Cain's Blood (25 page)

The first, the one Jacobson had raised, had been stripped naked and
looked as if he’d been crying. he had been. There were abrasions on his
wrists and legs from the duct tape.

The other one, the one Ted knew from school, was a couple years
older. heavier, too. The young one’s hair was brown. But there was no
question about it: These two little dirty birdies came from the same
dirty nest.

It really was something to see. And Ted could hardly take his eyes
off it. Any of it.
When they’d first grabbed the kid in Scofield, it had been a pretty
random act. But when they saw, when they really understood who this
kid was . . . they thought it was AMAZING.
Another version of Jeff. 2.0 or 3.0 or 40.1. They hadn’t a clue.
And the real kicker was this pussy had lived with Jacobson most of
his life.
Al totally recognized him. Another lab rat who’d apparently been
snuck into DSTI a couple times for counseling and testing over the
years. One of the lab rats who’d gotten off way too easy. Didn’t even
have a tracking chip in him, when they looked—cutting him in the same
places they’d been cut, and a few others, too. Not too much, though.
Williford had other plans.
The bones were only animal bones. Small stuff, too. Mice and birds,
mostly. A squirrel Jeff had found in Mt. Sterling. And a cat, that one
family’s cat. A fun little pile of tiny vertebrae, ribs, tibia, and skulls that
Jeff had pulled together over the last few weeks. he usually kept ’em in
an emptied box of frosted flakes, a box he’d recently had to reinforce
with silver duct tape. Now they were dumped out onto the table again
so the other kid, the other Jeff, could play with them.
Would play with them. had to. Or be punished.
When Jeff’d been five, the crew at Massey made damn sure he’d
find the bones behind the facility one morning, in the hope that he’d
find them amusing and play with them. That’s exactly what another
Jeffrey Dahmer, the “real” one, had done when
he
was a kid. They must
have been quite pleased with the results. But this other kid, this other
Jeff, hadn’t gotten any of that. he’d been in another test group. until
now.
“It’s the sound,” the older Jeff said. “When they rub together. Or
when the pile collapses and they roll off each other. That click, click,
click.” he leaned in close behind the second Jeff as he spoke. “I don’t
think they ever understood that, the ones who were watching me all
these years.
Click, click, click
. They’d call it something else, some psycho
babble about a God complex, I suppose. Playing God. A power trip. But
it was never that.” he picked up some of the pile and let the tiny bones
trickle back off his fingers onto the table.
Click, click, click.
Ted listened too, but he couldn’t understand what the big deal was.
To him, it sounded like dice rolling on a table. But he could see the look
on his new pal’s face. And he recognized ThAT completely.
“Do you hear it?” Old Jeff asked New Jeff. “Do you?” he picked up
and dropped another handful.
Click, click, click.
New Jeff didn’t answer.
“Are you playin’?” Old Jeff’s face sharpened like a knife blade.
“Maybe you need another beer first.” There was a half-emptied case of
Budweiser on the table, and he angrily reached for a can. “Go for it, faggot.” he pushed the kid’s head back and poured.
Jacobson’s kid spurted and choked as the beer ran over his throat
and chin and piss-colored streaks traced down his bare chest. he
thrashed against the weight of Old Jeff’s hand, but throughout, Old Jeff
held him in place.
Ted reached to scratch his arm again. It stung, and he reluctantly
pushed back the shirtsleeve to get a better look. The blotch looked even
worse than before. A rounded stain that today ran from the lower half
of his bicep past the crook of his arm toward his wrist.
Growing
. It had
bubbled up in the center with what looked like several giant whiteheads,
but yellowy and the size of quarters. The skin was darker than brown
now, almost black. A week before, it had been a small smudge. he’d
thought it was a bruise.
But there were others now. A small one on his chest. And another
growing up his calf, multiplying by the day, hour. he didn’t know what
it was, but thinking about it made him want to scratch it again. Made
him want to cut it out.
Ted turned his attention back to the Jeffs.
“No?” the older Jeff was shouting. “Then we better give it some
time, I guess.” he tossed the empty can across the room. “you’ll get
used to it. even start to like it, I bet.”
The boy coughed, gagged as some of the beer spewed from his
mouth.
“Pussy,” Old Jeff laughed. “They had me drinking by ten. Wanted a
genuine alcoholic. Like the original.” he moved behind the boy again
but kept his hand on his face. “Of course, you’re really only a baby,
aren’t you? Still wet behind the ears with formaldehyde and whatnot.
New and improved insta-clone.” his fingers moved steadily over the
chin, forced their way into the boy’s mouth, where he slipped them in,
long and wet, again and again. “I can tell from your look you have some
idea what I’m talking about. your daddy told me all about it. And since
Daddy’s all dead now, good-bye Daddy, I guess it’s up to me to make
sure you really get the whole picture. Ted, you think our boy here can
handle this shit?”
“Whatever,” Ted replied.
“exactly.” Old Jeff leaned closer. “here’s the thing, kid. you were
made in a lab about nine years ago. Jacobson, your pretend daddy, and
the other paragons of science at DSTI figured out how to alter gestation rates. how to accelerate the speed of clone production. . . . Ah!
Ted, I think our boy might already know all this.”
Jacobson’s kid tried speaking. Nothing came out.
“Save your strength, Jeff,” he patted the boy’s face. “you’re gonna
need it. So, while some of us have been here like real people from the
beginning, you and another batch of clones have been alive for only ten
or even three years. Daddy took one home, told it some lies, used an
army of tutors and top-of-the-line learning modules to stuff your head
with everything an average fifteen-year-old should know. And voila! you
got a kid. They could have as easily made you thirty. Which, technically,
considering that your DNA was copied from a guy
in
his thirties, you
already are.”
“Just . . . ,” the pathetic kid managed, “stop. . . .”
“face it, you got any real memories from when you were a little
kid? Anything? first Christmas, maybe? Learning to tie your little
shoes?” Old Jeff said, his voice deep, like a god’s. “Like I said, love.
Clone in a box. Just add water.”
“Please . . . I—”
“relax, brotha. you’re cool here. you’re still one of us, right?
Shouldn’t care if you were made yesterday, love. right here and right
now, you and I are exactly the same. We are one.”
“I’m . . .”
“you’re what, Jeff?”
“I’m
nothing
like you.”
Old Jeff grabbed the kid’s face in both hands. “All evidence to the
contrary,” he smiled.
Jacobson’s kid tried to wrench himself away.
Old Jeff held tightly. “Do you love me?” he asked. his voice had
taken on a different emotion. And it was another that Ted was familiar
with. Old Jeff’s other hand moved down New Jeff’s chest. “Because I
love
you,
” he said. It came out like a whisper as his hand slipped lower.
“But you know what?” he pulled his hand away from the New Jeff’s
mouth and leaned closer so their two faces were pressed together. It
looked like one of them had mashed up against a mirror. “I fucking hate
you, too.”
Old Jeff’s lips brushed across the boy’s cheek, and Ted wondered
if New Jeff was even listening anymore. If he was even there. he also
wondered if it really mattered.
Ted smiled and stepped slowly from the room.
It was clear that Jeff needed some more time alone with himself.

tanforth, that Army Guy, was an asshole.
even more so than the other stock Nazi Big Brother Dogs
of-War who sporadically appeared at the lab. This guy was another breed altogether.
Seven letters for Stanforth?
ASShOLe. GeSTAPO. CerTAIN. uNMOVeD. MONSTer.
Ten letters for the current situation?
PreCArIOuS. INIQuITOuS. INeVITABLe. fuCkeDCITy.
An old word game DSTI’s Dr. robert feinberg used to take his
mind off the real task at hand. Not quite the same as his customary
morning routine of the
New York Times
crossword puzzle, but it usually
got the job done all the same. his hands were hardly shaking anymore.
he looked across the lab to where Stanforth and some other Defense
Department clown stood with Dr. erdman. Watching him from the
relative safety of the control room. Dr. Mohlenbrok was at the console
next to his, reading out the latest vitals.
The specimen in the tank twisted again. Moved with new life. A
single dark hand suddenly slammed against the side of the Plexiglas, and
feinberg instinctively stepped back. Snot-colored bubbles rolled between the long, skeletal fingers as it dragged the hand across the inside
surface. feinberg would not look up. he knew that if he did, it would be
looking straight at him. They always did that.
And he knew it would be smiling.
he refocused.
Nine letters for the things in the tanks?
PrOCeDure. eVOLuTION. DeSTrOyer. PAyCheCk.
They’d used these before in Afghanistan and yemen. Lots of tests in
Central America. Short shelf life on these fellas, they—
No,
he realized suddenly.
“Paycheck” is only eight letters.
And then
moved to the tank itself and typed in the last codes, unable to drown out
the whirr and spurt of the remaining dark fluids.
I should be home playing
my guitar,
he thought
. Rolling a nice big fatty and crankin’ those new speakers.
feinberg patted the release check, and the sealed hinges of the front
panel hissed back at him like something alive.
I should be hunched over a
binocular microscope, making better deodorant for P&G.
he could almost
hear the other men talking behind him. Stanforth and Dr. erdman’s
words muffled, but about killing more children, no doubt.
By now, word among the staff was that DSTI had already eliminated the other waiting embryos, and that some of the developed specimens had been destroyed or chemically lobotomized. There’d been a
million rumors after Jacobson had up and vanished. Some kind of accident in the “Cain” tests. rumors, he told himself. Nothing more than
that. he wondered again why he hadn’t been sent home with the others.
Most of DSTI was temporarily shut down, the employees shipped off to
various university study or interim assignments in other development
branches within the corporate mother ship. Instead, he remained part
of the skeleton crew. for cleanup. he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep
in nine years
. Nine years.
his shrink felt that his anxiety attacks were
induced by “stress” from work.
Stress?No shit.
Legs wobbling like a newborn deer or someone who’d just cum for
a third time, the figure stepped from the tank and grabbed the sides of
the hatchway to steady itself.
The man—and it
was
categorically a man by all touchstones of the
definition—was a by-product of biopharming. The use of recombinant

DNA technology to introduce genes into organisms, thus manipulating
their genomic structure and function into a form not otherwise found
in nature. Companies had been doing it with plants and livestock for
almost thirty years to the tune of a hundred billion dollars a year. This
organism—this
man
—here was merely another single step forward.

feinberg thought again of a book he’d recently read all about the
Nazis’ work on V-1 and V-2 rockets at the Dora concentration camp.
The mountain hideaway in Thuringia with its endless secret tunnels
and twenty thousand slave laborers. The torture and hangings in the
name of science. fifteen thousand corpses to help “improve” mankind.
How many corpses will this one make?
feinberg wondered.

Dr. feinberg half closed his eyes to the thought and stepped aside
to let the specimen pass by. But it didn’t. It had stopped. And now stood
beside him, watching him. feinberg could hear the fluids dripping off
its charcoal skin onto the floor. he could smell the synthetic stench of
something between cheap fruity wine and formaldehyde.

A twelve-letter word for—
Then it opened the mouth. fetid breath blew rank and hot over
feinberg’s face. No words came to mind. he gagged, and a deep gargle
burbled down the specimen’s throat. he assumed it was laughing.
Something gently touched his arm, tugging him closer, and he turned
slightly.
A single eye caught his own, and he stood frozen before it again.
his body trembled, yet he was too terrified to move a single step away.
In that one glance, feinberg would have sworn he’d seen everything
behind the stare. In the novels he loved to read, the killers always had
uncaring, vacant eyes. Shark eyes, glossy doll eyes. But in this gaze
was something else. This eye was the collective refined chromosomes
of men named Bundy, DeSalvo, Dahmer, Gacy, ramirez, and a dozen
others. This eye was the authentic “all-singing, all-dancing crap of the
world” and empowered by that same truth. And this eye wasn’t vacant at
all. It was
totally
aware. It was all-knowing. This eye was the eye of God.
And God clearly wanted robert feinberg dead.
The mouth opened, showing teeth, and moved toward feinberg’s
throat.
“No,” someone said behind them. It was Stanforth.
Jaws cracked, widening. Something sticky dripped down feinberg’s
neck.
his mind racing, feinberg thought,
Would there be a space age without
the extraordinary work the Nazi scientists accomplished at Dora? Would . . .
he knew then he would die.
“No,” Stanforth said again, beside him. “At least not today,” he
added and laughed, patting the technician on the back. “Move aside,
Doctor,” he suggested, and feinberg quickly did as he was told. Colonel
Stanforth stood directly in front of the dripping form. “We need you to
find someone,” he said, handing over a blanket. “your brothers.”
The specimen growled in understanding.
“find them and then kill them,” Stanforth explained.
“Castillo, too,” erdman added.
Stanforth turned and fixed the geneticist with an icy stare of endless
contempt, then looked back. “Anyone,” Stanforth agreed, “who gets in
your way.”
Grinned. head tilted back in anticipated pleasures.
“first,” Stanforth said, “some clothes and intel. There’s a chopper
leaving in thirty minutes. Better follow me.”
eight letters for fucked.
feINBerG. Some guy named CASTILLO.
eVeryONe.
“feinberg!”
he looked up to where Stanforth had his hand on the back of the
swathed creature, leading it and erdman from the room. “yes, sir?”
“We’ll need the other two, as well,” Stanforth said.