The Hunger (21 page)

Something brushed past him. He remembered the awful sense of movement in the attic. Clawing frantically at the roots that surrounded him, he screamed. This was a wet, stinking grave if ever there was one. It wasn’t quite as confining as the stone chamber, but it was just as deadly in the long run. He pushed at the roots, trying to progress toward the surface. His mind contracted to a single thought: hurt Miriam. If possible, destroy Miriam. If not, then die trying.

In his final effort, at least, there would be some small nobility. He was the last of a great line, after all, who had fought in many a noble war. There had been brave men among his forefathers. He would remember them now. His hand reached ancient, sodden brick, the vaulting of their old tunnel to the East River. So that’s where it had put him. He pulled the bricks down easily. The mortar was rotten, the bricks themselves crumbling.

Suddenly, he found that he could stand to full height, even raise his arms above his head.

It took him a few seconds to realize that he had broken through into the old tunnel, not out of it. The echoing water was much louder, so loud that he could hear it even with his injured ear. His hands clutched mud, flailed, found a curved brick ceiling a few feet above. It was rank, the great roots twining everywhere. Waving his hands ahead of him in the total blackness, he began to move forward.

After ten steps the tunnel ended in a jumble of bricks and concrete chunks. Roots formed a slick forest. Above the dripping there rose another sound.

Was it the tide, perhaps? Their house was not far from the East River. Then it hit him all at once — he was hearing traffic on the FDR Drive.

This old escape tunnel was built back when the recently formed New York City Police Department seemed a threat. It had been covered over with the construction of the highway thirty years ago. That slate she had lifted was the door to the tunnel.

He began to claw at the dirt. Not so far above must lie the garden. Maybe it wasn’t over yet, maybe he would get another chance after all. Roots tore at his fingers, scraping them raw. Only by digging around them and pressing himself up between their strands could he make progress. He worked with the furious strength of rage. He must not fail now. When he felt this same strength surge in the bodies of his victims he knew they were at wit’s end.

There came a blaze of light. John recoiled — had he shorted some kind of buried electrical cable? As his eyes grew used to the brilliance he also found he was covered with flat flakes of a pink material. For a moment he was utterly confused, then he smelled the flowers.

He lifted his head into Miriam’s garden, right into the midst of her treasured roses. They were her own special hybrids, created over God knew how many years of patient grafting. Some blossoms were enormous, others tiny. Some plants bore thorns, others none. And they ranged in shade from delicate pink to deep red. Most of the thorns were strictly ornamental, soft to the touch. Five of the larger blossoms at high summer would fill a substantial vase, and the fragrance would cover a dozen rooms.

Only his face and one arm were worked out of the earth. The house was invisible behind him, but he could feel its menacing presence. He hoped she wouldn’t so much as glance out a window — Miriam had the eyes of a falcon.

The roots clutched at him, impeding every movement. He was tiring quickly now that the rush of panic had ended. His heart bounded raggedly along and his lungs bubbled.

It was a triumph when both arms lay among the rose bushes and he could press against the ground. Inch by inch he freed himself. At last his hips jerked through the final impediment and he pulled himself out. He lay beneath the sky of morning, feeling the hunger rising yet again, barely able to move, save only to tear blossoms from their branches. When he was done he rested, then pulled himself to his feet. The house stood in its garden, somber to John’s eyes. He looked high to its roof, to the tiny window of the room where Miriam kept her dead.

There was something he could do there, if he dared, if he could bear it. The house was silent. Taunting. Daring him to enter. He would, when the moment was right. If she captured him first he would lose his revenge forever. And if she did not? Then it would not matter.

The whole clinic was electrified with the news of Miriam Blaylock. By six-thirty
A.M.
a stunned, hollow-eyed crowd was huddled around Tom and Sarah, watching the monitors. At seven Sarah pressed a button that sounded chimes in the sleep cubicle. Miriam had been awake but motionless for two hours; her sleep had lasted exactly six. She stirred, stretched luxuriously, and opened her eyes. She looked directly into the monitor. Sarah was surprised, it was one of the gentlest, most beautiful expressions she had ever seen. “I’m awake,” said the rich voice.

The whole group stirred. Sarah knew that the others felt as she did. “I’m gonna get on the horn,” Tom said. “I’d better get things moving.” He headed toward his office to call specialists — geneticist, physiological biologist, cellular biologist, psychiatrist, and half a dozen others.

It hadn’t taken long for them to realize that they were in the presence of a potentially marvelous discovery. The gross abnormalities of the blood and the completely alien brain function left no room for doubt: Mariam Blaylock was not a member of the species
Homo sapiens
.

Sarah’s intense reaction to her was partly explained. There must have been some awareness on an unconscious level and a corresponding attempt to compensate. The unconscious reaction to a living, intelligent being of an unknown species was itself unknown. Now that the alienness lay uncovered, the woman — female creature — seemed subtly less threatening. Unknowns were the familiar ground of Sarah’s work, and Miriam was a confluence of unknowns. Although an extraterrestrial origin could not be ruled out, it seemed unlikely in view of the physical similarity between Miriam and a human being.

In spite of her position as a scientist, Sarah could not shake the feeling that she was in the grip of some enormous mechanism of fate, something pulling her toward some destiny, and that it was not blind at all, but rather entirely aware of her smallest response.

“Good morning, Mrs. Blaylock,” she said into the intercom. “Would you care for some breakfast?”

“No, thank you. I’ll eat later.”

“Coffee, then?”

She sat fully up in bed, shook her head no. “Come tell me, Doctor, what you’ve learned. Can you help me?” Suddenly even through the filter of the TV monitor, the eyes were fierce.

Sarah felt no further reticence. She marched right to the cubicle. It was warm and smelled of Miriam’s sweetness. “May I call you Miriam?” Sarah sat on the edge of the bed trying to feel neatly enclosed in herself. “We learned a great deal. You’re a unique person.”

Miriam said nothing. A tiny doubt crossed Sarah’s mind. Of course Miriam herself knew what she was. She must. So they had assumed.

“Did you sleep well?”

She looked surprised. “Don’t you know?”

They both laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you remember a dream. A particularly vivid one.”

Miriam’s face grew solemn. She drew herself up, dangling her legs over the side of the bed. They were beautiful, outlined under her nightgown. “Yes, I had a vivid dream.”

“I’d like to know about it. The information will be very helpful.”

Miriam glanced at her, said nothing. That look stabbed Sarah deeply. She felt in her own heart a glint of Miriam’s pain. The thought came that someone ought to take Miriam in her arms and hug away that loneliness. It would be a noble thing to do, a bridge across worlds.

Sarah opened her arms, turning toward Miriam with invitation, oblivious to the gleaming lens of the video camera attached to a corner of the ceiling. Miriam clung, it struck her, as a child. “There, there,” Sarah said through feelings of awkwardness. She wasn’t really very
good
at this sort of thing.

Miriam sobbed, quickly cut it off. Sarah stroked her soft blond hair, made soothing sounds in her ear.

The loneliness was palpable, as real as an odor. When Sarah felt her stir she released her grip. Miriam sat back against the wall, took Sarah’s hand in hers, and kissed her fingers.

Now Sarah did think of the monitor. Embarrassed, she withdrew her hand. “Perhaps we’ll talk again after you’ve dressed,” she said as calmly as she could. “I’ll beep you when I’ve turned off the video.” She tried to smile. “You’re allowed to get dressed in private.”

Miriam seemed about to say something but Sarah did not wait to hear it. She was not at all sure why the creature seemed to compel such intimacy, but this was not the time to probe further. She retreated to the observation room, determined to be more careful in the future. Other patients were being awakened and the group around Miriam’s monitor was smaller. Phyllis Rockler and Charlie Humphries had arrived, however. They were talking heatedly with Geoff Williams, who waved his now-wrinkled sheet of blood component statistics as he spoke. When Sarah reappeared Geoff called out that Tom had gotten his core group together and a meeting was scheduled in the conference room.

Sarah followed standard procedure in killing Miriam Blaylock’s monitor during her dressing period. Mrs. Blaylock would have to be processed further by a resident. Sarah and Tom both had to attend the core conference. “Just don’t let her get out of here,” Sarah said to the eager kid who was assigned to the job. “She’s precious.
Precious.
I want the standard post-observation interview right off the form. Then stall her. Say we need her here for another twenty-four hours.” When she left for the conference the resident was scribbling on a clipboard. For an instant she allowed herself a privilege reserved for the successful, delighting in the fact that he was obviously a couple of years older than she. Life on a fast track had its compensations.

Sarah walked into a packed room. People looked disheveled, bleary-eyed. She wondered what Tom had said to pour so many senior men out of bed so early. Tom sat playing with an unlit cigar, which disappeared as she entered. She took the chair that Charlie and Phyllis had saved for her. Around the table were twelve people ranging in age from thirty to seventy. Hutch sat straight, his lips a thin line, his face frozen in a manufactured expression of curiosity. Underneath it Sarah sensed something else. Their eyes met and his sadness surprised her. So Tom’s assault was progressing. Hutch had not called this meeting, he was here by invitation only.

“OK,” Tom said, “thank you very much for your time, Doctors. I’m sorry to get you out of bed so early in the morning. I must say, however, I think you’ll be glad I did once we review the record. Just briefly, the subject in question is named Miriam Blaylock. She appears in excellent physical condition, aged thirty years, and she has received a working diagnosis of night terrors. That diagnosis has been revised to include grossly anomalous brain function.”

“Doctor —” It was Hutch.

Tom held up his hand. “Doctor Hutchinson hasn’t been briefed because of the need for haste,” he said. Sarah blinked. The riposte was deadly. Now Hutch must remain silent. He had been neatly exposed as being among the uninformed. A figurehead of department. Tom took his blood in drops, but each one counted. “We’ll get our first report from Doctor Geoffrey Williams, who did the blood grouping and analysis on the patient.”

Geoff rattled papers, pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Put simply, the woman’s blood is completely mutated, to the extent that she might well be a varietal species and not a member of
genus homo
at all.” The few preoccupied faces came to attention.

“It could be a genetic defect,” Hutch said. He had leaned forward in his chair, his face full of interest and concern. Sarah realized a truth — he did not view the clinic as a possession, but himself as the property of the clinic. Of course he would continue to talk, he saw no humiliation in being relieved of the captaincy as long as he remained in the group.

“It isn’t a defect, the blood —”

“You don’t have a chromosomal yet, you couldn’t. I think you’re being quite hasty —”

“Hush up, Walter,” a deep voice said from the back of the room. All eyes turned. Sam Rush, Riverside Medical Center’s Chief of Research Staffs, leaned against the door, his arms folded before him. Sarah raised her eyebrows. He counted for more than the entire board. Considerably more.

Geoff cleared his throat. “Mutation, even parallel evolution, are the appropriate concepts. The kicker is in cellular detail. First, the erythrocytes are off color, practically purple. Yet there is no indication that the patient is suffering from any oxygen-uptake problems. The cells are also less than half-normal size. Second and perhaps most important, we observe seven varieties of leukocytes instead of five as in a human body. The two new ones are among the most extraordinary cellular structures I’ve had the pleasure of observing. As a first guess, I’d say that the purpose of number six is heightened control of invasive organisms. It is active against all test cultures so far, including
E. Coli
and salmonella. And it shares a totally unexpected property with number seven in that it resists death even in a saline solution.

“Now, the number seven. This is the reason I mentioned the possibility of a parallel evolution. It is literally a factory, consuming dead blood cells of all kinds and birthing new ones, including its own type.”

The room was silent for some time. Finally, Dr. Weintraub, the cellular biologist, spoke. “Doctor what kind of breakdown process occurs?”

“This blood sample is exceptionally resistant to morbidity. I suspect it would even cause such diseases as virally induced cancer to be self-limiting and transient events in the life of the organism. If this blood was flowing in the veins of a mortal being, subject to time and accident, it might itself be immortal.

“Structural detail of the seventh leukocyte?” Weintraub’s eyes were tightly closed, he was deep in concentration.

“Complex tripartite nuclei. The structure appears to change according to the type of cell being consumed and reproduced. They birth living versions of the other types as fast as the originals die. The blood is in the lab now, six hours old, still as fresh as the moment it was taken.”