9.4.2002
A cougar sat on a rock, absorbing the light of the setting sun. It was an oddly colored cat. She idly flicked her tail at a fly. She would start hunting, soon.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and drifted off into a contented sleep, tinged slightly by hunger.
“What’s the likelihood of the mutation?”
“About 1 in 250 million, I’d say. It guarantees immunity only to the neurological effects, by the way. The aerosol is still caustic, so anyone so protected might still die of burns. If he inhaled it directly.”
“What’s this I hear?”
A woman stepped into the room. Not exactly a human woman, though. She had a feline face, feline ears and a feline tail, in addition to pale grey fur streaked with light blue.
She knew the history of her kind. They had been created by a group of extremely sick men who wanted to be gods. They had modified the genes of the animals that they felt were common enough not to gain any respect, had mixed and matched with genomes, and they inserted their modified gene packages into zygotes, which matured… Unfortunately for those men, when their subjects matured, they were bright enough to break out of the large jungle-area they were kept in, stealing enough equipment on the way out to contact the news media. But they soon discovered a drawback: they required monthly doses of a virus meant to maintain them in their current state, because their genetic configuration was unstable. Left to themselves…
But when they returned to their creators, the damage had been done. A couple of the scientists, who were blessed with more moral sense than the others, published a paper on how to make the needed viruses, and then disappeared from the face of the earth. Their creations were forced to leave the jungle compound, and then to spread all over the world, for various reasons. Most had gone in small groups, so reproduction… took place. They were a vast minority – there were three hundred thousand of them in a population nearing seven billion – but they were known. Hated by many, loved by few, but known by all.
That, however, was history. Sixty years had passed.
The cat-woman asked her question again when her employers did not answer.
Capt. Dr. Samuel de Jude (ret.), MD, PhD, smiled, a bit grimly. “We were discussing some things we have learned about the last – and nastiest – addition to the nerve gas arsenal. You remember what you learned about VX, Ela?”
She nodded. “A cholesterinase inhibiter. It can be absorbed by inhalation, ingestion or skin contact. Highly corrosive, too, and it floats well on a breeze – unlike the earlier agents, like Sarin and Tabun.”
The younger man standing next to him introduced himself as Lieutenant Robert Parker. “There’s a new one out. It’s marketed as a method of cleaning ship’s bunkers – a pesticide, if you will. It kills anything with a nervous system, and many things that don’t – but it breaks down in a simple salt-water solution. Some brilliant fellow released its formula and makings, and we now know it as WB. Like all the others, it’s a liquid, and as a weapon it’s explosively dispersed. It’s not as corrosive as VX, but it’s far more deadly. It does something to the dopaminergic system that we don’t yet understand. There was an ‘accident’ at the facility that produces it a couple of months ago; we suspect an attempt to steal some of it.” Parker wiped his forehead. “Those who got a full dose of it died – within ten seconds, I am told. Those who absorbed less – and the fatal dose in air is 3 ppb – were almost totally paralysed. It’s like tetanus. They have recovered some motor functions, but it damaged their brains too… They are, one and all, schizophrenic to the extreme. Those who could manage it became violent, and two were gunned down by the medics in the lab where we were holding them.”
Dr. de Jude nodded, and then Ela suddenly realized where their latest group of highly odd patients came from.
“Why are they here?”
“Well,” said the doctor, “remember that this is the best lab for research on neurolytic agents. If there’s anywhere these men’s injuries can be treated, it’s here. And we may be able to develop an antidote to it.”
“Atropine?”
Lt. Parker shook his head. “We tried that. Makes it worse, actually – it reacts with WB and makes it hemolytic. The animals we tried that on disintegrated when we examined them.”
Ela’s pupils contracted to slits, as her ears and whiskers fell back.
“It’s real nasty stuff,” said the young officer. “That’s why we don’t use it.”
“I bet you’re arming weapons with it right now.”
Lieutenant Robert Parker stiffened, and his face turned to stone.
Ela spat on his uniform. “I knew it! You say it’s so nasty – and it’s illegal, all gas weapons are – but you’re going ahead and preparing to use it. The hypocrisy here is stunning.” She bristled, making her look half again her real size. She turned and stalked away, as only a feline can do.
Lt. Parker turned to the doctor. “Kind of catty, en’t she?”
The world ended a year later. Ela was enjoying a vacation from helping victims of brain damage cope in the fast-paced world they lived in. She had put aside her records, her computer, her NIH mess kit, and gone to the shore. From there she had rented a small boat that had an RV bolted into the frame: a cheap houseboat. She stocked it, went out, and went fishing.
It was on her fourth day of life on the water when her radio woke her, blaring out the three-toned emergency signal that the National Defense Department used in its alerts.
The signal was full of static, but the message involved something about “war” and “reserves” and “underground… or seawater.” She didn’t know what to make of it, but then the words “no antidote” filtered through the noise.
Perhaps it was time to go home. She turned the navigation system to ‘active’ and waited for it to align with the satellites above her.
After about ten seconds, the screen beeped. She sighed in relief – usually it took just an instant to link up. But then she read the message and froze in horror.
[no signal]
Well, if there was war – as the radio alert had implied – the satellites would have always been first to go. For that reason, astronavigation was taught in all schools of boat command, and any boat with a range of more than ten miles was required to have the equipment for it.
She got out the tripod and the sextant. She checked her watch and noted the time, then sighted on the setting sun. She noted the angle reading, too.
Then she looked out on the water, trying to recall the exact procedure for finding location. She saw a whale surface not a 500 feet out – wait.
Using the binoculars that had come with the boat, she studied the object. It was a submarine, she saw, but the biggest damn submarine she had ever known of. And it was at least a quarter of a mile away. Fascinated, she watched hatches behind the sail rise on hydraulic lifts. What was going on?
She waved to the boat, and then used the spotlight to signal it. W-H-A-T-B-R-I-N-G-S-Y-O-U-B-O-Y-S-H-O-M-E-S-O-E-A-R-L-Y-
Then she saw what was under the hatches that had lifted. They were holding rocket rails.
The hatches lifted until they were at a sixty degree angle to the surface of the water. Then the deck of the boat disappeared in a gigantic ball of flame, with a roar that hurt Ela’s ears. Had the boat been hit?
No, just the opposite. Six missiles shot out of the spreading firestorm, rising into the air. After six or seven seconds, they leveled out. Their rocket engines died, and wings popped out of their bodies. With a muted whine, small turbofans took over and sent the missiles diving for the ocean… and they flattened out six feet above the water.
Ela was horrified – not only that she had just seen a missile attack launched against her home country, but also because one of the missiles was headed straight for her boat.
Throwing herself to the helm, she cranked the engine desperately. It turned over again and again, and then she opened the throttle all the way. It started, and her boat lurched as a hollow boom underneath announced the presence of a propeller, spinning so fast it was boiling the water around it. She cursed the machine, and kicked at the panel, trying to make the boat move faster… It wouldn’t. The missile was still heading straight for her… She closed her eyes.
That was the reason she missed seeing the missile speed by, missing the boat by less than twenty feet. She opened them again when the boat was rocked by the wake that the missile had left in the air.
Now that she had survived, it was time to leave. The propeller was finally biting properly, and the boat was accelerating. Five knots, then ten, then twelve…
A flashing light from the submarine caught here eyeS-T-O-P-Y-O-U-R-B-O-A-T-A-N-D-S-H-U-T-D-O-W-N-E-N-G-I-N-E-S-.-P-R-E-P-A-R-E-F-O-R-B-O-A-R-D-I-N-G-A-N-D-C-A-P-T-U-R-E-.-Y-O-U-R-B-O-A-T-W-I-L-L-B-E-D-E-S-T-R-O-Y-E-D-.
Not good! She cut the engine and opened the brakes, slowing the boat rapidly. Carefully, she tucked a small Czech weapon into her belt. A rubber raft full of men left the submarine and came towards her.
When the boat was alongside, the officer stood up. With a Persian accent, he ordered her to step into the raft, as two of his men covered them and the other two jumped onto her deck and started searching.
She dove again, to the left, and bullets sped through the space she had been in. She fired backwards, into the cabin, and was rewarded by cries as she hit the marines in there. Then she fired through the siding of her boat at the officer, who was too surprised to have sat down. With him dead, she jumped up twice more, and put two bullets in the heads of the remaining marines.
She looked back at the submarine. There was a pop, and a white tube shot out of the sail. It ignited a rocket engine and came towards her. She jumped down into the raft and sped away from the houseboat. The engine on this raft was small and quiet, but it made the thing rush forward like a frightened squirrel.
She was about a hundred yards out when the small missile hit the houseboat. There was a puff of dirty grey smoke, and a hollow boom, as it exploded; then, a moment later, the boat itself exploded, with a roar and a fireball. Seconds later, all that remained of it was a flaming oil slick behind her.
Apparently satisfied that she was dead, the boat commander left the scene. The submarine sank beneath the swells as it moved south.
The batteries on the marine’s raft gave out an hour later, so she rowed for another two, then put on a life jacket and swam for shore.
When she got there, the army, National Guard, Reserves, and maybe even the Boy Scouts had been mobilized. She went to the marina, explained the situation to the guards there, and then went back to the train station – only to find it closed to civilians.
Oh well, she thought, I can still get the virus from the local hospital.
Later that month, she went to the office in the hospital that dealt with such things. Or she would have, had she ever made it.
A small airplane had flown overhead – it was a pusher biplane, very old, and flying at treetop height. It dropped soda bottles that exploded into clouds of mist when they hit the ground. The mist quickly dissipated… but its effect didn’t. Ela had ducked into a doorway when the first bottle landed near her. She smelled a slightly acrid odor, and felt a burning in her nose and throat. It was corrosive, but… what was it?
The other people in the area were not thinking about that, however. Within seconds of the bottle’s bursting, they thrashed, squirmed, screamed, and fell. The cry was not only from this part of the city: she could hear it, a collective scream of agony and despair and death from every mouth in the city.
The people who had fallen around her were dead. But why wasn’t she…
Oh, no. It wasn’t possible! Why her, out of two hundred fifty million people, was she chosen to live in this hell?
She ran to the hospital, but wasn’t surprised to see that it was in the same condition as everywhere else. Dead bodies everywhere, some with foam at the mouths. A few of the staff, recognizing what was happening, had reached for the atropine… She recognized them by their half-melted bodies, in pools of blood that literally coated the entire corridor floor.
She tried to find the office that could help her, the one that carried stocks of the stabilization virus. She found a likely one, and tried the door. It was locked, so she shot a half-circle around the handle and kicked the rest of the door out of the way.
Inside there was a man who was still alive. Could he, too be immune? But then he looked up at her, and she knew otherwise. His eyes were unfocused, and he was looking all around him in desperate fear, seemingly hearing something that she could not pick up.
This man had, for whatever reason, received less than the fatal dose… but it had still had its effect… His eyes were suddenly full of hatred.
“You…” he said, softly. “You did this. They tell me you did this!”
“I didn’t. They’re wrong! They’re lying to you, they’re not even real!” She screamed at him. It seemed to her that now would be an appropriate time to panic.
“I don’t hare, it’s all the blame to see,” he said, clanging quite badly. “I’ll do what must be done. I will!”
He grabbed his office chair and threw it at her, and then reached for the computer on his desk.
She ducked the chair, but as he hefted the computer, she drew the gun again and shot him. Again, and again, and again. With two bullets left, she walked over to his body and fired them into his brain at point-blank range, and reloaded.
Opening the door in the back wall with the madman’s pass card, she looked around. The room was refrigerated, and along the walls… banks of tubes, each one with a serial number.
Ela tried to remember the number group that she belonged to, based on the genetic code that she had inherited from the first of the Chimaeras, as they had been known. She found the tubes, and in another part of the room found a box of lancets. She stuck all the tubes with her number on them – about twenty – and took a matching number of lancets. She stuck all of them in her pocket and left.
On her way out, the small biplane swooped by again – no, wait, it was flying erratically, and then it was in the store across the street, and the world as Ela saw it became light and heat and noise and smoke.
She picked herself up off the ground and stared at the whole row of stores that was starting to burn. She ran, wincing at wounds caused by flying glass, but she needed to get to somewhere safe…
She found a bridge over the river. Everyone on it, in all the cars, had died. Many had hit each other or gone through the rails, so the bridge was not stable, except at the bases. She limped into an access closet, turned on the light, and began inspecting her body.
Her face, arms and legs were covered in soot, and there were a few nicks here and there that were starting to become irritated. But the worst wound was on her left hip, under her pocket. A piece of metal had embedded itself there, and driven through her soaked jeans to hit her leg… and on the way, destroyed all the virus and the lancets.
She sat down in despair, and then decided to move on as best she could. She went out to a car and tore out a piece of an armrest; placing it in her mouth, she lay down and yanked at the metal in her leg.
When she came to, about a minute later, the wound in her leg was oozing blook, but not seriously; the fragment, about half an inch long, was by her hand. She spit out the armrest and found that she had bitten through it. Then she got up and thought hard.
It was time to move. She got started on the disabled vehicles around her.
Three weeks later, she was in
This part of the country had not been hit hard, either by
war or terrorists like the one in the biplane who wiped out
She was well supplied with food, but noticed something odd one day. She was having trouble standing, and had been much more on all fours than she had before. She tried to talk to herself aloud – a method of self-therapy that had helped her before – but she realized that words weren’t forming.
Then she realized that it was. I’m reverting. Without the stabilizing virus, I’m reverting to the original form, with all its limitations…
She put her hands over her face and wailed in fear and despair. In doing so, she caught the attention of a human hunter, hidden in a stand of trees. She smelled him as he approached, but didn’t care.
“Come on, kitty, what’s wrong?” He knelt about ten feet away, his gun ready but not pointed at her.
All she could do was snarl at him, but then he saw that there was something wrong. Her posture, and the sound of that snarl… He had heard that if they didn’t take some drug that they changed into something else.
“Come on, kitty. I’ll help you if you’ll help me.”
She lifted her eyes to meet his and nodded. She tried to speak again, but all that came out was an odd growling sound. She put out her hand – more of a paw now, she realized – and he held it in his and shook it.
The cougar flicked her eyes open on hearing something in the bushes. It was almost time to go hunting, and she would go herself if need be.
But no, this evening they would be together. A man dressed in deerskin, with what looked like a hand-made crossbow, was coming towards her. She slid off her rock and approached him, and he scratched her ears with his free hand.
“Let’s go hunting,” he said.
The oddly colored cougar followed him. She had dreamed something most peculiar, but somehow it didn’t feel right – not like a dream. Perhaps a memory – but no, when had she ever lived in a city?
She padded silently after the hunter, her grey and blue fur shining in the dying light.