The Methuselah Gene

by Jonathan Lowe

  As we both stood watch, taking a breather, she seemed to read my mind. “Who do you plan to call?” she asked. “And what would you say?”

  I shrugged and checked my leg bandage. “Well, I could call the FBI, ask them about the traffic there in DC, follow that with banter about starvation in Delhi, then maybe segue into all our various theories, including one about either the CIA or Al Queda secretly testing an experimental virus on the residents here.”

  Julie laughed at this, albeit nervously. “I think you’d be talking to a dial tone before you reached the end of that sentence.”

  “I think you’re right.” I hooked a thumb toward the water tower, partly visible amid the trees to our left. “By the way, my camera is up there, and it has some photos that show evidence of tampering. Be nice to have a sample of residue, too, maybe soak a spare bandage in the stuff for later testing.”

  “You want me to do it?” she suggested. “While you wait here?”

  With cavalier disregard for danger, she started walking toward the tower.

  “No, wait! There might be—”

  “What? I don’t see anyone over there, do you?”

  She paused long enough for me to slip the revolver out of her backpack. Then I reluctantly followed her. In the changing angles we could see through the trees that there was no one around. No sound could be heard either except our feet tramping among the rocks and fallen leaves. Although the area did seem deserted, I approached with apprehension, remembering my close encounter in every muscle and limb. Squinting toward the top of the tower, I felt a foreboding rise inside me like trapped gas percolating through seaweed, but I rejected the images that attempted to reach my conscious mind. Finally closer, the hulking thing loomed above us in the morning light like the underbelly of a dinosaur. Zionus herbivorus.

  As we neared the ladder Julie asked, “What’s that smell?”

  “What smell?” I was staring at the irregular striations in the dirt, where the ground seemed to have been raked. I sniffed the air, but smelled nothing unusual. “A woman’s sense of smell,” I observed, “is better than a man’s. Or mine, anyway.”

  “Smells like paint to me.”

  “Paint?” I looked up at the curving body of the water tower, and saw a patch of smooth gray up there against the rougher rusty surface, near where the rungs ended. I half imagined I heard a faint humming or gurgling sound, too, coming from inside the thing. I put my ear against one of the metal supports to confirm it. “They’re covering their tracks,” I concluded. “Probably sanded and painted the access cover on top, once they retrieved my camera and binoculars. Now they’re filling the tank back to the level it was years ago. Probably claim it’s all a public service.”

  “Who?”

  Who . . . I felt the word reverberate in my mind. My growing current of unease electrified the word as though a switch had just been thrown and a mechanical owl had just come to life from the coppery static. “Maybe it’s Maybelline,” I said, fighting the feeling.

  She smiled. “Will you stop that?”

  “Sorry.”

  “And that too.”

  I considered Julie’s own situation. “You know,” I said, “even if whoever did this disappears, it means you’re relocating again. The connections you’ve made to friends here, broken.”

  “I haven’t made many real friends,” she confessed, “in case you haven’t noticed.”

  I nodded, slowly. “Join the club.”

  We were motionless and silent for a time, like two contestants on The Price Is Right just asked the cost of a bottle of Nyquil. Then Julie picked up a stone and hurled it at the water tank’s underbelly. In frustration, it appeared at first. But when the rock stuck with a metallic thump, not a hollow thrumming echo, I saw that she meant it as a test. Then she turned to me to express a hope even she didn’t seem to believe. “What if,” she said, “we’re wrong about all of this? What if some hunter shot you by mistake, and those folks in town are just spreading some kind of rare flu bug?”

  “Not a Satan bug, you mean? And those G-Men or X-Men who burst into your house were only dispatched to help Cody search of a guy who lied about his name, and possibly his age?”

  Julie fell silent again, studying my face for a moment before asking, “How old are you, by the way?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “If we escape to get married and live happily ever after, it does,” she said. “In Montana, of course.”

  I played along. “Of course, Montana is a given. That’s where all us nut cases go to escape. But still, why would my age matter?”

  “Well, three kids would be hard for an old man to keep up with.”

  “Not four?” I asked. “Two boys and two girls?”

  She picked up another rock, and idly juggled it between her two hands. I looked beyond her at the base of the water tower, and noticed something missing. I limped past her, and she dropped the rock to follow me. “What’s wrong now?”

  I came to the support on the fall side of the tower, and looked up. The bleeder valve I’d seen the day before was gone. The area appeared to have been patched and sanded. “There was a hose here,” I said. I traced an imaginary line by pointing from the belly of the tower down to the ground, then down the ridge on the other side, into the trees below. “A hose that went along the ground to somewhere down there.”

  “Down there?”

  Julie followed me as I struggled down the somewhat steeper angle into the woods below us. Then I suddenly slipped and landed on my ass amid the leaves, yelping in pain from my wounded leg.

  She helped me up. “You wait here, I’ll go see. Okay, old man?”

  I held onto a sapling and watched her until she disappeared into the thick foliage. Soon I could only hear her shuffling through the leaves and branches. Then there was silence.

  “Julie?” I called, momentarily.

  No answer. Several minutes passed.

  “Julie!”

  “I’m here,” came her distant voice.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she returned, pulling herself up the slope by holding onto the ends of swaying branches. Here she reminded me again of Madeline Stowe, returning—no doubt it would seem—to her wounded co-star Michael Keaton, having just escaped being scalped. Only thing out of place for that image was her Lands’ End backpack and Nike cross-trainers. Finally catching her breath, she joined me.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Funny thing,” she replied, still panting. “There’s like a level area a-ways down . . . a clearing . . . looks like some kind of . . . of grove there.”

  “Grove?”

  “You know . . . like with pecan or pear trees. Some pretty hearty trees, too. There’s even a fence around it.”

  “How high?”

  “Six, seven feet, topped by barbed wire.”

  “No, I mean the trees.”

  “Maybe thirty feet, some of them. Big green branches. Why?”

  I stared at her, dumbfounded, for a moment. Then I said, “Was there fruit on the trees?”

  “No, not that I could see, but then I couldn’t get inside. The gate was locked.”

  I laid one hand on top of my hand, as confusing thoughts invaded my mind. Thoughts about 565 and the tobacco etch virus Jim Baxter had been working on. “I’ll be damned,” I finally said, in disbelief.

  “What?”

  “Maybe it is Maybelline.” I was about to explain when we heard the very distant sound of gunfire coming from the direction of Zion, below the hill on the other side.

  Two shots, as from a shotgun. And after that, what may have been a scream.

  “What’s happening?” Julie asked, again. But I had no answer for that.

  “Let’s go,” I insisted, taking her arm. “Let’s get help.”

  18

  We descended the hill to the place we’d ascended, heading due west through a patch of prickly bushes toward open farmland. Birds fluttered and flew as we stepped over a fallen log to walk toward the more g
ently rolling hills on the horizon. Finally emerging onto level ground, we neared a dirt road we’d seen earlier, and saw a car approaching from the distance, billowing up dust like the prow of a racing boat through waves. Impulsively, Julie ran toward it, through a field of what did look like wheat. The motionless stalks parted for her in a bulging fan, as in a dream. She was faster than I, and waved at the car as I struggled to catch up to her, having to extend my left leg in a hobbling gait so as not to tear loose my bandage. Then I saw that the car was a Taurus—and that it was being driven erratically.

  “Julie, no. Wait!”

  When she ran out into the road, the approaching Taurus braked hard to stop fifty yards in front of her. Now it idled, waiting as she approached.

  “Julie!” I persisted.

  She paused, puzzled, as the car began to back away slowly. Then it stopped again too, as if playing a game. Bull and matador. So I pulled out my gun, hoping to even the odds.

  “Julie,” I repeated, firmly. “Back away.”

  “What? Who is that?”

  As though in reply, the car—my own rental—roared at her. I raised my revolver, cocked, aimed low, and fired. The bullet missed, but with a second shot I got lucky and blew out the front left tire. I stared in amazement as the wobbling Taurus now targeted me. I dodged it only by falling to the side of the road, and tumbling. Then it rolled past me, its blown tire flopping around the rim in the rutted road with a sound like an unevenly loaded washing machine on spin cycle. It came to a ragged stop thirty yards beyond before the engine cut off.

  Julie helped me up, and we stood looking at the car in disbelief as the driver’s door opened.

  It was Wally, sure enough. But something was very wrong with him. He seemed to be sweating profusely, his face squinched into a porcine knot as though in some desperate distress. Getting out, he staggered around to the back of the car, where he opened the trunk to extract a jack and tire iron. I approached cautiously, the gun at my side. Closer, I saw that he wore a Deputy’s badge.

  “No, stay back!” Wally commanded, dropping the jack and suddenly wielding the iron like a weapon. His voice was strained and tight, and hummed with the high timbre of fear. So I stopped moving for a moment.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Julie asked me.

  “He’s under Cody’s influence,” I guessed.

  “But how can that be?”

  “I don’t know, but today’s a new day. Cleanup day, it appears. And maybe Judgment Day, too. Wally?”

  Wally seemed to stare at us both in terror, finally settling on me. “Who are you?” he asked, with a taint of revulsion in his voice. “What are you?”

  “What am I? Wally, listen to me. You’re having hallucinations. You need Navane, or Zoloft, or something. I . . . I don’t know what. But we can help.”

  In response, Wally’s eyes danced from side to side, like he was trying to see through fog. As he focused on me, something formed in that fog. Something horrific, which needed to be put down. And now gathering the courage to do it, Wally lifted the tire iron.

  “Go,” I told Julie. “Run.”

  Wally bellowed as he attacked. The mingled wail and cry that escaped his lips stunned me with its intensity. As an involuntary reaction, I backed across the road into the wheat.

  “Wally, no!” Cocking the revolver, I lifted it. Not wanting to shoot, I lowered my aim to his legs. I was about to squeeze the trigger when I tripped on a stump and fell backward. The gun went off, aimed high. With the recoil I lost the weapon as Wally swung the tire iron, its arc just missing my forehead. Then he lost his grip too, as my good leg tripped both of his. He fell on top of me as I turned away, and tried to bury my face in the soil while he shrieked out in pained disgust.

  “Die, die, die!” he shouted, as though choking something that didn’t deserve to live. Like maybe a monstrous hybrid human slug.

  My nose filled with needles as my neck was twisted to the edge of snapping. I felt Wally’s knee dig into my kidney with the heat and pressure of a branding iron. The excruciating sensations seemed to slow down time for me, and gifted me with an odd flashback to grade school, when a bully had once pushed the side of my face into the grass while several classmates—plus one other—watched. One adult had been there, glimpsed only for an instant in the periphery of my vision. I could see that woman’s face clearly, now, for the first time ever as she stared at me in passing, in the background. It was the same look she might have given to a car accident victim, bleeding on the pavement as the sirens approached, maybe as she rushed to a hairdressing appointment. Then the past and present merged, and suddenly the woman’s face was eclipsed, cut off as Wally’s voice was cut off.

  When Wally’s bulk fell away to my left, I rolled over painfully to lay still, eyes closed against the brightness above me. Breathing heavily, I felt the thickened needles slowly pull out of my nose, and the searing heat in my back subside to a dull throb. The ringing in my ears remained, though, lingering longer, and as I opened my eyes at last, I saw that Julie knelt beside me. She held the tire iron in one hand. “Are you okay?”

  I squinted into the round face of the apparition beyond her shoulder, which retreated into the blinding sun. “Mrs. Long,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “It was Mrs. Long,” I repeated. “Freddie Long’s mother. Eighth grade. She was rich.”

  “Are you . . .”

  “Okay? Not like him.” I turned my head painfully toward Wally.

  Julie checked him for breath and a pulse. Then she examined the ugly bruise on the back of his head. “He’ll live,” she concluded. “What about you?”

  She wiped the dirt from my cheek. “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Placebo effect.” I kissed her, gratefully. “You’re braver than I thought,” I added, not caring that her bravery had been propelled into courage by the adrenaline of fear. “Braveheart, I’ll call you.”

  “Not Rose?”

  She helped me back to the car, where we changed the tire with the iron she’d wielded.

  Pulling away from the scene of our bizarre encounter, I noticed that the gas gauge on the Taurus hovered over the lower part of the E. But I didn’t mention it. Julie had just sighed in relief, after all. In my rearview mirror I saw Wally sit up in the wheat, too, but I didn’t tell her that either. Only after Wally dwindled from view, and after I saw that the indicator needle nearly touched the left peg, did I finally resurrect the courage, born of necessity.

  “How far, did you say, to the next town? Because I think we have a problem.”

  Julie looked at the gauge I pointed to, then put up one hand, covering her face as she turned away. “We aren’t going to make it,” she said, giving a little ironic laugh.

  “Most of the way, then?”

  Her laugh subsided into a nervous, mumbled intonation of words I couldn’t quite interpret. Then she bit at her lip as though to hold these thoughts in check, and looked straight ahead. Perhaps she was thinking about the implications of what we’d just seen, but when she finally appeared about to speak, her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes, coming to focus, then widened into terror, and she lifted and wagged her upraised index finger.

  On impulse, I stomped on the brake, looking out over the hood at anything that might be in the road. But the road was clear. Only when I lifted my gaze did I see something, and what I saw confounded me. It was Sheriff Cody, standing beside a roadblock scarcely a hundred yards ahead. He was looking right at us, too, and there was surprise written indelibly in bold type on his face.

  “What do we do now?” Julie asked as we sat idle.

  I thought about it for ten long seconds. Then, in reply, I put the Taurus in reverse. Cody reacted by withdrawing his revolver to fire a warning shot. At least I thought it was a warning shot for two more seconds. Maybe it wasn’t, because the second shot struck the car’s front grill, and Julie screamed. Steam then gushed and hissed from the radiator as I whirled the car around to see Cody running toward us, trying to close som
e distance between us before he knelt and fired again.

  The third shot burst the car’s rear window, whistling a patina of glass fragments between our heads. Julie canted forward, hunkering as far down as she could.

  “Are you all right?” I yelled.

  A fourth shot hit the rear window frame, but luckily the bullet took a left fork instead of a right one into my brain. At this, I leaned all the way over to Julie’s side, and kept pressure on the gas as I awkwardly tried to steer. But we left the road anyway, and the car soon bounded over a knoll to catapult all the way to an uptilted impact that jarred our heads together. At that, my teeth caught the edge of my tongue, and I tasted blood in my mouth. Still, we entered the wheat and continued moving across the heavy soil, hearing no more gunshots like the one Cody must have heard before he saw us. But the engine was complaining, now, red-lining as it overheated. Suddenly it jerked and coughed on the fumes that kept it alive, the hot metal bucking as if wanting to pull free of its mounts in the throes of strangulation. A sudden spasm as it seized, and then it was dead.

  We rolled to a stop amid the wheat.

  Now there’s hell to pay at the car rental desk, I thought, crazily.

  We got out on either side. I imagined Cody still running toward us while reloading, and so I took Julie’s hand in front of the car, and we struggled deeper into the wheat, trying to keep low. Then, when I realized that I couldn’t move as fast as she was able, I released her hand. She saw what I meant, and grabbed my arm. Instead of running, she fell to the ground, and pulled me down with her.

  “If you can’t run, you hide,” she whispered in my ear, hotly.