Kingdom

by Anderson O'Donnell

  The Journal of Senator Robert Fitzgerald

  Excerpt # 6

  To Dylan,

  Bad night last night. There were pills and booze, there was a woman but the details are hazy. I remember she spoke with a Hispanic accent and had a tattoo of an asterisk inside a circle on her lower back. But when I woke up this morning the woman was gone and in her place was a flash drive bearing the same symbol.

  Project Exodus_231.avi—That was the name of the only file on the drive, a video I wish to God I never opened.

  The footage was mostly dark—but I could hear grunting and groveling and anguished braying.

  Then whoever was behind the lens hit the infrared button.

  Creatures—monstrous, misshapen beasts—filled the screen.

  And every one had my face.

  Love,

  Your Father

  Chapter 22

  Tiber City

  Sept. 12, 2015

  2:30 p.m.

  Guarded on either side by jet-black Hummer H5s, the stretch limo raced down the highway toward the Tiber City airport, broken streetlights observing the caravan’s progress like burnt-out angels on high. The TruLife unveiling had ended less than 24 hours ago; Campbell and Morrison would be at the airport in 20 minutes, where a private jet was waiting to take them back to Morrison Biotech. It had been a long time since Campbell had been to New Mexico, since he had been to the desert. Sitting in the back of the limo, staring out into the starless, moonless night, Campbell wondered if agreeing to rejoin Project Exodus was the right decision. But what choice did he have?

  Return to Project Exodus or what happens to the rest of the Order’s camps makes Ramoth look like a tea party: That had been Morrison’s ultimatum. Campbell had to buy enough time to warn the Order, to clear out the camps—only then could he make his move. But how to warn the Order? It wasn’t like he could just drop the gurney men a text. And so, under the guise of assisting the TruLife product launch, Campbell was returning to Exodus.

  “Tell me Jonathan, is it bullshit?” Morrison asked, shattering Campbell’s train of thought.

  Campbell looked across the limo at Morrison, who was sitting with his legs crossed, a drink in one hand; his face, neither young nor old, shifting from shadow to light, light to shadow, the artificial illumination pouring out from Tiber City’s skyscrapers momentarily eclipsed by concrete each time the car passed under an overpass. The back of the limo consisted of two leather seats capable of accommodating four people, two on each side. Morrison sat with his back to the tinted glass partition; Campbell faced forward.

  “Is what bullshit, Michael?” Campbell replied.

  “The story that crucified monk told Lieutenant al-Salaam. He seemed convinced that the Omega gene is…” Morrison paused and took a sip of his drink, a smirk dancing around the corners of his mouth. “The human soul?” he finished, his voice dripping with mock reverence.

  The car entered a tunnel—one of the dozens of two-lane, claustrophobia-inducing concrete tubes that ferried traffic under Tiber City—and the inside of the limo went dark. Campbell blinked, his eyes trying to adjust to the sudden change. He was exhausted but still running on adrenaline, on fear, on rage—each time he shut his eyes he saw the Ramoth massacre: monks dismembered; the bodies of children slain while they slept. He had accepted an injection of the Treatment at the MOMA just before Morrison announced his return to Exodus; having used a synthetic substitute for so many years, the initial rush almost killed him. But now he felt the familiar warmth flowing through his veins, revitalizing each of his body’s 11 systems. It was rather ironic, Campbell considered: The Treatment, designed to ensure the founders of Exodus remained physically and mentally sharp well into old age, was now providing Campbell with the endurance he needed to destroy the Project.

  “No Michael, it’s not bullshit,” Campbell said. “Is it the human soul? That depends on what you think the soul is. It has nothing to do with an afterlife. But there is another component of human existence, something beyond the physical, beyond the material—I’m convinced of that and this gene is the key to that something. A radio tuned to the divine: That’s the way the monks explained it to me. This gene is what holds people together, what makes them whole. Without it, people are cut off—not only from one another but from…God.”

  The words felt strange coming out, but right—he believed. Campbell paused, waiting for Morrison to ridicule him. To his surprise, Morrison smiled.

  “What would you say if I told you I agree?” Morrison replied.

  “I’d say that since you’re already blackmailing me, lying seems a little excessive,” Campbell said, studying Morrison’s face for any physical sign his former pupil was mocking him. But Morrison gave away nothing.

  The limo burst out of the tunnel, sunlight flooding the backseat of the car and Campbell watched as Morrison finished his drink and poured two more, one of which he handed to Campbell.

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but I’ve never denied the existence of a God. Project Exodus was, and still is, a direct response to God—to his indifference, to his sadism. God has abandoned man, left him to wander through this life alone, to suffer alone. Exodus is about creating new men who are gods unto themselves—beholden to nothing.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t abandoned them after all,” Campbell said. “If this gene really is the human soul, if it really offers a connection between mankind and the divine, then perhaps the connections have gotten a little fuzzy on our end, the terrestrial end.”

  Morrison rolled his eyes. “It’s just a failsafe; a control mechanism. A means to deter competition.” He paused, then lowered his voice and snarled, “a fucking trademark.”

  “Jesus, Michael,” Campbell said, looking away, out the window as the limo began crossing the massive, four-lane bridge that traversed the Acheron River. Massive steel girders were twisted in a webbed arc over the bridge, which rose sharply at first, then leveled out for a mile or two before an abrupt decline. There were guardrails on either side of the bridge but they struck Campbell as the mere fulfillment of some bureaucratic mandate, measured to meet the minimum standard necessary to prevail in a lawsuit—no way those rails were stopping anything bigger than a scooter.

  “Besides,” Morrison continued, “one gene defeating the greatest minds of the 21st century? How can I not accept the possibility it is somehow… supernatural.”

  “Let’s pretend for a moment that I buy any of this,” Campbell replied, taking a sip of his drink—whiskey, neat. “What about Heffernan? You’ve got a U.S. senator, who you’re trying to put in the White House, on the verge of a complete physical meltdown. How the fuck do you remedy that one?”

  “What time is it?” Morrison asked.

  “What does that matter?”

  “You asked how I’m going to remedy Exodus’ current woes, and I’m going to show you. But first, I need to know what time it is.”

  Campbell reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He glanced at the external display: 2:58 p.m.

  “Two minutes to 3,” Campbell told Morrison.

  “Very good,” Morrison said, before producing a tiny remote control from the pocket of his suit jacket. He pointed the remote at Campbell as he pressed one of the remote’s two red buttons. The classical music cut off and a small video screen began to descend from the ceiling, glowing with that pale, expectant light given off by televisions and computer monitors tuned to a dead feed. But then Morrison pressed another button and the screen flared to life: CNN was broadcasting a Jack Heffernan rally live from Santa Fe.

  Heffernan was standing behind a pulpit on a massive stage in the middle of a town green, delivering the final lines of his stump speech, slight variations of which Campbell had caught in a hundred different sound bites scattered across dozens of different mediums. Just as the speech began to build toward its crescendo—the candidate’s voice booming and feverish; the images from American mythology displayed on video monitors behind the senator changing until they we
re almost indistinguishable from one another: pilgrims morphing into the Apollo moon landing morphing into Iwo Jima into Washington crossing the Delaware—two gun shots rang out, followed by a third, and Heffernan lurched forward, crashing into the podium. Secret Service tried to form a protective circle around Heffernan but cameramen were everywhere, jostling for position, for that perfect shot that would distill an American tragedy down to a single picture, the image that would become the collective reference point for an entire generation. Then the screen went blank.

  “Turn it back on,” Campbell shouted to Morrison. Morrison just smiled and shook his head as he put the remote back in his pocket.

  “There’s nothing more to see,” Morrison said. “Why bother with mere speculation and ‘unconfirmed reports’ when I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen?”

  Campbell was too stunned to speak. He finished his drink, the whiskey burn the only assurance he had that this wasn’t some terrible nightmare.

  And then, even though Campbell couldn’t remember Morrison using the remote again, somehow the television had turned back on, scenes from another American tragedy playing out in high definition; mourning in Dolby Digital. A blonde reporter holding the microphone a little too close to her mouth—her suit proclaiming professionalism, her glistening lip gloss hinting at something else—verified what Campbell had just seen: Jack Heffernan had been assassinated. As the reporter spoke, video showing Heffernan reacting to the shot—hands to the chest, crashing into the podium—looped over and over, interrupted only by shots from a helicopter that provided an aerial shot of the crime scene that, ostensibly, would provide new insight on the tragedy but were little more than a clusterfuck of yellow police tape, emergency vehicles, people standing around, and news trucks jockeying for satellite position. And yet, this useful footage shot from the helicopter would be run several times an hour throughout coverage of the assassination—content was king.

  Campbell shut his eyes for a moment, trying to process everything that had just happened. When he opened them, the assassination coverage had cut to commercial: a 50-something man and woman defying erectile dysfunction in Vegas, on a cruise ship; tumbling dice on green felt, dancing on the upper deck under a starlit sky.

  “Why me?” Campbell asked.

  Morrison laughed, metallic-tinged taunt that made Campbell think of giant industrial freezers; of too-bright hospital wards at 2 o’clock in the morning.

  “You are the father of Project Exodus. You know the workings of the human genome better than any man on this planet, including myself. It pains me to admit that, but we both know it’s true.

  “The things your monk friends told me…Well, let’s just say they gave me a new perspective. If Exodus can’t replicate this soul gene, so be it. It’s not like I can fault God for trying to protect his monopoly on creation—it’s a smart business move. But if the human soul is a gene that functions as—how did you describe it? A radio receiver?—then some people will naturally have better, stronger receivers than others. As your monks made clear, the function of this gene can be cultivated, enhanced—they told me about the OAA differentiation—but never artificially replicated. If an attempt is made to replicate it…well, I think the failures of Exodus have, so far, made that rather clear.”

  Still reeling from the footage of the assassination, Campbell tried to focus on the implications of what Morrison was saying.

  “But why now?” Campbell asked.

  “Until very recently,” Morrison replied, “I was convinced that our team could break the secret of this gene. I wanted Exodus to be self-contained: man made entirely by man. But there’s more: Jack Heffernan’s genetic makeup is so perfectly balanced, so finely tuned, that the introduction of a foreign gene might disrupt the genetic mix we spent so many years trying to perfect.”

  “But the alternative…” Campbell began.

  “Correct,” Morrison snapped, adjusting one of this onyx cuff links, a look of frustration flashing across his face, gone as quickly as it came. “The alternative is the meltdowns that destroyed Senator Fitzgerald, the meltdowns that were beginning to consume Jack Heffernan as well. Should I have considered this approach sooner? Perhaps. But the past is irrelevant. There is only the future. And Jonathan, let me show you what the future looks like.”

  Morrison gestured at the television monitor. The live broadcast had vanished, replaced by a single image of a young man in his mid-to-late 20s with longish brown hair, blue eyes, and a few days worth of stubble. Campbell had no idea who the kid was, but the eyes—he knew those eyes.

  “Allow me to introduce Dylan Fitzgerald,” Morrison said.

  “Shut it off,” Campbell whispered.

  “You might remember his late father, Robert, a former U.S. senator with a rather distinguished gene pool.”

  “Off,” Campbell said.

  “Dylan’s recently deceased mother, Elizabeth, on the other hand, while quite striking, has a slightly more mundane genetic composition.”

  “Off,” Campbell roared but Morrison continued, his voice steady and seductive.

  “It seems like one of the best decisions I ever made was to allow you to leave Exodus alive. You brought me to the people who managed to do the one thing Exodus never could: figure out the purpose of the Omega gene. Now, I guess the only question left is: Does Dylan Fitzgerald have a soul? If he does, then Exodus is back in business.”

  Leaning forward and looking down at his drink, Campbell struggled against the urge to smash the glass into Morrison’s face and if that didn’t kill the motherfucker, to slit his throat with the shards. But he knew Morrison was trying to goad him and there was too much at stake: Campbell closed his eyes and saw the aftermath of the massacre at Camp Ramoth. How many more would die if Morrison’s men moved on the remaining camps? He sat back, forcing his body to relax and for an instant his former pupil looked disappointed, as if Morrison had been relishing the prospect of violence.

  “And how do you propose we answer that question?” Campbell asked.

  Smiling, Morrison began to explain.

  Chapter 23

  Havenport–Tiber City

  Sept. 13, 2015

  7:38 a.m.

  Dawn collapsed into day, the light limping across the horizon before being caught and devoured by night, and all the while, Dylan rode north, away from the shore, away from the Jungle, away from Meghan Morrison. He ate little, slept less; He had been on the road for hours, yet was making little progress: Severe thunderstorms throttled the land and rain was coming down in slanted sheets, driven by 50 mph wind gusts and sudden thunderclaps. Accidents slowed the interstate to a crawl so he tried the back roads, but those were worse, ferrying him from one burnt-out industrial valley to the next, a series of small manufacturing towns that hadn’t manufactured anything of value since the 1950s, rising brown rivers slowly taking back what the mills had stolen. Although these roads were almost empty, the elements remained steadfast in their opposition to human progress and despite almost burning through an entire tank of gasoline, by nightfall Dylan had only made it as far as the lands that ran like a tattered police line around the perimeter of these northern industrial valleys, the Jungle’s neon lights still visible on the horizon like a million atomic stars.

  His cell phone rang a dozen times—11 calls from Meghan, one from an unlisted number. Dylan fought the urge to answer. He needed to think first, to digest the journal he discovered in the safety deposit, the story that the journal told: that his father had been something less (or was it more?) than human; that his father’s death had likely come at the hands of Michael Morrison, rather than his own.

  These suggestions were breathtaking in their audacity and yet Dylan couldn’t dismiss them—his father had been many things, but delusional was never one of them. It was tempting to write the whole thing off as a bad trip: Somebody slips the old man some new designer shit and voilà, clones and laboratories. But the fact that his father had sealed a flash drive, the one with the Ω symbol, on
the inside of the front cover made his case a little more compelling. Dylan needed to find a place where he could read the letters again; a place where he could explore the flash drive and see if it contained the footage about which his father wrote.

  But the night was barreling down upon him now, hungry and expectant, and he realized how tired he was: He decided he’d stop at the next decent-looking motel—maybe one with an ancient business center where he could plug in the flash drive. But the highway seemed to stretch eternal in each direction, and the weather was getting worse. Hail, frozen yet still sizzling from its rapid descent through the murky atmosphere, now accompanied the thunderclaps and hot, driving rain; a sulfuric stench announced its arrival, a reminder of the diseased skies from which it came.

  The hail was coming hard and fast, slicing into Dylan’s four-day-old beard and bouncing off the side of his skull. He could taste a tiny trickle of blood from where the hail cut him and he stood straight up on the bike and began to scream, not in pain, but defiance. A strawberry-size piece of hail whizzed past his ear and Dylan felt a rush of exhilaration; the exhaustion receded and he was loose and alive, consumed by dread and fear but at least it was an honest dread rather than the kind that manifested itself when his Internet connection dropped or he paid too much for slightly lower quality coke. And then he heard a loud POP as his rear tire blew, sending his bike into a fishtail. He struggled for control of the vehicle, but the road was too slick and the bike crashed to one side, shooting across the concrete in a burst of sparks and screeching metal. Dylan tried to control the slide but he had been going too fast and then the world went black.

  The scene played over and over in his head, low-grade video with static-y audio, like some YouTube clip stuck on repeat: His father was in an enormous hyper-modern hotel suite—lots of hideous paintings and muted tones, aesthetic forever divorced from function. But that was all on the periphery and vaguely out of focus: Whoever was directing this clip seemed most interested in Dylan’s father, who was slumped in some overly formal black stuffed chair and gripping a glass of scotch and melting ice cubes so tightly that Dylan wondered why it hadn’t shattered, cutting his father and sending the watered-down scotch to the cold black tile. His dad appeared older than Dylan had ever remembered him looking: huge black circles, cracked skin, and a five- or six-day-old beard—the old man never had stubble. He was wearing suit pants with dark socks and a white undershirt, which wouldn’t have been that unusual except Dylan could count on one hand the times he had seen his father in an undershirt. It was his father and it wasn’t: This man was only a shadow, an approximation of Senator Robert Fitzgerald. But that was how it had been in those last weeks. And that was something Dylan would never forget.