Reunion

by J. S. Frankel

  “His name is Istvan and he’s a man, not a thing,” Harry interrupted.

  “Fine, he’s a man. We’re hoping you’ll be able to get him back.”

  “And if we do,” Harry pressed, “can we expect more rights for my wife, for myself, and for any other transgenics who may want to live here or who are already living here?”

  The senator folded his hands under his chin like a mini-steeple. “Here’s my proposal. If there are more transgenics around, and if they allow themselves to be fingerprinted, carry ID’s, and submit to regular background and security checks, then I may be able to influence a few of my constituents to reconsider the whole...” He paused, “human rights issue.”

  His proposal was no proposal at all. It was a trial and judgment, nothing more and nothing less. Background checks, ID’s... what was the man thinking? Harry recalled reading about the terrible war decades ago and how people were forced to wear armbands. Worse things had happened, and he didn’t want a repeat of history. Still, he couldn’t keep from uttering, “I suppose tattooing them with blue numbers would be the next step?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I think bio-electric identification implants are more than sufficient.”

  Anastasia shoved her way forward, eyes blazing. Apparently the way he’d spoken, so unconcerned with past history, set her off. “Maybe stars or some other insignia, is that what you want?” She spit on his shiny shoes. “I hope if anyone invades this country, they come for you first!”

  Ulbricht took a step back, shocked. Spinning on her heel, Anastasia stalked back to the airplane. Pavel lazily eyed the senator, tossed a few words at him in Russian, and walked away.

  “As I suspected,” Ulbricht said in the coldest voice imaginable, “you’re not to be classified as human, and I wonder if that creature you’re carrying will be anywhere near human. Overton, I hope you realize the consequences of allowing this thing on American soil.”

  “His visit was sanctioned by the State Department, as you well know,” Overton replied stiffly. “And with all due respect, Senator Ulbricht, I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “I never make mistakes.”

  A wave of rage flowed through Harry, and while he wanted so very badly to rip the man’s face off, he couldn’t. Still, he took a step forward, his emotions ruling him. Overton intervened and whispered, “Harry, not here. Not now.”

  “That’s right, Overton, keep a leash on your pet.” Ulbricht smirked, as if daring anyone to do anything.

  Harry pushed the agent away and took in a deep breath, trying to calm his rage. It didn’t work, not totally. “I understand, senator. You’re just doing this for your constituency.” He turned to leave, but before doing so, left the other man with a parting gift—a shot to his mouth. “I’m doing that for mine.”

  Staggered by the blow and bleeding, Ulbricht roared, “You little bastard, if you ever set foot in Washington again I’ll have you arrested and jailed for life! For life, do you hear me?”

  “Living how you want us to live would be a life sentence,” Harry responded. He kept is voice low and even, but it took great effort. “Good day, senator.”

  Trotting back to the plane, he mounted the steps and sought his seat beside Anastasia, who was uttering a series of curses that would have made a gangster turn white. “At least you hit him,” she said once Harry sat down.

  “I wanted to do worse.”

  Doing worse would have meant serious jail time, but submitting to Ulbricht’s demands would have meant the opposite. This was supposed to be a democracy. Naïve as that concept was, the USA had to stand for equality for all, or none could be had and enjoyed by anyone.

  As he sat stewing over the injustice of it all, Pavel, who’d been sitting in another seat and glumly staring out the window, picked his head up and asked, “So, I guess we can forget about visiting White House and having dinner with President, yes?”

  In spite of his anger, the remark struck Harry as amusing and he started to laugh. Anastasia began laughing as well, and even after Overton boarded and ordered the pilot to fly to Arkansas, they continued to chuckle.

  Chapter Five: The New Arrival

  Rush Ghost Town turned out to be just that, an isolated dot in the middle of nowhere. They arrived at the airport just before six. Overton had radioed ahead for a car and they drove out to the wilderness.

  Along the way, Overton cautioned them about what they might find. “From what we know, you’ll see a lot of overgrown weeds among the woods,” he said. “They have hiking trails, but hopefully no one will be there. According to the map, the mineshaft is hidden in the woods, so you’ll have to find your way through.”

  Harry had already been down a mineshaft a few days earlier. He’d hidden out in sewers, run from lynch mobs with his wife and faced death on a number of occasions in the past. This would be no different... or so he hoped.

  Good thing he wasn’t claustrophobic by nature. He’d been so afraid when facing Allenby before, not for his own life so much, but for Anastasia’s. Call it an old-fashioned notion, he believed in standing up for those weaker than him, even though Anastasia exceeded him in strength and ferocity.

  An internal battle then resulted as he admitted the truth—defending his wife was a most sexist notion. Defend women and children, yes—he’d done that. But to defend someone who didn’t need it ranked as hypocritical.

  Mind-drifting some more, he thought about facing off against bigger men and creatures. He’d done that as well. It was a challenge in and of itself, but facing Allenby—this man, this thing was unlike anyone he’d ever taken on before.

  Another memory swam up, not against another transgenic, but one when he was in university. It didn’t matter that he was only fifteen at the time. He was already light years ahead in terms of learning and intellect.

  Intellect, though, ranked far behind in the real world, where power ruled the day, at least in the setting of his Portland institute of knowledge. At the time, small, skinny, weak and afraid of confrontation, he’d been doing some experiments in the lab under the tutelage of his professor.

  “Check the strands,” Professor Adams had said. A touch of envy showed in his voice. As one of the foremost researchers in North America, Harry had felt his professor’s intense gaze while he observed the goings on.

  When Harry first began attending the class in an auditor’s capacity, the professor had looked on with amusement, as had the other students. The latter group laughed out loud at the skinny short kid playing around with the instruments.

  Their amusement soon faded when Harry began outperforming everyone in the class and demonstrated greater knowledge. To him, it was simply second nature. He’d never intended to show anyone up. If he knew more, then why hide it?

  “I did, sir,” Harry replied and stepped aside. “Like we discussed, their integrity is holding.”

  Adams leaned over to gaze into the differentiator. “Amazing,” he breathed. “How did you do it?”

  A few of the other students came around to look, which made Harry feel inhibited as well as intimidated. He’d tried talking to them, but at his age, five years their junior and with the body of a stripling, he felt physically incapable of walking alongside them, much less being their friend. In terms of brainpower, he ruled. In terms of physical power, he felt like a serf before all-powerful masters.

  “Yeah, Goldman, tell us what you know,” said a large student.

  He moved up to where Harry stood and shoved him out of the way. “That’s enough, Mr. Cook,” the professor rebuked the student.

  Justin Cook, a hulking slob who happened to be one of the brightest of the students and who also happened to be one of the biggest jerks in the class, wore a smirk on his spotty face. “I don’t think it’s asking too much for this kid to tell us how he knows more about identifying and cross-matching strands, sir. I did the same experiment and my conclusions show different.” His voice came out a hair shy of outright insolence.

  Holding up a
printed readout, he thrust it at the professor. Adams scanned it and handed it back. “I’ll have to admit, Mr. Cook’s findings show there’s no way the cross-matching can be done.”

  Stumped and somewhat pissed off over his professor’s seemingly one-sided acceptance of the other students’ paper, Harry searched his mind, went over the computations again, and thought furiously about the answer.

  “Well, Mr. Goldman,” the professor prompted. “The class is waiting, and as they say, the ball is in your court.”

  Challenge received, all eyes on him, Harry swallowed hard. He knew he had to step up and grow a pair. Never mind his had only dropped a couple of years earlier—late growth spurt—this was a time to man up. His father had always preached the concept of taking on responsibility.

  The time had come, and something in his mind clicked. The answer was obvious, and he tried to keep the triumph out of his voice. “If you bothered looking for the endings and how they responded to the protein sheathing and thus achieving synthesis, then you’d know.”

  He tried to sound mature and affect an aura of quiet command, but even so, the thought broke in that he still sounded like a kid. He took Cook’s paper and read through it. Just as he’d thought, the student had made the fatal error of using the wrong compound to coat the protein sheaths.

  “Here’s where you went wrong,” Harry said and snatched a pencil from a nearby desk in order to write something on the paper. “Try this next time.”

  The comeback startled Cook, and his face turned crimson. Obviously, he hadn’t considered the possibility of being wrong. Neither had the other students, but they seemed to find one of their fellow classmates being owned more than amusing and broke up laughing. Adams quieted everyone and told the students to return to their seats.

  Still, a few of them leaned over while the professor continued lecturing and thanked Harry for setting them straight. Cook grunted and turned away.

  Class over, Harry walked out with his head held high and felt nothing short of exuberant. Yeah, that was the way to quiet a moron. A few whispers of “nerd” came his way, but he ignored them. This was it, the secret of life, the meaning of his existence, and it lay in a classroom.

  Books tucked under his arm, he strolled at a jaunty pace to the parking lot where he’d stored his bike. He found it a mess of tangled metal. Dropping the books in shock, he looked around wildly, but saw no one and heard no one.

  Staring at its remains, he knew who’d done it, but there was no way to get back at the offender. Trying not to cry, he’d drawn a series of deep, shuddering breaths and started trudging on home...

  The car abruptly ground to a halt, which brought Harry’s thoughts back to the present. Overton pointed out the window. “This is it.”

  As the name implied, Rush Ghost Town was, indeed, an abandoned place, although there were no ghosts. There were, however, inhuman monsters, Allenby chief among them. They owned the area, controlled the underground, and now it was time to enter the pit and confront the demons.

  Harry got out first, and the others soon followed suit. A forest lay in front of them, with overgrown weeds, brown grass and a general sense of total abandonment. Shadows of dusk crisscrossed the area, and it gave off a vaguely threatening vibe.

  The last person to inhabit the place had moved away five years previously, and the only structure standing was a dilapidated house with most of the paint peeled off. It might have been a pretty house—once. Now, it was just a rotting hulk.

  Sniffing the air, Harry smelled nothing. “You get anything?” he asked Anastasia.

  Like him, she tested the air, her nostrils dilating, and after a few seconds, shook her head. “No, it seems to be clear.”

  “I smell nothing,” Pavel added, aiming his oversized snout skyward. “But he is here, yes? This monster you want to kill?”

  “He is,” Anastasia affirmed.

  Overton had been looking at a map on his cellphone. “I got this from Jason a few seconds ago,” he said, and pointed due west. “The Buffalo National River is that way, and there should be a mine near it. It’s about a mile from here in that direction.”

  Harry set off. This was his fight and his alone. A second later, though, he heard the sound of Anastasia’s feet treading lightly over the grass. The heavy, plodding feet of Pavel brought up the rear. Halting in his tracks, Harry said, “Guys, this is my job. If he sees you two, he’s going to kill Istvan.”

  “He will probably do it, Goldman,” Pavel said, never stopping his stride. “Maybe he already kill little friend of yours. You trust too much. This Allenby say he no send clones. He send zebra men to hurt us. He lied. So why you do this on your own?”

  “We’re coming with you,” Anastasia added. “I’m your wife. Where you go, I do, too. We agreed.”

  Actually, they’d never agreed, but she was too hardheaded, and no force on Earth could dissuade her. “Fine,” Harry finally said. “Hang back, though. I’m sure Allenby has some kind of security system installed.”

  As he made his way through the woods, the smell of water grew stronger. Sure enough, emerging from the forest, he came upon the mine, an opening in the wall bracketed by rotting timber. A sign lay on the ground. Marbury Zinc Mine, Est. 1891. A smell came from the entrance, something musty and gamy, chemical-laden... and dangerous.

  Monsters are waiting. “And they’re waiting for me,” Harry muttered.

  A scoping out of the area for any signs of motion sensors or hidden cameras revealed nothing, so he entered the mine and trekked along the narrow passageway with the rusty rail tracks as his guide. From time to time, he sniffed the air for more of the clones. It was dark, and only the rapidly fading light from the entrance provided visibility.

  Then that too, faded. Like a scene in every cheesy horror movie ever made, he half-expected them to be living in the walls, uncoil their loathsome bodies, and pounce. It came as a relief to find the walls intact.

  The ceiling, though, caused some concern. Dust sifted down from above, making his eyes water and he fought the urge to sneeze. A dank coldness surrounded him and a feeling of claustrophobia resulted.

  Mentally, though, coldness reigned. This Allenby, this thing, had almost taken everything from him. He hadn’t succeeded before. He wouldn’t now.

  Roughly five hundred feet in, the tunnel branched off into two separate passageways. Which one to take... try the left one, he thought, and tiptoed down the tracks. His hunch proved correct when he emerged on a ledge overlooking a mineshaft the size of an airplane hangar.

  Used long ago to house boxcars, rubble and men, the chamber now held machinery and monsters. Cables, thick as a strongman’s arm, lay coiled on the floor. Four generators hummed in the background. A few lights had been set in the walls, sending a sickly yellowish-white crawling across the walls and floor, and a mist from the crumbling rock overhead obscured the view.

  Nevertheless, Harry made out twenty transgenic clones of various genotypes that had been cobbled together by science gone mad and bad. They grouped around one of three large Genesis Chambers. So where was the puppet master?

  Harry strained his eyes, searching for his quarry in the haze below. A second later, Allenby emerged from the chamber. He was still in devolving mode. His Cro-Magnon look was more pronounced than ever. Cursing, he switched off the machine and hobbled over to a rickety looking table that held a computer.

  “Master,” said one of the transgenics, a mix of horse and man with a horse’s head and startling human features, “let us help you, master.”

  They lived to serve, but Allenby didn’t acknowledge his disciple’s presence at first. He sat, brooding, and typed in a few commands. “Master,” the horse-man repeated, “we are here for...”

  He never got out another word, as Allenby launched a punch without even looking up. His heavy fist connected with the side of the horse-man’s head, caving it in. Said transgenic toppled over and lay still.

  The other transgenics moved off, attending to servicing the cables,
checking the machinery, and generally staying out of their leader’s way. Allenby continued to type, muttering about ribosomes and DNA-RNA strands.

  Abruptly, he arose and walked to the rear of the cavern, where he stood inspecting another partially completed transformation chamber, talking to himself as if communicating with a higher deity. Perhaps he considered himself to be such a deity. He’d made mention of it before... it was doubtful his mindset had changed.

  Once the transgenic horde had wandered off, Harry climbed down the wall, using his claws to dig into the rock. It was remarkably soft, and bits of it crumbled to the ground. Hopefully, no one would notice, although he’d never been that lucky.

  At the bottom, he snuck around a generator and hid. A bit of luck was on his side. The cavern was so large all the transgenics couldn’t see everything at once. Additionally, they didn’t seem too bright, as none of them went to aid their fallen horse-type friend. They’d merely stepped around him while continuing their chores. Allenby had bred them to be obedient, not intelligent.

  Wondering how to shut this monster down, Harry crept out of his spot. After glancing around nervously in every direction, he made his way over to the computer. If he could only see the matrix, he might be...

  “Goldman, I know you’re here,” Allenby’s voice boomed out. “I can smell you. Cats always have a distinctive odor.”

  Knowing the hide-and-seek routine wouldn’t work, Harry waited at the table. A few transgenics came over, but none of them made a move in his direction. They were waiting for orders. In contrast to his earlier shuffling, Allenby strode across the hard earth, his feet making heavy, powerful thuds. His eyes, a demonic red, shot out their stare, and he did not look happy.

  His look of anger, though, abruptly shifted to one of almost-happiness... if a monster could look happy. “I’m glad you made it,” he rumbled. “Are you going to help me this time?”

  “Help you, due to you being too stupid to figure it out yourself?” rejoined Harry, feeling sarcastic and liking it. It would end here and end now, so might as well bring out the trash talk. “You tried to injure my wife.”