Hyllis Family Story 1: Telekinetic (2 page)

He
didn’t really want to be the test subject.

Then Charles River sent the lab 101 mice instead of 100 for Ameil’s next experiment. It wasn’t an uncommon mistake; Russ figured the guys who filled the orders just didn’t count
all
that carefully when they were putting the mice in the shipping containers. Russ realized he could just give mouse #101
his
virus and claim that he just put the mouse in as an “extra” in group C of Ameil’s study. Then he would say that mouse 101 died prematurely and it wouldn’t even foul up Ameil’s research.

Mouse 101 turned out not to be a very good mouse anyway, getting sick and losing weight. Russ was frustrated; he would have to find another mouse to test the safety of the viral vector. He took the mouse down to sacrifice it. He had intended to kill it early anyway since it needed to be excluded from Ameil’s work. As he picked it up to put it in the CO2 chamber, he took one last look at it. For a moment he wondered if it could be sick
because
of the DNA insertion rather than just coincidentally. Could he have made an error in one of the steps intended to be sure that there was no viral DNA in the viral shells?
Maybe the DNA I inserted combined with the viral DNA in some kind of…

The
sick mouse sneezed…

The worldwide “super flu” pandemic has been traced back to a ‘case zero.’ Case zero was a Russell Phillips who worked as a research tech at the University of Pittsburgh. Although the laboratory where Phillips worked did use viral vectors for DNA insertion, Phillips apparently did not work in that part of the lab. It seems unlikely that anyone will ever determine whether Phillips might have associated with someone who actually did use viral vectors because the exceedingly high mortality of the super flu has resulted in the death of everyone who worked in that lab. Even the hospital at the University of Pittsburgh where Phillips first sought treatment is now an empty shell.

It seems a moot point as this efficient viral killer has spread extremely rapidly and
, no matter where it blossoms, it seems to kill approximately 95% of its victims. Somehow the virus got loose in the CDC and decimated the scientists there before they even began working on it. Medical facilities around the world have collapsed as physicians and researchers die or flee for their own lives.

Experts predict that
about half of the survivors of the virus will be killed by the collapse of civilization. If indeed the world’s population of 7 billion is reduced to 175,000,000, a population density not seen since about 1000 A.D., it seems unlikely that anyone will be interested in exactly who killed us all. They’ll just be trying to survive the end of civilization as we know it. Presumably, someday, when civilization reestablishes itself, someone may be interested in these words.

As I write this I’ve developed a headache and have started to cough…

Tarc stepped into the kitchen, carrying a full strap of firewood. He set it down; then bent to stack the pieces.

Behind him Daussie
quietly said, “Tarc, I’ll stack the wood if you’ll take these two plates to the big men by the fireplace.”

Tarc
rolled his eyes, “
You’re
the server.
I
do the grunt work.”
She always claims she’s not strong enough to carry wood,
he thought with irritation.

His mother speared him with an eye, “
Tarc, you take the plates to those two men. They’re… not nice people.”

“
If so, why do
I
have to deal with them?!”

“
Tarc!” She paused, frowning, then shook her head, “Just take it to them.”

With a long suffering sigh,
Tarc stood and turned. He grabbed the two plates of roast pork and potatoes and headed for the door. Behind him Daussie crouched over the firewood.

Out in the main room of the
tavern Tarc immediately saw the two men near the fireplace. Unkempt, they looked like they must be travelers. Something about their bearing made Tarc think they must once have been soldiers. However, the active soldiers that Tarc had seen looked much more professional than these men. Tarc approached their table and set down the two plates. To his astonishment, the big man reached a meaty paw out towards Tarc’s waist.

The man’s
hand stopped suddenly when he’d lifted his eyes enough to see who’d delivered the plates. “Hey,” he said, eyes narrowing, “where’s the cute little blonde?”

Tarc
had stepped back to avoid the hand. After a mental hiccough, he realized the man was talking about his sister! “Um, she’s working in the kitchen.”

“Well, tell her we want
her
to wait our table, not some
boy
.”

Speechless,
Tarc turned and headed back to the kitchen. He felt stunned on several levels. First, that someone thought Daussie was pretty. Second, that if he were Daussie he wouldn’t want to wait on those animals either. Third, that no matter how annoying he thought Daussie was, he loathed the soldiers for their… attitude towards her.

Not knowing what to say, when
Tarc arrived back in the kitchen he avoided Daussie’s eyes. He simply took his strap from her and went for more wood. Daussie resumed helping Tarc’s mother with meal preparation.

When
Tarc arrived back in the kitchen with another strap of wood he noticed that instead of chattering gaily like Daussie normally did, she performed her tasks silently. Tarc normally found Daussie’s incessant talking a daily annoyance. But, her newborn silence felt like the oppressive quiet that came over a room when someone had died. Tarc’s gut clenched with a dread he couldn’t explain.

He’d spent much of his life tormenting his sister
. Why did it bother him so much when someone else upset her?

A minute later their mother plunked down three more plates of food.
For a moment silence reigned, as if no one really knew what to do with them. Daussie stopped stock still and stared at them like they were snakes. Quietly she said, “Mama… I don’t want to go back out there.”

Before his mother could turn to him,
Tarc picked up the three plates and headed back out to the big room. As he entered Tarc wondered over the fact he was doing his sister’s job without complaint. Irritatedly, he realized he didn’t know which table the plates were for. He looked around the great room and saw that only one table seated three patrons. He headed that way.

Arriving at the table
Tarc asked them if they’d ordered the potatoes and sausage.

The three men nodded, and
Tarc set down their plates, taking their money. He glanced at the two men Daussie hadn’t wanted to serve, but only briefly during his turn back toward the kitchen. He had just begun to wonder whether he needed to take orders from any of the other tables when the big soldier barked at him, “Boy! I thought I told you to send the little blond bint back out here?”

Panic struck through
Tarc and his shoulders stiffened. Rather than respond beyond the momentary halt, he simply continued on his way back to the kitchen.

Behind himself he heard the unmistakable scrape of the big soldier’s chair sliding back. Then came the paralyzing thump of the big man’s stride as the soldier followed in
Tarc’s wake.

Reaching the kitchen,
Tarc hissed at Daussie, “Outside! Now!”

H
is mother and his sister stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then, faster than Tarc would have believed, Daussie disappeared out the door. Tarc turned to the large dishwashing tub and industriously plunged his hands into the soapy water before the soldier filled the opening.

“Boy! Are you ignoring me?!”

Tarc turned speechlessly to stare at the enormous man with wide eyes.

His mother, to
Tarc’s great surprise, sounded completely unintimidated, “What do you want?” Eva asked in a clipped fashion. She almost always used little pleasantries when speaking to customers, so Tarc felt some surprise that she could be so abrupt.

The big man turned to her, “I fancy the pretty little blonde wench. I told the retard there,” he indicated
Tarc with his eyes, “to send her back to my table, but I haven’t seen her yet. So now I’m telling
you
.” He lifted an eyebrow, “Send her back to my table when she gets back from wherever she’s gone.”

Tarc
’s mother spoke evenly, in a fashion that belied the fury Tarc could sense in the trembling of the hand that had picked up the big meat cleaver. She said, “I’ve sent her on an errand. And… she’s only thirteen.”

The big man grinned, showing a gap at his left upper canine, “I’ll be here for a while, so send her in as soon as she gets back. I
like
‘em young.”

The man turned and left
without hearing Eva say, “We’re not running that kind of place here!”

What kind of place?
Tarc wondered. But then his mother turned to him and said, “Tell Daussie to run down to the deputies’ station and offer them a free dinner. I have a feeling
that
man’s going to be trouble.” She wiped her hair back, “Then go out and tell your dad what’s going on. While you’re out there, ask him if there are any new customers you should take orders from.”

With a feeling of unreality,
Tarc dried his hands and stepped outside. He found Daussie huddled behind the coats and the little mud room. Without any of his customary taunts or jibes, he simply passed on his mother’s instructions and then headed back through the kitchen.

Slipping behind the long bar,
Tarc stepped close to his father. He saw that Daum’s eyes were already intensely focused on the big soldier. Without looking at the man himself, Tarc said, “Mama has sent Daussie to the deputy shack to offer them a free dinner. Did you hear what the big man said about Daussie?”

Tarc
’s father only nodded, his jaw working.

“Mama’s asked me to serve for now. Are there any new customers Daussie didn’t take orders from?”

“By the door,” his father said, pointing with his chin.

Their little tavern got busier with the evening crowd. Daussie returned from her errand and continued doing some of the heavy chores that Tarc usually did. Shortly thereafter three of the Sheriff’s deputies showed up for their free dinner. It made Tarc feel much better to have them present in the big room even though he noticed they were much smaller than the stranger. Tarc continued waiting tables, a job he usually hated. Normally, he would have been angry at Daussie for saddling him with it, but instead felt some surprise upon realizing that
he
didn’t want her to be out to the big room any more than she wanted to be there.

Suddenly
, as he passed the soldiers’ table, he found himself restrained by a meaty hand clamped to his elbow. “Where’s the blond? I told you to send her along.”

Angrily
Tarc said, “She wants nothing to do with you!”

Tarc
found himself jerked violently around to face the soldier. The man’s big knife touched the skin just under Tarc’s breastbone, pointing up towards his heart. With an angry hiss, the man growled, “Did you just
disrespect
me boy?”

A sudden silence fell over the tavern
as all eyes turned their way. Tarc felt a small squirt of warm piss escape his bladder. His heart thumped hard in his chest. He swallowed. Staring into the big man’s eyes, Tarc felt a preternatural sensation that he could feel things inside the man’s head. He became aware of the globes of the man’s eyes. From his experience in butchering animals brought in by hunters, he suddenly recognized the cavities behind the man’s nose, the gelatinous shape of what must be his brain, the pulsations in the arteries, the air in his windpipe. Tarc heard chairs scraping back and the distinct bang that said his father had just dropped the little section of the bar’s surface behind him as he came out into the big room. With a stutter, Tarc said, “N-no sir.”

Behind
his shoulder Tarc heard Deputy Jarvis say, “You’ll let the boy go if you know what’s good for you.”

Tarc
risked a glance to his right, seeing deputies Jarvis and Miller, hands on the hilts of their swords. He felt like he should be relieved by this show of support from the town’s officers, but the pricking of the big sheath knife evaporated any such sensations.

Then
the knife left his skin.

The big man shoved his dagger back in its sheath and stood.
Tarc stared up at him. The man was huge! And he looked very hard. Suddenly, by comparison, Jarvis and the other deputies appeared, not only small, but also soft and childlike.

The big man’s hand rested b
riefly on the hilt of his sword. A sword that Tarc noticed was much longer than the ones the deputies carried. He grinned; then stamped his boot, shaking the floor and causing everyone around him, including the deputies, to suddenly jump back. He barked a laugh, but to Tarc’s immense relief he made no move to draw his sword. “We were just leaving,” he said in a tone full of disdain. His eyes traveled from one deputy’s face to the other until he’d taken in all three, as if memorizing who they were. He lifted his chin, “You
pissants
are gonna regret this.”

The big man and his companion slowly exited the still silent room
.

E
very eye in the tavern tracked their passage.

For a few minutes the usual clamor of the big room remained subdued. Then it gradually expanded back towards normal.

Daussie went back to serving and
Tarc complained because she’d fallen behind bringing in firewood.

***

As usual Mama and Daussie went to bed earlier than Tarc and his father. They got up early to open the tavern for breakfasters.

Tarc
closed and bolted the door when the last customer had shuffled out. His eyes swept the room for undone chores, but halted on his dad who stood behind the bar with a faraway look in his eye. What arrested Tarc’s eye however, was his father’s big sheath knife.

It stood
on its point on the surface of the bar.

At first
Tarc thought his dad had buried the point of the blade in the wood. He found
that
hard to believe because Tarc’s father worked hard to maintain the condition of everything in the tavern. Then Tarc realized he could see the point of the big blade, merely resting on the surface, not submerged in it. He walked closer, trying to understand what kept the knife from falling over. When he got close enough to see that
nothing
held it from falling he said, “Dad?”

His father
blinked.

T
he knife tilted over.

H
is father caught it before it clattered onto the bar’s surface. “Yes?”

“How did you do that?”
Tarc whispered.

“Do what?”

“Balance the knife on its point.”

Tarc
had the impression of his father’s mind returning from someplace far away. Rather than answering the question,
or
trying to pretend that a knife balancing on its point was commonplace, his father asked a question of his own. “Where’s the sun?”

Wordlessly
Tarc pointed down at it, through the floor and somewhat to the west. He could feel it there, incredibly hot, though incredibly distant. Very different from the glowing coals resting in the fireplace across the room behind him. Different too, from the banked coals in the stove in the kitchen, or the small hot flames of the lamps above the bar, in the kitchen, and scattered around the great room. Tarc could also sense the amorphous mass of his father’s warm flesh directly in front of him, but he could barely detect the warmth of his mother and sister in their rooms upstairs.