Immortality (15 page)

“Who exactly is working on this?” asked Mark.

“The CDC is where you’d be going, specifically a top research group that operates out of a secure facility in the Atlanta suburbs.”

Mark stared into the man’s eyes.

“When do I start?”

Commander Harris handed him a satchel-briefcase with the top open. Inside were manila folders with the words Top Secret stamped on them. Shiny orange and white striped tape was folded over the edges of the folders. The tape made the edges look like smaller versions of the orange and white traffic barricades used at construction sites. Commander Harris handed him a key for the briefcase.

“You can begin now,” said Harris. “This is all the relevant data the CDC has collected. Keep it secure and keep it with you at all times until we pick it up. Don’t make copies. It’s a federal crime. Oh yeah, take a look at the folder labeled five. It seems this bacterium can be frozen and, when thawed, a large percentage reanimates.”

Mark was stunned. This bacterium could be more than a close cousin; this could be
his
Chromatium. In all the papers he’d written, there had been no mention of viability after freezing. The detail was a small piece of information he’d kept for himself like a chef leaving a single ingredient from the recipe. At the time, it had seemed curious that COBIC-3.7 had been able to survive freezing and thawing. While it was not at all unusual for other species of bacteria to possess this trait, his discovery made COBIC-3.7 the only strain of Chromatium Omri with this resiliency. COBIC-3.7 flourished in superheated hot springs, so at the time it had not been that surprising they were heartier than the common strains in more than one way.

The City was experiencing an unusually warm day which was breaking temperature records for November. The air was a pungent mix of food and car exhaust and sweat. Artie Hartman pushed open the taxi door with his foot. The door’s rusted hinges groaned. He was a young man dressed in an expensive business suit. He was half Japanese and half English. His features were a smooth blending of the two races. He was tall and muscular with a Caucasian build but Asian complexion and features. His eyes were more round than almond, with the color of blue sky.

Artie lifted his gaze slowly upward and drank in the expanding view. What he saw was good. No, better than good. Twelve stories above him was a set of windows, his and Suzy’s new windows, his and Suzy’s new apartment. The rent was three thousand dollars a month and the apartment was small, but it was in a great part of town and had a uniformed doorman and a marble entrance hall. So what if the marble was cracked and the doorman smoked cigars?

Artie gave the cabby a generous tip. The doorman smiled and said, “Good day, Mr. Hartman.” It was a good day, decided Artie. Life was working out better than he could have hoped. Fresh out of law school, he had landed his dream job, a prime cut assignment as an assistant DA. For a poor Asian kid from the Bronx, this was the American dream come true. The job had started a month ago, and today they were moving into their new place. Suzy would be home from work in a few more hours. She was a location camerawoman for
Hello! New York
. The local morning show had average ratings and aired pointless stories, but it had easily paid their bills during Artie’s last two years of law school. In her off time, Suzy had worked on a pair of documentaries for a nonprofit organization. Her documentary about homeless people had been aired on PBS. Documentary filmmaking was where her real passions lay. Artie felt good knowing that soon it would be his turn to support Suzy in her career move.

Artie wiped the perspiration from his face. He’d unpacked ten boxes filled with books. He leaned against the kitchen doorway and poured gulps of beer down his throat. In spite of all his work, the room still looked just as filled, stacked from floor to ceiling with more boxes. Had they secretly materialized from another dimension? Where had all this stuff come from? He felt walled in. It was time for a break. Fifteen minutes later, he was in the elevator with a mountain bike slung over his shoulder.

Traffic was heavy. Artie clicked up through the gears of his bike. He flashed past long lines of cars bottled up at intersections. There was a rhythmic noise, something like the sound of riding swiftly beside a picket fence. He was doing almost thirty mph at mid block and on a ruler-straight line toward Central Park. Speed was freedom. He had worked his way through undergraduate school as a bicycle courier. In those days, he’d spilled over the hoods of more than a few cars but had never been tagged by the wild bumper. He had earned his right of way over the cars. He was the one going for speed, cutting the corners, jumping the lights.

Anger was warming the skin of his face. The rage had been there, simmering all day long and now it was coming to the surface. The anger had begun after court at eleven o’clock this morning. The gangbanger he was prosecuting had an arrest record eighteen pages long, but only one prior conviction. This time he’d been picked up for breaking and entering a grocery store after hours. The creep had vandalized the shelves and made off with two cases of Pepsi. The punk was stupid as well as violent. Busted six blocks from the store for Pepsi theft, this time the gangster had also been wanted for raping a sixteen-year old girl.

The crime scene photos splashed up vivid memories in Artie’s mind: a small Latino girl with a swollen eye and a split lip and bruises that ran all along her torso. She had been raped several times over a period of hours.

Artie’s attention jumped back to the street. His teeth clenched tightly as he squeezed the brakes skidding to a stop at an intersection. The cross-flow of cars rushed past him like the maw of some huge deadly machine.

The gangbanger had gotten off, case dismissed, because the girl had been too scared to pick him from a lineup. The cops only had him on circumstantial evidence, no fingerprints or DNA. As far as the judge was concerned, it wasn’t enough for a trial.

This afternoon, that piece of human dirt had shaken Artie’s hand in the hall outside a courtroom and thanked him for coming today. The animal had leaned close and whispered through a mouth decorated with two gold-capped teeth.

“Hey five-0, the little bitch ’id wanted it, liked it. She turned pissy when I wouldn’t give her no mo’. I know you know what I mean... homey.”

Artie had knotted up with rage. Every inch of him had yearned to follow the animal outside and put him down.

The light changed to green. Artie pushed off. By the time he was across the street and through the park gates, he was moving flat out. He swung wide around Cherry Hill fountain and headed back toward the gate. It was time to push the limits.

Suzy hated the way he rode. She was constantly trying to get him to stop. Kamikaze riding was the name Artie’s old gang had given it. He knew that rapist punk better than he wanted to. Ten years ago, given a few more problems, it could have been him.

Artie started working the pedals with everything he had. Sweat was soaking into his shirt. His legs were fleshy pistons driving the machine. The speedometer was reading high thirties. He jumped the curb and shot through a line of traffic. The horns faded as he whisked down a corridor of buildings, still gaining speed. He glanced down at his left wrist. The mark was still there, the gang tattoo.

Artie closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the wind. Danger was a rush. He opened his eyes and yelled into the wind. The memories were still there along with the tattoo. No amount of penance would erase the things he’d done and seen. He’d been fourteen when he was initiated into the Red Dragons. The ceremony was called being beat-in. First he was hugged by the guys that were going to beat him. They were in a vacant lot. Gutted buildings towered around him like the ramparts of some destroyed castle. He was bigger than all the others, but in minutes he was driven to his knees by the circle of ten hitters. He’d fought back hard. He was no punk that would just take it and lie there. He was determined to prove himself. One of the hitters had ended up with a smashed nose.

Once Artie had recovered enough to stand on his own, he was led off to a crash house. He was given a quart of beer and a joint; and told one of the local girls was waiting for him in a small bedroom. She was a nice girl, too scared and too proud to be wilded by any gangster that came along. She wanted the protection of her gang. This was her initiation too. Girls had the choice of being sexed-in or beat-in. After he was done with her, others had lined up. This serial abuse was the first train he’d seen, and not the last. After several years he’d earned the nickname caboose. He was always the last in line. He didn’t like this thing they did; but if he didn’t participate he was out, and that was almost always fatal. There was a gauntlet of knives to walk before a gangster became an ex.

Artie had told Suzy nearly everything about his past. The trains were something he could never discuss or explain to a Japanese girl who had grown up in the affluent suburbs of New Jersey.

The day after his initiation, Artie was given his mark. A local tattoo shop had etched onto his left wrist a red dragon coiled around a dagger. The mark was three inches long and directly over the major arteries. If a blood ever failed his brothers, he vowed to cut the serpent in two. There were rumors about some who had done it; one voluntarily, the others under threats of things far worse.

Artie was covered in sweat as he carried his bike into the apartment. Suzy peeked around the corner between the kitchen and hallway. She was home early. She stared at him with those eyes that never missed a thing. The smile vanished from her face. She knew he had ridden wild. He took his bike out everyday and almost never Kamikazied. How did she know? Sometimes Artie wondered if she was a witch.

“Sorry baby,” he said.

Silence was her weapon. Artie went into the bathroom to take a shower. He felt like a dog. The soap and hot water cleaned his body but not his thoughts.

Dinner was quiet. Suzy had made dumplings and noodles. When she was through picking at her food, she watched him eat. At first her eyes were hard, but slowly they softened. By the time Artie was through with his first helping, she smiled.

“Do you forgive me?” he said.

“Remember rule number twenty-six?” she said. “Forgiveness is for suckers.”

Artie laughed. He figured he knew about half her rules by heart. He loved her more than anything he could have imagined being able to feel, and sometimes even more. She had this smooth healthy complexion and when she smiled the entire room grew brighter. She was an exotic woman, high cheekbones and a smallish nose. Her hair was short and black and reminded him of pictures he’d seen on the cover of Vogue.

~

A faint smell of dinner lingered amid the cardboard boxes. Artie was on the couch with a glass of red wine. The boxes were piled around him like a fort. Suzy had been off doing something for the last hour, probably tracking down some of her stuff. The stereo was playing softly. She came into the room and cuddled up next to him. She took a sip of his wine, then gave him a small piece of plastic with a blue dot in the center. Artie was confused. There was something mischievous in Suzy’s eyes.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Guess.”

Something in the back of Artie’s mind clicked. His nerves jumped. He’d seen these on television. The blue dot was a home pregnancy test. He hugged her and kissed her until she was laughing so hard that he had to stop. He realized he was babbling, gushing, but didn’t care. He was in love with the girl of his dreams and they were going to have a baby.

~

Artie awoke in the middle of the night. His stomach felt sore as if all the muscles had cramped up minutes ago. He was sweating. The air felt thicker and was hard to breathe. There was a stench of burned meat. Something was very wrong. He was on fire. He screamed until his lungs were empty. He gasped awake for the second time. The air was fine. The room was fine. His death had been a dream, but so real....

Mark was dead tired. He hated flying and was glad that part of the trip was behind him. He was yawning. He couldn’t stop thinking of sleep. He’d flown into Atlanta on the red eye, tossed his bags through the open door of a hotel room, then piled into a rented Ford to drive out to the lab. The radio in the car was broken and the CD player had just finished eating its breakfast, his favorite CD.
Morrison Hotel
by the Doors was hopelessly jammed in the player. The great god of rental cars was frowning on him today. He knew he should have rented the Lexus.

At the CDC facility, Mark was expected. A security guard parked in a green Dodge was waiting at the gate. Mark followed the green Dodge with its government plates to a set of reserved parking spaces.

With his uniformed escort, Mark walked into the lobby of the CDC facility. Mark was wearing a tweed sport coat, Greenpeace t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of beat-up sneakers. The security officer working the front desk disliked him on sight and hated him even more when he found out Mark was the VIP they were expecting. The security officer gave him a six-page questionnaire to fill out for a temporary badge.

A half hour later, a young woman in a blue dress and white lab coat arrived to escort Mark through the building. They passed through a security checkpoint which included a metal detector and an x-ray machine for bags. Mark noticed people were being screened both entering and leaving.

Following his escort, he walked through a revolving door that required his new magnetic badge and was deposited into a long hallway of faux marble. One side of the hallway was the building’s back wall, which was solid glass. The other side of the hallway was a long row of doors leading to offices, elevators, and other rooms. The woman started chatting small talk. She was very much his type, young, full of energy, and a little reckless around the edges – a lot like Gracy. He noticed she had no ring on her left hand.