Reunion

by J. S. Frankel

  His stomach lurched as the plane took another dip, leveled off, and the pilot shouted something back in Russian. No need for translation. They were coming in fast and hard, and Harry hung onto the nearest crate, hoping it would offer some protection.

  “What you thinking?” Pavel shouted.

  Harry started to say something and then stopped. What good would it do? He did want to say thanks for his help back in New York, but then the ground came up to meet them and he heard screaming. The grinding of metal shearing off, the sound of snapping wood and wire all came through in nanoseconds, a burst of noise that filled his world.

  Over top of it the screaming continued, and it wasn’t until the second bounce that he realized he’d been the one doing it...

  Chapter Twelve: On the Steppes

  Experiencing a plane crash was not on Harry’s bucket list, but if he had to make one in the future, he could already cross that item off. Waking up covered by wood, glass, caviar and other foodstuffs, he groaned and blinked. He’d been thrown from the cabin about twenty feet from where the wreckage lay.

  A drop of rain pinged him right between his eyes, and then another and then one more. Rain... it helped to wipe away some of the grogginess. It also helped to douse the small fire that was burning from the plane’s aft section.

  “Pavel, are you okay?” he yelled.

  No answer. He put his hand to his head, and it came away smeared with blood. His limbs still worked though, and he got up and staggered over to the plane.

  “Pavel, are you in there?”

  “Over here,” a voice called from the front.

  Moving in the direction of the voice, he saw his ally was in the process of dragging the pilot from the wreckage. The man’s skull had been crushed, yet a peaceful smile was on his face. Tears streamed down Pavel’s cheeks as he gently lowered the body to the ground. “He was good friend to me. He save our lives. He put plane down and take impact on his side.”

  The rain continued to fall, but Harry ignored it. After bowing his head for a few moments in order to thank the selfless pilot—he’d never even heard the man’s name—he set to work using a piece of torn metal to scoop out a grave. Pavel joined in, using his powerful hands to dig out chunks of sod. Soon they had a makeshift grave, and they lowered the pilot’s body inside.

  After filling in the grave, Harry wiped the dirt from his face and body and asked, “Where to now?”

  “Follow me.”

  Succinct reply received, he moved off. By now, the rain had stopped and the stars had come out to shine brightly and light their way. Although the darkness offered cover, Harry still felt a sense of uneasiness, and his uneasiness grew with every step he took. Walking into the lion’s den was the first thought that went through his mind.

  Pavel marched ahead, his pace steady. His mood, usually one of buoyancy, had given way to something that appeared to waver between anger and despair. Losing a friend and almost getting killed could do that to a person.

  After they’d traversed a few miles, Harry decided to break the silence. “Did you know that pilot long?” It seemed insensitive, yet he figured some conversation was in order.

  “He was good friend,” Pavel said. “His name was Mikael. We train together, eat together, party together... he was good friend. Now...” he shook his head. “Now we go forward.”

  Harry said nothing. He kept sniffing the air, though, and soon a scent of the familiar entered his nostrils. Apparently, Pavel smelled the same thing, for he said, “We are close. They have been here.”

  “You mean Allenby’s things?”

  “No, humans... they all stink of milk and putrid processed food.”

  Odd for Pavel to say that, Harry thought. When he’d been human, he’d never been aware of others smelling of anything other than sweat or perfume. People smelled how they smelled, nothing more and nothing less.

  Now, though, he was searching for a particular kind of smell, a thick gaminess, the chief characteristic of all of Allenby’s creations. He didn’t find it, but did manage to catch a scent of, yes, butter and milk... sweat. Pavel had been right.

  However, those smells were soon overridden by the aromas of the night—flowers, fresh grass and the muskiness of field mice. They came through clearly, though, and offered a pleasant respite from the monotony of their journey. If humans had been here, they’d left long ago.

  Up ahead was a farmhouse, old, rotting, and abandoned. “There,” Pavel pointed. “We stop there for now. I need to catch breath.”

  He had been breathing heavily. “Is something wrong?”

  “You already know, so why you ask?”

  True, and Harry chastised himself for asking the obvious. He wished he had something at hand to help, but could do nothing. Pavel needed an operation more than anything else. However, his overwhelming priority had been to return there and help out. That kind of prioritization would more than likely cost him his life.

  At the farmhouse, they slumped against the side. Harry propped his back up against a section that offered some support and closed his eyes. He kept his nose and ears on high alert, just in case, and tried not to think of the seriousness of their mission.

  It couldn’t be helped, though. Anastasia’s face sprang up in front of his eyes, followed by an image of their daughter’s face and it made him think of...

  “So what you do after this is over?” Pavel’s question surprised him.

  “Oh, uh, I’ll go home.”

  “You go to your wife, yes? She is very nice person. It was good to talk to her in my language. Russian is hard for foreigners to learn, very difficult. I no understand English perfectly, but... it was good to talk with her. She make me feel comfortable, like person. She is pretty, and baby is pretty, too.”

  He didn’t wait for Harry to answer. Instead, he let out a grunt, not one of disgust as he usually made, but one that sounded not unlike the cry of a wounded animal. Or perhaps it was the cry of a tortured psyche. There was no way to tell. His body shook and he turned his head away. “I wish I had home. I wish I had wife. I wish I could do things you do, Goldman.”

  When he turned around again, tears dripped from his eyes and ran down his lumpy face. “I envy you. I envy your happy home life and that you found someone like you.”

  It was the most honest thing he’d said in the two weeks that they’d known each other. It held out the hope of rapprochement between two cultures somewhere down the line. “When we’re done, join us,” Harry offered. “You don’t like living here, so you could—”

  “No, I could not.” Pavel’s voice came out as a strangled whisper, something between anguish and resignation. “This is my country. I must stay and fight for it. You understand... da? I am Russian, and even though I look mixture of devil and person, this is still my country. I must stay and help here.”

  He broke off to clutch at his chest and reached inside his tattered pants to withdraw a vial. Shaking out two pills, he dry-swallowed them and soon a look of peace flowed across his features. “That... is better.” He got up and brushed the dirt off his pants. “We go now.”

  As they journeyed on, he took point, and Harry continued his search for human or transgenic life. They passed by fields, walked along empty roads, and once, only once, in the wee hours of the early morning, when the sound of an approaching vehicle came, they hid in a ditch by the side of the road.

  The truck rumbled along, its exhaust pipe backfiring every few seconds. The water smelled rank, but Harry took no notice of it. He was more worried about what was on the truck and made a mental note to ask his wife to teach him Russian. Once the sound of the truck faded, he asked, “Did you get a look at that truck? I couldn’t understand the writing.”

  Pavel took in a few deep breaths after he climbed out of the ditch. It seemed as though the pills’ effects were wearing off faster than usual. Or maybe it was due to them having walked miles and miles without food, water or rest. “I see lettering. It was transportation truck. They are delivering food fr
om farm,” he jerked his thumb behind him, “to city.” He pointed straight ahead. “We must continue.”

  Instead of taking the road, though, they branched off into the field. The ground was hard, and a cool wind blew. It soon turned chilling. Pavel had the definite advantage there. His thick skin shielded him from the elements.

  Pavel suddenly halted and put up his hand. “I smell something. Goldman, you have better nose. You check.”

  Training his senses, Harry took a sniff and... yes! “I smell an animal like a goat, two like rabbits, and maybe four or five like boars. There are others... I don’t know what they are.”

  A second later, the smells intensified. Harry was about to apprise him of that fact and didn’t know whether they were from friend or foe, but a rare smile lit up Pavel’s features. “They are my friends. Come... they will know me.”

  Squelching any misgivings—he was on foreign soil and had no contacts and no backup—Harry decided to let things come as they would. Pavel picked his way through the field with sure feet, and soon they came to a haystack placed incongruously in the middle of nowhere.

  Next to it stood a scarecrow, which seemed odd. They’d been tramping along, and this was the first scarecrow to appear in who knew how many miles. “You use these things?” he asked, pointing at the scarecrow.

  “We have one guarding our border with China,” Pavel answered. “Is good guard, no?”

  Now the situation had gone from uncertain to downright weird. If Pavel’s friends were in the area, the scarecrow was a dead giveaway, advertising their presence. It was almost as if they were daring someone to come after them. “It’s sort of obvious.”

  “That is why we put hay and straw man here,” Pavel answered, chortling. “It is because it is obvious. No one would think to look. What you want, electric sign that says here is mutants, please no disturb?”

  An angry sound of phlegm being dredged up from his lungs sounded. A second later, he spit something onto the hard ground. He then proceeded to upend the haystack and kicked the scarecrow. A second later, a trapdoor opened. “We go in.”

  Said opening led to a large and carefully carved out cavern underneath the ground. A ladder led to one level—it was empty, just large enough for one person at a time to pass through—and at the end of a passageway lit by one single yellow light, another ladder had been placed close to the ledge. People lived here?

  As if reading his mind, Pavel pointed to the ladder. “Down... we go down. My friends are there. This is only place we can hide.”

  Well, having been under the Vatican not so long ago, where another group of transgenics had hidden from angry citizens, Harry was no stranger to underground hideaways. Following his guide’s lead, he clambered down to the bottom.

  Once there, the musty smell of stale food, blood and body odor invaded his nostrils. A small generator, which had shielding around it to mask the sound, provided power for a series of dim lights strung overhead. A small table revealed a laptop and a couple of paper cups. Wires from the laptop went up through the ceiling. Pavel whispered, “This is for transmission. We no go up top for sending messages. Too much danger.”

  Harry followed the track of the wires and looked at the ceiling. A few light bulbs had been strung overhead. They sent down a pale, whitish-yellow light that illuminated the forms of a double-dozen transgenics.

  Harry’s nose hadn’t lied before, and his eyes weren’t lying now. Rabbit-men with oversized feet and monstrous buck teeth, goat-men, and a few other breeds mixed with humans stood up to greet them.

  Six other transgenics with bodies like wild boars and only vaguely human features made their way to the front, carrying machine guns. They also had very lethal looking ten-inch tusks, hostile expressions and even more hostile body language as they gnashed their teeth at the sudden intrusion of a foreigner.

  Words were spoken, angry exchanges flew between the members, but as Harry tensed for a possible confrontation, one of the boars walked over and greeted Pavel with a friendly slap on both shoulders. After they spoke with each other, Pavel turned and said, “This is resistance.”

  An hour later after all the introductions had been made, meager food eaten, and after Pavel had taken a quick nap, they sat discussing their future. It was a bleak one. “The Russian government has been ruthless in their plan to exterminate all of us,” said one of the boar-men.

  He’d introduced himself as Dmitri, another former Russian army conscript. In sharp contrast to his appearance, he spoke with a quiet, cultured air.

  “I studied English for seven years via the radio,” he said. “Is my pronunciation good enough?”

  “It sounds fine,” Harry answered. “But what happened?”

  Dmitri gave a shrug. “What do you think? The army has shot most of us. The rest they have captured for further experimentation. Or maybe they have killed them by now. I don’t know. I do know they are hunting for us all the time.”

  Time... how much did any of them have? The concept of death wormed its way through Harry’s mind and sent a sudden chill down his spine, even though the cavern was warm.

  “The big thing is attack them now,” Pavel stated and pounded his fist on the hard earth. “Fighting is all I know. I am not smart, but I was and am still good soldier.”

  A female voice from the rear of the group spoke up in Russian. Pavel listened and angrily turned around to spit out his answer at her. When he twisted back again, a look of rage shone out clearly from his eyes. “She ask me, why not cooperate with government? Why not do what they say?”

  He shook his head in disgust. “We try talking to them. I say to you before, da? They no listen. They only kill us. This...” he swept his arm around to indicate the rest of the group, “this is all we have left.”

  Silence fell, a few of the members shuffled their feet, and after a few minutes of listening to everyone breathe and mutter out words he couldn’t understand, Harry asked, “So what are you going to do?”

  “We hit government buildings later on,” Pavel said. “That is our response. We must have our rights. That is all we want.”

  Dmitri chimed in with a worried look, “I do not care for fighting, but we have no human rights groups as you do in America. No lawyer will help us. One tried. A citizen’s group shot him. That is the answer we got.”

  Would attacking do any good? Harry took a look around. There were only twenty-one people there, most of them looking to be in their late teens to early twenties.

  “The army will be waiting, won’t it? I’m after Allenby. That’s why I came here with Pavel, to find him and to stop him.”

  After Dmitri translated, a round of voices greeted his suggestion with either yeses or no’s, and it was hard to tell which group would win. Finally, after another heated discussion finished, one of the goat-men spoke up.

  “We have bigger problems, American.” He held a withered apple in his hand and chewed on it as he spoke. “You talk about this man Allenby. Maybe it is true what he do. But our government, our Russian government, they slaughter us whenever they can. If they kill their own people, the religious minorities, the sexual outliers, then what chance do we have, huh?” He punctuated his question by hurling the remainder of the apple into the wall, where it splattered its seeds in every direction.

  The female voice that had spoken out piped up once again and the figure stepped forward. It was a rabbit-girl. In the light, she looked to be no older than sixteen. As she raised her paw, Harry noticed she was quickly devolving. He estimated she’d completely revert to bunny form in about three days.

  Dmitri translated for her. “I will never have rights,” she said in a shaky voice. “I was a student once. I remember that. I came home and one of the scientists’ creations took me... now I look like this. What rights did I have?”

  She started to sob, but silently, and one of the boar-men put his arm around her shoulder. The gesture, and her words, sent a knife of pity through Harry. His wife had also been a student and had been forced into a l
ife not of her own choosing.

  Still... there had to be priorities, and he tried to articulate his concerns as simply as possible. “I understand how you feel. But the thing I’m after, he’s just as much the enemy as the Russian army is. He didn’t create you, but he created others. They’re much worse. They kill indiscriminately. He’s crazy, and I have to stop him.”

  “Then you shall go alone,” Dmitri said, uttering a sigh of disgust. “Pavel, I thought you said this man can help us.”

  “I can,” replied Harry, desperately wishing he had more than just a theory to go on. “I can, but I have to find Allenby first. He’s got the Genesis Chambers, the machines that made you what you are. I can reverse the process.”

  A boar-man spoke up in a heavy, rasping tone. “From what we know, the process of bonding animal and human cells is irreversible. We know of you, Goldman. We know your genius, but even genius has limits.”

  It was more than frustrating to admit they had a point, but Harry wouldn’t give up. “Yes, that’s true, but Istvan’s blood is the key. I think that by using an enzyme—”

  “Enough talk,” Pavel interrupted and stood up. He took in a few breaths and clutched the side of his chest before reaching into his pocket for his bottle of medicine. Bringing it out, he shook it and only tablet came out, the last one. He stuck it in his mouth and chewed it without the benefit of drinking any water.

  Once done, with a grunt, he tossed the empty bottle away. “Goldman, you are smart, but you no want to fight with us. Is okay to disagree. We go on without you. I help you once before with Allenby, remember? He is too tough for me, so you have no chance. Even if you go and kill him for us, it is no matter to authorities. Kill him and we will give you medal. Maybe army give you medal. But we attack army first.”

  Case stated, he made for the entrance. The others followed suit, muttering dire words all the way. A few of them carried semi-automatics, while some of the others had pistols. Most of them had nothing save their physical enhancements. Lambs to the slaughter...