The Methuselah Gene Read online

  “No,” she said, “I mean how did you know that I’d told them you left me?”

  “Because Walter told me, just before I killed him.” She looked into my eyes in disbelief, saying nothing. “Because Walter had just killed Darryl.”

  “Darryl,” Julie repeated, resurrecting the name. Then she took my arm. “Your friend, how is he involved?”

  “He’s not. He came here to help me, and it cost him his life. Now whoever’s responsible for all this is in that church.” I nodded toward the closed front door scarcely fifty feet ahead of us, from behind which we could hear voices chanting another hymn. Or blabbing it. We hesitated in front of the shattered windows of the barber shop, but then, when Julie saw me move forward again, she gripped my arm tighter. But still she didn’t try to stop me.

  “We should get out of here,” she whispered, as though the observation needed to be voiced, for the record. “There must be a way.”

  “This is the way,” I insisted, “if I want it to end here. If I want the man who set me up to pay.”

  I was surprised at my own determination, although I still expected Julie to offer another reason that might prevent me from making possibly my biggest mistake yet. I could tick off a dozen such reasons myself, knowing that curiosity killed not just cats. But she did not persist. Instead, her hand dropped altogether from my arm as she peered toward the door that hid our fate. The lady or the tiger? Maybe the lady had become a tiger.

  “Are you sure you want to face this?” I asked her. But I already knew the answer, because her eyes held the memory that had become her own motivation, and which now mirrored mine. This was why she wasn’t killed by whoever took her. Maybe her death was to be filmed, and Earl figured into that after he had his fun. Only Earl couldn’t get it up.

  No matter. Now it was time for a reckoning, a final judgment. And the guilty would pay, I would see to it.

  I put one arm around Julie’s shoulder again, and then we walked together toward the door of the church as though we were going to Sunday services. Just another married couple, on the way to hear a sermon. Only it wasn’t Sunday. It wasn’t even day. And there was one other difference between us and the other couples who may have entered earlier.

  We had a gun.

  27

  Ominously, the door was not locked. It did not even creak. As I opened it, slowly, I tried to imagine Pastor Felsen performing the special prayer service Walter had mentioned . . . Felsen ignoring the gunshots outside, not knowing who was being shot. Perhaps not even caring. Felsen, like the preacher I remembered listening to with my mother while we sat in the pew on endless Lord’s Day mornings, while the ceiling fans cut the high hot air above me like the propeller blades of P51 Mustang or Messerschmidt. But what Baptist preacher in my or anyone else’s memory would really have such a service on such a night?

  None would, I realized.

  None who were sane, that was.

  The heavy wooden door swung wide. We stepped quietly into the vestibule. The voice I now heard was unfamiliar to me. I couldn’t place it. Was it him?

  “Felsen,” Julie confirmed at a whisper, and I nodded.

  Indeed. From where we stood I could see part of the way into a mostly empty auditorium, where a woman stood in the aisle clasping her young son’s shoulders. They might have been me and my mother, thirty years ago. Only something was wrong here. Both were weeping, heads bowed. And they were at the back of what appeared to be . . .

  A line.

  Gripping my revolver tightly, I lifted it and moved toward the entrance. As I did, other memories flashed back to me. I had not been inside any church in years, but I remembered how it had been in another Baptist church we’d attended. A Reverend Billy Bob Williams had preached that damnation awaited those who did not accept the gift of eternal life, then. Hell was a place of darkness and gnashing of teeth, where the cries of the damned ascended forever, unheard. Amid dark sulfur flames that burned without end, your flesh would never be consumed there, no matter how hard you prayed it would . . . no matter how long you shrieked your prayers into the oily black sky. Yet heaven was a place where time did not exist, and you never got old, and the streets were paved in gold like transparent glass, and all you had to do to get there was make the right decision here, just like the nut case Jasper--who I'd met in a coffee shop back in Virginia--had said. Will you praise God, or trust Botox? Will you eat the good apple or the evil one with the worm inside? Will you be saved, or lost?

  When the remaining residents of Zion came into view, and I saw where they were looking, I lowered my gun and stared. But not because they begged forgiveness for their sins, which they appeared to do. It was more because of the line they were in, and due to the reason they waited . . . as every new Christian in every Baptist church is duly instructed to do.

  I tried to tell myself that this could not be happening, but it was. It was a special service, yes. Just as Walter had said. But the people—twenty or more women and children—were not here just to pray and sing.

  They were here to be baptized.

  Many wept as they waited their turn, under the watchful gaze of a man, a stranger who sat on the front row in a dark gray suit. I moved slowly along the aisle nearest the wall in order to see the man’s face.

  “Oh Lord,” bellowed Felsen from the baptismal tank, his eyes closed, his big hand resting behind an elderly woman’s back, “we ask You to cleanse our dear sister Lilly from the sins befallen us. May she not partake of Thy judgment come to Zion . . . amen!”

  Felsen dipped the old woman into the green baptismal water, which closed around her face. Then he opened his eyes to look down at her, and I saw something reflected there that hinted at terror and madness.

  “Buried in the likeness of Thy death . . .” he intoned solemnly while he held the woman under. Yet his own face contorted in hallucinatory revulsion, as though he was fighting something evil. Bubbles rose from the woman, who struggled, her feeble legs then kicking beneath Felsen’s strong arm. “. . . and raised from Thy holy water in the likeness of Thy resurrection,” the pastor concluded at last, and then lifted her out as she gasped on swallowed water. Felsen smiled as the old woman began to cough. Then the man on the front row lifted a camera, and snapped a photo. The Polaroid’s flash sliced into my dormant brain, bringing me out of my daze with an involuntary spasm, like what an epileptic felt.

  “What’s going on here?” Julie asked, from behind me. “What, in the name of all that’s . . .”

  I lifted my gun higher, clicking the hammer back. The man on the front row heard the audible gasp of those nearest me, and turned to see the commotion for himself. I saw his face too.

  It was Kevin Connolly. Accountant, numbers man, and company attorney. His face was shiny with sweat, as though he’d just concluded a sermon on the nature of God’s wrath, judgment, and mercy. But I knew it had been a long day of the Devil’s work for him, and this was his final detail. It would all be over soon, he’d reckoned. Although he hadn’t counted on me showing up.

  “Alan,” Kevin said, almost as a greeting. He rose as I aimed my gun at him, and the others became motionless. Julie clutched my upper arm nervously.

  “Toss it,” I told Connolly. “Slow.”

  “Toss what?”

  “Your gun. I know you got one, Kevin, or that door wouldn’t have been open.”

  He obeyed, almost casually opening his suit coat and withdrawing an automatic from its shoulder holster. “Self-protection, buddy. I see you got some.”

  “Toss it in there, by the barrel,” I commanded, indicating the piano.

  He did it. The piano played its own song, as the pianist fled. A modern atonal piece of brief duration.

  “Where’s Winsdon?” I asked. “Where’s your boss?”

  “What?” Connolly gave a short laugh. “What makes you think I have a boss anymore, Alan?”

  “You’re full of it, Kevin,” I noted. “You couldn’t head this up alone—not even if you knew which goons to hire.”
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  He shrugged. Maybe he’d heard the criticism before. I waved my gun above the people in line, signaling for them to leave. They were reluctant, so I jarred them from their lethargy. I fired once, high, and then saw that my shot had blasted right through Christ’s forehead on the image depicted in the stained glass window where the bullet had exited. The brown and blue and red shards splintered, leaving Christ headless and more like the Holy Ghost, now—a silhouette framed by lead solder.

  Sorry, I prayed.

  “Get out!” I shouted. “Go home. And don’t drink any stored water!”

  The people in the room began to move quickly toward the rear. But Connolly, during my momentary inattention, snatched the wrist of the little boy nearest him, and jerked him back to hold him up as a human shield.

  “Kevin,” I warned.

  “Noooooo!” the boy’s mother screamed, and attempted to intervene, but Kevin backed away from her, moving up onto the podium, toward the baptismal, where he then climbed over and into the water as Felsen backed away.

  “Stay back!” he demanded, both to me and to Felsen. Felsen obeyed, moving out of the tank and up into the rear entrance room, behind and to the side. But I did not stop. Not until Connolly lowered both himself and the frightened kid neck deep into the still tainted water.

  “Let him go . . . now,” I told Connolly, aiming my revolver.

  “Sure thing,” Kevin replied, and lowered the boy—crying—into the water. He then held the kid under, wrapped tightly against his chest. The boy held his breath. I could see him through the smoky green glass partition, struggling as the others in the church fled, leaving only his mother and Julie. The fortyish woman with short black hair cried out in a horrific bray of anguish. “Soon as you toss the gun up here,” Kevin said, “I’ll get up. Do it quick. Boy’s turning blue.”

  The boy’s mother stared between us in terror. Pastor Felsen’s wild eyes focused on Kevin with a strange new light, from around the corner where he waited on the steps behind the baptismal tank. Clicking on the safety, I tossed the gun high and hard against the wall behind Kevin, and it dropped into the swirling water. The kid’s mother rushed to pull her son out as Connolly held his breath and dove for the weapon. I was only halfway to Kevin’s own pistol in the piano, though, and Julie was only halfway down the aisle to the exit, when Kevin came up with the gun. He tried to fire, aiming at Julie’s back, then clicked off the safety and fired a warning shot that ricocheted above our heads.

  “Hold it, people.”

  We stopped, and then looked at Kevin. He now aimed the revolver at me, but stared at the others.

  “Where do you think you’re going? Can’t we buy you a drink?”

  “We?” I asked. And then I saw Felsen reemerge behind Kevin, except that the wild look in his eyes had now gone over-the-edge paranoid and delusional.

  “Yeah, you were right. I couldn’t do this alone. It was my idea, though. Some of it, anyway. Jeffers made it happen, of course.”

  “Jeffers,” I repeated in amazement.

  “Number two man, that’s right. Waiting for the old man to die. He got tired of waiting, though.”

  “Where is he?”

  “You just missed him. He’s wrapping things up with the men we hired. No job too unethical. A talented crew. Not as unlucky as you, though, Alan.”

  “Except they’re dead,” I announced evenly. “Some of the bastards, anyway.”

  Connolly froze for an instant, then blinked. “Really? I’m impressed. Kinda suspected it, after you came in here like this. Guess that means you can join the team, after all. Call it plan B, then. We cash in, set you up for the fall on this after your death. Then we take a long, long vacation. Now how’s that sound?”

  “We?” I repeated for Felsen’s sake, although I didn’t look at him. “How will you explain your absence?”

  “Hey, I’m still on the job, dumbo. Business as usual for me. I got nothin’ to do with this. I’m on vacation. It’s you who flew out here on your own, on a suicide mission.”

  “Like Jim Baxter?”

  “That was his choice. This is yours. Why make the same mistake?”

  “Why not just play by the rules, Kevin? Rules were what you always rammed down my throat.”

  “Rules.” He spat the word. “The FDA had us by the balls. We wouldn’t have lasted through the years and the millions it takes to play by the rules.”

  “So what’s in it for Jeffers now? Does he see no difference between a test results coverup and genocide?”

  “Accident. And if means early retirement, so be it. It’s what we all want, right? Who wants to work for a gold watch and a pat on the back? It just isn’t done, pal. Not in America. Not anymore.”

  “But even with Valium, how could you sleep at night,” I wanted to know, stalling as Felsen slowly descended into the water behind him, “realizing how many good churchgoing Christians you’ve killed?”

  Kevin laughed. “Got any idea how many people the FDA has killed?”

  “What does Tactar’s drug approval chances have to do with—”

  “Hey, just take their old food pyramid! Their warnings against saturated fats. They knew the real cause of heart disease is trans-fats and sugar, but they’re only admitting it now because they’ve been forced to. My God, prior to 1930 heart disease was almost unknown in the U.S.. Up to then Americans were eating meat and butter all the time! It’s only after margarine and all that refined white crap flooded the supermarkets that the heart attack rate skyrocketed.”

  “So you think that compares to what you’ve done here?”

  Kevin shrugged. “This is nothing. Small potatoes. It’s just quicker, more visible. Heart disease, now there’s the ticket. Keeps hospitals busy, and doctors employed. All thanks to the fast food industry. But enough of this. It’s time to find the boss, unless you’ve killed him too. The islands await, my friend, and I’m sorry, but it’s time for a swim.”

  Chuckling, he cocked the pistol again. Only Felsen intervened.

  “Time for a swim,” I agreed, watching as the pastor attacked Kevin from behind in a hallucinatory rage, pulling him back into the tank. Then Felsen boomed something about Satan as he took hold of Kevin’s neck with a strong carpenter’s hands. Jesus’ hands. Kevin struggled, of course. Kicking and screaming like a sinner at the edge of the Pit. But country life, thanks to its real home cooked food and fresh unpolluted air, gives a man the power he needs to perform a special baptism. And so Kevin’s face was soon as twisted as Felsen’s. And I could witness it all, too, thanks to the thick green glass. Just like at the zoo.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I told Kevin on our way out.

  But I don’t think he heard me.

  28

  The woman whose son I saved was Jean Thurman, the maid at Mabel’s boarding house. Her four year old was Ricky. Both wore blue. Earlier, they’d been taken to a special town meeting by Rebecca Crim, rounding up survivors in a van for Pastor Felsen, who was “indisposed.” Rebecca told them the meeting was mandatory, and an emergency, but she didn’t need to be told that. For one thing, the phones were dead, and the roads out of town were blockaded. For another, the bizarre horror movie being filmed with “extras” from all over had turned a little too realistic. And even Mabel herself had changed from being unusually angelic into someone with a morbid and lethal fascination for sharp knives. At the church, Connolly and Jeffers had claimed to be FBI agents. They urged everyone to stay in one place, right there, until help arrived from FEMA. In the meantime, until an explanation for what was happening could be found, maybe a prayer service was appropriate. Jeffers then directed Felsen to perform a baptismal service too, since the tank had just been filled the previous day. This would be followed by a special communion service when everyone would sample grape juice that symbolized Christ’s blood, not their own. When asked by one non-believer woman what he thought was happening to people in town, Jeffers proffered a strain of Mad Cow disease. When the woman said she wasn’t going to pray
or be baptized or take communion, Jeffers said she was free to leave. Everyone watched her leave, then. They heard the door open and close behind her. Moments later, they heard her screams. That was when they began to pray in earnest, and to get in line. Felsen had performed the service as though he were sleepwalking through a nightmare on Angel Dust.

  The El Dorado was gone now, as I suspected it would be. Also gone were the camera and tripod from the roof of the Sheriff’s office. I wondered if perhaps Jeffers had cut his losses and pulled out just a little early, film in hand. Or maybe he had planned to set up Kevin all along too, and assumed I was dead. That would prove to be a dangerous assumption, I vowed.

  As we walked quickly back to the boarding house to get Jean Thurman’s car, I thought about what might happen next. No doubt Jeffers had laid some kind of an incriminating trail behind, implicating me, Darryl, and possibly Kevin. What would do it, though? What could tie me in? Certainly Jeffers knew that if I claimed the CIA had been involved, my story would sound even more bogus. So maybe he’d set up a secret bank account for me, just waiting for a large deposit from whoever I’d sold the formula to. If so, it would eventually be found by investigators. Incriminating evidence might also be found in my apartment or office.

  I needed help, I realized. But who could I trust now? A private investigator? I considered Darryl’s cryptic hacker group, Hackers Anonymous. Darryl had claimed to be vice president. But how could I reach the president?

  Jean Thurman said she’d worked as a nurse’s aide when she lived in Cedar Rapids, and so she offered to tend to the dressing on my hand. But I declined, saying that what I really needed was a hospital emergency room for the pain that now throbbed through my whole arm and leg in a constant dull agony. It felt like the bullet which had gone through my hand had snapped several small bones, too, because I couldn’t move my middle finger. Although I didn’t need to move my middle finger to give it to Jeffers, if we ever met again.