by Bill Myers
And then it stopped, as suddenly as it had begun.
Everything was deathly silent. Only the ringing of the drawbridge bell sixty feet away cut through the stillness.
Coleman opened his eyes. He lay on the roof. The car rested upside down. No fire, no explosions. Just the bridge’s ringing bell and its flashing red lights.
He tried to move. Pain shot through his left arm. He heard a groan from the other side of the car and twisted to look. In the flashing light he could see Steiner, his face bloodied and his leg crushed by a large piece of metal.
“Steiner? Steiner!”
The man’s eyes opened.
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
Steiner tried to answer, but it came out a gurgle. He coughed, then spat a mouthful of blood.
Coleman pushed at his driver-side door. With a little coaxing, it creaked open. He reached across the car to Steiner and grabbed him around the chest. As he began to pull, Steiner cried out in pain. The crumpled metal kept his leg pinned. Coleman tried again, harder, but Steiner could not be budged.
Steiner coughed, spattering blood. “It’s no use.”
Coleman raised his feet toward Steiner’s door and began kicking the metal.
“Leave,” Steiner gurgled. “It’s what you —” He coughed violently. “It’s what you want.” He managed to glare in Coleman’s direction. “Go ahead, leave me.”
The accusation angered Coleman, and he used the emotion to kick the door harder — five, six, seven times — until the metal finally started to bend. After another half-dozen kicks, there was enough room to pull Steiner free. Coleman grabbed him around the ribs again and pulled him across the inside of the roof until they reached his open door. Then, with one final heave, they both tumbled out and onto the pavement.
Coleman lay a second, catching his breath. The bell continued to ring. The light continued to flash. He rose to a sitting position and looked behind them for the pursuing car.
Nothing yet.
He heard a scraping of gravel and turned to see Steiner trying to reach back into the car. For a moment he was confused, then he saw the reason. The gun. It lay just inside, on the roof.
Coleman staggered to his feet and easily cut Steiner off. He reached into the car and scooped up the weapon. He was surprised at how pleasant its weight felt in his hands. It was good to experience that type of power again. And with that power came the anger. It bubbled up from somewhere deep inside. How dare this twisted little man threaten him. How dare he come back and ruin his new life.
Coleman turned toward him. The look of fear he saw in Steiner’s eyes said the man knew exactly what Coleman was thinking. The expression made Coleman grin. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Afraid of a little justice?”
Steiner tried to answer but couldn’t find his voice. That was fine with Coleman. He’d heard enough of Steiner’s lectures, endured enough of his abuse. Now it was payback time. His heart pounded; exhilaration spread through his body. It was just like old times, and it felt good. Very, very good. He raised the revolver until it pointed directly at Steiner’s forehead.
But instead of horror, Steiner’s expression shifted to contempt. “Go ahead,” he coughed. “We both know it’s —” More coughing. “… this is who you are. Go ahead. Go ahead!”
Happy to oblige, Coleman pulled back the hammer. His senses sharpened. He could no longer hear the ringing of the drawbridge bell nor see its flashing light. Now there was only Steiner and his ragged breathing.
The man went into another coughing fit and Coleman waited patiently. He wanted to make sure he had the man’s undivided attention before blowing him away.
Steiner finished, then glared back up at him. “Go ahead,” he coughed. “What are you waiting for?”
Coleman wasn’t sure. The rage inside him was beginning to waver. It was losing its strength, no longer supplying him with its power. And the longer he looked into Steiner’s eyes, the weaker it became.
“Go ahead,” Steiner taunted. “It’s what you want! Go ahead!”
Coleman’s hand began to tremble — not with fear, but with indecision. It was as if compassion was somehow fighting for control, struggling to resurface.
“Shoot me!” Steiner demanded. “Shoot me!”
Now, once again, Coleman was seeing into the man’s heart. Understanding the terrible, searching loneliness. The consuming, controlling rage. But there was something else. Like the moon rising in the cedars, the snow glistening in the prison yard, or the distant wail of the freight train, there was something of beauty in this man, something of value. Despite his ugliness, he, too, bore the fingerprint of creation. Something of eternity dwelt in him, something of eternity searching for the eternal.
“Kill me! Kill me!”
Coleman slowly lowered the gun.
Steiner swore. “You’re a coward. A coward!”
Coleman released the hammer, uncocking the pistol. He gave an involuntary shudder at what had nearly taken place, then threw the weapon as far into the bushes as he could. He reached down and pulled the shocked Steiner to his feet. “Come on,” he ordered. “Let’s go.”
“Where is he?” Twenty-something shouted.
“I don’t —”
“MOM!”
Katherine lunged for Eric, but Pudgy Man was already pulling him away.
“Let him go!” She was on her feet, leaping at him. “Let him —”
Pudgy Man caught her and threw her back onto the sofa with such force that it knocked the wind out of her.
Lisa stormed out of her bedroom, looking as angry as she was frightened. “Who are — what —”
Twenty-something dropped her with a brutal slam of his fist into her temple.
“Lisa!”
“Where are they?” Pudgy Man demanded.
“I don’t know!”
“Mom!”
He threw Eric over to Twenty-something and turned on Katherine. “Where did they go!”
“I don’t know! They didn’t say!”
He grabbed a handful of hair on both sides of her head and pulled her to her feet. She wanted to claw out his eyes, to snap his knee with her foot. But he knew the moves before she could make them.
“Mom!”
“Shut up!” Twenty-something shouted.
Now Pudgy Man held her face directly in front of his, spittle flying. “I’m asking you one last time!”
“I don’t know!” she screamed, “I don’t know, I don’t —”
Again she was flying across the room. This time into the wall. Her head hit hard. She slumped to the floor, trying to hang on to consciousness.
“Mom …” Eric’s voice grew faint. “Mom …” She thought he might come to her, but he didn’t. She hoped he would understand why she couldn’t come to him.
The men were talking, but far away, from another planet.
“…Mom…”
She tried to move, but her body wouldn’t obey.
Now a face was talking at her. Pudgy Man. “…if you cooperate. Keep your mouth shut, and he’ll be returned in twenty-four hours. Got that? Twenty-four hours. No cops and you’ll see your kid again. You got that?”
She tried to nod and must have succeeded because the face disappeared.
“Mom…Mom!” Eric’s voice faded. With concentrated effort, Katherine managed to raise her head. But the men and boy were already gone.
The bridge remained deserted as Coleman helped Steiner under the wooden traffic barrier, then supported the hobbling man as they headed out toward the center. Unlike your typical storybook drawbridges, this bridge did not operate by tilting up. Instead the entire midsection, about sixty feet of asphalt and steel, was on a counterweight system that raised it straight into the air like an elevator.
Now it was dropping back into place, slowly, silently.
Forty feet below, amid the swirling fog, a red-and-white barge piled high with cedar chips was being towed down the Snohomish River toward Puget Sound.
Co
leman again looked for the pursuing car. Nothing. He hoped they’d lost them. In any case, the sooner they crossed this bridge out of the city and disappeared into the miles of foggy marshland on the other side, the better.
Unfortunately, Steiner was not making it a team effort.
“Why are you fighting me?” Coleman shouted as he half-carried, half-dragged the man along.
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“So maybe I should just leave you here for them.”
Steiner tried to answer but broke into another fit of coughing. They reached the end of the roadway, and Coleman leaned him against the pedestrian handrail. He looked up at the towering piece of iron and pavement, the center of the bridge. It was twenty-five feet above them, continuing its approach as it lowered into place. Soon the steel tongue-and-groove end of the bridge would lock perfectly into the tongue-and-groove of the roadway.
Power and precision.
Coleman walked to the edge, a few feet from where Steiner stood, and looked down through the fog at the river below. The wake of the passing tug and barge lapped silently against the pylons.
Steiner coughed again, only this time he doubled over, gagging and spitting blood.
Coleman walked back to him. “Here, sit down.” Steiner tried to push him away, but Coleman didn’t give up. “Take my arm here and sit —”
“No!” The cry was part wounded animal, part human rage. And with it came the strength to shove Coleman so hard that he staggered backwards, nearly losing his balance over the edge.
Steiner half rose and shouted, spraying more blood and spittle. “You —” But he broke into more coughing.
Again Coleman approached to help.
But Steiner would have none of it. Angrily, he lunged at Coleman. The impact knocked Coleman off balance, but he was able to recover. Steiner wasn’t so lucky. His momentum carried him to the edge. For a brief second he teetered, eyes wide in realization.
Then he fell.
Coleman dove forward, managing to catch one arm. But the force of Steiner’s falling body pulled him down, slamming him hard onto the roadway. Now Steiner was dangling over the bridge, clinging to Coleman, his weight pulling Coleman’s arm into the roadway’s steel teeth.
“Hang on!” Coleman cried. “Hang on!”
He looked up at the descending section of bridge. It was fifteen feet above him and closing fast.
Steiner screamed, trying to pull himself back up, but each tug and jerk dug the steel teeth more deeply into Coleman’s arm. He couldn’t hold Steiner, not with one hand. He inched himself closer to the edge and reached out his other arm. “Take my hand!”
Steiner looked up, terrified. He coughed again, and the force weakened their grip.
“Take my hand!” Coleman shouted. “Take it!”
At last Steiner began reaching. Coleman strained downward against the harsh steel teeth. They made several lunges for each other, and each time the movement lessened their grip. But finally they touched — first their fingers, then their palms, until they were able to grab each other’s wrists.
Steiner looked past Coleman to the approaching bridge.
Coleman craned his head to see.
It was ten feet away.
He turned back. The steel teeth continued gouging into his chest and arms. “Pull,” he shouted. “Pull!”
But Steiner did not pull. He had stopped.
“What are you doing?”
Steiner gave no response, made no movement.
“You’ve got to help me!” Coleman turned to look up.
The bridge was six feet away.
He turned back to Steiner. Suddenly he understood. “No!” he shouted, “I’m not letting go! Do you hear me? I’m not letting go! Pull! Pull!”
But Steiner simply hung, a dead weight. The bridge was nearly on top of them. Coleman could sense it closing in, hear the difference in the sound, feel the air pressure. “I won’t let go,” Coleman cried. “You hear me? I won’t let go!”
He looked into Steiner’s eyes — and saw the spite, the contempt. Steiner would not let Coleman win. He had lived a lifetime proving the perfection of law. Coleman was wrong. His ways must not prevail. There was no room for mercy. The law was supreme. Absolute. Not Coleman’s mercy. Not his compassion. The law!
An eerie smile flickered across Steiner’s face.
“No!” Coleman cried.
It broadened. He would not allow Coleman to win.
“No… no!”
And then, with determination, Steiner released his grip. Their hands slipped apart. And he fell silently, victoriously, into the fog and water.
Coleman rolled out of the way, feeling the steel brush his cheek as the bridge came together, the tongue-and-groove teeth interlocking in silent precision.
It was dawn when O’Brien entered B – 11 to visit Freddy. The baboon showed mild curiosity at his entrance, but little else — no enthusiastic welcome, no leaning hard against him to be patted or groomed. He simply loped over to see whether O’Brien had any food; when he saw that he didn’t, he headed back to the gym set to play.
Freddy’s behavior saddened O’Brien as he slowly sat on the park bench to watch. Something had happened. The baboon’s personality had changed. He was no longer the loving and affectionate Freddy he had become since the transplant.
O’Brien sat there numb, barely thinking, until he heard the door to B – 11 buzz and click open.
“Well, lookie here.”
He was not surprised to hear Murkoski’s voice. He had been expecting it.
“Rumor has it you’ve been burning the midnight oil,” Murkoski said as he crossed toward O’Brien.
O’Brien gave his answer without looking. “How much money are they paying you, Kenny?”
“They say you’ve been brushing up on your lab technique.”
“How much?” O’Brien repeated.
“More than you or I have ever seen.”
O’Brien nodded. The answer was fair. So was O’Brien’s next question. “Is it the Defense Department?”
“Not ours.”
For the first time he turned to look at Murkoski.
The kid tossed down the satchel he’d been carrying and smiled. “Some Asian cartel. You’ve never heard of them.”
O’Brien frowned, not understanding.
Murkoski scoffed at the man’s ignorance and stretched out on the grass before him. “Empires are no longer defined by geographical borders, Phil. You know that.” He picked a blade of grass and began chewing on it. “These days, corporations are the kingdoms. Big multinational corporations.” Then, growing more serious, he asked. “How much do you know?”
“I know you’re a liar, a cheat, and probably a murderer.”
Murkoski shrugged. “Perhaps. But I’m talking about the project, Phil. How much do you know?”
“I know we thought we were working on one side of the DNA molecule, the sense side, when in reality you turned it around and had us working on the antisense.”
“That’s the beauty of the double helix, isn’t it? While one side of the ladder is designed to code for one gene, the other side is designed exactly the opposite, completely neutralizing that gene’s effects while coding for another.”
“And since both sides are the same length, the gels could not detect the new gene until Wolff started cutting with another enzyme outside the coding region.”
“Very good.”
“So while you had us thinking we were designing a compassionate, nonaggression gene —”
“I had created the opposite. A gene that removes all inhibition towards aggression.”
O’Brien closed his eyes. He had known the answer for the past hour, but hearing it verbalized carried an impact he still wasn’t prepared for. Finally he asked the inevitable. “Why?”
Murkoski spat out the grass he was chewing. “Can you imagine what the arms market would pay for something like that?”
“What are you talking about?”
�
��Come on, Phil, think. In today’s world of techno-wars, we have the capability to kill thousands, millions if we wanted, right?”
O’Brien didn’t answer.
“So what’s the one thing we’re missing? What are we lacking?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The will, Phil. We’re lacking the men and women with will. We have the buttons, but we don’t have people willing to press them. Our technology is capable, but we’re not. Until now.”
O’Brien began to understand. “So instead of compassionate, caring individuals, you’re creating killing machines with no conscience.”
Murkoski grinned. “Armies select specific personnel. They inject the gene, let them wreak whatever havoc is necessary, and when their time is up, they remove it. Unless, of course there are a few die-hard generals or weapon designers who choose to live with it.”
“God help us.”
“Too late for that, Phil. He’s already been replaced.”
“But the mice. I don’t understand. There were only six or seven that turned into killers.”
“I couldn’t very well go around turning everybody into killing machines, now could I? Not unless I wanted to raise a lot of unwanted questions and risk having the project shut down. And why bother? It’s the same gene, just reversed. The biological effects will be the same, so why not study them in passive, easy-to-control individuals, instead of killers?”
O’Brien gestured toward the baboon swinging from the gym set. “What about Freddy? His behavior is changing.”
“Best I can figure, he’s gone into some sort of regression.”
O’Brien looked at him.
Murkoski shrugged. “I suspect it has something to do with the junk DNA we introduced. He’s gradually reverting to his original state.”
O’Brien sadly turned back to the baboon. “And Coleman?”
“He’s regressing, too. Of course, it won’t be stopping there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wolff noticed it first. There’s something about emotional trauma that stops the process. Once they’ve been exposed to extreme emotional stress, degeneration rapidly sets in. As it progresses, it neutralizes any normal anti-aggression chemistry they may have.”