The Zen Gene (26 page)

He was startled by the seeming nearness of his voice. In the darkness it sounded like he whispered it in his ear. Though he was close he could not pinpoint his location. He made sure he did not look at the fire pit because he did not want to blow what little night vision he had. He lost a lot of it from exposure to the cab light when he opened the truck door. He was not sure if Sedulca knew where he was but he guessed he didn’t or he would have simply shot him by now. His knee protested as he lowered himself down to a crouch beside the front wheel making himself into a smaller target. He moved slowly because he knew that the human eye is designed to detect movement in low light.

“Come over by the fire Doc,” he said, “or I’ll put a couple into that tent.”

He heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet being chambered but the mechanical sound did not last long enough for him to figure out where he was standing. He decided to stay put. He was bluffing. He would not shoot blindly into the tent because he could not know who he might hit. One good thing about his threat was he realized Sedulca couldn’t see any better than he could and did not know where he was hiding and he was not about to show himself.

It was a standoff.

Then his heart sank. He heard the sound of the tent zipper opening and he watched Tyler climb out. He stood beside the dying embers looking sleepy as he picked up the remaining firewood he gathered earlier and added it to the coals. The fire brightened and when it did Sedulca stepped out of the darkness and moved towards him. He stopped four meters away and pointed the gun at Tyler’s head.

“Come on out Doc or I will shoot the kid,” he said.

He had no choice now. He never fired a gun before. Although he could now see him he knew the odds of hitting him at this distance were bad. The only reasonable thing to do at this point, he thought, was come out and maybe later Sedulca would let his guard down and give him an opportunity to hit him with the Taser. He wished he took time to look at the damn thing because he did not know how it worked.

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 for 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.