Ike Hamill - The Hunting Tree Trilogy

“If you’re right we can actually prove this thing works, and we’ll be able to help this kid, too,” said Bill.

“Yeah,” said Mike, “and the police aren’t going to be any help. They’re already convinced that I’m a charlatan.”

“They’re generally a little too pragmatic to accept that kind of information,” said Bill.

“Like engineers aren’t pragmatic?” asked Mike.

“True,” said Bill, “but I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit first-hand.”

“So to speak,” said Mike.

Bill smiled.

They ate and talked, taking their time once they compared notes and understood that Mike’s rogue only moved at night.

After paying the check, Bill brought up the question of their next steps—“We’re going to need some high-quality maps.”

“No problem,” said Mike. “I’ve got every map published in my back seat. Let’s go use the device and see where this thing is holed up.”

“I’ve got it wired up in the car,” Bill said, smiling.

The two men adjourned to the parking lot. They spread the maps out on Bill’s hood and powered the detector from Bill’s car. Mike made a dot representing the diner and drew a line from their position in the direction of the strongest signal.

“What do we do if we find this thing?” asked Bill. “If you’re right, it kills at will. It must be incredibly strong.”

“I don’t think it moves at all during the day,” said Mike. “If we find it, we might be able to immobilize it completely as long as we get to it while the sun’s up.”

“I still think we should be able to weaken its energy. If we can detect it, we certainly should be able to counteract it,” said Bill.

“We don’t have time to experiment,” said Mike. “It’s moving roughly west to east, and from this latest reading, it could be within fifty miles of where the kid lives. That’s only two nights, if it’s moving at full speed. I say we track it down now and go at it with physical restraints.”

“Well, at least we could figure out what we’re dealing with,” said Bill.

“Yeah, exactly,” agreed Mike. “I live close to here. Let’s drop off my car and go in yours.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Bill.

“READY FOR ME YET?” Ken asked his girlfriend over his phone. He stood with a paper bag near the back door to her animal clinic. Sharon owned and ran a small veterinary clinic just a few blocks down from Ken’s practice.

“Yeah,” said Sharon. “I’ve got Lisa doing a training session. She wanted to run it anyway. You’ve got thirty minutes in the lab.”

“Can you let me in?” asked Ken.

“Oh!” said Sharon. She hung up and pressed open the door to let Ken into the lab. “Do you have everything you need?” she asked, standing at the doorway.

“I think so,” said Ken. “Where does biohazard go when I’m cleaning up?” he asked.

“Big trash can,” she said.

Ken laughed. “I’ll be done soon.” He smiled and kissed her cheek. “Thanks again.”

“Just don’t go bragging to any of your buddies. You’ll have my ass in a sling.” She backed through the door to the examination room.

Ken pulled the sample from his paper bag and fetched the test tubes and slides he would need to conduct his experiments. For a target, to test to see if there were any factors in Davey’s blood that were actually aggressive, Ken sliced a tiny patch of cells from the side of his finger. He used a scalpel from his bag and then carefully restored the instrument to its case.

After running a sample through the centrifuge, Ken extracted a clump of cells from the wall of the tube and laid samples out on several slides. He used different dyes to highlight the various types of cells he hoped to find and moved his prepared slides to the microscope to view the results.

The first slides showed completely normal results. Pulling back from the microscope, he blinked his unaccustomed eyes and nodded to himself. He chastised himself for humoring Mike’s crazy theory and demanding another blood sample from Davey.

It wasn’t until Ken gave Davey’s cells a fresh sample of his finger that he detected anything unusual. On that slide, instead of simply isolating and attacking the foreign cells, Davey’s immune response erupted in bizarre activity. Ken found a line of Davey’s white blood cells, organized away from Ken’s own cells on the slide. Instead of acting independently, the cells seemed to be moving in concert to plot against Ken’s skin. As he watched, a line of small projectiles moved against the enemy cells, and punctured their outer walls. Instead of killing them, the missiles took over and turned the cells against each other.

Ken watched in awe as his finger cells on the slide turned from placid skin into marauding attackers. Unable to immediately believe the evidence, Ken flipped back and forth between the slides, comparing the normal ecosystem of a slide consisting of all Davey-cells to the pandemonium that existed on slides combining Davey-cells with Ken-cells.

He broke his promise and made his way through the examination room to find Sharon. She stood at the back of a pack who listened to a lecture from Sharon’s partner. Ken waved to her, and she excused herself silently.

“Smooth,” she said when they were alone in the lab. “Thanks.”

“I just need someone else to look at this,” Ken explained.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me.”

Ken prepared fresh samples and didn’t give his girlfriend any hint of what to expect.

Sharon pulled up one of the tall bench stools and moved her eyes in front of the microscope. “Seems pretty normal,” she said, adjusting the first slide. “Heathy complement of all the cells I would expect. A couple of contaminants here, but a pretty well-prepared sample.” Sharon moved the controls of the scope precisely and canvassed the community of dyed cells.

“Ready for the next one?” asked Ken.

“Not quite done,” she trailed off. “Hold on,” she said, “something here seems to have triggered an immune response. I’ve got some pretty aggressive activity here.”

“Aggressive,” said Ken, remembering Mike’s caution. “Wait until you see this.” He held the fourth slide, wanting to skip to the revelation.

“Bring it on,” said Sharon, intrigued.

Mike’s carefully gloved hand passed the glass slide to Sharon’s bare hand. She was accustomed to handling samples and fluids and barely paid attention to what she touched anymore. Very few pathogens possessed the ability to move from pets to humans, so she rarely wore gloves for lab work. In this case, neither Ken nor Sharon could have foreseen the colonizing nature of Davey’s virile cells. Some had moved from the slide cover to the edge of the bare glass and attacked Sharon’s hand as she first touched the slide.

“Wow,” she said, looking at the new slide. “This is incredible. It’s like they’re staging a coordinated…” A new thought crossed her mind—“Jesus, I hope these things don’t manage to get airborne!”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” admitted Ken.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Sharon, returning her examination. “It’s not really even a possibility, but if your patient was here, I wouldn’t want to be in the room if he sneezed. Hand me that bottle, would you?” She pointed at a blue bottle of antiseptic cleanser.

Ken passed her the bottle and watched as Sharon took a long swab from a jar and dipped it in the blue liquid. Bracing her wrist with her other hand, she gently introduced the tip of the swab to the edge of the slide, and held it there until the blue had spread between the thin slide cover and the sample slide. She dropped the swab in a metal trash can and put her eyes back to the scope.