He began to rise from where he was hiding when he saw Tyler bend over and grab one of the rocks which defined the fire pit. It was about six inches across and easily weighed a couple of pounds. He held it loosely down at his side.
“What the fuck kid? Drop the rock,” he said. Tyler stood motionless watching him and ignoring his instruction.
“Are you nuts? I have a gun. Put down the fucking rock or I will shoot you,” he said.
Tyler took a single step forward.
“Shoot,” he said.
Mann quickly hobbled away from the truck and spoke to him.
“Do as he says Ty put it down.”
Tyler ignored this instruction. He was calmly watching the other man’s face and he took another step towards him and stopped.
”Put it down kid. You are coming with me so get used to it,” he said.
Tyler didn’t move. He stood eerily still and composed. He was now less than five feet away and an easy shot. He was convinced from his last encounter Sedulca was a sociopath and he would not hesitate to kill the boy.
The only thing stopping him was the fact he was the prize and killing him would defeat the purpose. He knew Tyler was taking a big risk by taunting him because people with mental illness act irrationally and often against their own interests when provoked.
Tyler lifted the rock and held it at chest level. He was not preparing to throw it he was simply taking the weight off his extended arm muscle and he hoped the gunman could tell the difference.
“Are you nuts kid? Put down the fucking rock I have a gun,” he said.
He spoke the words like he was talking to a slow child. He held the weapon up high and waved it in the air mockingly. His face was a mask of disbelief at Tyler’s weird behaviour. The boy was watching him with clear unblinking eyes, which Mann couldn’t help thinking, resembled the eyes of a stalking predator. There was nothing identifiable as fear or emotion on his face but there was something sharply fierce and coldly analytical portrayed within the boy’s features.
He was hyper-alert now tripping from the adrenaline circulating in his bloodstream. As he watched Tyler stare at the gunman he saw something new and disturbing invade his son’s flat emotionless eyes. What he saw caused a fresh shot of adrenaline one which was pulled from the deep reserve saved for the most ancient fears.
“Shoot,” Tyler said.
The voice was soft and clear and he could detect neither emotion nor bravado; it was as flat and affectless as his sharp grey eyes. A sick grin of pleasure crept over Sedulca’s features as he lifted his weapon and turned and pointed it at the tent.
“How ‘bout I shoot your girlfriend instead?” he said.
The words were hissed and meant to threaten but he did not doubt they expressed his true intentions. There was no cost to him if he killed her. She would just be collateral damage. He thought the threat to kill Zen would make him drop the rock and he was stunned when Tyler said.
“Shoot.”
Nothing in his body language showed fear or concern for her. He stood completely at ease with the heavy rock once again dangling in his right hand by his side. Mann held his breath watching as the deadly stalemate grew longer. He was surprised when he saw cracks appear in Sedulca’s pathology-driven confidence. Stress began to transform the leer of impending violence on his face into a taut mask of confusion.
The hand holding the gun began to vibrate in the air as beads of perspiration appeared on his brow. His eyes took on the damp hollowness of intense fear as he blinked rapidly. He swiped his coat sleeve across his mouth several times.
He watched as the gun barrel drew ever larger circles in the air between Sedulca and the tent. The sinews in his forearm twitched and jumped and he lifted his free hand to help steady it. A spasm erupted on his face which altered his features alarmingly then cascaded agonizingly through muscle groups as it marched aggressively down the full length of his body.
The stringy muscles of his forearm continued to tighten as if stretched from torture reshaping them into elongated ropey strands that looked like they might snap at any moment. As his skin bulged and warped and sweat poured from his face he hoped one of Sedulca’s wild spasms would not cause him to accidently pull the trigger.
“I’m not fucking around. I’ll do it,” he said.
It was a last attempt to regain control of the situation but his tremulous voice betrayed him. The smug self-assurance was gone and his hollow threat was belied by a voice stained with fear. His leg began to jackrabbit wildly and he staggered backwards as if struck or drunk. His dimming eyes searching dumbly for his lost self-assurance.
Mann was sickened when he saw the whites of his eyes turn the purple grey of a full deer tick as they receded as if sucked back into their sockets. His rapid blinking slowed and then stopped altogether as first his left and seconds later his right eye shut and refused to open. It was clear he was in severe pain from the muffled sobs which leaked from the tight margins of his closed jaw. As he tottered blindly Tyler stepped over to him and raised the rock.
He used the rock to smash his frozen gun hand. The freed weapon thudded to the dirt and Sedulca, now entirely insensible to the world, stumbled and tripped to his knees. Tyler stood near him watching him sway back and forth for a moment and then he put his hand on Sedulca’s back to steady him. Mann was struck by the simple humanity of this act. He’d not seen him comfort or show tenderness to another human being aside from Zen. At first he missed the movement of his hand along Sedulca’s spine, but when he saw it, he realized the boy was counting vertebrae. He was confused by this and he could not imagine what he was doing. When he finished counting he stopped and took his hand away. Sedulca swayed from side to side and then fell to the ground.
He was trying to understand what Tyler was doing when his eye caught up to his next movement and he was, if anything, more confused by what he saw. It looked like an eerie biblical tableau. Tyler was on his knees with his hands together as though in prayer above Sedulca. It could have been Jesus Christ praying for the soul of a supplicant bowed before him. Then he saw it. The fire pit rock. It was still in Tyler’s hand.
Tyler’s face revealed nothing as he grunted with effort and accelerated the rock downward. The force of the impact smashed Sedulca’s spine, obliterating vertebrae, nerve fiber, and tissue. In the low light from the fire and his swollen eye he could not be absolutely certain he saw it happen but he definitely heard it. The sickening crack of shattering bone and rending meat was unmistakable from across the camp he could clearly hear the sinews snap and bones pop. Breath expelled from Sedulca in a whoosh as he slumped face first into the dirt.
The boy squatted down beside him and closely observed as the stricken man lay twitching uncontrollably. His torso folded in two as muscles contracted drawing his limbs together in jerky spasms. He watched in amazement as a single large incisor emerged bloody and whole, squeezed from the tight grimace of his locked jaw. It was forcibly ejected by the mechanical leverage of his powerful mandible. The tooth dribbled from between his drooling lips and down his chin, leaving a bloody trail of spittle, then was buried in the dirt beneath him as straining muscle rendered his mass into a coil of twitching meat.
He watched Tyler’s reaction as he observed the destructive progress on the prone man. He was watching intently, fascinated by the progression and he laughed heartily when the man’s bladder and bowel let go. He wondered what thoughts or feelings were going through the boy’s mind. There was nothing displayed outwardly which could be described as empathy or humanity. There was no clue as to what he was feeling except maybe curiosity.
He was kneeling beside the ruined man when he turned his face towards him with a grin and a thumbs-up. He looked like a trophy hunter over a fresh kill. He was grinning with a happiness which contrasted darkly with the fact he intentionally crippled a man.
He was unsure how to feel about this. He would have gladly shot Sedulca himself moments earlier if he had the chance, the man certainly deserved it fo
r the cruel sadistic way he hurt Zen, but he found the look on Tyler’s face unsettling.
The lack of human empathy did not come as a complete surprise to him but the look of pride and mastery over his opponent was new and disturbing. What he saw was not simply the testosterone blush of teenage bravado. It was the first glimpse of dawning power. With his limited social understanding, non-existent moral centre and, in possession of a mind such as his, that look was worrisome.
He was lost in his thoughts about the boy realizing as a teen he was on the cusp of choosing the direction he would take as an adult and the potential he has as an individual to do good or evil was staggering. He hoped he would have the opportunity to help guide his moral development, because, if he was left to develop without any guidance, he could be disastrous for humankind.
These thoughts carried him away but it was not until he heard the CSIS agent stirring from where she fell that it dawned on him the significance of what he witnessed.
That was POrna!
What happened to Sedulca fit the verbal descriptions of the onset of POrna and he looked exactly like the videos of the stricken soldiers he viewed in the lab at Naden. He emerged from these thoughts and focused his eyes in the darkness and saw him beside Sedulca holding his nose as the man lay insensible in the expanding pool of wastes squeezed from of him.
“It works,” he heard Tyler say to himself.
That was then it dawned on him that Tyler did not know that POrna works.
When he taunted Sedulca to shoot he was risking Zen and his life on a wild-assed guess. There was no way he could have reasonably known Sedulca was exposed to the carriers of the virus and become infected. He did not know his connection to the military. He was bloody guessing.
The crazy disparity between what he was capable of with his brilliant intellect and his lack of understanding of what he risked moments ago was breathtaking.
What a crazy son of a bitch, he thought.
The woman from CSIS used the picnic table to regain her feet and was now staggering over. She stared down at the prone man.
“I don’t understand this Dr. Mann,” she said, “what am I seeing? Has he been shot?”
He considered what he should tell her because he knew everything he said from here on would have consequences. He knew the closer he kept his story to the truth the easier it would be to remember the details when they questioned him about it later.
“Sedulca pointed his gun at the tent and threatened to shoot Zen and Ty clobbered him with a rock,” he said nodding at the rim of rocks around the fire pit.
It was close enough to the truth to pass at least for the short term. It was obvious the man on the ground was not going to contradict him any time soon. He also hoped Tyler would keep his mouth shut, this would be a bad time for the boy to start explaining what he did.
“Why is he curled up?” she said.
He shrugged and pretended he didn’t know why. Clearly she figured out it was Sedulca who zapped her with a Taser because she never asked him what happened to her. It was her curiosity about what was happening to Sedulca that needed to be explained. He had been hoping, perhaps unreasonably, that if Tyler did not say anything to her about POrna their problem would die right here and now. Tyler remained silent.
He looked at Barbara Knight for a moment but said nothing. He placed the rock back in the indent it came from around the fire pit. He gathered up and threw on the last of the firewood and went back inside the tent zipping it closed behind him. The amazing thing about what occurred in the last few minutes was that neither Zen or her mother woke up. The loudest part of the whole exchange was the sickening sound of bones cracking under the force of the rock.
Mrs. Knight was leaning over Sedulca weaving back and forth while trying to make sense of what she was witnessing. He did not know how much she knew about the virus but figuring this out was the last thing he wanted her to do. In an effort to get her off the track, he said “Do you want me to come with you to check your partner?”
Seeming to surface from where her mind had traveled she nodded yes. She might be an agent of the Government but he could see she was badly shaken from being Tasered and appeared to be somewhat short of breath. He was not sure she would be able to deal effectively with whatever was waiting for her back at her vehicle.
Before they left to check on Owen she handed him plastic zip strips and insisted Sedulca’s hands and feet be bound. He did it though he knew full well Sedulca would likely never walk away from anything again. When he held out his arm to steady her she took it and held onto him. They walked back to the place she left her partner and the van.
They found Owen in the back of the van alive and embarrassed but basically unhurt. He swore a blue streak when they freed his hands and he ripped the gag from his mouth. It took them a few minutes to get him completely loose and a few more for him to walk off the leg cramps he got from being bound. It was during this time he explained how Sedulca came to sit behind him and that’s when he got zapped.
When they got back to the camp site Sedulca was gone. Mann ran to check on Tyler and Zen as Owen and Mrs. K. checked the rest of the camp. The kids were okay and there was no one lurking in the woods.
She examined the ground where he had been when they left him and when she was finished she sat at the picnic table and let out a breath. After he checked on Ellie in the truck he joined her.
“Someone picked him up and carried him away. We didn’t hear a car so they were probably here all along and they could still be somewhere in the area. It is essential we set up a perimeter,” she said.
When she awoke, she retrieved her gun from the grass where it landed when she fell, and now she checked it over and clicked off the safety. He looked at her.
“I don’t believe two people would voluntarily allow themselves to be Tasered simply to make me believe they are the good guys but Barbara, without putting too fine a point on it, I can’t help wondering why the fuck Sedulca was with you in the first place?” he said.
At this point he did not know what to believe because nothing made any sense.
“I made a mistake. I assumed Sedulca was a missing American agent the one we were supposed to keep an eye out for. We found him unconscious beside the old factory where a military van exploded, which is presumably, where you left him last night after Tyler nailed him the first time,” she said.
They sat looking at each other in the soft light each wondering how to play this situation. How much info either could share before it might have unintended consequences.
“He had no wallet or ID. He must have figured out we were looking for Tyler. He might have been awake and listening to us talk when we drove him to the Emergency room. Because he knew what we were looking for he simply played along and let me believe he was the missing American agent,” she said.
Owen was hobbling around walking off his leg cramps and he decided it was probably okay to give him the gun Sedulca dropped. It turned out to be Owen’s gun. Although he was livid at being taken out so easily by Sedulca he managed to mutter a curt thank you to him for returning it. He checked it over and jacked a round into the chamber and clicked the safety off then walked away from the firelight into the darkness to guard them against the possibility of Sedulca’s return.
“Oh shit,” Mann said. It was his turn to confess to a blunder.
“I think I know who carried Sedulca away. Sedulca was involved with an old colleague of mine from my university days, Jonas McLean. They were both working for Western. When Western dragged me out here McLean was the one who briefed me. He mentioned he was romantically involved with a soldier but at the time I assumed he was talking about a woman. The name he mentioned was Fran something,” he said. “Frank Sedulca.”
“Okay, so it looks like we both made a mistake, but right now Dr. Mann we need to get organized and establish some basic cover until I can arrange for backup from the RCMP. I want you to sit in the truck and cover us from that direction,” she pointed her thumb o
ver her shoulder. “Owen and I will cover the other directions. It is going to get dark when the fire dies down but it will be to our advantage. Don’t worry about the kids. They will be safe inside the tent because Owen is prepared to shoot anyone who comes anywhere near them. Please stay in the truck so he doesn’t accidently shoot you.
Keep your gun out and ready to use but remember to keep your finger off the trigger. My gut says they are gone but like you I’m not willing to bet our lives on it. In case there are more than two of them it’s better to be prepared. Okay?” she said making sure she had his full attention. He nodded an okay.
Mrs. Knight was talking on her cell when he climbed up into the cab. It was odd how he didn’t feel the least bit tired. He was trembling but he attributed it to the cold and being pumped full of adrenaline. He sat quietly with the gun in his lap, safety off, concentrating on the deepening darkness beyond the windshield as the last of the firewood burned down to ash. He managed to stay awake for almost ten minutes before he fell into a black hole.
He dreamt he was in a frozen wasteland with snow all around him and nothing but the howling wind for company. The sound of the wind became a woman’s scream of agony and he woke startled by the piercing whine of a turbo-jet engine under full power.
He thought his eyes closed for only a few seconds when he jolted upright. The gun fell from his lap and he was lucky he did not shoot himself. When his vision cleared he looked out and saw the campground bathed in harsh light. Shielding his eyes from the glare he could make out the shapes of Tyler and Mrs. Knight standing together in front of the truck heads tilted up looking into the beam.
The scene resembled a movie poster about an Alien Invasion. Then he saw the light source and the black outline of tires under a huge twin rotor helicopter emerged. It descended smoothly to the road in front of them as though lowered by a crane. He climbed down from the cab and Mrs. Knight shouted something in his ear. He could not hear what she said but he found out later that Zen was having convulsions and Tyler came out and found her and she called in a favour from the commander of the airbase at Comox.
The Zen Gene Page 25