D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“It won’t mutate.”

“And man will never walk on the moon,” Chris replied.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know, Sarah. You get the point.”

“I get a point.”

Jerry walked in. His pistol was aimed at Chris. He went silently to Sarah and handed the gun to her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Do you want me to hang around?” He asked.

“No, you guys keep an eye out,” she replied as she looked at her watch.

“Ok,” he replied.

Jerry left the room. They sat in silence. He stared at the muzzle of the gun. So this is what it was coming down to. The cold, dark orifice contained his future, or lack thereof.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Chris said.

“That may be so,” Sarah replied. “There’s something about you that I liked. If everything had gone smoothly today, I would have let you in with us. Seth would have complained, but I would have done it anyway.” She winced.

“You need help now more than ever, Sarah.”

She reached down and pulled a bottle out of her backpack. “All I need is right in here,” she said as she looked at the clear liquid in the bottle. “Gen96 is alive and well.”

“You can’t do it alone,” he said as she replaced the bottle.

“I can do anything.” Her voice sounded as if she said it more for her benefit than his, as if she were in some sort of a rehab program – step number one, believe in yourself.

She sat directly across from him, staring, keeping the pistol in her right hand pointed at his chest.

“Then just do it,” Chris said. “I’m sick of all of this bullshit. I was a normal person with a normal life. Now look at me. I’ve been shot at, beat up, cut open – it only seems natural that now I’ll get shot for good.”

She was going to do it. There was no doubt about the look on her face as her eyes narrowed and her lips parted slightly. She was detaching herself from her emotions in preparation for pulling the trigger. Ending a human life – what a concept. Her finger moved slightly, increasing the pressure on the trigger.

If he didn’t do something now, he was dead. He met her gaze, counting in his head – one, two, three.

He lifted up the table and drove it forward into her with all his body weight behind it. She squeezed the trigger. The motion of the table had pushed the pistol to the side. The bullet slammed harmlessly into the wall. He screamed as he rammed the table into her. Her chair started to slide. She fought to gain some sort of control until the legs of the chair hit an irregularity in the floor. It went over backwards. He followed. She cried out as he and the heavy table landed on her.

Her hand, clutching the pistol, stuck out from the side of the table. Chris rolled over, wrenched the gun from her weakening grip, and stood up. Pain tore through his broken arm and he cried out, but it didn’t matter. He felt and didn’t feel it at the same time. All he could think about was getting out of here. Alive.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. He turned as Mark burst into the room waving a gun.

“Freeze!” Chris yelled. Mark paused briefly before raising the gun.

Chris squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared. The slug slammed into Mark’s chest, which erupted in a gusher of blood. He fell forward. Sarah had squirmed out from under the table, and now was inches from her trembling, dying comrade. His gasping breaths shot spittle onto her wide-eyed face.

Jerry ran in, wisely stopping when Chris told him to. They all watched Mark die – three solid minutes until he was finally still. Chris picked up Mark’s pistol and shook his head. He motioned with the barrel of the gun for Jerry to move beside Sarah.

“You should’ve listened to me, Sarah,” Chris said in a trembling voice. He couldn’t take his gaze from Mark’s body – he had done that. Oh my God! “I gave you the option of letting me go, but you forced my hand. That’s your fault!” He pointed to Mark’s body.

Sarah’s shoulders slumped and her head hung down on her chest as she sat next to her dead cohort. She slid sideways, away from the spreading pool of blood. Some of it had already touched her jeans and it streaked across the floor – an appropriate trail of blood.

Jerry scowled. “So what’re you going to do now?”

Chris picked up a chair from the floor and sat down. Good question. Christ, was he any better than Sarah? He could still feel the recoil of the gun as he squeezed the trigger. The blast still echoed within the recesses of his mind. He had killed a man. It was absolutely justifiable – the right outcome for the moment but that didn’t negate the fundamental fact that he had sent someone into eternity, pushed them off this mortal coil into the incomprehensible abyss.

As he stared at Mark’s motionless body, lost in guilt and remorse and revulsion, Sarah leapt up from the floor and tackled him. Jerry followed her lead and the two of them piled on Chris, pushing him out of the chair and onto the floor as they wrestled desperately to get the gun out of his hand.

“I don’t care what you do or how you do it, Arthur. You’ve got to find these people – to stop this thing once and for all,” the President said.

“I’m working on it, sir,” Arthur replied. He wasn’t going to apologize or grovel. He was doing everything he could, and what the President thought about his performance wasn’t his highest priority right now, although it was up there.

“I’m not impressed,” the President said.

“We’re trying to ID the bodies from the Suburban,” Arthur said.

“What good is that?” The President replied. “You already said that Sarah Burns wasn’t in the van. It was two guys and a bunch of kids.”

“At least we stopped them from getting onto the planes and out of the country. If that had happened, we would have been too late anyway. We’ve got to give Chris Foster time, sir.”

“What makes you think he’s even going to turn up again? He’s the one who sent you to the empty house.”

“But he gave us the Suburban. I can’t explain why nobody was at the house.”

“I don’t like it,” the President said. “There’s too much at stake for us to rely on this guy.”

“We’ve got people pouring into the region. We’re doing everything right, we just need a break.”

“How much time do you propose we give him?”

“Until tomorrow. Noon. Then we go to the media and get the world looking for him and the rest of them. I’m sure he’s going to get in touch with us.”

The President muted his line and leaned off camera. After five minutes he came back on. “We need to contain this now. We can’t give it any more time. It’s too risky. I want an immediate media blitz and containment protocols for a thirty-mile region including aviation.”

“You realize what this is going to do?”

“Of course but I’m not going to be the President who sits by and lets this happen. Not on my watch. I’ve already kicked this off from my end so you don’t have to worry about the protocols, all you have to do is find these people. Got it?”

Arthur was shocked that the President had reacted in such an extreme manner but he couldn’t second guess him. This was uncharted territory and overreacting was a deserved response.

“I understand, Mr. President.”

“Keep me posted,” the President said as he hung up.

Arthur held the receiver in his hand until it emitted a loud siren sound before placing it back in its cradle. His stomach rumbled as he dropped with a groan into a folding metal chair and put his feet up on the table. All his team could do was wait and prepare. The media blitz would generate all kinds of activities.