand and sat down facing the water.

  Still standing next to Abel's body, Pryce asked Savane, "Are you strong enough to get his feet?"

  "I think so. Did you know him well?"

  "Not before the flares. But we've been here together for years. I don't know what I'll do without him," Pryce said.

  "Sorry, Pryce. Come on, I'll help," she said and walked to Abel's feet. She leaned over and picked up his feet as Pryce lifted him by the wrists. They carried and dragged him off the beach and into the yard next door. At the point where the fence which separated the properties met the sand, they stopped.

  "This looks good," Savane said.

  "Think so?"

  "Yes. It's close to the sand but not too close. Close to the house but not too close. Looks good," Savane said.

  "Ok. Here it will be," Pryce said. "Feel well enough to help dig?"

  "I think so. But let me sit, rest, while you get the shovels, okay?"

  "Fair enough, Savane. I'll be right back," Pryce said. He walked back to the garage and Savane laid down in the grass next to Abel. When Pryce returned, her mouth had fallen open and she was lightly snoring. He put her shovel on the ground and started digging.

  As he dug, a wave of grasshoppers swept into the yard. A massive cloud which moved from inland enveloped them like a fog. Each bug jumped and flew but the swarm moved like a single creature. Tens of thousands of grasshoppers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, migrated through the yard in which Pryce worked. The swarm also covered Maya's yard. Through gaps in the swarm, Pryce could see her lying in the sand next to the chair. Still asleep, Savane closed her mouth and brushed at her face. Pryce had seen such grasshopper swarms several times before and they didn't bother him so he kept digging. The swarm swept onto the beach and when it hit the water, it split. Some went left and some went right. From where Pryce dug, the two halves of the swarm looked like a dark gray cloud. The rear of the swarm finally entered the yards. Nipping at its heels, creating a dark swarm of its own, was a flock of sparrows. Sparrows, seemingly working in concert, picked up and dropped individual grasshoppers until they found one that didn't resist. They pecked and pinched the bug until it stopped moving. Then more birds descended on the dead grasshopper until just the legs remained. Then they moved on. Their frenzy covered Savane and she woke up, violently slapping the air and screaming. Pryce dropped his shovel and stepped to her side.

  "It's okay, Savane. Just birds. They'll be gone soon," Pryce told her.

  She raised her head off the ground and looked around. The fear in her eyes faded rapidly. "Thanks, Pryce. Wow. I hate those swarms. Never been outside for one." A grasshopper crawled on her scalp and she squished it, then pulled it out of her thin hair.

  Pryce said, "I've seen a bunch of these. Even tried to make something to eat from the birds but it's way too much work. The grasshoppers must be good for something but I can't figure what. Just wait them out. They'll be gone soon."

  Savane raised herself to her elbows and Pryce resumed digging.

  ~ - ~

  As the two swarms enveloped Pryce and Savane, it also consumed Maya. Scout 459 took aim from 30 feet away, where he was concealed by dune grass and the swarm, and darted Maya in the neck. She slapped at the dart, knocked it loose, then covered her head with a towel to shield herself from the swarm. "Hate, hate, hate, grasshoppers," she said to herself, then her eyelids involuntarily, slowly dropped, dropped, dropped closed and she fell sideways out of the chair and onto the sand. Her arm was stretched above her head as she fell and her head landed on it. From a distance, she looked to be napping.

  Scout 459 used his elbows to drag himself to where she lay, then reached into the pack on his belt and retrieved a red, metallic ring. He rolled onto his side, raised both hands over his head, and clamped it on Maya's ankle. He then dragged himself back to the dune grass, keyed his radio and said, "Director Shuh, this is Scout 459. Can you hear me? Over."

  "Yes, 459. Got you. Over."

  "The target is marked. Number 58963, COOP GREEN. Like you asked. Over."

  "Got it, 459. Get back here at your convenience but you are cleared for up to three more days in the field, at your discretion. Anything else to report? Over."

  "Yes. I love grasshoppers. Love, love, love. Four five nine out."

  Chapter 12

  Had the grasshoppers not parted at the water, but instead continued out to sea until after sundown of that day, they would have seen a beautiful sight. They would have been enveloped by the near-black darkness over the sea, outdone only by the pitch black line along the horizon which was the land. On that line they would have seen five pinpoints of light, sparkling and flickering in concert with Venus which hovered just above them. If the sparrows had followed the grasshoppers out to sea, and then had flown in toward these points of light, they would have seen them grow in size until each one was a large fire consuming a pyramid of logs placed there by a mutant gray, hairless man.

  Flying in even closer, they would have seen round large stones, each about the size of a volleyball, arranged at the base of each pyramid. The stones were arranged into letters, the letters into words. If the birds could read the words, they would have seen the words were really names. Orel. Graves. Hayes. Gwen. Savane.

  They would have seen the mutant, hairless man sitting in a chair which was placed in the dune grass. They would have seen that he was wearing a red metal ring on his ankle, and that he was crying.

  ~ - ~

  Anthony fell asleep watching the fires burn. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a violent thunder clap. His eyes shot opened and he saw that the fires had died down but still glowed orange. Soon it started raining. During those rare rain storms, he would climb the stairs to the roof and check the cistern he built there to collect rain water. Tonight, though, he remained in his chair and let the rain soak him through. Then, after several minutes, he walked into the house, disrobed, dried off, and went to bed.

  Well after the sun had risen the next day, and well after he normally started his day, Anthony climbed out of bed. After dressing, he walked his three-wheeled bike to the front yard. He loaded the bike's two large baskets with clothes, his knife and rifle, rope, smoked meat, his computer with six extra batteries, a backup hard drive and several canisters of acetylene gas.

  The last item he packed was a plastic shoe box containing 7 medium size clear plastic bags, each of which contained about 1/8 ounce of purified grasshopper hemolymph proteins inside small glass vials surrounded by paper towel. Paper towel was also packed between each plastic bag so they fit snugly inside the box.

  He double checked the contents of the basket, then went to the garage. He pulled some newspaper from the bottom of a dusty pile, crumpled it into several balls, and piled them neatly on the driver's seat of his Jaguar. Then he pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the paper. As the fire which consumed the small pile of paper grew, he peddled down his driveway and turned south. The three-wheeled bike was difficult to peddle, especially on roads overgrown with weeds. The state highway was clearer and smoother, even though it was littered with cars, so he took that road. As he peddled, he thought about the five people who depended on him for life, and who were now gone. The memorials and fires he made for them the previous night were motivated by his sadness. But as he peddled away, he thought harder and harder about the galactic controller who touched his finger to the sun, forming an unimaginatively large cloud of high energy nuclei that enveloped the solar system and nearly killed the Earth. Or maybe random chance, dumb luck caused the largest coronal mass ejection event in the sun's long life. Either way, Anthony saved a special, dark flinty place in his heart for Mutant/Resource Communal Con
trol who knew very, very well that if he was taken away from them for longer than a day, and they were not supplied with blood, they would die. With each turn of the peddle, he imagined his heart was a lump of obsidian just emerged from a volcano and hardening as it cooled. The more he peddled, and the farther he got from his home, the cooler and harder it became. He began to chant rhythmically as he peddled, like a long distance runner might do to help himself concentrate. "Colder" he said as he peddled with his left leg, then "harder" as he peddled with his right, then "colder" then "harder", again and again until he pushed the three-wheeled bike about 3 miles down the road. He then stopped and looked back the way he came. A line of black smoke, itself reminding him of a vein of obsidian, rose straight upward and into the atmosphere. Fitting, he thought, and he kept riding. About an hour later, he stopped his bike in front of a one-story yellow building surrounded by identical buildings which, together, formed an office park. He left the bike and the contents of the baskets in the front of the building. The floor to ceiling glass in the building's outside entrance way was smashed and he stepped through the door frame. Down the hallway, on the right, was a locked wooden door. To the right of the door was a rectangular black sign with white letters which read, "Transfer Medical Laboratories."

  Anthony pulled a key from his pocket and opened it. He walked through the first room to the second with practiced movements. There he sat on a bar stool next to the long black-topped bench. Built into the bench was a sink with a tall, curved faucet and, scattered around the bench top, were glass containers, trays, stainless steel vials, an autoclave that would never work again, and a centrifuge. When he worked here as a lab assistant, he could find his way around the room blind-folded. He sat on the stool for a few minutes longer, assessing in his mind what was needed to restore the lab to working order. He then took one last deep breath, forced himself to stand, and set to work getting the room ready for the task he was to pour his heart and soul into. He would not stop until he turned his computer simulations into reality, until he successfully combined his mutant blood with grasshopper hemolymph, until he manufactured a serum that would allow non-mutants to live without mutant blood.

  He knew he would not stop until completed. What he did not know is that the red ring around his ankle, in addition to the characters "CRM 28974 COOP YELLOW", also contained a GPS tracking device and that, as he busied himself around the lab, Scout 459 was radioing directly to Division Director Shuh with the news that 28974 was on the move.

  Chapter 13

  The horse which carried Gabriel Sparrow, Scout 459, to the lab dwarfed him. The former jockey, at 4' 11" and around 100 pounds, looked miniature when he rode the big horse but he handled the animal with ease.

  "Sandra, this is 459. I've got a fix on the location. It's some kind of business park, a bunch of office buildings that all look alike. The bike is definitely 28974's. Two big baskets on it with food and stuff in it. Acetylene gas containers for some reason. What's this guy's name again?"

  "Anthony R. Barringer. Approximately 45 years of age. Registered to a home in Seaside Heights."

  "Is he authorized to leave home for more than 24 hours?"

  "I've got nothing on that, Gabe. Except for the recent incident with M/RCC, and his bad attitude about providing his blood, we've got nothing on him. Very quiet character. Treated very favorably by Division Director Hansen before Hansen went over the edge. But that CCC incident earned him his Cooperation Yellow rating. Not considered dangerous, though."

  Gabe replied, "Shuh wants this guy; says Chevault wants him to. He's got pre-flare connections with the girl who's harboring one of his dependents. I just had to tag that one, name of 'Maya'. You'll find her in your records under 58963."

  "Negative, Sparrow. You don't have clearance to do anything but observe. I have nothing authorizing detainment. I already know about Maya 58963 and we're watching both. Your three days in the field are up. Make your notes and get back here."

  "On my way, Sandra. Scout 459 out."

  Gabriel pulled a round device about the size of a donut from his bag. He opened a little plastic cover on its flat side, depressed a red button until it clicked, wrote the serial number in his notebook, then closed the cover. He twitched his left leg almost imperceptibly and the horse side-stepped gently until it stood near the yellow wall of the building. "Good boy," Gabe said reflexively and patted the animal's neck. With an underhanded toss, he threw the GPS device onto the roof of the lab, then flicked the reins slightly and the horse was off at a gallop.

  Gabe rode the most direct route back to the Mutant/Resource Communal Control building, stopping for the night in a furniture store along the side of the highway. He arrived about lunchtime and found his boss, Division Director Shuh, in the cafeteria with Regiment Director Chevault.

  As Gabe walked up to the table, Shuh said to him, "Have a seat. Try these," and slid a cereal bowl half filled with roasted grasshoppers across the table.

  "Did someone finally figure out how to make those edible?" Gabe asked.

  "Finally. They're pretty good. Crunchy."

  "Niiiiiiice," Gabe said with a smile and sat down.

  "We couldn't figure out how to subjugate them, so we figured out how to eat them instead," Shuh said and laughed absurdly loud at his own joke. Some others in the cafeteria looked up, saw Chevault at the table, and turned back to their lunches.

  Turning serious when he noticed no one else was laughing, Shuh said, "I got your report. Anthony Barringer burned his house down and moved to an office park. Any idea what he's up to?"

  "Not really. Did anyone here come up with anything?" Gabe asked.

  "We picked up the GPS signal and did some research on the address," Shuh said. "There was a lab there, like a medical lab. Some big lab chain, I forgot the name. What's interesting is that this Anthony Barringer, when he first registered after the flares and round-up, reported that he was a lab assistant. We figure that lab is where he worked. Don't know why he'd burn down his house but it probably has something to do with his five dependents dying when he was brought in here."

  "Should I bring him in again?"

  For the first time since Gabe arrived, Chevault spoke. "No. Leave him. But keep watching. How soon can you get back out there? To the lab."

  "My horse needs a rest. I've got to write everything up and take care of him tomorrow. If I leave day after tomorrow, I could be out there that day or the next."

  "Do it," Chevault said, then looked away from Gabe toward the center of the cafeteria. A dependent, who Gabe hadn't noticed, appeared at the side of the table.

  Chevault turned back to Gabe and said, "What would you like, Mr. Sparrow? Anything they've got in the kitchen, no restrictions. You're sitting at my table now."

  Chapter 14

  As Maya slowly woke up the next morning, she heard sobbing from downstairs, a girl crying quietly. She opened her eyes onto the yellow and green ceiling which Abel had painted for her. She laid still for a minute, listening and tracing the lines of paint with her eyes. It sounds like Savane, she thought. Has to be Savane.

  She bent her leg so she could reach her ankle and rubbed the skin under the red ring that had mysteriously appeared on it when that swarm of grasshoppers swept over the beach. She woke up in the sand and there it was. Very annoying. Maybe a little frightening, although she didn't know why. Why did Pryce look so concerned when she showed it to him, she wondered.

  The crying continued. Maya swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She walked out of her room, down the stairs and turned toward the guest bedroom where she found Savane curled into a ball and covered with blankets in her bed.

  "Savane?" Maya said from the doorway.

  "Yes?"

  "Can I come in?"

  "Of course you can come in."

  Maya walked to the bed and laid down on it, stretching herself out on her back. The ceiling is boring in here, she thought momentarily. Then she asked, "What's up?"

  "What's up?"

&
nbsp; "Yes. What's up? Why are you crying?" Maya asked.

  Savane lay silent for a minute, then said, "At the flares, when the world blew up...when the sky turned green my family was killed. I was at school. I ran home and found my parents and brothers in the house."

  "You had brothers?"

  "Three younger brothers. Two of them were dead but Mike, one of the twins, was still alive."

  "Wow," Maya said.

  "Yeah. Wow. Did any of your family survive?" Savane asked.

  "No, but it was just me and my mom. I don't know what happened to her. I was at school too and she was at work. I never saw her again."

  "Sorry," Savane said.

  "I didn't know you had brothers. That's weird. So you and your sister AND your brother all lived. What happened to him?"

  "Mike died during the round-up. They told us we needed to come in to get blood transfusions, that it would keep us alive. The transfusions would keep us alive. But it was crazy, the crowds. They had these little buses. You know those kinds of short buses? So they drove those short buses around. Some big buses too. Me and Gwen got on one but some other people shoved Mike away from the door. The driver shut the door and drove to the school."

  "The school?" Maya asked.

  "They took everybody to the school. We screamed at the driver to stop but it's like he didn't even hear us. The school had a bunch of people in it but I never found Mike. They locked us up and we couldn't leave. Then we got sick and needed the blood. He was probably dead by the next day but I didn't know that then."

  "Is that why you're crying?" Maya asked.

  "Not really. I mean, yeah. But that was a long time ago. I thought me and Gwen were going to live, you know, like forever. Guess not."

  "Guess not," Maya said. "Gwen died because she didn't get a transfusion?"

  "Of course she did. Anthony got taken away."

  "He was your keeper?" Maya asked.

  "I thought I told you all this."