IN DEVELOPMENT - "Race" by Steve Orr

RACE
By Steve Orr

Now

Devereaux lined up the hood ornament with the centerline of the highway. The little chrome jaguar seemed to leap forward when he shifted its namesake into fifth. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel's leather cover, he pressed the already thrumming engine for more power. The yellow stripes dividing the highway seemed to shorten as he accelerated; lines, to dashes, to dots.

Having finally crossed over into Nevada, he could now drive as fast as the machine would go. And that, he hoped, was very fast indeed. He needed speed above all else right now.

He was headed due west. At this speed, the landscape, the road, the sky itself, all seemed to stretch out toward a central point on the horizon, growing progressively smaller the closer they got to that point. The bright sunlight, sitting squarely in the center of it all, gave him hope. At the same time, it made him want to hurry. It was very low in the sky, and he had to stay in the light until he reached his destination. He could already see fingers of darkness stretching over the roof of the car, reaching toward the west.

For a second he thought the fingers were reaching down to grab the car. He shook his head to clear it. That wasn’t good. How long had he gone without sleep, now?

The last time he slept was . . . ? It was before he stole the car. When had he done that? Was it two days, already? He knew he couldn’t spend another night awake. He had to rest, and that meant he had to hide. Of course, the great thing about driving west was that he had longer in the light. It would delay them some. Not much, but, maybe, just enough.

He knew some things about them they didn’t know about themselves. At least, he hoped they didn't know; he was counting on that to give him an edge. Sure, they knew how deadly sunlight was to them, more so since indulgence had produced that lovely hole in the Ozone layer. They really had to wait until deep in the night before coming out into the open. He was pretty sure, though, that they didn’t know about the other. Why would they? Not enough of it in the northeast that they'd notice.

He smiled. They may be vampires, but they weren’t geniuses.

Oh, they weren’t really vampires. But they were as close as GEN-EFEX could make them, weren't they? Whose stupid idea was that, anyway?

Oh, yeah.

His.

######

Then - 18 Years Earlier

It was one of those great fall days and Anson Devereaux, 'Son' to his friends, couldn't imagine how he could be happier.

As he Jogged across campus to the Science Center, the part of his brain that planned strategies and did math wizardry was focused on the work-study position he had just wrangled, Lab Technician-1.

Sure, it meant cleaning up everyone else's messes, but it also put him right where he wanted to be, in the University's genetics lab.

The competition had been steep, the other applicants being upper-class men and women. As a First Year, he should have been muscled out early in the process, but he had some offsetting advantages, genius being chief among them and financial need running a close second. This one-two punch took him through round after round of cuts until, finally, he found himself on the short list for the position.

It was at this point he made an enemy, Rand Elmore, a Junior taking all upper level classes. Rand was nosed out at the last by two factors; one, he had no financial need, but that, by itself wouldn't have sealed the deal. The clincher was that the Department Head was pro-ROTC, one of the other ways Devereaux was paying for his college education.

ROTC wasn't popular with many of his fellow students, but Devereaux ignored that. He'd make a deal with the devil, himself, if it would get him through college. So what if he had to give a couple years to the military after graduation? A short detour. He'd go in as an officer, and the country wasn't at war. How much trouble could that be?

The way he saw it, a little marching up and down,and some boot polishing, was getting him the job of his dreams. Well, not really, but definitely in the general neighborhood of his dream job. He guessed he would have to thank them, someday.

Now

Looking ahead, he thought he saw headlights in the distance. That would be bad. He had hoped to be a good deal farther along before dusk settled in. He saw it, again. Definitely headlights.

Without slowing, he eased the Jaguar back into the right lane. Out of the corner of his right eye, he watched the cacti and scrub brush accelerate into a blur as he pulled even with them. Gone in a flash.

Then

Another part of his brain, one that had only recently been awakened, was beginning to fill up with Marcia Bilderbach, 'Bil' to her friends.

In high school, dating had always meant pretending he wasn't as smart as he was. Dates had been excruciating experiences where he spent the entire time alternating between not understanding what his companion was talking about and trying to keep himself away from geek-speak.

Consequently, Devereaux avoided dating unless it was impossible to do otherwise. And, from time to time, it was impossible. Theirs was a small town, and, at least socially, a close community. His mother took note of his stance on dating, and made a point of arranging for him to escort this or that daughter-of-a-friend to this or that occasion requiring pairs composed of the opposite genders.

He didn't fight his Mother on these. He just got through them. Upon leaving for the University, though, he looked back with some pride on the fact that he had never, not once in 17 years, asked a girl out on a date.

All of that changed when Bil entered his life. Well, except for the 'asking her out' part.

Now

Soon, the lights became an eastbound 18-wheeler, heading toward the danger. But, of course, the truck driver didn't know that. Then again, just how much danger was there? Upon reflection, Devereaux decided that, for the next several months, even possibly the next few years, he was the only one who posed a threat to them. Possibly, just possibly, no one else was in immediate danger.

If they could control themselves....

Then

He'd been sitting in the Student Center luxuriating in the company of his two newest friends. Mark was his roommate, and was as smart in literature and philosophy as Devereaux was in the sciences. Sam lived in the next room and was a former high school jock as well as a former closet computer geek.

They were playing their favorite game -- 'what-if-it-was-real?' Somehow, over the past few weeks they had wondered from the path of pseudo-science, their erstwhile topic. They'd started out considering life on other planets, but quickly shifted over to more interesting questions such as the existence of Atlantis, things disappearing in the Bermuda triangle, and gates into the multiverse.

Unexpectedly they had detoured into fictional beings. They'd already tackled Moby Dick (maybe that's where they got off?), the Frankenstein monster, the Creature From The Black Lagoon (the easiest of the group, so far -- the genetics were pretty simple), and the Mummy (definitely the most challenging to-date).

It was the Mummy that got them onto vampires. They'd hit a wall trying to figure out just how the Egyptians, scientifically, could have produced a being that could walk out of a grave several millennia later.

The only way to 'win' the game was to 'prove' the situation with known or, on a stretch, believable science. No magic allowed! The only exemption to that injunction was something that could be shown to be subject to Clarke's Law. Anyone who played that card had better be ready to present a rigorous defense.

They'd been trying to work a stasis angle, unsuccessfully, when Mark did what it was he did so well. He asked the provocative question.

"What would they eat?"

####

From behind him he heard a husky female voice say, "Sonny Boy Devereaux?"

He hated that name.

He had been called 'Sonny Boy' all of his life by his family. He had tried all sorts of things to get them to stop using it. At school, he had signed all his papers as Anson; the faculty and staff had honored that. His few friends learned, quickly, to call him anything but 'Sonny'. Nothing, however, could change what his family did.

This time, instead of the old anger and resentment, he felt an electric frisson run up his spine, exploding out into his arms, legs, everywhere. It was one of the most pleasurable experiences of his life; maybe the most pleasurable. He actually shivered.

He must have zoned out for a few seconds. He suddenly became aware of his friends, both sitting with their mouths hanging open, staring over his shoulder. Swiveling in his chair, he looked up into a pair of eyes the color of polished walnut, little flecks of gold highlights scattered throughout.

He uncoiled from the chair, standing up because that was what he had been taught to do. As he rose, he kept looking into those eyes, and they kept looking into his.

Still in something of a fog, his words came from habit. "Your mother a friend of my mother?"

She grinned. "Friend of a friend."

He was looking down at her now, able to take in her whole face. She had something of a tan, but not enough to hide the little flock of freckles wandering across the bridge of her nose. He had read and heard that some people's eyes sparkled. Until now, he had never realized something like that could actually be true.

The grin became a smirk. "You know your mouth's hanging open, right?"

######


#####

Then-

The solution, as is often true, actually came before the problem. The trick, he knew, was to recognize it for what it was to become. Often, people encountered the solution and thought it was another problem to be overcome.

He had been lucky, lucky to perceive its future value before anyone else tried to "solve" it. The first time it happened, they all wrote it off to carelessness on the part of the operative. That kind of thing had happened periodically; an operative would lose track of the time, be caught in direct sunlight. The immolation was an intentional feature of the program. No one wanted the wrong people to discover the exact nature of the operatives they were fielding. Total destruction was imperative, and the immolation protocol took care of that. Nothing was left but unidentifiable ash; nothing remained that could reveal be traced, even on a genetic level.

When it happened again, same general location, same general situation, Devereaux wondered if there might be more to it than simple carelessness. He began to keep track of the immolations, charting all the relevant data; date, time, location, weather, etc. Eventually, he saw it and decided to keep it to himself. One never knew when one might need a secret. he was under no compulsion to share what he'd learned; the spooks in charge of the program having long before decided the unexplained immolations were the work of some counteragent of an unfriendly country or organization.


***STOP HERE***
####
####

Now

Convinces his enemy to 'take down' the vampires. He reveals the secret to the man, and that is enough motivation for the enemy to overcome his natural reluctance to help Devereaux.

The science:

Devereaux designed them, genetically, then grew them for the US gov't. Their purpose was to be a weapon. Each one a perfect spy and assassin. He had made them so that they did not produce new blood, as well as certain other essential bodily fluids. Amazingly, it was a simple procedure to make bone marrow not make new blood. The original idea had been to ensure their loyalty by this means. The US military would guarantee them the essential replacement fluids upon the successful completion of their assignments. It was a sort of half-life. The plan, as explained to Devereaux, was that they would be motivated to return to base, assignment complete. They would be told that they must do so or they would die, something that was, in the most simplistic sense, true.

Genetics, though, are about life, and making them be about death was difficult to do. Devereaux came as close as the science would allow, and as far as his employers were concerned, it was a success. None of them, even the scientist, were sophisticated enough to understand that what he had given them was only an approximation of what they had requested. There were some loopholes, but not so anyone else would know. The level of sophistication needed to understand very few individuals on the planet shared the difference between what was requested and what was produced.

Frankly, by the time Devereaux was brought on board, many of the broader design decisions had been made. What he had to do, and all he cared to do, was make the genetic part work. He didn't care, one way or another, what their purpose was. The science was all that interested him. He loved the challenge.

The military wanted to restrict these 'operatives' to night work, only. So, Devereaux gave them his own version of Xeroderma Pigmentosum, and made them sensitive to light in the blue range. They needed to be fast, accurate, etc.; he gave them stronger leg muscles, enhanced ocular abilities. Everyone was amazed. For him, though, it wasn't all that hard. The enhancements were an easy thing to do when you were building a being from 'scratch'. Give those abilities to a normal human being? Now, THAT would be a challenge.

They wanted some failsafes, so he gave them that. And that was the source of the trouble. It was the failure of the failsafe factors that led to the big problem. The very mechanisms he had 'programmed' into the creatures to limit their lives, a sort of 'planned obsolescence', was responsible for a weapon becoming a nightmare.

They were breeding. They had become a new race.